Rtm - Rules Committee - Regular Meeting

All right, well, since we have a quorum, I'll go ahead and call the meeting to order. This is a meeting of the Rules Committee of the Representative Town Leader. First item on the agenda is approving the minutes for June 1st. Can I have a motion to approve the minutes for June 1st? So moved. Okay, second?

Second.

Yeah. And then, oh, wait. Did you get that Mark? Okay. All right. Thank you. Corrections, additions, anything?

Well, we'll get to it, but on the pension, it can be as part of it.

Okay. Do you want the minutes adjusted? Yeah. Okay. So all those in favor then of approving the Do we want minutes? Aye. Aye. Okay, opposed? We hear none. Abstentions? I see none. Minutes stand approved. Next item is signing District 5 members to standing committees. Speaking on behalf of District 5.

Yes, Mark.

I can do that. I can do my notes too.

So Charles Walker.

Charles Walker, we recommended assigning to public works and to parks and rec. We actually meant to have that done at the last committee meeting.

That is great. Even if you sort of indicate that you want to do that in a full public event, it really does huge things. Yeah. Okay, good. So thoughts? None? All right. Then Mark, you want to move that?

I'll make a motion to recommend as presented.

I'll second it. Okay, second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? I see none. Hear none.

Can I ask our World Series man over here if Sloan or his brother was part of that team? Back in the day, I feel like that name.

Saverine.

Saverine. Was there a Saverine on the team with you?

No, he was five years older than me.

Okay. Because I read the article about you this summer. Yeah. We went up to the game together. The regionals. Yeah.

The original. The regionals.

We went up. I met. I met. The original regional. I met the series man over here. He was a hero out there.

Yeah.

Thank you. I just remember seeing that name in an article.

I have an update from the first selectman. It's on the agenda, but he won't get here until about 745 or so. I did get a note from him. He's proposing two items for the September 28 RTM agenda, an update on the charter and ordinance review process. and an update on Great Island Financials.

But he'll come in and present more with that as soon as he gets here.

So I'll move on to... Can I ask, is that the company how we got a $5 million estimate when we did the... Can I ask you to speak up a little?

I'm really having trouble hearing you. I was not facing that way.

I really asked for them to nail down what they thought the... was going to be. And the number that was thrown out, although it was a swag, was 5 million. We're not at 5 million. So I'd like that to be recognized. And I'll tell it when you see it.

The first selectman will take dialogue. Hold that so John can talk. I'll do that when John gets here. update on the town plan of development. Lois, Amy kind of pointed in your direction.

I know. So I'm going to give an update. So it's a two-year process, and the current status is I think we're on the second draft. The first draft didn't include recommendations, and this draft does. The Board of Selectmen had a draft of their response to the Some of the comments that they had, and most of it had to do with inclusion or exclusion of specific items and what degree it was going to be in the POCD and what degree it's not going to be the POCD. That is under discussion tonight for the Board of Selectmen to agree on their recommendations to go to. planning and zoning. From a standpoint, the public, PZNH has been on this. Amy's done an amazing job coordinating all this stuff, getting the facts there. She submitted for our committee comments to the prior draft. I think this draft came out the end of July. The draft that came out the end of July is the first one that had recommendations. The earlier draft just was a lot of background and a lot of information. So people have been I'm trying quickly to take a look. The current process is that written comments on this current draft is allowed by September 18th. There'll be a public hearing on October 6th. Planning and Zoning Commission will do a discussion on October 13th, and the final vote will be on October 20th or 27th. Obviously, that's all subject to whatever happens in the comments and things like that um i know plant pznh has been on it i know park and rec has also adele's been and patty i don't know you know the for the park and rec committee been involved with it also i'm not sure if other committees have been involved um but so my understanding is that the rtm does not vote on this which is why it's really important to put our comments in there is that true krista okay i understand yes completely planning and zoning OK. The one thing I will say, and I'm not going to be definitive about it because it's my first time through all of this, and I'm really a newbie on the whole committee, and that is it's my understanding that you want to include items in the POCD so that it's a guideline. And I guess I should step back a second. The last 10-year POCD was focused on on development and this one is supposed to be focused on conservation. There's some questions about that. The understanding I have is that you want to specifically include the topics but not restrictively so that you can follow up on them as you have zoning requests and things like that. But So that's the issue with some of the Selectmen things, because they were taking things out and minimizing them. I don't know where that's going to turn out, but for anyone that's interested, I suggest paying attention. And certainly, PZNH will, and probably Park and Rec, will be involved in looking at where it's heading and put some final comments in. But all decisions are based on what Planning and Zoning Commission want to do.

OK. My town plan of conservation and development is something that's done, what, every 10 years?

Yes.

Yeah. So is that a state statute? It is. Because all the towns do it. It's a state statute. Yeah. So we're in the midst of it, and that's great. It's great that QCNH is doing it, and it's great that Park and Rick's involved. Sounds appropriate. And just keep... Because we don't vote on it doesn't mean we can't have comments about it. So it's good that we keep doing that.

And as Lois said, PZNH has been really active on it. Yeah. And Amy's been very structured in how she divvied up the work and then brought it all together. So it's been a pretty involved process.

The committee's been great. And as a newbie on the committee, watching the detail of how people commented and what they were doing and skipping over some of the editorial kind of stuff, but really focusing on the meat and what people needed. I support what Michael said.

I can confirm. Board of Selectmen voted to move forward those recommendations that they had before them tonight.

But what's also discussed there is that at the end of the day, this is the Planning and Zoning Commission's final decision, and that they can, with a certain vote, do not need to, I don't know.

Right, I think it's now a two-third vote of Planning and Zoning to not accept those changes.

Well, that's an individual change. Right.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is a report from Patty on guidelines for our TM members. And she has a nice packet that she put together.

So just by way of background, one of the reasons we started to do this just for anybody who's watching on channel 79 was we felt we were hearing with all these new folks that were coming in they wanted more communication. They wanted to be able to figure out where to get this information. Some of them were very proactive. Some of them needed to be a little more spoon fed, but either way they were asking for information. And so we, I worked, I did a lot of research online to the website. I talked, I watched every district meeting, at least each district had a meeting for these breakout sessions. And one of the key things that I kept taking away was communication. Try and give us more information. Where can we find things? So that's kind of tied in with all this. And then efficiency in terms of meetings. And then bonding was also one of the things that I took away from those district meetings that they are imperative. had mentioned that remember last year where he said, we do so much in our standing committees, but the district, which is how that started in the first place, but the district chairs should host, you know, one or two meetings a year. So after getting feedback from all of you all, pretty much everybody thought it was important to include district meetings. And so that's included in here. So I'm not going to go through the whole packet. I'm going to just read out loud the first page what's going to be in here for the document because Jim Cameron wants me to do that. It covers district chair guidelines, standing committee chair guidelines, standing committee clerk guidelines, so what to put in the minutes, et cetera, RTM member guidelines, rules committee and moderator practices, public meeting requirements, for all district and committees, key contacts and links, RTM year at a glance. So kind of what starts in November, what happens in December, you know, state of the town, the annual meeting, the organizational meetings in November, work your way through, getting into the budget season, et cetera. And then a sample committee meeting agenda. So what I thought for the email that I sent out to you all, I thought that it was most important to just kind of zero in on about eight or nine items for discussion. So the first one I think is pretty easy. At the annual meeting, which is our first meeting after the election, hold a new member orientation, and we've been talking about doing that, as well as distribute. So we'll be giving these packets out to the new members on the RTM, as well as distribute the leadership and the RTM member guidelines to the full body of the RTM.

Can I ask a question? Yes, sir. Election Day Tuesday. How many days after Election Day does our first meeting occur? Two weeks. I'm a firm believer of not waiting until that meeting to hand out this package. I'd like it to go to all RTM members shortly after people are elected so they have a time to review it so that when we're going into the annual meeting, there could be questions, other things like that at that meeting.

So are you suggesting we get it to them before they even come to the first meeting? Because that is the first meeting.

No, I think that where you're elected, here's a package. It's going to be discussed at the first week. So people have time to review.

I have that there's a meeting on the 9th, then rules on the 16th, and then the annual meeting, the organizational meeting on the 23rd.

The organizational meeting. before.

Yeah, it's pretty quick after the election.

Right, but even so, within two days after we know who's been elected, let's get this stuff back. You're going to hear, I'm going to make the same comment on the agendas, that even if we don't have all the documentations, we should be getting agendas out within two to three days after Bruce has decided this is the agenda, which gives people time to start to review, because I'm tired of hearing from people in their comments, well, I don't know what we're voting on. Well, there were ample opportunity to do it.

So Jack, can I ask you, so is this from, do you want this packet to go out right away to the new people that are elected?

Everyone, everyone, everyone. Everyone. Level of play.

Okay. Yeah.

The other thing.

And how do we want to do it by distribution?

Well, we want to do it.

Okay.

Well, would you just say, I'm sorry. Electronically.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm just confirming that.

I'm just not a fan of doing this much printing. So I will always default to electronic. People can print it if they personally need it. But I don't think the town should be printing that much.

No, there was a corroded artery, which is maybe yours came through, but not.

I'm not being critical of you. In general.

