No, we definitely stopped me at 1230. Okay. Okay, I'm. I'm sorry. Yeah. All right. Lisa is in the audience and. Melissa. Val. Or in the audience. Kathy is not. Let me text Kathy and see if she's going to join us. Okay. All right. I'm going to call this meeting of governance organization legislation to order. Okay. According to my watch is 932. Sorry. Somewhere it's 932, but here it's 1032. This meeting is being recorded. And pursuant to governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order, suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. This meeting of GOL is being conducted via remote. Participation. I'm going to make sure that. Everyone can be heard and be seen. We're also going to bring at least one sponsor into the meeting. I think Lisa Klassen is in the audience. And. I have said that she could. She could be a panelist. So first, let me make sure that. That we all can be seen and heard. I'm going to start with Pat. That is there. Great. Andy. Yep. I'm here. Thank you. I'm here. Okay. And, uh, Lynn. Here. Thank you. And our guest panelists, Lisa. You just, uh, Hi, Lisa. You can hear us. Yes, I can. Great. Thank you very much. Okay. Um, So we have a full agenda. No surprise. Um, we have. Uh, two bylaws and a resolution on the agenda today. So we're going to try and move as quickly, but as carefully as we can. Um, we're going to continue first with the wage theft bylaws. I believe we have the wage and tip theft bylaw up for review. Um, then, uh, we are going to move to the wild, what I'm calling briefly the wild animal bylaw. And then we have a resolution, which my understanding Lin is this is not of, uh, pressing concerns. So we could delay it if we have to, is that true? The resolution on East West rail. Well, we delayed it from last week. So. Okay. All right. So we should try. Okay. Good. So that's not item number three. We do not have any minutes. Um, so, uh, that's, those are the three items in our agenda. Um, So I'm going to, uh, again, as I did last time, I'm going to turn to Mandy if she's willing to sort of take us through, um, the, the second bylaw.  And you should open it or use the screen. Uh, screen is quite clear so we could work with the screen. And as we did last time, I think we're going to go through it. Change by change, line by line. Okay. My understanding Mandy is that this has in a sense been quote unquote cleaned up. In other words, what this document shows are only places and please correct me, Mandy, if I'm wrong, but only places where there are still remaining disagreements between, uh, the sponsors and KP law. Is that correct? Um, basically it's correct. And I would say disagreements as a broad point of view. Um, and I think that's, um, I think that's, um, a disagreement. I think KP law would be okay with the change, but because they suggested something else and we were suggesting, we wanted to keep the original. We left it in as quote. A disagreement, even if KP law would be okay with keeping the original. Um, so, but, but pretty much if KP law suggested a change. And the sponsors said, yeah, that's fine. Um, I think that's the, that's the reading of things. Um, so you'll see that there were a lot of changes. KP law suggested that you don't see anymore because they've just been accepted in. And the first one is this criminal enforcement. Um, the sponsors really wanted only retaliation to be criminally enforced and KP law, when they went through everything suggested that it be any violation of the spy law. Um, and the sponsors still intend to keep it as retaliation. Um, I don't know. Pat. I think in talking to Kathy, um, she had indicated that she might be willing to remove criminal enforcement completely. I don't know where Pat stands on that because, and part of that is because retaliation is kept. Is dealt with a lot with a lot severe consequences in state law. Um, but, but we did not as sponsors believe that. Um, Post sort of the rules should be enforced criminally, which is why we had limited it only to the retaliation. And so, so in that sense, we disagreed with the expansion of criminal enforcement to any violation, including just the failure to post notices. Um, and so that's why we left it here as a quote disagreement, even though KP law would be fine with keeping it as just a violation of criminal enforcement. Um, since I would, yeah, any thoughts from my colleagues?  I agree with the sponsors. I don't see why this should be for all violations. Lynn, I couldn't hear your question. I'm sorry. She agrees with the sponsors. I agree with the sponsors. I don't believe it should be for all violations. Um, since the sponsors wish to, uh, reject this suggestion and it's not as far as I can see, um, It has anything to do with action, ability, clarity or consistency. Um, though there might be a policy question related to the larger issue of, you know, where the bylaw, you know, as you said, Mandy, um, I don't think we should be, um, a question about broader question of whether, um, we should be entering into those areas at all. And so one might suggest that, that there not be any penalties. Um, because the state has it covered. Um, again, I'm facing this constant question. Is that a policy question? Or it's not really a measure. You know, it's enforceability in a sense. Um, but is that action ability? So my thought is we just let the sponsor keep. What they had. And, uh, make a note of this in the report. If any council wants to raise the question of the larger. Issue of tension or conf, or, you know, between. Sure. And I can't hear George and I'm not sure I'm hearing anyone else. And anyone hear me. It's George. I'm having problems with hearing too. Really? No, great. Um, can I just clarify? Are you, are you talking about.  In your opinion. I'm trying to thread the thin line. Can you hear me? Yes, now. I can. Thank you. Okay. I'll try to be. Trying to thin the tread, the line between. Just making sure this is clear, consistent, actionable. As opposed to larger policy questions or larger questions of. That, you know, this bylaw faces in a number of different places where it goes beyond or enters into areas where the state already has. In this case, um, penalties. They have penalties for retaliation and. I would be, um, Comfortable with removing criminal enforcement. However, non-criminal disposition for violations of wage. No, no, yeah, I agree. No, I'm sorry. I miss. I wasn't thinking. Yes. No, I have no problem with that. It's criminal enforcement. Um, and my thought was, just leave it as the sponsors wanted. And not accept the KP law. Proposed change. But I can hear that there's a bit of disagreement amongst this, or at least difference. Among the sponsors themselves. So, um, Well, Kathy's willing to remove it. I'm willing to. I think, I think if. I think everyone. Given what we've learned about state enforcement of retaliation and the severity of those penalties that if Pat's willing to, and Kathy is willing to, and I'm willing to, we could remove the criminal enforcement completely. Yeah. Okay. Well, that is, that's certainly. I leave it up to you guys. Um, we can leave it in or we can take it out, but, um, Taking it out, George. I think it's clear. All right. So the, uh, good. So Mandy has stricken it. We moving on. Please. Thank you. Fine. There weren't many in this one. No, exactly. Trust me. I've never been more pleased to see such a clean text in my life. And some of these, um, Weren't necessarily disagreements, but I, I. Difference would have been a better word. And differences isn't even the right one for some of these. It was more of, I, I didn't feel right removing comments. Um, even though there was no suggestions. So that's why some of them are still here. Um, Right. Yeah. So, so like this one here, that whole number three. We left the comments in, even though, um, This was not something that. KP law actually recommended doing anything with it was more of a, do you know comment? Right. Um, And so I felt weird taking the comment out, but there was nothing she rec the KP law recommended changing about this. Um, so I don't know whether we need to discuss it or not. I think we don't actually, um, I think the, the challenge is how to get, or whether, whether the, that needs to be in a report from GOL where the, the attorney has made a comment, but not actually made a, um, A suggested change. And I, I don't know how quite to handle that. I think that's a question for the report from GOL, which means question. Question for the chair. If we're talking about the sanctuary city one. Yeah. That should be a KP laws comment should be removed. We are a sanctuary city. And we have faced, um, the fact that we could, uh, affect not apply for grants and other federal aid. We were threatened with that when we made the bylaw, when it was voted. Um, nearly a hundred percent of town meeting, uh, voting positively. So I don't think we need this comment at all. I think that the lawyer is bringing up a fear that is not, um, connected to the town's values. Um, we're not unaware of it. Um, it's just a waste. It's a, it's another thing to scare people with. So. And I understand that she feels it's being conservative, but I feel like it is. Loading fear on to making a decision. And some people fall for that. Okay. Anyone else. I disagree with that, but. I think it's a question. Yeah. Do you want this in the GOL report? Yeah. Doesn't go anywhere else. I understand where Pat's coming from. I, but I actually agree with Andy in that. Well, I know town meeting was very aware of this. Many of us are very aware of us, even, even though we may not have been in town meeting. But I think the purpose of this review is to make sure that. Highlighted the places where other legal issues. Should just be known. That's all. I don't think it's going to scare anybody on the council. But as a matter of due diligence where we have. Um, Comments from the attorney who is reviewing something. Um, It seems probably appropriate that at least be in cases like this and be acknowledged. I certainly not going to comment on. I'm just going to note it. Yeah. And I think for the purposes of this committee, we should note that while it's a comment that was offered. We don't think that it affects whether it's clear, consistent and actionable. Thank you. That's, that's a good summary. Yes. Maybe part of the report is comments offered by attorneys that don't affect action ability clarity and consistency or something like that. You know, clearly label it. Right. Right. As a comment and is not something that the committee is. Passing any kind of judgment on. Good. So the next one, we actually deleted something that was between three and four. Um, and so the comments are no longer there. I think this. Comment from KP law again, in my opinion, this should be deleted. Refers to the. Paragraph. We actually did delete. Um, so. Um, I don't know what you're saying. But, but what we did instead of deleting it is. Um, change the wording. And the reason it's in here as still sort of a difference is because, um, none of us could remember if this was specifically talked about with KP law. And agreed upon that it was a fine change. But, but basically the concern with KP law was that. Um, it was a fine change. Um, it was a fine change like that. And so our change basically says if the attorney general has. Found retaliation under state or federal law. Um, then. Our burden of proof for retaliation is met. Um, and so we pegged it to, you know, the, the attorney general's sort of findings. Um, so that the town just, it's just sort of a, accepting the attorney general's findings. Um, and so that's sort of what our attempt at rewording does. To now read a finding by the attorney general of retaliation under state or federal law shall be sufficient to show retaliation under this bylaw period. Um, um, and the, you know, the KP law's concern of removing it completely or just request to remove completely. Um, but recognizing the concern that the enforcement authority for retaliation is the AG. Um, and so that's sort of what our attempt at rewording does. Um, Maybe go, I'm just curious or Pat, the one that you deleted basically what you're saying is this is now subsumed into the one that starts standard of proof. The one we deleted, let me look that one up on a different. Um, I'll be considered a rebuttable of presumption of retaliation. If an