Go ahead. Good morning. Seeing the presence of a quorum, I'm gonna call this meeting of GOL to order at 9.31 a.m. and pursuant to chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021 and extended by chapter 22 and 107 of the Acts of 2022. This meeting will be conducted by a remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. See instructions, well, you don't have them below, but anyway, no in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. So I'm going to shift the agenda around a little bit and we're gonna go with water and sewer regulations first because Amy Russecki is here with us. So I'd like to do that. We're going to probably not get to the snow and ice thing, which is not high on priority, but I have a little bit of new information. And after we hear Amy and we talk about the water and sewer regs, we'll go to public comment because we have plenty of public. So with that, I'm gonna, oh, can you bring Amy in? Oh, there she is. All right, Amy, I apologize. I hate being chair, so I always flop around, I apologize. I read through and I think the whole committee has read through the changes to the water and sewer regulations. Do you wanna talk about anything specific right now or do you wanna just go? I think that I'll just preface it with a couple of things. So first of all, the changes that you guys are seeing are obviously from the town council's vote regarding ownership of the sewer service lines. So most of it was just changing it back to the current ownership model versus, you know, what TSO had wanted when we first went through this. But the other thing to note is because we know that this conversation is gonna come around and the decision that was made wasn't, this isn't a forever decision. And so because of that, there were a couple of things that I put in that will make it easier. Things like if your curb stop isn't on the property line when you get work done on your sewer service line, you're gonna bring that to the property line. And then also if you're doing anything on your sewer service line, installing that clean out that most services in this town don't have currently and that we will want in the future. So those are the two things that just kind of with this forward thought of if we ever do change the ownership model, these are things that we're gonna wanna see in place. So let's start that practice now. Amy, thank you. Any questions from counselors? Jennifer, you're muted, Jennifer. I think Jennifer, it's switching between your speakers and the headphones. Yeah, so no. No, I think you have to change the setting back to the system audio when you take your headphones off. And then when you start using them again, you have to change it to the headphone audio. Okay, any other questions from counselors? Then I move or someone, Mandy, you're probably gonna have to help me here. I move that we recommend to the town council the change sewer and water regulations that were presented at the 315 GOL meeting. I'm sorry, I'm gonna suggest that we just hang on for a second because Jennifer is having remote participation issues and she has her hand up. So I'm just gonna ask that we hang on for a second. Sure, no problem. Pat, we just declare them clear, consistent and actionable. Okay, thank you. Jennifer, do you wanna try and say something? Let's see if we can hear you. No. Now we can hear you. You can hear me now? I have no idea. I haven't done anything differently, this happened before. The only thing I'm going to, so this happened the last, I'm out of the country. Right, it's okay, it's the headphones. Yeah, but there's no, it sometimes works and doesn't and there's no change in setting. Anyway, I was just gonna say, would I feel really uncomfortable voting in the, to approve this, this one vote? Because it, I'm very torn because it seems, and I know this has always been the case, but it just seems so crazy that individual homeowners are responsible for the line that's not under their property and depending on where you are, like I always refer to Dorothy Pan. She's on a main street. She lives on a main street in Amherst, but her sewer line doesn't come, it's all the way down Amnity and then partially down Sunset before her line connects with the town. And she got hit with like a $38,000 bill that she was lucky enough that her homeowners insurance covered it. But it just doesn't feel right approving language that leaves residents that vulnerable. Okay. And Jennifer, I'm sorry. Jennifer, I made a mistake because we're not approving the regulations. We're saying that they're clear, consistent and actionable. So that's what we're doing. And I, you know, so the approval or disapproval will happen in town council. We'll get to the council. Okay. I'm sorry. No, do not apologize. I'm the one who needs to apologize because I said it wrong. Okay. Thank you. So, so Mandy restate the motion and somebody second it. The motion is to declare the proposed water and sewer regulation drafts of March 15, 2023, clear, consistent and actionable. Second. All right. And so we'll take a vote on that. Lynn Griezmer. Aye. Mandy, Joe, Hanakie. Aye. Jennifer, Taub. Aye. And I'm an aye. Does anyone know why Michelle is not here? She was, she's not able to be here today. Well, that's too bad because she also supported the public comment changes. Okay. Amy, do you need anything else from us? No, I may just continue to listen if you guys get to snow and ice just to kind of be available if there's any questions on that. Yeah, thank you. I do, we'll say to you because I don't know whether we will given what's been the agenda. To be clear, I will do work on the side and- Oh, good. What I wanted to say was I have not received the response from the tree warden about what he sees as the issue. I've gotten a copy of the letter that DPW sends out and that's in our packet I think. And so I don't, if we get to it we will have some questions, but- Okay. And given how can, they're amazing. It's incredible for a GOL meeting to have 17 attendees. I certainly understand why, Lynn. Yeah, given that this was an item referred back to the council, to the committee before we move to public comment could we at least have some initial comments from the committee? That's fine with me. I feel, well, go ahead. Other councillors, Jennifer. Can I just clarify something? We're moving on to item seven in our agenda and skipping for now the two proclamations. Yes, we are. Okay, thank you for the clarification. Jennifer. Yeah, so this is to comment on the referral, the substance of the referral back to the committee. So I don't support the changes to public comment. I think I liked what was in the rules of procedure prior to the conversation. The one that I would support, I guess the one change I would support and I think it was Councillor Miller's suggestion. It's 5.1B that I think the way the rules of procedure currently read is that the presiding officer can limit public comment to one minute and Councillor Miller proposed that it be two and I would be supportive of that change. But I, in the last council meeting, I didn't vote to refer the matter back to GOL because I would have preferred that we voted frankly down the proposed changes at the council meeting. So that's where I stand, I don't see any, I don't think that our meeting are made longer by public comment and when they are, it's because there's an important matter. So I would want to keep it as it was. And I very uncomfortable also with the item that says once public comment begins, you can't remotely raise your hand because I think that if a statement is made that may be factually incorrect, a member of the public should have the option to hit the raise hand button and respond to that. So I could say more later, but that's roughly where my position, thanks. Thank you, I'm gonna call on Athena. Thanks, Michelle had shared some comments that she asked us to read at the meeting because she's not able to be here if it's okay with you Pat, I'll read that. Sure. So Michelle wrote, I strongly disagree with limiting public comment at this time when the charter is in its infancy and we have not explored other ways to reduce meeting times. Many residents have expressed concern about limiting public comment and doing so now would undermine the trust we are seeking to build with the community. As we approach a charter review, it is critical we ensure the public that are new form of government enables a healthy and robust democratic process. We have other ways to reach the objective of reducing meeting times and I urge us to creatively consider other possibilities before making changes that limit the public's ability to provide valuable input. Thank you, Athena. I wanna comment and I support in many ways what she's saying. However, she did not speak out during the meeting and actually supported the decision. So I'm a little uncomfortable right now. I'm a little uncomfortable with her lack of presence and I have to be honest about that. And the statement while it is a good one and I think we're all aware of the public input into this but I wish she had spoken up as clearly and directly during the last meeting. Mandy. Thank you. I don't know what to do with the current, our current rules, both 5.1 and the rule six issues because we had our discussion and it was very valuable to hear from everyone and all but with the new Southboro ruling that came out, I think that again changes how I'm thinking about all of this because that ruling with how our rules are currently written, things like if time allows without defining what time allows means in terms of whether non-residents can speak or not. Means that given what the SJC just said in Southboro without any guardrails at all about who or when you can sign up or how long it goes or at what point, if any, a counselor can request that we move on from public comment without any time limits at all. Given what Southboro said, we could face a situation where we have 40, 50, 60 people that live in Florida or Michigan that are part of that First Amendment audit issue coming to a council meeting, taking three minutes of time, each of them all three minutes spouting some very nasty rhetoric and we have to sit there and listen to it and nothing in our rules right now says we can stop it. And given Southboro, the chair would not be able to stop any person in under three minutes, whether or not it even, as long as they are saying something that plausibly relates to our business, not even our business on an agenda, our jurisdiction within our jurisdiction, a chair can't stop anyone right now from saying anything, given the SJC ruling. And so I think we need to think about how that ruling could or could not impact and how we would want it to impact or not impact the issues that we were discussing last meeting and at the council meeting that brought the referral back. Think about some of the Zoom bombings we've had not in our council meetings, thankfully, but in other meetings where public comment potentially has been stopped because of some things that have said that aren't now clearly are not able to be stopped given the Southboro ruling. And I think we have to think about that potentially happening given that we just had a First Amendment audit of our town hall and what individuals might aim to go after public meetings for similar things. I don't know what the solution is, but I think we need to consider those possibilities as we discuss this referral. I do wanna say that we can limit, I'm not saying this is what we're gonna decide, but we can still have time limits and things like that on how long someone can speak, et cetera. So it's not, we're requiring that what the SJC is saying that we need to meet in a people, residents, non-residents who's ever speaking need to do so in a peaceable and orderly manner and that the things be consistent with time, place and manner restrictions. So I think there's a lot of looking. I went into public, you know, to a code of conduct and this is not gonna