 I'm going to call the Meeting of Governance Organization and Legislation to order. It is 1140, excuse me, 1044, and we are being recorded by Amherst Media, and everyone is present and ready to go. Just a quick comment about agenda. I've invited the chair of finance, Andy Steinberg, to be with us this morning when we do the review of the finance charge. He's tied up at the moment, so I thought we would proceed to item number two, and then I would like to then deal with the finance charge, and then JCPC and BCG charges, sort of try to get those out of the way, hopefully in a fairly quickly as we can. And then turn to Councilor Comments and talk a bit about the restructuring process. And then turn to Public Ways Request, item number six, and if there is public comment. And since we just had a Council meeting and we've had a number of things given to us, including the number of bylaws, I'd like to spend a few minutes, hopefully before we're done talking about that. So under item 10, that's what I would like to spend some time on. So can we start then with item number two, and I'm going to ask Mandy to take the lead on this. She is one of the two sponsors. This is a proclamation regarding the League of Women Voters. You have it in your packet, and we just need to review it for clarity, consistency, and actionability. So Mandy, if you'd be willing to take us through that. Yep. So Adrienne Therese wrote to myself and Lynn asking that there be a proclamation celebrating the 100th anniversary of the main League of Women Voters, not the one of Amherst. We did that one last year celebrating their 80th anniversary. And so I took her wording, said I'd be willing to sponsor it, along with Lynn, and took the wording, modified it a little bit, added some stuff. I believe that's the version you have in the document. This is essentially celebrating the founding of the United States League of Women Voters. The one thing I did add, which Adrienne was completely fine with, was the last whereas paragraph that sort of ties it back to our own Amherst League. And the citation we passed last year as a town council celebrating that chapter's anniversary. So, yeah, a number of us are members of the League of Women Voters of Amherst, I believe. Myself included. I don't know how many councillors are, so I assume that's one of the reasons it was written to me. It could also be that she's still remembering me as chair of GOL, I have no idea. But I'm happy to sponsor it and see if anyone's got any more changes. Now I use the procedure unless someone has a specific change that they're pre-to present right away, is to go through this whereas by whereas. Is that acceptable, or do you feel comfortable having read it and looked at it to accept it as it is? Any thoughts on that? I feel comfortable having read it, accepting it as it is. Any other thoughts on that? Since this is coming from Andy, who has a particularly keen eye. I wanted to try to find an error. I know, I know. There is that competitive aspect to this sport. Do you know I probably went through it like six times to make sure you guys couldn't find anything? That's good. This apparently has been vetted very carefully for all the right reasons. If there are no specific comments or changes or suggestions, I'm prepared to entertain a motion. I'll move to declare the proclamation celebrating the 100th anniversary of the League of Women Voters of the United States clear, consistent and actionable. Is there a second? Okay, Pat seconds it. I'm going to call the question. All those in favor of the motion is stated. Please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. That is unanimous. So this proclamation has been declared clear, consistent and actionable by unanimous vote. Now, we could proceed to the JCPC and the BCG charges, or we could. We have all the written materials that Councillor Steinberg submitted. There are two of them in your packet. And we could simply begin that discussion and see where we stand given his comments. And when he comes, we can then return to it. That would be sort of my inclination. We also have JCPC and BCG charges that were placed in your packet by Mandy, which I thought was excellent. So we could start with those. Any thoughts there? Do you want to start with finance? Or do you want to do, Mandy, what are your thoughts on this, any? I would prefer to see if Andy shows up before we discuss the finance ones. But we should, there were other recommendations in the Councillor comments that don't relate to either of those three charges. Maybe we could start with them. Okay, these are Councillor Comments on the restructuring, you're thinking. Yes. I'd like to hold that off. Okay. But again, this is okay. So then maybe JCPC and BCG. Yeah, can we, do you think we can get through those? Well, you can try it at least. So again, I'd like you to take the lead on this if you're willing. But we have the JCPC charge. You want to start with that? Sure. And so in your packet, if you want to open that up. And so these changes are very minimal. I do have a request to talk about one of them that is not in the packet that I had suggested or mentioned a possibility of discussing last meeting. But I had volunteered to look at the JCPC and BCG and make sure that when we were eliminate or propose to eliminate the finance committee portion, portion of that charge that related to who can be on JCPC and BCG that we incorporated it back into the correct charge. We decided it didn't belong in the finance charge talking about other committee memberships. So that's what this is mainly doing. It talks of the change in JCPC is to the composition cleared up the current school committee to just members of the school committee members of the library. It's how we've been doing other charges. And then the three members of the town council, this, this one actually disagreed with the finance committee charge has written finance committee said no more than two shall be from finance committee. Whereas the JCPC charge said two shall be on the finance committee. So I think we had decided as a committee here to go with the finance committee wording the no more than two. And so that's what this potential change reflects the change I would also like to potentially discuss is the number of voting members. There's been a push in the past to have eight with four from the council. I at this point don't know where I stand on that. But I thought as we're redoing charges, it might be good to have that discussion again, given that it's been brought up many times. Okay. Thoughts of other committee members on these proposed changes. And question. Yeah. Question for Mandy Joe. What in terms of what is the argument for four counselors? I'm sorry. I've heard it before. I don't remember it right now. So there would be a couple of arguments. The main one written was that JCPC used to have eight members on it to from finance to from select board and then to from school to from library. And so since our finances from the council, that that was the question arguments against in the past made were that they were putting four members of the council on to the JCPC might have some negative effects on the school committee and library trustee members feeling that they are overwhelmed and outnumbered. I think what the council settled on last year was a compromise between two and four of three. But I thought as we're redoing all of this and another potential would be that for would better able to accommodate the number of counselors that really want to be on this committee. At the same time, this is where my concerns would come in. Three of those members are on finance, which would put a quorum of finance if that happened and those were the numbers that were put onto JCPC would put a quorum potentially if we changed the no more than two to no more than three could put a quorum of finance committee members on JCPC. I think the two charges are so similar that I'd be really worried about open meeting law violations since they're both dealing with finances. So that would be just something I'd want to bring up if we do go to four. We might still decide to keep a max of two from finance due to that concern, but that might not solve the issue some people want for moving to four. Evan. I don't remember where I stood a year ago, but I think it was that three was a good number because four would make the library and the school committee members feel sort of like their total number together equals ours. So I would probably want to keep it at three, but what I would say is if we do move it up to four, I would not vote for something that allows three of those four to be from finance committee for the quorum reason that you stated, but also from the fact that that's of course finance committee is already a very powerful body. And so I like that there's a little bit of a counterweight by adding on finance committee members on here. And I don't think we should ever be changing the numbers of committee members for any committee just because someone wanted to get on and didn't get on. Any other thoughts besides the number of members, any other thoughts about the charge as it has been presented to us? Are we satisfied with the language? Are there other issues that you want to discuss? Hearing none, then it sounds like we're ready to proceed on this because my thought is that if we are satisfied with this document as it's been amended with the number three apparently being left in place unless we want to continue that discussion. I'm sorry? 7-2. It wouldn't change. Right. None of me. Right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And the thought was that I would notify the president that we are ready to present this to the council for their approval because that would be the next step. Okay. All right. I'm willing to entertain a motion. I'll move to recommend the council adopt the joint capital planning committee charge as I guess amended at today's meeting. Or as proposed at today's meeting I guess. As we're proposing to amend it, I guess as amended. As amended I think. As amended I think. Right. On this state. Is there a second? Okay. Evan second. So we have a motion. It's been presented. It's been seconded. I see no further discussion. So I'm prepared to call the question. All those in favor of the motion as presented please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. That's unanimous. So the JCPC charge as amended on this date has been approved by this body. And I will then notify the president that it's ready for prime time. Can we go to BCG? So the change here. A couple changes. Again, because of some other things, the first one would be in composition adding the representatives of the town council as designated by the town council, which brings it in conformity with sort of the legal opinion we've received as to who's the appointing authority for BCG for the counselors on that. A new paragraph. The finance committee had no more than two counselors from finance shall represent the council on the budget meeting group, so I moved that over to this to add that into a third paragraph of the composition. But then I added, and I think this is in yours, a clause that says unless the council designates more than three representatives to BCG. What I wasn't sure is this