 I'm going to call the Committee on Outreach Communications and Appointments to order at 8.04 p.m. Thank you to my committee members for entertaining that fairly lengthy and unexpectedly lengthy gap between the interviews and this meeting. We are all learning our lessons for how to do this better next time. So on the agenda for this meeting, the sole agenda item is to discuss and develop a recommendation to the town council regarding an appointment to the planning board. And so we just saw the interviews of the three candidates for appointment to the planning board. The way I want to try to structure this debate and frame it a little bit is by the selection guidance that you should have in front of you and that's also up on this screen. So per the OCA process, we adopt selection guidance to help guide us in our selection of a candidate. It's there to help us understand what we're and to remind us what we're looking for in a candidate. This selection guidance was developed a little bit in our meeting on January 6th and then further in our meeting on January 8th and officially adopted on January 8th. The selection guidance has two sections. One is criteria for a healthy multiple member body. I would probably argue that 1A through C is not necessarily relevant to this appointment. Since these are all new people, there are no reappointments, but section 1D is relevant and these are the characteristics of effective planning board members that were developed by the members of this committee at the meeting on January 8th. The second section is input from the body's chair. We talked about this briefly at our meeting on January 6th and then agreed that it would be put in directly as it was written from that meeting into the selection guidance. And so this is comprised of information from both an email from the chair of the planning board, Christine Gray Mullen, and also notes from the meeting that I had with her shortly after she sent that email. And so what I'd like to do is for us to use the selection guidance to frame our discussion since it is literally the criteria or literally the aspects that we said we should consider in a candidate. And so I'm going to ask that we talk about the interviews and we talk about the candidates in the context of this document that we've adopted with the goal of trying to recommend to the council the candidate that we best feel meets the selection guidance and given all of that. So with that, I am going to open the floor to discussion by the committee as to impressions and which candidate you felt like best alliance with the selection guidance adopted by this committee. Comments by this committee. George. I think the first thing that I wanna note is something that the planning board chair pointed out that we're dealing with a body where all current planning board members have four years or less of planning board experience. And so that's something that is very much on my mind when I look at the candidates that are in front of us. If this were a body with a larger number of more seasoned individuals, I would perhaps look at this group of candidates in a slightly different way. So one thing I just wanna point out which I'm sure is obvious to everyone here is that we're dealing with a body that at the moment does not have a lot of depth in terms of experience. So that's something that very much is on my mind when I look at the candidates that we're being presented with. I agree with the chair that it's difficult to apply A, B, and C, I don't think they're really applicable other than again pointing out the fact that this is a body which as we said does not have a lot of experience with planning as a group. D, I think all the three individuals gave us examples of experiences where they felt that they had exhibited some degree of characteristics one, two, three, and four. Four perhaps, perhaps a little bit less so. I think one of the candidates clearly I think has had more experience with regulatory situations, regulatory function. So that's my initial thought. I'll probably have some more later. Thank you. Other impressions from the interviews or feelings about how the candidates relate to the selection guidance that we have adopted? This is rarely a committee without opinions, so. Other thoughts, Alyssa? Thank you. I'm not sure that our, although I'm still pleased with the questions we asked and we've learned some things for future and I will go right ahead and say right now that it was the candidate's choice to answer a question with a yes, no answer. It was not a requirement that they didn't use their three minutes to provide an actual answer beyond yes or no. And I think that was also of interest that some chose to do that is it was perhaps not as easy to tell as I might have hoped the part about ability to work in a collaborative spirit and openness to compromise. I think there was a varying amount of the understanding of the regulatory function of the body. I think there was a reasonable amount of open-mindedness but I'm not clear on the, I'm not sure how we get to it differently but I'm not sure I heard a lot of examples and I think it was interesting that we worked really hard to make this super transparent that there was none of this was a gotcha. This was all provided to the candidates ahead of time. They saw the selection criteria. They literally could have written essays about each one of these things. These were not secrets as to what we were looking for and many of these things were not touched on in