 Sarah is coming. We don't believe she is, although I have not heard directly. Athena believes that she told Lynn that she'd missed meetings for a couple of weeks. So, so we'll see. All right, you're all set, everyone. Thank you, Athena. Thank you, Athena. And we'll see if anyone joins, or if we're an unloved committee. Unloved. Unloved. Nothing zero. Zero attendees. There's so much love within this community, we don't need, we've fulfilled ourselves. OK, so I'm going to get started. I'm going to call this meeting of the Community Resources Committee to order at 2.04 PM on June 30, 2020. Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the Open Meeting Law, MGL Chapter 30A, Section 20, allows us to hold this virtual meeting of the Community Resources Committee. This meeting is being recorded for future broadcast, and all votes that we take will be by roll call if we take them. This time, I'm going to call upon each member by name so that we can ensure that we can hear you and you can hear us. Please remember to mute your mic after saying present. Shalini Balmilne. Present. Mandy Jo Hanicky is present. Evan Ross. Present. Steve Schreiber. Present. And Sarah Swartz is absent at this time. We do not have a chat room for the meeting. If you have technical issues, please let me know. And to make a comment, use the raise hand button because I do not always see everyone's video. At this time, we will now move to our agenda. The agenda calls for general public comment at this time. There are no attendees in the audience from what I can tell. So we will be moving on away from general public comment. If attendees end up showing up, we may go back to this just to ensure that they are given a chance to speak if they do want to make public comment. That brings us to technically action items. Well, yeah, action items. I did switch these on the agenda. We're going to spend most of our meeting talking about a process for recommending appointments to the town council for the zoning board of appeals and planning board. We will stop that discussion probably around 3.30 so that we can move to an update on the status of planning board appointments so that we can decide what parts we need to move on, what we don't, what should be done. I don't think it'll take the full half hour, but we'll see where we are. I'm looking for mainly a decision on whether we should re-advertise the position or not and things like that on some of the first steps, even if we haven't fully adopted a process yet, making some decisions on some of them so that we can get moving and talk about how we're going to get to the point of having a sufficient pool. And then we'll do minutes. Right now, we only have one set of minutes. I forgot to, I apologize, Angela. I forgot to put your minutes from June 16th in the packet when I received them yesterday. So we will deal with them next time and planning board minutes are being proposed. All of our joint meeting with the planning board are being prepared by the planning board and so I'm awaiting that preparation before we deal with them. So let's start on adopting a process for recommending appointments to the town council for zoning board of appeals and the planning board. I will share my screen with the process so that we can all be working off the same document. We last week modified vacancy to update it mainly and same with the CAF to update them to recognize that this committee only deals with zoning board of appeals and planning board and sufficiency of the applicant pool was the same. And then we made it to selection guidance and we spent a lot of time talking about term limits and all we are going to come back. We're not gonna start with that today. I'd like to go through and see how far we can get on each of the items, figure out where we might have to have longer discussions and then come back for those longer discussions to see where our agreement is and where any potential changes are. So as I said at the last meeting, we're going to not start with that continued discussion but we're going to move on to, I think we're gonna start with B of selection guidance so this fourth one input from the body's chair because I don't believe we ever made it to that section last time. So is there anyone that wants to see, as you can see the only thing right now on that is the change of OCA to CRC. Is there anyone that has any desire to talk about any specific thing in here, potentially recommend any changes or questions about anything? Sorry, I had to fix my screen. Yeah, this is actually just something that I'm realizing. So OCA's practice has been to take whatever information we get from the chair and put it into the selection guidance verbatim. Clearly labeled as this is the input from the body's chair with the most recent planning board selection guidance, there were some discussion around that because there were some statements that were made by the chair that one member of the committee found objectionable and wanted to edit out. And so there was a discussion on OCA about whether we put the chair's input in verbatim whether we are allowed to edit that or what. The majority opinion on OCA was that we put it in verbatim but clearly labeled as this is the chair's position because we felt for the committee to have a discussion about which pieces of input we wanna take and what we didn't seems like it opened a door to something that could be divisive. Especially there were some claims made that some bullets provided by the chair were quote, political statements. And some members of the committee agreed there were political statements, others didn't but it seemed like it would be difficult to come to some consensus. So I wanna first bring to the attention of this committee since you all weren't there since I was asked to say that discussion did happen and then our practice has been to put it in verbatim and then also to, I guess, ask whether we'd wanna just add a sentence to that that it will be that the input from the chair will be included without edit but clearly labeled or if we just assume that will happen because there had been some disagreement in OCA about including input from the chair. Thoughts? Thank you for that Evan on the history and all. Shawnee? Yeah, thanks. Evan, I mean, it seems like you've been through this process so you have the most experience, like for us it's theoretical, for me it's theoretical. So what I'm hearing you say is that if the chair of the planning board, if we don't go by the chair of the planning board has a different opinion than the other members, is that what you're saying? So let me give an example that's in the extreme, just for the sake of example. So what if the planning board chair when we solicited input said we need someone who represents the viewpoint that there should be no new building downtown? Well, do we include that? And there are some members who would say that's a political statement, we shouldn't include that. The majority opinion on OCA was we include whatever they say but we clearly label it as this is not the opinion of our committee, this is the opinion of the chair. And of course the committee can, their selection guidance, the word guidance was actually very carefully chosen. Originally it had been criteria but criteria are something that are by nature evaluative whereas guidance is that, right? It's meant to guide us in our decision and you can ignore pieces of guidance. And so I guess that's what I meant. If the chair gives input that the committee doesn't like, OCA's opinion was, the majority of OCA was, you still include it in the document as verbatim whereas there was one member of OCA that felt as though we should feel free to be able to edit what the chair submits. Okay, yeah, that's helpful. Okay. I in a sense liked the statement that we wouldn't put that in verbatim somewhere in this document just to have it stated clearly and sometimes it's nice to point to stuff when you might get something that, as Evan said, could be very extreme. You never know what you're going to get. To be able to just say, you know, before we even knew what the chairs would come back with we decided we're putting it in word for word, clearly marked that it came from the chair. And so maybe it's wise under the third one to add a sentence that says the selection guidance will include the chair's submission verbatim or something and marked it. I don't know what I'd write, but something like that. What are people's thoughts on that? I see Shalini nodding her head. Yeah, I agree with that. That we should include verbatim, but kind of like you said, Manny, I agree with what you just said. Chair of the body to be appointed. It's going to get kind of wordy. I mean, it could be wordy. I mean, the other thing you could just say is the adaptive selection guidance will include. This input, I guess. But verbatim. When people think of that wording, the adopted selection guidance will include the chair of the body to be appointed's input verbatim. It's not an elegant sentence, but I get that. Not at all. Are we okay with inelegance there? I'm not seeing no's, so we will then move on unless there's any other input or comments for this input from the body's chair section. Seeing none, we are going to come back to, we're going to move on to statement of interest, number five. The changes that you see right here are all, one thing is the subbing out of CRC for OCA. The one thing that is added at this point is the unless accommodations are reached with the CRC chair for other means of submission, period, the SOI turning it into sort of two sentences. This is something that GOL added. And I'll say I'm the one that instigated it being added at GOL based on my conversations with the clerk and all when we were working on the guidance in GOL for statements from candidates, the candidate statements on the webpage where we had wanted to say they had to be submitted electronically and the clerk's office said, well, what if someone can't submit it electronically accessibility wise, that could be an issue. And so the wording that we used in those candidate statement guidelines or a policy didn't really work here. So GOL came up