 Seeing that we have a quorum of the Council President calling the meeting to order at 6.30. There are a couple of announcements that we just want to bring to your attention. First of all, there will be a public hearing of the Finance Committee, although the entire town council is also called together that night on April 4th at 6.30 p.m. in the town room. The purpose of that public hearing is the look at the regional school budget. And I believe the superintendent will be with us that evening. Thank you. I would just want to call to your attention that at the same time, actually starting at 7 o'clock that evening, is a forum on smart growth. Is it right for Amherst? This is a forum of the town, not the town council, although we certainly support it. And while the council totally supports this forum, we're asking that councillors come first to the hearing on the school budget, since it's the point in time where we will have the most robust discussion. And then we're asking that if they would like to go on to the forum, they do so afterwards. There will not be any vote on Thursday night the 4th. The vote will then take place at the Finance Committee and then come back to the full committee, to the full council on either April 22nd or 29th. I did have a request from one of the public to discuss the difference between public hearings and public forums. And rather than go into that with this full audience, I actually have to say that the Rules of Procedure Committee has been discussing this and we will come forward with additional definition that may clarify what is already in the charter. But let me just mention very quickly, one distinction is that the public forums require that half of the time be spent with the public sharing with us their thoughts. And public hearings do not have that requirement, but nevertheless there is still an opportunity for a public question and comment back and forward. So finally, the announcement, the final announcement then is that as we did on March 18th, I will be changing the order of the agenda to accommodate parents and teachers regarding the statement of interest to the Mass School Business Authority. Therefore after general comment and proclamations and commemorations, we will take up agenda item 7b. So moving on to general public comment, we are going to have a number of times where there is public comment tonight. Those will include items 7a, b, 7c, and d. If you care to comment on something besides those four items which include various requests regarding the public way, would you please show your hand now? Okay. Then we're going to move on. So proclamations and commemorations, Becky Michaels, are you here? Thank you. Okay. Would you like to come forward? Please. And if you would like, you could read the proclamation and then we will have a vote on it. I don't actually have a proclamation. Okay. Then I have one, coincidentally. Okay. Okay. This is a proclamation and recognition of the 25th anniversary of the Amherst Education Foundation. Whereas Amherst Education Foundation was founded in 1994 by a group of concerned citizens who were committed to promoting students, educational equity, supporting diversity, stimulating excellence, and mobilizing broad community support for public schools. And whereas Amherst Education Foundation has provided our public schools with hundreds of thousands of dollars in grant funding since its founding. And whereas the Amherst Education Foundation has improved the educational experience of thousands of students by supporting teachers, staff, and administration of our public schools. And whereas strong public education is central to a thriving community and a thriving community is central to strong public education. Now, therefore, it is resolved that the town council of the town of Amherst in the common wealth of Massachusetts do hereby recognize 2019 as the 25th anniversary of the Amherst Education Foundation and honor its mission in support of Amherst area public schools in providing a challenging and enriching educational experience that maximizes the learning potential of every student and prepares them to succeed in the 21st century. And then it will be signed upon vote by the president of the council. Would you like to speak to this and to your event coming up? Sure. Hi everyone, I'm Jennifer Page and I'm here with Becky Michaels and we are the two co-presidents of the board of directors of the Amherst Education Foundation. AEF, as you heard, was founded 25 years ago by a group of parents and community members who wanted a way of giving back to Amherst public schools. Ellen's story was one of our founders. And what AEF does is we raise money through events, sponsorships, and donations that we then turn around and give away via grants to educators in Amherst, Pellum, Leverett and Schuetsbury public schools. We give away about $30,000 in grants each year. On average, our grants are about $5,000 to $7,000 and we'll go up as high as $10,000 for certain grants. This past year, we funded a garden-based learning program at Crocker Farm, Fort River and Wildwood. We funded a restorative justice program at the high school, a coding and robotics program at the middle school where we were told previously there had been no computer science courses. So this fills a gap at the middle school, allowing students to prepare for taking computer science in high school. And we also funded a new light board in the Amherst Regional High School Auditorium and given how many community groups use the high school auditorium for performances that in particular is a grant that benefits not just those directly related to the high school community. So this year we're celebrating our 25th anniversary and we'll be having an event on May 30th at the Marriott Center at UMass. And we're calling it a toast to 25 years and Ellen's story herself will be giving the toast. We're also expecting Senator Joe Cumberford and Representative Mindy Dom who will speak for a few minutes about the importance of supporting public education. So tickets are available on our website at amhersteducationfoundation.org. We're also looking for new board members to join our board. We are an all-volunteer board of directors. AEF is a very lean organization. We have one very part-time paid staff member. And the rest of the work of AEF is done by our all-volunteer board of directors. So we're looking for people who are interested in and passionate about public education at Amherst. So anyone in the audience or anyone watching at home who's interested can visit our website to fill out a board application. I think that was all I wanted to go over. And I thank you for considering our commemoration. And we appreciate your support. Thank you. Did you have any further comment? No, Jennifer covered all of it. Thank you very much. OK. Are there questions from the council? See none. Then the motion is to adopt the proclamation in recognition of the 25th anniversary of the Amherst Education Foundation as presented. Do I hear a motion? So moved. I'm sorry. We hit Mandy Jo and then Pat. The second. Any further conversation? Discussion? All those in favor, raise your hand. It's unanimous. Thank you. Thank you. We look forward to joining you at your event. Thanks. And now we're going to move to item 7B, which is the MSBA Statement of Interest. And I'm going to first of all ask for council questions and discussion that may have arisen since our last meeting on the 18th. And then we'll have a public period of public comment. And then a motion and vote on the Statement of Interest for both Wildwood and Fort River. There also is a town council letter in support of the schools. However, the MSBA Statement is worded as it needs to be for the actual application. So first of all, are there questions or points of discussion from the council? Then may I see a show of hands of those who would like to speak? OK. Why don't you come forward? Good evening. My name is Jean Fay. I'm the president of the Amherst Pelham Education Association. And I'm actually here to read a letter from a retired teacher from Terry Magner, retired art teacher at Fort River. Before I start her letter, though, I do want to say that I think it's quite evident from the previous town council meeting that active educators in the district, retired educators, administrators, and community members were quite united. We are communicating with each other. And we're really standing united in getting across the point that we need to do something about our schools. So this letter is from Terry Magner. I'm going to read it in her voice. My name is Terry Magner. I was the art teacher at Fort River School for 37 years. And my three children attended Fort River School, Arms, and the high school. I was always so proud to be working for the Amherst public schools. For many years, Amherst was truly synonymous with fine education, K through college. I was proud to be an employee. The standards for teachers and students alike were high, and we all brought ourselves up to meet them. I taught art in the very front room near the entrance of Fort River from 1976 through 2013. I mentioned the classroom location for a few reasons. First, many international visitors came in those days to tour our illustrious schools, and many realtors came through often with prospective new residents eager to buy homes and Amherst to raise and educate their families. Sadly, now our elementary schools are not touted or toured. Realtors no longer have any requests at all for Fort River School, and hopefully, if they do have a visitor, it won't be on a rainy day, a cold day, or kind of warm day. I watched that entire progression before I retired six years ago. Secondly, the world has changed quite dramatically from 1976 to 2013. Welcoming visitors had been a pleasure. Sharing our pride, showing students making art was joyful. I feel fortunate that my proposal of having a hallway at the entrance reconstructed to have a large window to allow student and school art to be showcased never came to fruition. After Columbine from 1999 to 2013, I was fearful for my students in the art room. We were immediately in stranger danger territory. Anyone walking in found us immediately, and people often wandered in thinking it must be the front office. Years later, we began safety drills and locking the front door. I still feared for myself and my students in the vulnerable space. It was a fabulous art room long ago, but when the leaks began and the mold started growing, I would get three to four sinus infections yearly. In the days that Fort River was temporarily closed while rugs were removed, it was not a healthy place to be. As time passed, we felt that we knew that Amherst would replace the building, built on a notorious swamp with a thin flat roof and a much worn out heating air system. It seriously deteriorated at a rate that custodians could not catch. Poorly constructed in Decade, it is truly a sick building. We are patching it up, but that is so wrong. I am still a resident and taxpayer and strong proponent of public schools, but I cannot recommend Fort River School or Wildwood to anyone I know for their children. I am so sorry for the current students and for my former colleagues who have stayed. The elementary schools in the Amherst Public School District should reflect this town's most important industry, education. I am ashamed for us. If I were starting out again with three children to educate, I would not buy a house in Amherst and pay Amherst taxes. It is unacceptable. Regardless of the superintendent and staff and curriculum, the environment is disgraceful, unhealthy and contrary to this town's educational beliefs. Please don't delay. Please come together and vote for the new school. Thank you. Thank you. There was another hand in the back of the room. Were there any other comments? I'm gonna read off this and I haven't corrected the grammar yet. So I hope that's okay. Julian Hines, District Four. And today I would like to talk about the importance of the new MSBA proposal. And I feel that it is very flawed because there is an importance of respecting the fact that the voters voted down a new school design eerily similar to the one that is currently being proposed. So for that, in support of our small neighborhood-ish schools and feeling that the current new school design is very flawed in many small ways, coming from a student, I hope that this information will be taken deeply by the counselors. And I also hope that you will join me in opposition of this school plan. A recent example that I've talked about is coming in the new school design, coming from the younger children's playground to the basketball courts through that loop. It's an entry that involves going in between and through buses in a way that is unsafe for the new students, for younger students. And I also believe that things like how there's two floors with that balcony up top, and it feels like a very modern design to me, a design that is eerily repeating how we built the school Fort River and Wildwood in the 70s. So I believe that we should take note at that and come up with an entirely new proposal, not based on the old one, that would give our students peace of mind in a new building and that would also include changes that need to be made that are incorrect with the current proposal. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Are there any other comments at this time? Are there any questions or comments from the council? Dorothy. Okay, this one is to Julian. My understanding is that we are not committed to a particular design, even not to a particular place, although clearly some of us have our preferences, but that all we're doing today is saying that we're united in applying for money and in doing feasibility studies, which will examine all of these things. I do appreciate your comment about the intersection with the children and the buses, and I think that's something really serious and we would definitely need to look into that in the future design. But I also want to say that I do not think this design, this proposal as it is coming, is really identical to the one before. There are some important differences and one of the differences is the combined school is smaller. Secondly, that the grade configuration keeps the children together much more. And this is very important for a lot of people, particularly a mother who has more than one child or a single parent. So for me, many of the problems that I had with the previous design have been dealt with in this new proposal, but it's not all tied down and a lot of work has to be done. But I do think it's great that you come out and give your thoughts, because you've been clearly thinking about it seriously. Thank you. Thank you. Are there other comments from the council before we move to the motions? Yes. Mandy Jones. I just want to say to everyone who has emailed us, come out to the council meetings and all of the public listening sessions that the school committee held. Thank you. And I also want to say, I've personally received 50 emails. Many of them went to the whole council. Every single one of them was in support of this proposal. I have not in my service on the Charter Commission or in our short time here, ever seen an issue this large that I haven't received a single no request from, which is, I think, big. And individuals that stated that they did have concerns, there were some concerns. Those concerns will be addressed, I feel, during the feasibility study, because including our young commenter tonight, we're just starting and there isn't a building design yet. There isn't a location yet, as my fellow councilor said. And so I feel confident at the beginning of a process that the public engagement will continue and that this is the best way and the most fiscally responsible way to address the needs of our schools. Yes, Shalini. I also want to thank everybody. The number of emails we got is amazing. And so thanks to each one of you who's taking time to follow up and support this project. I also want to acknowledge the concern that some people have demonstrated about the loss of the small schools and the neighborhood schools. And that was something that I struggled with a little bit that for the sake of coming up with a solution, are we indeed losing what we really valued in our communities. And what I did see and what helped me make my decision that I just want to share with all of you was in doing the research of what is a small school, what is a neighborhood school, I did not find a consensus. It was hard to find a definition that everyone agreed upon. What I did find across the research was the need for creating small cohorts. And that's something that everyone could agree upon, regardless of who it was. And I believe the new plan is going to enable that. So by small cohort, what I understood is that each grade should not have more than two to four classes. And now with the dual program and our presentation that we saw, that's what is going to happen. So we are still going to have the small cohorts. And it feels like there is a strong emphasis on building a healthy community and closing it, community between the parents, the children and the teachers and staff. So I feel very confident about that. And I see from a finance perspective as well that this is the most physically responsible decision. Thank you. Additional comments? Kathy. I'll just build on some of the comments others have made. I too have received a large number of comments in favor. And I think some of the most meaningful were people who voted against the last proposal who stated why they both have a trust in the leadership that they're going to do what Shalini has just described. And keeping the grades together was very important. Bringing the size down was very important with the cohorts. So it was heartwarming to me to have people directly email me who knew that I knew how they had voted before and tell me that they now weren't supportive. Are there additional comments from the council? We have two motions. We're going to do one and then the other. I'm sorry. Please. I wouldn't prefer it. And why don't you place it in motion? Okay. All right. So the motion language we have doesn't actually say I move. Shall I just add the result? It's the resolved. Right. So resolved. I'm going to start with the Fort River one. Resolved having convened in an open meeting on April 1st, 2019, prior to the SOI submission closing date, the town council of Amherst, Massachusetts in accordance with its charter, bylaws and ordinances, has voted to authorize the superintendent to submit to the Massachusetts School Building Authority, the statement of interest dated March 26, 2019 for the Fort River School located at 70 Southeast Street, which describes and explains the following deficiencies and the priority categories for which an application may be submitted to the Massachusetts School Building Authority in the future. Priority one, replacement or renovation of a building which is structurally unsound or otherwise in a condition seriously jeopardizing the health and safety of school children where no alternative exists. Priority five, replacement, renovation or modernization of school facility systems such as roofs, windows, boilers, heating and ventilation systems to increase energy conservation and decrease energy related costs in a school facility. Priority seven, replacement of or addition to obsolete buildings in order to provide for a full range of programs consistent with state and approved local requirements. And hereby further specifically acknowledges that by submitting this statement of interest form, the Massachusetts School Building Authority in no way guarantees the acceptance or the approval of an application, the awarding of a grant or any other funding commitment from the Massachusetts School Building Authority or commits the Amherst Public School District to filing an application for funding with the Massachusetts School Building Authority. Is there a second? Dorothy? I second it. I second it. Are there any further conversations? Then by a show of hands, all those in favor, raise your hand. That is unanimous. We have one more statement for Wildwood. Kathy? You're closer. See if I can read it as Abeliece Mandy did. Resolved, having convened an open meeting on April 1st, 2019 prior to the SOI submission closing date, the Town Council of Amherst, Massachusetts in according with its charter bylaws and ordinances has voted to authorize the superintendent to submit the Massachusetts School Building Authority. The statement of interest dated March 26, 2019 for the Wildwood School located at 71 Strong Street, which describes and explains the following deficiencies and priority categories for which the application may be submitted to the Massachusetts School Building Authority in the future. Priority one, replacement or renovation of a building which is structurally unsound and otherwise in a condition seriously jeopardizing the health and safety of school children where no alternative exists. Priority five, replacement renovation or modernization of a school facility system shuts as roofs, windows, boilers, heating and ventilation system to increase energy conservation and decrease energy related costs in a school facility. Priority seven, replacement or addition to obsolete buildings in order to provide a full range of programs consistent with state and approved local requirements. And hereby, further specifically acknowledge that by submitting this statement of interest form, the Massachusetts School Building Authority in no way guarantees the acceptance or approval of the application, the awarding of a grant or other funding commitment from the Massachusetts School Building Authority or commits the Amherst public school district to filing an application for funding with the Massachusetts School Building Authority. Is there any further, is there a second? Oh, a second. Pat seconded it. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Okay, thank you. That's also unanimous. There is one other. And we have two letter, we have a letter of support that we have also written that goes with this but are you going to start passing around that for the signature, please? The town clerk, the clerk of the town council is now passing around for individual signature the two motions and votes that we have just taken that will be included in the application. So while we're doing that, we've also written the following letter. At its regular meeting on April 1st, the town, the Amherst town council in accordance with the Charter by Laws and Ordinances voted unanimously to support the superintendent's submission to the Massachusetts School Building Authority, the Statement of Interest School Building Authority, the statement dated March 26th, 2019 for the Wildwood School located at 71 Strong Street. In support of this motion, the council discussed the Statement of Interest for the Fort River and Wildwood Schools at its January 25th, March 18th and April 1st, 2019 meetings. Heard testimony from all three elementary school principals and a significant number of parents and teachers as well as a written communication from the president of the teachers union. Attended all six public listening sessions held by the Amherst School Committee and superintendent of the Statement of Interest. These sessions were held on February 25th, I'm sorry, February 27th, February 28th and March 6th. All 13 counselors attended at least one or more of the sessions and no fewer than five counselors were present at each of the six public listening sessions and received an overwhelming number of emails, letters and phone calls from residents supporting the Statement of Interest submitted for both Fort River and Wildwood and the school committees and superintendents' proposal to replace both aging elementary schools with one building which would house 600 students in grades six K to five or K to six. The town council strongly urges the approval of this application. However, we understand and we have the same statement on it as we did before. Is there a motion to submit these letters as well? George and Chalene is a second. All those in favor? It's unanimous. We look forward to working with you as we move forward and may Boston hear us. Thank you very much. Did you wanna say anything, either one of you? I just wanna thank the council, I think for three things. One is that as you noted in that letter, your attendance and engagement in this issue has been incredibly high. It's not the only thing that has been, you've been getting emails about or having questions or comments about that but it's felt that way to me because of the level of detail and questions that we received from each of you along the way. The second thing is just the support that we felt tonight both in terms of the votes as well as the additional letter that you offered. I know from my many conversations at MSPA, they're looking for a sense that the community does have consensus to move forward. That was their major concern for last year and I'm really appreciative of the sign of support that we received. I think the last thing is more forward thinking and maybe I'm in an optimistic mood at the moment but if we are able to get in that it will continue to be a partnership between the schools and the town because it really is that partnership separate from approvals and every other matter, other technical matters, really the partnership is what I think will get us to where we want to which is a better learning environment for the students in our community. So I just wanna offer my heartfelt thanks to all of you for your engagement and your support. Thank you. Yeah, Stacia. And I also wanna say thank you to all of you for attending the sessions, for being so thoughtful during this entire process and to each of you for asking the questions that you've asked, for thinking through all the different details. We really appreciate that. And as Dr. Morris said and has been stated already, it's not a guarantee that we will get into this pipeline that this application will be successful but hopefully I think with a strong vote that you sent tonight and the message that you sent tonight certainly improves our chances. So thank you so much for all the work that you have done, really appreciate it. If you wait for two more signatures, you can leave with the originals but you have to send us copies. No, he said you can't leave with the originals. Trust us, no, that's too special to you. Okay, we'll make sure you get the originals however for your proposal. Thank you very much. Thank you. We are now going to go through two presentations and discussions. The first one is on a recycling update and I'm calling on Mr. Backelman for this and that is being done with Mimi Kaplan. Thank you. Let me introduce Mimi first. Mimi is our waste reduction coordinator and she's here, she works for the town through a grant that the town's received and the question came up from the council requesting information about recycling and how the global markets are impacting local communities. So Mimi's coming forward with a relatively brief presentation because she was told to be brief but we'll be able to answer questions if the councilors have that. Thank you for having me. It's an important issue for the town. Closer. Oh, the timing is good. My grant will be up in a few months and I will not be here anymore so get me at a good time. Here's a quick snapshot of trash and recycling. Some of this you probably know, residents can contract with a private hauler or use the transfer station. I won't go through the list of the licensed haulers currently but most residents use either Amherst trucking or USA and there used to be three local haulers. Amherst trucking, Do So and Alternative Recycling and USA which is based in Connecticut bought Do So and Alternative. So they are the main two haulers now. Although apartment complexes primarily use a company called Republic Services and the average cost for households is around $400 if they contract with a private hauler that's given like a medium-sized trash container once a week and recycling is included. A little overview of the transfer station. Residents buy stickers if they want to use the transfer station. It's $85 a little more for a business. According to the transfer station they have about 1,700 households who have stickers. If a household produces not a lot of trash it's more affordable to use the transfer station than to contract with a private hauler. It's pay as you throw, that's what PAYT is. So you pay $3 for a trash bag, recycling is free. And also students are allowed to use the transfer station without purchasing a sticker as long as they come with a valid ID. And so about 200 students used it in 2018. There are many recycling collections. Amherst is one of the best in Western Massachusetts for how many