opening up the Zoomina. Um, I appreciate it. And, uh, we're starting a little bit earlier than normal. Um, so I'll call us to order. We just heard Ken can hear and be heard. Bernie present. Meg, I'm present. In
what sense are we earlier than usual? Raphael here. Andy, here. Great. Um so get us started. Um so basically first short update for
the committee is that we have um is that we have changed how we post stuff. Um so that basically we are supposed to send everything to Athena at once. So that means sending me anything you'd like
post in the packet 48 hours in advance. Um and then I can send Athena that and post in the packet. Um one change I've made is to make it a PDF document, the agenda itself. So folks who want to access it in that form online can do
that instead of using the town website. Um and then the only other announcement that I have is uh we are not participating in the counselor program that go sent us. Um so those are the
updates as of now. We'll approve the minutes which um given the new system which is hopefully working well um they are in your packet. Um, so I'll make the motion to approve the April 24th minutes.
I have a second. Second. Thank you, Meg. Any discussion? No. Great. We'll move to voting. Bernie, I was absent, so I abstain. Great. Myself, I'm an I. Raphael? Yes. Meg?
Yes, Andy. Yes. Thank you. Um, and then we'll move to the May 8th or and Ken, sorry. Yes. Thank you. And then we'll move to the May 8th minutes. I believe Ken edited those. So, they the updated version should be in your packet. Is
that correct, Athena? It's been updated. I see it. Yep, it should be in there. Thank you. Um, so I'll make the motion to approve that set of minutes. Can I have a second for the May second? Thank you, Bernie. Um, any questions, discussion?
Nope. We'll move to voting. Um, myself, I'm an I. Me? Yes. B. Bernie? Yes. Raphael? Yes. Andy? Yes. Excellent. Um, so now we'll move to public comment. Um,
oh, Ken, sorry. I just don't see you on my screen, so that That's all right. I I did all that work with AI to make those minutes. I figured I could get a vote, but that's okay. Sorry. Um, excellent. Me, go ahead. Could Before we go much further, could you
remind us who's taking minutes tonight? Yes. Um, I believe that it's Andy's turn to take minutes. Is that all right, Andy? Okay. And also, just for the heck of it, who's next? I'd like to get Who's next after that? I believe that it's Meg, but
I'd have to double check. I knew I was coming up soon. Okay. Could let me know because I like to come. No problem. So, I see four attendees um in the audience. Um and I would like to
allow people to come in for public comment. So I'll allow you to speak for 3 minutes. We may uh engage in a slight dialogue and that would be within the 3 minutes and you can raise your hand on Zoom or press
star 9 to be led into the meeting for public comment. So time is now if anyone would like to raise their hand and make a comment. Okay, let's see one person. Nina, um Nina Min, uh please come in to the room
and uh Hi everybody. I'm not sure you can hear me. I can't see if I am You can hear me though, right? We can hear you. So, I wasn't prepared right now to make a comment, but I'll make a general comment about um about I'm here representing a number of parents. I'm
the only one who could show up tonight, but I think there'll be more people next week who are um who work a lot with the schools. And we are generally concerned about what we
see as lack of transparency or or maybe lack of functionality as the charter is designed um to to create collaboration between the school system and um and the town. So that some of what we experience
as conflict and uh and um and siloing in that particular way between those departments. we think potentially could be addressed through this charter review process in terms of looking at calendar
for when budgets are presented, how communication happens, making sure that there's communication between the branches of government that's actually um codified in this document. and we're hoping that that would create more trust
and transparency between our citizenry and and our and our elected officials. We're particularly concerned about not being able to look at at granularity and budgets and uh feeling like there's not
a collaborative process to create um support for our schools. And we'd like to see that happen through this process. Yeah, thank you so much for your comment. Um, I'd love to invite you to the forum on the 29th as well. I won't
be there, but it would be a great opportunity to discuss this. I think we'll have a few more people there at that meeting. Great. Thank you. Do you have a question for Nina? Two quick things. I'm not sure the forum on the 29th is going to happen, but we'll very
soon be publishing the schedule. But I'm curious, Nina, not necessarily now, but soon, if you uh have specific suggestions for language and how to how to address what you're talking about, which I think is super important. That
would be helpful. Yeah, this is for Nina as well. The there'll be a session on the 10th. The the one on the 29th won't happen. Um if folks read the notes that Meg sent out, those details were in there. Um but thanks for sharing.
Yeah, thank you Nina. Um so yeah, if you all wanted to come on the 10th, I will be able to make that and we hope to have you there. So thank you. Any other comments? Um raise your hand or press star 9. Seeing none. Okay, great. Um I'll move
us along. Um I've been asked by Meg and Andy to have um each committee's update at the start of the meeting. So first we have outreach subcommittee and then we have the feedback subcommittee updates. Um so I'll hand it off to Raphael um if
you want to give an update on outreach and then I'll hand it off to Andy to give an update on the feedback subcommittee. So, so what I would say um is there's a document that you all had a chance to
review. It's updated a bit. Um Meg and I could send that out to the whole committee. The the update in that document includes details about Crocker Farm. We're getting some support from the director of facilities to figure things out. I think what's most
important to know is the first session will be virtual. It'll be on June 10th. Um there is a proposed sort of approach for these listening sessions. If you have feedback, it would be great to get that. We're also hopeful that everyone
on this committee can be involved um if they can. um it will be good to have you in that space, but the subcommittee members will be um sort of facilitating um the overall session, but it would just be great to have folks here um in
those sessions. Um so again, if you've reviewed that document and have feedback, that would be great. Um, if you've looked at it, we're doing some stuff at the beginning in terms of framing what these listening sessions are about, what this charter committee's
charge is. There's some guiding questions for the facilitators. So, I don't know if folks had a chance to review the document. Um, if you have, we're willing to field some questions now. Meg, anything else to add? Um, I I'
p I've make it a little stronger about participation. Uh, I'll be the bad cop this time. We hope that we will have at least three members of the charter commission, the charter review committee
at each session in add in addition to the outreach committee. So you might facilitate the small groups and have that opportunity to hear what people are thinking and the small groups will enable followup and what did you mean and what about this and could you be uh
so that we're really clear about what we're hearing. Um, also in the updated memo which I sent to Athena, but I I I didn't send it to everyone, but I could do it. Actually, Athena can advise. Can I send it right now with a meeting going
on? Maybe that's kosher with uh OML. Uh, we outline the materials we want to produce before the sessions that we'd have available as either handouts or slides. And some of those will need
your help. Some of them will be the work of that some of you are doing. Um, so maybe Athena, can I forward that now to everybody or that we're in a meeting? Uh, I didn't I was helpfully uh
reminded that I shouldn't have sent that first version out uh to everybody. So for the second version that had Raphael's in my uh the biggest you know just detailed list of what we want to prepare for
these sessions is in the second version not in the first. Um I would say though Meg I don't know if we want to sort of carve out time now for folks to review. I don't think we have Meg, but I think like if folks
could check in with us about right their thoughts about the plan, how they could support that would be great. Um I think what we're wanting some additional insight about is or thoughts about is like how to collect um that feedback to
bring back to the committee as a whole. Right. Yeah. And absolutely. And the other uh yeah, how do we we have some ideas on how to do that and you'll see our debate. We're not clear. We want so
that's why the more of you who can attend these there'll be the more people listening and using human brain power rather than technology to document what we're hearing. Um, I have to say I haven't heard
anything about the agreement with the survival center and I got a little bit of a heads up that it may be problematic because it's not a town facility. Um, and our budget doesn't even have $150 to pay the cost of a staff person
coming to be there because they're not open. A staff person would have to be there and that would be $150. Um, it's hard for me to believe. I offered to pay that uh myself just because all of us working so hard to make these things
happen. $150 is nothing. Uh, but apparently that's so so I'll just say the survival center isn't confirmed and it's been now over two weeks that we've been waiting to hear and we want to announce them all at once. So,
uh, and we really want one in North Ammerst. So I is Athena I don't know if Athena's there but it's some Oh so do you have an update on the survival center agreement? The the committee still does not have an
appropriation that the the committee asked the council for an appropriation for the Collins Center consult consulting but the committee hasn't asked for any other appropriations. So you don't have something. So is is that what's holding it up? Because what I heard earlier is that it should be in a
town facility or something. But if if do we need this is important if that's what we have to do, ask for $150. And if that's the case, we should ask for some larger amount because this may happen again that we want to have food or we want to have uh technology that costs
something. We just don't have any budget for that. And if that's what's holding us up minimally, we need to ask the council for 150 adjective deleted dollars. So the there was a conversation earlier on in the process about an
appropriation request and the committee determined that the best course of action at the time would be to request the appropriation for the Collins Center and not for the other activities that the committee was looking for. I think the Julian, you can help refresh my
memory if I'm getting this wrong, but my recollection is that the committee asked for a number of dollars. Uh, and the town manager asked for a little bit more of an explanation about how those dollars would be spent and potentially some input from our comproller to make
sure that they would be spent or they were being proposed to be spent in a way that was legal. Um, and then there was no further action. I believe I brought that back to the committee and the committee decided to wait on that and just do
um and just do our Colin Center request and not that other request. Um, given that the committee didn't want to be as detailed as the town manager was requesting, I guess, um, was my understanding. But I'll call on Marcus
and then Andy. Um, and then go back to Meg if we want to. Go back to Meg if we want to. Sorry. No, we'll go back to you. Don't worry. Sorry, Meg. I was just curious, have we reached
out to North Amos Library? They got that new room at the back there. They They will not let us use it if they're not It's not when they're open. Okay. One. Number two, it's not big enough. It only has 21 chairs. Uh, number three, there
aren't small tables, although we could sit around in clusters of chairs, but it's really not big enough. And it's also they I I did it was the first place they won't allow public use and they also charge money if you're not the town. And I thought we are the town. Uh,
but yeah, no, that's our first try. The other options in North Ammerst are the Cherry Hill co-housing community and they charge something but we could probably talk them out of it. Uh but this is all more time. Pardon? Right. The the Korean church on the corner
there where they do the voting. Yep. We've uh that community space hasn't been available. Although we have a great relationship with them now and it might be that we could use that space. We haven't explored that yet. But this is all holding up. Yeah, right. Announcing
all of our listening sessions and we could cancel North Ammeris, but that's a shame, right? Given that we have approval to use a perfect space and there's a survival center staff person who's agreed to come that day. Uh, and they have the small tables, they have
the parking, it's perfect. I mean, there's all I mean, we could always also just ask UMass, too. I guess it's northish. It's like if we get somewhere reasonably close. Oh, sorry, Rafia. But whatever we
get, it holds us up. Absolutely. I think others had their hands up though. I don't want to Sorry, I didn't have my hand up. Sorry. Um Andy, go ahead. No, that was my question about the North Ammerst Library. Right. Um
Raphael. Yeah, I I think um I've proposed we just begin by advertising the launch of the June 10th event. Um there are a lot of things to figure out their insurance matters. I know Marcus you just um recommended UMass, but I
think there fees and costs for all farm has a fee. Um I did reach out to the chair and say perhaps we need more clarity about this element in terms of funding uh requests for funds. So that's an issue we need to sort of be clear
about before we move forward. But I think in the meantime, we need to move on advertising the first event, which is virtual, perhaps figuring out the other elements later on. Okay. Yeah, I I would tend to agree. Um Meg, you'd had your hand up for a while,
so go ahead. Well, no, I spoke, but I'll just say uh I propose I want to move that we ask for $2,000 for costs related to events and hospitality, but we don't have to do it
right now. But I think we should we should line up $2,000 for this kind of thing so we're not going back for 150 now and 200 then and blah blah blah. Think big. That makes sense to me. Marcus. Yeah, sorry. I think that's a great
opportunity for like the 48 hour section. Um, whatever. Uh, I was also thinking Wildwood is probably another potential for a a North Ammerst area, too. So, it's one of the schools, one of
the town schools. Yeah, absolutely. I think that would be that would be a good idea. Um, Andy. Yeah, I was just wondering if we can advertise more than one session. We could put the North Ammeris toward the end and say our first three sessions are
blah blah blah and then you know what or whatever just to get that on people's calendars. Yeah. Marcus, do you still have your hand up or did you just Oh, sorry. No problem. Um Raphael. Yeah, Andy, we the the plan was to have all of them sort of
figured out by now, but but there's some sort of figuring things out. Um the booking of schools is different now held in one one person is handling it or the facilities department and they will get back to me to let me know like how
things should proceed. There's issues connected to insurance um and also costs. So we we'll have that information soon. Uh M the schools also have a charge. We might not have to pay it but this thing
about having enough money. So that a small amount if hundreds of dollars or something doesn't hold us back seems to be really important. And I think that they and I add that banks was a cinch to to book. This woman Diane who's there, she's just made it happen
in one phone call. I I don't want to take up too much of the a lot of the handle. Any questions about the document that Meg shared though about what was shared in shared there? You again you could always share
later if folks don't have okay the document that I have is dated May 18th and there's a newer one. Correct. There is okay if the new one can be posted to the this meeting's the page this meeting's page on the website as well as
sent to us I'd appreciate that. Okay. Okay. That would be great. Y I sent it to me. Can you send it to everyone? Yep. Right now. Any other questions? Thank you everybody.
