 So I think we're all here or at least those of us who are here are here and welcome to you all. And welcome to the Friday, February 26, noontime history bites we are kicking off our spring 2021 season, hosted by our friends at Amherst media. And today we have Mr Nick Grabe talking. He was a newspaper editor and writer based in Amherst for 32 years. And when he became editor of Amherst Bulletin in 1980 it was one of four weekly newspapers based here. He retired in 2013 and in 2016 he was elected to a commission charged with proposing a new form of government for Amherst. He was elected with a plan to create a 13 person town council to replace the town meeting, and he pushed to keep a town manager instead of electing a mayor. So he is well positioned to talk to us today about the process by which Amherst changed its form of government. To start, I should mention his memoir, Print and Privilege, and he may even hold up an advanced copy of it here to soon to be published by off the common books in Amherst and from the back cover it says, Nick Grabe tell stories from his 40 years as a writer and writer, taking writer taking readers from the age of manual type writers to the decline of print journalism. That's quite a journey. Nick also shows how he survived an elitist childhood struggled through his erratic 20s, somehow found fulfillment in career and marriage, and became an advocate for simple living. He was pioneering as a man in women's college, raising a son with intellectual disabilities, and helping to overthrow a local government go through it all, Nick discovered his own meaning of privilege. But today I think we're going to talk about overthrowing the town government. So please welcome Mr Nick Grabe. Thank you George. And thanks to the Amherst Historical Society for inviting me to speak to you on zoom today. We all know that Amherst is a disputatious town, and we like to challenge the status quo. But still it's remarkable that we've gone to the polls six times in the past 85 years to vote on whether to change our system of government. Two of these reform attempts were clear failures, and two others came up short by one half to 1% of the votes. Two of them were successful and changed the way we govern ourselves. I'm going to talk about all six of these campaigns over the next half hour. And then I'll invite you to make comments and ask questions. I was involved in three of the four unsuccessful votes in 1996 2003 and 2005. In my role as editor of the Amherst bulletin commentary page, back when our weekly newspaper was the main forum for expressing opinions on local issues. I was neutral in these campaigns to change change the town's charter. In a recent successful campaign, I was an advocate for change as a member of the commission that drafted our new charter, and as an advocate for its approval by voters. But before we get to the contentious debate over the charter of three years ago. Let's travel back in time to the mid 1930s. It was the middle of the Great Depression, and Amherst's population was one sixth of what it is today. The mass was still mass Aggie. And once a year, several hundred people squeezed into town hall for the annual town meeting. Every Amherst resident was welcome to come and debate whether to install a streetlight on the corner of main and spaulding or whether a fire hydrant should be placed on the corner of Lincoln and bearing. There is a type of open town meeting that is still practiced in hundreds of small towns in New England. This portion of my talk is based on research by the late David Booth, a professor of political science at us. For several years, there have been grumbling about open town meeting from residents who claimed that it gave too much power to the ill informed. In 1935, Amherst's population reached 6000, which was the legal threshold for voting to establish a representative form of government. There was a logistical reason to make a change. As the town hall auditorium where open town meeting took place, could seat only 650 people. There were also some concerns about fire safety. The grumbling came from Amherst college professors and from the Amherst record newspaper. They maintained that important decisions were being made by town meeting by a small number of voters who were swayed by emotional appeals, which they called mob rule, or by people who just came to watch the show. They said it was too easy for single issue voters to pack town meeting and impose their will. The existing tax bills were also invoked as a good reason for change. The Amherst record wrote that town meeting is composed almost exclusively of people who want something, and that something is invariably something that will add to the tax rate. So on March 2, 1936, a proposal to scrap direct democracy and go to a representative form of town meeting was put to a vote. 30% of eligible voters turned out and 837 of them voted to make the change. But 856 of them voted no, and the proposal lost by 19 votes. With that close a margin, the drive for change did not stop. The Amherst record kept up the criticism of open town meeting, and Joseph Thompson, an Amherst college professor complained that his annual property tax bill had doubled in eight and 13 years, all the way to $292. Someone wrote, a group of one section