 Thank you. It is February 12th, 2022, and this is our first town council retreat for the new council. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021, this meeting is being conducted by a in-person but also remote means. Given that we have a quorum of the council present, I am calling the meeting of the Emmerstown council to order at 914. I'll call upon each councilor by name at that time you should unmute your mic and say present. And then please mute your mic again. I'm present. Pat D'Angeles. Present. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Present. Lynn Griezmer is present. Mandy Johannick. Present. Annika Loeps. Present. Michelle Miller. Present. Dorothy Pam. We use this mic. Yep. Like the old times. Hold it. Present. Thank you. Pam Rooney is holding the mic. Thank you. Pam Rooney is hoping to join us later. She's on her way to Rhode Island to become a grandmother. Kathy Shane. Here. Andy Steinberg. Here. Jennifer Taub. Present. Alicia Walker. Here. Okay. And I want to check because we have three other four other people in the room. Although we have actually five. I want to first of all thank Sean for coming in this morning and helping us all get it set up. And also setting the room up in advance. So that we could be seriously socially distanced and still be together. We're joined today by Paul Bachman, town manager. Present. Dave Zomac, assistant town manager. And I'm going to now introduce Erin Cohn and she's going to say a few words about herself and then turn it back to me. Okay. Hi everybody. So excited to be here. I actually have a slide to introduce myself. Let's see if we can make that actually work. Here we go. All right. Well, I'm very excited to be here with you today. I am currently the director of the wordal center for leadership at Smith college, where I facilitate leadership development courses and workshops with a real emphasis on collaborative leadership. Before being in that role, I served as a senior partner at an organization called leadership and design where I worked as a consultant facilitator. To design a facilitate leadership development. Experiences initiative. For K12 teachers and school leaders, particularly with an emphasis on human centered design as an approach to changemaking. I'm also a parent of teenagers and I have a 14 year old daughter and two step children who are also in high school. And then I live part-time in Northampton part-time in Vermont. And you can see that's my woods in my backyard of my little dog hops. So that's me. Thanks for having me today. I'm looking forward to spending the day with you. Great. Thank you so much. So leading up to today. I first got a call actually even before we had the new council sworn in. From Michelle Miller and from. Anna. And they asked, can we, are we going to have a retreat? Could we talk about that? Well, we can talk about it. I'm not president yet, but let's talk about it. So we began talking about this. And so I want to turn it over to the two of them to talk a little bit about what we, what the goals are. And what they envisioned and what we tried to put together. So let's start, I guess, Michelle. Let me just get a little closer here. I think. Yeah. So I think Anna and I were talking after election. And I think the two themes were. Recognizing the extraordinary amount of work that the previous council had accomplished. And also recognizing that there was a lot more work to do. And then recognizing that to do that work and to serve our community. It would be important for us as counselors and colleagues to be able to work really well together. And so we, that was sort of the impetus for wanting to pursue the retreat. And then we had this meeting, I think in December. To talk about what that might look like. And both Anna and I had looked at some different models. Looked at what might be possible for us. What would benefit this particular group? And I think that's sort of, that's, that's where we started in that initial meeting. We talked about how we could. Gain the input of the council. Leading up to this day that we're now here for. So, and then I know we'll take it from there. Yeah. So in terms of the content, what we talked about was, you know, what Michelle mentioned around the initial figuring out how to collaborate, how to be in process together. And then we also wanted to spend some time talking about processes that have yet to be defined. So. Things like how to bring something that you're passionate about and turn it into something that comes before the council, right? There's not really a set process for that. Some people have, have figured it out very well. Some of us are kind of like, maybe I'll try this, maybe I'll try that. And so we wanted to spend part of our time together, really thinking, getting to know each other and, and establishing that collaborative process, which I believe Erin will talk us through the plan for today, but that's part of the plan. The other part of the plan is to really think about what is our process. And where might we be focusing our efforts? So while we're not going to get into actually solving those problems in this session, we're going to think about how we might apply a process to these issues moving forward. So those are the two areas that I miss anything, Michelle, does that cover it? Cool. Yeah. So that's, that's the plan for today. And then Erin is, I will just speak because I have seen Erin facilitate before. Very good at talking about both collaboration and process. And so is a great fit for this in terms of bringing, bringing humans to the middle of it, really thinking about our needs in this space and what we each bring in moving forward together. So I'm excited. Okay. And then we received suggestions for facilitators from, I think four or five counselors, there were six of them. And so at that point, Shalini and Anna and I started interviewing. We interviewed two. And we settled on Erin. And then we began having meetings and Michelle was able to join us for the last of those. So we kind of came full circle. On putting to gaze today. Today's agenda together. I just want to mention, we will not take any boats. There may be things that at some point. In the future, I certainly would imagine might come to a council meeting for a vote, but that's not the purpose of a retreat and so forth. We do have the retreat is open to the audience right now. There is nobody in the audience. So it's a public meeting. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Erin. All right. Thank you, Summer. Okay, great. Well, actually they'll do these first. Okay. Should I pause or just, okay. All right. Okay, great. Not sorry. Okay. All right. So I want to start us off to kind of laid the landscape of what we're up to today for the, for this retreat. And this is sort of a strategy for sharing all of these pieces with you called Ores. That's the acronym for it, but it basically stands for outcomes, agenda, roles and rules. And so this is a chance to just really think about what are we up to? Why are we here? And what are the roles that each of us is going to play at this work together. So in terms of outcomes, we've discussed these a little bit on a Michelle touched on these, but the first is to create connections. This is a new group. Some of you are new to this role. Some of you are not new to this role. But anytime you add new members, you are a new group, right? So you are forming as a group. And that forming process requires an opportunity to get to know each other a little bit better. And so we're going to engage in a little bit of creating connections. Another outcome that we hope to have from today is to clarify collective norms and values. We'll talk about what those terms actually mean. But to really get a sense of how do we want to work together with each other and what matters to us. And then the other goal for us is to create a new group. So we're going to be able to get to know each other and what matters to us. And then the other goal for today is to start to consolidate your priorities and to design a process or processes, processes. I'm not sure how to pronounce that for pursuing those goals. Obviously we are not going to converge on like, what are the priorities and exactly how are we going to, you know, pursue policy today? That's the work of governing, right? But at least trying to think about how can we do this work together productively is what we're up to today. So we're going to start with our agenda. We'll do a little bit of an icebreaker to get to know each other better. I'm going to share some concepts for healthy group engagement to kind of set the stage for the work for the day. We will have a conversation about procedure procedures, norms and values. We're going to kind of look at some of those procedures that you already have in place, some of your values and try to reflect on them and make sense of them. You've already started to set priorities, but we want to kind of look at how those priorities are and what do we notice from those priorities? We're going to spend some time designing process and then we'll kind of close. Obviously there's going to be breaks in the middle of all this. So just so you know, it's not like we're just going to, you know, motor through this whole thing from here until two o'clock and you're captive. So please make sure to take breaks as you need them. I will also have formal breaks for us. Okay. So in terms of roles, your role today as a counselor is to listen and reflect. One thing you'll notice about my facilitation style is that I like to engage people in individual reflection and conversation because I find if we're just in conversation, we don't really have time to collect our thoughts and some of us process at different speeds than others. And so I would encourage you when I invite you to reflect, to use the paper, to jot down notes and, you know, take the time to do that reflection and I'll set a timer for the reflection time and then share out. And so we'll kind of toggle in between reflection and conversation. I would encourage you to share your perspectives and ideas today. So that's your role is to be sort of an active participant. My role is to steer the conversation and also to bring us out of the weeds. And so I want to foreground this from the beginning and normalize that there may be moments where I have to interrupt us because we're sort of getting caught in the details. You all have issues that you care deeply about. And sometimes it's easy to get kind of caught up in those details and there may be moments where I need to pull you back up and out and say, okay, this is really great conversation, this is really great conversation. And so I think we need to really think about what kinds of processes are we, you know, can we use? And so please note that there may be moments that I do that and you may hate me. And that's why I'm here, right? I'm not a part of this group. And so you're allowed to do that. Every sort of meeting, you know, to create, it's nice to create a set of rules to kind of use together. And these are some that I like to use with groups. The first is to take space and make space. This is another, you know, you might have heard this, but I think it's really a great opportunity to talk about, it's just inviting you to both step forward and share your voice, but also make sure that you're leaving space for other voices as well. We're going to talk a little bit in a moment about listening, but would encourage you to listen to understand rather than to listen to respond, right? So listening to understand is about really, you know, stopping and really trying to think about what are my hearing from the people whose voices are being presented. I encourage you to be more curious than certain today. This is like one of my life mantras that in moments where I think I really know the answer that I try to kind of step back and take some curiosity on and think about how might I, you know, complicate the way that I look at these things. And so that's an invitation to you to do that today. And then finally be aware of the impact of your identity on your experience. And I would say identities actually, because we all carry various identities and they shape what we bring to the work. And so I would just encourage you to be thinking about that. Okay, we are in a retreat. We are not physically in a retreat. We're not in a separate space, but I want to invite us like to cross a threshold into a retreat space together. And so the first reflection prompt I wanted to bring to you as sort of a centering. And I'm going to ask you just for a, take a couple of minutes to jot down on paper and answer to these two prompts. You are not going to share these out loud. I'm just going to give you a little bit of an example of what you're bringing with you. I know it's just a manner, a moment for you to kind of check in with yourself. But what is one thing that you are bringing with you into this space in order to be a productive sort of member of this group as you're engaging in this reflection work together. And then what is one thing you're leaving behind? Okay. So what are you trying to kind of leave at the doorway? You know, push it out the exit. And then what are you bringing in through the entry? So just take a minute or two to jot down. And when you're ready, you can just look up. That helps me know that you're done. Okay. Great. So I would encourage you to keep those in mind as you're making your way through. Sometimes it's nice in groups to share these, but we're going to do actually a different share around for ice breaker. Okay. So for an ice breaker, we're going to start with our own values. And I think that's a really good place to start. What matters to us personally. So I'm going to encourage you again to take a minute to look at this list of values words. I encourage you to choose three values that most resonate with you. And I encourage you if you don't like these words and there's a word you like better to choose that word. There's nothing magical about this list of words. They're here though to give you a, you know, a set of things to get started with, but choose three that most resonate with you. And in choosing that doesn't mean that like, if you don't choose fun, you don't value fun. It's really more, you know, try to pick three that really matter to you. And in a moment, what we're going to do is go around the room and share what three did we choose, but then why did you choose one? So we're not going to talk about all three. We're just going to share out the why on one of them. But take a couple of minutes, look through these pick three, and then we'll do a share around of your why about one of those. Okay. So let's give it like 30 more seconds. Again, I'm asking you to summarize everything that matters to you in a very short amount of time, but. And Lynn, what do you think is the best way to do a share out? Is it should we do it through roll call order or when folks feel ready? What do you think might be the best way to do it? People could either raise their hand because they all have the raise hand function. Or we could do what we do for votes and that is I keep rotating the orders around and around and around. Alicia wants to ladder. I think it's because she comes at the end. All right. We're going to do the in the order that we. Do roll call. Okay. That makes sense. And that I think is probably more efficient than we're not. Yeah. All right. Excellent. We start with shall we bomb them? I think if you share the three words you chose, but then just the why about one and if you can be kind of brief, you know, we have a lot to do today, but I also want to give us a chance to hear from each other in terms of what matters. So I would just encourage you to kind of find that balance. I chose honesty. Inclusion and understanding. I choose so many. Okay. I think I'm going to go with. Okay. One thing about truth and honesty. I love glorious kind of thing. She says that the truth will set you free, but at first I'll piss you off. I think maybe I'll lead with that one that. Sometimes it's hard to say what's true to us as counselors, because there's so much of. Anti sentiment against it. I mean, it feels like saying that you're going to lose the support or trust of people. And yet that's the struggle constantly is what is my truth. In this situation, I may not be right, but that I need to say that so I can learn. Of something else and something new. So what is my truth? And. And I think if we can all speak our truth, I mean, I would speak for myself, but yeah, so when I speak my truth, I sleep better. I learn more. I'm willing to say I don't know what it is. So I guess that is an important value than that leads to understanding better understanding, seeking to understand different perspectives and why people are thinking the way they're thinking. And we were supposed to pick three I picked 123456. A multiple of three. So I'm going to read them all and then I'll talk about one collaboration, risk taking and courage, curiosity, justice and equity. And the one I want to sit with is curiosity. It's in some ways what drives me. I'm very interested in people's stories. What they what they've lived what they've experienced who they are. And I find that if I allow myself to be openly curious, I think what I'm going to pass is the way I judge myself or I judge others. And it makes life more interesting to just wonder about what is going on and it leads me into places I didn't expect or anticipate and I think that's a great thing. Anna. So I did follow the rules. So I'm going to go with that. Growth, hope and curiosity. And for me, growth. I'm going to explain growth. I think remembering that it's okay to learn new things and shift your mind, right? Like to change your mind on things, not change your mind, but educated changes. And that we're always learning, right? Like none of us are here to be experts. Our role is to learn our role is to grow and change. And then, you know, part of this is in the curiosity, right? So around growth, challenging my reactions to being challenged, you know, working on always momentum, right? Like always moving forward. I think if momentum was on that list, I would, I would choose that too because I think it's really, it's about that progress and whether it's slow or fast, whether it's hard or easy growth is key to this. So I go next and I, I chose truth slash honesty. I chose hope. And I chose contribution. And I'm going to focus on hope. And one of the reasons that I'm here today is because I have continually fallen into all kinds of challenges. And I keep hoping and I come back out of them. And making sure that I can hope also means that with hope, it allows me to just feel like there's still a reason to contribute. So there you go. So I chose service, openness and curiosity. Openness I guess goes a little bit to some of what Anna was saying about growth, but I took it as openness and openness to other opinions, other ideas, being willing to change, but also an openness of your own opinions and being willing to say what you're thinking in an open meeting without fear of the consequences and all of that. I think one thing I learned in the last council was if we're, can't be open, we can't have conversations. And we need to have those conversations if we're afraid to say something, we have problems. So that's why I chose openness. That's one of them. I chose openness. I chose openness. I chose openness. So I have authenticity slash integrity, a popular hope. And vision. I will sit with authenticity. I think that just in all things. It's important to center. And really focus on who we are, why we are. And bring that forward in all that we do. Michelle. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your passion and courage. And I'm going to share about compassion. I have found in my life experiences that. Working, practicing to relieve my own suffering and also practicing to relieve the suffering of others. And I think that's one of the reasons why I chose openness. And I think it's important to stay open. And has created more peace. In my life. That's my. Okay. Dorothy. Well, I'm five values here. And they're going to sound familiar. So you can draw your conclusions. Authenticity, courage, creativity. Initiative. And integrity. And I think that's one of the things that we have to do and say. I think we have to be out front. See what's wrong and where you want to go. And figure out how to get there. We'll join us later. Don't worry. We'll make her tell us in council meeting. Kathy. As I looked at these, I had to cluster them to get to three. Because some of the words. And I heard other people doing it too, but it's. I'm not sure what I'm going to say. Cause I'm not sure what I'm going to say. But I heard them all go together for me. So I'm going to only do three, but they're going to be clusters. Okay. So accountability, sustainability. Go together for me. And I must say, I'm thinking of this in terms of my role as a counselor, not the way I am as a parent necessarily. And outside. Creativity, learning growth and openness. All went to me because I don't think you can do any of those Both go to me because I think, and I'll talk about the last one, having worked on issues that took forever to get done, I found that if you had integrity as you were working on them, you needed patience to get them done. And it goes with the openness and curiosity that there's ways of moving to get to yes, but it may not happen in a day. Andy. Good morning. I'm going to start to take you just one sentence and say that I'd much prefer to be with you in person. And I will explain in another time in another context why it was not possible today. The words that I chose were two that went together, first, equity and justice, second is integrity, and third is sustainability. And the one thing that I will comment on since we're invited only to speak to one is sustainability. I have always felt that serving on any elected body, we're here to serve the people. The people who put us into office and the community that they represent, and we owe it to them to make sure that we are creating a sustainable community. That's why we're here. Okay, thanks, Jennifer. Thank you. So my words, and one of them does have three is service and inclusion, and then I had to add collaboration and community. And then my third word was integrity. And I think I'll focus on service. As a child of the 60s and 70s, I was can always hear the mantra in my mind of if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. So I think that's how I get to service. And I think to accomplish, you know, to get to where you're hoping to go in serving you need collaboration, inclusion and integrity. And I guess what Andy just said really resonated because I think sometimes I kind of harp on the same themes, but I do feel a real sense of responsibility to the constituents who put me here. You know, to, to make progress on the values that are important to them, which gets, which is pretty much communities sustainability. Great, Alicia. And so the words I chose were respect equity. And then my third one, which is one that I made up but is to me, a combination of a lot of the words on here. And that's the one I'm going to explain and that's grace. And the way that I look at that grace. So the way that I look at this in terms of meeting and working with other people is allowing everyone the space to be human. And so allowing people to make mistakes and allowing people to grow and allowing people to exist in a space in whatever way it is that they need to exist in that space, and to not hold judgment and to allow people to have an experience adverse things and to not think of them as lesser than. All right, that was everybody thank you so much for engaging that and putting your full your whole selves into that exercise. The thing I love about this exercise is the ways that people choose to break the rules that rules are there just to get you started right but it's really just an opportunity for you to start to think about it and you can learn a lot about each other in terms of how each of you tackle that. So, thank you for engaging fully in it. Yes, are we willing to have folks share are you all willing to share have you had a chance to think about it. I do think this is about the councils I leave it in the council and you're building your relationship, and I have a different role. So I leave that up to the president. All right, but I'm willing to whatever you want to do. Okay. It's an opportunity for future conversation perhaps. Okay, so I wanted to take a few minutes to share a few things about group engagement from some of the reading and research that I've done on this, just to kind of frame what, you know, healthy collaborative work looks like. And I have three main concepts for you that I want to share and this is just a little short segment but I thought it might be helpful to just give some of this framing for you. And I have mushrooms because I'm a big fan of the way that fungi collaborate in the forest and so if you want to talk to me about that later I'm happy to do that with you but it's really fascinating. Okay, so concept number one is that diverse groups create better outcomes and so there's all kinds of research on how diverse teams, especially in science for whatever reason diverse teams of scientists actually end up being more productive and more creative the more diverse the group is. And so that research helps us understand that it is in our difference that we can actually find productive and creative outcomes. And so it's really honoring that diversity, as opposed to kind of trying to step away from it or to find consensus or connection between our group. Diversity takes many forms in some ways that diversity is identity but there's also cognitive diversity and cognitive diversity is really sort of how do we approach problems, how do we imagine process. There's kind of cognitive diversity around neuro diversity and so just recognizing that there's lots of different ways that we can be different from each other, and that those differences can bring a lot to the table when we're trying to work together. The one thing that makes it challenging is that the more diverse a group, sometimes the less productive it feels. And that's because we as humans crave consensus and belonging right so when we are in a group that is diverse, we are more likely to experience conflict and abrasion against each other. And sometimes that feels less productive, when in fact, if we can find our way through that difference and through that abrasion, we can actually be more productive and more creative and so just sort of recognizing that the feel of diverse collaboration is sometimes very different than what we crave because consensus feels good. And one piece of this sub, you know, the last sub point here is that in order to become productive within a diverse group, it requires sort of the active normalizing and harnessing of difference and so being comfortable with and actually craving that difference among us to kind of be open to hearing other people's perspectives, and to be patient with the fact that our ways of doing things might come up against each other. So that's what number one diverse groups create better outcomes. The second concept I want to bring forward is that there's a difference between productive and unproductive descent and conflict. We need descent and conflict and in all group processes. There's different forms of that right and so we need authentic descent in order to avoid group think and group think is basically the sort of one person brings an idea and we all kind of come up behind it. And that there's all kinds of really interesting research about how that happens within groups because socially, we want to feel a sense of belonging and so sometimes we quiet our own voices and opinions as a result of that social pressure. So I would encourage you to to normalize dissent when dissent is happening and I mean you're a town council so I think the sense not a problem for you would be my guess. It's when I'm working with like student undergraduate groups where they're like we don't want to dissent right but so I just you know to be thinking about how do we avoid group think but also how do we engage in dissent in ways that are healthy and productive. So healthy conflict or descent looks like movement. It looks like curiosity. It looks like asking each other questions. And sometimes those questions can have difficult emotions behind them, but to do that in a way that honors each other's humanity, each other's experience. That's all part of healthy conflict. So unproductive conflict is when we lose sight of our shared values. We lose. Yeah, basically when conflict is the destination right we find ourselves engaging in conflict for the sake of conflict. And unproductive conflict also often looks like binary thinking. It's us versus them, my faction versus that faction. We're either going to have this solution or that solution right that binary the more heated a conflict becomes the more binary it becomes and so it's something to watch for in your work together. Are we moving into a binary here and if so how can we find a third way. And how can we do that in a way that kind of allows us to have an understanding of the larger picture. And I would also just encourage you to think about argument as actually the place where ideas form like that's actually productive if you can do it well. And I just love this, this quote by these two psychologists. I'm going to talk about Pergo Mercier and Dan's Berber, which is that reasoning makes us smarter, only when we practice it with other people in argument right and so, if you know anything about the right brothers or vulnerable right. They actually had this amazing relationship as brothers where they just thought like crazy, like all they did was argue with each other and try constantly to bad each other's ideas down, so that they could build and learn and create an airplane right and that's how they got there. So just thinking about how do we create that kind of productive dissent within our group. So that's concept number two there's a difference between productive and unproductive dissent and conflict. And then finally the third concept I want to leave you with here let me see if I can move this again. This is always the challenge when you're presenting on zoom, there we go. I just want to leave you with listening as like such an important skill. And if you're interested in reading about listening I would encourage you to check out this book by Kate Murphy you're not listening. It's a really wonderful read about the art of listening. And it is a crucial collaborative skill and so much of our training in our lives is about like public speaking and having an opinion and being a knower right being the one who has the answers and I would say that as public officials as probably very true that the expectations of you to be able to show up with the answers. And I just would encourage you to cultivate your listening instead of you know not instead of but in addition to that. And so there's multiple pieces of this that I find fascinating. The first is the concept of the speech thought differential, which is that our thoughts happen faster than our list of then people talk right so when you're listening to a person talk this is probably happening to you in the last five minutes while I've been talking your brain is going other places right because you get bored and brain just sort of takes a vacation right and so part of the art of good listening is learning how to turn off that tendency to mentally go somewhere else. Half the time we're thinking about how can I respond to what this person is saying right so remember I was talking about listening to understand versus listening to respond. So often we miss what the person is saying, because we're already thinking like waiting for them like come on come on I've got this thing I want to say so I'm going to say it, and you don't hear that the second half of what their website. Or you think you know what they're going to say and so you fill that in and don't actually listen to what they do say. So I already kind of mentioned this there's a big difference between listening to understand versus listening to respond that's kind of what I was discussing right there. So the key to think about is active versus passive listening passive listening is sort of sitting back and assuming that listening is about absorbing active listening is about asking asking actual curious questions to try to draw out more right. And so as you are engaging in conversation and dialogue and debate with each other. So instead of it being here's my point here's your point let's battle those two things out. You know if there is a point or a perspective to try to learn more about that right be active in the way that you try to draw each other out and gain more information about why, why does my fellow counselor believe this what is the background. What do they bring to the table and kind of engage in that active listening together. This is a really important quote from miles Davis which is, if you understood everything I said you'd be me in the sense that like, we can't ever fully understand each other the way each of us brings words to the table to our, you know, conversation is different and what we mean by those things is that's sort of the beauty of being human and also one of the biggest challenges of it so something to think about as you're working together. So those are sort of three main concepts that I wanted to bring to you just to kind of frame our work together. But I also want to not spend this whole time lecturing at you I just wanted to kind of share those things with you to frame your work, and then start to think about our own norms and values and procedures that you have as a team. So, I want to start by looking at what these things actually mean so what are norms, what are values these are words that we use often, but it can help us to define what they actually mean. So norms are the behaviors that we engage in regularly with each other as we work together as a group. Okay, so we might have a set of rules of procedure I know you have a formal set of rules with the procedure. And you've set those in place to say these are the things that we're going to do with each other norms are a little different than those rules in the sense that norms are the things that we actually do with one another. It's the actual behaviors that we have accepted as sort of the way that we engage with one another and sometimes the rules we set for ourselves, and the norms that we practice, don't match up fully right and so you might set a norm that people won't be on their phones during meetings, but if people are on phones during meetings the norm is actually people can be on their phones during meetings because there's no sort of enforcement about that right. And so there's a distinction between kind of what do we actually engage in as norms together. And what are the rules we want to set for ourselves. Values on the other hand are kind of what do we care about what are the ethics that guide us. And so we've already done a little bit of work with values and so I want to give you a chance this morning to really look at what are our rules. What are they translated into norms. What are our values do they map to the rules and procedure that we have with ourselves, or for ourselves and spend some time with that. So here's what you're going to do. You've got in your packet here. A set of values and procedures. So you've got the Amherstown Council rules and procedure. And I'm going to invite you to find the values. Which page of them. Okay. Yeah, I think they're highlighted. There's the values. Yeah, page 29. Okay, so there should be 10 of those. And just on a piece of paper I'm going to have you draw out this continuum. Okay. On the left side of this continuum is inward facing. And on the right side is outward facing. And just take a minute to read through these adopted town council statement of values. I'm going to have you plot where you think each of these 10 values goes on the inward facing to outward facing continuum so a value that is especially inward facing might be something like healthy balance. You can put healthy balance wherever you want. I'm just using this as an example, but what are inward facing value is something that governs our work with each other as a town council outward facing is more on the end of this is related to how we want to engage with the town and our constituencies. Okay, everything is going to be gray right it's not one or the other that's why we're doing this along a spectrum but do your best to just jot down along the continuum where you think each of these 10 values goes. And so I'm going to give you a few minutes to do that and you kind of look up and let me know when you're ready. It's a great question so the question, can you ask the question in your mic. The question was whether we are reading putting this in the way we are it was intended or in the way we actually practicing it, or acting on it. And I don't have a good answer to that so that's a great question for us to talk about in terms of the differences between practice versus intention and how do we want to think about that moving forward so I'd say do your best. And then maybe we can bring that up as part of the conversation should we give it one more minute I see some folks are still kind of thinking and considering anyone need another moment. Okay, great. All right, so I just want to open up conversation, and I can kind of move these around obviously there's no right answer to this question necessarily but we have these on a jam board and I can kind of move them. As we're considering you might make a statement of like, I really think that community participation belongs, you know, where, where do you think it belongs on the spectrum, just a chance for us to start to kind of think about how do these map in terms of what faces inward in our relationship versus outward. So, I open the floor to whoever'd like to contribute. I had a vision looking at this I thought you know could easily move them over but I did envision more of like an infinity circle whereas I think that they're both equally as important on both sides, though, I think you know maybe creativity and innovation, diversity inclusion and equity and teamwork, like, like, heavier on the side of the Council and our work that we can't put that responsibility to the community, but I found it very difficult to separate them. I think they're both equally important on both inward and outward. Yeah, Shawnee. The way I thought of it was like it's everything seems to be in the middle for me like we are working within but it's because they're also reflecting what people need said to me it was in the middle but I do like the infinity. What I also felt was the internal theme more like what is our small world so when we say we're working even with the community or whether we're working within who's in the in in our group. Even when it's community and we say it's the community but the community is still our little world of community and doesn't really expand into the larger so to me the inner versus outer seems a very important piece because we think we're talking about the outer when we're still talking about a subset of the outer. You know what I mean. Like our inner world is still who we can sit who we interact with who we listen to. And then we feel that that's the whole community because we have heard from everyone who's in our inner world. And we feel everyone has spoken, but that's still a microcosm of the bigger community. So I needed to define them in my head. And so I think I followed the way that you explained it Aaron and the way I looked at it as inward facing is kind of like we are now we're literally all facing into the center and it's this group of people right and so for me that was the ones on that end. So that's that healthy balance teamwork and that's not to say that we don't work in teams with our communities but I was thinking of this really as, as we define our work we have work that we need to engage in in order to be productive together and then we have work that we do that is everything is in service of our community but that is literally like we turn around and say it to the to the rest of the people right. The ones that I did think were strongly on the outward facing and and are less about how we work together and more about what we do are the fiscal responsibility environmental sustainability community participation and then like slightly less in slightly more towards the middle of the spectrum was culture. So I think that that's very much a outward facing responsibility that we need to focus on but it also impacts and is in drives, how we work together. So that was kind of my. And then in smack in the middle I had DEI transparency and respect. And then the other two are kind of where I had them on mind as well. Great. There's honest map in case you want to see it visualized. Well I was going to just give one and then I was like wait I'm leaving everything else out so great inclusion. Yeah, I'm curious if others would organize this differently. Yeah, it's Alicia right. Yeah. So I'm just already finding it very interesting because I think we all interpreted this like slightly differently. So I was looking at it a little bit more similarly to how Anna was looking at it in terms of like inward facing it's like us here right now in our meetings and outward facing is more of like our interactions with the community and sort of us getting our information to bring back to this group. And so I had a similar thing and also I was doing it as like a timeline and not as like all of these things go in one place. So having a little bit of a harder time like which one comes first, which one's closer, but I had for the inward facing. Healthy balance teamwork, creativity innovation and respect. And in the middle kind of I had diversity, equity and inclusion, fiscal responsibility, environmental sustainability and transparency and culture. I had all somewhere in the middle and those ones I had a little bit of a harder time because I think they go both ways. And so transparency is very important for us when we're working because if we all don't understand the processes and what we're doing then we won't get very far but it's also very important for us when we're outward facing to the community so that they can be involved and understand what's going on also. And I felt similarly in terms of like fiscal responsibility that's really kind of our work like the community themselves aren't so much so having to say and how we approach the fiscal deals that we look into but it does affect them. And so that's why I put it there and as well as environmental sustainability because we really need the community to work with us on this but we are the ones really making the major calls when it comes to those things. And then all the way on the other end, I had community participation. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I can actually is it Mandy Joe, it's Mandy, Mandy, okay. It's the same way Alicia and Anna did, but more with a timeline to and I had a problem with the timeline because things in the middle get middle like. But I agreed with both of them that healthy balance and teamwork were definitely inward facing and community participation was my most outward facing. And then that's where then the next seven kind of start mixing up and I had more inward facing the environmental sustainability and fiscal responsibility, because I felt like those were more what we have to do as a council. And so our job is to be fiscally responsible. And that's a role we have to report I thought, you know, as sort of our responsibility towards the community. In the middle I had creativity innovation, culture, and respect, and all, and those three I thought really were the most even on which go both ways. We have to respect each other in our own work, but we also, I hope, have to expect respect from the community in the way they interact with us. They can not like what we do, and that is perfectly fine but I hope as a council we expect an interaction that is respectful. Even if people don't like what we're doing. I think we want creativity and innovation both with us but also with what people are bringing towards to us. Similar with the cultures the one I wasn't really sure that that belongs to the town I thought but yet we're as a council probably holding on to it and promoting it. And then the other two transparency and diversity equity inclusion. Again, transparency is, I felt more of something that not only do we have a responsibility for but we have to that the community expects that from us and so they're going to hold us to it which is why I put it more towards the outward facing and diversity equity inclusion is it I struggled with where to put it actually because I, I, you know, it's both right we want the diversity of the participation of the residents and that's the outward facing seeking it. We also have a big job to do to make that happen. So I wasn't sure exactly where to put that one. Thank you. Additional perspectives yeah Jennifer. Okay, my chart looks just like mandates. Almost yeah, and I put so for transparency, you know, diversity equity inclusion. There was some I put in both, you know inward facing and outward facing but it basically came out. Yeah, I think it came out really. So we've got this we're sort of emerging a middley cloud here right and one of the things that is helpful about thinking about this as a spectrum again trying to pull you out of binary thinking is these values don't necessarily just govern us internally and they don't just do that. But they might have different valence, depending on how we're understanding how they govern us internally versus how they govern us externally right so being able to be clear about that together and to have kind of thought through some of that is helpful. Yeah, are there others who want to comment yeah shalini. In case anyone else hasn't spoken shalini was offering an opportunity for others to share who hadn't yet. I have almost everything divided up as outward and inward. I believe for me, it's almost like a pyramid and diversity inclusion and equity, the top of the pyramid. That feels to me like the most important element we can deal with around race around class around gender around economic status because those experiences current and in the past affect every other way that we are. So that's me is the most. And then for healthy balance. I haven't an inward but we don't practice that. And in terms of transparent. A lot of them I have in and out so I'm not sure exactly how I would wrote, you know, move them on that scale. I think. Yeah, I mean you can reject the spectrum all together right maybe that model is not the right medical model. Good there you go yeah exactly I know. Yeah, and that's the thing I think it's interesting what would this look like as a pyramid right that might be a totally different way of arranging these and considering them. Yeah. I'm pretty close if I have to do a spectrum to what we're looking on the screen but Pat's comment on pyramid. I also think we could think of this as a circle that there's a surrounding set of values that we're trying to operate in, which is both when we're dealing with the outside world. I think that's one of the things that we have to do as a council that it's not so much inward looking, but this is our responsibility so you know it's within the context of this bigger world. This is who we are so. So I think that's why we get things in the middle so some of these things we want to do it in a transparent way we want to be respectful. So, so I appreciate that you're saying it, do we have to think of it as a line. Did you want to show me sure. I would go back to the infinity then because to me and I think there is an assumption that we can do the internal work without the influence of the community we get a lot we you know we voted and you represent people in our community so in that sense I was like everything is sort of in the middle or like in that dance because we bring in a perspective and we get feedback or we already came in with certain ideas from the community. We represent them to me it's really hard to separate what we're doing in this room from the community that we represent. Yeah. So that's interesting thinking about how may we also lead lead the outward facing community towards some of these values if those are things that matter to us yeah I saw Lynn. So I, I was somewhat like other people, although I love the concept of the infinity or circle that Alicia, I mean, a Nica and Michelle first brought up I think actually shall any, but I also kept saying but where's listening. And then maybe I said, Okay, listening surrounds the whole thing. And so that was just my overall observation. Anna. As a quick, let's make sure we use our mic so Andy can hear us because that's the way he would hear us so just got it. Thank you. Dorothy, did you raise your hand. These are awfully quiet. Where's action. Good. So one thing I'm noticing is I think we're ready to move to my next step in our agenda actually which is to now think about these values and how they inform our actual behaviors right so values are great, but they're only enforceable by engaging in the behavior that then reinforces those values right because that value that culture happens in the action that happens in the behaviors that we engage in with each other. So now what I would invite you to do is take a look at your list of procedures. And I think we're going to focus on the page 14 to 15. These are this is the code of courtesy conduct and debate. So whatever you to do, let's go back here. Take a few minutes on your own to read through these. And what we're looking for is sort of what behaviors might reinforce the values that we care most about especially sort of our inward facing value since this retreat is about how we engage with each other but you might also think about the outward facing, which rules of procedure map to which values. Do any values not have procedures that map. So it might be thinking about, you know, we say we value, I'm hearing healthy balance is one maybe we haven't turned into a norm. You know, are there no procedures that map to healthy balance is that something we want to think about, you know, shifting right so that's kind of what the work you're doing right now is doing an inventory mapping values to procedures. And which procedures have been hardest historically for us to transform into norms, which are the behaviors that we actually engage in. Okay, so let's give this like a I'm going to start I'm going to put on a timer for five minutes to spend some time with this and then we'll see where we are and if we need even a little bit more time then we can add it but let's start with five minutes about any questions before you launch into that. Okay, so that was five minutes. Does anyone need a couple more minutes. Please your hand if you could use a couple more minutes to spend some time with these. Okay, I'll give you two more. Okay. You want to go ahead and finish jotting down whatever thought you've generated. We're going to take a break in about 10 minutes just so you know just if you're anticipating when is when are we can actually have a chance to collect ourselves. I would love to just sort of finish out this conversation on mapping procedures values norms etc, with just sort of open open the floor. So there was a set of questions that I prompted you with to get your thinking started. What behaviors do we want to reinforce our inward facing values, which rules of procedure map to which values do any not have procedures that map to them and then also, which have been hardest historically for us to transform into whatever you want to take it but I would love to hear some voices in terms of what you discovered in looking back through the rules of procedure. So I think this is, it was so helpful to do the inward facing versus outward facing because for me what kept happening was when I looked at my map of when I thought about because I drew my map of the inward versus outward and then I was doing the questions. So many of them are really about our inward facing with like a couple focusing on the outward. And so there were a lot that I felt did not were not touched by our existing rules of procedure. And that's not necessarily to say they have to be but the ones I noticed some probably should be physical responsibility environmental sustainability, creativity and innovation, culture and diversity equity and inclusion were the ones that I felt weren't necessarily touched at all by our existing rules of procedure in my opinion. And then the other ones might be an interpretive stretch but I will leave it there. And that's not to say they necessarily have to be but it is also helpful to just kind of do that inventory to think about are we actually carrying out the things that that we care about. Okay, so it looks like Michelle has a hand raised next. I first want to acknowledge that this exercise has been a little bit challenging for me, it's not exactly the way that I process so I tend to be somewhat nonlinear I guess in the way that I process so I'm a little slow on the draw here. But, and so I'll just share what sort of is arising for me. Looking at the code of courtesy conduct and debate. The word that comes is containment. And so, I, I guess I, I sort of invite us to evaluate like what is the need for us to sort of contain things. And when I read these that feels like a lot of containment and there are reasons why we have to be contained when we're operating as a body of legislators but I invite us to sort of evaluate. What those needs are that may be very real, and then also think about how we might create more breath, more space. So we can still do our work efficiently and effectively, but allow for a more spacious way of looking at these these codes. So that's what I have for right now. Thanks Michelle looks like Andy's next. Well, when I was looking at it I was finding that this has been commented on a little bit already. There are some values that are values of what it is. Community values really, and they're, and we are representing a community and trying to bring the community together and in, in the fashion to achieve, have a government that lives by those values so when we talk about things like diversity and inclusion, physicals, responsibility, environmental sustainability, those are really what we're trying to achieve with the community and for the community. Other values are talking about how we work together in order to achieve those community values and working together sometimes is working with the community, and that's a different set of values and that's what's really covered by the rules of procedure so that when you look at the rules of procedure, they're going to be much more about things like being creative and innovative team teamwork and respect. So I guess it's eyes beginning to divide it up between what it is we seek to achieve and how we achieve it. Thank you, Alicia. So this is also a little bit more complicated for me to approach because I think I first started off by like reading each line and trying to see which value it matched up with and realizing that that wasn't going to work out. So that went so well for me. And so then I switched to coming up with a list kind of like what Anna had in terms of ones that I didn't see that covered anything and so I have the exact same list with the addition of the healthy balance that on a healthy balance, creativity and innovation, environmental sustainability, fiscal responsibility, culture and the EI. And then I also did find like certain rules and procedures that not necessarily like I wouldn't say that they went against what our values are but they didn't necessarily promote them. So this is like a super simple example that I want to give you all because I don't want to read them all is 6.3 K the presiding presiding officer and counselor shall address each other by our first name. Why don't we just ask each other what we want to be called and make that decision. And so like things like that to me are missing creativity and innovation and healthy balance and transparency and the EI and so like just tiny little things like that. That can be changed to really more thoroughly encompass what our values are. Thanks looks like Dorothy is next. So first of all, I'd like to look at the word decorum, which is a word that I have. I don't like it means lady like, and it reminds me of being in a tight corset and restricted. So I don't think I see decorum as being a block to true discussion. And I will tell you, I'm feeling still very stupid. It took me three years to learn that when we discuss something we're only discussing the very limited thing before us, not the issue itself. And I think that that limits us too much. It puts blinders to keep the real picture, an item from being visible. And it's like talking about a disease but not talking about the industrial pollution that may have been causing the disease I really find these rules like that of a polite debating society and not necessarily appropriate to some of the serious issues that we have to deal with. So, I mean, I obviously agree that we can't have yelling shouting. We can't have personal attacks. I mean, I understand the motivation behind the code. But I'm thinking that we should, it should be not quite so tight, not quite so restrictive. That's my suggestion. Thank you, Jennifer. I was actually going to speak to the same point I hadn't actually wasn't focusing on the word decorum but that was a good way to explain it. And as Michelle said, I know there's a reason, you know, for containment and to maintain that we need to be courteous and respectful. We all agree, but I when I was trying to map this to our values. I mean, the only ones I really, you know, I came up with respect teamwork. And I guess maybe transparency. I don't know if the rules apply equally, you know, as they are meant to everyone, but I do find them to, I know they're meant to contain and to ensure courteous discourse and respectful discourse, but they, I think when Dorothy debate that it may be too constrained to allow a certain level of debate. Thank you, Shawnee. Yeah, I noticed the containment, just the number of knows that the counselor shall not do this and not and there were a lot of like knows and and I understand why we have them. But I think the way to balance is to then have equal number of things that also encourage creativity. And where we do have statements encouraging creativity, like they shall be marked by openness respect or, you know, like that creates a safe environment but we don't actually know what it looks like in action we have the rule, but there are a lot of times where I know we've had counselors, including myself, being inappropriate, or having public being inappropriate and then the chair is like awkward like do I step in, do I, and the public is awkward, and it's like just gets the all had a way of how do we act it out in a way that everyone knows what, you know, what to expect like you did like I may step in if you set it up ahead of time so it's not awkward when you do it. So having rules that would do that and then the last thing is we sometimes we have rules but they're not get having the desired effect. So if we have diversity and inclusion like in terms of community and hearing the comments no I wouldn't go, but again we're not getting all the people in the room so the rule is there but it's not being having the desired effect of diversity and inclusion. Thank you. Yeah, so I had another box that was coming up in my mind. So I had another box that was coming up for me, and they have seen outreach outreach outreach. Specifically with 61 a and six to a was also seeing a healthy balance, create creativity and inclusion and diversity and inclusion. And also to speak again to Michelle's comment on confinement. Not only as limiting but also as dangerous. I think that we have a beautiful small town, but it's really important for us to move on, especially with diversity. And the council now we're more diverse you have three women of color. We do not represent every person of color. We have small groups of community members that sometimes are seen to represent the community of color and this is not only untrue but can be very dangerous. So I think that it's really important for us to really embrace confinement, as Michelle said, and outreach. Those are the two that were coming to me this. Thank you. Looks like we've got Lynn Mandy and Kathy and then we're going to take a break after that so I just want to set that expectation so that we can make sure we have a chance to stretch. So, being the person that most often has to apply these rules. I appreciate them, but I think that I try to not, you know, say that's against the rule. My observation is about one of them which really gets to the fourth question, which procedures have been hardest historically to transform into norms, and it is 66.3 J. And that is when a counselor asks in advance of a meeting for questions data, etc. What we've tried to do but it's not stated in the rules is make the all of that information available to all counselors before the meeting, so that we do not disadvantage one counselor with information and disadvantage counselors, other counselors without that information and that's sometimes hard to do. But I know there's many times that Paul will provide the answer to something and then we, he and I will agree immediately that that answer will go to everybody so I want to, I'll probably be sending off something to GOL to add to that rule. I agree that some of our values don't map to rules and I think it's because of what Andy said some of the values are community values they're not how we run meetings and our rules are mostly for how we get business done. I actually thought some of our rules, looking beyond the one that was highlighted which is what I did. Many of our rules do try to there are some rules that do promote transparency or creativity. And I think it's really in in thanks to Kathy work sessions public dialogues and things like that that she pushed for in the rules we haven't used them, which is a problem, but, but I think we've attempted to put some of that in there. In terms of the confinement I don't, I don't necessarily agree with the group that they're too confining. And I think it's how we look at meetings and I might look at meetings differently than the group. I think to me are ways where we need to get business done. And the business is the question in front of us not necessarily the larger question which is where we should maybe be using those work sessions, a little more. Because that's where we could go out. We also have to respect state law that is always in conflict with some of what we want to do, particularly that open meeting law, where if we start talking about something that's not on an agenda we haven't been transparent to the public. And so if what's on the agenda is a small little thing. And we want to talk about a larger portion of it. Well we haven't been transparent to the public if we go to that larger portion. And so it does feel confining but I think sometimes there's a benefit to that for the public and for us to be able to have an expectation of what we will be discussing and for the public to know what we're discussing. So we're in a little conflict with each other though and that is hard. Thanks, Kathy. Mandy actually, I'll build on what Mandy just said because we did. I was on the group that wrote these rules. And there, as we got to the Robert rules, which are these very stringent what you can and you can't do in the meeting. We put these two entities in its 38 and 39 public dialogue and work session which I always thought was an opportunity for where teamwork could come in, creativity, because we weren't making a decision. We were just talking with each other. And it was an opportunity to have what Aaron was talking about is healthy debates. You know, don't think about it the same way bring in research, bring in information before we're faced with a decision and they're sitting there to enable that. And I know how busy we were the first three years so we just hadn't had the opportunity to use them. And so I just want to point those out and I know Lynn has put that on the agenda for today and Lynn pointing out that one about get your questions in early to get data. I'm one who often asked for it and is told can't have it before the meeting can't do that, or asked for it during the meeting and maybe in a committee will get it. But my question, you know, so it's a frustration because I know we're short staff that Paul staff can't respond to everything, but it feels then it's inhibiting the creativity and the discourse because we don't have the information we need to be able to even think about things so I think these are opportunities to do better. I mean we wrote them in for a reason and we should make use of them. We're right on the the brink of a break but I do want to make sure Dorothy gets a chance to get a word and then we'll take a quick break. I'll wrap us up in a moment. So this is just a quick comment to Mandy's comment. Yes, I see the point and you do have to remind me that the agenda does tell the public what's going to be discussed. So I would suggest maybe in writing the agenda to make things a little bit broader and not quite so specific, so that you allow that possibility the opportunity for the context of an item to be discussed. Because when we discuss just the item without the context, I don't think we're talking about things. We are not going to solve this question right now right but I did want to give you an opportunity to really do a deep dive into the values that matter to you, how those values connect to the behaviors that you engage in with one another. And I think there's room for those things to evolve and obviously there's all kinds of rules around how these things get adopted or amended or shifted right and so that's sort of the work for you all to do moving forward. And I would just remind you that values really only exist if they're reinforced through behavior, right, so I hope that that's a takeaway that you have from this is that if we state we have values that we don't behave accordingly then we actually don't have those values or we, you know they don't match with the behaviors that we're engaging in. I think that's some of what's surfacing here that the value of transparency might, you know, conflict with the value of collaboration and teamwork or, you know, innovation or you know so recognizing that we can't always be fully living into every single one of our values 100% right we have to negotiate how those things show up in different moments. What I would leave you with is that rules are only as good as they are mutually reinforced right and the more it depends on Lynn as reinforcer the harder it is to actually engage in those roles and so thinking about can we, you know find rules that we can, it's a feeling to live into, because that mutual reinforcement is essentially what makes that behavior become the way that we engage with each other so some thoughts to think about, why don't we take five minutes, we're close to on time but a little behind and so we can do just a quick break to stretch. Just ask me if you need to get coffee or drink etc and then we'll come back. Thank you. I would love to bring us back if possible folks could just one more minute okay. Okay I'm going to wrangle you folks if I can get you to come sit down and get started again. This is fun that's usually my job. When you get to just eat your cookie and I get to do the work of bringing everybody together right. I know what was the baker was this a so delicious. I did meet Angela yesterday yeah. She's the one that made sure you had a parking pass for nice wonderful. There are no gavels or anything in this. Oh you have a gavel. I don't need a gavel. There we go. I don't have the there Athena Athena is the keeper keeper of the merry maple. Oh wow. Oh that's cool. That's great. Okay, let's come. Let's get started again. So, you know, half of the work is doing this formal engagement but half of it also is having a chance to connect with each other so I hope you did get a chance to check in with folks. It is really nice to see people in person so I'm glad you're able to do that. So we spent the first half of this ritual half ish of this retreat session, looking at values norms or behaviors with each other. I now want to shift