Yes. And the thing is, Michael, what we had said before was this laid out in a pretty easy way to go through and can be on the the RTM section of the website as well, dropped right in there.

I don't care what the method of electronic communication, but it should be electronic. And then people will have the ability to print it on their own if there's someone who needs to have a hard time.

Not just to go to Kinko's today for us.

The other thing is, and this is just my preference, is I apologize because I really didn't spend as much time as I should have, and now I have. And so I'm going to give you comments along the way.

This is why we're doing it. It's fine with me.

I believe RTM member guidelines should be the first part of the package. I think that our problem isn't with as much leadership or what rules does or other things like that, that we can do with smaller group. There's experience there, but I think the RTM members need to have what their responsibility is like, Right up front. The other thing is, is on that page. It's page two. I'm actually on page 11. I'm going to page 11.

So he's going back to part four. Part four, 11. Page 11.

I appreciate everything that's here. I think everything is good. But I almost have a section that goes up on top, which is your responsibility.

Oh, as a phrase, you mean? Yeah, as the top thing.

Okay. The ones that I said is get involved. Watch general meetings on topics to be addressed at full RTM meeting. All right.

It's in there.

Read the package. Because I'm going to tell you that people don't read the package that we sent out. And then they said, well, I don't know what we're voting on. Well, you know, do your homework. And lastly, because if you do that ahead of time, ask questions on topics either to people on committees that reviewed it or just in general, you can go back to a board for something if you don't. Because one of the other things that you and I talked about, about that suggested in April, and Pierre and I talked about, is that people are not necessarily willing or in their personality to ask questions in front of the full RTF. So let's give them an opportunity to ask certain questions early. But I want that up here that, look, you're elected. This isn't to put on your resume. You have a responsibility to do some work.

Absolutely.

So I'll give you these subsequently. But since John here, we can, do you want to move to John and then we can? Sure.

So I sent the body a quick email of what I was hoping to do on the 20th.

that's been indulged with your agenda. And it will be two things. The first thing was to present a process update on the charter and ordinance change effort that we've launched. So first, just kudos to this group for all the district meetings and all the input that's been provided. And for your summaries have been very good. I've taken every bit of that information that I can find. And I put it into a master spreadsheet of recommendations. So that master sheet includes not only the stuff the RTM came up with, but all of my suggestions, Jen Chernesky's suggestions, a few department head suggestions, as well as suggestions from town council. So it's got all of them set up into a spreadsheet. The idea is that Everything that's come up and been suggested by anybody is in that master sheet. So I'd invite everybody to go through it when I send it out. If I've missed something, let me know. But I tried to make sure that we were fulfilling a commitment I think we all collectively made before, which is full transparency. Everybody can see every last thing that's been suggested. And when do you expect that to go out, John? By the end of the week. I haven't read it. I need to read it one more time. Then I'll try to do it tomorrow. So that's coming up quick. But anyway, everybody had a long time to read through it before the meeting on the 28th. Accompanying that spreadsheet is going to be a memorandum where I lay out a process that I think will work. And it's also going to lay out what I think are, I think my list is 27 right now, recommendations that I would advance now if it were me. Because out of the master list, there's 110 I think that I've surfaced. But I don't think we need to do all of those. A lot of them actually are not really charter and ordinance related. They're related to administrative functions or things town halls should do or things you got to want to do as a body that just don't lend themselves to charter changes. And so there's a lot of that that I would set aside or designate some other process to address. But I've got a set there that I would recommend that those should advance. But ultimately, it's the RTM's decision as to what to do with those things. So what I will do is sort of lay all that out, describe what I think a process could be for the RTM to follow, to develop some recommendations as to what you want to do because it's ultimately an RTM responsibility. I'd obviously like to be involved in terms of answering questions, offering perspectives, or just reinforcing why I think a certain way about some of those recommendations, but it's so much material. I'm going to depart from what I normally do is I'm going to send out this memorandum and that spreadsheet probably in the next 48 hours to the whole RTM. So everybody can take a look at it and have plenty of time to digest that. So when I come before you on the 28th, I'll have a few slides that summarize what's in the memorandum. And then I want to reserve enough time for Q&A if members have questions for me or want to explore any of the topics in more detail. But it's at that point that really the RTM takes ownership of the process from there. And I'll provide as much input as I can. One thing I want to stress that I think should be a difference in this process, is when we did the charter review commissions before, they're different since we're not doing those this time. Keep in mind a couple of things. One, because of this unique authority we have in Darien, that's unlike any town in Connecticut, you do not have to make all these changes at once and say, oh, well, we have to wait 10 years to do this again. No. Take a few of these changes now, Let these season for a year, and we'll pick it up again in a year and a half once it's gone through a little bit. And we can actually make some modifications to what you have changed if it's not working. So it's a great flexibility that we have, and we should take advantage of that. The second thing that people were disturbed by was that when the Charter Review Commission submitted what they had, it was put out in a referendum. I don't think we're going to need anything like that. You may have a hearing, but you do not have to have a referendum on this. Instead of putting that out as a up or down vote on an entire package, what I think the RTM should do is take each one of the final list, or if you take my list of seven, you have an individual vote on each one. So nobody feels like they're being railroaded with something they may not like. You have a chance to opine on and vote on them individually.

So that ensures- The RTM, the rules had already agreed to that.

That's great. So that gives everybody a chance to weigh in on every single recommendation and ensure that each one has got a clear majority support.

support okay we're at the point right now where two of the districts have submitted final their final recommendation their final thoughts uh we still have uh three about five more that are are four more that are putting them together and uh we've called for final finalists put them together and you know we're not going to continue having uh more suggestions let's have the final suggestions and get them on on paper and then get the district together, the districts together in the meeting and put them all into a packet and then perhaps segregate them into things that the RTM will want to work on and want to look at. Things that the first electmen who will want to hear may agree or disagree, but at least we'll parse them into those things which which go to you and for any changes that need charter or ordinance changes, they'd go to TGS&A committee to finalize. That's sort of the routine we're following so far and we're hopeful here before the end of the month to get the final thoughts from each district together so that we can pull together a meeting of the districts and then say, okay, here, this is it. Now, where are we going to put it? Who's it going to go to?

Take a look at what I've prepared and we'll send out to you guys. I don't think it's overlapping or redundant. It just gives you a sense.

Everything that I've gotten to date

uh it's in there so take a look at it what i've tried to do is say here's a framework to keep it organized so that you can come to some decisions the good thing about it is that if these districts come up with yet more ideas it's very easy to update what i've got is sort of a master schedule for all this so that you have both the raw material if you and you can use that in an organized way to say okay Or do we then bucket it out? Because each set of recommendations, they've got separate codes to them. So there's words for charters, there's ordinances, there's RTM policies, there's town hall policies.

It's all organized that way.

You'll see.

Okay, so I have a follow-up question I'd like to ask.

My approach... You're not conceiving before. I didn't think so. My approach to this was not to do 27 items and whatnot.

but rather we take a couple, maybe low hanging fruit, it may be things that are easy to do because first of all, TGS today isn't gonna get done with 27 days in a time for us. And some of them are gonna require other committees to participate in what's going on. But that we go and we may bring three one night, one meeting for another, some of the things that Patty has, the document she's going on, says that the annual meeting of the year, as well as the organization meeting, those two November meetings or working sessions. So they're not just five meetings going on. And we have done things in them in the past on that. We did a fire engine as well as the state and the town to have those things done. So there are times that we can push this through, and it takes some time to update the ordinances anyway, the chart, but that we try and get it done within the timeframe, but we still may be doing certain things that may take a year.

The only thing I would caution you on is that it makes complete sense to break it up like you said. What you don't want is piecemeal voting, and now let's update the town charter, piecemeal voting, and back this up. You need to take as long as you need to get all your piecemeal done, where they say, stop, and then you're going to hand that off to, and happy to have TGSA, TGSMA's work on all that, but the reality is that this needs to be handled by town council. I just want to give them a package to work on.

on i don't want this meal going to town council so take all the time you need well usually then it needs to come to a stop but town council will be working with tgs today that's really if it's an ordinance anyhow so some of the stuff they will have already seen as they're moving it ahead right so but yes i i i what i don't want is just continuing rewriting and no no this is six months

work done, but there needs to be a handoff and a stopping point.

That's where we're at with the districts now. We went back in writing and said, I want final, this is it. Whatever's on your mind, get it on the paper now, and then we'll move forward, but we're not going to continue sharing ideas.

By the way, the complicated stuff to do is the stuff that's an actual charter ordinance, James. There's a lot of stuff in there that's not that. that frankly is really RTM function related, that is very important work, but unless it crosses some kind of legal line that's really procedural, you guys can straighten all that out in, I think, an easier way.

Well, I'll give you a simple way that we could do really probably in October. There are six instances in the ordinances where the term secretary is used instead of clerk throughout the rest of the ordinances the term is clerk so can we just change everything to be consistent and use the term clerk just it's a just a quick clean up yeah and what i would do is say put that on the list but then i'll require town council to start

So unless there are any other questions, I'll go to the second topic I'd like to present, which is the Great Islands.

