Hampden council hears police briefing on ICE limits, weighs civility pledge

[0:01] Eric Jarvi: yeah thank [0:12] Matthew LaChance: you i'd like to call to order the meeting of august 24th 2026 the town council workshop we don't have a planning in okay we have no unfinished business also jacobus has an announcement he'd like to make about some papers that he passed out [0:40] Walter Jakubas: tonight yes it's not part of the agenda but it's he'd like just like to yes i just wanted to alert council and have it on record that i passed out a document that i prepared and i would like to request consideration from council that we discuss whether hamden should initiate an amendment to the subdivision ordinance which would establish an intermediate local appeal for final planning board subdivision decisions and this local this intermediate local appeal would be done by the Board of appeals and it would be before the judicial review by the Superior Court and this document kind of explains it and I think I'll just leave it at that rather than going to more of an explanation but hopefully we can discuss this at one of our next committee meeting yeah thank you new business we [1:50] Matthew LaChance: have chief Bailey's response to counsel inquiries on any ice actions in Hamden verbal presentation only thank you sir how [2:03] Chief Bailey: are you folks thank you for the invitation I want to preface my comments tonight and I'll try to make them summarized and succinct and answer as many questions that I possibly can related to this topic but I do have to preface my comments with I am NOT an expert on civil immigration law nor am I an expert on criminal law to be honest with you but i'm certainly i'm certainly not an expert on civil immigration law so if you ask me a lot of questions associated with visas and green cards and that kind of thing i'd have to get back to you so i'm just going to preface that but what i'm here tonight to talk about primarily i believe the request was how does the Hamden Police Department respond to a request by Customs and Immigration Enforcement to assist them in some way on activity in the town of Hamden. I think is really what you folks want to know tonight. So I'm going to go down through our response. I'm going to talk a little bit about the statute that guides our decisions. There's a state law, and I'm going to get into that in a few minutes, that will guide our decisions on how we handle those types of interactions. And, again, I'll do the best I can to answer as many questions as you have. If I can't answer them, I promise you I will not try to say something that I don't know is true. I'll get back to you, I promise you I will do that. So just to go over where, how we got to where we are today, LD 1971 was passed by the legislature in June of 2025. This was an act to protect workers in the state by clarifying the relationship of state and local law enforcement agencies with federal authorities, particularly Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The law, it became law January 11th of 2026, and it went unsigned by the governor. At the same time, a 2011 executive order by the previous administration was repealed, and that executive order is actually directly contrary to the new law that encouraged increased cooperation with federal immigration authorities. So that was repealed. The law went into effect July 29th of 2026. It was considered non-emergency legislation, so it actually went into effect 90 days after the end of the legislative session. So really what the law does is it clarifies the boundaries that exist between state and local law enforcement in federal civil immigration authorities. It's really what it does. It draws a line, delineates between civil law, which is primarily what we're talking about when you talk about immigration enforcement, and criminal law, and I'll get into some of the specifics we can enforce and assist with criminal types of investigations, whether it's regardless of what agency we're working be with, a federal FBI, DEA, ICE, or whomever. We can assist and work with, for criminal matters, human trafficking, drug enforcement, other types of identity theft, those types of crimes. So, not to jump ahead too far, but to talk about what we've done since the law went into effect, just so you folks understand what we've done, the Hamden Police Department is we implemented a policy that is consistent with the law that went into effect and went out and was published to our policy platform in June or so in order to have the officers sign off on that policy, read it, and sign off on it. Soon after that, we also had a staff meeting where we discussed the policy. We also required the officers to have training in the law, and that's through our DERGO training platform. So our officers are very clear as to what the policy is, what the statute is, what they can do and what they can't do. So that is made clear as of the time that the law went into effect. So I'm going to give you a little bit of a summary as to what it means for us, what we can do and what we can't do. And again, I'll do the best I can to describe some of the prohibited activities and then some of the acceptable activities when it comes to in interacting with ICE. So I'll go into the prohibited activities first. We are prohibited from inquiring into a person's immigration status or detaining a person based upon a hold request. So if ICE contacts the Hampden