 I'm going to take the agenda, which is posted online a little bit out of order, and start with item number four on the agenda, which is consideration of town manager appointments to multiple member bodies filed with the town clerk. There are two memos we received on June 20th from the town manager regarding his appointments. I want to do these first because we need to make a recommendation for the council to act tonight on these, because after tonight's meeting of the town council, the council doesn't meet again until July 22nd, and since these appointments were filed on June 20th, if the council doesn't act on them tonight, then the council will lose its ability to act on them at all. So I want to make sure we get those done, and so I want to start with them. So why don't we start with the affordable housing trust? You'll see the memo is in your packet, and so we received the memo June 20th from the town manager, appointing Rob Crowner, Carol Lewis, Erica Piedade, and William Van Kuevelen to two-year terms, John Hornick, Tom Kegelman, and Nancy Schroeder to one-year terms. The three one-year terms are reappointments. Looking at this, it looks like the town manager has provided fairly thorough appointee profiles, as Oka has requested. Are there any questions or comments on the town manager's recommended appointments to the affordable housing trust board of trustees? Yeah, the mics are not plugged in if you haven't plugged your mic in. I don't know why everything is unplugged today, but that's where that noise came from. We do not have hard copies. They are online. I don't know if they're posted on the packet, but they are in the town council packet online. So if you go to the town council, because they're being voted on tonight, if you go to the town council packet, they're available there since June 20th. Yep, Alyssa. Now it works. Yes, and I do appreciate that he took our feedback on adding more information into his profiles, but there's still two pieces missing in this particular case. On the trust one is he does not state how long Nancy Schroeder's been a member who he's reappointing. You know, he talks a lot about a lot of things, but there's still not a solid checklist about if you're reappointing how long has the person been on. It's not something every councilor should have to look up to figure out. And he did give me that date when I asked him about it, but I don't think he sent it to the whole group. And I will find it in my email shortly. And the other item was completely irrespective of any disclosures that might be made at the town council meeting. It seems to me like it would have been entirely appropriate for him to include in the profile that one of his recommended appointees is a spouse of a town council member. Okay. Other comments or questions on the town manager recommended appointments to the affordable housing trust? We typically do public comment at the end. So if there are no further comments, I would entertain a motion. I would move that Oka accept the or endorse the appointments. What is the verb we're using these days? Recommend the town council approve. Thank you. That Oka recommend the town council approve the town manager's appointments to the affordable housing trust. Okay. We have a second from Sarah. Is there any further discussion Alyssa? I'll be willing to agree to vote for this. If we include those two pieces of information in our report, which I know was probably going to have to be a verbal report since it's for tonight. Yes, we can talk about that. Yes, I will make sure. Thank you. Darcy. I feel like if we have a counselor here who wants to make a comment about this particular issue, it makes sense to take it now. So there's some reason that we can't do that. We have public climate schedule for the end of the meeting. But it doesn't make any sense. She wants to make a comment about this particular issue. It seems like it would be really easy just to take it. There are other thoughts on the committee on changing the agenda. Alyssa. I just think we're in a really awkward position here. We've only ever had town counselors come and talk to us associated with the finance committee with a very special arrangements we made associated with finance committee. And while I totally understand your point like why vote and then hear the public comment later, we've never dealt with. I mean, this is a new thing we're going to have to figure out. It isn't just that it would be easy. It's that now counselors are coming to other council meetings to have input before they make their decision and their recommendation to the full town council, not saying it's a bad thing. I'm just saying it's different. And I don't know if this now becomes a thing, a regular thing with all of our discussions at all of our meetings. I mean, does the finance committee take visitors from the town council necessarily in every case before they make a vote or GOL or CRC? I think this is one of those things we haven't really had to deal with yet. And so I don't know why it's special that a counselor wants to make a comment about an appointment and we're not letting a member of the public make a comment about an appointment. And if we are going to be making, letting both public and counselors make a, then I think we just need to get a new groove as to what our expectation is. Because as you know, traditionally, aside from when we're talking about process, we have done public comment at the end. So I think we just need to figure out, is this another unicorn? Is this a new thing that we just need to make sure we include in our process? Well, why don't we just... Sarah, you had her hand up. I think this also comes into that establishing policy because we have talked about whether or not counselors should be able to come to other committee meetings and weigh in. And I believe that the general feeling was that we aren't doing that. I think that the problem comes in is that how many counselors we have coming and speaking at a time when it's not general comment time, it seems like it gives the counselors comments more weight than the general publics. And then for me, it's sort of, it blurs the lines of what's appropriate, unless we agree beforehand that we're going to call a meeting of the whole. Darcy. I just think we should, if we are going to have a policy on this, we can develop it at some point, but we don't have one now. So why don't we just have a one-off and take Kathy's comment. And I also would point out that we had a counselor come to the last meeting and speak to us for how many minutes who was speaking as a member of the public, I think. Well, he wasn't, said he wasn't speaking as, he wasn't representing the finance committee. I'm not sure who we was representing, but anyway, he was there for a really long time and we gave him a lot of deference. Sarah. So that particular individual had contacted the chair of this committee a week ahead of time. And although he, I know that he said, well, he was here. He didn't feel on some points he could speak about the entire committee. He did request to come here a week before to the chair and speak as a finance committee member. So while I had range as chair, anyone who wanted to come and speak who was a counselor had to get ahold of me well a week ahead of time because I need to have that person on the agenda. And it also had to be really clear to everyone here that I was allowing someone from a different committee to speak on a pertinent topic. So I think that how we do public comment perhaps needs to be a future point of discussion on our committee. Since every committee has been doing public comment a little bit differently. Our standard has been to have public comment at the end. And so I'm going to maintain that for now. We have a motion on the floor. We have a second. There's no further discussion on the appointees. I'm going to call the question. All those in favor, raise your hand and say aye. Aye. That is unanimous. So I'm going to move on to public shade tree committee. Public trade to committee appointments were also filed on June 20th by the town manager. We have Claire Bertrand Bennett Haslip and Gordon Green for three year terms. Shoshana King and Henry Lappin for two year terms. And Nani Barak for a one year term. We have appointee profiles for all of them. Nani and Henry are both reappointments. Looks like they both do state when they started. Both of them started February 9th, 2011. And there's also in here a note that Shoshana King we also recommended to the public art commission. So tonight Shoshana will be on the council's agenda twice, potentially once for public art and once for public shade tree committee. Are there any questions, comments by the committee on these sets of appointments? Sarah. This is just a general comment. And that is that even though these are time manager appointments and not ours, I'm wondering if I just lost my train of thought. Never mind. I just lost my train of thought. We can come back. Darcy. This is another situation where it would be really helpful to find out who were the other people in the pool of the applicants and what were their qualifications. Because I know that at least one person on the list doesn't have qualifications with regard to shade trees. And I don't know why she's on the list. And I've heard, I've been contacted by someone who objects to her being on the committee because she isn't necessarily someone who will promote the purpose of the committee. And so it's sort of like, you know, the discussion we had with the energy committee where you want to have people on the committee that are committed to the purpose of the committee. And it's not clear that this person is there because she's committed to the purpose. So I probably won't vote for this group. Sarah. I remembered. So one of the things that, and this is just about making sure that we have like the whole, you know, pool idea is that if people are going to be on two committees, you know, I think that what we said before is it's still important to find out that they apply to even if that person then later says, well, I'm