Orono committee delays sewer ordinance review, discusses Kratom feedback

[0:00] Chair: Yeah, I was just opening up the meeting. Sure. But at least 1 person online attending, which is welcome. And welcome to anybody else who's watching this after they're back at the back. But, see on our agenda,. We, of course, and well, what we've just done, and then we have a. Number two is discussion continuing the discussion of chapter 33 sewers, so you sort of talked about where that's at, processed again, discussing our goals and preparation for council carpentry, and then our last item will be beginning the discussion of chapter 22 library ordinances. I should also note that we have an item that's currently assigned to the committee with no timeline imposed on us necessarily other than getting back to council at the end of the calendar year, just an update about whether or not we've been able to start this way. But it's analyzing municipal authority as pertains to limits on baby products, including but not limited, including but limited, but not limited, I think, is probably intended here, to back with Kratom, targeting youth and recommending a process and language for that. So we have received quite a bit of public feedback already on Kratom and it will and it's sort of effect on a lot of different people's lives in the community, so I think we can maybe discuss some of that and where we're at with. I want to be clear no and no agenda here as far as like what our goal is other than coming to understand the issue better and both what our authority is surrounding the how you deal legally with the products these products more creatively and then seeking further information about what we ought to be doing about this, if anything, so that could result in an action, but we really just want to be trying to understand the issue and doing what we think is right. So we'll we probably have time for that discussion here again, but why don't we get into discussion of chapter 33 34 sewers. Shelly, where are we at on this? I mean, I know, I think [2:22] Staff Member: we're also, yeah, so I need to apologize to the committee because in light of having some staff sickness and then someone out on vacation and the current election and trying to manage the tax that season, I literally have not had even an opportunity to dust off the ordinance. Likewise, Chris has been on vacation for he's in the second week of his vacation, and him and I was triaging customer concerns and or the upcoming sewer cycles because it was our largest billing of three cycles that needed to Get done and happen while he was away, and when that happens, I basically run the sewer collections, and I managed that in his absence. So we didn't talk at all about the sewer policy. So unfortunately, it's going to have to be pushed out a month, which we had said that this could happen from time to time. However, there was a comment made to me that there could be some concern around the large changes that we did make. There's been like when the sewer policy came forward, we were only initially looking at revision. And then we started making adjustments to meet or mirror current practice. And then we started saying, well, now that we're doing this, let's really do the big lift and let's do it for the future. So we've made some substantial changes, and there was a comment made to me that there may be some question or concern that we probably should send this out for legal review, and I'm not sure exactly where that came from, but I wanted the committee to have a discussion on that. [4:19] Councilor: Yes, yeah, I think we need to, I appreciate bringing it up, and I totally understand that the scheduling challenges are making getting moving this work forward among the urgent things that come up on a regular daily basis in certain situations. I do think there is a, I think there is, I think we're breaking ground in terms of the fee for service approach. And it may be something we want to embed in other ordinances as well. You know, EMS and, you know, when the fire department responds to something and those kinds of things. So I think there are opportunities, particularly with our largest users in Orono, to have negotiated agreements that would be preferable, all the parties at the table would prefer, but at the same time, I think we need to consider how we embed in our ordinances the true cost of providing services. I know we've talked a lot about the pilot with the University of Maine, and that hasn't changed in, you know, the oldest budget that's online was in 2014, and the pilot at that point was nine point four percent of all those expenses, so nearly ten percent, significant contribution to the cost. Now because of inflation and, you know, the cost of our operations, it's not four percent. So we have to have, you know, ideally we're going to have conversations with our biggest partners in town, it could be The big apartment complexes, it could be the university, the other businesses, but ultimately we want to get to the point where it's not just the property taxpayers or the sewer rate fee payers were shouldering a larger than appropriate, it's not an equitable burden on those payers. So I think we need to say, I think setting up the attorney makes a lot of sense, and I think it would be great to have template language that we, I think we need to know what our authority is. It's silly to write this into ordinance that have, you know, someone come back to us and say, well, in this, you know, title 20, you know, 30 A or MRI, the main state code says you can't do it. So I think it makes sense to both in this particular case, but also broadly to understand what the town law's authority is to use, to rely on kind of a fee for service approach on some of these types of things. [6:54] Chair: Right, so I suppose looking at our ordinance through your schedule, perhaps right when we get into the relevant areas of public safety, other spots, we can maybe keep that top of mind. