I'd like to call the meeting of GOL to order on February 12th. It is 10.37 in the morning, and we're being recorded by Amherst Media. Before we start, just a quick look at the agenda, which I hope people have in front of them. We have a couple of items I think we can get through quickly, two and three. I think we do have an issue that we need to talk about in terms of how we're going to handle bylaws going forward. I think that's something we need to discuss. But I really do want us to get to item seven and eight, the GOL proposal for committee restructuring. And I would like us to get at least to the public ways request. So I'm not sure how much we're going to spend on bylaws today, but we'll decide that obviously as a group. And then Evan has kindly put something in our packet, which I'm going to hold off to item 12. So item 12 essentially is item six. But so I'm going to as always reorder a bit. So the first item on the agenda is to discuss the revisions we made last time to the finance committee charge. It occurs to me now that maybe we really didn't need to discuss this. All I needed to do was send it to the finance committee chair. But you have it in your packet. And so I think the first item of business is decide whether we have any more discussion on those revisions, which Mandy has done. And if not, then my task is simply to send it on to the finance chair, have them look at it. And the hope is that we can present it then to the next, to the council at the next meeting. Do we need to look at this anymore? This is the revised finance committee charge. Can I just mention one thing? Sure. So most of it is what we discussed last meeting. I moved one bullet item from investigations and annual audit from that bullet down to reports because it was really the report section. I just wanted to point out that I did that since it was report findings to the town council. So I thought that probably better falls under reports. So that's one change we didn't discuss last week. Are we voting to recommend this to the council this week? Is that the goal? Actually, that's correct. We did not vote last time. So we do need to vote if we are ready to vote on it. So actually we do need to discuss briefly. And then maybe if that's the only change, I think we're ready for a vote. But I want to give you all a moment to look at it and to ponder. But yes, we need to vote on this. And if I take it, if the finance committee has some concerns, we'll have to come up with the council meeting. So two things. One is just helping with my failing memory. Andy had made some suggestions on things he would like to see included. Are they all now captured in this? I don't remember. I don't know. I remember him being here. I remember him talking. I don't remember what was said or decided. But no, I don't think they're going to be of much help. My recollection is that the issues seem to revolve around how broad the mandate of the finance committee is to be construed. And I'm not sure that that can really be decided by this document. But that was at least one takeaway. The sense that perhaps Andy and the finance committee might have a more broader sense of the mandate. Or should it reflect that? So I think the change we made that added bullet point under budgets and appropriations, that last one. He had recommended that it was just make recommendations on proposed bylaws, blah, blah, blah. And after discussion, we added the words upon referral from the council. So we were trying to limit it. And he wanted it even broader. So I think we've added in, I think he was okay with that in the end. But that was the change we made from his recommendation was to require for that bullet point referral from the council instead of just that they do it. And then, excuse me, the only other just super minor thing, regardless the measures will have. Yes. So if that issue is raised at the council meeting, we can present our rationale. Hopefully Andy and the committee will be satisfied by it, but there are obviously four other members. Otherwise, it looks like we're set. Okay, please. Motion. I move to recommend the council rescind the current finance committee bylaw and in its place to charge not bylaw. And in its place adopt the finance draft charge that was presented at this meeting as revised. A second. So we have a motion is that you need to repeat it. I think you're okay. Thank you. So a motion has been seconded. Any more discussion? So I'm going to immediately call the question. All those in favor, please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. I have four in favor and one absent. Second item I wanted to deal with next partly because we have a sponsor present partly because it's actually relatively short is a bylaw. That's being sponsored by Evan, but it does raise the question of how we're going to deal with bylaws when they come to us. But I'm wondering if we want to deal with this first and then turn to the larger discussion or do you want to have the larger discussion first? I think some of the other bylaws we have on the agenda do pose some serious challenges as to how we're going to proceed. This one I don't think does. Now that may be a mistake on my part, but my suggestion is let's look at the container amendment to Amherst open container bylaw and see what we want to do with it. I mean, it kind of seems weird to consider before we discuss how we want to proceed at the same time. I'm willing to go ahead with this one. I have a bias here. I understand. I feel like this one's so basic. I would just have one question for the sponsor if we're going to consider this one. Is that a tele-sized language similar to language that is used in other bylaws for this purpose? Or do we actually need a town attorney opinion that we can do this, which I hope not, but that's all I've got. So as we were having that conversation, I pulled up Hadley's bylaw because I had a feeling that would be useful. And so I'm going to read the last clause in Hadley's bylaw unless a permit therefore has previously been secured from the select board. So it's identical except swapping out select board for Board of License Commissioners and that language was intentionally pulled from Hadley because in theory it's already gone through Attorney General review and approval and has been in implementation and working there. And so if you looked at Northamptons, which I don't expect you did, theirs is much more complicated. They essentially have a separate provision in their bylaw that basically says for these particular public areas, you can get a permit and here's the process. And it was just that to me was very complex. And I liked sort of the simplicity of Hadley's that just said this is prohibited unless you get a permit and it's up to them to decide. So we could send this to the attorney. To me, it's straightforward and modeled on our neighbor to the West. I think it does again, as Manny pointed out, doing this one first. But it raises the question of any bylaw given that we are not whether with any bylaw we feel it always has to go to time consuming. It also puts us at the mercy of the lawyers and has some experience in the past where we had to wait and wait and wait. So I don't know the answer to that. Here it seems pretty straightforward, pretty clear. So I asked that question because I was curious whether it tracked language that has essentially already gone through either in the city, probably someone else's attorney review, or in towns they always have to go to the AG before the changes happen. And so if it's already been through that and this language pretty much tracks that, I am comfortable saying it's actionable, which is sort of that attorney review, versus another bylaw potentially that hasn't ever, you know, that's completely novel, you know, that you can't point to anywhere in the Commonwealth that has done it, for example. But something like this that the next door neighbor has pretty much this exact language. I'm comfortable just doing the clear consistent and actionable now because I do think it's clear. And I don't know what it would be inconsistent with, but. The chair could reach out, we could smooth ahead with this and I think we should, as my opinion, but the chair could reach out informally through Paul and ask the attorneys what best practices are. Because again, it's always dangerous because you ask an attorney what the best practices are, it usually involves their services. But I could do that if I think it's appropriate. In other words, just say, you know, whenever it just makes sense, if you already have a bylaw in front of you that we assume has gone through that the process has been in existence for whatever number of years, and you are making a slight change to it or making an addition to it, it doesn't seem to raise any obvious legal issues. Do you really need to go through this legal review process? So I'm thinking I can do that if you think it's a good idea and just see what I can learn. Looks like you have a thought. I'm not completely following. Are you particularly talking about this particular addition to this bylaw? Are you talking more generally what are best practices when committees review bylaws? The latter. Yeah, I think it's a good question. And again, so when Mandy Jo and I put together our failed campaign finance bylaw back in the summer, that was one where we proactively sought attorney opinion before we introduced it because it did things that no, as Mandy Jo said, in some ways modeled Northampton, but in other ways built on Northampton and did completely new things and also had different numbers. And that was something that was a level of complexity that we needed to turn the opinion on. I feel like this is not. No, I agree with you. So I guess I'm raising a larger issue prematurely. So we have before us a proposed amendment to a bylaw. The only thing I notice is that therefore should have an E. At least that's how I spell it. I have never seen therefore without an E. I'm also not a lawyer in Hadley's bylaw. It's spelled without an E. And I didn't know if that was an error during one time in bylaw review. During one time in bylaw review, I very confidently said we needed to add an E to one of the therefores in our current bylaws. And both Jeff and Bob said no, that's not the type of therefore that has an E. And so I trusted their legal minds. So we do have an attorney on this committee that maybe can let us know when the legal counsel has a different way of spelling things. So I am not speaking as an attorney at giving any legal advice, but I would not put an E on that one. I was actually just going to search for our bylaws to see how we used them. Because generally in legal, this type of therefore doesn't get an E. I can't tell you why. Right, but I was just going to do a bylaw search. But you answered that question that our current bylaws don't have the E. Bob Ritchie, you know that you're in the wrong. Can I make a motion? I'll move to declare the amendment to the Amherst open container bylaw clear consistent and actionable. For zero again, we've won absent to move this along. Thank you. Now, next in item, we have a resolution. And I would like to go to that. Yes, question. Can I ask the committee to just normally you're good about sending reports before a council meeting but for bylaws. It takes a little bit of extra coordination because they need to be posted. And so forth. Sometimes there are extra steps. So I'll just need these in advance. Right. Okay. I'll speak to my staff. Thank you. Thank you, Athena, for bringing that up since that slept my mind. This is not that posted on the town bulletin board. Correct. And it needs posted 14 days before final passage, right? Which I think my, my intention was to be on February 24th. I'm clear to me the, the when you brought it, it was not declared a first reading on the agenda, but the, but the president said it was a first reading. It was for the automatic referral. So we might be able to have the technical first reading on the 24th with a posting now for the 14 days. But that's what I mean. When we're talking about bylaws, it takes a