Information Technology Committee - Regular Meeting

All right, I I will call to order this meeting of the IT committee for Wednesday, May 13th, 2026. I'll take a roll call of the committee members. Um, Mr. Carol, Carol's here. Mr. Clark here. Mr. Hassinger, I'm here.

Mr. Rimmelard, I do not see Mr. Rimmelard here. Mr. Robbins is present. So, our Where's my agenda? Our first item on our agenda as always is public input. For a moment, I saw a hand raised. I do have one attendee. Uh uh. Yes, Jesse. Oh, that's weird. I'm under my wives. Are you Is that Lucas? Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Let me promote you to panelist here. Okay. So now now I'll I'll mark I can mark Lucas as president as well. There we go.

Excellent. Thank you. All right. So first item on our agenda is public input. if we have anything. I I now have zero attendees, but if anybody has anything that would qualify as public input and it's something that's within the committee's purview but not on the agenda, now would be the time to raise the the issue and hearing and seeing none. Whoa, whoa, whoa. So you guys were starting to talk a little bit about town meeting. Um what is there any discussion about procuring perhaps more devices? I I've not heard any. Um, one thing I did not do in preparation for this meeting was to touch base with Evan and and William to see if they had any input to anything to report to the committee. It's probably too soon after Monday's meeting for them to have any thoughts about procuring additional hardware. So,

I've not heard anything, but uh it wouldn't be out of the question for them to consider it. Yeah. So, um you know, I heard a few different things. Um, so if we were we if we were considering like a minimum buy like you know to minimize cost and we assume that we could borrow other enduser devices right the clickers themselves from other communities what would we have to do to or purchase just like a base station and what

yeah I think it's mainly from what I remember um between some of the some of what I heard Monday night and you know my previous you know involvement in discussing the the acquisition of these systems. The best of best of my memory is uh an additional base station would be required. One base station will handle up to a thousand clickers. So a second base station would double our capacity. And uh and yes, you're you I I would assume that you're quite correct in thinking that we could borrow the additional clickers. We can you this Meridan has a a substantial number of towns that they're serving with this. So I'm sure we could we

Merid's a vendor. Yeah. Okay. And I don't you probably don't remember, David, but do you remember how much one of those base stations cost? I don't think I ever saw the cost figures in that. Okay. But I in addition to acquiring a second base station there there may be some additional cost involved in configure configuring the system right with multiple base stations. Yeah, I I would imagine yeah you'd have to get like professional services from them or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

But go ahead. Well, and then I was going to ask too, like with the base station that we have, do we do we, you know, when we let other communities borrow, do we let them borrow that too or that just stays in Grafton?

As far as I know, what's borrowed around you borrow what's borrowed is just the the clickers themselves. Every every community that has a system presumably owns a base station. Okay. And then who's responsible for um you know maintenance, patching, upgrading, keeping it you know under I would guess we have a service contract with the vendor for keeping the software and hardware to whatever extent a hardware upgrade might be necessary. I mentioned

who exactly is responsible for seeing to it that that is organized. It's not the schools. I don't know whether it's the town administrator, maybe the moderator um who doesn't herself have any ability to do that, but you know, wait, where does the ball where does the buck stop uh on all of this? I my thing

it's likely in the town administrator's office. I mean they the the uh the the clickers the equipment is kept in the vault in the town clerk's office and the clerk the clerk of course is responsible for distributing the clickers and and returning them. But they you know they check the batteries I know before every meeting. I'm not sure that may be done at least partly out of the clerk's office. But I would I would guess that the responsibility for system you know maintenance is basically lands in the uh on the town administrator's desk whether that's okay

that could be delegated to the assistant TA could be delegated to some other staff but I think that administrator is ultimately responsible for it and not to get too far out in front of this but um are either of those are they attending tonight or no?

No. I had uh I had meant to contact Evan and William ahead of this meeting to ask if they had anything that they wanted to report or discuss with the committee. I did not get a chance. I was in the building yesterday and I just I was was running around doing a lot of things and I I I saw Will, but I didn't think to ask him about tonight. Not sure Evan was even there yesterday. Okay. Yeah, they they both they did both receive a Zoom invitation for the meeting.

Okay. Yeah. So, back to kind of where I started with this. Well, I was going to send a note anyway to the um select board and Evan and company asking, you know, or proposing some kind of postmortem or what we could do better, lessons learned from meeting. I'd be shocked if they aren't already planning on that. Uh right. Exactly. because I I had a couple a couple of comments that I wanted to forward to the moderator and really ultimately to the whole team responsible for setting up based on what I observed moderating out in the commons area.