things that they accept for recycling. There are fees for most of those things but things like mattresses, appliances, batteries, bulbs things like that and compost, kitchen compost. And the paper and cardboard at when people bring their recycling there the paper cardboard goes to a facility called Sonoco. The transfer station gets paid for that. The DPW, the town, and they pay, they actually pay the Springfield Material Recycling Facility or MERF to bring their containers there. That's, I'll explain that a little more in another slide. So okay, so where recycling goes? Amherst Rucking is dual stream. You separate paper cardboard from containers. All dual stream recycling in Western Massachusetts goes to the Springfield MERF. They are very secretive about what the end markets are and who the buyers are. So I cannot give you company names because they would not divulge this. But, and I think there's multiple reasons for that but I do know that very little if any goes overseas. So there are domestic buyers. I do know there is a regular buyer in Eastern Massachusetts for our paper which is great because it never went to China and very little did go to China from Western Massachusetts. However, USA which is based in Connecticut brings their, they are single stream. So they are starting to transition all their do so and alternative recycling customers. They will transition them to single stream meaning everything together and that goes to a facility in Berlin, Connecticut and from there both domestic and overseas most likely Southeast Asia. Same with Republic Services and Waste Management goes to Eastern Mass and then to both domestic and overseas markets. So due to the situation with China which I'll just tell a little bit more about later. There were exemptions in Massachusetts to either landfill or incinerate recyclables. Right now they are not giving those exemptions. So any clean recyclables are being recycled but clean is the operative work. So you probably know China stopped taking a lot of recyclables from the US in the past year for various reasons but a big reason was we were sending a lot of dirty and contaminated recyclables to China. So there was a lot of trash mixed in. So for their own environmental and other reasons they stopped taking it. So as a result there has been a glut of materials and lower prices for recyclables just overall. There's also been a demand for cleaner recyclables like less contaminated. And some municipalities have increased recycling fees if the municipality does the recycling or has a contract for it. Some not any in Massachusetts I'm aware of have decided not to recycle at all because it's so expensive, too expensive but not in Massachusetts that I'm aware of. To keep it in perspective prices for recyclables have always fluctuated because they're commodities. So right now they're low, they could go up. Domestic markets are starting to increase now. So I was just at a conference last week they were talking about this in one to three years the prices could go up. And this is important for western mass that recyclable materials from dual stream collections have lower rates of contamination. We have under 10% contaminated recyclables here where some single stream it can be 30%, 25, 30%. So they're higher quality and more marketable. And it's been improving because that's one of the things I've been working on. And so right now if so because in 2015 the town opted out of a contract with the Springfield Murph we actually would have been making some money for recycling but because prices for paper were very high back then they decided that it was worth it to not renew the contract with the Murph to pay for the containers and get money for the paper if that makes sense. They were profiting from it but right now we're not because prices have gone down. So right now we are, right now the recyclables from the transportation we are paying. To recycle them, that's how it is right now. So just to think about that kind of the general consensus I'm hearing is that even though this is a painful period with lower prices for recyclables that it's ultimately a good thing because we are now being forced to clean up our recycling and also develop and invest in domestic markets and also think about other ways to reduce waste and reduce plastic use. And also just to emphasize that there really are very few municipalities that are just stopping recycling and that to take the long view there is an economic and an environmental value in continuing to recycle. Thank you. Are there questions? Shalem, I'm sorry. Kathy. Kathy. Just a couple of things you said. If dual stream gets less contaminated goods than single, single why would it make sense to only contract with trucking companies that do dual? So eliminate the one that's doing single. And I just wanna ask a related one. Is there a benefit to Amherst residents or to the town of having as many as we do in terms of different groups? I know some are really small but it means different trucks coming at different times a day. So do we get an advantage out of that? Cause I think all the prices are the same. They're similar, I would say. Yeah, so it was a pretty big change when USA bought out do so in alternative because they had been dual stream bringing all their materials to the MRF, the local MRF in Springfield. So yeah, they asked USA if they could stay dual stream and they said no, they didn't want to. I mean, I do think it's beneficial. I do think dual stream is preferable and yeah, I mean overall I think it's better. And no, there's no particular reason I don't think to have multiple haulers. That's just the system that has evolved here. I mean, there are a couple fewer haulers now. Mr. Broklin. Thank you. So single stream was introduced to encourage more recycling to make it easier for consumers to recycle and that was the goal of it. But then as Mimi talked about the net outcome was that there was a lot of contaminated recycling. So there was a downside to the way that the town has been doing it historically has been a dual stream and that's been a benefit to the quality of the material that we have. The town itself doesn't contract for any curbside pickup. It's up to the individual property owners or renters to do that, take on that task. We do license the haulers through the Board of Health. But in terms of if there's a market for three companies to come in, if there's a market for 10 companies to come in, any company can come in if they get licensed by the Board of Health and compete for the business. So in many communities it's the town itself that collects the recycling or the trash. That's not the model in Amherst at this point in time. Shalini. I had two questions. One is what could we do to promote curbside composting? And okay, so that's both of our question. And secondly, what is our waste reduction goal? I was just curious and where are we with that? Okay. To promote curbside composting. So USA does currently offer that if people want to pay for it. They do. There's also a couple other small companies. There's one called City Compost that will come and collect just a five gallon bucket and then bring you finished compost. So it is available. Obviously in order for everyone to do it, you have to write into the bylaw. But education and encouraging people to do it and letting them know that this is an option. It does cost more. It does reduce your trash output so you could possibly save money on your trash costs. I would add to that. Darcy. Darcy. I think people are really unaware of the fact that this curbside composting is available through USA. I use it, I get compost pickup every two weeks, costs $11 each time. And I'm provided with this humongous container to put it in that I can use for probably two months without putting it out. And in the middle of the winter, it's frozen so you can actually not do it. You don't have to do it that frequently. And you can put everything in the compost. Paper, pizza boxes, paper towels. So you can really put a massive percentage of your trash in the compost. So I highly recommend it. And if the dual stream Amherst trucking is preferable, it would be really good if we could encourage them to do that. Yeah, I've talked to them multiple times about it. If they felt there was competitive pressure on them to do that, they might invest in a truck for that and offer that. Additional question, Darcy. In some towns, they divide the area up, which I would like to see happen because my husband takes the stuff to the dump and he enjoys doing that. But I don't like hearing all these huge, and I mean huge trucks going on my small residential street and I can hear them on the side streets and they all come at different hours. It's like an invasion. And just to me, that's an unnecessary waste of fossil fuel and creation of pollution. So I would like to say I'm in favor of finding it so that the area is divided up in some way. We don't have dueling truck routes. That was one of the recycling reuse committee that I think has been disbanded. That was one of their, I think they gave three possible suggestions for improving. Okay. That's one of their options. Andy. Yeah, I have a question, but I think on the last point, I was the select board liaison to the recycling and refuse management committee. So I'm familiar with the work that they did and their recommendations. It is a matter that's probably within the purview of the Board of Health because they're the ones who issue the regulations. My question though for you, Ms. Cablin, is have we made progress on getting greater compliance and cooperation from the residential apartment complexes and their residents? There is recycling at every multifamily residence in Amherst. So every apartment complex, every apartment building has either a dumpster for recycling or the carts. They tend to be more contaminated just because of the nature I would say of when you have a large dumpster. And there's less personal accountability and also for various reasons. It doesn't look as different. Maybe people aren't taking the time. There definitely tends to be more contamination, I would say, and those are all single stream also. I have worked with some of the apartment complexes. I mean, I've worked with all of them. I mean, I distributed education material. I've done quite a bit. So they all are recycling, but it could be cleaner. I mean, the outreach that I've done at single family homes and small rentals where I leave a tag and people understand so they know what's wrong with their recycling, it doesn't work in an apartment complex. Because if you put it on a dumpster that 100 people use, they're not gonna pay attention. Thank you. Amanda Jo. I know it was probably the recycling and refuse management committee that did a survey of residents a while back about all of that. So I'd be interested to have the results of that and the recommendations forwarded. I know when I lived in Boulder, it was a bylaw about what recycling companies had to, or trash haulers had to provide service-wise. And that essentially limited it down to one hauler. And one of the requirements was curbside composting and unlimited recycling. And it was pay as you throw essentially with certain size containers. So I'd be interested to know if that's something in Massachusetts, could it be something coming from the council to mandate curbside composting of all trash haulers that offer services in Amherst or things like that? Or does it have to come from the Board of Health? The other question I have relates to recycling of containers in businesses in downtown. I know I get very frustrated when I go to a food establishment and I purchase a container and I drink that container and then I'm sitting in the establishment and there is no recycling bin to put that container. So what has been done to get establishments in downtown to recycle the containers they sell or offer recycling containers in their businesses for customers to put those containers that are recyclable in? And is there something we as a council, again, could do to maybe make that happen? It is in the bylaws. I mean, they are supposed to be recycling. All businesses are. But front end recycling, they might be recycling back, but they don't have a container in the public spot to put the recyclable container. I have spoken with a number of businesses, but because the grant is really primarily about residential, I haven't worked extensively. Sarah can tell you I spoke to the, I did speak to the bid, but it's like it is optional I guess to have it at the front, although it isn't, it isn't because if too many recyclables are going in their trash, they are actually, that is gonna be too many recyclables in terms of regulations. It's not supposed to be more than 5% of recyclables in the trash. So if someone did go and enforce it, then yes, they would be liable. Darcy. I hear that you have provided a great service for the town and I'm wondering what's gonna happen when your grant runs out? I don't know. That's not a question I believe she's able to answer. I mean, are you wondering if I'm putting things in place that can continue without me? Are you? Are you wondering if I'm putting things in place that can continue without me? If you are, that would be interesting to know, yes. Not sure, because there's not, there's really not this staff. I think you do need a staff person to run and manage the things I've been doing. I mean, obviously Steve does a great job at the transfer station and he did take over some of Susan Waite's responsibilities when she left. Like he does some of the grant writing, but he can't do the outreach. He can't, he's already got a full plate. So yeah, he can't do the outreach and the education. Sorry, you're working with businesses or any of those kinds of things, no. Okay. Alyssa? So as Kaplan knows that I have spoken about this in the past and it's a little awkward because she has done great service for us. And at the same time, I questioned whether or not we should accept this grant in the first place because her position was not free. It did cost us money as well as receiving grant money. So it's never free. We haven't had adequate staffing since Susan Waite left, since we made budget decisions that allowed that position to go unfilled. So it's been marvelous to have her here to help try and pick up some of those gaps because not having Susan Waite's position here has meant nobody largely was doing it, although little piece parts were being done by people. And we knew this wasn't gonna be a long-term solution because we knew that this grant that was not entirely free was also only gonna be for a short period of time. And so hopefully would maybe jumpstart a few apartment complexes that hadn't been feeling the enthusiasm, that kind of thing, but it's not an ongoing solution to a problem. And so I think that's one of the things that comes back to the town council in addition to the specifics around things like board of health and hauling requirements and who's required to do compost and can we ask them to limit their licensing is also as a community, what do we value on this? Because we used to have a position. It was not usually a full-time position ever. And there's massive education as I'm sure as Kaplan could speak to, you have to make contact over and over and over again with people. And so finding another grant someday is not really gonna solve the problem either. So figuring out ways to do that, moving forward seems like a financial discussion we should be having associated with guidelines too, even though unfortunately she'll go on back. Are there any other comments or questions at this time? Obviously the Energy and Climate Action Committee has yet another piece to be looking at. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, appreciate it. Thanks for your service to the town. Thank you. Alyssa, are you going to discuss the next item which was, or shall we have that at another time? I'm not looking at the agenda right now. Council liaisons. Council liaisons, we're gonna, I can speak to that very briefly. Do you want to speak to it now or later on when we do your committee report? Why don't we do it then? Okay, we'll do that along with committee reports toward the end of the agenda. So that at this point, we're going to move on to action item seven. And we have four requests for the use of public ways. The first of which is the taste of Amherst and I believe Sarah and Claudia. Please come forward, state your name. And what brings you here? Hi, thank you for having us. I'm Sarah Lacour, Executive Director of the Amherst Business Improvement District. Claudia Pasmani, Executive Director Amherst, Area Chamber of Commerce. And we are in front of you tonight to talk about the annual taste of Amherst. It's coming up June 13th through 15th, 2019. So you have a request in front of you and then it was put into geographic terms with a map. Same location as usual on the town common. And the one change this year is we are running for three days and not four. So it will be Thursday afternoon evening, dinner hours, Friday and then Saturday it will be lunch and dinner and then not on Sunday this year. There you go, there's the map. So we are looking at closures of parking in order to have our vendors be able to load and unload and set up their areas. And then also we are requesting the closure of Boltwood Avenue because the, if you're familiar with the beer and wine tent is on the Amherst College property on the east side of Boltwood Avenue. And so we have a lot of folks crossing back and forth that street during those hours. Additional comments? Add anything, we're really looking forward to it this year. It's all the usual activities. We'll have the large stage, lots of music. We're looking at 20 to 22 restaurants. Our usual activities for children and families. So nothing too out of the ordinary on this one. Okay, oh I think the difference. I think this year is a real partnership between the Amherst bid and the chamber to make sure that this is a successful, safe and an attractive event. This is the only taste in the valley. So we really hope that it becomes something that really brings more people downtown and that's our goal. Hope for nice weather. Okay. Are there questions? Mandy Jo? A couple of questions for you specifically and then a couple for Paul. This is not gonna be a surprise. But one of them is, I was unclear. The park, is it the whole lot that is being closed off? Cause you had on your request like bagging meters including north and south sides of the Spring Street lot. Is that closing the lot off? Yes, the Spring Street lot gets closed off. Vendors leave their trucks and various accessory pieces of equipment and things there. So that has been the same as in the past. Maybe I wasn't clear on my work. Yeah, it just seemed unclear to me. In terms of the timing to the town manager, does this mean we bag and unbag the meters every day for three days in a row? Yes, I should note that the meters are really just on boltwood and on South Pleasant Street. It's just a couple of parking stations, kiosks in the Spring Street lot. But they do get removed at the end of Thursday night and then re-put on at five o'clock on Friday. So that adds again more time to police work and all. And so I am going to note, I've had some questions as to why I tend to vote no for this. I am going, I do not oppose the taste, but because there is no fee being charged for the reserving of these parking meters, I am continuing to vote no until this council has a chance to review the fee structure. So I thought I'd make that clear. It's not that I disagree with the taste when I do vote no. Are there additional questions Pat? I enjoy the taste we go every year. I feel like it's advertisement for the vendors as well as the town as a whole. So I'm also having problems with this not being for a not-for-profit organization or something that fees are not necessarily being paid for the covering of the parking meters, et cetera. Am I wrong about that? So this year is actually our first year that we are donating proceeds from the event to two not-for-profits. One is not brought alone and the other is reader to reader. So that is a significant component of the proceeds this year. Advertising. And they've been notified as well. Additional questions. Kathy. This is actually related to people being able to get to it easily if they can't park downtown. Have we ever looked at making sure people know that the high school parking lot or there is an off-site parking lot or even over by the ATM machine where Bank America is whether people give their parking up to say you can park here and come into town? Just really thinking of drawing people in by showing people where they can park and walk. Yes, thank you for asking that. We have talked about in the past, we have directed folks to the high school parking lot. Also, we can use different facilities. There's a parking lot at Amherst College that we're working on using and we do plan to have a more specific map to direct folks to this year so that they can know that they can come easily and park and some of them are going to be a bit of a walk, but we want to make sure that people do understand that they can park and can come to the event. Yes, Alyssa. I fully realize that this is our first year where you haven't had to bring your, the licensing request hasn't been brought by Amherst College associated with the information associated with the beer tent across the street because that's a conversation you'll be having with the Board of License Commissioners. But in terms of people understanding, people do cross back and forth the street there because there is activity on the Amherst College property because we don't have alcohol on our common. And for those of you who have been out of town every year for a million years and missed that and not realized that, has there been any additional thought about every year I ask a variation of this question, do we feel like the crossing is safe enough given the road closure that we're providing associated with that because there are cars parked along there while people are traveling back and forth, it's not like we clean out the street and then let people walk back and forth as though it was say the big block party. It's not that kind of scenario where all the cars are gone. There's still cars there, there's still the horse wagon ride moving around, et cetera. There's activity happening even though the ways are being blocked. And so I've always been a little nervous and never actually had anything bad happen but about people dashing between two rows of parked cars over to the Amherst College property. And I guess I would just ask that you continue to talk to public safety about how they are running, letting people in and out of there, et cetera. Just so people feel more secure. I've seen people walking across that are somewhat elderly trying to find their way even though the road itself is closed, there's a lot of activity going on. Additional comments or questions? Would someone like to place the motion? I move that we, do I have to read this one here? Oh, yes. Okay. To approve, I move that we approve the closure of Boltwood Avenue between Spring Street and Route 9 from 5 p.m. to 9 30 p.m. on Thursday, June 13th, 2019. From 5 p.m. to 9 30 on Friday, June 14th, 2019. And from 2 p.m. to 9 30 p.m. on Saturday, June 15th, 2019. To approve the reservation of all metered parking spaces using no parking bags along the perimeter of the town common from 12 p.m. to 10 p.m., 12, okay. Thursday, June 13th, 2019. From 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Friday, June 14th, 2019. And from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday, June 15th, 2019. And further, to approve the suspension on street food truck vendors on the South Common from 5 p.m. on Thursday, June 13th, 2019, through 10 p.m. on Saturday, June 15th, 2019. Is there a second? Challenging. Any further comments, questions? All those in favor? Excuse me, do you want a roll call or? Okay, there are, was it 10, 11 or 12 in favor? Let's do it again. Do it again. 12 in favor, one abstention? No. No. No. Two. I'm sorry. Ask for again. Oh, those against. I'm sorry, thank you. Mandy Jo, got it. That's a no. That's a no. Any abstentions? No. 12 to one. Thank you. All right, thank you very much. Look forward to the taste. Thanks very much, appreciate it. Amherst Sustainability Festival, is the next one. Stephanie? Please come forward. Good evening, I'm Stephanie Ciccarello, the town's sustainability coordinator. And I'm here this evening to request parking for the 10th, best 10th annual sustainability festival for the town of Amherst. The event is being held on Saturday, April 27th from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and we are requesting parking. We've had to revise our request this year. Typically we only request the western side of Biltwood Avenue adjacent to the common, but we have very, we have a lot of vendors. We have over, the last few years we've had over a hundred vendors attend the event and we have vendors with mobility issues. We have vendors with horses that come to the event. So, although it looks like all of this is just for vendor parking, it is to a point, the vendor parking along Biltwood Avenue, all of that on the east side adjacent to the side of the Biltwood Inn would be for vendor parking specifically. And the reason why we wanted more parking this year in Biltwood Avenue is to reduce the number of vendors because the street is closed for the farmers market at this time. During our setup, they start earlier than we do. So the street will be closed off. We have to drive, the vendors have to drive in, turn around in the driveway and then turn around back to sort of drop off. There's a designated drop off area for some of those spaces that will be left open for drop off and then the vendors leave and then go to their parking. So to ease the number of vendors that have to go in and turn around and drive out, we've tried to create some more parking. I did talk with the Amherst Farmers Market Manager about this parking situation and blocking off the street because we were hoping that perhaps for this one event they might be able to keep it open for us. But because of the way they have their vendor set up, they really need to block off the street. So his concession to us was to give us more parking. So the parking on the eastern side of Biltwood Avenue, which is directly adjacent to the common will accommodate vendors who have mobility issues. They can't park on the South Pleasant Street side because that slopes down to the common. So for those with mobility issues, they can't easily access getting their wares onto the common. So there are a fair number of vendors with mobility issues. There are also, as I mentioned, vendors with large trailers for the horses. So we usually give at least three parking spaces to those vendors. On the South Pleasant Street side adjacent to the common, this year we're having to move the location of the textile drive to the South Pleasant Street side because people need to drive up and drop off their donations for the recycling drive and then drive off. We need spaces for the bins to permanently stand for the day. So they actually get dropped off the day before. They are typically dropped off on a Friday. They will get dropped off. They will stay stationary throughout the event and then people driving up will need at least four or five. The textile drive has gotten very popular and I even have colleagues asking me if it's going to happen again this year. That's for clothing, for shoes, for large foam, styrofoam, packing materials that's also for things like electronics. So it's an extended and extensive recycling drive that happens. So we need at least six spaces to accommodate that. And then again the rest will be for some vendors who some of them also have large items and things that they need to sort of access the common. So we let them actually have a space so it takes them longer to set up. So that's pretty much why we're asking for more parking this year. And Mandy Jo, I won't be offended. I can see your face and it's okay, I totally understand. But typically we have even moved the date of the event so that we wouldn't have to do this in the past. Last year we actually moved the event a week earlier than when the market opened. But honestly, it's really a nice collaboration to have the market going at the same time as the festival. The events really support one another and it's just a really nice feel to have the market happening at the same time as the festival. So a lot is happening this year. There's also we've collaborated with the University of Massachusetts and some graduate students to have the March for Science terminate at the Sustainability Festival. This happened two years ago when the event was held on Earth Day. So we've worked with them again this year to see if they could have the March for Science. It will go from Kendrick Park and end at the Sustainability Festival. So it's again, it's a really lovely town collaboration that happens that day. So we can deal with some of the frustrating parking but we will have, and I will add that we will have a police detail this year. We didn't have one two years ago and I personally feel very strongly that it's incredibly important to have a police presence for that because it does get congested during the setup time. And that really happens between eight and 10 but it will be pretty congested at that time. And so the parking request is from Friday at eight in the evening. We'd like to have the meters bagged and that would be through Saturday at five p.m. The event ends at four. We need an hour for vendors to finish breaking down and then clearing out by five p.m. Questions? Alyssa. I'm sorry, I know it's Amherst but I'm still gonna make a statement in front of my question. One of the reasons it's very frustrating for me to not get paper packets, all this, it's probably the most paper we've seen since we started is that we can't compare maps as easily and because we're flipping from one opening slide to another opening slide. And so for me to lay down what's happening with the taste versus the sustainability festival versus the next map is much more cumbersome to me electronically, although it's probably just that I'm old but it was easier when I had three pieces of paper to lay next to each other. I'm uncomfortable with the number of spaces on Boltwood that are being reserved for this purpose when we have other events on the common all the time that have a substantial number of vendors, all of which also not infrequently have mobility problems. We have a crafts festival at least twice a year on the common, we do not put all these spaces out of commission for those vendors. We have the vendors, they park off site and where they park in a certain part of the parking lot that's down in front of town hall or they make arrangements with Amherst College. I'm uncomfortable with saying that because this is a town event, it seems okay to go ahead and close off that much parking for Boltwood. So I just, I'm not in support of that. I would like to see the parking arrangements. There are plenty of conversations to be had with staff in the town manager's office about different ways this has been worked out around between the Lord Jeff, Amherst College, et cetera and some of our frequent vendors like big brothers, big sisters who have a craft festival, et cetera. Additional comments, Chalene? Have a clarification question. So do the other events draw 100 vendors and are they as large as, okay. Additional questions? Yes, Dorothy? What about the horses? Okay, you said, okay. You said there were horses and that's one reason you needed more space. What are you doing with the horses? There are three parking spaces closest to College Street that are dedicated for the trailers. The horses are just on display. That's a, they're basically just, it's not for pony rides or anything. It's just a group that uses draft horses for plowing and things, so in farming practices. Sustainable agricultural practices. Thank you. Additional questions? All right. Then the motion is as follows. To approve the reservation of 19-metered spaces, parking spaces using no parking bags on the west side of Boltwood Avenue adjacent to the common except for the two reserve for the farm risk market near Spring Street. 