 Welcome, everyone. My name is Angela. I work for the town of Amherst. This meeting is being recorded to the cloud and will be uploaded to the town of Amherst YouTube channel shortly by our wonderful IT staff. And at this point, I'd like to turn things over to the chair, Jim Pistrang. Hi folks, this is Jim Pistrang. I am the current chair of the resident advisory committee. And just before we always may you be so. We'll see about that. And before we call a meeting to order, just a reminder that pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. We are meeting via remote participation and that order has been extended and so we're still meeting remotely as per that extension. I'm going to make sure that it can just be a show of hands if everybody could wave and confirm on the panelists side that their video and audio is working properly. It's going to be a thumbs up. Good. Okay. Angela's already reminded us that this meeting is being recorded to the web. So I will now call the meeting to order. That was indeed the first item on the agenda. Maybe so we do have somebody in the gallery. Can they see us or can they just hear us? It depends how they've logged in. If they're on the phone, they can hear us. If they're on a computer, they can see us and hear us. Why don't I quickly go around and call on people to introduce themselves and what they're doing here. So again, I'm Jim Pistrang the chair and Anastasia. Yeah, thank you Jim. Anastasia Ordonez and I'm a member of the resident advisory committee and Amherst resident. And Meg. I'm Meg Gage. I live in North Amherst. I'm a member of the resident advisory committee. And Jennifer. Hi everyone, my name is Jennifer Moisten. I am a community participation officer as well as the assistant director to the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion. Great. So the first thing on our agenda is to review if necessary and approve the minutes from our February 22nd meeting and include in those minutes was how we were going to invite community participation officers to come to this meeting so that explains why Jennifer is here. So did anybody have any comments or questions or anything regarding the February 22nd draft minutes. I don't see anybody jumping up and down and waving. So in that case, I would like to make a motion that we approve the minutes from February 22nd. And all those in favor can just give me a thumbs up and I'll report on the results. And the results are all three members voted in favor of approving the minutes. So they are approved so I'll ask so if Angela if you could. Hang on a second. Okay in a second. So if you could change them get rid of that little draft thing and post them that would be awesome. Meg, did you have a comment. A question. Since there's only one member just do an audience. Do we know who that is. I guess we need to know but they all know us. So the name that's coming up for me is Alana Bailey. Yeah, you can actually see it in participants on your zoom. So hi Alana if you're really there. And there will be a time later for public comment if you want to make public comment. Next on our agenda we was to have a discussion of volunteer recruiting practices. And we had a continuation we talked about that at our last meeting, and I don't know for sure that there's more to discuss I don't know if anybody has more to discuss about that. Yes, Meg. I just like to say because we have Jennifer here. I appreciate all the three community participate community participation officers do. And I think this is something I said at the last meeting but Jen wasn't there. I think we need to increasingly look for ways to structure a pipeline or leadership pipeline so it isn't only individuals going out to groups and personally asking this person in that one but I think are there any creative ways that we could make those things happen more and more structured way. Whatever you thought of town meeting. It was a pipeline leadership pipeline because if you showed up at all. I just learned about how the budget works with the different committees were and so on. I don't know if I don't think anybody would attend a, you know, mini course on how the town works, I don't know who would go to that. But I just think we can't get that we can't be too there's no way to be too creative and figuring that out. That said I think we're doing this having been on these interviews we're doing a really good job of getting more diverse candidates for every position, and Paul values that and has, you know, taken advantage of that in his appointments. So I'm not saying we're doing a bad job. I just think the more we can set up systems, rather than counting on you three individuals to make every contact or, although that's wonderful and important, and I know a lot of us do that as well reach out. I think we're going to go over for dinner the other night, just for the purpose of finding out when where they might want to plug in. But you know things like that inviting people over for dinner, and had Michelle was here to talk about reparations and think, you know, it's all the ways that a young black person can plug in an Amherst in a positive way, because people don't feel don't see a welcome sign or welcome that necessarily, especially young people who are busy. So I just say it again I think we can't do too much in this area to find people who who don't find us. So those beach. I think that's why I got on this committee. But a great segue to maybe go out of order and come back to discussing the renaming of the calf and go right into discussion of community participation officer activities you know maybe here for Angela and Jennifer you know what what do you guys do and you know what are you up to. Yeah. So go for one of you. Do you want to start or do you want us to use the PowerPoint that we've put into the packet and enroll from there. Yeah, I think we can use the PowerPoint and then kind of add live in or add to afterwards. Great. Okay. So I'm running this as a PDF. Let's see if I can do this. Here we go. Thanks for doing that. Gosh. So we put this together. So we're one