Police Department because they find out that we have somebody, a target that they're interested in, we have them under arrest and they want us to turn them over. They want us to hold them longer than we're legally allowed to do. We cannot do that. We cannot turn them over if they have an immigration or civil warrant. We can't act upon that. We can't turn them over. We can't turn anybody over unless there's a judicial warrant. So the difference is a hold request and a immigration detainer, a civil administrative warrant, those are all civil, those are just civil warrants and those are not signed by a judge, those are not anything that's endorsed by a court, those are like internal documents that our, you know, a supervisor within Homeland Security or within their department would sign off that they want this probable cause to believe that they violated civil immigration law. Those are not supported, at least initially, those are not supported by criminal law and signed by a judge through a court system. So that's prohibited. There is an exception that has about six stipulations in it as it relates to hold request, but primarily we are not able to act upon a hold request or hold a person longer than the law allows us, which is 48 hours. We cannot participate in an arrest based on an administrative hold request. Can't assist them with an arrest. We can't provide release from custody dates or times, or we can't say, we're not, the bail commissioner's on his way over and getting ready to bail him out. They're walking in the door now. We can't get into that, can't talk about that. We can't provide non-public personal information. So if an ICE agent calls us and says, our target is this person, and we know they live in Hamden somewhere, and we just need some help we can't provide addresses and phone numbers we can't go into our database type their name in and you know maybe they've had complaints you know what we have we have a lot of personal information that's in our database we cannot provide that we can't place an officer under the supervision of a federal agency for immigration enforcement purposes we can 't have an MOU that puts one of our officers on loan to ICE to enforce immigration law. MOU. Memorandum of Understanding. Memorandum of Understanding. Okay. Yeah, those came out. There was, before this law went into effect, there was some inquiries from Homeland Security to have MOUs with police departments to assist them in this process. There was one or two police departments in the state that did it, and then one or two retracted I believe, so I don't know that there's not any now because of the law prohibits it, but there were a few I think that did that initially. We cannot use an immigration officer as an interpreter, so if we had somebody that was from, that had a non-English language that we would need an interpreter for. We found out there's an ICE agent kicking around that knows three or four different languages. We can't have them come in and interpret for us. We can't transfer a person to an immigration officer without a valid judicial criminal warrant. I kind of alluded to that earlier. We can't provide office space and we can't allow them to do their business in the Hamden Police Department. So those are some of the prohibited activities. Some of the permitted activities. We can share and receive information regarding immigration status. They can call us and tell us what they want. We could inquire from them and there are a couple of occasions, there's certain, and again I'm digging in a little bit on the immigration law, but there's certain u and t visas that crime victims can obtain if they're a crime victim, whether it's you know involved in criminal activity as a victim or involved in maybe sex trafficking as a victim, where they may ask us to sign documents to support their visa. We could communicate with immigration to kind of verify information and whatnot. We can investigate, detain under state and federal law for criminal offenses during duties unrelated to immigration enforcement. Again, I gave you some examples earlier, human trafficking and identity theft and all of those things. We can investigate, take enforcement action and detained for illegal entry into the once they've been deported only if there's again there's stipulations only if there's and I don't want to confuse you too much but only if there's a prior conviction for an aggravated felony it was detected and it was detected during unrelated duties but we still need a court order to transfer them over to ICE we can share public criminal history record information so things that are criminal history record information that's essentially available to the public they could get it themselves we could actually provide that we can participate in joint task force if it's not immigration related terrorism drug trafficking human trafficking we gave you a few examples there so that's kind of an overview of what we can do what we can't do a little bit about the law how it came into effect I think at this point I'll ask if there's any questions about anything that I've [15:06] Matthew LaChance: Said so says the public you can do that but we'll let the public ask questions for us anybody sure nothing council [15:17] Dennis Marble: Go ahead Dennis Chief I'm not just interested in general how's it been I mean have our officers been not put in any awkward positions do you how did they respond to the law