One time and that's going to be difficult to do given that we've now changed it once ourselves and now Margaret's got edits and they don't show the rich because the version Margaret was commenting on for example had Changed the section that's near and dear to my heart that did not show a track change to what we presented on the six So I just had an idea we could take our version seven not Margaret's make that version eight that shows the track changes we did last week and Anything we want to accept from Margaret or do based on the comments We received from the council can go into that v8 where those represent the final That document is going to be what's presented to the council and so we never accept anything in that document So do some Margaret's version accept our changes. Is that what happened? No because I sent her I don't think so But what I'm saying is the track change version that was sent to Margaret did not Fully at least when I opened it in word the section about my my little thing about audible expressions had been changed to different wording at our meeting on the 7th that she was then working from I didn't agree to that wording on the 7th the way It's worded right now. Okay, so it doesn't show it doesn't show any but aside from that issue It doesn't any longer show what was presented to the council on the 6th for that wording And what we what we need to figure out is how to show them what was on the 6th versus what we decide today Which could be what we decided last week plus what Margaret said plus what the other town councillors said So we're really filling we're adding three things to what we originally showed the council And so I thought I understood what you said Mandy Joe about how to make that work But I'm not sure I'm facile enough with all the different levels of accepting and rejecting changes that maybe I do know that and Kathy's the one who's bravely taken on Managing the document so as long as the two of you understand it But I don't I understand that as a working document We need to know here what changed between the 6th and the 7th the 7th and you know what we decide today But I don't think the council needs to see all those changes because they're gonna be get completely confused Because how are they gonna be able to follow them? I mean I couldn't find Our version from the 6th any more in the version that went to Margaret. So I'm confused But if you think you too can work it out, that's awesome. It's a big load I understand So I'm not sure what the suggestion is go back to the It may be the public comment one In the public courtesy one is the only one I Shalini had sent in a comment to us to add the word as you know if it would Be divisive or not and I added those words Because of the email so that I think that's the only change I made that wasn't the change when we were Meeting as a group of four Otherwise they were Changes and we did have to make change changes as in when we done an option one an option two We were deleting the choices anymore and just putting the one preferred one And I think it would be too confusing to leave the old options in there Right, I can look back and I can understand that and I understand what you just said about that one particular change And so we can just revisit that one particular change But then what again what man just a which version do you think we can either I think Kathy You can either just start with Margaret's and if we don't like her suggestions We reject those changes or we can start with the one we sent to Margaret before she put in and add in to that one Anything we do those are the two options and relabel whatever that is the eight Right, so right now I have saved this on my Computer as the seven with PB and MN comments and you know, so I didn't change it to an eight yet So whatever we end up doing will become an eight is that what you're thinking okay, and so this one in track changes should very clearly shows a Margaret change and it doesn't identify the other changes as a group change because it was just the group changing it But I think now when we make changes, it'll be I'm used to word always saying who made the change But it didn't show that I made the change while doing it So we'll just it will be in track changes though. Okay So do we still feel like we are going to be able to based on that? get a version that Will show people who aren't us What changed from the six not what changed from the seventh and not what changed since Margaret Yes, it'll be changed from this. It'll look like that. Yes It will look like one set of changes and for if I'm gonna do these changes as we go along someone is going to have to be reading along the PDF because the They were nicely organized if people look through them the PDF was nicely organized with Falling from the beginning to the end a bunch of different people's comments and then at the end one person One additional person sends in some very thoughtful comments that again go beginning to the end But they're not organized it so someone's got to look at those the PDF is not Completely front-to-back. It's multiple front-to-backs right so people have to kind of look down at the bottom and at the beginning as We're going through with another edit because some of them were Questions some of them were suggested word changes some of them were You could delete this whole section all together kinds of comments So I can't I basically can't do both because I can't have two documents open at the same time One in adobe and one in board So I don't I do think it makes sense then unfortunately as laborious as it will be is that we will basically have to Go through and use Margaret perhaps as our jumping-off points and she has so many comments I mean not only the document itself, but to look at every place. She made a change and then exactly over all of us Not you having to Kathy look at the PDF and go was there something about 1.5? Okay? That's exactly right there. I'm just saying somebody else's eyes have to be doing PDF while we're doing I've got them both up on my computer which I so I just split my screen so I can see them both at the same time Right your eyes are young enough that you can see that kind of font which is tea. I could read them both Minutes clarification I am ready. Yeah, just for the minutes minutes clarification the two documents We're working out of our Margaret's version and what is the second one the other one is a PDF version where she took comments from separate counselors redacted them and Provided it to us When you when you eventually do the minutes with the list of documents used shall I mean you'll be able to just pull the two Yeah titles from our share point Yeah, you gotta do the next step Which is right there? Yeah Where it said open and word You'll want to make that bigger you'll want to make that this longer because one of these as my initials at the end And you don't want that one you want the one with Margaret's initially that that doesn't sit so you're looking for You need to stretch this so that you can see it Okay, scroll back up to the top of this section and then make this section go up so that you're at like a I know it's done I don't know why it doesn't let you do that and you need to go up to modify it pull that over like you're in an Excel Go a little bit to the left to see where it has a little line there Now stretch that over and now you can see that most of our dark folders are short names, but then now scroll down Okay It should be It's this one or this one The one that says Alyssa that's five minutes ago is not the one you want the one that says Alyssa Yeah, six o'clock yesterday is the one you want because that's the one with Margaret's comments. See how you can see it Good so pop that open and then You have choices, but you have to get it you have to get it out of Microsoft online to word Kind of but now you need to hit the concept open and word hit that and Now you should be able to see what Kathy was telling me you should be able to see With all of Margaret's comments yet That's actually the one that also is my comments in it But you can use that one if you want or you can switch to the other one This document is also in the SharePoint Under working rules documents. It's the only PDF. That's not in a folder It is a flaw point of flawed we'll talk to it but When you just open in SharePoint, you can't see track changes So it's a double step and it I find it better to download to my computer I have a lot more control than the word online, but you have to worry about it sinking so much It's like it's there you own it. I am ready Okay, so you can ignore the ones that say Alyssa if you want because that's for my notes for today Okay, so in 1.1 Margaret made a suggestion to us in terms of a rewording In within that first sentence making it clear that since we're not the only elected public body Maybe we should be specifying that it's the elected legislative body So whoever worked particularly hard on that paragraph have thoughts about that I appreciate what she was referring to that we have School committee and library trustees that are all elected representatives as well But I was okay with just deleting the whole phrase as she suggested instead of rewording the phrase preamble 1.1 So right here Why is Margaret's comment not showing to you? Margaret's comment should be expanded it is on my version It didn't have to work, she's open in even though she's open in word. Can you click on Margaret's name there and see what it says? Wow That's really weird because I'm looking at the exact same document through this whole thing and I saw many places where it just said Margaret Nardwood and it didn't say any comment. That's mad name. Oh that's interesting.  Do you go? Oh, it's showing simple markup Just go up one more It's a simple that's what you want to see Magic You would think right that's weird World I've ever worked in except for here Unless someone's if someone saves it and simple it it simplifies it So Margaret made two suggestions here She said either change it to elected legislative body or take that phrase out all together So that instead it just reads the Amherstown council commits. I think that's perfectly strong as it is I agree delete another set of eyes nice And then she that changes it from commit to commit Lynn has a comment. Yes Yes, yes, we're Mandy's tracking those lint. So we're gonna try to any time And any eyes will be helpful because on any of these if there's a comment We should be taking a look at it making a decision Unfortunately, some people use page numbers some people use rule numbers and some people just said general things So we're hopping around to make sure we capture just as the full draft scribe Duty what I'm gonna do is it shows up in track changes is to delete and I'm gonna delete her comment Okay Right Okay, because you want the comments show any and then it changed commit to commits Vice changing that phrase. Yeah, so I'm basically the whole thing I'm basically not doing anything because it's showing up in the track change change So until we override or change it will show up as changed. Okay, so it's like an accept of her comment. Cool. And then the Next one is 1.2 purpose, which I don't think there's anything in the PDF about Which is the the rules of procedures. She just reworded that a little bit to make it cleaner These rules of procedures shall be observed as opposed to the rules of procedure that follow So that's you know, I thought these were good at it. Yeah Cleans it makes it clearer Sometimes we wrestled so hard with content that we did have a suggestion in the In the comments from the counselors that we add the concept of legislative session as a definition Because we talked about legislative session in one place, but we've never it doesn't talk about any place else And it's not really a term everybody knows So is that something so you want to craft? Andy Joe can we can we do it right now? And yeah, and I've noticed they're in Alpha order, so it'll become between the definition of counselor and mgl Yeah, so I think We can craft something from the charter so legislative session and then the word or the phrase legislative session and Since it'll have phrases now instead of just words the We should change the following words to the following words and phrases in the little top before charter Which had been deleted since there weren't any phrases So unless another meaning is clearly apparent from the manner in which the word or phrase is used I see what you're saying or phrases used shall have the following meanings We didn't have any phrases. So we got rid of that. Yeah, but now we'll have a phrase So legislative session colon the word the phrase legislative session shall mean The period of time During I don't know beginning on the first Monday in January following the regular town election Except when the first Monday falls on a legal holiday I'm I'm I'm seriously reading from section 2.1 B Which is term of office and we should just say the term beginning and then just copy that term That sort of language and I can read it slower Kathy if you look like yes, and and I wouldn't mind it if you Simplified it as you went but I'm not sure we can I'm thinking but so the we're the phrase legislative show session shall mean the term that begins on the day town counselors are sworn in following the regular town election and ends When their successors have been sworn Would that work? Me the last part and ends when their successors have been sworn sworn in Harder just says sworn So so now that we have the charter words Okay, much of this rules document is a slightly user-friendly Okay, I'm gonna read read you but she did actually just super edit it down So totally edited It's I have legislative session colon this phrase So I don't have to repeat it this phrase shall mean the term that begins on the day town counselors are sworn in Following the election and ends when their successors have been sworn Say following the regular town election put regular town in there and for consistency We actually should repeat the phrase legislative session because that's how we do it everywhere else in the document and I put it in quotes I'm just gonna read it back again legislative session the phrase legislative session shall mean the term that begins on the day town Counselors are sworn in following the regular town election and ends when their successors have been sworn That's very clear The then weird have been sworn, but I'll live with it We could add the word in I was just reading directly from the turner Add a word in if it makes it easier for people to understand Please make it I'm so I shouldn't be humorous probably but I think it you swear at someone so you're sworn to her, you know I used to say so the clerk can swear he can swear at the clerk. Okay Okay moving rapidly 1.6 is the next one 1.6 is the next one that we had questions about and I thought we very purposefully we're trying to follow some of the charters Philosophy here, but we were not trying to do what Margaret said which Margaret said go ahead and follow it fully and Do the 14 days publication and that I thought we decided that that was an excessive way of approaching a change to the rules Was to put up 14 days notice on the town bulletin board as though a change to the rules was a change to a bylaw or some other Substantial measure, but we were trying to incorporate the two separate meetings part of it Just so that if you missed it one time and you give people more time to think about it So I'm missing the 14-day part unless all I see is her having Us read it what be more she's she's suggesting that the process and Charter section 2.10 Do the whole do the whole which means the whole thing and I'm like, yeah, no, that's not You know, this was double We have fixed this compared to what we we had already When we presented it to the council it was to be