employer, any other person takes an adverse action against. The days of a person's exercise of rights. In this bylaw or any other state. Regulating the payment of compensation, however, in the case of. Yeah. So we deleted that one at the request. Essentially. Um, determining that, um, we didn't need that in this bylaw. And then I tried to reword this one. Mandy, if this were taken out completely, what would be the adverse impact from your perspective as sponsors, the forge simply were deleted. So then to. In order to. Under this bylaw for retaliation. The individuals writing those non-criminal disposition tickets would have to actually prove retaliation. Um, whereas the non-criminal disposition, you know, sort of fine for retaliation for violation of the bylaw under retaliation now can just be written if they can prove the AG has. Exactly. Provide. I see that makes sense. Thank you. Okay. Anyone have any for the comments? I have no problem with this. Um, the way it stands. No problem either. Okay. All right, Mandy. So I'll leave it that I'll accept them later. Um, then. Again, the C prior comments from KP law are the other ones about things. Um, we want to leave it in. Um, I think. Pat, I think you talked to KP law more about this. We believe that if someone thinks that. You know, that. That if you believe in good faith, the bylaw has been violated. And you report that to the town. And the town finds that. You were wrong that the bylaw actually wasn't violated that you should still be protected on a retaliation claim. Um, and so that's why we would like to keep it in. Um, you know, and, and I think KP law again. Was concerned about retaliation being covered a lot by the AG's office, but, but we do believe it's important for someone who reports a potential violation of the spy law. There's no posting or this or that, or they didn't get their right notice. And maybe they were wrong because maybe, you know, they, they don't speak English well. And so they misunderstood things, but really made that report in good faith. And that, that they're still protected from being fired because of that report. So we want to keep it in. I think I agree with you, but I think that you should then have this be one of those things that we just discussed about.  That George mentions in his report. Okay. And again, the, the comment of KP law is that this is covered by state law. And so they don't think it's necessary. Is that a fair. What is the, what is the difference here? Okay. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Her prior comments are going back to sanctuary city stuff and the enforcement authority for violations and all of that. You know, beyond that, I, I'm not sure Pat and I can really. Describe what she was thinking. Okay. Okay. Well, I'm really bad in my reports when I'm trying to clarify something that's not clear. And we are bad doing it the same in person. You certainly not getting required. So this may be something Lynn that I'm just going to let, let a sleeping dog lie. Cause I don't even know what I would say here. But. We're just going to leave it in. Yes. And without a comment from GOL. You speaking to about to five. Yes. Just to five. Not, not to the previous. So this one. Yeah. Yeah. Just like, don't, don't mention anything. Well, I just, I don't know what to mention. So, yeah. And as I mentioned, beginning the meeting, I don't know if everyone was present. I think it came up in prior discussion, but we have a request out to KB law for clarification from the last meeting. On two items. And also have sent out. A list. Or I tried to express Alyssa's concern. So we have right now three things that we're asking for. What was Alyssa's concern? Cause I must have missed that somewhere. Well, it was, I reached out to her directly to get some clarification. From her as to exactly what. She was, I think. Basically there's a history that exists here. And I'm not going to go into that in terms of an existing bylaw that the, the town has 3.44. And at least two existing TIF, this is around the TIF. All right, but we're talking about tips theft right now, wage theft and tip theft, not TIF. So I'm not understanding this. This is a sideline. I apologize, Pat. This is a sideline. Mandy was asking about what Alyssa's question was on Monday. At the council meeting. And I felt that I was basically being asked to communicate that question. To. KP law for clarification. And you're right. There's nothing to do with what we're talking about right here. And so. Okay. I'll go back to my notes from the council meeting then. Yeah. And you can, we can, but anyway, I did try to put it in what I thought was. Of question form. And that was also sent to KP law. She now three things that specific questions. And I would like to keep it to a minimum if we can. But. Yeah. I didn't understand that. I'm sorry. I'm eating crackers. Has she been given a deadline for when we want the responses? No, she hasn't, but I will be reaching out to Paul again and asking him to just follow up again. Maybe Paul will tell me I can reach out to her directly. I can't just email her directly as GOL chair. And ask her, but I need to get Paul's permission. Yeah. So if we're ready to move on, the only other thing we highlighted was the requirements for succession and interest. The language here is the same language we discussed last week under the. Responsible employer by law. And so we highlighted that if KP law comes back with a better definition. And all that we should probably make the two. Clauses in each bylaw identical. So we obviously don't have any. And the interesting thing is while KP law highlighted the successor and interest clause in the responsible employer, they did not note a successor and that note anything problematic with this successor and interest clause. So I do want to make that clear that in reviewing this one, there was actually nothing. Mentioned about this successor and interest clause, even though it's identical to the one that KP law did highlight in the other one and delete. And all. So I think. We desire as sponsors to have them identical. But we're fine with this language and it was not highlighted by KP law. So. This is one of the things that we did ask them to. Comment on to get back to us. There was one item that they had not seen, and we just wanted them to look at and make sure they were okay with. And this was, I believe the second item, which was, do you have any language to us. For successor. In interest. And that's what I'm waiting to hear from them. And now I've added this is to that list. Yeah. So we just highlighted in a comment that if we change it in the one, we likely would. Exactly. Try to change it in this one too. Can we just go back to four C because in the copy we had last week. This one. The sponsors, I guess for C one through four. Just said, we will need to be ready to defend how this calculation was. That was a KP law. Comment. Oh, it was. Okay. Yes. But there was no indication from KP law that it needed changed in any way. So we deleted the comment. And again, that could be something that could go in the jail well report. So. Again, with the note that it does not. It'll in any way affect clarity, consistency, consistency or actually building. I'm not even sure it needs to go in. Yeah. Again, these are the kinds of decisions that. I don't envy myself. So we have gone through this entire document, I believe. Noting the places where there have been changes or differences. And we have a. Completed that review. So. I think we are finished with this document. I think we GOL as a body needs to vote clarity, consistency and action ability. Emotion and vote on whether it is or not for both bylaws. Absolutely. Yes. That would be the next step. I just wanted to let you know that I reviewed both bylaws. Again, this morning before the meeting. And I actually did have one question about the responsible employer bylaw. But generally I am at a point where, except for my one question that I might have a quick answer to. I'm perfectly fine with. The conclusion. That this committee needs to make about clarity, consistency and action ability. I'd like to hear anti Andy's question, but I'm in the same place. I'm ready to move. Okay. I'd like to hear Andy's question as well. Now, my thought is that we would do them separately. They would each be done as a separate vote. And so we could go back and do the responsible employer bylaw. First. Which is would be, and then we could deal with Andy's question at that point. But I do need to come back if only for my own piece of mine. Okay. So I would like to go back to the question raised and discussed at the council meeting as well. As to the question of counselors, members of the committee who are sponsors voting on clarity, consistency and action ability. And we've had this discussion last time. And we didn't make any kind of formal decision. And I'm not saying that we should make a formal decision, but I'm not saying that we should make a formal decision. I hear very clearly the arguments that. Counselors should not be kept from voting on measures that come before them when they're serving on a committee or obviously serving on a council and the fact of sponsorship. Is immaterial. Andy felt and I still am struggling a bed. With the thought that somehow GOL is different. And the answer may be it's not different. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not completely. It seems to me there is something about GOL's task. That does raise a kind of problem. When you're talking about simply the issue of clarity, consistency and action ability. Sponsors supporting a measure for passage seems perfectly natural. Sponsors who are passing judgment. They're not. They're not neutral at all. In that case. And there seems to be an element, as I've said, of neutrality that functions in this committee, meaning that I could very well have a resolution or a bylaw in front of me that I think is the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. I would never vote for it ever under any circumstances, but still declare it clear, consistent and actionable. And assist the sponsor in making it such. As opposed to me saying, you know, I haven't had any problem with clear consistent actionable, but this is that this is a horrible bylaw or this is a horrible resolution or whatever. So it does seem that our committee is a little different than other committees where we're performing a kind of service to the council. That being a sponsor would seem to be an issue for that service. So that's where I'm struggling. I absolutely agree that that, you know, and any other committee where you're dealing with, you know, content and you are the sponsor of a measure or bylaw, whatever, you should certainly be free to speak for it and to vote on it. But is I guess the question is, isn't there something different about what GOL does that raises just a practical question about whether if you're a sponsor for a measure, you can be objective about clarity, consistency and action ability. Even though you participated in that discussion at great length and are as a sponsor help us get to that goal. That's my question. Yeah. I'm concerned, George, and I respect it. However, I think that. I've been on GOL since it was formed what two years ago. And this issue has never come up. And people have sponsored resolutions, proclamations, bylaws. But the reason I can't support it is because you have the two sponsors, two of the three sponsors here, and we have shown over and over again that we will, that we listen, that we go back and take into consideration the comments of our colleagues, the comments of the lawyers. We don't always come to agreement. The only thing that we're voting on is whether it's clear, consistent and actionable. And in truth, four months ago, when I wanted it to be voted on, I couldn't have as a GOL member voted on it with some of the issues that were there. So I think that there is an element of faith that you need to have in your colleagues. And I don't think that's a misguided assumption. I don't know. So I came at it from the view of somebody who's new to the committee, which is the opposite of what you just said. And, you know, Mandy's done a lot of really good work and you've done a lot of good work, but Mandy's statements at a couple of times, even today were that the sponsors have talked about