City Council - workshop

We're starting a little later than normal, as we had our special city council meeting prior to this. So we're getting started at 6.42. Council workshops are intended to provide an opportunity for informal Working discussions between city councillors and staff in advance of regular city council meetings in order to allow for high levels of transparency about progress concerning priority policies of Ellsworth. No votes or formal decisions are made at workshops. Workshops are livestreamed on YouTube and the public is welcome to attend in person. However, due to the workshop format, time constraints and opportunities for private comment may be limited and have discretion of the city council chair. Formal opportunities for public input on city council items will be provided through the city's established public hearing and comment processes when those items are brought forward to the city council meeting for action. And we're actually going to be talking more tonight about other ways for the public to provide questions and receive answers with the city. But on that, we're also going to move the agenda around a little bit to accommodate some folks' schedules. So we're going to start with a charter amendment discussion And then from that, we're going to move up the short-term rental update. So with that, Charlie, you want to kick us off?

Yeah, I'll just do a little brief discussion. Thank you to Caitlin, our deputy city clerk, who's presenting this potential amendment for consideration at a future council meeting. And then a huge thank you as well to Tina, our person who's been heading up elections for some time now for the city. You never know when you're going to, be deep into bylaws and charter things and other pieces. We went through a lot of this in the recount with Caitlin and Tina and Sue and our other incredible clerics and Ebony and Vicki and actually Amanda, our public works administrator, who pitched in on that whole process on how do you run an excellent recall. We had a huge document after sorting through our laws, state laws, work well, what didn't, how we can have a policy document so that in the future if a recount is called for in the city of Ellsworth, you don't have to do what we all had to do for three weeks, which was have an insane amount of meetings with lawyers, make sure everything's buttoned up because the spotlight is on you and it's got to be perfect. I'm really happy to report that it was perfect. All the pre-preparations for the vote itself, the recount itself, and certifying essentially the exact same outcome as was voted in person and counted through the machines was effectively done through the hand recount, a real installation or instilled faith in our democratic processes and this incredible team we have here. A similar process was just played out with the recount recall election that we just went through, some things were pretty clear in the charter on how to proceed forward, some things were less so. There was an incredible amount of conversation with lawyers and other city clerks about processes and there was something that Tina really felt should move forward and be considered for a charter amendment to make the process a lot clearer on the recall process going forward. I'll send it over to Caitlin, our deputy city clerk, for a little more.

As Charlie said, this is largely Tina's work behind this. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to be here, so I'll do my best to share and answer questions. Quick background, I guess, on how petitions work, citizen initiative petitions. People sign them out from the city. They have 30 days to collect signatures from Ellsworth voters. That is returned to us. And then we, as the clerks, verify signatures. So we're ensuring that all the signatures and people on the petitions are registered Ellsworth voters. The charter amendment is not a huge change. It's really just adding some clarifying language trying to erase a gray area where essentially they have 30 days. So say you have to get 100 signatures in 30 days, and when that's returned to us, the way that the charter is currently written, there's a little bit of gray area where If you didn't submit enough signatures, you had 10 extra days to collect more signatures. So the goal here was to make it more clear that upon submission, you had to submit the full number of signatures to be validated. You couldn't submit less than the required number and still get the 10 extra days. So the goal is to clarify that if you don't submit enough signatures at your 30 days, you don't get that extra 10 days. The extra 10 days, our thought is more if you submitted enough signatures and then after validation it was found that maybe a certain percentage of those were not valid signatures, they weren't valid Ellsworth voters, then you would have 10 extra days to try fill in those gaps that you got afterwards. That's really the only change is just adding the clarifying language to it. I do believe with the clarifying language, it is how the state handles it as well. So we would like to just follow the state's guidelines and make it more clear for everybody.

And it just makes sense versus giving 30 days and then regardless of how many signatures you get, you get 10 more days.

Yeah, that's how we felt.

There's also an incredible time commitment of our clerks. I think it's one of the things that I've been struggling in terms of already limiting capacity staff. And there's something where you have to completely move the boat. And... I've run ballot initiatives before. I've run signature-gathering initiatives before. And typically, you have to get a lot more signatures than is what's required in order to not fall below that threshold, in order to make sure you have enough valid signatures. There's always usually some level of, this person is an actually registered voter. I've never heard of a place that allowed you not even to reach the initial signature threshold. Effectively now, you could call for a referendum you know, get 60 signatures and then require the clerks to get through all 60 signatures, certify which are not, bring it back out. And it's just, you know, it's a lot of time for me for a process that I think the more, and we talked to, I think it was four or five other clerks in other areas, all of them, four out of the five said, This shouldn't be allowed for 10 extra days. The intent of that is only if you submitted over 1279 and the threshold dropped below that you would get another 10 days to rectify that area. But that's not exactly what the law says. It's gray. It doesn't say, regardless of how many signatures are submitted, the group gets an extra 10 days. In my opinion, if that's the way the intent of the framers of this were, why not just give 40 days? If you're going to give 40 days, regardless of if you submit 50, 1,262, or 1,300, The 10 days is really only there should you submit the required 20% or more. the head of elections here, general assistance director. As many hats she wears, I thought she'd be clarified. She talked to legal counsel to see if it would require a charter commission, or if this is a small enough change of clarification. Legal counsel confirmed this is a small enough change that a clarification could be made to .

So does it come to us, the proposed changes, and we vote it up or down? Yes. Does it require a supermajority? I think it does require a supermajority. I don't know if this is Keelan. Do you know the answer to that question? Definitely make sure. Yeah.

Changes to the charter have to go before the voters? Not for minor amendments, and that's always the conversation with the legal counsel. And I'd ask you, Councillor Shea, if you'd like to participate to join us here. But yeah, legal counsel's guidance, that was one of the questions we asked was, does this require a full charter commission, or would this be considered a minor change for counsel? So I'll give the legal clarification on if it's a supermajority.

Any further questions for deputy clerk or city manager on the charter amendment regarding the recall language?

I just want to say, you know, as painful as the recall was to us, to some of us here on council, it did point out some of these issues that we're able to fix. And for that, I am grateful.

So thank you for putting in that work.

And I'm putting in all that time. during that process.

Great. Well, thank you for tackling that. It's very important. So now we're going to bring up, we're going to go to short-term rental.

Mr. Grant, I did notice we had a gentleman, two gentlemen who spoke. I know Robert was going to give kind of a summation of some of the things that were said in that meeting, but I figured, you know, we have two folks who have similar types of opinions.

I would like to hear what Robert's summation is. That's why we're here, because we... And I'm not sure, Tyler, if you had something to say before we hear about the... Well, why don't we hear from Robert?

I don't know. INSIGHT, THAT WOULD BE GREAT. AND IF YOU DO, WE'D LIKE YOU TO COME SIT AT THE TABLE AND BE PART OF THAT.

OKAY. JUST FYI, CAROL DROPPED OFF BECAUSE SHE COULDN'T HEAR US.

OKAY. IF WE CHECK WITH JASON, THE

I'm sorry, she didn't drop off. She is there. I'll go check with her. She said she's having a hard time hearing. Or no audio, is what she said.

No, just put a pile if anyone else wants to...

You got it. The floor is yours, Mr. Grant.

All right. Good evening, everybody. I'm Robert, the code officer. Robert Grant, Jr. So last month, we held a listening session for short-term rental. We had...

it is on this on this slide just so everybody knows the only audio is through this bar on the TV these microphones don't feed this TV so just you know just you really have to project your voice she can hear all right so as the slide says we had 43 people who signed into attendance for the meeting

18 were short-term mental hosts and 25 were not. However, we did also do an online survey at the same time, and we had 135 respondents to that survey. We also had paper versions of that survey available at the listening session, and we input all the data from those surveys into the 135, so that's a total of the in-person respondents and the online. Some of the comments that we had from this listening session, positive and negative, were fear for loss of long-term housing stock, the idea that neighborhood disruption and quality of life issues would come up, and strain on infrastructure and the unfair cost burden for the citizens of Ellsworth. For the downside, the positives were... Well, not positive. People who were in favor of short-term rentals said that there was an economic necessity and the affordability of their homes was subsidized by the short-term rentals. There was a local economic benefit to tourism. It gave all these tourists some place to stay, close to downtown, that are... or on the lake, something that our hotels don't really offer. It's a different experience altogether. And another key thing that was brought up at that listening session is the people that showed up said that self-regulation is already working. Most of them are, most people that came to that meeting were already doing a lot of the things that we would like to do with the registration. With that, I'll get into the survey. Tracy did all the legwork on the survey. She's been great with this. She put together the slides for me. I also worked with Andrew on this, my deputy. So I have to give them all the credit for this, really. I'm just reporting. So you see the demographics of the people that responded to the survey. 63% knew they lived near a short-term rental. It seems like we had all over the board for, they've never used short-term rentals. They use them all the time. And it was about a 60-40 split on whether or not we should do something about a short-term rental. So 61% feel that Ellsworth The city of Ellsworth should require short-term rentals to register. You can see some of the breakdowns there. But it was a very different story than the message that we received in the listening session, where it was overwhelming. Don't do anything. Nothing needs to be done. You would take into account the people there that did the survey. Combine that with online, it still came out 60-40 that something should be done.

So just to clarify, so this number includes people that were surveyed online and... And in person, people that filled out the paper survey...

either the night we did the listening session or who brought it back in later. So we offered a mixed mode of data collection there.

In order to keep the data in one place, because Microsoft Forms does such a beautiful job of this, if people brought handwritten surveys, I entered them and then just kept them in a folder so that they would be counted there because there's a lot of people that didn't want to do it online.

