is not protected to the degree that domestic violence is allowed within the family. It is not. We consider that to be unacceptable, because this is not an absolute right but a qualified right. However—I think that that is an important point—the minister made the point that she supported the legislation and the Government supports the bill because of their desire to make Scotland the best country in which to be a child. That is a laudable objective, but I have to say that if we want that to be true, we should not fool ourselves that passing this bill will achieve that. Only last week we heard that 240,000 children in our country live in poverty. The Poverty and Inequality Commission talked about the failure of Government spending to address that. The IPPR and a similar report talked about the importance of fast-tracking the income supplement on which the Government is dragging its feet. We should not kid ourselves that by passing this legislation we resolve all the difficulties and challenges that children face in our country today. One or two members have spoken about the last attempt to make a similar change back in 2003. I was there, of course, at that time. I do believe that attitudes have changed significantly since then. Mike Rumble's attitude for one, but the attitude of the public in civic Scotland is very much so. One or two colleagues have talked about the banning of the belt. When I look at a belt now, I cannot believe that a child—when I was a teacher, children as young as my own grandchildren were hit by a tozzalock elly, which is a pretty big instrument made of leather. Yet, when that ban came in, people thought that that was going to cause all sorts of difficulties, and it didn't. I do think that attitudes change over time, but Ross Greer reminded us that that ban only happened because Grace Campbell went to court. We should change that law before we are forced to do it by a court. The political commentators in recent weeks have quite rightly observed that the 20th anniversary of this place affords us the opportunity to examine how well we do things, whether we are delivering effective legislation to improve the lives of those that it is designed to assist. The anniversary reflect is a time to consider what we have got right, what we have got wrong, to examine our parliamentary procedures and whether our political system is sufficiently robust in terms of passing good legislation. I am grateful to Christine Grahame for what I thought were very interesting remarks about her earlier time in the Parliament, and particularly for flagging up what has to be done to make good legislation. She has talked about the domestic abuse bill and the facts that had to be put through the Parliament before we agreed to take action. Good legislation, in my view, has to be clear and uncomplicated. It must be based on fairness and maximising the common good. It must be acceptable to the public who must see the legislation as both useful and beneficial. As far as possible, it should be easily enforceable and not be open to constant debates about repeal. Like Margaret Mitchell, I do not doubt for a minute the good intentions of those who are proposing the bill. However, there are many of us in the chamber, and not just on the benches, who have grave reservations about what we have before us, because it does not meet the good legislation tests, but because it has exposed the failings in some aspects of parliamentary procedures, most especially when it comes to the laying of necessary evidence before Parliament. I will say more about that later. However, to Fulton MacGregor, I think that he may wish to revise his remarks. To criticise members of this Parliament because he believes that they have not taken due process into consideration, I think that, quite frankly, it is a disgrace, and it undermines what each member, the respect that we have to show to members around this Parliament. As Conservative colleagues have argued this afternoon, the fundamental failing of the bill is its single proposal to classify reasonable chastisement as assault. We have had various members try to argue that those two can be classified in the same way, and I simply do not accept that. Neither does the law, but it is also something that is about the unnecessary and unwanted transfer of power away from parents and the family to the state, and we know what the reaction and the vast majority of parents have been for that. Whatever the bill's proponents might like to argue, it will remove parental discretion and create the scope to criminalise their actions if they administer a miles smack. That cannot be right, and no doubt it explains why so many parents oppose the bill. Nor is there any necessary clarity in the bill, because it is devoid of the evidence, including any conclusive evidence from other countries, to prove that the legislation will make children safer. Indeed, the bill is so weak because of the great areas that it contains, most of them borne out of the completely mistaken view that reasonable chastisement equals assault. For example, are we really saying that when a parent administers a miles smack to a young child for safety reasons to ensure that he or she does not touch an electric plug that we will be reported as committing an assault? That is an open-ended question. Yes, Mr Finnie, I am interested in Mr Finnie's view about that open-ended question, which, as the Crown Office acknowledges, creates confusion and misunderstanding and unnecessary additional anxiety to the parent. I think that the member assumes that the individuals who are daily making decisions about children will suddenly suspend all the knowledge that they have applied thus far in relation to that. That is not the case. Is the member in a position to tell the chamber when she thinks that it is appropriate to commend chastising children? At what age is it reasonable to start hitting a child, please? Liz Smith, I am perfectly happy with the current law, because I do not believe that anybody at all has provided the necessary evidence to explain what is the bad aspect of the current law. I refer back to what Christine Grahame said and to what Mr Rumbles said about the original legislation that we took in 2002-2003, when we debated that issue for a long period of time. Can I just quote what Jim Wallace said in that debate? My good friend and the late David McLeachie made the point that the Scottish Parliament should leave well alone and resist the temptation to interfere and legislate at every turn when it is unnecessary to do so. Jim Wallace, who proposed the bill, accepted that his bill would not introduce any protections that could not reasonably be dealt with by the courts and the same remains true today. That is the fundamental problem about this bill, Mr Finnie. It does not have the evidence that is required to ensure that the additional protections would be put in place. There is no evidence, Mr Harvie. I am grateful to the member for giving way. I have tried to listen as closely as I can to those who do not support the bill. It seems to me that there is one question that they have all avoided. If they are right, why is it that the voices of children's rights organisations are so clearly behind the bill? Why is it that so many people who have children's rights and wellbeing as their professional expertise are supporting the bill and only the Conservatives have it right? Mr Harvie, have you listened to the opinion polls among parents? Those are the very people whose actions or the scope of the bill would be made into criminals, potentially. That is the problem. Of course, there are many charities who have spoken in favour of the bill. I understand that, Mr Harvie, but there are many, many parents across Scotland who have taken the complete opposite view and that tells as much a story as those who support it. I made my remarks at the beginning about the legacy of this Parliament after 20 years about whether we can take pride in passing good legislation. As things stand just now, the bill, just as was the case with the deeply troubled named person legislation, is very wide of the mark indeed about adhering to the key tests that underpin good legislation. Just like the named person legislation, it does not have the support of the public. It is not incomparable. It is because it is unnecessary interference and because it is unworkable. I am deeply troubled about the bill because it has exposed some of the fundamental weaknesses in the manner in which the bill has so far been scrutinised. I hope that you will agree that it is entirely wrong that stage 1 debate of the bill is happening prior to some crucial legal opinion being placed before the Parliament. As a longer-serving member of this Parliament, I am frankly astonished that it has been acceptable to proceed to stage 1 without the Lord Advocate appearing before the committee to answer questions on the bill and before the point of order that Oliver Mundell raised on 15 May has been properly addressed. That together with some of the fundamental failings in the bill is why I will certainly not be supporting it at the end of today. I am grateful to members who have contributed to today's debate and I would like to take the opportunity to address some of the specific points that have been raised. First, criminalisation of parents. In other jurisdictions that have implemented similar legislation, there has not been a significant increase in prosecutions. We expect that to be repeated in Scotland. In Ireland and New Zealand, the change in law was similar to that. In Mr Finney's bill, no, I will not take an intervention. I am sorry, I have a number of issues that have been raised during the debate that I wish to respond to, so there will be limited time for me to take interventions. You had multiple opportunities to intervene in the first time, so I hope to answer all of the issues that have been raised during the debate in my closing speech. In Ireland and New Zealand, the change in law was similar to that in Mr Finney's bill, the removal of a defence. Neither country has seen a significant increase in prosecutions. In New Zealand, the five-year period after the law came into force, there were just eight prosecutions. In Ireland, the committee heard that the office of the director of public prosecutions has found no evidence of any increase in the number of prosecutions. Of course, the approach in other countries varies. Legal systems and approaches vary, but the point is that physical punishment is wrong. This bill fits the legal system in Scotland. Members have asked, does the bill criminalise smacking? As the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service said to the committee in their supplementary submission, the bill, as currently drafted, removes a defence to a behaviour that otherwise falls within the scope of common law crime of assault rather than creating a new crime. The practical effect of that would be that some acts carried out as physical punishment, which may be commonly referred to as smacking, would no longer benefit from the defence of reasonable chastisement and would fall to be considered in terms of the law of assault, as it applies generally. So what is the approach to prosecutions? Decisions on prosecutions in individual cases are entirely a matter for the Crown Office, acting under the direction of the Lord Advocate. Similarly, it is for the Lord Advocate alone to consider whether the guidelines in relation to prosecution will be drafted and published. The Crown Office prosecution code sits out the test that prosecutors apply when deciding whether to take prosecutorial action. Richard Lyle raised the issue of unnecessary police and Crown Office Procurator Fiscal Service action in trivial cases. The written evidence makes it absolutely clear that professional prosecution will, as now, follow the Scottish prosecution code. Firstly, prosecutors must establish if any report received discloses a crime known to the law of Scotland. Secondly, prosecutors assess whether there is sufficient, admissible, credible and reliable evidence that the offence was committed and that it was the accused person who committed it. Finally, prosecutors consider what action, if any, best serves the public interest. In doing so, the Crown Office takes into account a range of applicable criteria, such as the nature and gravity of the offence, the impact of the offence on the victim, the personal circumstances of the accused, the attitude of the victim, the