 Thank you. Oh really? Interesting. So I do have a question though Lynn, we weren't, Shalini, were we planning on recording or not? You should. We often have people ask for recording. Okay. Hi, welcome to our recording. Okay, so I'm allowing people in. Okay. So I'll start letting people in. Yes. Adrienne Tarasi will promote. Yes. Alice Swift will promote. Bernie Kubiak will promote. Bonnie Isman will promote. Eric John Hornick. Erica. So for the attendees, we are slowly letting you in to be panelists so that we can see and hear each other. So FYI, that's what's happening. Probably should have warned you. Yeah, I was like, welcome. I just realized I was like, we're going to pull you through space and time. Hi, Alice. Sherry Wilson. Hi, John. Hi, Bernie. Hi, Andrew. Andrew, I said, wow. We're being very formal this evening. I know Andrew, sir. Welcome, sir. It was a long time from when we got the announcement until tonight without a reminder, unless, although I haven't, I've been missing some emails recently, so maybe there was a reminder. Erica, you have your hand up. I'm trying to promote you. We're still figuring out our communication lines, Alice. So we'll check that and make sure that we. Well, I did receive because anyone who signed up as a panelist got a reminder today. So, Alice. What do you mean signed up as a panelist? Sorry, not panelist. Anyone who signed up for the Zoom meeting? When did you sign up, Alice? I forgot until this evening. Yeah, so I know we're trying a new format, so we can take some time afterwards to get feedback on this new format. Hi, everybody. Welcome. And we'd love for everyone to come in as a panelist, and you can leave your video off if you don't want to be seen for any reason, but we do invite you to come in and join us. Yep. And so you can keep your video off, and you won't be recorded either, unless you speak, of course. Hi. Hi, Mindy. Hello. Hi, everybody. Welcome. Welcome, Mindy. Thank you. I'm having trouble promoting two people, and it may be because they need to update their Zoom link. I don't know. Maybe. I feel like I saw Vasiana webinar earlier today. Wait. Thank you for joining us after you. Hi, everybody. I got one in. Okay. All right. Keep trying, Maria. Hi, everyone. Welcome. Thanks for joining. We'll get started in a moment. All right. So as we're going, just so you know, the Q&A is open. Folks, hi. Look at all these faces. This is great. I'm so excited. And we will, Shalini, do you want to kick things off, or do you want me to? Sure. Well, welcome, everyone. I am so excited to be here with Ana, who is the other co-counselor from District 5. And this is our first District 5 meeting. It was a little chaotic. We're still trying to figure out our different committees that we're in and how to coordinate the timing and all of that. So we apologize for this being last minute, but we will be sharing a schedule up till July, at least, of all the possible meetings. And if anyone is not on our newsletters, please let us know so we can. We did send newsletters out. And if you didn't get one, then let us know and we can add you to that. We have an interesting agenda, but we're also here. This is a great opportunity for us to just talk with each other to be, you know, it's not as formal as in a town council meeting. So feel free to raise your hand if you have any questions. We do have an agenda, but most importantly, we want to hear from you. So we invite you to use the Q&A option. Does everyone see the Q&A at the bottom? Anyone not see it? So there's a Q&A button below, and you could use that to start sharing any questions, thoughts, ideas that you may have. And that way we have a sense of how much time we should keep later on to for answering questions. And I see Erica has a hand up. Yeah, Erica. Thanks, Shalini. I'm glad to hear. I just, I'm not able to type a question into the Q&A. I can see it, but I can't participate in it. And I'm maybe the only one who's having this problem. Maybe someone can educate me. You'd think I'd know my way around Zoom right now. No, actually, you know, technology has its own mind sometimes. So let's see, allow, maybe we have to allow something. Yeah, I just changed the settings of it. Maybe, I don't know if that'll help, Erica. Could you try again? Still nothing? Hmm, okay. Lynn, any guidance? Have you used the Q&A before? I have not. And so I'm not going to be much help here. Attendees can comment. Attendees can... I think people can just raise their hand and ask questions. Yeah, I think that that's probably good. All right. So I'm going to start, we do have a little bit of a slide deck and we'll be joined later by Kathy Shane, who I'm now realizing I didn't spell check when I wrote her name in my slide deck. So hopefully that doesn't go for later me. So yeah, welcome everybody. Thank you for joining us. Welcome to our first District 5 meeting. Many of you may have been with Shalini last term and I'm so excited to be here as the other District 5 rep with you today. So to give you an idea of what we are going to cover today, we're going to welcome, you've been welcomed. We'll do some quick introductions. We're going to talk through our committee placements and our roles on the council. We're going to go over the council priority areas that stem from the retreat. We'll talk over, talk through quickly what's going on in town. So covering the Crest program and other CSWG recommendations, the elementary school building project updates on Hickory Ridge, some current and upcoming votes that the council will have. And then we're going to go over ways to engage with us and with the town. I'm looking at this group. I know this is a pretty engaged group, but just in case you want more, more ways to get involved. And then we'll keep it open for questions and comments at the end. That's at the end, but please know that this is truly interrupt. I mean, I'm going to say this for me, but I think Shalini feels the same way. Please, you know, interrupt at any point with questions, either raise your hand, or if we don't see you, just you can unmute and start talking at us and we will listen. We're also joined by our council president, Lynn Grismar, who's here and one of our at-large counselors, Andy, as well as our state rep and district five resident, Mindy. We're happy that she's from district five. So all right. Shalini, do you want to talk through your committee assignments first? We have one shared and then Shalini has a separate one. Sure. So I'm part of the town services and outreach committee and the CRC committee. So what are we talking about in this? Are we showing what we're doing? Well, maybe why did you want to be on those? I'll interview. Yeah, that's great. Let's make it interactive. What are you excited to do on them? Yeah. So the TSO, I was particularly interested because something that I started, actually, that came out of affordable, our house comprehensive housing plan last time was the community outreach piece was missing and John Hornek, who's here, is the chair of the affordable housing trust. Thank you for bringing that to our attention last time. And that got me really thinking about we're, you know, we're really not doing a good enough job. Not everyone knows what's happening. So I started building out a community engagement plan, which, and so that's going to be one of the things that I'm really going to be focusing on is how do we engage residents and not all of you, just you residents. Thank you all so much for staying engaged with a lot of people who really don't know what's happening in our town council in the town and the decisions impact them. And we never hear for them. So how can we create ways to systematically be able to hear more and more voices? It's really, really hard. We've tried different things and it is really hard. So we're again, coming to you, if you have ideas, if you feel your neighbors don't know about the district meetings, that's a starter, you know, definitely let them know. But anyway, so creating a systematic plan for how to let people know about the different projects that the town council is working on at different phases, what are the different ways you can be involved, different channels of communication. So that's something that you can see I'm really passionate about. The other thing is we have a very comprehensive environmental and climate action committee proposed a plan. So I'm very interested in seeing how we can start implementing that in the TSO and the CRC, like what zoning changes need to happen or how does that impact how we use our streets or so starting to see and invite the ECAC committee more and we have Vasu here who's in the VC in the ECAC committee. Thank you Vasu for doing your work of doing amazing work. So like really looking at things from the climate action angle in TSO and CRC, there's some big things that are coming up in TSO like