this and the sponsors agree that this is an acceptable change. And it struck me every time she's done that, that I've got these two things going on. On the one hand, I really appreciate what she just said and that it really has helped the committee move forward just as we've had with other sponsors like Darcy and the plastic bag bylaw. But on the other hand, it sort of seemed to be a role that was different from the role of the committee. And that's where I was feeling uncomfortable. Joe has her hand up. Please Mandy. So a couple of things with that. I'll address Andy first and then I'll say some other things with what Andy just said. The sponsors operated under the assumption that. That GOL asks for a town attorney opinion and revisions because GOL intends to accept. What the town attorney says with that. And therefore, if the sponsors agreed with those changes, there was no issue in terms of. Whether that. Change is problematic or not for GOL. I think that's an assumption that maybe we need to talk about in GOL in GOL in the past, we've gone with these opinions and said, okay, are we accepting the council, the town councils, the town attorneys. Changes are the town attorney making it clear, consistent and actionable. And I guess that's something in this review. We didn't actually review all of those changes. For whether the town attorney was being clear, consistent and actionable. But I think in this case, the sponsors assumed that. Any change the town attorney was making GOL would accept as a change for clarity, consistency or action ability. And therefore if the sponsors agreed with it, that the only problem was if the sponsors didn't agree with it. So maybe we need to discuss what GOL does with suggested changes from a town attorney. For future bylaws. So that's my response to that in terms of whether I was operating. So I was operating as a sponsor in that sense, but I still maintain that GOL has no difference than CRC or TSO. Imagine if these three sponsors of this bylaw were all on TSO. We happened to not any of us be on TSO, but it was entirely possible. We could have all been on TSO just like two of us happened to be on GOL. So does that mean that going into. TSO and reviewing something that has three sponsors that already as, as anyone would suggest, suggest already support all of that. What's the point of a TSO review if a majority of the council of the majority of the body is already a supporter of it. So you have to take as Pat said with faith that this is no different than that type of review because what's the point of sending it to a committee that has the sponsors on it when you already know what their votes going to be. So I don't believe a GOL review is any different in terms of voting than a review at a different committee where the sponsors happen to be on that committee for a substantive review. And I still maintained that we as counselors are elected by the body by the town to vote. And vote however we decide we vote. And this is not an instance where there is any required recusal. And I don't believe and I strongly, I strongly believe that no other counselor can tell me whether I must recuse myself from a vote for something that state law does not require me to recuse from, or that the charter does not require me to recuse from. That is my own decision. And the council, the other fellow counselors can look at me GOL vote or look at the CRC vote or look at the TSO vote when there's sponsors on that and make a decision as to how, how to interpret my own vote if I'm also a sponsor. You'll see the wild animal act by law. The sponsor was on the committee that substantively reviewed it. I'd have to go back to see whether that sponsor abstained or not from a recommend to the council. To pass or not. I'm not sure she did. I think it was a unanimous vote. Five zero and committee and that sponsor was on the committee. So we had no right to tell that sponsor that she couldn't. Vote because she was a sponsor there. And I don't believe any counselor has a right to tell me whether I can or can't vote on this committee either. I'm going to take maybe. Back to. First of all, there is no state law. That. Says anything about recusal in this situation. In addition to that, when the council briefly discussed this on Monday, we came to no conclusion. So there is no council direction on this. And if there were, if there were any, if there were any, if there were any, if there were any, if there were any, if there were any. So there is no council direction on this. And if there were, it would have to be in our rules or procedure. And even then I think that could be contested. By the fact that it's not in state law. So I mean, you've all heard how I feel about this. I feel that every counselor has a vote, no matter the issue, unless state law requires that they recuse. Second of all. And when we get to this. And we've seen it, we've seen it. I never take attorney's opinions as the word. I look at them and say, do I agree? And I'll go back and I'll argue with them and I'll, you know, say, no, I don't want to agree with that. And I've had moments where I've had to work with. Directly with our attorneys. Or the town on the issue of the evaluation and records for the town. And, you know, it wasn't until I went back and around about five times asking my questions different ways that I ever got complete clarity and an acceptable way in which to handle it. So when I look at an attorney's opinion, I do not accept it as the word. Going on that a little bit, somehow or other, we overvalue KP Law's comments. We've had two other lawyers looking at these things and disagreeing and sharply disagreeing with her evaluations and her conclusions on a variety of issues. So does that make her, why does that make her voice predominant instead of, hey, we've had two other lawyers look at this and they don't agree? So I don't want to lose my ability to think through anyone's comments, whether they're my own or a lawyer's or Andy's or anybody's. And I don't want to be restricted in my responsibilities as a counselor. I want to be clear. My comments were not disrespect from the law. My father, lawyer's comments were not disrespect for KP Law. It's just how I, I've dealt with legal opinions for most of my 51, 48 years or whatever of professional life. And that's how I've always dealt with the reason it's worth listening to is because if it were contested and we were ending up in court, they're going to be our attorneys. So we need to evaluate it. And I think we do need to give it extra weight when it comes to a policy question, such as we just were talking about with the question of what would happen if there was an action by the federal government against us because of the reason stated, you know, we've evaluated that there was a risk question, not a lot of, and it was what it was. I was just going to say we need to evaluate, but our lawyer would have to find a way to defend our decision if we were taken to court. And I'm assuming that they would do a really good job. I don't think there's anything in this document where we've said that we don't accept the legal opinion where it was a matter of risk, mostly the places where we said, no, we want to keep it in. It was a matter of duplication of state law. And so I'm ready to vote, gang. OK, I think I can hear that. I still feel that my point has been kind of missed and I'm not going to I don't want to beat it to death. But you all, well, all of you saying I agree with, I don't I don't have any problem with, but nobody seems to have the sense that I have. And then I'm going to leave it here, I guess, is that that what Geo Geo well does is different than what other committees do. And that's where it is different, George. But it doesn't mean counselors have to recuse themselves. Yeah. And in the end, it is not a committee that makes the decision. It is the council. And as Mandy, Joe said, you can look at the minutes. You can see who voted which way. And if you feel like somehow or another, there was skill, duggery, then, you know, you can take that into account. But the committee is just a recommendation. So I'm ready to entertain a motion to declare. The responsible employer by law to be clear, consistent, and act to recommend to the council that we declare it clear, consistent, and actionable. I second. Now, Andy, I believe you had a question. Or did you about this particular by law? The motion is on the wage theft. No, this motion is on the responsible employer by law. Then it's a frail. Here's what the question is. And I don't know if you want to, if you have it up, have it available, Mandy, and put it up. What I'm looking at is on the bottom of page two, G and H. I think are the two ones that are there. Because on the one hand, it says shall give a preference to Amherst residents in there, after residents of Hanford, Hampton, and Franklin County. And the next one, it endeavors to achieve percentages in certain listed categories. How does a contractor deal with the question of what to do if those two seem in conflict with each other? Because one preference makes it impossible to achieve the other preference. So I'll try to respond to that. Section H in both this one and the TIF, because it's repeated in both, is a you're trying to, and there are no penalties if you do not do it. Whereas Section G is a you shall. So that sort of gives you the idea of which one gets preference depending on it. And so part of the documentation that the contractor would have to provide under Section H or I, I think it is. Because it goes on to submit the wherever it's submit, it's still an H. What the contractor could do is say, hey, in complying with Section G, I was not able to comply with Section H. Because everyone that fit the, say, veteran one didn't live in Hampshire, Hampton, or Franklin Counties. And so I had to make the choice. And because G is a shall and H is a shall endeavor, shall one out. And it would just be simply a providing the documentation to that or making that statement. Andy, is that satisfied you? Do you have a further question? Getting into clarity and I guess the question is whether there is other language that could be used that would make the preference or the importance of the section more clear for the reader, future readers of the bylaw is to which one is the predominant one because if I'm a contractor looking at it and I'm not a lawyer and I get into the questions of the distinction between shall not discriminate and shall endeavor to, I'm not sure it's as clear to somebody who hasn't, doesn't approach it from that kind of illegal perspective. And so it's not that I'm disagreeing with the policy. I'm just, it's a clarity question. Shall endeavor was KP law's idea. And shall not discriminate seems to me that we're making sure that if residents of Connecticut who are already working for a contractor or applying for positions aren't discriminated against, I don't see that, I guess I just don't see the problem. In the same, I just don't quite see it, Andy. Can you say it in a different way for me? I'm a contractor, not a lawyer, and I'm looking at the two and I'm trying to weigh between trying to give preference to residents of Massachusetts who equally qualified and preferences to Amherst residents and trying to achieve the goals of 15.3% of color. And I'm not sure that it's as, I wanted to be clear to the contractor as to which one they should take first, raising the question as to whether it is sufficiently clear to a nonlawyer reader of the bylaw. Lisa, do you have anything you want to say to this? You know, I wavered back and forth, raised my hand and didn't because I don't have an answer on the clarity issue in the language, I guess I would say from a practical perspective. The contractor is usually in pretty regular contact with the city staff who work on these issues and would just ask the question. And I think and also on projects that we've had that have had both the residency goal as well as diversity goals, the Shawl Endeavor really speaks to it. They're trying to meet it. If they might do better on one of the goals and or on two out of four, if you count women, people of color, veterans residency. And as long as they have very few employees period and they've got someone who's an Amherst resident or Hampshire resident, but they don't have somebody who's a woman, you can