 All right, we're broadcasting and recording. Okay, great. So seeing the presence of the quorum, I'm going to call the meeting of outreach communications and appointments to order at 9.33 a.m. So you have a packet that has several materials in it, including the agenda. The first thing is announcements. So I'm just going to announce, although I assume you are all well aware that we have the interviews for the applicants to the Zoning Board of Appeals this Thursday, April 16th. The interviews meeting will start at 7.30 p.m. As per our process, the interviews meeting can have only one agenda item, which is the interviews, given the number of people and the number of questions we have and the three-minute limit per question. My assumption is the interviews on the whole will run anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half. We have a second meeting then posted for 8.30 p.m., which is our deliberation meeting. I posted that for 8.30 p.m. or even though it almost certainly will start later than that, but we're trying to learn from our experiences where last time I've created far too bigger gap between the two. So this one I posted it for an hour after the start of the interviews with recognition that it probably won't actually start until about 9 p.m., but it gives us the ability to roll right into that second meeting. With the goal of having our recommendation for the council by the end of that evening, hopefully the council won't need the second night of school committee stuff, otherwise that is a potentially very long night for us. But then we'll be done with the ZBA. So make sure that's on your calendar. All of the applicants have been sent a Zoom link invitation, and so they should be all ready to go. So next thing on our agenda, agenda item three is discussion of planning board and zoning board of appeals appointments expiring June 30, 2020. So this is, I wanted to start the process of considering our reappointments. And so the first thing I wanna talk about is actually the ZBA reappointments because we're gonna be doing that a little bit differently than I think we originally thought of. So we've had a vacancy on the ZBA starting in September. I think it was September 11th, when Mr. Wilk resigned. Since March, we've had an additional two. And so we have been working through the process of filling those ZBA vacancies for some time now. We had been only focused on those two vacancies. However, and I'm gonna share my screen, so we're all looking at the same thing. Let me just make sure I'm looking at the right, yeah. So I put together some visuals for us because I think I'm a visual person. So this is the current state of the ZBA. And so we had Mr. Wilk who resigned. We had Mr. Parent who resigned early. And then we had Mr. Arcello who resigned, who was an associate seat. And then of course we always have had a vacant fourth associate member. Our zoning by-law allows us to have four associate members we've only ever filled three. So in theory, there's always been this fourth vacancy. So we have really been focused just on these three seats and filling them, the two vacant regular members and the one vacant associate members that have become vacant as the result of resignations. However, ZBA associate membership is only a one-year appointment. And so what that has meant for us is that these two associate member seats that have been, that have remained filled, both Tammy Parks and Sharon Waldman, they would be, their terms expired June 30th, 2020, and they're eligible for reappointment. And so we haven't actually talked about these because we've been so focused on the vacancies and we've been moving forward really in the mindset of just filling the vacancies and not necessarily thinking about what we're doing with reappointment. What occurred to me that, that doesn't make any sense to do it like that because in theory, the pool would be the same. We would like the people who are in the pool now to fill these vacancies when we go to do the reappointments would likely still want to be in the pool. And considering we have options of moving associate members to full members, it really didn't make sense to look at these two reappointments separate from these four vacancies. It didn't make sense to not look at all of this as one holistic picture. And so I have reached out to both Ms. Parks and Ms. Waldman about whether or not they're interested in reappointment and also whether or not they were interested in potentially moving up from associate members to regular members. And I also asked them if they were available the evening of the 16th for interviews. Both of them are interested in continuing their service on the ZBA. Both of them were available for interviews on the 16th. And so instead of doing the reappointment separate from the vacancies, we're going to do them all in one night. And so on the 16th, we will not only be interviewing the people who applied for these vacancies, we will also be interviewing Ms. Parks and Ms. Waldman. And we will be considering essentially both vacant regular member seats and all four associate member seats, both the ones that are vacant and the ones that would have been up for reappointment at the end of June, which means that once we complete that at the end of Thursday, Okka will be finished with its responsibilities for appointment recommendations about the ZBA. So are there any questions about that? I can't see the participant screen. Okay, so seeing none. So ZBA at this point, those appointments are sort of on autopilot. So we will be interviewing both people who are not on the ZBA, new applicants, and also be interviewing the two current associate members. And we will have a discussion afterwards about how we want to fill those seats. George, you had your hand. Now you don't. I do, actually. What you're assuming is that we will find a sufficient number of candidates to forward to the council. That's the assumption that for this to work, for us to be quote unquote done with the ZBA, we will need to come up with at least one or two, I assume, candidates that we can forward. Is that correct? Correct. And as I stated from the very beginning, I am not operating under the assumption that we will definitely fill every vacancy. I think our job is to make sure that we fill enough seats so that the body is operable going forward. If we finish the interviews on Thursday and we don't have enough candidates that we think makes sense for the ZBA to fill all of these seats, my hope is that we have enough that the body can function. And then essentially, we perhaps leave some vacancies open and say we need to fill in of the pool. But likely then that recruitment would extend beyond the lifespan of this community. Any other questions about ZBA? Okay, seeing none. So again, we're on Thursday, we will be doing both the appointments to the vacancies and we will also be dealing with the associate member of the appointments. So then the other one is planning board. And so we did one round of planning board appointments last spring where we appointed Janet McGowan, Jack Jemsick and Maria Chow to the planning board and also Parry Reahi, Parry resigned in the fall and in January, this body took up that vacancy and appointed Douglas Marshall. And so these four, this body has already appointed under one of our two processes and those seats won't be eligible for a re-appointment or a potential vacancy until next year. There are three members of the planning board who this body did not appoint because their terms were not yet expiring and so they were continuing on from the previous appointing authority. Their terms are expiring at the end of this cycle. So June 30th, 2021, 2020. They are the current chair, Christine Gray Mullen, Michael Burtwistle and also David Levenstein. So all three of these seats are expiring on June 30th. All three of them are eligible for re-appointment in the sense that everyone is always eligible for re-appointment because we don't have hard term limits. However, none of them have served six years yet. So also under our process of saying typically two terms of three years or six years total, none of them have met those six years yet. So my question to the committee, not even a question actually, it's a statement, is once we finish the ZBA appointments on Thursday, this is our outstanding responsibility is these three seats. Now this will be a little bit different from what we did in January and with the ZBA in that there, as far as we know right now, there are no vacancies. Perhaps one of these three people will choose that they don't want to be re-appointed. And so my first responsibility is to reach out and find out if there's interest in re-appointment from all three of these individuals. But assuming that all three of them do want to continue per our adopted process, even when there's an expiring term, we still consider that a vacancy from the sense of we will still be advertising and recruiting that we might be filling seats. We will still be accepting community activity forms, we will still be doing interviews. And so even though it will be of interest to us to know whether these three individuals want to be re-appointed, we still will be advertising that we are seeking applicants to the planning board. So I am going to start that process now. And so I'm going to be doing two things. One is reaching out to these three current members and asking if they're interested in re-appointment and if they are asking them to submit a new CAF. The second thing I'm going to be doing is hosting the vacancy notice that says that we are accepting applicants for the planning board. I have this as a discussion item. I don't necessarily have any particular questions and I don't know if I foresee any particular complications, but I wanted to give all members of the committee an opportunity just to comment if you have thoughts or opinions as we approach the Appointments to Planning Board. So does anyone have any questions, comments, thoughts, opinions? Okay, we'll start with Darcy. Yeah, can you see me? Anyway, you don't have to see me. I can now. I am just wondering, no, I forgot my question at all. Here. George has his question, so we can go to him and then come back here if you'd like. All right. George? Just clarification and it's just because my memory is going, but we have agreed as a group that everyone gets interviewed. So even though these three people have in theory been interviewed before, though not by us, we're going to insist