LAKEVILLE — Increasing resident engagement, updating town policies and bylaws and improving relations with town employees are among the goals the town’s first five-member select board has set.

Those aims were detailed at the board’s goal setting workshop May 13. During the workshop, members identified objectives for the year, challenges to meeting those goals and what steps they might take to accomplish them.

Members agreed that updating municipal policies and bylaws was a top priority. “It’s almost like we need to create a policy [for refreshing] policies,” said member Brian Day. “It’s like we don’t even know what we have because they are in so many different places.” 

Select Board member Lia Fabian brought a binder of Select Board policies to the meeting that, she said, “has needed to be updated for at least five years now.”

Board members also set forth a goal to develop better communication strategies with Lakeville residents to get them more engaged. 

Lack of communication, reduced numbers of media outlets and residents’ tendency to rely on social media, where information is not always accurate, negatively impacts the ability to keep residents informed, board members noted.

Select board member Brynna Donahue proposed sending out notifications by mail informing every Lakeville household about Town Meetings, the agenda items to be discussed and town elections. 

Noted in the workshop discussion was the challenge that community members get their information from different sources. “Mail is the only one that will reach everyone in Lakeville,” said Donahue. 

Another item that was proposed was updating the boards and committees pages on the town website to create “some kind of uniformity across them so they’re easy to find and understand,” said member Day. Many of them don’t even provide an explanation of what the board does or a point of contact, he noted.

The board did not address all of its goals in the two-hour workshop. 

At the workshop’s end, Chair Lorraine Carboni said she was impressed by the number of suggestions her peers brought forth. “There was so much that came out of this meeting and it was just not realistic to do it in two hours,” she noted. 

Another workshop will be held after the Town Meeting on June 10 to discuss additional goals.