get decided today, but I think the referral part is an important part of the discussion today. Lynn and then Jennifer since you've already spoken once. First of all, I want to express appreciation for Mindy Jo and Jennifer's comments as well as Michelle's, even though she's not here. I think we heard significantly from the public, but I also want the public to understand that in addition to the referral back to the committee, the next day was the day that the SJC ruling was released. That ruling is, I believe in our packet and I am going to strongly recommend that we leave everything in this section of the rules as it is for the moment and that we asked the chair to invite the town council, our town attorney to attend a meeting of this committee where we have a thorough discussion of the implications of the SJC ruling before we do anything else to our rules of procedure that might be considered trying to control people's conduct or public comment. I think we have a serious legal issue in front of us and we have clearly heard from the public. And so I'm strongly recommending that the rules stand as they are now, which means none of the changes that were brought forward to the council at the last meeting go forward at this time, even the one minute rule, just leave it the way it is. Jennifer? Yeah, I would well agree with Lynn to leave as the rules as they are and just caution. I mean, it sounds like we will meet with legal council that we will invite them to come to the GOL meeting and maybe even to the full council, but that we not over correct by, constraining public comment on the unlikely chance that someone's going to take over our meeting, our public meetings. So what I'm hearing is a suggestion to refer, for me to contact the town attorney and set up a meeting with them before we go forward. And I think that's an excellent idea because tampering with something that we don't totally understand can create a mess. So does that need to be a motion or no? Okay, then I'm going to go forward with today's public comment and I'm going to invite people to raise their hand and to speak. Dorothy Pan. You want to say for how long, Pat? No more than three minutes. Thank you, Athena. Hello, as you know, I rarely speak three minutes long. I have, as I'm sure you have too, received incredible mail from all kinds of people, people I know, people I've never, have never written to me before. And the best thing is just this from the legal voters. We believe local government should maximize widespread and inclusive participation. Hearing of diverse points of view encourages involvement. Being part of the process creates understanding and ownership of decisions. Expression of various opinions promotes a sense of inclusion. And I thought, you know, you just can't do better than that participation, involvement, understanding and inclusion. And I think that's what we're supposed to be doing. So I support, do not support these new proposed changes, although I agree with Pat that, you know, because everybody does not speak three full minutes. And I do think that at two minutes, depending upon how many people, you know, Lynn has often done this. Depending upon how many people have signed up, she sometimes shortens the time that each person can speak, which seems a reasonable response. So thank you for allowing me to speak. Okay. Thank you. Athena, could we have a clock? I'm probably won't need it, but can we do that? I'm not set up for that right now. I don't usually do that in committee meetings. Okay. Thank you. I will try to. Kat, I could do a timer on my phone. But I've got it on my phone. Yeah. Janet Kellers. Thank you for coming. Thank you, Pat. Janet Keller. 120 Pulp of the Hill Road in North Amherst. I do not support the changes. I'm happy that you are going to look at this in more depth. I hope that you're going to do that. I agree with the main assertions that folks have made that it is not public comment that is causing the workload of the council and of folks to be so onerous and that a careful look needs to be taken at the reasons that the workload is so heavy. But it's not public comments. And when we show up in these kinds of numbers it's because we feel that we need to reassure ourselves that you understand how important your decisions are to our lives and that we take that very seriously and we need to be heard and we need to feel that this is a welcome place. I felt very bad when I heard Breonna say that she didn't feel comfortable coming to a meeting and speaking. And I know many people don't. So I hope that one of the outcomes of this I hope with all my heart that one of the outcomes of this unfortunate event is that we all feel more open and welcome to participate. Thank you. Thank you. Birdie. My name is Birdie Newman. I'm from district three and I am also commenting in opposition to the proposed changes that would allow counselors to cut off public comment at the start of meeting after 30 minutes. It's crucial for the public to be able to make ourselves heard at town council meetings in advance of votes. I also disagree with the idea of limiting comments by non-residents because lots of people who do not or cannot live in Amherst continue to have a stake in town politics. I know I'm speaking in agreement with many other members of the public who spoke out on March 6th. So please heed our voices now so that we can continue to be heard later. In terms of the Southboro ruling it sounds like there will be an opportunity to respond to this more carefully in the coming weeks. Thank you so much. Thank you for your comments, Birdie. Tony Cunningham. Hi, thank you Tony Cunningham, Owen Drive. I think this is my first time attending a GOL meeting. I tuned in today to express my opposition to the proposed rule change that would limit public comment to 30 minutes at the beginning of council meetings and limit input from non-residents. I wasn't aware of the Southboro decision before now so I'm not sure my comments today are as necessary. I support leaving the rules as they were with respect to public comment. The council manager form of government was sold to Amherst voters as an improvement over town meeting allowing for greater input and participation by members of the public. The rule change proposal runs counter to that promise and counter to basic democratic principles. Your meetings run long often because the council has bitten off more than it can chew taking up innumerable tangential issues that may not be important to a critical mass of residents. I suggest the council try to focus more on what is important, prioritize your work and limit it to what is most important to residents. Perhaps then your agendas won't be so packed and you will have more time for hearing from those that you represent, thank you. Thank you for your comments, Tony. Anita Sorrow. Thank you, Pat. My name is Anita Sorrow. I'm in district five and I appreciate the suggestion to put this off until to allow further discussion. I agree the new case is important to consider but it has to be in context. My understanding of why these changes were made was that it was out of the concern to ease the burden on councilors to address issues of having to talk about things well into the night. And I agree with that goal but it should not be at the risk of community engagement which is an important call. So I ask that while the case is important it should be kept in the context of what is good for this town and not make paramount the First Amendment rights of people in other states. There is a need for people to express their points of view. There is also a need for councilors to hear our voices in order to fully inform the decisions that you're making on our behalf. So I ask you to please consider all of the aspects in the context of why these changes originally arose. Thank you. Thank you, Anita. Are there any other people who are attending who would like to speak before I close public comment for this meeting? Okay, and seeing no hands raised I'm gonna close the public comment period for this meeting and I'm gonna suggest that we move on to the proclamations and they're in the packet. We have the Jewish heritage proclamations. I did not receive an updated Arbor month proclamation from either the commission sponsor or the council sponsor, but I would like to suggest that I take that and make any changes necessary, contact the and move forward so that we can have it voted on at the council meeting if I have the committee's permission to do that. Does that feel comfortable to people? All right, so that will be on the town council agenda on the 20th, the Jewish heritage. Jennifer, do you wanna speak to that at all or? No, we, I believe the same sponsors sponsored it last year and we have community same community with sponsors. We did just update the language to reflect unfortunately the increase in hate crimes that's been experienced in the last few years. I think that's probably what's different from last year and we appreciate the chance to be able to bring it before GOL and the town council. And we look forward to reading the proclamation and having festivities around it on April 18th on the steps of town hall. I don't think we have an hour set yet. Okay, are there any questions or anything that needs to be looked at, Amanda? One small change and then a question about the date that Jennifer just said. So the small changes in the last whereas that has the hanging and the last whereas should just end with a period. And you said April 18th, but we're proclaiming May. Yeah. Jewish American Heritage Month is. Okay, so yeah. So I think that last year we did the reading so I didn't come up the April 18th. I think, is Dorothy Pam still in the audience? I think you got that from her. I think that the reading last year was on Holocaust Remembrance Day, but, and I'm not sure if that's maybe where we got April 18th. That is correct. Okay, so could we read it then? I think that's, yeah. I just had the question because we typically read them in the month they are, but given that date that makes sense. Okay, thanks for the explanation. Okay, anything else? No, I could just add just to comment. I learned something I didn't want to say when we, and this was another edition we made this year that I hadn't known that the University of Massachusetts back in the fifties and sixties was one of, was really a leader in not enforcing or clinging to quotas and that they really welcomed our Jewish faculty members. And that is really one, a reason that we have such a thriving Jewish community in Amherst. So I just shout out to you, Mass. Lynn? Yeah, I just want to recognize that at least one of the community sponsors is in the audience, Hilda Greenbaum. Greenbaum, and I don't see any others, but I didn't know if you wanted to have them make any comments. And Dorothy has her hand up too. All right, that's fine with me. Let's go to Hilda Greenbaum, if she'd like to speak. I have nothing to add. So I'll just sit here and listen, thank you. Okay, thank you. Dorothy? I checked my calendar from last year, and did you hear me? Shall I start again? We only heard part of it, Dorothy. Can you begin again? Yeah, I checked my date book from last year and we had it on April 23rd, which was Holocaust Memorial Day then, and let me put my glasses on, April 28th, okay? So April is the official month that was declared. Of course we can do whatever we want, but when George Bush established this, he said that April would be the Jewish American Heritage Month, probably because Holocaust Memorial Day changes in various states in April. So we're hoping, we did not get official, we're waiting for Lynn to tell us if we can do it. So we'd like very much to have it on Holocaust Memorial Day again this year, which would be, I guess, at the April 18th date. So she'll have to get back to us. Beyond that, I also wanna thank Hilda. Hilda did a great job of connecting me to sources in town, both written and people who'd done research on