 You're all set. Have a great meeting. Thank you, Athena, Athena, I'm sorry I'm going to call to order this special meeting of governance organization legislation is June 24th. It's 10 32 it looks like on my clock and Pursuant to governor Baker's March 12th order Suspending certain provisions of open meeting law this meeting of GOL is being conducted via remote participation Because this is a special meeting There is no provision for for comment public comment So that will actually not be part of the agenda. So looking on the agenda It's actually listed Who's the chair of this we'll talk to him later, okay? But as a special meeting according to our rules of procedure, we actually do not have public comment And I let me correct that we do not have to have public comment. We do not have to have thank you so I will have a discussion with the chair later about the agenda We are our focus today is exclusively on the town manager evaluation process and on the forms and going to hand over the meeting to Lynn and have her take us through the documents which are all in your GOL folder on sure point should we confirm everyone can hear and be heard Okay, we can do that. Let's start with Mandy. I'm here. Okay, Andy I'm here too. All right great Lynn here. All right and Pat here. All right. I can hear and see everybody and So Lynn Passing it off to you. All right. So first of all I sent in an email yesterday All of the most up-to-date documents because I didn't know how to create a previous document portion in the folder I'm sure Angela can help me do that and the reason That we want to look at the up-to-date ones is because I've started to make changes and Things like that. So let me just say we will come back to the timeline But there's no sense looking at the timeline until after we go through the various documents And but however on the timeline where you'll see that I said note one note two no three and no four note four So note one is all about the town councillors Portion of the evaluation note two is all about the staff portion note three is all about the committee chairs commissions and committee members and note four is the public and Later on which we're not going to try to deal with now is Note five, which is the manager self-evaluation clearly he writes that note six will be the the contract and I have a copy of the most recent one and Note seven, which is all the way on the second page is the draft goals Which I would advise that we start working on now and maybe one councillor Might want to take major responsibility for that. I'm willing to do it but if somebody else is just dying to do this I'm more than glad to have them do that and then Note eight is actually the draft memo So what I've tried to do is use the previous process There's a couple places where I'm suggesting some changes this year But in going through this I will tell you it is really time we relook at this whole process because For example, when we get to the issue of the staff survey We have been using the identical staff survey now for probably at least eight or nine years and Have not revised it. I'm assuming it's kind of a canned survey that came from some place And I have not taken the time to try to go and find a new one So let me with unless you have questions about the timeline and the place How I'm trying to relate the notes to The timeline, I'm going to go on and we'll start with the manager evaluation Okay So I wrote a note on this. I'll pull it up As soon as I can get my screen to cooperate Okay, can you see and that's not what I want right now. Sorry So as you might recall from Can you see the screen the town manager evaluation 2019 Okay, so as you might recall from the previous Work of the council this Oh, this is mislabeled. I'm sorry Yeah, that was This should be 2020 right right So in last year when we did this we would take each one of these small areas And we would have a rating scale And this year when the group that did the goals met We purposely have seven big goals And we said this year We don't have to rate each one instead What we're suggesting is that at the end of each section the person the councilor write comments using as a guide the subcategories And then up on the top They actually rate for that particular area of responsibility Now this can be done either going back and using survey monkey which allows for a I'm There's no limit on the number of characters in the comment and it would automatically compile the Um totals and it would automatically compile all of the comments, but it also allows you to show individual counselor Evaluations Be published on the website the difference here is And and it by the way, this could also be done as a word document And it just means that whoever is going to do the write-up has to compile You know all of the ratings in here and come up with an average that that's only seven calculations And so if people feel first of all this is a better way to go and second of all that People would prefer it to be in a word document. I think that's perfectly fine I did spend some time with a survey research person um former colleague Uh to look at the various options and for what we're trying to do survey monkey is the best We don't have a license for qual tracks and The other option is google and a lot of people do not trust google. They feel like it can be Uh Basically isn't secure So Our choices first and foremost is is this format acceptable? and second is Do we want this survey to be done in survey monkey or do we want it to be done as a word document? Okay, so those as I see it are the two choices with regard to this the other issues I raised um And is also at the very end of the survey There's another room for general comment As well so that you can get done with the whole thing Uh, I did not add an overall rating But if you would like I could add an overall rating as well So So let me just go back over this. This is the 2020 It would only ask for seven ratings. They would look like this It asks everybody to write comments And then you go to the next item you do a rating And you do your comments And you continue on like that to the very end Where you do your last set of ratings And your comments and then you have an additional comment section Okay Now I will tell you there are a couple councils not not many to be honest That have said they would prefer to rate on each individual little item Um, and so I think we need to decide as gol How you want this to go forward to the council Manjo, you have your hand Yeah, um I like the idea of an overall rating um So I I I hadn't thought about that, but I think I would add that in Another general comment is given this weird year Um, I wonder if we I think I would like to see In addition to the additional comment section A section on comments related to the handling of The international pandemic, you know the pandemic covet 19 Since that consumed Four months of the year one third of the year And he only had these goals since December So it actually consumed about half of the period In which these goals were present Um In terms of rating just the big one I think for some of these big categories that works But For others, I think it's really hard to give a one all rating and and you know So if you look at like relationship to the town council, there are three things that he's supposed to Be doing to meet the goals three goals So giving an overall rating with three individual goals doesn't seem like it's overly onerous And wouldn't give him information, but when you look at goal number one The economic goal There are Three sub-goals and within those sub-goals each sub-goal has Two or three sub-sub-goals and one of those sub-goals has like Multiple additional sub-goals so that you know, there's there's a whole lot of goals in there Some of which in reading through Weren't met probably um, and so if you were being honest, you'd be Writing probably an unsatisfactory for some of these And for others they were easily met um And so I'm not sure an overall rating on strong fiscal management as a whole gives Paul would give paul and provide paul with any real help in figuring out Where he was strong and where the council thought he was weak um I mean the comments would but i'm not sure if i'm looking through goals in number one and some of them You know, some of the sub-goals are commendable. Some are satisfactory. Some are needs improvement. Some are unsatisfactory. I'm not sure how I rate an overall Rating on that so I was thinking maybe there's a compromise Of maybe we do all the big goals and overall rating but also every letter goal Not any numbers. So like goal one would have four ratings maybe an a b c You know a rating on goal a maintain and strengthen strategies for long-term fiscal health health and rating on b Determine the financially sustainable strategies and the rating on c administering the annual budget and then an overall Strong fiscal management rating and maybe we could do that for each of the seven goals It would increase the number of ratings by about You know four to five times because there's somewhere between three and five goals Okay, so there's three in the there's three in number one and then some of them have five In number three, there's one two three four five five's the most Four has five five This one has three Oh six economic development has six I guess And number seven has three So it would add to the number of ratings, but I think it would provide better information To the manager without overly burdening the counselors to try and rate every single thing Mm-hmm. Okay, Andy uh So I was trying to think uh the Point that was uh Brought up about What was the effect of the uh pandemic on his uh And how he handled it. There's also We need to find some way to recognize that the pandemic affected His ability to achieve some of the other goals in