the municipal parking district. I can just go on and on and then CRC, let's see a big one is the comprehensive housing policy. There are great ideas like we adopted that but we now have to figure out how to start implementing that and you know again all of these issues are so interconnected, the zoning with the housing, with the climate action goals, with the social justice and equity goals. So how do we do this in a thoughtful way seeing the interconnectedness of all of those things. Last thing that I'm interested in is the economic development piece like we have all these expenses, the capital projects that are coming up and we also need to figure out how can we raise more revenue in a way that is consistent with the values, our historic, our natural resources and our colleges and institutions that are here. How do we work with everyone, the bid, the downtown and how do we work in a way that we can revitalize a downtown, invite more artists and businesses, startups and so forth. So those are some of the things that I'm passionate about. So on the council, I am the council vice president and so I work closely with Lynn to support her in general but also to set the agenda to think about how we are pacing the work that we're doing and I can tell you that that is a very mathematical process of fitting everything in. I've been surprised at that. And then I'm also on the town services and outreach committee and so this one was appealing to me for very similar reasons to Shalini. I would love to see this is an amazing turnout and I'm really happy with it and I'd love to see 40 people here, 50 people here. So I think that there's a lot we can do around outreach and awareness on just what council does, how to be engaged, how to be involved. In terms of the part that surprised me about TSO is how much I really enjoy and I knew I cared about but how much I really enjoy the town services component of it. I also have been coming at this from the climate action angle and I'm really, really excited about the ways that we can work with our town services to meet our climate goals and to continue to continue to take action in that way. So in addition to that there's also things like walkable, bikeable streets and other programs that the town puts forward. More kind of when you think about like the day to day that's sort of the functioning that's very much under the town manager and the town services and outreach committees plays that support role to that. That's my very rough outline. I'm looking at Andy and Lynn who I'm sure both would like to correct me on what I say but that's my very big picture view of TSO. Again interrupt us if at any point you have questions. So the council had a retreat, gosh a few weeks ago was it now? I was going to put our slightly confusing matrix up here but what we did was we identified some areas that folks really wanted to work on in the next term and so they are tied to the town manager goals but I wanted to just show these to you as an indication of where we may the directions that we plan on going. I'll also read them because I know there's a lot I did kind of have to squish them. So climate and these are not in any particular order just to be clear. So climate action and sustainability, economic vitality and economic development, parking, walking, biking routes, I squished two together there. Zoning and design guidelines, the major capital projects, housing and affordability, racial equity and social justice, administration, leadership and personnel and then finance and sound financial decisions. So I know Shalini and I had a couple shared, a couple different. I know that we had shared the climate action and sustainability. Shalini I believe you had economic vitality and again this doesn't mean we don't care about all of these other things it just meant this is very much the priority areas for each of us. Shalini had the economic vitality, economic development, I had the parking, walking, biking routes and then I think we both also had housing and affordability potentially as well as racial equity. I had racial equity and social justice on mind and I'm not quite remembering Shalini what you had so I don't want to misrepresent. Wait I think I added the community engagement piece again that in order to have more equity in order to have make better decisions for everyone I think it's really important that while we are acting and continuing to work on important decisions we keep working on improving our community engagement. Yeah so within these priority areas these are obviously not pieces of legislation right so we'll each be working on figuring out what does this mean in terms of policies that we can bring forward or things that we need to move on in the coming term. And can I just add one thing to that I think one of the things that we're also discussing is or at least I'm very interested in us discussing is how do we prioritize our priorities because they are all of these and so and you know we all have a certain interest and all of these are really important right and within each of these are so many different items that we're working on so one of the things that I propose in TSO and then in CRC is like if we take all the different items that we're working on and start plotting it in a matrix based on which goals are these priorities reaching so if we find that one party like let's say housing affordable housing if it's changing the zoning for more density I'm not saying we're doing that okay I don't want to freak anyone out but I'm just taking an example of housing and we change the zoning to allow more density around downtown area for example that's let's say meeting our housing goal it's meeting our environmental goals because people will walk more or whatever and then there is so if one action is hitting several goals of ours then it gives us something to discuss and talk about as as a council at least having shared criteria of how we're making our decisions and why we're making them so that's something that I'm hoping that we will this time round because last time I feel like we didn't really have a very clear set of criteria how are we prioritizing our goals and how are we making these decisions awesome so I know Kathy is with us in the audience Kathy I tried to promote units that you didn't want to be promoted so I'm happy to try again if you'd like to be promoted to panelists to give us an update but we're going to move into our I'll share my screen again I just wanted everyone to be able to see all of your lovely faces all right so talking through what's going on around town updates on major projects and initiatives and so we are excited to be joined hi Kathy by Kathy Shane I know I spelled it wrong I'm going to just just stop sharing my screen I spelled things wrong I'm sorry so Kathy is the chair of our elementary school building project committee building committee project and has some has some things to share with us about the status of that and maybe some ways to engage Kathy hi I'm glad to join you and I am going to be really brief and then take any questions and one of the things I want to let everybody know I've got a few charts to show is that next Monday night between 5 30 and 6 30 the council is going to be getting an update on the elementary school building project and so if you want to learn more and hear the back and forth the discussion there won't be any public comment during that but it's a special one hour session before the regular council meeting and there will be materials posted there so I am going to try to just give you a bird's eye view of where we are in an incredibly exciting project that I have the privilege the honor and with it comes a lot of hard work of bringing a new elementary school to Amherst what we're working on right now is the what is called the preliminary design phase and we are part of a process that is governed by a larger entity called the Massachusetts skill building school building authority and they are a granting authority that helps schools pay for new schools in this case a new elementary school and we go through a series of phases and I am going to if you let me I think show the screen um let me just start it from the slideshow um can everyone see the screen right now yeah so so I'm just going to try to give you this bird's eye view of how this is working right now because we are at the beginning of a phase and it's called a preliminary design phase one of the things if people have been watching what the schools have been doing is there's been a decision to move the sixth grade up to the middle school so we are talking about a school that will serve kindergarten through fifth grade and it will consolidate Wildwood and Fort River to one school there has not been a choice of where the school will be so that's part of this preliminary designs case which which location but it will be