id about this committee was having experts on it would be ideal because it could hit the ground running and definitely know who is going I think it largely depends on what you want this committee to do Steve for me the school committee is a great analogy because I have been thinking about that because there are school committee elected officials like us so their expertise is that they are able to get more votes than you know but so they are not there wasn't a seat for a teacher a seat for you know in other words so where the expertise comes from is then from either the regular staff of the Amherst public schools or from consultants and for me so one of the questions I have here somebody brought this up in a letter one of the letters to us is really what this committee would need is in addition to what we already have in town staff probably a consultant so to me the expertise that's embedded in the membership should be expertise and other help that's given to this committee so that they on behalf of the town can make recommendations I'd like to make a comment thank you I've served on three committees in this town I've never built a fire station I've never built a DPW and I really don't know that much about net zero buildings Chris but you taught me a lot as did Rudy but what I do know is how to ask questions how to look at what makes sense whether or not definitions are understandable and to listen to people like Andy on committees when he says you know when you write a bylaw it really needs to have a section on definitions and so forth and so in a space of two months eight of us four of whom are very very knowledgeable about net zero and four of whom were not myself included I don't know maybe I shouldn't speak for you Andy um I was down and over a period of 15 or 16 meetings um did a decent job of rewriting a net zero bylaw and I think what difference happens here is when you put everybody on a committee who thinks too much alike you don't have anybody who's thinking the difficult questions that somebody who is not from that background is going to ask so I would like to suggest that in this motion that's on the floor that we just say seven residents some of whom will have experience which leaves open of someone like me applying because I don't fit any of these Pat one of the things that is important to me is diversity and in this sense diversity of thought and I'm looking at forestry and I know that Sugar Shack Alliance right now is in a big kerfuffle because some of the affinity groups don't believe that forest should be managed one way other people in Wendell State Forest think they should be managed in another and while we're in a kerfuffle what we have is creative tension and it does seem to me that within this context of experts there needs to be a range of opinion and understanding so that there is that tension and I believe firmly that sometimes we have to look to the person who knows the least and I'm really putting quotes around that because we need to look for we need to see from their eyes for a moment to make decisions that are effective to make collaborations to reach consensus and I think that going back to the MMA whatever the conference was we were at the speaker was incredibly important because she spoke about you can't change what you can't see and so I really feel like there needs to be a range I need I feel like the emphasis does need to be on expertise but we need to open up that definition. Evan. I don't know how I followed that up. So as one of the co-author original co-authors of this charge this has been probably the part of the charge that I have struggled with the most. I think that especially given the short timeline that we as a council just voted on there is a need for some expertise and I think that I can understand that we need a committee that is capable and that doesn't have to spend time trying to educate its members. There's another part of me that also believes that the best committees are not composed of all experts and that sometimes a group of experts in the room together talking to each other doesn't always produce the best results and that sometimes you need stakeholders to as the president mentioned ask those tough questions sometimes you need people who will be impacted to stand up and say hold on how is this going to affect me perhaps that could be done through public participation but we said about the difference between merely consulting with a stakeholder and also empowering that stakeholder with a voice and a vote on a committee and I think that can be powerful. I don't think that we're talking about adding on just anyone who has an interest but people who have important perspectives and so that's been something that I've struggled with as I've dealt with this committee charge for what feels like six years now and so for me from my perspective you know I want to make sure that the local business community is heard I want to make sure that renters are heard and I think that that sometimes takes more than just having a public forum and so my thinking on this has evolved quite a bit over the past month as I've considered it in depth and I think that there is some merit to saying that this would be a stronger committee that would produce more innovative solutions stronger solutions and solutions that the broader community would have greater ownership of if it was not just experts in a limited number of fields that point one my second point is not as long I promise because my second point is one of the things I did I've been looking at this charge for a long time now but paragraph style lists are always hard to process and so one of the things I did was I took all of those qualifications out and put them in a numbered list and there are nine areas of expertise that we identified but then as I looked at them I thought well climate resilience one of the important things at the municipal level we're going to have to deal with the stormwater why isn't stormwater management and water resources one of those areas of expertise and I realize that we could very quickly start to just brainstorm a list of what's missing councilor Shriver mentioned why isn't planning on there when certainly density development is one of the best things that we could do to abate emissions and so where I end up falling on whether or not this should be 100% experts or a mixture of experts and stakeholders that position aside I also think that there needs to be if we do keep the expertise we need to think about whether or not these are too specific whether or not there are ones that we are missing because there's a lot and this list has grown over the past several months but at the same time it's there's a chance that we have an oversight and I think that councilor Haneke referenced this that in the future you know when we're dealing with a particular goal we may find that we need a certain expertise that isn't represented in that and so I think that I'm glad we're having this discussion as a council because it's something that I've been trying to grapple with and I'm glad that you're all dodging my baby on this Are there other Yes, Andy I've been hesitant to speak too soon after having been the maker of the motion and the first one in the last round I had thought about this issue as my other issue of concern also and I sort of was interested in how the conversation has evolved because I'm going to just share with you what I would what I wrote in advance of the meeting which was to change the first part of that the seven residents four members to excuse me to include at least four members with experience and then to take out the words from the pool of residents with her and then take out the words with her acquired experience among others so it would read from the pool of residents town manager may consider inclusion of members of relevant community organizations etc and it was trying to parse out both of these things and the reason it was coming back to the same thing that I had presented earlier but also I think has been very articulately presented by a number of speakers in the past few minutes. Additional comments. I was wondering if you looked at other communities composition of these kind of the climate change committees and what those look like because I looked at Keen, New Hampshire and Belfast and they have a mix of stakeholders and basically they have for example a cross-section of organizations, institutions businesses, interests and it's been shown again like I said there was research documenting that when businesses, industries and residents begin addressing climate change the entire community benefits so what I'm seeing is other communities that have cross-section of people and I'm seeing research that supports that when you have diversity you're going to make better come up with better solutions I'm going to see, I'm going to try something okay because I think we could debate this for quite a long time. There seems to be some sentiment that you need some experience and at the same time there seems to also be sentiment that you need to maybe not see this as the exclusive pool but there might be and other relevant areas and then there's also the idea that perhaps you need some people who are very interested and committed to this but don't fit into one of these areas of expertise but they have the commitment to try to serve in a way that would help bring this kind of thing to being enamorous so right now what we have is a motion to completely drop everything after the word residents and what I'm hearing is maybe we don't want to drop everything so the only way we're going to get out of that is to take a vote on that motion and then if we if it fails is to come back and see if we have another way of amending this area so I would like to yes Darcy I just would like to put out another possibility that people could think about if they're voting on Mandy because I thought of the possibility of putting a period after residents and then saying experience with one or more areas in the whole list and other relevant areas is preferred the word preferred implies don't bother to apply if you don't have any but we would add and other relevant areas because the town manager can only look at relevant areas anyway so that would include land use or whatever stormwater a lot of other relevant areas relevant to climate action which is what the town manager has to look at Steve Steve so the chances are really good if someone's gotten all the way down to reading the membership requirements that they're interested in the subject and you know I think this has to be curated so this is the these are town manager appointments and my experience with the town manager is that he consults I would assume that he will consult with relative people before you know trying to curate what the composition of this committee what the most effective kind of committee this should be so I guess I'm still I'm sorry we never cut your idea fully out there I'm in favor of one or the other one which says just put a hard stop to it and let the remaining let the process be curated or split the baby meaning some of whom some a lot of baby references to that Evan if I may ask a question of councilor your your amendment is