 All right, so as it's now 646, we'll call the retreat to order the first item, business or the second item is item 2.1. There was actually a motion to amend the agenda, so we'll do that first. So a motion to amend it to adopt the agenda. So moved. That's been seconded by Mark, Councilor Barlow. Don't even think of first names. And Joe, can you hear me? Okay, all right. So Joe is also, Councilor McGee is also joining us. Thanks so much, Joe. So the second, or actually, that's right. Sorry, I got, we have to vote on that. So there's a first, second. All those in favor of the motion to adopt the agenda, please say hi. Hi. Hi. That means we have our agenda. So that moves us on to the public forum. There are a couple of members of the public that are here. Do any of you wish to speak? Okay, so just so that we all know the system here, obviously we're not in con choice. So I'm gonna just have to use a timer. We have a two-minute timer and it seems as though the two of you that wish to speak are both Burlington residents so we don't have to, we can forego that. And then the only thing that I would ask is what, as you know, we always ask it at public forum and that is to please use respectful language. This meeting is being taped. It's not live, but it is being taped. And we do know that there are people who will watch this meeting potentially for years to come. And we would appreciate it if people would speak with us respectfully. Address your comments to me as the chair. Do not address them to anyone else at this table. And just as a caveat, that rule will be enforced. I will interrupt any speaker who attempts to personalize their comments to anyone at this table. And with that, please be welcome. Yes, hello, I'm Lee Morgan. I live in Ward 7. I came tonight because I'm really interested about this topic, mostly because I don't know what the answer is, but I'm really excited to see what you all develop. So to keep it concise, I think the reflection I'm thinking about is my background as a mental health professional, particularly watching interactions during public comment from individuals who are clearly experiencing a passionate moment and whether that moment has some pathology. I think what I'm interested in is what do you do when an individual, for whatever reason, is not able to engage in decorum? Do you recess? Do you let them finish their two minutes and if they always leave when their time is up? I don't know what the right answer is. My only reflection as someone experienced in de-escalation and conflict, there have been times where I've wondered if something would be over much more quickly if once a recess is called, if they're still active and all the counselors are still there, it's really gonna not matter to the individual that their time is up if they're still an audience and it may help them de-escalate and disengage if the audience moved. I don't know if that's the council leaving the room or the room being cleared, but there have been instances where I've seen where I think the individual would have disengaged much more quickly if the audience factor was removed and that's all I wanted to share. Wonderful, thank you so much, Lee. Chris, did you want to speak? Let's see, you don't have a public forum table, so this will do. Mama, I just want to say thank you all for the work that you do. I know how much time I put it on the marketplace commission and on the school commission before that and it can be a challenging, it's been a lot of controversial contentious issues so I applaud you guys for taking us on and trying to move us into a format where we have a little more civility in our public meetings. The process is important and I'm glad that y'all are taking some time off to try to figure out what we can do to conduct ourselves in a manner that reflects the important work that y'all are doing so thank you again for what you do. Thanks so much, Chris. Did you want to speak? No? No? No? No? No? No? Okay, well welcome. Okay. All right. Did you want to have, you're welcome to have what we have here as well. Going out. If you don't have it, if you don't have it, how many of us are going to bring it home? I am not talking. Yeah, I am. Okay, so we'll close the public forum at 6.51 and we'll continue on with the purpose of our evening. So other than getting us all together which I wanted to do a couple of months ago but it was never easy to find a date and miraculously we found this date in like a week so thank you all for being here other than to have some good food and conversation the point of the retreat is to discuss public forum and our council meetings and I would very much like to get all of your feedback on two aspects of public forum. The first is that, as you know we've had a few challenging public forums and while the point of this evening is not to discuss the subject matter of the public forums, what I'm hoping to get feedback on from all of you is that we need to determine amongst the 12 of us and well the 11 of us that are here what we feel is the acceptable standard. What do we think is the acceptable standard of decorum at a council meeting and I think we all need to be reasonably in agreement as to what the steps are that we're gonna take to make sure that we honor what we collectively agree to as the standard. Decorum at public meetings and public forum is one item and in the last month or so I've heard a lot from a lot of people about decorum during public forum. The other item that I'd like to get your feedback on is personal safety and safety of staff, safety of the council, safety of the community so that we have meetings where everyone feels welcome, everyone feels supported and everyone feels heard. And I'm interested in getting your feedback. First on, well there's two things. First on decorum and I'll give you a couple of thoughts about what I'd like to try to cover and then I'll leave it all to you. The first is what do you feel should be the procedure when somebody refuses to stop speaking during public forum? Does turning to face the gallery meaning not the council but the others who are gathered, does that constitute a breach of decorum and if so, what do we do about it? And the other is does the prolific use of profanity constitute a breach of decorum? And then the other thing I did wanna ask about was that our council rules do allow us to have people only speaking to agenda items. There's a form that, if you haven't seen it, there's a form that you fill out, you ask what agenda item you wish to speak to. Most people do fill that out, not everyone. Some people want to talk about personal stories. Some people wanna talk about their musings about the world. That does not have to be a part of public forum. We can limit ourselves to only covering what is on the agenda. So these are all thoughts about what we are able to do. We have Haley here. I imagine all of you know Haley, assistant city attorney and those are the things that I'm hoping to get your feedback on so that we can move forward with what we feel is a reasonable and respectful public forum that welcomes everybody and does not deter people from wanting to speak. Then the other question is about safety and security. At our last meeting, there were counselors who after the meeting expressed to me safety concerns going forward. In other words, we need to ensure that our staff feel welcome, they feel supported, that they don't feel unsafe. And with that, the things that I thought we could discuss were whether or not anyone is in favor of or wants to speak about a presence in contoy such as chocolate thunder. If anyone would entertain the idea of having a CSO in contoys, these are the ideas that have come to me. And then whether or not, I didn't know what this word was. It's called stashens, no, stanchens, stanchens. So stanchens are those things with the ropes. And how people would feel about having those in front of the table, how people would feel about having those to the side. We have done that before. We have had, when we know that there's a large public forum, we've had those beside us so that that way no counselor feels that literally there are members of the public that are within a few feet of us from behind. So those are the thoughts. We have this room until 8.30, not suggesting that we have to stay that long. But I'm interested in what you have to say because in the end, this is the community city council. We're all part of that. And while our time on the city council is temporary, this body will endure for hopefully many, many decades and to come and we need to protect that. So that's all I have to say. I'm here to listen to what all of you feel and how you feel and how you feel we can do better going forward and how you feel I can do better going forward because obviously I want to. So please feel free to go and eat as well. Obviously, I really appreciate you having this meeting, Karen. We had a lot of text conversations anyway about this. And my point really was that I think Karen has taken a fair amount of heat. We're doing this in formal, right, President Paul? Okay. Yes. Karen has at times taken a lot of heat for a lack of decorum in our meetings. And I actually don't, I think the council president can express an intention to keep order in a certain way, but actually it doesn't work unless the council president