So the next slide is about fee collection, because if we're going to require a registration, it needs to be able to at least pay for itself with the administration part of it. Under just about the same breakdown, 58% felt that fees should be charged for the administration of the registration documents, and 87% thought it should be some form of an annual fee. So it's not just a one-time fee. It's an every-year renewal, basically. And then you get the 82%, I can't believe this isn't 100%, that Maine should share a portion of the collected lodging taxes. The state of Maine, I believe Charlie said on multiple occasions, the state takes a 9% lodging tax on short-term rentals, and Ellsworth gets zero from that. So they... are forcing us to have all the burden of inspections and everything, and they're taking 9% off the top. So I think it's one of those things that they're not really doing much to get that money, but they get it. I'm trying to read. This is very small on here, but do you have it? Let me get my glasses out.

You could zoom this one.

I can? I think so. I am a Luddite when it comes to this sort of stuff. Is it a touchscreen? No, I don't think mine is. No, I'm a Luddite when it comes to this sort of technology. Well, I'm going to read it off the paper because it's bigger. So the top three neighborhood characteristics that are a little hard for me to say up there, but it's peace and quiet. housing affordability, and safety and security.

That's what people are looking for?

Yes, those are people that when they think about their neighborhood characteristics, what they want to see in their neighborhoods.

So this is residents, not the short-term rental?

This is everybody.

This is everybody who took the survey, and we just asked them to give us their top three important things about a neighborhood.

So, I mean, other, you know, well-maintained properties was one that was almost... up there as stable neighbors. So neighbors that weren't coming and going. No, I'm assuming not mentally stable, I'm assuming.

Yeah, I think they meant... They wanted horses.

Yes. They didn't say equines. I'm not sure. And then, you know, it was split fairly evenly. Have short-term rentals impacted your neighborhood? 41, yes, 45, no, and 13 weren't sure. So that's not the 60-40 you see that want something, want some sort of regulation, but it's a pretty even split where people say that these have impacted their neighborhood. To be fair, this doesn't say negatively impacted. So it's not, you know, that one's a little unclear to me on exactly what it means, but it shows that they've had an impact. The top three priorities for managing short-term rentals were preserving housing, clear, straightforward regulations, and protecting the neighborhood character. So they're very similar to the characteristics of the neighborhood that they want. They're kind of reflected there.

Mm-hmm.

It's much easier to see that. So I'm not going to read this verbatim. Nobody wants me to sit here all night and read this. However, these are some of the highlight comments that were given in the comments section of the survey. And they were, you know, we were also... have all of these comments available that Tracy put into a spreadsheet. I don't expect you to be able to read them all.

And I'm happy to send the actual digital copy of the spreadsheet if you want it, but Ebony said that some of you like things on paper, so we started there.

We did put some of the highlights on here, both positive and negative. I don't want to take up everybody's time tonight.

Could you summarize as far as the comments go? Did they reflect the ratio of people that were... Was it 60-40 comments for and against, or how would you...?

I think that might actually be... Yeah, they pretty much reflected the... You know, people were consistent. If they said they needed to be managed and then they had negative feelings about them for whatever, that it was ruining their neighborhood, the comments were similar. And some of them were very, very... complete for lack of a better word like they're not against them they understand the role they play in the local tourism economy and how they may keep people in their homes they just want to know that when their kids go out to play there's not transients that they need to be afraid of in the neighborhood some people's comments were really poignant about if it's a seasonal house anyway it's a house on the lake you can't rent it in the winter those people should have priority over being allowed to have short-term rentals where maybe we should step in and say, you know what, that's an all-year-round house you're selling, Mr. Smith. And if you sell it to somebody, and I don't know that the city can actually do this, but the commentary was maybe we should dissuade people in some way from selling an all year round residence to somebody who's going to then turn it into a short-term rental. Like I said, whether or not we can do it is another story, but it was an interesting concept. There were others that recommended finding incentives for builders to be able to build affordable housing. because they didn't feel that registering and monitoring STRs was going to fix the housing issue. So you'll see in there, and like I said, if you want the spreadsheet, I'm happy to send it because it's a whole lot easier to read, but there were some really, really poignant comments on both sides.

Can I share the spreadsheet with the council? Do we have a web page, like section?

I don't think it's a great idea to put this presentation survey results, because they're not named on it or anything.

No, we...

I took the names off of them.

So if the council would like to reach out to anybody who made particular comments, you can reach out through Charlie or Sarah, and we can provide you with their contact information.

Some of them did provide contact. Many of them didn't, so...

on our website, just in the interest of public transparency process. I know we'll get to some of this.

Good. Amy and I will get to work on that.

So, as far as... Without going through and reading every single comment on those... I would have a...

on this project. It's a lot of work, especially with Tracy and Robert who have really been taking the lead in setting up the listening session. I think it was, by a pretty good measure, the most productive city session and listening session There was some very frank conversation in opposition to this, but it was extremely respectful, well-informed, and we learned a lot. One of the things I've learned is that it's hard listen when somebody's yelling at you. And I think, in some measure, the discussion in the Bayside Road also was a similar, very difficult issue moving forward. But staff did an excellent job setting up that listening session, I believe. Maybe some folks would not. And I learned a lot. I think I kind of came in initially coming here. I'm totally opposed to short-term rental regulations. unintended consequences and just trying to solve a macroeconomic issue with housing and affordability. And I haven't yet seen the use cases of cities and towns that have regulated this market and then housing is abundant and cheap and affordable. But I kind of went into this after oftentimes in the position of I want a city manager. I have to facilitate a dialogue on an important conversation on values. in conflict. And neighborhoods, 1,000 Airbnbs popping up in Ellsworth or 700,000 over probably a five, six year period of time. It's fundamentally transformed a lot of neighborhoods in the character of areas in ways that we may or may not be able. It's also fundamentally transformed the economic conditions of a lot of our residents here in Ellsworth. On two fronts, I think one of the things I learned very deeply from that that affected me the most was hearing from folks whose taxes have been going up and who have maybe a lakefront property that's been valuation has increased dramatically and now have $10,000 in taxes a year on that home. It's a family home. They literally have to leave their house for six weeks each summer to go to a neighbor's or relative's somewhere else so that they can afford their taxes and keep their family home. To me, that's something that, whether we move forward or not, really needs to be kept in mind as part of this process. It's not just about out-of-state investors coming in and scooping up cheap homes to turn into Airbnbs for Acadia. This is a big local driver of the market. The second piece of that is actually local business opportunities that folks under the current regulatory scheme of the city, in good faith, move forward to build businesses in the city to capitalize that. They don't just help themselves financially, maybe to afford their taxes, but to build additional homes, to build property. And I do worry about similar ways to how the sort of rent freezes in other cities and towns across America seemed like a good idea at the time and really have not led to big housing booms for people in new homes. It kind of protects an existing class of owners at the expense of the next generation. To me there's hallmarks of that. And maybe there's some well in between. I'd also say, maybe just because I agreed about such a good meeting with some of the people there, there was a lot of the slippery slope argument as well I heard on, you know, one person said, I've had enough Ellsworth in my life. This is just one level of, you know, it's going to start now as a $300 registration fee, which seems somewhat reasonable. But this is just step one on what effectively eventually will be caps or other pieces. By that argument, this council may want to keep it on a reasonable level, but you have that system, it would be a lot easier to move forward. And that was one of my main takeaways. And then for me, it's the next steps. I know we discussed this in the budget process. We've got a decent amount of data. There's obviously an online survey, people who came in themselves. different, both of those areas, unless we did a real very expensive poll of the cities and waited for a variety of demographic preferences. We're not going to know. I consider you seven city councillors are effectively the representative of the will and voice of the people. So that's kind of where we're at now, is to get your comments on how to move forward. to next steps. Would you like to see a base regulatory framework on some of the lines discussed previously?

To piggyback on what Charlie said, I don't know that we need a strict regulation on short-term rental. We don't even know... Well, we don't know what we don't know yet. And I think that's where registration is appropriate. That way we get hard data on exactly how many we have, where they are, and we can have the inspection part of it, make sure that they're safe to occupy. We heard a lot of pushback even on that at the listening session. The people that have short-term rentals weren't interested in that. Understandably so. They have valid concerns about it. I think as long as I'm here with the city, I would push back on going any more than that with a regulation. I think Charlie's right. I've never seen any data that shows you can regulate yourself into affordable housing by getting rid of short-term rental or capping short-term rental or anything like that. These short-term rentals have actually spurred housing development in town. On July 1st, when the housing density rules changed for the city, we've had probably 20 house permits pulled specifically because they want to build more dense housing, multiple units on a single lot. Most of it is going to go towards short-term rental for now.

So it's not really housing.

Well, yes. Well, they're single-family homes, but they're multiple homes on one lot. Mm-hmm. They're short-term rental for now. That doesn't mean that they couldn't be sold long-term. Again, I have to take the developers at their word. They've said that we're going to rent these short-term for a while, and then we're going to sell them. We're going to flip them.

We heard a lot of that from some owners. They're like, no, I'm building long-term for workforce housing for... nurses that are coming here. And maybe in some off seasons I need to rent that in short term for a bit to kind of bridge the divide. But that was another surprising thing as well. I think some of the notes on...

There was also some really interesting comments at the meeting, at the listening session, about a landlord who had both long and short term rentals. And they used, essentially it's about the bottom line, right? Whether you have long or short or both. And so the escalated rent that they could get from their short-term rentals helped them keep their long-term rentals at a marketable, affordable rate. So that's something else. I don't know how you adjudicate that or how you encourage that, but that's something to not be lost in the ether because that's important. If they're subsidizing affordable all-year-round rentals, it's something to look at.

