All right, I heard you, not right now, you're muted. But how about now? Yeah, you're good. I may have had a mute I'm not sure.
Okay,
can you talk for a minute so I can test the volume?
Yes, hello, hello. Welcome to the Gold Hill town, where we love to talk about bylaws all day long,
I can speak up to the
volume. Oh,
I remember JoJo keeps telling me that the the volume dial on the wall doesn't work. You gotta do the volume on your computer.
Okay? Sorry, that was absurdly loud, like the neighbors can hear you for sure. Wait till now we need to actually test it.
Hello, hello, hello, welcome to the Gold Hill town meeting.
That was weird. You walked away, and your voice came from over there, like it was, like you were Standing in the bathroom. Okay, I think we're good. I
that already. I just entered stuff into the chat. I That's weird. You
Do you want me to put the screen on the chickens tonight?
Are you counting them that screen? Yes, please. Now it's an oversight.
Okay, how do I make this? Can I not make it bigger so that the the website bar and the tool bars disappear? I
all kinds of new buttons in here. All right, nevermind. Okay. I
screen, Do They? You?
Your body.
For Thank You. Thank
Hello. Is this a town meeting? You are in the correct spot. It is. Let's see if we get enough to do a quorum or not. All
those chairs you got there. They're
my friends. They're still coming.
Yeah, we'll see not a lot of people responded, not really, but normally people are talking about, I mean, we've been talking by laws, so I was expecting the crowd and nothing.
Well, the agenda is pretty much the Bible, because it's a
special meeting just for battles. Oh, it is. It is, yeah,
rich to center for the social aspect.
Yeah. See all the people I'm close to Ooh
concern the projector sucking up all the dirt that's coming off of the birds over there.
Interesting.
I noticed the top of that.
Yeah, your projector looks just as bad.
How are you never played? Too. We're still in
your work, working from home. Do tell another one. You know Greg Bucha. I do know Greg, Bruce, and I'm working for him. So doing a private consultant for wind farm development. Fantastic. Guy in the chair, guy in the background, doing all that you do to work of figuring out who owns what properties and mapping the right spaces and writing some releases.
Hey, can we do the pancake breakfast? That's a school
I suppose. Do I need to attend?
Somebody has told us, or I can love,
oddly enough, I tested the key that the bar bar.
Tell me today. It has nothing to do with
anything.
It's just ready to cut all met too. Yeah,
three. Christine, refresh my memory. We need three board members and five community members
as well. We have another community member here.
I didn't hear the answer to that.
Yeah, that is the answer, okay,
and that's based on the new by law we pushed through, yeah,
and
we're gonna have a quorum do any kind of voting we would need free in fact,
also, I would really like to request that somebody, if they could, would take minutes, because I don't, I didn't think much of the of the AI stuff. It certainly didn't sound like somebody who had actually been at the meeting to me. So but,
you know, the minutes can also be edited, um, after AI spits them out, you can. I mean,
it would be so much simpler just somebody take notes. We're eventually gonna have to pay for this, AI, right? So we could certainly save the money by having a human being.
That's an option.
Okay? So
we're experimenting with the AI because
AI
makes things up when it's with you know, it's not like a real person is well,
we can always record too well.
We are recording just who's going to read it through and listen to the whole recording and then try to make sense of it and remember what happened and everything else is to see better, to have a human being there. I think we could vote before we decide that we could just go with AI. I don't think that's just an automatic option that we have to pay for. Like,
yeah, don't if we have to pay money, though we haven't had a vote.
Women of you
still need no figure, yes, if you're, if you're open to it, yeah, sorry
I forgot. Thank you. Thank you Gretchen,
pardon me. We
got it
dynamite. I can, I can now sign my name a little bit, but definitely can't enough to take minutes maybe next time, exactly,
close the arm.
Well, it's really hard and but I go in tomorrow and they're going to check and make sure it's healing. I say that because I wanted to be here and get a cast and see how it goes, I right handed. I'm not supposed to even lift a cup of tea with my hand. So it's weird. It's very weird. I
thanks for asking. I could go on around.
Who else is on the
fantasy land buddy Kelly and sweet.
So we're good. I'm
all about the reminders
I think that we get plenty progression between the minutes and it was something happened, oh, it was a dinner party.
Congratulations. You are keeping the minutes
today. I Oh, that's like generic old government I cannot stand you on that think pad. There's nothing like types easier. There's no funky things with the touch pad, okay, but what is the red button in the middle. Okay, I had this computer for five years. I'm
too scared to touch it.
