 form I'm going to call to order the town council meeting the town council committee on outreach communications and appointments to order at 933 a.m. So you have in your packet with you our agenda it looks like a pretty full agenda but some of the issues refer to similar things so we'll take some of the things as packaged together as far as announcements I do not have any announcements at this time so we will move on to the second thing which is the debrief on zoning board of appeals interviews and so the last time that I saw all of you was on April 16th when we were conducting our interviews of applicants to the zoning board of appeals we that was a very long night for us and not just for us but also for Athena and Angela who were there with us until almost 11 p.m. and so I want to thank staff and I want to also thank the members of this committee who were there into a pretty late hour we haven't as a council done that yet so you're probably missing it and so here we are so we have that recommendation hopefully you've gotten an opportunity to see the report it's been both in our share point and then also in the town council's packet but I just wanted to provide us with a brief opportunity at the beginning to do a little bit of a debrief much as we did for the planning board interviews and part of the reason for the debrief of course is that we're going to be handing this process off in the not too distant future and so I'm trying to collect any sentiments we have about one of the things I'm hoping to do is have a when this committee does start to sunset have a document that we can give to the other committees that are going to be taking on appointments that's more than just our process document with some tips on how best to do these things and so any thoughts on how you felt the ZBA interviews went good bad things you think we need to keep in mind for planning board interviews things you want to make sure that we tell the next committees that take on these interviews floor is open okay I'm seeing none Alyssa oh surely we can say something um one of the things I think it's a small thing in the larger scheme but I think it helped make things go smoother is I think it's important to write down for interviews to get as part of the it's not so much our process exactly like step to B step C but it's like the shares notes kind of thing which is that the introduction that you asked how we got to where we were I thought was really valuable to place everything in context for all the applicants to remind all of us for the public etc right rather than just saying okay we know we're all here to do interviews let's just do um you explained how we got there and I think that we should document that that's an important thing because I think people would be more confused it was clear that one of the applicants was still confused and didn't know what was happening on some of the things but that wasn't your fault and so um having that stated I think provided a really good context for people and as part of that having us introduce ourselves I think was also useful because it's true even when we go back to as we all know we will someday in person meetings that we would make sure we do that then too rather you know just because we have nameplates in front of us it's also pleasant to do okay thank you other thoughts on things that I just thought generally on how the interviews or even the deliberation after went Alyssa again sorry I found another one was trying to back and forth with my notes which was I'm I know we talked about time limits I'm not sure we did that night and it kind of all worked out but again as part of the you know crib notes to self as person running the meeting reminding people of the time limits because we've all been in other circumstances where people have no sense of how long they're talking for yeah I was and so the email that I sent out to the applicants in advance of the interviews that had everything said that there was a three minute time limit um and I did I did keep track most most people were coming in at like 52 seconds to a minute we had actually in what I thought was pretty stark contrasted in planning board interviews very short answers there was only one person who went over the three minutes and I let them go over for a little bit and then as I was about to say okay that's when they they finished up but I let them go over a little bit because they clearly had a hard time starting so um and then of course there was the one with the technical difficulty which was very hard to time as well um but yep I'm just saying that it for the for the future person's notes who may not be as good as facilitating things like that as you were other thoughts on how the zba interviews went okay I'm not seeing any I I personally thought that things went pretty smoothly um especially uh I've said this multiple times over the past months uh relative to planning board the zba setting up these zba interviews and all of that was a much bigger uh task we had more people we had more vacancies we had differences between associates and regular members we had people who entered the pool literally a week before the interview um started we had people who withdrew from the pool even after we had declared the pool sufficient it was a very complicated process of setting that up and so I think that having that complication helped work out some of the kinks that we hadn't necessarily thought about or discovered in the planning board process but I thought that it went well and I was also of course worried how it would transfer over to zoom with the one exception of my internet giving out the way through the interviews um I think that overall it went pretty smooth so I was pretty happy with how things went uh George and then Darcy um just a quick question about the aftermath uh did all of the um we we've haven't heard from any of the uh candidates one way or the other we assume that they're all still in the mix I reached out to um so I reached out immediately after the interviews about 11 30 that night to all of the people who interviewed thanking them for interviewing and letting them know what the um recommendation was I heard back from several of them off the top of my head I don't remember which ones I know Peter responded very quickly I know Keith responded very quickly um just thanking us um I know probably perhaps I'm assuming the root of this question would be um Greeny who um during the interview there was some confusion as to whether he had withdrawn or not um as you'll see in the report I did have a conversation with him afterwards um in which he said that in light of his comments during the interviews he would accept the appointment so um I haven't heard back from all of them but they've all been I notified them immediately I was preferred to have them hear from me before they read it in the paper or hear from their friends uh Darcy yeah um I felt like we worked together uh pretty well at the at the interview and the and the second meeting where we voted um more so than I've ever seen um but a couple of comments I have one is um I missed having the question about um background and training and experience um I I felt um um like there were people that had training experience that didn't get a chance to talk about it at all because it wasn't one of the questions um and also I was um I was surprised uh when Sarah gave the information about Keith Keith's previous service on the on the zoning board of appeals and I so I that was all news to me and I felt like wow if we had asked the question about his training and experience we would have known all that um and that so that was news to me I didn't I knew nothing really about his background and I didn't remember it from before so that was uh and it was only you know a fluke that Sarah uh happened to know that background information about him and could share it so anyway um I felt like uh I I still feel like that's a valuable question to ask okay uh George is your hand up essentially or no I'll get it down okay Alyssa yeah so a couple of things to string together one is I actually disagree on the qualifications but I don't think we need to fight about it much because we're moving into the statement of interest conversation later and I think that also covers it I think that I knew the information about Keith's previous service and I know us googled all of these people on the town website and elsewhere to see if they ever written letters to the editor about their assumptions about the way development should work if they'd ever appeared at meetings I just consider that part of my due diligence so I did know that information um when it comes to the applicant sharing it as part of the question I mean even with doing the statement of interest obviously there will be interview questions and I would still argue that everybody had plenty of time with the kinds of questions we asked to tell us about those qualifications and the reason I emphasize that is because I don't think we are as good at interpreting what people's paper qualifications are and how those apply to zba versus what the applicant can do interpreting their own personal qualifications for that so if they chose not to speak about it that's too bad but I don't think that us having a list that says I did xyz tells us really any more than they could have told us but again we'll be moving on to the statement of interest thing and that could certainly cover that material as well because we could be very directive in the statement of interest the only other small things is just as you said Evan you called people or emailed people right after either way I think that should be documented as part of the process because like you said you don't want them to find out in the newspaper and that's been a criticism of town manager appointments in particular in the past that people haven't known not only not walking out but also before it gets on the town council thing so it's worth documenting that even though we all understand it I think it's especially important since a new body's going to be taking that on whether it's immediately at 11 o'clock at night or the next morning is another matter but I think they need to know it you know as quickly as they can I also would like a note made about rotating who starts answering the question right like you did but I also think that could also be also made more finely tuned and we did it in a kind of different way to see it with school committee candidates which we had just done that week as well which was that we still have seen people following people in most of those cases and I didn't really feel like that felt good because I would rather people follow different people sometimes and really I kept track of these charts it's not that hard to do but it is another step so it's worth considering and the other thing I would mention is that one of the criticisms that we've faced and so that's why I like to put this kind of thing at a report it's one of the criticisms we've faced by having one person ask the questions and not have additional questions from us or from other town counselors or the public or whatever is that there's no opportunity for follow-up questions I didn't feel like I missed anything by not being able to say what do you mean by I'd not feel that lack and so maybe questions were so good or Sarah on mute I have a headache oh and now you can't see me oh no we can hear you I have a migraine I'm so sorry okay so one of the things that I would say is that um I don't think it was it was necessarily just a few a few a fluke that I remembered about Mr. Langsdale it was information that we we all did have I would say the only thing that I would say about that is when we we do discuss a little bit more about you know exactly what we do want to have for questions or what we're going to pass on is whether or not this body thinks you know that there should be term limits right so if we then end up saying yeah we do think that there are term limits and it's something that we we take into consideration then maybe you want to have that documented in you know the information that's given to the appointing body um I would agree with Alyssa that the things Evan a lot of the things that you've done I think are very thoughtful I think that both you explaining the entire process both how we got there how this body would then ask questions and then how we would decide I think was excellent and made things very civil and very comfortable I would document every single thing you did even if you think it's obvious um trying to think if there was something else I was going to say about that um and also I don't know how this translates or how we would write this in but I think that when all of us got together afterwards and I think this is true of pretty much any time that this body has tried to make a decision on appointing is that I believe we're very civil to each other and also in how we discuss the candidates I know just from having you know put my name up one time for vice president of town council is that how you're treated by the people who are sort of evaluating you or making decisions has a lot to do with your own self-esteem and also how you feel about working with that body or in this case working with Amherstown government so I don't know the words that we would use to sort of describe like how the deciding body discusses things afterwards but maybe that's something we could talk about just to give people guidelines because I think when you're new to it there might be some sort of civilities or niceties that you just might not think of because you haven't done it before that's it okay all right yeah so a couple things that I was thinking about after as well if I could share some of my thoughts on this I agree with Darcy first of all I think that we worked very well together and so I felt pretty good at the end of those of that deliberation with our recommendation we had a disagreement over a year term so that's a pretty minor disagreement relative to all the other things that could have happened one thing I was thinking about was with planning board we had seven questions two of which sort of could be answered by yes or no we had three candidates I had a lot of an hour and a half for that interview as you all remember that resulted in us sitting in an empty room for a very long time waiting for the next meeting to start so this time I had a lot of an hour for the interviews and we did the thing where the second meeting was scheduled to start essentially a half an hour before it actually did so that's something I think that needs to be continued is that potentially overlapping schedule so we don't have a big gap because I think it was nice to just sort of roll right into it we had five questions we had seven candidates the interviews total took about an hour and a half and so I think to me I was thinking about the fact that by the end of that hour and a half I was pretty much done I did not want to listen to any more interviews I should I should give this as the preface Alyssa knows this but I don't know the literacy that I'm also serving on a university search committee who also did all of their lecturer interviews that afternoon so I was going into our meeting coming out of four hours of interviews so perhaps I was just interviewed out but but I do think there's something to consider for the future about thinking about the number of questions you ask in the context of the number of candidates so if we only had two or three applicants maybe there would have been some flexibility to add some more questions in with seven I think that would have meant very lengthy interviews and so I don't know that that's something you can write into the process and especially because you don't always know the full pool when you have the question certainly our pool expanded and contracted multiple times between when we declared as sufficient and when we actually held the interviews but I do think there was something that I was thinking during the interviews that by the time they were over I thought I wouldn't have wanted to add any more questions because that would have just been a long time for us and to ask them to sit in and so I don't know I think that's something to always think about I don't know that you can formally write that into a process of number of questions should have some relationship to a number of people I think that the questions we asked were really good I thought we got a lot of useful information out of them I just I'm not I'm not actually quite clear on what you mean by you didn't know about Mr. Langsdale's history until Sarah I don't actually remember what Sarah said up to the top of my head someone asked the question about how recently he had served okay on the ZBA and Sarah knew the answer because she interviewed him the last time okay so it was it was about how recently he had served not that he had served right um so so overall I think that there's a lot of good stuff to to take out of that experience to pass on to other groups and I've taken notes and so my hope is that for potentially our next meeting to come forth with some type of document of notes or tips or guidance to hand over to the next committee to remember so that I'm I'm recognizing how much and I was thinking about this how much stuff I did over the past couple months and how much stuff even we talked about as a committee that wasn't necessarily written into the process that we adopted and so I wanted to make sure that's passed on okay so then I want to hand go to item four on our agenda this is really quick this is just update on planning board appointments for terms expiring June 30 2020 so there are three members of the planning board whose terms are expiring at the end of June so a couple things that have happened since