 All right. Let's see if we've got. Here he is. Oh, I can't bring him in Athena. I think I need to be a cohost to do that. I'll do it and then I'll make it. Thank you. Um, all right. We're waiting on counselor. There is. Excellent. Hello. How are you? Wonderful. Wonderful and superb. That is the kind of attitude I like to hear coming into a GOL meeting. Glad to hear that. All right, everybody. It is Thursday, March 21st, 732 p.m. I'm going to call this meeting of. The GOL committee to order. And I'm going to begin by taking, taking role. I guess checking to make sure everybody can hear and hear me. I don't know if I'd like, I don't think I like calling it taking role. But I'm going to start off with. Pat D'Angelo's Patricia. Today. I'm sorry. Thank you. Lynn Greece. Excellent. George Ryan. Present. And counselor. Thank you so much. We are going to start as always with public comment. We have no attendees currently. So this is a short, a brief public comment period. And then I wanted to make some, I'm going to move past it now since there's no one here. I wanted to make a note. The children's mental health week proclamation. There's a bit of a snafu. I know, hang on. There was a bit of a snafu with that. And Pat had said she is willing to sponsor it, but. I think Pat will probably need time to make the edits to the proclamation itself. I did not receive an updated version. I'm going to call on Pat and then Lynn. I'm going to call on Pat. I'm going to call on Pat. To, oh, or Lynn, I guess, sorry, Lynn. Yeah. Because we didn't have anybody act on it. I did send it out to all counselors today. And both Mandy, Joe, Hannah key and. Andy Steinberg have also been said they are interested in sponsoring. I can't hear you. I would, I believe Pat is going to say. That can be off of it then. I didn't think there was anybody. And it's, I think it's a reasonable. The other thing is that I think in the past, it was counselor Miller who wanted it. And so I suggested that she. We're going to do raising hands today. Sorry, Pat. I'm cutting off. I know she's a jet, but I suggested that they approach her as a community sponsor. Thank you. Pat. You raised several hands. Originally didn't say anything about sponsoring it because the, it was had Pam Rooney and someone else's name on it originally. So I just assumed. Anyway. Regardless. Because I'm glad it now has sponsors, but those sponsors probably will want to take a look at it and change the dates to say 2024. So it is not going to be something we discussed today. That is the main point here. Should you want to. Jump on as a sponsor. It sounds like reach out to you said counselor Steinberg and counselor Hanneke. Okay. Excellent. That was item three on the agenda. We're now going to move to item four, which is Jewish American heritage month proclamation. I seem to only have this in PDF form. Lynn, do you have it in a Word document? You do. Would you be able to put that up or send it to me? I don't mind making edits. I will be glad to pull it up. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. In fact, I was just working on it because. And you may decide that we should delay. Action, but. Can I pull it up? I must be. Screen share. Yes. Okay. Since this version, I think is what was in your packet. Yeah. Pam Rooney has also come on as a sponsor. And Hilda greener bomb and Rachel. Vig, Vigderman. I have confirmed that they are sponsors. And Dorothy. He is confirmed that she's a sponsor. So. So that's some things there. Let me also just mentioned before we go any further. I'm still working on an update to this paragraph. And if people feel that that. Should prevent us from acting tonight. This could be delayed because. The heritage month is actually May and we meet twice in April. Although the problem is the council doesn't. Well, that's not true. I don't know. I think the council. Will probably be. Also the last Monday of April. Thank you. I think the. Edits that could be made that would. Still keep. A sense of that paragraph. I think. Councilor Grisner, are you saying that. The edits made would simply be an update to numbers and would not change. Other than numbers. Let me just change. Screens for a moment and show the committee. Before you do that, I want to hear George's question if that's okay. Or comment. Councilor Ryan. Just in general, I think we shouldn't act on proclamations. If the sponsors. Haven't finished getting it ready. We have some council responses present. So they can speak, I guess, for the group. But if they're not certain, then I think we should just put this off. I am inclined to agree with you. I think. And as long as I think my, my check in was, is this going to be a problem in terms of a community event? And it sounds like when you're saying it is not. I would like to, I've actually sent a suggested change in paragraph. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Rabbi Weiner. And I would prefer to get his feedback back and therefore not. Do this tonight. Okay. Thank you. So we are going to delay the Jewish heritage month proclamation. To our next meeting. Thank you. Everyone for your input. George, do you have something else to add? Nope. Okay. All right. Fastest two resolutions yet. Okay. Okay. Well, thank you. Thank you. My first question is from the finance committee appointments. We have not received any new caps for this particular committee. We are getting into a point where we need to. Well, we're always at the point where we need to discuss what we would like to do. We have at this point discussed the selection guidance and voted that we cannot vote the interview questions, but we have discussed them. Once we confirm the pool. Like to, at this point, would anyone like to make a motion to find the pool sufficient for the finance committee. Pat, you, your hand went up. Mind me I apologize. What can you remind me I apologize I don't have it on me right now I can't find my notes for tonight. Who, who the people are how many people there are. There are two people we cannot their names are not public. Yeah, I think I know. Okay. And there are two slots. Yes. There's one slot. There will be another slot slot opening but we are only appointing for one position. And when the next position opens people will have to resubmit a calf we can only our rules this is something that has been mentioned as a possible change. The, it's not actually in our rules it's a, the policy on making appointments to multiple member bodies. We have brought up the fact that for examples like this, or for examples where someone, you know, submitted a calf for the charter review committee on January 1, but we posted the opening January 4 that January 1st calf does not count. Some folks have suggested that we may want to consider changes to that policy to date no one has brought forward proposed by law changes, as it is a by law, or as it is a policy. So we would need to go through that process it's not our, it's not in our rules. So, I'm just going to close the round you and muted, did you have a thought. Okay. Pat, did that answer your question. Yes, thank you. I don't see why we don't declare the pool sufficient. I mean, I'd love to see more people. But so I can move to do that. If somebody will second it if they agree. All right, we have a motion to find the pool sufficient for the finance committee applicants. Is there a second. I don't know why I would change that. But the motion fails. Okay. That's fine. It's I understand. I understand where you're coming from in terms of wanting to, to advance. For me, the challenges we've been voting this number. Insufficient for the past many weeks. I don't know why I would change that. Now counselor Ryan. Yeah. Two is just not enough. Do we have that there is no set number. Do folks have a number in mind that they'd like to get to. More than two. Okay. Okay, so I'd like to just briefly discuss what we're going to do to get more applicants for this. If folks have any brainstorm ideas here we've emailed out to counselors. I will reach out again to folks who have submitted caps in the past if that if people think that might be helpful. Yep. Okay. I'll do that again. And maybe I can see if Athena can pull a list of caps from further back than just. The last, I think it was, I think she pulled the last two years, but I can look for further back. I'm writing. Hang on. I got a sense and write myself some notes here. Councilor Ryan. Councilor Ryan, Athena has told me not to cut people off to put her in line first. So I'm, I'm going to council Ryan. I will go to Athena. You know, there are two current resident non voting members there. And it's not ideal, but two is two is, you know, so I don't see the rush. Is there a deadline. Other than, you know, it's, it'd be, we should have these three or four or five applicants. And then we would sit down and we would go through them and we'd choose who we felt was the best person. There are only two applicants that really limits our ability to make, I think, a good choice. So if it stays to for the next month or so, it's not the end of the world. They've both been on there for some time and they both are, I think, strong contributors. I'd love to do it tonight, but we don't have the numbers and I think we just have to keep making this point to people and using our own networks, but I would be very uncomfortable. Actually, I probably wouldn't vote to approve a pool that has only two members in it. Thank you, Councilor Ryan Athena. Hi, thank you for not calling on me first. I can go back and run, I can pull the caps that were submitted before. I wanted to suggest that you reach out to the current applicants and let them know that the committee is still looking for additional applicants and, you know, interviews are on the way or something so that they are not kind of in limbo. And then I also wanted to point out not that I am encouraging the committee to do anything differently than what it just did, but the regional school budget is coming to the council on April 1. And that's going to be a significant issue this year and then the town budget is coming May 1. So I think if appointing somebody in sort of mid budget is it's going to be a difficult position for them to be in and and the committee is going to be facing this appointment again at the end of June. So, I just wanted to point out that there will be another vacancy at the end of June and recruitment is an issue for this committee for the Charter Review Committee and also for CBA and Planning Board. And I wonder if the committee would consider requesting TSO. Think about this issue as part of their outreach charge and potentially make a recommendation to the council about how I could better outreach to potential applicants and work on developing some kind of plan for the council or recommendation. George is on TSO, you can tell me. I'd love to hear councilor Ryan's thoughts on that. Thank you, Athena. Councilor Ryan. Yeah, it is within the charge of TSO and I think it makes sense. I don't know that TSO will have any more luck but that is what one of the things we're supposed to be doing. So, I'd be happy to pass that along to chair Steinberg. And see if we can get it on. I assume we'd want to it sooner rather than later. So hopefully it would be on the next agenda. You know, it tends to get jammed up sometimes with, you know, stuff that comes from town. But yes, I think Athena makes a good point. I'd be happy to send it to Andy and hopefully be on the next agenda. Do we need to get this officially referred as an item to TSO? Athena? The committee could agree by consensus to make that request. I think if you wanted to make it a little bit more official, you could as the chair communicate with the chair of TSO that the committee has talked about this issue. I was interested in TSO's input or recommendation of the council about how it could, how the council could tackle this issue as holistically rather than each recommended committee CRC and GOL trying to figure out this problem in their two separate camps. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Councilor Ryan. So it makes sense chair to chair. I mean, I will certainly pass this alone, but I think you should reach out to Andy and just say, assuming the rest of our colleagues agree that the committee and consensus is asked for our help. Are there any members of the committee who are opposed to the idea of me reaching out to Andy and asking him to have a conversation at TSO to think about improving systems of outreach to be a more holistic. And considering the struggles that individual committees are having right now in receiving CAFs for open positions. It's a long statement. Is anyone opposed to that? Okay, I am seeing general consensus Athena. So also it might be worthwhile including the CRC chair on that email to give them a heads up that you're talking about. Thank you. Okay. I'm highlighting this I remembered to do it one moment. Okay. Thank you everybody. We'll keep going. So then there's nothing else that we can do at this. I think your hand is still up. I'm assuming it's leftover. Okay, so there's nothing else we can do at finance then to finance tonight. Unfortunately, we're going to move to charter review committee. We have received one new CAF for the charter committee. Outreach outreach helped counselor Ryan. I had this thought we've had this thought before I don't know what the rest of you think, but why can't we suggest to the council that they revise the charge and reduce the numbers seven. At that point we would have at least double the number that we need. And I would feel a little more comfortable going ahead. I think the current number one strikes me as perhaps a more manageable number. We're having trouble finding enough to fill nine. I think with the current number. I personally would be comfortable going ahead. If it were seven, but since it's nine, I'm not. I'd like to have at least double the number. I don't know what others think about that. Could we go to the console and say, look, let's just bring it. I mean, nine is arbitrary. It wouldn't be perfectly fine. And we're having the trouble anyway. So do people think it's worth making that appeal. I'm going to. I actually think that's a really compelling idea. I think partly because I agree nine is a really unwieldy number of people to have on a committee. My question is with seven people is the workload different. Is the workload higher for seven people or is it actually going to be any different because the reality is even with nine, they all have to engage in every part of the charter, right. So is it. That would be my my only concern about dropping it is that increasing the workload. Otherwise, I think that would be compelling and then my other question is, are we, is there anything permitted prohibiting us from changing the number. That prescribes somewhere. Councillor D'Angeles. You're muted. Mike. In terms of number, you know, I think we'd have to bring it to the council and they would have to vote on it if we made that as a recommendation. I'm not sure I could support it. Nine can be a little more unwieldy. I agree. It will increase the workload on the seven people. And the other thing is that we're trying to get community representation for the committee. So nine slots gives us a possibility of more diversity, maybe not. It depends on who applies, but that feels important to me. Can I ask you why you think it would be more work on seven people than nine? Because honestly, having worked on small committees and having worked on large ones, the large ones tend to be more work. So I'm curious what you're, I'm just curious. I guess I'm in a bind right now in my own life where I'm on the committee, a board with that has just created a not for profit and they're four of us and we're doing all of the work that you wouldn't, you know, and I keep thinking we need to have over a board members soon to share more of the workload. So I do think that even dividing sections of the charter up or I don't know how the committee would decide to do it. It does mean I think more workload on, on, you know, those two extra people could, I think, help manage the workload, maybe not depends on who they are. But the other piece is, to me, it's like, I have not been impressed with the diversity of people who are interested. Now, maybe it's so I'd love to have the opportunity to get more people. I don't know, not telling reasons I know. I was just curious. Thank you. Councillor Ate. I agree with George data nine is arbitrary, but I think it provides an opportunity to have a broader swath of people in town that could apply. I think the word there is diversity. I am not sure about the workload increasing or decreasing, but I do think that with extra people, there's a possibility that they could step in when those who are doing a lot of the work might be unable to do so. I do appreciate that perspective. I think for me, I'm thinking about the work in committees versus the work done at council and how different that can feel sometimes. And I know that this is not none of these are comparable, right? None of the examples I have in my head are comparable paths example like we all have different lenses that we're looking at this through. I do think I agree nine is arbitrary and I'm partly wondering if we should take this discussion back to council just to have the discussion of revising the charge. At a council level and explain kind of the, the challenge we're having we have 14 people for nine spots. One councillors may think that that is absolutely sufficient and and I've gotten emails from at least one councillor saying why hasn't GOL deemed this sufficient that's plenty, right? Ultimately it's our, it's our call so I do think that I see the case to be made for revising that the charge to be seven. I do think we keep making the assumption that we will find more diversity in a nine person committee. And I think that Pat has a good point when you look at the caps that are submitted there are some elements that do offer diversity in terms of when you look at different, different identities, but I think that it's it's still has a lot of still pretty homogenous in other, in other aspects as well so I'm not convinced that that might shift between seven and nine. And I'd like to see it shift so that I'm bringing problems and I prefer to bring solutions. So I apologize for that but maybe Councilor Ryan has all the solutions for me. Councilor Ryan. Lynn hasn't spoken yet so maybe. Alright, go ahead, Lynn. I'm concerned that we, given the fact that this committee is probably going to work for a year that if we don't start with nine we may not end up with even five at the end. So I'm concerned about the fallout. And I liken it to one other committee and that's the committee that did the redistricting, which was a pretty intense committee. And they, first of all, I think they finally appointed one less or something. And they had people who kind of had a drop out by the end. So that's my concern. I, I'm, I also have to just the irony that I think we're looking at not only in this committee but in all the others is the number of people who are clamoring to be heard and immersed. The number of people who are clamoring to be part of, you know, decision making part of discussions who are wanting to be engaged when we put out the call for ways to be engaged. We don't get any answers. So it's, I'm, I'm, it's troubling to me. It really is that we're not getting responses because of whatever reason it's hard work. And I don't think some of the more recent events encourage anybody to participate. But that's just a different perspective. Thank you. Thank you. Two quick thoughts. One is there is time pressure here that I feel at least where I don't feel it as much with Fincom. We really need me to get this started. And I also feel that I think you could get a seven people who would represent a diverse swath of Amherst. I don't think getting a few more bodies would necessarily change that you may find that you're getting just individuals who maybe have a particular agenda so they may be diverse in some sense but in another sense, they may have a sort of, you know, I've already made their minds up about how this is supposed to go. And that's something that concerns me too. I'd like seven citizens from a diverse area, you know, across the spectrum, but who are open minded who are, you know, going to read the charter they're going to, you know, listen to, I mean Athena will certainly take them through this and they will become more conversant with it and then they will listen to people and then they will see what they think would be a way to make things better. So just having diversity by itself, which is important. I think you can get it easily with seven if we if we go about it in a systematic way. And also there's time pressure, but Pat. Yeah, there are some things I hear you saying George that I agree with but I come to slightly different conclusions. I would like everybody on every committee, including the council to be open minded. People, when they're interviewed give very open answers. They're not necessarily how they function. That's true for many of us, all of us maybe. I think the thing that I'm concerned with is when I'm talking about diversity, I would like to see racial and age and diversity, those things. But I'm also talking about people who aren't a conglomerate of the same ideas, and we see that in the pool. I might think this group feels this way thinks this way and I might think they think this way, you know, I know we can be wrong. But I think it's compelling. Lynn's argument is compelling. We're going to lose people over the course of the year. The other thing is that even if we we could with 14 people is you could almost say it was sufficient I would like to see two people for every slot which we have in finance we have two people for one slot but it's not a fine line. But to me, I think we need my hope always is that the actual work changes people's assumptions, because they start to experience a different level of understanding they begin to hear other ideas. It's important. And I think we need to be careful, you know, it's like, I could make a little checklist of the way I think this group is going to go and this group is going to go. I think nine is a better number. Okay, so I at this point, I would need a motion for us to, or I'm going to say that I want a motion for us to bring this back to the council to rewrite the charge. I think the, the one second. I think that the point about melt rate is very compelling as well. I do think that this is a committee that needs, you know, more than five people and I would worry about about folks dropping I don't want to make a decision based on fear but I'm. That's kind of where I'm at. I think that's a really good point as well. Pat. Yeah, I'm not sure I want to bring it back to the council. So that's fine. Then you don't need to do so. But I also don't, I want to be careful about how it's phrased. And I'm sure you would do that because you're very thoughtful. And I mean that I'm not being whatever that I do try to be thoughtful if there if someone makes a motion I think we can discuss it. Councilor Ryan, would you like to make a thoughtful motion. I'm willing to. Well, I don't know about thoughtful, but I'm willing to make a motion that we go back to the council and at least have a discussion with them. About whether they think that lowering the number from nine to seven is something that they'd be willing to do even and also acknowledge that the committee itself is divided on this. And of course, if this doesn't pass, then it's not an issue. So, but I'd like to at least have the committee vote on it. I think it's worth having the discussion at the council level. So I make that motion. George, that was such a long motion. Could you please summarize it for me in a sentence. I move that we go back to the town council and ask them to lower the in the charge lower the number of members from nine to