 I don't have our note. Good morning. It is February 1st, 2023. And because this is the first meeting of GOL after appointment of people to committees. We do use this as an opportunity to do reorganization. Let me also mention that because state law allows this meeting is being held virtually. But there is an opportunity for public comment. We are using. Zoom and our phone. And the video will be available over time. On the town website. The first thing we have to do today is elect. The chair and the vice chair. And that's one of the jobs that I need to do as president, which is why I'm chairing at this point. So the floor is open for nominations. And volunteers for the position of chair. Mandy Joe. I'm not going to Jennifer. She's talked about. Giving people opportunities to lead. And I think she'd be a great leader. And this would be a great committee in order to foster that leadership development and council. So I nominate Jennifer. Jennifer. Are there any other nominations at this time? Jennifer, do you accept the nomination? I don't actually, but thank you. Yeah. Lynn and I have spoken about this. And I. This is. I feel I don't have the bandwidth to chair this committee now. So I appreciate the nomination, but. Yeah, we had a conversation. Okay. That's great. I'm going to do a second. I'm going to do a second. I'm going to do a second. I'm going to do a second. I guess. Okay. Mandy Joe or Pat, you had your hand. Good. Then I'll nominate Pat. DeAngelis for chair. And I will second it. Actually, you don't even need. I'll do a fantastic. You don't need a second. That's right. But it's okay. We appreciate the seconds. Pat, do you accept the nomination? Yes, I do. Are there any other nominations for chair of GOL? Okay. See none. Then I actually, I'm going to do two things at once. And one is make sure that you can hear and be heard. And also because I forgot to do that. And we should do that for all virtual meetings. And the other one is to make sure. And to give you an opportunity to vote. I will take this in alphabetical order. Pat DeAngelis. Hi. Lynn Grisper is an I Mandy Joe Hanneke. I Michelle Miller. I Jennifer Tom. I that's unanimous. So Pat, congratulations. I'll go ahead and open the floor for nominations for vice chair. You can either volunteer or you can. I'm, I'm going to nominate. And I heard what you said about bandwidth, Jennifer. But I would love to know that you were vice chair. I'm in a transition period physically. Today's real this morning is really hard. So I'd love to know that I could collaborate with you as needed. So I hope you'll accept it. I will. Thank you. Okay, great. Are there any other nominations or volunteers? Okay, then we're going to do the same routine. Pat DeAngelis. Hi. Lynn Grisper is an I Mandy Joe Hanneke. Michelle Miller. Hi. Jennifer top. Hi. Great. Pat, given. Thank you. We now have chair and vice chair. And I will be glad to turn the meeting over to you, Pat. But I want to check to see whether you're not, you feel you can honestly do this today. Given your. Today is really cool. So if, if someone else, if you could run the meeting, Lynn, I'm more than willing to run the meeting on less Jennifer, you would be able to. I mean, I guess I wasn't right. You're just going to be able to run the meeting. I, I, I'm going to, I'm going to be, I'm going to be, I'm going to be, I'm going to be, I'm going to be able to run the meeting on less Jennifer. How's that? In fact, let me pull up the agenda. That's CD. And we'll look, look at the agenda and talk about the items. And we'll all work with you. How's that? Okay. I know that Michelle has already said she has a hard stop. At 930. And I have a hard stop at 10 minutes of 11. I have it here, basically after the election, we have the action items, water and sewer bylaws, discussions and votes, what we're holding off looking at section seven, and then there's general public comment, and we have our usual thundering herd of people, and then we have minutes, and I'd like to, I'd like to bring up switching meeting time a little bit by half an hour, not, but that's so important, so that's basically the agenda. And to look at our calendar, right, and I, yeah, right, I go ahead, well, I, I had on here when I was trying to work on it yesterday, a moment of silence for tie, tie nickels, we could have 30 seconds of silence, I'd appreciate that very much. Let's make it a full minute. Okay. Thanks, Pat, for suggesting that. Athena, Anna is in the audience, would you bring her in, and let me just note that does not constitute a quorum, and she is here for the purposes of working with Amy to talk about the water and sewer bylaws. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Anna. So, Lynn, I'm letting you take over. Yeah. Yeah. I feel better, Pat. I will. I'm going to stay, sit. I just can't. Oh, okay. Yeah. Just give me a second. I thought I had it all queued up, and I obviously didn't. I guess I'm more bossy than I thought maybe we could have Amy and Anna fill us in on TSO and what, what's happening with section F and the two bylaws. Do you want me to go on or do you want to take it? You can go ahead. Feel free. Okay. It's all good filling the blanks, I guess. So, yeah, I guess at least today we're going to look at the bylaws to try and get them off understanding that we still have the sewer. Hold on one second, Michelle, you have your hand up. I do. I'm just wondering if it would be at all possible that we deal with the calendar issues since I have to leave at 9 30. I just want to ensure that I'm able to make the meetings and going