 The June 5th, 2019 meeting of the Town Council Governance Organization and Legislation Committee, we are being recorded for posterity on the Amherst Towns website. And so we are going to start. It is 10.38 a.m. and we have a quorum, so I'm calling it to order. Steve Schreiber will be taking minutes today. So the first order of business is to begin follow-up on town committee charge update request. We had went to the council and asked that they request that committee charges, committees propose updates to their charges and that then they would come back to, I guess, not us directly, but I think it's the appointing authority. Any proposed changes initially would go back there. But someone needs to follow-up on this. And so that we said in that meeting that it would be us that would sort of coordinate and help and all of that. So I thought we'd start the conversation as to what we want as follow-up welcome. We are Governance Organization and Legislation. Great. So I thought we'd start the conversation of what that follow-up should be, how we should encourage maybe emails or notice to committees to go out, who should do that and all of that. And then we'll figure sort of a plan of attack out and then we can sort of keep track of it as we go forward. Pat? Since we have a member of the public here, perhaps we should find out if he'd like to make comment. Good idea. So you're attending the Governance Organization Legislation Committee. Is there a particular item, if you had planned to comment, is there a particular item you wanted to comment on? Okay. So when we get to public comment, we'll ask if you've got any when we get to that in the agenda. I missed the agenda follow-up. So the agenda is this follow-up on the town committee charge. And then the next item is a long set of consideration discussion. The council just adopted rules of procedure and the rules committee forwarded to our committee governance a whole list of things to continue looking at. And so we're going to be doing that and then it's public comment. We don't have minutes to adopt today, so we're skipping that agenda item and then it's items not anticipated by the chair. I don't believe there are any. And then we will adjourn and we'll be done by 12.20, I believe. And maybe earlier we'll see. So that's our agenda for today. And the packet and the documents we'll be looking at can be found on the governance website, the subcommittee website. If you have a problem finding them, let me know. There aren't any documents for this first one, so you won't find any. Yes, so, you know, we had that request that any committee, town committee long that is older than five years, look at their charges and if they desire updates, put them into the template and update them. And so that request passed. We had originally said they'd come back to GOL. That part of the request at town council did not pass the part. That part was changed to, I believe it was changed to, and they would submit them back to the appointing authority who I guess can aggregate them for figuring out what to do with them because appointing authority is not necessarily the creation authority. So we have to figure out what would be done with them. But that's sort of the thing, but I don't know. And what I thought we could discuss is should we take charge of notifying committees? Where should we request that notice come from? Should we request timelines? I figure the committee should probably get a template sent to them specifically and a whole host of stuff. So I'm looking for thoughts on how we want to manage the sort of keeping track of what's going on. It seems to me that we should be notifying committees and that we should also set deadlines and timelines, send the template, and that just seems part of what we do because we're the ones that look at it for actionability and things like that. And I know it's the council that will approve these changes to charges, but I can't imagine that they wouldn't ultimately come back here first for us to take a quick look. So I feel like we should be responsible. Evan? Yeah, I think we had pitched it. So we're probably the ones who are at the very least coordinating it. So what that looks like, I think could take a lot of forms, but to me, I guess the first thing I'd want to see is how many committees are we talking about? So because in my mind, this is something that could be delegated perhaps to one member of GOL, George is volunteering. But also if it ends up being, you know, 38 committees, that might be a lot for one... Why don't you just make the list? Oh, you want to make the list. I thought you wanted to be the person who does everything. No, I don't want to be... Well, I guess I was thinking that if we look at this and we say, okay, at the end of the day, there are 10 committees that we feel this would be appropriate for. One member of GOL could probably be responsible for actually coordinating all of this. But if there's 40, that might be a lot. And so it's hard for me to envision what this would look like without knowing which committees and how many. Because my thought is the first thing is probably a message, an email out to the chair of the committee saying the council voted on this. We could either designate someone to send that, although it would likely be most appropriate coming from the chair of our committee. I'll say I can send that email. I'm sort of looking for, and this is a great conversation, what our process wants to be. And so an email that says this is what the council voted. We're going to help coordinate that. Here's the template. And do we want to set timelines? Yeah, I think we need to simply because it can seem at the time unimportant to a committee that's working on something. And so if they have a timeline, it might help them to even do whatever is suggesting have one or two members work on it instead of a committee. George. So I'd be willing to assemble a list of all the committees. We already have the memo from the select board, which is what I would be working from. I would certainly then need the help of the rest of you to make sure point out what I've missed. But we would have then hopefully a complete list of committees. And then I would also go through and determine which ones are five years or older. Correct? Is that right? Yes. And then, as Evan said, that may turn out not to be such a huge number. And if the number is manageable, I'd be willing to be the contact, you know, help organize it, whatever. But I think that the next step would be having identified the relevant committees that fall under this charge, whatever you want to call it. If Mandy would put have a memo that would go out from her as chair, just explaining what we're asking them to do along with the template. But then they'd send it back to, well, that goes to their appointing authority. Correct? That's what the council passed. Yeah. We could ask that they copy us when they send it to the appointing authority so that we know it's been done. So I'm making this list, I guess, at least to the sublist of the committees that we think that would fall under this five year or older. We'd also be helpful to have a name of the appointing authority. Right? So we'd know who the appointing authority is. Yeah. And so at the next GOL, I'd be willing to provide that list and a sublist and a list of the appointing authorities of that sublist. And then we could go over and make sure I didn't miss anything. Would that be? So the appointing authority on nearly everything will be the town manager. So I think we can just say, except for planning board, well, except for planning board and ZBA, the other ones we appoint are less than five years old. We created them this year. Ranked choice voting, FINCOM, because we created a new finance one, participate in budgeting. So everything, but those two would go to the town manager. So I think the memo can probably just say you return to the town manager with a copy to the GOL committee, maybe. One of the questions I had was, and this might be helpful as you assemble the list. I've already seen there are a couple of committees that I would, you know, that people would say need updated because of references in beyond appointing authority references to things that the select board does or things that town meeting does where there's specific references to non-existing bodies now other than who appoints, because a lot of the appointing authorities are the select board. It might be nice to include when you're creating a list of town committees a, hey, this one probably does really need updated. This one doesn't have stuff. This one has a member from the select board on it. You know, which ones might have more of an immediate need than others for our references GOL is my thinking. Now, if you want a second pair of eyes on this, I'd be happy to have an accomplice, but I'm also perfectly willing to do this. It seems like something that one person can do. And you will all look at it anyway when it's done. So I think that should be fine. The timeline for us then is next. Do you'd like it to have it by next GOL? So I think the list by next GOL, does that sound like a good plan? And then the goal would be for me to send the email out after that meeting, or I might have to ask Angela or the town clerk to send it out because I might not have contact information for all the committee chairs, but I can coordinate sending it out certainly. So I started with one thing, but now I have three. So one, I think we need to think a little bit about, part of this is, so it seems like there's three things that we're asking them to do potentially, right? One is simply reformat your charge into the template. Any committee can do that. Two is what you just mentioned, which is bring it into conformity with the charter and there's a conflict. Most, some committees will have to do that. The third option that we're throwing out there is the potentially to propose some type of revision to the charge. But, and that makes sense for some committees, but then there are also committees that are governed by statute, right? Planning boards, EBA, conservation commission. And so I'm sure they already know this, but those committees I assume should probably have a different email because I don't necessarily think that we can offer to ZBA and