Charter Review Committee - Regular Meeting

is 7 o'clock time. I'll call this meeting of the chart charter review committee to order. We'll begin with a roll call of the members. Um Don Anderson. Oh, wait. Hold on just a second. I've got some attendees which I need to promote to panelist. and we have double pops. Okay, again, let me begin the roll call. I was just about to mark you, Don. Don Anderson

here. Nate Bodwin here. Mike Brunie here. Angela Korea. Skip Courier. Angel got really deep. I think Skip. You meant said Skip Courier. Said here.

Skip Courier. Can you hear us? Skip. Bob, can you hear us? I can. Okay, we'll start we'll circle back to you. Skip. Bob D is present. Dan Fitzgerald here. Mark Hadad here. Jeff Hess here. Andy Jefferson here. John Kelly here. Jim Malloy here. Greg Nar here. Hello Robin

here. David Robbins here. We got Skip now. Do I have Skip now? We could hear him. He can't hear us.

He's frozen. Oh, thanks. Deep in thought. He's unfolded now. That's one of the reasons I like to watch Fincom is just skip on the Zoom being honest. All right. Mute the video and just watch. All right. Well, we have a Since Since I But since I can see Skip, he's even though I can't hear him, I will mark him as present. So, we're all here except for Angelina. Great. Anyway, let's proceed with our agenda tonight. This was advertised as a public hearing. So, that's the first item on our agenda. Move to open the public hearing.

Second. Moved and second that we open the public hearing. Any discussion? Hearing none. I have to call for a roll call vote. But on the on the planning board, we don't mo we don't have a motion to open the public hearing. We didn't do it. But since we do have a motion on the floor, Dawn I. Nate. Hi, Mike. I Skip. Bob. Hi, Dan. Hi, Mark. Hi, Jeff. Hi, Andy. Hi, John. Hi, Jim. Hi, Greg. Hi, Angela. Hi, Dave. Go. Hi. All right, public hearing is officially open. Did we get a yes from Skip or was that Did we skip over just left?

Yeah, I see what you did there. Anyway, so this we are inviting members of the public to join us this evening to speak to us about charter changes in which they might be interested which they'd like to suggest to us. I I know Colleen has another meeting to get to. So, I'd invite Colleen to uh

Hi.

I don't know if I have a Oh, is that okay? So, Colleen Roy, 53 Elwood Street, and I wanted to talk about the budget uh section, section 6.3. I'd like to see you guys add a budget calendar. Um I brought an example from another community where it states in their charter um annually annually no later than the first day of October the town manager with agreement of the select board and they have an appropriations committee and school committee shall establish and issue a budget schedule which shall set forth the calendar dates regarding the development of the town's annual operating budget and the for the ensuing fiscal year and then they set the dates for and they list out seven different dates and then I have a copy of what that calendar looks looks like for the last two fiscal years that I could pass around and I really think that's something that would really enhance how we're doing the budget process here in Grafton and I'd love to see you guys consider that so I can leave all this for your consideration or

yes we'd like to you know we'll we'll make copies of that and distribute those to all of the committee members and just just so you know you are the third person to recommend a budget calendar or comp something comparable third times the charm. So

which which reinforces the desire for something like that. So I very much appreciate and and I think the more the more examples and the more variation and suggestions the better that you know gives us potentially gives us several several options to consider as as we zero in on what we want. But yes, that's there there does seem to be very strong sentiment for something like that. Yeah, I think it would be great. So, um I will leave this here with you.

I can actually also speak on that for a moment. I believe Mark had sent in a first draft proposal of some changed language to that exact section as well as the other sections in article six or section six. And some of the proposed additions were adding a no later than October 30th of each year for this process to start and then for uh the finance committee to have that budget submitted to them by the town administrator no later than January 31st. So that's our first Yeah.

I love the idea of having dates set out with all of these important committees so that they all know what to be looking for. we can get them out to the public knows and it's not a will they won't they is it the same night situation which we've kind of seen here. The only other thing I did notice in our section right now the first line is within um a time fixed by bylaw. I didn't see one a bylaw. We don't. Okay. So we don't have to worry about that. Perfect. I just wanted to throw that out. That's also been stricken in the draft form of the proposal. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Awesome. So you guys are like on top of it. I don't even know why you need Great. I'm just keeping track of them. I didn't write this one. All right. Well, you guys have fun. Thank you for Great. And and thank you. Yeah, of course.

And for for reinforcing what we already pretty well convinced we're going to do, but like I said before, more ideas along the each each proposal may be a little bit different in detail, and I think we'd be happy to uh happy to look at all the ideas and and see which one meld it together. in our infinite wisdom what fits best for graphs and so we should put these together add them to the uh meeting documents yes I'll add them to the uh I I'll include that with all the other documents that I distribute right after the meeting okay and it's good to have what

the language from what other towns are doing too see what kind of dates they're aligned to how close they fit to our schedule yeah like I said I'm I'm I'm happy to get even if it's the same idea several variations of It gives it gives us more perspective. I feel like everyone brings their own solution, too. So, you kind of get a bunch of different ways to solve it and find the best one through that. Okay, great. Well, Ray, I think you're up next.

Good evening, everybody.

My name is Ray Me, 217 Brigham Hill Road. Um, I'm probably going to bring up some things that you probably already have discussed and after listening to what Colleen just said, I'm not going to be here that long either. Um, couple of things. uh the and I'm sure you've looked into this is is a town management town manager form of government and and I think that the town is is now a small city and we uh we should have a different change change in the government um to a town manager. Um so uh that's one thing. Um, I would like to see the planning board um change from an elected position to an appointed position. And I don't know if you guys have talked about that.

We received a we received a suggestion last week, right? Somebody else suggested that. Okay. Okay. So, I'm a little late. No, right on time. Yeah, that's good. I think that was also in the previous Yes, that was considered 10 years ago. We did look at that 10 years ago. And you just just as we all know a town meeting voted that down 10 years ago but but keep in mind Tom meeting voted down changing the town clerk to appointed the first time it passed. So second time's a job.

I think this year is a great time to put it front and center again even though we're going next year because no one pulled papers and it's an extremely extremely important not just saying this because you're next to me. It's an extremely important board. Oh, just we got So, so we gota I think it is a good time to revisit. It's it's time it's time to get away from the votes and and get to appointing people who and I'm not saying that any know anybody on the planning board doesn't have qualifications, but it's a lot easier when you're appointing

to to hire people. It's like interviewing people. You hire the best that's that's going to do the best job, you know, and it's a lot easier that way. Yeah, that's that's similar to one of the rationale in favor of it 10 years ago. We have between the previous charter committee's report and my notes on the topic, we have a fair amount of information as to why why it was considered 10 years ago and certainly we can we can include that for consideration this time around as well. Thanks.

Sorry. Before before you move on just for my minute taking could you what was the your first point again were you suggesting something manager it was just town administrator town and manager correct okay thank you right could I ask you about that though because we we have talked about that a little bit here it kind it seems my understanding of it's almost like a name change but you seem to it's not well Mark's right there he's a he's a town manager and he knows the difference between a town manager and a town administrator

Jim and I talked about that and I think the the town manager It just it it just has a little bit more oomph to it than and I don't know how else to put it. Jim, I welcome your input on that, but I just think the town manager it just it has a little bit more prestige than the town administrator. The title, not the person. And it's Yeah. And you when we've discussed this previously, we've noted that the powers and responsibilities and duties assigned to our town administrator are pretty much those of a town manager already. Correct.

So it's it's a there's a change in title and something where you have and we have to be discussed further in our meeting tonight is there's also aligning the powers, duties and responsibilities with those that are commonly associated with the town manager. So if as we further review what we have, if we need to ex further expand the currently titled sound administrator, uh if we need to expand further the powers and duties to match up with the town manager, that we'll be looking at that as well.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's not it's not something you just want to make a name change because it because it also it also involves appointments and and hiring and firing and decisions that are made now by the select board that transfer to the town manager and and and it's it's more of a smoother process in a town of this size now 20 almost 21,000 people and it's about time that we do that and allow whoever whoever the town manager is, to be able to have that power and control to make decisions without having the board hanging over his head.