that everyone be interviewed again. So if say we had interviewed them before, we would still insist on an interview this time. Is that what we've agreed to? It's kind of a question and a clarification. Yes, correct. When we were discussing the process, we agreed that every time there's an appointment, anyone who wants to be appointed is interviewed even if they're an incumbent member. And we also, per the process, and this is a discussion item for the next thing, said that they have to have a new community activity form. So essentially, every time there's a vacancy, whether it's because someone resigned or left for some other reason, or because it turns expiring, we treat those vacancies the same, which is to say everyone who wants to apply needs to submit a CAF and interview. So we will be, if these three individuals are interested in reappointment, we will be asking them to interview. And yeah, as you pointed out, we've actually never interviewed them. So that would be different. Darcy, you remember? Yes. It's, since there's a preference for giving members an additional term, do we, it seems like we should tell other applicants so that they're aware that the existing members have a preference for being chosen. Because I'm not sure I would apply if I knew that the people that were reapplying were given preference for being appointed again. Okay, thoughts on whether or not we want to put in the vacancy notice or some other way, communicate that there are people potentially who are applying, who are reappointments, and there's a preference for reappointments. I'm gonna go to Alyssa and then George. Thank you. I'm not gonna pretend I can move around quickly enough on the surface to find it at this moment, but in the past, when the select board was advertising vacancies, which we were not required to do, but which served as precursor to the way that you're trying to requires it now, we actually used to stock phrase associated with the fact that there, this is the bad, there may or may not be openings indicating some other people may act to be reappointed. So we could look for that and figure out how we wanted to wordsmith something like that that as Darcy says, gives people the heads up that people who are continuing to continue serving, you can't say for sure they wanna continue serving because they can always change their mind at any time. Okay, George, you have your hand up. Don't we send everyone the selection guidance? So wouldn't they actually have a copy of the criteria that we use? And I'm a little nervous about telling people what we're going to do or not do, but I'm certainly understanding that people should know what the field or what the lay of the land is, but wouldn't they get something from us anyways a matter of course? And I assume they read it. That was just a question. Sarah, why don't we go to you first? Yeah, so I guess that was the thing that I was gonna ask is that we do send them, I'm assuming we do send them how we choose people, do we? So if we send them how we choose people, I think we very plainly state like when there is a preference and when there isn't a preference. You know, like if someone's already, don't we say like if someone's already served like one term, then our preference is to seek someone new, but if not, I mean, so I think we sort of state it there. And I don't know if what Darcy is getting at is that she feels that even though we stated if somebody had been on for one term, really our preference is to not look for someone new, but I don't think that's true. So I feel like if they're sent the guidelines for how we choose people, I think that's sufficient. That's okay. Yeah, so I think that that's sort of two levels to this. So they do get the selection guidance which would have in that first part the information about preference for a reappointment. I think Darcy's point is to some extent would it be useful for them to know that before they eat it? They don't get selection guidance until they've already applied and are in the pool and we're moving forward to interviews. And so I think, so Darcy, your question, I think was a little bit more about do we want to tell them that ahead of time before people even apply. My personal opinion just to weigh in on this is I'm a little hesitant to, I think Darcy's statement of I might not apply if I knew that there was someone who's up for reappointment who might be given a preference is an important point. But I also worry, I don't want to scare potentially good people off. Because to some extent, even if someone interviews and they're great, we may end up being like, you know what, this person is really good. And maybe we don't do one of the reappointments when we appoint this person. Or we say, this person was great. We're not going to do it this time, but maybe the next round we have to make sure we keep this person in mind. Darcy, you had your hand up. Yeah, I think we could just pretty simply do what Alyssa suggested and look at the old guidance from the select board where it's just telling people that there may or may not be openings you know, depending on who the people are and so on. George? I think if all we're doing is saying to mayor may not be openings, I have no problem with that, but I would get very uncomfortable with any statement by this body saying that, you know, sort of like a warning or any expression that there's a preference one way or the other. It's stated in our selection guidance and I think that's where we should leave it, but I don't have a problem with a benign statement like there may or may not be openings. If that satisfies the rest of the body, that's fine with me. I think people are adults and they should, you know, if they don't read what we send them, what can we do? And I, you know, we haven't stated in our guidance in our selection criteria, but I agree with Sarah and I get a sense from others that this, you know, this is an open process and we've struggled with it a lot. And I don't want us to be in a position where we're making statements about anything to the effect that, well, you know, normally we give preference to X, Y or Z outside of what's in the criteria that we send out. So if it's just a matter of saying, you know, there may or may not be openings, fine. Okay. So I am going to write the vacancy announcement. I will include that language in the vacancy announcement and I will get that posted on the Bolton board as soon as I can. I will also reach out to Ms. Gray-Mullen, Mr. Brotvistl and Mr. Levenstein to assess their interest in reappointment. And then at OCA's next meeting, which will be, I might not be full 14 days after the vacancy announcement is posted, but so we'll have to look into that. We'll talk about potentially if we have a sufficient pool to move forward to deal with these impending and inspiring terms. So if there are no more comments on planning board and DBA reappointment, which I see no hands, moving back to our agenda, we'll move on to item four, which is discussion of revisions to community activity forms for multiple member bodies appointed by the town council. So we have talked about the community activity forms a number of times in a number of different ways. And the last time we talked about the community activity forms, we essentially got to a point where we had a couple different opinions on how we might want to revise the CAFs to better get the information that we're looking for. And so we had everything from, and I had designed different mockups for the CAF of what they could look like to accommodate those different ones, everything from splitting up, training, experiences and skills into three separate questions to just having one box that asks something more broadly. We've talked about a number of different things. But then there was one area that we had sort of gotten hung up on, which was whether or not they are personnel records or public records. And that's sort of where we left off last time was on that question. As I've been going through the CBA reappointment, I came across some other, I would say complexities in the CAFs that I discussed in my memo. So in your packet, you had a memo from me about CAS. I also want to note that because that memo expressed opinions and it was an expression of an opinion to a quorum, that memo was also after it was written, posted to the public meeting posting in the lower left so that it was publicly available so that it would not be trigger any type of OML implication. So that memo has been available to the public as long as it's been available to you. And so in that memo, I discussed a couple of different questions that have come up as I was going through the CBA reappointment. So the first thing was that, excuse me as I'm trying to pull this memo up, the first thing was our process says that every time someone applies for appointment, they have to submit a CAF. A new CAF. And to some extent that might make sense when people are appointed to three year terms because after three years, they probably have accumulated new experiences that we want to hear about. The question became when it came to ZBA associate members, do we really want to require a new CAF annually from associate members given that perhaps something might not have changed and a relatively recent one on file for them. So the first thing was, do we want to apply the people seeking reappointment need to submit a new CAF to everyone or does it make some sense to have a difference between someone who's appointed to a three year term and someone who's appointed to a one year term. But the second question I think was more important and that's do we require a new CAF every time someone applies for appointment to a board? And so where this is interesting is in the example I gave of an individual who applied in our first process to be on planning board and ZBA and was not appointed. So we had a CAF from winter 2019 for this individual then applied again with a new CAF in 2019 for planning board. Then has applied for ZBA with yet another CAF in winter 2020. And should this individual remain interested in planning board as we go into reappointments theoretically might submit yet another CAF or planning board, which means that over the course of just over a year we would have four different CAFs from this one individual. And I think that this is an important question. We just did planning board appointments in January which means we have CAFs from people who submitted them in October, November, December as we're