 participates only if there's not a forum. So the question was whether we want this at all or we want to bring it to the full council. My thinking on this, and I know already that Lynn doesn't like this idea, because I asked her, my thinking on it is that you avoid a situation where there are multiple council members who want to be on a committee and the president wants to be on the committee and he or she chooses herself over a council member. And then since we've delegated all this authority to the president, we've even allowed them to choose themselves in preference to someone else. So that was my thinking. Then I also noticed in Northampton that the president is not on any of their committees. So I think what the president of the council and Northampton is doing is saying I can participate on committees so I don't have to be on a committee. So then Mandy's concern, and I'll let her speak for herself, my husband raised this when I asked him about it and then Lynn raised it with me, that does that mean that the president has to attend all council meetings? So I don't see any reason why if we gave this authority that the president could say, I'm going to be an ex-official member of committee one and two. Meaning I'm gonna kind of regularly come, but not of others, because she has the right in our overseas committees to go whenever they want. So I thought this was a protective thing to put in which is why I put it. So that's why I'm a yellow highlighted it, that this is not in a ton of them, but I found five or six pounds that did it. And so this precludes her from being part of the committee. Well, it- Because she's ex-official of all committees. I put, you know, it doesn't literally say she can't appoint herself. It doesn't- We would need to clarify that if we went with this plan. I think we would need to clarify that. So it doesn't say she can't and you know, since the charter says the president appoints all committee members, it doesn't then say, and then it later says, the presidential has had the same rights as any other council member, you know, to vote, to do whatever. So it doesn't restrict the president from appointing herself or himself. It's just suggestive. It's just suggestive and it's a way of, you know, for example, I'll give you on finance. I went back and looked at where people had done their preferences. In finance, if Lynn hadn't appointed herself, she wouldn't have had five. Literally no one else has listed it as a first, second, or third choice, you know, so she had to go down to second choices even to get to five people. So in that case, we would have been short one person and she would have had to, like she did with audit committee, doesn't someone want to be on? So it makes sense to allow her to do that. Okay, so I'm going to weigh in and I don't want, I don't like any of this. I appreciate that other communities are doing it and that's what we were researching is what other communities were doing. I think the president should be able to be a member of a committee. I do not think a president should be an ex officio, any of the other committees. I think that it is obvious based on my experience that that person has a chilling effect on every committee meeting they come to because they're the president. And so people on the committee are working to please the president at the point when the president's there, especially if it's an ex officio basis rather than their president. Any council member can come to any committee. I have no idea why we would give the president additional authority at our individual committee meetings by being a member of a committee unless they're a full member of the committee. I think it's, I mean, I think that if you, if I'm outvoted and you guys do it this way, it should be specified. You can't be both ex officio of everything and also a member of something like that. Right, you can't double do that. But if you really want them to be ex officio of everything then it seems like they shouldn't be a member of anything. I would rather it's the way it is right now and this temporary basis where we are right now where it's that she's a member of some things or the finance committee in particular. And in fact in some communities she's automatically the finance committee. Okay, so. And so I'm not seeing the purpose of having her be an ex officio member who can come and go as an ex officio member and not count toward for them, not be depended on to attend every meeting, not be required to attend every meeting because she's already got way too many responsibilities elsewhere and then say, but when she's there it's like she's a member of the committee. I just, I don't see the purpose. Can I just add one thing to that because I saw in the Mansfield I think it said all counselors show the ex officio members of the committees to which they're not assigned. I found that in two circle tabs. That is another interesting way of doing it. Yeah, so that means anyone, including the president. So I didn't put that in, but I found it and I really liked it and I thought people would hate that idea. But I like that idea. So all kind of, what would that mean? That would mean that all of us could attend any. So again, we could do it, but not have no voting. Could restrict it to have no vote. And motions, no motions. As an equal around the table at another committee meeting. But just not be able to vote. No, you can't make motions and not vote. And I asked, I asked Margaret about this, but I'm not always sure that Margaret knows the full AG world. So number one, we run into a couple issues on this. I like this idea, so I'm not arguing against it. I like this idea. So one of the issues we run into is we're starting with five people on a committee. So two more people show up and are fully participate. It's a council meeting. That should have been posted as a council meeting. That should have been published. Because otherwise people are going to assume you're deliberating about things. Right. That are for the full council. And in fact, you are. Because if you've got seven people there, you are in fact delivering something because the committees serve a function to represent to the rest of the council what the council might wanna do. So I found an AG, I went on to see what, I actually Google council members participating in a committee on which they're not a member. And I found three or four AG decisions. You know, it's a nice, searchable thing. So one is, one council had appointed a committee that had nine, there were nine councillors and they had a five person committee. So it was already a quarter of the council. And the AG said, perfectly fine. You could have a committee that is a quarter of your council as long as it only talks about things in its jurisdiction. So it can't go broader than whatever. You know, so you could have a big committee if you want. The second was the situation we're talking about that it was a topic that was of high interest and two more councillors came. And there the AG said, if they sat over there, not here, it was fine, then they weren't behind the bench. If they sat, if they sat at the table it has to be posted as a joint meeting where the meeting was the finance, in this case it was a finance issue. So it was, it was a finance committee meeting but it was jointly posted with the chair. So it ran into this, you could do it as a committee but you had to co-post, you know, which would mean, you know, anytime two of us showed up we'd have to know in advance that more of us were coming to be able to post it. We can just get her up to. I just figured out for you. You're so smart. So it feels, yeah, I got it. All councillors being exception. So we moved from just the president which Alyssa doesn't like, you don't like and Lynn doesn't like. I got an independent, Lynn doesn't like it and she didn't like it for a similar reason. You raised Mandy that it does impose an obligation to be attending all meetings and then it's clear that president shows up, president has a different kind of authority than the rest of us and if they can come dropping in sometimes and not other. So I think we're removing president. The question would be, do we want to enable any council member to go to meetings of others without voting privilege? In this case, it would be without voting rights. We saw that in a couple of other like Mansfields. Right, okay. You know, a few councils gave that right and the issue we run into quickly is we've got five member committees and seven are quorum. So as long as only one shows up are okay. And if two show up, then we should have posted it as a joint, as a. I appreciate the idea of we, but we haven't agreed to anything. No, no, no, no, no, no, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean the larger committee would have needed to post it. No, I'm talking about this committee before you got here. So I objected on certain grounds, you objected on certain grounds, I also object to the idea of all councilors being ex officio to I understood the concept. I have understood the concept. I think that it does not at all recognize the practicality of the fact that certain people don't get appointed to committees and certain people do. And as soon as you put the other people at the table with almost the same membership as others, now you've just put that person on the committee after all. And so this is not a kumbaya kind of thing. These are councils that committees that have been assigned to do specific tasks. If you have a strong personality who wants to come to every single council committee because they just happen to have the time and the energy to do that, they will influence every single council committee's work, I believe, in an untoward way. And I just, practically speaking, in my experience. Okay, so Alyssa is a strong no to the idea of no. So I think, sorry, I was late. No, no, no, no, no, no. I'm glad to see it moving off just the president. Yeah. So, and I had other reasons for objecting to the president beyond some of what we're stated. But I think my concern for everyone goes to, some of what Alyssa said, but some of just the practical purpose. If you make it all practically, then every council meeting should be, I'm thinking about the work building, then every committee meeting practically, if you've said everyone's ex officio, then really every committee meeting should always be noticed as a council meeting because, or you make it incumbent upon anyone who might want to go that one day of notifying someone in advance within more than 48 hours. So they tend to that notice because otherwise someone might show up, but three people might show up, or two people might show up, and then they're no longer ex officio because you didn't notice the council meeting. And so what's the practicality of doing this if you don't ever want to say, oops, we didn't notice it as a council meeting. So yeah, you're ex officio, but you can't sit at the table. So now you can't comment, except you're in public comment. That means every single committee meeting will need to be noticed as a council meeting. And that to me is impractical. On many different grounds, it creates just scheduling issues because you also then can't have committees meeting at the same time. Yeah, you don't know when they're coming. You don't know in terms of- You don't know how many are coming and who is coming. You don't know, someone has to keep track of, do you need minutes of that meeting for the council, or do you not, do you, how do you declare? Just all sorts of practical reasons. There's so much of a minute-staking problem. No, I guess it wouldn't, because the clerk wouldn't be at every council meeting committee meeting. That's the thing. The clerk wouldn't be at every committee meeting. So I think from a logistics point of view, that idea is gonna be really hard to implement. And that goes beyond whether I like the idea in terms of what Alyssa said. It's just logistically- Unless we still- I can't imagine. I guess we still are really good- Okay, I'm taking- Wait, you know, if other towns do it, they have figured that out somehow. I mean- That's not a safe assumption. They could be breaking open- But if we're gonna work again out, they are operating logistically, I mean they are doing it, and they have to follow- They might never notice in this council meetings and just regularly break open to people. We know people who break open- Yes. meeting a lot every single week. Yes, so this, so I'm just, I didn't yellow highlight C in here. We're working through- Mandy, I saved the clerical edit Mandy version as V1. So we're working off that right now. And I'm just, as people wipe things out or add things, so that's just the work in