I talked to a developer today, which I'll get into more in RV parks, who was on a separate subject, who's now locked into this moratorium on RV parks and was looking to make a massive investment in his REN, $200,000 into it. prospects. And he was hoping that could help leverage to help start building workforce health. And now that's all kind of up in the air. So I think it's one of the real delicate dances when we start regulating, moratoriuming. There is a fair amount of unintended consequences that developers will know, because they're the ones doing it. And without a massive staff, too. We don't have a lot of people that can micromanage how development is going to be. So I think, to me, You know, I can see why a light registration inspection, we hear a lot, even from owners, that septic on branch and other pieces. But to look into this many septic systems, yes, we have it potentially. We don't have enough staff to do a lot of that. To me, the big thing is that 9%, the state. I mean, I'm talking with our finance director a lot about this, just how the state monetizes elsewhere's growth. So every short-term rental owner, unless they're unless they're dodging their state tax liabilities, is paying 9%. And Ellsworth doesn't get a cut of that. They get the valuation increases, which is a mixed bag on what that does to the tax base, depending on where you're at on those thresholds. But to me, if I had my brothers in the state law one, we'd be at least splitting that. We're the ones in the city that have to absorb a lot of the infrastructure. We're the ones that have to deal with the effects of a lot of the market changing. We're also benefiting from new homes and other pieces, but that keeps the cycle when it goes into short term. They keep sending more 9% to the state in our roads, in our infrastructure, in our water, whether you're on water and sewer. or whether you're off it and we're not getting those customers into our system where it's getting built. To me, I really feel like there needs to be also a push from the state level to kind of share that pretty substantial tax revenue.

That would be one more reason to have information about what we've got here for short-term rentals to be able to answer that question.

Well, they have to answer that question. They take 9%.

Again, the count of what we have here beyond what we can pick up from the internet.

And not all of them would be on a well and septic. A good number of them are on city water and sewer. I mean, I don't know the number because we don't have that data, but I know there are quite a few downtown in the downtown area that wouldn't have a well and septic to inspect. But I'm thinking of myself as a pretty good septic guy, so.

I'd also note, Robert, you know, we had initial estimates it was like 40,000 for the registration system and potentially at, like, The general fee at one night, you know, we can clear the threshold of 100,000 incomes that that would, you know, essentially cover the staff time cost plus the system. He's found maybe a cheaper option. So there's some drawbacks there. So there could be just a cheaper kind of base registration system, especially if we're not going to go into a higher regulatory environment.

Yeah, I've been doing my due diligence on the software piece too. I asked for $40,000 in the budget because that was the OpenGov Cadillac version of this. I found some cheaper options I'd rather go with if I can. If they do enough of what we need to do, that's the option. I'd rather go with this and give everybody some money, myself included as a taxpayer.

So we have a few folks that are here regarding short-term rentals. If you guys have any comments to provide, I'd ask you to join us at the table. Please. Thank you.

Michael Hill. I live here in Ellsworth. I've renovated a couple houses. One was a drug house. One was a house that car backed into and the guy couldn't afford to fix it up so we renovated it. Over the last couple years my taxes I've been paying you guys. This year I'm going to probably pay you $15,000 to $16,000 for my properties. I paid for permits to do it. I went above and beyond in these properties to increase the value of the neighborhoods. I proposed $300 additional fee for each property just to... have a inspection when I just did a build and you came in and inspected my home. What's the benefit for me as an owner? You keep charging me money. What's the benefit for me? And facts backing up, I am kind of about me because groceries are expensive. My taxes are out of control. I'm paying more to keep my properties plus my interest rates because it's a business loan I'm barely paying for stuff, okay? But back up to the listening meeting. I asked a question and I've never got an answer. What are you trying to solve? What are you trying to solve? Am I allowed to ask questions and get an answer here? I asked at the last meeting. I didn't get it. What are you trying to solve? Short, one term housing? Or affordable housing? Yes. You haven't really said that comprehensive plan. Did you see the packet that I gave out? Did you guys all see it? Was there any valuable information in there? Because there's a list of things to fix affordable housing. You're taking this low-hanging fruit, short-term rentals. This survey, how many surveys were taken? 135. 135. And you're saying there's 9,000 people in Elkworth? 9,000 units, and you got 135. So if you take 135 and you take 60% that wanted it, what is that?

87 or 88.

I know that there were at least that many people. How many people were in that meeting here? And I think when we were all talking, there were three people that had... There were people that complained about the sewer, which I agree. There were people that complained about the noise of their neighbors. That's just a bad neighbor, and the cop should be called. Regulation, what I'm hearing the regulation wants is to help the city identify how to collect more money from the state, work with the state. They must have a report on how much Hotel tax they charge. And Regents, they must have something. You're looking for revenue sharing from the state. It shouldn't be for me to pay $300 per property so that you can identify that they collected sales tax on me to go ask them for half of it. It shouldn't be for me to be registering my property so that you can hire an outside company to go inspect them, to pay for the company to inspect them so you can find code violations to go after. You should be able to see that on a listing, on an Airbnb listing, I can four bedroom and I can sleep 10 people. Well, if you know it's set for a three bedroom, Go investigate. They gave you plenty of ammunition to go check on a code violation. It shouldn't be for us to pay more money so that you can do your jobs, that you have the information to do up front. I'm just getting, I'm nickled and dying to death. And this is just one more thing. My properties are up to code. I'm paying through the nose for taxes. And it's getting to the point, what are you doing for me? What are my taxes doing for me? I can't even get my road fixed. I get to boil water every other day. I fix a property and I want it for rent. I turn on the water. I pay $150 minimum fee. Whether I use the water or not. Help me as a... Citizen of Ellsworth, who's paying the city a lot of money, help me understand what you're doing for me. Grant Street sucks. I want to talk about Chapel Street. Doesn't really concern me, but it does because of the fire hydrants. My house burnt down, and they identified a problem. It is getting to a point where someone said to me a few years ago, and I'm a Democrat, last thing I'll say, people, one of my friends said to me, there's going to be a revolution. I'm like, you're just full of shit. You know, just because of everything going on in politics. And I'm like, you're just crazy. I'm getting to the point where I can understand that. People are going to revolt because you keep nickel and diming them to death. It's not going to fix... The low-paying fruit is not going to fix to find your daughter a place to live either, Nancy. I know she lives with you. I'm sorry. I don't mean to attack you. I beg your pardon. That's personal? That's personal. No. That's not okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't mean to attack you.

We choose to live together, and it's fabulous. And that was so far out of line.

I'm sorry, but if people finding short-term rent or long-term rentals, affordable rentals are no good.

We're going to talk about meeting procedures. I think this is one of the areas which seems like a good idea at the time. We have some folks, Mr. Hill, I have respect for him. He also consumes an extraordinary amount of time for staff. you know, multiple emails per week, we essentially, there's a lot of constituent services on just Mr. Hill. Time is, we love that, that's part of the nature of this job, but it's an incredible amount of staff time dedicated to that, and oftentimes it can become like this, where first few words are used.

This is why we don't typically have public comment at workshops, it's not related to design, and I understand your frustrations there, but... that was out of line.

I agree. I totally apologize.

And he has apologized. I'm just saying that I know that people are frustrated.

To answer the question from my perspective, what this is going to do for us is give us solid information about where they are, who owns them, what the ownership models are, are they on water and sewer, all of that stuff. We need that information to know, to be able to understand how they're impacting neighborhood quality of life and housing stuff. So that's my answer to your question. And then we should move on, I think.

Yeah, we can move on. Sarah, would you like to provide a few minutes of comments? Sure, yeah. I'll be short.

I'm Charlie Pierce. No, my name is Tyler Crawford. I'm an Ellsworth resident. First and foremost, thanks again for providing a public kind of informal discussion around this. I think it's super beneficial. I attended the last meeting. I thought that was great to hear from everybody's perspective and to learn you know, motivations of why people will own short-term rentals. I own short-term rentals. I'm the gentleman that you referred to that had the 50-50 long-term and short-term. And, you know, now that I've had time to digest that meeting, you know, similar to Michael's point, I think the main thing that stood out was that there really doesn't seem to be a clear, defined objective of this ordinance. As Mr. Pierce stated, there isn't any information out there that shows that regulation of any sort is going to open up inventory or reduce pricing for the cost of housing. So I guess that leads to this ordinance, I guess the avenue that maybe you guys would choose to pursue to institute this would be based on health and safety of guests and things like that. But I haven't heard really any objective data around that these are, you know, causing issues with first responders or city infrastructure and things like that. So with me not being really familiar with how the city operates and how you can pass an ordinance and things like that, like from an ethical or maybe legal standpoint, can you pass an ordinance when you don't have a problem, but you're trying to solve maybe a problem, but you're not sure about it? And so I think that's more of my question when it comes to this right now and right at this juncture that we're at. And I think it's just, you know, I think Mr. Grant had said it, like, we don't know what we don't know. Part of the problem, and I think that everybody here, you know, has kind of a sensible and rational view Outlook on short-term rentals. I think everybody understands what it gives to the community the hosts and You know tourists and small businesses alike. So I think everybody yeah, I commend you all for that but where I think you were where I know I have the problem is the the part about getting charging me money to a fee to get data to try to figure out what you don't know and you know, if it's a registration, it's a registration, but why am I going to pay 300 or 500 or whatever that dollar amount so you can get data on it? So that's where I'm coming from. Thank you all again for listening and the hard work you're putting in.

It wasn't in the packet, but I do have quite a lengthy memo from Chief Guillereau about why he supports a registration for short-term rentals. And one of the major aspects is that people will call with an emergency, and they don't know where they're staying. The addresses aren't posted anywhere inside. I'm sure that there are plenty of short-term rentals in town that do have the address posted. That information is readily available, but he said the fire department's got a number of calls where they don't know where they're going. So those minutes where they're stumbling and fumbling to find an address, that could be the difference between life and death for somebody.