going into reappointments if those people remain interested do we require them to fill out yet another CAF even though we have a CAF already on file from then from October or November which is fairly recent. Do we require it? Do we give them the option to say, hey, if you have new information you can submit an updated one otherwise we'll just use this old one. But it's a question both of organization and logistics. I know we had a little bit of confusion back in January when we were trying to share CAFs with counselors trying to figure out which was the CAF we had to share because we had multiple from some people. It gets to this idea of, we say we have a two year window when we go back to the CAFs. And so that's our sort of cut off of what CAF is current enough that we would still reach out to that person to see if they're interested. And yet if we require them to submit a new CAF every time there's a weirdness between saying, oh, this person applied nine months ago and so they're recent enough in the pool that we would reach out to them. But the CAF is not enough. We still need to ask for a new one. And so it just started to get a little bit complicated especially for people who apply and don't get appointed and then are looking to apply again. If we already have a CAF on file do we ask for another CAF? And so that was sort of the main question I was looking to ask is how recent is recent enough? If someone submitted a CAF three weeks ago for the ZBA and then we have a resignation on the ZBA in July do we ask for a new CAF from that individual even though they submitted one just a few months prior? And so it deals with a little bit more complexity than I think we were looking at. And I think it gets to what the purpose of the CAF actually is because I think that influences, what are we using the CAF for? And I think that that influences what our decision is. So I put forth an idea and I'm not here necessarily to advocate for it because I think that there's both positives and negatives about it but it was something I wanted to be able to discuss. And it was based on the fact that I was reading the statements of interest from the school committee candidates and I thought that they were great and I thought they provided so much useful information and I thought, gee, if we could get CAFs that look like this, that would be great because these actually are providing us a lot of really great background information going into the interviews that I don't think that we get from the community activity forms. And I thought, wouldn't it be great if we could get something similar from our appointments, the statement of interest? And certainly this is something that Alyssa has suggested in the past about the possibility of asking for a writing sample. But then the question becomes so then what's the point of the CAF? And so one idea I put out there was to make the CAF something that's simple that just says what's your name, address and what bodies you're interested in serving in and that just is an expression of interest for a person and that's kept on file for three years which corresponds to the length of a normal term and it just serves to, for someone to say I'm interested in this body and then we can go back and say are you still interested? But then every time we're gonna do interviews we ask for a one page or something statement of interest that allows them to articulate clearly why they're interested in that body. And one of the things that I put in there is that we could send them the selection guidance first so that they actually have our criteria before they write it so that they can write to that criteria and with the recognition that criteria might change from one appointment to the next. And so that would give us more up to date information from a person, it would give us fuller information from a person and so we would still have just one CAF on file for three years but every time they wanna interview they would submit a new statement that perhaps could be modified in response to what we have publicly said we're looking for. It's an idea I wanted to have before we move on to any of these other continuation of these other conversations we've been having about the CAF I wanted us to at least be able to grapple with those questions and then perhaps that proposal. So with that I wanna throw it to the committee to just say what do you think generally about any of this with regard to those questions with regard to the statement of interest from the school committee with regard to potentially the proposal I outlined because my hope is that we can have a good discussion about this before we move forward with the planning board. So thoughts, ideas, concerns, questions, the floor is open, Sarah. I was unmuted that whole time, so sorry. I agree, I think it's a great idea. I feel like having a writing sample tells you so much more about a person than a lot of the other things that we've asked for in the previous CAF so and I think it would be timely we have just their information on basically who they are and then we get more detailed information yearly. And so I agree with it, that's it. I was muted. Darcy, I see your hand up. Yeah, I think that it makes a lot of sense not to burden repeat applicants with having to rewrite an application over and over, but I think that we could incorporate what we're doing into the CAF process by just having a question, one of the first questions be, have you applied within the last three years if the answer to that is yes, the following question, answering the following questions is optional or something like that. And then you could even have a statement of interest type question on the CAF. So everything is in one place. So I guess I don't think we need to change having a process of CAF. All towns have application processes for their boards and committees and it just seems like that makes sense just to keep it within the process that we already have. I keep doing this while I'm muting myself. Alyssa, why don't we go to you and then we'll go to George. Alyssa, are you there? You need to unmute Alyssa. I am unmuted. Okay. It shows you muted on my screen. That's weird. Okay, sorry, go ahead. So isn't that the important part? Okay, go ahead. I like separating them because I- Mute it again. The whole point of the issue. Yeah, Alyssa, I think we're having, I think maybe we're having some connection issues because you're very choppy. So I'm assuming you're speaking, but we can't really hear you. My computer, but I hear you guys, too. So I'm out. So you can hear us, but we really couldn't hear you. You can only hear little, little tiny snippets. So why don't I go to George because he's had his hand up and then let's go ahead, George. She could use the chat function. I agree. It's not good if we can't hear one of our members. Yeah. Can I make a suggestion? Yes, please. Alyssa, if you are having trouble speaking during the meeting, you can mute your computer audio and then call in and we'll be able to hear you over your phone. Cause I would really like to have Alyssa's input here, especially because even though this is a proposal on the memo I wrote, she has been someone who has been talked about, who has talked about the possibility of a writing sample since our very first discussion of CIS. And so I think her input is too valuable to lose in this conversation. So George, why don't we let you speak and we'll try to figure out how we can make sure Alyssa's input is included. Evan, I guess before I do that, I just make the point that that really applies to everybody. We have to be able to hear each other. So for all five here and one of us can't be heard, that's a serious problem no matter who it is. I agree. No, so, but I hear you, but I think that's something we all need to keep in mind with this technological new world that this could be a real problem at times. And here we have an example. We can't really go ahead. I think we can't talk to each other. So I just want to say quickly that I'm a little concerned about adding another layer of whatever you want to call it. Not necessarily an obstacle, it's really not fair, but I understand the argument that's being made and it makes sense. We're all struggling to get some kind of something from our candidates that we can actually chew on. And I think there's been frustration with the CAFs in that regard. There's also other issues with the CAFs, but on the other hand, when I think about it, that basically two questions I have, I want to understand from this candidate why they want to be on this body and I want to understand what they think they bring to this body. Those are the two things that matter the most to me. And I'm not sure that, it's on the CAF, at least the revised version that we've been looking at. And I guess I'm just concerned about adding another layer. So your thought is, okay, we take those questions off and we just treat the CAF as a sort of initial inquiry, a statement of interest. And then if we then gonna require them to put forward a statement of interest that will answer those two questions, I assume. I can live with that. I guess I just, my concern, and I'll try to shut up now, is that it just adds another layer of complexity, another level of looking for forms and making sure everybody gets them in, da, da, da, da. And the two questions that I am most concerned about are already on the CAF. And it tells me something when somebody fills it out if they actually don't say much. So there is some information begotten from someone's CAF when they really don't spend the time to answer the questions that we've made clear that we need to have them answer. So that's my thought. Okay, Alyssa. I tried switching my internet connection and we'll see if that helps. Does it sound any better? So much better. I have no idea what the problem is. I'm doing this in the same room of my house that I have done our previous meetings in, et cetera. Just to be clear on the open meeting law, as obviously many of you know, once I can't be heard anymore, then you just record that I'm out of the meeting. And as long as you have a quorum, you still continue to function. If you can actually hear the things that I'm saying now, I can't tell, so I'm gonna pause. We can, yeah. Okay, so to try and be succinct, what you know is difficult for me. I think that we are looking, the reason I like the way the direction this is going is that we've struggled so hard to come up with the right way to ask a question on the