nna vote no on this because the CRC hasn't met yet and should be allowed to basically create its own culture and to get to know each other. I don't think that we should be requiring them to take this particular action as their first action. I don't believe that this requires action by CRC. This basically is referring this with its ideas for consideration by CRC. It does not ask CRC to take action or even to refer back. Sarah? So I was going to sort of build on what Steve said, I appreciate this. And part of me also says, again, what Alyssa said, if each one of us counselors are not thinking of all of these things in our head every single time, we consider something for action. We're not doing our job. And as someone who was with Lynn and several other people at a goals meeting on after five o'clock on a Friday night, we're working like 60, 70 hours a week on this and we're all strong people. I don't see us burning out and we're working really well together. I just think giving this to a committee that is just forming whose charge was very carefully thought out and we referred it back to them to look at it again. I feel like a lot of the things that that committee states in its charge are very similar to this. And I just, I don't want to refer something that seems like redundant work or just more work to a committee that hasn't even met yet. I just, to me, I'd rather just, I don't know, like maybe vote this yes or no than to refer it. Shall we? Could we invite the people who brought this proposal to take in all this feedback and come back with a proposal that, because I think what we all are agreeing is that there is value in what is being proposed but not in the way that it has been proposed. Alyssa. So, fine, don't vote for my motion but my point is if we don't, then it's dead. Unless you come up with another thing to do with it, it's completely just gone and dismissed and over until somebody comes up with another motion which I'll be happy to hear about but that's what I'm trying to avoid. I'm trying, I don't want the petitioners to go back and work on this again. I don't want to see them again because I'm never going to vote. I'm never going to vote to create a separate committee that does this. That's not going to happen. And so we can keep having that camp conversation at Infinitum. What I'm trying to do is take the best of what they're offering, including their personal resources and saying we can consider it over at this other committee. We're not making that committee do anything but if we just let it die instead, that's fine but I'm not hearing any other alternatives and sending them away to come back with another proposal for another committee, we're going to just have the same conversation about. Don't get it. Kathy and then Andy. Okay, we're looking at a very nice way of framing a way of looking at it. It's not dead, it's in our hands. Just, everyone likes this in terms of this. So there's no reason to not adapt, adopt, to do anything with or without referring this and I'm thinking it's what we're doing in rules. We're looking across 30 different, 50 different towns and saying, boy, I like that idea. I like that idea. They're not having to petition us. We're picking good ideas. So I think CRC can do anything they want with this without us necessarily even referring. It won't die. It's very live and it's got a great chart. Andy. I've been struggling with this because I keep looking at the committee charge for the CRC and it doesn't seem that it really fits within the committee charge. So then it was sort of comes as best coming into description of why it fits within the charge because it gives a framework for the CRC to look at issues that are before that committee but there are other issues that could come before other committees that could benefit from the same framework. And for example, if there was a sustainability proposal that came before this council and it was gonna go to a committee, it would not be going to CRC. It would be going to a different committee. So it just didn't seem to make sense. This referral as opposed to GOL which should take a broader look at the question and it's something that was applicable to all areas of expertise and I guess that's what I've been struggling with. Dorothy. One of the things that was not on the report was the list of the members' names and contact information which would be very, very useful and valuable to, I didn't get printed off when I printed it off. Okay. Good. So with contact information. Yes. Well, I don't have a master email list of anything. So that would be very useful because I think that you would be called upon. Different members would be definitely be called upon to do additional research and to look at issues. Mindy Jo. So between George and I, you can tell the GOL committee doesn't always agree with what GOL should do. I think I'm gonna vote against CRC referral even though the content for what Andy said. I, as we discussed this, I believe having GOL look at this in a holistic way to adopt and figure out how to adopt this content in a good way. And that might be a new committee. It might be having our standing committees adopted. It could be done many different ways. And to have a committee that looks at it not just for the community resources policies because there are gonna be some stuff that get referred to us that don't fall into community resources. And I'm gonna go back to GOL right now is dealing with a public ways delegation thing. We're crafting that policy based on a report from the town manager. So this would be, I see similar to that referral to GOL, the public ways referral that will come back to this council with a policy proposal. That the council talked about through a town manager report but we were told to craft something. So there's a motion on the table right now that this be referred for consideration of its content to the new soon to be appointed if you will community resources committee. There's been a second to that motion. I'm going to call the question. All those in favor, opposed. Is there another motion on the floor? Did you get all that? I'm sorry, Margaret. Yes? Okay. George. I move we refer this to GOL. All right, is there a second? Is there a second? Alyssa. So now I'm really confused because I totally understand. Wait a minute, there's a motion on the floor and I need a second. I don't understand what the full motion is. Second. I don't understand what the full motion is because just like we elaborated too long on my motion refer what to GOL is what I'm asking because we refer to GOL, we delegated to them the idea about the parking and figuring out what we might delegate of our duties to the town manager and not. We agreed, we wanted somebody to look at that. I don't agree that I want there to be this separate committee. So I'm not referring having a separate committee to GOL. I know. So I want to know what you're asking to be referred to GOL because just referring a committee proposal to GOL is not something I'm up for. I'm going to go to the person that made the motion. Thank you. I think what I had in mind was basically you're wording but replacing CRC with GOL. So I don't object to your wording. What I am suggesting is that given that this committee has not even yet met, perhaps the most appropriate would be to give it to GOL. So you're wording just substitute GOL for CRC. Okay, hold on one second. Margaret, would you read the motion the way it's now intended? Well, with same language substituting GOL for CRC, to refer the content of this report to GOL, to consider the content of all pieces of the proposal to incorporate into their future work. How about incorporate into the town council's future work? Is that a friendly amendment? Yes, it is. Okay, the motion's been made. It's been seconded and there's been a friendly amendment. Is there further conversation? Seven. To be annoying, can I just ask that it be read one more time with its amendment? Thank you. To refer the content of this report to the GOL, to consider the content of all pieces of the proposal to incorporate into the town council's future work. When GOL was founded, there were some people who were concerned. And one of the things that many of us said was, we don't want this committee to do or create content. And I believe that to refer this report to GOL would get fall into that trap. So I would be against it. Shalini? I just wanna clarify, I wasn't saying that they should go back and give another idea of a committee, but I was trying to say, instead of thinking in the duality that yes committee, no committee, could we think outside the box and see what are some other ways that this expertise could be channeled, either it's through district level residential committees or so coming up with, based on what you've heard are our challenges and you know the ways you can help, what are some other ways they could come in with a proposal? Pat. Sorry. I'm feeling very strongly that the content of this proposal is critically important to the work of the council. And I feel like in terms of organization and that it fits with the charge of the GOL. And I'm trying to figure out, I think we're still in the process of finding out what our limits and where we can expand our ideas. We're not here creating content for bylaw that somebody else has brought us. We're going to be looking at the intent of this content and seeing how it can further our work as a council and further the work of the community resources committee. And I think that's a valuable and important proposition. Okay. Is there any further conversation on this? Okay, the motion before us is as follows. Margaret, please read the motion. The motion is to refer the content of this report to GOL to consider the content of all pieces of the proposal to incorporate into the town council's future work. Okay, the motion has been made in second. Any further conversation? Call the question. All those in favor, raise your hand. Opposed? Margaret, would you like a roll call vote? No. Okay. So it is referred to GOL. What was the vote? What was the vote? I have eight to five. Can the no votes please raise your hand again? Yeah, it's eight to five. Okay, yeah, it's five. Okay, thank you. It was a different eight to five. It was a different eight to five. It's very important. It is very important. Okay, we're going on to the finance committee charge. This is section seven E of the agenda. Since this charge was first made and approved by the council, the finance committee has continued to meet. It has met many times and will be meeting many, many times between now and the end of June. This particular charge has now been discussed by three different committees. And I guess what I would like to do is have each of those committees speak to the charge. So the first committee that it was referred to was rules of procedure. Alyssa? I don't know how to answer this question because rules of procedure was not referred to finance committee charge. Rules of procedure was asked about the memberships associated that were of non-voting residents. That's what we discussed. We also ended up discussing in passing some term length issues and how terms would roll over and do you have three, two in one year? Do you have all three years, et cetera? That was mentioned in passing, but I felt that it was never referred to us as pure content of the finance committee charge. But maybe somebody who's on both the finance committee and rules could speak about it. Kathy? That would be me. Yeah. So why don't I start just with what we are recommending as a change in the charge? Yes. And then we can get to the second issue, which is more about how these members are interviewed and appointed, which was in both rules and then also in OCA, those two separate discussions. So we're coming back with an amendment to the charge that makes two definite changes. One is it reduces the number of residents, non-voting members from four to three. So that's one change from what you saw before. And then we're expanding their terms to two year terms. And I'll explain how we think that would work first time around. But we thought through the cycles that the council will go through and how important it will be to have continuity on the finance committee, where people really learn the town's finances are familiar with the budget, constraints on the budget, and so having longer terms where they're not coming on and off made sense. And what we're recommending for the first time on is they would start in July. So they would be starting at the beginning of the next budget cycle. We would have put this one to rest.  