 Seeing that we have a quorum and attendance I'm calling this November 12th meeting of the town service and outreach committee to order at. 501. Governor Baker's March 12 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law allows us to hold this virtual meeting of the town services and outreach committee. Now I'm going to call all the committee members by name to confirm you can hear me and we can hear you. Alyssa Brewer present Darcy do not present Dorothy Pam present Evan Ross present George Ryan here. Okay. Those assisting the meeting will be monitoring committee members connections and if necessary will pause the meeting until you reconnected. Okay. Art, if you would like to give public comment. Raise your hand does not look like he wants to give public comment. So we just have one piece of business today, which is town manager appointment. One additional person to the community safety working group. So Paul would you like to introduce that. Sure. So there's one more name that we're adding. I'm moving forward to the town council at this point in time. That's for Russ Vernon Jones. Mr Vernon Jones has been served as principal at the Fort River School for a number of years has been a leader in racial justice conversations and work throughout the community. And has among a number of other things he's well known in the community, the interview team interviewed him and felt he would be a strong addition to the existing working group. Questions anyone. I think probably quite a few of us are familiar with Russ Vernon Jones and his work in town on racial equity and so on. So, I see. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm not even looking. Dorothy. Well, I applaud his credentials. And my question is to Mr Backelman. Are there more committee members proposed proposed committee members coming our way or is this yet. At this time, this is it. Yeah. Good. Thank you. Yeah, so one of my questions I think I think similar to Dorothy's which was, are we going to be having meetings to consider one additional candidate each time we add because I believe we have two more seats to fill and I'm hoping that we don't have another meeting with just one candidate. I guess my second question, which I'm not quite sure how to ask. So this is a unique committee because it has a racial diversity requirement. At least six of the members have to be BIPOC. In your previous memo, you stated how the candidates had self identified racially on their community activity forms. You did not do this. And for this one, I know Russ and so I can make an assumption about his race. But I guess I was curious in the last memo one person chose not to self identify and so I guess I'm curious when we, this is a more complicated question but when we say six people have to be BIPOC does that mean on the CAF. Do we have to self identify as BIPOC or if there is someone who did not answer that question. I think you're getting what I'm getting at here, which is, we have five people who have self identified as BIPOC based on the last memo. One person who didn't self identify, and in this one you didn't tell us and so I'm curious to hear to know how how you're viewing how we actually meet that requirement and how much is self identification. That's a really good question I don't know the answer to that question I can tell you that we've met the threshold of the requirement of the charge, six members, I believe are BIPOC members. What was one did not identify self identify. But that's all that's what I put in my memo but I'm confident that we've met the threshold of six members being BIPOC community members. So they're Dorothy yes, yes, when I did see the self identify my first thought the other day was Rachel dollars all, and who I do not denigrate by the way I think people can self identify as one thing or another. And I think that we don't want to get into 23 and me. I don't know DNA because people's DNA and their sense of who they are do not always match. But I am agreeing with Evan that if there's a system. Then either if people have to be identified which used to be in very bad taste but now is in good taste if people have to be identified. I think there has to be a consistent system, because what we what we ended up with was white was the default, which is, you know, a So I understand the difficulty in your position. I think people have to be told that that the requirements of where we are now. At least some committees require a consistent system. Okay, thank you, Dorothy, Alyssa. Just reflecting again on the unique nature of this committee. I think that what this means is much like many of the conversations the previous OCA and now TSO has had with Paul about what we want in memos and what would be more helpful to us in terms of this. I think it was arguably, I assumed it was an oversight because it wasn't something we normally would do. When it comes to Russ Vernon Jones, I think given the nature of this committee, I think that it would have been made sense in the memo in this most recent memo to say, how that person self identified or if they didn't. And then in the case of both the previous memo and this memo, when a person doesn't self identify which no one's required to do anything accurately on their CAF or we'd have to throw some CAFs out because some people don't answer like the question if they live in Amherst or not accurately is that I think given the nature of this committee as opposed to every other committee. I think we aren't going to start expecting this to be part of every single memo to us, which I believe we are not except in isolated cases like this, where the charge clearly identifies, I think the charge must have surely been, of course, used during the six, so the charge clearly stated that it, there needed to be six. Therefore, the interview team should have stated whether or not they had six, because that's the requirement. And so I understand what Paul just said but I think that it could easily have been that given the person did not self identify on the previous memo that Paul could have written did not self identify on the CAF but during the interview identified as, because if that's not true then right we're kind of in a know where's the kind of way. And I think it's entirely appropriate for this limited circumstance, where we have said, in the charge, you have to fulfill these requirements, you can't just allege that you fulfilled the requirements you have to have people either self identify, or follow up with them and say, I know you didn't fill this space out but you see how the charge here says six, can we count you, and and then that's up to the person, and if the person doesn't want to be counted, then that's fine, but it should be an active question because you shouldn't sit there and say, I know this person, I can guess well that that's exactly the wrong thing to do. So, this is a hindsight sort of thing rather than knowing it going in. But if, for example, there's another committee in the future, which I think we all expect there to be at least one of that grows out of a recommendation from the community group that might very well also have some standards like this, then I would think that at that time we'd reflect back to this conversation and say, it needs to be clear the person needs to choose at the interview time they don't think if they don't do it on the CAF whatever, but they need to just choose at the interview time so that the people making the recommendations know whether or not they've accurately met the requirement. Future reference. Any response to that Paul. That was an oversight clearly an oversight of my part and not including the self identification of this, the one that Mr Vernon Jones that you're referring now I can read, I can revise that memo in anticipation and in advance of the town council meeting on Monday. And I would never substitute my judgment for what someone has self identified. So, but we can reach out to the person