Charter Review Committee - Regular Meeting

All righty. So, this is the May 14th meeting of the charter review committee. I will call the meeting to order. And if I could find my list of roll calls here, I'll take take a roll call. Don Anderson seems to be absent. Nate Bodwin just notified me that he wouldn't be here. Mike Brun, don't see him. Angelina Skip Bob Dtoma, finally I get to mark one is present. Dan Fitzgerald here. Mark Haydad here. Jeff Hess here.

Andy Jefferson notified me that he would not be here. John Kelly here. believe I see him here. Jim Mallaloy here. Greg Maher notified me that he would be absent. Angela Ramen here. And David Robins is here, which means we exactly have enough to make a quorum. Ah, hello. Sorry. Unreliable teenager borrowed my car. Just brought it back. Yes. I'm just doing a roll call. So, Don Anderson here.

Very good. We now have nine out of 15. We needed eight for quum. So, we're good to go. Our first agenda item is public input. I do not see any members of the public here in the room. I do not see any Zoom attendees. So, it appears that unless one of us has something that counts as public input. Not really, but I was doing the tracking of those that we got. We did get an errant email, I think, on April 30th that had nothing to do with this committee um about revenue generation by going after old permits or something. Interesting proposal.

I just wanted to let you just comment that I didn't include it in the list of things related to this committee. Yep. I think that went out to a lot of I got one as the town moderator. So I think I think they were covering all their bases. Yes. All right. So with no public input, our next agenda item is outreach. We did some outreach at town meeting which Don can report on. Um I don't think we've gotten any followup from that yet. I haven't heard I have not heard anything about the charter review committee from town meeting. You probably heard one or two things about other elements of town meeting. Yes.

Which we can discuss some other time. Yes. Um but it they were on the table. I don't know how many got taken, but people were gathering up a lot of the paperwork as they were walking through. So um I apologize. I forgot to mention it in my opening remarks. I think you had other things on your mind. There were so many things to talk about it was anyway. Okay. So, that Yes, I saw the I saw the uh the uh paperwork on the table. I did not take one.

I meant to, but I didn't. Okay. So, that's what we've done for outreach since the last meeting. I don't know offhand what we whether we have anything in mind for further the next outreach activity.

I think we should just continue to make our paper resources available places like the library and other public areas town hall and then I don't think we have a need for some more organized outreach until maybe after we assign everyone a section and start digging into it. Yes, we will certainly once once we once we get really, you know, start putting together the results of what we've seen so far. Eventually, we'll be, you know, doing outreach here. Here here's what we're thinking about. What do you think? And we we had talked about holding a a a public hearing of some kind

once we've got kind of a a draft set of proposals. Certainly. So certainly we'll be looking for feedback and especially once we get divvied up if someone reaches out for outreach it'll be much easier to communicate as subcommittees than having everything questioned by this whole board a little bit. How would we how would we expect from like committees and boards that we I assume sent emails to how would that work? Like would we expect someone to come here or do we expect an email response or our responses are good? I don't expect them to come but not everyone.

Yeah, there may be particular topics. I think we'll we'll we'll circle back to this. We get farther into the agenda tonight. there may be particular topics that we or one of us or a subcommittee will want to meet with other boards. Okay,

you to get their you take their temperature and you just as an example the uh the the fire chief appointment. I think we will want to be discussing that specifically with the fire chief or the town administrator the select board and get their uh don't tell me is zoom Did it go down for just you? It looks like we're good in the back. Yeah, my my Zoom is reconnecting. I'm still here.

We're still up in the room. Oh, wait. Did we lose No, because we're still here. So, we didn't lose the host. I think David was the only one who got booted up. I do think uh to Dan's point for stuff like I think one of the best pieces of outrage you had so far is moving planning board from elected to appointed for something like that.

I think it would be easier to have the members of ours who are focusing on that part go to a planning board meeting rather than have that come the other way around just out of convenience sake. Um, but you're absolutely right. When it comes to like a a municipal employee, we can have them come in. Or if it's something simple like say we have uh we're putting it out to all town departments that are privy to the charter and the assessor's office comes back and they're in there and they say like we have no suggestions. We're all set. That can just be an email,

right? No, I do like that idea of at least that they understand what we're doing and they acknow like we get a no. You know what I mean? instead of like their confusion in their own little group or whatever. for an appliance, it's like, "Oh, I thought she was going to get Oh, no. Like, if you know, and maybe as we said, you know, as we split into those smaller groups, that's that easier correspondence between the two."

Because that is good to know, like you said, if if we're thinking about changes and some group comes together and say like, "No, we're fine." Like, everything's working. It's like, "Well, don't fix it if it's not right. Oh, another thing for future outreach plans. Um, last time we did a bit of a joint social media push just on our personal Facebooks. I remember when we did that first outreach thing. Um, we can even do just as simple as well like when this gets posted on the town's YouTube, just link to that and say, "Hey, we just had our charter review meeting. Remember, you know, anytime you have an idea, here's the link for outreach." And that can serve as a really easy monthly quote unquote outreach.

All right. Get a mute before it goes crazy. Yes, it would appear my my computer off the network finally got back. Okay.

All right. So, anything else at the moment we want to touch on for outreach? The next agenda item is additional proposed revisions. So, there's a couple things that have come in since the last meeting. The first one now. Here it is. Me get it on the screen. So these are from Greg. He he's sent me a long list of typographical. I will distribute this after the meeting. So

just to and I know I talked about it before the meeting, but now it's just on the record. I have sent out twice to the charter review committee group email, the Google doc with the draft version that looks exactly like this except without the um like little mini explanations. Uh the people who didn't get it, I sent it out individually. So if you need it individually, let me know. But I will add all of this in once we get it after the meeting. Yep. So he's got a lot of his bold needed It's mostly again some pretty minor nits.