age of the offence, any mitigating circumstances, the effect of a prosecution on the accused, the risk of further offending and considerations relating to the public concern. The Scottish Government considers that the main aim of the bill is to make it clear that physical punishment of children is wrong rather than the criminalisation of parents. In terms of clarity in the law, as Rona Mackay said, the committee heard that in Ireland different civil society organisations and state agencies are positive about the clarity that was brought by the change in the law, and social workers have better relationships with parents because they can provide clear advice. That does not fit with the spectre being raised of a huge number of increased concerns and an overburdened people responding to minor issues. That echoed the evidence that the committee received from social work at Scotland, from Barnardo Scotland, with the NSPCC and Children First and the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, Parenting Across Scotland and the Law Society of Scotland. There is broad civic support for the change in legislation. All those people agreed that the bill will bring clarity to the law. As a number of contributors, including Rhoda Grant, have said, it removes the judgment around how my reasonableness compares with others. It sent a clear message that physical punishment of children is unacceptable and a clear message to society that clarifies the law. As the Crown Office put it, the common law crime of assault is well understood and it is widely used to prosecute offending in courts across Scotland, resulting in a large number of convictions each year. The Crown Office added that the bill proposes to remove this defence, which means that the legal situation would be simplified and children would receive the same protection from assault as adults. Gordon Lindhurst said that the Lord Advocate had not given evidence. I have to correct that, because the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service gave detailed written evidence to the committee. Gordon Lindhurst also said that the bill tells parents how to parent. It does not. It makes it absolutely clear that parents will still have a range of positive techniques at their disposal when disciplining their children. On the issue of interference with family life, we are not aware of any international treaty provision that gives the rights to parents to physically punish their children. We note that the committee came to the same conclusion in paragraph 95 of its stage 1 report. Murdo Fraser asked why physical punishment of children was different from all the other forms of discipline that might be used, such as the removal of privilege or the naughty step. Let me be clear that the difference is that there is a solid body of evidence that physical punishment is harmful. Let me remind you that the bill is supported by the Faculty of Public Health, the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health. There is even a statement opposing physical punishment from the Academy of Pediatrics in America. Let me read to you the evidence submitted by the Royal College of General Practitioners during the course of the Welsh bill passing through their Parliament. The balance of evidence seems sufficiently clear and compelling to inform us that parental use of physical punishment of children plays no useful role in their upbringing and poses only risks to their development. That is the Royal College of General Practitioners, scientists who are used to assessing the quality of evidence that is available to them. I would like to thank the committee again for its consideration of the bill and for Mr Finnie to Mr Finnie for taking it forward. I urge members to support the general principles of the bill. I thank all the members who have participated in what has been a very interesting debate. It starts off by the convener of the committee talking about the ambitious programme of engagement that took place. I had forgotten about the snowstorm and the sky, and it is commendable the efforts that people went to share their views with us, more in time to all the kids at Boonskull, Higallic, Postree. The convener talked about a rights-based approach, and the deliberations were about children being at the core, and we have forgotten at our peril that that is what this is about. It was also early mentioned from the convener of a conflict of rights, but it is a very clear statement that physical punishment does not interfere with the rights to family life. Hold your children, keep them safe was a very good phrase from that contribution. The minister followed that on by again citing the evidence that she has there and talked about the work that the Scottish Government is doing to make Scotland the best place for children to grow up. The reasonable chastisements antiquated, and it odds with that aim. I certainly would share that view and share the view that the minister expressed that there should be the same legal protection for all individuals, regardless of their size. Now, there was much speculation about the public interest test, and I did, on occasion, try to intervene. I have to tell you that there is very little mystery about it. Indeed, it is covered in the explanatory note, as a lot of the points have been raised, and at paragraph 13 on page 3, the bullet point 6, or the footnote 6, actually gives you a link to the web link that would explain all the factors that are taken into place. Absolutely nothing is going to change in relation to that. Now, the next contribution came from my good friend and colleague, Mary Fee, who I thought made, as ever, an excellent speech, citing the example of learning disability adults. The public reaction to that, if they were to be subjected to being assaulted. The very clear statement of assault is assault. That is unequivocal. I thought that another very important point that Mary Fee made was that the Parliament is a guarantor of human rights, and that is absolutely—there is an imbalance at the moment, as you rightly identified with us, and it will be part of a culture change. My colleague, Ross Greer, then went on to give a very comprehensive resume of the rights and the shortcomings that exist at the moment. Those are acknowledged by the Scottish Government. Indeed, they were acknowledged by the Equality and Human Rights Committee, who commended the approach of the adoption and incorporation of the UN convention. I would share my colleague Ross Greer's view that the human rights advisory group's findings must be acted upon. You just do not hit children, I think, is a very good statement. Ross Greer was brave to talk about personal faith, and I do appreciate the faith groups that have had a contribution to this. I am particularly grateful to those who lent their support to the legislation, and that is not least the Quakers and the Church of Scotland. We are rights holders in here, and we need to do that. Next speaker was Mr Cole-Hamilton. I would like to acknowledge his support throughout this, and the advice that he has very generously shared with me, and his long-standing commitment to this cause that predates a lot of us. His father's face is in my thoughts at the moment, given the retribution that he took in his father. He is quite right to say that there is an international imperative. It was the first substantive mention of the police and chief superintendent MacKenzie, who came and gave evidence. What I thought was very compelling evidence of explaining, along with his colleagues, sitting side by side him from social work, saying what happens at the moment, the shared work that takes place, the interests of the child being at the forefront of deliberations, the public interest being a factor and that nothing would change if anything happened to be greater clarity provided. No right to hit was a comment that Mr Cole-Hamilton made there. Angela Constance again, and I am not going to have time to do everything but another excellent speech there. Yes, I was a police officer, and that might surprise people, but I was struck as a child and I struck my children. I think that we are all the richer if we learn from experiences, and that is what it is—the unfolding evidence is irrefutable of the damage. The phrase never harmed me or yesable. Liam Kerr. I am grateful to the member for taking the intervention. My colleague Liz Smith raised some really quite important procedural points. I am just wondering if the member can come back on the points that Liz Smith raised. John Finnie. Well, if this is about accusations and what would happen, nothing that would happen is differently. Liam Kerr. I do not feel it is for me to comment that views have been shared with the Presiding Officer. Certainly, unlike some members, I attended every session of evidence, and I thought that we heard very compelling evidence and comprehensive evidence. I did not hear any attempt to stop hearing evidence. There was no—and there was a significant number of written submissions as well, of course. Yes, indeed. Haskell Hamilton. Just to clarify, I am grateful to the member for giving away, the committee went to great lengths to encourage representations from groups opposed to this legislation, as it did from the key members of the judiciary that were already described in the Crown Office and the Lord Advocate, both of whom submitted written evidence. I agree with the member that the evidence that we received was as comprehensive as it could be. John Finnie. I thank the member for that intervention. Annie Wells talked about legal clarity, but I have to say that it was not apparent to me that she was not at all the sessions that I was at that she had taken on board all the information that was there. Rona Mackay was the next speaker who talked about learned behaviour, which I thought was a significant factor. Rhoda Grant—perhaps you can tell me how long I have, Presiding Officer, please? I'll get another two minutes, Mr Finnie. That's right, indeed. Okay, thank you. Likewise, Rhoda Grant, I thought, had a very powerful speech and talked about verbal assault there. We know that we have checks and balances in our system and the reassurance that there is there. Gail Ross, the incorporation of rights, baby box and the direction of travel—I have to say that Mr Lindhurst would not take an intervention. Clearly, the Tory's aspirant legal shock jock was, I think, way off the mark there. Claire Baker talked about being convinced that children need equal protection and talked about the work of Mr Barry in an earlier session, and that is to be commended, and the unfinished business. That is how I see it. There were excellent contributions again from James Dornan, and I am grateful to my colleague Mike Rumbles. I thought a very courageous thing to say that you have changed your mind on the basis of evidence that has been received. That evidence has been overwhelming. The evidence suggests that physical punishment of children is ineffective. It has potential long-term effect. We know that young people support this change. The practitioners, the police, the social work, health professionals, the regal professionals, the children's charities support it. We have members from all five parties in the chamber support it. It is time to give children equal protection. Thank you very much. That concludes the debate on the stage 1 of the children's equal protection from assault Scotland bill. We move on to the next item of business, which is consideration of business motion 17432, in the name of Graham Day, on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau, setting out a revision to the business programme. I ask Maurice Golden to move the motion. The question is that motion 17432 be agreed. Are we agreed? We are agreed. We turn to decision time and there is one question this evening. The question is that motion 17342, in the name of John Finnie, on the children's equal protection from assault Scotland bill, be agreed. Are we agreed? We are not agreed. We will move to division. Members may cast their votes now. The result of the vote on motion 17342, in the name of John Finnie, is yes, 80, no, 29. There were two abstentions. The motion is therefore agreed. That concludes decision time. We are going to move shortly to members' business, in the name of Mary Fee, on SAMH report on universal credit and mental health. We will just take a few moments for Members and the Minister to change seats. A few moments and then we'll proceed.