past year we essentially operated BCG as one meeting, committee of the whole at the four, at the three boards meeting. And so I was trying to figure out how you would operate if the council says we kind of want it as a whole, as the entire council is just on BCG. But then you put into the charge no more than two counselors from finance can be on BCG. Like, they don't, that doesn't work. And so what I was trying to do with this is how to make that restriction work if we're going to, as a council, just decide that counselors are going to be BCG because it's really only going to meet once a year. So that's where that clause came in. I'm happy to hear comments about that and how to work with that. The other two bullet points, which I think are in yours, in the charge section, I took from Andy's request. Actually, you guys don't see four. So I'm looking at one that I had added in after I posted that Andy had requested two additional bullet points added to the charge within, I think it's Andy, someone requested two more in the counselor comments. Those bullet points were provided vice to the town manager during the development of the annual budget as requested by the manager and share information amongst the town manager schools and library as the town manager develops a budget as required by Charter Section 5.4. So we should discuss whether to put them into this charge or not. We don't have them in front of us. You would be able to find that in the counselor comments document. Steinberg, yeah. Well, not the Steinberg. That's the finance committee. It's in the counselor comments. On restructuring. On restructuring proposal. That document is where those bullet points are. And I had in my copy here, apparently I did it after I uploaded because those changes don't relate to the composition changes of moving over from finance, which is why I uploaded before they were in there. But while we're talking about BCG, we should discuss those requests. This maybe is a question for Andy, but I guess the members of this committee could explain his reasoning. I'm not quite sure what's meant by to share information amongst the town manager schools and library as the town manager develops a budget What does that mean? I looked at 5.4 to see if that language literally came from 5.4, but it doesn't appear that it did. I mean, 5.4 is the development of the budget, right? Right, but the language of sharing information amongst the bodies is not explicitly in the budget. I wonder if it's not supposed to be town manager, it's supposed to be town council schools and library as the manager develops. I assume it's the managers, the one that's sharing the information. So what I see it as is... I'm going to give an example, and I'm not probably the one to speak to this because I've never served on a BCG before, but we got at the Maya conference an average increase in insurance rates that was announced at the Maya luncheon, and the manager in developing budgets has put in a sort of placeholder insurance rate, and so as new information comes to what that insurance rate increase would be, the manager could use BCG as the way to disseminate that new information, which seems potentially, since the schools aren't necessarily developing the school budget, the school superintendent might unnecessarily add a new step with that example, because why wouldn't the manager just go directly to the library director and the superintendent of the schools and their finance directors to share that information, but this may be that similar to what Andy's referring to when he suggests this change, like information like that that affects all the budgets. So without him present, we're going to be just speculating. So this is something we need to ask him I take it when he, if he appears. Should we decide on the composition changes at this point? I think that might be useful. Thoughts on that? So I'm trying to piece together my memory, which is tough. So last January or February, we as in the council appointed several people to BCG, but then that collection of people that we appointed never actually met, we just called a meeting that was really a meeting of the whole, and then we called, we said, okay, so that was BCG, correct? So we're debating a charge for a committee, but it hasn't actually, this is a confusing situation. It is required to, required to actually exist by the charter, but has met exactly once and met as full committees of all three elected bodies, not a full committee of the regional school committee. And BCG is supposed to include representatives of the regional school committee, but with all of the Amherst School Committee at that meeting, you can make an argument. So yes, we're debating a charge for a committee that may not ever meet separately than committees of the whole. Yes, those darn charter commissioners with fee unless the council doesn't. I'm sorry, can you just state that for the mic? Damn. Without any French euphemisms. I urge us to accept the two revisions. Any thoughts, Steve? You're listening. That's all right. That's okay. Sure, Evan. So again, I'm not sure that any of us, well, maybe John, you probably know this more so because of your role as vice president. Whose decision was it to call a meeting of the whole and then call that the BCG? Is that the president, the manager? Was that the appointed members of the BCG? So my understanding, I haven't heard differently, but I could be wrong, is that the library board of trustees in the regional schools have not actually designated members to BCG. But it is under the charter, the manager's responsibility to call a meeting of BCG. And so it would be the manager that made that decision to just designate that meeting as a BCG meeting, but post it or somehow. Although in terms of open meeting law, I have no idea how that works. But in theory, the charter, I believe, has the manager shall call a meeting of the budget coordinating group prior to the start of the budget process or at the beginning of the budget process. So section 5.2 says the town manager shall call a meeting of the budget coordinating group as defined below before the commencement of the budget process and may call further meetings during the budget process as necessary. So it's totally up to the manager. Seems that we're satisfied with the compositional changes. And what we just need is input from Andy. And then we could be ready to move on this. So I think we're going to have to suspend this for the moment. Move on to another item. That would be, well, we have a choice. We can, what I had in mind was then moving on to councilor comments related to committee restructuring. You have in your packet all the comments I've received to date from councillors on our proposed restructuring. We could, as we've done in the past, we could go through them one by one and discuss them. And then we could open up to a general discussion and suggestion as to how to proceed. We've obviously had one part of our proposed restructuring carried out on Monday. Congratulations. The more challenging one is obviously the dividing of CRC into two committees and potentially shifting the appointments burden of OCA elsewhere and then dissolving OCA. So those are the other proposals that we have been considering. There seems to be, among some on the council, a notion that this is some sort of done deal or that we've figured it all out. And I just want to make it clear, at least to the public, that we're working our way through this. And we have been keeping the council abreast of what we've been doing through reports. And so today I'm hoping we can make some more progress with this. We're not, I wouldn't say we're in a rush. But on the other hand, the president's made clear that she would like to make appointments to committees. And if we are seriously considering making a serious change, it's something that we should try to do sooner rather than later. So with that preamble, do you want to go through the councilor comments? This would be... Right. So let me just go back and tell you. Councilor comments on restructuring is the main document. And then I got a second one just the last day or two ago. And so it says councilor comments too. That's just an addition. So let's start with councilor comments on restructuring. And then we can go to the other document once we've gone through it. I will start with a simple matter. So I broke them into... I did not identify by name, though perhaps an astute student of council politics could deduce who's who. But following the procedure of other chairs, I've simply numbered them Roman 1, Roman 2, Roman 3, and then Roman 4 is in the other document, which came after I had posted this on our SharePoint. So I just put it in as a separate document, but it's just one councilor comment, Roman numeral 4. The very first comment from the first councilor has to do with the president, excuse me, with the chair's report, and I think is not relevant to what we're trying to do here today. It's just a comment about the report. Item number one is a suggestion related to the finance committee charge. And that's something that we hope to talk about this morning. And so I think we're going to hold on that. Item number two, I'll let you read it as I speak, but essentially it's simply a comment on the referral examples. And as I did in my committee report for the council this past meeting, I simply pointed out that I felt that this is misunderstanding the purpose of these referrals. They're just there for the sake of example. This is how things might look, but in the end it's the council that decides where things get referred. So I hope that comment in the report responded to this concern. Any thoughts on number two? I don't think it's relevant, but yeah, Evan. I mean two and three, three merges a couple different things together that I think take some time to tease out, but they both have sort of a critique of the documents that we provided. Primary and secondary, I never, I'm speaking as the one who sort of put this together, I never saw as secondary devaluing. I almost just sort of thought as this committee should probably tackle it first. And so I think that's a misunderstanding. And then the other one about, I don't like the referral example because it incorporates assumptions and suggests that you drop it. I think what we heard from the council was thank you for providing all these examples. And we heard that from the president when she was here at our last meeting who said you need to give examples. So yeah, I think just clarifying that these are just, I wrote them up. Mandy Jo looked at them, changed some of them, added some things, but it's just two of 13. And of course just specifying to the council that every time there's a referral, we're not going to look at that chart because that's what Evan and Mandy Jo said. No, it's not an official document. It's just, yeah. Making sure the report says I think it's fine. And that's what I said. Otherwise I think, yeah. I don't know if anybody has any thoughts about two, but I felt it just was a misunderstanding of why the document was there. I could understand the misunderstanding, but hopefully that's been cleared up. How about three? So I think three goes to many of Councillor Steinberg's requests for the finance committee charge and to