Right. Right. Okay. Yeah. Because I'd be more interested in the, you know, because it it's not now, you know, unforeseeable, right? And it's heavily plausible that we could run into this again, right, with the clicker thing. Yep. And then, you know, the space have to sort that out and, you know, just a whole lot of logistics. Yes. Clearly, we needed to uh have more space available, more seats available than we did, right? Yeah.

And then communication paths so that everyone can participate. She had u the you got to come into the auditorium if you want to talk. Uh if you caught that one at least partway along and um in the past in the gym we were able we were connected so that you could speak from there and there's been off and on about being able to see people or doing whatever here and there. Um, so there was overflow in the gym too, Bob. No. Say what? There was I said there was overflow in the gym.

No, no, there wasn't. Bob Bob's referring to P times past. Oh, the other ones other meetings. We didn't use We didn't use the common room. We used Jim, right? Um, and there was a little more juggling to get things to work out there. Um, don't forget that the base stations have some limited range as well as capacity. I'm sure. Yeah, with the radio.

And, uh, so that might mean more. But here here's the problem. Okay, let's say we better figure out how to do 2,000, maybe 3,000. Um, okay, let's buy up everything we need and we'll be ready and it'll be five years before we need it. and then we will have wasted all that money we could have spent on something important and uh we it we never get that kind of a turnout again.

So you know um it it it's but any anyway it seems to me that the moderator is responsible for the meeting. It's her meeting

ultimately. She she is she she is the head of town meeting separate from the head of the municipal government and separate from the head of the school district. Um and uh the select board is responsible for calling tower meeting with a warrant.

Yep. that conforms back which is what keeps taking me back to the old where does the buck stop and and I'd like I'd like to I'd like to know that okay we have a committee or we have a some sort of a a grouping that is responsible and maybe everybody could even go there and talk to them uh about about all of this. Yeah. One one other thing that I remember it was either Dawn or Evan mentioned this Monday night that had we had more lead time, we could have borrowed or leased on a on a short-term basis the additional base station and the and the other setup that goes along with it. We we yeah had we planned say a two weeks in advance, had we planned for more than a thousand attendees, we could have accommodated it without without having to purchase all the additional equipment, which in in the long run, that's probably a a an appropriate alternative to consider that on those relatively rare occasions when we anticipate the possibility of a large crowd. We just didn't we didn't anticipate the numbers that we saw. But if we you based on this experience, I think if we were to uh yeah, when we are the next time we are anticipating a large crowd, uh we could we could be prepared to handle a much larger crowd. It just said nobody nobody expected the crowd to be as big as it turned out to

be. Um I I recall a mention in when announcements while things were going on that besides more equipment there was engineering that would be required or consultant. So you know you have to do that too. Yep. And what I heard something about a landline. What's what's that all about? Yeah. I wondered about that. Um, you if you were in another building then then you start having to have some internet or some Yeah, but why a landline? You would think just internet.

I I I rather doubt that when whoever it was used the term landline that they meant it in the in the sense that people like us would think of it. Yeah. I was just gonna say they're they're probably talking like Ethernet cable. Yeah. you know, versus using a Wi-Fi.

Yeah, they they might have for one one thing I think I remember from when we first looked at this clicker system is that a single base station, you can just have a direct Ethernet link from the from the laptop to the base station. But once you get into more than one base stations, now you have to set up an Ethernet network as a minimum. you got, you know, you you're adding a, assuming you make it all wired, you're adding at least an an Ethernet switch to to to the mix and more Ethernet cables and configuring that. So, like a subnet you're talking about. Yeah, could it could be

it could be more complicated than that, too. But as a as a minimum, I would say it's, you know, you you would, you know, keep it as a completely isolated Ethernet, but now you've got an Ethernet network with at least three uh endpoints to it, which means if nothing else, that means you have to stick an Ethernet switch in the middle. Mhm. Okay. Yeah. Um, so you know, part A is the the voting and the clickers and then part B is the logistics, right, and the space and the safety aspects and all that. So,

what they could set it up the way they did on Monday night using the commons area as overflow because they could they they positioned the base station basically in the uh at at the doorway in between the commons area and the auditorium. So, so how many people I was in the main auditorium. How many people can they fit out there in the commons? I I think they had seating for 200 or so. Okay.

