 which hopefully folks, thanks for that, right? So hopefully folks got the agenda, but the way we're gonna manage the meeting right now is at least for this one, I'll kind of facilitate. So I'll walk us through the agenda, I'll call them folks, when it's their time to present and then like as we've always, we're not gonna go crazy form on the stuff, just don't talk over each other, that's kind of silly stuff. If we have a lot of things to say, just put your hand up or whatever so we can make sure that we get to everybody. We have several things on the agenda. We will start, Gene's gonna walk us through some mission statement work that Carolyn started and that she has been working on, figured with kind of this new people in place, let's have that be our first order of business. Then we'll get some updates from Becky right after that, just so we don't have to keep her here for an extended amount of time. And then Matt, looking to you really, I think like the main order of business for us right now is really making sure that we give you feedback on CPAC projects. So looking to you to walk us through what we've learned to date, what you know about the projects, so we can provide you any feedback you need. We'll go over to Cherry Hill Finances, I know Ray sent out materials a while ago on that, just fill us in on how that, what our situation is there. I'll talk about some next steps. I know that both Sanchez and Chris have expressed interest in helping understand what's happening there and how we might be able to provide guidance to Ray. We'll get a pickleball update. And then just at the very end, I've got kind of meeting cadence, but it's really just, are we good with this Monday time slot? We feel like once a month is probably reasonable, but we can get to that when we're done. So there's a lot on the agenda. So this may be a little bit of a longer call than normal. Hopefully we can still keep things moving along. But on that note, let's get started with minutes. So I guess first of all, let me just say, Matt, are you comfortable taking minutes for us today? Okay, great. All right, so then first order of business would be to approve the minutes from the September meeting. So can we get a motion on that? I could motion that. Does everyone have the minutes? Yeah. Yeah, we've all, we have more ready to vote on them. Yeah. Okay, so we've got a gene put motion out there. Let's get a second. Second. All right, Jeremy. All right, any comments or questions on the meetings as they were presented by Matt? All right, then we'll just do a vote around the horn here. All in favor of approving? Yeah, a hand would be great just so I can see them. Gene, you're good. Yep. All right, so we've got a unanimous for approval of those minutes. Yep. All right, let's do Ray. Is there anybody from the public here? Looks like not. Okay, so no need for public comment to this point. So Gene, you want to get us started on some of the work you've been doing on the mission statement? Sure, let me share my screen with you and I could share that. I don't know if that was shared, was the mission statement shared with everyone previously? I don't believe so. Yeah, I don't know. Ray, I don't have possibilities to... Ray, can you promote Gene or...? You have disabled my participant screen sharing. Oh boy. The hosted, if that's you. I think Ray's the analyst. And so now? Now I can, yes. Okay. All right, so... Oops, what happened there? Sorry. Do y'all see the Amherst Recreation Commission mission statement? Yeah. So based on some of the other mission statements from some of the other groups, I kind of came up with this idea, this wording, sent it to Caroline's and she wordsmithed it and added a few other things and this is what we have right now. I'll just read it out and then we can kind of discuss it if you want to add anything and drop anything. So the Amherst Recreation Commission supports and advises the Amherst Recreation Department, formerly LFSE, and its work to provide leisure and recreational programs and events, supplemental education classes, and recreation facilities to the Amherst community. Commission members bring a diversity of interests and strengths to support the department's programs. The commission reviews proposals and makes recommendations related to CPA funding for the town's parks and recreational projects with the goal of promoting the fitness and well-being of Amherst residents. Recreation Commission's monthly meetings are open to the public and meeting agenda recordings and minutes are posted on the town's website. So short and sweet. I don't know if anyone has comments, suggestions. I don't think it needs to be much longer, but go ahead. Yeah, I would say I think the first sentence was sort of what we've always had and then the ads were around bringing CPAC in, right? Yeah, I don't think we had a mission statement or maybe there was, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, I think there may have been something, you know, read further than this. I mean, this seems to cover the charge of the commission. Chris, did you wanna say something? Maybe you look like you were gonna say something. Who me? Yeah, no. Oh, no, I'm sorry. No, I get it. I get it. Slowly. Okay. I didn't say yawn, so no. You're good. Yeah, man, I know we've got some new folks on the board here. I guess for those like Jonas and Jeremy and Chris, does this kind of sound like what you signed up for? Yeah, it does. It looks to me, it definitely looks conclusive and comprehensive, that's the word I'm thinking about. Yeah, and concise, like simple, I thought. I agree. It looks great. Okay. Well-being of homeless residents, of fitness and well-being, I love it. Yeah, we love it. The disclaimer, open to the public. You know, getting educational classes in there, that's not just rec, it's not just, you know. Yeah, I mean, it looks good to me. I mean, if people are good, exactly as is, you know, we can probably lock it down. But if anybody would like a little bit extra time or not, there's no time sensitivity to this. So if people wanted to, you know, hang on to it, take a look at it over the next month and make any other recommendations, we could do that. But if not, we would like to get this uploaded to the tabs website just to make sure we've got something. Anybody have any concern about this? I think it looks good because it's straightforward to write to the point. You know, I don't think it needs to be much longer because a lot of people, you know, I think it's good. I like it. All right. Okay, well, it seems like everybody's pretty much on board. So, Ray, I mean. May I ask, as a non-voting member of the commission, we do have a panelist and Becky Demlin here that served on the petition before if it would be appropriate for the commission to just ask her in case she has any feedback on this also. By all means, yeah. Becky, what do you think? I think it's good. One thing I wanna, like making sure it stays broad, having served on the commission two terms years ago, that it's really important that it stayed loose. Like when it was Groff Park, we did a lot of community engagement, like when we were working on that project with Kendrick, same thing. So there's always like, there's always a need for flexibility. It used to be like the North Common Project also had an Immersed Rack Liaison from the commission. And I don't, like, I guess that falls within departments' programmings, but programs and initiatives maybe to support, like a little broader, because it's not just programs, that it's also initiatives that need to be supported, but that's mainly in put. Otherwise, I think it's great. Jean, can you capture that now? Where would that, where? Where it bring a diversity of interest and strengths to support the department's programs and initiatives. I will, as I was thinking about that too, I wonder if it makes sense to take that sentence and move it maybe to the end, because you have a sentence, it talks about what, and then it senses it talks about who, and then another sentence, it talks about what. If that makes sense. So move this one to the bottom of that paragraph? Yeah, I think like maybe, yeah, have that come after. Have those two that are sandwiching it be next to each other. I think that's on the better, yeah. And then Ray, I guess you offered up, Becky, what do you think? Does this sound like what we're doing for you? I do like it, and I had to restrain my own, I almost wanted to make it more specific, but I agree with the architects of this statement, and with what Becky just said, that I think staying general is good for the mission statement. Marking your specific authority is not essential here, so I do like this. All right, very good. Yeah, John. Go ahead, John. Is it backfinding, or is it CPA funding? It's CPA, the extra C is for commission. Ready? Yeah, that's a good question though. Maybe actually just put Community Preservation Act, spell that out, for clarity. Do we need to include formerly LSSE, just so people know what that is, or? What do you think, Ray? People still talking about you as LSSE? People like me, yeah. I do believe, I wasn't even here for LSSE, and I've had some conversations where it's come up, and I didn't even register for me that it was inaccurate at some of those conversations. It is still, it was pointed out by the co-chairs to me that the commission page on the town website still has a link that's horribly outdated. The commission page, I'm looking at it right now, does refer to it as formerly LSSE, and if we change it here in the mission, we could change it on the page also, when we change those other, it's out of date. The Recreation Commission page is definitely out of date. Other than your names, which are updated, it is out of date. Who takes care of, who does those updating? I will submit that to Town Hall. Okay. So we want to leave it for now or the formerly LSSE? The formerly LSSE. I'm okay with leaving it formerly LSSE. Let's do it then. Okay. The only way, can you get rid of formerly LSSE and see if it makes the margins neater on the paragraph, because that's the only reason why. Yeah, I know I don't like that either. Well, it'll be on the webpage too, so it's going to rescale. Okay, it'll recenter, so leave formerly LSSE in. Leave it. All right. All right, well then maybe, how about this? Could we just email that out to the commission rey? So we all have it. And then how about like next week, look to get this thing uploaded. And then meanwhile, if anybody has any other last minute thoughts, just reach out to rey. Motion to. Really rey and Jean, I should say. Motion to make that official. Second. Yup. All right. Let's take Jean as first and Chris as second, just since they're the commission members for that. Yeah, I'm just not sharing now. All right. And folks approve that. All in favor? I should say yes. All right. Yes. All right, unanimous. Awesome. Yeah. All right, one order of business down. Next one would be Becky for you to give us an update to see how much more of the world you've been able to change in the last month. There's a lot been going on in the last few months. The main reason I wanted, actually Ray, should I let them know about the Culture City programming? Yes. Okay. So I'll start with an update on something I've been working on actually for the past month and a half. We've been looking at using some of our ARPA outreach money to do some training around sensory inclusiveness in our programming. This would involve the organization, the nonprofit we've decided to go with that we're presenting to the town manager tomorrow is called Culture City. They're a national nonprofit. They work with a lot of primarily venues, museums, libraries, anywhere that has a bunch of people that come in to do different things. And what they do is they provide a one hour training that's online, it's asynchronous so that you could have different staff people. So you take the training, they go over like a checklist of like, do you have a sensory friendly space? They give you materials like headphones and fidget toys and weighted pillows and things like that. And the goal is to train your staff and adapt your facilities so that you can be more accommodating for those that might experience sensory overload or need to take a break from the activity. The main focus of this initially would be our camps and our after-school program. Just in the time I've been here, I've been to both programs and I've seen kids