add a specific example, a specific bullet point too. And I think maybe a difference between various councillors' visions of what finance should weigh in on and what it should not. Right. I think that this might be a useful conversation to have with the chair present. Good. I expressed earlier my reservations about how broad finance committee was seeing its scope. And as I mentioned in previous meetings, I saw that really play out with the 132 Northampton Road Debate where people were saying, well, what if putting this means we need new street lights on the street and what's that going to cost the town in a way? And we were dealing with these hypotheticals and I thought this isn't the purview of finance committee. So I worry a little bit about the suggestion because I think finance has a very focused charge. And I think that in some ways they do need to consider the financial implications of bylaws and I think that that should be in there. But I also think that we have to restrict it to like the real implications and not this. Well, what if this and what if this and what if this? Because that can sort of go on forever. And it starts to touch less on finances and more on economics, which they're often conflated but are two different things. Okay. So again, something that may take place at a future conversation this morning. Item number four has already been dealt with under BCG. And those are the comments from the first counselor. Mandy. No. Okay. Councilor number two. The basic point here is that this perhaps would be best dealt with in a retreat format. And obviously we now do have a retreat coming up. Yeah. March 21st. Any thoughts on that? I assume at a retreat format as opposed to spending council time on this, which we've already spent not much, but some time. Steve. Steve. Yeah. So the difference between a retreat and a council meeting is Saturday versus Monday, right? Because both are public meetings. And I guess the other difference is that we can make actual decisions at council meetings and we don't at retreats. The toothpaste is out of the tube. I think that we should start keep brushing our teeth, I guess, just to stay along with that. And there's, I think that this is, I think there's some really great suggestions that have been put out there. And I think wait until March 21st. And then after March 21st, it'll get referred and blank blank blank. I think maybe refinement or final sandpaper. I don't know. I think that we should just keep forging ahead. Although I did have the exact same question that this person did about, I thought the retreat was going to be in February, but that's been settled now. Yeah. All right. Other thoughts? I pretty much agree with what Steve said in a way. I was going to reword it differently of this reorganization and the proposals within our committee's ability to do. There is no, I still feel strongly there is no need for us to seek prior approval from other committees to suggest what we believe as this committee focused on governance of our council is appropriate to do. That we bring it to the council as a whole with a plan and a proposal. And then they can tear it apart if they want. And then it comes back to the drawing board or they can like it. But that's how committees work. And so waiting for a retreat, that's another six weeks. That means this reorganization isn't going to happen until July. And I think we're close enough, given the feedback we got the first time, that we can go forward. I think one thing is striking, maybe it's because people just aren't paying attention or they have just too much on their plates, but we haven't gotten any response which says, this is a terrible idea, please don't do it. So, look, I'm sorry, Pat. That's not completely true. I think we've heard from some members of OCA that they are not liking the elimination of that committee. And I would love to hear more from both of you about that. Well, Pat, I've not heard that in writing. So I've solicited written comments from the councillors and no one has sent me a written comment to the effect that they object to or have concerns about the dissolution of OCA. So I would appreciate people, if they have concerns, that they send them to the chair so we can talk about them. I've heard them in other contexts, but I've not actually had any kind of written statement from anyone objecting to dissolution of OCA. And that shouldn't limit our addressing it because we have heard it. Evan, go ahead. I'm sorry. I want to correct that statement a little bit. OCA has discussed this in a meeting. It was a little bit confusing to me at the town council meeting the other night when the statement was made that OCA hasn't had a chance to discuss it. It was an agenda item. OCA spent about 45 minutes on that agenda item. I've also talked one-on-one with two of the members of OCA who do not sit on this committee. There has been a lot of concern and criticism on OCA about the process and a lot of feelings as though they were not properly apprised of the proposal, but there hasn't been anyone on OCA who has been opposed to the dissolution of the committee. And so I can just name names. Sarah, who's not here, we had a very two-hour conversation over coffee about this and she basically said, I support dissolving OCA, but I don't want appointments to go to GOL. Alyssa is in favor of dissolving OCA, but I think it feels similarly to Sarah about appointments. Darcy would like to see a standalone appointments. Committee remain as maybe a three-member committee, but doesn't want to see OCA continue in its current form. So the concerns from OCA have been process-based. They haven't been on the proposal itself. Steve? Well, we're going to jump ahead to number three at some point, I think there's some great suggestions in number three that address what you were talking about. I'm going to move us to three, but I just feel that I need to say, which is always bad, never go on these feelings, but we are doing our job and I don't think that it's the responsibility of a committee that's doing its job to be consulting other committees about whether it should be doing its job. The decision ultimately that we need to make as a council is a decision made by individual council members on a recommendation from a particular committee to the council. It's not about a particular committee. It's about what, so I just, I have an issue with this notion of somehow there's a process violation or that somehow we need to consult other committees to make sure it's okay with them that we actually do what we're supposed to do. And so that a bit sticks as you can see in my, let's turn to number three, a more pleasant topic. Steve, you like some of the suggestions here? What do you think? I love the last part that you basically distribute the A part, the appointments part into three different committees. Each one of these is the one closest to basically who's being appointed. Others on that idea, and anything in three actually, but in particular the idea of redistributing appointments so that more counselors, I mean to me it seems one positive would be that it would give more counselors opportunity to be involved directly in appointments. So for instance, if GL took on town manager appointments, that would be one large group, but CRC or some other committee could take on planning board and zoning thoughts on this. Evan. Yeah, so I think if you remember back to one of our earlier meetings when I came forth with this restructuring idea, I had put forth two ideas for appointments, one that was very similar to this and one was moving all appointments and I kind of said, I don't really even know which one's the best idea and thus just pick one and so we sort of went, well, let's just keep appointments together. Reflecting on that now after having spent some time, I think I'd probably lean a little bit more towards distributing them for two reasons. One, I think we heard from multiple counselors, they'd be more comfortable with that and I want to be responsive to the full council. The second thing is one thing that's happened between when I first put this forward and right now is OCO went through the process of appointing a planning board member and I as chair led that process and part of this I'm sure was growing pains and learning curve but it was a lot more work than I originally thought it would be and part of that is things like how we manage our community activity forms and the fact that I was on the phone with Angela on New Year's Eve and she was going through literally the paper forms trying to figure out who was in the pool and who wasn't. But I'm thinking now that perhaps I was a little bit naive in thinking that because OCO had established the processes it would be a marginal amount of work to add to this committee and I'm thinking that perhaps the workload is greater than I anticipated and it might be easier to distribute. Mandy? So I'm in general in favor of the distribution. I've got some questions as to how to distribute it. I mean everyone suggested it makes sense to put planning board and zoning board appointments in CRC or whoever is dealing with land use. So that seems an obvious one. That also seems to be one of the largest responsibilities in terms of appointments because many of the other remaining appointments part of the OCA charge are recommending approval of someone else's appointments which is a whole lot less work than doing the interviewing and coming up with the appointments. But not all of them. So I struggled with some of where else to put stuff. I found it interesting no one recommended that finance get any appointments even though there are finance members that need appointed by the town council now I don't know whether it would be appropriate for the finance committee to make recommendations on members that they would join them so maybe that's why no one said maybe finance should get some but one of the things I brought up the last meeting was there are appointments to recommend the councilors to appoint to JCPC and BCG. Where do they sit? Right now in my attempt to distribute appointments I've got them in the GOL committee along with some others with the non-voting liaisons so finance would get none but the general idea I think I support putting them across three it goes more towards our initial goal of trying to distribute work and quote meaty work and if people believe appointments need distributed for everyone to get that experience then that supports that initial goal that we started with as to why we were doing this to begin with it's just I think figuring out what goes where Ellen? Well at the moment I see appointments being split up between two committees so help me with I'm just not following and it's me but how does the third yeah go ahead TSO would get departments I'll explain to you what mine was when I was thinking about adding some in CRC gets planning board and ZBA which are actual appointments not recommendations on someone else's appointments TSO gets department heads but then I also had TSO getting appointments for the town manager or interim town manager if referred by the council because we had some in the initial GOL draft charge of these they don't get these five appointments unless they're referred to clarify that those when they come up so