ou know that if if we were going to pull together something with seven people to come up with street lighting policy they should be working with what do the shields look like what's the glare and all these issues to have them assign that work when the staff and the manager is already working on it those two seem completely inconsistent to me and I didn't mind a task force I again I wasn't sure this rises to a level of such a high priority that we want to create another committee to work on it so for both of those reasons I pulled it off the consent agenda because the two things together didn't make sense to me and asking him to in general develop a policy and come back I'd be fine but not as as described in this specific memo honor so I'm going to try to tackle some of these and then if it's okay I'd like Mandy as the other sponsor to be able to respond before we go to more questions we would have loved for it to pass out a TSO that would have been great right like this is not the this is not the way that the sponsors wanted it to go of course the discussion in TSO was really generative and led us in this direction in terms of you know thinking through how bylaws come forward and how we move in that I'm really looking forward to the goals discussion because I think that what this has unearthed for a lot of us is how we set goals and how prescriptive those are however I do not think it is fair for us to hold certain items to processes that we might change in the future so I think that if we change the goals process for 2020 what year we're going into for 2024 then it would be absolutely you know it'd be fair to say okay well this is not in the goals so it's not going to go forward but the way that the goals have been written in this year it allows for councillor leeway and you know it allows for us to bring things forward that we care about and that our constituents ask us to carry forward so for me the the the fact that this item isn't specifically in the 2023 goals is not a precursor to getting it done and I actually really worry about the precedent that it sets to say if something isn't in the town manager goals the town councillor can't work on it if it needs town manager support right I think that that precedent scares me a bit in terms of how we're ever going to get anything done but I think that the other part of this is and it gets a bit to Kathy's question which is that this is that the motions motions is based on right so town manager can develop a policy what we were trying to get at with that language was here's a start you know and if we consulted a lot with with TPW on this on the development of this this is none of this is a surprise to TPW right about what's in the bylaw what's in the policy but if they decide to shift they decide to shift Mandy's going to tackle the task force part of it but really I just wanted to highlight based on doesn't equal present the same bylaw and yeah I think ultimately I just I caution us for limiting things that aren't directly in the town manager goals in terms of getting of what we can move forward I think that that's something that yeah I would would stop a lot of our work and and limit us as councillors and bringing things forward and allow Mandy to or not allow ask Mandy to continue what I was saying so I'm going to take out of line for a moment maybe you're going to speak to the task force I'll just speak to the task force so the task force charge is in there because the policy that we presented to TSO that is referenced in the motion to direct the manager includes the formation of a task force it is the motion is not directing the manager to form a task force it is not requiring that the manager come back with a policy that includes forming a task force it's just part of this iterative process that we went through for the last year and a half resulted in this policy can do one thing but a task force or some something potentially given the the processes we've been following for the last year and a half we recognized that certain parts of the original proposed policy required more conversation at a more community conversation and that's where the task force was going and that's where it came up back to TSO and so that's there as part of if TSO had voted out a recommendation to adopt the policy that was in front of TSO that would have included forming the council forming a task force and so the reason the task force is in the packet is because it's sort of part of that original presentation that would then may or may not come back from a manager because he could he would come out with his own policy which his proposal if this goes forwards may or may not include more than what our policy did it may include a number of the things that the task force would have done it may not um but that's why the task force is in there right now Lynn may I make a quick note yes the policy that comes back from the town manager would would go back to TSO to continue that review process with input from finance committee and then it would go to GOO before it comes back to the council for a vote Andy yes so I uh want to speak for a moment as a member of TSO who spent a lot of time on this was not a cosponsor but I want to make it very clear that I am not speaking for TSO I'm always speaking of my own impressions from having spent that much time on it this is not just a dark skies policy it is a policy that is trying to look at a number of issues having to do with street lights that have frankly have never been visited because the original street light policy was really a budget cutting policy and not anything else and this is a lot more and it's recognizing not only is there the dark skies policy which we've heard all about from the advocate for that perspective but there are also substantial other health issues health for human beings as well as health for wildlife including birds and part of the problem with street lights and I found this just when I was canvassing as a candidate and spoke to somebody who raised the issue unsolicited I said what are your concerns that you want to share with me and that was one of them because he has a light that shines in his bedroom window and it's hard to sleep at night and it has to do with the height of the street light the brightness of the street light and the fact that the street light is not shaded and he said he's lived with it for long enough and he wanted to bring it to my attention as a counselor so the policy is really dealing with a lot of those issues that he cited the brightness the location and the questions of the color of the light and the intensity of the light I think that what my concern was in the way the policy was beginning to develop is it was getting very technical in how it was stated as to what the standards would be for the street lights to be purchases opposed to saying we want you to purchase street lights that provide the safe lighting but tend to these issues and the town manager came forward with the suggestion that he would be willing to take a stab at trying to develop with the help of you Mr. Mooring Guilford Mooring the policy so I thought that that was a very good suggestion and that's why I'm going to support this this request from the co-sponsors and the last thing that well I think all the task force I am a little bit nervous about task force but is the general policy not just about this one and that is I think that we underestimate how much time it takes our staff to oversee boards and committees and the amount of time that gets put into things like just keeping minutes getting meetings posted and everything else I think about DPW administrative staff and what they do to support the TS the attack and so I was curious as to whether it was possible to either combine with another existing body or replace an existing body so that we don't have yet another existing body and I do think that's a live issue but I really would and perfectly willing to let that be part of what being referred to the town manager so I do support what is done on the floor tonight for those reasons Jennifer yeah I guess I'm concerned about kind of what what struck me about this was how the process by which something gets elevated to a task force and I know that we've been discussing this but there there are so there are issues that you know well I guess when we talk about like what issues we heard when we were campaigning and there were other issues that you know many that were very consistent that we've been you know also talking about on the council and that you know I know that there was a suggestion I I think Pam you know maybe it was the first council meeting um about a housing task force to address some you know issues that have been talked about by you know many many people in town and that we were told that you know there were two that would be too time consuming there were too many task force would take up too much you know staff you know energy and resources and when I read the description of this task force there's like 10 items on it I mean it seems incredibly time consuming so how did sort of street lights and I know that we've just discussed the process but it's still something doesn't quite feel right about how this jumped to the front of the line and now there's you know looks like there could well be this very involved task force that a lot of will take a lot of tasks staff time and technical skills when there seems like other issues that many people in town have been concerned about for a long time you know and we were told well there's not the resources for a task force so that's my concern Dorothy well my my question was one that um of total ignorance um I don't know how a task force gets created I guess I didn't know that the town council could create it on its own um for the things that people have been mentioning you know they after I put my hand up people began to clarify this a little bit more but so I really like to know how does the task force get created how is it staffed and what are the rules that's it can the sponsors respond to some of the questions that are asked I think we've got answers to them sure um so I think just to shed a little bit of clarity uh I think what Mandy was saying is that this motion does not necessitate does not uh require a task force to be formed if Paul decides that that's something that he wants to recommend I believe the council would have to still vote to authorize a task force um and if he doesn't decide that he wants that then that won't come back to us um where the task force came from was from the significant community engagement that we did so that was where that idea that's why that idea was placed into the bylaw was because um the folks we had been engaging with were basically you know we we kind of got to this point where um we were we were spinning in circles right we we weren't able to really find that middle ground and so the and I want to credit Mandy for her um immense community engagement work here with folks from with residents who wanted to engage they they said all right look we need to pull in experts from different areas to the table to develop this um and I think that you know if if this motion passes and if Paul takes the lead on it I think he also has different mechanisms for doing that engagement it might not be a task force um but just to give folks clarity on why that and where that task force idea came from it was out of the efforts for um deeper community engagement work um and again it does not that is not a requirement of this motion if Paul decides to do that he would bring it back to the council um I believe in the council would vote to to create the task force much like we did for the um similar to the solar bylaw working group that would be that that'd be the closest I think that that I could give you as a reference point thank you so you're just saying the council has the power to create a task force that was my question okay yes we do Pam thank you I think it's it's really good timing because we're as I said before we're