if you want to revise your charge, do it, right? And so in compiling the list, it might also make sense. This is more, but to separate out which committees are committees that have been created by like town meeting that are the, and then which ones are committees that are created under state law. Steve. So some committees have minimum charges that they have to do based on MGL, but that doesn't mean they can't have more expansive charges. Like the planning board has to do certain things, but it can do more than that. The ZBA, I'm not so sure of because ZBA, the ZBA is strictly a permitting authority, but the planning board can plan. So just for clarification's sake, at the moment, the only thing I'm doing is highlighting problematic committees where they're going to need to, you know, it's select board or whatever that kind of stuff. Do you want me to, is there anything else you want? Sound like Evan had something in mind, but Steve's objecting or not objecting, but just saying it's obviously, the idea of revision is open to any body. Right, exact clarification. And so it sounds like I don't need to make any further subdivisions or do I? You're going to get a list of all town committees. A list of all those that are five years or older, which is going to be fairly large. And they're appointing authorities. And then I will highlight those committees that I can see right away are going to be problematic for the committee's purposes. Anything else that you would like me to highlight or separate out? I think Evan suggested highlighting if they were state law creations created under state law versus, so for example, we have to have a zoning board of appeals. We have to have a planning board under state law, but we don't have to have a transportation advisory committee under state law. Our bylaws might require it for municipal law at this point beyond the charge, but there are certain committees that under state law we must have. So I think the request was to highlight those. Is that what it was? Only if, the only reason, and so Steve's point I think is well taken then, the only reason I suggested that is if our outreach to those committees would look different because we aren't envisioning that they would necessarily revise. If their charge, so if their charge is dictated by state law, I don't want us to reach out to them and say, and let us know if you want to revise your charge because they might not be able to, but Steve's point of they can have to do a minimum but always add if that's applicable to all of these then I would probably, I don't want to give George more work than he has to do for no reason. It would only be if we would be treating those committees differently in this process, but if not then I don't see any particular reason to. So maybe before I send the email once we have the list, since I'm going to have to coordinate with someone at town staff I can ask them, we can highlight at the next meeting ones we might want to say, oh is that one that they could revise and then I could talk to staff, should these get a specific separate email that just says please bring it into conformity with the template if desired. It might be best to talk about it when we see a list next meeting instead of trying to figure it out in sort of this ethereal, we might have them, we might not, but we don't have anyone to specifically talk about. Does that sound like a plan? Timeline as I create, because I'll try and create some sort of email for next meeting so we can see it too. What type of timeline might we want for a response back? It is summer. I don't think this is going to be a popular activity for any committee I think, but we're going to do our best to encourage them. So probably more time rather than less. And then we can always follow up within X number of months and say, do you remember we asked you? Do we want to tailor the timeline based on some of the information we get from this list you're going to create, George, with those that we think are more important having a shorter timeline and those that we're like, oh, just get there eventually having a longer one? I don't think we can probably create one today, but once we get the list and we look at it and we talk about it, that will probably become clear. I have a question about, okay, appointing authority for many of these is the town manager. So let's say a committee actually does what we ask and they send it to the town manager. Then what happens? What happens? Does he put it in a drawer? Well, I think that's why we said copy us. There is potentially an unknown as to who has the authority to amend these charges. Do the amendments, if they do get amended, can the town manager just do it if they were created by, say, the select board, an executive body? Could the town manager just say I accept these changes? Or are they some that have to go through the town council as the legislative body? And I think that's why the change at the council level when this request was passed was send it back to the appointing authority. So I think that's probably a discussion that I as chair or we as the committee more likely need to have with the manager maybe as to how are we handling committees and creation of committees and all in this new form of government. So maybe we need to think about inviting the manager to a meeting in the future. Is it worth having that conversation before we embark upon this long and laborious process or are we just going to assume that, as a reasonable person, but maybe even from his perspective, he would just say, well, you can do what you want, but when it gets to me, I'm not going to, I really don't care. Or do we need to worry about that? I just wondering whether it's worthwhile just maybe having the chair reach out to him and say, this is what we're thinking of doing. We just want to make sure that when it finally gets to you, something, you at least look at it. I mean, he might say, this is my territory. You can't touch it. I don't know. Would people, would members prefer that I do that? Before next week or two weeks from now, whenever our next meeting is? Evan? So as far as the timeline goes, because I think this fits into that, I don't think there's any particular rush on this. And I do have two concerns about doing it sooner rather than later. One is, as Mandy Jo said, it's summer. Summer is summer. And so that's one concern I have. And then the second one is that, hypothetically, if we draft, if you draft an email and you bring it to next meeting and we all say, this looks great. Send it out immediately. They're also about to get an email about the town manager evaluation due July 12th. And I feel like if you get too many emails at once, you're going to put some on the back burner permanently in the town manager evaluation. So maybe this doesn't go out until after those are due. Yeah. There's almost a part of me that says these shouldn't go out until August or even September. And I think that also gives us a little bit more time to figure out that question that you just brought up about. Who, because I actually think that's probably a bigger question than just this, which is committees that were created by the select board who had either town manager appointments. Does that mean town manager has authority? There's a couple of gray areas in there that I don't want to rush to figure out next meeting so that we can send out an email that might get ignored. So I'll start the ball rolling unless I hear otherwise. And then we'll just, next time we get together. But I agree with Evan that it's probably wise to wait until at least the end of the summer, given all that's going on, to actually start the process. And in that time, we might get some greater clarity. The other aspect is we're expecting sort of, over the next month or so, a flood of appointments from the town manager. Yeah. And so I expect those will continue throughout the next two months or so, maybe longer. And so it might be nice to have fully seated committees before we start this process. That sounds good. So we'll keep this on the agenda as we go forward, but not really rush it. And we'll get the list so we know what we're dealing with. And then we'll start, we'll go from there next time. Does that sound good? Anything else people want to say regarding this before we move on? And while we have public, is there any public comment on this? Nope. That means we are moving on to our next agenda item, which has... Yes, sure. Come on. Please use the mic so that the video can actually record what you're saying. Otherwise, they can't really hear it on the mic. So I think you might have to press the button if it should light up when you... Oh, yeah. Yep, there you go. Oh, yeah. So I'm doing this in ignorance here, but I mean, so you were talking about the town manager giving approval for things and then what happens in the amendments. So you didn't ever go through... Sorry, I'm not criticizing or trying to change and just throwing this in. You didn't ever talk about whether there was a way to assess whether the amendment was a significant one or a trivial one, which might be the difference between just getting him to tick off on it or being kicked back to the original committee. I think you're right. And I think that all of these revisions should go to the town manager and to this committee because that's our job to look at it for action, ability, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, we're in a new government. We're not exactly sure, as we were sort of stating, who actually has the authority to create the committees. Right. And most of these committees were created in a different form by a board that was on the executive side of the government. So the question now becomes with the managers that had executive, is that the person that has sole authority to amend what they do, or does the council have it? So that's a discussion we're definitely going to have to have. That was what we were just talking about. Yeah. And that includes trivial or non-trivial amendments, too, who can approve those. So as we move forward on this process, we're going to have to have that conversation and figure out whose authority it is. But thank you. And can you just identify your name yourself with name, please, for our minutes? John Willoughby. Okay, thank you. Can