Oh, I don't know what it does.
Alright? Would anyone want to copy it through what we're looking at tonight,
Dan press record
it? It just asked me if recording was okay, and I said, Yes,
let me try again. Oh, it is recording, nevermind. Okay, we're good.
Thank you. Thank you,
sir. Welcome
alright. I believe that we have enough council members and community members to go ahead and move forward with this. We were definitely hoping for a bigger crowd to discuss some of this, but let's get the discussion, the discussion, out of the way, at least, so that we know kind of where some of the community sits, and then we can go from there. So I guess we will open the meeting and correct me if I'm wrong. Gretchen, but I believe that we don't even have to do review of minutes or anything like that, because we'll cover all that at the actual meeting next month.
See, I don't really remember. I think that we usually have, but yeah, we certainly could cover it next.
Yeah. So I think what we'll do is we'll just 100% focus on bylaws tonight. We'll go ahead and skip committee reports and all of that, and cover all of that next month. I was gonna
do that. So that's perfect,
wonderful. Thank you, John, so I will then we've got, if I counted correctly, 10 articles that we're hoping to discuss and get input on. Again, this is your opportunity to bring up concerns, everything from typos to fundamental of what we're trying to do and where we're heading. Tonight is your night to voice your opinions that
we're talking about when we say red Yes, thank you.
So as always, let's keep it as polite and courteous as we can, and keep the whole meeting as efficient as we can. And without further ado, I'll pass it over to Christine.
Okay, so first I wanted to skip back towards the end. This was one that we were supposed to vote on last time, and with so much going on, we weren't able to, I was hoping to get the final vote on this. So what we have here in amendment Section C, approval proposed changes the next general membership meeting, the proposed amendments to the bylaws may be adopted by a two thirds majority global town meeting in calendars present by law changing there to be voted on section by section. If you remember that last sentence was the one that we were debating. And so this one has its end. I'm hoping we can take a final vote on this one now, yes,
yeah, they seem to be exactly the same. Oh, no, I see it's different between regular schedule than general membership. Okay,
I know we I've moved here. We approve
it. Sorry, I make a motion that we approve article eight of the amendments.
Sorry,
we, we, we've got a little bit of delay where everyone on the computer cuts out every so often. So we, we missed that motion altogether. But we have a motion by Gretchen, and then we have a second by Leslie. So all of those in favor of Article eight, section C, say, aye, aye. Hey, Chrissy, remember when we vote, we gotta stop sharing, so I can see everybody else make it nice and easy on you.
Alright? So I have seven in favor. Thank you. All right, so we're like nine in favor, All those opposed, I see zero. All right, sounds easy? Are we done? You? It All right, go ahead, Christine working on it.
We don't necessarily need to see it.
This one is a proposed addition so there's nothing already in the bylaws that discusses the membership voting procedures and how we would go about making our votes. The Gold Coast law meeting shall establish procedures and methods to ensure that only eligible members participate in election, that all members are properly notified of the election, and that the nomination and voting processes, including all relevant deadlines, are clearly communicated. Election procedures may allow for voting to take place over a period of up to three days, and are not required to occur during the annual meeting, the town council shall determine the method of voting, which may include in person, voting by written ballot, absentee voting by written ballot, voting by electronic, electronic means, or any combination of These methods. Um, when, when we were talking before I wanted to come down when we were talking about this before, let me just reshare this so I can edit there. Was pretty adamant that we that we add in person voting to the options. It wasn't meant to not be a part of that. So you can definitely in person voting, in person voting by by what, by show of hands or written ballot. Yeah. Okay, I don't know if anybody else has an issue with this particular one.
What is this considered? Is this in person? Is this? Yeah, what
we just did would be an in person show of hands voting.
So all we were trying to do was make it written in the bylaws that we could do voting digitally or remotely or whatever. Like, if there was a scenario where we wanted to send out emails and have people vote through an email, we could do that. We were just trying to open it up so that we weren't excluding anyone that we didn't.
I'm asking, how are we voting right now? Is it when I'm raising my hand over zoom, is that considered in person?
Yeah, I great question.