little bit of extra to eviction. I have a report as chair of CRC on this. I told you I would report. So CRC at today's meeting voted unanimously with one absent to sponsor this resolution as a committee. So CRC is the official sponsor. The official practice is to go through whereas by whereas. Do you feel this is necessary? Do you want to do that? And we are simply interested in clear, consistent and actionable. Clear and consistent. CRC has looked at it and they seem happy with it. One of the sponsors of it has obviously looked at it carefully. So I just need a guidance from my colleagues. Do you want to go through this whereas by whereas? There's one no. I just wanted to declare it clear because it's unactionable. Do you want to take just a few moments to read it? I read it. I read it. I had a question with regard to and I guess maybe this is clear and consistent with the organization. So there are four bills, well, two bills, but there's, you know, they have counterparts in the House and Senate that this resolution is meant to support. And then two of them are introduced in the sixth whereas. And then the other two are introduced like way down below in the, I'm not counting probably 10th whereas. And I was sort of confused about, but there didn't, the space in between them. I didn't necessarily understand. I guess I was curious why the bills weren't introduced as one whereas clause towards the end before we resolved to support them. Why there was like a, and maybe there was a reason I just didn't pick up on it. So this came as a copy of what Northampton adopted, which I tried to change for the right names, for example, who are representative and all is and got rid of some dates because apparently Northampton did this a while ago and some hearings have already happened. I think it was because the one whereas that introduces the right to council bills then, you know, some of that is the explanation for the needs for that are above that one and then below that introduction. So starting in like the sixth whereas or something, one, two, three, four, five, the seventh whereas is sort of talking about the eviction records and how that can do it. And then the last whereas talks about the bill that would address that one. So since there are two separate bills with two separate issues, they're mentioned and discussed sort of, it could easily be two separate resolutions because they're two separate items, but they're in one resolution. And so it's talking about the one bill that the one issue, then that bill and then the other issue and then that bill and then the whereas is about both of them. And then the second thing I had from a consistency perspective was in the whereas that introduces the first set, the first bill that I didn't quite understand. I guess we did it in both. Sorry. Do we typically put the sponsor names in? I wasn't sure. We've passed. We've become like a resolution factory. And I, right. And no, that wasn't a critique. I'm just saying we've done a lot of these and I couldn't remember and had I had more time, I would have gone back and looked. But do we typically put the sponsors of the bills in the whereas clauses? We have at least one other resolution because I went back and looked. I don't know if it's the row. I think I might have looked at the row Act resolution had it in there. The only the only other thing is that I that I sort of picked up from a consistency perspective. You can tell I'm back in the semester in grading papers is so there's there seems to be going back and forth between just saying, here's the bill by this person. The bill filed by this person and the bill sponsored by this person. And so I wasn't sure it how. So it says in the first one, the S 19 by Senator Sal Di Domenico and then the next one and by them and then but the next one says filed by. And I wasn't sure if Sal filed it and then and then when you go down to the other ones. And then I think it's it's down. And then they say sponsored by right. And so I wasn't I wasn't again. I wasn't sure if these were inconsistencies or if they were intentional. This also doesn't matter. It was just one of those things that I picked up. That's kind of our job deal with stuff that I couldn't resist. Well, I haven't have a moment to compose itself. However, he does raise a legitimate question, which is, is there a difference and to which we don't have the answer? And I don't know if the sponsor or the sponsor representative wishes to make a change or not. I think the answer isn't she really doesn't. I don't really care. I mean, I can make that change as chair. Sounds good. I like it. I like it. Since we don't have any knowledge base here upon which to criticize it, I think we're going to leave it as it is. It certainly doesn't affect the action ability. Any other observations, thoughts, concerns? And thank you, Evan, for your clear and sharp eye. So I think we're ready to entertain. I'll just be the motion person today. I moved to declare the resolution and support of the right to counsel, et cetera. Clear, consistent and actionable. And soon to be too absent for him. The chair wasn't planning. Where's that gavel? The gavel is gone. This is terrible. How can I run a meeting without a gavel? All right. Thank you. That is we're moving along. This is what I'd like to see. I'm going to skip over bylaws for a moment and I'd like to go if that's okay. But again, I'm open to I'd like to come back to that later in the meeting to discuss a generally how we're going to deal with bylaws and then turn our attention to the percent for art bylaw, which I think does raise some serious challenges. And I'd like to go instead to the proposal for council committee restructuring. Is that okay? We've been sitting on this. My personal feeling is it really needs just to put together a proposal, make an argument for it, tell the president that we're ready. And then the council will have to decide what it wants to do. And so Evan's worked very hard on this. We have worked very hard on trying to figure out where appointments should go. I did get at OCA's meeting on Monday. We finally let's be polite here. We finally got some comments that I think are helpful from the members of OCA related to the proposal. There was one counselor who would like to stay in existence and be a kind of appointments committee feeling that OCA has certain skills that can easily be transferred. It has relationships with town manager and CPOs that other committees would have to kind of recreate. Worried, interestingly enough, about the town manager having to attend multiple meetings of different appointing bodies. And there was also, this was expressed by at least one other counselor as well on OCA, a concern about whether the same interview process will be followed if you have different committees engaged in the appointments process. A second counselor is not opposed to the appointments being shared out, but does not want to see this happen until at least July 1st. So there was some concern expressed by this counselor about sort of the process of getting this started. And this counselor preferred delay until July 1 partly because they were concerned about ZBA appointments, which we have not yet made. OCA has not yet made and also a concern about the CAF issue. OCA is working on that and the OCA chair may speak to that in a moment. So concerned about CAF, concerned about ZBA appointments that haven't yet been made and that the town manager will be making a whole host of appointments after July 1st. This counselor had no problem with putting outreach somewhere else but did not want all appointments to go to GOL. The third counselor is present and so perhaps he will speak to his concerns if he wishes. But anyway, we had, I think, finally a fairly robust discussion and these were what I could distill from their comments. We already have comments from other counselors and we've gone through those. So what I'd like us to do, I'll give Evan a moment to speak about OCA. I'd like us to see if we can get this done and then I would write up a report to the president and then she would have to decide and we'll answer additions to the OCA discussion. Yes, so as you know, members of OCA had felt as though they had not had an opportunity to properly weigh in on the proposal. Which is not a sentiment I personally agree with but gave the committee an opportunity in our meeting on Monday to weigh in. And it was very interesting because I think that in many ways they had already weighed in on January 6th and seemed more supportive in January 6th than they did in the meeting on Monday. That was sort of shocking to me because in January 6th there was only one counselor on OCA who felt like OCA should remain and that sentiment wasn't necessarily the same on Monday. So as George said, there was a suggestion, we'll call it a suggestion, that any dissolution of OCA not happen until July 1. And part of that rationale that I don't think George covered was not just getting through appointments, planning board and ZBA appointments that will need to be made by June 30th and also some expected town manager appointments. But also the idea that as we just went through the planning board appointment, it was actually a decent amount of work. I think I said this in the last GOL meeting that my position on putting all appointments into GOL shifted after having gone through that planning board appointment process because it actually was a decent workload. And there was some worry that in splitting CRC in two and potentially having new membership, CRC will be in a position to sort of have to re-figure itself out a little bit. And to do that and then immediately say, oh, and by the way, we have some planning board and ZBA vacancies that you need to deal with before June 30th. So the idea was maintain OCA until those are done and then once the new CRC, however you want to call it, has a little bit more of its footing, they could then absorb that responsibility. And so that was also part of the rationale of waiting and also seeing if CRC felt they actually had the capacity to do so. I think there was some concern and we saw it Monday night when it came to the comprehensive housing policy. There were even questions on that. Does CRC have the capacity to do this? In that sort of jarred my memory of the conversation from that morning of does CRC actually have the capacity to do these planning board and ZBA appointments because they can be fairly time consuming. And often in very unnecessary ways like the fact that our technology is not really well positioned to easily allow us to assess what the applicant pool is. And so that was part of it, this idea of maintaining OCA at least through July and then assess whether it actually makes sense and maintaining OCA as a strictly appointments body. So I think the idea was move forward, this was my takeaway and George can disagree if that wasn't his, was move forward with this except for the appointments part. So split CRC in half, TSO, CRC, and take outreach out of OCA, put it in TSO, but maintain OCA as a strictly appointments body at least through the end of June and then assess whether it makes sense. Which was an interesting proposal, I don't actually personally know where I stand on that. I think there's logic to both sides of that. I made the argument that, and so this is what George said I could speak to because I talked about this, one of my concerns, I think that to me personally the town manager appointments, whether they be department head or town committees, at this point now that OCA has figured out how we assess those, which is really just our process that's very simple. And has really been less about our process and more about what we expect from the town manager, which she has now through sort of this iterative process of us basically saying better, but better, but we're there with that. And so I think they're actually even within the suggestion that I just said was taken from a counselor on OCA to maintain OCA as an appointments committee. I think that even within that it would still make sense to strip department heads and town