You know, Dave, anytime he I know in a couple of places he capitalized the town meeting and capitalized other things, the legislature when they get this or whoever, they're going to shrink it back down to not capitalized. Yes, we we will worry. I don't know if I don't know if we want to go through the the exercise of capitalizing everything when we know it's going to be unc. Yes, that's that's something we'll want to discuss before we finalize everything. We should take count of how many things that we've capitalized and then when it comes back see how many they lowercased

or maybe we don't get the legislature involved. That way we don't give them a chance to mess up what we've written. But that again we'll we'll we'll discuss that before we all done with our work. So, Greg, you eliminated a lot of redundancy here. Added a few words and you I'll, like I said, I'll I'll send this out afterwards and we can go through it. And some of this is sort of it's covering some sections that were likely to be changing for other reasons. like modernized a lot of language too which I think in a lot of places where it would say like certain period ends on the first day of July it's like how about July 1 or like how we just do the simpler

yeah so that's a bunch of stuff from Greg he shared it with me shortly after the last meeting so that I could look that over because I'd been accumulating a list of typos as well and So that simplified my list of I have to share. How does what was just shown on the screen compared to the Google doc that was that uh was sent out earlier? So what was just shown uh because we have to bring it forward at a meeting first uh that's the first time I'd seen that. So after this meeting I will add it all in and that this uh draft that I had sent out is I would consider it like the first draft. This is a a rough idea for us as board members to see what's in there so far and how the finished product could look. But as we break into groups and as we get closer to making actual proposals, I imagine a much more broken out version section by section to have like a finished

Hey, could I interrupt for a second? I'm not getting any of the emails that that you guys are talking about. It's you likely in your spam. All right. I was going to say you're purposely keeping me out of this, but that that's all right if you are. Yeah. Mark, did you get the email I sent out a couple days ago with the uh meeting materials? Nope. I had to go online to look I I looked at the um I got the the um the Zoom invite, but I had to go online to get the packet. Yeah, I think I think we have an issue. We have in the past I know had issues with those mailing list that the town sets up. Yeah, I didn't get it either. I I looked at it online. Yeah. interesting.

It's a good reason for me to make sure it gets put online as well, but I I I'll have to follow up with Amber or Cindy and try to see if we can't figure out what what's what with that mailing list. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Yeah, it's weird because, you know, on the finance committee, I get all the finance committee group emails, but I don't get charter review committee.

Yep. Well, there's something going on there. Anyway, so this also I will send out after the meeting, but this is a short list of the additional typo and minor changes that I came up with. The last four here, just kind of little knits and one a section here or there. I've got three that sort of I've labeled them here as potentially applying to all sections. Uh consistency and clarity of references to state laws. I've got another document that I'm I'll talk about that in somewhat more detail. Uh, another terminology issue is yeah, how do we spell bylaw? Because we spell it two ways in in the bylaws and in the charter both that spell it two different ways. I ideally we should be consistent and spell spell it just one way. I looked it up in dictionaries and I found that the hyphenated bylaw is the usual British English spelling. The non-hyenated is the usual American English spelling. So we will we don't have to and again nothing we don't have to decide tonight but we should we we should come up with a we'll spell it one way. And uh the third item of mine, general review of grammar, phrasing, spelling, and typography. I'm tempted to say I would leave that sort of, you know, I mean, we've caught you some various ones of us have caught a lot of little details already, but once we're more or less all done, I think we will want to review it again to catch any remaining

inconsistencies or, you know, issues with formatting, spelling, and all that. So that that I would included here in here because I don't want to forget it. But that that's one that I think is probably best left till we've got all of the more substantial work done to do a final proof read at the very end. Okay. And going back to the references to state laws, let me get find that. me. But everybody knows the ring sound. I say maybe it's maybe it's the mayor.

Okay. So here I basically extracted from the charter all of the references to state laws. Mostly they use the term general law. There is one reference to a specific section of a specific chapter of the general laws. We want to think about that and I haven't quite made up my mind, but I'm not convinced that that reference has to be there.

We discussed when I had brought up changing the Grafton Housing Authority specifically. It mention mentioned general laws a couple times and for the powers and duties it was drawing like three specifically from what the general laws allowed and then saying anything else given in general and I think a part of that discussion we had when I made that uh proposal was if it's like something completely out of our hands and is very ingrained in mass general law we can think about the like saying exactly which one it's pertaining But for the most part, just kind of saying a general laws.

For the most part, I favor just a a generic reference to general laws. We've got one reference to the Constitution and general laws of the Commonwealth. And I'm not convinced that the Constitution needs to be referenced there. We've got general law, general law. We've got the general laws, the general laws, general law, general law. Mostly it's just a reference to general law, but sometimes it's so there again I'd like to use consistent phrasing there. Oh, then we get to the definitions.

Oh, and at the bottom we've got another reference to Massachusetts general laws. But anyway, we define general laws all lowercase. And that basically is just that's what general laws is. That's that is the Massachusetts general laws. Uh pretty pretty much. And then oh if we capitalize general o there are those capitaliz capital letters again then that references somehow that is that was deemed when this was originally written as something that needed to be distinguished because it says everything post December 22nd 1920 when they amended it

but it's all general laws. Yes. I think the the reference to 1920 has to do with that's the date at which the general laws were cod codified into the sections the chapters that that currently exist prior to that the same law was known as a different section

but since that time and I'm not quite sure if that it is correct because I've also seen the I think I think maybe there's the the tur centinary edition which I think was dated 1932 which is also commonly used as a reference but in any case it's not clear to me that we need to make that distinction in the charter but a simple reference to general laws generally would suffice although here I have a question I think maybe council town council might have a good answer for that because General laws aren't the only laws that the legislature passes. They sp pass. They enact special acts, i.e. the ones the ones they do to amend our charter. But one of the special acts they did to amend the charter did more than just amend the charter. It also one section defined the duties and and some other elements of the town clerk's office. And then another section defined the transition from elected to appointed town clerk. It's the one that defines the town clerk's office, the town clerk's position. It's not a general law because it applies only to Grafton.

