 Good evening and welcome back to Byline. This is a public affairs show here at Amherst Media, co-sponsored with the Amherst League of Women Voters. And it's a weekly show where we sit down with our elected officials, mostly our town councilors as we're getting to know them, and our newly elected state legislators to learn more about what's going on on Beacon Hill and right here in town. And as we know, we're transforming from a charter debate and the adoption of the charter into putting that into effect and making a government that works for us. And today we have the chair of the ad hoc rules committee, Alyssa Brewer. And Alyssa you'll remember was on our select board for for quite a while and has been very active in town. But today we're focused on this ad hoc committee because no legislative body can operate effectively without clear rules of procedure. And this committee is actually called the ad hoc committee on rules of procedure, right? So it covers both the rules and procedures under which the commission, sorry the council is going to do its work. So let's start briefly with the charge. So people who are hearing this for the first time about this committee for the first time will understand what your committee is supposed to do. Well I was going to say if we can delay the broadcast of this long enough we'll be done with our charge in May. And then you can just look back and say this is what we did. So we are an ad hoc committee because we're supposed to, according to the charter, we're supposed to have adopted interim rules which we did in December and revised them in January. And then we're going to have permanent rules in May is the idea and which our committee will bring back to the town council for adoption. And then after that, and he changes after that unless it's some minor scriveners things, would end up moving into a standing committee which is the governance organization and legislation committee. And but this way there was a group that was focused purely on the rules of procedure whereas governance right now can be looking at things like committee charges that's more specific and helps get that day to day work of the council done. But eventually we'll move under that umbrella and we will no longer have to exist as a separate committee once we've completed the task that the charter sets out for us. Very good. And then the rules can be reviewed and revised periodically through the governance committee which happens in the state legislature at the beginning of every two-year term they review and adopt a set of rules. We always do the interim first which is the rules from the last term and then usually within a month or six weeks we can settle on the rules for the upcoming two years. Not a lot of changes from cycle to cycle but you can review and revise to address things. So for example in recent times we had to address technology and electronic devices. What do you do with those? Hey a hundred years ago nobody was thinking that and now we have to think about somebody's sitting there while the debate's going on and they're texting. What are they texting? Who are they texting? Blah blah. So okay so now let's go to sort of try to drill down and get some some details here. So rules of procedure. Rules of procedure are about what? Well they're about a whole bunch of different things. So the charter says that the rules have to at a minimum include like six elements which are interim temporary rules too which refer to things like the town council has to meet at least once a month. The town council as opposed to general record keeping in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts the town council actually has to take note of who voted which way if it's not a unanimous vote whereas normally if it's not a unanimous vote you just say it's all to do and you're done. So it turns into a recorded vote so that the public knows. Right and so that's something that's very specific called out in the charter so they made sure that it was put into our interim rules. It says things like that we take minutes well obviously every public body takes minutes. Then when it gets into some of the more specific. Except for the state of the state. Right yeah we could talk about the state of the state not being subject to an open main law. We actually have a journal of the House and a journal of the Senate which is quite detailed. Right but not quite the same situation. That's true. And so it and so but then there are other references to rules throughout the charter sprinkled throughout the charter associated with for example the finance committee. So the finance committee is obviously a different kind of finance committee than we used to have under the old charter and it's a finance committee of town councilors period. The charter does say we could also appoint residents. Could a must. Could. Could. Okay. Not a must. May I believe probably is the word. And so immediately because of a focus on transparency I think everyone carried through this entire campaign is that we said yes that's a good idea let's go ahead and do that. Let's have residents who have a voice but no vote I don't know where they got that quote from but that's what's in the charter voice but no vote. And so then it says council rules will determine how those residents are appointed. So yeah rules committee needs to figure out how those rules are done and then what would happen is we're going to have actually that meeting by the time people see this will have had that meeting because we're having that meeting next Tuesday. And we will then discuss some ideas that have come up for example will it go through the would we just have the president go ahead and appoint those resident members even though normally the president only appoints counselors or would we have I don't know say the chair of the finance committee who is of course a town council appoint the residents or would we have it go through the appointment process that outreach communications and appointments also known as OCA is going to be managing as in other town council appointments you know is it is it like this or is it like that and that's what rules will be grappling with next week and then making a recommendation to the town council based on that and then town council will decide whether or not to take that recommendation and then that will eventually become written in a rule in a document. It'll be written down and how you do how it will be done until until you revisit it and say we can make it work better if right based on experience we need to tweak this or tweak that but again this is a place where there's sort of overlapping jurisdiction yes absolutely with the appointment the outreach communications and appointments committee and therefore you need to coordinate with that committee so the two chairs and presumably the council president would be in that conversation as well right because you want to make sure