And when when things were full be before people started messing around with the adjournment and uh not being clear what that meant and people started leaving it. But before then, you know, every every seat in the Aamas area was full and there were dozens and dozens of people standing along each side of it, which Oh, so they didn't even have space for for that. Huh. Not we didn't have enough seats for everybody. Even just the reg code violation.

Yeah. Well, and then I would think uh what do they call it? The accessibility, right? you know the hand what movies call handicap stuff. Well, all that space is handicapped accessible that we were using. But uh that you're not know you're talking about a thousand clickers. That's a thousand registered people. But then we had a substantial number of other people. Yeah.

Kids, whatnot. Um, and uh, I'm not sure where they all were when when all that started to come apart. Um, I don't think they were all out there with Dave. U, well, some of them were in the the babysitting area, which I don't think was very well pointed out to people that it was there. And Linda tells me it was really a nice, well done setup. I haven't seen anybody um compliment that or comment on it, but then I heard that that was only for little kids and that we had all these school age kids. And while we're at it, could we not spend 40 minutes before we get to the first article?

Yeah, that's especially if we're going to be going to midnight. Um, now we could go to 11:30 and fewer people would have to go home and go to bed. That that that's gotten on an end and it's we're there to do a warrant. The warrant didn't mention anything about speeches and and uh honors and whatnot. I understand how nice that is to do and yeah, that's great, but that's not what we're there for. Yeah. is historically we've always always done a some of that at the beginning of a town meeting but it went rather longer this time than normal. Yeah. Well, that's where I kind of

I give him 15 minutes talks get into the lessons learned, right? And you know kind of what we're what we would do for next time. Yep. So, and there may never be a next time, Frank, to your point for five years. Yeah, you never know. No, representative town meeting. It's a nice thing. I won't be voting. So, when when we did because I remember the other big one was it was during COVID times and we were outside, right? We had the tents and the whole thing. How many people probably no one knows or remembers when we had that how many was because that was a whole lot of people for that one too. Yeah. for

I don't remember off the top of my head. I think I've seen I think I saw somewhere someone me mentioned the the the number of attendees at many of the recent town meetings, but I don't remember what the numbers are. But yeah, the uh the the two outdoor ones we did, especially the first one during CO, there were a lot of people there, right? Those are the two biggest ones other than this one that I recall. Yeah. Average uh town meeting in the spring is uh 222 people, right? Yeah. Grafton, you mean? Mr. Grafton. So, we should equip we should equip ourselves for 10 times that many at least.

Yep. I We've had a few big ones. I think it was it might have been the fall of 2017 or thereabouts. There was some I think it was for the the the the two big projects on the agenda on the warrant were the library and the DPW and I think we had I think maybe we had 700 that that I think is the one that I'm remembering that we exceeded our number of clickers that we had to abandon the use of the clickers and go back to the old ways. M

and if you want to look for a little bit farther back in time, there was a special town meeting on a Saturday to vote for the construction of the high school and that was about 1,200 attendees, but that was pre in before clicker times and it was in the what's now the middle school, the old high school

high school at that time. So, we've had a few big ones, but uh it's mostly when some notable project comes up. We also had a a rather large attendance and I don't remember the number when we were voting on the zoning to enable the uh Holden Farm to do some of their their I remember how many that was. Yeah, there were substantially more people than usual, but I don't remember the numbers. I don't keep track of those myself. somebody somebody knows but not not me.

There were a lot of people when we adopted the um zoning in ' 86. I was there till like midnight and we had in the old high school we had uh on the order of 900 and some I think um that that was probably more contentious than this. I mean, we had tremendous consent contention, but it was at least four to one um on that one. There's really no question what was going to happen and we didn't need to spend quite that much energy, but on the zoning back back in ' 86, that was a big deal. Yeah, but I'm I think we were we did the secret ballot on Monday night in a slightly different and more efficient way than we used to because we always used to have to do the secret ballots by precinct. So with a separate box for each precinct and when you in order to cast your vote, you first had to check in on the list of registered voters for that precinct. So that that took a rather long time.

But that was better a better control over who was voting. Yeah. Um there was it was again four to one or five whatever the outcome was. It didn't matter if a couple people threw an extra went in, but um uh it wasn't as rigor rigorously controlled as the old the old system, right? And they could they could do it with the tablet system. Yes, they could.