That was part of the gray area. We were like, does zoom count? Is in person or not? It was just, it wasn't very clear in the previous pilots. Could we just
add by web conference,
free is electronic means, I think that covers that. I think, sorry, I know we're not supposed to write these on the fly, but why don't we just say which may include any combination of,
okay, the town council should determine the method which may include, um, any combination of last one
person, oh, I missed that. Sorry, that's
okay. Yeah,
so then yeah, because we're doing a combination of in person and electronic right now,
if you, if you are looking to get, if you are looking to get written ballots back from people who are members out of district that may take more than three days
Correct? Yeah. So it was kind of set up as an option of like, hey, if we wanted to do, if we needed a vote on a grant that we wanted to go for and we didn't have time to get a meeting, but maybe we, because you would need a two week schedule out to get a special meeting. We could maybe do an email vote real quick. Hey, you got 10 days to respond. So just giving it an option. There were other ways to do this, rather than having to wait for a meeting.
Well, I would have to look at this more carefully if we could do something like that. That actually hadn't occurred to me, this was just because we have something bigger going on. People like to give the examples of the community center or road paving or just council elections. It doesn't have to just be Monday night, except the fact of vote if there's bigger, more important things. Captain saying because we could figure other ways to open it up and give more action to express
like to speak against that works fine. Just have in church now, plenty I don't see, don't see absentee ballots. I mean, that's that could get very complicated.
Yeah, I think
it works rather well for people who are available at seven o'clock on Monday nights,
yeah, one way or another, it works gone.
Yeah, I've taken
the meetings from Florida, and I'm traveling from work from Oregon multiple times to zoom. It makes it easy.
Is there
a proxy opportunity?
And
talked about that for community center in December. A lot of the community not here, so the remaining 12 going to make the decision on that we want, we want to open it up.
The goal was, did we clarify who was counted as a voter? Okay, and that was anybody in the fire district? In the District? Yeah.
Okay, closely. But we did spend a lot of
time talking about that. That's right here. Eligibility and property owners within the Goldfield Fire Protection District who are over the age of 15, senior members of the gold hill town meeting and have voting rights. Each member is entitled to cast one vote on any issue that requires a vote by the Gold Coast admin membership, regardless.
So a property may have multiple voters. You may have the owner of the property, husband, wife, and you may have a half dozen people living in the house. So that's six votes.
Correct. No that one, but I lost.
Well, I was just asking if, if a property is rented, it sounds like the owners have a vote as well as the all the tenants have a vote. Yeah.
Then the flip side to this is we're not defining how we have to vote for every election. We're laying out potential options. So if someone requests absentee ballots, we can do it, but we're not saying every election has to always support absentee ballots. That's what may does in that clause.
Well, who guesses? I mean, you either do it or you don't do it.
If someone requests one, they can get one until someone requests one. We don't have to decide.
An absentee ballot would be especially helpful for anybody who's involved in our emergency services or any emergency services, considering we don't know when a call is going to come in, we may not be available at 7pm on a Monday night because something has happened. So that could be a very good thing, just putting in my two cents there.
I mean, how the policies and procedures are written is to be determined, but that's, I think, generally going to be left up to the chair to decide how a given good would go.
I think we have to have if we're going to do something like absentee ballots, I think we have to set it up how it's going to work and when it's going to work. I don't think we can just leave it up to some one person, arbitrarily. Apparently talks about,
yeah, yeah.
Do we have a motion on the floor? I move that we accept this. We have a motion on the floor. I might have missed it. My My stuff is unstable.
Let me clarify. So one so the ones in red, we are not voting on tonight. It's simply a discussion. So at the June the evening to to vote on it, so you still have time to talk it through. So, yeah, so I'm going to attempt to keep us moving along. Does anyone else have any final thoughts they want to lay to this one? So
it's my understanding we're working under the current bylaws, which is an in person or virtual show of hands of whether we're moving forward or not on any or all of these amendments to the bylaws.
Correct? Yeah. Now technically, Rick, though, there is nothing in the bylaws that says how we vote, that's kind of the point of this is that there isn't anything there. It's just tradition on how we've done it, which, again, goes back to the the will of
the it wasn't necessary in the old days to do anything else. Where the direction these guys are steering this is creating the need to have this
wonderful Christine. Let's move on.
I Okay,
so this one is also an addition and to the record. This isn't one I particularly care about, but others in the room. So parliamentary authority and meeting procedures Currently, there's nothing that states how exactly we run our meeting. So here's what this could look like. The goal meeting shall establish procedures for conducting meetings in an orderly, inclusive manner that encourages good faith participation and respectful conduct. These procedures may be documented in writing or stated orally during a meeting in the absence of written procedures adopted by the Gold Coast on meeting the general principles of Robert's Rules of Order shall apply unless they conflict with the gold coastal meetings bylaws or any special standing votes, the chair or the facilitating town council member shall determine whether such a conflict exists and how to proceed. Um, so in your bylaws, it is recommended to have something about parliamentary authority meeting procedures, how we run our meetings again. So far, it's just been tradition that has dictated how our meetings have been run, and no one recommends that you actually say that you will abide by Robert's Rules of Order, because they are extremely detailed. You're looking at like, 600 page manual on how exactly you don't want to hold yourself to that you'll just find yourself in trouble.