No offense, you know, uh be able to be able to make decisions without having someone on this side and someone on that side saying that was stupid. Well, if it was stupid, that's the way it goes.

Yeah. No, that that that's absolutely part of what we're looking at. We a lot of towns are doing their charter review right now and some feedback that came up on the Gavlon was in Mansfield last year they reorganized a few years ago they reorganized the charter specifically putting the town manager in charge of appointing all professional department heads including fire chief, police chief, treasurer, town clerk, DPW chief. The result is the town manager is the chief executive officer of the town managing all the business and then the select board politics. Right. Right now that's right now the select board is the are the CEOs of the town. Right.

You just switch that over to the town community. So you're actually looking for change of more than just title which is kind of what we've been looking at so far is saying that the town manager the position is already pretty much a town manager. But you think there should also be some uh changes in the powers appointment powers as well? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. We we haven't Jim Jim's done some research on that which we can which we'll talk about later I guess.

Yeah, we we've got that on on our agenda to talk about. But yeah, ultimately I think collectively our goal is to fully align the position with that that's generally understood to be a town manager. Okay. So, it's clearly it's clearly a title change and it may involve some other changes. Okay, that's that. Okay, move on. Get more. Um, and Dave, you and I have talked about this representative town meeting.

Um, it's uh again with with the switch from from a town administrator to a town manager, size of the the size of the town and everything like that and the attendance at town meeting, which you know, for for 40 years we've been trying to get people to go to town meeting. So we would have to propose under that an elected charter commission to do that as part of our work here. Can we make a recommendation to town meeting that they create an elected charter commission specifically to look at the representative town meeting?

Yes, that we we could make that recommendation to to change from an open to a representative town meeting. There's there's some extra hoops that we have to jump through that we don't have the power to do as a committ. Yeah. But you can make that regulation. Yeah. So there's a whole process which starts with a petition signed by at least 15% of the registered voters and it goes from there to well we could get that at a town meeting barely that's 15% of all registered voters which is you know couple I'm the standard stop and shop

but anyway anyway yeah you cross that bridge when you come to just know that there you know it's there there's It's a fairly high barrier to do that, but not insurmountable. Yep. It's just it's it's it's more work than what we as a committee can do. But if we wanted to uh recommend that the town consider pursuing that option, we know how we know how the process works. We did it 40 years ago. We elected a charter commission that produced produced the charter that we have now. the process of electing a new charter commission to revise the charter. It's the same process,

you know, and a lot of people I I brought actually brought this up when I was moderator and and a lot of people um not a lot of people, but some people were against it because they felt that their rights at town meeting were being taken away. Your rights at town meeting don't really get taken away. It's it's just that there are representatives that vote. You can go and speak and talk and do anything that you want, but to have 50 people show up at a town meeting in the fall is is an absolute shame.

And to have to go to a to go to a annual town meeting in May, which is this is this is gonna maybe it amazes me every time. that you pass a budget without any questions. No questions. No holds. No,

no, nothing. No holds, no nothing. No questions. So, if you have a representative town meeting, all those representatives and and you know, there's a there's a number, there's a ratio that comes up, you know, how many people are in town, registered voters and all of that stuff. Um, you know, all those people have the same information. They all have the same information. So, they know what the budget is. They know what goes on, what's going on. They've had all the information's been given to them and it's it's a good thing, you know, not having, you know, going from 50 people to having, you know, 400 people and I'm just throwing that number up. I just think it's a way that we should we should do it. and you guys can can make that recommendation and and yeah,

you even mentioned the the meetings where you get to a certain article, people vote, and then everyone gets up and leaves and you've still got Oh, that happens. However, well, yeah, that happens all the time. You're going to see that at the next town meeting. Don't worry. Oh, yeah.

You're gonna you're going to see a mass exodus and it's uh either they're going to be happy or they're going to be really pissed, you know. So, so um okay, the other thing is Dave already Dave again knows about this. I brought up at the planning board a um and and I don't even know if this is this is charter review or anything like that, but I brought up at the planning board to look into a technical review committee for the planning board. Um and and it it it fell on Um I would you say defiest? It didn't fall. It fall on a fell on a rock and it broke. Okay. There was really no one in favor of it. And and Mark, I wanted to ask you, do you have a technical review committee? You don't?

So, um and I'll just give you a very very brief, you know, description of what a technical review committee is. Technical review committee is made up of a member of the planning board and then all of the professional staff in town uh fire department, police department, highway department, uh building inspector, town planner, um the sewer department, water department. And what they do is they as someone submits a plan for uh for approval. Um they review the entire plan during the week, during the day with the developer.

Let me correct that. We call it the land use committee. We do have that. Okay. So that Yeah. Some some towns call it call it different things.

Yep. and they actually go through all of the the the entire process and confirm that the uh that the uh plan being submitted, whether it's a subdivision, whether it's a building or or whatever it is, meets or exceeds all current local zoning laws and Massachusetts zoning laws. So that when it comes to the planning board and and this happens, this happens a lot. Someone will bring a plan and they they put it down and then well did you you know we don't have anything from the fire department we don't have anything from the highway department so you're gonna have to come back in two weeks you don't have anything from the sewer department you got to come back in two weeks and back in two weeks and back in two weeks and it's all it really it really chews up the time of the planning board okay at a meeting and people keep coming and and you know coming back whereas a technical review committee handles all of that during the day so that when it comes to the planning board that plan is ready to go.

That doesn't need to be in the charter. It's a good idea. We do it very effectively in Grot and um where the police chief fire chief DPW everybody gets involved. They provide comments to the planning board when a site plan comes in and then the planning board has those comments as they go through. It works really well. You don't have to do that in the charter. the town administrator can form that committee make it a requirement of the permitting process coming in. So I think it's a great idea. We can just understand technical we can add supportive language in the charter of like if ever were to make that put in the powers and duties put it like after the fact but I think so what you're saying as a bylaw Jack than it could be a bylaw I didn't know whether it was whether it was belong to the

yeah some of the suggestions that we have brought up in committee and that we're likely to get may turn out to be better placed in a bylaw or in some other fashion. Yep. But one of the things that we can do as a committee at the end is to in addition to proposing charter changes, we can make additional additional recommendations. And hearkening back to the bylaw study committee of not too many years ago, of which three of us here were on that. And just three. Yeah. Well, Skip was on it too, but I Skip is

Skip has left the building. But anyway, one of the things that we did as part of the bylaw committee is we did include some charter changes in the town votes because these were things that needed to be done to align the charter and the bylaws. In addition, we made some recommendations for other things that we saw needed to be done. So I think I think we generally going to approach it the same way in this committee is that we're primarily focused on charter changes. We might see some bylaw changes that need to be made to go along with the charter changes. We might identify some bylaw changes that we don't want to we're not going to try to implement but we think should be done at some point in the future. We might have other recommendations that are neither charter nor bylaw, but things that we've identified as being good things to do. So, we'll I think we'll take that same approach here. And so, I don't mind receiving suggestions like that even if it turns out that they don't really fit into a charter.

I think it's a great suggestion. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, it doesn't it doesn't take any power or or authority away from the planning board at all. Um, and just for example, I've been I I don't know how many technical review committees I've been before, but it's it's been it's been a great process and I I I just met with a town planner in Middletown, Rhode Island, uh, for a project that we're that we're going to be doing down there and, uh, they guaranteed me one planning board meeting. Now, you may you may be before the technical review committee for three months, but one planning board meeting and that's it.

So, you're saying what this board does is instead of if I'm a developer, instead of having to go in front of, you know, a planning board meeting, a zoning board meeting, a select board meeting? No, you still have to get the still have to get the permits. What ends up happening, Jack is you go before the department heads and the fire chief will say, "If you're doing a subdivision, I need a turning radius of so much at the end of the culde-sac." Okay. And then he'll provide those comments so that when the planning board gets it, they'll put that in their decision for the for the site. They've already got it all there for the meeting when it happens. Yeah. Because what Ray is saying is he'll go and the planning board will say, "Well, what does the fire chief think about this?" Well, we haven't talked to him yet. That delays until the next meeting. I see. So, that's a that's a small example of how it becomes very efficient. So I think Ray raises a very valid point. I like that.