So to the extent there's full turnover of finance, we would have some people, but thereafter they'd be renewed for two year terms. So that's the core changer, to go from four down to three and to go to longer terms than the one year terms of the council. And I did do some reformatting, trying to get as close as I could to what GOL has done as the preferred format for charges. It's probably not quite where it should be yet. So some of the other, you've got the track edit changes and the new one, which was saying there is a purpose to the committee and then these are the things it can do, but this was the core thing we were coming back to. Alyssa, is there any other comment from the Rules Committee? So unfortunately I did not produce the Rules Committee report until 10 minutes before y'all walked in the door. And so on page two of that report, which was a separate item not in the big stapled packet, you will see about a quarter of the way down the page. It talked about discussing the length of term and I'm gonna be real blunt. I copied this from another individual's report and I'm not 100% sure we should say that I should have said that we all agreed on any particular thing here because many comments were made, but I'm not sure that one would say that all five of us agreed on any particular thing. For example, I'm not compelled by the, my personally, I'm not compelled by the idea of having non-voting residents stay on the committee longer than counselors, but I don't want to fight about it and I don't care. So, but it's not that we agreed that that was true amongst the five of us. These are just, these are, this is perhaps a less than careful reading on my part as to what we did discuss these ideas. But again, I like, I did end it with, we left the decision to finance committee with possibly GOL weighing in just because they're looking at consistency both across charges and across term length because it's come up, obviously, with our other committees, but I don't feel that rules had strong feelings about that aspect of the whole discussion. Okay. The other committee that discussed this was finance. Andy? Kathy? Oh, yeah, Kathy. Right, you know, the issue we did discuss in rules was how we do the interviews and the appointments. So, and you know, it's, it hit two different committees. So, what? No. So, I'm just gonna start, the way we changed, the only thing we changed in the charge has to do with the number of residents and that their terms would be longer. So we're not talking in this charge about how we would find these residents and select them. Fine. So, the charge that is before you both in track change form and then also in final form describes the number of residents as being three, not four, and sets the term for residents as two years, although the initial term would be for three years, effective July 1, 2019. Is there a motion? Yes. Question. Maybe you covered this, Kathy. Was, what was the reason for changing from four to three? I think the primary reason is thinking about the difficulty getting of nine people together on a regular basis and that three people, if we could find people with complimentary interests would be enough, you know, to get this. So it wasn't a long discussion other than getting nine people together is harder than eight. And the old finance committee was seven. So we're already at a bigger group than in the past. So it wasn't strong. It was that three would bring a lot to the committee. I mean, we could always go back to four again at some point in the future, but an eight person group is a lot of people. Okay, other additional questions. So the motion is, there's actually two. One is to accept the changes in the charge as to approve the revised finance committee charge as presented. Is there a second? It's shallowing. Okay, further conversation. I have very minor, oops, very minor point. On the bottom of the first page, responsibility, the finance committee shall, you have to just cross out the words that repeat, finance shall, there, that's it. Absolutely. And so some of this is what GLL has been very good at, cleaning up wording. So some of it was just copy and paste for the other unless I made a mistake on this, yeah. There are two shalls, yeah. Okay. Yes, Evan. I'm a little confused here. We have two motions in front of us. One is to approve of the charge. And then the second one is to then send the charge to GLL for formatting and editing. That seems to be backwards. It seems though it should go to GLL and then the final edited version from GLL would be the one that council would vote on. The changes that were changed, the only changes that we're dealing with tonight are reducing from four to three and the terms. We're not dealing with format, et cetera. Yes. But the motion is to approve this charge. So I guess as chair of the GLL, if this is gonna come to GLL for formatting, I think what would be helpful to GLL is some sort of straw poll that the substantive changes being recommended by finance committee are being supported by the council, but that the charge itself is not being adopted tonight so that GLL knows when it comes to it for formatting that those substantive policy changes that finance have recommended are going to stay when GLL brings it back after it's formatted. The other, yes, Mr. Brockman. The other possibility. The other possibility is to, you probably were gonna say this is approved, it's subject to final revisions by GLL. Yes. Exactly. Yes. I just want to clarify that this, the changes do not have anything to do with the appointment of non-voting residents. It does not. Okay, so the motion, yes. I just wanna, I wanna ask, I do wanna actually ask the substantive thing that's not about the method of appointment because that's covered by the simple statement that it's already there about the town council shall appoint and then we'll have a separate conversation about how that actually happens. So that doesn't affect this, but I was wondering, I know this came up in passing at some committee meeting I was at. What we were doing with SME status for this committee because you can't have SME status. Normally town councilors don't have SME status, but when you have a mixed committee, you're supposed to assign SME status to a committee. So isn't this supposed to say something along the lines of the committee has been assigned SME special municipal employee status, although counselors cannot avail themselves of it legally? Margaret, would you speak to that please? Yeah, Alyssa's correct in that the committee is assigned SME status. So whether counselors sit on the committee or not, counselors are not permitted to have, to be special municipal employees in any way shape or form. So that just needs to be made clear. And I think someone suggested that there could be a note added to the charge that would clarify the role of the counselors. And you know, regardless of the SME status of the committee, the counselors would not be SME designated. That's what that left, Alyssa, to be D, to be, it wasn't so much to be determined, but someone had to figure out the right wording to put. Right. Keel-El can do that one. Okay, so the only, I'm sorry, there was one other sensitive thing. I believe that even if it's a one-time deal and you, what I'm about to say, it's a one-time deal and you don't really need it on the charge moving forward forever, many charges talk about when they're first created, they have a little extra section that really doesn't apply anymore five years in. This idea of the first term being a three-year term, that's not mentioned anywhere on here. That needs to be included if it's gonna happen, I think. I think it's weird. I'm not. It's in the draft charge under appointments. Yep, it's there. Maybe. Okay, got it. Again, that's something that I would expect to you all to clean up. Okay. All right, so the motion is to approve the revised finance committee charge as presented, subject to review by GOL. Did I get it right? Is there a second? Clarifying question. Is there a second? Yes, now, clarifying question. And the charge has been changed so that it's from four residents to three residents. Yes, it's four to three and it changes the term. Okay, motion's been made and seconded. Any further conversation? Call the question. All those in favor? Opposed? That is, that takes care of those motions all in one. We're going on to the GOL recommendation for the town committee charge updates. Nandy Jo. I had to get my things up. Okay, so in our last report of March 12th, I indicated we had a recommendation in there that would come up later and that recommendation was that the governance committee voted unanimously to recommend that the town council request that all town committees that were created at least five years ago were either charged and if changes were sought to that charge that they reformat the charge into the new template when requesting the changes and then submit the proposed revised charge to the town council to adopt or reject after review by GOL. The review by GOL would be intended to be to make sure the template was adequately, it was adequately formatted into the correct template. The GOL committee makes this suggestion in an attempt to start the process of conforming all committee charges to the template that this council requested we create. And after discussion felt that seeking, asking the committees themselves to look at their charges would be a good idea, especially for those, we put that five year deadline on it because we felt it would be a good idea for those committees that existed longer than five years to just look at the charge and see if what they're doing now conforms to what the charge was, maybe their purpose has sort of evolved over time. And if not the committee, the GOL committee thought it would be good for every committee to look at their charge at least every five years anyway. So this was part of why this recommendation came into effect. We know that this creates work for committees, that is the con against this recommendation that we came up with to report all the pros and cons, that it's not necessarily something committees might want to do, it's not necessarily something committees particularly have time to do. And it's not necessarily something committees would do on their own without nudging from someone. And so we recognize even if the council adopts this recommendation that there's probably someone out there that needs to, that we might need to as a council assign a sort of nudger, which might be the GOL, of following up with committees and saying, hey have you looked at your charges if this is what the town council does? And there are multiple ways to go about if this recommendation is accepted, that the GOL could be a resource to the committees for their looking at their charges in terms of getting it into the template. That the committees might not have to do it on their own, there's probably also other ways to offer resources from the council to do this. We did not recommend a specific timeframe for a reason. One was that that meant that the work of the council and the GOL in reviewing any proposed changes to charges would be spread out over time. If we said, and we recommend that the council say, review them and submit changes by October one, then come October one, we might be looking at 70 different charges. And we didn't think that would be wise. So we thought we could put it on the committees to come up with a timeframe for themselves. And then when they come back to us as a council, it would come back in a little bit at a time. No big deluge of here's a whole bunch of charges. Another reason for not recommending a specific timeframe. And if committees don't have changes, if they say, we love this charge, we're not, this recommendation does not force them to put it into the template that we have come up with. So if they choose that they don't want any changes, they can just say, we're good. And they don't have to put it into the template. That's, I welcome add additions from any of our, my fellow GOL committee members if I missed something on that. Are there additional comments from the GOL committee? So I have a clarifying question. So what you're asking tonight is that we recommend that town committees do this. Okay. And that if they have a change in their charge, they come back to us. Okay. So, and then you talked specifically about technical assistance in doing this. If I were chairing a previous committee I chaired, I would look at this and I'm going, oh my gosh. What do all these terms mean? How does each of these relate? Is there a matrix that says, well, if you're ad hoc counsel then this applies, then this applies. So I need a lot of guidance. I'd need definitions, I'd need a matrix. And then I'd come to the fact that in fact the town manager at the time appointed that committee and gave us a charge. And what am I allowed to do as chairing that committee or the seven people of that committee? What am I allowed to do with that charge? If this is the charge that was given and this is the charge that we swore we would, you know, uphold the rules of the