say, oh, well, they did make an effort in that regard. If they have a lot of employees and clearly haven't made an effort on multiple of them or have only focused on one, that's just all of what gets taken into account when it's evaluating, is this somebody who made an effort for future work? But there is no under this bylaw. There's no penalty for it. There's no hard and fast evaluation process even if the town does. The town just has an ability, again, the staff who are dealing with it know where a contractor has made some attempts or just said, I don't care. I'm just bringing who I'm bringing and I'm not going to care about any of this. And it provides that town staff with a tool to say, that's a contractor we don't really want to use again because they just disregarded it totally. I don't think we come into issues of, well, they only really cared about this or the contractor wasn't clear on which ones to prioritize. We just haven't run across that kind of situation. They are generally trying on all of them and they either made efforts towards it or they disregarded it and didn't focus on it. So looking at age, if you change it just a little bit so the contractor shall make a good faith effort to provide as opposed to endeavor, is that more clear? Well, I'm going to stick with KP law and endeavor. Yeah. Me, they mean the same. And it's simpler. Yeah. I guess what we're relying on here is that when a contractor reads this and G&H, they would get guidance from town staff as to what they should be doing. Because I can see Andy's point that you're just reading from a straightforward point of view, you think, well, which am I supposed to give preference to here? And if I have prospective employees who come from the Amherst area or from the areas that are identified in G, but they're all white, how do I balance that against the desire to? And if I ignore, if I go outside of the area to get people of color, is that violating G? I guess the answer you're giving us is that there's no penalty here, so there's no technical violation. These are aspirational. The challenges exist even in just H alone. Is women more important versus veterans versus people of color? And the practicality is that there have not been as UMass's campus and East Hampton and Springfield, where contractors are making efforts, it shows up in different degrees on that. And where contractors are doing a great job, it shows up that they're achieving all of it. And then there are contractors who continue to just bring white men from outside an area. Let me just speak to this as somebody who's written multiple proposals over the years where I've had to meet these kinds of requirements or at least address them. And in a cost proposal, for example, or even in the technical proposal, this might take up two, three pages. It could talk everything about how you recruited. It could talk about and then have some kind of matrix that shows percentages in each of these and qualifications and stuff like that. It's in some ways, it leaves it to the creativity of the contractor to be convincing. And in some cases, you might get a federal or state agency or even a foundation, although they don't usually come in with these kinds of requirements. They might give you some kind of format that they want you to answer to. The federal government is the most strict on this. And you just have to show effort. And if you're smart, you show success. So it's a matter of creativity. I hate to say it. It's creativity in how you convince them. And it's creativity, frankly, and even how you go about recruiting because sometimes the recruiting to meet these categories can be brutal. OK, well, go on. OK, I'm not hearing a consensus to change this. Though I think Andy's raised a good point that, but the counter seems to be that this is really in some ways more a tool for town staff in evaluating future contracting and that the language is clear enough in terms of what we're asking. And there is no penalty. So we have a motion on the table. It's been seconded. I'm ready to proceed to vote unless there are further comments. Hearing and seeing none, I'm going to move to vote. Lynn. Yes. Mandy. Abstain. Pat. Yes. George, the chair votes yes. Andy. Yes. So the vote is a four in favor, none against, and one abstention on this motion. The second motion is to declare the wage and tip theft bylaw to be clear, consistent, and actionable. Is there a second? Yes. Lynn has seconded. Any comments or discussion further on this bylaw in this motion? Seeing none, I'm prepared to move to vote. This time I'll begin with Pat. Yes. Lynn. Yes. Mandy. Abstain. I vote yes. Andy. Yes. Again, the vote is four in favor, none against, and one abstention. Both motions pass. All right. We're almost done schedule. I want to move now to the bylaw that has been presented. It's been through CRC and approved by CRC. I believe the vote was unanimous. But I will check with that later. This is prohibiting the use of wild and exotic animals to traveling shows and circuses. And you should find in your packet three documents related to this bylaw. One was the initial KP law response, which was basically one sentence saying, we have no changes to recommend to this bylaw. The second is the bylaw itself. The third is a series of email messages back and forth. Because member of this committee, I thought very astutely actually looked into mass general law and found what he felt might be a possible conflict. And so I put that into an email, sent it to KP law. And lo and behold, very quickly, actually, they sent back the document that you have in your packet. And if anyone actually read the three legal, what are they? Anyway, it seemed like KP law was getting their revenge. And so they hit us with everything, but the kitchen sank. But the bottom line is they did not see a problem with existing state law related to circuses and this proposed bylaw. So those are the three documents in your packet. If we could put the bylaw up on the screen. I'm just going to take my leave of the committee. OK, maybe. Yes. Thank you for, yes. Again, we're simply here to determine whether this is clear, consistent, and actionable. As I've just said, the one question of actionability in terms of potential conflict with state law, was addressed in the second KP law memo, where they deemed this not to be in conflict. And otherwise, they had no changes to make. CRC, Mandy, was this a unanimous vote? Did you at least? I just looked it up. It was 4-0 with one absent. The absent member was Sarah Swartz. OK. All right. Any comments, questions, concerns about this bylaw in terms of clarity, consistency, and actionability? Or any comments or concerns about the KP law communications? Can I speak to her? Pat, please. I support this bylaw. And I think it's clear, consistent, and actionable. And for me, I'm delighted that it is here and alive and well, because it was presented. The idea of it was presented to us by Rebecca Twer. I'm not sure if you're listening. But to Lynn and I at our very, very first district meeting. So I'm glad that it's come to fruition, and we're getting ready to look at it and vote on it. And Shalini is the sponsor. Yes. Yeah. So there's no conflict. So I heard you. So I guess we'll get down to the purposes of this committee. I do think that it is clear, consistent, and actionable. I've read through the bylaw several times, and have identified no further issues and confined in no place now after I'm hearing from KP law that it's in conflict with the state law. KP law has advised us that the answer to that is no. And so in as far as support for the bylaw, I think that that's a different issue. I will speak to that at the council meeting. I have said to Shalini very clearly that I am uncomfortable with loading our bylaws, our town bylaws with unnecessary bylaws. And that if a bylaw is speaking to an issue that is something that has never come up and we have no real indication is likely to occur, is being done just because it's a statement of, gee, we really think that this is a bad activity. That doesn't seem to me to be a reason to load our bylaws, but that's an issue for the council. I don't think that's an issue for clarity, consistency, or actionability. I'm going to go off track just a tad. I know that in other municipalities when bylaws present or ordinances presented, the sponsor's names are listed. And you guys knew that it was me and Mandy Joe and Kathy, but would that be helpful to both the committee and the council to have that information directly when we're presenting? Well, yeah, it should be in the GOL report. And it should be made clear before the council, it doesn't actually go into this document. Yeah, no, I know it doesn't go into the document. I actually try to make the point of listing the sponsors when I introduce an item on the agenda. Right. So on the agenda plus. I don't make goof, but I try to. No. And the same with GOL. It should be made clear in the GOL report who the sponsors are. Sometimes I don't always do that. So Pat, your point is well taken that this be clearly communicated to the council and to the public. And there's both the agenda and also the GOL report and our discussion, which of course is a public discussion where it should be made clear. So I need to do a better job on that as well. Any I don't I'm not seeing or hearing any concerns about clarity, consistency, and actionability. I was just going to say one thing you guys have seen me adding in periods and stuff, semicolons there instead of commas and a period here. OK. Just correcting some of the Scrivener stuff. I will say when it was presented to us at CRC, it was not in this format. It was not in a format consistent with our bylaws. So I was I put it in that format for CRC to be able to see it. The sponsors were saw the new format and this is the format that CRC voted. But I didn't obviously proofread everything as I went through for everything. And I'm seeing more as I scroll. But listen, maybe we could go through it briefly just because that is and Mandy, you've been very, very good about this and we're much in your debt. But that is and for Athena's sake, that is really one of our functions is to make sure that this is in the proper form. And so do you want to go through it? I think probably we should. I mean, we should at least look at it. I tried to put it in the proper form so that the sponsors would be able to see it and mainly so that CRC would see it in the proper form so that when it got here and got everything moved around, if it did, CRC wouldn't be like, wait, that's not what it looked like when we voted on it. But I didn't necessarily proofread for all the small sort of consistency stuff. OK. Well, then maybe we should take the time for a few moments and do that now if that's all right with the rest of the committee. Otherwise, we could come back to it next time after people have had a chance. But I think we have the time today to do that. We have the time today. I'm sorry. That would be good because right now, I'm hoping it will go on the agenda for the 19th. OK. Andy has read it a number of times. He's not noted anything, but this is a different kind of reading. There's also a question of what the actual correct format is for bylaws. And I know that I don't have a particularly firm grasp of that. I think Mandy does have a better grasp perhaps. I basically tried to copy one that was already in force that had a penalty block and penalties and copy the same structure, including the A, B, 1, 2, whatever you do. Right, right, right. Oh, that rhymes. That's an added bonus. OK, let's go through the header. We're OK. Penalties for violation of the, excuse me, so prohibiting the use of wild exotic animals and traveling shows and circuses. Penalties for violation of the prohibiting, excuse me, penalties for violation of the prohibiting the use of. Yeah, it's the same title. OK. And then it adds bylaw at the end. OK. Criminal enforcement violation, no punctuation, fine. Non-criminal disposition, enforcement by police department, animal welfare officer, fine. A, purpose. It is the intent of the Amherstown Council to protect the public against hazards that wild and exotic animals use in traveling shows and circuses posed to society and to protect wild and exotic animals from cruel and inhumane treatment. I do want to say that the bylaw review committee felt like