 March 12th, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, General Law Chapter 30A, Section 18. This meeting of the Put Your Board Commission Committee name here. This meeting of the Resident Advisory Committee is being conducted via remote participation. We're gonna do a roll call to check and make sure everybody's video and audio is working. Mine is, I believe, Keisha, talk to us. Yours is, Connie, talk to us. Yes, can you hear me? Angela, talk to us. Yep, I am present. Perfect. And with just four of us here, we don't necessarily need to unmute when we're not speaking. It's not a big deal. Just a reminder that the meeting is being recorded to the web. And have you turned on video, Angela? I just did, yes. Before you started reading your statement. Aha, this meeting is being recorded to the web and could be shown on Amherst Media and broadcast in the town of Amherst YouTube channel. And the meeting is called to order. There's a reminder for people who are dialing in by phone, but there aren't any as far as I can tell. So nevermind that. And okay. Is Angela on by phone? No, she just doesn't have a camera on her computer. Hang on, I gotta leave for just a second. Yeah, my desktop here at work doesn't have a camera. And I could call in on my iPhone, but I end up incurring huge data charges. No, no, don't do that, but I didn't know you didn't have a camera. No, I know. It's better for everyone this way, Connie. Oh, no, no, no, no, I expected her. Okay, so we just did the call to order on our agenda and the next item on the agenda is approving the minutes from our previous meeting, which was way back on February 11th. And I looked at the minutes and I didn't find anything to comment on. Keisha or Connie, any comments on the minutes? No. All those in favor of approving the minutes, why don't you say aye and raise your hand if you're in favor. Aye. Good, opposed, none. So we'll call that unanimous. And I don't know, if it's just three of us, do we technically need to do a roll call if there's no one else here? No, that was perfect. That was great. That helps me out. Okay, good. Okay, so much for that. Okay, review of interviews since the last meeting, which is since February 11th. Who wants to go first? And I will if no one else wants to. So far. I'll go first. So I took a look this morning and I've since February 11th, I've done 21 interviews for five different committees. I did six interviews for Board of License Commissioners, seven interviews for Community Preservation Act Committee, three for Disability Access Advisory Committee, one for LSSE and four for the Cultural Council. All of them resulted in a consensus on who we should recommend to be appointed. And in all cases, Mr. Bachmann followed our recommendations. And I think in all cases, except for the most recent one, it's already, they've already been approved by town council. So we're batting a thousand or 100% or whatever there. Okay, who's next? I can go next. So I've done just under 30 interviews, most of which was for the elementary school board, school building committee, and then the rest were for the housing trust. There are a lot of people very interested in both. Again, we did have a consensus on the selections. So I thought they were good interviews, good candidates. Obviously I'll go next and last. I didn't go as far back as you went, Jim, I was looking at my calendar just over the summer. I had the Human Rights Commission that was in August. And those were, we had more applicants than slots. There was a fair amount of interest, which has been good because that's been a hard committee to keep filled. And those have gone all the way through. Most recently, just like two weeks ago, we had the community development block grant committee interviews. And again, that, well, that has at times been a hard committee to keep fully populated. We had more people named slots and some very good candidates. So those, not been voted on yet, but Mr. Bachmann went ahead and put those through in a memo that I saw. I don't know if those go to everyone when he does his appointment memos. So that's what I thought. But as we've been going through this, Jim, you were so much more complete and you went way back and I didn't, I don't want to make more work for Angela, but I wonder if as these things get scheduled, if there's like a matrix that at the 12 months out, if staff would be able to go back and say, oh, you know, Jim did 30 for these five committees, he should did 29, Connie did 15. Cause I'm just looking, you know, I just see my little slice and I have not been methodical about keeping track. In fact, I've been methodical about trying to purge on my paperwork and throw stuff away. So just an idea might be good to kind of look at that as a record over time. So we do do an appointment spreadsheet. I do it in Excel for Paul and we track all of his reappointments and appointments that way. And we also do that for department head appointments and town council appointments to multiple member boards and committees. So I don't think there would be any objection from Paul for me to share that with you. Okay, or just taking our, if we're in there, sort of adding those columns up that just have us or something like that. Okay. Whatever works, but if it's already being done, I think