 Good evening and welcome back to byline. This is a public affairs show here at Amherst Media and it's co-sponsored with the Amherst League of Women Voters. And back by popular demand is the vice chair of our town council, Mandy Jo Henneke. And she's here tonight in a different role. We're going to be focusing on the committee that you are chairing, which is a very, very important committee. It is the committee on governance, organization, and legislation. That's a big portfolio. So we want to learn how things are unfolding as you're putting this committee together and as the committee is doing its work. And so we had a brief conversation the other day and so let's start with organization. What are you organizing? We're organizing ourselves in a way, but we're also organizing how we operate and some part of how the town operates. The town manager has that organizational on the executive side, but we've been forming committees both for the town council and we did form an energy and climate action committee that will be a town committee to work on that because we thought that was a missing segment of our committee structure. And so the governance committee, that's one of the shorthands I use, is just governance because it's long. It's the first word of the committee. We also call it the GOL committee as the abbreviation, and we've been looking... Which could be the goal committee. Yeah, it's a goal committee. We're looking at on the charges of committees, what do they do? And so we've been making sure they are clear, consistent, and actionable. And do we have the ones we need on the town council? And so our main function right now has been to look at what's been proposed and make sure they're consistent across sort of uses and clear so that a resident, if they're looking at what's this committee do, can read it and understand it fairly easily. Okay, so there's a series of what I might call operational committees that are in place right now. These are... Some of them come out of the charter? Yes. And then some of them have been developed by the council itself in order to effectively organize the work that you're going to do? Correct. And then there's going to be policy committees. Yes. And the policy committees, an example would be the Energy and Climate Change Committee. Yep. Right? So the operational committees at this point include the finance committee, help us. So finance, and that one's out of the charter. Yeah. The... What's it called? It's abbreviation. So it's outreach communications and appointments. Good. And there is our committee, the governance, organization, and legislation committee. There's going to be a new one by the time this airs probably called the community resources committee. And then there are a couple of ad hoc committees on top of that. There's a by-law review committee per the charter, and there is a rules of procedure committee per the charter to generate and draft the council rules of operation. Okay. And so your committee in its organizational function, which is the middle word of the committee title, you're trying to bring order to the committees and how they... When you form a committee, various things that need to be done. So for example, a committee has to have a charge. Yes. What else does a committee have to have? Well, so the charge is... And for people who don't know what a charge is, the charge is what does a committee... What are they told to do? What are their sort of operational... What can they do? What do we want them to do? And so there's been... What were they created to do? Yeah. Their purpose. If you look at the current committee charges, their goals and why they were created, they're all over the place in terms of structure. And so it's really hard to say... To look at something and say, where's the membership in that? You can't. And so our goal in looking at all of these was to create a template, a document that you could put everything in so that any resident looking at them would know, here's where you'll find how many members there are, whether they're voting or not. Here's where you'll find its purpose. Here's where you'll find what they are capable of doing under that purpose. Here's where you'll find do they have to report and who do they report to. And who appoints them. And also who appoints them. Who has the authority to appoint them. Yeah. And how long that appointment would be, whether it's one year or three years or five, how long you'd be on it. So there's a series of boxes that you have to tick off when you're writing up a proposal to create a committee. So that when the council takes a look at it, they have the answers to the basic questions in order to decide whether or not to create that committee. Yes. And what else do you see, what else is involved in that? So for example, what about applying for membership on the committee? Is that within your jurisdiction? That is not. Okay. Yeah. So once a committee's formed, any proposal they come back to the council would eventually end up at our committee. But for things like applications, that actually goes to a different committee depending on who the appointing authority is. But there's a process on the town website where residents can indicate their interest in committees. And so the goal of our template is to put them on every committee. So people know what to expect if they want to join that committee. What is it doing? What has it done? Very good. We're instituting a request to our council that every committee have a reporting requirement. So that the council knows what the committees are doing. Because many of them might not actually ever bring anything back to the council. But also so that a resident can see what happened in the last year. And if you go to the town website when the system is all working properly. And you click on that committee, whatever the committee is that you're interested potentially, you're interested in the subject matter. So you can click on that committee and you'll be able to read the purpose of the committee, the jurisdiction of the committee. How many people are going to be on the committee? Is it a council only membership? Is it a town? If you are on as a resident of the community, like the finance committee has a bunch of town council people who vote, but they are also going to have several people from the community who are not voting members. But they