rarely need a discussion as to how that's going to happen I actually split up some of them and put into TSO the manager or interim manager portion of that that they would handle that if the council tells them to so it's not an automatic and then in GOL if we're going back to its original they would have and so those manager interim manager if that happens those are substantial amount of work obviously and not just a recommendation on someone else's appointment and for GOL non-voting liaisons non-voting finance committee members counselors to JCPC and counselors to BCG so those are all actual appointments similar to ZBA and planning that's actual recommendation of names and then clerk of the council or additional council staff if referred by the council so as governance I saw the clerk and the potential additional staff relating more to governance than to town services because it's on the council side not on the town manager side so that would be an if referred and then they would keep the multiple member bodies from the manager that was my split okay Evan so I would mostly agree with what Mandy Jo said if I was when I was doing this through in my head but probably swap to places one of the things I was thinking about is my original mindset when I was putting this together and that I sort of separated things as internal external and then the interface between the two and in that context to me it might make sense that GOL does liaisons non-voting members of the finance committee I would also I would put the clerk of the council additional staff and the town manager and interim town manager because all of these are internal in GOL but I would probably take multiple member bodies and put it in TSO because that's sort of a it's part of our government but it's sort of at the interface of the community I'm not super committed to that but it was just this idea of if we're sort of distributing them where things might logically go perhaps multiple member bodies would go to TSO and then I think we'd also want to have something maybe in GOL that says and all other appointments by the council or something like that and I guess I'm just thinking off the top of my head if one of our appointments from bank choice voting resigns in this summer we would need to appoint someone and it wouldn't necessarily be clear where it would go so I don't know if there's another example that might come up but I guess there could be so I think I generally like Mandy Jo's proposal I would probably swap multiple member bodies and Town Manager but I'm also like this isn't my hell to die on let's you know I'm sorry Evan go ahead so I guess maybe the first step it does feel like we have consensus about distributing appointments is that okay no I agree I think that's where we're at question about how to divvy it up we have a couple of or at least two potential proposals yep Mandy do we have consensus on the CRC divvying up though such that we could just dispense with that charge potentially unless there's any no other changes because it would just be adding a bullet point into the CRC charge to make recommendations to the town council regarding appointments by the council to the planning board and zoning board of appeal charter section 2.9C we didn't get any other comments on that one we got the newest comment talks about transportation and parking into TSO but I think it's already in TSO so it's not a CRC it's not in CRC right now well I think it's also as we know just you can get all the written comments in the world but when you finally come to a council meeting all kinds of you know what breaks loose so I think all we can do is do our best and but understand that objections can come from anywhere at any time we agreed it sounds like we have a consensus for distributing appointments we're going to need to fashion some kind of alternative I mean sort of something we can decide amongst ourselves and maybe one option is for or maybe we can do it now but it is to have Mandy and Evan present their sort of versions based on their reasoning and we could resolve this at our next meeting another is we could try to resolve it right now Mandy. So I'd frankly be fine with going with Evan's reasoning it also makes sense and I don't have a huge dog in the fight as to where some of them said some of them aren't going to happen very often that it's likely they're not going to sit with a standing committee anyway especially town manager and our town manager if we get that I can completely see the council creating a separate committee for that you know but it's good to have it somewhere to recognize that that is a council appointment but I don't if we want to go with Evan I'm okay going with Evan suggestions. I'm a little reluctant to move the the multiple member body appointments to TSO GOL is a committee that I guess my concern is that I would like TSO to have a fair amount of breathing space to do lots of you know and to investigate or whatever do some things related to town services GOL is concerned with governance organization legislation I'm thinking more governance maybe it also fits in with my very strong desire to get rid of GOAL and just keep GOL but I'm wondering why can't we just keep the multiple member body appointments with GOL and ease the burden of TSO so that they just don't have to deal with that. They deal with department heads and maybe with the interim and town manager appointment issue which should be very rare if ever and the rest of their time they can focus on the things that hopefully should keep them very busy GOL is going to be dealing with bylaws and that's certainly going to be we're going to talk about that before we're done today but otherwise I think they could handle what I personally feel are generally speaking fairly straightforward reviews the town manager there's a very robust process the town manager follows it and I think in my personal opinion as long as that's done and he's giving us the information that we ask there really isn't a whole lot for whatever body it is that's reviewing these to do other than perhaps over the long term trying to come to some understanding of how this deals with diversity and equity and so on that's a different issue but I'm just thinking I think you should stay with GOL that's my gut Mandy. So here I am going to argue against my proposal and for Evan's proposal one of the benefits of swapping and moving town manager to GOL if referred and moving multiple member bodies to TSO is that then TSO holds all review of town manager recommended appointments they are not split between two separate committees which means the review process will remain consistent versus if they were within two separate committees two separate committees might choose to do that review process differently and then GOL gets everything but planning board and zoning board with actual recommendations of people and most of what GOL has with those actual recommendations of people is counselors it does keep that finance committee section that is members of the residents but nearly everything else once plan participatory budgeting and rank choice voting are dissolved when they're done their work is mostly internal to recommending fellow counselors and so you're keeping processes sort of within one committee so that the process from the external point of view is the same for that type of appointment no matter what board it's for and there's my argument against my proposal and for Evan's other thoughts no one is moved by my no concern that I really do want TSO to be able to focus on town services and constituent needs and have some chance to maybe do a little exploring and da da da da I don't want them to be and maybe it won't be that big of an issue I don't want them to be spending most of their time just going through appointments and approving them and we know it doesn't take huge amounts of time but it can that's not only concern but that's my concern it's elegant and we have a meeting of the minds here and that's plus two minds and I'm waiting to hear from the other two minds I think one thing I would appreciate and I think the rest of my committee members would appreciate would be some kind of document or draft how this actually would work and I'm not asking obviously not asking for it now but it would be something we would then review at our next meeting and refine if needed to be with the hopes that again that's moving us closer to the goal of bringing this to the council so that's asking a little bit again of two of my colleagues I'm not sure whether I have it I'm bringing up a separate issue I support Evan's suggestions I am concerned with people on the council who are bound and determined that to see GOL as taking power and I know this shouldn't be a consideration but I'm wondering if we're moving multiple member bodies and everything as you're suggesting from George into GOL that we aren't really setting up something that's going to feed that feed that argument I don't really consider it an argument I'm just concerned I am also concerned given that JCPC was so contentious in terms of councilor reactions to whether they got chosen or not I don't know how do we and this is not necessarily the purview of this committee how do we begin to deal with that kind of contentious behavior or belief that there's manipulation and power grabbing and all this other stuff going on and I don't know how to address those things or if we should I don't know Evan maybe the merit to both what Mandy Joe said which was far more articulate than what I said and also to what George said I think part of my inclination to a TSO also a little bit is capacity where we are not subtracting anything from GOL's charge in this restructuring but we are adding things and certainly we have not we did in the beginning but we have not recently had agendas where we are like what should we even talk about we've had stuff to do and so I think the TSO might have a little bit more capacity in how it's designed but I'm not I could go either way on that regarding JCPC and BCG although the contention was really over JCPC I think part of that contention a year ago was that JCPC is a town council appointment and yet last year it was a defacto presidential appointment our president made the decision about who to appoint and then she gave it to the council and the council said sure and so even though we had veto power it was still a really presidential appointment and I wonder if maybe if it was within the committee and it was an appointment that was being recommended not by the president there were concerns about consolidation of power but came from five people maybe it would be less contentious I don't know probably that's probably naive but I do think that there was some concern about the president has a tremendous amount of power and he was a appointment that was given specifically to the council and yet it was really made by the president still and so maybe if it came from a committee there would be a feeling like there was a little bit more discussion over it but I don't really know I'd like us to move if you're willing to councilor comment Roman numeral four which unfortunately is in a separate document but I don't want to cut off discussion here so is there something more people want to add Evan just because