it would be just interesting and helpful to have it as part of our record as well. Okay. Getting, I have two things. First of all, what I do, the reason I was able to count this, I actually keep my own spreadsheet. That kind of looks like this. And every time I get a new batch of appointment of interviews from Angela, I add it to here. And I find it really helpful because I can, especially so I can quickly say, hey, this guy's getting interviewed and I interviewed him five months ago. And I actually do save my notes as well, just because I save everything. I'm crazy. So I can actually go back and look and see what that, you know, just my notes aren't that extensive, but I can at least see a couple of things that I jotted down about a person. And that's nice to do when they come back. First of all, so that person feels a little more welcome when I can say, hi, how you doing? I last saw you, blah, blah, blah kind of thing. And I have had a couple of those of people who have interviewed for a committee where we interviewed them sometime in the past for another committee and they didn't get it. So it's nice in those cases that I remember that and I know that and I'm not just saying, boy, they look familiar. Just a footnote to that, Jim. I had that experience with the CDBG committee where I was interviewing someone who didn't, who was a good candidate but didn't get selected for something like a year ago. And I was like, gosh, they look really familiar. And then in the interview, I had to say, oh, did I interview you, probably. So just to underscore what you said, yeah, it was really a little embarrassing to not remember that person. And my only other comment, it's really nice. So I just got the appointment memo for the cultural council because I was involved in those interviews. And it might be nice if everybody in our committee got all those appointment memos instead of just the person who's in there. I don't know if either Angela or Paul objected to that, that's okay too, but it kind of gives us another, so I can say, wow, Keisha just did 12 interviews. My God, something like that. So it might be nice if we could all get those instead of just the person interviewed. But if Paul would rather not, then I don't care all that much about it. Well, they are public documents so it's just the work of adding our names to those headers. I think it's a good idea. Okay, we've reviewed interviews since last meeting. Okay, review of upcoming interview assignments. What are we looking at, Angela? Well, what's interesting is a couple of chairs have asked for a delay. So the public arts, chair asked for us to delay interviews until after the council passed the bylaw for the percentage for arts. And so I think the bylaws tracking along appropriately and they were hoping that with the passage of that new bylaw, there would be renewed interest in the public art committee. So hopefully we'll be filling that vacancy soon. Shade Tree has two current vacancies and I'm actively trying to schedule Shade Tree, but also the trustees for the Munson building in South Amherst have been unable to meet because they should have three members but they're down to one member. So I finally have a viable group of candidates and they're gonna be the next to get scheduled. But as you know, we're pretty busy with triaging that little thing called COVID-19. So it's tough to find a chunk of time where there isn't already another Zoom scheduled. So Munson's next, Public Shade Tree is next. Historic Commission has one vacancy. We're waiting for a larger candidate pool for the council on aging who has currently one vacancy. And then cultural council agcom and then whenever public art gives me the thumbs up, public art. Going to kill a bee. Okay. I think cultural council, we just did interviews. Are there still more coming up? Nope, that's it. Yeah. You're right, cultural council. They just haven't been approved by the town council yet. So the ones that are really pressing are that Munson board of trustees who oversee the maintenance of that building and the upkeep of that building. And then also public art who has two vacancies. So numbers-wise, those are the two pressing ones along with Shade Tree. I think I said I'd be happy to do Shade Tree because I've done them last summer. I just did an update on a vacancy on local historic district yesterday. Early morning, Maureen Adams passed away. Oh no. Yeah. She had a really serious cancer that she was struggling with over time. And then the treatment wasn't working in it. She was at Fisher Home the last like two weeks. So I don't know how quickly the clerk picks up on that, but that when there's a vacancy via death. I had no idea she was that ill. Yeah. And I haven't seen an obituary anywhere. Well, it was at 3.30 a.m. yesterday. Oh, okay. Oh boy, that's sad. Yeah. Knowing Maureen, she probably wrote her own obit. She didn't have a lot of family, but she had a close group of friends who are giving her support. Okay. Well, thanks for letting us know too. Yeah, I'll reach out to the chair. I had no idea. She could let Paul know too that I know what you did. Upcoming, while we're on, I'm sorry, on the upcoming interviews, I know I think we all did get the memo that explained that. Keisha was going to be participating in the interviews