hi everyone um welcome to the uh April 17th Charter Review Committee meeting um this meeting was supposed to be on uh last Thursday but it has been moved
um due to my mistake with the agenda um but here's our current agenda we have one topics not anticipated item and I will go through um I'll go through everyone to see if they can hear and be heard i see Athena's here thank you um I
can see that on the screen meg present bernie present erica present marcus present ken present and I'm going to turn my screen off so I can I can eat my
dinner so I apologize no problem andy we don't mind watching you eat your dinner president speak for yourself Meg okay um all right uh I believe I got everybody um I could hop off you know
Julian I'm here oh sorry Raphael here yes and Erica did I get you you did great um okay that's everyone um I will just give a few quick announcements which is that both me and Raphael have
some uh have some versions of the elected officials and staff questionnaire and we will begin the discussion on um budget coordinating group and the budget section in topics not anticipated but will not um will
certainly not be the end of the discussion it will keep coming up um as well as Meg and Erica meg and Andy met so they have some documents to share with us about public feedback that we'll spend most of the meeting discussing um
and then uh we will also discuss Erica's outreach um schedule that is attached in the packet so I will start the minutes were in the packet um have folks read over
them both copies i'm seeing head nodding um for the sake of time I will make the motion to approve the March 27th meeting minutes second excellent um even though I wrote
them I still seconds that's okay um Meg yes myself I'm an I bernie yes raphael yes erica yes marcus yes andy
yes ken yes thank you um and then I will make the motion to approve the February 27th meeting minutes um me go ahead second and I yes okay i have my hand up
i have my hand up for after this oh okay got it other questions about the meeting minutes no um just to suggest that we confirm who's taking minutes at this meeting so they can start because from my experience it's hard to start taking minutes halfway through the meeting yes
thank you um I will get to that once we take this vote me I'm an I bernie yes raphael yes erica yes andy I'm going to abstain since I was not here that's okay um Ken
yes excellent um that is seven in favor one abstension um and I will now move us along to who is taking minutes which let me check my list um Erica would you be able to take
minutes sure thank you um Julian just one quick thing one thing I would suggest is the once the recording becomes available it comes with a transcript of everybody per by you know microphone so it's got all your names it
is very easy to use certain AI capabilities to get it to write minutes for you and it's just a case of uh writing it up i just worry that we lose people to focusing on uh minutes during these
that makes sense to me that's a good suggestion um I tried it the transcript you have to go through and like watch to make sure it doesn't go too far off script but you can use it and is helpful if it's a tool for you um so moving on
uh any member announcements no okay um public comment i see we have uh two people or no three people excellent um and we may have a fourth joining us i'm not completely sure who would like to offer public
comment um if you'd like to author offer Could Julian kick himself off julian we you're gone we have two people with their hands up i guess we should wait for Julian though yeah he got too excited
uh Erica why don't you step in as vice chair we can start that's Mike so while Julian's coming back um why don't we just have our public comment session and the first hand I see up is Martha Hanner and we'll um set a timer
for three minutes thank you i'm Martha Hanner i live in District 5 South Ammerst and I sent you all a memo yesterday uh with sort of my thoughts on the survey if you really
want to get a broad spectrum of people in our community you know it's necessary to do more than just an online survey because that only gets the people who like to do online surveys right and uh so I hope that you would be uh
distributing paper copies in public places or visiting groups and so on and then also going to some public events where you could uh you know actually go around and talk to people and do sort of
oral interviews uh so I think you're already thinking some of those things but I just thought I would jot them down and then I think the most important thing is when you get to actually the time for the survey I don't know whether you're going to allocate a month or something that you really need to
advertise that broadly and try to motivate people as to why it's important that they bother to take the time to do it that's my experience uh you know you go with high expectations and it's always disappointing that even though Ammerst where only the H is silent you
really uh often don't get as many people as you want unless you really advertise publicly with some catchy slogan and and things and go around to to meetings so on and then if you don't mind if I uh say since I see you've got the employee
survey on your agenda tonight my experience was that I was part of the solar bylaw working group and for 18 months we had uh two town employees sustainability coordinator and uh planning board person
you know listening with us and then they spent a whole year sitting in with the uh town council committee that was supposed to be reviewing that and it seemed to me it was a terrible waste of their time because they were never asked
to present their expertise or explain anything and they had to do a whole lot of busy work when one particular counselor counselor Hanni kept wanting to rewrite and do the wording and they had to dutifully do it so I hope that
you will ask um in the employee survey ask whether you know whether they feel they have open communication whether they feel that their expertise is being solicited at appropriate times and then whether they feel that their time is
ever being wasted with sort of having to do busy work or provide reports that people could have looked up and so on uh because it's not clear to me from my experience that our staff are worked uh
or always worked well okay well thank you thank you thank you for that comment Martha um next uh hand I see Darcy Dumont darcy I'm I think you're muted still
sorry so I'll start the timer okay um uh hi my name is Darcy Dumont i live in district three i endorse those comments that Martha Hanner just made um I'm commenting as a former counselor and individual and I also served on the
League of Women Voters Charter Review Task Force for two years i have two recommendations regarding article 2 this evening my first recommendation is that the charter should limit the number of consecutive terms served by a council president to two two-year terms running
the length of two legislative sessions so a total of four years i'm also suggesting that a legislative session be for two years instead of one the length of the League of Women Voters also voted to limit the number of consecutive terms
for the president but did not include it in its recommendations because that recommendation was in conflict with a state league position the relevant charter section is 2.2A the rationale for possible charter amendment is that the power of the
council president increases significantly with time in office also change in the president's seat can allow for more diverse participation and emergence of new leaders currently a council president could be elected in an uncontested race or in a small district
race and nonetheless hold the council leadership position for an unlimited number of years to be more democratic representative participatory and diverse there should be term limits to prevent any counselor from holding the office for unlimited terms at the recent
election of the president counselors Devon Gothier and Hani spoke forcefully about the reasons why the job of president should be shared by others my second recommendation is that the charter should be amended to require that all counselors serve on the same
number of major standing town council committees so that they have an equal voice and vote the League of Women Voters also supported to providing each counselor with an equal opportunity to have a voice and a vote on standing council committees the relevant charter
section is 2.6E um the rationale for a possible amendment is that the Emerst has several organized political groups and two official packs one pack has endorsed a majority of the counselors in all three
of the terms the president appoints the members of the committees council committees should include equal participation of counselors elected to pro promote both full public participation uh in the democratic process and
diversity of representation the council experiences that we have four major standing committees in 2025 several counselors neither serve as chair of any committee nor serve on more than one standing committee of the council
membership on a committee gives a counselor a voice on that committee's recommendation back to the council councilors on two standing committees have twice as much voice as those on one also the council rules favor unanimous
decisions made by five counselors on a standing committee um to be to allow them on the consent agenda giving even more power to counselors on those committees we've crossed three minutes thank you
very much thank you for the comment and to uh Martha and to Darcy I would strongly encourage that the comments also be submitted via the public the written public feedback um comment form that we have available on the website u just to capture the full value of what
you've had to say i think that's all the public comments excellent thank you Erica for chairing in my absence my computer crashed um but please Darcy and uh Darcy and Martha please send an email
to all of us um and I'll happily read that i apologize for missing your comments i caught the last bit of yours Darcy um all right uh thank you everybody um we will now move on
to number four which I am sort of proposing this as a time where I would ask the committee members if we could set a date in which we are going to start actually opening up the charter and reviewing it and what
date you all are comfortable with starting that process um I'd like for us to do that so that we have a timeline of when we can actually open up this document and start editing or discussing
edits um and proposing them uh just so that the public can know when to tune in and also so we as a committee can budget our time adequately any proposed dates thoughts comments meg um I suggest that we not
decide the date until we've discussed this timing of getting different kinds of outreach so do we want to do that before we've received the surveys back from the town we're pl the outreach committee is planning listening sessions very soon so it seems to me that the
timing of that uh discussion while it's very important would be more useful if it's well into when we've already been receiving comments from the public i don't think that receiving publics from the comment will necessarily end but so