and the training I mean how we do that you know [15:39] Chief Bailey: So I think there's always some education that has to be done when we tell police officers that you can't cooperate with another law enforcement agency. So there's a learning curve there, 's discussions and education, but one of the things that I can say to you today is that we are committed to enforcing the law and the state of Maine has spoken as to what that law is as it relates to our relationship with immigration customs and enforcement as it relates to civil law and but we have to talk to our people about And we have to educate and provide training and guidance and to help put it in perspective a little bit. But to answer part of your question, there has not, to my knowledge, been a circumstance where we've had to be a part of anything related to immigration. I've been here a long time, so I can't say years and years past. But since this has been the topic of the hour, we have not been put into awkward situations yet. Do we cooperate and communicate with our federal partners, other federal partners? The FBI was in town not that long ago on looking for someone with a criminal warrant. We've worked with the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency a couple years ago. Ago, we had a pretty significant drug situation in town where we were working with them and were able to arrest some people for drug trafficking. I think it was crack cocaine and fentanyl and guns and money and all that. So we do work with our federal partners. ATF, we work with them at times. But we've come to a place when it comes to immigration and the civil whole portion of that where we have to make sure we abide by the law and our officers have accepted that they understand it and we have clear guidance based on policy discussions training on how where to react if the circumstances arise yes [18:21] Walter Jakubas: Please go ahead Chief Bailey. One of the scenarios that I kind of envision where Hammond police might come about involved and I'm just kind of curious whether this would be allowed underneath the law would be if ICE were in town and there were protesters as we've seen in many cities protesting their presence and I could imagine that Hammond police would be involved in crowd control and you wouldn't know whether it was immigration or criminal activity probably or a combination of both you know at the time I assume that 's you would you could still do that right yeah that [19:10] Chief Bailey: Certainly could happen. We've had I think trying to remember a few of the circumstances but I we were a little bit concerned about that when the FBI was in town with their SUVs that there was gonna be some thought that ICE was in town and it's on our minds for sure. But to the answer your question, yes, I think that could happen. And we certainly would be called probably to make sure number one, people can exercise their First Amendment right to protest within reason, to ensure the safety, you know, to ensure that people have a right to speak. We would make sure that we maintain that. We're also certainly not going to allow protesters to become violent toward anybody, whether it's another citizen or whether it's an ICE officer. We're not going to allow that. Now we're not going to participate in the arrest and the enforcement of the civil law, but we're certainly not going to allow them to get run over by cars or hit with objects or whatever. So we're going to maintain order, but we're not going to participate in what they're working on. That answers your question. Yes, thank you. Yeah. [20:38] Eric Jarvi: But Councilor Jacob is kind of hit on this a little bit. We've got into it. But what I was thinking about is if ICE were to come to town and we were to have some kind of civil interaction, people wanted to protest or whatever, knowing the people in Hamden, I wasn't worried about violence on the part of people of Hamden towards ICE. But I think we have seen multiple examples and I'll just state it from my perspective and what's been on TV, violence on the part of ICE and federal officers towards U.S. citizens, and that concerns me greatly. Do you have the ability and or the desire, I'm putting you on the spot here, to interact with these folks to let them know, whether it's verbally or pronounced, if it has to be to let them know that 's not appropriate. Because certainly, we have multiple examples across this nation, Minneapolis and Aaron Biddeford, that has gone very wrong. And I personally think those things are ultimately going to go down review and stuff, but obviously much better to educate ICE officers ahead of time to make this stuff not happen, and you know whatever we can do locally to make it not happen. Also I realize that's an open-ended question, but that's the thing that concerns me the most, and I, from what I've read in the paper, and the ICE officer who killed the person, immigrant in Biddeford, poorly trained, apparently psychiatric issues, not picked up in screening, you know, our, these folks has, I think by definition has failed. So what, how are we in what kind of place are we in to respond to that? Because I don't, now that it's happened three times, I you know, other times that didn't make it to national prominence, you know, how are we gonna drop this in the future? There's a lot there in that question, yes. [23:32] Chief Bailey: I'll do the best I can to answer it truthfully. I don't have any