grades k through five and as I mentioned the Massachusetts school building authority has a series of steps we have to go through we have a fantastic design team denisco design and if you've been able to tune into any of the sessions they've held they've had some community forums and visioning sessions um I feel like they are really um both willing and available to us to reach out to the community as we go through this process and explain clearly and go back um as needed so we're at this arrow down the middle we're at the what I said beginning we've chosen our designer we've got an owner project manager working with us and we're hard at work or preliminary design program and what this means is that the school committee which is a partner with the building committee is looking at the education program of the school and saying given what we want to teach what kind of space needs do we have what programs do we have we have a dual language program could come in on taste how much space does that need we have district wide special needs programs how much space do they need we have this many children how many grade school classrooms do we need and that drives the overall size of the building the education program so we are at the point we're hoping by the middle of march which is just a few weeks away that the school committee will sign off on a final education plan which will determine the size and where the classrooms are and the building committee will um frame the choices working with the designer we're not going to make decisions right now we're talking about four possible alternatives with lots of variations in those will we be building a building at the wildwood site or fort river is it going to be an all new school is it going to use some of the old with total renovation with an addition those decisions will not be made until later this year there will be um and to the extent you want to hear more about the detail of this there'll be a community forum this will be the second of them on march ninth and it will most likely be at six thirty and at that point the education program will have been signed off of which will dictate the size of the building and the comparison of choices our design team has been out there digging the dirt we're going to be building a net zero building which means all electric and we're talking about potential geothermal solar panels to offset the energy costs so they're looking at the two sites with the which might be better for those what's the traffic look like on the sites um where the can they locate the school whether it's add or new so that the sun and the daylight streams into the school in the best way to be using the natural energy of the sun so all of that is going into this evaluation of the four alternatives we don't have to make a decision until june well this is our own schedule we've imposed it we're going to be coming up with votes on the educational program the building committee with the comparisons in march then we're hoping to go from choices to one choice a preferred choice where are we going to build the building what's it going to look like with some a limb very preliminary design this is a very a creative team that's starting to say where will the gym be where will the library be where will the cafeteria be where will the classrooms be as we think of um the school and go into the future so this is the the bird's eye view of where we're going and i'm going to stop screamsharing so i can um let's ask to hold this to five plus minutes so hopefully i've stayed within my my time slot for your meeting great okay so that is you know there's a longer version of what i just showed you and um on monday night one of the things that's extremely exciting because until now i've been in this abstract world of what's a preliminary design we're starting to get um what it would it look like if it was a two-story or three-story building the design team is starting to say here are the classrooms where might they be located so it's starting to feel like a building and a school to me um we're hoping if we can move forward this by the end of the year we would be bringing this to the council and then we're going to be bringing it to the voters for support for the financing of it and the best guess is 2026 will have a new school that children can enter so that's the big picture timeline does anyone have questions oh sorry sorry shall we go ahead yeah no same thing any questions yeah nancy hi nancy hello kathy this is kind of a question that comes up way in the background but where are we in terms of population projections for elementary school kids um well with crocker you know i've been since the sixth grade moving up we are at 575 in this combined school and there's another 300 so we're at in the 800 ish numbers and um i can get you i'm i should have come prepared with answers like that but when when you work with msba they're doing their best to look into the future with us to say you know they don't want to build a school that's too small but they don't want to build a school that's too big so that estimate of 575 kids maybe will have 600 kids in this school but they're allowing a summer room for growth so one of the reasons we can move the sixth grade up to the elementary school behind nancy's question is we we have had a decline in enrollment and there's plenty of space in the middle school for the sixth grade to move up um and it makes for a kind of healthy mix to have three grades there to share art music and language so um the projection is not rapid growth but about steady state rather than the loss we've seen over the last several years okay thanks kathy and just so my my children are are in their 40s and late 30s this is down a good 200 to 300 children compared to when they were in school i mean this is we're talking about a decrease which is why we're looking at consolidating two schools john um kathy to what extent if at all does the school building committee take into account the pelham elementary school which really has well it would have a lot of empty space except they choice in about 50 of the students who currently attend the school that's a great question john it's not explicitly on the the radar screen but as i said when the overall picture of how many children do we have um pelham is sitting there as as john has said it there are some people who live on that side of town who choose to go to the pelham school so we have to have suppose they decide to come back into amorous but pelham is right now not part of the school group that we're looking at we're really looking at crocker and our own schools but it's a great question because pelham is sitting with capacity and amorous kids are in some of those seats right now um so i don't have a good answer for you other than it's not one of the pieces certainly the building committee it's not part of our scope to be looking at uh where does pelham sit in all of this the larger town is looking at it but we are not thanks basu hey kathy very excited with this project so thank you for all the work that you've done um so i just want to you know i i lead the well i'm part of the energy and climate change committee and i would really like to see or have you present you know whatever ideas that come up at this at your meeting around how are you going to build in net zero building because i believe it is the first net zero building in amor so be super excited and curious to learn a lot more from it um and then my other question is around uh the materials used for building uh this the school will it be made from net zero or reduced carbon footprint material or is it going to be using regular material have you considered transportation cost and the associated carbon emissions because of that is that part of the consideration as well well you just moved into a sphere that i can't give you a good answer but i can give you a good beginning answer um that we actually have a net zero subcommittee of the building committee and that's four people on the building committee but we've also welcomed town people who have knowledge to be residents to come in and that um there if you go on the website for the elementary school building committee in the town website that subcommittee has had some very interesting postings for so those who you want to really look at the technical details and talking about how do we get to a net zero building how much of it is the building envelope what we build around the building uh what systems we put to heat and cool the building what we what we'd use for daylight and then how we use the building so you don't leave the lights on all day long and you have lights coming off and on and there's been a couple excellent presentations in terms of the specifics on building costs the other thing if you want to um send me an email there's been an amazing report put out by the