committees out and put them in TSO because those are a very different beast. And I know one counselor who wanted OCA to maintain as an appointments committee permanently felt like it didn't make sense to distribute appointments. There are appointments you keep them together, but town manager appointments are so, so, so different from council appointments. The process, the evaluation, everything is so different. So if we, I guess throwing an additional level of complexity into this conversation about whether we wait, whether we maintain OCA as appointments temporarily is also the option of saying council appointments might stay in this committee. But there's no reason we can't take town manager appointments and put them somewhere else right now because there's no need for OCA to continue to do that because a big concern has been OCA just developed this process. We've implemented it once. We already have some ideas on things we might want to tweak about it. There is some concern and I share some of this concern about if that process is then sent to GOL and to CRC. Since there are committee processes, there's no reason that those two committees couldn't then just ignore them. And we spend a lot of time on that. And so there's complexity here that I think we have to consider. And there's one other thing that I'm trying to, oh, one other suggestion on top of that, though, was that GOL could take liaisons because OCA was tasked with liaisons. Because they're a council appointment, OCA has put forth recommendation of some committees that we think should have liaisons. OCA has not spent a single second of our time talking about a process of appointing liaisons. So unlike ZBA and Planning Board where we spent literally four months building a process that we feel a little bit of ownership of and probably a little hesitant to just hand off, we haven't done that with liaisons. And so you could take liaisons away from OCA right now with literally no impact. And so this is a lot more complicated of a discussion about whether we just want to move forward with what we're recommending, whether we want to move forward with everything but appointments, whether we want to move forward with everything and some appointments, but not all. I mean, there's a lot of complexity here, but there was a lot more resistance in OCA on Monday to the dissolution of OCA than there had been in the month prior when I last sat in this room and said OCA is okay with this. Before I go to you, Mandy, just one point from my perspective at the same meeting. My reading was there was one counselor who is opposed to dissolution of OCA, but the other counselor is not opposed to dissolution of OCA but would like it phased in. Right, exactly. So I feel there's clearly there, I think there's a sense that this is something that can be done, that there was reluctance to do it immediately. And I thought the points that were made were good ones, that there might be some sense to a kind of phasing in of certain things. And I don't see why we couldn't recommend that if we decided it makes sense rather than just present them with, you know, an entire plan and let's do it, you know, next week or next, right? We could suggest a phasing in. And I think that would meet with the approval of at least one. I'm sorry, go ahead. No need to apologize. So in listening, I'm looking at the charges. TSO gets appointments for department heads and multiple member bodies, which it sounds like OCA might be okay with moving out more immediately. Or at least that the OCA chair seems that that could potentially be moved out more immediately. Plus a few. TOL gets under this proposal appointments on non-voting council liaisons, which OCA has agreed could be moved, I think, right? Non-voting finance committee members, which I'm not sure any of them are up this summer. Mary Lewis. One is, okay. The OCCP committee and budget coordinating group, which are all counselors and clerk of the council, council staff town manager, if that's referred. So that's, you know, so I read those two and I say it from what I just heard, OCA doesn't seem to have a real concern about either of them moving out of OCA on a more immediate basis. And so it really is just planning board and ZBA. So I guess what my recommendation would be is we move forward with a recommendation to the council to adopt these three charges as is effective immediately except for the appointments centered in the CRC charge. CRC right now has planning board and zoning ZBA and only planning board and ZBA. And the recommendation would be adopt all three charges as is so that we're not modifying language later. They're effective immediately except for this one bullet point on the CRC charge, which would become effective July one. Or after ZBA and after the July, the upcoming, you know, July one. And in the meantime, the current OCA remain in effect solely for those appointments only and to be dissolved July. And it might not be a date. It might not be a date because if we can't, if because of applicant pools or something, it might be, you know, it might be something until appointments are made to replace the current vacancies or vacancies due to the upcoming vacancy due to term ending July 30th, something like that. And until those appointments are made, OCA remains in effect simply for those two appointments. Would that, it's a complicated motion. It could be explained easier than the language would be. Would that on the two members that are on OCA sort of appear to satisfy this concern of we don't want to switch that that actual ZBA planning board appointment process or, you know, not even the process, I'm guessing that CRC would not necessarily go and uproot the process. But it would also CRC is somewhat busy. We'd find the time, but it would allow, I think, OCA more time to try that process. And then when they forward that process on to CRC to forward it with any potential recommendations on any changes for the next year. I think, as I said, there's one member of OCA that this will not satisfy under any circumstances. But I think that the other member, this would be meeting, I think, a number of serious concerns. And I think Evan shares some of them. And I, listening, I felt I shared some of them too, though I would really like this just to be done. But phasing in might make sense. The appointments issue is the sort of, no one has expressed any concern or reservations about, actually there's one small exception we need to talk about briefly, but no one has really expressed any concern about breaking CRC into two. There seems to be, without all the comments I've gotten, no one has said this is a terrible idea. We should keep CRC as it is. We don't need another committee to deal with town services. That seems to be something that everyone that I've heard from is comfortable with. And I think there's a general consensus, again, this is my perspective, that appointments make sense to share our appointments. But there is some legitimate concern or concern about how they get shared out and the timing of it. And I think we have a good rationale for how they're being shared out. I think Evan has presented us with a very sensible rationale. But there is then the question of the timing. And if we could agree, at least this committee, that we were open to or maybe proposed as Mandy has suggested, and Evan, I think, is suggesting a kind of phasing in where essentially planning for ZBA would be held in advance. And we'd have to word the, obviously, the motion, but the idea I think is really clear. But everything else could really be moved. And so if the council is willing to move appointments, if that's not a big problem, we would have a proposal on the table that would move most of them and leave two that are still problematic to be resolved hopefully by July 1. That's what I'm seeing shaping up here. And I think we could move to that point where we could endorse that if that's what we want to do. So I do want to say that I was offering that as an option, not necessarily suggesting that. I do think that's important because I'm not actually sure. I could get on board with this. Could you speak to some of you? There is, I mean, so part of this is why are we making this unnecessarily complex? There's a very simple solution. We've had these proposals, we've been talking about these proposals since the end of November, early December. It's now February, so already we're, I mean we have this idea of one-year appointments, right? In theory it should go January to January and now we're already not making them until March. And if we approve this and the president will poll, they won't probably even be made until March. And so part of this is just, this seems unnecessarily complex. I also, I'm going to try and word this delicately. I always feel a little hesitant about changing course and changing plans and introducing complexity due to the opposition of a single counselor. All of this conversation we've had over the past 10 minutes has been from because of one counselor. I share some of those same reservations. I don't know that they rise to the level of needing to do what we just talked about. The other counselor who had concerns this would not address. And one member of OCA was absent, I'm not quite sure where that person stands. But there is some feeling, we're giving a whole lot of weight to one counselor's concerns and not necessarily the other counselors. And I think it's because the counselor's concern, the counselor tends to be a very, one of the louder voices in the room and one of the more demanding and persistent voices in the room. And there's a feeling that we need to address. I don't think that we give the same deference, we're not giving the same deference to the counselor who's saying all appointments in one committee for all time. And I worry a little bit about saying, okay, we're going to kind of upend what we've been talking about a little bit, make it more complex because there's a counselor who we know is going to really fight it when at the end of the day we just need seven folks. And I have some concerns about that. I understand that, but I think that also the concern that's been expressed by this counselor is one that I think I share and perhaps you share some degree. There is this question of ZBA in planning and that we have a process that we're very comfortable with with time management appointments and we could handle it tomorrow. And we have another question, which is how can we guarantee it will stay consistent, which is another issue. We hand it off and then who knows what they might do with it. So is there some way that we can be assured that a process that's working fine will be followed. But ZBA in planning do present a serious challenge for whomever takes it on and OK is the most experienced and is still working on at least the ZBA side of things. So it doesn't seem to me to be an unreasonable proposal. It happens to come from one counselor that as Evan described it. I won't repeat it, but it's coming from a counselor, right? But the proposal or the concerns of legitimate one. And I think overall I get no sense that that many share the view that appointment should just be in one committee. I think that's something that really doesn't have legs. Now I could be wrong, but that's my sense. The objection that was raised by the other counselor does seem to be a legitimate objection.  