information, you can write something up and post it. Put it on the map. So would we do that? Would we do that during snow events? Yeah. I mean, that's what we talked about. It's a regular update. Yeah, regular, regular communication. If you have an idea of what if you just do it by saying where you're thinking where you're working. In the summertime, it's easier because we have a planned project. Right. But not seasonally, it's here, there, everywhere. I can't tell you every month all that's in this town that I'm going to fix tomorrow. But can you give a general idea? Yeah, I can generally give a general idea. I mean, I try to break the town into sort of quarters and I try to put my efforts in a little bit everywhere. You could say that to borrow future calls and say we receive calls about what's in the falling road. It's falling roads and we're going to get to them as time permits. Yeah. So then at least they know you know. Yeah, it's the same thing obviously too. There are many times that we I think it's just, I think it's right. I think it's just about communication, saying something. So that people know that you know. People know they know you know. Do we want to put it on the website or do we want to do it? Well, the only issue of the front porch forum is the lack. So the front porch forum comes out every day at about four. So if you're posting, if you're giving them anything after that, it's not going to come out for 24 hours. I think you know, I don't even know what the path to putting something on the website is. Well, we have to get Jeremy or Barbara to put something on the website. You know, post it. So, and they usually leave the office around four. So, I mean, even if it's just like we know this, you know, we know Muncie's really bad. The road crew is on it. They're hauling gravel. You'll see that, you know, something or and saying that, you know, the road crew works on sections of towns. Something. Well, if so, all right, let's try this out though. What if that what if we asked Jeremy if he would be willing at 3 30 each day to post what happened today. So we're not asking you to predict it's okay. Here's the roads that we hit today. If you have an awareness of what you're doing tomorrow, then people do have immediate information and it could possibly be accomplished in a conversation with Jeremy if he's willing to do that. What do you think of that idea? Well, certainly it's easier to tell them what I've definitely done. And that's what you saw. Right. Denise, they said what was already done. I can't remember. I thought it fronted it out. I didn't see it. I just think I really think you're right. What people need is just a little touch and communication. First of all, I think people need to know just what you're doing in the sense generically. So I think I'm talking to both of you guys. I think just saying all we can do right now is put gravel down. It's too early for us to sleep. Grab a little bit. Whatever, something like that. Because to the extent that we're irritated because they keep driving over something that's really hard to do and they're thinking, why can't they do anything about this? And I think if you say all we can do is understand that we can't grade right now. I had a conversation with him where I was saying, why can't you grade? I told you why.  So anyway. Oh boy. We don't have to belabor this any longer. We're all coming at various ideas and various urges that there be some regular method of communicating something that is useful. The more specific great but if that's not possible that's something you can aspire to and for now just letting people know even if you have even once a week you say we hit these roads this week. That's what I think my opinion is just posting something on front porch forum if it's like right now it's really bad so maybe once maybe twice a week. I don't think that it's going to be possible to ask Jeremy to do this every day. I don't think that's a realistic Leave it to the two of you guys too. I don't know where we are. We're on the news. Start somewhere. Once a week. Whatever. I just know that last week I was not going to be wanting to talk to somebody on the phone explaining what I did.  And it was 6 o'clock some nights before I got home. Leave it. My brain is pushed at that point. It's just this. I mean I'm keeping track of the guys. I'm telling them where one road needs to be where the great is going next.  During those times it's going to be the hardest to communicate. But I think Rick could work with you having a conversation with Rick and then post something on Rick. Next what he's saying, I'm with you. I'm glad to do that. He's going to have a bandwidth. So either he has to drop me an email because I haven't worked too. If we have I can try to set something up either with barn or from our porch form or with a slight amount of he's got to fill me with that information. Bottom line Alfred I hear you and at the same time from my standpoint it's not too much for the town to ask of us. So think about how you create that bandwidth for yourself. I hear you that you need it but think about how you make that space be level in your brain. How can Rick help? It's not too much for people to ask. It doesn't take long to post something on porch. Right. You can first vent you can vent it Rick for a few minutes and then do that. Right. He will but he can take it. What I do want to talk about too is to make sure that we have the whole notification process for schools. That's on the agenda. That's the next item. Anything else I mean to say about much? When is it going to be over? Let's shift on. Protocol for school closures based on poor road conditions. That's the next item Rick. This stuff tails in particularly when you're talking to Roger Hill and to the supervisory I think that's connected to that. Generally talk to Roger to ease the communication to the school and then lately I've been talking to the West Grouch through the text Roger Hill communicates with the school did you say? Worked out a few years back a process of attack and this is how they make the decisions about school closures with Roger. We have that contract with Roger? No. That's the part that's broken because when we were using him when you were on leave we did have a contract. We never had a contract. We kind of piggybacked through the schools. What's important for us in this situation? What time that information gets to the school so that they can make it and I don't know what time that you should have. It's three in the morning they made the decision. 5.30. They've got the answer. They've tried to get all their information gathered by them. So when you say you talk to the school that cat or you talk to the supervisory you're talking directly to the bus company two on orders four. I never really thought as much about money but that's as much as a snowstorm even more. We're running into potential issues with the school buses. Sheet and Jen is the lady at the bus garage she called me that Monday morning when one season first hit and she was asking me about the road and I said you know it would be really great if you asked to cancel today. It would be one day to fix up some of the stuff on my recommendation they didn't want to run the school and those buses create a lot of damage cars make damage it's just a big difference so I was asking them to run the school for one day and give me time to fix up some of the really worst spots and they can honor that. Obviously they've got a lot of criteria to follow. They've got a lot of things to look at and I'm just going to make their decision on one time. I think you have the authority to close the road now and you could say well if you're going to run school and say Lightning Ridge is dangerous from your standpoint you wrote as close to all heavy vehicle traffic so you're going to have to figure it out and pick up at the elementary school and parents have to get the kids there. There was only one road that I closed during this whole process and that was Collard Hill if you've seen it it was just a problem and it was cars getting stuck and it was on the weekend also so I went over Saturday night a week ago a week ago at least one car got stuck on Iron and Martin Road too and had to be turned out and I think those buses tend to run deep because of the car drives and one of those trucks is on its frame because there is Collard Hill trucks are stuck in the wall between Elizabeth and Doug and ours in fact we couldn't even put our I had to have my trucks back down to the wall dump it and then push it into the grid so I knew my trucks would be stuck all the time did that on a weekend? no no we went there Monday I closed it for over a week and then Monday I went and picked up well that's the kind of thing that if Rick knows that you've closed the road he can post something from porch forum so we didn't that's a fight it depends on when that happens with a closure decision like that that's the day before we can do it even if it's late at least at least you've posted at least it's a communication the good news is Worcester Road all the work it offered did that major investment was beautiful I made the mistake thinking because there were just too bad spots now like Robinson Hill I was going to take my trash to Worcester I was like man you know Collar Hill it's like this it's a little drain better which is stupid because of course overall it's like this but it's like this and then it's like this and then it's like this and so I actually got stuck too but I got pulled out but I should have taken the Worcester Road because I came back and it was beautiful until I got to Robinson Hill by Pat Malone's as well there were two spots and those are clay boils they come every year yeah and there are places like on Marshfield Road they're all over the places you guys worked and worked and worked you did a lot of work on that that was east cow side of town so if you look at that that's a perfect thing if you look at that like 100 feet from the black top it's just like a summer day that was dug up and built I remember that and then we did all this clay so we need to do more of that and I'm planning on doing more of that the summer with some grandma which is totally a box cut it out put it under drain and then growl fabric did it on Moscow did a lot on Moscow I mean the stuff by the cemetery and these cows all those humps and we got another one up here in front of me corner store