knows that the entire body is with them because no one person can control the kind of things that happen in our room. And I know when I was council president, I also had some really difficult meetings, the F-35s and I could not have controlled those meetings without the support of the council. So it's really helpful going into a meeting knowing that we're all on the same page. We have the same expectations. And then we're gonna have the council president's back no matter who the council president is. I mean, maybe we change our standards over time, but this at least gives us a starting place to come to agreement on the expectations. Thanks. After you and I spoke, I decided that talking with one former council president, this wasn't enough. So I spoke with six of them. And basically they all said the same thing. They did not know, they did not have the answer, but the one thing that they did know that was that as a body, we all have to determine what we feel is the standard. Because if we don't, then the standard is effectively what anybody says the standard is. And I don't think we can function as a body if we just, if we do that. It's the default right now. Yeah. The standard is a lack of a standard by default in a lot of ways. My regards from the gentleman, medicine general. The comment about we all have to support it. What does that look like? I mean, sometimes you get a little overwhelmed and so you just sort of sit there and don't do anything. So I'm just, I mean, really just asking that question because I agree with you that we need to show support and we need to support the council president. But in the minute, what would that look like? I think it's about expectations. I, we often have some idea when we're gonna have a difficult meeting. So when we do that about at 35s, I let people know I actually, I don't know if you were in on this conversation because I met with the city attorney, former council presidents. Max Tracy was actually really helpful to me at the time because we weren't on the same side of the issue. And so having, talking to Max and having Max's agreement that he would help me with the crowd because some of the people in the room are my people, some of the people in the room are his people. And we agreed that we expected order in the room and that Max would call to his people to quiet down and me calling to his people wasn't gonna do anything. Max calling to his people really helped keep order in that room. And also we created, we were hearing from the same people over and over and over again, all about the same things over and over and over again. The council agreed that we're not, if we, you spoke at this meeting, you are not going to speak to the same issue on this, at the next meeting. If we've already heard from you on at 35s, we don't need to hear from you again, we're gonna give that time to somebody else. We also agreed that the public forum was going to end. And so if the public were acting in disruptive ways, fewer people were going to get to speak. So in order to be respectful of everybody else's time, kind of using the whole room as remember, we're a community here. And if you're going to take too much time, you're taking from somebody else's time because more people wanna speak tonight than we have time to hear from. And we're gonna end this at this time. So you need to stop speaking because you're taking other people's time. Now, we've had meetings recently where that simply wouldn't be the case. There's not that many people, at least maybe there's hardly anybody and we have this major disruption. I completely agree with what Lee said. When we call a recess, it's really important to physically indicate. We are on recess, that we are no longer your captive audience. So I completely, that's exactly what I was thinking, Lee, is that it continues because we continue to listen. And we feel like this is the respectful thing to do, to continue to listen, but actually to de-escalate it, we need to remove ourselves. Somebody's very mad at us. So we need to remove ourselves from the table. We could even go into, potentially we can go downstairs. Potentially we have a plan for who is gonna stay in that room, who won't be the target because they're kind of non-political. And wait until order comes back. Time is still limited because the point of public forum is actually by state law to hear about our agenda items. We're doing the business of the people and our top priority should be hearing from the public about our agenda items. If we want to go beyond that, my suggestion would be that we do that at the end of our meeting. If somebody wants to talk about whatever under the sun, I think we still need to have guardrails. We've just seen people doing harm to the community in their comments. It has nothing to do with us. It's personal. And I think it's also important to have an opportunity for the public to say, hey, how come you guys aren't doing anything about X, Y, and Z? Which is not on the agenda. I've raised something to our attention. There's a number of ways to do it. You can email us. You can call us before you can come to public forum. But public forum isn't the only way to communicate. We should remember that. And I think doing the business of the people in a professional way is important. Well, I had a specific thought, but now there's sort of a good amount on the table. I agree. Thank you very much for having this meeting, Karen. I agree with everything that's been said about it. I think that it's important that we have a common set of standards and what it means for us to all be behind that is that we all let Karen know that we're behind it. Such that when you have to enforce whatever those standards are, you don't have to do so questioning whether or not your colleagues around the table are agreeing or disagreeing with your having to enforce the standards. And to me, I think we have to have those standards and have them in place sort of regardless of whether or not we agree or disagree with a viewpoint that someone is bringing to the table. I think honestly, while I have empathy for perhaps some mental health issues that folks have brought to the table, that even for those folks that perhaps cannot help themselves in the decorum standards that we have, that we need to have a common understanding and that you should have our support in even enforcing our rules and decorum standards in those situations. In terms of what folks can bring to the table, I actually don't think that we should necessarily limit it to agenda items. I think the city council public forum is a place that historically has been an area where folks have general concerns in our community. They know they can come to the council. Not everyone is, I think it's more so now, but not everyone is tuned into using email or technology and there's some meaning to actually coming for the council physically and relaying concerns that you have for your community. So I don't necessarily figure our limiting public forum to agenda items, but I do think that we should set a standard where it's not appropriate to be screaming at the city council. I think it's appropriate for a set of standard that it's not appropriate to be using intimidating language or intimidating body language. I think we should have a standard that folks need to stay in their seat when they're at the public forum table. I think that we should maintain the standard about not personally calling folks out either on the council. Certainly members in the public sort of individually by name. I actually think as a council, when you look to other legislative bodies that they have a standard even amongst themselves to not call one another out by names and even in the US Senate and Congress where folks could not be more different. They're still calling each other as sort of my friend from such and such and my friend from there and there. And I think even as a body, we can hold ourselves to some better decorum standards in the sense of, at least in that respect, sort of identifying each other by name. We can have our differences, but it should be on substance. So those are my own sort of two senses of what I think the decorum standard should be. What we should do if someone breaks that. I think recess is a helpful tool. Personally, I think we need to have a clear way of whether it's turning the microphone off in the room or cutting the feed to the public. I can't imagine what it looked like the last few meetings for folks who were turned in from the public. I don't know. I know that at one point when we recessed it eventually sort of came down. But I think we need sort of a quick and efficient way for the council president to be able to either shut off the microphone in the room and or be able to shut off the feed to the public virtually. And in the last few meetings, I will say that I have never sort of felt personally unsafe. I can understand how others perhaps would. But when I look around to sort of city councils around the country, I mean there are some scary stories out there about what's happening in some other city councils of folks bringing weapons and being physically threatening. And I don't, I think statistically speaking it's probably unlikely to happen here, but it's a realistic possibility that someone could come to the council and present truly unsafe