 Okay. Okay. This is the Committee on Outreach, Communications and Appointments, Subcommittee on Outreach. It's Monday, October 7th, and I am calling the meeting to order at 9.07 a.m. So you will find an agenda for this meeting in your packet. I have no announcements. And so I want to go first to agenda item number three, which is follow-up on OKA Outreach Survey. Darcy was kind enough to upload the – an Excel spreadsheet of the results into our packet for today. And so I'm going to first ask her just to give us sort of an update on where things stand with this and how it went. So we – sorry. We put this survey together in June of this year to try to get an idea about what our own counselors are doing at their district meetings, how it differs, you know, what advice we might be able to give to other counselors about doing outreach in general to the districts and in general to the town. And so we finally got everyone to respond as of last month. And so we have a – Google are now an Excel spreadsheet of the counselor's responses to all of the questions about their own district meetings, their own office hours, just to get some basic data. And, you know, it went – it went well other than the fact that it took a while to get it done. But it does – you know, my questions are sort of how to – how to use it, whether we – well, it's already public because it's in our packet. But if it could be made more easily accessible both to the council and to the public just so they can get – see the data in a more accessible format. Okay. Thank you. And thank you both for putting this together and also for hounding some of our counselors to ensure that we got all 13 to complete it. And so I think that Darcy highlighted the two questions that I have and the two questions that I want us to talk about, which is, one, how to present this to the council and the public de facto will receive it as the council receives it, but does it want to be presented separately? And then what do we do with this information? At the very least, we want to share it with our counselors so we can see what each other are doing, but do we want to do something more with it? And so I think those are the two questions that we should focus on for right now. Thoughts either George or Darcy? Darcy? I think some of the questions are straightforward enough so that we might be able to do like a one-pager fact sheet that has just basic information on it and then refer people to this for the long form or something like that because this is pretty inaccessible having long narrative answers in columns on a spreadsheet that they have to click in order to get the full answer. George? I think the executive summary of this in a single-page format would be excellent. I agree with Darcy that the form it's in would be difficult and not very helpful given the time constraints that counselors work under. I think a report is a good idea, just briefly. So if the chair were willing to, but he also could just ask one of us as members of the subcommittee to just briefly present it. But I think the other question is the, and I think we should do that, and we should do that sooner rather than later. The more, I think, more difficult and perhaps more important question is, well, okay, so what? What do we do with this? I put something in the packet that just because it was something I'd worked on back in April and sort of reflected my thinking at the time in terms of what I thought of as outreach and communication since, as we've said before, we've spent a lot of time, really almost all of our time on appointments, understandably, and we're actually the outreach and communications subcommittee, excuse me, as well. So that document was just a starting point, it was just a reflection of my thinking. And it seems to me that those kinds of questions or questions in that area would be appropriate for us to talk about and think about going forward. So I guess what I'm saying is that there's probably a conversation we need to have as a subcommittee about what we see our role as and what we would then think we should be doing with the council in terms of that role. If we're just here as sort of, we could just say all we do is we just tell them twice a year who on the council, what the council has been doing in terms of outreach and communication. That could be it. And maybe that's what the rest of you feel. And so that would be, excuse me, would probably be a report by the chair twice a year with a little handout saying, okay, this is what's been going on and end of discussion. I think I see a more robust role for our committee, but that's obviously up to debate and discussion. At the moment, if I had to go before the council, other than the one page sheet based on Darcy's work, I really don't know what I would be saying, which is kind of, I think, what you're asking. What am I supposed to say? And what guidance can we give you? But we really haven't had a chance to talk about it. Right. So that is agenda item four, the role of the outreach subcommittee. So maybe it makes sense to talk about our role, and then we could always circle back to this and talk about once we kind of establish what our role is, how it's doing more than just reporting this will fit in. I can do an executive summary of this and attach it to post it and then also attach it to the regular OCA report for the council meeting on October 21st or October 28th. But I think there's a lot of useful data in here that would be interesting to actually go through and figure out more than just reporting it. But I think you're right. It has to be done for some purpose. And so maybe it makes sense for us to, unless Darcy has any final comments or thoughts on this, maybe it makes sense for us to jump to the next agenda item. And so for that, I was happy to see George. It was a nice surprise this morning when I looked at the packet and saw George