forward. Good suggestion. Okay. All right. Thank you. So two things. First of all, in your packet is a calendar, a proposed calendar. I believe that it has us meeting every other week. Is that correct Athena? Yeah. Okay. And is there any question about the calendar? And can we have a motion to adopt it? Knowing that things can change. I move that. The meeting time is part of the calendar. So you might want to include that in your discussion here. Okay. Pat, you've asked if we could meet at nine 30. Right. And if we can't nine. It's, it's just tight for me for on a. On in terms of my body, not. Anything to do with surgery. But I can certainly still meet at nine. So. For me personally, nine 30 is fine. Joe. Michelle. Either of you want to weigh in. I have no problem with nine 30. That works fine for me. I. I was wondering whether we needed to meet every other week, or if anybody had thought about maybe a lesser meeting schedule, but that. That's just. Out for discussion. If anyone. Let's let me come to that in just a moment. Mandy Joe, any problem nine 30. Nine 30 is fine. And nine 30 works for me. So. And what I would suggest Michelle is that we schedule the meetings and then if we don't need them, we cancel them. But keep in mind exactly the. Issue you're raising. That's fine. I think that's fine. I think that's fine. I think that's fine. I think that's fine. And about how often do we really need to meet? Okay. Does that work? If I could point out that there are sometimes less than every other week, depending on. It basically follows the schedule from last year, which is not exactly every other week. It's. There, there are sometimes less. Okay. And thank you for putting that together, Athena. Michelle. Does that. For you. Thank you. Okay. So the motion that I'm looking for a second is to adopt the calendar. With a starting time of nine 30. The annual calendar with a starting time of nine 30. Is there a second. Okay. All right. Quick vote on that one. We'll start in this case with Lynn. It's an eye, Mandy. Joe. Michelle Miller. Hi. Jennifer. I. Patty. Okay. Okay. I'm done with that item. Okay. Michelle. Is there anything else you want to make sure we discuss? Like, for example, would you like an update on where we are with the sewer and water bylaws? No, I'll just listen in until I have to leave, but I just, that's, it's all good. Thank you. And we'll note the time you leave so that the record shows that. So I think somebody said. Amy. Go ahead. Thank you. I'm going to start at the beginning. Yeah. So as you guys recall, we've got the water regulations, the sewer regulations, and then the bylaws that kind of allow us the ability. To have these regulations. And so already we've discussed the water. Bylaws. And that's gone through all the various processes. Sorry. The water regulations. Even I get confused. I have to say that. The sewer regulations were still, still have to come through this group, but today we're just talking about the bylaws, which are pretty simple. They just kind of lay out the groundwork for who has the enforcement ability and kind of. How we go about changing any of the regulations and that sort of thing. So we've got both the water and the sewer. Bylaws to discuss. These already went through TSO. There were a couple of questions that came up in TSO. And so we did get clarification from the lawyers on them. And so one of them was just making sure that the way. That we're laying out all of the fines that that being in the regulations and the bylaws just referring. To them being in the regulations that that was acceptable. And so that was okay. And then the second thing. So we've got both the water and the sewer. Bylaws to discuss these already went through TSO. And then the second thing was the requirement to. Publish the regulations every time they're. Adjusted. And that is, that is a requirement by state law on the sewer side, but not on the water side. Although it's, it's kind of best practice to at least put some sort of an announcement. But unfortunately with the lawyer said is the way that the state law is written on the sewer side, we're going to publish a single word of the sewer regulations. And so that's the one place where you're going to see, we made an edit just to the water one to say, we're going to publish a notification. That these regs are available because we have the flexibility to do that on the water side, but on the sewer side, our hands are tied and we do have to publish every single word of this 20 page document. Of the regulations, unfortunately. We're not going to publish a single word of that. And that is yesterday in discussing. The town manager's budget where, and the town council's budget. The issue of what we have to publish and the cost is enormous. And we're even to the point that we're actually going out to bid for other quotes. From the Republican, I think it is. And the reminder. As well as. So. Pat, you want to call on people. Anna. And then Mandy. This, I apologize if I'm speaking out of turn. Lynn, is this something that we should be advocating for on a state level of saying we got to really kind of critically think about our, our publishing requirements to find a balance between making sure the public is informed and. Being current with where people are actually finding information and being cognizant of budgets because it seems, I mean. I haven't seen those numbers that you're talking about, but I assume they are very high based on prior budgets and how much it costs. And so. Yeah, I guess not this isn't about this topic specifically, but I'm