I'm sorry, did you have something else? I know it's final. I don't think we want people to think they're shut off. It's an ongoing process. There's going to be discussion, feedback. And just for people that are watching, I don't want them to feel like this is final, final. If you don't get an opinion in by now, you're not going to have a chance to revisit things as it comes back to us, right? Because that's how the committees work, right? It goes back and forth. So that's the only clarification I want to make.

If you've got to have feedback as to where we are now, So you have something to work on. You draw a line and you say, shoot at a moving target. That's not what I'm saying.

The good news is that there's going to be a round two. And there's going to be a process even on the round one stuff where they can provide input and tweak it. But if it's a blazing new idea that's presented next March, let's do round two.

That's the distinction I'm trying to make clear. But to build on what you're saying, TGS should be, as a committee, constantly looking at least at the ordinances, you know, to say, hey, we can modernize this ordinance here throughout the life. So they may be bringing things like that just to do a cleanup here, a cleanup there. And so that's part of it not being final. That's part of, hey, we're coming for something and look, you know, maybe it's time to clean that up. So it's like nothing earth shattering, like a new thing.

That's Okay. Secondly, I'd like to present is an overview of Great Island Financials. So I'm proposing something a little different this time. I'm actually going to present this in order of RTM appropriations. So you guys had an original appropriation for buying the island, and you had multiple appropriations sent. So what I want to do is try to answer the question, okay, if I'm an RTM member, What happened to these appropriations? How was the money spent? It was this dollar amount. It was for this purpose. Let's look line item about what was spent, what's left over, and have an aggregate view of that. So you're going to have a couple of benefits from that. One is you'll have kind of a by-appropriation confirmation of what happened and what's left. You're going to be able to see a complete picture of all the money that's been spent to date and what's left. And at the bottom of that, I'm going to put the estimates for Great Island parking. Right now it's a range and we don't have a final estimate. But with that, you'll be able to see, all right, we've spent this much today, this much is left over and why. Here's what the parking could cost in a range. And therefore, at this moment, assuming we did nothing else to Great Island except parking, This is arranged for in aggregate what we have spent. What I'm not gonna do is talk about financing and bonding and all that. Those are separate revenue raising decisions that I think are not relevant to what we're spending on Great Island. I just thought the RTM could benefit from this type of discussion as opposed to what we just presented. So Town Finance has already prepared that spreadsheet for me. I'm gonna need some time to go back together in a cohesive way. But I will be ready to present that to the RTM, as well as take questions from the group after I present it. So questions now?

If I go, because I do know some of the notes. So if we take the original bond appropriation, because we did the answer bonds.

We're not talking about the bonds.

Yes, right. But I may say bond, but it's really, I'm talking the full original appropriation. So we do the original appropriation. we don't spend the full amount on what we appropriated, because that's equal to the bank, doesn't matter one way or another. Are we gonna know, this is what was done. Here's what was the contingency, which equal those two. Here's what we use from the contingency. This is the final price. And this was returned to the tap because like similar on the first ground of Great Island, initially that the board of finance rescinded about 11 million, if I recall, and then subsequently based upon the last thing they rescinded another four million.

I can't answer that yet. Okay. The spreadsheet is going to have all of that data. Okay. My objective is to present something that's digestible because my objective is for you to have at a fairly complete medium level, a clear understanding of this is what we appropriated. And where the money went, this is what's left over. And how can we think about that? If I get into something that gets down to that kind of micro level detail, it's 150 pages and a lot of complexity that, well, complete. Yes, I could make this very, I mean, very complete. It doesn't get to the goal that I'm trying to pursue, which is understanding. So I would like RTN members to come away from that and say, I get it. And I see where we are. And I see how our processes as RTN members in terms of what we appropriate for the town. I can see the results of all that. It's clear. And you walk away with an aggregate view of this is how much money we've spent on Great Island. Those other details, if it comes up in the Q&A that they will wait a minute, I want to know about this detail. I'll come in with another presentation, but I want to reserve this presentation. And I need to do this in about 20 minutes for everybody to walk away with a fairly clear, high level understanding where we are with appropriations.

If nothing else, though, if we appropriate it, I'm just going to make up a number, $20 million, but we only spent $19.5 million. You'll have that clarity. Right. And then an explanation of what we did with the other $500,000. Usually, if it's a bond, it gets rescinded. If it's not a bond, then we never spend it. I'm going to look at it.

If I feel it can be explained and people will walk away with clarity, I will include it. If I can't. That's all. You guys know my presentation style for this and what I try to accomplish. It's different than what you see in other presentations. And I just felt like for many conversations I've had that the body would, I think, welcome a conversation like that. That's my plan.

The more of that you get, the better, particularly given the amount of money involved.

Would we be able to see that at least at F&B before you present?

I don't like to do that, and I don't like to have presentations out. I've seen too many times where people are looking at phones, looking at presentations, and not paying attention to what I have to say, because a big part of this is my explanation of the numbers. Just keep in mind, There's a difference between pre-reading. So when you see the pre-reading that comes out, it looks nothing like what I present because it's details that I want everyone to read. A presentation, at least the way I deliver, is much different from that. And it's hard to follow unless you are listening. to me present the numbers. And so that's why I don't do that. It's not to hide anything. You can have the presentation and all the source material for all of this. And you can have some minutes and I will send it out for everybody, which I always do. I'm not going to have a free presentation and all that. It's just not the way I present that.

But what we might do in order to accomplish both is, and I know I always ask you for your presentation, to which I distribute, but if we look at it and we have additional questions, we can either invite, especially since we're always virtual, we can either invite John or Jen to come in and answer some of our questions too, if we need a little bit more depth.

Yeah.

The only reason I ask is,

It's been my experience that the people on the Finance and Budget Committee will follow your presentation, let's just say, more clearly. And the questions we would ask would be questions that the body might benefit from. And if Jack has the time or I have time to kind of at least have a heads up, As we're listening to you, we may be able to help ask questions on behalf of the body. They wouldn't think that's going to stop us. I'll consider that. Yeah. That's the only reason. Otherwise, I respect what you're saying. I'll consider that. What else?

Lois has a question. Just one comment in that. And John, I don't know how you do this, and I trust that you can. But what I'm hearing is we'll be making decisions on a very specific area. But it still needs to be in context of a long run. And I know you don't intend this, but I would hate to think of things where we make a bunch of small decisions and before we know it, the project has gotten way out of hand. And when you're putting this together, if you can give us some ideas of how it fits into the long-term picture, I guess that's what I'm trying to say.

Well, one of the good things about the RTM is that no project gets out of hand beyond what gets appropriated. Because if you guys didn't appropriate the money, it ain't getting spent. So that's a good thing about this. I think to your point, Lois, there's a low likelihood that it's going to get out of control beyond what the RTM will tolerate. I think in terms of a longer term vision, I mean, I don't want to speak for my board and for a lot of people broadly, but the town right now is going through a period of debt indigestion. We've taken on a lot of things, and people talk about Great Island, but I would remind you, we just spent $100 million on elementary schools. We spent $60 million on Oxbridge. We're about to spend a lot of money on Middlesex. All important investments. That's why we're here. It's because of the quality of our schools. I'm not saying we don't do that. It's just that all of this has come up at once, and our debt levels are at historic levels. So in answer to your question, Lois, my prediction is that once we get the parking in place and installed, that it will be quite some time before people want to propose significant expenditures on Great Island. So I would say that certainly in the medium to medium-long term, The answer on Great Island is no capital expenditures, but maybe some spending for events and trying to use Great Island. We might do something like that, but I don't envision significant capital expenditures beyond parking for quite some time.

Thank you.

Others? I think you and I don't say that. Yeah, we're very much on this. Other questions? Okay. Thanks for your time.

Oh, John, is there any way I can have the doctor to think you guys are really true that probably was explaining their sense to me on the great island that I walked out on? Oh, sure. It's in the board.

Yeah, I know. I'll just. I was going to say, I've already read it because I read the back of it. Thank you. Thank you, Brent. Thank you, Derek. Okay, we're in the middle of Patty.

Well, under the category of reading the packet, communicating, I think that will be very helpful at the September meeting, even prior to the new. So at least all our existing RTM folks feel like they're up to speed on the next step.

I'd like to add something else. But it's not just the RTM. We have a very viable book of finance that doesn't allow things to get out of hand either. So many of us are in communication with members of the when they're reviewing something. So it's a joint effort of how we're looking at things and communicating back and forth. So, yeah, I just want to, you know, it's not just the idea. It's also the board of directors.

All right. So I'm going to kick back in.

So I saw 11.

Can I go through my stuff and then a little bit and then we go through. But I love your, I mean, let's give and go. Okay. Was there, what was the last thing you wanted to say?

No, I'm just saying, I'd like to move that to number one so that we're... I heard you.

Yeah, yeah.

And I'll give you the notes about it.

No, I actually think that's an excellent idea. Thank you. And then, you know, to that point, we can change it instead of saying, RTM, Darien RTM leadership and member guide. It's really RTM, you know, members and then leadership.

Right.

So that's your point. Like you have to get the port, you know, to the main body of the hundred. And I'm, and I love phrases, right? So get involved, your responsibility, make the packet.

Because everything else on that page is super.

Yep. Okay.

Thank you.