And you said that's a memo. Can we include that?

Yeah, I can absolutely send that to you. Thank you.

He mentioned it briefly at the last meeting.

That was surprising to me. I hadn't heard of the police perspective. They really didn't feel like this was in order to be burdensome on their call volume, right?

I'm not sure if it's burdensome on the fire department's call, but they have gotten calls where they didn't know where the person was calling saying we're staying in a short-term rental. We don't know where we are, though.

Yeah, I did hear, I'm sure the full member, that there was also an aspect of fire alarms going off, not midnight. So that was one of the new pieces of information that we had on getting back to the reason why, which maybe we can shift it to the council on what would you like to see as the next step here?

and it's not a full crosscut of Eldritch, but the fact that it was people at the meeting and online, to me, shows there's some validity there, and at least it was making yourself available to people in a number of capacities. And you have 60% of the community saying you need to do something. The question is, what is that? And the one question I have is how, you know, I understand the reasons for at least knowing what's going on and there's pros and cons there. I think it would be good for the council to see a proposal of what that would look like. Registration is not about limiting, it's just about figuring out who's here, what the costs are for the software. I think, you know, if we can reduce the cost of software, maybe that means we can reduce the registration fee, or maybe there's a tiered fee for people that are doing it that's their primary residence, or maybe there's no fee for them, versus if it's just a vacant home that's being used for short-term rentals. But the question, you know, we're not doing this just because, right? You look at our comprehensive plan, you look at all the What I've been hearing from a number of people, and it's affordability of housing, it's a lack of housing stock. And there's a number of reasons, and there's a number of causes for this crisis that our community's in, and everywhere it is. And this is one issue. It's not the only issue, and we're not gonna solve Ellersworth's affordability housing issues just by looking into short-term rentals. But it is something that It's worth exploring. I just wish there was, you know, I admit I haven't done, gone in and done research on my own, but like showing, is there any studies, is there any data out there that says, hey, if you were to go beyond regulation and go into, you know, or regulate the number or where they are and all that, does it actually improve housing and access to housing, right? Because that's, In my mind, that's the goal for doing this, one of the goals. Again, I think, say, public health and safety, knowing where these folks are, there's valid points there. But my viewpoint is let's see what a proposal looks like just to document and understand what the regulation, who's here, what does that look like, and then we can debate the merits of it, whether or not we advance it. But then the big question is, what else is there to do, if anything, on short-term rentals. And I wouldn't want, you know, the city to advance anything other than without some kind of strong data showing that it would have a desired outcome of what we're trying to do, which is improving affordability and access to housing for people that live here or want to live here and can't get into housing.

So, my next step, I was... One of the questions I wanted to ask tonight was, If I created a draft ordinance and had the software agreement ready to go, would there be an appetite for another workshop for that before we actually bring it to council for a vote? Or would you just like me to bring it to a council meeting?

I feel like a workshop would be better. I agree.

Before we decide on anything, we need to have another workshop on it. Because I really would like to have long-term, but it just isn't enough to pay my taxes, mortgage, insurances, okay? And then if you do get somebody long-term, yeah, they stiff you on your rent. You get a notice from the power company saying they haven't paid the bill for a long time, okay? So there's a whole lot to go along with it, okay? Affordable housing, it's... I do a combination just like they do. Sometimes I get nurses. Sometimes I don't. It's just the roll of the dice. And it's within walking distance to the hospital and to the downtown area. And everyone that I get, they say it's awesome. It's great. Beautiful. And they really appreciate the fact of all the safety features I've got.

So maybe, I think it works to the point public and council, this is of the magnitude similar to the Arlington Park. You know, sometimes issues get elevated and we need to outline a different process, you know, that we really need to move forward on that allows for both of those pieces, council to get a lot more input, actually look at the regulation before we get to the issue.

I think I would like to have your input and the public's input. That way, you know, and then you all could actually have a little bit of direct feedback. You'd be right there, and you'd be able to talk to them in real time about it, what you like, what you don't like.

Absolutely, we could.

Robert, will you be providing, I know there's an initial cost, but I'm assuming with the software there will also be yearly cost offered?

Yeah, there is an annual maintenance, but it's a fraction of the initial. It's usually like a quarter or less of the initial startup.

Okay, all of that information would be really good.

Yeah, I have three different proposals from three different companies that I was weighing the cons of. So I have all that available. Okay, great.

And I would add one thing I'm looking for in the workshop is the kind of information that we're collecting of a lot of the conversations we've had to hear in addition. I can catch up with you later on the list I put together. Sure thing.

Yeah, absolutely.

All the late stuff you've already covered.

And that's kind of... you know, fine-tuning. If I give an outline, you know, rough draft ordinance, and we can fine-tune, I like this, I don't like that. Right, right. Exactly. That's what a workshop, you know, that's what I want on the workshop.

Right.

Yeah.

I have a question. When the public restroom came out, you were going to put that onto the taxpayers. So if you're going to start charging us, Why not put that out onto the taxpayers? What was the public restroom doing helping the downtown businesses? By me paying you a fee, what is that helping me? I do rent short-term for many reasons, and it doesn't matter what the reason is, nobody needs to know but me. It could be anything, but you don't need to know why I'm doing it. It is my property. I should be able to do what I feel is right. I'm not breaking any laws. I'm not doing anything wrong. You can look on a lot of B&Bs, and you can see if it's a three-bedroom house, like someone said, but it says they're going to fit 10 people in it. That should be a cause. But if I have a three-bedroom house that I can have six people in, my septic system or my public water system and sewer system will take care of that. But why is it okay for you to charge me to have an outside restroom that does me no good, and then you charge me more because I'm trying to make a little bit of money for whatever reason it is? for my life, what's the difference? Why are we not charging the downtown stores that have no restroom? They should be charged to have that outdoor restroom for their patrons. I don't understand what the difference is. That's my only concern.

Yeah, I'd say that that was a table conversation. There isn't a downtown rationing interactive discussion. Tax increment financing monies are restricted to be spent for economic development growth. That's one of the big differences there. Obviously, this is still very much in the proposal area that it's not going to be toward either necessarily at this moment.

It seems like we have a plan for next steps. We do? You've got Carol . Oh, hey, Carol.

Hi. I just want to add my two cents. This is an issue that I've puzzled over since it's come up. And I think one of the things that we tend to overlook here is when we talk about regulating or potentially regulating short-term rental is the niche that we occupy. Yes, it's all grand for the starving landlords in Bar Harbor. to enact whatever, they have some of the most stringent restrictions on short-term rentals in Maine. I think being that we are the service gateway, we can't think of it in the same terms that they might think of it, preserving the neighborhood character, that's all well and good. I think I personally at this point would not, do not support this because I don't think, I don't think it is a gateway to anything that's gonna help the community. People that own these short-term rentals have as much right to do with their property as anybody else does. And theoretically, if the entire property ownership of Ellsworth decided tomorrow to make their property into short-term rentals, That's their right. I mean, we're going to start putting caps and asking questions about this. You start trampling on some basic property rights. And I don't think I can support the way it's coming down anyway.

Thank you, Carol. It's all the more reason to, you know, we're at the point where, again, it's up to the council, and I may not be here for this next workshop as a councilor, at least, but I still think Carol's points, all the points we've heard, it doesn't mean we just stop. I think it means we continue the conversation. We look at it, and maybe after that workshop, the council determines it doesn't want to proceed, or it does, but... I think getting a little bit more information, knowing what the ordinance would look like, how it would work, would allow us to have a more informed discussion and consideration of it.

Great. Maybe we move to some of the issues brought up with rules and procedures. We'll move to that. Sure.

printed out is a proposed amendment to our rules of order. And what I've done is, I think if you guys will recall, at each of our, each year at the council, it's November meeting, which after it's sworn in, new councillors get it.

Thank you, Senator. That's not how it works.

and then our organizational meeting, the council adopts rules and procedure. And this last year, we've had many opportunities to navigate very difficult meetings and difficult interactions with meeting participants and people claiming that we're not doing things properly and we should do things differently and what I think the council needs to do is it needs to update its rules of procedure to make clear just clear how a meeting is supposed to progress and these proposals are I took directly from materials provided by the Maine Municipal Association that provides, there's a whole host, it's a packet. All of us as counselors have access to it. We have Maine Municipal Counts, which you should or you can. It's free if you're a counselor. And I'm happy to send out the materials I reviewed, but these are in, there's a whole host of recommended data recommended procedures and things to consider for student bodies such as the city council and how to conduct its meetings. And the language that I've proposed for an updated rules and procedure are taken directly from that. And there are also proposals that I've seen make sense and function and work in meetings here, but also with a number of the municipalities that I do work with. None of this is new or radical. It is all very much keeping in mind with how many municipalities in Maine and across the country operate their meetings. Some of the materials are taken from nationwide organizations that provide advice to municipalities and other organizations about how to conduct their meetings, how to deal with contentious or difficult situations. So that, so much of what, well actually everything that's in here you guys saw in the spring. What I, the difference is I imported it into these rules of procedure rather than having them be two separate documents I would propose. That you can see one of them shows, I track changes where I propose some donations because the language would be, I provided more detail as far as how that works. So you see on the red line copy, Section 2, the meetings, those 1A through D, I deleted because the proposed language that follows and the subsequent four and a half, four pages or so, are basically more detailed about how to conduct our meetings. This is also how I've been conducting our meetings as chair. So I've been following this These are well-established rules. These are the rules that are proposed by the Maine Municipal Association. They're adopted by numerous municipalities in Maine and across the country. I think things to note is that, again, you know, for meetings that, you know, public comment is not a public discussion. materials saying why it shouldn't be that. I think we've seen many instances throughout the year where it's clear that if you get in a back and forth with the public during a meeting, it's not productive. And also there's plenty of opportunity to receive public input. And on that, so that's that. Also been talking and I've been working with Amy and Charlie and Sarah about how do we update and make more accessible and easier the public's ability to ask questions and get information back from the city other than trying to get questions at a city council, get answers through the city council at a city council meeting. So Amy has been working on will allow for greater accountability and service to our citizens in providing questions and answers. But I think before we get to that, Amy, does this Council have any questions about what's been proposed as far as the updates to the rules of procedure?