participate in the discussion and feed into that whole process. So you'll be able to go to the town website at some point not so long from now. Hopefully, and you'll be able to, in addition to seeing the form that you fill out to apply for membership, you'll also be able to see a very clear outline of each committee. And it'll be consistent. It'll be consistent across all the committees. And that's our goal as the governance committee is to make that consistent so that it's predictable. Right. Okay. So the finance committee right now is busily working on its review of the budget and all of that. You're still working on this boilerplate for the committee. There's supposed to be non-voting community residents on that committee. How does that fit into what you're doing now? So that doesn't really come back to us, at least the non-residents. That would go to the outreach communications and appointments committee. If we hadn't had a rules committee, a rules of procedure committee, that ad hoc committee that's creating rules, the process for that appointments or a recommendation would have actually come to the governance committee because there's a slight conflict in the charter as to who appoints those non-resident members of the finance. And that sort of recommended process coming up with a recommendation was sent to the rules committee when rules dissolves, when they're done in their initial, we've created the rules for the council, that question would come to us, questions of that type of procedure. Okay. So this is a very important point, which is the ad hoc rules committee and your committee and the outreach committee all have a certain amount of overlap right now, but as our government continues to be put together and things are finalized, we're going to see appropriate coordination among committees, but we're also going to see some change because, for example, you just said that the ad hoc rules committee is going to dissolve. And once the ad hoc rules committee dissolves, that puts the questions that would otherwise have gone to that committee, to your committee under governance. Under the governance portion. Under the governance. Yes. So we're going to come to governance in just a minute. Yeah. Let's get up on this on the committees. So you can't, you don't create committees, you, the council can propose a committee. Yeah. A person in the community could propose a committee and petition the council. Yeah. What you're doing, and that's not your decision whether to create that committee or not. That's the council's decision. That's the council's decision. Your work is to make sure we have an orderly clear structure when we decide we're going to have a committee on this. These are the elements that the town council is going to look at to make sure that they're all there and they make sense, but they will ultimately vote whether to create that committee or not and what the jurisdiction is, what the purpose is, how many members, et cetera, et cetera. Yes. There is discussion on whether, you know, as we figure all of this out, though, the recommendation to create a committee, the governance committee as a whole is discussing whether recommendations such as that could come from governance directly. Through our review of organization of committees, you know, that organization portion, are we organized properly? Do we have a recommendation? Are we missing something? Are we not? We're in, as a committee, discussions over multiple meetings on, is that an appropriate function of our committee? Again, we're all learning, so we're trying to figure out our scope and that's part of our discussion is, is that within our scope to review structures and actually make a proposal ourselves to the council? That kind of makes sense because any member of the council could propose a committee and your committee is a group of members of the council. So a group of the members of the council, independently of your committee could do that. So maybe that could also be a function of your committee, but not to the exclusion of any individual council or even the public. And that recommendation, us wanting to recommend the creation of a committee doesn't automatically create it because it's ultimately the council's decision to say yay or nay to any recommendation, whether that comes from a resident and other council or a committee if the committee decides it's within its jurisdiction to make those recommendations. So now, let's assume, let's fast forward, your boilerplate is done, the council has embraced it, the system is working, the ad hoc rules committee dissolved last week, talk about governance and the role of governance as part of your committee's jurisdiction. Yes, so the governance portion is sort of the internal rules of how the council will operate. How are we going to govern ourselves? So part of that is which committees, but part of it is how do we run meetings? How do we require certain above and beyond charter or legal requirements in the state, different voting requirements? And how are we going to conduct ourselves at meetings? That's what rules of procedure, as Alyssa I'm sure has talked about on the show, is looking at. But once that is adopted, our committee will undertake probably yearly a review of them to see is this working, is it not, are we missing something, are we not, the committee, the governance committee is the one that's going to be sort of in charge of those reviews and then the recommendations back to a council for any changes if we see it. But if someone else recommends a change, it would then come to governance for that review. So once the council adopts those final rules, the governance committee is the committee that becomes sort of the caretaker of those rules. And so from time to time you may review and revise those rules by vote of the council and it could be that the council sends a question to your committee to research and think about because it's not working quite as well as they like or the committee itself could observe that, gee, we missed something here because we didn't anticipate X, Y, or Z and now we need to propose something to the full body as to how we're going to operate. And so the rules are not just how the council is going to operate. Correct? Correct. It's also how the public and the residents communicate with us too. So those rules will encompass public participation in