Charter Review Committee - Regular Meeting

All right, the time is 7 o'clock. We appear to have a quorum of the committee present. So, I will call the meeting to order. I will note that a few of our members have let me know that they will not be in attendance tonight. um specifically Nate Bodwin, Mike Brunie, Skip Courier, and Greg Maher. So, with that said, let me proceed to call the role. Dawn Anderson. Anderson here.

Angelina Korea. Mark had it has his hand up. Did you have a Mark, did you have a question before we complete our roll call? At least I don't know. Well, the the room should be okay inputting into it, right? Can't hear you. Okay, we just muted over. Yeah, mute. We're muted in the audio bottom left corner. Yes, the room is muted. Oh, there it is. Now I can hear you. Now we're good. Okay, start over. Sorry about that.

I can't read lips, David. And you look really good with all the talking you were doing. I just couldn't hear you. Yeah, I'm not going to demand that everybody able to read lips for this. Okay, where was I? Um, Angelina present. And Skip, I know he's going to be absent. Bob DMA here. Dan Fitzgerald here. Mark Hadad here. Jeff Hess here. Andy Jefferson here. John Kelly here. Jim Malloy here. Greg Maher is absent. Angela Ramen

here. And I think David Robbins is here. I'm not sure about that, but we'll count him as being present. So, we have 11 out of 15 of our members present tonight. That's significantly better than a minimal quorum, which would be eight. So, let me see where is my agenda. All right. My first agenda item is public comment. If if we have anybody in attendance who wishes to make a public comment to the committee, um now would be the time to raise your hand either in the room or on Zoom. Don't see any hands raised. So we will proceed. The next item is to consider the whether the committee wants to set a policy for communication with a request to town council. Um um and I'm not quite sure where to start that off. Mark, did you want to

Yeah, I I understand that some members are contacting uh the town administrator and going directly to town council. I don't think that's that's a a good idea. I think we need to have some coordination. So, I'd like to have this committee pass a policy that um any any request to town council goes through the chair or is discussed here at a at a meeting before before it goes to town council. If we're all haphazardly reaching out to town council, we don't know what people are asking. We don't know what the issues are. And I just think it it it just dissolves into chaos. So, I'd like to have us consider a policy that um any any request or information from town council has to go through at least the chair at a minimum um before before it goes to the town administrator or to town council. That's my recommendation.

Yeah. And I would assume that the idea is that these would be requests related to committee business there. You know, you may have a personal matter, you know, something that's just about just speaking for yourself and not not related directly related to committee business. I mean, you're free to contact whoever you want with something like that. But I think Mark your idea your your pol suggested policy would be any any communication with council regarding the committee the business any business before the committee uh would go through the chair or some other designated contact.

I agree. Yeah, that's that's that's what I'm saying. Yeah, if you have a conflict of interest issue or something like that, absolutely you have the absolute right to go right to to uh to town council. But if it has something to do with a matter before this committee or something to do with the charter review committee, you need to know what's going on, David, and the rest of the committee should should be able to weigh in and at least discuss it at the next meeting so we know what the issues are.

Yeah, for for the most part, I would suggest that you know that the the committee sort of be aware of, you know, and ideally we discuss it. For example, last at the last meeting, um we agreed to request town council to provide us with some information about uh majority the the questions about majority voting that have come up relative to what we might want to do in the charter. Um so that was you know the committee agreed to communicate with council. Council has just responded to that and so that's that's the sort of thing generally speaking it's good for the committee to be speaking with one voice I think. But any other comments on that or questions?

No, I I would just say if um Mark is making that as a motion, I would be happy to second that. Yes, that's my motion. Okay. The the only thing I would ask is um as we go through that process, once you assuming this gets approved, once you forward a comment or question to town council, if we could get the the response before the next meeting. so that and and distribute it among the members so that we've all had a chance to read whatever the response is before getting it just sitting here in the room. I think that would be very helpful. I agree with that.

Yes, absolutely. that that is the type of thing that can be shared with all committee members outside of the meeting because that's not a that any a response from town council is would not be considered a deliberation because it's it's not a member of the committee speaking. Yeah. In fact, the uh the response we got from town council regarding the quorum and voting that just came in yesterday, I think it was. So I that that got out to the committee almost as soon as it got in. I was a little bit late yesterday getting the meeting packet put together and I apologize. I sent it out just after midnight which is doesn't give you a whole lot of time to look at it before the meeting. My my intention is to try to make try to make sure that that that meeting material packet is should be available for the committee members at least 24 hours before the meeting whenever possible. Sometimes something comes in real late, but uh yeah, I had other stuff going on this week and so I that ended up being a little later than I wanted it to be. But yes, in general, I absolutely agree that that really any information from outside that comes into this committee, you know, should should be shared with the committee members far enough advance of the meeting so that we all have time to digest it. Any other discussion of Mark's motion?

Good. Just so I'm clear. So, let's say and I did I have a question I I or I have an issue that feels that I feel is could be taken up by the chair. I I send it to you first, Dave, and then you make the decision as to whether it needs to go to council. You know what I mean? Like it's arguably like, so obviously I'm I'm understanding if it's a personal matter with me in some type of conflict, that's, you know, probably not. But if it was in general, hey, are we doing this correctly? It would go to you and then you would make a determination as to whether it's going to go through the chain to town council,

possibly. I think the uh assuming that it's a question that would most appropriately be answered by town council, I would uh yeah, and I would tend to lean in favor of if I think town council might be able to help then probably. So, but Mark, you might have a thought on that. Yeah, my my if if something is if there's something that the chair feels can go to council and request an opinion to bring back to the committee, that's great. And if the chair is concerned and doesn't isn't sure 100%, you can put it on the next agenda for the committee to debate and discuss and then decide to send in a request to town council. I think the chair is the gatekeeper um of what goes to town council. We elected you chair. We have trust in your ability to to manage this stuff and we expect you to to act accordingly. That would be my piece on this.

There's never going to be something that goes and then is just like, no. I think that the two options would be either sent directly to town council or put on the next agenda. Yes, that's what I'm saying. Jack, you said that much more eloquently than I did. Yes. If there's you I think if it if there if there would be a question in my mind whether the committee wants town council to weigh in on this if I'm uncertain about that then I think you're you know that idea to to have the committee discuss whether we want to reach out to council on that particular matter and you have something Andy

yeah um just I think for reference um the select board is not allowed to reach out town council directly. Uh we we have to go through the town administrator for those requests. Um you know, part of that is is cost management so we're not eating up retainer and you know, shocked by some fee at the end of the month. But yeah, I think definitely makes sense.

Yep. and and I spoke to Evan about this briefly the other day kind of you know asking him how how he wanted to handle it because I'm remembering back to when we were doing the bylaw study committee that you know Evan basically wanted to be kept in the loop but Evan basically the process there was the chair would send send an email to council and copy Evan so Evan is aware you think and there have been previous times when I felt I think it was I don't remember specifically what the occasion was but I felt I needed to send my request to Evan and Evan would forward it to council to council. I I have an occasion on matters related to something the planning department is doing. I've I've sent my request to Fiona who then forwarded to Council. But you know, it's it's for that exact reason that at the very least they need to be aware of all communication with council and if they if Evans sees something that's he thinks is consuming too much of council's time for us, I think he would want to step in and say slow down guys or something. Yeah.