had uploaded something, which I admit I haven't had that much time to go through because I spent this morning on town clerk stuff. But I think that it is a useful document to start our conversation about what our role is. So to summarize what this outreach subcommittee has done so far for the purposes of reminding ourselves and also for purposes of the public on the YouTube, we met with the CPOs and had a conversation with them. We have this outreach survey that was spearheaded by Darcy. And then we also took the lead on the bid block party table and outreach there. So those are three very different things that are all related. So what I'm probably going to ask, what I'm going to ask George to do is maybe just go through this a little bit more than you just did about what your intent was. And then we can open it up to discussion with the hope of using the majority of today's meeting to define the role of this subcommittee. Thank you. As you can see from the day, this goes back to April. And that certainly is a very vivid demonstration of what the reality we've been living with for the past five, almost six months, which is that we did think about this and we're trying to get our minds around it. And then, you know, stuff happened. So we have been focused on appointments. So when I put this together at the time, it was just my thoughts. And I divided it, as you can see, into three categories. And this is just a starter. This is just, you know, really just sitting down and putting down stuff that I thought was a good place to start. So it's called a communication plan. It really is a communication outreach plan. Call it what you will. But that was the idea. And first is goals, which is what we're trying to get clear on. And I listed four here just to get started. But this could be certainly revised and sharpened and needs discussion. So goals are listed here. And then below that, I just thought, okay, what's our toolbox? What is it that we, in theory, could work with? And so Evan has mentioned three things that we have just done recently in relation to outreach and communication. One of them is working with the CPOs, which I don't think actually is here. So I think it's down below under discussion questions, I believe, or it should be. But working with CPOs perhaps should be added to this toolbox. The bid block party, I assume, would fall under what category? Public events, perhaps? I don't know. And what was the third again, Evan? The block party, CPOs? Outreach survey. Okay. So anyway, then listed is what I called the toolbox. And then finally are just questions for us. I just threw them out here. What is our job? We don't want to duplicate the role of town hall and staff. We obviously, what's our relationship with the CPOs? How do we get feedback from counselors on their own efforts? And we've, I think, made a good step in that direction. That might be the way to do it. Should we have a communications calendar? Maybe again, some of this is better handled by staff. We don't have staff, so there's probably a limit to what we can do there. How important is it for counselors to know what everybody else is doing? I think we're going to try and address that at least initially with the chair's report. I think we should twice a year, and this would be the first time, I guess, when Evan gives a brief count. We should twice a year talk to the council briefly about outreach and communication efforts by the council. And I assume it is the council we're focusing on, so we're not going to be discussing outreach by other bodies and so far unless it intersects with us. I think how do we measure effectiveness in terms of outreach communication? I guess the reason I think this is really important is that we are a new form of government, and I think there's a fair amount of skepticism, healthy skepticism amongst the number of people, not all people, but certainly some about how effective and representative this form of government can be. And so I think that does put a little bit of extra pressure on us that we pay attention to that and give people a sense that we actually take it seriously. So to agree that our body is responsive and communicating and reaching out to the public I think is really important. The challenge is that we also have other things we're trying to do, but I do think it's something we should be paying attention to. And then at the end I just mentioned something I know Sarah has brought up, perhaps others of you as well. How do we reach, how do you contact hard to reach audiences? And again a number of councillors have been I think doing that, I think. And so that's what you've got. And it may be something that people need to sit down and digest and maybe add to and amend and da da da da. But that was the thinking behind it and that's a very brief crew description of the three part. Thank you for that summary and for putting this together. So maybe what makes the most sense is for us to start to try and answer these questions. Because I think that the goals are probably broadly agreeable, but the questions are more about how we actually do that. So why don't we do that? You want to start with goals or you want to start with the questions? I would like to get some feedback from the two of you about whether there's something missing here or whether there's some duplication or whether some of this is really not appropriate. In the goals? Yeah. We can start with goals. Darcy? I think these goals are good, but I think that we have a capacity issue as far as our ability to do some of these things. And for example to increase engagement and participation in town government, I see that as the CPO's job. And I think it would be really nice if the council had its own staff or if OCA had its own staff so that we could do some of this. But I do think that the first bullet to maintain a healthy, robust and transparent flow of