And you guys, CRC is just going to have to figure it out. And CRC may also may want to weigh in and say, wait a minute, you know, give him what's on our plate. You know, we really wouldn't mind the full help. I mean, if you guys could hang in there for a couple more months and get this sorted out, that would make our job easier. So I think there's a way forward that's a compromise that meets, I think, legitimate concern and doesn't derail what I see as the larger goal of dividing these committees and dividing up appointments. So most of what we want to accomplish could be accomplished at the next council meeting. And the only thing that would be delayed would be the zoning planning board. And it seems to have some sense to delay that, given where we're at an OPA right now. And I think the OPA chair would probably agree, but he may not. So I understand a concern about, you know, having one voice sort of dominate a conversation. But we know that that's what happens. But here I think definitely it's a legitimate concern. But I'm wondering, Pat, what are your thoughts? In my head, I'm echoing. You asked, when do you let one voice dominate a decision? And I feel like sometimes that one voice, even though it can be a voice that's hard to listen to at times, does carry some information that has to make you look at this and say, hey, wait a minute. So I feel like this is a compromise that I think would be a good one for planning board and zoning board. CRC, what do you feel? I mean, would you be willing to take this on in the next month and try to do? I mean, I don't know if you know from experience from what you said, this is an extremely demanding task. And how do you feel about taking that on? So yeah, I don't know whether CRC, frankly, looking at stuff. I think when transportation removes, maybe I'll feel a little differently. And maybe when I'm not looking at a proposal we heard today from the town staff for massive revisions of the zoning bylaw over the next year, along with master plan update, where that will require multiple meetings in the evening to hold hearings jointly with the planning board. Frankly, I'm not sure how this will play out over the course of a year. I think as CRC's chair and looking at agendas, I would love the leeway given if we don't have to do this immediately. If we did, we'd find a way. But just giving OKA one more shot at another one or two sets of these to really figure out and have recommendations on the process. And is it working? Is it not? I think would be very valuable to it coming into CRC versus them having done it once. And CRC saying, OK, well, we'll go at it again versus having multiple experiences. You know, I realize the burden it puts on those five counselors assuming they would remain the same for the six months, essentially serving on an extra committee then. Is it right to put that burden on them instead of a CRC people? That's of course, you know, I'm OK with it. It saves me work. But I do think there is a value to letting the five counselors that have been through now an appointment process twice revamped it once, looking to get a better process so that when it comes to CRC it is better. And CRC has time to figure out how to get it into an agenda instead of facing now two ZBA openings, planning board coming up with potentially a third ZBA in June. Something like that. Two planning boards in June, at least two ZBAs now, essentially. And then technically all three current associate members of the ZBA are up in June. Yeah. Let me play Devils Advocate for just a moment and have you defend for me the larger argument that we want to put appointments in committees that are closer to the actual appointments. Devils Advocate would say, you know, let's just have a separate body that deals with all appointments. In other words, why should CRC be given the task of this at all? Well, the argument is why, because they deal with planning and zoning issues so they're closest to the ground on this. And so they would be a very appropriate member. But if someone challenges that and says, you know, well, anybody can do this, why should CRC, and CRC has got a huge workload anyway. So how can we, how would one defend the argument that's really underlying this entire appointments division, which is we're trying to parcel out appointments in a sort of logical reasonable process rather than just lumping them into one body? And, you know, so for CRC, you might say, look, the argument might be they're already overwhelmed. And yes, now they're going to have some things taken off their plate. But, you know, this is really a lot of work. So why don't we just have a committee that does appointments or maybe just the committee that does planning and zoning board appointments. And that's it. It's for anyone.   And we flipped that out in response to some concerns that that was too concentrated, that it might be too much work for GOL. And so let's spread that out. And one of the things then in spreading out was, well, it makes sense then for the committee doing planning and zoning to be appointing to planning and zoning. And we could revisit that decision. But no, I do think given the amount of contact I've had with the planning board chair and looking forward, the amount of contact CRC will have with the planning board through zoning by law hearings. It, to me, almost makes some sense to have the CRC do those appointments in the end because they will have a really good idea of what zoning is what the planning board. And then similarly zoning does similar regulatory portions of planning board. What that job is like might have an idea of who's showing up at meetings in order to if we have low applications who we might be able to recruit and specifically reach out to. There may be some synergies there that that help that issue too. One of the concern was raised, as I recall, by one counselor, not on OCA, but from a different committee, different counselor about where parking should go. Can we talk about that briefly? And in general transportation. Right now parking is located in TSO. Can we just revisit those charges for a moment? Because I think the suggestion was that it should be in CRC. What's our argument or rationale for parking issues and transportation across the board and as to where it's going. Concern about that and my understanding was a very brief conversation was this council wanted it moved somewhere else, which I assume meant TSO. I'm sorry CRC. So it's in TSO. Do we want to split it? Do we want to keep it where it is? What's the rationale because I think there will be some concern about that. So I obviously this was part of my idea to move it over and it's one while I'm certainly open to budging out a lot of things. This one I'm actually fairly friendly behind and I think it's for two reasons. One is municipal parking is a service provided to the community by the town. We reserve a certain amount of our public lands for us to park on whether we like that or not. It's something that we do. And so if we are putting the commons in TSO, if we are putting parks and town facilities in TSO, which is the current proposal. It doesn't make sense to carve public lands that are reserved for parking out of that because parking is a service public way. I mean, and it's not we didn't never lay. I don't think never labeled parking in TSO. It was public ways. And so it's only parking on public ways. So have stuff that has to do on private property or say privately funded parking garage. That would still be in CRC, but it's those things that are public ways because it's really about how we manage our public lands. The other side of the coin is this. If you looked at, and I know Mandy Joe did this at one point, what could be taken out of CRC under this split? How the load would be lightened our CRC?  If you put parking back in, I actually, I don't think that takes a tremendous amount of work out of CRC. And so I think it doesn't make sense rationally. And it also works against one of our objectives. What Mandy has suggested is that the charges as they are currently in our packets are basically acceptable to this committee and could be voted on today, which is something I'd very much like to do. I also need to provide a rationale, and that's my job. And I may be consulting Evan at some point just to make sure my rationale fits with what he's been shaping. But are there any concerns about any of the specific charges or any concerns that you've heard of from other counselors? I've mentioned one. Others of you may have heard others, but obviously we've not gotten back any written comments about the charges other than a sense overall that people are happy with the idea of a split. So we could move to adopting these charges today and then the next step I think would for us to decide about appointments and really in a sense that's in the charges. So we would have to perhaps, perhaps something in terms of a recommendation or a phasing if that's what we want to do. But let's again just focus on charges. Any, are we ready to move on? I have a question on the town services for TSO. Okay, good. It says review and make recommendation to the town council on measures that may affect the provision of services to the community by a town department. Can you clarify the limits of that? Please, absolutely. So my understanding when I wrote this is the key where there is measures. And so the idea here is not that this committee would sit around and look at planning and go, you know, if you combine those two planning positions that would be inappropriate. But if there's a measure that comes before us. So a bylaw that is going to affect how a town department delivers services to the community, that would be. And so the example I keep using is the campaign finance bylaw, right? That would affect the town clerk's office who deals with that. And so that was a measure that affects that department and so it would go there. And so, you know, we could in theory write upon referral or something like that. I don't necessarily think it's needed. But again, it's only to be it's only to look at the provision of services by a town department in the context of a particular measure that's been proposed for the council to act on, which I think helps constrain it to the council's review and because it can be tricky there, right? Making sure that council doesn't this committee doesn't exceed the authority of the council itself. No, that's helpful. And that's where I thought we were. But I got some feedback about what are you going to be telling departments how they should be. Yeah, no, I don't think so. But so that's why I wanted the clarification. My understanding though, and I correct me here if I'm wrong is that this would be the committee that citizens could come to for what? For help assistance input if they're having difficulties with. Say for instance, she's about parking or street signs or speed limits or that sort of thing. Wouldn't that naturally come to this committee for discussion? Wouldn't this committee be a place that I could send constituents to? And so will you should contact the chair of TSO? Or am I misconstruing what this charges? I think that TSO would be the place. But I have more and more reservations after watching the Lincoln Avenue thing, which I can talk about now. It's not about Lincoln. It seems to me that there are credible reasons to change parking on Lincoln Avenue. I'm not saying which way. I have had constituents come to me or residents come to me with more frivolous reasons for changes. And what I'm concerned with is what we're saying the process so far is that if the town manager brings something forward, then we work with it. We have a public hearing. And my concern is that not every resident's complaint is as important as it seems to that person. This actually is the item, a leader on the agenda. Yeah, that's what I thought. That's absolutely fine. Here I just want to focus on the TSO charge and also the other two charges and get a sense from this committee that they're happy with what. And she raised a good question. Evan has answered it. Any other concerns with the language or so forth? Because if we do vote on this and I send it to the council, they're going to go through this with fine tooth comb. Now, we'll have Evan present and he will be someone I will be turning to in assistance to deal with objections. But I need to present a clear rationale in the report. So if there are any other concerns or changes you want to make, otherwise I would entertain a motion to adopt these three charges as written. But we may still have a question about how to deal with the appointments. Anything else for TSO? Let's just quickly look at all three TSO. Evan has given us a clear rationale for keeping parking. Now the word is not used here, right? And that, I'm sorry, in public ways is the