voted on at two separate things and we Changed it to red red at I guess before we anyway because I'm not seeing our own track changes But was that the comment we got from from councillor? Do we have to vote on it twice? So the comment from the councillor was that the rule felt unnecessary completely It seems and then it says What the comment said was this rule feels unnecessary It seems like it would be better treated like a bylaw change read and discussed at two meetings before being voted on But I'm not clear why it needs to be voted twice at two separate meetings So that comment tracks with the change we already made okay, so I think She made an edit to we made this edit already Why does it not show that we got rid of the two votes, but I wonder if she accepted a change that deleted the two So I'm fine with the wording as it is right here in this edit if people are fine with it So assuming we're seeing the same edit I see prior to final passage proposed amendment shall be read At two separate meetings of the council. Yes, that's the word. Yeah, that's the wording I said and I think we agreed that was the wording we wanted and we appreciate Margaret's input on this one But that's not what we were looking for right. No, that is what I'm looking at So the question I have is should I I won't do that right now, but should I? Figure out how to show that we used to say voted on twice because that seems to have disappeared from what it's what we show People I can fix it up later. Yeah It might be nice, but I'm not sure it's absolutely necessary. Okay, so then I'm deleting her comment leaving her wording and we're moving on Yeah, so it clearly some council. We had that comment that some counselors thought that was confusing And so yeah, the original she must have accepted change right because I am bringing up the the version that we gave to counsel and Kathy's exactly right that that's That's wording we subsequently fixed but not the very first thing we gave them on the six And what I'm seeing once I delete her comment is this is in yellow Should I leave the highlight in because we've changed it? I Don't think we should do any highlighting this time. Okay, should I just remove? Okay, so I'm not going to do that right now, but I'm going to remove highlighting later. Okay, so whenever I see it So does it make sense to you Kathy? No, Margaret wasn't working from that She was working from the edit that I sent her on that we made You know and that's how we so I'm just Well, I can as I said I can fix I know how to fix this I could go back in and put our words and do a strikeout so we can show the original That's very thoughtful. Thank you. Okay. You could just add the original in and then accept the original change and then Accept it and then delete it You've got it, you know, I'll figure out how to get back to the original and then show the track change the changes it Word is just not the most cooperative animal sometimes should we leave the highlighting for counselors to know with that? That's that's what I'm wondering. So do we do we look at the point of a track changes document? We were showing them track changes already We didn't give them a track changes document before we gave them a highlighted document before with special yellow and blue color code Track changes instead. Okay. You saw this before now. You're seeing that. Okay, so Disconscious of time I am going to after we finish as much as we can of getting through everything which we have to I will remove all yellow one Just because we knew we might have a lot of feedback So does that bring us to 2.1? Yep, and then I'm okay with Margaret's edit except for the fact that it shouldn't say members It should say counselors. So she wrote and it originally said counselors may nominate themselves She added other members or themselves. No, the word members doesn't belong here It's counselors may nominate other counselors or themselves and then she added no second is required I'm okay with that. I think changing members to counselors is good. I think she missed the period after required I can't totally tell but I think it might not be there. I think you are right. I get what she was trying to get at but Members isn't the term we're using Got it. And now we've got edits on the edits, but I think that's okay and did that That's section 2.2 is what we did last week when you see red. That's our changes. It's blue and mine It's different color in different colors depending on how many times I open it. Yes, where it's sometimes it's purple Well, it will be basically Margaret's color is one color and our color is another whatever colors you see they contrast So do we have any Mandy you're tracking as we go through if we got counselor comments in in section two then the only comment is It's set on page four, but it's in the clerk of the council section should the power of the clerk to appoint assistant clerks be recognized It might be helpful that the role of anyone acting on the clerk's behalf be recognized and authorized I Didn't exactly knew what that know what that meant. I didn't know if if he that person he Mr. Steinberg was trying to get at the idea of That to be clear that of course the clerk of the council then has her own power to Say another person who's in rather than that we have to vote on it because at town meeting for example If the town clerk couldn't be there at the beginning of the night We'd have to say tonight our clerk is such and such person and so he might be thinking about that because then it's like Oh, thank you so much for for filling in for so-and-so Well, we don't know our alleged old legislative this comment came from it didn't come from The town manager Margaret because that we're seeing theirs in here. So So I have no idea, you know to me it's fine for her to choose an alternative Do we have to give her that power in our rules to allow it? It doesn't I think it's two parts I think he's asking do we have to give her the power and I don't think so I think we can just say she sends who she sends and we just know that and I think the other thing He's asking about is that actual vote we used to have to take at town meeting And I don't see any reason why we'd have to do that under our charter. That's like a town meeting Thing but it was a thing we used to do at town meeting when we had substitute clerk So we don't have to do it thinking so it's our decision. We don't have to do anything here I think so because I Margaret didn't ask for it. It tends to me think that she believes she has that authority already Yeah, that she assumes that's you know We appointed the clerk the clerk performs duties if the clerk can't be there I mean as president. Do you see that differently Lynn if the clerk can't be there? Should she does she need to like do anything to say somebody else is coming? I don't think we should be bound by previous rules of town meeting. I think this is fine Yeah Because we might have a different clerk literally every time we could it just means we'd have to go through this election I see that as needed so so Within the the The clerk one Margaret has raised the do we mean three calendar days or do we mean three business days? That's in two three a two She read raised that a couple times. Yeah, the computation of time issue, which I thought we decided We were just gonna assume the charter computation of time applies the question is do we have to Specifically say that I think it's very important to define what you mean whether it's business or calendar Well, you don't do that actually you can do that someplace else wherever you say days and Whenever you want to not do it do it just say it differently, but otherwise days will mean so if I may There is no such thing as business days and not business days There's computation of time which is already in the charter and which talks about Holidays and not holidays and it doesn't the way we normally think like business days is not the way the charter So we could just mirror the charter language, which is section 9.5 that that section actually replies This states in computing time under this charter, so we could say in computing time under these rules Yeah, we're can and then just copy it directly into a new 1.6 and move 1.6 to 1.7 right after definitions Yeah, because it's not really a definition. It's not a definition. It's an overall thing like authority is yeah Parliamentary procedure we could just essentially time is a new rule Or yeah, it's fine. So Rather than I mean you could dictate it to me now or we could five lines long So why don't you just go to the charter? It's charter section 9.5 On page 49 for easy well 49 of the whole you know, so here's a thing that I When we were looking across Other towns rules. I found it very helpful To not have to be Cross-referencing something to understand what a term is and so in this case if You know, I understand we don't know what a business day is maybe it used to Mandy had suggested and I liked it simplifying it today's rather than 48 hours or 38 hours or whatever But it's I think it's really useful for people to be able to see this sentence Rather than cross-reference to say are we when we say two days? Do we mean if the meeting is Monday is ended the day Friday okay is ended the day Saturday. Okay When when does what need to happen? So That's the purpose of computation of time. I know but if if I see three days Listed here, then I as a human being have to go back to a definition say when computing time do the following I still you know, it's a lot of work for me to know what three days is So I'm just saying is there any way we could do it within here? And if the term business day doesn't work You know, we ran into this only once since I've been serving and it was We couldn't easily post a post a finance committee On a Thursday because a Monday was a holiday and so we didn't have the one extra day We thought we had for posting, you know So it would have normally been fine because it's a Tuesday meeting And it became oh, oh, you know, we don't have a three-day before we post the meeting You know, so I'm I'm finally doing this now. I just think of maybe we can think of later a way of just To the clerk but all to all of us, you know on committee When is it that we have to do we have to get it in on a Wednesday if the meeting is on a Monday? I'm just looking for something simple. I really appreciate that because the note I made was yeah We're going to use computation of time because right will be standardized, but what does that actually mean? Yeah, so and so maybe can we can if we made a new rule like one point a new 1.6? Yeah, I'm totally agree with an example. Would that be like totally outrageous to give an example of That means because the other thing we keep in mind is open meeting law counting of days is actually a completely separate concept From computation of time. Those are actually two different things. Yes No, I'm fine with it. So if we don't have to resolve this right now my my suggestions So which we can get things that are a little bit more substantive would be Do what we just decided I'll plunk in 9.5 and between Tomorrow and the meeting or something if someone comes up with one sentence that gets added somewhere So everyone can understand what we mean rather than cross-referencing and trying to figure out what the long paragraph means Okay, because there are a couple different places we use that and so we'd have to use a consistent exactly It's there's not the just the clerk did we use anything greater than seven days in this set of rules We do have a 14 don't we? Okay, because if we didn't have anything greater than seven we could shorten the definition and easily provide an example But if we have something greater than seven We'd need two examples Okay, so then then let's just go back and think about it a little bit Even if it's by the end of this time because I can easily copy and paste a long paragraph in And then I would just delete her comment Put our creative thinking hats on that. She's right. That's one of the most practical applications that people actually need I Have a question about formatting so in 2.2. We move to the C rule for C rule 3 and in 2.3 B It just says rule 2.1 rule 5 What did we decide to do with the C's? like C S E E C rule and we have some that still have them and some that still don't so I'm confused. What do we decide? Kathy you're the arbiter. Yeah, the way we did it and you'll just have to show me where we didn't do it, but we're Where we were referencing if you really all we have a whole long thing on agenda, so you gotta go look over it That's where it says C Where it was just this is the rule. We didn't use the word C. So where am I missing a C? So if you look at 2.2, yeah, and the president shall Yep, and then it says prepare agendas and my version says C. Yeah underlined and then if you if you scroll down to 2.3 And you look at duties of the clerk count the council item B It says B1 preside over the election of the president and then it says rule, but it doesn't say C rule I just missed it. Oh, well, that's okay. I just couldn't remember which way we went three and four The same three and four assist the president with public participation and provide minutes. Okay, but we decided to go I couldn't I honestly couldn't I think it was if if we if we weren't expounding there And there was another rule that expanded on what that requirements were it got C in front of it If it didn't it didn't get C in front of it. So we'll just throw a bunch of C's in 2.3 B. Yeah All right, it wasn't meant to be different that is fine Section three had a lot of councillor comments Rule three. I want I want to ask a question actually about this before we get into each of those comments so just in terms of my recollection of our conversation before and after the meeting of the sixth under 3.2 regular council meetings under e and we went around about how to do the 10 p.m. Thing aside from the council comments. When did it become meeting shall aim to end? I don't remember us ever using that that was I think placeholder language because I was gonna come up with new language And I have three options for us today Okay, because one of the things that that I found. Yeah, okay. So once we know that yeah, all right So let's just start with the beginning 3.1 presiding officer. Oh, that was one of Margaret's suggestions, too Is do we want to consistently say? We definitely don't want to see chair, but do we want to say presiding officer or president? Do we want to she did it both ways herself actually at one point? She said president or presiding officer, which one do we want? We we changed it last time to and I may have missed some to try to later on Not just say the president to say or presiding officer Because it won't always be the president in this very first time If we're saying the president shall be the presiding officer unless she's not he's not there So it I didn't do it But if I didn't catch it we changed it because we used to say chair and we got rid of chairs and Put presiding officer wherever possible. So as we go through, you know, these are track changes in there Where I tried to catch it So I when I remember is the first substantive comment on 3.1 and I actually agreed with it Why should the chair of the finance committee be our second choice? Why not just go right a bit right away to? Figure out who's Queen Queen or King for the day? I've had that feeling all along Yeah, so I agree with it and I you know, there's no particular reason I think we picked it up a couple towns did it this way and there's no reason to do it this way So if everyone's fine, I'll just cross out and I'll say second the council shall elect approach, you know, just change it Is that okay? Yeah, it's fine with me. I still have a question after Kathy's done typing that was the only PDF comment on 3.1 So what tell me again what the answer was not did we catch them all?  