yeah just don't forget to press record there we go it is April 1st at 6:31 p.m and I'm calling this G meeting to order i'm going to go ahead and make sure everybody can hear and be heard so Councelor Griezmer
um yes excellent thank you councelor hi hello and councelor Lord um yes here press hello all right excellent so um
thank you all so much for your flexibility in meeting today uh we are going to be talking through um a a couple different things today uh and we're going to see how I'm I'm
trying to make sure we budget our time um budget our time appropriately uh as we as we go through and I'm trying to make sure that I have everything pulled up as well as I go okay so um let's start
off with public comment as per the agenda we do not have any members of the public here um and I know that I had emailed Michelle and Dr shabbaz uh earlier to let them know
about the meeting date but it looks like they're not here so it's okay um we've got a couple things on the agenda today mainly it's the uh the AH successor body charge and then committee vacancies um
I'm tempted to swap the order of these two items because I think the the committee vacancies will go quicker and then we can kind of see where we get today on the AH successor body charge i do want to preface this by saying that I am not expecting us to get through the
um successor body charge today this is going to be something that I think will take us a couple meetings we've got a lot of feedback to talk through um and I will give the background to that when we when we get to it but if uh unless there's an objection from folks I'd like
to move to the committee vacancies um and start with the uh finance committee if that's does that sound okay no objections okay let me pull it up and what we're going to talk about first is the selection guidance um we need to
vote the selection guidance first and then we will vote interview questions but until we have voted the selection guidance we cannot vote the interview questions if I'm understanding the order correctly so stand by all
right this is selection guidance that we have used in the uh in the past for finance committee i don't know why it's two fonts because I thought that this was the one I had used uh and I would never allow such a thing to happen but
there we go so um what I'd like to do is just spend a moment uh reading through this this was in the packet for our last meeting so if you read it for that meeting then it's uh you know and you have comments on it but I'll I'll give us because it wasn't I will put it make sure that it's available in the packet
for this meeting but because it wasn't there initially um I want to give folks a moment to read through it um selection guidance is part of our appointment process to multiple member bodies and basically this is what we are keeping in mind as we go through and um are
conducting interviews and looking to put together the two members um the two non-resident members of of this committee so I'll give you a minute to read can everyone read this okay I can zoom in a little and if you could just give me an indication with a hand when you're done
and ready for discussion can you scroll down [Music] this part we can't change this is just the town council policy right so are we ready
to Okay um thank you so this first part just bearing in mind this first part is I believe what's typically used for all multiple member bodies so it is slightly less relevant exactly for finance committee this is um
where we only have two members that we're appointing to sit to round out that full committee of counselors right um so the part that's kind of key for finance is are these three bullets here uh and so we can absolutely talk about
this but um our focus in my mind our focus is really about this section here uh because this is what's specific to multiple member uh to to finance committee excuse me councelor ete
yes I don't expect an extended conversation on this but I was wondering what is meant by broadly representative of the town that's number three this Yes i don't know it's a good question uh I think that this is saying that they
would like the makeup of the full body to ideally include representation of the variety of folks that we h of the variety of identities folks hold live in our town that's my understanding of it based on the first part right is like no
one and again no one person has all of these it's saying the body as a whole um so that's that's my read on it is that our multiple member bodies should be broadly representative of the town itself in their makeup does that
clarify um councelor Lord wondering um where do we get our demographics of the town from the census every 10 years or is there another do you know uh I believe I believe it is the census yes but we also I I don't know if we are looking back and
cross-checking with the census when we uh when we get applications in to multiple member bodies at least I haven't necessarily done that piece of it oh thank you it just hit me like hey how we know some things but how do we Yeah thank you yeah yeah and and this is
um much of this information I don't know about home ownership or rental status i haven't looked at the community activity form in a while but the um form that folks fill out does ask for age gender race does not ask for income I don't
think um location of residence things like that it asks those questions uh and then folks self-disclo if they choose to self-disclose other elements but I don't we don't ask specifically about um I don't believe I let me I can pull it up to check if someone wants to or if
someone else wants to look but um some of this is self-disclosure some of this is what's on the community activity form great thanks yeah no problem does anyone have any proposed edits to to this selection guidance
really thinking through experience serving uh I would I would say experience serving just on doesn't make sense here but um on a baseline edit I would say experience serving experience with or service
related to past service related to public finance does that make sense sort of public finance I don't know what audit committee is can I That sounds like public finance to me can I just say public
finance i'm going to go until someone tells me to stop so uh first one says public service related or past service related to public finance i probably am the one that mentioned audit because it is another
way that people uh learn finance and sometimes audit committees are separate from finance committees but when it says here past service in public finance or audit committee is it a specific audit committee that you were looking for or
was it broadly finance i I want to I want to step back a moment and just say finding people with public finance if we actually think about it of the people we have brought
on I believe that Bernie may be the only one that had public finance yeah so I would like to suggest past service related to
finance including public finance or something like that so in other words if you've been on the finance committee of a nonprofit it does give you some level of experience that's relevant to budgets it's relevant to audits it's relevant to
um complying by certain rules and tax forms that kind of thing so how's this past service related to finance including public finance auditing or other relevant areas i think that that covers a lot of territory that's good i mean we're because this is
some of this is we don't also want to limit to only what we know of too so we want to give folks that right um but I think that's a good a good point Lynn so then any issues with this first bullet okay training SLexpertise