we last met so one is I have posted the vacancy notice I did use the language we discussed about maybe appointing to reflect the fact that we don't know if we have vacancies yet we don't know if every member who's currently there is going to be seeking reappointment maybe they are and we know we do have somewhat of a preference for reappointment but we do treat any expiring term as an intended vacancy that was published on April 21st and so we are still within that 14 day window when it when it's up there I didn't so that was the first thing I did was I published I wrote and published the vacancy notice it looked very similar to the last planning board vacancy notice just with that addition or that change that said may to reflect the fact that technically isn't an open sea the other thing I did is I went through all planning board CAS for the past two years this was much easier than last time because we had just gone through this process and so I already had a list of all the CAS for the past two years and we haven't received very many since we've last run this process and so I have reached out to every person who submitted a CAS in the past two years for the planning board to ask if they are still interested I have not heard back from anyone I've heard back from a fair number of people the majority of the people I've heard back from have reported that they are no longer interested and a big portion of that is there is a lot of overlap between people who applied for the ZVA and people who applied for the planning board and so there are a number of people who were just recommended for appointment to the ZVA and the next day got an email from me saying do you want to serve on the planning board and they said please please no so um so I am still waiting on that I don't feel I did not feel that we were at a point today where we could declare the pool sufficient to move forward because I don't necessarily have a full picture about what the current members are doing you know for some of them not for all of them I'm still waiting here back and I haven't necessarily heard back from enough people that I reached out to to feel comfortable moving forward but though that that correspondence is out there and so my hope is by our next meeting I will have a fuller picture of where the potential pool looks like and we can look toward scheduling interviews for the planning board and my hope is to have a planning board appointment potentially by the end of May or whether they're reappointments or new appointments so any questions on that again this isn't necessarily something that we need to debate I just wanted to update you and field any questions Alyssa um have you been able to speak with each of the current people whose seats are expiring from the standpoint of them understanding our new interview process and have you gotten any pushback on that that you'd like to characterize um I have not so um right now there isn't um there was an email sent out from Christine um and so my first course of action was was um to have Christine as the conduit of whether or not they're interested in continuing and I was waiting to hear back from that but at this point I'm probably going to reach out to them individually but I haven't actually personally reached out to the current members yet because there was sort of an outstanding request from Christine and I didn't want them to have multiple requests but even then I have not heard back from a couple of them I will likely reach out personally and with with the caveat that they would also include some description of what the new process looks like um because they've only gone through the process as it existed with the select board and the time manager so you're referring to Christine Breastrup our director of planning opposed to Christine Gray Mullen the current manager I know it's very much up um any other questions about um planning board okay so seeing none we will get to sort of the with the bulk of our agenda is today so items five and six I separated out as two separate things because they are separate but I do think we should talk about them together and this is building on a conversation that we had last meeting about what to do with the CAF this is we we first talked as a body about potential revisions to the CAF in September and it's been a recurring conversation since with the hope of submitting to the council some recommendation on how to make the CAF more useful to the council and resolve some of the remaining disagreements about them you all remember the memo that I submitted last week and about a potential idea to revise the CAFs to be just expressions of interest without necessarily asking a number of questions and having a statement of interest to get information from people at the time of an interview and so at the end of last meeting there was a sense that I at least got from this committee that this committee was interested in at least investigating that proposal a bit more and so what I told this committee I would do for this meeting was to draft some potential revisions both to the CAF and to our process that reflect the discussions we had and I also said that where it seemed that there was disagreement or a few different options I would lay out some different options much as I did while we were discussing the process originally back in November and December so those have been in your packet I think I put them in your packet on Wednesday so my hope is that you have had some time to read through them to think about them and so I want to discuss them now even though on the agenda I list the revisions to the CAF first before the discussion of the process I think that I want to actually do the opposite and start the process because once we decide that that will probably make what we do with the CAF itself much easier so here's what I want to do I'm going to I don't I share my screen and so we can all be looking at it on my screen at the same time okay so you should all be seeing my screen now with the document that you've had in your packet that had the potential revisions to the process if we were to move forward with this so there are changes to a number of sections there were a couple of changes that would just I recognize little mistakes as I was going through this but the substantive changes are really in sections two a little bit in section three and then this new section five where there would be really the most changes and then a little bit in section seven part of that is clarifying something that we've done since and so I think the first thing I want to do before we go I instead in the past if you remember right we've gone section by section and discussed them but since the revisions to all these other sections really depend on what's happening here in section five it makes more sense to me to talk first about this section five we've had two weeks since our last meeting to sort of think about this idea let it percolate I'm sure you spend most of your waking hours thinking about this and what we might do with it and so I want to start by just talking about whether we feel based on what you read that idea would look like actualized in a process and based on sort of just the time you've had to think about this what your thoughts are generally about statements of interest before we get into necessarily all the details so having seen it written out having thought about a little bit more um are we still feeling like this is a reasonable thing for us to move over and the reason I ask that is I don't want to get too bogged down in little details if we're not at least all still sort of interested in pursuing this as an option so thoughts okay so then let's go I'm going to take the the lack of thoughts as agreement to move forward um so let's actually look at the process that I wrote out and so this is draft and so my expectation is this provides a fodder for discussion and some initial draft language that if we do want to move forward we could we could edit to adopt and so the idea is that after OCA declares that the pool is sufficient and adopt selection guidance the OCA chair we contact each individual as the applicant will to solicit a statement of interest um and that the statement of interest shall include the adopted selection guidance this is not all that dissimilar from what would happen now in that right now the OCA chair uh after we adopt selection guidance and interview questions reaches out to each applicant um my my policy has been to again remind them that they're had signed up to interview in case they'd forgotten to share with them the selection guidance and the interview questions and also to remind them um about the format of the interviews and so in this essentially that email that I've already been doing would uh also include this solicitation of a statement of interest now we had some discussion last time we met about uh whether or not this committee or the committee would spend time discussing what should be in the statement of interest or the details about it um each time or whether they would just sort of be a standard template statement of interest um that's used every time and so I put two different options in here one is sort of a standard SOI that every interview um this is what the SOI looks like so the content that applicants write in would would obviously be different but what's being asked in all the standards around it would be the same and then I also put one where OCA would uh decide the format length and desired content of the SOIs so that reflects sort of the first conversation we had and where there was some concern that if OCA had to develop a different SOI template or request every time that that would take up more time so I put both options in there so the first place for us to talk I'm going to say would be this section here so let's talk about options A and B and also if there's anything here that you think is missing Darcy yeah um I didn't say anything before um not because I agreed but just because I hadn't gathered my thoughts but um uh I am um I feel like uh the way this is set up that it just goes to the chair um is not a good situation and that um I guess I'm interested in knowing um if this is substituting for our current CAF which I feel like if it ain't broke don't fix it um I feel like it's unnecessary to do this when we're asking the same questions that are on the CAF and um I guess my my main concern is um when would this be available to the public and when would it be available to other counselors when would other counselors get the SOIs you know a number of the people on this committee are no longer going to be on OCA very shortly when will they get access to the SOIs and when will the public get access to them um that's my main concern um and I have a lot I have I I didn't think we ever even talked about the possibility of not submitting a CAF and doing this instead of a CAF CAF even the most minimal CAF that we're talking about changing to so so let me um let me address a couple things um so the first thing I'll say is questions about uh timing why don't we put a pause on those because um as you know from reading through this that's uh something that's dealt with later in the this process that's been written out and I put a couple options out there so why don't we save questions about um when SOIs are released to whom um for when we get to that part uh the second thing is important to me that's that's a core issue that is my core issue no i'm aware of that and so we can discuss that when we get to that part um so um with regard to whether or not people submit a CAF so remember the conversation that we had last time um was that people would still submit a CAF but they wouldn't necessarily have to submit a new CAF every time they were interested in applying to a board and so again um this gets at the aspect of if someone submitted a CAF in December for the planning board vacancy that we interviewed for in January would we require them to submit a brand new CAF for the planning board potential vacancies that we're interviewing for in May and in that case do we get two two CAFs from the same person within the context of six months under this process the answer is no we wouldn't get two CAFs because we would still have the contact information the demographic information and know they're interested but we would ask for a new SOI and maybe they could recycle some content um but that actually cuts down the number of just CAF that are adding to our our database um so this wouldn't necessarily mean they don't have to submit a CAF it just means that if we have on the record that they're interested in the body they don't need to submit um a new CAF so that was uh that that's that's one thing and then the other thing with regard to you said um why does it just go to the chair or that kind of stuff um so I did write I did put in here chair or designee to reflect the fact that um whichever committee isn't responsible for this might decide oh we don't want the chair to do this we want someone else to do it someone who has capacity um but I do think it's important that there's a point person who's handling sort of all of this information um and so someone has to contact the applicants to say hey you need to submit an SOI um so to me it makes sense that that's you know a single person who's responsible for liaising liaising with uh the applicants um the fact that they submitted just back to the chair I guess you could say they should they could email back to town council at um but I didn't see it as the chair the only person that's access it's just the chair is sort of that intermediary um much as we do for for many things and so I think that's one thing that we could think about but I do think it's useful to have just one person who's the point of contact for the applicants and who works with the applicants to to sort of go back and forth between the committee and the body of applicants Darcy? So the existing situation is that CAFs automatically go to town counselors um and so this would um be a step backward from that because of the fact that we wouldn't have a a firm set of CAFs that were um because people wouldn't be um required to even submit a CAF so um we wouldn't know who the group of appointees were as as counselors not just the public but counselors wouldn't even know. No that's not true because people would still be required to submit a CAF and those CAFs are still automatically forward to all counselors so counselors would still have the pool of CAFs under this as they do right now the only difference would be the SOI and so um it would and and this would be a little bit more similar to what we did for school committee in that one person would collect all the SOIs and then share them with the counselors and the public um but it would be different in that people would still be required to submit a CAF to express interest and that CAF would still go to um all of the counselors um so so yeah there are still CAFs and they would still automatically go what I'm not sure that's what this says though um if that's true that would be good but I mean that's exactly what's in here uh does anyone else and can I can I just ask for for anyone if you want to raise your hand to to use the raised hand button only because it's hard for me to go back and forth between all of the different screens on on on the thing and so I've been looking at the video cameras and now I'm noticing there's a whole bunch of raised hands that I may have been missing because we're doing differently so I'm just going to go down the line then I'm going to start with Alyssa we won't that's why I turned my camera off for a minute so I could bang my head on the desk I didn't read Evan's memo the same way you read it at all so I do believe this this is not going in the direction you're talking about you're talking you're talking about a CAF that's very minimal and so there it's not the same so when we understand your perhaps this implies that the only person who gets the statement of interest that's sure going in the right direction I always the fact that once we listen your your sound just got very choppy for me and she's pretty much ready setting enjoyed she's breaking up badly yeah okay I don't know if there this happened last say I left say I like document that I left the meeting oh coming back on another device I hope she's coming back on another device this happened last time in the sheet and then it reconnected in a way that we could hear much better uh so while we get clarification on that why don't we go the next time I left with Sarah Swartz so I will say that I agree with this and this is the way that I remember it being said and this is also how I read it that going to get the CAFs back from two or three years is incredibly labor intensive especially because they're not all on the same format anymore so we would have people send in a CAF and then I think we all talked about whether or not that CAF would be good for one year or for two years or three years it's our basic information everybody gets it we also agree that every single person who has sent in a CAF will then be interviewed so all counselors know who has applied and then we all know that every single one of them is going to be interviewed from what I understood the SOI would be a way for us to gather more pertinent information at the time of which we are interviewing people that gives us more information about what their current qualifications and interests are better than a CAF where we've kept it you know for a year or two years and and maybe you know we're not getting something fresh so this was a way to keep track of everyone know that they had interest we all know who has interest we all know that every single one of those people if they want to be interviewed is going to be interviewed