personal information about the Biddeford situation. All I know is what you folks know. I don't have any inside information. I've read the news reports and I do know that there appears to be, I know there's a state investigation. The Attorney General's office is involved. All, they investigate all law enforcement related deaths. I get the impression, I don't know, that there may be some cooperation to some degree between the state of Maine and the federal authorities. I don't know that. It just feels like the state of Maine is able to do the work that they need to do in order to determine whether that was a justified shooting or not. So I don't have any specific information related to that. But what I will tell you is this and I, we have, I hope this is enough of an answer for you, we have policies in place that dictate how we respond in situations that require force of some kind. We have a use of force policy, we have a de-escalation policy, we have within those policies there are certain stipulations that are requirements on, again, the policies are in depth and I can certainly, if you folks ever would like a copy of it, you're welcome to it, that dictate how we use force and how we report force and what our responsibilities are when we use force and a few of those that I think pertain to your question and many of these came to fruition since the George Floyd incident in 2020 that there were not only changes in the state of Maine which they've made some significant changes quickly but there were also changes across the federal government through the Department of Justice as it relates to how federal officers are to respond in use of force situations and the ones that I'm going to Hone in on is the duty to intervene and the duty to report. Those, the duty to intervene, if you have knowledge or you see or you have knowledge that a police officer is using an unreasonable or unnecessary level of force, that is what would be considered a substantial deviation from what known standards are. That's been in place since, I think there was a circuit court and I don't know if it was the Fifth Circuit, whatever, but since the 70s that's been in play. That's [26:45] Matthew LaChance: That's what police officers are supposed to have done. [26:48] Chief Bailey: It ramped up since the George Floyd scenario where policy started changing and those started to get embedded into policies, which included the state of Maine. And fortunately in the state of Maine, for people that live in the state, the Maine Criminal Justice Academy, the board, they do a great job of staying on top of what's going on across the country and making changes that need to be made. I'm not saying I agree with every single thing that comes out, but they're certainly, they stay on top of big issues, and this is a big issue. So there were some changes that were made soon after the George Floyd scenario that required policies to embed duty to intervene, duty to report. And what that means is, as I said earlier, is you have a duty to do something to protect the rights of the person that is being unnecessarily abused or hurt in some way. Now, that doesn't have to be force. It could be words. It could be whatever the case may be. And I think if you remember correctly with the George Floyd scenario, there was the allegations that there was force being used and four or five officers were standing around kind of watching it happen. So our policy says that we have a duty to intervene. Again, it doesn't necessarily mean it's physical. And we have a duty to report that to a supervisor if you see that happen. That's in play. And I believe that's in play at the federal level as well. So, I don't know if that answers your question or not. To go along with those policies, did I say de-escalation policy? [28:51] Eric Jarvi: No, you mentioned it earlier. Okay. [28:56] Chief Bailey: So, if our officers saw a substantial abuse of power, beyond what's reasonable, beyond any imaginable scenario that you could articulate would be okay, then our officers would speak up and would report it. So what that looks like, I don't know what that necessarily would look like because it depends on the circumstances. Are we going to be in a position to where, you know, possibly, I suppose, if we're out with some, you know, people that are concerned about what's happening and we saw something egregious but our policy is pretty clear as to what our responsibilities are and again these are responsibilities that are not just for local officers. I've been doing some research prior to this presentation. I've seen some of this that's federally expected as well so to talk a little bit and I'll just to reassure the council of how we operate when an officer uses force of any kind other than compliant handcuffing, you know, handcuffing if someone, if we have to use force put someone to the ground or use the taser or even threaten to use our firearm or threaten to use our taser we have to fill out a use of force report. That use of force report is the narrative that includes all the information associated with that incident including any witness officers that were there maybe they didn't imply that apply the force but they were there they have to do a report that gets submitted to the supervisor that's working. They look it over they sign off on it whether it's in compliance or not that goes to the deputy police chief. He looks at the report he'll pull the video take