It didn't change the charter. And unless we incorporate what it says into the charter, it's a it's a general law or it's a law that applies. we have to sort of recognize here potentially, but it's not a general law. There are also some session laws that apply to all towns or many of them that never never get incorporated into the general laws. So I have quite I I I would like to think that the term general laws is sufficient to cover everything that the charter needs to reference, but that's something I would uh if if the committee's agreeable to that, I will try to confirm that with town council. So that's what I have and and as Jack pointed out these references to general laws in some case what I the the text I have here overlaps with some other changes that we've discussed and unless I get a different reading from town council I'm going to propose that we eliminate the definition of capital general cap capital G capital L for general laws and just consistently use the term general general law or general laws with or without the the depending on what is appropriate for the context it's used in.

I agree with that. Yeah, because they're when would you only be referencing like the definition for definition D says that general laws shall mean laws which apply to all cities and towns to all towns or to a class of municipalities of which Grafton is a member but doesn't include that doesn't make any sense to me like why would you need two like yes that definition D is pretty broad. My assumption but doesn't include the Massachusetts general laws.

My assumption is based on the only place I've found capitalized general laws is in the housing authority. So what my assumption is is that sometime around December 22nd, 1920 when this was codified is when they wrote in that the governor would appoint a member of the housing authority. But at the same time, the tenant member has to be way newer. Yeah. So housing authorities didn't exist back in 1920. Then I have absolutely no idea why they went with capital.

So there is somebody thought that it was important to distinguish general laws generically with something that somehow is a more specific and I I can't even begin to fathom or imagine the thinking that went into that. So, it's just it was probably quite possibly it was copied from somewhere else. I did a quick search of a couple of you two or three different town charters that I could quickly find. There was one that had these same exact definitions. There was another that had no definitions at all. They just refer to general laws assuming that everybody understands what it means. There's one more that used the word law and it was I think it was a definition the word law refers to the general laws. So there there's any number of different ways. But I I I do I do also have the impression that at least some of the wording of our charter was copied from another charter because why reinvent the wheel if you've got a reasonably good wheel to work from. So we weren't the first town to adopt a charter. Yeah. I'm sure we we copied quite a bit of it from some other example charters. This this probably came along with it. Anyway, since since we're in the business of, you know, we've taken one of our tasks we've taken is to go through the whole thing and clean up any little oddities that we find. This is one. Okay. I think Yeah, I will I will try to confirm with town council that the term general law covers everything that it might possibly need to cover for the charter. There are some, like I said, there are there are peculiarities regarding

special laws and and session laws that never get enacted into general laws. But can't we just put that in the definition section that general law pertains to not only mass general laws, but constitution? In fact, in fact, a a simpler and more generic definition might be an order to refer to, you know. Any statute enacted by the legislature that applies to Grafton, regardless of what it might be called, so yeah, that's good. All right. So, that's what I have for new stuff. I don't know if anybody else has come up with any anything addition.

I have I have something, Dave, if I may. I have something I want to talk about. May I? Oh, absolutely. That's why we're one of the reasons we're here.

Yeah. So, town meeting the other night. I know we have clickers and I know the purpose of the clickers is to have anonymity at at at town meeting and and things like that, which I understand completely, but I think the select board needs to be exempt from that. And I I I at town meeting the other night when somebody called for a secret ballot. Two members of the select board got up and and and wanted a secret ballot. And I'm thinking to myself, these are our elected representatives and these are the people that we should know how they're voting because their voting record may determine whether or not we vote for them for reelection. And and I and I know town meeting is different and I know you have exempt exemptions from biases and everything else at town meeting, but I think the select board is different. and I want to know how they're voting on separate articles and the fact that two of them at town meeting pushed to have the override vote um as as a secret ballot. That really bothered me at town meeting. So, I don't know if this is something the committee wants to talk about, but I'd like to see a section in there that requires that that that prohibits the select board from using clickers at town meeting and they need to declare their votes. I don't know how the rest of you feel about that, but I I was really upset the other night when two of them got up and forced a secret ballot. Just how I feel. I don't know. I'd like to hear other people's opinions on that.

I agree with you 100%.

Yeah, as someone with many suggestions for town meeting changes in here, I think I agree 100% with the sentiment. I don't have enough experience in charters to know how that would look in practice. Um, I think it it seems very logical and well like goes almost without saying, but I can see well to say I can see push back is, you know, redundant, but I I would tack on to what Mark is saying and I think that this town meeting, while obviously an outlier, um, is one of the best cases, one of the best case arguments for representative town meeting that we could have had where you have years and years of you know I saw the 300 average as being the average attendance and you know I'm not doubting you but I don't I saw that number I was like that's way too high like I've been to so many

no no no there's a difference between average and median okay yeah so the the average is 305 for spring but that is when you Take the peaks of 550, 564, 488 and 474 and that gets mixed with years where there were 150. Yeah. So the median gives you a better idea of the number of people who usually show up and that's 222.