circumstances. And I think we need to understand to the extent we need some sort of security presence there, what is it going to be? Because whereas I didn't feel unsafe in any of the recent meetings, I'm looking around the room, there's no private security presence, there's no police presence, there's no CSO presence. I'm assuming someone's in the building, probably at the front desk in the basement, but how are we gonna reach out to them? How are they gonna know what's happening in contoys? I think we need to have, I think we need a security presence in the room, truthfully, and I'm open to whatever folks feel is the right presence in that sense, whether it's private security, whether it's a police presence, I think we should have common consensus as to what that should be, but I do think there should be a security presence or at the very least, an understanding as to what's our protocol going to be if someone walks in that room with a gun. If someone walks in that room, I mean, someone was just arrested in City Hall Park with a machete and a bow and arrow, right? I mean, nothing would have stopped that person on a Monday night from walking into Contoy's auditorium. So if someone walks in with a machete, a bow and arrow, a knife, a gun, I think we need to know what we're going to do. And so on one side of the spectrum, it's, what are we doing if someone's breaking the quorum in public form? But I think on the other side of the spectrum, it's, we need to have a policy in place of truly unsafe circumstances are present in the room. One thing about recess is that when we do call a recess, the channel 17 plays music and there is no volume. So in other words, if you're in the room, obviously, if you are watching on the live stream, I don't think you do hear anything. Whether you hear, imagine you hear things on Zoom because Zoom is not the same as, I mean, Zoom you've signed into. So whatever is going on in the room is what you're hearing. Don't we control Zoom? Do we control Zoom? The? Yes, we do control Zoom. Me, you can mute, I mean, I think we had a lot of what went on after the recess. What's that? YouTube did have a lot of what went on. It didn't happen immediately. It did not happen immediately. And that was one thing when it was probably, I don't know how long, there probably was a minute that was in between when you had said to call a recess or asked about calling a recess. And I don't know how long that was, but after that it should have gone to. The full audio is there. I watched it, the full audio is there. There at no point was the feed cut at our last meeting. That is certainly something that we can obviously look into and of course when they do the final version, obviously there are issues or edits. They do make those. So I'm not really sure that that gets captured in terms of forever, but I would need to look into that. Mila? So a lot of stuff thrown out. So we already have a decorum. I don't think we really need to discuss that. I think it is what we do when people don't follow that. I don't think we should rope ourselves off. I think that's a bad look. I don't think we should do anything to limit what people talk about. I think we've clearly established from some time now that even though a lot of people do show up to speak about a particular item that is on an agenda, people do show up to speak about other things and to suddenly change that, that won't be a good look and especially since everybody's out talking about freedom of speech and things like that, that's gonna go back on what we've been talking about publicly, right? So to do anything like that, I think would be wrong and would get a lot of pushback and rightly so. I don't think we should have a police presence. I was actually pretty disturbed that John Mirad was there. I wasn't sure why he was there. I wasn't sure he was sure why he was there. There was a comment made by someone that they were concerned that he was reaching for his gun. He wasn't reaching for his gun. He was kind of befuddled. He was like what to do, what's going on and it would have been best for him to have just sat down. Know the audience, know the people in the room and know that in that particular moment in space it would have been more of an escalation and not a de-escalation. I want us to be very careful about who we say we're afraid of. I want us to be very careful about what we talk about. The fact is people walk around this town all the time with all kinds of weapons. Maybe I'm more aware, because I was on the police commission. We have some of the easiest or lax, open carry laws in the country. I've worked retail in this city and people have walked in strapped. So just because they can and they believe it's their right to do so. So we have to be very careful about making assumptions about what people would do. Now what would be great is to get something through the legislature about bars because we know we had gunfire incidents. A large percentage of the ones we had last year occurred in bars or right outside of bars. So maybe there should be a standard for guns being in certain public spaces. But lack of that in place, that'd be really hard to regulate and it would mean we're just making assumptions about people that could lead to additional problems. I think that when someone breaches decorum, we just immediately boom, we're having a recess and we do need to remove ourselves to make it clear. You can't talk to us anymore because you're not following the rules. And if someone turns and talks to someone in the gallery that is breaking decorum and that requires us to immediately shut it down. And maybe the only thing that maybe you add at the beginning of what you say is that if there is any breach in decorum, we will call an immediate recess and leave the room. And then that way people know and understand that. The other thing is that we have to take into consideration and is a little bit harder to do is the root causes of in particular what happened at the last meeting. There are specific root causes in terms of the way an issue was handled and how people were talked about. Anytime you have, you bring in issues of race, that is gonna elevate things. And a lot of people took a lot of what was said personally, including myself, including myself. So I think we have to look about, be very conscious of how we talk about things, how it's going to affect members of the public, be aware of what's not only going on in Burlington and Vermont but what's going on in our country and be more mindful. We have a problem with race in our city, just like every place else. We have been very clumsy about some things, very insensitive and I wish I had a video of my mother watching that meeting. I let her watch it and she's 86 years old and she went up in the South, moved to New York City. She and my father were very much involved in the civil rights movement. And let me tell you some of the comments of what she saw were just, and I didn't even have to tell her personalities of people that were involved. She could just see, she could see what she saw 50 years ago, you know? So these are things we need to think about. We need to think about what have we done in city government that causes people to feel that they have to act this way, right? Outside of individuals who, yes, we had a couple of individuals who do have some mental health issues, but we did something city government that triggered that and certainly a lot of other speakers who spoke don't suffer from those issues, but were very passionate about how they were being affected. And the last thing I would say is, especially at that particular one, we had essentially two groups, what very powerful things to say about what brought them there. And so in any way to apply again, that we would shut down a public forum and affect people who are following the rules would be unacceptable. So we really have to be very, very careful there because that won't fly. Thank you. Before you go, Sarah, Joe wanted to get in. Okay. Joe, now's your time. It's unsafe having on choice during meetings. We have had public forums that folks have experienced who share strong emotions. And I think we discuss a lot of important issues in their own and do a ceremony to limit that, but we want to agree that if it gets to apply more as a whole or a productive conversation, that a recess makes sense and that we should rule ourselves in the room. I'm going to show you might not be on our agenda, might not be on our radar, while the full council is present and we're going to present a public presence. I think it's important. I think it's an opportunity for folks to make sure concerns that each other and members of the community are talking about as well. And I don't have time for community for folks to learn. Maybe they're all alone and so it's something we need for folks to come together and to address those concerns. I think we should have gone out of hand and we give people two minutes and most of the time, people's takes the chance. I think that the more we try to interrupt people or I think to the extent that we are a public body and we do not want to infringe on people's rights to free speech, I think, you know, well, some people can say very painful things. When the clock run out is sometimes the best thing that we can do. I guess to a point where the