But yeah, I did check with Evan specifically that he said Yeah. that I you know it's he's okay with with me communicating directly with town council provided he gets a copy of all the correspondents but yeah it wasn't even so much directed as you I'm sure you you have earned that right as chair and and as David Robbins but uh

but I but I'm I'm well aware of the the fact that town council doesn't work for us for free and that uh it's really Epan's job overall to manage the communications with town council the way he sees fit. And so you've got a rule for select board. Our our situation is similar but not identical. That as I said, Evan Evan is okay with me communicating directly with council provided evidence sees what's going on. Any other discussion of Mark's motion? Okay. Hearing none. Let me see. Roll call.

Dawn. I. Angelina. I. Bob. Hi. Dan. Hi. Mark. Hi. Jeff. Hi. Andy. Hi. Jack. Hi. Jim. Hi. Angela. Hi. I'll vote I on that.

Carried unanimously. All right. What's next on the agenda? My screen isn't big enough. I should bring another screen with me so I can have it all there at once. Okay. The next thing on the agenda was uh continuation of our discussion of outreach. At the last meeting, we talked about uh outreach to the general public and the committee said they would like to see a proposed message that we for us to send it public. And so here's what I've come up with as a proposal. It's some of it is written about the same as the request we sent out to the town department's boards and committees which some of you may have seen via your membership and other boards and committees. Um, let me see if I can't enlarge that a little bit. Can you read that? Yeah.

Yep. I can I can make it bigger on the screen if it would help. I think for me you're going to have to make it way bigger. I think I get I think I get the All right.

Oh, much better. So, I'll give you a moment to read it. Uh, you probably want to highlight the second paragraph. For those new to the process, the town charter sets up our town's government structure and main procedures. This includes a legislative branch, town meeting, elected positions, administrative structure, especially town administrator and financial procedures. Think of the charter as the town's constitution. It leaves the foundation just as the state and federal constitutions constitutions do for their governments. In contrast, town bylaws act like laws passed by the state or federal government. This is we we discussed this a little bit last time is to you know to to give us people for people who aren't familiar with all the intricacies of town government you know charter what are we talking about

I think that sentence alone is the most important of that second paragraph just to because people will quickly be able to identify a comparison for the body of the paper so they know what their suggestion should be rooted in. Yeah, we I kind of got that from what from our discussion at the last meeting. I wanted to make sure I captured that in some way here and going on with including including a pointing people to our web page if they want to read the charter or read the history or anything else. We but I didn't want to I didn't want to go into great detail here. There there's this if if you make something too long, people don't read a TLDDR.

You won't get any feedback at all. I try to keep this short. I think the link is smart because the chart, from what I've seen working with the charter on the website, it's pretty easy to understand how to navigate it. And if you can't find exactly what you're looking for, you can just kind of control F the idea you're looking at. I want to see how the budget process is laid out. There it is.

Yep. and seem to be helpful just to emphasize that we're how important we think you if anybody wants to comment on it we'd love it we think it's very helpful and the usual enumeration of well how do you send your comments into us

David this is really well Done. Do you want a motion to adopt it as our uh public outreach? So move. Second. Moved and seconded. I was kind of hoping I'd have some you got you did this wrong. You got to do the different or maybe someone else. Take David take take the win. Take the win. David's good enough. me. As much as I like to think I do a pretty good good job of writing things, I I never assume that what I do can't be improved. I'll do it.

Can I ask one question? Yes. To steal your thunder because I I I think it's written really well. My only question is on the piece at the bottom about um um carefully considering all comments and suggestions. And again, this is my first time, so um keep me honest, but is it worth putting something about how or where we will I'm thinking of like Nicole, the email that came in. Is it worth saying that like these will be included um to review at the next meeting or I guess just letting people know like what happens to their comments and doesn't go into a bathroom. Yeah. like are they going to see them? Like if you put something in, come to the next meeting, you'll hear us discuss it or

I don't know, just something about where all of them live or Yeah, I think, you know, we haven't yet fully worked out how we're going to do this exactly, but I know we pretty much I think we pretty much agreed that we want to make available on the website everything that we've been looking at and and where we're at. Okay. So, a a a sentence I'm not quite sure off the top of my head how best to word it. Yeah,

but uh David, if I if I may, I think she raises a very good point. I'd say the committee will carefully consider all comments and suggestions we receive at duly posted meetings. All proposed suggestions will be added to an agenda for future consideration. I think that addresses what she's asking. I would just change like instead of to agenda to say packet because we're not going to be posting all the comments on there. Good point. But I think that that that meets what Angela's saying, right? And I think that goes well hand in hand at the there's something at the top

that is really good to put in there but might turn some people away from putting in comments right when they think of them because it does give us a timeline that is realistic of October of next year being when a lot of these go forward. And I think some people may look at that and think well this doesn't even say what they're going to do with my comments. So I'm not So I think including that as well will make people know as soon as I think of something we'll send it in. Here are my options. remind me we I think when you went over how things were done for the bylaw review was that you had different categories that the feedback fell into like different buckets like I know we're going to send it out to specific boards and committees in town feedback but just the general public um we may not consider it Is it is that going to be part of the process like the charter like we include all the feedback but then also address it specifically at the meeting when we're covering that specific section

to review to make sure there's you know like when I gather feedback from on different projects I kind cross reference it to make sure that okay this is about this specific section and these were the changes and 90% of them were suggesting the same thing but 10% were scattershot in a lot of different directions and how will we be reviewing the feedback

like would it be as it comes in or will we compile it and then when we get to and this doesn't have to be in the the outreach statement. I'm just kind of thinking it through to the

Yeah, I think until we see more clearly based on based on what we're what suggestions we're getting, what matters we're considering. I'm not sure that we know how we're going to organize that. I mean this is one of the differences between the charter and the bylaw committee is that the bylaw committee we had 41 distinctly separate bylaws you know and so each one each of them sort of stood on its own and so it was lot it made a lot of sense to partition the work according to the bylaw sector article here we have seven articles of the charter and in some cases one article pretty clearly covers one topic In other cases, it's maybe a little bit less clear. So, I think in my in my mind at least, it how we partition the work out and how we present you how we group things together for presentation purposes, it it may become clearer once we get more once our list of suggestions gets fl fleshed out more may become clear how we want to do that. Okay.

So, I want to make sure I'm hearing everybody the right way. We want to be sure that the person who sends their suggestions in understands that it might not be reviewed at the very next meeting. It might be months down the road when we get to that particular portion of the review process. Yeah. So, I'm just I'm I'm thinking maybe preventing them from saying, "Well, you didn't review my topic." Yeah. Yeah. They didn't lose interest in following our exciting meetings after they stayed the Well, they didn't cover it. Say it is.