curious if that's something that we should be maybe advocating for. Let's, let's put that on our agenda with Joe and Mindy. Okay, Andy. So I can actually answer that question. The MMA is advocating for it. I don't have any other laws that are filed at the state legislature particularly related to hearings. I will bring up the sewer publication thing too. It was mostly related to public hearings and the notice where notices for public hearings go. So that would be ZBA hearings, planning board hearings, all of our zoning by law change hearings. I'll make sure sewer regulations and regulation publishing is part of that ball. You know, because so part of the problem. Is that in Eastern Massachusetts, a lot of the towns are having to publish in the globe because there is no other local paper at all. And the globe is massively expensive for some small towns that don't even have people who read the globe. At all. So, so it is, it is certainly being considered the bill unfortunately went nowhere in the last session. But it has, it is being refiled and for my policy committee, it is one of the things we want to see changed. But so that's an answer to that question there. Could you send me the bill number. I will look it up. Thank you. Let me make a note of that. And we will mention it to Joe and Mindy as well. Yeah. So I wanted to go back to thank you for the questions because I know a lot of those answers were because I sent on a questions related to this bylaw and don't see a lot of changes. But I want to go back to that section F. The water bylaw and the sewer bylaw language is the same. And the way I read at least what's in our packet. It reads the water bylaw reads once adopted such regulations and any amendments there too shall be published once in a newspaper published in the town. If there be any and not, and if not, then in a newspaper published in the county and shall include a notice that said rules and reg shall be available. And so that reads to me that you have to publish the whole set of amendments. So I think we need to fix that language. Amy. That was fixed. That must not my version of it must not have. If you actually look at an email that. That Athena sent you like 30 minutes ago. She sent you edited version, but I guess that might not be the one. All I did. And we can edit this as a group. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to add to that. So all I did was added. In section F on the water rights only it says once adopted and I added the words notification of. And then such regulations and any amendments shall be published in a newspaper of the town. So I just added the words notification of. Okay. To the water. Have the ability. It's okay. I. Is this correct. I'm trying to make sure that we had the right one, but I don't think that's the right one. Okay. You'd have to go down to section F. Which yeah. Up a little bit. That's, that's, that's the one change that we made from when we saw. TSO. Okay. I'm going to. Mandy, are you finished? Jennifer go. I have other comments and questions. Great. Jennifer. Yeah. No, I just had an overall question is what triggered. The review of these bylaws that we wanted to change. Individual homeowner. You know, responsibility for repairing a line. Or did we have to do this anyway? Pat, I can't raise my hand, but I'll be glad to answer that. Yeah, that's good because I have no answer. Okay. Two things triggered this one is. I'm not sure. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. A LC Fetterman, somebody in my district. Had a pipe break. And she was just astounded by how much it cost and felt. That some of the bit was because of the poor risk. Condition of the roads. That. Lead to the main. And right now. The homeowner has to pay from the main. The second thing is that what we learned in the process. And Amy would be able even better at this. Is we basically had practice in Amherst. But we really couldn't find the original bylaws. And so Amy, who was really the expert at DPW in. Water and. For the. I'm sorry, I didn't hear that. And so the last thing I wanted to say about the bylaws who were. Have his has to. Finally developed bylaws. And so it was a need to put these bylaws on the books. As well as address this issue. But. I'll just chime in to say to be, to be clear too. The bylaws. Don't even get at that whole ownership question. to have the regulations that do get into the weeds on, you know, the town's responsibility, the owner's responsibility, everything like that. So this is kind of the first step in making sure that we have these regulations that everyone knows what the expectations are of everyone when it comes to water and sewer. And it kind of lays the groundwork for that. Thank you. So the next step would be addressing the Elsie Federman situation, which probably applies to a lot of people. Can I take that, Lynn? Okay. So, yes, and I think that that's going to be a really big discussion that we have at the council. TSO and finance had slightly different recommendations coming out of each committee. We're trying to sort those out and figure out if there is one, because TSO came up with an idea that finance hadn't considered. And so, because we're a very imaginative committee. So we want to see if finance likes what TSO came up with and kind of before we bring that back. But that issue would be if the council agrees to it, addressed in the regulations. But the council has to agree to it. It's not an insignificant change. And so, that'll be a really big and important discussion that we have. Sorry, I just had another one of those moments where I didn't think I'd be talking about this in my life ever. But so, yes. And I think that one of the things that I really want to highlight is Amy brought this forward. I think Elsie's situation and those like it were, you know, were definitely really good reasons. And Amy, I want to make sure Amy's getting full credit here for realizing that our water and sewer rigs hadn't been done since I know before I was born. And I'm 32. So, you know, that's it's been a while. And so I think that this was really a we needed to update these regardless. And now is a good time to try to dive into that bigger issue. But that's in the regs and the bylaws. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Mandy. So a GOL thing, which is always surprising. So do we want headings for each of these sections? You know, if we put headings on that means sections D and E and F might actually become a one, two and three. But do we want them or not? We tend to use section headings, but we don't always use them. I don't think so. One question is do we want to add that? And then I have a question about I don't know whether this is technically, one of my comments is not technically GOL, but I'm going to make it anyway. And the other one is potentially GOL. Section C, I guess it could be GOL. It's a clarity issue. When you read it, does this mean that the town council on its own can't propose to amend or adopt that it needs to have that proposal start with the manager? It says we can, once the manager's proposed something, we can amend that proposal. But does the way C is written, actually, you know, from time to time the manager following consultation may propose the town council adopt or amend adoption or amendment. The town council may adopt or amend and set forth. The way I read it means that we can't, I don't know whether it's clear enough that we can do it on our own and the town manager can do it or whether the order of the sentence implies that we can only start that process at the behest of the manager. Amy, did you want to respond? I was just going to say I kind of thought section B is where we say, hey, the town council acting as the water commissioners has the right to change all these and then part C is just saying that town manager and DPW also have the ability to bring forth suggestions. But let me know if that's not how that reads. That's how I thought it would read. Honest thoughts. And then I'll go on to my next question. I agree with what Amy said. I also think that the way I read it is, you know, first sentence, full stop, second sentence. I don't see them as conditional. But I'm curious if it would make more sense to have it be broken out into another letter. Like put a paragraph break after the first, not after B in C after the first sentence. Would that make it clear, Mandy? Or is that redundant? Or what if we said separately or something like that just to maybe make it ultra clear? I mean, I wonder if in section B is authorized to promulgate and amend regulations and fee because section B doesn't talk about penalties. Right. That's where it's only in that sentence in section C. So promulgate and amend regulations and set penalties for violations of such regulations to ensure, and then we could potentially delete that sentence in C altogether, maybe also adding an also. The town manager may also propose to the town council adoption in section C. So it's clear that it's both. That makes sense. Yeah. So with what Lynn's doing, I think we could then delete maybe that whole sentence that she just highlighted. Amy, does that work for you? That's fine. I think that's certainly the intent. So I'm glad that this is adding some clarity of we all kind of have the ability to have these conversations and make updates. And obviously we would want this same thing parallel in the water bylaws. Right. They're pretty parallel with the exception of the MGLs that we reference in them. Right. So those changes parallel. And so my next question was with D and E. Part of it goes to cost again. And part of it goes to aren't they sort of saying the same thing? The bulletin board is on the website, right? And so if you have to publish it on the bulletin board, do you need another notice on the website? My next question is do we have to hold a public hearing by state law? Because once you have public hearing, even though this one just says bulletin board website and social media, the implication is newspaper too, which adds cost when you're referencing a public hearing. And so they seem duplicative sort of. And I worry about the reference to a public hearing, if not required by state law, requiring us ultimately to publish something in a newspaper. Anna, should we? Okay. So I guess I didn't enter. Obviously I didn't interpret it the same way I would have flagged it. But so I did not interpret it quite the same way in terms of the public hearing requirement. But I hear what you're saying is just to make sure I'm understanding it. You're saying that anytime we do a public hearing, that kind of triggers all of the normal set of requirements for a public hearing. So if it's not required by state law, Amy, is this a state law requirement that we have a public hearing? Could we just, could we call it a public listening session and phraseology wise around that need? I do think we need a formal opportunity for public input. So I would just call it must take public comment at a meeting specifically on this item or something on the regulations, something like that. Okay. I can chime in that I'm not aware of any specific requirement