We used to in this in the fire bar. We used to have this little along with the gavel for the county council chair. There was a little book of Robert rules of orders that was, like, all toned down into, you know, I didn't see it recently, so just
Okay, so I think the gist of it is following Robert's Rules of Order. Yes or no, okay, yeah.
To me, okay. So before we had we had rules about removal of a town council member, and we updated them, no major changes there, but there's nothing in the rules, in the bylaws, about the cause for removal, what exactly would warrant removal. So this is an addition. The town council member may be removed if the member is ineligible to serve for the gold hotel meeting determines that their continued service is inconsistent with the best interest of the organization. Examples of conduct that may be considered inconsistent with the organization's best interests include, but are not limited to excess, excessive unexcused absence from and I said town council meetings, I would change that personally, even though I wrote it to Gold Hill meeting, yeah, violation of organizational policies, conduct that disrepute to the organization, or disruptive behavior during meetings. I'm going to stop and edit that. I'll be right back. That's what we're trying
to avoid. I mine.
Personality to this group. Check
your personality.
Okay, this looks pretty cutting. Yes,
any thoughts on this?
Oh, there may you may want to leave just one bullet point for other. I don't know how to word it, but yeah.
Well, here you go. Best interest include, but are not limited to so give room for people's creativity.
If we have to do it, we'll know.
That's the hope. All right. Continue to see
all right. Now this is the one that I'm expecting, some discussion around authorities and responsibilities of the Goldfield town meeting, town council. So proposed addition, this is where we really keep finding ourselves in trouble, because the town council is elected to carry out all of these things, but it's never been written down anywhere. What authorities the town council actually has? What can they actually do without having to go to the meeting for a vote. So here's what we have. The town council has the authority and responsibility to make administrative and business related decisions essential to the ongoing management of the nonprofit organizational. Decisions shall be made by a quorum of town council members. These authorities and responsibilities include but are not limited to representing the gold hill town meeting and interactions with county officials, donors, community partners and other external organizations to advocate for the organization's interests and needs, overseeing website maintenance, marketing efforts and community communication, purchasing merchandise and Organizing fundraising activities, authorizing and supporting gold hotel meeting committees, establishing and enforcing the organization's policies and procedures, applying for grants, and managing grant related obligations, entering into contracts, leases or agreements necessary to advance the organization's mission, acquiring, managing, improving, encumbering or disposing of real or personal property, managing the organization's financial resources and overseeing financial transactions, securing insurance and indemnifying officers, agents, employees, independent contractors for liabilities arising from their work on behalf of the organization and taking taking any other lawful action in the best interest of the organization. Now, again, going back to our conversation, if you were with us last month, part of the thing that we need to keep in mind is that all of these decisions that get made by the gold hill town meeting are the legal responsibility of the town council members, the liability rests with the town council. And so in many ways, the authorities and responsibilities also need to rest with the town council. This is, this is kind of the big shift here that some of us are suggesting that we elect the town council members that we entrust with with some of these responsibilities and authorities, so that we can be effective. And know within our towns,
you cut out a little bit there Can you back up 20 seconds? So the liability?
Yeah, well, just that, the the liability address with the town council and so you know, with that, if you are giving that liability to the town council members, there's a certain amount of authority and responsibility that they need to have as well. So it there's nowhere that it's ever been outlined what the town council can actually has the authority to do, and so this is an attempt to get us there.
Well, I think it's a bit of an overreach. I think most of this stuff should be run. We should know what the town meeting as a whole thinks. I don't think, I don't think we've ever elected the town council to just run things. Protocol has always been that the town meeting authorizes things and the town council carries them out.
Yeah, well, to be clear, there's also nothing at this point, never has been that explains what requires a vote of the gold hill town meeting, either. So that is what would be the last round of bylaw revisions. Is like, okay, what can the town council do? What does require a vote from the Gold Hill town meeting?
