account for the okay we are recording we're going to call to order this second meeting of the Charter review commission today is Tuesday May 28th I have 6:05 PM we have in attendance myself jod gross Jeff Maguire Adrien mandaville the folks in town hall carolite tell me their names again Pat Billings and Karen Mador thank you and members of the public Katherine magaldi Lewis Louise forgot the goodwi Goodwin Leanne Hutchinson and this is lean that's that is me okay you appeared twice here that's interesting she appears twice because she doesn't have speaker on her computer gotcha thank you you're welcome you're familiar with all this Jeff let's go all right so we are called to order the next agenda item is public speak any members of the public will just will'll just pull them Katherine yeah I have a couple of things please I was looking at the minute of the 22nd and I had asked for two things I had asked to change the name from the board of selectman to the select board and for the chat to hopefully you probably maybe be in English but neither
one of those are in minutes the other thing was I know that Shannon had given specific sections that she wanted or asked to please be reviewed but I couldn't find those sections there either and I just thought you know if those were specific sections that she she was good enough to ask about that maybe we should have those specific sections in the minutes and the only other thing I wanted to add too which I didn't have before was also adding page numbers to the chatter and the index and that's it thank you thank you Louise goodwi I'm all set thank you thank you Leanne yes thanks you you may cover some of this but I had a couple of questions slash concerns one is that I don't see much in the way of specifics about what you've actually been charged to do this time around it doesn't seem like there's been too much publicity about this so it seems to have come up Suddenly whether it has or not I wonder if you are able to respond now or if it's going to become apparent as to actually what you're charged with doing and and and how that came about it will become apparent a little bit I can say we don't have a
formal charge but I have a list of personal items Bob Bob just as a point of reference it's public speak you just allow them to talk and you don't have to respond to them I mean it's not a negative lean we will do it Bob is correct but you don't have all right to be clear I I think Bob is chairing there are no he can set the rules however he likes so if he wants to respond he's has the option to do that we want to as a group decide to respond or not we have the option to do that so I think given the limited amount of people that showed up it's not a big deal but that's up to the board if we want to make rules for public speak then
we need to make them otherwise you said it's up to Bob so Bob it's up to you we have a few enough people here that I don't mind responding especially since what Leanne is is asking I have an answer for so if anybody else wants to jump in that's fine also what I started to say Jeff was that some of what she is asking I have a little list of action items here that I want to get to and some of what she's asking will be answered so okay thank you yeah I'm I'm glad you're going to get to that because as I said I haven't I looked at the minutes from the last meeting and there you know it was pretty you know didn't seem to have a lot of explanation about discussion which is fine but but those are the things I'm interested in I do understand that for
example the board of selectman has people speak but then doesn't necessarily have a dialogue with them right away so I appreciate you you know your answer here Bob because I know it can be done either way all right that's and and Bob since since we're responding just to let Katherine know the actual meeting minutes from the special meeting didn't have anything from that public hearing that was before the special meeting so there were actually two meetings last time so I I don't know what was published but the actual special meeting minutes to what the public speak of the and the public speak at the beginning didn't have anybody say anything that's why you didn't see their comments there well actually the note that I have I don't know if this has been made public yet Jody but there was some overlap between what was in the the public speak in the in the hearing as well as the items that we then kind of reviewed again in the in the the charter meeting so I I've got a we'll get no no no there wasn't overlap no I think it's I think I think Jody's point is that there were two separate meetings technically and so that correct when when Catherine gave her input that she's talking about select men to select board
and you know being more plain English and Shannon's comments all were in that public hearing so they weren't recorded in the minutes of our meeting you shared and I was secretary just making that point okay so noted all right thank you anything from the public all right so that brings us to discussion and possible action upon any Charter I can barely read what's on my computer here Pardon Me Charter revision issues okay so I created just for my own edification here a little action item list that I wanted to go over just kind of referee as I said in the last meeting I see my job mostly
as a traffic cop and a referee for this one of the questions that Leanne asked is and the the charter revision process itself calls for a set of recommendations or a charge from the board of Selectmen to the commission and as far as I understand we have not received any such formal communication from the board of Selectmen now luckily we have the first Selectmen here Jeff can you tell us are we going to receive a formal charge from the board of Selectmen no you will not receive a written charge from the board of selectman the board of selectman discussed the various issues at our meeting not in great detail but every Charter commission committee has the authority to do what it sees fit related to what it would like to change within the charter so you won't see a formal document okay so relating to that then just for clarification you brought up a number of different comments suggestions ideas relating to potential Charter revisions so just to clarify
these are your input as a citizen of the town and don't reflect anything official from the board of Selectmen well again the board of Select has to approve everything that this Charter revision committee does before it it gets sent to referendum so if the I if the board of Selectmen does not approve what is done here it will not move forward in totality it could be totally scrapped we could be wasting our entire time and it could be totally scrapped or it could all move on again right doesn't really address what I just asked you so the source of what what you vocalized here last week is not I'll take it as my personal opinion okay that's fine just just for the record okay so again real quick Bob go ahead yeah was there anything in then I didn't go back to specific meetings and try to find it was there anything in notes no noted did you
guys actually put anything in the notes as far as for what spe specific things were brought up I know Eric had some comment commentary in a couple meanings but was there anything put forward at all nothing nothing documented no okay so just the things that Eric had talked about but but nothing beyond that okay I just wanted to clarify that's all thank you Bob sorry okay now thank you for the input so I have free rain Bob where do you want to go excuse me kind I have free rain Bob where do you want to go do you got an action list or I do actually and this is so I have the the draft
meeting minutes that Jody put together and I've taken that along with the draft special the the excuse me public hearing minutes that were put together and I have a list of items here and really what where I was going with this is between the public input and the commentary made by the commission there are several potential changes that were put forward and one of the things that I want to get done tonight is to codify and clarify and prioritize prioritize these changes into a formal list okay you know specific measurable actionable things that will serve as our official charge moving forward and what those things comprise at this point just to go through them their bullet points that jod put together dollar amounts to trigger Town meetings early voting dates of Elections aligning the board of education budget timing B Bob do you mind just is it possible if you to screen share those so we can have that for the public can I screen share those let's see the Green Arrow at the bottom I see points up yep Bob whatever is on your screen will appear please know that yep I see on let me just make sure that the screen is clear or sanitary at
okay how's how's this look thank you so much okay so I was going through that list that I've got here so this was the the draft that jod had put together and as I said I I kind of gleaned some things from there as well as from the public hearing and this is what we've got kind of as our as our list of bullet points so dollar amounts early voting elections town clerk position change to a Town Council as a legislative body alternatively keeping the board of Selectmen but merging theard of functions and Board of Finance functions and eliminating the board of Finance Major versus minor ordinance procedures not having a first selectman but instead have a chairperson like the Board of Ed Board of Finance planning and zoning and town meeting adjustments so this is a nice overview 10,000 foot level but this isn't something that's really actionable so what I'd like to achieve tonight among the commission members here is to turn these single bullet items into a few sentences a paragraph something that somebody reading it can say aha before we go ahead and do that let me just share this is this is my notes here that I've been reading off of one of my goals in codifying this into a a list
