FARMINGTON — Farmington Fire Rescue Department staff will be recognized at the April 23 Select Board meeting.

Town Manager Erica LaCroix made the announcement at the April 9 meeting while discussing newly purchased agenda and minute software and proposed changes to the board’s agenda.

“We will be recognizing staff that responded to the Holley Road fire, the officer who was first on scene as well as the staff at the fire,” LaCroix stated. “We got a really nice letter from the owners, they provided a donation to the fire department.”

Some body camera footage taken during the fire will be shown, she noted.

The Town Cloud software will probably be used starting with the next meeting, LaCroix said. She used it in Winslow, and likes several things about it.

Anybody with a login can adjust meeting information which is helpful when somebody who typically does that is out of the office, she said.

“The software allows you to link all background documents to the website,” LaCroix noted. Anyone who wants to can click on the link to view the documents, the town won’t need to print them off, she stated. “It can cut down on paper,” she said.

“The nicest feature, what I like best is the ability to search past meetings with a key word,” LaCroix stated. “If you want to know the last time we discussed Hippach Field . . . you can type Hippach Field into the search and it will come up with all the meetings where we discussed Hippach Field. It is a great search tool. It will be a lot easier than hunting back through multiple meetings.”

Cost of the program is pretty cheap, LaCroix said. Payment for three years was required up front, works out to about $75 a month for two licenses.

“We can use it for any meetings we want, there is no limit on that,” she stated.

LaCroix also suggested a change of format for Select Board meetings with much of the information typically shared at the end of meetings moved towards the beginning. She spoke of submitting a manager’s report while working for Winslow and department heads being required to do reports for every meeting there.

Department heads didn’t always have to deliver their report, LaCroix said. It depended on whether they had something they wanted to present to the board and the public or if the board wanted to hear about something in the report, she noted.

The report is a chance to give updates, LaCroix indicated. “Mine is usually an update like I am giving here,” she said. “The other thing they are going to start adding and not every department will have something every month, but I have asked for at least one every month to recognize something good in a department. So we can recognize employees for that.”

People come to meetings for an issue they want to be present for and then they leave, LaCroix noted. “Particularly with employee recognition, I don’t want to be recognizing people to an empty room,” she stated. “I would prefer that they get the biggest bang for their buck.”

The reports and recognitions shouldn’t be long, wouldn’t have every department head delivering at every meeting, LaCroix noted.

“It gives employees some face time with us,” Selectman Dennis O’Neil said. “It is also good for the public to see some of the good stuff that is happening.”

Chair Joshua Bell thought it was a great idea. “It is a way for the board to stay current on what is going on,” he added.

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