information between the council and the community that makes sense through our district meetings and our office hours and some of our other things. And to keep citizens informed on what the council is doing. But I have a little less sense that we have the ability to do to increase engagement and participation in town government and to give citizens the sense that their voice is heard. I think those things are super important, but I'm not sure this committee has the capacity to do that without staff. George? I hear you. I wonder if maybe part of what we can do, I mean Darcy, you're right. We don't have the manpower, the human power to do these things ourselves. CPO's do some of it. Some of it is done by our website, so it's done by staff. Obviously healthy, robust, transparent flow of information is largely handled by staff, but at the direction or active participation of chairs, we've had a problem with our committee in terms of getting agendas out or getting packets out to the public before our meetings. It's not here to point to finger blame because I don't think that's the point, but that's a good example of where there's been a challenge and it does involve us to some degree, though the actual solution may have nothing to do with us. It has to do perhaps with staff time and so forth, but I guess to increase engagement participation and give citizens a sense of voice is heard. I can imagine the chair or one of us in a report simply quickly either mentioning or listing the various public forums that have been held in the past six months in which the public was invited to participate and we were there. We do so much, we forget how much we do. We forget how much we actually have been doing this, so it's not as if I'm saying we're not doing this, we need to do this. I think in many ways we are. We are, in fact, doing it, but it might be important just briefly for us to catch our breath and for the council to be reminded and the public to be reminded of how many public forums have been held on different topics. We've met with the public on the schools, we've met with the public on 132 North Hampton Road, we're looking forward to meeting with the public, so letting people know this. So maybe it's... So you're saying rather than our doing the tasks ourselves as a committee, we keep track of what the council has done and report on it. That makes sense to me in light of the fact that we don't have staff. And I don't think that excludes us occasionally taking a more active role where appropriate. But I agree with you, we don't have the time and energy to do it and we're not, I don't think we should be, but I mentioned the bid block party. There are times when we can take the lead but I think I guess I see our job primarily as one of oversight and gathering information, summarizing it, giving it to the council and also occasionally as a group thinking about, okay, what's working, what is it? So just to add sort of my two cents on these four. So I think one and two. So all of these are not, to me are not necessarily goals of the subcommittee, they're goals of OCA. And our role is to support OCA in achieving those by doing some of the groundwork and providing guidance. I think one and two are the ones that are most important to me. I think citizens informed and having that healthy flow of information between the council and the community. I think we might want to try and distinguish those a little bit better. But I think that's the most important one to me, especially as, you know, I've been talking, the bid block party was a really great opportunity where I met some people from District 4 who said, when are you having a district meeting? And I said, well, we've already had one. And they said, well, I didn't hear about it. And I said, well, how do you get information, right? And, you know, one person said, well, I don't use the internet. And I thought, oh, how do you find out about a district meeting? And I think those are questions that this group can really try to grapple with is, how do you get people to district meetings who aren't paying attention? Increase engagement participation in town government, I think it depends on how we define that. So if we define that as getting more people onto town committees, I agree with Darcy. I think that's the CPO role. And I don't think we have the capacity to do that. But engagement and participation in town government can be also really broadly defined. And so two things that I think of when I saw those were, one, the bid block party, right? As you said, that was engagement in town government that was participation. All these things could have relate. The other thing that I'm thinking of, you know, we have several events that are being done by the town council that involves citizen engagement and participation. And I think that, you know, OCA and by extension this subcommittee should have a role in that. And so the town council is going to be planning these public meetings, public forums on the capital projects coming up in the near future. And when I met with the president recently, I told her OCA should have a role in that. That's an outreach and engagement thing. The council is putting on meetings to engage people. If there's going to be, it sounds like there's going to be a steering committee that puts on those meetings. An OCA member should be on that steering committee because that's part of our role. And it would make the most sense for that OCA member to be one who's on this subcommittee which luckily is four out of five members of the full committee. And so that's where I see increase engagement. It depends on how we define it. And then to give citizens a sense that their voice is heard is the least George Ryan thing I've seen on this list because it's sort of vague and undefined and provides no guidance. But it sort of, it relates I think to the first three. The goal of the