14-meter spaces on the east side of Boltwood Avenue between Spring Street and College Street and 13-metered spaces adjacent to the west side of the common along South Pleasant Street from 8 p.m. on Friday, April 26th, 2019 to 5 p.m. Saturday, April 27th, 2019. Is there a motion? Okay. Darcy, move second. George, second. Further discussion? All those in favor, raise your hand. Opposed? Okay, Margaret. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. The next one is the request for the use of public way for the May Day celebration. Is there anyone here to speak to this at this time? Okay. This is to approve the closure of Henry Street between Market Hill Road and Pine Street from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. on Saturday, May 4th, 2019. And you have information in your packet regarding this. Is there a motion? Andy. Andy, so moved. A second. Sarah, is there any further discussion? Okay, all those in favor? That one's unanimous. Okay. And then we have a request for use of public way, art week, art nights, plus bid trolley parking. Sarah, thank you. Thank you. I'm still Sarah LaCour, Executive Director of the Business Improvement District. So we're requesting two parking spaces in front of our Visitor Information Center that we share with the chamber on May 2nd, which is both Art Night Plus and in the middle of our Art Week celebration, which you'll be hearing more about. That's a statewide initiative that the Amherst Center Cultural District, which is managed through the bid, is launching the first Art Week Amherst. And we have lots of different events being hosted throughout town by different organizations and groups. One of the bid pieces is we're going to showcase our trolley again. I don't know if you've had a chance to see it, but last summer we, through a collaboration with the Donahue Institute at UMass had two Pakistani artists that were visiting the Donahue Institute for other reasons, and they happened to mention that they liked painting vehicles, and this is part of sort of a Pakistani truck art movement. And I suggested that I had a trolley they could paint, and they actually took me up on it, and it came out really beautifully. So we're going, we'd like to park it in front of the Visitor Center, and Ken Leban from the Donahue Institute is going to provide interpretive materials, and some students from UMass that are going to help interpret the culture of this type of art, and what it means to them, and the fact that we have this. So we're requesting form, essentially the event is five to eight. We're asking for 43830 in time to get it into place. It would be parked so that the opening to the trolley was facing the Visitor Center. People might want to walk around all sides of it, so we would be putting up orange cones along the edge just to make sure people could get safely around it if they wanted to look at each side. Questions. Mandi Jo. This one's more for the town manager. Sorry about this, Sarah. No worries. I'm again assuming since there's no indication anywhere here that the bid would not be charged for the reservation of these two spots during the four, I guess, three hours since parking timing ends at eight, three and a half hours that they're using the meters. Could you explain to me if that is the case, the difference between a reservation like this and a reservation for two spots for a moving van for a certain similar amount of time that would get charged for that amount? The request is for the Council to not charge, obviously, and that's what this request is. The Council chooses to charge. You can make that motion. In terms of the Business Improvement District and the Chamber of Commerce, we think of those as civic organizations and we want to support their mission. Shelley. It seems like an incredible opportunity to bring community together and learn about this particular culture and art. And I was just curious about the location of it. You did mention you're going to put cones, but was there any consideration of putting it somewhere else which would allow for more community to gather around? So because it's a vehicle, we did look at a lot of different options, but because of the size and the way it maneuvers, they all involved parking spots. For the taste of ours last year, we actually parked it in the Spring Street lot and all it was closed and that worked out really well because that had already been reserved. So we really were trying to figure out where to put it. The only other places would be private property off the beaten track and we really wanted to be front and center associated with our activities in the visitor center that evening. We did try to sort through that, yeah. Andy. I just support this and I appreciate it of bringing the trolley back in its new form for everybody to admire. Is the 430 time, this is also a question for the town managers, 430 times sufficient to clear the spaces for people who might be parking there during the day and have paid for a longer period of time. Is that really a feasible time request to achieve the goal? So what typically we do is we put a notice on the meter saying that these spaces are reserved at a certain period of time to alert people if they're gonna park there. Are there additional questions? I just wanna say that in the interest of full disclosure, I have been employed by the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute. I am no longer executive director but I continue to work with them as a senior advisor. Thank you. I had nothing to do with the painting of the trolley. But I knew it was happening. We tried to get people to volunteer, it was fun. Thank you. Anything else? Any questions? All right, the motion is to approve the reservation of two parking spaces in front of the visitor information center, 35 South Pleasant Street from 430 p.m. to 830 p.m. on May 2nd, 2019. Shallone's made the motion, the second, Pat. Is there any further discussion? All those in favor? Opposed? Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you. I'm going to take a break. I'm going to take a break. Five minute break. We will come back at that point to the East Street School. All right. We are going to continue with agenda item 7C, East Street School. Are there questions from the council? I think Andy, do you want to just mention the quick conversation at Finance Committee? I think the Finance Committee did have a discussion about it, even though we appreciated the fact that it was not referred to us to make a formal report on this. And we were really delving into two issues. One is how the property had been assessed. And I think that Mr. Malloy, in his question and answer, really covered that very well and was very consistent with what we heard from the assessor, Mr. Burgess. And I actually suspect he might have talked to Mr. Burgess. And the other thing that we talked about was how property is assessed for rental purposes and the methodology that is used for doing that assessment, which has to do with gauging the, it's a business approach. And so there is some effect if you were to rent it to parties that are, are detentments that are paying totally market rate, it would be different economics. But it is still a tax, there's still taxation to be paid. And that's basically the report that we received from Mr. Burgess. OK. Any other comments? Yes. Well, in looking at this document we have here, let's see what this is titled, it's on how we authorize and dispose of surplus real property. It talks about you can, but you're not required by law, to sell town property at its highest price. But you can look at non-price factors. And then it says, for example, if the town wants property developed for a particular purpose, say, recreation or affordable housing, end of Perenn, the town may choose a buyer based on the buyer's experience and financial resources among other criteria. I thought that was interesting. Mandy Jo. I was looking at the same sort of section of the surplus real property disposition policy. And I understand that this property was sort of moving along at the same time this policy was being written. But the policy refers to a mass general law, Chapter 30B, Section 16, the Uniform Procurement Act. So that makes me think that that portion of this memo must be followed. And that portion indicates that if the value of the property is above $35,000, the town is required to solicit proposals by issuing an RFP notice of which is to be advertised. And the advertisement must identify the property with particularity, all of that. So I guess my question is, is that before we declare it surplus? Or is that the RFP that we're asking to be voting on tonight to allow the town manager to issue? Because I was unclear from the memo whether that was before we declare it surplus. Mr. Bachmann. So it would happen. The town has to comply with Chapter 30B. So once the town council says we want to move forward on this project, then we would do the steps, all the legal requirements to comply with 30B, plus any other state laws or local laws that we have to comply with. So that's something that would be the responsibility of the town manager and administration. And it's after our vote. Well, additional? I'd name Hawaii Senior Planner with the town. I think the request for proposals, the RFP, I think in an earlier email from the town attorney, they said you could issue the RFP at different stages. It could be before the vote, but then no one is likely to respond because there hasn't been any commitment by the town to transfer the property. And so the typical process is there's a vote on the commitment of a town or municipality to transfer the property and then issue the RFP so the developers know the town is serious about moving forward with the project. OK. Any other questions from the council? Yes, Pat. I want to thank you, Nate, for putting together this fact sheet, basically. I'm particularly interested in the fact that we're really supporting mixed income development and reaching out for that diversity through this project and other projects in town. Thank you. Any other comments from the council? Shalini. It's just a comment that I think we mentioned that in the finance committee also that not with respect to this particular proposal, but in the future, we would like to see a process of how we are going about assessing these properties and what is it, what is the criteria for the decisions we're making, but not with respect to this because this was already passed. A lot of work has been put into it. And so. OK. Additional comments from the council? We have identified this for public comment. Is there anyone who would like to make a public comment at this time? OK. Seeing none, then we have a motion before us. And the motion is to amend the vote taken under Article 27 of the April 30, 2018, annual town meeting as continued, which transferred the property identified by the assessors as parcel 15A-20, located at 31 Southeast Street and known as the East Street School Property to the select board and authorized the select board to dispose of such property to declare that that property is surplus to the needs of the town and available for disposition and to authorize the town manager to dispose of said property for affordable and mixed income housing purposes on such terms and conditions and for such consideration, which may be nominal consideration as the town manager deems in the best interest of the town. Is there a motion? Pat has made the motion. Second. Evan is the second. Is there any further discussion? All those in favor? OK. You may proceed. Thank you. Our next item on the agenda is the town meeting advisory committee Tina proposal. And Meg Gage is here to speak to this proposal. And there will be council discussion. There will be public comment. And then there will be a motion to refer this to the governance, organization, and legislation committee. Meg? Thanks. Lynn, I don't think anyone here knows me well enough to be on high alert that I'm speaking to you on April 1. But I will assure you that while I have a very well-honed reputation for that, I am saving it for later. Because this evening, I am presenting to the council the proposal. And I'm also reading so that I'll be efficient. Very good. This evening, I'm presenting to the council the proposal developed last summer before our new government was inaugurated by the town meeting advisory committee, or TMAC, to create a council advisory board to take on a similar function envisioned for the TMAC. Let me begin briefly by describing the problem our proposal seeks to address, believing that problem definition is a really important part of problem solving. The regular policy-making process is usually dominated by vocal advocates, people with confidence and knowledge of how to be influential, people who are skilled at creating a sense of urgency. But as we saw at the recent poorly attended budget forum, while public hearings, forums, and opportunities to speak at meetings are important and necessary, they're inadequate. People want more than an opportunity to speak. They want to know they've been heard by their elected leaders and their points of view are considered. Right now, neither the council nor its standing committees are obligated to assess the impact of policy on a range of community interests and needs. I'm sure I know you all would like to do that, but with the extraordinary time pressure you're under, it's hard to imagine you could take on a deeper and broader analysis of impact. The core of our proposal is twofold. First, the creation of an advisory board, not decision-making or even recommending role to carry out research that you request on policy proposals in order to examine their impact on a range of community groups and interests. Second, a specific tool to facilitate this research. And there's a graphic, a summary, I did a summary of it because the whole thing was too complicated to put on a slide, but it's up there for people who are here from the public to see and their copies in the back and you have it in your packet. The group, this group would conduct research on behalf of the council just as congressional staff do for larger legislatures with more resources. At the heart of the proposal is the Community Impact Report Framework or SERF to help, whatever you want to call it, that's what we called it, to help structure the review. And as I said, there's an abbreviated version up there. We created this tool by examining a number of community impact documents ranging from Brookline to the European Union, which has a very large one, very big. The Community Impact Report Framework is a suggested tool to help you legislators assure that a range of community needs and interests have been taken into consideration. Again, this new body would provide research, research that you request, but not recommendations. The advisory committee would look at selected important decisions that the council must make. In the normal order of business, the council hears from committees recommending those decisions. The advisory committee would be charged with looking at both the advantages and impacts those decision might have. Unlike the standing committees which have particular remits, finance planning, transportation, housing, et cetera, the advisory committee would have a broader remit to look at the implications of decisions on the town as a whole, since all of these areas impinge on and affect one another. I've heard, I must say, significant opposition for this proposal and understand that many of you feel the council members should and can carry out this research on your own. But the simple math of time and multiple demands makes it hard to imagine the 13 members of the council could conduct the level of review we are encouraging. Yes, the council can ask town staff to carry out research, but we think this is an unfair burden on our already busy and wonderful town staff. Doug Slaughter writing on behalf of the select board in the letter that's also included in your packet opposed our proposal. I would like to agree with his two central points as reasons to go forward with this tool and the committee. First, he points out that the charter provides numerous ways for the public to speak its mind about policy. Yes, indeed, having been on the charter commission, those venues that we generously put into the charter work for people who understand and know about them. Again, witness the recent budget forum. And it isn't good enough to say, well, we invited you, not our problem, you didn't come. The abundant methods that the charter mandates in the charter mandating public participation do not assure that the council will receive balanced information. Second, Mr. Slaughter points out that in section 2.8 of the charter, it articulates the council's authority to keyword authority to investigate the affairs of the town and conduct or performance of any town agency except those town agencies under the jurisdiction of the school committee, et cetera. He urges the council not to give up authority to another body. Indeed, the council should not give up its authority to another body, which is why this proposed committee and research tool would not make recommendations, but instead carry out research requested by the council. Authority would not be lost. Authority will be gained because the council will make balanced decisions, building council credibility based on research, research that you request and not just the influence of the loudest voices and the most skillful meeting junkies. Two final suggestions. If you decide not to go forward with this proposal, although I hate to make that easier for you to do, perhaps I have two suggestions as a partial steps. First, perhaps rather than creating a new advisory board, this work could be included in the mandate of the new community resources committee that you will panel this evening. Second, possibly if you don't want to go forward this, perhaps the council would use our proposed tool when considering new policy as a framework for asking questions that advocates have not addressed, questions on behalf of constituencies, and community needs that have not been considered. Thank you. I look forward to hearing the lively discussion now. Thank you, Meg. Questions, comments, et cetera? Pat? I'm very interested in this. I was part of TMAC for a little while on town meeting. It does seem to me that there is a way that this group could work with and collaborate with the community resources committee, which really is an emphasis on impact, et cetera. How do you see that working? Or why do you think it would work? Well, it's hard to know for sure, because that committee hasn't formed yet. But it seems to me that the mandate to look at community resources would give them a perspective that would make this possible. I've been trying to think of ways of making this happen without necessarily setting up a whole new additional committee. I guess my other question, and I'm not sure whether this goes to Lynn, you, or Paul, or the government's committee, could we add residents to the community resources committee who were taking on this kind of work? Let me answer that. Since the president and the council brings forward committees, obviously, then the group has taken them and put them together. And then I do the appointments. That is something I would refer. And that's the kind of conversation I expect will take place in the referral of this to GOL, is whether or not there is a way to incorporate the kinds of suggestions that we're hearing here tonight into an existing committee structure. And in fact, let me just take the opportunity to say we've had this proposal before us since we first were sworn in on December 3, second, and preceded December 3, thank you. We made it before we were, before you were inaugurated. Right. And we purposely have delayed it until we got our kind of organizational act together, if you will. And I'm not saying that we have our act together, nor anything else, but we're getting there. And so I think this is the appropriate time to have brought this proposal forward to see whether and in what way this kind of offer, if you will, might be used in light of our present structure and going forward. So it's really in the spirit of that that we're now looking at it. Kathy. I think Steve also had to. Oh, I'm sorry. I definitely think there's a need for this kind of thinking when a new and complex issue comes up that we shouldn't immediately make a decision. My concern about any ongoing standing group of eight people, nine people, whatever the number is, is you won't always have the right people for the issue that comes up. And I think within, it's within our purview, and I've been looking at what other towns do, we can anytime we need to create a working group and say we, here's the marijuana policy as an example of one from the past where we want to institute something, we need to gather information, we need to think of different ways of doing it, come up with pros and cons of alternative approaches, and we can bring non-council members in choosing people based on experience points of view. And I think we should be doing that, in thinking of what happens at a federal level or states that have a lot of money. California has a ledge analyst group, and that's what, they don't go to their legislature, they go over to their analysts, but the analysts are, if it's about roads and construction, you bring someone in like that. If it's about housing, you bring in someone else. If it's broad planning, so the mix keeps shifting and that's what makes me worried. I think we should be doing this process and not jumping into something that is complicated. We should take time to think about it, but we should be bringing in diverse groups depending on what the issue is, and that might change from year to year or from process to process. So that is my thinking about liking this list a lot, liking a way of thinking about something. Okay, Steve? So the Community Resource Committee work task force struggled to come up with the right, it's kind of the right mission and the right mix, and at one point it was a mix of counselors and citizens, and so we came up with something that was voted on, so I hope we can at least let that group meet before we add to it or change its charge, so we should at least have one meeting before we do that. The other thing is there's a lot of concern about existing committees of the town, so we have lots of committees. Some are underused, some are overused, some of the missions aren't clear, some of the missions are too clear, and before we add another committee to the mix, I would really encourage us to think about how to activate all of those committees that are already on the books, and maybe this can be embraced or embodied within some of those existing committees, and then maybe my last point is nothing prevents, there's nothing that prevents any group of people from doing exactly these things. We've seen very effective lobbying groups for say the schools, different positions on the schools, different positions on everything, so there's nothing to prevent any nine people, eight people, 30 people from doing this already, and I'm not positive that this would, that us endorsing this in addition to all of the other boards and committees we have is something that I can support. Additional comments, Darcy? I'd just like to say that I like the idea of including more citizen input. I think that there are a variety of different ways we can do it, like Kathy suggested one. I think that we've shown that we can be creative about doing things new ways, and I also think that we are only 13 people, and we have hundreds of people out there that have experience and expertise that we can draw on, and I think that we've seen in just in the last few months that there have been instances where the public has contributed to our discussion about, for example, public comment about the open meeting law in ways that were very helpful. So I hope that we can think about how we can use this resource that's being offered to us. Shalini? So I really love the community impact report framework. Thank you so much for all of you who created that, and I don't know why we're not using it. If you're not using it, I think all of us should start using it while we still figure out what we're gonna do with this. The surf. Yeah, yes. And along with that, I do feel and agree that there is a lot of expertise out there and a lot of residents who are wanting to contribute and have amazing skill sets, and so figuring out how they can support us in doing more in-depth research in ways that Kathy recommended or the other way I was thinking was at the district level, I would show them, and I'm sure Darcy too, we would love to have at the district level support, working with groups like this to help us think through things deeper. So it could be district level committees, that's one suggestion. My concern that I had reading the document though was some kind of languaging around things like which said monitoring other committees, and that sounded a little like, for lack of better word, disrespectful to the other committees that are also formed by residents, so there'll be another group of residents that's monitoring another group of residents. So, and that's something