Thanks folks. Um yeah, it seems like you guys had a quick nice meeting. I watched it um last week. Uh and I unfortunately did not have time to watch the feedback subcommittee update. Um, but I read the
minutes um that you had and it seems like you had a good first meeting. So Andy, if you want to kick that off, that'd be great. Before we jump to Andy though, like Julian, in terms of the money element, how should we proceed? Should we check in with you? I would say
that we should um see if we can find places that aren't going to charge us, but if we can't um that we can go ahead and vote and make at our next meeting an appropriation request, I would say if
you can midweek figure out like, okay, is there enough venues that we could find that don't cost anything? I'm thinking like a public park, um a church, etc. And if that's not possible
um to then uh from a charge perspective um come back to me and I can draft a another request. I just think that that request might take an amount of time to go through that isn't feasible with when
these dates are. So like I'm thinking of like the Mil River Pavilion, the South Ammerst Church, etc. that um that we could use for such an event without much of a problem.
Andy, I um I think we should um we're going to need some money. I mean, we can't run this thing with with no uh resources. So, I think we ought to try to put together a, you know, a
budget that says, you know, we're going to have x number of sessions and for each one we're going to need, you know, potentially this number of or, you know, money for securing space, money for refreshments, money for, you know, supplies, markers, and
flip charts and things like that and get that moving because we're going to need it. I mean, we can't just be, you know, uh depending on the uh the kindness of strangers. I I think we need to we need to have a budget and and you know, it's
not like we're asking for a lot, but I do think a $2,000 budget, you know, broken into a couple categories that make sense would be fairly easy to put together. Yeah, I'll say I agree. I think at our next meeting I'll bring a request
forward um for us to have like a detailed $2,000 budget. Um and I don't see any problem with that. I just think that the amount of time that it takes for that to get through the town manager's office, get to the town council, etc. Um we may need to work out
something for one or two events in the meantime, whether that means moving them virtually, moving to a public park, etc. where it's possible to do it rather than rescheduling the events and using it sort of as another delay. Meg, two
things. I think planning an outdoor session is disrespectful of the people who would come because it's so dependent on weather. It would mean we can't it would completely limit recording and all technology and posters and distribution of materials. But if if that's what it
comes to, I think that's what people will remember about our process. I wanted to propose that we agree if it's possible to approve a budget in the next five or six days that two of us would put together in the next 24 hours. I'd
be happy to participate in that. I don't know if we can approve something uh by email, but I don't think if we wait two weeks to approve it, you're right. We won't get this money until August. I think we're dealing with a somewhat of an emergency.
Yeah, I would I would tend to agree. That's why I was trying to Yeah. I don't know. Can we approve something or to say we approve a $2,000 budget, the details to be worked out in the next 48 hours by two people who agree to do that. I don't
know if that's legal, but this there has to be a solution to this. I know. I think that's a great idea, Meg. I honestly wouldn't have a problem with it as long as it's allowed. Um Andy and then Raphael. And
if that's possible with Athena, that would be great. I I would suggest that maybe we look at just if if the bank center is easy to schedule things at, everybody knows where that is. There's parking. Why don't we just schedule things for the bang center?
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah. Okay. That makes a lot of sense, Raphael. And I'm gonna just be aware like we have three sessions that are good to go. There's a virtual session on
the 10th, the Bangs is booked on the 18th, and then we have another virtual session on the 25th. So, just FYI for both. Okay, sounds good. Um, so are we going to be sticking with the bank center or are we going to want to make a request for that money? I feel like it's
sort of an and both situation. Um Andy and Meg, do you want to work on that request for the budget and uh we can book for bangs um if the other places don't work out in time?
Sure. Excellent. Marcus, sorry. Marcus, go ahead. I was saying Athena's first. Athena, just a reminder, we talked about this process um some months ago that the
committee is essentially asking the town manager for an appropriation request. Um he would then if he agrees to send the appropriation request to the council, then it has to be referred to the finance committee where Bernie will decide whether he likes it or not. And
then and then it has to come back to the council. It needs a public forum before the council can vote. And this is an odd time of year to be putting in an offcycle appropriation request because the council is in the midst of the budget review process which needs to be
approved before the end of June. Um so as folks have already mentioned this the timing is a little bit tricky uh and you might not be with an appropriation in your hands until um you know for some weeks. Um, so
I don't advise that the committee approve anything outside of a meeting. Um, that should happen in public. And, um, the last time Julian and the town manager emailed about the
committee's previous appropriation request, the town manager wanted some more detail than just the dollar amount. He wanted some information about how that money would be spent. So, I encourage you to think about what else you might need before your work is done, such as mailers to folks. We can easily
work up a price for how much the um the little postcards that the town sends out for a mailer if that's something the committee is interested in, any other printed or marketing materials the committee would like. It's really helpful to have an idea of how much those things will cost before you make
an appropriation request so that you don't have to come back through the process again making another appropriation request. It's like I mentioned, it's a time inensive process with committees and council time involved and so on. So, um I encourage you to make a wellthoughtout
appropriation request. Yeah, that makes that makes sense to me, Marcus. Oh, thanks. Yeah, I was just going to say I think to Raphael's point, let's push the next three sessions cuz they're done and I mean, you know, planning wise, they're done and dusted.
And then while we're doing that, we can get in with the the budget request. I think let's not lose focus on the fact that we've got the three sessions coming up. Um Megan, then Andy, so two things. So is the instruction to the outreach committee to schedule more events at
bangs or to go with just three at this point? And my second comment just so I don't have to raise my hand again is Andy and I now we have more time because we have till the next meeting can take into consideration all of these things that Athena helpfully mentioned
like mailers u possibly publicity that we might want to something in the newspaper we might want to pay for. I mean, we may be looking more like $5,000, but it's still in a town with a budget the size of ours, $5,000 isn't much. So, Andy and I can do
that, especially now that we have till the next meeting. Does that make sense, Andy? Sure. Yep. Great. Um, anything else on this before we move to the feedback update? just
that um we uh are likely to have uh more forums even if we you know once we get past these initial ones we're going to want to be presenting what you know interim results and things in the later in the summer and having and early fall
and having people get together then. So I think we need to think about you know having resources for that as well as well as maybe mailers or whatever else. So absolutely um we should it should be a comprehensive type request if that
makes any sense. M just my question was are we instructed to cancel the survival center and it's sort of embarrassing because Lev went to a lot of effort to make this work but I can do it to cancel it or to keep trying to get permission so we could have it some other time. Is
it reschedu or cancel? And same with Crocker. We don't have the resources right now. So, yeah. Yeah, cuz Rafie and I Raphael and I have both had relation. We've developed how much how much
exchanges with these $150 for for Crocker. How much is Crocker? Meg. What I would say though is let's try to work on these first sessions. Maybe bump the survival center to later. Maybe we bump Crocker Farm to later. But let's begin
with these sessions. B, but I need my question is about the the survival center because someone's holding that time to work to show up that day. I say reschedule is the answer to your question. Okay. And my question is how much is Crocker? How much does it cost?
Crocker's umund and something. Okay. Yeah. Um the same with Fort River. Okay. Bernie and then Raphael. Go ahead. I'm all set Bernie. Okay. Thank you. Um,
uh, Amoris isn't that big a place. So, I don't know how much moving around we have to do for one, and for two, if we're going to be reporting out to the public and holding open sessions with the public to discuss what we've done so far, I think it'd be better to be
consistent about where we are, uh, where we're going to do that. So, it it makes if the bank center is available, it makes sense to peg that as a space that we'll use to do our reporting. if not our listening and so the people know where
to go and how how to be present. Yeah. And and all of this will be I hope I think with the bangs too we'll have the opportunity to I'm I'm guessing we'll have the opportunity to do this virtually as well as uh in person.
Yeah, I agree. I think bangs makes makes some sense given that um it's been very easy to work with the town which we appreciate. Um other questions, comments about this before I move us along to feedback
update? No. Okay. And you want to take it away? Sure. Um, I thought I would just share from the minutes since that's our log of um, what we're do. Oops, this isn't it.