it sounds like you gave me and perhaps Mandy Joseph homework I want to make can I just get some idea I was going to hold off on the homework assignment for a moment just before we we can go through this but you're right I do have something in mind for a request to one or both of you but let's do four and then we'll come back to the homework assignment so we have one other councilor elaborate set of seven specific comments first comment agrees to dissolve OCA second appointments seems to follow what we've been talking about one seems to support the boards and committees in TSO not that is correct and that is the moment where it seems we at least have two councillors in agreement both who've given I think a lot of thought to how to divvy this up so it looks like to is endorsing what seems to be emerging as a possible consensus position number three so here's to suggest about parking going to TSO essentially yeah right it's already there number four yep go ahead it's there but if someone says if someone actually wrote suggest parking going to TSO maybe you know it says make recommendations on measures related to public ways including transportation maybe we put including transportation and parking to just clarify that since it if someone didn't think it was there already it needs clarification so here's why I didn't write parking there as parking in many ways is encapsulated by public ways but in other ways is not and so again so on Monday we were presented a proposal for a private parking facility and the council would have to rezone I think to make that happen that's a zoning change so it logically goes to CRC it's also having to do with parking so should it go to TSO but it's not really parking in the way we consider public ways parking and so I think the reason I didn't put it in there is because not all park some long-term parking things and things that have to do with private parking might more logically sit with CRC and some things like the proposed parking benefit district really might fall more with finance because it's about how we spend from the transportation enterprise fund and so I think I saw as parking is too broad to assign to this committee and I put public ways into suggest parking that has to do with public ways now maybe we want to put all parking in there but that's that's why I actually didn't write the word parking okay we can take a quick break of sure so we're going to pause for just a moment and which button should I push here the pause button not the pause so we're back and we are dealing with counselor comment item number four further we can go through them so we issue with parking and whether this should be put into the TSO or not leave well to focus on bylaws rules of procedure essentially doing what it's doing the suggestion there could be three people rather than five Evan so this has been a suggestion that I've supported in the past and probably have changed my mind on and I think one of the reasons is just you know I was having a really great conversation with a counselor at MMA this past weekend from Framingham their committees are three person committees they have 12 committees but they're three person committees and standing next to us was one of his fellow committee members and we started talking about something and the guy had to go you know what I got to walk away because we're a quorum of that committee and I thought God having a two person quorum makes working together on things really difficult and so even though I've always proposed drinking our committee so we all have less work to do I think that presents a challenge any other thoughts about a three person committee I think it's too small and not diverse enough potentially when you think about the workload potential workload of GOL what's the advantage of five versus three or does it really matter if we're adding certain appointments into it and the appointments we're looking at adding into it are actual person appointments not review of someone else's appointments that is going to add work as I think two of our members who have sat on OCA will understand even if it's appointing councillors appointing councillors to things is a little less work we know each other so we probably don't have to interview each other but the non-voting finance committee members that appointment is going to be interviews is going to be stuff and so that to me goes against reducing the committee size and I have to say given what we've just given on Monday night and we may hopefully have at least a few moments before we're done today to talk about it that's a fairly substantial chunk of work I would the bylaw review committee was three members and you guys did that so it was five and two right so you had five but surely that could have been done by three people right that's a joke alright those three Burnie could have done Burnie and Richie deathed together so there was just dead weight so it sounds like the consensus unless I hear otherwise is that we appreciate the comment but we feel five is probably wiser I definitely agree with five for a number of reasons but one is simply that it means we don't have to there's a lot of just renaming things that doesn't have to take place that would be nice but it just seems that what GOL is doing if we take appointments and spread it around it doesn't so it's not overreaching I don't know what that means maybe somebody wants to comment on that but I don't know how the name is overreaching but maybe this councilor might object to having any appointments in GOL so that could be an issue I guess if we spread an appointments out right it doesn't make sense to just give one committee the name to add appointments to the title of one committee it totally doesn't I was thinking that the idea of overreaching would be that they just there's any viewpoint that GOL is always trying to get more power and so this is another move not the name so much but the fact that it would actually have some appointments that it would have to deal with but that's a debate we'll have in council probably any other so six is I'm not so sure that'll be true but who knows seven have we eliminated outreach that's a really good question and I have some thoughts on that but Pat why don't you hear from the rest of you first have we eliminated outreach has OKA been meeting with thoughts on this Evan so the new committee is literally called town services and outreach so I given the thing about moving public ways and this question I have to question whether this councilor actually read the charge probably not because it includes outreach and it includes helping with district meetings so my question was a bit different and I restated what outreach work was OKA doing and so I have some sense of what we're putting into it so or was that a part of your charge that you weren't able to reach Evan the short answer is that is a part of our charge that we weren't able to reach we did have I think one meeting with all of the CPO's present and we had one meeting with the RAC and I also as chair had a meeting with the RAC but the there are only two real things that I could point to that we actually did in response to our outreach charge one would be that outreach survey that all councillors filled out and that we reported on I don't know if councillors felt that was useful might be useful to get feedback on that at some point and then the second thing was we organized the table at the block party right we met with the CPO's figured out what they were planning on doing making sure we didn't duplicate what they were doing came up with the ideas and implemented it so we did a very small bit of the charge I think that appointments just took up so much of our airspace that's my other please Pat when we're put the talk about putting parking issues into TSO makes me really nervous because I'm not saying we shouldn't do it but I'm getting so many requests for parking changes from residents I'm wondering whether we need a parking committee you know and maybe that would fit in with the downtown working groups ideas I'm not sure and I'm just kind of wondering here a bit with it but I don't know if I want to sit on a committee where all the residents complaints come many of which are valid or not and then getting feedback that's enough I think that's a conversation I hope we'll have at least for a few minutes this morning and maybe hopefully it will be continued but I want to go back to outreach for a moment because we have town services and outreach and I've come to the conclusion that I'm wondering why we even have outreach at all as a part of any charge it seems that in practice we've been doing this it's not a function of any particular committee I'm not sure that other towns do this that they have communications and outreach committee I obviously could be completely wrong and I'd be happy to be corrected I think maybe part of the logic of it originally was that we're a new body and we really wanted to make sure that people knew what was going on and we make sure that there was and we do obviously value this as a council and we value it individually but I'm wondering just for the sake of argument whether this is really something that should be given to a particular committee we certainly on OCA found that we couldn't give it a great deal of attention but it seemed to get done anyway it seemed that outreach and communications was happening on many many different levels both by individual counselors P.O.'s and da da da da da so I'm thinking that outreach should just it's everybody's job it's everybody's responsibility and it's not a particular committee that's sort of tasked with it and the one committee that was tasked with it really didn't do much with it and it wasn't because we didn't care it seemed to happen anyway without our help so Pat? I agree a lot happened and I'm particularly grateful to this Jennifer and Angela and Brianna but my concern around outreach and not reflecting on OCA is that we still have a majority white middle and upper class people participating meetings participating on committees and so the outreach into communities of color the outreach to renters and things like really hasn't yet been maximized and I know attempts are being made but what is it that we're missing as middle class white people about who we attract and who we bring in to meetings and I don't have an answer I don't but to me that makes outreach still a very rich area for the council to look at because I'm tired of seeing the same faces Manny? I agree with that but I also want to mention the part that Evan mentioned that OCA did do which was the organizing tables at the block party and that and if we remove some of these items from the charge we run into the problem we had last year which was who's going to do it are we going to do it there's no decision making process for who does that when it's a council thing certainly the town has its own things and until we figure out that relationship between us is the legislative body and the town's activities on town staff part for those types of events and their tables someone on the council has got to say you know we want a presence at the block party this is how we're going to do it and maybe ultimately in a few years that gets worked out within town staff and within the