with this wording to essentially say, we really want these electronically, but if for some reason you can't, you need to talk to the CRC chair, the chair of the body that's, you know, so there it would have been GOL and figure out a way to submit them a different way, but get agreement on that first. It's sort of a way to accommodate accessibility, potential accessibility issues. So I'd like people's thoughts on whether to keep that in here or not or modify it and then obviously any other thoughts on statement of interest, are we doing a statement of interest or not? And, you know, things like that. Kevin? I guess, so I know this committee's aware, but I'll just restate of course, that this was a recent revision to the OCA process. As you know, it was one we intended to test out with planning board, which we didn't do. So we, this isn't, yeah, as far as OCA concerned, an untested portion. So I don't necessarily have good thoughts on how it could be improved. I will be curious to hear how went for GOL. I know they just received their statements of interest. I admit that I haven't looked at them yet. I just looked at the names. So if Mendy has any input on how that worked for GOL and if there's opportunities for improvement, I'd be curious. As far as the accessibility thing, you know, this is one of the, I don't really have a strong preference on this. I can see that. I understand the accessibility thing. I, on the other hand, I don't think that you could actually be a functioning member of the planning board if you don't have the ability to type and submit an MS Word document electronically. Like I want it to be open to as many people, but if someone, you can't join the planning board, right? And be like, oh, but by the way, I can't use Word or a computer. I don't know how. So I'm fine with it either way, but I do sort of feel like accessibility is, I also felt that way about Candace statements, but I understand we want to make sure we're being accessible. Yeah, Steve. And then I'll respond to Evan's question about GOL. I would be reluctant to insert accommodation statements at particular points, because we are always, I mean, a principle, we're always accommodating, right? So if there's any part of the application process that someone needs help on, then the assumption is that we would be accommodating at that. So I would be reluctant to single out this particular part for accommodation when the assumption is that we will follow the law or exceed the law wherever we can to be as open and inclusive as possible. So I would be in favor of not saying that actually, and having a general statement that whatever the general statement is. So the other thing is that catches my eye is 700 words. So 700 words are, that's a real paper, right? That's a serious, I can't think of how long that is. About a page and a half. How many? About a page and a half. Page and a half, huh? I was thinking more like three pages just to tell you how long it's been since I've done word count. Okay, then I'll be quiet, but if you say 700 words, people will try to write 700 words. So yeah, I'll be quiet. So before I recognize Shalini, I will talk about, I don't know if anyone else has seen the GOL SOIs and looked at them. We received four, one was approximately a page, two were approximately a half a page and one was about a page and a half. That's how I can say what about a page and a half is 700 words. So each of the candidates took, clearly not all of them felt they needed to fill up the full 700 words because only one of them really did take that full amount of space. And so some were more extensive than others. We have not met, so I don't wanna say too much about my thinking because tomorrow are the interviews at GOL. I think overall, it's not something I would want to get rid of right now from this one until we've seen it more than just once in a finance appointment. I think I wanna keep it personally, I would like to keep it. I think in general, they've been helpful at GOL. Obviously some of them could be maybe more helpful or less helpful, but they're better than the CAFs that we were getting before, I will say that, that there's more information in there than generally people write in the CAFs. Shalini. I was just thinking for the statement itself that in my mind when I'm on the crossroads, I refer back to the values we wrote at the town council and inclusion, making things accessible and wanting more people to ease of participation is one of them. So if this helps people feel more comfortable, like we know that we would accommodate, but if writing it out helps them to see it, I would believe it and that makes sense. Yes, that does. Is there a way we can reach consensus on whether leaving it in or not? I think Shalini and I would love to see it left in. Steve expressed an opinion that it's not necessary. Evan. So what I heard from Steve, and I'm sure he'll correct me if I misinterpreted was that we will be accommodating at any part of this process. And so singling the statement of interest out is one piece where we'd be accommodating, whereas if someone had trouble filling out their CAF, we'd also want to accommodate. Which are done online. We'd want to accommodate them. So what I heard from Steve was instead of saying this one thing here, having a more blanket statement, maybe in the beginning to people that says, if you need accommodations with any of these, we can help. You said it perfectly. Yeah, I like that a lot. But as long as we make it clear a friend that if you need accommodation with any of these, that's great. I like that a lot. Thank you. Okay, so we are going to, let me get to this, delete the comment, reject that change, reject that one. I think that turns it back to what it was. And then I'm not gonna write it now somewhere up here. We'll have to figure out where. I'm just gonna put a comment here that says, add accommodation language somewhere. So we don't forget. Okay, any other changes, thoughts, comments, discussion of the statement of interest section? Seeing any. And so we will move on to interview questions and interviews. So this, I think they need to sort of go together. And then there's the recommendation. So the only changes right here right now are, in all three of these is changing OCA to CRC. So interviews, right now there are interview questions. The proposal is to adopt a set of interview questions that all applicants would be asked. In adopting those questions and developing, we consider selection guidance and solicit questions from the council. Thoughts, Evans got a thumbs up, Shalini and Steve. Any thoughts? Do we not get any questions from the planning board? Evan, yeah. Nope, so our input from the planning board is via the selection guidance. All right. So the idea is that the planning board gives us sort of what they feel is important in a candidate and then we construct the questions that we hope get us insight into who has those skills, experiences, characteristics. But we have, OCA has not asked the boards that we're appointing itself for questions. So I mean, this goes, I think to my questions related to this go to interview questions and interviews themselves. OCA used this process at least in the interview questions and interviews for the most recent CBA, right? Right. And we saw something like this in use for the school committee in a sense where the questions were decided ahead of time and they were asked of everyone and they were given to everyone ahead of time. Great. I would like to know from Evan, if OCA talked about whether they thought this was an effective method of gaining additional information during the interviews or not. And then I'd like to hear from people whether they thought at the school committee level it was effective for the purpose of what we would be doing interviews for. Yeah, if I'm understanding your, I mean, your question sounds like do the interviews add value to the decision-making? Yeah, I guess it's that and do the way we do the interviews add value or is there a potentially other way to do it in terms of the questionings that might add more value but also I know OCA went through a lot of weighing of pros and cons of different methods. So that's why I went to you first Evan because you're the one that has had the most discussion about how to do interviews and questions. So I'm curious what you guys thought of the value it added and as compared to potentially other options. Sure. So let me give three different answers because I think now I know where you're actually going with this question. This is a leading question. So as far as the value add, yeah. I mean, overall we found the interviews to be very effective. You know, what we actually found in both the ZBA and then also we use this for the planning board appointment in January was it was amazing how much information we got from the candidates from the interviews that was not in the CAS. And maybe that will shift with the SOIs. But for instance, Doug Marshall who we appointed to the planning board, you know that. You know his work on the building committee for the Hitchcock Center featured nowhere in his CAF. And yet it was a really important thing. And so we have found that the interview questions do bring out really valuable information. Some more so than others. And I think we're always going to be experimenting with the questions that we asked to some extent because, you know, I really liked the ZBA questions more than the planning board questions because they were a bit more specific. I really liked the question that one of the members of this committee suggested, which was about asking people to talk about having to apply rules they disagreed with. I thought we got really interesting creative responses from some of the candidates. As far as alternatives, OKA of course debated a million different alternative ways to do interviews. And two things that I know people have, let's say questioned. One is providing the interview questions in advance. And this was something that OKA really struggled with because what we did sort of get is some people who got the interview questions in advance wrote down their answers and then read the