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, it makes sense to just [7:14] Councilor: understand what is our authority here in this case, our, we're looking for to, we've been talking, we have language that creates an expectation that we meter our largest users that, you know, it exceeds the certain threshold volume that they require them to have metering at the outflow for sewer as opposed to based on water inflow, which is how everybody, every household always assessed, so that this would be, this would be changed. We need to make sure we have that authority to do it, and I also want to have, I also would like us showing just, so I think it's important that we have the council has the ability to, the council has the ability to make the determination that a better agreement is in place instead of, so in lieu of, you know, so the council could determine that a negotiated agreement, I'd like to have the tools in place in our ordinances, but also give the council and town leadership the ability to circumvent or in lieu of, in lieu of this language, an agreement has been reached. I'd like the council to be able to make those kinds of determinations on a face-by-face basis, so that if we do have a great agreement that everyone's all kind of worked on and really it really has us working together in them in all the right ways, that we can just bucket, we're not going to enforce this p, council has made the determination because of it's [8:53] Chair: Superseded by super agreement. Yeah, okay, I think that all sounds great. Thank you. I'm sorry for the monologue. No, I mean, I know it's like slightly separate from like the issue of sewers, but I think it's relevant. I'm glad that it sparked this idea, this way of thinking about this other element when you get to, you know, I still, I mean, I'm hearing that this doesn't necessarily mean that this is like a temporal priority. It's also going to be to like move up the right, you know, schedule. But when we get to that, we should definitely keep that in mind. And if, assuming I am on the committee or whoever's on the committee, should make sure that issues, so Kate, you are that too, right? The record will go to the enthusiastic from the council, from the website, neighborhood, and regarding chapter hand sewers, I think yes. And also completely appreciate that this is really the busiest time of year probably for your office, so there's no concern at all. Total understanding that you have of work that really had to take a little more priority at this point. Yeah, and we still, I [10:16] Staff Member: think we've still got a lot done. Oh yeah, certainly. So thank you. So for next steps, the way that I would view this is, of course, Chris will be returning back to the office once I am kind of like on the other side of the election and I have more availability. Chris and I can sit down, give it that thorough look that you had all asked us to do, and then we would kick it off to the town's attorney asking for a full legal review of the changes that we've made, and if they could codify that against current practices statute. We've done that as we've went by evaluating other municipalities, but having said that, we've relied on other municipalities and for the statute as we understand it. It, and if there has been something legislatively that has actually risen that we happen to miss, we would anticipate that the legal opinion would give us what we might have missed. Yeah, and then I can give you an update of where we're at with that timeline. So I know that November, as a rule, is going to be really busy just because of your having the changing of the guard with the council. We have to retreat, so it would be my intent that possibly it would be December before we'd be in a place that we'd have something concrete. But I think for the change of this ordinance and in fact that we're using it as our model to head in a direction of what Dan is speaking, we want to do due diligence to make sure that the ordinance is constructed [11:56] Councilor: It properly first I'd also share, and I would urge, you know, you and Chris and creating a, I'm glad there's YouTube videos that has a record of kind of what we talked about, you know, I'll download the transcript, but I would also encourage you to think about making sure that partners in town who may be affected by the change we're moving forward with understand it, because it's budget season, we vote on our budget in May, but it's, you know, that work starts now, and people need to understand that if there's going to be a significant change in their expectations around sewer bills for FY, now we're talking about 28, they need to know about it, you know, now as they're building the budgets out, so I'd encourage, I believe Chris is in contact with the folks he works with, but I do encourage municipal leadership to make sure that those impacted by this, you know, we could consider a phase in or something like that, so