 All right, I see a presence of a quorum and so I'm going to call this meeting of governance organization legislation to order according to my clock it is 1032. This meeting is being recorded and pursuant to Governor Bakers March 12 order 2020 suspending certain provisions of open meeting law. This meeting of GOL is being conducted via remote participation. I'm going to very quickly go through and make sure everybody can be heard. And I can hear them. So Mandy present and Andy. Yes, I'm here. Pat present and Lynn present. Okay, so everyone is here. Everyone could be heard. If I can pull it up on my screen, maybe I can't. No, I can't. We have, if you take a look at our agenda, if you've got that handy or Lynn wants to put it up, I'm not sure we really need to we have a number of specific items today. First, I want to start with the rules and procedure and work our way through those. Then we have a town manager memo on charter 8.1 that I would like us to attend to. We have time. We might want to spend a few minutes, maybe not reviewing candidate interview process. I thought I had a conversation with Pat and she had a thought some good points about how perhaps that the actual interview process could have been structured a little bit more clearly. So I'd want to bring that up if you have a moment. We still have the timeline. I don't know if we want to deal with that today, but it's item number five. And then the rest of the items are pretty much boilerplate we do have three sets of minutes I do want us to get through today, before we're done by 1230. So, rules and procedure. If everyone should have hopefully a copy of that handy. I don't think we can put it on the screen because we're going to have other things up on the screen. My thought was that we would work with a, I put a document in the SharePoint. Unfortunately, I don't know that it's in the other packet, but we'd gotten the memo from Lynn about various things that various committees are supposed to pay attention to this was a while back. Most recent one. And I thought that formed a nice focus for our discussion, but I'm so I was going to simply go through there were 14 items on that list. And it is, I believe. What is it. I'm sorry my computer is completely useless. That was the disposition and a referral of a future dental items. Yes, and there were under GL there were 14 separate items, not all of them refer to rules of procedure but a number of them do. And I thought we could simply go, we could start by going through those. But you may have individually some particular items you want to start with. So I know Mandy has a couple so we might start with Mandy's list first. And you also others of you have particular things you want to bring up, but I thought it would be worth going through that list of 14 at some point, just as sort of vacuum everything up. Make sure we've covered our bases. I don't think it makes sense to go through the rules procedure chapter by chapter item by item. I think we should focus on specific issues that have been raised. And so in that list. There are 14 that some of which relate to RLP. So that's what I was going to suggest Mandy, maybe we should start with your list first and do others have specific items that they would like to bring up because we could do that first and then turn. So Mandy does I know anyone else have some specific things. Or do you want to wait and hear Mandy's list and then we'll go from there. That. Let's go with Mandy's list. Okay. So my list is mainly there's, there's some random things but but the five I want to talk about are five that are designed to either. Hopefully, shorten council meetings. And, and also give more predictability to GOL's agenda. So this is also a GOL thing in a sense to. So the first one is rule 6.3 E, which is the rule that relates to speaking time for counselors, counselors conduct and debate and speaking time essentially. Do you want me to pull the rules up. It might make sense. And then if you would, I have a copy on my computer. I'm fine. I don't know. My computer is gone on the blitz. So I can't even refer to mine now. So yes, it would be helpful if you would do that. Right. I'm sorry. So it's on page 16 of the document. I just want to make sure Mandy Joe that I have the right document. The packet has the correct document of rules of procedure. The packet has the rules in it. Right. It does. Is this the document. Yep. Yeah. That's the right date. Last one is June 1. 16. I'm going to go to page 16. Thank you. Right. You just passed it. Thank you. Sorry. 6.3. Actually page 14. But it will show up as 16 on the page things, even though because of the table of contents. So it's kind of weird. 6.3. Okay. So we're there right there. E counselors may speak upon a matter for no more than three minutes at a time, except when introducing or presenting a measure, a counselor may yield all our part of this time to another counselor. So, um, first of all, we don't necessarily enforce this rule as it is. So I think it needs enforced. So I have some changes I'd like to suggest. The first is to change the three minutes to two. Um, and let me just read what my final version would be. And then I'll talk about each one. I would change it to my proposal is to change. E to read counselors may speak upon a matter for no more than two minutes at the first instance, and for no more than one minute thereafter, except when introducing or presenting a measure at which time the presiding officer will set the time period. Counselor shall be timed. So this changes the initial three minutes to two. It would add the clause at the first instance. And for no more than one minute thereafter. Um, it would delete the clause at a time. Um, and then it would add a clause. At which time the present presiding officer will set the time period for the presenting of a measure. And it would add the sentence counselor shall be timed. And it would delete the clause that counselor may yield all our part of this. Time to another counselor in the last two years, we haven't really seen the yielding of time. So I'm not sure it's necessary. Um, that yielding. Does it also add time to them. Meeting in a sense. Um, but we haven't seen a need for it. Uh, but mainly I'm trying to say. If we're talking about a measure. You get a longer time the first time you talk, but every additional time you talk. Um, you shouldn't have to talk as long because you might be responding to someone. Um, and. If we limit the time, we have to not. If we limit the time, could you repeat the last part of what you said? We can't as counselors ramble. Oh, we'll find a way. Yeah. I just. Good. The one other thing counselors shall be timed would actually provide an enforcement mechanism that is. Fair. If we start timing every time a counselor starts to speak. Can I ask. Just you referred to. Who is going to do the timing. The presiding officer would decide who times. Okay. And they can't. May they assign. Timing to somebody else. I assume so. I envision when we're in the town room, potentially bringing back the town meeting clock. With the green, yellow and red lights. I don't know how it would work on zoom. Yeah. Somebody told me recently. That a clock has been added to some zoom version. Okay. And I will. See, you know, I would investigate that whether we stay at three, go to two or whatever else we do. I, I. I support this as long as somebody else can be the timekeeper. You know, or we have a mechanism for time. As practical matter. For the rest of you who. Right. Don't sit up at the front. When we actually. When I was sitting next to Lynn. When we did public comment that had time periods. I ran a clock, but didn't do anything. Just had it in front of her and reset it every time somebody started. And that was kind of an informal mechanism for that part. But. That was sort of just by agreement between two of us. You know, but in truth, Andy, we've only done it. And I continue to only do it. For. Public comment. The councilor comment. And I think what Mandy Joe. Is getting at is getting back to a limitation on counselor comment. As a way of shortening meetings, which I. I support totally. Yeah, I'm not sure how the. There's the council. And I agree that the. The board of directors. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. I agree with that. The more formal clock that's visible to everybody would be then. Useful. If we're going to enforce it and allow people to enforce it themselves. Could you appoint. I don't know what the term a parliamentary and something maybe a term as a member of the council who this may not work, their job would be simply to speak up at that moment when the clock ran out. They wouldn't do anything when they don't have authority, but they could simply interrupt and say, Madam President, the time is up and then that's all they would do, and then the speaker and or the president to act with that help. From my standpoint, absolutely. Take the burden off the president in the sense of the presiding officer wherever that is and put it on another party and their job is not to be the enforcer. Unfortunately, the president has to be the enforcer or the presiding officer has to be the enforcer, but they could at least be a voice. I think having a clock would also be very valuable because everyone can see it, but it probably would be helpful to have someone and maybe it could just, I don't know, maybe every meeting and have to point somebody else, maybe it's more of a headache, but it's nice to have a neutral voice simply saying, I mean, it could even be the clerk of the council, perhaps I don't know, but we simply say Madam President, and they would over, they would speak over, ever speaking. They would say the three minutes are up or two minutes are up. So let me just speak to the issue of who. Okay. First of all, if the desire is that it be the president to keep the clock, maybe there's also a mechanism that could be done simultaneously on the screen to watching Zoom that even if it's not a part of Zoom. And unfortunately, I haven't gotten to that point, but I'm sure I can explore it. I've been using my phone which means I have to go back and forth. And that is really humbling them. And it means a lot of times whoever is keeping time, therefore isn't able to really listen. They're more focused on keeping time. The second thing is that if we ask the clerk to do it and she's taking minutes, I think that's also a problem. Too much. It's too much for the clerk. So it's either the president or someone, the presiding officer or someone that either agrees or is designated, but not. Just want to point out my proposal doesn't designate who keeps time. It just says it needs that council. Exactly. Those types of issues could be decided later and fluctuate depending on the type of meeting. I'm not. Yeah, please. I'm not sure I support this. I support possibly the three minutes as an initial statement when presenting and two minutes after that. But what I'm feeling like as a rambler, I often don't know what I'm going to say until I'm saying it. And that doesn't mean I don't do my work. But the biggest lack that we have on the council is real dialogue and conversation about issues. People come in with prepared statements and this would exacerbate that. Because if you knew you only had two minutes, you would prepare your statement. So we don't have conversations that are open and allow us to more freely think about the issues and maybe change our minds. I think the charter has the two meeting times when issues are presented. I think that's critical, but we don't use it. Because we already know at the end of the first one exactly what's going to be happening in the next one. So I feel like, and I'm rambling. Hey! Time is up, Matt. I'm sorry. And my time could be up. Is up. No, I'm going to keep talking. I'm going to filibuster. All right, go ahead. I'm feeling, and I also feel like after the meeting where we were called Trump, you know, actions of ours were called Trumpian. And I still want to talk with that in a meeting, but I haven't been able to look at the tape of the meeting to be sure about a couple of things. This feels like right now that this is just feeding into, here we go, they're trying to control debate. And I know it's a timing issue. But I don't think this is going to do it. And to set up an agenda that says 15 minutes for an item that we know is contentious, that's silly. And sets up priorities that aren't going to be helpful. I don't know. So you guys can work on convincing me, but right now I can't support this. So let me just speak to the 15 minutes agenda. When you set up multiple meetings in a single night, what you'd have to do is set a time for the meeting to start. And even if the other meeting isn't over, at least you have the agenda there. But if the other meeting ends, say, for instance, in 13 minutes, and the next meeting isn't supposed to start until two minutes later, after two minutes later. Well, that's a rule that might need to be changed. State loss. That I think is much more than anything. We can. That's helpful. Mandy, Joe, is that a rule we can change? Or is that state? State loss as the meeting can't be started until the time it is posted to start. And so if you post the meeting to start at 8, you can't start it at 7.55. Yeah, I hear that. OK, that's helpful. The only thing that I didn't understand about Monday night's procedure is why the initial discussion that was to carry over from the last meeting