answers to us or to the camera. And that doesn't feel as useful, right? However, there was a practical consideration there and then also another consideration. The practical consideration was that smart people, if we decided the questions during a meeting, smart people who know how the system works would get the questions in advance, right? So there was a feeling at first that we wanted to not give people the questions. But then how do we develop the questions? Because if we develop them as a committee, it has to be done in a public meeting. And all you need is one person who knows that they can go to the video or go to the minutes or go to the packet and find the questions. And we felt like if we didn't give the questions but they were developed in a public meeting that would bias the process towards people who know how the system works, right? People who follow this along would know that they could just go get the questions in advance. Whereas other people wouldn't. And the only way to not do that, which is what we did for school committee was that the final questions were decided by a single person, right? And so we tossed around the idea of saying what if everyone submits their questions that they want but then the chair decides the final list of questions? That would be acceptable to keep them private. People on the committee didn't like that. They didn't like giving it to just one person to decide all the questions. They felt like they should be done as a committee. So that's the practical consideration. The other consideration, and this was driven by a lot by Sarah who unfortunately isn't here today to speak to this. So I'll try to get her argument correct, was that different people function different ways and that we like to think of interviews as thinking on your feet is a really good thing. But there are a lot of people who when they have documents ahead of time and have time to think them through and construct opinions can give really good stuff but just aren't good on their feet and that we shouldn't penalize people who aren't good on their feet because for the most part on the planning board you have documents in advance, you've read the reports and so you don't need to be quick on your feet necessarily if you need stuff in advance. So there's a practical consideration in the other one. So that's the first part about giving people the questions in advance. The second thing that I know is gonna come up is the ability to ask follow up questions. And we debated follow up questions for a very long time and there are definite reasons why you want follow up questions. The problem was twofold. One was time considerations. If everyone was allowed to just ask follow up questions you could end up having very long interviews. Another one was actually consistency because if one person gets asked a lot of follow up questions but then another person doesn't does it feel unbalanced. But the other thing was that we were really trying to maintain what we considered to be an appropriate atmosphere during these interviews. We recognize that a lot of people are hesitant towards public interviews. We lost candidates for planning board because they didn't wanna do public interviews. Public interviews people might not feel comfortable with right away and which is why we tried to avoid them in the first place. So we wanted to really kind of control the atmosphere as much as we could. And there was a fear that, I put this delicately, some counselors would ask questions without thinking them through and might ask questions that are inappropriate. And so one of the things that Oka had really decided was that we wanted to judge people on their skills and experiences not on their political positions. And I will say this, one committee member on Oka said, well, I wanna be able to ask them what they thought of the Spring Street project. And we said, that would be an inappropriate question. And she said, I don't think that's an inappropriate question. And we went back and forth about whether it would be an appropriate question to ask a planning board member, whether or not that what their position was on the Spring Street project. And what that showed to us is that's why you have to decide on the questions first in committee. Because if she had been given the opportunity to just ask that follow up question, she just would have. And we would have all gone, what are you asking that, right? But what we were able to do is have a conversation in the committee about why we thought that might be appropriate versus inappropriate and what we're actually trying to glean from that question and what are ways we can ask that question. And so we ended up deciding against follow up questions because we thought the better option was for us as a committee to figure out what we're looking for and collaboratively come out with the questions that could get those answers. So that was a very long-winded response, but it's much shorter than the actual deliberations that we had around those two issues, which were, I mean, hours and hours of conversation about the best way to do this. Thank you, Evan. Steve. Yeah, so planning board is a political zoning board. They're political positions. And in fact, in a number of Massachusetts communities, they're elected by the voters. So I think ability to answer awkward questions or deal with awkward questions is actually an important skill as is an ability to sort of respond spontaneously. So yeah, so I don't think it has to be completely studied and scripted. And actually, I love the question about, what do you think about the Spring Street question? Because that would give me a lot of understanding of a candidate's ability to explain the rules or explain how Spring Street came to be. But yeah, so I have no problem with kind of open questions or awkward questions because I think in the world of a political world, it has to be used to them. I think too. I wanna thank Evan for that. There were things that he said that I hadn't considered, especially in terms of giving the questions ahead of time to candidates. That to me makes a whole lot of sense is to try not to privilege those that would know to check a packet and watch a meeting ahead of time to those that might not know that. And so it better creates a level playing field. So I appreciate that. My question on interview questions is, so I now have a better appreciation for why we would want to decide them ahead of time and also what they are and publishing them. My question more leans to, why do all the applicants have to be asked the same questions? Especially if we have statements of interest ahead of time and we get them and we have, after reading them specific questions for applicants that may not necessarily go to different applicants, we might have a 700 word statement of interest that really describes their background in planning and another statement of interest that is 100 words and barely talks about planning. So for the 100 word person, we might want to really explore what their background is. We might not necessarily need to do that as much with the one that wrote 700 words. And beyond that, I lean towards Steve in terms of planning board and zoning board of appeals are political positions that comes to me from my service on the charter commission when we were deciding who should appoint them or whether they should be elected. And they are not, they are the only essentially two committees that are not appointed by the town manager because the charter commission decided they were more political and should be and the counselors should be held to that appointment and bring it closer to the voters without actually having people to run for office so that potentially the views of those on the planning board more go for the views of the general public on what they want to see in planning. So I come to this whole process with that belief that these are more political appointments than say some other positions in town. So I then bring up when we are appointing people to a position and we have a lot of background on someone and say someone that either has served on the planning board in the immediate past or in the far past or has served on ZBA and now wants to serve on planning board we have a voting record and is there a reason we shouldn't ask questions about that voting record if we have questions to ask for more explanation and all. So I would like to explore whether we should whether all applicants need asked the same questions or whether they can be tailored towards each applicant. Shalini. Yeah, I'm finding all of these perspectives really helpful in thinking through but what I'm getting from hearing both sides so to speak is that they might be things that are unique to somebody and then the other aspect is they might be some more controversial questions but could we combine the two ideas and like based on reading the different what are they called statements of interest we could come up with questions that we ask all of them. So if you wanna ask about the screen street let's ask everyone about how they are seeing it or if you're seeing someone wrote something but others didn't but we might ask everyone like how did you vote and what was your reasoning? So instead of just targeting one person with that question it could be made asked to everyone but I do feel in some sense just because the way this process is and so public and whatnot it's not conducive to a one-on-one deeper questioning it needs to be at a level where we're sort of asking people the same questions but we could look at the SOIs and derive from that maybe it'll be good to ask certain questions because this one person highlighted this and how do others feel about it? Thoughts on that? Evan? So I mean, I mean, one thing of course too I have to be transparent about from Oka's perspective is that Oka had not yet got an opportunity to implement this process with SOIs, right? And so this process was built around CAS we added the SOIs we haven't gotten to do it and so I actually, I understand Mandy Jo's comment of well, if you already have a lot more hopefully a lot more information in the SOIs can you ask more targeted