already on, you know, like the arts committee. And I've found that that's really challenging. And so I would want to withdraw. So I'm just making the point that we want to make sure that there's consistency on that. Does that make sense? And that's your problem. Can you? So it's just, so if we do indeed see all the CAFs, this is just about the, like what we're calling the quote unquote entire pool. So I mean, obviously somebody did, you know, make it onto a committee that's on another one. But I just, I'm just saying I want to make sure that people who are on one committee, if they've applied for another, that we do see them in the entire pool. Gotcha. Even if, even if they were contacted and, you know, said I'm on this committee, so I can't, I'm not, I'm on a committee. So I don't want to be considered for this because I'm on B. I would still want to make sure I saw the CAF. That's all. So one thing that I do want to bring up because I think it responds to both Darcy and Sarah is some time ago we had a discussion that I know I was very much in favor of having the town manager present when we were debating his appointees. We had him present for one set of appointees with conservation commission. I think that was really useful. That's when we provided him with a lot of the feedback of what we want in appointee profiles. We haven't had him for the past two meetings. Last meeting he was on vacation. So I think that we have to excuse that he's not here again today. But some of these questions, such as Darcy's, where did the pool look like? How many people applied? And then perhaps why did you appoint this person if someone doesn't feel that that person might have the appropriate qualifications aren't questions that we can necessarily answer ourselves. And so we would need the town manager present. So this puts us in an interesting situation in which we have asked the town manager to be present. He was amenable to that given his schedule. But without him being present, do we move forward? It's worth noting again that we cannot put this off until another meeting because if the council again does not act on these appointments tonight, they will just automatically go into effect. So are there thoughts on that? Unless we send them back, right? If we act just to send them back and say. So when I say if the council doesn't act, I mean if the council doesn't take them up at all, the council certainly could take them up and send them back to the town manager or could reject. Well, we unilaterally cannot because we are just in an advisory role. But we could, in theory, we could advise the council to reject, to send back until we get an explanation. But we, as OCA, we cannot. We can only advise. So I'd love to hear some thoughts about how important it is to us as a committee that the town manager be present when we discuss town manager appointments. Sarah? I actually think it's really important. I mean, I don't know that I would hold this up. But I think that I would agree with Darcy that if one of us has, if something does seem, like we've already said, if something seems startling to us, right, or completely out of character or, you know, that we would, we had the power to not recommend. And I think having the appointing authority here to ask, to answer some of those questions would be enlightening because, you know, obviously you could maybe say, well, nobody else applied. It doesn't mean that even if, even like we've also talked about this, if there's four slots and four people, if one person is not appropriate, then you could always have three. And then, so I do think it's, I do think it's important for the town manager to try to make time to be here for that. Other thoughts on these appointments or on the presence or absence of the town manager when we're deliberating on these? I guess, I guess I would also just want to ask the town manager why the person without any experience was given a three-year term as opposed to two or one. That's just another question that I would have for him. Any other thoughts on these appointments or on the town manager? So given that there are some questions on this, given that we don't have the town manager present, we have a few options. We can take a vote on a motion to recommend approval and express these thoughts in our report tonight to the town manager. We could entertain a motion to recommend we reject based on concerns. Of course, with the explanation being that we're not necessarily rejecting individual, we're not rejecting people, but we're saying we want to put a pause on this because we have information. Our third option, of course, is we could send someone upstairs to see if the town manager is available to come down and perhaps briefly answer some of these questions. So do people have a preference among those options? Sarah? Oh, I can run upstairs if you want. Other thoughts? Perhaps we should pause and see if the town manager is available. Okay. Sorry. Thank you so much. So we'll take a brief pause. Let me, okay. So we're going to resume our meeting. So the town manager says that he can be here at 10 30 a.m. So I am going to temporarily table the discussion of the public shade tree committee appointments. And we can resume that when the town manager gets here. So then I will, we will move to agenda item three, which is discussion and vote on OK designees recommended appointees for non-voting resident members of the finance committee. I've divided this discussion into two parts. One is to actually discuss and vote on the appointees themselves. And the second is to continue the conversation we had about term lengths. So I will open this discussion, but I will say when the town manager gets here, we will immediately stop that discussion so we can resume public shade tree so that we're respectful of the town manager's time. So in our packet, there is the finance, the report from the OK designee on finance. So there are three people that the OK designee is recommending. We recommend appointment by the town council to the finance committee as non-voting resident members. We haven't really had much of a discussion about these individuals, but there was some concern last time that one of those having served for a very lengthy period of time, perhaps the time at which that person has served would exceed any term limits that we would want. And so there was some interest in discussing this in the context of the individuals, but also in the context of term limits. So I will reopen that conversation. Does anyone have any questions for the OK designee or comments in response to the OK designee's recommended appointees? Darcy? I have a prepared statement which I would like to do. Yes, please. So the issues seem to be around Mary Lou Tileman, and I think that three main points that I'd like to make, and then I'm going to get into some details. One is that I don't think there's any denying that Mary Lou is extremely qualified, has deep knowledge and experience in municipal law, and she's exactly the type of candidate who has the qualifications that I was asked to look for as far as experience in municipal law. Number two, the group that I brought to this committee was very balanced from the perspective of partisanship, if that is the issue, which seems to be that there are people who are concerned about political viewpoints, this particular group as a whole is very balanced. And thirdly, we don't, as a town council committee, as OCA have an existing policy around term limits, and we shouldn't be creating one retroactively that applies to a list of recommended appointees just because you don't want one of them. And I feel that we have a town manager handbook that has a policy in it. We have our precedent that we've set in this committee, which is not completely clear. I'm all for having a policy in the future, but our past policy is what we've done with the Planning Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals, which is fine. I think that we had a reason for appointing Mark Parent back to the Zoning Board of Appeals because he said that he would agree to just serve one year, and that was consistent with what we wanted with term limits, but we don't have an actual policy. And as one of us said in the last meeting, we don't necessarily, not all of us want a very specific policy because it was said in the last meeting that we want to take things case by case. So that's not a policy. We don't have a specific policy. So I think that the Finance Committee that Mary Lou was on was a different committee. This is a new committee. This would be a new position. She'd be a non-voting member of the new Finance Committee. So that is not, if we were saying anything about term limits, it wouldn't apply because that is not the same committee like we were talking about with the Planning Board. She didn't have notice of anything that might have been our requirement around term limits. And in fact, during the interview, I asked her how long she had served. She told me, and then she said, oh, is there, am I disqualified because of term limits? And I said, no, because no one had, there was, we don't have a policy. And we didn't discuss that. And that wasn't anything that I was telling applicants. And it was also, obviously I didn't have that direction. She didn't get any notice, and I didn't get any notice as the designee. And the Finance Committee had specifically requested someone with deep knowledge of municipal law, which is someone who has served on the former Finance Committee for a relatively long period of time. So I really feel like we shouldn't be able to look at a list of recommended applicants and decide after the fact, you know, like I said, retroactively develop a policy that was, that is going to pertain to that group. So I also find it really not acceptable that we have gone through a lot of procedural gyrations in the last two meetings before this one to try to derail this set of recommendations, especially one person. And including the issue around someone applying who hadn't gotten an interview, that was one possible way to derail it. The issue of whether or not