 We are now recording. Okay, perfect. Okay, so I am going to call to order. And they have the wrong hand. I am going to call something to order here. Let's see. Why is this show. Okay. Oh, interesting. It keeps pulling up the wrong agenda for me. Maybe I forgot to switch the. Yeah, the date I forgot to switch it, I guess. Okay, I'm calling to order the September 28th meeting of the governance organization and legislation committee. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021. This meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public are able to access the meeting in real time via zoom or by telephone. I'm just noticing that the date on at least the SharePoint version Athena of the agenda still says September 14th. No, it was my fault. But here we are at least it's the right agenda on there. So I'm just going to do a quick sound check and make sure everyone can hear and be heard and Anna. Good morning. Morning. Good morning. I'm here. Great. Amy. I am here. Excellent. Thank you, Mandy. Present. And Jennifer present. Okay. And I, Athena, I think you can hear us right. Yes, I can. Thank you. Okay, perfect. So we're, we're going to do just a quick review of the agenda and then we have our guests Amy and Anna here to join us with respect to the water regulations. So we'll jump right into that. So we're going to start with the water regulations and then we'll move on to the three items concerning appointments. And so, Anna, did you have some. I meant to ask you this. Did you have some feedback on the appointments part as well or were you part of that process in some way? I have a faint memory about the rubric or something. I have lots of thoughts and feelings. But I don't have anything official. No, I just, I'm happy to share from my own professional. This overlaps with what I do professionally. And so I'm happy to support in any way I can. Okay, so maybe we'll just after we finish with the water by law will move into the regulations will move into that. So I'm going to hand it over to either Amy or you, Anna, to give us an overview of the process that TSO went through and what, you know, what's happening with the water regulations. Amy, do you want me to start and then you can jump in or do you want to? Okay, so TSO has been tasked with reviewing both the water and sewer regulations and bylaws. And I want to note that somehow Athena and I had a chat yesterday where we were both like, oh crap, we completely just didn't do the bylaw so that's that's a drop on our end. I think it was not in the same document. And so I think we just got so focused on the details of the regulations. So I apologize that I know your agenda says bylaw and regulations we have a new timeline you will see the bylaw. The bylaw itself is really simple and straightforward. So that'll be a quick one for you. But today we're going to talk about the regulations which are, this is not a judgment on the regulations but they are not simple, nor necessarily super straightforward because there's a lot of quite literal moving process. So what our process was, I'm sorry to cause you, I just, oh yeah, Guilford is here. Guilford has joined us so just wanting to make sure that Guilford can hear us and be heard. Yes. Okay, welcome Guilford thanks for joining us. Go on, Anna. So, Guilford they're letting me, they're letting me try to explain water regs which was, which was very exciting for you and Amy I'm sure to hear me mess this up but our process is I do know that so as you all know the regs came to the council they have not been updated since gosh with the 70s is that right? Since before I was born. And so we are, we are taking a really good look and basically Amy has rewritten these and it's been, I just want to do a public commendation of all of Amy and Guilford's work but Guilford this is no shade on you especially Amy because this is very much her arena and truly she was, I'm so grateful for how much time and effort and energy you put into completely redoing these so thank you. The regs came from council with lots of comments and questions from folks on finance, folks on council, and we've, we combined all the comments we kind of went through and what we did was we looked at all of the nitty gritty sort of detailed comments we meaning I combined them and then Amy had to deal with all of them but we also, what we also did was talk about sort of the big thematic changes. There's one really big thing and I know GOL is dealing with more of the clarity consistency action ability but I want to just talk through the big content shift that we, the biggest content shift that we made. So, prior to these, the new version, the homeowner was responsible for the waterline from the main to their, into their home. So, we all have seen emails about this we've seen some concerns about things that happen, for example, under a public roadway, where the homeowner is responsible. And so what TSO did and I want to like, this is a really specific area of nerd that I didn't know I had but what TSO did was, we got into this in and had a really good discussion with Guilford and Amy about what it would take to shift some of that responsibility in a place where the owner is responsible for the things that they can control. So, we're saying the new regulations have adjusted it so that the property owner is responsible for the waterline from and this is there's some caveats to this but is responsible for the waterline from their property line into their home. The town takes jurisdiction and responsibility when it crosses onto town property. So, that's, it seems really simple right so town is responsible for waterlines under town property, property owners are responsible for waterlines under their property. And so that's the that's the biggest shift that we made and we were, we were, I know that this is a big adjustment for our town staff to now take responsibility for more of the lines and so Amy Guilford and I kind of talked through what, what it would mean to me and how to present it and how to move that forward and it feels from my perspective and I don't want to speak for Amy or Guilford, like we came to a really solid resolution on how to make this equitable and fair, while also not throwing everyone into total turmoil, I know that this is still a little stressful for or maybe a lot stressful for our town staff but I appreciate the willingness to work through. There's this shift in these regs. There's a couple other things that you'll notice as we go but I wanted to just name that because it kind of gets a little bit lost if you're just reading through it, like policy, but there is this bigger. In my mind bigger kind of ethical shift that we've made that I'm very, very pleased with and I think is important for us. I don't know if Amy or Guilford have anything to add oh and so process wise just so folks know we have finished the water regs the sewer. This is where I've learned so much, and I know it like it's like 100th of what Amy and Guilford know but water is pressure driven whereas sewer is gravity driven and so you're getting water now. I know I did it. You're getting water now because it will be slightly different than sewer and so we wanted to just start this moving. I think originally the plan was to just get you everything at once but there's going to be some slight changes between the two just based on logistics of how things move. And so we will be getting you sewer a little bit down the line however it's going to look very very similar in terms of the major shifts so when you do, I guess my reason for saying that is one of the things we were striving for was consistency and I know you're looking for consistency, and I'll ask that, you know, when we get to sewer you kind of keep that in mind of consistency between the two. Yeah. Before I answered Jennifer's question sorry. I'm sorry Michelle this is your meeting. I'm apologize. No no no no you're fine. I was just going to ask if Amy or Guilford if I missed anything big that they wanted to share. No, I think that's great. Okay. So Jennifer please. No I did I wanted to get that quote sewer is gravity driven and water is pressure pressure driven pressure driven okay. And the other thing I just wanted to thank TSO and Amy and Guilford because I think this is just a great example of the government working and being responsive you know we got all these emails and then, you know really zoomed into action and I think this is a great resolution to. So I just want to, you know, sometimes even in Amherst things move quickly. And I think this was a very. I mean sort of quickly Jennifer we were redoing something from the 70s but yes, but yes no but from when those emails started coming in that at least this council got alerted to some of the concerns I think. So it really it feels like everyone just snapped into action and came up with a really great response so thank you. Yeah, Amy and I were talking about that this morning about how it's I'm sorry I mean. No all I was going to say is, you know the last part of all of this action is you know we made a decision that the town's going to take responsibility and there is finding there's a financial piece to that and I feel like that question is still lingering. It's not your purview but I'll never hesitate to say let's be conscious of the financial impact of a decision. It is our purview but yeah yeah. Well, I think I mean it's not like GOLs it's like finance gets to mess with that but yeah it will this will have. Yeah, this will have financial implications, and I think that when when we thought about it on that very minimal at TSO knowing that we are not the finance committee and Anika please also feel free to jump in if I miss something. You know we decided that the benefits outweigh the costs in this in this instance, because of, you know I mean I think the water rags were in the works before we started getting those emails but what those emails did was alert us as counselors to how to think another way to think about this. And you have a rationale for it which is very cogent that what the homeowner can control. It makes sense. Right. Thank you. I think that's about it from my end I don't know if Amy or Gilford or Anika have anything that they want to jump in on. I do not I just, you know I want to join in thanking you I was away for much of the, the work and the leads that went into this so thank you all so much. So just, I just wanted to ask a clarifying question in terms of process so this has come to us just the regulations we're going to get the bylaws soon. Does this then have to go to finance committee still or is this going to go back to the council and then to be referred to the finance committee. Okay, so I guess usually are, we're sort of the last stop so I was just wondering what the order difference was here. And I see me. Please. So I was reminded it's one of the questions I have that, you know, finance would recommend this change or not but if it recommends this change. It would come through with a recommended water rate change, which wouldn't affect the clarity consistency or action ability so it probably matter which order we do it in. But that was one of my questions was, do we need to change the rates, and if, because of this ownership change and if so should they happen at the same time, such that our vote should be to recommend, only when a new rate is calculated and ready to be voted on. Yeah, I could be wrong because you guys know the whole process better but in terms of any reference to cost and rates and all that we were really careful to put that all in appendix a, and so I think there might even be a way to craft language to just say I agree with everything pending, you know, any changes that might have to be made in appendix a and we did that just because the water rates are referenced and even some of the fines and we knew that people aren't going to want to go through and find all those rates every single year if we update things so we have it all consolidated in one place and everywhere in the regs references that. So, I guess I'm hopeful that that means that we can work around that. So, I guess my question though with that is, I have a couple questions related to appendix a but the regulations once adopted become in effect, if we don't change the water rate at the same time. We could be in a having a problem and so is the recommendation from your department Amy and Guilford to make sure that there is a new rate adopted simultaneously with the adoption of the new regulations. That's my recommendation if nobody's asking me but I mean I do, I think that it makes sense for, they do have to go into effect at the same time we also have talked about having the go having these regulations go into effect upon the passage of the bylaw because that's coming after and basically the bylaws just saying that we as