of specific items is that I would like to suggest that for each action item that we defined that we have one or more members assigned to be an advocate or a champion for that item and that person will have ownership of the item research it present it defend the idea of subsequent meetings Okay including what's being proposed how it will be implemented what any transition would look like from how things are being done now what the implications and ramifications would be on the rest of the charter and beyond that the greater Town functioning and governance anybody else who wants to to contribute to that advocacy and similarly anybody who wants to argue against it this isn't intended to lock anybody out but it's intended to make each item have a point person that that can own it and advocate for it and the idea here here is to spread the labor and keep any one individual from hogging to Spotlight so we each act as an advocate and we each Act you know jointly in the capacity to adjudicate and decide upon the outcomes can you just slide that window over so we can see the what was the very last thing on your sheet yeah hang on action items there we go town meeting okay town meeting adjustments okay so that's kind of my my goal for Where We Are Tonight hey hey Bob so it was really an advocate was there a contrarian for each I'm I just I forgot what you said there no I
wouldn't Define a specific contrarian anybody can be a contrarian okay at least you want someone that's an advocate or someone that's really trying to dig into it to try to drive is this an issue to right and anybody anybody can jump in and help and be another Advocate if they want but I want there to be a specific owner at least one owner for each idea there well but I I think there's a difference I think someone can be an owner and not necessarily be an advocate I think there I think it would be be better if whoever's doing it can present both sides you know I mean I think that you need to prevent a fair argument so I may
be completely for something but at the same time it's still my responsibility as you mentioned Bob to say what the effects are that of that change may be so there may be some negative effects of that and I don't think it's I don't think it's a bad idea to have that person if they're doing the research anyways to come forward and say hey well you know changing this may be good in this way but there here are some repercussions that may happen if we do that as well so I I agree with Adrien I think that's a great idea Pros cons position as an owner to the extent that somebody can can fairly and and dispassionately argue both sides
of an issue absolutely okay you know my my oversight this is why we have a committee and not just one person okay and then the other thing related to that is I think before proceeding in depth in the review of these items I think it would be helpful if we had a preliminary poll of the commission on their initial opinion of the soundness of each item so we can gauge how readily the commission might approve or reject and how much effort we might want to put into into these things it would be nice if we can do this without really coloring the decisionmaking process but I think it kind of helps to know before going really into depth you know what I was thinking here is before you take a a case to trial there's an evidentiary hearing and you want to see you know how strong it it's kind of the same concept that you know do you have something strong here do you have something weak it's it's maybe it's not the best analogy but I I think it might help us any thoughts on this you want to Grand Jury this yeah let's go hey yeah hey Bob I I have another con concept I wanted to put on the table go ahead I I'm I'm sort of of this camp that I would rather have two or three impactful items if we had to spend what limit time we have as opposed to you know 15 smaller changes right and that's just my personal View and I don't know if that color sort of how we tackle this list well Jody what what about if we I I
think I think I like Bob's idea in the sense that if we if we all agree that let's say there's five of these or six of these that that we all agree that we should attack or tackle I should say if we do that and we say well listen what are the what are the least what are what are the things that are the easiest to pick off like we need know we need to do dollar mounts early voting things like that right so maybe three of these are really easy and low hanging fruit and maybe we pick two that are more involved yeah agreed so I was going to piggyback a I was gonna say a little bit more first there usually a bucket of technical changes sure in these types of
things that are you know some of what Shannon Lowden said in in in public speak right oh this word or that needs to be cleaned up but I I like where Adrians go and in the sense that maybe we could we could try to size it too as you know as we go through it this is a bigger issue and it you know maybe a small medium large in my business we call it t-shirt sizing right Bob I I'll I'll sit there and I'll second what you did I really do think you need to sit there and Whittle this list down if there are items that the group The Seven members there's not four people that want to move forward
with a given idea there's no reason to waste any time yep okay do you think we could do that right now thoughts let's go yeah I would just like if we do this before we vote on an item let's just do a quick any any quick comments so for instance if we talk about dollar dollar amounts for for for Town meetings I think we need some feedback from Eric before I would say yeah or nay on that totally but I think initially we have to do it right so some Adrian isn't the issue that that setting a new dollar amount would be appropriate and then you'd say okay let's move forward with that idea and then come up with the dollar amount that's that is Meaningful and impactful yep so I want to have just a little bit like this for each yeah no problem let's go yeah okay for what it's worth I mean I was kind of
hoping that we could do this without getting into the weeds tonight you know that we stay at the 10,000 foot level okay and not not get get caught up in the details yep okay so just give us 10 seconds 15 seconds whatever I'm just saying a little bit before we say y or no okay so do we need to follow Robert's rules on all of these things or can we just informally say yay or nay and go down the list I think we I'm okay with Y or nay and go down the list you know with any any quick comments on each one that's all okay how about this is there anyone who is opposed to tackling the idea of dollar amounts to trigger Town meetings no okay okay so we're GNA keep that yep okay early voting now what does that actually comprise I mean again again without getting into too deep details we talking about opening up the voting window for general elections to a week or two weeks or like that Connecticut state law so I don't know if it's really something necessary to put in our Charter we may have to clean up the charter simply to remove some of the things that limit within the charter rather than add okay is this a line that said we are following the Connecticut state statutes right exactly and then pull out anything that limits okay so Adrian is this your example of lwh hanging fruit yes okay anyone object
to it no not hearing any okay so we'll keep that dates of Elections I think the the the comment on that was also about whether we should be aligning with Hein so that we're because especially now that we're talking about going to early voting all these other things having multiple voting dates that then require multiple early voting is an issue Hein already has aligned with the ram budget for their voting we would I think it'd be a good idea to do the same that goes into budget timing in the charter so it's not NE it's not necessarily it is a date of a referendum related to the budget and the timing of the budget would have to be adjusted exactly so but the data of Elections let's just sit there and go an election is when someone's running for a public office a referendum is a different it still falls into the same but it's talked about differently in the charter yes so election I think date of Elections actually felt at early voting that there there was secondary discussion about which is again maybe not necessarily highlighted on this list about aligning our budgeting for referendum with Hein right I'm sorry okay go ahead Carol I was just going to say if you look at hein's Town Charter the way that they
did that so they could vote at the same time as RAM they eliminated any kind of a town budget meeting so what they do is they have the dates very specific in their Charter so that they're able to have the referendum on the first day following or on the Tuesday following the first Monday in met so they really move everything up with dates as far as the end of the fiscal year but I'm just saying trying to say that if we look at Hein stown Charter which is what our Charter was written almost word for word like that will show us an even P how to do that in align with PR for our refence yeah okay okay so does anyone have I mean I'm sitting there looking at dates of election I think you right keep and then I think he put another line under it Bob to sit there and say referendum dating and I'd be a keep for that one as well I'd agree with Jeff it sounded like the issue was that our town budget with Rams was the was the connection there though am I am I missing what what the point was yeah that's that's the issue that but the issue is we have a town meeting where we
have to we'd have to push everything back if we want to keep the town meeting we're gonna have to start really early in order to have time to do it and there's a risk that if at a town meeting a budget fails you would get out of cycle if it failed at a town meeting and we said no we're not going to send it to the town versus saying okay the board in other words their Board of selectman can just move it directly to a town to a to a town vote we move it to a town meeting and then to a town vote Board of Finance actually it directly to the referendum after holding their public hearing yes I'm sorry you're correct Carol okay and so you'd have to move the public hearing up to this to the time to a different timeline there's other issues in our Charter that would have to be moved I think there's a there's a plausibility question and I think that you you risk I think you got to put it out to the