you say that again? I'm sorry. John Willoughby. Let us know when you figure that out. So our next agenda item is to begin consideration and discussion of the revisions to the newly adopted rules of procedure, particularly, and then I listed a whole bunch, particularly the following from the ad hoc rules of procedure committee follow-up list, and then I picked some to start with. And that's what's listed in the agenda. There are more we could go to from what we listed in future agenda items if we have time. And the document we're going to, I posted two rules documents. There was one that is the rules as past. Clean copy, everything as it looks as the council passed it. And then I took that and I started a draft that we will continue to add revisions to as we go along because eventually these will have to go back to the council, whatever we do for passage. And when it goes back to the council, it needs to show the track changes of what we're doing. So I created a new one which you're looking at, or should you, that's the one you should probably look at that was titled as amended by GOL draft because I didn't know what else to title it. And I've now also saved it on my own computer with revised 6.5 so that we can kind of keep this going and each new meeting that we're dealing with this will get the new revision draft. The first thing that I added, and the first thing on our agenda to look at is the table of contents index and active links to other reference documents. So I will go through what I did on some of these so people can follow what this draft looks like and why. So what I did, word is great in that you can create an automatic table of contents. So I did that even if I forgot some things, which I did. I forgot to header some things. So we're going to have to header some more stuff and recreate it. But I essentially used header one for the big rule names and header two for all the individually numbered rules, as you can see in this table of contents, and then hit create. So it can be automatically updated if anything changes, which is nice. What I forgot to add in header ones was all the appendices. So it's missing in the table of contents the appendices. So I will go back and re-header those, actually change the header, change the format from body to header, and then I can recreate a table of contents. Is this the level of detail we want in the table of contents? Do we want even more detail for some of these? There are some rules that have some subsections. Do we want the subsections on a different one? I think that's one of our things we have to decide is level of detail on table of contents. Thoughts? Evan, Pat? I got to like swing my head. Whenever I say he's going to say the opposite, so I'm going to say what he was going to say. Not really. I don't think that we need to filter it down, down, down if there's a general area to go to. There are going to be very many people who look at this, although I find it riveting reading. I don't see the need for any greater. And if we discover as we work our way through this that it might be useful, we can go back and change it, but I think it's fine the way it is. My concern is with the creating links. That seems like a much more challenging. Creating links. Let's talk about the index before we get to the links. But we'll do all three. So the table of contents we'll just keep updating as is. This is the right level, and we'll make sure when we present it to the council that it's got everything in it. Index. There is an ability for Word to create an index. It takes a little bit of work. If people are opened in Word, not Word Online, you can go to references, your reference section, and you can see somewhere over there that would say index. You know, there's a table of contents, and then footnotes, then research citations, at least that's what's listed on mine. There's one that says index. I assume it takes and automatically does it as long as you mark the right things. So the question I've got for us first is, do we need an index? Rules one at one. And choose to say, no, we don't. If we do need one or desire to put one in, what are we indexing? What are our words that I should be going through or someone should be going through and hitting mark and find and do all of that? So shall we start with the first question of is an index necessary? I'm getting crickets. No. I mean, imagine using this. You're probably going to just go through table of contents and find the relevant rule that you're looking for and go there and then read it. I don't know. I don't see any need for it. I mean, I guess in theory we could create one and see how useful it is, but it seems like it's a fair amount of work to create it, right? I mean, as you were describing, Manny, this is going to require a whole, you know, what words get indexed and that's going to be a real, and we have a lot of work to do. So I don't see why we should be doing this kind of level of work. This is a beautiful document. It's very useful. It's organized. It's got a table of contents. Bingo. Let's move on. Does anyone feel differently or want to speak up to a different opinion? I am seeing no one wanting to say anything differently. So we will go with GOL Decided No to Index. GOL Decided what? No index. Evan. Because I didn't, I'm not disagreeing with George. I actually do just, I agree with George. Question was, because Manny Joe, you're the only one in this committee who also served on rules. You said rules wanted one. Did they have a good argument as to why? And where did you fall on it? I never truly talked about how an index would be useful other than a, there were some members of the committee that said, oh, an index would be great because then you don't have to know exactly the title. You can just look up a word in the index and maybe find where that rule applies. You don't have to, the table of contents might not be completely useful. And this might be another way to create usability if someone's looking for something specific. You could find that word in the index and find every mention of it in the rules. That's as far as the conversation really got because we kind of ran out of time to even consider what it would look like or what we would need indexed if we created an index. So I think on an academic level, rules committee said this sounds like a good idea, but that's as far as that conversation really ever went, is what I would say. And so when I was looking at how to do it, I went from, that sounds like a good idea personally to, wow, I need help figuring out what words I'm indexing, which is why it's not done whereas a table of contents was easy to say, we can start here. First of all, you wouldn't index council, town manager. I mean, because there would be, it would be useless. So already you're, you know, how about tax? You want to index tax? Or like motion or something? Yeah, it's going to be very right. It would be hard to decide, which is why I was bringing it up here, of we would need a creation of a word list of what to index. And it would be utterly arbitrary and, you know, I'm sure we'll miss words that someone will say, well, why isn't that an index? Amend, adopt, bylaw, I mean, I'm just browsing through this. Emergency measures, I think it's, in the format it's in, the size that it has, the creation of a table of contents, the way it's broken down, it's perfectly useful as it is. And an index would only make it loopy, it seems to me. Anyway. So that then brings us to the hyperlinks. I am happy to do it. I'm not sure we can do it till we know if I can hyperlink to a specific place in the charter. I mean, I can go to the MGL and find the MGL references and add the hyperlinks into this document. That's not hard. The charter is on our website. I can link to the charter itself. I can figure out, I should find out whether we can link to page 38 of the charter versus page one of the charter. That would be very useful, it seems to me. And if we could do it, then I think it would be a very useful thing to do. If we can't do it, then I think we should just forget it. You just have MGL and nothing else? I don't know. The MGLs, I think the MGL links would be very useful. Still be useful? Yes. All right, all right. And those can go to the specific section. Okay, fair enough. But it would be nice to do it for the charter. And I think that would be it, right? Charter and MGL, right? What else would you think? I think there's a reference to the remote participation policy, that one short enough that just to the PDF there, some of them, yeah. And I can go through or if someone else wants to go through and find the links, but I thought I might manage the current master copy so I could go in and do the links. But I'll find out whether I can do links to specific sections of the charter. I just don't know. And I like that. You'd be doing it, Mandy. So let me ask a question. The appendix B, I think it's B, I think we did letters, which is the charges. Should we just type the committee names in and then have active links only? Or should we attempt to actually insert all the charges? We can, whichever we decide we can amend the rules or propose amending wherever that reference is in the rules to make it work. Pat. I think we should just go for links. It just seems like we're adding things to the document that would be easily accessed as long as the link is there. Evan. So I feel like my general operating procedure, standard operating procedure is to not create documents that need to be continuously updated. Although we will annually review the rules. But we could go through all this, right? And then next month, the council could, after this GOL discussion of do we need another committee, could decide it wants another standing committee. And then we have to go back into the rules and then add another link. I'm wondering if we can literally just link to the town webpage that's labeled council committees instead of. So. We could let me ask Brianna. Or whoever's no, Angela is doing the uploading if we modify a council charge, is she just replacing the document, which would not change the link on the town website. Because there's a way on the back end, like if there's a charge and I don't know whether the charges are on the website, if you'd modify that charge, she could go in and say replace that document. If it's a PDF, if it's linked to a PDF on the website, you could just replace that PDF with a different PDF and the link would stay the same so that we'd never have to update the link. But I don't know if that's how they're doing it. So if the website has the charge as a PDF so that when you, and I don't know how it is there written out. Okay. So we could link to that to each committee page thoughts on that because those links won't change. Those web addresses probably won't change. George. So the link would take you to that particular committee page. Is that right? To that particular committee or is it just to a town link and then you scroll around to find the committee that you're to the committee's page. So it'd be specific to the committee. But and that's it. We would not have any other writing on it. It would just be a link. That's it. We have the name of the committee and its link. That's the question. Should that should, should we do it that way? Or should we have that and write out? Have it written as well? Right. I think a link is fine. Because again, then we don't have to modify this every time a committee charge is updated because Angela immediately updates them on the town website. Okay. So if the link is fine, let's look at rule. And the committee rule. Seven. Seven. Nope. Eight. I don't think it's quite. Active yet that. Nine 10 rule 10 page. 25. 