very simple I guess I'm just curious so because there is an expectation and also stipulate in the charter both that the town manager should be appointing people who have some type of relevant experience or interest or something to offer and also because it's in the charter that we're looking for committees that are diverse is your expectation that the conversation we've been having tonight about balancing the expertise and also sort of inclusion diversity and stakeholder engagement is sort of inherent in that simple simplicity because it's elsewhere or I guess I'm trying to clearly we all have opinions and that one sentence might not fully answer the audience but I feel like you probably agree with some of this so I'm just sort of curious to hear your thoughts on that. It is simple and as I mentioned in my first reasoning behind this is the charter does require the town manager to look at relevant expertise and all of that so it's required already somewhere else but the main reason I made it simple I think has been shown through this conversation if you start with a list it's really hard to get a group of 13 people to agree on exactly what that list needs to include and we could be here for four hours if we decide we're going to have a list that says and some will have this experience and then we're going to create a list of first we have to decide how many are going to be on that list and then what it is that's really hard to do I had that experience on the charter commission when we were trying to create a list instead of just saying seek diverse residents we were actually going to name the list of diversity and that was really hard and so we went back to a more generic seek diverse residents because everyone's thoughts on diversity are different on what those particular sectors are so that's sort of the main purpose behind it I absolutely agree that if we're seeking 90 day the first set of appointments that we'll have for the seven residents a one year, two year, three year term they should probably be skewed towards experience and something that can put that out in 90 days but then in another year you're appointing two more residents that maybe you don't need them there at that time you need something else and so yeah I mainly a simplicity that it's going to be there by the manager because of the charter and coming up with a list is really hard with 13 people any other comments Darcy Darcy I just want to make sure people understand that the list comes from looking at the areas that have the most greenhouse gas emissions the first few phrases or words on the list they're all everything on the list is related to for example Amherst greenhouse gas inventory and the emissions or climate resilience so all these areas are areas in which we would want expertise because that's where we have emissions just FYI they're not just randomly chosen George I agree with Darcy given the nature of this committee if we're asking for expertise we could word it in such a way that it's not specifically seven or nine things but without some sort of guideline or some sort of list particularly one that's key to what this charge is trying to address it's in theory just left to the town manager to pick any people he wants now he's a smart guy he'll make intelligent choices but I would be a little reluctant just to take this all out and just have seven residents this is not just any old committee even for the other committees I assume there's some description of what they're looking for and I think we could word this in such a way that it isn't these seven things and if not that forget it but it does give us a sense of what the expertise is we're looking for in this committee Darcy why don't we just say relevant expertise and interest Steve so wait I came up with my own list no so my list was land use education, open space, site and building design, renewable energy waste management, food system and public education so that's why it's going to be hard to come right yes Alyssa I think one of the things we've been spinning around here and I really appreciate you pointing out Darcy the very specific nature of that and that's why I disagree with Steve's list is because your list is relevant specifically to where this committee is right now yet in the future this committee might need to be someplace else so I wonder if it makes sense to in terms of trying to reflect all that to go ahead and give these examples, these specific examples with that caveat that's been thrown around as to some of which should include people with these experiences not four half two or seven half two but some of which should be in this area because that also does despite what the charter says about what the town manager is supposed to do I can tell you that previous appointments were based on quote merit and fitness and that was a completely meaningless concept and so hopefully this new charter phrase is more relevant but merit and fitness didn't really mean anything and so giving guidance so that as everyone's out in the community doing outreach as the community participation officers are out in the community doing outreach saying we really need some of these things right now but they don't all have to have this but we need some of these people because if it turns out that none of the people who apply have those things then we have a problem because we're not going to get anywhere with the 90 days and then once the committee gets started if we're like you know what that wasn't really that is no longer the right set of things and they come back and say actually next time you need to do appointments when we all quit because we're tired of this pick the next set of things but that's why I wonder if we could come up with a compromise the motion on the table is to eliminate everything after the word residents I'm hearing that somebody would like some people would like to have something here so I'm going to call the question on that motion and then we'll see if there's a different motion call the question and that is to eliminate everything after the word residents so the second bullet reads seven parentheses seven residents would you like a roll call vote or would you just go with hands all those in favor of that motion raise your hands three those opposed okay so that motion has died the three people here that said yes and the other people said no do I hear a different motion Darcy I move that we put a period after residents and then start with the sentence experience with one or more of the following areas net zero energy building energy efficient retrofits climate change mitigation advocacy research clean energy practice policy infrastructure community choice energy green infrastructure for climate adaptation sustainable transportation sustainable farming and forestry waste reduction environmental or climate justice and other relevant areas is preferred there's a motion on the floor to have a second Sarah okay just clarification is the next sentence is there a period after preferred and then the rest of the next sentence deleted or included Darcy deleted okay and is that okay with this person that seconded it Sarah Mr. Bachman okay question however Darcy you did insert something here about the community action community choice that was not in the original motion it's something I know you wanted to add yes I would like to put that in there and where was that inserted right after right after infrastructure okay so in its community choice energy these are just preferred just preferred not required it says you said yes just underlining that and other relevant areas is preferred Sarah I just want to make sure that adding community choice energy fine so Mr. Bachman it was after the word infrastructure semi colon community choice energy semi colon before the green infrastructure for climate adaptation yes where it got added yes Steve for what it's worth I'm almost okay with that I just take exception to the two parts about buildings and I would prefer a much more general something like sustainable building practices so the first two are net zero energy building and energy efficient retrofits and I'd rather see it be a more general sustainable building practices so that would be a that would be an amendment from the amendment to your proposal I would like to have net zero in the words in there because we have a bylaw that's our law now we're supposed to love it I'm forgetting what I was going to say net I think that energy efficient retrofits also is important in there and for me that brings in a lot of carpenters and other people plumbers who worked on my house when we had a deep energy retrofit and it needs to be there because it goes beyond sustainable building and I think sustainable right now is there are too many definitions floating around there that aren't what I think we're looking for so I still think it's a little too specific particularly something like green infrastructure for climate adaptation that's the only place in this list that climate adaptation is mentioned at all yet this committee is charged with not only dealing with mass gas emissions but also dealing with climate adaptation and I presume there's more than just more ways to look at climate adaptation and things that you have to do besides just green infrastructure that's just one example of how specific this is the other relevant areas that is preferred as Lynn said earlier that if you're just a regular person who is very interested in climate action and you read the list and then you see is preferred you might be scared away from applying because of that because you might not have any of that experience despite the fact of how interested you are and how much you might have read and all of that and so I don't see it as the fix that we were just discussing that might be of opening up the potential membership to a mix of those that have this expertise and those that don't because you've got language in there that says is preferred and so versus language that is some may have or should have that clearly indicates that not all have to have whereas when you say is preferred there's an implication that if for seven openings nine people with experience apply and the other within these areas apply and 15 people without experience in those areas apply the way the charge is written with that is preferred means that maybe the manager has to take seven that have that experience and you don't end up with the the diversity and that split that we're actually looking for if we want the split we should not say is preferred we should just say some should have or name a number. Pat? It seems to me if we go back to saying with experience in or in pardon me I think it's with I'm pressing my button honey I think if we go back after seven residents we're talking about people with experience with or interest in any of these topics those words were not in there right I'm saying add them and get rid of preferred just to make it complicated for you. Okay. Evan I'm going to take your comment and then I'm going to try something okay go so I feel like we're in a bit of a Goldilocks situation here where Mandy Joe's amendment was perhaps too simple for many of us this one still feels maybe a little too complex