to thinking about the work that is ahead of you and engaging in some reflection on priorities, and also then thinking about process for tackling those priorities or pursuing those priorities together as a council. So before you came to this session, you completed a pre retreat survey to just express kind of what most mattered to you what were the priorities that you had as an individual. And so I want to take some time to dig into those you may have seen them already but I think taking it a little bit of time to really look at them is worth doing. And again we're going to do some individual reflection and then conversation. So here are some prompts that you're thinking about as you're looking through those. The first is just a general. What do you notice, you know now that you have the map of what the priorities are for all the different counselors here. What do you what do you notice in terms of overlaps differences, etc. The second question is, where do you imagine there will be the highest level of energy and attention for this council so where do you see a lot of energy and he kind of coalescing. And then we will have the easiest time aligning around shared solutions. And where do you imagine we will have the greatest challenge aligning around shared solutions and I'm going to say right now I want to ask you not to share what you think the solutions should be right now this is not a moment to like argue for your point of parking. It is a moment for you to share your point of view about why parking might be challenging for this council to come to alignment around. Okay, those are two very different questions. And like I said earlier, this is where the weeds are going to come in, right and it's very natural for that to happen but my job is to say okay let's come out and think about why might this be challenging for us. Okay, so again I'm going to set a timer for five minutes I'll check in with you then we'll see if you need a little bit more time. These are a lot of big questions right so you might want to jot down some thoughts and notes. But I'll check back in with you in five minutes. So there was a question are we looking at the pre retreat counselor priorities are we looking at the work session priorities constituent concerns are all of the above and I would say, let's start by focusing on the pre retreat but then use the other two documents as sort of references that fair. Okay, definitely focus on the pre retreat priorities. Thank you. That was five minutes but I see people are still deep in the work so I'm going to give it a couple more and then see where we are then. Let's go another 30 seconds. Okay. Looks like Lynn has a hand raised kickoff conversation. Right so I wanted to just mention a few things about the analysis okay. I'm the one that chose to put them grouped based on the town managers goals, because I feel like if we have a priority that is outside the town managers goals we need to make sure that we identify that. Okay, if you do not agree with how I have classified your priority because I had to do some force fitting. Please let me know that in an email and I'll be glad to make a change but not today. Okay. And then the other thing is, I've taken this analysis to the level that the data allows. If you're averaging, you can't do anything else besides basic counts. Okay, so. Thank you. Thanks Lynn. All right I'm curious what do you notice and feel free to tackle any one of these questions that appeals to you but it might be interesting just to first of all kind of reflect with one another about what what we see here. Do you want to take your hand down. Okay, great. Kathy. Can you hear me. Yeah. So one of the things I noticed was an absence of top ratings of things like the school and and the reason I noticed that as an absent is it's going to come before us in our term. It's going to be controversial. And we'll have to make a decision about it. So that's just what I noticed on it. The other thing I noticed is similarly if I get down to I'm on the finance committee. If I get down to how much money do we have in over the next two years unless the Biden infrastructure bill passes and got or someone else gives us a lot. Conflicting priorities. We've got big capital projects we have other spending, and we probably can't afford all of them so the what I noticed is not everyone picked. How difficult is going to be able to make those decisions so it's sort of a we various of us picked things that are expensive. And when you add them up, it's probably more than we can afford. Thank you. So what are the considerations things that you notice are emerging Jennifer. Well housing by far. Have the highest number. And I'll send an email to Lynn but I feel like I have to say my concern isn't preserving single family homes, it's just to be able to have homes rentals and otherwise be affordable to non students renting by the bedroom, but I'll clarify that in But I was just struck by that that by far had the greatest number of so to speak. Great. Okay, so energy attention around housing. Mandy. Just on the notice part I noticed that we set a lot of goals for the managers that we then have no care about it all on our priority in some sense. And some of that could be that we as a council don't have any role in that and so it isn't a council priority but I thought it was fascinating that there's a lot of manager goals that we didn't identify as also any, any item of that as a priority of There's many of them were in the administrative side where we don't have duties, but there were some policy goals that we didn't really have as a council. A lot of say of our own priorities there. Thanks, Johnny. Yeah, I noticed that my priorities were the least popular. That being said, I think what I noticed was that where there's a lot of investment of town time and money mainly is like was a priority. But at the same time, again, I see that how we raise the funds and the economic policy and as Andy said, maybe that's not our job but that was one of my questions is figuring out the town council, what can we be thinking about, and to support and not clear vision for economic goals as a town in a sustainable socially just way so that to me was really important and I was the only one in that. And, but I think the key thing for me again is that we, whatever we choose as a priority what are the processes in place to ensure that we have a process of decision making, where we're really create to creatively thinking and it's inclusive it's bringing in people who are being impacted, whether we like it or not, you know, we have to bring in how do we bring in those people into the conversation and to really get creative around it so I would really like that to be a foundation, have a shared foundation for that. Great thank you and we're going to spend some time the next thing on our agenda is to start thinking about process so yes. Maybe the only person I know who's like yes process. Oh, sorry, I love process. I'm just kidding I also love process. Other observations or things that are surfacing for you as you take a look at this. Okay, I think it's interesting. Kathy when you were talking about the elementary school. One of the things I noticed is that the areas that were feeling to me like we'd have the easiest and easiest is very much a relative term. It doesn't mean an easy time but easiest. They were the ones where our decision is pretty singular right so like the elementary school is a good example of we don't get to decide a lot of the things you do you to do and in your committee that's which is awesome which is very rare but we as a council what comes before us is really one question, one ish questions right and so I thought that would be the easiest, the places where our scope is more limited felt like the easier places for us to come to alignment. And so that was my mind. I don't usually cheat the questions but I'm cheating a little bit of that that was my notice. And a little bit of bullet three. When. So another observation I had was, I think some people might not have said, this is a priority because they already assumed it was. And that would be the capital projects okay, or finance or something like that. And the other thing is that some of you are going to look at this sale but that's a priority of mine too. So there's a whole piece of this that we still have to sort through this is a preliminary stab, having said that I think I'm going to just jumped the one where I think the greatest challenges going to exist. And that's finance. Because everybody wants a piece of the pie. And the pie is just so big. Thanks Dorothy. I'm not going to the specific numbers but some issues are divided up and presented in two places and one of them is sidewalks. So, on the issue what are your constituents bring up to you all the time. And there's, there's sidewalks and bike paths and there's sidewalks and they should really all be together it's sidewalks and that's what they bring up all the time. I've got sidewalks got a little deluded there, although it's still quite obvious but that may not be the glorious topic that many people want to run on but that's what our constituents keep bringing up. That's nice to be able to balance those right the constituents concerns with our priorities given that we are inward facing and outward facing right that's the common theme here. Andy. Sorry. I think one of the things that I noticed this number of people who put parking down, which is really in use meant that sort of parking in your introductory comments. You know, I think that parking is an issue that keep people keep coming back to, because it really it needs to be put into focus of what it's really about and it is something that we're going to have to deal with. But I think that the question is, what is the why so many people concerned about what seems like the least of issues and I think, you know, for me it has to do with the connection between the economic development budget and choices that we really need to do it I think that other people have other reasons and. But yeah, I said what did I notice that was one of the things I noticed it when yeah. I just need to acknowledge that soon to be grandma Pam. Please let the record show that she's with us. Unless unless Pam you have an announcement to make. She just muted. I guess that means I'm sorry, I just I have no announcement to make but thank you for your attention and your concern. Welcome. Welcome. So just a quick observation, because I do very much agree with what Lynn said in terms of there are a lot of things on here that are important to me and that I think our priorities but I didn't give them a number. So I just want to recognize that and that I'm sure I'm not the only one. If you look really carefully at what people chose it does say something about them personally like, you know, me and Kathy put the elementary school building as a priority because we're on the elementary school building committee and so like things like that and then, you know it's very interesting that district three parking was very important to both of them. You know, just things like that. This is a very telling list and then I also just agree with Lynn in that I think the most difficult things that we will face are like any topic that has a budget implication. I think those are all going to be things that are going to be challenging for us to come to agreements on. And I think that was all I wanted to share. I just went, I remember tuning into I think a council meeting, and I was not a counselor last year and Lynn said something which is so true. You said I think in all your time in public service, nothing is more contentious than taxes and zoning. And I think we'll find that too. And taxes in terms of finance. Yep. Thank you. I looked at this very simplistically in some ways. And what I realized is even though there's contention right now about a temporary solar moratorium, there isn't contention about the need for a solar bylaw. So I actually think that that's one of the things that's going to be easiest for this council to deal with. And I see us having a much more difficult time about parking, which says something. And I also think that in terms of racial equity and social justice issues that we're going to have a hard time when it comes down to it and to pretend that we're not. It's a mistake, because we need to be prepared for the kinds of responses that will be generated on so many levels, and we need to find ways to support the people who are most affected by our decisions, and not see that as a constraint that's unfair, or something. That's kind of where I, what I've been thinking about. Thanks Pap. Mandy. You know, I think the highest level of energy I found what I was looking at didn't always align with what I thought might be the easiest or hardest shared solutions. You know, many of them did, but I actually disagree with Pat on whether a solar siting bylaw will be I think it'll be one of our hardest times aligning because I think the discussion of the moratorium shows the different priorities on what a solar siting bylaw might look like. And so I actually think that will be a difficult conversation. I actually think parking and housing affordability will also be too difficult conversations. I'm hoping that design guidelines, I actually put that as one of the easiest time aligning and I think I could be proven wrong on that but maybe that's just my hope that when we get to a consultant with actual design guidelines that we might be able to align on the guidelines which I hope are different than where things are built type thing. So, you know, and it's been an interesting hearing the challenge everyone put finance as hardest time aligning. I put it might be an easier thing to align that doesn't mean the conversations are easy, but we might be able to get to shared solutions. So I'm hopeful we'll be able to get to shared solutions easier than some other things. I think some some things seem easy until you put the dollar sign to them. So the social justice to me that's an easy topic, but when you say and we want money for a youth center, then that's the difficult topic, because right now we're all fighting for money and the capital projects are taking all of it as far as I can see. So it's, I see big problems and we're going to be fighting about money because we can believe and agree on ideas and concepts but then you say okay, let's put it into practice. And if that costs money and we don't have the money lying around, then we have a problem. So I do see some problems about things we agree on coming down to money. Thanks Kathy. I just want to come back to a statement Mandy made on easier being the school. I think we're facing a controversial price tag for it that maybe we'll be able to solve before it comes to the council. You just have two of us on it, but the decision we have to make, which is unlike the library we have to go out to the voters to ask them to raise their taxes to pay for it. So that I put it under hard. Yes, it's just one decision but this is not we are going to have to be thinking about it justifying it and so to the extent any of you can follow what's going on now. It's important. So I just think of those are when Dorothy said it's the dollar signs you know we, when I said the library was easier, we had the internal money to do it so it was a question of you want this version or that version but this one is harder because we have to talk to the whole town. One of the things that I'm hearing surface here is that there are different definitions about easy and hard right so easy. We might find it easy to align on we all care about this or we all want the solution but weighing it against other solutions that we or other priorities that we have right that that is something to kind of be thinking about here and so that I think that's a helpful framing to say yes this part of it easy that part of it's actually really challenging so it looks like Shalini's next. I want to talk about that we are using the word difficult conversations and, and that's primarily because one of, we don't have a framework how we're going to approach it. And, and how do we transform these different perspectives and different points of view which make a conversation different difficult sometimes is because we don't have the process to use that diversity of perspective into better solutions. Because now we're actually seeing things from all the point you know that's actually a strength and not should not be difficult difficulty. And then the other thing is like just what makes it difficult for me personally is when we're leading with solutions that this is what we should do. Again, coming back to process that if you had a framework of what our intention values, and what already exists what our resources what possible to again, but you're going to talk about that, but to me I don't see difficult as a bad thing. The additional thoughts on these questions. One of the things that I would add is that I think about this every year when I get to kind of goal setting for myself is that too many priorities is actually no priorities right so if I make a set of goals for myself that includes, you know, 20 items, then I'm actually not prioritizing I'm giving myself a free pass to just sort of not prioritize any of those things and so that some of the hard work is narrowing to say, we do care about all of these things. In order to be our most effective selves and group, we actually have to align on which ones are we going to put most of our time and focus on right and that is not when we first plan to this retreat we hope we could maybe even do some of that narrowing and then I, you know, in talking about it we realize like this is not the moment it's just so it takes too much time to kind of do that that's the work ahead of you all right. But really starting to think about and mapping what are the, the options for us, how do, how do we get to a place where we can come together on that I think is as part of what is ahead of you so it looks like Andy has a hand. Yeah, and I was actually going to say pretty much same things I'll be real brief with it. What I had written down is for the fourth category where do you match we will have the greatest challenge for lining around shared solutions. I wrote down this, where we have to recognize we cannot do something of high value. Is that a hand again. I don't know if this is the right time to ask that do we have a set of criteria for prioritizing. Like, is it, who is this impact this decision going to impact like when you decide whether parking or social justice or climate, I mean, I think we've, I don't know if you have a shared set of criteria we're using who is this going to impact. Is it around safety, and, you know, and then going into how does it help everyone flourish. So just having a shared set of criteria to even prioritize. Great. I think the other part of it is also trusting among another to carry some of not carry that's not the right word but to to advocate for some of these two right like we cannot. If we all have all of these as priorities, we're not going to like you said we're not going to get them done and so you know I see that shall any put economic development I care a lot about economic development and I know that she's going to champion it and I'll support her but by the time all that pre work is done and it comes to council I'm not going to try to go back to square one, right and so like it's also about doing that pre work, looking at this list and saying great I know that, you know, other folks are like Dorothy is into sidewalks and I'm into bike lanes which, you know, that that's something that we might want to approach together so that we can do the pre work together. And by the time we come to council we're not getting questions that take us all the way back to the beginning right there needs to be that level of trust and and when we get to process next, thinking about making sure we're asking for thoughts and soliciting opinion on the onset of it versus waiting till we get to council and people see it for the first time. That's not helpful that's not a helpful place to then start over right so how do we make sure we're trusting one another and building that process to advocate at the start. And I would add building on that on it is that when you're arriving at priorities sometimes you can get stuck groups can get stuck when what they're doing is deciding on do we do bike lanes or not. Right that's a solution that you're arguing about but if you can actually step back from bike lanes and ask the question like what problem are we trying to solve with bike lanes and is that allowing a sustainable way for for residents to get from point A to point B. So we can maybe come together around sidewalks and bike lanes and who knows what other creative possibilities right and so thinking about the like what is the actual problem we're solving. And then can we align around common ways to get there, as opposed to getting down to into, like I said and the weeds of like it's either bike lanes or no bike lanes and we all have to decide which side of that fence we're on right. So, setting priorities can also be about setting some like beautiful how might we questions around the kinds of problems that you're trying to solve together, and, and tackling those together that are really aligned, you know you can align around values even if you have different kinds of solutions or ways of thinking about solutions for those problems so. I didn't think about their john used to have a hand raised again okay wasn't sure. Okay, so let's start thinking about process and what process could look like. What I would love for us to do. It's not where the break goes I'm going backwards. Okay, so I'd love to take a moment to think about process and when you're designing a process you might think of it almost like a recipe I'm a very big baker I love to bake and so if you think about baking. It has a set of ingredients and those ingredients kind of go in in some order right, and so there is a process to baking you have a start to finish experience and so I would love for you to just take a moment on your own to brainstorm. What are some of the steps that if we're going to pursue one of these priority areas, we should engage in and you don't have to put them in or you're just sort of brainstorming some things you think we need to do as part of that process. So take a couple minutes to do some individual brainstorming. Take just one more minute to gather your thoughts on what the steps are for you. Okay, so I did some brainstorming myself before I came to the retreat and I'm curious if the things you say are going to map to what I have up here and if not I'm going to add new sticky notes and maybe take off ones that that feel like they don't resonate with you. Okay, so we'd love to have people share I don't even worry about what's up there but it will help me have a