it. And so had Rachel Viggeman also connected me to good sources. So it's, I really feel a strong community base for this one. So I hope that this will go forward. And thank you, Mandy. When I saw that last, and I thought, is that what we need to do? And I wasn't sure. So I'm glad that you know, and that you can correct that. So thank you. Okay, thank you, Mandy and then Lynn. I'm just still now confused. Dorothy just said April, but I actually just Googled and it's still May. So I just wanna make sure we declare the correct month. This will come to a vote on the 20th. So... Excuse me, Pat, but April 18th, actually starting at sundown on April 17th to April 18th is Holocaust Remembrance Day. I wanna make sure that, yeah. So I just need to confer with town hall people as to what time would work best for them. But if there are specific requests from the sponsors, including the community sponsors, please state that now and that's what we'll go with. So any response from the sponsors? It's good for me. Dorothy, she's still there? And Ann Hilda? Yeah, so that's a mistake. Okay, so I was wondering where's Mandy getting the April, the May? That must be a mistake on our part, Mandy. Okay, so eagle eyes again. I mean, you look at something a million times, you have a whole bunch of people looking at them and we still don't see it. It's supposed to be April. That needs to be corrected on the proclamation. Mandy? So I guess I'm not sure. When I Google it, it appears to be May. So I think the proclamation is right. It's just when Dorothy said April, it just. If no, it was in April last year, we want it in April this year. Right, but the May is the month that George Bush proclaimed to be. I'd have to check, I don't know. American Jewish Heritage Month. Okay, so hear that little, that little word that's the word proclaimed in that first paragraph. It's supposed to be a link. And I don't, I'm sure it's not a link anymore. That link would take us to the internet. I can check that later to see what he said. I think Jennifer's right that Jewish American Heritage Month is in May. And so I just want to confirm that that's the date, the month you want Amherst proclaimed to. Jewish Heritage Month is in April. No, it is not. Okay, Jewish Heritage Month. Okay, I'm getting two things confused. Holocaust Remembrance Day and Jewish Heritage Month. Okay, well, that's a kind of. I just want to confirm who deals with, okay. You want the flag raising on the 18th because that is Holocaust Remembrance Day, but the proclamation is actually the, for the month of May or Jewish Heritage Month. Okay, right. So can we have the ceremony? Go ahead. The ceremony on Holocaust Remembrance Day, announcing that the next month, May is Jewish Heritage Month. Yes, good. Thank you. That's clear. Mandy and then, well, Lynn, did you have a comment? Okay, Mandy and then Jennifer. I apologize. I didn't just said something about a flag raising. So is there an intent to raise a flag? And if so, what needs to be included in our now therefore? It's no, that was my mistake. It's only proclamation reading. Okay. Thank you. Jennifer? It just quickly, I think the confusion came. It was always May was Jewish American Heritage Month. Last year, I believe Holocaust Remembrance Day was like April 28th, very close to May. So that's when we read the proclamation and also acknowledge that it was Holocaust Remembrance Day. I wanna ask a question. I'm sorry, Jennifer, I spoke over. No, no, that's, I was just trying to explain it to you. So that's helpful. Well, isn't there a Holocaust Memorial proclamation? And if so, why, was there a separate proclamation? Or, I'm trying to read it. I don't think there was last year. Jennifer's read on, gotcha. Okay, thank you. Well, then I'd like to put forward a motion that we find that GOL finds the Jewish heritage. I'm not looking at the full name of the proclamation. Jewish Heritage Month proclamation, clear, consistent and actionable as amended. Second. Thank you, Jennifer. Right, we'll go around. Jennifer, vote? Yes. Mandy? Aye. Lynn? Aye. And I'm an aye. Thank you, that's unanimous. All right. Barbara, I have a couple of questions. Athena, could you put, I apologize. Could you put the agenda back up for a moment? I can't find, well, right now I have several proclamations and that have come up that I do not want to deal with today, but I would like to deal with on our meeting on the 29th. One of them is the Children's Mental Health Awareness Proclamation, which, and that week is May 7th through the 13th. So I wanted to place that on the March 29th GLL agenda and therefore it could be voted on by the town council in April. And then the universal free lunch, which I think also, again, I did not receive these in time for the packet and I want to clarify something with Athena, but I would like to do that on the 29th as well. And Athena, I'm trying to understand how late can we receive because if it's $48 in advance that we get a proclamation or a resolution, that would be at Monday morning. Is that correct? So if something comes in Monday afternoon, it doesn't meet the 48 hour rule, it doesn't get inserted. Right, and if I could just say, if something comes in after that 48 hour deadline and it was, I think in terms of proclamations and resolutions and so on, it's gonna be very unusual to not know about something 48 hours ahead of the meeting. I mean, that would be like, you know. Something happened in the world within the last, within the 48 hours between. So otherwise it's gonna be, something's not gonna be, it wouldn't be appropriate to put it under 48 hours in terms of resolutions and proclamations. And when something has been like, if Lynn sends me a thing about, oh, this is the, I've been assuming that you have gotten it also and would add it to the packet. And am I incorrect about that process? One other thing I wanted to add to the 48 hour thing is you're correct that it's, it would be Monday at 9.30, but I need like flashing red lights to let me know that something gets added that late before a committee meeting so that I can update the agenda if something does get added right before the deadline. And then your question was about, I'm sorry. Can you repeat your other question? I don't remember exactly what it was right now, Liz. I, the 48 hours that, oh, if Lynn sends me, like the, the child's health, mental health awareness or whatever, I've been assuming that it's being referred to you as well. And is that an error on my part? So I should be contacting you when I get those. I'm not sure if you're talking about Lynn sending you individually an email about a proclamation or to the entire council as an official referral. Usually I see those official referral emails and add them to the packet, but it's never safe to assume that I have everything and can add it to your packets. It's good to check in and make sure that we're on the same page about what's going on, on the GOL agenda and that everything's in the packet that you expect. Okay, all right. I just, I do my best, but. Oh, I know you do. I'm not worried about you. I'm worried about me and make, making sure that I know exactly the steps that support your work. So you need to stop apologizing for yourself, please. That's a demand. That's a, I move that Athena stopped doing that. Is there a second? Lynn? Yeah, a couple of things. Based on the GOL's discussion and particularly your requests, I have sent two counselors emails that relate to getting proclamations to the GOL. We're muted, Lynn. So GOL does not spend its time. Can you hear me now? Yes. So the GOL does not spend its time doing little edits, okay? So it's really a much more fruitful discussion. Jennifer did exactly that. And I think that if we know something's coming, but we don't have a final form, we could list it on the agenda so that's on there between 48 hours. But if we got it on Monday morning, it would still be okay. But actually, if we don't know that and unless the event is happening between now and the time we have a council meeting, we can put it on or we can take it to the council and bypass GOL, which sometimes can get messy if the council starts getting into editing, which is one of the time consuming things that happens in the council occasionally. We try not to do it though. Just some comments, thanks. Any other comments around this issue? Okay. Then I'm going to, we have talked about moving the public dialogue discussion with good reason because we need the KP law referral. So I'm looking at the agenda again and I'm trying to, we could go to Snow and Ice, but as I said, we don't have that information. So I'm trying to figure out where we go next. Mandy? I'm just curious on the agenda. If we're not going to do Snow and Ice, we still have minutes to do, but does the agenda broad enough to continue the rules of procedure review outside of the rules that were mentioned? And would we want to do that? I don't even remember what ones are listed, but would we want to do that if it is broad enough to accommodate the whole thing instead of just the three that were mentioned? We could go to Snow and Ice and we can also continue with other look and looking at the rules and procedure beyond that. Is there a response from any other counselor? I'd like at least the update on Snow and Ice. Jennifer first, and then I'll give you that update. I will be siding off in about 10 minutes. Yeah, no, I know that. Yeah, let me see where I have. I'm trying to find polls, comments. Oh, here we go. Okay. So in terms of Snow and Ice, we have, which is now obstruction of public ways bylaw, the things that we're still missing is a real response from the Tree Warden around his concern about language in the bylaw being enabling a resident to cut down a healthy tree. So that needs to be clarified, but I have gotten no response from him or DPW. But what Paul said, and this is, he reviewed the proposed changes. He does not recommend to the change in enforcement designates. Currently the enforcement officers are identified as police officers, which include the parking enforcement officers. The proposal is to designate the following, building commissioner and special service traffic enforcement officer or department of public's works. And then Paul goes on to say, currently if a complaint is filed with the police department, parking enforcement officers are assigned to visit the residence, seek a resolution and issue a non-criminal disposition citation if necessary. The current bylaw addresses Snow and Ice complaints and typically during Snow and Ice events the parking enforcement officers are readily available to address these situations. In addition, parking enforcement officers are trained in the issuance of citations and are experienced in working with people who are receiving citations. The process maintains quality accounting and fiduciary control in one department. It also provides clarity as to which department is responsible for enforcement. Having multiple enforcement designates can create confusion and overlap of responsibility, clear lines of authority and responsibility should be incorporated as part of this bylaw. So his recommendation is to keep the enforcement agent police officers. Are there questions about that or comments, responses? Mandy? I respect that comment, but I think it ignores the problem we've heard from many people about you go to the police department, you complain and they send you to DPW and you never see anything get done.  