progress. So I just removed President C, which is now C. I should have yellow highlighted this as counselors who are now members of the committee are entitled to participate in the discussion of the committee. Newton had that, and so this is- That's the residence, come on. That's not what that says, Shalini. That says participate in the discussion. Oh, that's like a sub-issue kind of similarity. This is a nicer way of saying it. But it says it practically means the same thing, and it practically runs into the same posting problems. Oh yeah, I always read it more as they can participate. Okay, so we could very clearly state, and in fact we should, directly because of this conversation, we should very clearly state that, without saying of course, of course, town counselors can participate as can members of the public. Right, that they can feel free to attend, they can feel free to comment, but they are not going to be at the table. We should state that, flat out. So this could be restated then. Counselors are not members of the committee or entitled to participate as members of the public. Exactly, yeah, we should clarify that. Because I'm just saying there's a value in that because researching different things have different experience, and so we as a committee have been working under the certain lens, and someone else comes and says, hey, did you look at that? I mean, that should be an option. It shouldn't be, you know, we're all working towards the same goal of coming up with the best solutions. Maybe some issues, you know, that we run into as we're getting to the end of this process that we actually don't agree on, and we can have a vote, it's not a big deal. You know, we don't have to have like a 100% consensus on every single thing, so. So on C, I just, so Darcy, on C, I just edited it to who are not members of the committee or entitled to participate as members of the public. So this is one where do we have, that one is clearly we have the right to do that period. So that's just a statement of our rights. So we're making it. So the question is, are there enough of us who would like the larger entitlement to take a vote on this? That's what I think you're suggesting on this. Yeah, on this issue, you know, which would be fine with me. Yeah, well, I like the idea conversation was going to evolve into this, but I do like the idea of the ex officio members of the party. The culture of like trust and all, or is it like, you know, that it's like, hey, we're all in this together. And even if you're going off as a group, you know, I can still come in and listen and participate as, or like you all said, it is logistically so hard and it feels like someone's imposing and watching you and being monitored. You know, if it's creating those feelings, those feelings should not even be there. So if they're there, that's a problem to begin with. Like, we should not be feeling that with each other. I think it could create some, and I have a request for clarification on the new C, but to address Sean on this issue or question, difficulties with the committee itself in terms of the committee's deliberations. I'm thinking of, you know, I'm thinking of a committee I'm on where we've had discussions over four or five meetings on one subject. And if one person shows some, another counselor shows up with the first one and another one shows up with the third one and another one shows up with the second and another shows up with the fourth. That group, those individual counselors don't have the entire discussion in their history. And so they're jumping in and they might run in with something that was already discussed two meetings prior that then this committee might have to go back to or it would sound like if they said, you know, we discussed that three meetings ago, we're over here as if they're dismissing those counselors concerns. So, you know, I don't know. I see problems with it, even though I see a potential for good from it, but I think at this point I see more problems to go to a clarification. I think it reads right now, councils who are not members of the committee are entitled, could we make it clear that it's a council committee? Okay, I just have to say that my internet, I just got thrown. I wonder because it didn't show your change. I'm completely gone. It's really small bars. It says I have no internet. I've got really small bars too. And I didn't, I can't download the document because I can't get on SharePoint. So what do I have to do? Reboot. So if anyone else who's on it, stay on it. Don't lose it and save it because I didn't save it to my drill. Your last save isn't showing up on the SharePoint. When you altered C and D because D was the one for Newton, you're rephrasing isn't showing up on the SharePoint. Well, I'm not on. That's because I'm just not on it. It just kicked you off. Yes, I've got really small bars. Okay, so anyways, anyone who's on it, I'm just gonna restart. I'm restarting my computer. I have no internet. I mean, I think that you should look at the example of what's happened with me missing several of these meetings is that it's really difficult to catch me up on. But we already went down this direction over here. Even though we're not talking about this thing for the first time, it's related to that thing back there that we already did. So it's not that you're trying to shut people out there, counselors, respectfully, oh, we're glad they came, but I have practically speaking beyond the meeting agenda, the meeting minutes. I have experienced counselors who then come in and then try and take charge of every single meeting and they have the right, if you've given them the right, whereas when you make it clear, yeah, we're gonna have rare examples, but there would be the examples would be where someone actually is perfectly willing to commit to going to every single meeting. And we just restricted the number of people. And they had always said that. There won't be that many, so it's not that they wanna go to all the meetings, they wanted to be on a committee. You're working theoretically, I'm working practically, and I know what happens when you have a person and I am working practically because I am personally going to every meeting of one of our committees that didn't have enough slots. So it's great that you go, and I hope they're listening to you in public comment, but why would you get to participate? Right, and that is... So I mean, I think going beyond personalities, individuals, I think just having that, I mean, so what you're raising is a question that if someone was left out just because of the size of the committee, like community resources, so many of us, so is this a way, I mean, that's something to just question, is that one way we're allowing more people to participate in a committee they really wanted to be in, but because of our limitation they were not. So that's an independent of who and what. That's a question. I'm fine. You can't write the rule for just that. Circumstances are the next issue of everyone, then you get the in and out circumstance. Well, and it's not fair to pressure them to come to every single one, either, just like when we took off having the president there, it was not reasonable to have the expectation they should come to. Okay, either. Oh, we do... Before saying, and where the vote would end up, but a, maybe write it without ex officio assuming that might be where the vote ends up, if it ends up the other way, write it that way, but then in the report that goes to the councils, specifically highlight this issue as, we've said that with some other things. And maybe how we're getting ready for the other one. Okay. Here's our two options. Okay, so I'm just conscious of the time, so we can ask for a time check in half an hour and it's gonna help. Okay, so tell me, I'm back on, so how do I write the suggestion? I think one is the one that whatever the majority here supports, the other one's ready to go. Right. I'll case that one and then it's brought up in a report that says here was one of the issues we split. This is the one that had the majority in town. This, in the committee, this would be the other one. So Mandy, tell me how you wrote, we wrote C. I was, because I was trying to reboot my, the councilors who are not members of the committee. So it would be councilors who are not members of council committees or a specific, I don't know, I just wanted to make clear that it was council committees. We're not talking about town committees. And not members of council committees are entitled to participate as members of the public. Is that how it was originally written? Okay, yeah, I'm just, you know, and I'm going to avoid this happening again by also saving shit. So we can just write two options and then we can vote later at some point in the process, A, that those are the two options and then maybe as we get through more of this, we'll come to coalesce around one of them anyway, as completely rather than as a split vote. But at this point, if we just write up two alternatives, we'll just say, choose your path, A or B. So I guess the other one would then, councilors shall be ex-officio. I'm just looking at the form or C. Yeah, I just read that councilors, all councilors shall be ex-officio members of the committee to which they are not assigned, but do not have the authority to make motions. Say that again, so where is that? All councilors shall be, it's not an issue. I'm typing it in. Say that again. All councilors shall be ex-officio members of the committees to which they're not assigned. So that includes the president. Yeah, and that would include the president. Yes, it just doesn't treat them differently because they're present. They have made this one option one and one option two. Yeah, we'll figure out how to do that. Since they can flip with each other. Yes. It's clear we know they can play. We are aware of this choice. There's a little arrow here that says pick one. Okay. Okay, so I just did it now, if people can see what I'm typing on, I did it as a bullet underneath C and it says option two. That was the easiest way of notating it right now until I download it to word where I can make C option A, C option, you know, option one and option two because this automatically, ooh, someone else is typing on it, but this automatically. It goes to town now. Oh, no, we're not doing town council. We're just doing town, we're just doing council. We're just doing council. Council, council. Okay, so. Shall be ex-officio, I think it's on the councilor that they will not, certain decisions have been made. Right, we'll have a behavioral. Yeah, that's exactly how it is. Dr. Hadley, I can give you some other examples. Talk to Hadley about how you control your members. You can't, you can't. This group of 13 gets along beautifully. You can't control your manager. Okay, can I just delete the very beginning now? So I'm just getting, trying to get to a cleaner copy. You know, that very beginning, standing committees agreed on. That's just. Everything before council committees and committees in town. Yeah, yeah, yeah, got it. I'm just getting rid of it. That's all from the whole timeline. Right. We remember. Peace parts. Right. Okay, so the next thing. Are we comfortable with the select committee section? We haven't talked about that. No, no, we're just moving right down. So. Can I just clarify one thing? The G point of council committee shall be advisory to the council and take no actions and find the council. So that just sort of links back to the OCA decision that they made. I actually have a notation on the things that turned into V1 were just like anything that wasn't really substantive. My substantive here was, what does this mean? Which letter? I heard what you said. Okay, so we're now in at eight. Oh, it's a V1. No, no, new F. It's new F. It's the last one under this one. All council committees shall be advisory to the council and take no actions that bind the council. It might be reworded better, but it's, you know, that what a committee comes up with is a recommendation to the council that the council then votes on. That's the intent of something like this, that they're not making a decision before bringing the decision back up. That's not true, though. Yeah, I think we're just going to do that. We're in F. It's in F. F is in O.G. Right there. Oh, okay. That's not actual fact at this point. Right, it may not be fact. It's a proposed... The question is, what are the pros and cons? I still go back to, what does this actually mean? Well, it could be reworded. What it means. What does bind? What does bind mean? What does advisory mean? No, I guess I read the thing and I go, what are the limitations of this? What