Sorry. Well, this is our agenda for our next meeting, which I guess we can pull from. Um, we could extrapolate from there, but I can go back if we need to. So, we met. It was our inaugural meeting of uh, me, Ken, Marcus, and Bernie. And
um we basically uh let me let me stop sharing this. This is a little premature. Um that's not it. All right. So a lot of the discussion was around sort of what's our role and our role we feel is
basically to we we feel there's a good symbiotic relationship between outreach and feedback. So outreach brings in the the people to give feedback and then we collect it and put it in a format that the um committee and the public can can um can look at and and make you know and
the committee can make decisions based on on it. So um we uh had some discussion about how we would c how we might want to categorize the information and we sort of came to I think we had two sort of
crosscutting ways of thinking about it. One was to to um divide up suggestions according to which section of the chart of the charter they would refer to to the extent that we can do that. And the other was to have a sense of since we're
casting a wide net, which uh items are, you know, explicitly and and um you know, definitely charter related, which ones might be more, you know, a question of whether they're rules, you know, you know, council rules or or or charter,
and which ones might be outside the realm of either, but still might be worth documenting. So it's sort of like within each article we would have um you know the relevant suggestions that came in and then among those we would say we would be attempt to be sort of
identifying which ones are specifically relevant to the the charter and which ones might be more suggestions about rules or about um other kind you know beyond our scope. So that's that's sort of what we're thinking as an initial um
setup and then uh it was called to our attention or we discussed that that people have been giving we have sort of the initial list of things that that that have been brought to you before the list of 84 items that are in a spreadsheet that um that we can start by
sorting. But there's also um items that have been brought up during public comment during each of our meetings. So, we're going to need to go back and and collect those and make sure that we're um you know keeping track of those. And then we need to look forward
to the um the outreach sessions to make sure that we have a plan for collecting that information and for um then bringing it back to the to the team. So, so that and then also the survey that we're planning to do. So we see ourselves as you know dealing with the
onslaught of information that's going to be generated by the outreach subcommittee and we we uh think that'll be a nice uh symbiotic relationship. So, our next meeting is [Music] um um is we're going to meet in the
um in the off Thursdays. So, at 4:30 generally, and our next meeting happens to be Tuesday, but after that, we're going to meet on Thursdays hopefully. Um and um what our agenda at this point is to discuss any input from you folks
tonight. um plan to collect public comment ideas from prior and future charter review committee meetings. Um discuss the League of Women Voters report had about 100 198 submissions for ideas and it was
suggested to us that maybe we should look at those as well as just the report recommendations. So we can talk we'll talk about that and then planning for collecting ideas from the outreach sess outreach sessions and from the surveys and then how to organize it for use by the committee and the public. So that's
our plan. We'll we'll be looking to meet in the off Thursdays going forward after this Tuesday. And anybody else from the committee have anything to add to that? One one other thing that I think we did talk about was that we hope that um we believe that the judicious use of
uh of chat GPT or other AI may help us ident you know sort some sort some thread some themes and and some uh some threads for us to to use. So we're trying to figure out how to take the categories and the charter and apply
those to the information they're getting to to help with the sorting process. But we'll see if that works or if we have to do it the oldfashioned way. Excellent. Sorry. As part of the subcommittee, I just wanted to say um I'm not sure if Andy said it or if Julian if you did. I'm sorry if I'm just repeating this,
but um Andy was elected chair. Um I'm vice chair of the subcommittee. And then to tag tag on to the AI stuff. I mean, yeah, it's it's hardly a magical wand waving over stuff. You got to do the right prompts. And so we may it's a
total work in progress and we're learning as we use it. So um let's see what happens. Yeah, I've used it and it's not bad for some of those like sort of straightforward type things. Um it's just a matter of like sort of taking the
more analytical stuff and like beyond facts and analysis sort of combing it over and making sure that those little details are right. Um Meg, um just connecting, you know, bravo.
Great work. Uh what you're doing and what the outreach committee is doing. If you're able to identify topics or questions that come out of what you're hearing that would be helpful for us to focus the discussions
that will move the feedback process at the listening sessions more quickly. So in other words, we're not just a blank slate. tell us what you what you think, but what about this? What about that? We're hearing opinions about this so that these sessions can move us along
faster because we've got an awful lot of information that we've already collected. Um, so if you if y'all can help us with structuring especially the small group discussions with specific questions and
I did that today. I'm on the resident advisory committee and I raised a couple of things that have come up about the committees and the resident advisory committee is the committee that interviews people with the town manager people for committees and I got some good feedback
about what based on having heard some things about it and they had a different opinion. So the more we can get specific concrete ideas uh that are beyond just not just general we want more transparency you know what does that
mean or we want more meaningful participation you know what what does that mean thank you I guess I'm I'm not sure what how you're structuring the initial outreach
meetings I haven't seen the the updated memo obviously, but um I just I sent it to you. I haven't read I haven't read it. Sorry. No, of course not. Sorry. Um just uh you know it is if we have until
June 10th. I guess it is something that we could add to our agenda to uh or or incorporate in our agenda to think about you know uh what we can uh any suggestions for small group
discussion or you know themes that we've seen so far or things that we want people to react to but I think we'd have to bring that back to the full committee to get their approval. Thank you. Um, okay. Other questions, comments about
this? Nope. Okay. Um, I will move us along. We've pretty much discussed the listening sessions um about that for a fair amount. Um, is there more folks would like to add about that before I kick it off to Collins for sort of our
next hour of the meeting? No. Okay. Um so Athena has um presented us an updated and new schedule for the sort of other half of our time here. Um and the Collins Center is going to be
making a work plan based off of it and has sort of come up with some drafts of a work plan. It's going to be working more with it once we get that schedule. Um, can we I believe it's already been sent to Collins, but can we uh sort of
like approve that schedule or agree so that the Collins Center can use it to make a work plan if folks have seen it? If folks haven't seen it, we can do this at the next meeting. May sorry that I keep I got to zip it up after this. That's okay.
Athena Athena identified the July 3rd meeting as possibly problematic. So, could we agree that we're actually going to meet on that date? I can, but I don't know about She identified that as a question. I That date works for me. Raphael, others, if you've checked
your calendar, if not, that's okay. It works for me. Great. Marcus, Andy, tell me the Sorry. Tell me the date one more time, please. Uh, July 3rd, and Bernie, I'll be absent. Okay.
Yeah, I don't know yet. Okay. Yeah, that's fine for me. Sounds great. Awesome. No worries. Um, if you can't make it, that's okay. Um, so, uh, other than that, do we want to give a thumbs up to the schedule?
Great. Um, and I will pass it off to So, thank you for sending that along and doing that, Athena. I know that was a fair amount of work. Um, and uh, we will, um, move it along. Mel and Anthony, if
you guys want to handle that, that'd be great. Sure. Uh, thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Um, excited to be here again. Um, I'm going to have uh I know I've met this group before. I I think this will be the first time Mel has been before you. So, I'll have him introduce himself in a second, but I just want to start
with sort of a bit of an apology. Uh, you've been meeting with uh Pat for the past couple meetings. Um, and there were some documents that she was going to share with the group that we're going to go through today. We would have sent them to you before the meeting to include in the pack, but there's there's something we got a little mixed up in
our hand in her handoff to us. So, I have the documents. We'll we'll talk about them. We'll go through them during this meeting and I'll send them to you at after the meeting at the end. But just apologies for not having it sort of beforehand. Um before we get started, Mel, I don't know if you want to I think it's your first time before then so I don't know if you want to introduce
yourself, say a little bit about your background. Sure. Thanks, Anthony. And uh good evening, folks. Uh my name is Mel Kleckner and I've been with the Colin Center for three years. Uh but prior to that I spent my career as a town manager or a town administrator in
Massachusetts local government and so um you know been very involved in all aspects of all the things you're is within your charter and within your operations and so I'm pinching for Pat uh tonight but also will probably be on board for other aspects of the uh the
project. So uh looking forward to working with you all. Thank you. And uh just to orient everyone to give you a little lay of the land, we've got sort of two documents that we're going to go through. One is a uh memorandum uh about the preamble. I believe Pat would
have discussed with you the preamble at the previous meeting a little bit, but we've got uh sort of a memo to talk about just some elements of a preamble. We've got some example preamble link which um uh to sort of discuss here. And then we've got uh we we created a annotated version of the existing
charter. Um, we're going to sort of walk through that. We're probably not going to go line by line, but we're going to sort of go section by section and just highlight for you some things that you might want to be thinking about as you're considering this review. Uh, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to share my
screen. Mel, do you want to do the preamble memo or do you want me to to take Sure, I can I can do that preamble memo. I think it'll be fairly fairly quick. So, thank you. Um, so this is the memo you will receive, but let me just really uh briefly summarize it and then
u maybe have some dialogue with the committee because we're prepared to start drafting a preamble. So you don't the the Amoris charter does not have a preamble uh currently. It is not a legally required aspect of a charter. In fact, it's really the only part of a
charter, if it's in the charter, that uh, you know, it really can't be enforced because it's it it's more about values and um, a little bit more aspirations aspirational than it is about, you know, the town manager shall submit the budget on this date and so
on. So, but nonetheless, u, the fact that they're not legal does not mean they're not important. Um, many constitutions have preamles. The United States Constitution has a preamble. Many charters have preamble. And really what they're intending to do is to provide uh
the reader um with the some value statements about the town, about why there there is this charter, and um uh a little bit about perhaps anything unique about the community, about its
history, or about um the way it's been developed. sometimes is used as as a way to uh sort of connect the past to the future. Um and so um we we like we like them. We also think it's important for the for the committee whether they're included in the charter or not to talk a
little bit about what's important in Amherst. What what what is what is the value uh what is what is so uh essential about Amherst and uh you know what what kind of values might be included in the in the preamble? Uh length I think is a
is an issue. Um we're going to show you some preamles in this memo. Some are very short and some are very lengthy. Uh it's I think it's notable that the US Constitution has only 52 words in the preamble, but it's a very power powerful preamble in my opinion. So let's just
move up uh into some of the preamles. I I I won't read these through because um you know there you're going to get them in a memo but um basically um it it does a couple barns for example let's look at
that as an example um they're they're talking about managing their affairs they're using the words of honest forthright and efficient manner participation fully participation the rights and responsiveness of local government and independence
uh from from the state to give it some some local local authority which home rule does in a charter and then um and then talking a little bit about um you know this uh what you know what why that's important in the conduct of of
town government I think we'd avoid the word prayer but yeah yeah so that was another thing I was going to mention me is that you know these days it's very hard to develop values that are uh un universally accepted or appreciated. And
so you have to thread the needle a little bit and and avoid some of those words or some of those concepts that uh in in this day or perhaps even looking forward uh will be controversial and won't achieve what we're trying to do and that is get a a universally uh felt
statement that um you know is is worthwhile and helps people understand why there is a charter. It's the first thing that people will read when they read your charter. Um, currently there's the introduction, but that's more legalistic. This is more um valuedriven.