we should start from scratch because two of the applicants couldn't come from 2 to 4 p.m., even though that was in our handout. And everyone had noticed of that the issue of not even having non-voting members residence on the Finance Committee at all. So there were a lot of procedural issues that were thrown out as possible ways to derail this in what appeared to be for reasons of just derailing the one applicant. And I feel like this is really going to have a chilling effect on people applying to be on boards and committees if they think that we are going to go to great lengths, including two of our members attending the Finance Committee meeting to speak about those last two issues. And that is of great concern to me because we didn't decide as a committee that you were going to do that. And that was a big surprise to me to hear from residents and constituents that you had represented us at the Finance Committee meeting. But it does appear that the Finance Committee doesn't want to change their hours, does want to have non-voting residents. And, you know, the bottom line is that we don't want to have a situation where if we don't agree with one person that's being recommended in a group on a partisan basis that we're going to have to figure out ways to undermine that application. I think I want to give other people a chance to respond here, especially since there are some claims that are being made about the motives of the members of this committee. Alyssa, you had your hand up first, I believe. We could thumb wrestle for it. So a couple of things. One, I am completely appalled that I would be accused of derailing the process when it had nothing to do with the individuals involved. Mary Lou is a friend of mine. This has nothing to do with the people who were being recommended. There was a staff screw up in terms of documentation that was provided to the town council about Finance Committee applicants. That is worth doing whether I agree with any of the candidates who applied or were recommended politically. I would say that if the devil himself had been the person who complained about that. And so I'm really offended, Darcy, that you would say that my concern about that process being broken was in effect an attempt to derail this. It was not. It is also true that we had a Finance Committee member come back to us and that kind of derailed our whole conversation last week. And that actually did happen, but that was not a member of this committee who tried to derail the process. And I absolutely object to the characterization that we don't have a policy in place for term limits. We do have a policy in place for term limits. The appointed committee handbook exists until the town council decides that it has a different policy. It is still a valid reference document, just like before the council came up with its public way regulation that GOL did for us. It did not revert at the moment of the council taking office to have the town council approve whether or not an event took place on the common, even though legally that was ours. That had been delegated to the town manager by a previous authority. Then we had GOL look at the whole thing and say this piece delegated, this piece not delegated, et cetera. And then we had a new policy. But until that new policy existed, we were still required to do parking. We were still required. We still let the town manager do the common, even though that was technically our purview. Because we have old policies that are in place until we replace them. I know George has expressed frustration too that he doesn't feel like we have a term limit, but we do have a term limit because we talked about it at this body repeatedly associated with both planning board and ZBA appointments. They absolutely, the idea of a term limit came up during both of those. We didn't agree whether or not there should be a term limit. I totally get that. But the policy was specifically addressed in those appointments. And like you said, Mark Parent, we said, we know we have the policy, but we want the one year and he wants a one year. And we specifically used the term limits policy as a reason to not reappoint the chair of the planning board. And so you sat here through all those where we did have a clear definition of term limits. And so I can totally understand that you might want this person on there because of the transition. Totally get that. But to say that there was no discussion or no agreement on term limits is not actually factual. We have the discussion. I do realize it's awkward when you're confronted with the question and the appointment. Oh, well, yeah, the old appointed committee handbook says this. We said this at the meeting, like there was not a hard and fast thing that you could hand out to the person. And maybe we can come up with something that's not entirely hard and fast. But we did have that conversation here repeatedly. And so that wasn't about this individual either. That was about the criticism we were getting as individuals who said, oh, people out in the community who had found the appointment packet and said, how come you didn't reappoint planning board, but you did reappoint, but you are doing finance committee. And when you say it's a new committee, I hear what you're saying. At the same time, I also have the history of when we took two old housing committees and we turned them into one new housing committee, we took one member from each of the old housing committees, gave them a one year term on the new housing committee because we wanted their expertise to come over. But we totally understood that, yes, they'd been working on housing issues for a long time. And so we did think term limits applied to those people. So I think a lot of this is just a matter of perspective. And we can totally disagree on how relevant it is at any given moment. It was relevant, more relevant to people associated with CBA than with planning board and maybe different for finance committee. But I absolutely strenuously object to the idea that any of this was an attempt to derail the process because it was all about the process, not about these individuals. Sarah. So I'm actually going to try really hard to become about what I say about this because I'm not sure if everyone heard me, but when this brings up term limits for when I was the interview designee for ZVA and the planning board, I went to great lengths to even write a brand new memo that was all mine, that was all me, about what makes up a healthy committee. And I presented the people that I presented to you, and I did talk very specifically about term limits. We had that discussion. One of the things was is you would keep someone over if it led to having more expertise if it was needed, which is why I recommended Mark Parent because I felt that his committee did not have, he still had a lot of young members there, and that if there had been somebody else there that I thought had had enough institutional knowledge to keep them on without violating a term limit, then I would have. But there wasn't, and I actually violated what is stated for term limits to let this person serve for one more year because there was no one else with that much experience. I took, I recommended taking off the chair who would only serve for a year who had an incredible amount of knowledge because I was abiding by term limits and I was trying to create what I said was a healthy committee. I believe I had said this many times, but as my final statement on why I believe that the people that I had I had chosen for planning board and zoning board of appeals was that I did not look at it politically. I did not. I looked at it as abiding by term limits, what made a healthy member, multi-member body, and that's how, and who was qualified. That is how I made that decision. I don't, I don't pander to anyone and I do not play politics and that was not a part of it. I have an issue with one, with one person. It has to do with term limits and I believe in consistency. That person I served with on finance committee, I consider a friend and a mentor. So I'm incredibly insulted that you would say that we would play politics because I tell you what, I will never do that. I'd also like to speak as someone who both. So first let me speak to your concern about the finance committee last week. I was present at the June 25th finance committee meeting. I went in my capacity as an individual because I was interested in one of their agenda items of discussion. I did not go there intending to speak for OCA, but when finance committee brought up the discussion of OCA, they asked for the input of both Alyssa and I who were there. However, I believe it is within my ability as chair of the committee that went called on to provide information from the committee that I can do so. I did not offer any opinions. I merely restated for the entire committee the debate that was had and asked for their feedback. So I did not express any opinions whatsoever. I did not express anything that was seen as representing the decision or opinion of the committee. I merely reiterated the debate and asked for their feedback. So I do not think I was in any way out of line in speaking to finance committee. I share Alyssa and Sarah's both surprise and offense in what you just said. You, by my account, you listed six different things and I think the first five have very valid concerns and I think we should discuss them. But the sixth thing is really surprising to me that you would actually disparage the character and motivation of your colleagues on this committee by saying that we are attempting to derail the process based on some type of partisanship. That is a really serious accusation that you are making against your colleagues on this committee that has no basis in fact, at least on my opinion, and that's based, I guess, on your speculation of our motives. I think the fact that we discovered that there was someone who had applied for finance committee who had not been contacted for an interview was something serious that we needed to discuss as a committee and get some answers on. I'm not sure