being dysregulated in part because their sensory overloaded and in part because we don't train our staff on how to deal with it. So for me, I'm a parent of an adult with special needs. I know like I've had two kids that did rec programming, one that it was never an option for. And that's something that I would hope to change so that we can broaden how many kids in particular or adults can access our programming. The cost is fairly insignificant. It's $750 and it's unlimited number of people that can be trained. So this is something that we're hoping that we could roll out in early next year with the start of our winter programming. Yeah, does anyone have any questions about that? I have a couple, but anybody else wanna go first? You're good, man. All right, I guess. So this is around sort of how we design physical spaces and physical experiences or does this also affect like digital or online stuff that you might do? And I asked a ladder also because like, is this something that could have town-wide application? So to answer the first part, it's making sure that when we run an event or programming that we not only have the physical things necessary to support the type of sensory divergence or it's like the way people, there's like one in six people have a sensory integration disorder whether it's through autism or other things. So part of it is having physical spaces. The other part is training our staff, particularly our forward-facing staff, people who work with individuals that access our programming so that they know like how to recognize and support them in productive ways rather than reactive ways. And yes, it could be something and we have talked to the town about starting this with REC and then branching out to other departments that have a lot of forward-facing staff. But it would primarily start with Amherst Recreation, the events we participate in and our specific recreation programming. Daphne, then would you also have like coaches or other folks who are helping? So all right, it's not just town employee or it's not just staff, it's anybody who is in a leadership role for any of our programs. Yes, and in order to get the certification that we're seeking, you have to have a headcount of how many employees you have and then you have to train at least half of them. So you have to have a critical mass before you can get the certification. Very good. Any other questions on the culture city? No, it sounds fantastic. Where are they based out of? I don't know. The person I've been dealing with is in Connecticut but that's not where their main office is. They work with the NHL, NFL, and MLB and like a bunch of different museums, particularly science museums in particular. So I found out because the Red Sox have been looking at using them and we're exploring that the Bushnell in Connecticut also uses them. So they like their New England hub is based out of Connecticut but I don't actually know where the main headquarters is. Sanjay? Thanks. Oh, go ahead Sanjay, you're on mute. Okay. Hi Becky, thanks with respect to the camps, right? I wonder the camps I think are largely, what's the counselors at the camps, right? These are mostly young people, yes. So I guess the question I wanna ask is what are our expectations for how much we can, what are our expectations for how much we can move the needle on counselor ability to address these situations and young people with an asynchronous online short training and will we, well, we will wreck will the town understand what those expectations are with respect to how the camps are managed, right? I mean, this is low cost, but I guess, let me try to phrase this precisely. If I were sending an older teenager off to be a counselor at one of the Amherst Wreck camps and I came to understand that they were gonna receive an online asynchronous training to support children in need of support during sensory overload episodes, I would be concerned that they were being put in a situation that they actually weren't prepared to deal with. I really appreciate that question. Like I agree with you, there is a limit to what you can ask a teenager to do, but what you can do is make them aware so that they know what it looks like. Like, oh, wait, when you see this kid start pacing, you know, you might recognize, like when you can recognize what's happening, you can intervene earlier before escalates. We still have our behavior policies, those aren't going away, all of those expectations we put on our campers for minimum behavior conduct. What we can do is just like, when you build the awareness that like, you know what, that kid might be reacting that way because it's a little loud and you offer a pair of headphones, you avoid the escalation of behavior that can result in that kid getting sent home. So the expectation isn't that like, they're not, you know, teachers with master's degrees, but there are base level things that we can all do and make available that, you know, are just kind. And I don't expect that it would be perfect, but I also think with modeling and like showing like different ways, if it permeates all of our training, these general directions of how we work with kids, then I think we can make an impact on, you know, we're not gonna be perfect, we're not gonna, like year to year, we'll have different, like we are working with UMass at having one of their masters of public health students do some documentation and observation for us, like so we can figure out how we have to improve year over year, they have to do an unpaid internship for like 200 hours of research and be their case study. So, you know, I absolutely agree with you, it's not gonna solve everything, but if we can make just that little bit of difference that allows us to become better every year at addressing and supporting kids with sensory input issues or adults with sensory input issues, like that would feel like a way to test them. That's good, I think I would just add maybe to Sanjay's point is that I think his point, make sure that that's articulated to folks as they come on that this, you know, be very clear upfront that this is not, you know, a medical training, this is an opportunity for that. All right, Matt, I saw you had your hand up first. Yeah, so it's just gonna affect the staffing ratios, like, or I guess I'm not sure exactly what the right way to phrase the question is. Another, an overnight temp that my children attended did have a program for children with special needs, which included this kind of thing, but other things also. But that was sort of a separate application and they had a much higher staffing for those people and there was a different cost as well. So I don't know if you anticipate just saying these people are just gonna apply like anyone else or if it's gonna be a separate application or if they apply with everyone else, do you think that you're gonna have to change the staffing ratios, for example, in the after-school programs or you don't think that's gonna be a problem? So what I can say is just within the programs we already have, like within our after-school and in our camps, we already have kids that are on the spectrum. We already have kids with ADHD or trauma that can make them respond to sensory input differently than someone might expect. So we're not going to become a camp where we can accommodate a high level of kids with special needs. They're already in our programs, quite frankly. So you don't think it'll change who's coming to the programs or the camps. It's just more of a situation of handling them better or accommodating them better. Okay. All right. Thanks, Jonas. Yes, I think kind of dovetailing on that is if it was a camp only had like one counselor managing 20 kids and then they need to kind of take a break with those 20 kids, maybe depending on the age of the kids could, they almost had like, could the counselor say, I want to know who's ready to help like be a quiet buddy to this, whoever it is. So instead of having to stop 20 kids from whatever they're doing, maybe a couple of kids have already volunteered to say, I'll go sit quietly with this, you know, whoever's having that issue. And then the kind of the, obviously it depends on the age of the, if it's five-year-olds that probably won't work, but depending on the age. But I guess it does bring up the question of if you're, if you only have one counselor for a lot of kids, how are you going to, how's that counselor going to handle it? So we follow EEC guidelines for our staffing ratio, which is one to 12, at least in our after-school program we always have a floater person. So we have our one to 12 ratio. And then we have a floater person that, you know goes between because we know like frequently with your K1 unexpected toileting issues or other things like can come up. So we're not going to be changing our rotation. I love the idea of incorporating kids in it. There's a lot that the school already does around that empathy training of noticing what someone might need. That's absolutely something that we can look at and incorporating. Unfortunately, Culture City won't let you see the training until you signed on. So we don't know. I did ask them a bunch of pedagogical questions around like what's your structure? What's your expectation? It's very beginner level. It's very much about like early intervention, like warning signs and interventions that you can do. And then, you know, empowering the child to, you know or the adult to have access to the materials they need. Like I said, these kids are already in our programs. They don't have one-on-ones. We don't have one-on-ones at this time in any of our programs, unfortunately. But a lot of this follows what our schools are already doing during the day. So that carry over from like, oh, this kid's wearing headphones at school, you know, to decrease noise. Like, oh, wait, we have them here. So it's not such a cutoff between what you're able to access at school and what you can access in after school or other programming. Makes sense. I have one quick, fast follow-up here. So what is the, like you said, we're going to go to the town to get ARPA or go to town council, I guess, to request the ARPA funding here. Is there any reason to expect that that would be tonight? I don't know whether, I'm just not sure how the ARPA is sort of allocated if it is allocated amongst departments, but is there anything that you would need from, you know, the, this committee to help with that? So at this point, we're only accessing ARPA funds that have already been identified for Amherst Recreation Outreach. We were given a pot of money with the idea of broadening who we are able to serve in our programming. We have done a brief, like we submitted a paper, which I can totally send to the commission if you'd like, outlining the, what we're doing, why we're doing it and how we're going to track its effectiveness. Above all else, I don't want this to be a token effort. I want it to be a systematic change and how we, you know, support kids in our programming to make sure we're as inclusive as possible. We spent a lot of time writing about this. I don't think at this point that my indication from talking to Paul Blackelman is that he just had additional questions. We submitted our paper to him last week when I call it a paper, it's our proposal last week. And he asked for some additional input, which Denise Lekinby, who's our aquatics coordinator who has seen a need for this also within the swimming program that she runs with Amherst United has been working with me on it. She has a background in public health and connections at UMass, which is how we're able to find a UMass person who would be able to help us track data and do a real needs assessment like an official needs assessment, not just like a random survey. So that's how we're going, but at this point, I don't think there's going to be a need for the commission to get involved, but I'm absolutely happy to come back and let you give you updates on the program of it is progressing. Sounds great. All right. And then there's one more thing. There's one more thing. There's one more thing. I'm so sorry. And I'm winter from like Becky too fast. Yeah. I think that there's another thing that I think the commission can definitely help us out with and that she's going to be looking for. And I'm pretty sure that I'm leading Becky into the second piece. Yeah. So winter fast in the past has been a joint effort between Amherst