I mean yeah so try to mark them out they're obvious and then I can put a I'm trying to get a number together for price per foot so that would be easier to for grants you know we can calculate the grants better can we um I want to circle back and make sure we've that we have wrapped this up clearly so the question Rick was whether we have good protocol for school based on poor road conditions I just want to make sure that do you I want to I'm going to beg to differ when you were on leave we absolutely had an arrangement with Robert Roger Hill because I think it wasn't we had an arrangement but I don't think we paid for it no we absolutely did pay for it there was a fee involved we had to pay for whatever yeah it absolutely was but when Rick ran into some conversation where that was a piece that from somebody's perspective was missing now what I need to make sure of is that schools know what our assessment is before they have to make that however that's happening I thought that was through Roger Hill but I was getting some feedback they weren't hearing from us finding out after the fact and so we need to know we have to make sure that that connection is closed and act you know the same and so not just for the bus company that has to the supervisor union is making the decision so whatever that that's being done through Roger which I think that was the original so that well before they get so the school district has the arrangement with Roger did I get that they get information from him but you communicate with the garage this year I've been communicating with the garage so Roger I mean I don't holler to Roger because he's got six screens in front of him and he's got all things going on so I don't holler to him on the radio I wait for him to holler to me and I haven't had that so I've been communicating with and that's the thing because we're in the bus company that's probably a bad time we were waiting for it and here's another thing that is probably part of that reasoning every single year in the fall we go down to Washington Central and we have lunch together and we talk about the plan for the wintertime since COVID that has not happened they didn't want to hurry in person so there's a little bit of a communication gap there and we also change superintendents during this time so there's a little bit of a mix up and less lack of communication as far as that goes well before you were communicating to Roger at least that's my understanding from that supervisory so if that's the case I mean if you're communicating the information to them that's Roger's deal to gather that from the five frame form so Roger has contracts with all the towns that communicate and we don't have a contract so this is one of the gaps we should talk about right that's why I didn't check that's probably I can take that on the chin I didn't feel like we should be spending six or eight hundred dollars a year to get a weather report this is all started that's what it was we had that before we had to give us an update on the weather and what to expect I could get that on the radio from him right from him so now it's like it's different now it's all tied into whether we go into school whether we're not going to school whether the roads you know to meet there's more to it so now maybe it's time to fight the bullet and spend that eight hundred thousand dollars a year so who would do that well I think this is we've reached to recognizing an opportunity I think we say Rick and Alfred bring us back something to you know to discuss and bless just bring us back it might be just the phone call Roger and see why he hasn't been reaching maybe he can't now some of the reason too is the truck that I normally drive is out of service all winter so there's no off and on so it's quite you know so okay so I'm making a note it's broken again do you have a clear action for them Rick and Alfred are going to connect with Roger Hill well and and find out what services he offers we want to get clear on the protocol for and it might involve Roger Hill and make another proposal we'll get clear on the school protocol I think it's a phone call to Roger and see what what he requires to so Denise is doing her best to take ministers why I'm slowing this down right because there's nobody whose fingers are capturing everything I'm writing a note so I have to define exactly what that protocol is and also and then whether we have to have a paid service with Roger or not I need to kind of find out what the towns are doing what we'd like to do it's always been that the school was paying him so we're part of the school district so that's why he's communicating with me at that in the beginning of it it's always been on this slow down he's not reaching out to me as well it sounds like there's a disconnect in an expectation which comes from the overall there's a lot of cooks in this soup here and lack of clarity somewhere maybe everybody just needs to get on the same page I need to clarify if that's the case if it is $600 or $800 why can't the supervisor take a call right from now I was going to make the decision I think the $600 was when we were paying Roger for like road by road what to expect on timing because we had a gap a couple of years ago that's my memory and now who needs the information is not Alfred unnecessarily it might be the schools and so they're paying him anyway we can sit here and ask questions online we put a shape on the questions so one of the things you're going to do is you're going to check with this district to see who contacts who the exact what is that protocol if there's an agreement in place I want to know what the communication is the chain of communication because the bottom line is you've got sort of kind of a complaint that it was broken and so let's find out and it's not broken and let people know okay all right we need to call Sandra okay on the back can you grab the space phone over here no it's over there we need to call Sandra well we need her to do the treasure while we're getting her phone can you give me her number yep it's 802 let's wait 223 7484 the more that he gets I know it's addictive isn't it hi Sandra sorry we're late well let's get right to business then Sandra thanks for joining us we are ready to talk with you about the the treasure and delinquent tax collector report that you provided for us and we have it everyone has in the electronic folder I printed out just the highlights from my own purposes that's what I did I printed out the memos yep Sandra why don't why don't we let you drive and then we'll ask folks here have questions okay well you guys are in I'm on the rabbit the uh as we're coming to the end of the third quarter you're suggesting that you have revenues that aren't which states your expenses are big for both general government and highway this report was drawn in February the delinquent taxes are about $33,000 right now at the end of February they were at 42 keeping in mind that 9,000 of that is the taxpayer or the car collector should say that was turned over to Laurie Rice for collections she has indicated to me that she had no contact with that particular that she is ready for would get this upward exhale her thought was that she'd like to wait until the delinquent collector was appointed at the time we spoke that it seems fairly imminent can you repeat the numbers again that they were they the delinquent taxes now are $33,000 roughly $33,000 of which is in collection and headed towards exhale as soon as is $33,000 at this stage of the game something while let's take that 9,000 out because we understand that there's a process for that so is the 24,000 something we should be ringing our hands about at this point I'm sure 91% looking at these there's a good chance that you will get most of them before the end of the fiscal year are they on payment plans Sandra what was that are they on payment plans some are some are not generally speaking this is the month I usually say hey you folks you've got to get this paid so I don't think there's any hand-raining that has to happen at this point I think you're going to be most of them collected and what we all we're really ahead of the game at this point but what we often see is you collect a good deal of these by the end of the fiscal year and then another couple months go by and they're virtually all in so I think we're going to have some problems folks I don't know I mean I don't like are we in an open meeting now like yes so there's one always on the delinquent list and that person may need a longer payment plan she suggested one and I have countered only because that takes me to do a but I do know there has been and I'm not sure how that has affected her finances I'm sure we'll be fine there's one guy who's going to go to the end but it's a few hundred bucks it's not a big amount I think we're going to be alright remember once again you have a very healthy fund balance that is in an we don't like to call it a cushion but you should be fine okay starting with John questions no thank you Sandra nice work thank you it's good Rick questions thank you any parting comments for us Sandra things we should have asked you no yes asking the fiber the invoice for the fibers that they have laid in the area any longer laying that fiber but you folks had promised them up to $35,000 okay and you probably want to do that in this fiscal year which they need to get you a bill and a check has to be cut to them before June the reason I say this is that in the budget in the budget for this year you do have a $10,000 in that you promise up to an additional $25,000 and again you have a fund balance that's going to be able to manage that but when you roll into FY23 you have nothing set aside in your budget receiving fiber depending on what happens that year that could be a big that's a large on budgeted expenditure so if someone should reach out to them a board maybe could write a letter or give I think David is gone now I think there is a new ED I'm not mistaken I think a reach out point for that invoice would be wide he serves on that board he's still there he's not the executive director the executive director I think has which staff yes that's true but David's still there Denise would you be willing to follow up on that point and get us an invoice I don't think we does anybody feel the need for a letter form I mean if Denise if you want to write a letter and do your own signature is everybody okay