are the restrictions? I just don't know what. Let's talk about the... Okay, so then I think if it were reworded to have more meaning, it would be reworded to say, it was one of the conversations we had within the newly formed community resources that things would be referred to the committee. The committee would do more research, do more, and make the recommendation up to the council and then the council would make the decision. So that's the flow of it goes to the committee to do thorough work on it, to come back and say what you think. That what the committee comes up with is not final. It's the council that comes final. So this should be reworded, that that's the intent of it, I think. It makes recommendations. It makes recommendations. I think that actually that's entirely covered by the charge of each committee. Each committee's charge should indicate what their powers are. And rather than trying to write a blanket statement, it's gonna cover every charge because there are going to be certain council committees, whether you call them ad hoc or working groups or task forces or whatever, that are assigned to do a specific thing, but then bring it back to the council. There are gonna be others who are told, make this much happen and then come to the council, like we have a disagreement on OCA, but nonetheless, that at this point, it's advise the town council on appointments. It's not take your process to the town council for appointments. So I'm not sure that this helps us at all. If our charges didn't say. I understand your point of view, and I'm gonna come back to it, Alyssa, then I would go back and rewrite that charge because I didn't, some of these charges when we looked at them, when they first went through, I... We didn't notice that. I was trying, you know, we've got another thing, duties and powers of councils coming up too, where we could do this. So what you're saying is a blanket statement may not make sense, but examining every charge to make sure where we've delegated final, on what aspects we've delegated final authority to a committee and where we've asked them to come up with a recommendation should be clear. And that blanket, I think that's what you're saying. So I would agree that the charge should be really clear. Finance is totally clear. The charter makes it clear that the only thing finance is doing is doing a thorough vetting and bringing its recommendation back to the council. We can't encumber, spend, do anything else as a committee. Right? Right, and I'm ever giving account. I would see it in the future where you start getting potential bylaws that come through, the committee says this just isn't ready for a vote and just ships it back to the planning board without it ever coming back to the council. Like the five members agree and say, this is not ready for action. It's not that we agree with or not agree with the policy, but it's not. It hasn't been thoroughly vetted. It hasn't had its pros and cons. It hasn't had this. Or a resident initiative. I can see where it could, there could be a committee that a decision that says, we're not, it's not ready to come to the full council for debate on the merits. What's the problem of just coming back with a recommendation to the committee? It's an efficiency thing. I think that was where Evan was getting with the TMAP proposal. We pretty much debated the merits and I think his point was potentially, is this the place to debate the merits? Is it ready to debate the merits now? Or is it, is the merit debate at some later time? I'm just, I'm putting out there that I could see a point in time year two, three down the road when we've got better systems in place. We're so new. We're still trying to figure out whether charges are accurate to what we want committees to do, but I can totally see a future of a council where the committees can say, this isn't ready for prime time. And so we're not gonna bring it back to the council to say this isn't ready for prime time, debate whether it's ready for prime time. Get it ready for prime time. Okay, so the, so Mandy, the example you gave is a good one, why if it's not ready for prime time and you wanna go to the group to come back with a revision or make it clear or something, the other example would be is first time councils are coming up with ways of doing this that will be our way of doing something as a whole council. And we haven't heard a rationale why, so it's a process. So they're putting in place a policy with policy slash practice. And I don't think we should be authorizing five people to do that before we've heard why, considered it, and said, yes, that makes sense to me. So if we've inadvertently done that without realizing, because we didn't carefully word of charge, so this may not be written in the right way, that like no action ever. No action ever, but it's. What are you here for? Yeah, that's not it, that's not it. Get it on. Okay. Yeah, so Mandy, I'm just saying that the example you gave is like, it's not ready yet. We need more information. I want committees to do thorough vetting and do assessments before it's ready for a vote, but to actually implement a process that they will in fact bind the council. And we only have one example coming up to us. Seems quite different than that. We don't really have one example. The GOL has implemented a process for reviewing things addressed to it for clarity, consistency, and actionability. We told you what that process, we told the whole council what that process was in a document. Right, and we agreed. And we said that. She didn't put it up for a vote. There was no vote? She said it is what it is. It is what it is. There was no vote on the process we used to just on what we define clear to mean, what we define consistent to mean, what we define actionability. There was no vote in the council on that. It was brought in a report and says, here's what GOL has come up with on how it's going to review these matters. Here's what the template for charges are that we're going to base charges off of. The council did not vote on that template. The council did not vote. So it's not just OCA that has done, you know, it's a process the committee uses. The committee could change that process at any time as committee members change, or a council, or a council. It's really interesting, Bandy, because as you talked, you couldn't say, hey, I want to vote on that. And then the council could decide whether or not to vote. So here's where I just find it's, the two examples are really good ones because I have no problem with someone coming up with a totally logical format for things that just takes things we've already written and puts them in the right place, you know, consistent. And saying we've been asked to vet things using these three words. Therefore, we had to define the three words. And this is, so that to me is like, we've already said do that. It feels totally different to me than saying, the charter said the council shall appoint the planning board. And I always assumed 13 of us would somehow know who's applied, understand what the interviewing process was. And this is a brand new thing that has never been done before. And if whatever path we're going, see, I don't even understand what the thinking was behind the process, but that is we are actually setting up a regulatory authority in town that's external to the council that then will be making judgments in a major way about zoning. So it seems such a higher order. And it may be the charge had to be rewritten to make it clear that that is a bigger thing than you in JOL saying what should the format of a charge look like where Lynn had to wing it first time through. And then you came back and took more or less the starting point and said, I'm gonna make them look consistent with each other. I understand the difference you're making, but both under current age. Or F, is it? Or sorry, I don't know where to put that. F, neither of those could have been done. Even what JOL did to set up that process would have had to come back to the council. So the way all of this wording is, there's no... Yeah, so this wording is, I'm agreeing that this wording, so are we saying that a few of the charges need to be revisited, which is where Alyssa was started with, on which things do we want to come back where the authority to come up with a way of doing something has clearly been given to the committee and we want them to come back with, this is how we're planning on doing it, versus we're giving the authority and we want you to just do it. Tell us how you're gonna do it, but just do it. I don't think there's any policy decision. And see, that's what, Mandy is doing the blanket, Dorsey, it says no action, so, and what's the difference between major and minor would be? That's really hard to get on. Right, I mean, you had to have a meeting. Go back to my legislative process and I was trying to get to the point. So Mandy Jail had to have a meeting, or more, to decide what clear, consistent, and actionable meant. Those three words might seem obvious to all five of us, but probably did not come out exactly the way each of us would have defined it, based on what her group defined it as. So for any of us to decide what is major, versus the rest of the counts, council decided what is major. I would say that should have come back to the council. Okay, can I just make a comment? Yeah. In terms of practicality, let's say someone has, the committee has really worked through this, spent a lot of time, you know, so they've gone through, and let's say we were to ask them to bring it to, the whole town counts out, and we're not gonna have that. And so how does, what can we add or do, I mean, what is the purpose of that process? The purpose to be aware? Okay, here's the way I think of it. Coming from, again, it's my major experience as a federal or state. If something was gonna come in, new regulatory process, the deliberative group comes in with a clear one-page summary that says this was what we considered, we went through three options. This is the way we've done it. Here's the reason why, period. So we don't have to go through 20 hours of thinking about it. We thought of A, B, and C, and three were deemed to be illegal or whatever. And then we can understand the thinking and look at the points at where, if you've gone in a different direction, so for example, with appointment process, they've gone in a different direction, the interview would have had to be in public. What's wrong with that? Or we would have had to have applications be public. What's wrong with, you know? But I agree, we wouldn't wanna go through another 20 hours. And I do think that if you bring it in front of the council, it opens the whole thing up for debate and can results in a full rehashing of everything and a rewriting of that policy if you suddenly say, yeah, you guys spent 20 hours doing that, but I don't like it or the five of us don't like it. And so we're gonna rehash it all, even if that's where we end up, and then three hours into the meeting, of the council meeting, you're still talking about how, the whole thing. To me, it comes, it, looking at it, trying to look at it, and I'm trying to relate to how I feel about OCA and what's coming. I think as a councilor that's not on that committee, I need to be able to trust the committee members. My fellow councilors who have done that, and at least for processes that they want to operate on there, to trust them that they've made a decision that is the best way for them to operate after they've instituted all of it. And if I come in after they've spent 20 hours and countless hours with the town attorney and all of this and say, well, I don't like it, go back and fix it. I understand that perspective, but I don't trust them. Well, or I would have had. This is knowing what the policy is, and just being presented and saying, here's what it is for your information. But let me do it that if a different five people had been in the room, so they would have come up, come to a different conclusion, because you felt there were a few strong voices that influenced the outcome. And there were 13 of us. And so if we had shuffled the deck and put five other people, you might have had a different cover page. That seems to me a very different situation. You can say that for any recommendation or anything coming out of the committee. If it's a different five of us, it might have come back with a different report. Well, the best for me is the same one. Well, right. So finance cannot make decisions without, we cannot. But they have a process for figuring out whether it's, they're gonna have a process. But you still have a role. And so to pretend that just because you don't