town. So I, to me the idea of I want to understand what we're asking the council to do, but then I also really need to understand what the parameters are in which a committee is allowed to do this. And what are the, what do all these terms mean? I mean, I know I can go to the charter, but I'm pretending I'm John Cue public, you know. I just want to build on that. It's not clear to me what problem we're trying to solve here. So if I started to read through all the charges and I said, I just don't have the boggiest idea what this committee is about. But when I read most of them, I had a pretty good sense. So if we think, for example, do we think some committees have overlapping jurisdiction? And what we're trying to do is clean that up or purposes that aren't relevant anymore. But that would be us looking across them. And not, you know, I guess I think if a committee wants to expand their charge, change their charge, they would try to figure out how to do that. But I don't know why we were, would be going out to all of them to ask them to review their charge and see if it still works for them. And you know, do we think there's a problem as opposed to it's nice to have things look about the same, but you know, if I can read them and understand them at some point, they'll all look the same. So I just not sure what problem we're trying to solve on why we're doing this. Dorothy. I can see a good deal of common sense in the proposal. But like Kathy says, it would be a huge job over a lot of committees. I think perhaps if you held maybe with working with the town manager some workshop in which you put out a call and two committees and asked if they were interested in attending one to discuss the committee charge. I mean, I think things change over time and that things can get really, you know, barnacles can be all over the place. There's nothing wrong with a reexamination, but I agree with Lynn that since we were getting used to all these words and terms now, but a lot of people may have been doing a great job with their committee without even thinking of any of these words or concepts for a long time. So, but I think it's worth maybe making it available for some of them to come in for a refresher of some kind. There's a hand back there. Sure. When you get a prize for sticking around. Hi, William Cason, 32 Golden Rod Circle. I'm actually here in my capacity as the acting chairman of the Public Art Commission, and I can say having been in the room for some of this discussion already, it's prompted me to raise this question with the Public Art Commission. And in fact, we did revisit briefly our charge which refers to the select board, which is no longer in existence. So from that very basic level, I think that there's some of this work that does need doing. And I would say that we, at least I would be excited to rethink our charge potentially. So this is an opportunity. So I just thought I would share that with you briefly. Thank you for that comment. Please let the record show we were flexible on public comment. Thank you. There are other comments on this. I have to be honest and say, I see serious value in this. I just would need some technical assistance, George. I think that we're probably not going to have a lot of people knocking on our door. Though this is exciting to hear, we need to have one. So I think we're going to see what's going to happen. If the council feels that this is agrees with the Madam President that this is a good idea, but let's play it out and see. I don't think there are going to be many responses. I think most committees are not even going to pay attention to this request. I would prefer we actually order them to do it, but I know that won't go far. So we're simply requesting. So let us request. Let's see if we get some responses and then we'll come back to you and let you know what happened. Thank you. Alyssa. So I said this, what, three meetings ago? I don't understand why we have, I would love to be pointed to chapter inverse in the charter as to why we have the right to tell committees that are established through previous bylaws, that are established by mass general law, that were established by previous town managers, previous select boards, by the cultural council at the state level versus what the cultural council might think it wants to do. They have state requirements that they have to do. What does this have to do with the town council? Who are we to tell other committees that aren't our committees? We are not an executive branch. None of these people report to us. They're not our committees. We don't own them. We don't appoint to them. We don't own their employees that may or may not be liaisons. What are we thinking? What does this have to do with us? I'm just completely flummoxed that, yes, it would be nice if they all matched up nicely and it would be wonderful if they all actually had the references to how they were established, whether it was by town meeting action or general bylaw or whatever, and many of them are missing that information. But this is, if the town council is concerned about this, then it feels to me that the way that you manage that is you ask the town manager as one of his goals to have his staff look at that, and maybe they could say they could get help from GOL because GOL has been putting so much effort into an effective way to do this. It's been the first time somebody's really looked at the templates in a while. We've done it in the past in a very catch-us-catch-can sort of way. So having that expertise is great, but you said you could order them. You can't even ask them. Who are you to tell the conservation commission to look at their charge? Even to reformat it. I have no understanding of this. Darcy. I just want to say that I appreciate the fact that the GOL committee came to us with a recommendation for our action because I think that was the right thing to do. But I would, I have said before at other meetings that I also think that this is not really necessary. And I agree with Kathy and Alyssa's comments. Shalini. Could we get a sense from the GOL committee? What was their thinking about this? Like, do they have a response to these two questions? I'll try. One of them was, we as a GOL were tasked by the town council to come up with a template for committee charges, not for council committee charges, but for committee charges for the entire town. We did that. And as part of that template, one of our thoughts was, hey, we have one. Wouldn't it be great if all the committees used them? And how do we go about getting the committee templates charges, the charges uniform throughout town so that a resident looking for what does this committee do has a general structure to know, oh, this one's council, this one's town. Right now, they don't really say that in any specific way. I think that goes to something councilor Brewer, Alyssa, was urging, in terms of coming up with a template, us to have is a commonality of all committee charges so that a resident when looking at committee, what do committees do has a predictability about where they would find how many voting members there are and who appoints them and what they do and what their purpose is. And as anyone looking at the committee charges now can see, it's all over the place. And now we have a template. And so the GOL committee felt this was the, I don't wanna say most logical, unanimously voted to recommend that we request, not order, request the committees do this to try and move us more quickly to a standard committee charge. If the request doesn't happen, the way I believe committees would get moved to charges is whenever potentially the town manager or the council just takes one up and does it. There's no other mechanism for moving committees to the template. In terms of the authority, you could consider this a measure. We can adopt measures, we can adopt orders, we have the ability to form committees of the town. We already did that as a council with the ECAC committee. So we're not ordering anyone to do anything. We're making a request. If that request is felt to be more proper to the town manager to request, then we could reword the motion. We haven't made the motion yet, but it can certainly be reworded to the town council requests, the manager request that. I mean, we can figure out a way to word the motion, but we felt that this was something that should be looked at. George. Oh, Evan, I'm sorry. If I can just add slightly to what Mandy Jo said, because I think the conversation we had was, it would be great if we had this uniformity, if we had this consistency for the council, for GOL, and for the public who might be interested in charges, the one or two people who might. And so just to give you a little bit of the backstory, I think the first conversation we had was, well, perhaps the easiest way to do this since we know the terms and we know everything is GOL can just reformat all of these charges. And we stepped back from that for two reasons, one of which is that's a tremendous amount of work, but the second one is that because there's such diversity in the charge formats, it would necessarily require GOL to interpret some charges, potentially, right? Because there's some aspects like purpose that exist in our charge template, but not necessarily in other charges. And so we would now be writing the purpose statement for a committee, which seemed inappropriate for us to do. It seemed like the committee would be the one to do that. And so we did consider the different ways we can do this and this seemed like the best option. It then occurred to us that it has sort of the corollary benefit of having committees be able to sort of reexamine what they're doing and whether or not their charge still holds up. I mean, I think the thought is that some of these committees, and I don't think that we're talking about MGL may, I don't think anyone's thinking the planning board or ZBA, but I think we're thinking of some of these committees of the town that have existed for a while, perhaps times have changed, perhaps they've recognized that there are things they'd like to do that would be appropriate for them to do, but are included in their charge. It seemed like an added benefit. And so I don't think the purpose of it was necessarily for them to reexamine their charge. It was an added benefit that that would be a useful conversation for many committees to have that have existed for a while. Pat. I also think that we do need to look at committee structures and organization, which is an organization as part of our charge. There are committees that are not functioning, that there are committees that can be combined. And I'm not even saying that's the most important thing to happen, but it's something that I think that we need to look at over the course of this year and really begin to think about how do we make sure that committees get the support they need and also are doing the work that we've asked them to do in a way that really supports us. Shallonee. Yeah, I'm just looking at some of the committees right now and they have missing information regarding what is the tenure? Like if I was a resident and wanted to know like how long is the commitment? So there's a lot of missing information I think. So it would be helpful to have a consistent template across the board, across all committees. Alyssa. I don't tonight would be helpful. I just still do not understand. And it's not a measure. We can't just order anything in the town because we make a measure. We can't say, well, we want an RFP to be established for a playground on the common. Well, yeah, I guess we could do that as a measure, but we don't actually have any right to compel it. We don't have any right to compel that the conservation commission, or as it sounds like you're saying less important committees, things that aren't historical commission, conservation commission, other things that you literally on GOL have no idea why they exist or not. The idea that you would conceive of rewriting their charges for them is just blows my mind that that was originally part of the conversation. So I understand that you've come away from that, but it's not up to you to decide whether or not these committees are functioning. It's not up to the council to decide that. So I understand offering them help, totally get that. Being able to say, look, we now have charges. Well, they aren't all consistent yet, but all our charges, including GOLs, could be consistent. Look at this, this is really great. Would you like some help with this? Totally understand that. Or asking the town manager, you know, I think there are some committees that could really consider being put together. I'm seeing some, that's another thing we could ask about. We can't, no one has yet to explain why they think we can make people do things. Dorothy. This is a question for the town