studying the the uh town managers goals and I think we've been told a number of times to keep those goals fairly general so that it doesn't restrict the town manager in how to to tackle them how to address them and I'm I'm thinking as we go into our discussion specifically on that topic that in fact we may want to be much more specific because we may want to insert the need for a streetlight policy into into what we're asking for um I think it's great that you brought this forward put all the work into it I think it's just what's what's catching in my head is is just the process of it so let's be more specific with the town manager goals and that will have the same effect as coming forward with a very specific um topic for him to work on michelle yeah it sounds to me like we're having two different discussions here and I will uh admit that the process discussion is getting me a little fired up because I think there is a legitimate concern about the way that we move through process here and whose initiatives get you know taken to the level of the possible creation of a task force I myself have tried to initiate such task forces um I have the reparations successor committee that I'm trying to have created and feeling some you know various pushback on that so I know I that I'm personalizing it a little bit but just to make the point that we all have these things that we care about and I think that that's wonderful and that's why we're elected officials but that we also have to be really mindful of um the sort of equity within the council in terms of using resources of the town and I am curious actually to hear from Paul on this um I've been following it a little bit I thought that Paul without us had the authority to create or put a group together even and and maybe I'm wrong about that but I I thought that he could do that without even if he decided that that was the best way to move forward that he doesn't need our permission necessarily to do that so I wanted to hear just from Paul if he's so willing in relation to this like what the thought process has been if there's one that is there Paul sure so um it this came out of um I think we're still learning how to do things and I think you're all raising really important questions and points about how do the goals intersect with initiatives that counselors want to bring to the table which might by outside the goals process and I think we're seeing that play out in multiple different ways um and and I think no counselor wants to give up their their autonomy or ability to bring an idea forward this one this idea was voted by the town council to refer it to the TSO committee so it gave it some standing it was in TSO where there was a struggle with with how to sort of reconcile all the different concerns we had the TSO committee had just gone through a pretty um laborious but successful process on doing sewer regulations and water regulations if you recall and that was done with a council sponsor plus or a council lead a counselor who was in the lead with one of our staff members Amy Rusecki and that seemed to me to be a pretty successful process and that's what I had in mind when we I said maybe the staff can help on this I did not have in mind establishing a task force I think you're right the town manager can establish a task force as can the um the the council anybody can can start a committee what and I think the um a point was made earlier that staffing these committees is quite intense so we tend not we tend to I tend to try to avoid them if we if unless it's really compelling reason to do it um so I did not have in mind to create a task force for this in particular I could see the council wanting to establish a task force when it when a work product comes to them and they start to want to engage with the public more about what it looks like and you want to have some advocates or some people who were more sort of knowledge experts who were going to be able to convey what was happening to the public but my view was very fairly simple was which was let's talk to the people who are operating this the street lights and see what they would come up with looking at all the work that had already gone through in the education that counselors had already done uh and see if we can model that model it on the um prior successful um development of the water and sewer regulations. Thanks Paul. Anika. Thank you just wanted to chime in about the um the task force also uh so we had you know we have the process which you know many members of TSO and even council has has said throughout time that it was very prescriptive. The task force also originated and came through some other concerns which were safety um that was primary primarily one because you had a lot a lot of concern about whether it was loss of lighting or the need for additional lighting and so this came down to um better lighting right more secure lighting where you could see sidewalks so you know for instance the difference of how this can impact people who rely on public transportation just to navigate the community um to get to work to buy food just basic needs those who are relying on public transportation late at night and for other reasons other than um you know leisurely strolls and walks so of course the you know tack and some others are a great concern about um where lighting would go even though the initial proposal did not add lighting it just changed the type of lighting and coverage that we had so that was one of the major reasons for the suggestion of the task force to my understanding to really be able to potentially deal with those issues separately and then make sure that they're inclusive of you know people who would need to be at the table who you know making sure that there are people who represent um people who depend on planes trains uber and taxi and their feet and bikes to to get around as well make sure that that um they're at the table and I think because of this is something that really impacts the majority of all residents regardless of which side you might be leaning to that that was really my understanding and and also it was you know sent back to TSO with that recommendation to be sure to work with the community members that were bringing up those concerns that really related to um the for or related to forming a task force so I just want to add that. Melanie um I'm also seeing two conversations happening here and I want to acknowledge both because I really do want to acknowledge what Pam um has said about the process and I think that's something that's really important um and something we are discussing in TSO um I'll speak to that in a moment but I also want to acknowledge that a lot of work has gone into uh this and we didn't have that any other process other than what within which Anna and Maddie have managed to have worked so I just want to keep the two things separate I did vote no on that final thing because my understanding at that time was and what I was hearing from Paul is that they appreciated the fact that Anna and Maddie Jo did the work because the town staff didn't have the work and what I had in mind was that uh to continue doing the work that is being done in TSO but with more um engagement of the community in the besides public comment have a way of listening to people who use the roads and biking and so forth and also um with better coordination from the tax committee as a whole because we were hearing from individuals and there was a lot of lack of clarity within the tax committee what is their role with respect to this bylaw so there was a lot of confusion and I was hoping that but given that the majority of the committee voted and what I'm hearing Paul now say is that something um he's comfortable taking on with the staff leading I'm okay with that but in the future I do feel that the discussion we're having in TSO is around there's a lot of staff burnout and council burnout when on the one hand and yet we also want to encourage councillors to come up with proposals outside of the town manager goals and so what that process might entail because the discussion we had when this was sent to the TSO committee was very limited I think there were a few of us who questioned is this a priority in this but we didn't really have a framework to have a robust conversation and it was sent to the TSO well the TSO will decide whether they want to have this conversation or not and when it was in TSO we were told that well the town council wants us to discuss it and provide a report it almost felt like we had to go through the process so there wasn't really a good process and I'm just using that as an example but really moving forward I think and that's what we are working on right now is to have a legislative guide that would allow this would have real clear expectations from sponsors and especially like new councillors who don't know when they come when they want to propose something what should go in the sponsors memo to the town council and the sponsors could include questions could include the problem the solving and where is this coming from why is this important and then the main thing is that the town council would be able to ask the town managers specifically in terms of what are the resources what resources are needed needed including existing staff or consultants and what is the timeline for staff to work on this given their current priorities so like having a process where we as a council can look at proposals outside of town manager goals but in conversation with the town manager who can look at where the staff is otherwise we are all putting in our ideas with putting the town manager in an awkward position to not be able to say no to anything so that's a discussion we need to have separately is all I'm saying and we are working on that in DSO honor thank you yeah I mean I think one I'm wondering how many if anyone's counting how many times we have as a collective body have said the word process tonight um because I think it's been a lot but I think you know Michelle to your point I agree that or what I'm taking from your point is that we need and and from Shalini's point as well is that there isn't a consistent consistent way that this is happening I do think it's a bit of an unfair framing to insinuate and I don't know that this is what you were insinuating but um I want to just clarify that I don't think that there was anything um special about you know the way that Mandy and I went through this that warranted different attention than other proposals have gotten and so I do want to if that was the framing I do think it's a bit of an unfair one because the way that this happened it could very much still be could have been right it's not this is not the way it is happening but the council could have said no to this right this wasn't an automatic thing we were developing this bylaw um or editing this bylaw and bringing it back to the committee it was in and that was where this change happened we weren't bringing it together we weren't bringing it to the council as a standalone separate thing um and I think that it's a valid question to ask why proposals for other task forces haven't been you know brought to the the council for decision I think that that's an indication that we don't have a process um but I I do think that just to be clear that this this was part of something that the the committee and the council would have voted on and would have absolutely had a say on um it was not a sure thing in any way shape or form and and at this point you know it's with the way that this motion evolved um it's absolutely not something that is a is a is what the council would be recommending paul do right we're just we're saying paul look at this and do what you what you need to do not um paul do these exact things I hope that helps to clarify thanks so using my privilege as a counselor um this brings up many issues for me one is very much the process issue that various counselors have raised and it also brings up for me how do we in fact then balance