a look at it and then it comes to me and I sign off on so there's essentially depending on the circumstances now the deputy chief might be the supervisor so it might be two signatures but many times there's three different looks at that situation and I can tell you that our officers do a phenomenal job of de-escalation. They use force only when it's necessary. I'm very proud of how they interact with our citizens and how they deal with situations that are volatile and we've had them recently where officers are on a traffic stop and couldn't you know passenger in the driver of being uncooperative and the radio trying to get to the radio and the radio didn't hit the tower and you know this and we have some high stress scenarios at times you know we have a low crime rate but we there are times when we have things that go on that in our officers do a Good job, they really do. And then so we get those reports, we sign off on them, and then yearly we sit down, all of the supervisors we sit down, and we go through every one of those use of forceful reports, and we look at them through the lens of was a training, is their policy changes that we should look at to try to even lower the number that we may have to use. So there's a lot of looks at it, and we pay attention to what's going on with our officers. Did I answer your question? Yes, one [33:14] Walter Jakubas: of the things that's confusing to me is this idea that many times federal law supersedes state law, and I'm not sure how that plays out when it comes to enforcement. So you're saying, you know, you gave examples of intervening in reporting. If you were to enter, if an officer was to intervene when they saw a situation that they thought should stop, I'm thinking couldn't the federal officers say that this is none of your business, go away? And I mean, so I'm just kind of wondering how effective local law enforcement could actually be in protecting people. That's [34:16] Chief Bailey: a tough question, it really is. I don't know, and again, the intervene part doesn't necessarily mean physical. It's really hard to say how that would end up. It really would. If we shouted, you know, hey, back off, person, whether they listen to us, I don't know. But our policy in our law says that we can't just ignore it, we can't do, you know, what was alleged to the officers in the George Floyd case, just sitting back and watching things happen. What it, what the intervention looks like, it's going to depend on the circumstances. I'd [35:09] Walter Jakubas: imagine that would be really frustrating. I think it would be, server, that you're serving, trying to serve and protect people, and I [35:20] Chief Bailey: just hope that our officers don't have to be put into that position. Just [35:26] Dennis Marble: a comment, and I can't speak for anybody but myself, but suspect this attraction to what I'm going to say, we all get in trouble when we start dealing in absolutes. You know, all federal enforcement is bad, you know, all that kind of nonsense, it's way more layered and textured than that. But I will say I think that with almost no exceptions, there isn't a person living or working in the town of Hamden that doesn't have clear respect and appreciation for your force, and how Joe led it, how you've continued to lead it. So if there's any bias at all, it would be a concern that your guys and women would be put in potentially compromising positions by, frankly, a force that is not, has shown it is not as well-trained, equipped, quick and appropriate as our own local officers are. So I think the sentiment of the council is to say thank you for what you've been doing, thank you, and to continue to support that. We appreciate. [36:39] Chief Bailey: That we appreciate the support, and the officers know that they're supported. They know the town manager, and they know the council supports them, all depart, all of our departments do, code, EMS, fire, police, and we appreciate that, and you show that in many ways. And but these are difficult situations, and you know, and we appreciate our partnerships with our federal, with these, for a lot of these federal agencies. We 're in a little quiet town of Hamden, but we have our moments, and we have our situations. That happen, and we work with our federal partners, we do, and we'll continue to do that. We have some limitations as it relates to civil immigration law, that's all. We'll continue to work hard and do the right thing, abide by the law, and pray that we don't have to get in to these kind of messes, but there's no guarantees. Thank you. [37:49] Matthew LaChance: Chief, I think we'll set up. Thank you. [Mark Cormier: You next item.] Is council consideration of the adoption of the town civility pledge, a resolution commitment to strengthening civic trust and civil discourse, chair. Lachance, thank you. I've placed before each of you a packet that includes this, the first rough draft of this, obviously as always open to amending and suggestions by counsel. I don't expect us to just be boiler plated and expect your stamp of approval. If there's any adjustments or amendments, I'm obviously open to them. This idea was first hatched at the National League of Cities Conference in Washington, DC this spring when Tim Shriver gave us a presentation at one of the leadership sessions. It was a very information-packed session, one of the more valuable ones at the conference, where it was discussed, and there