this is just a way of getting more pertinent information at the time of selection of appointment and so I agree with this I think this is a great idea and actually gives us more information in a timely manner okay thank you George I'm leaning towards option A and I wanted to make just a few quick comments about the little wordsmithing if that's appropriate point I took a look at the statement for the school committee and one thing I noticed and I imagine you did as well Evan but one thing I noticed it had in its statement was a sentence resumes and attachments will not be accepted I don't know if that's worth putting in here or whether that raises a whole nother set of issues but my understanding was that we were not going to seek that sort of thing and so I wondered if a statement to that effect would be appropriate added to what you have here that was my first observation right can you can you should repeat that resumes it's the sentence in the school committee so I says resumes and attachments will not be accepted and if that sentence were inserted at some point wherever it's appropriate maybe at the end I would suggest that as a consideration since I don't think we want them and this basically says even if you send them we won't look at them so people hold that I think and this is a very small point I would I would delete at a minimum and I would just again what the school committee does and this is a matter of just style and choice but it just says the the SOI how do they put it it should the SOI should address the reasons why the candidate wishes to serve on the board or committee and the candidates qualifications and experience my suggestion is a small one just something like that is better and just delete at a minimum okay that's just a suggestion and other than that those are the the other thing they do is they just say one page and again this is a very small point and may not be worth our time or trouble but what you have here is perfectly clear it's just two sentences and if you want to make it shorter you could just say SOI shall not exceed a single page eight and a half by 11 12 point fund that's what they do but that's you know you may prefer what you have and that's fine it's just shorter hey the one thing I'll say is the only the only reason I put a word instead of a page length is I always feel like and this perhaps comes from a very long time of teaching is when you do a page length the question is how big are the margins how single space versus so one person who uses one inch one inch one inch double space has that much information someone who does point five margins and single space you know and so to me it's always easier just to have a word count to help keep it a little more uniform okay so George I assume your hand is should be lowered now yeah sorry um Alyssa are you able to you can hear us um are we able to hear you I don't know I could hear that I'm worried it's still a little choppy but um I want to get your your input in here somehow so thank you George um so I guess the the George offered some comments I think those are reasonable comments I I had forgotten about the resume thing but that's something that we have discussed in this committee before and we're discussed at the council so that seems like a reasonable addition and I can certainly word Smith um you know that that section here that George mentioned um George has a preference for option a is that you know this is sort of our first choose your own adventure piece of this is option a or option b um so is there from the other members of the committee a preference for option a or option b whether or not we have a standard or something to change this uh Sarah I'm going to say option a right now um and I would also say that I agree with you as an English major I do think it's smarter to keep it with a word count than rather just say a page okay uh Alyssa I agree on the word count and the only reason I was considering option b would be as an addendum to the end of option a right trying to keep all our options open which is that if for some when I was reading this earlier I was a couple days ago I was thinking well there might be a circumstance and I remembered well we only have three bodies we're talking about here um so then I'm wondering if we can feel good about option a in general for all the reasons we already said but also because it's the selection criteria that make the difference as to what they write in the SOI as opposed to see how that sentence says at a minimum it shall include it says with the adopted selection guidance so I think that then just puts the burden on the selection guidance being the current most up to date most tweaked for this particular body at this particular time okay um so we have a couple votes for option a with some minor words missing changes I think my personal opinion is that option a is probably the easier one already the committee has to debate sufficiency of the pool to proceed has to develop selection guidance and also has to develop interview questions so it seems like having some at least standard initial format for the SOI makes sense and I agree with what Alyssa said that to some extent that the heavy lifting of the variation between the SOIs comes from the selection guidance which is likely to change and so I make sure to include that in there and the other thoughts on a versus b so I'm hearing more of a preference for a and so I am going to highlight that just for now no that's not what I want to do so I remember so another another question and this was something that was just very briefly touched on in our conversation but was really something that I thought of after would be more significant was a deadline so I have here which I think is somewhat agreeable the ochre chair or designated shall establish a deadline for submission of SOIs from applicants that provides sufficient time for the SOIs to be posted as part of the interview special meeting packet at least 48 hours in advance and so that's the the latest that things can be published and so I want to stress that because this isn't the timing discussion just yet that comes next the latest that things could be posted would be 48 hours in advance so then of course the question comes what happens if someone misses the deadline and so we touched on that very briefly last time but I essentially there are there are two options I put out there although I'm sure there are infinite options for us one is essentially an exclusionary deadline that basically says look even if you're in the pool if you don't get your SOI in by this deadline you're you don't you're not in the pool anymore which is I think what the school committee process was although that of course process is a little bit different because there's never a debate on sufficiency in the pool or anything like that the other one is a non-exclusionary deadline which basically says look we give you a deadline to submit your SOI if you don't submit it by then you're still in the pool you can still be interviewed but we don't have an SOI for for you and it and so you know we're moving forward without our full information about you and so perhaps that person is then at a disadvantage which I wrote in there I don't know if we actually want to include that in a public version but just for our reminder so with regard to this there obviously has to be a deadline that we say you need to submit your SOI by do we want to say that if if people meet that deadline if don't meet that deadline they're out of the pool or is it just we just don't have an SOI for that person uh George I went back and forth on this um I don't think I have a really strong view and I'm certainly open to other thoughts but I guess uh rethinking it and listening to you as you go through it I guess I'm leaning toward the non-exclusionary deadline um it would be nice if people did what we asked but sometimes they don't sometimes they have good reason um we also struggle sometimes to as you've just experienced we've just experienced people becoming members to the pool in very short notice um so uh and people dropping out um so I guess I would lean uh somewhat toward the non-exclusionary okay Alyssa I'm gonna vote for exclusionary because I don't want someone who's especially glib to just be able to show up and perform because they couldn't be bothered to fill out the thing I I think as long as we give people really clear deadlines as to when it is just like we did with school committee and we said you will have it in by this time or you will not be considered I think that's a perfectly reasonable deadline to hold people to if they can't follow that simple direction combined with showing up at the interview when they're told to that I don't think they need to be a member of this body they need to be able to when Christine Breastrup reaches out to them and says can you serve on this panel or not tell me by four o'clock today they need to be able to respond to that and we're going to give them a lot more notice than just a couple of hours so I feel it's important to be exclusionary because it definitely does put people at different levels if they haven't all turned in a form when we talk about timing and I understand that you wrote it here from a legal standpoint to have the 48 hours so that that minimum you would want to have it be part of the posting I would be happy to talk more as we talk about timing about insisting that it be a longer period of time prior to the meeting although I certainly do understand what we just went through with our pool changing up until the last minute I also believed at the time we were doing that that that would be no longer true once we went with the statement of interest process okay Sarah I agree with Alyssa for all of the reasons that she just stated I think that there that should be it levels the playing field so it does make sure that everyone is being conscientious everyone is following the same rules and that it doesn't it definitely could be in favor to someone who maybe doesn't meet deadlines but definitely has a gift of the gab and I just think that you need to you need to keep everything the same for everyone okay so we have uh one preference for option b two for option a uh Darcy what do you think I I uh I need to have my other questions answered about all this whole process before I weigh in on any details why I'm gonna ask because I I can't support the process unless I understand what the timing of um getting information out to members of the council and members of the public right well that's the next question but let's let's say that under your ideal situation it with timing if you had to consider this question which would you have a preference for well it seems like the whole purpose of of doing this is that we think that for some reason people are going to fill this out where they didn't fill out their CAFs and if they don't fill this out then what are we gaining by having this process um so um and we're setting this up like it's special for our three special committees what what would we have if we didn't have a CAF and we didn't have an SOI we wouldn't have anything so yes I'm agreeing with agreeing with the women okay um my personal thought is is I sort of put both these options on here without necessarily feeling wedded to one or the other um so I was actually really looking forward to hearing the committee discuss these um uh and the benefit of being chair being able to go last is being able to hear um from my colleagues and I think I actually probably came in with a slight bias towards option b but I think that there are some really good points made about option a both the point of if you can't submit your SOI in time why these are pretty important bodies right and and I think also the point of Darcy just made of this is functioning as the content section of the CAF and they don't submit it we you know it's almost like not having the information so um I think I can swear more towards option a and so that seemed to be what the majority of the committee was so I am going to just highlight that one to indicate that um okay and so this last one is the timing question so I thought of different options to do this and sort of these are the the two um the the two ones which is um um so right now um and let me learn perhaps it's saying this way these are sort of the two polar options I understand there's sort of gradations in between um to me it seemed easier to give two options that we can alter than say here's 14 different options um and so I'm going to give the two polar options but also recognizing that both options a and b can be modified um so one is sort of a bundled posting which is that all of the applicants SOIs roll in once we have all of the SOIs of the pool they all get posted at once at the same time um 48 hours in advance of the meeting or you could say longer I mean to some extent that would depend on the deadline um and that they would be both added to the meeting packet but then also attached to public meeting posting so they'd have access um by the public and so um this is sort of similar to what we did for school committee in that they were all submitted by the same deadline we don't know when certain ones came in but we received all of them at once and then they were also available to the public once they were available to us obviously that was not 48 hours in advance of the meeting that was the week or week and a half or whatever so again that that timing can be changed but the idea being that all of them are posted at once and then the other idea being that they are posted to the meeting packet and the public posting as they come in and so essentially is uh this gets back to I think what Darcy was hinting at earlier which is essentially as soon as it's available um to the chair it's immediately available to the counselors and to the public so again two polar options um and so both of these I can see different ways that they can modify to be say to say different things but I wanted to put the two extreme options out there um with the expectation that will likely land somewhere sort of in the middle um so floor is open I see Alyssa sorry about that of course you do um I would do a but with a week in advance of the meeting however we want to define you know calculation of time in the charter but I mean I mean seven days and I could be persuaded to go longer it's just that it gets harder and harder for the person who's arranging all of this to stagger all these dates right we got the interview date then you back up from that then you back up from that but I would say a week in advance and I would say bundled and again I'm reflecting to the people who are cleverer at writing statements than others if I know they're going to go up individually then I'm going to wait and read everybody else's so that I can write a better one okay so we have one preference for option a but with one week instead of 48 hours in advance uh Sarah I'm going to say option a and I'm fine with changing it to up to a week before and again as someone who was an English major that's what I have my small degree in um I would want any writing sample that I did to be released at the same time as everyone else's just because of um being able to read other people's definitely would be an advantage uh I think George I too support option a I guess I'd like a little more thought um and I on the length of time um I'm not bothered by 48 hours um but I'm I again I'm not wedded to it either um I think going more than a week creates a whole I'm just also worried about the whoever it is who has to arrange all this um could someone speak a little bit about why a week is preferable to say what we have here which is 48 hours I don't this is just my thick head but I don't see um I kind of like 48 hours but otherwise option a bundled makes sense to me let's say your preference was was for a week did you want to take that yes thank you I think a week speaks to a number of different issues and I'm hoping Darcy supports that um and is that I see I understand the part about you know anything we do to make things more complicated as I indicated if we'd made it two weeks that would have been even more trouble to try and get the timeline right on these and because of course they don't all happen at the nice convenient times of year they happen at completely random times of year as we have experienced what I would argue and always argue and George you've heard me say this at town council meetings it is completely unacceptable that elected officials have 48 hours to consider the material before their meeting they need it further ahead of time and Athena and everyone else has worked in all levels have worked really hard to make the last minute be sooner so that stuff starts coming to us on Wednesdays frequently now instead of Fridays for Monday and it's just so important that we have some time to think about these things to remind ourselves of our process etc and you know in many cases we're only going to have two statements of interest take 10 minutes to read it right but what if we do have seven what if we do have 10 I just want everyone to have longer than 48 hours and I feel like the week does not put you in a position of everyone feeling like they have to lobby for their favorite candidates by writing us letters okay so we have that sounds like a greater preference for uh sorry George I'm here what we're doing here George is that hand sorry sorry so no okay I'm saying it seems like there's a slightly greater preference for a some debate over the length of time uh Darcy um what could you explain option b so add applicants sry to the meeting packet and public posting as they come in how would that work so the moment that the chair or the designate whoever is in charge of being uh the point of contact between the