As the term of art like the long phrase which Margaret suggested at one point or just presiding officer I thought we went with presiding officer, but now I'm not I thought we went with just presiding officer if it made sense It makes sense. Yeah, you know, so certain things have to stay president because it's the president's not the presiding officer It's a president thing like appointments or agenda setting like what's the order potentially the change if you're going to be able to change it That might but I think presiding I think that works better because it makes it clear that there's a difference when when you were Referencing committees. We really needed to change it because in that committee section. Yeah That's totally fine. I was making sure I understood what our term of art was Cool, and then the meeting thing is should we want some of the feedback we got especially since we just had the November thing is Item C 3.2 C instead of specifically calling out those months. Should we say something more generically about Our choices or are we trying to show people? We might only meet this often So they don't be worried that we're not meeting very much. So can we start with a oh, I'm sorry Is there were comments I think on nearly every single point So a was consider Amending 3.2 a to add quote unless amended by a majority vote of the council, right? We discussed and realized, you know, and it was talking about November the November change. So tell me the phrase, you know, what I put the phrase at the end with the schedule adjusted as needed for holidays comma unless Amended by a majority vote of the council that actually kind of covers see then So so this is a means of making it easier to do that than amending the rules generally It makes it easier to say we're Typically meeting on the first and third meaning twice Unless we have to find another time or we decide we're not going to meet twice a month To me it would be any of those changes which means we could potentially delete see completely. Yes And I think we could get rid of them the the in the months of July August and December because as One of the council's comments was correctly that we decided to meet just once in November because of this year's particularly Where the November date spot fell so we could take out the July August and December we can just take see out Yeah, just I'm deleting see just delete see you read back the end of a to us Kathy because that sounds like it really covered everything So regular council meetings everything up until the schedule adjust is needed for holidays now It says comma unless amended by a majority vote of the council that seems really good because it's the council's decision then And I think that does cover everything That's great One comment that said we could just say in 3.2 a with the schedule adjusted as needed and get rid of the four holidays And it was talking about 3c the one that we just deleted to go up there. I Like the as holidays because that's like the automatic adjustment is for holidays and then the council Convote beyond that. I think it makes the public's expectations clearer What they should figure That's good. I like it and what is the yellow shaded on aim to end at 10? Do my suggestions? Let's unless we maybe you said you have a few I have a couple options. Okay So option one I'm just gonna read them all and then we can discuss Would be any time after 10 p.m. A motion to adjourn shall be in order even if agenda items have not been heard Option 2 Meetings shall extend past 10 p.m. Only if the council votes to extend the meeting Option 3 anytime after 10 p.m. Upon objection by a counselor the council shall affirmatively vote to continue the meeting Could you read number 2 again? Sure Meetings shall extend past 10 p.m. Only if the council votes to extend the meeting and If we operate it under that Someone would say it's 10 o'clock. Should we keep going and we have to take a vote? Yes Yeah, I think that one's the And Lynn any thought about how to It's we're trying to well clearly what we're trying to do is say We have a goal if at all possible of ending at 10 and we should at least take a breath at 10 o'clock to figure out if we keep going and So how do we to me? It's the take a breath. Are we gonna keep going and What I like to I also like not bring up a brand-new topic, you know Like you wouldn't stop in the middle of a conversation, but you might not bring up another big item So I wouldn't want to always have to stop at 10 and take a vote So that was the shall aim to end But I the more I think about this the more I don't like it at all And would delete the whole thing because you know, there was a comment about if we're gonna keep this in We need to be stronger in The order the order of the agenda and allowing the president to change stuff But what I was thinking about was if the president doesn't know whether things will be extended If there's an executive session scheduled that executive session is going to be called at 9 or 9 15 In the middle of a meeting when there are people still here and you're gonna have to say and we're coming back into regular session and that's gonna have to happen any time an executive session is scheduled because The president's gonna have to guarantee that we can do the executive session prior to that 10 p.m. And that kind of Heart, you know Puts the attendance of a meeting by the public in that weird spot of up We're just gonna go into this room for 30 45 minutes and then we're gonna get back to potentially Whatever you were really here for I think it might really screw up the predictability for the Public if we have a you must affirmatively vote because that would require the President to hedge on whether that will actually happen and start moving agenda items around which is less helpful to the public and I I know it's logistically that issue but Trying to signal to ourselves and the rest of the world that we can't get our business done in Three and a half hours You know that we would hope that we could get our bit business done in normal times in three and a half hours But it may be longer because that's what ten o'clock is. It's three and a half hours from the time we started So anyone who wants to sit with us you you can see we keep people We still have an audience usually at 10 or 10 15. They start lit. They're all gone pretty much by 11 You know, so that's I think that the notion of this was just for ourselves also Can we try to be efficient with the use of our own time with a? In normal time expectation we could do this without making it so rigid that we're Ending a meeting before we're ended So that's the only reason and many deleting it all together, you know, even if we said 10 30 It's four hours, you know, so it's Something that says do we need to because we're we don't we're not thinking very well at the end of Four hours, I mean, it's it's not just efficient, but we we're racing often like I've been here long enough You know and sometimes we should be tabling things for the next meet, you know saying can we continue this and people don't have that Discipline right now to know how to end a meeting if we're not in the middle of a discussion So that's the only thing of sing singling it signaling it without making it rigid Which is this weird weird Right weird phrasing right now, right? Yes, and so yeah aim aim is a little awkward for me But I get not wanting to be as official as our previous legislative body was our previous legislative body had to affirmatively act To bring up something new not in the middle of a conversation, right? We could be in the middle of a warrant article and it could run till 1015, but if it was 958 The body had to affirmatively act to move forward I can understand not wanting to have to take that extra step every time because it does derail things right because you don't want to Stop in the middle of a conversation But I do think that the signaling part is important and I disagree with the counselor who said that oh well Then we have to make it clear that the president can rearrange the agenda It already says that in our agenda section that the president can do that and when it comes to executive session if we're planning executive Sessions for late at night. We're not making the best use of our time Executive sessions should either be at the beginning in my opinion and experience should either be at the beginning of a meeting at an earlier Meeting or at the very end of a meeting where we tell the public we're not coming back this middle of the thing And so I don't want to try and get too balling stuff in that when I think we need to depend on The president to have there, you know to figure out what situation is on the ground tonight And how long things are taking and as Kathy said to be able to say, you know what we have too much to do We're gonna put this one off. We're gonna finish this one We're gonna work on this one another day So that people don't feel like everything if it was on the agenda It has to be done with whether we're here till midnight or not I guess my point was if you've got that in the rules that there has to be an affirmative vote The agenda order will regularly Switch around especially if there's an executive session and that's not really helpful to the public and that's because it's becomes no longer Predictable maybe oh well, we need to make sure we get to appointments. So we're not gonna do discussion first We're gonna do appointments first even though you were here for discussion and appointments might take three You know it will kill the predictability of the agenda order I think if we require in the rules of vote We never had any predictability in our previous form of government. So I appreciate that concept But the select board and town meeting were both free to choose to take things in whatever order they took them in and the public Understood that that was sometimes frustrating. So I want to make sure we're balancing our ability to do our work is More important to me than that the public be able to predict what we're doing at 9 15 Well this The the language that we have in there now that arguably Isn't very good language. It doesn't require a vote. Right. I mean we could that it makes it looser it just You know it just says that we have the goal of ending at 10 or We could say if we say so have a time check at 10 You know in shell is the wrong word probably because it should strive or You could maybe just get rid of shell completely meetings aim to end at by 10 p.m. Yeah, that that's less Yes, that that's less likely to happen than not having a new agenda item So I think that's more forceful or it's more specific at least we can we can accomplish that ending a meeting at 10 is not It doesn't seem like a reachable goal So she'll any could you just restate you are your suggestion we add some other words in That was what was your recommendation that we don't add new agenda items after 10 Ah Specifically addressing that point. I'm sorry. Please I could see first of all I the 10 o'clock rule Was a town meeting rule where they were going to either meet one or two days of that neck of that same week or the following Monday We don't have that luxury. Okay. We could we could say we'll be convening back here tomorrow at 6 30 and all of you shoot me So I we couldn't without breaking up a meeting law though We would have to post it ahead of time. That's right So the first year least we could do would be whatever or I could say, you know, this agenda is so long I'm now posting a meeting on Thursday for Tuesday night I don't think you want this. Okay, and and the reason I and what I've tried to do since you know seeing this And I heard her like all of you did is just throw up that timeline And then I see it going off track The other piece I just want to point out and that is usually executive sessions are Something we can't delay either because we don't want counselors to be caught off guard on something or It is a time action that is sensitive and needs to be acted on in executive sessions So we can move forward publicly so as Much as I I want to do whatever works to get our meetings over early. I like going home like anybody else I want to make sure that we don't End up in some unreasonable situation With an with the realization that sometimes we don't need for two more weeks Sometimes we don't meet for three more weeks. We're trying to cut out an August meeting where we won't meet for a month or 30 days will meet within each month So I just want to be careful what you do to your what we do to the council Whatever you do, I'm gonna comply by that so I just want to put in another plug for I It's water under the bridge But I don't believe there's ever been an emergency where or Time really issue where we needed to have executive session in the middle except because that's when it was decided to do it And so I think that's one of the confusion points is I want to be able to let the public go home after executive session And so that's something we can bear in mind for future and that we don't need to address in here Because that's just like an informal conversation thing and I appreciate not wanting to take the active vote But but but yet I wanted to send some sort of signal. So I liked what you said about bringing up new items from the standpoint of guidance like this is what you can Expect but there's always exceptions Does a new item constitute approval of the minutes does a new item constitute the town manager's report? Does a new item Include the president's comments or other comments or council suggest suggesting new stuff Those are what we put at the end of the agenda, right? So right now we've got no link to items at all meetings aim to end by 10 unless the council Otherwise determines we had deleted no item may be brought forth, you know, and let me just say I think recently for example, I think the Town manager last time we met Shortened what he might have said and then two or three of us had questions, right that of things We wanted him to state publicly because they were in his report If we don't pass our minutes, we are hearing it from the public and that's not okay either And if I don't come back and say to you oh and by the way You know, I had approved this three parking spots in front of a bank for three hours then legally I haven't met the letter of the law and The other I so I just want to be careful What right we've done to ourselves and what the public I like the signal I Just want to be careful Could it be discussion items like all of these seem like routine minutes down managers report and we may have questions That's fine, but anything that involves brain power a lot of it. That's hard for me So I think the problem is we would like to do this But if we put in you have to vote to continue well, and that's not what's in there right now But but even brain power we ran into this with committee reports the committee reports were happening late and then Multiple meetings later. There were counselors that were saying well I don't think that was reported on and we never heard well It was but it was done at 11 or 11 30 at night So that requires brain power and suddenly then you're saying well, we can't do that's bank brain power And so we can't do that You know I I'm to the point where I would just rather see nothing Because you know, I think we elect a president to set an agenda in an attempt to balance what can we What needs to be heard at that meeting and be done at that meeting versus how long is that meeting going to be and that Is a balancing an act of massive balancing of what can be pushed off one meeting because you're looking in agenda going This is really long, but we can't push it off because that agenda is going to be even longer And so can we get it done this one? We don't want to short change our committee reports You know, they