for I think it's called community safety, is that what we're calling that? And I thought that was great. That'll be a slew of work as well. But it had me thinking that it's really different when we're participating in forming a brand new committee. I had that experience with the energy committee. Then when we're filling in a couple of vacant slots and it's just a different, for me, kind of a different mindset or sort of building a mosaic of people. And Keisha, you had this experience with the elementary school building committee, which was a brand new committee. One that's already been up and running, the committee uses as a chair, a staff liaison usually, and a kind of feeling for that group. But it's, I think it's, I find it interesting, but different when we were working on a brand new group. And I didn't know if either of you had any thoughts about the different approaches to that. For me personally, I think really in interviewing people, their underlying goals is the most important thing. And then factoring that in amongst the larger pool of candidates and seeing how people can work together and how they can highlight the different aspects of whatever the goal is for the group. Whether it's a committee or, because I think part of the challenges are, how should I put it? I think part of the problem has been too many single-minded people taking part in different groups. So I think for me, I always look at what unique quality or aspect is someone bringing to a group. And I think that when it's a brand new group, I think it's equally as important as if you're filling a vacancy on a currently existing group. Good luck to you is what I have to say. Oh, on the next one especially. Yeah. But this may not fit in here, but it may not, I don't know if it fits into our agenda, not posted, but sort of following along with that thought was, I wonder now that we've got two years under our belt, if we want to write up any kind of document that sort of share some of what we've developed for a process and a protocol and some thoughts because as this group goes on, some of us will roll off, other people will come on if we want to have any kind of written kind of record of how we've evolved and how we do business. So that may be a discussion item for another agenda, but I was kind of thinking about that. I think we can talk about it now pros and cons of it. It's definitely an interesting idea. I don't know if other committees have anything similar to that or not. The ones I've been on, I haven't been exposed to anything. I just, I'm not sure anyone would know what we've been doing. Where they would find that or get a sense of this if they went to our webpage or, I don't know. Angela, do you know of anything like that for other groups? I mean, what springs to mind for me is like the specific qualifications needed for things like the agricultural commission, like they really have very specific needs. And then also looking at how there needs to be representation from the real estate community and an architect for other committees. It can get very specific in terms of representation and qualifications and technical knowledge for certain groups. I know the water safety group, like they have some pretty specific qualifications that they look for in candidates. But in terms of writing a document where people share a rubric for a meeting, I haven't seen anything quite like that. Yeah, I mean, for better or worse, I think the typical scenario is not everybody leaves the committee at the same time and new members are kind of encouraged to look at the minutes of previous meetings and they kind of figure out what happens. For all I know, all three of us will leave at the same time, which might be an argument for something describing what we do. I don't know. Probably did too much, drank too much coffee this morning. We can just mull that over. I don't want to make more work for us, but. Okay, we can leave it in a mulling mode for now then. Okay. So move on to Zoom interviews. What works? What doesn't work best practices? Oh, okay. Anybody want to go first? As we begin this conversation as the person who schedules these, I just, I want to use a line from my son and remind everyone that for most people, this is their first pandemic. So, you know, I'm open to feedback, but we're all learning as we go. I have some specific feedback in it. It happened with the CDBG interviews, which, you know, overall were fine, but we didn't have any kind of intro time and the staff person came on and there was no information. The town manager is trying to look this up while we were meeting about how many vacancies there were because the information on the website for the committee was out of date and some other issues around who, you know, who had wanted to read up or who hadn't been attending. I think it would be really great to have a very brief kind of staff update about the status of the committee. It may not be that big a deal for some committees, but like for this one, it was important as we went through. So we weren't really sure who was still on and we weren't really sure how many seats we were filling. So there was no pre-prep as such, which could have been five minutes before the first Zoom or it could have been in writing. You know, it could have been in