manager. What Pat was mentioning, are they doing what they should do? The term my husband used to use was a performance audit. So my question is, have you, the town manager, ever done something like a performance audit on the committees to see, are they in fact doing what they're supposed to be doing? No, not in my tenure. Okay. Pat. Number one, people start conversations everywhere and usually you start with the most rigid idea and move from that. I think it's important that we take out some of the language that I'm hearing here. You wanna make them, you wanna do this, or that committee's not working. I heard William say, this is an opportunity. Now he's only one person on one committee, but that's what drove us. To offer an opportunity for all of us to look at what we're doing and why we're doing it. And it is voluntary. We can request. We can do lots of things probably, except impeach the president. But, and then I don't mean Lynn. Oh. Did you, I wanted to worry about that. Excuse me. Anyway, I think you- My moment. You got her. I think we need to, I guess I'm trying to understand what the opposition to this committee is. And believe me, I don't agree with my colleagues about everything. But I think that we need the opportunity to work with committees, not monitor them, not have the town manager tell us who's doing their job and isn't. That's not what it would be about. It would be about what are the ideas that you're working on. Is there content, not the agenda, is there content that would, like we talked about with CRC or whatever it is, is there content that would enliven your committee? Is there, you know, and there's the plus and it's less important to me, sorry, that everything looked the same. But the idea that we're trying to work to better a system, I think is being dismissed and seen as a dictatorship. And it's not that, not with me on it. Indi. I'm almost tempted to make a motion so we can move this along and I'm going to therefore make a motion and it's going to be part of the motion on the motion of the meeting. And that is a motion to approve the recommendation to request all town committees that were created at least five years ago, review their charge and if changes are sought, reformat the charge into the new template. I second it. And I'll speak to it real quickly. What I'm trying to do is to avoid the part that says and submit the proposed revised charge to the town council to adopt or reject after review by the GOL. Because I think that gets to some of the discussion that we've been having and this makes it entirely a request. And if they choose to follow through, we welcome that. Does that motion allow the committee to change their charge? I think that the problem is that it was noted and I didn't want to go into all of the detail of rewriting it, but charges were created in very different ways. And if the charge was created by the town manager, I'll give an example. Then the decision as to what to do will be up to the town manager. Once we've made this request and the committee has taken that action, it would seem logical that whoever the appointing authority, which in fact could be this council for some committees would take that request into due course, but I didn't want to go into all of that in the new motion. So just to follow up on that. So once they do this, it seems that they at least need to go back to the appointing authority. Whether it's the council, the town manager, I mean, if one of the state created committees wants to change its charge, God bless them, but I don't think so. So it seems like it has to go back to somebody to the appointing authority. Alyssa. So could we just slightly, and I know we're smithing on the fly at this hour, but slightly alter that because what we want, I think sounds like, and that's those strong words at the end of this motion that have been removed are exactly what I was talking about earlier. So since those are gone, if we say that we're created at least five years ago, reformat their charge into the new template and review, I mean, something along the lines of we want them to reformat it. I mean, it's just that simple. We would really like them to do that. That'd be super great, even if they don't do anything content-wise. Then beyond that, because that's the accessibility for the public part, right? You can see how long the commitment is. You can see that. So even if they don't change the content, they just move it around. That would be awesome. Then as they're doing that, if they review it, then say something to the effect of understanding that if they want to change any of the content, they're going to have to do a little more work than just cutting and pasting to put it into the template, although that'd be good, because they may not even know where their thing came from. And so they would start with their appointing authority, I think, to figure that out. I suggest you withdraw the motion. We can start over. I can do that, or I can just say. Okay, go ahead. Try it. I mean, there's two possibilities. The one is I could withdraw the motion. The other is to add language. So instead of saying, Jane, just charge into the new template and submit the proposed revised charge to the appointing authority. That would be. Right. Yes? I was the second, and I agree with that. So I second that one. Steve. So I'm not so sure why it would be the appointing authority, and in some cases, we have mixed appointing authorities, like the the ECAC. Right. Wouldn't it be the creator? Should go back to that. The creator is your appointing. No. The ultimate authority. The ultimate authority. The ultimate authority. The ultimate appointing authority. Yeah, I think if they go to the appointing authority, and the appointing authority looks at it and says, oh, I'm not sure that's what the council expected, they would know enough to come back to us. There is a motion on the floor. The motion is to approve the recommendation to request all town committees that are created at least five years ago, review their charge, and if changes are sought, reformat the charge into the new template when requesting changes and submit the proposal, the proposed revised charge to the appointing authority. That is the motion, and that's been seconded. Is there further conversation? Yes, Alyssa. Can we add the word since this motion can live on after us without the title above it, can we add somewhere in the motion that it's the GOL's template? Because otherwise that's not listed. Into the new GOL template. Yeah. Okay. Just show ownership. That's in, so the change, reformat the charge into the new GOL template. That's a friendly amendment. Agreed. Anything else? Does anybody need the charge re-read? Okay, all those in favor? Okay, good. Thank you. Middle school, I'm sorry, was there a no? Oh, I'm sorry, there was a no. I'm so sorry. I apologize. Were there any opposed, any abstained? Okay. Margaret? Yes. Okay, got it. Middle school roof funding. This is a straightforward referral to the finance committee. Okay, we have a motion and we have a second. The motion is to refer the authorization to the finance committee. I'm sorry. Can you repeat who moved and seconded? Sarah. Sarah. Sarah. Sarah. I can move it. I can move it. I can move it, Sarah. I actually moved it. That's fine. Okay. Yes. I just want to make sure this is a referral that they would then bring back within the 60 days to a council meeting for a council vote with a recommendation. I'm just trying to clarify that it wouldn't just disappear into finance. It would come back with a recommendation. Right. The answer is yes. And it's sort of this new territory for us because this is a procedure that as a council we're not familiar with just a 32nd explanation. The way it's worded of course is because it was created for towns because the select boards, the select boards have the authority to make a decision if this board doesn't do anything within 60 days or town meeting doesn't do anything than 60 days, then it's binding. But we are in a new path and we have to figure out when we get future requests like this, which we will likely get every year or almost every year that we have something we know how to deal with. Yes, Darcy. This might be a question for Andy. I just wanted to know whether part of the funding is or what's been done to study and to fund solar readiness of the middle school roof or maybe the town manager knows this. I don't know the answer to that question but the school committee will be here on or the superintendent will be here on Thursday night reviewing the regional school district budget might be a good time to pose that question then. And my understanding is that question was raised Darcy so I can follow up on it. So it's in redoing the roof, think about the future. And it's also they're thinking about light in the classrooms that don't have any as in tubes that would bring light in so it's not just any old roof. There was discussion about that but this is a perfect question to bring up on. Absolutely. Thursday night. Yes, listen. Could we consider adding to the motion or if not tonight because we're exhausted another time soon that when things like this come in and even though I've looked at them year after year I don't remember what we call the thing other than the MGL reference and the school committee authorizing borrowing is that it automatically be sent to finance committee because I hate to see anything. Why does it have to come through here first? I mean like please let's just send as soon as these come in from the school district let's just send them over there and let them send it to us right away because there is no value add to us having to make this referral. Okay. I would just mention that what rules will take up tomorrow and one of our draft rules has that exact recommendation on it. So it might end up in the council rules formally. And it is what other towns do. You know that the this kind of thing just goes. Yeah, exactly. I have a comment. I think if that's the case it would be useful to in the minutes or somewhere to say that this has happened because the other members of the council who are not in the finance committee might be interested to know this as they might have something to add on it. So there might be part of either the president's report or the town manager's report when something's been automatically referred to a committee. Okay, thank you. Okay, there's a motion on the floor. The motion is to refer the authorization to the finance committee. It's been made in seconded. It's the further conversation. Seeing none, all those in favor. Okay, so moving back to our agenda. We're now going to the appointments. You've received two memos. One is the appointments of the resource, community resource committee. And I wanna make sure that I point out the eagerness of 10 people on the council to serve on this committee. The charge, however, is only for five. And so I have appointed five, but asked the committee in within their first couple of meetings or so to discuss whether or not they see options for expansion. And just for the, in the sake of full disclosure I've attached the present status of various people who have been on various counselors who have been on various committees and or yet on committees to be appointed. Is there any question on the appointment to the community resources committee? Yes, Steve. Yeah, so I don't see how the committee could be expanded because the only other option would be seven or nine. Then you have a majority of the council. Seven you have a majority of the council, which is, that's the council then. That's one of the debates that goes on. Kathy particularly is the person that has raised this. And so maybe you wanna speak to what you found. In researching something else and like why would one be reading this? I found some instances of other towns that had a subcommittee where the number of people on it were a quorum of the council. You know, we're larger. They'd made a larger one and the AG said as long as when they're meeting they stay within the jurisdiction of the committee. It's not considered a council meeting. It's considered, and so they explicitly said, you know, it was a nine-person member and they had a seven-person finance committee.  You know, the question is, do you wanna do it or not? But you could do it.  