Today is November 20th, and this is the meeting of governance, organization, and legislation. I'm calling this meeting to order at what looks like 10.36 a.m., and we are being recorded by Amherst Media. There are three members of the committee present, so we have a quorum, two members today are absent. So, fellow committee members, you have in front of you the agenda for today's meeting, and major item is to review council committee charges. We also have our calendar that we can look at if we have time, and a couple of other items here, including some business not anticipated. So, my thought was to begin with the council committee charges, and I don't expect us to get through all of them. Hopefully, we'll get through at least one. And I was going to suggest, I don't have an order here, but I was going to suggest we start perhaps with CRC, but I'm open to any suggestions from my colleagues. I was, yes, which may be start with something else. Well, that's, that was one thought. But, so, how do you feel? We can start with that, we just had the discussion. You just had the discussion, so you feel like you're ready to take that on? Finance, I think we're going to pull off on. I've spoken to Andy, I haven't heard back. Obviously, this committee, I mean, we could begin with GOL, if you want to get warmed up. All right. Okay, so we're going to begin with CRC. And so, I'm going to try and open CRC. And being the coward that I am, I'm going to turn to Mandy when she's ready, have her lead us through this, if she's willing. So, as chair of the CRC, about a half an hour ago, we had a discussion about the CRC charge. And I took notes, so I will just read some of the notes, and then we can continue a discussion here about those notes. I first want to do one of the easy ones, which is the size. There had been rumblings and discussion earlier on about potentially CRC wanting to increase its size and all. And they have, to me, indicated there is no desire to increase the size beyond five members at this point. So I thought I'd just at least mention that so that we can dispense with potentially that issue unless people think differently. But now to get into the bulk of the discussion, which was the charge itself, the purpose and the charge. CRC members are not uniform in their thoughts on this. And because the discussion happened about a half an hour ago, I will read my notes, which kind of just run all over the place, instead of coming up with a nice, succinct summary of it. Well, one option, Andy, I'm going to interrupt, is for you to just, we can pass on this, and give you a chance to, no, okay, it's really good. There were two main points of the discussion, but my notes are kind of all over the place on them. I'll try to sort of put them there. The first one was actually about item A bullet point, I guess it's four, the policies regarding the relationship between the town and the Amherst institutions of higher education. We noted that we haven't really, as CRC, done anything with anything related to that at this point. So it's kind of been a section of the charge that has been nonused. That doesn't mean it isn't important, but at least from, we haven't been seeing stuff. But that one member thought, well, maybe, at least one member thought, well, maybe we don't need it in our charge. It's kind of an outlier to the rest of what the charge deals with. Another thought that, well, it's a very important thing to have in a charge somewhere, but maybe it doesn't need to be in CRCs, but they would hate to see it disappear from everywhere. So then another member said, well, maybe it could be transferred somewhere in thinking about what a discussion about something like this might look like. The relationship might better fall within GOL's purview of governance, talking about town sort of organization, not more organization and all. And a lot of the things, especially as it relates to maybe the strategic partnership agreement, better potentially falls within maybe GOL versus CRC as a potential way to move it somewhere. One member said the strategic partnership agreement probably doesn't belong within CRC, but the impacts of higher ed planning, the impacts of students on neighborhoods, that part does. So how you word that in a charge is something different, but it might not need to specifically mention higher ed per se versus impacts of that versus the relationship between the two. So that was one of our big discussions was that particular bullet point. One thing I would recommend when I was looking at this myself was it relates a lot, it refers a lot to policies. We should maybe change that to measures as the generic, so it's more generic. But then there was talk about just sort of the comprehensiveness of this charge. And one member believed that you can't separate them out into separate committees, because they need to be discussed in the same committees. When you're talking about economic development or parking or planning or land user housing, you can't do it in a silo. That they all relate to each other, they all do that. And so you have to have those discussions not in different committees. Another member mentioned that item A is matters referred. So even though there's a lot being referred, the CRC is not creating the process for those policies, aren't creating the policies when CRC is taking the ownership of the time to think through something that has been proposed to the council. And when you think of it from that perspective, it's a little less daunting than another member pointed out, but section D does allow the committee to offer policy and make recommendations within its purview. And so the two together may get daunting. And if you want the committee to be a proactive committee along with a reactive one, this charge might be too comprehensive versus if you only want it to be a reactive committee responding to someone else's policy proposals. One member thought, well, in the future we might get time to deal with D, but it's not as important. Another one said, maybe the discussion then at GOL needs to be around section D, not section A, and how to allow all committees to be sort of proactive committees, not just reactive committees. Then one member said, well, how do you split D out of A if D is proactive, a committee should only be creating proactive recommendations on stuff within its purview. If you haven't limited the purview in A, how do you get to D? And so then the discussion went on to GOL's problem is that how do you limit those two together to create a body that, or multiple bodies in a town council that can be both proactive and reactive in a manner that does not over tax and over burden, the already over taxed and over burdened counselors anymore because you don't want to necessarily create yet another standing committee. So, and as that member eloquently said, so that's GOL's problem, not CRC's problem, to figure out. But so those were sort of the main discussions where there were some members that thought the charge is too broad, others that thought you can't separate out the specific areas that have already been included in it, but then there's concern that not separating them out does not allow for any proactive identification of problems and attempt to solve or propose policies that might solve those problems on our own as a legislature. Any thoughts, Evan? And you're free now to have any, but do you have any thoughts? This has always been a really tough charge because I agree that it's overly comprehensive and I also agree that you can't really separate some of these things out. And so I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, okay, the council, one of my, one of my, I guess, core process beliefs is that every measure with some rare exceptions that comes to the council should be referred to a committee to then advise on council action on that measure. And so I'm looking at this and so planning, zoning, land use all comes before the council, public ways, housing and homelessness, all these issues come before the council. And so in my mind, we need some committee that can advise on these. That said, just as Manny Joe said, how do you separate this out? Because George and I recently sat in on a meeting that discussed economic development that almost exclusively focused on zoning in many ways. So you have to keep those together. Housing is also so tied to our local economy. You can't separate these out. And I also don't wanna create a sixth standing committee of this council, especially if these committees continue. I know one of our absent members today has been really pushing the idea that the council committee should meet once a month. And I think there is actually some merit to that. I don't know how we do that. But I do think, I was having a conversation with councilor Pam last night and she asked why is this so much harder than it was for the select board. And I told her about a conversation I had with councilor Brewer who said the select board met as often as the council and often for as long as the council, but there were no select board committees. They were liaisons and sometimes they went, sometimes they didn't. But what's crushing many counselors is not the council, it's the committees. And so to create an additional standing committee to deal with some of these seems unwise. So I actually, I don't know what to do here because it feels like at least recently every meeting of the council, we go refer to CRC, refer to CRC, right? And I feel so thankful I'm not on CRC in some of those moments because I don't know how CRC can do it. And luckily they have an incredibly competent chair to help them navigate it. And they have very smart members, but if we had referred the climate goals to them, at that meeting that would have been 90 days, they'd have less actually because the council had to act in 90 days on top of the parking that we would have referred to them during that. I mean, it just doesn't, there's so much. And so I don't think this is a manageable charge for CRC, but I don't know how to fix that. So George, I'm looking to you for the solution. Well, there's first of all just a process question for us. When we get the comments back from the various chairs and committees, what are we supposed to do with it? I mean, we listen to it, we note it down. Then we're going to revise this, make changes, or are we going to just, I mean, we make changes and then what happens then? I mean, how does CRC or any committee then weigh in and say, wait a minute, that's not what we want. That's not, you know, is that come out of the council meeting where they say, you know, they look at what we've done and they say, well, no, no, no, this is terrible. I'm just just a process question. Mandy, what's your thought? So I think the initial process is to hear from the chairs of as many of the committees as we can before we get into what would a modification of say a CRC charge look like because I think that is also dependent upon what the modification of maybe an OCA charge or a more particularly a GOL charge might look like or what we do with audit. Do we need a separate audit committee? Not that getting rid of that one would allow us to put one in its place because audit meets three times a year. So those would be totally different commitments but you know, I think it's good to hear what each committee's thinking about its charge but then I think we can't discuss them in isolation. They need discussed as a group. After that, whether we present it to the full council first or whether we send individual revisions or the package back to each of the committees for discussion, that I think is up to the chair with maybe the advice of the rest of this committee as to what that might look like. I do think it would have to be a package to the council in the end. So once we come up with potential changes to the charges, I think what George was asking was what do we do with them? Do they go back to the individual committees for advice and thought before they head to the council or not? I think whatever goes to the council needs to be a package where we can't just say, here's what we recommend be done to the GOL charge in isolation from what might be recommended to the CRC charge. I think it needs to be a package of we've looked at everything and here's our comprehensive changes but how to get to that, I