with that I'm just not sending them an email Denise get us an invoice thank you alright thank you Sandra anything else you should have asked you alright before you go Sandra it's probably common knowledge remember what is your last day Friday so I guess maybe from your perspective and maybe you provided this advice to others on the board what is your parting advice we're kind of in this in between without having hired a treasurer or a tax collector we have some time for that discussion but no but John's asking for Sandra's advice I'm looking for Sandra's advice on this board's advice I think that I think it's very important that you figure out how you're at the very least how your payroll is going to be managed and how your quarter of tax resources are going to be filed there before the end of April you do have a proposal from Simmerick for that purpose and I think the board needs to make sure that that the accounts of please are reassured that there's not going to be any glitch in that area so I think that you want to get resources in place to take care of at least your payroll right and we're Mark and I are meeting with you and Jeremy on Thursday and I sent out to the board two things we sent out that is isn't that later on the agenda well it can be now I don't know if we need to go into executive session I guess we don't probably don't need to go into executive session it's not really personnel it's become more contractual it's contractual and it's personnel I think we'll just have to be careful I printed what I got it in a copy at least so the plan that Mark and I came up with we sent it to the board so it doesn't have to stay we I think we put on the record no you don't have to you can say if you want to he knows that I'm kind of interested because I need to know who to send the time back we're going to be able to talk about that I think we did say for the record that we in an earlier meeting that we were we were making an offer to somebody and so for the record that did not work out so we're back at we're back at square one with a shorter timeline and that's the context so I'm saying this and you're busy shuffling you can remember to put that context in the minutes so yes so we have to unfortunately we have to re-advertise this hiring market as Mark and I described is really really bad hiring market right now when I spoke with Bonnie at CBRPC she said this is the perfect storm this was going to happen with a lot of baby boomers retiring so people retired earlier there's half the population of younger people to fill the jobs that the baby boomers were in so the board needs to think I've got a whole list of places to advertise say what people have been predicting that for 30 years and it's a perfect storm it's happened here we are and where the board wants to go in executive session to talk about is a couple of things that I put down about updates to the ad do we do a sign on bonus updates to the ad we have to be in executive session for that I think we need to decide are we going to be flexible in what we offer as benefits so that's are we going to there's two issues there's two reasons one is our plan for how we're handling this internally and the other is the personnel issue of what we put in the ad what we offer etc so Madam Chair do you want to show me do the what should we do first I think the latter needs we have some other things for executive session personnel related I think what we need to do is I've made a list of all the places where we've placed the ad previously I'd like the board to revisit the ad and see if there's any way we can fluff it up a bit and then do we want to consider a sign on bonus like we did with the highway crew some corporations are offering a $10,000 sign on bonus private companies so when we've advertised we've put the sign on bonus in the advertisement but it was in the ad yes so if and I think people are well if we think we would put it in the ad then there's no reason not to be discussing it openly here that's why I've got it on this question is do we want to offer that and if so how much that's for later can we want to talk on bonus and all that stuff in public if we're going to put it in the advertisement well I think we ought to be talking about the memo that says how are we going to handle payroll that I agree in the executive session we should talk about what is our what are we going to offer because I think we need to look at what the offer was previously and the issues that arose from that offer that might make a difference now so I think we need to do an executive session folks from folks around we will talk about a sign on bonus because we have to decide among other things that are much more and that has a I think the issue that you guys are pointing out is that has an interplay with some of the other things that definitely are executive sessions that sort of push that whether we offer a bonus or not gotcha thank you for working through that with us so the upshot for now is we are we are going to be re-advertising and then the other issue is we need to have some short term solutions that require some creative so we the two of us met together Denise talked to Sandra at some point and we are also meeting with Sandra and our proposal for how we handle this in our period is in this memo which we sent to you which is in for executive session so there is really nothing on this that we feel we can do because of its relationship to some other things I do think the plan that is what we do we can discuss now in other words we can discuss now the memo that we sent to you that talks about can't we discuss all this procedure for why did we label that because I did which one are you guys on do we need to discuss that you guys still need me we only need you for about 5 more years we only need you for about 5 more years yeah Sandra sorry Sandra do we need her for 5 more minutes no well we probably should do 5 more minutes 5 more minutes so thank you thank you you have brought us into the modern age of finances and do you guys have an exit interview feedback schedule you're working on before we do that so Mark and Rick are probably have probably connected we're going to wait until we kind of get through this push right now to do that alright Sandra but you're free to go unless you want to I'm sure you don't thank you Sandra thank you Sandra bye ok so you guys or if you want to do it later and go through some of these other things first I think let's just go I was thinking that we were doing this that whole thing because we got later at the end because otherwise we're asking folks to leave alright so let's move on Mark the next item is the select board guidelines and I'm going to turn to you on that one I'm just going to put a motion out first and I'll explain I'm moving that we table this for now and come back next time the 411 meeting the 411 we're almost there but that's I don't think you need a motion I don't think you need a motion the motion is also for the two of us the two of us will work and we will provide you guys we're almost there we'll provide you guys with a clean word version copy you can read it we can debate it if there's anything to debate I really think when I look finally finally understood my apologies there were we've discussed this at length in several meetings one of which I had completely forgotten about and so I think almost every issue was resolved it's just that you know now you'll have a clean copy and we'll talk about it and I guess for my two cents let me say that the version that I put in the folder is that clean copy based on the last time we talked about it and the to-do that I had which was to incorporate some edits that I kept telling you guys I had made but had not been the one in front of us that night and so at the end of that discussion it was okay let's get those in that is what you have here I did do some things like put some little headings in to just be guideposts but Mark and I can work through it and bring I remember the concerns that were expressed we're sharing unfortunately it wasn't there I remember the debate I'll make sure it gets to you as reasonable right but we did but that was not the last discussion that was my mistake in your email you said there was a discussion in September there was another discussion after the August version and there were a number of edits that we made as a group that night that I think people forgot about well and I think it's been so long I think we didn't we didn't see like the the document this is the document before and this is the document now the edits that I made so you don't see don't know well okay but you're not going to see them again it's time to just look at a document say do we like it where are we now rather than trying to start a year ago and try to go through the whole thing so I'm going to be authorize Sharon and Mark to work on the document alright all in favor alright okay and Mark I'm going to meet this application I'm going to turn to you for that one too I forgot to take the water marker we what I guess it is a draft could we approve we're just at this point given where things are we've put together a very you guys charged the two of us with as you remember working on private roadside and we did Lua just sort of the odd hope kind of thing that was going on where people were coming okay and we did and we met with Alfie we met with Alfie we met with Alfie and Peter and concluded that for right now given where things are we just we need to stay we need to we're asking for a little delay we need to we need and what we've done is we've Sharon and I have put together Sharon put together and I agree with it it's just a form it's just a form that require that people have to fill out saying what they're doing that they understand the clearance site clearance policy that they've read it that they're familiar with it I mean essentially it requires them to set out information you have to get approved by the board access goes right to the board it's not ideal it's not what we'd hope for but I think for right now it's coming season can I say I mean is there an outlet let's say I offer obviously season say sight lines aren't being maintained and we come in and know that's what the girl actually is it's a safety issue well so there's quite an improvement because before there was no form we were hoping to do what we all thought last fall we could do is come up with a policy and it feels after