we want to promote is a culture of respect, and so more in life, so changing, working in a way that we're supporting the other committees rather than we're gonna look over your, so that was one of my concerns. Thank you, it's helpful. Man, did you? It's nice to talk to you, Meg. We served on the Charter Commission together, so it's nice to have you back. And I thank you and the TMAC for bringing something like this to us. I'm gonna echo some other comments of the Community Impact Report framework, at least, sounds completely beneficial to analyzing policies as we come up with policies on the council. I did have a question that I'd like you to perhaps respond to. TMAC was a very new committee, even as it dissolved itself due to the change in government, but my recollection of its formation was it was formed as a, by the legislature, town meeting, to assist the legislature, town meeting, in coming up with sort of the full pros and cons and all sorts of things in terms of policies that were being recommended. And when it was formed, while not required, it had mainly the legislators on it, town meeting members. I know there were a few that weren't town meeting members and it was not required, but in general, it had mostly town meeting members on it. So if we're looking at a similar framework in a council form, wouldn't that imply that the committee doing some of this work be mainly made up of legislators? Since if you're looking at sort of this sort of parallel system, if that's the goal of the proposal to create a committee to do this sort of investigation on a parallel track, then wouldn't it be necessarily a committee of the council? And if it's a committee of the council, wouldn't that necessarily be made up of mostly counselors? So I'd love to hear from you on that. I'm just now speaking for myself. I don't think we saw this as trying to do the same thing that TMAC was, but for the council, that in other words, to recreate the same kind of thing. And I think is implied by my remarks. I think the committee part of it is the weaker part of the two aspects of our proposal in comparison with the community impact report framework. We have a different government now and I think however you all and we all can figure out to do this, the better. Our point is though that you may need some ledge support, like Kathy was talking about, of people who are analysts on whom you can call to get information that you don't have. So, and I don't think those of us who are on the TMAC necessarily are those people. We certainly aren't those people, many of us. So I think that it's a mistake to see a parallel with our we're proposing doing the TMAC 2.0 or something like that. The point we're trying to make is there are perspectives and I've resisted giving you examples because there's sort of times when people, the town did things that ignored perspectives of affected people. That's not helpful, but we all know those things have happened. And the point that we're trying to make is to create some mechanism to reduce that as much as possible so that the voices that aren't traditionally heard are heard and that we look hard to find out what environment impact will this have, for example. And the finance committee does that already. It's just what the finance committee does around finances. Like what'll be the financial and the economic impact of such and such policy as part of what they do. So it's providing some function and it could be counselors but I don't know how on earth you have the time and you may not be, you may want, like you call up your lawyer, for example, and say, could you tell me the best way to do this? And she tells you, she doesn't do what, you know, but anyway, sorry, don't over answering your question. This is a question. George. This is a question, thank you. President, this is a question for my fellow counselors. Where does this go? The suggestion I think was that it might go to GOL. I serve on GOL and maybe the chair of GOL can help me. I don't know what we can do with this in the form that it is at the moment. I'm thinking of an example. We had the ECAC, there you had a group of counselors who worked very hard to create a proposal. They shaped it, then it came to us to look at, that's GOL, this does not seem to be in that form. It seems to be a multiple series of suggestions. Who, where does this go? Okay. Alyssa. So I thought about writing my comments, but I decided that writing out two pages was probably more than you had patience for. So the history of this is not exactly what it is now, and I appreciate that it has evolved over time. That is certainly a fact. It's also a fact that when it was first Brock's town meeting, it was not an overwhelming success. It was a 99 to 81 vote, so nearly a split vote as to whether or not people thought this was a good idea, even then with a somewhat different form of government where legislators would be advising legislators. One of the shortcomings of the plan at that time, which has not entirely gone away, is the idea that at that time, although it is certainly no longer being described in quite this way, but at that time it was going to be a body that was going to be competing for town staff and resources with other bodies, is how the perception of some of us who voted against it was how we perceived the activities of that body. So the reason that I see this body's work, this impact framework is excellent. There is no question, but this is an excellent way of looking at things. And if we aren't looking at things in a way similar to this, then if we don't have the time to do that, then we're not doing our jobs. And so if we had perhaps less clerical tasks because we had more staff support, then we would have more time to do things like this, which we need to do, which we need to be able to talk to our resources, both within our town staff and out in the community, just like all of these excellent people that have been in types of situations that have been brought up in terms of a working group we need for right now. If we didn't have community resources like brand new committee at this point, I would have sent it to GOL for lack of a better place, which is how we've been kind of trading GOL. Referred somewhere. Now that we have community resources, it feels very much to me like we would send these ideas to them and say, given how community resources evolved over time, given what you've been hearing at town council, given all this information, how much of this might you choose to incorporate in what you want to do? And then let's talk about it beyond that because I would much rather say as council when a new idea comes up that we feel like we need more analysis on that all 13 of us aren't gonna go off and do or call all of the people we know with that expertise is I would fully expect the new community resource group to have done that. And when they come to us and we say, well, who did you talk to? And they're like, nah, we just kind of talked to each other for a few minutes. Then we'd say, no, you need to be working on these kinds of things before you bring it back to us. And so that's actually putting a lot of pressure on that committee, but I think that's where the pressure belongs. I don't think it belongs in a whole separate layer of any type of appointed committee at this point other than a council committee. And then with working groups formed as needed as various things come up. And it's entirely possible that one day we have enough working group knowledge that we decide we need to spin something off as its own permanent thing. Just like we've talked about it like a business relations sort of committee that may again someday become a thing after community resources talks about it. But at this point to keep it close but be looking exactly at those things and see how we can manage those. Evan. I'm trying to catch people who haven't spoken yet. Evan? So I have several comments on this but I'll try to keep them minimal. The first thing I did want to just pitch to the council is I think that this proposal brings up some questions about how we deal with proposals from the public. It's interesting to me that this was a proposal that was developed by several members of the public and sent to the council and we are now spending our time debating it. To me if a member of the public wants to bring a measure to the council they should find a counselor to sponsor it and bring it forth. If they cannot do so there are mechanisms in the charter the free petition that allow for public participation this doesn't seem to fit in any of those and I worry about a system where members of the public just email the full council a proposal and then the council debates it. I think that could get unwieldy so I think that's a topic for future conversation of the council not to throw more on rules but maybe something I don't know but to me it seems as though if you are a member of the public who has an interest in bringing forth some type of measure to the council you reach out to your district council or you reach out to an at-large council and you ask them I have this idea would you be willing to bring this to the council for me but to email the council and then expect them to take it up without going through the proper channels without doing the free petition this in the charter to me seems inappropriate. The second thing I'll say is I think I'll echo a lot of what Alyssa said in that doing this is our job and we are all overworked but I think that looking at this community impact report framework and thinking about the discussion we had about the East Street School we did this, right? We had a conversation social impacts we talked about affordable housing environmental impacts there were conversations that were had about green building economic impacts about disposing of surplus property we had that discussion even if we didn't define it as a surf and so I think that the council's already positioning itself to consider these multiple angles and I think that we're fully capable of doing that and especially with the CRC whose charge says may study and consider issues affecting community resources sustainability and economic development it seems like recognizing this was put forth long before CRC was in existence that CRC would be doing exactly what this committee would seek to do and therefore makes this committee seem superfluous and the very last point I'll make because I know I'm talking for a while but this is the first time I talk tonight so I'm gonna take that time now I forgot come back to me moving on Steve so actually Evan said what I was going to say about the East street school but I have a point of order question so as far as I can tell the only motion possible is to refer it to the GOL what happens if that's a negative vote? it first of all GOL only recommends back to the council as do every committee of the council standing committees only recommend back to the council my question is what if it's what if we don't vote to refer it? good question so if it's a question should we amend the motion because GOL doesn't seem like the right place to refer it is that what you're asking? my question is what if the motion I'm sorry my question is what if the motion fails what happens then? either we decide to put it someplace else or the motion fails and the proposal dies Alyssa just to clarify there's nothing written in stone about the motion to refer it to GOL so if somebody makes a different motion prior to that one but that's like our cheat sheet if we don't know what else to do next exactly thank you but somebody could come up with a different motion first thank you yes Dorothy is this on now? there it is okay you don't have to vote yours oh good okay the study of impacts is in fact what I thought I was elected to do and we do it all the time the question of doing additional research research for us on various items has some interesting aspects and there have been a number of people in town who have sent me and not just me papers and really well thought out positions that I have found useful and I have taken seriously my concern is with the structure you know that we were elected in a divisive election but what some people may not know is that we are working together very very well and we know that there will be some issues when you're gonna see some of the old lines again but our week to week business we are not seeing that so the structure of this which nobody's mentioned is but I read it in your proposal is that the members of the committee would be elected by the town council well if you remember our first election it kind of broke along party lines and I think that it would in fact have the effect of driving us back to sides which I don't think is what we want to do now when it comes to the new community resources committee yes some of the things that you're talking about there obviously impact is one of the big thing that's why the committee was formed would we in future really be interested in drawing upon these resources I'm sure but the committee hasn't even had its first meeting it's would be an overwhelming thing it would be destructive towards its natural development and growth to put this in it or on it at this time so I'm saying that I understand the motivations and I'm really appreciative of the the research and the intelligence which is behind the proposal I mean the idea is to help us do our work and to do it in a way that is fair to the community and to all the aspects of the community but I think that at this time it would it's not the right time is what I'm saying one of the other options is motion to defer yes Andy so I guess there are several things that one is just to point out that the memo from Mr. Slaughter represented the select board at the time and we didn't we took it up 40 under the provision that we did because of the fact that it was on December 1st and we were going out of business next the next day but it was a unanimous vote of the select board so I just wanted to clarify that I think that the major thing that I wanted to just point out is that when we have had things come up before this body that really needed development we appointed an ad hoc committee and the ad hoc committee was composed of people who had a particular expertise and interest in the area and I think that that has turned out to be an extremely good model this raises sort of some interesting additional things that we can consider so it's very helpful one is a framework and the second is the idea that we can reach out beyond the council itself as we compose ad hoc committees in the future that's a judgment call that gets made each time and I'll close it out by saying that when we in previous form of government needed to try and address problems with the original zero energy bylaw it was a group that was pretty wide ranging involving a number of different people select board as well as people who are from the original group that brought forward the proposal and somebody from the fire station dpw study committee there was a lot of different expertise that was able to come together and it was formed specific to the purpose and I'm a little bit hesitant to suggest that we create a standing committee as opposed to create the right committee for each proposal I appreciate the framework that has been suggested in the thought of including non council members when appropriate me and Joe I'm gonna address George's and sort of the the referral issue as chair of GOL I see this is potentially appropriate at GOL I can also see it as appropriate at this the community resources committee too but GOL has had been having some ongoing discussions about policy proposals that might not fall under community resources for and when they come to us to the council and they don't really fall under the can now that we know what that community resources committee looks like if they might not fall under that charge and where would those policy proposals go for something like this community impact report framework and the governance committee has already been having discussions about that organizational structure under our organizational part of GOL and as to where we might think that goes that discussion is ongoing you've seen it in some of the reports reported out that we haven't come to any solid conclusion yet so I see this proposal as falling potentially under that portion of our discussion which is why I can see it as appropriate for the GOL committee and as falling under organization do we want to go forward with random ad hoc committees every time something comes up that doesn't do that or do we want a standing committee do we want a non council committee like I can see that falling under continuing discussion that GOL has had so I just wanted to put that forward for the council and I want to address one item to make that we kind of skirted over Shalini mentioned it a little bit when you guys made your proposal to us you couldn't know what the council would do and tonight one of our discussions on our agenda was liaisons that we included in the charter and that council can put non voting liaisons and I saw a portion of your proposal specifically that the CAB would go to committee meeting agendas regularly attend watch recordings as really looking like the potential for when we get to our council discussion as liaisons so I just wanted to acknowledge that you guys did all of this before we've done that and we've actually potentially done some of that or working towards getting some of that going in our operational sense that there might be that already being taken care of concern that you guys foresaw almost and and we're getting there well I appreciate that and anyone I think it's a mistake to focus on one word like like elected as I said in my closing if even this is carried forward that would feel really fabulous because this is really what it's about is having a tool for asking the questions pat I feel strongly that looking at this proposal needs to go to two places it should go to g l for organization and it should also go to community resources because that's what the committee was set up to do which is to study impact uh... and I want to remind us just as a general reminder expertise does not always reside in a college degree or a doctorate so when we look for experts and I would say this to everyone we need to look at the people who are most impacted who live with the daily constraints or issues as experts who can teach us so um... stepping aside as president just as a counselor uh... I remember when this came before town meeting I happened to be in the room because I was there as I often was there for the dpw fire station and as I reflected on this and I have to say at roman numeral three I've already taken the fire station dpw advisory committee through every one of those steps mentally tonight while I'm reading this um... and hope that you know we did our job at least as far as we were able to go um... I did question then and was okay so we would come forward to town meeting with this committee then do what else would they do that our seven-person committee and uh... the staff that we were working with which were the experts in fire and dpw in town what else would this committee have done and I kept asking myself that when I was listening to the proposal of this in town meeting at the same time uh... I have enormous respect I've often used it in my own classrooms when I've taught for the different policy organizations that you know help congress and so forth so I I want to I want and I I still feel it needs to go to gol they are the group that is charged with looking at our governance organization and legislation except for the entire council to look at it again uh... and then whatever they recommend they would come back to us but I've heard several people suggest that they find enormous value in the framework they find enormous value in being able to call upon people who are expert when we need people for various topics that are expert and heaven knows this is a town that has probably more analysts in it than per square mile than just about any other town we have in massachusetts except maybe cambridge uh... and so uh... I'm still very much interested in having gol look at this and then perhaps they may come back and also once the community resources committee has an opportunity to get its feet on the ground and organized they may also look at how they would incorporate some of this policy work as well is there any other comments from the council because we do have public comment on this as well yes elissa so thank you very much to my colleague for bringing this up so on her computer gol is advising town council on matters of internal rules which I don't think we'd call this and reviewing bylaws and resolutions proposed for action by the town council and we haven't proposed that gol do something and it talks about form content organization I'm still not clear why I would want to send it there rather than to the community resources folks to consider what feels like it fits to them with or without actually changing their charge george I am uncomfortable with this coming to gol in its current form I think it needs more discussion more uh... there's good stuff here but I don't see the function of gol to craft some kind of proposal our job is to look at things that are pretty much ready for prime time and we look it over to see if it's ready for prime time we're not supposed to be generating policy creating policies I understand so I think this does need to go somewhere it needs to go somewhere where will be treated seriously given good thought but I really don't think that's the function of gol as I understand it so I agree with Alyssa that if you read the charge uh... it doesn't seem to be our responsibility either an ad hoc committee or sending it to community resources and I understand you're just starting and you've got a lot in your play so maybe ad hoc is the way to go but speaking as a member of gol I don't know what I can do with this and you're basically asking me to craft something for you and it's not my baby Steve I think the most appropriate action is to refer this back to the presenter to bring together a group you know either through the the charter outlines the ways that proposed actions like this can be brought to the council so I don't I don't think it's appropriate that we are taking action without having followed what the charter specifies as appropriate ways that these kinds of things get brought before council so you would prefer this back to the group and then they would bring it forward through one of the citizens participation processes I don't think it's an actionable I don't think we could take any action on this actually because it's I see this as an information meeting so I know because it's not been brought through the protocol outlined in the charter then we're here just talking so it's not an actual proposal that we can take any action on that's how I see this as a member of g o l i just want to reinforce my colleagues are saying that it almost seems logical to send this to g o l but I don't I we would have to literally craft something and hope that we are embodying uh... the sponsors uh... beliefs that doesn't necessarily seem appropriate and to be honest given our schedule and agendas uh... doesn't seem like a prudent use of our time uh... where I guess one thing that i'm confused about and i think that steve sort of spoke to this is we're having a conversation of where should we send this and i think the first conversation is do we even want to move forward with this uh... because I've heard most of my colleagues speak and I don't know that I have a completely clear sense of what the feeling for this proposal is but to me uh... to ask for a committee whether gb g o l or c r c or ad hoc to spend time going through this uh... I would hope would mean that the council thinks that this is a proposal that is worthwhile to go forward with uh... and so i would either support what steve said and said send it back and have it come back to us through a proper channel uh... in a proper form or i think the council should give some sense about whether we think this is worth moving forward with so now that we're ending up in a very different place even before we've had public comment I totally appreciate that the idea of this in theory having been brought forward to a counselor for sponsorship haven't talked about originally that didn't happen and it doesn't say that in the charter and i am low as i have said on the byline with the stan resenberg conversations uh... that i do not want people to feel like they have to use relatively clunky and cumbersome parts of the charter in order to get something addressed so i appreciate that in an ideal world had in a different level of organization and this hadn't existed in a different format that actually existed before we even came to office we might have done things differently but given where we are what i am suggesting and may later make a motion toward is referring the content of the idea to community resources i am not in any way asking g o l or community resources or anyone to create this committee absolutely not no way know how what i'm hoping is that having the community resources look at these exact things that oh yeah that makes sense we would do this that at the end of the book and that will be sufficient if then the petitioner still feels like they want to continue to push for yet a separate committee because they don't have the patience to wait for that then they can follow the process in the charter but once they follow the process in the charter going to end up in the same place like we are going to just do it because they went through the process we're still going to have to re take it apart refer to someplace else that's just adding extra steps to accomplish what i'm just really losing my place here yes so indy joe megan iar probably and makes probably wondering how did we not follow the charter so i'm going to i'm going to stand up and say this came to us appropriately through the charter process uh... the charter section eight point two a allows resident petitions signed by one or more residents the fact that an email comes to us from a resident you can consider that a resident petition we don't need a hundred and fifty signatures when it comes to us like that our action is discretionary it's when you get up to one fifty that we have to do something but this came completely appropriately through that process and i think megan iar now like we did put that in someone was wondering why did we put that in and this is why we put that in i think i'm not my charter we can choose to act we can choose not to act when it's less than when it's not a formal group petition but it is appropriate for any individual to bring to the council a request for something under the charter and it is allowed clarified that point is there further discussion from the council elissa briefly while that's true there's no requirement that we put it on the agenda if one person asked for it so action is discretionary meaning it never needs to see the light of day it saw the light of day it's going through a kind of process it may not be the preferred process of some members here we obviously have a difference of opinion but nothing's wrong at this point and we're just trying to figure out the best way to express our enthusiasm for the ideas without creating another level of work thank you any other comments from the council we are having public comment is there anybody who would like to make public comment on this I see two hands first person Hilda Hilda Greenbaum 298 monarchy road and there are a couple of misunderstandings here that I wanted to clear up and the first one is that we were an elected committee we're not just a group of citizens but we were elected by two hundred ninety two town meeting members because of the need that was seen for our committee parallel to the finance committee and from uh... it was mentioned that we already have groups that come in and advocate for a certain thing like the affordable housing on east street you think you looked into everything maybe there were things that the group that came into advocate and then the thing that comes to my mind is what what really started this team out on the first place is zoning and planning so many times it didn't used to happen thirty years ago when we used to have planning boards that voted five to four and seven to three or whatever people actually would go to planning hearings so that they could express a point of view or if they didn't understand but it got to be the point over the last ten fifteen years you go to planning board hearing and nobody listens so people stop going and then planning board has never had a devil's advocate well they did have a devil's advocate advocate and her position was not extended for