SWAMPSCOTT — The Select Board’s members met in a unique fashion to cohesively establish their goals and priorities.
Board Chair MaryEllen Fletcher gathered her peers early Saturday morning for the purpose of creating a more personal and informal style of public meeting.
“What are important issues that we have to keep on our forefront all the time?” Fletcher asked rhetorically to describe the meeting’s purpose. “We just wanted to hear what was important for one person versus another.”
Fletcher felt the meeting helped create more cohesion and unity among the board, as opposed to “five separate people.” According to Fletcher, the smaller-scale weekend meetings, in which board members discuss their goals, used to happen relatively frequently.
After discussion, the board documented numerous priorities in no specific order, including financial discipline; implementation of the Community Preservation Act; water and sewer infrastructure; housing production; economic development; diversity, equity, and inclusion; beach-water quality; community engagement; climate action; mental health; tax exemptions for lower-income residents; and the ongoing development of the Westcott housing complex at Elm Place.
“You had Select Board members who didn’t even know in advance about this library… We have an opportunity here to do better,” Fletcher said. “I think the role of the Select Board and the town administrator possibly got a little cloudy, and I think the Select Board needs to act like a select board.”
The Select Board will soon be distributing a survey to give residents an opportunity to inform the board about their priorities for the town.