So, um, there's more. Um, I don't know, Anthony, whether uh Pat it was the intent to to generate some discussion on this or just introduce it and then submit the memo and have some discussion later. I don't know what the uh the thought is there.
um you know, the group hasn't seen the memo, so we can have a little bit of um deliberation here. Again, we've got sections one and two of the charter are going to be a bit longer or definitely are sort of a lot longer. Um but I think it would be beneficial. I mean, you haven't seen all this language, but to
sort of talk about some of those elements that Mel sort of highlighted in terms of the community values. I don't think we should spend a lot of time here because we got to get through the second part. And you don't have have the the memo yet, but I think, you know, maybe if if anyone wants to talk, maybe we can devote 10 minutes to just sort of
rumaging around what you've just seen. And I I saw I believe saw Bernie's hand up first and then and then Andy or I'll defer to the chair. I apologize uh for calling speaker. Oh, that's fine. Go right ahead, Bernie and Andy. Yeah. Um
Mel, I associate you with Brooklyn. Um the um the thought of having a brief valuesbased statement for Amorest is uh sort of mindboggling. So I would set as a goal that we are no no wordier than
twice that of the United States Constitution. Um and and that's that's about it. I um I was on the part of the committee that went through and rewrote re reworked the u the town's bylaws,
mapped them to a city form and u the goal of our committee was to eliminate preamles um because we never saw them as and I still don't see them as terribly useful but I I understand that people may want to make a a brief value
statement and so for Amorist again a brief value statement should be 150 words or less. It's three times three times the constitution. Andy, I believe your hand was up next. Yeah, I I think we could spend the entire time that we have left trying to
figure out a value statement that would not, you know, be objectionable to anybody in Ammerst. And so I kind of am leerary of spending time on it. I I I I know I could come up with a wonderful value statement that reflects me, but I
don't know that and I and I would try very hard to come up with one that represents, you know, the wide range of opinions that we have in Ammeris, but I'd rather spend the time thinking about the actual charter and how we want, you know, to improve in terms of how it functions. I'm not that interested in a
in a preamble. Okay. And Athena, I see your hand up as well. Athena, go ahead. Hi, Anthony. Um, I just wanted to point out that the council has adopted a statement of values as part of their rules of procedure. Just as a quick aside,
thank you. Thank you. What I'm hearing sort of loud and clear is that we don't have to spend too much more time on this. Um, so I I put that on my notes. I'm going to close this. I'm going to move to the actual charter language unless I hear anybody else just want to share a thought here that I just want to leave space for for a thought. And
again, I I just want to say, you know, in some ways, this is I know you guys have been meeting for a while. This is early in the process. Everything that we discuss, it can come up, you know, later if there's a strong sense of the of the committee to sort of revisit something. And that often happens on these committee. So, I don't want anyone to think just because we moved on from
something that the book is closed forever on that particular item. So, I just want to put that out there and as people are sort of mulling over these concepts. So I will sort of uh take over the conversation on
um on the charter. So let me just shrink this a little bit and make sure that you let me know if if everyone can sort of see uh see this document. This is the charter we've converted to a word format. Um uh and I just want to make sure that people can sort of read
through this. We're going to go through this um somewhat methodically. Uh again, not word by word, but section by section. Um and so as the notation sort of states here, and people can probably tell, uh this incorporation section, I usually call it um it's one of those
sections that really is the plumbing of the not necessarily the plumbing of your government, but the plumbing of the charter. It sort of spells out how you should understand and how things uh work together. Um there's a few highlighted portions here that I'll I'll touch on um um just to sort of highlight in people's
people's minds. um just for people to think about and as I'm going through it feel free to um you know stop raise your hand feel free to even shout out um if you have something that you want to sort of discuss. So let's say I most of this is sort of plumbing. So I'm I'm not
going to spend too much time here. Um but some important sections um uh for people to consider are the division of powers um which is an important sort of saying that the legislative powers of the town are going to be uh focused or embodied in the um town council and the
executive powers to run the day-to-day operations of the community are in the um office of the town manager. Uh here there's going to be much more discussion about both of those positions later on in the charter, but this sort of sets out that broadly speaking um this is our
division of authority uh here in town. Uh 1.3 is also something that is important but can sometimes sort of be overlooked in the sense that while municipalities are an extension of the state government. They do they have been grounded granted through the state
constitution some of their own inherent authority we call the home rule powers. And so, uh, we recommend in most charters and and we were part of the the the committee that created this one to sort of loudly sort of exclaim that in your charter that we are fully embracing
all of our home rule authority. And so that's what section um uh 1.4 does. Uh section 1.2, 2 I'm sorry 1.5 uh sort of just talks about describing the language uh here just that you know
all the all the sections shall be construed in a broad manner in favor of the of the community. Uh section 1.6 six talks about the independent authority of the community to deal with other entities, other sort of legal entities including the state as well as sort of
other other cities and towns. And I I thought it was here maybe it's maybe it's later on. Let me see. Uh so one sort of unique thing about the town of Amherst is that while you chose when you adopted this charter
and change your form of government from what it had been to remain to be called a town, you're legally defined uh as a city because you know all cities under the uh sort of what we group as as cities under sort of state law are any
uh municipal entity that operate under a um a council form of government regardless of who the um executive is. So, you've chosen to be called a town, but you are in many ways, you know, you're operating with many of the legal classifications of the city, which includes that Amherst no longer has to
submit its bylaws to the um attorney general uh for approval. just just a bit of history, we we noted that there were several other towns including Greenfield nearby that um the when I when I was on the the charter
commission and me and I were um there were several other places that wanted to remain their town identity even though they were a city form of government. So it was a city known as the town of Ammerst and city known as the town of Greenfield. That's correct. Yeah.
Uh, and again, I'm going to skip over this pretty quickly. There are a couple points that I'll sort of just raise here. Oh, I'm sorry. I see Bernie's hand. Yeah. Could we go back to 1.6? Um, that is going to um it may
become more important or may demand some attention as we go through because as we heard from the uh at the start of the meeting, there's some concern about the school system. Well, we actually have a regional school. So, it's uh you know,
dealing with a regional school is basically an intergovernmental relationship. And um uh so that'll that'll factor in in discussions if not actual action at some point or another because the charter does mention the
library trustees and does mention the school committee. But the main action if you will in terms of budget debate and the like is between the uh the towns plural uh the four towns that make up the region and and the government which
is the regional school. That's a that's a good point. um sort of not to sort of douse cold water there, but I think sort of one thing to consider is that as members of a regional school, uh in many ways um I don't want to sort of oversimplify this, but in many ways it's
a it's a a relationship with external bodies sort of you know the charter is going to talk about Amherst in your inter um your agreement for the regional uh school system is kind of external and so you know there there can be some
things we do in the charter around, you know, the represent um usually be around electing the members to the repres to the uh regional school district, but there's a little we can do to modify the regional the structure of the regional school system inside of the charter. So, I just want to be upfront about that.
And I I think that's an important uh uh important uh qualification that people need to keep in mind as we move into these discussions that you really have inter it's it's an intergovernmental relationship. we can't uh change the charter of the regional schools and the
regional schools can't change change the town charter nor um then there'll be limits to what we may we may do. Um they also operate on their own schedules in terms of budgeting and so we we want to keep
that keep that in mind I think as we go through and have these hear from people and have these discussions. So thank you Anthony. Yeah. Um, I'm going to skip over most of these definitions, but I'll sort of scroll over them slowly unless somebody wants to call something out.
But some things that we highlighted were um there's a specific definition in here about full town council. Uh, sort of the summary of this is that the full town council is everyone who's elected to the town council, even if there's a vacant seat that is, you know, somebody, you know, god forbid, passes away or or they
just leave town, something like that. the the full town council mean as you look through this document everybody who is elected to um who is elected and serving on the on the council. Um majority vote uh defined um as all the
members present at a particular meeting um with the important caveat unless a different number for majority vote is defined by uh state law or or or the charter or bylaw. So there are state laws I'm particularly thinking of zoning in which you're required to have a vote
of the full membership of uh of the body. Um so that would trump this definition here. Uh and then quorum again pretty much the standard definition that the quorum shall mean a majority of all seats on any multi-member body even if
one or more seats is vacant. Um, so I'm going to again, unless there's any questions or any wants to stop, I'm going to sort of skim over the rest of these these definitions and where we get to really some meteor discussion points and and we
actually did see and uh some of the uh responses to um the public input session. So some of those public input points are sort of would be sort of covered here. Um, so I'm going to go through this a little bit more slowly and again feel free to jump in here and
um and sort of, you know, add some some questions. So you know this cuz you're you're living there. You got a 13 member council, three members to be elected at large, the remainder to be elected um uh from the wards or from the districts. You've got two members elected from each of the five districts um in Amherst. Um
and you've got a term of office. Each member shall be serving on a term of two years to beginning the first Monday of January until their uh successor is uh has been sworn. So, um some of the things that we gleaned from the public input and and I'm assuming maybe some
earlier conversations with this committee uh is that there's an interest in perhaps lengthening or staggering the terms. Um I'll sort of let you know that there's definitely some implications there. Um because if if I'm if my memory serves, your elections are in November
and the state uh is very jealous of the uh November election date in terms of state elections and as well as um uh you know the federal presidential elections. Um so I'll just I'll actually stop here for a moment to see if there's any discussion just um
here. Andy I Yeah, I'm curious. I I'd seen in um I think there was a Chelsea had a um a charter review where they they uh voted on whether they could uh whether
they wanted to shrink the size of their of their um council from 13 to 9 or something like that. And is that something we can even uh do in in this in this um committee?