can take a while and I think as counselors we might just have to recognize At least at this beginning We shouldn't have a hard time and we shouldn't have this is what we're going to do and we're gonna do this It's good to have that goal, but The unless the council otherwise determines it's I'd be more fine with our goal is to end by 10 period That doesn't but then why is that a rule if there's no Force to any of it. Like if we're just gonna have there if you're gonna put a rule in you should have force but I don't I'm less and less likely in the force because Sometimes you just got to sit there until the business is done If the if the rule was left to say what it says Including unless counselors determine differently It leaves open the door that you know Someone on the council could say you know I moved to adjourn and someone else could say I second that and then Someone could point out, you know, we have a couple things here. I think we really need to do and Let's get those done and the person who you know and reason prevails and we get those done and we move on an adjourn I do not mind having the statement in here. Okay. I've been trying to aim towards that by showing you Timing on stuff. In fact as I looked at the agenda proposed agenda for Whatever the 20 20th, I guess I just moved yet one more thing around And set up trying another way of getting it done Before we bring it to the full council for discussion Because in this case the discussion items aren't the big issue the big issue is going to be the votes including the rules and the appointments So I'm trying to look and balance the What I'm thinking about But you know, it's I don't mind the rule being here the way it is I don't like the idea of interrupting the meeting to take a vote. Okay, so this is general enough to allow for What I call taking a breath if we look up at the clock, you know What when you say the way it is which words are I think it's the one I just read meetings aimed to end by 10 p.m. Comma unless the council otherwise determines It's a signal. It's loose Okay, it sounds a little more like a rule, right Right, I mean I want to get back to just a moment the idea of with force because not lots of things in here Can't be enforced So I I noticed that in another councillor's comment that well if you can't enforce that then why is it a rule? Well, a lot of what we're setting up here is we're setting up expectations We can't enforce that we have a dialogue session like we just say we want to do things and So I think this is a perfectly fine thing to leave it open like that while it sends the signal to everyone Okay, I suggest we move to the next three point five and markets Got I think Some edits and some substantive. I'm not sure if there's others It's on three point five a is the first one I see in the track changes She added the council is participating remotely because we talked a little bit about how to not mix together remote participation And not remote participation, but it's true that you have to say if there are any councillors this is fine. Yeah, so sounds good It's just that a to that councillors present councillors absent and councillors got it and I've deleted the comment on that We have to have it. So is there anything else in three five in councillor comments? Yeah mostly in B three five B about record of votes and Right to or what I think we renumbered so so I'm trying to one of them work. I'll just read the ones I can find Requiring draft minutes to be completed within four days of a meeting is unreasonable for council meetings and for committees The clerk has other duties and people taking minutes for committees now often councillors are already finding it a challenge challenging to manage their time See my second general comment above the second general comment was the rules should not add Responsibilities or make service more complicated rather they should be developed with the goal of making our work more efficient and another comment on three point five Two or B. I think part B is a great aspiration But is an unreasonable burden on our clerk of the council and should be removed part a seems more reasonable Though I would provide the clerk a bit more flexibility and suggest Extending the time frame from a day after to two days after a meeting. So that must have been the votes and Another one said council meetings record of votes two days after the meetings and final minutes posted one week after the meeting Was the other comment on this section about votes and minutes? I want to just make a real quick comment on that final minutes thing Which I think again shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what we're talking about just as came up at council on the sixth Is that we've got different varieties of minutes? There's no reason why final minutes that we've voted on on a particular council night wouldn't be up the next day That's not that doesn't make any sense to say it takes a week to put those up It's the draft minutes and the votes that we've been focusing on here in terms of getting information back out to the public and the gap that I see here I think is significant in that in the past I don't know what they'll say Thursday night But in the past the division of open government one of their theories about minutes has been that they presume that Which is false on their part. I think that they presume that you will have the minutes ready from the previous meeting at your next meeting The thing that thing that and so we're trying to at least make that and I feel like Margaret's pushing it out even further to say Well, it might be from two meetings ago And I I totally appreciate the concept of having them ready for at least the next meeting Which is not to be confused with our desire to get things out to the public as well But I find that minutes are far less useful to me if it was from what happened three meetings ago Then if it's from the meeting that I'm walking into now reminding me what happened at the meeting two weeks ago Okay But we've got two related issues here. Yeah. No, we've got no because as We linked this also to committees. So the committees when we talk about minutes with committees We're what our cross-reference and we can decide whether we want to have Delete the crossroads the cross-reference would impose on committees what we're imposing on the council for its regular meetings We could definitely delete the cross-reference to three five B Publication and just trust reference a what they have to include and then Margaret is pointing out that the council meets More often than every two weeks So we've been thinking when we said at the next meeting that we're giving her two weeks because we've got all these Times where there's a special meeting. We've called a meeting. We have a hearing and it's clearly We're not going to impose two-day Turnarounds on this so her suggestion as I read the track changes Is to allow She's striving to have 13 days as be the goal, you know two weeks Which then would potentially work for committees? I'm Finding and this is just I shouldn't probably make an aside comment but on the committees I've been on including at-hoc The minutes are often Available, but no one reads them in the committee or that chair gets them and Others don't know they're there or they're posted on SharePoint and nobody knows to go look at them, you know, I mean it's sort of like Some minute takers are being extremely prompt in committees. It's just the minutes languish You know the one with our goals ad hoc committee Lynn we actually had minutes for almost every meeting. We just hadn't moved them from draft to Public, you know, we hadn't taken that step so so I don't mind the 14 days, you know as as within the as a Because it's our clerk who's having to turn these around and she's been really good if two meetings happened in The interim between our regular we get a set of minutes for all of them You know, we've been getting like this special hearing minutes and the other minutes So I thought this was Useful her phrasing was useful So I don't know whether it addresses the comments you got from the counselors Mandy Think if we remove the cross-reference, we address the comments about Counselors and counsel taking minutes themselves for the committees the committee minutes where we we just need to be careful to Cross-reference only the content of the minutes not the publication of them That'll address one of those comments Right and and she's done the as counselors we get them three days before, you know We before we have to approve them. We're getting them, which is a nice goal. I Would keep the B1 at one day. I know a lot of people are saying to Margaret asked for two and counselor comments said what about two I found out last night that the town manager by 7 15 the morning after a regular meeting has out to People in town employees in town a summary of the meeting with actions for them to be taken That that also includes the votes we took so I'm not sure why we're getting pushback on One business day after when someone's already creating a document that would comply with that if you just modify it a little bit And throw it up on the website beyond that's not even the just the piece of paper that records that the clerks recording the votes on so I'm I'm I don't want to move from one day to two on a at all I I'm not sure where I stand on two and her added three so can we stay focused on that book that Record of votes issue for a moment because I actually think that one's a little simpler in some respect since we moved to that one So other thoughts on that because I thought this this body was pretty clear on that in previous and now we've read the comments And how do we still feel about it and what you just found out so I agree with it Mandy said, you know Um, I think we had that document so as long as no one thinks they have to create a new document for this posting It just can be headed record of votes taken last night and post it I'd agree with that Is there a problem if it if you're late at night like sometimes ending at 12 does that make a difference for the town manager to get this up in a Technically, I guess if we end at 1230 the day after the meeting is Wednesday not Tuesday So so And let's be clear. I mean that's the town managers prerogative to have done that right We've had town managers do that and we've had other town managers who didn't do that And that's a great way of him communicating with staff But it strikes me as nothing short of really bizarre that staff knows about our votes prior to the rest of the world Knowing about our votes. There's no reason for staff to know that first So again, just like a modified version of his document whether and and when somebody said it would be like a scribbled Handsheet, you know, I'm fine with that. I'm fine. I'm totally okay with that. We don't care how pretty it is This this leaves open what that record looks like it can be a photocopy of the handwritten notes, right? It doesn't have to be anything fancy So then so that's the easy one. Can we go to B2 then? We've got a new B3 and a B2 modified that we at the council get any minutes I read this is any minutes. We're going to approve. We get to see it three days before Which I find great So I question three though because the and the reason yeah, I'm just staying on two. Yeah, two still makes sense to me I was just concerned about how it fit with three because three's nude language and I think that I think you know She's trying to get across what she explained to us in text about But I think that we're being too focused on this crazy time of year when you have to have all these extra council meetings because of the budget and I don't necessarily feel That it needs to be every special council meeting is also included in there So I wonder if we just get rid of three Do four and minutes of regular council meetings shall shall be approved by majority vote of the council at the next regular Council meeting just start throwing in regular Into some of these because regulars are I like regular I like yeah, I think that rather than trying to bollocks ourselves. I think that takes care of it. Yeah, you know They're regular. I like when it's just told us we will run longer meetings rather than have extra meetings To we can count on But in general, I think you can do to with get rid of the word next and leave Margaret's add-ins in Prior to the council meeting at which the minutes are to be approved So it's not the next one. It's just we're getting them three days prior to whenever they're being presented So took out the word next council. Let's remove next. Yeah, and maybe that was our three her three her added three the 13 days and then minutes From of regular council meetings shall be approved By the majority vote of the council at the next regular council meeting and two was our compromise from our original where we wanted to have it by the End of the business day four days after the meeting correct. Yeah I'm gonna need you to so one is as is number two is As is to I think my suggestion is to read the council shall receive draft minutes No later than three days prior to the council meeting at which the minutes are to be approved. Yes the word next and Mandy Joe you didn't find out anything along those lines when you were getting information from the town manager or the clerk About their ability to get Minutes out faster Did you I haven't asked about minutes out faster. I think that's a job for our president to ask And then are we keeping minutes to be approved show include minutes of all? No item three is just gone did delete it. Yeah, and so the old item three now item four Whatever was the old item three Minutes of regular council meetings shall be approved by majority vote of the council at the next regular council meeting and then that just leaves special meetings up in the air for We don't have a rule on when they get approved so we have one two and If it once I fix the numbering because it's doing four even though I deleted three but Minutes of regular council meetings shall be approved by a majority vote of the council at the next regular council meeting And so we're getting the minutes one day prior to what we would usually get them, correct You mean in comparison of current practice, right? It's aspirational We have Parts this Lynn our record of votes is Available to the public by close of business said after the meeting We get the council shall we pee breath minutes no later than three days prior to the council meeting at which the minutes are to be approved and Number three is minutes of regular council meetings shall be approved by majority of Voted the council by the next regular council meeting. So it's making clear that we have we're just talking about regular council meetings In this expectation at our next meeting We're getting them before the next meeting and we're that's the meeting at which we're voting on them The only potential problem which we should just watch for when we have two meetings in a row because of missed things two weeks in a row We should just You know, we can suspend the rules for those meetings because that's going to be really tough But When there aren't two weeks between meetings, but that doesn't happen too often. Luckily, so and and just to clarify still haven't gotten this is there any change in in to From what the current practices Right now you've been getting them. I think on Friday Instead of Friday We open we open don't get them before Friday. So this would be Wednesday on Our computation of time So it would it would increase it would increase the amount of time we have Right, but yeah, and that's why this cross-reference should have to understand that we're computing time not in days of the week So three days doesn't mean By the Saturday Sunday So and what yeah, that's really helpful for me because I actually if I get them