email. That same issue came up at the end because we had the last candidate, you know, each interview is a separate Zoom link, I get that. So we had the last candidate with, you know, that link and then we all wanted to stay on to debrief to actually hopefully decide who we were gonna recommend, but we had to kind of get rid of the interviewee so that we could have that space and that was awkward. I mean, they, you know, they left but we sort of saw them like struggling to, you know turn off their computer and it was kind of weird for them. They left and we weren't, but we didn't have a script that asked them to leave and it occurred to me that we might want to schedule as an additional Zoom link, the debrief with the interviewers to do that settling up at the end, which could be the same right after the last interview, it could be at a separate time, depending on people's schedule. So those are things I noticed that we're kind of awkward with the way we were using the Zoom technology. As far as the ending, maybe Paul's gotten better at it because in my last batch, which was just recently, you know, at the last interview, Paul, you know gave us thing about, you know, we understand these interviews are very short and we apologize for it now, but now I'm gonna ask you to leave the meeting so we can stay on and discuss all of the candidates. So he did come up with a good way of saying it that wasn't just saying go away or pretending that we're all gonna leave, but staying, you know, so he said it right out loud and he said it in a good way. Oh, can I ask when that was? Cause I had given him some feedback after this happened and that maybe he had incorporated that. It was September 30th, so a week ago. Okay, that was after the kind of awkward one and I texted him some comments afterwards. So maybe we fixed that. Yeah, or it might have been a coincidence. You know, I do kind of agree with you about the beginning that maybe there should be, the meeting should start for the group five minutes before the first interview just so we can get those facts about how many vacancies, make sure we know each other and who each other are. Cause currently it's kind of random. Sometimes we get there ahead of the person and sometimes we don't. So I could see that starting the first interview and I don't, you know, so there's two ways to do that. You can just have that first one, that first Zoom link start five minutes earlier and not tell the candidate. But it's in the Zoom. I don't think that works cause they all get the same Zoom message whereas having a separate Zoom meeting isn't good either because, so I don't. What about, what about a simple email memo from the staff person? That could be nice. Or from Angela, she could do all that. What do you think Angela, about the whole thing? I'm unmuting and chuckling. Oh, oh, I used to chuckle, don't you? You don't mute. I think that's a good idea. I think everyone being on the same page is a great idea. And there was a group of interviews where the liaison was feeling, the staff liaison was feeling a little bit anxious about the order of events and felt like there should be a pre-meeting but because we're doing so many internal and external meetings by Zoom, I'm really hesitant to add a pre-meeting and a post-meeting deliberation in addition to the scheduled interviews. I could see that. So I like the idea of a memo. I think that's great. And I don't know how you all feel about this but in my memo, in my email to that staff liaison, I said, you know, normally what happens is Paul starts the meeting. Paul encourages everybody on the staff side and the RAC side to introduce themselves. And then we usually ask the chair to do a summation of what the group does. And then Paul talks about the time commitment. And then your side as a rep from RAC is to say, you know, the reason we're here is this and then the staff liaison explains their role and then the questions kind of happen organically from there. Is that correct? Yeah, that's basically what happens. Yeah. I might suggest then that we have our chair, Jim, write a short email kind of memo to Paul with our recommendation that the staff liaison, when there is one, the staff liaison, prepare some kind of written briefing for us and what, you know, just some bullet points at what that might include. Do I need to do that, Angela? Can you just sort of pass that along yourself? What do you think? Yeah, no, I'm happy to pass that along. And I also feel like it might just be like very similar to what you read at the beginning of our meeting that I kind of do a script for chairs and have them do a fill in the blank so that it's not as onerous for them. Uh-huh, yeah. So they can just fill it in, send it out to the interviewers. Right. Well, to the chair sends it or the staff liaison sends it out? I think maybe yes to both. And then we cover all our bases, right? And then it comes back to me and I do a summation. That's fine, but it puts more work on you. She doesn't really do anything, so it's okay. Exactly. Yeah, I think that would be a good minor but good improvement to the system. And also sometimes that both the chair and our staff liaison get on and it may be one of their first ones. They don't have a clue. They haven't thought ahead for a couple of minutes what