in economics finance pis fiscal policy or comparable areas or experience interest in multiple finance i don't necessarily see how this is different than the first one uh other than I guess for the economics finance fiscal
policy are those are different should I take one out because this is stated in the first one yeah just end with areas okay um I want to add something in here
that's like interest um I think that this for me I would read this as someone who I would hope would I'm thinking purely from my own experience right i would read this and be like "Oh I definitely couldn't couldn't apply for this where I think I could learn and become a valuable member of the finance
committee right so is there a way that we can add in another bullet here that's saying you know uh demonstrated interest in financial future of amorish or something like de like like other committee engagement or
other um basically showing that they want to do this kind of work that the finance committee does i I think demonstrated interest I'm sorry I need to raise my hand no go ahead go ahead it's fun demonstrated interest
[Music] in I like that financials i don't know if that's right council I'm looking to you to tell me why why I say this my screen just says financial planning but financials stay in feels really
broad yeah um financial planning sounds good i think financial planning is good yeah can I add finance and or budgeting because I think sometimes people just call it something different yeah that would Yeah okay so
consistently available for meetings particularly during budgeting season which is normally May and June that would be our last one council um availability so qualifications might include consistently available for me
yeah yeah yeah thank you all right availability to attend meetings particularly during budgeting season which is normally May and June okay so right now we've got four qualifications might include and I think
I I want to add in a sentence i think we did this for charter review about like no one person is expected to have all of these things uh but past service related to finance including public finance auditing or other relevant areas training or expertise in economics
finance and or budgeting fiscal policy or comparable area areas demonstrated interest in municipal government operations and financial planning and availability to attend meetings particularly during budgeting season which is normally May and June i think this does it does that sound
okay [Music] but you were going to add something about not limited to I just wanted to add a clause here um ideally resident members would represent a mix of experiences skills and perspectives including knowledge of
and beyond Ammerst knowledge or experiences no Saturday said experiences sorry all right fine okay um sound good yep i'm going to add
in this one [Music] uh do I have a motion to adopt this selection guidance for non voting members of the finance committee dated
April 1st 2025 so moved is there a second second okay I'm going to go ahead and Thank you um I got to write this down don't forget on the reports that I don't
remember to send in uh app selection guidance moved second okay um uh councelor Griezmer nothing did I raise my hand no we're
calling the vote oh yes thank you uh councelor yes uh councelor Lord I and I and I as well all right let me save this so that I
don't forget this passage um thank you all very much adopted that's so funny the last time we adopted this was April 18th 2024 all
right okay um let's go now to the Let's see we're doing okay on timing um let's go now to the charter review committee
um where did it go sorry I have too many things open on my computer it's actually alarming give me one moment please anybody have any small talk i hate when I don't have stuff up and I am
awkwardly just going around here no small talk for me all right well take take a minute while I go look here must be thrilling for anybody who watches it after the fact all righty here we
go so we're going to go to the charter review committee guidance and then based on timing we will look at interview questions and there's this so this was what go adopted March 21st 2024 um
and we came up with this list based on a lot of discussion i know two of you were part of that uh conversation last year so let's look at this and um and see where we where we go from here
i'm going to give you a minute to read indicate to me when you are done what are we doing ready okay all right um so we had a quick preamble here the guidance below represents some of the
criteria go will consider in selecting potential candidates it is not an exhaustive list and no one candidate is expected to possess all or even many of these criteria a robust charter review committee will include a mix of the following any issues with this before we go into the
Okay demographic diversity including racial economic gender and generational diversity good there variety of life experiences skills ages and occupations i don't know why ages isn't up here with
a demographic age and generational kind of the sim can I do age generational sorry now I'm getting picky but is that okay counselor you unmuted and I was waiting for you to tell me if what you thought
um better right you like this better or the other way better i I like this i was thinking about generational diversity and what that meant but I I think there is a
distinction between age and generational diversity so yeah I'm going to kind of do a slash okay variety of life experiences skills and occupations prior community engagement outside of government town
government prior engagement with the charter development process prior experience in community engagement/outreach prior experience with or knowledge of data collection methodology prior service on a town board/committee or as an elected
official i think we can just take that part out initially I was like this should say town of Ammeris but then I feel like we should just take out this last part okay no one has shot me down yet okay uh representation across all town
districts should we say all or should we just say representation across because I struggle with this like if we have a this is why we have lots of criteria but you know we don't want to just pick somebody solely because they're from a district that hasn't had one individual
on it yet when they have other great criteria councelor Lord I don't know if that word mix gives us flexibility where it say I like that it says we'll include a mix of the following um so you're right right okay yeah no you're right it gives us it does
give us that flexibility you're right so that's council i was wondering what the mix of representation across town districts is right now and is it even a mix cuz I
seem to recall that it's it isn't um and I I think I prefer removing the all just because that is added flexibility on top of the mix i
agree thank you i don't have the information directly in front of me in this moment but uh I believe that it does skew a bit but it's a nineperson committee so I think that there is a variety just not I don't think it's perfect um
okay any further edits to this otherwise I'm happy to hear a motion to adopt the charter review committee selection guidance dated April 1st 2025
so moved second thank you i'm writing it down selection uh I'm going to call the vote uh councelor Lord I uh councelor
I I am an I councelor Griemer I excellent thank you okay can I um try to Oh there we go go ahead one of the interesting things that we
face with this is we I don't Do you remember if we plotted out where people were from it was in it was included on the cast that we did have that discussion yeah and then my question is because
we're only picking one person this time mhm and it's it's not like so are we like filling a hole because a person lives in a certain district or brought a certain