So, as a suggestion for a fairly simple way to incorporate that in this particular thing is um the committee will carefully consider at its regular meetings all comments and suggestions that we receive. So that that that makes a little bit of a stronger statement of about when and how we will look at these

without committing to a specific schedule. We don't really basically when a suggestion comes in, we will at least look at it and we we will spend a little at least a little bit of time talking about it at the next meeting after it comes in. And

to Don's point about the different um buckets of areas we're looking at, my biggest thought was, you know, issues we have received comment on whether from board or from a citizen, issues we are discussing discussing and issues we've come to a conclusion on or come to a decision on. And so if people are going through this to our page on the uh website, you know, once we get down the road, once we start actively discussing a lot of these articles, I think if they go to make a suggestion, they'll be able to see in the same place what we've talked about. So if they have a suggestion that they can see, oh, they've already, you know, talked about this. Let me see what they said or something along those lines.

Yeah, Jeff, your hand is up. Yeah. Thank you. Um, so I I think if we're potentially going to be holding on to topics for months at a time, we might want to think about some sort of at least tracking mechanism that folks can see so that we've received and maybe when we're planning to talk about these topics um so that they can re-engage at the appropriate time. So, I mean, if we're able to somewhat forecast that we're not going to be talking about, you know, topic B for 3 months, the folks that submitted it, you know, can kind of rest easy and check back in at that point in time as long as they know.

Yep. I think we had talked at one of our maybe both of our previous meetings that that conceptually at least similar to what we did on the bylaw committee, we had a we had a a page on the bylaw committee's website where we we tracked you know the status of all the proposal and that one we did we had a list of for this BA article we have a proposed revision and it was last update and because sometimes they went through several revisions, but we and we'd have a link to the text of the of the proposed revisions. the bylaw committee also and I don't think this was I don't remember that we put this on the website but we had an you know an internal action item tracking that we used um which tracked you know which which which items we needed to work on which we've completed and that was yeah that was a slightly different method of tracking and we haven't yet really nailed down how we want to track our work and we and there there may be sort of to there may be something that's more internal to the committee for the committee members to keep track of and then there there's some way of some way of informing the public of what we're what we are working on and what the status of each of the suggestions is. So we still have to work out some of those details. But as far as this, you know, outreach message, um, I I just added this the phrase the committee will consider at its regular meetings everything we receive. And if that's are any other is it

I think I was just thinking as you're saying that as it pertains to this message, do we um feel like we need to put a deadline to anything or do we want to keep like comments coming in even if we've already passed budget and someone puts something in for it? Does it matter or Yeah. No, I think I I I don't see a need for a deadline. Okay. Just

I had mentioned the want for doing a two-phase public outreach of the first phase is, you know, whatever ideas you have, send them our way. And then the second phase being this is what we've discussed. This is what we're thinking. What do you think? And that can either be opinions on what we're putting forward or anything we missed. But I think if you have an idea, send it. No matter when. No matter what. Yeah, I I agree. Two pays.

Okay. So, there is a motion on the floor to approve this outreach message as amended and with any I'll assume the motion includes any further amendments that anybody wants to suggest before we vote on it. Are there any other is any other discussion? Okay. So, ship it as we used to say. Um I should call for a vote since there is a motion on the floor. Dawn. Don I Angelina. I Bob. I Dan. Hi. Mark. I Jeff. Hi

Andy. Hi Jack. I Jim I Angela I I'll vote I or I could be orary orary and vote no even though I wrote the thing with everybody's help here. Okay then question I can take that off the screen.

Should we plan on our next meeting being a public hearing? I know we talked about that previously. Do we want to make that decision? There was a suggestion made I think at the last meeting that the April meeting be a public hearing. So now that we have a public outreach message, ah our next agenda item is okay. How do we make this outreach message visible to the public? Where do we where do we send it? And then sort of the obvious catchall answer is everywhere we can think of.

Is this something where we're able to put the for lack of a better term put the ball in the town's court and say disseminate this on your platform social media's lists as well as us doing you know our own outreach. I don't know. What do you think? I I think just off the top of my head, I'm thinking we've got some the town social media,

which we know we we can put that in the hands of whoever whoever is responsible for the town social media, but aside from that, do we want to see if we can get this published in the Grafton News, the community advocate? Do we want to have an announcement of any kind put on the cable? And I don't know if this whole thing is suitable for you might have we might have to have a much shorter version of that to fit on the cable announcements. I don't I don't know enough about the mechanics of that. I have no idea what kind of an audience the cable announcements get. That could anything if we recorded a a short bite that mostly drove people to the website, we could use that for social media as well.

Yeah. So there's social media going through the town. social media that we pick up on and share, as I've learned, goes further

because the more times we share it, the further it goes, the more people see it. I just finished two videos for the town clerk. How do I vote? How do I mail in a vote? When do I vote? Those videos are coming out Tuesday, I think. So, they last less than a minute and a half. Just bing bing bing bing bing. folks out. Um, the videos can go to YouTube, the videos can go on the local channels. YouTube's the best option. The town website, some people might argue the town website's the first option and YouTube is second. I, you know, vice versa. It doesn't matter. But, um, I imagine that William or Amber can help us with that process. The video creation is not rocket science. It's where do you put it and get the most eyeballs on it is the Do you think we could do a pitch to get um an episode of the municipals to cover the charter review?

I heard they're really hard to work with. I don't think we need to. I think

then we'd be out in the pod podcast sphere as well. I think the best way to do it social media wise is to have one post from the town with essentially what we just had and the relevant links and then if you'd like you can individually share it. So, you know, I just the most prevalent social media that most people in the town use would be Facebook and you can share a post and you can write your own little blurb on top but it'll still send you to the main post. I think that would be the best way just so we don't have, you know, 15 different versions of the message out there and we can all just say, you know, it can be as simple as what you're saying because the more people share it, the more people see it and just say, hey, this is a great opportunity to have a say in how we, you know, continue to push our town forward and then they can still just click and see that message we just voted on. And you could do a 30 second

blast telling people where does my suggestion go and what will the committee do with it to to to circle back to that topic for residents who are not on social media and believe it or not there are some other than the the the two sort of local newspapers that some people get. Oh, the Blackstone Valley Express. That's another Blackstone Valley Express. We read it every time it comes to our house. Rapton News just follow, right? I don't know. Quite fat.

Um, for town meeting, we usually put warrants at the library and the post offices. We can consider those locations. Yes, we could we could print out flyers with this. Yep. Yep. Print flyers. leave them in various locations for folks to pick up. That's a good idea. Do does the town have some sort of like email list because I know we have the alert thing, but that's

I don't believe we have anything outside of the the code red system. That's why I was interesting doing the public hearing because I know that there's while I'm not completely educated on it, I know there's a somewhat formal process about for a public hearing the town sending out information to interested people and them taking the onus to do so. That's why I think it would be a good idea for us to So, isn't the isn't on the website, isn't there a notification link where you can sign up to get notifications from the town? Pretty sure there is. And there's different categories of what you can sign up for.