questions? And to be honest, I'm not necessarily sure how I feel about that we on Oka didn't actually consider asking people in all of the options we considered asking people different questions never really came to us and part of that was just because how would you develop those because we had almost no information on the CAS and also, but there was also a feeling of consistency wanting to make sure that people felt like they were being treated fairly and consistently and I think it's a fine line there, right? So if you wrote a little on your SOI it might be warranted to ask a question that's as broad as so what's your interest in planning which may seem like a softball question, right? Whereas if someone had served on town meeting and wrote about and you said why did you vote against the zoning change to allow the single room occupancy that might feel like, oh, you're being much harsher with this person. And so we always sort of one of the, you know, Shalini a while back says the thing about values and one of the things that we actually kind of started with in Oka was like what are we trying to do here what are we trying to create and one of the things that we really tried to strive towards is making it a welcoming atmosphere and making everyone feel as much as possible making it a consistent experience for each applicant and making everyone feel like they were treated well and equally and that's where I mean one of the things that's in section seven that we could talk about is we went back and forth between group interviews and individual interviews. And so one of the reasons we went to group interviews was a feeling that as long as they're public meeting if there's individual interviews different people could show up to different ones and that can change the atmosphere of the room or if they're individual interviews we're all real peppy with interview one but by interview seven we're drained and so as much as possible we try to create a consistent experience for everyone and that I guess would be my I'm both intrigued by Mandy's suggestion but that would be my concern is a feeling that it wasn't a consistent experience for each person and I should also say this might also be coming from my work in academia where Steve knows I'm sure he served on search committees where you same questions everything you know it's very regimented and so maybe that's also how my mind works but I'm intrigued by the suggestion. Steve. Yeah, Evan brought up a great point so I think it's a principle of affirmative action that you ask the same questions and then that way is everyone is treated fairly so that's the reason it's done on search committees and then you have the same data points to evaluate each candidate. So I like Shalini's idea of maybe we can somehow tailor questions that might be you might wanna ask say one but figure out a way to get that to that point for all of them so that we are more fair. So I'm coming around to at least trying it since we've never had an SOI and then interviews and all after that myself. I don't know the timelines here the SOIs have to be posted at least a week in advance of the interviews and in theory the interview questions are done before that I still think it would be helpful personally to not finalize those questions till after we've seen the SOIs but that requires either or really essentially requires a much more earlier SOI deadline not necessarily posting them but a much earlier deadline for submission of them before the interviews then I think this process plans although I don't I'm trying to think GL I guess we've had them for approximately two weeks we put the deadline two weeks before the interview so but you'd still have to have a meeting in there to finalize the questions but maybe you could nearly finalize them and then when the SOIs come in have a meeting that could potentially and it seems to be getting a little problematic in terms of a timing issue with being efficient and moving the process forward but also being able to come up with to be able to really use the SOIs as something that does go towards the questions because if we don't, I guess my thought is we don't have the SOIs in front of us before we get the questions by the time we get the SOIs half the questions might be answered by most of the candidates and then what are we gonna do and maybe we'd wanna change them so thoughts on maybe at least finalizing the interview questions after the SOIs are received, Evan? Yeah so you know, trust me I understand all of the complications but having done this a few times behind making all the timing work and sometimes you have to bend your own rules a little bit. Anyways, I didn't say that but you know, so one of the things that Oka did was we really tried to do planning board interviews on a Wednesday that wasn't a planning board night and ZBA interviews on a Thursday that wasn't a ZBA night. Because that's when they would normally meet, right? I'm thinking about this committee, right? Which meets Tuesdays, two to four. For now, yeah. If you, right, if you in theory had SOIs do the Monday and then posted and then you did interview questions on the Tuesday for interviews that are held the following Wednesday or Thursday, I actually think that's enough time that meets the week that this stipulates that the SOIs need to be posted for before the interviews. And it usually only takes one meeting to do the interview questions. They're actually usually be pretty quick because I mean, and maybe they won't be but they usually go pretty quick. And then you send them out to the candidates that evening, they have them for a week. So the timing actually might, it seems really tight and it is and it would be a really difficult if we couldn't get it done in one meeting. You have to be committed to getting the interview questions done in one meeting. But I actually think that it could work because I understand completely what you're saying, right? You don't wanna develop an interview question to then be like, everyone already sort of answered this, right? You also don't necessarily want to develop the interview questions after the SOIs come in but before they're posted because then you run the risk of are you bringing them into consideration and are they becoming public documents before you need to post them? The only hesitation I have or the caution I would have would be you wanna make sure that you aren't seemingly rendering judgment on any of the SOIs as you're utilizing them to finalize the questions or to develop the questions. But I think that I trust this group to do it. So what about adding into the interview question line something that, right now it says prior to holding interviews we shall adopt a set of interview questions. I guess that would still allow them to be adopted after the SOIs are met without actually changing the language. What would people think about changing the language to say something that's like and after the SOIs are submitted to the extent possible or something so it doesn't require it but or is this language sufficiently vague that we can do it whenever we want so we don't have to change it? I mean, one simple answer is you could say CRC shall consider the adopted selection guidance and may consider candidate statements of interest in developing interview questions. Thoughts on that, that works for me. Are these applicants or candidates? Applicants. We've always called them applicants, I think. There's probably some places in here where we got a little inconsistent with what we were calling people but. So down here it's interviewees. Right, there you go. What happens when you have a document that's written over the course of like four months? So is everyone okay with that additional language here that allows us to consider the SOIs in developing the questions? Okay, so that brings us to any one, any other changes to the interview questions? Not seeing any, so we're gonna move on to interviews. So this one is they get the, maybe we should change interviewees to applicants. Fine, while we notice it. So to the council and all applicants, the selection guidance interview questions, are we adding the SOIs to this? The SOIs were to be posted publicly like as part of the meeting posting. And so whereas the other stuff isn't necessarily posted as part of the meeting posting. And so the thought was we just post the SOIs and they can go find them. We can send them to them, but I don't know. It was just one of those things where it's like, if they wanna see them, they're publicly posted, they can find them exactly where the public is. So the chair would distribute all of that to the applicants prior to the meeting that their interview is at. Schedule and post a special meeting with at least 14 days notice to the interviewees. Applicants can be added, it says here up to one week before the scheduled meeting. I would actually recommend changing that to up till the date of the due date of the SOIs that once, cause you're gonna put a date in where the SOIs must be returned which is gonna be slightly different from the posting date. So I would recommend changing that to when the SOIs are due is when our final pool is. And then it's interviews group, right? This one's a group interview. No public comment, videotaped and interview groups. Thoughts on this process? We're a very quiet committee today. Evan. Yeah, I was just looking at Evan. I'm like- I feel like I'm probably tired hearing my voice. I feel bad Sarah's missing this, cause I think she'd be thrilled when she's starting to move right through it. So I'll say two things. One is to your suggestions to clarify, I don't think it really matters. We could do the, sorry, when it was. The idea was that once we name names and post the SOIs, that's the cut off date. But when they're due, I mean, that could also work too. I don't think it really matters. How I have at least operated posting, cause you mentioned the posting is I've actually posted the interviews as a skeleton posting without names, like the moment we know what the date is, which sometimes is two weeks in advance, sometimes it's a month in advance. And then one week before the interview, I