things that are brought up at any point in the year by counselors which is their right with an already established set of goals that we've asked the manager to accomplish and or at least work on and you know we're going to get to you know looking what that looks like both through the evaluation and the goal process so part of me wants to say I want to hold any decision on this until we have the goals discussion so that we look at it in light of the goals and in light of what do we as a council agree on the priorities of where we want the town manager and our staff and our time to spend on what priorities and that you know that really does get back to something I I know shallonies you know worked on and talked about all along so I'm not sure where I stand and it it has not it's separate from whether it has anything to do with street lights okay I separate from that that's I'm raising these questions okay with regard to street lights I would hope that a group like tack would actually take it on public ways take it on and not create another task force or committee that has to be staffed I look at you know various committees that have been created and the amount of staffing that has gone into them and it's a lot so I'm I'm just kind of sharing some thoughts I haven't come up with a decision thank you Anna retroactively holding counselors to a process or a list or something that was created or that was not in play when they brought emotion forward is absolutely unfair it is absolutely unfair when when we tried to do this around counselor compensation and it's unfair now it is absurd to say that we should be now taking away someone's someone's ability to bring something forward when it's our fault there wasn't a process but we can't now say well we should have had it so we're not going to let you pass this until we do have it in play and then you can bring it back that that to me is is undermining what we do have currently which we which the council the sponsors of this myself and Mandy Joe followed and I and to your second point Lynn tack is not the appropriate group for this to go too slowly because of the content of the street lights policy this is not just a transportation issue it encompasses far more than that which is why are the proposed task force was broader than that as well so that was why we didn't we discussed that as a possibility and ended up not based on the nature of the the bylaw but my main point here is I I think it's it is absurd for this council to start saying to counselors and I held this to other I said this exact same thing when we talked about council council compensation and finance it is absurd to say you followed the process as we explained it to you but we decided we don't like that process and want to fix it and so we're not going to do the thing that you brought forward even though you followed the rules so I I think that if we start down that road it's I mean that's just awful to me Mandy Joe I want to talk about the process we've already followed about a year and a half ago Anna and I per the rules of procedure brought to the council a proposal to adopt a bylaw that proposal per the rules of rules of procedure was presented in a form adoptable by this council there was a motion this council passed that motion that motion was to refer to TSO review and recommendation of that proposed policy TSO discussed that referral for over a year in fact last this past august about four months ago TSO voted a recommendation on that referral that recommendation was to adopt the to recommend the council adopt the proposed street lights policy when that recommendation was brought to this council after the full process was followed the council then had a motion to send back to TSO the proposed policy that TSO had already recommended the council adopt for further conversation and another report and recommendation TSO went to tack as the second referral requested tack came back with some comments we went back and addressed those comments and TSO made another vote another recommendation that is the recommendation we are sitting here talking about tonight a recommendation from a committee this council tasked with making a recommendation and TSO's recommendation was the second recommendation was to recommend that the council direct the manager to develop a policy and that is the recommendation we are supposed to be talking about tonight we followed the process the process as set out in the rules the motions as this council passed have been reported on yet most of this conversation has dealt with not should we direct the manager to do that or not but about do we like the process that's a completely different conversation we should be talking about the TSO's recommendation which was a 4-1 vote thank you for correcting us Shalini um to to recommend that the council direct the manager to do this if the council does not want to direct the manager to do that that is fine that is the council's prerogative but the process has been followed the council may not like the process it may hate the process it may love the process who knows but the process has been followed per our rules Kathy I I think what you're seeing here Mandy is for me anyway a five-year learning curve that when it first came up I should have just said no that this wasn't you know I understand what you're saying when it first came up don't refer it as Paul said we gave it a status by referring I am totally ready to vote on this yes or no tonight I'm totally ready and what I raised is I just didn't want it on the consent agenda because we are referring a development of a policy to the town manager and that I wasn't going to raise the larger issues because I think you're right and I'm going to be smarter I think in the next couple years I've started looking at rules of procedure more carefully to figure out when I should use something you know a couple of votes we've taken I didn't know what the number of votes were on something but I'm getting better at it I said I'm a slow learner on the the rules part but on this part I wish I had voted no at the beginning because of everything else I thought we as a council needed to do and we as a town needed to do so I'm just saying I'm ready to take a vote on this I'm going to put the motion on the floor and have a second and then people can continue to speak to it the motion is to direct the town manager to develop an updated streetlight policy based on the streetlight policy proposed by councillors Devlin Gauthier and Hannah Keith is there a second second sorry go ahead Andy you got it Steinberg seconds okay Michelle I think we're we're not having a linear discussion and that sometimes happens and it was helpful for me to hear like what I would consider the method or the process that happened and I understand that it's our responsibilities counselors to follow the reporting on these initiatives and understand sort of what the process has been and it sounds like Mandy when you say we follow the process what you mean is that our rules the process was followed I am just a little bit personally activated by the use of the word absurd because it makes it hard for me to like express myself in the face of that kind of language but I understand I think I guess I actually got lost a little bit Anna with what you were saying I wasn't following where like what point did you hear that we were asking you to go back like I'm genuinely confused about this conversation and at what point that was communicated when you use that it's absurd that this council would ask that we go back and follow a process that you know so was there something else that I missed or are you just talking about like the general comments that were being expressed may I respond since it was so sure so I apologize that that my word choice set set a block for you I what I was trying to say it wasn't go back I think what I was trying to say is that I do not think that it is a fair expectation for us to retroactively set rules I think that because we don't have a process for the establishment of a task force or the you know all the things that were stated that folks would want to fix about our process I don't think it's fair to hold a bylaw that was created before we fix the process that followed the process the rules that we do have to then say you now need to follow rules that don't exist yet right I think that that's what I was saying I personally found out that's the part that I found absurd because my brain was having trouble wrapping my head around why someone would have you know we'd followed the the way that we were told to bring measures forward why now that was incorrect because we uncovered gaps in our process I hope that clarifies what I was intending with that thanks Shalini yeah just to clarify I was very clear in saying that there is a process and then there is the bad and I was not I was very okay okay so yeah okay so that's that but I do want to say in terms of TSO followed the process and from my perspective they were lapses in terms of the community engagement because I was asking for the safety and and I'm sure you did your due diligence and but the fact of the matter is that we did hear from people about the safety impact and on certain streets and and when that was raised that's why it went back so it's not like it was just arbitrarily sent back it came to the council and then it was sent back so it sounded like it was just arbitrary going back and forth some of it is the lack of process but the fact of the matter is that TSO processed it to the best of the TSO information that was given by the sponsors and then when we heard there was new information about impacting safety in the council we decided to send it back and have a more thorough conversation with TAC and then in between by then TAC was confused what is their role and all of this is not to put any blame on anyone and again like where I stand I'm supporting the recommendation that's the motion that's at the table if the town manager is comfortable taking it on that's on him and I think that is something I've heard we need as a town because there is no policy so that's great that all the work has been done but I still maintain that there is no process again that is separate discussion and hopefully we will have a robust conversation and pass something that's going to be helpful to the next council to move forward in a more systematic manner. Jennifer. Yes I mean this in a friendly way but actually as I recall I think three of us didn't vote to refer it so yeah but you know but we followed the process so I think you know Kathy was saying she wish she hadn't and I think maybe Kathy and I maybe Shalini didn't but the majority did so that thought went into it but I have another question are we voting now specifically to authorize the task force or just for the town manager to decide if that's what he wants. The motion is is only to refer this to the town manager to develop it it has nothing no task force is assumed. Okay thank you. Dorothy. We had many discussions on the issue of streetlights we had some areas where we had quick agreement but the areas where we had disagreements were to do with pedestrian safety particularly at night around crosswalks bus stops and those things so I believe that sponsors said they would sever the placement of the lights from the policy but then we got into the color and the height and the shielding and lots of very technical things at that point although I was going along with it understanding it I felt and I thought Andy did join this discussion we began to feel so maybe this isn't what we were supposed to be doing as town counselors getting into such technical specificity that it needed to be taken have more staff input and now they had had staff input but it needed more that we didn't feel that we could you know new enough and I certainly don't want to learn enough to know all about streetlights I've got other things in my life so I don't have a problem with the current situation where the town manager has said okay I will take care of it I will look into it he'll deal with the staff because that gets to the point where I felt that you know technical stuff like that is not what we're here for all right so I felt that the things were coming to a reasonable conclusion that's it. Pat quickly I had trouble with the beginning of our discussion where people were saying I didn't get something and they did and I need us to look at ourselves individually all of us to figure out how you participated in that because it undermines the workings of the council and I'm tired of it but I'm going to do we are it's clear we need to get into the discussion that GOL is bringing forward about specificity in the town manager goals so I am going to call the question. Question's been called that does not require a second yes it does is there a second second okay we move immediately to the vote on the question being called and then we move to the actual question. Pat? Aye. Anna? No. Lynn Griezmer is an aye. Mandy Jo? No. Anika? Michelle? No. Dorothy Pam? Yes. Pam Rooney? Yes. Kathy Shane? Yes. Andy Steinberg? Yes. Jennifer Tob? Yes. Alicia Walker? No. Shalini Balmilne? No. Yeah I have it. No you need a two-thirds vote. Oh it's two-thirds I'm sorry we continue with the discussion.  