Looking at this, section two, meetings, number four, do I understand putting a cap on the time for public comment period? I don't, that just doesn't sit too well with me, especially how short that is.

18 minutes? Yeah.

That's only six speakers.

Yeah. You know, and this is a proposal. This is what the city of Lewiston does. Oh, okay. So this is taken directly from the city of Lewiston. That was the one I tried to find. Now, obviously, Lewiston's a bigger municipality than us, but at the same time, that's what MMA kind of says, here's the gold standard. But that, of course, I'm happy to, if the council thinks that... But I think the goal of that proposal is, as we know, right, if we have long meetings and if public comment goes too long, then we're not able to get to these issues you know, until late in the night. So, again, it's a balance, right? This is all a balance. Because it's not trying to, you know, to stop the public from having the opportunity to provide comments. I mean, that's quite the opposite. It's making sure it's establishing how that works.

And then we wouldn't have any limitations on specific public comments.

No, I mean, this could be the same as before. I mean, it's got to be a comment about public business.

Right, about the issue. Well, the... specific public comments to an item on the agenda. No time limit to those?

Well, so it's difficult. We can just take out the 18 minutes in proposal, the chair ultimately has discretion. Public comment, there's 100 people here that want to provide a public comment. At a certain point, and this is the practice adopted everywhere as well, is you can say, okay, we've got the amount of comments we've had that are becoming redundant. If it's information we've already heard, we're going to suspend it for now, get to the merits, And if there's time at the end of the meeting, we'll allow for more public comment. And then again, we'll talk about other ways for the public to provide comment and information to the city.

I want to highlight, Charlie, something you said there. I know you just used 100 people wanted to speak as a number out of the air, but I'm interested in what we're going to talk about about other opportunities. Because if Generally, we're not going to be surprised if 100 people show up and want to speak. We know it's a hot topic. So being able to give them ways that they will feel heard without them having to spend four hours of their evening here as well. I think we're talking about a really interesting balancing act of making sure that they are heard in ways that work for them and work for the council to function in our meetings.

Is it relative to the public hearing comments, or is there no limitations on those?

Not in here. I mean, again, it's just other than three minutes or less. Yeah.

I think it's, to your point on the balance aspect of it, it's one of the unique things about municipal government. It's one of the great things about municipal government. It's also one of the pieces taken to ad infinitum. If the U.S. Congress wanted to do something like this, the state legislature, every single session meeting would be 65 hours long. It does take an incredible amount of time. Sometimes it can be extremely useful when folks feel respectful and have guidance, and then sometimes it can feel threatening and dangerous. Tonight you saw a little bit about that, people cursing, not being able to follow the rules. how many times a staff member walks out of this building after a meeting and a citizen comes up and says, oh, I'm sorry about that. That was, like, you know, I was... Just have it. So I just have that here. And it's usually the same 10 to 15 people. They come in every week. They scream. They yell. They make it really hard. And, you know, a lot of times they have good input on things. But it's hard to kind of do that balance on sometimes you have And she's a gentleman here, which is kind of why I asked the council chair to open that piece up. And you can't necessarily do that balance. And more and more and more and more and more and more of city staff time is being spent on less and less and less city citizens, as opposed to the council issue, which are also tremendous. We already added more workshops. That's added more pieces. We've added listening sessions. We have an incredible amount of small staff to do these pieces, and we're getting to the point where the service demands on staff, just in constituent services, is like, we need to set up our own, you know, Amy's going to be doing the best she can, but every additional avenue creates hours upon hours upon hours of work that I think, you know, Previous times, it's the reason Cass Dean adopted recently. There was half a dozen people who showed up to every meeting to scream about the same thing. And they adopted procedures like this. Bangor Insurance White MMA. We'll talk about council code of ethics soon as well. It's a very different normative environment than I think the US was in 10 years ago when people understood that it's not OK to just scream in the middle of a meeting and demand that you want answers right now. This is a public meeting of the board. It is not a free-for-all Q&A on anything, anybody, because that's the ability. I can just walk into any other municipality and just come up with the works entirely. So this is a balance of allowing that and not. I'd say my small piece here is, you know, I think that in the research I've done, it's the time limits, the capping the amount, you know, is perfectly fine and reasonable, and That's the reason you have rules in order for meetings or public meetings on the board, these workshops. And then you can judge if, OK, the RV park situation, the moratorium, that needs to get allocated. And we can talk about that a little more. This short-term rentals, this is going to take a little more. So I think in many ways, it is kind of a judgment call amongst the chair. And I think we've seen this at meetings over the years, too, where it's like, hey, OK, there's a lot of new faces in the audience. This isn't the usual suspects screaming about the same thing that are here to disrupt the meeting intentionally. This is like a real thing or a new thing. And I've seen counselors be like, we need to pump the brakes on this issue. I'm getting comment and commentary. It's hard to judge that on an individualistic level. I would say my own perspective, too, is on the limits and things that you can't really accept for if it's an agenda item itself that you have issues with. even political commentary. It's not threatening, or in this case, cursing or personally attacking some of the councilor's family, which unfortunately for staff and for council has become more a regular thing as well, that you should be able to talk about whatever you want. If you demand this council have bad puppies, and you want to do it, you can speak about it. If you want to talk about politics, you can talk about it. But that's my personal preference, is that there's not a limitation on the type of speech that's being made, just that offensive language, comments that are threatening, those are the big ones that kind of leave the building. Or disrupting meetings itself, too.

I was worried, Charlie, that if you don't specifically prohibit supporter opposition for candidates for political offices, the public comments just become, you know, political rallies. Yeah. And, again, I didn't come up with this proposal. This is from the Municipal Association. I think it's entirely, again, public comments should be on city business, city, you know, who's running for office, a lot of those people will be a part of city business. Speaking for or against Canada is not city business.

And there is non-partisanship baked into the China-Iraq agreement.

Yeah. I don't want... You know, we've had it before. We've had it in instances. It's not productive. It's just people using this as a stage for political campaigning, and that's not what this body's... We're addressing the business of the city, which is not politics. So I would... You know, I'm not... I would propose... We already have it in our... We've already adopted it, actually, that, you know, no politicking was already in our language for...

Does it need to be added here, then, or...?

It is. I've already had it. It's on page three, comments on the bulletin process. Or wherever it is. It's on section three, or section two, number three, public conduct. And then it says comments related to the following will be ruled out of order by the chair. There's six bullets, the last one being support or opposition for any candidate for political office. And this language, again, I took this directly out of the MMA materials. And it's also, yeah, talking about personnel disputes, grievances, all those things, things that are not appropriate for public comment, and they included politicking.

Patrick, just so I'm clear, in the red line version, things that are underlined are new?

Yeah, so anything that's struck out is in there. So yeah, the first page, you see section 2, number 1, A and B. I struck that out because the proposed language basically goes into more detail.

I was going to say, it makes it look like there really wasn't much for our... Well, there was a supporter. That's the problem.

We didn't have much guidance on how to run our meetings.

So I'll add that we had a shift recently that I appreciate in that there's the public comment, they ask the questions. After that is the house alert comments, and that we can use that to address some of the questions, again, from our own singular perspective. And at least that... Again, if we can get to the point where there are other ways for people to address the questions, they can email us now, but are there better ways? But is that something that we want to encourage, or that has its own issues?

You know, I think I've, and I've seen other city towns, when I haven't read the answer, and I'm a writer by nature, especially when trying to process questions and write them down, and sometimes I make pretty quick bets, like I can answer that when I can't, and we get those together, and then I can give my general areas where we'll get back to, and Amy can maybe talk a little bit more about some of the changes we're thinking about to kind of keep track of comments and inquiries. maybe made it in the names that I'm not able to get to in real time, and then we can have some of those things.

Have we thought about a sign-in sheet for speakers where we ask for their contact info, so that if a counselor wants to follow up with them, we don't have to chase them out the room? They can reach us, but if we want to follow up with them. And it may be interesting to hear, of course. Sorry.

It has someone who's not, who is relatively in public speaking, You can't lose track of time easily. So I don't know if we should have a visible timer for people. So it's less of the, well, finish your comments. And I know when Fractions Decathlon, they have little colored flyers of papers that they would tell you how long you have so you could adjust your speech. And I wonder if that may also help. with public comment because I appreciate every member of the public who speaks. And it's just trying to make sure that everyone can be heard and that the meetings can stay focused.

We do have a timer that we purchased.

Yeah, I think the timer, we've actually had a couple citizens that, some of our frequent flyers that have said that they, you know, appreciate a public timer and I know it's always awkward for the chair.

Even just having the time without the flag, at least you could point and say it would be a signal to move quicker.