don't know what the right process is. Okay, I have a issue here that I need your thoughts on both of you because in my thinking, we don't touch these unless a committee comes to us and says we wanna change our charge and here's what we've done. Then we look at it to make sure that it's okay but the idea of us actually altering a charge of a committee with or without the committee's input makes me nervous. It seems to me that it's the committee that should sit down and decide whether they're happy with their charge or not because the charge exists, here it is. And we've asked them to review them. You have done that. Other committees will do that hopefully and they come back to us with some changes. Then we look at that but if they don't or if they don't look at them, I'm nervous and here I need to hear from both of you. I'm not happy or nervous about the idea of us tinkering with these charges and then whoever we send it to, the committee's gonna go, wait a minute. That's not what I meant. That's not what I said. So can I hear from the two of you on that? I mean, I'm just a question of process and our role in this. I'm just not comfortable with us tinkering with charges of other committees with, I think it should come from, I guess in simple language, it should come from them. So clearly there's some disagreement here so I need to get some clarity. That's my view at the moment. I'm glad to change it but I'm trying to get a sense of what the two of you think about that. Either one of you. So I always appreciate your conservative approach to some of these issues, mostly because I'm usually on the other side, which I am. And so my thought is it's within our charge that we advise on the organization of the council. And I think that one of that, one of the annual things the council has to decide is which committee should it have, what should they do and who should be on them? Now the last one is a decision of the president and the president alone. But in my mind, those first two are really GOL, they're not decisions, they're decisions of the full council as opposed to the president and GOL's role is to advise on those two decisions. And so in the beginning, really four of our five committees where the president came up with them. But now I think that role rests in GOL to say what does the organization of our council look like with regard to its committee structures, what should they do? And so we have some committees and I think it's GOL's job now to advise on to the council, do we need them? Are these the ones that we should have and are these what they should be doing? And I think it makes sense for us to get feedback from the members of each committee but I don't necessarily think that the members of the committee should have complete control over that because we're our role, how do I say this? The members of the committee are one viewing it in terms of our committee. But our role is to take the 30,000 foot view and say this committee in the context of the work of the council and all of the other committees. And that perspective, that lens is very different than the lens of a member sitting in the committee doing the committee's work because they're looking at their own actions within a committee and we're looking at the committees as sort of a council ecosystem. The second thing is I think that they're and I certainly this is going to be the case in one of the committees that I serve on that I think committees can be very protective of some aspects of their charge. Even if the council may feel as though that aspect of it should be changed. And so to give complete deference to a committee I think puts too much power in that committee of what it will do. Ultimately, all of this is a full council decision. And I think we're looking for input from the committees but I think that the council is looking to us to advise on their overall organization. Okay. That's all right. And I'll just say ditto because I was going to say pretty much all of that. So I think our role is to advise the council which would include potentially coming up with revised charges or even a new charge for a new committee potentially. So I think it's completely within our advise the council on council organization to modify or recommend modifications to charges. And if I had to throw out sort of my idealized process that I've thought about for all of five minutes now I'd probably say we solicit, we get feedback from the committees. We make some recommended revisions to the charge. We send it back to the committee and say here's what we're recommending. Do you have feedback? And if they come back and go, yeah, that makes sense. We go, all right, great. And if they come back and they go, no. Then we have a harder decision to make about are we still going to recommend this over the objections of the committee? Because maybe the council problem, first of all that each committee except for audit has five members. And so that's almost to the seven votes, right? And so we don't want to put something contentious in front of the council that we don't think will pass the council. But I think then that's a conversation, right? But I think there's still something to be said about. Then again, I can think of at least one instance where we will likely recommend a revision to a charge that the committee will absolutely reject. But I think that the council will probably support and we would have to have a conversation of are we still going to recommend this to the council even though the committee doesn't like it because we're not here to please the committee. We're here to look at how can these committees best serve the council. So my thought is we get feedback, we make revisions. We run this by the committee, see what they think. But then ultimately we're the ones who are deciding what to send to the council. All right, I'm not yet convinced, but that's okay. I'm just, let's look at this concretely. My initial thought is okay, let's take out policies under A and just make it measures, measures, measures, measures. That seems to me, I bet again, that's just a tiny little change and we'll see what the rest of you think. But other than that, I wouldn't want to touch this but I'd rather turn the conversation to, and I think we have already in some sense that okay, how could you break this apart? And the answer is we can't think of any way to do that. So I don't think at the moment I'm hearing any kind of suggestion as to how to take this and break it into other bodies or committees or whatever. And if we start tinkering with the particulars, things fall out and we don't really have a clear sense of where they would go at the moment. Though we certainly can talk about that. We could identify three or four particular things we'd like to take out and then discuss where we think they should go. But what I'm hearing is that this is much too much and yet there doesn't seem to be any, at the moment, practical way to redesign this. We have created now a new mechanism, the ad hoc committee. And so one thought I have is that okay, when you have something that goes, something goes to CRC, they consider creating ad hoc committees to deal with it. And that could give them some flexibility, blah, blah, blah. But short of, I mean, again, I opened it up for discussion, what are some concrete alternatives anyone has, because I have none at the moment, to what we could do to restructure or reorganize this committee, breaking it into some kind of smaller units or taking something specific out and giving it to somebody else or just taking it out and letting it just lie fallow and just, you know, we'll see what happens. Any thoughts on that, Mandy? So I don't have tremendous amounts of concrete thoughts right now. One of my thoughts is that bullet point four relating to the town and Amherst institutions can be moved to potentially GOL. Rewarded, but something moved there and some sort of rewording to add neighborhoods or impact measures that impact neighborhoods or something. But that's still planning zoning, it's kind of already there. So anything, say UMass might do in construction, already kind of, if there's something for the town to do, falls within the current CRC charge. So even if you remove bullet point four and the removal of bullet point four, which isn't really related to, when I read it, it's more related to the relationship which looks towards in some sense the strategic partnership agreement portion versus what they're doing on their campus that affects the, you know, there's sort of two issues. And so I think that one could be moved to GOL. So speaking as CRC chair, we have six referrals in front of us right now. We had seven until Monday when we finished with one and formally sent it back to the council. We almost had a seventh on Monday.  Not that we're looking at the whole zoning bylaw right now, but those are sitting in front of us. Housing priorities plan will probably come back to us in a couple months. We've got at least one transportation issue in front of us. It looks like given the discussion on Monday night, we might have a whole lot more coming to us in a couple weeks.  That from my chair point of view, when I look at trying to set future agendas, I go, how am I ever going to get to some of this in a month and a half, let alone in a good discussion? I can put four of them on an agenda, 20 minutes for each item, 25 minutes on each item is not enough. And so how long can I get drug out before the council's like, what are you doing? Or how much till I have to say we need to meet weekly? As chair, I am vitally concerned in a way that I wasn't when I chaired GOL about getting the referral work from the council done. And I will say at the prior meeting, some of these things I said about how do you split it out? I don't see a way for CRC to be proactive on any policy recommendations at all. And maybe that's okay if that's what the council wants. If the council wants CRC solely doing responses to measures that came in front of the council and making recommendations and discussing policies solely on things that the council has been presented, then this charge might be manageable. But if the council actually expects CRC at some point to be able to offer its own recommendations on issues or matters that it seizes problems in town that haven't been created policy-wise or measure-wise by some other entity, whether it be another committee or the executive, there's, I don't believe there's a way CRC can do both right now. So one of them has to give, and that's an expectation, is the council expecting CRC to come in with its own policy proposals or measure proposals? Maybe not. But if CRC at some point says we've got a problem with parking, talk about it. Given all the referrals that come from other ways, there's no time in the agenda to do that right now. At the same time, I don't know how to split. There's been talk of splitting it between anything related to the master plan and then not, but when you look at what the master plan includes, it includes facilities. So you can't split the works of DPW or the workings of public safety out if you're going to measure it by master plan or not. Maybe you could take specific portions of the master plan and say the master plan falls there, but items related to or measures related to facilities or to public safety or to this particular thing fall into another committee or maybe it's zoning and bylaws and everything else. I'm not sure there's a good way, as Evan said, to split. So I think that's where we have to have the discussion, but if we want a proactive committee on measure proposals, that there's no time right now in CRC to ever do that. Right. Sure, go ahead. That's why I agree and this is where I'm, so you just listed off your current referrals and to me done well and meeting twice a month, that's a year at least, right?  Some of those are contentious issues like parking.  