department of energy working with a larger group that came out in December called elementary school net zero elementary schools and they profiled many across the country and then they've done a kind of it's not quite a how to do it manual but they said how did these schools do what technically so in terms of the materials that go in the building our designer has built a building like this several as as has other in massachusetts so we're going to be looking at that but i think the focus is more on how we're heating cooling and offsetting the electrical costs then specific you know what will the walls be made out and the floors be made of but they're well aware of these issues so i can't go much more into that but i welcome you to this meeting you know it's probably going to be meeting about once a month but they've been very good at if people raise issues later on coming back to give a better idea of what's being thought of for the building right now they are looking at geothermal and looking at the two sites could we have geothermal wells and doing an analysis expensive upfront but lifetime it's worth doing so i don't know where that will that's a choice that we will be making us a town thank you and adrian yes thank you i was trying to put my question into the chat but um the chat didn't seem to be working so i don't know if you want to take this up kathy and i realize this is regarding the elementary school building appreciated your summary there as a district five resident um perhaps i'm asking this question outside of your purview but we've got crocker farm school here and we know there will be several ramifications can you or anyone else speak to crocker farm and the issues for crocker as we go into the new elementary school building era and what that means for our children down here um i can speak real quickly to it adrian because again we are focused on the two other schools but crocker is part of a whole system um so with the district wide special needs programs one of the issues is going to be as we move the sixth grade up where do people who currently go to crocker if they want to be part they already have a choice of going to the common entes to do a language program will siblings follow siblings so some of those decisions are going to be made at the school committee level you know on on where specific which specific school you might be on with some choices we have already seen the school system i'm on the finance committee and on the joint capital planning committee and this year we are looking at a series of capital requests for crocker so crocker is not being ignored in terms of their needs on renovations and upgrading on systems several have been submitted both for the playgrounds and internal to the building so keeping crocker um up to date but also renovated and long term if we were to need more space crocker would probably be a logical place to build it bigger but that would require another building grant so right now we're looking at um hopefully we will live five ten years for with this building but crocker is on the schedule for um not being left behind in terms of its physical space and the quality of its space so i was pleased to see several requests coming in this year and there's a queue you know what's next year and the year after so it's part of the larger um keeping our buildings up to the support of the education programs we have in them last call for questions any other questions i should say anna is anna is also on that joint capital committee so she's she's going to be someone who can answer these questions as well about the schools anna like the disney princess that's my yes i am it's true not on the building committee on joint capital yeah i'm sorry guys yeah i i had a question about well when i was just i just want people to know that march ninth is another public forum that you all can attend and my question actually was that uh kathy pointed out that march eight the school committee is voting um and the forum is on march ninth is the is the feedback or questions from the forum and they're feeding the school committee so the the school committee's vote is on the educational program and what they're what they've really done there's an excellent document the draft document so it's it's building on the programs they're already offering and considering what is this new space makes possible so this is not starting from scratch we have a really simple education program so some of the feedback we've been getting at the forums is more about what does the building look like not what is the program inside the program so to give you an example is using the outdoors as a learning space not just for play but how do we start to say we're going to teach how do we use the building to teach itself if we have a net zero building with young kids coming up learn how the building operates so the building committee follows that several days later so what the community forum will see they're not decisions being made yet on where the building is going to be how much it's going to cost so what the community forum will hear is what our choices are with lots of you know are is it going to be two stories or three stories how how will you worry about the traffic none of those will be answered in this preliminary design phase they were going to be answered in June so all input that people come when they come to the community forum will be worth raising your hand and asking a question or offering a comment right and actually my question was around like our parents and teachers part of this educational plan piece uh yes they're what what you'll see I'll do um a more detailed summary but we're also putting it up as part of the documents for the council meeting okay the Dinesco design team has held multiple visioning sessions external but with parents with teachers with staff and into that has fed into the educational program the next step is going to be on this okay this is your program um where do you want different things in the building and what I've seen done in others you involve kids you know if you think of designing your kitchen where's the stove going to go where's the library going to go where's the gym and communities make these decisions with the designers saying well if you put it here it has these consequences and we're starting to see some of that so the teachers will be very much involved as well parents on thinking through what does the building flow feel like um and kids too right Kathy they were doing some work absolutely and kids and kids you know it's it's pretty exciting when you see um the kids get involved with um you know one one one person who's working with us our owner's project manager she saw one district that have the teachers had the kids draw their vision of the building and where things would be and bring it home bring it home to talk to their parents so their parents come to the next meeting when people were talking about this so it is there there can be a larger engagement and that's decision when I say we pick a place a preferred from June into December we'd be designing the building we the designer so there is going to be a lot of opportunity to uh participate to the extent you want to um that's awesome thanks so much Kathy that's really exciting yeah so I do want to I do want to kind of make sure we're publicly thinking Kathy I know this has been a this is a big lift right the committees are all slightly different and this one is a is a large lift so and sharing it as well um Kathy we are so grateful to you and appreciate all of your work and I'm sure you will hear from many of us as we continue on so thank you and thank you for joining us but thank you for doing this and and you know as we get further along what we're hoping is we bring this out to districts too so that you know what's coming up next and can figure out bring people in or let other people know what's happening so thank you for inviting me thank you so the next update that we have Shawnee do you want to do you want to share about this one it's this crest or do you want me to I'll show the screen okay uh so this is from this is uh an update from Paul Backelman about the crest program this is the community response program and the other recommendations from the community safety working group so crest specifically was the one that got a lot of the a lot of attention and it's it's a big component of this so we I know this is a lot of words I'm going to read them don't worry uh so the essence of it is that the the council last year um in December so prior to me this was the the previous council approved the creation of the department of community responders for equity security and service that's what crest stands for um and so now they're in the phase where they have an implementation team that's been meeting weekly to figure out now what right like how to make this