So rolling into the next thing, and that was a lot of what I remember talking to Jay-Z a year ago about how, there was somebody in our district who worked down on Wall Street, and it was really tough for him to leave his office early for the annual meeting, which was 10 minutes, basically, right? You come in, Kristen would swear everybody in, which was great, give a few details, and then at the annual meeting, you would then break up, as you know, into your districts and elect the district chair or vice chair, and then the district the two rules people, but that's a long way to come. And then remember, we originally used to have these RTM meetings at eight, now they're 7.30. So as a result, that's an example of someone who was, was involved in the rtm for a long time but he was like i can't do the i can't do these anymore because these are two in november and then that so um but we it was somebody who was with us for a long time so we're happy for his uh i think there's many people in that particular situation including myself yeah it doesn't even have to be and it can be at your you can be doing work from home and it's hard to get up and leave whatever you're doing for a ton of things. So the other thing that I wanted to comment on was, and we've talked about this throughout the Rules Committee, was that efficiency, efficiency. So if something comes up, whether it's a fire truck, whether it's a board event, I remember a few years back, Jill specifically saying at a board of selectmen meeting, they needed to get something approved. And then we weren't having business done in the November meetings. And we weren't even doing it at that time at the state of the town meeting. So you weren't getting things done until January. So I think that this is a really under the category of efficiency. I think this is a great way to still have these meetings, the annual meetings and then the organizational meetings. So again, the annual meeting, hold on one second. The annual meeting is November 9th. So election day is the 6th or the 7th?

The 3rd.

It's the 3rd. Okay. So it's that following Monday is the annual meeting. The RTM rules committee meeting where we get together and assign committees is the 16th. And the organizational meeting where we then do a breakout session and you meet with your committees. This now gives us, you know, the proposal is to have business done. And I think that's, I think from all the feedback that I heard from people that gave me comments, they all agreed, let's make it efficient. Now, if we don't have anything coming for us to vote on, that's fine, but it should, we should be able to move that forward, I think, so.

Well, Justin, where are you going to want your committees to be? No, no, I'm looking at my calendar and looking at the dates.

Should we fluff our hair?

No, no, it's just I have them all in here and I'll make sure that's all. I'm making sure I'm not screwing up.

So for that one thing, I did add two things and then one that we talked about. Which was one, not only is those two November meetings, but it's also the state of the town, which at times I've had to fight to get something on that agenda. But the other thing important that's in Appendix B, every committee sends the people who no longer are on the RTM are still in force and effective. placement is named at the organization. So if somebody met in October and they had a report, the committee chair or their designee could give that report to the 4TM and it's still a viable report from establishing on both of those states. It's not.

Yeah. And then the only thing I have noticed, I don't know how you all have seen this in your district, once people don't re-up, they don't necessarily come in September or October.

So you do, but most don't.

So that can affect a quorum, right? That can affect a quorum in a committee if suddenly you had four people that were there decide that they're not doing it. Hopefully it doesn't really affect you. so anyways um so the next the organizational meeting is which date the organizational meeting is on monday the 23rd so that's what happens you come in you do an annual meeting in the past it's been like 10 minutes and then they don't do the rules meeting we all do that but that's a very productive meeting obviously and then they come in and um on the 23rd. And that's a good meeting, I think, because people get together. You have, some people are very quick. You know, you can see they break out into different groups and other people spend time and go through it. It depends on how the chair does it. Right.

And our rules meeting where we're signing committees is the 16th.

16th, yes, sir.

Right.

Yep. Okay. So does everybody feel good about formally Having, allowing business to be done. Okay. Terrific.

You can't be beaten six times a year and say that. Not often. Yeah.

And then you're waiting too long and you're not even creating that sense of bonding with your people because you're seeing them in 10 minutes or they're new people. So, okay.

It's great to be here. Krista?

More of a general question. This is amazing. Like, really incredible. I've just seen it for the first time. I don't know. Is this kind of the first reading and you're going to vote on it next meeting just so I understand because I see some things.

Vote on it next meeting because I have confidence in that.

Yeah, I think just I would love to be able to look through it and little things just to... Where I think you would make a meeting in October and we certainly. Yeah, but again, never went on to look at it, read it.

Let's let's get it in for voting on it in October. So it's available for November. That's good. That's right.

And so it's going to come to.

Yes.

Oh, and that's not here.

We put it on the agenda. Are we going to put it on the agenda for the RTM or no? We're just going to vote it ourselves and put it up.

When he was in London, she couldn't dial in, but she had done, you know, everybody gave feedback in different ways and you'll, see it reflected in in this document particularly some of your comments as well i've got some yeah yeah well you can celebrate them all coming from jack and yeah and i'm writing these down yeah like for example she went through and redlined a document uh we were redlining back and forth other people gave me you know these are the three things that i think that make the set most men's or this is something and i'm I can talk about this when I get down to that digit point that you, that point that you made. But go ahead, what's your question?

I was going to say, also, this is now a public document. So while it is your choice as to who votes on it, it's obviously a public document. But now the public is watching this.

We're voting on it by votes.

Absolutely. No, I don't disagree. This is now a public document for anybody to view. Correct.

OK. So just going through a few other points. at the group's meeting after the election when discussing an assigning speech.

Yeah. What page? Oh, you're on your email.

So what I did was I... Okay, can I get a copy of that email?

I have an email.

Can I get a copy of that email? I will send it to you after I get home from this meeting. Okay. Thank you. You can't have emails going to the floor.

Chris, I'll send it to you right now.

Thanks, Mike. It went to the full rules committee. It's needed to be CC to you. Well, not just tell me, you know, We know that, for example, in here, you are sourced a lot, like every time, not you in particular, but Town Clerk. When they're doing the meetings, when they're doing agendas, everything has to go to you from there. No, this was just a, what happened was this is the document I was discussing, and then Lois had recommended, which I agreed. that I just pull out some specific things to talk about tonight. Because so much of this is just process.

No, I just want to make sure there's not a meeting of the rules committee occurring on email.

There's not at all. There's not a violation. I'm going to be very blunt.

Yeah.

I go up, there's no violation of FOIA. This was sent out separately for this document to be worked on today. There was no exchange on this. Patty and I had had a separate conversation because I was the only one on that had not provided feedback. And he and I had a client. So I said, can you please give me.

So everybody got the email and everybody gave feedback.

No one. That's what I'm saying. The first time everyone's seen it. Yeah.

Gave feedback. Thank you.

Yeah, this is the discovery. No FOIA problems.

Of course, when I started hearing emails.

I hear you in the back of my brain.

Okay, so this is regarding now as we're in, you know, we're kind of going down the line, right? We're starting with the annual meeting. the orientation meetings, the November. So now here we are at the rules meeting where we're assigning people to different committees. And Mark had made a point to me about how he always felt, and I agree with this, sometimes when we're adding people on, like towards the end of the year in May, like we chose not to put Sloan and the other guy on because I think that was going to be done at the main budget meeting. We had too much going on. We had somebody from five to explain.

We're sure somebody from five was here. Oh, to go to the background. Correct.

So anywho, but I feel like we do a pretty good job in that first November meeting going, through. This is, you know, I'm from District 1. I'm going to cover these people. Everybody, like, whatever, 10 out of 12 are staying on the same committee. Two new members want to go on. This is why they, these are the committees they requested. This is their background. One of the interesting things that I think Mark said was that to give a little bit more insight if people want to switch committees. And I know I've done that in the past where I've said, this is somebody who's wanted, she'd been on TGSNA because that was the only thing that was available when she came on and she really wanted to get on education someday, you know? And so this was the opportunity because somebody got off. So this is pretty easy thing. It's really just provide a little bit more info on each person in the november meeting but particularly we have a number of spots we have to fill correct krista um that are coming on and so let's make sure we get as much information from those folks why they wanted this committee etc and the other thing is once the um You know, we're going to have people looking at the end of the year reports. That's part of this in this document where for the new people look at the end of the year reports. So you can see what a committee covers what's involved. Is that really, you know, is that something you're really interested in or not? Are you raising your hand? I do.

Just on your point about getting the information. The survey goes out in November. I can bring a copy of that to the next meeting if you all want to look at those questions that solicit. And I'm happy to tweak it, obviously. That would be great. If you think there's not enough information or other questions you think would be helpful.

Yes. But it's not just the end-of-year committee reports, because that's a lot of attendance.

No, it's not a lot. I don't care about that.

I write one thing down, F&B. So... The other thing though is- Scope document. We want, and you and I had a conversation. There are certain changes that he's going to put in that the committee chairs are responsible for looking at slope document and identifying committees that don't exist anymore and new ones that came up. So we have the Great Island Advisory, we have a sidewalk advisory, we have a conservation one that's there. That HHR will be going away shortly. So we want to have that done and we definitely need to have it cleaned up in September so that rules and look at it, make those changes, because that really... They're trying to go for... For what all the committees actually look at. Right. And so, you know...

I'm adding that in the section under standing committee chairs, their responsibility to continue to update their... their scope of their committee.

So yeah, and so that's something that Patty and I were talking about is that there's several documents that people should be looking at to decide.