and the more I sat with the idea of a list the more I feel uncomfortable with it even throughout this discussion because we could talk for hours about what is and is not on this list so net zero energy building is important right but what if you have an architecture is really good with sustainable materials but maybe it doesn't really fit in energy buildings but has worked in some type of sustainable construction that doesn't really fit in here right and so it feels a little bit exclusive that only people who have worked on net zero energy building even if we all agree that that should be the goal especially as it's sort of a burgeoning thing it's the list still sort of lacks ideas about planning and land use and development which I think so I worry that any list of qualifications opens us up to an exhausting debate over what is and is not on that list and how specific we should get beyond that I mean to say experiencing community choice energy is like a specific policy so it's even I mean we have clean energy practice policy is abroad but CCE is one policy that we're saying experience in this that's remarkably specific I think for a charge and so perhaps there's a middle ground there's a counselor earlier who put forth an idea of some language that is maybe that middle ground that perhaps she would be willing to put forth to find a compromise between the two amendments that we've had before so far Darcy I'm hearing people say that they want to have people on the committee that don't have expertise and are just interested and I don't think the charter allows that the charter says that the town manager has to seek to appoint people with experience and expertise in the relevant area so to me that means that that's what he has to do Steve so the I mean the the mission so then we can simply go to the purpose of the committee and say that you must have experience and expertise and can I read it off of yours how do I scroll down you should have experience and expertise in climate mitigation and resilience goals so that's really that's what the purpose of the committee is so we could be general and say that you must have that Mandy Joe I guess Darcy I don't get why we need to put it in here if you truly believe that whether or not it's in here the charter requires it then why does it need to be listed why couldn't we just go back to seven residents if we truly believe the charter requires that all of those residents have that I mean that where I'm having another problem if I agree the charter requires that the manager needs to seek appointments that have those so why do we have to list it here because we Kathy because you have to say what it is we're not so I don't know whether you put an asterisk this includes the following things I don't see how you can leave the town manager decide what we might have meant by what kind of experience what kind of expertise if we have some specific things in mind and can you do it as a footnote down below these include the following so it doesn't have a laundry list effect to it can you write a charge that way the motion on the table okay is to say seven residents period no no no and then next sentence with experience with one or more of the following areas and then we list them and we say or other relevant areas is preferred the discussion thus far has suggested preferred is as good as saying must have and the issue of the list we could go on all night and we're not going to we've said other relevant areas is preferred so I think we need to vote on this motion and the motion is seven residents period experience with one or more of the following areas blah blah blah blah and other relevant areas is preferred period and then we eliminate the second sentence unless there's an amendment around the issue of the word preferred because I did hear that yes shall any so I just feel like as a council I don't feel we have a consensus so what is the nature of this committee what do we want it to look like I don't I'm not sensing that we have a consensus we want the diversity we want people who are going to be affected to be part of this committee to have their buy in and that's a fundamental I think and that's why we're trying to reach this which is neither this nor that and so can we is that worthy of a debate that do we want that or not so that goes back to the idea of saying some of whom will have experience and also specific specifying the way key new Hampshire had that and then what the others would be they would represent a cross section of organization institutions communities or so if you're not saying that it and just saying that the this is preferred it's almost inviting that sense like we want all of you from different sectors to be part of this to shape this because this is affecting you okay I'm going to call the question and the question is on the motion seven residents period experience with one or more of the following areas it's the full list of areas after that it says and other relevant areas is preferred nothing else after that I and the community choice energy was added yes I need to reread it okay if all those in favor means yes means that you're in favor of this version no means you're not all those in favor all those opposed all right that one just got defeated I'm going to try another one I'm going to try one okay who is the great compliment seven seven residents some of whom shall have expertise with one or more of the following and you can include community choice energy and after the words climate justice include another relevant areas there is no preferred or is preferred and I don't see any reason to even have the whole conversation about the pool because that just the pool is the pool from any number of places and we hope it's broad do I have a second Andy seconded yes I have a question I just want to make sure that we're clear that and I know I love that word some so did we end the sentence then with waste reduction period and then is the rest of it gone no it's waste reduction and environmental or climate justice or other relevant areas period so that's different can I just clarify again so the start of it would be seven residents, some of whom have what's the start of it is that some of whom shall have experience with one or more of the following areas we added in the words community choice energy and we added at the end other relevant areas how is that different from is preferred it says some meaning some of the people some of whom so in other words some of the people in this committee will have this kind of expertise others may have a strong interest about commitment but maybe they've never done an energy efficient retrofit Alyssa and to elaborate on that a little bit more shall I think part of what that then having given that direction to the town manager then the idea is if the town manager brings us all people who don't meet any of the sums then we say really you couldn't find anybody to meet some of the sums or if the town manager brings us only people who have those things but nobody from any of the intersectionality discussion we've had then we'd say really because it only says some you had to pick every single expert so it's a way of checking back in and saying we wanted this combination and you can pick the combination but it can't just be one thing or the other remember ultimately we do confirm this committee yes Darcy other comments does it make sense to have that phrase at the end you're starting it with some or other relevant areas that's basically saying suppose there is another area that didn't get listed here expertise just it leaves you lots of it leaves you room so that seems to are we uh I guess I've repeated this quite a few times now but does the Charter not say that every person on this committee has to have experience or expertise in the relevant area because I think it says that so we're pulling out the Charter 3.3 C can you tell me the section you're looking for that's what we are we're not experts exactly no but you can ask to vote on things you're not an expert in so you become expert enough I'm sorry 3.1 3.4 8.11 yes I've read a lot of stuff on leadership I know about why the Challenger exactly how long is this section powers of appointment it needs to check down the line accept as otherwise provided by this ok this is the section being referred to appointments to multiple member bodies accept as otherwise provided by this Charter the town manager shall appoint all members of multiple member bodies members of all appointed member bodies shall be residents of the town of Amherst at the time of appointment and throughout the term of the appointment unless otherwise approved by the town council all appointments to these bodies shall be subject to provisions of section 2.11 the town manager shall establish a resident advisory then it goes on in making appointments the town manager shall seek to appoint individuals with relevant experience or excuse me with relevant expertise or experience the town manager shall establish policies and practices to actively encourage a diverse pool of applicants for multiple member bodies I think the issue here is what is considered relevant expertise or experience and seek so Mandy Jo I was just going to comment on the shall seek it doesn't say shall appoint they shall seek to so that doesn't require the appointment of that it gives a little bit of leeway depending on the applicant pool because we never know who will apply for what committee George I think we have to trust the town manager but also we know that there is a process in which we review his appointments and if there is a problem we will raise it so let him seek and we will see what he finds additional comments yes Evan so I am open to this amendment I do remain a little concerned about the specificity of this so waste reduction is really broad that could mean a whole lot of different things and leaves us open to a whole lot of different people who maybe have experience in reducing consumption or reducing plastic or anything like that net zero energy building is remarkably specific and pulls it beyond any other aspect of green or sustainable building the one that I have a big issue with is including community choice energy which is not a statement of my support or opposition to the policy itself but just that it is a very specific policy that we are encouraging them to have expertise in and so at that point we could just start adding policies to it and that to me feels way too specific I would be open I would probably prefer not a list if the items on the list were slightly more general so I like things like waste reduction and energy efficiency or sustainable transportation or sustainable farming but some of these things like community choice energy and net zero energy buildings seem far too specific and far too restrictive to include in this list Steve I don't think we are ready for prime time I am about ready to send this back to a committee the issue is which committee it's 10 o'clock we are on page 1 we are not going to be happy about how we are going to vote because we are tired but we are not going to vote to you know I really second Councillor Ross's concerns about the specificity of a lot of this which I think is attractive