they want to say about the committee. So putting them on notice that they're going to be asked to do that is good. It just might help things move quickly. Yes, that would be good. Yeah. Anything else from you, Connie? What works? What doesn't work? I think we covered it. I am aware, I think since we haven't met since February we may want to go through the formality of choosing our chair for the next year. Why, oh no, she's laughing again. I mean, I don't have a problem keeping it the way it is. If that's what people want, that's fine with me. I don't particularly want to do it, but so I could nominate Jim. If that's what people wanted, but I just think we should have a record of vote that we did that on the state. I'd certainly be willing to do it. It's about the least burdensome chair of a committee I've ever been involved with because Angela does most of the work anyway. So if anybody else would like to be chair because you get the limousine and the parking space and stuff like that, who else wants to be chair? You should step up and say so or else I can stay as chair. I really don't care much either way. Not very helpful, maybe. Keisha, you want to be a chair? I have no interest. Connie, you want to be a chair? No, I'm happy to nominate Jim Pistrank to be our chair for the coming year. Okay, do we have a second? All those in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed and I'm going to abstain, abstain so I guess I'm chair. All right, thank you. I just think it's good practice. Okay. Keisha, do you have any what works, what doesn't work thoughts on the Zoom meetings? All the ones I did, I thought they went pretty well. We didn't have the issue Connie brought up. We, for most of them, like we logged in a couple of minutes before the candidate and so Paul would just say, everybody stay on after the last one so we can discuss. So we didn't have any of those issues. I think, I can't see how if it's specifically noted that these are the things expected of the chair that might help it to go smoothly but I didn't have any problems. That's great. I thought I was sort of jotting down things and I came up with a couple of things that do work. I actually think Paul does a good job of going around the room quote unquote and introducing people and mostly making sure that the main points in terms of time commitment and when the meetings are and stuff like that. I find that one of my roles is I have a little checklist and if we're getting towards the end and no one's talked about when the meetings are I'll gently remind someone to do that. So I consider that kind of and it's really no different whether it's Zoom or not but I just try and make sure that the basic things about when the meetings happen and how frequently then they happen get told to the interviewee but in general what happens without me doing it. There was a little stretch where I was reminding Paul to tell people that if they don't get on this committee there's others but then I stopped doing that because Paul started getting annoyed I think. And it's actually a good deal that we don't have to go park in town for these meetings. So my parking costs for the year are way down this year because of Zoom but I miss, I think there is a little bit of a different feel when you're in person in terms of the humanity aspect of being in the same room as somebody and possibly people feel a little more comfortable I think when you're in the same room but maybe it's different. I don't think it's particularly a lot worse and we're all getting used to the weirdness of it and I've personally been working remotely since the mid 90s and been having video conference calls like this for the last 15 years. So for me it's more normal than not for my work environment but it's still, it's something everybody's getting used to in a lot of different ways and I think we're doing the best that we can in terms of our interviews. It looks like we have no public, so there's no public comment. Anything else we wanna talk about? Items not anticipated by the chair. Covered a lot. Do you, I was wondering if in an effort to thank all of our volunteers on boards, committees and commissions, if maybe we wanna put that as a bullet point on our next agenda, we could all do some brainstorming about, obviously we can't do an event to bring those 200 plus people together but if you could help me think of something that would be much appreciated. Send them the pin. Yeah, I was thinking of a mask, town of Amherst Mask. Yeah, well let's brainstorm that for our next meeting. That sounds good, Angela. Okay, thanks everyone. Actually I had one other thing because I'm looking at my notes now. Do we, are we interested, and I'm hoping I'll open a can of worms, are we interested in some kind of post interview survey that we send to all candidates to ask them, how was the interview for you? What could have been better, what could have been worse? Do we wanna do something like that? If so, is that something we can just do as a committee or do we have to go through Hall to make sure it's okay and we'd have to put some thought into writing it but just something so we can get feedback from candidates about what worked and what didn't work in their interview process. Do we wanna do something like that? I think that's a really