everybody's talking to each other about how that's going to move forward and you don't want anyone to feel like you're taking something away from them that should belong under their jurisdiction but of course remembering that aside from things like the finance committee that are already defined in the charter all the other committees that we have governance okay that they're just made up things I mean this council president made them up in the council said sure let's tweak this and that those sound like good kinds of committees but those aren't in the charter so it's different than when for example under mass general law you have a historical commission like a historical commission is a thing an agricultural commission is a thing these things you know we may decide later to carve up the charges slightly differently for some of these committees so we're trying to make sure everybody is talking and there's only 13 of us so we do overlap in membership amongst the different committees and so then it plays out and you have to start somewhere and so the fact that the town council president came up with some proposals somebody had to tweak them adopted them but they're not in the charter therefore and they're totally within the control of the council and therefore they can be changed dropped eliminated added to later and some days some of those may end up in the charter because people decide that it should be permanently in and because the charter will come up for review periodically I think there's a five-year review if I remember incorrectly in the charter I think but yeah a little bit longer so but in a few years not so many years from now it'll go through revision and who knows some of these committees may or a version of some of these committees may end up actually in the charter although legislative bodies tend to hold control of their own committee structures so that they can be nimble charters take a long time to change therefore you need to have the flexibility and so legislative bodies tend to hold that kind of power within the council and that's why I think the charter was wise in leaving those decisions to the council okay so now so you've given us a couple of examples of things that you'd be working on let's talk about something like let's say public hearings so should there be consistency with public hearings and how they're conducted and when they have to be conducted meaning under what circumstances do you conduct them and then if you conduct one the rules by which you will actually conduct the hearing so that the public knows what to expect etc what's the committee and by the way we should remind the listeners that we're recording the show on march 1st it may not be seen for another two three four weeks right and a bunch of decisions may have been made by then that we're talking about now except you'll know and understand some of the context of what they were thinking and wrestling with because understanding the thinking behind things is actually very important and understanding why that decision might have been made the way it was so we hope it'll be informative even though some of these decisions will already have been made but but tell tell me what the committee is thinking about with regard to hearings and when they have to be held and how they have to be held so in large part and and I really do appreciate you making the reference to and not using the overtired metaphor I'm about to use about the sausage being made or the plane being built as it's being flown but we are doing those things and so we will have sorted more of this out within a few weeks and other things will take longer and then other things will change after we think we've sorted them out because again generally we're not really working from base documents and so it isn't just let's tweak a thing it's like oh let's create a new thing and what should it include and how much detail reflecting back to something you said before in terms of maintaining control without putting too many specifics down sometimes you want to have an envelope to work within but not have it be too precise but you want to be transparent about it at all times so people understand why you're doing it it isn't that you're hoarding power right you need to make things work and you need enough flexibility to make them work it's so important because one that was one of the big discussions no matter where you came out on the charter proposal itself was transparency and people understanding how government works so it's all well and good to talk about order and efficiency and predictability all of which are super important but transparency is also really important too for people to understand how we got to that point and how we continue to move forward so yes the words in the charter say this is how you do a free petition the words in the charter say here's how you do an initiative position but there would also be rules that didn't just repeat those words but might have some things around the edges to help explain it better so for example if you have a concern try taking it to the town council president first or your district representative maybe you don't even need to collect signatures maybe they'd say i'm happy to champion that for you i want to file something on that in the council right and champion it and it will then go through the process within the council and you can be part of that right as the proposer so you don't have to feel like you have to go out and collect 200 signatures before whichever threshold of a particular thing that are all laid out in the charter that you feel like you have to do that first right you don't have to do that first you can just come ask and you don't even do it in public you can talk privately with direct democracy is great but this is a representative democracy first and that's safety why not ask petition is a safety valve if you can't get the attention of the governmental body right where they act in a way that you feel is not appropriate i don't mean behavior i mean a decision that they make a decision or a policy they adopt then the petition becomes your safety valve to bring it to the council if you can't find a counselor to carry your message absolutely and so people would say well i don't know how to get this on the select board's agenda or i didn't know how to get this in front of town meeting and so having processes where we simply explain that and so then that reflects back to rules that will say how to get something to the town council's attention before you have to move to the safety valve i mean you're welcome to do that process but you may not have to do all that work you may be able to just follow these three steps get what you want and then everything moves along a pace but we don't know yet i mean we we are writing those sections we are obviously looking at examples from other communities and of course one of the things you find looking at other