regarding a public hearing for water and sewer specifically. I'm sure that there are regulations for you guys as a community that if you're going to change a regulation or a bylaw that you have a process that you have to go through. And so yeah, maybe this is duplicating something that you guys already have a formal process for. Amy, if I can ask a question, are there notice and hearing requirements in the regulations? I don't think there are. Go look. No, because the regulations are like for the users and not on the process to do those regs. That's the bylaw. They refer back to the yeah. So so Lynn's modifying something but it would be, you know, town council or their designee takes public comment or has a specific public comment period on the proposed amendments or something or prior to adoption. I don't know what the language is. You could call it a public forum. We've defined that in the charter. That was sort of the way the charter commission hopes to get out of the publish eight publication requirements of a public hearing. Although we now know the issues we've had with public forums. So you could also say just hold or their designee holds a public forum for which notice is posted on the town bulletin board for no fewer than 14 days. You know the notice requirement on the bulletin board I think is fine. It's just the use of the word hearing. I would be more comfortable leaving it as is and just changing that one word to say public. I already forgot forum forum is what is the one that we use in the charter. Lynn. Lynn. Yeah. From a standpoint of scheduling a public forum means we have to post it as a separate meeting have a separate agenda, etc. Whereas if we just say at this meeting we're going to do public comment at X time for this. I can go either way. I just want to point out the fact that that requires a second meeting. Okay, but I think I'm sorry. I want to make sure I'm fine either way. Just let's get the sentence right. I don't want to take out the part about notice posted on the bulletin board. I think that needs to stay in. So regardless of whether it's a public comment or a public forum, I think it needs to go on the website which is the bulletin board. Yes. So it's the conducts of public hearing that you would modify to specific public comment. Yeah. Holds specific public comment holds a specific public comment period for which notice is posted. It's that phrase you're doing that's in the wrong spot Lynn. The must take specific public comment should go where conducts the public hearing is. And everything else stays the same. Yeah. The rest of the sentence mostly stays the same. Do you want to say for which notice is posted on the town bulletin board? Yeah. And then the no fewer than 14 days is fine. So reject everything but then subject matter of the public comment is what it would read. Sorry. Keeps and subject matter. So reject all the changes after town bulletin board for now to clean it back up to its original state. All of that. Yeah. Reject the changes and subject matter of the public comment. The last word hearing just changed a public comment. I'm going to guess an E you need to change that word hearing in the first sentence. Well, I guess my question is do we needy? Okay. Was was the sort of the the you can call it clarity or consistency. It seems repetitive. How are you going to take website notice? Yeah. How are you going to take care of any special notice to businesses, etc. So the website and social media is not necessarily special notice, right? So you could keep the provided however that nothing herein shall prevent the manager from providing additional notices. You could put that provided however sentence tack it on to D and delete the rest of E, right? Just put a semi colon after public comment there and delete E up to provided however and combine it with D. I'd like to also then add I'll wait till you're done. Sorry. Is that what you mean? Yeah. Can we also say when we go if we're back up to the beginning of D which notice is posted on the town bulletin board and social media and town social media just because I think that that's where a lot of people start their engagement? I'd like to push back on that a little bit. We don't use social media for any other sort of legal announcements and I'm not sure how we would do that. Okay. I was just sort of a different. This would be very special if we if we were required to put it on social media and you know as opposed to any other by law change or zoning regulation or zoning by law change, there's nothing in the charter about social media. I'm just worried about making a special thing that somebody has to remember to do. These things change and that we don't have a process for. I don't have control of social media for the town and I'm just thinking about how that would work. Yeah. So I was just pulling it up from the former item E because it was in there. And so I think that I guess maybe it's not a bad idea to start a conversation about public hearing notices going out on on social media and some capacity. I think that might be helpful. This doesn't necessarily need to be the starting block for it but I hear you in that if we're going to do it here we need to figure out systems and structures for it to happen. Elsewhere. Was there anything Athena that you had flagged about that would make it have been that would have made it different for where it was before? Can you? Yeah so it's in the crossed out section it says at the same time as general notice of the hearing is posted under subsection D the town council shall similarly