of our other meetings and it kind of gives a very specific overview of where the CPO is created in the home role charter, which is the document that created our change of government. When, when we made the government switch, Paul decided to make three of us community participation officers Jennifer Moisten, Brianna Sunred and myself, and it was kind of a genius move because all three of us have kids who are in the school system or have gone through the school system, and then all three of us are volunteering in the community and lots of different ways. So this is the specific language on this first slide. Am I okay to advance. Yeah. Yeah. So these are three CPO officers. And lots of us have experience in other languages. And, and so we all Jennifer grew up in town Brianna has lived in town for a long time. I've lived in town since 91. And we all have attended different faith communities and in addition to the public school experiences so these are the things that we as a team bring to the work. Great. And then these are just kind of an overview or a sampling of the things that were involved in planning but also kind of brainstorm together that we feel celebrate our community in different ways. And so just to highlight like the cup of Joe's with Paul, those are great opportunities for us really great to meet people who are activated in some form or another that it forces them to leave the house and come and meet people. And at those, at those kind of gatherings were able to take people aside, one to one say you know I noticed you're really interested in, I don't know electric buses so I don't, why don't you and I have a conversation about the energy and climate action committee or why don't the two of us have a conversation about you know, getting involved, or looking at school committee or there are lots of different ways to kind of take people aside at those type of events which has worked for us in the past but cup of Joe's with Paul are usually like once every two or three months and a little bit more often when the weather's nicer. So we also manager. The town manager office hours open on the website or I've never known about that. So that was something new during the pandemic we did them via zoom. And then, when we've done them in person, it's kind of been an extension of the coffee hour, or in addition to the coffee hour. And they do go on the, they go on the community calendar. So I think the presentation has her hand read. Thank you. Thank you I appreciate that. So I was just curious, Angela, you said that they, the cup of Joe's or is that what they call them couple jobs are met are done every two or three months how many people on average usually show up to these. Many times it depends on what the hot hot topics are at the moment. Right now, like the most recent ones have been very elementary school building focused. And so it's been an opportunity to ask questions about the cost and how it will be funded and the two and a half percent override vote, or dead exclusion vote. And so in the, like during the pandemic, obviously, many of the questions were about pandemic restrictions, but it has varied from like two to three people to, I would say pre pandemic the one, the ones that I attended had 15 to 20 people. That's great. Okay. But you this the school when that I went to a couple weeks ago had 30 people, at least, and the media were there and at least 30 people were there was very good. They're happy. I know Kathy Shane was there was leading with Paul the discussion. Sorry, Jen. That's okay. I was just going to say, it really does depend on which who what the hot topic is, because I know like when Chris when Earl was introduced and he was at a cup of Joe that kind of like 40 people. Right. And so it just really does vary. These are kind of an overview of the recent events and places where CPOs could have been found or were activated. And then this has mostly moved. A lot of this is coming out of our DEI office so thank you Jennifer. But these are a lot of the cultural events and black raisins that happen throughout the year. And people always ask why we're taking pictures of the back of children's heads and I just want to say, you know, now that we're on the record, it's the safe way to do it. Right. So looking ahead we meet as a CPO team, not too often but every now and again to talk about challenges and limitations. We are trying to connect with more community partners, and we have discussed in our starting to outline goals and plans for the future so it's an interesting time and local government and with the change of government we've seen lots of people say due to the pandemic we've seen lots of people value their time differently. So it's interesting some of the CAFs that come in the community activity forms are incredibly detailed about exactly how people want to use their talents and what their time to be utilized so it's a great time to be in local government. So our future goals, I think are shared by the members of the residents advisory committee. We definitely are working to expand the expand language access to meetings like this one and to other meetings, redefine the scope of our work, and we're always looking for new ways to measure success and invite people to learn more about local government. And we have Brianna's plan as part of this, this meeting packet for government 101. So next we continue to build community pride to our good works. We try and collaborate as often as we can with the regional public schools. And we love to work with a bid in the chamber and the ambassadors for something that we some sunset in December they were our public education response or feet on boots on the ground during the pandemic. And then we're always seeking to redefine what it means to have a good kind of community sense of stewardship. Right. Thanks. Sure. Thank you. So, do you want to give us an overview of what this Amherst Civic Academy thing is. In a nutshell, it is several week to week, like a six to eight week program that we would put together. We're hoping to include people who had gone through