separately from this giant packet Yeah, I'm more likely to read them and do my minor You know sometimes minor or major if I get them with ten other things to read. I sometimes don't read them as carefully Yeah, and just for your information. I mean we start out. We start with draft minutes. We I Have asked consistently that they send them to both me and Mandy Joe Mandy Joe keeps some of the best written notes of meetings and Then after that review takes it then we send them out to all of you So that by the time we get to the actual meeting the meeting the minutes that are posted a pretty been scrubbed been scrubbed So that's my only concern. I do have a concern though. I just want to This issue of posting draft minutes. Is that still in here? It's been removed. No and I would just like to I Remember that Mandy Joe mentioned it. I think the last meeting that you know a big purpose of The rule is for the benefit of the public as opposed to us and so to is really You know, I think the other counselors are going to be fine with it because it's good for us But it you know, it doesn't really answer the public's Complaints about they would like to have their minutes immediately And you know the possibility of having draft minutes actually to does talk about draft minutes It's just we get the draft minutes. Yes, you know and I I do think Draft minutes that undergo multiple drafts is a difficult thing when it's minutes So, you know partial minutes going out to the public and better minutes going out to the public when there's substantive and In a few instances Counselors have given pretty substantive comments, you know, like you missed a whole section of a discussion or you didn't capture it and the clerk went back watch the tapes and Expanded So And I want to make clear dressy. I hear you on that I think we all hear you on that and I think what we're trying to do given the reality We're facing as much as I like to say we need to be aspirational in these is that if we can get it set So that at least we can see them ahead of time So they're not just mixed in with the packet Which means that the process where they get them to the president and the vice president is going to have to back Up also because we're not talking about that in the rules, but given their current process They're gonna have to back up their timeline as well And so if we can consistently get to the point where we're getting them three days ahead and we're publishing those votes We're doing the best we can at this moment To address the public's concerns Maybe once we get more of this under our belt like where we've been putting up the votes And we've been getting we the counselors have been getting things three days ahead Then we'll be able to reevaluate and say okay. We got that structure in place now. Can we add? Another level to it of the public being able to see some form of draft minutes sooner and I think that but if without this we like we need to build this first and then Continually ask ourselves what we can do to do better So we're coming back to that someday. It's not gone away So we're up to we're moving on 3839 The first Margaret is 3.8, and I know we had a lot of comments on this on This seems like adding you can read them out Manny, but I saw it was like we're adding yet another way for the public to participate It's already difficult to figure out what the difference between a hearing a forum a Whatever is and we need to do this at all was one of the questions Yeah, that that was one of the first ones was for public dialogue Don't make a third type event incorporate aspects of public dialogue into hearings and forums public is confused enough 3.9 and I'm just going to take them all together 3.9 I think this is a really interesting idea that could be useful But I'm not sure why we need a whole new category of meeting to accomplish this could this not be a special meeting of the council It feels somewhat similar to special meetings that are being called for finance and CRC throughout the month of May There is 5.3, which is the Corollary to the 3.8 public dialogue This is a cool idea, but I'm not clear on how this adds any function utility that is not already covered by a public hearing forum or district Meeting could this be duplicative of existing meeting formats? And if so, is it necessary? Someone else said I Urged that we not adopt proposed rules 3.8 and 3.9 at this time the requirements in the charter for public hearings public forums and district meetings are Difficult to manage some counselors are experimenting with office hours We can't yet assess the value of these public engagement efforts it is too early in the council government to add more expectations and Proposed rule 5.3. That's the public dialogue is another creation of a public engagement mechanism in addition to what the charter Requires for the reasons stated above related to proposed rules 3.8 and 3.9 I urge that the council not adopt this one and just so if those of us who are looking at the track change Margaret Didn't delete public dialogue, but softened it too By majority I wrote we might do one of these whenever we feel like it So my thought on this was well, let me go to work sessions first. I think Maybe at the May 20th meeting We might spend a bit longer describing what these could be and they're completely discretionary to us that the notion It is very different than a public forum or a public hearing It's really we're talking through a tough or complicated issue well before we're doing a vote And we want others to sit at the table with us that we need there and that might be You know, I'm thinking some town staff there There might be some people from the university from the community that we know have a lot of knowledge about this and We're setting it up as a real what I call a work session, you know a gaining information a Study section any name we wanted so it's different than the others and from those comments It was to me. It was clear. We we had an accent to the difference enough You know, so that's all I was thinking on that one that this is a useful thing for us to have in our bag of Potential the public dialogue as we written it has to happen So I personally would be fine softening it and that's a chat with the public a Conversation with them, you know without as much of a scripted a scripted dialogue So the district and I'll stop after one more five seconds the district meeting We just had in district one was pretty close to a public dialogue man Mandy came, you know people were bringing up issues of concern to them and Each person was giving each other ideas about how to go forward. So it wasn't formal I like the idea of softening the public dialogue per Margaret's recommendations to At our discretion Instead of forcing the two times a year now and then that will give us some leeway Given that we're only in our first year of operation I'm hesitant to remove them completely despite it sounds like many counselors who don't like the idea of them being in here Because I think if we remove them we forget about them Was that two or three counselors the three separate counselors made those comments I read okay So they're outnumbered Wow Darcy way to count votes is that but but I do think that Kathy's point was extremely well taken which is that Because we were explaining so many things it was supremely obvious to us what the value of a work session was But because they're just felt like there were so many new things to the rest of the counselors They couldn't they couldn't perceive that difference. And so when we do public dialogue, right? Which which is more like a forum and more like a district meeting where it's work session is really a very different thing Public dialogue is more like those things But I've argued to individual counselors that it's different because it's not based on your district And it's different because it's not based on say the master plan or the budget And so it is a different way of having a town-wide discussion about public dialogue, but you know given the all the interest that was expressed here at this committee I think it's fine I do think it's important to leave it in as another kind of thing we could do But then the may is it doesn't force it if we're not ready to do it this year But we're reminded that oh, yeah, we might do it this way rather than expecting Different people to go to different district meetings So I think in as long as we just we just update right 5.3 They to also say may then we'd be fine with public dialogue with the softening but not losing and I'm Desperate to not lose the work sessions because of all the reasons Kathy just stated and I want to make sure we're all clear I don't know why Margaret would have added in accordance with open meaning law because that is a meaningless concept What we were trying to say is that the work sessions were not just for counselors That we understand it would have to be a posted meeting Minutes would have to be taken etc But we were also so we didn't even address open meaning law because we said they were open to the public with an opportunity To because we want to make it clear It's not just a bunch of counselors sitting around deciding this work session with a university official or a town official It's that the public is open to come to them and they would be posted meetings So I don't know why we would have to say in accordance with open meaning law except maybe She was thinking like district meetings aren't open meeting law Yeah, I think it was just to clarify that this is more formal than say a district meeting in terms of requirements for minutes and stuff So In the interest of keeping going I've changed 3.8 to the council may By majority vote schedule public dialogue sessions as it deems prudent period see rule That we will then fix. Oh, you did the prudent thing. Oh, should I leave? Necessary, how about necessary or not even as deems sessions as necessary I've just shorten it I just moved her whole sense the sentence may by majority vote schedule public dialogue sessions period. Oh wait Did you say by majority vote? Yes That's new and that in 3.8. It's new to 3.8. Yeah, so so but it's so which one How are we altering them to go together? We could just say 3.8 is the council may schedule public dialogue sessions period here. Okay, and then see real 5.3 we modify that Similarly, and that's a majority vote or something. I'm not at 5.3 yet. So I can't see what the wording is But we fix it when we get there. Okay, so that's nice and short and then work sessions her she had The second at it we were talking about should I just delete it in accordance with MOP and meeting law you do a reject I'd liked the addition to just make it clear that it's not That is so informal that it's a district meeting Yeah, as long as it means to everybody posting and minutes that I'm fine with that meaning Okay, then then she changed purpose of a work session is to discuss and then in which case We have a double work sessions. Oh, so that last sentence needs to then say a work session You know I mean it goes back and forth between work sessions and a work session. She actually didn't edit it Righted she put if she puts is and I have to say the purpose of all. Thank you. I Know it's like grammar grammar. We need to fix that but whether they're a singular session or okay Can I just want to keep us moving because I think they're in agreement. We like this and we're keeping it and I So I'm leaving Margaret's two edits, so it's not to skip. Okay, so then we're moving to preparation of agenda And I don't have any idea why she added in consultation with the clerk of the council because I that makes me nervous that The president's ability to prior to the agenda should not be limited by the clerk's schedule So I don't know why you would say in consultation. It's not in the charter. It specifically isn't in the charter It says advice from counselors in the town manager period. I Don't see any reason to have it added. So I don't get it. Do we have agreement just that I don't accept I'm okay with that skip Good And I marked under 4.2 how we already made clear that the that the in our first sentence there that the Presiding officer can shift things around. Yeah, so I think the question there was do you call out the president specifically or just say presiding officer I Think you might want to call the president out because the president is the agenda setter and they could set an agenda In a posting that is not the right order But might not be the presiding officer at the meeting But there's probably still involved with the agenda setting for that meeting if they're not going to be at the meeting so Since the president has the specific agenda setting authority You're then by keeping them both in you're allowing when the president publishes the agenda Even if they're not going to preside at the meeting it to be off Kilter and then whoever's presiding at the meeting Can also switch it around if that's not the president Just catch me up to exactly where we are 4.2 in that sentence because we talked about should we use president or presiding officer or should we just use presiding officer That this is a case where we should have both. I believe man. Yes. Yeah, I think so And actually we have always had that because there's no track changes and then we're down to 4.3 Which has a couple of comments. I think we should put president or presiding officer Into that too because it is both in agenda setting but also potentially during the meeting and I disagree with Margaret's comment to change it to May because I thought we were very specific here that we wanted it to Be shell so we have a couple of comments from counselors And I will read them Proposed rule 4.3 requires public comments on matters that are new to the council and likely new to most members of the public A better approach would be quote when there is significant public interest on an issue before the council as evident from public attendance Or otherwise and when time permits the president shall include additional public comment session specific to the issue end quote That was one comment Another one is I think this suggestion has been working very well and would recommend retaining it Those are the two So I would say that we keep it as we wrote it because only one person had a problem with it and we've actually had Lin is in the back room, but We haven't had that many and it's at the beginning She's always been able to figure out who's here to talk about these issues. Yeah, so I think it's working. Well, yeah Yeah, I don't want there's some weird rule that like you're telling by how many people just yeah I like the way it says Okay 4.4 Margaret has a full delete of everything to describe an executive session So I wrote Margaret a note separately that said We so appreciate everything you did But one of the things is because you didn't sit through hours of meetings as you don't know why we did some of the things We did and one of the things that we did for example with executive session is we were trying to not repeat What's in the law, but yet give the public a sense of what are they doing? Like how can they go into executive session? So she gutted it which in my opinion would mean you don't need to mention it at all because you just go to MGL So I'd like to keep it the way it was. I wanted to keep it too. So can I just reject her edits? I think that we were good on that. I have to tell you I think there's one at it You might not the statutory reference. She added section a in Okay, whether we want to keep that one or not to one in parental a that yeah, okay I don't know Melissa. Yeah, I think that one's fine to keep hasn't heard anything because yeah Then it actually has the reference It's much easier to reject an edit than the edit the edits in terms of the way it looks. I have to tell you Her change of shall instead of may in the