if we make a significant change, it's going to have an impact on the expenses of one of our partners in town supported today, yeah, they're aware of it for things on their desk, yeah, we'll have a public hearing absolutely about the, you know, about the ordinance change, but it's, you know, they're building their budgets today for a year from now, and they need to be aware that there's, there are potential changes coming that impact their expenses. [13:26] Chair: All right, sorry, no, thank you, so I suppose we'll be awaiting the legal review, and that's where that work is at currently, and before we move on I just want to check in, looking at the schedule, so thinking about some of the issues that Dan is raising, I think probably under public health and safety is one of the areas, the chapters, so I'm curious, I guess we last opened that up for marijuana establishments if I'm not mistaken, looking at our, what's happened in the recent, the schedule, or maybe it's also so i'm unsure when that's next plans will come up and not that we necessarily need to but i feel like i'll just for the sake of sort of good organization of the information we've raised so far about when do we think that's the next plan to come up with no expectation that 's this is all sort of long great well it was last [14:40] Staff Member: last visited in 2023. so if our goal of having stuff be looked at or touched every five years at max I would think that 's going to be on the list coming up I mean within probably another two years now having said that the council does have the ability to move an ordinance sooner or if legislation happens that we have to address an issue because there is something dysfunctional then we certainly would move it along great thank you I suppose I mean how practical [15:28] Chair: to feel about this one you want to raise with the council schedule, feel free to. Yeah, if we're you [15:34] Councilor: know, if we're in a project, if this template becomes part of how we're going to build our budget, public safety and revenue, public safety, you know, we'll, I'm sure that council will, I would imagine, I think it would be an opportunity to ask the council, hey, we want to give a ticket, we have a template that works, that's got legal sign off, we put it in the sewer chapter, and then we you [15:55] Chair: know, it's not cut based into that, but yeah, so no, I mean, that's there, I mean, it's worth us raising with council, seeing what that type is for it's being raised, and also just something you see a lot of stuff, you know, your own thing, schedule works the way that works for everybody, but knowing that as we're particularly facing with big budget challenges for the pay-per-click of taxpayers, you know, I can see it being something that comes out of that, so that is [16:27] Councilor: a little student, and we definitely don't want some sort of, we don't want a lot of the back and forth about, you know, like fire department plays kickball at the university, at the university courts all the, all the time, and I love it, so we don't, you know, we don't want to be like, all right, we're going to charge you x for this service that you get from the town, yeah, and then the fire department, mean our first responders have to pay 10 bucks an hour to use the task force, you know, we don't want [16:52] Chair: any kind of, it's the free flow of goods and services and stuff, yeah, we'll figure out sort of how to sensitively navigate those times as well. So anything else on this topic, sewers? Sorry, I know that's sort of, we moved back a little bit, but so our next section is discussing our goals in preparation for council to co-operative, so this conversation, I imagine, will be a little bit free-flowing, but I guess my interpretation of this question is really sort of what is this committee's perspective on what Its work plan should be over the course of this next year, and what insights do we have to share with council? Like, what anything that we think is worth raising, what we need, whatever. [17:44] Staff Member: I think that Dan's topic is one that we really should address during the workshop, because if we do want to take a look at those ordinances that need to be restructured on the field, those should probably be considered a little more highly than ones that all right, we can raise that topic. [18:08] Chair: It's a lot of sense. What else is going on? You know, I'm sending off my slightly revised version of really Shelly's summary of this year's work as our committee report of the year, but is there anything that we've gleaned over the course of this year's work and that's that we think is worth sharing with council? So I think it's like brief overviews during the council meeting. So how do we think this work is going? Any anything that we have to raise with the council about how this work is working or not working? [18:56] Staff Member: I think it's important that we stress to everybody the time that it takes Shelly and the immense number of duties that she's responsible for. Part and that we need to keep that in mind we're looking at staffing choices. Yeah, I'm [19:19] Councilor: interested in you know how the one thing that one area where I don't think we have and I this is I'm just putting on the table, I don't know that I don't know enough about it to know what I think about it, but these aren't We don't ask for public input on these issues as they come up, so like cemetery issues, you see, you