 going to call Outreach Communications and Appointments Committee to order at 9.35 a.m. Hello to all of my committee members and to everybody watching out there and to our esteemed president and Phyllis. Hi guys, all right, so we have the posting agenda. Today is what we're working off of and I apologize a little bit for not having everything as together as I would like and I think everybody else would like to feel more comfortable with the organization. The first thing that I would like to do today is to ask Darcy just to give us a brief update on where she is at with Finance Committee appointments. So the Finance Committee interviews are scheduled for Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning. I received a handout that was created by the Finance Committee and we forwarded it to the interviewees. Okay. I have on my agenda to meet with Kathy Shane to get a little bit more guidance about what the Finance Committee wants and really that's about it. I plan to write my report next weekend so it will probably be, the recommendations will probably be on the agenda of this group in two weeks. Does that make sense? Yeah. Are you writing it for this weekend or are you doing it on the 8th and the 15th? The 8th. But if you write it on the 8th then couldn't we make sure that we, yeah, so then it goes out that Wednesday and then it would be the next, right? Right. If we don't discuss it till the 17th then how's Town Council going about it? The plan was about Town Council for people July 1st. So if they aren't going to get it see it for the first time till July 1st? Yeah, if we discuss it on the 17th and vote on it, she could sit in it. I'm saying the moment, we were at one point trying to set it up so that they would have the opportunity to look at it one week. Could you please use the mic? I think for our timing for this one we weren't attempting to do that. We were just saying that the report would of course be available ahead of time but the first discussion and we assume approval would be done at the July 1 meeting. Am I remembering, now remembering that correctly? Yeah, I think so. I think also we had always thought we would bring forth recommendations at a meeting and give ourselves some buffer in case they rejected. So far the council has not done that but I think if they weren't comfortable voting in July 1, waiting until the second meeting in July still wouldn't impose a burden on finance either. So then, so if we're okay with this time. Yes, George? Just a question about what you got from finance. You said you got a handout or something from them or a fly. Yes, I got a handout that was based on our handout for planning board and zoning board of appeal that they put together. I ran it by Sarah. I didn't run it by the whole committee that did occur to me this morning that maybe I should have done that. No, that's all right. We will see it eventually at some point. I didn't have any problems with it and so I just forwarded it to Angela and asked her to send it to the interviewees. So George, that's just the, remember when you did yours that's just like part of our packet. It was the one that just gives the person who is going to be interviewed. The basic information on the committee or board that they are applying to. Good, it wasn't a set of, it wasn't a list of what they're looking for. No, no, no, no, it's simply the information packet about the board or committee and yeah. No, and we all just got, I received the names of the interviewees last week but I see that we just got them. We just got an email this morning. You probably saw that. Yeah, so does that make sense? And then I'm sure that Darcy will report out to us the things that she's going to meet with Kathy, get some ideas of what finance committee is looking for and then yes, Alyssa? So I hope we're, I don't remember us having a conversation where there would be another conversation between the OCHA designate. I'm just looking at, I mean, we have a very new process. We know we're going to be changing it after this set of interviews. So this is all like we're just trying to work it through. But I don't remember us having any conversation where we agreed that the OCHA designate would talk to the finance committee again in private as opposed to during a post-it meeting about what the finance committee is looking for because that in and of itself is pretty much exactly like having that person, well, is similar to having that person at the interviews which we can't do because it'd be two counselors. So I'm just a little leery of, I know it's a subquorum of the council but I'm not sure why it's needed when we've already had hosted meetings where finance committee members, both Mr. Steinberg and Shane have talked to us about what they're looking for. They wrote their own questions which were largely our questions which we just slightly modified in honor of what they wrote. They wrote the handout. I don't know why they get another discussion because when you, yeah, or when you were working on preparing for interviews, you didn't have anybody else to talk to about who you would get, what that would be like. You didn't have another person to bounce ideas off of which is in fact one of the flaws of the system that we have right now. I'm not sure why the finance committee would be different than the other committees we've been working on where that continued flaw would seem to need to apply in that there shouldn't be any conversation outside of hosted meeting about the interview and the content and what qualities are being looked for. I don't understand that. Darcy? I would to some extent agree with that. One of the purposes of doing it, actually Kathy asked for the meeting. And she's the vice chair. From my perspective, I know that she has sort of an in-depth idea of the different types of expertise that they might want or need on the committee more so than I do. So I think it would be helpful to me to speak to her. On the other hand, I would only be doing it as one factor of what I would be looking at when talking to these people, to the interviewees because what the finance committee wants is something that I should consider but it's not the full, that's not all the criteria for what we would be looking for. So anyway, it doesn't matter to me what we decide on this. I'll try to get that information for myself in some way or another before I do the interviews because it will be helpful to me to understand more what I'm looking for, obviously. So either we're qualified to do these interviews or we're not. So if we don't have adequate information based on what's been said at posted meetings, then that's all the information we've got if you wanted to talk to, say, a finance committee, a finance professional like a liaison that's a staff member that I would understand but we did not have Sarah talk to counselor Steve Schreiber about what would be ideal qualifications for a planning board or ZBA member before she went into interviews. So that seems entirely parallel to not talking to a town counselor who's on the finance committee about what she wants in finance committee people. That's reasonable. That, I'm fine with that. I'll, if I feel like I need more education, I'll find somebody who's not on the finance committee. How's that? Well, somebody who's not on the town council, right. Right, but like a staff member like Sonya. Right, sounds good. Cause I know George was curious about it. I did add the finance committee handout to our interview materials packet. So if we need to look at it, that's there. Thank you, Evan. Okay, so then I want to make sure with you that then we also, when you write your report that we also talk about like how things get linked. You know, we've gone through all this thing about how like reports and names get linked to Oka's website, the website. Our packet, our posting packet by the Wednesday before the Monday meeting that we're talking about it so that the report and the names are there just for Oka. Cause just we will be talking about it at that meeting. So just check in with me, like maybe like that Monday that when you have the report and we'll make sure that we get that together. Okay. That it's cool. So I assume that means you know how to do that. I know a little bit more than I used to know about four weeks ago, but if we run into trouble, I can, I know who to ask to make sure that we get that done the right way. Okay. I do know the importance of it and pretty much how we do it. So we'll make sure that it gets there. Okay. So at this point, I think I would let, Lynn, did you want to speak to us about the town manager evaluation? We're ready. I sent you, well, first of all, it was posted in the your meeting and also in the regular council meeting with the calendar. But then yesterday I sent to all counselors the additional material, which will be posted. This was developed very much working with Alyssa who worked with me not only on the timeline, but finding what we have done in the past. So if you want to start, we can start by looking at the calendar. Okay. Yeah. So maybe I don't, not usually big on straw polls, but I personally have been struggling throughout since December with the fact that we don't get hard copies of things. This particular set of materials that we're gonna be looking at tonight for town council, maybe it's just cause I'm old, I'm willing to say that on camera, but I would really think it would be helpful that we all worked so hard to just do the electronic wood. And I know we can individually ask for hard copies, but I personally am going to ask for a hard copy of the entire set of town manager evaluation. Because I just find it so much easier to flip through the pages than to constantly wait for the town website to bring document after document that I can look at side by side. So I'm just saying I'm planning to ask for that, even if I'm not the only one. To check my email, I know at one point I said we would have hard copies available, but I didn't think we'd be able to have them for this morning. Yeah, that, I told you. But for tonight in your folders, we asked for hard copies. It's got, I mean, there's 11 pieces to this document. Right, so it's hard to like, yeah. It's just a lot of documents. Right. And I don't know whether any of you are able to project for the purpose of our audience. If you are, that would be great. And if you're not able to. Darcy, did Mike work on that with you while you, well, did Mike work with you on the, he said some of us were set up to be able to project. I think I can. I don't know if I am. I just hit my solstice. As far as I know, it's not to air we go. Oh, just waking up. Enter the key on the screen. Hello. And so, right, and it was there. So while you're, while you're trying to figure that out, let me just start by saying, this is a proposed process for this year, very much following what has been done in the past by the select board. At the same time, I just as we're going to take a look at the, you know, OCO process, I think this is one of those things that we should definitely take a look at. The thing that's so unique about this year is that the goals were actually established by the select board with the town manager. And although we're in the process of putting together the council goals, what we will do this fall is then revisit those and they will be turned into goals by the town manager in the way that he helps facilitate the council's goals as well as his own job as manager of the town. So that's one huge change. The second is that we did, we in this case is Paul and myself went out to the various towns that are cities that have council manager forms of government, of which there are I think 11 or 13 in Massachusetts, although interestingly enough, it's the most popular form across the country. So and what we found, and I stated this in the email to you was that Amherst by far exceeds any of the towns in Massachusetts that we, in terms of how and the extent to which they go to seek input on the manager evaluation. And then finally, and I literally just got this yesterday, so it's a handbook or a guidebook on doing town manager evaluations that at this point, I think