first three is so that citizens feel like their voice is heard because they know what's going on. They're engaged and they can communicate information. But I think that those first two are very clear and that third one could be defined so that its meaning is restricted a little bit so that it makes sense for us. But I think that just those first two could take up a lot of our time. George? We've got a district meeting coming up. And I guess one of the main things that I'm interested in at this and other district meetings without necessarily explicitly saying it though maybe I will at this meeting is to what degree do the 30, 40, 50 however many people show up feel that their voice is being heard. And to what degree do they feel it isn't? To what degree do they feel that this new form of government is actually an improvement upon what we've had or at least is doing the job that they hoped it would do. So I agree it's a rather broad and no problem taking it out. But on the other hand I think it really is something that should be at the heart of all of us in our work over the next two years is at the end of our first term for some of us maybe our only term. I really want to feel, I hope we will feel that the citizens think that they've had been heard. Even if decisions made by the council are not what they would necessarily personally choose, they feel that their voice has been heard. So I'm no problem with it being taken out but at the same time I think it's something that all of us should kind of have over our desks or whatever. And when I go to a district meeting it's really what I'm trying to get a measure of. And I'm listening when people do say, you know, I didn't hear about X, I don't know about Y that's concerning to me. And so reporting back to the council on a regular basis about what we're doing, what's working, what isn't oversight. With these things sort of in the back of our minds is what I guess I've had in mind. Any further thoughts on the goals? Alright, let's start answering some of these questions then. So the first one, is our job on OCA one of oversight and sharing info with councillors? Or are we to be actively sponsoring and creating and organizing events? Thoughts? Darcy? I think I already said that I think that it would be nice if it were the second. But I think that our capacity limits us to the first. George? And yet and I agree but I think that, A, we have done this to some degree and we were able to manage it. And I thought we did well. And I think all three of the people here, particularly the two to my right, you know, stepped up and other councillors did too. So we do occasionally actively sponsor and help organize or at least participate directly. And have some kind of direct connection with an event or events. So I can't say that we never do it or shouldn't do it. Though I agree with Darcy that it's going to be limited. Personally, I think sharing info with councillors definitely. Oversight is a tricky word. Because I'm not quite sure what that means in this context. Maybe I'll ask George to explain in a minute. As far as actively sponsoring and creating and organizing events, again I think my thought is when there are events that are going on, I think one of the things this committee should do, and this might be an agenda item for another meeting, is think about what are the events that are held in town that the town council should have a presence at as the full town council. So we already did the big block party. We already did first day. Are there others? There are some events like the A plus awards that some of us were just at where the council is not there as the council but individual councillors are there. What events should we be at as the full council? And then for those events, and then for other events that the town council is putting on, such as these forums, such as any future open meeting of the residents under the charter. I think those are things that when they do occur, this committee will likely have to take an active role in maybe not organizing just us, especially as there are events that might occur, collaboration with the president or with another committee, but at least actively involved in those. So my thought is this, we wouldn't sit here and say we're going to have a forum, and OKA is going to recommend a forum and we're going to do or the organization, but for events that are happening, I think that this committee should have an active role in organizing the council's presence. You're going to be doing that, Evan? I mean, I did a good part of it with the block party. It was not my natural skill set, especially as it involved figuring out how to interact with children. But again, I do think this is a committee that has four members, and I think that those events should be sporadic enough that they shouldn't require constant attention. George? I'm not worried about that, really, and I think that when the squeals of pain and outrage come from the other members of the committee, Evan will hear them, but he may be leading the chorus, actually, because he's got more than enough on his plate. So I'm not worried about that at the moment. I'm more concerned that we really have worked very hard for the last six, seven months. We've done a lot of outreach, a lot of communicating, a lot of meeting, and there's no real record of this. And I think it would be useful for us both to summarize briefly what, and list specific, you know, but just the list to show people, show the council, first of all, what they have done, show ourselves what we've done, and also something we can refer to when we have people say, well, you guys don't communicate. Well, take a look at this. And also, but oversight, Evan, your question is a good one. I guess it's just sort of us as a group stepping back and with these sort of broad goals in mind, looking at the meetings that have been held, the