recreation and the friends of Amherst recreation. And what I am trying to do is give winter fast a little refresh, come up with some, keep the things that were worked and were attended and then change up some things. I'll be honest with you and I'm having some struggles if I don't have snow what to do at Cherry Hill. So if the committee had any input on that I would very much appreciate it. I'm looking at changing up the kickoff. I don't know if you've attended winter fast in the past but it used to be that there was a Cherry Hill celebration that ended the event. That's kind of changed a little bit. The chamber wants to end on the luminaria and fire at least on the culminating event. So that's going to be February 3rd on the town common. The kickoff is going to be Saturday, January 27th based on the, when the finale is going to be. There is a little difficulty this year in that UMass doesn't come back until January 30th. Students don't come back. So we're a little, we have some volunteers but and we will do a call for volunteers but I did not know if the commission wanted to be involved in either working with me on some of the events or vetting some of the events that we have planned. The main one I'm thinking about is the kickoff event which I'm proposing that happens at Mill River instead of Cherry Hill. And the reason is we can't predict when snow is going to be and like I said, I can't think of a lot of things to do at Cherry Hill if there's not snow. Absolutely open to any, like I've nothing against Cherry Hill. I just don't know what to do with the land in space if I can't slide or ski on it. So just not to drop a wide mill river then. So what I'm proposing is a couple of different things. Doing street hockey on the basketball court like tournament style because they could be cleared of snow or ice if need be but also if there's not any snow, absolutely use them. I don't know if you've ever seen those fake foamy snowballs that are like squishy, his toys. I'd like to do snowball fights, tournament style like dodgeball kind of thing on the kind of sports. I had the snowballs tested on me, so. Director grooved. Doing things like snowshoe races that could be just boots or snowshoes if we have snow. Doing a snowball throwing contest with like distance which could be balls or actual snow. I found this really cool thing which I don't have it up on my screen but doing these penguin races using, I don't know if you can see but it's like using gutters and little floaty things so you can do races which would be a great pavilion activity and fitting with the winterfest cold thing. So, and then maybe Mass Mammals which is a program out of Amherst College who's done some other programming for us this fall having them do like a nature walk along the trails and like animal habitats kind of thing. So that's what I'm thinking for the kickoff and I'd really like the commission's input on it. Yeah, so I'm surprised you asked for ideas because I think you've thought of all of them but let's I know Jonas you had your hand up a couple of times do you want to chime in? I'm just wondering for a non snow cherry hill option what about like miniature golf? So if you could modify because there's Amherst golf courses right next to us and I feel like it's hard to get kids to play, 18 rounds of golf on a big course but if you could modify the whole so that it was like a short and that would depend on of course if it was muddy then that wouldn't be good. But snowy and not snowy and also like good grass but just an idea. Thank you Jonas that would be something that we can and will be looking at putting forward. The greens are usually roped off in the winter time snow or no snow for the sake of care there. We talked about that for all of our off season work out there. If it was really not snowing then it could be that that's something that's one of those that we're talking about the if parts of programming here which programmers don't like if but if we have a couple of those ifs locked away and say if there's snow then we can do this if there's snow we might schedule not impromptu but as we get closer we could schedule a sledding the sled race at Cherry for another day during the week. If we want to bring people out and try and get them in for that have a day of sledding at Cherry Hill if there is snow but there's no sense that we can bank on there being snow right now. All right. So how about this I know just to keep us moving Becky's asked for some folks who might be interested to want maybe Matt do you have a question or I had I did have another question. All right so go ahead. Those are great activities and then is there going to be like a food component or some other thing like that? I don't know how other things wrap into the winter vest. So go ahead Becky. I was going to say for the main event I'm looking at working with local vendors to do like cupcakes and donuts kind of not anything that you need to get a food permit for but like prepared foods and hot ciders kind of thing mostly to avoid the inspection services, the ASCO gift grant. That's going to be the the rec commission staff or an outside vendor. For selling food. Can I give you a great big TBD on that? I have to finalize planning the event I'm meeting with the chamber later this week to talk to them and then I was going to maybe some people in the chamber want to be involved. That's what I'm hoping. Right. I see that you jogged my memory. I had one question and maybe embarrassed. I don't know who are the friends of Amherst Wreck? Friends of Amherst Wreck maybe in transition to come back towards us a little bit but that was that is the 501c3 that is a independent fundraiser for recreation. Right now the board includes, I believe Yusuf is still on the board but bar bills is the one that I've spoken to the most from that small group. They haven't done a ton. They still have a bunch of money that we can use to supplement our programming but that is an account that is separate from our budget. It's a fundraising account that's separate from our budget. Okay. All right. Yeah, maybe we can connect on that. Yeah, let's. Yeah, just that. Okay, well, that's what Tobekis asked though about folks to vet these ideas by, I guess to keep things moving along. Let's, you know, anyone interested maybe we can get a raise of hands and then maybe if you just, yeah, you just email folks directly. So anybody would like to be interested. I see Jeremy's hands up, Jonas. I'm putting mine up as well. Jean. All right. So those four and you can always jump in later if you change your mind. If there's any. Oh, so you're breaking up there, Jeremy. I mean, obviously historical where our best was for winter and but if there's no snow, you can always throw a frisbee. Yeah, that's true. All right. Okay. Anything else for us, Becky? No, thank you all so much. I really appreciate your input. Thank you. Great work. Appreciate the update. Thank you for being here, Becky. Thank you. All right. All right. Next up would be a CPA, Matt, are you at a point where you can walk us through the proposals? Have you, have you heard them all and been able to kind of interview the, the requesters or applicants at this point? Right. So the situation is that we received the applications that had been vetted by the town about a week, about two weeks ago. And then members of the commission submitted their questions, I think one week ago. And then we just today received back most of the responses. So with respect to, there were, let me bring up my spreadsheet. There were 13 proposals total and five of them are recreation. All of the recreation proposals were submitted by the town of Amherst. And I'm not sure if you want me to share my screen so I can look, show you what they are, or if you want me to just describe them. Share stuff. I would, I mean, I would appreciate the visual. And then also, before you get going to, I do see that we've got Dave Zomek in the attendee list. I don't know whether he was joining to be able to help field questions. Is that what you were going to say, Ray? That is, if the commission will indulge, I can take him off of the, I can promote him to panelists for this and probably the next agenda item also. Yeah, let's, let's do that. And then Matt, why don't you, why don't you walk us through? Okay, bear with me while I try to figure out how to share screen on Zoom. Wow, desktop. I don't know which is which. Let's see what happens. Okay. Okay. I've never done this. So I have to add this preference. Thank you. Okay. I'm going to have to leave the meeting and re-enter in order to do this. Okay. We can, we can. While Hank does, I do just, I did just promote Dave Zomek to a panelist. So Dave is here. Hi Dave. Hi Dave. Hi Dave. Good evening, Dave. Welcome. Question is, is he here or not? I texted him. Is that he's here? If not, then he got my text. All right. Well, Matt is very thorough and I'm sure he can provide us great updates even without having the full process run its course yet. And so, oh, Matt's back. All right. We'd see your browser. Yeah. Let me. Matt's green. Okay. Oh, let's see. Okay. Can you see that or is that too small? I can see it. Anybody else good? Yeah, it works. All right. Let's try it. Let me go back to the start. So I can just go through them in the order that we've received them. So the first one, maybe I should, before I do that, just list to you what they are. Oh man. And can you actually, also can you do like a 30? I'm not sure whether Jonas, Chris and Jeremy, are you guys up to speed enough with what we're asked to do for this or would you like Matt to give an overview? Little review here. Yeah, I was gonna say a little review would be nice. Okay. So the CPA Community Preservation Act is a state program in Massachusetts where towns take a part of their tax revenue and then get a partial match from the state. And then there's a committee that votes by people apply. There's a committee to discuss it and the town council votes on it. And it's an annual process. And the categories are like affordable housing, historic preservation, recreation and open space. So this year, the proposals totaled about 2.4 million. We have close to 2 million available to give out, I think. And the recreation proposals was 1.1 million of that 2.4, but mostly in one of the proposals. So there were four proposals, five proposals for recreation, one was additional money for the Kiwanis Park Pickle ballcourts. The second one was $60,000 for Mill River Tennis Court Rehabilitation. Then $85,000 for Softball Rehabilitation. $750,000 for to go toward the rebuilding of the War Memorial Full House and Area. And then $100,000 to go toward trail restoration and enhancement. Now, when I first heard about this a couple of years ago, I was sort of didn't quite understand why these things go through this process. But it seems that in Amherst, things that you might otherwise consider to be sort of maintenance sometimes go through this capital allocation process. So for example, the trail restoration enhancement is sort of an almost annual amount that it's not in the regular budget. They get it either out of the capital budget or out of CPA or some other capital type of grant or something like that. So they don't actually have a budget line in the regular budget for materials to maintain trails, which I was surprised about, but that's how Amherst does it. So any questions about that? I was just trying to remember, but CPA is not supposed to be used for maintenance, right? It's got to be tied to some type of enhancement. Yes, but I mean, these kind of things, they're capital enough to give you capital. So the town has said that these are okay. These conform to what is required, even though it might sound like maintenance. It's not, I guess the difference is whether it's just baseline annual maintenance or more like long-term maintenance. So the softball rehabilitation, they're saying, this is like something we don't do every year. This is something we do every 10 or 20 years. It's a one-time over-referring basically. Yeah, I believe that the distinction, it's my operational distinction. I don't know that it's official, but anything that goes above and beyond the normal maintenance process, taking care of the lawn, upkeep on the fences, that sort of thing. Anything that goes beyond a normal maintenance, we're not supposed to put anything that would be classified as basic upkeep into a CPA proposal, but anything that goes