FM #1689 - Town Council Quarterbacking with Councilor Morrongiello - 03/11/26

You know, I think part of my process is that, you know,

people say, oh, I don't feel like the council's listening

or I don't think we're heard.

And I'm part of me having these kind of surveys is,

okay, I want you to feel included.

I want you to feel not only included,

but that you have skin in the game.

It's a feature like it for Franklin Matters, Franklin Public Radio Available,

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pre-setting and it's always there and ready for you.

Here in our glorious studio again today with town council of Max Morris.

It's glorious.

It's glorious.

I'm doing, thank you for having me, Steven.

It's great to be here.

Absolutely.

It was a council meeting and we're going to do some corner backing.

Okay, what just happened and what does it mean for us?

Yeah, so I think we had a good number of things.

We had the, we created a try to review subcommittee of the council

to go into a preliminary look in as to what needs to be done going forward.

Whether we need to kick it to a full try to review committee,

whether we can have some small fixes.

Yeah, because the discussion has generally been, you know, speculating.

Yeah.

And you really need a list of, okay, if it's 10, just to make,

for conversation sake, if it's 10 things, but five of them require the full process,

versus these maybe the low hanging fruit requires this,

then what's the prioritization?

Maybe we take all 10 and go through the full try to process,

which theoretically can open that can of worms.

Council respectfully doesn't have as much control,

because it's in control of the charter commission.

And that, I think, is part of the discussion.

So all valid, but somebody needs to at least come up with that short list then.

Absolutely.

And I think the biggest thing we hear from people is about staggered terms

and having that continuity between councils.

So that's an everything that we're going to have to, you know,

that's not something that the subcommittee could do or the town council

can even do on, so that would have to be a try to review process.

Right.

Because my understanding, at least from the historical perspective,

having talked at least unofficially with those who were proud of the prior,

the reason it didn't go, because nobody could figure out how to implement it.

And so it's a great idea, but how do we divide it up?

And then the other thing is, is probably, you know,

whether you have board of health or, you know, the assessors board

or town clerk, whether those things should just stay elected or remain appointed.

Right.

But I think there might be other opportunities to look at, you know,

you know, whatever towns do with their charter reviews.

I think they have, they have documents as to when they come out the report

and just being able to look at, you know, and we're like the model.

I've been to, you know, Massachusetts Municipal Association meetings

where they say, wow, you're the charter.

We have the best charter.

Yes.

So Jamie said that was going to happen and he was right.

Right.

You know, people really like our charter.

But I think we want to make sure we, you know,

do the best we can in terms of making it the best it can be without, you know,

reverting back to some of the ever things that might have been had in the past,

where, you know, I think it was sort of a history you learn about the progressive era

and how that the town administration, former government, was a way to get back

at sort of the big bosses, you know, in this sort of city hall around mayors

and that kind of stuff, a lot of corruption and that kind of thing.

So, you know, but I think that, you know, hopefully there'll be a lot of opportunity

for the subcommittee to look at that and then pass it on to the council

to vote on just a few weeks or the, you know, and they have to figure out, you know,

if they do do a charter review when that's going to be,

because if it's going to be right away, you know,

that's going to take away from other things.

But if they do it, you know, in a few years, maybe that'll be a little bit,

make more sense.

Yeah, and so at least having the list, so when I'd speculate,

what's on the list and what kind of prioritization are those?

Right.

You know, the one piece, two pieces that I've been talking about,

one, the need to at least get away from forcing an election within 90 days

of the council of resigns.

I mean, as a practical matter, there's a number of qualified people

who could serve on an interim basis and it avoids the cost of an election,

which, oh, by the way, has increased with the mail ballots and early voting,

et cetera.

And given a budget crisis, you know, we can't afford what, 30, 40,000 for an election

for one person within 90 days, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

I had to say where it came from, but now potentially we'll have an opportunity to change that.

The other piece I would advocate for is given the school committee nine members.

Respectfully, they do manage a larger portion of the budget granted.

You have the total budget, but your portion of the budget is a little bit smaller than theirs.

And they need the nine to fully staff the subcommittees to do all the work

that the school department, I think, really needs to support for it.

But that's my two cents.

We'll just throw it out there and see what happens.

Absolutely.

And I think the most important thing is to listen, you know, I think, you know, if you,

I mean, I could have my own opinions, you could have your own opinions,

but if people just get on, you know, if people just do what they think is best for themselves

or what, you know, for the personal opinions, that's not what the role is for that, that position.