the second three year term somebody who would bring up well this may be this and that may be that did you look at it planning articles would come to town meeting not having been totally thought through and then town meeting looks at it and says well we don't understand this and we don't understand that and it gets sent back and they don't like it coming back all the time and it's because there has never been a group that would look at the zoning bylaw independently of the planning board hearing to say well why do we have buildings that are sixty feet tall when the bylaw says fifty feet where did that come from it was there we voted for but in fifteen pages of bylaw you don't see it this committee would have picked up something like that I really think there's a need for it somewhere I joke around and say you know how we're going to balance the budget next year by my lottery figuring out when you guys are burnt out and we'll go back to town meeting but you really need somebody besides the group that's bringing a proposal forward to look at the other side and be the devil's advocate and that's what this is thank you for hearing me thank you for your comment additional comment yes john hornick fifty nine carriage lane I would say a bit over a year ago I generated this idea was reshaped by many people and you have that product before you I want to share a couple of things related to that first I shared held this frustration as a town meeting member I found it very difficult the pros and cons of a warrant article were never presented and why is this why but confession to make I also spoke before town meeting as many of you know on behalf of warrant articles and when I spoke I believed in the warrant article that I was speaking for did I talk about the possible negative effects but things that town meeting should consider would go against what I was proposing no I did not I never did and as Hilda said people would ask of committees you had a unanimous vote or you had a five to two vote was it anything else considered that was on the negative side why do we only hear what's positive that's what the structure was and frankly that's what the structure still is as Steve noted you have many committees in town but I will tell you as the chair of one of those committees that when someone brings something forward from a committee what you're gonna hear is what they think is right now that may be what you need to hear from their point of view but it may not be what you want to hear or hear exclusively from your point of view a committee may try to take this idea of multiple impacts into account but the truth is when they settle on a direction when they settle on an idea when they bring a proposal forth they're probably mostly paying lip service honestly or they might say well we considered A we considered B we considered C and we just think it's all positive so then the question becomes why a standing committee and both Kathy and Andy spoke about the fact that this could easily be handled by ad hoc committees and there's a part of me that agrees that it is important to bring in a variety of voices and people with differing expertise into this process on the other hand my feeling is this kind of process will go much more smoothly if there's a standing committee that creates a culture and a set of ideas about how you go about it so whatever the issue is whether it's the East street school or some element of the budget or something that comes from the planning board there are people who are set up to pull in the experts in a reasonably efficient way to hold a public hearing if that would help gather information about the pros and cons to do what you need to do and I do emphasize pros and cons I do wanna recognize that Mandy Joe was asking for a cost benefit analysis I think you're looking for something broader when pros and cons are include things beyond the financial benefits or costs in any event it is my view that having a standing committee it need not be very large to create a culture that second yeses things that come before you as a matter of policy I mean obviously each of you can do some of this research and do some of that second guessing I know all of you and you're all capable but your time is limited and if you want this to happen you have to create a structure that will make it happen thank you. Thank you for your comment is there any other comment at this time? Yes, back in the far corner. Hi, it's Krista Osterling rising and I just wanted to say it's very interesting hearing what everyone has to say about this as well as everything else because you guys are in the process of trying to set up a new form of government and make it work and it's an incredibly time consuming and exhausting job for you. I know that and I appreciate it. I also wanted to thank George Ryan who made himself accessible to me when I called him and also I wanted to thank him and all the other town councilors who have made their phone numbers available to people so that we can call you and it's a lot more difficult to call the town and have it referred to somebody takes a little more time but anyway, so I just wanted to say I was trying to think about whether I had anything more to say than what everyone else said. I really liked what John said just now and what other people said about the importance of having all viewpoints presented and when you call on experts they tend to be people who consider themselves experts but a point was made and I'm not sure who made it earlier that everybody has expertise of their own. Everybody is an expert and the people who are gonna be affected by whatever the policy is are the ones who should be considered and often that's everybody but not always. I think it's really important and I appreciate the fact some of the councilors went out of their way to say I think it was Mandy and Meg had been on the charter commission and we set it up specifically to make it possible for people to get access to the government and if you narrow it and say, no, you didn't go through the right channels you have to start over, you can do some of that but if you really want community participation if you really want us to be representative government you have to make it reasonably easy for people to get access. If you have so many rules and you immediately turn to the answer that well that you didn't approach it the right way people are just gonna give up so I think it's really, I appreciate the fact that people spoke up to the idea that Mandy in particular said we set it up this way so that people could get access to the government. So I guess that's what I'm basically saying. I'm a member of town meeting advisory committee almost because someone suggested that I should run I wasn't on town meeting I never have been on town meeting but I think that it's really important that whatever form of government we have be accessible to everybody people of low income people with less education people with obviously of other languages it's really important that everyone feel they have a voice in this government and so I appreciate people who stood up for that and I just want to encourage you to do that also I guess I personally would encourage you all to list a phone number that you're accessible at other than the town phone number because that makes it harder to reach you. So mostly that's what I have to say I think that the idea of having a standing committee that's available to assess the impacts to not take the place of the research that any of the committees would do but to supplement it to be helpful is really important and I think it's a good idea I know that I understand that there are more committees than I was aware of and it is difficult filling all the spots on the committees so however you guys wanted to work it out whether you wanted to have it be a subcommittee of another committee or whatever but just the idea that there be a voice and that there be easy access for everybody to the town government is so important and that was one of the ways in which the town council was, the charter was promoted that it was going to make government more accessible I guess we'll find out whether that's true or not but I wanna thank you all for the hard work you're putting in to try to make this work and just encourage you to make it as possible as you can for people to access the government and to have a voice because that's what I have to say. Thank you for your comments. Additional comments at this time? We're back to the council for discussion. Alyssa. I move to refer the content of this report to the new community resources committee for consideration as part of their framework as they develop their work plan not to say to create a new committee but to consider all these pieces of information as they develop their lives. Pat has seconded for their comment on that motion. So if I could, again, I'm just trying to make it super clear that I'm not asking anybody to create a new committee. I'm asking them to consider the particular piece parts since this committee is just about to get off the ground but to me that is exactly the committee we created for the purpose of second guessing. That's what they're there for. I wouldn't have agreed to have that committee if I didn't think they had a purpose and their purpose was very clearly laid out in their charge to examine all of these issues and this will only help them figure that out when they can adopt it or other frameworks as they so choose. I wanna also make clear that I don't like wasting people's time and so the TMAC was created by a town meeting article in fall of 2017. It was not elected until May of 18 which of course was after the charter had passed. Therefore, there were nine people running for nine seats. They were elected and they had no actual function. They never advised a town meeting which was their only function which was to advise a town meeting. They went ahead and held some meetings. They got interested in continuing to have this conversation but it's like we took their time and they didn't really get to do anything with it and so I don't wanna see that happen again and so I would love to see community resources look at this and find ways and they could be some of the first people they call on when they need additional help for something. There's been a motion and a second or there are additional comments. Yes, Evan. Just a question on your motion was for CRC to look at the content of the proposal. Do you mean, I mean the proposal is several pages. Are you talking about the entire proposal or specifically this community impact report framework? I guess I looked at it as just all the material as in isn't this interesting. So for example, I'll use the example of rules. So when we sat down and we were trying to figure out how to deal with public comment, we looked at how other communities were doing public comment. It's like they've already been handed a gift. Community resources has already been handed this gift of a bunch of material they can consider as they're starting to develop their frameworks. Steve. Additional comment. There's a motion on the floor. It's been made and seconded. This be referred to community resources to look at its content to refer to community resources to Margaret, do you want to try reading the motion for me, please? Thank you. To refer the content of this report to the community resources committee to consider the content of all pieces of the proposal and to incorporate into their future work. So that's the motion and seconded, Dorothy? No. I need clarification on the last sentence. Is the motion that CRC incorporate this plan into their work? No, it's to consider including it. It's to offer them this information as being, I think we've all discussed many valuable aspects of it and that we think they should consider it so that when they come back with their first report back to us, we say, hey, we remember that really cool slide. How come you didn't use any of that? That clarifies it, thank you. Yes, Steve? So I'm going to vote no on this, not because I don't believe in the importance of what's up on the slide, but I'm gonna vote no on this because the CRC hasn't met yet and should be allowed to basically create its own culture and to get to know each other. I don't think that we should be requiring them to take this particular action as their first action. I don't believe that this requires action by CRC. This basically is referring this with its ideas for consideration by CRC. It does not ask CRC to take action or even to refer back. Sarah? So I was going to sort of build on what Steve said, I appreciate this. And part of me also says, again, what Alyssa said, if each one of us counselors are not thinking of all of these things in our head every single time, we consider something for action. We're not doing our job. And as someone who was with Lynn and several other people at a goals meeting on after five o'clock on a Friday night, we're working like 60, 70 hours a week on this and we're all strong people. I don't see us burning out and we're working really well together. I just think giving this to a committee that is just forming whose charge was very carefully thought out and we referred it back to them to look at it again. I feel like a lot of the things that that committee states in its charge are very similar to this. And I just, I don't want to refer something that seems like redundant work or just more work to a committee that hasn't even met yet. I just, to me, I'd rather just, I don't know, like maybe vote this yes or no than to refer it. Shall we? Could we invite the people who brought this proposal to take in all this feedback and come back with a proposal that, because I think what we all are agreeing is that there is value in what is being proposed but not in the way that it has been proposed. Alyssa. So, fine, don't vote for my motion but my point is if we don't, then it's dead. Unless you come up with another thing to do with it, it's completely just gone and dismissed and over until somebody comes up with another motion which I'll be happy to hear about but that's what I'm trying to avoid. I'm trying, I don't want the petitioners to go back and work on this again. I don't want to see them again because I'm never going to vote. I'm never going to vote to create a separate committee that does this. That's not going to happen. And so we can keep having that camp conversation at Infinitum. What I'm trying to do is take the best of what they're offering, including their personal resources and saying we can consider it over at this other committee. We're not making that committee do anything but if we just let it die instead, that's fine but I'm not hearing any other alternatives and sending them away to come back with another proposal for another committee, we're going to just have the same conversation about. Don't get it. Kathy and then Andy. Okay, we're looking at a very nice way of framing a way of looking at it. It's not dead, it's in our hands. Just, everyone likes this in terms of this. So there's no reason to not adapt, adopt, to do anything with or without referring this and I'm thinking it's what we're doing in rules. We're looking across 30 different, 50 different towns and saying, boy, I like that idea. I like that idea. They're not having to petition us. We're picking good ideas. So I think CRC can do anything they want with this without us necessarily even referring. It won't die. It's very live and it's got a great chart. Andy. I've been struggling with this because I keep looking at the committee charge for the CRC and it doesn't seem that it really fits within the committee charge. So then it was sort of comes as best coming into description of why it fits within the charge because it gives a framework for the CRC to look at issues that are before that committee but there are other issues that could come before other committees that could benefit from the same framework. And for example, if there was a sustainability proposal that came before this council and it was gonna go to a committee, it would not be going to CRC. It would be going to a different committee. So it just didn't seem to make sense. This referral as opposed to GOL which should take a broader look at the question and it's something that was applicable to all areas of expertise and I guess that's what I've been struggling with. Dorothy. One of the things that was not on the report was the list of the members' names and contact information which would be very, very useful and valuable to, I didn't get printed off when I printed it off. Okay. Good. So with contact information. Yes. Well, I don't have a master email list of anything. So that would be very useful because I think that you would be called upon. Different members would be definitely be called upon to do additional research and to look at issues. Mindy Jo. So between George and I, you can tell the GOL committee doesn't always agree with what GOL should do. I think I'm gonna vote against CRC referral even though the content for what Andy said. I, as we discussed this, I believe having GOL look at this in a holistic way to adopt and figure out how to adopt this content in a good way. And that might be a new committee. It might be having our standing committees adopted. It could be done many different ways. And to have a committee that looks at it not just for the community resources policies because there are gonna be some stuff that get referred to us that don't fall into community resources. And I'm gonna go back to GOL right now is dealing with a public ways delegation thing. We're crafting that policy based on a report from the town manager. So this would be, I see similar to that referral to GOL, the public ways referral that will come back to this council with a policy proposal. That the council talked about through a town manager report but we were told to craft something. So there's a motion on the table right now that this be referred for consideration of its content to the new soon to be appointed if you will community resources committee. There's been a second to that motion. I'm going to call the question. All those in favor, opposed. Is there another motion on the floor? Did you get all that? I'm sorry, Margaret. Yes? Okay. George. I move we refer this to GOL. All right, is there a second? Is there a second? Alyssa. So now I'm really confused because I totally understand. Wait a minute, there's a motion on the floor and I need a second. I don't understand what the full motion is. Second. I don't understand what the full motion is because just like we elaborated too long on my motion refer what to GOL is what I'm asking because we refer to GOL, we delegated to them the idea about the parking and figuring out what we might delegate of our duties to the town manager and not. We agreed, we wanted somebody to look at that. I don't agree that I want there to be this separate committee. So I'm not referring having a separate committee to GOL. I know. So I want to know what you're asking to be referred to GOL because just referring a committee proposal to GOL is not something I'm up for. I'm going to go to the person that made the motion. Thank you. I think what I had in mind was basically you're wording but replacing CRC with GOL. So I don't object to your wording. What I am suggesting is that given that this committee has not even yet met, perhaps the most appropriate would be to give it to GOL. So you're wording just substitute GOL for CRC. Okay, hold on one second. Margaret, would you read the motion the way it's now intended? Well, with same language substituting GOL for CRC, to refer the content of this report to GOL, to consider the content of all pieces of the proposal to incorporate into their future work. How about incorporate into the town council's future work? Is that a friendly amendment? Yes, it is. Okay, the motion's been made. It's been seconded and there's been a friendly amendment. Is there further conversation? Seven. To be annoying, can I just ask that it be read one more time with its amendment? Thank you. To refer the content of this report to the GOL, to consider the content of all pieces of the proposal to incorporate into the town council's future work. When GOL was founded, there were some people who were concerned. And one of the things that many of us said was, we don't want this committee to do or create content. And I believe that to refer this report to GOL would get fall into that trap. So I would be against it. Shalini? I just wanna clarify, I wasn't saying that they should go back and give another idea of a committee, but I was trying to say, instead of thinking in the duality that yes committee, no committee, could we think outside the box and see what are some other ways that this expertise could be channeled, either it's through district level residential committees or so coming up with, based on what you've heard are our challenges and you know the ways you can help, what are some other ways they could come in with a proposal? Pat. Sorry. I'm feeling very strongly that the content of this proposal is critically important to the work of the council. And I feel like in terms of organization and that it fits with the charge of the GOL. And I'm trying to figure out, I think we're still in the process of finding out what our limits and where we can expand our ideas. We're not here creating content for bylaw that somebody else has brought us. We're going to be looking at the intent of this content and seeing how it can further our work as a council and further the work of the community resources committee. And I think that's a valuable and important proposition. Okay. Is there any further conversation on this? Okay, the motion before us is as follows. Margaret, please read the motion. The motion is to refer the content of this report to GOL to consider the content of all pieces of the proposal to incorporate into the town council's future work. Okay, the motion has been made in second. Any further conversation? Call the question. All those in favor, raise your hand. Opposed? Margaret, would you like a roll call vote? No. Okay. So it is referred to GOL. What was the vote? What was the vote? I have eight to five. Can the no votes please raise your hand again? Yeah, it's eight to five. Okay, yeah, it's five. Okay, thank you. It was a different eight to five. It was a different eight to five. It's very important. It is very important. Okay, we're going on to the finance committee charge. This is section seven E of the agenda. Since this charge was first made and approved by the council, the finance committee has continued to meet. It has met many times and will be meeting many, many times between now and the end of June. This particular charge has now been discussed by three different committees. And I guess what I would like to do is have each of those committees speak to the charge. So the first committee that it was referred to was rules of procedure. Alyssa? I don't know how to answer this question because rules of procedure was not referred to finance committee charge. Rules of procedure was asked about the memberships associated that were of non-voting residents. That's what we discussed. We also ended up discussing in passing some term length issues and how terms would roll over and do you have three, two in one year? Do you have all three years, et cetera? That was mentioned in passing, but I felt that it was never referred to us as pure content of the finance committee charge. But maybe somebody who's on both the finance committee and rules could speak about it. Kathy? That would be me. Yeah. So why don't I start just with what we are recommending as a change in the charge? Yes. And then we can get to the second issue, which is more about how these members are interviewed and appointed, which was in both rules and then also in OCA, those two separate discussions. So we're coming back with an amendment to the charge that makes two definite changes. One is it reduces the number of residents, non-voting members from four to three. So that's one change from what you saw before. And then we're expanding their terms to two year terms. And I'll explain how we think that would work first time around. But we thought through the cycles that the council will go through and how important it will be to have continuity on the finance committee, where people really learn the town's finances are familiar with the budget, constraints on the budget, and so having longer terms where they're not coming on and off made sense. And what we're recommending for the first time on is they would start in July. So they would be starting at the beginning of the next budget cycle. We would have put this one to rest. And then the very first time they'd be on for three years, which will have this span the R election cycle so that they will still be on when a new council comes on. So to the extent there's full turnover of finance, we would have some people, but thereafter they'd be renewed for two year terms. So that's the core changer, to go from four down to three and to go to longer terms than the one year terms of the council. And I did do some reformatting, trying to get as close as I could to what GOL has done as the preferred format for charges. It's probably not quite where it should be yet. So some of the other, you've got the track edit changes and the new one, which was saying there is a purpose to the committee and then these are the things it can do, but this was the core thing we were coming back to. Alyssa, is there any other comment from the Rules Committee? So unfortunately I did not produce the Rules Committee report until 10 minutes before y'all walked in the door. And so on page two of that report, which was a separate item not in the big stapled packet, you will see about a quarter of the way down the page. It talked about discussing the length of term and I'm gonna be real blunt. I copied this from another individual's report and I'm not 100% sure we should say that I should have said that we all agreed on any particular thing here because many comments were made, but I'm not sure that one would say that all five of us agreed on any particular thing. For example, I'm not compelled by the, my personally, I'm not compelled by the idea of having non-voting residents stay on the committee longer than counselors, but I don't want to fight about it and I don't care. So, but it's not that we agreed that that was true amongst the five of us. These are just, these are, this is perhaps a less than careful reading on my part as to what we did discuss these ideas. But again, I like, I did end it with, we left the decision to finance committee with possibly GOL weighing in just because they're looking at consistency both across charges and across term length because it's come up, obviously, with our other committees, but I don't feel that rules had strong feelings about that aspect of the whole discussion. Okay. The other committee that discussed this was finance. Andy? Kathy? Oh, yeah, Kathy. Right, you know, the issue we did discuss in rules was how we do the interviews and the appointments. So, and you know, it's, it hit two different committees. So, what? No. So, I'm just gonna start, the way we changed, the only thing we changed in the charge has to do with the number of residents and that their terms would be longer. So we're not talking in this charge about how we would find these residents and select them. Fine. So, the charge that is before you both in track change form and then also in final form describes the number of residents as being three, not four, and sets the term for residents as two years, although the initial term would be for three years, effective July 1, 2019. Is there a motion? Yes. Question. Maybe you covered this, Kathy. Was, what was the reason for changing from four to three? I think the primary reason is thinking about the difficulty getting of nine people together on a regular basis and that three people, if we could find people with complimentary interests would be enough, you know, to get this. So it wasn't a long discussion other than getting nine people together is harder than eight. And the old finance committee was seven. So we're already at a bigger group than in the past. So it wasn't strong. It was that three would bring a lot to the committee. I mean, we could always go back to four again at some point in the future, but an eight person group is a lot of people. Okay, other additional questions. So the motion is, there's actually two. One is to accept the changes in the charge as to approve the revised finance committee charge as presented. Is there a second? It's shallowing. Okay, further conversation. I have very minor, oops, very minor point. On the bottom of the first page, responsibility, the finance committee shall, you have to just cross out the words that repeat, finance