meetings. Things like public comment, when that happens, what an agenda looks like, how long, and just addressing, manners of addressing each other and respect and things like that. So it's not just internal, but it's also communications. We would call in legislative bodies quorum. Yes, we're trying to avoid that word because it's an archaic word. Well, and it also doesn't feel like Amherst. Right. But legislative bodies have to operate in a way that allows for civil communication and discussion and engagement, even in situations that can get very hot and heavy. And yet you have a public responsibility to conduct that conversation in a way that brings honor to the body and reflects well upon the community. Not to mention on individual counselors who presumably want to put their best foot forward at all times. So this will also be about how people interact with the council around public hearings or presentation of proposals. That's not exactly the jurisdiction of your committee, is it though? With regard to if I want to present the petition, the charter speaks to how I, as a resident of the community, can put forward an idea through a petition. Yes. The petition then has to be received by the council. Whose job is it to set the rules and the procedures and the approach? And is that starting to get us into the conversation on legislation? It is, yeah. The charter, as you said, sets forth some specific things. Our internal rules that the Rules of Procedure Committee is working on will set forth some other, flesh that out a little bit more. But then when it's at the council and it's not maybe ready for action, or the council wants to be deliberative and thorough, so they don't want to necessarily adopt something on a first time forward. They want to know pros and cons and all of that. Where does it go? And right now, there really isn't a committee for that. There will be when community resources is adopted, there'll be a committee for some of that policy discussion and debate and all. And anything financial goes to the finance committee. But the governance committee is trying to figure out, do we have any role in that beyond what our current charge says, which is we would look at those measures and they would ultimately, everything like that would come to us as a final look. But what is that look? And that's one other thing we've been discussing in the council in our committee is what is that look? And is it a policy-based look or not? Or should it be a policy-based look? And at this point, we are avoiding the policy-based look. Not only does our charge say no, but we're concerned about things about that. So we're looking at it when it does come to us for clarity, consistency, and actionability without regard to what our own personal feelings on the actual policy presented is. So it's more in the nature, that function is more in the nature of determining whether it is, whether the eyes have been dotted and the T's have been crossed in relation to the rules of the body. And the specific dictates of the charter with regard to certain matters. So in the state legislature, we call that the committee on the rules, the committee on bills in the third reading. And basically on the third reading of the bill, it goes to that committee, whose purpose it is to make sure that it's constitutionally accurate. It's been drafted properly to achieve the intended outcome. If you're supposed to be making desserts, and the word beef shows up, that probably is a mistake. And therefore, you're probably going to want to edit that out, because you're not making, that's not a policy decision, that's a question of accuracy. If somebody says, oh no, I'm redefining beef as a dessert, that's a different story. But you understand what I'm saying here is that this is about the accuracy and that it's complying with all other existing provisions. So for example, you could also identify, couldn't you, where it might conflict with another policy or bylaw or something like that? Yeah, actually we did. And we've adopted guidelines so that people can have a predictability of what we're going to be looking at things for. So actionability would be, does it conflict with a current bylaw? Does it conflict with mass general law? Does it conflict with our charter? And conflicting with, say, a current bylaw is not necessarily bad, because you might be trying to change the current bylaw policy in a different manner, but to identify that, hey, it does conflict. It creates a conflict and you have to resolve that. How are you going to do it? Are you in effect repealing the portion of the previous bylaw and substituting this? Or are you intentionally going to create this for some reason, which is not a very good idea in most instances? No, for example, there's a current bylaw, the signed bylaw. Sign regulations show up in two bylaws, in both the general bylaw and the zoning bylaw, and they actually conflict. So it needs taken care of, obviously, but our role would be, hey, someone might not realize there's already something dealing with it in, say, zoning if they propose one in a general bylaw, and our role would be there's something in zoning and it conflicts with that. We should, if we like this policy, deal with that at the same time, but not and say, oh, because it conflicts, we can't do it. Versus if it conflicts with the charter, that's a potentially different recommendation. Got it. So the legislation committee is, sorry, the legislation portion of the work of your committee, you're doing the same thing that you're doing in the other two governance and organization where you're trying to create predictable, transparent process so people know what to expect and how it's going to work. And some of those things are gonna be identical, whether it's something from a town department or the public, a town council or a committee of the council. And sometimes there may be some differences in the procedure or the process, but it will be clear why. Yes. And it'll be a policy decision as to why we're handling this this way versus that way. And it'll be a decision of the council that yes, we're going to do that way. Yes. Okay. And so now that's all about transparency and providing opportunity for engagement and clarity, et cetera. It can be surprises and things that can also get a little confusing. Okay, let's take an example. Are there things that sometimes it's