know, some emails from folks about cemetery issues or again we get to the one about pets right animals and, you know, just things like that we just don't get it would be off it'd be awesome if we had a way to collect information from people about what they if they have any concerns or issues they want to see updated in one of those ordinances as we thought we turn to the library one and I don't know I'm thinking about something you do already I don't know that we can the amount of work it takes to engage people so there's a broad awareness that's going on it's not particularly urgent but like I use a retractable leash for my dog just to use a personal pet and so the Ordinal ordinance is retractable down to eight feet or whatever the length is. It's also can go longer than that too, right? And technically I might be in violation of the ordinance if my dog is beyond eight feet. And so I would be interested as a pet owner to show up at that meeting and talk about why I think it should be, you know, the word retractable too. And I will, you know, if I'm in those conversations, it's still part of this group, but we don't offer that opportunity to other people. This is your shot. And maybe that's something we could do as a council in terms of our work with the community, trying to make people aware [21:09] Chair: it's coming up. But at the same time, we do nothing. I think that as you just said, I think that probably would be a good role for us as counselors to be collecting that and actually and sharing out with the community. I could also be make or whoever is, you know, in the meetings like making more of a call like, hey, these things coming up and we are welcome, but I don't really say that as part of it. Yeah, like, you know, people who have thoughts on these chapters that are coming up the next few months please do reach out to us to make that a more explicit call for. I mean, I know our meetings aren't always the most modestly packed, but when issues are important to people, a lot of the time they do find their way, as we've been experiencing with all these emails on the creative machine. [22:03] Councilor: You can't think of companies from out of town, but that's kind of... Yeah. If someone's using some kind of AI agent to monitor all these meetings, all these municipalities... Yeah, they get a buzzword. [22:13] Chair: Yeah. Not to say that there aren't people in the community who are absolutely sorry. Yeah. And I think to that point, if we still have folks online, it's an amazing discussion with that you can see if you want to share anything with us. So if you're with us, hold on. But I think the public input, yeah, this is like it's maybe seeking some brainstorming the rest of council C1 how we might most effectively incorporate that into the process, given that our meeting is during a lot of other people's work because it works great for me [22:52] Staff Member: there ever been if you have the evening meetings who are the companies has there ever been an evening meeting you're there for [23:02] Chair: Well, so all of our committees, sorry, I know that you have a lot of skills. Excuse me, I was going to just say that all of our committees used to be all counselors, and all of our meetings would be sort of our equal funding. So whenever we're having a whole council meeting, we're having everybody basically still have them, but Shelly was closer. I was just going to share [23:23] Staff Member: that so the public engagement piece is your public hearing, right? That is technically, I mean, if you look at how an ordinance gets worked and what the natural flow or order is under statute, statue of how municipalities are supposed to engage the public, the public hearing is just that. It is the public's opportunity to come out. It is to weigh in, to throw up caution if they believe that we're heading in a pathway. So if you're thinking about this and engaging the public, perhaps, I mean, not to put more work on anybody, but perhaps quarterly there be something that goes out on social media that says this next quarter these are the ordinances which are being worked on. We will be having public hearings. This is your opportunity to speak. However, if you are interested in the weeds, meaning that you've, you have some language you'd like to suggest, this is how you can submit it, and they could send an email, they could, they would, you know, make some time to talk with a counselor on the committee, or maybe even they could forward some information about that particular ordinance, and then we would have an opportunity or a vehicle for them to actually engage. I think that we've been, we've been maybe a little backwards at times where we talk about it and we don't always wait for the public hearing because people are excited and they want to share, and then before you know it, like we get to the public hearing and what are we now going to discuss because we've already discussed it in the lead-up too. So I think if we can really use the fundamental method of how to get an ordinance through first and second reading, the vehicle for the public engagement is there. Perhaps we're just not putting it out there so the public knows it's coming. Part of us putting it out there was having this schedule that we now share on the website for people to look at, but I don't know that people are awake to know that it's there, and until it's in their backyard and it's affecting their tree or it's affecting their dog They're