shall, there, that's it. Absolutely. And so some of this is what GLL has been very good at, cleaning up wording. So some of it was just copy and paste for the other unless I made a mistake on this, yeah. There are two shalls, yeah. Okay. Yes, Evan. I'm a little confused here. We have two motions in front of us. One is to approve of the charge. And then the second one is to then send the charge to GLL for formatting and editing. That seems to be backwards. It seems though it should go to GLL and then the final edited version from GLL would be the one that council would vote on. The changes that were changed, the only changes that we're dealing with tonight are reducing from four to three and the terms. We're not dealing with format, et cetera. Yes. But the motion is to approve this charge. So I guess as chair of the GLL, if this is gonna come to GLL for formatting, I think what would be helpful to GLL is some sort of straw poll that the substantive changes being recommended by finance committee are being supported by the council, but that the charge itself is not being adopted tonight so that GLL knows when it comes to it for formatting that those substantive policy changes that finance have recommended are going to stay when GLL brings it back after it's formatted. The other, yes, Mr. Brockman. The other possibility. The other possibility is to, you probably were gonna say this is approved, it's subject to final revisions by GLL. Yes. Exactly. Yes. I just want to clarify that this, the changes do not have anything to do with the appointment of non-voting residents. It does not. Okay, so the motion, yes. I just wanna, I wanna ask, I do wanna actually ask the substantive thing that's not about the method of appointment because that's covered by the simple statement that it's already there about the town council shall appoint and then we'll have a separate conversation about how that actually happens. So that doesn't affect this, but I was wondering, I know this came up in passing at some committee meeting I was at. What we were doing with SME status for this committee because you can't have SME status. Normally town councilors don't have SME status, but when you have a mixed committee, you're supposed to assign SME status to a committee. So isn't this supposed to say something along the lines of the committee has been assigned SME special municipal employee status, although counselors cannot avail themselves of it legally? Margaret, would you speak to that please? Yeah, Alyssa's correct in that the committee is assigned SME status. So whether counselors sit on the committee or not, counselors are not permitted to have, to be special municipal employees in any way shape or form. So that just needs to be made clear. And I think someone suggested that there could be a note added to the charge that would clarify the role of the counselors. And you know, regardless of the SME status of the committee, the counselors would not be SME designated. That's what that left, Alyssa, to be D, to be, it wasn't so much to be determined, but someone had to figure out the right wording to put. Right. Keel-El can do that one. Okay, so the only, I'm sorry, there was one other sensitive thing. I believe that even if it's a one-time deal and you, what I'm about to say, it's a one-time deal and you don't really need it on the charge moving forward forever, many charges talk about when they're first created, they have a little extra section that really doesn't apply anymore five years in. This idea of the first term being a three-year term, that's not mentioned anywhere on here. That needs to be included if it's gonna happen, I think. I think it's weird. I'm not. It's in the draft charge under appointments. Yep, it's there. Maybe. Okay, got it. Again, that's something that I would expect to you all to clean up. Okay. All right, so the motion is to approve the revised finance committee charge as presented, subject to review by GOL. Did I get it right? Is there a second? Clarifying question. Is there a second? Yes, now, clarifying question. And the charge has been changed so that it's from four residents to three residents. Yes, it's four to three and it changes the term. Okay, motion's been made and seconded. Any further conversation? Call the question. All those in favor? Opposed? That is, that takes care of those motions all in one. We're going on to the GOL recommendation for the town committee charge updates. Nandy Jo. I had to get my things up. Okay, so in our last report of March 12th, I indicated we had a recommendation in there that would come up later and that recommendation was that the governance committee voted unanimously to recommend that the town council request that all town committees that were created at least five years ago were either charged and if changes were sought to that charge that they reformat the charge into the new template when requesting the changes and then submit the proposed revised charge to the town council to adopt or reject after review by GOL. The review by GOL would be intended to be to make sure the template was adequately, it was adequately formatted into the correct template. The GOL committee makes this suggestion in an attempt to start the process of conforming all committee charges to the template that this council requested we create. And after discussion felt that seeking, asking the committees themselves to look at their charges would be a good idea, especially for those, we put that five year deadline on it because we felt it would be a good idea for those committees that existed longer than five years to just look at the charge and see if what they're doing now conforms to what the charge was, maybe their purpose has sort of evolved over time. And if not the committee, the GOL committee thought it would be good for every committee to look at their charge at least every five years anyway. So this was part of why this recommendation came into effect. We know that this creates work for committees, that is the con against this recommendation that we came up with to report all the pros and cons, that it's not necessarily something committees might want to do, it's not necessarily something committees particularly have time to do. And it's not necessarily something committees would do on their own without nudging from someone. And so we recognize even if the council adopts this recommendation that there's probably someone out there that needs to, that we might need to as a council assign a sort of nudger, which might be the GOL, of following up with committees and saying, hey have you looked at your charges if this is what the town council does? And there are multiple ways to go about if this recommendation is accepted, that the GOL could be a resource to the committees for their looking at their charges in terms of getting it into the template. That the committees might not have to do it on their own, there's probably also other ways to offer resources from the council to do this. We did not recommend a specific timeframe for a reason. One was that that meant that the work of the council and the GOL in reviewing any proposed changes to charges would be spread out over time. If we said, and we recommend that the council say, review them and submit changes by October one, then come October one, we might be looking at 70 different charges. And we didn't think that would be wise. So we thought we could put it on the committees to come up with a timeframe for themselves. And then when they come back to us as a council, it would come back in a little bit at a time. No big deluge of here's a whole bunch of charges. Another reason for not recommending a specific timeframe. And if committees don't have changes, if they say, we love this charge, we're not, this recommendation does not force them to put it into the template that we have come up with. So if they choose that they don't want any changes, they can just say, we're good. And they don't have to put it into the template. That's, I welcome add additions from any of our, my fellow GOL committee members if I missed something on that. Are there additional comments from the GOL committee? So I have a clarifying question. So what you're asking tonight is that we recommend that town committees do this. Okay. And that if they have a change in their charge, they come back to us. Okay. So, and then you talked specifically about technical assistance in doing this. If I were chairing a previous committee I chaired, I would look at this and I'm going, oh my gosh. What do all these terms mean? How does each of these relate? Is there a matrix that says, well, if you're ad hoc counsel then this applies, then this applies. So I need a lot of guidance. I'd need definitions, I'd need a matrix. And then I'd come to the fact that in fact the town manager at the time appointed that committee and gave us a charge. And what am I allowed to do as chairing that committee or the seven people of that committee? What am I allowed to do with that charge? If this is the charge that was given and this is the charge that we swore we would, you know, uphold the rules of the town. So I, to me the idea of I want to understand what we're asking the council to do, but then I also really need to understand what the parameters are in which a committee is allowed to do this. And what are the, what do all these terms mean? I mean, I know I can go to the charter, but I'm pretending I'm John Cue public, you know. I just want to build on that. It's not clear to me what problem we're trying to solve here. So if I started to read through all the charges and I said, I just don't have the boggiest idea what this committee is about. But when I read most of them, I had a pretty good sense. So if we think, for example, do we think some committees have overlapping jurisdiction? And what we're trying to do is clean that up or purposes that aren't relevant anymore. But that would be us looking across them. And not, you know, I guess I think if a committee wants to expand their charge, change their charge, they would try to figure out how to do that. But I don't know why we were, would be going out to all of them to ask them to review their charge and see if it still works for them. And you know, do we think there's a problem as opposed to it's nice to have things look about the same, but you know, if I can read them and understand them at some point, they'll all look the same. So I just not sure what problem we're trying to solve on why we're doing this. Dorothy. I can see a good deal of common sense in the proposal. But like Kathy says, it would be a huge job over a lot of committees. I think perhaps if you held maybe with working with the town manager some workshop in which you put out a call and two committees and asked if they were interested in attending one to discuss the committee charge. I mean, I think things change over time and that things can get really, you know, barnacles can be all over the place. There's nothing wrong with a reexamination, but I agree with Lynn that since we were getting used to all these words and terms now, but a lot of people may have been doing a great job with their committee without even thinking of any of these words or concepts for a long time. So, but I think it's worth maybe making it available for some of them to come in for a refresher of some kind. There's a hand back there. Sure. When you get a prize for sticking around. Hi, William Cason, 32 Golden Rod Circle. I'm actually here in my capacity as the acting chairman of the Public Art Commission, and I can say having been in the room for some of this discussion already, it's prompted me to raise this question with the Public Art Commission. And in fact, we did revisit briefly our charge which refers to the select board, which is no longer in existence. So from that very basic level, I think that there's some of this work that does need doing. And I would say that we, at least I would be excited to rethink our charge potentially. So this is an opportunity. So I just thought I would share that with you briefly. Thank you for that comment. Please let the record show we were flexible on public comment. Thank you. There are other comments on this. I have to be honest and say, I see serious value in this. I just would need some technical assistance, George. I think that we're probably not going to have a lot of people knocking on our door. Though this is exciting to hear, we need to have one. So I think we're going to see what's going to happen. If the council feels that this is agrees with the Madam President that this is a good idea, but let's play it out and see. I don't think there are going to be many responses. I think most committees are not even going to pay attention to this request. I would prefer we actually order them to do it, but I know that won't go far. So we're simply requesting. So let us request. Let's see if we get some responses and then we'll come back to you and let you know what happened. Thank you. Alyssa. So I said this, what, three meetings ago? I don't understand why we have, I would love to be pointed to chapter inverse in the charter as to why we have the right to tell committees that are established through previous bylaws, that are established by mass general law, that were established by previous town managers, previous select boards, by the cultural council at the state level versus what the cultural council might think it wants to do. They have state requirements that they have to do. What does this have to do with the town council? Who are we to tell other committees that aren't our committees? We are not an executive branch. None of these people report to us. They're not our committees. We don't own them. We don't appoint to them. We don't own their employees that may or may not be liaisons. What are we thinking? What does this have to do with us? I'm just completely flummoxed that, yes, it would be nice if they all matched up nicely and it would be wonderful if they all actually had the references to how they were established, whether it was by town meeting action or general bylaw or whatever, and many of them are missing that information. But this is, if the town council is concerned about this, then it feels to me that the way that you manage that is you ask the town manager as one of his goals to have his staff look at that, and maybe they could say they could get help from GOL because GOL has been putting so much effort into an effective way to do this. It's been the first time somebody's really looked at the templates in a while. We've done it in the past in a very catch-us-catch-can sort of way. So having that expertise is great, but you said you could order them. You can't even ask them. Who are you to tell the conservation commission to look at their charge? Even to reformat it. I have no understanding of this. Darcy. I just want to say that I appreciate the fact that the GOL committee came to us with a recommendation for our action because I think that was the right thing to do. But I would, I have said before at other meetings that I also think that this is not really necessary. And I agree with Kathy and Alyssa's comments. Shalini. Could we get a sense from the GOL committee? What was their thinking about this? Like, do they have a response to these two questions? I'll try. One of them was, we as a GOL were tasked by the town council to come up with a template for committee charges, not for council committee charges, but for committee charges for the entire town. We did that. And as part of that template, one of our thoughts was, hey, we have one. Wouldn't it be great if all the committees used them? And how do we go about getting the committee templates charges, the charges uniform throughout town so that a resident looking for what does this committee do has a general structure to know, oh, this one's council, this one's town. Right now, they don't really say that in any specific way. I think that goes to something councilor Brewer, Alyssa, was urging, in terms of coming up with a template, us to have is a commonality of all committee charges so that a resident when looking at committee, what do committees do has a predictability about where they would find how many voting members there are and who appoints them and what they do and what their purpose is. And as anyone looking at the committee charges now can see, it's all over the place. And now we have a template. And so the GOL committee felt this was the, I don't wanna say most logical, unanimously voted to recommend that we request, not order, request the committees do this to try and move us more quickly to a standard committee charge. If the request doesn't happen, the way I believe committees would get moved to charges is whenever potentially the town manager or the council just takes one up and does it. There's no other mechanism for moving committees to the template. In terms of the authority, you could consider this a measure. We can adopt measures, we can adopt orders, we have the ability to form committees of the town. We already did that as a council with the ECAC committee. So we're not ordering anyone to do anything. We're making a request. If that request is felt to be more proper to the town manager to request, then we could reword the motion. We haven't made the motion yet, but it can certainly be reworded to the town council requests, the manager request that. I mean, we can figure out a way to word the motion, but we felt that this was something that should be looked at. George. Oh, Evan, I'm sorry. If I can just add slightly to what Mandy Jo said, because I think the conversation we had was, it would be great if we had this uniformity, if we had this consistency for the council, for GOL, and for the public who might be interested in charges, the one or two people who might. And so just to give you a little bit of the backstory, I think the first conversation we had was, well, perhaps the easiest way to do this since we know the terms and we know everything is GOL can just reformat all of these charges. And we stepped back from that for two reasons, one of which is that's a tremendous amount of work, but the second one is that because there's such diversity in the charge formats, it would necessarily require GOL to interpret some charges, potentially, right? Because there's some aspects like purpose that exist in our charge template, but not necessarily in other charges. And so we would now be writing the purpose statement for a committee, which seemed inappropriate for us to do. It seemed like the committee would be the one to do that. And so we did consider the different ways we can do this and this seemed like the best option. It then occurred to us that it has sort of the corollary benefit of having committees be able to sort of reexamine what they're doing and whether or not their charge still holds up. I mean, I think the thought is that some of these committees, and I don't think that we're talking about MGL may, I don't think anyone's thinking the planning board or ZBA, but I think we're thinking of some of these committees of the town that have existed for a while, perhaps times have changed, perhaps they've recognized that there are things they'd like to do that would be appropriate for them to do, but are included in their charge. It seemed like an added benefit. And so I don't think the purpose of it was necessarily for them to reexamine their charge. It was an added benefit that that would be a useful conversation for many committees to have that have existed for a while. Pat. I also think that we do need to look at committee structures and organization, which is an organization as part of our charge. There are committees that are not functioning, that there are committees that can be combined. And I'm not even saying that's the most important thing to happen, but it's something that I think that we need to look at over the course of this year and really begin to think about how do we make sure that committees get the support they need and also are doing the work that we've asked them to do in a way that really supports us. Shallonee. Yeah, I'm just looking at some of the committees right now and they have missing information regarding what is the tenure? Like if I was a resident and wanted to know like how long is the commitment? So there's a lot of missing information I think. So it would be helpful to have a consistent template across the board, across all committees. Alyssa. I don't tonight would be helpful. I just still do not understand. And it's not a measure. We can't just order anything in the town because we make a measure. We can't say, well, we want an RFP to be established for a playground on the common. Well, yeah, I guess we could do that as a measure, but we don't actually have any right to compel it. We don't have any right to compel that the conservation commission, or as it sounds like you're saying less important committees, things that aren't historical commission, conservation commission, other things that you literally on GOL have no idea why they exist or not. The idea that you would conceive of rewriting their charges for them is just blows my mind that that was originally part of the conversation. So I understand that you've come away from that, but it's not up to you to decide whether or not these committees are functioning. It's not up to the council to decide that. So I understand offering them help, totally get that. Being able to say, look, we now have charges. Well, they aren't all consistent yet, but all our charges, including GOLs, could be consistent. Look at this, this is really great. Would you like some help with this? Totally understand that. Or asking the town manager, you know, I think there are some committees that could really consider being put together. I'm seeing some, that's another thing we could ask about. We can't, no one has yet to explain why they think we can make people do things. Dorothy. This is a question for the town manager. What Pat was mentioning, are they doing what they should do? The term my husband used to use was a performance audit. So my question is, have you, the town manager, ever done something like a performance audit on the committees to see, are they in fact doing what they're supposed to be doing? No, not in my tenure. Okay. Pat. Number one, people start conversations everywhere and usually you start with the most rigid idea and move from that. I think it's important that we take out some of the language that I'm hearing here. You wanna make them, you wanna do this, or that committee's not working. I heard William say, this is an opportunity. Now he's only one person on one committee, but that's what drove us. To offer an opportunity for all of us to look at what we're doing and why we're doing it. And it is voluntary. We can request. We can do lots of things probably, except impeach the president. But, and then I don't mean Lynn. Oh. Did you, I wanted to worry about that. Excuse me. Anyway, I think you- My moment. You got her. I think we need to, I guess I'm trying to understand what the opposition to this committee is. And believe me, I don't agree with my colleagues about everything. But I think that we need the opportunity to work with committees, not monitor them, not have the town manager tell us who's doing their job and isn't. That's not what it would be about. It would be about what are the ideas that you're working on. Is there content, not the agenda, is there content that would, like we talked about with CRC or whatever it is, is there content that would enliven your committee? Is there, you know, and there's the plus and it's less important to me, sorry, that everything looked the same. But the idea that we're trying to work to better a system, I think is being dismissed and seen as a dictatorship. And it's not that, not with me on it. Indi. I'm almost tempted to make a motion so we can move this along and I'm going to therefore make a motion and it's going to be part of the motion on the motion of the meeting. And that is a motion to approve the recommendation to request all town committees that were created at least five years ago, review their charge and if changes are sought, reformat the charge into the new template. I second it. And I'll speak to it real quickly. What I'm trying to do is to avoid the part that says and submit the proposed revised charge to the town council to adopt or reject after review by the GOL. Because I think that gets to some of the discussion that we've been having and this makes it entirely a request. And if they choose to follow through, we welcome that. Does that motion allow the committee to change their charge? I think that the problem is that it was noted and I didn't want to go into all of the detail of rewriting it, but charges were created in very different ways. And if the charge was created by the town manager, I'll give an example. Then the decision as to what to do will be up to the town manager. Once we've made this request and the committee has taken that action, it would seem logical that whoever the appointing authority, which in fact could be this council for some committees would take that request into due course, but I didn't want to go into all of that in the new motion. So just to follow up on that. So once they do this, it seems that they at least need to go back to the appointing authority. Whether it's the council, the town manager, I mean, if one of the state created committees wants to change its charge, God bless them, but I don't think so. So it seems like it has to go back to somebody to the appointing authority. Alyssa. So could we just slightly, and I know we're smithing on the fly at this hour, but slightly alter that because what we want, I think sounds like, and that's those strong words at the end of this motion that have been removed are exactly what I was talking about earlier. So since those are gone, if we say that we're created at least five years ago, reformat their charge into the new template and review, I mean, something along the lines of we want them to reformat it. I mean, it's just that simple. We would really like them to do that. That'd be super great, even if they don't do anything content-wise. Then beyond that, because that's the accessibility for the public part, right? You can see how long the commitment is. You can see that. So even if they don't change the content, they just move it around. That would be awesome. Then as they're doing that, if they review it, then say something to the effect of understanding that if they want to change any of the content, they're going to have to do a little more work than just cutting and pasting to put it into the template, although that'd be good, because they may not even know where their thing came from. And so they would start with their appointing authority, I think, to figure that out. I suggest you withdraw the motion. We can start over. I can do that, or I can just say. Okay, go ahead. Try it. I mean, there's two possibilities. The one is I could withdraw the motion. The other is to add language. So instead of saying, Jane, just charge into the new template and submit the proposed revised charge to the appointing authority. That would be. Right. Yes? I was the second, and I agree with that. So I second that one. Steve. So I'm not so sure why it would be the appointing authority, and in some cases, we have mixed appointing authorities, like the the ECAC. Right. Wouldn't it be the creator? Should go back to that. The creator is your appointing. No. The ultimate authority. The ultimate authority. The ultimate authority. The ultimate appointing authority. Yeah, I think if they go to the appointing authority, and the appointing authority looks at it and says, oh, I'm not sure that's what the council expected, they would know enough to come back to us. There is a motion on the floor. The motion is to approve the recommendation to request all town committees that are created at least five years ago, review their charge, and if changes are sought, reformat the charge into the new template when requesting changes and submit the proposal, the proposed revised charge to the appointing authority. That is the motion, and that's been seconded. Is there further conversation? Yes, Alyssa. Can we add the word since this motion can live on after us without the title above it, can we add somewhere in the motion that it's the GOL's template? Because otherwise that's not listed. Into the new GOL template. Yeah. Okay. Just show ownership. That's in, so the change, reformat the charge into the new GOL template. That's a friendly amendment. Agreed. Anything else? Does anybody need the charge re-read? Okay, all those in favor? Okay, good. Thank you. Middle school, I'm sorry, was there a no? Oh, I'm sorry, there was a no. I'm so sorry. I apologize. Were there any opposed, any abstained? Okay. Margaret? Yes. Okay, got