gonna be unclear whether it goes to this committee or that committee? And if that happens, what do we do? We haven't totally had that happen yet, but yeah, there certainly will because there will be times where there's a bylaw that's proposed that would clearly have financial impacts, but has a policy behind it and the council will want to know what the pros and cons of that policy are. And then obviously it's a bylaw so it's got legislation issues of is it even allowable to enact? Does it comport with and comply with state law? And so we haven't had to deal with that on the council yet, but in various side discussions on council as we've broached this subject, not like outside of council meetings, but the general feeling seems to be that it would go to all the committees and the question is, does it go all at the same time or does it go one-on-one? And we actually found- You mean in sequence? In sequence or does say if it's a planning related item that might have financial impact, does it go to community resources at the same time that it's at finance, at the same time that it's at legislation and governance committee? And we as a governance committee, we tried that with the energy and climate action committee charge where it was still being modified by the charge sponsors at the same time we were trying to figure out whether it was clear, consistent and actionable and we decided that doesn't work very well because we never were sure what version we should be looking at. So it was in too many places at the same time? It was, for that reason. So we've sort of recommended that any changes to policy be done before governance sees, it's referred to governance for final determination because we wanna see what is believed to be the final version, not while policies are still changing in it because that makes it hard to determine consistently. And if there's a fiscal impact, does it go to the finance committee before governance or after? So it would be before governance. We want governance to be the last person to see it. The question would be, does it sit at finance at the same time it sits at, say, community resources if it has a financial impact but is related to planning? And that's something we as a council have not had an experience with yet. So we're not sure, but it'll probably be a trial and error. Can it be done at the same time or does it, as we tried it with governance and legislation and drafters, does it really need separated sequentially? So if this is helpful in the state legislature, the policy committee sees the bill and makes a recommendation on the bill first. If it recommends it favorably and there's a potential fiscal impact, it goes to the budget committee next to determine what the amount of money is that it will cost. And then if they, once they decide to release it saying we agree with the policy and we can afford it, it then goes to the floor for debate. And after the debate, the first debate on the floor, if it's approved, it moves to what would be the governance committee to check for constitutionality, proper drafting, et cetera, before the council takes, I'm sorry, before the legislature, that branch of the legislature takes the final vote. So it's the same- That is helpful. This is the same, these are the same stages that you have to figure out. And at the state legislature, now the difference here is the state legislature is two, there's 160 reps. There's a lot of people running around to do a lot of work. There's 13 of you. There's only 13 of us, yes. So you will have to take that into consideration. We only have a couple of minutes left. Orphan Bills. Orphan Bills, that's the biggest discussion in governance right now. What if there isn't a standing committee on that policy? Where does it go? And right now we've been created some ad hoc committees to deal with that. But governance- As a council. As a council. And governance is, we're only 13 people and our schedules fill up in terms of trying to find this mix. So governance committee has been discussing, is there, should we have another standing committee for those that aren't covered by community resources? Does it belong in governance? And that goes back to my concern and the concern of the governance of policy versus just constitutionality in some sense, actionability. And we wanna keep our own feelings out of and beliefs out of that last decision. And so we're not sure what we're gonna do with that yet. If you start blurring that line, will you be able to maintain the discipline of, oh, this is too, before of us, because there's no policy committee. When 90% of what comes before you is coming from committees that are policy oriented. So that's a very tricky situation. It is. And why we're still in discussions on governance is to what we might want to recommend to the council on that, because it relates to our own charge ourselves of do we recommend a change or are we recommending yet another committee of the council to take those sort of orphan bills. Which again, you have only 13 people. You're part-time volunteers. You've paid a small stipend. You're not full-time legislators. So it's very challenging to stand up a new government, to fly the plane while you're building it, which is what you're doing. And you guys are working really hard at it and it's obvious and we wish you all very, very well. And so what we've learned here very clearly is your committee, and by the way, this show is gonna be broadcast probably in two or three, maybe four weeks, which means some of the decisions will already have been made. But our viewers will at least understand some of the thinking behind what you're doing. But the bottom line is, you're looking to create consistency with regard to how matters are proposed, including how you create a committee, all of the expectations around that, what happens if somebody files legislation, whether it's from the council or from the public, and that there'd be a clear process and transparent and people can predict and know, not the outcome, but the process. So they'll understand the process. The outcome is the debate between the council member, among the council members, and the council and the community. With that, thank you so much. Thank you. Our time goes so fast here. It does, it does. Thank you so much for all your good work. Thank you for having me. And thank you for joining us again tonight.