They could probably move themselves down there and or wherever wherever it is and actually have a positive control. Reminded me of Roger Coleman. Remember Roger? He didn't when we had one of those voting the same tear it and drop it uh into the precinct boxes and Roger raised hell because the letters were too small on the chest

and he insisted going forward that they be enlarged to a half an inch. Now we have letters of I remember a lot of Roger but not tonight. I move the uh I move the agenda.

Let's let let us proceed with our agenda. Uh the next agenda item is update from town administrator and as I said I have nothing and the town administrator neither the administrator nor his assistant are in the meeting tonight. So uh we can simply say we have nothing there. And then the more interesting part of the agenda continuing our discussion about AI policies. you know, we what we what we said at the last meeting was we'd uh we'd gather up a few example AI policies and uh look through those and then we'd begin some discussion about what we think might be appropriate for an AI policy or guideline for Grafton. Keeping in mind that the town administrator is looking for some kind of general policies and not not overly specific and not not addressing specific AI applications that the town has formally adopted because there are none.

But you know, it was more of a more of a starting point. Some good general principles that uh we might want to write into a policy. I notice some of the ones we reviewed are they're they're titled guidelines rather than policies, but whatever we choose to title it, it's more a question of what we think should go into it. So So the um the ones in the packet that So who who gathered these? Were these you David? Um, Amomar contributed the Boston and the state policy. Okay.

Um, I I I looked up the Nantucket and the Brookline policy. Okay. All right. So, it was most So, yeah, these are good. You know, it gives you kind of a good um because, you know, I didn't like really read them in depth. I did take a look at them and and and did read them first pass through and it gives you kind of a good compare and contrast, you know, for kind of different approaches and um to me um I'll just kind of put it out there. The the Boston one and the Brookline one look most appealing, right? Because they they kind of, you know, seem right size to something like Grafton, but uh yeah, whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. And I want to give Lucas credit for Lucas is the one who mentioned Brooklyn at the last meeting. So that's I I had I had learned of the Nantucket one in one of those MMA webinar, but but thank you to Brooklyn to Lucas for mentioning that Brooklyn had a policy. So I went and found that and included that. And that works out because it's Massachusetts. So we know at least we're complying with state law if there is any. Yep. And one thing I saw in reading through P there are a couple of them in that and mentioned the NIST AI what they call NIST AI framework right

framework n the AI riskmanagement framework and late this afternoon I looked that up and just to see what it was and uh I could I I it didn't look to me like it was terribly relevant at the level that we're be we're discussing now, but it's it's good to keep in mind. I will I will distribute that to the committee here after the meeting. Although it's not not hard to go on the NIST website and find it, but it's always easier if someone's done the work of finding it. I'll just share it. So

I see I see the references in here to to it a couple places. So yep. So be before I put in my two cents, any other any other thoughts that that might have occurred to you guys after reading through these to whatever extent you were able to do. So

yeah, I really liked Boston's approach. I thought that um it was a very pragmatic approach. Um and approaching kind of the use of AI with curiosity. Um and I also like the Brooklyn one as well. I thought that the Brooklyn was very well written. I think it was short and to the point. Um which is important in a policy, right? you don't want your policy to ramble on for 50 pages because then nobody's going to read it and can't comply with something that you haven't read, right? Um I do think that it's important to have, you know, what is allowed and what is not allowed in there, right? And and just call out if there is anything that's approved and then call out how we handle things that are not approved

essentially. So those were kind of my takeaways from it. Yeah, I I thought that was a good distinction they made between what they called it unconstrained AI applications and constrained AI applications. that I think that that we we don't have anything in that latter category at the moment, but we we may as things evolve, we may very well it might be to the town's benefit to you get into that category of we've you know certain AI applications that we've vetted and approved and we can operate them in that constrained fashion. But I yeah, I liked that distinction they made. I like in the Boston one it has like an example with like dos and don'ts so that way people you know like you read it kind of like what Amar was saying if if your thing's too long nobody wants to read it and this would be easy because you could just go like here's an example of what you do and then what you don't do.

Yep. Yep. that that's one of the one of the things that I I picked up from Boston that I thought was worth remembering,

right? I think considering you know the competency right in terms of technology and you know where and who our audience is for these right which are you know the town workers and whatever um that you know they don't live and breathe this stuff all the time you know making it so they can understand it is a good thing right trying to hit your audience Yeah, Bob Hassinger.