the center for new Americans but also people who are new to town. And so we would reach out through realtors and through other organizations to try and find newbies to town and to invite them to learn more about the town that they've just moved into. And it would include things like field trips to the DPW field trips for wastewater treatment plant field trips to conservation areas. An overview of all the different departments where the money is spent how the money is spent, why the money is spent the way the money is spent. And also insights into the structure of government right so sitting through a recording of a council meeting and looking at all the different sections of the agenda and why they're there and and the function of that legislative branch of the government. And then obviously an overview of the executive branch and the chief financial officer and that would be Paul's office so definitely a deep dive into how local taxes are used, and then also the role of advisory boards committees and commissions and using that as an on trade point for people into local government. And has this been published yet or is this still just in the planning stages. And the skeleton of it has been in the works and the three of us have kind of offered our input it's Brianna's brainstorm and and she looked around at best practices and what other communities were doing for this civic education program. I think one of the things that we've talked about expanding maybe is looking at the role of the counselors and how to instruct people on running for council in a more specific way. I think there's this nebulous zone of like oh you know I would I'd love to be a town counselor. And then, and then there are all these steps right like how do I activate funding source and how do I make sure I meet all the bench benchmarks and deadlines for reporting. And how do I get my name on the ballot right so that should be a very critical piece of the puzzle for this program that we haven't completely fleshed out yet. Related to that. I think that's a great idea to gives the counselors or ships on how they could engage people when they have their sessions, or even not every district has a neighborhood association, but even so you can have a district meeting and use those as a time to tell people. So for example, Kathy told us about the resident capital requests. And I don't think I don't know if we're going to get any of them but we applied for four and actually two others. And they were all reinforcing one concept of making pedestrian and bicycle safer in North Amherst but somebody I said, right up at the JCPC how come they had so many from North Amherst we didn't have any from South Amherst and she said, you tell them about it. No one had no one had told anybody that there was this opportunity whether again whether they're actually be part of this. You know I'm into this participatory budgeting and giving people a way to have an influence on the budget, which didn't go anywhere, but if this was a, you shouldn't give people a chance to apply for funding if there isn't any intention of funding anything but the CPA for example, a huge, huge portion of the CPA applications come from the town. And if it's really intended for the community, the counselors could do a better job of letting their constituents know when these deadlines are approaching or dealing ahead so that's a great idea to train the counselors to just think, you know, although I don't think that's why we have to. That's why we have to district counselors rather than one because on the charter commission we thought it was so important that there be a you know as much local control over the council is possible. I agree with you I don't think training the counselors is anywhere in this Civic Academy plan this is talking about sort of normal citizens and teaching them. I was just referring to what Angela had said yeah sorry off the topic. But this thing you know, it'll be interesting to see, you know, obviously you need to figure out great strategies to publicize it. And you know, eight two hour sessions where you watch videos of town council meetings, you know, you can have to work hard to get people. You have to keep it lively and keep it fun. It'll be interesting to see if you can, you know, sell it to people and get people to be involved. Yeah. So, I'm going to get in the stage. Sorry, go ahead. No it's good. I'm trying to figure out of the digital hand or the actual hand is better I think the actual hand might be getting there with five of us. The digital hand kind of gets lost in the background. I really appreciate hearing about all of this and I look forward to the plan being further fleshed out. I'm especially excited actually about the partnership or potential partnership with the bid because I actually see that, you know, the pipeline that we're talking about to civic engagement can often start with employers, and having, you know, employers in town businesses in town, provide an incentive right to employees to get curious about how their town works to, you know, get engaged to volunteer to do different things would be a fantastic opportunity to expand the number of people that might maybe become passionate about right like all of us here have served in some capacity, you know, at a town government level, and you that happens it doesn't happen organically usually happens because you sort of you know notice something somebody comes to you and say, Hey, would you be interested in doing this. And if you have this kind of more formal pipeline created through, you know, employers in town who are basically saying I'm going to donate a number of hours to the town through my employees to have a volunteer day right and learn about how the community functions and learn about our local government functions. I would see that as a great opportunity to get more people excited and interested in what's on so I do look forward to seeing a fleshed out plan. And, you know, would love to continue to hear more about that as that develops. And I think the fact that it's a 68 week program also