that we have a significant amount of feedback to inform that discussion bernie I think I'm in agreement with what Meg just said i' I'd like to note that um former counselor Dumont has um
posted to our our site website some extensive comments as has current counselor um Manaki Manaki um I would like to hear from everybody
else who is either a counselor or has served as a counselor um before we start um pulling pieces of the uh uh taking pieces of of the charter um I I think we'd learn a lot from those folks having
lived this for you know two years or more uh trying to make it work and I I think the the u Darcy's comments Mandy's comments are valuable they're they're risk for the mill and I'd like to hear
from the rest of the uh the rest of the uh subjects if you will who who've taken it on to to serve on the council um and move forward raphael I agree with the comments that have been
made i think spending time to review getting more feedback or insights perspectives and then reviewing that before doing this work is important andy yeah I I agree with that
and well I think we're going to look at a list of some feedback that we've received so far um Meg and I just uh went through the stuff that's come in in writing uh to our our website we looked at it yesterday and put put together a
list of the kinds of things that people are asking about and I think we'll get more of that as we uh do the ser the survey of the um town officials and and staff and as we do our our planned I think open forums and that at that point
you you got a list that's pretty you know themes start to come out even even the the short list that we did there are some themes that you start to see i think that builds confidence among the public that we're actually listening before we're deciding what we should
change ken um yeah I guess the very last part of what Andy said um I really want to have a better foundation of where comments are coming in
um it's part of a you know it's part of like a personal like what do I want to see change but also gives me some guidance the the the input would give me guidance much like what Bernie said about the about the the officials that live and breathe it um yeah I feel like
there just needs to be more foundation and waiting for that input to come in is is I think that foundation i'm sorry I forgot the last part of what I was going to say julie go ahead yep that's fine i think we can come we can come up with a timeline if we look at
what um you know the outreach committee's been putting together they have a timeline for um you know when we want to be surveying people and when we want to have our our forums and then I would we we should probably set a date shortly after that where we can have distilled the results and we can start
going through that that's sort of where Ken do you still have comment okay that's that's sort of where I was going I was wanting to say when do we plan for outreach to be done so that we can and even if the committee doesn't feel comfortable
setting an exact date so that we can have a rough estimate whether it be the third week in July or whatever um that we expect to conclude outreach and begin
um and begin actual review um and I don't know when exactly that the committee would be comfortable with that happening but I'd like us to get some reference as to when we anticipate that to be if
that makes any sense um and Me go ahead i I suggest that we come back to this at the end of the meeting after we've talked about the schedule for outreach and some other details of outreach and not necess right now um it's hard to we
haven't talked about the schedule for the listening sessions or the timing for getting the two surveys out and whether another factor would be whether we want to have I don't know if we're ever going to complete the listening Uh but when would what it's my
opinion is we'd want to have received gotten the two surveys out had at least three of the lives listening sessions and done some more aggressive outreach to get people to respond to the website i think we haven't done that aggressively enough i mean it's Andy and
I did that spent fair amount of time yesterday going over it and it was pretty interesting to see there weren't as many comments as I had hoped there were still quite a few as you could see who looked at the list and I think we should promote that much more
aggressively but I would I'd like to come back to this at the end of the meeting to see if we're in a better position to answer your question julian I'll I'll let us segue into um into what you and Andy did do you
guys want to screen share and discuss that um and maybe that can help inform our decision well yeah this what we did isn't about the schedule for the surveys but it is looking at the first feedback so it's part of it but yeah I just want everyone
to have to know that we've like most certainly feedback is not done it's just beginning but we have already received the submissions to the form you're talking about we've gotten quite a lot of input from the legal women voters etc
that I think we don't have enough information to even begin to conclude our public outreach but I do think we have enough information to understand what the public outreach process looks like and
when and the timeline of when we expect it to conclude if we want to talk about a little more for us to go back um to it at the end of the meeting that that's fine with me no I think Andy and I could do that but I'm encouraging Andy you're
the Andy after we met pulled it together just one quick comment before you we were very careful not to curate what we heard in any way or to even some of the question the topics that came up we weren't sure they were charter changes or changes in practice
so we didn't even indicate in the piece that Andy's going to share what the kind of change was being proposed because we wanted to be sure that we were giving you a summary of the information that's there okay andy do you want to
Yeah i just for the sake of the minutes could you Andy and or Megu just state the what what it what it was the piece of work that you reviewed so that I can give it a proper heading as a summary of
what I think Andy we went to the public uh public feedback link on our website and we took all of the summaries that were there from Athena as well as the League of Women Voters report and Mandy
Andy Johannaki's submission um which was all of the things that were on that link and we walked through it and we you know uh wrote down you know we we compiled what each of the suggestions was if the there were some
cases where we you know abbreviated it but that's it's basically just one long list of all the suggestions that have come in so far and it's not definitive or anything but it's basically to give a sense of what the range of things are that people um have said so far and and
we can continue to do that um Meg suggested it and I think it was a worthwhile thing for us to see at this point um but I think we'll get more you know a lot more and we can organize it once it once we get it in in a more organized way through the survey through the forums and then
um you know we may want to come up with here's some things we're hearing and then go back out to to people and say what do you think of these things you know so that we're actually giving them something to respond to but at this point it's just a long list of bullet points so should we share it Julian please do
uh that's exactly what I was going to suggest screen share it let's go through the bullet points almost one by one thanks to And thanks to Andy for summarizing i mean some of them were very lengthy so you can you can see it's basically three
pages i'll go I'll go back to it and and we can you know we sent it to Julian we can we can post it and send it to you this was it happened yesterday so it didn't make the packet so I'm just showing you there are 84 items as far as if we numbered them correctly there were a couple that got split and got
reumbered but it's you know there there are things about the relationship the powers of the town manager the relationship between the council and the manager the lame duck period between you know when people are elected and when they take office term limits of various
types there's an idea for having a standing building committee for public buildings um that one that one had a longer explanation that you might want to read but if you don't understand the reason it's basically that that you know
a number of towns have be when there when there is a building project they have a standing committee that goes into that looks at at that rather than jumping around could we go one by one starting at the top or the bottom hey Andy was doing that I think okay well if
you want to Yeah we You want to go through all You want to hear all of them i do yep um I'd like us to have a relatively lengthy discussion on this actually could I be recognized for a minute go right ahead yes um I'm going to say like this is important work i
hope we can set a timeline to do this collectively but I want to reference something that Hannah shared in public comment yes some people have shared we should review what's shared in this feedback but I think the work that I'm really trying to push for is we need to
do this public outreach soon and I'd rather spend time like being clear about that now so that we have time to collect more public input and then like carve out like everybody in this committee
should look at said feedback um and we should have that timeline this is important work but I wonder if it's useful to spend this time reviewing these these notes or perhaps lean into we need to move on the the
outreach stuff that's just my two opinion yeah I think we just wanted to you know we just Meg suggested we look at what we've received so far just to get a sense of what's what kinds of things are coming in i think you're absolutely right this
is you know it's scratching the surface and it's not you know what what we will be doing down the road I think is taking you know this type of list but probably longer and grouping coming up with themes and you know um so I don't know
how much you know I I wasn't thinking that we would spend a ton of time yeah like to I I heard I heard like I heard lengthy discussion Andy so you you requested that we spend like 30 minutes or more on this no I requested
that we spend 30 minutes of our meetings talking about the feedback we're hearing but I think Andy was trying that I I agree with Raphael that um but I that we don't have time to go one discuss each one but I think Andy was trying to speed
through to give everybody you know in three minutes a sense of what's here whether we do that or not just to summarize it and then we can send this out to everyone to read more carefully but I agree with Raphael that the b the the burden is on the pressure is on
right now to do the outreach i mean for example I'd be happy to I volunteer to write a short piece for the Indie and the Current that simply tells people about this website and how and of course everyone could review it but just so that a lot of people don't know about