Like even as it's written now with just police officers things don't seem to be getting enforced. We've heard that from multiple people in our public comments about not just the confusion but the sidewalks don't get clear after complaints within a day, within two days, within a week. They just stay unclear no matter who you've called. And I think we're struggling with how do we fix that issue, right? The parking enforcement officer isn't going to clear the sidewalk if within 24 hours of issuing the citation if they even issue one. But if they do, if it's not cleared within 24 hours it would be DPW that does that. But DPW, there's no communication, right? And so how do we fix that issue if we don't include enforcement by everyone else? And so I guess that's a lot of questions for Paul. Is parking enforcement actually issuing citations? And if so, who's doing the clearing if it's not cleared after 24 hours? How's that internal system working? Because from externally it doesn't seem to be working at all. Yeah, I would agree with that. Anyone else want to comment on this? Jennifer? Yeah, I'm gonna have a question. Is it the responsibility of the parking who's ever called for giving the citation? Is it then their responsibility to do the clearing if for some reason the homeowner can't or isn't doing it? I didn't, so that's new information to me that they would then do the removal. I just was just asking for some clarification. I don't, Mandy? So the current bylaw says that the manager may after notice to the property owner and an opportunity to be heard, perform or otherwise cause the clearing or treating to be performed and then recover the expenses not to exceed $500. So I don't think we use that one at all. Which is potentially part of the problem, right? A lot of the issues with this beyond only covering Snow and Ice are enforcement. And Paul's email didn't really address why enforcement isn't happening from the external point of view of residents. Lynn? Yeah, it seems to me that I'm hearing several things. I'm hearing some confusion over what happens next and I'm hearing a lot about who does what next. And so it seems to me that maybe we want to ask Paul and whoever else he wants to bring with him to have a conversation with us about this before we do anything else with it. That makes sense. And I may perhaps if we invited the tree warden to that meeting as well, it would be helpful. Jennifer? Yeah, no, I was just gonna say this is one of these issues that before I was on the council really had no idea was so such an important and such a big issue because yes, the sidewalks need to be cleared, but there's people who can't physically do it themselves and may not have them either have the means to retain someone or have somebody come to do it that quickly. So it's a real tough situation. They have to be cleared, but then you don't wanna have to sort of really come down on someone if there's a reason why they haven't been able to clear it. And it might be because they haven't been able to have somebody come out to do it, but that doesn't help somebody needs make their way down the street and can't. So I'm just, this is one of those issues that you wouldn't think would be so complicated, but it really is. Right, right. I don't know, Amy is not in the audience. I don't know if she wants to make any comments or she may, she was going to be working nearby. Ah, you are. Amy, any comments on this? I only to say I did reach out to Alan Snow, the tree warden, and he just said, yes, I owe you information. He wants to just do a little bit of research on neighboring communities to figure out how they word it well, cause he's got this concern, but obviously we need to kind of wrangle how to word that properly. So that makes sense. That's helpful. Yeah. That's helpful to know. I told him after I left this meeting that was probably going to be a homework assignment that he had to get done in the short term. So for what it's worth, he'll get on that. Well, I wish he had let us know and that would have been good, but I'm glad that he's on it. So any other questions for Amy or I'm not sure we're ready. There's still too much work that has to be done on this. And I will send an email to Paul with our questions and concerns. And I think we can, I think that's it for now, Amy. You could actually go away this time, maybe. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Okay, the suggestion was if possible to go on to other parts of the rules of procedure. And if people would like to do that, I know, Jennifer, you're going to be leaving fairly soon, but the places that I see are in rule seven and eight. And I'd like to give Andy a chance to address some of the legislative actions, stuff in rule eight, but in rule seven under 7.1, motions shall comply with rules as set forth herein. And then there's a listing when a measure is under debate. Thank you, thank you, thank you. If we scroll down to the following motions are not debatable. And then it says all other motions shall be debatable. And then there's this addition of time limits for debate. Now this is in terms of the council and is this something, Mandy? So yeah, this is part of my set of proposals that was thinking about how do we try to reduce counselor burden and particularly the time of council meetings. And I, again, debate, right? This is not the times, the voting qualms, all of that was just something to put something in there because we're supposed to propose full rules. So when thinking about debates, I've noticed that there's sometimes a couple of different types of debates the council have, but they don't always determine, but those types don't always determine length of debate. Sometimes we go on forever. So when thinking about the ones we debate a while, there's a lot of stuff we can get done in 10 or 15 minutes in an action item or that's on the consent agenda, but when we go for 45 minutes, an hour, an hour and a half on an item, what are we going that long for is some of my thought. And when I was thinking about it, I sort of saw two potential reasons. One, there really is a discussion and people are undecided. Counselors are undecided as to how they're going to vote. We're maybe rehashing language or proposing language or working through some potential changes to language because of how we don't know how we wanna vote or whether it's the right vote and all. Those debates are going to take a while and should take a while. But then there's sometimes where it appears that after 10 or 15 minutes, all 13 of us, know exactly how we're gonna vote, yet we go on for another hour with just talking. And that is sort of not necessarily the most productive use of the council's time if we've already all decided how we're going to vote. And so how do we limit those types of conversations to potentially reduce meeting time? And so this was one of the proposals I came up with or one of the thoughts I came up with was in the past I've proposed things like at any point in time making a motion to close debate sort of an interruptible motion where you don't have to be recognized by the chair. You can't interrupt a speaker, but you don't have to be recognized such that if there's eight people, if there's six hands up of counselors and you decide you wanna make a motion to close debate, you don't have to wait for five others. You could make it beforehand and see if it succeeds. That one failed the last time I proposed that. So I'm proposing something else. I'd be happy to consider that one again where instead of needing two thirds, at some point instead of needing two thirds of counselors to end debate, we make an affirmative decision to continue debate after a certain amount of time has passed. And in this proposal, I had two sets of different times where the affirmative decision was at a majority at one point and then after a certain amount of time it needed two thirds to continue. But it's just another way of looking at when is an appropriate time for us to move on and actually just vote? And are we accomplishing anything after a certain amount of time that is moving the discussion forward or continuing to help people decide or should we be voting when everyone's already made their decision and stopping the discussion? So just another option in thinking about how can we shorten meetings? And I'd love to hear people's thoughts on our side of the debates on how we can potentially shorten meetings. Okay, thank you, Mandy. Comments, questions? Jennifer, are you saying goodbye or do? Yeah, I'm really sorry to have to do this but I get to a plane, but- Do you have a quick response though? Maybe not. No, I really have to read this. I- Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, I'm sorry to have to read this. No, no, don't apologize. Thank you. Lynn? Well, I think it's productive for us to have a continued debate. I just wanna make note that two members are no longer here and I wanna be careful that we don't try to do any motions but just continue. Thank you. Yeah, I think that's accurate. Although we are quorum and we could, but I agree. One of the things, Mandy, I'm wondering about is the two thirds, that's nine people. Why nine versus seven? So right now, a motion to end debate requires nine no matter when it's made, whether it's made five minutes in, whether it's made an hour in, it still requires nine. And so I chose this sort of two-tiered system where the first time, sort of the first time a motion to continue debate would be made, you'd only need a majority. But then after a certain amount of time that debate has occurred, maybe we want to need a supermajority to continue debate. So sort of flipping the Robert's rules rule to instead of a supermajority to end debate at some point, a supermajority to continue debate up for discussion, but it was sort of mirroring in some sense the Robert's rules. And what about calling the question? Well, that's the Robert's rules to end debate. That's the call for question. We wouldn't remove that rule. Although at least I have not proposed removing the use of that rule. One of the other options would be potentially to change the, in our rules to change the quantum vote needed to pass a call the question from two thirds to a majority, right? And do that through rule. Just trying to think of a variety of ways to shorten our meetings. Lynn? I think this gets at the heart of one of the reasons our meetings are long. And I hope that we can come up with a way to continue or not continue debate. The only thing that, the thing that pops up for me with this is the creation of confusion among counselors. It's a lot of motions to just move along. And so in some ways, I just assume I just assume we do 20 minutes at a majority. If we go up after that 20 minutes and that we leave another 20 minutes or 10 minutes at another majority. And then, but not to remove the ability to call the previous question or move the previous question. I think that we should always keep that. Thank you. Yeah, I'm, I get, I must admit, I get frustrated as a counselor about how long some debates, conversations, discussions go on. And when I hear repetitive information, and I think I only a couple of times did call the question, which I learned about when I was first in town meeting and saw how important it was to move at times to a vote or to end the discussion. I feel like we, you know, and this is reflective of Southboro conduct and what should counselor conduct be as well. But I'm really, I feel like there's less debate and more making of statements. There is, you know, the idea of there being two times to discuss an issue in the charter feels like an important thing. But what I find is that the same positions that are staked out at the first discussion are generally maintained, although there are sometimes changes. And during that period, we're hearing from the residents, we're hopefully doing more research independently. But I'm concerned about, I'm concerned about, I guess, politics, statements that are made to support your position that don't advance us to a state where we can collaborate, where we can really hear each other. And I don't know how to address that. I really don't. So that's kind of where I am. I'm certainly not ready to vote on this right now. Anybody else? Well, I think we are not coming to a dissim, Mandy. Yeah, just one thing. You know, I mentioned a proposal that Patton, I, in a two or three years ago, when I proposed, I think somewhere earlier in 7.1, I think it's, we're in 7, right? Yeah. The