not necessarily watching, so that's just some thoughts. I mean, there are, you know, some great social sites out there or that people in the community are using, like for no neighbor to neighbor, and maybe that's a good place to put those quarterly updates on. Yeah, so that's just my quick thought if I was going to [26:04] Chair: try to triage engagement. What a great topic to treat, yeah, the use of public hearings in general. Yeah, you know, it's not what they are this, I mean, you said most of it, Shelly, here, and this is all, I think, a really powerful framework too. Yeah, I like the idea of the like quarterly alerts to people in our communications of just here's the stuff that's coming up, just, you know, if you have an interest in this, you're mistaken, this reach out to us, and also here's what our volunteers will be if we can work that into our workflow as a concept. [26:44] Staff Member: It that makes a ton of sense, it already fits. Yeah, I will pass along just a little bit of information. So what I hear most often at the counter is people rushing in and they're all concerned because they've heard through the grapevine that this topic has been discussed or this topic is in motion and why didn't I know, how is the council at this decision, and I'm just finding about it now. And I try to reiterate to them, we have social media, we have our website, it has been publicly advertised in a newspaper that probably people are not looking at, you know, and we've done what we could to get that promotion out there to advance the public that this was coming up, but people are busy, right. And so I, you know, we try to do a little bit of damage control and say you can still submit information and it is the training is down the track and you're going to have to run to catch up a little bit, but this is how we can do it. So I think maybe if it was that quarterly bus going out, perhaps that would help if you have big topics that are coming up or ordinance that you want input, that's the place to pop it. [28:11] Chair: Well, thank you. Yeah, obviously very insightful. Very helpful.. Is there anything else that's most right? A little bit of a treat. I mean, I think this is already like, you know, a lot of other people are going to want to talk to, so. I guess maybe we could. I'm talking over this. Anything else you want to raise. Nothing, okay, those are cool, good, yeah, it's good stuff. So to be, to sort of summarize raising how, where the schedule of the council feels it might make sense for us to be talking about these ordinances relevant to fee schedules, raising sort of the ongoing way that this is fitting or not fitting, or how it's working in chile's time with staff time in general, and then also talking about public input in the process and various avenues for that. And I think I've captured that somewhat in my notes here. Too, so next up is beginning a discussion of chapter 22 library ordinances. So the reason that this is has been sort of moved up on the schedule is because of course we have this huge library project imminent, and so we want to make sure that we're prepared for that and are doing our video to support that work to make sure this happens the right way. So I guess [29:47] Staff Member: where are we at on this? So the library is fully aware that we are looking to start engaging chapter 22. They have started doing their preliminary read through and highlighting or redlining areas that they want to have some dialogue or question on. I have not yet met with Lori, but I anticipate that will be happening probably about the same time in the background as the sewer project, and once Lori and I have kind of had that preliminary look through, then I will cross reference again against state resources and we'll try to get a rough draft to you to start to really look at. So if I was going to predict when this is probably going to start, you're going to tangibly see something in paper, I would probably put that around December, more likely January, like December I will probably give you an update and say this is like the high points, some low points, and it would probably be more like January that we would physically have something marked up that you could start to like read and digest. Right, so I think it'll be great to [31:09] Chair: hear sort of even just sort of an overview once you have that initial discussions, what are the issues that are sort of most top of mind for Laurie in the physical library. Yeah, but I think we should also be anticipating this is a chapter we'll be looking at, so maybe we should see what public input there is on this, on this chapter, maybe we could be looking ourselves about as we're reading through this, which I imagine will be a little more accessible to all. [31:42] Councilor: Of us sewers, let's say the so we're in the process of our town council year looking at the charges to all the various committees and the library board is one of those in ordinances. I just talked about at the genesis meeting. I think it's in our next meeting we will I think we'd say we except knowing that this process is going on with the library chapter. We don't we don't have full council to jump in change something based on so that sort of charge would be part of this process full council. Is part of a sequence of looking you know it's also the tree board all the all the committees boards get a look at annually as part of our process and this will be well note that we've got this going