 All right so I'm gonna call this portion of the meeting to order portion this meeting. Resuming the meeting. I moved to come out of recess and resume the meeting from last night. Second. Any other discussion? All in favor? All right. Opposed? Okay so yeah we reached out to say if the candidates had any further thing that they wanted to offer they they could and so I know at least two of the the candidates are here and I think Lalitha had sent a statement so if you want to make a statement further you may. We're not going to take any further public comment though at this point so either one of you like to go first? If you're or not at all either way it's up to you. Sure. Okay. Are these on? I think so yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your for enduring such a long and difficult process last night with grace and determination. I appreciate everything you do. I think I have three points to make. It's been suggested that appointing my opponent here would be the democratic way to address this decision. Speak a little more in the mic. I don't know if I can hear you back there. Okay. It's been suggested that appointing my opponent would be the democratic way to address this decision. While there is some facial appeal to that way of thinking with respect I believe it is incorrect. First the way we adhere to democratic values is by observing and following democratic institutions. In this case the charter is clear. The decision is vested in the judgment of the council. If the framers of the charter had intended to make it an automatic appointment to the second place candidate in a previous election they could have done so but they did not. To argue against the deciding role of the council in this process is to argue against our democratic values. Second while it is hard to tell what the voters mean by their choices the clearest thing we can conclude is that what just a month ago two candidates articulated their positions and asked the voters for their support and the voters did not support the candidate who came in second. I do not think we can infer that they supported him based on his showing in the election. Third this is a different decision at a different office. The previous office was a two-year term for an office that was vacated by a departing counselor. This is the remainder of a one-year term. There should be no surprise that political and strategic considerations influence the choices of people seeking political office. It is absolutely true that I made the judgment that I didn't want to split the vote with another potential candidate someone who chose not to run that I agreed with on the issues. Nevertheless that choice came with some potential risks including the risk that I might not be appointed by the council and the fact that if chosen I would be required to run for reelection after just one year. Throughout this process I've been determined not to say anything negative about either of my opponents. I've spoken with Alex Geller and we both agree that this should never have become as hostile and personalized as what we saw last night. Still the choice for you is to based on qualifications record temperament and what other considerations you'd seem relevant is the best choice to serve on the city council. I suggest that based on my long history of service to the city my knowledge of the issues and my vision for the future that I am that person. Thank you. First I'd like to thank all of you for really taking an enormous amount of time to carefully weigh this decision. It's been hard on myself and Jack and Lolita but I'm sure it's been just as hard if not harder on you. So with that there were some troubling discussions that or statements that were made last night and today on front porch forum and I just want to make it clear that Jack has done a great job supporting housing in this city in this community and I do not agree with a statement to the contrary. It's people like him it's civil servants like me civil servants like you that make this community great and there's plenty of examples of Jack's work in particular in his contributions and I want to make that noted. I do not agree with any of those statements. I also want to take the opportunity to make crystal clear that I am not conservative. I'm not Republican and part of actually one of the biggest reasons that I chose to run for this office in Montpelier is that it is nonpartisan historically and that is an extremely appealing thing because it has the potential to avoid so much divisiveness and that's appealing that makes people want to participate in in our democracy makes me want to participate in our democracy and so that's a big reason that I stepped up Yeah, I don't I don't know what else to say to that but I will just say I like to plan. I like to know what's coming down the down the pipeline and I like to do it and prepare for whatever that decision is in a fiscally responsible way. I'm not anti government services. I'm not anti investment. I'm not any of those things. I like I like to have a good solid rationale for making any investment in our community. I think it's proven. Other than that, I'll just say that your elected representatives and this argument that the election that was one month ago, roughly isn't relevant. I just can't see that elected representatives are representing their constituents. Constituents spoke in the recent election 309 of them liked what I had to say, likes my platform, believe in me. Some of them are still here today. This this can't be denied. It just can't. And really, as an elected representative, you are representing your constituents. That's what this is all about. And that's what I want to do. And I hope you listen to the district to residents and their sentiment because you can make any argument that that those 309 votes didn't count. But it is a data point, and it is a reflection of people's thoughts and values and desires. About all close. Thank you. And believe that couldn't attend, but we asked if anybody had a statement they could send it in if they couldn't appear. So she emailed this to us on reading her statement. This is good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to address the council last night and again today. I appreciate the time you have taken to carefully deliberate this important matter. I am unfortunately unable to attend today's council session as I will