purpose, it could be there, but is not a requirement in writing up a bylaw that generally the purpose is embedded in the title of the bylaw. But it can go either way. And I think the last two we just voted on today had purpose statements, or at least one of them did. So we have gone either way. Right. I really like purpose statements. I do too. I think it's a good way to begin, even if it's in the title and is somewhat repetitive. I kind of like it. Definitions B, for the purpose of this bylaw, only comma, the following words in terms shall be deemed to mean and to be construed as follows. And here I'm not going to read this, but I'll let people read it silently if they see any problems with punctuation, parenthesis, et cetera. So be silent for a moment. As you read through one, two, three, and four. Can I ask a question in definitions that are in the previous one we passed and then what's coming in surveillance tech? We have capitalized each individual word and the definitions, and then continued to capitalize throughout the bylaw. I can start making those changes for traveling, show, and wild or exotic animal, if that's our plan, to make sure that they're always capitalized. Yeah, I'd go ahead and do it. It would do something like this. Yeah, I can. So person, circus, traveling, show, wild, or exotic. Let's say that as a reviewer looking at some of the terms used in number four, it's using terminology that, obviously, I'm not as familiar with because of not my area of professional expertise. You're not a trained botanist or biologist. I can say that Evan's place on CRC paid well here because he was able to look at that and say, oh, wait, some of that includes this. And do we really want to include that? I miss him on GL. He specifically did it with Arteo dactylla that I can't even pronounce, that has llamas and alpacas. Yes, right. OK. I want to move quickly, but we do want to be thorough. If I'm moving too quick, let me. So if we went through, if we can roll back up just for a moment. Do I need to roll up further? Please, if you don't mind. So one, two, three, and four, we have the change in the capitalization. Any other problems people notice? No. OK, then under four, just as we go through. Thank you. So the next animals in capitalized. I don't think this one does because it's not referring to wild or exotic. All right. And then here's four. I'm trying to get all of four in. Let me know when I can scroll to five. I'm ready. Yep, please. Animals after exotic. OK. Yep. I switched ordinance to bylaw. I just happened to miss that one. Thank you. I think this is the provisions of this bylaw shall not apply to, on the exceptions. Capital B. Are we capitalizing bylaw? That's a question. Yeah, I don't know. I think we've done that in the past, so I have to go up and do that one other place, I think. And how about down below where you changed it to bylaw? Yep, I've got that one, I think. The purpose of this bylaw. Yeah, I got it here. Got it. All right. And that's the end. That's the end. OK, good. So unless there are any further comments, observations, I'm prepared to entertain a motion to declare this bylaw. If we can scroll up to the title. You don't have a memorized search? No, I haven't. I'm sorry. Prohibiting the use of wild and exotic animals and traveling shows and circuses to be clear, consistent and actionable. Is there a second? Second. And has seconded any further comment or discussion? One more. We defined person. Ouch, OK. So that's the only place it shows up. Instead of that, a friendly change. Yes. It was being made while he was making the motion, so it was included in the motion. Still speaking. I think we have to re-vote. No, no, I didn't hear that. I didn't hear that. All right, so we have a motion that's been seconded. I'm sorry. Sorry, the purpose has wild and exotic animals. Oh my goodness, yeah. And traveling shows. And circuses. These are scrivener errors. And then exotic animals, yeah. That's correct. Thank you. OK, I think that's it. Move the question. Go. All right, prepared to move to vote. Pat DeAngelis. Yes. Lynn Grissimer. Yes. Manny Jo Hanneke. Yes. The chair is a yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. So the vote is unanimous 5-0 declaring this bylaw clear, consistent, and actionable. We have a resolution before us. There are two documents in the packet. This is a resolution on East West Rail. And the sponsor, I'm sorry? Nothing, sorry. Working on it. And the sponsor is Lynn Grissimer. Right. And I think there were eventually three versions that I saw, but I believe what's in your packet that's relevant is draft two. Did I put the wrong one up, Lynn? Well, that Lynn will tell us. And then there's also. This shows your changes, which I believe I accepted all of them. Right. There are we looking at your document, Manny Jo? Yes. That's the one I had in the packet. If that's not the right one, I'll find the right one. Well, then you sent me two drafts, but I'm hoping that the draft that Manny Jo went through and made changes on was based on draft two. That's the correct draft. OK. So we can look at this document. Should I accept all the changes in this one? OK. OK. We're going to go through this line by line if you can bear with me. Resolution supporting east-west passenger rail, whereas residents of Amherst are underserved by public transit connecting them to Worcester and Boston, and whereas the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts located in Amherst and many of its students, faculty and staff would benefit from public transit connecting them to eastern Massachusetts, including other UMass campuses and work and internship opportunities in Worcester and Boston. Is there a comma needed there? No. No. Right. Whereas train service would provide an alternative to travel on the heavily congested Massachusetts turn pike, and whereas travel by rail reduces carbon emissions and air pollutants, and whereas inequity in public transportation creates an environmental justice issue for low income and minority populations living in Amherst, and whereas Amherst is a potential passenger rail stop on the central corridor rail line running between New London, Connecticut, and Brattleboro, Vermont. And whereas it best. Not really. What, Lynn? I'm sorry. Go ahead. But that's not really true because they moved it from Amherst and Northampton. I was wondering about that, too. It says potential. You have to be a vibe. Go ahead. I mean, they talk about pending restoration of train service to the Amherst station there. It'd be great. But go ahead. Not going to happen, but. Yeah, right. Is that a matter of clarity, consistency, or action? Or just reality? This committee does not deal with reality. It's always a potential George. It's still there. It could be a potential rail stop. Right, exactly. Could be a potential space station, too, but anyway. All right, so whereas a passenger rail stop in Palmer could serve as a transfer point to train service north on the central corridor rail line to Amherst and whereas PDTA bus service connecting Amherst to Belcher Town Center could be extended to Palmer as an interim step in restoration of train service to Amherst station. Period. Now, therefore, be it resolved, the town of Amherst supports east-west passenger rail connecting Springfield and Boston with the station stop in Palmer. Period. Be it further resolved that the clerk of the Amherst town council shall cause a copy of this resolution to be sent to Massachusetts Governor Charles Baker, members of MassDOT East-West Study Advisory Committee, Massachusetts President of the Senate, Karen East-Spilka, Massachusetts Speaker of the House, Representative Robert A. DeLeo, State Senator Joanne Ann Cumberford, and State Representative Mindy Donn. Period. I don't see any typos or punctuation or any sorts of issues like that. Any concern about clarity, consistency, or actionability in the text? I just capitalized resolution with our capitalized thing right here. OK. I could see this has nothing to do with our decision, whether it's actionable. But I could see people wanting to mess with this issue of the Amherst rail stop, ETA buses, but that's not our concern. Right, exactly. They may want to come in or change that, but. And I personally would like to add, and I should have done this earlier, Transportation Chair, Senate Transportation Chair. Yeah, I'm blanking on his name. East Long Meadow. Oh, yeah. I can see his face. Yes. Lesser. Yes. Lesser, thank you. What's Lesser's first name, though? Eric. Eric. Eric. All right. Good thing this is a committee. L-E-S-S-E-R. Yes, my recollection is Eric Lesser. And is it called Transportation Committee or is it something else? I'll check it out right now. OK. So we want to add that recipient. And Lynn's going to check for a moment to see if there's a title of the committee. So we can make these changes if we have to with Athena's help, but it'd be nice to get it. And we tend to, for Lynn's purposes, when we have the sponsors at here, like we did with the other two bylaws we just did today, if the sponsor wants to add stuff, we let it be added in this committee. We just don't talk about whether it's good or bad. Right? I think, George, I think that's sort of accurate. We've allowed the sponsors to make changes while it's in front of the committee. Absolutely. Absolutely. Take Lesser out because actually it's unless we want to put in Bonecore because he's actually chair and Strauss. So why don't you just say members of the Joint Committee on Transportation? Member, have that. I think that's actually good because of the following. They change. I'm going to move where it goes. After. I think after Mindy Don. You want it after Mindy?  It should at least be after the speaker of the House. Yeah, why don't you put it in there? OK. Yeah, it doesn't matter. And is it the is it just the Joint Committee or do we call it, you know, the because it's the Senate and the House? When you say joint, that takes care of it. We'll know that it's the State House. Could say of the of the general court. Yeah, after transportation of the general. That's what I was getting at. That's what that's good. OK, so and Mandy is absolutely correct that when we're dealing with resolutions, we like to have the sponsors present and any changes made or made mutually because the goal is to to get it to the council in the form that the sponsors wanted, but also in a form that's clear, consistent and actionable. So whenever possible, we ask sponsors to be present. There are there are occasions, though, when we. Do it on our own. So you want to accept all the changes before we send it? I will do that as I finalize it. OK. Before I copy George and Athena and you on all four that we're voting today. Great. All right, we have in front of us now the resolution as revised and any further comments. If not, I'm prepared to entertain a motion. Seeing no hands. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I'll move to declare the resolution supporting the East West passenger rail clear, consistent and actionable. I'll second it. The second and Pat. OK. Any further discussion? Seeing none. I'm going to move to vote. I'm going to begin with Pat. Yes. I'm going to go to Lynn. Seeing no conflict is a sponsor vote. Yes. I'm never going to be able to live this down. No. And. Was that Mandy or Andy? It was Mandy. OK, then yes. I'm still on speaking terms with Mandy. I think the chair votes. Yes, Andy. Yes. All right, the vote is five zero unanimous to accept this resolution is clear to declare this resolution is clear, consistent and actionable. All right. So it's only 12 noon and we've gotten through. We do not have minutes and that's no criticism of either the minutes or of Athena. We only had one week turnaround. And so we will deal with the minutes at the next meeting of GL going to my calendars, October 21st. We have no public president. So I'm going to note that there's no public comment because there's no public president. What we have, we have about half an hour and we have on the agenda discussion of the process for creating the town manager performance and assessment goals, which is my crude attempt to sort of bring us back to something we worked on very, very hard. And do somewhat of a post mortem and also is thinking of what we could recommend to the council, what we might want to recommend to the council going forward to make the process a little bit more consistent, a little bit smoother, a little bit less onerous. So that is something that I'd like us to, if we have the energy at this point, to wrap our minds around or to suggest how we might begin doing that over the next few weeks or months. So can I ask a point of clarification? Is this to talk about how we went about setting goals or is it also to talk about and or is it also to talk about how we evaluate the manager? I think it's both in my mind because both have fallen to this committee. And so the question, I think Lynn is correct. It's really both. It's the process of evaluating and it's the same goals. Should it be with this committee? If not, where should it be? And insofar as it is with this committee, what should be the process? For better or for worse, the council gave it to this committee. I was personally quite thankful they did. I think you have provided good advice. Let me just speak to the goal settings since I was involved in the goal setting years in a row now and he was probably involved in the year before that. This was the smoothest goal setting I've seen, although the rest of you may feel it wasn't. The fact that we had to go back, I think, four times for discussion with the council didn't surprise me. On the other hand, we got it done in September versus January, which tells you right there. It was a whole lot smoother. And I think that it's a test because they're much more overall broad statements with examples. But what I really, really liked was the fact that policy goals were each pinned to previous actions of the council and the fact that each gave then examples for things that are in our bailiwick, if you will, to follow up. So in many ways, I think upon the goals that we set for the town council, I mean, for the town manager as a statement of the council's goals when it comes particularly to policy. So in general, I just feel very, very grateful for the process that went into setting the goals this year. Are people, again, please raise your hand or just speak up. I'm just going to be free form. I can see you all.  What do people think, first of all, about just the format in which these goals were presented? In other words, distinguishing between policy and management, trying to keep them relatively balanced in terms of number. It seems like we have a kind of rubric or format that, at least Lynn and I think I find fairly clear and coherent and a structure that could be used going forward for the next time tied to specific town council actions. Because again, we often get into this. Somebody's convinced that this is a town council goal, which is not. It's something they want. And so it's important that I think we did succeed this time in identifying goals that all of us share. So first of all, just the way was the actual document, the form it was in, is that something people feel? Would they like to change it? Are they unhappy with it? Would they be willing to go to the council and say, this is the kind of format we'd like to continue to use? Aside from the process for the moment, just the form of the document, thoughts about that? In general, I like the format. What I'm still unsure of is as we were converting from the old format to this one, we had to decide what things got numbered and what didn't get numbered and whether there were numbers. There's the initial statements of implement climate action policy or whatever. But then it was like, by doing these sort of things. And I think that's where I'm still unsure whether we need that or not. And if we do need it, how specific that gets or how many should be in each of those. I know the management goals got fairly long when we started listing stuff like that, whereas the policy goals were a little more generic even in those lists. Yet I think that's where we could get tripped up in further years. But at the same time, I think it helps. We'll have to see next year. We'll help with the evaluation process when we get to that of, oh, did he talk about these things or did he not? But since there are specifics there, that's where we could really get down to, should this one be listed or should that one be listed? And so I'm still not convinced that going into that specificity is good or bad. I don't know yet. The same reaction that Mandy just expressed. My experience from nine years on the Select Board that is that the hard part is to make it both a concise enough document that it's actually can be reasonably accomplished, which I think we did. And that there be a clear and easily usable linkage to the evaluation process that comes forward. And that's where we need to see how it plays out. One of the questions that it raises for me are that I want to think about the goals. And that is, is there a point where we as a council should regularly come back and look at the goals? For instance, six months after adoption, but before we begin the evaluation process. So part of me wants to develop almost a calendar of, when we do goals, here's when we review goals. And I have to say, I'm starting to think about the fact that the next time we set goals, we will be passing them on to the next council. And should there be a way in which we say, we think in February or March at the latest, any council should review the goals and make any adjustments so that it's then set up for the evaluation. The other thought in this, because every time we were working on the goals, I kept saying, OK, what will the evaluation document look like? And I think we should start playing with that. So that we have a clear feeling about how it might work. And so forth. So those are, and that also fits into the calendar sense, when, which very much is starting the evaluation earlier. And then again, I also want to make people aware of the fact that the evaluation is tied to the renewal, not right away, but in another two years, to the renewal of the contract or the fact that any evaluation, if there's an attempt to not renew a contract or to break a contract, has to be done far enough in advance unless it's for the cause. So there's other pieces in this that need to be looked at. The turnover from this council to the next council, the fact that the town manager's contract is tied to the evaluation, the fact that the charter requires the evaluation, and when do we actually do the evaluation, and whether or not that will help us capture greater responses, although I have my own personal opinion about whether or not you can ever capture greater responses. I'm more than glad to share with people. In talking about timing, I wonder if we can try to do the goals earlier. Even with our fairly streamlined process this year, we still didn't pass them till September, early September. But September, which is two months into the year. And so do they specifically need tied to the previous evaluation, I think, is a question we should ask. Or can we be passing them in mid-July right after budget, which would put a committee working on revising goals, potentially before we've even seen the manager's self-evaluation and everything, I think we have to talk about that timeline too, because if we're going to be re-looking at them six months later, well, that's March, pretty much. And if he gets reviewed and submits a self-evaluation in July, you can't really change stuff. Three months is a very small amount of time to correct, given what the goals are. So I think we need to look at the timing of passage of the goals, or at least the start of the development of the goals, to see if we can get the passage closer into potentially July or early August. Well, and people have suggested they would like to see the evaluation occur earlier, which I agree with, but I also don't want to... I mean, if we had started to try to throw evaluation activity into June and July when we were trying to sort through the budget mess this year, I think we all would have run from the room screaming. But we might be able to put some of the evaluation stuff earlier. I was talking about timeline, like going out to committee chairs in public can probably be in May and early June. And if Paul submits his self-evaluation in early July, we might be able to do it in late July instead of late August. So having a calendar and having that calendar reside with a specific committee and committee chair, or having it reside with the president, these seem sensible to me. I like the idea of it being with a specific committee because then it's part of that committee's job is to keep track of this sort of thing and make sure to keep an eye on the calendar, etc. It could become something that the president does and just add to her list of things to do. We have become the de facto or whatever committee for doing this that may be objected to by other members of the council. We'll have to deal with that. But doesn't it make sense that they have a group of people, not just one person, but a group of people, part of who the responsibility is to keep an eye on that, creating that calendar and keeping an eye on it and then making sure that specific actions get taken when it should be taken? Or should that stay with the president? I think it needs to stay with the committee. I think the committee, I would also say maybe enlist the clerk's help too in keeping that calendar and calendaring to remind committee chairs. Because as committees turn over, hopefully our clerk doesn't turn over too frequently. And so she might be able to do calendar and pings for her to send out reminders to committee chairs. Oh, it's now time for you to start thinking about this or things like that. We're trying to do it with resolutions that happen yearly, but I would include the clerk in the calendar. And as much as I agree with trying to do a review of the goals on an every six month basis and backing it up as early as January, every other year, that means it is part of the quote orientation of a new body, which is good. It should be part of the orientation of a new body. Not they then feel prepared to chime in on changes to the goals is a whole nother issue. And then the other pieces does, I really don't believe that you want the outgoing body to do a review in December unless for something less something really serious like COVID has emerged. It's really something that should come up with the seeding of a new body. I really like the idea of reviewing the policies and goals periodically because that was one of the things that when we were deliberating about and finalizing the policies, we kind of promised the community that we were creating a living document and that we would be as a group making sure that if changes were necessary, they came forward and were there in this document. So I'm not sure what that process should look like, but I think it's a critical one, particularly around issues of racial equity and probably energy and climate action as well, but definitely around racial equity issues because those are in many ways the most difficult issues to address on so many levels. And I think that we need to consistently review for that. The very fact that we hired ambassadors and I remember Paul saying, oh, I didn't think of that when somebody said, are they all white? Did you hire any people killer? And he honestly, and I respect him for that, just said, oh, I didn't think of that. So to me, how do we make sure that kind of thinking is present in the decisions he makes and the decisions that we make? So I don't know, that's kind of where. I want to also bring up the issue, the roles of public in the formation of these goals. If this resides in a committee and we are having, obviously, public meetings where we are trying to shape, as we did shape this document, then there's a clear place where people can go if they wish to express their thoughts on this. How important is that in this process? I mean, clearly, we're focused on just the challenge of 13 people coming to some agreement as to what the goals should be and how they should be expressed. And that's a really difficult job, but there also seems to be a place for the public's involvement, I assume, and their input and that is a transparent process. It's not something that's done, you know, in the dark. It's so they can come and witness or listen or contribute and speak in public comment. I assume that that it makes our job more difficult, but that's OK. I