was even representatives of these cities like Louisville, Kentucky and Lawrenceville, Georgia, where they've created and installed either a dignity pledge or a civility pledge. And also in that packet is examples of both of those cities, what they did, and I'll make sure that copies of what I handed out was available for the minutes for future public access. They did this in an effort to paint a crystal clear picture to the people of their communities that not only do the people in our positions vow to follow the law and do things right in the eyes of our constituents, but to treat each other and the people of the community with dignity and civility at all times, acknowledging that all people have the right to be treated with respect, courtesy, and openness, and that we value all input. Collaboration doesn't mean that we all agree, it means that we all have the same goal, it is my idea that the goal of local democracy is to listen and treat everyone with civility and foster a culture of dialogue, and I want for us to show a constant intentional pursuit of building civic trust and civil communication with our constituents so that people feel like they can come in here with their concerns, with their opinions, with their questions and speak to us and get the answers that they seek when they walk in these doors and join us for one of these meetings or workshop sessions. and it was widely discussed during this session, the positive results that were felt in these larger cities. Granted, we may not have the population density or cross-section of people that these cities had, but it was something that spoke to me while I was down there. I've been working on throughout the summer to try to craft this in a way that we can show the people of Hamden that they will be and they should expect to be treated with dignity whenever they engage in discourse with us, even if it's not an agreed-upon topic, so I wanted to present this to council as a possibility for adopting this resolution and enacting this in the guiding principles of town operations. Do we have any public? Go ahead, go ahead please, Linda. [42:29] Speaker H (unidentified): Valcourt. Yeah, I read through this, I was just wondering though if adopted by the council under section 2 on the page two, this commitment to dialogue engagement, there was a mention, I was wondering if you could elaborate maybe on their verbiage regarding hosting listening workshop sessions, and in this, is this something that the council is possibly considering, and if so, will the council be participating in this session as well with conversation? Great. [43:03] Matthew LaChance: Question, well I guess my answer to that question would be right along the lines of what was discussed at a previous meeting here during Rules of Procedure on guiding principles of the council here, and I've always tried to answer any questions. If information doesn't exist at the time that a question has been posed, sometimes things need to be circled back to, but yeah, if that was something that we did maybe quarterly, opened up, you know, invite people in whether they show up or not, as we've seen very few of you show up on a regular basis. Go [44:06] Mark Cormier: ahead, Mr. Vice-Chairman. This really, I think, speaks and reinforces much of what I have seen in my almost three terms, full terms, on council, is that how our town certainly in and our staff interacts with the citizens, and I think this may be, you know, sets it down and really describes it in detail, but I think this is something that they espouse to anyway. I think the civility pledge is consistent with some of the intent of the newly adopted Rules of Procedure, particularly item number two. And so my only comment were this to come, and I hope this does come in our next whole council meeting, as to whether section two is in fact redundant to Council Rules of Procedure and could probably simply be dropped for clarity because I think it just simply reinforces what Council has already adopted in Rules of Procedure. That would be the only editorial change I would even entertain in my first reading of this, is that I think Section 2 is purely redundant, but based on what's been presented to us, I fully support this proposal. Great. [45:27] Dennis Marble: I think that there are a number of parties both here at the dais that are concerned about representative democracy. I think the timing of this is extraordinarily good. I just want to tease out two things, and I don't have a clear answer for their questions. One is, I think it addresses how we speak to each other, but is that explicitly inclusive of how we address town staff, because there have been instances in the history of this body where someone elected to an office here has not in any way been respectful. I'm just, I'm asking my peers, is that something that should be made? The second thing, on a somewhat similar line, although I think it's thornier, is what are our expectations when a member of the public comes into this room? I understand anybody saying that it can be intimidating to look at a body of elected officials behind a wooden structure with microphones, and I get that. But I don't think that is a license for anything that's too aggressive or abusive in tone, or frankly brings input based on lies, distortions, inappropriate language. I mean there's a whole, if we all were trying to act with respect, it wouldn't be a need to pick this apart at all, but