committee and the applicants as soon as they receive the so i um from the applicants whether that's three weeks in advance of the interview two weeks it doesn't matter the moment they receive that so i it's added to the packet and added to the posting so it is immediately available to um with public and counselors uh the moment it's received but um so that a meeting packet would be created that was three weeks in advance of the meeting I've never seen such a thing and and what's the public posting like when you post a meeting so you would be posting the so i so one of the conversations we've had here right is about what's what's released to the public um from the CAF and so one of the things that this is intended to help us uh navigate is find a compromise solution between uh whether CAFs are public records and personnel records right and so the idea being that the SOIs would be public um and of course you've had conversations on this committee about what does that mean for an S for something to be public because I just mean that it's subject to a public records request does that mean that it's easily available to the public um I tried to go with the most public way I could think doing this which is that the SOIs themselves would be part of the public meeting posting um uh attached to it so that any member of the public that wants to see who applied and what the qualifications are could go to the meeting posting and find the documents and read them um now of course that's that's the meeting posted way in advance of what it would normally be posted so the meeting would be I mean our process has been I have had these meetings posted the moment I can confirm an interview date um so yeah with the planning board meeting that that those interviews because I because there were only three people and so it was easier to find a common date that everyone could contribute to if you remember those interviews happened on January 22nd I think um and they were posted about three that that meeting was posted about three weeks in advance because I was able to confirm the date very quickly the ZVA interviews just took a little bit longer I think they that interview was posted maybe a week and a half two weeks in advance um because it just took longer but then my my my process and maybe this is something I need to pass on has been um to post the meeting the moment I can confirm the date for it so you're talking about the meeting in which the interviews will occur yeah so um the it seems like the um I mean that's I guess one option but as we saw in Northampton they just had it posted in a link in the next meeting of OCA or CRC or whoever is going to be doing this um so it would just be an agenda item with a link in that next meeting um seem like it'd be a little bit easier for people to find um you don't think so but to get the agenda they'd have to go to the meeting posting this would actually be one less clip because what you're describing they'd have to go to the meeting posting click on the agenda and then click on the link within the agenda this they'd go to the meeting posting and they'd all be right there okay so I think this would actually this would be one fewer click for the public yeah so um I I think that you will be surprised to know that I favor B or if we did A if we had two weeks instead of one week that would um also be a good thing because I'm I'm assuming that the the rolling posting might end up being a couple weeks in advance which as you heard at the last our last meeting that's what I was suggesting would be better than 48 hours um so I I'm obviously I'm open I think for E I think to me you know from the perspective of the person who's been that intermediary the bundled posting is probably easier because it's just less to to keep up with and like if someone's thing comes in on a Sunday and I don't get to it to a Tuesday but then someone submits on Tuesday and I get to it right away is there an unfair data um one thing I want to I want to throw out there that's applicable to both options A and B as long as we're talking about that is so using literally the example that we had for um the ZBA gotta kind of think of it uh the the ZBA interviews we just did so we did those ZBA interviews on April 16th um so if we had 48 the 48 hours that means that and uh that means that they'd all need to be posted by April 14th if we did a week they'd all have needs to be posted by April 9th if we did two weeks they'd all need to be posted by April 2nd so just starting to conceptualize what that looks like so one potential wrinkle that I think we would need to iron out with this is um so I had one applicant who joined the pool on April 4th and I had another applicant who joined the pool on April 10th so if we're saying that they need if if the deadline is the same as the posting so a week or two week if we're saying that they needed to come in if they need if they're excluded from the pool if we're going with this option A that we highlighted um if they don't get an SOI I think we do have to keep in mind that further in advance we push that SOI deadline um the the more we push the deadline to when someone can enter the pool and so if we started from that everyone knows this it might not make a big difference but I do think it's worth recognizing that um if we had put that a week in advance there was one person who was in the ZBA pool who might not have otherwise been in it we had put it two weeks in advance there's two people who were in the ZBA pool who might not have otherwise been in it because they joined the pool late and they would have joined after the deadline to submit that SOI passed so I just want to make sure that we're aware of uh George your hand is up and I think Evan that you have articulated much better than I could my concern um I hear Alyssa and she makes as always a very good point about you know trying to help us as elected officials um do our own jobs and in the end perhaps the committee will agree with that but I guess on my end I'm concerned about um making this a process that um cast the net as wide as possible um and maybe in the end there's just no way this can work but as you point out at least two candidates would not have survived simply because of the process if we pushed it out by a week um and two weeks so again that's my concern I guess I just like to hear from the rest of the committee um whether in the end the desire to have more time to review documents which is perfectly understandable in their mind outweighs my desire to keep this process uh have the net as wide as possible and also given the challenge we face I think and Alyssa can certainly speak to this at one way or the other but the challenge we face in getting people to serve on CPA planning board um we found this is not easy um and people sometimes make decisions you know people become available the last minute blah blah blah um I guess I'm also worried about that um but maybe that's just life uh thoughts and response to to George's concern and the potential issue I brought in about the more we move the deadline forward the more we have a hard cutoff for when people can join the pool uh Sarah than Darcy so I think that while I understand that we want to have you know the biggest pool that we possibly can I also feel like you know maybe someone would be able to convince someone who's fantastic you know seven hours before the meeting I mean I think that um I think if these become hard and fast rules people will start recruiting earlier and I think that um counselors really do need to do due diligence and have some time so I'm going to sort of stand firm on the week uh Darcy I guess I don't see why we wouldn't be able to add to our posting if someone came in late I mean if we have if we have a deadline for one people you know the last day when they can that can apply which is different from the date of posting um would not offend me to to add people I understand that you know the original posting might be what people looked at first and someone might feel like that was unfair but if they wanted to be added then they might have to um be added late so you're saying that we should be that even if we say SOIs are due one two one two weeks in advance and that's sort of the deadline for SOIs if someone wants to join the pool a week in advance um we say sure you can still join you have to get us or your SOI as soon as possible when you just add it in yes okay just just I want to make sure I want to make sure I'm understanding uh let's see uh Alyssa but that flies in the face of what we just decided about exclusionary deadlines the deadline is the deadline it's got it's not got separate parts because of the statement of interest the deadline is you don't get considered if you don't get your statement of interest in is basically a week plus a day ahead of the interviews and I say a week plus a day because this is really not a difficult task to put this together and staff should normally be available to do it but you know we're in a difficult time if the chair has to do it again not a horrible burden because we've all had had things posted but we already said we do not have a rolling deadline therefore there's no rolling deadline for statement of interest they are all going to get uploaded to the posting just like other things we've done in the past where we have had for example the um manager's appointments we've had our appointments added to the posting and it's all going to be you know a week and a day basically in advance of the interview I don't understand why you would let people join the pool late when we already had that conversation uh we have George your hand was up now I don't see it are you well it yeah again it's a difficulty this format but my mind's going back and forth again we do have the exclusionary deadline and I'm tempted by Darcy's suggestion because again from my perspective it it keeps the window open as long as possible but then you run into the problem that Alyssa points out which is now essentially the exclusionary deadline really doesn't really become exclusionary because people can you know enter into it um you know a few days before and submit an SOI I assume so I guess my up and down hand reflects my up and down mind so I'll try to thank you uh Darcy I see your hand up I guess I'm just I was just saying that if we adopted the rolling posting um and uh and there were SOIs that were coming in um you know three weeks in advance and they were showing up on the posting um then uh if if someone were to if someone were to be added after at any point they could be added after the you know they'd be showing up in a rolling basis um to the public and to other counselors and so on um but they wouldn't we wouldn't accept them after a certain point whenever that so we'd still have some hard deadline that would be an exclusionary deadline but right so they would start coming in yep and then but at some point they would stop so so I just want to make sure I'm understanding your position so theoretically you would say you have a deadline 48 hours in advance is when you have to get your thing in and then as they come in we just post them right right okay uh I see Sarah's hand up so I I maybe it's just that I'm not wrapping my mind around this correctly I mean I guess I'm seeing that what we're saying is that if we have a rolling deadline then at least all of them are published at the same time but that goes completely against what we were trying to say about having everyone get everything in at the same time which would lead to an even playing field so I still can't go there I'm still going to say a week before same rules for everyone and giving counselors a chance to digest the information okay so so we're looking for so so I'm hearing a couple themes here um so we're looking for giving counselors enough time to be able to read the material I mean I think as Alyssa said it's it's one thing there are two applicants if there are 10 applicants 10 pages of SOIs um you might not want to read that 48 hours in advance you might want a little bit more time we're hearing especially from George that we want to make sure that we're not um taking too many actions that are going to constrain the pool or make us more we want to make sure that we're constantly making sure that as many people who are interested in serving in our town government can serve in town government and we don't want to be turning away warm bodies that that want to serve and we're also hearing that we want to make sure that everyone who's applying has sort of a level playing field and there's some concern of um you know we want to make sure that one savvy person won't just submit it right before the deadlines so that they can they can read everyone else's and get ideas and and put in so we're hearing I think probably enough time for counselors to read a process that allows for as many people as possible to participate and a level playing field for all applicants which I think are hopefully all things that we can all agree on as values and principles so how to actually actualize those I think is the the the harder point of discussion Darcy see your hand up is that residual or is that current that's residual okay um so this is a hard I think this is a this I knew this would be the hardest part of the process to iron out and I think it it remains um and so what I'm hearing is Darcy has a preference for option B um Alyssa and Sarah have a preference for option A with a one week instead of 48 hours and George has a preference for option A with perhaps a 48 hours or something less than a week it am I characterizing people's positions accurately that I mischaracterize anyone okay um so I think then I'll add my input on this um so speaking again as the person who has taken on sort of the responsibility of being the point of contact between applicants um and thinking about how to do all this I would probably be more aligned with Alyssa and Sarah and I think the reason for this is is uh the reasons are one um I think that it's easier from the perspective of managing all of this um to be able to just as an SOI comes in you know add it to a folder add it to a folder add it to a folder and then just post them sort of a bulk posting um I'm trying to think of you know if if I had to um post things to the packet or send things as they came in um that could be a lot of just okay remember to do this remember to do this um also I can add them to the packet but staff has to add them to the meeting posting um I can only imagine Athena sitting there thinking about the constant email should be getting enough oh and add this one and then two minutes later oh another one came in add this one um as opposed to just here is all of the ones you have to add and it's sort of one attachment and so I think from an efficiency standpoint um I think that carrying that out would be easier I also have some the same concerns that I think Alyssa and Sarah have about level playing field and about people being able to read others before they write their own um but I think looking at it strictly from sort of an operational standpoint um that the bundled posting is probably the easiest one um because there's just oh that's not my coffee over there's just less moving pieces right it's just you you take all of them that you've received and then you decide when to put them in um from an operational standpoint the 48 hours is the easiest but I think that I'm hearing um Alyssa uh very clearly on the fact that um 48 hours is not a whole lot of time if you have you know other things to do um and certainly like I said the week that we did the ZDA interviews and I keep doing this and scheduling these interviews during my terrible weeks um you know I honestly wouldn't have had time on that Wednesday or Thursday to read through seven statements of interest um I was back to back every single one of those days between my full time job and this full time job and so um having more time I think would have been good and and I think that it also just would have given me more time to to ponder in advance um and so as as much as I am wary about pushing that deadline out because there are complications like what if someone tries to during the pool late um sometimes some of these logistics don't fall into place until later than you hope certainly that was true at ZDA um I think I think a week is reasonable I would be wary about going beyond the week I think two weeks um starts to get a little tricky um so I think I'm probably a little bit more in camp uh Alyssa Sarah on this um again coming at this from the perspective of if I had to do what I did for planning board and for ZDA um with this process you know which would be the best way to go about doing it um so why don't we pause that discussion for now I think we've probably beat that horse um but I am going to just highlight this and write one week not because we've made a decision but that's just because I think that's where the majority of the committee currently lies um I want to go through and just run through some of the other changes that were made to these other sections because I think we've discussed the section five quite a bit um and then we're going to we're going to circle back so hopefully you can still see my screen um so section two um I did two things differently uh I changed one is to note that CAF should be kept on file for three years right now we say two years uh we've I think recognized that sort of an arbitrary number and since most terms are three years I'm not quite sure why two years would be how long we keep them on file and so I changed it from two to three um and I basically said that if you already submitted a CAF for that body within the past three years you don't need to resubmit a CAF which is sort of what we're trying to get at here right not making