um characteristic i think that there's a bit of that yes and we can look back on if folks want to look back and watch the interviews um or read the calfs from last year i believe I can share those uh I'll confirm that
but um the uh no committee is going to be perfect so I don't know if it's necessarily about replacing the characteristics that the one person who left had as much as
it's looking at the committee uh and seeing where that need is i would encourage everyone to watch at least one charter review committee meeting um and kind of observe that i will reach out to the chair to see if they have any
thoughts as well um as we kind of go through here so we're not I guess L to answer your questions no we're not looking at who left we're looking at who's there and what is needed if that makes sense
um what I haven't looked at is the the calendar so I apologize i don't have an updated calendar for you but the agenda posting went live it it went live later than I thought not the agenda posting the vacancy notice sorry went live a bit
later than I thought um let me tell you exactly when because I uh I will have a remade calendar to run by everybody up and um I think Holla I think we weren't able to confirm it with you two so I'm going to send that um I'll ask for
availability from folks um which is not an open meeting law violation but I will ask for availability from folks for interview dates and such because we typically need to hold those in addition to our normal meetings um they're uh
depending on how many interviews we have they can be challenging to hold during our normal meetings um so I will be discussing with you the the calendar at our next meeting which lucky for us is soon um I'm just going to look at the posting
date i think it got posted last Friday let's see yeah so no it got posted on last Wednesday so it has been um posted for just under a week now and we have to leave it up for two weeks so we can look
at the um we can look at the agendas next week um and I will reach out this week to folks who had submitted a calf in the past two years to get them because we can't use their old calf we have to have them submit a new one now that the vacancy is posted for both
committees any questions about that okay um so we've got an hour and a half left um let's spend a little bit of time on interview questions maybe if that sounds okay with folks and then we
will go on to the um HA uh successor body so let's start with charter review because just cuz that's up on my computer and I don't have to dig for it and let's discuss this
so these are the interview questions that we used last time and we had broken them down into uh different areas right so um yeah this was the the breakdown we
just for context we only asked six questions because we were filling the entire committee so we had um I think like 18 or so interviews to conduct uh and that took a lot of time um I would
encourage us to not wildly differ our questions i think we can improve on them as needed but I don't want us to have an entirely new standard and set of questions for uh for the committee drastically right um and and
again that's my thought but if folks have their own thoughts I always am happy to course correct myself so I'll give you a minute to read these through and we will discuss Okay we we good all right sorry someone my partner was
walking outside and someone beeped at her and I was like "Who is that?" But I think I knew who it was all right um are we ready okay got six questions here i'm going to go through them point
by point and we'll see at the end if there's something you want to add in but let's let's start with our existing questions so question one what's your understanding of the role of the charter review committee are there particular areas that you see as strengths weaknesses or missing elements to the
charter comments on this this question lynn I wonder if we should ask if they have been at you know watching charter committee meetings do you want to replace this part
um no no definitely not um I would just say have you ha after the first question have you been able to observe any of the charter meetings and then go into the next question that's
all i do struggle feel like I'm always a broken record on like multiple things in one thing whether it's the goals or this but I do get nervous having three questions in one question um and so I would like
to I would propose if we add that part in I would propose making this a second question and breaking it out because I think it's different councelor Ete yeah I think this is one case where we can break it and it
won't it won't matter so much because the question of are you watching is more or less a yes or no question yeah and I think it goes with this first one in a way but this feels separate to me this feels like a different it's asking something
different okay um prior experience based on the selection guidance what experiences or skills do you feel you bring to the charter review committee that can make it successful i might just shift this because it's already started to that
will aid in its work or something like that but this is no picky and doesn't matter yeah council i think what the question is getting at is how your skills would complement the
work of the committee m I think that also relates to the previous question because if you have watched and you see some of the questions that are asked or the proceedings there are things that you can speak about to answer this
question are we holding it that it should be a expectation okay okay okay um so does this work then that will support the work of the Okay how do you
stay informed and up to date about town affairs i think what this question was getting at was like how have they engaged with the charter right like how has the charter impacted them um work style tell us about an experience you have had collaborating with a group what did you like about it
what did you find challenging this is one that I think we should shift this next one initially it was please briefly describe two or three activities that should be part of the work plan for the group um I think we could just I think we could shift this to say what are two honestly kind of
just make it less jargony like what are two to three things you believe the charter review committee should do if they aren't already doing in the coming year or something like that like we also aren't necessarily looking like the charter review committee has now asked for money for a consultant
like they have a pathway that they're going down and so I don't know what the purpose is in not that I don't think this is a good question but the the path has kind of been a lot more defined for where the charter review committee is going so I'm not sure what we learn from
this that we don't already know from question three and again like I'm happy to be wrong here but my based on my own viewings of the committee it seems like there's they've settled out i don't know what we are learning from this that's
going to help us so I would be fine deleting it council atte um so brief briefly describe two or three activities that should be part of the work plan there's already a process going on and if there are things that
need to be improved upon that would have been discussed with question two I think right yeah yeah okay um what else would you like us to know about you that makes you a strong candidate for the charter review
committee I will always fight for this type of question to be in there i think that it's important to give people an opportunity i like I know that it's not specific but we create boundaries with the prior five questions and if someone has something to share with again that we