Thank you I just had a really quick question also about process and it's just that so if we were to pass this motion to ask the town manager to create the policy would there be further consultation of the council? Yes can I answer that it comes back to TSO after the town manager does it so it would go through the full process again Alicia it would go back to TSO go to GOL go to all of the all the places. So just for clarity the main reason for it to be happening this way is more so that he can manage the smaller details with staff input and do sort of that tedious work that isn't necessarily something that we can do more of. I mean you call it tedious I was having a great time with it I it's more so that TSO believed that the town manager staff had the expertise to to write the policy with the level of complexity that it required. Alicia any question any further questions? Sorry yes just one for follow-up so when it comes back to the council to go back through TSO it will come as a recommendation from TSO then to the council and the council will have another opportunity to sort of vote and possibly change or amend things in what is recommended from the town manager and also from TSO that's correct it goes to it'll go straight to TSO with input from finance and then it gets a review from GOL before it comes back to the council okay thank you that is very helpful okay are there any other questions okay there's a motion on the floor the motion's been made and seconded the motion is to direct the town manager to develop an updated street light policy based on the street light policy proposed by Councillor Devlin-Gothier and Hanneke it's been made and seconded we'll go with the vote yes is there a timeline we're giving you to do this no may I when I when I wrote the motion it was you know the council reorganizes in January and then when they elect a president then the president makes appointments to committees so I wasn't sure if the council wanted to include a deadline for the town manager because of all of that would put it out at the end of January or the beginning of February and we don't have a council calendar yet or we're expecting to bring that to the council I think at the next meeting so I don't even have a meeting date to put in there but if you'd like to include okay you can if you want you can always ask for amendment okay okay the motion's been made seconded we start with Anna Devlin-Gothier aye Lynn Griezmer is an aye Jane Mandy Joe Hanneke aye Anika Lopes aye Michelle Miller aye Dorothy Pam yes Pam Rooney yes Kathy Shane no uh Indy Steinberg aye Jennifer Tobbe yes Alicia Walker yes Shalini Balmillan yes Pat D'Angeloz aye it passes a with 12 in favor and one opposed we're going to move on to the town manager evaluation we have two options besides we can either discuss this or people can send me on an individual basis their request for changes and feedback I'm open for discussion I request we discuss I'm sorry okay yes please do Mandy Joe so I want to thank Lynn for the work there is a summary evaluation statement that is on the first two page of this document of 21 pages but then it goes into listing all of the policy goals and then making a quote evaluation summary under each of the policy goals and management goals it struck me as very strange that nearly every summary quoted was mostly quoted or the bulk of nearly every summary was a verbatim quote from counselor Griezmer's evaluation with very little added from any of the other 12 counselors that completed evaluations of the manager such that I can't at this point recommend any specific changes because I think nearly every evaluation summary needs massive changes because it fails each one fails to generally summarize the entire council's statements okay Dorothy I just couldn't figure out which was your summary now I have the thing in front of me that may be your summary that has up at the top a little in small print for the purpose of this document this evaluation terms should be defined as it defines commendable satisfactory needs improvement could that be it no it doesn't have your name on it and it doesn't say summary the it's the item that you should have been looking at is a memo to Paul Backelman and it's from Lynn Griezmer dated November 20th it's possible I didn't get it I I've gone through the pages trying to sort them out and then I had a chance to read the where you amalgamated the counselors which took way more than an hour and a half okay but I haven't come across it lately is it possible that you could send it to me again yes we will make sure that we do it's in a link also from the memo but there should have been a copy of it in the package delivered to you the package that was delivered included the compilation of all the town counselor evaluations and ratings and each counselor evaluation and ratings it didn't include the memo but I did send you Dorothy I sent everyone in the council a direct link to the compiled ratings and evaluation and the memo okay so I will get it from there thank you thank you very much okay Kathy I Mandy basically said my overarching comment fine however I have but I don't know what would be helpful to you because I know what else you've been working on in the past week so I did go through all 13 of us and there were some interesting themes I thought emerge and I only call it a theme if at least two or three people said something you know if a lot of people were smartly terse this took me forever to write my paragraphs but I thought picking up on some of those would be helpful so I don't know whether you want us if we send you comments to say hear us some themes we saw because that would make us do the work that you just tried to do but you know so I would like to be constructive if possible rather than just go through rewrite this or too much of that so I also thought the other thing I saw among the 13 of us is that to varying extents we we picked out different aspects to write longer about them and I found a lot of them very interesting reading to see you know what people had focused on and there was a general theme of are we giving staff enough time to do the things we think are really important you know so it is is there either not enough staff are we pulling them off on other things so that was something that happened in different places and some of what we don't know might be behind the scenes there's more work going on than we know so so Lynn that was just my thought was what would be helpful given what you just had to do in reading lengthy evaluations and pulling together this memo Alicia so my comments are essentially the same also as Mandy Joe and Kathy that I just generally would have suggested changes to almost every summary and so I'm wondering if my question was pretty much the same as Kathy if it's helpful for us to send like recommendations as to what like we think would be helpful to include in the summary because some of them I just think were like incomplete didn't include certain things that I think should be included a few of them I didn't like I just didn't agree with how it was worded and would suggest those things and so would it be possible or how would we be able to sort of make those types of recommendations I think doing that on a council meeting might be a little bit too long and so maybe sending in recommendations to you and then is this possible to revisit it and would that work within our timeline in terms of the budget cycle and all other things we have going on generally what we what I've asked in the past is that you individually send me recommendations I can send you the word document to do that with or you can send it to me in any other way that you want I accept the criticism but I also want to share with you my own personal philosophy of how I was trained to do evaluations and that is that you start out by talking about the things that have gone well and then you move to the challenges and I think the things that have gone well are what I tried to summarize in my own evaluation and then in my own evaluation I use did move on to what I think are the challenges in the areas for improvement in the process I'm not I perfectly accept the fact that I have not captured everybody's so but I before people say yes I it's because I write evaluations by starting out with assuming nobody's going to read anything else even though the town manager has written I don't know a 69 page document uh that usually I start with some kind of something that recognizes what has been accomplished and then go on to the other if that is not the desire of the council then I um you know I stand corrected it's basically how I've approached for the last couple years Andy yeah I mean I have somewhat of the same concerns but I appreciate all of the evaluations that were written by all of the counselors I think everybody gave a lot of thought to it and I really appreciated being able to hear by our read I should say everybody's comments but I think that what got left out of it is a result of what we were doing and so in this a lot of this had to do with time I have to admit that I was very delinquent on getting started on it because I was so involved in the campaign to get reelected that I it sucked up all of my time and I by the time we got around to working on it I was pretty well cooked from the campaign but I did but when I did mine you know each paragraph I started by looking at what Paul had written and you know recognizing how much had happened and how much was successful and then of course I ended up as I think all of us did focusing on the pieces where we were concerned about what didn't happen but I don't think that that resulted in balance all of the time which I don't think there was any of our fault I don't think we did it intentionally but it was gets back to Lune's point that those of us who have done evaluations of employees in regular settings that know that it's important in doing an evaluation to give a balance and I wasn't sure that because of the time constraints and I so I really think that what was happening was really a problem of the amount of of faults in the process itself and you know a very complex process that because of the timing this year we had little time to deal with and we put the two together and we ended up with something and I appreciated the fact that Lynn was trying to strike a balance in between those all of those problems that I just cited I think what we do need to do is go back to the and not do anything tonight because I think we've learned a lot and we'll have a little bit more conversation I'm sure but to think about the point that Lynn was raising to look back at Paul's rather lengthy and complete self-assessment of what he did and our own concerns that were expressed in the collective set of