10.3 standing council committees. It says right here. See appendix B for charges. Or we could just delete that sentence completely. Delete appendix B. And each of those listings, the word finances an active link. The word or, you know, I don't know how the word governance is, or we could keep the appendix B so that the web addresses are fully written out. For now, should we just keep the appendix and we can make both active links. I'll figure out something. How about that and come back with a. I mean, it is nice if you if you are using this document and you're. There's a link right there with finance to take you right to finance, but. It's also there for the appendix B. Shall we keep it in both for now? It seems unnecessarily duplicative. If it just duplicates the same link in two different places, both are labeled. Council committees, right? If you want to know what the council committees are, you look at the. Table of contents. You go to 10.3 and then if you want more information, you put the link. So I'm not. I'm not sure why we would need. So I will. Delete. We will delete appendix B. But in 10.3 I have made a new reference. To. Delete that wording. And then to add the links directly in 10.3 to the. Council pages. Which means we're going beyond. Into the index to. Or the appendices and appendix B. Is also going to show in the document. I'm. I'm the master document that will be posted for the next meeting. A deletion of appendix B. Which will require if we want appendix. We'll talk about appendix C. Later. How about that? Not today. It's not on today's list, but, but we'll deal with that when we get there. Because we have to get there for other issues. So that, that is our first dealing with. We'll come back with fixed stuff next time. Rule 1.6. At the council meeting that this was adopted at. Councilor Steinberg. Indicated that he would like to see 1.6. Modified to get rid of rid of the word read. And put reviewed. So the question is, does this committee. Want to suggest that change formally to the council. I have put it into the draft. So that we could see what it would look like. We are on page five. Steve. You looked like your hand was up, Steve. Evan. So I'm struggling to recall. This particular moment. It was just that he didn't feel like they needed to actually be. I think he referred to red as being an arcane term and reviewed is more what we were going for of. We need to talk about it at two meetings, but we don't specifically have to. It was the question that came up with our bylaw Monday night of do we actually have to read it. And so if you got rid of the term red and instead put the term reviewed in. I kind of like arcane terms. And I kind of. Yeah. And it don't, you know, for example, you know, so it caused people some pause. But I didn't care. But it looks like we have some public comment on this. So come on up and. So just for semantics. Um, red implies to me that you have read the entire document review implies to me a more casual. It looks all right. So you would prefer red. I would leave. Evan. To some extent. The charter says that bylaws have to be read at two council meetings and it seems like this is just mimicking that. And so for consistency sake, it probably also makes sense to just keep red. And then we can have that great discussion about this and the clerk, whoever it will be, we'll point out that you don't have to, I have to read it and all of its glory. You can just. It's shorter. It sounds like we've reached a consensus to. Why do we have a book up there? Not changed the word read to reviewed. So I am rejecting those proposed. Excellent. Do we need to vote on this? I'm just the minutes will reflect consensus that we discuss. And decided not to change. With public help. Yes. All those present. That. That brings us to. 10.6 J. Well, we're going to go back and forth. But 10.6 J is our next one. And this was at the request of. Evan here. 10.6 J is our next one. And this was at the request of. Evan here. 10.6 J is on like page 32. Or 28. 27. And this was the committees. It read committees have the right and obligation to be creative. Offer opinions, including majority and minority views and produce documents. And. Evan. Thought that was weird. That might not be the greatest way to word that. So Kathy had come up with. So Kathy had come up with some potential alternative wording, which is what I have inserted into this right now. She was attempting to address that. And so I thought I'd put it in here as a start of a dialogue. And her alternative wording would be. Committees are encouraged to be creative. And have the right and obligation to offer opinions, including majority and minority views and produce documents. So thoughts. Evan, I'm starting with you because you were the one that started with this. So this is, I'm not super passionate about my feelings on this. To me, actually the entire rule is fluff. And just says something that is already true. And I think it feels like a feel good statement. Like committee committees can be creative. Yeah. And so to me, that's not a rule. That's like, so my preference. If I had soul control over the council rules. I would just remove Jay because to me it doesn't say anything other than we can be creative. Thanks for your permission. So that's actually created. And offer opinions. I mean, our charges literally say advise. Right. So like we're, we're mandated. Our charges already mandate that we offer opinions and produce documents where required to produce reports. Right. And so in our charges. So to me, Jay is a, it doesn't say anything. It just confuses me. But also if people love it. Fine. Use your mic, please. With your proposal. K becomes Jay and it should be automatically done with, with word in theory. If I delete future rule, future sub rule. So I heard a here, here from Steve on deleting the whole thing and actual so moved, I think, or a second to it. Pat, what's, what's your thoughts? Well, if you look at the other letter items, can you find one that even remotely resembles this? All the others seem to be telling you something. Maybe I miss, I mean, there's a lot here. Shall report. Shall include data report. Shall adopt a practice. Right. These are concrete things and we can say they did it or they didn't. But in this one, who's going to say, well, this committee wasn't very creative or this committee, you know, it wasn't really offering any opinions or naughty naughty. I mean, you could, I mean, majority majority and minority views is perhaps the one that, but, you know, that you could have one on that. That one you could argue, you could actually say, you know, well, where's the minority report? And they said, well, we don't have to provide one. And they say, well, Jay says you actually have to provide one. So we'll see if Evan's going to say what I would respond to. K-1. K-1. In the reports, reports shall include the date, list, summary of discussion, including pros and cons related to any proposed actions. It goes. Right. It goes. Minority views and a record of any votes taken. This is just to feel good. So is there an, should we vote on that? Or is there just a consensus? Yes, Steve. The committees have the right to, so the one way I see be creative is to, in a sense, suspend the rules and like take public comment when there's not public comment, you know, things like that. So I think we have the right to be flexible with our rules, which is maybe less so with the town council. But I'm not sure that that's creative. So if we were to leave Jay, so we don't have to renumber, I'd say committees can be flexible, basically suspending the rules. Pat, I don't think that's necessary because every chair in every committee and also of the council can suspend a rule and say, you know, John, come on up here now. Or in fact, we've been talking some to you, which we're not allowed to do during public comment and stuff. So I think that, you know, you don't need that. And flexibility is real different than creativity. You can't have it without flexibility. But do I hear a motion? I would move to remove Jay in its entirety from this document. Is there a second? So it's removed 10.6 Jay. Is there more discussion or any discussion, Steve? In front of the amendment and renumber K as Jay. I'm trusting word will do this to Jay. I have no problem with that. He's assuming it's going to be done automatically. Is there any other discussion? And I think if anyone asks this, I think Evan has pointed out, we have K1. So K1 seems to cover the substance of Jay anyway. And we felt the rest was feel good and utterly unenforceable and not very helpful, really. Great. Sorry, I'm just noting. We did adopt that. Is that correct? I don't remember anymore. But did we actually go to that? As adopting the rules, it became adopted. It was part of the rules. It was part of the rules. Yeah, I had a lot of things I wanted to do. That's all right. Maybe in