have a final say, does you have a few influence on one of the town councils gonna hear. And a different five would have a different vision. It's the binding part. I think I like the part where you said where we get a one-page report, because even we're answerable, like when I'm going to meet in a committee at district meetings and stuff and people are like, how did you make the choice and then go ask Oak? I mean, I should also know what that process was and why we chose this versus that. And if I think about it a long time and I say I would not come up with that process, I ought to have summary course as an elected official to be able to weigh in on it. So you do, you say no to their appointment recommendation. No, because it's... No, it's a process. It's the process of doing it. I'm not saying I want to go and say no, like you spent all this and now I think I'm better and I know better, but I would like to be informed. That's part of the reports. Yeah, and so that to me sounds like we need extensive reports with how you're doing the process. Or if he said one page, we said we had these options, we chose this over this because of this. I don't know how long, but I would consider that something that should be in a report. Yeah, that should be the report. I just know I have constituents who want me, I wouldn't have a vote on it. I wouldn't have how we're, so I... I guess I don't feel that way and I'm not on my vote. My vote is whether to confirm or not, that's my voice. And that is a, and I'll relate it back to another vote I've been taking and taking some hits for. My, and it's that vote on those appointments is not just these appointments are good, but the process is good. And I agree with the process that got to it. It's why I've been voting no on all these public way requests because I don't agree with the process at this point. And until we fix that process, those parking spots will be no. It's not that I don't agree with the marathon of this or that. Samantha, you're setting up, which is, I think it would be a very unfortunate situation that if I don't agree with the process that I'm getting major appointment recommendations that my only way of protesting the process is to turn down the appointment, which just seems like a very... But if you all did that, we would be saying no to the farmer. Like if all of us were thinking like you are, then we would be saying no to the farmer's market parking and all of that, which is... Which had nothing to do with the farmer's market. So what it has to do with the... It was our back that we didn't sit in. We're punishing the constituents for that. Well, so then we should set it better. And so if you get too many no's because of the process, that gives the committee number one an idea. It gives the council an idea, but there's also any councilor in any Countdown council meeting can always, or go to the chair, the president, you can always, if there's a report there, you can say whatever that is. You could say, I want to vote on this. I think this is too important. And I think that was at our last meeting, Darcy, I think you made a motion to do that. And the council voted against that motion, but the motion was made to say, this process here or this decision here, even though it's an internal one, is too important to be done and left to just the committee. We as a council need to talk about it. You can always make that motion. So, but it takes a lot of, I mean, it's putting one person in a bad spot, like, oh, you're the one who doesn't think so. I mean, it should be, the process should be such that it doesn't put individual people. So, I think we've got a strong difference of opinion on this. We can go back and think about the person. Because, I mean, for me, what happened was, okay, there was a deadline that we, not doing the appointments. And so I was like, we don't wanna punish and hold that process up because of, all right. And plus, I do know that you all have done a thought, I mean, the committee has done a thoughtful thing. They've got attorneys. So intrinsically, I trust the outcome, and I know there's this time. And so I'm gonna say, yes, we caught the report, like, what, in the afternoon or something? There was no time to look at what was there, and what, and it wasn't very clear. Yeah, and it wasn't like, what was, why did we choose what? I mean, none of that was there. Well, none of it was intended to be there because we didn't give you the process. So let's just, I wanna use, I think we should get divorce ourselves from this specific. Yeah, because it's not. This is what triggered it for me, because I think what, so I'm gonna try to move us off this because I don't think we have, I don't think we have agreement on it, but I would strongly want, and we can have one of these options, it's either out of here altogether or there's something that I think this notion that where it's the first time instituting a policy or practice that we will be following, it should be made as a recommendation to the council with a vote taken on. I don't wanna do this no action, this is too broad, no action ever that will bind it, so try to rewrite it in a more qualified way. And to me, it's this first time through. Once we adopt a way of doing something, we're at least for the next three years gonna do it unless we, unless we then discover we hate it, but. Yes, but if you need it then. But when I find out Northampton is doing it in a different way than we are in this and others, once I have more information and I didn't, I wasn't there as a decision-making, I feel like I need to be part of it. So I would just say that F is either end rewritten, and I'll take a stab at rewriting it or out and we come back to it next week, okay? And we come back to it next week, so I'm gonna yellow highlight it that as written, as written it's, and I'll send people, I mean, Dorsey and I both are advocates of something like this in here, but I'll just send two or three, like here are four ways of writing one sentence that we can consider next year, right? Yeah, just to this for the people in there. Not in a way that I'm not trusting you, but more that it should all be out in the open or why certain decisions were made in a practical way. But it is all out in the open and it will be more specifically out in the open when you brought your first, okay it will be, and if that's not even an issue then for me it's not an issue, it's the process, like the report reports all of that, because then if I read the report, if I have an issue I should be able to go to the people directly here. I have a concern about this, and then you might say, hey, we thought about it and this is why it is. It doesn't have to take up the whole of the council meeting, but I could go to the chair of the committee, is that what would happen? Right, okay. Should we use a different color highlighting on C to make it clear that it's a choose your own adventure sort of deal in terms of. Yeah, no, I'm gonna be highlighted somehow so that we'll remember. I'm gonna come back to it, I just can't in SharePoint do the formatting that I can do in Word, it's trickier. I was just thinking of highlighting because I think it's okay with the things that aren't highlighted, right? I'm going down, I'm gonna highlight them, yes. What are we doing? I'm just highlighting anything where there's not agreement, where it's a choose this or choose this, you know, option, so I'm gonna go option. There are different levels of rewriting. A certain shade of yellow means this, and a different shade of yellow means something else. So are we down to? Yeah. Yes, nice. So could someone explain to me why we decided to call it this just visit because that's what a lot of other communities do? Select committees, I think we actually have. Northampton has it. I just purely, this is a copy and paste from Northampton. We have, and then I realized later, we have something called special committees referenced and we might have special committees referenced. So the notion was, this is what the notion of this thing is, that you might want to set something up that has a short-term duration focused on a particular issue. And it's not us, we got rid of those words, standing committee, you know, so it's dealing, I could imagine that when we first did marijuana, if we had had a council, we might have made a council subcommittee that was dealing with this. And the special committees, as I understood, this is literally copy and paste, I just took out mayor in the town of Northampton from this, this was Northampton worded, that in this instance, they brought on some residents and some town employees because you wanted the committee to come back with a new way or a different way or address something that hadn't been done. And I thought it's a nice idea, so I stuck at it. This was why I blue-shaded it. I saw one in San Diego for homelessness and I thought that was really great, that you could have residents, you could have different people be part of it and then figure out an issue and then you bring it back. And the way they had framed it, I liked the language was to look at the legislative action needed and then fold that work back in. All that is understood, I just don't know why we're calling them select. Oh, we know what it's meant to say. It's no different than what we are saying. I get it. I would say this, right? I don't get it. I think, no. Any committee in our, oh, there's no such thing as a definition of ex-officio. There's no such thing as a definition of ad hoc. Our charter allows residents to be on any council committee if we so do. Okay, so the main thing you're saying is, it's the word, so if we call it. To me, it wasn't necessarily, it was part of it was the wording of, how is this different than ad hoc and if it's not different than ad hoc, do we need to define it? That was my other thing because, you know, like. Okay, do ad hocs allow, you're saying ad hocs allow. Oh, yeah. They allow residents and other people. Or we could stop calling things ad hoc. I'm saying choose one. So we could stop calling things ad hoc and we could call them select or we could call them special. Yeah, yeah. Or we could call them task force. We should pick something. Yeah, if they're the same thing. And my assumption when I agreed to select or special or whatever, was that it's a little different from ad hoc. But if you're saying they're all the same thing, then just use one word. The naming of it didn't bother me. I like the idea that we've only set it up for our own term because we're not creating a standing committee. We're addressing a specific issue rather than giving it a broad charge. Right, so we can call it just ad hoc committee. Just make it clear that this could even allow. What would GOA want to call it? That's the last one. GOA has already called them ad hoc. Okay, that is a true. Okay. An intermediate committee charge. I guess if they don't have separate sort of purposes from what we typically think of as an ad hoc committee, I don't see the need to have this section in there at all. Well, where do I define ad hoc committees then? We don't. That's what I'm saying is we should, we should some place have a definition that indicates clearly for everyone that in addition to subgroups of counselors being assigned a task, we can also have another group that's around a particular issue that just as Shalini said, has residents, has other, whoever needs to be at the table. It's not just council committees. So pick a term for that. And so if ad hoc is currently only applying to groups of town counselors, then I understand the purpose of having a separate name for this. But I understand that this concept actually applies to both. And so to me, it's a special purpose committee, which is great. Yeah, a special purpose committee. Special purpose committee, but what is that called? And do we need to specify that sometimes they'll be just counselors and sometimes they'll include others or do we just not even need to say, but we probably need to say in some fashion that it's okay to have a thing and what it's nomenclature should be. Let's see, we've got A under one way up at the top in addition to the finance committee established by the Charter of the Council may establish committees and ad hoc committees by majority vote. And ad hoc is literally listed in 2.68, right? That term is actually 2.68. Those are just committees in the council, right? Yeah, but that's what a select committee is based on who's appointing and all. Well, that's, because right here, the select committee, the president appoints all members, which is the same as a council committee. Right, but we're gonna, I see, you know, already, you know, every once in a while, I