it's just too late in the process to incorporate that into this year. So in a big scheme of things, but you'll see with this calendar, which is attached up here, the proposed timeline. And that is, you'll see that there's enormous amounts of input, some of which become public and some of which do not become public, okay? So let me start with all town council documents related to the town manager's evaluation, particularly the huge 13 page document that's there. That actually gets posted and is public, okay? And so, and it's really important that every town councilor review the town manager. In addition to that though, we also with a form seek input into the town manager's evaluation from all staff. And those are not public. They're considered part of personnel files, okay? They're public. They are available, however, to us as counselors. The other, the next one is we seek input from all committees, chairs and committee members and so we send the form out to the committee members or the committee chairs and ask them to distribute it to their committee members. We do not ask them to summarize the findings. We ask everybody to just submit the finding. Those are not public. Again, they're part of personnel files. And then the final one is we seek input in general from the public and that is done by a notice on the town web page. And again, it comes in and is those are not public documents. All of that gets put into a massive, if you will, input. And I'll talk about some of the, frankly, the flaws of a couple of these pieces in a moment and it gets drafted as a first pass at the evaluation of the town manager and he gets to look at that. And I sit with him as president and get feedback and so forth and based on something he may say, you know, I really didn't stress this enough in my self-evaluation. Here's some additional information. So that, and then we go to a second draft of that and the second draft of that, the council can see the first, they can see the second, they can see any draft you want. The second draft is what we review, but we review it only after everybody has submitted their evaluations and you've read all other counselor evaluations and you've read all of the other input. Prior to starting any of that, one of the things the town manager does is provide us with his self-assessment based on the goals. So, but here's the problem. So much of what is in the goals is written with an eye of co-administration with a select board. And I know, even though all of us work closely with Paul and I certainly work closely with Paul and I see evidence of some of this, I'm not clear, I feel totally able to answer in with any depth several of these goals and I'll have to go on based on the input. So one of the questions I've raised for this group and you can decide what we should raise it to the council and that is should we ask previous select board members, of course, two of them are on the council already and three or not, should we ask them on a voluntary basis as to whether or not they would be willing to fill in the evaluation form this year since they shared five of the 12 months that this evaluation covers and since they set the goals. Now, that does not mean they have more say than we do. In fact, it would be voluntary and what I still don't know is whether or not their responses except for Alissa and Andy would be public because they're already on the council. So that's one question. And the other thing that I think is that you should understand is that the responses in the past from staff and committees and the public have been, let me use an art form, splotchy as best, okay? You wanna try spelling that one for me. Often, for example, as we know, they may come from the public because they have a particular gripe or concern or vested interest. And what we don't hear from the public is other comments. The same thing might be true for staff. We may hear from staff whose contracts are up for negotiation, but we may not hear from the other staff. And then the same thing could be true from committees, although I don't have as much sense of that as from based on my discussions with both Alissa and Andy Steinberg. So summarizing what comes from particularly staff and or the public in any way that is meaningful becomes very difficult because what you're not doing is summarizing a real sample. You're just summarizing whoever decided to volunteer. It's an end, so that's kind of the general overview of all of the various levels of input. Meantime, what we also will do is create a email address called townmanagerevaluation at amherstma.gov. All one word, town manager evaluation. And all responses will go to that email address. That email address will only be available to all of us as counselors and to the town manager, whereas normally when we have emails sent to town council, it includes the manager, it includes his office, it includes Margaret, and so forth. So this is a time limited email address that will be available for people to send their responses to. So, and after we get all done with this and we've met and we've agreed to the evaluation, then we actually go into executive session and we discuss compensation for the town manager. And then, and by that point, we're probably up to the end of August beginning of September. And then we go into a period where we will have a retreat which is open to the public, where we will talk again about our goals, which we've already started well down that path. But once our goals are set, then the town manager will start the process again of taking our goals and writing his goals and we will then go through the process of approving his goals. Those are the goals that will become the basis of the evaluation for FY 20. But as in many, and it's at that point that I also hope we will revisit the evaluation process to see whether or not we want to continue with the process and the practice the way it presently has been. Is there a way, for example, to encourage more community input? Is there a way to encourage more staff input? Just look at any number of options that right now from what I've been able to understand, this would be what we can expect. And I really and know that Alyssa will chime in and thank her for doing so. George? When I looked over some of these documents, particularly, I was impressed by the level of detail that I'm assuming the select board brought to bear on this process and I'm wondering whether this was the result of intense collaboration between the select board and the manager or whether the manager essentially was mostly the source of the input. I don't know about the rest of you if you had a chance to look at some of this stuff. It's a lot of stuff. But when I was looking at like fiscal year 18, I think it was very detailed, very specific things. And I was curious how that came about. I think there's only, well, there's probably two people who can answer that the best. One of them would be Alyssa Brewer. She would like to speak to that. Let me just say that in looking back over previous years and the material. I'm looking at previous evaluations. Basically, for the last couple of years and I think this goes definitely back to a period when Alyssa was chair of the select board and that is it really includes basically taking the goals of the town manager and translating them directly into the feedback form. It's word for word. So it largely came from his sort of sense of this is what I'm aiming to do. Select board looks at it and then, no? No, there's one more step in there and that is those goals were agreed to with the select board very early in the fiscal year. Okay, so these are not new to the select board. These were very much agreed to by the select board. I'm going to ask a question. Chair is not here to call on me. Is this, are you assuming that this process that you're proposing is just being put forward in this way by you as president as a one shot deal for this year? I definitely feel that after this year we should look at this process and this is just one shot, yes. And it's really, you know, I'm bringing it to Oka because this is part of your charge to not evaluate the town manager but to put together the process and you've been so swamped with everything else going on that I decided that since I also have to play a major role and fit it into the timeline of the summer that I would take it upon myself to put all this stuff together again with Alyssa's help and Angela Mills' help and get it to you because by now it literally this is the meeting parallel to when the select board would have kicked this off. I think, you know, if we want to wait another two weeks we can it's going to make it a very crunch timeline and it's going to throw it all into the summer months which I'm afraid that brings us leaves us open for criticism that we do this when people aren't around. Let me just also say that at one point Paul and I did discuss the fact that the cycle of this is based on fiscal year and it's based on his contract year. It's possible that we may decide we want to move that for some reason but again that's a debate down the road. And when does this contract end? This contract is yearly, well it's multiple year but it's an August date. Oh sorry Darcy. I can understand why we are doing it in a different way this year but I just want to say that it does make me feel a little bit uncomfortable that it's being put together by the council president in consultation with the town manager. The only piece that was with the town manager was his research on what other towns were doing. Otherwise it was totally with Alyssa and Andy Steinberg. I would like in the future for it to, maybe we'll go through a process of figuring out what according to our new goals, what we're going to be doing in the future but I personally would like it all to reside in OCA and eventually for OCA to be putting together the first draft of the evaluation and consulting with the town manager having him come to OCA and talk to us in the future. Maybe we are not able to do that this year because of all this crush of appointments that are coming through but I feel like that's what the charter was suggesting because it says the town council will be evaluating the town manager rather than the, you know, it doesn't say anything about the council president, so. George, did you still have something you wanted to say? Just a bit uncomfortable evaluating somebody on goals that I never set and that's nobody's fault, that's just the reality. And so I would be, I'm sympathetic to the idea of soliciting the opinions of the three other select board members who are no longer were not serving on the council. We obviously have two that are and I would put a lot of weight in, or at least I'd be very, I would put some weight on their evaluations simply because they helped shape the goals under which this, the town manager's being evaluated. So as I looked over these documents, I felt there were many, many cases where I had absolutely nothing to say, which is fine. But I would very much hope that the other three select board members who helped shape these goals would be open to giving us their input. I realize it's their choice. I would think it would be private since they no longer serve in an official capacity. I would suggest that their views not be made public, but I would certainly be interested in what they had to say and interested in what our two colleagues who did serve on the select board have to say. I'm so sorry, Darcy, yep. I'd be interested in hearing what they have to say too, although I wouldn't want them to be officially evaluating the town manager. I would want us to have some kind of a session with them so that they could give us feedback, but that we would still be in charge of the evaluation, the new town council. Evan? So thank you, Lynn and Alyssa, for doing all of this work. I think had you not, and it had been put on this committee, we would be at this point in August. I'm a little torn on whether or not to invite the select board to participate. To some extent, goals are set and the people who evaluate those goals might not be the people who, you know, the law, I'm thinking, so I'm thinking