forums that have been held, the district meetings, and so on, in a very broad sense, and sort of amongst ourselves agreeing that, you know, that this is happening, and that we can give a brief accounting of it, and maybe also see if there are any gaps or any places. You know, again, for me, speaking personally, student outreach is important. I don't know that counselors are aware of the degree that some of us are trying to reach the student population, and I would like that to be something that people are at least aware of. I certainly have encouraged people to come and join me, and some of you have, and I'm not alone in this, but that's something that I think often gets lost in the shuffle. Often when we think of public meeting, we think of, you know, resident voters, and that's understandable and appropriate, but we have a huge population of students, and so that kind of outreach is, people should just be reminded of it, that it's going on, and maybe someone would go, well, you know, I could come to that, or I could do something like that. And I'd like to know more about what other counselors are doing with hard to reach populations. In my district, quite frankly, I don't see that, just because of the nature of my district, but I could very well be missing something. But I think in other districts that, you know, this is a real issue, and if I knew of some gatherings like this ahead of time, or first of all, just know that people are doing it, would be something that would be encouraging to me, and maybe I might participate myself, or at least let people know. So I think it's partly, so counselors know what other counselors are doing, so the counselors are reminded of what we have done as a body. I like Evan's idea of kind of a list of what annually the council does together, and maybe also a list of things that counselors attend, like the A-plus awards. There are many of these events, and it would be interesting, I think, helpful and inspiring, actually, for people to see both the full council events and the ones where we go. If we can, then you have district meetings. I mean, there's like four or five baskets that we could, I would certainly help with this as well, just fill it out. And specific dates and events, and then going forward, we'd have a sense of what every year should happen, but also we'd have a sense of what has happened in the past, and remind us as we go forward that hopefully this will continue. Darcy. So a lot of that was covered not in great detail, not as to events that happened on specific dates, but to some extent was covered in the survey. And just to mention the word oversight in the first bullet is our job on OCA, one of oversight. I guess we could just change that, as George said to just keeping track, keeping track of everything that's being done, both to let the public know what's being done, but also to let each other know what each of us is doing so that we can compare notes. I can support them. The word oversight sometimes makes me nervous because I don't want us to feel as though we're going to say to a counselor you're not doing enough or something like that. And that's where that can get kind of tricky. I think we have this first outreach survey I think one of the things we'll probably have a discussion of in a future meeting is whether we want to do that again, and if so, how we might expand on it. And I think one question is, what are these other community events you're going to? Because you're right. Many of us were at the A-plus awards and many of us were at the UMass community breakfast. Many of us were at the Sammy's for the Jones Library. There are a lot of community events that counselors are going to do. If you're not at that event, you won't see, but maybe it's nice to know that counselors are at some of these events. That might be something to consider for a future survey. We could just go back and list for the past six or seven months what would fall into each of these baskets. And I'd be willing to help with that. Again, maybe it's just we'll all run out of time and energy, but I think it would be very helpful for people just to see what has been happening involving a council with the public and also with its district meetings and forums. We've had a forum on the budget. It wasn't widely attended. Again, from the point of view of oversight, we can get rid of the term, but the idea would be we're sitting together and we're saying, okay, we're looking over what's happened over the last six, seven months. One thing is nobody comes to the budget forums. And it's understandable and maybe there's no answer to that one. But it's something to note that there's more counselors in the audience sometimes than there are a public. And is that because we're not getting the word out? Is that because this is a topic that most people really aren't that interested in since it affects their tax bill? You think they would be interested, but anyway. So that's what I mean by oversight is just that we sit and sort of look at it and say, okay, what work, what didn't why was this not attended and we're keeping kind of a record of it. And we're sharing that record with the council and with the public and so yeah. Okay, so because we're 17 minutes and I don't want us to end right as the next meeting begins. To give us time to maybe get some water. Are there any of these questions that we think, I don't know if these other because if we go into order, we're not going to run out of time. Are there any questions that you feel as though either of you feel as though we should definitely talk about now I think to some extent, you know, buying your report to council and into public on outreach, we've sort of discussed a little bit. We're going to at least do this first one. How to get info feedback from counselors. We have with the survey, but we can talk about that. But are there other ones that we feel