 And here we go. OK, here's my script. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain positions of the open meeting law, General Law Chapter 30A, Section 18, this meeting of the Resident Advisory Committee is being conducted via remote participation. We're going to do a roll call to check and make sure everybody's video and audio is working. So we'll start with Keisha to say something and wave to us. Oh, happy new year. Good. And Nicola. Hi. And Angela. Yes, I am present. Good. And I assume you can all hear me and see me. And just another reminder that we're being recorded to the web. It may be shown on Amherst Media or broadcast on the town of Amherst YouTube channel. And the meeting is now called to order. Did you want to do a sound check for Paul? I was here. Oh, look, who's there? Paul's here. And his sound is working. So I guess we've done a sound check for Paul. Thank you. OK. If there is anybody dialing in by phone, you can press star nine to raise your hand to speak. And let's say, if you want, I mean, with this small group, we don't always do it. But if you want, you can mute to cut down on background noise, unless you're talking on mute when you've been called on or you raise a hand. OK. So this meeting is called to order introduction. Since we have a new member, we'll go around and do introductions and say what our role is here. So I am Jim Pistrang, and I am currently the chair of the residence advisory committee. Keisha, you can go next. I'm Keisha Dennis, just a member. And Nicola, am I pronouncing it right, Nicola? You are. Yes, I'm Nicola Usher. I am a new member of the committee. And Angela, who the heck are you? You're still muted. Sorry, I am Angela. I am your staff liaison. I'm one of your community participation officers and Paul's executive assistant. And I'm doing minutes for this meeting. And I do some of the updates to the website and set up all of the interviews for new board committee commission working group members. Thanks, everyone, for your time and your effort. And last but not least, Paul. Unmute. I'm Paul, I'm town manager. OK. So again, welcome to Nicola. Very exciting to have a new member. We've never had a new member before. So this is very exciting. What I put next on the agenda is review our best practices. And what I thought I'd do is I'd go first and then I'd put Keisha on the spot after me and then see if Angela and Paul have anything to add. And I'm just going to talk very quickly about what I do preparing for a meeting and preparing for the committee. So just jump in real quick. I should have mentioned this earlier. So I need to jump off at 1130. So just so you're aware of, I'm not sure how long your meeting's going to go. I'm hoping we'll be done by then, we'll see. So when I've got interviews scheduled, basically I review the community activity forums, the CAFs that I get. I just, you know, not memorize them, but just see who's there and what their interests are. I also go to whichever committee I'm interviewing for. I go to their web page on the town website and I look and see what their charge is. And I look at the list of members. Occasionally I'll look at an agenda to if I really have no clue what the committee does, but I don't usually even do that. And then once we get to the interview, we prepared a script. Where's my printout of it? Which Angela has put on the packet for this meeting. Basically it's a script. The subject is recommended script for town council appointees to the board committee. And it's kind of a script of everything that needs to be touched on in our 15 minute interviews. So you can look at that or print to whatever you want from the most recent packet from our web page. And I kind of use it as a checklist. We don't exactly follow it. Sometimes the things that we say the town manager does, somebody else does. Sometimes the thing that the RAC member does, somebody else does. But it's kind of a checklist of all the important things that should be covered in the course of the interview. And at the end, I see it as my responsibility. So let's say Paul forgets to let the interviewee know what the timeline is. I'll say, Hey Paul, what's the timeline for them knowing something like that? Just to make sure everything gets checked off. And my understanding is that chairs of committees all have received this script as well. So they have a general idea of what's gonna be covered Angela's making a face. Maybe they've received them. Maybe they look at them. And some chairs are very prepared and they really have it down to give the sort of five minutes summary of everything that the committee does. Some chairs are a little less prepared, but I see our job not to interrupt in the middle, but just sort of check off. And at the end, if there's anything important that was missed just to ask a question to make sure it comes up. And that's kind of what I've got. I would say for me, I do some of the same things, look what the charge is so that we know, you know, kind of what we're looking for come up with a couple of questions. You know, that I'd like to add in case they're not already asked by usually the chair of the committee, you know, just to kind of get as much information from the candidate as possible about to, you know, why they're interested and what ideas they have that they'll bring to the committee. Good, thanks. Angela, anything to add to that? No, I think you covered it. I think there's some extenuating circumstances sometimes. Nicola, where we have people in the community who really want to get involved. And so part of the interview process at the beginning is you have people who send in a CAF and they've listed every single board committee commissioner working group. And our job is to kind of help focus them and say it's great that you want to volunteer. It's great that sometimes they're new to town and they are so eager. And so our job is really to try and ferret out where best to place them or where we can, like Keisha said, put their talents to the best use. And Angela does a lot of that sort of one-on-one when someone submits something. And, you know, we try to give anybody who's expressed an interest in a committee, but when we do get the checked all the boxes, people we'd really like, are you really, are you more in the housing world or the environmental world? Where do you want to go? And then she's really good at helping to guide people and also recruit people to pitch some committees that they