forward to, let's say the town council sets goals for year 2021, right, and then we all lose reelection or none of us run, we'll see what happens. And then in 2022, you have 13 new counselors having to evaluate the goals. Would we then say, well, we need the evaluations to be done by the old counselors? That doesn't make sense, and so that seems applicable to here, it doesn't make sense to put people. The other side is I do actually agree with George that looking at the evaluation, I can't speak to honestly, probably 90% of these. And so I don't know that it, I don't know that the select, I don't know that I feel like the select board needs to participate in an official capacity, but I do feel as though most of us on the council will be checking off that unable to judge box for the vast majority of these goals. I do, the one thing you don't have in this packet is Paul's self-assessment. He has not done that yet. But you know, again, that's his assessment of where he stood with regard to these goals. Darcy? On the issue of the staff assessment, is that anonymous? Yes. And would all staff be asked to? Yes. And in the past, have they pretty much all submitted? No. They all staff are asked. It is anonymous and it is very splotchy. It is not widely consistent. There and therefore it makes it very hard to summarize. Yeah, go ahead. Do people feel like you've gathered up enough questions that I should go ahead and talk for a while? Yeah, I'd love to hear you talk. Go right ahead. Where to start? So, yes, I worked on the timeline with Lynn based on the timeline you find on the select board website from last year and all the previous years are also available on the town website. I mean, all is an exaggeration, but many years are available on the town website. Yes, we talked through the process at length. No, we never discussed whether or not the select board would be part of this particular evaluation. That may be a conversation. That's a rational thing to question. It's not a conversation she and I have had. And so therefore I haven't been able to give my input on because we haven't had that conversation, which we can talk about more. In terms of the one thing I wanna clarify that I may not have explained well enough when I was explaining the background to the process, previously to Lynn, is that no one is attempting to summarize what the public writes, what committee chairs write, what committee members write, or what staff writes in the broader sense in the same way that the president, previously the chair, is trying to summarize what all the actual elected members are trying to do. So let me try and explain that in a different way. When there were five select board members, they each wrote their evaluations, right? Just like there will be 13 now. And then the chair wrote a composite summary that basically looked at the themes that were recurring throughout those. That doesn't mean that if you had a particular thing that you were either happy about or sad about, that would still come to light because it would be in your personal evaluation, which was public and given to, and the whole world could see, but it may not have become a theme for everybody else. It may be that everybody else thought, that's a dumb thing to worry about. And it didn't end up in the sort of themes composite. It is much trickier to, so what we did, the way we viewed as individuals, what people wrote to us, which often was because they were upset about a particular, oh, I don't know, say bridge, for example, or something else that they didn't, we would, in fact, as you saw from all the materials you got, when we solicit the comments, we specifically said, go look at the goals we set for the town manager. These are the things we're judging the town manager on. And some people said, oh, that's good. I only have something to look at. And other people are like, no, I'm mad about that bridge. That's all I'm writing about. So, because everybody gets those comments, as they come in, that colors the thinking of each of the people who are writing evaluations. They don't have to try and say, and I think what the public was telling us was X, Y, Z, because we are all gonna filter that our own way. And similarly, the chair now president does not have to try real hard to try and grasp that. The one exception to that is we did try and say something about what the staff was saying because we've been trying really hard since the day I joined the select board in 2007 to include some sort of staff input. We have not been particularly successful at either engaging staff in doing it or in finding a format that they're particularly happy with. It's just been an ongoing challenge. It has also been difficult to characterize their feelings because as you get those anonymous inputs, it does become clear that some people are upset about some particular issue, which may or may not even necessarily be under the town manager's control. And so then it gets really hard to figure out, well, what does that even mean? And so, if you look at the old versions of this, you'll see that the summary did say, well, we sent this many out to staff. We got this many back. This theme still seems to be recurring, but we're getting fewer of them. So maybe some people are less unhappy. Did some people give up? Do some people never write unless they only have glowing things or horrible things to say? We don't know what to do with it. And so basically every year the summary says, we're not really sure what to do with the staff input. But as individuals writing your own, just as the five select board, they just had to think in their heads, well, I don't know, maybe that reinforces something I'm about to say here or not, but each individual does not have to summarize that, that burden falls on the chair or president to decide how to address that to the extent that they feel like they can. But that's why each of us gets that input as it comes in rather than it being filtered through a single source. One of the technical things that I think is going to be a small challenge is adding a new email address. What we used to always do is we used to take the people, extra as a book for evaluation, people off the email address because people are used to using that email address. Yes, you can tell people in the website to use this email address, but they won't all do it. Which means that some of their emails will go to the regular town council address and therefore staff will see them. So that's why I don't know why that's happening and maybe that can be re-looked at, I'm not sure who was working on that. But I know there are always technical challenges associated with all the issues because otherwise you have to turn, you have to take some people off the distribution list and then remember to put them back on. And then that means that you have to contact them a separate way if you wanna make sure they see things, et cetera. Although I'm not confident that in fact the whole town council actually understood that anyone other than the town council and the town manager was on that in the first place. I just knew that from my previous history. It's absolutely true that even though the select board modified the goals they gave the town manager in the fall to reflect to the fact that it was gonna be a transition year, there's still gonna be a lot of things that don't feel like something you can speak to. And that is, I think Evan expressed it much better than I ever could in terms of that's just how it works in that people don't get re-elected, people don't run for re-election, therefore the goals that they were themselves really, it was really important to them to wordsmith it that way, they're not there anymore when a time comes for the evaluation. And so this year probably more so than most there will be unable to judge questions. The actual advantage to that, although it may not feel like it when you're filling out the form, is one, you don't have anything to write, yay, saves you a lot of time. And two, trust me, you can spend a lot of time writing these things, two is that it also, every step of this is, I'm asking people to try really hard to think about this as not just, oh my gosh, this is gonna be so hard this one year but then it'll be fixed. Think about all of it as we're doing it as what we could do to make this work better for this form of government. Because it's absolutely true that if you all could judge all of those things and could all write a paragraph about every one of those goals, let's just think about how long it's gonna take all of us to read them all and we're not even having to write the composite that's up to the president. And although the president's not summarizing all our things, still that's a lot to process. And so I said this back when they were developing the number of counselors for this. I'm like, I don't know how you think you're gonna do any valuation, because that's not gonna work. So this is a transition year. The reason that Lynn ended up with this burden as president is that there was no other way to make this work this year. We literally, I mean think back to all the meetings we've had since December, during which of those meetings were we gonna set new goals to replace the old goals that were to then be evaluated on? During which meeting were we gonna change instruments or change methods about reach like it just wasn't gonna happen. And so I hear all the things we're saying about OCA coordinating that in the future and it was certainly, it was never, I felt it was perfectly clear in talking with the president when she was just asking me how did this timeline actually work? How did these things actually happen? At what point did you discuss what with who? That that was not undercutting OCA's position, but that OCA is, I definitely hope, going to be the coordinator of this in the future. Reflecting way back to what George asked originally. So, George, like everything else in town government, this is an iterative process. So you look at the previous year's goals, you look at how the evaluation turned out and you just tell yourself, well, do we ask the questions the wrong way to get the results we were looking for or do we all interpret the question a different way? So then we figure out how to write the goals better for the previous, for the next year. And then we have that during an open session, as was mentioned earlier, and that's part of the agenda and we go over it with the town manager and town manager says, yeah, I was thinking about it over the weekend and I want you to add this, that and the other thing to it. And we say, yeah, no, I don't think so. Or we say, yes, that's a great idea. Let's beef up this section about that. And then they are the shared goals for the town manager moving forward and then he shares them with staff and it influences basically everything that happens over the course of the year. That's why it matters that those goals existed whether we were here to judge on those goals or not. Also understand that some of the things that are, if you look at old evaluation results from various select board members, you'll see that there are also select board members who felt they were unable to judge the answer to some of the questions. And those were questions that we then later said maybe those weren't the right goals. Maybe there is no good way for the town manager to report back on that sort of performance goal. Maybe we were each kind of interpreting that a different way and that's not really what it meant. So it's an informative process each time you do it. I think by marking a whole bunch of things as not able to judge, that will tell us, well, those aren't the kinds of goals we're gonna have for the town manager. We're gonna have a different variation at try and get at this theme. And I do wanna just be a little bit picky about the concept of co-administrator, understanding that I'm relating into dangerous territory when a previous select board chair is also directly informing the information that the president has on this. During the time I've been on the select board, I never considered the select board to be co-administrators with the town manager ever. We