It's also a fairness thing. A lot of people come out for this, and we have some people that come out for every single one, and they talk for five, six, they just try to keep pushing it, and they're to the business at hand after their own agenda. And somebody else here might have a family or a kid. And one of the issues we have here, too, is we don't get a lot of good representation. So I saw that gentleman. He took one time to come out to the listening session at Short-Term Rentals. He's taking time away from his kid tonight. You don't often see that demographic here. Young, family, demographic. And yes, it's always great to hear the public comment. But we are just seeing one side of the demographic. We see that in the comments on Short-Term Rentals online It's an important part of the process, but it is the order and structure and having a time limit allows a little bit more fairness so that if there is a limit too, somebody's not taking eight minutes of that limit. The council chair just keeps trying to add this back and forth. I think we've seen a lot of that, right, which is all of a sudden it turns into a free-for-all and you can't get to the business at any end.

Another thought is... As someone who has had to learn the Robert rules of order, it may be interesting if we have little cheat sheets so that when it's available, so if it's motions or table, people can understand this, it means that we're not taking action. But if the issue doesn't, we haven't been saying about the issue, they're just maybe trying to clarify because that would Not that meetings are not transparent, but it helps people understand what is happening. You can be as transparent as you want, but people, for whatever reason, do not understand or aren't familiar. It can look non-transparent. Yes, that's the right word.

Yeah, there's a great book. I think I've shared some books on Robert's Rules written by an MIT professor that analyzes the history of this. I think it's basically a post-civil war general. Saw these meetings going bananas in San Francisco, and he did some order, put it together. It became like a family cottage industry to keep selling these rules. But lately, you're seeing a lot of cities and towns being like, this is not appropriate to what we're trying to do here. We're seeing different circumstances for our meeting procedures that are not relative to the 1800s. But what are those things? discussion after a table. Why? We could adopt that as a current process.

We could have discussion. The thing is that this also does incorporate Robert's Rules of Order. It's not exclusive to it. Robert's Rules of Order does not get into this detail about how our meetings run, but as far as Robert's Rules and Order is really for the council and its deliberative process about how councilors can propose amendments or table things or call to order. Robert's Rules are really for how the council operates. for the best part of this rules of order, that's more about how we run through the meeting, our structure specific to our council, how it's run, and then how public comment is allowed for, circumstances. this talks about how specific meetings would be called and you know this makes clear a regular meeting is called on the third monday of each month special meetings um you know it just references back to the charter it's designed to new counselors come in and be like well how does this work or the public if they're watching i mean how does this work but to marina's point i think there are some various roberts rules kind of cheat sheets And if you wanted to incorporate one just as an attachment to this, so counselors have that, the public has that.

It's sad it's going to be not to have a municipal lawyer in that chair. It's true. We'll be guaranteed, come this November, that we're going to have that. I'm not going to be able to learn a lot since being here, but I think that would be helpful.

Yeah, and, you know, and I wrote these, drafted these rules, you know, not just for me, right? This is, I do, you know, hopefully, you know, if it is adopted, that it's adopted and, you know, future councils and chairs can use them. They can obviously be amended. They can obviously be completely revoked. But I think... Just the last year, especially, we've obviously had some pretty difficult meetings, and all this is designed to allow the council to do its job as best as it can while balancing the public's right to provide comment so long as they do it respectfully and within time limits. Carol?

Yeah, I was just thinking, you were talking about people going over the time limit. I think in the last three or four meetings that we've had, we've started to see this, I'm almost done, and then they just talk over you and keep going. And this was the case in one speaker who spoke this evening and spent their speaking time reading out the AI rebuttal to BAN. I pulled it up while It was being read, and that's what it was. And that's kind of politicking. I don't know how you're going to stop. But it's just, you can tell, it's very broad. It doesn't have anything to do with the particular situation. But more importantly, as you're getting this, I'm almost done. I'm almost done. And where does that get cut off?

And, Kara, I think this is an area I've been on the other side. debates and set up debate rooms with timers and moderators, and some moderators were really good at shutting down a candidate. Nope, nope, nope, and they just talk over you. That's really for the chair. You breach your three minutes, they keep trying to breach your three minutes. But I would also train candidates to be like, that time is money on that television. Do not pay attention to that clock walk to whoever. Try to get five, try to get six. because you're basically making it unfair in a limited time. So I really think it's always a hard dance, but having the timer there can be helpful, and then having the council chair just have a repetitive, I'm sorry, you've reached your time limit, you've reached your time limit.

Of course, with candidates, they cut the mic.

And that is a piece of this, too, is that I think there was a time when this wasn't happening. I think I read an article about Brownfield meetings just turned into Bananastown, and to the point of violence in the parking lot afterwards. I hope it doesn't come to that. I know there's been times where there's just been yelling, screaming from the areas to disrupt the proceedings. And we have started having police presence here. I guess that used to be a policy in the city that the police chief was required to be here. Unfortunately, due to more recent events, we've restarted that. might need to be for more of these areas, but that if it came down to it, that if you continue to disrupt the proceedings that are rolled forward, we're going to have to escalate.

And that is an allowable... Yeah, I mean, that's been... From forever, that's the... You know, eventually, if someone's disruptive, then they won't listen to reason. The chair is allowed to suspend the meeting and have them, you know, move. Of course, we hope that doesn't happen, but... You know, it's just that everything's so amplified right now. And it's not easy being the chair. So it's a hard job, and this is just supposed to help people figure it out. Amy, do you want to give us the overview of what you're proposing for public comments?

Yeah, absolutely. So I think we've put a lot of time and thought into this, and I appreciate all of the thoughts that you guys have given me. We do have a plan. It's a multi-page plan, and I've kind of boiled it down into a quick one-pager or so, just so I can stay focused. So we really have been looking at the question of how do we make sure that questions from the public don't get lost and that people know that they've been heard, Nancy, just like you said. So residents do reach us in many different ways. They speak during public comment. They use our Contact Us form through the website. They call us, they email us, they drop in. We've got a follow request form. There's a number of different ways that they can connect with us. So we do have a successful contact us form and an internal process for getting those questions to the appropriate staff and answers back to the person who asked them. So what we're proposing is really building on what we already have and trying to get more of a consistent process. So the basic idea is this. A question comes in. We acknowledge it. We get it to the person or the department that can answer it. We respond to the resident. We track the question. And then we close the loop, right? So there really is an important expectation on both sides here. Sometimes an answer cannot be immediately a question cannot be immediately answered. So sometimes the person who receives the question simply isn't the person who has the answer. So staff may need to research it, they may need to talk to a different department, they may need to even go to an outside agency to get the right answer. So we want to provide accurate information and occasionally getting those answers takes a little bit of time. So with that, and it's what we've been talking about all night really, is that we truly need to work with the approach of giving each other patience and respect on both sides to get the answers back to the person who requested it. So the other part of this that I'm kind of excited about is the ability to really track any trends that are coming through. So if one resident asks a question, chances are somebody else is wondering the same thing. So rather than just answering that question and then it just stays there, we can look at whether it should become an FAQ on our website or a website story or a social media story, a PSA, a media, global media story, even information that we need to bring back to you folks. So we will look at the questions over time, identify those themes or those trends, and then that should tell us where residents need more information. Okay, so just to boil it down, it comes down to five things really, right? First of all, make sure that residents know where they can find information. There's a lot of places that they can find it immediately. Maybe we need to do, not maybe, I need to do a better job of informing them of where they can find information. That could save them a lot of time, you know? and then make sure that residents know how and where to ask their questions. Then the staff, work with the staff to make sure that they respond to the requester. The questions are then tracked and they're resolved and tracked to identify any trends and to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks. So ultimately, every question is an opportunity not only to help the person who asked it, but also to improve communication and educate our community and to further build on that trust that we're trying so hard to do. So that's kind of it in a nutshell. I hope that we'll have an opportunity to talk a little more detail about it when we meet on the 21st. And I've kind of got like a one-pager for you guys that sort of brings us through the workflow of that.

That will be part of the packet.

Yeah, that will be part of the packet, yeah.

Great.

So Steve, I'm sorry, you joined us. Did you have anything to add or any questions for me? No? Okay, I just wanted to ask. So that's kind of what we've been talking about. Any reactions? Any other thoughts that I can think about as we continue to build this plan?

Do you have a... a like a templated templated response ready at least what comes in with emails and stuff that kind of um that can go right out to these questions providing them like information like like you were saying like well where they can find this information in the meantime while we take however long it takes however many business days it takes But in the meantime, while we are working on your answers, here's like, I don't know if that's something, like an automated response.

So, thank you for that question. Yeah, I guess the short answer is sort of. And you know, it's really interesting and timely as we work through our FOA, our FOA requests. I'm learning a lot about how questions come in. Now with FOA, there is a time frame. Can you just say you're talking... So the Freedom of Access Act. So for public records. So when a member of the public requests access to public records, how that workflow goes. So, okay, so yes, I do have some boilerplate responses for questions of those nature. So absolutely, there would be some consistency in this message. I think... When I think about all the places that people can go to get answers, you know, there's our city schedule that will tell you all about what's going on when. There's the Yodel calendar, which, you know, that's, yes, it's events, but still there's a lot of information there. The website, the search feature on the website is really good. The search feature... So there's a number of different ways that people can get information. So your question was, when somebody asks, will we have a default answer of a sort that says, we got your message, we're working on it. In the meantime, check these areas. You might get your answer. Yeah.

I just feel like it would take a lot of burden off of you initially and give you that time that you need to take in the emails or the questions that are being asked from wherever they're coming in. And then, at the same time, give them all of these places that they can find the questions that they're looking for at the right time. Because I know how overburdened everyone is, including directors and everyone. So, you know, that consistent messaging of, you know, we respond to your questions in five to seven business days, whatever that might be. In the meantime, you can utilize these resources. reach out to your city councilor, whatever that might be.

Yeah, that's good. And you know, I will just toss in here too, don't forget about Doppler. That's another area that is city alerts that we'll be able to use to reach our residents.