gives a chance for people to, you know, to subsequently learn something, as opposed to just diving in quickly and then leaving the community. Good luck with it. It's there. I was just trying to find, did we get a description of the Civic Academy that I can find. Oh it's in the packet right after the PowerPoint thing. Okay, just keep scrolling down. And it's kind of tiny but if in a browser if you just hit command or okay roll plus it gets bigger and you can read it. I didn't want to distract myself. There's any way ever. Sorry. Go ahead. Is there any way we can help you guys in any way, or if you want to brainstorm things or, I don't know just if we can be supportive of what you're doing it's really what great what you're doing. And, or if you can think of other ways people could be helpful to you. Let us know. I think part of the thing that we've been really pleasantly surprised by is the, the outreach from some of the student teachers at the middle school this past year. They are doing a whole segment on local government. And so Paul was invited to do a short video, kind of like a this is your town introduction piece and I am your town manager and this is what it means and surprise Amherst doesn't have a mayor. And, and so that really focused our efforts on the Civic Academy and made us realize, you know, we can hook them all their young that might not be such a bad thing. And the resurgence of like civic pride through organizations like the sunrise group. Those kids have been doing some really interesting environmental pieces of the puzzle so it's some, it's a great time. I think to kind of look at how to activate different age groups and get people better involved. Nice. Nice. And I guess I would just add to that that first there are some middle schoolers who usually typically participate in like the MLK reading that we have here with the town. So, and the Human Rights Commission has two high school students on it now and so we typically have high school students and they're graduating so they're looking for, you know, the next two folks to come sit on the board as well. And, you know, part of the becoming more diverse and more inclusive I just think is, there's a lot to it because from my perspective there's a lot of barriers but we don't necessarily know what all of those barriers are right and so it comes down to child care of dinner. I will say that since we've gone via zoom right participation is has increased at least for at least at the HRC level like we usually never had anybody now we have a pretty good group of people who are who are watching online because they can be cooking dinner at the same time while they're listening to the meeting. So hopefully, the state government will give us some kind of way to move forward with the hybrid version of of meetings moving forward and then I just I really spend a lot of time thinking about alternative ways to get the folks that we usually see here in local government involved and one of the things that I had to come to realize is that not everybody wants to be on the finance committee right like it's just something that not. And so how do we get people still to be engaged with local government, even if they're not going to be sitting on a board or committee, or how do we just make them aware that you know, I think about before I was involved with local government and local government's one of those things where if you're not tapped in yourself or not within a group of people who are tapped in you're not you don't necessarily know. And so it's how do we just keep everybody just kind of aware of the different things that are happening in town and, you know, a lot of folks don't know there's Human Rights Commission a lot of folks don't know that there's even a finance committee or that their voice they can go to meeting and voice their opinion on stuff and so it's really about how do we connect to those voices as well and so. And then what do you do if they don't want to sit on a board or committee and how do we get them involved so just. So one thing you could promote, which would have multiple benefits is a lot of people don't know that they can work off part of their property tax by doing things like taking minutes at meetings. Being of, you know, welcoming people at the senior center stacking books in the library, but when you take minutes at a meeting you find out what's going on. And you also work off some of your taxes which I think we should be promoting anyway as a while we're while so many people are worried about the cost of the dead exclusion override. Yeah, we have a really great senior tax work off program. Currently now. And so I don't know if there's a cap to the amount of people that can be involved in that or not. But that is one way that we do you know and I know that the whole concept of stipends has been going around for a long time and how to get people involved. And there's always that question of civic duty versus like money but then you have to worry if about whether or not it's a barrier or not right because I think about the times when I was raising my kids and not in local government I was working two jobs with three kids there I just didn't have the time to think about local government really. So, I think that you are now. Yeah I know I just I, you know, I just think that diversifying our boards and staff and becoming a welcome welcoming community is is just this really big. Right like and there's multiple layers to it, or cake right because that would work better layered cake. So it's, there's just and there's no wrong way necessarily and there's because there's multiple ways to get it accomplished. I'm going to loop back in the agenda. And we talked about the pros and cons. I know that we can decide this we can't decide this but of renaming the calf from the community activity form which I think it is now to the community participation form so cast a CPA. Anybody want to comment on that thought. It seems like I'm talking too much but this I think this was originated with me. The word activity to me doesn't communicate what we're talking