So, yeah.

I have a process perspective on that everybody else does.

Maybe you have somebody else who's got another axe to grind and they want to do something else.

I totally understand. That's fine. Let's talk about it.

And prioritize accordingly.

Which you're about you, as in the council, who are about to figure out how to do that.

Absolutely.

That's a good thing.

You got some bad news on the snow and ice budget, which no surprise given all the stones we've had.

Yeah, it's been a mess.

And I wanted to, I mean, kudos to the GBW and all of our, you know, responders for helping out with that.

But it really is going to hurt the town's pocketbook and it doesn't come cheap.

And I think we used up all of our sort of all the money allocated for it.

And then we also use all the money in the snow stabilization count.

Potentially given, I think Jamie said it was going to be in excess of 2.1.

If the budget was 1.1, okay, where's that other one coming from?

I think there's 700 something in the stabilization.

So there goes that.

And now we're still short for.

Well, there's 200 or free cash.

And where do we get the other 200?

Oops.

So, you know, we're going to have to work that out.

And, you know, we're just going to try to have to patch things up the best we can.

Right.

I know, but rains and dust and snow.

Or hail, you know.

Yes.

No ice.

No ice.

No ice.

And then the fire truck.

Yes, yes.

Engine 3, which has some rail issues.

Yeah, we knew it was common.

But, I mean, we knew there was, I think some rod and stuff that was going to be a problem.

But we're hoping it was going to stay with us a little longer.

Another year or two.

Yeah, I think so.

Yeah.

So the goal was that, you know, they were talking about financing.

And there's different ways to financing.

Typically what they do is they get a bond and, you know, they let the borrow money and pay it off over time

through the operating budget.

But this time, you know, there's a question as to, you know, whether rates could go down or

as to whether it can get a better, we could get a better deal if we bundle sort of the debt

with some other potential potential potential things that we want to borrow for.

Sure.

And if we do that, we can sort of get this, this BAN.

I believe it's called a ban.

A ban.

Bond anticipation note.

Where we can sort of borrow the money now and wait to sort of re-not finance it into a bond

until later.

So we're going to pay the interest now, but we don't have to worry about paying the principal.

Correct.

And, you know, it's sort of a way to sort of, because there's a lot of transaction costs with getting a bond.

And so we don't, if we just get one bond for a bunch of things, we could save some money.

Sure.

Yeah.

And the ban is a relatively easy inexpensive manner of given that flexibility, because then once the ban does become a bond,

we still have the opportunity to use some or at least a portion of the existing stabilization account for the fire truck.

Or keep it for that further use and let it continue to build up for the next time, since potentially we will have a lower interest rate.

Just go that way.

So it's a future decision in terms of exactly how financially we will go.

But at least the approval was, if we didn't buy the truck now, we're going to be a couple of years away.

And that was resolved.

It was a good deal.

I mean, I think the truck was just a floor model.

And I was praying, you know, I think that we didn't snap it up, but we would have been snapped up by someone else.

So we, I think it was a good move to try to get that.

And they also have, you know, they have three trucks at that station in rotation.

So I guess they, you know, they have the oldest truck that sort of backs up when the other ones are out of service.

Right.

And then, and then usually the oldest truck is that that's sort of a backup truck.

And then they, and in this case, engine three technically is the oldest truck.

It's no longer available.

So this one's going to, this new one's going to come to the front.

You know what's going to come to the front and the two that we bought at the same time.

One of those will cross in the back for a while, which is fine.

Because then both of those will last longer.

I mean, they could even rotate a couple of years off, a couple of years off, and then bring them back.

But yeah, that'll help us long term.

Yeah.

And I think that, you know, there's also concern about the amount of salt and that kind of stuff.

Right.

And the trucks have to deal with.

And, you know, I think we, between the DPW and the fire station, we don't have anything to sort of clean them off.

Right.

Do we need a, quote, car wash vehicle wash?

And how much is that, you know, is it worth it?

You know, I don't know.

Well, it could be.

It could, we've got what, 200 vehicles I've heard, right?

Yeah, that's true.

And if some of them like the fire trucks are a million dollars, a million plus,

you know, maybe washing them once in a while.

If it's, if it postpones that million dollar expense, that might be worth it.

But yeah, having, and then the other issue with the salt as our DPW director, Ken Origi has mentioned,

it ends up in our water.

Because we're groundwater.

And our percent of salt is increasing as well.

So, you know, doing that kind of master planning, well, if we do this and then have to use additional sand,

we've got to clean the sand per regulations.