all of the discussions that we had with Alfred and Peter we're not in a place to really have a policy yet we'd like to get there we're not there we'd like to get there so we're not so that's the reason for the deferral it's not like we're going to come back in six weeks but what what we thought would make sense in the meantime is that to at least standardize an application so that everybody who wants to maintain the road privately fills this out we aren't able yet to delegate this to Alfred because we don't have a policy for but at least we'll have a standard application everybody who wants private range is filled out brings to the board we'll get the same information from everybody and then we approve or deny for the season so is there a statement in there regarding us not waiving our right in the event we determine the maintenance is inadequate but the road commission it determines is that in that form that needs to be in that a clarification because so if Alfred says I've talked to these folks to do blah blah blah and they're not we have a place for conditions so if we were pressed to approve this tonight that could always be a condition but we're not pressed this isn't the folder guys so go out take a look at it if you feel like something's missing we can approve this next time I think the clarification is it's going to happen someone's going to fall down they've been too busy on vacations somewhere in France or something so we're going to need to get the work done and they're going to come back and they're going to flip out so we need to say look at paragraph 9 okay so are you going to go out and do this or are you asking us to do it we should just do it I think you should do it and can we put it in here and then we'll have a clean copy to look at for the next meeting okay now one thing this doesn't mean we aren't going to ask Alfie right what do you think right it's consulted he has to sign this thing I don't know this is still coming to the select board he sent it to the select board are we going to get Alfred's input are we going to get Alfred's input on this on the application and we'll bring this to the meeting we'll have a discussion at a meeting right kind of like a curb cutter I can put in my two cents then yeah I know the certain parts of road that they're right what I'm saying is that it'll be like for now it'll see someday I don't think these things should come to us right someday we think they should come to us on a palette level only but for now we're just living with the status quo part of the status quo but improved part of the status quo is when there's a meeting and they come to the meeting we're going to ask Alfie what do you think and he can say it people are great I don't see that they can do this so I just made a note that we're going to add something in here that the town will mow if they're not maintaining they're part of the bargaining right but understand I want to get really clear with you guys this is the converse of what we wanted what we hoped is that we would say here's a standard and you have to meet it in Alfred Kennedy but we're not there so we're just it's a bunch of blanks it's a bunch of tell us what your plan is for this tell us what your plan is for that it's it's which is basically what we've been doing this is just makes it better so that everybody has to file the same information and it does have a statement in here that we will work cooperatively and collegially with the town's road commissioner to maintain open and proactive lines of communication and we will respond promptly to communication from the road commissioner so that is in here Alfred I carried over the note that I was starting to write I'm just going to hand this around and you can take this paper version I bet that's easier for you if you have feedback for us please send it to me and Mark by Friday Friday yep just so you don't forget about it and we can get that wrapped up okay yeah because the season is fast absolutely and at least we've had a discussion with people now there's going to be an application if you want to do your own private roadside maintenance now is that when we get that we'll be on the website private roadside maintenance private maintenance public roadside private roadside oh right private maintenance private maintenance of public roads private maintenance of public roadside okay you're right about that that could very easily be misread okay so that's done alright so we can do these probably as a slate um we have what before we do I'd like to ask Denise if she would want to be well first give us okay can I say it loud with the topic oh I thought you were doing these appointments I was I'm jotting the gun so what we were about to do is revisit a discussion from a couple meetings ago we made some preliminary appointments we had several appointments they are the Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District Delegate and Alternate the Health Officer and then the CVRPC Delegate to the Clean Water Advisory Committee those one to basically four appointments are the topic but John so not listed is an idea of mine you know most boards maybe select boards but boards in general you know Robert Jules and all that have a secretary and I see Denise like time and again basically in that role I was wondering if the board would consider if Denise was willing to be our board secretary isn't it called a clerk maybe called a clerk yeah it's optional for us to have a clerk I was thinking the same thing there you go but she's doing it well as long as I don't have to do minutes forever but I've got a plan for that well that kind of is the role of the clerk is doing the minutes so Denise doesn't really want to be doing them forever then that's well I don't know there's more things I think she could be the clerk and then would we hire someone to do minutes not the minutes if it's not to do minutes on going then I would want to have a clear understanding because Denise you just said there's other stuff but that's what we talked about that last time right until we until we get to the other piece of an administrative this maybe we wait do you want to well I want to know what it is I think it's really important that we as a board because Denise has been doing things organically based on she just knows to do it for a while to have that kind of bubble out and for us to understand what that is well I think also the clerk would like contact the other boards commissions committees check with chairs and stuff to see if people want to be reappointed you know those kinds of things like that I would think a clerk or a secretary would do or or a select board assistant but yeah I think you want because I think you want it to be somebody from the board that's asking people if they want to be reappointed or if the chairs think they should be reappointed kind of thing um seems like it should come from a board member and yeah that's yeah that's fine that can be an assigned duty but that's kind of not what we're here on right now I was thinking I was thinking about work from the recording secretary standpoint because you are doing it now but you have lots of thoughts on that we're going to talk about it exactly this session so um yeah right yeah so well yeah so is there so the I move all the appointments well can you say them out loud though for people watching the movie I'm moving the appointment of Jay Copping as a health officer for a three year term Bill Powell as the CVS WMD delegate and an alternative alternate delegate of John Brabant for a one-year term and that's the center Vermont's always been and then the central Vermont regional planning commission delegate to the water clean water advisory committee is John Brabant for a one-year term second okay any questions discussion comments I've been on the water advisory committee they've changed the process I filled out this form for you yes okay um all in favor please say hi okay okay so those are done the private roadside maintenance or private maintenance of public roadside application will be we'll do that at the next meeting okay so one of the things um that I kind of forgot about when Denise and I were working on this agenda but um this concept of consent agenda so we heard your input on the application um whose input? I mean the board's input? yeah oh okay yeah so so just to tee up this concept that's the sort of thing that A we can change at any time B we just want to get it done um you've looked at it's been in the folder you gave us some feedback that to me would go into a consent agenda the the private maintenance of the public roadside for next meeting in other words it can sustain introducing the idea of a consent agenda which a lot of organizations do a consent agenda is just things how do you make one motion and one approval of a whole series of controversial items so it's like housekeeping stuff? yeah like Mark just did like Mark just did for that point so you put on the agendas and Sharer and I are working on these together do you put on the agenda consent agenda items and then you list them and the first thing that happens is the chair says anybody want to take anything off the consent agenda it just takes one member of the board to remove something from the consent agenda they want to talk about it and then it goes right into the agenda it just moves into the agenda but if it stays on the consent agenda then someone says I move the consent agenda second to a move but how do you know if you take it if the board member says okay I want to take this off for discussion then how does the public know that it's being discussed to be able to be here it's the next thing but you list it so we would literally have a list well we would never know so it's the chair's job to say these are things that are fits for the consent agenda so you guys will get the agenda it'll say consent agenda there's the four things right and people in the public know that if they want to say anything first of all they gotta find somebody on the board to take it off the consent agenda right and second of all then when they do it's the next item but well it is good it saves a lot of time and we've already had as much discussion as that application deserves so it's stuff like that we're making a little tweak we do this every year it's a feel good letter of support for a project absolutely not controversial it's in the folder everybody can read it you can email me and say I don't