needed to be a separate meeting. Because the procedure were that if the other guy, actually, it's in the charter that it's at the next meeting. Well, the next meeting was the meeting we were going to have that evening. So the next meeting was scheduled as a public forum, the Belcher Town Road public forum, not the regular meeting that occurred after it. And that was going to be problematic if the forum has to devote half the agenda time to public comment on the forum item. Why can't the forum be a part of a regular meeting so that you don't have that problem? Because the way the charter defines public forum, half the agenda time on the forum, on the meeting that has the forum, must be devoted to public comment. And so if you put the forum as part of a regular meeting, you don't meet the requirement of half the agenda time. I just want to point out that this is the blessing that Mandy Joe brings to this because she explained, as we grappled with this postponement and the agenda issue, she pointed all of this out. We all went back, we looked at it. And that's why we scheduled the separate meeting. So it wasn't done during a public forum. So we have this question in front of us just about the length. I mean, Mandy has raised. I have another rule that kind of relates to this one that's part of also 6.3. So maybe I should talk about that one too. Because then we can go back to the whole discussion. OK, go ahead. And that's C. So up at C, no counselor shall speak more than once until all other counselors desiring to do so have spoken. I want to add, and I'm not sure about the language here, the following. No counselor shall speak more than twice on a pending question unless permitted by a majority of the council, except under rule 6.3H or when the presiding officer calls on a counselor to provide a specific response to a question due to their role as chair of a committee or sponsor of a measure. So I don't particularly know if this is the right language, but I am concerned about counselors extending discussion to try and respond to every small respond and rebut to everything every other counselor has said. And maybe the solution to this is to call the question earlier and is not language like this, but is motions to call the question shall take precedence over additional requests to speak on the subject matter or something. But I think we sometimes needlessly extend our meetings when everyone has already made up their mind, as Pat would say, but still wants to talk. And again, it's a way to try and maybe limit discussion time, and I know Pat doesn't agree with this, for items that we truly don't have our minds made up for versus extending discussion on items that minds are already made up on. I have these exceptions in here about the specific responses. Sometimes Pat and I, when we sponsored in with Kathy the wage theft, you have to respond to a question. And that shouldn't be disallowed or require a vote of some sort to do so. I tried to limit this more than twice to a pending question so that sentence wouldn't even apply to the discussion items onto the discussion agenda. It would only apply when there's a motion on the table, is the intention to. So it kind of goes with the 6.3e changes that I was suggesting too. I have not liked what's been happening in the last couple of council meetings. And in some ways, this looks like it might be able to clean it up, but I'm uncomfortable with it. Well, I'll stop there so I don't ramble. Pat, I have to say I agree with your statement. I totally agree that I'm uncomfortable with those with the last couple of meetings. However, I'd like to see us do something, but I want to be careful. It doesn't look like we're trying to limit debate or it doesn't look like we're trying to limit debate. Yeah, and that's a real concern of mine. Mandy, you know that I don't always agree with you, but I always know that it's coming from a good place. So I don't feel like there's evil intention at all. But given the emotional state of the council, I think this would be a really bad time to change these things with the exception of three minutes being reduced to two minutes, unless you're presenting. Maybe that's where we just start is three minutes reduced to two and potentially add a sentence of counselor shall be timed. Leave it up to later to figure out how the time, but to sort of start mandating that timing and see if that does anything. I'm sorry, I think it's always I think one of the things that's really important about bringing all of this up is we don't really go back and review our rules and the discussion. And so maybe what part of what we're saying is let's change the note of three to two and add the other point that Andy Joe is making. But let's include in the packet this piece of the rules and just say, we go to this to remind counselors of our rules of procedure. But we don't follow our rules and procedures. And that's some up to you, Lynn, and this. No, I agree. And I'm not trying to call you out in a negative way, but you don't say, Kat, you've been talking for this is it. You've had your, you know, or you do sometimes to wait. And that on Zoom, for me, that's tricky because I'm better in a room with people. I think we probably all are. But what happens is often you don't get to respond. Like the other night when Evan said, no, Pat, you're not right, he was responding to a different aspect because when I texted him what my concern was, he goes, oh, yeah, I'm concerned about that too. And I felt like I couldn't get back in to counter that. I could have tried harder. So I'm taking. So let me suggest two options. One option is we make the change, Mandy, Joe's suggestion. And this section of our rules get put in the next agenda. They get sent out to counselors in advance. And I in conducting the meeting, assuming I'll be conducting it that night, will say I want to draw attention to these rules and understand that my goal is going to be to try to enforce the rules. I will tell you, I'm going to get pushed back. People are going to feel that what I've just done is said, I don't want to listen to you. You're going to have to deal with that pushback. That's the rule that you're in. But because it's never consistent, I think you're good. If it had, if you were consistent all along, I think there'd be less pushback. OK. Does that make sense, Lynn? Yeah, it does. So the question, I guess, before us is, do we change this to two or leave it at three? Do we add a sentence that says something about being timed? How do you want to do? Do you want to change this to go to the meeting on the 25th? Or do you not? That's the question before us. And I would suggest that whatever we finally decide on this and any other rule of procedure probably should be part of a report that would be stand alone that could be the next meeting. But it may take us. It may take us a while to get through. We've got a number of other items here. If this turns out to be the only main one, then it's pretty simple. But if we've got others, you would get a report from GOL and at whatever meeting we finally get to, if it's the next one or the following, which would have the text and have the argument for why the change is being proposed. If it's a change, it has to be adopted by the council. Absolutely. No, exactly. I understand. Part of the meetings. Correct. If this is going to take some time, it's going to be quick. That's true. And but it seems to me, making a statement about, these are our rules and procedures as they are now. We're going to be discussing possible changes. But I am going to be enforcing the rules that we have. There's no change there except, Lynn, you're taking the heat for implementing that. It's implementing what's there. I'm in favor of that statement. But any changes we bring should be part of, quote, the package of reviewing the rules per our charge. And so they shouldn't come piecemeal. And so this is something we want to do. We might vote on it, but the package comes together when we decide we've finished reviewing our rules. Yeah. One thing that I notice is that, really, Lynn could right now institute a clock if there was a clock available on Zoom and could it institute the clock by finding if we still have the town meeting clock and just use it if we were in the town room. And she would just be enforcing an existing rule, not changing the rule. Exactly. So I think that the existence of the clock doesn't need to be written into the rules. It's meant that the president just needs to do it. So there's that element to it. I agree with the yielding of time has never been one that made sense. And the last observation that I have going back to town meeting experience is that there needs to be more awareness of the possibility of calling the previous question, which was in the rules of town meeting. And the needs to be a mechanism that allows people to make that kind of a privileged motion without having to wait until a person is otherwise recognized because it could be a period of time that transpires. So that worked out OK for the moderators at town meeting because the moderators knew who were the frequent callers of previous questions in the model would choose who to call on a purpose. So sometimes that particular motion is allowed to interrupt all other people in line. I don't think we've written that into the rules, but that could be something we consider, which is a motion for the previous question takes precedence and is considered a point of order in the sense that you can just shout it out. Not interrupt a speaker, but shout it out without being recognized. You may call the previous, I guess that's the thing, you may call the previous question without formal recognition would be the way I think you would do it. This is where the rule regarding previous question comes. So that's just precedence of motions. But we could add something in that says previous question motions do not require recognition from the presiding officer. I'm a little nervous about people just shouting things out. Andy's correct that at town meeting, it was kind of an unstated understanding that there were certain individuals who would call the question and the moderator was aware of that. And when the moderator felt that maybe it was time to try and get this to a close, they would pick them out of the crowd. And sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. But this would be just letting any of us, any one of the 13, just as soon as the speaker is finished, just shout out point of order, Madam President, I will call the question. Are people okay with that? It seems a little, but that's what you're suggesting. Is that if I understand it? Is there any way, many of us text and respond to each other during the meeting? And I don't want to talk about today, by the way. I'm wondering, and in many Zoom meetings, there's a chat and you can type into the chat and then it could be, and I don't know why we don't quite have that, but if we could type into the chat or text that you wanted to call the question, then the presiding officer could make that decision. I think that's an open meeting law problem, Pat. We're now having private conversations that the public can't have access to. Yeah, I got it. And that seems inappropriate, in the best of all possible. Yeah, I hear you. But if it were chat and all you were typing in was, I want to call the question, that's still... I would think so. Okay. That chat is not visible to the public. Right, they've got to be able to hear and see what we're doing. And that's the problem with people getting their own little email messages during meetings is that if they're talking to colleagues, that's really not appropriate. I mean, so I guess it could be added to 6.3D. That's an interruption, or you could add something else to that one that says, to call the question. You may call the question without being recognized by the chair, but may not interrupt someone. Because interrupting someone's speech seems weird to call the question, but at the end, when someone's done and the chair's trying to decide who to call on next, add a break in the proceedings, you may, without recognition, call the question. I don't know how you word that, but... Well, wouldn't you put right here, Mandy Jo, wouldn't you put right here or call the question or to doubt the president? You probably would be there. Yeah, I would think it might go here. So... It would be perfect there. So we have two suggestions, one for 6.3E and one for 6.3D. We're gonna need to have these written out at some point, maybe not today, and then we're gonna have to just make a decision on them. Do you wanna try and do it now or do you wanna wait? I think this is your decision as a chair or the group as to whether or not we're gonna try to do all of it at once. I wanna just, for the moment, focus on this. Right. Say, this is what I am prepared to say on the 25th, okay? These are our rules of procedure as they stand now, okay? This was recently discussed at GOL and I have been asked to enforce them. How's that? That's fine. Well, that applies to simply the use of the clock, which I think Andy suggested, if you could get that arranged, that would be helpful. And then your statement that you have been asked through GOL to actually try and enforce the existing rule. That I think makes perfect sense to me, but doesn't require any action on our part and doesn't require us to write anything down. No, but it should be in your report. Fair