part just because of Time his time and staff time to support it and But we need to make sure that We give a balanced Inquiry in that area But I agree that an inquiry into the Bring that topic up makes sense Um Just as an aside, I didn't bring up the introductory Uh Email, but I believe I mentioned it in the email and when we go back we should look at that But go ahead Okay, and I guess the other thing is uh Lindsay had now had the experience for one year of putting this together I always felt that there was two burdens with a number of checkoff boxes In the number of separate comment sections that run those forms and Part of it was all of the counselors or select board members who were filling it out in the past And the other was the Person who was in the role as Chair or president to kind of combine it all and I recognized as soon as that came up that going from five select board members to the 13 counselors Is in and of itself Creating a crisis that was making a horrible task into an impossible task So when you have to give your honest Guidance from being the only one who's been in that role Is to whether you think the expansion that Mandy recommended is going to interfere with the Desire that you have to make this manageable for that So let me answer that in two ways And this is referring to the past in a way that assures you that I did not break open meeting law I as president or as a counselor Who was in charge of this had the option of asking Another counselor to help And I did okay The second thing is I actually like the sub ratings As someone writing this up. I frankly think it's easier to have ratings Uh, I I like having fewer and I think the way Mandy joe's proposed it Actually is not only doable I agree that it gives paul more options, but I also think it gives counselors more options of how they can give feedback I like that idea Pat was that you yes, it was a me too Okay, I didn't see hands because I don't know. I'm sorry. I didn't do that. No, I didn't see it. Anyway, so don't worry Okay. Yeah, it's your fault. I think it's a really good compromise Of not having them all. I mean think about this area with all of them being ratings And by the way when the group got done with these last year We looked at this and said well, we certainly didn't achieve brevity Um, but nevertheless george you have your hand up. Um Just wondering also about the coven 19 whether that should be added as a Something that needs a rating or is it something that I guess first should it be added and secondly Does it then get a rating and then comments? On the form or is it simply something that we're being encouraged to keep in the back of our obviously all of us Will be very much in the front of our minds as we fill out this evaluation That's so much of what paul has been asked to do and is being evaluated on has been, you know, seriously hindered To say the least by by this crisis. So that's something all of us will be thinking about when we write our comments Do we want a separate item here? Um, sounds like the answer is yes, but i'm asking That would require a rating and then potential comments on that specific topic Hey, um, there's two people with hands up Pat Can you unmute and talk? See I should just let leave it unmuted. Um, I like the I would like the opportunity to make comments related to how He's been handling the pandemic crisis. I don't want to rate him on that I I want to do ratings individually, you know I support what mandy is saying about overall rating but individual ratings of the subcategories But I really it feels very on to me to rate him on his handling of the crisis It just makes me uncomfortable. I don't even know if I could articulate a reason Joe Yeah, um, I think there's two issues here, uh talking about our understanding of how and what we think he's done with the crisis itself Um, I agree. I'm not sure we have the ability to rate on whether it's been great or not But I think commenting on it would be fantastic um Since it's been such a major part of what he's had to transition to um But the second area is how that transition and having to deal with all of that unexpected crisis Um, that that continues for so long, you know months not a week um Has affected his ability to meet the actual goals we set and so That I don't think that issue belongs in rating his response to the crisis or Responding to the crisis. I think that belongs in each of the comment areas For each of the goals and so maybe When we add the words, you know comment or additional comment at the end of each of these on that um Include something like, you know, including your assessment as to how It the co vid has affected the ability to meet these goals or something like that I don't know what the wording would be but but specifically indicate in each of those comment periods Yeah, talk about whether you think his inability or ability to actually meet some of these was affected by Having to deal with this crisis type thing Hmm. Okay. So something like that with each comment So let me just give you an example, but and again, I think this is very reasonable under here identify additional sources of revenue Well, you know that got seriously turned upside down but He applied for all kinds of other stuff so Okay, are there other comments about this? So this is what I've heard Under each comment individual comment Oh under each category Provide a rating for the capital letters A, b, c, d, whatever. Okay Keeping the rating overall Second under each comment Add something to the comment section that basically States including how this was affected how the ability to achieve this was affected by co vid. Okay Then I've heard that at the end of this Not only do we have Oh, we have an overall rating We have additional comments And then we add comments Related to this handling of the international co vid 19 pandemic Not a rating Questions comments. Did I get that? Did I hear that one right? Yes I mean that works for me. Do Do we know whether the council expects us to vote on this before they all go out? Bring it back That's a very good question. I I mean, we have a meeting on Monday Uh, I can quickly review our george can You know give out a report from gl And we can take it from there Um, let me stop sharing this and share with you Um a different document This is where I wrote notes to you about the ratings and so forth but more importantly uh, this is the message that I revised and making a point that The we didn't adopt the goals until this date And then I did make a note about the COVID pandemic, but I should probably Add that we specifically ask at the end you rate this So just to be clear you're proposing to rate something that was not stated in the performance goals that he was So it's add an overall rating No, and make additional comment For COVID so we're not rating for COVID. Is that what you meant Andy? I just was trying to Picture the question coming up is to you have town manager performance goals that didn't anticipate What the goals would have to be if we had a pandemic? Because who would have ever thought to put that into a performance goal So we want to recognize that It is not part of the performance goals Something like that in there I wrote a note to myself Which I don't know if you can you see that? Now we can Okay Just a clarification from me if I can When we say overall ratings I just my memory is not good today. I guess we're talking about Providing a rating for his performance overall or are we talking about I'm sorry. Yeah So in addition to rating him and all these various categories and subcategories We're also going to be asked to provide a rating for his performance overall Yep And I guess I would like to hear some argument Further discussion as to why we think that's necessary To be honest with you I I think it's a hard one to do I mean, I can understand rating someone on specific things and even subcategories of things And then leave it at that I'm not sure what value there is in Um providing an overall performance rating Given that you've gone through, you know, I mean from the point of view of paul's benefit to paul Is to have as I think mandy made a point very well that We want this to be useful to him Um, so I'm not sure what this kind of rating really does for him Um, as opposed to specific things that he can look at and go, okay You know that looked like it went well or that looks like it needs work or that really didn't work. Well um, at least it gives him some Something to work with But an overall rating seems to me. I'm just trying to understand why what's the point? I mean, it won't take much time But it just adds to the burden of the counselor And maybe they feel they have to justify it, but they've already provided all kinds of comments and ratings above Um, so help me understand why we think this is valuable both for paul And Maybe it's for the public. I don't know. Maybe it's well, let me just point out that depending on how that one comes out That will be the headline If we don't have it then, you know, they can make up whatever right I just yeah George has convinced me to get rid of it even though I said it sounded good I just wondering I I don't you know I don't need to be very helpful to paul, but maybe there's a place for it in terms of the The optics, I don't know The press I don't know The optics I guess are the letter You know town manager overall evaluation headline. He gets a blank See mine is b plus. It's stupid Yeah He either gets commendable satisfactory needs improvement and by the time you get done You're going to say we had five counselors that said this three that said this Five that said this I I'm agreeing with you george I just yeah, I mean So I just took it out of the other Of place. I just said we'll do comments Then additional comments which will be Some are a summary of additional areas not