November 17, 2008 Select Board Meeting
- CALL TO ORDER
- ATTENDANCE
- OPENING REMARKS/ANNOUNCEMENTS
- PUBLIC COMMENT
- SELECT BOARD'S ACTION
- Update on Article 11 - Larch Hill
- Update on Town Manager Evaluation
- Update on Article 9, Part C - Recreation Space Requirement
- Update on Article 10 - Professional Office Uses in LI District
- Approval of Minutes
- Farmers Market Extension
- Approval of Select Board's Annual Report
- CLOSING REMARKS
- ADJOURNMENT
- Post-Mortem
Select Board Meeting - November 17, 2008
Music Room,
Meeting called to order by Mr. Weiss at 6:32 p.m.
Present: Gerry
Weiss, Diana Stein, Alisa Brewer, Aaron Hayden, Stephanie O'Keeffe
Absent: (none)
Present: Town Manger Larry Shaffer
Town Staff: David Ziomek, Jonathan
Tucker; Town Counsel Shirin Everett
Members of the public: Walter Wolnik,
Julie Johnson, Jonathan O'Keeffe, Rob Kusner, Hilda Greenbaum
There were no opening remarks or announcements.
Walter Wolnik said that ACTV will soon have on-demand video, including Select Board meetings. He recommended that agendas or minutes be annotated in a way to indicate the start times of different topics, to assist those watching the online video. He also suggested that links to recent Select Board budget meeting videos be included on the Budget Process page on the Town web site.
Update on Article 11 - Larch Hill
Mr. Hayden disclosed that he is on the Hitchcock Center
Board and Ms. Stein said she had been active in the Center's founding; both
said these did not represent financial conflicts or affect their
objectivity. Mr. Shaffer said that
compensation will be expected by the State as part of the land transfer and
lease action sought under Article 11.
The
Action: No vote was taken. The October 27th vote in support of the
article stands.
Update on Town Manager Evaluation
Mr. Weiss suggested releasing each Select Board member's
Town Manager evaluation form to the public in its entirety. He said that seemed preferable to him cutting
and pasting all the elements of each one into a single composite document. He said that the forms could be released with
or without Select Board members' names.
It was suggested that he try to summarize any broad themes in a cover
document, to try to unify and add value to the separate documents. Members were willing to have the full
documents released, and to have their names on them. Concern was expressed about whether
former-Select Board member Anne Awad would be willing to have her name on hers,
and if not, how that might compel the rest of the Select Board. Mr. Weiss said he would check with her. There was discussion about the logistics of
releasing the documents, the nature of the agenda item to be planned for that
topic, and how consideration of next year's goals and expectations might
occur. Those issues were not resolved.
Action: It was agreed that full evaluation documents
would be released; members' names would be included if Ms. Awad concurred; and
that Mr. Weiss would consider creating a composite summary of common themes
from the individual evaluations.
Update on Article 9, Part C - Recreation Space Requirement
Jonathan O'Keeffe said that the Planning Board would ask
to have Part C of Article 9 (a proposal to require recreation space for some
types of multi-unit residential development) referred back to itself, following
last week's referral back of parts A, B and D.
The primary reason was that Part C was not intended to stand alone, and
had some dependence on language in other parts of the article. He could not predict when a revised article
on the issue might come back to Town Meeting, and said it would be considered
among other Planning Board priorities.
VOTED unanimously to support
referring Part C of Article 9 back to the Planning Board.
Update on Article 10 - Professional Office Uses in LI District
Mr. Weiss said that Town Meeting members had approached
him with possible amendments to the article, seeking to have it apply only to
the Light Industrial parcel off
Action: No action taken.
VOTED 4 in favor, 1 abstention (Hayden,) with a single vote to approve the minutes of the October 27, 2008 and November 3, 2008 Select Board meetings, as amended. Mr. Hayden abstained because he was not yet on the Select Board as of those meetings.
VOTED unanimously to approve the minutes of the November 10, 2008 Select Board meeting.
Mr. Shaffer had distributed a memo earlier in the day
regarding the request by the Farmers Market to extend to next weekend. The memo indicated support from the Police
Chief, the DPW Superintendent and the Chamber of Commerce. Appreciation was expressed for Mr. Shaffer's
efforts in collecting and presenting these details, and doing so on short
notice.
VOTED unanimously to approve the
following motion: Consistent with the
Town Act, Chapter 216 of the Acts of 2001, in particular, Section 3.2244
Regulation of public ways - The Select Board shall control and regulate the
public ways, the Select Board hereby authorizes the use of the Spring Street
parking lot and public way, from Boltwood Avenue to South Pleasant Street, on
Saturday, November 22, 2008 from sunrise to 2:00 p.m. for use by the Amherst Farmers
Market.
Approval of Select Board's Annual Report
Appreciation was expressed to the Select Board members
for their assistance and to the Chair for putting the report together.
VOTED 4 in favor, 1 abstention
(Hayden,) to accept the FY 2008 Select Board Annual Report.
Mr. Shaffer said that a photographer would be at the
November 24th meeting to take individual and group photos of the Select Board
for Town Hall. He said it is important
for history, and recommended that such photos happen after each election. All were advised to come prepared to be
photographed.
No action taken.
VOTED unanimously to adjourn the open meeting at 7:26 p.m.
-----------------------------------------------
• Best news I've heard lately: on-demand meeting video is coming soon! I think that will be incredibly useful and popular, and Walter's suggestion about noting the start times of the discussion on an annotated agenda is excellent. That will work very well on this site; I'm not sure how it will work on the Town site, but we'll figure it out.
• I think the
• I'm very happy that each SBer's complete Town Manager Evaluation form will be released (and I've since learned from Gerry that Anne is fine with having her name on it, so that part is settled too.) I think people should know our thoughts on his performance. The sticky question is how to interpret one "Select Board Evaluation" from among the five "Select Board Member Evaluations." Imagine five people having entirely different and sometimes contradictory ratings and comments. (Who knows - you might not have to imagine for long - that may be exactly what we have. Only Gerry has seen them all, and I don't know when they will be made public.) What is the Town Manager supposed to do with that? This whole evaluation process has been a massive puzzle. Still plenty of room for improvement, but it felt like we made some progress.
• Article 10 takes the weirdness award for this Town Meeting. First, there's all this behind-the-scenes stuff going on with unidentified Town Meeting members seeking SB Chair assistance to make their un-submitted "potential" amendment to the article pass muster with Town Counsel - excuse me?!? Then there was Denise Barberet's presentation of the article on behalf of the Planning Board - it's a PB article: you know, one that body brought forth and supports - which veered off into sabotage, and was the second most outrageous thing I have witnessed at Town Meeting. (Yes Rob, T-Shirtgate still holds the prize.) Some wacky machinations around that article. Which passed, unadulterated, BTW.
• Picture Day!
The SB is having official pictures taken before Monday's meeting. I think the following week we get our visages
carved into