Okay, so we're good on that? District chair should host district meetings a minimum of two times during an RTM season. The first is recommended in November in order to onboard new people and to bring them up to speed on what's going on. To your point, committees have still stayed together kind of all the way through. until they're reassigned. Most of the time, most of the committees stay together. The second district meeting, and a big kudos to Per here, because you were the one who really started to talk about district meetings. And I appreciate that. And our district one has done multiple ones, which we found very helpful. So the second one's recommended in April prior to the budget season so that in the district reps within our each district can talk about. And I know you'll still be the expert on what's going on overall at the budget, but it's helpful. Like I really know inside baseball on Parks and Rec, you know, Adele really knows it for her, you know, in her district three and give a lot of detail on that. From the financial end. But also, hey, this is the big project that's coming down the line. Or maybe we would have forecasted. I think pear tree is going to get approved, but we don't think we beat is going to get approved. That's kind of because we've been focusing on that within the committee for so long.

But while I agree with you. No, there is a concern.

That.

You know, I still go by the 80-20 rule.

You think you said someone... Yeah, I'm not sure that every district will have

sufficient information to explain a budget to the rest of their members of the district.

Sort of random. Who is the chair? Sort of random.

You know, so Bob, the district.

The district chair relative to F&B.

Right. It's not just F&B, but I have a member from F&B that's now in district one.

All right.

and whether or not that individual has the same capability to explain the whole uh budget they may have been focused on board event they may have been focused on the town so the the question is is that yes that's there i i feel more comfortable with the other conversation that we have is the oxford april meeting where we'll bring people in and have a pre-budget meeting so that we can talk about policies, what's going on. And the big thing is, and Pierre and I had this conversation, a lot of people aren't willing to get up in front of the full RTM on budget night and ask a question, right?

So- Can I talk about that, Jack?

Absolutely.

Okay, thanks. So that's number five, add in an additional optional April RTM meeting Amy Z was very supportive of that as were you and a few others, to preview the drivers of the budget and allow for a more casual Q&A. And when you said that, I thought that made great sense because there are folks, that budget meeting can be intimidating to get up and ask a question. But if it's in a little bit more of a casual atmosphere, so if it can- This is an RTM meeting? So it's going to be an optional-

I don't even want to, we'll have to figure out whether or not it's similar to the district recording because if people are being recorded, they may be lack the honesty to have it, but it would be the chairs or the vice chairs there and other members to be able to explain. So a lot of the discussion that goes on during the budget meeting we can actually start. I mean, we know what the budget is. And we said two weeks because, you know, what's the Board of Finance votes on that? Only if there's a change someplace that they've had to do, which we have done in the past, the change in a- I like you're taking the 75,000 out. No, that's not the change I'm talking about. I'm talking about that they made an error, they calculated- the depreciation tax, or we got more money back from Beloit than we were anticipating. So there was a change on the mill rate. And there's been about four or five of those. And you'll hear even Jim Palin say, if we get this information post all voting, we can always change it in the RTM. We can always give it over to them. So that's the only things we may not know.

Thank you all. And I mean, again, I'm just gathering data and pulling it together. And so very open to everyone's comment. But it would be that April meeting would be done after the Board of Finances vote for that comment. And we would do it, we try and do it in room 206 or 119 here so it can have a Zoom link. I think the Zoom link is really an important thing because if people, you know, that May meeting was tough for a lot of people. So if they think, oh, I got to do this April and May. But I specifically remember a person saying at the meeting, I felt like I went in voting blind. Now, you could say, well, there was a ton of information out there. You could have watched F&B meetings. You could have watched that. But it was somebody who was fairly new who had come in in the last few months. So what our goal should be is to provide as much opportunity for people to be able to You know, Jim Cameron does a great job of sending out the Channel 79 with the digest. Thank you, Mike Willer. You're awesome with those digests. I love them. I send them to my chair. She sends them out on District 1 all the time, whether it was before the sewer pump thing or whether it was before like the Great Island thing, just to get people up to speed, even if we're not voting on it. So I think if it can start to become... part of the communication process. Some district chairs will embrace it more than others, but I think Priscilla Wong does a high watermark.

Who's coming to the April meeting? It's something that's being organized by F&B. Essentially, it's an F&B meeting.

That's what I was going to suggest. Instead of it being an RTM meeting. It's an F&B meeting that we're opening up to the public. All right.

There's something else I want to say. And it really deals with all these things on the budget. I can tell you what my philosophy is on Budget Night. And it's different from many other people that may be in this room. On Budget Night, the presentation is not to RTM members. It's to the town. It's the only meeting in the town where all aspects of the town budget and town philosophies and town decisions are presented in one package. You can listen to the Board of Selectmen meetings. You can even listen to the Board of Finance meetings, but they're never showing some of the slides that we've been producing. They're not showing some of the rationale, they're having debates on what the decisions are. And so, and many of it is on Excel spreadsheets that aren't necessarily as clear as mud. So, I mean, we have them so we can look at them, but for somebody who's new to it and not financial oriented, it's very difficult to follow. It's good for them because that's the work that they're working on. They're excellent documents. But this is the one place in town where you're hearing what's going on, where you can hear about what's going on in debt. You can hear what's going on in the philosophy and how we're approaching things. And I mentioned debt because we're getting a little tight on it.

So to this point, Jack, I like the idea of making it an F&B. A lot of your F&B meetings are Zoom, correct? They're all Zoom. So are you... This would be an in-person. This would be an in-person with a Zoom link.

Yes. And now in the auditorium. Here's my other comment, which is maybe close to the amount that has to do with budget also.

Zoom link in the auditorium. No, I don't want to do the Zoom link.

This is $119,000. Here are two different things.

You said you do not want to have a Zoom link?

Not in the auditorium. I can do it at the toolkit. 206. We have enough. I'm not anticipating. I thought I heard. I don't want to have a Zoom meeting. I want to do in-person with Zoom. Agreed.

We don't do that in the auditorium. Here's the other point.

We are one of the two towns budget-making authorities. We're equal to the Board of Finances except we don't do debt. All right? If you look about the total amount of time that the Board of Ed or the Board of Selectmen do on their budget, the total hours, now they have to live by those budgets, but they're doing more than an hour. If you're listening to the Board of Finance that has multiple meetings that go into debt, they're not living by that. And I'm not counting the bond discussions and other things like that and what they're allocating, because that's part of their job, but it's not an hour. If you want to be part, this is the most important thing with the finances for the town. My goal is a two-hour meet. The last one went on far too long. But it is a two-hour meeting. And this is a commitment. And I know it's very tough for people who are non-financial. I have conversations with them all the time. I've had somebody, when I explained how we figure out the mill rate, finally told me, I've listened to you on the same speech seven times. I think I'm finally getting it. But the fact of the matter is, This is a town meeting. And so certain things are being delivered to the town to explain the whole town financial pitch. And it's not being done in the net.

Okay. You're jumping numbers though. So I understand what you're saying. We're talking about, so instead of doing the April optional meeting that you and Amy were giving, you know, each individually gave feedback, right? Um, make it an FMB meeting here. Fine. We could just, that's a good idea. Agreed. Yeah. Leading into your next point about, um, um, set the time limits on speakers at the state of the town meeting and the budget meeting. So we remember our good friend who went way too long in the state of the town meeting. and I had to run out and get additional cookies to keep everybody going through the program, right? So I'll load up again. And again, Jack, there's nobody better than you in terms of doing the budget meeting. But there was, we could see the drop off. I remember looking, I talked to you Krista afterwards and I was trying to figure out the drop off of when people left because they had hit the wall. It was precipitous. And so we almost didn't have a forum for the last vote. So that's not, so what we're just saying is overall with the state of the town speakers, because they're in our invited guests, You know, I mean, we're not going to tell Jake Z what to do necessarily.

All right.

Well, that's for your agenda.

On the budget, this is server conversations.

Sometimes this year we had a lot of different things that were going on, a question on debt, a question on something else, and a discussion on treasury, which we typically don't have. There's a couple of other things which I've mentioned to Seth. When every town official has left the building, we don't need to take time to go, any other electors, any other that. Is there anybody who's an elector or town official who wants to talk? One sentence, no. But quite honestly, that does save 10, 15 minutes on the whole meeting. Number two, there was a question on something else. But when I look at budget reports.

Okay, I'm going to, I'm going to. So let me, let me go. Okay, please. I will just say that there was some specific feedback about also trying to, I know it's a difference of opinion with you, so you can duke it out with the person who has the opposite opinion, but that we should focus at the May budget meeting on items that we are voting. So we'll leave it at that.

Well, that's why they could do that. I don't care. You know what? Okay. So, all right. There's something else I do want to say. Sure. When committees, and Mark, you've done this all. Well, this is a committee's time to explain what they've done during the course of the year because they've been following budgets well. However, right now it takes $110,000 to move the needle one basis points. So we shouldn't be listening about 7,000 or $10,000 items. We can talk about the philosophy of what they're doing, like there were certain changes in the Board of Ed, or there's certain other things that are going on, but here's the main projects here they're working on, here's the big numbers they're doing, which is how you did reports in the past. So, I don't need to hear about $7,000 items that are going on.