Well, this basically because nothing, nothing requires a vote, the town council can just do it all. Yeah,
that's going to be where the sticking point is, right there, just a heads up, we get, we get that you guys are liable. That's absolutely clear. And I think what the part of the disconnect here is that, as I said, you know, this was started to own the school and to own this property that Roosevelt gave us. That was it. So, the direction that we're steering, this, you guys are steering this is what's creating this need for this type of structure, which is fine, but it's still, I think you're going to run into to back, you know, definite pushback, if it ever comes to a situation where the town council is, you know, making decisions on behalf of the town dream without there being some sort of conversation. Yeah, every time, yeah,
totally agree. The what we've been saying from the get go is that we're we're not trying to change anything from how it has been. So the the intent is still that all decisions are run through the town meeting. But again, there's these pieces of things that have urgency, or things that that are on a timeline that we can't we can't wait three weeks to make a decision on like, some of these grant opportunities pop up, and you've got weeks to get application, and that's not enough time to get a meeting. So I understand the hesitation. I don't know how to how to further word it, so that it's understood that that everything, if possible, should still go through the membership.
Well, and I, I fully agree with the sentiment that everything should go through the sentiment. So, yeah, I agree with Dan. I don't know how to quite word this to protect people a bit, but what I would say is things like the town cleanup pose a small but serious amount of risk if someone gets injured at the town cleanup, that could be a million dollar medical bill that Chrissy Dan Gretchen and myself will be responsible for paying if this doesn't happen, I think we need, I don't know how we make two things link, but if this doesn't happen, I think the council needs to be protected with whatever it's called the owners and board insurance or something like that.
John, I have thought here is that, what if there could be a like a three back to that three day, like a three day, hey, this is an urgent thing. Send it out to everybody. We're acting on this in three days. Here's the issue that help resolve the kind of the urgency of things coming up suddenly, I
think that's reasonable. And it's going to be like Dan had stated before, it's going to be things like a grant opportunity that, like, literally drops in their lap that they need to jump on. Right now, it's stuff like that, that if they just give people the heads up, I think that that would, you know, take it down a notch. Yeah, I agree
with which, again, is the intent. And maybe some of this gets hashed out further in the policy manual, of like, hey, when we have a decision that needs to be made that does not that, where there is not enough time to bring it before the membership, then this is what we do, so that can be definitely detailed out in the policies too. Well,
I think it really should be in the Bible. Policies are, are just sort of organizational stuff this, the bylaws are the rules that we go by.
The suggestion on worrying in this that would additional worrying. Or, you know, I mean, we can throw it, you know, running up the flagpole, but any sort of wording that anybody can come up with now to to make this work, because would be nice, because I don't know what we would say,
Yeah, and again. I mean, this is the bigger picture. So this one ties so closely to knowing what what things we can actually do without a vote. So I mean, we've had 100 examples, but again, like we have a grant, there's money sitting there. Can I do what I need to do to follow through on that grant, or does every piece of that grant need to be voted on. So, yeah, I
don't know if the town who's been supporting grants and applying for grants, and they know that you're that you're interested in grants, then that's not going to be such a problem. I mean, to write this whole thing saying the town council gets to make every single decision on its own is not the way to write it. There has to be something in there about the responsibilities for the town meeting and that carrying them out, and that all of these, these things listed are how they how they will carry them out.
Well, to Dan's point earlier. I mean, what you're asking for is an outline of circumstances under which this would apply, and if those circumstances are developed and approved in this space. I think the only thing we're arguing about is whether or not that content then sits here in a bylaw or in a policy and procedure. But I think the general agreement is that that outline of the circumstances under which this would apply makes everybody feel kind of satisfied about this, right? Well,
except that there's nothing that says that that these things be run by the town meeting.
Well, that's, that's the piece we're looking to add. So Christine, what about wording like the town council, after having a Cora may make a decision after due diligence of presenting it to the membership, something like that. Yeah. So they stated that that we've at least and even even list out what due diligence means, but showing that we have done the required steps to give the membership the opportunity, whether that is an email vote or, I guess, a two week I think it's a two week notice of a special meeting, or whatever like, maybe that's the one sentence that we can add.