it. Middle school roof funding. This is a straightforward referral to the finance committee. Okay, we have a motion and we have a second. The motion is to refer the authorization to the finance committee. I'm sorry. Can you repeat who moved and seconded? Sarah. Sarah. Sarah. Sarah. I can move it. I can move it. I can move it, Sarah. I actually moved it. That's fine. Okay. Yes. I just want to make sure this is a referral that they would then bring back within the 60 days to a council meeting for a council vote with a recommendation. I'm just trying to clarify that it wouldn't just disappear into finance. It would come back with a recommendation. Right. The answer is yes. And it's sort of this new territory for us because this is a procedure that as a council we're not familiar with just a 32nd explanation. The way it's worded of course is because it was created for towns because the select boards, the select boards have the authority to make a decision if this board doesn't do anything within 60 days or town meeting doesn't do anything than 60 days, then it's binding. But we are in a new path and we have to figure out when we get future requests like this, which we will likely get every year or almost every year that we have something we know how to deal with. Yes, Darcy. This might be a question for Andy. I just wanted to know whether part of the funding is or what's been done to study and to fund solar readiness of the middle school roof or maybe the town manager knows this. I don't know the answer to that question but the school committee will be here on or the superintendent will be here on Thursday night reviewing the regional school district budget might be a good time to pose that question then. And my understanding is that question was raised Darcy so I can follow up on it. So it's in redoing the roof, think about the future. And it's also they're thinking about light in the classrooms that don't have any as in tubes that would bring light in so it's not just any old roof. There was discussion about that but this is a perfect question to bring up on. Absolutely. Thursday night. Yes, listen. Could we consider adding to the motion or if not tonight because we're exhausted another time soon that when things like this come in and even though I've looked at them year after year I don't remember what we call the thing other than the MGL reference and the school committee authorizing borrowing is that it automatically be sent to finance committee because I hate to see anything. Why does it have to come through here first? I mean like please let's just send as soon as these come in from the school district let's just send them over there and let them send it to us right away because there is no value add to us having to make this referral. Okay. I would just mention that what rules will take up tomorrow and one of our draft rules has that exact recommendation on it. So it might end up in the council rules formally. And it is what other towns do. You know that the this kind of thing just goes. Yeah, exactly. I have a comment. I think if that's the case it would be useful to in the minutes or somewhere to say that this has happened because the other members of the council who are not in the finance committee might be interested to know this as they might have something to add on it. So there might be part of either the president's report or the town manager's report when something's been automatically referred to a committee. Okay, thank you. Okay, there's a motion on the floor. The motion is to refer the authorization to the finance committee. It's been made in seconded. It's the further conversation. Seeing none, all those in favor. Okay, so moving back to our agenda. We're now going to the appointments. You've received two memos. One is the appointments of the resource, community resource committee. And I wanna make sure that I point out the eagerness of 10 people on the council to serve on this committee. The charge, however, is only for five. And so I have appointed five, but asked the committee in within their first couple of meetings or so to discuss whether or not they see options for expansion. And just for the, in the sake of full disclosure I've attached the present status of various people who have been on various counselors who have been on various committees and or yet on committees to be appointed. Is there any question on the appointment to the community resources committee? Yes, Steve. Yeah, so I don't see how the committee could be expanded because the only other option would be seven or nine. Then you have a majority of the council. Seven you have a majority of the council, which is, that's the council then. That's one of the debates that goes on. Kathy particularly is the person that has raised this. And so maybe you wanna speak to what you found. In researching something else and like why would one be reading this? I found some instances of other towns that had a subcommittee where the number of people on it were a quorum of the council. You know, we're larger. They'd made a larger one and the AG said as long as when they're meeting they stay within the jurisdiction of the committee. It's not considered a council meeting. It's considered, and so they explicitly said, you know, it was a nine-person member and they had a seven-person finance committee. You know, I mean, it's really a, you know, so we could do it. You know, the question is, do you wanna do it or not? But you could do it. So sometimes they've made big committees, I think probably because a bunch of people wanted to be on it and the committee's jurisdiction was large. Right. Steve. Nope. Okay. Any further questions? Okay. Then moving on to the audit committee. There's also an memo there. I'm sorry, I should have announced the councilors appointed to the community resources. They are Councilor Andy Steinberg, Sarah Schwartz, Pat D'Angeloz, Dorothy Pam, and Steve Schreiber. And then on the audit committee is Mandy Jo Hannake, Pat D'Angeloz, and Dorothy Pam. And let me just add that I would like to come to this meeting, but I didn't wanna point myself. Okay. Moving on, next agenda item. Any questions on those? All right. Next agenda item is committee reports and the finance committee. We have no additional report that hasn't already been offered. Rules of procedure. First, I wanna thank the rules of procedure committee for putting up with my unavailability due to various illnesses of myself and my family members and Kathy has taken over as vice chair and everyone else has pitched in and done a huge amount of work and I'm nowhere near caught up with what they're doing. So I'm just kind of going along for the ride at this point. However, I take responsibility for the fact that I didn't write a particularly cogent but hopefully full of information report which you received this evening. There are actually two pieces. One is the committee report rules procedure town council on the letterhead. The other is a little conceit I started when we first started doing this that was a recommended action for town council. So basically rules of procedure is continuing to do all the wonderful things we do which are described at the end of page three in terms of the member of times we've met and the various things we've been working on. But this report is focused on two issues which were referred to us by town council. One was referred, they're both referred to us on February 25th. One was in regards to the non voting resident members of finance committee and what rule because the charter said rule would be defined around appointing those and the other was associated with liaisons. Several of you expressed interest in hey, when are we gonna get going on liaisons and so I did not provide tonight as I had originally promised my group I would. The list of liaisons that the select board had before but you have seen some of that associated with the select board's long report from November that we saw at the December 3rd town council meeting because I know y'all remember everything we talked about at our first town council meeting which also included a whole bunch of committee charges but talking about the different kinds of committees that might have liaisons and also more importantly I think first is what is that role of those liaisons. So that starts at the bottom of page two of this report where we had the conversation about how liaisons were not actually serving as members of committees. So for example, especially with something like school committee or library trustees which are specifically called out in the charter if we were to have a liaison to go there from the town council we would be making it perfectly clear amongst our own shared culture and also as we went to their committee that we're not sitting at the table with them being the sixth member of their committee. We're not serving on their committee. We're simply a conduit of information. We're also focused more on committees that might be bringing us stuff to work on at some point like say zoning subcommittee of the planning board or say something going on with the school's project. So it was phrased well here by Cathy it should be to provide early alerts and bring information back to the council would be the role of the liaison and not to serve as an additional committee member. So my new intention is to recreate the chart that the select board which was just a moment in time that we always placed on the back of our agenda but also would reflect the rest of the committees that we have in town and start looking at priorities which things have we been feeling the need to be more connected to and which things might be discussed later. And of course we don't want anybody to feel left out but there's no way we're all going to everybody else's committees. As I think I probably made clear earlier in a different conversation. So that's something that I hope the council will talk about that the idea was we'd have this chart you guys could look at it and say oh those are all the committees out there. Oh those are ones that the select board liaisons too. Oh those are ones that haven't had liaisons in years. Oh those don't even function anymore. And then could you could all think about as our president has done with us in the past. Ooh I'd really like to be on that one. I'd like to be on that one. And then we'll have to figure out the process of how we decide who gets what. But now that we've got a whole bunch of other committees we're all, we've all been assigned to. We have a better sense I think of our individual workloads and what time we'll have left to do things. So that's an in progress work. The other item is on the finance committee non-voting residents which has turned out to be so much work. And for so many different committees to talk about and outreach communications. And appointments we'll be talking about that as well tonight and as I point out in the middle of the page on page one it's important to note that the finance committee shares two members with the five member rules procedures. Town council president was at the rules meeting. She's on the finance committee. And outreach communications and appointments also known as OCA shares two members. So there's all this nice overlap but yet at the same time we're kind of wearing different hats depending on the circumstance. Which if you get a chance to read both this report and the OCA report later you will find that I voted two different ways wearing two different hats. Just to prove that you can be different things under different circumstances. Also that you can take several weeks to think about something and maybe wish you had voted differently. But so you know life is just an unfolding box of chocolates when it comes right down to it. What rules eventually decided was a little complicated from the standpoint that because OCA which I am a member of has to this point not chosen to try and tell you every single week the two or three hours of deliberations we've had every single week about how we're getting to the point we're getting with the process of bringing you appointments rather than the one off type things like board of license commissioners. Therefore the other people on rules who aren't on OCA didn't know what that process was. So it was kind of hard to explain succinctly what we recommended associated with everything. But what the final upshot seems to have been is that we ended up with a vote of four, zero, one meaning one abstention to support the president's suggestion that the which the finance committee seemed already to be in favor of at that point to when it says that the town council as we just said in the charge the town council appoints the non voting resident members of the finance committee. What that process would look like on that four, zero, one vote rules is it would look like the process that the president and finance committee members said they wanted which was that the finance committee chair or their designee would be the person who actually interviewed the applicants. The members of the finance committee who were counselors would know what the entire pool of applicants was although they would not be able to say their names out loud because if they did say their names then their names would become public and we are attempting to balance both transparency and privacy concerns because some people have told us they will not apply if their names are made public. And so but rather it would be similar to the outreach communications and appointments of the OCA process but instead of being done by the designee of OCA because only one counselor can be in the room in order to allow the interviews to be private it would be the finance committee chair or their designee who would actually do those interviews and then bring the names of the exact number of openings that need to be filled that they have somebody to fill them with to the finance committee then the finance committee would bring a recommendation to the town council as to who those members would be. This is different from the OCA process in that OCA has a designee that's a town council that does the interview but then it goes to OCA to find out what those names are that are being brought forward to not speak of all the other applicants again but to know what the pool was but not speak of it publicly. And then to bring then OCA normally would bring you those appointments that's what OCA will be doing at some point associated with planning board zoning board of appeals ranked choice voting participatory budgeting but finance committee is confident that they are different enough that they need to be able to appoint their own members. I was not particularly personally for example compelled by that argument because I thought well then why not have planning board chair appoint planning board members. But the reason I ended up voting for it is because I said well you're following the OCA process that you're following a process that I can agree with following a process and I had some input to that process. I'm not particularly thrilled with the outcome but I would have lost the vote anyway and which is another reason I went ahead and voted for it. So rules thought that it made sense that in this rather particular kind of committee just like we have this odd energy committee not that the people on it are odd of course but that it's constructed in an odd way and that it's going to have the town manager appoint town counselors to it rather than the council president appoint town counselors to it. That finance committee is yet another hybrid sort of thing that's different than other things. There's an argument to be made that is it enough different or is it different and so the rules committee decided it was enough different that the finance committee president should or the finance committee chair or their designee as designated by the finance committee should be doing the interview and then the finance committee itself should be bringing those names here. But what that also means is that other options on the table would have been we could have set up a rule that said the town council president could do it but we didn't consider that for very long that wasn't something that anybody was particularly behind and another option would have been to have the finance committee chair or designee do the interviews but then have it shift over to the OCA process but that didn't happen either instead it was staying with the finance committee. So OCA is basically out of this conversation except to provide the same framework of the standpoint of not having names that have been talked about publicly unless they're the actual names that are being brought forward and that it's then the finance committee who's having the discussion about the names that have been brought forward by the finance committee chair slash designee who did the interviews before it comes here and in all these cases when those names are brought forward they are being brought forward to posted meetings so at that point names will be made public they do have to be on the open meeting law list of topics so it is still possible that someone will get named as a finalist for a position and if the committee says no that person potentially will be frustrated because they are not actually brought all the way forward to council just as when their names are brought forward to council council may say no and that so therefore that person's name's been out there but we've avoided in both the OCA process and the finance committee's tracking of the similar process from what they expressed to us at rules that they were interested in also maintaining that level of privacy until the point where it could no longer be maintained. Dorothy. So the finance chair does interviews does the finance chair then bring only the correct number of people so that when we meet, I've lost my voice when we meet in public meeting and the public is there they will not hear a discussion of this candidate versus that candidate they will hear a discussion these names have been brought forward by the chair and he gives us why they're good and we vote them up individually or as a slate up or down individually or as a slate which is well rules hasn't developed in detail so we could get drag another committee into this but from another aspect but traditionally how that is done is as a slate but it is entirely possible that someone sitting here of the 13 could say oh my word I've totally worked with that person and I can't possibly support doing this and then would but assuming they weren't having an actual conflict of interest just an experience they could potentially ask to carve something off or we could discuss that as a group because we've not had that hasn't come up yet in terms of like board of licensed commissioners nobody said I like two but not three of them so that could potentially happen and so that part of the process has not been delineated because it doesn't seem quite like just now speaking off the top of my head that if the finance committee chair bought five people that the finance committee would say that they could say that but by the time it got to council it seemed unlikely that you would have anything other than a slate. Are there questions? Sarah. Okay. Proceed. So in order to be fair to original nominees it's been suggested by Oka that when nominees are first brought back in this case Oka would get nominees first. What we had originally thought was that we would go to chairs of the committee and ask them if there are any special qualifications or special skills that their committee or board felt that they needed a nominees to round out and make stronger their committee, right? So before anybody saw CAFs on our committee we would first have a framework of things we were looking for. In order to keep people's names private when the original slate is brought forward the committee still may not mention names. You may say I don't think I want the slate because I think it does not fit into certain parameters in which case the interview designee would then have to go back and do things again and then bring forth different names or we would start the process again. And then in the process that Oka is thinking because we bring things to you then when we bring names forth here of course then things become public but just to let you know that also here it's the same check and balance. Anybody on the town council can say nope I think this needs to go all the way back. So that's kind of what through talking with town attorney and looking at open meeting law is something that we've sort of come to. Pat. I have a comment. While I think the people on the finance committee are special I don't think the committee itself is special and I don't think that you should be selecting your own people as a committee it should have gone through Oka. So I'm really disappointed. Darshi, did you have a comment? I just wanna respond to Pat. We haven't actually adopted that policy yet. It is a policy that probably needs discussed a policy recommendation that needs discussed as a full council that whatever policy it is will have to be included in the rules of procedure per the charter. And so whether it gets discussed now at another meeting at some point it will being a recommendation will be included in the rules which will come before us to formally vote. Alyssa. So really I was telling you what the report said that you were frantically trying to read while I was telling it to you because you didn't get it in enough time but the separate piece says that the recommended action tonight would be whether it's a formal motion or not is to refer the rules of procedure ad hoc committee 3519 recommendation under blah blah blah blah blah to addressing the appointment of finance committee members of the public who shall have a voice but no vote to OKA to consider and for OKA to make their recommendation to the full town council because the idea was rules was gonna look at it because it said there could be a rule and that eventually we will certainly have a rule and our formal rules but this felt like in order to get ready for July 1st even though we're gonna have the rules done before then too we didn't wanna compress the timeframe necessarily too tight for the finance committee appointments so whichever way the finance committee appointments get made they making that decision on a more of a temporary basis as to how this would work this time seemed important to continue forward even though no one's really expecting these members now to start until July 1st that still involves time schedule them for appointments and then for somebody to review which of them are being brought forward before it comes to the council so rules did its task and then OKA needs to weigh in which as it turns out had a meeting today and therefore has a report that includes this information because we are working in real time here on the town council and then I would assume that the full town council would go home and after asking a whole bunch more questions that'll keep us here till at least midnight we would go home and think about it for the next town council meeting and say now that I've had a chance to digest both those points of view and the things that all the other brilliant counselors I serve with said now here is how I think we should do it because rules is not making the rule just to make the rule, they're making a recommendation as to what we think fits in with the rest of the rules concept. Kathy. I'll just, I mean, Shalini is urging me to say something so I will across the room. You know, the thinking about this and I'm fine with having a lot more discussion about it thinking about it was partly from my own experience when I was a research director and having to hire people with technical or a range of skills, a few key interview questions and the way people responded I could quickly pick out people that were gonna be really good fits with the team we already had versus overlap a lot. And so the thinking was finance we might have and we would be doing just what Sarah said, you know, what are the kinds of skills, experience, knowledge base that we need and a mix that if the interviewer didn't have that same experience they might not come back with the same kind of information. So it was that kind of fit and it's because it's a council committee and we're looking for complimentary skills to who we already have. We know where what our own strengths and weaknesses are so trying to see whether we can supplement those in an ad value. So that was the thinking about why this one's different that we put appointed counselors on it where some of the counselors themselves are learning finance, you know. So how do we make sure this extends it and that was the reasoning but you know, as we said, Alyssa's saying move it into another and if that's not the process that the council wants. Mendejo. I just wanted to add one other reasoning was at least it rules the understanding of the OCA process was that the OCA interviewer, the councilor interviewer would be able to have if desired a member of the committee the planning board or the ZBA that is being appointed maybe that chair in those interviews or a town manager in those interviews but what rules is understanding was that a second counselor could not be there. So for finance committee that would mean if the process stayed with OCA, the OCA interviewer would be there but no one from finance could be there because all the finance committee members are counselors at this point. And that seemed odd to the rules committee to leave out everyone, all the counselors from finance from any of the interviews at all. And so I think part of that recommendation was a response to that. It wasn't a way of having. We are just going to move on. So the other reason the finance committee having residents on it is the only committee at least at this point of the council that has a standing committee that has residents. And again, because of its nature and I think Mandy Jo's point that because of the process or the practice that OCA is working on, you can't have somebody from the finance committee also in the room. That was all. Okay, so we have a recommendation before us. This is the rules of procedure recommendation. Lisa, you wanna make that? Bet the motion on the top of the action sheet. Yes, move to refer. I move to refer the rules of procedure ad hoc committees 030519 recommendation under the Amherst homeral charter section 5.5B on town council rules addressing the appointment of finance committee members of the public who shall have a voice but no vote in the finance committee's deliberations to the town council outreach communications and appointments OCA committee to consider and for OCA to make their recommendation to the full town council. Any further discussion? Call that question. All those in favor? I miss abstaining. Okay. Yes. 12. Zero one. Zero one, right. All right. Is there any further conversation on OCA? I'm sorry on rules of procedure. Any further conversation on OCA? Either that or we can refer to the next, the 22nd. Is there any action you need? I think I'd like to do it tonight. At least, well, I haven't actually, we haven't actually given you a written report in a long time and we have taken a lot of votes and actually we did vote on what was just referred to us. All right. So I will try to make it super quick because I know that we're all tired. First I'd like to say that I'm really proud of OCA and I think that a lot of the things that were said today about committees and about what we do, I think we break all the rules because this chair only has a bachelor's degree and I think that you're gonna hear a lot of voices that we've met almost every single week since we were appointed and we have had like four hour or four and a half hour meetings and we really just talk about everything and you'll hear a lot of views that are different here even though you're gonna see our votes and we respect that and I really feel like we're a great team. So there's a lot of information that I gave you that's pretty much just what we found out about certain definitions of what different groups are doing for communications and outreach and I'm not going to read all of that to you. You can read that yourselves and then if you'd like to bring back questions, that's fine. So we voted on 3-18-19. OCA voted 4-0 with one member absent that OCA would designate one OCA member, Sarah Swartz, to conduct private interviews of applicants to multi-member bodies appointed by the town council and I feel like I just missed. So and then we voted on 3-18-19. OCA voted 3-1 with one member absent to adopt the practice described as OCA proposed process 3-11 for appointments to multi-member bodies appointed by the town council. So the vote against this would prefer public disclosure of all candidates' names and public interviews. What