detail from the candidates and so I think that in some ways makes our job a little harder. I do wanna follow up on what George said about the current status of the body at seven members is there is not a huge amount of experience there and they have expressed their frustration with that and that does make me less interested in bringing in a non, so to speak as was referenced during the interviews I believe a non-professional I think actually professional expertise in some aspect of the things that the planning board is doing would actually be more useful to them right now than some of the other valuable characteristics the other candidates brought forward at a different time might be a really good fit but I think at this time I'm preferring the professional experience of one of the candidates. Dersi or Sarah? Sarah. So I'm not sure that I have anything that's wildly different from what George or Alyssa has said. I think that I do think that I felt a pretty good sense of I would say one and two. I think Alyssa's right in the openness to compromise. I'm not sure how we get to that differently although I do think it was fairly illuminating to me but I think the thing that really again comes to me is that we have an inexperienced planning board and one of the things that the chair has said is that they really need someone who knows the ins and the outs and does not have to be brought up to speed and is a professional so I'm just saying that I agree that I think one of my bigger deciding factors right now is that that is what the chair is saying that the board needs in order to be functional so. George. I don't know about anybody else but I was particularly excited by the candidate, Mr. Marshall, who has experience with creating a living building and one of the really remarkable buildings in our town and very much hands-on intimate experience which he described in some detail and I thought given our concerns of sustainability, the fact that here's someone who's going to bring that obvious commitment to the planning board and actually work to make something happen, actually something quite remarkable. I think, I don't know if all of you but certainly I and others of you had the opportunity to tour that building and it's very impressive and so we had in front of us this evening someone who was intimately involved in making that happen so I personally found that quite exciting. Disconnection with the university and UTAC, the fact that he also has had experience with off-campus leasing and housing which is obviously a big issue in our town. I thought that also was quite striking. The others I think bring a good spirit and certainly a commitment to the community and a sense of wanting to be involved and have been involved in a number of ways as they describe but I'm very much struck by the very real world experience that Mr. Marshall brings in the very areas that planning is involved. Yes, so to build off of that just to add because I was surprised by the discussion of the living building experience because in the materials that we've been provided for this that was not originally in there and so I was unaware of that experience but the moment he referenced first I think an interesting climate change with regard to the first question that he answered about why he wants to serve and then his elaboration and talking about his experience building the Hitchcock Center did strike me in the context of two things one of which being our recently adopted climate action goals that we passed and the fact that one of the things that we're gonna need to do as a community and as a town government is very seriously think about how we implement them because they are admittedly bold and that will necessitate some rethinking in how we develop and plan as a community and the second aspect that I thought was interesting was that one of the big tasks before the planning board is going to be the master plan update and one of the things that we keep hearing probably needs updating is the sustainability aspect of the master plan and I think certainly Dave Zomac at some point referenced that the master plan that really needs to be beefed up when it talks about how we're dealing with climate change I think both adaptation and mitigation and so I was also struck by the living buildings thing in the context of both our climate action goals and this focus in updating the master plan to sort of beef up its sustainability requirements both of which relate to the planning board. Other thoughts Darcy? I was struck by how I am having a hard time deciding because I felt like all three candidates were attractive and that the two candidates that are lay people are both college professors and are obviously if they were chosen they would be quick learners, they're both very motivated obviously really were earnestly competing for the position and clearly bright able people so I originally when we were asking how we should decide this I was someone who said I didn't really want to decide right after the interviews because I want the way my brain works is that it helps if I have if I sleep on it if I have some time to think about the decision and so I'm not sure because I would rather have more time to decide. George? One question or concern I have about Mr. Marshall is his connection to the university and to what degree that might create complications for him on the planning board. It would seem that there might be certain things that would come before the planning board that he simply