were the chief elected officials. He was the chief executive officer. That is different now. The town council is no longer the chief elected official. He is the chief executive officer who has in fact even more power than he had before under the previous form of government. And there were things that were very difficult for the select board to ascertain even with staff input. But we felt like he had to ask, but we as town counselors are in this building way more often than select board members were in this building. I mean, even to run into people and casually in the bathroom. I mean, it's just not like we weren't here this much and so, but even so. So there were things we didn't know and we could only hope that staff would give us input about committees, would give us input about, but we felt like we had to ask the question, but do we really know how some of these interactions are going? Of course not. I mean, we don't get a report. We didn't get a report from the human resources director that told us how many people complained about the town manager. I mean, like that's not a thing. So we were working at some distance already and I think there's gonna be a different distance that's involved with the legislative body. Of course, we used to ask town meeting for their opinion too, as the legislative body, right? Because they had an opinion on how the town manager comported himself at town meeting and what information they got, right? I mean, you remember that as a previous town meeting member. And so we are trying to ask everybody who has any relationship understanding that all those pieces are missing lots of context. It's just those individuals that are having that. So I hope that's helpful, but I think that, you know, I hope I was clear that this is a one, this is, I mean, I don't like all these one offs we have to do, but to an extent we just have to, as we transition, to learn from doing one. If we don't learn from doing one, if we took a different tact and we said, well, you know, geez, 13's a lot of people. Maybe we should just have a few people write some comments or maybe we should pick a shorter set of goals. It's like, it's too late in the process to do that this year. So, but let's be thinking about that as we answer all these questions and say this is too long or we need broader themes or some people just like write two paragraphs to their about their town manager evaluation in other towns and don't even have very specific goals. So we need to find a middle ground but we need to be thinking about that the entire time we're doing this. I just don't feel like we can change methods at this point in our madness. And I also think the community is expecting it of us right now until they see a full public discussion of what's a better way to do it. Darcy? I'd like to see a little bit of a role of Oka in the process though. I think that it would be nice if we somehow or other, maybe the president came to us with the first draft of the evaluation or something like that, just so that we would have a part in the process this time around, even though we're not doing that much. So my response to that is she just did. So, I didn't know exactly how that, I mean, she and I talked about, oh wow, look at the timeline. If I'm gonna even talk to Oka, it's gonna have to be like right now before the town council meeting tonight. She just did that. The draft, she has no say in what the evaluation says. The evaluation is purely the goals that were established before put into the matrix. It's not her evaluation form, it is the evaluation form based on the goals that were already established. There's, she has no opinion on it. She might think they're horrible goals, but those were the goals that were established. So the materials that she's given us are all materials that are in the process of being updated for this year's timeline, so that people have this window of opportunity. But we didn't have, at the risk of repeating myself, we didn't have time to change the process this year. And so I would think that in future, after we have lots of discussion about this, after we do it this year, like immediately after we do it, not six months from now, but as we're developing the town managers' goals moving forward, I would hope that the town council would give Oka some direction, and then Oka would start to talk about how are we going to execute all the ideas we just got, and that we would be working together to do that, starting basically now as we're moving forward, making notes now about how we think things should be in the future. But I don't think expecting a separate meeting where the goals are the goals that were written, and so it's only a formatting question at this point, and a timing question, and explaining how the process works issue. Evan? So thinking about Oka's role in all this, so our charge is to coordinate the annual review process of the town manager, which is a pretty loose term that I think could be interpreted multiple ways. To me, coordinate means bringing the materials together, setting the timeline, and making sure everything's on track. To some extent that's been done for us by Alyssa and our president. In the future, I imagine we will be the ones who say, okay, here's the timeline, here's the materials, here's when things have to be sent out, and here's when we need to receive them by, but as far as figuring out what's in those materials or what the goals are, or looking at drafts of the actual written report evaluation, I would argue that that actually exceeds our purview as Oka, because our role is strictly coordination. So I think that for me today, our president has brought forth to us a proposal, and our discussion should be around the coordination. So does the timeline look right? And do we have all of the materials, but as far as sort of the details, I would argue that's not within the charge of Oka. George? I have to agree with Evan. Darcy doesn't have to answer, but it seems to me that I wonder if she sees our role as, in some cases or in many cases, we actually make recommendations to the council. We say this is who we think should serve on this, and so forth. Our opinion on something, but it seems here, as Evan stated, we're not going to make recommendations to the full council about the manager and what we think of him. That's going to be done by us individually, and so our role does seem to be, in this particular case, more one of coordination and organization and making sure things are done, and not one of actually providing then our own committee summary and sort of our view of what we think of the manager's job, right? I just, I think that we play the role of the town council in this scenario, and I'm just saying that in the future, rather than the president taking on a role herself, we would take on the role of whatever she's doing now, and because the charter gives the job to the town council, and so we don't want, the town council shouldn't be ceding power to either the town manager or the council president. We should keep whatever power that we have. So that's all I'm saying for the future, that we should look at those things so that whatever, if the president is collating our evaluations in some way in the future that we would do that and pass it on to the council. That's all I'm saying. So for, I think that's a question we should return to once this first process has run its course, because perhaps down the road, collating the information might look very different, but I think that the word town council can, the president is the head of the town council. She acts and speaks on behalf of the town council, so I don't necessarily feel as though her taking the reins in this was ceding our authority in any way. As far as OCA, I'd prefer to keep us fairly narrow on the timeline, and so I'm wondering if maybe we should be returning to that now. The other thing I'm gonna say about this as I understand it is that we are under a time crunch, right? We do have the timeline that we need to follow, and from what I understand, from where, this is sort of like when we did appointments process and we sort of tried to start with what, well, in some ways we were sort of forced to start with what had happened before, and then we moved our way through it, and then we realized how much we just hated things and wanted things to go away or things we just loved. I think that what's happening with this process right now is that we do have a timeline, and from what I understand from the process that happened before is all these questionnaires go out to, well, previously it was select board, town council will get them, employees will get them, the public will get them, and then what ends up happening is that it's the president's job then to look at these things and then just do, like Alyssa said, pick the themes, give the big picture of it, and then I believe most of the input that comes in is public information, there are things that we can see, right? Of the, tell me if I'm wrong. All of the information that comes in is available to councillors but not publicly. But we are, but councillors are able to see it, so after the president has to go through everything and write down all the themes and do that for us, we're still seeing all the individual things that went into that. So I think that it makes sense, I myself think that it makes sense to sort of go along, do this, get it done, and like Alyssa said, just keep writing in the margins, like I think that's wacky or we should do this, seriously, or we should have done, this timeline next year needs to do, take into account more time for public input or let's try to tackle the fact that the response that we get from the employees is splotchy. How do we make it less splotchy and more even, right? So that's what we'll be working through as we do this and then I think that that's, like Evan said, for us then trying to smooth out a timeline and we could maybe, we could change some things but I do think that we'll have enough information coming into us for right now, right? And then again, it's like the appointments process, we finish it up and then we take a look at it, we break it all down and we decide what we want to do from there. But I will say that looking at how this evaluation process happens right now, I do think that what's been said by Evan and by Alyssa that our job is more making sure that that timeline is smooth, making sure that the input that we get in, we're trying to bring that back to us in a more efficient way and or we're looking at goals but I feel pretty comfortable that that Town Council itself still is getting a lot of, we're still getting all the information we need, I guess to make a correlation, we're still getting to see all the CAFs, right? So I still think we're getting all of the information myself and then if everybody's comfortable with that, we could go back and take a look at the timeline and see what we think about that just as far as getting started. Discussion? Darcy, I feel like you're still feeling uncomfortable. Does that make sense or do you feel like that you're? No, I'm assuming that we're going to do this one off this year because of all of the other stuff that we have to do in the next month as far as appointments and so on. Okay, so should we take a look at the timeline and see to do? Yes, we should take a look at the timeline. My personal feeling is the timeline is very detailed and it squeezes in just about everything that needs to be done but others may have some thoughts on that. I don't have a problem with the timeline. I don't have a problem with the process. It seems extremely thorough. The only question I have with the process has to do with reaching out, will we reach out to other select board members but my personal feeling is the timeline is fine and the process is very thorough and fine but I don't know what others think. Okay, so yeah, Evan, were you going to say something? So I need one point of clarification and then just a couple of questions. So one, counselors receive a questionnaire, staff receive a questionnaire but chairs of the committee and the public is just sort of an open forum. Just give us your comments. It