CAF. And when I take a step back and I look at the school committee statements of interest, I realize that that's actually not an efficient use of our time or the applicant's time to try and perfect the CAF because what we really want is at the time we're going to be interviewing, we wanna know what these people think they bring. So if they filed a CAF two years ago, having a check-off box that says, I filed a CAF two years ago, these questions are optional, doesn't tell us anything about where they are today and why they wanna serve today. And that limited amount of information they provide on the CAF gets us nowhere in terms of determining sufficiency of the pool. So we can look at that, we see their name, we see one sentence, somebody else writes a book, we just, that still doesn't tell us if the pool's sufficient. So I say, so I've gotten to the point of frustration that I've like rather than trying to perfect the CAF, have the CAF just basically be, here's my contact information. And then when we're ready with our selection criteria, we say, okay, tell us why you're, why you're ready to do this. The only sticking point and Evan talks about this in the memo is how then do we decide on sufficiency of the pool? And I would argue that we're already deciding on sufficiency of the pool in the absence of complete information because no matter what they put on that CAF, if it's a CAF that's two years old, if it's a CAF that's 20 minutes old, if they don't give us adequate information to be able to tell, I'm not sure why I'm saying the pool's sufficient. Yeah, so just to thank you, let's say at my point in response to I think George's question about if these two questions are already asked on the CAF, I think what led me a little bit towards this proposal were two things. One being what Alyssa just said and that things change, right? And so even to some extent the associate members of the ZBA, if they had never served on the ZBA before and now they do, even though the CAF may only be a year apart, the content would likely be completely different because all of a sudden now they've served on ZBA panel. So their experiences are very different. And so the only way to get that updated experience is maybe to say, if you're not gonna require a new CAF every time someone wants to be considered, which to me is just too much and burdensome and you know, Darcy sort of said, well, we don't wanna put the application to that and I agree is you could say, you have the option of submitting an updated CAF, which I think is fine. But at the same time is sort of this weirdness. Some people will be have multiple CAFs on file, some won't, you have to be looking with the most recent one. And then the other aspect of it is that idea of we could send them selection guidance ahead of time before they write their statement of interest, which can help them, when we're asking for relevant skills and experiences can help them in theory gear towards what they know we're looking for. And so, and maybe this is something that sounds great in the abstract but functionally wouldn't make a difference and I don't know. But in theory we had selection guidance that was somewhat specific for the last planning board appointment that might be different for this one. And so maybe the information they want to tell us varies depending on what we say that we're looking for. And so I think Alyssa's point of, it gives us information about their skills and experiences at that time in the context of what we publicly say we're looking for might just give us better information. And then the one other thing that we haven't touched on is we keep having this conversation about public versus private, are they personnel records or are they public documents? And I think having that split actually helps because what we can say is, look, the person's like contact and demographic information, we're gonna keep that as personnel records because it's just the names and it's their contact information and it's potentially sensitive demographic information. If we agree that we want to continue demographic information. But then the statement of interest, much like we did for school committee, that could be public. And so what the public's actually interested in could become a public document because we can extricate the two. So I think that there are some benefits in this. George, I see your hand up, so I wanna go to you. Just a very practical question that in the course of this process that you're envisioning, if someone fails to submit a statement of interest, they would not proceed to interviews. That would be something that would remove them from the interview pool. And they would have to, certain deadline, they'd have to meet so that we could actually see them. And so that would be your understanding. This is, I think that if we decided to go on the strat, that would be a decision of the committee. I thought about both having a deadline. I think you would have to have a deadline. But I thought about both the option saying, if you don't get in by the deadline, you're not in the pool. Or just saying in theory, this is when you need to submit a statement of interest. And if you don't have one by that point, we'll still interview you, but you probably are at disadvantage because we don't know anything about you and you didn't submit. I'm on a search committee for the university right now and there's documents that we requested and some people didn't submit them. And so there's this conversation of, if we don't have this information, it's harder to move forward. We're still considering you, but it's harder to move forward without this information. And so you're at a competitive disadvantage. So there's two more ways we can do it. Go Dusty and then Alyssa. Yeah, I just have a comment about, your comment, Evan, about public versus personnel records. And if there were, first of all, if we're asking the same questions for a statement of interest, I'm not sure why that would be different from having the same questions on the CAF. But aside from that, if the statement of interest were public, that assumes also that the names of the people who wrote them would be public. The numbers of people who wrote them would be public. And so the only thing that would be private would be maybe their address. Is that what I'm hearing? Because you wouldn't be publishing the statement of interest without their names. Correct, so right now, names and numbers are already public when we move on to interview. So it would be the same thing except name, numbers, and statement of interest. What would be different is certainly their contact information and if we included demographic information would not necessarily be published. And also we would, how I envision it is we would maintain the idea that we would release names, numbers, and the statement of interest closer to the interviews, but we wouldn't necessarily release CAFs for people who applied, but then withdrew or something like that. And so some of that, okay. Alyssa, do you have your hand up? Alyssa? Let me try this again, is that better? Yeah, not better. Two other quick additions. One is associated with the process other towns use. The process other towns use is bad. Please quote me in the newspaper saying, the process other towns use is bad. Every elected official I've talked to over the last 20 years complains about the fact that they get a very limited pool with very similar viewpoints over and over by doing things the same way. So that being the definition of a not effective process, that's one of the reasons I'm excited to move forward with what feels like a way to get the information on the CAF that we've been trying so hard to get, but to actually get it in a better way. So Darcy's not wrong at all about the fact that the CAF and the statement of interest are in many ways the same thing. The advantage to the statement of interest is all the things that we've just talked about, including the fact that it's not out of date, that it's written specifically for the selection criteria that are appropriate at this time. And also remembering that we are looking to ourselves as setting a standard for the town manager, whether he chooses to adopt any of it or not. But when we do that, we say, you know, this year, this body is looking for people with these qualifications because they're facing these challenges. Three years from now, they're facing different challenges and it actually might help to tweak the selection criteria to be appropriate for that, much less on a year-to-year basis, certainly on a longer than a year-to-year basis. And so having just their basic contact data and then whatever we figure out we're doing with demographics as the personnel record, and then the statement of interest, which as you said, would be published so that everyone can see it is so much more useful than what we're doing now, right? Where we're not publishing their personnel record that is more or less not useful in the first place. And it's a lot more useful to all of us just like the statement of interest for the school committee. And to be clear, we told the school committee applicants you have to turn in a statement of interest. If they don't turn it in, no, they don't get interviewed at a disadvantage. If they can't follow simple directions, they don't belong on a town committee. So, you know, we saw great variation in those statements of interest, even though there was a pretty clear guideline on how long they could be, what font they could be in. And so people will do the thing we asked them to do. We just need to be clear on what we're asking them to do. And I've always talked in our previous conversations about the fact that it can't be like a five page document. I think the length that we use for school committee is actually pretty appropriate in this case. Okay, George, I see your hand up. And we'll go to Darcy. I'm, again, as often with this body, the conversation is extremely helpful. I am beginning to see very clearly the advantages of the proposal. I guess I'm just asking again, just sort of dumb practical questions that each time we do this, we would have to craft a statement of interest for this particular set of interviews. And while I assume over time, this would become pretty routine, the advantage would be, of course, it goes slightly tweak it, but we would have to agree as a body every single time. We'd have to have a vote, I assume, that this is what we're going to ask in this particular round of