could not be involved in. I just don't know. If we had staff here maybe they could but I don't know if Alyssa has any thoughts on this and she certainly may not that's fine but that's the only concern I had was given his obviously strong connection to the university and to its planning mission. I'm excited by that fact but I also wonder if we could create some, I mean there may be a fair number of issues that he simply can't be involved in. Is that, yeah? Alyssa? So obviously the person asked would be our counselor Steve Schreiber since he served on the planning board for many years with that experience. I would argue that it's not a problem at all for planning board. I can see it being a problem for potentially some other committees and potentially for town council which is why we all had to do a whole ton of disclosures associated with that but in fact because of the way the zoning by-law works and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts the university has almost nothing to do with our zoning and so they get to do largely whatever they want and so the advantage, because I was thinking about that again too right and so the advantage is that although they don't have to take our master plan into account when working on their master plan even though years ago when we had the comprehensive planning committee we did have somebody from the university there who was ostensibly giving information back and forth associated with that they can act completely independently with their master planning and with their building and need almost nothing from the town when they do then yeah there would be a recusal but it's incredibly rare and it has been my experience is that it's incredibly rare and it's made up for by the fact that in general planning if they're talking if we have a connection back and forth while we're redeveloping UTAC right cause U3 doesn't exist and has it to the steering committee doesn't exist as it did and he served on that and while we're waiting to see what the new UTAC might look like which he may or may not be the right fit for depending on what the town manager and the chancellor are looking for in terms of that connection too but I see that as an exciting opportunity for him to say oh I know that the zoning subcommittee which he may or may not be part of is working on something and have they ever and they wanna talk about incubators for the UMass and so why don't I connect you with somebody over at UMass who knows about incubator space so it could be really valuable there and I don't see it as something based on just past history that has been an issue fortunately because in many ways we lament their independence from us but in some ways it helps in this case. Sarah. So I just wanna say that those things also stood out to me I felt like at first I was worried about the connection with UMass but then I'm hearing so much from constituents that they feel like they don't know enough about what UMass is thinking and the fact that he was on UTAC I thought well that might actually be a strong connection to actually finding a way to communicate better with UMass about what their planning is and to have it so that their planning is we could find a way again like we had with UTAC where the town's planning and UMass's planning they're communicating with each other I think that that could actually be helpful and with the sustainability I felt like I just wanna say again that because this is so big for us one of the things that I hear from constituencies where if we're spending money on things on making buildings sustainable we really would like to know what technologies are working and this is a person who's actually built successful buildings and I feel like would have a recent and working knowledge of technologies that I'm just using this word again that work. Other thoughts, comments? George. Again I was struck by Mr. Marshall's comment that when he first came to Amherst his first impressions I don't know if I have this quite right but his first impressions were not quite what he thought the town saw itself. So someday maybe I'll get a deeper insight of that but I was impressed by the fact that he was willing to suggest that the way he saw Amherst is not necessarily the way the community or what some perhaps sees itself. I think also I was also struck by his willingness to politely but somewhat question our question. I mean it wasn't the only one and I think that was valuable. We certainly got some feedback. No I know we did but I thought he made it an excellent point. I think actually both speakers made an excellent point and that's, you know we're learning and we'll eventually refine this hopefully but you know he made a thought a good point about our question and yet he still answered it and so I was impressed by his willingness to I don't know if I would say not kowtow but he was willing to speak frankly. So I'll take this pause to sort of insert some of my opinions from what I saw. So I think that there were two things that I particularly was looking for this evening. One was what I've heard from current and former members of the planning board is that one thing that makes a successful planning board member is their ability to work together, to collaborate, to compromise and I think we saw that from all three individuals. I think they all had really good examples of how they've worked together. Certainly Mr. Marshall and committee work, Mr. Greeny in multiple settings and especially the one that he gave about