flocked to a meeting and secured an appropriation of $14,000 for constructing a road that is used annually by about 1% of the population. Someone wrote at the record that our present form of town meeting has ceased to be democratic. Years later, on March 7, 1938, there was a second vote. This time the proposal for a representative town meeting was approved. Yet, even though it got fewer votes than two years previously, the number of yes votes slipped to 799, but the no votes declined even more to 657. Voter turnout was lower and the number of abstentions increased dramatically. People were just tired of the debate. Representative town meeting was to be Amherst's form of government for the next 80 years, although it was approved half-heartedly in Professor Booth's words. The prediction that representative town meeting would increase participation in voting did not pan out. 12 years before the change, turnout in town elections averaged 46%, but in the 12 years afterwards, it was only 26%. And those who hoped that the new system of government would halt the growth of government spending and stabilized tax bills were also disappointed. The numbers became more common, and with them came greater public expenditures for road construction and maintenance, and as well as snow plowing. In 1940, the new representative town meeting enacted the first zoning bylaw, which determined what kinds of development could take place in what parts of town and with what level of review. Three member Board of Selectmen to make week to week decisions in this era. And two more members were added in 1954. Also in 1954, Amherst installed a professional town manager to supervise the daily functioning of town government. The Board of Selectmen officially changed its name to Select Board in 1988. For several years, some traditionalists mocked the change by calling it the Board of Select Persons. Remember that, Nancy? Representative town meeting met annually, sometimes more often, over the decades as UMass expanded and the Amherst population increased. The average property tax bill also grew to many times the $292 that Professor Thompson had complained about in 1938. Now we fast forward to the early 1990s. A group called Amherst Citizens for Responsible Government arose mostly in response to increases in spending and higher tax bills. The average price of a house in Amherst had increased dramatically, partly because of a building moratorium in the mid to late 80s. Many older residents on fixed incomes felt burdened by high property taxes. The number of candidates for representative town meeting was declining, and in some precincts it became easier to get elected. In the 1970s, almost all town meeting members were elected with more than 100 votes. But by the 1980s, 35% received fewer than 100 votes. Turnout in local elections, which had averaged 27% in the 70s, slipped to 18% in the 80s. Amherst residents seemed to be less interested in participating in local government. In 1993, a man named Stanley Durnakowski decided he had had enough of town meeting. He was undaunted by the rigorous demands that the state of Massachusetts places on people who want to change their town's form of government. These include gathering thousands of signatures on a petition to hold a little election just to determine whether to create a charter commission, then waiting for up to 18 months while the commission weighs its options, and then another six months before voters vote its recommendation up or down. Few people have the time and the patience to expend so much effort and wait more than two years. The reason for this laborious process is to avoid changing a system of government because of short term discontent. But Durnakowski was determined and he stationed himself outside a supermarket for months, patiently gathering enough signatures to force voters to confront the question. They did vote to create a charter commission, and in the same election, Durnakowski was one of the nine residents chosen to serve on it. The commission was chaired by Irv Howard, a political science professor at UMass. It concluded Michael Greenbaum, the former school principal who remains an active commentator on town government 27 years later. As well as several members of Amherst citizens for responsible government. A 32 year old Amherst native named Larry Kelly, though not on the commission became a vocal critic of town meeting. This first of three charter commissions came up with a proposal for a hybrid form of government that would not abolish town meeting, but would reduce its membership to from 240 to 150 in an attempt to streamline its operations and reduce the number of members who could be elected running unopposed. The commission recommended establishing a seven member town council and an elected part time mayor who would serve on the school committee and oversee the budget process. The council would be authorized to set budget guidelines and could override town meeting on spending, but then town meeting could over then override the council on a two thirds vote. After an extended debate, voters declined to accept this proposal by a margin of 237 votes. In the first five years of the 21st century, the question of whether to change Amherst system of government arose again and was voted on