interviews. This is what the statement of interest is gonna look like. It won't be just a, what like the seat, the advantage of the CE apps and maybe it's really a disadvantage, is it's a set form, it's fixed, boom, you don't have to think about it, chair doesn't have to worry about it, committee doesn't have to worry about it, it's just there. And that's got some real disadvantages, as Alyssa points out. What we're asking, I guess what I'm saying is, we're asking for ourselves, we're putting a little more work now on the future committee, won't be us who will be doing this, that every single time, they do have a set of interviews that are going to have to craft a statement of interest document. And that's my understanding and I assume that is correct. So again, I think some of these questions are, I wanted to lay out a proposal for discussion and if we decided to not move forward with it, then we wouldn't have to consider any of these questions. And if we did decide to move forward with it, these would be questions to consider, but I wasn't personally interested in working out every little detail before knowing whether or not it was even something the committee would be interested in. I think that would be a question. So for our process, we have to adopt selection guidance every single time, and that selection guidance might look very similar every time it might look very different depending on the needs of the body, depending on who's chair of the body, since half of the selection guidance is input from the chair. Whether or not we have to new statement of interest guidelines every time I think would be up to this committee. To some extent, we could work into the process. No, every statement of interest will be maximum one page, this font, and has to answer these questions. And they could specifically reference the selection guidance. Please describe your skills and experiences that are relevant to what we're looking for in the selection guidance or something so that it transfers every time. Or we could say, what we might want different types of statements of interest depending on each vacancy. And so I think George, I don't think I fully thought through whether or not we have this, the selection guidance changes every time would the requirements of statement of interest change every time? I don't think they have to, but I think that's certainly a possibility, but I think that's something we would have to discuss. Darcy. I just have a couple of comments. One is that it feels like once again, we are making things like a whole lot more complicated than they need to be. Like I don't really think we need to do this. I also feel like, this isn't an elective office and to require people to write a long statement in order to take this position separate from filling out the CAF, I don't know, it seems kind of onerous to me. And I also feel a little bit like, we have CRC is going to take over this function. Why don't we just let them decide? They might not want us to be, they might not agree with us. They might have a different way of doing things. Why are we bothering to do this right before we're handing this over to the CRC? Okay. So I would just respond to that specific thing. So the one thing is we did tell the council that we were going to be the ones who were recommending any potential revisions to the CAFs because this is the body that is most familiar with the CAFs and the problems involved with it. So I do actually think that any recommendation for any change to the CAF needs to come from this body as we're the ones that have the best grasp of it. So the only person on CAF who was a member on CRC which was a member of this body is me and Sarah. And so we could try to bring that perspective to CRC. But I think that we would then lose the voices of Darcy, George and Alyssa in that conversation which I think have been really valuable because we've all had experience with this. But the second thing I would say is in my opinion what we do in this body as our internal process or internal process but my opinion is that the CAF for council appointed bodies is really something that is owned by the town council. And so just as when we recommended splitting the town manager and the town council CAFs we asked for a vote of the council. My expectation is that any change to the CAF itself would require a town council vote. How we as a body use the CAF is our own internal process but an actual alteration to the CAF I think would require a town council vote. And so I do think that this would be something. You know, if your concern is CRC might not like us doing this right before we hand it off to them that could be dealt with in a debate. Sarah your hand was up and then we'll go to Alyssa. So I guess I would say the same thing that you did is being part of OKA like we have been doing this since the very beginning. So I think that our input and how the CAF is done is incredibly important. And as someone who is also on CRC I wanna know what this body thinks about the CAF. So I'm deeply interested because OKA has been working on this for so long. And then I just wanna also say that the writing samples I think give us a lot of the information that all of us have been saying that we want to know about applicants about their background about why they're interested about all sorts of information they wanna give us that maybe isn't just academic. I think that that's great information is what we're saying that we want. And the other thing is that I think that the extra work is completely worth it both on a chair's part on a committee's part and on somebody who is applying. We get more information from them. And also I think that Alyssa's right is that if we sort of leave this a little bit open-ended about how the process is done when there are specific needs of a committee it lets the selection committee maybe tweak a little bit of what they're looking for. All of this, even though maybe it's a little bit extra work gives us a lot more information. Okay, thank you, Sarah. Alyssa? You'll be pleased that I wrote out a bunch of my comments and then lined them out. I'm finding it really disturbing that we're still hearing some sentiment that we're making this too complicated. We are trying really hard to make it uncomplicated by just asking people to provide us basic contact information that we can treat as a personnel record and then going to them when we need a statement of interest. This concern that we're going to have to keep doing it. I mean, come on, we only appoint members to three bodies. This isn't that difficult. It's just that we're trying to figure out our process. The idea that we would just toss it over to CRC and say, yeah, I know we've been wrestling with it for a year and a half but whatever you guys just figure it out is appalling to me when we have spent so many hours grinding over every detail of it. And I reflect back to the fact that if we just given up on this conversation a long time ago, there was a sentiment expressed by some on this committee and also on the full town council. We'll just take a resume and publish the CAF and just be done with it. And the reason we aren't doing that is because it doesn't provide useful information, providing a resume that has nothing to do with appointed volunteer service is useless. And we've outvoted that regularly. Providing a CAF to the public that has questions that we've tried desperately to wordsmith in a different way and still aren't going to get complete answers for does not solve our problem. Publishing things in a different way does not solve our problem. I feel like this new suggestion actually solves a ton of our problems. I think the only one it makes difficult that it doesn't solve, it makes no more difficult we're in exactly the same position now. The only problem it doesn't solve is determining sufficiency of the pool. Because how do you know if the pool is sufficient are you basing it entirely on numbers, right? Because we've had that conversation before. Are you basing it on the extremely limited CAFs we get now? I mean, meaning the limited content on the CAFs and incredibly variable. Or do we somehow decide after they write their statement of interest? I think we kind of have to let go of the fact that we're going to be able to tell other than on a purely numbers game. And that number may vary from situation to situation, just like we're in this complexity of the ZBA with the associates in the full versus filling one seat as a non-voting resident on the finance committee. Like what's sufficient for that versus multiple seats on the ZBA at any given time. So that's, I agree that we would want to continue to not set a hard and fast number for what sufficiency means. But I think we want to describe that for the CRC moving forward in terms of what sufficiency of the pool means purely because we've wrestled with all these aspects. And this newer process that we're in the format of discussing now does not again solve every problem. But I think it solves almost all of them. So one thing again, just to insert my thoughts on this as I was writing this memo and thinking about it, I did question to Darcy's point, are we creating just a necessary or excessive work for the applicants? And my thought on this was to me, if we are requiring the submission of a new CAEF every time they're interested, that feels like when students complain that something is busy work, right? Because if information hasn't changed and they're just writing the same thing but they have to resubmit, they're resubmitting the same CAEF for no reason, right? It's just now we have multiple CAEFs from a person and would that just say the same thing? Whereas the statement of interest in theory if someone applies in January and then applies in July for the same board and our criteria is the same, they could submit a very similar statement of interest that they just tweak a little bit. So I don't think that it actually creates more, any more work than if we were requiring them to resubmit a CAEF because in theory they could just reuse the information and just tweak it to the selection guidance. But I do think it ensures that at all times the information we do have is the most current and is considered in the context of that selection guidance. So to me it actually feels like it's the same amount of work for the applicants but it creates better information for us. Speaking from the perspective of the chair, I will say that the most difficult part of implementing