conversations will not just make sense first, let them sit down and push with the thought of the space to talk to us. Thank you. Thanks a lot Joe, thanks for joining us, yeah. I think Sarah was for me. Just a comment. I think there's a space in between sticking just to the agenda and letting folks talk about everything. I think it should be a public comment on the work of the city. And so there might be things that we don't know about or are a civic concern. And I'm happy to hear that. But sometimes, and there are certain speakers frequently, who may talk about a topic that is not city business, so to speak. So I think trying to sort of focus, I mean, how does this relate to Brillington? I don't know how many asked a question on the forum, but I think that's just important. It's not about personal relationships. It's not about the entire world in general. It's about what can we as city councils do to respond to you? How can we tell us what you're thinking? How can, what idea have you got for us to help us? And so I just think now, and stating that, we're here to hear what we can do as a city council to resolve your issue. Not every issue, not every, you know, you can talk to the state government or the federal government for certain other issues. And I think that would be important. I have a few, I think I'd do those around the recess. I think that's really important. Leaving the road is really important. So I don't want us to, you know, lose that thought. I would agree with a lot of what Ben has said, and then just expanding on, I think that if one councilor has expressed a want to have the area roped off, then we kind of owe it to one another to do that. I think we will function best as a body if each one of us feels comfortable in doing the work and showing up to the meeting. And just because I may not feel it's necessary to rope off the area, if another councilor does, I would rather create an environment for them where they are going to feel better showing up in that space, even if it doesn't necessarily benefit or make me feel better. I think that will be a big thing for our community as councilors. I mean, the last couple of meetings, but over the last few years, we got periodically a meeting with a contentious agenda item and it gets a little crazy. I too have never felt personally unsafe. Although, I have to say there was a meeting early in my council tenure where I had people banging drums in back in May. And I did, it was a little disconcerting and it was hard for me to focus. I think we need to have a safe space. And I think some of the ideas around security, I don't think they're outlandish. It's just you were gonna, like Ben had said, it may seem improbable, but so do a lot of things that happen, like a lot of school shootings, one of the things that's better than what happened there. The idea that people are wandering around the park with machetes. Machetes, right? I mean, that's parks right next door. So I don't think it's, we should have, we should have, we should plan for that contingency. What happens if something happens? We should have a plan as a council. And I am not against having somebody, I don't know if it's chocolate powder, or CSOs have been mentioned, having somebody that's available that don't have to be standing guard at the door of a patty, somewhere where they can act, if called upon to act to help us in that situation. So I think those are all legitimate and valid points, even though statistically maybe it's not gonna act, but things can get pretty heated. With regard to the agenda, I honestly, we're all upset when we both try to move our meetings earlier as they go along. We're there to do the people's work. And public comment is a valuable part of that, but I don't think it's unreasonable to, if not restrict public comment to the agenda items on the meeting, at that particular meeting, kill us prior times those comments first. If we run out of time in public comment and we need to get on to our deliberative agenda, we should do so. We've had, recently in TOOP, we've had a lot of public comment about, and she even asked people to be here. In fact, they'll speak to the agenda items when we run out of time, offer to take their brief comments, conclude them with the agenda items on which they're speaking to, and we've done that. And I mean, like others have said, public comment forum is one way for public comment. We have other mechanisms to do that. So I would like to see us get to our deliberative agenda as early as we can, with while still respecting the public forum process. Oh, in terms of recess, us from ruining, maybe we clear the room instead of us leaving, maybe we clear, you're just gonna throw it out there, may not be a popular sentiment. But we could ask everybody else to leave and then have them come back in when the recess is over. That's maybe another take on how to get control of the room in the meeting. So I'll just throw that out there for consideration, I'm sure you made a list of some strong opinions, but it's, we need to get ahead of this trend because we're seeing a breakdown in the forum more frequently. Thanks, Tim. Sure, thanks, I also think it's sort of a valuable conversation that I appreciate, I appreciate you calling us together to do it. Yeah, I'm gonna just sort of name the sort of attention that I feel inside myself that I seem to be in it and that it's being expressed in our conversation, I bet, I'm guessing everybody feels right. I don't think anybody randomly on the city council because they wanted to limit other members of the public's ability to speak, particularly to speak on the grace and the other things that we've been discussing and there's just a big part of it that just, you know, colludes of the notion that we are going to take steps to silence people or even create the appearance that we're silencing people and I think, I feel like we all really feel that way and on the other hand, I do think we have a response that it would be to use a run in a way, as Mark said and others have said, that we get to the work that we need to get to, get to the work that it is part of good governance and that we do so in a way that encourages everyone to participate and to be involved, whether it's to be involved by speaking at public forum, whether it's to be involved by being on the commission, whether it's to be involved even just to have your children as you always say, have your children watching and listen and learn about some of those options. And I do think, right, there's just a tension between those two groups that is going to consist people, but those things are kind of sort of, it seems like there's a couple of things. One is that when the rules of the forum are broken, it seems as though we are in agreement that the appropriate response is for the city council president to call a resource or recess rather and for at least the council to leave the room to de-escalate as we suggested, to create some space and some breathing room. And I would suggest that maybe we explore, ask you, President Paul, to explore with the city officials, making sure that the bushel conference room is open. It seems to me like just physically that's the best place for us to be. I don't know whether it's always open and available. And maybe we try to come out of this meeting with consensus that when you make the decision that, or someone asks, or someone asks the point of order, like Ben did the other night, that a recess be called, that we have a plan, I don't know how to make sure of this, but like, come up with whatever the plan is, maybe the bushel conference room and then we agree about number one. Number two, we agree that we recognize a name that, in fact, you are in a really difficult decision, and you are going to be called upon, particularly you're going to be called upon to make sort of hard decisions in the heat of the moment. And, you know, agree that we are going to support you and if we have disagreements about it, we'll address them with you, right, but generally support the fact that you're the one most often has to make those hard calls in the middle of the public issue. And then with respect to safety of city council and the people who come to the meeting, I think, again, I don't want to over-react, right? I do not want our city council to be able to look like some sort of armed fortress, I think, as Mila said, that's a bad look. I don't think it's necessary, but I also think we ought to behave responsibly and we ought to have a plan. And whether that plan be that we have CSO or private security, or police officer, perhaps on duty as in city hall, but not sort of standing there in some way, we have someone who's close on call. I think you can even know that you can have an officer who's sort of standing by, who needed someone at city hall. I think that's an important thing to find and build around between making it look like we have potentially chilling folks who have maybe come from a place where they don't have a good relationship or a good experience with law enforcement or security. No one would chill with folks coming from that place. They also want to have a responsible plan in place in case there is a situation where, by forbid, someone acts by their data brings a weapon. And then last stage, I have one question, do we have Google, I actually