internal government and doesn't have to sit with a committee but for now I think it needs to sit somewhere so you would keep it with TSO as Evan has suggested in his proposal Evan? Yeah I guess on top of that Oka's excuse for not working on outreach was that we were so buried by appointments and I guess and honestly ZBA planning board appointments for the entire year and I do have sort of a question I constantly ask myself which is if we weren't so buried by appointments would we have done more on outreach and so I guess I'm leaning towards keep it in this charge for the first year and if TSO comes back in a year from now and says we didn't know what to do about outreach then maybe we say you know what the town council can't figure this out we have to figure out a way to do this but given that this committee should have a little bit more capacity to focus on outreach it'd be interesting to see whoever the members are could figure out what that actually looks like So the answer number seven is no we have not eliminated outreach it's in the TSO charge please read it okay so we've gone through all the councilor comments related to our proposal I'd like us to come quickly within the next few minutes to a kind of decision about how to proceed next Evan go ahead so if I may so it sounded like the most we haven't touched the finance committee charge yet it sounds like we're pretty much in agreement on the others except for the appointments issue and it sounds like that's sort of what's being asked of me so I'd like to just try and get an idea of where we stand on some of these so I listed I think nine appointments and I'd just like to get an idea of where I'm putting these so if I may go ahead really quickly so planning board with CRC do we have consensus on that okay okay potential new town manager or interim town manager where is that upon referral is that GOL or is that TSO both have been put out there well given the elegance that you're striving for here in your design is it more internal, external that's the criteria you've been using so potential assistant or town manager appointments I favor GOL and the reason being internal to governance and also GOL likely will have other person appointments instead of confirming of appointments and TSO will not and these are by council referral anyway council referral okay so if that's going to be okay I also assume potential clerk of the council and additional town council staff okay non-voting resident members of finance committee is that did that land in GOL okay so we're not recommended to give that to finance it doesn't seem appropriate to me to give the committee the power to appoint people that are going to be serving on the committee but maybe I shouldn't okay town council liaisons to town committees that GOL oh boy okay at least it wasn't my proposal and I think it so what's the rationale here so this is town council again just remind town council liaisons to town committees to town committees where my ignorance is emerging my understanding clearly false is that this was something that the council president did and explain to me where I've obviously lost the train of thought here so let's say we want a liaison to you know the housing trust right that's what we're talking about okay and the council president solicits people and says who's interested in being liaisons and she gets a list and then she says or he says this is where I'm going to suggest people go that's not how it's going to work we're going to have a list of people's preferences and then it's going to go to GOL and they're going to make the recommendations is what we're envisioning yes so so charter 29 D says the town council may select from above its membership so we've always considered it the town council appointment it currently sits in OCA so OCA had the first discussion which was which committees do we think should get liaisons if the plan is if we continue as if we have the committee structure that we have now the plan is if the town council approves of those committees it will go back to OCA to make recommendation on who to appoint as liaisons sorry keep going so is it GOL okay I don't envy GOL that but that's alright hopefully I'll be after it um JCPC and BCG I assume that's also GOL okay other appointments let's go to that last appointments by the town manager to multiple member bodies TSO we decided on TSO that's what we thought and department heads TSO that covers the waterfront so the only other thing I have here is in other category again to encapsulate anything we may miss that are appointments by the town council again such as if someone resigns from PBC or RCV in their town council appointment I assume that's in GOL but it could also in theory be in TSO or we don't even need to me it's nice to have a little catch-all just in case we miss something if we don't have the catch-all it allows us to put it wherever it's most appropriate and so your thought is that you could write out briefly a sort of description of what we are this is a suggestion for those of you out there in TV land and also for my fellow councillors this is just a suggestion to the council as to how if we were to divvy up appointments they might be divvied up and that would if you could produce for me a document that would do that it would be very helpful I have notes but and then do we feel we need to come back and maybe we do I have no problem with this it's not like I'm rushing to get this to the council on February 10th it was already made clear by one councillor that this should come back to us at our next meeting which would be February 12th to review okay alright I was hoping to get the finance charge settled we started about 15 minutes late almost and I'm not trying to ruin people's plans but we still have a number of things we need to do and we usually meet for two hours but I'm open to okay well we'll decide it to our understanding let's know alright we thought you forgot us for those of you in TV Land councillor Steinberg is making an appearance with his entourage with his posse and dancing girls right it's quite alright we've been busy so this is item number two on our agenda and we want to come back actually I'm sorry it's item number 4 it's item number 4 it's item number 4 we want to come back to finance committee because our hope is that we can come to some agreement as to what the charge should look like and be prepared to present that to the council on February 10th that's the hope and councillor Steinberg has sent us a number of very thoughtful comments related to that we've also been looking at a number of other councillor comments we've gone through them all actually but this is specific to the issue of the finance committee but I think it spills also I think Mandy you said it also spills over into BCG is that correct yes so we have some you want to start with BCG you don't want to start with finance anybody is BCG simpler easier or BCG might be easier alright someone take the lead here please other than yours truly so go ahead Mandy please there were two items you wanted to add to the BCG charge in your suggestions they were provided by the town manager during the development of an annual budget as requested by the manager and share information amongst and you had town manager schools and library as the town manager develops a budget as required by the charter section 5.4 I wonder if that was supposed to be town council schools and library but I think we had questions as to what these were meant to do we weren't sure how these were to operate right is that what it was Evan yeah I just got the email up and put on it that's why I was trying to get the computer too so we were all looking at the same email when I was really trying to do an idea I don't think that the question is as much town manager is just town budget what you want to do is make sure that information about the needs for our municipal functions and their capital for the schools for their capital and their library for their capital are all available in a single place and the BCG serves that function of bringing that information together what are the needs so whether it be major building needs repair needs that if you're developing a good five-year plan you want to bring it all together and you want all of the players to come together the reason I probably wrote town manager down there is that it's really the superintendent and the business manager from the school who takes the lead role in formulating that even if it's the information delivered by the school committee members but it really should be amongst the town our municipal functions schools and library and you go ahead I have a question I get the first point in a way because this is a charge for what BCG so if I add the words BCG that BCG provides advice to the manager during the development of the annual budget is requested by the manager so if the manager wants advice BCG provides it that makes sense to me as a concept but BCG sharing information amongst town schools and library as the manager develops a budget and as required by Charter section 5.4 is the manager's budget I don't I'm still struggling to understand I don't see BCG as having the information the information sits with not really any of the members of BCG if they're elected so I'm having trouble understanding how BCG would accomplish share information amongst count how would they get the information is that more of an action or more of a purpose statement that the purpose of BCG is to share information amongst these groups as the budget is developed versus a charge as to what BCG is supposed to do very delicate distinction between what you're making between it's really a question of how active the role is or how passive the role is but it's still where do you when you're trying to have the BCG have a role in the 5-year plan where does the information for the 5-year plan come from does BCG have a role in the 5-year plan or is that JCPC I'm sorry you're right you're right I think the BCG the problem with BCG is that it served a clear function in the old form of government and it got adopted by I'm not looking at you and saying this Mandy you guys adopted the Charter Commission and didn't think through the question as to whether the reasons that it existed in the first place came up in the old form of government was I really a couple one is that you would have always the potential that the school committee might come to town meeting and say we need more money for schools and make the plea directly to the town meeting and bypass the finance committee process and that that created a potential for havoc by letting that surface unnecessarily on the floor of town meeting and the other that was much more direct and I'll just say it because these are all people who are no longer actively involved but there was a period of time where the Select Board was having real differences of opinion with the finance committee as to what the priorities for the budget should be and the finance committee was charged under that form of government with developing a budget to propose so that it wasn't town manager as we currently have that is bringing a budget to the council we had a finance committee that was bringing a budget to town meeting and that is a standard format for town governments