about. It sounds like, you know, knitting or you know, hobbies activities to me isn't what we're talking about is really specific participation. And so the word participation, especially the we use that word community participation officers. It just seems the word is more appropriate. Sure activity form. So turns people off. It's just the word participation is to me a better word. I've been trying to think of ways of using word participation that end in an acronym that you can say like participation application form which would be path. We could figure some way for there to be an acronym that you can say. But it again this isn't the most important thing we have to do but it's always struck me as the wrong word. Although we've used it forever and ever. And there is the point one of the advantages is half you know we've got a nice acronym that we say we could have another we could have half or we could work. No, that's that's the benefit of activity. Yeah. I feel like there have been changes in the form itself. Over the years. And who generally drives that how to changes occur. We just by magic. It's been it's been the residents advisory committee. And we did a major overhaul with the first rack members. And it was kind of in response to feedback that we had from the public that we were being too intrusive with the questions like, who really needed to know if you owned a house or rented. And who really needed to know your exact age, or, you know why couldn't some of this be more self selective right so now, really the only thing so we asked for our name, an address in town where the person resides as their primary residence, and a method of communication, either a phone number and or an email address, and everything else race, gender, pronouns, everything else is self submit it's challenged by choice. And I, I think that that group was very conscious to from switching it because if I'm not mistaken it was raft before so it was resident activity form or something similar to that. And so that was switched to community members instead of residents and I think that the CPO kind of took that on and stopped using the word resident and you start using word community members as much as we can. And we did do it. The art the RAC committee did a survey or first year of feedback on the on the half process and the interview process and that's where a lot of this stuff came from. It was an interesting survey and you know it did lead us to having a more generic form and just the sense of the survey of people, not wanting to be an intrusive and wanted to be an easy and somewhat anonymous path to at least the first dipping your toe into possibly being a volunteer. I'm sorry I'm just going to jump in. Yes. I'm going to chair myself Jim. Maybe we'll be another one soon. So yeah I mean I actually think it's a no brainer you know having community participation form makes a whole lot of sense for all the reasons that have been stated previously. And I'm deeply in favor of changing that. I also just want to say that, you know, I, so I am a part of an organization that works on racial equity. And, you know, one of the conversations that we have been having as an organization recently is about data and data collection. And, you know, there is actually a lot to be said about collecting demographic information right and it should be voluntary should not be forced on people but at the same time if we actually want to be able to make change and we want to live to our values. We have to be able to show that we're making some progress or if we're not then we have to be able to show that to and have that transparency with the community to say like you know we're getting the kinds of you know we're getting information of all kinds in our committees, or we're not and then what do we do to improve that right so, you know, and maybe it's also thinking about the form, a little bit outside the box or outside the form so to speak, you know as at the instructions that we give folks right so we can say you know none of this information is required, but it is helpful in order for us to be able to track our progress and to be able to further engage, you know, underrepresented groups. So there are things that maybe we could be doing a little differently with our form that would encourage that kind of participation. I do, I do believe that we have to, you know, lower reduce the barriers of entry for sure and we certainly don't want to, you know, reduce people's enthusiasm for participating but we have one certain type of person that repeatedly volunteers in this town for everything. We don't get a voice, you know, so that's been true for years now you know so we always get the same kinds of folks that are always repeatedly you know engaged and constantly out there, and we certainly want them to continue to be engaged but we also want more people of different kinds with different voices involved in that so I think I think you know that the CPF and acronym, I don't I don't care so much about that we'll call it the CPF. So can I jump in here Jim is that okay. Absolutely. So in preparation for this agenda item I had a longer conversation with Brianna Sunred who runs our website and the CAF is cross posted in over 180 places on the website, which will make switching the moniker for this form. So, pretty difficult, because when we switch the name we can't just swap it out. And all those 180 places. I think one of the things we talked about was maybe doing a better introduction of what the CAF is and saying, maybe in a short video to people like, thank you for wanting to get involved in local government. We welcome you as a resident to apply for all these different boards and committees. We are looking for, you know, more diversity on all of our boards and committees we're looking for our boards and committees to look a lot more like our community looks. And so we want you to participate via this form. It should be called the community participation form. But we call it the CAF. Yes. Is there a volunteer? I mean, if you could do one a minute, it would be three