I would have to say about that is if we just read it from here, is OCA spent an ordinate amount of time and careful consideration of the practice used to make recommendations to town council for multi-member bodies. In addition to the solid validity of this practice, it is imperative that OCA begin the process to make recommendations to the full town council for multi-member bodies by no later than April 11th in order to meet the deadline to have appointments completed by June 30th for terms beginning July 1st. This timeline allows for OCA to begin interviews of applicants no later than April 11th to vote successfully, I just said that. Our final nominees no later than May 13th and send recommendations to the full town council for consideration by May 20th. OCA feels that as a committee, we have worked together to competently complete the task that we have been charged with. We feel comfortable with providing additional details of our appointment recommendation practice, companying final nominee names for the town council consideration rather than asking the full town council to approve the practice itself now without context of actual appointments without the time necessary to describe our more than 20 hours of detailed deliberations in publicly posted meetings. And I realize that the policy coming forward is now a horse that's been beaten to death and it lies dead in front of us. So I would maybe ask if you would like to see, I mean, you actually know, you've heard it already. You've heard most of it today, tonight. And it's on our share point. I would request that we be able to have a decent chunk of time or a special meeting called the town council before the 11th so that we could actually start a process. So whatever process you would like us to validate, we can bring you all of our information forward and have enough time to vote on it so that we could move forward. I'm sorry, would you just go back to when do you want that meeting by? Time. We did not agree that we want any such meeting to be held. What I think you're alluding to is that if it's determined by this body that you do wish to look at our practice outside of the context of actual appointments that you need to understand that that would need to happen quickly enough that we may need additional meeting time to make that happen over what's currently scheduled. However, our current recommendation is not to do that. And so perhaps it would make sense at this point, given all the material in front of us, Sarah, to go ahead and talk about the finance committee issue that was so fresh this morning, of course, because these other things had been voted on previously and you put them all into this wonderful report, but maybe since we just finished talking about finance committee while that's still fresh and we should take what few energy minutes we have left to focus on that. Okay. So we voted on, we voted today, we voted unanimously, zero to five against revising the OCA charge that currently includes recommendations to the town council regarding all appointments by the town council charter section 2.9 to clarify that non-voting resident members of the finance committee are not recommended to the town council by the outreach communications and appointments committee. It came out sounding kind of backwards because we were trying to say we want it to stay the way it is. Yeah. We want the, but we couldn't, we didn't understand how to write a motion that said keep it the way it is because then that wouldn't explain what the alternative was. So we explained the alternative and then voted against it because if you don't explain the alternative, then nobody knows why you're confirming the current. I think that, yeah. So the majority of us felt that a committee should not be able to choose its own members. We don't do that. And I think as far as like expertise, I understand that finance committee requires a great deal of expertise, but then we also said to ourselves, well, planning board absolutely would zoning board, absolutely would. So I guess the question that sort of flummoxed us and then we could discuss this further. And I think that you've spoken to some points of it was why would we have finance committee be different and do this? So you've heard a couple of different points of why there was reasoning behind that. And I can't speak to what my entire committee would have to say in response to that. I'm sure they could explain to themselves. So would you like me to stop at finance committee? I think that would be a good idea. And maybe at this point then, cause we asked questions about what rules said. So maybe people have questions about what Oka said. And then that way the full town council at least feels there's so much to process here that they can at least be thinking about finance committee thing for next time. Andy. We did not have as robust a conversation in the finance committee as it might seem. And I think it would be helpful at this point, given the conversation that we do so and not try. And I think it's getting late of hour so that we really should not try and go too much farther tonight. I do want to point out that this is a unique situation because there is, you know, when we talk about the planning board, we're not talking about committee of the council. We're talking about planning board. And there is no analogous situation where there's a committee of the council. And that I think our concern is that we have the balance of skills and that we make sure that there's some way that that gets considered both for how people propose to operate the level of commitment and the level of skills that bring forward. We don't want to delay this for too long because we do want to get appointments going for July 1st so that we can start the next budget year. But I think to carry this on much further tonight is not going to be helpful for any of us. I just don't comment. Yes, Mandy. Sorry. I would be curious to hear your thinking and I know this may not have come up on why finance isn't different from others because if absent that last clause in section 5.5 of the charter that says the council rule shall address how to appoint the resident members, the president would have the full appointing authority of these residents. So, and I think we need to recognize that that any process we use other than the president appointing the resident members is actually an anomaly from the charters default which is since this is a council, a committee of the council. So I'd be curious, I'd like to hear if you talked about why this one shouldn't be treated differently since it's already, if we go anything other than the president being treated differently for appointments than any other committee of the council's members. Is there a second? Shallonee? A second. We're deferring the conversation. Okay. All those in favor? Opposed? Abstain. We have one abstention. Two. Sarah? Is there anything else from Oka that you want to discuss at this time? No, I think the council has made it clear that they're tired, so. Okay. If I could ask a question, please. I'm sorry? If I could just ask a question quickly, please. Yes. So we don't really have a motion to defer and that wasn't what the motion was. The motion was that we continue the conversation another time. So, unless rules comes up with something called a motion to defer. But at any rate, are we gonna talk about again next time? It's just what I'm trying to be clear on. So if Oka meets in the meantime, rules are both gonna meet before the next town council meeting in case we come up with additional information as we've heard people's feedback tonight. Are we planning to talk about this then on April 22nd? It'll be on the agenda item April 22nd. That's the plan. It'll also on the agenda on April 22nd. Just to be clear and going back to your previous report, will be the list of committees that we might do liaisons to. And the council will discuss that after that, I will take a poll and on our May 6th meeting report, the results of that poll out so people can actually decide which liaisons they would do. Yes. That sounds great and really helpful just in terms of us managing our workload of these committees. So that's great. And then the other part I just wanna mention is there is a ton of information here in the OCA report in terms of other suggestions that were made and then disposed of by the OCA committee. And so please look at that associated with OCA's charge because there is additional information there. Even though we don't at this point, have any reason to believe those other things are gonna be dealt with on April 22nd? They're just information you should know. Thank you. Yes. Quick comment. I just wanna assure OCA that I didn't postpone it because I'm tired. I postponed it because I feel like I need more time to really listen and understand what OCA is saying and also what, so I feel like it's important for me in that sense and so I'm not trying to dismiss it. That feels okay. Thank you. Yes, Darcy. I know the timing of this is not really good, but I included minority opinion about the actual process and the process for appointment of members of multiple member bodies appointed by the town council and because I think that that's something that needs to come as a recommendation to the full council. And if I sort of have to bring that up tonight because if I don't, the process will run its course, it will happen and I feel like that is something that needs to be brought as a recommendation to the full council just like any other major policy decision. I feel like we have, we've had a couple of different processes that we had to create in the OCA committee that are major processes that are going to be processes that we're going to have going into the future for this council and are very important and reflect how open and transparent and et cetera that we're going to be as a council and so it's a problem, the timing of it because I normally would move that we put this on as a discussion item at the next meeting or something like that. So I would like to hear from other councilors what they think because I don't see this as just some practice or procedure that is minor. I see it as a major policy decision that we've made that needs to come before the council and the council hasn't seen what this procedure is. Thank you first of all for bringing it up and mentioning it because rather than completely say there's nothing more from that report. In fact, I want to recognize that Darcy has filed a minority report. It seems that there are several questions about this process and our practice and the other thing is from what I can gather, the committee has not been able to get the attorney general's read, is that correct Sarah? No. Okay. Alyssa. The attorney general is not going to approve our process that was never our intention. We were not asking the attorney general. The attorney general doesn't approve processes. That's not something they do. Our town attorney was planning to run some additional ideas by the town attorney, by the AG's office just to see if there was something she, Lauren Goldberg, had not thought of but she has assured us that this will be a fine procedure to do. But again, my mistake Darcy, we got so bollocksed up in the finance committee thing. We worked on this report today. We incorporated the minority report into this and that was really important that you brought it up. Thank you because even though we disagree, the point is from a timing standpoint, we do need to know and this reflects back to what Sarah reported early in her report that Oka needs to know that if the town council agrees that they need to see the process exclusive of the appointments, then we have to stop where we are and not do actual interviews until we find out that you agree with that process, which may or may not require additional meeting time. So it is a timely. So the question before the council is whether or not we, as a council, not as a committee of the council standing committee, we as the council would like to have the Oka process brought before the council for review, discussion, and approval. I so move. Okay, is there a second? I second it. Okay, so there's a motion on the floor and a second that the Oka process be brought before the council for discussion and approval for the conversation. Yes, Amanda Jo. I'm gonna vote against the motion. When we created committees and specifically a committee that would deal with appointments, I guess my internal thinking was that that committee would come up with a process to deal with appointments and that would be the process, that that process wouldn't necessarily run through the whole council because the committee would do that and it would be their process. And given what I've heard this committee report, the Oka committee report, I don't think they've taken, they have not undertaken figuring out that process lightly. They've struggled, it sounds like for a couple months now, to figure out something that would balance transparency, but privacy, and still abide by open meeting law. So I think we as a council need to give some authority to our committees to figure out how they're going to operate, even if it potentially appears that that authority is on a major issue. They are still going to bring the recommendations for appointments to the council. We're going to have a final vote on who to actually appoint. So I don't think we should, as a council, have a say in how they get to that recommendation. Additional comments. Yes, Evan. Okay, so a few different things. Our charge was, as Mandy Joe said, to make recommendations to the town council regarding all appointments. Those recommendations need to come before the council. The council needs to vote on them. My understanding has been that our committee determines how we go about making those recommendations. And it is not the role of the council to approve or disprove the decisions we make to put forth those recommendations. As was noted multiple times, OCA has really just endured through well over 20 hours of deliberation on this two meetings where we had our town attorney on the speakerphone, emails, meetings, and to then open that process up to a council debate without any of that context, I think could be really problematic. The second thing I would say is, as Sarah mentioned, time is of the essence. Our next meeting of the council is the 22nd. If we were going to have a full presentation discussion and debate on this process, it would have to be then. And that would be honestly too late for us to wait. We need to get started right away. We have to appoint by June 30th. We have to get moving. I think that one of the things that's going to be really important to the future success of this council is to have a resilient committee system that relies on us trusting the members of our committees to which we have delegated these tasks. And I think that for the council to decide that they have to approve of the practice that we use to give them the recommendation we were charged with, honestly, it's getting late, so I'll speak bluntly. I would view as an undermining of the operations of our committee and a complete lack of trust for all the work that we have put into coming up with this process. So I hope I will vote against this motion and I hope others will too. Is there a further comment, Dorothy? I understand what you're saying, but when people say to us, how do people get on a committee? What am I to answer them? I mean, I just wanted to be informed. I didn't want to necessarily vote in debate. I wanted to be informed. Right, so if you want to be informed, I think any member of our committee would be more than happy to talk to the council. We, you have access to our SharePoint, which has both a visual diagram of the schematic of our process along with a written narrative to go along with it. So I have no issue with the council being informed. I do take issue with the council having to vote to approve. Shalini? I totally respect what the perspective being shared here and just I feel I would want to hear why one councilor feels the need, like why do you feel the need to bring this forward just so we hear your perspective? Well, as I've said before, I don't think any committee of the council has the authority to make major policy decisions. This is a major policy decision. I think we all have an interest in knowing how our appointments are going to be done. And like Dorothy said, people are going to be asking us, how are we doing this? You know, the committee has done an amazing amount of work and I am not making any particular judgment about how it came out. I'm just saying it's a major policy decision that every resident in Amherst has an interest in. We're representing them. They're our constituents. We each need to have a voice in major policy decisions. They aren't left to the committees to make these decisions. And I believe that's probably gonna end up in our rules that come back to us whenever end of June or whatever. That these committees don't have that authority. And again, I know the timing is horrible. So I don't know what to do about that, but I'm just saying this is an important issue around democracy in general. Kathy. I'm not on the committee that's been wrestling with this, but we're setting up whatever we decide is a process of the difference between just trusting committees as they get going. This is the process we're gonna be living with for a while. So we ought to thoroughly understand what it is we're saying yes to. And I think it really is, it's a shame it's so late at night just to get a better understanding of how the group came up with this with all those hours of deliberation. And if I think of the world out large beyond us, how does the Supreme Court justice get nominated? Well, there was a decision how the Senate would do it and how a committee would do it that people had to vote on. And whether that it's a super majority or not. At some point that got set up and that's what we're making decisions. And this is more about counsel appointments in particular because otherwise it's the tail manners making appointments and that's a different kind of an appointment process, but it's we're delegating. So it's a shame it came up this late at night because I think what Dorsey's asking for is we thoroughly understand the process we're saying fine to. And we endorse it rather than just say, fine, you know. Alyssa. So obviously we can disagree about timing and what democracy and transparency mean and all those things, but I wanna be clear on what some of the practical applications of this are. So what the point was is that if what you're looking for is how to explain to the public how you agreed to confirm an appointment that was brought to you is you will have a package at the first committee meeting at which OCA provides you appointments. It will say we need to appoint five members to the ZBA. I'm not saying ZBA will be first, but I'll pick on them for a minute. We're promoting these five people to be on the ZBA. Please town council vote for these five names, which we've already posted publicly. With that will be a description of why these five ZBA members, why these particular five people are being brought forward for your attention. With that will be the visual of our decision-making tree as to how the process worked to get us to that point. And we'll also have some basic demographic information at that time because our current practice and longstanding practices, we have never said how many people applied until it's time to appoint. And so we will say, and 15 people applied for the ZBA, these are the five people we're bringing forward. Of those 15, three self-identified as people of color and three self-identified as low income. And here's the decision tree we used to get to it. And here are the five names and here's why they're special. And you'll say, oh, and maybe you'll say you don't like some particular part of that process or some particular name, in which case you will say, I don't wish to confirm this because I either have a problem with the process or I have a problem with the people. However, what we were trying to avoid was bringing you and it's fine that Darcy wants to do that. Obviously it's fine that she wants to do that. And I understand the desire to say, can't we just approve your process ahead of time? But we're far enough down the road and maybe we should have rethought that earlier, but it took us this long to get this much information from the town attorney as to whether or not we could do what we wanted to do because we wanted to do other things before we got to this point. And so now at this date, that is why this is a critical junction because if you must see it before we bring it to you with the names, then we aren't going to be able to start getting you any of those names until later on in the process. So it will be a simple delay. Evan? Real quick, I just want to correct one thing that Kathy said because the statement was that this is something that we'd be living with in perpetuity and Oka has had a discussion and perhaps even a long time ago of vote that we would adopt this process for this round of appointments and then have a discussion as a committee. Did that work? Should we revise it? And so are we intent for this to be a somewhat iterative process? That's very helpful. Thank you. So there's a motion on the floor. The motion is to bring this process forward for a full council discussion and vote. Is there any further discussion at this time? All right, then all those in favor of bringing this process? If we vote against it, it's the process stands and just moves forward. That's correct. I'm sorry? I don't know what we're voting for here. The motion is to bring, do you want to read the motion please? That the Oka process be brought forward to the council for discussion and approval. Okay, so if you vote yes, it means you want it to come forward to the council for discussion and approval. And if you vote no, then it will not come forward. However, the committee appointments using that process will come forward. Sarah. I'm so sorry, I don't want to belabor this point, but Oka is suggesting that when we bring forth the names, like Alyssa said, we'll be bringing forth our process, how we did it and all. So we're not saying you guys never get to see it or vote on it. So we are, it's just a different timing. So this motion would be that we would need to bring it forward to the full council for adoption before we start the process. Whereas what our natural process would have been or we would like it to be, is that we would bring this, all this information to you and our process when we bring forth nominations, the final names. Okay. There's a motion on the floor. Okay. Again, voting for it means it will come to the council for discussion and a vote. And voting against the motion means it will not come forward for the council for a vote. And in fact, the committee will proceed as planned. All those in favor of the motion, raise your hand. All those opposed, abstained. We have two sets of, let me just make sure I've got my agenda. Could I ask a quick question about bylaw reviews report? Since I wasn't there. Why does it say draft on it? Why does it say draft on it? Because either a report's a report or it's not a report. Okay. It was just a watermark deal. Okay. Sounds fine. Maybe we'll republish it without the watermark. Okay. And on the goals and values statement, we have two more meetings before they, coming up one on the eighth and one on the 12th. And GOL has no report for tonight. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry, I skipped over that. Approval of minutes. We have two sets of minutes. I'd like you to, I'd like to do this as one vote. So the motion will be to approve the minutes for March 14th, 2019. And the minutes for March 18th, 2019. Is there a second? I second. Andy is the second. Could I make one super quick minor edit to the 14th? Yes. Now the opportunity is to edit. Yes. I know there were several. Are there changes or corrections? This is a very small issue, but I just wanted to be clear since people are looking at our minutes these days, that the meeting of the 14th while we posted it as a meeting in case we had a quorum, et cetera, even though we wouldn't deliver about things that we weren't supposed to. It wasn't a required attendance thing like this is. So maybe just mention that it's a workshop that we posted. Margaret come up with some phrase that it was a workshop that we posted in case a quorum showed up, but people shouldn't like be punished for not having been there. I don't think that was the intention. Whereas when you see our other minutes, you're kind of like, really? You haven't come to five meetings in a row? Just some phrase that indicates it was a workshop that was posted for. Okay. Thank you. Is there any other changes or corrections? Okay. Seeing none, all those in favor of approving both sets of minutes? Opposed? Abstained? Those who are absent should have abstained. Nice. No, you don't have to. You don't have to. I'm with you. Okay. Oh, the managers report. Immersively brief, I think is what you thought. I'll knock a few things off if there are any questions. People can call me or talk to me. I do want to note we have volunteer spotlight, which is really exciting. Watch the video online. Rebecca Woodland is our first person. Very exciting. We're talking about the neighborhood cleanup. May the fourth, may the fourth be with you. Saturday, May fourth. Bring to your attention that on April 10th, there's a proposal for a cultivation of marijuana establishment. They have their public meeting required by the state law at Formosa across the street from here on April 10th at 6 p.m. They intend to have this at 555 Belcher Town Road. The last thing I want to mention is at Hampshire College. We had a meeting with the president and one of her staff of Hampshire College. Also present were me and a couple of staff members, the president of the council, a representative from the town of Hadley, our state representative and our state senator. The purpose of the meeting was to engage the college on the community impact of the changes that are going to happen. Nobody knows if the college is going to close or not, but we do know that the college is going to be about half the size that it is now in terms of students. You could extrapolate that to mean that will be half the size in terms of staff. There are 85 families or residents who work at the college. We assume that those, they will be impacted in one way or the other. We're trying to assess what the impact is. We're trying to assess what the impact is on local businesses that Hampshire may do business with, things like Atkins Farm. We're, our planning department is reviewing all the land that Hampshire owns. So we're actively monitoring, as I say, but we're also, it's a pretty active monitoring of the situation. So I want to share that with you. Things are developing very quickly at Hampshire. Over the next few weeks, they say they will announce additional layoffs, which will be significant in my opinion. It'll continue to draw a lot of attention and just to let you know that I've been engaged in and that a larger group has been engaged with the Hampshire administration. And our strict purpose is to understand the impact on the community, our residents and our businesses. And if you have any, or in on town operations actually as well, so if you have any questions on that, I can answer them. Any questions? Under town council comments in your packet is a memo to Mr. Backelman. This is a result of the poll. It reports the two counselors who have expressed interest in appointments to the Energy and Climate Action Committee and the additional two counselors that said they would serve if needed, or under the condition that there was no other architect. I have no idea. I have no other reports. Are there any future agenda items? We hope to bring forward the town council goals for our April 22nd meeting. And I believe also you're planning to bring forward the hope to bring forward the public ways. Hope to. And in addition to that, we have the whole issue of the liaisons. Okay, any other comments? Yes, Sarah. Really quick, I just wanted to tell everybody here because I've replied this to everyone, but I just want to say it out loud. My younger son is having gallbladder surgery tomorrow morning, and then my husband leaves for India the very next day for two weeks. So I have let people know, but just to let everybody here know, I won't be able to make the April 4th meeting, and I will do my best to make sure that I get all that information, but I'm not just blowing you off. We certainly understand. Any additional comments? There's no topics not reasonably anticipated and no executive session. I move to adjourn. All those in favor? Thank you.