And I did check with, I did check with Brutus.

And the amount of water in our, in our, in our bonds is not yet considered, I think,

a level where it would be a pollutant.

Because I was asking, if it was a pollutant, you could use, I believe you could use stormwater money

to sort of do something to help with the salt.

Right.

Like with the brine stuff, because that can alleviate some of the salt.

But if it's not a pollutant, they can't really do anything with that.

And we're fortunate that, yeah, it has a reason, it's continuing to rise, but it's not risen to a level that's an issue yet.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it's certainly something to be mindful of.

You know, but, yeah, I think, I think that the cover is everything with a fire station.

Right.

And then you had an interesting topic on some parking fees.

Yes.

Oh, boy.

Okay.

So, yeah.

So, I mean, we currently have parking meters.

One of them is in front of the Forge Park lot.

There's a separate lot.

And that could be some utilization, because it's actually cheaper than the Forge Park lot.

But then there's another one, your Ferrari is that, since, like, always dead.

No one ever uses it.

But the point, the point is, is that...

Don't depot a lot.

Depot a lot.

The depot a lot is used, but the one your Ferrari is...

The Ferrari is underutilized.

Underutilized.

But we did get, like, $20,000 of, you know, parking fees that have been used for the meters.

It's accumulated since they get implemented, what, three years ago now?

So, but, you know, so we clicked that money and then we repropriated it.

And this is where I sort of got a little tizzy of the meeting.

We're using it to spend on the meters themselves.

So...

That was the whole point.

Yeah.

Well, yeah.

If you laid the parking free and available to anybody, first come, first serve,

the wrong people technically were going to grab it.

Right.

So, by putting a meter in it, at least you had them thinking about what they were going to do.

And, oh, by the way, the meters went at least fund the process.

That was the way it conceived.

Yeah.

I think, you know, we could still try maybe like a two hour, three hour, four hour.

You know, or like, you know, maybe the harder to reach spots are four hours, you know.

And the, you know, closer ones are three hours.

That was one of the points that I was led to believe it was going to be by the hour.

But right now it's just $3.

Right.

If you'd have for 15 minutes or the entire eight to 10 hours.

So...

Yeah.

The statistics that are available theoretically would just say, okay, we had 65 used during the day,

but you don't know if the 65 stayed all day.

Or if 20 of them came in and out, you're using the same spot.

There's no way of knowing.

Right.

So...

Okay.

Yeah.

It goes that idea.

Yeah.

You know, I'm about doing the most good and trying to make sure that, you know, we, you know,

we can do it without passing the cost on to consumers and not have like a tragedy

of the common situation where we don't have any parking because everyone's using it.

You know, I would prefer to do, you know, to have something more, more affordable.

But if you have a situation where everyone's just going to use everything all the time,

and I do think we need to sort of, you know, continue the meters.

Yeah.

At least it's fee-based.

So only those who are parking in pain are the ones who are bearing the burden of the meter call.

That is true.

That is true.

But, you know, so...

Well, yeah, I think the other thing was, you know, the master plan was trying to figure out,

you know, if we do have residential parking in the area, whether we want to have like an overnight parking pass.

Or a resident sticker.

Right.

You know, because I think that, you know, that would...

The more parking spots we build into buildings, the less room there is for actually like

downtown businesses and that kind of stuff to actually utilize that space sort of living.

So, you know, it could be pretty tight downtown, so making sure we utilize parking efficiently.

As well as another part of the master plan was trying to have a shared parking.

So, the water fee rebate for people who...

For businesses that share their parking lots downtown.

Right.

And that's a good carrot, at least.

It sounds like it would be practically usable for the business.

Again, they could pay less if they share their parking.

For somebody who would have fairly large parking lot, that would make more sense.

Because even the ones that are downtown, I don't see them heavily utilized.

You know, whether it's 25 or 30 or 40%, then that would still make a whole lot of sense.

Right.

If they were 100% utilized all the time, then maybe not.

But I don't see that utilization that that high.

Right.

I think we need a little much.

I think a little bit of the car a little much.

I mean, even if it's a little bit of rebate, I think, you know, if it helps a businesses bottom line, hopefully they take the carrot.

So.

It would help the business and help the customers of other businesses by at least making more parking available.

Absolutely.

So that could be a win-win, but we'll see.

The other piece relatively easy.

You had two more measures to go through referral to the planning board for the residents and listeners.

There were two prior.