up beyond that, anything that demands funding to substantially go beyond that, you transcend the sense of maintenance. So something like the war memorial, redoing the roof at war memorial, which is part of what led us to the process. If it was just redoing that roof, that could be called a maintenance project. If it wasn't- Actually, there are roofing projects that are in CPA funding. That's what I mean. If it's a maintenance project like a roof, then the question is, can we turn that into something that is beyond sort of something that should be handled by our operational budget? If it was just fixing the fence, if it was something along the lines of fixing the fence or bringing in new, what have you, if there's something that seems like it goes beyond normal maintenance process that should not be covered by an operational budget, then that's where CPA comes in. So we're looking to try and shop for the department, for the town of Amherst. We're trying to shop and take care of those needs that go beyond basic maintenance. When you say with softball field, what softball field are you referring to? Do you want it at the high school? Well, firstly, just if you have any general questions, and then we can go through these one by one. Yeah, I had a quick general, Matt, which was reminded. So 2.4 is being requested, and how much did you say we have available? You know, I can't remember. Off the close to that. It's pretty close to that, I think. Okay, that's a nice change. All right, Jonas, is it for everything or? No, it's done. Were there more projects submitted and you narrowed down to 13? There was one that was submitted that the town dean didn't meet the requirements of the CPA Act. Otherwise, okay. New track, I'm just trying to be, new track and field would not be part of that project or any of that funding. So the new track and field at the high school went through the CPA, I think, two years ago. So that was partly funded by the CPA in addition to other sources of funding. Okay, I'm just two years of flown by. I appreciate it. All right, Matt, let's hit the projects. Okay, so let me go back to the other screen. In a couple of minutes, I'm gonna have to turn myself not off, but I'm gonna have to turn to just audio because they have to be UberDead. Okay. So the Kiwanis Park Pickable Courts, so... And Matt, I'm sorry, or I guess I'm not sorry. I'm gonna interrupt. Is our objective here, is our objective to come up with recommendations tonight or is this just the first step in moving towards recommendations over a subsequent meeting? So I think the purpose right now would be to have some discussion within the Recreation Commission to gauge like the Recreation Commission's enthusiasm, roughly, for each of these proposals. So, yeah. Yeah, but... And I'm bad too, we know... And then you, Matt, as our representative have the ability to convey the sense of the committee, commission to the Community Preservation Act Committee, right? Correct, correct. But we are, we would not, given the timeline for CPA, are we likely to see this topic on an agenda for a next meeting or is this our one shot? Oh, to answer that question, I have to, I should have my CPA timeline more at hand. Perhaps Assistant Town Manager Dave Zomek would like to answer that question. Well, I... Dave. No crowd, I'm gonna get to Dave in one sec, but just also for the committee, just remember there's more being requested than what we have. So that enthusiasm will help. Generally what'll happen is, there'll have to be some negotiation around whether we would request something at the full funding amount or a smaller amount. And I think by giving Matt our interest, that gives him some more ability to sort of speak on the behalf of the commission when those decisions have to be made. I think it's quite likely that the CPA... The CPA discussions will happen before the next Recreation Commission meeting. The CPA decisions will probably happen after, like there's two phases. There's where we receive presentations from the submitters and then there's a later phase when the CPA Commission discusses and votes. So the discussion and voting will probably happen after the next Recreation Commission meeting. So there is some opportunity to still give feedback at the next Recreation Commission meeting, I think. All right, thanks Matt. Dave, would you like to add to the conversation? Yeah, if I could. Yeah, I think Matt is right. Typically, there's at least three meetings where presentations happen in the four categories, Recreation, Conservation, Affordable Housing, and Affordable Housing, and Historic Preservation. So that will take all of the month of November, probably into early December. So there certainly is time. I mean, I think given questions that'll come up explaining the proposals tonight, I would suggest that I would hope you'd listen and generate more questions and send them to Ray or myself and we'll get back to you. And then maybe you take a good portion of your next meeting or if there's an opportunity maybe to schedule a special meeting to really dig into these and help you to prioritize them, that would be great. I guess I just wanted to put a plug-in for all staff, Ray, Amy, Rusecki, Alan Snow, Nate Malloy. I mean, this is a pretty robust slate of recreation projects. That's not been the case 10 years ago when the Recreation Commission was considering these. So I think it's a good thing. There isn't gonna be funding for everything, but even if we get partial funding on some of these, it's gonna take us forward. So there's 13 proposals. I think seven of them are town proposals and they're really solid proposals and all of them are needed. It's a question of what can we afford? So I guess I would, and I'm happy to help. I think Ray and I are happy to help. Matt, if you want to explain them, that's fine. If you want us to do it, just give me a shout. Give us a shout. Okay. Well, I can just briefly summarize the material in the request and then probably you would be better at answering some questions when they come up. Sounds good, Matt. Okay. So for the Kiwanis, sorry, for these, sorry, the Kiwanis Pickleball Courts. So two years ago, the CPA approved funding for pickleball courts. I think it was 120,000. And that whole discussion has been going on and the decision has been made to build them at Kiwanis. And I guess we're at the point of like getting bids and actually moving forward. But the initial amount is now insufficient to complete the project. So the town is coming back for an additional $100,000, which is based on $55,000 offencing, $35,000 for the surface preparation painting, and $10,000 for the pickleball nets. And I guess the posts. So that's my summary. Any questions? I do have a question for this one, which is, that all sounds like stuff that would have been part of the original, I don't remember, but that certainly seems like items that would have been on the original proposal. So is this just construction cost overrun? But what's driving this? That question came up in the questions presented to us and it's basically that question verbatim. And it's not a matter of duplication for us. It's a matter of more accurately presenting the numbers and also adjusting for the rising costs since that was put through before. And so in order to get an accurate read on how much it would cost here in terms of the equipment, in terms of the costs of the project, that number was adjusted for the project to hand. Yeah, are there some more? I'm sorry, Matt. I just put up on the screen, the town's response. Okay, and when we do have Dave and Ray here as well, I guess I need to read it, but are there more courts being requested than originally? That is part of the town's response, that originally they thought it would be two and this is three. And then they also said that when they actually went out to bid, the costs were higher than initially anticipated or they didn't even consider some of the costs in the initial proposal, okay. So if I could jump in Andrew, yeah. So I think all of that is spot on. I think the original proposal, I think everyone was extremely well-intentioned with the Mill River proposal. We never got to cost estimates, true cost estimates there. We actually, we already bid out the paving for the courts at Kiwanis and that's already locked in at about 100,000 plus. So we do get one additional court in this. We've already gone through the permitting at Concom. We're going through the design review board, the planning board and the disability access advisory committee. So we're well on our way, but again, just the paving alone, the site preparation and the paving is about 112, 115,000. So that takes up most of the original allocation from CPAC. So we think this is a better site. There's adequate parking, there's no conflict with other uses. So we think we're on a pretty good path here to get the town three courts. I guess that's, yeah, that's all I have to say, but happy to take any other questions if there are any. One more and then I'll go to Jonas to just, are you gonna pave the parking? I know that's just dirt at Kiwanis right now, is that added? Yeah, no, the bids we have do not get a paved parking lot there. Okay. So that would, you know, at the square footage cost of paving these days, that would probably add up, I don't know, my guess is 50 to 75 grand to do that. So, I understood. All right, Jonas. We will have like a welcome kiosk and places for people to exchange information and set up tournaments and things of that sort. DPW will be doing some of the work themselves. There are two large trees in the area. They'll be taking that down. They'll be doing some of the site prep. We saved a lot of money by doing the wetlands permitting in-house and the conservation commission was very receptive to that. Thank you. Jonas. Yeah, I'm wondering, going from the two courts to the three courts, is that a big expense? Or is it that it's all, there's so much work that needs to be done for the two courts alone that adding that third court is not a big portion of the cost? That's a good question. I really don't know the answer. I mean, I think there's, there's simply been an escalation in construction costs in general since this was first envisioned. And, you know, no sense going back in time, but the Mill River site really was just not vetted fully, you know, and in retrospect, probably would not have been possible. There are drainage issues there. You know, we need the parking there. Mill River is actually, you know, our best use than most highly used park in town, bar none. So it was a good idea with well-intentioned folks, but it really never got to design. It was a cost estimate done, you know, with good intention, but it never got to design. We now have a full design for this. We already bid out, we were able to fold the bidding on this into a paving contract for 2024. So we're set to do this, you know, if we got seatback money, that money would be available on July 1st. So we'd be ready to go in July of 24, if this goes forward. I think, so you would never really expect three, sorry, two courts that come on us. We did not, I suspect it's not going to save all that much once you mobilize, you know. We've also gone through the permitting for three. We're going to the various permitting boards, planning boards, site plan review, DAAC and DRB for three. So, and frankly, the pickleball enthusiast are saying, build more than three. You know, there's so much demand. I imagine though, I mean, just being devil's advocate, knowing that money would be cut, I think Jonas does raise a good question as, you know, if you did too, would you need this extra money, right? I imagine some of the things, the permitting things that the work that's already been done, if you're going from, if you're reducing the amount of payable area, I mean, I imagine that it wouldn't be too difficult to kind of transition the permits that have already been approved. Is that, am I wrong on that? I just don't know how much savings there would be. I can tell you, you know, that number is pretty fresh in my mind. I think it was around 112, 115 for the three courts. We're not going to be able to do it for $120,000. There's no way, shape or form. So whether we need 100 extra or 75 extra, you know, we can, we might not spend all the extra $100,000 and that goes back into the CPA kitty, but I would hate to kind of nickel and dime this down to that. And I think, frankly, it's premature