be at work and cannot abandon my post. So this written statement will have to suffice. I was deeply disturbed at last night's council session, primarily by the personal attacks made by Alex Skeller supporters against Jack McCullough. I don't remember his name or nor his exact quote, but Alex's friend and so called character witness from Worcester last night maligned Jack's 25 years of service to this community by suggesting he had accomplished nothing. And at the end, another supporter implied there was some kind of conspiracy between the council and Jack to get him onto the council. If this is the caliber of Alex's supporters, what does this say about Alex himself, especially since he did nothing to distance himself from those attacks? I have said my primary points about who I am and why I believe I would be a good addition to the council in my letter of application. But let me reiterate and expand upon them just a bit here. There are a lot of ideas I would like to bring to the council affordable housing assistance with daycare summer camp, establishing a long term financially viable solution for our failing infrastructure, roads, sewers, water pipes, etc. All of which will require a delicate delicate balancing act between keeping taxes from rising and paying for what we need. I would bring to the table the viewpoint of the economically challenged. In addition to the viewpoint of an immigrant, a person of color, and a single mother. If these viewpoints and goals seem good to you, I am the best candidate. I hope that will prove to be the case. I'm sorry to see the selection process unnecessarily politicized. Good luck in your deliberation. Sincerely, Lalitha. My wagon. Thank you. So I think we're ready for a motion to go into back into executive session. So moved. Second. All in favor. All right, so we're going to be in there. We'll be back. Hopefully today. To have a motion. I moved that we come out of executive session. Second. All in favor, please say aye. All right, so we have a statement to read first. And then we'll have a vote. So here we go. All right. As members of our community, we have been saddened to see the recent vitriol personal attacks and absurd insinuations coming from a number of members of our community on various sides over the past several months. We put sides in quotation marks because it seems absurd to even use that language of division to describe our community is customary for the council to sit passively and not respond to individuals who attack us or others personally, either in a council session or in a public forum. However, we are breaking that custom to call out this behavior. We find it unacceptable whether we candidates or individual community members are the targets. We are all members of this community, neighbors who are doing the best we can. This is not an acceptable way to treat neighbors. Last term, the council adopted as one of our group norms, the principle that we would always try to assume best intentions. That is, when one of our neighbors disagrees with us or makes a comment or an action that could offend us, we won't jump to the conclusion that they are a horrible person or intend to harm us. Instead, we will assume that, like all of us, they're a reasonable person who is doing the best they can. This doesn't mean that we don't continue to disagree on issues. It is our responsibility to try to bring all perspectives to the table, listen to each other, and then each council member must form their own opinion based on that dialogue. We must remember that reasonable people can disagree. We are all members of this community, and long after the contentious issue of the day is forgotten, we will continue to be members of this community. You are our neighbors, and we hope to live together in this community for a long time. We cannot require that our community adopt this mantra of assuming best intentions, but we are asking it of you. Please, before you speak, post or write, stop and take a breath. Before you make a hurtful zinger about the person across from you, remember that they are your neighbor. Disagree with their ideas, but don't question their motives, integrity or sanity. We acknowledge that we do not always live up to the ideals that we have laid out here. We all will still sometimes make thoughtful, hurtful comments, I'm sorry, thoughtless, hurtful comments, but we are doing the best we can. We know that you are too. As many have surmised, this particular decision was not an easy one. We had three very qualified candidates to choose from. None of them would have been a bad choice, and each would have brought their own perspective to aid in our future decision making. However, even though there was disagreement about who to select, there was no vitriol in our closed door session. Instead of listening to respond, we listened to understand. That led to several members changing their minds in multiple directions throughout the deliberation. None of us felt unheard or disrespected during the process. We chose to recess and reconvene so that no member felt rushed in our decision making process and so that our community could trust that this was a decision that came from careful deliberation and not out of exhaustion. As a council, we came at this appointment not from a perspective of who aligned best with my politics, nor from the perspective that we were obligated to appoint the second place candidate, but rather from a perspective of looking at the group that we had and evaluating our gaps. Who is the council missing? What value or asset was the council missing? This is more or less why the discussion took so long. Every candidate brought very different assets, which made choosing among them extremely difficult. So that is it for me for now. Do we have emotion? Mayor, I'd move to appoint Jack McCullough to fill the vacant district two seats on the city council. Is there a second? I second. So before we vote on this, I just want to let people know that we have two council members who got to go catch a bus and so they're going to they're going to leave. So we're going to vote and then we're going to adjourn. I will stick around though and be happy to like answer any further questions. Okay. Any further discussion? All in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? All right. Movement to adjourn. Second. All in favor? Aye. Thank you. Thank you all very much.