work how to make this function um there is impact bargaining on the establishment of the crest program that's been initiated with the police and offered to the fire and seiu unions and then the in terms of staffing they are advertising or they have advertised the position of the director for the program the interview team has reviewed the applications and the final interviews are actually happening this week so hopefully we will have a director for the crest program soon once that appointment is made and the town council reviews it once they are in place they will be the ones who recruit the staff and hire them for this program the space at the bank center banks community center has been designed and is being contracted out so that's where this department will be functioning out of and we are working on um I say we Paul should Paul I did nothing to get them a vehicle but uh they are they are getting a vehicle to have available for when the program begins um so it's it's continuing to be in process there the other and again interrupt me because i'm going to keep rolling unless you interrupt me so if you have questions just jump in the other recommendations coming out of the community safety working group uh the first was the creation of a diversity equity and inclusion department and so the assistant DEI director started work on january 3rd that is miss jennifer moisten who you may already be familiar with and she is doing a phenomenal job um we are so excited to to have her um I work in organization development and so seeing us you know promoting from within and recognizing talent in our own organization is very exciting uh and and she's doing a great job so the director position has been advert advertised and an interview team will be reviewing those applications and interviewing candidates in the coming weeks at that point paul will then interview the finalists and make an appointment that gets referred to the town council for review so moving along there the second recommendation was a community safety and social justice committee and so um the challenge years that repeated recruitment efforts have not provided a large pool of interested applicants so this is maybe a little bit of a hint and a nudge for those of you who might be interested in this particular area to consider applying for that committee the interview team will be interviewing applicants during the first week of march and paul that should say paul sorry this is i was in a rush paul anticipates making those appointments immediately after they've concluded those interviews and recommendations so please uh you know share the word on this one this is a really important committee um we we'd love to see it robustly uh applied for and you know this is a deep value in our town so i think it would be really great to see some more folks apply for that committee the third recommendation um regarded uh adjustments to the amherst police department so um there's a new dashboard up on the apd website which makes it easier to find and download information collected by the police department so uh easier to access that and now that our police accreditation process is complete there'll be uh we'll be reviewing policies that cswg uh recommended to be reviewed so they're going through back through those policies looking them over and seeing what might need to be adjusted there and then the last uh the last thing that they're moving on is the police resident oversight board and the town manager is working to finalize that charge and then we'll recruit so recruitment is not open for that yet but they're finalizing the charge yeah nancy um where are we in terms of commitments to buying electric cars given the fact that you're providing a new car for cress so that's a really oops sorry i wanted to stop sharing so we could see each other it's a great question um we do not currently one of the one of the things in the um in the climate action plan was a five-year vehicle um switching over to electric vehicles to my knowledge that has not been enacted and i'd love to see it be enacted because uh and lin i'm looking to you to correct me if i'm incorrect um but i believe that go ahead where it is appropriate and those cars or vehicles are efficient we do buy them i believe this year we've bought two police cars that way but what we find is with some equipment it's just not a feasible thing the technology is not there on the other hand for example we're in the process of purchasing a new uh piece of fire equipment and it has a whole different idling system so that it's not sitting there and idling and spewing out fumes um so that to the extent that it's available and the technology has proven itself we look to buy it when we buy Nancy this specific one though i'm going to look back because the the joint capital planning committee does have a list of the vehicles that are currently in service and the proposals for the vehicles that we'd like to buy i believe i'm going to speak so vaguely and i'd like to confirm this before you take it for fact i believe this one was listed as an electric vehicle but i will i will check that the the vehicle plan that i'm talking about would be for like lin said the the vehicles that are able and reasonable to purchase an electric version and so it's a five-year plan to move us forward so that's not an existing policy but would be a great one to get on the books thank you yeah of course so then the next area did we just lose her yeah we did oh um why don't you take over shall yeah i can continue sure so the next update was about the hickory ridge and so good news is that after four years of the owners of that place are trying to get money the smart money and solar money are finally getting it it's happening now finally and so apparently we're going to be closing uh in this week with them and so once that um once that they get them solar money and whatever then we're able to close the deal then i believe that um they will be creating a plan uh Dave Zermak our assistant town manager is going to create a plan for community outreach and to figure out and to engage and figure out what we'd like to see happen um in hickory ridge yeah smart yeah yes uh i i'm really quite excited about the possibilities for hickory rich and i feel that it's really important right from the start i.e as soon as we have the closing and getting to work to have an engaged community committee you know the same old same old where we you know the staff makes the plan and then we do quote outreach after the plan is already in place uh and i i really think that here you know we need the community input you know people who have used hickory ridge who have ideas for it i think it's very exciting that it backs up to the apartment complexes on east hadley road and i think it's very important that members who live there should be actively involved right from the start in suggesting things now would they like to have a playground for kids would they like to have some community gardens over at that end what about a good path for walking to crocker school so that then you can reduce your you know fossil fuel transportation costs if it really was a pleasant walking experience you know all these things i think really need to come in soon and so i would hope that the the town council could make a recommendation uh to today's omac to put in place a community uh no working group of some kind uh you know sooner rather than later thank you martha that's um that really makes a lot of sense to me at least and john oh john you're muted okay i agree with martha i did want to note however that the town has put out a request for ideas about what should happen at hickory ridge on the engage amherst part of the town website and there have been i don't know maybe close to 100 ideas that have come up uh the most popular i'll say since i'm interested in this is but anybody who has an idea can certainly add it by going to the engage amherst website but i would then question uh the people who are living say in the east hadley apartments and so on do they actually actively go to the town website and use engage amherst or would there be a different means to reach out to them martha there have been individual oh sorry there have been meetings with um uh those those apartment complexes uh that outreach is is being done um and will continue to be done because i know that your your point is a very good one and has been on the minds of the folks who are in the planning department um who are doing this okay thank you yeah i i believe that some of the cdbg money that we just got is going to go towards building a trail you are correct apartment buildings out and it's interesting the uh i do want to put a plug in for the fort river and the importance of the fort river ecologically um it's also the longest undimbed tributary of the connecticut river right now and to