I do not believe everybody does, and I think some people have a very fixed agenda, sometimes actually orchestrated, when they attack local government, be it a school board or a town council, and I don't want to naively sign on to something that says we appreciate all input, because frankly I don't. I appreciate all input that's either based on facts or research or discussion or objectivity or other facts I do not respect other input that may be disparaging or unfactual so yes I'm absolutely in the spirit of this I think it's good work I think we should embrace it in some form but I want to do it with a little bit of strategy towards does that include everybody in this room when we're in session so to speak and if so should we state that 's my question that's [48:32] Matthew LaChance: valid. Quick response to your first question, second bullet point, where this pledge would pledge that we treat every individual, citizens, staff, and opponents with dignity and civility. So I feel like this would be a guiding principle of the way elected officials would treat staff. It would be on page one, just the second dot, as far as setting forth an expectation of conduct within these rooms. Excuse me, that's very valid concern that you've expressed. I don't disagree. I don't know if this particular pledge is the place to set expectations of public speakers, or if that is in rules of procedure. Obviously be open to discuss that further, whereas I guess my intention of this was directed towards counselors and staff alike, just get everybody on the same page. Okay. [50:17] Walter Jakubas: First man, I want to thank you for putting this all together. I imagine it's a quite a bit of work to craft the document this way, and I certainly, you know, support, you know, the, you know, the ideas behind it. One, the kind of the first point that I wanted to address goes back to what Linda and Eric were speaking about, the listening sessions. When I first read this, I was intrigued by it. I wasn't exactly sure what you meant by it, but I know, you know, early on when we were meeting, probably last, maybe December or so we were talking about things that we were making a list of things that we thought were our priorities, and one of them was improving communications, you know, with the public, and I think we even talked about listening sessions outside of our normal meetings. So I wasn't sure whether that was what you were suggesting, but I would certainly support that. It might require more time for counsel, and then some of these sessions might be more difficult to kind of listen to because usually people only show up when they're mad, and but I still like the idea, so I that's the first thing I wanted to say. I'm not sure Eric, it's you know it's it duplicates what we've already put aside, it might it might turn into something else that might be another opportunity for us to communicate, you know, with you know with our public. The other point that I wanted to make, like I said, I support this. I wonder a little bit though, is it really necessary to have a resolution when much of this language is already in, let's say, our rules of how council is supposed to act? The question of how this, if this is going to be posted every place, how is this going to affect the public if someone is upset about you know whatever they want to come and speak to counsel, is there you know are they going to be inhibited at all because they feel like they can't really speak their mind, possibly not, you know, but i just want to raise that as maybe an unintended consequence of something like this. I [53:05] Speaker I (unidentified): just have a brief comment, I think it's a great idea, Matt has talked to me about it in the past, I think when he first came home from the National League of Cities and shared it with me, the only question I have or it could be just a matter of tweaking some language in that, the inclusion of employees alike, not that i don't think employees should follow rules of civility and commit to that, but we have no status, so that means we are not elected officials and don't have constituents, and this refers to how you as a council deal with your constituents, so I think it's just a matter of tweaking some language or something, and I'd be happy to help with [53:58] Matthew LaChance: that. Thank you ma'am. Did you did you want to say something? Yes please. Yeah, could you just push the button on the green button, the thing that says thank [54:19] Cindy Mitchell: You yeah my name is Cindy Mitchell I live at 85 Summer Street and listening to what you're saying I hearken back to the 12 years I spent on the school board and having my children go through the school district. When you walk into every classroom there were rules of respect for each other and for how they were going to interact. In fact the link 22 that just came out did a great job of reminding everybody of what those are at different levels. I think it would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do when you open up the public comments section to have things you say about interacting respectfully with each other. You know that we welcome what you have to say and here are the guidelines on how we interact here together. After watching what happened to councillor coverly I would I don't know why anybody would run for council if they thought that was going to happen to them I really don't. And having been on the school board for 