notify business owners and residents by posting a copy of the public hearing notice on the town website and social media. What's your question about that? Is that different like should we have taken it out if it had if we had kept that in would we have wanted to take would you have pushed us to take it out there as well or is to take out social media? Yes. Okay and the bulletin board is on the website. So the bulletin board yeah it is there's a section on the website that we call bulletin board that we put all the things where something says it needs to be posted on the bulletin board that's where we put it. I totally get that I think I'm trying to think about that the ease of access than the typical entry points for folks and so maybe but I think it could be a different conversation about how we are maybe just posting about the bulletin board on our social media. So I'm okay with taking that out but I will figure out a different way to kind of work with communications on how to better promote bulletin board's existence. Go ahead Mandy. I was going to say I think it's a comms issue with what goes on bulletin board and how that gets pushed through other channels of engagement. Yeah totally. But I think. Yeah well I don't know that it's this is your guys meeting I'm just here but I mean I almost wonder if like partly what you guys are saying is like our hands are tied by specifying where this gets notified and that's a townwide thing. So like right now we use the town bulletin board in the future it might be social media. I almost wonder if you want to look at Amherst bulletin board and instead somehow kind of just say you know we align it with however we're doing notifications at the time. It's not an elegant way of saying it but hopefully you guys understand kind of what I'm saying is like that might evolve and I wouldn't want us to have something in here that isn't in alignment with what we might do in the future. A lot of those I mean the the charter references posting on the bulletin board so if we did make a change it would it would need to be part of a charter change and that would you know there's there would be a whole ripple effect so that's and that's part of the reason why it's like you know I think the bylaws should align with the charter in terms of what we're required to do but there's nothing stopping us from going over and above that if we decide in the future that we want to make that known in more places which I think is a good idea but I'm just worried about making it a requirement. No that makes a lot of sense I appreciate it thank you. Anybody else on this any other questions for any other part of it? Oh one one thing back to section B the set penalties the section C that we deleted said four violations of such regulations so I would just add the four violations of such regulations to after penalties just to keep the language the same. Anything else anywhere pertaining to these two bylaws? So I can make a motion this was the water one right to declare the proposed water bylaw as clear consistent and actionable as amended. Is there a second? Second. Second. Triple okay so we'll go to the vote and we'll start with Hanneke. I. Miller she's probably not here right now. Jennifer? I. Lynn? I. And I'm an I. One step closer Amy. So I mean I would just request that whatever we just did with water be done for sewer. Except sewer. Except for the notification of in the new section E I think it is. Yeah. So do you want me to pull it up or not? That would be nice to get it done I think. I was going to say can we just make the motion to declare the sewer bylaw clear consistent and actionable as amended and someone can make all of those amendments later if we are knowledge of what those amendments are. I'll be glad to do that but I want I'd really want Amy to check. Yeah Lynn if you want to try to. Yeah adjust the sewer and then I'm happy to look it over and then. Great. So I second that motion. Okay. And so let's vote on that unless there's more discussion. Okay starting just for the minutes the clarity is the only amendment that showed in the water bylaw that won't show in this one is that one section notification of phrase. Okay. We'll start with Jennifer. Hi. I'm an eye Lynn. Hi. Mandy. Hi. Okay. And Michelle is absent. So it's for yes no opposed and one absent. All right. We're done with that section that thank you. Amy and Anna but particularly Amy. Thank you. All Amy. Yeah. Thank you. I'd like to move on. Do we want to look at snow and ice? Or there's one person in the audience and I'm wondering if they have any questions or want to speak so maybe we could call for a public comment period right now. So if phone number 14383. Oh don't read the whole thing just the last four digits please. 