Yeah. And I think that you know that number is you know proportionate to our town is 1% just about over 1% of our just over 1%

and then I'm not going to do the math for our electorate but I know that we have over 15,000 registered voters you know let's say we had 1,200 and then around 800 at different points in time and it was like we have to you know there's safety concerns we have to move this and you know I'm not saying this to I can't think of the word I want to use here, but I'm not saying this to be dismissive, but if we get even close to that number next year, I would be I would be shocked if we didn't return to like 200 next spring. We had 84 people in the fall. So,

and I know the fall is always the smaller number, but again, if you look at the fall numbers, because I did the same exercise for both, the average is 164. Mhm. The median is 154, which means that that's pretty consistent. There was a fall town meeting in 2015 where we had 361 people and that's the highest that we've had in 10 years and it's the next closest to that was 208. Yeah. So, it's it's fall town meeting attendance are for the people who just like to go to town meeting. Yeah. Those are those are the you know the people who go. Yep.

And it really takes a lot to get that number to budge.

Yeah. And if and if you know because I like I said, I have a lot of thoughts on this. I think that when you talk about a town's legislative branch or any anything's legislative branch, I think what you'd want most is a consistent say and consistency. I think there's an idea of going to representa representative town meeting takes a voice away from voters but to that I would say does voting for select board for executive decisions take your vote away you know it's it's the same idea and I think that as this charter is an ongoing process as we've also talked about moving planning board from elected to rep or uh to appointed there can be a happy medium it doesn't have to be a representative town meeting where We say, "Well, there's five select board members. Let's say 10 representatives." Like, we can try and have some talks here. Figure out what a good number looks like so that we make sure people feel like their voices are still heard. Maybe make the terms somewhat short so you can get more people in there. Have term limits. So, it's not the same people every single year. Obviously, these are a lot of ideas I'm spewing out, but the idea that one spring you can have, you know, 7% of your electorate show up to make decisions for the whole town and the next spring you'd have 1%. That scares me as well where it's like I don't, you know, I I'd like some consistency.

Yeah. A couple of comments along that line. Number one is in the in a representative town meeting form, citizens who are not town meeting members are allowed to attend and to speak. Yep. You still have a voice at a representative town meeting. You don't have a vote. You you put your faith in the person in your precinct that you voted for. That but yeah. So I mean a representative town meeting does not prevent an unusually large turnout for the town. Certainly. So I still hope the uh the other the other point I'll mention at least you wouldn't run out of clickers that way though. Yeah.

Yeah. The advantage is that you have you you know exactly how many clickers you need and and I would say for that to Mark's point, apologies for cutting off the other comment, but for this representative town meeting, I would say it's just as if not more important to make sure that these representatives cannot anonymously vote because you're electing them to represent you. You definitely have the right to know what they're going to do. Yes. And with from a technological point of view, I don't remember if this is true for our current clicker system. It probably is that you would assign each clicker would be assigned to a specific town meeting member. So that

that's how they that's that's how it works with clickers at at representative town meetings. Their name goes with the at our town meeting. We don't you don't hand out a number and track the number. In a representative town meeting, you still use electronic voting, but they would you would know how they're voting. Yes. because they would be assigned a clicker number. The the clicker system knows how each each clicker voted. And if you associate the clicker with the the voter, then you have a public record of who how everybody voted. And there are representative town meetings that use clickers that display the results on a separate screen. So you have your primary screen with your

motion or any supplemental presentations, but the actual display with the number you would be able to take a screenshot of every vote results because they display that's what we had in Lexington was matter of fact people used iPads or iPhones to vote. We had a software system. They all had a password. They logged in. They would take a vote and their votes were displayed by precinct to have multiple people in each precinct. And then

yep, the other the other point I was going to make about representative town meetings is that I think the the typical number of elected town meeting representatives runs one or one or 200. I've heard numbers 240 I've heard is a fairly common number. Other numbers maybe 120 or so. So, it's a it's a it's a much larger group than any board or committee would be. Good. Because I I know it's been brought up. I know Grapton's tried this in the past before in other charter reviews. Correct. They put this forward. I think well actually it was in 10 10 years ago it was discussed.

Okay. But with the same the realiz the same realization that we're working under is that the charter review committee is not empowered to propose that change or you know that's it's a it's a more complex procedure. Well, that's good enough. But I do think, you know, if a good faith argument was presented like, hey, we're not trying to take anyone's voice away, but this is government and that means we need consistent involvement to make sure that we are consistently providing what's best for the town. And I think just the idea of a legislative body picking and choosing when it wants to show up is scary. So

which which begs the question when they are on the stage and voting are they voting as a select board member or are they voting as a registered voter for the town of Grafton? And

I got I got proposal at first blush. I think it's a great idea, but that was the first question that popped into my head. You know, it's like I'm I'm a registered voter. I can, you know, I can ask for for a secret ballot. Um, but I also think that anybody with half a brain could have looked at the uh the panel on the stage and tell who was going to vote which way. A small logistical issue related to that is if we are using clickers but requiring select board members to vote where everybody can see how they voted. That's five votes that you have to that you you're not counting with the clickers because

No, no, no, no. They could still use they could still use clickers, but they have identified numbers and like a representative numbers they would be assigned a specific number that I could be able to identify quickly and easily on the display and that would and what if I William would be able to explain this better, but my understanding of the system we have Mark might know this as well is that it keeps a record of that. So we know what every clicker voted for. Yeah. I think and then we just delete it at the end. Delete it at the end. Like we we I think part of Mark's idea is that the the the the voters at town meeting should be able to see at the time the vote is taken how the select board votes. Is that is that part of what you're thinking?