documents from each counselor and see and then think about what is the best summary memo appropriate but to do that at 10 30 at night is not a good time to start right I just another thing I'm going to share with you as I was looking at the composite of all of the evaluations I received most well not really only about three evaluations arrived on time the rest arrived at various of the times during the week so I want to just be straightforward that you know I'm spent trying trying to get them in but I have seriously considered giving you the composite which I did give you and saying okay counselor X you write this one counselor Y you write this one and the other one write this one rather than you know me trying to summarize it all in the space of you know of two days of trying to write because I don't claim to have any magic about writing these I've done tons of evaluations but I also enjoy the richness of what people have to say and that's one reason why I think it's useful to both look at individuals and read them and then also look at the composite of what is said by 13 different people under each goal because it gives you a sense of the themes that you know that you see with each of the goals so and I think it's the sense of those themes that I'm hearing people didn't like and they also don't want me to write the first paragraph or whatever it is the way I do Anna so yeah I think I appreciate the amount of work that goes into it into this process and as one of the people who was late I think I can commiserate with how time intensive it is I'm also looking and I'm like oh man I wrote paragraphs and I guess I didn't really have to have other people sentences and so I think for me to be fair I'll probably always write paragraphs and then I can try to edit them down but I think for me this is we're going to use the the magical the the P word again right of this is something that I hope GOL can take up in the next term of what this process looks like because I think that it's not only time intensive time intensive for for us it's more time intensive the way that it's been conducted in terms of how it's compiled and so I think that GOL could do could do some serious work on that and it's I hope that it's something you know I see pat writing really really diligently so I'm hopeful that that gets brought in there but I think for me you know when you when you try to over focus on balance sometimes you lose really valuable feedback and it can it can feel almost disingenuine right because you you push things out that are really important and for me my frustration was it wasn't actually just that things that I had written that I feel are very very important weren't reflected but it was that I wasn't the only person that wrote them you know that they were in they came from multiple people and they they still weren't in there and so I think that for me you know and I respect that this sounds or I understand that this sounds like a critique on you're pulling things together and I want to note that I actually think it's more of an indictment of the process right that you had to go through and find those commonalities and pull things like that and so I think that I overall I'm not holding us to that for this year because I just went on a whole tirade about how I don't believe we should do that but I do think for next year I hope this is a process that we we shift and I appreciate I would appreciate having a word doc go out that we can add comments to and yeah I agree in the future having counselors take a section having whatever that looks the way that finance does for for budget presentations makes a lot of sense it could be I'm going to say this knowing that she is too far away to smack me but I you know that could be something that gol handles in the same way in in future years you can't reach me thank you Jennifer yeah I was just gonna say I think next going forward there has to be another process so that the you don't have to do you know the council president doesn't have to do the whole compilation I mean I just it's a huge task so thank you I can't I would not take would not take that on so I think anything we can do to not have it all be on one person and just the only thing I also want to just add when you you did point out in your summary that the maybe the one thing everybody agreed on and it was I think accommodation commendable across the board was Paul's relationship with the council so I think Paul that was a huge compliment or tribute that we all feel that you're responsive to us and for 13 counselors we don't agree on much that's I thought that was kind of extraordinary but you know pat yourself on the you know that really was a tribute to you so thank you so given the holiday coming up is it reasonable to expect that I can get comments back by next Tuesday can you specify I'm sorry oh I will send you the word doc tonight could can I clarification would you prefer comments that suggest changes of things we would like to see or what what types of comments would be most helpful for you in this process I mean obviously changes would like to see but sorry are you are you saying you want specific language we want added are you going to say that you want us to attempt to summarize other folks comments as well what would be more helpful to me track changes are most helpful sorry no I okay I understood that but are you are you looking for us when we go into this document should I be looking at everyone else's as well and saying this is my opinion of what the summary would be or am I just saying here are the elements of my personal review that I want to put in here and I know I think you need to look at all of the comments on that great thank you which is only fair yep thanks for and and to remember that our practice has been that we only that if only one person mentions that we don't go out of our way to bring that up but if we're looking for themes I think themes is the right word here okay Dorothy I just want to be sure that you your voice will still be unified throughout the document I don't like the idea of different counselors writing different items because that would be a mishmash that's that's the challenge but yeah so do I if I understand it if I feel that one of your answers was not sufficiently responsive to the remarks that were turned in by the counselors I will let you know is that correct yes and suggest ways in which you would have it changed okay using track changes or if you feel the summary should have had more qualifiers in it or you want to just write a whole new summary that's fine I do do want to say that this is two days before Thanksgiving you know and there's that I I think pushing this through at this moment is not a good idea that's what I'm saying I think we should extend the deadline and people can do what they can do now or they can do it but but you know let's talk about this being put together to you next week that's why I'm asking for Tuesday okay not tomorrow Tuesday a week from tomorrow thank you okay oh I'm sorry you didn't realize I was no yeah I yeah and I was busy tomorrow I forgot it all all calls I have my own plans thank you Kathy just just a quick comment and and the uh for those of who of us who want to do this I just knew what I'd written and I went looked at all 12 of the others to see how many people had a similar theme and different and where there were differences that was the easiest way I could say is there a nugget that's been missing or is there um something that's been overplayed because three people said this and four people said that it's just an easier way to read it if you know what you said mm-hmm yep okay uh we're going to move on to uh how many of your goals and Pat you want to talk about gol we talked about how specific my fingers on it you have to move it closer sorry at the last gol meeting is that okay um we started to talk about how much specificity should be in each goal uh and we started to look at the document um a little bit and that's and you can see some of your clear in the clean copy you'll be able to see some of the slimmed down version we didn't reach agreement on this it was a discussion and what we realized is we needed to come back and get input from all of you and paul it I know you were there for one of the meetings but I think that tonight we also need your input um it's you know the discussion we had previously about streetlights um and and the reaction people had and was too specific it was and then I'm thinking about well waste faller we have that in our climate action goals and we very specific about what we want and that didn't bother anybody so this is a real issue what is it that we're looking for when we create goals for the town manager do we want it to be a checklist or do we want it to be the implementation of policies like the carp or or the comprehensive housing policy what what is it that we want um so I'm going to open it up it a little bit to I mean I see honest hand so with your permission Lynn I'll just call on her okay um so I think uh so I was curious if joel had discussed and I apologize I wasn't be able to make it and so I'm trying to tread that line of not asking you to rehash your whole meeting and if you said we deliberated this is where we landed I accept um I was looking at when I was thinking about this um yesterday I was I was looking at different town manager evaluation processes across the state and what folks do and to be honest with you most of them are pretty inefficient as well but I think one of the things that I was that was very compelling to me was looking at there was a city oh no I wrote it down I'm not going to remember which one but I'll find it for you um and what they had was they oh Chatham Chatham had the structure where they had the objective as we do but then they had specific action items within it and they broke it out in a in a way that I think made it a little bit more doable right the objective is that the purpose statement is really what we're getting at the action items it looked like we're able to be modified much more easily throughout the year as time became more clear as you know folks not modified to add a bunch of stuff but modified to say like okay is it is implementation still the answer do we need to shift this um and it allowed for us not needing to go 12 months before saying oh wait we're not on track right they also um the MMA talks about and their best practices for this talks about having you know middle of the year um check-ins and things like that as part of the process but I was really I found the idea of having the purpose and the objective and then the action items really compelling um because I think that for for me when I look at our goals we go from big to small and big to small and that's really tough um and I think it also allows us to say like okay we can we can ask Paul about these action items to know how many roughly we should be putting that still gives us a little bit of wiggle room if something comes up during the year it gives us I think a better roadmap one of the things that came up in GLL was also mid-year a mid-year check-in and also periodic conversations about costs as things develop and and whether or not there are trade-offs that we need to make I would love it in any way if you would react Paul because this yeah I mean I think you characterize exactly what the what the what the dilemma is do you is it a checklist which is sort of you is it it's a it it's a binary you did it or you didn't right or is it a more of a you know are you looking for the chief executive officer to be doing something in this area I think the number of goals is really challenging I think if the the value of a goal in my mind is if I can get our towns if you can articulate the core core goals that you really care about and I can get every town staff member to say what that is you know if you walk up to somebody they know what it is and we're trying to do that with climate action and racial equity we say that all the time we want people to really