I want you all to take those three recommendations. I want you to seriously consider their viability, whether we should recommend them. And then if you'd like one of them, I'd actually like to see the committee turn one of those into a proposal that can be put in front of the council to vote on. That's like three months of work at least, right? Because it involves talking to the public. It involves perhaps bringing members of the DPWG. It involves talking to the, it involves bringing the time manager. It involves liaison with finance, considering that one of them would involve an appropriation for a new staff member. And so I think what you said is doing them well, right? And that's been my concern in a lot of ways. And I think one, no one watches these videos. One of the areas where we saw this bite CRC in the butt was when CRC considered CPA recommendations in the spring. Now granted, that was because CRC was, it was like their second meeting and it was very new. But to some extent, there was a, yeah, these look good. And then it kind of blew up with regard to one of those proposed projects. And my thought is, okay, so CRC is probably gonna be asked to review CPA recommendations again because they relate to the things in these charts. What does actually reviewing those mean? And it probably is at least a full meeting, maybe two, depending on what's up there. When you start to add all this up, CRC in my mind, with all due respect to all of the members of CRC, will end up slowing the council down. Because if we want CRC to really consider parking, or the parking recommendations, but they also have potential parking on Lincoln in front of them. And we also said that they have to get back to us on speed limit. I mean, when we do all of these things, in my mind, we either don't get things for a very long time and we can't act on them until we get them. Or we have very sort of rush discussions in CRC. And so I look at this and I say, I don't know how you break this up. But I don't really think CRC can effectively serve as the committee that we intended it to with this workload. And I think at some point, there's a conversation of expanding the membership, which CRC doesn't want. But I still think even that wouldn't solve the problem because just adding more bodies doesn't work. So why can't you use the ad hoc committee structure? Why can't we begin to think about calling on other council members to serve on some kind of ad hoc body and also reaching out to the public and just carving out and say, okay, this group go off and work on X. This group go off and work on Y. And I realize the workload, but the workload is there no matter how you cut it. There are only 13 of us. And if we are going to be involved in forming these policies and CRC is going to be taking the leadership in them, are they comfortable or open to the idea of using the new ad hoc committee structure? Or is that what sort of structure system are you going to use when you have to break off these tasks? So you want someone to look at the parking situation, for instance, so you want someone to look, group to look at the master plan. Is it just that there's just too much no matter how you organize this? Or is there some way we can begin to think of using the ad hoc committee structure or something like it to begin to break, carve off some of these things and also bring in other counselors. So you turn to someone who's not on CRC and you say, would you do this? And you reach out to one, you get a staff member. You get a counselor and you get one or two town people and you send them off. Is that an option? So I mean, I've indicated my non-love of ad hoc committees many times in this council. So what are we doing? Yeah, so I don't, I guess I fall from a structural point of view a couple of ways. One, our standing committee should present similar workloads as best as possible so that people are choosing potentially committees that they want to be on because they want to be on the committee, not because it's the only committee workload they can handle. So if we can find a way to even that out and right now the way it's evening out in a sense is everyone's meeting every other week and CRC as Evan said, will just be slow in responding to, in making its recommendations to the council because I don't want to have to have CRC meet weekly in order to speed up that process. I don't think that's a viable strategy for making a counselor position doable in this town. I also don't believe if you're going to have a standing committee that is said to recommend policy that the expectation should be that that standing committee hands off regular review of policy recommendations to ad hoc committees. That doesn't mean that CRC will not recommend that. That doesn't mean that CRC will not recommend ad hoc committees. I have potentially come around to the fact that the working group or whatever we want to call it for the percent for art bylaw is helping and might have been the way to go and I could potentially see some working groups in parking to work out some specific policies but not to make the recommendation on whether those policies are good or bad or what the impacts of those policies are on the town. I think it's best to have, to have a consistent way to evaluate impacts, benefits, drawbacks achievability of potentially, if you're looking at a goal policy, achievability, timeliness, all of that, have a consistent way of evaluating all of that and presenting that to the council and the council should be able to expect that consistency. That consistency might be different per committee but it should be able to expect that consistency from a specific committee. If you then say to that committee, well, we know you're not gonna be able to do all your work so start recommending ad hoc committees to do it. You lose some of the benefit of consistency of a committee being able to look long-term and delve into those issues and be able to look back on things because now you've got a whole different group making that recommendation. It doesn't necessarily mean it's bad but I don't think it supports efficiency in getting things back to the council in a comprehensive and timely manner. You're talking about evening out the workload, right? In a way. Yeah, right. And you're basically talking about four committees that exist because audit, right? They're not good, right? What are you gonna give audit? Nothing. So we're back to the issue of GOL and maybe we should turn to that. I think we've been at this for 45 minutes and I don't expect us to get through all of these but I'd like us to get through at least one or at least get clear on what we're trying to accomplish which we've had a good discussion so far. I think there's some difference a little bit about what we're actually trying to accomplish. I'm not completely persuaded by the two of you that we should be doing these kinds of revisions and then if the committee doesn't like it, well we're still gonna take it to the council but I'm still, I'm not made of my mind on that and we also are missing two committee members and I think it'd be useful to hear their thoughts on this but what I'm struggling with I guess and maybe Evan you can weigh in here is that, okay if you wanna even out the workload you're basically talking about expanding GOL's charge and we've had this discussion before and so maybe we should turn to that. Maybe we should turn to GOL and leave this for the moment. Obviously Mandy's just had her committee talk about it. She's still processing it. We can come back to it again on our next meeting but I guess two thoughts. One, give me some help here with this idea of evening out the workload if that doesn't involve the creation of some kind of ad hoc type committees to take on some of these tasks and involving other people other than the members of CRC and instead it means sharing the load with other existing committees because I don't hear any real strong feeling for creating a new committee but that's always an option. You're really talking about four committees and finance is certainly not appropriate and OCA is not appropriate, it doesn't seem to me so it just leaves GOL and I have always resisted that myself but I'm not set in stone but this idea of evening out the workload what do you think? I mean if it's not ad hoc committees what do we do? So I haven't fully thought any of this. That's fine, I mean you don't have to answer. I share Mandy Jo's icy feelings towards ad hoc committees. Which is what we've created. And I know, and I think to me. Call it what you want. Percent for art. Well so here's the thing for me, percent for art made sense actually as something else because it didn't appropriately belong in one of the bodies and so to me the ad hoc committee should really be created when we have a measure that doesn't nicely fit into some existing structure. So I actually, maybe I'm certain the climate goals or some things that come forward in the future for climate those even might fall into an ad hoc committee because they're kind of finance but they're kind of CRC but in some ways they might also be something completely different and so those are the types of reasons I think we want to have ad hoc committees. I don't like the idea of creating ad hoc committees because we have a committee whose workload is overwhelming. To me that's not a reason to do it. It's special circumstances because I do think that they increase the workload and for me I mean one of the issues that I think is difficult is not just the time commitment but predictability and so right now I serve on five committees if you want to include the steering which just wrapped up thankfully in the steering group for the capital projects so now it's four but for the past few months it's been five. GOL and OCA no problem because I know when they are I have some idea. ECAC, nope, it has its own problems but no problem right because of that. Baila review has been all over the place as we were trying to finish up and the steering committee has been sort of all over the place and it's that sort of unpredictability of meeting when you can meet and not having that regular consistent schedule that to me actually makes things more challenging and so I don't think that ad hoc committees are a good solution. So you're right, what do we do? And I think that maybe there's something to be said about maybe you do create another standing committee and compensate in other ways. We've had conversations in the past about GOL maybe going down to three members. We haven't necessarily done that. We are often three members and we seem to work just fine that way but and so maybe that's maybe there's a everyone is so reticent to create or so hesitant to create another standing committee and I share that but there also might be ways to reduce workload elsewhere or maybe even CRC if you split it into two committees you reduce the size of each, right? So they're not two 5% committees. So I think that there are probably alternative solutions here to think about how we can move forward as a council. The other thing, the other option is we could pull some things from CRC's charge and just say when those things do come to the council we do create an ad hoc committee for them instead of CRC creating an ad hoc committee. I think that there's probably, we haven't spent a whole lot of time thinking about this but there's probably some innovative ways we can actually approach this. Well that's an interesting suggestion that that at least would be something we could actually come back to the council and to the committee and say okay, we're suggesting take out X, Y and Z and when those matters come before the council we would create some kind of ad hoc committee to deal with them. So if we talk about that for a moment what might be areas that could be taken out that CRC might be willing to let go and again just throwing it out there? Would it be housing? Would it be zoning? Would it be master plan? What's the core community resources? I would think economic development, art and culture, I know one member of that committee would never let that go but that doesn't mean we can't take it out but it would seem that the second bullet point under purpose would be sort of core. I don't know, thoughts on that? I mean that's a suggestion at least. Evan suggests let's take out a couple of these things to lessen the workload burden and people say well then what do we do? Well when they come before the council issues say dealing with the master plan or issues dealing with say zoning or planning we create an ad hoc committee. Mandy. So I would have actually said bullet point number two, community and economic development including art and culture in any- Would come out. Would come out. Potentially though with the recommendation to create