feel like I butt it up against the Charter, which was probably not intentional with the win. Right now, the president shall appoint all members. It can include members of the public, town employees and staff people. That starts to look like a multi-member body. And this is establishing a particular thing that allows our president to set the whole thing up with the town manager. I mean, the town manager would clearly have to approve a town staff person serving on a committee like this. So I think our biggest problem here is actually seems really small, but under one A, which you referred me back to, Andy Jo, is we dropped some words out of one A, and that's what makes a substantial difference in how we look at this. What the Charter actually says is its own committee standing or ad hoc committees, it does not say may establish committees and ad hoc committees by majority vote. And that actually does make a difference because this whole section is about council committees and committees at the town. We should have the word council committees and ad hoc council committees. May establish however you wanna phrase it, the words in the Charter say. I'll determine its own standing. I guess one says process to establish council committees and then A is in addition to the finance committee, the council may establish committees and ad hoc. So it's all under the heading one. I would like to include those words because that's directly what 26E says in case somebody forgets to look at that heading that says process to establish committees. It may establish its own. Yeah, okay. So we should just add its own between establishing committees. Go ahead, yes. And its own committees, I don't have any. It should say standing. It says standing or ad hoc, so we can't just pick half of that. So either it's standing an ad hoc or it's not, but I mean, they're not capitalized in the Charter, but standing an ad hoc committees. Okay, so standing committees we already have a section for which should now be item two, should now say standing council committees. Standing council committees. So that says standing down to two is number standing. And then ad hoc committees we should describe because ad hoc otherwise is not explained. And ad hoc should be explained and perhaps the way to explain that instead of saying select committees say ad hoc committees and then say you can make one, the council can make one that's just an ad hoc committee for a specific purpose like we've already done and just memorialize that. And then add to it that it can in fact also have residents and others on it with the wording you were thinking about for you know, you can't compel the town manager to put somebody on it, but you're asking the town manager. You can't say I appoint Stephanie to crawl up to this without saying to tell me what your word doesn't mean. Right, because then it flows. We got standing committees, we got ad hoc committees, but we've got multiple kinds of ad hoc committees, not just the kind that's interior council ones, but that are still council. It's not like we're suddenly setting up a new multiple member body out in the town. It's still our ad hoc for a particular purpose. This is not how you would run like, you know, parking forever kind of thing. You would sell. So what we're not talking about for only councilors, right? Yeah, we're trying to clarify that it could be either it could be just councilors or it could also be a larger group. It would depend on the issue. So I had moved up the works or study groups to consider new measures. I thought I put it up there because I thought that was similar to these ad hoc committees. I think the work group is the same. And so maybe use some of that wording in there. Councilmen established ad hoc committees to consider. Rather than saying for purpose of considering a particular policy or other purposes, maybe use your, if it, well, any, some combination. Yeah, meld those together and then it will cover both kinds of issues. Right, so any of all of these types would be under the ad hoc. Yeah. It's just figuring out how you would work. What we call things, right? And we, you know, in the past, between the struggle with that too is that a work group and ad hoc committee is at a standing committee. So we'll finally define it somewhere, standing in ad hoc, which GLL did also, but nobody had ever done it before. Charter said ad hoc, so. Right. Okay, so then I'm going to leave this blue right now on the thing and download this document because it says no committee will, somewhere in the middle I'll just say ad hoc committees may include just counselors. They may also be broader. So. You could just say ad hoc committees may include residents. Yeah, okay. Yeah, and you could also, and you wouldn't necessarily appoint, and we can argue about this for a while, but I think we could simply say you wouldn't necessarily appoint town staff to be a member of a committee. You would just ask town staff to participate and that's what you're asking the town manager to do. And then if the town manager says, well, I want them to have voting rights, then that's a whole different conversation. But I think the important thing is you want their expertise. And these groups are not necessarily likely to come up with split votes. They're more likely, they're just researching something for everybody else to act on. Or proposing a marijuana by law. Right, exactly. And so. And I would like to make sure that when you're making, if you're the one making that pretty, Kathy, if you would break out in a bullet point that no such committee shall exist beyond the current term, I think that's really important to not have that in the block of text. I think, because I think you made a very valuable point there that that is a thing. I know that formatting's a pain in the butt on this thing. That's right. No committee should. The ad hoc committee should not. Yeah. Ad hoc. Ad hoc committees are done at the end of a three year term. They don't move on. Because they should have resolved something. They should have done their work. If they haven't, then we probably need a different ad hoc or we need a new standing committee, right? We might need a new, if it turns out the ad hoc's work just seems to be going on and on. Maybe it's because there's a standing committee that should be taking its place. Okay, so I'm gonna get rid of work committee, right? Combine the two. Yeah, okay. Powers and duties, we should say standing. Standing committees and ad hoc committees. Undersecs in the title. Okay, so did you just jump all the way down to everything in powers and duties is okay? Oh, no. Oh, I got a question in there, too. Okay, I see some little. So B, I've got a couple of questions on. Okay, so mine is bulleted right now. I'm gonna turn it back in to. That'd be awesome. Word is so fun that way. It just decides. It just does stuff, right? Okay, A, I've got them back into letters. Thank you, Kathy. Okay. So I wanted to talk about B. Okay, right, I didn't yellow shade. You didn't yellow shade the S committees. That is a decision that needs to be made. Yes, I meant to. What needs to be highlighted? The very end of B, there was this thing that says about no council member may chair more than one standing committee unless there are more than so many committees. Right. And so we would have to put a number in there. Yeah, can I vote for, just take it off and let no more than one standing committee, period. And then because I can certainly envision a situation where somebody who's a chair of a standing committee would also chair an ad hoc particular thing. Okay, I'm fine. But as I said, I'm not gonna even argue for this. There's just good ideas from other places. This was Kathy and Jay on January 4th. I'm all ready for one standing committee. We've got 13 councils. It's not like we have nine councilors and six standing committees and there might be problems. Okay, what about restricting the president of the council? I think that's the other one I want to discuss. I'm perfectly fine restricting the president. I'm less fine restricting the vice president and I'm vice president right now. So I understand there is a conflict there. That's fine with me. I only found one place that put vice president in here. I'll just say the president's essentially chairing a committee. The vice president is not. Okay, I agree, that's why I'm taking it out. And can we turn B into two separate items? To be super, I'm sorry. I just want things less texty, more bullet point. Okay, the president of the council may not chair a standing committee. No council member. Right in front of your eyes, that is changing. Yeah. Okay, and I'm going to take the yellow highlight off because we fixed it. And again, this is because even though in other communities which we had all these good ideas. I'm good. I'm saying they weren't good ideas. It's just that now we're at a point where we're like, nah, let's not do that. I think it's good to spread out the chairing. The president part there again in several communities, they automatically do their demands. I just want to keep moving. We don't want that, right? We're still in agreement that we don't want the president to automatically chair. Yeah, we agree. Very agree, yeah. Okay, and D, I think I need to split it into two because the first is they should meet regularly and then special committees may be held. Right? Yeah, or it should be like. Special committee. Oh, special meeting. I'm looking at C because I'm not looking at it yet. It could be D, one and D, one and two. I'll just, I'll just. I'll just, A and B. Or it's one, two, little one, little two. Roman numerals. Yeah. Let's talk chartered as a, why we picked Roman numerals. At least we're trying to make things consistent. Most of the rest was boilerplate that we got right from the very beginning from somewhere. Yeah. So I don't actually understand what D means. I mean, what's the talent? Which, what? Committees shall meet regularly at such times and places as required by the town council or the committee's chair. How would the town council ever require us to do a committee meeting to do anything? I guess I'm not, I'm. We could just like. I wonder if we could. That's fine. Yeah. I like that. There's a, there's a. I like that phrase. The charter has some wording for. It's very. I want to give direction. Section nine. Article nine is like they shall adopt. It's the purpose of this is just that people know when we're meeting. Right. And we've coordinated with the rest of the meetings. All multiple member bodies of the town shall meet regularly at such times and places as they may by their own rules prescribed. Unless some other provision is made by measure. So I think you said the town council committee shall meet regularly at such times and places as they may prescribe. Here, thank you. They may prescribe. Got it. Where was that from? We should have. 912 a. No, I'm not going to. I'm not going to do it. That's all the member bodies. Yeah, I'm just taking it out. We're just stealing. We're just going to steal it from the charter. And I'm just going to do committee shall meet. I don't need to long committee meetings. I'm just making some. And then special meetings. And then. Committee chair or the request. I wish you. Yes, so that mirrors again 912 a or b in terms of random multiple member body can call special meetings. Yeah. The chair can or call by the chair or by one third of the members there. But. Exactly. And it kind of mirrors what we allow for the town council. It's good to specify this because there have been big fights in the past about who got to call committee. So I'm glad the charter called us out and then we should carry that through. This is, this was actually handed to us right at the beginning. And then many made an editor to own it. You know, when we first were given our charge, but we didn't put it in committee show. We coordinated with the clerk of the council who will. Yeah, that's, that, that doesn't belong. Can we just delete the under it says she'll hold the meeting no later than 60 days after appointment. And then committee meetings shall be coordinated with we can just get rid of it. Just really. And then that was boilerplate it also, right? The notice. Yep. I would get rid of the word notice because we haven't I moved it to just comply with the meeting. Say what? Yeah. Say what? The change was committee shall comply with the meeting. And can I just put, oh, no, I don't, I'll leave it. And then just separate the notice to a person. To a person. Seven days, I think. That's the child, right? I just, I just deleted that. But can we just make it a separate point? Yeah. That's what I mean. If you're making somebody