point. And your feeling is let's leave it that way. Right. Intentionalism is in your part. And I'm not hearing. So I think last week or whatever I recommended that and the discussion revolved around but sometimes parking doesn't actually belong in TSO because it's not a change of regulations and stuff like that. And so putting that word in there might restrict when you could send it to say CRC because it really deals with a land use. And that's the rationale that Evan's presented and would be presented through the council. And hopefully we'll be in the report. So we've met, okay, good. We don't need to make any changes with the appointments because we feel that we can go ahead with those right now. We're not worried about any kind of phasing in. I've not heard much from anyone about outreach. No one seems to be objecting to putting it here. And so I don't have anything to say about outreach community relations. So I think do you want to do it charge by charge? Evan, sorry. One, yes. I think we should vote on each of these individually. This is so minor, but for consistency perspective, I noticed, and I don't know if we have an adopted format or what's their own. I noticed that in the finance committee charge, the charter references come outside the period. And in this one, and the ones I wrote, I put them inside the period. We should just pick one. We just adopted the finance charge. So we should probably just go with the references come outside the period. Okay. All right. And that's a change of willing. I mean, if any changes are made, is that something you're willing to make? Yeah. I'm just moving the period. Yeah. I can do that. I know you can. Thank you. So other than that, any other thoughts on this? Because I'm ready to entertain a motion. So I've tried to draft a comprehensive motion. That might work for all everything at once. Yeah. All right. So we have two suggestions. One is do a charge by charge. The other is the comprehensive motion. Can I read it without making the motion? Absolutely. What you're suggesting. Your suggested motion is to recommend the council do the following. Resin the current CRC and GOL charges effective immediately. Adopt the TSO, CRC and GOL charges as presented at the GOL 12 to 12, 20, 20 meeting effective immediately except for the appointment responsibility for planning board and ZBA in the CRC charge. And rescind all duties in the OCA charge except for making recommendations for appointments to planning board and ZBA. Appointment responsibility for planning board and ZBA shall remain in OCA until July 1, 2020, at which time the appointment responsibilities for those bodies shall shift to CRC as provided in the charge and OCA shall be dissolved. Well, it's a mouthful. Yeah. I won't ever send my previous statement. I thought it made sense to vote on each individually. My concern now is whenever motion we passed here should be mirrored in the council.  I would hate in the council for the TSO charge to pass and then the CRC charge to fail. And then we're like, so what does that mean? So I think it actually has to be a comprehensive motion. But it does include a phasing in this suggested motion. At the moment, a suggested motion does do that. See this up on the screen. But I think it's all right. Does anyone else besides me need it to be reread one more time? Actually, we'll be read one more time because it's going to become a full motion. Evan has withdrawn his idea of doing it individually with the thought that when it does go before the council, we would present it as a single comprehensive motion because we don't want parts being knocked out. And if the council is unwilling to do that, then our attempt has failed. So that makes sense to me. So we've only looked at the TSO charge. We made slight changes to find. I'll try to read it slow, too. But when I get an email connection after my computer's updated, I'll also email it to you. What is technology grand? Oh, it's all my fault. So I moved to recommend the council do the following. Recind the current community resources committee and GOL charges effective immediately. Adopt the proposed town services and outreach charge. Community resources committee charge and governance organization and legislation charge as amended at the GOL 212 2020 meeting. Effective immediately except for the appointment responsibility for planning board and ZBA in the community resources committee charge. And rescind all duties in the outreach communications and appointment charge except for making recommendations for appointments to planning board and ZBA. Appointment responsibility for planning board and ZBA shall remain in OCA until July 1 2020 at which time the appointments responsibility for those bodies shall shift to CRC as provided in the charge and OCA shall be dissolved. You just made that motion. Second. We have a motion in front of us. It has been seconded. It is a complex motion. It has got a lot of moving parts to read it back. I'm sorry. What's your question? She doesn't have one thing. So you will email it to her when you have email. When I have access. I don't know what the current OCA charge says. I know this seems so minor. Can you just accept a friendly amendment to change the word recommendations for appointments to recommendations regarding appointments. And I can briefly explain the rationale when I see recommendation for appointments that sounds like it's just names. OCA also wants to recommend changes to the CAFs. And I think that we could do that under the auspices of regarding appointments because it's part of the appointment process. If that makes sense. I want to make sure we retain the ability to with it to retain the authority to make recommendations on CAFs because that's something we're going to be undertaking. I will read it again. To recommend the council do the following. Resend the current CRC and GOL charges effective immediately. Adopt the proposed TSO CRC and GOL charges as amended at the GOL February 12th 2020 meeting effective immediately except for the appointment responsibility for planning board and ZBA in the CRC charge. And rescind all duties in the OCA charge except for making recommendations regarding appointments to planning board and ZBA. Appointment responsibility for planning board and ZBA shall remain in OCA until July 1 2020 at which time the appointments responsibility for those bodies shall shift to CRC as provided in the charge and OCA shall be dissolved. Motion. It has been seconded. Any further discussion? Motion. The vision is presenting this to the council as a single motion and rationale presented in writing to the council by the chair. And then we will do our best to defend it against any and all attacks but I feel that I'm proud. I'm very grateful to Evan for all the work he's done and also Mandy because I think this is what the council needs at least in broad outline and I hope you can convince the council to do so. We'll move in favor of the motion as presented by raising your hand and saying aye. So 4-0 with one absent to accept this motion. I would like to move for at least 15 minutes maybe a bit more but not much more because we still have minutes to also approve. It shouldn't take us long because I think they're in great shape but I'd like to talk for a few minutes about public ways requests and so you have in your packet a document from yours truly and I think it raises and it's here simply for point of discussion. I need your input so I'm basically presenting this as this is what I would do if I were the emperor of Amherst and it's not because it's the best or the right but I just feel like we need something concrete to look at and then pick it to pieces and hopefully come up with something better or just abandon the cause because I think the council is certainly the president is waiting. I think the council may be less so waiting for an actual process but I did feel at the Lincoln Park discussion that there was a greater sense of frustration that we don't have a process and so I said at the meeting that we are working on this process so this isn't all that different from other things I've sent you but it's basically here I'm just saying okay this is what I want to do and I need you to tell me so somewhere in proposed process for public ways do we need to take it for do people need a break? Yes sir. Okay alright and I'm going to present this with my thoughts and you should start making notes and though we can stop as we go along but the first my first suggestion is that all public ways requests come through Town Hall so that any request that requires Town Council action comes to us from so any citizen that comes to us and says I want to do this that in the other way parking in someone you should say well this is my suggestion you go to Bachman and you say this is the problem now the counselor could go with them which is what happened with Lincoln Avenue the two counselors went and had a meeting with Bachman and it's up to the counselor but the basic suggestion goes to Town Hall then at that point Town Hall does what it does I assume normally Paul I mean he becomes sort of the gateway and now I think I need to run this by Paul as well but it seems in the past it's pretty much been the way things work and if Paul decides to just ignore it or let it sit or just whatever he can do it but if he sees it has merit it usually goes to DPW and whatever and they look at it and eventually it goes through and it comes back to Paul and if it involves the council then he would then notify the chair the president of the council that he has a proposal regarding a public ways request that requires Town Council action at that point the council president then would set a date for a public hearing because the public hearing is required I do not think that requires any action by the council that's strictly up to the president the president puts it on the agenda when the president thinks the agenda can manage it but the president doesn't have the option of not holding the public hearing for these requests because they are required so I think I'm just putting my proposal out what happened at the last meeting and under my proposal wouldn't ever happen again we obviously need to have materials in advance again but this is you know this is the way the world works right ideally we get it what 48 hours 36 hours but at some point it comes into our packet we're supposed to read it we come to the public hearing supposedly ready to and the only person the only party that's making a proposal is the town manager or staff there aren't originally envisioned duly proposals and the actual process that we have at the moment in our rules of procedure does not have a place for that and I think that's not appropriate so town staff presents the proposal and there's time to public comment so I would assume what would happen at the Lincoln parking hearing is that the proposal we made by the town staff we have materials in our packets then it would be open for public comment and people would come forward and say yes they know and then we decide but there would only be one proposal and that proposal would come from town staff at that point the public hearing there and again I could use help here in terms of what options I'm missing but basically the options at that point is we either voted up or down we say we approve this proposal we don't approve it we could I guess in theory a council could offer a proposal of their own I'd like to strike that but that's possible I guess we could continue the hearing and usually that would mean that we need further information from town staff those it seems to me are the only options now that's the end of the process as I envisioned it because I believe that at this point you know if someone brings a proposal to town hall and nothing else someone might say to them what do we do and it seems to me that we are the ones who then have to sort of look into it and report back to our constituents and conceivably could even you know bring it before the council and say okay there's an issue in our neighborhood and spend your four town staff on clean months and