seven. Is there a second. We are crushing it with emotions today y'all. Okay. Athena took her hand down. Okay. Since we aren't going to vote on that nothing to add. Okay. You're good. What was going to be wrong with it. I'm curious. Are we allowed to change? Yeah. Yeah. I think George's motion was just. Councilor Ryan's initial motion was a little rambly. So I was going to suggest a motion to recommend the council lower the number of members, but. That is what I wrote in my little spreadsheet here. So, um, George, I think here's. It's not even that I'm a poll. Like. I don't know how I would have voted. No, but I do think the conversation is. We have to act on this at some point. And so I think that if we are. At a point, we are going to need to make the decision as a committee that we either need. I now I'm seeing kind of this as two options. We are either need, we either need to. Drop the number. Magically get a lot more people or deem this pool sufficient. I said two options and gave you three, but. I don't know what else to do here y'all and I'm open to suggestions. I emailed the league of women voters the other day because they're doing. Apparently their own review of the charter and so I reached out to them and said, Hey, this is really exciting that you're doing this if you'd like to join the official committee or please promote this to your. Folks, that would be appreciated. I know everybody's been doing their outreach, but. We can't keep not finding this pool. Big enough. I actually think nine as a number is good but upon reflection. It would have been good to have that discussion in council just so that it could serve as a recruiting mechanism. But since the vote is already done, we'll just have to use the normal channels that we've been using. One could make a different motion, a slightly different motion and have that be okay. Your point is that if we make this motion we are at least bringing the conversation back to council to kind of highlight the, the dire need that we're having and sort of get more input on that on the options that we've got in front of us is that am I summarizing what you're saying. Exactly. There's a lot of action right now in council it's must watch TV. And so this, in addition to everything else that is going on that would be a very good. Are we not to present dire need in this case. I see your point. Pat. My move that whatever Athena was going to say. Can I read it? Can I read it? I'll make motion and how you can second it. So, I move that the GOL committee take the, the GOL committee. I wrote it down. It looks weird. Go back to the town recommend to the town council lowering the number of committee members on the charter review committee from nine to seven. That they discuss it. Yeah. I second it. We have moved and discussed that the GOL committee recommend the town council discuss lowering the number of committee members on the charter review committee from nine to seven. If I, if I may, I would encourage you to just recommend it. And then the committee doesn't have to vote unanimously. Ultimately, it will be a council discussion and and vote. So, I mean, asking the cost of the council to discuss something without asking them to change the number is a little bit. Weird. Okay. So, you would recommend the council lower the, the number of members, and then the council would discuss and vote on whether or not it wants to lower the members, you know, you would, you don't need to ask them to have a discussion about it because that could just go, oh, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, fair. Would you keep your second on this if that is the change? I don't want any repeat of other things. So I was going to pull in my second, but I'm not going to. All right, you have a motion to second counselor Ryan, do you have a comment? Yeah, just to make the point with my colleagues that of course they can easily vote against this at the council. So, all we really want is to hear what our counselors think. And if we vote, if we get a three to two or four one vote, you can easily when you get to console vote against it. So this is just to, as the thing is said, to make a specific recommendation. Then it goes to the council and they will discuss it. And if they do come to vote, you all will be free to vote how you feel which you may very well decide. No, I want to keep it a nine and you'll vote no. Thank you. So the council and it, I think is as a counselor, it says it also might do a little bit to spur some, some applications. Who knows. I think Lynn's going to reach through and hit me upset the head for adding things to her agendas. Athena. I would also strongly suggest that you included the geo while report that the committee was divided and wanted the council to have this discussion with the understanding that there wasn't a consensus among members that something was about. Thank you, I will. One moment please and then we will go to a vote. Okay. All right, moving to a vote on this motion. Councilor Ryan. Hi. Lynn. No. Councilor at a. And I am an eye. Okay, so that is moved. Second. Or one zero. All right, that is the motion passes. For in favor one opposed no absent no abstentions. All right. That is that we have not to my recollection and I'm welcome. I welcome corrections. I do not believe we officially voted the selection guidance for the charter review committee so I put it back on the agenda. I know we discussed it but I think there was confusion as to whether or not we could vote it doesn't even have a different recollection than that. All right, great. Thank you. So I'd like to pull it up and just revisit it briefly. And I'm going to just share my screen really quick. Just so we can see if anyone has any edits and if not, I would like to vote this we cannot vote the interview questions, but we can vote. The selection guidance. Point of order you can you can go to interview questions after you vote the selection. I thought that it said once we've set the interview date. Yeah, but I think the order is that you just need to do the selection guys before you do the interview questions I don't think you need to send the team first, but you can check I can't bring up the policy. Yeah, definitely definitely don't do it. Give me one second I will pull that up if folks want to take a one minute break while I do that you can turn your camera off and stretch for a minute. If you don't want to take a break you can go into what I sent you via email that is in your packets to review the selection guidance that we will have up in a moment. Prior to selecting statements of interest to developing interview questions or holding interviews. The recommending committee shall by majority vote adopt selection guidance for filling the vacancy and shall provide the document in full to the Council and all known applicants prior to the deadline for submitting statements of interest. So I would agree with Athena then that we could go ahead and vote the interview questions as well. We just can't solicit. We just can't. Yeah, we can do that. Okay. Awesome. Thank you Athena. So, let's start with selection guidance for the charter review committee. This is something we had previously discussed. This means we've had time to let it marinate which is really exciting. Love a good processing time. Yeah, try to be committee question. I'm sharing the right thing. Oh my God. Okay, so starting with the selection guidance here. Everybody seeing this. Good. Not seeing any saying anyone saying I'm wrong. Okay, try to review selection guidance these are listed in alphabetical order they are not listed in priority order. Councilor Ryan. When you're ready. Yeah, I was just going to read through them. So go ahead. I wanted to start with the the header. I'm not that the brief two line. This part. Yes, exactly. Yeah. I have some suggestions for this. I think, well, I'm going to just state how I would write this and then if someone can decide what you think but items below. Then I would insert represent some of the criteria. GL is looking for in selecting potential candidates. Period. Not an exhaustive list. And no one candidate is expected to possess all or even many of these criteria. I'm not happy with the word criteria. Maybe we'd come up with a better word trait characteristic. I don't know. But the message I think we're trying to get across. I think is that we're going to use these to guide us. I think it's not exhaustive list. We, I mean, or maybe we will say, maybe we'll say these are the ones we're going to use. But the thought is, it's not exhaustive list. And we don't expect anyone to possess all and probably even many of these attributes or characteristics or criteria. I think that's what we're trying to say in this sense. Yeah, yeah. Proposal here. And I want to do, I think we will need some sort of guiding text below it just to contextualize the bulleted list. Yes, Lynn. You're muted. I would say represent some of the criteria GL will consider in selecting. And I would insert even before many. So it says and no one candidate is expected to possess all or even many of these criteria. I think that I'm comfortable with that. I want to add one of the things I really liked about this language before was the guiding recommendations part. And so, I think, what if we change this to the guidance below represents some of the criteria. GL will consider in selecting potential candidates. It is not an exhaustive list and no one candidate is expected to possess all or even many of these criteria. And then I don't like what I wrote here I just threw something in so I didn't forget because it kind of almost undermines what we just said. So I would love to hear folks just delete it just take it out. You don't need anything. Hang on. Yeah, before you delete it. Do we think I can rewrite it. I think we need something to contextualize Lynn. Yeah, I also, I actually would leave it there and say, Committee should represent a mix of these experience. Something about, because what we lost by the sentence above is talking about the mix across the group. Well, we have that here. It's in the criteria. No, we say mix here of life experiences. We don't say mix of all the experiences. Demographic diversity, including racial, economic gender and generational diversity. Okay, maybe I should explain my point better. I'm sorry. What we're looking for. And I'm going to start cracking down on hand raising Lynn. What I was looking for was across in the whole group. We will take into consideration a mix of all of these. Not just, you know, mix of this or a mix of that. I'm wondering. Okay. I'm wondering if we could put something like a. Robust charter committee will include a mix of. This is terrible. The following. To kind of get at what Lynn is saying. Help me make this sound less weird. That's fine. That is fine. You know, when my mom said that is fine to me as a kid, I never actually believed her. Fine is a good word. Okay. I like robust. I think that's an excellent addition. And it has mix, which is within stressing here. I think it's a good word. I think it's good. I think it's good as it is. If you capture, I think it captures Lynn's point. Lynn, does this capture what you were saying? You're muted. That's fine. That is fine. You know, when my mom said that is fine to me as a kid, I think it's good as it is. I think it's good as it is. I think it's good as it is. I think it's good as it is. I think it's good as it is. I think it's good as it is. Within stressing here. And it makes it clear that it's, it's a mix of things. It's not anyone. Right. Thanks. Good. Okay. I'm going to accept my own changes. This is how the. We'll put the data in here when we do it, but. This is how. The selection guidance will read to applicants. I want us to read it through. Everybody take 30 seconds. I'm going to give everybody 30 seconds to just do a quick group. Quiet reading. When you're done, if you just. Wave at me or something. Councilor Ryan, before I go to Lynn, did you have a. Comment from