sense of whether I got these right, according to the steps that you have generated. And it looks like Dorothy has a hand raised. Well I did it very differently. I'm a baker. I believe in using the best ingredients and making the absolute best cookies, because when you're finished you're going to share them with people. And if you make really great cookies, there's a feeling of shared joy. So that that means that the ingredients have to be good. The best ones. That the timing really matters that you have to figure out what you can fix and put together and put aside and leave to another time. And then when you do start working how do you handle them with what kind of tools and how difficulty and is it going to be a blended egg or is it going to be a meringue. And then it has to be the proper container the right size, and the heat has to be right. And the main thing is that you have to stay there you have to watch it you have to smell it you have to test it. And neglect it you don't ever turn your eyes from it. And when you're done, you have something wonderful. So I'm thinking of the school right now, the latest report on the elementary school sounds like it's going to be some really beautiful brownies. And there's going to be a problem because people say it's too many feet, too many this but the point is, are you going to build a great school. And if you are, then do it, so that we don't have just a good enough school we have a great school. And that's not the way a lot of people do things, but this is how I think makes you happy in your work. If you're going to make it make it and do it right. Thanks Dorothy, Pam. Hi. I am thinking about a process I would, I would probably, I'm not going to use a baking analogy issues that we've experienced what are what what's on the table that we're trying to solve what are the problems. I typically start by generating data by understanding and getting my head into the details of it to understand what the parts and the components are. I look at then potential arenas for input like who who controls this information who controls this part of the puzzle. I start communicating with them getting information additional information which ultimately starts to craft potential solutions and then the, the piecing together the, the potential solutions in a way that involves the folks that have, that have contributed the information and contributed to to some of the solutions. And then, and then obviously having to reach out to others who might have a similar interest, for instance on the Council in explaining or getting them on board to help support the outcome. Thanks so as I'm listening to you all share I'm adding where I think we haven't already represented a piece and if it feels like I didn't adequately get yours you can raise your hand again and I can make sure that I get it up there. But Pam I heard identify other counselors who share this priority, and I also heard determine whose voices haven't been heard on the issue and include them among key stakeholders. And then I added generate and analyze data and consider who controls the information or other pieces of the puzzle. Dorothy your hand is raised is that still is that from the last time. Okay. It looks like I've got Mandy's hand. Yeah, I actually looked at this project or this question is two separate questions one on how we would pursue deciding our priorities and one on once we did make that decision. And then move forward with those particular priorities. So I'm going to talk about how we would pursue the priorities are figuring out as a Council, which ones of this extensive list we came up with are the priorities we need to pursue. So I thought we'd need to identify the problems to solve that's been said earlier that then we have to identify which problems are most important to us. But we also have to identify which problems can be addressed within our terms and what the capacity of us that staff and all of that are to address certain priorities like if they're all in one staffing area. So that might not work. And because they might not have the capacity to do all of them. And then we have to mesh those together to come up with top three top five, whatever that is and that might be more priorities than we think if they fall within different staffing levels or different is the Council pursuing it and doing the work or is the staff doing the work or as a committee doing the work and if you figure that out you might be able to identify more priorities so I'll stop there with how we get down to three, four or five priorities before we move on to how do we make those priorities a reality then. Great, so I'm sort of clustering down here. This is a kind of decide which priorities pursue in the first place and determine what is possible for us is that adequately represent what you what you shared. Thank you. Great. Kathy. I don't think I really adding to your sticky notes I think they're great sticky notes but that consider multiple possible solutions I'd move over a little bit. Because that's where there's an opportunity for discussion and debate. And in the world I used to live in they said, Dorothy wanted the perfect and the best cake, but in healthcare we sometimes had to take steps. It's a resource issue. So, is there a partial step so the one thing I don't think of here is here is do we have the resources to do it. You know, either, you know, it's just change a rule that's easy. It's spend a lot of money so maybe it's not a research. So I'll give the example and housing we have a lot of priorities around housing but some of those, it's not clear it's within the council's power to make certain things happen. You know, so it's just trying to figure out the constraints on our ability to make change. Great. Thank you. And one thing I should note I forgot to say this is not in any order. These are all randomly here because actually our next step is going to be figuring out an order for these steps. But for now what we're doing is just putting on the table. What are all the ingredients going into this cake in the first place right. Looks like on us next. Okay, so Mandy mentioned the two different questions I want to be clear I'm talking about the ladder of her to so like once we know what we're going to do, how do we do it. And I'm trying to glance and glance so I apologize if I missed some. Ask ourselves who is impacted and who's not represented at the table. So considering kind of whose whose voices are we missing in discussions. Get feedback from supporters get feedback from naysayers anticipated right so and that feeds I think to what Kathy is saying is to then gain ideas for multiple solutions or or kind of solutions. Consult mass general law and our bylaws just to make sure we're not proposing something that's blatantly against what we're supposed to be doing. We're allowed to do a benchmark with similar communities. Conduct resident engagement they know that's a whole broad thing. And then reach out. You kind of have this you have stakeholders I think they're stakeholders but also even more specifically applicable. And then reach out to the resident committees. Sorry and you honor you talked to that I know your name why did I just call you Anna on. You just talked really fast what was the I got him I got him I got him okay so resident engagement which means 20 different things. Reach out to applicable committees. You have stakeholders on there which is great but I think even specifically our resident committees benchmark with similar communities. Okay. All right, does it do. Do you feel like I adequately captured. I have one more, I think I forgot. Which is asked the question of how this supports our values. I get to do that fun thing where you type in front of a whole crowd. Make sure I don't have any typos there we go okay. Okay, and there's no rhyme or reason to the color coding I just think it's nicer when it's multiple colors so just a fight there's no, there's no coding going on here. Okay, when. Yeah, this builds on something I think Mandy said but I want to make it much more clear. What is the council's role in this issue. And to make sure very upfront, we're looking at is it to change a bylaw is it to create a bylaw is it to do what. Thank you. Alicia, I don't have anything very different than what everyone has already said, but just something that I like to call impact mapping, which is not only looking at what Kathy said, in terms of like our ability to make it happen. But then also looking at like different community outcomes and impacts on the ground. Does that look okay. Okay, Jennifer looks like. Yeah, I think so I was, I was struck by that housing and I guess major capital projects seem to have the greatest number of counselors had put those as priorities. And maybe this gets to a working session but I think on both of those and even housing, you know which there's a lot. It's a seemingly issue that arouses a lot of passions but I have a feeling we're not that far off from each other in our goals. I think some of the strategies to get there may be different, you know, and when Alicia says you know what are the impacts on the housing, you know, that's where I think we may have, you know, there may be some differences of opinion but I think they're like that issue just really strikes me as one that if we could have a start with a couple of just free flowing conversations. I think we would find that we're not really that far off from each other. And then, you know, what as counselors, what, what can we do, and what are the steps we can take to improve housing which we all agree needs to be done. Yeah, and you may find process will look slightly different for different issues right because the issues have all kinds of different, you know, context, etc. So I think that's a good point to bring up that it's not always going to be, you know, look exactly the same. At least you have a hand raises that doesn't care no worries. Any cat. Yeah, so I agree there's are all great notes. One that I have which is probably up here in a way but it's also anticipate the or leave room rather for the unexpected and new decisions information that comes up. Myself I had had for my number one was affordable housing and economic opportunity and one thing in housing I agree we're probably closer to being on the same page but you know sometimes there's a kind of consensus that for instance like students have disposable all of them do without you know acknowledging that some that's just really not the case for a lot and we do have the very real issue of homelessness within students so I think just making sure that we know we're truly being inclusive of you know what those needs are and the impact and effects. Great. I have it written as anticipated the unexpected does that capture it or is there more language you want to add. Okay, that's great. Okay, Shalini just building off of looking at impact and stakeholders. I think specifying that we're looking at people's lived experiences. I mean generally we're going to do people want this or don't want this. I don't want it or do you want this housing I don't want it versus like like what you were saying understanding the problem that we're solving and so when you're looking at stakeholder engagement it's really looking at what are their lived experiences how is it the quality of their lives, you know, and approaching the engagement in a way that we really understand people's challenges and quality of life and then also looking in terms of other stakeholders like the practical aspect that we have a lot of ideological values and ideas. But we sometimes don't consider what are the practical obstacles in achieving those things and so which means we need to be speaking to a wider spectrum of people who can tell us how to implement. So not just experts in the sense of scholarly and academic and research but also practical. So the two things. Got it. And do you see those represented here or should we include new sticky notes for those points do you think they're more a subset of stakeholder engagement. Okay, consult key stakeholders yeah it's just a final point within. Thank you yeah okay so kind of keeping in mind as consulting key stakeholders maybe it's sort of those lived experiences and practicalities. Thank you. And you've got a hand and shiny I'm assuming those were the past ones okay just making sure Mandy. Yeah, I could be missing it here but capacity, there's, there's very different capacities the capacity of us as town counselors to manage all of the priorities and all of the meetings that go with the priorities any of the outreach and all of that that we can't overload ourselves, the capacity of staff if we're going to be expecting staff to do stuff. And frankly the capacity of the community to for all of those meetings to you know I think it goes to what is everyone's capacity and managing that and recognizing that we might have priorities that we just can't get to because there's not capacity. Okay, thank you. When this, this may go with impact, but once we decide to move forward on something we need to look at the cost of implementation, and the impact of implementing that on whoever is in charge of doing that. We can't really assess whether or not that's doable, or it's going to create a negative impact for instance on the people who might respond to an RFP, or that kind of thing. Thank you just does that I've got determine the likely cost of proposed solutions and necessary resources does that capture that for you or do you think we should add something. Okay, Charlie. Do we have a measurement of once we do implement something and how successful how do we measure success. What would success look like 30. I don't think that we can do anything with like a chart with numbers. I mean, it's really just figuring out what you're going to do, for example, thinking of the school I think I saw a headline of sentence today saying that Fort River ground is better for digging geothermal, you know, and I didn't read the details. So it could turn out that you've decided that the new school should be at one place for lots of good reasons, and then you find out that your energy saving is better at the other place. You have to sit there and rethink it and weigh it and balance it. I mean it's, it's, I don't think that we can do things with numbers and charts and weighing. I think it's got to come down to just making decisions. And choices, and they could have been made, you know, different ways. But sometimes you're going to make a decision. So like, if we're up to me, I'd say, oh, I'm going to go with geothermal because that is cheaper in the long run. But others would say no, there's so many different reasons there. It's really difficult. It's really challenging. And I don't think there's any way that we can really put this into a neat thing. I think it's good to know the things that consider. It's good to know to think about, oh yeah, what's this going to do to staff, what's this going to do to the money, all of those things. But when it comes down to it, decisions have to be made, and they're going to be made by a weighing and balancing process that we're going to either fight against or accept. And that's the challenge. Thanks, Pat. Yeah, I'm building a little bit on what Anika said about leaving room for the unexpected. I think one of the things that I don't see us doing but I think is important in terms of processes, finding and expressing a green where we agree, or where we're connected, but also finding expressing the differences, and then sitting with that conversation to get to something we didn't expect. And I don't know if culturally in the council or elsewhere we have the patients to do that, to not just say this is my position. Instead of this is where I am. This is where you are what's in between and where. Thank you, Lynn. Decision to give it up. Walk away. You can't do this one. Just decide whether to keep going is it. Okay. Let's make that one pink. All right. I think we have a lot here, which is great. And you might find that some of these feel connected to each other. You might feel some of them don't. You might personally feel like some of these are not as necessary than others. And so what I want you to do right now is just take a minute to start organizing some of these things into like a flow chart that makes sense to you. So how, what, what's the order of operations for some of this if you're imagining the work of pursuing an issue. Are there pieces here that go with other pieces that kind of fit in a bucket so start doing some of your own kind of thinking about the how the pieces fit together and I'm going to do my best to make these as big as possible, so that you can see the text of them. And so many of them are more important than other ones. I just want to do a check in with those just two to three more minutes seem appropriate. Okay. So one of the beautiful things about working with other people is that they design process completely differently than you do right and that's actually really challenging but if you lean into that being okay and accepting that your way of approaching is always the right one you can actually arrive at some really interesting outcome so I just use that to start us off, but would love to hear how some folks have designed process when looking at all these different pieces. And it looks like Pam has a hand raised and so we'll start there. I'm going to start what I perceived as one of the easiest parts and that's the beginning. Deciding on which, and these are like four items that cluster at the beginning I think decide on which priorities to pursue. Determine what the council's role is in the issue. So that's the question of how this supports our values and reflect on why it matters to us and our constituents. So that's kind of the core of what feels to me the starting point of grappling with, you know, what what project are we talking about. I'm going to put that down in this bottom corner for now we can move it around if we need to but I'm just sort of starting to pull together some buckets here. It's, it's a little bulky on this page I wish I had like a giant board but that's great. Dorothy, starting the same way. Why this matters. How it supports our values. What is the council's role. When is it going to happen. And then the how, and then resources in terms of money, staff information stakeholders, what's already been done. Is this legal. What are the impacts. And at that point, you really put together your proposal, your solution or your legislation, and you then line up your supporters and advocates and feedback. And one thing for me in doing this is that this is not usually how I think I get very annoyed, for example, using the school. Why can't they just decide whether they're going to do one school or two schools and which place it's going to be. But I see now this is the process that they followed. I've learned something from that. And also I have to write a bylaw which I've been putting off. And I thought, okay, now I really know the order to do it. It's a very small little one on gas fueled leaf blowers that somebody's been asking me to do forever. So, thank you for making me think this through. Absolutely yeah and I would say that making process transparent can be part of transparency, as your value as a council to so that when when you have community members who come to you with impatience to say why hasn't this been decided yet you can do the same thing to say here's a map of how we've gone through this carefully so that that becomes as clear as possible to folks yeah, absolutely. So I found a similar thing to Dorothy and that this is really helpful for me because I don't usually think about it in this way and I also sometimes jump from place to place. When I'm trying to approach something so this was a very much more linear way of me thinking about it and so what I the approach that I took is I had different steps and I grouped all of these things into different steps. And so I had like step one would be the planning portion and that would be like deciding on the priority determining what the council's role is reflecting on the why learning what has already been accomplished understanding the horizon for the issue. And then I had step two which would be gathering and analyzing the data and that would be, you know, like doing the outreach the stakeholders all of those things and then possible solutions, considering all of the multiple solutions looking at what other communities are doing, and then the possible outcome so mapping out what those impacts to all of the possible solutions are so that you can decide which one would be your best. So that's about as far as I got but I sort of grouped. I had multiple sticky notes from here in each group of the process. Great. Yeah, so what you're starting to do is cluster of these into phases almost and thinking about what are the sub pieces within each phase right. And maybe during our lunch break one of the things I can do is create another slide that clarifies some of those phases for us that we can kind of look at on the other side of the break. Thanks. When I think looking at what can be done in our term. So let me as an example, building a new school is about a six or seven year process. Our terms are only two years long. So in our first term, we voted to support submitting for the MSBA proposal, and we put some money out. So in our term, we will have to decide whether to go out for a debt exclusion override and hopefully at some point, authorize borrowing, and then actually our role is done, except to show up for the ribbon cutting. So, I'm sorry, and the groundbreaking, excuse me the groundbreaking the beam and the ribbon cutting. Thank you. You all have big scissors is that part of the game. I don't do. Right. But I also want to go back to one that Mandy Joe and several other counselors have worked very hard on and that's zoning. So they got certain things done in zoning but because of finances. We couldn't do the design part until this term. So that has come up because it's in the budget so it's not a, we can get it all done in this term and we need to respect the fact that there are periods, sometimes which we have control over, and sometimes which we have no control over. Thanks Len yeah as you're talking it's reminding me that you all are collaborating on so many different levels you're collaborating with each other. You're collaborating with the community but you're also collaborating temporally with other councils right because the work is never done. It's never like we've, we've solved Amherst right that just isn't a thing. And so for forever, it will be there to work on right which and so for some people might feel really frustrating but it's also like a healthy reminder that you are you're collaborating with future versions of you and past, you know folks who are you delivering these problems to you and so to keep that in mind might offer