executive sessions versus the gutting No, she was but that changes the shall be convened It was what it was read to so instead of may be convened. I like may I think yeah personally The only thing I like about what she added here because for the reasons we stated is the actual MGL reference Which maybe we just put at the end of the 4.4 heading rather than having have its own sentence But however we just whatever looks good to you Kathy. I think it looks fine. I'm just trying to wear the executive sessions may be entered only into did she make Where was the may in the shell that you were talking out? He had to I because I just rejected her she had her her sentence would have read executive sessions shall be convened in accordance with MGL 30a section 21b for the reasons stated in MGL 30a section 21a We had executive sessions may be entered only after the council blah blah blah blah blah And then we had executive sessions may only be convened for reasons stated in blah blah blah So where would you put the shell? So I think the may in the first paragraph is good, but maybe the shall Executive sessions shall only be convened for reasons stated that that may turn into a yeah The first may is is fine, but I think the second one should be a shell Got it. We love our raisins shells 4.5 was just a computation of time from Margaret We had a comment that said we haven't been following This I think this is a great rule as I often fear if I read the packet too early then I will miss things But can we abide by it? So this is goes back to the posting and 4.5 may have an unintended consequence if a committee meets three to seven days before a meeting It may be impossible for the committee chair to prepare a report three days prior to the meetings It is complicated by the general statutory rule that weekends are not included when actions are required within ten days or fewer This requirement rate may reduce the number of written reports and increase the reliance on oral reports. I Think this goes back to the enforcement question, doesn't it? Yeah, it's harder for committees that meet on Wednesdays on Thursdays or Wednesdays, I guess Impossible for Thursdays impossible for Thursdays. Yeah, I guess I saw it as aspirational, right? This is this is our general standard if you can meet it great if you can't meet it What's gonna happen to you? I mean nothing somebody's gonna complain if a particular committee is not maybe fulfilling Their application to report back more effectively, right?  You know that that could be a question, but I think setting an idea is not saying Well now that we have this rule everyone has to twist themselves into a pretzel. I mean it's it's generally What we expect we understand particularly as we're all meeting less often honestly a lot of our committees Once we get into a groove aren't going to be Facing quite as much time pressure. So I think I'm hearing we leave it as is and the question of what do we mean? My days will be taken care of by our how you compute a day and There's a little bit of slack here when it's late breaking news You know as in couldn't but I do think the expectation that a committee has met I Find it really difficult to get things Sent to me by email Monday morning because I actually don't know there. I don't always know they're there I mean I may be doing something else and so I'm supposed to have read something. I didn't know I had Which makes it extremely difficult And sometimes it is or isn't in the packet in a way that I know it just got added, you know, it's just You so I like the idea of it being a tough rule unless we You know, so I'd almost postpone something if they can't get to maybe before and worse It's getting at three or four o'clock in the afternoon before Monday, you know, I mean you shouldn't come in that late Can I just this may not be the right? Forum for this but all of these points are leading to the idea we need somebody else to be working on the minutes for all of us and Posting them and doing all of these things. So There's a clear need for that the the other aspect to this that I think we need to not lose sight of is that Arguably any committee report is an expression of opinion and should not be being provided outside of a posted meeting And until we have it set up such that the public is getting it 48 hours ahead It's actually Arguably by some people in division vote when the government not supposed to be submitted prior to the meeting at which it's considered Which is of course ridiculous because how are you going to take time to read a report? So our lives are complicated by that issue but technically yeah, okay, so we're moving on because let's just We're go past it. We're so far at the we're good minor edit world. So five point one I Saw in B Two changes that we want to probably change president to presiding officer in five point one B I see both references should probably more properly be presiding officer and The comment there so D. I'm not sure we need the president in there versus just presiding officer. Yeah Given that we're trying to consistently is presiding officer we can remove president. Yeah In place presiding offers in place of right and presiding officer Margaret added So we just want to take out president Without first being okay, so I'm in five point one presiding officer five point one B I changed president to providing officer so the next one down is D D Okay, B had two changes to places. I did to her guiding officers there and D and then D Number two has her one. Okay. Yeah, D. Just at the very beginning where Margaret's changes are just just do President, I mean get rid of president there and then I guess the add D to right got it has one There was a comment on five one E Council's response to public comment the president's recognition of councillor or staff to answer questions of public very important more important than the 10 p.m. Closing time And five point one D five. I support D five Which is written comments submitted if this I wonder if this should also be expanded to include written comments sent prior to the meeting and to specify that written comments are never included in the packet and Then is there another one more on five point one E The comment is confusing as written because of the placement of the reference to the open meeting law It would be clearer to say quote the intention of the public comment period is for council to hear comments on matters That are not on the agenda not to engage in discussion of those issues The open meeting law may not be a barrier to discussion because these matters were not anticipated by the president 48 hours in advance We're mixing a whole lot of different things together, right? So let's go back to D5 right we fixed D D5 as to whether or not we want to add anything about those other comments and while I respect that Concept I think it's going to make it more confusing if we try and address that Issue of people emailing us stuff and saying put this in your packet and put this in the record. I'm not sure that's Easily addressed except through a completely different rule. I just heard the person no I heard it a different way. No, I heard the the comment being This says a written comment during the meeting would be sent to us Yeah, I think the comment was just suggesting written comments prior or during the meeting We're putting the word prior just making sure that if something came in to us that we got it Was that what the comment did? I'll read the comment again. I support this I wonder if this should be should also be expanded to include written comments sent prior to the meeting and To specify that written comments are never included in the packet. So I'm not sure what Expansion would be if written comments prior to a meeting aren't included in the packet Are we just handed a whole bunch and the clerk's got to figure out what we received? I'm just not sure where this comments going if for the I read this as you know when someone emails us and it comes to Lin is forwarding them or we all get them but suppose a letter comes in that we should somehow know that I'm sending you my views on this we should know it they didn't have to hand it to us during the meeting So I was thinking that we don't have the word prior You know that if there's a written comment on something we could get it prior to or during and then the person Who's giving in this but they don't want it in the packet, you know They just want us to know what's been coming in so they were trying to make it clear We weren't going to be posting it So this is all talking about things happening at a meeting and this was mainly to address the idea of somebody come in with 13 letters and walking around and handing them all right exactly as opposed to what you said Which is really important that we get the information Ahead of meetings that's provided to us ahead of meetings right if it wasn't already sent to all of us naturally right to me That's a different and so if we want to we could add something But I'd be uncomfortable with saying or prior within that same sentence because this is talking about actions Okay, okay during the meeting But maybe I mean maybe we do need to add that some place so am I should I change anything or should we? the actual Practice has been to get us those comments I think if something's been sent by mail to And address to the town council we've been receiving copies in our maroon folders before meetings That's what I think we by practice. It's been half. Yeah, yeah I'm not sure we need to specify whereas we were calling this out to make it clear You just hand all the stuff to the clerk and she'll take care of it and she'll make sure we all get it She won't just put you're not also walk into each individual counselor and his hand and something to him Yeah, can we back up just a moment though because for I'm I object to Margaret's change on identifying by name and address We have never required that and anything other than maybe some kinds of public hearings and I just think that's not necessary Where is that so I am for D4 she added by identify themselves by name and address Oh, we do a reject. I'll do a reject. Yeah. No, I think that that's good The address made sense if it's in a written in the register of people's but not when you're actually making your comment That's probably upon recognition by the presiding officer. Oh, there's another one. There's another one. There's a lot of them We'll just find them all There's one in e1 Yeah, you're right. There isn't there and then yeah when we're in e I actually don't Have shared the same understanding Margaret does about council practice because we have in fact turned to the town manager for a Question at some point and practice, of course is a very limited number of months old I liked what we wrote But is there a way to elaborate on it for the counselor comment that we got associated with that? To make it clear that in theory something somebody's bringing up could be an item unanticipated So we don't want to seem like we're shutting the door The counselor comment Actually added some stuff the counselor comment had proposed the intention of the public comment period is for the council to hear comments on matters That are not on the agenda Not to engage in discussion of those issues Which actually isn't something we've done for public comment Because we have different kinds of public comment and we can't restrict that you can't talk about what's on the agenda at all You know, you're allowed to it's just sometimes we're saying you're gonna do it when we hit that item other times We're saying you can do it at the general comment. So but not to engage in discussion of those issues So the and then it said the open meeting law may not be a barrier to discussion Because these matters were not anticipated by the president if they're not on the agenda So I guess the concern was the in compliance with open meeting law phrasing I Don't think we have a problem here Just delete the in compliance with the meeting Done it we struggled with that phrase the last time it doesn't seem like we have to have those words Yeah, we could just take that out right then we don't provide that barrier that counselors concerned about But we also don't automatically open it up to something. Yeah means that the presiding officer's discretion and just Okay I think yeah, I think that solves it as much as it's gonna get solved Because it doesn't make it a three cent three line rule anymore It's rid of one line Okay public hearings Here's the comments public hearings are required for many reasons some required by state law and others by charter There is not always a petition or a petitioner such as a hearing to set the tax rate when the finance committee schedules a budget hearing Is required by the charter there is no petitioner this proposed rule needs to be reconsidered The public hearings 5.2 5.2 Is it see that they're concerned about that one was just 5.2 in general my guess is it's the after petitioners Presentation so there's another one that says I don't know if and this is specifically for see I don't know if this is the typical order for public hearing But it seems like questions from councillors should come first or second so that all questions are answered before any testimony is given So I think that was taken care of with Margaret's recommended change of adding a questions from councillors and then comments from councillors at the end and That's it for the public hearing section comments So maybe instead of after petitioners presentation the public hearing format is one petitioners Presentation if any two questions from councillors three public asking questions for You know or just presentation I'm sorry, so maybe do we just Where it says after positioners presentation maybe turn that into one of the steps and Instead of that parentheses is we have that before yeah Yeah, yeah instead of the parentheses number one is petitioners presentation number two is questions from councillors then public then public speaking in favor Public opposing then comments from councillors, and then you're closing the hearing Although comments from councillors isn't part of the hearing comments from councillors from councillors again actually because part of Oh, yeah, you can have multiple questions. Yeah different question periods is actually because comments will take place during After the hearing is closed right after the giving speech Yeah, it's closed, but but we should be able to ask so whether we want to say questions or comments or just questions But we need under what's currently listed as five, which will be six I guess will be and it's another question period because we we may have more questions Some the public may have brought something up that we then turn to Dave the president and say could mr. Zomac address that more because we don't understand what the public just said versus what he just So and and the whole about non petitioners We did have in e the format doesn't apply to public hearings to consider the budget the master plan. Yep hearings where procedures are governed by state law or hearings on topics where the where the council is not responding to a formal petition, so I think we've already sort of Done some of that hedging there That the format's not for formal petition essentially anything formal, so I think we've hedged enough there So what that public speaking in opposition should that be okay? I'm just telling you I'm following it, but I haven't typed anything yet So I would like to do it all at once in C. I think what it is is in C The public hearing format colon and then number one is now petitioners presentation Margaret's added one is now two everything else got bumped numbers and We are rejecting her change in the new six from questions from counselors to comments from counselors going back to questions from counselors because comments are part of