As the Select Board’s June 24 meeting opened earlier this week, outgoing Chair SusanMary Redinger nominated the board’s other veteran member, Kara Minar, as her successor. In a roll-call voice vote, Minar was elected unanimously. “It feels odd, but aye,” Minar joked, as she was called on to vote for herself. Minar then nominated Redinger for vice chair and new board member Eve Wittenberg as clerk. Each was elected to her new post unanimously.
The Select Board currently has only four members—Minar, Redinger, Wittenberg, and Ahmet Corapcioglu. The latter two were voted onto the board in May’s Town Election. Former member Rich Maiore resigned too close to that election for a candidate to be added to the ballot. The board deemed it unwise to hold a special election during the summer, while many people would be out of town and unable either to campaign for office or vote. So a special election to fill the Select Board’s fifth seat is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 8.
Much of last Tuesday’s meeting was devoted to discussion of the board’s goals for the coming year. The broad topics for those goals were developed at the board’s June 7 strategic planning session. In brief, the goals focused on developing Ayer Road; improving the town’s budgeting process; finding new revenue opportunities; improving volunteer board operations and communication; planning for the future of Devens; and acquiring new land for athletic fields.
Based on the June 7 discussions, Redinger had identified specific factors to be considered as part of each goal, along with some dates by which steps might be concluded. For example, the goal of improving the town’s budgeting process has one of the earliest deadlines. A pilot process is to be in place just a little over a month from now, on Aug. 1, with a review of the process to come next June.
The goal dealing with Devens led to the longest discussion of the meeting. As drafted by Redinger, the goal called for Harvard to “jointly hire a consultant with Ayer, Shirley, and MassDevelopment” to plan for Devens’ future jurisdiction. Minar said she did not think it was realistic to expect the other towns and MassDevelopment to work jointly on the project, as MassDevelopment had not been willing to pay for a consultant so far. But Redinger said Ayer Town Manager Robert Pontbriand was working on getting grant funding for the project, and the Harvard-Devens Jurisdiction Committee was also involved. There was general agreement the Select Board did not want to undercut the work of that committee, so Minar agreed to leave the Devens goal in its current form.
The board voted unanimously to approve all six goals, and every board member signed up to focus on one or more specific goals, with regular progress reports. Corapcioglu described the process as having a “quarterback” for each goal. When the board’s fifth seat is filled in October, the new member will also become part of the team for a specific goal.