have a list of my help, do we have Google so you can allow it to be on fire, or do we need to speak on some of these? I was going to ask that question. I wonder how much of this we want to do. Our city hall is a place of employment. I wonder how much of this we want to talk about public. I think we should have a role, if we are needed to do that. City hall is a place of employment in the one with the spring workplace. City hall is a public building. And not a very formal policy that we have. There are maybe certain funding sources that require us to need to do work in this free public building, but I would need to look into that a little more and learn that. Well, Joe's point is well taken, by the way. You did too, President Paul. Do you want me to answer the question? I don't know the answer to that question. Okay, thank you. Think about it. Thank you. I'll think about it. Jean, then we'll go to Mila. So, there's a lot here. And apparently I missed two exciting meetings. The last meeting, you know, the last meeting. So my experiences are not informed by what happened at the last meeting at all. Did get to the last meeting. Let me start with the end of what Tim said. I think that it is really important to invent what's mentioned is of having a plan. I've been working in and around that building for a really long time. And even as far back as the 80s and 90s, there were incidents that were really pre-unsettled. I can think of one. And we did not have any security there. And it was heated, and it was, that's the one time that I have felt like I could get shot. Right? Not having a plan is really bad. The de-escalation points and the different ways that we get folks to be there for the purposes that we're there for, I think are very. And so I would suggest that we should always have people who are around, who can de-escalate. And their presence is not escalating in and of itself. One of the problems with having uniformed folks is it just creates that innate tension. Tim said in terms of chilling, there's a chill, it's purposeful, that's why you wear those things to stop folks from doing stuff. And in that form, I don't think that's right. That that's right. But having people who are trained to be de-escalating and maybe more than one with the ability to call other people who are around, I think makes sense for maybe not all the time. You know, people have talked about us going long and this delaying our business. I have to say that I don't think that we have suspended the rules very many times. In the two year, coming on the year and a half, the year and three quarters since last night, we haven't done that. So we are taking care of our business. And that means that despite people going off, that we're still able to get it done. So I don't think, I can't support closing down the scope of the debate. You know, I'm gonna name a name, I'm sorry, Todd. He always stays to his two minutes. It is very uncomfortable to be yelled at the way he does, but he's really articulate. And he makes his point and I could even type into the city's business. So it becomes a really slippery slope for us to be judging what's appropriate and what's not for folks to say. I hate to say that you're in a very difficult position because we talk about what is acceptable behavior, but this is more of an art, science, and one outburst, I think Joe said this really well. If you shut it down too much, it creates more of an issue. If somebody goes over by sentence or two and you try to shut them down, then you get into this thing with them. I think you've done a wonderful job dealing with folks and their time. I really do. When you're creating a bit of elasticity, perhaps if it's thought to be a problem, then the cutting of the mic after 30 or 45 seconds would be fine with a comment that just says, thank you very much, there's all these other people that are needing to talk and need to get out to our business. You had two minutes, thank you. Something that does allow you to get control without getting into an argument. I remember getting into arguments of trying to finish the last two sentences with Kurt Wright, and it was just miserable for me, and I don't think that we should do that, and that's particularly true if there are complicated issues. Some people can simply, for example, have a tendency to wanna throwing all the points that you should be considering and almost thinking about it for me. It's really hard to get into two minutes, so I appreciate when folks are at their limits, so that is a way that you could do that. But we're moving ourselves and having the escalators try to take control. I think it will be really kind of productive to try to empty the room. I think that will then become a fight and we will lose the meaning and we will lose the people, and I mean I understand why it is something to do, but I don't think that it should be done, so us doing that, but one hour first, even though it's not in the rules of decorum, I don't think, and I'm not hearing you, anybody say that they are, but I don't think that's a grounds to call for a recess, so that's the part for this, is why it really feels like it's just getting out of hand when Todd and the audience were engaged in the back and forth, it was like okay, this is, we just got the sort of stuff, and that's something that I would absolutely support if you're saying we need to take the recesses, and naming it, I think that's the last thing, but if there's gonna be such a disruption, then we should say this is, we can't continue our business here, this is now out of control, we need to stop and take the recess to try to deal with that. Thank you, thank you for informing us. Forgive me. I'm so sorry. No, that's okay, I have to be in the south end at eight o'clock, so I actually have to leave, my apologies. So if we're gonna do security, I'd prefer chocolate thunder, people know chocolate thunder, people are comfortable with chocolate thunder, chocolate thunder has a lot of experience with de-escalation because so many of their employees have worked in bars and concerts and other things like that, I do not think it should be police, and it shouldn't be CSOs, and actually for a whole lot of various reasons, we don't have the CSO count right now. I don't want to get into debate about hate speech. Some people feel hate speech is freedom of speech. To me, hate speech is unacceptable. Todd crossed that line. If it's been a black man addressing white women, the way he did, it would have been a very different conversation. Max, we need to think about that. We have been sloppy about issues of race, and I'm infuriated. I mean, I had to talk to a guy last week who told me, well, the blacks need to listen to police, and he was not talking about a white family from Wisconsin. So we have that in this city, and it's real. And some people are not appreciating that, and this is what's getting us in this hot mess. Now, with regards to doing the work of the people, the former city counselor, to his great regret, and it'll be on his tombstone, in the midst of extremely long public forums that went on for days, got really frustrated, and talked about we need to do the people's work. And that established that he clearly felt there was some kind of division in the city where some people didn't matter. Because what people were talking about at those extended public forums was the people's work. But it clearly wasn't as important to some city counselors as to others. So we want to be very careful when we talk about the people's work. Who are the people? We're trying to segregate the people? We don't want to go back. We don't want to bring memories of that back because people brought that up for a very long time. So when you say the people's work and the city council in the past has made these divisions as to which people we're going to work for, we need to be very, very careful. Thank you. Thank you. Our name's Mark Cookie. Yeah, thank you. And it seems that everyone talked about great ideas here. And thank you for allowing this to happen, and especially for the one-on-ones too, because you did not just call us all, but you individually called people to talk about this personally. I think those who felt threatened, it was a good time for them to talk to you. But I think I completely agree, Mr. Consul, already about the safety of the city councils when we come together. We don't know when there is a fire, what we're going to do as a body. No fire drills, no active shooter drills. And I think we should know all of those for our safety. But where I don't really feel safe sometimes, it's not people in the room, but people who are upstairs. I think we need to make sure that those doors are locked, and also when we allow them to be opened. I think that's the most scary part when I'm in the building. Now, and I think it will be also very important for us to not invite some behaviors at our next meeting based on what we're talking about at this exact meeting. Because sometimes our comments is triggering people to show up the next day, just to respond to what they heard a consul talk about. I think we also have a responsibility of being general or sometimes allowing the consul president, just like the people we're asking them direct your comments to the president. And I think sometimes we should also direct our call to the