update the posting with the names. And that thought would be, we'd also update it with the SOIs, which is why the word posting, I wanna make sure we don't misinterpret. As far as the other thing I wanna say is, so we have meeting Shelby videotaped consistent with regular, what's OCA meetings? Our practice for planning board and for ZBA was that they were done, we have Amherst media do them live, which in some ways has been great. It's actually, I don't actually know how we got there because the original thought was we would treat them like any other OCA meeting, which is we press the little record button and they're videotaped. But somehow there was a request that they be done live for the planning board and we did it and then that became sort of the expectation, right? I think it would be interesting to hear the perspectives of you all. I think it's important that they be videotaped for people to be able to go look back on. We didn't actually write in here that they have to be done live with Amherst media, but that's what we've been doing. It adds a little bit of an additional complication because you have to make, Athena has to work with Amherst media to make sure that we're set to do that. I don't know how many viewers we have, I'm sure some. But anyways, I'd be interested to hear from you all if you think it's important to write in that they're done live by Amherst media, if we should even do it by Amherst media or if it's good enough to do what we're doing now of just recording it. So speaking as chair, I like the idea of just hitting the button and saving all of the extra administrative work to figuring out how to get it live, how to coordinate and what would happen if we wrote this in and for some reason Amherst media couldn't do it live because something else was live and they had no people. Do we have to cancel our meeting then? Like I hesitate to go that way versus just ensuring that we videotaped them. Shalini's nodding. Yeah, I agree with that. In the meantime, I've changed all the interviewees in number seven to applicants, so that we're at least somewhat consistent. Any other thoughts, questions? Are we looking for any more changes to the interviews? Group questions, the chair, this one just says CRC will ask the adopted interview questions of the group and each applicant will have an opportunity to answer each question. Was it always the chair, Evan, or did it just randomly get assigned or passed around? So there was a discussion in OCA, should it be the chair, should each person be allowed to ask a question and we didn't come to a consensus around that and so this actually opens the door to any combination. You could have the chair, you could have a random person in the committee, every member of the committee, two people of the committee and so how OCA has operated is the two times we've done this, we have taken a vote as to how we wanna ask questions. Both of those votes have been, we're just gonna delegate the task to the chair, but the thought, so yeah. That wording is intentional. We could just put chair, the chair can always delegate too. Here if you would rather have that clarity, it does eliminate a vote down the road, but it doesn't, I don't know. I'm fine with that, I just was remembering that it was always the chair, which is why this sort of stuck out of me that it didn't say chair, I'm totally okay with the open language. It was chair by vote and I will say that it was never a unanimous vote. I'm not seeing anyone itching to change that language, so I say we move on, which brings us to the CRC recommendation. I see that there are still some interviewees, so we're gonna change that one to applicants. So any changes, requested changes to the CRC recommendation, section eight. This, for my own point is chair, essentially what happens is you do the interviews as a special meeting, it's the only thing on the agenda, and then that same night, an hour and a half later or whatever, or pick a time, a special meeting is called that the discussion is on the agenda that potentially has public comment and then you vote that, you always aim to do them the same night. That's been our practice. Yeah, I mean, that's been our practice because it's sort of, even though they're technically two meetings, it just feels like one very long meeting and it just cuts down our meeting, our number of meetings. As with everything, there was discussion about this and there was disagreement. There were some members of the committee who felt like I just wanna discuss it. Once it's fresh in my brain, we wrap up, I have impressions. There were other members who said, I actually, I really prefer to be able to sleep on it and think about it, but the majority opinion on OCA was, it's better to just get it over with while it's fresh in our minds because the other thing that it, again, thinking about the applicants is they interview and then they're not just sitting waiting to know how they did. I have always the moment that the second meeting closed, emailed every applicant to let them know what the result was so that they hear it immediately once it's been decided and so it just minimizes the amount of time they're sort of waiting to find out too. But we didn't write that in there because there might be, maybe we don't, maybe there's a desire to do it on a different day because I don't know, we have a lot to do. Or you've got, well, you guys already did a seven interviews and say you're interviewing 12 people or something and you just can't face five hours of meetings or something. I mean, the ZBA interviews, we concluded that deliberation at about 1130. So it can make for a really long night, but for me personally, it's preferable to have one really long night than two shorter nights. Yeah. I am not seeing any other comments or any other requests for this one at this time. I think we have two things to deal with then before we can potentially vote. One of them is term limits and the other one is figuring out a place to add accommodation language. And I'm not sure where that would go. I mean, that might make sense as almost like a disclaimer at the very beginning of the document before any of this actually, because in theory it could apply to any of them. Well, not in theory, it can't. I mean, it essentially in some sense to me looks like it would apply to community activity forms, statement of interest, and potentially even the interviews. Especially if we're interviewing on Zoom, it could definitely apply to interviews and all. So it has three sections. We could put it maybe at the very end down here instead of at the beginning. Yeah, that's right. Something like, I don't even know what to write to, but comment who are adjusts. It's like the CRC seeks a diverse diversity, seeks a diverse pool of applicants and we will make every effort to accommodate applicants who need assistance at any step of this process. It's hard to write this on the fly though. I think that was great. Well, that CRC seeks a diverse pool of applicants and we'll make every effort to accommodate residents who need assistance during this process. Should we just dump it at the end or should we dump it at the beginning? Beginning. I'm just totally pointing up. It shows that this is a priority for us when you put it like upfront. So do we want it on the first page or do we want it on the cover page? I'd say in the preamble, where the next. Not really a preamble. Oh yeah. Before the vacancy. Maybe under vacancy. It could be at the end of this paragraph. Under vacancy. I'm trying to figure out how I write out all that. Or note, note the, I don't, yeah, that's fine, the way you have it. Does that work for people? It's kind of weird. Goes with my other sentence that we added that is not the most elegant, but it serves the purpose. It communicates what we need to. So that brings us, I believe to the very last item, which is a continued discussion on term limits. We had a very good discussion last meeting on this issue. I'm not sure there was anywhere near consensus on what to do, whether to leave it this way, to change it, to delete it, to think we had five different opinions or at least four different opinions. So, and I'm, I'd like to know where people are. I ask people to think about it and come back. Shalini. Still maintain that based on listening to all the different things that when we write it in this way that we're giving preference to a newcomer versus it's, I don't agree with that fundamentally. And I liked what Steve had suggested as the associates. So if we are getting, you know, we want new people to be coming in and we don't want to lose the experience and skills of a person who's doing such a great job in lieu of someone new just for the sake of getting new people. But we could do both the things by holding on to the person with the skills and experience and bringing in new people and making them associate. So they get mentored and trained into till they also are in a good place to contribute. Otherwise I feel we're weakening ourselves by letting go of someone who had the skills and experience just because we feel this is a good. It's, it's like when, to me that feels a little dogmatic. Like when you believe this is the principle then you kind of want to apply it regardless of what the outcome is going to be because of that decision. But we're just doing it because we said we want whatever. That's how I feel about it. Other thoughts? I know Sarah would want me to say despite the fact that she doesn't like the language she's arguing to keep it in and taking George's point of view from Oka that it's good to, that it's broad enough to allow for pretty much anything in a sense. It's a rub, can I? Yeah. Will we be using actual score sheets? Like in other words, will we give five points for this, 10 points for that? I don't think so. So then the term, if I may, then the term preference is kind of weird because preference is to me means that all candidates being equal, this candidate gets another five points for being the incumbent. But if we're not using a score sheet and we're really kind of going with our gut, then I'm not sure we need to say anything. But also I think of the