Good morning, friends!

I hope you enjoyed the sun while it lasted on Sunday. We have a warm, if damp, week coming up, and I hope I’ll see many of you out and about.

The election might be over, but Burlington marches on. Budget season, for one, will be continuing right up until the May Town Meeting. But the town has plenty of other work to do, as well. Tonight, for example, the Select Board and the DEI Subcommittee will be meeting to discuss updating the language in the Board’s mission statement to reflect an emphasis on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

I see this being a natural extension of some work that’s already been underway in the town. At my very first Town Meeting, we voted to update the Board’s name from Board of Selectmen to Select Board. Now, to some, this might seem both logical and unnecessary. “Of course, the Board isn’t exclusive,” you might say. After all, there’s no restriction on who can run. Women have even served on the Select Board before.

But how many? I personally know of one, but I will be the first to admit I haven’t been around forever. (I also wasn’t able to find this information on the Town’s website.) Certainly using exclusive language doesn’t help women feel welcome in running and joining the board. Words matter, and changing that language was an easy lift that brought us one step closer to making leadership in this town feel accessible and attainable to people who have felt excluded from local government.

Updating the mission statement is another step toward this ultimate aim - to make positions in Town leadership feel welcoming and accessible to people from all backgrounds. The current mission statement, while I wasn’t able to find it on the Town website, can be viewed in the agenda below (click on DEI Subcommittee), along with the recommended changes. I’ll be eager to see how the Select Board and their DEI Subcommittee collaborate on this.

More about that tomorrow, hopefully. For now, I’ll leave you with the agenda for the day:

6:00 PM - Select Board Meeting. The DEI Subcommittee will be here to work with the Select Board on adding language supporting Equity and Inclusion into the Select Board’s Mission Statement. There will also be some public hearings for alcohol licenses, as well as some approvals: use of the Town Common, block party request, children’s mental health awareness, and other items. (Join via Webex)
6:30 - The Town of Burlington Scholarship Fund meets to discuss some logistics for the Scholarship.
7:00 - Information Systems Security Advisory Committee (ISSAC) meets to discuss Cybersecurity Policy implementation progress and some upcoming presentations they’ll be making to the Select Board and School Committee. (Join via Webex)
7:00 - Land Use Committee meets to discuss some of the issues currently in front of us, like the groundwater separation proposal and some other zoning issues from the planning board, the proposed project at Roger’s Piano, and to vote on their recommendations for articles for the May 9 Town Meeting.

Enjoy your day, Burlington!

P.S. I just realized I forgot a Friday Funny last week! Sorry ’bout that. Guess I had my eye on the prize. 😂 Here is a makeup funny for all my Napoleon Dynamite fans.

Daily Buzz | Onward