And so charter charter covers just about all the categories in the town government. Maybe we could just flood it through that too and get as many of those automatically just sent out to people's email boxes that we're looking for comments from them. Y and then right on the front page of the town website there's like a news and events that go there's no for a suggestion thing like this. there's no too much like publicity or information just blast it because if you know the average resident isn't going to say well I have 20 suggestions it's going to be oh here's my idea and it's that one time so you just got to catch it catch them once they'll think of it send it in so

plus it also benefits us at some point in time when we get to town meeting to have all of these whatever changes we're considering um recommending uh it's my experience that there will be people who come out of the woodwork and said, "I didn't even know you guys were working on this. How was I supposed to know?" And so when you can state where you've posted it and that you've made a the best effort that you possibly could to get the information out to everybody, it it really does help a lot at that one point. Yeah, there's there's always somebody at town meeting that I didn't know anything about this. How come nobody told me about ask the moderator to make an announcement at town meeting?

Yes, we can we can make announcements at Well, we we have three town meetings between now and the time we're going to vote on these changes. So absolutely an announcement and and that flyer we talked about would be the flyer if you could ask the moderator if they would allow you to put a flyer in the welcome center. We only knew a moderator. Mr. Chair, do you know if the surrounding towns are doing the same process that we are at the same time? Not that I'm aware of.

So do you think it would be worthwhile to reach out to Spectrum One to see if that might be something they'd be interested in? covering, promoting. I mean, a third of the town subscribes to Charter and the other two/3 subscribe to Verizon. It's worth a shot. I mean, they send somebody out to cover the parade every year. So, first they say is no. Yeah.

Right. You're trying to get on TV. You're telling me no jacket. Yeah. Any other ideas? Got a pretty good list of ideas here. Social media in various ways, local newspapers, of which we have three that would be worth considering. Flyers sent around, flyers available at at the libraries, maybe at the town clerk, the desk in the town clerk's office, maybe the senior center. The thought crossed my mind to if we could see if we couldn't get this sent out in like this. There's a senior newsletter, right?

Um the schools send out information to the parents and as I recall we not on this committee and and I I'm not even sure that I remember where specifically this was mentioned, but getting getting word out through the schools. My recollection is when that idea was proposed somewhere along the line the school said yeah we kind of try to keep this limited to information relevant to the schools and the students. So yeah you reach it you you reach all the parents that way but I'm not I don't think I would propose that based on my somewhat dim recollection of that idea being discussed in the past but through the senior center. It might be a possibility.

So with that um only because I would happen to be down there today and asking about the um the gazette that goes out. Um they're getting ready to publish the April issue tomorrow. I think they're doing some of their final proofing. So we obviously wouldn't make that one, but just to give a time frame, we'd need it'd be something we need to work on earlier the month before in order to get it out in advance. Yes, I think I remember encountering that with again somewhere along the line with with proposals to send something out through the senior center. Y Mark,

are we going to vote on the motion or because it seems like we ve off that discussion and I don't recall voting on the motion. The motion to approve the message. Yeah, did we do that? We did vote on that. See, I'm falling asleep. I'm sorry. I apologize. Pay attention, Mark. That's merits.

All righty. When do we I don't know if this is in here, but when do we picture this going out at large? Because I'm just thinking also timeline is this March and then we have our town meeting too this May with some things that will probably want to be communicated. So, I'm just curious in terms of when we think we'll send this out. Yeah, I was thinking we'd try to start pushing this out at least as almost as soon as possible. Okay.

Um, some of these things may take a while, but uh, yeah, I can I can I can hand this to Amber tomorrow and uh, she she can take care of getting it out to the places she can get it out to, either herself or delegating that. Some of the others will take a little bit more work contacting the uh Grafton News and Community Advocate and the Black Valley Express. I don't know if any of us are have contacts there or in a good position to uh reach out that way.

I think just throughout the rest of April and then once we have everything out, it'll be open from that point forward. Yeah. I mean, if we're talking about holding a public hearing in April, that would be the second Thursday of April, whatever that date is. It's the 9th, I think. Yep. Then getting the word out on this prior to that would be helpful. And then there there would be the question of publicizing that public hearing. and kind of the same the same considerations imply. How do you get the word out for that?

Should that be on the message so that we're not it? It could be part of the message for cases where the message is going to be out before that April date. So it would be like an an addendum to that. But longer term, this message is

it's it it it's going to be it's going to be alive a lot longer than April. But accompany accompanying this message where where it is going out before the April date, the message can be accompanied by an announcement of the public hearing. There's a lot of ideas here. I want to make sure that we have somebody committed to following up on the ideas. And like I say, I I I can I can get Amber maybe maybe the best way to follow up on this immediate for the immediate future is to I can kind I can touch base with Amber and find out which of these things she can do or arrange to have done and and where we where we haven't figured out how to do it we'll probably have to discuss it more amongst the committee. If anyone wants to volunteer to do anything,

I'll I could uh help out with the media outreach. I can contact community advocate Grafton News. Okay. Blackstone Valley. I'm happy to bring flyers to various places. They can be printed or whatever.

Yeah. So, I'm I might guess that Amber could help though could could get flyers printed. Yep. But yeah, I can I you know after I talk to Amber and find out when we can I not sure to not sure I can guess how many flyers we might need, but I don't want to go overboard. We a thousand flyers and maybe we print a couple of hundred or 100 or 200 and and check where we put them out and if people have been grabbing them then we can always print more.

That would make sense. Let me see. Make sure I make some notes here so I don't forget. I Greg will I'm sure Greg will Greg will do his best to write up minutes of this after he watches the video. But Greg did ask me to try kind of take some notes and whatever notes I take I'll share with him. between the two of us. We'll have hopefully we'll figure out who did who who did and said what. Please leave out of the minutes that I fell asleep and didn't realize we voted. David, I'd appreciate that.

Do we have to ask town council if we need to collect that in the minutes if anyone during it? Yes, the minutes will know when somebody confesses to a fallen asleep. No, I'd be comfortable leaving that out of the minutes. All righty. So, that's where we are so far with any other ideas for how and where we publicize this?

I I have I have a question. When people submit comments, how do we actually as a committee member, how do we see those comments or where we will see them? Where will we see them? Yeah, we all assuming we're all getting emails from the committee mailing list. The the one public comment we've received from Nicole Epier that was sent to the entire email list. So, okay. So, I didn't get that. So, who do I need to follow up with on that? If you're not getting emails from the email list, follow up with Amber. Okay.

Amber or Cindy. I I I don't remember now. I think Amber was setting up our email list, but yes, for everybody on the committee, if you haven't been haven't been getting the emails from the committee and I definitely follow up because I not too many years ago, I I was aware of a number of difficulties with the email lists. I think one of one of my other committees, you know, the email list didn't seem to get out. I sent it I'd sent a message to the email list and no one got it. And one time I I I tried to verify I sent the message to the list. I sent the message to all the individuals saying, "Did you get this via the committee list?" And no one was getting it at the time. I think they fixed that one. But

so the reason why I asked is that um I'm I'm I think that somebody said along uh one of the comments that how are we going to track these? And while I haven't volunteered to place an ad or take something to um some place, I would be willing um as a retired town manager with who's busy but you know, not really busy. Um, I would be willing to volunteer to um, put together a database to track those comments and to put it in such a way that um, it reference which section of the charter it would actually be um, looking to comment on so that as we receive because my guess would be we'll receive some comments that are very similar and deal with the same section so that at some point it can be organized and sorted very easily so that we can do by section in the charter and um I and I would be happy to do volunteer to do something like that.