identified and then comments related to the handling of the international covid pandemic You could even combine those last two if you wanted again, it's a decision for the group, but Um, again, I'm trying to keep this as simple as we can given the complexities You could combine those last two into a single You know comment extra comment area where you just say and Keep me, you know and including, you know handling of covid-19 But maybe people want a special thing just for that if that that's fine, but um You know, I'm worried about town counselor burnout. I mean just as you make your way through this You know And I will tell you from last year And you can see this yourself. Some people wrote pages Right other people Hardly wrote a thing And the problem that that leaves you with by the way Then the only written stuff you have Is the person who wrote pages, right? And so it leaves it to the person writing the overall evaluation To come up with a balanced way Of talking about what all of the counselors have done for the ratings the little bit that some most counselors have said And then putting in Some of the highlights of what a counselor who was much more Lengthy in their comments have done and we had that situation last year I'm hopeful that lessening the number of ratings encourages people to write more Because we rated so much It's almost like well, I just gave all the ratings. What can I add? Whereas if you're lessening how many your rating You have more to add potentially Which is the one downside of Putting in the ratings for each numbered each letter each major letter is More sections you do the more you feel blood out before you would stand by the comment So we can encourage them to please add some written comments Okay, anything else on this because I want to make sure we get through all four of them Okay, right I'm going to stop sharing here And now we're going to go to the next one and this is the staff and the staff This is an area and I just want to be very very clear this is an area that Angela Rihanna Athena Joanne in HR and Evelyn I've met with that group twice And they have made various comments Much of which is summarized here and then Angela Put into a one drive all of the evaluation material grouped by years and Am I sharing a screen? No, not at the moment. I'm sorry um Angela put all of the um evaluations grouped by year And yesterday when I was getting this stuff together and in final form to give you I went back to see whether or not I was actually looking to see if I could find a Word document of the staff evaluation and what I found is going back all the way to 2014 or 13. We've been using the same staff evaluation form The big issue is and I have now posed this to Paul And he has asked Evelyn to look into it And it's it's the following comment Which I have to go and show It's under tracking, but I believe Thank you So I want to show the markups No, so under simple markup. There's a box that one No, yep So right here it says Please please be aware that these submissions will Be and it didn't say summarized. It said Be made available to every town council member and town manager In other words, we Sure, you a anonymity, but by the way we plan to share it with everybody with your name on it Or individually Staff are very reluctant. So the question I have asked Paul and he has since asked Evelyn is is there any requirement? legally That we have to show individual or can we just summarize and share only the summary and this is not only true For this, but it's for chair comments as well as public comments um Staff person and I wanted to be critical I would be reluctant I mean, I liked the change the question is can we make this change? That's the question and I'm waiting for an answer from Evelyn now And but can any of you Andy? Can you think of a reason why it was this way? You're you need to unmute Yes, but uh because Val just came in I had shut it down for a minute. Um In the select four days We did not Require name Beyond is made on the submission From staff so that the staff was coming in Essentially is an anonymous as people could make it out to be And for the most part, um, you couldn't figure out who the staff were and You also That's what departments they were So that's another alternative to ask is why are we putting the Should we have the name not be required to be included and um, does that invite Invalid comments or people trying to make this score a point You're saying don't include them Well, it's an alternative I think that one of the issues that had come up in prior years was If a union is in the midst of negotiating and is unhappy with how negotiations were going with the members of that bargaining unit Use the evaluation as an opportunity to Score points or whatever The questionnaire itself is drafted does not even have a space for a name Right So, you know, but but again, I I hear Lynn's point even if there's no name depending on what you write It could be at least traceable back to a department. Yeah You know, just remember that from last year and reading them Many identified at least the department they were in Just by or you could guess so, you know, angela. I really want you to chime in here if you have comments Okay, I mean the discussion has been great Okay Mindy Joe I Unless there's a requirement for names and departments I don't think we should include them and I don't think we should be I mean, we're not going to take the individual comments and make a summary of them We're going to just show counselors all comments They just won't be attributable to an individual survey So what survey monkey will print out for this is The ratings for all of the questions, which I'll show you in a moment and all of the comments It just won't have the survey and that person's comments And also saying is eliminate the department and eliminate the name Is the staff going to do a survey monkey survey because all we have is a PDF And they had an email and we were going to provide them with paper copies and all and if they're not if they're all submitting on paper Last year, I think we got scans of the paper that we then turned back in Is someone going to be typing everything into survey monkey? All right So this brings us to the next question. Okay And and another another suggestion was made Is that we give people both a cover letter And a form don't put it in an envelope And but give them a return envelope And they can put it and it you know, it's addressed to town hall And they can put it in town hall mail that circulates across among all the buildings We've also had it suggested That we find a external person to which they can send their response And I have now identified a woman works independently I have worked with her in the past and she is very good at these kinds of things So what we're trying the overall issue is and I'm just going to say we may be chasing a rainbow here I don't even know if we want to call it rainbow No matter what people have done in the past the highest response from staff I've ever seen is low 40s Last year we had 30 or 31 So over all of the years that we have data for It doesn't matter what we've done so If we send these to someone who isn't even a town employee I assume we would be technically contracting with that person and paying that person to do this because if we're not doing that We've got huge personnel. I mean their personnel records. Um, what why can't we use hr for this? Isn't that the purpose of hr We can use hr in the past Last year at least angela did it She she we got the individual responses That people put in the computer. I think there were Like 19 or 20 of them and then we got the paper responses And angela added The paper responses into the summary So that the summary reflected all 30 returns We could ask joey and an hr. I just want to mention as of friday. We're down one person in hr Because evelyn's last day is friday and I angela Will people trust hr not to reveal it? I don't I don't really have a handle on that. I really don't. Um We did give people the option to do it electronically last year I know I filled mine out electronically and we do send multiple reminders of the deadline when the deadline approaches I know in our discussion lin we talked about incentivizing somehow like offering, you know some type of Reward for participating, but you know five dollar five dollar Certificate is the idea right? So I don't and we did make On the sign-in level last year by survey monkey. We did make it optional to Put your name and your department on The you say about 10 people did and 10 people didn't right All right, and we did have one person who wrote a long You know a page long evaluation and sent it to me directly And I want to go back to andy's point off times what you get is people who are annoyed over contractual issues This year the issue that's annoying people is being made to come back to work in the building even though Huge accommodations are being made um, so I can tell you right now we're going to get some of that um and The so it's in that category pat you have a hand up. Yeah, I'm a little uncomfortable with that. Um Both from you and andy because in a way you're saying oh, if it's a contractual issue and and they want to get a pay raise Their comments aren't valid Or they're gonna I I think we have to assume all comments are valid Because it's very easy to eliminate the things that you don't want to hear or you don't want to know about and so Setting yourself up to disbelieve People's responses makes me uncomfortable. I don't want to speak for andy, but I will tell you that's not my concern My concern is that it skews the survey Yeah Here's the problem. We have over what 300 employees to get this angela Yes, okay and if You're never going to get a good sample You're never going to get a representative response. What you're going to get is