embody that and feel that so I think for a lot of goals it's it's sort of like what do you what does the council want to accomplish this year so I think it's fair but then you also are using your goals to judge the performance of the town manager so it's sort of a too too prong thing and I think that that's where we sometimes struggle a little bit I think the idea that what Chatham does I'll talk with Jill and see if it works for her there you know they usually have a pretty good process so I think I think one thing is instructive is find out how other people have done this you know in the other councils have done it you know so yeah I don't think there's there's we have the most laborious process that I know of any any but any other manager I mean you know I will I look forward to reading the 212 pages at Thanksgiving choices are in laws or not um yeah so thank you bam I would love to have gel focus also on the timing of the whole thing the the evaluations are are noted as f y 2023 when in fact it is calendar year 23 that that the work is happening and yet the budgets aren't established until halfway through the calendar year for a fiscal year coming next and much of the funding doesn't even show up until June or actually for July 1 for many of the items that the town is supposed to accomplish so I think if we're really trying to be active and and proactive with putting our priorities forward is this the right time of year to do it or should it come prior to July 1 where July 1 to June 30 is the action year which doesn't if which is not in sync with our terms of office Anika yes so I touched on this in my evaluation and so one of the biggest challenges I found except in addition to the time was also that there are certain goals where we've asked for change um specifically the social justice um and equity racism we've asked for goals that are or housing whichever that are decades and centuries in the making and we've said do something within a year but we haven't been specific with that something um the something is not measurable so so I don't think that does other the council the manager of service in this regard because many things are up for interpretation and I do I think flexibility and leaving room for creativity is great but if we can't say you know for instance I'll just take health care which is probably we're immersed in regards to like people of color also specifically um black women and low income people is probably where we would have the highest percent of inequity and um you know for instance if there were something like that we want to have at least something implemented that maybe there is a database or something for you know people to either report on or something that works for EMTs or something at least that is specific that we're saying like here's a systemic issue um here is something measurable that we would like to see implemented so at least like in the period you can see you know what what has been done um you know some of it it was just like okay this is 500 years old and so what specifically what specific changes have we asked to see um so I think that you know that would be helpful I know that that really you know stumped me where it was like how how do we how do I give an evaluation that holds myself not in the town manager myself as well accountable to um what that is you know where where what did we do throughout the year to check on these things did we even have an opportunity did we even understand what we were asking to do was it clear so um I definitely agree with the points that um Anna has brought up and that you know Paul had said that he would look into so there's just more meat um and to have these goals been achieved or not you know Mandy um so as a general practice I'm not a big fan of specific checklists for a CEO um because number one I think that micromanage is a job to a point where the CEO the manager can't perform to their best because they have to fulfill a checklist even if they don't believe that's the best way to accomplish an objective or a goal um so I would rather have slightly more generic but when I say slightly more generic I want them somewhat measurable as Anika was talking about um and and where I'm going to give an example is our current the the goal in housing or the goals in housing affordability that that we just evaluated the manager on included things like explore strategies to stabilize year-round population for example that's not really measurable what does explore strategies mean versus one of the proposed rewrites is proposed measures to stabilize it doesn't say to the manager what measure or how what that needs to be whether it's a bylaw whether it's a policy whether it's something else but it says we want to see a proposal it doesn't have to be big it could be small but give us something and then you've got a measurement capability there which explore doesn't you know whereas if we were to then say you know I'll get one of the other ones in housing and housing is just the easy one for me to give examples um you know one was about diversifying the housing stock it said increase the diversity of housing stock available to all residents um the one of the changes in one of the two documents we have is proposed measures to increase the diversity that's somewhat generic but if we went specific in a checklist we would sit here all day arguing over those specifics increasing the diversity are you going to propose a measure for duplexes triplexes townhomes apartments what what what do we mean you know whereas if we just say this is our strategy in general propose something we give I think the leeway to the manager to figure out the best strategy he believes that to meet that whether it be in climate action or this carp for example we listed seven or nine different specific carp ones


from theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston. It's theCUBE, covering IBM Think. Brought to you by IBM. Hi everybody, we're back. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE and you're watching our continuous coverage of the IBM Think 2020 digital event experience and Ed Walsh is here as the general manager of the IBM storage division and software defined infrastructure. Ed, last time you were about four feet to my left. I wish you were face to face, but this will have to do. Thanks for coming on. The new normal. I like to call this maybe the new abnormal as some of us are still in lockdown, but it is the new normal. So we'll see more of this. So welcome it, I embrace it. So Ed, you've obviously seen a number of downturns. You've run a lot of businesses. You've been on rocket ship businesses. You've been at IBM for a couple of stints. Obviously we've never seen anything like this. When did you first start getting visibility? That this was going to be an issue.  But when did you start to see it and what was your first move for the team? Yeah, sure. And so yeah, I've had the opportunity to lead a couple of businesses in 2000, 2001, 2008. And this is, it is very different. But as far as our visibility on this, we have a worldwide and I would say world class of supply chain. So we saw this start as a supply chain issue and we came into it hot from Q4. We had a very good Q4, so we came into it hot for supply. So we were tracking it early. And then we started to see the issues in China in late January.  So we were watching it almost as a supply chain challenge. Yes, we do a lot of business in China. So we were also watching that, but it was a supply chain.  I don't think anyone has a better supply chain. But then of course it quickly moved and everyone says, well, you should have seen it. This happened really fast. So it's different than the other crises because it actually has to do with humans and lives and all the other crises were financial crises. And we largely just managed the business through it. You worry about your employees from the stress level, but you don't worry about the employees by the health level. So we did see it early with supply chain that quickly got in demand. And to be honest, when Italy went down, well, when Italy had the challenges, it happened so fast with a shutdown, that was kind of a big wake-up call for us. You saw IBM respond very quickly. Everyone was at home almost immediately, even in countries weren't set up for, really took care of our people, but then we immediately, you saw that IBM was gonna work really helping our clients. So we saw it kind of early, but it went from 100% supply chain to a demand issue. And then we did have different real, interesting as a bad word, but interesting supply chain challenges as a quarter went on, different countries stopping shipping is coming in, had to get a government approvals to get things. So it was a good partnership with some of our clients get things where they need to be in the right time. But it was probably, I'll remember this quarter for a lot of different reasons. And it worked out good for us, but to be honest, it was, it is different from the other crises because it wasn't just a financial issue, which I think we're just getting into actually. It was human and you saw different, two of our best regions were Italy and Spain. Now you think, whoa, why, you think, think about all that going on in the quarter in Italy. But it was a relationship, it was, we got our, the IBMers got safe real quick, but then we quickly got them to engage with the clients, but we didn't push them, it was natural. Next thing you know, that trust, I think there was a flight back to quality. And you saw these different companies, now it was the things they had to get done. But it was, it was pretty amazing quarter. To me, it was more seeing the team. You see your teams react to crises and challenges in different ways and sometimes they paralyzed and we didn't see that all in the team, which was pretty intelligent. But we saw it coming from the beginning, probably before this, we saw supply chain as we came into Q1 hot on supply. So we kind of saw it early and we're already doing drills. So we saw it kind of right when it was hitting. But it was interesting, you used the term interesting and it was challenging because it was sort of not only day to day for you, it was probably like minute by minute, hour by hour, country by country, region by region. How did you change the way in which you communicated to your teams or did you? Well, so quickly, so one, I think culture. So I've been in a couple of different companies, big and small, so I've seen different cultures react. And the IBM culture is one that I kind of look back in awe in this last quarter, just because it's very customer intimacy. You don't have to, if the customer's in trouble, you can't stop them from running to help the client. So we saw natural, you know, we, IBM made sure the employees were fine, got everyone at home, but we saw them quickly go after it. So most of it is communication. You do see if these crises, you see some groups kind of freeze and you have to kind of walk them through it and make sure one, they're okay. This one was different, you had to make sure your team was okay, both mentally, physically and their families. And it was a different stress level. It was very personal and affected all of them. Where the financial crises, it didn't affect everyone as much. It was more sterile. This one was, wow, really different from a leadership, but it's all the same. You have to get the team together and make sure they're healthy, happy, and mentally healthy too. And then you have to get people to kind of, how do you go drive and help clients out? In this case, it was help you, make sure your clients are okay, they're healthy. And then what can we do to help them? And I think that became more natural. And then of course, is Biver Cate let's drive the business supply chain, which is I would say with any of the different challenges, but it's all communication. But on this one, it was really had a check with the team often. We also had this new normal. I call this a new abnormal, which