because I I'd be interested in talking about if we can and then I'd be interested in hearing more about if there you know if there are if there are any ways of getting to three-year terms or uh for us because it the two-year terms where you end up voting for
everybody at once and it's very cluttered uh uh ballot. Um so well I we can look into the Chelsea I don't I just don't remember off the top of my head what if anything happened to Chelsea. Mel, if you remember anything please. didn't actually end up approving it, but they they had language that they were
pushing. Yeah. Um in with regard to the um so I don't I actually didn't look at the charge of this committee before we started. I my understanding from the um the the charter section where you're doing your periodic review is that you can propose anything. Now a change to
the um the terms of office, the number of members or the terms of office would have to be approved by the state legislature. So it go up in a special act. Um but you We're operating under special ed charter really anyway. So really well let me let me make it
simple. Any changes regarding the size in terms of the council would have to be approved by the council and as a special act and sent to the legislature for approval and potentially uh voted on by the um residents sort of at the end to
make it effective. um with regarding um changing the length of the terms or staggering the terms um you know I would say anything is possible but if you were to stagger the terms or or or if you were to stagger the terms let's say let's remove changing the length of the
terms just staggering them um because you may have terms uh end on the years of a of um of a president or the state you would have we we you
you probably have to move to a spring election. You probably wouldn't be able to have a November election anymore. You probably have to move to a spring election. So all all the towns that have staggered elections are towns that do their elections in the spring. Mel, I don't know if you have anything to to
add there. No, that's right. Um, you know, the uh state uh secretary of state and uh very protective of the uh November state and uh federal elections that happen every every other year. And so uh you just got
to stay away from that. You know, there's just no town has been successful in using that date for their annual election. Yeah. Uh Bernie, I saw your hand then Meg. Um, and I know that when you guys adopted this charter, there was a lot of
sort of wrangling at the state because it it did happen on a I think on a state election. Um, so you know that there's just that you know the the Secretary of State is very much sort of opposed to having town elections on on the same
time. But I'm sorry. Go on, Bernie. Well, yeah. The fact of the matter is we're no longer a town and it is the towns that have the spring elections and it is the towns that have select boards that have three-year terms. Um, and so it's unfortunate that we have um we have some restrictions on when we can hold
elections and that we have two-year because I I really think a two-year term is much too short. Um you and it you you get into a a sequence of of counselors, you know, as soon as they're settled in, they have to run for
reelection. Um and that's that's uncomfortable kinds of things. A three-year term, a four-year term would actually be preferable in my humble opinion, but um and maybe more workable than a three-year term because then we could keep the u keep the November
election uh going. Uh, also having the prospect of having the entire council turn over at once while it's remote. Um, that's still uncomfortable as well. Oh, Meg, please go ahead. So, so can a three things. Can a city have elections
in the spring? Can a charter review process change the length of the terms and make them staggered? So, there are three things I'm asking. move the elections to the spring, stagger the terms, and ex make the terms longer.
Uh, so, uh, is that something this is that something only a town can do, or I'm not I'm getting confused about town versus city? Oh, well, let me So, the short answer is yes. I'm not aware of any um I I'd have to do some, you know, we've got the town this the the city
known as the town of, so I'd have to sort of just parse through and remember those, but get that. But every comm the you the short answer is yes. So you could have you could you know you could say that you want your counselors to have three-year terms and you could say that you want them to be staggered. Oh
yeah I'm sorry. Three I'm saying whatever the number is you could you can yes you can propose a new number and you can have them and you can have them staggered and you can have them in in the spring. Now, if you were to again, if you were to have odd odd-year terms or terms that might interfere with or
fall on a state or or national election, then you would have to have your elections in the spring. I mean, that would we if you want to get this charter pass the state, we highly recommend that you do that. So, cities can have elections in the spring. You can just okay because that has some advantages
that in that new counselors would come in near the at the end of the budget process rather than in the middle and some of them don't know a lot about budget processes right in the middle of the you know this advantage of spring elections is that it they come in after
that's over with pretty much actually I'd be curious Melody I don't know if do you have any thoughts having uh on coming in in the spring in terms of budgetary understanding. I I don't know if you had any any thoughts about that actually something we talked about before. Um well, first of all, I I
want to confirm I think the answer is yes to all those questions. We're really talking about a special state law and so if the town wants it and there's really no um major impediment with other state laws, I I I think they would go with it.
you know, you know, having the um having the uh the elections in the spring, uh you used to have them, so I think you know, um you know, how it impacted with your with your budget process. It can be a little tricky there. Um but um you
kind of have to just map it out and uh see what works for you if you want it in the spring. But it's trickier if they come in in January because it's underway. Sorry to interrupt. I apologize. No, you didn't interrupt. It's it's tricky either way. I mean, I think there's, you know, issues either
way. Uh so, what I would suggest is you sort of map out, you know, what's going on at that time of year. Make sure that uh you know, you do it in the most uh advantageous way possible. Yeah. Because elections uh in the town form of
government, elections are actually part of town meeting. And so typically um you know by the time you get around to holding an election uh your your your budget is done right and the slate board the new slide board uh uh takes comes in
uh or changes in select board happen after the budget's been finished. Uh so that's a uh that's something we'll have to look at and debate as to uh and there's also particular requirements in the city form
for the manager when the manager submits a budget uh to the council. So we've got some other mechanics I think we have to we have to worry about if we're going to look at changing the uh the election
date. It won't be as simple as as it might seem. Uh, and I frankly I know of no city in Massachusetts that had spring elections. Now, that could be because most of those cities were formed under the the old uh the old laws where you had, you know, four prototype charters
and you picked one. Um, but I I don't know of anybody who's advocated and I wasn't on the form of government committee for MMA for long, as managers for long. I just a couple of years and and spring election for city never came up as a question or an option.
Well, I see Andy, I see your hand up. Before I go to you, I just want to the other thing I just wanted to share with the group and and really I guess in some ways the benefit that you're doing a relatively recent charter review for a charter that was adopted recently is that um most people are really used to
going to an election in November. You that's when the big presidential one is those those things. So, you may want to take a look as you consider that the turnout for your elections in the spring versus what the turnout had been since you turned to the um to the new charter cuz that so one of the things that we
hear people are very interested in is making sure they get the biggest turnout and that sometimes can be a real benefit of the fall election. So, that's just something to sort of chew on and that you may have data for. So, so apologize for that. Andy, please go ahead. Yeah, I um that that was part of the thinking
that went into moving to November elections at least among the you know the majority on the on the commission and but you know we you run into I think you run into the issue of having a very crowded ballot
when you have two-year terms and everybody's up for election at the same time and you've got a 13, you know, 13 positions on the council and five on the school committee and six on the library trustees. It's very it's it's pretty unwieldy. So, you know, one way to go
would be to have four-year terms and stagger them and keep it to November and then but then another would be to try to put do them in the spring um with three-year terms. But yeah, I wasn't aware that we could even do that. I I remember I thought I remembered that
that you know, if you're doing the council form of government, you had to have your elections in the fall, but I didn't realize that that was a possibility. it there there are some you know it's typical that the cities want to be in the fall but um there are a few u
typically the the towns that turned into the cities recently tend to tended to be the ones who kept their spring elections but we'll do some more research on it but yeah thank you Ammeris voted to have them in November but not when there's a
presidential or congressional election because we have so many students whose turnout for that we didn't want them distorting our local voting. So, so in fact, we have November elections, but not on those even years when it's a
congressional or presidential election. I have a comment to make, but go ahead, Andy. My sense was that um we've we've had we did have an election um about I think about the charter um in in a November election and people
had to choose separate a separate local ballot and I don't think a lot of you know people from out of town or what you know temporary residents um picked up that that ballot. I mean, you know, they're constituents, too. So, it it's
right, but the the the elections are off years. I'll have my own comment, which is I sort of feel like it almost would make sense to have the local ballots on at the same time as the national ballots. I don't know what the
legalities are around that, but it might be something that would allow voters to be like even if sure they might be an uninformed voter, but I'd rather have more people have that opportunity to get involved um if they're like, "Hey, I'm voting for president, but I could also
vote in these local elections." Like I feel like having that ability for folks opening the door to people to getting involved if they want to without making a separate trip sort of feels like an advantage to me.
Well, we we don't disagree necessarily, but our point, I guess, is that the Secretary of State does. And uh and so uh you might want to talk to your legislator to get a little bit more background about about that. Um but to
to our knowledge uh other than you know some special election that involves you know two ballots uh on the same day uh you this they don't allow you to have your local election on on that same ballot.
I see. Okay. Huh. Interesting. So they don't let you have it on the same ballot, but would they allow you to have two different ballots on the same day? Um just I think sort of the route we're talking about not about sort of a single
election which is where we've sort of again this did come up with uh uh Amherst adopting this charter sort of that's like a one-off like hey we've got this item we really want to get it voted on and you get permission from the state and they said okay you can do it but you have to have separate ballots separate
counting all that. Um what we're saying is that if the charter were to go up with the language that you would have a uh your elections regularly fall on the same day as the state or the national, the secretary of state would then go to the legislature and say I don't I I don't think you should approve
this. You would get you would get um friction at the state level in terms of opposition to your special act. That answers my question. Thanks. Um and and then the other point that came up about the sort of the four-year terms, um that's definitely sort of been
a trend for mayors. Um but there are some city councils, um I don't have the numbers, the names off the top of my head, but there are some who have uh moved to and definitely several that have proposed four-year terms for their counselors. Um and if you were to do that, that would you could stagger those
terms in a way that you wouldn't uh sort of interfere with the the state or the national election. Um, I don't I again I don't remember the numbers off the top of my head, but there are not many councils that have it, but there are some. Mel, I don't know if you think of any just off the top of your head. Sorry to put you on the spot. No, not off
hand. We'll research that. Uh, if there's nothing else, I'm going to move down. Um, but again, feel free to raise your hand or just or just shout out. Um, and then again, very common element in charters is just eligibility. that's focused on residency in the town
or in the um case of the district counselors within the uh proposed district. And you've got some language here about um uh moving. So moving out of town, you automatically lose your seat. If you're a district counselor and you just move to a different district, you get to uh uh finish the rest of your
term. Um but obviously, you wouldn't be eligible to run for that same district seat if you weren't in the district the next time the election comes around. Um, and then you have a section here defining um um I'm sorry, defining the officers of the council. Um, so you've
got a um uh you've got a let me see. So you've got the election and term for the council president and the vice president. Uh you have them serving for one-year terms. Um and you have them chosen by the um uh by the council. Um,
and then there's some I'll sort of stop here because there's some public input about changing the method of choosing the president and vice president. Um, what I what I can say here is that most cities um, you know, I'm thinking of sort of the most I mean there's
Greenfield, but I I'm most familiar with Springfield below you. Um, the counselors elect the president um, uh, I'm sorry. Yeah, the president of the council uh, annually. Um it's sort of I would contrast that with Cambridge. Um
well not even contrast it Cambridge the president of their council is called the mayor. They have what we call sort of a weak form of a mayor mayor who doesn't have any sort of day-to-day authority. Um but they do the same thing. The c the counselors in in Cambridge and Worcester elect the mayor but it's really the
council president from amongst their members. So the method that you have here is the most common in terms of choosing the the head um of the of the council. Um but the suggestion I guess from the public input was if you're the highest vote getter in the election then
you get um to become the president and vice president respectively. Um again if you were to move it in the direction of staggering terms that would complicate this election um because everybody wouldn't be up. Um but so I'll stop there and Meg please go ahead. And
Cambridge also has a high paid manager. Correct. So the mayor just what you said there's a mayor and he's the president that would be like Lynn would be the mayor but there's a professional city manager. Correct. Who who makes like
$250,000 or probably more by now. I mean it's he's not elected. Correct. Yeah. What about um term limits? Do do you see term limits for for um president and
vice president um at all in in other other charters? I I imagine one argument is that once you're a you've been a serving president for a while, some of the counselors might be leerary about alienating the the person who's been
president. They don't want to be on the losing side of a vote to try to vote them out. So, term limits would allow more turnover. Uh I I h I uh I have to do some more research there. the the close one I can think of and and I just have to look at
it again is Framingham did have a discussion um about um uh the terms or h how sort of I I believe and I just want to double check this but I believe that Framingham and their charter has a provision that says that you can't run
for president or vice president consecutively. Um uh but I let me I want to double check to get back to you. I would say that the m the vast majority of council forms of government there's while there may be a term there isn't a
um a codified limitation on um whether or not you can do it consecutively or whether there's a limit. So so that that wouldn't be a common thing. I see no other hands raised. So I'm I'm just going to scroll down here. Um so B is also again fairly common that
the council president is sort of charged with um creating the you know creating the agenda for the uh for the council meetings. Um but other than that really has the same uh creating the agendas for the council meeting and presiding over the meetings but other than that has no
more authority than um any other counselor. Uh interesting thing here that um uh you may want to actually bring in the council president or the town manager to talk about is the state of the town address. So it sort of reads that the council president as well as
the town manager really will do some joint address. I don't know if they're doing a joint address or if they're doing separate addresses now, but that annually they'll do this address to the um uh this address about the the state of affairs in the town. Sort of a state of the union speech um that we think about at the uh federal level. I'm I'm
curious if there's if anyone sort of want to provide some color here. Has that been working? Does that happen? Is it a joint address? Yeah, I it is they do a yearly presentation and it's a joint address and they bring in the council president, the school committee, etc.