individual responses and Whatever you get is not valid I I'm telling you this from a survey research Back then why do it? I think I think the issue is from lynn's perspective. It's not statistically valid. That's right It But it is still valid to say that it's not valid in general. I think is what pat's Issue is I'm saying Those complaints and those writings are completely valid because that's what our employees are experiencing But but Thank you that a statistical sample and a statistical Rating if that makes sense you know If i'm annoyed at paul the day I write my for something that he says or does The day that I write the evaluation it's going to affect what I I write That I think that's true no matter what so um, I don't know All right. I'm being cranky. Ignore me. So I guess I'll Yeah, I'll go george I think we also have to keep your hand up george. Yeah, it's just yeah, please. Um that This is about us If that making a decision or in other words, we let's not discount the role of the individual counselors And hopefully their ability to use Be thoughtful and use common sense Um, I agree with mandy, you know statistically. I'm not worried about statistics so much But I do like hearing what people are saying both good and bad I'm thinking in my own experience as a teacher, you know, when you get, you know, when you have to Uh, the valuations are done the chair looks at the evaluations and a good chair is someone who's able a thoughtful chair Is someone able to make the kinds of distinctions? That I assume my fellow counselors will make, you know, that person was having a bad day I mean, you're looking for patterns. You're looking for things that stand out. Um, and we're all Hopefully would be aware of contracts larger issues that that color things We can't control the content. That's right. We're not trying to control the content. I don't think Um, we're just trying to get as much of a response as we can To get a feel for how people what morale is like and what what are some of the issues that have been coming up? um, so I I want to hear from as many voices as possible. I'm not worried about, you know, whether You know, the union is going to use it as a way to blah blah blah We're smart enough to be able to hopefully figure that out But um, the question is how can we encourage more people to do it? And it may be just be there's just a natural limit here. I There's just only so much we can do um And make it as easy as possible Encourage people to do it and then trust the counselors Um to to use good judgment. Um, but I went with pat I I want to I just want to hear what people have to say and then I can read it and go Well, there's somebody who clearly has an axe to grind or I can read it and go. Hmm. I hadn't thought of that Um, and that might cause me to ask some questions But that's our job, right? So Here's the questions I'm hearing not whether we do a staff survey we do Whether we do this staff survey for us to come up with a different staff survey at this point I think it's a little too late But I do think we should look for one for the future um The two questions are some questions are Do we even provide an option to include their name and department? That's one And do we provide individual responses to counselors and paul? Or do we provide a summary literally of all responses? And again, one of the goals is to try to increase staff Comfortableness with responding mandy joe you add your hand up first um yeah, so, um I think a summary Although I don't know what summary means, right if the summary is Printing out the survey monkey thing in sort of summary form instead of individual response form fine, um if the summary is someone going in and Doing essentially what? The president of the council has done in the past to summarize the whole evaluation I'd be concerned with that because that will We we as counselors won't have any means of determining What bias went into creating that summary or not? um So there's that I have a one small change for the letter itself Okay, can we come back to that no more? Yeah Uh, I just thought I'd stay on this and see yeah, I want to stay on this and see if I I am uncomfortable having this in this short period of time go out to an independent non Staff member Whether that whether we send it to hr or to someone else. I don't know what's best But I'd rather keep it in house at this time. Okay um And other comments on whether we should Provide a print out of all responses, but in summary form. So in other words question one 20 people responded this way 50 people responded this way And here are all of the comments Shown by individual paragraphs From participants. Nobody writes any summary it's just given to counselors As a print out of all responses That's what I'm hearing George strongly my position Unless I hear some good argument against it that you ask people for their comments And then you take their comments and summarize them. I mean, let's just There shouldn't be summaries. It's all it's extra work first of all But secondly let people speak for themselves and trust counselors to use their judgment It's not the work if They use survey monkey. Okay. And if the person in hr Then enters Those responses we received by paper It's extra work for them, but that's it I'd also like to allow the option of giving your name in your department I don't see any reason why someone shouldn't be allowed to do that if they want Um, so I guess those are my two thoughts Are there other comments on name and department? Yeah Unless people are afraid to somehow that yeah, if we're only distributing in a Summary form and I wouldn't use the word summarized because it's not a summarized Okay thing But it's a summary form. I think Or a congregated form or something Um, then I don't see as much of a benefit to having a name in a department and so I don't think it's necessary You get you get to know the names and the department's an aggregate then but um, you can't Pin one comment to any department. And so I think the benefit of having the names is outweighed by the concern people have of it even being asked Any other comments on this The only thing only thing by having department is to see whether or not all departments were represented somehow But again, since this is not a representative sample, it really makes no difference Names Other comments in this So we're saying do not do this Right, right Okay, we're saying Print out all responses in aggregate form Okay, no, I know what that means. I'm trying. I don't know if I've said it Appropriately. No, I think aggregate forms the better way to do it and we'd change the letter to it because I think it It gets across what we're going for that. They're going to be there word for word, but it's going to be aggregated It's not going to be Yeah, do not use a um Outside of value order. That's fine Um return underlope doesn't need a stamp if it's being done by hr So the report that came out of survey monkey last year gives each question and in the aggregate summary it gives um The average response in terms of the affective scale response and then it shows you each individual response as a bar graph And then beneath that it gives you all of the comments that were entered Okay In their entirety I don't see how we're going to be able to revise this But I do want to ask do we want them To include in their responses consideration for covid I'd like to see it there It's been such a major part of the year. I think we should ask So include in comments Okay And with I'm looking for people to help with wordsmithing here Okay We don't have to do that right now What do you think about the idea of having a video where I'm personally asking people to fill with it That was a suggestion from actually everyone I like the idea Okay Is that you mandy joe? That was me pat. Thank you. I didn't know if it was you or angela. You're kind of dark today Um Just and then the other thing and I want to just go to the letter is to look at Stating the goals and then a link to the website where the full set are And assure people that it's confidential. So Right here is the actual letter Isosh Somebody just woke up Okay, so So this is the revised email and printed letter For staff to be on letterhead Date it appropriately Mandy joe. You said you had a change here. Yeah, I just had a change to the bottom paragraph that starts we ask that you return your form by 4 p.m. Friday, July 10th the way it's worded with the 2020 and Should be mailed Inter it it because of the changes it the sentence doesn't work. So I would split it into two sentences Um, so the you know, it ends by Friday 4 p.m. Friday, July 10th 2020 period Please send it by mail Interoffice mail or deliver to the town council in the envelope provided for that purpose period I think it just makes it cleaner And I think with our change in wording to aggregate the fourth paragraph Please be aware that these submissions will be summarized in that summary review needs to be changed Because they're not going to be summarized. They will be aggregated And made available and made available Another word is compiled if you yeah Might be at mark. Yeah aggregated or compile which one I think compiled, um Just I mean, we all know what aggregated means but Compiled I just okay And what about this thing? If this basically all this says is the aggregate what will not be provided and this should say the aggregate Response The compile it's thank you For the compilation of responses, whichever Or the compiled responses. Yeah, I need an s just put an s in Yeah, please here They become part Will become part, yeah Right become probably Right And then this is something that we have not done in the past. We actually listed the seven goals And we will have a reference here which tells them where they can find the detail Can I ask about that the thinking behind that? Um, again, I'm