The planning board has scheduled a meeting.

And one of the storms kind of wiped that meeting out.

So they never got to do the hearing.

Now they are effectively going to do all four and then bring them back to you.

Two, I think, are related to the MBTA zoning and two as I understand it on that crossing neighborhood with some final tweaks that apparently were effectively mistakenly.

Some pieces were put in mistakenly or left out mistakenly as they were implementing what should have been approved.

Yeah, I think there's some footnotes and some tables.

I just kind of got meshed together.

And it's really mostly just a housekeeping thing.

It's not like technical adjustments.

Like we know we're coming in and we're going to build skyscrapers or anything.

Right.

So I think that it's not anything to be concerned about.

It's just housekeeping measure.

Yeah, that's how I understand it as well.

So it's going off to the planning board.

They're going to do their public hearings.

Send it back to you.

You'll do your two hearings, two readings.

And then certainly discuss and ultimately vote.

So, yeah, sometime in April, I think Jamie said.

And then the big set of the meeting since you had adjusted the agenda to get to the goals

which had been kicked down the street.

Yeah.

So we got them done when we had we've already been a quarter of the way through the determine.

So, but no.

So I took this very seriously.

You know, I put out a two surveys.

One was to sort of get people's feedback as to, you know, what goals in the master plan should be considered

to be actually put into the goals for this session for the council to work on.

And so if one was to nominate them and people nominated a whole bunch of different things,

I nominated a few myself.

And then we, I had people vote on them.

We had a poll.

We had over 150 people vote on different goals that they want to prioritize.

And then I tried to incorporate that feedback into what I put forward to the council and Jamie.

And, you know, the goal process and negotiation, you know, this will be a lot of work.

I don't know if we can do this, you know, but, you know, but I think this is appropriate, you know.

So then through the biggest one, it was in regards to in the master plan, it was referred to a set allocation.

So it was, you know, the school should have a certain amount of a certain percentage allocated to it.

And, you know, through negotiation with Jamie, I think that,

I think we needed to make it sort of fair, incorporate all departments, you know.

So it's not just singling out the schools because I think that the, the, the us versus them narrative can be somewhat divisive.

Sure.

So sort of set, we set, we settled on looking at sort of an objective process or objective,

having the joint budget subcommittee look at an objective process for looking at the budget.

I don't think you fully understood where the set allocation was coming from at first.

I think he didn't understand that, you know, I explained to him that there was some,

some folks on the school, the school side who felt that sort of politics came into things a little bit with regards to how things were allocated.

And he didn't, when he sort of heard that, he sort of, I think things clicked for him.

And I think he actually was at the meeting.

He actually wanted it to go through the joint budget subcommittee, even though it was a little pushback.

Sure.

So I think that, you know, the town administrators on board with that, and it's something that, you know,

hopefully make things fair going forward so that we don't have to worry about, you know,

things being arbitrary or appearing to be arbitrary when we make budget decisions.

Because I think that there's been a lot of angst around, you know, why are we funding this, but not this,

you know, wanting a rationale for that.

And so, yeah.

I think related to that, the town as a whole, I think, needs to tell a better story of the structural deficit and how over time we effectively landed in it.

Because there has been a whole series of, at least in my almost 20 years reporting of measures taken by the town to help the schools.

Likewise, the schools, you know, taking measures on their own, particularly redistricting, so that at one point,

the town was saying, well, fire department redistrict, please department redistrict, when does the school go?

The schools did.

Yes.

Town men also restructured within finance and HR, so that the between town and school sides, those are now more jointly together with still separation of duties,

but with coordination and collaboration to cover each others, you know, work hours and stuff like that.

So, all of those things are good, but they're not fully understood by the general public.

And I think a lot of things, you know, I was talking to a constituent maybe a few weeks ago.

And I went to all the lists of cuts that we've been through with the library, for the police,

and all the things we've done to make things more efficient.

And it's totally over the radar, or under the radar.

Right.

So, I think the more we can tell those stories about how we're doing to make things more efficient.

The other simple piece too.

And on the one hand, Jamie and even Jeff Pryor, in the town council document that you get for the budget proposal,

it lists the department budget, town administrator recommends, council recommends, and approved, etc.

But there's never been, other than one exception that I know of, a difference between what the department recommends and the town administrator recommends.

So, on the one hand, okay, everybody's putting forward, quote, the level service, or whatever the circumstances are.

They're putting forward that budget and everybody's in agreement.

But on the school side, generally, there's always been, this is what we're asking for, this is what we could have gotten.