might not have thought of knowing who the people are. So there is a lot of sort of counseling like that that goes along because we're desperate to have people involved and we're happy to. And so we want to make sure the experience of being involved is really positive. Nicola, any thoughts, comments on everything you just heard? No, that all sounds good. Okay. In that case, I'm checking it off the agenda. The next thing I have, and we do this, so our committee meetings are sometimes frequent, sometimes infrequent. And in fact, this time we haven't met since June of 2021. So one thing we do at each of our meetings is we do a quick review one by one of the interviews that we've been involved in since the last meeting. So I'll go first thing in there. And what I do personally is I keep a list on a spreadsheet because otherwise I'll never remember. I look today and I said, oh, I don't remember those interviews, but I know I did them because they're on my spreadsheet. So what I've done, I didn't, I wasn't involved in anything over the summer, but back in September, there was a big burst and I was involved in three interviews for the cultural council, four interviews for the Board of Health and two interviews for ECAC. Okay, which is an acronym for SNAP Quiz. Paul, what's ECAC? Is that the environmental one? Yeah, Energy and Climate Action Committee. There we go. I knew that, I was just testing Paul. And then in November, I did three interviews for our committee and one interview for the Council on Agents. Kisha, your turn. So I couldn't find the notebook that I usually keep all my notes in, but I did the African Heritage Reparations Assembly. I think it was like 12 to 15 interviews for that. And then I did the Recreation Director and I think it was about 10 candidates for that as well and then one for the Council on Aging. Cool. So the next thing we usually do is Angela gives us, hang on, let me look at the agenda and follow it. Yeah, upcoming interviews. What's in store for us? What are you looking at? I'm turning this responsibility over to Paul today. So there's a lot coming up. So there are two, so we have, the immediate group is, and correct me if I miss any, Jones Library has a one community member seat that's available. The Elementary School Building Committee has one community seat that's available and those are high priority ones because those committees are actively working right now. And I'm sorry, just to interrupt, what's the Jones Library Building Committee? Jones Library Building Committee, yeah. Shade tree, cac, and then down the road, then we've had some resignations because of counselors being elected from Conservation Commission and Community Preservation Act Commission. I think we might have some vacancies on the Council on Aging Design Review Board, Energy and Climate Action Committee, again, because of counselor change over Recreation Commission, our new Recreation Director is sort of looking at recruiting some folks to be on there that he knows. We have two, and others that we are establishing the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee. And I have asked on that one to, because it's a brand new committee, we reached out to the group that's been really successful in the past, that's Barbara Love, Sid Ferrara, and Keisha to interview these groups of people. And we, I think we sent out, or we will be sending out soon, the community activity forms for those to see if the pool is sufficient for the group to start the interviews. And the same with the, we have a one seat available due to a resignation on the African Heritage Reparation Assembly. And then in the near future, we'll be looking at the police resident, the police resident oversight board and getting enough people to serve on that as well. So there's lots of new committees out there. And so we are making more of an effort to reach out and connect with folks. And just to clarify, this doesn't include normal term explorations of current committees. That's right. All the terms expired June 30th and these are all the vacancies right now. Wow. Yeah. So we'll be calling on you periodically. And a lot of them are onesies and twosies. So it's like, it might just be a couple, like the shade tree, Angela, two people that we need to interview. And the Jones Library, I think there's gonna be a fair number of people interested in that. So. I had a question and it just popped on. Oh yeah. What's the status of Zoom interviews? I assume they're continuing for the short term at least. Yeah. So all of our meetings like this are continuing, we're allowed to continue meeting, public meetings like this until April one under the state legislation. They are looking at extending that. The council itself is meeting in person. If they want to, it's a hybrid meeting. It takes a lot of support for us to do a hybrid meeting. So we've offered that to the council, but to no other committees. They are gonna reconsider that at their meeting on the 24th, a lot of their members feel like they really don't wanna be coming into a building together for multiple hours with each other. So, and I, you know, honestly, I'm not sure what we'll do going forward because the Zoom is really convenient for folks. You know, it used to be we had to, you know, people had to get down to town hall for a 15 minute interview. We always felt bad about it. I mean, I missed the personal interaction, but I mean, with these interviews, we can choose what we want and I'd welcome what your thoughts are on that. Anybody have thoughts on that? Zoom versus in person for our 15 minute interviews? I mean, I personally think it makes it a little bit more accessible in certain ways for people. You know, maybe not having to have childcare or, you know, in the light, but I also know that for some people, they may not have access or feel comfortable, but I think overall, it might widen the pool of applicants we have. Nicola? Yeah, I agree with that. I think especially for a 15 minute interview, I have a question if we, for somebody for whom Zoom might not be accessible, could we do phone interviews? Yeah, so I mean, I just, I would say, you know, in terms of best practices, my experience with other organizations, it's just important to provide sort of the same, the same to everybody, you know, so we should be doing Zoom for everybody then or Zoom or phone for everybody or the same options, I guess, consistently. Yeah. Yeah, I'd say you guys mostly said everything, I