I'm I'm assuming nobody in the committee is going to say, "Oh, no. I wanted to do that." Yeah.

Yes. But that Yeah. That kind of circles back to a topic we talked about earlier is how how are we tracking these? How are we uh how are we publicizing that on the website once you once once we have kind of figured out how to organize it and what we we'll have to talk more about what do we want the website to show the public about the suggestions we've received and the action we have or have not taken on them. Yeah. And so yeah, if you if you can if you can uh if you can come up with a way propose a way to organize them, present them, I think the committee would be delighted to uh

Great. Take that. So I'll make sure we have that on their agenda for the next meeting. Okay. Happy to happy to do it. And I'll reach out to Amber and make sure I'm getting those emails.

Yeah. Okay. So, that's on how and where we publicize this outreach that we just agreed to. I had on the list also how to collect responses. And what we're sending out or what we what I proposed to send out was simply that people could of course come to a meeting or send in by snail mail but online it's uh just sending an email to the entire committee. I think we touched on one of our discussions, one of our previous discussions, we touched on the thought of setting up a separate email address to send suggestions in. I thought about that for a while and I kind of concluded that I don't there's no I didn't see any added value to that as opposed to just sending it. I mean, in principle, you could say, well, when people send suggestions in, it should just go to one person who will collect them, organize them, and then send it out to the rest of the committee. But nothing wrong in my mind with the entire committee seeing every suggestion that's mailed in as it's mailed in. I think any any other way of doing it would just be an extra complication. I have a tendency to want to not make things more complicated than they have to be.

If everybody gets a copy, it's more eyes and it doesn't get lost in the shuffle. It doesn't risk getting lost in the shuffle. So, we're all comfortable with just with all our public comments just coming into every member of the committee or to be precise every member of the committee that actually gets emails through that mailing list. I I think I might be I actually I think I misspoke. So, uh I just looking looking over her shoulder I wrote down her name and I just searched it and I found it. So, I am Yes. Go ahead. Forget my thought. But

oh, we one of the ways of responses was snail mail. That'll come through the town administrator's office. They scan it and then email the committee with what was submitted. If someone does write a letter, then otherwise how what are we going to pass it around at the meeting? Like trying to think what view it beforehand if we didn't get it scanned and then distributed as a PDF. We'd have to wait until we were all together.

So that so I think we could incorporate that into the protocol is that if we do get any correspondence through the town administrator's mail, you know, that it be scanned and sent to the Absolutely. Could could we the other thing we could do is we could add an item on every agenda that just said correspondence and then for any correspondence that was received, it could be attached to the agenda and that way it's not sending out the extra email. It's just sending out the agenda and it that way it's part of the agenda, part of the public record. That's a that just maybe reminded me of something that maybe should go on the message. Thank Thank goodness we said that

we accept it as amended. Should we make it clear on our message that suggestions are public record so that if you write something in that is subject to public record or I think that's should be redundant but it's possible that for some people who would send something in they might not be aware

that any anything they send to the town and the public record but that also applies to you know, anything. We've got, you know, every every board and committee and department has a contact us, you know, place on the web page. And I don't think we ever every one of those is going to be a f anything you send in by any means whatsoever is a public record. I don't think in the other in the other cases, I don't think anybody makes a point of saying that.

Yeah, it's probably It's probably just assumed that and I I like I said, I don't know if I don't know if everybody who emails something into the town is aware that it's a public record. You you kind of go off the deep end worrying about some of this stuff. So, yeah, I I would think it's a reasonable assumption that people should understand that their communications with the town are public records.

When select board receives snail mail, Amber scans it in and emails it to the entire group. Yep. So, I would expect Amber to do the same for us. Yep. It's good to make a note of that though. All right. Yeah. at least make Amber aware that we'd like her to do that.

Yes. Okie dokie. So, that covers all I think that covers all the agenda items I had under the topic of outreach. So, if no one else has anything on that topic, we can move on to charter revisions. Basically, I listed two things on the agenda. new suggestions and discussion of any and all suggestions we've got. So off the top, does anybody on the committee have a new suggestion to offer us?

I have a new suggestion. Under section 37, part B, Grafton Housing Authority powers and duties. Upon checking the mass general law, it became clear that the parts listed in our home rule powers and duties are just a couple of the ones listed in general law. And while the second one, make available housing for families of low-inccome and for elderly persons of low income is exactly what we do. The first part shall make studies of the housing needs of the community and shall provide programs to make available housing and then it kind of bleeds into the second one is not something that has ever been within our purview we've been funded to do or been asked of and considering that there are other parts under mass journal law where we are giving the ability to conduct investigations um determine areas of substandard decadent or blighted open areas. There are a lot of things in here that it says we have the right to do that I frankly don't think we should have any ability to do, but at least for our graft and home rule, I don't think it's appropriate that we have something in there that has never been asked of us and already falls under the second part of it that says the housing authority shall have such other powers and duties as are given to housing authorities by general law. So we the proposal would be that the powers and duties portion of the charter assembly say housing authority shall have such powers and duties as are prescribed by general law.

I would like to keep the portion that says uh the housing authority shall make available housing for families of low income and for elderly persons of low income. Yeah. and just add the add the catchall after that because I think that

we could easily for each and every board just have the you know such powers and duties given to blank board by general law. But I do want people to be able to get some sort of an idea what powers and duties we have by reading our charter. And I think if someone were to ask me what does the housing authority do, I would explain it exactly in those first two responsibilities of making available housing for families and elderly persons low income. Yes.

Okay. So that is now on the table. Add that to our list of suggested changes. Uh any other new suggestions? I wouldn't say it's a new suggestion after we got Nicole's email, but I I similarly was thinking about something around um in the budget section around some sort of override timeline. So, I think um just to highlight what she said, I'd like to discuss that, please.

All righty. Let me see. What I would like is after we have a public hearing because we've already had that suggestion written in by Mr. Hadad is ask some people to come in who have privy to that process so that we can get a good idea. I think we're all in agreement that we should have it much more outlined but then figure out exactly how we should outline it because I certainly am not fully educated on how the budget timeline should look. So I wouldn't want to say by this date we should have this and by this date we should have this number because we might that just not might not be available.

But I think that that should be a whole meeting.

Yeah. Okay. So if we want to move on to discussion of things that we have already been placed under consideration. Uh maybe the first one I I don't know. Excuse me. I was going to suggest that we talk about uh quorums and majority votes, although the memo on that from council came out just within the past day. So, you guys have not had a any time to read and digest it really. So, and if you wanted to talk about that at all tonight, I mean, the the end result is we want to consider amending the charter provision that has to do with majority voting. But if if if it would be helpful for the committee members to have more time to read council's memo on that, then we can just note that town council has given us a memo. town council's memo ends up suggesting several options that we could consider but it uh want to talk about that at all tonight. I think a lot of feel

his options kind of boil down to the idea of without saying it we would have to make some I don't know if radical is the appropriate word changes to some very plain definition such as the definition of like quorum and majority um I think he does a really good job at the top of outlining how it works as of right now and stipulating that uh majority vote is defined multiple times and that in the absence of a rule for this specific case, there is a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that has stipulated essentially that abstensions are nos in the case that a majority vote is needing to be decided. So I think just based on how the precedent is now, it would be it would be very difficult for us to make a change for just here in Grafton. based on my interpretation.