So, you always had that difference, that there's more there.

You never see that, unless you pay attention on the fin come side, because George and the prior chairs always said,

well, what else would you ask for?

And they always have bunches and stuff.

But it's never in the dock.

So, somebody looks at the docks, and they're completely in a line, except for schools.

And people don't fully understand that.

It's subtle.

Yeah, I think when someone's, when the department had, you know, someone's your boss, it's going to be different than if someone isn't directly.

And so, I think that, you know, that's the quiet part out loud, I think, for that.

But the other piece, at least, you know, the goal session given, if you will, some of the contentious discussion in the first set of the goals being discussed,

which resulted in kind of kicking them down the road to this session, it was a much more amicable discussion.

It was a rather fruitful, there were some resolutions and accommodations made across the board.

Yeah.

I felt much better coming out of that discussion than a prior meeting, who leave it at that?

No, I think, you know, I had some, you know, goals that I proposed, and some people had some feedback, and we worked them out.

Pretty, pretty, who had a little back and forth.

And that's actually one of the nice things about the council.

I mean, as much as I like Robert's rules, people know me.

I think that the being able to relax it enough to have a little bit of a back and forth was actually helpful in this case.

Yeah.

I think when it goes crazy, you know, there's going to be a problem.

But, you know, I think we had some feedback earlier in the meeting about the climate leader,

being a department of DOER climate leader designation, and that's having a green,

making sure we have more green.

Because we're already at one level, this would give us a different level.

Yes, it's a certification, I think.

And so, but it's not an easy goal.

I mean, we tried it last year, I believe, and we didn't get that far, but I think that there's a lot of different steps.

We're going to go within goals within goals.

Sure.

But I'm hopeful that that's one thing that we looked at that.

A lot of people were passionate about in the survey that could move forward about.

And if we do this, we can get a grant money for sustainability coordinator,

which I think is something that'll be really exciting if we can get that.

There are steps you got to have, you know, an energy electric fleet.

You have to have a sustainability committee.

You have to adopt the specialised stretch code.

Stretch code, correct.

So, there are a lot of steps that go that.

And as for, you know, zoning, you know, having the by-law changes, you know,

if there's a lot of work that goes into that.

So, I acknowledge that, but I'm hopeful that we can forward with that.

One of the other environmental things that we got forward was composting at,

expanding composting at Beaver Street, which was a big priority for a lot of people in the survey that I put out.

I think, you know, as much as I appreciate, you know, the feedback from people

and try to incorporate that.

And I also have to incorporate the people who aren't necessarily included in the survey.

People who might have full-time jobs or juggling to part full-time jobs who, you know,

be struggling to be represented there.

And so, you know, looking at things like Gattra and having a fixed bus route

is something that I was able to put forward through that.

One that was already in Jamie's draft was around, you know, making sure we have a good fiscal health

for getting our fiscal house in order.

And that was, you know, it's something that, of course, have to work on.

Yeah.

It's part of that strategic planning, not just in terms of what are we going to do when,

but how are we going to fund this over time?

Yeah.

We also, you're going to take a look back at sort of what planning stuff we need have done in the past.

We're actually going to want to look forward to say, what are we going to do in the future?

But we're at least looking backwards and say, okay, what do we do for?

What do we do in the past?

So, we know what we're going to do for in the future.

Yeah.

You know, we included some infrastructure goals around funding infrastructure.

I was able to include a sort of an addendum to that to talk about ADA accessibility

for as well as traffic comming.

You know, we have talk about traffic and that's a big, always on people's minds, I hear it all the time.

Yeah.

And being able to put traffic improvements and busy intersections is something that we were able to say.

Hey, we're also going to look at this when we do our goals.

It was interesting on the ADA piece coming out of the commission on disabilities meeting last week

that I attended the recording will be coming out sometime this week.

39 of those tactile pads or tactile awareness pads at the crosswalks.

39 of those were replaced across the town.

I know.

That was an amazing way.

That's a good victory.

I wish it was celebrated.

It kind of flew below the radar.

Yeah.

So.

And it's little things.

I mean, when I was at Bridgewater State, I did a, as part of student government there,

I did an accessibility walk where we would go throughout the campus and see,

okay, if I was in a wheelchair, if I, you know, if I wasn't able to walk,

where would I not be able to travel?

Sure.

And that was something that was very helpful in pointing out, you know,

and some of these handicap accessible doors and I was like, you have to go all the way around the back

and it's like, it's a maze.