communities rules is that in many cases unless they've changed forms of government recently they do it that way because they've always done it that way and they don't necessarily even look at their own rules anymore as to how to do things and so they're not necessarily the freshest examples of how to explain things to the public because of course when most of these rules were written we didn't even have open meaning law in the form that we have now so again just trying to make it really clear to people if you want to do x like our town website currently says how do i and so that that's the kind of thing that we're trying to incorporate into this rather than it just being a very dry recitation of it says in the chart you have to have a hearing and you post a notice and you do this and then this other thing happens and then this other thing happens we want to make it a little more engaging so that both counselors many of which are unfamiliar with our previous government processes will know what to do with this and themselves and then also be able to share it out widely in the public so that everyone knows how they can approach issues that are really important to them but that they don't see that are just naturally appearing on the town council's agenda and it's one thing to know and understand the issue that you want to advocate for it's another to understand the system into which you are entering and how it works to try to advance your your proposal so let me summarize and see if i've got this right so part of your job is to figure out the operational rules by which under which the council will actually conduct its own meetings part of it is the rules and procedures under which the committees of the council will operate and part of it is to work with the appropriate entities to make sure that what is what is allowed under the charter for individual petitions that there is a clear process and set of procedures where the charter is silent where the charter is silent where it's not silent those are the rules right but where the charter is silent and there are open questions then your committee's job is to try to find those open questions come up with answers and hopefully have a set of procedures and rules adopted for each of those i think i did three buckets there and so it's basically how how do we do this and how do we do this transparently and consistently in each case and so by the time your committee your ad hoc committee dissolves in may we will have a set of procedures and we'll know how the town council is going to conduct its meetings we'll know how the town council committees are going to consider legislation presented to them either by members of the council or by the public through the petition process so that's roughly what you're going to be doing over these next still a couple more months when people are watching this okay um so um there are going to be some things that will come up and i know i have one example that has already come up and so i'll use that one and and see what the update is on that but then maybe you can give us some other examples of things that i may not be aware of that the public should be aware of that you're wrestling with so public comment at the town council meetings right the council the charter talks about transparency it talks about civic engagement so clearly public comment is an important element where's the committee at this point in its thinking with regard to public comment and how does that interact with what's actually been happening in these first couple of months that you've been operating right it's been it's been really challenging to try and figure that out so it seemed very simple in the past that various multiple member bodies meaning things like historical commission planning board select board etc not town meeting but all this sort of standing committees that you think of would almost always have some sort of public comment during their process these were not hearings right just a chance for the public to come in and say something usually at the beginning or the end of a meeting and it depended on the committee as to when usually not about actual agenda items so actual action items that the body was going to take action on that could either be mentioned you know through email phone calls letters or a comment in one fashion another at a meeting but normally most committees do not just invite public discussion during each of their agenda items because you would be there forever and it also is not particularly accessible i mean if it's a meeting that's at 10 in the morning there's a lot of people who can't come to that if there's a meeting at 7 o'clock at night there's a lot of people who can't come to that either and so we didn't want public comment to be the only way and that's why i continue to emphasize those other methods of getting in touch with us but also what what is public comment and so we have forums in the charter that specifically call out that you have to have half the time devoted to public comment so we were actually trying to calculate this out the other day and say well if there's a 20 minute presentation and then there's 10 minutes for counsel questions do we have to stay there for half an hour even if no one's there do we say normally under you know typical government process and typical amherst process people have between one and three minutes to give their public comment town meeting was typically three minutes for example even though that's not a public comment process but it was a standard people were used to and you can say a lot in three minutes and if you're organized and have your thoughts in order so then the question becomes if you're actually setting aside a block for public comment what if there's only two people there do they each get to talk for 15 minutes and so again because that accessibility factor we know there's people who aren't coming in on the bus who have two jobs who have childcare who have elder care responsibilities who are not there so then you're turning in into kind of a show for the two people who were able to come and then it's like well that's not really what engagement means although it's open so opens good so we're trying to balance all of those issues and we want to ensure there is public comment so for example town meeting was not required to accept comments from the public typically did but also would vote to shut down discussion when they were tired of listening we are trying not to put ourselves in that position of shutting things down so we're trying to proactively provide the right amount of public comment when we first started we were having it at the end of meetings but unfortunately our meetings were running very late and so that wasn't really very workable for the public or for us to listen on the other hand if you put public comment first and if you allow people to speak about any topic then what happens is you might have