some perspective. Shawnee. I would add to the first step of the problem statement and what we care about, I would add to that, you know, looking at what are the risks unintended consequences of doing things and not doing them. And, and then looking at the cross community like who is it impacting. And then the second step was to the first was a problem statement the second was, what do we know about this and that includes all the generating the data and then looking at the community engagement people's lived experiences. The technical aspects of things, the social cultural variables, all of that is under. So what do we know about the situation. And then that might help to redefine our problem now that we know what a people's lives experience we came in thinking this is a problem but actually, the problem is actually different so we might have to redefine our problem statement and then going into what's possible and that brings in all the resources aspects, how much time do we have at hand staff time, technical expertise but I think how thinking through can allow us to actually tap into resources we may not be because we're in such a rush, but we may actually have resources in our community which are untapped, like our academic institutions are nonprofits, the different committees. So really thinking through what's possible what's available to us. And then, yeah, and then coming into an understanding of what can we do. Thank you. Yeah, I love that. You know we've got determine the likely cost of the pros, positions and necessary resources resources are not just financial right they're human their cultural their community they're you know so thinking beyond just financial resources is helpful. Anna. Yeah, so my flow chart. I love, I love a good flow chart. So it's a weird interest apparently. My, my photo chart followed a similar sort of breakdown when Alicia was talking about the three phases I was like oh yeah I kind of mind fits within that I that idea. I think the one thing and I won't read through it if anyone wants to look got a lot of pretty arrows, but one of the things to the things that I think we're missing that as I was thinking through this came up for me. I have reflect on the why but we don't necessarily have reflect on the how. So I think that's the question of like, is this a resolution is this the bylaw is this like what form is this going to take. And I think that's pretty critical, and then Dorothy reminded me of something as well that came up of when we consult town staff. One of the questions is who should actually if it's a bylaw who should be writing it. Right and so I think that, while we have a lot of very capable. Well, I'm going to go ahead on a limb and say we are all very capable people. We might not always be the people who should actually be drafting by law language. I'm going to say most of the time we should probably not be the people who are drafting by law language but our town staff, especially in areas around things like that are very capable and knowledgeable and so where is that line to in the process of, you know, how are we engaging town staff, considering capacity considering like all doing all of that in in one go. And then determining the how, are you getting all this on one sticky note or determining the how of actually drafting, I think is the question so yeah that's, that's a, that's a lot of, should we add those as sticky notes I think are they embedded I can synthesize if you'd like me to be great thank you. So, I think, because it's it's very short on my paper. Consider the how by law resolution, etc. See I knew this was okay the resolution, etc. And then, I'm going to say, consider the who of drafting right so consider who writes it. Obviously there's about 10 minutes of talking wrapped up in what that means but that covers it. I'm going to make this pile of mess into something over lunch I promise it right now it looks overwhelming and it's going to feel a little bit, a little bit more coherent, but this is really helpful. I have Shawnee at the top. Is that is your hand still raised or an Anna. No worries Jennifer. Yeah, mine's almost a question is of some still grappling with how you actually move something through the process. So, I put this. So this is kind of is this how we would do it I guess, identify. I decided on a priority identify other counselors who share the priority advocate to get issue on the agenda consult relevant town staff with town managers permission consult he stay stakeholders and those whose voices haven't been heard, get feedback from supporters and they say or learn what's been accomplished in this area, maybe in other towns, and then draft and propose solution or legislation and gather support. I think that's the process of. Thank you. Yeah, it sounds relatively similar to some of what we would be heard we've heard here which is really helpful. Kathy. I do think this way about float charts. So it's, but I just, everyone is put almost all the steps I would have on I just was so I'm not sure it's more words that at the very beginning, the understanding the problem. I put this is the problem but what's the nature of the problem. There's, and it depends on what we're looking at sometimes it's pretty clear what the problem is. Too many cars on the road with no place to park or something but understanding the problem is, because the problem statement will either resonate with a lot of people or the sand, you know, I wouldn't have defined it that way. And then, when we get to, and I'm not thinking the simple ones where we're just writing a bylaw, but we're looking at options, and we don't all agree on them, finding getting to yes. So that's sort of building a consensus big building support for it. And Lynn mentioned implementation complexity, but I don't think we think about that as much is there one way that's easier to go. And there's another way that they all sound good but you know, it's Paul will tell us I need 10 more staff to even begin to do that so it's the complexity for us to do it but also for the people in town to even understand what we did, you know that there are too many different things going on so we will we have had those kinds of issues, and I don't think we pay enough attention to them. Thank you. Yeah, and the piece about understanding the nature of the problem to I would encourage you to think about that as an evolving thing that you know some of these are steps like we do this and then we figure that out and we move to the next step. And that can be circled back to repeatedly right because, as you do whatever research or benchmarking or data, you might discover in fact I hope you discover that the problem is different than we thought it was in the first place right, because if that doesn't happen, then we're coming in with preconceived notions and we're engaged in confirmation bias and we're essentially just you know only pursuing the thing that we think is the right thing right. And giving yourself space for these things to evolve and to kind of return to them throughout the process is really helpful to Pam. Well you just took most of the words right out of my mouth. I'm sorry. I see this as a, as a planning cycle, and it's such a, it's that every everything that we deal with is a sort of a planning cycle. And that's the, again, sort of picking or identifying the problem statement. And it goes to the, it goes a little bit to the phasing that Alicia talked about so you have the problem statement the input and all of the considerations. Being open for the unexpected testing testing out the hypotheses testing out the, the implications of it. The implementation phase, and then a tweaking and it's any, any process, it should be iterative. And the iterative part of that is adding in the unexpected that you discover and you learn, or the voices that you haven't heard before. And it's just a, it's, it's a cycle. So lots of us who like to plan and go through the cycle, you know, may never feel like we've tied everything up in a tidy bow because there wasn't a definitive endpoint, because in fact we're always open to more ideas so there has to be a balance of those who definitely just want to get to the end line, and those who want to continue planning and I think that's part of the tension of decision making is some people are, are ready to finish earlier than others. So, but it is, but it is iterative. That was my main point. Thank you. I love that, that observation that each of each council member has a different level of patience with various moments within these right some of you, you know you probably can pick your favorite sticky note here where you're like I'm in my element, when I'm in the decide whether to keep going or whatever it's first one I saw, but you know, there may be one where you're like that's the place where I can shine like learn that about each other to and draw on each other to bring that out to say like, I'm actually really terrible at even knowing how to approach, you know, finding out whose voices and included can I figure out who on the council can help me with that right so learn what you know each of you has a superpowers and notice when someone's like bye can't you know and and and support them through those those areas where there may be less strong. Yeah, thanks Pam. So, Shawnee, Michelle, did you want to go first, I've already spoken. So this is all really amazing. But I would add that consider identifying counselors who don't share your priority to work with, and that for one can be strategic. So it comes to a vote particular, but it also gives you a chance to sort of check any bias that you may be holding about a particular person. And I think it's really easy for us to sort of create permanency around people and think that this person's in this box and this person's in this box. And what I've discovered is that that's not true. And when I have gone out of maybe my comfort zone or spoken to somebody who I didn't think necessarily shared my point of view or priority, I always learn that there's much more nuance. So that's something I would add is to identify counselors who may not share priority. Thank you. And one other thing I would add is what at each stage, who's doing what, who's doing what at each stage because, you know, when we're gathering with the information is the staff gathering the information for us are we supposed to be individually doing a ton of research and going out and that becomes my main job then because I'm so obsessed with understanding. So having some clarity around, you know, who, who's doing what role at different stages. And, and who can we pull in because the staff gets overburdened to so can we, you know, like, I don't know, but you get what I'm saying, like who's doing what. You get that. All right. Oh, when just one more. And then once you introduce it, understand the process from when it's introduced to when it is finally happens. Okay, bylaws take a lot of steps proclamations take fewer that kind of thing. You know, we're right on time people. It's not amazing. So excited. It's rare that that happens for me but we're at 1230 we're going to take a lunch break but I just want to thank you for taking some time to think about these different steps and it, you know, the thing to remember is that for each priority area, again, the process might look a little different but the best you can do is to decide in advance how do we want to tackle this together, so that you can be intentional about it, and then let that process evolve as it needs to evolve right so you know planning with flexibility is sort of the idea here. So during the lunch break, I'm going to try to organize this based on kind of what I've heard as some general areas so that it doesn't feel quite so overwhelming so that sort of like here's what it could look like. And then our last piece together is to actually apply this to a particular one of these priorities, not to get to a solution, or even share what we think the solutions are, but to think a little bit more specifically if we were to do this, who would be the people we would need to talk to what kinds of things would we need to consider so we're going to get a little bit more specific by applying process and thinking about each step and how it relates to wait for it parking. So, more parking. So, any instructions we need to give folks for lunch. Yes. So sandwiches and drinks are and chips are out there. There are places you a couple people can sit and get into that when we'd like to depopulate the room and you probably want a different view anyway. There's a room right next to this I can hold a few people. The first floor conference room can hold more people. Those are all the spaces and some people can stay in here if they choose but we encourage you to sort of get out and see something else. Same doors unlocked guests. All right, how long, we're going to pick up again at one o'clock. But like on computers ready to go at one o'clock. Yeah, not like me and during and I need the clarification otherwise I'll be like, I'm in the room this counts ready to go at one o'clock please on. I'm on it. Get us back to live. Got it. Aaron, it's back to you. Great. All right. Welcome back from lunch one of the great things about masks is that you cannot see all of the pesto that's in my teeth right now. You'll never know but I get to like enjoy it for the rest of our session. That's really gross. Okay, someone say authenticity was their favorite value because I'm here for that I am. Yes. Pam has a hand raised you have something you'd like to share. I do. There was a baby born at about 1230 while you all were lunching. So that's the good news. Congratulations. I think we're good. If you leave, feel free, but no one will ask any questions. I think I'm coming. Okay, are we good. I think we're good. All right, let's dig back in. Okay, parking let's tackle that. Okay, so we just before lunch, we had a chance to kind of think about process and how what you know how we might design process and so I did my best while I was eating to kind of organize some of those questions which I'll show to you in just a moment. But what I thought we would it might be helpful to do is to get a little bit more specific on one particular issue that is on your list of priorities to kind of think about what would it mean for this particular issue if we were to follow that process so I'm going to pull us out of the slide deck and head over to the Jamboard again. So this is the best I could do to try to organize based on what I heard in terms of how these things might unfold and so these are sort of higher level categories of the sort of buckets that I heard you all starting to pull things together into beginning with arriving at a shared subset of council priorities. And then you can see there are the sub sticky notes unfortunately the text has to get really small in order to fit these all in these columns but you know if you need to kind of zoom in for yourself again. So starting there, then moving to understanding the nature of the problem so there were a handful of sticky notes that kind of fit into that category. So moving to finding our why and connecting our to our values, and I put role clarity in here although you know some of these sticky notes might actually apply in multiple places and you could probably make copies of them and put them in multiple spots. I put it there for now thinking that role clarity is helpful at the beginning with the with the why and connecting to our values stage. So moving from there to a great big bucket of learning, right, taking the time to engage town staff generating and analyzing data, considering folks capacities benchmarking with similar communities, learning what's already been accomplished in this area. After the learning moving to generating and considering solutions. So that's the whole solution bucket. And then gathering feedback consulting multiple stakeholders, their lived experiences and practicalities from supporters and naysayers, moving from there to proposing and adopting a solution. And then once that solution is adopted, assessing the outcomes. So, if you just do all this then you'll be all set right. So, I would love, again, go back into individual reflection and mappings take let's all set a timer again for five minutes we'll see check in after those five minutes. Even if you want to just work at the yellow sticky level, that's perfectly fine but the columns are there for you to kind of think about what did we mean when we said these buckets, but for each one, if we were tackling parking. What kinds of things would we need to do to, you know, understand the nature of the problem, you know, arrive at a subset of council parties let's assume we arrived at parking as one of our priorities right. And then, you know what we need to do to be able to understand the nature of the problem. What kinds of things would we have to figure out related to our why so this is just a chance to practice with a specific issue. So any questions on what you're supposed to do. Yes, Anna. So, it's, it's not for you, and it's this questions for you and I asked it before because I wasn't sure if I missed something, the sticky note of advocate to get the issue on the agenda. So this is one that based on what I just asked you for half an hour ago seems like should be on there twice I'm not saying you need to get but should be on there twice, and it kind. Let me ask this as a question. I want to indicate to get it on the agenda twice once generally to establish it as a priority and then again once you have something that you're pitching. The way I manage the future agenda items is that if I know an item is going to happen sometime. It is in a category. It's kind of the third or second category in my future agenda items, which I still have to share the whole thing with you. It so that I know it's out there, but I haven't brought it up to an actual date of a meeting. Okay, and there's times I might take it off the list, because it's not going to be out there anymore. To the extent possible, they're all somewhere on this. I don't know four or five page document. Any other questions before we do some. Yes, Dorothy. So you said that the colors of the sticky notes were random. They're not anymore. Yeah, I want to know how that happened. Okay, check it out. So on this page, this is the mess that we created earlier. And then I copied everything over, and then I color coded them. Yes, thanks I didn't clarify that I appreciate the point of clarification. With respect to parking. There are many different pieces to it to what are we, they all require different processes. So, what are we looking at. Yeah, that's that's a great question so one of the things that we were considering as we were developing this agenda is recognizing that there are sort of, there's almost like this ladder of a set of umbrellas or we've also played with like Russian nesting dolls or whatever kind of analogy you want to use in terms of like, there's parking, then there's downtown parking or there's garage is that an option right so I would say, dive in at whatever level feels right to you and where it feels like you can get traction and make sense around practicing thinking through process. I think we have a really good answer to that question other than this is just a chance to start to, to play with this process and think about what would it actually look like in practice that mildly helpful or not at all. Not helpful. Would you like us to just pick one of them. I think we, I'm sorry, because we'll be all approaching it in a very different we're not solving the same problem like we're all solving and then we won't be able to compare and like we want to want the apples to apples. I really would appreciate us following a process, just like having the same problem that we're tackling because it feels like we're tackling different problems then. Okay, then I would suggest we do the parking garage. Okay. So I, that's totally fine and I want to acknowledge that in doing that we started the process. Right so like the arriving at the set of Council priorities if parking is the priority, nailing it down to the garage would be part one of the process I agree that it makes the rest of this easier for today but like just want to note that that is part of step one. Right, so if step one is understanding the nature of the problem, I think part of what you're doing right now is raising the question of what problem are we actually solving right so then think about what kinds of questions would we need to ask to be able to do that. And then for the sake of the rest of the exercise maybe imagine you've arrived at one solution etc. You know, again, we are not going to arrive at a solution to parking by the end of this this is just an opportunity to do the mental exercise that work. Okay, great. Thank you. All right, I'm going to set the timer for five minutes and I'll check back in with you. That puts us at five minutes to see people are still writing and working with us give it another two and I can check back in. How are we doing does anyone need another minute. I'm seeing eyes looking up. Great. Okay, so I think before digging into some of these steps I just would love to hear some thoughts on the overall experience of trying to apply a theoretical process to an actual issue. Where did you notice yourself getting stuck or asked it where did you have questions where did it feel more challenging than others. Just any sort of overarching thoughts and then I think it might be helpful for us to think about you know if we were looking at parking. What did you notice in the understanding the nature of the problem column and then kind of what march our way through so first sort of overarching observations. Difficult because it's so theoretical still like I can't do the proposed and adopt solution unless we've talked about stuff because then I'm bringing my biases into what I believe the solutions are, and I don't know whether there's options so I actually found nearly every step of talking about even the problem without having a conversation writing my it's all my thoughts but I found every step hard. I think that is such a great revelation for oneself to recognize like, oh, we can't know how it's going to end until we do these earlier pieces to the puzzle so thank you yeah. I think for me articulating the problem itself like the problem wasn't like should we have a parking garage or not away. The question was like, what is the problem statement what are we solving for here and so for me, we're coming to an agreement as a council which I think is a little ambiguous. Why are we wanting this. And so like for me it was the statement was how to make our downtown accessible for people visiting and enjoying our downtown. Like a starting statement but but so I think for me that was the first thing that even as a town to come together as an articulate what is the problem we're solving for. Thank