to do that. That's what the CPA does. They wrestle with the dollars and cents. In my inbox, I can tell you as of today, I don't know about any of you, but I have gotten, I'm gonna say three to five pickleball courts that go on as supportive letters that just came in today. So there's, this is, you know, this is the most popular sport going right now in this country for a segment of our population. So I'd like to see, we can go for three and if we have to cut back, we will, but I don't wanna go in, I would prefer not to go into CPAC without position if possible. Yeah, of course, it makes sense. All right, any other questions on pickleball that I guess, Matt, should we let Ray and Dave drive the presentations here? I don't wanna, I know that you've got info and have been processing it, but your call, they've offered, you can lead us or we can have them do it, but we can move on to the next project. I'm happy to just give the summary. Let's do it. So the next one. Wait one second, Jonas, did you hit your hand up? Did you wanna add something? Okay. The next one is $60,000 for Mill River Tennis Court Rehabilitation. So that goes to, they're saying there's some photos in here that there's cracks in the tennis courts at Mill River caused by the foundations for the net posts not being solid enough. And they want to dig up the net posts, put in new foundations, reinstall them net posts and then repair the cracks. And so 15,000 for the net posts, 10,000 for the crack repair and then 35,000 for re the special paint on the surface of the tennis courts. All right. I actually have a question about this. So this photo here shows the cracks all the way at the baseline. Are you confident that those cracks are caused by the net posts or this is just the second part of the project? Matt or Dave or I'm sorry, Ray or Dave? Ray, do you wanna jump in there? I can't speak with expertise. Well, I think if you're gonna, sorry, Ray, if you're gonna redo all of them and then you're gonna resurface, you have to fix them all. If you don't, you're just, it's not gonna work. Oh yeah, I think the intention is to fix them all but Amy Rosecki wasn't able to join us tonight from DPW but we will check on this. I know the, I wanna say the rehab of the basket, yeah, the basketball courts was that last summer and the summer before, I think was on the order of 80 to $100,000. So I think this gets us a long way with all of the cracks. We would not wanna do just the cracks on the left-hand side of the screen and not address those cracks on the baseline. So Ray, maybe you could just ding Amy on that just to confirm for the commission but we don't wanna do this halfway is what I'm saying. I will do that. Okay. Any other questions about this project? Nope, oh, Sanjay's gotta stand up. Sanjay, yeah, comment more than a question but I think that coming out of our discussion of maintenance versus capital, right? This is a situation where I think this project is really deserving that having, it's always like it's very attractive to build new facilities, right? But to keep existing facilities looking good and playing well, right, is really crucial and it actually reflects dramatically on the town. This is, these courts are right at the entrance to Mill River. A lot of people see them. Even people who don't play tennis see them. And people who do play tennis there experience the lack of quality play because of the conditions of the courts. So I believe for me, this falls outside this sort of regular maintenance, right? Aspect of things. And I think it's really important for the town to treat its existing facilities well. Very, very important. Yep. Makes sense. How many other public tennis courts, how many other tennis courts does the town have in town? Six. We have the six at the middle school. Yeah, so these are the only town-owned ones and then there's the tennis courts at the middle school which are owned by the middle school and then use it all by the public when the middle school is not using them. Or the high school, right, those are the questions. Okay. Good, any other questions on the tennis court project? Nope, I'm good. All right, nice. Rehabilitation of softball facilities. So this is a $85,000 request for, and it's broken down to $65,000 for regrading and rehabilitation of playing surfaces. And then 9,000 for replacement bleachers, 2,004 field hardware, and 9,004 Groff Park backstop repairs. So this covers the community field and Stanley Street and Groff Park softball fields. I assume it means just the softball fields and not the baseball field or community field. And there's some photographs in the proposal that sort of illustrates some of the puddling and not good grading there. And then this is a Groff on the left. There is a Groff Park, the old bleachers and the fencing for the backstop which is deteriorated. Yes. I just wanted to get the scope. So it was all three of these fields. It's regrading, it's bleachers, and was it also backstops? The bleachers and backstops, I think, is just that Groff Park. Yeah, is that right, Dave? Is that correct? Okay. I was going to say like, based on some of the other projects, it seems like a bargain. Be able to take those three fields and I guess the regrading rehab of playing surfaces. So that's taking care of drainage, that's reseeding. I know that they're pretty weedy over there in addition to the various moguls and stuff that you have in the dirt. I think that's mostly has to do with what you were saying, Andrew, which is, you know, skinning the infields, laser leveling them, bringing in new material for the infields, the first baseline, third baseline, all of that being done. And, you know, that can be done fairly inexpensively. But yeah, for some thousands of dollars. So I think Amy, you put this together, got some quotes. You know, Amherst baseball has been very active in this arena at the field, that community field, as well as Mill River Park in North Amherst. So we've done it before, as Sanjay said, the key is once you do it, you got to maintain it because those weeds and that water keeps falling on that field and you do have to do tune ups because lips, you know, lips in the infield occur after a while after the, the playing surface gets moved around by, by the infielders as well as people around the bases and the elements. So, but we think it's a pretty good, good presentation too, because it improves fields in a couple of different places in town. We'll get the varsity, the girls varsity field at community, really up, up, up to speed in, in 2024. And we know that the new fields at Fort River will be a couple of years away. And when those go down, we lose fields over there as well. So this is part, in part to plan for some improvements while those fields go down. We will get a brand new softball field out of that project, but it's, it's probably four years away is my guess. I don't know the timeline on that. We spoke during the Fort River conversation about how this creates a perfect window for the town to look at its softball facilities outside of Fort, because when Fort goes down, Fort was the, the site for a few reasons, which became kind of the, the, the mecca of, of town softball. And one of the reasons why it was is because we hadn't really invested in those other, those other fields had started to fall to disrepair. There are other reasons why people would want to go to those, those diamonds and play. But the fields, there, there were problems with Kiwanis. It was too hard. There's problems with Groft. It was too uneven. There was, there were problems with, with the alternative fields. And this allows us to put those back in focus while Fort River is, is, while the Fort River project turns Fort River into the, the softball field that can again be the center of what we're doing. But in the meantime, that'll be a couple of years of us trying to find a place for our services, for the high school services, the town, it's a, it's a resource of town needs. That's good. Jonas. Yeah, I'm wondering about, so the, the high school girls softball team doesn't have a field at the high school, correct? Community field. So they're going to be benefiting from this. I'm just wondering. I played baseball. I'm not, I don't have any kids. So I don't have a horse. Well, well, well. Community field is the field that is to the south of the high school. So you might, it's next to the parking lot of the high school. It's not actually owned by the high school. It's owned by the town. But it's, it's, does that make sense? Yeah. I'm just wondering does the, do the boys baseball team, they're not part of this, partly because we, we have no purview over. It's just a quirk of the fact that the girls don't really have a softball on high. In the high school. If I could, so community field has the varsity, our best football field, our varsity football field, our varsity girls softball field and our varsity baseball field. All of those fields do double duty with recreational programs and other leagues and, and, and whatnot. But this would have the direct benefit of addressing, you know, equal access and quality of fields for young women. So title nine is important. And that's where the, the, where the, where the varsity softball team plays. And we want it to be our, we want it to be our best softball field, frankly. Pardon me for my ignorance about not knowing that, that distinction of that. Yeah, no, it's a, it's a weird little quirky thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the space ball field has been decided it doesn't, it's, it's in good shape or good enough. Or it can wait for any kind of renovations. Sanjay and I are talking about that as well. And we have some ideas. Amherst baseball and the town and others have put in money in that in recent years, but it actually needs a little TLC and Sanjay and I are talking about some of those ideas as well. Thanks. I had a couple of quick questions. So I guess what is the, what is the extent of the playing surfaces? Is it all, since none of these are enclosed by fence, is it, is it to like a 200 foot line? Is it just the infield? Like, are you going to be reseeding the outfield, regrading the outfield or just the diamond? This is mostly focused on the diamonds. This doesn't have to go, you know, we may fill some holes and things like that, but this is not a whole resurfacing. That would be a much more expensive endeavor to actually strip the outfield or, or then come in and bring in new top soil and, and all of that. So it's mostly focused on infield, backstop, bleachers, baselines, all of that. That's, that's, that probably explains my shock a little bit more. And then is there any like future proofing stuff? Like I don't believe any of these would be currently irrigated. Any plans for that? Would that be something that we'd want to try to have rolled into this proposal as well? Um, I guess my quick answer, and. Ideally, ideally sure, but, you know, as, as Matt said at the outset, you know, these, these recreation projects probably add up to 1.5 million. I think. In our, as we look at capital plans and CPA plans and, and the open space and recreation plan, which Ray and I will talk to you about at future meetings. There's no question. We want to have a, a work list, a infrastructure improvement list for all the recreation areas. So. Many of them need irrigation. Many of them need drainage. Those projects should be on our. Capital planning lists. And I say capital planning broadly, meaning for DPW for recreation for the town in general, we should be looking at all of these fields as, as Sanjay said, very astutely earlier. You know, we need to take better care of what we have. It's all great to build beautiful new sparkly things, but we got a lot of, a lot of recreation space that we just need to give more TLC. And that usually means money. And so we're, we're trying to knock some of those things off with these projects. Yeah. Makes sense. Matt, you had your hand up and then Sanjay. Yeah. So in the Western and Samson plan. After the, they have the, the, after the track is relocated, moving the softball field to the, the far Western corner of the high school. So, but maybe you just feel like that's. Too far away to, we need to do this before that. I can, I can address that, Andrew, right? Yeah, great. I'm smiling because somebody read that. I love it that somebody read our report because I was so proud of that work we did. You're absolutely right. I mean, the goal eventually is to move that varsity softball field down to the West over in the corner there. I do, Matt. I think it's many, many years in the future. I think, you know, this is, if you take this one third, one third, one third, it's a very small modest improvement that'll gain, get us, you know, many years of good play on that upper field for, for varsity and other softball uses. I think phase one of the larger Western and Samson plan is the track and field in the middle. And, and, you know, we're going to have our work cut out for us to get to the finish line on that. I think moving the softball field might be 10 plus years down the road is my guess. I remembered that. Part of the, the Western Samson design also, and I, I thought it was a fascinating piece. One of the parts that I remember most about that plan was moving the softball field onto the. The high school property and sort of filling that space, the track, but my understanding early on in the process when that came with that same question came up was that was it, it doesn't, it doesn't remove the possibility of doing that down the line, but we can't wait. We can't, we can't assume it's going to happen. We can't assume that's going to happen at a time that, that is, is a productive for our timeline here. Got it. Sanjay. Yeah, thanks, Andy. So I'll try to keep this in two parts here. First of all, regarding the community field softball field. I mean, it's totally critical. The truth is. And Jonas, where I'm going to say applies equally to zone, McDiamond, the varsity baseball field. And be happy to fill you in offline. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to say baseball field and be happy to fill you in offline about some of the things Dave and I've been talking about there. But basically when it rains, the softball field is unplayable for date, literally days. Until the girls can get out there. And, and play again. And Adam Feldman is the DPW employee who has sort of has charged those fields and on both the softball field and zone McDiamond, his gang undergo or take on Herculean efforts to get the fields playable. No softball or baseball field should require pumping to get it playable. And that is the state of both the community field softball and baseball diamonds right now. So I think it's absolutely crucial investment. The ARPS softball program has seen a resurgence in interest. They were able to field us a junior varsity team for the first time in years this past season in addition to it, or they were able to feel two teams for the first time in many years. And there are other, and there are other programs, including our baseball programs that have made use of that field. So I think that's an absolutely critical investment on the part of the town. I did communicate. I did correspond with Amy about this proposal a little bit before it was submitted. I will speak honestly, Dave and Ray, that I have concerns about putting money into Groff and Kiwanis. Because I just, I don't see how the maintenance will be performed to keep them playable for more than one season. My experience now over several years maintaining baseball fields and infield dirt is that they require, they require work multiple times a week in order to keep the dirt weed free. And I mean weed free in a loose sense, not a perfectionist sense. And I said this to Amy when I wrote back to her. I just don't know that the town has the funds, the person power or the will to maintain those fields once we put thousands of dollars into regrading them. And it would be terrible to see CPA allocate some of its sparse funding to fields that in a year or two years have returned to their current state. It's a little bit odd for me to be saying things that sound like they're opposing the rehabilitation of a bat and ball field. But I think what I'm really saying is that we should do this and commit to maintenance of those fields. I hear you on that Sanjay. And I know what you aren't saying. I know that comment is not saying I will follow up with Amy and just go over that concern that I've heard. But if I, I mean, if I can, I'm just going to be a kind of as pointed as I can, right? If I were on the CPA and being asked to vote on this, I'm the president of Emmer's baseball. I like bats and balls. I wouldn't vote in favor of the money for graph and Kiwanis without seeing from the town. A plan for maintenance of the fields. Yeah, if I could, thanks for those comments, Sanjay. And, you know, If I, if I was on feedback, I might ask for the same thing. And perhaps, you know, we just had the conversation about pickleball courts and how many courts that Kiwanis. And this might be an area where we. Decide through the CPA process that maybe we, we've bitten off more than we can chew and we should focus on the field at, at community, a percentage of the proposal, 85,000, I think it was, gets us the field improvements at, at, at community field, maybe, maybe that's something to think about this is good feedback and input that Ray and I can talk with Amy about. And I share your very realistic concerns. One of the, I will say, going, going back to Matt's comments about the Western and Samson report. One of the recommendations and takeaways from that report was that we should spend as much available funding on community field, the high school fields and the middle school as possible middle school fields. So I don't want to lose sight of that. I don't want to lose sight of that. I don't want to lose sight of that. And I think what Samson and Samson said, those are the core of our recreational facilities. They should be, they should be the best. So we should have the best varsity. You know, girl softball, boys, football, baseball, soccer and all the sports we offer at Amherst regional. They should be the best right in that core. So I think that's really good feedback. Sanjay. Yeah. Do you mind joining us right now? Or do we know how those other two fields are being used? Yeah. Do you mind Jonas? Your hand was up. Do you mind if I go ahead? Yeah. There is a softball program. It's administered by. Our organization. Amherst baseball and Hadley Amherst softball. We have a total of about. I think 85 girls playing from ages five or six through 14. We play the majority of our softball in Hadley for two reasons. First, that's the sort of historical home of the organization. For reasons that require a longer explanation than I'll take right now. And second, because there aren't playable softball fields in Amherst, with the exception of community field. Which is marginally playable a lot of the time. Not withstanding my sort of your speech about. Kiwanis and Graw. If those fields were rehabilitated or if one of them were rehabilitated and maintained, perhaps in partnership. With a. Community based organization. They would be used. We have more kids wanting to play with bats and balls than we have fields to accommodate them. And. Baton ball fields are. They're different. I don't mean to minimize the amount of maintenance that is required for a lacrosse field or a soccer field or an ultimate field or a field hockey field. But the maintenance requirements are different. They're more for baton ball fields. And 1. 1 can't sort of set up a field in a grassy area and call it good. So again, despite, despite my your speech. If one or both of the graph and Kiwanis fields were rehabbed and if there were a plan for maintenance. They would be used extensively, I think. All right, that's what I was. You can hear Jonas and they would be, and they would be used by adult recreation by baseball and by girl softball, right? But all three of those constituencies would make use of the field. Can I, can I say one question? Hold on Chris. Let's hit Jonas first. Yep. Sorry. So, thanks Chris. I have gone past golf park couple times, I think couple of random times and I have seen people playing softball there, which was very cool. So, but I'm wondering if you really push, it really came to shove on money. I don't think that backstop, you could probably put off fixing a softball backstop. Because a no one's standing behind that backstop. There's no spectators back there. It's softball. It's not baseball. You know, why does it need to be fixed now? In reality, how often is a softball going to go past that backstop? So that seems to be one thing you could maybe push back on. And I mean, I don't know how bad it is, but I just can't imagine that's a big priority would be a softball backstop. I think we're going to get started on that. $9,000 right now on that. Okay. All right. Chris. I'm just trying to understand so. More about the town. Even though I've lived here my whole life, the. Gentlemen or ladies and gentlemen that are by the pool area, those people maintain just the athletic fields. Repeat that question. high school, you know, where there's lawn mowers and stuff like that, trees and grounds. Yes. Yes. Those are just other trees and grounds. I'm just saying, is it feasible to give up a little less maintenance in some areas to shift maintenance to, like Sanjay said, to those areas where, you know, that field needs to be attended to twice a day. Do you, I'm just saying, don't you let some different grasses or something grow in other areas, not on a field, obviously, but unplayable areas, you know, so there can be more maintenance done on that specific area. I'm actually saying that we have the answer tonight, but it just, if you're going to spend the money, I mean, I think our fields right now, I don't know what the answer is. I mean, I've walked across that football field the other day, and I think I probably sprained my ankle four times, you know. So I'm sorry, Dave has his head up. I don't want to take much time, but Chris, I think you're asking a great question. Sanjay and I again have had very similar conversations for a number of years. I think it comes down to the town, through the manager and his departments deciding what are the highest priorities for investing in our recreational fields and facilities. And I think there's a case to be made, particularly when you hearing stats like Sanjay just shared, which I did not know that there's 80 plus girls in that program. I think that's a very compelling stat. And I think you as I'm excited about that stat, because we said earlier, you as the rec commission, you know, that is part of your job is to advocate for and and make known, you know, the needs of families and teams and the community. So I think advocating for more resources and more emphasis on on our fields and facilities makes perfect sense. So that's all I want to say. And sorry, just to be clear, Dave and Chris, the 80 is for our entire programs, which is roughly evenly split between Hadley girls and Amherst girls, probably more like 60 40 Hadley Amherst. So I don't want to exaggerating the numbers, but that's but that's what the program is. That's what the program is for a program that was probably close to being done. So that's how many touched about that, you know. All right. Any other questions? All right. I think in hands for Memorial was next man. Yes. So the CPA approved just in the last cycle, funding for a I forget the title, like a site plan, like a schematic plan for what to do with the Walden Memorial pool area. Now, they're not considering moving the actual pool, but the pool house is in a bad shape and needs to be replaced. And it's also a consideration of moving around other things in that area, such as the basketball court, the location of the pool house, and whether to put in a splash park or playground or things like that. So the site plan is currently in process. And they anticipate that at the end of the site plan, they'll be an actual, you know, at the end of that project, there'll be a recommendation as to what to do, which could then move to more detailed design and construction. And the purpose of this request, which is $750,000, is to be a large part of the town's contribution to that capital improvement. They're also expecting to get maybe up to a million and a half of grants from two different state grant programs, Park Grant and LWCF Grant. And then there might be an additional partial contribution from the town capital, just regular capital process. So that's my summary. I have a quick make sure following this. So the $750,000 would include redoing the pool house and moving the basketball court with the other funds being matched. So this would be this would essentially complete that