come, it's good to carry that third from where else we have it. We're only gonna get through one section today. I'm so sad, but it's a big one. But it was a big one. And we had separate discussions, right? Five days is what the charter says. Ooh, does it say five? Notice the town council shall give notice of not less than five days to the representative of all the body town managers who were kind of like the director and notice all the specific questions on which the council seeks information. I'm reading from the charter, the person called to appear for the council under two H under required to respond. Okay, so that's no less than five. It's actually the word, instead of seven. Five is what the charter is. But it's no less than five. I think, my God, I would give a person at least a week. No, I know the charter's only five. Yeah, I know. If we want to be consistent with the charter, I'm not sure that we have a purpose for not being consistent with the charter for this. So you say no less than. It's no less than five days. Business days, so the charter's just five days. I think anything less than seven is business. I'd have to look at time computation. So shall give no less than five. And are you okay with shell and ease business days? Well, computation of time is a real thing. It's defined. There's a real definition of time. Computation of time is less than seven days. When the period of time designated is less than seven days, intermediate, Saturday, Sunday, and legal holidays are not included. So business days doesn't matter because of the competition. You don't say business days because business days is not a real definition. Computation of time is a real definition. We had this long conversation at BiLaw Reviews, so that's why it's four years. No, but I like the fact it says no less than five. That doesn't mean only give them five days. Can I fix this wording? Committees, it doesn't work. So can I say no less than five days to a person required to appear? Can I just say? Yes, but it may be gone. Well, who decides they're required to appear? I mean, there's kind of a phrasing issue there. So how is it phrased in the section of the charter that we're stealing from? I'll just do the committee. I'm looking, hold on. I think it's in separate sentences. You can make somebody count. Investigations, the town manager, the town council may require a representative of a multiple member body to appear before the town council to give any information that the town council may require in relation to the minute, blah, blah, blah. So it says the town council may require and the town manager and superintendent, the town council may require the town manager to provide. The town council may require the town manager to appear before it. And then it has the separate sentence about how much it knows. And then the notice is separate in a separate thing. And so does it seem odd to just say a person, it gives the impression that we can require people to appear before us? Yeah. That's what I'm trying to get at is how it was phrased in the charter originally. So it was three separate ones. It was a representative of a multiple member body, the town manager, the superintendent of schools and library director. And for superintendent of schools or library director appear before it at any time to provide specific information on the conduct of any aspect of the business of their respective town agencies that is within the jurisdiction of the town council. So I have a... And then they get to choose whether they send someone else. Right, yeah. All right, so a normal human being, we're not a court, we're not gonna put them in jail. So this all was applying to, we're asking ahead of a department or ahead of an agency, you know, the school to come before a committee, can we either take it out altogether or as Darcy just says, what does it mean to say a person because it's like dragging people off the street with five days' notice? You've been served. We didn't say. Homeless, we didn't test them. We could mirror the charter and do three separate sort of things, representatives of multiple member bodies, the town manager and the school committee, this superintendent and library director. And more, we could just say the town manager, we could always say, I've come up with wording it gets longer, it's not short, it's long. You might always want to include within the committee's jurisdiction. That's a good point, because you can't just ask them to come because you're curious about something. But I just heard you also say we're asking officials to come. Officials, right. So it's not a person, to town officials. I'm just, there's that long description. It's a representative of a multiple member body means the town manager, it's the superintendent of schools, the school superintendent and it's the library director to appear before it within the committee's jurisdiction. Other than representative of multiple member body, everyone else's they can send it, they make those three individuals and choose someone else to come. Is it worth considering, as Kathy's busily trying to type all that in, is it worth considering instead of typing all that in, that we're just trying to say the five days' notice as a reminder to people in here and then tell them to go read that section of the charter. We might just say, committees shall have the same ability as the full council under the section. Yes, because then that forces you to go read the whole thing. Section 2.8. Rather than copy it. For access on investigations and access to information. Because that's what you're saying. 2.8 regarding investigations and access to information. That simplifies it completely. I was joking about including SEC or section instead of the little symbol because you've got some platforms. I did sick. I did sick. So I really appreciate that. And just in case she noticed why you did that. No, the attorney in the old ways uses the symbol to vote. Yeah, makes it hard for the laborer to do searching and some platforms. But I think that's great because then it says, that kind of, if you're sitting in a committee, you go and look and see the rules. And access to information. Investigations, plural, and access to information. It's the title of section 2.8. Because arguably if we didn't write this in here at all, some people might say, well, you're not really acting, you're not really the council. You're only a subcommittee of the council. But so we make it clear we're being treated the same. Okay, you got it. That's why I wrote it. Committees shall have the same power as the council, charter section 2.8. Under charter section. Under. Okay, under. To act in, I don't know, under. Same power as the council. Under. For regard to investigation, to access to information as set forth in charter section 2.8. Okay. I'll fix this wording, why would you do something like that? Because you want within the committee's jurisdiction. So in there too. So I'll get all of that in this. And that section has the timeline in it. So we don't write the timeline. Then we don't have to timeline it. Which also forces people to go and look at it because otherwise they're gonna be more tempted to just use this shorter version. When it's a complex section, I say make people go with the charter. That makes it easier. Yeah. We don't have to come up with our own wording. Do we decide shalls the right word, Kathy? Isn't there a discussion? No, we say we're gonna decide it at the end. No, but for a period of public comment. Yeah, we... Shalls the right word? Are we good with that? Oh yeah, no, I only see... My shall versus must was only. There were four places in the bylaw that had the word must. Throughout the bylaw, it otherwise said shall. It should be consistent. No, those musts were real musts. In the original, when you looked at them, you had to do this. It wasn't so much that I thought must it was a better word. There were only four instances and they really were obligations, but in any case, shall is the better word normally. And it says shall, and in fact, it says shall in section 912, so shalls go. I don't think we used any of that. That was a good move to just try and be consistent. So was our intention in the more global view to, you know, one thing in the section H where it's complicated and we need people to go read the charter, was our intention ever to add a charter reference to basically the end of every sentence that has one? No, okay, just thinking, just being clear. It was in certain sections we did. Because some things we've said in here are in the charter and some things obviously aren't. And so I wasn't, one method would be to every time you use something that's in the charter would be to cite the charter. I'm okay with not. We just need to be clear when we explain it to people that some of these are exactly the same as in the charter and some are not. It's not specified unless it's something complex. Okay. So what did we decide? So for example, when we wrote the remote participation policy years ago, there are certain state rules and there are also things you're allowed to do locally. So every single sentence we either cite the state rule or the local rule. I just meant like, what are we deciding? I think what we have been doing, and then this is what I think when we do the final review, we can say, do we wanna do more of it? We've only been dropping charter section X or Y when it is literally taken from that specific place or it helps with, this was shorthand for, we can do a bunch of things without writing a full paragraph. So we didn't do all the places where something we would drop, like the charter says we're supposed to meet regularly, we didn't say charter section, whatever, you know. That's what I was wondering about. Is that what we need to? We're not doing it. We're not sure if it was more on a timeline or action. So the other way I would think about it is if we ever wanted to come back for the annual or every two year revision, there's certain things we can't change because they're dictated by a general or a charter. There are other things that the charter was permissive and vague and we're, you know, not, it didn't say which committee, it was broad, so we had to do something, but it didn't dictate how we had to do it. So do we wanna finish this section J through N today, or is there something you wanted to switch gears to, Kathy, because you thought you really wanted to get through something else today? Okay, well, the issue, I think we've got a couple more larger discussions here that are only one-liners, but it's like, do we want the men or not? So, and we've got 15 minutes left. So maybe I clean this up. So there's a more decent version one to look at next time. A version two, you know, this is now version one, version two, and we come back to those. So the, I had, and I'll tell you what the two things are so people can think about it. One, I didn't question the town attorney's decision, but I thought it was odd that if we create a committee that's not already envisioned by the charter, okay, the charter has some committees that have counselors in it and it used wording like the council shall appoint these, that if we ever committed another committee and we have one instance of one so far that had a mixture of council members and residents, I have never seen under separation of powers a hired manager appointing a member of the legislative body. And it wasn't because it's normally considered a separation of power. There's an executive branch and there's a legislative branch. And I can't think of anybody of government I've seen where, you know, a governor would choose which members of the legislature served on a committee. That was, so I wanted to come back to just, we can't change, we got legal advice on that but I wanted to question that. Then the second, I have a drafting note. I have it under where there are committees that are multi-member committees. I just literally put a yellow highlight because I knew it had already been decided and we had a real. It's the old highlighted on, no, let's not. It's a number five, I've got it just sitting here. It was five. Yeah, but I've got it just sitting here. And then the other one was when we have and Mandy flag, which I think is right, we have a few committees named in the charter that aren't committees of the council. And what is the process that the town council uses and we used a process to get us so we could have a joint, a JCPC. But the process was the president makes us a recommendation and we decide whether we like what her recommendation is. We could take a vote every year on how many people want to be on that and if there are more members than not choose. So those are two things