this website for example but I'm agreeing with Raphael we need to get the outreach going but I also think speeding through this like Andy was starting to do might be interesting or if people want to do that
i I don't think we should speed through this i I think that there's a lot of really valuable information here and we should I I at least personally I looked at it before the meeting and a lot of these I just had clarifying questions
points of understanding etc delineate more clearly the powers of the town manager i'm wondering how many people exactly had this idea i'm wondering things such as like were they asking was there a
general consensus that the town manager should have more power or less power um those sort of things and I think that uh that being able to review this and actually ask questions i mean this is the outreach we're talking about here
and it's I struggle with the committee wanting to do outreach but then when we get outreach some of the comments I've heard doesn't feel like people are completely listening anyway that's just my opinion um Bernie and then I'll go to
Erica and then back to Raphael i I think Raphael was first in line but it's just he's already spoken so that's why I wanted to call in i don't I'm not one for that i I think Raphael wants to follow up on a comment so Raphael go ahead thanks thanks thanks
Bernie i I think if we we haven't shared this with but there are listening sessions on the horizon with things we need to do so I'd like to sort of spend some time just being clear about what we need to prepare for the lesson listening
sessions that are on the horizon and make some decisions about the questionnaire um so again I heard lengthy discussion that's why I shared what I shared thanks
Erica uh where I think that this is a this piece of work is I think going to be really useful and I think that how and when it can be useful is in two ways one is to kind of extract some themes of what we're seeing so far and that's a
process we're going to have to do not just with this list of 80ome points but with all the other kinds of feedback that are going to come in so that's a piece of work that I'm not sure the best way to do that is in committee right like we we can do the work of re like sitting with this and pulling out themes
and perhaps using them to organize listening sessions around those themes so this is not lost work i'm not I for one am not suggesting that that this isn't valuable i think it's how it's valuable i don't think it's valuable to
sit here and read all 84 points out loud to each other i think we need to extract what themes are coming in just like we will with the public feedback and use those to organize public feedback sessions it's critical that we move on that and the other way that this could
be useful is in the development of the public survey the work that has to be done with the Colin Center it can help us structure themes questions recurring topics so I think that this work is valuable i'm just kind of I'm I'm in
consensus with a lot of what's already been said that I don't think that the best use of time is to review them in a se in a kind of numbered sequence as a group right now okay Bernie yeah I um Eric has said a good deal of what I was intending on
saying and I I really think that to use Meg's term this list needs to be curated you need to create some themes from it uh cluster thoughts so we have a general idea of where people are concerned uh
there's a couple of things I noted on the list that just can't be because they're impractically awful so off those go um you know uh I don't I read through the comments this is I I want to thank u
Andy and Meg for doing this this is a gift i read through the comments um most of them uh sometimes faster than others uh uh more care some more carefully than others depending on um whether I've seen the material or not before so this is a
real gift and I think we can use it to extract those themes that that we need to then further focus on um my other question would be around the con where is the con center and all this we yeah our our consultants are and u uh get
some framework from them as to how we now we have this information and we have this plan for outreach meetings how do we mold these to make them effective and how do we begin to meld this information into usable data so I think those are good questions for the consenter and
would lean on their expertise andy yeah I I I think I saw sort of saw this as like a little down payment uh you know it's sort of an exhibit of the kinds of things we'll be seeing but I think we have an outreach plan and I
think we should be um you know acting on that and then um that you know re if somebody said examine the power of the town manager you know at this point it doesn't really
matter whether they said more or less it the theme is look at the the power of the manager but we'd want to talk to a bunch more people to see whether they are feeling that the town manager has too much or too little or whether that's even something that emerges in in in other other discussions so I think you
can see the the thing for me that's useful about it is just like these are the kinds of issues that people have that are bubbling up and so you know term limits comes up in three different ways so obviously term limits is something that we would want to
consider maybe or we'll see if it keeps bubbling up but it's more of a very scratching of the surface at this point and I really uh am looking forward to getting more and richer data using the processes that the outreach committee has been talking about with the help of
the Collins Center ken um I would love to if they'll have me and if it doesn't violate open meeting law I would love to help Meg and Andy curate or cluster this great um so please invite me to the next meeting if
that's okay um and then Meg real quick I would be happy to help you with that pitch or the the the the writing oh great for the indie and the current and whomever else so I'm happy Thank you yeah i mean I I I really don't think we we nominated ourselves to keep to keep
doing this i think it or even to curate this i think we as a team need to figure out how we're going to curate what we get from the surveys and the outreach that we do um Mang go ahead just a reminder that this feedback we got was from less than
25 individuals not counting the league so it's it's useful information but it's a tiny number of people who've contributed it that's why I think we should focus on getting clarify that Meg you had you said that there was 25
individuals but then didn't you include comments from the league in this document or did you not yeah so this document reflects 25 or so PE so there plus the league i would argue the document represents 425 individuals because the
league surveyed over 400 people and then you guys on top of that got 25 extra so if you look at the comments from the league you've already included a pretty significant group but the league consensus process
didn't include 400 people it included about 30 and that was a amazing process that I won't describe now but consensus is very tricky and that the consensus process changed and eliminated some things because everybody has to either agree or or step aside but that group
was more like 35 i think there's I can't remember a percentage of the membership who has to participate there was a there was a series of of presentations right that um preceded the consensus document and if you read through those
uh five or six I forget how many there are um you find that a good deal was not was left behind right when the consensus document was u and as as Miss Dumont mentioned uh when the term limit thing
was dropped out of the consensus document because it conflicts with the league's state position right so I I think the I I would treat the consensus document from the league as one input well but a special one because this
process was very elaborate and and that's true but I can also go through the document and show you stuff that is just going to work so you're making my point that we need to do more aggressive outreach i think everyone here is saying that same thing yeah i mean I mean the
the the fact that an organization or a group has submitted something um that's fine but that doesn't weigh any heavily more heavily for me than some of the other individual finely tuned opinions that we've gotten and that we will
continue to get I hope so that reinforces my point that we haven't heard if we I don't sir I agree with you but we we've heard from less than 27 or 30 keep 30 indiv individuals it's it's not it's it's not it's not a good sample
if you're you know by by any any stretch of the imagination so I think this is you're right just reinforces the point that we need to do more outreach and we need to do it in a systematic fashion and I will go back to saying where is our interaction with our
consultant to help us with this um okay so do we want to move to discussing uh our outreach forms Raphael yeah I think we should but there are a
few things we should want to make sure we have time for the listening sessions check-in materials connected to that sharing some additional details about said plan and then we have the surveys that we need to make some decisions about tonight and we
did in the subcommittee talk about like engaging the Collins Center for just a lot of support around a public survey but the other um survey for town um the stuff that we'll look at tonight we should do that
now if you're open to that yeah let's let's do it that's fine with me so Julian do you mind if I preface this by there was a conversation in that subcommittee about whether or not we should have open-ended questions alone
or what Julian will propose tonight some uh questions that could allow us to get some quantitative data so how do you want to approach this Julian in terms of sharing i'll let you share first and then I'll share the Do you mind sharing because I sent it to
you oh sure yeah that's perfectly fine i can share it too um basically Raphael put together one thing and then I put together a different just to give us two different options and I would ask the committee to select one um
and it was Raphael and I put that together it wasn't just Raphael okay that's based on like Erica's Erica too i'm I'm sorry for the sake of the minutes and my own clarity is this a town staff survey or are we talking
about a public survey staff survey no officials or staff there's a difference both both okay because fine i I I would will probably not be happy if the officials
and the staff are asked the same questions so So we have an Go ahead sorry here's what I did Julie go ahead and I'm about cleaned up Erica or tweaked Erica's version we went to all
open response questions and that's what I did i think you adapted it more to add different forms of questions so every Erica's I just tweaked it we tweaked it a bit
so to answer your question Bernie the form that I'm about to present that Erica and Megan Raphael worked on um is it sort of clarifies if you're a staff or a staff person or a elected official
but it still asks the same questions my form will review that separately um after this but I will start screen sharing can you all see that yep yes
yes excellent yes so this is the open response version the preamble so I'll talk people through a few things so we heard from folks who shared like they wanted the intro to be