is but as Alyssa pointed out and you'll see in the drafts they're encouraged to go to a link where they see the town manager's goals. Is there, this is a maybe overly technical question, is there a minimum or maximum amount that they are allowed to submit? No. Oh, so that's something to think about, yeah. And then my second question and I don't know who would be most appropriate to answer this is there's one date for when the public has to give feedback by, one date when the staff has to give feedback by and one date when the council has to, why? They can all be coordinated but you want to have the council have the opportunity to see what the committee people, the staff and the public say before they finish theirs. Alyssa is that how you remember that? That's absolutely correct. I did go back and forth with Lynn a little bit about the public and staff input given that we are paying staff to sit at their desk or their work cubes or out in their trucks to fill these out. So I don't feel like they need as much time as the public but and it's easier to have fewer deadlines but we've done it both ways. The important thing as she pointed out the important thing is that all of us have to be able to think about what they said before we write ours. And if we only get it the same like right before hours or due then that would be harder for us. And there's the longer you, I mean, we all know how deadlines work. Everybody writes things at the last minute. So leaving the deadline open longer. That's why we don't do that. But we try and have a long enough period. It is actually thought through a long enough period that people might be on vacation during some of this. And we also gave a long period to committees because committees may choose to post this as something they wanna talk about as a committee. Say for example, a committee was working really carefully with the town manager on something. And so they wanna actually write something as a committee but more likely, right? They're not even meeting in July and they're just sending in individual comments. But it gives all those choices to people so that they have all those alternatives. The other, just one other thing. Alyssa, I'm more than glad to revisit this issue of the email address. I thought your idea was interesting because most people are getting used to the idea town council at and that's what they use. The other piece though that there is a box if you will just like there's a box for your census forms downstairs. There's usually a box upstairs in the town manager's office. Now we could move that downstairs where we put in census forms so that people can actually turn in things that are not electronic but they will still be scanned and provided to everyone. All right, so I have a question. Is this something that we need to vote on to say, yeah, we go with this or can we just have talk to you about it? I know that's a very dumb question but I didn't have enough caffeine. There's no dumb questions. At present, this is on the council's calendar tonight. They have now received everything you have. I really leave it up to the committee. You could just say, we've reviewed this and feel that it's a transitional year and we should proceed as proposed. Whatever you want to do. So I have two things that I would have all of us just kind of gather together to get in our minds. One is do we as a group feel, yeah, okay, we feel comfortable enough with this timeline for this year knowing that we'll be making lots of notes and thinking about it very hard the entire time that we're going through it. And the other is whether or not we want to solicit any input from the, sorry, this keeps disconnecting, from the select board, the previous select board. And if we, okay, and if we don't, we don't. And if we do, how would we want that to look? So maybe we could break it down first to just, do you want to do a sort of consensus, stravo on how we all feel about this timeline? Yeah, your name. Yeah, absolutely we can. Yeah. Which one are we talking about? Well, let's talk about the timeline first. Because actually I think the select board issue might be trickier, but let's see. Yeah, so go ahead Evan. So I think the overall order of things looks good. Some of the dates, again, I'm just curious about. So again, so there's July one for staff, July five for committee chairs, July 12 for public, and then August 6th for the council. I mean, is there any reason why those first three can't be the same date? And is July 5th and 12th, it's a month essentially for the public and for committee chairs. Do we feel that that's a sufficient amount of time? Yes, of course Melissa. I'm just trying to make this bigger. Let's remember that challenging not questioning. A lot. These are basically the same dates as before, just brought forward into the calendar. Again, I agree that having fewer dates for everyone to keep track of is helpful. One of the reasons it's so early in terms of July versus August. So the first three in theory could all be the same date. Yes, that's true, except I have traditionally pushed that staffs be sooner because they don't have to worry about having a public meeting that they might wanna post something for. And they are literally doing it on town time. So they have plenty of time to get this done. So giving them a week would be enough, but except that they might be on vacation. And so that's what we're trying to take into account. And vacation's driving a lot of this. And so that's part of what makes big difference is the summer vacation part of it. The other reason to do it, to have it be done early is because of that email issue. So every year up until, we've never done it this way with having a separate email address. That's a new thing. So what we always did was we took off the people that weren't privy to Paul's personnel record, meaning everyone other than Paul and the town council, people which not that we get to see. The rest of his personnel record, just to be clear. And that way we could put them back on as soon as possible. Because if we use the old method of taking people off of the email distribution, the longer that goes on, the more likely staff's not going to see something that people had hoped for them to see. Because anything that's going to them during that time period isn't getting automatically distributed to them. So that's one of the reasons to have it early. If this on balance seems like a better way of doing it even though people are not used to this brand new email address and I can tell you for certain won't use it and there will be things that staff will see. But they'll see the paper letters that they have to scan into their confidential employees. They know that they're not supposed to talk about what they see in the evaluation. So somebody's going to have to balance that out. But that's part of what was driving that as well, is trying to give people enough time to take into account their vacations. But then also to be able to turn the email back on so that life could go back to normal for email distribution. We'd all have seen that a long time before we necessarily started writing our own. But let's remember that many counselors may also be going out of town for weeks at a time. And so some of them are going to be writing their evaluations well before the due date. And some of them are going to be writing them the night before, right? But there will be plenty who are out of town during some of the, some without internet access or desire to work on evaluations. And that's why that time period is relatively long. And then we actually have to give the person writing what I've been referring to very sloppily as composite when it's actually, the composite is really just the scores that we don't use numbers for. It's the summary document that I'm forgetting the name of even though I called it that many times in the past. That's the hard part to write, right? It's the part with the actual words rather than little check marks. And that we need to make sure we give the person writing that enough time that they can have vacation too. And so they can have other things come up in their lives surprisingly. And sometimes things just happen. And so we have to give them enough time too. If there is one date I would suggest moving it would actually be to allow committee chairs up till July 12th, so that that would be simultaneous with the public because again meetings may not have happened July 5th is July 4th weekend. It's one less different date to keep track. Yeah. Darcy? I don't have any problem with the dates but I did have a question about on August 19th town council president meets with town manager and next draft of town manager evaluation is completed. Just wondering what is, what's the process there? What happens in that meeting? I've never had that meeting. Try and tell you. Alyssa, do you want to give us some sense of that meeting? So I need a decision tree Evan. I survived without one all this time but now that I've seen them I really like them. So all the counselors including the president fill out their own evaluation form on the deadline at the same. The president doesn't read everybody else's and then write hers. She writes one just like everybody else does. So then there's 13 of those. That's perhaps not clear but there are 13 separate evaluations that are written. Then the president, what used to be the chair looks at those and says wow that's a lot to read but then also says okay I'm sensing some themes here. Not only are people putting check boxes in these particular areas but I'm seeing similar comments about some certain things. She is looking at last year's summary so that she sees how we did that and modifies it as she chooses but gets a sense of how we did it before. And can obviously do it however she wants but taking that document which is also available on Lines right there on the old select board page. A draft of that document she walks into the town manager's office. Well potentially they've emailed ahead of time but so she walks into the town manager's office and says so having read all 13 of these here's what I think this document's gonna look like. Your actual evaluation document's gonna look like not the grid but the words, the narrative. And he says yep that makes sense to me or as she mentioned earlier oh my gosh I guess I totally forgot to talk about such and such in my self evaluation that's why everyone says I'm unable to judge maybe I should like put out some more information about that or can we talk about that or wow I think what Alyssa wrote meant this and you're interpreting it this way so can we talk about that. And then they have a back and forth and then she as president decides that's really useful input thank you for that and goes home and changes or doesn't change any of the words that are in that and then that is what then goes to all of us at the same time we're reading all 13 of each other's evaluation so we can say well and you can do that a couple of different ways you personally amongst my five colleagues amongst my four colleagues and myself we did it different ways when we sat down some of us would read each others and then read the composite and summary documents the two things one check marks one with narrative other people would read that first and then read to see if they felt the material supported that idea but the only thing that the president is doing with the town manager is giving them a heads up because otherwise if you didn't have that meeting if you just had the president write the check mark document and the themes document and come to a public meeting the town manager be like well news to me and so that just didn't really seem like an effective way to evaluate somebody it gives the town manager the chance to come to grips with some of the things that might be in the evaluation to be able to speak more positively or negatively about something that's in the evaluation to potentially ask the president if he can provide more information to the council et cetera because right it's not a done deal that he could ask oh I forgot all about that grant and how that worked and what the process was behind that and