before, I think. Just a very small suggestion. I hate it when we use the same word twice in two different context. So I'd like to take the word mix out of the second bullet point and make variety of life experiences. Is there any opposition to that? Okay. Pat, I thought you were going to say prior. Lynn. I would say representative across all town districts. I don't know what's right there. I know what we want. And that is we want. All districts one through five represented. I think that's a nice. Thank you. Any other changes to this. Yes. Pat D'Angelo's. Wouldn't it be representation? Okay. Yes. Pat D'Angelo's. Wouldn't it be representation across all town districts? Not. Probably. Or representative. Of all districts, but not, I don't know. Representation. Yeah. Yeah. Councilor Ryan. This is just a comment. For what it's worth, which isn't much. I think this last one is important, but I think it's going to be very difficult for us to achieve. Yeah. I think it's something we will try to do. But I think. But yeah, I think it should be here. But I think it's going to be, especially if we're talking about, you know, 10 or 11 or 12 people, it's going to be tough. Absolutely. Okay. With that, unless there are any more edits. I move that the GOL committee. Adopt the charter review committee selection guidance. I'm going to stop sharing so I can take my notes. Sorry. All right. I'm going to take. My windows. Okay. I officially lost them. I'm going to write the code in here. Councilor Etta, you. You seconded that, right? Yes. Thank you. Calling the vote. I'm going to stop sharing so I can take my notes. Sorry. Sorry. All right. Thanks. Thank you. Calling the vote. Councilor Ryan. Hi. Pat D'Angelo. Hi. Lynn Grisner. Hi. And councilor Etta. Hi. And I am an I as well. It is unanimous. Nicely done, everybody. Okay. We are going to move on to the charter review committee interview questions. Once I write down. I'm going to put it in my report for some reason. All right. Moving on to the interview questions. We have. Written those too. Look at us go. But we have not visited these in a while. So we've got questions. We've got a lot of questions. And I think now we can start to whittle them down. I am going to give us about 20 minutes for this discussion. And then we're going to move on to the next. Topic because we have not found the applicant pool. Acceptable at this point. I'm okay if we do not approve these today. Unless there's an objection to that idea, but we've got a lot of work to do here. So this was sent to you as a PDF. Folks have been able to review it. I'd like us to remember that if we are seeking. To have, I know the rough number of two for everyone spot has been tossed out there. We're looking at somewhere between 14 and 18 interviews. Interview ease minimum. So I'm going to throw it out there that I think we have too many questions at this point. To, to make this feasible. So what I. I want to make efficient use of our time. What I would like people to think about is on this list. First off. Are these questions? I don't know. I don't know what to think about is on this list. First off. Are these questions. Question categories still. Covering all of the things that we want to cover. And second, what, which questions would you prioritize in each area? If you picked. If you picked, I'm not going to give you a number to pick. Pat. I'm going to make a comment. About. General Amherst. Wait a minute. Let me see. Where is it? This one. I guess so. How long have you lived in Amherst? Why is that important? You could live here a very short time, but have lots of experience. So I'm uncomfortable with that one. What do you. There was something else. Okay. It was, it was speaking about students and I guess I made it. More. What do you like about, what difference does it make? Whether you like living in a college town. Or what the challenges are. If you're working on the charter. And I'm, I, you know, and I, I feel like. Those are some of the things that. Yeah, I just have a big question about that. I'm sorry, Ryan. Yeah, I think I hear you, Pat. I think. This is meant to, I mean, 60% of our population are students. The charter affects them as much as everybody else. So a thought was to get something in here. About. 60% of our population. I agree with you that maybe in the end, it really doesn't. I mean, I, it's a question. I don't know the answer. I just felt that it would be valuable to give people an opportunity to just express themselves about a fundamental fact about Amherst, which is that it is a college town. What does that have to do with the charter? Well, I think you raise a good point. It's not clear. There's a direct connection. But some of these questions are more about, you know, like. I think an important question is, you know, how do you become informed? How do you, you know, how do you keep abreast? So it's always sort of just teasing on a little bit. You know, where they're coming from and right. So I, I wouldn't live or die with this one. But I guess that's why I suggested it. I don't know. Thank you, George. Pat. Yeah. Thank you, George. I just, I'm. If there was a different way of. I mean, I think it just feels like that hasn't got, it doesn't have anything to do with the charter. But. Acknowledging. Sorry, I had a. I mean, are we going to have 60% of this people on the charter commission students? I don't want anything. It's my point. I always, I'm really old. The. I want to, I would love to see some of the college students. Who live in Amherst and are interested in this kind of work around, you know, be on this committee. And I'm feeling like somehow or other that it just feels to me. Off-putting and supportive of. A tendency in this community to blame students for everything. And we're not, you know, I don't, I don't know. It just. I don't know. I don't know. If, you know, I will go where the committee decides, but. That's my basic discomfort. I think. Thank you, Pat. I'm ignoring my urge to let Athena cut in Lynn. Let Athena cut in. No, no, she told me not to. Lynn. I don't want to interrupt us if we're going to. Like accidentally break the law. So go ahead. I'd like to go back up to the top. Yeah. I'm just going to go back up to the top. I'm just going to go back up to the top. In the. When we ask people for their. Whatever that. Written statement is. Have a couple of preliminary questions. One would be how long have you lived in Amherst? Another could be is what district do you live in? And, you know, there might be one or two of these. Instead of asking the question here. So that's that. I think that's a good way of getting around this. I think it's just important to see how. The charter. Impacts college students, seniors. Families, et cetera. I think that's a good way of getting. To the same thing, but not. Maybe. How do you feel? Excuse me, having to feel like it's been. Retargeting students. I did just throw this in there and I raised my hand to discuss it. I'm sorry. I need to write things down or I forget them. And then when I'm sharing my screen, I recognize that you have to watch me do that. Lynn, can I ask a follow-up question before I go to councilor. Can you tell us why you believe it's important to know how long someone has lived in Amherst? What does. In our criteria, we have a variety of. Experience. In one of them, I believe was length of time you live. I don't think, for example, we want a committee of nine people who have only lived here for five years. I just pulled up our. Selection guidance. We do not say length of time living in town. The reason I ask you what that brings is. I think that there's a classic New England trope of when someone introduces themselves, they also include how long they've lived in whatever town they've lived in. And it's used a bias towards people who live in one place longer than another as having valid experiences. And so I do worry that. Asking that question does. At least give the appearance that we are skewing that way. I disagree. I agree. My bottom line is I don't want to committee where only everybody's lived here for five years. It's. So why though is my question. Why? Yes. Because that's not representative of Amherst. Okay. Counselor Ette. I think the idea was we could have that question of how long you've lived here as not a question to ask during. The interview, but something that is preliminary. And in that case, I think you'd be fine. Yeah. That was my suggestion. Thank you. In my case, I would want to return back to the students. I, I think. The. How do you see the charter impacting different populations? Is a great way to get to what we are asking, but there's also the fact that some 60% of the nearly 40,000 residents at college students, the two questions that come after that really have no connection to that first sentence. I think the. How do you see the charter impacting different populations? Is a great way to get to what we are asking, but there's also the fact that some 60% of the nearly 40,000 residents at college students, the two questions that come after that first sentence. At all. But there is a legitimate question to ask, which is if you have a large number of people who will be affected by the charter. How would their views be representative? Or how would we get their views? In a discussion. Involving a review of that same charter. So I don't think a question about students is wrong. I just don't think the questions we have there at the right ones. Do you have an alternate proposal? Give me a moment. Not yet. I'm open to it if you do. Okay. So I added this bullet up under the charter section, trying to get it. I think what George was suggesting. I think we need to make sure that we don't. With a mix of what Pat was saying, because I really see that point of we need to make sure the focus here is on the charter review. And thinking, I actually really think that the question of. That George is bringing up is, is the impact that our charter has. I think people often don't necessarily realize how, how broad that charter is, like how, how much it, it determines the direction of so many things in town. I actually am intrigued by the idea of asking people how they believe the charter impacts different populations. And I'm trying to figure out how to make sure they answer it for, for like specific ones. Like I actually, I would like to hear how they think it impacts college students, how it impacts seniors, right? Like certain populations that we know we have significant numbers of. So I'm, I, I'm also wondering if you would like to, I'm not sure if it's appropriate. This is what I put in. If folks have thoughts on it, I'm open to hearing them. Athena. Oh, and I have a question for Athena too. Oh, ask your question, please. Are we allowed to change the questions that we ask in the statement of interest form? Actually, that was one of the things I was going to mention. The statement of interest is in the policy. It says what you asked for in statement of interest. the policy requires you to adopt the selection guidance first because the interview questions, you know, the questions you ask during interviews should get at the selection guidance. If there's an interview question that is irrelevant, then it might feel that a committee is making its recommendation based on criteria that aren't listed in selection guidance. So I think if it is important to many members that you have a variety of time that you've lived in Amherst, then that should be included in the selection criteria, or else it might feel... You broke up, but I agree with what you're saying and I just want to summarize it again. We set selection criteria. We basically wrote the job description for the committee. We need to ask interview questions that get us that criteria. I'm assuming your hand is up because you have something to say. I'm going to come back to you in one second. What I would like to then do is I'd like to reorganize these questions under the criteria. So I'm going to take the selection criteria we wrote