hadn't thought of I want to give them that opportunity i personally like the question more of like what do you wish we'd asked you that we didn't and what's your answer to it but that's getting a little fluffier than maybe some people like to go so councelor Lord
I'm sorry I couldn't find the mute button thank you i'm in agreement in terms of having that more open-ended question and I just had a quick question about do the applicants get these questions ahead of time yes or they coming in okay thank you they get the
questions no no it's okay they get the questions and the selection guidance ahead of time so it's a great accommodation for Yeah absolutely yeah absolutely and it helps us when we are asking for you know I think I think we we took out the two to three uh question
but in the past if we have a specific number of examples we want they've known in advance that we expect multiples so um here's a question we uh are only interviewing for one spot so the part of
the process for us is determining a sufficiency of the applicant pool um so far we have zero calfs that have come in uh since this has been posted i think we had one that came in prior to it being posted that person will have to resubmit it but um we will at some point need to
determine how many people and it's not just number right it's like how many but also when we look at all of those things in our selection guidance constitutes a robust pool i'm going to make the wild assumption that we are no longer looking for 18 people like we were the first
time right um because that is going to be really hard since we're only filling one spot we will hypothetically have fewer interviews to give should we give them more than 2 minutes or not 2 minutes is also a decent amount of
time but it's not that long i would be in favor of say bumping this to three i know that sounds wild but um public comment is three i've tried to give public comment in two and it's really hard so sometimes I think if we're asking for examples if we're asking for things like that we should give them a
little more time is anyone opposed to changing the 2 minutes to 3 minutes okay done um the rest of this has been you know I think this apparently is standard
practice i have no feelings about this but I think the thought was it gets confusing to kind of keep bouncing around questions so it's fine to just have one person ask them um and then the uh I had a question about this one i
wanted to check this prior does somebody have our multiple member body appointments policy up because I read in one instance I'm going to stop sharing for one second sorry i want to just make sure that we are allowed to do individual interviews um and that it's
not in violation of our multip Yeah I know Lynn I had the same thought but um uh hang on so my concern is that if it says somewhere Yeah so this is an old
document so I want to find the most Does anybody have the most upto-date version of the policy on appointments to multiple member bodies oh is it in the packet did I put it in the packet the last meeting like a smarty no yes I did okay amazing
news all right so the policy for making recommendations to multiple member bodies talks about the [Music] um interviews and it says that
interviews shall be conducted in a group setting is the version that I the last version that I have seen which was updated when was this updated doesn't have a date on it that's why I'm this is my frustration with navigating our our websites it looks
like 2021 so I'm trying to figure out if this has since been updated and if we are permitted to do individual interviews or if it has to be a group interview um so I can try to track this down uh I don't know if I mean we don't
have to approve these today this is because we're not doing the interviews right away um so I I would recommend the committee wait until I can get clarity on this point um if folks are okay with that I would strongly encourage us to try to do individual interviews um
versus group interviews i have a strong bias against group interviews i think that they're unhelpful and uh allow too much confirmation bias or comparison bias to come in um in the moment so that's that would be my thought but what do people think do you want to just get
this done today or do you want to get some clarity council where would you get the clarity from so I would ask Athena if there's a most recent up-to-date version of this um
that I am somehow missing uh and if it's been changed and if not were we breaking the rules last time does that make sense um it's possible I missed it and I have not had time to dig in and look further
but I that is the most recent copy of the policy that I found lynn do you know of another yeah okay um and when they do planning board and zoning board interviews they do them in a group interview to your knowledge oh council
you're on CRC do you I I was on CRC i did you were on CRC in the group um I Yeah I'm struggling to approach this but what if it turns out that it should be in a group setting what does that do we have to do it in a group setting um and
or or we as go propose a change to the town council policy which is we are the appropriate committee to do that it would have to that would have to happen first before we approve the interview questions um and it would have to be approved by the council obviously it's
not just a go policy um but we can't pitch that today because it wasn't on our agenda i I would encourage folks I think if it's something this committee thinks we should do i will confirm that this is the most up-to-date thing uh and if so then we as a committee can one of us can
make that motion as a counselor to This is wild we'd make the motion to the council the council would refer it back to this committee this committee would discuss it and then refer it back to the council which is completely logical and I see no
flaws whatsoever okay um so just to confirm our plan of attack here I am going to confirm the uh and I'm writing it down i'm going to confirm the council policy on appointments to multiple
member bodies includes that it must be a group interview if so Joel will or I can just do it
um Anna to propose uh change to the council for referral go all right does that make sense so I'm going to confirm that this is true if it is true I will I'll I'll
write a memo to you Lynn so weird um this committee makeup happens to make this discussion so insular uh if it is that way in the policy I'll write a memo to Lynn and Athena asking for that to be changed it will be discussed at the council meeting and referred
hypothetically to go who will discuss it and once that goes forward we can vote those interview questions we're not as time pressured on the interview questions because we again do not currently have any applicants for this uh and until we have a sufficient pool
um that's that the selection guidance was kind of the first step so I'm I'm happy we took that any other questions on this i know that was a bit confusing okay let's do um let's do finally let me find that
sorry I'm looking and I I'm realizing I think I have the wrong version okay share this one time I was leading a workshop and I went to share and I accidentally ended the meeting and now I have fears okay um this was the these were the
interview questions we used last time uh last year when we look ahead of schedule but we're not going to do these today cuz same same issue [Music] um I'm going to give you a moment to
read there are eight questions all right we ready to start quick talking through it okay um so just going to make sure that I've saved this in the right date okay based
on the selection guidance what do you feel you bring to the finance committee that can make it successful uh please include any experience you have with finance in general or the town's finance committee okay what is your understanding of the role of the finance