Um so basically they have a situation where they give the presentation normally they bring everyone in in person. Um the first year they did it, it was at the middle school and then now they've been
doing it more sort of impromptu, but it does happen every year and it's pretty usually he just says like the state of the town is strong um and elaborates a little and there's not much else but um it would be nice if we got like I don't
know an analysis of all the challenges the town faces. Yeah. So that that's something you can sort of sort of think about as we sort of move on. I mean so again we're going to we're just going through it but we're going to come back to these sections. Again I would just say that a state of the town address this joint one
particularly is is rather unique. Um so if we move to 2.3 um the uh prohibitions um so uh A is is becoming fairly standard or actually is fairly standard and is is uh it's it sort of maps pretty
closely to the state ethics law um that they can't hold any other compensated position in town um while you know while they're serving and then a one-year prohibition um you know as a former counselor. Um, and then the interference is is also
sort of very standard across um across the Oh, sorry, Julian. Go ahead. I was just wondering does this like and I'll just use myself as an example. Um, in high school I had a summer job with the town. Does that mean if I wanted to
run for town council, I could not legally? Uh my reading of this is that uh is that if you decide to if you're employee of the town in any capacity that you have to give up that employment
to be a town council. Now I I wouldn't say it's unclear but the way it reads is that you could keep that employment up until becoming elected. Now I don't know what the practice is here. Um, but my reading is is that you cannot if you're an employee of the town, you run for your seat, you become elected, you would
have to give your you'd have to give up one or the other regardless of of the level of employment. Um, Mel, do you have anything you want to add there? Yes. Um, that that that is that is correct. Anthony, this is not a u it
might follow to some extent the conflict of interest law, but this is not a a a technical conflict of interest issue. It's really a local issue deciding, you know, who is eligible and um it's it's whatever you want it to be. And I that's
the way I would read it. regardless of the amount of compensation or the level of the position, uh it it would it you you would not be eligible to uh to serve. Cuz I remember a situation I it was like a principal or a secretary or a teacher
of some sort in the Holio schools who was elected to their city council and they said that like it all went to court and it was a whole thing. like I think this section should definitely be looked at to avoid a similar situation and also
like to allow sort of the people who aren't administrating stuff in the town and who just happen to have a job for the town from getting involved. You guys can continue unless there's any
other questions. Oh, okay. Well, I saw Bernie and mut real quick. I mean, the the standard fix for this is that if you uh and we had a we we had an employee in the schoolsman for a while and and basically he received no compensation
for being on the siteboard. Um so the the conflict is when you're getting two incomes from a community. Uh so I would think that if um you know if and you also have to abstain from
voting on anything in any matter that affects your position. So it's cleaner to say that you can't have a town employee u serve on the council. uh it's it's not impossible, but it's it to to
arrange for it, but it's it's it's it's cleaner and it's easier um to uh to just have people um disqualified if they're an employee. It just would make honestly more sense to me to have like basically this read if you're a town employee and
you would like to run for town council, you have to give up the town council salary and can keep your regular employee salary and employee job and you'd give up the like five grand or three grand or whatever we pay the
counselors which that way there wouldn't be that same conflict and they would still get involved. Just just to play devil's advocate a little bit just for people to consider is that as the as a town counselor,
you're approving budgets presumably of a department that you're also a member of. Um, I so I think, you know, when I hear people talk about this, that's some of what goes into some of that concern is that you've got a vested interest now in the budget beyond just um um as a as an
elected official representing, you know, a constituency. So, I I just want to sort of put that out there um as something people do do say and compensation is for counselors is $10,000.
So, we're a little bit more generous. Okay. Other questions? Comments? We did get a comment um from um a counselor about this provision that said um you know, this provision prohibits
any part-time employment by a counselor in any municipal department, working a summer camp, lifeguarding, refereeing, recreation department, sports events, part-time library work, substitute teaching from being on the council. It also prevents a library or school department employee from running for council, although they can run for
library trustee or school committee. Elected boards that have far greater oversight over their employment than the council. Uh maybe allow part-time employment or exclude library and school employees or prohibit only those employees appointed by the council or
directly reporting to the manager like department heads. So there's we have some input on that. Yeah, I would say I I would I generally agree with what Mandy Joe or Councelor Hanniki had to say here. Um that it makes sense to me to say like you
forfeit the money for town the town counselor's salary and as long as you're like at a level below that the council doesn't directly supervise like a department head or a town manager, etc.
If you're like a lifeguard, a camp counselor, a school teacher, a DPW worker or whatever, I don't see why we would prohibit them from getting involved. It's not like they can vote to raise their own salary anyway because they're unionized. So,
this is very helpful to go through this this way. Yeah, Marcus. Yeah, thank you. I was just curious like what happens if that employee earns would earn more as a counselor than they do now? Like do we
say you give up the lesser of your two town salaries or do we specifically say it's the council one that you give up? I'm not sure that we need to even prohibit them from taking, you know,
either. We we could decide to do that, but we don't have to. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I'm just I'm just curious. I mean, if they're like being a ref for recreation, you know, basketball, and they're getting a little bit of money for that, they don't want to give up, you know, the stipen for
Yeah. Just just rely on personal greed. They'll they'll figure it out. Yeah. I I know Mel had his hand up and just as we're I don't think we should just do any amendments right now as we're just sort of orient ourselves but I as you're talking I'm sort of thinking through
perhaps you can put a a cap maybe a limit maybe the limit is you know whatever the counselor salary is or double that that if you're earning something like that or higher that you have to give that up or I'm just sort of as I'm listening to the conversation or you have some sort of direct supervisory
authority those are just some some I'm thinking about sort of turning your thoughts into actual language that can fit in here that could be sort of a measurable standard in terms of um when this would that sort of language makes a lot of sense to me. I would like maybe even
something like if you are a non unionized supervisory town employee um you are prohibited from um from running for council. But if you are like sort of
a regular mid-level worker or like a seasonal employee of some sort, you're allowed. I mean, that would make more sense to me. And Mel, you had your hand up for a while. No, I I think that Julian's right. We we'll we'll find there are
language out there that is a little less restrictive than yours. And so we'll we'll find it and provide some options for you. Great. Right. So um and I I I just want before I move on to text I just want to highlight that somebody said this is very useful to sort of go through like
so I'm just glad we're bringing some benefit to the group. I'm that feedback. Um so the interference section is also pretty standard for this form of government. The count the uh town manager is running the day operation. So
the council um and this we'll say this later on really communicates um about what's going on in town through the through the town manager. Um so this is actually very um consistent with this form of government um this uh uh prohibitioning about interference with the administration. Um now when you talk
to counselors there may there there can be some uh uh friction about that. Um and so depending on what you hear back you may want to consider sort of what to do here. But I'll just let you know that this is pretty standard in terms of the separation of powers.
Um so the compensation language is also uh fairly standard. Now here uh you've got um you've got the council sort of setting the salaries for um through themselves through the adoption of some um of some piece of legislation.