Can you resend an invitation to that since we're part of the testing of it? Or can I find it on the website?

Yeah, I will, yeah, it's a, I'll send you some information so you can register. I know we've talked about it. Yeah.

Amy's been revamping our And to your point, Tabitha, we have to. We already have the CRIM, the Council of Requests and Information for Inquiry Management, so that we can track. I mean, it's the volume. Rightfully so. Obviously, I'm important to this council, so it's a good question to figure out. But the volume is really intense. I have 20 to 30 meetings a week. Getting to my email inbox in real time can be a struggle. And so we're working as a team to have access to that inbox folder and use the correct piece so we can be as responsive as possible. Junk email filter, too, that I had to pull off now. So now I can't really separate my junk mail because it's just gathering too much. But the citizen request, too, we just need a little bit more. diligent about the catalog and tracking of the question and when it's processed. It's going to take a lot of initiative. Thank you to Amy and Sarah. Carrie and Lorena are also helping on this process. But once we kind of can get this new system for Askell's worth in this process.

Yeah, so we're hoping to set up an email address at Askellsworth.com. Because there are a lot of different ways, so it's kind of like an octopus with all these arms. Just to be able to funnel it together is going to be helpful. And I'm hoping also to work with IT to see if we can utilize maybe Microsoft Lists as a way of bringing the question in and then coding it some way so that we can better filter the trends and the topics. And it'll also be a good way to be able to track to figure out how many questions are coming in, how long is it taking us to answer them, what are the main departments that are getting hit up, I was going to say, asked often to help us get answers. So hopefully we'll just be able to identify where there's topics that we can do a better job educating the public.

I want to make sure we have time for the last agenda item. Does the council have... So I've got the question about whether we want to cap it at 18 minutes, and I'm fine just removing that. And, you know, really, ultimately, it's at the discretion of the chair if they feel the need to cap any public comments. beyond that, if you guys, after you're able to review it, if you have any further questions or comments, if you want to email them to me, I can try to put together a version that will then go on September 9th. Okay.

I know we just kind of have a time boundary. We had that special meeting. I apologize for the... How are folks doing? We could push this to October for workshop and potential October meeting. I'd also like Carrie's time. She stayed here, so on the city official Code of Ethics and Conduct updates. I just know September is supposed to be a pretty

heavy agenda for the meeting. Does it make sense to maybe raise it, and then just for a matter of efficiency of the meeting, have this voted on in October?

I'd be OK with that. I'm fine either way. I'm just thinking. Yeah, I think this is a long-form conversation that Council Well, I'll leave Karen. I know she's got some opening remarks here on where we're at. But I think it is going to be a long September meeting, so pushing some of this back. We might need a further workshop discussion on this one. This is a lot more long form. It's going to put city officials for debate. I know I gave one version of this to the city council three months ago it's one of the things that's like maybe four months ago and then it kind of um but we're continuing to confront issues and there's some big issues that we've had for a long time in the city that i believe need to be addressed through an updated policy um so i wouldn't want to have this beyond the october yeah let's jump into it Actually, we are very much still in the draft version. And before I employ legal resources .. I really wanted to .. Thank you. You're welcome. OK, so I did prepare an entire thing to go through every one of these sections.

So happy to do it, or if we want to just kind of do a quick overview, that's fine too, but I will get started. So the intent for tonight was to walk through the entire proposal for the replacement of Chapter 40, the City's Code of Ethics and Conduct.

I'll email you, Carol, so you can follow along.

Thanks. Thank you. Sorry. So yeah, I do not have a fancy, nice PowerPoint like Robert had. So the current version of chapter 40 was last replaced in February of 2011. So it's been approximately 15 years since the city has undertaken a comprehensive update of this ordinance. There are many principles in the existing code that remain important and aren't being carried forward with the proposed version. The purpose of the update is to address areas where municipal operations technology, public record requirements, workplace expectations, and the ways elected and appointed officials communicate have changed. The proposed code therefore retains the basic principles of public trust, professionalism, proper governmental channels, avoidance of conflicts of interest, and protection of confidential information while providing much greater clarity about how those principles apply today. So the proposed ordinance is also considerably more detailed. The existing chapter 40 is 14 sections. Proposed ordinance contains 33 sections organized into three primary articles. Ethical standards, relationships with city administration and employees, and complaints, investigations, and enforcement. So I can go into the details of all of them, or we can... Yeah, maybe we...

You know, as one of them mentioned about in the short-term rental conversation, what is the problem we are trying to solve? And to me, as the issues that have popped up across the last three or four years, they've popped up across the last three or four council chairs. And what's been very surprising to me is the professional environment that's expected of city staff members and the expectations we have to live under through our performance reviews, through our personnel ordinance, through our disciplinary measures that really ensure that we provide a safe, harassment-free, bullying-free professional work environment for our city staff and that conduct among staff that went into ethically and, in large measure, privately addressed. And that the only aspect of our, for the most part, that work. There's an investigation that comes forward or information that may lead to one. HR proceeds forward with said investigation. Sometimes there's something that requires discipline. There's a whole process for that. There's a structure of the department head. An issue of that discipline, it can be grieved to the city manager, it can be grieved to the city manager, it can be grieved to the city council. There's a role for the city council to play in that piece. That's very important. But it also protects the privacy of both those who come forward with information that they don't think is right in their workplace. But it also protects the person who has an accusation that gets made against them. I can't tell you any specifics, but not just in this role, but in my entire professional career. That falls on both measures. Sometimes an accusation is made or something you have to look into, and there's no there there. No further action required. We're not going to really say anything. Sometimes there is something there. It's a verbal warning. It's a written warning. It's a more serious suspension in very rare cases of expulsion. And that allows for a level of professionalism in the working environment that is really important in any workplace. I've been frankly shocked in municipal government, and not just in Ellsworth, but across the board, of the lack of protection for city employees with the Code of Conduct and the conduct of city counselors, city officials, with staff. the fear that comes with staff for coming forward in that they will be publicly shamed and that city officials will You go to great measures to make life difficult for city staff members in unprofessional ways, which would never be tolerated in a private workplace, and which would get you fired very quickly. Hundreds of words, all caps, emails with multiple exclamation points. Never sent one of those in my life to a staff member, even when I've been frustrated. They would not be tolerated because that's not a productive work environment. Bringing employee complaints into the public sphere and embarrassing, retaliating, shaming employees through such a thing and creating a chilling effect is another area. I think we saw that in pretty stark relief this year when staff members felt increasingly frustrated with the behavior of the city councilor. They reported that. We discussed that in the executive session. The behaviors continued to the point where an investigation had to be called for, and it was really uncharted territory because the ordinance doesn't really structure that. There's some state laws, and there's very important counselor rights on bringing those types of complaints into the public sphere to protect city counselors from effectively a cabal of of other counselors trying to kick them out of office or something. Those are very important rights, and they're enshrined in state law. But the employees have rights as well to be in a productive, professional work environment, and the city councilor is having a code of conduct. That's why I asked. She says, every year you should do this. Hasn't been done in 15 years. And it's not just for city councilors. It's for all city officials, myself included, our planning board. That was the issue in Brownfield. It was a planning board member who was really, you know, there needs to be a similar structure so that staff feel like when they're the subject of bullying, harassment, intimidation, unprofessional behavior, that that behavior will be actioned upon and protected so that they don't have to spend their days and lives in fear of being falsely accused of doing baseless accusations. And this gets at many of those areas. The other piece is sort of how I worry about a chilling effect. I know many of the staff members have come to me that were part of the initial I wasn't a part of that investigation. I was interviewed for it. But many have come forward and said, I wouldn't do that again. The public shaming that occurred when that was brought into the public sphere, which all could have been handled in an executive session, made a lot of city staff scared. And they didn't feel protected. And I felt that there needs to be a better process for sure. When there's going to be a discipline from the council, on an expulsion or some sort of serious piece, there should be a process for that to be in public. But it also should include guardrails for city staff in privacy. and non-metalliation that are also pretty strict. And I hate to say it too, that really outlines what is and is not professional behavior in a work environment. I actually think in some ways the length of this is so unnecessary. My camp motto is to treat people with kindness and respect. If you had that as one sentence with a, and don't make baseless accusations against people to score cheap points, that probably would be enough. Most people would see that as, but it's not enough in our current environment. And there's a lot of, I think, work that needs to make it expressly clear. This is what is and is not appropriate in city official behavior. I also added some other just things that I thought was important on, that kind of came up on, okay, if an investigation moves forward, how is that authorized? Who authorizes that? How do you go through a city official? Another piece that's been quite concerning for me is the side investigations of counselors into staff members. based on what I've been told on citizen reports. That is right and proper for a citizen to report an issue they feel like the staff member is there. It is not right and proper for a city councilor to do their own private investigation without talking to HR, without talking to the city manager. without talking to our police department if it's a legal matter, but utilizing police resources for personal potential grudges and unsubstantiated investigations of the staff members has legal consequences and financial consequences for the city. We've seen this in other municipalities where they bear some legal burden. And really, this goes into great detail on how a counselor, if they receive a citizen complaint, should move that forward. When those complaints come to me, they always get investigated. um and that's kind of the we're doing another training on discipline and investigations with city staff because there's real consequences of those don't aren't handled properly um and you know that how they're angled how privacy is maintained through that um somebody reports that kerry um is uh you know uh deals money every Thursday from here, and counselors come in, starts taking pictures, confronts her in City Hall, makes a baseless accusation We're also creating a work environment that is going to create a lot of turnover, because it's not a safe place to work when you feel like you're being falsely accused, or harassed, or stalked by city officials based on based-action cases. And if the response back to a citizen, that might be true. have been doing such a thing. But that is also a reason why you need to go through the proper channel, either legal or elsewise. If it's not proper, we can't report back to this, hey, actually, I looked into Carrie. Turns out she has a reason. Um, she, you know, it's perfectly legal. You can't just give the whole reason for the investigation either. The only thing that's public about the entire process is the final disciplinary letter that's issued to that staff member. And we're all trained as a city staff on how to do those pieces. When city officials start blurring those lines of investigations, um, in the city staff members, um, and it's happened on multiple occasions now that, um, uh, that, uh, That's right and proper. When a city councilor gets involved in the actual investigation, it creates a whole different realm of not just feeling the staff member that they're going to work in prior to when that happens, but potentially more financial liability for the city. Plus, especially in the role of city councilors, you're a piece of the disciplinary process. If you start an investigation process, haven't told anybody about it, done your own thing on it, that moves forward, you may have to vote on that disciplinary matter. So you need to be an independent person. I mentioned this in some city council trainings. I don't inform you all that it's not allowable for you to unless there's an actual discipline that gets grieved to you all. You don't know the details of investigations into those pieces, and that needs to be in there. Confidentiality. on records, information, and other continuing issues that we've been having here. Also, there's a lot of talk on the board's disclosure, but I felt it was important here as well that the board, you know, it came up, we did have a check through at the council. It's not against the current code of ethics or or general standards here that being on a nonprofit board, we can't throw in an item that included a subsection of that funding for said nonprofit. council on that. The council came back and said that's not... However, having some writing in here that you should self-disclose. I'm on boards. Other people here are on boards. Maybe you're in a for-profit. Maybe you're in a non-profit. Taking a city official position, I feel like there should at least be a disclosure aspect of that. In the same way that if you have a financial liability for a financial interest in a city council item, you need to self-disclose. Or maybe you have... a friend who's bidding on such a thing, or an acquaintance, you should probably disclose. It might not mean you can't vote on that item, but, you know, disclosing those, disclosure, I think, is often the best medicine you get. And just having that guidance clear for city councilors that, hey, if you're on boards, let us know on how to do some of the disclosures.