another lifetime. Okay. So I've not seen any more discussion on this. So all those in favor of removing Jay, 10-6-J and renumbering 10-6-K to 10-6-J, raise your hand. That is unanimous. So I will make that change. No, I have a point of order, actually. Why are we saying aye now? Yeah, I don't know. One word. Alyssa. There was a request made to the president that the voting in silence seemed weird to the audience. And so a voting not in silence might be useful. That's a reason I didn't understand it. I just, all of a sudden I was being told I had to speak. And I thought, okay. Next is 10-7. There is a Scrivener's error, but I thought I'd mention out the second bullet point said budget coordinating group charter, period charter section 5.2. So we're just going to remove the first charter as a Scrivener's. While I was staring at that, I will point out that the joint capital planning bullet point had a missing period after SEC too. So I added that in. Showing that. As long as no one complains on that Scrivener's error, we will move on to what I did on letter E. Letter E of this agenda is advised on whether to add a scope section to rules that plainly indicates that the rules don't apply to multiple member bodies. So at one point in time, a member of the rules committee had wanted to add a section, rule one point either, I think it was technically in five, after parliamentary procedure, maybe after authority. So it would be either between authority and parliamentary procedure or between a parliamentary procedure and definitions that was called scope. I could look up the language that was proposed, but it essentially said these rules of procedures apply only to the town council and town council committees and do not apply to other multiple member bodies of the town. And rules didn't completely vote on it, but a number of rules committee members did not think it was necessary. Some members thought it was, so in the end it was removed with a request that GOL discuss whether to keep it in, whether to add it in or not. So here we are. Do we need these rules to specifically say they don't apply to multiple member bodies of the town? The official title of this document is? Amherst Town Council Rules of Procedure. QED. Does anyone care to make an argument for adding a scope section? I am not seeing any desire to add a scope section, so we will by consensus say that our advice is no scope. The purpose. Be observed at and guide meetings of the town council. So while I'm staring at this, 1.1 seems to have two commas. The Amherst Town Council, I think both of them need deleted, actually. So I will delete both commas in the space between the commas. Again, Scrivner, we're on to F. Advise on whether to add a section to the rules that states that the president shall serve as spokesperson for all press inquiries and for correspondence addressed to the full council. There was a rules committee member that sought to add this in. I'm probably in somewhere around rule two. Powers and duties of the president and vice president, between 2.2 and 2.3 is likely where it would fall. The wording of this advise on whether I believe the wording of the section was spokesperson of council, the president shall service spokesperson for all press inquiries and for correspondence addressed to the full council. I think was the proposed wording. One member of rules sought to add that other rules members. We didn't discuss it in full. It was determined that it might not be wise. We were running out of time and a discussion on that might have taken too long to figure out what to do when rules needed adopted. There was no full discussion at rules as to whether yes or no. It was agreed that that discussion would probably take too long. It should come to GOL for discussion later. A full discussion. Because our time is less valuable. Rules was under a time limit, too. I think it wasn't a some hated, some didn't. I think it was the scope section where there was just a... My initial thought of it, looking at it seems like a sensible rule and seems to work very well. What do others feel? Do you feel it's something that doesn't need to be stated? That we just leave it up to whoever happens to be president and on the council at that time to sort of figure it out? Or do you feel that this sort of centralizes an important function of the president or to be the voice and face of the council in sort of general context like this? Because it is effective. It doesn't preclude somebody for a counselor speaking for themselves to someone, but it does keep things centrally located, communicated. Well, it would mean that if someone called me up and said, what do you think about X? And I, you know, unloaded. And that showed up in the newspaper that I have actually violated one of the rules of the council. And I personally would think that that's something I shouldn't do and I would hope the other counselors would agree, but if they didn't, then this rule shouldn't be in there. But I think the idea is that for these sorts of things, it should be the president who speaks. And correspondence is, I'm very grateful that she does that. It could be given to a, it could be a clerical job, really, quite frankly, but I'm assuming, you know, there are times when she perhaps wants to tailor things and she does. But we certainly wouldn't do that, right? I mean, and you wouldn't want 13 responses to every letter that comes into us. I'm not saying that. I agree with you. My feeling is there are times where I get an email from someone I know directly and I add a little bit to what Lynn says, but I don't say, I send it as a separate email and I don't, and I keep it in the general bland response. But I feel like I need to make, cause I'm not talking about adding or speaking to the newspaper, although my social activist thing sort of gets clicked when I'm told I can't speak to the newspaper. Exactly. That's good for you to be, you know. It's part of your discipline. You need this discipline. I mean, I feel like 99.9% comfortable with Lynn speaking for the council to the paper. But I, I don't know, is that, I have a feeling, I wish I could come up with a great instance or something, but there might be a time that I need to speak directly to the paper. I can't. Could this be the difference between shall and must, which always gives me difficulty? It doesn't say the president must serve, but it says shall serve. So does that give a wiggle room for a counselor who, or does it? Well, May gives the wiggle room. May. Okay. So Steve. No, but May is not strong enough. Yeah, Steve. So my computer keeps shutting down, so I have to overlook. So democracy dies in darkness. Someone else said that. So we have 13, we've created 13 new political positions. And so we are all politicians and the press is one way of creating an effective community, you know, basically. So I think, finally in every, and I don't, it doesn't exactly say that, but it doesn't exactly not say that either. But finally in everything through a single person, I think gives the other 12 people, they lose an opportunity to kind of speak to constituents, frankly. So a very effective way of speaking to constituents is through the newspaper, because actually a lot of people read that. So there have been various things that feel like dressings down for speaking directly to the press without going through them. And I think that we have to trust 13, 12 other people's judgment as to whether or not it's a good idea, you know, to be speaking. So I think we all agree that none of us can speak for the whole council, but I can certainly speak for myself as a counselor. And I can also speak for things that I've heard from people in, you know, the community. And there's, I can. Evan. Yeah, so I actually think I agree with Steve on this. And I would probably actually be okay with this rule if it was edited slightly to say, the president shall serve as spokesperson of the council for press inquiries. So specifying she's a spokesperson for the full council and taking out the word all before press inquiries, because I think that when there's a huge issue in town and they want to know the position of the council, that really needs to come from Lynn, right? That should come from the president. But I'm thinking now, so let's say that the Gazette calls up near Mandy Joe as sponsors of this campaign finance by law and they want comment from us about the dressing down. We took a council the other night, right? I feel like I should be able to respond and defend legislation that I'm trying to move through the council to the press. But technically that's a press inquiry, right? But it wouldn't make sense for me to say, oh no, you have to talk to the president about my bylaw, right? And so the word all is what's throwing me. I think that she should be the, when there's a big issue in town and they want to know what the town council is going to do, it should be her. But I think when it comes to our actions or our constituents, we should be, I don't want, you know, if they say, you know, what's going on with how this project is influencing district four, I don't want to say, oh, go talk to president and district two counselor, right? I feel like I should be able to speak to that representing my constituents. So I would be fine. I actually do think that it's useful to say that she serves as the spokesperson of the council, but I would get rid of all. I think I want to be able to talk to the press on things that are about me as an individual. Steve. So oftentimes these rules are in place to make a distinction between the president and the town manager. So who speaks for the town or who speaks for the town council? So I think it's helpful for that, that the president is a spokesperson for the council, but that should be, it shouldn't be anything beyond that. George, I was going to chime in with my thoughts. I've struggled with this one in sort of in line with what Evan was saying that, and more with the second half of this one actually correspondence addressed to the council. When we get an email that's sent to town council at, I think any counselor if they want to should be able to respond to that email. If they want to continue a dialogue with that person, that person is a constituent. You should be able to talk to the constituent about your