president so the president can speak on our behalf. You know what I mean? I think that's also very important. It's been six years, and this is not the first time I hear people coming back just to respond to one comment they heard a city consul said. We have a responsibility to also be safe and feel safe in here. I do believe that it would be imperative public forum is for the public to give them the space, to give them the time and to not limit what we have, allow them to talk about. They can talk about what is affecting them in the city, what is happening in the world, how does it make them feel? Those two minutes, yes, we need to make sure that they respect it. I think it will be important. But I have to say, president, that you are doing always an amazing job reminding people there are children watching. I think those lines that you read all the time, they are so important. And I'm so glad that since you become president, you've been highlighted, and it's important. And that's true. There are kids who are watching, right? And we need to definitely just do that and allow people, the public, to do so. One thing that I haven't heard, people who are not respecting our rules. What are now the consequences? Speak to the council, you're not speaking to the council and you're addressing the mayor or you're addressing a specific, what are the consequences? And from my perspective, we need to bring some level of consequence to it. If we cannot allow you to say, oh, you can't speak to public forum because of your behavior, I think we need to create rules or ordinances where you will be fine because you're not respecting, this is a ordinance, it was a rule of the city. You drive your car, you do what you should not do, you receive a ticket. You allow that, you do the research and bring that level of accountability so that people respect this municipal system of governance. I think from my perspective, that's what we need to come up with in order for people to remember that there are consequences if they do not listen or follow the rules. Just wanting to add those. Thank you. The enforcement, I don't know if that's something that we're able to do. I mean, before we would even talk about wanting to do it, is that something we even can do? I'm happy to answer it. Okay. Did you want to do, sorry, do you want to go online? Do you want to go online? It's a book, originally, you wanted to say. That's okay, you can answer that question. We'll talk about it. In that. Unless that person is ready to jump up and leave. In the vein of, it's a bigger bucket, like what's our authority to ask them to leave the building and then what's our authority to say, you can't speak to the next five meetings. I mean, there's a whole progression of, and I don't know that you can answer that tonight, but, and I'm not sure we want to do it, but there is that sort of, what, if somebody repeatedly does not follow the rules, what are the consequences? Ken, the council president, for example, not allowed him to speak at a subsequent meeting. I'm asking one. There's a wonderful federal court case out of the Royal Island County where a guy was very disruptive and they abandoned, and they were trespassed from like, that was thrown out of the federal court. There are real limits to the limit, the exercise of free speech. On the other hand, the constitutionality of the disorderly conduct laws at which have things for disruptions and that's part of the disorderly conduct is to make it short, this is that you have to get civil fines or criminal penalties, which I don't think are appropriate. They do require enforcing officers to issue them, so it's not so easy as to say, oh, you're gonna get a fine, right? Sort of like the number of people that break the traffic laws is much greater than the number of people who are fine for those violations on magnitude, which we can't act on. And I would just add to what Shannon raised with me and also mentioned that we do want to be careful of what we invite, right? And I've seen in my practice, activist groups that have a legal way that are intended to actually see some of the supermodel or intentional, broken situations in order to bring first amendment type cases into court. And we don't want to respond to some trappers of litigation, which is not necessary. And I'm not sure we're even close to that stage yet, and at least with anything I see. For whatever it's worth, I find much personally, much more worrisome. Worrisome when I think about my kids when I was a kid watching at home, not a little bit over the two minutes, which I mean different, right? And not even the occasional outburst, and certainly not sort of the passionate, we should not be an agreement. These are our issues, right? We're troublesome if we were sitting there. And he did agree, right? That would be really worrisome. That would be a huge red flag beyond that. I've never heard that expression, he did agree, but yeah. I can see why you don't, yeah, I know why you don't. That's an oxymoron. Well, the things that I stood out for me that made me go home about feeling so good are when people make personal remarks about city officials. And I've heard that, right? Recently, personal remarks about city officials, family members, what city officials look like, that kind of personalization also, how much it'll affect, it has a chill effect. It has a chill effect on people that might not participate in our run for office, that might be commissions who wants to be involved if that is what's going to be said. I do think we need to be staffed, right? Yeah, and I think you try, I think you're right, but I think to me that is more important than ever. I'll spark you, not on the city agenda. Oh, okay, we'll run over by a few seconds, okay? To me, when we start talking, when we start commercializing things like that, I think maybe. I wanted to talk about just some of the things I've heard around the room. One of the things is the stanchions, you brought that up, and Hannah, I think you have a very wise and kind approach to that. Like, some people here may not feel it's needed, that was not my idea, I have never suggested it. And maybe it would make other people in the room feel safe. And we have had a former colleague who felt very, I have heard from city employees who are very upset about how many people come behind us. Again, not my issue. I've never really raised anything about that. We have had a former city councilor who had a magician with this, for good reason. And it seems like very basic, and not actually very unfriendly thing to do, to say this is our space here, to kind of define those spaces doesn't seem like a big ask to me. Because there's space not only in the room behind us, but in our case, the stage, which is pertinent off, that's not safe. And agree completely with what Holly said, something I have been fighting for, since for probably 15 years, the thing that makes me feel most unsafe is when the doors are unlocked above. I think that there's just no reason that the only time those doors should be unlocked is if there's overflow, and we choose to unlock them. There is safety in numbers, there's safety in community observation, and to have one or two people up there, and sometimes it's been my own daughter. I don't feel unsafe when she's there, but it doesn't matter who it is. It doesn't matter that some people would like to be up there by themselves. I get that. Should not be open. It probably is a good area for security, because there's a very good view from above there. If it should be open, I think opening the sections that are on the back wall, not the sections behind us having something in advance set up, it's very unusual if we would actually make the entire balcony, and keeping everybody in front of us is better having only security. Somebody like Chocolate Thunder, whoever we decide, I think it is fine. I think the gene is right, that seeming heavy handed as soon as a bad word slips out, we're all out of our seats and we're in the back room and we're holding up everybody. No. That's not really us, and I don't imagine you really doing that. I don't imagine us really jumping at that, but maybe if we can all, maybe the warning to people is, if you break one of our rules, we'll give you a warning, but that means you're going to get interrupted and you're not going to get more time, so you're going to lose time. And somebody breaks one of the rules, I think a counselor says point of order, counselor calling, you know the rules, you know why that person's calling the point of order, you say point 12, taking counselor Jane and correct the person speaking when the bell rings. And I think we can all also kind of observe the tone of our meeting. And when the tone of our meeting, it's not just one person, we're seeing these things happen repeatedly and we need to change the tone of our meeting. That's the time to say, I'd like to call a recess. And so I don't think it has to be really heavy handed or I think there's room for some judgment here, but I also think it's really helpful when counselors are the ones saying, not only this is not up to President Paul's standard, this isn't up to our standard. And it's helpful if it's not always the same counselor, say point of order, you know, if we can all try and pitch in in how we expect this to go, I think