if you think that we should have just ignored that. I think concerns, I think questions we had for finance committee based on a conversation we had with the chair last week were valid but to say that any of that was done to derail the process because we had an issue with one person is honestly an offensive accusation that I take very personally and seriously and so I'm surprised that you would say such a thing to the members of this committee who are just trying to make sure that we have a good process. I do have concerns with one recommended appointee Mary Lou. I will say unlike Sarah who served with Mary Lou and unlike Alyssa who is good friends with Mary Lou, I do not know Mary Lou. I have a relatively short political history in Amherst limited to about the past year and I don't know Mary Lou. I don't know her political leanings to be honest. What I do know is when I looked at those names I googled them and I saw Mary Lou listed on the old finance committee webpage and I saw that she had been appointed in 2008 and I thought to myself gee this is a new committee but in many ways it's very similar and if we have a rich pool of qualified applicants which we did and we have someone who has served for over a decade in that capacity perhaps it is time to hand that position to someone who is somewhat newer much like we did for planning board and zoning board of appeals. So my concern with Mary Lou has nothing to do with partisan politics because I don't know the partisan leanings of really anyone on this committee save for maybe the one who also ran for town council but I don't know Mary Lou and I also don't know Robert Hegner. My concern is that if you have good qualified people who have not served for over a decade on this committee why would we put forth someone who has? So I'm really concerned with where this debate has turned because it seems like it's being framed as something partisan when I think it is something that is very simple and that's something this committee has discussed with regard to how long people serve on committees. Other comments or questions? George? It's extremely difficult to take minutes at this meeting and to actually be an active participant and I'd like to express that in public. That's nobody's fault but it is very difficult to do these two things at the same time and also make any kind of coherent or intelligent comment but I will try. I agree with the previous speakers that this is not a matter I don't see of partisanship. The question that has arisen is one about being consistent and the issue of term limits and I'm learning as I do this. Some of our members have been involved in town government for many years and I very much respect their knowledge and expertise. I think that at times I am struggling simply to get caught up. So as the as pointed out there is a policy that has existed. I've been learning about it. I perhaps should have known a lot more about it before I sat on this committee but we have this policy does exist. It was used by our previous chair and she's explained very clearly why she did it. That makes sense to me. I did not agree at the time with that decision but the rationale was a reasonable one and it was accepted by the council. Now we face another appointment. There we have someone who is extremely qualified. No question about it. I actually do not know her personally at all. I have no idea what her political views are and I have no real interest in them but the question has been raised and it seems an appropriate one that if we do take seriously the issue of term limits and I'm learning quickly that this is a serious matter and we have applied it once already it seems not unreasonable to expect that we would be consistent in applying it in other situations. This is not a judgment on the member of our committee who went through this process and I think did a very good job but the problem has been raised and it seems not an unreasonable one and I understand the frustration of the committee member but I would urge her to try to refrain from characterizing people's motives as much as possible. Actually I'd suggest and I say this to myself as often as I can not to characterize them at all but I think in this case I would agree with the other members of the committee that this is not an issue of anyone's political views or about derailing any particular individual it's not about that at all. It is simply about or I see it as simply a matter of being consistent in the application of what we have done in the past in relation to people who have served for a very long time and in this case we have someone who's recommended who has served since 2008 and it doesn't seem unreasonable to suggest that we go back and find someone else that is also qualified since we have a rich pool and we try to be consistent in our application of this idea of term limits we still need to have a discussion about that I agree and I have my own views on that and they're they're evolving maybe devolving but I think that's for another time so I would that's enough I'll go back to taking minutes so one thing I want to say is George I feel you I'm trying to take also really good notes today so don't feel I'm gonna help with that you know one thing I think we have to recall is when we had a discussion of term limits not that long ago when we were considering our process for planning board and zoning board appointments long before we ever had names in front of us we made an active decision as a committee not to rigidly hold on to those term limits and so we saw that happen with zoning board of appeals right where we put forward a mark parent who began in 2013 but the understanding was always we didn't want to disqualify someone for term limits if they were qualified and we did not and we felt those qualifications were needed because they did not exist elsewhere in the pool and so you know Darcy you made a whole bunch of points about Mary Lou being extremely qualified I agree that we didn't that we didn't agree to hold anyone to term limits rigidly and you're right and so the idea when Mary Lou asked would her her long tenure on finance committee to qualify her your answer was correct no of course it wouldn't the question of course becomes if we're saying that we are not going to rigidly hold the term limits because we want to make sure that we bring qualified people forward and we recognize perhaps there are less qualified people in the pool I don't necessarily feel like that holds here and that's where I'm coming from in this I don't necessarily feel strongly about term limits to be honest I don't think that my concern is necessarily with having a hard and fast term limit I think those can often be counterproductive but when I look at a pool as rich as we had for finance committee with many people who had very good qualifications many of whom had served on the prior finance committee for far shorter periods of time than Mary Lou I don't feel as though we have to we have to jettison our term limits so if we had had if we had had a scant pool or if we had had people who we thought and they really shouldn't be on finance committee I would have no issue with Mary Lou serving for what at this point would be a 12th to 13th year on the finance committee but I don't feel like that was the case I felt like we had a really good pool and so the the flaw in our process that I think we've all recognized is you can't say to someone you can't say to the ochre designee I like this person better why didn't you choose them because those names are of course held privately but that's I think the situation I'm in is there are people who I saw in the applicant pool who I thought were highly qualified would bring great experience to the finance committee exactly the type of experience that finance committee asked us to bring forward whose names I don't see here and who haven't served for the length of time that this appointee has and so of course short of being able to say why didn't you choose this person my only real recourse to say I would prefer other people who I think also bring expertise but don't have the decade of tenure is to vote against this appointment that said Mr. Bachman has walked in the room I said I want to be respectful of his time so I think we're going to turn temporarily to publish a tree but we will return to this right after so I'm going to temporarily table this and bring it back to public trade tree committee so give you a second to pull up that memo if it's not right in front of you okay so thank you Mr. Bachman for joining us I hope you had a nice week off right thank you again welcome back yes um so uh I will hand this over to Darcy because she was the one who had some questions on public trade tree I guess um now that we have that opinion of the uh around open meeting law about the size of the pool are you able to tell us like the size of the pool for the shade tree committee thank um for shade tree committee anybody who's interested is this is one of those committees that is always looking for membership so um pretty much anybody who's interested is usually welcome to join the shade tree committee is I'm not sure so there were were there other applicants than the ones that were chosen no um yeah I just had a question about um about Claire Bertrand not having qualifications for this and why she was given a three-year term since she doesn't have any shade tree qualifications so a lot of the committee appointments aren't just about qualifications it's about diversifying you know having regular members of the community participate in decision making she came in with her interest and her interest in serving on the committee of some sort and a lot of people come in for these types of committees who want to just volunteer their times she has expressed a lot of interest in the visual appearance of the town and was willing to be a worker in helping with the planting is part of one of the big efforts for the shade tree committee is actually planting trees on once a month they go out and plant trees so they're also looking for people who are willing to to be worker bees