So that's number nine. Standing committee chairs should focus on highlights in their oral presentation at the budget meeting. a few slides and photos can be included on the big screen for the audience to follow. Two or three people specifically said to me, credit to Jack for sending out the slides on that Thursday prior to the budget meeting. So people could, if they had the time, they could look at it, but that you also had something up there and so it might be interesting whether it's public works or parks and rec you just have one or two visuals and then the chair is talking about who incorporated into that main document for budget now yes because as it is i was driving yes lower steps yes yes um and then so you skip down to that but just to um Standing Committee should submit the report to their full committee for feedback in advance of the budget meeting. I mean, you participate in a lot of that. This is a question that I want to ask. This was feedback. That's not me saying this. So, Mark, I don't know. Do you do that? Or do you ask for feedback on your committee report? Or do you just write it and send it out? And... Anybody else who might be a chair who wants to apply on that?

Usually it's a consolidation of comments that take place very much in the budget and the committee. Usually nothing new in there that wasn't already summarized in the minutes or discussed. But no, I don't think I, not consistent. Didn't send out a draft consistently.

I have another thing because I'm still writing at the J of the budget, quite honestly, some of my comments. So you haven't done Thursday.

Actually, the answer is I do present to the committee an almost complete question.

So the answer is yes.

Is it a final? No, I think so. I'm literally, you know, I am.

Do you have it done by the Thursday?

I haven't done the last Thursday.

Subcommittee meeting before the... Yeah, and so from an consistency standpoint, if we're going to do procedures, right, it's like we have the new person on public health and safety. She's doing a great job, right? And she just came in, and I love her report at the RTM budget meeting because she just hit the high notes, right? But she may not... have known. I don't know if she knew that she had to, I'm not saying she did or didn't, but she needed to go through that with other people. But I know, for example, Amy Zee didn't know that she had to do an end of the year report. And I knew that because my chair Adele, who's excellent, is on top of all of that and always did an end of the year report. And those are posted on the town website. And so once Amy, I told her about that, she added it in. You know, it included attendance. It included kind of what they covered for the whole year. So those are just kind of like procedural things. And there's more details on all of that in here, but I was just kind of highlighting, let's be consistent. And so the one last thing is, Jack, I know you're working on the budget all the way up until kind of the end, although you did send those slides out on that Thursday, which was quite impressive.

Yeah, but the slides won't be available for the two-week period.

Mark, you had for the what?

When I'm having the RTM meeting. Oh, that's different. Those slides aren't going to be there. I'm still validating.

When the woman said I felt like I was voting in the dark, I think her point was she wished she could have had the report from each committee that was going to be given so she could have been a little bit more prepared with that. And so... You know, if there's a way to get it out on a Sunday prior to the Monday budget meeting, you know, you say the weekend, I think it's hard to have it done Thursday because everybody's working. We have Fridays here are closed. So I'd love some feedback on that. That was just a talking point.

I do have a comment on getting it out. And I know you're saying send things to the town clerk for distribution. In my opinion, everything has to go to the moderator and the moderator sends to the town clerk, I mean,

beat him up if he becomes that's been my because your moderator is is this body so if i had 100 people sending the town clerk information that they don't like to have sent out or even if it was six district chairs it really in all due respect i think it needs to have the blessing of

What are we talking about?

I'm sorry.

It's coming from the chairs. You're not going to have 100 different people.

Any communication to the full body, I always make sure. So the chairs send it to the moderator, and then it comes out via... the town clerk.

Right. Yeah. The town clerk is a facilitator. Right. Not in charge. Right.

Right. But it comes from him because he's in charge. That's kind of my point.

Yeah. Came from me, but she's got the up-to-date email.

And we just beat him up. Yeah, right.

When you all get the chance, go through and make notes on it or not. And are they allowed to give me directly the feedback or do we have to wait a full month?

No.

Well, what I would propose is that, or I would ask, you guys can do it, obviously, whatever you want, is pick one person to whom all the feedback will go. Right, there's no discussion on the feedback. You collect it, you can synthesize it. I mean, I personally wouldn't say edit it. You should take the feedback as it's presented by the full body. And then in the packet for October... you can outline what has been presented, and then when the body meets, you can take a vote on each recommendation. Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's...

So there's just two or three more comments.

I think it's not that it's in here.

We've been reviewing this now for a while. I just want to suggest that we...

Thank you. But on this, number one, one of the things that I've done is even, and, you know, Paris done some of these reports, you list your report of what was done in the committee. And if you're a secondary, You only mentioned the things that haven't been mentioned before.

That's in here.

If you read it. It says, try to discuss and coordinate. And I'm saying you're only coordinating.

And then it says, Jack, it says, don't replicate what was said.

I understand. Don't replicate. But for me, when I read it, I don't want people to be discussing what each one's reports. And therefore, they leave out something that was discussed in their committee. Our committee reports are on everything we discussed, and then you synthesize based upon the reports that were said previously. Or if we're first and we know we're only handling the finances, we'll have the finances, but there's other parts of that report that we discussed, but I'm expecting Public Works and Park and Rec to have that conversation. And I think that's important to do.

So your F&B finance and the Parks and Rec and the other committees are colored commentary on the NFL.

And the last thing is, because we've had this and there's difference of opinion, but I don't believe every minority report needs to be done by the dissenting votes.

So that was a point that I wanted to, that was feedback that I included because someone had said that.

However, that is the one time.

What page are you on on that, Jack?

I don't like lessons. Page six. but when I have a minority report, then that's something I do distribute to those who dissented to ensure that it was properly written, all right? Now, some people don't want to do the presentations. Others do.

So what is your point?

So all I said is an addition, which I'll give you. In any case, should the chair deliver the minority report review of that report with the dissenting votes is required. So that's the one time that I'll send it out. Did I say this right? Make edits to it as you want, or write it and give it to me. I don't care, either way. And then that's put into the report.

Okay, got it. And then one person had suggested that someone with the opposing view give the minority report, but other people did not feel like that was appropriate, that they felt like the chair should be delivering, this is how many votes there were, this is the reason why.

It matters on the dissent and how long it's going to take.

So anyone else?

Yeah, I think traditionally it's been open for a minority to get up and give their report, but Normally, the chair would give the minority view. And that's usually adequate.

The only time I've seen it different is if there's a tension convention going on in the committee. Or if it's a major, major issue where the positions are so extreme, then yes. But otherwise, the chair can handle it.

And usually in discussion with the dissenting people, They reached an agreement.

Yeah, it was included to Chris's point. I'm including things that, you know, somebody said that was probably not the majority opinion, so to speak.

Well, it's not like there's a committee chair is the defending opinion, too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

OK, great.

I actually gave it to you. How are we doing?

We're getting to the end of it. We're good. We're good. What do you want comments by?

Your meeting is October 13th. I'll send out an email.

I'll send it out.

I will.

October 13th.

I did it for that. I'm not going to make that decision right now. Okay, so you'll update everybody? Yes.

The philosophy I have on getting my comments into her is ASAP is not the bad solution.

now hi can i add something yes this isn't an eye-opening experience not being in the room so but i'll talk about that at some other point not online but my and i'm not sure i've totally understood where we ended up on it but my my thought was on the april meeting which was a pre-budget meeting it wasn't an f and b meeting it was a meeting of all the the committee chairs where they would present their highlights of the budget and get some discussion so that when you go into the budget meeting, all that stuff has been answered, not a strictly F&B kind of concept.

Lois, you were right with the original intent was, but if it makes it easier for everyone to make it an F&B meeting with all the chairs also attending and presenting there, we can do that. but it's called like a joint meeting. That's what I was thinking.

A joint meeting of all committee chairs. It's fine.

Invited to speak. Right. It just makes it a heck of a lot easier to do that.

All right. Well, also we can reach a conclusion on that and, and, uh, This obviously will get modified as time goes by and we use it. As you do it, there probably will be changes as we go along. So this seems to be a good place to start anyway.

I will admit, I understood that F&B meeting to be open to all RTM members. Yeah. So, Lois, that F&B meeting.

I disagree. I don't think it should be an F&B meeting. I think it should be a meeting of committee chairs to discuss their comments on the budget. That was my understanding to begin with. Obviously, I can be overruled on that. You know, that's just my opinion. Lois.

The reason for this meeting was for RTM members who are uncomfortable voting on the budget, not the chairs, to have an opportunity to get familiar with it, ask questions, and do it in a forum that isn't the public meeting where they have to stand up and address.

At the end of the day, where you're first asking a question when we're voting on something, and they might feel as if they're foolish because they might have, should have known this answer before.

But if we're going to have the RTM invited, you have to have a room big enough to hold them. And I don't know how, let's see how many people we have.

Yeah, it is.

It's going to be. Seth, we're doing a Zoom link. And so that really gets people. I mean, that. Okay. Yeah.

Right. Most people will come in and Zoom, they'll stay as long as they want, and they'll drop off.

But that's a perfect time where we recommend the new folks, right? In particular, each district who has a new RTM member, encourage them to attend that.

Here's a thought for the committee to consider. The way we structure those working sessions during the budget season, where you know the schedule, right? Yeah. public works is first or last, P&Z is third, your subcommittee may show up just for that portion that may not be your intention.

No, that's fine. You know, so that the whole thing is to have a discussion where people can feel more comfortable in an environment to listen and learn. All right? And Again, that allows you maybe to get into a little more detail than you would otherwise, but it allows us to bring back up at meetings that we're talking about the large movements, the new philosophy, like in the Board of Ed, what their new philosophy is, the two things, which they did a very good job of, but not into all the detail. All right, like I took I stole Jen's chart and essentially in seven lines explain the entire Board of Selectmen budget. And that's what we're aiming for us to be able to give the detail, talk the important things that are going on, but not necessarily get into an issue.