the council has water and sewer commissioners maintain our ability to change this, instead of having the town manager have full authority on it. I think that yes Mandy and I guess then the question becomes, do we make, and I believe I know this is on finances radar, but I would just want to say like, I guess, yeah, we can't bring it back to the council until finances established new rates. And maybe you're saying we can't craft emotion or we can craft emotion that says, you know, goes into effect upon adoption of water rates for a fiscal year. No, GOL certainly craft emotion when we make a recommendation to that or declare that they're clear consistent and actionable. They can back motion can include things like but we recommend adoption, effective. These right with these two things type thing. Yeah, because, and I'm not actually even sure that I would, I would say that the rates are the clear consistent or actionable component of this. I'm sure I guess you could say actionable, but without an analysis by finance committee I don't know that we can say that. And just to that point on a do you so you said you think this is on. So I'm on the finance committee and I was trying on Andy's radar, sorry on Andy's radar. Okay, so like we have a meeting on next Tuesday on the fourth. I'm not sure whether it's on the agenda yet or not and maybe more but just timing wise. It sounds like we can do what we are here to do, and we'll put whatever disclosures into the motion that we need to. And then it will be referred over or it's already been referred but we'll let the finance committee know that we believe so. Okay, and then it has to come back to the full council as well and so I think that, you know, yeah. Yeah. Okay, great. All right. So, would you three. Are you going to be staying for the review itself. I'm happy to in case we can answer, in case I can answer any questions. I don't know for me. Yeah, I was planning. Really also because I've never been to a GOL meeting so I just am curious what the what your guys process is to learn. Very exciting. You're about to find it. Guilford please. Yes, I am staying but I would not tie it to setting rates. Not saying you're going to accept this with what with the new rates because we only set rates at certain times. So we're nowhere near ready to set new rates so we'd be if you do just be accepting the current rates, which I think the current rates are all in there already so there's no real need to. And I don't think the finance committee is going to actually give us a rating increase just because we accept this right now. It might be easier to say it goes into effect on the start of a calendar calendar year or fiscal year. Okay, Mandy to do. Yeah, please. I know we tend to do the rates in the spring. Do they go into effect immediately or are they always based on a fiscal year. They always go into effect July one. Okay. Unless unless there's a crisis, but usually it's July one. Okay. Mandy or Jennifer or Anika do you have any more questions before we move into the review. No, thanks. Okay. Go ahead. You mean by questions. I mean I have questions. Well, will they be, could they happen as we're reviewing this. Okay, perfect. So are you in a position Mandy to bring, bring stuff up. I have some of my edits on it, but sure they're minor. Okay. And I think there was a, there was a marked up copy and a clean copy in the packet. So this is the clean. Okay. With my markups. Okay. So Anna, maybe you have the marked up one just in case there's a question that comes up or whatever. Okay. I've got it. Yeah. So I'm going to be very honest here that I have not in this role as a chair of GOL reviewed a document like this yet. So I assume we'll go through and look at it and Mandy has already made some suggestions. So we'll look at those. Are there any particular Mandy, since you've been on this committee before anything that you would add about how we should review this. It's easiest to generally sort of go section by section instead of page by page or page by page instead of like line by line anything on this page anything on this page it was quicker that way. Perfect. So I'll look for hands and we'll just move through in that way and just please go ahead and raise your hand if you'd like to ask a question or add any information as we move through this. So my first one's basic and I don't know whether it happens. I'd love to have appendix a be on page one so that the table of contents is only on one page. It's doable. I actually did it after and then was like I don't actually know that I can make formatting changes that we didn't officially vote on so that is. Yes, it's doable. I'm going to open the word doc actually said I can. Yeah that's what I was thinking if you could take. Yeah I had the PDF. Let me get the. Yeah, I've got the word doc up so I can do any changes on this it's just where mine are I deleted a line it might do it but because I'm track changes it won't show it till I show. But if you delete the line above water use regulations it does do it. Yeah, and that's what I've done. So, yep, yep, that should but I remove the view of all markup it should show. Yeah, yeah. All right, anything else for. Yeah, table of contents. Nope. I'm going to try and get one page on at a time. Great. Thank you Mandy. And Mandy since you've already looked at these and you have some suggestions as we go just as you know just just call them out and well they'll be marked on the side, but not all of them are so general ones which I didn't get to doing. Do we, in bylaws we tend to capitalize all of defined terms. This, this regulation set is. This is 5050 it's it's sort of half and half or sometimes some not so I think we should decide which way we're going with that and then just do a find and replace. I think we should capitalize everything and I agree. It's my hot take. And like what are you talking about. So, the word. Amherst construction standards is a defined term so anytime it shows up in the regulations are we going to capitalize it or not, and it's sort of a 5050 right now. I say. I, yeah, that's good call. So that's just a search and replace which I can do afterward and Yeah, that was my question Mandy would you rather that I'd be making the changes that you're talking about afterwards or would you like to do that. So if we do it right on the screen I can then send you stuff and then say, this is the stuff I didn't get to if you want. Yeah, that'd be that'd be great. I just wasn't sure if I should be like taking notes as we go to make sure I got it, but that sounds that sounds good. And then my other one was Oxford commas. Yeah, that's mine too. My confession is that I love an Oxford comma and would like to put them in everywhere. However, I will defer. I mean like here. Yeah, no, to me it seems like it should, it should be there but I don't know if Amy do you have a different thought about that. I'm an engineer, I barely know how to write, so your knowledge on that. I probably have been pretty inconsistent throughout because I throw it in when I think I need it. So, hey, Mandy I can go through and add an Oxford commas. Okay. If that's okay with you. No, that's fine. Yeah, I think that would be great. And also like is this for example this year, the applicability purpose and policy is that a need to be like, so that's capitalized. But is that consistent. So I looked back at our regs at our other regs and I did this after sorry needs to write down at Oxford commas I don't forget to do it. So I looked back at our other regs because I was doing I was looking at this yesterday and I was frustrated by the spacing, which I really want like to fix and that was when I had my moment of like, am I allowed to fix this if TSO didn't vote on me to delete that space. There's also if you'll notice like a couple font differences. So with GOL's permission, I would like to reformat this. The issue is that Michelle to answer your actual question. There isn't a lot of consistency with how different regulations are written because I went back and looked at a couple different ones to try to figure it out. This is not a top priority but at some point it might be nice to kind of create a little council style guide on how we want to write things because they're not consistent. And throughout this document I know they're not consistent either but that's in some places it's bolded in some places it's underlined. I think it's if you all want to decide that. Okay, I'm sure I can see your hand is up. Yeah, well and I, I'm just going to say that as you guys. The applicability purpose and policy and that capital air not if you look at the table of contents I have it as a lower case a and if you look in here it's an uppercase a so decide which one you want but then it's going to have to be fixed in both places. I got that no worries. That's our job for the middle one of them's right. Um, does anyone have a preference on that on the committee, whether that that a should be capitalized or not. Anika I saw you know I do not my hand with my hand was up to set. No I just saw you on mute so I. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, I agree either capital or, you know, big or a little way. You're talking about the A&M. Yes, should be lower case. I think it should be lower case. Yeah, I agree. So then it has to be through them. Okay. Anything else on this page. I'm just quickly just. I mean I think a lot of like the formatting stuff will get taken care of when, when Anna goes through and does that. Definitely has my authority, my, my permission to do that. I can wrestle with it. I got it. Okay, I'm moving on to the next page before it. Yep. This change here was an addition of a paragraph because it just the paragraph thing as built just continued on here. So, I'll see it in the packet. I'm looking. Okay. I'm just going to go back to the comment section. I'm just going to go back to the comment section. I'm just going to go across connection. There was a comma between 310 and CMR. So it just needs. I deleted the comma and out of the space. Yep. Just lingering things. I'm good here. If you went once year. Where everyone else says. Sam. Andy, I swear. If you have a comment about law and irrigation systems, we talked about these for hours. Permanent. Didn't have a space between them. Oh thank God. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It changes error, I think. Yeah. A lot of these are things like that, right? Where you don't realize that happen. Mandy, can you scroll up? I think I saw something odd. Valved. Sorry, never mind. Okay. So the turn on and or shut off. Those are. Or there was like, those are definitions, I believe. Okay. Okay. Perfect. Is there. Oh, turn. Turn on. Is valve to word. It isn't. Great. That's perfect. It makes sense to me. A definition though. Oh, shut off does. Okay. So do we need a definition for turn on or do we. Amy. Yeah. I mean, we can, if you. Want. I think shut off has a little more of a definition just because. There are certain tasks and, you know. You know, You know, You know, You know, Collectors office things that happened with shutting off where turn on, I think it's pretty self-explanatory, but. That makes sense. Okay. So that's, that works just to do what, what Mandy just did. Solar case. So it's fine. This page six more definitions. And page seven. So on seven. The highlights. I don't know why those are highlighted. But I think that's fine. I think I did it in my version. And then it got nervous that I had screwed something up and so I sent you the version that still had the highlights. But they should, it should not be. That's my. Amy, do you feel differently? No, that's fine. I think things were, I was highlighting things when I was going through and was like, here's a conversation I need to have with Guilford. And so again, with the track changes, it's possible that. It's so confusing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Mandy. There, there's a couple more of those. I think. That's fine. No, you're fine. This is a beast of a document. I am grateful that you all are catching the things because we've been staring at it. I've been staring at it for a long time. I don't, Amy and Guilford have been staring at it for longer. Yeah. I'll move on to this page. This is where I got. Sorry, Mandy. Would you just. A bit. Number. I'm looking at number four real quick. The comma there is just. Is it needed or. It's not after. Okay. Okay. So this comment is where I realized that not all the defined things were. Yeah. Done. So I got through and do the search and replace. Okay. And a lot of fun formatting. There's a bold A there, which I. Why. I know the B doesn't line up. I. We'll get this. We'll figure it out. Yeah. So. No. I'm going to site with Microsoft word. I'm going to do it. I'm determined. Honestly, I'm just mostly mad. And A. A should have a, a, a comma after stop. No. Yes, it should for Oxford commas. Yeah. Adopting principle. Yep. And I think there's a bunch of that in this case. There are. You'll see me adding some of them when I went through quickly. There's not, like I added one down here and down here. Yeah, at this point, if you wanna call them out, you're welcome to, but I'll go back through it and add on Oxford Thomas. Okay. Anything else? And then this is where I started capitalizing terms and then gave up about three pages later. So. Hilarious. I mean, the good thing is now I know this for the sewer ranks. Exactly. Yeah, we'll get this for sewer. So the sewer ranks are gonna be smoother sailing. So the, I think Michelle's gonna say this come is probably not needed. I don't think it is. Where are you? Okay. 4B on page nine. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Is it, are these your changes on D-Mandy? Yes. That's just capitalizing defined terms. Yeah. It'll stop in another two pages. Mm-hmm. When I was like, it'll be easier to do a section or a place to do this. Yeah. Okay. Jennifer, you're muted. I'm sorry, we ran into something on another committee. Because you didn't make these in the file, we're doing these for the first time. Like if you had made any changes to the file, that would have been an open meeting law violation. Yeah. Like if I had, because it came up, right? Yeah. If there was like a collaborative effort going on in a file, that would have been a violation. But I'm not in the same file as maybe. Yeah, we're doing this. So this is being done for the first time. And we're in a meeting. Yeah. And we've agreed on some of these. So we don't have to do it now. It's just gonna be part of the vote. Right. Yep. And I'll do it. Authority. Yeah. Hey, you heard all. Yeah. Can I move on to page 10? Yep. More capitalization. Easy. And Oxford commas. Okay. And also just looking on it when you go through and taking out commas that aren't needed. So I'll try. I'm a comma fiend. So I will do my best. I think I saw one up. If you, if you climb up a little bit to D here, let me just, did I? Any violations? And where appropriate? At the bottom. And the utility me too. You know, that one works. Where? And yeah. Yeah. And the first and yeah, that's where. Yeah, that one. The other one can stay. Yep. That's good. Page, I think we're on 11. You okay? More Oxford commas for me. Oh, down here's a non Oxford comma. B meters, greater than two inches, right? Yes. Correct. Just wanted to make sure. Mm-hmm. Not two inch. We call them two inch meters. And so that's my slang. Not being grammatically. The industry term. It's the industry term. So you're right. Okay. All right. So as of the approval of these regulations, comma, the utility will provide, I don't think we need that comma. I think it works because it's a phrase. I think it works. As of the approval date of the regulation, the utility will survive. Okay. I mean, you might actually not even need that phrase. I don't know that that's in your purview, but obviously these regs don't go into place until the regs are in place. And that's when this is. They could just say the utility will provide all service. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That makes sense. Good catch. Yeah. All right. Next page, page 12. An extra space on 2A. Thank you. Couple of commas. For the rest of mine. Do they, is location underlying to say like a comma before the witch? They want a comma after location. Right. Usually when you put which they want a comma before it instead of that. If you said in a location that maybe safely, I don't think it would want a comma. I like the that better than the which. Yeah. Try that and see if it. I always like that better than what you. I do too. Wait, well, okay. Good. I'll read with that. It weirds, it weirds read to me, but I'm not, this is not my committee. Weirds read? It weirds read. That's where I'm at today. Yep. I left my coffee downstairs and it's killing me. Yep. You heard correctly. Quickly on that, what are the, what's the light brown under like period of time, period of time? I think that's because they want you to make it shorter as in and in is in instead of is located in, if a meter is in an inaccessible area. Right. Like that located is not needed. That's grammatically, but do you feel any that that gives more clarity to the the language? I mean, I think so. Okay. What about the period of time? What is it asking us to do there? Probably the same thing, just period. Yeah. Yeah. I think that I would take out the of time unless that's someone feels strongly about that. Where is the of time? So up here, there's a will be charged triple the estimated water usage for the period of the current billing cycle that the meter was tampered. I like the of time in that. You do? It just seems clunky to me, but it's, I'm not gonna, it's fine. Period of time of the current billing cycle. I think usage for the period of the current billing cycle. I think that's fine as well. I agree. I also will tend to like overuse comma sometimes and chop out information. But I think in this case to be, it's important to be extra clear for someone reading it. So we're not leaving any room for confusion. So Anika, are you saying to leave the of time? And Amy, is that what you were suggesting to leave of time? Wouldn't it? I think I could go either way on this particular one. Okay. What if you said it for the portion of the current billing cycle? Yeah. Yeah. I think that one reads well either way. So if you want to take those out, that's, I'm okay with that. Okay. I tend to be like a minimalist with that. So if I, you know, whether people might have a different, would it feel better to say estimated water usage for the portion of the current billing cycle that the meter was tampered with? Aren't you glad I'm not on your committee? No, that's the question is, well, does that change the meaning by using portion versus period? Right. Oh, I thought there were this. I didn't think that, but yeah, that's fine. You just say time. Period is a cycle that is determined. Whereas a portion isn't, at least as far as I understand. A portion is like a segment of the entire period. Yes, but isn't that what this is saying? Amy, was this the, the charge triple for that whole billing cycle once it was tampered with that the billing cycle during which it was tampered with the whole cycle gets triple or is it just from the date of tampering? It's the period of time that it was tampered with. Well, I'll say that it's a little bit of a moot point because if your meter is tampered with, we can't get a reading. And so what we're going to do is, you know, kind of take your previous quarters usage and it's going to be estimated and then that's going to be tripled. And that that's per mass general loss or our hands are tied on the tripling, but it's a little bit of a moot point because if we can't get a reading, it's going to be on it based on an estimate. But it'll be an estimate of the cycle, not just like one month, you'll correct. Cause we're not going to know when it was tampered with. We just know we could get a reading last time and we can't this time because of tampering. Got it. Okay, then yes, I agree. Don't change it to portion. I misinterpreted that. All right. And that's the same for the unmetered lines that it's the whole cycle. Yeah. And then of the meter has no standing water and temperatures above freezing at all times. What is it pointing out there? Does it wanna? Always has no standing water. It doesn't always have to have no standing water. It just has to not have standing water when the people are coming to install. How did it even make that recommendation? It's so interesting. I think it doesn't like the at all times at the end. And so it's saying that could be consolidated to always. Always, right? Exactly. Is that a dangling part of Sibyl or something? But it would change the meaning of this sentence. Yeah, okay. Good. All right. This one, they just put the word for. For this purpose, the owner shall provide valves located on either side of the meter for the purpose of shutting down. They're just saying for shutting down the water. Shutting down the water, yeah. Is this, that's okay with you, Amy? I mean, I am sure grammatically that actually works. I think for the specificity, I like having, you know, for this specific purpose. Yeah. You want to change it? Clarifies it really well. I'm fine with that. If every, yeah. Take that Microsoft word. Can't tell us what to do. Thank you. Wait, you mean 13? Oh, 13. Okay. Yeah. So this one is supposed to be an of, not an or, right? Yeah, this is just describing that, you know, you've got a meter and there's a couple of different options for how we read it. And then it describes the different types that we currently have. Yeah. Meters are equipped. So is this saying that the meters only have one or the other or is it saying? Correct. Meter only has one or the other. Oh, okay. Okay, got it. And should the note there be within the period or does that go? I never know how to do that properly or does that go after? Depends on what style you're using. Period works inside. Yeah, that's the separate sentence. So the way that it is right now, I mean, I would have put the period after the note, but you're saying it's fine this way. It's not. I mean, Michelle, you're saying, you say utilities reader and not have that period there and have that note within that period. Not whether the period at the end of phased out is inside or outside. Correct. That's what you're asking. Yes, that's what I'm asking. Yeah, because does it refer to that, the outside readers? It refers to the outside readers specifically. So I don't know how you guys, where you want that. Yeah, I think that you should just go with your gut here because I don't think that it necessarily impacts the clarity, consistency or actionability. Yeah, I would remove the period and put it after the note. Jennifer, you have some, I know sometimes you've pointed out these kinds of things. Okay. No, I'm good. Okay. That's what it looks like. Yeah, to me that more. Right. All right, great. So we could get rid of in order on this one. I think that's good. Move on. Yeah. Yes. Well, there was one thing above, if we're really getting picky, where it said about installing, let's see, if the owner, the last, very last one on the page, if the owner, private meters, do we need all those and shall be furnished, installed, comma maintained and read by or maintained. Yeah, that's. And I don't think we actually need the A on this one because there's only one sentence. Yeah. So I think we can get rid of the A. Oh, that's a fun, a fun little, we haven't run into that yet. I like that. Anna, did you say that you're gonna consider like bolding the... I'm gonna try to, yeah. Things like this will be indented beyond the A, Bs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting how the fonts also can change like if they are, but they, you know, like this one and two is, no. I did figure out how to fix that part yesterday. It was the little tab things that were driving me nuts. The tab things are pretty. Yeah, the hit under do, under seven, two. Which they does. They want it does when the result does not. Yeah. As long as. If. Yeah, that's good. The cost of nails. Do we want to change that to if? I would, I think. I mean, I don't think we need as long as personally. I agree. So it's like, you know, have any of you become reliant on your GPS systems and then they like take you somewhere? Like, you know, you can, you can kind of rely on some of these edits that word gives us, but you also have to use your own. Yeah, you do. Word doesn't get nuanced. Yeah. All right. It's 15. How many pages we have on this? 28. That's why I'm moving through quick. Okay. Wow. This is a big one. Okay. Are readily acceptable at all times are readily accessible. Okay. No, I like it this way. You like it this way, Anna? Personally, I do. Are readily accessible. Well, the only thing I would say in terms of consistency is that we've taken out the at all times in other places. Right. So we didn't. We didn't end up. No, we kept it. We kept it in the last one. Okay. So then if we kept it, it's fine, I would say. I thought for some reason I thought we, isn't the last one that changed the meaning of it. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. And then the defense of all the time that went into it, I think, you know, it's understood sometimes when you see the word shall, you are in for some long reading. What was that, Anika, when you see what? I just, you know, had it over, overall, I used to have a little word of sense to me about this. That was like some of the words that when you see them, like key words, you know, you're in for long reading and pay attention and shall is one. Yeah. Oh, This one down it does not leave room for error, which is great. The fees and expenses. All installation of devices require permit. Installations require or installation requires. I would put this on installation. That sounds right. Yeah. Yeah. Great. 