you. Pam. That's actually a really good starting point. I like the thought of going through a process like this, because it actually takes the time to open up. What are the considerations that need to be on the table. And I think it's our tendency to perhaps jump into solutions and not take the time to ask if, in fact, we should be broadening our consideration of other opportunities. So I think, going through a slightly more formalized process for thinking about parking as this one example. I think is very valuable for us rather than jumping to, we want, we want to make the downtown more accessible therefore we need a garage. It asks us to step back and say, you know, what are we trying to achieve. And are there other ways, are there many ways to accomplish this is the garage the best solution so I think this process is terrific to think through. Thank you. Jennifer. Yeah, I was really struck by just something, you know, a sort of unglamorous as a parking garage, how many of those apply. I mean, you, you know, from considering who has the information and other pieces needed it was just, it was almost every box to apply to trying to solve this problem. But I did notice on one of the squares where I don't know how that language got there it says supporters and naysayers. I don't know the word naysayers to care. I think the word was used in there and I can't remember how but what is there a better word that you propose, or it's just both sides of the issue all sides of the issue. Sure yeah, those who are pro and those who are against I mean, yeah it doesn't really matter I think it's it's more just, there will be people in support there will be people in opposition and you want to talk to both of them. And just do that since we're on that, because there's a whole bunch of people who are complacent and I think we need to also include them like how do we bring more people into the conversations. I agree it's a spectrum. Great. Thank you. Alicia. So I have a similar experience commandee Joe, when I did this that was like just my realization mostly and then also just that what you were saying in the beginning that a lot of these sticky notes can be copied and moved to other places. So, for example, when I got to the generate and consider solutions there. I want to, I then also want to ask like, who would I be doing this with. Again, because I was thinking about like if I'm benchmarking in the step before and I'm looking at what other communities are doing. Who's doing that research me, or do I do it with other people until like there were other things I would basically steps that I'd be doing multiple times. Well, it gets really complicated right like you could make a really complicated flow charts that have lots of arrows pointing to various places with lots of repeat pieces but I think that's such a great observation Dorothy. Great. I'm curious and I'm not looking for answer to this but I'm curious if with all of these priorities. That's a similar way of approaching this right to say, I mean, it makes a lot of sense that at the beginning of your work together. You're going to really be in this space of like understanding the nature of the problem before trying to jump to solutions and so if that's a piece that you take away from this that's, that's helpful, but also recognizing that if we only get stuck in constant, thinking around what is the nature of the problem we never actually come to solutions right so finding that balance in the work and continuing to move a process forward while being really conscious of redefining the problem that that's a tricky balance to take. Yep. It looks like Kathy you've been renamed council retreat but I guess I just build on. I agree with the statements that have been made on this particular issue but I want to contrast it to one other that we worked on. And this was Pat Mandy and I worked on something called wage theft or responsible employer. We started with the definition of the problem that most people agreed with. And we were able to find multiple other towns that had done something about it, and could document it. So it, it created, however long it took to get that through. There wasn't a disagreement about what the problem was. So that was a really important piece to be able to define that because it built consensus in a way that I think was helpful. Yeah, that's such a helpful way of thinking about this to that even though each one of these pieces is the same takes up the same amount of space on this page. It might take different amounts of time space, depending on the problem itself right so some things might get really caught up in the defining the problem and then once we figured out what the problem actually is. It might be very quick to come to the solution because we've done that really good work of understanding what are we trying to solve in the first place, right, other, other problems might have pretty easy sort of early identification of the problem and take all of its time up in the solution generation right so recognizing that there, there can be some of that elasticity. Well, as long as we're keeping our eye on forward movement as opposed to being kind of stuck and spinning our wheels. Andy. One thing. When Dorothy spoke I did not hear anything she said because she didn't use microphone so I just ask everybody to please use the microphone. When I went through the steps that were outlined it was all working well until I got to the column learn. And I just had the observation that I didn't know what it was we were learning we didn't. To identify what information do we need in order to figure out what it is that you take to go to town staff or wherever. What is it we are trying to. To achieve in that column. When. So my problem that I had was going all the way to the beginning of this and it's because for this particular issue. I think where an individual counselor may come from is based on what their vision is for our downtown. That that vision for our downtown, maybe a significant driver therefore of how we would even approach this question. So it's how do we deal with the fact that this actually may be a piece of a much bigger question. Yeah it's bringing us back to that point that there's umbrellas and smaller pieces within right and so also being able to think about this the problem that we're working on right here how does it link up the chain and down right in terms of the levels of work that we're doing. Shawnee. I was going to do a link. Linda said I had thought about it as like who's this impacting. How is it going to impact them and what are our values around this situation so if they're seniors were visiting how it's impacting them is the walkability aspect and safety and all of that and then what are the values they have we have houseless people who come to downtown they don't need the parking garage but you know it's wondering who's getting impacted how that would help us keep the conversation centered around our values and the problem. But what I was also hearing and notice realizing is that as Dorothy said I think that different people have different information who has access to information and very often there has been work done. Is it behind the scenes or it was done before our term. So for example there were two downtown studies with hundreds of people residents that show that parking if you look at what they wanted parking was one of the top things is that we need more parking downtown. But now the new people who come in do not were not part of that in a study so the problem comes of what Anna saying we don't trust each other's work. And part of the trust not being there is that we don't have systems of situating all the information in a way that's easily accessible. And a lot of thank you. Thank you Mandy. Yeah I just wanted to add a few things with one in particular. And one of the things that I wanted to add to as Charlie said is really important because a lot of times we think of it as just we need the residents views. But for something like parking, we need the visitors views, how do you get visitors views, you know, like, or are those views similar to the outlying residents views we have, you know, for something like a downtown parking at least in previous discussions were potentially varying different stakes depending on where you lived in town as to whether downtown parking where your view might be on downtown parking so I think we have to recognize that. And then I also caution spending too much time in the learn generate solutions. And all of that this town loves to study stuff, but we do have to make decisions, even if we don't have all the information, even if we don't have half the information at some point where we, this town would get stuck in studying on everything. And so I think one important thing is to recognize at some point you have to move on so maybe the timeline of when you're going to make a decision really becomes important on deciding how much learning you can do. Or not, because you need to move forward at some point. One stage is always imperfect, right, because you can't talk to every single citizen and every person who ever comes to Amherst and you know I mean like it's impossible to do that perfectly so you always have to put imperfect boundaries on that right yeah. Pat. I'm not sure exactly. I'm not on a different slightly different tangent building on what Kathy shared about Mandy and she and the three of us working on wage theft. We had a common understanding. We did a lot of this process as our steps and then we brought things to the council, but I'm trying to figure out. And that's an incredible process. I'm trying to figure out how we as a body do this because of open meeting law. We can't do a lot of this. So how I guess we can do it publicly, but how do we do that. I mean I know how to work in the smaller group. I know how to invite challenge in there. So we do this as a lot as the larger body. And so that's the question I'm put in with in my brain. Jennifer you had a hand did you want to Kathy. Just building on what Pat said to bring it back to garage parking, you know, big things. We have committees that are assigned topics, and they may arise. If you're not on the committee. We have five minutes to talk about something. So we haven't developed a way of creating a legal public place where we're discussing it gathering information together that if others want to bring information to the group. It doesn't violate the public meeting laws. You know, so in it's efficient to have the committees working on it. I'm just saying that we can't put everyone on everyone, every committee so we don't have what Pat just said we don't have a way of going from small groups can talk to each other to how does the larger group. Get to a comfort level. The small groups supposed to bring a solution to us, you know, that's their charge it's not they're not supposed to bring the problem to us. So it's, it's developing a way to do that would be extremely useful. Yeah, I mean it sounds like a design challenge in terms of the structure of how you all work together right so it would be thinking about how do we, how do we lay something like this over top of that. Yeah, so to me this is not the committee work but this is that small group work right and so for me there's maybe a post it that should go at the beginning where we to be clear we do not violate open meeting law but we say, you know, Mandy and we are working on a, you know, are examining the role that elephants play in Amherst. If you have anything you think we need to know. Just tell us we're not going to respond to you but tell us like what information you would want to see in that tell us what questions you have so that we then in our small group can go through this process. So consider Kathy's hot takes on, is this going to hurt the peanut industry in town. So like I think that that's where we can anticipate I'm going way hypothetical clearly we're not ready for reality. So, so like, I think I think that's where in that first column the set of council priorities. That's where this chart is so helpful and again it comes back to that the trust thing of saying I know that Kathy's concerned about the peanut industry and so I'm going to make that look really deeply into that and include it in the, the information that I then report back. I'm not saying that I'm relying on Kathy to be a part of this small group and I'm not saying that I'm going to discuss it with her right until we have something that's ready to present. And that's the other part that I think when we get to that propose and adopt a solution that's really important is that we're not just presenting the one solution we're also explaining how we got there. We're showing that we did that work, and that doesn't need to be in a really long drawn out way but I do think that's an important part. We've talked about memos and things like that it's, it's important that we understand that the narrative behind some of these things so that we can see that it was done we can see what the process was as well. I would really like Athena and maybe Paul to weigh in on the suggestion that Anna just made. Thank you. You can always rely on me to get the bring the hammer down on small group meetings. Because if the council were to designate a group of people to meet together on a subject to bring back to the council that's a subcommittee. And if three counselors have something they're passionate about they want to work on something together. The council hasn't designated those people to do that, but they're doing it together like someone mentioned about the wage theft by law. So, there are a little couple of open meeting law things to consider in those instances. Can I clarify. Okay, so, so then if I'm looking at this sheet and I say elephants on and Mandy are on there. I don't want to be involved and I were not designating this as a, as a group that's working on it but I'm going to tell them hey if you ever do pursue that. I want to know the impact on peanuts. That's okay, because we're not saying it as a group right like we just are looking at this list. Okay, I'll bring it into reality. So we say okay BL zoning I know Mandy Joe is interested in that I know I'm not interested if she chooses to pursue that as a as a priority I want to know. XYZ can I then share that and just say hey Mandy Joe if you're interested and if you're if you do pursue this could you make sure to include this like as an individual know that Mandy is interested in doing something and you have that conversation with her offline that's fine. But if the council says these people are working on something together. That's great. Okay. So that helps us at least kind of understand what are the what are the rules around whether what kind of work we can do here. We're not going to solve parking today right that's not the whole point that the point was essentially to get a sense. I'm sorry. No, actually that's what was like keeping me awake when we first started this relationship about the developing agenda was like, I'm not going to be able to get them to, you know, come together around any of these big first meeting. My hope is that you were able to at least kind of get a sense of what this process could look like. And to figure out how does that work, given the relationships that we have. It does require mutual trust. It does require a willingness to move forward and move on, even when you feel like maybe you haven't fully fulfilled one of these stages right and so having both patients but also a collective sense of trying to move the process forward. But this is, this is the hard stuff right but to do it well and then to be able to document and share and be transparent about process is, is half of the battle and so one thing I'd love to for us to do with this before we we're going to close out by two o'clock but I want to stick with us for just one more minute, and actually you're going to close out by two o'clock. I'm going to be done by we're actually here to maybe three maybe not. Yes, yeah, so I my portion of the agenda sorry I should have made that clear. It's done at two o'clock. But before we move from the this process and analyzing it I want to bring us back to our values and circle right back to the beginning of our conversation together. And so just take a moment please to read like bring those back forwards you can in your packet return to page 29. The question I have for you and again I'm going to give you just a couple minutes to reflect on it when you're looking at this process. If we were to follow this process. Where are we most likely to need to call on or return to or reinforce these values with each other. And so think about in the process we are definitely going to be to you know really return to x value at y moment that's what I'm getting you to try to do some reflection on so where do the values now map to process is the question to take just another 30 seconds. I hope of course is that our values will be a thread through all of our work, all the way through right so it's not like oh we turn on respect during this section but not over here, but I am curious you know if you look at this are there moments where you can see where one of them might get especially challenged and we need to make sure that we're returning to it. I would love to hear your thoughts on that. Kathy you have a hand up was that from the previous comment. Okay. I would think for me though, for the first step of problem are articulating a problem. I thought of the values of community participation diversity inclusion environmental sustainability and respect is really playing a role, like in terms of really bringing that lens to who is this impacting. How is it, you know, are we including all the voices and who's going to be impacted. How is it impacting our value of environmental sustainability, and of course maintaining that respect that, you know, initially they'll be like, I don't agree with that and so reminding ourselves to have that. And in a different stage where we're considering different solutions that's where more of the other values of creativity innovation, you know, of course they all go through everything but that comes later. Great. Thank you. Anna. So, whoa, community participation felt like one of the very clear steps in the process of a few different times. The ones I thought, I think the creativity and innovation by by the way it's explained here will both guide our discussion and be a one we need to be reminded about of that. It's okay to do things differently and move forward, and that we can also learn from what has been done and trying to find where in that we kind of settle diversity equity and inclusion environmental sustainability and fiscal responsibility the questions we always need to ask of how is this moving those goals forward. How is this physically responsible how is this supporting our sustainability and resilient climate resilience efforts and how is this advancing advancing diversity equity inclusion and justice in town. Those for me are three questions that need to be asked regardless of what project it is. Thank you. Alicia. I think I looked at this a little bit differently because I see these values as all of them needing to be applied across the board all the time. And so how I look at this more in that when we're engaging in each of these steps on the sticky notes. How are we showing these values while engaging in those things. For example, when we're in the process of proposing and adopting a solution like are we are we being sure that we're sticking to our goals of being creative and innovative. And like when we're engaging the community are we sticking to our goals of diversity equity and inclusion. And so like how we can actively show these values through the steps that we're taking. Absolutely. Thank you. Dorothy. Well, I would say that the the first two can include the others with community participation. We have to solicit it and we have to respect it when we get it. And then for creativity and innovation that's us the town council, accepting the challenge of the problem. And also reaching out to that community participation where we have a lot of talent and figuring out how to do the thing that we have decided needs to be done within the framework of the rest of the values. So those are the two I think are the most important Jennifer. Yes, and I guess I would add, you know, for community participation, we're always going to find members of the community on all sides of the issue. So how do we kind of balance that, you know, we'll all point to the people from the community that are reinforcing our point of view, but how to try and reach consensus. And of course transparency because sometimes we do hear well this work was done before, but if we don't really know what that was then it may even feel like something was is especially being done behind the scenes for some reason. So transparency I think, again, all these values apply to everything in every square. Yeah, absolutely. All right, so I guess the thing the reason why I wanted to circle us back here is because it is so easy often to get in the work, and then forget about the larger overarching things that matter to us right and so I would encourage you as you are in the work and doing each of these sort of minute pieces and steps along the way to be stopping to think about how are we, you know, incorporating our values does this work and the ways that we're carrying it out reflect what matters to us. And to be doing that by thinking both internally and externally and that's all really hard to do all at once right so you'll you'll probably need each other support for that. So I know you all are staying together beyond two o'clock, but my portion of this ends at two and I wanted to have a chance to do it just a quick little closing we open with a nice breaker I want to close by asking you to take a moment to jot down for me and then share out one key takeaway or point of gratitude or thing that's kind of coming you're coming away with from the work that we just did together today would be helpful for me to hear that and I think also helpful for you to be able to kind of pull together like if there's one thing I remember from this it'll be this key point so take a minute to write that down and then we can do another share out and then do you mind just doing the call the roll call again the same way. You hate that. Oh, remember you can always pass and come back. Right well yeah so take a moment to write it down I know some people you know need a moment to process and then we'll do a share out. So take like 20 seconds to finish chatting down. Are we ready. Almost. Maybe. I'm really going to shake it up going to start in the back of the alphabet, Alicia. So, mine is a little bit long but I think like overall what I'm coming out of this is although we have these shared values here that we apply in our council meetings we all really do have