12 years we had we had as a board been attacked that way but never an individual as an individual and i found that absolutely appalling and i'm so sorry that happened to you. So my first point was i don't i think it would be perfectly acceptable to have sort of a love having you here 's our expectations about how we'll have this conversation and then the second thing i would encourage you to do when i saw what happened and they with coverly with counselor coverly is to think about how you in how does this pledge also speak to how you support each other in a situation like that i didn't see anybody jumping up and saying whoa here this is not how we treat each other and i think that's a perfectly reasonable thing for you to be able to do. So i would encourage you to think about how that fits into the role you're you know the behavior doesn't feel like the right what you're trying to accomplish and i want to commend you for doing this work. I think it's really important in this day and age that we are just out and speak about how we interact so [56:43] Matthew LaChance: thank you that's all i have to say thank you. Thank you for that input much appreciated Mr. [56:54] Mark Cormier: Vice Chair, and for the benefit of the public, we recognized some things that happened, but unfortunately our Rules of Procedure really were silent on how we could interact in those kinds of situations, unfortunately. And that was an oversight that I believe has now been corrected and endorsed by this Council through the adoption of the new rules of procedure, and specifically now allowing for a question of privilege and in council companies take a motion for personal privilege. Which immediately stops that interaction and requires a decision on the chair. And by the way, There's a check and balance because counsel can appeal the decision of the chair if they don't agree with how the chair handled it, so there is something now that council has done to really try to, and it's not only how council interacts, it's how the public interacts with council, because as was alluded to by counselor marble, how it how we interact with each other and how we interact with staff who are up here is just as important. But that guiding principle, the question of privilege, holds under robert's rules in all cases, and we did not have that tool. Matter of fact, i think specifically at the when that was happening, i mean, i remember the circumstances, but quite frankly, in the absence of specific tools to handle those kinds of things, we were we were in a very awkward situation as a council to how to respond to that as well. And i think we've we've addressed that. I hope we never have to invoke it, but we believe we have the tool to handle it. Thank you. [58:36] Matthew LaChance: Anybody else? One more thing. I just I did I did want to touch on her the comment of listing our expectations at the time of opening the floor to public comment. That is something that I've seen chair French do over at the RSU meetings, and it does seem to be effective and a timely place to list out those expectations when somebody comes and appears for the very first time in attendance at a school board meeting. And that might have the same effect here if somebody shows up here for the first time with some angst. I think it would set a reasonable expectation for the tone that we would expect. perhaps that's something moving forward when opening the public commented expectations could be listed to [59:41] Dennis Marble: Get a little sense of closure to this and see if this is agreed to fill a chance work together to take up town manager Scott's offer to help the plan and maybe look at two or three in the key points we've made tonight. I mean I'm sitting here thinking that some of what I said earlier is almost moot now that I've listened to further explanation of some existing language, but I think this is very worthwhile and it's worthwhile doing right and I'd like to have the next draft come back in front of us. What I'm asking for, okay, just [1:00:31] Mark Cormier: one quick comment in response to the suggestion about introducing I have spoke before the school board on many occasions and it occurred to me to time how long it took to recite the requirements and quite frankly they spend more time telling you what you can and can't do then they allow you to speak so I'm a big fan of this but let's be real about it, too. [1:01:03] Matthew LaChance: Yeah, so we just keep it short. [1:01:09] Walter Jakubas: I wanted to respond to what you were talking about, privilege and listing for the public. I think it is good. I'm not saying that we should verbally do it each time. I'm not sure what you had in mind for that. But you know if there was such a list I wonder if it would be helpful to let the public know that if they if someone council feels that they are getting out of line that the question of privilege will come up and that could stop you know stop their discussion because really we don't with a resolution it doesn't have any real enforcement to it you know it's just this is how we want to be want to behave and we're making this public and so it's it's almost then goes to like an education level we need to I think we all know on council that we could raise this but is the public going to know what their limits are so it's just something to consider are you [1:02:17] Matthew LaChance: happy meeting adjourned [1:02:24] Eric Jarvi: that is a great