to a certain kind of a person but really who I think is the most important are people that can think holistically Alyssa I want to go ahead and have the vote even if it's not unanimous I understand that we are tired I understand that we are frustrated and I have no idea how we are possibly going to fix it in another meeting because we are never going to come to agreement as to what the list is going to suppose to include we just have to come up with a close enough thing that we can tolerate and we can start appointing people to start doing this work which is what we say is more important than whether or not we got the list exactly right if the town manager comes back to us and says I can't find anybody with any of these expertise so I am just going to give you a bunch of enthusiastic folks that would be fine but that is not going to happen because we know that we have people in our community some of them sitting right here in the audience who are going to apply with that level of expertise so I am not finding that I am just totally loathe to postpone something when we aren't going to learn anything between now and then except that we are less tired. Yes Margaret. May I read back the composition as moved? Yes. All right so seven residents some of whom shall have experience with one or more of the following areas clean energy building energy efficient retrofits clean energy practice policy infrastructure community choice green infrastructure for climate adaptation sustainable transportation sustainable farming and forestry waste reduction environmental or climate justice or other relevant areas. That is the motion. I move the question. Yes. That we say some I don't really understand if the people that apply might have enthusiasm and maybe even experience but not in the way it appears here but the town manager through his process deems those people as good people for this committee he recommends them to us. Call the question. The motion has read by the town clerk all those in favor aye. Opposed? I think it's were you opposed? If you are in favor of the motion the way the town clerk read it then it's yes or aye. The committee exists. Did you want to re-vote on that one?  If you are not then it's no or if you want to abstain. The community choice energy it has everything. It has it all. It even has the phrase that allows there for it to be other things. It leaves the door wide open for everything and anything at this point that is in this field. All those in favor aye. Opposed? Do you need a roll call? Abstained. Okay. Motion passes. I'm sorry? No. It was 11 to 2. I need to just do a time check because I want to know how much else we're going to be looking to on this one because I think we may need to either take a pause and go into the executive committee that we have asked for this to another day which I don't think any of us want to do. So other questions. The general motion is now on the floor and that is to accept the charge to this committee as it has now been amended. I do want to say I believe from the earlier discussion on the motion that we have gotten rid of the word standing and I think that's to be filled in by the committee. That's part of a whole legal council rating, et cetera. Kathy. I have something that is not substantive. It's not to what the charge is doing. The appointing authority has the town manager appointing town counselors to review the appointments including some of us. And I think there's a separation of power here that we're crossing over. That's a very bad precedent that I've never seen a legislative body delegate to someone they hire appointment authority over them. I can't imagine a member of congress saying that a department head in the federal government could pick which two members served on this. So I think we're doing something that's precedent setting that isn't a good idea. So I'm raising it and think of it, if this was an education committee, would we have the town manager pick which of the two school committee members who were elected separately would serve on it? That's the question. I understand the question. So what I would like to suggest is it's very clear that the town manager does appoint the seven people. That is very, very clear and I think more than anybody else here, we'd like to get started on getting those applications in and getting going. And in a very near future we can take this back to our council or our town attorney again and go back over that. You're absolutely right. For the other seven, no problem. So I'm not going to try to sit here tonight and debate that issue. I just don't think it would work. Mandy Jo? So I'm going back to what Steve just said about it. It's 1115. We've talked about one thing. There are clearly some other things that some counselors may want to discuss with us. Sorry, 1015. It's 1015. We have a larger agenda yet I fear we would just push this through without that discussion and that's a bad precedent to sent to. Especially with one where counselor Kathy just said it sounds like she wants to change the appointment authority of the counselors back to the council. You didn't do a meeting. We've had a couple of opinions from the town attorney on that might that type of change might contradict the charter. We may not like what the charter says in terms of who appoints who, but it's the document that governs us and we shouldn't we can't change that document. And so to do this this late at night and pass a document that we might not agree with certain things or say we'll deal with that later I think that's a bad precedent to begin with so maybe we do just need to refer this to someone or maybe not even referral. Table it and bring it back at the next meeting for another thorough discussion about what everyone's concerned about and has changes for. Okay, Alyssa. I completely disagree. We're totally close.  It's stupid the situation that we're finding ourselves in in terms of the town manager appointing town counselors part of the problem is the charter did not properly for Amherstile envision town counselors being placed on a committee that weren't included in the charter which is remember that conversation when we started all of this so that's where we've boxed ourselves in by putting town counselors on a non-town council committee and therefore according to the charter the document we have it says this how it works. The next argument to be had is whether or not the council president gets to pick those two counselors and recommend them to the town manager or if we all know the town manager or if he just picks names out of a hat and hopes for the best when he gets to the decision tree that another committee is working on but in the meantime we need to recruit the seven members and we're not going to get a change in the charter document to do what we think is weird and so we move along and we start going. I take issue with the fact that your statement of we are close because we've talked about one thing and no other I believe there are counselors here that are hesitant to discuss things they intended to discuss tonight because of the time so I don't I'm not willing to concede that we are close to passing this because I don't know whether we are given the language in here so that's why I'm saying tabling might be the best situation right now. Other comments. Steve. I just want to remind you all that we passed a motion of one of our first meetings that we have a hard stop at 10. I'm not sure. We never passed that. I'm not sure that tabling I think that tabling is a reason we still have other parts of the agenda. Question about maybe it's a point of order about tabling since that's not something we've ever done at town something we ever did at select board and so it's a new thing to Amherst to be doing tabling. We've postponed which is roughly the same thing but when we postpone there's a reason not just that we're tired not that some people are afraid to talk if the president wants to pull people and say is there anyone who has concerns that they're not willing to bring up tonight but they will let us know so therefore if they do we won't have any idea what they are until we show up at our next meeting and we'll be all over again. I don't know what their concerns are if people want to bring up their concerns and then say but let's not decide I'm fine with that. I'm not fine with saying we can't talk about it tonight we're going to show up the next time we're going to hear it all for the first time okay well that's really interesting maybe we should postpone it again. Please speak up and tell us what they are and then ask us to postpone the rest of the discussion I'd be fine with that but walking away now that's pretty fixed. There's been a suggestion that I ask are there other things in this charge that counselors would like to discuss now or in the future? Mandy Jo. I have four other things frankly. Okay. I didn't want to take over anyone else who was saying that they might have other things but I don't know how we're proceeding but I raised my hand to say there are things that I have. Steve. Others? Shalini and Evan? Okay and we don't have the right committee to refer this to. If people have substantive issues with this we have to talk about them as a group isn't that correct? Even if there was another committee they could just have a chat and bring it back to us. The 13 of us need to hear it. There is not a committee that is assigned to deal with substance and that's where I would imagine most of the rest of the comments are because the committee that deals with governance has already dealt with those issues. Pat. I think we need to hear from each of the counselors about what they are. There may be parallel issues or the same issue coming up. I agree with Alyssa if we don't know what they are we can't prepare for them we can't deal with them now or later. So let's go ahead and people need to say what's on their mind. Let's start with Mandy Joe. I'm going to try and make it brief without necessarily going into reasons so that people just know. I'd like us to look at the term for counselors to change it from two years to one year. I would like us to eliminate in number four in terms of appointment. Right now it says three years for residents two years or term of term expiration for counselors and I would be looking at modifying that down to one year for counselors not for residents. In number four I'd be looking at ending the sentence after climate resilience planning and deleting the laundry list for similar reasons that we just spent nearly two hours talking about a different laundry list. In number six I'm sorry we'd end with GHG reduction goals and climate resilience planning period. Okay thank you. In number six I would delete D and E completely and then I had some minor changes to number two B and number five B language changes that probably don't affect the substance of the matter. Five B you said. Steve? Actually Mandy said exactly that. Number four what Mandy said. Okay. Shalony. I wanted to hear more about the public forums and what is the process of public involvement because it said there would be one meeting in a year and I'm not sure so just more clarification of that and I was thinking of understanding