enough. Mandy, Joe, does that work for you? I mean, that's all well and good and I'm always in support of following the rules and enforcing the rules. In terms of these, we have to at some point vote on language. If we're ready to do that today, I think we could, even if we don't actually have it written into this, that can be shown later when it's presented to the council as motions, if it is as basic as I think it is. And I could try to make the motions to recommend those additions, if you would like. Mandy, Joe, I do, this is a word document. So I could actually show them here without- I could make the motions and you could type it in then as I make it. As long as nobody is upset by my fingers in the picture. All right, and I have an objection to trying to do this in real time. We are now almost more than a half hour into our meeting, but this is our task. I'm gonna combine these into one motion because they relate to each other. And it's to recommend the council add to rule 6.3 D the phrase comma, to call the previous question, I guess, or previous question comma, I guess I didn't make- Or to doubt- Prior to the phrase, or to doubt the presence of a quorum. So exactly where she put it. And to change in rule 6.3 E, two minutes, three minutes to two minutes. No, I guess the problem I have with what you just suggested for D is that I don't feel it's really gonna be comfortable to interrupt a colleague to call the previous question. I think what we're really looking for is somebody to be able to call the previous question immediately upon the conclusion of a statement of one counselor before another counselor is recognized. True. So you would make it as a separate item in this list. Well, I think we could change this to shall not interrupt a colleague or speak without recognition, except to raise a point of order, express a personal privilege or to doubt the presence of a quorum. Because doubting the presence of a quorum, you generally wouldn't interrupt a colleague either. Okay, what was the word after colleague or what? Or speak without recognition. Because A is speak until recognized, shall not speak until recognized. So. Yeah, no, that's a good solution. But that still allows a person to interrupt someone. Yep. Now, hopefully, if all of the other rules are implemented, a person isn't gonna speak that long and you might be courteous enough to wait long until they're done. But I think- I'm sorry, I was gonna say, this will allow us at least in Zoom to know that the raised hands are people that want to speak, not want to make a motion because you wouldn't actually have to show your raised hand to make that motion, which might gauge people on, well, how long, should I just let that one more person speak without making the motion? Or is there a list that, you know? I just wanna know, Mandy, Joe, whether or not we're gonna have a Steve Puffer on the council. A what, Lynn? A Steve Puffer. I know Mandy, Joe, and Pat may not have been in town meeting at those, back in those years, Andy. Yeah. There was a person on town meeting that the moderator would always look at when they wanted to end the debate. And that look said, please, Steve Puffer, call the question. And it was just the way it happened. Well, you could train one of us, Lynn. True. It's hard on Zoom. I'm just, it was- So I would add this language to my motion for whatever motion Emily's got written down right now. Okay, so the motion includes the changes as I've added them here. Yes, and the change to 6.3e. Question about 6.3e, if you're done with your motion. Okay, anyone? We're not going to include language to the fact that the councillors will be timed. And we're not going to include language about a restriction on subsequent comments so that they get two minutes every time they want to speak. At this point, yes, I'm willing to make that compromise. Well, I'm not sure. I'm wondering if I were to yield my time to Andy and I have a minute left, that means he has three minutes, yes? Yes. Yeah, so it does seem to me that we need to say something about timing because that needs to be carefully timed and I don't know why we... I mean, I suggest deleting that sentence completely. Like, councillor may yield? Yeah, don't allow councillors to yield their time. I would agree. I don't see the point. Enjoy the town meeting experience. What we did with time was that if more time was required, then there was a procedure where the speaker before starting to speak would ask the moderator for more time, like I would like an additional minute and the moderator may have asked for a vote or may have said without objection and then if nobody objected, it would just be a ruling. But we don't have anything about adding time when somebody realizes that it's gonna be required. The other thing from my town meeting experience is that when presenting a motion at the beginning as a select board member or finance committee member, I would write it out in advance, read it, time it and I knew if I needed to ask for more time and how much time. So it was really a very prepared thing that had to do with the initial presentation of a motion. Otherwise, I agree with Pat, you don't really know exactly how long what you're gonna say is gonna be until you've said it. And when you did that, would you request more time in advance? You had to, under town meeting rules, you had to do it before you started speaking. To present something. You had to have additional time during your speech. Like if you call time at the end, you can't say, can I have it? You couldn't say, can I have an additional minute? Moderator is very clear that you had to ask for it before you started to speak. To answer your question, Pat, that was for presenters and any other speakers. So it could just be someone who wanted to speak on the measure. This rule doesn't accept presenting and introductions of measures to that time limit already. So if it takes me five minutes, I have it to present. If it takes you five minutes to present, or if you're making a motion to amend, you get more than two minutes because you're presenting a measure. Gotcha, okay. As long as that's there, but I still wanna maintain the May yield all or part of this time. If people have to know in advance and when I present to, I time, I think that's smart. But when there's a trick here is I can imagine my deciding, oh, I'm just gonna say every time I speak that I need more time and then other counselors will start to do that. And if you give it to me, then you have to give it to other people. And so that seems to me to be a game that can be played and I'm kind of tired of the games. So, that's what- Let me just say that the sentence that Mandy Jo and others are talking about deleting, actually trying to implement that where you yield your time to someone else. You could end up with somebody just being a full time keeper. I mean, it's like- I mean, like Mr. Smith goes to Washington, that might be fun. Something like that. I don't like that. I yield my time to Andy. The next person says I yield my time to Andy. And finally you call on Andy and Andy now has six minutes, but somebody has to keep count of all of that. And so, and I will say that this came up one time as in my memory at least during public comment. And I'm like, excuse me, when did we ever have yield the time? Right, I don't see the point of this. You get two minutes, right? And apparently we're not going to go with any further reductions, which I guess I said, okay, I can live with that. We still do not wanna have anything about counselors will be time. We don't want that statement in this rule. I mean, I think since this isn't going to come, I assume this isn't gonna come to council three weeks from now if we don't get through this discussion today for all the rules, but we can always see how it works with Lynn's statement next week and whether we need to add it or not. I mean, I guess I'm in favor of adding it because yet we've not followed so many of these rules. It's just adding something that is likely to not be followed, but maybe it's worth having in there. Any other thoughts from others? I don't think it matters, frankly, that's in there or not. It's implicit. Okay. When you say somebody, they only speak for two minutes, somebody somewhere implicitly being asked to time. Right. And that's a practical matter that has to be resolved, but it doesn't- No, I've written in my notes to explore whether or not I'm correct that there is a clock mechanism on Zoom. So are people satisfied with the change in D and the change in E? And that would then be the motion that Manny will be making. No, I'm not satisfied with the last sentence being removed in E. Okay. And your reason being? I think a counselor should be able, if we're going to be strict about timing, which I think is a good idea, then I believe there are times when a counselor might want to yield their time to a colleague. Can I ask a question of you, Pat? Sure. I always think of yielding time as if I spoke and I was recognized and had two minutes to speak and I realized, oh, I only needed one, but I have a feeling Evan's going to say something and he might need more, I'll yield it to Evan. But do you see this as also encouraging things like, well, I don't actually want to say anything, but I know Evan wants to say a whole lot, so I will raise my hand and all I will say is I yield my two minutes to Evan. You know, like would it allow something like that? And would you want something like that? Would I want something like that? No. Is it possible that there are people on the council who might do that? It doesn't stop me from wanting it there. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I feel like there... I mean, the rule has stated, allows anyone to continue speaking, right? There's nothing that says you can't keep it. So if Evan or I or someone wants to respond to something that's been said, they have two minutes to respond to it, as long as they've been recognized. Yeah. And that's what's being talked about. As long as anyone, once everyone's spoken once, in some sense, you get your two minutes as many times as someone as the debate continues. Exactly, exactly. And we don't, right? So I don't see, what's the point of the yielding? I'm just trying to understand why we even want this since unless the question is called and then that would put an end to it anyway. So go ahead. Sorry, I mean, let's think about it for a second. I don't know if I can have a logical response right now. I have a very visceral response to it being removed, which surprises me. But it may have to do with the kind of, I guess I want to ensure that if a counselor needs to speak, they have the time they need. And if I could edit many counselors, I would. Yeah. But I don't know if that's, I don't know. So I feel, I'd like to give you logic, I'm gonna, I can't. But it feels wrong to remove it. So I'm gonna stick with that. We don't have to. May I suggest I make two motions instead of one then? Oh yeah, that might be a good idea because I don't have an objection to the, yeah. So the other option is simply to take, leave that language in for the moment because we're agreed on everything else. And unless people, maybe people feel strongly, they really want to keep that language, delete the language in E. So if they do, two motions are called for. Well, it's never been used really. I mean, I remember Steve saying during the election, I yield my time. That was our only really way to say pass, but we didn't say who we yielded it to. That's the only thing I'm done talking. Right. Sorry, George, go ahead, please. So I'm suggesting maybe we just leave it. We don't delete the language for the moment and we just let, then we can vote on one motion. But if people feel strongly that they want the language deleted, or Mandy does, since it's her motion, then we should have two motions. Well, it wasn't in my original motion. So I'm okay with it still not being in the motion. I don't know how Emily's recording all of this right now. Good luck, babe. That's all right. We're just, we're working through it. So I'm suggesting we leave it in. And so the only change in E is from three to two. We've already agreed. I think we have consensus on D. I think we have consensus on E now. If people are comfortable with that, then that would be the motion. I mean, that's my motion. I'm just gonna say that. That's my motion. Is there a second? What's showing on this one? I think Emily's got it. Okay. Would you be able to repeat the motion? Sure, sure. I move to recommend the council revise rule 6.3D to add the phrase to call the previous question before the phrase or to doubt the presence of a quorum and to add the phrase or to speak without recognition after the word colleague and to revise rule 6.3E to change three minutes to two minutes. Okay, got it. Thank you. Is there a second? Second, DeAngelis. Okay. Any further discussion? I'm fine with this. I think that we could come back at a later date and consider the time to speak question as to whether there are unique circumstances and do which we would wanna add to the two minutes. But it's worth getting some experience under this rule before we do that and have that discussion. So I would say let's go with it now. Okay. Try it out and then we can come back after your suitable period of time and see how it went. Now my understanding is we're doing this not piecemeal but as a total package, but perhaps that's mistaken. In other words, the