sort of in favor of keeping things as short as possible Um, I there's a good reason I'm sure for this I'm not sure it really is I don't know. What's what's the reason for it? Um to just be have people more aware of what we're looking at That's I think what we're interested in here is just you know, I'm really I mean, I guess my thought is If people have complaints of gripes or whatever. I'm in good, bad or indifferent. I just want to hear what they're thinking I'm not really worried about whether they are in tune with all our great goals and all our great plans I just want to get their sense of how they work with the town manager Big small large. I don't care. So I'm just the thought These goals are important to us as a town council. They're important to the town It'd be nice if everybody, you know knew them by heart I wish I knew them by heart But from the point of view just a staff member being asked to give us their input My thought initially here is just keep it as simple as possible Which is what we've got and I'm wondering why we want to add this Extra text for them to probably ignore but even if they read it What's the value added? It's a question I'm just wondering and agree with you. I think that it might actually confuse I'm Confused for the people who are trying to honestly respond What we're really looking for is whether they feel that The town manager is giving them an opportunity to Listen to their ideas listen to their concerns is in whether he's considering Yeah, those kinds of things whether he's a responsive Manager to people who are doing the day-to-day work and That's really what we're after Okay I'm fine with that so It needs grammatically some things picked up if we got rid of the goals Then we should get rid of the whole paragraph that says below are the town council's broad performance goals Um There's some things here, but do we want to encourage online responses that first paragraph is Enclosed as a questionnaire for that purpose are helpful add your comments to the back of the form All assuming paper forms should we be encouraging in this letter? Electronic responses Some people are afraid even though it's not true that a computer can be traced. No, I I understand that but we barely even Talk about the fact that you can actually Submit them electronically at all in this letter. There's there's no indication really at all responses can be mailed by inter-office Mail or dropped off at the town council. Like there's no indication that you can even an electronic survey So maybe we can say first upfront you can respond electronically or return Yeah, I mean the electronic here is if you prefer to fill out the form on a computer You've also received an email with that option That that to me wasn't even you can fill out the form by a survey That's like, oh, you can type your answers and print out the form and then mail it back to us Okay, and then here we just start by saying Enclosed and we could even say we encourage you. I mean again, it's a question But we want to accomplish because they've encouraged you to fill the form out on the computer You've received an email with that option Um, you were also free to and then you could just say right I mean, it's do we want to encourage you if we do we should say it and we should want to and then If this is not your preferred option, we've enclosed a questionnaire for the purpose of returning You know for a non-electronic Submissions or something Agree for calculation purposes. It'll be a lot easier Yeah So, yeah, we'll need to wordsmith the rest of that. But yeah, this whole paragraph needs to be reworked But I I like the idea of encouraging them to use the electronic response system if they could Do you think I should say it is in fact secure? Oh If people have that headed that idea in their head, I don't know how you're going to get it out of it. So, you know You'll encourage it by saying it's not Right think. Oh gee, maybe it's right. I mean just I don't know what to make of that kind of thinking You know if they really have had paranoid Yeah, I think we should just be straightforward. Please use we encourage you to do this and here's the other option enough The only reason I would say lin not to do that is because if we get 200 responses this year someone And I'm not saying it would be me but someone might go back and make sure that they're not all from the same person Like survey monkey does have a way to track Yeah, and so if they're all from the same IP address that could be telling Especially if we have a spike in numbers Okay Should we just let lin? Yeah, word smith this later Yeah I appreciate Desired to get it done. I don't have any fault with that. All right. So we're done with this piece I think so Okay, I think these suggestions were really helpful by the way. Thank you so much I'm going to stop sharing that well again um And we're going on to The next two are very similar um They're emails to boards Committees shares, etc um Okay Oh, this one is the public It shouldn't be called that. Um, but it's very similar message and there is no format Now this is something by the way in the future We may want to consider changing. Okay This is the wrong form. Sorry my recollection is we get very few responses to that That is absolutely the experience we've all had The the two that I had the one that was attached to note 3a and the one attached to note 4a Both appeared to be to chairs not to the public and they were slightly different I'm just going to say right now that I Preferred the one that was note 4a over the one that was note 3a, but I think it's got similar change challenges to What we just discussed on the staff email In terms of summaries or not that up I think You know that did not that is not what I want Um Hold on Sorry about this And Mandy Joe, I believe this is the one you're looking for And then this So two things this also has that same paragraph uh about This and I would assume that Probably We want a summary are we can't we want to compile it I mean these are emails to the town council That's true They're not forms. They're not anything. I'm not sure there is a way to compile per se The only thing is they're not subject to public records law Right, so I think your yellow paragraph is fine That the submissions will be read by every council member and the manager But their personnel documents and are exempt from public disclosure disclosure All right, so then the next question is in this one. I actually did state the goals Right And do we want that? I mean here it does arguably Make more sense in this in a way that I don't know Again, it's kind of what what do we want? Oh, we just want to hear from This is addressed to the public. Correct. This is just the public Memo Yes, but this includes Town committees boards commissions, right It this it's literally is the same process right Yeah, I george. I think this one's for the chairs But then you just barely modify it for the public, right? Okay. Thank you I'll deal with spacing later Um, I think just the bold sentence in the first paragraph is what disappears When it's sent to the public Yes right right And I guess the question for us is whether this kind of extra text will possibly produce Better responses Or whether we just again like we did with staff We just want to hear what people are thinking Right, man. Do you have your hand up? Yeah, so I was going to say for the public I think it's helpful to just put out there the goals anyway We might not get stuff directly related to paul on that, but we might get I don't like these goals There might be other things helpful to the council if we put those broad goals out there Yeah And if we take out This paragraph this sentence and put those in there. It still may be one page We might be able to although you notice that this one we also give our Direct contact as we do in the board and chairs Or it's chairs and commissions I don't think that's totally necessary in terms of direct contact We could just Amherst m. A and not right right I don't think you want the individual ones listed because you want The public comments and the comments from committee chairs to be sent to the To the council as a whole that counselors they know Because otherwise we're not all going to be working from the same place as we do our work the other thing that I was thinking about is that What you're interested in apart from committee chairs and committee members Is a little bit more specific and that we'd also like to Have some sense of whether they provide a whether adequate support for the work of their committees and what and Whether they think the work of their committee the goals of their committee are being Significantly Considered Was there some goals specifically on that under Community engagement Volunteer committees boards and commissions under goal number five Yeah, if there was maybe we for the Committee email we specifically list that one Yeah, maximize contribution of town committees Maybe instead of stating all the goals we say Among the town manager seven goals is this broad one Including c and then repeat there right? So in other words this whole thing Would get be replaced by it's five seed Okay, I like that because it really gets at what we need to know from them. Exactly Although for example, you know, ECAC may want to comment on the climate action goals, etc right, okay So I need to monkey with this so that it basically says, you know, there's seven broad goals but specific to committees is this one and In your response, you may want to speak to that So that's for committee chairs, right and you could also If you want say Encourage committee members to look at the seven broad goals because some of them may specifically relate to the committee They are on and they may wish to comment on that too something like that Yeah, because finance the non