twice. In 2001, the creation of a second charter commission was approved by 17% of registered voters who turned out for the election. The commission was chaired by Brian Harvey, a UMass administrator with experience on the select board and the finance committee. After a vigorous debate, it proposed scrapping town meeting altogether and replacing it with a nine member town council and an elected mayor, which share the council and hold veto power, but could be overridden by a two thirds council vote. Most appointments to committees will be made by the mayor, but there also would be a manager. The proposals would shift from March to November to conform to what voters were used to in state and national elections. Harvey maintained the town meeting had the aura but not the reality of direct democracy, and that it had lost the confidence of many citizens. This proposal was designed to combine the leadership and political legitimacy of a mayor with the professionalism and non partisanship of a manager. During the campaign for approval of the charter commission's proposal, I went to a town meeting session and interviewed members to get some contrary viewpoints. Michael Greenbaum told me, we have a remarkably respectful culture at town meeting. We are patient with people who talk too much or haven't done their homework, and sometimes we have our minds changed during the debate. Bill Field, a former town meeting moderator and then a member told me, I can't think of any event that would bring as diverse a collection of people together in a common purpose who are not normally working or going to church or shopping together. Moderator Harrison Greg told me, there's a fascination with the debate itself, an intellectual exercise of understanding the issues presented. There's a sense of being part of something larger than yourself. The fact that people have fun is not irrelevant because it's an incentive to be involved. The campaign was bitterly fought and divided the town. One opponent of the proposed charter change said he will never again patronize the business owned by a supporter of the change. A candidate for school committee said he would have difficulty serving on the panel if a new charter was approved. One person actually complained that the newspaper was putting more ink on the charter yes logos than on the charter no logos. As gatekeeper for the letters to the bulletin, I made a point of publishing exactly the same number from each side, and I did not take a position on the question. Here's how one perceptive letter writer summed up the campaign. I wish I know who wrote this. When I listened to supporters of the proposed charter, I get the impression that the choice is between certain finesse fiscal ruin overseen by incompetence and a wise prudent government straight out of the civics books. In contrast, when I listened to opponents of the charter, it seems as if the choice is between democracy and an unresponsive oligarchy of evil real estate developers. But it came time to count the votes. The proposal lost by a whisker 2414 to 2400 or about one half of 1%. It was even closer than the attempt to create a representative town meeting had been in 1936. Perhaps because that change had been then adopted in 1938, the charter commission exercised its legal right to bring the same proposal back for a second vote in two years. But with a larger turnout, the second vote failed by a wider margin, 252 votes. The crucial factor Harvey told me recently was that the school community community, that is parents, staff and school committee, viewed the proposed change as a threat. Alyssa Brewer, then a member of the school committee was one of the debaters on the no side. According to Harvey, there was a distinct sense among most school supporters that they were unlikely to get better treatment out of a town council than they did from town meeting. And a lot of suspicion that an unstate of motive of charter reform was to get a handle on school spending. There were other reasons that no voters expressed to me. Many cherished the image of Amherst as a small town and having a town meeting reinforced that image. Some questioned having both a mayor and a manager, both in terms of cost and separation of responsibilities. Some felt they didn't understand the issues and so voted no because they were unsure of the consequences of adopting a new form of government. In the second vote in 2005, some people may have voted no because they didn't like bringing the same proposal back again. Now we come to the most recent campaign for change, which many of us are familiar with. By this time, I was retired from the newspaper and became a direct participant in the process. I have my opinions, but I will try to describe what happened in a nonpartisan way and explain why I think this latest campaign was successful. Town meeting instituted some reforms in the wake of the two unsuccessful charter votes. The number of signatures required to get your name on the ballot was reduced to one in an attempt to encourage more people to become candidates. Electronic voting created more information about individual members positions. The new town meeting coordinating committee considered a wide range of options for improving its functioning, but there was still an undercurrent