on with the tribute committee as opposed to sometimes we can change other chargers just in order but we have up to the whole process to change the climate you. [32:48] Staff Member: Said the last part again sorry as. [32:50] Councilor: I understand it we have to the library trustee I haven't read it myself to confirm this but as I understand it the charts and the library trust I think it's the trustees is in ordinance so we can change and I understand we can change the tree board you know charge you know put more cactuses in orno cacti I suppose with an order a simple kind of order that we need one meeting whereas the trustee charge if there's need for updating it has to go through the ordinance in order to change process. Which is you know the ordinary and stuff like that so that would be here through this committee as opposed to the council kind of do it separately like people are. [33:31] Staff Member: So I would think organically as Lori and I meet that should probably be a conversation as to is there any sort of ordinance framework that does affect the trustees? Does the trustees of them of their own have any ordinance work that they feel should be integrated right? Right, because if they hit the trustees or believes that there's something that we have in ordinance that is not working or does not benefit the longevity of the mission of the library, then it would make sense that the library trustees are invited to a conversation so that no one feels slighted that we're trying to back into any one group. We want to be sure that they were included. it yeah. [34:22] Councilor: Yes there's an order the consent agenda of monday's meeting order assigning the orders review committee that would be us to integrate into the schedule to review requested changes to chapter 22 library article 2 board of library trustees section 269.7 yeah so it sounds like. [34:40] Staff Member: They've already started, they probably already started dusting off the annual wall. Well, yeah. [34:45] Councilor: Let's not have, let's not, it's important we don't confuse or conflate the fact that we have a 90 some odd page policy procedure manual and annual expectations with a groundswell of demand or urgency to make a change. So we're going through it methodically, so there's a place every year to make a change, but it doesn't mean we have to act because we're looking at it and they're checking the box is way too simplistic, but we have a process in place that we're doing it. So we don't get the point where we're 30 years behind. That's what all this stuff has done. And in this case, it's not like you've got 15 emails from every library trustee member saying you act or you must act, this is our process. They just sort of take a step back. Whenever these things come up, they're part of the policies and procedures made, which is phenomenal. Don't know, you gotta step back and say it's just, it's this is because it's part of our annual process or because there's a need we have to fix, that's important, the [35:55] Chair: other discussion that's you gotta go right, thank you, all right, well I need to go slowly, fine, I think I do want to, if there is somebody online still, let's go to your other corner, we can to promote our guests. Would you have any interest in sharing anything with us? Yeah, if you want to, if you would like to speak, you raise your hand. All right. Yeah. So if you select, let go to the person. So a lot of the time. [36:32] Public Commenter: Hello, Jennifer. Can you hear us? Yes. Can you hear me? [36:35] Chair: Yes. Welcome to our committee. Thanks for sort of sitting through some of these other [36:40] Public Commenter: items. What would you like to speak with us about? I just, you know, I am talking today just about the kratom ordinance. I myself am a kratom advocate. 20 years ago I was diagnosed with transverse myelitis and I became a lifelong chronic pain patient. And I relied on prescription medications for many years. And with the ever-changing guidelines and the whole opioid epidemic, you know, a lot of chronic pain patients were in my shoes and got to where, you know, they were either force tapered or no longer able to access the medication. And so, you know, we were left, we're left with nothing. In 2019, somebody told me about botanical kratom, just the natural whole leaf kratom. And I tried it and it gave me my life back. Like I'm able to, I have three kids. I can, you know, get out of bed, go to school functions, run errands. And I feel like I live a somewhat normal life, even though I still have physical limitations. And, you know, to be honest, you know, there, 's been a lot of talk lately. I know you've probably seen it in the media. But over the last couple of years, ER visits have increased. Rehab facility numbers have increased. Poison controls, all these things have increased. And it's all due to the synthetic 708 products that were thrown out into the market. And they were, you know, marketed as Kratom products. I'd say they're more potent or, you know, people go in a smoke shop or whatnot looking for Kratom and they're they're told, oh, you know, just take this pill. You know, it's just a more potent form of Kratom. And that's not the case at all. You know, these are like chemically manipulated products. And so all these things are being attributed to Kratom because to people, that's how it was sold to them. And so it's just been real disheartening to see so many, you know, so many bad