committee what is your understanding of your role as a non- voting member i'm curious what the intent what what do we hear from responses to this question that helps us and how counselor Oh you're muted
don't worry you'll repeat the genius I'm sure before answering that I was wondering since this is an interview for a potential role what's your understanding of your
role or of the role of a nonvoting member and I think the last time that we talked about this it Because I think the sense we got
was non- voting members have a different perspective that they can bring that is broader than those who have [Music] been elected that if I remember part of the conversation we had last time
okay any other thoughts on on this question i I think what I'm curious about is like are we looking for them to say I know that I am supporting or not supporting and that I'm not a voting me like are we just looking for confirmation that they understand it or
like councilor I think what you were saying is we're looking for someone who's bringing to this a lack of maybe like the pressure of holding elected office or like their own experiences i'm not sure maybe I'm not fully understanding what you're saying could you clarify go ahead i
hesitate to say more because that would be answering a question that they should answer so either of those would be appropriate the question as framed is simply saying from the perspective of
the whoever is being interviewed is the difference [Music] between a non- voting member and a voting member and whatever that understanding is plays into what we think um how capable they would be in
that role okay so we're looking for someone who can talk through that nuance i'm not I don't feel like I'm giving away an answer here right because I do think that we're still going to get unique perspectives i think for me it's we need to know that there
is that we're gaining good information from the responses to those questions and that's not to say there maybe maybe I'm framing this wrong as like I don't mean to say that there's a right or wrong answer i mean to say like are we going to get information
from this that would help us make the decision and so for me in responding to this question am I going to get a piece of information that tells me this person is more or less um I don't know if the word qualified is
right but is would be more or less of a good fit for that that spot and I I'm I'm not convinced yet i'm okay keeping it in there but it feels to me like it's like it's it's almost a yes or no um or like it's a one-s sentence answer
and I don't know if it's helping me to make the decision which is why there are eight questions so it doesn't need to be the only one but I just want to make sure every question here is giving us helpful information if that makes sense and if if for you it is that's fine and I'm I'm happy to leave it so am I correct in saying you feel that you
would get helpful helpful information from question three go ahead i was waiting on Lynn to say something or counselor Lord but I would say that the during the last
interviews there were some responses that even for me expanded my knowledge of okay what um was happening on finance between those who are non- voting members okay perfect i happy to accept
that um okay tell us about an experience you've had collaborating with a group particularly where opinions were in conflict or the decision was controversial um I think I just want to add on to this like how did you engage in that moment like I I I think this
is what we're looking for is someone who was able to continue to move through conflict right sorry I'm trying to move back to how we framed this in the last last set of uh here we go so in the charter review we talked
about we said tell us about an experience you've had collaborating with a group what did you like about it what did you find challenging and so I'm curious like there's there isn't necessarily that followup on this one we just say tell us about an experience you've had collaborating a group particularly where opinions were in
conflict or the decision was controversial and I kind of want to add like how did you engage to move through that conflict or how did you engage to move toward I don't know like I I need a second I need an actual question that
tells me something about them and prompts them to talk to me about it that how did you engage with the group in that scenario because it's not like we're not going to get consensus i'm not suggesting that but I I think what I'm seeking from this question is how do you
navigate these kind of challenging conversations how do you balance the needs how do you you know share your perspective and respect the perspective of others that kind of stuff how do you engage Are are we okay if I add that to
this okay please describe the considerations and objectives you'll use for considering there's too many words considering in this uh financial matters and the budget when making recommendations to the council so other than changing one of the words sorry the
tag on my clothes was itching me um other than changing one of the considerations to a different word um that I don't know yet but I'll think on can I just say please share what you
will bear in mind or please share and I also am not clear that this is as helpful in this sentence as it could be because it's not these individuals who are making recommendations to the council um it's the body and so I
think we could say when discussing recommendations to the council that might be a better word here or when the finance committee is making recommendations to the council people both considering Zen because I
don't know a better word right now and I don't have Google's I'll Google it uh um okay we could say when deliberating on or reviewing how about reviewing
somebody say thing reviewing is is fine that's part of what is done on finance am I the only one that's annoyed by this so everyone else is like just on a just tie yourself out here um I'm the only one that's annoyed by the devil consider council i thought you'd be like with me on this one i I am
but I I wanted you to exert yourself so don't worry plenty of energy to get through the rest of this all right um what is your approach to incorporating public input into your decision- making
okay what else would you like us to know that makes you a strong candidate and then we just have this random yes or no at the end i w if there's a way that we could put this in the statement of interest uh this is such an awkward end to these interviews
um I was reflecting on that from last time it's like we get these like final thoughts that are often really good and really interesting and like meaty and make me think and then we have the like are you free from now till July uh question and it's really feels like a um
I don't know if we're allowed to to do that or not but um we put this pretty clearly in the in the um in the requirements and we don't even state exactly when the meetings are so I don't see how this is actually a helpful question at this
point so my controversial take is I think we should take this out we also don't kick them off if they don't there is a provision for us to do that but we we I don't know are people would people be upset if we took this one
out i I want to end with the the passionate question okay so these interview questions are actually in line with the policy um I hate it but it is in line with the policy uh the random order feels like
it's going to it's just impossible to to do um but again we don't need to vote this tonight we can wait uh and I can try to sort out the other issue unless people feel like they really would like to do this tonight no