a little more concise so we did that um there was also talk Erica about where we would what we would use what platform maybe folks want to speak to that but this um just reflects what you did we just tweaked a few things big based on
feedback so if you continue scrolling yep we just have identifying information then professional role um tweaked that a little bit and then I actually tweaked it in terms of not leading people too much i
just asked R um I don't know what the initial question was i think um we might have noted what are but I just put are there um so we just had the same categories terms of positive aspects and
challenges town counseling town manager relationship all open response questions and then we went down to topics of interest if you don't mind scrolling and it's just for them to sort of respond to these things in an open response format
great thank you Raphael um so do folks have questions of Raphael comments and then we'll see my form erica and then Ken uh thanks for sharing this um I had a question about the if
you could scroll down to the bottom where the topics of interest are listed um I if I um I was trying to pull it up in front of me but the in the version that I had proposed one of the things I don't know if first let me back up i'm sorry that I had to miss the meeting
where the initial drafts of this were shared um that was un unfortunately unavoidable but the [Music] um some of the way that I structured the draft version of this was based on an conversation with the Colin Center to
kind of get us started and get some initial uh direction and pointers from them on best practices for this kind of thing based on other towns and other for this audience not for a public survey that's a whole other can of worms for for this
kind of audience staff and elected officials um and one of the things that that I thought was an interesting um comment which I don't know if it was able to be in discussion in this committee was that it's sometimes helpful what I heard from her what is
sometimes helpful is to um put a little bit of content sort of charter content into the question um to not to lead but to sort of build in um the ability to sort of point to the
existing status quo to give people a starting point on which to respond not for not exhaustive not like every article every paragraph that's relevant to for instance department head and committee appointment authority but a a sentence or two that points to what is
currently described around that topic in the charter i don't know if I'm making myself clear um which is an option right we can just put the topics themselves and leave it as open as possible to just solicit
uh the broadest kind of feedback but it can also what I thought was interesting was the idea of summarizing what is currently phrased in the charter around those topics as a starting point just adding that as a comment not criticizing this approach
but just as a point of contrast so I don't have your version uh sorry i'm sorry yeah go ahead i don't have the version that you shared initially Erica but I'm not sure that was included the sort of reference to it it wasn't it was
in my notes and that's that's why I regret that I wasn't able to introduce it in that way okay okay can um I yeah I guess my question was kind of along the lines of Erica's but I I
was trying to read this not as me the committee member but as a as somebody in the in the town um as reading the public survey for them and the the topics of interest I I totally get wanting to kind of grease the wheels a little bit so people start
thinking about like what's what's at stake and what's what's [Music] um what's up for grabs um so to speak but I do find it leading i I totally appreciate that it says it's not an exhaustive list and I don't know if we can make that language more strong uh to
say it's not exhaustive and this is not what the this these six points seven points or whatever aren't what the charter is about um it's so much more than that so I just feel a little uncomfortable that people are going to feel like they need to need to talk about one of these six things whether we
I don't know there's just sort of an inference there that these are somehow more important than other things so it makes me just feel a little weird if I were reading this as a town official or a staffer bernie I I sent along to um the
committee as a whole and then to uh the committee working on this uh questionnaire a series of questions that I thought were appropriate uh none of them appear here and so I would like to understand why the the open-ended questions I
I phrased and formed that would get counselors to talk about their experiences and what they've they found and done found and where where they might make improvements in the charter um aren't included in here and I'd like
to know if my c My questions my comments were shared with the Colin Center uh because I I I think as I'm looking at this questionnaire it it might be appropriate for town employees and I would start by striking do you live in Ammerst and how long have
you lived in Amorest if you're a town employee you're obviously you're you're interested in Ammeris um and you're going to respond um none of this questionnaire encourages the kind of discussion we've seen from Hani or
Dumont um interestingly enough both of them are lawyers where you you you'll look hard at what you've experienced on the council and with working with the charter and where things may be made where there should be
changes made whether you want to add something or delete something you're not going to get that from this u you're not going to get this from that from kind of information from this questionnaire nor will you get that information from something that's yes no
scorable i I I I fail to understand why people don't want to have uh give the elected officials people who actually have lived with the charter for the last several years the opportunity to do some
open-ended free association discussion about what they've experienced because that has that will and we have that and we have our now laundry list of topics that people have raised and and I'm sure we're going to see some
overlap and we're going to get better guidance but asking um you know asking a DPW worker to um talk about the structure and allocation of authority in town government uh which I is my comments on that was is that you know
that's not the capstone topic in the MPPA program um I I don't think that's a you know I I you know the the the person who checks the meters is going to maybe they do want to comment on the structure and allocation of authority in town
government but is that necessarily first thing on their mind and will even respond to this because um their position has virtually no relationship to the charter um they might offer a comment as someone who you know works for the town and and
and sits outside the the the weekly operation or the grand warp and woof of the operation of the charter so sorry to come on so strong about this but no I'm not sorry to come on so strong about this
start to ask the counselors and the members of the town the town's school committee and the library trustees to begin to describe to us their experiences with the operation of the charter where it it moves things
along where it frustrates things and how we could make some constructive changes in that document this doesn't accomplish it marcus then Raphael then Erica and then I have my own comment thanks Julian i I
was just gonna say I was gonna agree with Ken's comments on I think some of these are leading i also do agree with Bernie's comments about some of the aspects of this you know I overall it
comes down to I think trying to combine uh people that work for the town and people that act for the town in the same survey it's a nice sorry a nice idea but
I think it may be you know a bridge too far i think we do need to delineate that because you know to Bernie's point someone of the DPW I mean even Guilford has got a a completely different viewpoint than say a counselor and I
think we don't want to try and get uh you know two things out of one questionnaire so anyway Raphael yeah yeah Bernie Andy we did review your comments during our meeting i think this process that we're going
through now is one we cleaned up what Erica offered um we kept these open response questions in play julian has another version for me what's most important is for us to come to some decision about what this will look like
so there's another um questionnaire survey that you'll see from Julian so this is just one option um we need to make some decisions about how it'll look moving forward
so yes we did review erica thank you um just wanted to quickly respond to the some of the issues that Bernie brought up um when I met with the Colin Center about just getting some ideas about this
I did not present them with formats uh either yours or mine um in order to just get their straight up guidelines on what they think are successful examples some of the some of the examples that they shared with me were from other towns and
some of which followed quite closely this format that doesn't mean that it's right for us but that I just wanted to make that clear um I didn't keep your comments or my comments from them for any particular reason just to get their
as as straight up um a guideline conversation going as possible the other thing is I didn't quite understand Bernie from your comment whether whether you just felt like the the last part of this was closing conversation down too much or whether
the whole thing because I heard you say I feel it should be more open-ended in order to get the true experience the true lived experience of people who've been in office uh or in whatever office in whatever whatever capacity so are you
saying it should be more open-ended what I'm saying is is that um if this is a questionnaire intended for town employees then with a little bit of modification it's fine it is not the
questionnaire that I would pose to or the questions that I would pose to elected officials or the town manager or Athena or the um finance director is those are folks who have a very different level of
experience with operating uh with the charter and the council on a week-toeek day-to-day basis understood so I just wanted to clarify so it's not necessarily it's not necessarily the format you're saying but how it's tailored to the audience we're not
supposed to have this much back and forth Bernie and Erica if you somewhere it might be helpful to allow people on but that's you know that's not my fault raphael I had my hand up by mistake i'm sorry
okay um Erica go ahead i just wanted to have one last comment which is I'm asking the questions in good nature and to say I I would fully support and it would be relatively easy to do two surveys that are they're slightly more tailored to
those two audiences and their their differences in experience and differences in what we want to solicit that's I have no problem with that so I'm going to close this out i'm going to start screen sharing my own form