across the Commonwealth which we are no longer and so we were having these huge huge battles going on between this was back when I had probably Anne Awad was chair and the between the Select Board and the finance committee and so there was one night after a meeting of the finance committee were three of us who were on the finance committee and John Misanti who was finance director got together and said what can we do to make this better and out of that conversation the four of us came up with this grand idea of a budget coordinating group and it became institutionalized and had a life of its own but it was really created to serve a purpose that doesn't exist anymore and now we've got in the charter and we're trying to figure out how to give it a purpose you missed our earlier conversation about BCG which was we're really dealing with a charge for a committee that hasn't met and probably won't ever meet except in committee of the whole so so maybe we should try to keep it I'm in the interest of time and energy we should try to keep it as simple as possible I'm what my desire is to create a charge that we can bring to the council that will not be terribly controversial but will at least do what we to the limits that we can and so I just want to produce a document that we can all live with and we're not going to resolve this larger constitutional question or historical question can we just resolve this charge and we have a draft in front of us you've made some excellent suggestions what I'm hoping to do here is come up with some if not compromise or agreement here or at least with something that you and you could live with so we don't spend this time at council doing all this I think that makes sense the other thing that is potential is that if the budget changes and I mean the budget is the amount of money available to fund the whole bundle of things that get funded changes upwards or downwards during the year and you know put it into the context of get really great news far and beyond anything we could possibly ever dream of at the from the governor's budget at the MMA meeting or we get really devastating news because of the the amount of money that's available the state has gone down in the states in such great financial problems then you get into the question as to whether there should be a substantial shift amongst the proportions of the budget that go to municipal functions library operating and school and each one is going to come in and have its opinion and it's going to have its needs and that's where the BCG might come in to be an important forum and so creating language that allow the forum to have that discussion take place that involves the council so it's not just involving the town manager but the council gets involved it creates a place for it so it's sort of like um creating a piece of a charge for something you hope you'll never have to use right so can item number two be wordsmith or do you want item number two removed to say ensure that I mean I understand Mandy's point just as a matter of English language that we need an action statement here we have an action statement and number one number two really it seems difficult to construe it as how it could actually be something that BCG could do but would that solve the problem Mandy or would you prefer to have it simply removed because I'd like us to get through this and get it out the door I could do something like communication amongst the council the manager the school committee the superintendent the trustees and the library director so that you get everybody in there and it's you have all of the bodies about significant budget issues that the town manager to assist the town manager as he develops a budget is required is required by 5.4 so I guess what I would do is keep the first bullet point provide advice to the manager during the development into the charge section I would move the entire second point share information as a purpose BCG coordinates budgeting between the manager council committee regional school committee and library board of trustees and shares information amongst those entities as the town manager develops a budget or ensures that information is shared amongst those entities as the town manager under purpose rather than charge if that's acceptable to you we can incorporate it and Mandy would make that change are there any other changes to BCG that we need to make that we wanted to touch base with Indiana because I think we've talked about everything else with BCG and did we vote on it we didn't so I would like us to make that change and to accept any changes that have been made and we talked about already is my understanding and have this presented as a motion and move it to so we can get it to the council we've already done it with JCPC we've done it I'd like to do it with BCG the only time that the BCG had a significant amount of meetings and had a really contentious time was when we were developing the operating override and to present to voters and we wanted to make sure that the override amount was correct and that the messaging was correct and the BCG served that function at that time under our current form of government I don't know would we do that in the finance committee or would we do that somewhere else if we ever got to that point are we prepared to move to a vote I'd like to have a motion and I'd like to vote on it Andy you're trying to make these changes yeah I'm trying to do the changes take your time we want to get it right so I think the changes are we've already sort of discussed the compositional changes which is adding as designated by the council into the first paragraph of composition and adding a third paragraph that says no more than two councillors from finance shall represent the town council on the budget coordinating group unless the council designates more than three representatives to BCG purpose would be amended BCG coordinates budgeting between the town manager town council school committee and regional school committee and library board of trustees and ensures that information is shared amongst those entities as the town manager develops a budget as required by charter section 5.4 and then the charge would add one bullet point that reads provide advice to the town manager during the development of the annual budget as requested by the manager okay that is the amended charge um I prepared for a motion can we count that as a motion sure that's a motion we have a motion before us um and we have a second from council Schreiber um all those in favor please raise your hand and signify by saying aye aye so the vote is 4-0 with one member absent thank you Steve for sticking around for that um can we turn to the finance charge do we have the energy and time to do this because Andy's made yes we do thank you Steve no that's great and I think Pat may be back but we do have a quorum Andy's asked that we insert an additional bullet to the charge itself is that acceptable to um I'm sorry I'm looking at I think he's placed it in two places but I'm looking at the um councilor comments document item number one which now is probably everyone comes from councilor Steinberg and this is number one under that charge should have an additional charge quote to investigate proposed bylaw revisions policies or other initiatives under council consideration determine whether it will affect town revenues expenses or finances this was a suggestion he made and I want to know if this is acceptable to my fellow committee members sorry you missed the vote you've been kicked off no no I'm saying yes I agree with that addition okay any other thoughts to adding that to the charge so I'm supportive of adding this to the charge with the hope that it will be uh narrowly interpreted if you can come up with wording um I have tried very hard to make sure that when we look at things and I'll give you the two examples real quick we just completed yesterday one was housing we really did try and focus on the housing issues we there were a couple of references in the draft report that talk that make reference to other issues but we didn't deal with them make recommendations on them and the purpose was that we wanted to get it back to the council and it was only to provide the bulk of the report really is providing information about the costs and some things that could be done to improve the charge we didn't for any or any new policy on housing we didn't want to leave that to the finance committee we want that in another committee similarly with the ad hoc art it was a financial analysis it was not a policy issue for us and I think that it needs to remain that way I am working very hard to make sure is chair that we stay with that um but if you think that there's a way to word the charge to solidify I can understand the point you're making so I'm concerned about this change because we've talked about in this committee the potential for a change like this and this is how I read it allowing the finance committee to really speculate on hypotheticals when it says investigate revisions, policies or other initiatives that's pretty much everything under council consideration by law revisions policies or other initiatives that's everything under council consideration to determine whether it will affect town revenues, expenses or finances so if we go back to the example that Evan has used many times which is the SRO example and what residents were saying to the council is arguments of well has it been investigated that we're going to need a traffic light for people to turn in and out or new sidewalks or new crosswalk and who's going to pay for that and new lighting on the street and who's going to pay for it adding this bullet point sends all of that for everything the council considers and all of those hypotheticals to finance under the way this is written and that you know there's merits to looking at a by law change or looking at a climate action goal and a policy under the climate action goal or plan and saying this is going to have a huge effect on our revenues and there's merits to that up to a point but beyond that point saying well we might have to add a light and that could be negative that to me goes to in the weeds about the financial impact as Evan was saying it's an economic versus an actual financial issue everything the council does has the potential to have an economic impact in town that doesn't mean we need the finance committee to consider everything the financial the council does and make a report on that potential economic impact versus non hypothetical impacts to town finances I'll give another example as Andy did the housing policy that said 50 units every year of affordable housing and a maximum of $50,000 per unit in subsidy of town finances that's got a more direct impact on town finances that I think it's appropriate for the finance committee to take a review of that and say hey that $12 million we can't absorb or we can absorb and this is how we can versus that hypothetical on the SRO side of well it might increase traffic which may or may not do this and may or may not and I don't know how to limit that but I think this bullet point opens it up to everything for everything the council does and I'm really hesitant to support that the word will as opposed to