the process for goal setting beyond the overarching goals that we have what are some of the intermediary goals and also again if we could get a sense of the report would it include a roadmap and not just isolated policies or isolated actions but what would the roadmap look like in terms of what our goals are and what are the challenges we encounter and what are the intermediary steps what are the long-term steps and so forth so like a roadmap and that's all for now. Evan? Mine would be very quick I hope. Based on the comment I had on the motion would be 6C engagement of the public and relevant stakeholders in education planning and development of climate actions I'd like to add after education a goal setting since goal setting is a big part of this charge one and two I think it would be useful to make sure that's stipulated that should also include the public. Anything else? Okay. Were there other people over Pat any of you? Yes. Go ahead Pat. Microphone. Under reports I would be very interested in what the committee did in terms of community engagement and how successful it was. George did you have something? Okay. Others? I just need to do a time check with the town manager. We were going to go into an executive session and that required that another staff person be here. How would you like to proceed? Well we have two staff people are waiting but that's up to you. How do you want to proceed? Yes. Andy? I was just wondering if the president would consider appointing an ad hoc committee that would consider this charge and bring it back next meeting. Given the input that we presently have. Yes. I think that's necessary given the number of changes that people are looking at and so I'd like to entertain a motion to create an ad hoc committee to take this charge and that committee itself will in fact look at substance. Is there a second? Second. For the discussion. Alyssa? I think that's a great idea and I think that one of the reasons we went ahead and had to go through our lists and if Mandy Jo wanted to go through hers more was because we set it in a public posted meeting where the ad hoc committee can go back and say so Mandy Jo, what were those sentences you said again and Evan what were those sentences you said again and it's not like you're going around and deliberating.  And I actually have marked up my copy. So Kathy? If we set this up can we limit it to things that were just brought up now rather than get a wholesale rewrite and this document addressing the specific areas can we just have agreement that it's not going to have. That's fine with me. Yes, George. So when this imagined ad hoc committee comes back they're going to report to us what the objections were of these counselors and make recommendations and make recommendations instead of letting the counselors to speak for themselves so we can know what their objections are. Well, the ad hoc committee can take what people have suggested during this quick survey and they would come back with a recommended change. Otherwise we're going to be sitting here for hours. If I count if it's Mandy, Steve and Shalini and Evan and Darcy where they're working this and Pat you know I mean we've got people who are very specific so if they're in the room then they can repeat what they just said to us so we're working on. That's fine. I have notes. So there's a motion on the floor. Did I get a second? Yes. Excuse me, of course I did Andy. Is there any other comment on this? Yes. Mandy Jones. I just wanted to add I forgot 5D as one of my word changes in the document quickly. Just to put it out there. Anything else? Evan. I'm not completely clear on this. Is the motion simply an ad hoc committee to hash out the remaining substantive issues or does the motion include that that conversation be restricted to what was just brought up? I'm sorry, go ahead Margaret. Restricted, yeah. That's why Amanda Joe just made sure she mentioned that. I'm giving anybody else a chance. Where else you want green lines in this thing? Because that's what I've got right now. Okay. The motion has been made. Seconded. Call the question, creation of an ad hoc committee to take this with those items that have been identified for which the councillors have a question and come back to the council with a recommendation. Yes. Yes. All those in favour? I think it's Darcy. Your hands up. No, reluctantly. Okay. It was unanimous. Thank you. Now I need to have people express their interest. We've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.  Anybody like to withdraw your hand? Me. Okay. And we're supposed to have an odd number of people. Yes. To be clear, you're going to have to post this meeting. I know. Put over many people you want on it. That's true. Yes. I think Lynn's point was if seven are on it, it also needs posted as a full council meeting, not just a committee meeting. That is actually a point of discussion I've had recently with our town attorney. And that is that since we have five people on most of all of our standing committees, if two more councillors plan to attend and be vocal, then we have to post it as a council meeting. Yeah, but if you've got seven people on a committee and they're all from the council and they're all going to be vocal, it would be a posted meeting if it was two people or if it was seven people. The difference is if you have somebody come to a meeting you weren't expecting, that's where it gets problematic because you have more people associate, you have a committee and some people who aren't on the committee. If you have seven people on the committee, it's okay, but again, you probably don't want seven people on the committee to stand. Okay. I'm sorry. Pat has removed herself. Can I see a show of the hands again? One, two, three, that's six. Can we have an odd number? Huh? You removed you? Okay. All right, five. So the president gets to appoint to ad hoc committees the following ad hoc committee Darcy, Mandy Joe, Steve Shriver, Shalini and Evan Ross. We are going to go into yes. I just ask since we passed the motion creating the committee can we get that going and start taking applications, get it on the form? It's a very good question. Thank you for asking it, Paul. Yes, so we do have a press release ready to go and you took action tonight in terms of creating it. I'm assuming that nobody challenged the number of residents. Right. Excellent. Okay. Thank you. We're going to go into executive session. I have to get my language out. Okay. I ask that the motion be made to enter into executive session for the purpose set forth in the agenda item. Darcy is going to actually do the actual wording of what she has to say. I move. Just right there. Yeah. Okay. I move that the town council meet an executive session pursuant to the provisions of GLC to discuss the purchase, exchange, lease or value of real property if an open meeting will have a detrimental effect on the negotiation position of this public body. That's it. I hereby declare that an open meeting on the purchase, exchange, lease or value of real property would have a detrimental impact on the council's negotiating position in further state that if the council will convene in open session after the executive session and I need a second. And now we do a roll call vote. Roll call vote 2 is required to enter into executive session. And do we just say yes to confirm? Okay. I'm going to call your name. Yes. Councillor Brewer. Hi. Councillor Degilis. Councillor Griesmer. Hi. Councillor Haneke. Hi. Councillor Pan. Hi. Councillor Ross. Hi. Councillor George. I mean Ryan. Councillor George Ryan. We both say yes. Councillor Shane. Councillor Schreiber. And me. Thank you. Unanimous. We are actually going into this back room so you're welcome to sit here. We expect to be gone maybe 15 to 20 minutes. Ha ha. Okay. We are going to reconvene. We're back. We're going to move to agenda item 6a. Council item 7a. We have the rules of procedure. Ad hoc committee. And there is a report of that committee and then a motion to adopt additional interim rules. Alyssa. Our motion sheet has some acceptance of reports and I don't know why because we don't normally do that unless it's something like a recycling and refuse management report that we're accepting. I don't think we need to do that because we don't need to do that. We don't need to do that. We don't need to do reports. I think that's just extra words that people don't need but that's a process thing we need to work out for future. Is that a question that you care to speak to? No. We didn't do it for governance. We heard the report but we didn't accept it. So you don't have to accept our report for rules of procedure but we have many documents. We have the action items. It was not written on letterhead at that time. It just said rules of procedure, town council ad hoc committee recommended action and that had the motion which I'm not actually making yet to adopt the interim rules of procedure dated January 15th as amended because figuring you'll change something under the Amherst Home Rule Charter section 260. My site is fading apparently at this hour it's at 2.7 p1 I and basically here's the deal so you remember way back when when we got the original rules and procedures from the bylaw review committee and we sat here and we tore it apart and we said yeah this is duplicative mass general law this repeats what's in the charter let's just do the basics and then we'll have this committee go off and turn it into something else. Now one of the sets of basics that we pulled out according to the charter we needed to have in there in order for them to count as our interim rules and so what we did is if you look at I know there's so many documents here if you look at the you can look at the beautiful marked up one that you got it oh I don't know midnight and but there's also a clean copy of it that show that basically what we did is we tacked it at the end like in solution as it mentions in the report but it is something that seemed workable the only other change the only other changes that were made to those things that you voted on December 3 they say December 4 because that's when various corrections were made based on our discussion on December 3 is if you were on the marked up version and this is we're not doing this on the overhead et cetera and we're all exhausted basically the differences are outlined in the report which is for example we didn't consistently use town councilor town councilor sometimes we said councilor and so I just tried to go in and do a fine and replace and fix that there is a section under hearings that I added in the part about the forum on the master plan just as we had already had the part about the forum on the budget and mentioned the citation for free and if that turns out to be wrong then we can fix that later but the part that got tacked on at the end is the part that's directly from the charter which is charter section 2.60 which says rules of procedure have to include the following things like you have to meet at least once a month like you can minutes have to say this that or the other thing and we've taken that out because it was so obvious why would we need to put it in there well it turns out we needed it in there so it's