fact that we're voting on this now is simply part of a larger process where eventually we will be done and we'll present the whole thing to the council. We could do it another way, which is we could do it piecemeal. I think we should present the changes that we make as a package because doing this piecemeal is gonna extend a lot of meetings. I was seeing they're going, oh my God, every time we have rules of procedure, we're gonna have another hour debate. Right, yeah. So I'd rather do it at one time. Even if we do it today, yeah. It also affects the report. I would not report on this until the whole package were ready. Unless you feel otherwise. But I'm going without any of the changes. Exactly. I would still do what? The timing. Yes, exactly. No, I think that we agreed to and I'll make sure that's in the report that we've asked you to do exactly that. Okay. Mandy, I think you had at least one or two others that you wanted to present. I did, but we have a motion on the table so we should actually. I'm sorry, yes, we do have a vote, don't we? Thank you for reminding of that fact. So if there's no further discussion, we'll move to a vote and I'm gonna start with Lynn. Aye. And Pat. Aye. Mandy. Aye. Mandy. Aye. The chair is an aye, so it is five zero unanimous. The motion passes. So my next three are in rule eight, 8.2, 8.4 and 8.6. Okay. So 8.2. I think it's the next page. There we go. 8.2 F and 8.6 relate to the same thing. I would like to delete 8.2 F. That's proclamations, resolutions and citations. Things would need renumbered, but G and H would need renumbered and the reference to F in 8.2 B would need to be deleted, but I'd like to delete 8.2 F and the equivalent paragraph in 8.6, resolutions, proclamations, clarifications and citations. The council shall not vote on any proposed resolution, blah, blah, blah, until it has been considered by GOL. So the equivalent sort of language, that one right there in 8.6. We are to the point where we have a lot of GOL time spent on resolutions and proclamations for very small matters. I think our two-year experience has been most of them, whether or not those changes were made would be fine. And so they're adding a lot of time to GOL in terms of meetings, but they're also adding a lot of uncertainty to GOL agendas because some of them come back after agendas are in or out. And so they are poor George, sometimes his agenda is blown up because of these requirements. And so I would like to delete them because I think we could as a council, if there's a resolution that comes to the council, that the council feels does actually need a review. It needs to use its referral power instead of the automatic referral and then the requirement that anything be seen by GOL before being considered in these instances. And then I can talk about 8.4 later because it's not quite related to these two. Okay. So there are two further issues that you want to raise the first and most GOL and this process of review. Let me suggest something because I agree with what Mandy Joe is saying. Perhaps what I would suggest is that GOL that we not eliminate these two, first of all, when we vote unanimously about clear, consistent and actionable, that means it can go on the consent agenda. And if we don't have a vote like that, putting it on the consent agenda, I think is a little dicey, may disagree with me. So what I'm suggesting is that perhaps GOL needs to maybe not spend as much time on Scribner's, but more around is this resolution, for instance, trying to pass a policy versus just being a resolution? In other words, it's so, maybe the burden should rest with how GOL handles it. So we don't spend as much time on it. But I'm concerned about removing these as automatic because then it doesn't get a vote and idle. It's not going to get very much scrutiny. And let's face it, I think most of my colleagues given all the other things they have to do to prepare for a meeting, they're not really going to go through a proclamation or a resolution that carefully, in most cases, maybe they will in some, but. There are counselors who would like to have every proclamation and resolution actually read at the council meeting. Yeah. I think this could end up adding a length to council meetings versus shorting council meetings. Well, I'm just worried that it'd be reviewed by somebody, apparently more than one somebody to make sure that the thing is just in right form because it's the public face of the council. And imagine a document that just because no one's paying really that much attention, it's full of typos or doesn't make any sense or whatever. There should be a body that looks at it and tells the colleagues that we've given this a careful review and it's in decent form. If people want to then debate it on the floor, that's a whole other issue, but otherwise it just comes to the council. It hasn't been vetted, right? And it's up to the individual counselors to look at it. Some may, some may not. But I think, Rob, generally speaking, many won't and just assume it's okay. And then it gets, you can't put it on the consent agenda, I don't think. Right? I have a suggestion at our last meeting, I hadn't read the MLK proclamation that I was sponsoring because we'd done it so many times and what had been picked up is not the last one but an older one and there were errors in it. And I apologize to the committee then. What I'm gonna suggest is you and Lynn and Mandy Joe just reviewed a resolution, right? Which was an important one. You mean a proclamation on COVID-19? Yes, I'm sorry, thank you. That's all right, it's a proclamation. And the review was important and it was well done. What if, and this would protect the consent agenda, I believe, if when something came that was standard or fairly standard, you do exactly that. You call on a couple members of GOL to look at it with you. I think that's reasonable. I remember presenting the choice resolution ages ago. And that had content that was intense. I think that would have to go through our full process. I don't know. So I'm suggesting that we have an impromptu subcommittee that the chair calls together to review standard proclamations and resolutions. I don't, I think, I don't know. So I guess that's one of where I'm trying to go with this is the way these two rules together are written. That's, that still would require, if we left 8.6 in, it still requires that vote that we had to do on Monday night on 8.6 by roll call to wave rule 8.6 that says it doesn't have to be considered by GOL. And 8.2 still technically means it was, it had to technically be referred to, no, 8.6. Yeah, no, 8.6 paragraph, the paragraph below, it is 8.6. It's this resolution section. Shall not vote until it has been considered. And maybe the solution is we just get rid of that one and not the automatic referral. I guess I don't see the problem. And maybe others do, maybe it really does. I don't, I think that it's important that somebody in the council look at any document that's going to go out under our name before it comes before the full council, even though many of these proclamations are, you know, yearly things and there hasn't been any change, right? But even then we find sometimes something's changed or it's just good that it'd be done. It's up to, maybe the chair needs to do a better job moving us expeditiously. But I don't think that it's, I like the way it's been working. We spent an entire meeting on a recent resolution. And I think it was well worth the time that we spent on the entire meeting was devoted to one resolution. And certainly that could not have been sent to the council as it was presented. That needed a great deal of work. And I think it was to the benefit of all. But even for something as, you know, that we've done every year, I think it's good that at least it come to the committee and committee members get a chance to look at it. And maybe it'll only take a minute or less, but I think it's important. And it also gives the council confidence that five members of the body have taken at least some time to look at it and review it. And still doesn't mean that somebody couldn't bring an issue up at the actual council meeting, fine. But they've got the report. They know that we've looked at it. I don't think it takes up that much of our time. It's true, Mandy, that sometimes it throws the agenda out of whack. But I mean, look at today, I mean, it's the rules and procedures that you're going to have all this meeting. And, you know, there's nothing we can do about it. And it's not a proclamation resolution or anything else. I don't see the problem, but that's just me. How do the rest of you feel? Andy, Lynn, do you see this as something that is keeping GOL from doing what it needs to do? My solution would be that GOL can do better at controlling its own time. Okay, fair enough. And not eliminate these. I do, I have to say that if you eliminate this paragraph that I've highlighted here, then we don't have to have a vote for 8.6. And, you know, so that if we have a situation like we did at this past meeting where the COVID resolution came up, we all had to take time to do 8.6. But that would be, my suggestion would be we tighten our own commitment of GOL and keep. Well, in defense of the chair, I think generally, I'm just speaking for myself. I think generally speaking, we do a pretty good job with this. It's other issues that you get by time and we just, that's the way it is. You know, taking the timeline, that's still out there. I think of the review for bylaws, you know, that those are nothing to do with resolutions proclamations. I think, you know, it's, but that's just my view. Let me also make an observation. I think one of the reasons in addition to just the general focus of the COVID resolution was that because GOL has done all of these reviews, there's confidence that when George makes that recommendation that the council is confident. So when George was able to say, you know, and I asked Mandy Jo and Alyssa and Lynn to look at this and we made a few changes, I think the built up confidence was what allowed us to move through that one as fast as we did. Yeah, I mean, the hope is too, it's relatively short and the people read it. We always assume people have read them, even though I know that's not true, but the hope is they've read them so that someone will say, wait a minute, what about this? What about that? Or I don't agree with this, but if they haven't read it or read it very cursively and then later they regret it. That's their problem. That's their problem. But I think Lynn is right. We should ban the statement. I didn't read this in council meeting. If you didn't read it, then... You didn't read it. Just don't say anything. Right, I agree. Don't admit to it. Okay, so I'm willing to just let that one drop so we can move on. Okay. I just, I don't know what others think, but that's my feeling is that we really... I don't have support. There's not a majority of this committee, so I'm okay to move on. Here you go. I think this was a healthy discussion. Thank you for bringing it up. 8.4, you actually have to go back. 8.4, this is the one that I know is gonna create a lot of them. I wanna delete. 8.4, okay. So we waive or suspend this rule so often and the charter, the important thing is the charter provides a means of requiring that second discussion. That I think those two instances together, the fact that we waive it at least once in nearly every meeting, if not more frequently than that. And that there is a mechanism that would fulfill this thing, that does fulfill the intention of this, which is the right to postpone, the charter right. That I don't think this rule has helped the council necessarily. I think it's just created a lot of sometimes confusion, but also just a lot of extra motions and work and time to get around it or not, or any of that. And I think we should use the charter right more often, if that's the case. And also rely on our president as chief agenda setter to make a decision as to whether to even present the motion on a first reading or not at a meeting or not, as to whether it's something that they think needs to or needs one without requiring yet another suspension of the rules every time. And I know it's gonna be controversial. I'm not disagreeing with you, although I will say that we've tried very hard to get 8.4 in the consent agenda. As many times as we, I think we missed one recently. I just wanna check on something. So an item comes up, we think, I think it's going to be relatively easy. During the process of discussion, it becomes quite apparent that it's not. During the meeting, even though we have a motion drafted for that meeting, I can say I'm going to move this for further discussion to the next meeting or what would I say? So I think you could suggest that and then if no one actually makes the motion, it's done. And if someone does, then you make a motion to postpone. So then if someone does put the motion on the table despite your suggestion of that, right? Then someone uses their charter right or actually makes a motion to postpone and the president can use the charter right too or makes an actual motion to postpone to some date, certain in the future, the next council meeting that then the council votes on. There's ways to do it without having to always suspend rule 8.4. So would we in doing this, we would we strike all of this, but leave this part? We strike all of it because the right to postpone is listed in 