just to come back to and I provide, it's the same motion I made. It's under BE, right? Yeah, it's the same motion I made. Yeah, it's under the committees that aren't committees of the council. And Mandy pointed out that the resident, the- The resident's participating in budgetary commission is essentially an ad hoc committee. It's not a long-term committee. So it'll be done in a year and a half. So I want you to just come back and discuss this but there are probably a bunch of other things in here that we do or don't want. So I was wondering, could we finish A? I have a few things in A that might take a lot of time. Okay, I'm ready. We're still in, wait, we're in A of what? We're now doing J through N of item six. Starting at, is it minutes? Minutes, yeah. Yeah, okay. So I want us to take out the, this may rotate among members because of course, like any of you, I'm pushing that we have staff for this because it's insane. Exactly, and we didn't put that too. So we're assigning a clerk and I don't think we need quotation marks, just capital clerk. And then everyone knows the clerk can vary from one meeting to the next. Until we get a real one. Okay, taking it out. And then minutes, keep the minutes, shall record votes taken by each of us. That needs to be two separate points. It either needs to be minutes A and B or it needs to be J and K because those are two separate concepts. Okay, assign a clerk, record the votes because the charter says you have to record votes. That was the one that made me think, should we, do we have to quote the charter every single time? I mean, the citation and I appreciate that we decided not, okay. It's not an A. It's a show of creativity, it's fine. So reporting, my comment is that paragraph doesn't conform with the packet deadlines we've created in the meeting section of the rules. Okay, so we'll put the, we'll put the, we'll put the exactly the same. Okay. We are a packet language into reporting in terms of what our reports are. Okay, I'm going to, I'm going to yellow highlight because I know what section that is. We did, Mandy turned that back into days. We turned it into like so many days. We turned it into days so we have specific wording. Yeah. Just, I would just mirror the wording for that. The only thing, I'm not, I'm wondering about the last, well, I'm also wondering about how you can help people if they don't follow the rules. But aside from that, I'm wondering about the last sentence. Committees are subject to. So I, I appreciate that we don't want reports that say nothing to report on paper, but based on what? So does that mean that every single, we are, do our agendas, again, connecting this to another piece, do our agendas assume that every single time the council meets, there's an opportunity for every single committee to make a report? If that's true, which I think it is. Just take it out. Then why do you have to say something? I'll take this, how about if, if a committee is not submitting a written report. Then they could submit, then they can provide a verbal. Well, I'm just saying it allows the clerk to know I'm not waiting on a written report to include in a packet. So are we saying, so there are a bunch of different ways to go with this, but it sounds like you may be saying that in order to make things move along efficiently, rather than having the clerk pull the chairs to see if they're turning in reports, is that it would be the active duty of each chair to say whether or not there will be a written report. That does not preclude a verbal report. It doesn't mean you want them anything to say. Yeah, that's what I just changed it to. The committee is not submitting a written report. They shall inform the president and clerk, period. Period, it's just. They shall inform the president and clerk, period. Period, yes. Take out the no report. Exactly, because then that way they can still, because something may have come up since that deadline versus what's happened last night at the council. And so they may have a verbal report. Oh, we're gonna talk about that. Fixed, done. Next Tuesday, done. So just going back, just for a minute to minutes. Sure. Does the minutes section assume that that's all we have to say about minutes? So that is the different, that is different than what public records requires for minutes. Public records only requires minutes under state law only require what the vote was, not actually indicating what member voted which way. So we are altering what state law requires for minutes with that sentence. Okay, what we could. I'm just suggesting that we, the AG talked about minutes when she was here, or the, what's the name? Lauren from Casey Law. She talked about minutes and she said that they need to include a reasonable summary of what was discussed. So maybe what I should do is what Mandy just had me do on the days. We have good language on that up on agenda, on regular meetings. We have minutes shall be taken. They should include a decent summary, a record. I should just put a copy and paste that out here. Either put it all in there or say minutes shall be applied with the rule, yeah, whatever. I would much rather do that. Send people from here over to that section. So they don't think this is the only place that talks about minutes. Send people over to that. Just a committee meeting shall be counted. Yes, committee meeting shall be followed. I too, and that's the one place you're more extensive rather than having a short version of that. We get your cross-reference ourselves. X point X, whatever it is. Whatever it'll be in the end. And that's good because that already has a record of each vote taken by a member and there should be a clerk. So we can just get rid of all of this, right? Right, and that way nobody's using just this and forgetting that there's a whole nother section. Okay, good work, Darcy. Good work. For all my question was, does it belong here or should I have really included it in the legislative process section? Yeah, this is a section called. We actually, so this would be, does a committee, so does a committee have a power duty to re-cross-refer, because that's where it is now. Otherwise we have it other on your whole legislative process. Right, my one question was, does this belong in council committees or legislative process? That's another complete different conversation is kind of committee, automatically refer to another committee. We started that conversation last week, didn't we? Yeah. I'm not sure we resolved it. Should I just color code this to come back to this? Because one issue might be just to remove it. I don't think we have a decision. We didn't make a discussion. It's just, it was here from Jen Gray. But now that you've got it in the other section. Well, I'm not sure I have this direct automatic in the other section. I'm gonna leave it in here for now and then we'll, so that it goes somewhere, but I suspect it belongs over there. We haven't talked legislative process today, right? No, right. Okay, so I can move it there and put it there for conversation next week. I bet it'll scan better over there in terms of and it kind of jumps out at you there. To whatever I wrote there. And then we can drop, and we set it up there. It was kind of difficult. The other, if we could go back to reporting for just a minute, I want to clarify something. So that's L now. Keep changing. The yellow part is totally cool. And with the last little bit, the first sentence, however, I don't know that there's, are we sure we really want to force committees to do a report every single time? I don't think we do. So I think instead we just alter that second sentence to say something that makes it clear what we talked about earlier, that you gotta tell people whether or not you're gonna have a report so they can count on it in the packet. And that's like your responsibility as a committee rather than having to ask you. But it's totally okay if you don't. And then eventually a counselor might say, how come we haven't heard from that group in a while? Like that would be a totally reasonable thing to ask. So do you want to start with, so I'm just thinking committees, shall report orally or in writing? For sure. Shall regularly report to the council. Written reports shall be provided to the council president, the council, whatever. Is it regular generic? No, you think that the committee will let that go? As needed? That's what I think Geo is using in the charge. Okay. As necessary or as needed. That's where it is. It's in the charges, right? I try to get us to have specific stuff in the charges that says you're gonna tell the council things. So it's as needed or as needed. You must know the default should be your or not. And only notify when there is a report. Okay, so I haven't read it. I hear what you're saying. You should be notifying if there is a report rather than having to notify every single time. Every single time. That makes sense. So we can rephrase that. So it says committees shall report to the council as needed. I'm just gonna, ooh, right. And then I'll move up. If there is no written report, they shall, whatever, reports shall be provided no less than whatever date. And they can just say written reports. Of course, right. So I'll report it this way. Rubble reports may be provided as needed. You may want to just do it on your own, but instead of having so much communication every week, every time that, oh, there is no report, oh, there is no report. Could we just have the default that they will write when there is a report? Do we need to say you shall tell them? Yeah, I like that. Yeah, oh, I like that. You don't have to tell them when you're not. You just better have your report in. Right. Right. Oh, I like that, Shalini. Right, and then, you know, if they haven't heard from that committee in a clerk or the president as a purpose of the committee, I'm like, you really still don't have a written report? It's been three meetings since you had a written report. Then they can ask, but rather than it being another task for a committee to check off. Just say written reports are provided by the step line. Right. I think that has been done. Once we have staff support, maybe we will have more regular committee reports. But then it's, once we have staff support. Then we'll have really regular committee reports, but in the meantime. But I do like the idea of saying, one, it's written reports that, not just reports, but written reports that have to be submitted in order to do that. But then also giving the option of verbal reports because people may well have something. They want to just tell some characterizing two sentences. Do they want to specify that anything, any time of recommendation is being made today? Yes. That makes sense. I don't know how you're working on that. Maybe that's a subset of this. So you've got verbal reports. You've got written reports and you're like, by the way, if you're trying to get the council to do anything, you can't just ask them verbally to do it at the meeting. You need to have some written support for that. Okay. That makes sense. And then if something weird comes up and a committee does try and do that verbally, we can say, well, the rules say X, Y, Z. So are we gonna suspend the rule? Is this really that important? And that's why you have rules, right? Okay. To set the baseline. Okay, I will clean this up, but it's got typos and duplication, but it's basically. Committee shall report to the council as needed. Committee shall notify the president of clerk if there is a written report. Any recommended action must be provided in a written report. Report shall be provided X days before. I mean, that'll be the flow of this messy, messy thing. I think we just got through A. Yeah. Yay. So that makes very little bit. That was complicated. There was actually a lot of stuff in there. Okay. So. I'm just gonna make sure this is actually in my download. I want to, I want Kathy who's doing all this work for us to feel comfortable where we're at. And then I want us to talk about what we're focusing on next time and then I want to address. Okay, so we've got, we, we, meaning you, are on the April 22nd agenda for liaisons. Yes. And the expectation, as I understand it, is we already gave a few paragraphs on what we think the process should be, but you will have a list. Right. And we have one more meeting, which is next week before. So I was thinking maybe you could have that ready. So we, we are totally ready so that they will get it by Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning for the packets. Okay. So yeah, what else are we doing? So then next week, Mandi, we're finished coming back to this legislative process. The process was completely sort