public if you're going to do that I don't you know it's going to go to the public well I think at the end of the day here we're saying keep it I was just trying to size it maybe we should just keep keep moving yeah well also let's keep in mind that there are things further on that could completely impact and collide with that also so we got well why don't you put why don't you put them in Bob into the simple category and the more detailed category right so so the first two the dollar amounts early voting dates of election are all simple issues ref let's just keep going through the list and we'll do that after y fine well I can I can yeah I I agree town clerk position appointed versus elected this has gotten a lot of discussion around town already well let's start with Caroline where's she at I'm I'm still Neal I just would like to hear both sides I've been doing a lot of research and taking a lot of input myself so just staying open to it well Carol I mean the reality is if you're against this the town's not going to approve it so we don't want to waste a lot of time on this if you're not going to be in favor of it I mean I personally will say right now I have no problem with saying why don't you make this your baby and you tell us what you want to do and you know if you if you come forward with something that you can you find
acceptable great and if not then it's not worth us trying to do anything else well I don't necessarily think that this is an issue where we can all come to some sort of alignment it may not be perfect but the Town Administrator is a perfect example of this situation we had an elected official in the first selectman and then we replaced that with a Town Administrator and that individual that that job is now solidified and it's the same thing I get what you're saying Jeff but the reality is very simple I understand and but ad I'm explaining it for Carol like because she understands Carol's Carol understands she's not Carol when you leave and your next election comes up in 2027 if if you leave and it's an elected position and someone else runs the town is in Jeopardy of having someone that is not as qualified as you sit in that position and it it be it's not an it's not an appropriate way to govern okay Jeff jefff I got I'm cut I'm cutting you off because we're getting into the details and I didn't want to get into in into the details now I want to counter adrianne's suggestion to me it's smacks of conflict of interest for Carol to be the one who I agree who talks about this I think we need to have somebody other than her research this although I think it' be valuable if she
provided input because she's so close to it well obviously she knows more about this than anybody else but I think as we hand these things out this should be somebody else's responsibility well but but to the to my point I if I finish it is that you could have someone and this committee spend a lot of time on this and if Carol doesn't agree with it you know it's never going to pass when we had when we had the town administrator's position as Jeff was talking about we had several people as elected administrators prior to that that were a complete show for luck of a better term and it it behooved the town to move to someone who was qualified right now you've got someone who has been a pillar of the community for 30 plus years that's universally loved if that person says no no one's voting for it and you've wasted a lot of time on something that that's not going to get approved so that's my point well I'd like I'd like to ask Carol Carol were were you and you won't answer this but this is the question I would like you to answer were you in favor of the
Town Administrator when it came up for vote I had very mixed emotions then too I thought it was honestly a quick it was a what a two or three Charter revision and then it was did the voters on the you know us I think another presenc so I really didn't think too much about it at the time and I had mixed emotions then like I have mixed emotions about town CL too I think there is a huge benefit to having a town resident who has physical and emotional ties to the office and with Eric as you just said Eric is a lifetime resident so that's a different thing he's here he has ties to this community and his heart is here as M so I still have mixed emotions about elected and appointed as elected person has real tie to the community a love for Community they're established so I see both sides yeah I say we keep it and I think adrianne's point is if Carol's gonna really be opposed to this we should know that very early and I Jeff your point is well taken I mean perhaps there's even there's some maybe there's some sort of hybrid that could be created right that there are you know maybe I don't I don't know if this is possible but is are there elected officials that'll have certain qual it's an elected thing that people have certain qualifications for or I don't know if that's something that's allow have a certain level of business professional experience or this level of degree or this you know and it's still elected Jody the flip side of that is it could be a hired position with a
residency requirement or residency preference yeah but I mean policeman agreed and that's a hybrid too agreed I understand so I'd say we keep this and Adrian's point I think it was a good one if Carol's gonna say n you know we shouldn't even touch this then we should know that early and it I'm not hearing that from her well listen Carol's next election is in 2027 it's this change cannot go into effect until after 2027 and to be really honest if Carol wanted the job the people that are running the town at that point in time would be stupid not to hire point taken all right so let's move on it's it's it's honestly it's keep and if we can get four keeps we move on okay okay EXC I'm not we still got one person who has not said anything is it Miss billing there in the back actually too Karen Mador also where's okay sorry I just unmuted Karen I don't see thank you face in there hi we're trying to sit so we can see the
screen here sharing it so it's kind of tough we're going to get you guys a bench next time yeah please pipe in though okay pop in every now and then okay or or get them some laptops that they can sit in front of so everybody's got their own camera I offered I offered mine but to no avail but it looks like the Muppet's over there everybody's every now and then somebody just leans in you know yes exactly all right moving on we have a bunch of things that I think are in inter inter interchanged with each other so we have the concept of changing the Town Council changing to a Town Council form of government or
alternatively keeping the board of selectman but merging the board of Finance functions there's there's a lot of things that are all all put together and Jeff you've been the the champion for this the The Advocate the the spokes person say a little bit more for us well I mean this is just something where the group has to sit there and say I do not want to waste a lot of time on this I do believe that the town would be better served and and I'll I'll list out the reasons you have a board of Finance it's a seven member committee and you have a board of Selectmen that's a five member committee so you have 12 volunteers that are essentially not doing the same exact work but they are working in parallel and with the current situation where we have that many volunteers and that many un contested elections that have gone on and trying to find volunteers I do believe that a Town Council that would absorb the roles and responsibilities of the board of Finance would be more appropriate for our community now I will sit there and I will tell you that the last budget that was put out came to the board of Selectmen and
by the time it got through every meeting that was required to it and through to the town meeting it changed by a total of $166,000 and that's occurred probably on the the last five or six budgets that have gone before the town the last budget that had any major changes to it was when a was the chairperson of the board of finance and that was six years ago seven years ago so how I would do it would be I'll just give you a high level view I would sit there and it wouldn't go into effect until 2027 when the board of selectman is up for re-election I would turn that over into four members running for election to whatever the new board is named the select board or the Town Council whatever it would be and I would take the three remaining members members of the board of finance that still have two years left on their terms and they would be the the other three members of that board and you would have a comingling of the two boards and then what would happen would be that board would then be responsible for the priorities for the town establishing the financial budget for the town managing that financial budget for the town and moving forward and I'll even go back to this so everybody understands why I'm recommending this you got to look at every portion of the town is it's a $4 million component right now a little bit harder higher for some of the educational components so there's 4 million for Ram there's $4 million for AES there's $4 million for the town of
the $4 million for the town about 1.5 million is capital so you set those priorities those priorities are established equipment fire trucks whatever is required and the remainder is a $2.5 million operating budget and of the $2.5 million operating budget and greater than 50% of that budget is is employee costs so reason why I'm suggesting this is you'll have potentially not absolute but potentially better candidates because there's smaller number of roles you'll have a group of people that will move from one you'll never have a complete clean sweep on this board which you should never have and so you'd go four to three and it would just make more efficiency sense because what you'd also have is you'd have everybody that presents to the
board of selectman and presents to the board of Finance has to do it twice Eric has to go to double the meetings and I I just look at it totally as an efficiency and the ability to potentially have contested elections and getting a better pool of volunteers that's as simple as it gets nothing else nothing nefarious it may not fly and that's okay I wanted to put it out there for everybody to understand that this is how the this town should run in the future Jeff how do you obviously sometimes people might think about things like checks and balances where you have you know in the corporate world there or even in judicial world you know in sort of politics and judicial world and legislative World there sort of you know you you try to have two two layers or or two different you know checks and balances approach does that is is is your thinking that this is just so small of there there isn't you know you're saying it's only $166,000 was adjusted in a budget that you don't need that well the issue that I have is and finally after years and years and years of trying Jody we finally got to the point where we reconcile our bank