Yeah. Well, what I'm wondering, maybe maybe I just forgotten and this base has actually been covered, but exactly what is our role at this point? Have we been asked to develop and recommend a policy? Are we just poking around, pass on some thoughts? it. As it happens, I'm on a bunch of other committees that are currently going through developing or redeveloping policies, uh, personnel policy, the the bylaws of the regional planning commission, those things. And uh you know that's a committee working this way going through words and whatnot and getting ready to provide something that the lawyers will look at and then whoever whichever entity it is that actually enacts them. Um so are would either there's already a good answer that I've overlooked which would be very easy or uh maybe our next step is to coordinate with whoever adopts the policy um like maybe the select board um about what they would like us to Yes. So Evan has specifically asked us for policy suggestions. a any any policy any form of policy would be uh adopted by the select board and you basically Evan's looking for us to make some

suggestions that could go so far as to you draft a suggested policy which then he and his staff would likely be reviewing and revising bringing it to a select board meeting who in turn would further review and revise it before they approve it. Okay.

Um, so one thing I was going to say is have we or anyone reached out. There's an AI task force that the school has. I know my wife got some emails about it because I guess they're looking to do some programs or uh some education stuff with it. So they may already have something that's already written or we can have them help us figure out how to, you know, format and style our policy so it not only attribute or works for the town but also can work for the school since they fall under the town.

Yes. It occurred to me as I was reading through these policies today that it would be a good idea for us to reach out to the schools and at least, you know, try to coordinate our our AI policy efforts with them. They may have some ideas that we hadn't thought of. We may have some ideas that they might find useful. In the end, the school department will adopt their policy and the select board will adopt the policy for the all of the departments that report to Evan.

But to the extent that we can that the two the two parts of town government can coordinate with one another, we might see some synergy out of it. And yeah, absolutely. And I I don't know off the top of my head. Well, I can reach out to Jay and explore that possibility. In the past there's been for things many things including seminar domain where it turned out that the schools and the municipal just had different constraints different needs different approaches and that we each did our own thing. Um, I'm sure the schools have some rules, probably a lot of rules that we don't necessarily have. I think ours is just do do it so that we don't get into trouble. So, the town doesn't get into trouble. Um, uh, and and we're transparent, but the schools probably have a dozen things to protect. Never. Uh and um so if you want to do a thorough exchange with the schools, it might take quite a lot longer before we get to the end of this.

Certainly want to hear certainly we want to hear what they they can pass on to us. Yeah, I would think at least a check in right with them, see where they're at would be good use of time and you know, so do we need just an action? We don't need to have a motion or vote on this, right? We just kind of reach out. I don't know. David, do you want to contact um make it make it slow, Mr. Chairman,

Jay or whomever on the staff? I'll take it as a consensus of the committee that the chair is authorized to reach out to the school department to find out what's what's practical and feasible for us to do to collaborate with them to whatever extent it turns out to be useful on AI policies. Not only is he authorized, but he's asked to directed to, if you like, with with only a consensus. Uh, and do we need a

The word asked is probably more appropriate there. No problem there. Um, my observation, we have consensus that that's true that we're asking. Without objection. Yep.

Any any objection? Without objection, we'll make it. So, so my my reading through in addition to some of the points that you guys have raised, you know, you observe some of the some of the same things I did as far as particular details of the various policies. I think overall when I look at all of these policies there are are a few things that are fairly general in nature but also show up in all of the policies. Uh one of them is basically always do a fact check or whatever you want all always try to validate what what the AI produces. You never take it at its word because AI is fallible. So number one is and on my notes I just wrote it down as fact check but if if we ever when whenever we start writing a policy would obviously you know be a more detailed explanation but fact check. Uh the number two thing that I noticed was pretty consistently disclosure. You know you anything that you produce that AI has helped you produce when you want when the public sees it the public should be aware and there are various degrees of disclosure but basically you know as part of the public document is made public is made aware that this was produced with the assistance of AI tools. A couple of them went so far as to say when you're disclosing the use of AI, you should write out what the prompt was that you used to do it. Um, I'm not sure that that always works. And in general that sort of strikes me as comparable to whenever you're develop whenever you're writing any kind of a public document. You may have a lot of

work product notes and analyses that go into it. But the the notes and anything anything used to put it together that in itself is not necessarily a public document, but certainly the final product is. I I would I would ultimately look sort of refine that a little bit to to be have a better description of what you need to disclose that in terms of how AI was used to produce this document or whatever. The third point that I noticed was and we've touched on this before in our discussions that do not use any kind of confidential information you PII or HEPA information or anything else. Don't use that don't give that information to AI. So those are sort of the three the three big three big things the fairly general things that struck me as a min at a as a minimum what I would like to see in a policy.