okay good discussion everybody um I'm going to Oh council go ahead i was wondering um from last year's interview it seemed they were all done at the same time
that's what it does seem like based on that discussion cuz I remember I'm looking through on June 13th 20 24 and you had um Tom Porter Bernie
Kubakan and um Steven Casey so it was all at the same time yeah I think the charter was the only one we did separate um and yeah for for better or for worse I if we want to do it again that way again like if it's not a fight worth fighting
it's not a fight worth fighting i also think with Charter it was so unwieldy because there were so many right like we're typically looking at replacing spots and so it's three people or four people or whatever versus we logistically could not have done 18
people um so yeah that's that okay are we ready to move on to our next item uh of business here so not seeing any objections so we will bring those interview questions back um in our next
meeting let's talk through the reparations committee charge reparations uh successor body charge um I want to give some context here and I know that this is familiar context but just in
case and I say it's familiar context because again two of you are with me when it happens so also correct me if I get this wrong g uh got this referred to
them three ago or two two or three goss ago um before I was on the committee uh it was referred as part of the discussion of the final report from the African Heritage uh reparation assembly
and this specific part of the report was that there should be a successor body a body to kind of continue on specific elements of the work of the AHA um there was a draft charge included in the report in
the final report and that was what was referred to go for discussion it was carried over into go last year um it where we discussed it and um voted a draft to recommend to the
council for for adoption and and moving forward to create it um where there were a couple communications breakdowns in that first go there had been a lot of counselor feedback that counselor feedback was not it it got lost in the ether between goos so um we hadn't been
able to take it into consideration when we were discussing this charge so when when the charge went to the full council there was a bit of um I think feeling of did why like I put all this time into looking at this why didn't you discuss my thoughts from from counselors which
is fair um and also there were significant proposed edits made by counselors um and so I'm looking to to councelor Griemer and Ete to correct me if if I'm misremembering this i believe that what happened is that there
was an amended version brought forward at council it was never voted on it was just immediately referred back to go for for discussion so what you had in your packet was the charge that go brought to uh the
council um and that had one little track change in it and then there was a marked up version that was uh the um the charge so both of these have been referred back right like there
there is not we're not just discussing one or the other basically what we are here what we are going to look at is I think we should look at the marked up charge um and discuss whether or not we as a committee would like to agree
with those those proposed changes um and refer it back to the council for adoption we also have a number of comments from counselors that I included in your packet uh that we should be kind of bearing in mind as we're going
through this does anyone have any questions about what we're doing here does anyone have any thoughts on how to do this okay um so did folks have a chance to read
the comments through if not I can put them up on the board and we can kind of just talk through it would that be helpful okay I'll do that um so my plan tonight is let's start with the comments my plan okay let me let me back up this is a this is a
bear right like this is a lot of stuff to try to manage at once so my current plan of attack here is let's familiarize ourselves with the comments that folks made which are tend to be a bit bigger picture and then we're going to start looking at tonight we're really just trying to familiarize ourselves and get
oriented in the next couple meetings we'll go through and discuss each of the the proposed changes as well as any changes that are in the comment counselor comments but not reflected in the document yet um and see where we want to go with with each area does that
make sense so I'm not necessarily expecting a lot of action on this tonight i just want us to get our heads around it if you feel like your head is already around this and I need to catch up and if everyone feels that way I will happily catch up um and we can go ahead
at at at everybody else's speed i'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by the sheer volume of uh information that we have i will say that okay so these were a couple different memos i just smooshed it all
into a document this is in your in your packet um so starting off um let's start off with the ones from Kathy so oh sorry i'll wait i'll stop talking
i believe that this was sent uh prior to yeah this was sent prior to the the draft that we that go did last year going forward so this was this these were initial thoughts um and I think some of this was addressed in the initial charge and some may not have
been addressed so just for context this was kind of like early draft this was not in response to I'm going to keep going she was saying set it so sorry I'm just I'm going to talk and you can just mute mute your computer if
I'm bugging you kathy's comments seemed to be things that go did discuss last year um when we crafted the charge so this was saying we haven't talked about what process would be followed for distribution and um that that process
would need to be approved by the council both of which we discussed I believe when we crafted the charge um she also suggested creating a process that's similar to what's done by CPA so having a clear set of written guidelines legal
guidance uh a period for proposals an annual budget a voting process and then council authorization we also looked at CPA when we were crafting that committee charge i believe that that is where we tried to model this off of i don't know if it's exactly what Kathy is saying
here to do the comparison but um we talked a lot about how CPA functions when we were discussing the the draft charge um so a couple of her comments here around the when she says the charge she's referring to the one that was
initially made in the um final report drafted in the final report so um we cannot we've gotten clarity on this I believe from our legal team that we cannot specify race uh of committee
members in a committee charge um and we did not have a specific student slot um and then sorry I'm trying to pull up everything at once
okay she had suggestions on the mission i'm going a bit quickly because I think this is captured in the markedup version um and I am assuming that the elements that she wanted in the charge are also marked in that markedup
version so this was Kathy's initial memo to us we Okay if I move on and then she she Yeah uh Andy so this was
also this was also prior to yeah this was also prior to our draft going our go's draft going back um okay so We dealt with this already this was saying you can't specify race as a
qualifier for committee membership that's correct we cannot um okay from Hanaki okay so she provided some specific recommendations um which we can address as we get in but
then I think that this was the uh this was the biggest general question that she had um was that the um the AH report included a lot of recommendations some of which are