a town committee on economic community and economic development that would include art and culture or downtown development or economic vibrancy or something like that. So in the end I think we need to decide what do we want CRC, what should CRC be discussing when something is referred to it for recommendations? And I have a couple of things so like or what, I don't think it's necessarily what it talks about when it makes a recommendation versus what should be in front of it for making a recommendation and maybe that's the way to look at it. If a zoning bylaw is proposed it makes sense to go to community resources committee for making recommendations on whether to recommendations on passage or not, approval or not of that zoning bylaw. When the master plan comes it makes sense to make the recommendations. When it's making that recommendation CRC can discuss a whole lot of things except maybe finance because we know that'll be covered potentially if it's been referred to finance finance. But if it hasn't maybe it discusses finance. But it can discuss economic development how that proposal would relate to economic development. It can discuss how it would relate to arts and culture. It can discuss how it would relate to housing. It doesn't have to be limited necessarily in what it evaluates and how it evaluates that proposal it's just what proposal and what measure is coming. One way to think about this is percent for art that is coming. If we moved economic development and art and culture out and put it potentially to GOL the discussions and the committees can encompass all sorts of things. It's just which committee has that discussion. CRC would discuss it in light of potentially not finance because it's sitting in finance at this point it would discuss it in light of is it going to aid economic development? Is it going to aid the master plan? Is it going to aid downtown vibrancy or what's its effect on housing or this? You can have that comprehensive discussion but does that need to be in CRC? Or because it's a general bylaw could it be in GOL still to have that same comprehensive discussion but sitting in a different committee? So could it be a split of policies plus zoning bylaw changes or CRC? General bylaw changes are some other committee and this is just random thought in terms of how you might split this or policies from these committees or directly affecting these items housing or planning or zoning here policies directly affecting whatever arts and cultures, facilities, public safety, public transportation or just the public way say in this committee the discussion in the committee can be comprehensive and encompass some other committee's sort of initial charge. It's just where are we sending what committee is best to have that discussion? I don't know whether that's helpful at all but. Evan. I need to apologize, I need to. Go ahead, we'll pause for a moment. We'll pause for a moment and we're back. We're still on the item related to CRC we've been at it for an hour. I would like to put a stop to it but yes, Evan. So I know your intention perhaps was to sort of pick off a committee at a time or something but I actually kind of like the fact that we've been talking a little bit more holistically about the different councils and the distribution of workload because I think that's actually what our job is to do. And so as I was washing my hands I was thinking about the fact that OCO right now has actually been fairly busy because it's been coming up with a new town council appointment process. Absent that task, OCO would not have been very busy. So in theory, we get, let's say that we come up with an appointment process that the council loves and the public loves and everyone just loves and we say, okay, this is what we're gonna do going forward. OCO's role then primarily becomes reviewing the town manager appointments which have been coming to us in big groupings in part because there's a lot of catch-up to be played right now but also there's 30 days so we don't often feel a whole lot of pressure. If we got a set of appointments right now I would probably put them on the December 16th or December 9th, OCO agenda. They don't need to like go on the next one. And in theory, we shouldn't have that often planning boards, EBA and finance committee vacancies in theory. But if we do, once we have a process in place that's like two meetings of OCO under the process that we seem likely to adopt at our next meeting. The outreach part of OCO, we have an outreach subcommittee that's worked on hasn't done too much. And when we actually do look at the OCO charge there's something about supporting counselors in district meetings and stuff like that and OCO hasn't done anything with that. And I don't necessarily know what OCO would do with that. Like how are we here to support counselors in district meetings? It seems like counselors have been relying on the CPO's a whole lot but I'm not quite in staff but what does OCO actually provide in that context? And then there's also something about working with the CPO's and working with the RAC without any real discussion of what we're supposed to be doing. But I think even absent those things we do it on occasion but infrequently. And so I actually think that in hesitant to say this, so let's keep it between us. Do you want me to hit the pause button? But it, well no one watches these. But in normal times, right, when we're not playing catch up on committee appointments or when we're not having to revise an entire process I actually think the workload for OCO will likely be the lightest of any town council committee. And certainly significantly lighter than CRC. And so if we're thinking about evening out workload and where I don't necessarily think the conversation necessarily naturally leads to GOL I do think we have to take a look at OCO. And one of the things I'm thinking is could OCO be reconfigured to be something different? So I'm looking at, as we've been talking I've been sort of casually perusing what some of our neighbor communities have for committees. And East Hampton has a ton but they only have three people per committee. They have, I'm going to read these because it's sort of fun to just read. A committee on mayoral communications which is a council committee. A committee on public safety. A committee on rules and government relations. A finance committee. A committee of the ordinance committee. The appointments committee. The property committee. So they have a whole lot more committees than us but again they only have three people per committee. It's a 13 member council, correct? Is that true? I believe it's a nine member council. So they have more committees than us. Fewer members but they do have fewer members per committee. And I also don't know how often these meet. And so there's lots of different ways to sort of reconfigure these. But the reality is that OCO has become the appointments committee, right? In theory, outreach and communications is in the charge but it has become sort of the appointments. But I think, Evan, I hate to interrupt but I think that the reason for that is because of circumstance and that in the best of all possible worlds if we had existed for a number of years and we had the process sorted out, what you described would be true and we could then, at least in my thinking, we could turn our attention to outreach and communication. And I think we'd be a fair amount of things we could do there. We've just participated in an outreach to the student community and I would think outreach would be something that this committee could take on and pursue that. I mean, it can be done individually as it has been by individual counselors or groups of counselors. But I could see OCO saying, okay, part of our charge is to work on improving outreach and one large category is students. But there are also other groups that others have been trying to reach out. So I think there are things that OCO could and should be doing, but it hasn't been. Not because they don't need to be done, it's because we've been consumed by appointments. And you're right, once that gets settled, assuming it does get settled, I would say we should turn our attention to outreach and communication. That communication is another thing that we really need to spend some thoughts on, some time on. So again, I'm reluctant to start thinking of things for OCO to do or GOL to do or finance to do. I am concerned about lessening the workload of CRC. I'm also hearing that maybe an option is to cut memberships to three instead of five, but it does seem like creating some kind of another body, a full council committee to take some of the burden from CRC might be the way to go. I'm a little reluctant to start thinking about how we can change GOL or OCO to take on some of these things.  Where it was gonna end with this, and this is 100% an idea for discussion, not fully thought through. But appointments in many ways are about the organization of the town, right? And considering that we've talked about having committees review their charge and we might be eliminating some committees, there is a thought that perhaps instead of GOL taking on sort of bylaw reviews, GOL could take on appointments because that sort of fits into organization and governance and then OCO could retain its outreach and communications aspect, but perhaps take something that fits from CRC. It'd be a pretty dramatic and radical change and maybe after a year the council isn't ready for that, but I would say that the reason we paired, we put appointments into OCA was the idea that outreach and appointments should be paired together because part of the outreach would be about getting people to serve on committees. I think we haven't really seen that materialized and I don't think that we actually will. I think the CPOs are very focused on getting people to sign up for committee appointments, but OCA, and in fact when we had a subcommittee role that didn't seem to be what we felt like was the role was to get to recruit people except for maybe the town council appointments and so there could be a thought that appointments actually sit more logically in GOL within our revised second bullet on advise the town councils on matters of town governance and organization since that is town governance and organization and that would free up substantial space in OCA for them to maintain outreach and communications but maybe take something like public ways or something like that and it's just an idea throughout. So it was as Evan was talking, one of the things that popped into my mind of could appointments go to GOL? But here's another again radical thing as we're just talking about restructuring everything is if OCA goes down to three, if GOL goes down to three, you've in theory freed up four members from committee assignments. It might give enough space to not that we wanted to discuss this to put a fifth standing committee or what would be a sixth standing committee in that could some if we could figure out a way to split CRC that could then take some of that as another potential again, going back to as I was just thinking about the question is what does CRC or some other committee get measure wise referral not what can they talk about relating to that referral? And I think we've been thinking it more as what can you talk about relating to that referral? Well, downtown parking was referred to CRC and it has to stay in CRC because it involves all this other stuff. So that's where it had to be but whoever whatever committee gets downtown parking study can still discuss all of the impacts throughout town including of housing and this and that even if the housing measures don't go to that committee to give an example, the transportation speed limits. There's no necessarily reason why that has to be in CRC as a specific proposal. It could be in GOL, it could be in communications, it could be in some other committee. The discussion around whether to adopt them will still be comprehensive. It's just who gets that measure not oh because they don't get housing measures they can't discuss how that speed limit affects housing. They can still discuss how it affects housing it's just figuring out where that measure goes. For me, the most important thing is that somebody actually brings something to the council to act on. Discussion is great