and I can reorganize the questions that we have underneath kind of where they get at. Does that seem like a helpful approach so that we can see where we're going or do folks feel like you've got the selection criteria down enough that we could do that right now looking at this? Lynn? If I have to call for reconsideration of the selection criteria, I will. Okay. To add length of time lived in Amherst. Okay. You're welcome to do that at any point if you'd like to. Councillor Ryan? I'm going to suggest you not rejigger things at this point. Maybe others will feel differently. I think it seems absolutely right that we need to connect the questions that we're asking here with our selection criteria or guidance. So I think we just need to keep them handy. And when we go through our questions, we want to be asking constantly, is this somehow, how is this connected to our guidance? And if it's not, for instance, then I think we have a problem we're going to have to either get rid of the question or perhaps add something to the guidance. But I wouldn't try to rejigger this. I think the division you have is, you know, basically questions about the charter, your prior experience, general questions, background, and then your workings. I think that's a good way to break them up right now. Okay, great. What do you think? I'm fine with that. I raise my hand. When I see length of time in a selection criteria, I have only been alive for 33 years. Many people have lived in Amherst longer than I've been alive. I have only lived here since, oh, God, math for seven or eight years. For many people that, like Lynn, what you just said is that you didn't want a committee full of people who have only lived here for five years. I ran for council and got elected after living here for five years. So what I want, I know, but what I want you to think carefully about if you're going to propose a motion to change the language is please think very carefully about putting language in that does not discourage people who have not lived here for 30 years from applying. That's my big concern, because anytime I see that as a consideration, I think, oh, they don't want me there. I don't know enough. So please consider the language you use in making that motion. And I think if you look at the tasks we've received, I do not think we are facing that risk, to be honest with you. Right. We're not. Let's look back at the interview questions. There are no hands raised, so I'm going to keep going. Okay, let's start at the top. Oh, sorry, Councillor Ate. Returning to the question, how do you see the charter impacting different populations in Amherst, such as college students, seniors, families? If this were a question asked to someone, is the person going to speak about all these categories? Some of the categories mentioned. And what if they include categories? Of course, we use et cetera, but what if they include categories that we may not have considered as appropriate in terms of different populations? My take as the person who wrote this is that I think that that's I don't presume to assume that I don't presume that I know every population that we might want to include here. And so I do think that it's really, it would be really interesting to hear people share what they feel, what populations they want to talk about. And I was not expecting someone to talk about all of these populations. I do think including it in the interview questions, which are released publicly beforehand and discussed now, could give someone ideas of what to talk about. But if they wanted to talk about a different population personally, I think I would welcome that. I think it would be really compelling. Councillor Ryan. I'm actually in the opposite camp on this one. I hate to say. I really don't know what this is going to do. I don't know how I would answer this question, quite frankly. That may just tell you something about me, but I haven't as foggy as notion how I would answer this question. I know how to answer the first question. I think I could answer the third bullet point. And I hopefully they could say something or I could say something about the fourth bullet point. But in spite of what I put in, or I suggested later with college students, that was really aimed at something different and perhaps not appropriate, given our selection guidance. But I would suggest we not ask questions like this. That's just my thought, that I'm not sure what to tell us. It's, you know, and I don't, I don't know, maybe somebody else can weigh in here and what, how they would answer this, but I don't know how I would answer this. Athena. I was going to suggest a reword that, you know, Amherst is a diverse community and how would your work on the committee help take into consideration the diverse populations and, you know, something to that effect rather than trying to, I don't know, did you catch enough of my work? I can't tell if you can hear me or not. I can hear you. I'm going to type in and say it back to you. Just a suggestion. So it's more about how are, you know, how is the person going to make sure that all of these diverse voices are going to be taken into consideration as they're working on making suggestions about changes to the charter. That's my Okay. So what I've got is Amherst is a diverse community. How would your work on the committee take into account these, take into account different communities and perspectives as you conduct your work? So Councillor Ryan pitched, pitched removing this question. I am not wedded to it. I was actually, if you don't like it, that's, that's helpful to me because I was trying to get at what you were trying to ask. So I am not wedded to this question at all. Is anyone attached to this and feel strongly to keep it? Otherwise I'm going to delete it. One, two. Pat, you moved so fast. I got scared. No, I was just going to say, as long as we have the question, which is now F, I could see deleting it. But I think Councillor Ate made an important point that we need to look at when we design our questions. What is it that we put down? And what's missing? I think I liked it better before you added as you conduct your work, but I wouldn't, but I can't remember exactly what it said. It said just that, but without us you conduct your work. Councillor Ryan. Sorry. Pat raised your hand and dropped it. Go ahead. I don't like it either. Because basically, no, I'm serious. This is serious point. I'm good that we're talking it out because I'm not, you know, I, you know, I changed my mind. I would change my mind. But this is kind of like pretty obvious what the answer is going to be. What do you think the answer is going to be? Of course, I'm going to make every effort to include all the diverse voices, et cetera. That's not what it asks. Well, how would you do that? How are you going to take in those perspectives into account? I guess my initial thought was it's our job as the committee making the recommendation based on the caps and based on answers to the questions we're going to shape to create as diverse and broad a group of people as we can. But no matter how, oh, sorry. Yeah, I don't see that F is going to, yeah, I just think that's our job. But no matter, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Go ahead. No matter how good of a job we do, we are never going to be able to get a committee of nine people that represents every perspective in Amherst. So I do think that just as we as counselors need to represent perspectives and experiences that aren't our own, this committee will too. So I do think that a question that gets at how are you going to, and maybe it's more in the outreach question, but like I think something about how are you going to make sure that you're not just representing yourself and your identities and your experiences, but also kind of trying to take in those of others to bring those forward. It's maxed a little bit of virtue signaling. Tell us how you're going to be a good person. And I would rather learn more about, you know, other facts about their experience in background and so on and not get into the issue of having them tell me how they're going to try really hard to include all voices, et cetera, et cetera. We, you know, we just assume that, but there's no way we can, I mean, I just don't see what this is going to tell us. It's not going to, you know, other than just we're all going to go, okay, they've, you know, they've signaled their virtues, their virtues, their, you know, that they're good guys, good gals, whatever. I just, I really struggle to see how this is going to help us. Pat, you're muted. There's a bizarre way in which I agree with George, but my, I think we should leave E in and take out the new F because the new F would have that, this is the way I would do it, answered. Compared to, we're just saying, how do you see the charter impacting different populations in Amherst? Even stop there. Do they know that there's difference in terms of race, college students, seniors, families, incomes? What, you know, why can't we just say, how do you see the charter impacting different populations in Amherst? Well, gee, everybody's the same. So the impact would be the same, you know. I don't know the charter well enough to answer that question, but I think that's an interesting question. And F, I agree with George, it would be a canned answer. My hand is up. Pat, I actually, I think I agree with you on E because I think when we think about the elements of the charter that this committee is going to be discussing, it's things like public participation measures, how we do, right? Like there are elements that particularly impact how folks engage with their government. And I do think that that is something that impacts different populations in different ways, folks who know how to navigate these systems, folks who have the time to engage in different ways. So I do think the question, and I think you kind of answered it in the way that I would be interested in hearing from folks, is just the knowledge that it does impact people in different ways. I think that's a really compelling point. Pat, your hand. Yeah, I'm sitting here working on a grant for the mobile market and we're talking about translation services. We don't have that. So we limit our own public engagement because we are not right now, for whatever reason, providing translation services in meetings. Yeah, so I don't want F. Okay, so Pat is pitching, getting rid of F. Is there any opposition to deleting F right now? Okay, not seeing any. All right, so we're back to E. George, or Councilor Ryan, excuse me. That's fine. I would insert renters. Okay. College students, renters, seniors, families, etc. And I'm willing to yield. I do change my mind. I think Pat and you all make a good point that let's hear what they think. Again, I don't know how I'd answer this, but that's, you know, that would be, if I were applying, I'd have to think about it. It should be good. I'm wondering if we should also add a question here in residence. Pat, hands. That's why I would like to get rid of the list. I would like to hear what they say, what their list is. That would make a difference to me instead of us coaching the list. Thank you, Pat. That is the last time I will allow you to go out of turn. Lynn. Thank you. I actually agree with Pat. I think you should just end it with an Amherst question mark. And that way they demonstrate to us that they know who lives here and they know what the diversity of Amherst is. Is there any opposition to, I don't mind doing that. Is there any, unless we really wanted to hear specifically, which again is not necessarily in our selection guidance. All right, so it would look like this. I'm okay with that. Is there any, George, your hand is up and Lynn, your hand is up. George is your hand. I have no objection. I guess the question then is the one I think you were about to ask, which is how does this, where does this connect with our selection guidance? Because what we've said is that we want to make