The Temple Select Board passed a new policy at its last meeting intended to clarify the process of appointing people to the town’s committees and boards.
“From my perspective, having a transparent process for both applicants, boards and committees and the Select Board, is going to be really important,” said Christine Robidoux, who currently serves on multiple boards and committees and is one of the people behind the push for this policy.
The policy calls for committees and boards to discuss their potential need for new members annually, as well as what skills might be necessary. Interested candidates are required to submit a statement of interest to the committee or board, followed by a vote by the committee or board to decide whether to nominate the candidate.
From there, nominations will be sent to the Select Board, where the vote on the nomination must be in the public agenda prior to the meeting. Once the Select Board votes on the nominee, the policy calls for them to inform the board or committee of their decision – if the Board rejects a nominee, the policy calls for the Board to publicly state why.
Additionally, the policy calls for the Board to publicize openings for volunteers for all committees and boards.
“I see this as a foundation for a broader effort to try to recruit more members of the community,” Robidoux added.
The policy itself came about after a Select Board meeting in March, when the Board decided to vote on appointing Deborah Harling as a new alternate member of the Zoning Board of Adjustment to replace Honey Hastings following her resignation.
“Without it being on the agenda, they appointed someone to fill the spot that my resignation created, with no input from the ZBA,” said Hastings, who helped draft the new policy and has served on many boards and committees throughout the years. She currently serves on the board of Library Trustees and the Temple Land Use Committee.
Gail Cromwell, who also serves on many boards and committees and was involved in writing the appointment policy, said she was angered by the suddenness of the Select Board’s actions and sought to keep it from happening again.
“You’ve got to put this out in the open, instead of doing it in the dark of night,” Cromwell said.
Over the following months, the policy was debated and discussed and finally voted on at the June 22 meeting, where it passed by a vote of 2-1.
The policy as it stands will last until the end of the year, a sort of “trial run” as Hastings described it. Some changes might need to be made, she said, and there has to be room for that by allowing the Select Board to see what works and what doesn’t. But she believes that it has staying power.
“I’m confident it will work,” Hastings said, “because it is sort of codifying what we’ve been doing, with a little more specifics.”
Cromwell said the same, adding, “For years in Temple, the committees have been responsible for acquiring their own members, because after all, they know the kind of skill sets that they need.”
“This has always been the policy,” Hastings said, pulling from her own experience on town boards and committees since 2002.
With the policy clearly in place, however, the hope is not only to help iron out the process for the Select Board, but to clarify it for the townspeople themselves.
“I think this policy will actually help recruit new people, because people can see what the process is, where before, you kind of had to be in the know, so now it’s right there,” said Hastings.
There has been an ongoing difficulty, according to Cromwell and Hastings, with Temple not having enough volunteers to fill all of the committees and boards. Many people end up serving on multiple committees, and it has been historically difficult to get fresh faces involved in the decision-making process.
Cromwell currently serves on five boards or committees, including the Budget Advisory Committee, the Village Green Committee, and on the ZBA as an alternate. Robidoux serves on six, including the Budget Advisory Committee, the Planning Board, and the Temple Land Use Committee.
Roubidoux has been attempting to fix that already, first by hosting a forum in January to teach town residents how to run for elected positions, what boards and committees the town has, and how the appointment process works.
This, she says, is the next big step. After, she hopes to produce a booklet on the town to distribute in time for the Harvest Festival in September. The goal, she said, is to engage with new folks in town and re-engage with existing residents.
“We don’t want the process to be that scary,” Robidoux said. She said she wants to be able to say, “‘Here’s what you have to do’, and try not to make it as scary so that people will step up.”
With alternate positions currently open on the Zoning Board of Adjustment, the new appointment policy may be tested as soon as the next Select Board meeting on July 13.