this process has been collecting and figuring out CAEFs. That I know at some point it was asked if I could try to keep track of how much time I'm spending. I have not been able to do that mostly because I'm usually doing four different things that once across all of my different jobs and so it's hard to do that. But I will say just my sense of it has been the biggest time suck has been going through all the CAEFs, finding which ones are current, trying to pull them together, make sure I have the right ones. And so to me just having this once, three years and after three years, now the system boots it out or maybe it doesn't but we only look at three years and just saying here's the contact information of the people. I think would actually maybe make things a little bit easier for the chair because I will say right now when I look for CAEFs, especially because some of them are in access in an access database, some of them are in Civic Plus and some of them are in neither. So there's a staff perspective to this too. When I have four or five different CAEFs for a person which we do for many people over the course of two years, just having to go through them and figure out which ones I'm trying to pull. It just gets very complicated which is why I actually like the idea of having the CAEF just be a one time submittal of contact information, maybe demographic information and check one, two or three of the finance ZBA planning board and just leave it at that and then they don't have to resubmit if they've submitted within the past two years and we just reach out to them. I actually think that it might be less work for the chair, maybe not, but that's my sense of things. George, you're handing one up and then down. Do you have a comment? I'm just trying to in my own mind and hopefully helpful to the rest of you but maybe not sort of summarize what we seem to have gotten to at this point at least from my hearing that what we're thinking of doing, we're proposing is to revise the CAEFs and basically take out questions that would address anything that would be appropriate for a statement of interest. So they would be simply sort of document that would give us a sense of just who these people are in the most basic way. You're considering or suggesting a three year time limit for CAEFs and after that point they would have to submit a new one but otherwise we would not, they could if they want but basically three years would be the limit for CAEFs and then we would need to adopt or change our process revise our process to include a statement of interest. Are those, am I missing something? Is that that's my sense of what is being proposed or if we were to move ahead with this those are the kinds of things we'd have to do. We'd have to revise the CAEF one more time, make some decision about time limit and then adopt a statement of interest to the process of our interview. That is correct. So if again, I'm still saying if this committee feels as though this is a proposal that's worth pursuing what I would do is I would bring back to this committee essentially two things for discussion and vote. One would be a recommendation to the council on the CAEF to for a change of the CAEF that again, I think we need to go to the council with a report with a request for a town council action because I do think that the CAEFs themselves for town council committees are really owned by the full council, although other people have opinions and that I'd be willing to hear them. And then the second thing I would bring forward would be a proposed amendment to our adopted process that would be ours that we would amend. And then that also would get sent to CRC and GOL because the CRC is gonna be taken on planning board and ZVA, GOL will be taken on appointment of finance committee members with a description of what those changes were because my hope is that those committees will take on these processes as we have labored over them. I don't think that they're gonna wanna reinvent the wheel here. So yes, I would bring back two things, one for the council, one for the committee. So, go ahead. I would like to propose or maybe build a consensus, maybe need a vote that something to that effect what you've described that we empower you to go ahead and do those things either by consensus or by vote. What I would suggest at this point. So Darcy, I wanna look to you because so my sense of this discussion has been George, Sarah and Alyssa are overall supportive of the idea of moving this proposal forward. Just bring it to a point where something we can actually look at what the details would be. Your thoughts, because I know you seem less on board. Yeah, well, first, we just went through a long process of amending the CAFs, so that seems odd to me that we're now again amending them. But my main concern is the transparency of both of these things, of the CAFs. And if we do a statement of interest, I'm not necessarily opposed to this idea. I would just like them both to be transparent at a early date similar to what Northampton does. So if they both work, that would be fine with me. And even though I think it's unnecessary to be changing our process again, but I don't care that much. I just would like it to be transparent. Okay, can I ask you, so I think what is actually being considered is very similar to the process that was being used for school, the school committee vacancy. Is that something that you have felt was transparent? I don't know how early the statements of interest were transparent to the public. Do we know that? I don't know. I have. I know there was a date at which all the information was released, so that it was all released together. George. I'm just trying, I really am trying to understand what this issue is of transparency. It's a word that keeps being used and I really am struggling and I'm, you know, is it a matter of like six months ahead? I mean, the public knows who the candidates are. The public will have access to their statements of interest. They will know, I assume, well advanced of when these decisions are made. What more, Darcy, do you want us to do? I just, help me understand what you feel is missing in terms of transparency here. It just seems very vague. And if you can make it clear, I can at least understand what your concerns are. But at the moment, I'm just, I just don't understand. It's just about a transparency can get, you know. So what's missing? It's just the date at which it's transparent to the public. So in the past, we have been transparent, what, 48 hours before the interviews is our latest amount of transparency. So I would like us to be transparent, say, at the, you know, with a link to the documents on the date of when we vote on whether the pool is sufficient or something like that. So that would be maybe a couple of weeks earlier than what we are, when we are currently getting the information out to the public. One thing that I just want to insert into that conversation for consideration is the fact that, at least with these ZBA interviews, when we voted on the sufficiency of the pool, there was a list of names before us. Since that time, some of those names have withdrawn from consideration. And since that time, we have gotten new applicants and so there are new names. And so the one benefit is to not doing it when we first made that initial declaration is the fact that we have always said that even after we declared the pool sufficient, we would still accept applications. And so the list of names that are now publicly posted for the ZBA interviews is the final list of names. If we had published that initially, it would have looked very different. And so there is, I guess, a question of, and Alyssa sort of, I know, brought this up initially when we talked about not releasing names or numbers too far in advance is that it's something that's fluid and it's something that if someone had asked me, we got our last confirmation two days ago. And so the pool literally changed two days ago. And so that fluidity makes it very complicated. And so if we're looking at simplifying and we're looking at easing the workload, there is something to be said about having a date that's when we're ready to post the actual interviews to say, now we're going to release the pool publicly because it wasn't with the planning board, but with the ZBA, I think it's been an incredibly erratic and fluid pool. George? Well, I continue to struggle, but I guess I'm getting the sense that this idea of transparency is to allow people to express their opinions. And they have 40 hours, if they wish, to communicate that to us. And then we simply recommend these names. We don't make the decision. It's made by the council. And then there are at least another week or two or more if people so, I just, I'm sorry, I guess I'm at a loss. The public is aware. They have 48 hours advanced notice. They welcome to come or at least listen, just like everybody else. They can email if they want. They can do whatever they like in terms of that sort of thing. And then it goes to the council and the whole process goes over again. So I'm sorry, I'm struggling to understand what the issue is. Sarah? Evan, okay. So I have to agree with George in the fact that I think that we're releasing way more information, especially if we have a writing sample. And even if it's for just 48 hours before, it gives people an idea of who is interested. And even with school committee, even when all that information was released, one of the only other things that I can see that people can do with it is just, I feel like we're all, we're seeing that when the information goes out soon, it's great to have public input. It's great to have people's ideas. But then I also worry a little bit that if it goes on too long, I think we're also seeing, I'm gonna, I know, all right, maybe this is not, I don't know how to say this exactly, but maybe like some expressions from the public about who's running that sometimes gets overly personal. And I also feel like in some ways it also, if you let it go on too long, I feel like the public can also, then in some ways, in a strange unexpected way, sort of campaign for people. And although I want the public's opinion, I think that there's also something dangerous about having it go on for too long. And I don't think that I can articulate it any differently than that. I'm not sure that it's clear about that. Yeah. So I think what might be useful, Darcy, you have often cited Northampton as the model that you're