I just don't think it belongs. Yeah, the idea covers covers a fair amount of the territory that ends up otherwise being covered, you know, during the planning board and in between meetings. But what it doesn't do is detract from the planning board's discretion still decision. Yeah. Yeah. We I I can just say we did the same thing in Lexington. We had a project review team and it it wasn't in our bylaws and it wasn't in our charter. It was just something that the town manager created. And so I really think the town manager can do that. Y

well um but I really do think this is something that even in the administrative organization that we have here in Grafton that the town administrator still has the authority to create an internal working group like that without having to have a bylaw or a charter uh provision allowing it. he can simply get all of those people together and put together a team that does exactly what you're talking about because I I agree entirely that it's a very effective way to um better deal with any kind of development that comes into the town where you don't have people coming in and the planning board saying well what's the DPW director say about the water pressure in this part of town and um all of a sudden the planning board's sitting there going well you have to come back next month

uh instead you get it all done up front and then when it goes before the planning board. It's pretty much a uh finished project or product that uh will answer all of those questions. So, I I think it's a good idea, but I don't think there's anything stopping the town administrator from creating a a a project review team like that. Right now,

we have something that's kind of along that line. It's the it's a little bit more informal and it typically they're looking at applications uh before they're before they're filed with In fact, while the application is still under development, we have a development team. Nobody on the planning board participates in that. with the, you know, the the various department heads. In theory, I I I don't think that every one of them attends every one of these meetings, but we have it's it's I know we've talked about that before, Rachel, that that's it's kind of a step in that direction, but what what you're what what you're suggesting is something that's a little bit more formalized, a little bit more, you know, I want to say rigorous, but maybe not rigorous is that may not be the right word. Well, I mean, you know, Dave, you you know so well in the planning board how many developers show up and say, "Uh, here's my plan. What do you think?" And it's like, it's not even a plan. What are you talking about? You know, and why why would you want your time wasted, you know, when when they could go to this committee and get this done? So, but

it helps with the completeness of an application before the plan board makes all sure all the boxes are checked. I was going to say when you were talking about it not taking away I can't see how it would at all. All I see is that it makes it so they know or at least best chance of knowing going into that meeting with the developer they have everything they need to have that discussion. Yes. Can I just ask you a question, R? So, you had said it it has fallen when you've like brought it up before. Is there any feedback on like why that's happened since it seems like everyone is like this is a great idea

in is it like in I don't know did we hear from anyone or it it it wasn't it wasn't widely accepted. Let's put it that way. Okay. And I'm not sure whether that's a lack of knowledge as to as to what the process is and how I explained it or anything like that, but it it was not widely accepted by the members of the planning board. Yes, I it's probably fair to say that some members of the board worry about it taking away from the board's responsibilities. The planning board's authority is statutory. You can't do it without a statutory. So people just need to understand this is actually going to make their life easier. Sounds like it.

It absolutely will. Change can be hard. Wait. Well, there's no pennies anymore, so you know, we're all set there. That's all I have. Great. Thank you very much, Ray. Commend you all for for being on this huge committee. I can't wait to see the fights. No fights. We all love each other here. Yes. And if if we want to get more detail from you about what you had in mind, we will reach out. Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you very much.

Okay. Um that information you had on the the town you looked at for town manager, is that something we want to discuss later or do you want to put that in with the to be distributed? I I I will be distributing that. So you you have this? I I have that. Okay. and I will be distributing it. It's one of those things that I'm told we can't distribute ahead of the meeting because it it's an expression in part of an opinion of a committee member. Okay. So, we'll get we'll get into that shortly. All right. So, that is the since we had a motion to open the public close public hearing. Second.

All right. Motion to close the public hearing. been seconded. Let me bring my list up here. What? I had my attendance list up here. Where did it go? All right, there we go. So, put the motion to a vote if there's no further discussion. Dawn. Hi, Nate. Hi, Mike. On Zoom, Angelina. Skip.

Skip is no longer with us. That sounded bad. Bob Doma. Hi, Dan. Hi, Mark. Hi, Jeff. Hi, Andy. Hi, Jack. Hi, Jim. Hi, Greg. Hi, Angela. Hi, Dave. I motion carried unanimously. The hearing is closed and as we've previously discussed, we intend to have at least one more public hearing aimed more at the public reviewing and discussing the charter amendment proposals that we plan to make.

So there was a hand on Zoom that I noticed mid vote. Do we but it is gone now. No, back up. Do you want to put that in? Yes. Let me see. Where is it? My Zoom has been flaking out on me. Yes, there's a uh there is a hand up. I will uh

Okay. Hello. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Hello, this is Michael Rock of 8 Trinity A. Uh sorry for missing the first few minutes of this. Something else came up. Uh just quick short and sweet. Uh section 7-11 uh absenteeism. Uh current threshold is 50%. That seems generous to borderline on abusive. Uh I would love to see that moved down to somewhere in the neighborhood of 25%. um to serve in a public capacity. Good point. Good point. Okay.

All right. So, that's all. Just RA AK is your last name. Correct. First name is Michael, last name is R as in Romeo, A is in Alpha, K is in Kilo. I I thought so. I just wanted to verify for Yeah. want to make sure we get all the names correct for the agenda minute together. Thank you, Mike. Of course. Thank you all for your time and service.

Yeah, sorry about that. My my my Zoom on my computer has been kind of flashing on and off and every time it comes back on, I lose my view of the attendees. Yeah, I I had it looked pre looked like a minute earlier and it wasn't there. I just going to flip over. No, no offense taken. I will I will consider that comment to have been part of the public hearing. Absolutely. All right. Where was I in the agenda? Anything else? Okay. The next item I had on the agenda. I had a feel. I had to turn the volume up to 100 to be able to hear.

I could hear the other people that were remote. Fine. Welcome, Skip. Good to have you. Hi kids.

Great. Okay. Anyway, wanted to just, you know, have a brief discussion of the status of our outreach efforts. Um, where are my notes on this? We've had paper copies of the solicitation for public input that's been uh distributed, printed, and distributed. and and in your meeting packet tonight was a uh a copy of the paper version of that. Um we have the where were they distributed as was where were they distributed? So they are at library, they're at town hall and they are at the senior center currently. Thank you.

Any any other places people think might be good to put them? Great places. I know those are those are the ones we mentioned and then there sort of the end. Once upon a time we could say copies at each library, but those times are long gone. Well, it's still true. Each library has one. Yeah, that's true. Each each library has it just now there's only one of them and we used to have three. Anyway, okay. Uh what else? Uh, we posted the on our CRC web page. We've got a a posting of that announcement. Um, I noticed that it showed up on the front page of this week's Grafton News.

Um, the only thing I had heard back from them was they wanted to confirm that we'll put this forward to town meeting at 2027. So, that's pleasant surprise. Um, I also reached out to Community Advocate. I don't know that they got it in print, but I saw at the beginning of the week they put um an article online uh and shared that out.

Um I never heard anything back from Blackstone Valley Express. Uh and TNG reached out late, apologized for the delay, but said they'd be interested in doing an a general article, you know, because when I when I reached out, I told them all we had the public hearing tonight, but you know, it's a it's a year-long process. We'll post at least one more. You can always do public comment. Um, so they were interested in an article and asked if a select board member would like to speak to it. I said I could. However, I felt that the moderator would be a better person to talk to as they assemble it or our incredibly knowledgeable chair and gave them both of your contact information. So

cool. Okay. and the uh the public hearing announcement that went out on Facebook and people it's been reported to me that lots of people saw it put out all over the place. It was

Yep. And it uh we put it on the on the front page of the town website. So anybody looking at the town website in the news section will see it. So let me see. So that's pretty much what we've done so far. And moving ahead, yeah, I I had on my notes future outreach would be the local papers, but that that's already in process. When I made these notes, I hadn't yet seen the Grafton news. And we were planning on publicizing this at town meeting.

Yes. So Bob told me he can't hear me. Um I was working on my preliminary notes for the meeting this week. I know we wanted to do a flyer and I'm going to have a welcome table for the middle school signin and for the quick guide and the bingo cards and CPC will be putting something out there so we can add that to the display. But did you want to do a official report as part of the boards and committee reporting? I know the bylaw study committee did one like a progress report or did you want me to just make an announcement for outreach?