thoughts on that issue. If you wish to that, I don't think we should be prohibited for it. To read this in the strictest, and if we recommend adoption, I would actually ask to add the lovely lines, the president may delegate this authority as necessary. To give you some examples, there was a letter we recently received from the Amherst survival center that specifically stated that our council president as president of the board of a survival center recused herself from that discussion. I as vice president of the council took the president's typical response to those types of letters and responded on behalf of the council even without consulting our president because she's got that dual conflict with that organization and I just in reading said I should be the one responding not her because she's conflicted out. I could have formally asked her that would have slowed down the response. Depending on when she was reading her emails, although she reads them all hours of the day, but then there's the other questions and then for another example, there was an email that tamed the whole council asking about some climate action items that I held in my inbox for a number of days but never saw a response from the town council president. So I eventually said, wrote back to the person individually, not a CC to the whole council that said I don't know whether you've received a response, but here's a response with some things we've done and that person wrote back and said thank you. You know, sometimes the president misses some things. And you can, if we adopt a rule like this that says for all correspondence, instead of a counselor taking the initiative and saying, oh hey, I can respond to that really easily, they'd have to go through the president. So I've always struggled with this at the same time. I do believe we elect a president too for press purposes, be the what is the council's position and even for correspondence be the in general the hey, we got it, thank you for writing us sort of responder. So I don't know what to do with this. Well, it may be if we just insert of the council for all press inquiries and correspondence address the full council then that doesn't, it does not seem to me reading it that way, does not preclude anything that's been described by any of you. It doesn't say you can't personally respond to something on your own to some constituent or whatever. But just says that when anything comes in addressed to the council, it is the, we're seeing it as the responsibility of the president to respond to it in some fashion or other. But that doesn't preclude, and I'm not sure that the way this is written, if you put in of the council, that doesn't preclude us individually responding to it if we choose. And in fact, people do do that, right? So do we, I mean, would that solve the problem? Or is there something here I'm missing in terms of, you know, if you read it, spokesperson of the council for all press inquiries and for correspondence. So the press sends a, you know, inquiry to the council that the president would respond. If someone sends a letter to the council, the president would respond. And we would expect her to do that in all cases. But that doesn't preclude, it seems to me, an individual responding if they so chose. And it certainly doesn't preclude you speaking to your, you know, about issues that come to you directly, right? A press person calls you up and says, what do you think about Northampton Road? Right, but if a press person, you know, if someone from the Gazette emails the entire council and says, I'm looking for comments on this issue, I feel like I should be able to, right? But that would be addressed to the, like if these, I'm writing my article on the campaign finance by law, I'm looking for comments from counselors. I feel like I have, I should be able to write. Well, my general advice in all circumstances like that is not to say anything, but you certainly free, no, you're free to do what you wish. I don't think there's any rule here that says you can't. Well, all it says, as I read it, is that she is going to respond every single time there is such a thing like this, and that's what we expect her to do. But that doesn't preclude, you know, others doing so if they wish. Though I think Lynn would probably prefer that we not. I'm not sure this rule says that. So I think we have some public comment on this, did we? Sure. Come on up to the mic. When you're the only one at the meeting, you get to comment anytime pretty much. Yeah, so I hope I'm not, I'm probably missing some of the nuance of the, not used to the negotiation stuff so much. But this whole conversation puzzled me because it seems to be everything. Whereas in reality, you have two types of responses, one of which is completely factual, and one of which is where people are fishing for an angle for your, the inclination for future plans for likelihood. So it seems like if somebody knows what's happening, you know, like your answer to your constituents sounds excellent. You get them to some facts and that showed them the response and everything else. But if you don't specify between those two things, it leaves you open to having somebody ask the question, they feel, on a committee, they feel very strongly about it. They pull in an opinion of one or two residents and present it as a nuanced response which may not be appropriate. I don't think it would be appropriate. Okay. Thank you. You don't. Is this, sorry. No, go Steve. So now we can debate and discuss what the press is. So is the, so we know, two people sit at the press table. Scott and three press people. Press people? Yeah. No, two. Emerson D. Emerson. Will. William. Yeah. But there could be other. Yeah. And there are also people watching at home. So some of Scott's articles, hi Scott, are based on, you know, watching us, watching us on video. So everybody's the press now. So if you have a Facebook page, you're the press. So it's complicated. Yeah. With blogs and all. So is this something that we should mull over and come back to in two weeks? Should I add it back onto the agenda? Do we think we're able to make a decision today? On what to advise. We have a section that states the president is the spokesperson for the full council. Period. I would second that. So you, you take F and rewrite it to say something to the effect that. Well, pretty much what you just said. That in all matters regarding, maybe you should restate it just. I was just going to. Right. The president shall serve as a spokesperson. For the full council. For the full council. Town is, it would be council at this point. Because it would, it would be, and that motion is to add that as a new. Section 2.3 and renumber. Section 2.3 to 2.4. So it would be added under rule two organization after the section of the powers and duties of the president and vice president of the charter, or. If we didn't want a full separate section, it could be added as section 2.2. H 2.2 is the president shall and H could be. You could add an H that just says 2.2 H serve as spokesperson of the full council. Is, is Steve does that. Okay. So add a section 2.2 H 2.2 H. That reads. Chef serve as spokesperson of the full council. And that was Steve. Who seconded that. Evan. Before I call for a vote, any conversation, George. Definitely. I looked to these rules for guidance. And so, and they're very helpful. And I'm learning a lot by reading them. And I appreciate very much that they're here. But what I like about it is they give me specific guidance as to what I should or shouldn't do or what can or cannot be done, blah, blah, blah. This doesn't give me any guidance where and so I looked at these rules. What should we do as a body when there's a press inquiry to the full council? What should we do as a body in these specific circumstances that are listed currently in what we're talking about and with correspondence as well. And what we have before us now doesn't tell me anything. This revised statement just really is no help to me, it seems. So I'm still back to the question, what do we do when the press sends an inquiry to the council? What we have been doing is that it's assumed that the president will give some kind of response. To me, that doesn't preclude other people weighing in if they want to, but the president is expected to do this. And the same with correspondence. And so that's useful to me or it tells me something about what the president is supposed to do. So I don't find this helpful, this new rule or this revised rule, just as president's spokesperson of the council. Does anyone else find that helpful? I don't find that helpful. Pat. I kind of agree with George and I'll go back to what I originally said. I feel like having the president respond to the press is an important idea. But I also, I couldn't conjure an instance where I would want to speak separately from the body to the press. But I want to know I can. And I honestly, I can't imagine a time, but knowing me, I'm going to have to speak out someday. And my feeling is this allows that. This allows that. I don't see how it does allow that. I hear what you're saying about it doesn't say what is the... It doesn't say you can't do it. It just says the president in these circumstances shall be the spokesperson of the council for general press inquiries and correspondence address to the council. And it doesn't say anything about what you or anyone else can't do. It just says what the president must do or shall do. That's it. So before I recognize Steve, I'm going to comment myself. The motion that's on the table is just serve as spokesperson of the full council. So not correspondence, not press inquiries for everything. And I'm trying to, you know, I don't know where I fall. I don't think this limits in thinking about this. I don't think it limits any councilor's ability to speak to the press. So in that sense, I think it's good. I'm sorry, just clarification. You mean this meaning Steve's amendment? Yeah, this motion, this motion, Steve's motion. But what I do think it might provide is some clarity to the press of... Well, not just where they should go, as Pat said, but a... If I or you, Steve, or you, George, call the press up and say, here's blah, they know that's not the council's... necessarily the council's position. That's