It is.

So I think, you know, I think that's, definitely makes me appreciate, you know,

more of what people with physical disabilities have to go through,

whether navigating the environment.

Especially in public places, there's always an opportunity,

including the grandfathering for any of the other private buildings, if you will,

but a historical museum, you know, you look at the front of it and there's steps up

and there's nothing relatively telling you, okay, if you want to really get in,

you've got to go around the back to your point, right?

It's accessible.

Right.

But it's in the back.

It's not accessible if you don't know if it's accessible.

If you don't know at the front, there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I know there's people discussing that and working on that.

So I don't, it just happened as an easy example of a public space that, you know,

it's relatively inaccessible.

You know, and everything we did was we talked about the downtown revitalization

and working, trying to see if we could work with our downtown neighbors

as to trying to get some, you know, work on the vacancies and trying to get more businesses downtown.

I know to that point, Councillor Maloy proposed a goal to have a restaurant week,

which was, you know, another way to sort of drum a business and support for that.

Sure.

And as Jamie would tell you, all that extra meals tax wrap is going to go back to us.

And you know, there were some goals that weren't, you know,

weren't able to make it in.

But I think that we, I think, like 90, around 90% of the people who fill out the survey

had at least one goal that was so good.

There was in some way, some fashion, you know,

some things that at least get carried through.

So I think that, you know, I think part of my process is that, you know, people say,

oh, I don't feel like the council's listening or anything we're heard.

And I'm part of me having these kind of surveys is, okay, I want you to feel included.

I want you to feel not only included, but that you have skin in the game.

Sure.

You know, that you're, you know, that you're engaged, that people have, you know,

engaging people just to, you know, because there's a lot of people, you know,

make their minds known in certain cases, but then sort of when things are going on,

you know, other times people don't feel like they did not pay attention.

Right.

Right.

So, you know, people want to be one recognized.

I hear you as opposed to, well, we've never done it that way.

Don't say that.

I hear you.

Let's talk about it, explain.

And then, you know, we'll see what happens.

So, yeah, you know, I think I'm trying to do what I can to engage with residents.

And I have been trying to engage my email whenever I receive email from someone I'll travel.

I'll do my best to respond right back.

And I'm referred to whoever the appropriate department is.

Right.

And sometimes I don't always have the answers.

And sometimes there's not always something I am able to do.

But, you know, just being able to communicate that.

And, you know, try to let people know that we're doing the best we can.

And I think people have been receptive.

Even if you say, I got your email.

Like people just.

Right.

I got it.

I got it.

They didn't get lost in Spamland or something.

Yeah.

So.

Good.

Well, I think that kind of covers the session for that what it was.

And still, you got a boatload of work ahead of you.

Absolutely.

Well, now we just gave more to ourselves.

But I think I.

Unfortunately, as I think we were discussing offline, most of that.

It's going to be done by the town and the town departments.

You don't have to actually.

You just have to oversee it.

Check in on it.

They'll come back and say, oh, by the way, you asked us to do this.

This is what it is.

Right.

And hopefully sometime this year and then given the normal process.

I'm assuming sometime.

December-ish.

You'll do a look back on the air and we set goals granted in March.

But you set goals and this is where we're at.

Right.

And then you can rejigger for the next calendar year.

Right.

So yeah, that's that's the cyclical piece of the government.

Well, thank you so much for having me, Steve.

Well, thank you for coming in and sharing.

You know, we always try to get to those two questions in terms of.

What does it mean for us?

And what just happened?

Right.

And by getting behind into the rationale of some of that, I think hopefully.

Assuming people will listen and grant that even if everybody doesn't,

some people will at least be more informed to talk to the neighbor when they come up with the question

as to what's going on.

Well, I heard.

Max and Steve talked about it and they said this.

And thereby the word will spread.

So that's my hope.

And it takes two to tango.

I can't do it alone.

Oh, let me do it because Franklin matters.

Oh, he used to.

He took my line, but I second it.

Absolutely.

We do it because Franklin matters.

So thank you for doing this.

Thank you listeners.

And we've already said the line.

So we'll close with a chuckle instead.

Till next time.

We are not producing this in collaboration with Franklin TV and Franklin Public Radio.

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For additional information, please visit FranklinMatters.org.

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The music for the intro and exit was provided by Michael Clark in the group East of Shirley.

The piece is titled Ernesto Manana.

Copyright Michael Clark and Tin type tunes in 2008.

And used with their permission.

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Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.