I think I a simple announcement. I don't think we're ready to make a report. Okay. Yeah, we really don't have we have anything to report interesting to report other than we're working on it. We're we're receiving public input and we'd love your input. Okay, then I'll incorporate Yep. I'll incorporate it into my opening statement from the moderator carry more weight. So, at this point, are there any other outreach activities that we should be looking at? If not, well, we'll do more as we think of it. But, uh,

Michael's still panelist here. I have no problem with it.

All righty. The next item on the agenda, I had tracking the status of proposed revisions. And you know here again Jim had uh Jim had submitted let me see if I do I all right. All right. So this may not show up really well here, but Jim had created a spreadsheet to track comments received from the public and what you see on the screen and I'll distribute all this in a packet after the meeting. So

let me uh I can forward you I updated it just a little bit. I added a column on charter sections that are impacted by the um information or whatever they were seeking. Um and so I and I added the one from Dennis Parin that came in a day or two ago. This came in Yeah. like yesterday. Yeah.

Yeah. So So this is kind of what it looks like. And Jim just just explained he's going to do a little bit. So we'll we'll see a a slightly updated version of this. And in fact, since we've talked about it tonight, if you can send me that updated version, I will I will distribute in the in the meeting materials that we discussed tonight that I'll I'll include that in the supplementary meeting packet. So that's you that you is there anything more you wanted to explain about this, Jen?

No, just um you know, it has contact information. I added some columns that are uh where the um video feed is and what they are is uh the date we schedule it for discussion and the date we invited the resident to attend assuming that we might want to do something like that and then a decision uh or motion and then what the vote was on that so that we could track all along and at any point in time we could say yes we received this um request from um Nicole Eier and We invited her, we scheduled it for discussion on June, whatever, and we invited her in. She did, did not show up. We discussed it. This is what we did with it. Kind of thing. So that way we could at least track it all the way through so that when we do get to town meeting and somebody invariably stands up and says, I didn't know anything about this, we say, well, a lot of other residents did and we did our best because we did all of these public outreach and then here's how we track those comments we did get.

Yeah. And th this looks like it's particularly suitable for our use. Yeah. Interacting it for our own basically internal purposes. Yeah.

At some point, we're also going to want to start publishing on our website the status of what we're doing. And that may be more appropriate once we begin to nail down specific proposals that we want to ultimately bring to town meeting. And that would kind of compare roughly to what we did with the bylaw committee where you we had and I I probably mentioned this before. We had like 41 articles of the bylaws. So we could we had a table on the website basically for article one. You know we have a proposal or we don't yet have a proposal. We're working on it. If we do have a proposal here's a link to the mark to the markup showing you what we're proposing changes. Um, we only have like seven articles of the charter. So, I'm not quite sure ultimately how we're going to want to arrange it, but I don't think we're at this point. I don't think we're at we're we're at a point where it makes any sense at all to to talk about what we're going to propose changing in which articles of the charter. Uh eventually that's and we can think about what we want that to look like whether whether we want to kind of mirror what we did for the bylaws or whether we have some some approach that makes more sense for the charter. I think you know Jack you had said you were going to be you know looking at something along those lines. As of right now, it's it's just a simple Google document with just the changes Marcus suggested and the change I suggested, and it's pretty much just the same format with green and underlined meaning new additions and uh strike through and red meaning old. I also think that there's potentially if it could be formatted better, having just a old version, new version. So if someone just wants to see what it's

going to look like, they can look there. And then having a version that shows specific changes is also, you know, that's something else we can get input on from the public. But you're right, I think it's not that time yet to be putting out the two suggestions we just barely. Yeah. I mean, we've got the two suggestions from the public. We also have a bunch of suggestions that we've come up with internally. some some in the form of a proposed markup of the charter, most of them in the form of just we think we should do this. Now, if I this is open meeting law question. If I were to make this Google doc viewable to the board, but no one else could edit it, would that

that's not a violation. Okay. I I I I I can do that so everyone can get to see as long as as long as you put only put things in it that we've already discussed. Correct. Yes. I some I assume he's talking about the updated version. Yes. Yeah. It'll be only after we've spoken about in a meeting. I'll put it in and then everyone will have access. So I don't So I don't have to set it out send it out every single time. Yeah.

I was thinking you guys are talking and the tracking and everything. Should we schedule for the the next meeting? There are seven sections to the charter, right? So, should we make it an agenda item at the next meeting to look at each section and determine if there's going to be an amendment of that particular section so that we know exactly what we're going to be focusing on. For example, section one, we're probably not going to touch that. That's just the the setup of the chart or whatever. So, do we want to spend time at the next meeting, Dave, just looking at each section, say, "Okay, section one, we're going to touch. Section two about town meeting, we're not going to touch. Section three, select board and elected powers." Well, yeah, maybe we're going to talk about the planning board. Section four, town administrator, appointing authority and all that sort of fun stuff. Town manager. Yeah, we're going to touch that. Section five, what is that? The um

administrative organization. It's articles, not sections. Article and then article six is the budget. We're going to talk about that. So, should we just go through that? So, we what we're looking at.

Yeah, that's probably worthwhile. Yeah. And you maybe Yeah, at this point assuming we've re we've gotten most but not all of the suggestions from within the committee as well as the public suggestions. We probably are at a point where we could start going article by article that you know this article we don't expect or this article we have nothing. this article we have changes A, B, and C to consider and probably so begin to organize it by by the the articles and what we're going to consider changing in each article.

And then what I would also like to suggest is that for example the budget article, there's several suggestions that have come in. Nicole had one, CP had one, Colleen had one tonight. I had one. I'd like to recommend that we have a subcommittee of this committee per article so that a a small group gets together takes what they think is the best of the suggestions and puts together something to bring back to the committee because if we try to do it at this table with 15 people I don't think it's going to work. So I think

we take once we get all our suggestions in you know we we sit down and we say okay section four is the town administrator town manager Jim and I will be the subcommittee on that because We're going to look at reddrafting the powers and duties and Jim's done a lot of research on it as well. We look at the budget section, you know, another subcommittee takes a look at that particular section so that then that comes back to the full committee. I think that's better work and a better way to handle it. Yeah, I think that's kind of what I was imagining that we might do. Okay. Great minds. Great minds think right or else we're both were wildly wrong. Probably wild. I'd like to think that we kind of make some sense.

I think I think we should try to be as efficient as possible and give the larger committee more to more to just debate and look at instead of trying to create at a table of 15 people. Yes, I think yes, absolutely. when it when it gets down to the details of crafting the wording and the changes. Yeah, that's not something that's not that's not something that could be done efficiently by 15 people. So, yeah, I think we'll okay,

we'll take that and you know, I just put my note on that in the category of things to plan for next meeting. All right. So, right. So, in terms of tracking right now, I think we're all we're all set for what we need to do right now. Yeah. And the other thing that I'll add and I'll send it back out to you before you distribute it is the um three comments we got from residents tonight. So, that those will be added into it and what sections and all that. So, I'll do that. I'll have it to you in the next day. Yep. So, you have everything you need retirees. What else am I going to do? Yeah. So, I'll hold off on sending documents out

after this meeting until I get that update from you. Yeah, I'll either get it tonight or tomorrow. Yeah, John, do you have all you need from that or I think so. Yeah, I took some notes. All right. If you miss any details, Jim, just it can always be amended and updated. Just pastor Greg Ford or me. Okay. Greg may have better notes than I do, but I try to take notes of everything, but my notes tend to be cryptic. You understand, too?

Okay, next agenda item, charter revision candidates. Do we have any new suggestions coming in from the committee? Um, I was looking over my notes and I see that I have a number of things that I've written notes on, but I don't think I've shared them with the committee. So, I will proceed and Greg just sent me something that you know and you do you have any others potentially, Greg? Uh, I have a whole list of typographical and minor ones that I'm working. It's transcribing my notes into something usable by the by the committee. Yeah. So, okay. So,

and then I'll have I I have a couple other things that uh I had looked at and I thought could be rewritten but then found out a lot of that stuff is already in mass general law. So, I want to look see if maybe we can just simplify that by in that area. So, I had I had that too where I was like this is worded so strangely and I look I'm like oh it's word for word from general law. I'm like, I I can't change that. These weren't even that. They were this if if we go the charter route or if we go the legislative route or whatever, the first thing it does is it goes to House Council and House Council will rewrite everything that we've done.