accounts timely so when you sit there and say checks and balances we've had terrible controls within our town for years and years and years and years and we finally gotten to the point because of software and because of people that we can actually reconcile our accounts timely so I also look at it as we have two signers on every check there's very little that can happen at a board level to screw it up to be really honest at a board level this is my personal opinion as an accountant as a at a board level at a an operational level and a in the the weeds of this there are possibilities that things could occur but again it's a $2.5 million operating budget at the Town level that this board would be under control and again 50% of that is is payroll so I don't look at it as as a concern I understand the checks and balance needs and I understand the treasury role and and and trying to do that but I don't necessarily know that the board of Finance and Adrian would be able to speak better to this being on that board I'm not sure that the board of Finance gets down in the weeds to sit there and check check and balance the community the only thing that I look at from my experience is that you know if there's a transfer made at the end of the year the
board of Finance needs to approve over a certain level but Adrian would be better positioned for that for point of reference it really depends on the board I know the the board part of me getting on there and then once I was on and then even when I was chair we got into the weeds a lot of the budget but we did that because we felt that the the board of Selectmen that that was sending us a budget at that time and and the Town Administrator were not doing their job but also it had been a it had been a longstanding policy that every town Department by Charter actually is supposed to go to the board of Finance to present their budget not to not actually to the board of Selectmen the board of selectman calling them in and going through that is a is a process that was picked up but it's actually not in the charter going to the board of Finance is so we took that seriously when I was on the board of finance and and the board part in my my being there took it seriously and went through every every but Roy is dependent upon the board and so that's one part of it and I think sometimes one you know board select picks it up sometimes Board of Finance picks it up I think my personal opinion is this current Board of Finance hasn't done that in any way shape or form they've sort of Taken what the board select and brings through and for the most part rber stamped it and I don't know that that's good either so okay I just want to jump in here and
and give a thought here which is a little bit more conceptual but am I unmuted you're fine yeah okay a little more conceptual and something that I think applies certainly to this but it applies to everything that we look at if we're suggesting a change to the Charter because some practice or process has become difficult or inefficient or unwieldy then I think we need to ask ourselves does the problem lie in the underlying Structural Concepts that are delineated in the charter itself or can we modify the implementation of those Concepts so as to streamline the process and you know the analogy that comes to mind is if the front door hinges squeak you don't tear down the house so you know I just I just want to throw that in for what it's worth you know I hear some of that in what Adrian is saying and this is granted it what we're talking about here is a very big change and so I think we have to we have to look at this from as many different angles as we can before we would seriously consider it and like I say in theory though Adrian I think what I heard you say is a board of Finance as it's structured today a board of Finance would create a budget scrutinize it sort of a bottomup approach scrutinize it from each of the Departments and then that budget goes to the Selectmen to approve is that how that works and then it goes to the town so that there is a the Town Administrator generally put forward a budget and then we would call in each department to ask them to to justify the
budget that was given to us through the Town Administrator whether it was the whether it was the board whether it was the slackman or whether it was the town the town admin as it is now they're all submitting budgets to him and then he's bring them to us and we would actually bring each person in and say okay Public Works why do you want this why do you want that sometimes Public Works would say well we wanted this too but but it's not in there because the you know the Town Administrator said he we didn't agree with it so sometimes we would put that back in if they made good case sometimes we would take out something that they wanted and saying you know based on your schedule that that isn't allowed this year it's not it's not in your schedule of purchasing of equipment so that's not happening this year but so there is there's there was a lot more intricacies done in the past you know
getting into the wi and then where would it go after that board of Finance creates the budget where does it go after that have a we'd have several meetings that were open to the public and then we would vote that budget to go to to a town meeting so the board of Select is not involved at all in creation of the budget you go by the charter not really know okay thank you that helps very much me understand just to quickly jump in if you read section 400 of the Town Charter that delineates all the duties of the board of Selectmen 701d delineates the duties of the Town Administrator as far as preparing the budget for the board of Selectmen and the board of Finance final Duties are with the board of finance and that's delineated in section 802 of the charter and that will give you a clear definition of everybody's duties dictated by our Charter thank you and so what I would recommend is that you create a seven member board that would consolidate the
functions of the board of selectman and the board of finance and you still continue to have and and I know I I heard Carol say something about not a town meeting but the the the to hearing a budget hearing being more appropriate but the town needs to be the community especially the motivated individuals that come to a town U town meeting the 47 Hardy individuals that came to our last budget meeting they need to have their say and I'm I'm all for that I just think that consolidating those two roles and making it more streamlined more efficient and again having the ability to have potentially contested elections mean something in this type of in this small of a town I'm gonna I will say this and this this this probably the last thing I'm going to say on these two things but at least at this meeting I think if we are talking about actually
aligning our referendums and that is and there a risk of of that is that we need to eliminate the town meeting then I I don't think you go forward with this this change as well I think you can do one or the other but I think you can't do both that's my own take on it because if you take away the second board and the board of Finance becomes one board with the board of Selectmen then if you are also then taking away the town meeting that feels maybe like you're taking too much out of the town the town folks hands do I I don't NE I think in big bigger towns it's more accepted but I think in a small town like Andover where there's still a lot of Desire at least from from a good portion of the populace to to have their say whether they exercise it or not that's their own choice but but they want to have that option so just my own take on it okay so this is clearly an important subject that everybody has a lot of ideas on but going back to where we started on this can we reasonably assess its probability of of getting through this commission and moving on does anybody want to come out and say how they feel
yay or nay about this at this point I just say that I think that taking two separate boards each whose Duties are delineated by Charter section 400 and 800 and dumping all of those duties onto a seven member board they're putting a lot more on those seven members so I would not I am not in favor of that at this time I will stay open to hear things but I am not in favor well I I have to say I feel about the same way that Carol does I'm not convinced and I would to try to work out every detail to streamline the process within the framework that we have now rather than tearing it down
okay and just so I don't necessarily know Bob that tearing it down is a good term for what I'm recommending I'm trying to be more efficient with what of time we have available to us as volunteers and being on one of the boards understanding what one of the boards does I don't necessarily know that it's that much more work I will defer to Adrian who served on both of those boards to sit there and and tell the committee if it's that much more work the issue ends up being if it's not going to get four votes potentially get four votes please I do not want to waste my time to sit there and champion this issue so if Carol is is is a no and I would assume that there's you're a nobob let's go if there's two other people then I don't want to waste any time here I say as well because Adrian knows we are
small okay one more okay let's go Bob Jeff assumed or no I don't I you know unless you feel like you want to voice an opinion I don't think we should assume your opinion you could say you don't have it you're undecided but I don't want to assume you're no I'm 75% no at this point okay it would take a very very strong compelling convincing argument for me to change my mind how's that Adrian you were on both boards the amount of work required I don't think the amount of work required is going to go up dramatically but I think that you would say that I I would say you're probably going to add an hour to a board of selected meeting you know so whatever you're doing for a meeting now you're gonna add an hour to it I think most of the stuff that the board of board of Finance does on the day-to-day stuff you guys already did you know there's there's a good portion that you know during budget season that's a little bit different but again as we