Okay. On the assumption that uh we would like more time to re review and digest this and your your comment your comment is well taken Jack. We will obviously we'll keep this on the table for consideration but um I guess we just generally speaking we don't We're still kind of early in the game. We don't have to like make and make make any actual decisions, but for this if we do want to propose a change to the charter at some point, uh we will have to write up the proposed change. But yeah, I don't want to rush things right now. I think it's better better for us to take time to think things through. So that's probably sufficient for that. I could, this might fall under our next item, but I could nominate myself as being in charge of as we go on through these early days, keeping track of what has been proposed so far, even in just draft form. We had some proposed earlier by Mark. And so, as we continue, I foresee after a public hearing and then reaching out to our boards and committees.

Yeah. just keeping track of everything as we go. Is that kind of what you had in mind of doing, Jim? Uh I think he's doing something slightly different. He's you're looking at doing our internal proposals. The internal proposals that are being like what he just suggested uh keeping track of that so that as you know we had board members or you know chairs or department heads or soever that have to do with this charter coming forward to give us information. We could say, "Well, so and so had proposed this. What do you think of that?" And they could use that looks great or that sounds terrible. Okay. So that that doesn't particularly overlap with what you offer into.

Okay. So Jack Jack will take care of tracking that and we'll remain flexible as you know as we get further into the work we may find that you things do overlap or that there's a better way to track things but yeah you got to start somewhere. I I think it actually would be complimementaryary because if we get um like uh Nicole Ethier's comments and then we get to a point where we discuss them, if we decide to take some action on that, then he'll be keeping track of what that action is that we're recommending. Okay. And so I think it'd be complimentary.

All right. So continuing discussion of proposed charter revisions. Um Mark, one of the changes Mark had proposed was to have the town administrator appoint the fire chief. And I looked into that a little bit, thought about it, and aside from the fact that I'm not sure which charter text mark was proposing to amend because it didn't match up with ours. the uh the issue that we may have with an appointed fire chief and again this is probably something that will want to look further into but I wanted to bring it up is that we have the we had adopted the strong chief model

and the general law for the strong chief model specifically has the select board appointing the chief. It also has the select board involved in various other elements of the chief's job and the the select board select sets the salary. The select board can remove the chief for cause. The select board approves purchases made by the chief and the select board approves compensation of deputy forest wwoods. Don't know if we have deputy forest wardens, but that's neither here. The point is that the the general law is quite specific about the sluck forward having the responsibility for appointing and basically managing the fire chief's responsibility of his job. So it's probably trying considering whether to make the chief have the chief appointed by the town administrator might not be as simple as I I would have thought it would be. And this is probably a question that would have to be posed to town council if we wanted to follow up on the idea. Do you Mark, do you have any uh thoughts on that? Yeah, I if I said if I used the wrong section, I I apologize when I put that together. I was doing a thousand things that day when I sent in my proposals, but I think if we just put it in the charter in one particular section and leave him as a strong chief, the charter, according to what town council said to us last meeting, is is a state law, right? And as long as it doesn't conflict with with other state laws, it allows us to to to do what we want to do within the town of Grafton. So I think if we find a section of the charter where with the town minister, town

manager's appointing authority says he appoints the fire chief and the fire chief is a strong chief under whatever that section is of the of the law. I think that does it, David. And maybe we just need town council to clarify, but I don't think it's it's overly complicated because we just we did that in in graten and we just put a simple section the town manager shall appoint the fire chief subject to ratification by the select board and that was it. wasn't ultimately complicated.

Yeah. I And I I'm pretty sure that when I worked for the town of Sturbridge that I appointed the fire chief subject to the select board's confirmation. It was one of the rare positions that required a select board confirmation and that he was a strong chief in that particular community. the biggest the biggest issue that I see because I I agree with Mark on this that um it's hard to you know when especially during emergencies probably more than any other time you basically as a town manager you know you have a team of people that you're working with and it's difficult if you have one person who doesn't really he's part of the team but not really part of the team and it makes it really difficult to have a a a good coordinated response it can doesn't mean that it will, but it it can create complications. And and the other issue that a lot of people don't really think about is that uh town managers and school superintendent are put in a different bucket because they're appointed by a multi multiple member body. And so their performance evaluations, any disciplinary issues or uh any type of corrective action that wants to be taken has to be discussed in a public meeting by the board. Um and it makes it really tough. I'm I'm sure Andy can agree to this. It makes it really tough to do performance evaluations when you have to do it publicly. It's it's hard for the board. It's hard for the manager. And when you put the fire chief in that same category, it means that the fire chief, he has to have his performance evaluation done in a public meeting. He has to, if the board is not satisfied with the fire chief and they're trying to take um corrective action, they have to first convene a public meeting and say, "This is what we're going to do." They can go into executive session to discuss it, but the fire chief can then say, "No, I want to discuss it in in public. I'm a strong chief. Let's talk about this in public."

And um I I I see it's it's not the trend of what communities are doing now. Communities now are trying to create one coordinated team. The the whole strong police chief and fire chief are really antiquated laws. And um perhaps that's that's something for the um select board to discuss at some point in time whether you want to change it from a strong chief and or and eliminate that uh you know revoke that provision. Other communities have done that. Um and and so I think uh I agree with Mark that there's a way and and it would be good to talk to town council about it, but I think there's a way that we can do this and such a way that the fire chief is brought more into the fold and being appointed by the the town administrator or manager, whatever.

Yeah. I it it seems like a good idea and I'm completely convinced that the charter is allowed to change the appointing authority for that. That's not my issue with it. My issue is that there's there the potential issue is that in addition to the strong chief statute stating that the chief is appointed by the select board which again I think the charter is empowered to change that no problem. It's there are some of the other aspects of that statute that assign responsibility to the slot board and I'm not sure whether we can change that. And I'd like to think that we can, but that's that's what I wanted would want to run by town council. It's not the it's not the question of the appointing authority that the you the uh the home home rule procedures act rather specifically allows a charter to set the appointing authority for somebody.

I agree. I think it's a good question for town council to pine on. Mark, your hand is up. Yeah, I just want to echo I Jim brought up a the crux of my um my uh proposal is the whole personnel issues when you're dealing with discipline, when you're dealing with everything you want to, you know, it's it's Jim will tell you getting your review done in public stinks. Jim, I think you'll agree with me on that.

Yeah. So having um you know the town the town manager, town administrator, he should have the ability to to to manage the employees and he should be able to deal with those disciplinary issues behind closed doors and not air dirty laundry because it's it's embarrassing for the town. It's embarrassing for the employees. So the main reason I was proposing that was was was very much so what what Jim talked about tonight. So I'm glad you brought that up, Jim, because that's a very important uh aspect of the uh proposal.