Yes, I have noticed that what what we send what we vote on at town meeting and send to the legislature does not come back looking like what we voted on. You know, it's so funny. I always thought you capitalize things, right? Yeah. They take all the capitalization away. Weirded. I don't know why. I don't understand that either. Bugs me. That's That's the way it works. Their typewriters don't have capital. That's especially Especially funny since we have a difference between general laws lowercase and general laws capitalized in the charter. So they mean different things.

Exactly. It's actually very funny. That that was actually one of the things I looked at is we have town meeting uppercase and town meeting lowercase and some of them they actually do mean just a meeting or town meetings in general. So that's one of the things I haven't go through and find all of the those and get those updated. And not to go off on too big a tangent, but the legislature loves to write extremely long paragraphs. like you're gonna you'll have a paragraph that this long and it's just one sentence

and when when I'm really trying to understand some of those things I take and copy them and then break break it up into readable pieces. But anyway, that's the that's the legislature for you. So anyway, Greg has some suggestions, Jack has has something. I' I've got a few things that I need to write up in in a manner that kind of makes sense. Again, my cryptic notes don't always aren't aren't always readable by anybody else. So,

I guess I just do have a very brief update on something that the changing of the language in the powers and duties of the housing authority. We had a meeting and I believe while we didn't vote on anything formal, it was the consensus of the board that those changes would be appreciated and understood by the board.

Yeah, we we did seem to think that made sense, but anyway. Yeah. So, and any other ideas people have the things that we haven't already talked about things that you might have thought of let's try to get all that collected together so we have maybe one one big long list of all the details that any of us have thought of the big and small I'm I'm expecting a whole a whole page full of you know spelling and grammar and punctuation things probably probably that you'll probably find those in almost every article of the of the charter Let's capitalize everything. I really want to do that. One

drive house council crazy. If if memory serves one of the charter changes that we made 10 years ago was to go through and capitalize a bunch of stuff. That was one of the one of the warrant articles, one of the votes. And they'll put it back down to and as long as we don't as long as we don't let the legislature tinker with it, we're good. Okay. So, let me see. Where was I? New suggestions. Yeah, I need to we'll we'll we'll collect all of the ideas have been floating around in our individual heads and and and and put them on the table for consideration.

Do we want to go through the one I submitted today or I'd like to Should be fairly fairly short.

Yeah. Let me see where where did I put that? Where did I put that? Where did I put it? Let me file that in a place where it needs to where I can see it. They give up came. All right, let's see here. I need a bigger screen. Okay, so here we are. So basically uh section 7-5 definitions uh defines days as the word days shall refer to business days not including Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays when the time set is less than seven days. Typo that's in the charter. When the time set is seven days or more, every day shall be counted. Um grammatically incorrect. Extremely confusing. In one point there is a sentence where they say between one day and 10 days. So the one day is business days and the 10 days is calendar days in the same sentence. Uh

I have no idea what that means. So if you say five days, it's business days. If you say six days, it's business days. If you say seven days, it's calendar days. So that come across we we've come across that before. But see the problem here they failed to decapize. So there might be some significance to that.

So what I've um the other slightly less thing that I noticed as I was going through and finding days is sometimes we put the number in parentheses after. So we write out seven seve parenthesis 7 and sometimes we don't. So I'm sure there are more places we do this. This is all the places involving days where I did it because that's where I was going through. Didn't we do something comparable to this in the bylaws? I think so. I have a vague memory that we had

just don't be inconsistent with that. So my the first the first part of the my suggestion amendment is that we change it to business days and the term business day shall be shall refer to days other than Saturday. Sunday. Okay, so Saturday is plural. Sundays is not and I didn't notice that before days other than Saturdays, Sundays and legal holidays and leave it at that. And then the rest of the suggestion is going through all of the places where we say days and fixing up the ones that make business days. Uh most of them are staying the same. Uh section 4-4 acting town administrator temporary absence. It says it was previously until at least 10 days have elapsed. And that one I think made more sense as business days. So I marked that as well actually it said working days. So I changed it to business days because we don't define working days. Uh section 4-6 screening committee. uh one place we had 150 another place we had 150 for so for continuity I got rid of the and there um section 7-8 removals and suspensions this is where we had the the one and the 10 in the same sentence so I just rewrote it as within 10 business days after instead of between one and 10 days after um and clar clarified a little bit of the language about the employee failing to request a public hearing because it was very confusing. And we also made the 15 business days for delivery of the notice of intent to

remove and that actually did come up recently where we the town had to withdraw and reissue a suspension because the 15 days landed on a Sunday. So they had to reissue that and everything else in there is just adding the numbers or the section 7-8 the suspension being 15 business days. Excellent.

That's great. One comment to you. Legal holiday should be better defined meaning which legal holidays legal holidays from Boston or federal legal holiday because if you talk about Boston St. day is legal holiday. Yeah, it should be it should be it should be Massachusetts recognizes if it's Massachusetts legal holidays or federal legal holiday because we ours are slightly different than the federal legal holidays because we do have patriots day off.

So it's a that would be a town council question. How would you word that? There might be a general law, mass general law outlining which days are if they haven't thought of it, we mention it, they'll probably bring it up. Yeah. And and check check with the latest version of the bylaws. We may I think we some of us kind of remember we did something with days in the bylaw. And I'm not going to try to look it up and and find where it was or what we did, but we did have we did do something in the bylaws related to counting days.

Does anyone know if there is a chart or chart that gives us like these are all the federal holidays and then for every state what are the state holidays? you could see if there's an overlap where if we were to say just Massachusetts, would it by default automatically cover all the federal holidays anyway? So then it would be specific to Massachusetts and cover for federal. Yeah, I feel like then there are separate SU county holidays that we don't get in the rest of the one but the secretary of state's office. No, we the Secretary of State's office has state legal holidays.

Yeah, it's a little it's a little outdated. And you know, we have to say we dealt with this in Lexington like the last year was there and I don't remember if it was in the bylaws or if it was in labor negotiations or in our charter. I think it was probably something in our bylaws that we dealt with. And I'll just look at the wording for how we dealt with that because maybe that would just make it life easy. Yeah, the secretary of state has a graph that has all of the days, what date it fell on, what year.

Yeah, we have we have similar language in the bylaws regarding the definition of days. Saturday, Sunday, legal holidays when less than seven days, seven days or more. So, we might want to as as we're looking at this, I'm not going to try to dig really carefully through the compile a report here. Would there be precedent? I know we have multiple times in our charter referencing Mass General Law, but would there be precedent to referencing a certain executive office saying as pursuant to the Secretary of State's holiday schedule or you know, better wording, but something like that.

By laws does not define business days. I've never seen that, Jack. But if if that's the office that we know keeps track of that schedule or that list, what if we want to I was going to say we we could use this opportunity to create our own holiday, just put it in the specific. Yeah.

Yeah. they Lexington did to do with it and I just found where they dealt with it and it's probably why I'm forgetting it because it was a nightmare was um we we had banned um uh gas powered uh landscaping equipment and we had to include legal holidays because um some landscapers were out there on legal holidays doing it. Neighbors were complaining because we didn't originally include it and so we had to define what the legal holidays were. Um, and so that's that's where it's at and that's why I forgot about it because it was

so a couple of follow-ups to this this discussion then would be to find a find a an appropriate definition of legal holidays and to compare it to the bylaws and see if see if either there's something in the bylaws that we can reflect here or whatever we do here may need to be reflected in the bylaws to improve the bylaws. You can just leave that as a as a task for the next bylaw study committee which has make a we can make this change.