just talked about for some for for a lot of it it can be repetitive unless you have really one board digging in so I don't know that it's that much more okay I'm gonna also vote no because I don't really want to go forward with the effort to put this in front of this Charter committee and then have it be rejected so it can come up at another Charter revision committee okay just a just to call out the the folks were having difficulty hearing the other folks in Carol's call so when you guys Karen and Pat when you guys speak up if you guys could try to come towards the microphone or the computer that would be helpful thank you Bob I think you're on mute Bob yeah the dog was barking so okay so that's a no on going to a Town Council as well as keeping the board of Select merging the board of Finance both of those Concepts we're going toh defer yes all right just since it's kind of related to that we're going to skip over one here it's been suggested that the first selectman not be separately elected but instead be selected by the board of Selectmen just like the other commissions and Boards in town thoughts on this one I I thought this was a good Jeff suggested it the other day and I've been thinking about it and it sounds like a
good one to me I mean I I've observed several several of the meetings and it it it appears that it's very much facilitation and and I think it I think it works well when that actually that group can make that election as opposed to to you know an understanding who sort of has the who has that skill set so it felt felt good to me I think I think having an elected board first selectman is a hold over from before we had a Town Administrator when we had a strong first selectman and and you know now old mayor style yeah exactly and now that we have erican place I don't think it needs to be a
separately elected position so I would agree I would also point out that if we're doing that though we may want to look at other portions of the charter that make that position the chief of police and the you know all all these other little things good point all the downstream stuff Carol and Pat and Karen anything on you from you guys on this one I agree I think it's a good idea to that way and I think we could increase number of candidates maybe two that rather than just right now it's restricted each to committee can nominate one for first select and then two look into increasing the number I mean it's five positions you know maybe increasing the number that the town committees can first and the number that our electors can vote Carol can you explain that again I didn't understand it neither did I okay so right now the town committees can put up one candidate for first select and two candidates for Board of Select which six people can be put up for five Deion they open it up and just do Board of Selectmen increase the number that the elect that the town committees can put forward and that the electors can vote I think the con oh I'm sorry Carol were you done I was yes I think the concept here was that we have five Selectmen in our town and then once
those five Selectmen are elected that board is is created and then at that point they elect the chairperson right but what I'm saying moving forward with that we may be able to increase the number of candidates that are put on the ballot because right now there are only six people being put up for five positions oh I see so positions and eight people want it Carol where is that in the charter for electing the Selectmen yeah the number because really there's eight PE there can be up to eight people put up for five positions you'd have the two because of the way the town Charter is written there's the first selectman Ray and then there's the selectman race correct and each Town committee can put up two members no it's three members yeah SE why I'm asking that's why I'm asking you where it is in the charter that says section 401 right number members no more than three members of such board shall be of the same same political it doesn't and and this is that that's why I was asking you I would like understand that yeah that's the that's the that's the minority party rule like you can only have three me three members from One party so that you'd have some minority representation I don't believe Carol that there's a limitation on the number of candidates any party can put up yes there are and that's with our election if you remember the ballot from this past November right yeah you Scott and Ann were on the Democratic line and Adrian Jeff and Paul were on
the Republican line but you see this goes into my this goes into my whole point Carol about elections and and contesting and not contesting the one election I'd call you back to Carol was the first one I ran in I think 2014 or whatever it was when we had a little bit of an uproar in the town and and Kurt Rand right and we hadt you had you had Kurt running and then you had Steve Willard and Kathy D roers but you also had Jay Lindy right Jay and Bob Burbank were petitioning candidates and they both won on the petitioning candidate long okay and and and that's what I'm asking where in the charter does it say that the Democrats and the Republicans can only put up two candidates they can only win three
seats right so I'm gonna have to look that and and and why Carol looks at that I'm just going to tell you that the reason why I put up the board board of Selectmen or the first selectman as a I'm not sure that as a five member board it will work appropriately so I'm just telling you I put that up because I would go to a seven member board but you can keep it well we could Jeff that's still viable idea I think the the if you if you think that expanding the number no see Jody it's not that it's not the number the there there are there are very good people I I would I would reference our current board very diverse group different parties all smart Common Sense do what is right for the community the the previous board was the exact same way very smart different different groups if you do a five member board Jody what you're saying is not always going to happen because politics are always being played in some way so they're being played in our Charter revision committee so you have to understand those all that that's going on and you can sit there and put up the the the first selectman or the chairperson is chosen but I don't necessarily know that it works really well with a five member group versus seven member group so so our Charter says in two 203 a a political party May nominate no more than three members one of whom shall be the designated nominee the office okay okay well then then then Carol I 100% agree that you should allow more people to run I am a big believer
in contested elections so so so Jeff did you believe if you believe that this was part of your other seven member board idea and bringing it together and you want to take this off the table and explain why no listen this is not me I I am one member of a seven member committee but you're the one who put it on the board you put might be a good idea for everybody else for me it's it's not it's no longer a good idea so you want to you want to oppose this idea I will say no but you've already had five different people that four different people that had said it's a good idea we have we have we're we're talking about the idea Jee we haven't rendered opinion of the idea per se so and just like with Carol I think you're you're you know as Adrien said with Carol I think your your thinking being in this role is something we want to hear well I just don't believe that in a five- member board it works as well as it does in a seven member board that's that was my opinion you have a larger group you have more people you have the ability to sit there and and not allow politics to totally sway everything that you do to do what is right not what is politically correct for your party yeah but to my I'll point this out so when I was on the board of Finance we purposely elected Dan Warren who was a Democrat even though the Republicans
ran the board at that point and we did that because at that point in time he was the most qualified person for that spot and we felt like he could navigate both sides of it you know so I I think there is opportunities on boards when boards are open to it to look at the candidates and say that are that are on that board and say you know we've got a bunch of Republicans on this board but maybe maybe the people that want it are too political if we have a Democrat or if we maybe you have Democrats that say hey we have a republican that'll cross the aisle let's let that person run this and and that way it'll feel more fair for everybody so I I think there's opportunity there I think it's politics will always play A Part whether listen doesn't matter who's chair of the board politics are always going to play a part
in the board on some level but I I still I personally agree with the this idea that know that that that that position is is put forward by the board to pick who's going to be the person guiding them you know I think it definitely has value on a seven member board I think it has value on any board personally okay all right let's let's move on I one of the things that just came out of that discussion as a potential action item is to expand the number of possible candidates for the board of Selectmen I'm going say I'm a no right now yeah you're going in the reverse direction we're having a pro we're having a problem both Republicans and Democrats are both having a problem putting enough candidates forward for all the positions that are open in town qualified qualified I think qualified or not qualified I still I think on both sides it's hard to get people that that that want to run you know because these positions they take time and they take energy and and you can you know I I think most people realize and say well even if I'm qualified maybe I don't have the bandwidth for this so all right well I I penciled it in I just took it out never mind something else that I just put in also while we were chatting that I've heard bandied about and while we're talking about Board of Selectmen is splitting the board of Selectmen terms right now everybody is up for election every four years the other boards and commissions have split terms is this worth considering I think staggered terms on the board