7.2. So if you go up to 7.2, you'll see this was just a cross-reference to that rule. So I would strike the whole rule and renumber everything after it. And God, I've just gotten so used to saying 8.4. I guess my immediate reaction to this is it's, I think there's gonna be very strong pushback and I might even be part of it actually, though at times it causes me pain. I've never thought this job was supposed to be painless but how painful it can be at times to me is quite extraordinary. But nonetheless, this would cause me much pain or some pain in the future, but the public should have the opportunity to weigh in on things that we're actually going to make decisions on. And while I may have made up my mind on something and I'm ready to vote on it, it's only been before us in this one meeting and there is I think merit as painful as it is to allow the public another two weeks to weigh in, to say, you know, send all their emails or reach out to their representatives. I'm very nervous. I realize there's a right to postpone, but I'm really not eager to encourage people to use it. I think, yeah, but- So sorry, sorry, go back to 7.2, Lynn, because in 7.2 we encourage counselors to use the right to postpone. So what happens now is if it gets used to force a third meeting potentially instead of a second. Yeah, yeah. Third meeting would have to be four counselors coming together, requesting- Not if the first meeting never has a vote because we didn't weigh in or with 8.4, right? And so if the vote doesn't come up to the second, it can be used to force the third meeting and then the four counselors can be used to force a fourth meeting. But in 7.2 we actually say and encourage the use of considered within normal counsel procedures. Yet, I think 8.4 actually contradicts that right to postpone is within normal counsel procedures. And I am trying to move us to right to postpone is actually a normal counsel procedure. My only hesitation, not my only, but one of my hesitations is it would be the right to postpone says it has to be at the exact next meeting. And that's what we just ran into on January 4th. I would really like to figure out a way that between the time there is a motion to postpone, I don't know how to, I'm going to start with you. So I get what you're saying. And I think the solution to that is when a right to postpone is invoked, that instead of them, you have to stop debate per the charter, but I think as presiding officer, you need to take the time and say, okay, invocation of a right to postpone or clerk, when is our next scheduled counsel meeting? And if that's random forum two days from now, say it would be on that unless that motion that, that's when I'm going to have to put it on, unless that right to postpone is withdrawn and a motion to postpone until date, certain XYZ meeting is moved and seconded and voted on the council to, I think the presiding officer needs to sort of use their presiding officer ship in those instances to try and encourage maybe the council to instead of requiring the invocation of a right to postpone, then accepting a motion to postpone to a date certain so that we don't end up in these instances. But I think the problem is we use the right so little that when it is used, it's so surprising, no one knows what to do and there isn't a regular procedure for trying to get it onto the meeting, you actually want it on. One of the other pieces, and I'm going to have to go out this piece now, I'm sorry, Mandy Gilbert. One of the other pieces that I'm concerned about is that this, the right to postpone, recognizing that it's in the charter and it is always an option, can be used in a very serious way to disrupt a healthy discussion even on the first round. And as a council, I think that's unhealthy. 8.4 doesn't stop that from being done though. No, I agree with you. Mandy, what do you say to the concern that I have, and I don't think I'm the only one, that it's important for the public to have an opportunity to hear about and digest something before we actually vote on it. What do you say to that? I say then, why are we suspending rule 8.4 every meeting for certain things? So maybe the issue. Like, if that was truly a belief of this council, we would never be suspending rule 8.4 but every meeting has a suspension of 8.4. We did it for just the capital inventory recently. We've done it for other things. And so I think 8.4 fails to recognize in its strictness that some things just maybe don't need two readings and fails to give that leeway to the president. But you, if you're not comfortable with that. I'm sorry. I told you it was controversial. I'm sorry, Pat. What did you say? I just said I'm not comfortable with that but I interrupted you. Go first, please. No, I wanted to hear that. My sense is, and here's my alternative, okay? My alternative is that only when, that we keep 8.4 but in setting the agenda, the president only use it if they, their judgment is this will not be a controversial issue or that it's not a very complicated issue. Complicated issues for me are even more difficult. And that, you know, and maybe in introducing the consent agenda, there can even be said because not seen as that, you know, deep or controversial an issue. And if a counselor disagrees with that, then you don't vote 8.4 on the consent agenda. Right, that's what's been happening. That's what's been happening, Lynn. That's no change. And I know what's the problem with that? I don't think it extends our meetings. I think, I don't see, George, I so agree with you but I don't see this as a problem. But I see it as very problematic to remove it. And I feel like it's a tactic that's being used. It's debatable whether it's inappropriate or not. The other night when I was saying, no, I'm not gonna vote for something, I got asked, am I gonna postpone? And that was not my intention. There is still a split on the council but it's not a real one in many ways. But if you're an independent, you're supposed to vote the way Darcy wants you to vote. And if you're on the other side and you're ammaged forward, you're supposed to vote the way Mandy Jo wants you to vote. I'm an actual independent and I'm rambling, I know. But because this is hard to talk about. I feel like it is going to look like it will be taken very, very negatively by other counselors and the public. And I think that's a mistake. I really do. I feel like, again, I will say how much I respect you, Mandy Jo, and I think you know it. But that doesn't mean you're not respected. You're seen as a power broker. You're seen as this manipulative person. By some people on the council and some community members. And I think that you're placing yourself in that spot to be shot again. And I don't want that happening to you. We're going to protect you from yourself here. Yeah, honestly. As I said when I said this, I knew this would be controversial. I am trying to... Absolutely, no, I think... I will actually tell you this. If you go up to rule 3.2 D. That says we aim to finish council meetings by 10 p.m., my other one is to just delete it because we don't. And so my whole thing is, if we actually do... We clearly don't. So why is it even in here? And I'm not even going to say that was my crazy whatever. And it's not even we're spending time on that one, right? But my point is, if we are actually serious about getting these meetings to three and a half hours, some of our rules are preventing us from doing that. And some of the things we're not following in our rules are preventing us from doing that. And so I go back to, maybe the council's not serious about three and a half hours. And maybe that's what we have to admit. But it doesn't care about three and a half hours. It's okay with five and six. But maybe that's where we have to start and admit that if we're not willing to discuss... And we've had a great discussion, right? But if changes aren't willing to happen that might get us there, then we should admit that. And so I'm okay if that's okay, if that's the thing. But let's admit that... No, your motivation here, Mandy, I think is clear. You're trying to make the meetings. Time management is crucial. We're clearly way out of control. And the reasons are many. There's no simple fix. And you've offered a number of potential fixes. So the motivation is clear to me. I don't question it at all. But I think Pat is right. And that it will be perceived by more than a few in a way that I think will be damaging to the council and to its sort of public persona. We have to find other ways. I think right now the use of a consent agenda and they're trying to be stricter about time limits and reinforcing that through GOL as we give the report are concrete steps that can make some difference. I think what you're suggesting here won't make that much time difference, quite frankly, but it will raise a storm. And actually I could understand some reason to it. People wanted, for better or worse, they wanna know what we're voting on and they tend to hear about it after the fact. So at least we can always say it was at this meeting and then two weeks later was at that meeting and I think that's important even though it costs us time. So I think the motivation to hear is excellent but I think what you're suggesting is just gonna have too many other repercussions. Let's focus on the timing issue and urging the president to be more forceful in executing it and maybe assisting her in the mechanics of it. Maybe each meeting by just rotating it. A member of the council is gonna have to be the timekeeper and they have to take it seriously. And I think you will get some people, I mean, I think most of us will take it seriously. We wanna be done by 10 o'clock. So we can do that and we make healthy use of the consent agenda as Lynn has been doing but there are certain things we just can't control and it's painful, trust me. I mean, there are meetings where I'm just, I turn my screen off for a minute. I pick up a key and my poor wife has to hear me but I understand it's a process and one of the advantages of Zoom is maybe one of the only ones is you can actually do that for a moment when we're there for five or six hours in the meeting you just have to keep your smiley face. And so I hear the motivation to understand, frustration to understand but I think this suggestion goes farther than I think we should go. Can I just say, Mindy Jo, I think this has been an extremely healthy discussion and I wanna thank you for it. And are there other rules that you would like to particularly point out and say? I would like the president to notice these. Those were the ones I started with this morning. I don't have any others on my list right now. And I hope you're free to bring others forward. And I really mean, this has been a very healthy discussion. And when I speak to that at the council that's exactly how I would portray it. Now we have, and maybe we will say this for the next meeting. I don't think we have to deal with all the ROP review today, though we could. What I was gonna suggest is we take the memo that's disposition and or referral of future agenda items and just looking at the 14 items there, some of which are not relevant and we can just dismiss. All of them kind of focus our discussion. Some of them do relate to potential rule of procedures changes. Maybe what people wanna do is look at that list in advance of our next meeting and be prepared to sort of have their thoughts on it. Like for instance, this doesn't even matter. It's not relevant or this is not right or we can go through it now. We are only 35 minutes from our appropriate end time. There are a number of other things we need to do. My suggestion is we hold off on this discussion, come back to it in two weeks. I will have this document again in the packet and urge people just to look at under GOL, there are 14 items there. And some of them do have specific ROP references, but many of them don't. But I think even some that don't might be worth our brief discussion. If only to say we discussed it and we dismissed it. I can put that in report eventually when we're done, but that's my suggestion for the next, for right now. So leave this until next time for the next discussion of ROP review. George, as the person that collected all of those suggestions, I'm gonna really emphasize your last statement. I personally feel that many of these should be discussed very briefly. Right, but I'd like to at least have us go through them. On the other hand, I believe we're supposed to do this before the end of our term as GOL, which I believe actually our term ends, I think it will end at our next meeting, or will it? Do we have time to do this? Let me stay on the memo and then. Okay, go ahead. Regarding the memo, that memo actually is no longer an active memo. Because a counselor or counselors have raised these issues as quote, future agenda items, I think if we could spend a half, maybe even 15 minutes at GOL saying yes or no, and dispensing with some of them, I think that satisfies it. That's my personal opinion. Yeah, I understand it's not the active one, but I think it's very useful. It's also very clear. It's, Eminem, it's 14 items and it gives us focus. It was in the packet, people could look at it if they had a chance, but I don't think they understood how I was gonna use it. So it's probably been mysterious. The list that I also personally feel we do need to pay attention to is the additional general bylaw changes. Yes. Now, having