sort of what could have been a contentious meeting and also Mr. Hirsch from more of a organizing and activism capacity. I thought that Mr. Greeny gave really good thoughtful answers about working together as a committee and how to collaborate and I think that's a really important skill for the planning board because they do have to navigate some contentious issues and I did appreciate his emphasis on how to work together and his thoughts behind that. The other thing I was looking for was that professional experience given what we've heard from the planning board chair from the planning board and the conversation that I had with the planning board chair about the current composition of the planning board and so what we know right now is the planning board has two lawyers on it. We know that the planning board has an architect on it. We know that the planning board has an engineer on it. The planning board has a hydrologist on it and the planning board has someone who would be considered a lay person, a general person who doesn't necessarily have professional expertise. And so there's a lot of diversity and experience on the planning board. What we heard, what I heard from the planning board chair that none of those people necessarily have is actual planning experience, right? So we have an architect who can design, we have someone who can do hydrology, someone can look at legal stuff but no one actually was a planner by trade. And so for me, Mr. Marshall's experience as a planner is something that that body really badly needs and his understanding of planning and development and zoning I think is gonna be really useful. I would also echo what I said earlier about his commitment to sustainability impressed me and also echo what I think George and Sarah and Alyssa said that I see his connection to UMass as a strength because one of the things that I've become increasingly concerned with is the siloing between the town and the university and I think any future prosperity and vibrancy and economic development in this town will necessarily involve better engagement with the university in any way that we can foster that. So I thought they all gave really impressive answers to some questions but I think to me of the three candidates, Mr. Marshall for his professional experience and what he can bring to a body that's lacking in some of that experience came out on top. Other thoughts? Darcy. I guess I feel like that the Mr. Graeny expressed the opinion that I've expressed before about how he felt like he would represent voices of the town that aren't adequately represented currently on the planning board and I am not sure about Jack Hirsch but I think he may also. I'm not sure about Doug Marshall. I'm gratified that so many of this committee are praising him for his sustainability cred which does sound good but I guess I am concerned that the composition of the planning board reflect the opinions of the residents in Amherst about planning board related decisions. So I think that that is something that I would take into consideration because it's important to me and it's important to my constituents. Alyssa. So now as things start getting a little more complicated we knew it had to happen at some point. I disagree completely. I believe that the planning board is not supposed to be representing different viewpoints in the same way that it's been characterized by at least one of the applicants tonight and by Darcy just now. That's what the town council is for and the planning board is not an elected position therefore it is not representing different constituencies and viewpoints. What it is supposed to be doing is taking the zoning by law and applying it with some small amount of judgment and then things that it finds lacking or that the community brings to it or that the town council brings to it or that they think up on their own. They bring to the town council for a change in zoning and then separately there's the master planning work. It is, I would argue it is not the job of the planning board to be representative of all viewpoints in town. It is the job of the planning board to enforce the zoning by law that we have which was developed through many years of town meeting and is now developed through the town council with planning board opinion offered on in both cases. So it is in no way important to me to say we need to represent some particular viewpoint on planning board. I'm looking at the characteristics and skills that people bring and that's why I go back to what I said earlier about in this particular case I think the professional aspect of that is important and it's not for the other two candidates it's not what viewpoint they bring it's their skills in bringing those and so I would love to find other spots for both of those candidates in terms of the skills that they obviously have to offer and if they are frustrated by not being appointed to the planning board as I would imagine they would be that we could find another spot for them to bring what is clearly their dedication to the community but the planning board at this time would not be that place. Now depending on who doesn't wanna get reappointed or who wants doesn't wanna continue to serve on planning board or any vacancies that might develop just as this one developed to then certainly they could ask to be reconsidered for one of those in the future but in the meantime I would hope we would look for another spot for anybody who comes forward to us like this particularly people