To add to what you're saying, Chubb, If the council majority decides that we should have an ordinance governing short-term rentals, I'm abstaining. I can't vote on that. Bid openings. There's a wide range of construction companies I've been associated with. I'm probably going to abstain from it. Some I probably would like to vote against. Honestly, you know, I mean, look, there's an honor amongst thieves, but it's not right. It's not ethical. You see what I mean? And that's where I come from. I don't have any problem with that.

Honestly, I brought it up not to call you out here, Pat, but I wanted your guidance on the RFP for the road because you have a lot of information in that and have done stuff like that. But we really kind of thought about it and we're like, you know, setting Pat up to be in that position if we did that.

There's a level of things. You know, I can offer some suggestions, but I... But then, am I crossing the line? Is it your job to manage the employees of the city?

Yeah, I think that's a, and also you can always ask. Hey, is this okay for me to do? Hey, there's a lot of rules, policies, and procedures we all have to follow, and there's good reasons for them. Anyway, there's also public transparency and public preservation of records. There's some information here on requirements for counselors. you've got to give us that information. Not responding, and if it's in your personal email, and you've got a bunch of emails on it, you've got to give us that information. You're discussing city business. Using your personal email to talk about a city issue with friends and family is not a way around the failure of disclosure laws. That is a public record. Destroying emails that you have on your personal devices that may be relative to your city council is also against POA. And this is, you know, it needs to be pretty clear that it's why I keep it all on my city email. It's why I have a separate city phone with a text message so if anybody asks, here you go. I do not use personal devices for that type of thing, because I want it to be really easy to be able to track my public information. It's all right here. Here's where it's at. Sometimes these might be just honest mistakes. I didn't know that, or it's convenient for me to do that. But also making it pretty clear that, yep, we might be involved in a lawsuit, and they're going to ask for evidence, and you're going to have to provide that in a specific manner. And if you just don't respond to city staff members after repeated requests, that can be a bad thing. there's also a lot more of a detailed tier in here on I think Bangor is also looking into this on additional violations it might need to go to training so if people have an issue they're not the city of Goldsworth has sent people to training we've got this issue and also Carrie has this we all every year have to do an insane amount of you know videos all these policies, and I think city councilors and other city officials, we should all really have to be certain of this. Maybe not as many as the city staff have to do, and not just to protect the city, but to protect councilors, too, so that they know what is and isn't appropriate. And this has a little bit more... I had to do it for the 21 years I worked for the state of Maine. And to me, in terms of the tiering of, you know, it's kind of like sanction. Three different flavors of sanction in our current ethics ordinance, which all seem the same to me, except for expulsion, which is a whole other process. The expulsion process, I think, needs to, you know, remain and have that really high bar. But now there's one, hey, you can't do this, you're going to be sent to a training camp. You send to a training, you still keep doing it. There's going to be further processes. I think for all city officials should be held to the same standard that city staff is held to. And that would be thinking forward that staff feels comfortable going to council or going to HR or going to legal. And that their issue will be dealt with so we can have a productive professional work environment. I think that's really important. It's really a key to success in any work environment that you have those protections. And maybe we can, if you've got another workshop in early October, we can talk a little more about these pieces. I know there's a lot there that needs to be included. Maybe there's things that Carrie and I have missed. I know Sarah has been included in this as well. And, you know, any questions?

Clearly a lot of reading to get ready for this, but we appreciate having it framed up the way it is.

Yeah, a quick look at it, and, you know, I think this is all quite necessary. So, I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah, we tried to outline in there, too, on the... you know, there may be a reason. It might be about the city manager. You may not want to work with me on something. You think it's about me. Then you've got to go to the city attorney or HR or the city council chair. If you don't trust any of those folks, you know, the main attorney general of office, that this is, you know, that there's got to be a process that staff deserves the right to do in executive session or... in a venue just like all of our staff are afforded that protection. I don't go out there and start talking in open forums in public about these issues unless they've had a full vetting process internally. And we've gotten to the discipline level where it is a public record. And even in those cases, we try to make it not going to ruin somebody's career. by making it like a public even when discipline is very much necessary we try to be as general as possible we worked with the city council on letters like that that had to happen in one case there's never fun moments even when it comes down to having to issue those types of really tough disciplines but even then the intent is that they're in a fair process and we're not trying to ruin somebody's life with these things and sometimes it does feel like

This is great work. But, yeah, I think I would have liked to have had it this month, but I think considering the time to digest this and the heavy September, we will make sure to put it right at the top.

To clarify your question, when you had mentioned who this is applicable to, you mentioned yourself and planning board, and I'm looking broadly at it as city officials, but if we can just get clarification, is it all commissions? I know they all get sworn in, so this is what they're sworn in.

Boards, commissions, planning board, city manager. The only folks it would necessarily apply to is city staff, not commissioners. I think I'm the only appointed official in the city administration, so that's why I'm lumped into this category. I'm kind of in double jeopardy, actually. I think I have personnel requirements, personnel ordinance, and the city officials. That's all right.

Well, you said finance director is kind of quasi.

You know, that's another change. I was thinking the junk mail filtered that out. I would like to elevate the finance director to the... an appointee of the city council to create a little bit more of a high-level and responsibility, but I've got to find out if that's a charter change that would be commissioned as opposed to something new. So in that scenario, yes, the finance director would also, if we appointed that to an appointed city council position, would also be in this category.

There are pieces in this, too, I think, that are important because it just, you know, technology changes. There's been a lot of changes in technology and communication over the last 15 years. So this does kind of address that, too, and makes adjustments for that because we're certainly using email and other forms of technology a lot more than we were even 15 years ago. So that's another big piece of this that I thought was really helpful and also necessary.

notes and comment, do you want to share those with us in an email?

Sure, yeah. It's basically an overview of each section broken down with just kind of a summary of what those changes are, or additions, changes, revisions from the current code of ethics.

I think that would be super helpful if you could email that and a copy of this to the council. Absolutely. And then we'd have that and what people want to... ask questions or make any proposals that could do it that way. Sure.

Well, now, you know, there's got to be a final legal review, obviously, to conform to state law. There are rightful protections for public officials on free speech aspects that are really important to keep enshrined in this as well. So one of the things I kind of struggled with when thinking about this is this, like, okay, It's like a mediator process. This piece got into why the investigation is this political. You can see why somebody tried to enact a political ethics-oriented violation to try to kick somebody out. You want to protect against that. It felt like maybe a mediator. a city manager contract on a direct mediation aspect. But I didn't quite know how that would fly with some of the council protections and sort of giving out your ability to kind of bring forward as opposed to requiring, like, my contract, like, we're going to go to mediation. I'm not just going to come out here and say, you know, that keeps retaliating against me for saying that she's robbing folks.

I want to know that.

We're going to mediation first. That would be the requirement if that happened, though. But with city councillors, you do have a different level of protection for state law, and that's sort of bring it out into the public sphere, which is important to keep there.

So I don't know if that could be . I've never, I don't know the answer to that, but .

Because it can just kind of take out that, like, hey, nobody has to get in the game. There's this mediator. They're viewing all the evidence. If there's a staff complaint, it's a councillor. If there's a councillor complaint, it's not a councillor. If there's a councillor complaint, it's .

Carol, I want to know what you're knitting. Is that a whole sweater? Oh, I'm jealous, Carol.

I'm a needle pointer, and I love to listen to needle pointers. That's my favorite.

That dog has pulled this sweater out four times. I assume you're using dog hair in the yard.

It's a good place for one.

I hope you can join us soon.

Thank you. Bye. Bye.