So what what the wording they had there was um all legal holidays recognized by the commonwealth and those recognized by the town of Lexington as identified on a list to be approved by the select board. So if they had some local thing they were going to do because they have this thing with patriots day celebration every year there. Uh, so we we could do something similar to that. I think some real simple wording would be Yeah. Section 4-19 of the bylaws has holiday leave. So this is the employment section. Yes. I was just going to say the I think that's the personel bylaw. That's Yeah,

that that would be that's that's probably the best definition of holidays recognized by the town. Now, how we how we incorporate that into the charter maybe by referencing legal holidays as referenced in section four 4-9 of the bylaws. Yeah. or or more generally as recognized by as recognized as legal holidays by the uh bylaws for well worry about the specific wording but

yeah they some places say holidays accepted some days say legal holidays yeah I think that section is probably the best All right. So, we've got something to work with there. Any other thoughts about if Where was I? Right on my agenda again. All right. So, that's it for new suggestions that we already have. And again, there's there's a bunch of things that some of us are going to write up. So sufficiently, you know, sufficiently formal manner that the committee could then do something with them. Uh continued discussion of revisions currently under consideration. I think there's a couple things that we got from town council. Uh first one on my list is the fire chief appointment and the I think we are at least informally in agreement that we need that we should consider having the fire chief appointed by the town administrator slashmanager rather than by the select board. I had raised some concerns at our previous meeting about the possibility that there's it's more complicated in that because the strong chief statute chapter 48 section 42 if I remember right has a number of responsibilities assigned to the select board in addition to the appointing authority. uh as I was and I promised to to reach out to count town council about that and as I was formulating my query to council

I kind of reached the conclusion that it's all covered and council has basically confirmed the conclusion I reached which I had not really thought through at the meeting but basically chapter 43 B section 20 says that anything a charter says we with regard to various things including the appointing authority and the powers and duties and responsibilities whatever we choose to do in the charter is considered consistent with general laws. So what what our task will be here and we don't have we don't have to discuss it at any length. In fact, I would I dare say the subcommittee that's going to look at that would be the place to consider it in detail. basically of of all the responsibilities that are assigned by statute to the select board with regard to the fire chief. We can go through those and I had I had sort of included that my query to council and council bas could confirm that that that we want to think through which of those responsibilities we want to assign to the town administrator manager and the extent to which we want the select board involved. For example, appointment would might typically be the the administrator appoints with the approval of the select board which actually

check and balance mo most of the administrator appointments already basically have to have a select boardification to confirm. If the select board chooses not to vote, it's automatically confirmed.

But so I think that's pretty consistent with how we already do things. So the so then you know that I think the task before us is relatively simple. Everything that that section says about the select board does this, select board does that. We need to decide do we think that should still be a select board responsibility. Do we think the town administrator manager should take that responsibility? Which of those if we sign it to the TATM, which of those did select board need to oversee? So that

way it the the thing I was worried about I'm no longer worried about and we have I think we have good guidance from town council in that. So and I included that letter and the the memo from town council in their meeting packet. So unless somebody else has any thoughts about that, I will leave the rest of the detail work to whoever ends up writing up the uh So you're going to put the assignment of subcommittees on next agenda so we can talk about that. Yeah, I think at the the next meeting we can start assigning specific tasks to subcommittees because I think I think we're probably getting to a point where we want to start producing some results,

taking some action. We can do that at the same time we're going through article by article, section by section. We can group them together and say at some point I can handle this one. I can go.

Yeah. So the other the other memo from town council is the one that came in just in time to be distributed to the committee for the previous meeting, but they didn't didn't give us any time at all to discuss it. And that was questions about quorums and majority votes. And presumably some of us have at least have taken the time to read through that prior to this meeting. I my thought my my tentative conclusion on that is and this is just me is that the way con the way council wrote that it seems like we don't really need to define quorum or majority vote as a definition in the charter. because we cover those topics in subsequent section 7-9 or whatever the section on multiple member bodies that covers some of quorum and voting majority voting topics. So my first suggestion is we don't need those definitions at all. The the slightly more challenging question is what do we want to say about what is a quorum and what constitutes a majority vote?

We should have examples of definitions of quorum that we can look at and think about. I think well council's memo kind of had that. It had that. Yeah. Yeah. Con council's memo basically you indicated the commonly used definition primar primarily the definition that's used in the open meeting law and and if we deleted it then we would just default to the state law which is pretty clear. Yeah. So the only place So do you recommend deleting it and deferring to state law? Well,

it it it I I think it provides some confusion having a slightly different definition than what's in the state law. We would also kind of be going because against it in some ways, which I know that we now know we could theoretically do in certain instances, but when the question was raised specifically about abstensions, the general laws are very clear that an abstension is, for lack of a better term, a no vote. And so if we were to come in and say, "No, we're creating a new outcome for this type of vote." I feel like that would that's I'm not sure that that is actually fair.

Can we ban people from staying other than having a direct financial conflict of interest? Well, then you'd have to ask why don't they just recuse themselves? Should we require that? And I think now that we're getting we elect you to take a vote vote. That's the pointing is ridiculous.

I agree with that. But anyway, the question of a quorum, a definition of a quorum, sort of the charter under it's 7-9 E 7-9E specifies that for a multiple member body, a quorum is a majority of the members then in office. And it's that then in office qualification that conflicts with the open meeting law. Question would be do we want to retain that? And if so why

because if there are only two members on a five member body they can't do any work until anybody is appointed. I guesses I think it does have language interesting for special instances such as vacancies where if it becomes if because of a vacancy that majority is now even they can still do business but again there was there was something about what you can do if you don't currently have quorum in your meeting. it was extremely limited. But again, it's still a question of like if a five person committee has only two people there, the only way they can work is if

they both all of a sudden someone drops off the board. So I think that I think it's more uh more work than good to tinker with this. Yeah. Generally speaking, I mean, at least certainly in our experience, we don't often have a significant number of vacancies on most committees. Yeah.

Um there there are there is an example which occurred to me and I realize I think that's it's not an issue here. You have a committee something like the master plan working group that I was on. We started out with 27 members. We ended it with only 11 members. Now if that committee had been constituted as a committee of exactly 27 members then once we dropped below 14 we could have never achieved a quorum.

But that's not the way the committee was defined. It was it was defined with a maximum of 27 members and no minimum. The result of that being that there's there's no particularly well- definfined there's there's no such thing as a vacancy because you don't have a fixed number of members. So and a committee that and any committee that is similarly constituted I dare say even this committee where you know it's not defined to be a committee of seven members. In fact, it's not defined. There's no there's no definition of what the requirement is. It's a committee, right?

The only thing we had to follow was maintaining the odd number of people. Yeah. So, so in a case like this, if any of us should happen to decide we're done with this group, we hate it. And drops off, then it just becomes a smaller committee unless the appointing authority chooses to appoint someone else, which they are perfectly free to do. which they might have to do to keep it and look at the size of this. Yeah. And that's that's another topic.

But yeah, in in terms of defining a quorum, my thought is we're probably best off being consistent with the open meeting law, which either means we don't try to redefine the word, the term quorum. we just sort of assume the generally understood definition or we define it in a way that's consistent that matches the open meeting law. I I I think what Jim said removing it from the chart and deferring from state referring to state law. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I've already suggested we we remove the two definitions, seven, whatever they are about the majority definition,

right? In in the section on multiple member bodies, we talk about quorums and we talk about majority votes. And there if we talk if if we keep the language in there at all about a quorum, we probably want to make it consistent with the open meeting law. The next question which is more interesting because it gets to the topic of abstensions is what constitutes a majority vote.

So we don't actually talk about major the only place we talk about majority vote in multiple member bodies is in filling a vacancy and it says majority vote of remaining members. In fact, the definition majority vote in the in the charter as it is now has absolutely no effect because all of the places majority vote is used. It says majority vote of the remaining members or majority vote of the full board for removal suspension or a majority vote in town meeting which already has a definition. So that current majority vote has absolutely zero effect. So I guess here is the point at which we probably we probably want to say the the gory details of all this. We will delegate to whatever subcommittee works on on a whatever sub subcommittee has work that includes this topic. If nothing else, it would be the article 7 subcommittee. We may we may partition that work somewhat differently at some point. Or I think it probably makes more sense to be under multiple member bodies than definitions. Yes. But

yeah, because where where does the definition apply? Where where do quorums and majority votes apply other than multiple member bodies? They don't apply to town meeting. Number one, when we made this charter, we made the conscious decision not to have a core town meeting. I thank you. And you cannot define a majority vote in town meeting and in any way other than of those voting and present and voting present and voting and that's just that's the normal well understood rule for town meeting. So I don't know where

which is actually kind of what that this says here but present and voting. Yeah, but we don't, you know, so the charter doesn't need to define that. And the only place the charter really addresses the topics of quorum and majority vote are when discussing multiple member bodies. So yeah,

a separate definition outside of the section on multiple member bodies really doesn't have any useful effect within the section on multiple member bodies. Then the questions are what do we say about quorum? What do we say about majority vote? The one suggestion that somebody made and I don't remember where it came from off the top of my head, but in the under multiple member bodies, the vote the majority vote is mentioned in terms of if it's not unanimous, you have to take a roll call and I think we we've already had that suggestion that roll call doesn't seem to make sense for that.