That's that's exactly what I'm saying. There are elected representatives. All right. So it's it's a little different. So when you think about a representative town meeting, you are electing your representatives to represent you at town meeting, right? So you know how they vote. So why is the select board different at an open town meeting? They are our elected representatives. And if they're there, we should know how they're voting because that's their voting record. And and somebody might take that into consideration when they run for reelection. And the fact that two of them stood up and forced a secret ballot at town meeting, I think that was an abomination for elected representatives to do that. I'm sorry. It just really bothered me. That's why when I walked down and voted, I held up my yes vote so everyone could see how I voted because it was ridiculous.

Yeah. I think to Bob's point, which is what we have to think of when we break up and if we do make this proposal, is it's a great question to posit. Are you voting as a select board member or are you voting as a resident of the town? And I think unfortunately that's politics where it's as soon as you get elected to that board partially you kind of cease to be voting as just a resident because you not only have your vote but you also have decision-making power. So it kind of has to go hand in hand. Yeah, one one other point I'll make about that is that it is in the town bylaws where we have our various provisions regarding voting the the provision for the secret bailout the provision for using clickers. So this idea that we can think about it some more if we want to but this may very well turn out to be an idea that really belongs in the law not the chart.

Yeah. because there is not as much in independent of the merit of this idea, the proper place for it is more likely to be in the bylaws. I like that much better, aren't they? But so within the charter, we can still propose that the we would have a committee for representative meeting, right? No, probably more bylaw. I thought that was the issue last time was that I agree. We realized that we had to put this committee had to propose a committee.

Yes. Yes. So you when you going back to the representative time meeting thing what we the pro the procedure would be I mean we if if we if we generally agree with the idea or of it would be the idea of forming a charter commission whose primary purpose would be to consider changing the form of government and to actually I mean to to kick that off. So somebody has to start a petition which has to gather some 2500 signatures

to then put the question on the following town election ballot. Should we form a chafard comm charter commission? And if so we have to have names of at least nine people who want to be elected to that charter comm. It's a it's a drawn out process and it's a high relatively high hurdle to get that going. But nevertheless, if we as a committee end up agreeing that it's an idea worth giving further consideration to, that's you we could put that forth as a a recommendation, but you know that that's the limit of what we as a committee can do. Yeah,

that's what it happens when that's your I mean the analogy there is that town meeting is our Congress. So to change the way Congress works, it kind of has to be a monumental thing to change that. Yeah. All right. So just something to think about.

Yes. So any other things we'd like to add to our list? This isn't your This isn't your last and final chance to add something to the list, but we're we're getting to the point of what we we have a reasonably lengthy list of proposed charter revisions, big and small, that we want to get to work on. So, I'd sent out the uh where did I have it? Can I speak on this? I know that we already said that it wasn't really something that the charter could do, but I do quickly I did a little bit of looking into this proposal for uh permanent amnesty program. I did I did I just want you know they took the time to write a very lengthy thing and it it's an it's a interesting idea but I don't think it takes into consideration the amount of money it would cost to actually do this reassessment. So the I don't want to use this word I know they didn't use it but the threat of like we're going to do these reassessments and find all these undone or these unknown changes to these houses. It would cost the town a good amount of money to go do all those reassessments. And I think that when asking people to kind of turn themselves in for something they're not getting punished for anytime soon, I just don't see a lot of participation. But I did I did want that person to know that I did see it think it was very interesting and take some time to look into it.

Yeah. All right. So, this is the list I sent out a couple of days ago. I've listed more or less in order by section the various proposals we received where they came from either one of us. In some cases I marked it committee because I don't I don't have any record of specifically which one of us suggested it. Yeah. When it was proposed to the committee and where it came from. So, I'm not going to spend much time other than showing this list because just this evening we've added more to the list and this is the list I' I've added to this everything that Greg and I had come up with. We can we can we could put Mark's thing in I there's a a place here probably not charter issues I would add tenative at least I'll add Mark's note Mark's idea there but anyway again this is roughly sorted by section order and here's where we decide how do we parcel out this work and

could I just get a quick breakdown on subcommittee What number do we have to have for it to be as convenient but also as transparent as possible? The size of a subcommittee. I would think three. You'd want to have an odd number. So, I think if we we have 15 members, if we're going to sign subcommittees, I think it should be three members.

Yeah, I think three would be good for a subcommittee. And it's not I don't know for sure that we need to have every one of these assigned to a subcommittee. There's a whole bunch here that are really you simple things that are basically no-brainers. It's just, you know, Jax incorporated some of that in the uh the document that he sent out. Um, so I'm I'm guessing that things like section headings are missing a colon. We don't need a subcommittee to work on that. Yeah. So there's um I don't I'm not quite sure how best to characterize it, but it's probably more interesting to take a look at these topics and identify which ones should be assigned to a sub subcommittee and who's going to be on that subcommittee. So in in no particular order.

Can I ask a question? Yes. Not trying to skip ahead, but so how when we bring this to the town, how exactly sort of do we package these proposals? Because maybe that then kind of helps how we think about the committee, but I'm just obviously time. So that's an interesting question. I I I'm I'm aware that that's an issue because it's probably not going to be helpful for us to present a put put forward a single vote yes or no on everything we propose. Yeah.

So we we we're going to need to split it out in some way. probably bundle together all the things that are clearly not, you know, non-controvers. So, the typos and the formatting and all those kind of things probably bundle those together. That's the way they did that's the way they did it 10 years ago. They had a single warrant article basically, you know, to you know, correct capitalization and all that sort of thing. But then a more sub a more substantive proposal like for example I would guess that we will be putting the change from town administer to town manager as a single warrant article.