that would address a particular concern that had come up but the president isn't like the president is merely giving the town manager heads up at that point and giving them the opportunity to have some input so that when they get to the public meeting like the rest of us they are not surprised by what's in there it's not a gotcha kind of document. Lynn? Yes and I just want to say while I have never done this particular evaluation I have done hundreds of evaluations in my position at the university and prior to that and they would be similar to what Alyssa would talk about the only difference was they never were public documents. George? On August 19th the town council president meets with the town manager and the next draft is completed on the very same day the council reviews each other's evaluation, correct? The only other possibility would be that Paul and I would do this by conference call he is away the week before and that's the Monday he's back and I'm actually away that week and that's the Monday I'm back but if he would like to do it by conference call the week before he leaves on vacation I'm available to do that. Evan? So I guess because I also had a question about that point August 19th council meeting, council reads composite draft of town manager evaluation is that intended to be the second draft? It is the draft, let me just say it's the draft that is made any changes to after I have met with the town manager and if you would like to see track changes I have no problem with that. So I guess my thought is you get all of our information on the six you then have less than two weeks to read 150 plus pages of our comments some people on the council are probably gonna write quite a bit and then you're gonna have a composite draft that I assume we will receive before the 19th but maybe not and then you'll have a meeting with the town manager that. So first of all our president's going above and beyond by saying she would offer you a track changes version I see no reason why she should do that she's writing a cover memo to something she's working it's a work in progress all of us are not putting out every single work in progress that we did before we posted it so that's great but there's no obligation on her part to do that. So what we are seeing is remember because of this delightful open meeting law that would be an expression of opinion she can't send it to us ahead of time that's the whole right so which has only been available recently which was not true legally until less than a year ago and so when the select board was doing this what would happen is we would walk into the meeting that night on our desks would be what's frequently referred to in here as the composite which is the one with the check marks that show where things fell in each question the composite cover memo which is the narrative and now in this case all 13 evaluations and we would have a reading session on camera which was just delightful for everyone to watch and at the same time we would also have staff have uploaded all that information to the online packet there now if you look near the end of the timeline that Lynn's developed because of some rules that we're looking at adopting that we have been able to say expressions of opinion as long as they're posted as long as they're part of the meeting posting and so we believe that we can legally under open meeting law have that material go to the public and the town council at exactly the same time the problem with just putting it out there as we have done associated with the documents we've been doing that with so far which is on a very limited case by case basis associated with appointments is once you put it out into the ether you lose control of the narrative and let's be clear here the town manager's evaluation is a really politically sensitive thing to do so if you just put that as an upload on a Thursday morning and walk away what's the press gonna write over the weekend? What are the bloggers gonna write over there? What's the press gonna write? Before the town councils had even one second to discuss it amongst themselves so there's every disadvantage to putting the information out publicly before the town council can discuss it as a group if you put it out the same night and the bloggers and the reporters wanna sit in the room and watch us read and start writing stuff but we're gonna start talking about it that night but if you just put it out there and say, oh well let the chips fall where they may you really wanna headline you really wanna headline to be somebody's negative evaluation as opposed to what's in the composite memo not in so that's one of the reasons that it actually open meeting law actually works with us associated with that. So is the intention then that we will receive all those meeting those materials when we get to the meeting and we'll actively read them at the meeting? That has been the practice so I haven't wanted to ask and we have not pulled for this and that is the possibility that on April 9th I mean on August 19th we start the meeting earlier so that we can spend say from five o'clock I'll buy the pizza. Okay. Yeah I know. So that we, you know we start we start at five o'clock so that maybe we're done reading by seven and that, you know we can have a civilized conversation in an hour when we're still somewhat awake and aware. Yeah. And so, and so just to be clear I mean pizza really does help we started doing that the last couple of years but and it's boring as heck for the people watching on Amherst media and then some people are always feeling pressured like I'm not reading fast enough. And, but the reality is it isn't your last chance either so it's your first chance to say it's your first and best chance so you want to be well rested for that meeting because you do want to try and absorb as many themes as you can so that you can say wow you know I get the little check marks part but the part where you're talking the cover memo where you're talking about the themes here I think you totally missed one or I think this one is getting more weight than it really needs and then you will you will inevitably find that somebody brought something up on their eval and a comment that you were like I totally forgot about that and we should totally give them credit for that you know something like that will happen and it isn't just that and then rather than say well only one person said it it's like oh 10 of us would have said it if we'd remembered it and so that's how you then then there's a whole lot of note taking by the president that night as to oh I should alter this I should alter that nope that everybody still agrees these things are correct and these are the right things to do let's also remind ourselves that A this is the last time we're doing it this way and B it's a really important thing to do and yeah it's really hard but you know we signed up for this and like anybody any one of the 13 counselors who tells me this is too hard should have read that before they ran for office because it was there it was all available to them Evan Evan Evan so I think that's fine I think that tonight when this is presented to the council that part needs to be thoroughly explained because when I just looked at this I just assumed I would be getting the composite ahead of time and that's where my question that George now that you've explained it I don't necessarily know that I like it because I'm a slow reader and I don't want to feel but but at the same yeah everyone's gonna be looking at me like are you done but but it makes sense right but I think that's gonna have to be something tonight that's sort of proactively explained so my only my last question about the timeline and this is just I haven't been part of this I'm just sort of curious the July 22nd meeting town council discusses the town manager self-evaluation is that I wasn't sure I'm trying to picture what this is is that we just read it and we go yeah so he said this or is that an opportunity to ask the town manager questions about it is it viewed as sort of a back and forth of the town manager of what did you mean by this did you not address this is it is you know or is it just literally a discussion by the council I'm looking to you for past practice that is absolute so that of course can be posted ahead of time realistically almost every town manager gives it to us the day of the meeting because they're still writing it but given the opportunity I know their intention is to give it to us ahead of time and it's much more productive if they've given us to us so say it's actually in the packet on like a Thursday we'd actually have had time to read it right and depending on how he formats it read it next to the goals or maybe he'll incorporate the goals so it's like a 25 page document whatever works for him it's up to him and that way yes exactly at that meeting during that time it is in fact his opportunity basically to say to the public you know these are the things that I did this is good but then we can all say well tell us more about this or I notice you only wrote thinking of one particular year I notice you only wrote one sentence about this particular section and I'd like to hear more about that and it turned out there really wasn't anything more to say nothing had been done on that goal and you know but it was it was a way of finding that out because you know there's a lot of goals some things are gonna get more focused than others but it's a way of asking those questions to make sure that you understand what he wrote but also to make sure that you're not missing something that you think he intended to write Darcy you may have already explained this Alyssa but can you and it's probably an open meeting law thing what is the reason why all the town councilors can't get the individual town council reviews on August 6th at the same time the president does Alyssa it's called an expression of opinion to a quorum Darcy it's the fundamental open meeting law requirement your evaluation is an expression of opinion sending it to a quorum of other counselors would be a violation of open meeting law that's why also the cover to the composite check marks the one that talks about the themes we need to come up with a clever name for that is not sent to us ahead of time because it will be the president's opinion expressed to a quorum I'm sensing that it's not a... No, no, I get that, of course but so we aren't gonna be asked to vote on August 19th so we have to have can we wait until the next meeting or do we have to have a special meeting? Nothing happens on August 9th okay so August 19th is a date when we are looking at things and we are deciding that this is worded a little differently and this can be fixed up to talk about what Evan said and I think we're trying to maybe get fewer words I kind of actually didn't read this part of this draft so I didn't check to see if we covered what Evan just mentioned as well but here it's discussed in public and it's when we say these things need to be beefed up in the cover memo to the composite but we don't vote that night it's on the 26th that we say I mean unless we all say I mean we could, we could just say this is brilliant, we agree and be done chances are somebody's gonna have an opinion that's not reflected that they wanna try and convince the others should be reflected there's also the opportunity of the 13th somebody might say this is so important to me this needs to be in here and the rest of the group's like nah man, that's not that important it's in your individual evaluation but it's not part of what we are saying as a council is a challenge that this person needs to work on so that then happens that the 26th we see what the president revised so she brings us one thing on the 19th we read it, we discuss it we don't do anything else that night we literally don't do anything else that night and then when we come back on the 26th there are other things potentially on the agenda although preferably not and we say okay now here's the new version of it arguably, defensively, under open meeting law if all the president does with that cover memo so to speak is reflect what was