Middlesex Town Meeting Solutions Committee
Meeting Minutes
April 19, 2005

Present: Susan Clark, Dave Shepard, Barb Whitchurch, Greg Whitchurch

1. Meeting Minutes on the Town Webpage
Jim Colby has pointed out to Greg that some Planning Commission meeting minutes appear to be missing from the Town webpage. Greg will check through information he received from Tim Murphy and see if the minutes are there.

2. Town Budget
Ideas of how it might be possible to make the town budget more intelligible to the average voter were discussed. The Town Meeting Solutions Committee (TMSC) has learned that there are some complications to trying to state the cost of a given item on the current year's Town Meeting warning in terms of an amount per $100,000 of assessed value due to some costs being spread out over a number of years. Greg suggested a different method that might put monetary items on the warning into perspective would be to compare an expenditure to what it would have meant in terms of an amount per $100,000 of assessed value for the two previous years where the necessary data would be more available.

Susan suggested holding a brown bag type gathering to provide a training session on how a town budget works. We would need to find someone who understands budgets well to lead such a discussion. Susan will discuss the concept with the Select Board. The target date to hold such an event would be late January.

3. Public Meetings vs. Hearings
A Middlesex resident has suggested that it might be helpful to have an informational session on public meetings and hearings and how they differ. This would likely best be accomplished by getting an outside speaker who is knowledgeable about this topic. It was noted that September would be a good time to hold such an event as there will likely be a public meeting on the zoning regulations coming up later in the fall.

Greg thought it might be helpful to provide a "suggestion box" posted at the town office where residents could write out a question or a suggestion for any of the town boards or commissions. The intent would be for the various town boards and commissions to take up any pertinent questions or suggestions during their meetings. The TMSC would need to contact the boards and commissions and check with them about this possibility.

4. Minutes from March 22, 2005 Meeting
The minutes from the March 22, 2005, meeting were approved with the understanding that the list of comments received from the Town Meeting questionnaire will be appended to the minutes.

5. Middlesex Website
Greg reported that the website has been down recently. New school board members Don Hirsch and Aaron Weed and new Planning Commission member Steve Martin need to be contacted about adding their contact information to the website.

With regard to the Fire Department, there was a long list of all the officers of the department on the listing of town officials June Lakin provided to Greg. The TMSC thought it would be a good to list all of the members of the Fire Department but to only include the Fire Chief on the contacts page of the website. We will check with the Fire Chief about the contact information and inquire about listing all department members names on the webpage.

The contacts page previously mainly provided phone numbers and sometimes email addresses. Greg now does have quite a few mailing addresses as well and asked if they should be included on the webpage contacts page. The TMSC agreed that mailing addresses would best be left off the webpage except for the institutional buildings such as the Town Office, Rumney School and U32.

Greg brought up the idea of a community bulletin board as a place to post a notice of a community member in need. He will check with June Lakin about letting him know if there is an appropriate listing.

Next Meeting: May 24, 2005 at 7:00 p.m. at the Town Office.

Minutes recorded by Dave Shepard