said that, I'm just gonna say, however, that's not required. It would be, I think, courteous of this council to clean that up, but it's not required. Mandy Jo and I, Mandy Jo pointed that out to me in giving me some thoughts previously, and that's reflected in the thing where we're trying to get to a calendar for the year. Going back to your other question, one of the reasons I was late is I started trying to write the email to counselors to say, this is what committee assignments look like now. Is there anybody who would like to request, you know, consider it. Exactly. And that I'm hoping to do before the week is out. And then once I get that back, I have to make considerations. Some of those come to the council for votes. Some of those are straightforward presidential appointments. None of that will be happened until the 25th, but after that, the composition of existing council committees and every year a council committee is supposed to elect their chair and vice chair. I'm looking at our schedule. Actually, we meet again on January 20th and I believe the council meets again. Is it correct on the 25th? That's correct. So we still have one more meeting. So it's not an issue. After that, it would be an issue, but we still have one more meeting where we could still fulfill the mandate to review the rules of procedure. Hopefully we'll move more quickly next time. I think we will. And then we will. So I think that answers itself. And if people are okay, I'm going to urge you to use that memo to sort of just look over briefly before our next meeting. And obviously, if anybody has any further rules of procedure they want to raise, we would raise them then, but we would have to act one way or the other by January 20th. Can I also clarify one other thing? And Mandy, did you please correct me if I'm wrong on this? I think our rules of procedure require that they must be reviewed in total once a year. Is that correct? Oh, it's just the GOL charge that says that. Okay, thank you. I knew it was somewhere. Right. So. Which is why George put it on the agenda. It's almost like three different things going on. The prior procedure review, all of those that were raised by the people as future agenda items. And then there's the issue of, did you look at the matter regarding required and possible future agenda items and is everything on it that GOL has to do reflected there? And I have received comments from eight counselors, seven counselors, because I'm not going to count myself in, seven counselors. And in fact, I think GOL gave me comments. Thank you. I appreciate that. But I do want to make sure that if there's anything else, the GOL feels needs to be on that list from a committee standpoint that it gets on that list, on that memo. So that's a question to the members present or they could communicate that to you by email. I think that's a discussion for the next GOL meeting. Okay. All right. The next item on our agenda is the town manager memo on charters section 8.1. Are people prepared to take that on? We try to find it. Sure. This is a fairly elaborate memo. I think the town manager and or staff have gone through this very carefully and have obviously very explicit or a set of suggestions. And I'm wondering what people feel about them. Well, I looked at it and going to the final attachment D because that's where it really gets implemented. I thought that there was, the idea of having a form is good. I'm not sure, but I wasn't happy with it. And I thought of a number of things. One is I would require that there'd be a legible name and address, get it legible. I was thinking about how it compares to nominating petitions that are circulated on an ongoing basis. And I feel like we ought to be, we don't want to require a signature because not just for COVID, but for practical means for other times. But I think that you could say that you require either signature phone number or email address. That if you're not gonna, if somebody's not gonna actually physically sign it that they need to then be able, they need to be required. It should not be optional to provide a phone number or an email address. Otherwise, there's no practical way for any body performing a clerk function to verify it. And the other things that I thought about is that it would be good practice to require that everybody who signed the petition or provided their name for the petition in the manner I described, be provided with a notice of the date, time and location of the open meeting and a notation that they are being, recorded as somebody who has signed and if they were not a petitioner that they should notify somebody. And the other thing that I would require is that we put something in somewhere that require that specifies the public notice and posting procedures to announce the meeting to the public. That all seems fine to me. I do have, I have a, I'd love other people to comment to what Andy is saying before I go on, cause I wanna bring something up slightly different. Well, Andy, what the suggestions you're making are to the attachment D. Right. And they would be included in the text of that attachment. There's also a policy. I just did it this morning. I understand this is our first run. How to it is not something that I really had time to work through because when I was looking at the agenda and thinking about what you were asking us to do to which is to critique the entire package. Right. And what is missing in clarity of process in what would make this a good process to make the open meeting provision in the charter youthful. Those were the things that struck me that needed to be included. And they don't necessarily all need to fall into attachment D. So some of them. I would assume a policy, a policy statement would be created by GOL that the council would vote on. Yeah. Ryan do something for the next meeting to raise as to how to implement these points in the way that Mandy did for this meeting about rules of procedure. Right. But I did not have time this morning. That's all right. That would be valuable. Can I ask you just to repeat for my sake. The first that I heard is that we should require a legible name and legible address. Okay. Yeah. We're not requiring a signature. Right. There should be not optional but required either a phone number or an email address. If there's not a signature, otherwise is. Well, there's no place for signature in the document at the moment. Right. So that would either have to be I don't see the need of a signature. I don't either. I think as long as the name is legible the address is legible and they've given some kind of identification place to be reached. I don't see the point of a signature. But that's, you know, and I think we're allowed to do that according to the, where do they teach lawyers to write? Mandy, is there a special class you take in law school, which just how to write an opinion that no one understands it? Right. Anyway, my understanding of what the lawyer said is that and it's not clearly her fault but it's probably my fault at all is that we don't have to require a signature. I don't see the reason requiring it as long as we have this. Does anyone feel we need a signature? But only I do not feel we need a signature. And that, that was a shock for me because I go back to my own old petition days. Okay. Clearly we don't, it's not required. Okay. And the problem with signatures sometimes is in fact, they aren't legible. Well, mine isn't. I can tell you right. It is not. And I was trained by a lawyer, by the way. That's a whole other area of signatures. I'm just worried about their pro style, but that's okay. I believe that if there's a signature and I think there should be a signature and address regardless. Name and address. A phone number or email. So Lynn, you want a signature? No, I don't want a name. A legible. Okay. A legal name, legible address, phone number or email address required, not optional, but either, either one. The second thing, I mean, that's the first item. I'm sorry, Andy. The next, would you just repeat the next you require is or you'd like is. Okay. So then the next is that we specify something of what we do with it, either in who the we is could be. If it's a petition to the school committee to have a, Andy, let me interrupt you right there. It might be the school committee, but somebody needs to be assigned the responsibility to then do something. So it's by what will happen next. There's several, one thing is that notification be made to the people who, whose names are listed on the petition. Okay. Noted that says that your name has been provided and it has an opt out instruction. Secondly, that we are notifying them of the time and location of the open meeting because, you know, they've asked for the open meeting. We ought to be requiring that they be notified that it is provided last piece was to make sure that we specify somehow what the procedure is to notify the public and to post the announcement of that meeting. What is public notice procedure? We need to write that. That should be part of the policy statement. Those are the things that I felt like. I've got those down in my notes, but again, if you want to have a moment in the next two weeks to just jot them down, that'd be great. May I make the point? I believe this is correct. We are only dealing with this as the town council. The school committee and the library trustees, they can come up with their own policy. We're not coming up with their policy. We're just coming up with our policy. So what we will produce, I assume, is a council policy statement and a council document that we'll just cover. And now, if they want to copy us, fine, but they have to do their own thing. Is that correct? Yes. We're not doing this for anybody. I'm not sure I'd like to hear from Mandy from the charter commission side of it because it was placed in the charter as a requirement that is applicable to all of the bodies that we've named, all of the elected boards and committees. And if there's going to be a requirement should not have come from the council as to what the rules are as to how this is being done. After all, Paul went and obtained the legal opinion and it was really obtained because of a school committee petition as it turns out. And the question is, is there an expectation of what the school committee is going to do with it? And shouldn't it be up to us to just say, this is what we expect? Mandy. Mandy. So the three entities, the town council, the school committee and the library trustees per the charter are completely different entities and they have different subjects, different sections that they are subject to under the charter. And this section happens to apply to all three but it does not say any one entity can tell the other entity how to implement that section. So I believe we are dealing with only how the town council would respond to open meeting of the residents. And I do not, I wholeheartedly do not believe that we can tell the school committee or the library trustees how they would respond. I don't believe the charter commissioners intended the council to rule over this one. That it was, we included, it's the only section that includes the school committee or library trustees because we wanted those entities to also be subject to it but it doesn't mean that town council sets all rules for all three. On similar notes, I like, I think we need to decide as a GOL whether it would be a separate policy or whether it would be included in our rules of procedure because that's the other option is to put it into the rules of procedure instead of a separate policy. I don't think it matters either way but we should make that decision because if it's a rule of procedure we should just include it in our package rules for yearly rule review. I actually really like Andy's suggestion of email or of one of three requirements. This does not require signatures. I wholeheartedly object to requiring signatures. Lynn's heard me spout on this one well more than she ever wanted to. Coming up on two minutes. But Andy's, that third box in this draft attachment D that has phone number optional could say phone number, email or signature. Required. Yeah, one of the three required for verification purposes or audit purposes, you know, indicate why and that's where I would actually put the signature thing because the problem with this document is it's a public document and people may not want their phone number or their email address public and this would then allow them to have their signature instead. I think in some sense it then complicates issues. So my charter commission person is saying that section should be completely avoided completely, but the charter commission struggled with how you could actually verify these residents that there were 200 residents and we struggled mightily with that and had multiple revisions to this on whether it would be verified and by who and all of that. And so I don't think it's outside of the charter commissions intention to have a way to verify it. And but I don't think it's appropriate to require someone to have a verification to have to submit a phone number or personally identifying information of a phone number or an email address into a public document because those generally when we publish public documents that might have them are generally redacted. And so I think we should allow the option of that. I think we should put on the document whether those numbers would become public records