17. Okay. They want to change sufficient to enough. I think sufficient is better. It seems more clear to me. Yeah. What's the, yeah. Okay. It's on his love of commas there. I know it's so bad. My mom is like a literacy teacher and she can't stand me sometimes. Looks like there's an extra space before the F laws, irrigation systems. Lawn irrigation. Yeah, there is. Anna is going to take care of all of those. Oh, okay. Yeah. No worries. I got that. Near. Is near different than. Is near different than. Is near different than. Is near different than. Is near different than. Is near different than. Is near different than. Is near. Is near different than in close proximity. Is it, it's asking you to put near in there. Yeah. Yeah. I prefer. I prefer in close proximity just for some reason it feels more specific to me. I know that that's perception, but. No, I, I, I agree with that. I think it does feel more specific with in close. Some of this is just like also the, the lingo of this type of thing, you know, so I think it's important to keep that voice in there because this thing will just bear it down to the bones. If you let it, you know, where it says on maintenance of the fire hydrant, that just means you have to keep it accessible to the fire. Trucks and. I don't know how. Which. Which one was that for, I mean, that just means I'm just curious. That you have to maintain access. You can't have. Yeah. It's just around it. Okay. Well, it's also, I mean, it's maintained like it's got to be an operational order. But how do you know when you say hydrants, is that. A fire hydrant. Yeah. On private property. So this is. A condo complex that might have, you know, they might have private water mains or even like mass on campus has private lines. Thank you. I was like thinking that as a homeowner. Yeah. Okay. As well as accessible. Yeah. I'm just going to keep scrolling. Yeah. Yeah. It goes ABCD and then a. So, so these should be. Oh, in, right? In. Yeah. Yeah. That's the formatting issue on. It's going to take care of. Let's try. Guilford. I see your hand is up. You just. Hit it. I got too many keyboards here. It's funny because you get bumped to the top of the, at least on my screen you do. So. Yeah. Okay. Good. All right. I thought it was supposed to be an owner, not a owner. Yeah, I think you're right. It had a blue underline on it when I went through it the first time. Yeah. I think that was at some point customer and owner were using interchangeably. We consolidated on owner and so track changes. We fixed that and. Yeah. Yeah. And is owner a definition. Yes. So does it need. Does it need the word and at all. I mean, you could say the owner may request. I think the owner is what we've been kind of consistently using before. If you wanted to. Seek that level of that consistency, but not just owner may request. Correct. We've been using the owner. You can see it here. Yeah. The is not. Yeah. Like in that it's capitalist because it's the beginning of sentence, but typically. Right. Okay. So I'm sorry. Yeah. So you're saying throughout the document, even though it's a definition. You used the, okay. Yes. And I didn't go through and check references like this. I assume. Anna and Amy that they're correct. I could highlight it for further check. Yeah. Let's let's double check because I don't know that I went through to double check every single one of those references after a couple of things got shuffled around. So that's a, that's a great call that we should just confirm. I think this is the only one I saw throughout that was an actual reference, but if I see it, I'll highlight them. Great. And I'm just deleting the ones. Where there's only one paragraph. I'm not seeing anything right now. No. There's a double as there and B. Right there. That's why that's. Yeah. There we go. Amy, are you getting into this? Oh, this is, this is thrilling. It's customer defined term. Customer is a, I believe it's a defined term. We can, we can double check. But that was, yeah, we made a full pass at all of it, but very clearly tried to, you know, customers, basically the person who. Sign up, like, it's like they pay the bill, but the owner is a person who owns the property. They're not always, you know, one in the same. So we tried to be clear on responsibilities of things. And a lot of times they are one in the same, but there are places where they aren't. And that's why you'll see. Probably. And there's probably disputes where that's not clear. Right. So that's why you'll see it like right here. No owner or customers because. You know, in the Venn diagram, there's a lot of overlap, but they're not the same. That gives us to the appendix. Which is where I have questions. This one. I'm always concerned when we refer to rates in. A document that we might not update regularly. You know, we vote the rates every year and maybe because they haven't been part of the regulations, the vote has just been. The new water rates for FY 23 will be X. Right. That's what we vote. We either, I think have to change the vote. Or. Be concerned with since the regulations say the rate is what the appendix says. I think we either need new language when we vote rates, but then I'm concerned that even if we have that language, if it doesn't actually make it into appendix, A that we might not be able to charge the rate, the council voted. Until it's changed in appendix A. And I worry that that might get forgotten sometimes since this is new. So is there a way. We can, this is just language I sort of came up with. A way to ensure that. The council's latest vote is the water rate, even if appendix A. Has not yet been changed. Does that make sense? I think so. You're saying, oh, sorry, go ahead. Oh, I was going to. Ultimately, this is your guys decision. I'm going to advocate for the town council every year. Votes and updates, all of appendix A. Because I, I, you know, we also don't want stuff like the meter rental rates as meter prices increase. Like I want them on an annual basis to not just look at meter rates, but to review any other cost. Or fee and make sure that we're. That those aren't static, you know, some, some of these things have been static for, you know, 30, 40, 50 years and they shouldn't be. And so I want, as we're looking at, rates, I actually would, I'm going to advocate for, let's look at the whole picture and let's, but I do understand that that's asking town council to look at it differently and not just approved water rates, but to approve, you know, all of the associated fees. So this would be also, I think this is Mandy, why I just made a note as I'm looking at the bylaw. You know, the bylaw would let. Does say, you know, from time to time, the town council, the town manager in consultation with superintendent of public works may propose to the town council adoption or amendment of regulations, which because these are part of the regulations could include fees. And so I wonder if I add a section in the bylaw that says on an annual basis, the town council shall review and update as needed, a pen rate and fee struck schedule. And I, if I include that in the bylaw, it forces us to do it every year. It would mean having a public hearing on it, which I believe we would do now, right? And so, I mean, I can specify that out, right? In the bylaw. Yeah. I mean, we don't have to, we could specify. An annual review every year. I'm just worried, you know, the way we voted rates in the past, and it could be because we haven't had an appendix or something is just the rate shall be X. And then the council's vote stands. But if the regs say. The rate is as per the appendix. If it never gets changed in the appendix, it doesn't matter what the council voted. But we have the ability. We would have this would change it so that we have to change it in the appendix. Right. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to talk over. Yeah. We're really, we're really pushing for the fact that when the rates are voted, you actually are voting on appendix A of the water regulations and the sewer regulations. And you would actually have the whole appendix when you vote. That's what we're really hoping for. So it won't, it won't get lost because you won't be able to vote without the appendix. So we really. We really kind of set it up this way to make sure it gets voted every year that way. Okay. That helps me. Yeah. So I can add in something in the bylaw though, that does say. The council shall conduct an annual. Hearing on and vote. Or conduct an annual vote on. Appendix. Annual review. Thank you. Of the rate and fee schedule. I think we just need to make sure Athena. Realizes the next time we vote rates, the motion will look a little different. Well, and to Mandy, Joe's kind of point or comment there. Do we want to just make sure. Somewhere on appendix A. That we're capturing like the effective date or something like that. Just because a two years from now, there may be a couple of different versions that somebody printed off at some point. Think it's applicable. So just making sure that somewhere it. And I see it. His hands up. So maybe Athena will. Hi. So I believe finance committee recommends changes to the water rates and the council rule state that recommendations from committee should include the motion to be adopted by the town council. So finance committee would need to recommend. Changes to appendix A along with any other changes. I mean, appendix A the rates and any other changes to the. The fees or anything like that. So that should all be part of the finance committee's recommendation and, and the motion that they pass under the council. Most committees don't do that. I think CRC is the only one that does that consistent. Consistently, but that's what. The rule says should happen. Thanks. So I'm just going to put it back on you all. Thanks. I do think, I mean, I think it makes. So, so are you saying just to make sure I'm fully understanding though, is there a reason why we can't put a rate and fee schedule. And then blank. So there would be an effective date here. It would say adopted X amended Y. And every time the appendix is amended, the whole regulations are going to change. Right. So, but do we need something that, that makes sure people are aware that it's the most current version that they're looking at? Do you see what I'm saying? Like if we're voting this every year and there's nothing that. Tells people that in the regulations, because that's in the bylaw. Are they going to be able to know that they're looking at the most. Like that they're looking at the accurate version. Versus if they just pull an old one and think, well, it's probably still the same. I guess I'm thinking the, the footer here will say that. Okay. We'll have an effect, you know, we'll have the light, the last amended date on it. Yeah. I guess there's just no end date. Right. So like. That's all. That's, I just want to make sure people aren't like accidentally pulling an old one. And is it true that all rate and fee schedules for our like embedded into the regulation document that they don't have their own separate. It's the direction that this is going. And will be true for sewer as well. I did not go through and look at other ones. Yeah. Cause I see your point on it that you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't. Yeah. Cause I see your point on that you don't, I mean, being that it's embedded in this document and being that then the whole thing is going to be getting voted on on an annual basis is what it sounds like as opposed to the regulations. Are what they are. And then the fee schedule is being. Triggered. Well, I mean, I think that we can. I think it depends on what we write in the by-law. Like if we write in the by-law that the council shall review appendix A of the regulations specifically, then we don't need to go through every single bit of it. That would be really, I think clarifying you to sort of pull out that this, this appendix A needs to be voted on on an annual basis. However, I don't know if it solves the issue or I, I'm not sure how that plays into what Mandy was saying about the footnote and how that would. Change. So what Amy was saying was to have like, I think an effective date. Or even just like a vote, it sounds like you guys should have a date that it was voted on and the date that it's effective because typically you vote, you know, January or February or sometime in the winter for, in effect, July one. Of that upcoming year. Right. I don't know where you would capture that in appendix A if it's different than the effective date of all the rest of the