Right. Steve. Nope. Okay. Any further questions? Okay. Then moving on to the audit committee. There's also an memo there. I'm sorry, I should have announced the councilors appointed to the community resources. They are Councilor Andy Steinberg, Sarah Schwartz, Pat D'Angeloz, Dorothy Pam, and Steve Schreiber. And then on the audit committee is Mandy Jo Hannake, Pat D'Angeloz, and Dorothy Pam. And let me just add that I would like to come to this meeting, but I didn't wanna point myself. Okay. Moving on, next agenda item. Any questions on those? All right. Next agenda item is committee reports and the finance committee. We have no additional report that hasn't already been offered. Rules of procedure. First, I wanna thank the rules of procedure committee for putting up with my unavailability due to various illnesses of myself and my family members and Kathy has taken over as vice chair and everyone else has pitched in and done a huge amount of work and I'm nowhere near caught up with what they're doing. So I'm just kind of going along for the ride at this point. However, I take responsibility for the fact that I didn't write a particularly cogent but hopefully full of information report which you received this evening. There are actually two pieces. One is the committee report rules procedure town council on the letterhead. The other is a little conceit I started when we first started doing this that was a recommended action for town council. So basically rules of procedure is continuing to do all the wonderful things we do which are described at the end of page three in terms of the member of times we've met and the various things we've been working on. But this report is focused on two issues which were referred to us by town council. One was referred, they're both referred to us on February 25th. One was in regards to the non voting resident members of finance committee and what rule because the charter said rule would be defined around appointing those and the other was associated with liaisons. Several of you expressed interest in hey, when are we gonna get going on liaisons and so I did not provide tonight as I had originally promised my group I would. The list of liaisons that the select board had before but you have seen some of that associated with the select board's long report from November that we saw at the December 3rd town council meeting because I know y'all remember everything we talked about at our first town council meeting which also included a whole bunch of committee charges but talking about the different kinds of committees that might have liaisons and also more importantly I think first is what is that role of those liaisons. So that starts at the bottom of page two of this report where we had the conversation about how liaisons were not actually serving as members of committees. So for example, especially with something like school committee or library trustees which are specifically called out in the charter if we were to have a liaison to go there from the town council we would be making it perfectly clear amongst our own shared culture and also as we went to their committee that we're not sitting at the table with them being the sixth member of their committee. We're not serving on their committee. We're simply a conduit of information. We're also focused more on committees that might be bringing us stuff to work on at some point like say zoning subcommittee of the planning board or say something going on with the school's project. So it was phrased well here by Cathy it should be to provide early alerts and bring information back to the council would be the role of the liaison and not to serve as an additional committee member. So my new intention is to recreate the chart that the select board which was just a moment in time that we always placed on the back of our agenda but also would reflect the rest of the committees that we have in town and start looking at priorities which things have we been feeling the need to be more connected to and which things might be discussed later. And of course we don't want anybody to feel left out but there's no way we're all going to everybody else's committees. As I think I probably made clear earlier in a different conversation. So that's something that I hope the council will talk about that the idea was we'd have this chart you guys could look at it and say oh those are all the committees out there. Oh those are ones that the select board liaisons too. Oh those are ones that haven't had liaisons in years. Oh those don't even function anymore. And then could you could all think about as our president has done with us in the past. Ooh I'd really like to be on that one. I'd like to be on that one. And then we'll have to figure out the process of how we decide who gets what. But now that we've got a whole bunch of other committees we're all, we've all been assigned to. We have a better sense I think of our individual workloads and what time we'll have left to do things. So that's an in progress work. The other item is on the finance committee non-voting residents which has turned out to be so much work. And for so many different committees to talk about and outreach communications. And appointments we'll be talking about that as well tonight and as I point out in the middle of the page on page one it's important to note that the finance committee shares two members with the five member rules procedures. Town council president was at the rules meeting. She's on the finance committee. And outreach communications and appointments also known as OCA shares two members. So there's all this nice overlap but yet at the same time we're kind of wearing different hats depending on the circumstance. Which if you get a chance to read both this report and the OCA report later you will find that I voted two different ways wearing two different hats. Just to prove that you can be different things under different circumstances. Also that you can take several weeks to think about something and maybe wish you had voted differently. But so you know life is just an unfolding box of chocolates when it comes right down to it. What rules eventually decided was a little complicated from the standpoint that because OCA which I am a member of has to this point not chosen to try and tell you every single week the two or three hours of deliberations we've had every single week about how we're getting to the point we're getting with the process of bringing you appointments rather than the one off type things like board of license commissioners. Therefore the other people on rules who aren't on OCA didn't know what that process was. So it was kind of hard to explain succinctly what we recommended associated with everything. But what the final upshot seems to have been is that we ended up with a vote of four, zero, one meaning one abstention to support the president's suggestion that the which the finance committee seemed already to be in favor of at that point to when it says that the town council as we just said in the charge the town council appoints the non voting resident members of the finance committee. What that process would look like on that four, zero, one vote rules is it would look like the process that the president and finance committee members said they wanted which was that the finance committee chair or their designee would be the person who actually interviewed the applicants. The members of the finance committee who were counselors would know what the entire pool of applicants was although they would not be able to say their names out loud because if they did say their names then their names would become public and we are attempting to balance both transparency and privacy concerns because some people have told us they will not apply if their names are made public. And so but rather it would be similar to the outreach communications and appointments of the OCA process but instead of being done by the designee of OCA because only one counselor can be in the room in order to allow the interviews to be private it would be the finance committee chair or their designee who would actually do those interviews and then bring the names of the exact number of openings that need to be filled that they have somebody to fill them with to the finance committee then the finance committee would bring a recommendation to the town council as to who those members would be. This is different from the OCA process in that OCA has a designee that's a town council that does the interview but then it goes to OCA to find out what those names are that are being brought forward to not speak of all the other applicants again but to know what the pool was but not speak of it publicly. And then to bring then OCA normally would bring you those appointments that's what OCA will be doing at some point associated with planning board zoning board of appeals ranked choice voting participatory budgeting but finance committee is confident that they are different enough that they need to be able to appoint their own members. I was not particularly personally for example compelled by that argument because I thought well then why not have planning board chair appoint planning board members. But the reason I ended up voting for it is because I said well you're following the OCA process that you're following a process that I can agree with following a process and I had some input to that process. I'm not particularly thrilled with the outcome but I would have lost the vote anyway and which is another reason I went ahead and voted for it. So rules thought that it made sense that in this rather particular kind of committee just like we have this odd energy committee not that the people on it are odd of course but that it's constructed in an odd way and that it's going to have the town manager appoint town counselors to it rather than the council president appoint town counselors to it. That finance committee is yet another hybrid sort of thing that's different than other things. There's an argument to be made that is it enough different or is it different and so the rules committee decided it was enough different that the finance committee president should or the finance committee chair or their designee as designated by the finance committee should be doing the interview and then the finance committee itself should be bringing those names here. But what that also means is that other options on the table would have been we could have set up a rule that said the town council president could do it but we didn't consider that for very long that wasn't something that anybody was particularly behind and another option would have been to have the finance committee chair or designee do the interviews but then have it shift over to the OCA process but that didn't happen either instead it was staying with the finance committee. So OCA is basically out of this conversation except to provide the same framework of the standpoint of not having names that have been talked about publicly unless they're the actual names that are being brought forward and that it's then the finance committee who's having the discussion about the names that have been brought forward by the finance committee chair slash designee who did the interviews before it comes here and in all these cases when those names are brought forward they are being brought forward to posted meetings so at that point names will be made public they do have to be on the open meeting law list of topics so it is still possible that someone will get named as a finalist for a position and if the committee says no that person potentially will be frustrated because they are not actually brought all the way forward to council just as when their names are brought forward to council council may say no and that so therefore that person's name's been out there but we've avoided in both the OCA process and the finance committee's tracking of the similar process from what they expressed to us at rules that they were interested in also maintaining that level of privacy until the point where it could no longer be maintained. Dorothy. So the finance chair does interviews does the finance chair then bring only the correct number of people so that when we meet, I've lost my voice when we meet in public meeting and the public is there they will not hear a discussion of this candidate versus that candidate they will hear a discussion these names have been brought forward by the chair and he gives us why they're good and we vote them up individually or as a slate up or down individually or as a slate which is well rules hasn't developed in detail so we could get drag another committee into this but from another aspect but traditionally how that is done is as a slate but it is entirely possible that someone sitting here of the 13 could say oh my word I've totally worked with that person and I can't possibly support doing this and then would but assuming they weren't having an actual conflict of interest just an experience they could potentially ask to carve something off or we could discuss that as a group because we've not had that hasn't come up yet in terms of like board of licensed commissioners nobody said I like two but not three of them so that could potentially happen and so that part of the process has not been delineated because it doesn't seem quite like just now speaking off the top of my head that if the