Same with the the fire chief appointment. That's that's a topic that really stands out from the rest and there may be others. budget calendar when we did David when we did it just recently in Groten we broke it into categories. Yeah.

Um you know we we we I think we did um you know screr errors things like that as one generic and then if we had something that was going to change an appointment like we we we changed the way the fire chief police chief and Tom clerk got appointed we did that as a separate vote because as you said it stood out. So, I think once we figure out what changes we're going to make, we can figure out how to group them. And it would be a bad idea just to put one article forward with everything because somebody doesn't like a particular vote, a particular change, the whole thing can get shut down. You know what I mean? Yep. I think I think doing it by theme is the right way to go.

That's the word I was looking for. As long as there's no like procedure as to how these revisions have to be put forward, I think theme is the best way for us to package it as well as the best way for voters to understand it. So they specifically are like, well, I'm really, you know, wanting to know why we're changing, you know, the fire chief or the planning board or the town manager title. They know exactly where to go for that information rather than just kind of having to sip through. Yeah. So, uh, considerations of how we ultimately package this, that's one thing. We don't need to nail that all down just yet.

But for continuing the work on this, you know, and at least some of the topics here that we're going to assign to individuals or subcommittees, those are likely to turn out to be warned articles of their own. Again, using the town manager as an example, that's one we would Yeah, I I'm pretty sure I know who should be on the subcommittee for that. Uh but I think that that ends up being a warrant article as does the fire chief,

the fiscal procedures, the the fiscal calendar and so on. That's another sort of significant topic that that stands alone is is deserves some spec specific attention. Y um if I may. So Dave, if you want to help get this started, um I would like to be on any subcommittee having to do with the town manager piece, any subcommittee having to do with the change in the budget calendar or the the the way the budget is put together, and then the fire chief appointment. So if if we're going to look for those particular if that's the way you're going to break it down, I like to be on those three.

So if I may, I just have a just a Google doc with a list breaking it down by each section. They're all very well defined. So even as Mark just put it, there is a section for all of the town administrator related pieces and there is a section for all of the finance and fiscal procedures related. So that would just be Mark would be on those two. Yeah. So I' I've just assigned Mark as the first member of the subcommittee for those three as you can see in the screen. I'll also volunteer for the town administrator, town town manager, whatever deals with section four. I think that's all of the town. Yeah.

Administrator section. I'm happy. Yeah. In fact, all of the let's let's make a subcommittee for all of section four. there. So, do we have a I mean, I'm I'm I'm happy to volunteer for any subcommittee point, but do we need votes to create and appoint for these subcommittees? Yes. Once we figure it out, let's let's let's we could if we wanted a vote at the end if we're going to have them subject to the open meeting law, a vote at the end after we put them all on there, take a vote saying these are the

subcons. Yes, we will vote to create these subcommittees.

I would I would like to be on the uh legislative branch and elected officers sections articles two and three. And just to read them all out, there's article one is incorporation, short titles, powers. Article two, legislative branch. Article three, elected officers. Article four, town administrator. Article five administrative organization. Article six finance and fiscal procedures. And article seven is general provisions. I volunteer to be on article six. So I'm not sure I agree with having a calendar. So I might be a good

counterbalance. Yeah. All right. So I've got we could have a knockdown dragout fight there. Uh can I be on that one too so I can watch that? I was going to say we we do need one non-town administrator to be in the town administrator cuz I'm the least I want those to just go off and be like we know what we're doing. Let's just figure this out. One afternoon you could call me who break that down. Who else should we assign to work with Mark and Jim on the town manager? Put Angelina on there. She likes to argue with me. Angelina.

Yeah, it's perfect. All right. So, Don, would you like to be on the uh legislative branch one as it pertains to town meeting? Yes. Yeah. Although, and the article one just the general incorporation short, right? We don't we don't have anybody at the moment or any proposed changes. Right. Well, correction, Greg had a proposed change to article one. Okay.

I'd like to This is Jeff. I'd like to do two and three. Articles two and three. All right. Now, on my list at least, much of what I have here for articles and two and three is typos and minor modifications.

Then throw on article three. I have a background in proof reading. one I have an kind of an unknown article three might be impacted by the fire chief. We haven't you we haven't really figured out what needs to be changed to implement the fire chief proposal. We've got I mean we know we want to make the fire chief appointed but there's a whole bunch of there's a number of powers and duties that the statute assigns to the select board relative to the fire chief. We know that the charter has to change the charter has to specify the fire chief being appointed. charter also has to we have to consider which of those other powers and duties that are currently with the select board fire chief where some of those should go. So, the way that Mark had it in his proposal, and I again, I don't know if we're allowed to do this, he essentially created a new subsection in article 5, section 7, which detailed the town administrator's relationship to the fire department. So, I don't know if that if adding a section would also mean doing a charter commission, but

no, we could add a section that that's not a problem. Perfect.

But the question is where does where in the charter is the best place to make the fire chief's changes? And until you know exactly what those changes are, you might not be sure about where best to express them in the charter. Article 3, section 33 32 details the powers of the sluck board and perhaps fortunately it doesn't explicitly talk about the slot board appointed the fire chief, but that happens to be explicitly specified in the bylaws. H so the fire chief thing also requires a bylaw change to implement it.

Well, that was another suggestion we had earlier that I think is really good is going through the charter as it does pertain to P boards powers and duties and kind of either unifying or clearly outlining the timelines and differences between the bylaw and charter review committees. I like the unification idea, but that's obviously a term. Oh, so instead of having them because as of right now, as soon as this charter review committee wraps up, the bylaw starts right up. Yeah. Yep.