regs. So, so if we go, oh, sorry, go for it. Sorry, I imagine when we submit our recommendation, it's going to have effective date up there under appendix A. You don't have one there now because we don't have one we're going to make this effective. So I believe our recommendation would have that effective date on it. And I don't think. I mean, once it's done, we do this every year we have to, if we don't do it, we don't have enough money. So it's pretty much guaranteed. That's really similar to what I was going to suggest, which was just a line after rate and fee schedule effective as of, so I think effective data is, yeah, that's perfect. Great. So I had two other questions related to this, but I don't know if you have a comment over here. Is, I went through to see what fees were mentioned in the regulations and whether I could find them here. And I didn't see the water connection permit fee or the application fees that were mentioned. Did I miss them somewhere? I think we're just using a different term. So we can change that because that's the water system entrance fee is what we're calling it here. So that's a good. That's a good question. And it's a good question. And it's a good question. And it's a good question. And it's a good question. And it's a good question. Because there's a whole formula. We can't just say, here's what it is. Because it depends on how much water you need, what the size of the services and stuff like that. So that's, that's specific to the water permit. Is it a separate application fee than a connection fee? Or are they the same? No, there's two. There's a connection fee and an application fee. And they're basically on the same permit. So. We could, we could put it in here. It's just going to add another half page of. Information or page of information. With something like that work. Yeah. I wonder if you want to change that language for the. Again, it's stipulated in the application. It'll fix itself when you don't show the track changes. I have a quick question. Is that the fee to connect? And then the fee to turn the water on. It's basically yes. All right. And this one says by permit, this, this temporary hydrant. Use fee. Is it a permit then that you get for that? It is. Okay. I mean, you could, it's. If you want to be consistent with language, you can say on the applicant, like there's, there's the application that you complete to get the permit. And so if you want to be consistent with language, that's. That's appropriate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can say it on the application. Yeah, just. Okay. You're really only 27 pages. Yeah. I think it'll show 27 now. Yeah. We're all the rest of the, like it looks like there's a lot to still scroll down. Andy. There's not just be track change issues that are not fixed yet. I'll make sure there's no blank pages when I do that, but I think it'll disappear. I don't know what this line's for. It might just be to show the end of the fee stretch page. We'll delete it. Yeah. I think at some point I was like, what's the fee going to be? And I left this, but it, it looks like it kind of got pushed down. Like I left a fill in the blank here. Yeah. Awesome. So any other. Questions or comments or we are going to make a motion. And this is the really fun part. Cause we need to account for Anna making changes to this after. And me. Yes. Mandy, do you want to, excuse me. It's my dog. Do you want to attempt a motion here? Give me a second to draft a new one. Sure. I'm just going to step away for one second. Are we going to recommend the specific adoption effective date or not? Well, it still has to go. Well, in terms of to be concurrent with bylaw adoption and all. Yes. That's what that was the consensus on that, right? Yeah. But. Okay. Let me try this. And I can send this to you, Athena, but I'll read it slow. To declare the. Well, I guess I moved to declare the water use regulations clear, consistent and actionable. And I think that's the best way to make sure that the. The permitting subsequent formatting changes as discussed at the 928 22 meeting and recommend that the council's adoption have an effective date to coincide with any required rate increases or bylaw adoption. Second. Any. Further discussion. All right. So. I'm a Nica. I'll start with you for the vote. Yes. I am an I and Jennifer. I. Great. Congratulations. And you still have a lot of work to do. Sorry. We did. You did great. I will send this to you on after I've done the. The defined capitalizations. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. That was really fun. For the rest. Feel free to stay in the audience. You want to stick around for a second on the rubric piece or. I'd love to. I can I just run and use, you can start talking, but I have to be so bad. Okay. So we have two sets of minutes to adopt. So why don't we go ahead and do that? Okay. I'll bear it back. We do not have any attendees. So we're good right now in terms of public comment. So. We have, let's see here. The. I have to pull up Athena. Do you? Do you have any comments? The change on the minutes. What was it? Were the ones that we were the older ones we were adopting. August 17. Perfect. Okay. So I'm going to move to adopt the August 17th, 2022 minutes and the, the August 17th and the September 14th. Minutes. I'll second. Great. Any discussion? Okay. So, Jennifer. I. Anika. Yes. Mandy. Hi. And I'm an eye. Okay. Thank you, Athena. And thanks for getting those. I know you had to do that off of a video, I think. That must be grueling. I so prefer to do them in real time. Absolutely. All right. So the next. Matter of business is for us to discuss this three part. Appointment. Referral to us. The first being review of section two, eight and nine on the town council policy on making recommendations for town council appointments. Second is review of a scoring matrix. And the second is review of the community activity. How do we, Mandy? What is the AF again? Community activity forms forms. Okay. Good. So I guess I probably would have made, I don't know what you think about this, Mandy, but I may have done this a little differently in terms of how the community works. I don't know if that's true. Yeah. Okay. So, and the reason I've asked on it to stay is because I remember that they had. Had some thoughts about this previously. And so if we want, and I, and think in particular the matrix. So maybe we can just start there. So on it doesn't have to stay for the whole discussion. And unless, unless you want to. Yeah. But please, if you, and I know Mandy, this was your, these were your recommendations, I think, and or were at least gone through in CRC. And so having, do you want to provide us first with like a background overall? Yeah, I can provide a background. So as CRC was running into this problem last spring, right? So we were looking at, we were looking at. Appointments and looking at trying to fill the remaining vacancies at the ZBA. And given our last thing, we were looking at potential changes to the policy that the council adopted. That, that. CRC, at least for the next set of appointments thought would be useful and then said, you know, maybe the council needs to look at these. And so those got referred. But while we were doing that. And the council was, the council was already on the council. It was the council was on the council dealing with appointments for three of them or recommending appointments for three of them. Anna. Before she was on the council came to GL a couple of times and, and. Spoke highly of some sort of rubric or scoring matrix or. In order to potentially. Decrease the. The bias. into making recommendations. And GOL had never gotten to it, but I brought it up in CRC as we were thinking about what do we recommend could be helpful to CRC in making these recommendations that were sending to GOL. And so that's why it got voted on. It was not a unanimous vote to send to the council to see if they would refer this to GOL. In the end, it did get referred to GOL. I didn't have beyond that memory of Ana mentioning it multiple times in GOL. You're being very kind about how I showed up with this. I did not research it. I did not look into it. I did not look at any potential examples because it was more of a, maybe it's time for GOL to look into this and get it formally looked into. So there isn't any examples or anything, but it was based sort of on those two experiences from my point of view. And then CRC made that recommendation, like I said, it was not unanimous to the council and the council referred it here again, not unanimous. But I think the initial referral is to determine whether it would be appropriate. And then if GOL makes the recommendation that it would be useful, then for GOL to recommend what it would look like. Okay. So I see Jennifer's hands up. I'm also gonna go to Ana, but just to quickly clarify. So we first are tasked with determining whether there should be one. And then if we make that recommendation, does it have to go back to the council first before we would propose something or could we develop it and then? We'd have to look at the exact referral, but I think the referral said, if we think it's worth recommending, develop it to recommend to the council before you go back to the council for a new referral. Perfect, perfect. Okay. Okay, Jennifer, please. Yeah. So I'm sorry. I just want to quit. We would develop one and bring it to the council. Only if we thought it was worth doing. Like only if we were gonna recommend the council adoption. Right. And so I think what was the discussion in the council, I think it really, and I include myself in this, I don't really know what it is. So I think people just have, they reacted to it not knowing what it could be. So that would be really helpful to know. I agree. And just to sort of follow up on that point that Jennifer's making, you said that it didn't get voted unanimously at CRC. What was the, was there any, anything you could shed light on? My guess is it's very similar to the conversation of the council. Jennifer can probably confirm that. It was- Right, people just do- Yeah. It's what you associate a matrix with, but so that's what I think would be really helpful to hear from Anna. Like really- Perfect. How is it, what is it? Yeah, we don't really, we're just- Yeah. Okay, patiently waiting, Anna. No, it's fine. Mandy, I can't believe you remembered me constantly showing up at the GOL and George being like, we have been working on this for six months and you're coming in now. But I'm really glad that it's getting brought back up again and that's not any fault on George. So essentially what a rubric does is when we think about, so I'm approaching this a little bit from my professional world when we think about hiring and reducing bias and promoting equity and hiring decisions, right? Because essentially what we do when we are appointing is we are hiring someone just, they don't get paid. And so we are appointing someone to a role similar to hiring someone into a role. And when we make those decisions, when we make appointment decisions to match the specific skills that we're looking for in the role, right? In the job, in the appointment, in whatever it is, we're reducing the potential for bias versus if we look at the people and then decide if they fit whatever conceptualization of the role we have in our heads. So I also wanna just kind of name something which is that this is a political role, right? And so there are politics that are gonna come into play and I'm not saying that we can get rid of whatever personal things we may wanna see. However, we can't root those personal things in bias. And so what this is doing is allowing us sort of as a first step to mitigate how we're looking at folks' skills and kind of take that bias away as much as possible. So what a rubric does, or how it kind of functions is that you create a set of standard quote unquote measures, right? Standard attributes or skills or traits or knowledge or ability that map to the role and map to kind of where, what the role needs to do. This is quite literally often presented as a template. I've seen them done as like Excel sheets. And so you create that sort of scoring standard. It needs to be the same for everyone, right? Could be one to four, could be yes, no, strong, yes, strong, no, whatever you decide, but everyone is using the same matrix. And the idea here is that if you want to appoint fairly, you need to decide on what you're hoping to evaluate before you design the evaluations. So this is where, you know, GOL would come together and say, what is it that matters most in different appointments? And then there's a lot of decision points for y'all, right? Is this a matrix that needs to be relevant regardless of committee? Is this a, you know, do you create different ones for the, just the ones that council appoints, et cetera, et cetera. There's lots of questions for you. But you can adjust that rubric to make sure it's specific to the role. However, having general areas would be helpful. So in terms of best, so just to be very clear, this is considered best practice in hiring. So this is absolutely what folks should be doing when they're hiring for jobs. And I, in my opinion, feel like it should be translated over. So you create your screening criteria and GOL would create and pitch that. And some things might be, you know, related work experience or translatable work experience. I think in this instance, education, some people talk about, you know, service in the community, other service they've done, other past experience, training or professional development, experience working with diverse populations. There are lots of different ways, but you all would have to decide on a set of maybe, you know, six to eight kind of like areas that you think are most important. You or whoever is, I guess it would be you all. Appointments are blanking in my head, it would be you all. Would clarify this prior to screening candidates and you could decide my recommendation would be to use this in your screening process and your interview process. And that way you're also coming to the conversation with a shared language. When you talk about candidates, you're talking about their skills and their qualifications and what they bring to the table using a shared benchmark. Again, other things can come in that can impact your vote. I'm not taking away your right to, you know, I'm not suggesting that you use that, but it gives you at least a common baseline. Okay, and just to be clear, GOL appoints for the non-voting member in finance. Yeah, that's what I was remembering. Yeah, and CRC appoints for the zoning. Right, yes. I'm planning. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Anna. That was really, really helpful. Jennifer. Yes, thank you. That was very helpful. And maybe we start with, I don't know, the council, the committees we appoint versus giving one to Paul, but we can, that's another discussion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, my, and again, this may be getting a little in the weeds because we're really just talking about the concept of using like a rubric. But I think since we're, for our committees, or Paul's too, we're looking for volunteers from the community is how we deal with, you know, if you're hiring for a professional position, you really are looking for a specific experience. I mean, I fear that one reason we've been, yeah, well, challenged to get more like applications or CAFs for ZBA is, it is intimidating when you read the experience. I think people feel like if they really aren't planners or land use specialists that they can't, but we want to, you know, we want to have people from our community involved, so. Yeah, so my other recommendation, if you want to just let me talk about all the things I want to see, my other recommendation would be for folks who are on CRC and GOL who make these decisions to go through an anti-bias workshop around hiring before doing these appointments because there are ways to look at experience that aren't just direct related, like perfect match, right? So for example, I'll use myself as an example. I was on the Conservation Commission. I have an undergraduate degree in environmental science, but I haven't touched it since that many years ago. And so for me, my qualified experience is that I spent nearly every day out on those trails, right, and like that was relevant for folks. I was very familiar with it. I saw how it changed. I saw how it adapted. And so that would be considered relevant experience. So I think that what's important for you all is to define those categories, because I agree, Jennifer, that this is those words, especially the ones you referenced, are really intimidating. And there's no reason why a non-professional planner could do a great job on them. So it's important that you all are creating whatever matrix you end up using, that you're creating it and that you have a shared understanding and definition. And that would be a discussion to have amongst yourselves is, are we okay with somebody who isn't a professional planner? My argument would be that, yes, I'd love to see that. And when you think about unbiased and reducing bias and hiring, that's something that they talk about a lot is, it's someone's job doesn't necessarily mean that they'll do that role well. And so it's important for you to consider what are the things that you're looking for. And if they're not a professional planner and they're a teacher, what skills are they taking from teaching that then they would apply and you can ask that question. Yeah. Thank you, Anna. And I saw first Mandy's hand and then his hand. I'd love to hear Anika first. Anika. Yeah. So yes, thank you, Anna. I just wanted to just add a couple of thoughts. I think that it's great to look at this through the lens of coming from a position of hiring. Though I also think that it's important as well to recognize that we are in fact talking about volunteers because there is quite, and but I completely understand like the parallel and the expectation as well as, I'm sorry, my thought is going right out of my head. I may need to, if Mandy, you will go ahead and just give me a moment. Could you just remember my train of thought just ran out of my head and I'll go after. Thank you. Sure. So in doing this for the council for three years, both on GOL and CRC, we as committees, every committee basically and every appointment that we've done has struggled with once the interviews are over how to talk about and narrow down the choices and make those choices. We have the policy we have that every other committee has had before the council adopted the policy has this sort of preferred qualification section. Like what are we looking for? What makes a good candidate? And yet we've never known what to do with that almost once the interviews are done, right? We've put it out there for writing a statement of interest or how are we going to, what questions should we ask because this is what we're looking for. But then my experience has been that then we get to the talking and we struggle with, well, does this person meet those qualifications or not? Or we struggle with how to talk about that. And so I, and it's not always been clear and I have been complicit in this too that we as committee members have gone back and actually looked at those standards that we gave everyone else and then made our own thinking about them before we get to the discussions. And so I feel like something like this that if we're tasked with having to fill it out ourselves or at least having that in front of us might give us a way to have those conversations or at least structure the conversations. At the same time, I do worry how do you, as Anna said, there's been a difference of opinion as what is this political appointment or not? How do you factor that into this? And then the, we still have problems always recruiting especially for ZBA but not as not as severe with finance not as severe with planning but ZBA for some reason which is our most quasi-judicial body. How do we make this so that if we do all of this we don't scare everyone away? Yeah, so in my, I'm sorry, are you done? Yeah. Okay, so in my opinion this shouldn't change anything for the folks who are applying for the roles. Nothing about using a matrix or a rubric should change anything about how they apply for these unless you're gonna totally revisit that but I don't think it needs to. What it does change is, and you hit the nail on the head is it gives you a way to approach your conversation. It doesn't mean, and I wanna be very clear this is not a you average all the scores and pick the highest person. That's not what this is. And so, what it does do is it allows folks to say, okay, Mandy, you rated this person really, really high on related experience. I rated them really low. Can you walk me through why you had a four and I had a one? And we can have that discussion. It gives you a grounding. It also, there may be times where you say, okay, ZBA has four professional planners on it right now we're gonna choose to prioritize this other area which is engagement in the community or something like that. And so you can look at it with that sort of that shared lens. When I say it doesn't take away the political end of this I just, I don't, part of me is not sure that we should take away the political, we were a lack part of the reason that we were elected is to make these appointments. And so I'm not gonna suggest that we should get rid of all political aims because I also think that there are things that we each want for our town and our community and those might be different and that's okay. But what it does do is it gets rid of the things that should be there for everyone, right? So it's not gonna ask, I'm not gonna say that you should put on your matrix interest in building tall buildings that should not be on your matrix, right? We all have different feelings about that. And so I think that that's something that you can engage in and talk about but for the things that should be commonly shared values or commonly shared attributes or whatever it is that's what should be on the matrix. I feel like I danced around it a little bit it's not gonna solve some of the tough conversations we will always have to have those but it gives a jumping off point so that what we're getting at is the actual core of we have multiple qualified people. We have done what we can do to reduce bias in our interviewing and in our selection. And now we can also include the elements that are personally important or politically important to us regardless of all of the other stuff. So I'm gonna go to Jennifer and then Anika but I think what you're saying is it's a supplemental it's a tool as one of other ways that we might work through that process. Okay, Jennifer. Yeah, do I just ask maybe if another meeting where we discuss this if you could bring the rubric to use? Yeah, absolutely, I'm gonna do that. Yeah, and then the other thing this is getting a little in the weeds but just like for what we do it's and this doesn't really it's helpful to have I think people from one of the criteria might be people representing different parts of Amherst. So that's a different kind of a qualification. Right, so one of the boxes may be considering the current makeup this individual brings a different but so what I would say though I would say demographic, I would not say perspective because those are two super different things. So yes, absolutely, it could be that, right? Like your board is entirely South Amherst folks you gotta pull someone from D1 or D2 or like you would wanna prioritize potentially prioritize that. And again, I'm not saying which elements of your matrix should be prioritized but that would be part of your discussion as well. And are you just to clarify that point are you saying that perspective should not be included in a matrix? I think that's something that GOL could talk about but that is such a, excuse me, subjective. Sorry, I'm having some asthma stuff this past week. That's such a subjective area that like I don't think you can really get into it. It does, I do wonder though how we might be able to get that elephant out of the room in a way and talk about it not in a way that actually is a way of injecting life into the process. You know what I mean? That like it's that we can talk about these things and that we're, you know. I think what it allows you to do is remove it from someone's qualifications or experience in a way that I think might be helpful. So if you are looking at perspective you're not entangling it with, they believe this thing but look, they're so professional at whatever job it is. So you're able to kind of tease it out and just center it in a way that might be helpful, yeah. I agree, yeah, I think so. Anika and then Mandy. Yeah, so just to continue with what both Michelle and Anna had just said, I think it would also just be helpful that when talking about this to really just be clear on definitions of what is diversity because not everyone feels the same as what that is and recognizing that we have an incredibly, most often an incredibly small pool of applicants coming in. But does that mean that you just fill in wherever? So I definitely think that even just looking at makeups also just in terms of like also balance experience, ideas and interest because sometimes it is helpful. As Anna has pointed out, I mean, someone may not have the direct experience but they have interest or something that they can bring to the table that could even challenge the folks that have had a great deal of experience. And there's no solution, but I