select really good idea because it gives continuity to the board the way that our Charter and that's if our Charter is if we're changing the charter on if we're not there's a chance that we're going to end up with the majority of the same select but if we do change the charter the number that are on the ballot there is a chance that we'd be using the entire board with a history of what was going on so stagger terms I do think are good on every barl even though I agree with you I agree with you that stagger terms are appropriate but you are now you are now putting so much Authority into the Democratic town committee and the Republican Town committee because there'll be three members that are in one cycle and there's two Republicans and there's one Democrat and now the Democrats put up two people and the Republicans put up one person the Republicans can only gain one seat it's it's a rigged election and it will be a rigged election I mean and it's difficult even sever member board but you can't do it on a five member board I see your point no I agree you could you we should because continuity is a huge huge piece of it well I mean the upside is that you do have continuity on the manager's position the town manager so no 100% Adrian and that that was the best thing that we did 100% it was the best but your point is valid that it does make it a lot harder for the for the other party yeah it's gonna it's gonna Carol I agree I would do it I
would do it with a seven member board when you're having four people run and three people run but if we keep minority representation which we were we're required to do it's a lot less than a seven member it's only two people from the other party in a seven member committee so you think about that you know you got five open seats and the Democrats could run five people and you know to to win the seats I mean it's just it's hard Carol it's hard on a five member board I can sit there see the math working so that you have two people in one election and you're just only focused on getting one person elected and getting one person that number of votes and it's they're gonna get they're gonna get put on they're gonna gonna get put on I hear what you're saying Jeff but if you look at
section 1013 transition of our current Charter okay and if you go and look under Zoning Board of appeal there was a trans IAL and that was a five member board yeah okay at the regular municipal election to be held in May of 99 there shall be elected three members for a term of four years and two members for a term of two years and that was to phase in this transition then it said at the regular municipal election 2001 there is a way to phase it in for the transition lause in the charter yeah but do that Carol I agree but you have to get to Seven members on that board and if you go to seven members on that board and seven members on the board of Finance you are splitting your resources
and your available candidate so far that it's counterproductive in my estimation I only humbly from having to deal with it I'm just telling you so you can do it and you guys can sit there and say that you want to have U you know the terms the terms alternate three and two three and two you're going to come back with a really difficult process because the parties are going to control even more than they currently control I wasn't saying to increase number on the board of and I was just saying to increase the number that the electors of our to and vote rather them just increase the number so there's more candidates that are able to put up I I agree I agree Carol with that it was the staggered terms concept of 32 yeah I would say right now I would say notice dagger terms if the boards stand as they are so but but but let's go to Carol's Point let's go to Carol's Point sorry Bob I agree with Carol more candidates I agree with that way more candidates why is staggered terms appropriate for some commissions and not for the board of Selectmen because as he out there's only five there's only five on the board of Selectmen there's only five on Planning and Zoning not as it's not quite as political as border of slman is exactly then when's the last time we've had a when's the last time Bob because
you've been there when's the last time you had a contested election in planning zon don't know I'm sorry it's it's rather quiet Bob I couldn't hear that what was that don't know I know I was elected to uncontested so contested yeah all right so but Carol's idea is to change I think it's to change section 203a where it says a political party May nominate no more than three members and I think what she's saying is why are we limiting to three I think you could probably eliminate the four that might be a fairer and then minority party representations is going to force you to you know you wouldn't get more than three on even if you ran four so well this is what I was saying before opening up to allow more candidates and everybody said well we can't find candidates now I I listen you were you were you were saying to expand the current Board of Selectmen to seven total me I wasn't well that's I put that I put that to think about yes because put seven in general when you were combining the two so Jeff when you said you you're meaning you Jody not you Bob is that I'm sorry I heard Bob I thought Bob meant to say that he he was thinking of expanding the current Board of Selectmen to seven members Jody's a vist yeah yeah okay my bad I'm sorry I had my eyes down I was reading the charter no that's fine that's fine okay
so can strap that move on say no to this okay I would also I would put though increased number of candidates don't we have that I had it and then I took it off oh you just you had it and you took it off why'd you take it off just like you just like that delete key p and and Karen any any input on anything we talked about I know they're over there doing planting or something I don't we're not doing planting girl got them trying to work or wind cell she needs more plants we're very shy right now okay speak up if there's something you guys wantan to in most definitely thank you all right we're almost at the end here so Town meetings adjustments does anybody know what that's about the idea is that you would align and if we're not I think we definitely should look at this especially if we're talking about not doing the Town Council idea if you adjusted the town if you adjusted when we have our not just our town meeting but I think it really that was supposed to be more about budgeting and town meeting with your referendums wasn't that though to increase the threshold of grants and things like that that Force us to go to a special meeting is what I believe that was about that's the first that's the first one dollar amounts to trigger Town meetings it's on our list okay oh town meeting adjustments
okay I think this is aligning them with when they happen but I think we we now have molded that into referendum voting that's now five is that five one two three four four car you said something at the last meeting about the town meeting versus the Board of Finance public hearing what what was what were you what were you addressing on that were you addressing that the town meeting could really be morphed into the public hearing no I was just saying if we were going to try to align Our Town budget referendum with the ram referendum them that would mean that they would have to move everything up like I was looking at the Hein Charter because they as you know did that and there's they're in the middle of April rather than the end of April with their public heing and then like I say they don't hold it Town budget meaning directly to repent so I was insane to merge the two the I'm not sure but I'm I'm pretty sure that there the does have to hold hearing yeah I think I read that that they required a hold stat right public hearing and then after the public hearing they set the budget and and Adrian you'll know this but they move at the town the town meeting the town meeting votes and then we go to referendum there's a lot of detail as to if we don't have enough people for the town meeting and well what you could do though what you could do this just hypothetical but you could
still have a town budget meeting but the town couldn't at that meeting you couldn't reject the budget but you could reduce it so you could still do the thing you do now and then move it to a town a town vote and still allow people to have a say but not necessarily reject it it's currently now if it gets rejected at a town meeting it goes back to the board of Finance you could move it to a full w a full Town vote you could still keep the town meeting in place as a way for people to line item things they disagree with the same way we do now but then once that line item is pulled it would then go to a town vote and that would kind of be the happy medium so you still keep the town meeting so that people can have a say on you know because usually people don't usually show up to these things to to add things they show up because they're mad about something that's too high you know they don't want their taxes to go up so you still give them that opportunity but then you still try to keep it on schedule and then if if go ahead no go ahead I just why can't you move why can't we and I know it's difficult but why can't we move here's the thing if you move it you don't have a way to force it if you still keep the town meeting as is in the charter then that budget can be rejected and sent back to the board of
finance and then it screws your whole schedule up going forward then your referendum doesn't work to to line it up with Hein I'm with you so under 802 in in in the section c it says additional duties it's 5c right the board of Finance shall hold at least one public hearing you know why don't we merge that public hearing and the town meeting into one activity it still doesn't prevent them from saying no and messing up your schedule I understand but without saying no so the board of Finance listens to what everybody says now the board of Finance is still in a regular session they can
go up and go down based upon what they hear in that meeting and then the board of Finance would pass that on to the referendum because the one thing that people love and tell meetings right now doesn't happen often but they love right now in in the you know in the 14 years I've been living in town the one thing I have learned is when you go to a town meeting it it makes people satiated to at least be able to have a vote about taking things out now it doesn't always happen but the fact that they can if
there's an issue if they can if they can line item something well for inst I'll give a perfect example if the Town Tractor had been at a at a at a meeting it would have probably gotten pulled but instead it was on a small little side thing and and it got approved but if it had been that town budget it probably would have been pulled out as a line item so those 46 residents would have controlled that item yep and that's why people that's why small towns are small towns we let it happen now right and it makes people happy do I agree with it all the time no but but it happens and I can tell you I can tell you though you know you know there were Town meetings that were contentious that that budget got voted down and sent back to the board of finance and I can tell you one of them was one eliminating the state trooper was proposed right so people want a say the question is how do you give it to them okay so I would sit there and and your F your take is that by going to a full wide Town boat that's the me that that's their say right well that is that is the ultimate say is you went to referendum and you allowed people to come and exercise their right to vote and personally I don't disagree with that but I I think everybody on the board would you know that's does anyone else have an opinion on