point out to folks that there are lots of wetlands through there that will be require a lighter touch so before folks get to you know spreading the asphalt pouring the concrete you we really need to do and i i guess there's been a considerable amount of work done because dave zomex very careful about this stuff i'm a dave zomex fan the you know so there's there there's some significant constraints on the property that we need to take into account and we do need to preserve and protect the fort river and um maybe even turn it back into a reasonable trout stream again who knows you are not the only person to uh be interested in the fishing potential of the fort river um i i know that for for fact yeah so bernie i want to i want to talk a little bit hickory ragesome as uh an area i'm so excited about this project it did come before us when i was prior to council when i was on the conservation commission when we were putting the solar array or permitting the solar array and you are correct that um there the wetlands are considerable as with most places in amherst the wetlands are considerable right i'm pretty sure you can't walk a hundred feet without hitting a wetland uh in this town so we are um any trails any permanent trails will require permitting that goes through the conservation commission for those of you who have not had the pleasure of going to one of their meetings part probably because it's at this time uh they are incredibly fastidious and uh cautious and careful about protecting our natural resources um we have a phenomenal wetlands administrator and so know that that is front of mind i also believe specifically about the fort river that there's and i may again this is pencil the fort river watershed group um is paying close attention to this project because it's a potential area for restoration of the fort river yeah i'm part of that fort river great see so i so was i was i right that you all are keeping an eye on it okay good great and i think it's the area where the the existing building is that's where the potential is for some kind of um building or the parking area and so forth over there the front and yeah and one we got a couple of ideas around the community theater that was a also of great interest to people that using the existing building although we've been told that it's in a really bad shape but that's one of the ideas that's come up um from a couple of people is to use that space for a community theater so um the current status you are correct we did get community development block grant cdbg uh yep money to help us with hickory ridge that was a recent announcement that's very exciting and the town staff are continuing to do that targeted outreach to folks that are adjacent as well as um the apartment complex owners and managers to the north of the of the property they're also looking at trails um and and doing that due diligence associated with the funds from cdbg uh so this is just a quick note um Dave is planning on Dave Zomek who's our assistant town manager is is heading up this project and he is for those who don't want to read this long quote he is planning on doing more community engagement work uh for the public so this is going to build off of what was on engage amor so that is a great um jumping off point but the focus is getting more people who live near the property involved in the planning more targeted discussions with the recreation department the housing trust and representatives of the arts community in amherst among many others so he's he's definitely casting a wide net to make sure that we're hearing all of the voices that we possibly can hear from with this project and Martha to uh to build on your idea maybe the you they could be so there's already a south amherst committee I forget what it's called there is an association right the south amherst association of neighbors whoops which one it's um does anyone know what i'm talking about what is there isn't district five there's a district five neighborhood committee yeah and but the apartment complexes are I think a little bit south of where district five is I'm not sure yes oh yeah it's the redistricting it's not going to include that's true but that aside I what I was going to suggest is that Martha maybe you and other residents and we already have a neighborhood south amherst neighborhood association if they want to organize themselves and do the outreach and then collect the information that could be shared with Dave Zermak and with us at the district meeting or directly with Dave Zermak but it doesn't like we don't have to have an official committee for you to do the outreach is what I'm saying we could do that outreach use the neighborhood association to do the outreach in the way you want to do it and then share that information with with us and so may I jump in just quickly yes there is prior to our district configurations there is a very loosely but a well-heeled orchard valley neighborhood and friends and I happen to have been in charge of that for about the past 10 years and we embark upon neighborhood issues down here Dave Zermak knows very well about us so district five there is an association but please know that orchard valley are 200 and plus homes down here we are active we're engaged and we are a very diverse neighborhood of singles of families and we're listening we're very involved and engaged in especially the hickory ridge issue great so uh next up in my little slide deck is just upcoming council decisions and votes and discussions that are coming up we wanted to just make sure you were aware of so Kathy mentioned this on the 28th at 5 30 we have a special meeting so typically our meetings start at 6 30 but we're starting early to discuss the elementary school building project and that's yep 5 30 on the 28th during the normal meeting we will be having our final this our second reading and vote on the temporary moratorium on solar on permitting of large scale solar projects um at that meeting we will also have a couple of um what are called poll hearings just because this was new to me i'm going to let you know uh because uh not sorry not the 28th later on Lynn go ahead my rock you're doing great not the 28th for poll right i that's why i didn't put a date next to it and my slide deck to be fair um so uh coming up the other ones that are tbd tb dated uh so poll hearings so just so you know anytime that ever source needs to put in a new uh electric pole in the public way um they need to come to the council to get that approved because the council is the keeper of the public way it does not apply to every telephone pole um so these are thrilling thrilling discussions that we uh engage in and then um also coming before us are the updated flood maps so updated flood plain that happens every 10 years i believe and so we have hit the mark there and you get to look at maps which is very fun for me um also two things that are going to be coming forward uh tso has been working on uh new parking permit fees and so we uh this is not parking meters this is not this is like you get a you probably doesn't apply to anybody in this space but you live close enough to downtown that you can get a parking permit to park in designated areas downtown and so we're looking at the fee structure for those um that is one way to support our parking funds enterprise funds for parking um and the other thing that's coming down the down the pike as well is potentially looking at the fees as well for rental registrations and examining those and seeing if they are what they need to be for uh just the fee structure around rental registration so those are a couple things i'm sure we will do many more things than that but those are a couple things that are uh on the on the docket in the next couple weeks for us um and then the last thing we wanted to just go over are the ways to engage in some current initiatives that aren't necessarily council related that you might want to know about i'm not going to leave the meeting this time i'm going to click share there we go so uh it's been like two and a half years i work remotely pretty much full time and yet it still happens so uh two two great ways to get engaged these are not the only two ways but wanted to just highlight them sorry these are so pixelated uh the town of amherst website is a really great starting point for finding meeting dates finding agendas and and packets so all the documents that are going to be used in a meeting and that's amherstma.gov on that homepage you can see the calendar of events you can click on the um click on the one you're interested in um you can also see committee committees that are uh have vacancies that you might consider applying for and then the other one that was referenced earlier is engage amherst and that is a website dedicated to gathering input on current projects and initiatives and that is