finance committee chair bought five people that the finance committee would say that they could say that but by the time it got to council it seemed unlikely that you would have anything other than a slate. Are there questions? Sarah. Okay. Proceed. So in order to be fair to original nominees it's been suggested by Oka that when nominees are first brought back in this case Oka would get nominees first. What we had originally thought was that we would go to chairs of the committee and ask them if there are any special qualifications or special skills that their committee or board felt that they needed a nominees to round out and make stronger their committee, right? So before anybody saw CAFs on our committee we would first have a framework of things we were looking for. In order to keep people's names private when the original slate is brought forward the committee still may not mention names. You may say I don't think I want the slate because I think it does not fit into certain parameters in which case the interview designee would then have to go back and do things again and then bring forth different names or we would start the process again. And then in the process that Oka is thinking because we bring things to you then when we bring names forth here of course then things become public but just to let you know that also here it's the same check and balance. Anybody on the town council can say nope I think this needs to go all the way back. So that's kind of what through talking with town attorney and looking at open meeting law is something that we've sort of come to. Pat. I have a comment. While I think the people on the finance committee are special I don't think the committee itself is special and I don't think that you should be selecting your own people as a committee it should have gone through Oka. So I'm really disappointed. Darshi, did you have a comment? I just wanna respond to Pat. We haven't actually adopted that policy yet. It is a policy that probably needs discussed a policy recommendation that needs discussed as a full council that whatever policy it is will have to be included in the rules of procedure per the charter. And so whether it gets discussed now at another meeting at some point it will being a recommendation will be included in the rules which will come before us to formally vote. Alyssa. So really I was telling you what the report said that you were frantically trying to read while I was telling it to you because you didn't get it in enough time but the separate piece says that the recommended action tonight would be whether it's a formal motion or not is to refer the rules of procedure ad hoc committee 3519 recommendation under blah blah blah blah blah to addressing the appointment of finance committee members of the public who shall have a voice but no vote to OKA to consider and for OKA to make their recommendation to the full town council because the idea was rules was gonna look at it because it said there could be a rule and that eventually we will certainly have a rule and our formal rules but this felt like in order to get ready for July 1st even though we're gonna have the rules done before then too we didn't wanna compress the timeframe necessarily too tight for the finance committee appointments so whichever way the finance committee appointments get made they making that decision on a more of a temporary basis as to how this would work this time seemed important to continue forward even though no one's really expecting these members now to start until July 1st that still involves time schedule them for appointments and then for somebody to review which of them are being brought forward before it comes to the council so rules did its task and then OKA needs to weigh in which as it turns out had a meeting today and therefore has a report that includes this information because we are working in real time here on the town council and then I would assume that the full town council would go home and after asking a whole bunch more questions that'll keep us here till at least midnight we would go home and think about it for the next town council meeting and say now that I've had a chance to digest both those points of view and the things that all the other brilliant counselors I serve with said now here is how I think we should do it because rules is not making the rule just to make the rule, they're making a recommendation as to what we think fits in with the rest of the rules concept. Kathy. I'll just, I mean, Shalini is urging me to say something so I will across the room. You know, the thinking about this and I'm fine with having a lot more discussion about it thinking about it was partly from my own experience when I was a research director and having to hire people with technical or a range of skills, a few key interview questions and the way people responded I could quickly pick out people that were gonna be really good fits with the team we already had versus overlap a lot. And so the thinking was finance we might have and we would be doing just what Sarah said, you know, what are the kinds of skills, experience, knowledge base that we need and a mix that if the interviewer didn't have that same experience they might not come back with the same kind of information. So it was that kind of fit and it's because it's a council committee and we're looking for complimentary skills to who we already have. We know where what our own strengths and weaknesses are so trying to see whether we can supplement those in an ad value. So that was the thinking about why this one's different that we put appointed counselors on it where some of the counselors themselves are learning finance, you know. So how do we make sure this extends it and that was the reasoning but you know, as we said, Alyssa's saying move it into another and if that's not the process that the council wants. Mendejo. I just wanted to add one other reasoning was at least it rules the understanding of the OCA process was that the OCA interviewer, the councilor interviewer would be able to have if desired a member of the committee the planning board or the ZBA that is being appointed maybe that chair in those interviews or a town manager in those interviews but what rules is understanding was that a second counselor could not be there. So for finance committee that would mean if the process stayed with OCA, the OCA interviewer would be there but no one from finance could be there because all the finance committee members are counselors at this point. And that seemed odd to the rules committee to leave out everyone, all the counselors from finance from any of the interviews at all. And so I think part of that recommendation was a response to that. It wasn't a way of having. We are just going to move on. So the other reason the finance committee having residents on it is the only committee at least at this point of the council that has a standing committee that has residents. And again, because of its nature and I think Mandy Jo's point that because of the process or the practice that OCA is working on, you can't have somebody from the finance committee also in the room. That was all. Okay, so we have a recommendation before us. This is the rules of procedure recommendation. Lisa, you wanna make that? Bet the motion on the top of the action sheet. Yes, move to refer. I move to refer the rules of procedure ad hoc committees 030519 recommendation under the Amherst homeral charter section 5.5B on town council rules addressing the appointment of finance committee members of the public who shall have a voice but no vote in the finance committee's deliberations to the town council outreach communications and appointments OCA committee to consider and for OCA to make their recommendation to the full town council. Any further discussion? Call that question. All those in favor? I miss abstaining. Okay. Yes. 12. Zero one. Zero one, right. All right. Is there any further conversation on OCA? I'm sorry on rules of procedure. Any further conversation on OCA? Either that or we can refer to the next, the 22nd. Is there any action you need? I think I'd like to do it tonight. At least, well, I haven't actually, we haven't actually given you a written report in a long time and we have taken a lot of votes and actually we did vote on what was just referred to us. All right. So I will try to make it super quick because I know that we're all tired. First I'd like to say that I'm really proud of OCA and I think that a lot of the things that were said today about committees and about what we do, I think we break all the rules because this chair only has a bachelor's degree and I think that you're gonna hear a lot of voices that we've met almost every single week since we were appointed and we have had like four hour or four and a half hour meetings and we really just talk about everything and you'll hear a lot of views that are different here even though you're gonna see our votes and we respect that and I really feel like we're a great team. So there's a lot of information that I gave you that's pretty much just what we found out about certain definitions of what different groups are doing for communications and outreach and I'm not going to read all of that to you. You can read that yourselves and then if you'd like to bring back questions, that's fine. So we voted on 3-18-19. OCA voted 4-0 with one member absent that OCA would designate one OCA member, Sarah Swartz, to conduct private interviews of applicants to multi-member bodies appointed by the town council and I feel like I just missed. So and then we voted on 3-18-19. OCA voted 3-1 with one member absent to adopt the practice described as OCA proposed process 3-11 for appointments to multi-member bodies appointed by the town council. So the vote against this would prefer public disclosure of all candidates' names and public interviews. What I would have to say about that is if we just read it from here, is OCA spent an ordinate amount of time and careful consideration of the practice used to make recommendations to town council for multi-member bodies. In addition to the solid validity of this practice, it is imperative that OCA begin the process to make recommendations to the full town council for multi-member bodies by no later than April 11th in order to meet the deadline to have appointments completed by June 30th for terms beginning July 1st. This timeline allows for OCA to begin interviews of applicants no later than April 11th to vote successfully, I just said that. Our final nominees no later than May 13th and send recommendations to the full town council for consideration by May 20th. OCA feels that as a committee, we have worked together to competently complete the task that we have been charged with. We feel comfortable with providing additional details of our appointment recommendation practice, companying final nominee names for the town council consideration rather than asking the full town council to approve the practice itself now without context of actual appointments without the time necessary to describe our more than 20 hours of detailed deliberations in publicly posted meetings.  