sure to the best of our ability that the questions we're asking have some link. So I'm just asking and I've got the list in front of me too. Where do people think this connects with the selection guidance? Does anyone have an answer specifically to George's question, Pat? Yeah, the very first thing, demographic diversity. That's answered by the CAF, right? Yes, but it is one of, it's our selection criteria now, not where it's getting answered, variety of life experiences, skills, ages and occupations. I guess my thought is this is more getting at how people think and what they sort of, what's their understanding of Amherst, which I think is valuable, I think, that you've made a good point. So maybe we'll just leave it at that. This is an important thing for us to hear. Doesn't map exactly with our criteria, but it does get at, yeah, maybe life experience, generational diversity. Okay, all right. Councillor Ate. And thank you for highlighting that. It actually maps quite well prior experience in community engagement. So what community are we speaking of? This, just a brief example, there's a distinction between the fact that I have work from nine to five and those who are retired or who might work from home. That's something I wouldn't have known if I didn't end up somehow in the council or whatever else we could describe this situation. So the point is different groups may have different ways of connecting with what goes on in town. And the question is getting at, what is a community that you could speak of that has been impacted in a particular way by something within the charter? Thank you. That is why I highlighted it. I appreciate that we're on the same page. Lynn, your hand was up from before. You had a comment. I actually wanted to go back to your questions. The very second one be, here's the word of, I think should be if yes. Probably so. And if yes, it shouldn't be if comma yes. It should be if yes. You're right. In my defense, I copied and pasted these. No, it's so if yes comma. And there should be a question mark at the end of it. And I also think we should say missing elements to the charter now. Yes, I agree. Okay. Thank you. Councilor Ryan. Oh, sorry, Lynn. Were you done? I apologize. No, actually, while we're on this, I actually wonder if we should ask, are there particular areas of strength and or weakness or missing elements in the charter? Let's see his strength, weaknesses. Comma or missing elements. Okay. Thank you. Councilor Ryan. This is one I really wanted to get out. I don't like it. So I need to be persuaded or hear some more argument about why I would like to have people approach this from the perspective of first of all, they got to learn a lot, hopefully. I'm almost wishing I could serve on this because I would learn a lot. And already asking them to sort of give us their critique of a charter before they even sat down and met with each other. It's kind of like a jury. I mean, maybe there is a logic to some juries. As soon as they get in the jury room, they immediately take a straw poll. You know, what did you like? What did you like? So I, I, this makes me really, really, really nervous. And some people will run with it and they'll write, you know, and others perhaps will say, well, I just don't really know because I haven't thought that much about it. But I don't like this one, but somebody convinced me that, that's really needs to be here. Lynn? Actually, I would drop the second sentence or question in there. And the reason I like it is because, again, we don't want all like-minded people on the Charter Commission. I mean, some people may say, gee, I think it's a strength that we have X and somebody else might say, I think that's a weakness. That's good. We want diversity of how people think about the Charter. Thank you. I kind of want to fight both sides on this one. So I'm looking at the Charter Review Committee criteria that we adopted to see where this links back. I could see it linking back with this one. And maybe that one would speak to an experience. I think my thought here is I agree with Lynn that this could help us avoid groups, right, like this initial sort of everybody sees the exact same weaknesses, but at the same time, if everybody sees something as a weakness that's applying to this committee, maybe it's a really big weakness that we should fix. Well, maybe that's a strength. I'm sorry, I started my hand up. That's okay, absolutely. Maybe that's why I added the word strengths, weaknesses, and missing elements, because frankly, if they can answer that question, we don't need A. My concern with this, I agree, and I actually want to get rid of A. And I was thinking about the experience I had. I joined the Conservation Commission, and I had not read the entire wetlands by-law before I joined the Commission, but I dang sure read the whole thing and knew it back and forth by the time I left. So I think I don't like A, and I would very strongly like to get rid of it, and I will compromise by keeping B in if folks would like. I think that this does, what I want to avoid, I would like to avoid folks saying, GOL picked this person for this committee because they answered question B in a specific way, because we all know that that is not what we are trying to do. We are trying to seek a variety of thoughts and experiences and ways of thinking. My concern is that this, that's my concern about question two. And so I want to just make sure that we're asking this for the reasons, and I think Councillor Ryan said this very clearly, if we're asking for the reason, I think it was Councillor Ryan, that we are seeking that diversity of experience, diversity of engagement and all of that. So I'm trying to link it back here and make sure that we're still maintaining that rationale. And I think that's the one that said that. Thank you. Oh, sorry. Thank you, Lynn. Okay. Thank you. Councillor Ryan. I agree with you, buddy. You should go out. Look, we finally got rid of one. We also added. Well, I don't know what the others think, but I think you should go out. Because I know how to answer that. Yeah, right. I read it. Would you say yes? Okay. Lynn, I'm putting you at the end of the line because your hand's still up, but I'm Pat. I agree with removing A. What was I going to say though? I've had to wait so long because I'm... All right. People, it doesn't matter. We're going to say you agree with me. It doesn't matter what our intent is, no matter how legitimate our intent is, where we're hoping to come from as a committee. People are going to say whatever they want to say about the process if they don't like who gets picked. So you can't worry about it from that angle. You worry about have you created a question that is asking what you want and that has many openings for someone to respond. And I think just saying it the way it is now with the edit is a good way to do that. The way you came so close to telling me to get over it was hilarious. Athena? If I haven't read the charter, how do I answer that question just now? I'm going to jump in. If you haven't read the charter, we need to know that. Raise your hands or I will mute you. Athena, your hand is still up. Did you have more to add? You muted yourself again, so I'm going to go with no. Okay, Lynn? So diplomatically, I would say something like, I'm really in the process of coming up with my list. You know, I've come up with some diplomatic way of saying I'm not prepared to answer that question yet. And we also do release these ahead of time, so folks have time to prep. Pat, did you have something to add before I yelled at you? No, only that. I think that the first question gets at whether they've read the charter. And you know, they may say, I haven't read the charter, but I go to meetings and I see how it's being implemented. So I've read sections. I feel like we can put a little bit more responsibility on the people that we're interviewing to hopefully have read it better than I have. Or at least how I would prepare myself if I were applying to this committee. I would definitely be diving into parts of the charter that felt important to me. I'm kind of going back to Athena's point and I'm kind of now leaning on we should get rid of this one. Councillor Ryan. And then I'm going to tell folks we're going to spend three more minutes on this. I know we're not through it and I'm going to give you homework before we come back together, but three more minutes on this. We will get done with one category. Councillor Ryan. So again, connect this question of strengths, weaknesses, or missing elements to specific elements in our selection guidance. Somebody connected for me, please. Does anyone have a connection for Councillor Ryan? Pat? For the committee. Yes, for the committee. Thank you. No, just maybe here, but I don't see it. Unless it's prior engagement with the charter development process, but that's really not it. That could be it, but that favors a specific group. Right. Because then the only group that could answer that question well would be folks who had prior engagement. Or somebody who read the charter. But that's not prior engagement. I mean, if we want to make that, we put it in a selection guidance. Must have read the charter. We had that in here and then we deleted it. No, I mean, amongst our only selection guidance. No, I know. We had that in the selection guidance and then we deleted it. Right. Because I don't think that in the end, it's all that crucial. I agree. And that's kind of why I'm actually... Hopefully somebody's read it. Folks on this call have, maybe. Hopefully somebody's read it. When? Somehow or another, we need to be able to determine where people's perspectives are on the charter. Again, if we have a nine committee members and all nine of them wish we had never had this charter and still want to go back to town meeting, we need to know that. Pat? I do not want to delete this question. Okay. I think it's an important question. And I think that most people would answer it to the best of their ability. You know, I can imagine people who have served on the council be applying for this committee. There are several counselors now over the course of five years that have changed and that's one way of experiencing the charter having been on the charter review committee is another way of experiencing it. Sitting in a meeting and hearing counselors talk about the charter or to hear Athena expound on the charter and what our limitations are. Those are important ways of experiencing it too. I think I want to hear some opinions. I want to know where people are. I don't want to... Look, I can go down that list and I can pretty much make a tally sheet. Boom, boom, boom, boom. But I could be really wrong about how somebody is thinking about what they're going to say is a weakness of the charter. And I can close my mind in advance because I think I know what they're going to say. I want to hear what they say. So I'm not deciding based on my own prejudices. I think, Pat, what you just said is actually what I want to hear is we're asking how do you see the charter impacting different populations in Amherst? I'd like to hear what's your experience been with the charter. And then I think we can ask the follow-up of are there particular areas? Because I think that for me, to your point, if someone has experienced a town council meeting and has tried to engage with the council but hasn't necessarily read the charter, this question is really hard to answer. But if we say what's your experience been with the charter and they might say, I just learned that it's the thing that governs the town council meeting or that is how the town council functions and this is the problem I've seen, I want to hear that. But for me, I worry that this is still getting at the idea if I don't know it backwards and forwards and I'm not coming in with preconceived ideas, I shouldn't be on this committee. And this committee is going to be an incredible learning curve for the folks who are on it. So I'd like