a topic that you're not going to get to till 8 30 that night you're sitting there at 6 30 and you as a council have never talked about it before the council president's planning to make a presentation at 8 30 and at 6 30 somebody having read the one line on the agenda says well i think this and it kind of changes the whole flavor of the conversation before any of us ever got to it before it got framed for us or the public so you don't have the context in which consider the individual's comments and so then that's really frustrating for them and for us and so then what do you do so the hybrid we've come up with so far and again everything subject to change is to have a public comment period near the beginning of the meeting if not right at the beginning we had a little rescheduling snafu but generally at the beginning that's about items not on the agenda and that the agenda will specifically call out there will be public comment during this topic and during this topic that are particularly sort of hot items that are being discussed at a certain point in the process and so that's our sort of compromise to try and cover all the different bases of the ways public comment might be used without having to make people wait till 11 o'clock to bring up just a topic for a future meeting that they wanted to talk passionately about but also not derail a conversation before it starts it's interesting because some things become so obvious when you're talking about running a meeting you know are we going to use parliamentary procedure roberts rules of order masons how are we going to you know what are our rules and if we don't have a written rule what are what's what's our fallback going to be that's pretty straightforward you can get your head around who would think that you would have to spend that much time and there would be that many complications over the question of when to do a good deed and an important thing like having public comment and giving people that opportunity and we've had public comment as you say a town meeting and it's like board meetings for years right but it's a new form of government and you have to rethink these things and so some of these things can be pretty complicated do you have any other examples of other things like that that you're wrestling with to give us an additional flavor we have a super simple one that we're wrestling with to help give people an idea of things that we don't don't keep us awake at night like public comment does form of address and so you know many places you go where you were things are very formal things not so formal in Amherst in general right we don't do the pledge before we start meetings we don't all rise we don't do a whole lot of things and so we over our first couple of meetings it became clear that we didn't know how to address each other or we we knew we didn't want to do councilman and councilwoman probably we had you know we had changed a select board member so many years ago so we say town counselor and it was just getting really complicated because we were calling each other by first names last names counselor preference or preface or not and so finally we said you know what let's just try doing the informal thing and then we said to the president the rules committee came up with this proposal and we said to the president you can call yourself whatever you want because you're the president if you want to be president ground up that's that's fine with us but we were thinking you could call us all by because of course one of the options was whatever people want to be called by and we were like no you do not have to keep track of what 12 different people want to be called so we went with how about trying first names and she said sure very graciously and i'll even go by my first name okay fine so that'll be great then we're reminded that and that seems to be working okay and so we're kind of evaluating this trial and see if it needs to be different but we haven't really gotten into a situation yet where we've had a lot of public testimony right and so we haven't really had hearings yet we haven't really had our official public forums yet no one's coming up next week and so then how we want to make sure it's clear much like town meeting was you're addressing the moderator so a town meeting you're addressing the moderator which obviously not everyone really listened to that rule and at one of our meetings public forums hearings the public is addressing the president and rather than saying oh you district one counselor remember how i told you exactly and so we don't want to be put people in that position but we also want to be clear right so that they know what the expectation is so we still have to do a little more tweaking to that to figure out how that's going to work when we're in a more formal setting because it's an actual hearing rather than which you know is kept track of in a different way than just i'm coming in to tell you about a future agenda item i think you all should think about yeah so that's an interesting area because you can actually make rules around that you can also have traditional practice that's not in the rules but you can also have a category which i don't have an exact name for but i'll just dub it decorum yes at this point because the the tradition in legislative bodies because there's a large gathering of people who are addressing each other and in the case of when you're serving on a committee or in the case of a public common period the public is addressing you um there are times when things can get a little bit hot and heavy and what you need to do is to remember that you know these are elected representatives working with each other and talking with each other and they are all equal no matter what their titles and then when it's the interaction between the public and the elected officials that you have to respect each other i mean we respect our constituents as elected officials and we hope that they will respect the office even if they didn't vote for you and don't like you personally whoever you is in that sentence it doesn't matter you are the elected representative of the people and so legislative bodies historically the right honorable gentlemen yes we see that right anytime you see the parliament a vittish parliament and in the massachusetts legislature the lady from mr president through you to the members right madam chair through you to my distinguished colleagues always trying to keep the conversation at a level to remember and recognize that you know people have titles they have positions but they are you know that that we have to do business together in a respectful manner and so it doesn't seem like a big deal but it actually is a pretty big deal so with that we've run out of time and i want to thank you again for being here and good luck with your work and thank you for listening and we'll be back next week with another guest thank you thank you