of dissatisfaction with town meeting. By the 2010s, 60% of town meeting members didn't receive 100 votes. And there was frustration over town meetings rejection of zoning changes that had been extensively researched by town staff and volunteer committees. In 2015, this simmering feeling came to a boil when a minority of town meeting members blocked a plan to authorize borrowing to supplement $34 million in state funds to help pay for a new elementary school, because they did not like certain aspects of the school committee's plan. Parents of children who attended school in buildings that had structural design and environmental problems were incensed. A friend of mine called them the mad moms, and they became a potent political force. A group of reformers collected signatures on a petition to create a third charter commission by putting it on the ballot in the town election of March 29, 2016. We stood in front of supermarkets and sidewalks, staked out the recycling center, circulated at the September block party, and even pestered people waiting in line for church fairs to open. We collected 3500 signatures, more than enough to put the question on the ballot. The proposal to create a third charter commission passed easily, and nine members of the new commission were elected from among 20 candidates. Andy Churchill, the former school committee chair, got the most votes and became the chair. He heard at the time that six of the nine commission members favored replacing town meeting with a council, while three favored keeping town meeting. But it became more complicated than that. Two commission members who favored keeping town meeting. Jerry Weiss and Gage and Jerry Weiss had supported the elementary school project, and they realized that rejecting $34 million in state money for a new school building would make the status quo harder to defend. Referring to the school vote while defending town meeting, Jerry Weiss said that Amherst should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. In 2016 and 17, the charter commission held about 75 public meetings and 10 listening sessions. And we heard or read hundreds of comments from citizens. And under the split on the commission over whether to keep town meeting or create a town council, there was a debate over whether town halls day to day management should be handled by an elected mayor or a professional manager. Most members of the commission's majority who favored a council argued for a mayor instead of a manager. I could see both sides. Members were more common in college towns in the Northeast, and they could unite authority and accountability in a single person. An elected mayor could embody a shared vision for the town and provide a clear, powerful and politically legitimate voice in speaking with state and UMass officials. This could be the steward of the big picture and directly answerable citizens. On the other hand, the manager who we had recently chosen, Paul Bacheman, appeared to be adapting to the job well. A manager brings professional skills in handling employees and budgets that a mayor might not possess. Questions about whether voters could accept not only replacing town meeting with the council, but also the consolidation of power in a mayor. And although an experienced and widely respected potential mayor was waiting in the wings. There was uncertainty about whether similarly qualified mayoral candidates would emerge in the future. Members of the majority on the charter commission advanced several reasons for replacing town meeting with the town council. We argued that there were no longer enough candidates for town meeting and select board for voters to make informed decisions among multiple candidates. And this had resulted in a steep decline in voter participation in local elections. We found that it's difficult for town meeting members to process enough information in one night to make to decide complex questions such as zoning. We argued that the people, the public felt disconnected from local government, not understanding how it works or how to impact it. And that not all constituencies felt represented. We said that time meeting was too big to deliberate in a back and forth manner was not nimble enough to deal with crises, and was not a real legislature because it couldn't originate laws. On the other hand, members of the minority on the commission argued that time meeting involved a large number of people in decision making, instead of a much smaller number on the council, and was thus more democratic. Town meeting supporters maintain that it had served as an incubator for citizens who were interested in town government, and many of them had gone on to serve on the select board and school committee. They called town meeting a crucial check on the initiatives of town hall. They said that if you're satisfied with the way Amherst is with its emphasis on education and lots of protected land. And I change it. Many of these were reasonable arguments. But opponents of eliminating time meeting also put forward predictions that many regarded as far fetched. One commission member argued that a town council would be dominated by men, because most councils in Massachusetts are. No, some opponents charge that council candidates would be beholden to wealthy