principle of affirmative action or diversity or whatever is that if I know that Jones's term is expiring this June and I think I have something to offer for this particular body, then I should be given an equal chance of having that seat, even though Jones already sits there. And I think that we should not be tying our hands that we feel we need to give Jones another, I hope there's no one named Jones, that we should not feel obligated to give Jones another term when there's another possibly better candidate in terms of many of the things that we've been talking about. So I don't like the word preference myself because to me preference speaks of frankly cronyism, so. Do you have any thoughts, Evan? I mean, so as I expressed last time, this was really a contentious point of discussion on OCA. This was compromised language between different viewpoints. My preference is to keep the language as is, which is a little bit born out of the work that went into just agreeing to this. I think that personally, I don't know that I agree completely with all of these statements, but I do think that they're good guiding principles to someone, if you complete your first term and you do a good job, yeah, you have a leg up on someone who's a new person, but also we are looking to encourage healthy turnover so that we aren't in a situation where we have people who have been on there for a very long time who leave and then we have a very young body. To some extent, we're kind of experiencing that right now where we have a very, very young planning board. And so I think making sure that we are incentivizing bringing new people on with some regularity is a good thing. I don't like the idea. So it's so funny, honestly, the funniest part of all of this is there are three sentences or four sentences in here and Steve doesn't like sentence one and Shaoling doesn't like sentence two and Oka spent like six hours on sentences three and four and just sort of accepted one and two as like, oh yeah, that doesn't make sense. Cause that was where, honestly, where the triangle, but I so apologize if there's no way. Can I make a comment? Cause I heard the triangle by Mandy's house about three minutes ago. Going north. Steve, you're not too far from me. I'm surprised it didn't light up my screen. Cause actually the piece that I'm uncomfortable with is the length of service is normally limited to two terms, three years in length. Because what we've heard is that six years actually isn't that long on the planning board from some of the people who have been on it. I mean, my ideal world would be that planning board terms maybe were longer, but you know, people on the charter. What were they thinking, right? So my position on this is it gives us enough guiding principles while still giving us the flexibility to make the decisions that we think are best at the time. I would like to keep the language. I am sure that I am, it seems at least that I am the minority voice, you know, that I'm never afraid to lose votes. So I'm going to not vote to change this. I know that Sarah would feel the same way. But I do hear what everyone is saying. So to follow up on Evan, sounds like Evan doesn't like sentence three. Shalini doesn't like sentence one, no, two. One and two. One and two. Steve doesn't like at least one and two. I don't like the whole thing. Right, and even the rest I'm sort of under the way. Because even the last sentence, we're appointing two bodies that require special training and expertise. So it's almost a redundant sentence at this point because it is. So I mean, it's sent to qualify the third sentence, but we are appointing two bodies that require expertise. So that longer period of service is almost always in play in terms of whether it's appropriate or not in some sense. So I, we might just have to go to a vote and ask for a motion. I'm not sure, you know, we can spend another 15, 20 minutes talking and see if we can reach some sort of consensus with maybe completely new language that get this completely and just writes, I don't even know what it would write, but we might just have to go to a vote even if we really don't want to. Shalini. Yeah, Evan, can you share more why YouTube? Because what I'm hearing from you is like, we spent a lot of time discussing it and so now I don't want to, but I'm not hearing what is the reasoning for why you want this other than that we spent a lot of time. And to me, that's already spent and that's not a reason why we shouldn't change it. Sure. So to me, our whole thing was, we wanted to make clear that a healthy, so this whole thing is labeled criteria for healthy and now effective, multiple member body and a big driving force of that is we need to make clear that a healthy body requires some turnover, that there needs to be some regular turnover that brings in new blood, new ideas for a body to be healthy and effective. The way that a lot of bodies encourage turnover is through term limits, right? And that's where we, so we got to term limits and then the question was, do we have term limits? And the thought was, we don't want hard term limits. Well, I shouldn't say that. There are some people who wanted hard term limits six years and you're done. And there were some people who said, we don't want any term limits. If someone can serve 10 years and they're doing a great job, we should let them do that. And that's sort of where we got to this language is it sends the message that we are looking for, we are looking as a body, we're as a committee to encourage people to serve multiple terms but also to encourage us to cycle people off so that we bring new bodies on. And we're not gonna enforce any strict term limit because those can be problematic in the opinion of at least the majority of OCA. This was not a unanimous vote. But that we would like to at least signal that to us two terms is an appropriate length of service. I wanna thank Shalini for that question because it made me go back and read numbers one and two. And if you listen, as I was listening to Evan answer, I wondered what item three adds that items one and two don't really cover. I mean, item one says we need people who are experienced. Number two says, but we want new people too. So what is three adding besides that? So let me also just give a little bit more. I feel like all I do these days is provide the stories of OCA. You're summarizing the hours of conversation for us so we don't have to have them. And then the other piece of this, so the very first version of this didn't include the word term limits. And the reason we labeled that as term limits was because we started getting a lot of people who were asking that people who were interested are their term limits, right? What are their term limits? And so we said, if we're kind of in a roundabout way talking about term limits, we should just label it term limits and you very clear what we're talking about. Because that is a question that people have. The other thing that some of this sought to clarify is the differences between our appointments and the town manager's appointments, right? And there are a bunch of differences. But one of them is that the town manager does not interview reappointments and he reappoints someone. If someone has completed their term, he is almost like an automatic reappointment. Doesn't interview them unless he hears that they don't wanna continue or there's something really extreme. But if you are already serving on the historical commission, you get a reappointment to the historical commission for your second term if you're interested under the town manager's appointment. We didn't feel like that was appropriate but we did wanna signal that there was a preference for reappointment. That if you completed your term and you did a good job, of course you have a leg up on someone who's brand new. But it wasn't necessarily guaranteed. So I'm trying to, as Mandy said, summarize a lot of different conversations and a lot of nuance. But there were a lot of things in here that had to do with the fact that people are curious about term limits but you felt like we had to say something on term limits. People on the council were discussing term limits and debating term limits. I mean, this number three didn't exist in our original document when we did our first planning board appointments in May, 2019. And of course a lot of the conversation on the council was about term limits, right? And so we felt like we actually did have to say something definitive. So to your question, what is this adding? Is one, it does differentiate our policy a little bit from the town managers and two, it responds to something that we know people are curious about because that was a big part of the debate on the council around some of the candidates. And we felt like we couldn't just be silent on the issue of whether or not we have term limits because it's something that was being asked. Sorry, it answered my question. Are we getting any closer to either reaching a consensus or someone being, if we don't think we can get to consensus, someone being ready to make a motion? Shalini? Could we rewrite this in a way that it's not so directive, but just like I liked the sentiment behind it that we want a healthy body that's doing this and just leave it at that and not be so directive that you are gonna be given preference this way or that way. Cause I just feel like we weaken our bodies by if someone was to go, because that would give them that if someone did want the new person, they would use this language and say, look, but our document says that we're supposed to give preference. So it can be used by that person to advocate for the new person that they want. And then we're not left with very good. I don't know. I just wish there's a way we can provide what we'd like to see happen or our value or what, but without, because as soon as we point to like we are gonna give preference, then it's leading to, it's giving more weight to one way than the other. And we may not end up with a healthy body because we chose someone and lost someone really good. I'm just trying to make something up here. Appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you