and she um and every everyone who came forward were interested in doing that so how did you decide who got the I guess one of my questions is um if the now the charter requires that people on boards and committees have experience or expertise in the relevant area of the committee so if somebody comes along that doesn't they still get on the committee I don't think it requires that it requires it encourages diversifying our membership as well I'm pretty sure the charter does require experience or expertise in the relevant area of the committee because we went through this with the energy and climate action committee that's one sentence in the charter that I'm sure of so I think that she brings expertise in terms of being involved in the community knowing the community well advocating for trees and a natural environment a lot of people come to the shade tree committee without that who bring high energy and commitment to the environment I think that like Shoshana King who was also on your list she had she doesn't have anything background specifically in shade trees but she has a lot of energy and a lot of positive attitude towards wanting to help make sure that the town maintains its green the the tree canopy and things like that so um since the charter has been brought up I have it in front of me I'll just read I think the relevant section to which Darcy is referring which is 3.3c which is in making appointments the town manager shall seek to appoint individuals with relevant experience or with relevant expertise or experience and so I think what we're hearing from the town manager is the expertise and experience doesn't necessarily have to be content expertise it could also be organizing ability or ability to work in a committee I mean is that so I think that it's it's how we define the words expertise and experience and whether we define them narrowly or broadly Melissa did you have something you did this it's always open on my screen thank you does anyone else have questions for the town manager on public shade tree committee appointments is that public shade tree yeah okay I guess actually my follow-up to that is then because it is shall seek and as you'd already asked what was the pool and so when the pool is much larger than it's totally reasonable to say well I say it says shall seek and so therefore I want to see more types of experience represented like that I think that is one of the things we can discuss here based on the previous decision trees that we've used I think we've just found that in this particular case we now we know the answer but I don't think it's an unreasonable thing for us to ask even though it's not a hard and fast rule it's a shall seek are there any other questions for the town manager on public shade tree then in that case I will entertain a motion on public shade tree committee I'm sorry the motion would be that okoh recommends the town council approve the town manager's appointments to the public shade tree committee does anyone want to make that motion is there a second okay so the motion has been made by Alyssa seconded by George is there any further discussion in that case I'll call the question all of those in favor of the town manager recommending the town council approve the town manager's appointments to the public shade tree committee please raise your hand and say I I all those opposed abstain okay so it's four zero one Alyssa I have a question since we usually try and do very long written reports and I'm sure the town council reads every single page of but we aren't going to be able to do that for these two committees tonight because of the deadline that you brought up several times earlier is that I want usually when we write a report we try and characterize reasons for split votes and so I wonder if there's a comment just a brief comment that Darcy would like to offer to ask you to include in your report rather than we don't do the whole and where's the minority report we have the chair report out what all the views were right I would appreciate it Darcy you had a reason for the abstention well since you're here we did discuss and vote on the affordable housing trust we did recommend approval but there were two things we wanted to know in our report that since you're here we might as well give you a heads up on them one of which was for two of the I don't have the memo right in front of me but for two of the reappointments Nancy Schroeder and was it Tom Kegelman there was in the memo no mention of the original appointment and how long they had served so we do we have that information thanks to Alyssa but who got it from you but it wasn't in the original memo and then the only other thing on there was there was a feeling that there should have been some disclosure that one of the recommended appointees is a spouse of a current town counselor so that I did not mention that because that's not something that was discussed or taken into consideration during the process so but it could certainly be disclosed tonight if that's important yeah Alyssa so following up on that so I understand that it didn't come up during the interview and that's fine but I think that the public would be surprised if we didn't make some mention of it and whether or not the counselor is here to and considers recusal or whatever that is not really the relevant issue the relevant issue is that we're making a recommendation and we think it's a bio it's an actual piece of information the public might want to be aware of whether or not the counselor is here to talk about it but the other part it did bring us to was future caf questions like this might be the kind of thing we ask people to disclose because right now we have some funky wording on there that way predates all of us that's about don't list these certain people as the or we at least we did as references and so just kind of along those lines we may ask people to disclose or not because again we're just dealing with public perception that things are inside outside preferential treatment etc and so we just thought being made a very matter of fact about it it just addresses that but I see you have a different feeling well I guess one of my concerns is I don't know all the personal relationships that people might have and so I would not I'd hate to start to weigh in on some that I happen to know and there are others that I don't happen to know and it's just not always readily apparent what personal relationships people have I think if there are conflicts people should identify them themselves they know if they're acting on something that they have a conflict if I had a conflict I would certainly clear be clarified clear on that here so that that was my concern was that if you this one isn't would probably be obvious to a lot of people but might not be it wasn't a lot of use to me at the beginning until someone mentioned it so so I worry about trying to capture all the all the potential conflicts with me laying weight weighing in on that individually unless there's a standard and I thought about this because if we put in on the cat for something tell us if you're related to any of these people that can have to it you could say that's a good thing or that's a bad thing at you know Alyssa just pop I understand that completely but I also can see my and I do I get at the same time I also feel like if I'd been sitting if I'd sat here and didn't recognize that name myself recommended it to council and then somebody and then either the council themselves or someone else at council said did you know that then we kind of went on went on we're good with that right and like we because it was a piece of information we didn't have before but I totally appreciate that you know is it their mother-in-law or their nephew right are there any further questions for the town manager thank you great see you tonight okay so we will now return to agenda item 3a discussion and vote on recommended appointees for non voting resident members of the finance committee so it is 1042 one of our committee members who also happens to be our minute-taker today does have to leave a bit early today so and I want to make sure we get to some of these other items especially our schedule going forward given that we have discuss this at length for what is now our third meeting I do want to take a vote I also want to move on to term lengths however given that we have a member of the public who clearly wants to make a public comment and given that we have a member of the finance committee here who is also available I am going to use my right to take the agenda a little bit out of order and move public comment to right now I'm going to ask that public comment on any part of our agenda go right now because I'm not going to have a second public comment at the end of the meeting so if you want to speak on agenda item 3b which is recommended term lengths which we'll get to after we do appointments then this would also be the time to to talk about that so press it again oh yes okay thank you my name is Janet McGowan and I appreciate that you put public comment where it would actually have an impact because if I had made this comment after you voted I don't think it would have helped my participation or the idea of public comment I'm I'm here today to talk about Mary Lou Teilman a person who I often disagree with um and have had many debates and discussions with and done a lot of research with Mary Lou has deep experience in town budget issues especially involving the schools she has served on the Amherst School Committee she's a former educator and administrator for many years I know her a person who gathers facts and then gathers some more and then some more her strong suit is conveying complicated information and understandable charts and in prose she can write things clearly and I know that she updated and provided information to the counselors about the budget issues and you could have seen her experience she also presents information that is pertinent not just information that supports her view I think an extremely valuable trait she strongly that values open government