different values or different things that we prioritize. We have different ways that we approach things. We have different goals. So that, that is what's going to make us a strong council. And so that if we can really truly find a good way to work together through our differences and how we can utilize our different superpowers and then also uphold each other in the places where we're not as strong that we will be a very powerful and strong group and we will make a lot of progress. So I'm looking forward to working with you all. Jennifer. Well, first I really appreciate being able to have this time altogether not in a formal meeting. It's really the first time we've been able to do that. And I very much appreciate having these values, you know, written and highlighted here so that we can refer back to them and kind of self correct if we veered away from applying the values to, you know, the different priorities will be addressing. And as Alicia said, yeah, we do have different priorities. I think we may have a lot of shared overall goals for what our vision for the town. But it is, I think also our strength because I think we do represent a lot of the differing different perspectives that are in the community. So I think that's a good thing. Andy. Andy you need on you. Yeah, it took me. So I came up with was that the council process can achieve important goals for the town and remain committed to our values. And I also included and I think it's similar to what was been previously said that whether we are district or at large. Councilors, we are group that has and will work together to achieve what is best for the entire town. Yeah, no Kathy, I'm sorry, Kathy. Sorry, I want to start out by thanking people who chose our facilitator because I thought this was what we just went through for me, I completely agree with what Alicia just said but I think it was extremely helpful to hear the way people approach problems because it will make it much easier to think that I come at it this way you come at it that way and we're both coming at it for a similar reason. So, I thought that was excellent even when we put the boxes, it just gave me insight into each person's way of thinking, which was terrific. Pam. My takeaway is that I appreciate the, the shared understanding of process and I think, you know, just the, the organization of, of what we all believe or what we individually came to as a process. The shared understanding of what that process consists of. Instead of just each of us sort of tackling something in in our own natural state. I think we'll, we'll help build some trust in both the information that's brought forward, as well as the outcomes and I, and I think that's been from the public's perspective. I think the, the lack of trust in the outcome and the information information being brought forward has been, you know, sort of attention within the community and I think us sharing a sense of the process may help heal some of that. Thank you. Dorothy. Well, I guess my main take from this is the importance of defining the problem or the problems and to get to the root of it to look at its history, its imports, and its unintended consequences. So then you redefine the problem for this moment. And then we start figure out what should we do to solve that problem. So I do appreciate that. Thank you. Michelle. Yeah, I so appreciate what everyone has offered. And I've learned from each of you. So thank you. But one key perspective that's really sticking with me. And I think it came from Aaron and Lynn is that we're collaborating with past present and future counselors, and that our work is a continuum. I really appreciate that sort of larger perspective on it. Okay, and he has gone home to get ready for her award. That is public Mandy Joe. Yeah, just, I wanted to say I appreciated the reflection that we had to do on our statement of values and the rules we put it in three years ago. I'm at Shalini's great suggestion, but then we never really visited it again and never really talked about it. And so the focus on that today I thought was very helpful at least for me to be reminded of what they are and to be reminded that we should really be keeping them in our focus and if we ever lose any of them, we need to talk about why we've either lost it or whether it's not a value anymore, or whether there are other values we should be adding. I like the elements of the process and with the realization that while we think it's linear it's not. It's circular and that's an important thing to keep remembering. Okay, Pat, you know it's Anna, Anna. You know notoriously short in what I say. So, something that I find interesting is being a new person on the Council. When I looked at the values and the, the rules and everything. A lot of you had a stake in writing those and a lot of us didn't. And so it was interesting for me and considering are these values still true right are these still true for the folks who are coming on and didn't have a say in what they are. You know, I was having a little bit of tension for myself and it's not because I don't like them or agree with them but I think it's hard to come in and be told these are these are the values, knowing that half of you got to write them. Right, like if it were all starting fresh this would also be different so I think I was sitting with that tension kind of as I was going through this and, and I'm comfortable because I'm comfortable with those with the values as written but just wanted to name that. And I think the other part of being for me a new counselor is, it's like learning a new language and trying not to break the law and not really always understanding what if you're doing the right thing and wanting to do 10,000 things right and so part of this was part of the realization for me, looking at that list is we cover a lot of ground. There's a lot of things we want to do and so it's really exciting that we don't all want to do the same thing because it makes me feel like we'll get a lot done. I'm an optimist. And the other part of that is it's a lot less daunting when you have when you have an idea of a process right and I know that what we were talking about is that more informal part of our process because for me that's the part that was so confusing is, I want to do this and I have no idea how to start right and so this really helped build a runway I think for, for me at least, which was much needed. Pat. Thank you President. I have two things that I am taking away and feel grateful for. One is the reminder that if we step aside from our positions and assumptions, we can find really fertile ground to work together for change for and and for innovation. One is the realization that, again, that in the very ways that we are different. We can find our strength. And, and that feels really important to me. Shalini. I'm going to start with an important value appreciative joy, and that we all do such hard work in council and I really do appreciate and I'm grateful that really came alive today seeing everyone, you know, coming so much from their heart and authenticity and, you know, we can all see that we really care about what we're doing and, and we think really take this seriously so I think appreciating each other for that and taking like this retreat as some of us stated was really nice that we are sort of celebrating us, you know, it's bringing some joy into that feels continues to feel our work is important. And this also helps I think the mood enhancers that might be part of it. And then I was just thinking in terms of taking forward two things one that maybe as committees weekend from the overall elements of the processes we discussed maybe each committee can come up with their own process that will work the best for them. And personally I feel like just because there are new people always in a process that when they're doing work in the committees we kind of summarize the sources of the research and all the work that's been done. So, at least try to level some of the information that people who already working had and new people may not have to be more conscious about how to bring forward that information. Thank you so much and this is fabulous. So Aaron I think we all want to collectively thank you for spending all of the time with us to try to tease out what this might look like, and getting us this far, even though we have a long way to go. But thank you so much. It's been a pleasure working with you. We may see you again. Okay, my, my key point of gratitude is just being invited in to create this container for you all to be able to do this work together. So thank you for that and that my key takeaway is that Amherst is in really good hands with you all so I wish you so much luck and thank you. It's going to take me at least 10 minutes to clean up all my stuff so just ignore me over here but thank you so much it's been really a pleasure working with you all and stay in touch I'm just in North Hampton so not far away so thanks. Great. Great. For those of you that did not hear that was Dorothy pointed out that we just broke our own rule. And that is we're not supposed to do audible demonstrations. But there you go. Rules are made to be broken sometimes. I would like to turn in today's discussion to the next sheet you have which is the work session priorities, and before we look at, well what do we think should be those because I don't think we're going to get that far. I think we need to have just a brief discussion about how many work sessions a month, you're willing to have, because with this list, every council meeting could start at 530 with a work session. They would not be mandatory. But, you know, you might not want to miss them. So, do you want to set a guideline is it, we're not voting today. Is it one a month, is it sometimes there might be two in succession because the topic is in succession, or what might be the situation the path. Thank you. I'm having full with saying, we'd meet at 530 before council, because I'm thinking work sessions could be longer than that, and that maybe separating them from an actual council meeting. Like we've done today would be very valuable because I think work sessions are valuable and I don't know. Okay. Other comments or thoughts. I'm sorry. Are you putting back up. Are we still taping. Okay. Oh, it's on the screen. Thank you. All right. I just, I forgive me if I misunderstood. Are we going to tune in to see an eco receiver. Yes. Okay. She and I have agreed that when she thinks it's about five minutes out. She's going to text me. And then I'm going to abruptly end the meeting. And we're going to put it up on the screen for those of you that want to stay or not. It's up to you. Thank you. And for Pam and Andy, if you want to watch the link is on the Amherst historical society website. Okay. I'm back to Mandy job. Yeah. So I think what Pat said about maybe separating for some of them might be good. I think too many 530s, or very many 530s at all is problematic when our meetings run four hours to five hours already, you know, and 530 start is like eating dinner at four or 430, or not eating for some people, right. But I also want to keep in mind, we need to look at our own capacity and every work session we add is an extra meeting for all of us, or those who want to show up and that, as some of us found last fall, all those extra meetings takes a toll. And so that's not to say they're not good. I don't want people to think that I'm saying we can't do any I, I think they, I think we need to take a very careful look at what needs a work session. What that topic is how broad or short it is or whether it could be done some other way to great. I am inclined to agree with Pat around and Mandy around the separating them out from the regular council meetings I think when we also are planning on going into a council meeting after we all are thinking about what we're going to be doing in that council meeting and so it's a little bit tough to totally resituate and then think and work together in a in a different way than we do during meetings right so. However, I also recognize that adding another date a month I don't know I'm, I can recognize that and my personal opinion is I'd rather separate them out. Okay, I'm going to assume that if we separate them out we would probably use available Monday nights, since that's the one night we kind of all put aside. All right, Kathy. Oh no, yeah Kathy. Yeah, a couple thoughts. I agree with everything everyone just said about separating them out. And in terms of choosing what we do. My strong preference would be left to thoughts of strong preference one is, if something is going to come up before us in the course of two years that requires us to do thinking. I think that's a good topic for work session, you know where we need some time before we have to make a decision so I'd use that screen. The other is there's a second thing that was written into the bylaws that's called a public dialogue, which is a little bit different but the kind of squishy like which is we when we pulled that when we found it in New Hampshire, I think in the town. And that idea was there's some things that we have community members, not just the council that know a lot about something. And we want to bring them into the room for conversation. And I think that feels different than a working session where we're going to be working on something. I mean, not to say that I wouldn't bring someone in so. So when I looked through our list I was trying to think which, which of these two do I think each of these are. Thank you. Jennifer. So this is just I guess the question, maybe getting too specific, but I admit I've only kind of recently been following, probably since I got on the council the school, you know, the school building debate in a little more detail. So, so I mean one of my suggestions is, and I'm just wondering if, like, if we wanted to have a dial public dialogue or working sessions on possible uses for which of the vacant elementary school, is that something that it all informs any decision discussion driving now is there a rush on that is what I'm really asking if we wanted to address that. I'll just give a quick, the interest no, and it's not just that and Lynn and I would, we've got some town properties that were are vacant, you know, so it's like, how do we use our spaces well but that would be a big one to start thinking about that before it's confronting us. Okay. Is there anything else Jennifer. Thank you, Darcy. If we have separately scheduled work sessions. I think we try to do it, avoiding that period when the finance committee goes into its double time meetings. Because I think that could kind of help spread the work. And in terms of timing if we don't separately from meetings, I would caution that we don't have every month have a work session or three council meetings on top of all the meetings I, you know, I mean, maybe we should be aiming for four work sessions a year, one a quarter or something like that where we're not feeling overly burdened I know the three a month or the four months that we did at the end of last year every Monday, and every three out of four Mondays just feels like we don't get a break. And that's the same for staff to it's not just the counselors. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I just want to apologize I misunderstood what that question was but now that I'm looking at it I'm wondering if one of the purposes it could serve is to for the people who are really working on it to share their research and for the other counselors to ask questions and I guess that is the purpose. Yes. Yes. So let me just be very straightforward between now, and there has been a request for two working sessions already. One is request around the elementary school. And I'm going to be very careful. It is not we are not the school committee. We don't determine the education plan. The only roles we have and they are big ones is to put it on the ballot as a dead exclusion override. And hopefully then go to appropriate and borrow the money. So if we have a discussion, it can't be like well I think you need to do this educationally or whatever. At the same time, I'm having a debate with myself okay I'm just going to be straightforward. At the same time we have two people we have elected as a council to represent us on that committee. And they might like to hear what some of us are having our heads. Okay, so the only time I can see us possibly doing that, that it would have any possible impact on what's being submitted would be on the 28th. And it would be more like a working session because it's not a vote. There is no vote for us to take. It would be like, gee, have you looked at whatever something like that. Mandy Joe you specifically asked about this. Kathy specifically called me and talk to me about it. So, it would be the 28 that 530. It would just be the council it would not be asking the superintendent to come and plead his case. It would not be creating a public dialogue. I want thoughts on that. I'm testing it out. Use your process. Let me just happy. Let me just add one more words to what you just said about the timing even on asking questions. The, we're on a schedule to get what's called a preliminary design to the granting authority which is seven or eight different options with no decisions made about them. And that's supposed to be signed off by the building committee on March 11. But it would be previewed by the school committee the week before so it's extremely tight timeline. So in thinking of what this is. It's questions and information that may or may not affect the flow. Mandy Jeff. Yeah, I mean, I asked for a public discussion because I think we need to have a public discussion around costs and what goes into costs and from what I heard from our representatives on the school building committee. Some of that decision is being made for that submission on March 3 that might set some pricing. I think we as a council given that we have to vote on things like bonds and whether to ask the people to raise their taxes to pay for a certain building that costs a certain amount. We can't shirk that duty by just not having a conversation at this early stage when that conversation could affect. Ultimate costs of the building so I don't know whether that's a working session or part of a discussion in a council meeting, but I am very much believe we need to have a public discussion and open meeting about that. Okay. So I didn't have much specifically to add but I just wanted to state that I strongly agree with everything that Mandy Joe just said and that was, I didn't specifically propose it but that's why I brought it up at the last meeting because I think it would be critical for us to be having these conversations now. Okay, I will look at the agenda and determine whether or not it's 530 working session, or a discussion item during the regular meeting. And that would be on the 28th. Okay, we just agreed on something gang can senses we didn't vote. We didn't vote Kathy. Just one other piece of information when Jennifer said about the building that would remain open this building, if we can pull it off will open in 2026 so when I said pick carefully what we do for working sessions, we can do it next year. You know, it would, you know, in terms of I would pick things for work or dialogue that during this two year cycle are coming before us that we need to discuss, but keep a list of down the road. Okay. And then there were, there was one other sheet, and it really arose because Jennifer I think it was asked whether or not we could have a conversation about how do we bring constituent concerns forward. And we can all make observations about the constituent concerns. I have my own you may have your own. One of the ways you bring them forward is you send something to Paul with CC to me, and you ask questions and actually Jennifer did that on two or three issues and got some pretty solid answers. And I think recently Kathy and Michelle did the same thing for some district one. So I just want to emphasize again that, you know, Paul's there, he's a resource. He's got more knowledge about these things than any one of us sitting in the room. And, you know, and I will try to help and answer stuff. But if things arise to a certain level. Then at some point we may want to think about whether that is a discussion item for council meeting or whatever the case may be Dorothy. I know I stepped out of the room. You're saying the meeting will be on the 28th of February but I have a town council on the 20. We have a town council meeting on the 28th. The question is whether I as president will schedule a working session for an hour before or include as a discussion item in the agenda, the new school proposal. Okay, okay. Thank you. Anna. So this is where I'm going to pull us back to our process here when we think about our constituent concerns. I think one question that I'm now doing when I'm looking back at this list is saying does this make sense for a public dialogue. Does this make sense to defer to Paul does this make sense for an action item or does this make sense for a working session. I think there are probably more options than that but that's what I got in my brain. So like, I think that's, that would be something I would encourage us to look at these and say all right if folks are saying, you know they're really concerned about economic vitality and development, maybe that even though it wasn't the top getter of on our work session priorities. Maybe that is a way because it's a constituent concern and so we want it to be really accessible in terms of following along with our constituents and working sessions and public dialogues are more open and are more by their nature and by their definition are more open so I would encourage folks to look at this and maybe consider if there are things on here that would make sense for a dialogue or a working session. Great. So what I think we should do with both the combination of the working sessions and the and the constituent interests okay is develop our list we've already identified our next one. If, and there's been another one identified and that would be the area of rent and rent control. So I'm trying to be respectful of people's time, but also understand the timing of certain things. So, let me develop the list and start narrowing it down and come up with what we think we need to do next. I want to make sure we don't miss the awards. So unless there's any other final comments, I'm going to declare our meeting adjourned. We just as a point of information. Some of us are going to stay in this room and key into the awards ceremony, we will not be in a meeting we will not be discussing anything we will not be making any decisions. We just happened to be here and we're watching a video of a meeting together, and others of you may decide this is a time you want to leave and so I'm going to call the meeting adjourned.