if someone requested the petition, that's something we probably should confirm through the clerk's office or town attorney whether phone numbers and email addresses could be redacted. And I like the notification of time and location of meeting to the people who signed the form. I would say we do it by paper because we will have everyone's legible address and that would make it standard instead of, well, maybe you'll get an email or maybe you'll get this, just paper to everyone although at the same time that requires a lot of work. Yeah, there's a... But if you do email, then do you then have to call the people who gave, then you might end up with three different or two different methods because someone might sign and you might only have the written address, someone might provide a phone but not an email. And so I like the notification rule. I think we have to be very careful as to what type of work that would actually require and who is doing that work because it could be very time consuming. The president, I'd like to speak after you, Lynn. Lynn, I'll go back to your signature, which I have no objection to at all. Would you accept electronic signatures? As a verification, if we're doing it for audit purposes, yeah. Okay, I think we have to say that because one of the reasons all this came up was because collecting what signatures during COVID has been highly... So when we say or signature, it would have to say including electronic signatures. Yeah. I just did that for CDBG. Exactly, ditto, ditto, yeah, ditto. I'd like to... Lynn, I'm sorry, Pat. I thought Lynn was finished. She is finished. I would like to lower the age and I don't know whether that... Because I feel like one of the things that we've seen is young people moving forward on political issues on climate change, et cetera. So I would like to see them to be their voice be honored in this process. If it's a resident petition, I think that young people should be able to sign it as well. So I'd like to see a reduction in age to possibly 15 or 16. And I don't know whether it's legal, but Mandy Jo will tell me. So I'll give you the history as to why 18 is there and why I would support that. And I think we could do it as an addition. The charter says 18 or older. At one point it said, I think 13 or 14. I know we considered something as young as sort of middle school age. We ran into verification issues when we were talking about similar things about verifying. How would you? We actually, as a charter commission thought, the street lists could be a way to verify residents because they're not voters. So you can't use a voter list. And the street lists don't list names of anyone under 18. So that's where we ran into a, well, if you're going to use anything to verify that these are residents, you kind of need someone over 18. But we actually really kind of wanted lower. Although some charter commissioners do others fought against it and spoke against it. The reason to consider it was particularly to school committees that there was a desire of a number of charter commissioners to allow students in school to petition and require a meeting with their own school committee. And there was differing opinions on the charter commission about that. But I personally would support it. I think what we could do is a rule of procedure of the council that mimics section 8.1 of the open meeting of the residents that applies to those under 18 or expands it to those under 18. I have a feeling if we went to KP law and asked, could we ourselves on our own? That doesn't mean the school committee and the library trustees would follow. As a council say, we will accept signatures of those under 18 or names of those under 18 as part of the 200 or in addition to the 200 or separately, we might be able to do that but it might have to be a separate rule of procedure instead of quote section 8.1 charter open meeting of the residents. Well, I'd like us to find that out because I feel like it's very important to include that voice because many young people are more attuned to what's really happening than many of us. Now, there's nothing in this document that prevents them from signing it but clearly the signature would not count to the 200. Then that's ridiculous. Well, I'm not saying it's not necessarily ridiculous. In other words, but. That's why if we adopted a separate rule of procedure that mimicked 8.1, but say said 13 or over. And so they use that instead of charter section 8.1 then we could probably do it while having those names count. Yeah, I think they. So we couldn't force the school committee or library trustees to do that. No, we can't. But I think it's important that if a young person signs their name that it has the same weight as my sign my name. And so the suggestion of you can sign it but it's not going to count because you're not a team. Yeah, backfires. Okay. Yeah, we may need to come back at this again after giving it some thought and possibly making some inquiry because Mandy's raised a good point that putting into the public document a young person's contact information may have risks that we need to be thinking through. And the other thing that I just want to come back to is that we say, you know, you're now saying that this should only apply to the council it should not apply to the school committee and to the trustees. But I do want to point out that this whole thing started because Mr. Cason put in a request that was directed to the school committee and our town manager obtained an opinion from town council as to how to interpret or handle that request under the circumstances and it was not related to the councils or related to the school committee. And so when I responded this morning by jotting my notes down, it was sort of flowing from the process of what happened. It was dealing with the school committee. Andy, I want to add to that. I'm sorry, because I'm hosting I can't raise my hand. I can't use the reason. Go ahead, where it's open. Run. Originally Mr. Cason did intend to petition both the town council and the school committee. Okay. All right. Which brings up another issue. We petition the town council, but it's really not an issue under our jurisdiction. All right. And so I want to come back to the 18 and I certainly am totally supportive of hearing this. How do we verify them? In our, I'm going to support the idea that this is in our rules of procedure. In our rules of procedure, regarding the piece that follows the charter, we'd be very clear that if you have 200 signatures of people over 18, anybody of any age can add their signature. If we come up with an additional charter rule and it is not charter rule, I'm sorry, an additional rule of procedure that allows for a petition from a group of people who are 200 people less than who are not 18 years and older then I want to understand how we're going to verify them, how we're going to protect them in terms of email and a phone number or any other identifiable information that could lead to them being preyed upon. And I also want to understand how we're going to judge and who gets to judge whether this issue is under the jurisdiction of the body. I'm wondering if in terms of verification, there couldn't be if under 18 that there's that a parent signature is also required or that a block needs to be checked off that says parental permission. I don't know. Does that bypass anything or just? In my mind and just ask for the parent signature along with the child's signature with a minor. We'll come back to this. Obviously we have time constraints, but this has been a good discussion. I think I still have a lot of thinking to do about this. I'm particularly concerned that we get something out there for the public because we already had this particular incident so they know what the procedure is. I don't want us to get so caught up in some of this that we just can't even get a simple, I mean, we're elected by, right? We're responsible to the elect, people elect us. And so anyway, we have more discussion on this. Maybe we can have Andy since he's thought a little bit about some of it come up with the rule or the procedure for under 8.1 and then continue the discussion about how we might be able to do something for kids at a different time. Okay. We're at a different time meaning continue it, but get the 8.1 stuff solidified first and to the council for potential adoption as we continue figuring out ways to allow a similar type of meeting call from minors. Right. And I have some, right. The other thing I want to do and I can't do it now is to reread the legal opinion that we received and see if what we were being advised by KP law is that the town council can pass a rule applicable to the entire piece in the charter or whether it's limited to petitions to the town council. I'm not sure that if the fine reading of that legal opinion didn't, at least suggest that the town council can set a rule of procedure for the entire thing. Well, I'd have to reread that document more carefully than I did the first time, but I think that's the first thing I should do. Before I go to Paul and ask him to turn yet again to KP law, but you would like some kind of resolution on that Andy, it sounds like. I think we might need it, but I'd need to reread the opinion and I'm obviously not gonna do it during the last 30 seconds of this meeting. Unfortunately, it's gonna be more than 30 seconds, but I appreciate the thought. You and I can perhaps communicate about this if people are comfortable, whether KP law is needed and maybe they are, but the question is whether we can write something for all bodies or whether this is just for the council. Clearly Paul's understanding this is just for the council but Andy's question is a bigger one. And so we'll, he and I will take a look, anyone's welcome to do this, look at the legal opinion and come to some consensus agreement as to whether we need to go further. And if we do, we will, if we don't, we'll come back to this at the next meeting. Andy, are you okay with doing something in terms of 8.1 for the next meeting? Is that something? I don't need to try it. Okay, and we can be in communication. I can help you with that. We have a very briefly, I thought in a conversation I had with Pat, she I thought very appropriately raised a question about just the process that we followed or that I had us follow when we interviewed or when we did, it's not so much the interviews themselves but the post interview discussion where I pretty much let things kind of just, we just went right into it. And she suggested it may be a more formal process where each candidate is introduced and people then speak whatever they wanna say. She felt and I think she had a very good point that there was a tendency to sort of just glom onto a particular individual. And maybe it would be, I'm speaking for the chair and for future, when we do this in the future, that perhaps a better process that we may wanna formalize or at least write down somewhere, especially for chairs who have bad memory is to say that we should proceed by first, here's candidate X discussion, here's candidate Y discussion, here's candidate Z discussion and then we turn to what we make of that. I thought that that was an interesting point. I think in the end it worked out but I think that more formal approach might be preferable to what I did which was kind of just open it up and people were all over the place. I was all over the place, talking about X, then talking about Y. Do people have a feeling about that? That was her thought and I thought it was worth raising for the future, we will do this at least once more and we may do it even more for all I know. Lynn. I think it's an excellent suggestion. I'd like to see that if we do it, we put it in our summary of how we conduct this. Right, it would be certainly should be included. Also, I think Alyssa Brewer made an excellent point that the actual report was deficient and so that's on me, that it all be there for the counselors to read. But yes, it would be included in the report. I guess the question for GOL is whether for future chairs and for future, that it be part of the process that we agree that this is how we're gonna do it or do people feel like, well, that's not, you know, it was a little loosey-goosey and maybe that's not really the right way to do it. Just to be fair to all the candidates that each one has, so it's A, B, C, D, however many they are, and then we open it up to a general discussion. And if you thought, Mandy. I just wanna thank Pat for suggesting that. As a fellow chair who has run these for a different committee, we got to that discussion stage and had issues too of like, well, what do we do now? So I wanna say thank you for that. That I think will help me as I chair another committee that has to go through this. I think it's a great suggestion. Good, good. Well, the chair certainly wanted, the rest of you to hear about it and takes it, I think it's an excellent suggestion whether it needs to be written down or not, it certainly will be mentioned in the report. But at some point we may wanna include it in our, I don't know if we can, but in our document, but I thought it was a good point. And in the future, that's my intention. And the hope is it would be the intention of future chairs to be a bit more methodical. I just got to respect to the candidates. Yeah, the only reason I voted no, well, I wanted a different candidate. I wanted Matt Holloway, but that's neither