and but I don't you know and you have to have discussion but the real task it seems to me of these bodies is to bring something to the council that's been fully formed and vetted and shaped and say here's what we think the council should do about downtown parking or speed limits or whatever the issue is, housing priorities, transportation plan, master plan, whatever. It comes to the council with a actual proposal and if a committee isn't doing that and because it's just overburdened, it's got too much on its plate, it just can't write, it can't deal with all this so nothing gets to us or it gets to us in some kind of you know in co-hate confused form, then it's a failure. The whole thing is a failure. The purpose of these bodies is to do the work and bring it to the council for action and that's why I'm worried about CRC. We on GOL and OCA bring things to the council fully formed and vetted and the council then makes up their minds. We do our job on those two bodies and I would say finance as well and this is not a criticism of CRC at all but there are a whole host of issues that they're being asked to deal with where what I want from them is concrete proposals. I don't want discussion. Obviously they have discussion. They can talk to it, right? But in the end they're supposed to create something and give it to us and then we decide if we think we should do it or not and that's what I'm worried about with CRC and where else these things get discussed or by whom or whatever it doesn't. I don't care at all. I want CRC to come to me on the council with specific recommendations about master plan or zoning or about housing priorities or speed limits, whatever it is and that's what I measure their success by. Any committee success by. So GOL and OCA are just not getting stuff to the council, there's a problem but they are. CRC has a problem and it's not anyone's fault. It's just the right. So what can we do to help them do their job? What can we do to help them send things to the council for the council to act on? That's my concern and what we're hearing today if I can summarize it fairly is a broader discussion appropriately I think of overall committee structure and the tasks for each committee. We've had a number of radical suggestions that I think we should come back to. We're not gonna obviously resolve today. I think it would be helpful to hear from our other two committee members as well to get five thoughts or five voices in this conversation but sure please Mandy. So food for thought. We haven't talked about finance and I just go back to and this was just a thought that came to me. I think we need to talk about finance. As many people say, well everything has a financial component so everything has to go to finance for that evaluation but with what I was just saying about it doesn't matter what that evaluation has it's where that evaluation happens. We were talking about these priority recommendations from downtown parking working group today in CRC and we said, well pretty much everything we're talking about has a financial implication. Are we allowed to discuss that in CRC or does that mean we have to also send this to finance and I think part of maybe the problem with all of our work is we as a council have been saying well if it touches finance it goes to finance along with CRC. Maybe we as a council or we as GOL need to come back with a recommendation that says we send it to one committee and so we're gonna split these things out to these particular topics into multiple committees to wherever they go and the council's job is to determine which is the overarching the most pertinent subject that that measure applies to. Is it financial? The budget is financial that belongs in finance but is signage the most is the most pertinent part of a discussion on whether to recommend for downtown parking working group priorities that that be a real concrete we need to deal with parking signs is that discussion much more pertinent to public ways or is that much more pertinent to economic development or is that the most thing to finances because it's got a financial component to it but does that mean it has to go to finance too and so maybe being clear about how something gets set and just because it touches on financial matters doesn't mean it has to go to finance just because it touches on economic development doesn't mean it has to go to CRC it's what it's main proposal relates to and the discussion then around those recommendations will touch on everything but it doesn't have to be in four committees it can be in one and so maybe that means actually modifying the finance committee charge to not include everything related to financial matters maybe it's only specific things not anything that might have a cost to it and that we empower our other committees to actually be able to discuss the potential costs of a proposal and whether that how that relates into something as just food for thought as we I assume are going to continue this discussion at another time well I want to bring it to a stop and because we have a number of things we should do so I need just quickly a sense of what we want to do next time when we come back and what I should be thinking about in terms of shaping the discussion and you can also send me these suggestions individually at a later point of how you would like this discussion to proceed but we have spent a fair amount of time not really looking at the specific charge that we have talked a little bit about it and we've discussed to what degree we should be tinkering it not but we spend most of our time seems dealing with the larger issue of overall committee structure and what would be the best ways to what suggestions we could make as a committee to the council about restructuring or redesigning some of these committees and or creating a new body I'm leaning towards a new body but with clearly discussion we need to continue so is that a fair sense that the next time we come back the next meeting we will revisit this but I'd like everyone to think about it and maybe have some concrete suggestions to present I certainly will give some thought to this but right now the focus seems to be on overall committee structure and recommendations potential recommendations to the council about how to restructure or reorganize some or all of these committees now that's a huge undertaking and a huge change and I have some great reservations about that at this point in the committee in the council's life but that's where we are at the moment we're not talking about the nitty gritties of a particular charge we're talking about the larger structure of things and considering some potentially major changes or at least wanting to talk some more about it I get the sense you certainly want to talk some more about it so I think that I'm feeling opposite George today in a lot of ways because I actually think you don't want to it sounds from what I heard your hesitant to make some major changes this early in the council whereas actually my thought is early in the council's life is the time to make some major changes because we just completed the first year and the vast majority of us had no idea what we were doing and so I think in the same way that Oka developed a process and said let's try this out and then we said oh that didn't work and now we're making a fairly radical change to that process I think it's okay if after the first year we say so we tried something out here's where it worked here's where it didn't and we should be able to make some big changes I think also given our three year term we have some luxury in having a first year that was sort of a learning curve and an experiment year in many ways that it's fine if we sort of say okay let's make some big changes based on what we saw because future councilors who have two year terms might not have that same luxury of being able to make some of these big changes whereas I think a big thing of what we're doing as the first councilor is setting up this structure I think we have probably talked this a bit to death I have in my mind a couple ideas that I would need to sit and think on and flesh out and maybe even bring in like here's what I would have is the committees and their charges and we could each do that and do that but I'd be willing to move on now I do think finance is something that we hadn't talked about and we should because I might actually even think the opposite of Mary Jo which is I've been uncomfortable with finances what I think finance committees what I feel has been an overly broad view of their charge in my mind finances, municipal revenues municipal expenditures end of list and when I've seen some of the conversations finances had about 132 Northampton Road about the housing priorities policies they seem like they're considering broader economics which to me is way outside of their charge and has made me personally I think if you went to a finance major and said so you study economics they'd be like no I study finance like they're two very different things and so finance committee seems to be under this impression that if it involves money at all it's finance committee but I actually want a very narrow appropriations and revenues end of list and so I think that we should talk more about finance next time because I don't think that's important the last thing I'll say is I did not have a chance to talk to Oka about any of this as George knows since he's on Oka my intent is to have put it on the December 2nd agenda so I should hopefully be able to bring to our next meeting some sense of where Oka stands on this but that hasn't happened yet. All right. All I would say is I actually I might not have been clear but I think finance has been taking an overly broad and so my other example would be percent for art I'm not sure what CRC will discuss in percent for art because it's all about finance and so I think it probably doesn't really belong at the more I think about it I'm like what am I gonna how am I not gonna talk about finance in percent for art in CRC so maybe that one should only be in finance because it really is municipal finance and it does on some other stuff but they can handle that other stuff and does it really need to be in two committees so I think that's that I've also got ideas and I'm ready to like blow up some charges and just come in with a whole set of different things so I don't know what but I think we do need to hear about the I'm not happy about any of this about the other committees too I'm gonna charge you both with coming up with your revolutionary plans but I don't obviously send them to each other but you can send them to me and but I'm also hearing just to sum up that CRC is a real issue and trying to figure out how to share the workload but also hearing the concern about the finance charge is being too broad and so those two are on my mind at least the role of CRC how to lessen the workload and the issue of the finance charge being too broad and then the suggestions about and just put on your thinking caps and we will continue the discussion next time and so I'm going to that's number item number two I'm going to skip item number three I'd like to just briefly say something or have some input for you from you about what role if any GLL plays in the future given by law review committee report to the council and here I just need guidance and basically just sit back we have no role unless something is sent to us by the council help me here Mandy. So I think this committee while I was chair already voted that the proposals themselves don't need to come to GL prior to being acted on by the council so that would be the whole revision of the entire bylaw I think you're asking about maybe the future considerations list I think it could come to us I think it would come to us and then maybe we can dole it out as things that we should as GLL deal with and things that maybe should be dealt with by others can the chair be proactive in the sense that and this committee be proactive in the sense that it begin to look at some of these suggested changes and begin to think about what we might do or not do or is that overstepping our authority in other words these things come in other words doesn't isn't there a whole host of suggestions and that I mean that document is one I have not I will confess this publicly I