haven't done anything and I think we need to do something so but that seems to me is a political issue that is resolved through the process of the council doing work they shouldn't there isn't some special process so this is my suggestion everything comes through the through town hall and the town manager does his job and when he finally has proposal that requires town council action he notifies the council president the council president puts it on the agenda and we get the materials x days in advance and then we have a public hearing and at the public hearing we have these options I like it but what I'm concerned with I agree about doing our jobs as counselors but because a request has gone into the town manager he has or that information he if he makes a decision by himself or with department heads or whatever that it shouldn't see the light of day it's not valid then there then he needs in some way to report to the constituent to the resident who's making a complaint because not every I'm never going to get elected to anything again not every resident complaint is valid and I feel like we need to have some way of setting some limits about what actually requires action and either we're going to trust town manager and DPW or or we're not or we're going to find a consistent pattern of lack of response from DPW I'm making that up so yes we need to move forward doing our job but that might include saying to a resident we've looked at this the police have looked at it it does not need to be changed I understand why you would like it to be changed but you know what I understand really the question is follow-through when something is not dealt with well so then I and I that's what we could say we would you know could assist or you know oversee that there is responses and that's certainly a plausible option whether that goes into a process I'm not so sure but we could another response would be that's the counselor's job so you know president brings something and doesn't see the light of day the counselor then you know says I want to see Paul you go to Paul you say Paul what's going on and Paul hopefully would tell you or he'll put you in charge in touch with the particular person staff to say this is why it's not going anywhere and then you would then pass it on to the resident and if you were not satisfied by the answer if you felt that there's still you could take it before to TSO or you could even bring it to the counselor and say I think we need to do something about this but the idea of putting into a process so part of see we just need a process that we as a counselor know is what we follow for these requests and I'd like us to keep I would like to keep us out of this much as possible for any number of reasons and encourage counselors as individuals to act as counselors you know if a constituent has a problem and if they're not getting any response then you need to step in and it might be you have the unpleasant task of going to say Mr. and Ms. X and say okay here's why they're not going to act and in fact I think this is legitimate and if they're not happy they're not happy but I hear we hear you that people need to know what happened and when they don't learn what happened it just dies that's not good so I think now with the new form of government part of our job is if something dies it's a find out why communicate that constituent rather than put it into a process where Paul has to add this to his list of many things to do is respond to X, Y and Z when nothing happens now we could we could say that we expect the town manager to notify residents who make the request, the public waste request what the disposition is that's not completely unreasonable I would want to run that by Paul and some of his thoughts but you couldn't say that that would be part of the process but I guess the controversial issue here one is who's the gatekeeper and when some towns and cities do have a special committee that deals with all this stuff and we could create that or TSO could create a subcommittee or TSO could take it on but I'm personally leaning toward trying to keep this we have enough to do but we could decide and some of you may feel this makes sense to have a special committee of the council or a subcommittee whatever whatever that deals with these kinds of resident parking requests so we would the vast majority of these requests are dealt with we do not vote on whether we're going to have a public hearing this is ridiculous but apparently for parking or neighborhood requests we have to have a vote as to whether we're going to have a public hearing and I think that's just I have a problem with that if it merits a town proposal it gets a public hearing and we don't get to the side whether it does or doesn't it comes from the town so I'm saying the gatekeeper is the town manager but if there's a problem then it's the job of the councilors to get involved and there are various ways they can do that including ultimately for the council itself so that's my suggestion and I need to hear some objections and concerns because I really would like to assume in front of the council and you're tearing the pieces would be helpful because then stay out of this as much as possible pretty much agree so between this I have a few recommendations for the first one in theory everything requires town council action because it's a public way so I would clarify that to say something like as required by the town council policy regarding the control and regulation of the public ways or the general bylaw 3.14 to clarify this does not apply to the things we've already handed off to the town manager those one day temporary this is anything that we'd have to finally vote on on the second point so the second sentence that has the based on the recommendations or responses the town manager prepares a report to the council with recommendations I would add and here's where I start adding stuff if making a recommendation to alter the public way because that would be what requires the vote they notify the council president that a hearing must be set if needed we can add that if needed or whatever because some of them might not actually need a hearing if the town manager is not making a recommendation to alter the public way so if they got that complaint and is like no we're not doing that we're not making that recommendation then the person making the request shall be notified that that is the recommendation to not do anything essentially that person then has the option to comply with charter requirements for petitioning the council so just put right in there that if they're not happy with the manager's recommendation they kind of go to where our resolution solution was which was if you can't find a council sponsor you got to petition us you know you got to follow the charter requirements if you can't get the town manager on board with a change you got to petition the council you know I think I liked that the town manager prepares a report to the council since this is ultimately a council decision and we're passing off much of it I think anytime a request is made for a permanent alteration or whatever we would have to act on we should get a report on what that recommendation is so that we know what's been made similar to why we require the town manager in his monthly reports bi-weekly reports to indicate what he's granted on a monthly basis so that we know what's going on so that it wouldn't die there we would see oh we got this we did our investigation and we're saying no or we're saying yes and then that report can also then be forwarded frankly that's what my thing about notification he can just send that report on to him and say we're not recommending anything number five I would also get rid of offer a proposal on its own I would add in refer the proposal to a council committee for study and recommendation because that's where a potential alternate proposal could be discussed made and done all of that too very good so three things off the top of my head so one I think a critique you're going to get although not necessarily from me is the council is the keeper of the public way and this seems to give a whole lot of power to the town manager over something that is technically and I know we got that criticism if not in debate I've heard it from other councillors on our public ways policy that it delegates too much power to the town manager over something that the council technically has control over I don't know that I necessarily agree with that and I'm all for giving us less work but I do think that you should when you're presenting this to the town council I know at least one councillor who will say are we even keepers of the public way really if all we're doing is the vote the two other things one is as you know I've been sort of a pain about this Lincoln I'm the minority on this committee when it comes to how the council proceeded with the Lincoln Ave and what was perpetually what was my real issue when I started thinking about why it wasn't sitting with me was the idea of having a published public hearing out there for a proposal that I hadn't seen and the discomfort I had with the potential of a constituent coming to me and saying what is public hearing about and not knowing and specifically for the Lincoln Ave one I was really appreciative and this is a point that I will absolutely be making during the public hearing of the person who brought up the fact that the people who are parking on that street are likely faculty staff and students who cannot afford to park on campus and that is a way for them to park and I would love for those people to be able to have a voice in what's being proposed but it would be literally impossible for them to have such a voice if we didn't know until five days before the hearing what was actually being proposed and so with regard to number two and Mandy you may have said this I wasn't here and not see what you're writing but it says the town manager prepares a report to the council and notifies the council president that a public hearing date must be set there's actually nothing in there that says that the report has to be given to the council it just says he prepares a report and so I'd like some stipulation that the council needs to receive that report and recommendation at the latest when the public hearing is set so that the moment a public hearing is scheduled the council knows what the proposal is and so the point four the council shall have all relevant materials at least X days that's fine there's going to be additional materials that we want to have in advance but I want to get that report I don't ever want a public hearing to be scheduled without me having that report and recommendation and actually I think that's true for everything I mean it makes me uncomfortable that even some of these non-controversial ones from every source of horizon that I'm walking into a public hearing may be scheduled weeks in advance and I have no idea what's actually being proposed and so if we're requiring him to make a report and recommendation I just want to clarify that the council has to receive that before or at the posting of the public hearing Mandy? I actually as you were talking or modified it to X days before the public hearing to X days before the public hearing notice published including the manager's report I think that if we add in including the manager's report you know that it's before it's published whether it's one day before it's published or three days or whatever that those that makes more sense than before the hearing when it's been published for three weeks and we give it three days in advance for your exact reasons and that would address what's been my primary concern with what was happening with the Lincoln White Park so let's just from using this example what would have happened or what you would like to have happened would be that once was ready to that just help me here what is it so something some document from Paul would need to be in your hands before a public notice is put and that's 14 days right before the public hearing you want to have at least a report