process and listening to diverse opinions she encourages that she's not a behind-the-scenes person in any way and discourages any kind of talk outside of a committee meeting she also doesn't reflexively accept or reject whatever the current orthodoxy is which is super helpful to decision-making and good government she changes her views based on facts and discussions and she has changed mine she doesn't push people or committee members into one viewpoint and she accepts disagreement and explains why people are disagreeing in reports I think the arguments against her nomination are red herrings the new charter finance committee is not the same as the town meeting finance committee which is appointed by the town moderator it's got a different role there's some overlapping stuff but it's a very different role the membership is different it's chosen different it does not violate a policy against having more than one two terms this is going to be the first term for all members of the finance committee unlike the planning board and the zoning board of appeals which are old established creatures of state law they exist only because of state law this finance committee is a new creature of our new charter so I don't think terminate term and supply or the policy I also just want to say as a lawyer you can't as a government agency or entity decide we're going to apply a policy or not the policy actually directs your actions so if you disperguide or policy you're actually violating the policy and that's people your government doesn't do that agencies go through a lot of decision-making on policy sort of legislators it does no one's free to ignore it when it's convenient or as you know it they think it doesn't apply or shouldn't apply legal point I also think that previously councils were arguing that it was critical to have all seven planning board members with long experience and now seem to be arguing against that or applying different policies and I just don't like arguments of convenience Mary Lou has more experience in time than any current member of the finance committee except for councillor Steinberg most of the new finance committee members have weak experience with town budgets and this I think she'd be an excellent candidate to help in this transition period and longer I also think people need to be upfront about the real reasons for opposition and I'm not saying anything about anyone's motivation but as a member of public it's important to say that it's if arguments keep on switching and points of view keep on switching depending on candidate it's not a good look the impact of hiring Mary Lou Tilleman on the finance committee will reduce the power of the chair of the finance committee who will be the most knowledgeable person on that committee more knowledge equals more power it's easier to manage discussion and control recommendations or outcomes the committee will be so much stronger with two or three people with deep experience that can bring in different points of view and different information and histories and ideas you know I you know I know councillor Steinberg has been against this appointment he may simply agree with Mary Lou Tilleman's positions on different issues and not want her for this reason that's okay be upfront if we can talk about the real reasons and not you know publicly it makes a better government it's not a good look for town councillors to vote down very qualified candidates for reasons that are misleading and it's it's just it's not looking good so I really encourage you to look at Mary Lou for what she's done what she can contribute and you know how she can help our town and our budgets and she will be you know a great candidate a great great person that committee thank you Kathy Shane and I'm speaking both as a member of the public but also as a member of the finance committee I'm the vice chair so I want to talk first on the first issue that you took up earlier and it wasn't a question about the appointments per say on the affordable housing trust but there is a brief mention that the town manager will be a trustee and this if you look at the actual charge and the bylaws this and Alyssa will know this well the select board formally was the appointing authority for the affordable housing trust and there was one select board member on it and it's coming up to us our bylaws have not yet been rewritten for this but there was a question raised in the drafting on one person appointing all trustees and being a trustee which is different than when the select board used to be a group of five and one of them would serve and they went a little bit back and forth on whether to make that a council member on the trust so I just wanted to be able to raise that question tonight because it's it's embedded in the appointments that the town manager will take on the role of being a trustee so you weren't actually voting on appointing him because it's assigned to him but it's not assigned in the charge and we haven't rewritten that bylaw yet so it was I think it's something worth questioning and the reason I ask is because it is a trust and in the past when I thought of external private trusts having someone with a power to point trustees also be a trustee gives you a different role on the committee than you would normally want to have so I think it's it's just an aside issue that's not actually as much for OCA to take up you know we've got the bylaw's committee reviewing these but you saw a charge where the old charge was there and say don't worry about it see select board and think town manager and that's in the recommendations so that was my point on that on on the non-voting members of finance as you all know you asked to have an arms length distance from all of us on finance in terms of chatting about when you went once you were doing the appointments on seeing who to look on the pool I actually would have taken done a recommendation to bring only one person with past Amherst finance committee experience on and to who had experience elsewhere that was my own personal view because I think from my own experience if you have been on another municipal you've been on a corporate board you've had on a role and background you learn this really fast and it brings you to ask different questions you know so you're not imbued with this is Amherst only so so it's not a question on term limits or not I saw that several of the people had past experience on the finance committee and I wasn't going to make that a major criteria and I was going to do one of those and two of the others with with looking at the richness so that aside I think one thing you could consider we put in two-year terms for them for the non-voting members during the discussion of the charge Mandy said that we didn't have to worry about if we want might want to stagger them because I was arguing for staggered so you could do one of the people as a one-year term and the other is two-year terms so it's something worth considering with the three I'm not speaking at all about three names that have been recommended so it's more the group and then my last point and Evan came to the finance committee meeting to raise the question of did we still want non-residents did we should we or might we want to reopen what kinds of people what kinds of backgrounds and I was a very strong voice George was there at the meeting too actually this was at the meeting also three of you were at the finance committee meeting that yes we still want them and I think this idea that we will always have counselors who have a finance background is maybe not in the future or quick learners and we are only appointed for one year so we could have turnover on the finance committee and our non-voting resident members would bring continuity from year to year and I actually would like to see some turnover because I think every counselor who hasn't had an experience of looking at the budget it's a good experience so I think it's a good idea the charter wrote in as we may do it I think it is a good idea and I we had a long discussion on types of experience and I think you've done a good job in adhering to that and I just meant to broadly economics municipal finance policy because my training wasn't as an economist and it means I love numbers and I like to ask questions about them and you can give me tons of tables and they don't make me want to hide in a closet but I think those kinds of backgrounds of people ask questions and think about it so I do think I strongly stay with the yes this is a good idea but I'm offering you uh you could have one person be one or two people be one your terms and another person be two your terms so we could revisit this next year thank you for your comment I do again want to just make sure I clarify that I did not go to the finance committee with the purpose of speaking for that it just sort of happened I was very much there to observe their deliberation okay we have discussed this a decent amount does anyone have any further comments they want to add before we take this to a vote Darcy um I just want to um I guess to some extent soften my previous statement in in the regard that I know that there are members of the committee that um that do feel strongly about the term limits issue and that we've all thought about that a lot so that is clearly the reason why some of the people on the committee are are taking whatever stand that they're going to but um I I would like us to really think about um whether we could in this situation do something like what Kathy just suggested and we had talked about it our last meeting of dealing with this through the staggered terms um and if we are uncomfortable with someone who has had a lot of time in the former finance committee do something similar to what we did with mark parent which is give a one-year term um and then we won't it won't look like we're retroactively uh applying something to a list of applicants and um then we can you know we we would be able to give a recommendation to the council to do it in that form to to approve these this group of applicants in that form thank you