Um, yeah, you know, maybe I don't feel like, I don't feel like we're ready to edit this. I feel like now that we're having this discussion in my head, at first I was thinking we could hash out what the town council can do on their own, and that will tell us what the town needs a vote on. Um, you know, when I sat down with Marcus and all to try to go through this, this was, this was a really hard part, because they kept explaining to me, legally, you can't, you can't parse this stuff,
honey, there's explaining to you, start back from where they kept explaining to you, there's, there's something
going on with the projector. It keeps cutting out. So sorry,
that's right. Again. You know, hearing from Paul, who's a lawyer would be better than hearing from me, but that's an option on Monday nights. You know, a Monday night issue here, for example. But anyway, it's with the liability piece. It's really hard to keep putting stuff back on a membership vote and and so it seems like the elected officials need to be the one to have that final authority to go ahead and execute. And it needs to be outlined who gets to do what. But anything that I tried to move over into this would be a membership vote. They kept pushing it back. The other way. Mostly, I think because of this liability issue, that the final decision needs to be on the town council, because the liability is on the town council. But what I'm thinking is we just keep working on this. Let's get through this stuff that's easier for us, that we think we can vote through in June, and then that leaves us again with that harder stuff. And really, this is the crux of it. The hard stuff is, who has the authority to do what it's been, it's been like, I don't know, at least a monthly issue for me while I've been doing this, this job is, do I have the authority to make this decision, or do I need to wait two months and ask? It's a constant issue. So I think that this is one that we can talk about what the due diligence looks like, but I think we're going to need to continue to have discussions about that.
You can hear me or not. This is Virginia. I think somewhere in here would be also good to have something about informing, right? So, for example, the thing on the county officials, I mean, that's kind of ridiculous to have a town meeting. Have to approve that one of the town council goes to a county meeting when a county commissioner asked for something, or the the parking people come up, or transportation people come up that. I mean, that's kind of absurd, in my opinion, that we have to have people that represent us. We voted for them. It's representative. And you know, if, if Dan's the chair and transportation wants to come up. He can be at that meeting, representing the whole town. But you can have something in here that says, you know, you have to be informed. They have to be informed of what went on, or, you know, it has to be publicized, or something. So I think that's another aspect of it that could be in here, that that needs to be in here. And the entering into contracts, for example, you know, the town council is going to be the one who enters into the contract, right? So the question is, how does the town meeting know about that contract and approve of that contract. So there's sort of that difference, parsing that difference between the decision to enter and the entering,
yeah, and Virginia, as you sit and think about this, if you have specific wording that you think would help us along, I mean, send it our way.
Oh. Oh, go ahead. Maggie,
first of all, I agree with Christine that I think we we try to get through a lot of these things that are easier than this particular one. I, for one, would like to go point by point and discuss each of them. I personally do not particularly agree with the purchasing of merchandise, but yes, organizing fundraiser activities, I think purchasing merch, merchandise should be voted on by the entire town council. I mean town meeting. There are a couple of other things that I think their discussion and maybe they belong here, maybe they don't, but again, I agree with Christine that we should maybe put this one aside and hash it out later. It is. I mean, a lot of these authorities and responsibilities have been done by the town council for years and years and years. Gretchen has overseen the website maintenance for years,
so that was agreed to by the town by the town meeting,
right, right, right, but that was years ago,
right? Yeah, still. I mean, they haven't rescinded it, so, yeah,
but some of these things have been done already by the by the by the council, but I do think it's really important to codify everything, as you suggest, Chris,
yeah, you're gonna run into a transparency crisis. Yeah, we don't like Yeah.
I agree, yeah. So again, we're attempting to do this so that there is 100% transparency, and get us in a position where, if the council is liable, we know what they're liable for, not liable for, and so that we know what decisions we can make without a vote, or is every decision of membership vote like we're trying to hammer out those details. So let's put this one on hold and Christine can move on to the next one.
All right committees. Purpose of the committee, the town council may establish both standing and temporary committees to support the fulfillment of its mission. Committee leaders are authorized to make strategic and financial decisions consistent with the committee's charter and the intended use of designated funds. They're responsible for maintaining accurate financial records and any other required documentation related to their programs, and for providing these materials to the chair and treasurer as needed, committee leaders shall report to the town council upon request and provide regular updates at general membership meetings. Hello.
Discuss,
discuss. The
important thing here is talking about the committee's authority to to use their designated funds for their intended use, and that they have to keep the records, and that the chair and treasurer need to be overseeing that as well. So it kind of helps to outline the authority and the oversight.
Yeah, so again, 100% transparency so that the members of the council know what's going on, and the committees now have the ability to take the money that they have that was voted toward them, and they can do what they need to do without having to get additional votes. And
then when they want more money, they can bring it up at a time meeting get more money.
Yep, exactly. All right, look at the chat real quick. Yes, it just wasn't clear. It wasn't written clearly enough so that we knew. Yeah,
this was something that was particularly important to the mountain stewards, is that it was delineated more clearly that once they have their funds, that they can go ahead and use them as as they intended to, but they don't have to come back and get a vote on everything.
