SPOT looks to the Board of Selectmen for leadership in our community. What does that mean? Here are some specifics:

Leadership means making the tough choices... and not backing down. For example, the town paid a consultant $50,000 to say we do not need 3 fire stations and not to rebuild the third fire station.The Board of Selectmen decided not to take his advice after lots of noise from the firefighters.The list goes on. So maybe lack of leadership is the wrong word to describe our fiscal mess. I think there is no list of priorities for the town and this is what SPOT is attempting to help the Board of Selectmen develop.

Mary Megson

To me, what leadership means is getting all people who can make decisions together and then making them. It may be very difficult to make such decisions but this is why these are our elected and appointed officials. Specifically, deciding how much money can be used in reserves and sticking to that--not pointing fingers at the Finance committee who do have a plan on how to spend them and then having other leaders say that's not okay but then not getting together and figuring out as a town what is the bottom line. Also not saying that the Treasurer's office and retirement board's decision to extend fully funding the retirement accounts by 10 years, and then have that decision questioned with the implication that that wasn't good enough, but not having a clear decision that is being stuck to on all sides. Not saying things like it's up to the school committee to do teacher contract negotiations but then not giving them a clear answer or amount on whether the BOS would support an action to get more funds if the school committee thought they were necessary. Of course TM does come into it, but if the BOS and school committee and Finance committees were all talking with one voice (not easy to do as so many people are involved) then we might have a more cohesive town and plan. And we might start feeling that what can be done is being done. In other words, don't use the fact that we have several different boards in town to be an excuse that we can't make the hard decisions and support them. Our BOS needs to be bringing all the various experts we have in town together and making sure we agree on what our priorities are, what our goals are, and what our actual bottom line is.

Colleen Kirby

Leadership is looking at how decisions and policies affect the whole town and not just a given selectmen's constituency (e.g., neighborhood, seniors, unions, etc.). It's also making decisions that aren't just politically motivated, but that stand for what you truly believe is the right course of action for the town.

Cindy Friedman

Other specific actions that would show me we have leaders…

Looking for Board of Selectmen and School Committee to increase cross meeting attendance or provide other evidence of collaboration between these two entities. This is for School Committee leadership too.

Looking for the Board of Selectmen to acknowledge the substantial number of constituents who are concerned about the schools through:

• publicly acknowledging that the schools are hurting because of the cuts (right know BOS seems to ignore it) and
• committing to identifying revenue streams for the schools.

Jennifer Sharpe Potter

To me, leadership also means realizing early that a potential problem may exist and taking a proactive stance to stave it off. A good example is the budget crisis, the town has known about its potential and effects for some time but the Board of Selectmen hasn't done any real digging in to look at it. Last spring they set up subcommittees/task forces to look at various departments, etc. but once the budget process was over they disbanded. That wasn’t leadership to stop the work that had begun. It’s also sticking your neck out to raise a controversial or unpopular issue and to then take a stand.

Sharon Grossman