um that I created um that I don't think is exactly it might be a little bit better to what Bernie's talking about but it's not certainly not exactly where you're going um I will I have my own personal
thoughts on all of this but basically I've been hearing a lot of questions about the Collins Center and they for the form that both Erica made and the form that I made it is reflective of
many of the um things that they sent to us and in addition um the council has approved the funding and authorized the manager to enter a contract and a contract is in the process of being
either found or written up and sent to the manager to be signed um and I am meeting with them this Friday for the first time individually at 4 o'clock i'll report out on that and after that um other members are welcome to join me at those type of meetings as well
um so that's the first thing and then I'll screen share this and I'll go through it and I'll explain what um what I was thinking like Raphael did and we can choose uh which form to go ahead with i
personally have a lot of positives about the form Erica and Raphael and Meg proposed i just think that the reason I created a separate form was because I think this committee has been asking for lots of public outreach and we need to
be able to aggregate that data into themes and pie charts and that sort of thing um for our use later on in the process in addition we don't want the survey to be intimidating as in a counselor or a school committee member
or a town employee goes through this and says "Yikes they're asking me for six paragraphs about this i can't write this and spend 5 hours on Monday nights and work a day job." Um we want it to be a
little more approachable um than that so we have the same preamble you've already read that it's no different um I did include this in a Google form um as opposed to uh air drop or error
table whatever it was called simply because uh a Google form can be like made into a QR code and shared more easily and folks know about it a little more i think the committee agreed that that would be an appropriate change no matter what form we decide to go with so
this is first questions this is the second question um this is asking for people to describe their role so this is a little different than the other survey um Bernie I'm
saying let's know who's responding um I would disagree i would say that all feedback whether it is a town counselor or a teacher or a firefighter DPW employee is valuable but it's important that we know it so we can put it in
context um that's what that allows this allows us sort of a selection feature so we know exactly what perspective our respondents are coming from and how many people say we were to get all town
counselors who respond to this form and one town administrator we would be able to see that broken up in a pie chart and then I have a liker scale here um um are you um should we be having a
screen share yeah I'm screen sharing can you all see this i can can yeah I can no I can't at all that's really bizarre i just see you all really is there Are you looking at one tab there there might be a different tab are you looking Everybody else can
see this I think you got it yeah there was a problem sorry about that no problem okay um do you want me to scroll up so you can see the rest of it okay no I was listening intently i just uh was going to get lost that's okay um so this is the first scaled question
strongly agree disagree neutral and then I did put an other box so folks can if they don't want to put their opinion in a box they can write about it um what are some aspects i still include some open-ended questions i think open-ended questions
are important it's just sort of having a reasonable mix of different types of questions sort of wanted to get both positives and negatives so that like we're getting a lot of feedback that's sort of negative
or what to change but if folks say yes it works well the way it is we might not hear that as much and that's important to consider too i put a small preamble here um and sort of broke it down the topics of interest rather than uh making it more broad i
wanted to give people some direction when they fill out the form um in to governance structure and I have a few others here just so folks know what we're talking about do you have a question related to a specific question on this Meg um well
I'm just I just want to be clear are you saying this questionnaire would go to everyone DPW workers as well as counselors this question because some of these people Anyway that's my question okay well that but I'll wait till the end and
let Thank you thank you budget process i did a little bit more just because it's been such an active point of engagement in the community so I have it on scaled questions here uh I feel like we should
get if we want a lot of public feedback we should tap places that are already of great importance to the community and we've seen this as one and then I do still have the everything else question and this incorporated a little bit of Andy's
questions a lot of what Erica had to say and changed the scale um and how folks responded to it i'll keep that up while we have our discussion um and my expectation by the end of it is for us to choose a form to send out
and to clarify who we want it sent out to both Raphael's form and my form currently our the plan would be to send them out whichever form we choose to the entire town staff as well as the entire
group of elected officials school committee library trustees town counselors and former town counselors um if the committee wants to change that we can discuss that but I would urge you all to keep your comments to choosing the form and which form we would like to
choose first and then after we choose the form and which form we would like to choose and after we debates the merits of the form that we can discuss who exactly we would like to get that form um I don't think it's helpful to mix those two conversations right now seeing
the level of polarization isn't the right word but that's the word I'll use for it um Andy I saw you raise your hand first or Raphael I saw you raise your hand first actually go ahead Raphael julian I don't know if you want me to surface
Andy and Bernie's feedback on the form that er the the ser the questionnaire that Erica shared i could screen share that for the committee to see i have Bernie's questions if folks want to see them andy
had five questions i have those too do you want to open that up to this conversation or No not at this point i'd like us to sort of consider the committee's recommendation first and then after we consider the committee's
recommendation we consider we can consider the personal views of individual members okay um Andy um I'm I guess I'm um addressing both of these uh forms
where we are picking certain areas to uh point them toward and I'm wondering if there's a more neutral way of jogging their minds and I have um a page up from the charter which is basically the table of contents
which shows the articles in the charter that might be a neutral listing that we could use rather than pointing them to you know a few things and saying this isn't an exclusive list so I'm wondering if I could share that just so people can
see what that what that looks like and see if that might be a way of making this less uh you know making it a little more neutral sure you could do that i'm just again I feel like the committee needs to either
formally vote down the subcommittee's recommendation or should choose um a form or should say subcommittee go back to the drawing board those are all options before the committee i think it's just difficult for me as chair to
juggle what if Andy brings up something and Bernie brings up something and Meg brings up something plus these two forms it would be difficult to juggle five different form proposals at the same time
well I'm not sure how we work as a committee to I would propose edits or amendments to the form that could be sort of done either in real time or sent back to the subcommittee to do and ask that the subcommittee either work off
those amendments off of my form or work those amendments off of Erica's form so I guess I'm what that's what I'm proposing I I guess is that rather than the limited list and and more pointed list that both of you have used that maybe we could use the t you know the
the list of the articles as the grouping to prompt people to think within categories and that's what I was going to show people but Okay yeah um Bernie I don't have a problem you screen sharing it you can go ahead and screen share i just Yeah I have I have nothing
andy's you you wanted to screen screen share the uh Yeah we have to It says someone else is sharing i'll stop you can go ahead um while Andy's doing that Bernie would you comment yeah I I really think that we need to step back and take
a look at both of these because I I think the format for both of them is is inadequate for elected officials and I was happy to hear that there's an openness to creating a different kind of form or interview processor
um for for the elected officials the other thing I would say is when I go to our um our uh document center there are no documents in the document center that were received from the Collins Center which apparently some committee members
have had access to but not all of us and there are no notes of discussions that folks have had with the Collins Center uh on the document center so I would ask that the Collins Center materials that were shared be posted there so we can
all see them okay um I can work with Athena to do that the uh currently I am in discussions with the Collins Center and so is um I believe Andy to an extent um the
reason that hasn't been made sort of public to everyone is just because it's still we have approved by the council but we haven't gotten it signed yet so I'd rather present everyone with to clarif to clarify
there are members of the committee who have referred to documents or samples they received from the Collins Center in doing their work i would ask that documents received from the Colin Center which are public
documents be posted to our website so that other members of the committee or people from the community can have access to it i'm not asking for detailed notes on what contract discussions are going on with whom okay um once those documents are
finalized that can be done may may I speak no go ahead you got stuff from Collins may I speak yes go ahead i had a I had a um 45 minute meeting with one person from Collins to get some to get some
questions answered about some best practices in that meeting some documents were shared with me live that I then used to create a draft i have no problem sharing those they were not like it was not a document dump that then I hoarded it is something that I can share and
it's not it's not secret that if that's what you're referring to i'm not Yeah I'm not saying anything is being kept secret i'm just saying information that's fine i have no problem sharing that the other thing is I did write up notes from that meeting and because I
was absent I shared those notes through Meg i'm not sure if those were included in the document packet but I did share those notes with the committee um I shared notes on what I learned from Collins i shared notes on what I proposed for uh interview protocols i