interested in pursuing. And a few weeks ago, we gave you a little homework assignment that you did for our last meeting. And unfortunately, we weren't able to get to it. I've added that document into this meeting packet. And so maybe given that this conversation of transparency, your model has always been Northampton. Maybe this is a good opportunity to have you discuss what you found and the document that you wrote up for this group. So as a reminder for all of us, we asked Darcy to find out what it means to be a public, what it means for the applications to be a public document from Northampton. And specifically the questions that we asked Darcy to bring back to us, answers from where, which documents are released publicly? Is it all applicants that are ever, applications that are ever submitted or just the ones that are brought forward to a vote? And when are they released? When are they, which ones are made public? When are they made public? And what does it mean? Are they posted on a website? Are they distributed? Are they just subject to public records request? So maybe talking a little bit about what you found, Darcy would give us a little bit more information about what you're looking for from our process. So I'll hand the floor over to Darcy. You pull that document up. Yep, I certainly can. So let me, if you just give me one minute, share screen. Y'all can see the document. Okay, great. So this is the document. So the floor is yours, Darcy. Okay, so the first three paragraphs of this document are actually an email from Bill Dwight, who's a city counselor in Northampton, who was explaining the process to me after I sent him an email. And the last two sections are simply links to their application form, which I think you've seen before and the link to the process that are described on their website. So basically the process in Northampton starts with the mayor. He passes on a recommendation to the council after informally contacting people who have applied. So then the name or names go to the council and on that very first, and the council then refers to the city services committee, but the very first agenda that the council gets, there's a link to the application form. So you can actually see that if you, I don't know if we can do that here, the first link there. So if you scroll down, you'll see right here with appointments, it'll say under 10B it says documents, appointments to various committees. So if you click on that, you'll see the people who have applied and what is comparable to RCAS, the forms that the different applicants filled out. So that's linked in the very first meeting where the mayor refers to the council. And then the council sends those applications to the city services committee and the city services committee actually conducts the interviews by phone or in person, either one. So, and you can see the same thing on the city services agendas. So as it says here, the members of the city services interview the candidates either in person or by phone, report their findings in another public meeting. And then the committee determines if they should be referred back to the council with a positive recommendation or not. And then the council votes. So, and as Bill added, all these proceedings are done in open public meetings that are posted, so on and so forth. At any point in the process, counselors or members of the public may challenge the appointments. All documents are included in the public record and are available by request. So it's pretty early in the process that there is that the documents are made public. Okay, I see a hand from Alyssa. I'm having trouble keeping track of my notes and being able to actually talk at the same time in terms of the way the zoom screens flip around. I'm sure after we do this 50 or 100 times, it'll be really obvious. One of the frustrations I have with the information we've received is that I actually would need to pick apart that statement further about how all these things are done in public. There's no way individual members of the city council in Northampton are interviewing people randomly in public at publicly posted meetings for these things. That's now they may be having meetings where they're doing that at, but if they're interviewing someone by phone, that's not a public process. If they're interviewing someone by email, that's not a public process. So I think it's overblown to say this is all done in public. I think that I'm sure the committee meetings where they interview people, if they do so at a committee meeting are public, but there's no indication that in fact, they haven't all separately been assigned to interview someone and then just report back publicly at that public meeting. There are no details on that. And I don't think we need them, but I think it's inadequate to say everything's public over there when it's clear to me that can't possibly be true. The other part of it is that one of the frustrations that Darcy's expressed numerous times is just wanting the public to know basically as soon as someone applies that someone's applied and Northampton doesn't do that either. Northampton, these are all mayoral appointments. The mayor decides who he's gonna send forward to the council. There could have been 10 more applicants that they'll never know about just like with our town manager. So it is not a completely transparent process. No one knows who the applicants were that are not being brought forward by the mayor. It is completely false to say that every application is being forwarded to the council. All right, it's muted. I see a hand from George. Yeah, I mean, I looked this over carefully. I appreciate Darcy sending it to us. And I had many of the reactions it sounds like that Alyssa had. It seems in many ways that our process is actually more transparent. Quite frankly, there's no way that these interviews, I don't think any of them are actually done in public. It's certainly not clear that they are. And certainly phone interviews are not done in public. There's also a role for staff here that we don't have. And of course, the mayor makes a big difference. The form of government certainly changes it. So I'm not sure. And then finally it says something about that at any point in the process, counselors or members of the public may challenge the appointment. And that's all it says. And in my conversations, in formal as they are, with counselors in Northampton, I think it's extremely rare, if ever, that appointments are ever rejected. So it's not clear to me what this challenge actually amounts to other than what? An email or I don't know. Somebody says, I don't like Smith. Okay, fine, that's perfectly legitimate. They're welcome to say that. So I found nothing in this that I thought, oh my God, these people really have figured it out and they're transparent and we're in the dark. And in some ways, I think we're much more transparent. So that was my two cents on making my way through this. Yeah, thank you, George. So I guess my question is, right, so having read this and then I appreciated Darcy's explanation, I wanted to make sure that my reading of it was her interpretation. I think that if we actually move forward with the proposal that's on the table for CAS that was in the memo I supplied to the committee, we would be more transparent than Northampton because what I'm seeing here is a process in which who applied is not released. And the only things that are released are the names and the information for the people who are actually recommended for appointment and that information is released at the time when it's time for the council to conduct their interviews. And so what we're talking about is the CAS and who's applying would be private until we're ready to actually move forward to interviews and then the pool would be made public, which is actually a little bit different because we'd be making the names of everyone who's being interviewed public as opposed to just people who are being recommended for appointment, which is what we're seeing here. The only difference is that we don't publish the CAS but if we move towards the statement of interest and we do publish those at the time of interviews, I actually think that our process would look very similar to what's outlined here. The only difference being that our interviews would be conducted publicly as opposed to here. So I think we would actually, if you're interested in transparency, I think what we would be doing would actually be more transparent than what was described here. Darcy, I see your hand up. Yes, I think that I would interpret it completely differently about transparency. The key is when the public gets the information compared to when the interviews are held. So if we are not releasing our information to the public until 48 hours before our interviews, then that does not give, for example, the Hampshire Gazette the opportunity to run a story about it. Whereas in Northampton, they put a link in, the meeting of the city services committee isn't for another week or two weeks or whatever. That gives the amount, that gives the local media the ability to put a story in about, these four people are running or have applied for the planning board or whatever. We don't have that opportunity in Amherst. If we're only releasing our information 48 hours before, there's no opportunity for that. And to a large extent, most people will not know because they don't, things don't happen that fast. And the word would not get out as to who were the applicants. And that is of interest to the public. So basically what I'm hoping for is to get the information out a couple of weeks before we have our interviews, not 48 hours. And the Northampton process allows that. Okay, so I'm not, okay. The one point I will make is if you remember with planning board, there was actually an article in the Gazette before our interviews that featured Mr. Marshall, Mr. Greeny and Mr. Hirsch. So the Gazette did publish in advance of the interviews, a description, even though we didn't have weeks of experience. But the one thing I do want to make sure I'm constantly reminding people is that the fluidity of the, if we are going to do something like that, we would have to have a hard cut off at a pool that would be weeks in advance. And so if we had applied that to the ZBA process we just talked about here, there are a few people in the pool who would not be in the pool because we would have had to announce the pool weeks ago and then that would have