that that would be really helpful. As far as clearing the room, I appreciate why that's appealing. I just think it's easier to control us than it is to control them. And so it's just gonna be much easier for us to say we're gonna remove ourselves from this situation, we'll come back when this room is cooled off. I think people have taken some comment that I made the wrong way. There's been kind of accusations about who makes who feel unsafe. And I haven't felt, I have not felt unsafe in recent meetings, but I was trying to point out that members of the public stood up at our meeting and asked us, how are you keeping us, members of the public, safe in this room? And I said, that's a good question. How are we keeping these members of the public safe? How are we keeping speakers safe? And how are we keeping us safe and safe as Councilor Paul said, or President Paul said? And in my long course of time here, the times, what's made me feel unsafe is people in the balcony, especially with people with backpacks in the balcony. And there was one meeting, should I remind, I don't know if you were there or not, where we adjourned our meeting unexpectedly and early. And I remember wondering how I was going to exit this irate room, so the meeting was over, I needed to exit the room, and everybody in the room was hotter than hot, because something unexpected happened. You might not have been there. I think you might not have been there, even though if I remember that. We reconvened, we were there when we reconvened for many points of order about meeting, that triggers any memories. But at any rate, things do happen. They're not always, there's some things that happen that are predictable. There's something on our agenda that we know is a hot and divisive issue. There are times, it seems less recently, when we have hot issues, it's only one side in the room, which historically hasn't been the case. Historically, we've talked about Ben Patrol and two opposing sides are in the room, and it isn't actually kind of the public against us the way it's felt at times more recently. It's a public against each other, and they're really, really mad. And there was a little bit of that dynamic in that meeting with Todd, where he said something offensive and the room rose up against him. And I think physically probably felt threatening to him because of the physical rising up and moving towards him. I think that that probably felt threatening to him. But we have to be prepared for the unexpected. Some of these things, I think a plan should be known to counselors. It doesn't necessarily have to be publicly known. What our safety and security plans are. Maybe that's based on the overall conversation here. I hope, Gary, that maybe that's something that you can work on and let us know what the plan is. We elected you, and I also think that there is room for disagreement and respect for the fact that you are a council president, and you're gonna need to set some boundaries and we need to help support you in the boundaries that you set. Thanks. Thank you, Jean. On the question of stanchions, we invite the public to give those forms to Lori as we're in the back. So we just have to be really conscious of the changes that need to be made and I don't think there's anything in the lavatory about having stanchions that delineate the boundaries between from where the speaker table is, the public form table is, over to where the council and even otherwise, because those bathrooms are not public, the bathroom there is not a public bathroom. But there are staff people there, but we do expect folks to interact with the public, with our people to interact with the public and so we might not just change. That I think it's totally reasonable to close the upstairs unless there's an overflow. But if we, people when it's really crowded downstairs, they start to fill in the space, they don't necessarily sit down in the chairs, they start to stand, we've all been in meetings like that. So you have stanchions, we just have to be really conscious and just like we've got a plan for emergencies, we have to plan to be able to, the open doors upstairs if need be and try to direct people and take the time to do that. I mean, I think we could do something like stanchions in a reasonable way, but we've got to think it through. So we don't inadvertently promise because we haven't really thought it through. I think we have to use those in the past. Usually it's been when we've known there was going to be a large group of people. And I don't, I've never spoken to a city councilor that enjoys having someone literally this far away from them with their back to their back. And I think that is a, and we even have that with, there were times where the media also is pretty close. And I mean, I've never felt really great when that happens. I sort of want people to not be quite that close. It just sort of gives you a little bit of a claustrophobic kind of just too tight. Nevermind the fact that we all sit at a table close together, but I think that's a little bit different. I mean, what I'm hearing is that, when it comes to the questions or the thoughts that I had asked before is, turning to face the rest of the community is not what we ask of people. They're here to talk with us, not to talk with all the other people that are here. And that is a breach of decorum. I mean, you are right. I mean, if we call it a recess every time somebody unfortunately uses profanity, we have a lot of recesses sometimes. It's gotten better and it ebbs and flows, but I think that the challenge in a couple of other meetings was just simply that once there is just a prolific amount of profanity, the next speaker will feel that that's okay. And so that is when you have to sort of say, okay, is once enough, is twice enough? What is enough before it really is a breach of decorum and it's just gonna devolve from there? When somebody refuses to stop speaking, we can after say, okay, that's it. You're done. Two minutes doesn't mean two hours and two minutes and 45. And you have to stop speaking and a microphone can certainly go off. I will also talk with CCTV that when a recess is called that ends what is going on in the room. Particularly, of course, if we leave the room. And I'm really heartened by the fact that I don't hear anybody saying that if we call a recess, a real way to get people's attention and understand that we are no longer listening is to leave the room. I'm really heartened by that. I think it will work and I don't know that we'll necessarily have to do it very often. But I do think you're right. And what I'm hearing is we need to have a plan. It sounds to me like we don't wanna limit comment, but is there some level of agreement that while we don't wanna limit comment that it is not unreasonable to prioritize the speakers who are here to speak to agenda items first? Is that, is there a common understanding, is there a common feeling that that's really what we're here to do and that the people that are here to speak to, not just an agenda item, but something that relates to the work of the council as opposed to just simply being able to come and talk with us about their feelings about their ex-spouse. I mean, I think, you were not the last meeting, Jean. I think that the challenge was that it was a very short agenda. I think we were all expecting this was gonna be a pretty calm meeting. I thought you guys heard me. Right, and in fact, I- I was shocked. You didn't miss nothing. Well. Yeah, I didn't think I knew anything. Well, fiscal didn't have to say nothing. But I think the thing that I caught a lot of us by surprise was that there really were only, I don't know, three people, four people who wanted to speak during public forum. And it's hard to listen to someone speak during public forum about other people in the community. And really, really, I mean, it was just incredibly, I don't know if you could call it hurtful, but it was really just a moralizing to people. And these are just citizens that are, they go about their lives. I don't know if anything is true or not true, but it was really, it was harsh to listen to. And I think that is another realm. It's one thing to be attacking or personalizing comments about people at this table, but it was quite another to hear what was said. And I think that was really just challenging. I don't know what the answer is. Tim, I think said very well, I'm sure I said that the rule of decorum is not personalizing things. And I agree with that. To anyone? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, it doesn't help us, just doesn't help us at all. Deal with different issues to just have other people call names. We go ahead. Sorry, I think it's really good idea that this notion of us leaving, because I think it emphasizes the point, which on this city council meeting, the purpose is the city cap, like the people are addressing the city council, right? But they're there to address us, and that is the rule that they address you as a president. They don't address individual council members. And the other thing, kind of really strongly disagreeing with any suggestion that members of city departments or heads of city departments regardless of whatever city department it is, including police chief or the bar chief, is not welcome at a city council meeting. And I think it's really important that actually the public do not address, you know, a city employee that was to be there for whatever reason. I think that's just a bad estimate and it's pretty slow. Discrete city policy, redistricted departments doing the redistricted, mayors doing the redistricted, we're doing the redistricted, especially with you, all the way. But just to address, you know, so-and-so, that not even, that should be, I think, again, I know it should be more police than other things. Let us think it needs some funding. You could just fund some funding. I'd like to, I guess, like the Oscars. That's classical comedy. I love where you're at, Tim. I really do. I will talk with Chief LeChance about a fire drill. We've never done a fire drill. And you know what? We should. We should know where to go. Should there be an emergency. So, excellent point, Colleen. And we'll all try to follow directions that go in one direction. I do hear what you're saying about people being upstairs. I've heard that a number of times. Most of the time, we don't need the upstairs and we really don't need to have those doors open, particularly the ones that are next to us. Will, I think what I'm hearing is that, you know, while it would be good to have some kind of security that chocolate thunder. I also am wondering whether or not, because I know this has come up before. There are a couple of people that speak at public forum. We all know who they are, who are well known to street outreach. And they will sometimes come to the meetings or will be around City Hall, because they know, they know that, and they may actually have an interaction with that person during the day. And so they know to be on alert for that. And I think that's something that we can certainly do. Did you wanna say something, Sarah? I'm sorry. I don't want to, I just had a couple of comments back on the security emergency plans. Sure. We need to make sure who knows them, since council has changed and turned over. So I think there needs to be some discussion with the administration kind of who's on first. If there's a fire drill, if there's a violent situation, who leads the pack? And the emergency plan would have all that, but I just wanna make sure that we, I'm not sure, I think it's necessarily the council president's job. So as we develop plans, we should do that. The other thing I was just gonna comment on, and I don't know how to wedge this in, but is there a way for us to maybe have more public forums for contentious issues, and then say, but you don't get to say it, every, every, every, every meeting. We're gonna talk to you and we're gonna listen to you about the issues, but that's our feedback. On this subject, you can come talk to us and tell us that, not a formal public hearing, which is kind of mandated by zoning and stuff, but a McNeil, you know. Come tell us what you're thinking, but we don't have to hear it eight meetings in a row. We want you, and even though, maybe those public forums, you should give people longer. I mean, if it's a particular topic that we want your feedback on, you get five minutes. And I'd rather hear somebody talk for five minutes or six minutes than two minutes three times in a row. I mean, I think we get more feedback by giving you a shot to tell us in detail why you support or don't support something, but I don't need to hear it, you know, repetition doesn't persuade me, depth does. So I just think that somebody should sort of think about. But we are gonna have, you know, we are gonna have other contentious issues. I mean, that's just the nature of what this is. And some of them we know, and some of them we don't know until we get there. I will, I'm gonna try to synopsize all of this and get this into some readable form, particularly to be able to share with those people that either had to leave early or weren't able to come. The other thing I would suggest is that it's taken a while, but the council rules that we completely redone are not yet on, what is that called? Co-publishing. We have them, they're actually, they're on this agenda. And I will say, I did think about the fact that we all should, just like when you become an employee of a business, you should have to sign that you read the employee manual. I don't know that we need to all be able, all be that accountable to say that, yes, I have to sign something that says I've read the council rules. But in the absence of that, I just hope that everyone will read the council rules. With the exception of just a few city councilors, we all agree to those rules. So it's not only that they're the rules, they're the ones that we voted on. So hopefully you'll all have a chance to read those and just take to heart what we all agreed to. I think the most important issue, and I will just put it out there, is that we can't impugn the character of one another. There is no advantage to that as a body. It is disrespectful, and it's not the way that we can treat each other. It's not the way for us to treat each other. So I would just ask that we all think about that when you're speaking that in the heat of a moment, that we just not talk badly of one another and try to work it out privately and have our disagreements. Please don't say, please don't accuse people of things or impugn one another's character. You're all good people. You really are, you're all good people and there's no reason for us to do that. Could I just make one comment? Sure. The recess, it just kind of occurs to me that what we've been discussing maybe a little bit more than we really need, the idea of leaving the room, I think that there are times we need to leave the room. I think there are other times when we can, there's lots of times where we are taking a recess, not having anything to do with the public forum. We take a recess, we want to be in the room. There are different levels of things that can happen at public forum. There's different levels of things that happen in the room. And I think that we just need to be cognizant that when we are taking a recess for the purpose of cooling something off, at a minimum, get out of your chairs, just leave the table, turn off your microphones. And then if you, Karen, think that this is kind of reached that higher level, I think it would be helpful if you announce, yes, we will take a recess and counselors please exit the room. And then we know where we're going. We're going out, okay. All right, Ben, did you want to say something? And then we'll have to... I have two very brief things to say, but I just do want to say one thing. I completely agree with everything John is saying about the recess and even to step away from the table and so on and so forth. I also think, again, we're going to need some protocol about whose responsibility it is to diffuse the situation that we've just left in the room. I think it's unfortunate that at the last session, the folks who, and I'm very grateful that they did it, but the folks who ultimately sort of left the room and diffuse the situation were Milo and Zariah. And I think that if we had sort of a clear protocol in place as to what's going to happen, are we going to step away? Is there a presence in the room? Whether it's chocolate thunder, whether it's someone else who's going to be responsible for trying to de-escalate the room when we leave, I think we need that in place. Two other really brief things. You may have just said this, Karen, and I'm sorry if I just missed it, but the council rules that we updated, they do need to be updated online. Okay, we just said that. All right. Were you not paying attention? I admit it. 60% sure, I heard it, 140% I made it. We got there. The other thing that would be a suggestion is I think you've heard from all of us that we really appreciate the comments that you make before public forum. I think just one really minor suggestion would be, I would totally be open to your saying that the council has jointly asked me to say to you all, right? And then that way it's the council's expectations as opposed to Karen Paul's rules. I think that may go some way in trying to establish that this is sort of some joint commitment that we've reached here. Well, I don't think that that's minor. I think that's actually a big deal. And thank you, thank you for saying that. I agree, you know, it's been a, you know, the last couple of meetings have been challenging. You know, I would love to be able to think, I think we all would love to be able to think that when you're presented with something like this, that you can do it yourself. And the reality is none of us can. I know I can't. I need all of you, you know. I need all of you to be there to help me and to know that, you know, if I say we're gonna leave the room, that no one is gonna say, well, I disagree with you. Because that would definitely not be helpful. We all bring different skills to the table and we all bring different groups of people to the table with us. And I think that's our strength. Not, not, I think that's a positive, not a negative. Thank you for all giving up another day. Yes, Ali was here yesterday, thinking that it was yesterday. So he gave up two. But thank you for giving up another day to come and talk on a Tuesday. We will be back together on the 10th of October. Without objection, we'll adjourn. We'll adjourn this at 823.