voting residents might want to comment JCPC members might want to comment on, you know, the capital improvement plan or You know, they're there just might be long-term planning. There might be committee members that want to comment on specific goals, but Directing them to that instead of listing them Go down a little bit lower in the goals just so I can Sorry, hold on I've got so many documents here. It's I wanted to see what's the last two are again You know, frankly, I would hope that people from the chamber in the bid would comment specifically on six I think the public letter which we don't have in front of us Should list all seven goals. Yeah, I agree. Okay Let me just go back up here And on this I'll just write myself in the public seven goals that are Encouraged to look at broad goals particularly as they relate to their committee and replace with With whatever with oh five C five That's a committee that feels that the Goals don't adequately address what their committee is about and so that they're also critical of the goals themselves is written That's a problem Andy Yeah, I was thinking of two examples Is there anything in the goals that speaks to the purposes of the public shade tree committee Is there anything in the goals that speaks to the purposes of the lsse commission? Uh, the only thing that would be on the shade committee. I would imagine would be uh under the environmental goal, which is two and That doesn't have anything that says quote shade tree and You said lsse the only place that that would be Um a possibility would be under five And it doesn't recommend it doesn't necessarily speak to Um lsse But you know, then they tell us that it doesn't have that and that gives us information That should help us shape next year's goals Yeah, no, I was thinking about the lsse commission because Having been a formal liaison to that and having thought a lot about the issues The question ultimately the commission is is the town manager Creating an atmosphere to support the work of the commission and to Make sure that the goals of the commission are translated into the activities of the town And is that is that part of what we're looking for or not? You know I think Andy those are great questions For next year because the goals we have now are the goals we have Uh, I also You know, it to me this just raises the much bigger question about revision of this whole process Now I think it is a big problem, but uh as you go to committee chairs and ask them to send all members of committees What do we expect to get and Why are we asking that particular group? right So given the timeframe, is there anything else on this? And i'm going to mark this revised note three and four okay okay Um, let me just also then quickly go back to the calendar Uh, let me find it As you start that i'm going to just say a couple things when is it? I think that the calendar right now is pretty problematic Is to whether we can it's really reasonable to achieve Uh, what we want to achieve according to that calendar And we need and I don't think we're going to get that solved in the next five minutes um The other comment I just had is that um One of the things that you've heard me complain about before and um You know elissa's made reference to it Is I think that the whole council meeting in which we deal with the Um reading of everybody else's comments and the compilation In a public meeting and have a useful Discussion in the cut in in that Format I have always had problems with And continued their problems with what could we so let let me stick to one question I had right up front should we give people till july 17th Give who? give um Staff The public and committees When are our evaluations do our evaluations are not due until Um the fourth the fourth right if we give them more time we have less time to read and write ours Right Yeah, I think that's that's why I think the whole calendar I mean the 10th gives us three weeks To complete ours now people may say that's too much or plenty two weeks would be fine I don't know but the 10th is when they're in we don't get them Potentially till the next week Right. I mean we could give them till monday the 13th You know splitting the difference I'm I can go either way I need to get these things out by either the end of by morrow thursday Putting them out on friday does nobody any good You know if I get them out on monday that gives people two weeks For the holiday in there with a holiday So I you know I could make this the 13th that means counselors get theirs by the 14th or 15th and Um, remember they're getting committee chair and Of the others directly the only one that they're getting as a compilation of is the staff thoughts Don't like we don't have a lot of other things that are going on during that same time period So Council attention Which gets back to my general question as to whether We're reasonable in this timeline at all Indy just let me point out that I agree with you Part of me says and and I also want to point out that this is not a contract renewal year for paul um His contract Already goes out two years past this officer's of three years three years um and Um, I probably should not discuss compensation but um In my preliminary conversations with paul. He is not only not expecting. I think he would prefer not to receive any addition So it's not like we're under that pressure. The only other pressure is to clear it off of our calendar so that It's done and we can get on with our work in september There's also the pressure of goals waiting till january to approve the goals is unacceptable the the year starts in july we're already waiting till september to Approve them which is already two months into the fiscal year So I I don't I don't want personally. I don't want to push that Goal approval any later than early september I agree So this is I mean, I at this point. This is a calendar that We put out and people have commented on twice Um, this is the session andy that you're talking no um The august 17th session. Yeah, this is the session you're talking about and I am I would be so open to any other suggestion The thing that always has befuddled me is Why these aren't confidential documents until we release them given that they're dealing with personnel Well, I think I asked elisa why we couldn't get them early last time because they get released and the other people get to Read them too. Scott gets to read them at the same time. We do they're released to the public at the same time And the response was because if we do it at the meeting we first discuss it We can control The narrative I think is what it is otherwise the newspaper articles out there before we've even had our meeting Right. That's exactly her argument But andy makes the argument that Well, how do we even control the narrative when we're just We haven't even even if that's the happening because we haven't even had time to Digest any of it right And we do not release A public document Until No, the the 17th is when it's released publicly All our evaluations are released publicly on the 17th. We don't have a press release about the whole thing until September 14th Yeah, because it's not a final evaluation. But in the meantime Merzbach will have read the compilation and have read all of the individuals And We'll make whatever story that he wants out of it And we now have all of these additional Journalists out there in various fashions who are doing the same thing and posting to wherever right But Public Until we release them They're personnel documents And yet the only thing that we have That is not done in public is the discussion of what we want to do about his contract I think you're getting into a kp law kind of question Because elissa has always assumed That they are public documents and their public documents as soon as they're released In a public meeting for us to read So I think elissa's point was the staff evaluations are not public but our evaluations are public As soon as we start discussing that because I think we're elected officials or something I don't know the reasoning but that with andy would be a kp law discussion ours are and and certainly our summary letter in draft form is most definitely public upon release and discussion But I think the thing that People would really appreciate is being able to get All 17 or 13. I'm sorry of the individual counselor documents Before that night where we then sit in front of a blank tv screen So we can do that if we release them to the public at the same time A week in advance if we wanted to But we can't you're saying even though they're personnel documents So so the problem is we're all elected officials subject to open meeting law And they contain our deliberations and opinions on the evaluation of which we will be voting on And that is why it's probably a public record And so we cannot release all of them to each other Except either in an open meeting or simultaneously To the public on the website Okay So we could do it four days in advance on friday the 64 14th at 5 p.m. The typical dump time of stuff Public simultaneous with the public so the council has the weekend to read them It's just it has to be posted online at the exact same time And at which point scott can publish something in the saturday newspaper The other You know digital press can do whatever they want And individuals can start writing to us Yep Yeah, I have made the argument to elissa's the select board days and probably made it sense and she just Isn't there Is that I would at least Not start the public meeting when you release the documents but to release the documents say The four o'clock and start the public meeting at seven o'clock and just swallow those three hours and If somebody's going to make a newspaper story during those three hours It doesn't matter if we're sitting there in the room silently