think that really just trying to expand because in just in my experience, so far being in council and here at committees and I mean, the lack of diversity is real. And oftentimes the definitions and what we're talking about within diversity is also very limited. So I think for us to also provide space and open up for folks, like you hear a lot about it's intimidating and it's intimidating. And I'm sure there are people that it's intimidating for but also in recognizing people that may be used to a, just a wider pool around diversity in terms of expectations and makeup, it's also exhausting. So some people will look and say, I have the expertise. I have the experience. I know someone who is just interested and they could maybe add to this, but I'm looking at the makeups and I'm not seeing diversity. I know what I'm walking, I feel anyway, I know what I'm walking into. I mean, I definitely hear a lot of that. So I know that I really like this idea, but I think that, I think it's really important to kind of look, I think we assume a lot that when people are talking about diversity that we're all on the same page with, how we see that and what that means. And I think if we need- The matrix would allow you, sorry. I apologize. I need to cut you off. No, no, no, I'm just, yeah. But I get like a formula, when it's a formula, but I'm just saying in terms of like what we're, just coming to the table with as well. Yeah, and actually it's in my mind, it's less so a formula, it's more so a common understanding because when you create your, if you create a rubric, you'll have had the discussion of what does it mean to if brings a different demographic or helps to support more representative volunteers on our boards. If you decide on that, everyone needs to be clear on what it means before you can kind of determine where folks are at. So to your point, then you're having the discussion where you're not just looking at one dimension of diversity. You're not just looking at one element and you're having a conversation where everyone's using the same grounding. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Mandy? So a couple of thoughts. Some lean me towards this and some are like, ah, and the summer that are ah, or this sounds like a whole lot more work than what we've been doing and a lot more committee time. And it's not necessarily the more work that's the problem, it's fitting it into the committee time, right? Not that that wouldn't be a good thing, but as a chair when I'm already figuring out and running behind and trying to fit it all in, I worry about that aspect. But one thing, a couple of things I see that could be very helpful. I think it might, you know, CRC started thinking about when we've heard a lot of geographic diversity that we need people, you know, our ZVA is too full of people from downtown, you know, or the planning board's only downtown or, you know, we need people from all over. We've heard comments like that and we hear those comments, but we don't actually always look at the current makeup of the body and the membership of the body and where they live before we're like, oh, they'll bring geographic diversity, right? And so I feel like some of this, if we had a rubric that said we'll bring geographic diversity, we'd actually have to define what that means based on who's remaining on the committee, not based on, oh, well, we need one from each district, we'd have to look, you know? And so some of that, you know, the age diversity and all of that, we'd actually have to do that work ahead of time, look at it and have that conversation that says, you know, who's remaining on? Where do they live? What are their ages? What are their genders? What are this? So what does diversity look like in the new candidates? You know, and so, but two other things. So I also think it might be helpful if you've done that first and you distribute that rubric, hey, candidates, this is what we're gonna be filling out. That might actually help them with the SOI. You know, we've had questions that say, give us your relevant experience. But if they don't know what we think is relevant, you know, we've had candidates apply for planning board that have served on ZVA and not mentioned it at all in an interview or an SOI. And we're like, that's totally relevant, right? But maybe they didn't think it was. And so that might help them know what we're looking for. My one other big concern is in terms of would this put people out from applying is if we fill, if each of the CRC members or each of the GOL members fills this out, are those now public records? And I think we need an attorney opinion on that. You know, if we're actually, if I'm taking that rubric and I as Mandy CRC appointing committee person, you know, on the recommending committee putting numbers down for each candidate, do those evaluations become public records or not? Because if they do, I worry that that might scare people away from applying. Yeah. The way I would think about it is, I'm assuming that when you interview people, you have the questions printed out and some of you take notes. Those notes are not public. So I think that, I guess it depends on how you present it, saying that we are using a rubric might mean that you have it in front of you if you happen to write stuff in it, that's fine. What gets challenging is that the best practice is to use the same scale. So, you know, I guess as long as you've got that, I'm picturing the document, like a document in my head, right? And it says, you know, this is the rubric, consider it on a one to four scale. My like waiting for Athena to call me out on this is that like, I don't, I think it seems like personal notes. I think that it gives you a grounding for the conversation. It don't think that you need to say, it was a four, it was a one. You could say, I thought this candidate was really strong in this area, but I agree with you that it's not, it wouldn't be helpful to have those be public record to the process. And then to the first point that you made, and I'm sorry, I don't, I feel like I've become the de facto like team rubric person. And so I wanna just disclaimer this, I'm speaking from my own experience, like this is hugely Googleable and all of that too. I encourage you to check it out. What is not hugely Googleable, which makes me very excited is that we would be kind of leading a little bit of the curve and using this for municipal appointments. And I think that it speaks really highly to Amherst commitment to bringing in an equity lens to our different processes. So I just wanna name that. In terms of the more work, yes, and these role definitions don't necessarily shift all that often. So it would be work on the front end. However, I, my, again, my imagination is saying that you would revisit the rubric when you revisit the interview questions, but that the rubric itself would be fairly standard year to year because these are common. They should not necessarily be related to current happenings in town. It should be things that are shared across and it should even be shared, general enough that it should be shared across appointments. Relevant experience is relevant experience regardless of whether that's finance or ZBA. Yeah, I don't know if that helps at all, but that would mean mine. And I'm happy to take a stab at what a draft might be and try to think through some of the options. Okay, Jennifer, and then Anika. I guess just a couple of things. I mean, like I know, I very much think about who's on the boards now in appointments, because, yeah. So I think that we do, we are very aware of who's there because we're feeling like one or two vacancies and how does it balance with the expertise or geographic or any other diversity representation that's on the current board of commission. But we can discuss this. I was talking, I'm thinking, I guess I just assumed that the scoring rubric would be public. I don't, you know, that part of, I mean, I think that the way when we discuss a candidate after, I think that's intimidating. I don't, you know, I'm wondering if sharing the rubric, you know, saying, well, I thought they scored would be, makes it almost more objective. I don't, I mean, we can discuss that. I wonder if that wouldn't make people feel more rather than less, you know, more comfortable rather than less, yeah. Yeah, I mean, we can talk about that. Cause I think I've always wondered also the people, they're interviewed and then you sit there and you listen to everybody, I, that horrifies me. That would make you, I don't know. I know, it doesn't sound like we can do a ton to change that part of it, but I think Mandy's right that it might be worth getting a quick legal opinion on that, on the public nature of the rubric. And also with the CAS, we were going to ask, I think even, you know, when people apply for the town manager appointed committee boards and commissions that, I don't understand why that's not public information, just that you applied. Is it not? Apparently they said- I'm sorry, I thought they came through that we were, oh, maybe that's just the, they come through. That's just the ones we appoint as councillors. Right. So you don't- That's a whole separate- That's a different agenda item. And it is a really interesting and important. And it's been on my mind too. So, and I've actually had people give me feedback that have applied for things. And so let's make that its own item at some point. And just Anika, I saw that your hand was raised. Did it go down? I put it down. I decided a last comment basically, just, you know, thank you, Juan. I think in ways like this is necessary and even parallel to that, you know, updating the water regulations after what is it, 50 years, you know, so I think that this has some fresh air blowing through it as well. So thank you. And I'll just add, if I could, you know, I do think that this could be a really wonderful tool for us to use. And I do think it's best practices in hiring. It also raises the stakes in ways, you know, that when we're talking about volunteers and even just the scenario that we just went through here where Jennifer described like after we've gone and done the interview, then they go, the person goes back into the audience and then we have a discussion, right? And I can imagine that if there is a rubric that especially if they haven't seen it in advance. So for me, the transparency and for them to be able to see that advance. Yeah, that's critical. So I guess I'm just trying to understand whether it's an internal tool for members of the committee to use and have a common language to speak on or if it's more of an external tool because I think that depending on what the criteria is, there will be a higher sense of stakes if we're going through point by point like that. And I just wonder how the public and the people who are considering applying for these positions might feel about that process. Like it feels a lot more serious in a way. It does, but it also lends a really concrete sense of consistency across the interviews. I think that there's also something to be said for, oh, they talked about this candidate for an hour. They only talked about me for five minutes. You know, like I think because there's not necessarily a set approach and that's not to say, I'm not saying they're gonna take the exact amount of time but at least it gives every single person the same grounding in a way that interview questions don't, right? I know you're asking the same questions. However, this is much, it takes out some of that bias, right? So when we think about the different types of bias, we've got affinity bias. So people who are similar to us in their beliefs, we have perception bias. So things we believe about other groups based on how they show up, the halo effect. So I was looking this up this morning when I was practicing. So I don't just know all of these perfectly, but halo effect is like when you say, oh, well, it would be me saying, oh, well, you're from South Amherst. So you must be wonderful because you're from my district, right? And then confirmation bias, which is looking to conform our own preexisting ideas. All of this shows up not just in political opinion, but it also impacts on lines of gender bias, beauty bias, racial bias, ageism, all of that comes into play. And so when you bring a rubric in, even if it's something where you frame your rubric as a, we talked about the dimensions of diversity that they bring to the table, this allows us to kind of let go of that perception bias and say, okay, maybe they are from South Amherst, but let go of all of those types of biases and say, okay, I'm making the assumption that because they live downtown, they are really not excited about frozen yogurt, I don't know. And so it allows me to check that because we're having this conversation, we're all talking