So I would maybe ask if you would like to see, I mean, you actually know, you've heard it already. You've heard most of it today, tonight. And it's on our share point. I would request that we be able to have a decent chunk of time or a special meeting called the town council before the 11th so that we could actually start a process. So whatever process you would like us to validate, we can bring you all of our information forward and have enough time to vote on it so that we could move forward. I'm sorry, would you just go back to when do you want that meeting by? Time. We did not agree that we want any such meeting to be held. What I think you're alluding to is that if it's determined by this body that you do wish to look at our practice outside of the context of actual appointments that you need to understand that that would need to happen quickly enough that we may need additional meeting time to make that happen over what's currently scheduled. However, our current recommendation is not to do that. And so perhaps it would make sense at this point, given all the material in front of us, Sarah, to go ahead and talk about the finance committee issue that was so fresh this morning, of course, because these other things had been voted on previously and you put them all into this wonderful report, but maybe since we just finished talking about finance committee while that's still fresh and we should take what few energy minutes we have left to focus on that. Okay. So we voted on, we voted today, we voted unanimously, zero to five against revising the OCA charge that currently includes recommendations to the town council regarding all appointments by the town council charter section 2.9 to clarify that non-voting resident members of the finance committee are not recommended to the town council by the outreach communications and appointments committee. It came out sounding kind of backwards because we were trying to say we want it to stay the way it is. Yeah. We want the, but we couldn't, we didn't understand how to write a motion that said keep it the way it is because then that wouldn't explain what the alternative was. So we explained the alternative and then voted against it because if you don't explain the alternative, then nobody knows why you're confirming the current. I think that, yeah. So the majority of us felt that a committee should not be able to choose its own members. We don't do that. And I think as far as like expertise, I understand that finance committee requires a great deal of expertise, but then we also said to ourselves, well, planning board absolutely would zoning board, absolutely would. So I guess the question that sort of flummoxed us and then we could discuss this further. And I think that you've spoken to some points of it was why would we have finance committee be different and do this? So you've heard a couple of different points of why there was reasoning behind that. And I can't speak to what my entire committee would have to say in response to that. I'm sure they could explain to themselves. So would you like me to stop at finance committee? I think that would be a good idea. And maybe at this point then, cause we asked questions about what rules said. So maybe people have questions about what Oka said. And then that way the full town council at least feels there's so much to process here that they can at least be thinking about finance committee thing for next time. Andy. We did not have as robust a conversation in the finance committee as it might seem. And I think it would be helpful at this point, given the conversation that we do so and not try. And I think it's getting late of hour so that we really should not try and go too much farther tonight. I do want to point out that this is a unique situation because there is, you know, when we talk about the planning board, we're not talking about committee of the council. We're talking about planning board. And there is no analogous situation where there's a committee of the council. And that I think our concern is that we have the balance of skills and that we make sure that there's some way that that gets considered both for how people propose to operate the level of commitment and the level of skills that bring forward. We don't want to delay this for too long because we do want to get appointments going for July 1st so that we can start the next budget year. But I think to carry this on much further tonight is not going to be helpful for any of us. I just don't comment. Yes, Mandy. Sorry. I would be curious to hear your thinking and I know this may not have come up on why finance isn't different from others because if absent that last clause in section 5.5 of the charter that says the council rule shall address how to appoint the resident members, the president would have the full appointing authority of these residents. So, and I think we need to recognize that that any process we use other than the president appointing the resident members is actually an anomaly from the charters default which is since this is a council, a committee of the council. So I'd be curious, I'd like to hear if you talked about why this one shouldn't be treated differently since it's already, if we go anything other than the president being treated differently for appointments than any other committee of the council's members. Is there a second? Shallonee? A second. We're deferring the conversation. Okay. All those in favor? Opposed? Abstain. We have one abstention. Two. Sarah? Is there anything else from Oka that you want to discuss at this time? No, I think the council has made it clear that they're tired, so. Okay. If I could ask a question, please. I'm sorry? If I could just ask a question quickly, please. Yes. So we don't really have a motion to defer and that wasn't what the motion was. The motion was that we continue the conversation another time. So, unless rules comes up with something called a motion to defer. But at any rate, are we gonna talk about again next time? It's just what I'm trying to be clear on. So if Oka meets in the meantime, rules are both gonna meet before the next town council meeting in case we come up with additional information as we've heard people's feedback tonight. Are we planning to talk about this then on April 22nd? It'll be on the agenda item April 22nd. That's the plan. It'll also on the agenda on April 22nd. Just to be clear and going back to your previous report, will be the list of committees that we might do liaisons to. And the council will discuss that after that, I will take a poll and on our May 6th meeting report, the results of that poll out so people can actually decide which liaisons they would do. Yes. That sounds great and really helpful just in terms of us managing our workload of these committees. So that's great. And then the other part I just wanna mention is there is a ton of information here in the OCA report in terms of other suggestions that were made and then disposed of by the OCA committee. And so please look at that associated with OCA's charge because there is additional information there. Even though we don't at this point, have any reason to believe those other things are gonna be dealt with on April 22nd? They're just information you should know. Thank you. Yes. Quick comment. I just wanna assure OCA that I didn't postpone it because I'm tired. I postponed it because I feel like I need more time to really listen and understand what OCA is saying and also what, so I feel like it's important for me in that sense and so I'm not trying to dismiss it. That feels okay. Thank you. Yes, Darcy. I know the timing of this is not really good, but I included minority opinion about the actual process and the process for appointment of members of multiple member bodies appointed by the town council and because I think that that's something that needs to come as a recommendation to the full council. And if I sort of have to bring that up tonight because if I don't, the process will run its course, it will happen and I feel like that is something that needs to be brought as a recommendation to the full council just like any other major policy decision. I feel like we have, we've had a couple of different processes that we had to create in the OCA committee that are major processes that are going to be processes that we're going to have going into the future for this council and are very important and reflect how open and transparent and et cetera that we're going to be as a council and so it's a problem, the timing of it because I normally would move that we put this on as a discussion item at the next meeting or something like that. So I would like to hear from other councilors what they think because I don't see this as just some practice or procedure that is minor. I see it as a major policy decision that we've made that needs to come before the council and the council hasn't seen what this procedure is. Thank you first of all for bringing it up and mentioning it because rather than completely say there's nothing more from that report. In fact, I want to recognize that Darcy has filed a minority report. It seems that there are several questions about this process and our practice and the other thing is from what I can gather, the committee has not been able to get the attorney general's read, is that correct Sarah? No. Okay. Alyssa. The attorney general is not going to approve our process that was never our intention. We were not asking the attorney general. The attorney general doesn't approve processes. That's not something they do. Our town attorney was planning to run some additional ideas by the town attorney, by the AG's office just to see if there was something she, Lauren Goldberg, had not thought of but she has assured us that this will be a fine procedure to do. But again, my mistake Darcy, we got so bollocksed up in the finance committee thing. We worked on this report today. We incorporated the minority report into this and that was really important that you brought it up. Thank you because even though we disagree, the point is from a timing standpoint, we do need to know and this reflects back to what Sarah reported early in her report that Oka needs to know that if the town council agrees that they need to see the process exclusive of the appointments, then we have to stop where we are and not do actual interviews until we find out that you agree with that process, which may or may not require additional meeting time. So it is a timely. So the question before the council is whether or not we, as a council, not as a committee of the council standing committee, we as the council would like to have the Oka process brought before the council for review, discussion, and approval. I so move. Okay, is there a second? I second it. Okay, so there's a motion on the floor and a second that the Oka process be brought before the council for discussion and approval for the conversation. Yes, Amanda Jo. I'm gonna vote against the motion. When we created committees and specifically a committee that would deal with appointments, I guess my internal thinking was that that committee would come up with a process to deal with appointments and that would be the process, that that process wouldn't necessarily run through the whole council because the committee would do that and it would be their process. And given what I've heard this committee report, the Oka committee report, I don't think they've taken, they have not undertaken figuring out that process lightly. They've struggled, it sounds like for a couple months now, to figure out something that would balance transparency, but privacy, and still abide by open meeting law. So I think we as a council need to give some authority to our committees to figure out how they're going to operate, even if it potentially appears that that authority is on a major issue. They are still going to bring the recommendations for appointments to the council. We're going to have a final vote on who to actually appoint. So I don't think we should, as a council, have a say in how they get to that recommendation. Additional comments. Yes, Evan. Okay, so a few different things. Our charge was, as Mandy Joe said, to make recommendations to the town council regarding all appointments. Those recommendations need to come before the council. The council needs to vote on them. My understanding has been that our committee determines how we go about making those recommendations. And it is not the role of the council to approve or disprove the decisions we make to put forth those recommendations. As was noted multiple times, OCA has really just endured through well over 20 hours of deliberation on this two meetings where we had our town attorney on the speakerphone, emails, meetings, and to then open that process up to a council debate without any of that context, I think could be really problematic. The second thing I would say is, as Sarah mentioned, time is of the essence. Our next meeting of the council is the 22nd. If we were going to have a full presentation discussion and debate on this process, it would have to be then. And that would be honestly too late for us to wait. We need to get started right away. We have to appoint by June 30th. We have to get moving. I think that one of the things that's going to be really important to the future success of this council is to have a resilient committee system that relies on us trusting the members of our committees to which we have delegated these tasks. And I think that for the council to decide that they have to approve of the practice that we use to give them the recommendation we were charged with, honestly, it's getting late, so I'll speak bluntly. I would view as an undermining of the operations of our committee and a complete lack of trust for all the work that we have put into coming up with this process. So I hope I will vote against this motion and I hope others will too. Is there a further comment, Dorothy? I understand what you're saying, but when people say to us, how do people get on a committee? What am I to answer them? I mean, I just wanted to be informed. I didn't want to necessarily vote in debate. I wanted to be informed. Right, so if you want to be informed, I think any member of our committee would be more than happy to talk to the council. We, you have access to our SharePoint, which has both a visual diagram of the schematic of our process along with a written narrative to go along with it. So I have no issue with the council being informed. I do take issue with the council having to vote to