4701. Thank you. Sorry. If they would like to speak would you raise your hand or let Athena know? Okay. Pat they raised their hand. Okay. Athena can you bring them in or hello. You're going to have if you state your name and where you live you have up to three minutes to share with us. Oh. Hi. So this is Tracy and I had just calling in on the snow and ice bylaw. I don't know if you are going to talk about it today or not. But I guess you know I had seen in the packet the letter from the on manager indicating that according to staff that the bylaw is fine as is. And I do agree that you know the letter of the bylaw seems pretty straightforward. I just as I had raised before and as I raised some emails when it was first being considered I just had questions related to the enforcement. And I just it's not really clear like how it's enforced or the extent to which it's enforced, the extent to which fines are collected, the extent to which there's follow-up with property owners who don't clear their sidewalks. So I know in the past DLL discussions on this there's been some consideration that the DPW could perhaps help with enforcement and at one of the meetings DPW superintendent Gilford mooring offered that the DPW could do that. I guess I would urge the DLL to consider that change. Especially because because the DPW are the ones who are out clearing the sidewalks you know as a courtesy anyway. And I've been in touch with Mr. Mooring recently about there was like a sidewalk that got damaged by one of the sidewalk plows and he was immediately out fixing that. So they're pretty aware of what's happening with the sidewalks more so perhaps than the police department. Thank you. Thank you very much Tracy for your sharing. Okay I'm going to end public comment at this point. And do we want to look at the sewer snow and ice bylaws? I'm sorry. Lynn. I can raise my hand now sorry. I wasn't part of the full discussion at GOL on this. But I really can't remember but the following issue comes up for me. Wherever we plow we're liable. And so if we extended plowing and then we didn't do it properly then I think we assume liability. And so I really support the town sticking with its own property because at least at that point we haven't taken on more liability. I could be wrong about the liability but I'm concerned about it. Good point Mandy. So a couple of things. And this has been, this is a comment related to a couple of things. Right now the enforcement in non-criminal is only by police officers so I think we should put DPW into that somehow. And I think we should put inspectional services into that. And I would actually think about in looking at a broader thing and this is where public nuisance comes into play that CRC started looking at the public nuisance bylaw and in doing that look looking for obstructions on sidewalks and all the only thing we have is snow and ice bylaw really except out of code or something. And it specifically talks about snow and ice. Removal of snow and ice from sidewalks. The title is snow and ice. I can put the bylaw up. And then depositing snow on public ways. No person shall deposit snow or ice on any way sidewalk or public parking place. And so it's really specific to just snow and ice instead of a more general obstruction of sidewalks. And so I'm curious whether beyond adding inspectional services so inspectional services can't write for an obstruction of a sidewalk based on this bylaw unless the obstruction is snow or ice. If it's a tree hanging across it that no one cleared up or frankly what's more problematic in our neighborhood bushes overrunning the sidewalk where you can't actually use the sidewalk because the property owner has not trimmed the side of the bushes say you can't write a ticket for that under this bylaw. And so it it should we be thinking more broadly about sidewalk and public way obstruction versus just snow and ice removal and then thinking about adding in inspectional services to that so that they can write a ticket under this bylaw for that obstruction or and then DPW because they're the ones that clear the snow and ice so if they're going to be the one going out that's who I call I don't think to call the cops right. And so I think if we add more enforcers we might actually be able to enforce the bylaw a little bit better and if we make it more broad. Good points Mandy Lynn. Adding to that issue bushes and so forth is also sign of a line of sight when you are trying to make a turn in an automobile and at what point does somebody not trim off their bushes and their trees obstructing the line of sight for safety. Could also a good point Anna. Hi I apologize I probably should have raised my hand during public comment and so I will I will make this as a comment and not as a discussion necessarily. I would really love to see this removed from police enforcement I do not think this is something our police officers need to be responding to. And I think that the it makes sense to have it be inspection services and DPW however I also then question capacity and making sure that this would be not adding undue capacity and either of those departments but I feel very strongly that this should not be something that people are calling the police to respond to. Thank you. I agree with Anna or calling Crest this isn't what Crest should be. Could it be something that is combined with our existing traffic our traffic officers? I mean I don't want to add staff. So instead of police officers the traffic enforcement officers I think we reference them some other places instead of I mean they are technically police officers I think I'm not sure but. They have certain powers. They have certain powers yeah. I'm happy to try and propose some sort of amendment that would expand it and and do those changes if people would like so that we could see some actual changes. I think that'd be great. I do too. It's not going to happen this meeting. Yeah now I understand that yeah so I guess we're asking you to go away and do your work kid and come back at our next meeting with this. Does that feel comfortable to people? And I'm going to suggest and if you have additional things that you think might need to be added to get those to Mandy directly and not to anybody else in the committee. So with that are we ready to move on from Snow and Ice right now? I think so. Okay then I'm going to suggest we I'm going to