I'd agree with that. Yeah. Um, yeah, I would just add that I did like in a couple of those policies I saw that there was some statement that said something to the effect of the human that is responsible that that's using the AI is responsible for whatever outputs get published, right? So, um, that kind of puts a check and balance onto it. you can say, "Hey, you need to check what the AI did." But, you know, if it's your name and your reputation on that, I think that it holds a little bit more weight. Um, so I thought that that was a common sense um policy that we could put into into our framework.

I I could agree with that. Some of that some of that came by me uh over at CMRPC, Georgia and all those committees. Um we were looking at I think a in progress development of a policy on AI. Uh and I think I I had some they already had the it's got to have it's the human is responsible. you gotta reveal that you used AI, but I wanted them to I hadn't thought about the actual prompt, but I had said you got to say which AI and which version and when because if you go back you you know in a few months you'll get a different answer. they they keep changing and you know if it's ever going to get to court or or get into some sort of serious issue, you're going to have to be able to identify and theoretically reproduce the process that produced the information. Yes, I I noticed some of these example policies did touch on that that the fact that unlike some more traditional methods of research and analysis or using software to do something you AI is kind of inherently non-deterministic if I wear my sort of engineering hat call it non-deterministic but uh yeah you can you know these these AI mean the uh the uh learning base that they're working from the tools themselves and how they you know I mean it's sort of inherent in the nature of a large

language model that that every time you modify you know or augment the the base of learning that it's using you're change potentially changing everything about it. There's even more. When I just ask questions on AI, some of them are going out and looking for input, you know, um they'll go find something on our um our bylaws. Um, so when they did that will make a difference because that's changed by the time you go back and you try to read.

So the safest thing to do is to be sure and require that you document all that someplace maybe in a footnote uh with whatever you whatever you do inside.

Yeah. So any other kind of thoughts for discussion here? I think I think what we're driving towards here is to uh uh put together sort of an an initial draft of a a possible graft and policy. And the tricky thing is how to do that when everything we do has to be here in a public meeting. Yeah,

we've been doing it at CMRPC. We have a staff person who brought runs word on the screen and you know patches and puts stuff in and takes stuff out as we go along. Um, I don't know how I don't know how we're going to So, for us, since we don't have a staff person, one of us could go off after this meeting and write I have two of them actually. H I have two drafts.

Or an AI policy for Grafton in in your spare time. Yeah. Awesome. Oh, it's pretty basic. It's like four pages and it's just kind of, you know, but it's something that we could start with and then build on top of it. So, would we each read this and just come back to the group with our feedback in the next meeting? Would that be a way that we could get this done? Yes, that would be legal.

We're at TRPC where we had a staff person. It was okay for any of us who had thoughts to send to the staff person. And the staff person dealt with them, did whatever it was that they needed to do to bring the process along so that we could see what was developing here. If you're if you're if you if you really follow the meeting law, it's an open question whether you know what's I'm not even sure whether it's open whether you can do that.

So we need a AI agent to do this. Bob, right? Um well no actually no I told you how you work this we one of the uh cable committee members um the cable committee has been looking at the licenses for half a dozen or so of the towns around us u one of our members the one who's just retired in the last few days ran them all to through one of the AIS and got complete summary comparing what you know who had what and all of that very nicely organ. I was surprised that it was possible for it to do that. So I mean we'd have to reveal that we did that

right but we need we need not one of us to do that again. Um no one person could do that. It's it's how it's how it gets distributed and when. Okay. Might be a draft. You might you might be able to make a draft and ask the chair to send it out as meeting material. Yeah. Or could William help with this too or no? In his spare time. Okay.

Yeah. I wouldn't I wouldn't count on William having the bandwidth to be able to do that. But if we wanted to, for example, without much comment, but just take the time to for Lucas to what I'm thinking of is if at tonight's meeting the committee views the document, then I guess there's two choices. We could we we could look Lucas could show us the documents that he's created. We would then further we would then we would then discuss them at the next meeting. Alternatively, if after the meeting we send those documents out for our review, it's probably probably six of one half dozen the other there. Yeah,

cuz well that's what I was thinking is like if I sent it in an email but we didn't discuss it just you have the email you can review the documents and then at the next meeting we can you know you can print it out write all over it make your comments or suggestions yeah that works there's been not not not quite um I think you don't want Lucas to send it to the committee. You want Dave to make it meeting materials um for the next meeting and distribute the meeting materials.