engage amherst.org so highly recommend both of these um i will say you know engage amherst i was even surprised uh i thought it was great when it launched and i looked at it and i was like i wonder if they're really reading it you know and when you look at it they respond to almost every question they are truly on that webpage looking at it and taking it um very seriously so please you know consider using that as as one way to give feedback um shalini anything to add to these two all right so then yeah i guess i would just uh have put it out to people if they have any questions any struggles like we're always looking to improve our website and i hear from people sometimes that it's hard to navigate so if uh what have you liked about or enjoyed about the website and what are some difficulties you might have in finding things so any comments about that and if they're on that's good news no no news is good news i guess um so if if it comes to you interrupt me um so three quick things i wanted to just point your attention to tomorrow thursday yep tomorrow's thursday the 24th uh west pomeroy lane is going to be closed between west street and farmington road between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. so just a friendly fyi in case you're in the area uh the other a couple other things so the livable amherst community survey this is supporting some some really serious and exciting efforts to help make amherst a more age and dementia friendly community if you have not received that survey and would like it um please reach out and we'll make sure to send it to you um it's it's really important to uh i believe it's targeted at folks who are seniors um and it helps us to improve the services and and other things that we've got um to move towards being classified an age and dementia friendly community uh and then the last thing this is i for those who don't know i'm decently competitive um we have a walking challenging challenge happening happening right now and we are losing to amherst new york uh so please if you are a walker or runner even just a plotter um you can enter your enter your miles uh in this in this walking challenge it's an honor system uh and my dog isn't getting much longer walks i'm going to tell you in one second because it's not in front of me but it is on the town web page if you go to the website and tell me this is on because i've been walking a lot and i haven't entered it okay i mean you can enter them retroactively i think i know i know right um i believe it's through the month of february so we only have a couple days left but we're we're close we're close so we gotta all right everyone get on the website and please put in your miles walked it's fun i used to live close to amherst new york when i was in college and for a couple years after so i've got got this is personal all right um and so lastly uh just as a reminder you know i know shallony and i both have facebook pages that you can follow for regular updates if you are do not think you're on our mail email list and would like to be or would like to confirm please please reach out and then lastly just as a reminder of how to reach the council there are two ways um you can just email town council at amherstma.gov and the even better way is to visit the public comment form which is online when you fill out a public comment via that form it automatically is added to the public comment record um as well as emailed to all of us so just know that those are two really great ways to um to reach out i'm done so now we're gonna just open up the floor we'd love to hear from you all about what's on your minds what you want to talk about questions you might have etc and yeah corny turn my mic on yeah yeah i don't know amherst new york has duff's wings that must you know i i probably slows them down some you know yeah you'd think anyway there's nothing i it's not the anchor bar but we're here um i just want to put in a plug for town hall staff yes um you know i have the public service jobs in town tend to be a tad more complicated than they appear and at times they can be crashingly dull and um you know and people come in with all kinds of agendas and make all kinds of phone calls and i i think the staff in town hall the um in the crew up in planning and conservation those those folks um the folks in finance the town clerks uh crew they all work very hard they're all very personable at least in my experience and uh i think we uh i would just like to call the attention of the counselors um that you know they get kudos from me and i'm gonna throw in the library staff as well um i've uh you know benefited i my green kids have benefited greatly from all the good work that the folks at the jones do as well so um they're uh we've got a good crew of people working for us and i think they need to be acknowledged i completely agree um i would love to follow that up yeah with if you have any ideas for how you'd love to see us acknowledge them please let i mean you know i can say thank you to them blue in the face and i'd love to i i'm fully with you that we are incredibly lucky to have the town staff that we have they're phenomenal i think one idea is just we can be nicer you know even when we are um um um disappointed or frustrated just remembering that the town staff is working really hard and is stretched out so thin and uh just be nice yeah and i think we can do more so if you have other ideas please it is a great starting place though i love it yeah adrian thank you bernie yeah thank you bernie i'm sure bernie would have also extended it to our town counselors with your long meetings uh on the council and then to extend it to us i think these district meetings are so very important let me jump to uh my point it's something that i wrote to shalini and anna about the districting advisory committee you know we're coming into the midterms and i see my good friend mindy our terrific representative who helped push through the massachusetts votes act so my point is this that we are redistricted in the town excuse me and come november we might have new precincts we may not but i think it's not too early to start reminding the town and getting out publicity that we've got the state votes act that is coming online as well as our new precincts and new districting and it takes a long time with lots of repetition to let our residents and our citizen citizen voters know that there are changes coming so please put that on your agenda for for meetings coming up and um thanks for our counselors thanks mindy for pushing through that terrific votes act i know we didn't get it all but maybe next time oh yeah maybe you want to say a couple of things about the votes act mindy i'm happy with people would like to hear but i don't want to come and hear this so is that all right anna and please and after mindy we'll have lin give us the redistricting stuff so mindy please go ahead thank you a man so the votes act was the major votes legislation that was passed in the house about i think two weeks ago now um it's not done yet because the house version and the senate version are different and they have to go to a conference before they can actually go to the governor for a signature but that bill does a couple of things the things that we agree on as a house and senate is that mail and voting will continue um early voting will continue there's a shorter registration period um it's been cut to 10 days um people will still be able to use drop boxes and collection boxes the the aspect that was not agreed to unfortunately was election day registration and same day registration and those are different so same day registration is anytime there's an election day um so even during early voting people can register to vote at the time that they're going to vote and election day registration does the same thing for the voter except it's only on election day so it would only be on like september 6 which is the primary or november something which is the general election um in the senate they have same day registration in their bill in the house despite um a really good fight and um not a unanimous vote which is unusual for the house um we lost an effort to try to get election day registration um but there's still the conference committee so a lot of us are holding our hope that maybe the compromise in the conference committee will be election day registration the quasi good news and i hope this isn't too much in the weeds is that even though we didn't pass an official election day registration or same day registration because the registration period has been shortened and the early voting period has been extended it means that right now even with no other changes there'll be a couple of days every election cycle that will actually be able to have same day registration because those days overlap um so that's not ideal we had that last year