Yeah. I I suspect I'm not going to speak for everybody, but I suspect, you know, we can all appreciate that and agree with the uh the desire to make this work, um it's, you know, I sometimes get myself into the weeds, but when I read that strong ch statute and saw it's more than just the appointing authority that uh leads me to suggest. And since it since it's my cons it was my concern I'd be happy if the committee is agreeable to reach out to council and get some clarification on that. Absolutely. Yeah. It was how do we do this and do it right.

How was our chief designation changed? Happened at a town meeting. I just don't remember how it came forward before we picked the new one. Before the town meeting changed it to a strong chief. Yes. And that's that's they just adopted the statute that established the strong chief and then the under the under the um under the statute that the select board appoints the the fire chief unless of course our charter changes that. Got it. So that's how that happened and that's when Eric got appointed. Yep. So that happened. Have a full-time that happened at the November 2020 town meeting if you're curious.

But anyway, yeah. I mean, you know, like I said, I I read I read some of these and and and and look at some of the details and worry about things like this. So, but I I I don't disagree with the reasons for wanting to do this and it's more a question of can we accomplish it the way we want to. Okay.

So, I will I will follow up with council on that. The the one other discussion item I have is let's see what are the chances I actually have that there. Yeah. And this is this is more to go back to the we shared with the committee at at the previous meeting. We shared uh Mark's three proposed amendments. um town administr changing town administrator to town manager um appointing the fire chief by the town assistant administrator manager and then he had one on finance and fiscal procedures and I shared with the committee the ver a version of his town administrator change with the red and green highlights and I have one. There it is. See if I can. David, this is really well done. So, this is what you were talking about um that the bylaw committee did. This is really excellent. I'm trying to access the uh make this a little bit more readable on the screen. And yeah, I had shared this with Mark to see if I got it right. And you just heard Mark's comment on that. So, I'm just quickly scrolling through it. You can see an awful lot of

red and green, but what I did at the top of this, and again, I'll I'll send this out to the committee after the meeting, but I I tried to summarize what's actually changed here in particular. The important points that I saw in here is well, aside from changing wording and formatting and phrasiology and punctuation of it, what's the meat of this? And what I saw as the meat of this is basically four things. requiring a joint select board finance committee meeting no later no later than October 30th to provide guidance and budgetary direction and that that gets to the more more than one person's concern about you know having schedules and deadlines uh requiring the town administrator to submit a proposed budget to the finance committee by January 31st and the finance committee publishing a proposed budget. So, the finance committee sort of takes over the budget here and has recommendations that may be different from the town administrator. And of course, ultimately, if we if we succeed in changing town administrator to town manager, that goes into this as well, but I I kept that out of this for clarity. So, the finance committee has to publish a proposed budget at least 14 days prior to town meeting. And then at town meeting it is the this proposed amendment is it is the finance committee's proposed budget rather than the town administrator's proposed budget that's voted on and presented to and voted on by town meeting. Um, one detail in here is that, you know, the proposed language says that amendments, budget amendments proposed

by the select board and town administrator get acted on before any any other amendments are accepted, which is sort of the reverse of what the charter currently says. The finance committee has first first cut first first shot at amending the budget. So these are this this is what basically summarizes what what Mark is proposing and and again I don't we don't need to nail this down yet but I think this uh this helps to clarify the the meat of the proposed change

and I can have when I am keeping track of our proposals I'll have it match this format so you can easily read how the language would be changing in that proposal. and then a brief summary. So I see Mark's hand up.

Yeah. So the the the one uh proposal that we've received so far from Miss Eier is in the same section. So I guess my question I guess Jim said he was going to keep track of the various things that come in. So, how do we because she had a lot of the things in in her proposal that I'm I'm also recommending and she had some good points that might enhance this particular proposal that I'm making. So, how do we incorporate that, David, so that the committee can keep track of those sections? Because I'm sure we're going to get given what's been going on this year with the budget, I'm sure we're going to get one or two other suggestions on the fiscal procedures. So, how do we how do we keep track of the various proposals within the same section? Because what we want to do, you probably want to take the best of everybody's proposal and incorporate it into one final proposal. And that could be difficult, I think.

Yes. I I think yes, you're absolutely right. That's I would say the same thing that uh that any propos the the the committee's ultimate proposed amendment to article six here would include as much of Mark's proposal as we think we want to as much of Missier's proposal as we think we want to miss proposal was not expressed in terms of changes to the language so we would take and other other suggestions are likely to be in the same vein where they're not going to propose specific language, but we would take we would have to take the every proposal that touches on article six out will we have to merge it into one committee proposal.

I think you just treat it as what it is. the difference between a suggestion on how the charter should act in the future and an actual amendment to the language.

Yep. Yeah. For example, going back to the fire chief example, it's clear what the what the proposal intends to do, and that is to make the town administrator town manager in the future if we succeed in making that transformation, but to make the town administrator, manager the appointing authority for the fire chief. Now, how we do that in terms of the language of the charter, we don't have to nail that down quite yet. you know that Mark Mark presented this in the form of proposed charter language u but in general I I don't expect that all of the suggestions will be in that form but ultimately all the suggestions that we get once you know whatever we choose to adopt we will ultimately have to cast it into this form so yeah I think you're you probably that's probably a good way to keep it keep track of it for now is this is Mark's propos proposal. We have another proposal that hits on the same section. I may have I don't remember off the top, but I think I had identified another relatively minor detail that also affects this this section. What you see in front of you is is just a a rendering of Mark's proposal at this point. But yes, we will we will have to combine them at some point, but it's probably sufficient for the time being to track each of the documents we get, note which sections they apply to. And one of our one of our tasks will be to come up with proposed language that we want to present to the voters.

Okay. Anything more on this right now? Can I can I just offer to volunteer to do one other thing? Um, no.

As I thought about the idea because both Mark and I had brought up that we thought that the position title wasn't accurately reflecting what the responsibilities of the job is. Um, and I know from being on the municipal solid waste committee that we had discussed that there are a group of um, towns in Massachusetts that Grafton uses to compare to. And I would be willing to go and review their charters, look at what authority they have granted to either the town administrator or the town manager so that we could see a really quick comparison with those communities that Grafton normally compares to. anyway and just put it in a nice grid so that we could basically see, you know, is there a justification for changing the title from town administrator to town manager? Do these other towns that have town managers have the responsibilities that our town administrator has? And um again, I'm retired, so I have time to do some things like this. And so I'd be happy to do that um and just put it together and bring it maybe um at our next meeting for everybody to take a look at and see whether or not it provides some clarification um going one way or the other um for everybody.