like we haven't really touched on that we should there's the issue of our relationship with CPOs and town staff. To what degree I think we should meet with them occasionally, not on a regular basis. And this is just me thinking here out loud. I think there should be some communication or contact between them and this subcommittee or perhaps with them and the committee. At least twice a year I think. They pretty much do their thing and that's appropriate. But I think we should at least be meeting with them once or twice a year on a regular basis to just talk. And again, for a future meeting, but I think it's Sarah may have something to weigh in on this. How do we reach hard to reach audiences? There are whole sets of communities, the grad community up in North Amherst, seniors, apartment complexes, non-English speakers, self-community, Masanti Health Center. There are kinds of places that we should be on our radar more than they are. I think that at some point we should talk about. And maybe some folks have ideas that I don't have, but I think part of it and students should be mentioned in that group really. They are a very difficult audience to reach. Yeah, so this is this last question is something that I've been thinking about quite a bit including very recently Darcy and I on this past Wednesday were Energy and Climate Actions public forum and we've got probably 15 to 17 members of the public which I thought was really good and I was excited about that. What I wasn't super excited about was that they were 100% white and older and it was really sort of one demographic. And so I worked to try to get some students. I know one of the members of the committee is a professor that announced it to students in his classes. I sent it around to some of my colleagues to have it announced in their classes. I sent it to the president of the UMass stands, the president of the UMass Art Revolution, sort of student groups that I thought would be interested and at least that there was another one on Saturday and I don't know if the composition looked any different but the one that I was out on Wednesday there were no students other than the one that's like a fellow for our committee. And so I started talking to Adrian Terizzi who is at the event and I said how do we get diverse representation at these public forums and she said to me honey I've been working on that for decades and her role is the League of Women Voters which is also an older, whiter organization and I would love to see this committee or this subcommittee help the council figure out how to get better attendance generally but also better representation at these meetings but I'm not clear on what that looks like. How do how we actually do that. And maybe that's a future conversation but I think we have to first agree that that's even part of our role or is that the role of the CPO's? Darcy? I just would add that I agree that we need to do a lot more work on that but I do want to mention that the second forum of the ECAC on Saturday had double the amount of attendees it had some youth representation and diversity and all of those things on Saturday. Darcy would the youth would include college students or were they high school students or could you tell? High school to my knowledge. Yeah. I'm not sure. There might have been college students there. Saturday was October fest an opportunity for students to drink in a field in Hadley so it's tough to compete sometimes. Do we feel like this last bullet is something that we want this committee to grapple with. I think we all agree it needs to happen but is it something that we feel like this subcommittee should be working on? With the CPO's. So at some point and that's a conversation for a future date which I've said many times today. We'll have to figure out what it means to work on that because I think that's what I've been struggling with as an individual counsellor. I'm not going to reach out to these audiences but then recognizing that I don't necessarily know the best way to do that. I think Stephanie Chicoirella has been working on this a lot with her municipal vulnerability preparedness work and a lot of it has to do with making sure that like the leadership of different organizations are involved in the decision making even if we might not necessarily get renters or residents in general but at least bring in the director of the survival center or whomever who can then pass it on in some way to a diverse community of our residents. So we have 10 minutes left. I'd like to adjourn by 9.55. Are there any of these others that we feel like we should address before we close out today? George, what does you mean by a communication calendar? That's the one that keeps jumping out to me. That's probably my least favorite but in a way maybe expresses what we've been talking about in terms of a calendar of events at which counselors customarily or often appear and district meetings. So a list of, I mean maybe in a way you could consider it a list of meetings both past and present, future and past where the council is involved. So on this calendar would be say all the public forums that will be held on the One Town One Plan. On this list would be, you know, various meetings that counselors have organized or have participated in involving the public at large but not the full council. District meetings would be on this list. I mean in theory in other words again what value would that be? I'm not sure. In some so in a way at a glance people would have a sense of what's coming up and also a sense of what has past happened in the last three months or four months. So it could be in theory a convenient way to communicate to the council and to the public what the council has been doing or counselors have been doing in a way of outreach and communications to the public. But who would keep it and have the information and how would they, you