to at least add the, what has your experience been with the charter? Are there particular areas that you see of strengths, weaknesses, blah, blah, blah, blah? But I want to add some context in it that makes this a question that someone who hasn't gone through and redlined the charter already can answer. Lynn? I like the idea of having that first question you've mentioned and then then second one. I also think we may decide to reorder these at some point. So last one because we're over time and then I'm going to give you homework. Councillor Ate. I was thinking we should eliminate B because somehow B can be captured in prior experience. This section on prior experiences. Oh, okay. So Councillor Ate is saying get rid of B because ideally it's covered in the entire other section. Is there any opposition to that? I agree. I think we could either move it or, but I think that this is the only thing I'm thinking though is that we don't, this is talking about town government. This is talking about volunteering. We don't necessarily have anything that's like outside of those things. So I'm kind of wondering, I think in our next meeting we'll talk about this, but for right now, can I move this? Down to here because I think that, for example, if someone works in an occupation, like we haven't talked about that, it's specifically engagement as a volunteer or engagement in town government. Does that make sense? What I'm saying? So I, I agree it should be out of the first section. And like we got down to three questions, but I think maybe we can think about this. I'm not ready to delete it quite yet without more discussion. And we don't have time for more discussion. We're going to stop. What I would like you to please do this, I will share this document out with you again. I will share it as a Word document. I'm writing this down, so I don't forget to do it. Tomorrow I will share it with you as a Word document. I would like you to please spend some time on this. And I'm going to go ahead and share it with you. And I'm honored to send as Word doc. Please spend some time on this and make comments on which ones you think could be cut, which ones you think should be adjusted, however, so that we can, and specifically bearing in mind the selection guidance that we approved, which I will also send to you, so that when we come to our next meeting, we can discuss these and hopefully vote on them. That's the end of the sentence. Questions on this, Lynn? I want to just be very clear. Any statements I'm making are in the interest of balance, making sure that we don't have only people who are over 50 or making sure that we don't have people who may be voted against the charter versus people who are all four. I want balance on this committee because it's an opportunity to relook at the charter. The other thing is there is a person in the audience and we need to probably pause for public comment. Okay. I want to finish this part of our agenda and then we'll go back. Pat? Yeah, I just want to say, I agree with Lynn, but I think that we're all coming from the same place. I don't feel like there's any specific agenda coming from any counselor on this committee right now. I really don't. Thank you. Is everyone clear on what I'm asking you to do? I'm not sure I was clear. Yeah. I phrased it. Okay. All right. We are going to move on. I'll send you your homework. Moving on to the review process and timing for the town manager evaluation. I thought you were going to do public comment. Oh, sorry. You've already done public comment. We did already do public comment, but I will pause. Have you ever heard that? Yeah, at the beginning we just have to rest it somehow. All right. Sorry. That's okay. I have to do it if we've done it. I will happily pause again, and we do have one attendee at this time. If you'd like to make public comment, please raise your hand and I can allow you to speak. Five, four, okay. So now we're going to move on to the review process and timing for the town manager evaluation. You all had two items that were sent to you, including the relevant charter section. You all get to, once again, refresh on the charter. And the document from last year, the timeline specifically. I thought this would be the most helpful document to read. I didn't want to send you the full 200 and some odd pages of evaluation. So instead, I just sent you the timeline to try to give you a taste of how it works. And I know that many of us have engaged in this before, but wanted to send this because I think it gives a clear view of the process. What I'd like us to start with is really thinking about what the purpose of the town manager evaluation is. So that's why I included the charter section, which is a whopping one's sentence, which is the town council shall conduct an annual review for the purpose of assessing the town manager's performance. So the purpose is defined by the charter. Is that to assess the town manager's performance? I want us to think a little more broadly on what's, why, what is our why for this? And I'd love to hear from folks about what do you feel is the purpose of doing this annual review? Any thoughts, Lynn? The town council has two employees. One is the town manager. The other one is the clerk of the town council. And as with any employee, I think we as a body owe it to that employee to evaluate them against a set of pre-stated goals. And that's why we spend time on goals and then we evaluate that employee against the goals. To me, that's the easy part. The part is how do you assess those goals? That, how do you do the assessment? Okay. Any other thoughts on what why, on what the why is? Pat? I agree with what Lynn said, but I also feel like it's a time for us as a group to reflect together and for the town manager to reflect on his own work but to also hear the voices of other people in the community, staff, town members, committee members, etc. And use that information to evaluate, to judge the town manager's work and what's been accomplished and what's still undone. And I don't think that's necessarily a negative thing. I see it as a supportive thing. Councillor Ryan? So what begins as a process of our evaluating Paul on specific goals that we have set for him as a town council becomes this vast process of consulting everybody under the sun and getting tons and tons and tons of reams of stuff from all kinds of other sources. And I have yet to be convinced that this in any way, shape or form helps us evaluate him because we're focused on the goals and whether he accomplishes them. And it seems that we find out how successful he is by listening to our constituents and simply keeping our eyes and ears open. I guess I'm wondering how come a process that involves the town council ends up having 15 other pieces and becomes this gargantuan huge effort that I just, you know. If it was just us and going through his goals and then each of us weighs in on whether a success we think he's been based on our experiences of him and perceptions of him and our own right. That would seem to be a fairly straightforward process, but it seems to be much more complicated than that. Are you saying specifically because of the feedback that we get from staff and community members, we send out to staff? I don't. Yeah, I, you know, it may just be me, but I don't find that that's yeah, how helpful is that? How useful is it? And yeah, can we say, I guess, you know, can we simplify this process in any way shape or form? That is that can be one of our goals here. I mean, it seems like we are unique in the Commonwealth. I mean, in terms of the degree to which we do this, and it's not clear at all that we're getting any better result or any deeper. In fact, I think it's just the opposite personally, but and so I would love to simplify this and I would love to, you know, focus it. Anyway. I hear you. And that's actually one of my ideas for for the next time we come together on this is to actually look at other towns to look at their processes. Lynn. So the problem I see with this evaluation process that we inherited and have not taken the time to really look at, which I'm glad we're doing is really along the lines that George is talking about. But it's frankly, because we don't even get a representative sample. And so if from a research standpoint and from a fairness standpoint, and from a reliability standpoint, the feedback we do get from staff, from the community and from committee chairs or committees, isn't even reliable. It's not a sample. It's mostly people who may have a complaint or it's other people who want to make sure that they're there countering the complaints. I find the input from those other sources not to be something from a standpoint of reliability that I can count on. So I, I really either we come up with a better way to get input or we are stop pretending we get it because if you have 300 and some staff and only 20 answer the survey, you don't have a sample. You don't even have anything. So that's my, that's been my concern from day one about this process. And yet if we stop asking the public or the staff for their input, then we run the danger. Oh, you didn't seek our input. So I feel like we're caught in a dilemma. Thank you. So I see this as an attempt at a 360 review. It's an attempt at not at the town council. We see a very limited side of Paul's work. Right. And so I think that for me, I have really appreciated the I, Lynn, I understand that it's not necessarily we don't know if it's a representative sample or not. Right. So we can based on departments kind of sort of tell, but even then we don't know. But I, I have appreciated hearing from the staff because I feel that the town council in many ways is disconnected from the staff. I'm not saying that's an, that's a wrong thing, but we don't work every day in, in town hall or DPW or fire, whatever. And so I think for me, hearing from staff has been a really helpful piece of informing how I look at the goals and how I think about, because one of the goals is them exact, like running the executive functioning of the town and that includes supervision. I do think that there could be a better way to look at how we consider this as a 360 review and how we seek input, whether that's something that we say is an expectation of certain direct reports or second, like, I think that there's a way to look at that where we're still gathering staff input, but we're able to at least get a bit more of an idea as it pertains specifically to the goals that we're evaluating the town manager on. And we get stuck in this catch 22 where if Paul reports to us and we stay in our lane of legislative, how do we make sure that the folks in the executive side, all of the staff are, and to be clear, I think that Paul cares deeply and I'm not, this is actually kind of not about Paul. So I'm going to zoom out and just say town manager. How do we evaluate that aspect of the town manager's work so that someone is looking at his management of his staff, right? So I think that that's a consideration here and I want us to be keep that in mind. Similarly, thinking through committees, there are many committees that don't work with Paul, kind of at all. And there are some committees that work with him much more. And so I think that we should think about who we're asking as we go in, but I'm writing all this down. I'm going to go to George and Athena, because I think Athena's probably had lots of thoughts about what I just said. George, Councilor Ryan. So I would imagine in the real world if you were charged with evaluating the manager of a series of departments, which I take it as what we are charged with doing. You would interview or have conversations with those department heads and talk to them about privately, whatever, off the rec, whatever you'd have, but we don't do that. And I understand that we can't and absolutely respect that we cannot play that kind of game. But when it comes to the process of evaluation, I don't see how we can do that if we don't actually