people resubmit every time they're interested if we already have on file that they're interested in this body so this would comply with that process and um I got rid of the members seeking the appointment must also submit a new CAF um because again the whole idea is if they have an on file CAF in the past few years they don't need to resubmit and then the second thing um I put on this actually has nothing to do with what we um have been talking about in this but it's something that I've just recognized as something that should be added having enacted this process twice which is um we said that the chair shall reach out to all applicants to confirm receipt of their CAF um which is something I've been doing when someone submits a CAF I say you know thank you for submitting your CAF but then usually I immediately get a question back that says okay so when should I expect to interview what's going on with this and so I think that if we're going to require um the ochre chair or I should put chair or designee um to reach out and confirm the receipt of the CAF we should let them know what the status is so if someone submitted a CAF for the ZBA today it would make sense for me to say thank you for submitting this you know just to let you know we just recommended appointments to the ZBA so it might be a while until there's a vacancy just so they're not wondering a week later how come they haven't called me uh so uh questions comments on the revisions to this I see a hand from Darcy yeah I think um I asked a question earlier and um uh because I was concerned that we were saying and it is in the directions to filling out the CAF that that people are not required to file a CAF if they've filed one in the last three years and so we won't have a uh a finite group of people that we know has applied for um for this position didn't I mean I did I miss here at the beginning of this meeting that that oh it was said that every person that applies for a position will need to reapply at least filling out the minimal CAF that you're talking about no the the idea of this being that once someone expresses that an interest in a body they don't necessarily need to be continuously resubmitting a new CAF to express their interest because they're already in our pool of people who are of expressed interest and so if you think about this um for for example um there are people who apply to be on the planning board um uh when we did appointments to the planning board in last spring spring 2019 um those people are still in our pool of people who have expressed interest so uh last week when I reached out to everyone for whom we have a CAF on file I reached out to those people now several of them responded and they said oh no I'm not interested anymore but they were still in our pool and so essentially it would just do that same thing it would just not force those people to resubmit a CAF so we're already collecting I mean part of the process and part of what we've done in these past three times now has been to go back and look at the pool of CAFs that we have over the past we've been doing two years and reach out to everyone who submitted and ask if they're still interested um that wouldn't change the only thing that would change is it would say look if we already have on file that you're interested in the planning board you don't have to resubmit a new CAF to tell us you're interested in the planning board because we already know you already have that on file and we're already going to you reaching out to you to say hey you said you said you're interested are you still interested um so this doesn't change what we're doing now except it doesn't require someone to be continuously resubmitting a CAF and I think the idea behind this this is it simplifies this so again if someone submitted a CAF to the planning board in December we already have a CAF on file for them it doesn't force them to now submit another CAF in April when they just have one in December because we already know they're interested in planning board and I'm already going to be reaching out to them to say you're are you still interested uh George I see your hand up just a quick question about two years versus three I hear your point about the terms being three years so that that makes sense um and maybe this is a not a real serious concern but I believe the uh it's still two years for um other committees right for the for manager appointed bodies that CAFs are kept for two years is that correct or am I mistaken about that I don't know again the only concern would be that we have one rule and and the other committees have another rule and I just would prefer it be consistent but um that's the only question I had about two versus three you're listening I'm not sure how long the time manager keeps applications on file for me personally I'm actually we have uh diverged so dramatically from what the time manager does in so many different ways um that at this point I was more concerned with consistency a year ago um but now that the town manager I mean considering they do we do public interviews I mean the process is so different that I'm not so sure um for me personally that how much we are consistent with what the time manager does it matters I guess I was thinking about staff but again it may just be a this is a minor minor point in other words they have to be aware that first counsel it's three years for town it's two you know and here's what here's why I don't think that matters when I've been collecting CAFs essentially I send an email to Angela that says can you send me all CAFs from this date on and so she just does that so I'm not saying I would hope that someone would just go Angela send me the CAFs because she'd have to which ones I always say I always take whatever date the posting was subtract two years and say from this date to current and so she just queries that and so yeah uh what a few hands up uh Sarah so I'm going to agree with Evan and the fact that um now town council's appointments are so incredibly different right than town managers that we simply need to be consistent town council seems to need to just be consistent with our own rules um about appointments and the other thing that I wanted to bring up and maybe I'm wrong on this but I believe that Oka said once we changed um the form for town council appointments that those CAFs I believe are going to the town council appointing authorities is that correct that now like Evan if you're they're going right to you so um in another like two years it won't matter because it'll be town council that will have the record of all the CAFs it we I am I correct in thinking that because of how they're flowing you won't town council won't council itself will have its own pool will will we're the keepers now of the uh people who applied for our appointments correct yeah so I mean they they still go into a database and so they're still queryable by staff if we ask but but you know um they are all coming to us right and so we every counselor has every CAF that has been submitted since October in their email whether those are easy so for me personally whatever I have a folder in my email that just says CAFs and whenever I get a CAF I just add it to that folder so at any point in time if you want to know who's applied to any of these committees I can go to that folder I don't I don't know how other people are keeping track of them and maybe some maybe you're not because it's not necessarily a priority because you don't have to reach out to them right but but yeah I think what you're saying is is true that um in theory I don't uh the only reason I I need staff right now at this point to give me CAFs um is because there are if we're going back two years or three years their CAF before those are coming right but in theory right three years from that I think it was October 23rd that the council voted um the counselors assuming they're still the same counselors um will will have all those CAFs so so yeah I think there's there's multiple offers so Evan maybe could we write into the process that whoever is the designee or the I'm just going to say designee or chair needs to compile that list right and then it could be handed down either that or find some way we can write down right now how town council itself keeps its own database I think that that would be smart because you know even though that way we have it ready and it's part of our separate process that's what I guess is I got you uh Darcy your hand is up I would agree with Sarah um on on that suggestion that there needs to be uh like a running spreadsheet of people who've applied and um their current status I still think that you know the point of our minimizing the CAF form was so that it would be easy for people to fill out and I I her I think that everybody who applies who wants to be considered to be in the pool needs to fill out a CAF and um I think that counselors will want that to be the case because we automatically get CAFs that will be much easier for us to see who's in the current pool and um so I I don't understand why if we went through the process of minimizing the form why we wouldn't then require people to fill it out and there's also the issue of people constantly changing addresses changing their contact information we need to have the most updated information on these people even if they applied last year they might have a different address or a different phone number or a different email address or whatever or whatever so um I you know I feel like there's no um advantage to not having them all fill out their CAFs especially since they won't have to spend any time on it at all so I just so turn around and play where you're at so Jane Smith applied for the planning board when we appointed in last spring so they submitted one February 19 they applied again and submitted one in December 2019 when we when we appointed and so your argument would be even though we already have CAFs on Jane Smith from February 2019 and December 2019 if they wanted to apply this time we are asking for now another CAF yes we'll take them even if no information is changed no we need it because we need we need the pool of who's applying this time for this position but we have the pool when the chair I mean the product I mean this is again not similar to what we've been doing we have the pool and the chair reaches out to every person for whom we have a CAF on file it's automatic that would automatically go to the town council members so with with the idea be I'm trying to accelerate so again so Jane Smith has a CAF on file from December 2019 I email Jane Smith and say hey are you still interested in planning board she says yes and I said okay can you submit a new CAF to let us know is that what you're thinking because we don't we only have one on you from December 2019 so submit a new one yeah if she hasn't already you know heard about it and done it on her own uh oh Melissa is so I'm just trying to think so I contacted a number of people last week who had CAFs on file with us over the past three years and so I would say to each of them are you still interested in if you are please submit a new CAF to let us know that you're interested yes okay um so is this a in the sense been up for a while is it residual is it new it's new okay great so we'll go to you and then Alyssa okay so this is how I understand our process which is we have um it's and it's sort of we we post that there are openings for a committee and they're posted and we're giving a date but we also have people who you know are are going to go online they're going to see things that they're interested in and so they're going to just submit a CAF town council gets that CAF and it's automatically released to all town councilors if someone had the interest in knowing what a running pool is they could make their own spreadsheet or they could write down names as they come in and keep it in a notebook we have the people's basic information submitted to us and every single one of us gets it and then we're also asking a chair or a designee also to keep a database for us just in case we lose our notebook we have the constant base of who is applying for what with their basic information if we wanted to we could also put a little thing on the CAF saying these CAFs are good for three years if you have a change in address or phone number you need to contact and I would put a town council contact right so the onus is on people who applied to let town council know within that three years if they've moved to Oregon or what their new phone number is if it's unlisted you get blah blah blah blah blah but the thing the thing that we're changing we're trying to make this more streamlined so we have one CAF that the designee does not have to sweat they've they've got it we have it it's simpler then while we're looking for more detailed information about what someone's interest and their qualifications are right now we are asking for an SOI so we have the best of both worlds we don't have to go searching for their basic information we got it we know who's interested and then instead of having to just give us the blah blah blah yada yada address thing which doesn't help us every single time we are asking for a new SOI which gives us the pertinent information that we care about so I don't see where we're missing any steps this is so once CAF three years if you want to add something about letting us know if your your address or your phone number changes I think that covers everything okay thank you Sarah I'm glad this is being recorded because I want to transcribe what you just said for a potential future report because that was a beautiful walkthrough of every detail um Alyssa your hand has been up agreed Sarah just covered 90 of what I was going to say so thank you Sarah that was really clear I think one of the thing would help Evan perhaps is that it when you write the report to be clearer or frankly maybe I just skipped over this part because it was already obvious to me but it's clearly not obvious to everyone and it won't be obvious to the people on various council committees who haven't been doing this which is that CAFs come in as was indicated briefly earlier all year round so immediately after those zba interviews now we saw this didn't happen but in theory one could watch those interviews and be inspired to serve on zba and fill out a CAF right then knowing full well that it might not actually be looked at you know in any detail for months and so those CAFs are all there I mean starting now the only reason we had we made people for reappointment do CAFs was because we didn't have statements of interest CAFs they have filed at some point the people who are coming up on planning board for reappointment they filed a CAF at some point since we have a hopefully at the end of today's meeting a streamlined CAF the important stuff is going to be in the statement of interest as Sarah said Jarcy made an excellent point about saying if your contact information changes bear in mind this is the only way we have of reaching you so send an email and I would argue just send it to town council right because all their CAFs are going straight to town council might as well send it to all of us I moved to Oregon I moved across town whatever send that to all of us people will forget and they won't necessarily do it the only other insight I wanted to provide was associated one aspect of the two-year versus three-year issue one of the reasons for the two-year version even though committee appointments have always been for one two and three years forever that I know of is that we have transitioned this database of how to keep track of CAFs several times it's garbage it's really hard for people to work with so the least further back we had to go made sense because people were trying to import from different systems so that was part of the reason now that we'll have a simpler system and moving forward we've learned all learned so much and we are again all getting the CAFs like the select board used to I would argue that three years for basic information you know not part of selection criteria right is is totally reasonable but yes definitely include that part about tell us if your information changes because we have no way to reach you otherwise what we don't want is we don't want someone to have watched those zba interviews be inspired to join zba fill out a CAF and then the next time there's a zba announcement fill out another one um they there's always a contact person on the vacancy announcement and they can say hey you still have mine right I moved did you know that that would that should cover all of that yeah I guess that's where I need some clarification so I mean sometimes I hate debating in hypotheticals but I think sometimes it's useful so running with a list as example if someone submitted a CAF for the zba today because they watched the interviews and and were so inspired and then we had a vacancy for the zba in September would we then contact that person and say if you're still interested you have to submit a new CAF even though their CAF is only four months old that that's what personally that's what I'm trying to cut down on is that having to constantly submit new CAFs if we already have that they're interested yeah I I guess I feel like the value of of making sure that the town counselors and the public know who's in the pool is much more important than our need for the efficiency well they would know from the SOIs right yes we'll know that by one week before the interviews but if we were getting CAFs we'd know the counselors would know before that um well the counselors already know because they have the CAFs on well they don't have the CAFs if the designee has not um you know contacted the person yet or whatever um that's that's a lot of it you know I