The evening of 2026-07-27 was a meeting of the Mendon Town Board.
Originally something about the urgent care at 20 North Main was on the Agenda. But that was removed for some reason. Which left all the discussion items to build a workshop around.
The Town is looking to maybe join a Municipal Health Insurance Consortium. If I parsed the discussion properly, we have to join the Consortium to find out what the Consortium gains us. There is apparently a deadline to get in, but a further deadline to commit. So join now, take a couple months to figure out if it’s worth it. Then either stay or leave. Feels a little backwards to me, but I’ll admit much of the health insurance industry feels that way.
Much of the meeting was spent discussing the Employee Handbook. Hearing them talk reminded me of spaghetti code. This part points to that part. Which needs this piece. But we can’t forget about that bit over there. And so on. I think progress was made towards an eventual update to the Handbook. While most of it was interesting discussion to hear, parts of it were a bit painful. Eh, brought to mind the sausage making quote. Besides that, while it ate up the time, nothing much to say here.
There was also talk of Social Media Coordination, covering how information is shared through that medium. More communication is always good, so the effort there was commendable. Of course, communication is also difficult. We can sometimes end up at odds in what we are trying to communicate. Which social media seems designed to do. Which is why I think the Town should focus on leveraging their website. But then again, I’m biased here. I hold the opinion Facebook is evil, so should be avoided. And I think if you’ve got a website, you should use that.
The Records Publication & Redaction Policy discussion reminded me of when information on me was ‘leaked’. I doubt anyone besides me noticed, but it happened a while back. Since that information was already available through multiple other channels, it highlights how most of what they are trying to protect is already public enough information. It will be interesting to see how whatever they end up with interacts with FOIL. Because it feels like they are trying to create new exceptions, in direct conflict to FOIL. But I’m not a lawyer.
And a number of discussion items were tabled, as they decided the meeting had run long enough. Fair enough, that is how you eat an elephant.
And those are my Observations From Audience Land for the July 27, 2026 meeting of the Mendon Town Board.