have some kind of conversation at the highest level with those who actually work with and under Paul. And if that doesn't happen, there's a fair amount of this that is kind of pretend. And it's meant to be helpful, but I don't see how you can be helpful if you don't actually have these kinds of conversations. And so it could be interesting to find out, as you said earlier, what other towns and cities do. Maybe there's some very good reason. Did George freeze for everybody else? Or was it just me? He's frozen. George was saying that he agrees with every single thing I just said. And yet, I'm going to respond to George's point, assuming that he will come back. Okay, but you're interrupting and you didn't have your hand raised. Excuse me. As chairs of this meeting, you need to remain muted until I call on you, Ms. Pat. What I was saying was, I wanted to know if George meant something beyond what we are asking the staff to do now. Athena? I just had a thought. And I wonder if the committee would be interested in thinking about how would you measure how Paul manages his staff? What metrics would you use? Would you measure staff turnover? Would you measure a percentage of staff evaluations completed on time or something? Because I think there are ways of getting at that question that's not hearing directly from staff. Not to say that you shouldn't or something, but that thought just came up for me while you were having your conversation. Thank you. Pat, I want to clarify. I do keep raising my hand. And then whenever I call on someone, Zoom automatically keeps lowering my hand. So I apologize that I am butting in. I am trying to figure out how to... And I apologize too. I was being snarky. I'm never snarky. So I don't know what that's like. George, welcome back. Pat, did you unmute because you wanted to raise your hand and say something? No, no. Okay. George, where you got dropped off was you were talking about how we might better hear from staff. I think in more strategically and Athena was making the point of how do you measure how Paul manages his staff? What questions might we ask? Is that a measure of looking at staff turnover? Staff evaluations completed on time? What questions might we ask? Was there another part of your comment that you wanted to make? I think I pretty much said what I had to say. Thank you. All right. Athena, your hand is still up. I think it's a leftover. Okay. So here's what I would like us to do. We are at 9.20. I don't think we have any minutes to approve today. So we're going to be wrapping up in a moment here. What I'd like to do if the committee will allow me to do this. Sorry. I'm thinking out loud. I can put together a list of towns or folks can look it up on their own. I just don't want to duplicate efforts of comparable size and other towns that have a councilor mayor and other towns that are comparable size who have town meeting but do select word evaluations of their town manager. I said town mayor. I meant town manager. I'd like to find some of a variety of different scenarios. And I don't think that I can send that list to you all without breaking open meeting law. So I think, Athena, can you help me out here? Can I do anything? Yeah, you can send stuff out for discussion at the next meeting or whatever list of towns. Okay. And then if I may. Yes. Also, it's somewhat fortunate that the council is having their retreat next week and is going to talk about the town manager goals because I think that conversation is really going to help this committee figure out what success looks like in each of those goals. And that might help the committee think about how the council would measure that success. If it's really clear that he's accomplished something yes or no, then do you need more information beyond that? And so on. So I think it might be helpful after the retreat to consider some of that to the conversation. Thank you. I agree. Councilor Ryan. So you're going to give us a list of towns or cities that might be. And then the thought is that each one of us maybe would go off and try and find out. I don't know how one finds this out. I actually at the MMA went to talk to the MMA people and they were surprisingly unhelpful. They looked at me like I was crazy. And I thought, well, this is one of our primary functions. And they just, you know, so maybe that was just I got the wrong person at the end of the meeting. Who knows? But are you thinking that then each one of us would perhaps volunteer to take a look at a sample city and try and find out our town and find out how they do what their process is? And then the second question is, if that is true, if someone could give us maybe a thing or somebody or Lynn advice on how we'd actually find, I mean, maybe just call up town hall and say, I don't know. But is that what you have in mind us helping you out a little bit here as opposed to you going off and trying to do this in addition to your full-time job on your own? Yes, and consulting gigs. George, don't forget the consulting gigs. Yes, I was halfway through describing this. So what my plan, no, no, no, you didn't interrupt me. I interrupted myself by being like, can I actually legally do this? So yes, I will send out a list of cities and towns. I was planning to keep it within Massachusetts, but I don't know if that's necessary. But just to give myself parameters, I was planning to keep it inside Massachusetts. I'll send out a list of cities and towns. I'll give everyone between one to three of them. I would like you to reach out to their either their town council president, their mayor, their town manager, or someone at town halls, generally the idea and ask them if they have, I will send you questions that I believe would be just general information questions. My plan is to ask them, what is your do you have a system of evaluating your town manager or your person? What is that system? What works about it? And what would you change about it? Those are my four questions. And yes, I would like people to reach and if you have additional ones you'd like to ask on your own, that's obviously your prerogative. But I think that kind of is around a sort of around picture. I know that there are several towns that have really interesting processes. Chatham, Massachusetts is one that I've looked into that are publicly available. So sometimes you may not even need to call. But if you would like to get their perspective on it, it would be interesting to do that outreach if you're able to. And then yes, people would bring that back to the next meeting. We'll kind of discuss it and see if there are elements we want to borrow elements that we want to avoid. And yeah, kind of go from there. I agree. I think that because we base our evaluation off of the goals, the town council retreat next week may be helpful for us in thinking about what does accomplishment look like for these goals? I will tell you that my part of my job includes doing performance management work and we set terrible goals. They break all the goal rules. So I think that it'll be helpful to kind of think about them in that context as well. Does that seem feasible to people? It's question one. Our next meeting is on April 4th, I believe. Yeah. So I will try to get you those lists tomorrow. If you're not done by April 4th, just let me know. That's okay. But that is the current plan if folks circuit with it. Lynn. I don't. It's unclear that I will be here able for something else that will probably run right into this and well past the time you start. I may try to join later, but I just wanted to mention that. Thank you. Do you think you would be able to email me any notes that you take if you do that? Or would you rather wait and give a verbal report at another time? I don't know. No worries. Keep me posted. That actually is bringing me to my next point, which is that I will not be here on the 18th. And so, Councillor Ate, if you are, are you able to chair the meeting on the 18th? Yes, I will with the support of everyone else. And I'm happy to check in with you and help you out before that too. It will be a way that whole week. All right, Pat, you're muted. Sorry. I feel like we're getting ready to adjourn and I wanted to bring up, but we might, I'd wanted to bring up an issue. Yes. I had one other thing as well. I'm not totally ready to adjourn yet. You and I might be bringing up the same issue. It's a future agenda item stuff for me. So, maybe. Okay. So, mine was something, I'm going to move on from town manager evaluation. This was something I wanted to check in with Athena about that I would like to put on a future agenda. We obviously had some things said at the Monday Town Council meeting in public comment that were extremely upsetting. And so, it was mentioned that GOL might be able to put something together, some sort of statement that could be read prior to public comment commencing that is not, we cannot legally set a bound on what people say at public comment that is very clear. But what we can say is that we encourage some, right, like we encourage whatever. I believe that that is okay to say. This is not something that we are going to do tonight, but it is something that I, with the committee's sort of general consensus of agreement would like to discuss at a future meeting. Pat? I think I'd like you to go to Councillor Ate before I speak because I want to shift the topic. Oh, sure, sure, sure. Councillor Ate? I remember that request being made to GOL, but being made as a statement to be spoken at the end. And so, I think that in whatever statements that will be crafted, perhaps it would be good to have the statements put at the beginning and at the end of public comment. Thank you. Okay. Lynn? First of all, I want to thank both of you for bringing it up and for those comments. I'm just looking for help. Absolutely. Because Monday night is not something I hope we ever have to experience again. We can't stop it, but we can at least make a statement. But that's a future agenda item. You've said it. Thank you. Yep. Absolutely. Pat? One of the important carryover items was the reparations follow, committee follow up. And we have not looked at that at all. And I'd like to get it on the agenda as soon as possible. We do not have it. I wrote back to that letter. I did not CC the full council because I can't because of open meeting law, but I responded to the letter explaining as I explained at the beginning that we have not yet received that report back from KP law. So I cannot put it on agenda yet because we do not have it. As soon as we get it back from KP law, I will put it on an agenda. And it is in our work plan as well that was in the last meeting packet as a TBD item because again, we don't have it. I will follow up to see when that is expected back as well. Lynn? Thank you. We don't have the legal opinion back yet. That's the problem. Yeah. Councilor Ryan? I believe nuisance by law always refer to us. Is that right? Second verse, same as the first. It is with legal review. We will be getting it as soon as they are done with it. It's with legal review. Okay. All right. Fine. Thank you. Thank you for checking in on that. Yeah. And the sponsors of that determined that it could be separated out from rental registration so that the council can consider them separately. Pat can probably speak more to this if she wants to. But we will, we, rental registration had legal review if I'm getting that right, but nuisance by law did not. And so we want that before we look at it because if we look at it in legal, disagrees with what we say. Yeah. All right. Any other questions? The answer is probably it's with legal. Lynn? I move to adjourn. Is there a second? I need to hear a second. Councillor Ate seconded. Thank you. I'm going to call the vote. Councilor Ryan? Aye. I am a yes. Pat Dangelis? Aye. Lynn Griezmer? Aye. Councillor Ate? Aye. All right. We are adjourned at 931. Thank you all very, very much. Thank you, Athena. Thank you, Athena. Bye, everybody. Bye. Good night. Thanks. Bye.