Yeah. We have on our list here more separation between dates of charter and bylaw reviews or consider modifying. That's not so much it, but that's sort of a variation on what's already listed here is we've got like three items that touch on the periodic charter review that I would say to answer your previous question that the fire chief question falls somewhere in articles four and five, the town administrator/manager and the administrative organization. Yeah.

Because if the town manager is going to appoint the department head of the fire department, I think that the fire department organization then needs to have at least some representation in the charter. All right. So, we now have on my list, we now have the explicitly the the idea of combining the charter and bylaw review committees. I'm happy to work on section seven. part. So again, section seven has

I mean it has a lot there there's there's a lot in there. Section seven is going to be a good one to do like the whole time along with the other sections because as we do just language changes providing new definitions or consolidating definitions will be really important. Yep. And just looking at this, I' I'd say that one fairly significant topic for section seven is questions about defining quorums and majority votes.

You know, that's that's not a trivial typographical error or a minor punctuation thing. That's probably something that deserves some attention. In fact, that topic alone might deserve a subcommittee to review the the possibilities. So, you're voluntary for that. And the periodic review, charter, and bylaws are both housed in section 7. Yes. So, you want you

didn't scare you off. I'll join Angela in section seven on those. This is Jeff. Thanks, Jeff.

So, right now we have two in article one, three in article two, two in article three, three in article four, zero in article five, two in article six, two in article 8. So three is the max right. So three is off the board. So what what are not? So we have room in incorporation. No no I think elected officials which is just kind of outlining what the boards do. That's three.

Uh article five administrative organization which let me just take a look at the subsections of it. I can't imagine it's vastly different than section 4. Yeah, we don't have except for what we may do in article five for fire department. We don't have any, you know, other than the typo type stuff, we don't have any substantive topics in article 5 as I except for

No, it would just be incorporating the transition to town manager because it's a lot of the duties and things that the town administrator does. How will we leave that open for people who could not attend tonight if they want to be in a subcommittee and we don't just throw them on one? Yeah, I think we if we have identified the the subcommittees, we can send that out after the meeting and if we don't we don't have you we can say that's it it's not complete. Yeah, we don't even have to take that vote tonight. I don't think we're not going to start that working right away.

I think the the last big funds spot would be in article six finance and fiscal procedures. Yeah, I want to stay with that too. Yeah, I' I've gotten Mark and Jim on that so far. Are are the are the article seven people going to include the calendar days and business days? Sure. Yeah, why not? There's I know we talked about this before, but I think we found the list of state holidays on the Secretary of State's website.

Yeah. Yeah. If you want to talk about that topic at all, I I will throw out one one data point and that is that in state law there is a definition of legal holidays. And I would suggest we simply refer to legal holidays as defined in the general laws or as defined by statute or whatever whatever word we end up using for general laws. But I wouldn't I wouldn't I wouldn't want to run the risk of our definition of holidays being different than the states for article three just because we have one more open spot. I would say upfront this would be the article and subcommittee most likely to go to other meetings because as we were talking about earlier having people come here how we do correspondence all of article 3 is about elected boards other than the town moderator part. So instead of having the whole school committee planning board etc come here we'd likely be going to them for a lot of that.

Yeah. Going to the board of library trustees meeting. Yeah. putting that out there to fully inform anyone who wants to. So, let me refresh my memory since I didn't write it all down. My table doesn't have a separate entry for article one because there's nothing in here but article Yeah. And that'll be I just have a very simple just just

All right. Again on on this table here which I will I will share after the meeting but this isn't this has lots of nitpicky stuff listed for article three in it. May I suggest also because we're talking about kind of two separate things. We're talking about combing through articles and also these thematic changes that we are going to latch on to further. I think that there's no reason this has to be the only time we break into subcommittees for reasons like this where this can be first. No, this is this is our initial our initial work on

and then it can break down more specifically into those issues. Yeah, we can we can do things differently as we see the need. Um so who's doing fire chief? I've got markdown for fire chief. I don't have anybody else unless I I may have missed it but Oh, that's three. I should should we presume Skip would like to be involved in that? And we could assign Skip. It's a I think it's a fair bet.

Speaking of Skip, let's see. Skip Skip Skip's first choice for an article is article five. His second choice is article six. and article five might turn out to be the place where fire chief is addressed but we don't know that also skips have been on the finance committee for ever so I think being in finance and fiscal procedures would be very appropriate so you need one more person seven I'll do seven

seven needs one more rock paper scissors Is there room on two? No, there's room in one five. I'll take the planning board if I'm elected to appointed. I want to go argue with Dave. Okay. So now there's room in one. And actually some of these don't necessarily need to be assigned to a subcommittee. Yeah. If if it's a topic that one person like that's a specific example that

well I'll join up with number with three Jack and Don on like the housing authority and the the elected boards okay Jack does it have to it doesn't have to be three people are interested I don't want you know just because you didn't raise up first want to be involved Yeah, odd number we would agree. So, and of course what the subcommittes need to do is each subcommittee needs to set a meeting time and post a meeting, take minutes, report back to us.

Yep. And it's also good to know uh for some of the newer members, these subcommittees wouldn't be, at least as far as I know, maybe I'm not as aware about subcommittees, but they wouldn't be actually making decisions. they would be recommending uh their findings to the board as a whole for us to then see. That's that's correct. So I don't want anyone that was my understanding I don't want anyone to think that they have the pressure of having to handle all the changes in any of these given places.

Also there is no there is no absolute requirement for a subcommittee to contain an odd number. It's preferable in general. Uh but for example on the school committee they have a number of subcommittees. The school committee is five people. So a subcommittee can't be three because then that would be a core of the school school committee. Can't be one because it's not a subcommittee. So their subcommittees consist of two members. Well, I'll join Angela and Jeff on seven because I like seven. Yeah. Good reason is that. So you're on seven. You're a lucky number.