Yeah, so again, this is essentially how we've always done it. It's just not written down and very clear. So we're just trying to make it a little bit more clear so that we everybody knows exactly what they're allowed to do and not allowed to do. All right, Christine, let's move on.
Creation to establish a committee, the town committee of the town council must approve a Committee Charter that includes, at a minimum, the name of the committee, a general description of its purpose, duties and scope of authority, the process for selecting community committee members and identifying leadership, a statement regarding membership eligibility, unless otherwise specified in the charter committees may include individuals who are not members of the gold hill town meeting the committee's reporting structure, including to whom it's accountable the expected duration or term of the committee, for example, standing or ad hoc and any additional guidance or direction the town council deems appropriate.
I cool.
We should have a charter document for you explaining what it is, who they are, and the relevant details.
Sounds good. I don't see any concerns, so let's keep moving. All right.
Standing committees. Standing committees of the gold hill town meeting operate with a level of autonomy distinct from other committees. They are not subject to charter amendments or disillusioned by the town council, and retain independent authority over the management of their designated funds the gold hill town meeting standing committees include the cemetery committee. So before there was just this section specifically about the cemetery committee and how it is a standing committee, but it didn't use the language of standing committee. But that's what that means, that the cemetery is a standing committee. You can add other standing committees. When Marcus was reviewing this, he did not feel like it was appropriate for mountain stewards at this time to be a standing committee. Could also be something that runs its course and isn't needed at some point,
Airlink is also a standing committee. Well,
Airlink is not because Airlink is its own separate 501, c3, who reports to us. They're a separate organization,
but we're carrying their money.
Just because we have money set aside for another nonprofit doesn't mean that they are a standing committee. We could designate money to the school or the fire department or the museum or anybody else, and that doesn't make us a standing committee where report being there the school air link would be a reporting affiliated Association.
Yeah. I mean, we are essentially just the fiscal agent for Airlink.
They have their own bank accounts. We are not a fiscal agent. We just as a as an organization, had decided that we would that money aside for that organization to use when they need it.
All right. Any other thoughts on standing committees?
All right, let's continue. Okay, financial oversight and budget adjustments, proposed changes. And then also notice that in the red at the top financials, it's a title change up there, all checks, drafts, notes and similar financial instruments shall be signed and executed on behalf of the gold hill town meeting by town council members who are authorized signatories of the corporation. Once the annual budget has been approved, any adjustments to a committee's allocated funds from the town's general budget shall require approval from the relevant committee chair. Committees may spend their designated funds at their discretion, provided expenditures aligned with the committee stated mission and purpose. The Treasurer is authorized to adjust non committee operating budget allocations as necessary to meet the evolving needs of conducting Gold Hill town meeting business. So this protects, say, the cemetery committee or any other committee, from their money getting moved to fill another hole somewhere else. But it also allows the treasurer, as bills increase from year to year, to move around the rest of the money to help pay the bills. So
all right, I don't see any concerns there. So let's keep moving
deposits. All funds in the Gold Hill town meeting shall be deposited into accounts held at bank stress companies or other financial institutions designated by the town council.
All right, go ahead
and gifts. The town council may accept contributions grant gifts or requests on behalf of the corporation. All grants awarded to the Gold Hill town meeting must be approved by the town council and deposited into the gold hill town meetings account. The treasurer, in collaboration with the designated grant executor, shall oversee the management of grant funds, including spending and required reporting. Donations to the gold hotel meeting shall be allocated to specific committees or budget line items according to your stated intent on designated donations shall be accepted and used for general operating expenses.
So here's another piece, just to point out, previously, let's say town council was in a bind. They went and applied for a grant without notifying membership, because of a timeline, even if we got that grant, this section would require us to bring it back to the membership before accepting that grant. So again, there's we're trying desperately to write in the transparency and get the language so that we all know what we're doing. So for those of you that again, are concerned about the transparency, I would just want to point out that we're we are trying to write it in a way so that, so that nothing changes. Everything still works as it is, and we know what we're allowed to do. Are there any other thoughts on that one?