Sometimes charters will say um through specifically a bylaw ordinance, but um this could be either of those or or I guess in this case it could be a resolution or something. Um, so my initial thoughts reading this is that maybe you could tighten it up to say specifically through some sort of
bylaw. Um, I believe you call your local legislation bylaw. So, um, that was my only thought is reading through the through here. And then one of the other things that actually comes from state law, which it it seems is actually codified here, is that the council is
sort of a body that exists for the period of its term. And so, um, it can't raise its own salary. it can raise the salary for the next for the next council. And so your 18-month um uh uh sort of break here is really what
provides that protection between um between when they set the compensation and when it can sort of go into effect. Um but again, this is this is um you don't see any major issues here. Um, so unless there's any questions, I'm just gonna The only thing that I'll note is
we did get a comment about lowering the manager's salary or having like a salary cap or something um in what Andy wrote for us. So that might be something that we would consider. I don't know what the legalities are of that, but um I know we
did get a one or two comments about it. So the the this is not the manager section. that would sort of go into the manager section which I I think is the next section section three. Um thank you. But yeah. Yeah. Right. So 2.5 is again it's pretty boilerplate
uh really just stating that the legislative powers are vested in the um uh uh the town council. Um this is an interesting one 2.6 six. Um getting into some of the uh minations of of sort of
how the town council exercises its authority. Um again, some of this is actually pretty standard. Um some interesting things here that I just want to sort of call out for a second is that you've got a def you've got a definition for quorums just broadly for any multi-member body in town. in your
definition section, um you call out a um a specific quorum definition here in the um town council section. So, just to to be aware, I wouldn't necessarily call it an inconsistency. I would just say that you've got just sort of you've got the
broad umbrella definition for a quorum sort of up in your definitions and then you've got one that specifically applies to the town council uh here in 2.6. It's just doubling up really. Excuse me. It's just doubling up the definitions
in some respects. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um and then you've got um sort of explaining how they can how they um how the council sort of again this is pretty boilerplate. At a minimum they have to adopt any any measure by
majority vote. You've got the rules of procedure that the council will sort of adopt adopt them. and you and you've sort of called out some specific things around meetings, special meetings. Julie, I'm going to go to you. The only thing I would I I want to just point out is that um I I don't want to say I have
concerns, but this provision for emergency meeting to me sort of reads as redundant um in relationship to the fact that you do have this special meeting provision, which is essentially a meeting that's called outside of your normal regular meeting schedules. So, I don't I don't know what the thinking was
there for having these two provisions. Um, but you know, that's something I just would sort of ask the committee to sort of look closely at. And I'm sorry, Julian, please go ahead. Yeah, no problem. I was just reading this. The regular meetings of the council shall be held at a time and place fixed by
measure. I would just say that this is a little bit confusing because we sometimes meet hybrid. We sometimes meet virtually, we sometimes meet in person. So, I feel like time fixed by measure makes sense, but place might not. No, I think that's that's an interesting
one in our in our virtual world. I mean um Yeah. Yeah. Um now again you're under well actually I would I'm going to write that down to sort of explored because this is something that's cropping up in our new virtual hybrid reality. So
great. any other conversation on this on this section as we go through it? Um then the then uh sort of last one that I that I would point out is um uh the minutes section. So you've got a sort of definition or requirement for
the minutes. Um, not to say that there's anything necessarily wrong with this, but there's a very uh I don't want to say strong, but there's a kind of a standard definition in the open meeting law um that are sort of minimum requirements for for minutes when they have to be published and things of that
nature. So, um, you know, in some respects there could be an argument made that this may not be as um as necessary as you know, it may not be purely required to be in the charter. Um, and then you've got um a comment
really looking for it sounds like sort of more um requirements on your uh sort of meeting minutes um in definitions in the in the town rules. So, I will sort of scroll down here. I'm going to I'm going to skip over this. It's sort of standard. The
town council can can create its own standing or ad hoc committees. um district meetings, which is another sort of interesting one that's sort of relatively unique, um which is requiring that counselors have uh a minimum of two meetings in their district each year open to all residents. So that's you
know the individual counselors going out there to their districts. this requirement only applies to the district counselors and actually I'll just stop here and sort of I don't know I mean I think you haven't sort of formally brought the district counselors or any member of the council before you but I'm curious it do
people have thoughts is this working is this happening um are these well attended I've been to a few and I like them personally but that's just my take me you're muted Apparently, not all districts are having them. I think there's no consequence of
not having one or two. Um, in terms of whether they're well attended, uh, the ones in district one have been about 25 people, 30 people. So I don't know whether that's well attended or not but there's good there's always an
agenda and a a top you know that people come to and there's sometimes a speaker who presents something related to what's going on but I understand some districts don't have them at all I've heard. So there's no consequence of not
having them. I didn't know that. Interesting. There's no meeting police that comes in and says I get that's an interesting question actually, Meg, and I'm have no clue. Who enforces the charter? Is it self-
enforced by the council? Is it the state? Is it the police? Like, who enforces the charter, the provisions of it? Uh, that's actually a long-standing question. In most cases, it's the it's the um it's the town manager and the council that really enforce it
themselves. Um in most of the cases, it's it's one body enforcing against the other to protect their realm of influence. That's sort of when most of these issues sort of arise. Um but yeah, I mean there uh sort of as you read through these and I I would I would sort of put some real caution here in terms
of vesting rights in perhaps citizens or residents to enforce the charter against certain things charter against against the uh the government itself. Like there could be unintended consequence here, but for the most part, the charter, a lot of it is forced by the
council or the manager um sort of in the context of making sure people are doing what they're supposed to do. I almost feel like we could have like a charter enforcement subcommittee or whatever. Charter police. Yeah, exactly. Anyway,
Andy, uh, one thing that people have noted is that there's, um, the the district counselors have to have district meetings, but there's no requirement for at large counselors to have any kind of, uh, public meetings. So, um, I don't know if that's something we want to address or not. That's
interesting. Yeah, I I would say we we should look into it. That's certainly interesting. So, we're we're in uh, sort of our last 10 minutes. I'm going to speed through these a little bit. Um so um the investigation access to information is
um becoming actually very standard and this is the mechanism by which the council um can um really get the information they need to do their job in terms of uh many different ways in terms of oversight over sort of what's going on in government. Um so they've got this sort of inherent authority to
investigate the affairs of the town and they can exercise that uh investigative authority in a number of ways. one is in terms of submitting specific information requests as well as requiring the attendance of the town manager or subordinates to um uh to their meetings.
Um you've also got them the council being able to directly sort of bring forward the superintendent of the schools and the library director. Um the library director that one is is definitely sort of one that I haven't I can't think of seeing before. Uh, and Mel, I'm curious what your thoughts are
in terms of the council because the superintendent reports directly to the school committee. So, I guess I'm curious know if you have any thoughts about the superintendent being able to be called before this city council directly. It depends. It's been tried and you know
sometimes uh the school department or the administrator there will will not want to cooperate. But I think in general it's intended to encompass any aspect of the town government including the schools to some
level. And you did have that uh comments before from public comment about strengthening these um the links between the school and the and the town. So you know I understand that the chug and pull but I would just highlight it as being I guess somewhat
surprising. Yeah, that surprises me too because I had thought the sorry to jump in here. I just thought the s the school committee was the supervisor of the superintendent. I know at one of the recent finance committee meetings there was an issue where one counselor sort of
some of the school committee members felt that a counselor was outside of their bounds if you will in asking questions that were more the school committee's responsibility. So I feel like we could spend more time on this to delineate whose responsibility is what
um and who supervises who sort of here. Um the only other thing that I would bring up is that it says in 2.8 it says that the town doesn't have jurisdiction. The town doesn't have any
jurisdiction over the RSC. So, I feel like that is also one of those wording areas that should be changed. Like if we want the school committee to be under the town council, then that's different.
But if we want it to be sort of a separate body, we should word it as such. Sorry, Andy. Oh, it's fine. Um, I just, uh, it would be great to know, you know, back before the state's
ed reform, um, school committees could have their own budgets basically, and they could levy whatever was necessary, what they felt was necessary to run the schools under, I believe it was ed reform.
um the the the school budget had to be under underneath the uh the overall town umbrella and and I but then we've got a region that we're part of that um you know but but the appropriation toward the region I believe needs to be under
the town umbrella. So I I'm I'm not sure. I mean, you get into turf issues and certainly the supervision of the super the superintendent is the school committee's job and um but ultimately the responsibility for the town budget
is the council and the town manager's job. Um so how how do those how do those things get balanced out? Well, there there is a section um later on we're going to get into the sort of the budget creation process and usually
the school I mean you've got a regional school district, but I'm going to talk from the perspective of a town that has that has their own school department. Usually the school department budget is an intimate part of sort of forming the town budget. And there's a whole state
statute on the school budget and uh how the city has to incorporate it and what changes can be made and who can make them. But it's it's usually a fundamental part of the formation of the budget. Um the annual town budget. Yeah. I I guess I'm just
curious who is the final decider, you know, and and how you know ultimately somebody has to come up with a budget that's approved and you know if the if the schools and I've been on the school committee, I've
been on both on that side of it. But, you know, when you're looking at the entire town, you have to come up with a budget. And so, who can the school committee say? No, you know, we want, you know, I I I
it's getting late and I can't really phrase this, but I think this question about um you know, to what extent can or should the schools have more power in this than they already do is a is a question that we're going to be asked.