more feasible than others this was something that we talked a lot about that the uh the council shouldn't necessarily just blanket adopt all of those recommendations there are some that aren't we know aren't even aren't feasible um like redefining CPA
legislation is not something that we have control over I think was one example i'm trying to remember specifics uh so I think this is something we want to make sure we discuss is how do we clarify that these are each recommendation is still an individual kind of council decision that
we're not as the slate um adopting all of those recommendations okay that was it for comments any questions on the counselor any questions about the questions before we kind of look at the
look at the memo here okay um I'm going to try to do eight things at once i'm going to pull everything up let's take a look let's take a second and familiarize oursel with what G voted last time before we get into the marked up version because
it's so marked up that it's actually kind of hard to read it so this was what G voted to send to the council we had it as five voting members um purpose in light of the town council's
long-standing goal of advancing racial equity and social justice and continued commitment to dismantle structural racism in Ammerst abrc's mission is to carry forward the work of the AHA guided by the recommendations in the AH final report that's the overarching purpose
the charge the items they're supposed to do the ABRC shall review the recommendations in the AHR final report establish and and I think we were talking about this in chronological order for the most part here at least
this first piece establish feasibility and priority level of AH recommendations provide recommendations for action to the town council based on priority level and feasibility uh advise and make written recommendations to the town council on the expenditure of funds from the town's
reparations fund consult regularly with the black community about the allocation of reparations funds and other proposals under consideration by the committee involving reparative justice accept proposals from the community through a process determined by this body collaborate with the town commit
collaborate with town committees to pursue reparative projects and initiatives where shared goals are present so you can see in this and then they have to do reports uh which I'll get to in a second but you can see in this that some of the questions that were raised in those counselor questions were addressed in this initial charge
right so things like um concern about liaison from other committees we talked about saying that they they should collaborate with them uh where shared goals are present instead of kind of limiting it to one committee or another um and we always are saying provide
recommendations for action which is just similar to CPA right like they recommend projects but ultimately because we are the the um legislative body of the town and are managing the budget we are the ones who vote to authorize uh and approve at the end of
the day um and we modeled this off of CPA so advise and make written recommendations to the town council on expenditure of funds we're basically saying create that process uh where you recommend it um and that this body one of the things that we
talked about being really important was that this body should be not just kind of making those decisions in a vacuum they should be in consulting uh with the black community about the allocations of rep allocation of reparations funds and other proposals other under
consideration by the community committee oh my god um so this was where we were getting at like they have to seek out proposals it's not this committee kind of determining we want to chase this project or this project we wanted that
similar to CPA that process where folks submit proposals thoughts on this before we get into the marked up version again we're just familiarizing ourselves tonight i don't know about you all but it's been a long
week it's Tuesday just kidding it's been a long two days uh okay are we at no questions on this i almost am like scared to share this next one with you okay well I know you saw it because it's in the packet
all right here we go so uh this was the version that was marked up um I think it at least one if not two counselors I think did uh took a go at marking it up um taking in their thoughts about it and
um this is was sent back to go for discussion so notably they took the word black out of the uh title and the um I think that that's something we should discuss this is not to me never mind i'm
just saying we should well we discuss all of it uh and they upped it to seven voting members and they cl they brought back the uh membership from specific bodies again this is I want to be really clear
go may decide to go back to what we had before and that is well within our prerogative to do uh we had discussion on this and so I can remind us of that discussion but just because I just want to empower Jo a little bit here just
because uh one or two or multiple counselors said they wanted to see it another way does not mean that go can't say this is what we are recommending um ultimately at the end of the day the council votes this charge go makes a
recommendation um and so if we want to go to our initial recommendation of five voting members just standard versus specifying out we can and I will um do my best to make sure what I'll probably do is find the meetings where we discuss
this and you can recap them in the minutes or by watching them um so that we don't have the same discussion 18,000 times okay uh adjustment of the purpose here their proposed purpose uh with a change
name is the ARC's mission is to implement reparations as defined by international human rights standards in Ammerst for harms caused by support of slavery and postreonstruction discrimination by the town residents businesses and other Ammerst associated entities as part of its mission ARC will
make recommendations to the town council on expenditures of reparations of the reparations stabilization fund to support reparations including consideration of areas recommended by the African Heritage Reparations Assembly AH report
okay and then the shifts to the charge um so priority areas starting with regarding the scope of reparations so they talked about okay reviewing the recommendations
of final report they kept that in uh and they moved up the uh consultation so they and but they also they shifted it a bit so um we had had consult regularly with the black community they had shifted it to uh
consult regularly with the descendants of enslaved Ammerst residents and residents of Ammerst whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States regarding Ammerst reparations program to inform the program and recommendations made to the council and they they refer back to different eligibility groups
from the AH final report um and they specified make recommendations to the council on three to five priority areas for potential support from the reparations stabilization fund talking about considering scope of harms to be
repaired and addressed uh establishing and then they kind of expanded right establishing feasibility legality and connection to harms being repaired consider the final report funding priorities including youth programming affordable housing business grants and entrepreneurial training and then
present those to the council for action so this was their like basically they they tried to choke it out into starting with identifying scope and then getting into funding regarding recommendations on the expenditure uh of that stabilization fund based on town council