for trying. That we're recommending. Recommending to the council, yeah. I do like that directive a lot with leaving enough space for each case to be seen differently. We wanna try to do anything with this two terms, three years. Or do we just wanna say that council has not adopted a fixed limit on the length of service? I'm just making stuff up here. Yeah, no, I really do appreciate that. So thoughts on what was written versus what's old versus nothing at all versus some other thing would be appreciated. I think I've already shared my, I really like what you wrote, because it states our intention for this and it allows us to use this lens to approach each situation for, but it gives us a guideline that this is what we're looking for is a healthy mix. But without specifically saying that we're gonna give preference because that. Added the words and experience whether that's the appropriate spot to do that. And about the term limit, I haven't thought enough yet about it. So that part I'm still open to Steve or Evan, whenever you're ready, you don't have to wait for me to call on you. I like that. I think it's a great job. Yeah. It would involve deleting everything that's highlighted in the original language. At least that was my envisioning was. I think it's really good. It would replace the origin. Done on the air. Evan? You know, I hate to be rigid, but I think that from my service on Oka and the work that we put into the debate behind that, I'm going to opt to stick with the current language. I am going to lose that vote and I am okay with that. And my feelings are not going to be hurt. Evan, do you want me to call for a motion? Yeah, I mean, I think we've debated this, right? What'd you say? What do you mean do I want you to do? Are you seeking, because we've done every other change by consensus. So would you like then for a formal motion for the deletion of the original? Yeah, I actually would prefer that. That's what I was checking on. I couldn't understand you. I thought you were asking me to make a motion. I'm not going to make a motion to change. I was checking to see if you would prefer to have that vote recorded. So instead of work by consensus. Okay, so I will be seeking a motion to delete under, what section is this? For A3, the original language appearing after the words term limits and insert in its place, the language that is highlighted in red and underlined. So would be the motion. We can add that into the motion, what it is later. Is there a second or whatever? Yeah, so move. Yeah. Shalini makes the motion. Is there a second? Steve is going to second that motion. Second. Sorry, Steve, you were waving your hand, so I assume that's enough. Yes, second. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll take a roll call. Shalini. Yes. Mandy is a yes. Steve. Yes. Oh, Evan, I forgot to do you an alphabetical order. Sorry, Evan. I know. No, and Sarah is absent. So that is three, one with one absent to remove language, delete the comment and show that language deleted. So that, I believe, leaves us with no additional things to discuss in here. Do we believe we need to vote on each individual item or can we vote on the document as a whole? And are people willing to do that vote now or do they wanna see a fully clean copy before we vote? I'm ready to vote on the whole thing. We're gonna change the date. Okay, so then I guess I am looking for a motion to adopt the community resources committee of the town council process to recommend appointments to Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals as amended or presented. I guess it's amended because we've amended a lot. Is there a motion? I think so. You can make the motion. Yeah, you make the motion. I'll make the motion. Yeah, you did all the work, I feel. Yeah, in second. And Shalini seconds, do we have any more discussion on this? Seeing none, we'll take a roll call. I think we're down to me, so I am a yes. Evan? Yes. Steve? Yes. Shalini? Yes. That is four to zero with one absent. I will make sure Sarah gets a copy of this specifically and knows that we voted it so that she doesn't first see it when it goes to the council in a report. I will clean this up. I'm gonna stop this share because we are done. Congratulations, we've made it through a process. And I just wanted to thank Evan for providing so much context and experience in this process because for me it was very theoretical but once you were presenting I was like, oh, that also happens, this can also happen. And so it was really helpful. So now that we have a process, we are done with 3A, we are now moving on to presentation discussion items, updated discussion on status of planning board appointments. So I guess I'll bring that process back up with it. Where did I put it? I have no idea where I put it. Maybe I closed it already. No, let's try this again. So now we have a process that we've adopted and the first one is vacancy. Last week we determined that Evan and Oka, Evan is chair of Oka and Oka had listed these vacancies. I believe all three of them are at least one. I don't know whether we have to specify how many in the bulletin board notice but that they had been posted to the bulletin board. Do we want to repost to the bulletin board? Evan? So I don't think there's any harm in reposting. So I would say we might as well. I do want to make sure that we're all on the same page that posting to the bulletin board does not necessarily yield an increase in applicants because it's just not a lot of people are religiously checking the town of Amherst bulletin board. Most applicants that we get are people who we contact directly and say, please serve on this board. We need people. However, we should repost and the reason we should repost is even though this has been posted twice in both postings it says that it is being done by the outreach communications and appointments committee and that if they have any questions they should contact the chair of the outreach communications and appointments committee. And so at the very least we should update, we should repost to update with the correct information to recognize that it moved to a different committee. Now that said, it is useful to have a point of contact for people if they have questions. It has been the chair of OCA, which has been me. So one option of course is to repost and just swap out the language to say the chair of CRC and put Mandy's email address. I think that would be very logical. The other thing that could be logical if you all want is given that I have already sort of been through this process and given that I've already sort of had some contact I would be willing to stay as the point person for this and remain the contact person for this round of appointments. But I'm also happy to hand it over to anyone else. So I will say for those CAFs, if any, that have been submitted since this was passed to OCA, since we don't talk about numbers or anything here, I have taken the under number two, the requirement for acknowledging the chair or designee will reach out to confirm receipt and done that. Can ask that, so thank you. So I am happy to continue to pass that on, but I did want to say that I have already done that for those that have come in since that formal passing and dissolution of OCA, I guess, because OCA doesn't exist anymore. Even though we hadn't adopted a process, I knew that was in a process and we had reached consensus to that. So I did take it upon an initiative to do that for those that have come in since that time, but I am happy to go with whatever the committee wants in terms of point person, Shalini. Yeah, I just want to say I don't want to be the contact person, so if Evan wants to take it on. Yay, Evan, thank you. Or I'm happy to give it to Mandy too. I mean, most of this document says chair. I feel like it's probably my duty as chair to do it. I also might need help keeping track of it all. And so I am happy to be the person designated to try going through this as long as Evan, when asked for help, is willing to lend that help and advice for what do I do? Or even just help remind me that I'm supposed to be doing something because I know this process is much more ingrained with Evan than it is with me at this point. And so at some point, whoever is chair is going to have to know how to do this because this is not going to be the last time we're going to face this again in a year. But I don't want to screw it up and I don't know all of the intricacies. So if people are willing to have me do it with Evan being liberally used for advice and reminders, that would be fine with me. And then it keeps it in sort of the expected who would be doing that at least. That okay with everyone? So it sounds like we should post a new bulletin board vacancy notice. So I will get on that. I do want to thank Evan for the 30 some page document because when things come in and I was like, oh, I got to do something. I went to that document to read what I might have to do. So. Now starting. And so I appreciated that and I will be relying heavily on that for things like the bulletin board notice and all, but I will get that out. And that moves us to the CAFs. I don't think there's anything we need to do with that right now. And that then would lead us to waiting 14 days from the bad minimum to deal with sufficiency of the applicant pool. I do have a couple of numbers of applicants and everything. You at one point had said you would walk into a meeting and put pieces of paper in front of members with the numbers and the names and then collect them at the end of a meeting. What'd you do for ZBA? To, for everyone new, for everyone new what the numbers were in order to be able to declare applicant pool sufficient. So the document was distributed via email as a, but as a not public document. Okay. Okay. I was just curious whether that's how it was done or what because I know it should not be put on a screen like we're doing now for the process. Correct, correct. Yep. So not put on the screen. It's not a public document. Yeah. You can't discuss names or numbers at that time. Okay. Is there anything we're missing right now on what should be done? So