mean, that's right. So how important is that? I have a strong opinion that I said before we, I mean, a public can always come that they can come sit in when when we're formulating the goals, whatever. But the reality is, before we get into too much depth of public opinion, we need other councillor's opinions. Right. And and so it seems to me that while it may have seemed arduous to the rest of you because of the amount of public opinion that we ended up with this year, the reality is it made those goals better. And it was done as a council and some councillors. Who were not on the committee that originally kind of that developed the goals had for some very strong opinions. And so I think there has to be in the timeline, there has to be a date by which we start feeling the councillors out or introducing it to the councillors. And I think there has to be a date and and there should be public comment at least at one time, specifically related to the goals during a council meeting. After that, it can be during general public comment. But they're that's just my feelings about it. Andy, we're covering two different topics really because we've covered calendar and we've covered public input on the calendar thing. The one thing that we didn't talk about was when the town managers contract renews and whether that comes a factor. So there's the renewal of the contract. There's the fiscal year or two things. I think the renewal of the contract may turn actually more important just for historical purposes, because it kind of can lay some of the calendar piece to rest. The select board was driven in its summer schedule by wanting to do it after the end of town meeting. We don't have any on meeting anymore. So that should be put to rest. As far as public input, yes, we need, you know, I think the public has plenty of time for input and there was a stronger document because we heard from the public and we at least always didn't agree with everything they said. We certainly thought about it and did things consciously with what we heard in mind. And that's an important part of everything council does. The manager's contract comes up for renewal in 2024. I'm checking that right now. In what month? August, end of August. Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah, and then, but there is also the issue of. Is it a six month notice? It's sick. I'm looking at that right now, Mandy, Joe. Yeah, I'm sorry. It comes up at the end of August in 2023. We purposely timed it so it would be in the after a, it would not be in. It's in a non, it's in an election year, which means right. It's on full be at the end of its term. Right, it's, but it gives counselors more of a basis. And so we essentially made it almost a four year contract. The issue of notification, if you want to terminate, I'm looking at if you want me, I can put the contract up now. Oh, do you want me to do that? I don't think so. Okay, I do this left. Yeah, let me make sure that the contract is in the document is in our file. The next time we have this conversation. Trying to get counselor input on the goals process. Something we'll talk about, I'm sure again. In my dream world, we have a retreat.  You talk as a group, the 13 of you. Maybe that's, that's just not possible. Forget it. Fine. Okay. Then still the question becomes, how do we get 13 people to, um, they're out in all the same place at the same time with their minds focused on that one specific topic, how do we get them to, um, give us there? And we, you know, it's not that complicated, but essentially we solicit there, there, uh, you know, what do you want for goals for the coming year? That that's not that complicated, I guess. I really like the idea of us being together and talking about, right? But put that aside for a moment. We need to obviously get their opinions. Then it comes to this body and we start shaping a document, which is a goals document. Does that start in the ninth month? The 10th month. So this count of question that we need to sort out. But we create two documents, a goals document and an evaluation document. They're timelines for both that hopefully be fairly much in sync. Um, and it comes to this body to do those things. If, if it is useful to the body, um, since I have, you know, the vast majority of the files related to this, I can try to develop the initial an initial idea of a calendar and put in all of these different pieces under categories of goals, um, evaluation and contract. And bring that back to whenever we're ready for our next discussion. And just, it, it, I think we need, I think there's a way to synchronize this. I, but I do want to keep in mind that certain bodies. Of the council main, namely the finance committee, uh, starting really in April, but in the end, but mostly on May 1st. Um, becomes very busy with the budget. They're busy mostly correct me if I'm wrong, Andy finances, mostly a May and maybe early June, because the, the report and recommendation has to be done within 30 days of referral, right? The only thing that's different from that main to Joe is we do the regional school budget before that. Right. So, so June is a lot less busy than May and April. I guess is where I was thinking. So starting in June. In the normal year, yes, normal year. Yes. Uh, but I think we can, I think we can start doing evaluation collection in April, May and April and May. Uh, but it does seem to me that, um, we may not end up. But if we adopted goals by the end of June, I think that'd be terrific. Well, the only thing, um, and I don't know what your experience now is counselors for this, because I'm looking at it from a longer perspective, the, uh, feeling was is when problems were identified in an evaluation to be important to be able to incorporate those into goals. That's where that whole sequence came from. So you could do a preliminary adoption of goals even in June and then revisit them in, you know, July, August, whenever the evaluation, I think the revisiting is actually the answer to the question. So I want to bring this, this has been helpful to me. I want to bring this to a conclusion at least for today. I think it is something that this committee can do as a service to the council. There may be, probably will be some who may object, does this fall under our charge? I think governance covers this, covers this, but just be prepared for that potential object. Who are you? GOL to blah, blah, blah. But on the other hand, someone needs to step forward. And I think it should be more than one individual. So I'm very strongly believe that that's something that GOL should take on and that it's covered by our charge that may not sale, but that's what I'm going to make the case for. But what I'm hearing today is that this body, this committee should be able to produce a goals document, an evaluation document, a timeline or calendar and a process for both evaluation and GOL setting. Now that's a tall order, but it seems to be crucial for this council going forward. After three years, we should be able to hand on to our successors, these things. And I think we made excellent progress this year with the documents. And what I'm hearing is we have a lot of work to do in terms of just clarifying the process and establishing clear timelines and a calendar and then bringing that to the council, letting them know what we're doing, but also eventually bring it to the council for their approval. I think they'll love us for this, but. I don't, they originally gave GOL the job. Right. Now, I think we're going to, we're going to run with this until we get carried off in, in manacles to ever agree. And, you know, I think it's really important. Now we also have, it sounds like a couple of bylaws coming to us. We do. We have four bylaws that will be coming to us from DPW. And I have to go back in my notes. My guess is that some of them may have to go to TSO first. Okay. So they are the stormwater bylaw, an illicit discharge bylaw, some water bylaw, and then we've had the flood maps that we've known about. And I think Christine Brestrup talked about at least the flood map one. Lynn and I have no idea what they're going to look like, but that was the first question. They come to us in whatever form they come to us and then we need to put them in the proper form. So let, let me just say it's... Andy, Joe has to put them into the proper form. Well, we need to offer them a deal, because something you may not be here. Given that they're coming from town staff, they better put them in the form. Right. We understand that. Flood water, illicit discharge, water, bylaw, sewer, bylaw, and the maps. Oh, there's a sewer bylaw too. Yeah. I'm not sure the maps are a bylaw. I just think that I think they are some sort of, they're changes to the zoning bylaw. So I, we'll see. Anyway, I got a gun over actually. Yeah, I will put this, I'm going to put this on the agenda for next time to continue discussion. Yeah. We hope that we'll get some things from Lynn in terms of, of calendar at least. I will do some thinking and maybe some writing in terms of document and so forth, just to probably put in some better order. I will avoid thinking at all costs. You get a break for a while. You've been thinking very hard. So that's on our next agenda. I will do some work, Lynn will do some work. And then if we get some bylaws, we'll deal with them. But. It's going to come up. Would you say based recognition technology maybe by next meeting on GOL, if Pat and I have our fingers crossed. The surveillance bylaw has been split in two. And we're hoping that the first half comes, gets through TSO tomorrow, but we'll see. We don't know. What is the other one? So it's face recognition. It was split into face recognition, prohibition bylaw and surveillance technology oversight. And the surveillance technology oversight will be at least another month.  Yeah. Okay. All right. I'm going to declare this meeting adjourned at exactly 12 30, it seems. Wish you all a good day. And, uh, Mandy, you'll be setting this up later. You've got it. Thank you all. Good meeting, guys. Thanks, George. Thanks, Emily.


All right, thanks so much for coming and thanks so much to the Blender Foundation and everyone who's been putting this together. It's been amazing to see all the talks today. My name is Kevin Kress and I'm presenting some of the work of the Living Architecture Systems Group and I wanted to give a little bit of a thank you to some of my other collaborators who couldn't be here before I start the presentation. So Phillip Beasley, Timothy Boll and Matt Gorbit who have been sort of really influential in the work I'm about to describe. So this talk is titled, An Open Software Ecosystem for Designing Living Architecture. And before I get into the talk, I just want to talk a little bit about what the Living Architecture Systems Group is and what we mean when we say Living Architecture. So our group is an international partnership of researchers, artists and industrial collaborators. And we're interested in studying how we can build sustainable, adaptive environments that can move, respond and learn and that are inclusive and empathetic towards their inhabitants. So we try out a bunch of different fabrication methods for making lightweight structures, modeling methods, behavioral systems for these Living Architecture testbeds that are produced. And so these testbeds are sort of large canopies, they're sort of cultural, sculptural spaces that respond to visitors as they move through them and interact with them. And they have a variety of software tools that help drive their behavior and contribute to their production and interaction. And so a lot of this work can be kind of summed up in a couple of simple diagrams. So typically for architecture we look at sort of these static boundaries, this sort of delineation between inside and outside, and you have this sort of static structure that delineates between the two. And at the Living Architecture Systems Group we're really interested in exploring how those boundaries can expand and start to become porous, can start to allow energy flows between the interior and the exterior, and how these environments can become a little more open, a little more interactive. And so a bit about myself, when I started using Blender I think I fit very much in this sort of static box method. It was sort of my tool that I love to use