I guess I'm just uh I'd rather as a counselor I'd rather get the CAFs directly than um well you are because once someone submits the CAF it goes to everyone right but our rules that we're looking at right now say that people don't have to you know put in a CAF so come counselors will never know about the people who um who didn't submit a CAF uh until they they get their SOI a week before the interview so you know there are going to be people that um no I'm confused everyone needs to submit a CAF it's just they don't need to have to submit a new CAF every time so counselors would still have that CAF that they're interested in planning board right they counselors will not know that because they won't know that the people are interested until they receive the the SOI because right because they won't have submitted a CAF and we don't they will have submitted at some point right but we don't know that they're still interested only the designee will find that out so we don't know who's actually in the pool yeah I mean so sorry you know one thing I think to think about here too is how this all actually plays out in real life um and so to provide an example um you will have you will remember people both this happen with planning board and zba too is someone submitted a new CAF and then we're not part of the pool because they ended up later on withdrawing and so who's in the pool is actually a really interesting thing which I I don't think I would have fully grasped until we had gone through this that the pool is incredibly fluid right and so um to some extent there were people who submitted CAFs a month before the interviews for zba who then just a couple weeks later said you know I changed my mind and and withdrew so the CAFs are have some utility to an extent but I think that's where those SOIs are really really what's communicating who's in the pool because that's sort of the final they've gotten to a point where they're ready to actually they're writing the full SOI it's available to everyone and that's really the pool and so my worry is that just because you get a CAF in your mailbox a couple weeks before you know that person isn't in the pool until it's ready to go schedule the interviews and so um I'm just looking for us to have a running list of who is interested but the SOI is really what's going to define the pool for the council other other thoughts on this are showing move to a different section okay so I just want to make this really clear again when someone is interested in a body they fill out a CAF which they know is good for three years every single counselor is sent that person's CAF and what they're interested in if you're interested in knowing who is there and who's applying write it down in a notebook or write it someplace where you can find it I think if you if we want but I think we've already said this that the designee or the chairs of the committees that are making these appointments will also have a spreadsheet or some information available that also I mean we're collecting all of them so these people will have this running list of all the CAFs for every single board back for three years which in case you've forgotten your notebook or whatever you could ask that that chair a designee and you could always get you know who's filled one out that's not a mystery it's not lost it's available and then when it comes to the time when we're looking to appoint someone then all counselors again which is a courtesy I feel that chairs and designees are doing to counselors to then put them all together again for us and give them back to us in case we've forgotten you're still getting a pertinent bundle at least a week before none of this is being obscured and then we're getting even more pertinent information so we do know we absolutely do know and if we forget we definitely will know the person to ask so I I don't think any of that is lost or hidden and thank you sir because that also reminded me that a thing that to pass on is the fact that I have before the interviews collated all of the CAFs and sent them out to the full council which is something that's not actually required I don't think uh Alyssa sorry your hand just went up so I'm just fine tuning some of the wording under item two and in terms of that when it says that the the CAF is separate and is automatically I would say automatically electronically distributed to all counselors immediately so that no one reads this and thinks somebody's supposed to be bundling stuff like was happening for a while in the gap between select board and town council when we did have to put up with that that is no longer the case and then the Oka chair or designee shall reach out to each applicant upon receipt of their CAF to inform them of the current status I what we used to do is we used to just well sometimes when it worked when people would submit their CAF they just get a thing that said thanks for submitting um so they knew it like actually worked but it's true they didn't get told oh by the way we just filled zba and we don't know when we might be doing it again or that's also the ideal place to say look for an announcement in such and such place because this is where we put vacancy notices um but that you know that's each applicant upon receipt and so hopefully you know we don't get deluged right even though the form's simpler now and the designee just sends out like the generic email saying where we are at that particular point in the process and it doesn't imply that they have to keep updating them right it's just at that moment that they put in the CAF then whenever we do that vacancy notice then of course the chair designee will be reaching out to them to find out their current interest so I want to pause our conversation for just a moment so it's 11 32 so we are over time my hope was that we could finish this today and have a recommendation for the council because the council would need to act on the actual community activity form request and so I imagine we won't officially change the process unless the council is going to adopt the revision to the CAF so I think we have two options one is we say yeah we just didn't get to it today and we will pick up where we left off at our next meeting which is on May 11th the other option is that we go long today and try to finish this up and so I just want to hear from the committee I don't know what your willingness or time constraints or preferences are so just hearing from the committee do you want to keep going today and try to finish this up or do we want to sit on what we have for right now and come back to this on May 11th why don't I go this way why don't I just go down the line Darcy I think finishing this is going to take us you know longer than a half hour okay Sarah I think that I think we could do it today if you did just give us a five minute break I'm willing to stay longer and I think we should make a point to try to finish it Alyssa I'd like to try and finish it at least it or if we get to a point where we say you know what now we're really frustrated and we need more time to think about this but I'm not yet I mean beyond this entire meeting I'm not yet at that point and I think that I'm actually really having gone through this SOI part I'm really eager to say we're ready to move on George let's try to finish it okay so I think I'm hearing that consensus so here's what I'm going to do I want to just go through the other couple sections where I made some minor changes um so we can look at them I will then certainly oblige Sarah's request for a five minute break which I think we need and then we'll come back and maybe look through what I might do is update the document to where I saw sort of majority opinion in a bunch of places and we can discuss maybe the thing is a whole okay so um three sufficiency of the pool the only thing that was changed here was um two well sorry two things were changed here one is changing two to three the other is a suggestion that there's a change I made that's outside of what we're talking about right now um so we had and we had debated this and we had adopted the ochre chair or designation contact any applicant who submitted a CAF prior to the posting of the vacancy notice to confirm their continued interest that had been the process that we adopted is that we assume that anyone who submitted a CAF after the vacancy notice is definitely in the pool but we want to contact anyone within two years I haven't actually been following that I've been contacting everyone who submitted a CAF no matter how recent it was and the reason for that is twofold so one in some cases just a big lag between the vacancy notice and when we're actually moving forward so with planning board there's a vacancy notice that was posted I think October 10th and we didn't actually start thinking about moving forward with interviews until the end of December so that was a that was a big gap right um with the zba technically the first vacancy notice was published on September 12th and then we didn't really start moving forward until March and so I sort of felt like people who applied in December January that was still long enough to contact them but the other is what I mentioned before which is some people submit a CAF and then a week and a half later go oh my god what was I thinking I don't want to do that um and so I got rid of the prior to the posting the vacancy notice to basically say any CAF even if it was sent five days ago you reach out and say we're moving forward are you still interested um because I think that that given the experience that I've had that's actually necessary is there any objection to that just see your hands up is this a new hand or a residual hand it's an old hand okay um okay great um nothing has changed in section four nothing has changed in section what the former section five the new section six the former section six new section seven um I put the ochre shell also I should put ochre or designee well actually that would I can change that to designee she'll also distribute to the town council all receive statements of interest um which is just pointing out we already say they're submitting they're distributing all these other things um and then the other thing and this would change in with regard to what we put for uh in section five but one thing um that we haven't had in here is even though we had openly acknowledged that even after we declared the pool sufficient we would still accept people into the pool um even though we had agreed that as a committee we had never actually written it into the process and so this was just me formalizing something that we've already been doing um of course recognizing that this would actually change slightly depending on what we end up doing for section five unless I see a hand just that it changes substantially based on that and and like you said it just has to reflect whatever we make the final decision if it's two weeks then it has to be enough time for them to turn in a statement of interest right which was different than what we just did with zba when it was literally like show up because we didn't have statements of interest okay so I am going to put us on a short break um I use that time to read and maybe refill your coffee and um I am also going to use that time to just update this based on sort of what I saw as majority opinion and then we can go through and discuss uh so with that I will bring us back at 1145 so we are recording again uh so here's what I did um in our little break there is I went back to uh the process and I took uh the things that I had highlighted and and worked them into the process and so I took what seemed to be majority opinion now if you did not agree with that majority opinion that doesn't mean that we can't change it or change it back or alter it in some way but just to clean up what we're looking at um I altered it to be majority opinion and so uh let's go back I'm going to share my screen again so this is what the section five is sort of the full page of text this is what the section five looks like keeping only those things uh that there seem to be majority opinion on and so let me just go through them really quick um so this hasn't changed this first piece just that after we declared the poll sufficient we someone in the part of the committee contacts each applicant solicits a statement of interest and they include the committee handout and the selection guidance in that solicitation uh there seemed to be agreement um it seemed to be I think agreement amongst all members uh that we have sort of a standard so I um so the only thing I changed from what I had originally presented at the beginning of this meeting is I added the language that George had suggested of resumes and attachments will not be accepted and I also I think captured what George said uh the SOI shall describe why the applicant so not the at a minimum um we I changed the I put I kept the exclusive deadline because that did seem to be where the majority of this opinion of this committee's opinion landed um the original language of the exclusive of the deadline said 48 hours I put one week um because I did take on board what seemed to be the majority of the opinion which is that we would have a bundled posting of the SOIs for the committee and for the public and that they would be posted one week in advance of the interviews um I know that was an area of a lot of discussion I know there was not agreement there so this very well may change but that is where I heard uh that is the the option that I heard the most support for um in this committee and so uh I wanted to first you know take a second to read through this I mean it's all language that you you've seen it's just put together without the different options um I'd like to hear uh what we think if we are comfortable with this um if there are changes that need to be made um and then because we're nearing I think the end of this discussion um any changes that will be made I think we might want to consider doing so as a actual vote um so instead of voting on one option versus the other we'll vote on actual text so take a moment look through and I will uh entertain I'll open the floor and entertain any thoughts things people like things people want to change the floor is open I don't know how to raise my hand now oh no okay well since you're currently talking if you have something to say well I hear from you and then George has his hand raised and so then we'll go to George great I just wanted the little tweak and I appreciate the others that where it talks about the last sentence shall be posted to the interview special meeting packet we mean the town we mean the packet on the town website not the share point packet and then so we should be clear on that and then the SOIs so something about just the town but then the SOI shall be attached to the public meeting posting to provide additional access by the public because both doesn't be accessible it's just that one it's easier to find them so kind of that uh on the website on the town website is that get out and then to provide additional access is this address what you're looking for that's that's two ways they can find it okay uh George you had your hand up yeah I mean just uh in the uh first paragraph uh that you've highlighted uh the sentence beginning the SOI shall describe why the applicant is interested in serving on the body and we need a verb okay that's all right and shall include uh a discussion could be and shall include or include a discussion of the relevant skills and experiences the applicant will bring to the body that we could just get rid of that's right well you want it yeah that's all right okay and include what it meant to be they describe why they're interested and the relevant skills and experiences they will bring to the body okay fine that's fine okay uh other thoughts on this things we might want to change or add uh Sarah okay so again this might be because of my headache that I don't remember but I know that we wanted to say somewhere that the SOI is um required but I don't know if that's somewhere else and I'm assuming it is but I just it just occurred to me just so that people don't think it's oh that'd be great if you added it extra no you need to have it that I think just make sure that people like you know how people didn't fill out a lot of their CAF this is something no that's that's all so so we have here um I just I just highlighted the highlighting um it says uh any applicant who does not submit their SOI by the established deadlines shall be considered withdrawn from the applicant pool does that cover or do you want stronger language no that's beautiful thank you Evan um George is this residual hand or new hand that's residual I'm sorry okay uh other additions modifications deletions Evan yep I think it said should say at least both places in that paragraph especially since I'm going to encourage you to split that paragraph into two paragraphs starting with all applicants so see where it says at least one week in advance and then later it says one week in advance just say at least again because that way for some reason people want to do it three weeks ahead then that works out for everybody awesome but modifications deletions addition I have a question okay I guess uh you know just looking at this whole thing from you know the perspective of when we started um um of for quite a while we we looked at the possibility of um of making our CAS public records and um and we looked at the Northampton program that does that um and so we haven't we haven't looked at that as an option with this um for the CAS that are um filed and I'm just sort of you know it kind of feels like this whole exercise as it is an exercise in um in um attempting to avoid having to ever go there you know it's sort of a a a