Yeah, that's that's that's a good idea. That thought some time ago had crossed my mind that we you should see what other what other charters say we've got you whether it's a town administrator or town manager both. both it's not only the job title but it's the powers and duties that are associated with the title because Mark's Mark's proposed amendment to change town administrative town manager did not significantly change the powers and duties it was mainly a change of the title

and to some extent it is my impression that in our charter the powers and duties of the administrator align closely with those of a typical manager But it would be excellent to have some comparison there because one of the thoughts that crossed my mind at some point was if we think a town manager is appropriate for Grafton, do we need to expand upon or modify the powers and duties that the charter says? So that and that's a point where comparing it with powers and dutters duties uh assigned to typical town managers would see would reveal if are are there any gaps is there any more power we ought to give to our town manager. Yeah and that like I said that all crossed my mind that it would be worthwhile making that comparison and if you're willing to do that more power to you I think the committee would appreciate that. I am used to reading town charters, so I'm perfectly fine doing that and picking through those.

And might I You lead an exciting life. Uh Jim, you know what? I b I spent the weekend making maple syrup, so this will be a step up. If along the way while you're doing this research, you discover anything about strong fire chiefs and who they report to and how that is structured, not I could certainly make a note of that. I I could reach out. Matter of fact, for those, you know, it's probably like 20 towns um because he had both a smaller list than an expanded list. And so I would use the expanded list and that I could reach out to the town managers and say, "Do you have a strong chief or a weak chief just find out?"

I do remember that we had quite a bit of discussion that led up to the adoption of the strong teeth. I don't remember what all that discussion was. I know some people who were more involved in that than I was. I was I was really a spectator to that. I only remember a lot of it because I filmed a lot of the videos that they talked about it. But uh yeah, I think I think what we as I recall what we liked was the the sort of the not exactly independence but the more autonomy that the strong chief had.

I didn't follow it as closely when it was happening. I kind of left it to people who were experience in fire chiefs. But I did take the opportunity this weekend to listen to the municipal episode where you interviewed Chief M and he talked about what the differences were in towns that didn't have it opposed to those that do. And part of it was that it really empowered the chief to do things without having to go back to the select board for every single and he was going down the list of some of the things that you would have to go to them for and it's really going to bog them up. So I think

yeah so I think we would be interested I'm assuming in the fire chief basically retaining the autonomy and the authority that he has. We just think the town town administrator manager would be a more appropriate appointing authority. And didn't we adjust the town administrator's authority when the town clerk became an appointed position and that fell underneath? Yeah, it did. Your your memor is correct, Don. When they changed the town clerk to appointed, they put the appointment with the town administrator. You're right. didn't go to the select board. It went to administrator.

Correct. So, it made makes a lot of sense. And like I said, I will I will reach out to town council with my questions about that. And I want to be sure that we can actually pull off what we want to. I also anticipate at times when we are preparing to make formal proposals, we could have people that it would directly change their jobs with come in and give their opinion.

Yes, there is likely to be not as much of that with this committee as there was with the bylaw committee. With the bylaw committee, we basically for for every bylaw art article, we identified the departments or in officers or boards or committees that were involved in the administration of that particular article. And you know, we worked we worked closely with them to make sure that that that we understood what they do and and what they might like to change. They understood what we were proposing. But yeah, there was a lot more of that with the bylaws than we're likely to see with the charter. But absolutely, when when it comes to a charter change that might affect a particular individual or board or department, you we definitely want to work with them to make sure that we're all on the same page regarding what should happen. I just had a thought when Jim was saying that about um I guess sort of putting together this like benchmarking um tool and I was just thinking about like sustainability of this committee um or even amongst other committees I feel like we do a lot of benchmarking against other towns like is there a way to like we do this again in 10 years that we're look at the same towns and the same sort of information or even like across committees I just wonder if there's like I don't know a way for us to sort of like not have to redo these things years after year or be able to go right to a document and say, "Hey, this is what we looked at last year." And

so maybe that's just something that we internally kind of it would be useful for the documents that this committee assembles and creates, not necessarily so much intern work products, but you know, background information and other relevant information. It would be good for this committee to see to it that All appropriate information is retained for use by the next committee that does this. It could remain on our charter review committee section of the website despite the board's collapse after two years or a year, whatever, just stay there.

Yes. The the bylaw study committee had a section on the website and it managed to disappear. Fortunately, from the bylaw study committee perspective, I'm a packrat when it comes to documentation. I I I have everything and more on my computer that the bylaw study committee used. And

my intention with that, I haven't actually gotten around to it, but my intention is to go through the information I've gathered and collect gather anything that might be relevant to the next bylaw study committee, which will be appointed next year. Yeah, next year. So whoever's on that committee, I would I want to be able to pass on to them everything that we did. And so the same applies to the charter committee.

One way to ensure that happens is that for our very last meeting, we could include all of the attachments in our final minutes and then the town clerk would need to retain those um yeah documents forever because it has all all documents referred to in a set of minutes has to be have to be kept in a final record. In fact, as it happens, the town clerk wants copies of all the documents that we discuss at each meeting. So,

provided the documents are all discussed at a meeting, there will be a record at least in the town clerk's office. Alrighty. What else do we have to do? Agenda. Agenda. Okay. So, I've I've got an agenda item for follow-up actions. We've discussed a few here. Um, are do we want to commit to holding that public hearing we talked about at the April meeting? I think it'd be better to do a before town meeting. Yeah.

To have it be a little bit separate as we start this. Right. So, we will

I mean, we already have a meeting scheduled for that night. We just need to make sure that we advertise the public hearing sufficiently. We've talked a bit about that already. So, in addition to an announcement of the public hearing accompanying whatever information we send out, we'll send out We'll make sure we get a a separate announcement sent out just for that public hearing. Get as as wide a distribution as we can get for that. Um Jim Jim's got some things he volunteered to do. Jack's got some stuff he volunteered to do. I volunteered to reach out to council regarding the fire chief. Anything else we see a need to do as a follow-up action right now? Just waiting for all the all the input to come in from all the suggestions we're going to get from the public. All righty. So, we have the minutes of our February meeting up for approval.

Move to approve the minutes from our last meeting as presented. Second. Um, Nate's name is spelled incorrectly again. Nate. Yeah, I also uh for continuity sake, I'm referred to as John and Jack. Now, what I should be referred to as I don't I'm not sure. So, Gre Greg said if we send him these little these little corrections, he'll take care of it. So I I will take the motion as to approve the minutes with any corrections that are submitted to the clerk. Second.

Any other discussion on the motion? Hearing none. Where's my list of attendees? Dawn I. Angelina I. Bob I. Dan I. Mark. I. And I'll remember that I voted this time. Jeff. Hi. Andy I Jack I Jim I'll abstain since I wasn't in attendance. Okay. Angela I and Dave votes eye. Motion carried by a vote of 10 in favor none against and one abstension. The minutes are approved. Move to return. Second.

Moved and seconded that this meeting be adjourned. A motion to adjurnn is not debatable. Dawn I. Angelina, hi Bob. Hi Dan. Hi Mark. Hi Jeff. Hi Andy. Hi Jack. Hi Jim. Hi Angela. Hi. Dave votes eye.ai.ai.ai.ai.ai.ai.ai.ai.ai.ai. Motion carried unanimously. We are adjourned. Thank you very much. And uh we will see you next month and hopefully we'll start seeing more suggestions rolling in. Hopefully we'll see some people next month. All righty. Take care. All recording stopped.