this I'm not even sure what we're discussing to be honest do you keep the town meeting right now if in order to do the adjustments right to merge them and keep on a schedule you have to eliminate the town meeting you can't just merge it you have to eliminate it or have it but not have the public have the ability to reject the budget at that point the board of Finance could make an adjustment to it but the town and maybe you have the town residents be able to make an adjustment but no matter what at the end of that meeting you would have
to structure it so that it has to go to referendum you wouldn't be able to have them say no at the town meeting to the budget and send it back to board of Finance you could arrange it so that it automatically goes back to board of finance and they have a set and and they do what they want but no matter what at the end of that town meeting a budget has to be sent to referendum full stop and that is for us to be able to hold a referendum for the town at the same time as RAM because the date for a regional referend is set by Statute that is the Tuesday following the first Monday of May so that's why when Hein redid their Charter they said that the Board of Finance shall hold a public hearing on the recommended budget not later than the third Tuesday in April and then within one week after the public hearing the board of Finance shall present a budget for vote at the annual budget referendum and that budget referendum is the so I think this is a keep because it's connected to the referendum one above right Yep this is the much more difficult us saying we want the election till it coincide with the the regional Ram referendum it's easy to say well and it makes a lot of sense to do this because with the expanded voting it's going to be a little more taxing now on the on the register of Voters and on the on the polling folks you're putting a lot on them right now with this early
voting and then if we have early voting and then a ram referendum and then our referendum it's just it's it's it's a lot of work okay so so a I would ask I'll ask everybody is it can we merge the public hearing that the board of Finance has to have and the town meeting without having the town like keep it at as an open meeting until a budget is finalized like that meeting could go on for for days it could go on for hours and the board of Finance would have the ability to adjust their budget on the flly well we do have showers in the community room the new ones do we have it in a filibuster the gym too filibuster are you suggesting like the Board of Finance has their public hearing then it adjourns to the budget meeting but we don't take a vote people motions to no I think you have the budget meeting and then it adjourns to a board of Finance meeting to then push it to referendum and and it could come back it could come back to the to the open public hearing the are we solving for this here or do we just want to say keep and move forward forward I'll vote for that yeah out the details later but fairly complicated sounds like yes well thank you is that keep I'd like to hear Carol and the ladies they haven't identified themselves as ladies I think you need say keep and move forward with that please K Mador keep and move forward
okay we have a majority of oh so now we don't want to hear from Miss Billings are you keep your keep move forward yes okay so now we we have a yeah we we skipped over one thing here just because it was kind of out of order the ordinance procedures Major versus minor again can we Define what what exactly we meant by that it's basically taking out the difference between major and minor and giving the board of Selectmen the authority to create an ordinance without having to go to a town meeting so if we were to do that I just pulled a lot of like different procedures from different SS Hein is one so they have in section 405 power of the rule for ordinances adopted by the board of Selectmen and believe it was Southington they have at least one public hearing five days of notice given by publication so we would have to I don't know if I I don't know that I would be in favor of this thing that all ordinances could be enacted by the board of Selectmen without public hearing and you'd have to vote on some I I know ordinances we have day-to-day operation I just think we have to clarify and give greater definition to minor versus major and I've been trying to research a lot of other towns how they do with my take is I I I would disagree with you Carol on that I think that you allow them you allow the board of Select me to do both but I think for clarification sake we should have in the charter in that section What towns people need to do in order to repeal
one and I'm hearing you on that but just like when I was talking about at our first meeting about town clerk elected versus appointed I said that the town clerk position is the only elected official that there is a statute to remove that elected official if they were not doing their Duty and Dennis it's a long drawn out process the same thing with a resident having to petition an ordinance to have that ordinance So based on that same thing with it being a long drawn out process to remove an elected town it's a long drawn out process for someone who may not understand the process but it but it doesn't have to be that's my point we can make the threshold lower we can make the threshold lower to push an ordinance to a or you could say you can't pass an ordinance unless it goes to a town instead of having a town meeting which I think again you don't have enough people show up to instead of
having a town meeting have it go to have it go to a you know go to your referendum on your yearly voting you know why couldn't you do you're saying to have an ordinance go and be on a ballot why not why not I I I don't object to that but I'm just saying for the board of selectman to just enact an ordinance some of the ordinances is you know the blight ordinance first one we had we had over a hundred people that showed up to that a couple years so people do show up for those but realistically they they again you're saying you know a lot of times we don't have a 100 people the majority of the times we have 40 or 30 and they're making a decision so you have less than you know you have what 1% of the the voting public is making a decision correct which is a horrible way to run a town yeah and I hear you but that's 30 people or 40 people versus five five that are elected by 3,200 not 40 very vocal people but I guess they're elected right yeah c Katherine put in here actually a pretty good point in the chat you know what is Major what is minor and actually when I when this came up that's what I was thinking it's like look if it's if it's a $50 below fine let the bard of or whatever it is $100 200 whatever let the board of selectman do it it's something that's major that the town should do so
again I'd be in favor in keeping this and trying to have someone work work something out to bring forward this group for reference A50 $50 a day fine is500 bucks a month so whatever the number is you get into the per currence or not per day sorry but you end up getting into the nuances of it do you know what I mean trying to Define Major versus minor becomes so complicated I think it's better to say you let the board of selectman do it and then you give people away if they disagree with it to repeal it and make it easier the state has a statute that says got to do 10% blah blah blah we could actually lower that that threshold and say if you get 5% of the previous voters to to sign a petition then that then that ordinance instead of going into you could have a 90-day hold and instead of it clicking at 90 days and becoming an ordinance if someone gets the petition together and they get 5% then it automatically has to go to a
townwide vote you know you can do something as simple as that okay we're not going to decide this tonight okay we're we're trying to decide whether we're going to move forward on this so and can I just add one thing Bob for Jody jod the board of Selectmen are already empowered to set fees and fines we have an ordinance on the books that allows them to do that okay thank you Carol you're welcome I think a better definition however challenging it may be a better distinction between major and minor is certainly in order I can't find anything in i Frank I frankly don't know what the difference is nobody does that's the problem and you're going to define something that nobody's going to agree with so good luck Carol one one question I thought I read somewhere where it talked about the number of pred petitioning residents needed to revoke something do you have that section for me like are you saying in the charter in the charter yeah I thought there was
like there I thought there was a a number like 5% and they had to have their signatures verified I'll find it later it's okay I'm in favor of going forward with that because again it's one of those inefficient issues okay is the way is the way that I just defined this what what we intend y That's fine all right well I I would I would sit there the board of Selectmen is already allowed to make minor ordinances it's a question of what's a major ordinance that's really what the question is it's a definition of what the board of selectman has the true authority to do without bringing it to a town meeting yeah and I think and I think the other point here is what is the right voice for the town right not having a public not sending a town meeting is okay but I I think I heard Adrien suggest is there notice or is there something that goes into you know Board of Selectmen meetings and then they're gonna vote on it you know two meetings from now or one meeting from now to give the town public speak time something like that so Section 105 of the charter Jody defines in h a minor ordinance but it's a very like gray it gives a couple of examples so I've been looking at other Town Charters to try to see how they Define Major versus minor let's all agree just to move forward on this you know it may not it may not go anywhere but somebody needs to to dive into this so it's it's keeping of moderate complexity well I like I want to hear