motion to adjourn is in order at any time except upon immediate repetition, right? And I had proposed at one point making a motion to call the question in order, essentially at any time between speakers. To again, potentially, again, these are all potentials, right? You know, a lot of this requires, as Pat said, a lot of the repetition requires counselors to be quiet and not repeat and police themselves in that sense, monitor themselves, but if at some point I decide that we've been talking an hour and I've thought the conversation has gotten repetitive and it's really the same two or three counselors speaking, but they all have their hands up and I put my hand up to make a motion. I still have to wait through those three, nine minutes of conversation before I can actually make the motion. So that's an automatic nine more minutes that even if there are nine counselors that would like to add and debate, you have to wait till you get to the motion. And so is, what are people's thoughts on revisiting the issue or the potential for adding in a motion to call the question is in order at any time between speakers? Sort of so that you don't have to wait through the three or four that already have their hands up to make it. Thank you, Amanda. I actually would like us to revisit that because I mean, it is something that town meeting did use. It was used effectively at town meeting. And I think for many reasons, for the same purpose that you're suggesting it, I'm not, I would like to hear other GOL members weigh in on that, but I'd at least like to revisit that. And I'm, yeah, I agree. I am wondering, I just would like a real clarification. When the question is called that ends debate and I know with the PFAS thing, there was a whole mess around that. And so what actually happens? I raised my hand in between speakers and I say, I call the question or I propose to end debate or whatever. What's the next step in terms of the council being able to continue discussion? And I should know this, but I don't. So you're asking if someone moves to call the previous question, what happens next? If that, when that happens, then it automatically ends debate. So we move to a vote on that ending debate and moving to the previous question, a vote on the previous question immediately. If the vote to move to that previous question fails, then debate continues. Okay, yeah. But can discussion of the topic still continue? No. So if the vote to call the question passes, then debate, it's essentially the council saying as a group, we're done with the discussion and we're just gonna vote on the motion on the table now. So that's the purpose of calling the previous question is saying we're done talking about it. And if counselors don't wanna be done talking about it, then they would vote against... Calling the question. Calling the question. Mandy? So I think part of your question though, Pat, is there's discussions related to particular emotions and an actual action that council has to take. And then sometimes our discussions during those motions go a little wide and don't really talk about the motions. And I think that's where you were getting. Back in October, it goes similar to when a charter right to postpone is invoked. It postpones the question on the floor and debate on the question ends. But if that agenda item included other questions, right? It doesn't end the agenda item if there were other motions for that agenda item to be heard, right? Or if we're in a discussion topic or if there's a discussion topic. And so maybe we need some clarification around. I think that part of the reason we have discussion topics on our agenda and action items on the agenda in theory, if it's an action item, all of the discussion should relate to the motion on the floor. Right. And are we ready to vote on that motion? And I think sometimes our discussion gets wide of the actual thing we're being asked to vote on to other topics that are tangentially related to the thing or being asked to vote on. Okay, thank you. Athena? I think one thing the council doesn't take advantage of very often is to raise a point of order when things go sort of in a direction that isn't related to the thing, to the actual agenda item. And that's exactly what a point of order is for. We're having a conversation that's not related and someone can raise a point of order saying, this is outside the bounds of the thing on the table. So we're in, you know, could potentially be seen as violation of meeting law and so forth. So anything that's outside the rules, there's also the option of creating a rule that deals with that specific instance, you know, that issue of a conversation kind of going sideways and getting outside the bounds. And if the council wanted to deal with that a different way, but I suggest that if councilors have that perspective that you use the point of order more. Lynn? I agree with that, Athena. And in addition, at later on in the agenda, if somebody felt there was an issue that was related, but wasn't on the agenda, they can bring it up during future agenda items. And at that point, frankly, there can also be a discussion as to whether or not what someone is requesting is even within the purview of the council, because that is the other place where I see the council moving off target is they go into areas that are not council business. They are the business of the town manager, the business of somebody else, but not the council. So if we're going to clarify that, I think, you know, we do need to mention they can bring it up during future agendas, but then at some point, we need to also clarify what is in the purview of the council and what is not. Thank you. Any other comment right now where we are? Otherwise I'm going to, I have a couple of things in seven that where there were requests for discussion from counselors. And one of them there's in my notes, and I apologize, I don't have under the right to his phone, it says insert to be reviewed, but I think that's just on the, but also where there was a request for discussion on 7.5 motions for reconsideration. And I must admit, I have not reviewed this material because I didn't think we'd get there today, but. So does anyone know what whoever requested this wants us to discuss about motions for reconsideration? Since there were no proposed changes. Athena? I don't recall who proposed this, but the conversation at council in the past have been that counselors wanted to bring it up in terms of what new information is. So I'm guessing that that's what it was about. That makes sense. Mandy? So this motion, this rule changes Robert's rules. We could always consider going back to Robert's rules. Robert's rules does not allow motions from the non-provaling side at all. I think we added that in because we thought with new information that might be useful. The one thing I would ask for clarifying if we get rid of the non-provaling side issue is clarify if a counselor was absent from a vote. Not that they abstained, but they were absent from the meeting. Are they allowed to ask for a motion for reconsideration? Particularly if a motion failed due to a tie. Particularly, but for other reasons too. I mean, if we've got one person absent, you might have a 6-6 tie and a motion fails. If you've got two people absent, you might have a 6-5 vote, but if those two people come to the next meeting and we're going to vote on the same side as the five, would it be worth reconsidering? I think we should, if we're going to revisit this rule, we should clarify things about counselors who are absent from the meeting and whether they have a right to request reconsideration. In a certain way, just off the top of my head, that feels fair. I am concerned. I think that if you choose to abstain that you not be given that privilege. And that feels important to me. I think, yeah. Yeah, so if we could put that note in there too, just, yeah, thank you, Athena. Anything else here for now? Can I just ask a question? Absolutely. That I've had in terms of interpreting the rules in the past. I'm curious about the, if there is a distinction between emotions, I mean, the rules say that emotion for reconsideration is this very specific, you need information and so on. But it's not that specific about amending something that's previously adopted. And I think the motion to amend something that's previously adopted is maybe isn't very clear in terms of how far in the future that can happen. That can happen. And particularly in regard to zoning and by law changes, there's not really any constraints about when that could be taken up or if it would just be a motion to amend something previously adopted. Because in those situations we'd have to go through that process again. So I'm just curious about your thoughts. Mandy. Yeah, I'm not sure rule 7.6 changes anything in Robert's rules. And so maybe if we don't modify Robert's rules, we should get rid of the rule in the rule. Robert's rules is, because then it becomes unclear, right? Robert's rules is clear that you can't rescind or amend something previously adopted through these motions if some action has already been taken, right? And so you can't rescind a borrowing order. If you've already borrowed the money, for example, you know, you can't amend something previously adopted. Potentially, I'll use the bylaw, for example, if the bylaw is already in effect, you know, you'd have to go through the whole amendment. You can obviously amend it, but you can't do it through this rule. You have to propose a bylaw amendment, right? And so is it worth, if we haven't changed anything regarding Robert's rules and we basically recited Robert's rules? Is it worth even having the rule listed here? I think one of the reasons it was listed was to remind people using our rules essentially as a cheat sheet for Robert's rules. And I'm not sure maybe that's the way we should be using our rules. We should maybe only be putting in rules that we're amending Robert's rules for. And then create a separate cheat sheet of, oh, here are motions and what they can do, right? As an educational tool. So maybe the solution is getting rid of it. So that we don't have that. Confusion about what it is, right? A legislature can always amend a bylaw by going through the process. I'm sorry, I can't find my unmute button very quickly while I'm sharing screen. I should just take this down. I had the same thought about whether or not. This rule is useful since Robert's rule speaks to it. So, and I have been planning some, some sort of motion language as a, as a cheat sheet as part of the retreat and going through some of these things as part of the retreat. My understanding is that we, we go back to Robert's rules when the rules don't speak to. A particular thing. So I think there's a balance between making things easy to find in the rules. Even if it's repetitious of Robert's rules, because we maybe use them commonly. And in this situation, it, it might make sense to leave it in with a clarifying, if it's already been enacted or something that, that it's not right for a rescission or amendment or something like that. That seems logical. I'm sorry, I'm, since I usually put my foot in my mouth, I'm just noticing that there is a kind of tension in our, being able to discuss the rules and procedure today. And that's that. Where are we with this? And Lynn. Pat, I don't think there's a tension. I just think we're not getting as full of perspective because of, we're missing some counselors. Okay. We can agree. Disagree. Can I also offer that this is going to be a top of the rules are going to be, how do you use the rules and, and motions and so forth is going to be a topic for the retreat. And I'm hoping that I get some feedback from counselors. About what's going to be helpful to include in that discussion for the retreat. Yeah, I'm, I really would like to have some sense of how we, how we integrate Robert's rules and the charter rule or our own rules, the town council rules of