said during open session then that can be put in our packet ahead of time because it will reflect what we said if she makes up a whole new section that would have to be provided to us that night or posted as part of the agenda but otherwise it can be included because if somebody says add three sentences about this add four sentences about that it's all on tape, it's all in the minutes then she can send that all to us as part of the packet upload rather than worrying about getting at the night of the 26th so we'll be better prepared for the 26th because we'll already have read everything once we all know what we heard were the edits and then we'll see if we think the edits reflect and the 26th then we can have a fuller discussion about a vote and did we have advanced notice that we might have a special meeting on August 26th? There's been a poll out for that and it was only as we looked at the timeline that we realized that we're in order to meet the do this in August and not move it up to Labor Day weekend that we already know that at least one counselor cannot be here. And that's why it's important in fact another reason why it's important to have two meetings is just in case somebody gets sick and can't make like the 19th the reading meeting at least they won't just have missed the reading and the vote on one particular night you work on this all year in theory and then you miss one night and it's all over so that's another reason why you have it twice is that you have the discussion twice it's just a much, it can be a really long discussion the second time too if people feel like they've had more time to think about it and maybe they thought of more things. This very productive discussion, yes, Linda? I just wanted to mention to you all the changes that I've made to this while we were sitting here. So on the, under the June 5th to 7th, 2019 on the third bullet I've said email sent to committee chairs to distribute to all members due by July 12, 2019 instead of five on the July 12, the first bullet I've said all responses include public and committee comments are including public and committee comments are received by 4 p.m. On July 22nd in that bullet I've added a parentheses posted ahead of time and discussed in public meeting during the meeting, okay? Meaning the town council, town council or self evaluation and then on July 19th I've made a note more than anything to see whether or not we could pull to begin at 5 p.m. But then I've also added to the first bullet and bolded it. Packets prepared of all the documents, individual composite and cover memo and distributed as counselors arrive, okay? Alyssa? I was just gonna recommend even though I totally appreciate not having such lengthy paragraphs as I used to in this document, I think it would create less confusion if you combined the August 6th to 19th and the August 19th comments about the town council president associated with the town manager evaluation because although we can appreciate that you have that time period to do that in, I think it seems more like you're gonna produce a first draft to give to us and you're not. I mean, that's not the goal there. The goal is that you have that period of time. Perhaps the way of saying it is just literally removing the August 6th to 19th reference. So August 19th, that's when you meet with the town manager and with your first, I mean, I don't know. But I think, can you explain this? You might just wanna have August 6th individual received by county council president. In August 19th, town council president meets with town manager and finalizes draft because it's not a next, when you say next, I got caught up by the word next draft because that implied there was a first draft that I would see and then she was producing the second draft, but really you're just finalizing the draft you're gonna give us. So I think that word next is what threw me off. Yeah, the first and next as opposed to the thing you're gonna give the council. And however many back and forth you wanna have with the town manager before that is up to you. So you want no note in here of the August 16th to 19? Just take that out? Okay. And then under the 19th, Evan, instead of saying next draft, it's not, it's just finalized draft. Yeah. I'm sorry, I said August 19th, town council president meets with town manager and finalizes draft of town manager evaluation. Yeah, yeah. Complete. And for the meeting tonight, I would show this with the corrections as I've, I'll send it to you as well. You look like you're gonna say something. It's trying to be responsive. So I'll take a second to think about that and yes, listen. We might wanna just clarify in the August 26th segment with the bullet points and just add, you know how you have in the third bullet point, resume public session, make sure that the first one says, town manager evaluation discussed and confirmed in public session, second bullets in executive session, third bullets then resume public session, just so it's super clear to people because other towns have in fact, regularly discussed and confirmed their evaluations in executive session illegally. So just so we could be super, super clear that just add the words public in public session to that first bullet. Got it, thanks. Is there any other discussion on the timeline or do we wanna say by consensus, we feel pretty good about how this is going for right now? We're all nodding. Do you wanna just, you can just do by consensus. Everybody's nodding and I don't see anybody glowering at me so I think we're good. Oh, George. Yes, we could feel like Oka did something, right? Yes. Oka agrees to adopt the town manager FY19 evaluation timeline. Yes. Does that work? Yeah. As amended. As amended, yeah. God bless you. Yes, which then leads us to the, could be a short discussion or a long discussion. How do we feel about incorporating the previous last? Let's have a vote on that. That's what I was getting at here. It's like where it's not part of that motion. Yes, okay. So I make the motion. You wanna make the motion? I did. All right, then I'll second it. Yeah. It didn't really sound like a motion. Sorry. Phyllis, do you think you got a motion on that? I thought we were all just nodding. What was your, what did you think I said as motion? It's the FY19. Evaluation time, it's the evaluation timeline as amended. I did. All right. All those in favor? I. You gotta get into that. I wanna hear those enthusiastic guys. Yeah, I wanna hear ah. Yeah, just do it. No, we don't. You have to say aye. Aye. All right, that's unanimous. Yay. Okay. Fabulous. Okay. All right, so then. In regards to the slide port. So I'm not gonna make, I'm not even gonna pretend this is a motion, but I'm gonna make a suggestion and you can see if somebody wants to make it be a suggestion. I don't believe we should ask the select board to participate. I have zero interest in that. I think that that's associated with when you're no longer part of the body, you're no longer part of the body, however you use. I think it would be kind and thoughtful if people wanted to go ahead and write to the three not serving on the council select board members and say, hey, we kicked off the process and here's the reference, here's the public call out and ask that they, you know, consider doing that as public, but I cannot see giving them any special weight of any kind associated with this. Kevin. The resident advisory committee, will that be, will those members be asked to submit as through the committee? We're asking committee members, right? So that's one of the select board members, right? I guess I'm wondering, I'm wondering, right, now as a select board member, I guess I'm wondering, the awkward thing of asking the select board to participate is are Alyssa and Andy giving their feedback as both select board and town councilors or as just town councilors? And then is Connie giving hers as select board and member? And is she filling out one of these? And then also a committee one? I mean, Doug serves on PPP, right? Doug's the chair of the board of license commissioners. He works all the time with the town manager. So only people, there is no form for anyone and there's you would, I would think it was insane to give the select board the form that the select board worked so hard on. No, no, they're not, they can't fill it out as select board members. They're not select board members. They weren't select board members last month. They stopped being select board members on December 1st. Okay, that was six months ago. They're not gonna write any evaluation now. That was 12 years ago, Alyssa. They're not gonna write an evaluation now about what happened and what ended six months ago. What they're writing as is they're writing as it so happens I was a select board member. Just like if a select board member from 10 years ago wants to write and say, when I was a select board member we thought town managers should do X. Now that you have a new form of government we see town manager doing Y. We think that's amazing. Everybody brings their own situation to it. It would be weird if one of them perhaps didn't mention their history in their comment, right? And like, ooh, does everybody know that Connie Krueger used to be a select board member and she's on the resident advisor? But you know, whatever. I mean that's like some people who's been in town meeting for 30 years. Do they mention that? Maybe not. George. I think Alyssa's right. And the example that Evan gave earlier, you know, that we may set goals in the future and then not be any longer members of the council. And I would really be bizarre for you to ask us who write solicit our opinion just because we happen to have set the goals. I think she's right. I think that that would not be appropriate. I agree. Yeah. I'm not clear on what Alyssa suggested though. I was thinking that originally I made the brilliant suggestion that, especially looking at this document, the previous, you know, and realizing that there are very few upon which I could offer my view. I thought, well, it makes sense to reach out to the former select board members and since they had helped set the goals. And I think I started that particular while rolling. And I think I've become convinced that that really was a bad idea. But you may, yeah, to solicit them particularly as former select board members as distinct from the rest of the public and from, you know, because they no longer are official. So I see the error of my ways. But no, but there may be others who, no, exactly. And I think, but there may be, you may feel differently, but I'm convinced that that's not a good idea. Alyssa trapped that one. No, I agree with that. But Alyssa suggested that we still contact the three members somehow. I mean, that was that most that I'd be willing to do. And I don't even think we need to do that, especially since two of them are already gonna get the notice anyway. And I'll be sure and text Jim and mention to him that we're an evaluation process. Actually, that's interesting to the select board members are on committees and the former town moderator is on a committee. So there's a lot of interaction. So yeah, so we're just saying we don't need to solicit them as they're just as in the capacity that they are in today, whether it be on a committee or as a resident. I think we have consensus. Okay, then my question was again, do you feel like we want to have an official vote on what we, how Oka feels on us? Or do you want to bring up something else? Maybe we can make a motion. So that could be part of our report tonight since this has been floated out to the full council already so that we can show that we had this discussion and maybe they won't feel the need to have it as it much. What? Because we're coordinating. Because we're coordinating, so we're reporting. Right, all right. So the motion is, I'm feeling very agreeable today. Oka agrees that the select board will not be solicited in their capacity as select board members, but will not be solicited in there. How do we want it? Okay, what makes? I'm sorry, do we really need a motion on a bad idea? I mean, it was a bad idea. It might be. And we've agreed it's a bad