have not read with great attention to care I'm sorry but it's clear that they have a number of suggestions that they are making and it would seem that that would come to us can should we begin to look at that on our own and begin to think about how we might tackle it or should we just wait until what and what are we supposed to do with it if anything, any thoughts ever? Lots of thoughts always. Good, I think. So this I saw this on the agenda but also had intended to talk about this in some respect in the context of potential revisions to the GLL charge. I think that our charge right now of course which I just closed out of fairly narrowly limits our interaction with bylaws to just a review of proposed bylaws to be clear consistent and actionable as I've served for the past 10, 11 months on bylaw review committee. There have been a number of bylaws that we have encountered decided they needed some type of substantive revision decided it was beyond really the scope of the bylaw review committee and are punting it to the council. Some of those very logically fall into perhaps CRC. Others of them, and I think I mentioned this at our last meeting, really don't logically fall into a committee. And so I think the bylaw review committee has been working under the assumption that individual counselors will pick up this list and say I have a roadmap to some substantive changes in the bylaws, let me go do that. I have always felt that that was an overly optimistic view of bylaw review committee for two reasons. One, there are a number of them and our counselors are already in many ways overworked. And two, a lot of them are very boring, right? I mean, counselors want to put their mark on something that's exciting, right? And so some of these are just really, there were two substantive for bylaw review, but really, I can't picture a counselor looking at them and going that's what I want to work on, right? And so I think I mentioned some to this committee last time, although I talk about this all the time, so who knows who I've talked about it to. But for instance, both the plastic bag ban and the styrofoam ban have a deferment procedure. They're different, that doesn't make any sense because the same venues that might be, similar venues might be impacted and they both are run by the Board of Health and they're both about banning a product and yet they have completely different language for deferment, those should be the same. So why can't this committee begin to go through that and pick out the really boring ones? And maybe even some not so boring ones. It would exceed our current charge. And so who's gonna, you know, so we'll go ahead and do it anyway. And so what are you, throw us in prison? This is something that I never thought I'd hear from George.  No, I think I agree. Somebody's gotta take this on, right? It seems to naturally sit with GOL as I argued about the downtown parking. If you don't refer it to someone, it dies. And we don't want this future considerations thing to die. So I think it needs to be somewhere GOL makes the most sense. So maybe ask to get a referral. I don't want the agenda so that even though it's not part of our charge, it's been referred now. They are sort of bylaw changes. So then it would kind of, but I think that goes into looking at charges and saying, you know, maybe bylaw review, GOL should be able to do this not on referral, but on its own. There will be the charter requires bylaw, there be a bylaw review commission every 10 years. This is sort of the start. It won't happen again for another, I don't know how long. Not in my lifetime. But in the interim of that, maybe that should just sort of as with the town council rules sit with GOL. And we should create a charge that does that. Ask her for a referral of this whole package of things to us explicitly, is that? Just the future considerations. Future considerations is the term I should use. And so what we're asking for, I'm suggesting we ask for a referral from the council to review with the thought of making concrete proposals to the council of the future considerations. What do you want to call it? Can future considerations? All right, fine. I would, I'm concerned that this just gonna, nothing's gonna happen with it. I hear what Evan's saying. It seems like something we should be doing anyway. That's why I put it on the agenda. And what I'm hearing from the two of you is that you're okay if I go to Lynn and say at the next meeting ideally or some future meeting soon, we're asking for a referral of future considerations from the bylaw committee report. And I think that there are some, and I haven't gone through these finally, but I think that there are probably some that we could justify under clear, consistent and actionable. So there's a couple that have been flagged because we really feel like we just need further attorney review of them because we have some potential constitutional concerns. There are a few, you could argue that having two different deferment processes for similar bylaws operate is not consistent. And so I do think that to some extent we could take some of these up under our current charge, but there are also certainly others that I think. So if we get a referral, just carte blanche. I would say. Go for it. And I think many of them we could justify, but there are others that we couldn't. But that could also influence how we prioritize. Right, okay. So I will do that with your permission. And hopefully I'll be on the next agenda. It should only take a few minutes. I'm gonna skip five. That is relevant to other things, right? Fair enough. I'm just gonna leave that. That's already discussed. Exactly, right. We could just say it's been discussed. Five has been discussed. Do you want to take a quick look or do we come back to this? I did go through and revise the 2020 schedule with the advice of basically adding two days to the council schedule. And so you should find in your packet a revised 2020 schedule. And maybe the thought here is just, it's there when you get a moment, if you haven't had a chance, look it over. And maybe the next meeting we can finally just decide on it. We could also take a moment now, but it's really up to you. We have no public comments. So number seven, we do not have to worry about what you thought on the schedule. Do you want to take a look at it now?  I also put the council schedule in the packet. And I think I actually have a physical copy of it here if anyone wants it. And you should find, if I did it right, that every GOL meeting is two days after. So January, the first one I believe is January 8th. Is that the first GOL meeting? All right. And then pretty much all the way through. A couple of places I had to make some changes. But if you want to take a moment, if you see anything outstanding, we're meeting twice every month at the moment that could change, I understand. But if we follow it twice a month schedule and with the meetings coming after the council meetings that are scheduled at the moment, this is what it looks like. And I can't swear I didn't make a mistake here, but that's, yes, go right ahead. It lists one July and one August meeting. I think that's because the council has one July meeting and two very late August meetings, one of which is practically September, the August 30th becomes September 2nd in terms of two days after. So I'm looking at my draft CRC meeting schedule, which I did before I looked at this draft from you, the surprise draft from you. And we agree on all dates except those two that are missing in July and August, one for each of those, that I have a draft proposed schedule of July one and August five also meeting. In that sense, I have not compared my schedule to holidays yet, but I believe November 25th is the day before Thanksgiving. And so the three that in my draft CRC schedule don't agree with yours is when I went off the town council schedule because the town council schedule didn't, either there were multiple weeks between, more than two weeks between town council schedules. So I had drafted November 4th, November 18th and December 2th as, potential November 11th is going to be Veteran's Day, so that's a holiday on your draft schedule. So- Do I have November 11th on my schedule?  So I think that's why I moved to November 4th for CRC's draft because the 11th is a holiday. So I would recommend we add July one and August five. We can always cancel if we don't have stuff to do, but just to put them on the schedule, change November 11th to November 4th. And then I think, and since the 25th is the day before Thanksgiving, I moved to November 18th. So November 4th and November 18th instead of November 11th and November 25th. Thank you. And then I chose December 2nd instead of December 9th, even though it's before the council meeting instead of after. It allows- And the reason for using there? No committee meetings, not two weeks in a row because December 16th is the next week.  It's one where the council meetings are two in a row. And so that was my other reason for taking December 2nd over December 9th. So those would be my three changes. So November 11th to November 4th, November 25th to November 18th, and December 9th to December 2nd, and then add July one and August five. And what about meeting twice in the dog days? I always hedge with schedule them and hope we can cancel. So you would suggest adding July one and August five? With the hopes that maybe they're not needed. We won't need them. Okay. Any thoughts, Evan? I looked at this, I'm being honest. I'm sorry? If I'm being honest, I didn't look at this until- Well, that's all right. Then what I'm suggesting is I will revise- I'll do it right now with someone next to you. That sounds, I think that sounds fine. I'll put this up as a revised document and if you get a chance to look at it again. I'm sure it's fine. And I like the idea of having some placeholder dates in July and August, but perhaps with the expectation that we probably will. I love canceling meetings in the summer, but also the nature of my schedule is if we don't put at least a placeholder in for if needed, something else is gonna end up getting scheduled there. Okay. All right. So. No, no, it's, I must say yes to your life. That's, all right. So discussion review item number six, I will revise it and I will put it up in our packet. And hopefully next time we meet, we can formally approve it adopted. There's no public comment. We have two, we have the November six minutes. I put actually the track change version and the clean copy in there because there were a fair number of track changes that Athena had to make. And we're hoping that that eventually this process will become routine for everybody. But I wanted you to see it. So again, I don't know that anyone's had a chance to look at it because I put it in there, I think late last night. So I'm perfectly happy to leave it until the next meeting. That would be nice. I cannot look at them. That's fine. So I'm just going to pass over adoption of November six minutes, but I would urge you when you do look at them to look at both the clean copy and the track changes because Athena had to make a fair number. I want to go to item 10. And if we have time, we'll discuss about, I mean, we've had a pretty good discussion already about future attend items. Item 10, not anticipated. And the first is the rules of procedure 10.9 revisions. And that's in your packet. And based on our discussion at the council meeting, I went ahead and made some changes to that document. And I wanted you to look at them. I think there should be track changes, hopefully. They should have tracked from the clean version that was presented. So you accepted all the changes from the original rule and tracked your new ones? That's what I believe, yes, I did. So the only changes I made were while you see them. So, and I wanted, especially, well, I want you to put on all of them. But particularly the preamble where we suggested that we take some of the comments in the report and put them at the head of this. And having done that, I felt like I could strike at least part of what was down below based on what was in the preamble. So anyway, take a moment, look at it. We can also come, I believe we meet again before the next council meeting. For the December 16th, one of them will be taken off again. We do meet again. So