compromise of offering but um I guess I just I don't know why we looked at Northampton I don't know what that exercise was about if we weren't interested in going the full way in making our CAS public records um so exercise is kind of confusing to me because I don't know exactly you know it feels like it's some way to get around to well I think sorry Alyssa you had your hand up thank you my like actual hand I I know why I I know why I was interested and that was because I did not believe that Northampton was publishing a list of people's applications as they came in and I was confirmed in that belief they are not publishing people's applications as they're coming in they are not posting them that way that's what I was trying to confirm by finding out more about that process what I believe we're doing now is incredibly similar to what Northampton is doing in that we are offering the valuable information to the public to the entire council at that that's actual valuable information rather than the piecemeal information we were getting on CAS that may have been completed by someone a year or two years in the past and would not have anything to do with the selection criteria we established for now since Northampton doesn't publish a list of every single person who's ever applied for a committee we also don't need to do that and what we are doing is we are putting forward in the public way in a way that Northampton does with what they're with what they call their CAF we are doing it instead with an actual useful document which is called the statement of interest yeah I guess thank you Alyssa for that it's just to to respond I mean so the reason I actually wanted to do this has nothing to do with the debate over public record versus personnel records it has to do with some issues that I think we uncovered actually carrying out our process and issues that we discovered with the CAS and trying to find perhaps a better way to do this what I thought was sort of an ancillary benefit was that it did help bridge a compromise between those of us on the council who want CAS released as public documents and those of us on the council who want to find want to protect sort of private information that might appear on the CAS but still give the public an idea of who's applying who's being interviewed for these bodies and so you described this as a as a potential compromise and in my mind I actually kind of think it is it maintains the CAS as a personnel record and therefore maintains some of that sensitive information that's on the CAS as personnel records but the interesting the information that's really of interest to the community is wrapped into the SOI that is a public document that we make available to the public and I would argue even more available to the public than what Northampton does and so I do think this is a way of not getting around that debate but actually finding a solution to that debate that's beyond the black and white CAS or public or their personnel records right it finds a different solution and so to me this isn't trying to get around that debate to me this is actually finding a solution to that debate that all parties can find agreeable and it accomplishes the objectives of both parties that have disagreed over that. Sarah I see your hand up. So I agree because I think what we were trying to accomplish was that people in the public feel comfortable knowing who is applying for these positions and also who gets an interview and there were complaints that people felt that they applied and then they never heard anything back and then nobody knew the pool and it seemed shady so I think the way that we actually even did this better than Northampton is that we are keeping a pool which every single counselor gets so that if someone in your district is you know wondering you know if their application was received or whose applications are out there you can't say to someone well these are how many people that we have you can say you will get this information in a timely fashion and also I think because the chair is now verbally and also an email responding to every single CAF saying hello we did get your CAF and here's the timeline in which you can expect to hear from us I think we've solved a couple of the issues which were making people really feel like maybe there was you know some kind of inside fix on something so I think that we have actually done it one step better and I think we're doing a great job. Thank you. Yeah to some extent I don't I don't want us to just say let's do what you know with Hampton does I want I think Sarah did that well I want to do it better and I think that this actually provides more useful information to the counselors and to the public and finds a good balance between privacy and transparency which back you all may remember you don't in the first meeting in September that we had we had a values document that we discussed of you know what are the values we want to see in this process and one of them was finding a balance between privacy and transparency so this this gets at that. Further additions deletions modifications to this section five okay so then I want to go and just briefly look at the other sections so this is the section we looked at before this looks the same on the only thing I've done is I did add this that I'm highlighting now that responds to I think what Sarah said earlier and Darcy's concerned about what if they moved or phone numbers changed or something like that but if an individual's address or contact information has changed since they submitted a CAF they should contact the town council to update their CAFs they don't have to submit a new CAF every time you just contact a new say hey by the way I've moved you should update my CAF and then of course this also includes some of the minor wordsmithing that Alyssa had suggested about automatically electronically distributed to all counselors immediately so modifications additions deletions from this section sufficiency of the pool again the only thing that's changed has been two years three years okay until I see hands I'm just going to keep running through one thing I forgot to mention before because I forgot I didn't see it that I did change here um before we had this thing that said okay this is the applicant for holistically blah blah blah okay shell by majority vote declare the applicant full sufficient to proceed to interviews and then we said absent this declaration okay may engage in outreach to recruit additional applicants that hasn't been actually been something we've done because with both the planning board and the ZBA even after we said the pool sufficient um we were still accepting applicants and I and certainly um and certainly you know I was still saying to people who I would talk to even after we declared the pool sufficient hey if you're interested in ZBA we're going to be appointing some members soon and you should apply and so to me this read as we can we can only recruit additional applicants if there isn't a declaration and so I put before or after um we could even just delete this altogether I don't know but I want to reflect the fact that we can still recruit additional applicants even after we declared that the pool is sufficient because just because the pool is sufficient doesn't mean that we wouldn't want more people in it um I don't know any again this is just this is just sort of bringing our process to conformity to what we've actually uh been doing uh Alyssa I think it's good to keep it in there I think the clarification's good and I think we should add Oka may continue to engage in because of course we were all doing that okay any other thoughts on this uh nothing has changed in section four nothing changed in the section formerly known as section five now section six um section seven interviews um so again this has been changed to reflect that the chair will distribute the received statements of interest to the counselors um in addition to posting them on the packet and then of course um aligning the deadline with the posting and all of that so this now reads new applicants can be added to the pool up until one week before the scheduled meeting when the interview names and SOIs are added to the public meeting posting not to me that language still feels a little clunky um we can debate whether it's actually needed um I again my original intent putting it in there was to indicate that even after you declared the pool sufficient we still will accept people um but there has to be an up until and it does make sense that that up until would be up until the deadline for the SOIs since we don't allow anyone in the pool after the SOI deadline so if the SOI deadline is one week before we would accept people up until one week before um thoughts Alyssa I see your hand I think the first section needs a little work in terms of how you understand how it works but in terms of people who haven't been doing this understand how it works so in the very first sentence it says in advance of interviews the ochre chair shall distribute and at the end of that sentence with where it says in committee houndouts it should say as soon as they are available and then the other part that you've added of course we won't have the statements of interest yet right because we wrote the selection guidance so people then have to find out what that is before they can write their statement of interest so then you need a timeline on what you're doing with that and so you're either adding a timeline there or you're just moving that down into the later section where we talk about one week prior to the scheduled meeting unless you're trying to give the town council more notice than you're giving the rest of the world so I appreciate that sentence that new sentence but I think it actually belongs in the next as a clarification in the next part because the other stuff was as soon as they were available we don't have there's no reason for us to hold on to the interview questions and the selection guidance once we decide what they are but we obviously don't have the statement of interest yet and when should the town council get those I would argue given the week timeline they get them the same time everybody else does um so you let me just ask you are you should that sentence okay yeah I think so it could stay in here you're saying maybe it belongs in this paragraph I would argue you don't have to say it at all because the town council is got access to the same packet and the same public posting that the public has we're not putting them on a separate timeline so if we're not putting them on a separate timeline they don't need to be mentioned okay um uh Darcy your hand is up I I don't really know why the town council wouldn't get statements of interest as they come in the same way they would get the CAFs right they're co-equal so why wouldn't they just automatically get the statements of interest so you're saying that they that in the same way that we get CAFs immediately they should issue the OCA chair shouldn't even distribute like that all the statement of interest they should just go straight to all counselors yeah okay other thoughts we have a couple different options on the table I can't fathom why you would give it to the council ahead of time the whole point is to have a level playing field if I as a counselor receive a statement of interest two weeks before I get somebody else's it's asking a lot of me as one of 13 counselors to ensure that nothing that's in there is discussed with my friends who are considering applying there's absolutely no value in giving it to the counselors ahead of time because they need to read them in context with the others we are never looking for the perfect member of a committee we are looking for the best members given the pool we have at this time and the circumstances we have at this time we are not using the statement of interest as a way for someone to put their stake in the ground a week before everybody else's are published to the public okay other thoughts just just to answer Alyssa I would just say we would be then um taking a step back from where we are now with the because they do now get the CAS automatically so the reason I would say that's not a step back Darcy is because the CAS are trash it is broken and it does need to be fixed and they are often two years old so having a two-year-old CAF in your email is not useful in the same way that having a set of statements of interest is actually useful to you so I guess I guess what we're looking at here is very similar to what we just went through with school committee right I mean we we got the bundle of statement of interest from all candidates at once so we could sit down and say I have all of these information I'm going to sit down and read them all right now and compare them do is there a feeling on this committee and I'm speaking to the full committee but also to Darcy since this is our suggestion that in that context with the school committee you would have preferred to get the SOI as they came in even if there was you know a couple weeks between them versus the what happened where we were sent a package of SOIs yeah I would I would like to automatically get the SOIs as we got the CAS I'd also would like to have them all on a bundle sent to me at the appropriate time in addition to that so that that makes it easy just like we would have our spreadsheet of you know applicants you've provided in the past so you want them as they come in and then you also want them as a bundle okay other other thoughts we'll be looking towards uh George and Sarah to weigh in on this conversation Sarah I see your hand up so to me it seems like we're given information at a certain time I feel that it is up to individual counselors to keep track of that information and I I don't want to be insulting and I don't think this is what Darcy means but in some ways what this seems to say to me is I want all this information so I can find it or tell somebody else but then I want it spoon fed to me right before and I know that's not what Darcy's saying but that's what it feels like and I just don't think that that's necessary I don't think we need to put so much work on that designee I think we can all keep track of that information ourselves and also obviously I'm a person who had an issue with how the whole school committee interviews things went down and it's two things that I would really like to avoid and I know that part of this is just human nature I don't want to get SOIs in a staggered way without it being just you know in a bundle and I want to make sure that we get it in enough time for Town Council to digest it but not in a longer fashion where I feel like I feel like and again this is hard for me to describe but I feel like it wasn't just people saying you know from the public or even other counselors saying I think this person has great qualifications it went above that to the point where I feel like people were saying uh you would be a fool if you did not agree with me that such and such is just the best member ever and this is what I want to see or else I don't want that to happen again and I'm I'm not sure that we can ensure that but I feel like the week is good I feel like we can all do our work and keep track of our work and I don't think we need to make things so redundant that it is a burden on the chair or does it mean okay thank you uh George just anything you'd like to add it I feel like I'm in uh Groundhog Day part two um we've done through this now a couple of times and I don't see anything new being added so I'm ready to proceed I have nothing to add and um I think we've all pretty much set our piece here so let's let's move on it's getting late it certainly is so let me let me ask is one thing one suggestion was made by Alyssa to uh delete the language that you see highlighted in gray which is the ochre chair shall also distribute to the town council or receive statements of interest with the idea being that they're going to be added to the packet added to the posting the council has access to them in the same exact way that the public has access to them and so thoughts on that they're added to two different places where anyone counselor and public has access to read them we could also I could also add in you know shall notify the council that the SOIs have been posted so that that doesn't you just have to take them and send them but just says hey in the same way that I believe I notified the council on a couple different times um which weren't required by I just said hey just let y'all know this has been posted or this has been posted or this has been done so it can be just a notification any thoughts on this that would be good to add okay so we're thinking then is delete you'd be deleting that and then you could put on the town council that'd be the ochre chair or designee how do I spell shall notify the town council that the SOIs will ignore that make sense um so then nothing was added to the former section seven current section eight um Jordan Darcy your hands are upper these residual or you have current okay so in that case we have now gone through this as a group twice are there any final comments or do we feel like we're ready to actually take a vote so then I'm going to propose that we move forward and actually take a vote on this so um this has a lot of changes to a lot of different sections so I think instead of voting on the instead of voting to amend our process because it'd be a lot of to add and to strike and all of that I think much like we did for the general bylaws and for that bylaw we recently looked at um to do a rescind and replace motion would make the most sense um because then we don't have to have a motion that includes a language of all of these different things if that's something we're amenable