good idea, Jim. And I would do a survey of the interview process but I would also include the, all the way through to the appointment. Like was there a point where they felt like they didn't know it was happening or would have liked to have been notified XYZ. So I think the whole appointment thing from sending in their community activities to form or letter of interest through to notification of appointment, not appointment. Would we, and I agree that's a good idea. We have two ways to do it. We could have open-ended questions that people write verbose responses to, how was the CAF process, how was the interview process or we could have multiple choice. Very bad, bad, okay, pretty good, very good to different things. If we use an affective scale, there are metrics inside of SurveyMonkey that allow us to do some pretty interesting reporting out in terms of bar graphs and stuff like that. I'm willing to take a stab at questions with the affective scale. That's such a statistical thing to say. And maybe I'd send that out to everybody to see what they think or what they might wanna add. And I'd keep it pretty simple because if we send a survey with like more than six questions, no one's gonna wanna answer. So they have to be easy, I think. To your question, Jim, about well, should it be the checkboxes or more open-ended? I think there's always room to have, and what else do you wanna tell us? A narrative box either under a particular question or at the end. So I think we kind of get both, but I like that again, I think sending us a draft prior to our next meeting and having that on the agenda would be good. And who knows, maybe a member of the public will wanna join us for that discussion. Yeah. What is the goal of it? Is it to find out, is the angle to find out what someone's experience is, or is the goal to find out sort of how they feel about the whole process or just the interviews or disappointment at not being selected? Like what's the goal of the survey? I would think the goal is less about where they disappointed or not, but more about in terms of the whole process, did they find it cumbersome and difficult or did they find it easy, looking at that end of it? And for the interview process, kind of did they feel that it was fair? Did they feel that they got to express everything they wanted to express? And I think the goal is to come away with things that we could do better. So I see it as an internal goal for how we can improve. I think the idea is good. I guess I question including the actual appointment process because I think that would be way too heavily on the actual interview process for some people. So you wouldn't actually get a clear reflection of the process itself. You'd get more of a reflection on how they feel after not being selected or being selected. Yeah, I hear you. So are you saying we should focus on the interview process itself or we should say? Well, that's why I asked the question about what is the intention? Because if it's about the interview process, I think you shouldn't necessarily include that last piece. Because if it was a job, somebody would be very happy they got this job, but the process could have been fine and they just didn't get the job, but now it's gonna sway what their feedback is on the process itself. And also it's not under our purview. I mean, it depends once we have the debriefing and make a recommendation, it's totally out of our court. Yeah, I agree with that. And it meets more with our goals, where for me, our goal was to come up with ways that we can do our job better, basically. Okay, I will try and put something together and send it out ahead of time so people can see it, but we won't talk about it in email or anything like that. You can just see what I'm gonna talk about at the next meeting. Yeah, be an agenda item, which brings us, I think, to when we're gonna meet. I think so. I'll pull up my calendar. Oh God, making these meeting dates for things after November 3rd, always bring this kind of dark cloud over my head of what's life gonna be like? Let's not do it on the 4th. Let's not do it on the 4th. We could do the 28th or we can't do, is Wednesday better now than Tuesday? We used to do Tuesday. Wednesday, November 11th is Veterans Day. I'd go even, I don't know. For me, as for many people, probably every one day is the same as the other. I don't have that many other things. So, do we need one that soon as five weeks from now or can it be a little more than that? If we did November 18th, then maybe that would be our last meeting of 2020. Kind of put it between this one and the end of the year. Actually, I have a dentist appointment in the morning on the 18th. Switching to Tuesday. Tuesday the 17th. You think we'll know who's gonna be president by then? Maybe not. Do you wanna go back to 10 o'clock or was 11 better? I can go either way. I know, Keisha, 10, 11. 11 would be better for me. 11's definitely better if you want me here to do minutes. We do. That's a comparative. Tuesday the 17th, 11 o'clock. Sounds great. I'm gonna get in right now on my phone. Yeah, great. Okay, in that case, I move that we adjourn this meeting. All those in favor, say aye. That's unanimous, so we're adjourned. Thank you, everyone. Nice to see your faces, everybody. Have a good day. Bye-bye.