your definition of moderate then It Ain't Easy it ain't rocket science oh that's that's right you are almost a rocket scientist so this would probably be very very simple for you I have designed things that go into space yes thank you very much all right so we have actually gone through all of these things I I highlighted in yellow the things that we said were relatively simple the Adrian's loow hanging fruit maybe I should highlight and R the ones that we call complicated I don't know so in keeping with what I was proposing do we have anybody that wants to step up and say I want to adopt this or that you know right from the start anybody who feels strongly attached to any of these Concepts and
wants to grab them I'll work on the Ordinance one okay there we go that's one down why don't you change the colors so we can see who what belongs to who thank you wait a minute didn't mean to highlight okay I'll I'll jump in and do the dollar amounts to trigger Town meetings I mean I would suggest you reach out to Eric on that he had some starting points I think you town clerk position that's an important one I think for the amount of conversation we had about it anybody wna anybody other than Carol come on we need some volunteers I'll work on that one as well all right thank you Jeff you're going for the hard ones huh let's go you took the the one I was
going to work on away so let's move on yeah I understood here since I'm not on the board of Selectmen let me look at the concept Carol there must be something that feel strongly about I can go ahead with the referendum voting aligning this one here okay it sounds like you already had done some research on that I did do I've kind of been looking at a lot of stuff anyway okay and then so I guess that would run hand inand with the town meeting adjustments emerge for to finance budget public hearing and that so they are related I can go ahead and just grab both of those okay oh you know what I'll take I'll take the town clerk then so Jeff doesn't have two we're running out of things to assign okay Jeff you all right with that sure have had it well I'll sit there and make my my points on it Karen Mador I'll take early voting and dates I couldn't hear you she's gonna do early voting early voting and dates of Elections okay take both those okay Patty with Patty Karen and Patty together we get I didn't know we could do things as a [Laughter] group always a first is it Patty with an i or or y i or Y well maybe it's IE why are you limiting her it's a y well I guess you can put me down for that increased number of candidates relatively simple yeah okay Jody is that with a y or an i [Music] and Karen and Patty you said you do dates of Elections also assigned everything that we decided to keep so can you can you refresh the memory what's the charge for these individuals
that are assigned to each of them all righty let me bring that back on back over here okay [Music] so research present I won't say defend Ros cons maybe yeah research present do we have to build diaramas like what's going on here only just V just vend diagrams I mean he's got like six bullet points that took up a whole page he must not have been able to sleep last night I did this in 15 minutes this afternoon oh my God yeah no I think we get it research it Pros cons and present that to this group well not just that I mean okay what's being proposed how it will be implemented what any transition might look like for you know considering how things are done now what are the implications and ramifications on the rest of the charter and greater Town functioning okay I want a a real broad you know to the extent that that you can think through these things you know we should give them their their their due due diligence me no know much me just give you paper now B do a paper can you send us
your little I shouldn't say your little your actionable sheet here yeah Bob actually if you could send me that action item and sort of bulleted what the expectations are for each of us I can add it to the minutes yes I will clean this up and I will cut and paste from this and I'll send it to everybody thank you thanks PRI minut speaking you can memorialize it yes do we need to approve the previous minutes and as a side note do we want to grab the notes that Dennis made from the previous public hearing and include those before approving that's a good question I we don't have those as agenda items and we can't add those to the agenda well you have approval of minutes right we don't
actually oh well then we don't have to address it yeah we're gonna have to put it on next week's meeting motion to adjourn wait there's the the next if we're done with the the stuff that that we set out to do there is another public speak so do we have any members of the public left we have Leanne we have we have Katherine U so anybody want to say anything I do Katherine hi good meeting guys I I just I'm a little confused about things you went through these with the intent of are we going to go forward with it or not to have a discussion I feel like some things were just like the Town Council or whatever I never heard really any research done on that whether any pros and cons on that and it was just decided yeah we're not doing it and that that confuses me and the other thing that confuses me is
having Carol I disagree with the fact that car I think it's unfair to have Carol going through her own definition of what if she should be elected or appointed I think that I think of these should have researched in pros and cons and I just it seems like every time we go into it it just seems like there are so many areas within the chatter itself that if we took a look at and rewarded or reworked it it we might work out some of these issues that we have here there may be better ways in which to do things just by taking some of the definitions of that chatter and reworking them so that that's I'm like I said I'm just confused because I don't know what I I'm just not sure of what the op what what your options were here or what your objectives were here was it just to like take things off the table and if that's so fine I just I just got confused somebody can say something it's okay Leanne do you want to say anything yes about the two or three things about the ordinances I can't imagine why that the blight ordinance I
think is an excellent example I can't imagine why it would be a good idea to take away the option of having a public hearing you know leaving aside the idea that we're not sure what a major and minor ordinance is ETC I can't imagine it would be a good idea not to have public input and have people have a chance to express how they feel about ordinances because some of them can be very far-reaching and I think discussion of that ties in a little bit with discussion you've had about the town meeting this is still a very small town and I am not in favor of anything that's going to cut down on a lot of representation at public hearings and town meetings I'm I'm going to disagree with the idea that was stated tonight that it's not a good rate to run a town by having you know fewer than 100 people any given number at a town meeting we just had Memorial Day people have fought and died for our right to show up and cast a vote and there's always going to be people who can't attend a town meeting but I feel very strongly that
the people who get themselves there should be heard and should be able to cast a vote even if it still goes to referendum I don't think that's a poor way to do things there have been Town meetings that went my way so to speak on any given topic and there have been votes that didn't you know that I was in the minority of but I don't think you should take away any opportunity for people to show up again even if it's a a budget meeting that still goes to referendum I think the people who take the time to get themselves there should be at least listened to appreciate that Leanne pardon I appreciate appreciate your input Leanne I know we're not compelled to respond but Katherine I I've been thinking about what you just said and I just want to kind of go back over how we got to where we got which is Bob the meeting the meeting is recorded we we went over all this right yes let me it's it's it's fine I I don't mind I don't mind spending a minute or two just just to clarify this so nominally when the board of Selectmen owers this panel to exist there is some sort of charge we haven't been given one so the items that we've collected have been a result of informal discussion between various Town members as well as input that was solicited at the last meeting last week at the the public hearing and the the special meeting from those inputs we compiled this this input you were free to give whatever input you wanted if you felt that there was something that should have been included that was the purpose of the the public hearing as well as what you're
saying right now and if you have further input it would be great if you would put it down in writing and submit it it certainly can be you know we can certainly look at it we're not trying to lock anybody out but the flip side of that is that we have a very short time scale here just because of the way things worked out when we were imp panel and when the deadlines are in order to get things on the ballot when you work backwards and look at this has to be presented to the board of Selectmen and Y yada yada yada so with that in mind I propose that we look at all of these things and make a first pass because we know that we're not going to have enough time or enough bandwidth to give everything the proper consideration and I think we had more discussion here on some of the the details and implications than I had had envisioned and I think that was good because it allowed us to make a somewhat informed decision you know the the the the true test of of leadership is the ability to to come to a conclusive decision with incomplete incomplete information and so I I have to thank the the other members the other committee members here for their ability to think on their feet and come to some conclusions and make some decisions it's not an ideal or perfect process it's just the best that we can do give the people that we have in the time that we have available thanks Bob okay anybody else have anything that they want to add motion to adjourn
seconded all in favor I I all opposed unanimous so we are adjourned at 7:53 pm thank you all thank you thank