who've put themselves out in public like this which it was really quite wonderful of them to do because no one else has had to do that and so ever and so I'm very impressed that all three were willing to do so cause we were a little afraid when we came up with this public process that no one would do it. So at this time I would recommend that we choose Mr. Marshall. Sarah. So Alyssa just said a lot of things that I was going to say. I guess we're gonna talk a little bit about process. I, you know, one of the things that I thought was interesting was that we really debated whether or not we were going to have, you know, individual interviews or a group interview and I was very impressed with all three people who came in here and I really felt like they immediately bonded and I think they, to me it came off that they were comfortable, you know, sitting there together and I felt like they were working together and I felt a lot better about our decision to have the group interview and I don't want to resay anything that Alyssa just said so I'll leave it there. George. Imagine seven. Darcy. I guess I just would like to push back a little bit about the having a diverse voices. The planning board is in the process of updating the master plan. It's going to be updating our zoning bylaw. The composition of the planning board is extremely important as far as how that will turn out. And so I guess I feel like it is important what voices end up on the planning board. And there is, you know, the possibility of other openings coming up for a lay person depending on what happens with terms expiring coming up. So obviously a lay person could replace another lay person, but I'm hoping that when we advertise for a position like this that community members feel like they do have the ability to obtain a position on the planning board, even though they don't have background in planning, we do have the planning department that provides planning services and ability to do planning. So we could choose a lay person. Sarah. So I think that we have had a lot of discussions about whether or not planning board and zoning board of appeals are political positions. I think that I definitely have pushed back on that. And as far as talking about diverse viewpoints, I think one of the things that I have always said is that I don't believe that I would want someone who had like a rigid stance on something where you felt like they would stick to that and maybe, you know, not go the other way. I think I really saw, you know, if we're talking about Mr. Greeny, I mean, he's wonderful and he definitely has that ability to try to see in the middle and to bring new ideas. I think for me, one of the deciding things is that the chair of the planning board is obviously extremely frustrated with not having enough experience on the board to be able to do their work efficiently at this time. And so for me, I have felt that the thing that sort of pushed me over was actually looking for some real solid expertise as well as someone that you felt wasn't sold on one thing or another, but could be open-minded, which is also what I saw. So for me, the tipping point right now for the needs of the planning board is the professional experience and that has outweighed for me anything else. George. I believe we're trying to use, or at least I'm trying to use, the selection guidance that we created. And I don't see anywhere in selection guidance where it says diversity of viewpoints. And I don't see where it says layperson, whatever that's supposed to mean. Maybe we wanna introduce them. That's something the committee might wanna consider at some future date. I don't think I'd be too supportive, but I'd certainly be open to arguments. At the moment, that's not a criterion that we're applying. Is this person a layperson or not? And does this person represent a diverse viewpoint? So I don't even know how to apply those. But perhaps we could come up with some rubric where we could and then we could put it into our guidance. But at the moment, the guidance we have is right in front of us and I'm trying to apply it. And a good portion of it has to do with input from the chair. And I have to say that I'm a little astonished by the fact that we're not, or some of us at least don't seem to care what the chair actually is saying would be good for us to be looking for. I would think that with any committee we would take very seriously, wouldn't be the only criterion, but we take very seriously what the chair is looking for. And the chair actually has given us a fairly broad sense of what would be needed. And I think in this case it's pretty clear of the three candidates who have in front of us that one of them fits that much more closely. And as we said, in the first set of guidance, selection guidance, really A, B, and C are really pretty much not relevant in this case. If they were, we could talk about it, but they're not. So I don't see layperson here and I don't see diversity of viewpoints. I wanna take a moment and shift the conversation a little bit about diversity of viewpoints because this has been a part, something that's been a recurring theme in some of our meetings, starting back when we first started meeting last January and in February. And I've always been uncomfortable with the use of diverse viewpoints because when I hear the term diverse viewpoints, I think we're looking for women, we're looking for men, we're looking for people with different racial and ethnic backgrounds, we're looking