hours. Is there some kind of, I mean, I would do it if I knew had lots of time and knew how to do it, but who could go through and just change those all. Or is there a way to go find, find and change. A way to go find. I think the more specific piece as it was explained to me is that they link back to the original form. And what's important for all of you to know, because it's all behind the scenes is that original form feeds into a database as part of this, which is the program that runs for our town runs our website. In addition to that, there is a busy be in our office who for years has downloaded that form, and then fed that information into an access database which goes all the way back to the early 1990s. So what if it was a change that was really horrific and just had to be changed. Let me address your question because let me just request because I'm, I'm pretty somewhat knowledgeable about civic plus and how it all works. And I think the answer is, if this was some pretty egregious thing if it had some really horrible insulting name, it would be changed and somebody would be tasked with it, and it wouldn't be insurmountable wouldn't be a month of their time it probably wouldn't be a month of their time but it might be a couple days of their time and studying something up so a volunteer could do it would probably double the amount of time. So it's not something, you know, and you know, if it was a system that was an amazing relational database where the name was in one place one place only, like the systems I designed for example. But even then it's it's not easy it's it's something that just it's it's a tricky thing that would take a certain amount of time. And I think you have to weigh the importance of it versus the amount of time and if you know there's a groundswell from us from Angela from Jennifer that says you know this name is really insulting we need a different name, then I feel pretty confident could be a different name, but if it's, if it feels like more of a cosmetic thing then it's probably not worth that effort. And if it's something in between you have to make a judgment over all the other things that the tech people have to do and Brianna has to do. So I think that's where they're coming from. So if we decide not to do this, we should in our minutes be clear that we think it's a good idea. I'm not sure this is where we've gone but it sounds like this is where we're headed. Yeah, I mean definitely, this is a good idea but the technology didn't warrant it at this time. I'd say still think it's a good idea. Yeah, and I think you and Anastasia both have said yes it's a good idea I'm a little more ambivalent I guess I don't. I don't think that the current name is driving people away or a new name would get more people and I think it's all that other stuff we talk about that makes more of a difference. But yes we can definitely reflect in the minutes that the two of you think it's a good idea and you know maybe Angela wants to say that she thinks it's a good idea to but whether it's worth it or not is the other question. So off standpoint, I think there are ways that we could make that that welcome that a little bit more inviting like I, I've looked at that page and I look at it several times a day because of the nature of my work, and I feel like it is a perfect spot to have a more upbeat and welcoming five minute video in three different languages like welcome this is your town and we're so happy that you've landed on this page and this is a great space for you to kind of dip your feet in the water, and below us, like on this page are all the different boards and committees and commissions. And so let us walk you through how to apply. I think that would be easy to do because you just put a link in one place to go to this new place that shows you all that stuff. Yeah, you can also maybe have some little vignettes of people who are serving on different committees saying you know I'm so and so. Yeah, and I'm on the such as shade tree committee and some or, you know, committees, people joke about all the committees but it is the way to get people involved. There's so many committees. Yeah. There's 47 I'll just say. So, and again to I think part of it is is that, oh, and can you unmute. Sorry, I'm echoing, at least I hear it. Okay, thanks. So, again, I think part of it too is like how do we get those people to go to the website right like we still have to define those people and so it's like what are the different things and I think that the CPOs we do a great job and the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion do a great job of trying to get out into the world, you know, like we've kind of gotten rid of that concept of thinking that everybody was going to come to us because we see where that gets us, but actually going out to the other, you know, already existing things that are going on in town is also like a great way. And then also, you know, I would say like this year, the HRC and the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, we're having like a basketball tournament and that's going to it's like something that's been happening in the community for for years like since I was little. And yet it's a host a lot of there's a lot of folks that go there and we're merging it with the Human Rights Youth Here Awards which is going to bring for the most part groups of people who don't usually associate together. Right, but that's a great time like we're opening it up to the different departments to come in and to talk about what goes on in town and, and so you just, it's just like the. I always get concerned because I'm like it's great that we have really engaging things on the website but who's look the questions who's looking at the website right so that's my thoughts. Anything else on that or should we move on to somebody volunteering to be chair of the Resident Advisory Committee. And it's a really easy committee to be chair of because you just like let anybody talk whenever they want to, and you just have to figure out an agenda and tell Angela to post it and she does everything