it's not a super rush here, but I'm learning that if you do something right away, you try to teach me this, maybe I'll do that. So I have one minor that has nothing to do with what you proposed, but it is now actually 10.8, not 10.9, given our passage on Monday night. So one of our presenters to the constitution. We just have to change the title to 10.8. I'm sorry? This item, this is rules of procedure. I'm sorry? I think it's titled ROP 10.9 Liaisons Ryan revisions. Yes. Thank you for doing this. Well, this looks, this looks good. It looks okay. I couldn't, with Andy, I wasn't, it felt like the change I made in that one item. And again, I'm doing this blind. Andy had suggested adding something to one of the lines, and I did add it. But when I read it, I thought, is this really saying anything new? And so that's the one revision of what, like you're gonna put on. You're talking about that. Or maybe Andy's read or misunderstood Andy's point. You're talking about, and not to speak on behalf of the council. Exactly. That's what I remember him saying, but I wasn't completely confident in my notes. And I'm wondering whether that is necessary, or whether he said something slightly different and I didn't capture it. Eventually it will find out at the council meeting, but I meant to ask him at the meeting last night, but for some reason it was 11.30. Time flies. So another just consistency thing, and I don't know how we didn't miss, catch this the first time. What is? Our outline structure is start with A, B and C, little A, B and C, not one, two, three after the rule number. The rule numbers say 2.1, and then it's 2.1 A, not 2.11. I don't know how we missed this, but on Monday night I was like, wait a second, did we really do 2.1, you know, three point, or whatever this one is, 10.91? Is that really accurate? So I think we need to change all those numbers to letters for consistency purposes. Under 10.9 it should be A, B, C. A, B, C instead of one, two, three. According to the outline structure and how we've done the rules. I don't know how we missed that. All right, so we're changing the rule to 10.8 and we're changing the numbers to letters. To letters. Okay, that's all right, that's why we do this. So they will get it right. So item three is now separate, item two is broken into two, so liaison's made up to spit remotely. Item five, I'm six now, becomes and are not to speak on behalf of the council, which I believe captured Andy's point. Number eight, I felt striking that sentence because of a preamble. And again, it's right. And the only other, other than the preamble, if you have any thoughts on that, was whether we want to reorder these in any way. I don't think it necessarily needs it, but getting the shells and the shell not separated.  And I don't know what to do about, it is somewhat, what? What will we see? Should it be shell not instead of may not participate remotely? I wondered about that. I mean, we've tried to get rid of all the mays to wills and whatever, we've tried to use like will and, well, shall and, I don't know, but may is used in number two for may ask questions because you can, but are we trying to say they cannot or shall not? We're saying three, you cannot. They are absolutely prohibited from, which is probably what the state law is. Right, so it should be shell. I think it should be shell. So three should be shell. So when we make shells and shell nots, but functional liaison is to serve as a link between the council and the multiple remember body to which they are assigned. They are there to observe, share information, answer questions, degree they can, and make sure that the council has kept a prize to the work of the body to which they are liaison. They are not there to advocate or promote a particular policy or course of action. Okay, all right. I felt that was kind of what Andy wanted and captured it. And so, all right, I will go back then and make these sort of small changes. Number three, change the numbering and change numbers to letters, but I'm not hearing any particular, I mean, again, you can always reach out to me, but any particular issues with it. And we will have one more chance to look at this, if we wish. And the proposed motion to the council to make is a rescind and replace, right? So you'll be able to craft that language based on the 10.4 language we had. Right, so I will use 10.4. And is it appropriate to include that in the packet for us to look at? Or is it more of something? It needs sent to Athena so she can put it in the motion sheet. Right, but I'm also just thinking if I run by the two of you, we could make sure it's right. Well, she'll feel good. She'll forward the president and vice president and Alyssa actually get the motion sheet ahead of time so that we can attempt to review it for changes. So good, so I would just do that. I will create the proposed motion using 10.4. It's a rescind and replace, good. Anything else related to 10.9? Do we need a formal vote on these changes so that you can report to the council that this body approved them? I would, but I prefer that we do that when you see the final thing. No, we could certainly do it, but let's leave it for the next meeting, but you're right, we need a vote. It's always nice to be able to say we actually voted on this as opposed to Ryan just put it in there because he felt like it. The second item I have under items non-anticipated kind of came out of the, and maybe it's not appropriate and you can tell me, but it came out of the discussion at the council the other night with the parking on Lincoln and the issue of process. And the fact that there is no process. And I've actually now been sort of whiplashed by this because I was told that initially I said it goes to TAC. Then I was told by the manager, well, you're keepers of the public way, so it goes to you. And now it's been, it's back to TAC. So the question for me is do we have a role here in terms of just as GOL with process and procedure? And could we take on or should we take on the task of just figuring out the process or procedure and then presenting that? Because the president is not certain, the manager is clearly that clear. Is this the kind of thing that falls within our purview to suggest a process for this sort of thing? And we take it on and then send it or is that we're just gonna see what falls out? Which at the moment is all over the map. So public way requests is what I'm asking. Isn't that, I mean, how they are, how the process or procedure is to be managed. Not the content of it, but just the process. So if you are a resident and you want, you have an issue about parking on your street, here's the procedure or process you follow. Right now there is none or if there is, I just don't know what it is. But apparently I'm not the only one. So that was the question and I'm putting it here because it came up just at the council meeting and so I felt it was appropriate to add it. And maybe we'll come back to it next meeting but just as I was listening to this thing bounce all over the place, I thought what the president needs is just someone to figure out a process that she can then say this is the process. She can't do it, she's in the time. The manager's all over the map on it too. Any thoughts on this? Is it inappropriate? Not our task? Nancy? So we are the keepers of the public way. We drafted the public way delegation policy, however you wanna refer to that. Our charge says advise the town council on matters of town council rules, governance and organization and also advise the town council on matters of town governance and organization. If we draft, as keepers of the public way I think you could argue that governance of how that's processed could fall within our charge. And then what I wouldn't wanna get into tonight is what that looks like today. Is what that process looks like or what that might involve. I think it becomes a also potentially, you could argue potential separation of powers but not really a separation of powers, but a do we as a council want to be, and this would when you get into process, we're the ones that are charged with changing and well approving all of those changes. Are we going to delve into accepting the complaints about what they are? Again, I'm not sure that's where we are but I think given our charge, we could take it upon ourselves to say we saw this as clearly a problem at the council and so here's what we think a process given that we are the keepers of the public way could look like. That's what I'd like us to consider doing and I would certainly alert the president to this but I wanna first of all find out whether you think we should be doing it and secondly, even if we should be doing it, do you actually want to do it? There's a two separate questions. Maybe it's something we should do but we just don't wanna take it up. Any thoughts at all? It's clear you don't have to have any. So that debate happened very late at night and I was finding it hard to follow and think through at that time but the two takeaways I left with were one, this was not a, yeah, it's a public ways request. A different, it's not a reservation but it is a public ways request that the town manager had sort of taken control. It was a permanent, it was a request for a permanent change. I mean, it was something that very clearly falls within the purview of the council and yet it had been delegated to a committee by the town manager that many of us felt was an inappropriate committee for it to be delegated to without us being alerted.  Yes, I would be there tonight if I was 30 all year. That was, to me, absolutely wild that the town manager would take a public ways request, decide to delegate it to a town committee that really has never dealt with that before and for which I think is- We said it doesn't deal with it. Right, this is my personal opinion is ill-suited to deal with that request, notified the council after that had happened and then it was clear that the council had no information. I mean, George, you probably had heard stuff about this because it's in your district. I had heard a little bit about it because I do have one block of Lincoln and so I've heard from some people but when I left, Councilor Balmillan went, where is this? What is going on? And I thought, right, not all councilors know about this issue. And so the fact that the process was moving forward without the council being apprised of what was going on I think was really problematic. And so I do think as people who, as the body that wrote the public ways policy, that policy was a very basic one that basically said we're gonna delegate some responsibility, didn't deal with process but what I think you're saying is given this, which has happened, perhaps that policy needs to be more detailed and outline some actual process. And I do think we have some, we did advise on zoning bylaw change hearings, right? That we said we're gonna delegate that to CRC and they could, so we have done something because it would also involve a hearing. I do think it makes sense but I think that anything that involves the separation of power between the town manager and the council, advice on that rightly sits in this committee. I mean, some public ways requests go to him because of the way that things are structured and some come to us. So part of the problem might be we're trying to create a public ways policy but I guess the point is we're making it a policy for those matters which come before the council. How he deals with public ways policies that come to him is his business but this one does come to us and there's complete confusion as to what the policy is and I'd like us to spend a little bit of time maybe and I will give some thought to this myself as to what a reasonable policy might be for those public ways requests that come to the council. I mean, just again, concretely, I have constituents come to me and they just wanna know what they're supposed to do and the first thing I said was go to TAC, knowing for well that that probably wasn't gonna but that's what I thought it should be. Then I was told explicitly no, TAC doesn't do that. It's you're the keeper of the public way. So I said okay, we're gonna need to create a process to the constituents. Now it's back to TAC and may go to CRC and got it out of that. So yeah. I'm just gonna mention again as I did