sarah I would say that I I think that we did very soon we needed to clarify uh what we mean uh we need to do in writing and make it April what we mean about relevant expertise the same for term limits and the same for what we mean by an entire pool um discussing names does not make me feel comfortable it feels incredibly partisan and it feels unprofessional but if someone's going to do that and say these names and I'm just going to come right out and say that um I am flummoxed at people in the community and counselors thinking that this committee did something purely for partisan or political reasons or didn't um I'm going to say that I had presented um the idea of what I believed is firm term limits um I'm not really one for one-offs so it was term limits and then it was how you balance with the rest of a committee and and obviously we need to take a really clear look at that and make a hard and fast rule because I agree I don't think anyone on this town council should ever bend any rule to fit a partisan political agenda what is fair for one point of view should also be fair for another point of view and if I'm going to to speak to term limits I'm going to speak to them consistently regardless of what any other political ideas a person has and if I'm going to say I think we need to bring in new people I am also going to be fair in that no matter what a political preference is fair and balanced and consistent is incredibly important and no one in government should ever bend something to please or to pack or to help strengthen one political agenda over another so I would say in my vote I am standing up for what I presented that I thought was fair in term limits and in brand new ideas that's how I feel about it and I feel like because this other idea is so pervasive and keeps being brought up I need to make that very clear crystal clear Alyssa I was hoping to make a motion please so and now I don't have all three other names in front of me and I don't want to do what I criticized another counselor for joining the other day when they couldn't remember the third name of someone so would someone please read the three names to me again because I know you have this right in front of you counselor Ross do we want to do them separately we voted last okay can I I'll make my motion and then I'll speak to it I'll try and follow the town meeting thing Hegner I just want to make sure I said it right so I'll make my motion and then explain it and then we'll see if we want to split the motion maybe make sense so the motion is a one-year term for Mary Lou Tileman a two-year term for Sharon Poban Ali and a two-year term for Robert Hegner I just wanted to say his name what I think is correctly second that then my my rationale for this is we voted last time as you said we had a long discussion long before public comment today about whether or not we were going to stagger the terms and how long they needed to be as you referenced earlier at RC and so I believe based on our precedent of yes we have used term limits and yes we have looked at the health of the committee for a one-year overlap I think it's entirely appropriate to go ahead and appoint Mary Lou Tileman to a one-year term appoint the other two to two-year terms and then the idea being that doesn't prevent us from reappointing I mean the council of course from reappointing the one-year term a year from now and saying you know we really still need this particular person versus who else is in the pool but I think it speaks to both the term limits and to the expertise level and as I mentioned before previous redesign of committees that took people who had expertise like the reason to say that her term length on the finance committee doesn't count toward term limits but her experience is really valuable because it doesn't make sense you can't have both those can't both be true so she has the experience because of her length of service and that is why she's being brought forward there but therefore I think to reflect to what we did with zba and planning board that a one-year term would be appropriate and then two two-year terms then we have some staggering and we she also has the opportunity if she should so choose after all her many years of service to continue and apply again for another one year that'd be great but I did we talked before about the fact that we voted on a maximum of two years so I don't think three years is on the table anymore okay uh so there's a motion on the table I want to make I intend to vote against the motion and I want to just briefly explain why we as OKA designed a very unique process and we always said that there's a question at some point of if you see people in the CAF pool who you would prefer to be the appointees but are not brought forward how do you express that and how do you get that person forward and the answer was you vote against the recommended appointees with the hope that they will then go back and pull forward someone that you want in this case there are several people in the applicant pool who I think have the relevant experience that finance committee says they're looking for the relevant expertise and who would be very capable but do not do not present the same dilemma of having served for over a decade on the finance committee which has made several members of this committee uncomfortable and we know at least one other member of the council uncomfortable and so I think that if we have people who bring qualifications and expertise without bringing along that concern then that would be preferable and so because I can't make a motion to replace one name with another name I'm simply going to express that I have other preferences and vote against the motion are there other comments before I call the question so the motion on the table is to recommend the council appoint Sharon Povinelli and Robert Hegner for two-year terms to the finance committee and recommend the council appoint Mary Lou Thelman to a one-year term to the finance committee the motion has been made and seconded is there any final comment on this in that case I'm going to call the question all of those in favor raise your hand and say aye all those opposed raise your hand and say no okay the vote is three to two the motion carries so that takes care of names may I ask a follow-up question please do so again since you're since the burden is on you tonight to report on what the variations were on our votes is there anything that you and Sarah I mean just want to say because you may have different reasons for voting the way you voted just to be clear or so when we report out tonight we don't go what I think I can I can follow up with Sarah but it sounds like my concerns were preference for other candidates and her concerns were applique uniform and consistent application of term limits correct okay I just have one question please the you had asked me not to file a report on our deliberations over the last three weeks so is there going is this going to be reported at the time council meeting tonight and if so in what form so because we need to give the council notice and give the public note 48 hours we will not the council will not be taking this up tonight so my intention is for their report and for the vote to be on the july 22nd so this leads into agenda item number five discussion of the two reports so as far as the report for the finance committee I want to follow the process that we used for planning board zoning board of appeals rank choice voting participatory budgeting which is that we will submit your original report with a cover memo that describes this deliberation and as the oka designee you're responsible for writing that this will be a tough one because there was quite a bit of there were three meetings worth of deliberation and lots of opinions so I would ask that anyone who had a dissenting opinion perhaps share that opinion with Darcy for inclusion in the report so that we have the the deliberation accurately represented but that won't be until the 22nd I don't intend to report on this tonight unless I am explicitly asked by the council as to what's going on with finance committee but I would keep that report very brief and basically say you'll see something more full for the 22nd so my report tonight I'm not doing a written we have a written report that's already done I'm not doing an additional written report for the two committees that we voted on today but I will give a very short oral report on public shade tree and also on affordable housing trust but everything that has to do with finance committee will be for the july 22nd meeting and again Darcy you'll be responsible for that are there questions or comments about that Alyssa so just to follow up I mean obviously you guys will work out the deadlines associated with that but we did have some piece parts brought together for our last meeting based on our previous weeks deliberation plus the kinds of handouts that we've been using like including the finance so luckily there's already that you'd worked on things I'd worked on things there's already a combination thing and I appreciate the awkwardness of we were definitely going to talk about conservation commission and the trust tonight but we weren't going to talk about finance committee but it's gotten so much more public attention that it seems kind of weird that the people who are sitting here right now know what our vote was but the town council won't until they see our report and so I don't think it's unreasonable if you wanted to report on where we were because I've heard no indication that we're going to change that you know like next Monday morning but it is an awkward it's it's a different kind of position that we're put in and then on a completely different note when we have time I want to address what I believe are misstatements of fact associated with the trust and the town manager's position there and I know we're about out of time and so but I actually don't agree with what was stated during public comment and I want to state what I believe the lot to be. So we'll the council will be discussing obviously this