of, there's a lot new in that. We'll revisit council committees. So we have to finish council committees and we have to revisit legislative process. Which is a need. And then legislative profits. And then we had one minor additional thing into thing called meetings was just Alyssa adding a couple of notation. Yeah, I have it uploaded. Revisit, I'm sorry, revisit legislative process. I'm trying to get the words right for the meeting posting. Finish council committees, revisit legislative process. I already have the thing about the asides. Final detail on the thing called, section called meetings. Yep. That was in today's posting. So I'll just do that. Then what I said I would do, Mandi, on everything else or everything but these three sections. All right. I was gonna continue to do what you started to do and bring them in to a document. Where we've now got the charter references and being charter sec periods, blah, blah, blah, Paran. Try to do that consistently so we can see what it's looking like. We haven't, if we could get to it. I sent everyone the revised outline which is just simplified. But Shalini a while ago did values, both Dorsey and I gave her feedback on values. And I've included both of you. And so we've got a values appendix to look at too. I've uploaded that with everyone's. Right, so I was gonna think that if we could do finish committees, get through legislative and get through meetings and do values. I put it down so that will get pushed in. Then we had those. Yeah. So is that values in the appendix? It's an appendix. And it's a finished document that we've all seen. We just have to look at it. It's a revisit. Yeah, it's a v2. So it would be, if we could get that done. And Liaisons, I think Mandy is gonna be one sentence in the rules. And right now the rules draft says, Liaisons to commerce. Well, we've got two different versions, a version I had and the version you had. Either a town council may select from among its members, Liaisons to other multiple member bodies, including the school committee ideas. Or the town council can designate counselors as not voting Liaisons to multiple member bodies, the school committee, and the library trustees. Okay, so we have the charter reference. Right. Those are the two options, sort of. Yeah, and that's sort of covered in the report with the each town council. So, but in addition to taking that text and making it its own separate report, it's also with some application of both of those. It's also then the charter of. And that's what I'm bringing back. Which needs to be in those rules. Whereas council Liaisons, one sentence is fine. Right. But because of how the charters were in the process for Finland. Right, which we'll be discussing. All right, so we just come back to, both of those wordings are actually fine with me so we can just decide which we like better. They're both in currently be under this fee, whatever. Okay, I'm gonna do this. When you create the new burden. So the only change from today's posting, which currently has a whole bunch of boilerplate to cover everything, including Liaisons and finance committee in case we were visiting that. It also said likely this week, town council committees legislative process, Liaison and Exificio roles meetings. So all that is still holding true as well as values. Yeah. Okay, I'm terrified, but I think I can just close this down though, right? After you do all that work. No, no, no, I did the work here and I downloaded it. So let me just make sure it's sitting. So you did 1132, yes, that should be as near to. It's close. My internet just keeps getting to be smaller and smaller. Okay. All right, so that's the plan. And if people, the original work plan, I was looking at it and if we get to, so we're saying one, two, three, we have 10 working sections now. So we'll be talking about three next week, but I'm talking about then having something opened up that has seven in them. And then if we get these finished, they can be added and values could be added. So by the week after we could be looking at the equivalent of the first full draft of the thing. And meanwhile, people would have been able to see the way it looked, the flow of it, and the nomenclature, like if it's rule four and it becomes 4.1, then is it 4.1 A in parentheses? Like, we're just gonna have to figure out what that is. And I wanted then to, when we presented my hope was we had the document we're presenting and we either yellow shade something where we think it's new, different, creative, or draw attention, or we do a one-page report that says, you know, here we have our draft. Please pay particular attention to X, Y, and Z. But so we just keep a track of that mentally on if we wanna draw people's attention to something that wouldn't be necessarily, they wouldn't know to know it's coming. There might be a lot of yellow, but it's not a hard thing to do, then, to read through a document that most of this is just telling you a quorum is seven people or motions has got nothing unusual in it. So, or we could flag yellow shade a whole section title, it's got some stuff in it. But I think it would then expedite, because we're on the timeline, we're getting it a first draft to the council and then a second draft to the council, you know, once we get their feedback and then a final version voting and adopted on June 3rd. So we've got a timeline that allows from for coming back again and making changes, which is why we have to stick with the timeline we've got because otherwise we don't have that. So you're saying we'd be looking at a... Well, the 30th is the last time, the 23rd is the first week. So we're looking at having a draft on the 23rd. So if I'm doing next week, next week is the sixth, you know, I've got something that, like, look at that. Next week would be seven sections in a document. And then the 23rd would have everything in the document for the first time, including the values section. And so we could be looking at that so we could get to something that looks spiffier by the 30th. Absolutely. The plan is the 23rd and the 30th we'll be discussing the whole document as a document. Yeah, as a whole document. And then the council meeting, there's a meeting on the sixth and a meeting on the 20th, which gives us if we actually have a decent looking document on the 30th, which was the plan, it can be in the packet for a group discussion that date. We meet, we meet, if we keep a monthly meeting to revise it to come back with a substantially revised, if needed, by the 20th. Potentially with a final vote on the 20th. And if it's good to go and then if there's still something more, the final vote can be on the third. And if the final vote is a final vote, we basically like it. And our queen of GOL who's sitting here or says there's still some GOLs gonna have to make sure the notation is right or whatever. But there's, we just need to adopt working rules by June 3rd. We'll have to see what the council wants. My thoughts are we're kind of a subcommittee of GOL that probably shouldn't need to go directly to GOL before council adoption. And if there's anything monkey, it comes to GOL anyway. Just for, and I'm thinking of just, it's just like cleanup that the notation isn't as clear as it could be or something, but any substantive thing has been. So I think we've got enough time as long as we can. We've got three meetings. Yeah. So three meetings before the council. Season. For the first time. For the first time. And then three meetings with the council. Are we, I can't even remember. Are we meeting every week now? Yes. Yeah, so we've got the 16th, we'll have seven sections. The 23rd, we'll have everything in it. And then 30th, we'll be reading it again. You know, like any changes we wanna make when we look at them will be. So the GOL will be to come back on the 23rd every one of us with specific things we still wanna discuss. Right. And it seems like, you know, there's the potential of like long discussion on those things, but if we can just decide to do what we had said, you know, put. Have an option A, option B with. Or different opinions in these, or. Right, if you go to the council that way without us having to argue about it. Especially with the first time. Just to express our disagreement. Right, well it doesn't really make that much difference, I mean, it doesn't. Yeah, no, there'll be a nice way of saying it, I think, if it is like, you know, some but not all of us. Right. Like option A, or option B. It would be perfect because May 6th, or whatever it is at the council, we don't have to have a final. We can say, here's three things you guys need to discuss so we can come up with final wording. Because we disagree. We weren't five votes on any side of the matter. Right, I like that because it's better than saying three against two, or two against one in an abstention. It's just, we've got option B. We're giving you options on this. And so I will, on the things we. We're gonna give them options anyway, right? We're gonna give them options anyway. We need to them saying, right, a majority of us wanted X, they would still be able to look at it and say, well, we don't agree. Of course, of course. We're giving them additional. No, but I'm. Well, we're looking to look at it right away. We disagree, we didn't even bother to take the vote because our disagreement was so. Right. We thought the policy was so substantial that we thought the first vote should be the full concept. Right, so we'll do just what you just said. That in the document won't be, this is rule 1.1 C. This is 1.1 C with three options, including it doesn't exist. You know, what, or two, whatever it is. And we'll be red shaded, orange shaded. Something that makes it really stand out, a decision is being made here as opposed to some interesting things that we all liked and we put in that we wanna draw your attention to. So my point is, we don't have to waste time arguing about it anymore. Yes, right. We can just reflect the options. You got it. You got it. We need to find the new things to argue about, but we identify them. And we actually. One of our defaults can't be identified and say, this just goes to the council. Yeah, right. Exactly. We can stop talking about it. And that makes total sense. And so the other question is again, lead time for these things, right? So if what we're trying to give the council is something that is not just a, this is perfect trust us kind of deal. We're giving that on six that has options and alternatives and they obviously, we would like them to have it. Is it realistic for us to have it the Wednesday before the six? Yep. Even though that rule's not being followed anymore. Yes, because we press that our report got issued to the council on the sixth, even if the rest of the packet isn't ready. Because it's a lot for somebody who's not been looking at this the way we have for them to try and process it. Yeah, I think in my sense, I mean, we can definitively let Lin know we're on, we will be on time. So, but then it should be, however she thinks of the agenda for the six has an hour blocked out off for it. For at least the presentation can flag the things we want people to begin a long discussion. If necessary, take a vote on these things. That means then probably the 31st or needing the 31st. Maybe Melissa, whoever's going to write for the report. Has a draft report. Has a draft report for us so that we can flag things to go in and you're not, whoever's writing it is not tasked with fully writing it between. Tuesday, midday and Wednesday morning. That's great. So, we would be looking at a draft from you on the 30th of the report to the council. Right. So, things that we want included in the report in terms of highlighting. Yeah. So, Nick's ideas for this for inclusion. Why don't you just make a document for that? Yeah. Share point. Yeah. And then we can dark things in as we're talking about it. I understand. Isn't this exciting? It is. Yeah. Yeah, it's just great. We've got about a month to go and then we're done on Tuesday morning. You know, when the flip, when the fleet from the downtown parking group came through to the councillors that would you like to put someone on the council? I immediately said, oh, that works perfectly because roles will have ended and it's only a two month commitment. So, this summer will still be, there will still be a summer. And I can go on my raft in the second week of July without worrying about it. You know, I am really hoping that second meeting in July gets canceled, but I definitely will not be. I will be on one raft and there will be no. Somebody want to move to a chair? Yes. I move. We can stop. Chit chat. I move. All those in favor, please say aye. All right.