not what the council's view is. That is a councilor's view. And so this might give some clarity, not necessarily to us, but to the public as to when that quote is a representation of the council or of a councilor. And is that clarity important or not? I'm not sure I'm saying my thoughts in a clear manner, sadly, but yeah. So Steve. So we have no control over what happens after our mouths open. So we say things and we might say, I'm only speaking for the residents of my house and it might come out completely differently in the press. But I think that the relationship with the press is important. And so we know that this is not a well... We have some important newspapers, two newspapers that cover things in Amherst and at least one TV station, but that we can't really help how we're interpreted. Personally, I have been a little bothered by a couple of circumstances where we've got an email saying that, you know, please direct all press inquiries. We know that the reporters have been contacting me directly. Please tell them to contact me and send me copies of any such. Because I don't think... We're in a way where we are a council and we work as a group of 13, but on the other hand, we're also independently voted. So in a way, we're little entrepreneurs. So we're both part of a 13-person council, but we're also little entrepreneurs that have a sort of individual responsibility. So I don't respond to those ones that say, please send me your responses. I must say I too have sometimes been bothered by some of the emails we've received with those requests. Which is why I struggle with this. And you feel that this rule as stated could be read quite reasonably as sort of allowing that and... Yes, I think it could be interpreted either way, which is why I struggle. Right, and I agree that it could be read in two different ways. I read it as not precluding what you've done, but I could see others saying, no, you're supposed to be the president and you're supposed to keep quiet. So we have a motion on the table. Are we ready to vote or do we need more time to think about it? George. I feel like I need more time, but it's just me. Shall we postpone this vote till next meeting? We have a right to postpone. You can use it if you want. I'm going to say we're adopting it in this committee too. I am happy if people are not ready to vote because I'm not sure I am either. So I will take this and note that this is a motion to take up for the next meeting. Yes. And I will talk to other councillors. I mean, I've gotten five or four excellent opinions here, and mine wasn't pretty good, but the other four were excellent. But I will see... No, five. Exactly. But I will talk to the other councillors to see what they think. Right now I am sort of... So we have, by consensus essentially, we are postponing that vote, that motion, and that to next meeting. It is 12.04. We have about 15 minutes left in our meeting, and we have one, two, three, four more. This was a... I will say aggressive, so I didn't expect us to get through them all, but we didn't know. So the next one on the list is, per the clerk of the council, advise on language for passage of executive session minutes in a timely manner and prior to end of legislative session. So the clerk came to me and asked about whether the rules should cover timely passage of executive session minutes, and what she meant by that was when the council's an executive session, sometimes it's six, seven months between executive sessions, it could be even longer. Some of those executive sessions, one might be three months before the new council takes office and the next one might never happen until after the new council takes office, and then you've got minutes that are hanging out there that were with different council groups. And so she wanted us to come up with or discuss whether we should put language in this document that would probably go to minutes 3.5 or somewhere in there that talks about how often maybe you should meet an executive session to at least past minutes. If they're, you know, like every six months there shall be, I'm just making stuff up right now, but every six months and there shall be an executive session prior to the end of quote legislative session, I think we defined that essentially prior to a new council taking office that clears up all remaining and outstanding executive session minutes, something like that. So she wanted to know, did we want a rule that was sort of a thing she thought we should discuss? So thoughts, I will add that, let me just add, sorry Pat, 3.5B deals with only regular council meetings, minutes of regular council meeting shall be approved by majority vote of the council at the next regular council meeting. So we're silent completely on special council meetings and executive session minutes. Pat. I guess the only thing I'm thinking about with the executive session is how would we define timely manner, if we said two months for something, what if an issue that we are asking, we're being, the information is being shared with us, but it's not ready to go to public because it would affect the sale or purchase of property or something. It seems that could take quite a while. So you wouldn't want it to go out in public minutes. So I think that, so I'm just wondering what that means. Let me clarify. When the council adopts, approves minutes in executive session, those minutes are not automatically public. There is a separate, well there's a separate determination. It just means they've been approved and they're an accurate representation. There's a separate determination of when those minutes may be released to the public because that item that was dealt with in executive session is no longer necessary to be kept private. So approving them would not affect the, can they be released determination? So why wouldn't they just follow the same rules as other minutes? So the only rules we have are for regular council meetings at the next regular council meeting. We could follow at the next executive session. I think what our town clerk, our clerk of the council was saying is sometimes you have an executive session that you only do one a year. So we just make them do at the next council meeting, right? But they, what, they're... Steve? Sorry. If they're introduced at an open council meeting, then they're become open. You'd have to have an executive session to do the minutes, yeah. So you'd have to call an executive session just to approve minutes. And you could do it at the next meeting. Yeah, exactly. And then it's done. And since we can't predict when these can happen, and there's the possibility that you described that's where you could have a body going out of existence in some minutes still not approved by it, why not just make them do it at the next council meeting and we just take a few minutes and take care of it? You know, it'd be a nice break. We'll go back there and have a few drinks. Would this be... This probably would be an amendment of 3.5B, either 3 or adding a B4? B3 is the one that I read of 3.5B3. It's on page eight or nine. Minutes of regular council meeting shall be approved by majority vote of the council at the next regular council meeting. We could maybe add a regular council meetings, or we could add a B4 that says minutes of executive session shall be approved by majority vote of the council at the next regular council meeting. In an executive session or something that say at the next meeting so essentially you are calling an executive session solely to approve minutes. Okay. And it's an endless loop because then you have three minutes of that executive. Just once. No, I don't think the need... No, you would. You'd have to... Because now there's an executive session with sole purposes to approve the minutes. So they may have made it to that evening. Oh, he'll never return. Shall I ask the town clerk of the council she has suggested language? Isn't there another option which is the town clerk sends out the draft of the executive committee and they're considered approved by consent if nobody objects. I can't see why we can't approve them in open session since we're not reading them and they're not, you know, right? No, it just... I mean, they... If they are presented in open session they are public documents and so they don't maintain the ability to keep them private that an executive session does. It's just a state law thing. All right. So then I guess we need the clerk's advice as to how to word this so that we can actually approve them without becoming committed to an endless series of executive sessions. So I will email the clerk of the council to see if she has suggested wording so that we don't run into an endless loop of... We'd like to get it done at the next meeting but do we need... We don't want endless loops of next meetings. Nine minutes. We might be able to do... You think H, advise on whether the council should adopt a standardized council committee policy for approval of minutes or leave it up to each committee. Thoughts? Evan said we could do H so I'm going to Evan first. Evan. All right. George. A single process. I mean, there are very easy ways to do minutes and approval of minutes and so perhaps choosing the easiest one and the quickest one would be but I don't know. And then just saying everyone should do this. They'll love us for it, right? That's the question. Do we want standardized... I mean, you can have the... Approvals for council committees. Point someone who simply... who looks over the minutes and approves them, right? That's allowed. That's one of the ways, yeah. Yeah, which I like. As long as it's not you. Evan. Let the minutes show I'm staring at Mandy but... Or we could pick someone else. As long as it's not George. Evan. So related to this but not this rule is I do actually think the council needs a standard minutes template for all committees to use which I don't think is part of the rules. I actually think it's something that should come out of GOL because I do think that if someone wants to... if the public wants to read the minutes if there's inconsistency it's hard to get a sense of that. That's a recommendation from GOL. That's a policy. I don't think that's a rule. As far as adoption of minutes I think it's fine to say the committee can decide what they like. By law