want that on the consent agenda don't put it on the consent agenda and also people can hear if they appear at the beginning meaning they can say if they want it's an item on the consent agenda I don't want it to be on and then someone can say why not and they say have something to say about it you can say fine I move it I want it off the consent agenda it doesn't even require emotion I like it it's a way well and it's it moves the things that are routine and the things that we've already talked about into one motion not taking up big discussion time it allows us to free up time for the harder stuff I mean one of the things that I really noticed tonight is how I mean I'm trying to run the meeting and I'm not able to take good notes I'm watching and it's hard for anybody we've got a board member who's trying to do that one of the things that we need to do is slow ourselves down take time make sure we're getting crisp on what we want documented and Denise as long as you're taking minutes slow us down make sure that we are clear on what we're saying and what we're going to document because that's our memory at least for me what's in the minutes is kind of the memory right that's why you need to have minutes to say more than just the motions right so and the motions need to be clear anyway so so creating that time for ourselves through a consent agenda just it makes all the sense I think Mark said this before I've never been on a board that you've talked to me about that before didn't have that and so anyway so I'm yes I'm using this opportunity to say oh perfect example the private maintenance of public roadside the question though so that I can just write for the minutes so a board member says I don't want this on the consent agenda do you have to have a reason why and if it's not and if it's removed it's taken up like immediately after okay it's what thinking of it this way I'm just thinking of us for organizing the agenda it's not substantive it's just a way of organizing the agenda that's all it is I'll give you an exam by the way it's almost 9 30 it turns all the things that should be 5 minutes and actually 5 minutes well as opposed to yeah right good luck and it doesn't mean like for example so you can't talk about it at all you know what if it's a short question just really simple people do all the time but I think this is fine on the consent agenda just tell me this or whatever but one of the things that's important to remember is just because something's on the consent agenda doesn't mean that there's no report or written material about it in other words quite the contrary like for example in the Vermont Land Trust maybe every single meeting there would be like 15 transactions right I've seen that on the BLC on the CBF you see it there's 15 transactions of which two are controversial or important or involve a lot of money and the executive director would put 10 of the 15 on the consent agenda every one of them has a report what you say in report a document in the folder a document in the folder and it's up to the board to look at them and sometimes people would say the third one there, I want to pull that off and fine, that's that and it's off and no one frowns at you, it's understood it's an organizational device it's an organizational device that's all it is that's why it only takes one person saying there's no vote there's no you just boom so somebody makes a motion to approve all the items listed on the consent agenda somebody seconds it and then the board votes before that usually the chair says I'm going to raise the consent agenda now but before I do is there anyone who wants to take anything off the consent agenda? hearing heard do I have a motion? well then what do these said happens and I think the other thing it does is what you know I'm just going to you know I'm going to start doing this you know you won't get a whole big list but please please I work really hard to get the agenda out you guys had it by Thursday we asked you for items on Tuesday there were much of the documents that were in the folder today were in there last week so there's my goal is for you to have time certainly over the weekend to read the documents and not have them popping up and surprising you on Monday afternoon in the folder not just in your email there's so much email as we said last meeting getting the documents in the folder so you can read them it does put the burden on reading them in advance but it gives you more time but it gives you more time read them in advance and then you know whether you're comfortable it sort of defeats the purpose if we're pulling them off just because you haven't had a chance to read it that's my point enough on that for now John you had an update on the Worcester cell tower well no there is my update is that this is Greenwich it's not ripe yet you can no you're probably here for the application the what? that way you stay I'm still concerned about who I'm going to send the time cards to we'll let you know we're not going to get that right we have a plan we'll get once we get them all Denise and I are working on it and we're meeting the Sun around Thursday once we have that nailed down we'll let everybody know you're not going to you can wait your own night and you're not going to have any answers no I just if that was going to come about I would never to know in the past I've always done it one day more because that's what Sandra wanted to know yeah we'll keep that in mind when we're doing it we'll likely still be Monday morning yeah there's always psychics that's you know it's just work this is so nice to work for let me ask the question while Alfred is packing up we also got a town health officer recommendation form that came with the health with the health officer appointment do we have to fill this out would you like me to fill it out well that's something a clerk would do I was thinking that's what I was thinking we're only at a clerk if we can just can I have do you want me to sign it and then we can just fill it out and then we can sign it too and we're done okay I am filling this form out guys or signing it and then would you put like a signed version in our folder for tonight or something thank you or the completed version okay and the update on Mr. Sellars premature not right the application is yet to be filed you see the letter we go in okay okay so we we're going to executive session now yes Denise do you want to go into executive session per section 313 um a3 which is related to personnel matters is there a second do it all John seconds any discussion questions it's 9 932 932 who made the second I did okay so


This video is going to show you how to do some basic things in GeoGebra. So we want to put an equation, we want to graph an equation, so we come down here to input and we want to say that y is equal to, let's say we just have a whole bunch of factors. So x plus 5 and then x minus 4 and then we'll do one with an exponent so you can see what to do there. So x plus 1 and then outside the parentheses here, just like in web work, if you've used web work, it's just caret 2 for your exponent. So then we press enter, it'll show us a graph. And if you come up here to this, it says move the graphics, I want to move my graph so I can just move it however I want to, so I can see some things. Well, I want to look at this, I can see that it looks like I'm going to have some low points or minimums on my graph way down, it looks like it's going to be quite a bit down, so I need to change the window for this one.  Now sometimes you have to play with this, but if you set this over to the side you can usually see kind of what's going on. The basic dimensions is really what I want. So I need it to be something much bigger than negative 6 and so I could need to come in here and say okay, let this be a little bit more than that and let's say we want it to be negative 200. Move my cursor anywhere else, it's going to change my graph and we can look at it and definitely we have what we need. Looks like we probably could have gone to maybe 150 or 160, I would like to make that a little bit less. So let's go in here again and we'll say 160. Now you look at this and you're saying wow, that grid is so small. How do we change that? Well, let's talk about the grid, a distance here. We have the Cartesian coordinate on the X, we're okay, but for the Y here let's say that that's every 10, not 110, 10. And then if we just move and back to our basic just to see, we see that we have a much nicer graph. I could also come in here and change. Maybe I don't have enough Ys now. So I could come back to the basic and I could say okay, X4 is not near big enough so let's say let's see Y max to be 50. And then you have a graph that you would like to use. So you can just close out of here. Now if you want to look at the properties of your line, you can just right click, click on your function and right click it, down here it says object properties. I like to go to style so that the line thickness is bigger so you can see it better. I used to go somewhere between 7 and 9.  And then the basics here, one of the nice things is down here at the labels. You can turn the labels on and off, right now it's turned off, but I have all these options. I choose to do a label, I can name it, I could maybe give it the name function or I can give it a value. The value you can see up there will just give me what my factors were. Or I can give both the name and the value or I can give it a caption. Maybe I want to say line one, okay, just to see what that does. If I close it, I can see now that it's going to tell me that this is line one even though it's not a line. And it's going to, I've got that nice red curve. Maybe I don't like that caption. So I go back to objects, right click on the curve and get the objects. And I don't want that caption anymore. But I would like to have the name and the, which is the f function. And I would like to have the value so I can see it. So now I'm going to close and now I have my f of x function and it gives me the actual factors that, all right, and you want to copy and paste it, file, export. I want to export it to the clipboard and then I have a word file here. So I just control V, I'm going to sit in there. There's my graph and I can then see my nice graph. I can move it, oh usually you move it by just pressing enter. And then I can make it bigger or smaller, however you want to work with it.