if not the proposal just help me here what is it that you want I think I mean if you're at a point to me if you're at a point where you are ready to schedule a public hearing you should already have all the documents together like it to me it would be it would be ridiculous to say let's schedule the public hearing but we still need a couple weeks to work out the details of the proposal then you're not ready for the public hearing and so there should and this is a lot of my confusion in that meeting on January 27th where Paul was being very secretive all he kept saying was a proposal exists but then he wasn't telling us what it was and I thought to myself does a proposal exist do you have the outlines of a proposal in your head in which case we're not ready to schedule something because so I think that I'm just going to report on a proposal where there is any difference are these simply the same document or you haven't mentioned two different documents it sounds like you're imagining one document that once it's finished already then it should be available to the council and then the public hearing date should be set to me the language is proposal or recommendation I don't understand report necessarily well I guess it would be proposal and or recommendation because the recommendation could be take no action a recommendation to move forward on something should be accompanied by a proposal I think we might get hung up on the very report because I think if we're saying there's a recommendation a report and a proposal the town manager is going to say so what goes in the report where we think we're headed what are your concerns but I'm getting clear a sense now from Evan which I didn't have before of the desire and it seems not an unreasonable one to before we actually set a public hearing now I guess the one concern is look for and this would be Paul too I imagine saying look for things like ever source and utilities and so on these come sometimes they come sometimes they may come with some sense of time urgency whereas the thing we're talking about with Lincoln and so on you know they're not that time urgent is that going to be an issue in other words he may say look this is a great idea but in reality these things sometimes just come and we have to act really quickly you're expecting I guess what I'm saying quickly is that you're expecting to get even the ever source and Verizon material at least 14 days in advance and maybe I'm being naive here I personally can't imagine anyone setting a public hearing date without having the proposal in front of them not just the council but the time may excuse me for jumping in please the bylaw states that in order to send notice to a butters we have to have the exact proposed regulations so the notice to a butters that I'm sending on to residents on Lincoln Avenue has the exact wording of the regulations that are being proposed I think that's something that you might want to consider when you're making this process if you want to include people other than direct a butters like people who use that public way for other purposes so I was going to address the ever source and all the clerk's office or Athena gets an actual letter we saw most of that in the packet they get that and then in general they mention it to Lynn that says we got this we need to hold a hearing and all when she puts that on the agenda and schedules that hearing you don't always have at that time the DPW or the fire department's recommendation on that but that's also that hearing is required by state law under some statutory provision some of those not our bylaws or our public ways proposal so there's some leeway on that but when they send it it's pretty much the document you saw yesterday so that's in hand even if the managers and the you know the fire department or police chief's recommendation is not so it's it's it's guess what I'm looking for then is before at the moment of the posting I would like to be able to see the proposal and that goes for everything right because I I feel uncomfortable anytime a public hearing has been scheduled and I don't know what it's about other than Verizon public way request because if there's ever a situation where a constituent asks I have nothing to tell them and certainly the town has the letter the proposal before the public hearing scheduled and it to me and maybe it is but it doesn't seem unreasonable for the public hearing to be scheduled and then that letter to just be sent to town council at mrstma.gov okay so what I'm hearing this is all very helpful and produce another version of this because we're not ready I think at all we have time to move forward again any other thoughts the last one is the first bullet vote up or down on the town proposal feels a little too black and white for me so I'm thinking in terms of the link and have one voting up or down either means yes we're going to do this proposal or no we're not but in theory we should be able to say what we agree with the proposal from amity to north hadley but we actually don't agree with it from north hampton to amity and so we're going to adopt a part and so up and down seasons like all or nothing and so I agree we shouldn't offer a proposal of our own like we shouldn't be able to say you did all that work but how about instead we do one way down Lincoln and that solves the problem which I think it could but we should be able to say we will adopt these parts of it but not these parts the wording up or down sounds very all or nothing I would also reorder those bullet points start with continue the public hearing because you can't do anything until you've closed the public hearing so if you're going to continue it that's your first decision and if you don't continue it then I would put request further information next and then refer the proposal and then vote on the proposal put the vote last because that should be you know sort of put it in the order it would kind of happen thank you so what I'm hearing here is that the committee would like to go forward on this but we still need to do some work on it so I can tell the council president that we've made good progress and I can even share with her a little bit of what we're thinking so she has some idea where we're headed but we're not ready to make any kind of formal proposal to the time manager before our next meeting and give him a sense of where we're headed and see what he's talking about okay good we don't have much time but I'd like us to move on the minutes but before we do that we do have this issue of bylaws Evan has very kindly put a document in our packet that gives at least the chair gives the committee a sense of how we might begin to parcel this out we don't have time I think today we sink our teeth into that but we will certainly have it on the agenda next time yeah and Evan has done a very good job I think more important question again I'm not sure we have much time on it today is how we want to proceed with what at times can be such as we have a bylaw before us today on the agenda that we're not going to really get to so we might just look at that for a moment but the question is how are we going to proceed with these more complex bylaws do we want to assign a member of the committee to sort of be the the manager of it and sort of present it do we want to do what we did today which is we have a document in front of us I thought today this is very productive but for bylaws we're not really doing that there's some homework or background might need to be done might need to get some legal opinion do you want that to be handled by the chair sort of agreed it will sort of parcel it out and then one person gets this bylaw one person gets that or do you want to just have us do it as a group we have a bylaw in front of us today we could just start working our way through it that seems terribly inefficient and it would be helpful to have someone sort of the manager of each bylaw who's done maybe a little bit more preparing and a little bit more thinking about it so I'm open to suggestions here if we just for a moment open that particular bylaw and take a look at it how would we proceed with something like this and has anyone given any thought to this because I haven't given a great deal of thought to it except as maybe sort of like Evan opening up and going oh my god how are we going to deal with this we're able to deal with Evans but the others seem a bit more daunting and we've got a whole bunch coming down the road so just briefly what are some thoughts or do you want to maybe leave this for next time what are some thoughts about how to proceed in general with you know, take the percent for our bylaw do we just go through it line by line do we have someone sort of be the sort of take us through it manage the major together so I haven't given this a whole lot of thought but the first thing that jumps out to me that we sort of touch down with the last one is what does and does not trigger attorney review and so to me any process that we use the first question we need to ask is does this need to go to town attorney because it doesn't make sense for us to do anything on it until it goes to town attorney and so but that also requires is asking the sponsors if it already has gone through attorney review and if it has if they could send us that relevant information so thinking back again when Mandy Jo and I put our campaign finance bylaw through attorney review we didn't actually give you that information which in retrospect we probably should have right it would have it would have like we sent it to the town attorney they sent back feedback and we went great and then we sent you the bylaw but we didn't send you the feedback and so maybe you didn't even know that it had attorney review and if we didn't know and Mandy Jo and I weren't here we might have sent it back to the attorney and so I don't I severely hope this percent for our bylaw attorney review but this seems like something ad hoc committee should have done but maybe they didn't and so like my first question looking at this is has the town attorney already looked at that if so can you send us their response and if not we need to send it out and so the process beyond that I have no idea but that to me seems like the first step of the information we need so I agree wholeheartedly I think our first question is we need to review something because if so we need to get it out even if there's changes we already see that need done that are more consistent changes type things we need to get that language out to the attorney because it takes the attorney a while so that's the first one looking at this one it's not even formatted the way our current bylaws are formatted it uses section one section two for the big ones and our bylaws for the big ones there's certain things that we can easily see, Athena's raising her hand the question I think we asked this committee is is that our job or is that the job because it's supposed to be proposed by our rules in a format that can be adopted is it our job to flag it and change it or is it our job to just flag it and then say oh clerk when it goes in if it gets adopted here's changes that need made in terms of the sort of you know outlining of it that's an outline structure right Athena was raising her hand over here Athena part of what Jeff sent after the bylaws were passed was a document to help the town clerk reformat new bylaws that are adopted so that'll be part of the town clerk's responsibility I think it might be somewhere in the bylaws but that's going to be part of what the town clerk does when new bylaws are added but eventually you wouldn't even really need to make changes she would just incorporate the new formatting into the adopted the new adopted bylaw or if there were changes she would format them okay does that answer your concern Amanda so we have legal question we have formatted question formatted questions been answered but what do we do with the rest of us and how do we approach it so I'm just thinking in terms of bylaw review our jobs are clear consistent and actionable so actionable gets the sort of