also you can't meet with people. So you couldn't get people physically together. So I call abnormal because we're still, we'll get to the new normal and we'll use a lot more remote type of communication. But it was, I've never been so busy. I'm on video calls with all my teams every day. You see people using different tools to communicate like Slack, but also a lot more video. So it's communication communication, which is the same thing. It's all the same thing with teams, getting together, getting good direction. But in this one, it was make sure they're safe first and then move on. Same thing with clients, make sure they're safe. And that was what was fundamentally different about this. Anyway, so. Yeah, you know, Ed, we're both grinders. I always joke. I work a half day every day. It doesn't matter which 12 hours. And I'm the same way, I take 12 hour days and heartbeat these days. I mean, it's just really been crazy. And I have to agree that the teams around the world and our client space, of course, the CUBE teams have really stepped up. But I want to ask you about the quarter. You're right, you came in hot in December, meaning you had a really good CUBE four. You know, I reached out to Tom Ross, Amelia last September and said, hey, nice announcement, Z15. He said, did you cover it? I said, I did. And I sent them my breaking analysis in which I really kind of dug into the life cycles of the Z and how it affects, you know, IBM's overall business. And I predicted this is going to go on for several quarters where IBM has a real tailwind, not only in systems hardware, but also, you know, the storage piece of the systems hardware business. We saw that last quarter, you grew 19% in storage, 60 plus percent in Z hardware. Pretty amazing. What's going on? Unpack the quarter for us a little bit. Yeah, so if it wasn't for the crisis, I think all that would be played. We had some announcements on across the entire storage portfolio. So what we do for storage for Z, both disk intake, big announcements in Q3, directly aligned with what we do with the new Z. You get a lot of value, one-on-one is three, so a lot of synergy between those different platforms.  So there's a whole bunch of different things we brought to that platform. But we also launched new AI platforms, so storage for AI and big data. And then in Q1, we launched our new distributed storage. So we're kind of coming in from an offering set. In fact, this quarter, you know, 19% growth, I think it speaks volumes, not on the offering, yes, but more how we reacted to their clients more than anything else. I think it was a, as we talked about earlier, it was an interesting quarter, and I think it's clients who are responding to the flight or quality, but also who's engaging with them the right way. So we do have a completely refreshed offering set across, in fact, this quarter, every single one of our offerings, every single one of our offerings grew, which is more risky if you have the right offerings, meet in the market, helping them with, we use the term chapter two, right? You know, and during the cloud, moving, modernizing your environment, we needed to free up our teams. We did a dramatic simplification on what we do with storage or Z, but also distributed storage and what we do for storage AI and a big focus in cyber resiliency. Those are hitting what I'll say the market was in Q4, but they happen to also be hitting the market for what's going on now and into the new home. So a lot of the simplification was that how do you remote manage? How do you do things? In fact, one of the biggest things we do to our clients is we have all these tools. We give you a lot of things for free baseline, but we also have these increased like pro versions. We're just said, take them, use them because it allows you to monitor and manage your environment better remotely is all web-based. And that was one of the biggest things to do, but that is hitting the market. That's the new normal. And we did that across both Z, distributed storage, but also what we did in cyber resiliency and AI. I want to hit on a couple of those points. I want to start with the cyber resiliency because we were one of the first to report with our partner ETR, our data partner that the work from home offset was somewhat cushioning the downturn. I mean, it's ugly, but still work from home pivot. And that included solutions around ransomware, data protection, cyber resiliency. So investment, actually 20% of the CIOs that we surveyed actually plan on spending more in 2020 because of there wasn't just Zoom and Webex, it was other infrastructure around it, VDI, et cetera. So you're seeing that, it sounds like. Maybe talk a little bit about sort of cyber resiliency. And I'm especially interested in the context of going forward. It feels like this is going to be one of those permanent things where, clients might sacrifice some near-term profitability to have more flexibility and resiliency in their business and not rely so much on just narrow DR, but more business continuance. No, I think in fact, we've always been, leader in business continuance and we still are, but cyber resiliency is just fundamentally different. In fact, recovering from a ransomware or a malware incident is different, fundamentally different tool sets than what you're doing. You need to have copies of that, of course, but very different than when if you were DR, single server come after running. So you see us and mostly, I think we're ahead of it because as IBM, we're the largest outsource from the world. So we actually live with these incidents as IBM. So in normal storage, you hear about them and typically it's a storage issue, that issue that came back around and we are living with what we do in our storage or outsourcing or strategic outsourcing group. And so we're putting into all of our products a lot of unique things around cyber resiliency. So what we did for storage for Z, it literally is a safeguard copies and offering that literally gives you 500 cover points that have been separated administratively and physically. So you're able to literally internal and external threats protect yourself. Best in class, no one else has a solution is that we did the same thing in distributed. So, but in distributed, what we're trying to do is help people, not only I use the term left to boom and right to boom. Left to boom is before your incident. How do you prepare? How do you have the right backup recovery? How do you have the right tool sets, recover points? How do you protect yourself? How do you make sure you're monitoring for ransomware every single night with your backup recovery tools?  How to give the humans the right tools so they can react the right way and be quick. So also in storage plays a huge role with ransomware malware. Also, you get the call, the boom hits, you get the call, it's from the CEO, you gotta fix it. You need new tools. Like what recovery point do you go back to? It's iterative in nature. Well, you get hit on, I get a call on Friday but I don't know when the malware got in there. Was it Wednesday or Tuesday? It might be different per system. It's an iterative process. You need the right tools to use all your copies, primary storage, secondary storage, tertiary copies, DR copies and find out what's your best recover point and it's iterative. You have to literally bring up environments. You have to have fence network capabilities and all your tools to allow you to literally bring them up quickly in succession or altogether. Find the best recover point and get to it as soon as you can. So those are things I think we're leading and we launched all this before this issue. We also saw an increase in malware in our client set. So to be honest, even with all this crisis we're seeing an increase. And the malware ransomware is where the storage infrastructure layer really matters in that instant response capability where if you have an instance, someone stole your data sets and typically these storage guys not gonna get a call. Now IBM has great solution sets around there. AI driven capabilities to allow you to protect yourself there. But this is on ransomware. It's something that storage plays a huge role. We do undistributed. We do our mainframe with specialized solution sets. No one else in the industry is doing that. And of course backup and recovery and quick recovery in an orchestrated fashion. That's what we do around Spectrum Protect all day long, right?  And obviously, great quarter, 90% growth. A lot of that was sort of drafting off the Z and the DS-8900. But I'm wondering how that consolidation play worked. We talked about the challenges of doing that. The importance of that, how others are going to have to respond. And we're seeing that in the industry for a lot of the large portfolio players. But how did that, how's that going? Can you give us, what can you tell us about the progress there in terms of its uptake and adoption? Sure, so really what we did is we kind of looked at the industry and said everyone's adding too much complexity. The whole industry is based upon having a high-end, mid-range, and low-end storage environment. And the high-end did everything, cusp on silicon, great performance, but you had to pay a price for it. And then the whole industry is based upon just getting to the next gen. So if you're high-end, by the way, the problem is every client has high-end, mid-range, and low-end storage. So you have dual vendor strategy. But what you do is you have to, the whole industry is just getting to the next gen, high-end, you see EMC Dell, hashtag next generation mid-range storage. The whole industry, including in the past IBM, was structured and getting there. So we basically announced, no more of that, doesn't make sense. It used to, it no longer makes sense. We drive a lot of innovation in what we're doing with silicon, but software, we need one platform, one platform that allow you have different price points up, down the stack, from low-end, mid-range, and high-end, but without compromise. So it's a dramatic simplification, right? That was a well-respected, I would say we had an unbelievable response from that. And you saw a dramatic growth. So you're kind of hit upon, we grew across all of our segments. Yes, we had a good growth on what we do for storage for Z, but we had an equally good growth as we did around distributed storage. So if you have physical environments, virtual environments, VMware, Hyper-V, containers, public cloud, hyper-cloud, our distributed storage portfolio, saw one of the biggest increases. And again, we grew in every one of these segments. So one, the simplification, chapter two, how do you free up your team? How do you modernize your applications so you can innovate? It's critical you're free up your team. So that one thing, now we also did a lot of, Billy do remote management, made it very simple to use and simple to support, which also helps in the new normal, but it hit the right tone with it, our partners, but also our clients. And you saw a pretty massive uptick after the February announcement. So it's only half a quarter. We saw quite a large left. I want to ask you about the storage for big data and AI as well. There seems to be a new emerging workload. You got all this data out there that we collected and Hadoop and analytics over the last 10 years. Now you're applying, we've talked about this, the new innovation cocktail. You got data, AI and cloud gives you the scale, whether it's on-prem or in the public cloud, but there seems to be a new workload where you get kind of a data store. You've got the analytic workloads that are in there. You've got some data science tooling and other AI that you're applying. That seems to be an emerging workload, kind of beyond just kind of infrastructure as a service, but a really new way to get insights out of data. Data is plentiful, insights are not. It's Bob Pizziano used to say. So talk about that workload and how that is powering your business and what are you seeing there? Well, I think this is