reading them or if they're just Doing it everybody's doing it at their home, but at least That three hour window Where we're not in public meeting and we're not sitting there in that awkward stance Um of being in front of each other. I think is very um would make a lot of difference Well, I think the other question is with zoom because we are still going to be on zoom at that point Is what are they going to show during? I mean my video is going to be turned off. My mute's going to be on my Yeah, there's anything to show and there was never anything to show even if Let's pretend for the moment that we're not doing it by zoom It's still you have a picture of a blank of a room where a bunch of people are reading I know one year that I finally convinced elissa that we can put something on the screen explaining what's happening and telling people that the evaluations that are being read are available but to have that Have it be in a public meeting where it's being shown was really kind of ridiculous that If they were released and we read them for three hours beforehand And then we meet it would still satisfy the same purpose Hmm Could we release them on a sunday? You can release them whenever we want if we want more time than three hours or we release them at two o'clock day of or or whatever I mean, I like andy's idea Of you don't call the meeting for 5 30. You call the meeting for seven say maybe not even 6 30 It depends upon your level of concern Um to elissa's point that if you release it on sunday It invites mr. Spock to put something together for the monday paper So I guess my concern is he's going to do that with the individual evaluations whether or not we have a meeting Because there's the individual evaluations. What reporter's going to ignore them and go with just what's said in the public meeting right By the way, I don't think you did anything until we did the final evaluation um, you're deliberating in a public meeting and You have to go back to the open meeting law And whether there's any provision in the open meeting law That allows you to do an executive session for the purpose of doing an evaluation of the town manager I think the elissa Who's spent a lot of time studying the open meeting law has concluded the answer to that is no Let me let me just do this. Let me check with elissa And if I can see any reason um To go to go back to kp law on last fall that I go Before you talk to elissa read the open meeting law section on executive session And decide whether you have an argument in there That it is can be done an executive session because that's the debate you're going to have with elissa Okay, got it And that's about the question. That's where the crux of it is right Okay, uh, let me just go back on this timeline and just call attention to um note seven And that means that on august 12th, we should be having a gol meeting And it should be goals Wouldn't we need them before that though? That's the town council getting the goals from us. We have to meet once before that to Discuss the goals and come up with a draft. Okay. So george looking at the gol schedule, right? Do you want that goals meeting? we have a gol meeting scheduled for august 5th and July 15th What do we see on the july 15th schedule? This is not i'm at this is not a 15 minute discussion. No, it isn't We need it by the 12th, you know My guess is we should start on the 7th on the 15th and we have the 5th as well. We need it and then Finish up on the 5th And if we have to do a special meeting we still have time Yeah, I think the major huh The major point we're raising though is is that we do not Believe that we need to wait until after people have seen Have gone through the evaluation process and see how the evaluation works out For what he's done in the past year to start developing the goals for the next year That's that was what the That's what the prior discussion had always been is that we Should have the goals for the next year evolve out of the evaluation itself and We're suggesting that that's no longer necessary if it ever was necessary Well, we can give it to the town council in draft form We give them the second set on 31st and My and we don't vote them until September 14th So the goals are evolving as we're doing the evaluation And I think that's just what we say Yeah But I think you know and and I'll just tell you right now For the 15th, I would just July 15th gol meeting. I just here's last year's goals. What do you want to change? All right, okay Okay, and I didn't get the sense from the council Other than they Think I'm biased Um, well one counselor thinks I'm biased um That they expect gol to read the document In advance of giving it to the whole council Is there anybody else who sees that differently? If you do it means an open meeting I think that was the point for not referring that summary Evaluation letter to gol was because then It's already out there two weeks before the council meeting Right Right and so are the summaries frankly at that point that means the summaries and the letter are released for a gol meeting Not for a council meeting Yep, yeah, that's staying the way it has in the past Um I am not at this point Suggesting that any of you help me That doesn't take away my right later to individually ask I would appreciate it if you need help that you ask us And not to try to do it solo Thank you for that statement That's all I can say pat We get into it then it's committee um Okay, other comments on the schedule Okay, then we're basically get stained to the schedule as um We have it and the only thing i'm going to be checking on is the um When we when we want to post the things and checking on open meeting law and talking to elissa Probably we should assume that we might start the meeting earlier. So people have more time to read to the tv um And then the other thing is we've now agreed that we'll have a gol meeting On july 15th. We already have agreed to have a gol meeting on july 15th And it will include our first discussion of the goals Yes, yes, okay anyway Let me make sure I understood that point you made about So are you proposing that they'd be made available before the meeting goes public If I can figure out how to do that in a way that So you can This is the same as calling the meeting. It's just it has to be published simultaneously To the public So you can't like Send the council the summary on saturday morning and then post it on and the counselor evaluations on saturday morning And vatheena post it on monday morning It needs posted at the same time in other words you should post it before you actually send it to the counselors On the web But then it could be done on monday at you know, three p.m. Or something And let me also say that as you may recall when we were in the town hall last year We actually had physical documents Andy you're aware of this from the finance committee Some people would like us to have physical documents delivered to them Versus printing them off. Are we willing to do that or offer that? that means 13 police cars arrived simultaneously at our homes Well, no, you just put it online at like two or three and whoever asks for a physical copy Sometime after two o'clock or three o'clock or whatever time you pick gets delivered a physical copy Yeah, I don't think we necessarily encourage it. But if there's somebody who feels that disability reasons or whatever that they can't read it Without having a physical copy Or they can't print it at home because they don't have you don't have time to print it at home at that point I'm sorry. You'd spend your whole three hours printing instead of reading Right, where would you have your hand raised? I'm just trying to So on the 17th when we finally do meet We're still going to sit there and read That even though the documents have been available to us if we have this scenario if I understand it We'll have had the opportunity to read everything before the meeting We're still going to do is figure out what level of risk we're willing to take about outside influence and interference right during the meeting and whether we if we release documents publicly into the council and on the sat sunday before Right two o'clock on the monday before Right four o'clock because we all decide we need three hours to read right I mean what you're really getting to is the question also is to whether you're going to have public comment in this process at all and I would say that we need to give some thought to whether this should be a special meeting in which There is no public comment because we're dealing with the evaluation and Uh If you're not going to do public comment, then there's not an opportunity for somebody who's Read them even at the three hour window to make public comment Um try and sway the discussion Make you make the I wouldn't stop public comment. We're soliciting public comment on the evaluation Why would we then suddenly say oh, but you can't comment on the summary letter? It doesn't make sense to me. I'm sorry The note that I have Which comes over from last year is after the town council has their discussion on the 17th We open it up for public comment I'd have to go back and look at the agenda from them to see if we that's the way we did it, but I think we did Sooner makes sense Yeah, I think it's a matter of course. I just don't recall that we ever had it And by that time it's usually 10 o'clock and everybody else is going to sleep And some counselors Okay, okay, we don't do this anymore um Any other comments? no All right, george Do you want if anything in the gol report that would be useful to the council about what we're doing today? We viewed these various documents. Yes made changes and Summarized those and just a description of broadly of what we've been doing and that there's no Particular message or anything they really need to know specifically. It's