changed. Alyssa, I see your hand up. Yeah, reflecting on your last comment, especially Evan, I think that, and we did want more people in the pool. So it is good that the cut off wasn't sooner because the problem is once you know that maybe somebody wishes they'd made the pool but there was a miscommunication or something changed in their lives, then while you're interviewing the first set of people you're always wondering to yourself, well, but am I kind of saving a seat for somebody because I sort of heard they might be interested? So that's why it's not good to make a cut off without firmly deciding to make a cut off like we did decide to do it with school committee. So we would want to address that in our report. Like when you decide to make a cut off then understand you can't accept any additional people and that's going to have ramifications to your decision making process and the way you actually interview people as well. And whereas the ideal obviously is to get them all in the first go round. The other part of it is that I really can't help but feel again, I was gonna try not to say transparency theater today, but I'm gonna say it, which is that I'm amazed that on the one hand we're saying we're making this too complicated and on the other hand we're saying, well, people need more than 48 hours notice to know who might be applying to the planning board or ZBA even though people don't get more than 48 hours notice for first reading of a bylaw, okay, first reading of a bylaw, right? That's on the bulletin board. No one looks at the bulletin board. So people have to pay attention to the 48 hours notice. That's just a fact. They have to do that with everything we do. I think everything the town council does should in fact be getting published more than 48 hours ahead of time. You've heard me talk about that numerous times at town council meetings, but there is zero reason why appointed volunteers would be held to a different standard of people being able to write articles about them. I am, that's making my skin crawl. It's true that the Gazette did that associated with the planning board. I've never seen an article in the Gazette talking about who Northampton is thinking about appointing. This is just not the goal. The goal is not to have people write us letters in favor of people or not. The goal is not to put in in the paper. Now, Darcy, your goal might be different than mine. My goals are not to get it written about in the newspaper ahead of time. My goal is not to have people lobby us ahead of time. My goal is for the public to be able to see that the people they elected are doing a very transparent process on what they're doing. And if they don't like what we're doing, then they should tell us that and they should also unelect us. It is not up to the public to decide who should be on the ZBA or on the planning board. So comparing what is before us to the Northampton process, it seems like the major sticking point for you Darcy is that the Northampton process, there is a longer span of time between the release of names and the actual interviews. We have a much shorter span of time. But it seems like that's the only, that's the difference, right? That's the sticking point that you're interested in. Are there, it's just that one thing. Okay. I think that helps me understand, I think when Gus just took something down in my backyard. I think that helps me understand where you're coming from because that was where I was getting confused is it looked like the Northampton process wasn't necessarily more transparent in a lot of ways. So that's something that can be discussed. So where we're at, is there consensus among the members of this body for me to bring forward a recommendation to the council and some type of amendment to the process to accommodate the proposal that was described in the memo? Is that something that we are interested in pursuing more formally in our next meeting? George? Well, I've said it before. Yes, I think there is a consensus that I would like you to go forward and bring this back to us at our next meeting for us to make a decision on. So I hope that that is what all the rest of my colleagues agree, but if not, then I suppose we would need a motion, but I would like you to do, if I understand it, the two things that you had suggested and that I had endorsed, which was to go ahead and provide us with a revised the CAF for us to look at in concrete detail and to provide an amendment to the process that would include statement of interest. I'm still not sure about the three-year term limit, whether that also would be included. The two things you had mentioned were the first two, I would think that maybe that's just on the table anyway, so it doesn't need to be added to it. But yes, I would like you to do that and I think there is a consensus for that, but I need to hear, we need to hear from everybody else. Okay, Sarah? Yep, I'm in consensus. I think it's a good idea and I'd like to see you present us the entire idea, but I like it and I'm even down with the timelines that you had described in the beginning, so yeah. Okay, Darcy, sorry, your hand up. Yeah, I would like it explained again what you're proposing for, I mean, is there a part of this proposal that is about when the information is going to be released? So one thing that I can do is if you remember when we did the original process, after weeks of us thinking about the different options and not necessarily having an agreement, I brought forth a process that for places where we did not have consensus had options, which was modeled on what the ad hoc rules committee had done in areas where they didn't necessarily have consensus but just put forth some options. So I can, since now I'm aware what your area of concern is, I can put forth a couple of different options in that regard that we can discuss and then we could even have an individual vote on that one particular piece so we could separate that discussion from, we can have that discussion then we can have the larger discussion if that would be of interest to you, Darcy. I'd be interested to know if there's anybody else in this committee that is interested in lengthening the amount of time where we are giving public notice to, well, basically we would be, we've already voted that we aren't going to change the CAF to a public record, I believe, but that's what I'm asking, I guess, is to have to, I'm asking if there's anyone else in the committee who is interested in looking again or further at making the, either the CAF, both the CAF and the Statement of Interest public records. Melissa, I see your hand. Yes, thank you. No, we never voted to make the CAF a public document that has not happened. Next, as part of this process, I think that having Evan elaborate a little more, he's already given us a lot in this proposal, but to elaborate on the details a little more will enable us to resolve some of those sticking points. I think there's an argument to be had associated with the basic CAF contact information if that ends up being the proposal, being released out of context with Statements of Interest or maybe it's just, we just like release an ongoing scroll of people who apply to committees and all it says is their name and address. I don't know, that's one option, that is a way, it could be done, it's not the way anyone does it, including Northampton, to the best of my knowledge, but that would be a way to separate. I think that in terms of the additional notice, Darcy, I think you actually get that when you ask for a Statement of Interest because unlike the process we're going through this week where we didn't cut people off because we were like, please, we'd heard people were interested, would you please respond to the question Evan's asking you? Is that just like with school committee, we said, you do have to have your statement of interest in by a certain date and we said we will publish it for the public as of a certain date. I think that there is definitely room, Darcy, for I'm interested in that conversation about once we establish the cutoff and people have met the cutoff, then why wouldn't we just go ahead and publish it right then? I, looking back at the old select board process and how that translated into the town council process, arguably we could have, soon as the Statements of Interest came in, as soon as we verified they were voters, all of this happening under a pandemic, obviously, we could have theoretically under different conditions released the Statements of Interest a little earlier than the process said, but we could write into our process. Once the deadline has occurred, right, then it will happen that those Statements of Interest are immediately published and it's up to us how much of a gap there is between that and the interview itself. Okay, so there's a lot for me to consider working how to work into this. So with that, our next meeting is January 27th and I will bring forth drafts of that. I will do not January 27th, one month between April. We could not meet until January 27th, 2021. April 27th, I will bring forth. So I will do my best to write those documents in advance. Again, because they will constitute expression of opinion, I will have them also attached to the meeting posting and I will try to get them to you as soon as I can so that you have time to read them and think about them before we actually have our meeting on April 27th. There are, let's see, I do not have the March 30th minutes, we have not received those yet. And so that agenda item will be moved to the April 27th agenda meeting for us to consider those minutes. There is no public comment because there is no public present. And so with that, our next meeting, our next regular meeting is April 27th but our next meeting is Thursday, this Thursday, April 16th at 7.30 for the ZBA interviews. Again, if you look the, you probably got a text notification of it during this meeting, that the agenda for that meeting has been updated so that the names are now public. And so that agenda is fully updated, the names are there. I will be collecting and sending the CAFs to the full council, which is part of our process, the council gets, and they've been getting them as they've come in but I'm anticipating requests to have them together because they're probably scattered throughout people's emails. Are there any final questions about what's happening Thursday? Okay, seeing none, I will adjourn us at 11, 16 a.m. See you tonight. Thank you all. Thank you.