idea. I'd like it in the minutes that this is the first time I've actually proposed a bad idea, but it probably won't go in the minutes. But I don't think we need a motion on a bad idea. Well, we probably need a motion on this just to agree that we approve of the process or we hope we, you know, but I don't think we need a motion on this bad idea. Well, George, you weren't the first one to bring it up. And it will, it is, it's on the proposal for tonight. And so it's one of the first things on the proposal. So what would be a helpful way of us stating it? This could be, it could be, it was the consensus of the group. So. Let me, let me just also say this discussion has been extremely helpful, except to send this timeline back to the list and so forth. And all the discussions we've talked about here. This is the first time I've gotten to discuss this whole process with anybody. And I just totally appreciate the thoughts and feedback from this group. So however you want to handle the select board thing and communicate it tonight, you decide. Yes. I'm concerned that it's out there. That might, yes, yes. And so as opposed to somebody only brought it up here, you didn't just bring it up here. It was already presented. So I'd like to get it off everybody's mind as quickly as possible tonight at town council. Assuming that I don't know how other people feel about it beyond these five here, but we've certainly talked about it at length. So I would, I would just like us to be able to report tonight that the select board does not need to be solicited in their capacity as well. I feel like it's a recommendation to the council. Yeah, I agree. Yes. We recommend, make a motion. I move that OKA recommend that former select board members are not solicited for feedback in the town manager evaluation. George, help me out here. I can't help you. I think that if this comes up tonight, we'll talk about it. I just think that all we need to do is say that we approve of the process as it's been presented to us. And if somebody comes up with this bad idea on their own, then we will point out to them why it's a bad idea. George, it's in writing. It's in writing on a document that was provided to the town council. It's not like it's just an idea that might come up. It's in writing with yellow highlighting, as I recall. So come on. I second Evan's motion. Okay, hold on. Okay, hold on. All right, let's just, woo-hoo. So that's just to be, okay. Again, collective breathing in. I know, you want me to count that in? One, two, three, one, two, one, two, three. Okay, so that idea, and I agree that we all think it's bad, is out there. So I do think we have to address how we feel about it because that will come up tonight. And I think there'll also be discussion, similar to the discussion that we had about it, correct? So I think that in our report or what we say is that, yes, I think that's a fine motion. And then we could maybe put a little bit of a discussion of already how we kicked it around and decided it was a bad idea, correct, Alyssa? I have a different way of phrasing it. Maybe this will be acceptable. Move that OCA recommend that former select board members are welcome to participate in the process, but not as select board members completing the town council form. Oh, sorry, I can't do that. Something like that? Yes, sort of, like it's a plus. We're trying, I'm trying to get it a positive here, right? So we're not, we're not preventing that. Like we are not saying, oh, you can't participate. We're saying we move that OCA recommend that former select board members are welcome to participate as members of the public and committee members, but will not be completing the actual town council evaluation. And I don't know how to make that shorter. I don't either. The key part of this is they're not giving us, we're not soliciting feedback for them in their capacity as former select board members, right? It's that they can do whatever they want, but it's, they're not, they're, we're not specifically saying we want this extra from you, right? And the reason I added in all those words beyond the fact that I like them to be super long is so that it's clear that they're still welcome to participate. Like they don't have to take themselves out of it because they're on RAC, a board of licensed commissioners, but they're writing as those things, not as, but not as select board members completing the town council evaluation form. I second that discussion. Yeah, you did need to make withdrawal, right? Okay, so with the motion, with the one motion withdrawn, with the motion that we have now up and seconded, is there any discussion for the discussion on it? All right, then, all those in favor? I, that is unanimous. But what, yeah, so let's, now I have, now I have a question about the packet of material since you're already revising something. So I was not able to get on last night or yesterday to see exactly, I saw the document titles and I was like, yep, yep, yep, and I didn't get into some of the content. There are two documents here that I don't know the provenance of. I don't know who wrote them or when. And there's also a third document that has a draft watermark on it that is available on the town website on the select board page as a final version, not something with a draft watermark. So I don't know why we would be publishing a draft watermark version of the final goals that the select board agreed to in the fall. That's the ones got the draft watermark. The other two are text documents, no date, no name. Don't, I'm suspecting maybe the town manager wrote them. These are things that were forwarded to me from either you or Angela. And I've begun the process of revising them. I don't know who originally wrote them. And I am just trying to get everything ready since we're trying to get this out this week. So the example, press release, all I did was say it was an example from last year. The website information, actually, I think I did get that from Paul. He says, here's what's on the web in an email to me at one point. I can eliminate or add, but all of the council has all of these anyway. Yeah, I would just indicate when we mentioned them tonight where they came from. Thank you. But I would also replace the one. I don't know why one was published that has a draft watermark on it when the final version of it is available on the select board page as being the final goals. Maybe it was because it was an attempt to give you a word version rather than a PDF. It was. But we shouldn't have been provided anything that was said draft because it's not a draft. So you're saying that the second attachment, which is town manager goals, FY 19 final draft. That's something you may use in the future as a word document, right? For this next set of goals that we developed, but what should have been in the packet should have been the PDF version that doesn't have the draft watermark. We should replace that tonight because otherwise it looks like we're trying to rewrite the goals tonight, which we're not. So I myself would like to just talk about, I will then, this is the first that Lynn's heard of us. I will not be able to be at the meeting tonight. I want to make sure that OKA feels secure and that we have an idea about presentations and everyone feels comfortable and prepared. So our recommendations for two committees will be going out. That's George and Evan. Do you both feel OK with making presentations on your? Yeah? Sure. Yeah? OK. Elizabeth Brewer, would you feel comfortable speaking for me this evening and also the report that needs to be written for tonight, which I can? There's no, there's no report. I mean, there's, well, OK, so let me make this really, OK, hold on, break it down, break it down. No, what I was just saying is the votes that we took today, they don't have to be like written down and submitted, but in presenting tonight, right? Sort of where we're at. Do we want to, we will be presenting what we did to votes that we just took. That, try to be clear on that, yes. So do you feel OK on, that I'm making that clear, you knew it already, it's OK to put in bringing it? So I can do that. Yes, I can do that in your place as vice chair, especially since those guys are already giving their other reports. OK. All right, we've, everybody feels strong for tonight. Yeah. Is there anything else that we want to discuss before I ask for a public comment? Everybody's OK? OK. Any public comment at this time? No, OK, great. Well, then, yeah, yeah, no worries about the way things were posted for tonight. Yeah. So I'm going to take care of getting the final set of stuff posted for tonight and also printed for everybody. OK, that would be great. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for your time today again. Thank you. So actually, since you mentioned that, do we want to continue meeting every week throughout the summer now that after tonight and after finance committee will be through our glut of appointments? So we can't do finance committee next week because Darcy won't be done. We could do conservation commission because he just gave them to us. So we could either do that today because we posted saying if he had provided us names that we could potentially talk about them. We can see if we're comfortable doing, given the power, if we're comfortable doing that today or not. But otherwise, if we don't do them today and we don't do them next week because we cancel next week because we don't have finance committee things, then that puts us at being required to write a report on the 17th for the 17th about the Conservation Commission appointments. So we have some options here. One would be to go ahead and tackle the Conservation Commission appointments today. Therefore, have plenty of time to write that report before the 17th. Therefore, not need to meet next week because we wouldn't need to talk about conservation commission or finance committee next week. And those are the things that I see as being in front of us unless he comes up with a bunch more things between now and next Monday that we will be, if we would be then, be like shucks, we wish we were meeting on Monday because of the same conservation commission issue. I mean, if he's going to come up with five more things, when are we going to write those reports? Are we going to write them on the 17th for that night? I don't know. Evan? I mean, so my personal preference now that it's summer and that we have been working incredibly hard and got through a huge hump is most other committees don't meet every week. And so it would be nice if we could over the summer at least scale down to an every other week meeting schedule. I think that if we don't meet next week, we could do conservation commission on the 17th and either very quickly write up a report. I think it could even, I don't think it has to be a written report. Maybe I'm incorrect, but I think we could say this morning we voted to recommend that the other thing is technically the council could vote them in on July 1 and that would still be within the 30 days. And then of course we always have the option of just saying, well, just let these, we don't have to take action. I think we want to because we don't want to look like we're just rubber stamping. But if we look at those conservation commission appointments and say these look fine, could sort of just let them happen. But if the council votes on them on the 1st, that's still within the 30 day window, if we got that, because we got them today, it's gotten real close. But I think my personal preference as an individual is now that we've gotten through our huge workload is if we could maybe, at least for the summer, go back, go down to every other week, like most committees. So my preference would be that we, I would rather that we didn't let things time out. I would rather just set the precedent that we actually look at things and then say, yes, we recommend or no, we don't. I would think that with things that we've done today and then if we take a vote on conservation that that should be, even just if it's a brief report, a brief report, I would, my more experienced vice chair might have an opinion on that.