for people with different socioeconomic status, people who actually bring different perspectives because of their lived experience. And so it always bothers me when we boil down the conversation about diversity and diverse viewpoints to political positions. And so what I've expressed has been some discomfort from the beginning that we didn't have necessarily a very diverse applicant pool. And so the conversation about diverse viewpoints, I think, is skewing away from what I think we actually are talking about when we say we want diversity on committees. And I think that can be a bit problematic. I also wanna push back because I think that if you were to ask Mr. Hirsch, Mr. Greeny or Mr. Marshall which viewpoint they represent, they would perhaps be taken back by that question and to say some of you would represent diverse viewpoints and some wouldn't. I think they'd probably all argue we don't have political parties, right? There's not that some are Democrats or some are Republicans. They're all, I think, there for independent thought. And so I kind of share what George says about even if you put diverse viewpoints on here, you can't assess that because they would all say we are independent people who bring our own perspectives, our own experiences, our own expertise. But to say, well, you would recommend it, but to say, and especially, I'll be blunt because it's getting late, I'm tired, to say to three older white men, you would represent diversity on the planning board, but you wouldn't, to me seems honestly absurd. Other comments, thoughts? Darcy. I can, are we going to vote tonight? Yes. Well, before we do that, I'll just put in my final word. Well, we can talk for as long as we want. No, no reason to, really. I just know that when I was campaigning for this position on the town council in district five, I, the issue of downtown development came up at every door and there, I was astounded at the number of people which was virtually everyone who had some issue with recent decisions of the planning board. So, so much so that that became a very large issue in my campaign. It wasn't even an interest of mine before I heard from so many people. And it became an interest because my constituents were so overwhelmingly interested in the issue of downtown development and problems with the, like I said, the recent decisions of the planning board at that time, it was the Spring Street decision. So, it's, in this town, there is a diversity of opinion about downtown development and it's the, you know, the elephant in the room. And that's, you know, clearly there is, there are people on the planning board who want, you know, unfettered development or something along those lines and other people who want less feathered or whatever, whatever the opposite of that would be. So, you know, you can't tell me that it isn't important in Amherst to have a diversity of voices on the planning board. And so, you know, I am, it isn't just diversity by race, sex, gender, diversity of voices is important. And it's important in other towns where they give so many seats to the Republicans and the Democrats. We don't have them in Amherst, but we do clearly have a version of opinion and it doesn't make sense for one voice to steamroll and get all the seats so that they can rule. And that, I know that was an extreme way to say that, but that's the way it feels sometimes. So, and even in the opinion of the chair, she expresses her political opinion in B, that she wants someone on the committee who shares the committee's majority opinion. So, I disagree pretty strongly. So, Sarah, you had your hand up before. So, I guess if we're all being completely honest, what I'm, Darcy, what I'm hearing you saying is it's either pro-development, what you see as pro-development or anti-development. And I don't know that there was anything directly that we asked that actually got to that. And I also don't know that it's correct that we tried to solicit that from anyone. That's something that we have talked about ad nauseam. And I think also it's important to remember that at this time, this is a body that the town council appoints and it's not an elected position at this time where I think that someone's age, address, political opinions have any real part in the deciding factor. These are not elected positions at this time. These are citizens who are coming forward to donate their time. And I think that we really need to draw that line between elected officials and appointed officials. George. For the record, I'm just going to read B. Though people can also see it on the screen if they're watching at home. Feel positive and committed to strengthening and growing Amherst economic development and building slash housing infrastructure, particularly in the downtown and village areas. That could be pretty much taken right out of the master plan. And to call that a political view or that somehow the chair is tipping her hand. I just find baffling. Yeah, I will, I would actually agree with that. As I was putting this document together, I read through these and with an eye for was there anything that I would see as sort of a political opinion? And to be honest, when you copy and pasted me, these, the one that caused me to pause was actually the time commitment. I'm questioning whether they actually are expected to put five to 12 hours. A week into the planning board that seems like a lot. But anyways, that was the one that jumped out to me. B didn't jump out to me as political at all. Partly