think as well. You know, I'm, what I liked about the 15 minute in person is it was in person. And I think for the people coming for interviews, you know, it's, it feels more important or like you're wanted in a way when you're, you know, going into this big building that you maybe have never been in before and going into the, you know, cool town manager's office and things like that. And I missed that. But on the other hand, you know, I'm still working and to be able to just stop for 15 minutes or half hour, 45, whatever it is and do my interviews and not have to go into town and back is great. So I'm with everybody else, I guess. You know, there's one thing I wanted to mention that's not on the agenda, but I'm allowed to mention it. We have a funny committee in that there's only three of us on it, which means anytime if two of us talk together, not an official meeting about how the committee works or what it does, we're violating open meeting law. So we have a funny thing where, you know, most committees where you have nine people, two of them can, you know, meet for coffee and talk about how their committee is doing and stuff like that. But we can't do that. We can, we can share information like one person can send another person a spreadsheet that we talked about at the last meeting or the agenda or something like that. But we can't talk about the workings of the committee one-on-one because one-on-one means a majority, means you need to have an open meeting. So it's just something, it doesn't really come up. The one peculiar, when did it come up? There was something where? When you were hiring the interviewing for the resident advisory committee. Yeah. Because we couldn't have two of us. You and Keisha couldn't look at it and say, what do you think? So other than that, it doesn't really come up but it's something to keep in the back of your head. Anything else? Where's my agenda? I lost it. Okay. So anything else on upcoming meetings? I don't think so. So our next job is just one thing. So when we do open up, I mean, I think if we look at elementary school and Jones Library, if you want to designate who's going to be participating in them, that'd be a good thing to come out with. So Angela can or you can just let her know later what you decide. Uh-huh. Which kind of brings up a point. The history of the way this committee works, if any one of us has a particular interest in a committee, you can tell Angela. I know Kana used to do that pretty frequently. So I'm really interested in this committee. Can you have me do the interviews for that? And that's perfectly okay if the timing works. What I've always said is we shouldn't ask Angela to go out of her way in scheduling or rescheduling to meet our needs. So she has enough of a problem meeting the needs of the people that she is getting, signing up for the interviews. But certainly if we have preferences, we can tell Angela or we can just say, sign me up for anything, whatever works for you. Angela will typically send something out saying, we've got these meetings scheduled over the next couple of weeks, who's available? And at that point we tell her what we're available for or not available for. And we also try, like if the interviews get spread out, months in advance because someone resigned early. If we've done the previous set, we try to do the next set, but it's not always workable. So as you know, Nicole, I'm not available in the afternoon. So I tend to do the morning or the evening interviews. So sometimes it's just based on your availability in addition to your interests. Yep, thanks. So the next item on our agenda is to approve the minutes from our previous meeting, which was way back on June 15th. You can look at them online. I don't know if I have a nice copy here. So I looked through them and I personally didn't see anything that I want to change. I don't know if anyone else had a chance to look at the minutes or has anything to note. We're good. Nicola, any comments on the minutes? You weren't there, so you don't know if it's right or not. Yeah, I looked at them, I'll abstain, so I'll be there. So in that case, we will have, basically just do a show of hands. Raise your hand if you approve the minutes from Wednesday, June 16th, 2021. And I see two hands raised, so the minutes are, and Nicola abstained, so the minutes have been approved. At this point, we asked for public comment, but I don't think there is any public, so I think we're good there. Anything else that anybody can think of that we haven't talked about? Any questions, comments, anything? Yeah, Nicola. I have one question just about conflicts of interest. Just, you know, I think this comes up a lot. This comes up for me a lot, even at the Emmer Survival Center. Obviously, it's a small town, people know each other, so are there ever instances where it's not necessarily define a conflict of interest based on state law, but where you have somebody on this committee that has a close relationship with an applicant or something like that? Are there things like that where you try to avoid making recommendations or participating in interviews, or has it just not really come up? For me, the only time it has come up was, there was a panel, you know, I was one member of the panel to interview the candidate, and it was a relative of the person, so they just didn't participate in that interview, but they participated in the other interviews, and then they just didn't comment, you know, when it came time to sort of making our recommendation. And Angela or Paul, any comments on that? Yeah, so, I mean, most of these positions are not compensated, and you're one of a group that's advising the town manager, so there's a couple of steps away from having undue influence, but I think the metric would be, or the thing that you would think about is like, do you think it presents an appearance, or if it's a high profile thing, most of these things are just recruiting and trying to make sure people are aligned, but if it makes you feel, I mean, what our town attorney says, if it makes you feel a little bit queasy inside, then step away, you know? Good. Anything else to talk about? Cool, I like this committee. Me too, very efficient. In that case, I move that we adjourn and raise your hand if you are in favor. And I see three hands raised, so that's unanimous. So we are adjourned. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Bye, have a good weekend. You too. Me too. Bye-bye.