about the same area. And we can kind of, without calling people out on their identities and things like that, we're talking about why it matters to us. So I think, yeah, sorry, I went on a little rant there, but my point is like it gives that common ground. Yeah, I was just thinking while you were speaking, it totally makes sense, everything that you're saying and how maybe doing some sort of mock trial as a GOL committee with a willing volunteer. You can do me, just like, yeah. That's a great idea. I think that might really help us to have the experience of it, so that we work out what the issues are. We could potentially do all of us. That's a good idea. It's a great idea. That's scary. That is scary. Not even one of our committees, just say, you know, random X committee that we don't even appoint, like, and right. Do, like something like conservation commission would be perfect, honestly. That would be great. Cause like that's one where people do value lived and professional experience. So anyway. Okay, I like, I feel like I would feel more confident if on the next time we discuss this, we tried to do a mock something or other to feel the process a little bit more to see where the red flags might be and where the areas that we could tailor specifically for municipal government. Cause I just, I want to call out what Anna just said about sort of leading the way in something in terms of municipal government. And, you know, I think these things do get picked up and people do are watching. And so I think that it's important to really be mindful of that and also to appreciate that opportunity. Yeah, I think before we try ourselves out at one, I'd like to see some drafts from Anna. And then once we see those drafts, take, you know, maybe in the next committee meeting or whenever we get to this next put in the selection criteria that we've adopted for FinCom, for planning board, for ZBA, we've got all of that's public, right? And see if we could tailor those selection criterias or take all of them and cover most of that within one rubric, come up with what a rubric might look like, what the questions might be, what the, you know, under diversity say, brings diversity or whatever, what the specific things under diversity might be instead of just brings diversity, right? We've talked about that one of people have different views as to what that is. Look at a rubric, see if we can come up with it. See if we can come up with sort of an inclusive examples of relevant experience, right? Because I think Anna's example of for Concom walking the trails, walking the town might not have that, you know, we could potentially put some of that into a rubric for an applicant to see instead of just relevant experience without explaining what it is. And then once we've got that done after one or two meetings, then try and see if we could fill out SOIs ourselves for random committee and then see how that conversation would go or what we run into is we're trying to apply to a committee using the rubric almost. Perfect, I think it's a great process and I think we can really make this a big town event where lots of people come to the mock trial of this. I'm just joking about that. Okay, Anna, you were about to say something and then Jennifer has her hand up. I just know that typically GOL meetings are a little tough for me so I just will need to play calendars at some point and I wanna make sure I get you guys something good so get you all something good. So if we can just play calendars later, Michelle, that'd be awesome. Yeah, and I just wanna make sure that we are clear about what you're doing so that, you know, there's already a lot on all of our plates. And so I think what I heard Mandy suggest is that you would provide some templates of a matrix maybe from your experience or something that you'll pull and then you'll provide that to us. Will that be in your mind and in Mandy's mind who, you know, with or without criteria? I like, is it coming as a structure and then we're gonna do the criteria here? Mandy, how are you envisioning? I'd like to just see some that have been used in actual hiring, you know, that aren't already tailored to say Amherst and what we'd be doing. Just like, what do people do? Get me, you know, see some reading systems, some questions, some of that. And then we can also put in the packet the three sets of selection criteria that are most recent for the three committees that the town council makes appointments for because that could then inform the samples once we've found one we kind of like system wise inform what goes into it that might be able to cover all three appointments because I think part of the goal is to make it as wide covering as possible. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So just to reiterate, just to say it back to make sure. So I've got in my notes, I have pull a few examples of hiring Rebeck's used for you all to look at but do you want me to just toss some ideas out for what a sample might look like for y'all or no? Yes, okay, cause that's fine. You have the time to do that. And in the beginning you had mentioned like I wrote down related relevant experience, translatable education, those, if you could sort of give us those framework that framework that you outlined that would be really helpful. And we just, and we can follow up on this again but our next meeting is on the 12th. So you can let me know if that's okay. I know I can't be there. That's why I was like, ooh. You think you can get us something before the 12th? I can definitely try. Okay, okay. So, cause we still have two other items in this appointment referral to discuss. So if you can, wonderful, it will be included on the agenda for the 12th. If you can't, then the next meeting would be the 26th of October. And to confirm for the meeting on the 12th, I'd have to have it to Athena by the 7th. Athena? I think that's right. That would be a preference. I think that's after 11, oh, Athena's still here. Hi, I think that rule about getting materials in that timeframe applies to the council but not necessarily committees. I mean, yeah, but I want to be nice. Okay. So it's really up to the committee to, you know, make sure they have things in time to review before the committee meeting starts. So, you know, right before the meeting, they won't have time to look it over. Thank you. Michelle, I'm going to try and then I'll let you know if I don't think I can meet that deadline. That's perfect. And even like if we had it by the 10th or something, you know, I think that would probably be plenty of time. Okay, so it is past 11. I'm just checking if there's anyone in the audience. Again, there is not. And do you all have a second just to review the future agenda? I just want to make sure for next time to make sure that so of the items on the appointments referral, we've started the discussion of C, which was on the agenda review of scoring matrix. We still have B, which was review of section two, eight and nine on the town council policy and making recommendations for town council appointments and D review of public record status of CAFs. Mandy, do you have any recommendations or suggestions or should we just add those to the agenda for next time and continue on? Michelle, I'm going to split. Sorry. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. So I think they can be added to the agenda. I will not be here next time or at least I don't expect to be here next time. So I would request that maybe the CAF public document be held if possible till I can be part of that conversation. I'm not as concerned with sections two, eight or nine per se. But I expect hopefully CRC will be sending you flood maps. Okay. I'll know tomorrow evening. Okay. And I think Jennifer is also with, maybe we'll be done by then. Yeah, we. Let's hope. Let's hope we can finish it tomorrow. And so that, I don't know whether that'll take a lot or a little time, but as a CRC chair, I would ask that GOL get done with that as soon as it can because it actually has a true deadline. Yeah. And so you, Jennifer, if Mandy's not here on the 12th and the flood maps are ready, you'll be able to help us through whatever, because I'm not familiar with that. It's a clarity. It's going to be pretty straightforward. So I think it's been seen so much that it's going to have to go fairly quick. I am so not a floodplain expert, but I can do it. Okay. All right. Were there any other future agenda items? We're still waiting on some things that were referred to us to go through other committees. It sounds like we, it looks like the bylaw for the water is going to be, I think Anika, what did you all decide at your next meeting? Right? Is that the eighth? Okay. Six. Six. Okay. So that could potentially then be reviewed on the 12th here if you guys get through that on the sixth. Is that? I think that's a plan. Okay. All right. You just have to say, GOL is proving to be a much more interesting, I'm sorry. No, no, no, go ahead. I was just saying, GOL is proving to be a much more interesting committee than I ever expected. Never dreamed of. No, I mean, it is. Are there, we're going to be in October. So are there other proclamations that we should be looking out for for the agenda? I checked last. For Indigenous Peoples Day. Right. Anika, you, I, because I remember we briefly. Although that's the intent. It's you. Hang on. Lynn asked me to reach out to Jen Moisten about that one because I don't know if we had one last year and I, to see if the HRC wanted to sponsor something, but she did not get one. They weren't on the list of things and that's why they were, we had added them because we didn't see a proclamation for Indigenous. We didn't see one for, there was not one for Indigenous the month or the day. I mean, if it's the day, GOL's review on the 12th is too late, right? But somebody needs to make one. Yeah. Okay. That's the, so there's not, yeah. To create it and sponsor it because we don't have one. And did we have one from previous years? No. No. I'm looking at it on the list. I did speak with Jennifer about this. I had been talking with a representative from the, from the Knitmuk tribe. However, I had seen this coming up. So I wasn't sure if there was another one sent in. I guess that's how I took that. And it looks like Anika from here, you'd be looking at doing one for all of November, not for the October 10th, Indigenous People's Day. What? Am I reading this Excel sheet right with the Native American Heritage Month that that's more- Yeah. I think that we had, didn't we add both for the month and the day for Indigenous People's Day and the month? Because there are two differences. I didn't see- October and November. Yeah. I think that was discussed, Anika. And I remember Jennifer bringing that up and I remember you talking. I just, I didn't make it to this calendar here. Yeah. That was our first meeting. That was during our first meeting. Yeah. So what would you prefer in terms of, or what would the, you know, what do people prefer? Do we want to have two separate? Because at this point, we would need to get at least the one for the 10th done pretty, I wouldn't even get back to GEO. I think it would have to go to the council today or tomorrow for the third meeting. Third meeting. If we were doing Indigenous People's Day. If we wanted it passed before the day, which is always ideal, right? Yeah. And alternatively, we could acknowledge it at the council meeting, like Anika could acknowledge it as Shalini acknowledged the, remember the- India Pakistan. Exactly. And so maybe if Anika was willing to do that, then we can work on something for November. I don't know if that seems more reasonable in terms of trying to put a whole proclamation together in a day. And I think more than like putting it together, I think for me, I was really, you know, my point was really to hold space to, you know, to collaborate with tribal leaders and elders to bring that forward. So I think to kind of rush to get something and, you know, just my apologies for that, dropping that ball. And again, I did like when I saw it come through, I thought, oh, you know, there was one coming up for review. But nevertheless, we could have, you know, still have an acknowledgement and then perhaps work together with, I'm not sure if there's anyone else interested to have something that is, you know, thoughtful for November. Perfect. Perfect. Okay. That sounds really good. All right. And we can talk with Lynn about that direction to just to give her heads up on that. And all right. Anything else? Any other comments or? All right. So then I am going to adjourn the meeting at 11, 10 a.m. And thank you. Good meeting. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Hey, Michelle, can you stay on for just a second? Of course. I can stop the... Sure. The recording. The recording here.