Just to comment, I like that the town council has to approve any money coming in, because there could be the case where, I don't know, some Corporation says, Hey, we want to give you this money, but there's strings attached, and we don't want the strings. Same thing could happen in a grant. You have to do this certain thing, and all of a sudden that doesn't work for the community or something. So I like having that, that check, that the town council has to look over it again,
to clarify, the town council and the membership have to look over it again. No, no,
let's read it. The Town Council. May
I just said, Town Council? Yeah,
the town council may accept contributions grants. We have serve requests on behalf of the corporation. All grants awarded to the Gold Hill town meeting must be approved by the town council and deposited into the gold hill town meeting account. So I can't take it a grant and put it into my own account and manage it on my on the side, the Treasurer in collaboration with the designated grant executor. So say Virginia gets a big forestry grant, so me, along with Virginia, will oversee the management of the grant funds, including the spending and required reporting, so we know who's overseeing the spending, who is doing the reporting, and that there's a check so that there's more than one person with their eyes on it, making sure that the spending and the reporting is right. And then the donations that come in, if somebody is, if the, if the if the bike group comes in and they really want to donate to, you know, community relief, then that money goes to community relief. But if you put $20 in the jar at the cookie party, it's probably just going to go to general operating expenses so that we can share bills. So we want to make sure that we're honoring the donors wishes, but also making sure that we give ourselves flexibility with the Rest
of it.
That's all of
them. Are you sure we didn't miss anything?
Just one hard one that nobody wants,
right? Well, you know what? Again, that hard one, it's a hard one period that's that's just a hard one. So I think we can probably, in June, get the rest of these through, and then we just have the tricky stuff to deal with. And you know what? It's tricky, and we'll figure it out.
Is there anything else we want to say about those trippy, tricky topics for people to think about over the next month and a half, two months, 40, yeah,
you know, my opinion, for what it's worth, that, you know, I think that the fire department has a pretty good model. I know that fire department has its own issues, and I know I'm not privy to all of it, because I'm not in the mix of it. But, you know, they, they elect their their directors, their board, and they trust them to lead and carry out the duties of the organization. They don't have to go to the fire department and ask for a vote every time they want to, you know, make any kind of decision that's that's organizational or or business related. Um, move more to a representative democracy again, if, if you're going to elect people to be town council members, and we have to put in all this time and effort like, give us, give us some reasonable level of authority to actually make some decisions.
Well, it's a big difference with, with, with the fire department, it's a state agency, and it has tax money to
go, a
lot of tax money, and they, they are required to do that stuff, and, and, and that's all that whole, their whole organization is written up in state law has evolved over the years since
no but I think you would be actually a harder press to find an example of an organization that runs like Howard does New Hampshire.
New Hampshire, does it? They're running exactly the way ours is.
Yeah, but again, like we're not trying to move toward a state government by any stretch of the imagination, but we are trying to get a little bit closer to that, as if, if the town meeting decides to continue to go forward with grants in order to support the community. Then with those larger amounts of money, we need to be able to operate a little bit more like a government than a platform for discussion. So again, it's not we're not trying to just steamroll this through. We want to make sure that the whole membership is on board with this transition, and if we're not, then, then we have our answers. But as you can see from tonight, we're struggling to get the whole membership to even weigh in. So that's the piece I want people to think about. Like, are we do we want to go for these bigger grants, or do we not like that's that's really what some of this boils down to. But if we're not going to, not going to change the bylaws and not going to change the insurance and the liability and all of those pieces, then it becomes really dangerous to keep going for grants. So it's all kind of hand in hand. We've talked about community center for how many years now? Well, it's, it's not going to happen unless we make a shift here where there's some liability and some somebody that has some authority, that isn't going to take a nine month process to get through. So again, it's, it's kind of a back to this bigger discussion of where, where does everybody want to go? And then that's, that's where we go. So I encourage you to call your neighbors and call your friends and have everybody show up, because we want to make sure that everybody's on board.
Yeah. And Dan, can I reflect back to you, and I'm understanding, effectively, the town council needs a very clear scope of practice. Just to put it into my own EMS terms, you guys need a scope of practice, and you don't have one that leaves things dangerously ambiguous,
that that was very well put, okay,
just making sure I understand and hoping everybody else understands that as well. Alright,
so we're going to leave that there. So we will bring all of these to the meeting. Let's see here, June something. June 9, 7pm, we'll do in person and zoom as well. Again, I encourage you to call your neighbors and get everybody here so we can, we can have an adequate showing of the membership so that we truly know where everybody's at with this. So I think the only thing we need for this evening is a motion to call it a night. No. Greg Rick says, No, I move
that this meeting be adjourned.
I second, wonderful.
All right, as always, you guys, we really appreciate you taking the time to talk some of this through. I know their change is hard, and we'll just have to see where this organization goes or where it doesn't go so everyone have a great evening. We'll talk to you all soon. Bye.