the only thing, I mean, I would say again, is the bulletin board isn't actually gonna yield us any results. So OCA was successful in getting applicants when members of OCA worked to get applicants. So, you know, for those of us on this committee, just ask anyone who you think would be good. I know some of you, yeah, my internet's getting kind of weird. That was mine. Thumbing up was just ask people, try and get people. Don't rely on the bulletin board. Hold on, Rebecca. Yeah, so, okay. So that's everyone's job for the next two weeks is to recruit, recruit, recruit, right? And in two weeks, then we'll have an update. I'm going to mute myself for a second because my daughter is asking a question. So give me a second. Sorry about that. Okay, anything else with whatever this agenda item is? We are on update and discussion on status. We're gonna work through one and two and next at all the meetings, we will have an update on trying to determine whether we can get a sufficient applicant poll. So I will make sure that goes on every agenda. If there's no other items on this, we will move on. And I'm not seeing any. So that will be part of the agenda's going forward. Minutes, we have one set of minutes, the June 2nd minutes. Has everyone had a chance to read them? I am not seeing any hands for any potential changes or anything. That means I will take a motion to adopt or approve the minutes of June 2nd, 2020. So moved. Evan moves. I will second any discussion. We are on to Evan voting first, Evan. Yes. Steve. Yes. Shalini. Yes. And Mandy is a yes, those are approved. We will hopefully have our backlog of minutes to deal with next meeting. We'll see. But they're working their way through the system. And I apologize to Angela. She got them to me in time and I didn't get them to you in time for June 16. So that was totally my fault. Any announcements? When is our next meeting? Our next meeting is scheduled for, give me a second. I believe the 14th. Let me check. I think so too. So Mandy, I let you know that I wouldn't be at the 14th meeting. Right. If Sarah is also not going to be at the 14th meeting, we just make sure that. Wait, why is that? I'm not going to be at the meeting. I'm just on vacation. I'm going on vacation. I'm leaving you. But I didn't know you and Sarah might not be available for the next four weeks. I didn't know if she would be. I do not know. I'll have to check with her. Yeah, okay. Just reminding you. The question. Yep. Do we want to bring the bylaw while banning the Wildlings article with two members not there? Or is that okay? So let me check with Sarah to see if she can make the 14th. If she can't, maybe. I don't want to cancel a meeting. We have a bunch of stuff we need done and to talk about. And updates on planning board are one of them. Would the 21st work for individuals or the 7th? The 7th is really early. I'm not sure we could actually get the 7th. But would the 21st be available for people in case we have issues with a quorum on the 14th? I know though. Yeah, I know though. Yeah. I'm available. But also, I'm also perfectly had, if you do have quorum for the 14th, I trust all of you completely. I don't need to be there. Steve? I'm good on both. Okay, so. I'm going no more than two blocks from home as far as Evan's house. I go to Evan's street as my vacation. We're going to plan on the 14th, but I will check in with Sarah. If she's not going to be there and we have issues, we might go for the 21st instead of the 14th. This brings us to, if there's no other announcements, the next agenda preview, it will have a continuing update on planning bird appointments. We will have that on the agenda until we are able to actually make appointments. It will obviously take various amounts of time depending on where in the status and cycle we are. I am hoping to get the Wild Animal Act on this agenda. And hopefully we can maybe finish with it. That would be my fingers crossed to see if we can get done with it. I have to give you an idea of what I've done. I've compiled every various requests for amendments into a single document, including ones that have come forward since our last meetings. We had received a lot of different options for a bunch of things, but what we've talked about at the last meeting where we've talked about it in terms of our own concerns as committee members, but also from other various entities, including I have received some comments from Amherst College. Oh, you did. I did. I have to check back with UMass and Hampshire College to see if they have any comments about the bylaw itself and its effect on them. But it's gonna be in one single document with all the requested changes so that we can potentially just go through and say, yes, no, some of them are nearly identical or not, but they come from different things. So hopefully that will move the process along so we have it all in one document. We actually have it in two separate documents because I also took it upon myself to do it as it was presented by Shalini and the sponsors and also convert it into a potential bylaw, G-O-L compliant bylaw type system. So we will have both of those documents in front of us so people can see what it looks like converted because a lot of things sort of disappear in the conversion within the language because it goes up into a data block. So we will have both to be able to look at but they are both composite documents with all the proposed potential amendments which will hopefully allow us to deal with it quicker than we might be able to otherwise. So I'm hoping to put that on. And then the other thing I am aiming to put on is we heard at our last hearing with the planning board joint hearing a lot of desire for zoning bylaw updates and concern with outdated zoning bylaws. I have heard from the planning board chair and I believe the planning department head Chris Brestrop also is concerned about time requirements as it relates to trying to get that done but also updating the master plan. And given the new circumstances of COVID I am hoping to put on the agenda. I plan to put on the agenda discussion as to whether this body wants to. I know I and Steve are the only ones left of this body that recommended the council seek an update of the master plan before adopting it but I would like to on the next agenda revisit that recommendation based on things that we heard in the last couple of hearings that we've had jointly with the planning board in terms of zoning bylaw requirements get a feeling from our planning directors to whether the time is well spent updating a master plan now as opposed to dealing with zoning bylaws going directly to that. So that is my plan to put on that agenda so that we can get something to the council. If we have to move the meeting to the 21st we probably can't get something to the council by the meeting on the 20th but at least by August 3rd hopefully we could have something to the council for discussion on maybe a potential change of recommendation and plan going forward for things like that. So I think that will be on the agenda that will probably fill our agenda those two items plus any update on planning board appointments. I expect to fill the agenda with that. If we can get rid of if we can finish off with wild animal act that means come August we will be figuring out at this point how to deal with housing policy because that will beyond any zoning and all changes and master plan changes will be the only thing left on our referral list. So you guys have been doing great. We had a lot of meetings. That's the plan. Any other thoughts on agenda items preview thoughts on what I just said or any additions? Shalini. Yeah, I was actually gonna ask you that and you stated that when I was gonna actually ask from the perspective of the town employees and the planning board when would be a right time to have these conversations about zoning and how law changes and then to figure out which ones because there seem to be some that are so obvious in the sense that they're so outdated that they would make complete sense to change. And so instead of waiting for the master plan let's start with this process but hearing from the town employees in terms of their time and what seems appropriate. So that's great that you're putting that out. We're gonna figure it out somehow to get it on an agenda for financial recommendation. So any, Evan, I see his wheels turning in his head. I was thinking how back in, I guess it was probably April we had the bid in the chamber when COVID really first started to tank things and we had a really great discussion with them that I think was in some ways the impetus for Article 14 and I'm not saying this is something for July but maybe for August it kind of would be interesting to bring them back and just say, okay, so things are reopening now what's the landscape look like now? And we've done one thing what do you see as the next steps that we need to do? I don't think it's impressing. I mean, it isn't, it isn't and it doesn't need to be on the next agenda but at that point we had said this will be our first conversation we want a good working relationship. It'd be great to continue to bring them back and continue that conversation. Okay, I will note that down for an August meeting. Any other requests or anything? Seeing none, so certainly I will check with Dave Zomek we're gonna check with the Wild Animal Act people to make sure they can do the 14th if they can't, you know, so plan on the 14th it might be to the 21st to make sure that the people we need for the meeting can make the meeting if they can't make the 14th but could make the 21st if Christine Brestrup can't make the 14th but could make the 21st I don't know whether she has any holiday plans or anything in terms of leave scheduled or anything so I will check with Dave and I'll work with Shalini to make sure we can get the right people for the meeting for the right date and we'll be in touch but plan on the 14th but try and keep the 21st open just in case it gets moved to that. I have no unanticipated items. Does anyone else? Seeing none, I am going to adjourn this meeting at 3.55 p.m. Yay, us, thank you, thank you so much.