donors because they need to raise a lot of money for campaign expenses. Once again they said without town meeting developers would take over the town. March 4, 2017, two thirds of the way through the charter commissions deliberations, something happened outside Amherst that tilted the balance toward endorsing a manager instead of a mayor framing him was the largest town in Massachusetts with a town meeting. And it had approved a charter commission by a much greater majority than Amherst had. The commission then voted eight to one for replacing town meeting with a mayor and a council. Framing Framingham's commission was much closer to unanimity than Amherst was ever going to get. And yet, voters in Framingham approved the plan to create a mayor with only 50.4% of the vote. And they told us that voters might be more willing to accept incremental reforms rather than massive changes. So the charter commission switched its recommendation from creating the office of a mayor to retaining the town manager. We thought that this change might win the vote of Meg Gage, a widely respected commission member who had argued for keeping town meeting, but said that if a manager were retained. There was a real possibility that she could support the proposal. That didn't happen. The final vote on the commission was five to three with one abstention. One member who had been elected to the commission with support from an anti town meeting group voted against the proposal, and one member who had defended time meeting abstained. An iterated six month campaign followed with public debates, newspaper letters and columns and conversations among friends. I teamed up with Mandy Joe Hanneke, the commission's vice chair, and creating a blog to explain the details of the new charter and encourage voters to support it. The blog was called A Better Amherst, and we published 80 posts that were read by 5000 people. The seven most widely read posts were written by guest bloggers, not by Mandy or me. And the one with the most readers was select board member Jim Walz with 685 readers. The final campaign mailed out red and white postcards that featured in big letters, everything you love about Amherst will be up for a vote. And when has putting all power in the hands of a few been a good idea. The yes campaign emphasized year round democracy. On election day, it was not close. With the yes side winning more by more than 1000 votes, capturing 58.5% of the 6000 votes. There were many reasons for the lopsided result. In part because of town meetings veto of using state money for a new school. The school committee community was much more supportive of change this time. Most school committee members endorsed the new chart new charter. And Alyssa Brewer who had been opposed to the previous charter proposal and was now a select board member supported at this time. Our blog framed the debate, and the yes side had relatable and capable debaters in Churchill and Hanukkah. Johanna Newman ran a savvy and well organized political campaign that featured nifty technology that enabled the identification of supporters who had not yet voted near the end of election day. More than 100 voters canvas neighborhoods and made phone calls. The yes side received endorsements from all five members of the select board. Plus, former state representative Ellen story, and the Gazette and bulletin. Immediately after the vote, Jerry Weiss and I met with Pat Romney, an Amherst expert on conflict resolution. And Paula Green, who organized the dialogues between residents of Leverett and a town in eastern Kentucky. They led a meeting designed to unify the town by getting residents on both sides of the charter debate talking with each other. Some hatchets were buried, but many town meeting members still felt resentful of the change. So, did the ultimate sex success of charter reform and Amherst bring greater democracy and citizen participation. As Chinese premier, Joe and lie is reported to have said of the impact of the French Revolution on Western civilization. It's too soon to tell, but there are some positive signs. The first town council election in November of 2018 attracted four times the voter turnout of recent town meeting elections, certainly a step forward for democracy. For the first time in many years, all voters had choices among multiple candidates who presented their opinions on local issues. We now have a town council composed of 13 conscientious citizens who can take their time to study issues and look at all the ramifications of a policy proposal, as well as correct and misinformation before making decisions. The concerns about their government can now contact their local counselors who are elected from their neighborhoods and need to be responsive to their constituents. But the amount of time that counselors have to spend, including three to five hour meetings, all for $5,000 a year requires a much greater commitment than I had envisioned. I will see in a few months how many of the 13 counselors are interested in running for a second term. I hope that voters will again have multiple choices with a variety of perspectives on public policy to choose from. Thank you for listening, and I'll be happy to hear your comments now and answer any questions that you have. Thank you. I don't