in there now if you vote for that then we will think fulfilled our charter obligation to have interim rules and the rules procedure committee will continue working away at making a much more elegant and user friendly document for everyone to use within our 6 month deadline that's also called out by the charter the other change is that the charge itself has been altered slightly to reflect that we just are basically updating and we will have then complied with the interim rules part of the charter and then we still have the 6 months to figure out the rest of the rules which is May 31st but we don't have to act on the charge but you know yes no Mr. Bachman I believe we could by consensus just agree that it's been updated to say that and the other thing that happened is we had sort of an interim sort of charge format that came up when I suggested it to the energy group and so I reordered some things so it's just reordered and you'll see at the end it has less text more just bullet points but the content that's changed is it's showing that we have complied with the charter if we agree that the thing we voted on December 3rd which appeared to be sort of temporary kind of interim rules are actually our interim rules I'm going to call for a vote on the revised charge just to be clean okay do I hear a motion to accept the revised charge motion has been made second Mandy Jo yes what are the changes to the charge I haven't been able to see on the charge of the rules of procedure committee an actual red-lined version I haven't found it so can you actually tell us what those changes were and I don't have my mic down we received a hard copy tonight of what it was correct but we have this is what we approved before and we have it was my mistake I thought I provided a red line but I hadn't on the charge itself I've done that for the rules but not for the charge itself there's a clean copy it was supposed to be 8 o'clock when we took the vote I guess what are the amendments to it besides changing of like location of things the original one if you turn over the one we had in our packets thanks to Margaret bringing this to us tonight you look at the back it says reports it has a bunch of sentences instead now it has two bullet points that say a proposed set of interim rules no later than February 1 citation a proposed set of permanent rules no later than May 31st instead of saying the ad hoc rules of procedure committee shall bring that changed membership saying the committee five members of the town council it says five town councilors and we added the citation under legal reference way back at the beginning it just said 2.6d 10.7 p i 10.7 b was just a completely incorrect citation for term of appointment but it's 10.7 p i that's what happens when people are in a hurry changing things that's what we did on December 3rd we were cutting things then on the 17th when we did this one but 10.7 p i is that transition section and that's where it said how we could get together and do the rules ahead of time and that if we did the rules they had to include this extra section that we'd cut out that we've since put back in that same extra section is in fact right here on the charge as well so it's like you should become very familiar with it because 2.6d just keeps showing up over and over again it was right here in the charge itself but it was no longer in the actual interim temporary rules we adapted on the 3rd questions all those in favor unanimous okay let's move on to the actual additions to the interim rules and again if I could just make clear this is going to look way better we're not really making progress on how this is going to look when we do it at the end and see this is just what was left when we pulled it apart before and that's why if you look at the red lined version it's almost all blue the blue stuff was the stuff we cut out back in December 3rd and the red should be mine which is mostly just moving things around a little bit adding a couple citations and as I mentioned referencing that our discussion about what hearing format is like is different for the hearings on the master plan to hear motion it's a motion to adopt the interim rules as amended the citations actually on our motion I'm sorry thank you it's to adopt the interim rule rules are procedure dated 1 15 19 as amended under the Amherst home rule charter section 2.6 D and 10.7 P and I a motion has been made by Kathy 2nd Pat any further conversations all those in favor to unanimous we're now moving town managers report Mr. Bachman such a long town ministers report but a few things the just want to let you know that technology is up so tonight we've been live streaming our meetings broadcast through live streaming through our website second thing some we had kind of be talking about the North Common tonight there's plenty of time tonight I think but what basically is if you recall we had redoing the parking lot the main street parking lot in the downtown we decided those two things are intertwined so we should look at them together we there's a committee that looked at this developed a lot of reports made a presentation to the select board towards the end of their term and part of the project was what part of the recommended action was to reduce parking and part of the main street parking lot it was called the bold option it's a significant issue for the town there's a lot of attention and we knew that there's a lot on your plate and that if we didn't get a really quick decision from the council we wouldn't be able to do construction this summer and so knowing the number of things on your plate and how you with the schools and everything we decided to postpone this whole conversation for two reasons one is so that there's the council had more time but also more importantly we have a consultant coming in the main street parking and that consultant's already started and so we hope that we'll have that information for you when it comes time for you to make a decision about what to do with the north common in the main street parking lot we anticipate that that will happen later this calendar year so it's still a live project the money is still there and we hope that we'll bring it back to you then I'm doing one of my cup of jose on Friday February 8th at the lone wolf meeting I'm going to talk about Hampshire college making some announcements I've been in touch with the president of Hampshire college there's nothing imminent with Hampshire college but it's significant employer significant landowner for the town we care a lot whatever happens at Hampshire also influences the neighborhood and development in that neighborhood as well and it's unclear what is going to happen they have a board of trustees meeting next week so I think there will probably be some news that comes out of there I hope some news comes out of there board of trustees meeting appreciated everybody who was able to attend the MMA meeting in Boston last weekend I thought it was really good meeting I really appreciate it I think the whole town appreciated how all the counselors came together to escort Nancy was recognized and gave a speech which I thought was a really class thing for the MMA to do the metropolitan planning organization has a vacancy because we had Doug Slaughter who was chair of the select board on that previously Lynn Griceberg has been nominated to take that seat it's a seat that's voted on by south Hadley east Hampton north Hampton Hadley and Amherst there are two other candidates so the president has been working the poles as it were to ensure that Amherst retains that seat and I think that's going forward there's a terrific probably one of the best Martin Luther King days events that we've had here we weren't here but they had a really good presentation one of the largest turnouts and everybody who went said the food was great it's just one of the best ones that they've had I'm sorry many of us missed it because we all had everybody in this room had another obligation congratulations to LSSE and to the community theater for a great production of Peter Pan they had to cancel their last performance because UMass shut down on that Sunday of Martin Luther King day weekend which was unfortunate because that was their closing performance and I don't know I haven't heard a report on how much money they lost if any so and the last thing is to this came up earlier on your resolution or your proclamation about black history month that will be Sunday at 1.30 to 2. It's a very brief ceremony it happens in front of town hall so if you can be here with your families or wherever it's usually a really nice ceremony and I sent you electronically information about the event that concludes my report okay thank you moving on to 8 we did go to the town council for a read on when the president appoints and when the council appoints and I developed a memo to you dated January 23 I attached to that memo the council's opinion I mean the attorney's opinion and I also attached to that the Excel spreadsheet that I developed based on the polling that I did with each of you on which committees both standing and others you were interested in of all of the committees the only committee that I now appoint to is in fact the bylaw review committee and based on people's interests I am appointed Alissa Brewer Pat DeAngelis Evan Ross and then two external people Bob Ritchie and Bernie Kubiak those do not require approvals the other appointments however are by the town council and I have made a suggestion on the polling that I did and then I have to say I looked at the balance of who is being asked to do what et cetera and I also talked to several of you because I needed to create balance so for example the finance committee wrote their charge so that the participatory budget commission needed to have a finance committee person on it and the only person that mentioned interested was Evan and he was not interested in the finance committee so I went through this puzzle I think I had about seven iterations of this chart till I finally made those I do say in this for the appointments by the town committee these are recommendations only to you if you do not accept these recommendations I would suggest that you referral this to the appointments communications outreach and appointments committee and that's fine with me either way Kathy I have I want to speak to the way we're making the appointments so I'm not questioning necessarily the people when I think about what the design and there is a motion to amend in your packets I think when I look at the way the charter was designed and the way it was described to the public who voted on it one of the things that was stressed was it would be a very democratic process we'd have 13 council members with no concentration of authority in any single person and in fact we don't we even review what the manager is doing and so what I proposed is that when we the council what the legal memo said is when it's a committee that's not of the council it's us the council that's doing the appointing so we can decide on a case by case basis how we want to do it including let the president make recommendations but what I would like to recommend for the three in front of us so the