tonight um I considered whether or not we should as OCA deliberate on the town manager being the on the affordable housing trust I felt as though that was really a discussion for the full council because it has more to do with the bylaw itself than for this committee which is why I didn't bring it up and put on the agenda but I do think that's something that should be discussed by the council. If I could just say briefly then if you look at the town manager's report he actually does to his credit quote mass general law this isn't just about our local bylaw and doing a find and replace for town manager and select board as he clearly states here the select board appointed the entire trust and then sent somebody to serve on it. Town manager appoints the entire trust and then serves on it because the mass general law which we can't change with our local bylaw says chief executive officer. Chief executive officer used to be the select board in many cases not always it's not now it's the town manager. I'm totally listening to anybody who's concerned about it being an appointed rather than elected authority but those are two those are separate concerns and the mass general law is quite clear and our charter says the town manager is chief executive officer. There's no question as to whether or not that has anything so the bylaw has to conform with that. All right so again with reports finance committee will be the 22nd but I can mention it tonight. We have a written report for the council. I'll also be giving a brief oral report on public shade tree and affordable housing trust. I'm going to skip over the agenda item on town manager evaluation but I do want to come to we've already done public comment to the last one which is July and August meeting schedule. As you are well aware we are now the only committee of the council that meets weekly every other committee meets twice a month. For a period of time that was absolutely necessary we had a lot to do we have far less to do now we are through our slog of appointments. So I am proposing although I believe as chair I can just call it but I would love your opinion a new July and August meeting schedule that is in your packet that will take us down to twice a month. I put on there and days are encircled are the days that I'm proposing Ocha meets the days that are highlighted green our town council appointments. I also highlighted the 30 day before remarks. Let me briefly explain my rationale for some of these. I propose that we in Georgia I know you have to go so feel free. I propose that we do not meet next week we have met every week since forever and so I propose we take a break next week. The logical next meeting then would be the 15th. I am not here on the 15th but my and so I am proposing we not meet on the 15th as well because I won't be available but beyond that my secondary concern was that after the July 22nd meeting the next meeting of the council will likely be August 19th since there is a push to cancel our August 5th meeting. 30 days before August 19th is July 20th. If we meet on the 15th but not the 22nd that means that if the town manager submits to the council an appointment for the 16th, 17th, 18th or 19th and we don't meet on the 22nd we can't weigh in on that appointment for the meeting on the 22nd and we and because the council doesn't meet within 30 days then we will have no ability to weigh in on that. So meeting on the 15th and not the 22nd leaves open the possibility of the town manager submitting an appointment memo in that week that we have no ability to ever act on. So as much as it is awkward to say we're going to meet on the 22nd and vote on anything that he submits in the next three weeks it at least preserves our ability to do that. In August I'm proposing we meet on the 12th which gives us time to act on anything for the meeting on the 19th and gives us some time and then again on the 26th I am also away the week of the 19th so I prefer not to meet then. This would reduce our workload meeting twice a week and bring us more into conformity with how all other committees of the council work. Are there questions, comments, concerns about this meeting schedule that I put forth? Darcy? Just wondering if we're going to be able to keep up with the workload. I think that's certainly a concern and I think if we feel as though we are falling behind we can always schedule additional meetings. What I will say is I think that bulk of this committee's workload is behind us. Our main priority now will be as far as a time sensitive piece of our workload we'll just be keeping up with the town manager appointments. I do intend to have a town conversation with the town manager about sort of his timelines and expectations to make sure that we don't have a deluge that we can't keep up with but given that we have now taken care of all town council appointed committees I believe our workload is lessened from the past several months and we no longer need in every week meeting and we can go to a twice a month meeting like every other council committee. Alyssa? Thank you I um sorry trying to talk fast but George is already gone so what's the matter? Is that we have a ferocious workload ahead of us in terms of discussing process right? Certainly. And so but I don't think that we're going to be able to have very much of that conversation over the summer again because so many people are gone of various overlapping amounts of time and it's not something you want to have two or three of us just decide and then well three or more of us decide and then take that to council so while I don't want us to lose sight of the fact that we all have been telling council we're gonna look at the process we're gonna look at the process that we have every intention of doing so but it'll be like in September as opposed to this summer and I think that's I think that gives us all time to be thinking about better processes alternative processes because I know we know parts of what other communities do but we don't know their full process and so whatever we want to pick and choose we can we can all bring proposals to a future OCA meeting but I think it is fair and I welcome the idea of some respite from this in terms of just then focusing on the town manager's point in making sure we meet those deadlines and then talking we don't really have to do anything associated with the town manager evaluation except as counselors rather than as OCA and so looking at and then we have goals right but that hasn't been a super high priority of mine and so looking at that process question and just being able to tell the council we'll start talking about it in September where we may probably we will need to meet at least twice a month surely to have those conversations but I think we're fine for the summer just in terms of getting people to the table anyway yeah I will say when I first set out to do this I actually tried to plot out a twice a month meeting schedule through December and I decided to just put forward for July and August so that we could just see how it goes and if we and so the feeling could be that you know at the August 12th or 26th meeting if we're saying okay twice a month isn't working we really need to schedule more then maybe we go up to three times a month but at least to give our given that we have put in a tremendous amount of work I would I would argue perhaps we've more than any other committee since January I think that it's it's good for us to have take two months where we're not here every Monday Darcy yeah I can I guess I can possibly see doing this in the summertime I think that it's going to be hard to avoid having the town council or the town manager appointments getting automatically confirmed was in 30 days because of an every two week schedule it's just suit going to be hard to to do it with like I'm said I I think that there's going to be a lot of situations a lot we haven't had any situation yet where that happened but I can't see how we're going to really avoid it if we meet every two weeks but maybe I I don't have any answer for that it's it's pretty intense meeting every week yeah I agree to be perfectly honest I sat down on Saturday to figure out this calendar and trying to very much make sure that we I didn't propose to put us in a situation that would screw us over with the town manager appointments and actually the biggest challenge was not us meeting every two weeks it was the fact that there are usually we have a council meeting every other week but in July and August we have three weeks between the two July council meetings and then we have a full month between the July and August so actually the greater challenge was not our meeting schedule it was actually the town council's meeting schedule but if we're meeting every two weeks and the council is meeting every two weeks I I think we'll be okay but again if we find that it doesn't work then we can always revise this okay so in Melissa so and like you said you're going to talk to the town manager and so you'll say assuming we agree we're not I don't think we're actually voting on this but we agree that this is our schedule bear this in mind for your 30 days yes and help keep track of it and if there's one that comes up that he's like man these people don't even have a quorum and it's not the timing's weird then we'll see if we can call a meeting right so okay so as far as action items I will talk to the town manager about this Darcy you're going to be writing the finance committee report anyone who wants to make sure their opinion is included in that can send their opinion to Darcy for inclusion and with that Darcy so that has that's for the posting on July 18th that sounds right try to get it done before yeah I would say try to get it to them at the latest the 17th and that gives them time and and remember just as with your recommended appointees for this committee it needs to be added to the packet and also attached to the actual town council meeting posting okay so with that we will be meeting again on July 22nd in this room at 9 30 and so I will adjourn this meeting at 11 20 a.m