make a motion to adopt the December 14th 2022 and the January 4th 2023 minutes. Is there a second? A second and my comment is I just want to thank whoever wrote I think it was the really long minutes they were amazing. I don't know how that person did it. Now we're really grateful. And so we'll vote on that starting with myself. Yeah I'm an I, Lynn. Abstain. I wasn't part of the committee. Okay. Mandy Jo. I. Michelle is absent and Jennifer. I write the motion passes three in favor one absent and one abstention. And let me see. We've had public comment and thank you Tracy because you brought up some clearly important things for us to think about. I think are there any announcements or I know we've gotten well any announcements. Okay and there are no unanticipated items. The Tibetan proclamation has come up but that will be at our next meeting. Mandy. That was going to be my question. Are there any other proclamations? We should look at the list to make sure we're on top of the I guess the March proclamations at this point. Yeah and there's an early April 1 and I just want to ask if I've referred it because I've lost track. And that's the one for child abuse awareness week. I don't think that's come out yet. Okay I will refer that then. So both of those can be on the next agenda. And who has that list of proclamations? I basically. Sharepoint packet. Let me pull it up. Yeah. If I can pull it up quickly. Hold on. Good idea. I'm just curious because that's something I obviously need to have. I don't know how up to date it is. I know Jennifer Moisten used to do that for us and we do have the Black History Month tonight. So I don't know how up to date it's been but Black History Month Chinese New Year was March is Tibetan Day. April we've done Arbor Month in the past the Child Abuse Awareness and Prevention Month and Jewish American Heritage Month. Jennifer I think that was something we thought about adding. The Jewish American Heritage Month in April. Yeah didn't that's what Dorothy sponsored last year? Did we have one last year? So we'll have to find that one. Okay so that one would be April too. Who sponsored Arbor Month? We haven't shown that one in a while. So it would be a request to public shade tree if they're doing anything and want a proclamation. Okay I think in March we should have my birthday up there. The last Arbor Month one is probably 2021 so we might not have done it last year although these haven't been updated. Okay so I need to send you the Child Abuse Awareness and I will also send Dorothy the Jewish Heritage and see if she wants to do it again. Mandy your hand is still forward. That's residual sorry. I'm if we're all settled I think we can adjourn the meeting. Jennifer's got her hand up. Sorry Jennifer. No just quickly I just wanted to um I think she's not here but thank Michelle very much for her services chair last year and also Pat thank you if this is how you chair when post-surgery you're you're going to do great. It's an act second to both of those comments Jennifer. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah Michelle's done some really good work. I just want to say I was on I've been on GOL since the council started and it's been an incredible committee in many ways and used to be an incredible amount of fun and I think it's gotten lost in the weeds like many things but I really appreciate this particular group of people and the energy and and humor that you bring and the willingness to say what you're thinking and I want to thank Athena for her artwork and Kelly I believe is taking minutes today is that accurate and if that's true thank you Kelly and with that I'm going to do what I can ask this. I have a question. Do we have to do an annual rules of procedure review? Oh I think we do. I think we're supposed to. Yeah so that should come up on the next agenda. I think one of the best ways to start that is to pull the whole council and ask for a response to you Pat or to Jennifer one of the vice chairs and say what rules do you want reviewed and what changes would you make to them? So not just you know get a list of I want these three but have the councillors say and here's my suggested change too. And Pat I'll do the polling but when would you like those by? Well we have it on the agenda for the 15th so I'd like to see it well it has to be in month by Monday at nine it wouldn't be great if we could Monday the 11th 12. Why don't we make it Friday? That'd be great Friday the 9th 10th I'm sorry yeah see I can't do simple focus things. Okay and I'll have them sent Pat and Athena. Yeah that that would be great. And I appreciate it Lynn so you'll pull the whole council. Yeah I suggest mentioning it during the GOL report on the 6th. Yes okay yeah and and then it's just a compiled document in rule number order here's the rules people wanted us to look at and the changes. Right right okay. And then finally I want to just thank Pat and Jennifer for stepping up for leadership for the GOL. Yeah I'm glad to be back I was on GOL for one year and it was actually one of the best ways for me to know what was coming to the council when. Yeah and I want to thank Jennifer I mean I feel like we have the possibility of collaborating as liaisons on the housing trust and this is just one more way which I'm glad to. Yeah I agree. All right with that with my new power. In an hour Pat. In an hour don't let it go to your head. Get out of here go away adjourn. Bye bye thank you. Thanks. Athena thank you I'll see you in a while I can't hear you. I'll swing by in a little while. Okay thank you. Bye bye.