D Council debate okay, so it's public hearing format colon number one is petitioners presentation Then questions from counselors Then just tell me what comes next public asking question public speaking in favor public speaking in opposition And then questions from counselors again, and then questions again, okay And then there can be a motion to close the evidentiary portion And that's when we have the comments so to speak That's part of our deliberation Got it Moving to public dialogue. We're back to five point three like we said, okay So then we'll um what I'm thinking would be the simplest would be By majority vote comma the council may hold public dialogue sessions Yep, okay sounds good to me that way it's a more inclusive do we need to do this? Okay, yeah, that works So that first part where it says at least two times a year instead it says by majority vote comma At least two times a year Leaping at least two times a year. Okay, so by majority vote the council may hold by majority vote may hold May hold public dialogue sessions a public dialogue session that that's so it now reads the by majority vote the council may hold public dialogue sessions period or Or maybe I'll say a hole a so I can own have to edit the second sentence may hold a public dialogue session Then it says this session may occur so everything else stays exactly as rewrote it. Yeah, right It no longer requires it and it's a majority vote. So it's like everybody agreed. We should do this thing cool the only other comments that the PDF had for rule five was rules five and six five point five and five point six and Probably would go on reading the comment to five point seven two Which is given that these are already discussed in the charter. Is it necessary to repeat them in the rules? That goes back to sort of a general How much do we want to repeat from the Charter for explanation and not having to jump back and forth 5.5 5.6 district meetings and free petition So we did we just jump through Margaret said it's a 5.4. We didn't sorry I'm willing to jump forward I just need to be told to jump for let's go ahead and jump forward for a minute Because that's where we got okay. No, I'm fine jumping So we're on 5.5 and 5.6, but we're gonna go back to 5.4, but the district meeting stuff is just Is it a more user-friendly version in all reality? Or is it just repetitious and do we feel the need to have it in there? It was put in after the fact Because we had a whole thing called public participation and yes And when we had this discussion early on it was Harking back to our opening statement about our values where we believed in robust public So we wanted to show if anyone should ever read our rules They don't have to go read the charter that to the extent we can we've got a lot of opportunities So it it's delivered. It deliberately repeated To say this is not these are not the only ones, you know, the new things we're putting in There's a bunch of other times. Don't forget about all these other so I think that would be a good explanation to Whichever the counselors put that in don't repeat that. Yeah, this this is again This is who we are is the as the Amherst town council So I would Want to keep you just as is all the avenues. Yes. Yes, I like it Leaving uses. Yeah, because we want we want to show all the options plus the new options we made Right. So now we have to go back 5.4 to 5.4. So I didn't Have a problem with her edits I think she you know that it cuts out what the forums are for but I think that's okay It actually might give us a little more leeway when holding a forum on say the master plan If we haven't defined it somewhere is exactly what you're supposed to do there On same with the capital improvement forum So I didn't really have a I'd be okay with accepting all of her Changes whereas I run the exact opposite way and said quite harshly in my note to myself There is zero point in not describing the forums If you're going to just use the headers in the charter then you can skip all of it because it doesn't there's no point The rules aren't supposed to be a repeat of the charter in this case Unlike for example district meetings and free petition which we wanted to make sure people knew those things Existed without having to go and read the charter in the various places that they can find them is that I thought this really was an Opportunity for us to be able to help engage ourselves and the public as to what would we do at budget public forum? What would we do at capital improvement forum? And what would we do at master plan forum? So so Alyssa you're Just to I like to do it quickly You're saying keep the description of each of these in do you like the rest of her edits? I mean I found the rest of the edits simplifying and clarifying But so is it mainly the objection to getting rid of the description of these? Yes, and the only other one I had what associated with her edits So that to me was the substantive one and the only other one is I thought it might be a little clear When she's trying to describe our bizarro one half of the time scenario, which I appreciate the crack at that is maybe it's calculated instead of saying Just as the formal presentation, maybe it would help to say as the initial formal presentation Because it's like what happens at the beginning is what counts as opposed to the follow-up part So I thought maybe adding the word Initial would be a little bit helpful between the and formal in that last sentence on page 11 I'm fine with that. Yeah, I the only thing I wondered was she starts with one half You know the the way public form or form is defined in the charter Has That one half of the time must be devoted to Public comment right and that's and she starts with one half of the time is calculated as formal Presentation, you know, whereas, you know, it's almost swaps Yeah Where the one half is public form the phrase public forum shall mean a meeting during which more than one half of the meeting Time on the agenda is devoted to public comment. So maybe We could just say Some other rewording that's like Comments or responses to question or responses to questions by Responses to comments or questions from the public Shall be considered Time devoted to public comment So for purposes of Elation so get rid of rid of the first sentence and then and then sort of say for purpose purposes of calculating Time comma Responses to questions responses by the town officials to Questions or comments made by the public shall be considered public comment So it says for purposes of calculating time responses Responses to questions by the town manager staffer counselors shall be considered Part of the public comment time Or because they're not public comment. So responses by Town staff or town officials I don't know by the town manager staff or counselors to questions and comments made by the public Her wording was kind of confusing anyway So it's the responses by us to questions or comments made by the public Shall be considered part of the Time devoted to public comment. I don't know whether that's clear or not. I'm editing the edit So for purposes of calculating time comma Responses by the town manager staff or counselors to questions or comments made by the public shall be considered part of the time devoted to public comment I think that works. Yep. Yeah, and then as I go down the next one I think is Claire makes it simpler no fewer than one public form on for each of the following and then we're rejecting the edits that Get rid of the definitions of these and Do I keep the last in addition to specific forms the council shall hold forms in accordance with Bububububuh she got rid of all of that and charter what she just referred to the charter instead of describing what those I would just keep those words. I mean I would direct reject all those edits because it's not confusing I'm fine with rejecting those edits. Okay are delightful rule 6 code of courtesy conduct and debate Yeah, do you want to talk about what's in the counselor comments first manager? So I will try There's a couple, and I apologize for jumping around because they jump around, 6.4. We need a parliamentarian who is not a council member, a 0.1 from the public, 6.2d is sufficient. I do not like silencing the public, smacks a dictatorship. They have a right to express their opinion. Someone else, regarding the applause rule, it's against our value of celebrating our achievements. We can accommodate the main concern, don't want to support audible, visible expressions that create divisiveness by adding wording that makes that point clear. Those present shall not engage in audible demonstration of approval or disapproval if it creates divisiveness or something like that. That would allow us to clap for collective victories in our children like we did at the end of the guy Steve acknowledged. 6.1, in the statement, participants should avoid, I would encourage a stronger word than should. 6.2, should I stop, I've got 2, 3, I'll do the rest, 6.2, I strongly prefer option 2. When contentious issues arise, audible demonstrations of approval or disapproval can alter the entire atmosphere of the room, consider a situation where a member of the public offers public comment against a particular policy, and the room erupts in applause at the end of the comment. This may now discourage or make uncomfortable a member of the public who is present to speak in favor of a particular policy. Cheering or applause is not just about celebration, it can also signal agreement, and that has the potential to change the character of debate. I do not believe 6.2d is sufficient, as in the example above people clapping at the end of a public comment would not, quote, disturb or impede the orderly procedure of the meeting, but certainly would change the atmosphere of the room which can stifle debate. 6.3k, I think we have become accustomed to this rule, but it should be reconsidered. I know everyone likes a casual environment, but we are elected officials engaged in serious deliberation, and our address to each other should reflect that. Further in talking with Senator Rosenberg about this issue, he mentioned that during contentious policy debates, the use of first names can make things feel very personal, whereas using counselor name, quote, counselor, and then the counselor's name shows respect even in the face of disagreement. He encouraged using titles as it can help preserve decorum during debate, and in 6.4, is this a majority vote, does that need to be specified? So that's, I think that was the thing we actually might have just deleted. And that is all the comments on Rule 6. So in 6.4, to make our lives simple, in 6.4, we already deleted that, right, where we took out the part about that. So now we don't really need to specify, because it's just, go look elsewhere to how this is going to work, and then the presiding officer thing. And here, in general, so you don't know how everyone should alert me to it, but instead of the president or presiding officer, should we just switch to presiding officer? 6.4. So, I'm not sure what to do with that one, because the preserving decorum and order is the presiding officer, right? But then there's that sentence, the president may speak in favor of opposition to any motion, may participate and vote under the same rules as applied to other counselors. Okay, that president says that. That one, I think, needs to be the president. It's just the very first one, the president, and Paran or Parach. Do we leave it that way? That's the way I edited it last time. You think you could just say the president or presiding officer shall preserve decorum without the parentheses, maybe? Okay. And then it's clear that the next kept paragraph about the may speak in favor is literally just about the president. Right. Now we can go back up to the other. Yes, we were taking the easy one, because it was near the end. Okay, so now we're going after the six. I was just doing the last one, because we dismissed 6.4 now, so now we can go up. 6.1 is presiding officer and president again in the first paragraph. Address the remarks to the presiding officer. Right? Yeah. That's one where we change it. Yeah. I've changed it. Excellent. And then there's the C, 6.2A, where it's C rule five versus just rule five. 6.1, someone said in the statement, participants should avoid encourage stronger than should. I'm trying to figure out where this is. Where they meant that. So we've got in the second sentence, participants should avoid discussing personalities and not impugn, so we could say participants shall avoid. And then later on, you've got all participants should address their remarks to the presiding officer. You should probably say all participants shall address their remarks to get rid of those two shoulds to shalls. Yeah. We usually use may or shall not should as this has evolved over time. If that takes care of all the comments in 6.1, I think. And in 6.2A is where I just wondered if we were adding at the end of the reference to rule five, if we were adding the word C or not adding the word C there, I don't remember what our result was there. I mean, we could. If it was there, I don't think it, you know what? I think we could take it out all together. You think don't even mention rule five? Yeah. Oh, that's fine. What? That's fine. We have an entire section called public participation. And so rather than pointing them to it, just assume that they know it exists. Yeah. Because this rule six comes after rule five. It is a whole rule. It's an entire rule. Go. Right. Why would you skip to six and not read five first? I could see that. I mean, in other cases, we are setting the rule five. I'm fine either way because I don't find a cross reference, you know, because we've got several places in five, so we can't even say here, there's, I'm fine because I don't think this is very... Why don't we just delete it? Okay. Then we've got... I just think we wanted to make, I think one of the reasons that came into there is so that we made it super clear, like we did in some other places, super clear. There's a whole rule about this, like we're not just giving you one sentence. So on the next one down on B, Margaret's comment is interesting because I hadn't thought that we can't necessarily restrict it to... If someone comes in, I've got three things I want to talk about. We'd hear about three things as long as they can get it done in three minutes. Yes? Yeah. I guess I looked at that one as saying you should have, you shouldn't ramble randomly about... You should talk about something. You should have a point. I guess that's what it is. That's how I read focus on specific issues. You should have a point. So you don't think the concern she raises... I didn't think of it... This was restrictive either. I thought... Yeah. I don't think it actually... Okay. So we can take her... I'll just delete her comment. Yeah. Okay. Her comment is worried that we can't stop people from saying what they want to say and so is it enforceable and this is more saying we're hoping the public comment is talking about a specific issue. So we're not really... You've got three minutes. So you could use it... Would someone get up and talk about my child visited me yesterday and we had a really good time? I mean, that would be an example where they're not bringing up an issue to the council. Maybe we could say instead of specific issues shall pertain to matters under the jurisdiction of the council. Ooh. Yeah. That's way better. Why not? I like that. I think we did that back in public participation in Rule 5 somewhere. I think we had similar language in Rule 5. And what is the president supposed to... They don't. So that's what she... She's raising the enforcement side. Why... We had a situation like that, by the way, very recent. Right. And so that gives you the opportunity to say please focus on issues that pertain to the thing. But I mean, you can't unwind it. It's not like you're in a courtroom where you can say, just regard what that person just said. So I mean, the best you can do is say, is that kind of constant care and feeding of public comment, please focus on issues. And then we're always going to have people who break the rules and then talk about their grandchildren visiting.  