Welcome back to CouchBaseConnect. My name is Dave Vellante. We're going to dig into a customer case study of sorts with two software engineers from a company called Trendyall, the largest e-commerce platform in Turkey. And with me are Fatih Yilmaz and Emre Tanreverdi, both software engineers at Trendyall. Welcome. Good to see you guys. Hello. Hello. Hey, before we get into the story, maybe you can tell us a little bit about Trendyall. Let me answer that question first. Trendyall today is 10 years old, actually. It starts with an e-commerce company, especially for clothing. Today, it serves several services, mainly still e-commerce. We do our business mainly on technology, and we even have a saying technology is our main concern, actually, just like that action for now. So thank you for that. I mean, you started, I think, I think the company was founded in 2009, 2010. So you were just kind of, which we would consider sort of the modern era at the same time when you look back 10 years, you know, major challenges, major advancements from a technology standpoint.  What was the before, and then we can get into the after, and what was driving that change? Maybe I could start a bit. Well, we have a recommendation domain in Trendyall. It's like when you look at a certain product, like for example, you look at a pencil, it's recommending you an eraser. If you are going to buy a pink dress, it's going to recommend you a yellow dress. So if you are going to maybe buy pants, it will show you some t-shirts according to it. So since the recommendations domain grew larger, we have struggled to keep it high scale. And it wasn't a relational DB at first, but as product count increased and our right frequency increased day by day, and our read performance was affected very dramatically. I believe, yeah. So you were using a traditional RDBMS, and the issue was, you couldn't make the recommendations fast enough, and we always say, what's real time? Real time is before you lose the customer. So you have to make those recommendations in time for the customer to act. Otherwise, what do you do? Send an email after the fact, hey, you bought this, and nobody's going to pay attention to that, right? You want to catch them in the moment. And so what was it that led you to couch base? And what was the experience of that? Whether it was onboarding, the technology, how difficult was it to get up and running to where you are today? We were using couch base in Trandall for several years, and we had experience on that, and actually we need performance as Emre described. So we convert our data structure from relational DB to non-SQL DB. Actually, on our recommendation platform, the main problem was invalidation process. You know, we are selling things and in seconds they can be sold out and we shouldn't be recommending them anymore. And we are keeping track of this by invalidation process and with relational DB, writing those data to our relational DB was taking too much time and by changing this structure to couch base we see that benefits and it takes so short time actually. Yeah, so sorry, if I can just clarify. What was taking a long time? Updating the actual records so that you could actually inform a customer that it was out of stock or was it the coding that was too complicated? No, it was not the coding. There are millions of products in Trandall and those invalidations are coming huge actually. So we are keeping track of them if it's sold out or it can be sellable. When a product detail is seen by the customer, we are recommending some other products too but those other products must be sellable too. So the main problem was that and we are writing them in our relational DB that there is a huge right load actually. So it was not coding, it was the amount of data actually. Okay, so it was the update intensity within the database and the ability of the database to actually return accurate results quickly. So what was the after like? Can you talk about sort of the business impact? What were the improvements that you experienced? Yeah, maybe I can answer that. Like Fati said, the main reason we switched is because that there are so many products coming new in Trandall and many of them are being sold out and the updates to it was on our relational DB and the rights were too much that you couldn't give our customers a fast reply because the database was getting affected by the amount of high rights because when you think about it, there are millions of products coming and there are millions of rights operations on the database so it was affecting the read performance. So it could occur to you that when you click on a product you would see maybe a stock out product as a recommendation or maybe a product that is not in the website anymore. So when we switched to a couch base that we saw that it's using less resource with using less pods active alive and it's also giving responses faster. The main reason we were using relational DB at first was the invalidation process like Fati said because we had a consumer that was listening to messages, the invalidation messages and then writing them into database. But in the couch base part, it meant that actively writing to database that for every product document that you would need to update the document but for relational DB it would be we thought easier to just make this product available false or true. So that's why we were sticking with relational DB at first and that's why we made it at first as a relational DB but as time increased and our product count and our sellers increased, we realized that we should find another solution to the invalidation process and we should switch because I mean it had come to a point that it would just maybe take so much time that we were scaling our consumers at night time to just not affect daily users anymore. So that's the main reason we switched and after switching, we had improvements in like I said, response time and high write throughput and also one of the reasons is also because that the replication abilities of couch base because since trend is growing larger there are many data centers and like we can see that every day sometimes we deploy our apps to get another cluster and that's why we sometimes need to have backups or different data centers and the couch base was providing very good relation very good solutions to this with this XDTR. Yeah, that's why we switched actually to the ends. So is couch base running, if I understand it it's running the recommendation engine and do you still use a traditional RDBMS for the transaction system or is couch base doing both? Yeah, you're right, you had better add. So sorry, you could go. Okay, we are actually in Trandall, we are in Discovery team actually, we call it TRIVE and in Discovery TRIVE relational DB I think now very small small teams are using it. Its percentage is very low actually but other tribes, for example, orders, checkouts maybe promotions, something like other teams are still using RDBMS but in Discovery team it's very important to serve customers very fast. We need to show them products immediately we need to personalize them we should show them related products in real time actually. So in Discovery TRIVE we are barely using it, RDBMS systems actually. How hard was it to migrate from the RDBMS because you hear a lot of stories about how difficult that is to do you've got to freeze the code you're bringing up new code you've got to synchronize the functionality how did you manage that? Well, to be honest, we just asked the data science team to just send the products at the same time we were keeping the legacy API open that the clients were still coming there and to be honest, there were lots of lags on that too. So even if the newer products came a bit later it shouldn't be seen because it was already coming late. So we made a new API that is connecting to Couchface and we wanted the data science team to start feeding it but we asked the clients to switch it by time I mean, we were still supporting the old one but when we asked the clients to switch to the new API we just closed the last one so we didn't really migrate any data to be honest like it was from scratch and since it's a recommendation domain we believe it's better to add data from scratch because in our new domains if you are storing them in documents they are always sending a new list to us so that's how it gets updated all the time. So since it's not a user-related data it wasn't really like a migration process. Is this part of the secret sauce that you're doing schema-less, no schema on write to Couchface and is that correct and how are you handling it? How are you getting that awesome write performance? Well, the main reason we believe is that before when it was relational DB like for example, one product to one product and second product to first product third product to first product like you were duplicating the records so that when the product gets removed from a product's recommendation or maybe if a product is getting invisible for any reason it should be removed or maybe it could be a stock out that it meant that for every record you are sending a record for invalidation but in our new system it means that for this content there are 24 contents, let's say and like four of them got finished. It's okay, you are just replacing the whole list so that you are not duplicating the records. I mean, it's not like first product to first and first to second and first to third and if first changes you are duplicating this change three times like delete product one from three delete product one from two. You are duplicating the deletion record but now you are just replacing the list. So you are doing that all of the operation in one Kafka queue message if I was able to tell about it. So it's a bit hard to explain it in speech but we have a nice graphic that's showing how we are doing it now. That makes sense, okay, thank you for that. And so as you think about your modernizing your application infrastructure where are you at today? How do you see this modernization effort going forward? Actually, today we are mainly looking for cross cluster replication. All our products are deployed different clusters and different geographical locations. We always using, we try to always use modern products and try to avoid old relational databases especially for our discovery tribe and by modernizing it our engineers keeping up to date with recent technologies and our customers are happier. They're not seeing some glitches, some weights while they're using our products. Okay, so maybe I could double click on that because you mentioned the impact of customers and I'm interested in your organizational impact and what means for you internally but when you talk about cross cluster replication is that to scale, is that a performance impact? Is that for availability? What's the impact of that effort, that modernization effort? I believe it's all, the main reason is availability, I believe. Like we can't know when a cluster can go down. We can't be sure about it in any system we can but that trend should be up and running all the time and there should be some backups that can switch when a cluster goes down but also the main reason, one of the main reasons is to be able to scale because the clusters that we had wasn't enough considering our user base. So let's say you want to even extend your user base but the cluster is being a bottleneck to you because you can't get that much users but when you do cross cluster that you have backup and you have scalability and it's considering if the machines are newer maybe faster response times, I don't know, maybe network part would know that better but yeah, all of them, I believe. Great guys, well thank you so much for sharing your story, Emre and Fatih. Appreciate you guys coming on theCUBE. Thanks a lot, yeah, thanks, thank you for hosting us. Yeah, it's our pleasure and thank you for watching CouchBase Connect Online on theCUBE, keep it right there for more great content from the event.


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