I feel like we should better work. SAT Press.

Yes.

Yeah. I like that. To be honest, that is creating more work for the chair of the committees.

all right thank you all for the feedback and then i will um um let's see our next meeting is chris let's see our next meeting is october 13th so today is the 14th yeah so i want to give people time to digest it a little bit more uh when would you be comfortable Giving feedback, like in the next five days, is that a, are you going to a football game and you're going to be watching Clemson or are you going to be, oh, geez, my head.

I'm going.

I know. Well, you're good.

Well, I'll be bringing pro players back to your team. Not anymore.

Pardon me. Maybe a week. Two weeks.

Yeah, let me look at the calendar and then I'll send out an email and I will see you on that. Okay. Yeah.

So I can make sure I give it to you. So you have time to collate it and pull it together. The other item, I mean, just wanted to throw out there that looking at this document, Patty, you're talking to town council. We have concerns about the term caucus and how it's being used currently.

That's why I said, see town clerk. Did you notice that in the link? Yeah, I was like, I'm just going to have it. You don't.

Yeah. That's a topic that seems to be. Questionable as to how caucuses are being held.

Yeah.

Throwing that out there. Yeah. So we'll have time. Might be an appendix B slash document. Okay. Change.

All right. Thank you all for your input. I appreciate it. Right. So that by next year, a year from now, we'll have a full RTM without even trying.

We'll have no one but parties.

because they bonded with their district committees and they're bonded with their chairs and then they go on your own.

Yeah, we're ready to move to the next three.

Thank you.

I threw in an approach to learning from a member to leave the RTM. I'm wondering if a questionnaire would be the idea that people could,

We did that.

Who leave the RPM could. Yeah, we've done that.

Chris, did you bring in the list of names of the people? Where does this go?

Yes. Can you just do the ones that just left? I'm happy I did that right now. I worked on it and I did it. But I think like.

All right.

So, but that was part of it.

Yeah. Okay. Well, no, no, no. Okay. Now I'm confused. The survey was done. Presentation was made. Was there anything beyond that that was happening? I think that's what you're addressing here.

Yeah. What I read this agenda item to be is what are we doing with the learning we have, not necessarily talking about, are we going to do it again? We should continue to kind of roll in basis, but that didn't seem to me. We didn't need to do another questionnaire, but I am in the first year to transact the one we have.

Well, right. What do you want to do with that information that you have gathered?

An example is people said, I would have, I would have liked to spend more time with folks in my district. Now we're proposing.

And they wanted this.

They wanted procedures. They wanted communications.

They wanted.

Unless anyone could point to something that's, you know, they want to address the point of.

Well, I think the survey that we've done, that we created, we should be issuing to every year or every month somebody resigns. Yeah.

Okay, that's not being done.

I think we should.

I can do it. Next week, we have it set up and we can send it to the people that left. The challenge was that if people had Darienct.gov emails, I didn't know how to get. I had everybody's emails from the first time I did it. And then the second time we talked about doing it back and forth. And then it was kind of a lot of work, too, because a lot of people left that next year.

And so we are resigning mid-year. Are they resigning to the district chair or are they resigning to Krista?

They have to resign to me because as an elected official, I have to let them see that.

Can Krista ensure the survey?

Yeah. Well, can we talk about this offline later?

I don't care what you do. Online, offline, I'm just going to say that was last night's webinar.

Yeah. I think the process is what's important.

I have asked Krista to give us who the 16 people are that have left, because telling me 16 people left is absolutely meaningless to me. I want to make sure, because we've had this happen in the past, that people appear to leave because, oh, I forgot to put it in. So, you know... One or two people, you mentioned that happened in your district as well. I'd like to at least, if you could read out the names and send it to us in email, that would be appreciative to all.

District 1, Patrick Parr. District 2, Richard Aponte. Emily Salmore. Penny Wilson. District 3, Diana Botticelli. Dustin Gordon, Jeanette Lewis, Aurora Mar.

Wait, wait.

Can you, could you send that to us?

Again, who are the other two?

Oh, for you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, okay. Botticelli.

I got Botticelli.

Dustin Gordon.

Yep.

Jeanette Lewis. Okay. Aurora Mar.

And you know what's interesting? Those aren't names that we really know.

So what's Michelle's name? Two of them are new names. It's that they're one and done. And Diane, by the way, was acting as well.

District four. These are district four people. Sarah Ernst. John Flippen.

Those are the only two.

I mean, I did have one district chair reach out to me, and I got her the names. That was the only, I only heard from one district chair. I didn't require it.

So I think before, Jack, your point is in a more proactive way, it would be helpful for committee chairs to know who may be coming off and won't even be.

I know in my district of the names you mentioned, Penny has moved.

She moved into a different district. Yeah, I had a lot of conversations with Penny. Yeah, she was helping.

Anybody from six?

I'm almost there. Five, Mark. Curtis Butler, Jessica.

Angle, Andy Epperly, and that is it. Those three on a long time.

And then District 6, Peter Orfanos, which we know because he's on the ballot in another line. Rachel Taylor and John Vesey.

John Vesey?

Yeah.

Oh, really? But again, the position is to remember also Well, this is twofold. One, these are all you're all elected officials. It really is your responsibility as an elected official to decide whether or not you want to run or not. I don't chase people down as an elected official. It was your discretion. But that being said, it's then the committee chairs. I'm sorry, the district chair's responsibility to fill the holes. So it's. You can look at it. The district chair should be proactive because they have to then. But also I've told district chairs, it's not really your responsibility. These are elected officials and it's their discretion as to whether or not they want to run. You don't have to be chasing them down.

It would be useful as a district chair to know, are they not running again because they forgot or didn't get something in in time or are they not running again? Again, by choice. Or because of the distance.

You know, put it in this document as a suggestion.

Yeah, we have, out of those, we have only one person who has been wrapped up.

If it's easy, if you could just send that list. Oh, I'm just waiting, because... I try and help other districts fill their spots. I saw the thing that you sent where it was like three out of that, but I don't necessarily know who it is. And so the point being like, you know, Patrick Carr was on public works. So I know from district one, we're going to have to fill a spot in public works. You said, well, because we pick up ethics, that's a whole separate thing. It was like losing somebody last year at the last minute. But Penny Wilson is on Parks and Rec. So I know we're going to have an open spot unless she decides to come back. So to Jack's point, it's just helpful.

Yeah, I'm also looking from listening to those names. I knew about Peter, but which ones were there?

You might know some people across, like, let's help fill this across the district.

Yeah.

All good.

Okay.

Thank you. I'll do my best.

This is something that we want to do continuously, correct? Okay. So I think a motion might be in order to have a survey, we call it a survey, from each member who leaves An exit survey. An exit survey.

An existing exit survey. An existing motion.

The idea, though, is to continuously use that.

Yes.

Okay. Yeah. And then the where and who gets the result, I guess, comes back to the rules. Rules. Moderator. Okay.

And that's when we did the presentation and showed you.

Lovely.

that it wasn't always because they didn't like it. Sometimes it was somebody who had been here, people who had been here for a long time.

Can I have a second for that? I have a second. And one second, if all in favor, please. Okay. Thank you. I don't hear any, don't see any. Hi.

Beth, you're the best. Oh, no.

Oh, thank you.

That's going to come from me. So I'm going to get a copy of the survey to send out to these people. And you guys are all good with the survey as it stands. I, I, I will, um,

But he's not comfortable.

I'm not comfortable with that.

Well, what does the group feel?

Well, let me just vote on that.

I know how to do it. I did it. I collated it. I did all that work. That's the whole reason we started this was we were gathering information for how to make things better. So, I mean, I'm happy to pass it on to you in another time, but I'm saying ease of use. I know how to do it. And then Mike Wheeler. It just sends me the click, and then I go, and then I send it out. Okay, that's fine.

So then the survey will be handled by Codding. All right. Okay. I don't care where it goes.

All right.

All right. Next, update on the district chairs and where they are. We had a meeting before the summer started, and... I suggested the district chairs that we all get together sometime over the summer. They said, no, we are not prepared to do that. So what we will do is dialogue with our districts and get a final input on their suggestion. And I have some, the idea of getting to the point where you had a response from the districts that we could then move forward with. now because it's going to be a continuing process, but at least we would have a listing of proposals that we can work on at this point in time. I've gotten responses from District 1 and from District 5. So I've got to get follow through and get responses from two, three, four and six. What have you got? Do you have anything that you're adding to it? Okay, good. Now we've got something to work with. I would think we would have a meeting then of the district chairs, because we've got their final inputs for the time being. And then we can parse it out as to, okay, what has to come to rules about procedures within the RTM? What items are code changes? It would have to be worked on with PGS&A. And then what items go to the first selectmen because they're really executive branch field. Okay, so that's where I'm headed. I will be on the phone to those districts to get their final input on because they've had a couple of meetings. They have a couple of minutes. They have a couple of meetings where they have minutes and there may be additional things they want to say, but we want to get that all on the table now so that we can move forward with a suggested group of proposal.