joint capital planning committee for this particular budget is that we consider not just taking the president's recommendations or referring it to a committee but actually saying who's interested in these positions and taking a vote on it and this would both have a process that didn't invest authority in any single person and so it's not a question so much now of was this fair enough but if you think of the future what we would be setting is the president is appointing pretty much all the positions without a discussion so my understanding if I think of the way things were done before we're in a new world but select board would talk to each other about who wants what and often there didn't need to be any kind of vote because people distributed themselves so my motions before you and I can read it if you need me to it's to amend the motions to these specific committees so I'm just focusing now on the three in front of us for a different procedure we'd have the council members here indicate which of these they're interested in if there's more too many people for the slots that are available we have people say a word or two about themselves why they think they're capable of it and then we would put it to vote so that's the motion that I have before you and I just I'm on the rules procedure committee so I've been looking at how to other towns handle this and several of them Randolph's one say it's a majority vote when a council member is going on a committee if there are other people interested so I'm thinking of the future not trying to concentrate authority in a person the charter doesn't have a mayor we made a decision not to do it that way so the motions been made as their second Steve is a second can we clarify what the motion actually is it what the language that was written in the sheet we got to motion that I have is to amend motions for council appointments to the joint capital planning committee budget coordinating committee and participatory budget commission motions 8B1 8B2 and 8B3 under this procedure the council members would indicate interest in serving on these particular bodies if the interest exceeds the number of seats available the council as a whole would take a vote after hearing short statements of interest from each member wishing to serve okay the motion has been made and seconded I have a question is this an intended procedure for this one time of those appointments because this is going to come back probably yearly for everything but participatory budgeting for BCG and JCPC or is this the intended procedure that you're hoping the council will adopt going forward for these particular committees until we review that procedure so that when they come back next year that this is what we do again. I originally wrote this broader saying that whenever we have a situation where we're appointing a council member that we would go through this process and it made sense to me that I confine it just to this because I'm amending the three motions in my view it would be a good process to adopt going forward. I mean we clearly can revisit these things we can decide we want to do it in a different way but I think it's a healthy thing and if I think of say there's a situation where we have a contested vote for president which we didn't have this time it was unanimous. You don't want a situation you don't want the risk of a decision that there was favoritism among different factions on the council in any way and somehow people just weren't getting the things they wanted so this avoids that risk completely and doesn't depend on having a fabulous president who's trustworthy. So you know I would see it going forward but clearly it's just amending the motions in front of us and this is a yearly decision that we're going to make. Any other comments, questions? I'm sorry, Alyssa. So appreciating once again I don't think we've had the whole analogy about flying the plane tonight so we have to say it at least once every night. Governance hasn't talked about it obviously they may talk about it because their purview seems rather broad actually. Rules certainly hasn't talked about it and this is the kind of thing that we're going to have to talk about. So I think that's one of the rules and obviously that's one of the reasons it came up because Kathy is on rules, Vice Chair. I am also very uneasy with the charter that we have from the standpoint of all the authority that's invested in the town manager and in the council president that's just a fact that's where I'm at. Nonetheless, given that those things I'm not sure that it really benefits us to say well we can pull these back if we make a rule so why don't we pull these away from the person. But I would like to see so what I would like to do is I would like to defeat this motion and I would like to say that this should be referred to rules to talk about for future reference. Given that we wouldn't necessarily have an excellent president who asked us our opinion and that a contested election would be the one of which I think are very valid points that have been made by Kathy but I think at this time we would be better off given that everybody did provide the context of what they wanted to our current president that she should go ahead and make these appointments and this should be referred as a possible incorporation into the rules. I want to be very clear, I'm not making these appointments, I'm recommending to you that you make these appointments. And if you choose but that nuance has been there I did a poll and I've come back to you with a result and I am recommending to you that you make these appointments based on the poll that I did. So what? I'm sorry, so I thought I originally understood that until I heard this motion so I guess I'm not understanding how this motion changes that. What Kathy is suggesting is that in taking a poll if there are more than the number of people required by the committee charge that want to be on that committee that the come back to the council and the council hear short statements from each of the potential candidates and the council actually vote by candidate not by recommendation. My alternative was to just refer this back to the committee that does appointments. I was just going to say I think given what's here we have three options potentially tonight. One is to having there's a motion on the floor right now to say these appointments go by indicating interest tonight if the interest exceeds the number available tonight the council would vote to take after hearing short statements would vote who's serving. Another option is to just make a motion to adopt the recommendations that Lynn our president has made and another option is to refer those recommendations or even the appointments in general to the communications outreach and appointments committee. Those are the options. But the motion on the floor right now is the one that Kathy has made. Kathy. I just want to make one clarifying comment to speaking directly to something Alyssa said and I always think you're totally right on this but the reading and it's a hard to read memo from a KP law I think but they basically concluded that the vested power is only for the council the committee we create and for others we're making the decisions we're not taking power away from the president. If we conferred it we'd be expanding the authority so I'm trying to restrict and I agree that the wording Lynn has suggested it's not taking authority it's offering us some choices. Trying to move the process by giving you the information that I obtained through a poll and saying if you don't like it send it off to a committee or do something else. Evan. So I understand the concern about the town council president being able to make that decision. That said I think that the procedure outlined here actually makes me fairly uncomfortable because what it becomes is that for these three committees we have like a series of many elections and to me one that's time consuming and a body that doesn't have all that much time as we've seen tonight but two what we end up having is the prospect of potentially councilors you know whipping votes within the council to try and get on a particular committee. We could have lengthy votes of trying to see who can be on what committee. I think that our president did a lot of work to figure out who gets to be on it. She was also very transparent in providing us how everyone ranked things. I got some of my first choices. I got some of my third choices and so you know if you look at some of these like JCP there were a lot of people who wanted to be on that and I would worry about having essentially an election in the council to figure out who gets to be on what committee. I think that was especially absent you know our president was able to sort of take the 30,000 foot view and say okay here's what we need to do how do we allocate this. That's something that we can't necessarily do with in the context of the council easily because it takes a lot of time and thought which I'm sure she put into it and so I worry about that procedure and my preference now and have the rules committee figure out a long-term policy for how we're going to do this. Additional comments Darcy. I agree that the rules committee should look at this but I agree with Kathy that that we we need to somehow or other have a procedure that the council itself can use to make appointments and that it it feels you know it feels like I can understand what Kathy was describing that you know if if Lynn makes an appointment or if she makes recommended appointments that feels it's harder not to accept a recommended appointment than to vote on the people that you want on the committee so I would agree with Kathy's motion. Additional comments. There's been a motion on the table and seconded any additional comments call a question and the motion is to amend the motion for council appointments to the joint capital planning committee budget committee and budget commission and under this procedure council members would indicate interest in serving on their particular bodies if these succeed the number of seats available the council as a whole would take a vote after hearing short statements of interest from each member wishing to serve all those in favor opposed abstain there was one abstention okay all those in favor of the motion of Kathy's motion all those opposed abstain there's one abstention so hearing so that motion has failed although I think there's been a strong suggestion made that this be something that be taken to the rules of procedure committee I strongly recommend that as well so we now have before us two choices either to vote on the recommendations or to vote to refer this to the communications outreach and committee appointments I'm willing to accept a motion actually if we do them if we take the motions now we do them by individual committee or we can just do a general referral we are an item b1 so the motion sheet is here or it's a general referral to outreach communications and appointments so could I make the motion that's on the motion sheet to appoint council members to the joint cap et cetera et cetera and could I just combine them unless we think we're going to need to separate them