here or there, but what I voted no because I was reacting to the process. Process, understandable. Excellent choice. And you know, I don't have a problem with the choice that we made, but I do have trouble with the process. Okay, another process problem that came up in that one, since you mentioned it in that is that kind of I had a conversation about this topic. If in thinking through the interviews after the interview happened, a question comes up about a particular candidate during that discussion, it's after the interview and there's no way to go back and get that information if we're gonna force ourselves to make a decision that day. And I'm trying to avoid being specific and going what the specific issue was, but there was a point where my reasoning was at least in part based upon information that was not available to me and I had to make an assumption. Yeah. Well, I think it's perfectly appropriate for a member of the committee during the discussion to say, you know, I just feel like I'm lacking some information that we need to get and I'm not comfortable having a vote at this meeting. And I think that's perfectly appropriate. And then it's up to the committee to decide what, I don't think it's up to the chair alone, but by any means, but it's up to the committee to decide whether that's sufficient to put an end to discussion or whether they want to proceed nonetheless. I would think that would be a very strong reason just out of respect for a colleague to say, okay, then I guess we're gonna have to postpone our vote. We were under some time pressure, but it wasn't absolute. And even if we are, I mean, so what? I mean, that point is we want to make the best decision. So I guess I'm not sure we can formalize that, but I would think that anyone should be free and certainly should not worry about, you know, hurting anybody's feelings, simply to say, you know, there's just something here that I need to get more information about. And we, I mean, I guess, and I just would like us to postpone the vote to the next meeting. And we, I think whatever this discussion yields should be figure out how to put it into the written process. Therefore future committees and future councils. And I totally agree. We could always ask a candidate to come back or ask the chair to contact the candidate or, you know, bring up an issue that we're looking for further information. And if it delays our vote, it delays our vote. Well, my concern is that that then requires it to be public, I assume. In other words, I can't do this. I can't just pick up the phone or can I? I mean, I assume I can't. I mean, because the interview has to be public. And if you're gonna ask more questions or get more information, surely that has to be done in a public way, which means they're gonna have to come back to another interview, da, da, da, da, da, right? No, what you find out is what has to be public. Yeah, I think if you decided on what you were gonna ask and tasked one person with contacting the candidate for that information and then disclosed what the response was at the next meeting, that that's fine. But okay, so if the person wants to postpone, they need to stay clearly what information they're seeking and then request that the chair get that information. They can't just say, I'm just not comfortable or I need to think some more. But you could postpone for thinking, but then you're not going out and getting more information, right? I think you have to, if it's for more information, you have to disclose what information you need and... And then the chair could then go out and get it and then report it back in public session and that would fulfill the open meeting law requirement. Okay, all right. It was a very specific question. So it would have been obvious during discussion. It would have been, we need to call candidate X and ask this question and then in the open meeting... Give the answer. The answer would be reported by the person who made that call. Okay. Can I make another suggestion that relates similar sort of to the interviews as we're discussing this process? I noticed in the prior one that, and I apologize for not reading our own rules, that one candidate's interview took a whole lot longer because they chose to expound a lot more on answers than others. Do we have a rule for limiting the amount of time of an answer? And if we don't, should we? And if we do, well, that's on, I'm not gonna just blame George. That's on all of us for not knowing and not enforcing. But I did begin to feel during the last interview that potentially a candidate was being not necessarily treated unfairly, but had a lot more time in front of us than the other candidates. And that could be part of our rules in terms of how much time there is to answer a question. I certainly felt that at the time. I also felt, I just didn't know how I could, I mean, maybe I just need to say, you need to wrap it up. But- So it might be good to add in time limits into our rules in terms of answering questions in three minutes or less or five minutes or less or one minute or less or something like that. I know CRC has done that. Okay. A lot of candidates won't advance if there's time limits. Fair enough. It's part of setting them up for the interview. Yeah, CRC, when it decides, CRC has questions in advance that it decides on. And it actually sets time limits for answers to those questions at the time it decides those questions. And sometimes it's, I think the last time we did it, it was all the same time limit for every question, but we actually discussed, well, maybe this question would get a minute and this would get two. And we provide, I mean, it's different because we provide the questions to the candidates in advance, but we also provide them with that time that they have to answer them. So I think it's something that could be decided and provided in advance. I have resisted the idea, at least for this committee and its process to have specific questions written on advance, but that could be changed easily. You could decide as a good argument for it, but I prefer that you just, you have the opportunity to ask a question and a follow-up question. I'm not proposing we change how we ask the questions. I'm more proposing it's on the answer side more than the question side. And then be understood in advance and that the candidates know that and that the committee know that. And so that could be easily added to the process that I can certainly do that. Okay. So, good. We have three sets. I'm going to simply jump over bylaws for future consideration for the moment. I'm also jumping over the timeline. I, when we come at the very end of the meeting quickly, I wanna hear from Lynn in particular as to what she would like to do with that, but I have it on the agenda for today, but we're not gonna get to it. The minutes, I really would like to get them out the door unless people are uncomfortable. I've looked at them. I mentioned at the beginning of the meeting before some of you were present that I was impressed. I think they've been very well done recently and I expressed that to Emily and to the council clerk and as a result of their hard work. But, and I've looked through them, but do you have any corrections, changes, concerns? And if you do speak up or you could send them to me and I could, if they're just scrivener type things, I can make those changes, but I'd like us to get through these minutes today if we could, is everyone had a chance to look at them besides the chair. They were lengthy, which I think, given what we've been doing over the last couple of meetings is appropriate and I thought they were nicely done. I move that we accept the minutes as written. As presented, okay. As presented. These are the minutes for November 18, December 2nd and December 16th. I'll second. There's a second. Any further discussion, concern, issues? I see none. So I'm going to go directly to a vote and I'm going to start this time with Andy. Yes. Pat? Yes. Lynn? Yes. Mandy? Aye. And the chair is a yes as well. So he's five to zero. We'll have that discussion. Actually, maybe after the meeting is over. Aye versus yes. What? Both is five to zero. A new rule, George. We need a new rule. I don't understand. There's something going on here I don't get. No items not updated. I do not, but let me check. I do not see any public presence. So there is no public comment. Features. And we're such a powerful committee. You think everybody would be watching this? Exactly. It's the alpha committee of all committees. We control it all. I know we're in charge. I need to go. So I'm going to shut up. Reach your agenda items, please begin briefly. Lynn, do we want to put in place? We already have rules of procedure and basically have the agenda of today. Again, next time, ROP, we have to get that done. And we have the memo on 8.1. Those are right now. I take it are going to be on the agenda for next time. Right. But the Chinese New Year resolution will be on our agenda next time. Okay. It has to come before the council either on January 25th or February 8th, because New Year is February 12th. We do have two meetings before we have both the 20th and the third. So we could, we could, if we have to, but hopefully that won't be too. So Chinese New Year resolution. It's a resolution, right? Okay. We'll do proclamation. What is it? Proclamation. Sending it out in draft form to the council to see who wants to sponsor. Okay. Anything else? Do you want to deal with the timeline next time? Absolutely. Absolutely. That's a yes or a no? Yes. Yes. Okay, good. I will do my best to move as quickly through items one and two, but I believe we have to do one and two first. We have to do the rules of procedure, but good. Anything we can do in preparation for the timeline discussion? Read the memo. I'm sorry? Read the memo. Exactly. RT. The timeline discussion about the one about agenda items. Okay. Uh-huh. Is that, is that correct? No, I think timeline, he was talking about manager evaluation, right? No, I'm talking about the manager evaluation and I'm sorry. Lynn, you and I agreed that we were going to look at other town's evaluations process and I completely forgot that. But you've both been very busy. So I just want to know whether you feel that we should have it on the agenda for next time. Okay. I think either that or on the third because it's creeping up on us. No, I know. I know it's right. Okay. I just warn you from my experience when I was working with the charter commission on that issue, that because Massachusetts is so unique in its open meeting law requirements, that you can't get out of Massachusetts and find applicable procedures. I recommend talking to Franklin and Bridgewater. Thank you. Okay. All right. Go to Franklin and Bridgewater, they have manager council systems. Great. Okay. Good. Any other items that people have? I think that should keep us out of trouble for the next time. I need that if you have any additional things coming from GOL that relate to the memo regarding required and possible agenda items that you get them to me because what I'm trying to do is turn that into a list of what is our agenda items for this year and also then try to get a sense of the calendar. It's hard. It's never gonna be perfect. So I... But I have heard from you. Put that on the agenda and have a five minute discussion as to whether anything's missing because I think it could be done quick if your focus just on is any GOL action missing. That is the question. And I... Even something as simple as a bylaws for future consideration, technically, I think a point was made by someone that that's not actually required. So even though, I mean, or is it? I mean, we were supposed to report back by a promise we're gonna report back by March but is that something that is absolutely... Bylaw consideration of which came out of the bylaw review committee. Right. This is what I mentioned this earlier. We don't have to do it. It's really sloppy of this council not to wrap it up. Right. It would not be... It would be Bruta Figuera, as we say in Italian. But it's not... We could do it. So what is it something we have to do? I mean, somebody help me here. I'm thinking... Oh, so I think finance committee appointment needs to be on that. Yeah, yeah, finance committee appointment. Things like that and rules of procedure review in December of next year, something like that that if we can put our heads together on a finance lens, we might not miss any of that. Good. But I don't think it would take a long time if we came with our lists. Not a finance lens. Sorry, G.O.L.L. It's over the hell we are. Okay. All right. If I can read my scratch, hopefully I'll be able to. George, I will send you the changes that we voted on in the rules of procedure. Okay. That would be helpful. And I will work on the report, but we have a little ways before that. Anything else? You can actually combine reports, George, between this and the meeting we have on the 20th. Yeah, it probably will be the case, but. All right. I'm prepared to call this meeting to an end unless I hear an objection from my colleagues. I'd like to postpone that decision. I pretend I didn't hear that. Pat loves this committee so much, she doesn't want us to adjourn. Okay, well, that makes one of us. Let's do, yeah, we're adjourned. I'm doing it. I'm pleased to hear it. Go in peace. It's a pleasure. I love you all. Thank you again, Emily. And I'll see you all, see you all too soon. Goodbye.