i don't know if you remember that there was a cup there was like one day i think where we had same day registration and amherst that you know guess what the earth didn't stop rotating so that was a good thing um so we know that it can be done and we know that incumbents actually can get reelected that way so people were concerned about that i personally am not i don't think incumbent um advantage should ever be considered when we're thinking about voting it should only be about voter access um but we'll see so hopefully we'll we'll have election day registration obviously in a town like amherst where about 20 000 of my constituents or students who move in on labor day weekend and the primary is set the day after labor day um election day registration is kind of important to make sure that those students have the ability to vote so we'll see but unfortunately adrian it's not over yet it has to go to a conference committee and then the governor has to sign so more to come hurtle optimus thank you mendy i know you'll help push it yeah thank you adrian thank thank you so much for your advocacy and your work on that um lin would you like to give us a brief update to adrian's point and i know we had talked about this before the meeting around redistricting so we had a phenomenal redistricting committee they i just can't say enough about them they really really did their job in a shortened period of time uh our redistricting map has been approved uh the secretary of state's office is now verifying literally which street addresses are actually in which precincts and your precincts will now be district one a and district one b and district two a and district two b uh and there will be some there is definitely some realignment as to where you will vote once the all the addresses are verified the town clerk will come to the town council with a proposal uh as to where the voting places will be and they will be dispersed throughout town we will not go through that problem we had a couple years ago and uh i am hoping that sometime in april or may at the latest and then there'll be a lot of resident uh education and information uh just on another note rank choice voting would not apply to this coming election anyway and we're still working with mendy and joe on getting that through it was carried over from the last session and uh i also want to just give a shout out to mendy and joe uh they have been amazing along with our town staff in helping bring money to amherst just amazing so thank you so much thank you lin that's really kind of you but can i also say it's a hat tip to the town staff and also i want to publicly acknowledge the work of clauria posmani at the chamber and gabriel gould at the bid and their downtown amherst foundation for bringing lots of money for small businesses and amherst really exceptional um but thank you for crediting me i i don't really deserve it but the people who are in town definitely do credit's not pie we can just keep giving it out it's okay uh so future meetings and then truly truly i promise it's an open floor um we do have some some dates for you to mark your calendars for future district five meetings so um i believe shallony we're still talking seven is that true okay so march 31st april 28th may 26th and june 23rd unless andy is about to tell me why one of those does not work andy no that's not what i was oh good okay i was like oh no i over scheduled something okay or shallony i think shallony picks these thank you for doing that go ahead andy yeah i just wanted to do uh two quick things one is to thank uh i don't know shallony for including me in the meeting is uh historically um invited they've they've invited the at-large uh counselors um i think i'm the only one who's on this particular meeting but i try and attend all of the district meetings because even though i don't participate the way the district counselors do it gives me a great opportunity to hear from all of you and uh really get a feeling for what the issues are around town and actually find is a an at-large um counselor that i spend a lot of time in it because i try and go to meetings in all of the uh districts so well i'm not organizing the meetings so i'm attending more meetings um the other thing i just wanted to mention is that the budget process is underway right now the town manager is developing a proposed budget that will be presented on may 2nd i believe whatever the first monday is but i think it is the second and then we will be um it will go to the finance committee and there will be a forum about the budget so that i would encourage you to take a look at the budget when it comes out for whatever interests and programs you have um it is always a very tight process in amherst about budgets and i think that it's going to be even more difficult in the next few years because we've created um several new programs uh ucac and at the uh the recommendations of the community safety working group in particular and those are additional to programs that already exist so that the demands on the budget are growing faster than the budget itself is going on the revenue side and it's going to pose great challenges that we're all going to have to make difficult decisions about and getting input from the community is always helpful and important amherst faces a forever challenge because we have a tremendous amount of land that is not taxable either because it's uh owned by a university or college or it's conservation land and uh is a consequence uh and we have a very small business district compared to many communities which puts a lot of burden on homeowners um and uh property that is residential which is um makes us very cautious about wanting to ask for any operating budget override so there are difficult choices that are going to have to be made first by the time manager and then considered by the council within the restrictions of the charter so I just wanted to touch base a little bit on finances the forever chair of the finance committee to point that out and I wanted to also recognize that we have some really great resident members one who's on this column that's Bernie Kubiak who have really contributed a lot the charter provides a special situation for the finance committee to include resident members of the committee and they are really tremendous resource tremendous contributors to the committee's work so very thank you so that was all I wanted to say thank you Andy anything else folks want to talk about uh or or ask tonight yeah while we're waiting for people to think up and give them a little space to figure out if there's something I want to share I just want to give a shout out to some of the new restaurants that have started uh launched uh or started downtown so please go and visit our and try out even if you're not going into restaurants maybe you can do a takeout so we have rice delicious there is Garcia's Max Galitos Hazel's is a new one that's open where let's use to be um and uh and the last thing is that Drake which is does everyone here know about Drake anyone who doesn't know so Drake is a new performance center we're going to be having right in our downtown with live music or stand-up comedy and I already know actually dr. Kate Atkinson who many of us know her son is a performer in Boston and so he might be getting people from Boston so it'll be like so cool to have our own kids grown up and performers to come and showcase their work there and they have done a phenomenal job a job they are just short by $50,000 now so if anyone wants to uh offer it doesn't matter how big or small but if you want to offer a donation uh to get Drake started in time please uh go to the website and with that donation I do want to say I was thrilled that I was able to get any remark for the Drake as part of economic development in the ARPA funds um because you know the ARPA funds were all about post-COVID recovery and so there were lots of different ways of looking at that and you know $50,000 short makes me think I better call up Gabrielle because we're coming into budget season thank you thank you so much yeah and there's another uh I just shared it today on Facebook of anyone has a small business here please let people know that the uh the state has just opened up uh I think we got an email from Joe Kammerford saying that there is new grants that are being offered to small businesses so please spread the word if you know any small business and that they that can benefit from this grant okay well we're happy to stick around for a couple minutes if folks do have questions otherwise thank you so much um hopefully we'll see you March 31st at 7 if we don't see you sooner at the meeting thank you all appreciate it thank you all good to see you thank you so much everyone thank you Mindy thank you Anna Lynn Andy Mindy all of you thank you Adrian thank you town counselor all right