know, it sounds like a staff task and I think the staff probably already has more than enough to do. How would this differ from the calendar that the town manager publishes at the end of his report? I think it would, if such a thing existed, if we created such a thing or someone created such a thing it would be exclusively, it would be town council focused. It would be a communications calendar oven for the council and that you might think well it's already done but that's what the thought would be. What are we doing? What have we done and what are we doing and what will we be doing over the next three months or two months however often the calendar goes out. But I think the real challenge is who would create it and who would oversee it. I mean that's just, it's a lot of work. I think once it got up and running and once we had a sense of the fairly typical kinds of, I mean some of these events occur every year so they would always be on the calendar although the dates might change slightly. Some obviously would be new depending on what councilors were doing. So it would require some initial effort, real effort to get it up and then hopefully maintaining it wouldn't be overly burdensome. So are you talking about events, town events that councilors may or may not attend? I would include them, that would be my thought. So for instance if you meet with UMass DEMS or if you have a meeting with folks in one of the housing complexes or if you, I mean that could be included just to give people a sense of what councilors are out doing. So individual councilor meetings with certainly district meetings should be listed if we could again right and then individual or group councilor outreach attempts could be listed. I think it would be up to the councilors themselves whether they wanted to submit something. And we could certainly try and shake the bushes and see if you know people would, oh yeah well I did this and I did this and I did this. But it's work and we already have a thousand things to do. George meets with twice as many groups as the rest of us so he'd have a lot of things listed. Well it's now I guess I would like to encourage people to do more of that but on the other hand you know everybody does what they can do and I'm not sure that these are all that effective but I mean I just think part of our job is to get out there and wave the flag. So here we are, ask questions tell them what we're doing, tell them how to reach us, encourage them to get engaged. I focus on students because of my district. My district is 70% students and I think I have an obligation to try and work that a bit and I think Dorothy agrees with me. But we also, as you all do have lots of other things to do. I think this idea is something that in theory could be very useful but the more you talk about what you're envisioning the more it sounds like a whole lot of work and I don't really know that it's a staff job because it's really about council stuff and I also don't know that it would have to be some of them you're right are yearly events right? But some of these other things I mean you'd have to be updating it like monthly or yeah I mean like it'd have to be and who decides it sounds like a lot the amount of work versus the utility of it might not be perfectly proportionate. And I certainly would be willing to give it a try if the rest of you felt it was worth the in the long range worth the effort. And I think part of it would be done over the next weeks or so because we're trying to, it sounds like we are trying to come up with a list of everything that has been done and someone could start, I could start with that and try and create a calendar and I could talk to some people on staff and get some ideas from them and it would be my responsibility. If the subcommittee agreed that it's worth doing I think we all agreed that it's at least worth doing some kind of summary for the first six or seven months. I think that and I would help with that as well but I think that's worth doing. It sounds like you agree, I hope you all agree. After that whether that turns into a calendar or whether it just becomes a template for biennial reports. So six months later when Evan or whoever is in his chair has to report to the council on communications, they at least have a model to work with and I'm sure with Evan it would be a good one. So it may just function as that but it's possible that with a little work and we could create a place where people could go, council could go, public could go to see what the council is up to. Darcy? I guess I feel like it would be good to have one and it could include events to which the whole council is invited but I don't know if it makes sense to have one where we note every meeting of an individual councillor unless we want to require that everyone does that because it would be weird to have three councillors participating in the number two. Yeah, so I think it would be cool and transparent for us, it would be kind of like the schedule of the town council. What every one of us does, every one of our meetings, that would be cool but I kind of don't think that's what we're deciding to do. So I want to close out this meeting. What I think I'm going to attempt to do is the feedback I got from y'all today and because we keep talking about what the role of this subcommittee is, is draw up an informal, as in does not have to go through GOL, OCHA subcommittee charge for us. So just so we have words on paper that we can show people this is what the subcommittee does, that I will bring forth the next subcommittee meeting for us to vote on. But I don't intend for this to be a formal charge that goes through GOL review just something so we have words on paper to point out and it would be something I would ask this committee to formally adopt, if that's amenable. Okay, well then with that I am going to adjourn us at 9.59 a.m. . . .