things out there about Kratom. And, you know, I made a promise to myself in 2019 that I, because like y'all were just talking about earlier, like most people have no idea. I had no idea that Kratom was at risk legally, I guess, in certain places. And so, you know, a lot of people are out living life and they don't really pay attention to city council meetings and legislative meetings and things like that. And, you know, we're just regular moms and, you know, grandmas. I mean, all walks of life, you know, that are living a better quality of life because of cradle. on. But I also do want to mention, I don't know if you know what the federal government, they've just scheduled MGM 15 and pseudo-indoxyl in August. And yesterday they published their notice of intent to federally schedule one, all of the synthetic 7-OH products. And so that should take effect November the 30th, I'm sorry, November 13th of this year. And so hopefully all this, you know all the bad actors and all the bad products will be gone from communities i mean it's just been a horrible situation for many people all across communities well thank you for sharing [40:23] Chair: Your perspective on this, and feel free to reach out by email to, you know, let us know more about these things if you aren't already one of the folks who has reached out. Sorry, I don't think I had no, oh, and you know we're not gonna be taking this issue up in substance today, but you know we welcome you to being part of the conversation, and you know as you've alluded to, we're still sort of informing ourselves about both, you know, what our existing ordinances are and, you know, what this issue really Entails. You'd also share, are you [41:03] Public Commenter: resident of orono yourself i am not but i 'm actually in tennessee but like i said you know i kind of i mean honestly you know i this is my mission in life i guess is to be the voice for the people everywhere that don't know that are benefiting from kratom that have no idea that these meetings are taking place because you know well thank you very much for still sharing [41:35] Chair: Your perspective, and it is informative, and you're not the only one who's reaching out to help educate us about various elements of this issue. So anybody have any questions [41:48] Councilor: Or what do you know about Flock cameras, because we're going to talk about, no, I'm teasing you. [41:52] Public Commenter: Oh, I've heard all about Flock cameras all across the country. It's in every hearing, trust me. We're [41:59] Councilor: Tipping our toes into a couple issues that aren't really a part of it. You know, we're not a regulatory body, we don't have, so we're tipping our toes into a couple of issues, and because we're trying to be responsive to people in the community who raise the concern, so we've got a lot to learn, and Jennifer, I think when we do hear from people, it helps to provide perspective if there's another side of the story, and I think it's humbling in terms of just how, where we fit in terms of our role as a small Town council, the way you'll wade into these issues. So I appreciate you being here, but so thank you, thank you, and thank [42:40] Public Commenter: You all so much for just doing your due diligence and really, you know, taking it seriously and not just not caring. It means a lot to people not just in your community but everywhere to know that people, you're representing people the right way, so I do appreciate your time. Thank you all so much. Yeah, thank you, thank you all. [43:03] Chair: Right so I think is there anything else that I want to raised from this meeting before we get back to all our other very important work through democracy. All right well during nothing I think that will adjourn our meeting. We'll we'll discuss this random issue I think and also how we're approaching the paper products and tobacco products. It's part of the discussion soon I think maybe as counselors we could be looking more of this understanding of where your workload is try to educate ourselves a little bit and come with that maybe I'll try to think through a better framework for how to work through this discussion keep it moving. Again there's no timeline for any outcome or other than just I think all the charts currently that we want to give an update about what we've happened and done where we're at by the end of the year. So we'll keep this discussion moving but Maddie was with us last [44:08] Councilor: time is there a move to because your commitment I mean tomorrow democracy sits next to me on the right so I mean you're so is there not is there I'd be interested in those kinds of conversations how do we if there are other staff and I think it's a growth opportunity for someone who's early career to kind of this process yeah as well. So I encourage you I encourage staff to think about how can you staff us and balance it I mean obviously you got to bring in Chris when we're talking about utilities you got to bring in the Megs when we're talking about their importance you know we have new Megan's Jennifer run departments for us so just I encourage you [44:53] Chair: to think about that too yes yeah that's pretty good about that but yeah obviously we welcome I'm just supposed to force that too we love meeting and talking with I know everybody else they're important yeah awesome. All right well that's the end of our meeting thank you very much everybody who's been tuning in thank you Jennifer bye thank you