Okay. So along with them being put up on the u website. Okay. So we do it that way. I you know I generally try to get the meeting packet assembled a couple of days before the meeting. So if if we do it that way then yeah Lucas you can send them to me. I will

I will include them in the the packet for the next meeting and we can then discuss them at the meeting. There wouldn't be any harm, would there, in scheduling the meeting um posting it early and distributing meeting materials early, a week, two weeks early. Um and you can amend it with more materials closer to the meeting if you need to.

Yep. I I I will say that there is certain people have a point of view on open meeting law that says anything written by any of us outside of the meeting isn't shouldn't even be disclosed to the other members of the committee until the actual meeting is taking place. So I I I know someone who would who would say that's a violation of the OB meeting law. However, my general understanding and practice over a good many years is as as we've just been discussing to you send a a document that is to be discussed at the meeting can be distributed ahead of the meeting

long as it's public.

Yep. I think I think the the the catch is that the point of contention would be that if that document distributed ahead of the meeting is an expression of the opinion of a committee member, you could argue that that constitutes deliberation. That's that's that's the the the unusual argument that that I've been hearing from certain people recently. but longstanding practice. Yeah, we've been we've been distributing documents in between meetings as material for the next meeting, but we just don't discuss it.

Well, I tell you what, you you can get whoever whoever uh uh is the official word on this to advise you further as to when to distribute. Okay? is I don't see a a the first look we get coming up on my screen here of a of a several page document and really getting a lot of work done. So, I'd say um town council, town administrator, whoever is the the word,

I I I will double check on on that, but I remain convinced that even though you could argue that distributing something like that ahead of the meeting is maybe technically an all violation because a member is expressing an opinion outside of a posted meeting. But as a practical matter, been doing this for years and we all understand that we're not going to be discussing it, deliberating until we actually are in a meeting.

First I came across this um this general topic. It was telephone. Um, one person talked to another. That was only two. That's not a quorum. Then somebody talked to, you know, another person. That was only two. So that wasn't a quorum. We ended up with a situation. I think that was the situation where we ended up with a recall petition for three select only two of which survived and none of which had enough signatures. But uh people got really really testy about it. Um but that was the it the rule the rule says actually I think still speaks of a quorum.

Yes. Deliberation amongst a quorum of the committee outside of the posted meeting is the violation. Yeah. what constitutes deliberation. You know that the the open meeting law currently does discuss the possibility of a serial deliberation. You know, Lucas tells me, I tell Bob H, Bob tells Amar, Amar tells Bob C. Yeah. Yes. That's why I've always done it. If you have something for the committee, send it to the chair and the chair will send it out to the whole committee BCC.

Yep. So that if there's a response, it doesn't go to everybody. You'd be surprised how many times I've had to suggest that to every staff member I've ever come across. Yep. Anyway, so that's uh nitpicking about OML details is a whole another thing. I think we're I think we've all agreed that uh we'll we'll continue the discussion by looking at the two poss the two policy proposals that Lucas has already drafted and uh we'll we'll work from there at our next meeting.

Sounds good. All right. So I would say we're we've completed that work for now. We have next agenda item is to review and approve the minutes of the previous meeting. I move to uh approve them with any corrections that we discussed. Seconded.

Moved and seconded. Is there any discussion hearing? None. to take a roll call vote because we're all on Zoom. Mr. Carol, Carol is I. Mr. Clark, I. Mr. Hassinger, I. Mr. Ramlard I. And Mr. Robbins votes I. Motion carried unanimously. The minutes are approved. I have an item of I have correspondence on the agenda. I've not seen anything in terms of correspondence to the committee that the committee needs to discuss. There was one journ

there was one email that was sent to the committee but it like had nothing to do with committee business. Yeah. Yep. I will before I recognize the motion to adjurnn, I'll just note for the record that the final agenda item is a possible executive session. And as usual, we do not have any topics that need to be discussed in executive session. So we'll now recognize Mr. Hassinger's motion to adjurnn. And did was it Bob Carol that seconded it? I will. Yeah.

All right. Motion to adjurnn not debatable. Um Amomar I. Bob C I. Bob H I. Lucas I. And Dave votes I. Motion carried unanimously. We are adjourned.