see any questions just yet. It occurred to me, you mentioned Larry Kelly and he had his own blog. He certainly had his opinions about things. Could you talk about Larry Kelly a little bit? Did you know him well? I did. Unfortunately, Larry is no longer with us. He owned a karate school and health club, and I actually gave him his start in journalism because I offered him a monthly column in the Amherst bulletin, which he had for several years, in which he attacked town meeting and the town's acquisition of the Cherry Hill golf course. And he later had a blog that was widely read. I enjoyed it. Are there other questions? Nancy. I don't really have a question. I just want to say how glad I am that Nick has put all this down on a piece of paper. It's wonderful to hear the history all the way along. And to my mind, the progress that has been made, and maybe more progress will be made in the future. So, Nick, thank you very much. What years were you on the slide board, Nancy? Oh, dear. I was in the 70s, 60s. I think it was like 70 to 79 or 73 to 82. I don't know, right around in there somewhere. Brian, did I give you a faithful description of your commission's proposal? Where's Brian? Unmeet yourself, Brian. Brian. There it is. You hear me? Yes. Nothing. You did a good job. One point that I thought was excellent that you mentioned kind of the geographic elements of, you know, in the Northeast people are used to mayors and so forth. Because that was something I think went through, you know, several decades of these discussions everywhere else in the country. I think the manager council mayor form is extremely popular. In fact, the last time I looked at was the most popular form being adopted. But in the Northeast, I think you're right that it was with that history of either a town meeting or a mayor council. It was hard to kind of find people's a lot of experience thinking about that. I think that our commission never really seriously considered having both a mayor and a manager. Perhaps because it had previously been defeated, but there are things to be said for that, as you have made known to me. Any other comments? Andy. I would say that we considered those functions. We could, we did have, I remember a whiteboard being filled up with a bunch of different sort of criteria and then thinking about the management role versus the political role. And we were trying to figure out whether we could have a sort of a finance director and or a, you know, somebody would be a manager but not call them a manager, you know, but but I think it, it just wasn't a majority of the commission that could go along with that. So we ended up going, pursuing the mayor for a while and then it wasn't so much, I don't, I don't remember so much as trying to bring Meg along as, as just this continuing actually tension between the idea of professional management and political leadership. And ultimately one of the, we had a five to four for a mayor, and then one of them, one of the members flipped. And we couldn't get it, we couldn't retain our, our majority for the mayor, and I remember walking outside with Mandy and being like, well, I guess, I guess we're going to be content with changing town meeting. But it was frustrating, I think, in a number of ways, but it was actually a really, you know, principle discussion about the benefits of professional management versus political leadership and I think it still remains something to be figured out. Looking back, I think that if we had recommended a mayor instead of a manager, it would have passed. I know there was that fear that if we went too far and changed both town meeting and got rid of the manager that it might be a bridge too far but yeah it's kind of a what it could have should have because we could have the mayor too. Lisa. Hi, thanks. This is really fascinating Nick as. Thank you. Looking back to my own involvement, you know, I was a member of town meeting for, I don't know, two decades or something like that and came came here as a student I got into town government and town meeting as a student. Not to the benefit of my being a student I think but anyway, I think it, it had that virtue. But I really think by the time. I had gotten into the 90s. It was more a forum for those people who had lots of time and an axe to grind. Now I'm a bias, excuse me biased because I was on the parking garage committee, which felt like a life sentence, but I really think that Amherst has a history it goes back. I've faced a hundred and whatever years of not wanting to make changes and being very negative about changes and the parking garage certainly brought that out. I think we made a mistake not going with a three level garage. And since then there have been many other mistakes where the town has declined to move forward, often with benefit of state money for heaven's sake. So I live in hope. I'm not convinced yet, but I live in hope that our new form of government will be more rational about dealing with the realities that we do not live in the same world that existed in 1969 or 1979 or 1989. Yes. The parking garage certainly had a very high price per unit per space gained other comments. I don't see any hands up. I just wanted to ask actually to say thank you for the presentation Nick and since you've done this