portion of the pool project, or that, I guess, part of the grounds relative to the original Western and Samson plan. It's anticipated to be a large chunk of the town's contribution that toward the total rehabilitation of that area. Dave? Yeah, I think Matt, excellent summary. I just wanted to reiterate that, you know, certainly the Recreation Commission would receive or be part of, if you will, the planning for the area around War Memorial Pool. You know, that's a 1950s pool. That is the original pool house. The pool house really needs to come down ASAP. But we really don't want to read just redo the pool house, the entire area around the pool. You all have been there. The playgrounds are ancient. They probably should come down tomorrow. There's the War Memorial, which is on the south side of the pool, which would stay in some location there. The basketball courts that Matt alluded to are, again, very, very old. So what we want to do, we're going to do a site plan and, you know, that will determine where things go. What makes sense around that pool? Does the bathhouse stay on the south side of the pool? Or do we move it to the east side of the pool, closest to the softball field? Or do we move it to the north side? I don't know. None of that is determined yet. But the key here is that we think this is a, you know, in all likelihood, this is probably a $1.5 to $2 million project in the end, when all is said and done. And as Matt said, this would be the town's contribution. We're going to go for park grants and likely a land and water conservation fund grant from the federal government. And we'd need money to match. The reason we're asking for this now is that in July of 2024, we have an opportunity to apply for those funds. If we miss this cycle in July of 24, we're talking this is a couple of years out. Because you apply in 24, the funds wouldn't even be available until 25. So if we wait until 25, we're talking 26, 27, 28. So we're trying to anticipate matching these grant funds sooner than later, so that we can get these, these proposals in in the early summer of 24. So that's, that's kind of the urgency. And again, you can redo a bathhouse right where it is. And that's going to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. But we'd like to redo the whole area as part of one big package. This is from the Western and Samson plan. Yeah, so this is an example. So this is an example of the kind of things that we're considering. This isn't the draft or anything like that. But an example is the pool would be continuing to be where it is. But the pool houses where the basketball court currently is, there's a in this example, there's a splash area picnic area playgrounds and then new basketball courts where the DPW buildings are now. The other feature of this that we did not mention is that the new pool house would also have public facing restrooms to serve the fields that community field and high school fields so that when families come or teams come or anybody needs to use a restroom, they don't have to go into a building like go into the high school. Currently now a lot of people have to go into the high school. The high school has to be open, center, etc. But there's no restroom on the north side of Mattoon Street other than the high school. So that's a key feature is we'd have obviously the bathhouse, but we'd also have public facing restrooms comfort. So I just wanted to sort of get back and that's all great background. This is an excellent visual, but the seventh, the anticipated scope of the 750, if we were to get the matches, we think that would get us the pool house, the splash pad, relocating basketball courts. Again, I think mathematically we can't assume the basketball courts or a spray park or anything. There'd be a whole public process as to what would be there. So there would be recreational facilities, but there's still a planning process to go through to get there. So we already have the design money, so we're engaging that designer now and the design will inform the grant proposals in 24. So I don't want to get locked into a splash pad or, you know, we think those are all good ideas. I mean, it'd be wonderful to have a playground here when you're here with your family and maybe one person in the family is watching somebody on the softball diamond, but they have younger children and they want to go down and jump in a small splash pad or play on the playground. That'd be wonderful or shoot a basketball and that may come out in the conceptual or the comprehensive plan for this whole area. Keep in mind that the basketball courts in this image are where DPW is. So that is not likely to be part of our scope. I think that's really aspirational. I don't think we will be able to afford a move of that operation in the short term. I think it would mainly focus around, you know, the pool, the proposed bathhouse, the playground, splash pad, picnic area. And we've already talked about how the softball field is still in our concept, is still in this frame. Correct. Yeah, this Weston and Fampton graphic is just not accurate at all. It's just an illustration. But it is. It illustrates possibility. Correct. Any other questions, folks? Oh, Jeremy. I was just going to interject kind of as passionately as Sanjay is about the baseball, but pools are a critical part of every single community in the world if they exist. You got to have them. They're absolutely necessary. I can say about personally, my son met one of his best friends at War Memorial six years ago in the town. Pools are critical. And the idea that I'm, I totally agree with Dave. We have to make this investment now so we can get a match. You can't push a 26 in 20. You're just all this time is time that families are going to just choose and select other options. And not everybody can afford to just install a pool in their home. Let me know. It would be nice, but that's just not reality. So the pools are community centers of places where people come and the places that people, you know, connect. It's part of the community. I love the idea. I understand this. This is just the erratic rendering. But I know, again, anecdotally, I remember rolling my ankle back to Chris and rolling ankles across football field, rolling my ankle on that basketball court when we first moved to the town, bringing my son to War Memorial. It's atrocious. It's not acceptable in our town to have to present that forward face in the appearance of a basketball court in that condition. So that was just my two cent comment. Sorry. Off my soapbox. Thanks, Jeremy. Jim, sorry I didn't see your hand before. That's okay. Yes, as far as the pool is concerned, is there any planning for making a little bit more family-friendly, say with the slide, a place where they could sell some kind of refreshments, you know, some eating areas. I see there's like maybe a possible picnic area with the splash ground, but like that whole pool area, just like where I, you know, pools were very important when I was growing up too, and my kids were little and we lived in a different town on Wisconsin. It was just so family-friendly oriented, but so with the slides and with, you know, different areas that, I don't know, rooms for families, just to make it a little bit more family-friendly, I guess I'm looking for. Is there any consideration if in the renovations and those types of areas? Dave? Yeah, no, it's a great point, absolutely. So even in this rendering, which, you know, a picture and image is worth a thousand words, and this just gets you thinking, right? It really just gets you excited about what that area could be, as Jeremy was saying. You know, when we envisioned, when we started talking about a playground at Kendrick Park, you would be surprised how many people thought planning staff and recreation staff and DPW staff were kind of, what do you mean a playground at Kendrick Park? Well, you know, that's just going to be a problem and this and that, and now it is a landing spot for so many families and you go there on Saturday morning or Sunday morning and people are there. So when you see this, you really think this is such important real estate, right? It's right adjacent to the high school, it's walking distance from downtown, it's adjacent to all these fields, so we need to make this a show place and not a place, as Jeremy was saying, it's kind of frankly embarrassing when I go there and walk around the old playground equipment from 1950, etc. So the pool, yes, we absolutely need to make the pool house everything we want it to be and that includes, you know, being accessible, being, you know, kind of a friendly place to meet. You see in this image that they actually suggested maybe even having some outdoor pavilions within the, you know, for picnics and whatnot on the pool house side of things and then maybe you enter the pool, you know, along, along that side. So I think we need to do all of those things to make these places more inviting and more exciting for families. We have invested in that pool pretty heavily and I think we have more CPA money, we haven't spent on filters and pump house, so we've invested in that pool. It's there for the long haul, but the pool house is a rack and we really need to, you know, do that. So I think the short answer is yes. We need to, if there are concessions there or if whatnot, they sell some things down in Mill River Pool. I know they try to be healthy. I don't know exactly what Ray and his staff sell down there, but anyway, it's fun to get a popsicle or whatever in the summer, but you can see what this area could be. We also talked about whether the spray pad could be inside the fence and maybe there's some synergy there, but anyway, these are all just concepts, but the short answer is yes. We need to make it more inviting. Thanks Dave. Yep, thanks Andy. Getting the pool house rehabilitated is totally critical, so I totally support that, right? We almost lost Wolver Memorial as a pool, as a town rec facility a few years ago, if I remember correctly, and I'm happy that we averted that disaster, so I think continue to invest in having two outdoor public pools in town is totally crucial. I was a huge supporter of Kendrick Park. Thanks for bringing that up, Dave, the playground at Kendrick Park, and I've had, to my eternal gratification, I've had a couple of friends publicly eat crow for me, who didn't believe that anyone would go to a playground at Kendrick Park, but it's busy and it's a huge success. I am more skeptical of this site. I think describing it as walking distance to downtown is being a little bit charitable, but you know, maybe if enough is built it will become a real destination. Jean, I appreciated what you said about the pool itself. My understanding is that this proposal doesn't address the pool, the water holding tank itself in any way, but I suspect many of us have been to communities that we would view as similar to Amherst and have seen pools with spiral water slides and lazy rivers and things like that, and I wonder whether investment in the pool facility at this site rather than other recreational facilities might be worthwhile, but I'm not sure we're in a position to revisit the entire Weston and Samson job during this, you know, a couple of hour recommissioned meeting, but I wanted to say it, so I said it. All right, any other questions on World of Morales and Matt, I think we got one more. Correct. Oops, I messed up the zoom there. Let's try that. Okay, so the last one is to do with $100,000 for for trial restoration and enhancement, and basically the money will be spent on, let's see, materials, gravel, trap rock, wood chips and lumber, benches and kiosks, and the equipment required to install that stuff plus the permitting, so probably Dave can explain a little bit about the reason for this kind of request, which I think is we've had these requests before, we have them on a regular basis, and yes. Yeah, so if I could, I'll just jump in real quickly, so yeah, Matt's right on there. These are becoming more regular because I think staff are kind of recognizing that we need to have a regular source of funding to do these kinds of projects, and the projects are complex. I think when we did our presentation last year, we showed some very large bridges that we're rehabbing or replacing, so trail projects can fall in two categories. They can fall in the recreation category and the conservation category, and they kind of straddle those two