Yeah. So we do actually you I was confused why you said quorum was E because quorum is I but that's because we have quorum both under both under multiple member bodies and under definitions. Yes. And they are slightly different. Although they the one under definitions other than having a typo then instead of then clarifies not including any vacancies which might then exist which is rolled up in then in office under uh multiple member bodies. So yeah, I think we can probably get rid of those.

So we you've had now now some chance to you know talk about it in general and yeah let's let's delegate further work on that to the subcommittee to be a subcommittee to be named next meeting. Yeah. And what else did we have? Uh

I just have a question about quorum. So reading the memo from the town council, I sort of got the impression I think like you said Dave and like others said that uh they're sort of recommending that we go back to the definition or we use the open meeting law definition of quorum. Right. But then what I'm hearing is that that would be a problem if there are a lot of vacancies on a particular board. Yeah. So wouldn't that I know and this is probably an issue for the subcommittee whoever they are to deal with but is that am I correct in that's what people were saying about that?

Yes. I mean you know Greg's example was you have a seven member a seven member board and you have five vacancies and generally speaking what that means is the board cannot act.

So cannot do anything. KP Law, who represents a lot of cities and towns in Massachusetts, put out a really good memo on this topic and um it includes court cases and they've indicated that uh Massachusetts courts have applied um the general rule to hold that a requisite majority vote is calculated based on the number of members present, not on the entire membership present or absent. Then they cite some state law or some court cases. So, this might be something good for us all to take a take a look at. It's it's a unfortunate I I've we sent that to our town council and the town council disagrees and hasn't told us why.

Huh. Attorney's disagreement. Funny thing about it cost you $20,000. Yeah. Well, this was a this was from a presentation they did for the Mass Municipal Association. So, I I I found that I sent that along. Lauren Goldberg that uh I don't know who wrote I don't know. Well, thank you for clarifying. I was confused but I still I think we can come up with a some good definition. That is a good question though because in some places vacancies then remove themselves from the majority. Yeah. So if you

pick whichever definition you choose, there could be an instance where a seven person board with five vacancies could say, "Well, I'm here. the other person isn't here, but I'm half of the board. So, so I'm I'm not quite a majority, though. Exactly. You're in that sweet spot. So, yes, if you've got two voting members and one of them votes one way, and one of them votes yes, one of them votes no, there aren't enough. You you don't have you do not have 50% plus one to achieve a majority%. Not they say be very careful. Don't use 50% plus one. greater than 50%. Yes,

exactly. All right. So, anyway, that is something to uh take into consideration that uh I know one subcommittee I don't want to be on. See, it makes me kind of intrigued.

All right. So, the one other thing and I'll again I'll send this all out after the meeting, but uh Jim, you know, Jim spent a good deal of time putting together a spreadsheet that compares hours and duties of town administrators and town managers amongst the number of towns. And just sure that here in a Jim Jim's spreadsheet was just one very long

very long. There's no way I could fit it on one page without it being just a blur. So I just for the purpose of printing um I' I've split it up into several pages. So here's unfortunately the video in the room has the people in the way can minimize that. You hit the get it. You can see my cursor on the screen, but my cursor doesn't doesn't work. The only the administrator can fix that. Yeah, the uh

the operator in the booth can maybe minimize that. Uh I do like looking at Bob though. I don't want to lose that photo. Yeah. into your head. Watch them for an hour. There you go. Thank you. All right. It still it hides a little bit of the There we go. Well, there.

All right. So, this is the first few column the the towns that Jim looked at. Why Why don't I let Jim sort of walk us through this? So, um I previously was on the municipal solid waste committee and we did a comparison and um Evan indicated that these were towns that Grafton generally uses as its comps. Uh every town has different comp comparable communities they use whether it's for labor negotiations or whatever. And so these were the towns um we used and I confirmed with Evan that those are generally the towns that um Grafton uses. And then I just put what their population was um whether they have a charter or special act. Only Shrewsbury has a special act and they've never changed it since like 1937. Um and it's like not even really available online anywhere on their website. I had to go to the um old state statutes to actually find their special act and then what the title was for the position. They are all CEOs. I really think the only chief executive officers are in council manager forms of government where the town council or city council serves as a um policy setting um board similar to a town meeting and then the town manager city manager takes over as the chief executive officer. The CIO is chief administrative officer.

Yeah. Um and then whether they have general appointing authority, whether they have um control over personnel management, if they have a budget, they have budget responsibility, capital planning responsibility, town property management responsibility, whether they're responsible for negotiating all contracts, whether they have the authority to reorganize departments, whether they have purchasing responsibility, they're the chief purchasing officer, um whether they oversee all departments, whether they have the authority under state law. Uh you have to adopt a certain section of state law to authorize the town administrator, town manager to approve accounts payable warrants. um whether they have the authority to investigate departments uh whether they appoint the police chief, fire chief and then I added whether the fire chief was a strong chief because we had that discussion at the last meeting and really from the data that I found um there's no correlation strong chief and whether the select board or town administrator or manager appoints whether they appoint the DPW director, treasur collector, town clerk um and whether there is a select board confirmation or consent required whether they appointed committees and then I just put some notes at the very far far end um because Ashlin also includes a general budget calendar in their uh charter when I was just reading through what I saw. Um and so what I did is there's three um uh three tabs on the spreadsheet. The first one is just the base data that I got out of everybody's charter. And then what I did is I gave them a score of either zero for a no, a one for a yes, or a 0.5. I wasn't going to get into seven point 3es and 0.25s and any of that. I just figured if they had some authority, like they appoint some boards and committees, they get a.5. Um, and so, uh, then I scored all of these

different responsibilities is the second tab. And then the third tab, I sorted them so that you could basically see what was the strongest to the weakest um town manager or town administrator of this group so that we can kind of Grafton's right up there. The town administrator. It is. It's up there. It's the fourth. It's actually kind of tied up there. Um you want to be king, you go to Oxbridge. Is that what you say? Yeah, I guess so. The only thing we're really lacking to to bump us up is the fire chief. Yeah. And so, um, it's a pretty strong position. Um,

and I can tell you I was the town of town town manager at one point in Westboro and, um, the first town manager there. And, uh, when they changed their charter to create the town manager's position, they, um, wanted to leave some of the major department heads, police chief, fire chief, DPW director, as appointments of the select board, which created a lot of problems. Um they still haven't fixed it apparently. Um but uh it's one of you can see that it's a town manager's position and it's actually a lot weaker than the position here as a town administrator and that's why I don't know that we really need to add a whole lot. I think the discussion about the fire chief uh appointment is probably the biggest um

that is that's the one thing that's missing with a with the Grafton town administrator which if you make it a town manager really should be appointed that by a chief. It's ridiculous to have separate appointing authorities for the two public safety officials for full-time staff. That doesn't make a lot of sense. Um, so anyway, so that's how it's laid out. And I

I was I was dying to write a memo, but I didn't put it in a form because I haven't written a memo in like a year and a half since I retired. So, um, I just I just put it in a descriptive cover page is what I did. I didn't I I was going to write memo, but I couldn't come up with uh the the who it was coming from. Just Jim Mow. I guess I could just put member of the committee or something, but um no title. Based based on on on this and what Ry brought up tonight when he came in, we changed the title to town manager. Make the appointing authority of the fire chief the town manager. I think that pretty much makes it a really good position, right?

Yeah. And I and I think that's the point a key point to get from what this work that Jim did was that we've been saying all along that we we think the title of town manager is is is a good job title to use. The other part of the question is does if if we change the title to town manager, does that person now have all of the powers, duties, and responsibilities that are typically associated with a town manager? And I think this analysis shows that we're pretty close to it.