So instead of the legal shall pertain, can I say shall focus on issues under the jurisdiction of the council or something like that? Yes. There are issues that people come to the town. Technically therefore, they're under our jurisdiction. So I just want to... Somebody may come to, you know, complain about something a department did. It's part of our duty, but people may not see it that way. But... I personally think that what we have written here, rather than editing it down, you know, someone wanted us to make a statement about nuclear power. You know, some of the things, you know, that we don't have any control of, control of, we might be willing to entertain, could you come back with that as a proclamation or something? You know, I mean, we wouldn't restrict them that we can't, you know, if they wanted to make a statement, you know, I'm thinking of one that might... Would the town council support something that the legislature might do for Medicare for all? I mean, it's not the town can't do it, we can't do it. You know, so there, you know, people might make these kinds of statements and we wouldn't just want to say that's, we don't want to hear about that, right? So I kind of like public comment shall focus on specific issues, not fixing it. I don't have a preference one way or the other, so I'm okay. Yeah, go back to the way, leave it the way it was. Good point, Kathy. Then we're on to D and, is it technically a new E or was it just added... If you look at it as, as... It would be a new E and F eventually, but I guess it's not quite now because of formatting, right? The demonstrations, or is it just part of D? When I did this word, wouldn't let me move it out. I'll figure out how to get it, it's supposed to be D, E, F, and I, somehow I couldn't get rid of the little arrow. And it was in, it's whatever we, whatever blood ends up on the floor at the end of this meeting, associated with this particular item, it is within D and so E and F are the same. It's a sub, it's a sub of issue, it should be a little one, right? It should be a one and I tried to... Is it supposed to be a little one? It's not. No, I thought it was supposed to be a new E and E would become F. So I'll bring it in, so let me do it right now and see if... That was originally what was... No. Proposed an option. Option one was that D was sufficient, option two was adding a sentence before D, it wasn't adding a whole nother letter, it was just elaborating on D. In a prior draft, it was a separate letter, that's why I'm confused, I guess. The last one we provided said, add a separate sentence before D, which I interpreted as adding a sentence before the word those in D and someone else might interpret as adding another letter. Letter, okay. So either way, we could do it either way but I think Kathy captured here what we talked about then on the seventh, which was something that Shalini had offered, which is something I mentioned earlier, I don't agree with and we've heard the counselor comment that actually expressed what I think better than I did.  So we got two extraneous or three on this, some in favor, some not in favor of having it at all but also of softening it a little bit. So Shalini's added word softened it a little bit. I just want to address the concerns that people had. The two things I heard was, I mean the main thing I heard was the divisiveness, like one way or the other, if it's, you know, we don't want people to feel awkward about it or whatever their decision is. So if you can address that concern and what is the, is there any other concern that's left out? My comment associated with that is that if 13 people could agree on what was disruptive or divisive, we'd be fine but just as some would find it chilling to say anything about this, I don't think, I think that what the counselor wrote separately was actually really clear in that you would, you personally, a person on the council may never consider applause to be divisive whereas somebody out in the audience who was just totally trounced and what they thought their opinion was may find it very divisive that a whole bunch of people just burst into applause for something that was exactly the opposite of what they wanted. How do you as a counselor decide that particular display of applause? And that's why I was saying earlier associated with my version of it is that, you know, when we spontaneously applaud third graders, like, awesome, who's going to do anything to us? Like, I don't see why we want to prevent ourselves from saying, and we would never, I mean, we, we have a rule if people spontaneously explode into applause because someone's retired or because someone did an amazing thing or because third graders came before us, I don't think that's the same as an everyday rule that says we don't go through each order of business thinking that maybe somebody will decide to have an expression that's visible or audible about, ooh, look, they voted yes on these appointments. Oh, hiss, they didn't do that on that appointments. Was that divisive or not? I mean, I don't think that having the rule that I asked for prevents us from having something spontaneous happen. That it would be up to the president at that point to say, okay, that's enough clapping. We need to stop after half an hour. But it wouldn't be, stop that. Don't applaud for third graders. Like, you don't have to have that interpretation of the rule. Things happen spontaneously that we might appreciate. I cannot agree to saying that someone decides what's disruptive or divisive in terms of an approval or disapproval because no two of us is going to agree because we're not sitting out in the audience. We don't know. Go, Darcy. I feel like there's, you know, people feel strongly about this, obviously, both ways. So I, you know, and I feel like we had a very close vote on the council. Is there a way that we can just, you know, leave it as one item that we still haven't finally decided and just let the council decide? Just yellow shade it then. And then the question is if, if the recommendation is to leave it, it's with the qualifying words, disruptive or divisive, or do we go back to the, those present, the period after disapproval, as it was written. That's, I just, I'm, I'm fine with leaving it in yellow highlighted to say we want to come back to this. I think the addition clarifies it improves upon our last version, so we should have it with the new words and then device. And I'm concerned by putting the words in, but I was going to say this, we have to also remember in terms of clapping and all that this is a rule for the public, not a rule for us. So we could applaud the third graders all we want if we want. We're not prohibiting from us from applauding a presentation or something. We're saying the public shouldn't do stuff. I'm, I'm concerned by this who judges whether it's divisive. I mean, disruptive is a little bit easier to determine, but divisive because you don't know if someone sitting in the audience, whether they've spoken or not. And, and you go to the counselor that said, and, and I will, I'll, I'll go back to, I think Alyssa used the argument about Indigenous People's Day at town meeting when that was up for a vote. There were some individuals that spoke passionately for keeping it named Columbus Day as an Italian heritage recognition, not necessarily for Columbus and what he did, but for Italian heritage in general. And it took a lot of courage to get up in town meeting when and say that number one. And then when it passed overwhelmingly with only maybe eight people, there was a very few against and the room broke out and applause, that could be considered very divisive, but I'm guessing for those that were applauding, they were not believing it was divisive. And so divisive is, is hard to, it's a much harder thing to determine agreement on as to whether something was divisive. I think anything that could be voted one way or the other is divisive, but anything that involves celebrating a common victory is not divisive. So I don't know if you want to state it differently, but. I guess the common victory isn't always common and not unanimous. And so even a unanimous vote on the council doesn't have most likely unanimous support in town and so in applauding a unanimous vote of the council, I'm just having problems figuring out how that would be interpreted. So I'd just rather get rid of it. So anything that involves a vote I think could be, could have either or and would be divisive. So I'm not, when I say a common victory doesn't mean a common vote.  So that doesn't involve a vote, but it's an acknowledgement. So maybe what we want to say is not user word divisive, but if, is that if there is, but if it's creating such a big controversy, let's not do it. All I ask is that if you want to leave this to a vote of the council on Monday, that we, you place it, give them two or three options so that they clearly vote versus letting them sit there and try to word Smith, because that takes time. So, you know, the original clean version was those presidents shall not engage in demonstration of approval or disapproval period. Right? The original was audible. What? The original was actually audible demonstrations of approval or disapproval.  But the original said audible. Finger snapping, waving, and display of signs. So we decided approval. So that would be a way of stating this. The second would be remove divisive and say that are disruptive, or I'm just thinking even if we were talking about it, you know, accept to, to, in celebration or appreciation of, you know, I mean, so it, what we're going to do is we're going to have a discussion. And then we came up with another idea. What about based on what Shalini just said, approval or disapproval of a counsel action, or of a counsel vote or a counsel decision? I mean, that, that as a, as a potentially a third alternative or some sort of alternative wording, if we're going to have wording and I know this is like problems with that. But that, you know, that doesn't say disruptive or divisive, but it's all specific votes. There's no applause. So the problem with talking about specific votes, if that's the only thing you talk about, is that now you have not addressed the fact that when Bill gets up there and says, we need to have Italian American Day by God, then the rest of the population that's sitting out there can go boo, hiss, whatever, no, don't say that. So it's, it's fine to have one thing that talks about us, but it doesn't really relate to that. So I'm literally at the point, at this point where I'm willing to give up on this and I am willing to go if, let me be clear what I'm giving up, I'm willing to give up my old phrasing of those present shall not engage in audible demonstrations of approval or disapproval, which was based on my 20 years of legislative experience in the town of Amherst. I'm willing to give that up if all we say is what we already have about those present conducting, disturbing or impeding. If we don't say anything about the applause stuff, if we don't say anything about celebrating our community, if we just leave at the Frick alone and go with this, and then if it turns out that we're having trouble with that and our president says, you know, I kind of wish I had another rule that I can enforce here, we can figure out a way to phrase it then. I accept that. I second that. So I shallily wrestle with this. So rather than multiple wordsmiths, so we're deleting this, so there will be an A, B, C, D, E. And when we explain this next week, we can always, as Lynette pointed out, is put it on the, you know, up on the screen, please don't break out and clapping or cheering. So we can see what we can do to just send the signal and message in a very informal way rather than a rule. Gone. It's gone. I just want to, it's ironic that it's the one rule and Margaret said good rule too in her comments and now we just deleted it. That's her years of experience at town meetings speak. Yeah. Without question, I have to say both Margaret and Paul and I have spoken about the two times we've had applause and I'm not surprised to see their comment. And so I will explain to the people who felt that was important exactly why we got to the point where we got. I'm just trying to figure out how to show it. Well, particularly because it was an option, right? That's what makes it extra complicated is if we're trying to show them what you saw in the sixth versus what you see on the 20th. I've got it as it deleted something. Then the other, Mandy, as you went through the larger list, one person. Six point three K, which Margaret also had a change to the addressing of each other was the next one that people commented on. I actually think we should just get rid of K as a rule. That's the way we are acting. And I'm turning to Dorsey because she said this was such a popular thing that we did that it would be nice to put it in as a rule. But there might be instances, what's being pointed out, there might be instances we need to be more formal in some way, right? You know, in a hearing when we're going up against something where we want to go back to Councillor Shane. So this is the addressing each other by our first name. I think what the concept was, I just couldn't scroll to the right place. So Margaret says, do we want to compel this? And the comment that was sent in is one person never liked it in the first place, but the other said there are going to be instances like Stan Rosenberg raised that you might want to be called counts in a much more formal setting. You might want to be addressing ourselves that way. So if we're silent on this, we can do what seems to work for the setting we're in, would be where I would go. But I'm also fine with leaving it in. So I never found it, I haven't found it problematic. I think that Margaret's suggestion is a good one just to say may. Because I think it's kind of cool that was the first, it was like the first rule that we came up with. To just change shell to may. And that solves the problem completely. Well, it still gives us the flexibility to do whatever we want to in different occasions. Which is exactly my concern. So it gives us the, let's have a shared understanding of what that means. It gives us the flexibility to do it within a meeting or amongst different types of meetings. Because what we didn't want, we specifically talked about when we proposed this rule to the president, is we didn't want a list of some people want to be called Councillor Schreiber and some people want to be called Steve. And so within a meeting, right, we don't want it to be like do whatever you want within the meeting because then nobody's going to know who we're talking about. But I appreciate the concept of being more formal. But I don't know that we can effectively express without too many words that we mean in different settings we might want to. So maybe we just leave it alone would be my suggestion and know that in a different setting if our president is at some event somewhere and wants to say Councillor Hanneke, instead of that that's fine. Because this rule is really talking about how we talk to each other here. If we think that this respect issue is so different like Sam Rosenberg thinks then it shouldn't be optional. We should absolutely always be calling each other Councillor. He's not offering us flexibility. He's saying you're doing it wrong. And so I'm not sure why if this was a hearing versus a regular council meeting we would want to call each