town partially the town attorney that's one of the that's the purpose of that review clear is us I guess can it be read and understood consistent is there's the outlining consistency but then there's the who's doing the investigation to see if it's consistent with our town policies and maybe that's where where we can start and maybe it gets assigned to you were saying something like assign someone on this committee to do something maybe that's the assignment on a persons level as these come through is are there any bylaws are there other bylaws that this affects you know is it consistent with them you know is it are there other policies of the town whether it be the master plan or climate action goals or this that they're consistent with you know and and all maybe that's where our review has a purpose as you would say earlier today is is that consistency with current town bylaws or resolutions or policies stuff like that you might and clarity is us as a group and so that would be homework in other words the assumption is with all obviously all of these that we take the time before we need to at least read it through once from a point of view with this particular document what is the chair's task is he in this case to send this to ask to seek out attorney review is he to first reach out to the officers which now is the CRC I would say it's the ad hoc reach out to them and ask them if they had an attorney look at it if they haven't then I need to reach out to Paul and I just concerned about time and we're going to do this every single bylaw or we're going to make a judgment with each bylaw and that's why I kind of wanted to go through an attorney again just to make sure they got everything they might have gone right it turns out it does need to turn a review then I should act as soon as possible and try to get that started I'm not sure what I'm going to tell the attorney or what I'm going to say to Paul to tell the attorney other than just look at this and be sure that it's okay and hopefully that will be sufficient they might come back and say what exactly are you when we were in bylaw review we identified I think it was six bylaws that we were like I don't know this makes us uncomfortable and we literally just sent them to a town attorney and said can you give us an opinion and they actually gave us like line edits on them and so it depends on how much time they have but it was perfectly fine to just say can you give us an opinion on this so I will do that so we're not going to act on this today hopefully we'll be able to act how are we doing? Yes, go ahead Mandy for purposes of going into agenda setting I'm putting my vice president hat on now I think the president had mentioned at our last meeting on Monday that she hoped to put this on the February 24th agenda or whatever so are we can I report to her in an hour and a half? No it's not going to be ready I mean that's a question from GOL if we haven't reported it out yet can it go in for first reading and I'm not I personally am not necessarily comfortable with that on a bylaw especially if we're seeking attorney opinion but I think that's as a committee we should have an idea of whether we're okay with a first reading before we have ourselves finished our reporting out so I guess a couple of things I think this much like the first time we reviewed ecax charge is going to be a process of figuring out what our role is as we actually do it but I do think that Pat and I having served a year on bylaw review committee I'm already thinking of this almost in the terms of what Pat and I did on bylaw review committee whereas we looked at it and there were times where we said this is overly complex we need to simplify it there were times where we said this is aspirational and unenforceable and so it shouldn't be there to me that sort of our view we're not going to be able to get into some of the technical details but we can look at some of those aspects one thing I was going to say so my assumption is after you leave here today you will be emailing Paul to ask for attorney opinion give them a deadline that we did that on bylaw review if you sometimes they can be pretty quick sometimes they're not it depends on their workload so what would be an appropriate deadline by our next meeting so our next meeting is the 26th right so we're the 24th so that gives them time to get it in and then us to receive it put it in the packet and read it but honestly the town attorney is most busiest during town meeting times and we're not we're getting close and so if we say when you get to it and they put it off and all of a sudden we start to get into town meeting season but if you give them a deadline they can sometimes turn it around pretty quick I think with this one there's a sense of it's been sitting around so we would like to push it forward if we can maybe with others we're not quite as pressed so we were blessed by having two members on this body that's going to be very helpful eventually what I'm hearing is we're going to craft a process that eventually we could probably put in writing that future members of this body can use as a guideline but at the moment we don't have it we've got some good ideas today the only other item I have so is the a minutes and I would like to adopt them if we could we have two sets of minutes in front of us I've looked at both of them I'm satisfied with both but I need to hear from the rest of you in terms of consensus are there any changes that people want to make pass that along to the clerk of the council that these have been adopted by consensus we still need at some point we're not going to do it now to work our way through Evan's document and think about how we're going to proceed with the general process of bylaw review but we've made some good headway I think we're at least thinking about that today I have nothing not anticipated and there is no public present are there any other items that the homework set for me the report I will be giving to the council at our next meeting cognizant of hope in meeting long way to share this with I'm particularly thinking it is appropriate for me to share that with him if he wishes to look at it it is your discretion to do so as long as we don't assign it to more than one person so I'm prepared to adjourn this meeting


Bonjour. Merci. That's the extent of my French. Thank you all, and thank you for having me. And hopefully we can go from a little bit light-hearted to a little more serious topic, which is really around trust in AI. Our world is changing. AI is invading every aspect of it. Before I get into that, I have to give a shout out to a doc maintainer, some of my teams in the audience. So Brad Topol, you guys can tweet all this, right? Shout out to Brad Topol, Kubernetes doc maintainer, DE at IBM. Great guy, and he's helping to run the doc sprints at Kubernetes. So please give Brad a shout out. Thank you. So think about it, right? And this is a quote from Kevin Kelly. Kevin's a noted author, anybody who saw Minority Report. That was some of his work. And he's thought about AI, and it's really become very simple. There will be 10,000 new startups, and guess what? They're going to take something that we already do, and they're going to add AI technology to it. And you can read his book, The Inevitable, and see a little bit more on that. And it's anything, right? So a little light-hearted. You can look at, and this is really something that exists in Toronto. It's a real picture of something one of my team did. His daughter works in a dance studio. It's at night. The security guard is gone. Or off to the washroom, something like that. And now somebody needs to be able to get in and get to class. And they can just press the button, talk to an application. The application can verify who that person is, open the door for him and let him in. And they don't have to worry about where the security person has gone. After hours, they've got something to do. Done very simply. Voice recognition technology, text-to-speech to then go and play the response. And of course, make the door open. Very simple. Smart things happen, right? But we start to get more complex as we start using visual technologies as an example. And there's adversarial attacks that can exist as a result of just very simple things you can do to manipulate an image. You can insert noise. Not a lot of noise in this case, right? Giant panda becomes a monkey, right? Done just by tricking it with a little bit of noise. Because the computer is looking at the little pixels around the things, the elements that are inside of the image. It's not looking necessarily at the big thing. It can't make that sort of determination yet that we can. But deep neural networks are evolving. They're getting better. They're taking us down this path of helping us make decisions. And of course, you can then go and think about this in terms of your life. Well, simple things added to as noise into an image can then hurt my bank account, right? Somebody can very easily fool a machine. Can you really trust that check scanner that you have going on in the background? So as we get to more and more complex decisions that we have to go and make, it becomes really necessary to think about what's going on. Credit applications, admission to colleges, employment applications, your healthcare, whether if you've committed a crime, possibly how you're going to get sentenced. All these things are being assisted by AI technology. This can be kind of scary. Let me go back one here for a second. I clicked too fast. And what you have to do is look at, is the data been tampered with? Has the model been tampered with? Is there something inherently biased or unfair? We heard a little bit about that yesterday in some of the discussion about ethics. Can you look at that model, that black box, and understand it in any shape or fashion? Is what's being done tracked and accountable? So how do we solve these problems? Well, IBM has this long history of being out and available in open source, working in projects like Linux and others and other things before that, and doing it across a variety of different organizations. So that's our solution as well too. And there we go. So we've put out some open source projects. Adversarial robustness toolbox. It's up there on GitHub, you can go and play with it. It allows you to look at your models, inspect them, look at the data, make sure that nothing is being tampered with. There's a set of tools there that you can go and use. The AI fairness 360 toolbox that's there helps you with 70 different functions that are available to look at models and assess them, and 10 different ways to help you go and fix that model when it's broken in some way. And then, of course, explainability is something that we all have to deal with, right? When those models are being created these days, we can't necessarily understand how they were put together.  We have to be able to probe them. We have to be able to understand whether the data is biased in some way. We have to be able to make corrections. And so looking at that black box and turning it into a model that we humans can understand, that regulators can understand, that consumers can understand is very important. The toolbox there will help you. So we apply these tools as well in our products. Watson OpenScale has this as part of its dashboard. It allows you to track and measure your AI outcomes all throughout the life cycle, throughout that whole pipeline. So one of the things you can do to get involved in this is to join the Linux Foundation AI committee, right? There's a principles working group that's looking at the ethics and the principles of how we all need to operate, as well as use cases. And they're going to help really take these tough problems and turn them into something that we can all work with. And of course, it's a worldwide group that's formed across North America, Europe, and Asia. And lastly, you can come join us at IBM at Coday. We did take a French term coder. So you, plus the work that we're doing in Coday, come join us, join these projects, be part of it. Thank you.