to the joint capital planning committee to the budget coordinating group budgeting committee am I missing one is that all of them as recommended as recommended to the by the town council president the motion has been made is there a second seven second any further discussion all those in favor opposed to oppose abstain okay we're now moving on to the town oh let me just mention b4 okay we are going to start to need to do the appointments to other committees and this basically says that those committee appointments will immediately be referred to the communications outreach and appointments committee then brought to the council so that we don't have to bring them here refer them to the committee and then bring them back so there is actually a motion in this case up on four and the motion as it's read on our sheet is to refer to the communications outreach and appointments committee resident appointments to the zoning board of appeals planning board rank choice voting commission and participatory budget commission budgeting commission Alyssa can we just clarify and say all resident appointments rather than I mean because there aren't any right now right but what we're saying is any future ones as they come in is that what we're trying to do so we don't have to have a separate vote here as you just said so in some sense there are some that we have to start appointing the those committees just mentioned ZVA has openings planning board may or may not RCV we passed a charge and we have as a council three appointments to make to that participatory budgeting we passed a charge and as a council we have two appointments to make so you could argue there are some appointments open that the council needs to make there might not be applications yet for that but the appointments need made my argument being there there can't be any appointments made if we've seen no applications and so therefore we have nothing at this point but people were confused when they read this they thought we were getting names tonight there aren't any names because we don't know if there are any applicants for the many openings that we have on various things but what I guess I'm not too red wedded to the words but I don't know if we need to insert a word or maybe it's just fine as it is it's basically any and all appointments to these boards so that as those gatherings of applicants magically appear they will be immediately referred to the appointments group and it will not have to come back here first but see all of none of those are ones that the town manager has to tell us about there's something we don't yet know none of us knows including the people on the appointments committee how we're going to fill those things but you're basically handing it over to us just as potentially there might be a future motion along these lines that when the town manager needs to bring forward his appointments that we need to automatically assume that they're going to the appointments rather than that we have to wait for a town council meeting to vote to send them over to us. It's basically trying to be efficient. This motion is specifically for these committees to which we need to make appointments excuse me that's not true for the resident advisory. So we do have applicants for all of these committees. We don't know what to do with them until you come up with a process for how you're going to manage your appointment process we can deliver those however you ask us to also there are some shared appointments where someone might say they want to be on the ranked choice voting the manager has some appointments and the council has some appointments so we should coordinate our efforts along those lines and have that conversation but I guess we are you know our outreach officers have received community activity forms with people who've identified these committees that they'd like to serve on and so just like to know what to do with those. So this motion refers to the communications outreach and appointments committee any and all resident appointments to the zoning board of appeals planning board ranked choice voting commission and participatory budgeting commission that's the motion. Do I have a do I have a second? Yes. I have a question. So for a set of this zoning and planning we are the only appointing authority and for the others the town manager is appointing some and we're appointing the other so it's my it's my assumption so I'll frame it as a question that somehow the appointments committee will figure this out because there'll be a pool of people who want to be on these things and town manager's picking some and so not zoning and planning but this other set is a very different kind of set that you kind of jointly need to see the entire list and we would assume that the chair of that committee at least would meet with the town manager. We'll try to figure it out. Yes, Steve. So I have a question about some of these committees because some of the current members are on holdover appointments. Have they filled out these citizen activity forms so are they known to be in the pool? Mr. Bachmann. So after your action tonight we will notify the people who are on holdover status specifically for the planning board to ask them if they would like to be considered for a permanent appointment by the council and zoning board has a vacancy on a full time but there are three associates I believe but typically that would be a decision of the council to decide who's going to be a full member plus to fill the one vacancy plus there's two other it moves from three member committee to five member committee so there's three appointments to the zoning board of appeals for the council. Yes. Additional questions? Yes, Alyssa. So just to be clear this blank look on my face we know nothing of this the appointments committee had no idea we had any applicants for anything and so this is all breaking news and so if any of you have is concerned that the outreach newly renamed today outreach communications and appointment committee might not have thought of feel free to share those because we have nothing at this point in terms of structure but we know because we have two upcoming meetings we're going to have something for you soon but it's not today. Great. And I am correct that you had an election today as well and Sarah is the chair of that committee and Alyssa is the vice chair. Thank you both of you. Okay. So the motion has been made. Did I have a second? I think I did. Any other discussion? All those in favor? Looks like that's unanimous. Okay. Town manager appointments. Does the newly renamed committee have a recommendation? It would be unfair of me to pass this up to our brand new chair. It was done under you. Since I wrote it this morning at 120 and she didn't get elected until like, I don't know, 9.50 this morning. Yeah. So you see the motion sheet. It has the very specific language that cites as you know I'm so fond of. The citations associated with the various parts of the charter committee. So this one is that although it's normally the 30 days on committee appointments, it said 60 days of when we took office is when we have to confirm these and we've all talked before about the fact that the board of licensed commissioners is going to need to do some work because the town manager has been covering that position up until now and they've got to get trained, et cetera, et cetera. We, as I said in the report that they're just names and addresses and some maybe some people Google them and maybe they didn't. We are developing decision trees. We have two upcoming meetings we've already had to. We have two more in the pipeline. But at this point it's not that we're telling you these are the most amazing applicants ever but we are so appreciative of them. I'm sure they are the most amazing applicants ever but we have no idea. We're just assuming they're terrific and that's why we're doing this. So the motion has been made and seconded. Made is their second. Sarah, thank you. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Thank you. And opposed? And abstained none. Okay. So we have five sets of minutes. I second that motion. Except as amended. We have all been we moved that they would be accepted as amended. And there's a second, Kathy. Are there any other questions, comments? All those in favor? All opposed? No. It's all unanimous. Thank you. And we have on our agenda we're moving to any more committee reports. Finance committee. Any other comments to you in writing available for the public in the back of the room today? And it's not to be discussed tonight. It's an item that's going to be discussed in the first week of February. That's it. Any other committee reports beyond what you've already spoken about earlier today? I want to just say how thankful I am that all of these committee reports are available in the back of the room. Thank you. Because you're doing a lot of work. Public comment. Is there anybody who would like to make a comment? Please. And thank you for your patience. I need to make this hot. My name is Peter. I'm an Amherst resident. Thank you. And this is the first time I've ever seen an Amherst resident with an access invisibility. You couldn't have come up with a better way to do this. The live stream this evening has been audio only since the start. And I informed Amherst media and they were aware of it, but fixed nothing. The live stream never returned from your executive session that was scheduled mid-meeting this morning. Obviously you guys running long and figuring out process is none of my business. You just approved minutes that aren't in the packet. 15 and 16 aren't posted online. Maybe your packet has them, but they aren't part of public record. And it's fine. They are. I just looked online just right now on the public packet that I saw. They were not posted. I'm happy to see recent minutes showing up. You guys have been really late at approving even draft minutes or posting draft minutes. Seeing five, I'm hopeful that subsequent meeting approvals, minutes approvals will occur in the meeting following or at least the presentation of draft minutes. Again, excited to see that, but it's a little scary to see five meetings worth of minutes where no one has had any comment on this. If you didn't notice, they weren't posted online. We actually are not supposed to comment back to you. But that's my sort of, if you all approve that unanimously, likely you don't actually know what you approved. And since you've scheduled public comment after all items on the agenda, there was no opportunity for me to make any of these comments and bring them to the superintendent's presentation for a large school thing also is just impossible to do by anyone who can't be here at 12.01 a.m. for a meeting that started at 6.30. So I appreciate you guys trying to work this out in the time, but I expect more. And that's about it. Thank you for your comment. Are there any council comments at this time? I would like to thank you for your time. I have a motion of meetings on our agenda for the time being, I would like you to continue to hold Tuesday, February 12th, but we may not need it. Is there anything else? Do I hear a motion to adjourn? A second. All those in favor?