to so um I should have crafted this motion in advance uh so the motion then would be to rescind the town council committee on outreach appointments communications process to recommend appointments to multiple member bodies appointed by the town council adopted December 9th 2019 um and replace it with the document proposed revision for 27 2020 OCA process to recommend appointments to multiple member bodies appointed by the town council if someone want to so that would be the motion I can make that motion why don't we do that is there a second second okay so again the motion on the table is to rescind the current process and replace it with this which again is almost the same in many ways um just has the additions we've talked or the changes we've talked about today is there any further discussion there see is this hand current or residual sorry I just noticed it now okay okay well if there is no further discussion uh then I will call the question so this is a virtual meeting and so it must be done by roll call vote so brewer aye okay brewer's eye uh Dumont no Ross's eye Ryan aye and Swartz aye okay so the motion prevails four to one um so the last piece of this and I know we're way over time but if we could just take a look at this if we're not totally sick I think it would be nice to be able to send this to the council as a package um is related to this then would be a proposed revision of the community activity form itself and so I gave you a mock-up of that of what that might look like that should be on your screen right now so let me just run through this really quickly the major changes um are essentially to delete this right I mean this is the stuff that would be in the statement of interest uh so we would retain you know what what boards are you interested in you would retain their contact information and we would also retain because I think this is a really important one how did you hear about this opportunity I wouldn't want to lose that question but all these rest of them that we would get rid of and then we would retain the demographic information um that's the major change right it's the simplification of the CAF I also added some language that we can get rid of um and this is a response to conversations that I've had with people who have gone through our process and also who have gone through the town manager's process um so one is I just clarified again um this form is to apply for these and if you're in and distinguishing because these are appointed by the town council um but then I add so I added this so I'm just going to read through it um the same thing really quick community activity forms for these bodies are kept on file for three years if you submitted a CAF for this body within the past three years you do not need to submit a new form so that's just telling them what we already have in the process after you click submit your CAF will automatically be sent to the town council when the town council is ready to make an appointment a council will reach out to you to confirm your continued interest and schedule an interview note that there may be a lag between when you submit your CAF and when you are contacted for an interview depending on when the council is planning to move forward with appointments thank you thank you for your patience I'm open to to get rid of that um the reason I put that in there is just because of commentary I've heard from the public that says I submit a CAF and I don't know what happens next I don't know what the process is I don't know when I'm going to hear back I think part of that I tried to address in the process by saying the Yoko chair designee will reach out um and so maybe this language is unnecessary to some extent in case I maybe it's useful to have in more places but one thing I do want to make sure we accomplish and this is feedback I've heard from the community is I don't want people to feel like they hit submit and it's in this black hole and they don't know what happens next um and so that was my aim all right so I see a few hands up let's start with Sarah I think it's beautiful and I think it's a great thing to keep in there and I think it helps feel it helps the community feel connected to us the one thing that I would add is something that you have done and I think that we should continue to do which is to let them know when they hit submit a town counselor will call them to confirm that their um CAF was received okay uh George I wanted to make the same point as Sarah that somewhere in this statement I think the statement should be here I think it's a good idea um should be clearly stated that someone will reach out to them uh very quickly to just confirm the receipt of their CAF um so I think it's important that that be stated so if it doesn't happen um the the blame is on us okay uh Darcy your hand is up no okay um other comments on any of this the only the only change of course is changing this two to three uh Alyssa so the one place where it said application did we change the word to form oh yes where was that again I think it might be at the end actually listen you had yeah if I could follow up that would be great thank you and um the one thing I would like us to to think about to find a way to tweak just a little bit and I sent this to just Evan last night in an email is under the demographic section is to add a statement that makes it clear that that information is not going to be personally identifiable so please please please fill it out and we'll we'll put it out in the aggregate Evan saw what I wrote the other part I can pull it up too yeah the other part of that is because we literally lined out every other question other than how did you hear about this opportunity it strikes me that that actually belongs in the optional information section not as a required item and it belongs in the optional information section for a couple of reasons one is because it's not required and two is because it actually is part of our demographic question right is that if we are only hearing from people over and over again that white people got it from the website and younger people heard it from a person will contact right that that might actually be useful information so you want to move that to here so I put the language that uh Alyssa had emailed to me on the screen so this information the end for this information on this form is treated as a personnel record and is therefore not subject to disclosure under public records request demographic information will not be associated with an individual only reported in the aggregate and so again her goal there from my understanding is to make people feel more comfortable sharing demographic information because it is optional a number of people don't fill it out and if we're having it on there that means that we believe there's some value you can have again so we want to do what we can to encourage people to fill it out um was there any let me say it this way is there any opposition to adding that language Darcy um I I find that question problematic I've I've actually said this before um it um because you know we are still divided in this town it feels like it's an opportunity to find out uh where you know when you ask a person how they found out about it and they say Joe Schmo told me about it and you're like oh Joe Schmo I'm never going to vote for that person because Joe Schmo recommended him you know or um I anyway I I I just find it problematic because that I'm sure people look at it in that way so you want to get rid of the question how do you find out about this opportunity okay I do I mean I do see Alyssa's point that it it could you know in a well-intentioned world be of great value to find out certain ways that people got the information but I just feel like it's um problematic okay we're going to go George and then sour I tell you there's no way we can change the header from optional to demographic it has to read optional information that somehow required you can't just have the header say demographic information I can check on that um from HR I don't I don't know the answer to that I don't I know that I don't know so I mean anytime you don't put that asterisk right it is de facto optional information right they're not required to fill it out so I don't know just because they like the act if we can write demographic and leave it um I don't know the answer to that I would be fine with that if if that's something that's permissible so I guess we could do we could change that to demographic information they won't have the asterisks and then I can ask and then if it turns out that we have to have it we just fix it if people are armed with that uh sorry your hand is uh sorry your hand was up yeah so I would really like to keep this in because I think I want to know like real demographic information and real diversity I think this whole notion of we are accounts divided into two parties is is becoming incredibly tedious and I that's it's it's just not what we're looking for we're looking for questions of our underserved people finding out about things and are they feeling welcome and confident in applying okay other thoughts on any of this Alyssa yeah I was just gonna say I was really concerned actually when an applicant did that and um feeling like it might hurt them with certain people which of course is reflective of the reality I've talked about a number of times which is that there's the written process and there's how we all know how we should behave as human beings and then there's the practicality the practicality of sending people statements of interest as they roll in is that people are going to be influenced in how they talk to their friends about how they might apply or not apply whether it's consciously or subconsciously seeing a name like that is also a problem what we did in the past which I know everyone loves hearing about is that if you'll recall if any of you actually looked at the old CAF's beyond Sarah is that they used to actually ask for references and believe me that definitely could have had some influence on what people said there were three references and it specifically said do not list the appointing authority as one of your references so that that was the sensitivity people had to it then right like don't list the town manager and the select board chair and the town moderator should three references that would be stupid but then you know other times people felt really frustrated by that because they didn't know who to list do they list their neighbor that they're in a reading club with or who should they list so as you can see we got rid of that and I don't think it was a loss to get rid of it we could put a disclaimer on rather than asking you know don't specify a person specify a method but you know it just gets more and more cumbersome yeah I guess go ahead Darcy sorry yeah I I'm just saying that that is not a bad idea Alyssa's idea of you know adding some language there um to say like uh do not list names of any individuals something like that that could work because that way if they heard about it from the cpo they could just write I heard some town staff told me like that's cool so the idea being that they could have heard they could say I heard it from a friend they could even in theory say I heard it from a current town counselor but they wouldn't say I heard it from Alyssa Brewer Alyssa Brewer told me to apply George I see your hand up just fair we're getting into overkill here kind of instructing people and you know they're grown-ups and adults Alyssa's right people sometimes make bad choices but you know I prefer simpler and I don't like giving people making it more complicated just how'd you hear about it if it was Joe Smith who told you about it why can't you write Joe Smith's name down as opposed to my neighbor who lives two blocks down for me or you know the guy who gives me coffee in the morning I you know I I don't know it's not a big deal but I prefer there's enough writing on this thing as it is enough instruction as it is obviously we're trying to word it in such a way that it gets us the most useful information possible I think this is a step forward I'd suggest leaving this off I mean they do not list names I just over overkill so I mean I I will say I actually don't share the concern about people listing individuals names but I do understand it I don't want to lose this question how do you hear about this opportunity because and perhaps this is the scientist in me I want data on how people are finding out about these things because it matters to me whether people are hearing about it from word of mouth or from the town website or posting on the town Facebook I think that's really as we look as a council and as a community to better outreach I think we need to know how people are finding out about this information if there are concerns about this question I don't personally feel like this is necessary but I'm open to adding it to help allay some of those concerns if it means that we can agree to keep the question because I do share some of George's concern about this is now added a substantial amount of text I am a big fan of simplifying of assuming people won't read things but I do want I mean I just kept hearing from people in the community they didn't know what happened once they submitted a CAF and I wanted including very recently I had a conversation with an individual who had applied for a different committee under the town manager and they said I don't I don't know how these decisions are made I don't know what happens so I want that there but recognizing that some people might not read it so I'm okay with this if it gets us to keep this question George would like it removed I think Darcy and Alyssa think it should be there I'd like to try and find some consensus on this I don't know Sarah do you have any opinion on adding this this little clause I think it's good to add the clause that's fine with me keep the question and add the clause okay so George with your permission maybe we'll just keep it okay okay so I think if there's no other comments we're ready to vote now this would be a what we just voted to adopt that was our process and so that was something we were adopting um this is different this is the CAF is owned by the council so this would have to be a recommendation to the council to revise much like we had the council revised to separate them out and have them on an actively distributed um so uh the motion would be to recommend that the town council amend the town council appointed community activity form with the changes with the amendments described in the document community activity form propose your visions for 27 thank god um I can make that motion is there a second second okay so I made the motion George seconded is there any further discussion okay seeing none I will call the question uh Dumont oh Ross is a yes uh Ryan yes Swartz yes and Brewer yes okay only about only an hour and 15 minutes over okay so here's where we're at I am going to do my absolute best to capture all of these discussions in a report to the council in a way that makes this clear um to the council um which which is going to be a task um and I will hope to have that on the council's next agenda for us to at least update even if we're not doing uh this um what I will we next meet on May 11th I'm hoping to use that needing predominantly to look at the pool for planning board and ideally to also do selection guidance or perhaps interview questions to set us up for planning board um I think that's also a time where we have to have a conversation about uh this is our new process and we've just adopted it and so um my assumption is unless I hear otherwise it's with us being our new process and because we didn't put a effective date in the future that we are going to test this out now with these planning board reappointments and asking for statements of interest and so the conversation that will occur on and our next one will be moving forward with planning board reappointments and all of the things we have to do to get to um interviews and appointments for the planning board um we have minutes on our agenda I'm going to just put those off until next meeting they're not pressing uh there is no public present and so there is no public comment um and so are there any final things Alyssa I just wanted to make a quick thing under announcement sorry it wasn't two hours ago associated with tonight's motion sheet for town council you know that other thing we were prepping for all weekend and one of the you might notice that the motions for appointments now say approve reject take no action on the motion sheet is a constantly evolving document and trying to just reflect back to the charter like Evan pointed out how board of licensed commissioners said one thing for the transition period and now is another thing for the permanent I just said that we should start saying approve reject take no action on even though at this point we're not recommending take no action on that is something the town council has the choice of doing and the little charter references that were in the headers on the motions are now incorporated into the motions and the only other thing was you all remember how I gave Evan a hard time for people not being in alphabetical order and I put Sharon out of out of alphabetical order because she's an associate because hers was a reappointment and I was just trying to make clear that not all the associates were reappointments but you did notice I did put them in alphabetical order course I noticed as requested um okay thank you so um I will see you all again in this time I will see you all again tonight but I will see you all again in this oca context on May 11th and so with that I will adjourn our meeting at 12 48 p.m thank you all for your patience thank you