In an interview with The Harvard Press last week, Ayer Selectman Rick Gilles outlined his views on Devens topics and talked about Ayer’s role in the disposition of Devens.

Gilles characterized Ayer as a small country town with an urban edge and high density. “We have very sophisticated services: fire, police, and ambulance,” he said. “We have structure set up and the management in place with experience to do what it takes to run Devens.” He added, “We don’t need to hire new managers, and, although we would need to hire staff to support the additional work represented by Devens, we don’t need to invent new departments.”

Gilles indicated that Ayer would like to see disposition on Devens sooner rather than later, saying, “People of Ayer are working, making a living, raising their families, but they don’t have a lot of head room. We also have a number of people who are below the poverty line. Right now we are working for fuel assistance programs for this winter. We’ve formed a subcommittee for energy, and we’re asking how we are going to make our schools better. We are also exploring schools regionalization. We want our region to be successful. We want Devens to continue to grow and keep crunching. It’s going to benefit us all. We need a practical solution on Devens that we can lay out and say, ‘This is what we thought about, let’s do it, and move on.’”

Gilles said that Ayer’s goals with respect to Devens are outlined in the success criteria that the Ayer Board of Selectmen voted on and approved in July of this year: economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, community integration, and maintenance or improvement of quality of life.

“We think these are the super categories,” he said, referring to Ayer’s success criteria, “but it all comes down to sustainability. The end result has to be sustainable for the region.”

He said, “Intuitively, what makes sense is building a model that integrates Harvard, Devens, and Ayer. Personally, it makes sense to me that we come up with a cost-sharing and revenue-sharing algorithm…a mechanism by which everyone benefits.”

Gilles said he believes that “it comes down to collaboration between Harvard and Ayer,” emphasizing the cooperative effort required to come up with a solution to Devens disposition.

When asked his assessment of Harvard’s success criteria, he said, “The problem with the choice of ‘some, none, or all’, is that it is a false choice. If you look at cutting off part of Devens, it makes no sense at all. Utilities can’t be split up.” He went on, “It is in everyone’s interest to simplify; come to JBOS with super categories on one page.”

He commented further that Devens residents want a town, but added, “I don’t think that’s a practical solution. Why can’t there be a village of Devens in Harvard or Ayer? Governance needs to go to one of the towns. If there is a village committee that does day-to-day work, that’s fine.”

In order for the towns to come to common ground, he urges that Harvard create a “very high-level understanding of what we are trying to accomplish, not a detailed long list. We already did all that. We already know all that. All towns have this data and that work doesn’t need to be redone.”

He added that “nobody could understand all this unless you’ve been involved in the process,” pointing out that “over 30,000 hours went into developing 2B,” referring to the effort that led to a 2006 Special Town Meeting vote on disposition of Devens. He said he believes that 2B didn’t work because multiple scenarios for which citizens don’t have rationales confuse the average citizen.

“Step away from the details, align the top things,” he said.

Gilles said he has had “very little feedback from the town” on Devens disposition activities. Feedback from some citizens indicates that Ayer might want “to adopt Devens in its entirety and manage it through a revenue-sharing scheme,” he said, but added, “We need to come up with a vision of Devens that is understandable and meaningful and has benefits to all the surrounding communities.”

From his point of view, Ayer is at “step one in the process” of Devens disposition. “We need to finish our homework so we can report back to the community in a cogent manner so that people can read and understand what we are proposing,” he said. “Then we can have a meaningful discussion about it. We are not doing that yet; we are doing the investigative work right now. We are reporting through the Board of Selectmen, at our meetings, but there is not a lot to report right now. We have a lot of data from the past.”

He added, “We are developing a five-year plan for Ayer.”

Gilles said that the five-year model is a framework for making year-to-year decisions. He believes Ayer’s boards need “to be thinking in longer-term segments so we can have better long-term fiscal policy.

“Ayer has set up an ‘executive tri-board committee’ which is developing a financial model for the town,” he said, noting that the goal of the model is to be able to “look at and present to citizens how we make choices for the kinds of services, quality of services, and tax implications, and do it in a way that is understandable.”

When questioned about the pace of Devens disposition activities, he said that Ayer selectmen are “trying to come up with a practical solution to present to our town by the spring. We are not trying to rush it; we are building off of what has already been done.” As he sees the process, towns should first ask, “What are the high-level objectives?” “Next,” he said, “build a common financial model and define municipal transition processes. Let’s come up with the high-level solution and then work out the details. We are at the first step.”

Gilles reported that Ayer has been approached about using the Devens airfield on Devens North Post as a corporate airfield. He also said that Ayer is “interested in setting up an alternative energy power plant on that site, like the solar plant in New Bedford.”

He proposed using funds from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC). We haven’t said this is what we are doing,” he cautioned, “but we are looking at it.”