priority areas they shall review and consider guidelines and processes followed by the CPA um adopt a clear set of written guidelines uh including priority areas and fund and eligibility establish a process for
receiving proposals and making recommendations solicit proposals make recommendations etc and then shortened the the um reports so there's lots for us to
discuss clearly um but I wanted to just kind of give us an opportunity to sit with that together um I'm not honestly we're not even going to jump into it today because I think we want we want a big chunk of time and we are not going to get where we need to go
in a half an hour what I would like to talk about I want to just kind of open it up for general thoughts now but what I think would be helpful for us to do um I'd like folks to look at those edits um those track changes and
uh go through and kind of start to form your own opinions on whether or not you agree or disagree with the with the shifts as proposed um and basically I'm saying let's try to really come prepared with where we are at with each point um
with each edit that's made in that document to make our meeting a bit more manageable when we get into that piece by piece of it um but let's start with general thoughts and thoughts on that approach of we're
going to go piece by piece through it but I'd like you to come prepped with your own kind of either marked up you don't have to send it to me but come with your own further markups or proposed changes or whether or not you personally agree or disagree knowing that through discussion we all may shift
where we're at i just monologued somebody say something what are you What are we thinking nobody's thinking anything okay I'm going to ask you all to um to
do that then that's that's unless I hear otherwise that will be the route that we go um so when we next meet which is next week right um yeah so you've got one week you've got that marked up version i would like you to please review it um
and go through and say you know I I agree with this point i disagree with this notice um I'm not I'm not coming at this with an angle but notice what things were removed from our initial draft charge uh and then please reach out to if you um I
guess this is really hollow for you um because Pat Counselor Et and Lynn were all on Jo last year um if you want recaps of our conversations please reach out to um myself and uh we or whoever um
to try to get um an idea on that recap of the conversation and I will try to figure out what meetings those were at if you want minutes or recordings uh but really I think the best plan of approach here is let's just talk through it point by point and see where we're where we get to with that charge
does that sound okay okay thank you we will get it done um yeah council atte so I've I've been silent it's not
because there isn't anything to say but it's merely because I'm reminding myself of the discussions that we had which were um and kind of long and so it it would be necessary to revisit that so
that we don't retread what we've done before or even if we do that come at it from a different angle yeah yeah do you what do you think the best method for revisiting those is going to be like is it just do you think we should would it
be helpful for me to try to figure out the dates of those meetings and let folks know if they want to watch them or at least I I don't know if the minutes how helpful the minutes are going to be uh in that versus a recording to be honest with you um as painful as
watching ourselves on a recording is going to be it may be the the best way to recap would that would it be helpful for me to get the dates of those i think the dates would be good i am looking over at my notes and I know we
had something in September mhm that's helpful that's really helpful i will that gives me a starting point um September 26th okie dokie send dates to recordings
okay i will try to get the dates out for folks to if you want to recap yeah council i think that's honestly that's my fear too is that we're going to be deja vu all over again and having the same discussions and the and this was a lot i mean I also don't want to minimize
the work that go put into this last year this was a lot of intense discussion um and and yeah so I think that I I don't want to rehash every single discussion we had
um unless we need to right like I'm I'm unless there's a purpose to doing that uh and obviously this is a different committee than last year and obviously you know everything everything shifts so I'm not saying we can't bring it up again just to be clear all right so I'm
going to find the dates and send them to you i'm also going to try to navigate the question that we had earlier about the policy but I don't think that we have a half an hour if folks would like to we can start in on this but I I'm I guess I'm speaking for myself i don't
think it's necessarily going to be helpful for us to jump into it i don't know that I'm ready to jump into it tonight without kind of rehashing those or revisiting the prior discussions um but do folks want to jump in on and start in on this or
no no I'm seeing nos okay um we're going to pause there then and we will we will jump back in on this next week um we did not this is my fault i am co-sponsoring this resolution with George and he sent me edits and I forgot that he'd sent me edits so we do not
have the um the the uh whatchamacallit proclamation that I had put on the agenda um I did put pending receipt and referral but because I didn't get my edits done it was not received nor referred um so
we'll have that next time thank you and uh other upcoming agenda items prepare yourselves for town counselor evaluation um discussions those will be happening soon um we will be talking through the process for doing
this once I can get my head straight about it uh and looking at we did a lot of work shifting the goals now we need to shift the evaluation to match the the good goals that we got done and make sure that we're evaluating them effectively um we will have uh certainly
have some upcoming proclamations and resolutions and um we the legislative process guide is also on our on our plates um and then terrifying it is as it is as it is as soon as we're done with that evaluation
we jump right into goals anything else that folks think is coming up on agendas that I didn't say and I don't have my list in front of me that was just the the top of my head okay um we are meeting next week uh and we will be continuing our AH
discussion um as well as possibly those interview questions and depending on how many CAFs we have we'll start talking about um applicant pool and all of that until we determine the applicant pool sufficient uh it's a bit tough to give
you a calendar for interviews and and the like but um just keep if you don't mind keep bringing your calendars to go to be prepared um if if it if it happens okay uh is there a motion to is there
anything else that folks I I had no unanticipated business all right sorry i feel like I'm like thrown off today because we did fully dive into the things that I was hoping we'd fully dive into but I also don't think it was necessarily possible
for us to do that is there a motion to adjourn adjourn this meeting i move we adjourn the meeting second thank you uh
second Okay i'm gonna take the vote and councelor Lord I Lynn I councelor ete I and I am an I as well when absent so thank you all very
very much uh please feel free to reach out to me about questions with these uh agenda items and how we're especially the AH successor body charge um I'm I'm here to kind of talk you through it if you if you need help um as much as I can so thank you all have a lovely rest of
your day we are adjourned at 8 o'clock p.m thank you good night