procedure. And, and how we, how we call on one or the other, which gives one more precedence or whatever. I can answer that right now. Go for it, kid. Not to spoil anything we're going to talk about at the retreat, but federal law, state law, the charter, all have precedence over anything we do. Then the charter instructs the council to make its own rules. It has to include specific things. And we rely on those rules first. And if anything isn't specifically addressed in our rules, or if there's some, if we need clarification, that's maybe not as precise in the rules. Then we go to Robert's rules. So that's a. Yeah, the council's rules take precedence under federal and state law and the charter. Okay. They take precedent. The charter takes precedent over the federal and state. No, federal state. I don't think so. That's why I'm asking for clarification. Yeah. So, so. For example, when we go out for borrowing, we need to prove to the lender that we have followed all of those rules, even the council rules. We followed this, that we followed state law. We followed our charter and we followed our own rules when we've, when the council has approved borrowing. So. And then if there were something that weren't specifically addressed in the council rules, then. We, we go to Robert, but only in that situation. Mm hmm. Okay. Thank you. I do want to hold conversation about low eight. When Andy can be with us. So. And we have the review of non-voting liaisons, but again, I think we need to inject more people, even though we have a forum that we should wait. And I think that's, that's, that's an interesting impact. So I'm trying to see what else. Well, I'm not sure where to go right now, Andy. Yeah. So there were a couple of different proposals to rule eight. There was Andy's sort of on, and I guess they kind of relate to each other, but I'm not sure there's Andy's sort of proposal on. And I'm not sure it's all in this draft that we have. Yeah. The changes of how things go. And some of his, I think was clarifying that yes, does a council have to actually refer a legislative proposal that counselors have proposed, whether it be zoning or non zoning or policy or whatever. Right. I think some of that was clarifying. Some of my proposals relate to more of a committee charge. And I'm just curious where people think as to, you know, if there's a number of people that don't like them, we might be able to just not discuss them again. I don't know, you know, we're missing a couple of members, but, you know, one of the things I was thinking was, you know, that those are in sort of rule 8.2, the referral, and then similar things in 8.6 in terms of some of the deletions of thinking about what we actually refer, who, which committees and multiple committees do we refer things to, particularly as it relates to resolutions, proclamations, and, you know, those, those types of things, citations and all, does GL need to actually review stuff? Or is it really the council sponsors that need to make sure if we put out a template that it follows the template and then the council sponsors own it and it just comes to the council. So I think that might save GL time again, thinking about whose time are we saving here that might save some committee time. And then with the bylaws and all, one thing I've noticed being on GL and CRC, and I think some people at TSO have noticed it. It's, you're reviewing for substance in one committee, and then GL gets it and that's when the attorney sees it, and then GL is like, but there's a lot of substantive changes, do we? And so there's a lot of, you know, extra review, maybe making those reviews, combining them into the substantive review so that the committee reviewing for substance also has the benefit of the town attorney's opinion might be more efficient without losing anything. And so that that's sort of, it would require obviously some charge changes, but I don't know how much that relates to what Andy's doing or whether we could talk about that separately. Lynn? Yeah, I agree with Mandy Joe. I once a committee like TSO or CRC, maybe finance, but the first two really, once they engage in a serious debate and they start dealing with the town attorney, I'm trying to figure out what role is GLS and should that review with the town attorney take place when the real substance of the issue or the measure is happening in the committee, in this case, mostly CRC, NGO, and TSO. I used today the measure of the modern sewer bylaws. That was reviewed at a serious level both in finance at one level and certainly in TSO. By the time it came to us, except to have to go to the council to resolve the difference between TSO and GLS recommendation, I really, I'm not clear what else we were supposed to do today in GLS, except pat it onto the council. There is a point where it might be useful if GLL has to be an arbiter. In this case, in water and sewer, we decided to let the council have to make the decision. But it's something to seriously be considered. And it would change the amount of charges of committees. I think there's a lot of logic to what you both shared. In terms of saving GLL committee time or committee time, I would love to see sponsors take responsibility. But when there are errors, otherwise, that takes up council time if it's being done there. And so that feels to me like potentially extending, not necessarily by a lot, but depending on what the issues are. So I'm not sure that there shouldn't be a review just for formatting, et cetera, spelling, things like that. We saw those small errors today. And I don't know if I want to add that to the council. Mandy? So we saw those small errors. Would it have been, if the proclamation that we reviewed today came to the council without that one small change, would it have been problematic? Or would it have still sailed through on consent? I don't know. This is question number one, right? But number two is, you know, I've had counselors tell me this in the past. Well, we just leave it for GLL because they do it. And now Lynn's trying to fix some of that, right? But I should not be a sponsor's scrivener. And so I think part of this is to try and change councilor's comments. You know, if it comes to the council and is a mess and has still 2022 on it because the sponsors didn't do anything with it, well, then we should refer it back to them or say no and say bring it back next week, right? Table it for, you know, you can, you can motion to postpone to the next council meeting and tell the sponsors come back with something better, right? Fix it. You know, I think in a new council, we've tried to accommodate everyone and we're finding that that adds a lot of time instead of using the tools that are available of things like tabling for the next meeting to fix those things. We do that sometimes with a lot of, with a lot like snow and ice. Well, we can't do that here. It was the first reading. We're not bringing it back till we fixed those issues, right? I think we need to start doing that for more things saying we're going to table this till the next meeting, even though that takes it past the proclamation because sponsors, you didn't, you weren't prepared. You didn't fix what was obviously fixable. So, you know, I'm going to look at the Arbor Day month thing then because I said, oh, I'll take it on. I'll contact the sponsors. I'll find out blah, blah, blah. So should, and we voted to do that. So basically, in order to have it happen in a timely manner. So it happens for the beginning of April. And in a sense you're saying, no, that's not the count, the GOL's responsibility. It's a, you know, simple example. But, and I did not hear back from either sponsor, even after reminding the counselor sponsor. So it's an interesting process. And, yeah, given how, given how we spend a lot of time often in council revising things or writing on the fly, which is an enormous amount of time, I'm trying to figure out how do we affect that on seriously, you know, serious, more serious issues. And do we start sending things back then also and saying, I'm sorry, this is not ready. We have, you know, and then whoever is presenting it gets comments from other people. I'm not, I'm really not sure how to do that. That was a ramble. Any other comments or questions right now, since we have decided not to make decisions today? There only seems to be one more beyond those two big rules, which is 8.9 at least, and then the liaison discussion from my paging through this, we're not making decisions. So 8.9, we wouldn't vote on anyway, although I can explain why. Yeah, let's get, pull it up and then listen to your explanation. So, so these are carryovers, which we do once every other year, right? And, and I was thinking about a, just refers to GOL, but GOL doesn't do anything on substance, right? So this is automatic carryover, carryover doesn't apply if something is met. And one of the things that we said originally was well, if it's got a negative recommend, a recommendation from GOL, which is clear, consistent and actionable only. And my proposal is to change it to a negative recommendation to any standing to, I guess this says the, but it could be any standing committee of the council to which it was referred. Meaning, for example, you know, I'll take my street lighting policy by law, but it's policy, it's not a bylaw that Anna and I proposed. If it's out of TSO with a negative recommendation, but hasn't made it out of GOL, it would automatically go forward, but should it or should the council vote on whether it goes forward to the next council, right? I would hope if it's out of TSO by the time, and it has a negative recommendation by the time it's out of TSO, by the time our term ends that we'd actually just vote to whether to adopt or not, right? Instead of carry it forward. But, you know, do we really want to be carrying forward items that are mid-process that have received a negative recommendation? Or do we want to make sure whatever the next council is that they get reintroduced if that, if those sponsors want to get reintroduced to the next council. So that's why I changed it from GOL to any committee. Thank you, Lynn. Yeah, I don't know what the change would be, but I want to be careful that we don't get caught in a situation like, I mean, there was, it was not a negative recommendation coming up for water and sewer, but there was a difference of their own. So I don't want to change that. I don't want to change the committee's and I want to make sure that we don't throw the baby out with a bathwater. In that case. Yeah. Yeah, it seems. It seems like it. The perception. Can be and. Truth may be that a committee could be stacked in a certain. Or they always make a negative recommendation. Or they always make a positive recommendation, but there's something that needs to be addressed. So how do, how would we deal with that? That sort of giving away. Or giving power to something like that. Mandy. So maybe section a, maybe it's better to just delete section a completely and not worry about the recommendation section B is if the sponsors aren't going to be in the next session, that one still kind of makes sense to me. Yeah. And C is we would have to potentially reword C, but automatic carryover doesn't apply if a majority of the full council votes to prevent automatic carryover. So maybe everything that's been referred to and hasn't. You know, I think automatic carrier carryovers measures that have not passed the required number of votes by the end of the legislation shall automatically carry over. So that's all of our referrals that just have been referred to. So that's all of our, that's all of our referrals that have not passed the required number of votes, but are either tabled or postponed or still sitting in committee. Go to the next session. Without having to be reintroduced. Maybe sections B and C of this item. Are enough to. To make that decision without section a. At all. Due to the fact that some committees might always