for absolutely everything. If I was doing modeling, if I was doing renderings, if I was doing photo editing, I just defaulted to Blender because it was this fantastic tool that had everything I could possibly need in it, except for one thing. So I gave a talk back in 2019 about adding some architectural dimensioning and drawing tools to Blender because that was sort of the one thing that I couldn't do with it, and I wanted to be able to do everything inside this tool. But as I started working with the Living Architecture Systems Group I found that when you're working in an interdisciplinary practice, especially when you're doing shorter term collaborations, you can't just sort of, everybody's got their software tool that they know really well and they like to use, so you can't just kind of expect everyone to come and work in your platform. You've got to start to open those boundaries, and Blender, being the phenomenal tool that it is, makes it really easy and really simple for us to start to expand those things and build out. So I want to talk about sort of our history of Blender and how we've been using it in the studio by talking about four of the Living Architecture Systems Group testbeds, and these are these sort of immersive environments that are designed by architect and artist Philip Easley. So we've got two, one in Meander, which is in Cambridge in Canada. Arfa Reef, which is in France. Grove, which was an exhibition for the Venice Biennale. And Poetic Vale, which is in Tilburg in the Netherlands. So Meander's the first project, and I came in to this project about partway through. It's this sort of large central grotto made up of a couple of spheres and this sort of large expanse of canopy that's over an event space. And the role of Blender in this project, I'll start the video there, was really as a visualization tool sort of after the fact. Part of Living Architecture Systems Groups really mandates is to not just make these spaces, make these testbeds, but to communicate how they work, how they function, and what's going on inside them so that they're not just these sort of black box spaces, so that we can really communicate to people so that they understand how they work. So we produced these series of animated visualizations in Blender and these run sort of on some display boards in the space to kind of communicate what each of the sensors and actuators are doing and how they're responding to people's engagement. And we found we were able to create sort of a fairly high-fidelity model of the sculpture of the testbed using Blender. So for the next project for Arthur Reef in La Fru in France, we decided to use Blender more for the schematic design phase of the project. So we started out modeling the sort of canopies of this space. We used sort of a sculpted plane to define sort of the overall gesture and then some sort of simple hex grid geometries with particle systems driven using weight painting so that we could really sort of gesturally define what the movements of these different components would be throughout the space and how they would look. So these are just a couple of images of some sort of previous renderings that we did. But what we found was that translating that sort of very sculptural, very gestural Blender model into sort of the technical documentation that the team needed to actually construct the testbed provided some challenges. You know, if we exported via FBX or OBJ or any of these sort of more standard file formats, a lot of the hierarchical information that was really key to the design of the sculpture got sort of crunched down and made these sort of very difficult to work with files that were challenging for the team to take into, you know, Rhino or Fusion 360 to really build out the industrial design of the sculpture. So that led us to produce what we're calling the living architecture systems description. It's a custom exchange format that we've been working on that's based in JSON and it's this hierarchical model description of the sculpture that talks about the device design, the spatial design, the behavioral design and the sort of lexicon of components and assemblies that make up each of these testbeds. And what that description allows us to do is because it's very lightweight, we can use it to derive different models in different software platforms, whether that's, you know, in Rhino for documentation or in Blender for visualization or, you know, in Unreal or Unity or Godot for sort of more interactive applications or in our custom behavioral modeling tools. So a quick example of how that system sort of works. This is one of the sort of spheres that you can see in some of the testbeds in Meander and others and it looks quite complex. You know, there's a lot of components, a lot going on, but if you start to break that down, you realize it's a lot of repeated components. So the underlying geometry that defines these spheres is one of the Archimedean polyhedra. It's a truncated icosahedron, which I think lots of people are familiar with because it's the basic form of a soccer ball or I guess I should say a football. And so it's a pentagon surrounded by hexagons. And so each of those hexagons is what we call a sphere unit and then we can break that down even further. Each of those sphere units is comprised of multiples of these spars that get tied together and each of those is comprised of a subset of components. And so in Blender, we represent this through collection and collection instances and sort of hierarchies of those. And in Rhino, that same sort of assembly can be represented through blocks and block instances. And once we got this working, it allowed us to sort of very quickly round trip between Blender and Rhino. And so you can see, and if you attach a unique ID to these things as well, it allows you to actually update models sort of on the fly between the two softwares, which has been fantastic for our working methods. And so that kind of brings us, and once we realized we could do that with the geometry data, with the spatial data, we realized we could also embed some of the behavioral systems and information for those as well into this data representation. So this is a view of one of the behavioral control systems. It has to be spatialized so that these lights and actuators can respond spatially to different sort of energy flows modeled in the environment. And we can use the same LSD file to inform those systems and give them their spatial layout. This brings us to the next project, which was Grove. Grove was part of the Venice Biennale in 2021. Unfortunately, because of COVID, we had some restrictions on how we could access the site and how we could actually do the construction. So it's this sort of large canopy. There's an extended array of speakers throughout the space with a wonderful spatialized sound composition done by Salvador Breed and a film projected down into the center done by Warren DePerez and Nick Thornton-Jones. And we used Blender quite a bit for previs so that we could make sure we had a really strong understanding of how this was going to look in the space. So both sort of wireframe previs and rendered previs as well. And one thing that was really, really interesting about this process was usually we do lighting design sort of onsite for projects. And it's very sort of fluid. Philip's a fantastic lighting designer. But for this, because we couldn't be in the space, we had to do it all remotely. And all of these lighting cues had to be synced with the film that was being projected in the center and that was being done in Touch Designer. And we needed a way to visualize how that was going to look in the space. So we were able to connect Touch Designer and Blender together using OSC messaging so that we could visualize in real time how these Touch Designer patches that were driving the DMX light controls would appear in the space. And we used sort of Eevee's real-time rendering to drive that. Another portion of this project was the Grove Cattle film that we collaborated on with Warren DePerez and Nick Thornton-Jones. And we were able to use the LISD to send this sort of very detailed model of one of the sculptural testbeds that we produced in Blender. And we were able to convert that into a set of instance blueprints in Unreal Engine as well using this exchange format. And this is a sort of short excerpt that I'll play of the film. And I'll play a longer piece at the end if there's time. And so the film sort of shows this, one of these testbeds, sort of through cycles of life, death and rebirth and how they might evolve over time. The final project that I'll talk about is Poetic Veil, which is at the Textile Museum in Tilburg. It's just about two hours from here. We just finished it a couple of weeks ago. So I've been in the Netherlands quite a bit this last month. And again, sort of really lovely, very dense canopy within this room. This was some of the previs that we'd done in Blender, a couple of renderings mixed with a bit of Photoshop work, bringing in images of previous testbeds. And it's just a quick fly-through of our Blender model. The system was really using the LISD quite a bit to allow us to move back and forth between Blender and Rhino. We worked with one of our designers, Adrian Chu, who worked on this sort of central garland system that sort of arches over another exhibition of a dress by Iris Van Herpen. And this allowed us to sort of work quite freely back and forth between Blender and Rhino. We also engaged with some custom tools that we've been developing in the creation of this sculpture. So a system that we're calling the LAPL, which is being built in Gido engine, which allows us to very quickly sort of sketch out some of these crenellated forms and these shapes and then use sort of a mass spring simulation to start to regularize those polygons and see what the curvature is going to be like of those shapes.  And you can see it comes in just as the sort of triangulated spring net. And then we filled that. And then we've been using the tissue add-on quite a bit to sort of regenerate the dual mesh of that to give us our pentagonal and hexagonal grids back for sort of further instancing and work. And there's just a couple more images of the test bed. And there's some quite evocative shadow play. So another aspect of the work that is sort of still in development at Tilburg is a project that we're calling Living Shadows, which is sort of working between Godot Engine and Blender to create these sort of fictional animated shadows that exist in the same space as the real physical test bed. So you've got the actual object and then its shadows on the wall are being augmented through projection mapping. And we're able to do this because we have such high fidelity models that we're developing in the schematic design phase in Blender. So we have these really detailed digital twins of the actual physical components that allow us to do this work. So we can create this sort of digital double in this virtual world. And we're doing a lot of the animation of the sort of life cycles of these creatures, these virtual creatures in Blender. And it also allows us to do some sort of targeted lighting animation as well that's generated through the projection on some of the glass vessels within the objects.  These things, these sort of virtual creatures can interact with the actual physical components. So they can be sort of scared away by somebody interacting with one of the physical components or they can fly close to it and cause them to light up and respond. That's just about the end of the talk. So thanks so much for having me. Blender has been tremendously helpful in sort of the work of the systems group in really working on these types of interactive environments that can just prompt us to have a bit of wonder and a bit of speculation about how spaces might interact with us and respond to us. If you'd like to know more about the work that we've been doing, you can find us at lasg.ca. We try and publish a lot of the work that we do. So we have a series of folios, sort of short PDF documents on each of these projects. And there's quite a lot more images and content available on each of them if you're interested. And if there is a bit of time, I just like to leave a longer excerpt of the film Cradle playing just to end things off. So thank you very much.