just that we're working on it We changed we made drastic changes to the town manager Council form. We did not change the staff form You know, you can you and I can look at what you write. I do think that if we Get a decision that we don't have to give individual evaluations Um of some from staff to the town manager. We should point that out um, okay You know that we're trying to encourage more staff participation by providing both electronic and written options Make the decision not to use a third party Okay Well, I will reach out to you before I I'll show you this section and if you Work it if that needs to be okay And yeah, you can send it to the whole group for that matter. I don't I'm fine Anything else? This has been very helpful. I I actually um I'm glad it's been referred to a committee finally and it's been I think the suggestions Particularly made on the council form are excellent I really do. I think they're Really good ones Anything else? Next time we meet we're doing interviews Yeah a week and I don't know if people have any concerns or questions about that um, I've heard from everybody um The four interviewers that four people are going to interview Um, and I will describe the process to them But what I'm envisioning is that at 10 35 the first interview will begin they're Set a 20 minute intervals and I hope the interviews will be about 15 minutes. So there'll be a little bit of time Possible people could show up early Um and stay through the entire meeting um It's a public meeting So that's a possibility, but at the moment I'm envisioning everyone in this format. They're all panelists Um, but that they would show up at their specific time But I can't control that and if they do show up early I'm going to ask them to be muted and to have their video off And if they're not then we'll have to stop and do that So that's the just to be aware of the process a little bit Um cumbersome. I'm working with fina on this But uh, everyone the four interviewers are on board. They've all agreed Um, they understand that it's one after the other And I'll describe the process to them. Do you have any questions about that process? Um, as committee members how it's going to go So it would be like this and we'll say angela is the person to be interviewed But there might also there might be present one or two others But they would be muted and they would not have their video Hopefully they would show up a few minutes before the next right before their interview But that means they're going to show up on the screen And hopefully they'll be muted and their video won't be on so it could be a little awkward But I don't know any other way to do it Yes, I don't understand why they can't be attendees and moved into allowed into the room For their interview The problem is that then to get there's been some problems with that. Um, where um, they get there's a there's a time delay or they get they have to Leave the meeting and then come back Um, I will try again with Athena, but it seemed the simplest was to have them as panelists But andy, I would I'm I agree if they were attendees and we just move them in And then when they're done we move them out Um, so I will try again with her, but I the initial Communication between myself and Athena was it seemed simpler and she's also I think worried about zoom bombing and so on If they're panelists they get unique invitations right so And she was worried about security the odds of this are probably really remote say the least on the other hand It seemed more secure to have everybody have a unique zoom invite, but that means they're panelists So I'm open to suggestions here. Maybe people say don't worry about the zoom bombing stuff We'd rather they be attendees and then we just bring them in And then we take them out The issue about having them be attendees is Okay, so here's the issue if they're attendees And they have installed zoom on their computer Then they can be more easily moved in and out But they haven't the likelihood of them being disconnected when they're moved in as panelists Is very strong and that's what happened the Whenever that was that we were doing right Right Well, we're actually asking people To do who want to participate in meetings by zoom is make sure they've installed zoom on their computer They don't have to buy it. They just do the basic zoom And that evidently allows for a smoother entrance and exit one of the possibilities Yeah, now you can't do that with phone phone is phone one of the People who is applying has only ever joined meetings by phone And But we can ask Angela or Someone else that Angela might ask to go over with each panelist installing zoom I was thinking about the panelists my guess is they all have zoom I think one Is someone who uses only phone. That's right. I think the other three. I don't know, but I'm guessing they probably could do it Um, anyway, this is the situation Um, I certainly will continue to work with Athena And I hear the thought that if everyone has zoom that makes life easier for everybody um uh I mean this was the Of that question. Mandy. Joe. I think was you were on it the the meeting we had with Athena and um Uh sarge Yeah, so, I mean maybe george If you email the three or all four and ask them if they have installed the zoom app on their computer and have a Sort of free account. I guess is what it would be and if you can confirm that they do Then we still give them the panelist link because that's more secure, but when they come in as a panelist We can Demote them to attendee if they come in early and then promote them again very smoothly right And the reason giving them a panelist link is more secure is you can put your name in You can put any name you want in As an attendee to show and so there's no guarantee that You know if we're intending to interview Amy I haven't even looked at the soyes yet. So I have no idea whether there's just pick name out of a hat Yeah, we if we want to aim interview an amy That someone else knows because we have a list on our agenda that will show the name someone else knows There's an amy interview comes in because they want to zoom bomb and lists amy as their name We don't know whether it's the amy. We actually want to interview or Someone pretending to be amy. Whereas if we give them that panelist link, we know it's the amy. We want to interview And they actually have already gotten their links now we can change that but Athena and I had already arranged that they all have a panelist link But I hear you that I should try to see if I can get Confirmation that they have zoom Athena also said she would be present during the meeting I've been asked because I don't Angela. I don't think you can Bring people in and out of given your computer capabilities, right? So I can switch people from attendees to panelists. That's not a problem as a co-host and I'm I'm happy to do that. But I think Having Athena on the call is not a bad idea Okay She's volunteered for that particular meeting Not to be present So Hopefully that's what it will be that we will have the ability to Put people, you know move them and then bring them in And if they choose to stay um, that's up to them if they want to stay and listen. That's it's a public meeting But there is one of the candidates that I believe does have the phone issue And I will you I'll talk with Athena and we'll deal with that and see what we can do But anyway 10 35 10 55 right that's the plan And each one of you gets a question Try to move it along quickly. We want to give them a moment to ask a question if they have any um And I think as chair I'm going to try and pretty much just run that part of it And unless there's really something glaring that I see I'm probably not going to ask any questions. So And we'll rotate through so I'll start with one of you and the next time if I have my brains I'll move to the next but everyone will get a chance everyone gets a follow-up if they wish and We'll hopefully can do it in 15 minutes And then one person The one person you're talking about the problem is is that that individual does not have a computer That had a camera on it and therefore It's um, not possible to really participate in zoom meetings other than by phone and I think that if we're Not going to discriminate against an applicant because they don't have the computer capability with a camera So be it But I don't I don't feel comfortable that we in any way Disadvantage that person for that reason as somebody we would consider right What are you suggesting that then video be off for everybody? No, we just have to recognize that and make sure I mean, I did tell them that the interviews are optional Because they are Um, everyone has expressed a desire to do it But it's possible that one of them could have said, you know, I really can't be bothered Or I just you know, it doesn't work or whatever and we agreed that we would try not we would try not to use that Against them. Um, we may want to revisit the process at some future date But so we're gonna have to use our, you know, collective good judgment Okay All right Done I lead back to the church I'm done. Yep You you adjourning I was gonna stick around for a while I'm so lonely Oh, really it's therapy. We're just wondering whether we can hit the leave button You can hit the leave button anytime andy Yeah, I think I'm ready to call this wonderful meeting to uh to adjourn it and look forward to seeing you all in a week For the interviews if not sooner. Well, actually we'll see. I'll see you sooner. Obviously, but Anyway I just participated in an outdoor meeting at mill river Maybe we could have a meeting Out where we were seated at, you know, there were enough picnic tables. We could each be at one We really see each other Who's actually nice? Yeah, I'll see what I can do I'm leaving I can figure out how to leave I will