where I see IBM really helping clients for this journey to building smarter businesses because AI is going to be at every workload. You're bringing up very specific workloads around machine learning, deep learning, bringing cusp on silk kind of like GPUs into it on these big data lake. How do you take a data swamp and make a data lake? But what I'll say is IBM's doing this and we use the term ladder to AI and there's no AI without IA, information architecture. You have to have the right infrastructure to do it. We also see different groups having random acts of AI. A data scientist in division A does something that's kind of interesting. Another group does something interesting and maybe a third. It's like the early days of data warehousing, but they're not able to take it together and bring it so they can infuse AI across all the processes in a company and have one single view of truth. So we see people going through this natural progression. Some start independently and fight the technology. Some bring it together. So everything we're doing from, I'll talk about what we're doing is storage, infrastructure, servers, but also across what we're doing that are cloud packed for data offering and make it very simple for you to deploy and get the use case out of it. But for storage is about when you want to bring it together, you need the right performance. So we bar none have the best storage for AI data. It's based upon our, you know, literally award winning, you know, scale up file system called GPFS or spectrum scale. It runs the largest AI supercomputers in the world. The same as X software, you can buy it a 2U device that we launched in December, which is called our ESS 3000. It's a single all flash array. It's a cluster, but you can no compromise. You go from that 2U device to the largest AI supercomputer in the world configuration. The exact same technology, hardware and software that we deployed. So now you can start small and grow. And then we're helping along, how do you get the value out of it? So that's typically where storage ends. I gave you the best platform you can possibly have.  The next thing we're doing in which people say, well, that's not storage. Ed, why are you doing that? We're doing things called spectrum discoverer. It's managing your metadata to making your data scientist the most productive possible. They spend any 80% of the time literally just understanding the data, tagging the data, organizing it so they know what they're doing with. Because if you don't have the right AI data sets you really think that they outcome. So we have what's called spectrum discoverer works across a whole bunch of other products but also all of our portfolio both object storage file system blog allows you to look at an environment, organize it and save dramatic amount of time for data scientists. And of course that's easy feed-in to all the things we do around cloud pack for data which is where IBM is really putting a lot of these open source and our own tools together so you can move forward pretty quickly. The key thing is how does IBM help you not fight technology? We know what you want to accomplish. Let's help you but not limit you by we're letting you use all the different open source tools that you data scientists want to allow you to move forward and help you in that journey. And it is a journey and we're meeting clients where they are because everyone's on a different I guess segment of the journey and how do we help you go through it? And from a storage you're seeing that environment literally double every quarter. For the people that are looking for it no one really touches us. In fact our number two and three competitors in the space use the same software that we OEM do them. So we're in a very good position when it comes to storage for AI and good data. So they say it's better to be lucky than good. I say it's better to be good and lucky. And so we're not going back to the 2010s. It's not happening. We've got this new abnormal as you call it. I like that phrase. And you've done a lot of the hard work in terms of rationalizing the portfolio. You've done the R&D and you started this years ago and it took a long time. But I wonder if you could just talk about why you feel like you're in a good position coming out of this thing and who knows how we're going to come out of it. But what are the critical components that you feel you have in your arsenal that will make you stronger and more competitive relative to the landscape out there? Your thoughts? Yeah, so, you know, this is going to sound, well, okay, so all these different issues we've been through, all these crises we've been through in our careers, there's an old adage if you can last room and you get resource, you can come out stronger. And it's very true. So you can grow, you can do the right things but you have to have the right offerings. Sometimes that's low lucky you entered right. I think we entered perfectly with the right innovation that did because years ago but we're hitting the current market but also what I'll say is the new normal market. And I think that's an opportunity. And I've always said, listen, the world doesn't need another storage ray but they're looking for solutions around the source challenges. And I think what we've done around the product portfolio with we use the term offerings was the offerings we put around it with a different software allows you to actually truly free, you know, if it's really chapter two, now we're trying to monitor your core infrastructure you need to free up your team so they can innovate. We're going to do that dramatically in what we do in storage. We're going to help you with that journey to cloud either on-prem or into the public cloud or really what we see is a hybrid multi-cloud fabric happening but also we do cyber resiliency as we built them from the core. So I think we're hitting it right. Now the new normal is all the things that it has to be simple, it has to be role managed. And those are all the things we made massive investments across every one of our portfolio items that just got launched the last two quarters. So I think we're in good stead but to be honest in these times as we talked earlier, you work harder you've got to really embrace the client feedback. I think IBM is a good position to do that. Also with a greater IBM we see a bigger opportunity set to find out how to help clients. So we're the number one AI company in the world. So we're seeing what clients really want to do with AI and how the infrastructure is holding back. Number one outsourcer, we're seeing how people are really dealing with cyber resiliency and especially malware, ransomware where storage really impacts you. We're seeing exactly how to do it and what tools to push forward and that's where you're seeing very unique opportunities. And in these times, if you can have the right product the right go to market, you can do very well and more importantly, you do it by helping clients. If you can help clients through this do you come out stronger? I think some other people in storage it becomes more challenging. I don't think people just wants, you know the next flash array. I think they're looking for solutions that's and companies to help them get through and get to really the new I think we're going to get to the new normal. I think this is the new abnormal. I can't call it normal when we're all locked away. The new normal is going to be much faster. You're going to have to go faster. So I think IBM and IBM storage is aligned with let's help you with the cloud journey. Let's help you build our businesses. We'll make sure cyber resiliency built in there. But we're going to, you're seeing it across every division of IBM step up and help you in that direction. That's where I think it's differentiated. That's why I'm excited about what we're doing at IBM in general but also the IBM storage is perfectly aligned with that overall mission. And it's kind of exciting to see it kind of play out in front of clients. Well, I think you're right. In the last decade was, you know a lot of it was about the all flash data center and the future is about powering innovation infrastructure for machine intelligence and really getting insights out of data, scaling. Ed, Ed Walsh always great to have you on theCUBE. Hopefully we can do this, you know a little closer face to face, maybe six feet apart and then eventually we could shake hands or high five or whatever works. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. It's great to see you looking good. And stay safe. Hey, thank you. Stay safe. All right, and thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE and our continuous coverage of the IBM Think 2020 digital event experience. We'll be right back right after this short break.


Welcome to another New York City vlog. I realized I crossed over $100,000 in student loan debt. And we're going to be heading into my second year of YouTube pretty soon. And I just thought like when I put my job, I'd start making YouTube videos and I'd just be monetized right away. And that just has not been the case. Nothing wrong with that. I mean, there's plenty of YouTubers that have been doing it for quite some time longer than I have.  And this journey is my journey and it doesn't really matter what other people are doing or how it's worked out for everyone. But I'm just like, damn, not think it was gonna play up like this. Also, this thing kind of squeaks sometimes. It's kind of annoying. I am about to run to the yoga studio and teaching a class today.  Just like some finishing touches I need in order to complete my apartment series, which is coming soon. I've been teasing this literally probably since like 2022. It's now 2023. I'm in the studio. I am taking a Pilates class. So let's go. Of course you are at the studio, but that's good idea. I have to tell you guys a story. So literally this morning, I ended up just going to my core power studio in Brooklyn because I got to the train and I realized that there was no, no way in hell I was going to make it to Pilates. So I took a class at core power, then I taught two classes at core power. And now it's Ikea time. I'm thinking about putting this in my kitchen. I may throw one in my bathroom as well. I'll get more. It's are like kind of weird and they only clean with microfiber towels. If I try to use other towels, it just doesn't work. So I saw these and I just grabbed them for my kitchen cabinets. Okay. And then that for my shower, they had one that was like really nice and like $15. And I thought about getting it, but I was like, I don't use a squeegee yet. So let me just get this cheap one. It was like $2. And then I'll see if I like it, if I like it, then I'll invest and get a nice one. If I don't, then I spent $2. But this should be nice because my shower is all glass. I'm sure you've seen it. And so it gets water spots easily. So I'm hoping that you just use this after my cat is distracting you guys. Then I just got some little plastic baggies because I ran out and I told myself I was wanting to get like freeze bowl plastic ones. I haven't done that yet. So I saw them and I was like, let me just get them. Because you know they'd be having the best prices at IKEA. So I just went ahead and grabbed these. Then these are just like these little tiny hooks that I'm going to use for my keys next to my door. I'm really excited. They're just literally three black hooks. I'm like perfect. I needed that. And then I got some to the wall at the Builder Girlie. So it should be really fun and interesting to see the adventure on my apartment series.  I got these candles from IKEA and they smell so good. And they literally, I wanted to say they were like $3. They say they're 20 hours of burn time for the price. I'm like, oh, this is a seal. So I just grabbed those. And that is everything. Say hi, John. Say hello. So much for spending the day with me. Again, my name is Nika. If you're new here, make sure you subscribe. And I'll see you guys in the next video. Bye.