because you're right, it comes, I mean, it's essentially the master plan. This is the guiding document of our community. And so to argue that someone on the planning board should have some commitment to the master plan that was adopted by our community by through via the planning board seems strange to me. I also wonder what the, you know, typically if something's a political opinion, there's an opposing opinion. And so would we want someone who is not committed to growing Amherst economic development? Cause I'm not sure if that, if that's a criteria we'd want to use. So I don't necessarily see to be as political at all. I think it just basically is saying we're looking for people who are here to help carry out the vision laid out in our master plan. George. We are going to be coming to the voters of Amherst within a year, maybe give or take, and asking them to raise their taxes because we have capital projects that need to be addressed. How they'd be addressed, I don't know, but there's no way that any of this can be done just without some kind of raising in our taxes. And if we are not spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to increase the tax base and strengthen the economic base of this town, I don't see how we can look our constituents in the face. So maybe what you heard when you were out politicking a year ago was all about certain things that happened downtown. Trust me, in a few months or a year, all you're going to hear about is the $100 of increase in people's taxes. And what are you going to say then? I mean, you're going to have to, at some point, we have to be willing to take a stand for what we think is in the best interest of this community for the long term. And B seems to me to be just a clear statement of what is essential to the future of this town. It's not a political statement at all. Now, how it gets applied, I agree, there's areas of disagreement, but economic development and paying attention to that. We spent an entire year on process, basically, understandably, and we've really done nothing in that area whatsoever. So if we don't start paying attention to it and start giving the voters of Amherst some sense that it matters to us, they should rightly wonder what we're thinking. Right, I just... Thank you. Okay, so I don't want us to veer into a debate over, I know it's hard to do. So we have three candidates before us. We have the job of making a recommendation to the council. As a reminder, our process says that we can make a recommendation, we can make no recommendation, but we have to give the council something. And so my personal feeling at this point is we have probably maxed out our discussion, but if anyone has any final thing they want to say on the candidates, I'd be open to hearing it. Yes, we're looking at the candidates. So we have three candidates before us. So in that case, I would entertain a motion. The motion would be to recommend whatever name. No, let me start over. The motion would be to recommend that the town council appoint, insert name to the planning board that would be effective immediately. We would, we should also have a conversation. I'm sorry. They would fulfill the remainder of Paris term, which off the top of my head, I'd have to look at when that, do you know? One, I have it up, but secondly, it doesn't matter. We don't have to do that. We can do whatever we want. We should just make sure that we stagger it. So we shouldn't, if a whole bunch of other people have a committee term expiring at the same time, we shouldn't pick the same time. So what we have in front of us is we have people, we have three people expiring in 2020. So we definitely shouldn't pick, we definitely shouldn't assign them a term that ends in 2020. We have one person whose term ends in 2021 and two people whose term ends in 2022. So we have choices. We could assign this person to a term that ends in 2021. So we'd have two people who ended in 2021. I mean, obviously somebody else could resign in the meantime, et cetera. But we are under no obligation whatsoever to have it be the completion of a different person's term. When that person's gone, they're gone. Okay, that's good to know. Can I just ask what the completion of Paris term would have been? 21? Okay. So actually before I ask a motion, can we, regardless of who we choose, although that could be influenced, could we come to some consensus about what we would want the term to be? It will have to end to be consistent June of some time. I would agree with Alyssa that we have three people coming up in 2020. And so it would be unwise to do that. So I think that we would look at either 2021, which would essentially be completing the remainder of Paris term or 2022, which would be more in line with giving someone a two year term as opposed to a one year term. Are there thoughts on this? George? My preference would be for a two year term. A two year term? I guess they could technically be a three year term too, right? Because planning board terms are three years. If we appoint them now, they're serving basically all of 20 and half of 21 if they expire in June of 21. That's an 18 month appointment. I'm much happier with that and keeping the rotation going. But then we can always keep re-appointing people to whatever random term lengths we choose when it comes right down to it. So that whole idea of two, three year terms and then maybe not so much, it doesn't matter how the six years was obtained in a case like that. What matters, you know, because