Okay. Did you circulate, District 5? I only saw District 1's letter.

Well, the district chair, I was going to call you and ask you for the copy that the district chair said he sent to you. Did you send me that?

Sorry, did you send me your final fund?

I sent you some things. I sent you some of my own.

Yeah, that I incorporated.

I'll check with that. Can I also mention something else? Can we use Anne King's opt-online email? Because you're sending it to a dairy NCT and I'm forwarding. things to air. So can we just double check?

I am double checking and correcting my email addresses because people are telling me. Yes, I know.

She has to let me know which email she wants.

Right.

Some of them have to. She has to pick one.

Right. I strongly urge that. I know that she looks at the opt-on line. Because that's what I fall into when I see something that goes to district.

The reason I'm asking, Seth, is my sense is the last consolidation I did, even when I read through district ones, they didn't add a lot. Like they just. Right. Well, if that's what I want them to sign off and say, look, this is where we are. I understand. I'm just saying that we're very close to sunset. Yeah. Good.

We'll talk about that. I think that's why we didn't get a whole lot of stuff over the summer. We just said, well, it's important to come back to that. Right. Five is done. Five is done. Yeah. And District 1, Priscilla Wong did a beautiful job. So that's great.

So that's three.

No, two. I don't have two.

Well, it has nothing to add. So it's included. Yeah.

Right.

I don't think three has anything to add, but I'll confirm that.

Well, I won't be in touch with the district chairs and SMB that confirm that or whatever, but again, whatever it is on the table. Okay. This is the consign, doing the amendment to update the town's pension rules. That we would have, TGSA has been working on that extensively. So they're the lead on that. Unless we have any other people who want to play.

F&B was on that right from the beginning. We will continue to make our report. Okay.

So secondary. Yeah. Can't imagine which one.

So we voting on that in the September meeting.

When I, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. No. Then when we do the, I'm getting to setting up. Well, here we are set the agenda for the September 28 meeting.

I'm gonna make a suggestion on the agenda. The meetings explaining this pension started on March 9th of last year. Then there was a conversation, I believe in April by the board of finance. I think in this particular case that it might be good to timestamp certain meetings and send it out in the package so people can know what's going on because there hasn't been a meeting on this. The only reason why we're doing it in September is that nobody notified TGS&A that this was happening. And so by the time we added it to a May or June agenda, that was the first thing we're hearing.

Is that they weren't prepared.

Which is, right, which was- Well, the GSNA got into it and changed it. What?

Is there a timeline that- Yeah, and they're trying to get voted on because of financial, okay. Okay, so-

We will, first of all, vote to make TGSNA primary, F&B secondary. Can I have a motion? Okay. Second. Second. Great. All in favor? Aye. Okay, great. Next, setting the agenda for the September 28 RTM meeting, I sent out a draft. We would add secondary F&B on the agenda. I put approving the minutes addressed by the first selectman right after that, get him up and out on his way. And then Amy said she would do an update on the town plan of development. So I put that in there and then the moment to the town's pension. something occurred to me as well, and I didn't have a chance to talk to any of you much about it, but should there be an address from Ed Gentile on the effect of this storm, if there was any?

I saw it upstairs, and he was so busy. Yeah. I think we can have a break.

Yeah.

Well, John said at the Board of Selectmen meeting, he was doing his Friday newsletter about it and asked the first selectmen about it. But I think in two weeks, we should get an update from the RTM. We spent a lot of money and still forecasting stuff. What's changed since 2021 and 2026? It's two weeks from there. The first selectmen is going to be reporting on it. So the data is going to be there. But I think we should get a report. I don't think two weeks is an unreasonable amount of time.

Mike, you know what's interesting? Pardon me. On a positive note, I have a friend who lives right across from Pear Tree Point. So to your point about spending the money. And I called, I said, are you okay? You're right there because that always floods. She goes, Patty, there's no water.

Do you know why?

It was, well, high tide came at one. It was not a full moon.

I think it was a high in the wind. It was five mile river. There was no flood. The road will not get flooded over and a lot of debris.

If we're going to...

I've been going down and watching when we've had... Are we talking about this past weekend? That wasn't a title event.

That has nothing to do with it. I know, but they are saying that they would think with all the rain, it would be an event, and it wasn't. It wasn't a horrific event in many parts of this town, so.

Yes, but it was not affecting the beach. Yeah, but the title, yeah.

I was just saying that the flood mitigation, whether it was the title event. where they were spending the money. That's all.

All right. So, folks, do we want, do we need an address from Ed to talk about the impact of the storm or not?

I don't think we do. I'm not a fan of other field meetings.

The topic here is, should we have an address from Public Works and Gentile on the impact of the storm if there wasn't here, what the impact was?

Gentlemen, we can't have sidebar comments to get anywhere. Thank you.

So if we're going to ask Ed to talk, then he goes before Jay-Z. If you're going to put him on the September agenda, He's the first person.

Could someone else do it so he can continue to work? I mean, can Gen Z, what's the purpose of doing it? Mike's asking from a financial standpoint.

Here's what happened in 2021. Here are the mitigation issues we took. And here's what happened in 2026.

It is an update on flooding.

Mike, I think it's much more comprehensive than that. This goes all the way back to Superstorm Sandy and the four flooding, the four watershed studies and all the countless, not countless, all the projects that have been done in the past 15 years.

And I'm also going to say part of it happens where I live, when the state changed the slant of the road on 106 Fleet Street all the way down. where it used to go one way it now goes the other way plus there's two easements of the storm drains coming down from the warden and uh 106 was the crest of 106 was under five inches of water And six feet, four to five feet above my apron. Now, I look 15 feet up, so I don't care. But I couldn't get out if I needed to.

I think, Mike, I think your point is valid. But I also think... just because it just happened, trying to jump on it and report right away is unfair to all parties.

Your question- All I have to do is ask him. If he says I need more time, then give him more time.

But I think your question is more involved in that because you actually want a report on how flood mitigation and the expenses and everything else we've done in the past- Jay-Z says he's doing that in his newsletter on Friday and he's taping and asked the first electmen

with Jim Cameron tomorrow. So he's getting that information from somewhere. But in theory, we should dig a little deeper as the RTM than what's in a five-minute Ask the First Selectman and a Friday newsletter.

Well, we have two flood projects that are coming down the road.

Maybe at the state of the town, right?

I'm just suggesting that you don't jump on and try to do it in September. Ask him when he wants to do it. Yeah, I think that's fair.

That's all I'm saying. But we spent a lot of money in the last five years, and hopefully there's a lot of successes in what we spend. But we ought to know. We talk about doing postmortems all the time. This is one of those postmortems.

Is that something you could assign to Public Works and TCH just to start looking at? Or a future report, I don't know.

Well, we could also ask why we're unwilling to assess charges to the businesses and homeowners to partially pay for the drainage projects which state will allow. We're not willing to do this in this town. And they're not dealing with the trade noise that's affecting one quarter of the people in the town of Darienne But we're willing to pay two $6 million projects, which is affecting less than 1,000 homes.

We might be getting a little off the subject. Yeah.

Well, it's time. It's very much on the subject.

It is for the report, but not for deciding whether to have them on the agenda and when. Fair enough.

Our new business. I understand. Okay. So what I'm hearing is we give... add a call and say, would you be prepared? Would you like to get up in front of the RTM and talk about this?

But down the line is what I think.

Yeah, you're talking about October or something. Yeah, not September.

State of the town.

Yeah, okay. All right, good. I'll leave that off. So it's just, so address from the first selectman, update on the town plan and development, And Amy said she was willing to do that and approve the amendment to the town's pension rules for retired employee even. I have a motion to approve the agenda. Yes.

I just have two comments. Yeah. Just on bullet five, it's the town plan of conservation and development. Okay. And on number four, A suggestion, obviously, for you guys to give a little bit more detail to the body as to what they would expect from the first selectment. If he's identified two bullet points, did you want to give that transparency to the full body?

All right, I'll add the topics.

That's up to you guys to decide.

I'll add the topics. I can take it off this.

Here's the topics as I put them in the minutes if you want to use them. Yeah, I've got... Revisions to the Darien Town Code Charter and ways to improve government efficiency was one topic that he updated us on, and presentation... regarding finances to date around Great Isles.

They don't have the presentation. People may do some legwork before the meeting and they know what the topic is.

Could I make the request that the agenda not go out the Thursday before the meeting? That's who I'm making the request. I will send it out We don't need to wait for documentation. Get it out so we can send that later. Tomorrow? He can get it down tomorrow. I'm giving it to him. It'll be in by the time you get home.

There you go. All right.

Can I have a motion then to approve the agenda for the RTM meeting? And

And with the comments noted, I'll second. Second, I have a second. All in favor? Aye. Okay, opposed? All in favor? Very good. I sent out the spreadsheet on items in progress. If you have any that I missed that should be added, just call me and I'll add them in and then I'll send this back out to you. Can we format that spreadsheet? I would be more than happy to do that. I would be in touch with you, Jack. Well, because it doesn't come out landscape when I went to print it. All right. I will adjust it. We'll talk. So that's that. And is there any new business? Nope. Okay. Then I would take a motion to adjourn. Okay. Second. Second. All in favor, please rise.