shared my draft that you all worked on or worked from um so those things were shared um I forwarded those sorry can I just I have my own comment and then I'll call on Raphael and then I'll call on Meg um
so I have gotten two documents from the Colin Center document A is the proposal and document B is the presentation i've had probably 45 emails with them and I meet with them tomorrow for the first time that's the first time I've ever met
with them i'm happy to recap to the committee what that meeting is and I'm happy to share the proposal that um they've given and the slideshow i believe the slideshow's already been shared with you and I believe the
proposal may not have been in a packet but it certainly has been screen shared in this meeting um and the only document that needs to be finalized is an actual contract with them for the town manager to sign and the reason I can't share that with you is because currently it
does not exist raphael yeah I want to recognize the process a little bit of the subcommittee i appreciate that Erica reached out to the Galin Center we didn't have a contract with them so we got some guidance through Erica about what they proposed
we adapted that survey um for you all to review great feedback tonight i think the question that we were trying to address Julie and I Julian and I not that the questions can't be tweaked i think a bulk of our conversation on that night was should we
have open-ended questions alone or questions that are we can quantify i I think we wanted to get feedback about that in terms of specific questions we understand we might have to tweak but I want to just surface that Erica got some
guidance provided us with the survey or questionnaire and we tweaked it based on some feedback i still think the committee as a whole should see Andy and Bernie's questions i know Julian you incorporated some of them but just to
surface that as well we're not we're not seeing where these surveys are done or questionnaires are done we're just trying to get feedback from everybody here yeah andy have you been have you been able to screen share i don't see anything yet i did uh but I figured that
the conversation was going on so I Yep i can read share but um No I I just wonder Go ahead with your comment and then I have something I'd like Yeah I sorry Meg you're online first i just a
quick footnote that I did forward Erica's notes from the March 27th meeting i screen shared them and then I forward them to everybody at um I mean I have it right here that evening okay and at um well I can tell you
exactly it was at um 8:46 on March 27th if you want to I I might have needed to put them on the website but I they were shared and I appreciated Erica sending
them when she was having a you know in a at a difficult time i appreciated it very much i I um Go ahead i'm finding it hard to to review documents that that we didn't get in advance and that I can't look at um I
mean just to to have somebody scroll by and then I'm I'm trying to compare two things that I just saw scrolled by um and I don't know I I just I find that difficult i I am having the same problem i have gotten requests from a few
members that things aren't ready to be put in the packet or whatever um so it's I yeah I cannot screen share i can screen share stuff other members can screen share stuff but really it
shouldn't go through me i in fact I think I'm gonna make a rule about this which is set within 24 hours of the meeting before 24 hours of the meeting have your anything you plan to share in the
meeting sent to Athena you don't need to send it to me you don't need to send it to the other members send it to Athena and tell her to post in the packet if for whatever reason it's not in the packet you can email her and ask "Excuse me is this in the packet?" And that's
that some stuff she might not be able to post in the packet she's very busy but that's how it should be done send it to Athena you can CC me and send it 24 hours in advance 48 hours in advance within enough time that she can
reasonably post it and then if it's posted we will review it as a committee and if it's not posted maybe we just shouldn't review it as a committee and I think that might be the right rule to set if
it's it might make the process more bureaucratic but it will not um lead to this sort of back and forth where members feel they're in different places um so I I personally admit I could do better with that i shared my Google form
in an email to the committee i did not post it in the packet so that is on me i know other members could be better with that as well um so that's where I'm at i think that's an appropriate rule um but
I am going to move us back at this point to the forms basically I I don't think we're going to get this entire committee to agree with what to do on the forms um I hear Andy
has one perspective which I think is a good one i'm hearing me and Raphael might have a little bit of a different perspective and then Bernie has a different perspective so I'm looking for us to choose a form or choose or make a
decision and vote one way or another raphael share like the questionnaire that Erica produced hasn't been changed substantially we just a few things um so people have had that in advance
we want to surface what Bernie and Andy shared and think about how it might lead to an adaptation of that document that's fine but people have had that survey questionnaire for a while mhm okay i may
and then I'm um I'm interested to know um we discussed having one survey versus one for the people who were elected and another for people who were have other positions i found and Bernie's argument
persuasive and I'm curious if others do as well to have two surveys rather than one i'm sort of on the fence because I was in that other discussion but it's seems to me he raised legitimate points particularly the difference between someone who works uh in a department at
a level where they don't interact with the town council versus someone who's elected the school committee the uh counselors the town manager and the library trustees that seems to be a a base question that
we need to address unless nobody agrees with Bernie I'm kind of I have been persuaded i'll offer my perspective um for you and then I'll call on Ken and Marcus uh which is my perspective is I don't necessarily agree with Bernie um I
think he has a lot of great uh things to provide this committee but I think that having a form that says to the town in general will decide your position basically like if they have a place
where they can put their position as a elected official or a town employee or a school employee that is clearly delineated and Um and I think that the way Google Forms works we can break up
their answers into town employees said this elected officials said this and that is enough to me to be able to break up their answers and make those value judgments i think that I worry that this
committee is heading down a path where we're thinking that for whatever reason um it is less valuable or less important to have input from a school teacher or a DPW worker than it is to have that input
from a lawyer who's ran for town council like Mandy i understand what Mandy is saying but I think that I struggle with the idea that folks like we don't allow those folks to run for council so we
should at least have them have some level of elevated input in this process in my opinion I I also struggle with the idea that um we as a committee if we break it up
to what extent do we break it up because I'm hearing that we want to break it up to town counselors town staff and how do we differentiate between a town staff person who does not interact with the charter and a town administrator staff
person if you will how do we break it up between a school committee member and a town counselor i think that's what that select your position is for in the form as opposed to making 15 separate forms
um which feels like sort of a waste of the committee's time anyway that's my perspective marcus yeah I'm going to disagree um sorry i think we just need you know two forms
right people that work within the the uh charter and people that work for the charter so it really is we can't have um everything all in one we can't have a catch all because we have so many two
really honestly completely different scopes of experience thoughts um out of somebody you know a counselor and we want to like you were saying though we want to capture everybody's input here we we're not ignoring one
side or the other but there are specific areas in being a you know being an Athena being a Guilford being someone that you know almost like drives a a plow truck you know there that side is
one thing the council is another and I think we do need to try stop trying to catch all and I agree Google forms will help us split it out but it's the focus of the questions that is the difference that we can't
necessarily put all in one so thank you yeah thank you um Raphael do you mind if I share my screen Julian go right ahead yep can you see that yeah that's great so Andy I think
you surfaced this in your feedback um you talked about maybe separate surveys for folks but you had these questions that you think could work for all so I just wanted to bring that to the table in terms of specificity in terms of groups of
folks or some overarching questions that there's some proposed here that Andy thought could work for all so just adding an additional point to this conversation so I don't know if people got saw this from Andy i don't know
where it went but I just wanted people to see it thank you yeah thank you um should I stop sharing or people want to keep it up i'd like to keep it up but Erica
yeah um I had a comment but this I wanted to ask Raphael is this are you sharing this um I lost the context is this yeah so in our meeting Erica we had notes about feedback that folks gave on Erica's survey so I have that feedback
here so we referenced it during our meeting thank you sharing that here thank you um my comment was about the um the question that me raised about should we have one question or two and I wanted to address that i think that there's a
utility to having more than more than one version of the the set of questions that we're trying to ask from people who work in the town in various capacities for the town in various capacities and I wanted
to just make a technical point because I I I gather that there was a discussion about um uh Air Table versus Google forms i don't need to revisit that i don't really know what that was about but I just wanted to say that I had the notion
that because I'm the one that set up the air table I had the notion that if we wanted to set up for instance one for town officials elected officials and one for town staff of of various kinds that that could
actually be contained within one survey link and that questions could um be conditional based on what role someone uh says that they have in those opening questions if that makes sense if someone
says my role in the town is that I serve on the town council versus I work um uh I work in the town manager's office versus I work on this committeeever you can have a set of conditional questions that come up