Yeah. The only the only other thing that we might want to look at is some of the boards and committees in the town, whether or not some of them could be shifted. If they're generally administrative in nature, maybe they could be moved to uh the town manager if it becomes a town manager's position. That's how we do it in in Grafton Grten.

Just take a look, you know, because some of them like something like the conservation commission. Um is really administrative in nature. Um they have either um most of them operate under the wetlands protection act. Some have local um wetlands bylaws that they also work under, but they don't really they're not really a policy political committee. They're more of an administrative professional committee. And so that's the kind of differentiation we might want to make at some point.

Right. And generally speaking, the charter says that the select board appoints generically the select board appoints policymaking committees and the town administrator appoints more de committees that are more involved in administrative or administrative or day-to-day work. You know, the the charter enumerates just a few committees that are appointed by the select board and basically says that unless we say the select board appoints it, all the other appointment, it's a town administrator appointment, which is a good way to put it.

So that's and and that's I think that's fairly consistent with what you just described. Again, as we as we contemplate this specific topic of what powers and duties our prospective town manager has, that's a good thing to look at to re review the appointments that the charter or in some cases the bylaw, the appointments that it specifically gives to the select board and say, do some of those really belong as town administrator appointments? Dave, I'm looking forward to the conversation we have on the pointing the planning board because in some towns, town and for example, the town manager appoints a planning board in Sturbridge. I thought that servant

I thought that I said as he said administrative and I was like I'm pretty sure the planning board is more serot the charter review committee as well. Oh wow, that's a lot of power for him. Yeah. I don't recall off the top of my head whether the charter review committee's proposal 10 years ago for an appointed planning board. I don't off the top of my head I don't remember whether we recommend the select point plan. Yes. So yeah that uh I think I like the charter committee be as it's a legislative branch function that staying with the legislative branch

executive branch. Yeah I agree with that. Sturbridge created the position. They went the opposite way that Westboro went. They gave all the power to the town administrator. So West never changed. Huh. They changed it from town coordinator to town man. Yeah. They made very few changes in change the title. Yeah. Copy of this I will distribute to along with all the other materials from tonight. I will distribute that out. I don't think you should send it out till he drafts a memo about it. I'll put it in a memo for you. That's right. I I do have Jim's write up which is not a memo,

but that will be included in the distribution. However, if you would like to write a memo, I'd be happy to share that with the committee. Okay. Have to call some letterhead. Okay. So, that's that. What else do I have on? Let's see. Okay. Yeah, that's that's all I had on continuing discussions of proposals that have been before us. I think it's just sort of reinforces the idea that this is this is probably a good time to begin breaking the work up into subcommittees.

Any other thoughts or comments on the various charter revisions that are currently under consideration? Nope. Can

I just ask a question? So maybe it's in the bylaws further. But in regards to town administrator and if we're switching it to town manager within the powers and duties of this role, I found it interesting that there's no language with sort of the wording of like strategy or strategic sort of planning or needs within the um powers and duties. And I'm wondering like, you know, just if that language makes sense anywhere in a charter or sort of um if it feels like it's missing here. I don't know.

So, I've never seen it in a charter. Um and I've handled it differently in different communities that I've worked for. Um and generally, it was a like a team approach between myself and the select board on how we were going to approach it, what they wanted to do. I gave them I'd give them some options. In Sturbridge, we did an annual retreat, a strategic planning retreat, and then once a month, we changed our board meeting format so that we had two regular board meetings and one that we called the dialogue for the future, which we just talked about things. There was no votes ever taken. We got to dress down and we sat in a round table and stuff like that. We used to do those workshops here.

I don't know if you're right. We workshops. I remember there was a strategic meeting that happened at TUS in one of their buildings sometimes and it they morphed from workshops into regular meetings was oh we have a workshop we can add it to the agenda. Yeah. It sort of wiped it out. Yep. Yeah. Did you guys stick to that?

We we stuck to it. Um and then in Westboro we were a little bit more formal. We had an off-site meeting every year to do strategic planning and followup. In Lexington, like everything they went way overboard. We brought in two or three different consultants. one to deal with board dynamics and one to deal with um strategic planning and we would come up with plans and different board members would be assigned to work with different staff people to to achieve and then we would report back quarterly and stuff. So it was all very regimented there. It took a lot of time. It's always a policy setting board. The select board should set the the strategy. I don't think you need to put it in the

something the select that's going to be an E and fall dynamic with the who's on the board, five people you have to deal with ahead because it'll change. Yeah, that's the important thing. Yeah. The election. And you know what really spurred it with me to really start pushing boards to do strategic planning was I had a lot of board members who were long-term board members and I said, you know, 10 years ago, I got elected to be on the select board and I wanted to get X done. And here we are with still doing Y. 10 years later, we've never even had a discussion about it. And I and my response is, well, I've never made the time to have a discussion about it. And that's what spurred the whole dialogue for the future thing and doing strategic planning.

That makes sense because I guess to that point then it's also probably not under the select board in this charter. So I wonder if it's worth I don't know just looking at that. I guess yeah I haven't seen it in a charter before but it would be an interesting conversation to have and I think Andy might want to talk to could fit better as a policy from the board, something that they put on their books as more of a revocable thing.

It's a good thing. It it I can tell you it's a good thing to do and it's a good thing for the select board to do to to do especially if you can do an off-site meeting. Media sometimes used to be an issue. It's not as much of an issue now that there are no local reporters anymore. Um but uh used to be kind of an issue we had to deal with. But uh to get to get a board offsite with a facilitator who's really a good facilitator and can hone in and not when I first took over in Lexington, they had 70 goals they were trying to achieve. And we got them down to like five or six. And um if you can hone in on five or six things to work on during the course of a year as a local government, you can make a heck of a lot of progress. And it's it's so it's a really good thing to do. It's worth doing.

It's definitely I think an area that we're weak. Um we during my you know service um have held typically one annual goals you know and and future facing meeting typically offsite. Um we don't refer we haven't been great about referring back to those goals throughout the course of the year as they go on. This year we didn't even have one. Um, you know, so it's definitely I think something that can be improved. Yeah. But I don't think it needs to be sense. Okay. Cool. Any other thoughts or comments,

my next agenda item is follow-up actions? And I basically got primarily the one is the plan next meeting to begin looking at the charter the the individual articles of the charter uh creating subcommittees as we see the need for to do some of the detail work in between now and the next meeting. I will include any any proposed article changes that go out in the post meeting packet. I will include in that Google doc and then share it.

And I and again I think I would Greg had some and I have some that we're still kind of working through things like typos and I've got a bunch of chicken scratching that I need to translate into something legible suggestions for particular changes. Most of them are relatively minor things but still we want to I want to If we between now and next, we need to collect get some of those all written down so that we can include them in our in our work plan. Other than that,

I I will send an updated version of my proposal from today with some of the things we talked about today. I'll try to get that done tonight so you can put it in the distribution. Okay. Great. Great. And if there is nothing else that anybody can think of that we need to do followup, we have previous meeting minutes to approve. Move to accept with any amendments made during discussion. Second. Moved and second. Is there any discussion? Hearing none. Dawn I. Nate. I wasn't here at the last meeting. I did review them. Do I need to abstain because I wasn't here? Your choice. Your choice. I will say I.

There you go. I looked at the meetings. I looked at I looked I looked at it like I trust it. I trust quick on that one. Some comm on various committees some some members choose to abstain on the minutes if they weren't there. Others are comfortable voting. So it's your it's your choice anyway. Mike I Skip Bob. Hi Dan. Hi Mark. Hi Jeff, hi Andy. Hi Jack. Hi Jim. Hi Greg. Hi Angela. Hi

Dave. Bosai. Motion carried unanimously. The minutes are approved. A motion to adjurnn might be in order. So second eager guys. Moved and seconded that the meeting be adjourned. Don Nate I. Mike. I Bob. Hi Dan. Hi Mark. Hi Jeff. Hi Jack. Hi Jim. Hi Greg. Hi Angela. Hi Dave. Bothai. Motion carried unanimously. We are adjourned. Thank you all for your time tonight. Hello everyone.