who did not self identify and either through our process and find out how they self identify if they're willing to share that. Thank you. And I would just also add that I, I agree with Evan that I was a little surprised that we were only looking at one person tonight. And because they, you know, because we had the impression from you Paul that several people that you were interviewing and that you thought we were going to get a few names. So, yeah. In the future we might not have a special meeting for one person. Yeah, I, yeah, I understand that. And I appreciate the time everybody carved out their day for this brief meeting. I also had I emailed Paul earlier today because I was somewhat horrified that there was a person who contacted the whole town council that she hadn't been notified. So, and Paul said that it was because there was, you know, some people that might have still been under consideration or anyway if you want to add any more to that Paul. Yeah. So, yeah, it's an act, it's an active pool. So, as we continue to move forward. I rely on the interview team to say who we want to move forward with. So, you know, the ones I have started to contact them but Dr. Pierce appears I did not contact. So, if, since we have the names of these people are now public. If you were a person who had an interview and you haven't been notified, you would just kind of assume that you were still under consideration if you hadn't heard, because otherwise, you would want to contact people if you had made a affirmative or a negative decision about a particular person right. So I wouldn't make any assumptions right this moment. Honestly, if I were, if I were watching this right now. So, yeah it just seems seems odd to have the names public without notifying the people who had interviews. Yeah, but okay well I don't see any other comments or questions, or do I yes Alyssa. Yes, so since we went down that road, I have one request which is that we not mention that individual by name I thought Darcy was very careful to not do that and I think we should continue not doing that because again we don't publish a list or anything I know that's a long conversation we've had before, but since we don't publish a list it feels uncomfortable to mention a particular email that we received and I hope we won't be doing that at the town council level and I hope that town counselors won't do that as well. I agree that this is an unusual situation but I also disagree with the decision not to tell people that they were not being brought forward at this time. If this was something the town council was doing rather than the town manager doing like if this was a planning board or ZBA appointment. I don't want to fight tooth and mail that we would tell people, you are not being brought forward at this time, but of course we are going to consider you for future possibilities. At this time just because their X number of seats on the body doesn't mean we're ever going to fill those seats so rather than I appreciate not wanting to come back for another and another. We cannot be any more people appointed and that's okay. We don't have to fill all the seats, especially because we've fulfilled the mandate of the people of color that we specifically ensured we're on there. And sometimes a group gels in a particular way and that's okay one doesn't need to fill X number of seats just to have them filled. Given the awkwardness of this particular situation, I think that it does not make sense to not advise people that in fact several names are being brought forward, and yours is not yet one of them, and we do not know, we do not at this time. The reality is you're not appointing the person. They didn't get appointed last week they're not getting pointed this week. Will they get appointed a month from now, or six months from now, entirely possible, because you always go back to people who have applied before. And I think it was on, it was a mistake to not tell people whose names were not being brought forward in public, what their status was. And I think it's unfair to them for them to wonder, will they bring me forward next week, two weeks from now, or never, I just feels disrespectful. I just want to state that this committee is not being run by Paul. These appointments are being made by a committee. And so we are trying to make ourselves follow better rules we know in the past this has been a complaint that people would sign up for committee and, you know, time would go by and nobody would know what was happening. And that we were trying to work on this to not do that but he is not running the committee. So when you have a committee that has power. Then sometimes it does things the way you like and sometimes it doesn't. This is this is a committee of the town manager Dorothy. Is he making these appointments is he, I thought he had a committee he kind of he appointed a committee to make the appointments is not advise him. They're his appointments. That's like saying that when he has a search committee for a staff position that the search committee picked the person not him that's ridiculous. I don't know how it would level below. Is this the committee that's going to choose the committee, or is this, didn't we already choose a committee that was choosing people. And isn't this somebody that was chosen or am I am I a step out of step here. You want to explain that Paul. Thank you. So these are town manager appointments to achieve the town major appointments I viewed it I appointed an interview team that you saw the names on the team. They have done the interviewing with with myself present as well. So I'm part of all the interviews but they are the interview team and then they give me a their recommendations. And then I move forward with the recommend with the recommendations I agree with to you. So it's his recommendation for a town manager committee. I guess that's not really how I thought it was sold I thought it was sold that this was as this committee was playing a large role in doing this. It does. All right, so that what I mean is it's not quite like it is sometimes that's all it's not unless it's totally like your small advisory committees that you change for every committee. This was more input from a group of persons that they had a stronger role than some of the other committees. Well, it's just it's a different I think you talked about this at your last meeting. Yeah, this is a different process than a normal appointment. This is a unique interview team that is very engaged in the interview process. And we have very important conversations after the interviews, and then move forward after that. If you do play a major role in those conversations so it isn't it isn't okay I got it. All right, I think that's the end of the comments. If we don't have any more questions or comments I'm just going to make the motion. I would move to recommend that the town council approve the following recommendation by the town manager of a person to serve on the community safety working group for a term that lasts the length of the working groups efforts. Russ Vernon Jones drive a second. Second. Okay. Any more discussion. Roll call votes. Alyssa. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Evan. Yes. George. Yes. Okay, that is passed unanimously I will forward it to the town council for the meeting on Monday. Okay, so. Okay. That's pretty much it. We're not going to do anything else tonight. We don't have any minutes. We don't have any. Discussion of anything. So. Unless someone else has a comment or whether I would do have a public comment listed again at the end of the meeting and just in case let's just check. And see if you want to add any public comment. All right, so we are scheduled to meet again next Thursday at 430, 430 to 630 because we have our public forum on budget at 630. So, that's all. Thank you very much. The meeting has adjourned. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.