it I it certainly is. In fact, it's a question that was sort of already brought up in public comment today. Um Bernie, go ahead. One question actually, Anthony, sorry, just to chime in. Uh when was that ed reform like when was that passed to change it from school
committee having jurisdiction over their own budget to it sort of being this like joint process where they fight over whose jurisdiction it is? Um I I I I'll be honest. I'm not an expert on school budgeting, so I don't remember what I don't know what the process, but it we're looking at more than 30 years ago
for Wow. So before I before I was born, um it it was part of Proposition 2 and a half law, not not the ED reform. Okay. Back in 1981 or thereabouts. Yeah. 82, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Because um schools
used to there were two tax you your your tax bill would have two lines on it. One would be the town tax, the other would be the school tax and u prop two and a half did away with that. Um as as Mel mentioned, we we have if if this portion
of the charter was written for the the town known as the city known as the town of Hadley, it would work. Uh the town of Ammerst has a regional
school and has a school union which coincidentally all share the same person as u superintendent. So the superintendent gets to set attend three sets of school
committee meetings. Um, it gets wilder when you get up into the hilltowns in Franklin County and you've got, you know, superintendents and school unions wi with four or five communities and the superintendent is basically spends her entire time in
meetings. Um see see uh I I think we need to give some thought about this because um the superintendent is the superintendent of the Emmer schools which provide education K through
six but is part of the uh that's an independent group that is but that superintendent is also employed by the school union which has the same arrangement with the town of Pelum. And then you've got the regional school there. So, it's it it
it's messy. Um I was at that finance committee meeting and um bit my tongue because the finance committee uh and is has every right to ask questions about how money gets spent. Um and uh you know
say uh I I want to separate that and we talk about how budgets get formed. I want to separate that out. I also want to understand uh or get a good understanding of of the time frames involved
because the schools have to respond to DESIE in terms of what they want uh that organization wants for its budgets in their time frames. We have time frames that are set in the charter and by general law and the two don't line
up. So, uh and we're not going to probably get them to line up. So I think we need to look at how we can better u uh share information and collaborate on that. Um but uh uh so so that'll that'll be the the challenge going forward. But
just so so Anthony and Mel just so you folks are aware that um Ammeris has got um a very different uh school setup here. It's it's not a like it's the superintendent isn't down superintendent
uh completely. She's shared with the um the union school union and she shared with the regional school. Yeah. Thank thank you Bernie. I would just also note that like what I realized that's interesting about this is basically in effect this section
allows for the town side of the town budget ex police fire etc. town hall to have one review by the finance committee. So they only get reviewed once whereas the schools and the library get reviewed by the library or the
school committee and then by finance committee. So they get double the scrutiny um for whatever reason. I I just want to sort of sound just a note of caution here is that we're we're not in the financial procedure section of the charter. This is just the council's
authority to bring these individuals before them for question. So just so with that caveat I just want people understand. Yeah. So this is Yeah. I mean this is we this basically uh you're that's thank you for that Anthony. You
know this is basically says that the the town the council has the right to question these people about how they're using their money. Um and that's or other matters. And that's u that's where we're at here. We'll get into dancing
around with finance in a later section. So I you know I thought I think you're just go from uh six to eight but let me just quickly go through. So the notice provision just provides some time for uh individuals to well let me let me stop here at the notice section. So again it
just provides some time frame so that they can't say that you have to they can't tell the town manager that he has to be there tomorrow um if he's got something here. just it's provides some some reasonable time for people to prep prepare and to um sort of know when the meetings are going to be that that they're going to have to attend. Um I
can do I I think 2.9 I think it may be the last. There may be one more. Um I'll just I'll turn over just the committee. Do you want to do this today or you want to hold off to your next meeting to go to the next section? I'd say finished it today. Yeah, let's
go for it. Um, so uh this is uh so the um charter um invest the uh council with the um appointment of of certain uh positions. I can tell you that in some uh manager forms a lot some of these that are appointed by the council would
actually be appointed by the uh town by the town or city manager. Again, I'm not saying that's the right or wrong. I'm just saying that they've they've specifically for reasons made made given it to the council. So, you know, one is pretty standard. The clerk of the council who who does um uh sort of
recordkeeping for the council, they can have uh any additional staff that their budget would allow their you know, whatever the budget is for the town council. The counselors uh appoint the planning board and the zoning board of appeals. Um which is sort of for this
for formal government is somewhat unique. You know, usually when you see a strong town manager, you'll see them making these types of appointments, but this is not I'm in no way saying that this is not a bad way to go. I'm I'm definitely not saying that. Um that the council Oh, sorry, Julian. Go ahead. No,
that's fine. I was just noting I know because my grandmother served on the planning board in Southwick and that was an elected position. So, um they had like that is all elected. Um, and I think that's a little bit smaller of a
town, but not much. Um, and I just thought it was interesting. We could make I guess we could make those elected positions here. That might be something to discuss. Well, in towns in definitely in smaller towns, but uh well, actually the trend is is to go to appointed, but
if you look at the state statute on the planning board, it says that in towns they shall be elected, in cities, they'll will be appointed by the chief executive, the mayor. Um, so that's that's been in state law for a while. When communities transition um to
cities, they usually go to appointing these boards. Usually that appointment power gets vested with the executive. Um, I will just say that for smaller towns um there is there's been a trend across the state sort of a lack of engagement with local government and so they're having a hard time filling some
of those elected positions. So, I I'm aware of several towns that have made particularly planning board and zoning board of appeals appointed positions mainly because of um to make sure that they actually can uh can get people on those seats. And then sometimes there's
an interest in in um making sure that you get the right mix of sort of expertise and land use and things of that nature. But I would say the driving factor for smaller towns to go to a point it is a lack of uh public participation. Anthony, you noted that that that this is somewhat unusual and
this was a discussion that the charter commission had and planning planning board and zoning board of appeals were seen as um making decisions that could be controversial in the town and and the decision of the c of the commission was
to put that in the hands of elected officials because for that reason um but it certain certainly doesn't have to stay that way but that was the reasoning. Yeah, I I certainly see the advantage to doing that. That makes a lot of sense, Andy. And I would even see the advantage
to opening this up to being a sort of third or fourth board election. I don't know. Is that legal or is that only allowed in towns to have it elected? Like, sorry, J, I didn't get the I didn't get the question. Is an elected
planning board, is that a thing that's only allowed in towns that have town meeting or is that elected in like a city known as the town of government like we are? You could you could make the planning board elected. Um I'd have to do some research. I guess off the top
of my head, I'm not aware of any cities that have an elected planning board. Um yeah, nice. All right. Thank you. Um non-inviting non- voting liaison to various multimeters. I guess some things that sort of stand out to me as just a little bit weird and might just be the wording is that non- voting leazison to
the school committee and the library trustees. I won't I won't linger here but you know we talked about how it's a regional school committee. Um so I don't know if it's just mean that they you know when I think of I guess when I think of a leazison I'm thinking of sort of an exeicio member but maybe this is just someone's going to go to the
meetings and report back to the to the town council. Um perhaps that's the intent here. Um then the suspension or removal of any uh official that they have the uh ability to um uh appoint. Um and then we go into some of
the mechanics. I'm sorry. I'll I'll stop here uh unless there's any discussion here. So obviously there's a comment from the public about just discussing how the appointments are going. The next section 2.10 is on bylaws and other measures.
So, the definition of the bylaws and how they can be um uh sort of adopted. Uh I can tell you that emergency measures is fairly common. It's a way to sort of scoot around um some of the more involved bylaw procedure in case there's an emergency that needs to be addressed
uh quickly through legislation um where you've got some some uh a certain number of um you've got some requirements in terms of milestones in terms of timing in terms of number of meetings before a bylaw can fully fully adopt. Um and then
you've adopted something from uh really it's you've adopted from the state law and many of the um uh plan charters which is the you know in some communities they called the the charter right or or something like that um which is the ability to postpone matters that
are heard. So there can be no action on the item um once a person uses their charter right and you've got the ability to use it twice if there's a vote of uh four or more members. Um so one member can charter write something one time, four or more members can charter write
it again. Um but once those two things have been exercised, it has to go back before the community. I I actually would be very curious um if people think that that is slowing down decision-m being abused. Sometimes there there is a discussion about people abusing um this
thing called charter right uh on in some communities. Andy go ahead but I have a comment on this as well. We've received some input that is suggesting that maybe we want we should raise the threshold so that it requires a second or that you know so there couldn't be just one
person to slow it down. Yeah, I would almost recommend three people um because just we've received so much public input on this. I know we've had both a town counselor and a former town counselor bring this up with us as
well. And I do remember one meeting where a counselor used their right to postpone and then another counselor was upset that they used their right to postpone and used the right to postpone on a different matter. Um, and like it just feels like it opens us up to sort
of games that just prolong the process and don't really help anything. Well, that's Yeah. Um, the only thing I would sort of suggest as you whenever we come back to this to explore it is um to continue to require no debate. if
somebody raises it um that then whether you require a limit of four or three or whatever the number is that there be no debate so that there can be less um uh slowing down of the meeting um in terms of exercising this thing. Um but so I'll just sort of sort of give that
information to you. Um then the town council has the ability to um uh approve or confirm some of the appointments by the town manager specifically any any appointments the town manager has of department heads as well as members of multi-member bodies. And then the town council has
the ability to fill vacancies on the council. Um, so if a member moves or or you know something happens, the council will meet. Um, and I'm not going to go through all the sort of timeline things here, but a certain posting, but they have a meeting, there's going to be a certain posting requirement, things of
that nature, and the council will vote to fill that uh can to fill that vacancy. Um, depending on if it's an atlarge position or a district position, there are certain other limitations on sort of obviously where the candidate to
fill the position lives. Um, you've got the, uh, council president having two public forums. Again, this is in many ways uh, well, I wouldn't say it exactly mirrors the district meetings because you've got some um, definitions here about what these meetings should be
about, the master plan and the budget. Um, and then the I believe this is the last one. Yeah, this is the last one. So 14 is um uh to me this sounds like clean up from your previous form of government where the select board would have been the um the the water or sewer commission
and so you vested that authority with the town council and so that's the whole thing. I'll stop there and I see Julian I see your hand raised. Yeah, I just have two comments. The first one is just about the public forms. I think it might be worth us exploring like adding some
timing or dates to this just because the budget like I know I'd personally been told like wait actually the right time for input is not in May, it's in November. Um and like it would make more
sense to have public form heavy November on the budget rather than a public form heavy May if that's the better time for input. So that might be something that's worth considering here. And then the town council shall control and regulate
the public ways. I don't know exactly how that makes like what that does, but I remember at the last finance committee meeting there was discussion about how like the complete streets and such sort of slows down our ability to pave roads
and get some of these problems fixed. Um, so like I don't want this to be an extra barrier to us being able to sort of get caught up on some of these potholes and whatnot. Andy, go ahead. One thing we've run into and I I think
it maybe in the definitions of what a public forum is um was that I think the commission tried to put in that at least half of the time must be spent hearing from the public. And in some of these um public forums, the public didn't really
have a lot to say. They just wanted to hear what was going on. And so it became sort of a comical uh mathematical problem where everybody sat around for a half an hour while the public part ticked off so that then you know the the
the elected folks or the you know the weren't uh monopolizing the time you know contrary to the charter. So we may want to look at the definition on that. May just quickly because it's getting
late. Also, apparently the counselors feel they can't comment during the public comment which means they can't ask clarifying questions or they just sit there mute and it isn't even it just seems it would be helpful to enable some
little bit of back and forth for the point of clarifying. I could be wrong, but I believe that's discussion at the discretion of the chair or in the rules of procedure, not a charter issue, but that's different from the public forums. That's public
comment. Oh, okay. Then that's different. No, I was saying that that Meg's Meg's concern is is about public comment. Um, okay, that's all I have. I I and also you know also if the counselors at these public forums where
they just sit there waiting for the time to go by could say could ask leading ask questions like do people have any thoughts about this or that you know and invite an exchange so that it's not just this kind of speaking to a blank wall.
Yeah that that would make a lot of sense to me. So I'll just stop sharing just on that last last point. I just I just would sort of advise the committee just to be a little careful um in terms of I don't think you can legislate charisma. So if someone's not sort of
good at running a good meeting, I don't know if I don't know if you can necessarily craft language to make that make you know always make that happen. So just sort of I'll stop sharing. I'll turn it back over to you. We're going to circulate the memo. Um I I know I know
um and um I don't know if this particular document is is ready to be to be circulated, but I I will check in with Pat um about circulating this um charter with comments. Excellent. Thank you so much. I really
appreciate um your work today, Anthony and Mel. That was a great presentation and I feel like that was pretty much the most in-depth we've really gotten into these discussions. And um I felt that that was a productive use of our time and I really appreciate you all
facilitating it. Um given the time, do we want to adjourn or do we want to try to make our way through the rest of the little points on the agenda? I move we adjourn. Okay. Yeah. I motion to adjurnn or if Andy just said that I
Andy moved. Ken seconded. Um I'll start voting. Andy? Yes. Myself? I'm an I. Um Bernie, yes. Ken, yes. Meg, yes. Marcus, yes. We are adjourned. Thank you so
much. Thank you for me. I'm still here. Oh, sorry, Raphael. Didn't see you. Yes, you in the middle. Sorry, he's in the middle square. Not on mine. He's on my screen. He's off the screen, so I don't know. Anyway,
have a great night, everybody. Bye bye.