review, we... you know, the chair literally goes does anyone see any problems? And we go, nope. And he goes, all right, they're adopted. Right? I mean, it's just by consensus, right? Others vote but there are other... there are people on the council who might feel uncomfortable not having an actual vote on the minutes, right? So I think that letting committees decide how they want to approve minutes is probably fine. All existence is marked by suffering. So there you go. I agree with Evan. Allow it. Let each committee decide for themselves. Anyone disagree? So by consensus, it sounds like we are going to advise that we leave it up to each council committee and therefore no amendments to these rules need made. I do like Evan's suggestion and GOL will take this up of creating a standard way of doing minutes. Yes. I think this is... be very good. That may be it. Okay. That leaves us with I and Jay but let's do Jay because I think we can actually do Jay but I is going to take some time. So Jay, there are three options if you open up the document that was created that had all of these listed from rules. I think that was part of this packet. The list of stuff from rules. There are three... in some sense I drafted three potential options for this and I'll give you a history once I write my history on H here. Potentially the financial measure one. I'm sorry, where are we here? The last one. And this is advice on language for automatic or non-automatic referral of financial measures exempting the budget submitted under Charter Section 5.5. So where this comes from is the current rules I believe are the first one we adopted. The financial measures of all measures authorizing a loan, the levying of a tax or the expenditure of money shall be referred to the finance committee when received by the council. The council shall make the referral... No, that one's different. I think the third one is our current one. Let me just go find our current one just so I can read what we currently have. And that is referrals. Financial measures all measures authorizing a loan the levying of a tax or the expenditure of money shall be referred to the finance committee when received by the council. The council shall make the referral at the next regular council meeting. So that is our current rules. That doesn't...is not automatic referral. That requires us to vote to refer everything. That's our current rule. So the history around this is Section 5.5. We originally had an automatic referral, but Section 5.5 of the budget document says that immediately upon its receipt of the proposed budget, the town council shall refer the budget to the town council's finance committee. The finance committee shall... will review thoroughly the budget and make a presentation and recommendation to the full town council within 30 days of referral. If there's an automatic referral of the budget, that means that the finance committee must make its presentation by May 30th every year because...or earlier if the manager submits the budget earlier because it's 30 days of referral per the charter. We, as you saw this year, referred specifically on June 6th, May 6th, which allowed us to have that presentation June 3rd. If it had been automatically referred on May 1, they would have had to do the presentation like the 17th, or we would have had to have another meeting in May to make that 30 days. So there was concern about automatic referral of the budget, not necessarily automatic referral of other finance items. There's a difference of opinion of whether this section of the charter even allows us to vote that referral at a separate meeting or whether May 1 is the referral because it says immediately upon its receipt of the proposed budget, the town council shall refer. There's at least one councillor that believes that means May 1 it's referred, no matter what we do in the rules. And May 30 is when the report needs to come back. Other councillors believe differently. And so this is why it's here to discuss is this the right one that all finance measures need to be a specific vote referral, whether we should go back and modify it so that they are automatically referred. That's the third one. All measures authorizing alone the levying of attacks or the expenditure of money shall be automatically referred to the finance committee when received by the council. That would be everything. The middle one is the one that accepts the budget under 5.5 to give the finance committee slightly more discretion maybe on when that 30 days final is finished. And so that's the middle one of these three options. All measures authorizing alone the levying of attacks or the expenditure of money except for budgets submitted under Charter section 5.5 shall be automatically referred to the finance committee when received by the council. The president shall notify the council of the referral at the next council, regular council meeting. So that one accepts the budget but allows for automatic referral of everything else. So that we don't have to formally in a council meeting refer another measure, levying of attacks or authorizing alone specifically. We'll be done if we can pause this discussion if people believe, okay. If people think we can, we'll do it. Evan. So I would maybe defer to someone who perhaps served on the Charter commission for their interpretation of the Charter's language. To me, I would personally read the language literally as the council gets it and immediately upon receipt it goes to the finance committee. To me that says the finance committee gets it May 1. Do you have a different interpretation? So that is the interpretation of someone else. Another counselor. My interpretation is that the immediately was there for to prevent the council from holding the budget without referring it to the finance committee for six weeks. That the word the town council shall refer requires a vote of the council or some rule and agreement. Otherwise we could have just as the Charter commission said, you know, action on the budget, the proposed budget immediately on receipt goes to the finance committee. The finance committee reports out by May 30. There would be no need if we intended that immediate to not need a vote to put just 30 days. We could have just said May 30 or May 31, but we said 30 days from referral. If it's automatic on the day it's received, we should have just as a Charter commission said May 30 and since we didn't, I believe it was slightly intentional. My memory is not that solid. There were other things that we actually did put dates down, especially in this finance article, you will see things like May 1, June 1, not, you know, there's a lot of stuff that is April 1, not later than May 1, you know, there's a lot of things that have specific days, dates not number of days. So I think it allows for that. If the manager submits it April 15, that means finance committee has to come out May 15 if it's an automatic referral. Again, like I said, there's differences of interpretation. So the question is, do we want to change anything at all in the rules or not? Do we want to try and automatically refer everything, not everything? No one hears on finance. The finance committee was slightly against a May 30 deadline every year simply because with Memorial Day, right around that time every year, it will require the council meet, it will require if you look at a calendar, if we can't meet that Monday and we have to meet the Monday before, essentially the finance committee has to do its review in 21 days, potentially. If May 1, they might have, or we're adding a meeting on a Wednesday or a Tuesday or something like that. 5-5 in the charter is the action. A, the last sentence. Yeah. So the finance committee does not like the automatic referral of the budget because it is given when Memorial Day happens, essentially turns it into a 21-day review if it's submitted on May 1. So I'll just state that Pat said she's favouring the middle of the three, which is the automatic referral accepting the budget. Automatic referral of everything except the budget. Yes. Yeah. We do not have to decide this tonight today because we're running out of time. If we want to, we think we need to think about it and talk to people. We can take this up, Evan. Yeah. I mean, I think that the middle one makes the most sense given the dilemma that you presented. I mean, reading 5-5A, I still really do feel like, I understand what you're saying, Mandy Jo. Yeah. It just seems like it reads to me as the moment we receive the budget, but it's preferred to finance. So it's a little tricky there. I want to throw out one other option that I actually think is probably a terrible idea, but just for the purpose of discussion is we could also, I don't think the charter, does the charter define computation of days? Yes. And what is it? Oh, the charter does. I couldn't find that in the charter. The charter does. It's indefinite. It's in section 9, general provisions of 9, and it is, let me find, 9-5, computation of time. When things are above 7 days, everything's included, except if the last day of the period is a Saturday, Sunday, or holiday, no matter whether it's above or below 7 days, then it's popped over to the next day. And we copied that into the rules. My suggestion was going to be we could always change computation of days in the rules, but that's because I couldn't find it in the charter, but of course it's there. So never mind. So if the 30th day was Memorial Day actually, then it would pop over to Tuesday, but that would then, you're still meeting the Monday before Memorial Day to hear this presentation and report if you do it. It sounds like given our time, we'll put this one next week's agenda, and people can think about it, so I will highlight it for next week's agenda. Is there any more public comment? I see none. Adoption of the May 22nd minutes will be postponed until the next meeting. I don't have any items not anticipated by myself 48 hours in advance. Does anyone else? Not seeing any. That one is done. I'll take a motion to adjourn. Pat moved. Steve is seconding. Write down those motions and second Steve. You're taking the minutes. It was moved and seconded. It was moved and seconded, and all those in favor? Unanimous with one absent, which is George. We are adjourned at 1227.