last Monday night that I as CRC chair since he saw it within CRC's charge, the actual sort of discussion on the policy of the change not necessarily on how to get there asked me and I recommended that he get a TAC opinion before coming to the council for his own, as part of the council packet of here's what we're proposing but I think that's in reflecting on the discussion and what our role is and some things that were said here and some things that were said there that may have been likely was a very bad advice. But yeah, I think we have to find out, there's this how do where I think we need clarity on where requests go because we've delegated the dealing with the requests to the executive. In theory though, we don't even see most of them. Anything, the request for parking, has a parking reservation for one day, we never see until it's been either granted or not granted, even when we were granting them we didn't see it until it was on our agenda. Even though we are the keeper of the public way and in theory they maybe all should start with us. Not that we want them to start with us maybe but you know and so maybe a clarity on the policy of depending on what the request is, here's where you go if you're looking for a short term reservation, this is where you start with your request but if you're looking for a permanent change your request starts here, not there and that's something that maybe GOL needs to deal with to clarify not just for the residents but also for our own sake and the executive's sake that if they get a complaint from a resident on parking on Lincoln is horrible or parking on whatever street is horrible we want changes to that. The staff can say that's a permanent change you need to send that request to X not Y and that's I think what we can deal with. So I just, we're near the end here I just need advice on how, if and how I should proceed with this. Have a conversation with Paul about it, give a heads up to Lynn just to see what their thoughts are before I put it on the next agenda because there could be, I mean Paul may very well feel like this is you know, A, you're opening up a hornet's nest here the vast majority of these things come to town hall and we deal with them and there are these more permanent things that also come to town hall but ultimately are your authority so if you start crafting a policy for just that he would certainly I think want to have some input into this and so maybe before I start launching into some or we start launching into some kind of a lever discussion I should at least reach out to Lynn and Paul telling Lynn we're thinking of trying to craft something that we could bring to you and telling Paul you know, could we talk briefly about this and whether you have some, you know, do you just have practical serious considerations or concerns that should just rule this out for the moment or are you open to us trying to come up with a procedure that we deal with these kinds of long term issues, Evan? So I'm gonna be probably the minority voice and say no. Don't do either. I think it's within the purview of this committee to look at the governance of the council and how the council operates and one of those things is public ways requests which we have delegated to Paul but I don't wanna go to Paul and say so we're thinking about doing something that's in our right to do, what do you think? Well it's just Evan that so much of this comes to him anyway and he deals with it all the time and I think it's part of the reason that he's kind of caught between because it involves staff, it involves, you know he is right that parking is something that has multiple impacts and I guess just as a matter of just being politic if nothing else I'd like him to be apprised of what we're thinking and I'd also value his input because he might just say look you're opening up a can of worms that you just don't wanna get into right now but you're thinking, I mean if we go off and do what we're gonna do and so assuming we create something and then we come back and say okay here it is. I'd prefer that he be aware of it before we start. So I think you should talk to the president because she might decide it's an agenda item she might decide other things she might say we don't need to see it on agenda I think you should talk to the president if we're going to put it on an agenda which I think we have every right to because it wasn't advice on referral it's just advice so I think we have every right to put it on agenda I think then similar to what we did with the original public ways policy is we talked amongst ourselves we came up with something we sent it to Paul for feedback because it does involve the executive and I see this whatever it might show up probably does involve some executive issues and then that's how he can provide his feedback to us. That's exactly what I was going to say is to me it's a conversation that happens here first and then Paul gets brought in it doesn't start with Paul. And if he says that's a hornet's nest I don't necessarily that means we shouldn't do it right and I don't want him to dissuade us and that's not to do it. No, no, I'm just okay. So I will go to Lynn I will not go to Paul and I will see what Lynn thinks but it sounds like I can put this on the next agenda procedure with public way request particularly related to parking is that something that we can put on our agenda? Is that or no? Go ahead. And there's a couple things I did want to just mention one thing is this isn't going to probably change for this first request maybe I don't know but I'm wondering if does it need to be on the next agenda I think we really need to make huge headway through this town organization thing because I think Lynn probably expects to start having that conversation on the 16th so I don't must be hesitant to put anything that's not that on that agenda but maybe we'll get you can always put it on and we can skip it. There are two other things I did kind of want to bring to this committee's attention as future agenda so one of them going on the theme of separation of powers and making it clear to people one sort of confusing thing that's been happening from an OCA standpoint but I think the discussion might more logically fit in GOL is so we've had three resignations two on ZBA and one on planning board. Those are both town council appointed bodies those resignations have both been have all been submitted to the town manager and in many ways that makes sense in other ways it makes zero sense because he is not the appointing authority and so we have so in one case it went to the staff liaison and then that staff liaison sent it to the town manager and then that town manager sent it to me as chair of OCA and that's not the process that it should be and but I don't blame anyone because if you're just on a body who you probably never even met the council so you're probably gonna go to so for instance the planning board resignation went to Chris Brestra and to Paul and then we found out because it was sent to me and the president and so I think there's something to be said about I don't even know if the council at large knows that Mark Parent has submitted a resignation effective in March I think most of them probably haven't but they should because we're the appointing authority those resignations should come to the council president as the appointing well the council is a whole but through the council president as the appointing authority so what is our role in this I think there needs to be some guidance for the public about to the public and to the executive staff they're forwarding it on but they also need to then talk to the committees as a whole when they get one and say thank you for sending that to us but the appointing authority should be the one receiving it initially we will forward it on but we are not the appointing authority so it's something with the staff too to continually reinforce that. And it goes to president with CC to OCHA? No, town council through the president would be my sense. Okay, two town council by a president, okay. And then the second thing I want to bring up and George is aware of this but Mandy you're probably not it maybe you are is so OCHA is very close to its new process to appoint town council appointed you know what I mean. It is very likely to be public interviews there seems to be almost no way around that and it will likely occur during an OCHA meeting that will not be a regularly scheduled OCHA meeting. One of the things that is very important to me and to seemingly several members of the OCHA committee is not to have public comment at those interviews. There's a general feeling that it would be in it those meetings would have one agenda item which would be the interview and it would seem very inappropriate to allow people to come and comment publicly either before the interviews or right after them. My reading of our town council rules rule 10.6H it says committee meetings shall provide for a period of public comment. It doesn't like the charter does distinguish a regular. So there was some conversation about well the council there's a differentiation between regular versus special and only regular meetings does that apply to council committees and my reading of 10.6H is no it says committee meetings shall and so that doesn't say regular committee meetings or anything like that. So there's some thought that we might want to edit that rule to make either it to do one of two things either make it clear that only regular committee meetings require public comment or if we're worried about that because then any committee could just be like yeah we're just gonna have a special meeting on this on parking because we don't want to hear what people say. We could revise that rule to say something like committee meetings shall provide for a period of public comment except for meetings to interview appointments or to some language that specifically exempts that and I'm only bringing this through we haven't voted on this as OKA so it might seem premature but given that we would need time to discuss this as a committee and it would need two rule readings and given that we are hopefully doing these interviews sometime in January I'd want this rule to be in place I would not want to move forward with any public interviews without something clear that shows us that we don't have to have public comment and maybe we can just vote to suspend the rule until we do it later but just putting it on this body's radar that I think we will be looking OKA will be looking for a rule change from GOL to exempt public interviews from public comment. I'd support the just changing it from committee to regular committee. I think we as a council should have regular meetings and should not accept a committee that doesn't want to schedule regular meetings and so the exception there you know I think that's where we enforce and say no you don't get out from public comment because you never have a regular meeting our committees have regular meetings and I think it's within the spirit of what the Charter Commission intended those rules to be and the requirement for public comment both at council and committee meetings or multiple member body meetings was that when they regularly meet and we know multiple member bodies don't always have a regular schedule but that they accept public comment because it's not acceptable to never have public comment and so it should be expected that it is but the council commission only made it for regular council meetings because it recognized there would be some meetings that it wouldn't be appropriate at and so doing the same for committee meetings would be within the spirit of what the Charter Commission was thinking. For this is to say if we do it December 4th we can put it on the council agenda for the 16th and the second reading would be January 6th. So you'd like this on the agenda for 12, 4 and E-mendation amending to rule procedure 10.6H to insert the word regular, is that correct? I hopefully OCO will have adopted this on December 2nd so we won't be dealing with something abstract we'll have an actual OCO policy to say to record. 10.6H. All right, we have gone through our agenda and I am prepared to declare to adjourn this meeting. And at unfortunately 12, 38, thank you all.


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