they're just random numbers. So number of terms doesn't matter so much. No, number of years is what matters because so many people don't fill their whole three year term because all kinds of crazy reasons largely because we're trying to keep people staggered all the time. Now, if it turns out that just we have massive people moving to Palm Springs and all the 2020 people leave, then we may have a different conversation about how long some of theirs are or as in the case of say, for example, Mark Parent with the ZBA where we carried him over for just a year even though he was beyond the usual amount because we knew that that would be helpful to the committee kind of thing and we may do that. We may end up doing that with some of these people that have terms that expire in 2020 even though they haven't served six years yet. I mean, we just don't know what might happen. People develop other interests and that sort of thing but it makes more sense to me to go ahead and given that we haven't heard from the candidates, for example, I can only do it for one year or something that we would say 2021 and hope that we keep with our rotation to a degree just because it's such a shock to the system when you lose a big chunk of people and then you give a new year. So it's 18 months but I'm gonna simplify by saying one year or two year. So 21 or 22, it sounds like George is in favor of appointing to 2022. I'm not strong enough. Alyssa, 2021, Darcy and Sarah. 21, so 22, 2022. It's in no way an insult to anybody. We're just trying to keep the rotation. I guess my only concern, it's a very small one is that whoever the individual happens to be that they understand that and it's not meant to be a judgment on their application or their potential, it's just and I assume the chair could communicate that to them. I think the argument would be essentially we're appointing you to fill the remainder of the vacated seat. I think what would need to be made clear because there is this idea that you serve two terms that clarification that it's about a number of years, not necessarily a number of terms because if one person's appointed to a three year term and one person's, this would be an 18 month term, it wouldn't be fair to treat it from term. So I think as long as we explain that. So 2021. Okay. Thank you for entertaining that unexpected thing that I realized I forgot about. So the motion would be to recommend that the town council appoint in certain name to the planning board effective immediately for a term expiring June 30th, 2021. Does anyone want to make a motion adding a name to the insert name? Why didn't put a name in there? So I will pick a name. So, okay. Douglas Marshall. Okay. So there's been, so the motion is to recommend that the town council appoint Douglas Marshall to the planning board effective immediately for a term expiring June 30th, 2021. That's been moved. Is there a second? Second. Okay. So Alyssa has made the motion. It's been seconded by Sarah. Is there any further discussion? Okay. So with that, I will call the question. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain? So that's four, zero, one. And Darcy, can I have an explanation for the abstention? Well, what am I supposed to write in the report? I would prefer to. If you're not voting, I mean, you're present, you're physically present, but you're choosing not to vote. Is there a reason you're choosing not to vote as opposed to voting for or against? You don't, I'm just asking you to. Okay. Ask the question a different way. Yes. Of course you don't. I think part of the reason we do that is so people have complete information. I would assume that if you're not going to explain it for the report that you also will not be explaining at a town council because if you're going to choose to explain it at town council, then you should choose to explain it in the report. You're getting two bites at the apple. It's discourteous to the rest of us who have explained why we feel the way we feel about something and then you get to take the floor at town council and say, actually, I know it's not in the report, but I have this completely different opinion about things. So we're happy to capture your points inside the report so that people have the full picture. Okay. So our next meeting is on Monday. I want to thank this committee. I know this has been a meeting intensive month, but my assumption is that our meeting on Monday should be briefer than our past meetings. I want to use that as an opportunity, and I'm telling you now because I want you to think about it over the weekend, even though we'll all be busy at MMA, but one of the things I do want to have some conversation of is just to reflect on this new process and how it went. Certainly we got some feedback from the interviewees. I think I have learned something about how to schedule these meetings, and so bring with you sort of your ideas, your comments, your thoughts on how this process went because there's a chance that this committee might be dissolved and handing this process over to a different committee, and so it would be useful to hand them not only the process, but sort of some advice on it and some things that could be improved. And then the second thing we'll be doing is talking about the town manager appointments that were filed with the town clerk this morning. Sorry, I think that should be a relatively brief meeting. I don't know about time at this, George. So with that, I will adjourn us at 9 p.m. exactly. Thank you.