be. At all. At all. They may not fail at council completely all the time. Right. And maybe a committee does the other way they're negatively recommending and then they always seem to pass the council. Right. I could say that's potentially possible. So maybe section A isn't needed at all. That's interesting idea. Lynn. Yeah. I'm going to hold my comment. Unusual for me. Yeah. I just one more comment on that one. There is presently. One item. Before the council. And that's waste hauler. And just given the magnitude. Of that issue. It's conceivable. That it will have to be carried into the next session. And. I mean, I don't want to predict. Who's on the council and who's not. But there's got to be some level of. Looking at those issues in which. You know, we've made some progress. Maybe we're on a timeline. But anyway. And that comparing that to removing some of the bylaws for future consideration that goes all the way back to the opening of the council and it's not going to hurt to have them stay on the books. And we keep postponing looking at them because really issues that are more critical come up on a regular basis, even for GOL. So. Yeah. I feel. Perhaps we've come to the end of our meeting time. For today. I don't know. Oh, minutes. Minutes, minutes, minutes. Okay. I move that we accept the minutes from March 1st. As presented. Is there a second. Second. Okay. Vote. Lynn Griesmer. I. Mandy Jo Hanneke. I. I'm going to say that. Patricia DeAngelo's is an eye also. And I don't think this will. Ruffle feathers. I do want to say something which. I think there's a real misunderstanding on, on the publics. Part about what being on consent agenda. Means. I know. And I, I, if we had. When something is on consent agenda. It doesn't disappear and it's not automatic. Any counselor can remove an item. And that item then just goes into action items. And I think that there's a. A false sense that it disappears. The other thing that I experienced is even something that has been voted on, on the consent agenda. And I think that. Has a discussion later in the meeting. And that's really important. And the public seems to not. Have a clarity about that issue. And I could understand why, because it can get confusing. My concern. Well. Okay. I'm going to let Lynn speak and then I'll see if I need to say what I was going to say, Lynn. No, I. Pat. I didn't mean to interrupt you. Please go ahead. Thank you. It's interesting since we have gone to hybrid mode. All votes have to be taken. By roll call. And that's frankly adds to the time of the meeting. Although God, I try to whip through those names as fast as I can. But when you have 10 roll call votes. You're really adding time. So the consent agenda. I have a couple of things. The consent agenda allows us to vote for something. Even if later in the meeting, we're going to provide more information about it. I think that actually helps save some time. The issue that I think. I have noticed and it's been on more than one occasion, but it was most recently this, this last week. And that is. The whole issue around public comment did go on the consent agenda because how it was voted coming out of GOL. The reality is, as president, I could have taken it off the consent agenda as soon as we saw how the public was feeling about that.  And we were going to have to have. So I think it's part of it is just being more sensitive to, if there's issues that have been put on consent, but we're seeing a groundswell of public comment about it. Through emails and general public comments or whatever else, then we might just, you know, understand that the president is going to take it off. I periodically also do get. An email from a counselor or two sometimes giving me a heads up that they're going to take something off the consent agenda. And that's useful. Sometimes it's because it's for any number of reasons, sometimes because they just want to be able to say more. Sometimes it's because they want to make a Scribner change. They think it's critical. There's any number of reasons why they may take it off. But I think your other two, your other statements about consent are absolutely correct. But one of the reasons consent has become most more important to us is that since we went to the hybrid mode and we have never yet had 13 counselors in the room at the same time, except for the retreats. We had last February. We can't take raised hand votes. We have to take roll call. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I would like to, I really support the consent agenda and removed the item. Around public comment because of the grounds. Well, I think that. I think that was important and it was a listening. I also want to re of restate that the four counselors who were here. Each one of us suggested some of those changes and each one of us, myself, you, Lynn, Mandy, Joe and Michelle, unanimously voted to have those changes made. And, you know, I think it doesn't mean that we don't change our mind or things like that, but I think that it becomes important when instead of demonizing people that we understand that Hey, there were some people that you normally aren't mad at who also made this decision and share the responsibility. Four of us made the decision. Four of us were responsible for changing and moving, making a motion to change. 5.1. So anyway, I just want to correct one thing. Pat, we didn't make a motion to change. We made a motion to recommend council. Yeah. And, you know, then we saw a grounds well and I think any number of us probably would have changed our vote. I know that I actually wondered whether or not I should vote to shrink the whole thing in the town council meeting. But frankly, I, because I feel that those suggestions were made in the context of a larger set of issues of how do we shorten town council meetings. That it needed to come back to the committee regardless. And then it turned out with the SJC ruling. That was released the next day. It needed to come back anyway. So. Any other comments from counselors. Any other agenda item that I have forgotten or overlooked. Okay. Then I'm going to move that we, Mandy, are you going to say something? No. Then I move that. I'm getting ready to hit leave. I'm going to make a journey meeting at 1122 and. Thank you. Thank you, Athena. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Could you stay on for a second? I just have a couple of chairing questions. And the public is welcome to stay. I don't care. I basically what I'd like to do is, and I do it better in person. It would be better if we joined a different thing. So it's clear the meeting is over. Yes. All right. See you later.


Hi everyone, it's MJ the fellow actuary and in this video we're going to be looking at a question regarding the efficient frontier which is part of portfolio theory which is part of subject CM2. Now for those of you who don't know I do offer tuition to the South African students but because we're living in the time of COVID we have turned all of our tuition to make it more virtual and because it's virtual I kind of feel like we can open it up to international students. So if you are an international student and you want some actuarial tuition check out the form in the description below fill that in and you might be able to join for the next semester but what we're going to be doing in this video is this efficient frontier question and what we're going to be doing is jumping straight into it. So it says consider two independent assets asset A and asset B with expected return of 6% per annum and 11% per annum and standard deviations of return of 5% and 10% respectively. Let xi denote the proportion of the portfolio invested in asset i so what we want to do is basically just get some key points from the question and essentially we have this asset A which has got an expected return of 6% standard deviation of 5% so this is our low risk low return asset then we have asset B which has the expected return of 11% and the standard deviation of 10% this is your high risk high return. Now you want to make sure and have a little check here sometimes writing these things down someone might have oh asset A is 6% expected return and 11% standard deviation and then asset B and they get the little things confused. Essentially what you want in these type of questions is an asset that has low risk low return and the other one that has high risk high return. If it's a bit of a blend you want to maybe just check if you've read the question correctly that is a common mistake some students make. Essentially we then want a bit of a risky portfolio where we're going to have xi in asset A and 1 minus xi in asset B because essentially what we're doing is we're looking for the optimal combination of these two assets we're answering that question you know how should I invest my money and you could visually represent this on the graph this is our mean variant space or our mean standard deviation space where we have A you can see low risk low return and then B high risk high return. Now part I of the question says if only asset A and B are available determine the equation of the efficient frontier in the expected return standard deviation space. So essentially what we need is the equation of this efficient frontier. Now our efficient frontier like I say we need in our expected return which is going to be given by E and our risk which is given by our standard deviation or sigma. Now we can express the proportion or the portfolio proportions as functions of the portfolio's expected returns. So the expectation of the portfolio is going to be you know coming from A and it's coming from B and it's given by the following equation E is equal to xi times the expected return of asset A plus one minus xi times the expected return of asset B. Now what we can do is we can substitute those amounts that we looked at earlier which was six percent for asset A and eleven percent for asset B and now what we want to do is just kind of clean it up we can now have our expected return of the portfolio is going to be equal to eleven minus five xi where xi is the proportion invested in asset A. Now what we want to do with these efficient frontier equations is we want to get this xi on its own so when we look at the variance side we can then plug it in and have an equation that has got the variables of the expected value and of sigma. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to get our xi on its own and we also want one minus xi on its own because that's going to be the proportion invested in B and that's going to be the other part of our equation that we want to substitute out. So one minus xi we simply take five divided by five minus our xi and then we can clean it up and we have the following and these are two important things we want to keep in the back of our mind and we're going to see we're going to be substituting them in on the next slide. So sticking with the efficient frontier because the two assets are independent that's great for us that makes the question a lot easier the portfolio variance is given by the following formula where the variance of the portfolio is going to be equal to the proportion squared invested in asset A times the variance of asset A plus one minus the proportion invested in asset A squared times the variance of asset B. Now like I said from the previous slide we had determined what that proportion was equal to as well as what one minus that proportion was equal to. We can now substitute those in to the portfolio proportions and we're going to get the following equation. Okay we now can substitute the risk of asset A which was equal to five squared and of asset B which is equal to 10 squared. Now the reason why we're squaring them is because we were given them as standard deviations and in this equation we're using them as variances because the variance is equal to the squared standard deviation that's why it's five squared and 10 squared. Okay so just if you're wondering why we're forgetting those squares there. So what we then do is we have the following equation we want to simplify tidy it up and we'll have our variance of our portfolio is equal to five times the expectation of the portfolio squared minus 70 times the expected return of that portfolio plus 265. Now we want our efficient frontier to have expected return with E and we want our risk to be the standard deviation but we currently have it with the mean and the variance we like I said we want instead of the variance we want the standard deviation and we know that the variance is equal to the standard deviation squared so in order to now get to the standard deviation we're going to need to take the square root so you can think of that equation instead of v as sigma squared and then to get sigma on its own we're going to take the square root which means the efficient frontier is the part of the curve above the point at which the variance is minimized. Now in order to find the minimum what you want to do is you want to take you know the derivative so to find this point we're going to differentiate so we're going to take the derivative of v divided by the derivative of e and it's going to be equal to 10 e minus 70 which means once we set it to 0 e is going to be equal to 7 so the efficient frontier is the part of the opportunity set where our expected value or our expected mean is going to be greater than 7 percent so our return in other words is going to be greater than 7 percent and so we have the following as our answer sigma is equal to the square root and we've got that equation over there where e is greater than 7 percent and we can represent this visually to see what it would look like so remember we had our two assets the whole idea this is showing the benefits of diversification like like I said you should probably have watched first all my videos on the theory of the stuff before jumping into this question because that'll make it a little bit clearer but here we have that 7 percent so all that highlighted area of the curve that is now going to be our new efficient frontier on the opportunity set cool now we can move on to the second part of the question which says a third asset asset c is a risk-free and has an expected return of 4 per cent per annum now i'm going to probably mispronounce this name but a lagarian function is used to calculate the equation of the new efficient frontier write down but do not solve the five simultaneous equations that result from this procedure so this is a very theoretical question but essentially what we're doing is we're introducing a risk-free asset we're calling it c and this is how it would be represented on our graph this is our mean standard deviation space so simultaneous equations this is just going to be a lot of theory because we've got the lagarian function which is given by the following form and just to note that lambda mu or your lagarian multipliers and so for our question this function is going to be and also just note that because we're now introducing asset c i'm going to be using xb as a proportion invested in asset b instead of that 1 minus xi because now we have three assets that we could potentially be investing in and essentially we use that function above we just make it you know for our values over here i'm not going to read that all out because it's a lot but essentially what we now need to do is we now only need to differentiate the function with respect to its five parameters and set it to zero in order to complete the question so we're going to be taking partial derivatives with regards to each of these parameters setting them to zero and that essentially is this question done so when the parameter is xa it's given by this equation xb by that equation xc that equation by lambda by that and mu by that and essentially we're not going to be using this in the next two questions that are coming up so part three says use your simultaneous equations to derive the relationship between xa and xb on the new efficient frontier and please note that this is making the question quite easy the fact that they're breaking it down and they're saying you know how to do each step sometimes the questions just are like you know find the new efficient frontier once you've introduced the risk-free asset so yeah please appreciate that the question is holding our hand whereas in the exam it might not be um you know that step forward they might not be giving us the recipe they might require us to know this whole procedure off by heart but anyway let's jump into the relationship between xa and xb so we're going to use that third simultaneous equation from the previous question which is the partial derivative of the variance with regards to partial derivative of xc which is the proportion that we've invested in asset c and we see it's equal to negative four lambda minus mu is equal to zero or in other words mu is equal to negative four lambda now what we want to do is substitute this into the first two equations and essentially this was the first equation over here we substitute mu and we get the following answer that the proportion invested in asset a is going to be equal to eight lambda divided by 200 we're going to do the same with the proportion invested in asset b and we're going to see that it's actually quite similar that the proportion invested in asset b is seven lambda divided by 200 now that's great because now we can find the relationship between xa and xb and we see that the difference is seven eighths so the relationship between xb is equal to seven eighths of xa i mean this is great because now we can find the final part of the question which says hence derive the equation of the new efficient frontier in expected return standard deviation space so like i said our asset c is a risk-free asset so the new efficient frontier is going to become a straight line because we're now going to have a combination of our risk-free asset c and our risky portfolio or the market portfolio then in this instance contains asset a and asset b so visually it would look like this we now have introduced c the new efficient frontier is the straight line our task is now to find well what is the formula or the equation of this straight line and we're using the information from the previous question so we know that the proportion invested in asset b is equal to seven eighths of the proportion invested in asset a and please note your seven plus eight is going to be equal to two fifteen which means that the efficient portfolio consisting entirely of risky assets so this is when our amount invested in asset c is zero we're going to have this point where xa is equal to eight divided by fifteen and xb is equal to seven divided by fifteen now the expected return of this portfolio is equal to the following so our expected return of our portfolio is equal to the amount invested in a times the you know expected return of asset a plus the amount invested in asset b times the expected return of asset b so now what we're doing is we're plugging in the values the proportion invested in a which is eight divided by fifteen times that six percent which was the expected return of asset a plus seven divided by fifteen the proportion in asset b times the expected return of asset b which is eleven and we solve that and we get the expected of our portfolio when we're entirely in our risky asset is going to be eight point three three percent and now we're going to do the same with regards to the standard deviation of this portfolio so again we're taking the standard deviation of the portfolio formula we're substituting in the values we're solving for it and we're getting five point three seven five percent and what's great about this is we can now kind of wrap up this whole question so therefore the efficient frontier is a straight line in our expected or our mean standard deviation space and it's going to join the following points okay we've got the first point out with zero risk and a return of four this is you know when we've gone a hundred percent on our risk free asset we got this because we were told that the return of asset c is four percent it's risk free which means the sigma is equal to zero and then we have this other point which we've just determined in the previous slide and this is when we go a hundred percent in the risky portfolio when we put zero percent in asset c and now what that means is because we've got two points and we know it's a straight line we can determine what that efficient frontier should be so using you know a formula to find the straight line we can simplify that and we have our answer that e is equal to four plus zero point eight oh six sigma and that concludes the question thank you so much for watching and i'll see you guys soon for another one cheers


Joe got a job in another town and wants to move there. She wants to get out of her rental agreement. I want to break my rental agreement. She should be careful, though, and make sure she does it right, though the landlord may be able to sue her or take money out of her security deposit. Who said that? I'm the narrator of this video about the rights and responsibilities of landlords and tenants when breaking rental agreements. I've caught up on rent and I need to move. Can't I just leave? What can the landlord do? It depends on what type of rental agreement you have with your landlord. Read your written rental agreement carefully if you have one. Do you have a written rental agreement for a certain period of time? If you do and you leave before the end of your rental agreement term, you may have to pay rent for the months left in the term. Well, I signed a written lease with the landlord last year. I think it was a six month lease, but I've been here longer than six months. Now I just pay the same amount of rent every month. And the landlord has been accepting your rent payments? Well, he's been cashing the checks, so yeah. Then it sounds like you have a month-to-month rental agreement. Okay. Well, I paid for this month, so I'm good to go, right? Well, if you have a month-to-month rental agreement, you must give written notice to your landlord that you plan to move out, so he has time to find a new tenant. Like write him a letter? Exactly. And the landlord must receive the letter at least a certain number of days before the end of the rental period. This number varies from state to state. Rental period? The end of the rental period is the day before rent is due. I thought I could just walk out. If you don't give sufficient notice to your landlord first, your landlord may have the right to sue you. Although your landlord may sue you, it is likely that he will take the remainder of the rent out of your security deposit, depending on how much you owe. For example, let's say that you're current on your rent and your state requires you to give 30 days written notice before leaving. If you only give 15 days notice, you may owe your landlord another 15 days worth of rent, which can come out of your security deposit. Even if I'm not living here? Yes, unless he rents to somebody else and they pay, but he may not be able to find anyone. However, there are special rules where you may leave without giving adequate notice.  Hey, I found my lease. Huh, I guess it's actually a one-year term. So when does it end? Not for another two months. If you leave before the end of a rental agreement term, your landlord can sue you for rent for the rest of the term. However, your landlord is required to try and find another tenant, and can only sue you for the month he isn't getting rent. What can I do? You can try to negotiate with your landlord to let you leave sooner, or ask him if he would agree to let you sublease the apartment. Read your rental agreement carefully before you go ahead and sublease, though. Okay. I'm going to call my landlord and see if we can work something out. If you can come to an agreement, make sure you get it in writing. Good luck, Joe. Thank you. You're welcome.