memoir which I look forward to reading. You have any recommendations on good documents about town history in the 1960s seems to me the changes that you mass probably were debated and discussed a lot in town government and it would be nice to know how all of that actually affected town meeting. Either because it changed the population so drastically. You have any, if you read something interesting that you might be willing to share about that time. Well I wasn't here in the 1960s. Let's see Sheila were you here in the 60s. I was here in the 60s and it was a time of great change and I could even see that. And of course the 60s you know the turmoil nationally and student involvement. But I remember articles in the paper or an editorial cartoon of an octopus and it was there's university reaching out to swallow the town with an octopus. And I think in that next decade the population of the town doubled. And the university grew. I was in the classes 65. And we were the first of the big classes. There were 1600 of us. So the university had maybe 5000 students at that time. It's grown a lot since then. One of the colonial questions in Amherst is whether UMass is a net plus for Amherst or a net minus. I have always maintained that it's a net plus. I won't chip in on that one, but I would add in terms of change in the changing population. I joined South church in 1970. And at that time, from my house you could see apple trees all the way to Bay Road and beyond. So cows and many pastures. Dairy farms farming was it and we chose South Amherst because it was a community into itself. And at that time, most of the church members lived in South Amherst. Now we have members who live in South Hadley, Belcher Town, Sunderland, and all around. And the percentage of professors who belong to the church has dramatically increased. It's a fair benefit. But yeah, times have changed times do change. I'd like to say to Shalini and Lynn and Alyssa and Mandy. How much we appreciate the time and effort that you put into being on the town council. It's a major commitment and we recognize the work that you do and appreciate it. Thank you. Just along those lines, I think when we were, as you said, we, we didn't anticipate that there would be that level of workload for the, the council when we were planning the council. And I think. At least I had a model in my head that the manager would be the CEO and that the council be the board of directors and. You know, so that there would be decisions made. That would be done. That would be done. That would be done. That would be done. That would be done. That would be done. That would be done preliminarily by the manager. And then they would bring them to the board to either ratify or reject or, or, you know, but. I'm not sure we've seen it quite that way. I think there's been some deference to the council that. We might not have anticipated. And I think that's hard. For a 13 member group to. To take on that role. So I think. That. You know, if we want to have this job be doable, it's important. And I think part of that means that the town. Manager has to assume the role of the CEO. And I, I understand the. The reluctance to do that, but I also think it's important. Well, I, I would like to see town councilors. Want to run for reelection to provide. Accountability and. And voter choice. I don't want them. I don't want them to run for reelection. I don't want them to run for reelection. Running away, screaming from town hall as soon as their terms are up. Lisa. Yeah. Excuse me. I have enjoyed the opportunity to not be involved in. That level. So my observations have been limited. However, I did. Observe the meeting. This past week of where the library trustees came with their commission. And I will say that frankly, it seemed to me that some town counselors and I'm not going to name names. Don't really understand. The role of the council, at least as I understand it. They're not a design review committee. They're not substituting for the trustees. And I think perhaps part of the. The role of the council is to. The rights to counselors figuring out what is their role. And, you know, similarly, when I sat in on the ZBA meetings about the proposed. Housing, you know, studio apartments off North Hampton road. It seemed to me that some of the ZBA members wanted to be the designers. Of the project or the building, even. The design review committee. And I think that the council. The council. Configuration. To figure out what their role actually is. And sometimes grabbing hold. Of a few details that have caught their eye. You know, it's. The glittering bubble, you know, they can pursue that one. Whereas I think in the terms of the council, their job is somehow to look at the big picture. To look at what does the town need? To look at the town council. To look at the town council. To put it in with other projects. Can we do this thing? And let, in that case, the library trustees deal with the details. Of how it will be done. What you described made it sound like the town council was like a smaller version of town meeting. Other comments. I don't see any hands up. Okay. Well. That was a wonderful. How you say synopsis of. Where we, where we came from and how we got here. So thank you for sharing it with us all. My pleasure.