I was on seven. Phyis, you're also on seven. Oh, four. It's four. So, I've I've got several things here that are listed for all sections.

So, I'm not going to try to uh on this chart. I'm not going to try to assign names to those. Those will fall under the se whatever sections other people are signed up for. Although again, I suspect the uh the subcommittees don't necessarily need to spend a lot of time on the nitpick nitpicky stuff. Oh, I just realized something. Planning board gets compensated. I didn't know that going into the You don't mind. You're just not allowed to be a part of it. The planning board does not get compensated.

Oh, well then no problem. Maybe we might have another problem there. a plane board member showing up saying, "Hey, it says in the charter that elected town officials shall receive such compensation. Where's my back pay?" So, at this point, I think, you know, it's we'll put this out and for those who weren't able to make the meeting tonight, I think we'll gladly take volunteers for subcommittees. And if a subcommittee if there's five people who want to work on a topic I think probably more than five the subcommittee itself becomes unwieldy

but a sub on a on a on a 15 member committee if I a subcommittee of five is not entirely unreasonable. Did you need someone for fire chief? Did you get me from fire chief? Yeah I've I've only got Mark and skipped on for fire chief Dawn. Yes, please.

And I can just say it now for people who are on two and three, which for me I just have Don, Jeff, and Mark for the planning board specific stuff. I can handle the writing up agendas and posting and coordinate with the clerk

because I do want I do want section three to have a little bit more information for non select boards because it's kind of lean in some of the other places. So for each Let's see. Yeah, I have This doesn't really fit with sections necessarily with section. I've got it I've got it under town clerk. I have a question and I don't know what what section the answer will end up in. There's a I mentioned before the uh when the legislature uh did the uh did the special act that made the town clerk appointed, they included one section which was not a charter change and it was not a transitional change. It's something that may or may not need to be added to the charter and if it does I'm not quite sure where. I want to ask town council about that.

My gut is telling me section five administrative organization because it is a an organization of the town in which the town administrator manager has appointing power. Yes, it's that that thought crossed my mind that section five is is at least partly there. I also want to make sure that the very fact that the administrator future manager appoints the town clerk that is not currently explicitly anywhere in either the charter or the bylaws.

Yeah. So that language needs completely added the closest and you know if if we need to make that explicit that's a section four thing the powers and duties of the town administrator or could be because the town administrator appoints department heads and if you can take it as a given that the town clerk is a department head then maybe you don't need to explicitly mention it in the charter but I'm unsure about that so that's something I want to run by council and

do we want to add someone and this is going to seem completely random. Um, not an article or section. The table of contents, the spacing and use of colons seems to be completely arbitrary once you get to article three. There's random spacing past the sections, no colons on some of them. Yes, the no colons is something I it's on my list here. So, I think if that should also kind of get its own little

Well, that that to me falls in the category of general review of grammar, phrasing, spelling, and typography. That's that's on our list here. And rather than spend time picking at all those in a meeting here, I think Greg's already you and Greg are already

Greg Greg and I have both picked up a lot of details like that. Um, sort of the the formatting of the final product is that's another thing we really haven't I don't even want to begin to worry about that now. I want I want to worry I'm worried about the substance and some of the more obvious typographical things. I mean, if I if I if I had my brothers, I' I'd play around with the indentation of paragraphs and numbering of things. I like to do that sort of stuff. I'd like things to look just so but we'll get to that eventually. All right. So, we have at least for the moment we have a tentative assignment of subcommittees to different sections or topics and uh we'll we'll circulate that to the rest of the committee members. I'll have to see if I can make try to make sure that our email list actually works for everybody

and then at next meeting once those non-attendants tonight weigh in. I think next meeting we can officially create these and Yep. It's not like we're under a lot of time pressure right now. It's it's important to remember that we're like a year I mean plus out

our target is next year's fall town meeting and from what I've seen here we do not have a vast amount of work that's going to take months and months and months to work out. We've got a few major topics here some of which are going to need to be vetted by the the relevant departments or people. Most of it is utterly non-controversial, but we do want to be thorough. All right. So, we we we good for now on subcommittees and assignments.

Yep. And let's see what else is on my agenda. Must have something more. Oh yeah. Approve previous meeting minutes. Move to approve the minutes as presented. Second.

Move in a second. Do it. Move the minutes as presented. Any any discussion? Yeah. I just have one comment. And just so that um it's Greg can maybe do it consistently. Um he spells my name M A L L O Y and M O L L O Y. And so it's M A. And so if you could just maybe make those there's I think two or three places in SEO if that could just be corrected. All right. I will take the motion as to approve the minutes as drafted with the corrections noted. Does the mover agree with that? He does. Does the secondary agree with that?

Yes. All right. Got to be thorough here. All right, let's see. With no further discussion, we'll vote on the motion. Dawn I. Bob, hi. Dan, I Mark I, Jeff, I, Jack, I, Jim, I, Angela, I, and Dave votes I. Motion carried unanimously. The minutes are approved. The clerk will be informed of that fact. He will get those submitted to the town clerk as soon as practical. Move to adjourn. Second. Second.

Moved in a second that the meeting be adjourned. Unlike the other night, this motion will not be debatable. I I don't expect any objection to the meeting here. Don says votes I. Bob I. Dan I. Mark nay Jeff Hi I Jeff I Jack I Jim hi Angela I and Dave votes I motion carried unanimously. We are adjourned. Thank you very much for joining tonight. Good night. Thanks everyone. Have a good night. Recording.