might is a deliberate choice the only other thing you could do and not going to pine about it today is this upon request of the council was actually going to be my suggestion that I think I'd be more comfortable if the council instead of everything having to go to finance because it's so broad saying you know this one's got enough of a concern that we maybe need finance looking at it versus no that's not and so maybe upon request of the council would make me feel a little more comfortable I think Evan yeah I think that makes sense because when we do referrals sometimes it's referred to that committee and sometimes we sort of put some stipulations on it this is what we're looking for back and that can help because I think again my concern has been a little bit of Mandy's concern and I've been very pleased with how the finance currently has operated but of course it's always up to whoever's chair and how they so if we lose Andy as chair at some point in the future we might not know how a new chair would interpret that so I think having that upon request could help set some parameters and the council might choose not to set parameters for any given referral but then they might if there is concern because I do think that the bylaws do need to be I don't want to not include this but I understand Mandy's concern and I have shared it so I would support that I'm getting the feeling that in spite of my wishes we are not going to be ready to make a decision on this charge this morning today can I bring up one other thing Andy put we had another document from Councillor Steinberg his track changes to a proposed charge one of them was something we missed when we transferred to a new document which is the appointing authority that really does need to read town council president for voting members town council for non-voting members that we missed that change and so I think we need to add that into this charge so what I'm going to suggest is that we give Councillor Steinberg a chance to respond to the suggestions you both made about that slight change and see if he's amenable to that or if he wants to think about it but he has given us a number of other comments one of which Mandy's pointed out and what I would like to see is that we're not going to do this today I don't think we're going to have to go through and make some changes Evan would you be willing to do that for this particular charge since in other words you would be making you can say no but so Mandy's willing to take it on if you're Evan says thank you Mandy so you would produce a document that would incorporate the suggestions that Councillor Steinberg has made Andy do you want to say anything to and you don't have to to the idea of a pond how do we phrase it upon request of the council did you want to say anything to that I think it's easier for at this point to just let Mandy do a draft and say maybe the appropriate thing to do would be the next round of meetings because I assume that you're regularly meeting the Wednesday after council meetings and we were meeting at the finance committee the Tuesday after so if Mandy had a draft and it was permitted to send it to the finance committee for the 11th and then we reported back to you we have a report back in the 12th and I just would take Mandy's draft and say do you have any comments in this and if the committee has no comments then you said comments you can consider and deal with them the only concern I have it's a very small one is that we now have a committee that is charged with doing something that's not actually in its charge so I think we'll hopefully can live with that for the audit piece the audit piece that's why I was trying to get this done today I was hoping to have it done obviously when we presented it to the council on Monday that didn't happen anyway that's just a I should worry about it I'll worry about it nobody else will worry about it so good I probably need to talk with Pat about this separately when I was just meeting with Paul and Sonya upstairs while you were having your meeting down here we were separating out the audit functions for the FY19 audit which is the year that ended June 30th and that will need to be scheduled to meet they will be need to schedule a meeting with the finance committee as the audit committee sometime probably in March and the bidding functions and the hiring functions for the FY20 and 21 audit we talked about that but they're not going to have anything that's going to come up over the next couple of weeks alright thank you very much for coming and Mandy will be forwarding to you the revisions for your committee's review and if you can get those back to us before our meeting on the 12th that would be great it looks like we will not be presenting this particular charge any earlier than February 24th to the council we're not going to make the February 10th I think we can live with that we have some other things we can give them so thank you Andy so we are over time I understand that I'm going to try to bring this to conclusion I have a meeting at one o'clock I do have to be at I don't want to keep this any longer that's painful for me because I was very much looking forward to item number six at the council meeting I really did struggle to understand where people are coming from and I know they're coming at least I think some of them are coming from but I had trouble grasping it and we're not going to have a chance to talk about that today but it's something that we are I believe still continuing to try and hammer out which is what would be the proper process for public ways requests and so that's just going to have to go by the boards today we do not have public presence so there is no need for public comment I'm going to pass on the minutes for today we have them thanks to Athena but I'm going to leave them in the packet and we'll deal with them next time discussion of future agenda items we're going to pass over because it really is actually item number ten and again I'm just going to point out that I put in the packet at the last minute last night what I understood to be everything that's been sent to us by the council and at some point it would be helpful perhaps for those of you to look at it particularly those of you who served in the bylaw review committee and make sure that that was actually accurate and also in one case I think I didn't actually have the bylaw reference in what I had in front of me so anyway we have a number of things that have been given to us and I was hoping today but I don't think we have time to sort of decide how we're going to proceed to deal with this over the next couple of weeks or months we have some deadlines March 9th apparently a very sacred and important date that we are supposed to at least give something so I guess what I'm asking my committee members to do in the free time that they have is to give some thought to how they would think we should proceed in dealing with what seems to be a fairly substantial amount of work which we look forward to that's why we exist but there are a couple of items that have a time stamp on them and so maybe starting with those and I'm blessed by the fact that at the moment at least I have two members of the review committee on this body and that will make this work I think much much easier so I'm a little less worried when I think about that so that's really any things that you and yeah Evan so what I was thinking about this this morning and one of the things I'm willing to offer although if Pat wants to do this I'd also very happily see it to her but considering that we worked on the bylaw review committee considering that it's still not fresh in our minds I was thinking I would be happy to do sort of look through the future considerations document and maybe come forth with some suggestions about here are the things that will be really easy to fix and maybe we can just bang out and then here are the things that would take much longer and then here are the things that maybe we shouldn't even consider we should send to one of the other committees because I think our task was to develop a timeline to develop a work plan whatever that means but I think maybe ranking them in terms of priority and also how complex they are might be a good first step that I would be happy to take on unless Pat wants to do it so Pat is happy and that's important and Evan is willing to do this and I think that's something that you could put in the packet at any time between now and our next meeting if you could to give us a chance to look at it we will be presenting at least a couple of documents to the council on February 10th from this body Mandy at my understanding is you're going to work up the finance committee charge and we did that should be it right in other words that's the only charge that what am I missing here anybody the three other charges we haven't voted on right the charges being I'm sorry TSO CRC I think we will vote on my understanding is we will vote on those when we are finally satisfied that we have a proposal that we can bring forward to the council as sort of a next phase and I would like to believe that we would have some kind of report with your help that would articulate the rationale and in addition would be included in that would be the revised charges for those committees so I'm not as much worried about those right now as just we can get to the point where we feel we have a pretty clear sense of what we want to propose to the council and so that would be a major chunk of what we're doing next time Evan would give us a sense of where we stand with the bylaw revisions and future considerations we would have your document from the finance committee that hopefully we could move on and then I would hope to get to the issue of the public process for the process for public ways request Mandy so one other thing that's coming to this committee by automatic referral in the next couple days because both other committees have finished it is the percent for bylaw for GOL's review for clarity consistency action ability CRC voted finally today and my understanding from a report from Andy is that Andy voted that finance voted finally on the recommendations to the council so its next review is in this committee automatically okay and it would be interesting to see how that goes because that's okay Evan please I was not a good sign I was taking notes so I may have missed this but future agenda items the amendment to the open containers bylaw which was referred to us last night that's on my list it's on there but there's where I could use advice as to you're suggesting that something we might want to get on right away anyway that's something you can I have a bias well that's one of the advantages of being on this committee you'll get to maybe see your biases realized and that's a wonderful thing so good so if you would get a chance to look at that document it's in your packet now and maybe even suggest revisions to it or anything that's missing and Evan your report would be very valuable anyone else looking for something to do no okay so I'm going to adjourn this meeting at what time is it 12.52 p.m. and again with expression of thanks to my colleagues and to our council clerk who has been patient with us this afternoon see you all in two weeks