for you. Do we have any takers amongst our giant committee of three. And I'm fine just doing it if no one else wants to do it but anesthesia. Can we nominate you Jim. You don't have to I mean it's just nothing has to happen for me to be ready. Can we move to nominate Jim to string as a chair of the Resident Advisory Committee. I second that. I already am I don't think we need to vote on it. You know at some point I may just stand down and refuse but for now I don't mind like I said, all I have to do is tell Angela post things and she posts them so not that hard. Just wanted to give people an opportunity to serve. Well, I just, you know, joking aside, I just want to say thank you publicly Jim for your work. I mean you make it sound like it's super easy but it's not I've chaired a committee before, and know that it's there's still a lot of work involved no matter how small or big it is. I do and Angela make a good team because you're able to share, you know, a lot of the responsibilities and, you know, and communicate with us well, but I do appreciate your service and, you know, and hope you know that. Thank you. I totally agree with everything anesthesia said, and I really appreciate Jen and Angela to you guys are unbelievable. Jim, this is your like your civic engagement so we're, yeah, it's permanent chair of the resident. He can't lose this position. We do have public comment and I believe Alana is still here and listening, and can Alana speaker did we, Angela do you have to turn that on or can Alana just speak. So I think if she'd like to make public comment it'd be great to see Alana raise a hand. I didn't mean to assume your pronouns so Alana if you'd like to. There we go. So now I will allow to talk. All right, and ask you to unmute please. Hi, I have to attend community meetings for class. My repressor Molly need once I was to get really engaged community and I thought this one seemed really interesting and fun. Yeah, thank you guys for having me here I don't really have any actual comments I just have. Yeah, thank you for letting me sit in. Well, it's pretty exciting for us to get somebody from the community to this committee so we love it. I'm at Amherst College but Molly need is like very involved as a class called active citizenship since she's been sending us to community meetings like weekly I think you have to switch it up sometimes. But right. This is my first this when I went to Michelle Miller's the reparations one and then town council and then the finance committee but yeah she really wants engagement. Well, thanks for joining us. Yeah, thank you. I spoke at Molly meets class last year about civic engagement. Oh, she just said, um, Joe speak. Oh, anything else before we adjourn. I, it's not related to this I want to stay should talk with you soon about something related to the school campaign. I'm just saying that it's not related to this meeting. Just a reminder with the open meeting law of any two of us get together we're not allowed to talk about right. We can still we can still talk to each other but we can't talk about the workings of this committee. Thank you, who is a majority. It's a little crazy. Yeah, in that case, I make a motion. Wait, Angela, yes. Sorry, one last thing. So I would, I would ask if it's amenable to everybody that we continue the conversation about the form that we use for this intake. And one of the things that we're running into over and over again is the pronoun piece. We don't ask people to identify, or we don't mandate for people to identify how they would like to be addressed, and it makes it really difficult when we're writing the appointment letters, because we want to be on a riffing in the tone, right, because we're pointing people to serve and they have to come in and get sworn into service. We could as a group kind of brainstorm a good way to get people to at least share their preferred pronouns that would help us keep that, that correct tone in those appointment letters and certificates so I would love for it to continue to be a topic for us if that's okay with everyone. I mean at the very least, you could add it to the optional information section of the form. And now you've got age, gender, I'm cheating and looking at it, I don't have it memorized. I'm racial background languages more information, but you could have preferred pronouns just wrote in there that way, people might be less insulted if you guess wrong if they haven't put anything. And also, also, there's a way of asking it that sounds respectful like we want to address you the way you want to be addressed. But it's not prying because they can choose not to share it for some reason they don't want to. Right. Yeah. Great. Thank you. We can ponder that. Thanks for having me. Oh, thank you for coming. Thanks for coming. Yeah. Thanks Jennifer. No, and that would have been awkward. Yeah. I could never. I could never get these faces. Who could say no to that. So in that case, I move that we adjourn this mean well actually before we do that. Should we talk about when we want to meet next a vague timeframe in two months or something like or maybe in three months after the June craziness. I'm assuming there's going to be something of a June craziness of interviews. Should I try and I mean, maybe I'll wait another month to do it, but maybe try and set up a doodle poll for a July meeting. And it's tricky because people are coming and going, but we should be able to find something that sound good. That sounds good. I just want to say I will be away for a portion of July. So, you know, if, if it's possible to continue remote participation, then I can join from pretty much anywhere. I think I think that that's my intention anyway. I think that's what we would do. Thank you. Okay, in that case, I'm, I will wait another month sometime in May, which is really soon I'll send out a doodle poll for July meeting. And I move that we adjourn. Second. I see a second all those in favor can give me a thumbs up and I see it's unanimous. So we are adjourning. Thanks everybody. Thanks so much Angela. Thanks everybody.