approve. Shalini? I totally respect what the perspective being shared here and just I feel I would want to hear why one councilor feels the need, like why do you feel the need to bring this forward just so we hear your perspective? Well, as I've said before, I don't think any committee of the council has the authority to make major policy decisions. This is a major policy decision. I think we all have an interest in knowing how our appointments are going to be done. And like Dorothy said, people are going to be asking us, how are we doing this? You know, the committee has done an amazing amount of work and I am not making any particular judgment about how it came out. I'm just saying it's a major policy decision that every resident in Amherst has an interest in. We're representing them. They're our constituents. We each need to have a voice in major policy decisions. They aren't left to the committees to make these decisions. And I believe that's probably gonna end up in our rules that come back to us whenever end of June or whatever. That these committees don't have that authority. And again, I know the timing is horrible. So I don't know what to do about that, but I'm just saying this is an important issue around democracy in general. Kathy. I'm not on the committee that's been wrestling with this, but we're setting up whatever we decide is a process of the difference between just trusting committees as they get going. This is the process we're gonna be living with for a while. So we ought to thoroughly understand what it is we're saying yes to. And I think it really is, it's a shame it's so late at night just to get a better understanding of how the group came up with this with all those hours of deliberation. And if I think of the world out large beyond us, how does the Supreme Court justice get nominated? Well, there was a decision how the Senate would do it and how a committee would do it that people had to vote on. And whether that it's a super majority or not. At some point that got set up and that's what we're making decisions. And this is more about counsel appointments in particular because otherwise it's the tail manners making appointments and that's a different kind of an appointment process, but it's we're delegating. So it's a shame it came up this late at night because I think what Dorsey's asking for is we thoroughly understand the process we're saying fine to. And we endorse it rather than just say, fine, you know. Alyssa. So obviously we can disagree about timing and what democracy and transparency mean and all those things, but I wanna be clear on what some of the practical applications of this are. So what the point was is that if what you're looking for is how to explain to the public how you agreed to confirm an appointment that was brought to you is you will have a package at the first committee meeting at which OCA provides you appointments. It will say we need to appoint five members to the ZBA. I'm not saying ZBA will be first, but I'll pick on them for a minute. We're promoting these five people to be on the ZBA. Please town council vote for these five names, which we've already posted publicly. With that will be a description of why these five ZBA members, why these particular five people are being brought forward for your attention. With that will be the visual of our decision-making tree as to how the process worked to get us to that point. And we'll also have some basic demographic information at that time because our current practice and longstanding practices, we have never said how many people applied until it's time to appoint. And so we will say, and 15 people applied for the ZBA, these are the five people we're bringing forward. Of those 15, three self-identified as people of color and three self-identified as low income. And here's the decision tree we used to get to it. And here are the five names and here's why they're special. And you'll say, oh, and maybe you'll say you don't like some particular part of that process or some particular name, in which case you will say, I don't wish to confirm this because I either have a problem with the process or I have a problem with the people. However, what we were trying to avoid was bringing you and it's fine that Darcy wants to do that. Obviously it's fine that she wants to do that. And I understand the desire to say, can't we just approve your process ahead of time? But we're far enough down the road and maybe we should have rethought that earlier, but it took us this long to get this much information from the town attorney as to whether or not we could do what we wanted to do because we wanted to do other things before we got to this point. And so now at this date, that is why this is a critical junction because if you must see it before we bring it to you with the names, then we aren't going to be able to start getting you any of those names until later on in the process. So it will be a simple delay. Evan? Real quick, I just want to correct one thing that Kathy said because the statement was that this is something that we'd be living with in perpetuity and Oka has had a discussion and perhaps even a long time ago of vote that we would adopt this process for this round of appointments and then have a discussion as a committee. Did that work? Should we revise it?  That's very helpful. Thank you. So there's a motion on the floor. The motion is to bring this process forward for a full council discussion and vote. Is there any further discussion at this time? All right, then all those in favor of bringing this process? If we vote against it, it's the process stands and just moves forward. That's correct. I'm sorry? I don't know what we're voting for here. The motion is to bring, do you want to read the motion please? That the Oka process be brought forward to the council for discussion and approval. Okay, so if you vote yes, it means you want it to come forward to the council for discussion and approval. And if you vote no, then it will not come forward. However, the committee appointments using that process will come forward. Sarah. I'm so sorry, I don't want to belabor this point, but Oka is suggesting that when we bring forth the names, like Alyssa said, we'll be bringing forth our process, how we did it and all. So we're not saying you guys never get to see it or vote on it. So we are, it's just a different timing. So this motion would be that we would need to bring it forward to the full council for adoption before we start the process. Whereas what our natural process would have been or we would like it to be, is that we would bring this, all this information to you and our process when we bring forth nominations, the final names. Okay. There's a motion on the floor. Okay. Again, voting for it means it will come to the council for discussion and a vote. And voting against the motion means it will not come forward for the council for a vote. And in fact, the committee will proceed as planned. All those in favor of the motion, raise your hand. All those opposed, abstained. We have two sets of, let me just make sure I've got my agenda. Could I ask a quick question about bylaw reviews report? Since I wasn't there. Why does it say draft on it? Why does it say draft on it? Because either a report's a report or it's not a report. Okay. It was just a watermark deal. Okay. Sounds fine. Maybe we'll republish it without the watermark. Okay. And on the goals and values statement, we have two more meetings before they, coming up one on the eighth and one on the 12th. And GOL has no report for tonight. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry, I skipped over that. Approval of minutes. We have two sets of minutes. I'd like you to, I'd like to do this as one vote. So the motion will be to approve the minutes for March 14th, 2019. And the minutes for March 18th, 2019. Is there a second? I second. Andy is the second. Could I make one super quick minor edit to the 14th? Yes. Now the opportunity is to edit. Yes. I know there were several. Are there changes or corrections? This is a very small issue, but I just wanted to be clear since people are looking at our minutes these days, that the meeting of the 14th while we posted it as a meeting in case we had a quorum, et cetera, even though we wouldn't deliver about things that we weren't supposed to. It wasn't a required attendance thing like this is. So maybe just mention that it's a workshop that we posted. Margaret come up with some phrase that it was a workshop that we posted in case a quorum showed up, but people shouldn't like be punished for not having been there. I don't think that was the intention. Whereas when you see our other minutes, you're kind of like, really? You haven't come to five meetings in a row? Just some phrase that indicates it was a workshop that was posted for. Okay. Thank you. Is there any other changes or corrections? Okay. Seeing none, all those in favor of approving both sets of minutes? Opposed? Abstained? Those who are absent should have abstained. Nice. No, you don't have to. You don't have to. I'm with you. Okay. Oh, the managers report. Immersively brief, I think is what you thought. I'll knock a few things off if there are any questions. People can call me or talk to me. I do want to note we have volunteer spotlight, which is really exciting. Watch the video online. Rebecca Woodland is our first person. Very exciting. We're talking about the neighborhood cleanup. May the fourth, may the fourth be with you. Saturday, May fourth. Bring to your attention that on April 10th, there's a proposal for a cultivation of marijuana establishment. They have their public meeting required by the state law at Formosa across the street from here on April 10th at 6 p.m. They intend to have this at 555 Belcher Town Road. The last thing I want to mention is at Hampshire College. We had a meeting with the president and one of her staff of Hampshire College. Also present were me and a couple of staff members, the president of the council, a representative from the town of Hadley, our state representative and our state senator. The purpose of the meeting was to engage the college on the community impact of the changes that are going to happen. Nobody knows if the college is going to close or not, but we do know that the college is going to be about half the size that it is now in terms of students. You could extrapolate that to mean that will be half the size in terms of staff. There are 85 families or residents who work at the college. We assume that those, they will be impacted in one way or the other. We're trying to assess what the impact is. We're trying to assess what the impact is on local businesses that Hampshire may do business with, things like Atkins Farm. We're, our planning department is reviewing all the land that Hampshire owns. So we're actively monitoring, as I say, but we're also, it's a pretty active monitoring of the situation. So I want to share that with you. Things are developing very quickly at Hampshire. Over the next few weeks, they say they will announce additional layoffs, which will be significant in my opinion. It'll continue to draw a lot of attention and just to let you know that I've been engaged in and that a larger group has been engaged with the Hampshire administration. And our strict purpose is to understand the impact on the community, our residents and our businesses. And if you have any, or in on town operations actually as well, so if you have any questions on that, I can answer them. Any questions? Under town council comments in your packet is a memo to Mr. Backelman. This is a result of the poll. It reports the two counselors who have expressed interest in appointments to the Energy and Climate Action Committee and the additional two counselors that said they would serve if needed, or under the condition that there was no other architect. I have no idea. I have no other reports. Are there any future agenda items? We hope to bring forward the town council goals for our April 22nd meeting. And I believe also you're planning to bring forward the hope to bring forward the public ways. Hope to. And in addition to that, we have the whole issue of the liaisons. Okay, any other comments? Yes, Sarah. Really quick, I just wanted to tell everybody here because I've replied this to everyone, but I just want to say it out loud. My younger son is having gallbladder surgery tomorrow morning, and then my husband leaves for India the very next day for two weeks. So I have let people know, but just to let everybody here know, I won't be able to make the April 4th meeting, and I will do my best to make sure that I get all that information, but I'm not just blowing you off. We certainly understand. Any additional comments? There's no topics not reasonably anticipated and no executive session. I move to adjourn. All those in favor? Thank you.