um based on that inquiry and the advantage of that as I see it is that you are distributing one survey link and gathering a set of answers that are conditional to the role but all in one
bucket and that can be sorted by the role etc i'm not I don't get a commission for a hair table and I'm not selling it but I'm just explaining that that was part of my thinking in setting up in that format as opposed to others and that there are also opportunities
within that platform to do um ranked answers not just open-ended answers so if you wanted to do scale stuff like one through five agree disagree that sort of thing um can also be arranged i just wanted the committee to have the all the
information about that so that that might be that might be a a technical solution to the question of do we want to have one two or somebody said 15 different forms i think 15 is too many i think we can get away with two
forms for the purposes that we're talking about yeah I I agree erica Andy um I I just sent these questions to the committee the outreach committee because they were the ones working on the survey draft so that's I didn't send them to the whole team because I thought that
might be illegal or something but um when I look at them again I actually think that these questions I don't I'm not sure i liked actually um Julian's just you know having a a drop down or whatever so that
people can identify whether they are a counselor or a you know just a publicly interested citizen or anywhere in between um but I kind of think you know even without even cutting off the ends of these questions if you if we just
asked what aspects of our town's government are working well from your perspective what aspects have been difficult or challenging from your perspective are there specific pain points that you've seen do you have any particular suggestions for changes to the charter at this point is there anything else you'd like to share about
the char town charter how it or our government and how it functions pretty much anybody can answer those questions from their perspective and if we ask them to identify what that perspective is in a question right before it um you know this is sort of
initial data gathering to see what people will say and then we can follow up with you know we can probe more deeply with another survey if we wanted to um but it seems to me that and I guess this is why I said I I sent this
in just because it's generic enough that people can can fill it out from their perspective and then if we have a list of you know the the articles of the of the of the charter to say these are the
categories of that are in the charter just to remind you and you know that to me would be fairly easy to for people to answer from whatever perspective they're coming at so that I guess that's what I was thinking of so I just wanted to clarify that
yeah thank you Bernie yeah I um I want to confess to having missed Erica's notes um I understand how I managed to do that because I got as far as the link to the air table which didn't work and then Andy sent another email saying "Here's a link to the air table that
does work and I didn't go back to the original correspondence to look at the notes." So I I thank you for sharing those Erica and again it was a very personally difficult time for you um I I'm my questions are I think somewhat
along the same lines as Andy um there may be a little bit more uh formal in their phrasing i also suggested that there needs to be u a different slightly different
approach taken in terms of the school committee uh the elementary school committee not the regional committee the elementary school committee and the library trustees because uh they have a different relationship with the charter
than um does the members of the council so if we wanted I I I still would argue that we need to survey the counselors
trustees the elementary school committee the former counselors in a separate document to acknowledge their positions and their role in terms of living with and making the U charter work which is
at a different in a different level if you will not saying it's higher or lower better or worse but it's a different perspective than would be shared by employees of the town i'm not trying to denigrate any employee of the town and
I'm not trying to say that we shouldn't solicit their their advice and information quite to the contrary i'm saying we should what I'm saying is is that again I I think the council at least the council president former merits some special
attention and I would you know and go through and do a preliminary survey and then go back and do yet another survey and get you I would rather have them u kind of put as much out as possible upfront that we can then use and and
fine-tune our our our other questions bernie would it be helpful for me to share your open response questions that you've shared if if I the committee seen them I think u because you can share them now if you want but he's already seen them because they were
previously submitted just to refresh people's memory they're here so this is what you offered i I struggle with this sorry Marcus go ahead and then I'll share my comments on this oh sorry no it was just a quick one
um kind of forgotten it's been a while um no I was really liking Erica's idea about the single you know way to access it but then multiple ways through the the uh
um question i think we you know there's obviously a need for core questions uh which will be the same for everybody and then you know targeted questions depending and the ability to change that depending on answers is very good i I
have no skin in the game on whatever particular um technology we use but uh it all sounds good to me so all right thank you yeah I I'm looking at these questions
um I think they're good but I think it misses like we could have the approach of what Andy said to have it be the entire charter and we go charter section by charter section that makes a lot of
sense to me i don't think that it makes sense to have questions like this they don't really include anything about the budget or the town um or the town managers authority or anything that the
community is currently rallying around and I think that completely excluding that from the questionnaire feels naive to me so I think that we should have a lot more sort of I I don't think we need
leading questions but we need questions that address what the community is talking about um and we can make those as sort of bland as possible or neutral as possible but we have to address them I think as a committee that's just my my
opinion so that's why I wouldn't support these types of questions um Bernie this was written before there were any surveys done or any any of the information compiled that's appeared in our document center and again thanks to
Andy and made for them they don't It's intended to be open-ended to give the counselors the school committee and the library the opportunity to raise those here are the problems with the budget process i think we've already seen that
in in a couple samples that we've gotten uh from the two counselors one current one former who responded um you know what the community finds difficult or or puzzling or needs
clarity on is is certainly valid and it needs to be addressed this would allow us to say does those topics come to mind in the mind in the council's mind do those topics rise to the surface it's
the whole point in being open-ended is to get people to tell us what they have experienced and what they feel important you may not get from a counselor that the budget process needs revision on the whole you might get from a counselor
that the time frame between the seating of the council and the presentation of the budget is insufficient those both address the same problem or both speak the same problem budgets but they're fra they'd be phrased very differently
just to try to move this along it seems to me in this discussion which I hope people don't regret having um that people have said it does make sense to have a different survey for elected people from the staff who are
employed and another point just so I don't have to speak again it's always possible to do something that's quite general if we had two surveys with a follow-up survey that's much more specific that addresses points where maybe people didn't agree or there was
um a need for more information i just think we need to get it going uh get something out there but I did hear I think a feeling that it it makes sense to have two surveys but I'm not I just want to test that because that
was one of the things we have to decide okay i agree i'll make this motion and I'll see where we go because I have a meeting in 20 minutes and need to hop off at 8 um Well so do we all yeah
exactly um so basically uh I'll make the motion that we approve the uh Google form with um with scaled and
uh liyker scale questions um to be sent to the town uh and school staff as well as to the town administrative folks um and then that we
send uh and then that we task the outreach committee with coming back to our meeting um next week with the uh with a separate survey for elected
officials only school committee library trustees town counselors current and former and that that be all one survey the town counselors library trustees and school committee that's a lot to put in a
motion Erica i'm sorry could Could you simplify that maybe it's too um so that we approve my form based that we approve the Google form that I shared tonight for town staff um and
administrative staff and that we task the outreach subcommittee with a form for town counselor school committee and library trustees as one group raphael sorry we need a second and then Yes and
then Meg and then Raphael julian recognizing that some people shared like they perhaps would want more time to review do you want to consider that in light of the fact that they just saw your survey
tonight or I don't know folks just saw it tonight i I can't recall that's that was almost exactly what I was going to say sure because you have two things in there do we want to have two surveys and do we like yours better than the one that the committee did i mean right we
worked on that so I didn't hear that second point discussed decisions we have to make tonight Meg so if you want to split them up into two motions that's perfectly fine but we need to make So I amend your motion to
be simply we think there should be a different survey for the elected officials from the town employees i second that okay um Ken my uh comments were the same as Raphael's and Megs um so I'm totally on
board with uh amending the um the motion erica I also was going to ask that same thing so we're done we can The motion's been seconded okay we can vote on that um what is the motion yeah thanks the
motion is to create two different surveys one for town town counselors current and former and one for town staff it actually was for elected people so it could include the school committee and the library trustees yeah I'm sorry
elected sorry about that okay elected and employed and me before we consider this what is do you have any proposal for what to do with the two forms that have already been Well that's a second question and
that's why I think it's good not to have your your your proposal had two separate things that you might not agree with both of them so that's why I separated it out that's fine um then I'll move to voting uh Erica
yes ken yes meg yes raphael yes andy um abstain marcus yes bernie
yes myself I'm a no um so that is uh that is one abstension one nay six in favor um so that passes now let's move on to the next thing
um which is uh which is we are discussing the which form we want to use for which group so basically we have these two forms on the
table do we want to send one of them out to either our town employees or to our elected officials i I sorry just a quick I don't know that we need to choose which form to send to
which people right I think it's a case of choosing one form as a backbone which which one you know which way are we going to go as a backbone um because that'll there's no to me there's no point in having one kind of
collection on one side and another kind of collection on another um Let's let's say well we're going to go with basically Google or the other way and then you know then we can look at the questions and
Sounds good do would you mind making a motion for one way or the other so we can uh Yeah I motion that we um utilize Google forms as a means of data collection for our surveys with the scale with the uh I would just say
utilizing I don't the scale is a way of doing it is not the only way so I want to avoid that right this second okay it's just that we had a discussion about open-ended versus not open-ended so I'd like us to make some sort of decision on that because that's what the committee spent most of its time discussing
i think the motion is to just start with are we going to use a Google form yep okay then we can say do you know what do we want yep right exactly yep i'll second that that makes sense to me to use a Google form erica I have a clarifying question is this a motion
about what technical platform we're using or is it a question about open-ended versus yeah that's what I micro scale questions because that's very different things I don't feel like we need a motion on what technical platform do you think but
that's what I heard so that's why I'm asking a clarifying question is a Google form is irrelevant if it's or whatever platform is irrelevant if it's a question about the format of the survey Okay right i um motion is just clarify so I
can write it down i I was going with the uh motion of the technical just because um they are you know we have one survey in one format and one survey in the
other um I think that those surveys are a backbone they're not necessarily the way to go and then Andy as Andy points out we can talk about you know sliding scale or open-ended or whatever so just think we need
to choose one way or another yeah and I I Julian you seconded right so yeah I I mean I don't have a problem yeah I was just unclear on what we're voting on but I second I'm unclear on the motion for the sake of the minutes i'm sorry folks
that's totally fine uh the motion is whether to is that we choose um to move forward with a survey based on Google's uh forms and I would support that just because I think people people are familiar with
Google forms and it's a it's a more low tech solution which I think will probably increase um response i agree yep that makes sense to me meg so if one wants to vote on general versus specific that's me
raphael had his hand up sorry raphael had his hand up first i'm sorry it's unfortunate Juliana i think like this conversation we wanted it to be I think like focused on what we discuss open-ended or not I don't think we got
enough of that and in terms of the subcommittee's work like I wish we had made that decision and then moved into some of the questions about that that emerged here i think Erica got some guidance you had Bernie in play Andy in
play you created something but I still feel we're not clear about some of the things in terms of questions to be asked and focused which is unfortunate i I I agree it's very unfortunate that we have not actually answered the question the
committee posed and our meeting is almost over um Meg Raphael said what I was going to say i I I don't know how whether vote on Google or not i just think it should be open-ended but I don't that anyway I'm agreeing with Raphael i think that's
what we wanted input on about that's what that's what we're trying to decide Lykard scale or open-ended i feel like we need a mix of questions but that's why because there was that disagreement in the committee in the subcommittee that's why we brought it to the
committee to decide and that's what I'd like clarification on i think we need a balance of the two types of questions um yeah it was not that's not how it went in our committee
also the motion on the table is about a technical platform when I just want to make clear both technical platforms are capable of both kinds of questions so if you really want to make a motion about a a
software that's a different kind of vote yeah I'm I'm withdrawing the motion it's fine can I make a motion go right ahead yes thank you um I would like to propose that we since we're meeting next week correct yep
and one of the comments that came out tonight in the conversation is that that the two versions that are on the table weren't given enough time to be sufficiently reviewed by the members to sort of make a reasonable vote yep
so given the what you proposed earlier Julian to remind us all about the timing of submitting documents to be reviewed I'd like to propose that we submit the two versions that are on the
table and give the committee enough time to look at them and evaluate them and not rush this vote based on a technical platform that I don't think we're making a well-informed decision about and then have the full conversation as the first
agenda item on next week's meeting and I second that motion i think that is exactly what we need to do and I in addition will ask that all of the committee members when we have that meeting i will be sure that both things
are posted in the packet and I would ask each and every one of you to stick our discussion at that meeting to the question of what types of questions we are asking and not other discussion
items about your opinions about the survey rather exactly what types of questions we are asking i apologize if I sound frustrated ken uh I had a question of clarification to Erica erica did you say that you said something about us
meeting next week as a committee that's what I saw in Julian's that is what we are doing because we have missed one meeting and we need to make up i'm sorry I missed that so it's the um excuse me it is the 24th at 6 okay all right thank
you thank you no problem so Andy go ahead we have a motion on the table yep um I'm wondering if since it was raised uh thank you Raphael for um showing Bernie's and my comments which we didn't share with the whole committee
we shared with the outreach group subcommittee um whether we should have those in the packet as well just for people's information or if that's not or if we don't want to go there good i'll include anything that's sent
to me in the packet i just don't want a discussion outside of the question that we are asking um question is do we want open-ended or do we want a mix exactly yep so also we
h I I don't want we haven't discussed the good point that was made that do you live in Ammerst or not that we can discuss that next week several people have said that's not appropriate but it was still on there
we can discuss it next week but let's first before we discuss it next week decide on open-ended or not open-ended okay and after we make that decision we can discuss good yes um okay i have a
motion on the floor um I don't see any other hands up uh any other questions or comments about Erica's motion for the sake of clarity Erica would you mind repeating the motion to summarize because I can't um reconstruct
it exactly but my motion is that we uh table this right now put all relevant documents in the packet uh well in advance of next week's meeting and give the committee time to review and start next week's meeting
with a discussion and a decision on survey format thank you i second the motion um I'll start voting erica yes myself I'm an I raphael yes meg yes
andy yes ken yes bernie yes marcus yes that passed unanimously good job everybody um okay it's 7:57 um Erica yeah I have a question about
posting all of those documents to the document center is that going to be on you Julian no that should be everything should be sent to Athena 24 hours before the meeting i will personally send my Google form to Athena okay so the ones that you
anyone has in hand should be sent yes by whoever has them correct and a follow-up question does anyone have any objection if I were to send a revised version given all the feedback that came through tonight a revised version of the more open-ended
uh survey so that we have that in hand to discuss next week raphael Erica do you mind checking in about that with me i heard some great Absolutely yep okay right um yes so the process
is if any individual member creates a document send that document to Athena 24 hours in advance of the meeting i um I will do that for what I have and if everyone else does that for what they
have we won't have that type of confusion again um and then the only other thing that I have is that we Rafael do you have still have a question just quickly uh Meg shared a
listening session proposal for the whole group to review because um that is too that's also a pressing thing that we need to get excellent separately erica and Raphael and I ought to discuss whether we should have a very brief meeting before next
week to change that because the dates don't work anymore we will have to find a time I think so we have a proposal for three inerson listening sessions and two on Zoom very specific where they'd be uh we didn't
even get to that yet so we but that wasn't shared either so we'll share it um okay great thank you could I have one other clarifying ken and I have offered to draft a short article that would go in the indie or anywhere else in in this current just telling people about the
website because it did turn out to have pretty interesting comments that Andy and I spent you know an hour and a half yesterday just about the link so they can start giving feedback right now or should we not do that let's let's
wait i don't see a problem with it but let's wait to make that decision okay um it's just piece of in Yeah let's decide it though because it's been sitting there for several months and only 20ome people found it right darcy
has her hand raised in the audience darcy is this an accent okay great perfect um excellent uh anything else i am going to move to ajourn because I literally have another
Zoom meeting to log on to at 8 o'clock second thank you um Raphael no no I'm good thanks for the work that people are doing uh yes yes okay no problem um Mang yes and for the third time I agree with
Raphael thank you i do too um I'm an I erica yes andy yes ken yes marcus yes bernie yes and thanks to uh
the subcommittee and to Andy and Meg for all the stuff that's been happening thank you much yep thank you i appreciate it all right have a good night everybody you too thank you bye bye bye