in the CPA world. What's important about bringing this through the lens of recreation is that, and this is all state law, not town of Amherst, but state law, if you do trail projects through recreation, you can apply the funding to property not purchased with CPA funds. If you bring it through the lens, the channel of conservation, you can only use the funds on property that was purchased with CPA dollars. So best example, Puffer's Bond. Puffer's Bond was not purchased with CPA dollars. We acquired that long before the CPA came into existence. So you cannot, if you come through the conservation lens and say, oh, we'd like a hundred thousand dollars for conservation trails at Puffer's Bond, you can't use those funds at Puffer's Bond because it wasn't acquired that way. So bottom line is there's lots of, mainly this is for bridge work. A great example, if any of you use Amethyst Brook a couple of years ago, probably five now, a large bridge was washed away by an ice dam at Amethyst Brook. We are desperately trying to replace that bridge. It connects the users of Amethyst Brook to points north and east, and that bridge alone is probably 50 to 75 thousand dollars. That's all labor and materials, permitting will do in else. But that could use up most of, or a good portion of a proposal like this, if funded. So they're not cheap, but they will last for years. These bridges and boardwalks, we just teamed up with Kestrel. They did a new boardwalk down at Sweet Alice Conservation Area and they put in about 20 grand in materials, and then my staff and their staff volunteered, they put in the labor. And so it's probably a 30 to $35,000 new boardwalk and we put in the labor and Kestrel put in the 15 or 20 for materials, but they're expensive. So this is a way to keep investing in the 80 miles of trails we have throughout Amherst that are used for running and biking, mountain biking, and whatnot. We're also developing the trail system at Hickory Ridge and funds like this can be used at Hickory Ridge. I'm actually meeting on Wednesday with a group and I don't know much about pump tracks, but that's a form of, you know, mountain biking and learning how to ride outdoors on mountain bikes. And I'm meeting with that group to talk about pump tracks. I believe Ray might be joining me. So we're talking about pump tracks. Sanjee looks like he wants in. No, but I bet I know who's meeting with Dave. There's a group that wants a pump track in him. So we're going to meet on Wednesday and talk about it. Last name, camera, no? Maybe we should get it around War Memorial Pool and we could, you know, go around the pool. All right. Sanjay? Yeah. The trail network in the town of Amherst is world-class, period. I mean, I get to visit places like Eugene, Oregon and Corvallis and Boulder and places in other countries. And I come home and the trail axis is always better here than it is in those places, despite the fact that they get talked about in international forums and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So thank you, Dave, and to the commission and to all the people who work on the trails and the people who have acquired land and easements and all of the things that it takes to keep this trail network as amazing it is, as it is. It is world-class. There's no doubt about it. So I'm strongly supportive of continuing to invest in that network. I'm glad you brought up the Amherst Bridge. I can't really read everything that's on the screen right now, but is that a specific priority of this spending request? Or was that just an example of something that might be accomplished? I think it's an example. I will tell you that the pressure is building on me in particular to, we have that design, the original design was, these things need to be engineered back in the day. He used to put two telephone poles together and a crib structure on either side and away you go and you know, and then a big ice jam or a flood happens in this changing climate and hopefully the bridge might get washed away but nobody gets hurt. These days it's really hard in Massachusetts to build a telephone pole bridge. So you really have to engineer it. So we finally have an engineered plan and we're getting some cost estimates, but I estimate it's between $65,000 and $100,000 to do it with town and volunteer labor. And so it is a high priority for me, Sanjay, and in all likelihood some of this money would be directed toward that project. Thanks. Any other projects or any other questions on this project? Jonas? Yeah, so I mean Larch Hill is right in our backyard, Andrew, Gene, and I'm assuming that we're like it's mentioned here because we we get like wood chips from the town, I believe, and there's like a volunteer kind of grassroots. We go one day a year just past actually and I missed it, terrible. But one day a year we take the wood chips, we spread them around. It's very like grassroots. So I'm assuming that that's what this is just like a continuation of that yearly commitment to kind of keeping Larch Hill? Actually if I could know that, I mean that's so so we we have a very modest, and this is a challenge for DPW as well, lots of conversations about this, both the DPW and the conservation and the town budget in general. They're fairly modest to minimal operating budgets every year. Ray deals with this. So when you're talking about just doing annual maintenance at Cherry Hill, which is a recreation area, Larch Hill or the or Kendrick Park, we struggle as a community to fund those annual needs, replacing a bench, you know, something like wood chips or or you know just replacing you know replacing boards on a bog bridge on a trail. That's covered, we have, I will tell you, the number is about five thousand dollars a year. That's what I have in my annual operating budget for trails. That doesn't go very far when you're talking pressure-treated lumber and hardware and all of that. So we try to supplement that. We get donations, we get grants, and then there's a CPA dollars. The CPA dollars don't play for wood chips or replacing boards in boardwalks. They really have to do, make a permanent significant improvement. So that's why I really bring up bridges and and extensive boardwalks. We've been doing quite a bit of work in Lawrence Swamp to bring some of the boardwalks, excuse me, some of the trails out and up off of wetland areas. And so we've done some pretty nifty elevated boardwalks down there and you know a couple hundred yards of of an elevated boardwalk and there's twenty five thousand dollars in in materials. We're not paying any extra in labor because it's either coming from my small staff or from volunteers or a combination of both. So it's got to be pretty big. We can't use CPA dollars on just fixing things. And Ray, likewise Ray can't use or DPW can't use that to fix a bench. You've really got to buy a new bench and put it in and it's a permanent improvement to that little river or a golf park or something like that. Does that make sense? I'm curious what the large hell, because it's mentioned here, caught up on anything. Can I? I don't see it. So I guess maybe the Hitchcock Center? Like built that? That's the quote that I'm having trouble seeing it on the screen. Yeah, I can read it out for you. So in description of funding needed. Oh, I'm sorry. It says this funding is being sought to rehabilitate enhanced accessible trails at the following conservation areas. Maybe on large hill and puffers pond. I just needed the prompt. I'm sorry. I didn't see the rehabilitate accessible trails. So the trail, part of the trail at large hill, there are two parts to large hill, large hill south, if you will, historically had an accessible route from the parking lot of the Hitchcock Center, all the way out to what they call the popcorn shack, which is that place for school groups and whatnot to meet. So that accessible trail needs work. So yes, we can rehab that trail since it's a permanent fixture. That would involve sometimes renting equipment and bringing in crushed stone and TRG and hard pack to redo that trail. And also the boardwalk there is really you're in a butter, you know, is it's got to be it's 25 years old and it's showing its age. It's kind of a little bit of a roller coaster. So if we go to improve that and pull up all the old boardwalk, things like that, that would be eligible for CPA, but kind of annual maintenance where you're just replacing a border to or something like that. We can't nickel and dime the CPA funds for that. I'm sorry. I missed that piece about the ADA trails. No, thanks. I guess on that large though, do you think you would or maybe only could use monies to replace the existing not install new trail where there never was trail before? Yeah, we we it's a good question. We other than Hickory Ridge, we do not have new trails planned anywhere in town. Frankly, we have our hands full with the trails we have. So we're not planning any new trails at Large Hill or there are exist. We might add or enhance accessible trails, but we don't plan any new cross country trails through woods or anything like that. These are existing. So I'm just I may be thinking, Jones, the same part of this trail, right, where there's like a couple of two by fours that you sort of kind of balance on to get through. We wouldn't we wouldn't be doing anything on those existing trails. This would only be about replacing something that already exists. At large, yeah, we would not be making any more of Large Hill accessible. There's no way to do that with all the wetlands laws. So we would only be you've kind of got to go to Large Hill, if you will, and look at the existing boardwalk and the ADA trail. Nature has really almost reclaimed a lot of it. So it almost needs to be redone fairly significantly. We need to get equipment in there. We're talking thousands of dollars of crushed stone. And so it's a it's a pretty major project. It's not a new trail, but we can invest in the long term future of a trail like that. But but again, it's not for expanding that trail into the woods or wetlands or fields there. It's funny I walk there a lot. I don't notice other than some trees kind of having fallen down and maybe chipped some of the of the of the wood. I guess what I would worry that I don't want to turn away an investment in like my own backyard, of course, I don't want to be that's the opposite of NIMBY. But I wonder like if that's going to take it's going to take that path that trail out for a long time. That's a consideration. And you're talking about the Boardwalk next to the Common School, basically, that comes behind the Common School. That's the only major piece of infrastructure, as I understand a large hill. So well, it includes the crushed stone path that goes to the west of that. So that's no longer ADA. It wouldn't meet any of the ADA standards any longer because it hasn't been maintained in a while. It needs to be brought up to ADA standards again. And again, we sometimes put in, again, these are somewhat aspirational proposals. What everything will cost and what we can get done for the available funds sometimes don't match. So we might get you out of three projects done. And the third one we might have to come back on. All right. Jonas, was that you good? Okay. All right. Any other questions on this project? I know we're going long here, hopefully people are still managing. All right. Well, I think maybe in terms of next steps here, so we've all heard from Matt as well as Ray and Dave on what's happening here, Matt is going to be going to hear kind of formal presentations and carry our voice forward. I'm hearing sort of support across the board, not surprisingly support across the board for all of these projects. Just some of the notes I had on softball, making sure there's a maintenance plan required, the question of whether it makes sense to have funds towards a backstop, if that doesn't really impact players or spectators. I guess one other, so again with the idea that maybe our money, we're going to cut something, the $100,000, is there a specific, I think that was trail restoration date and Ray is $100,000, thank you. Is there anything magic about that number or this is just you know where we'd like to start and look at whatever we can. I know Dave, if you heard my question. Sorry, is that a question for tonight or are these takeaway questions or are these? Well, I think this is something just you know so we can, I'd like to understand or give, make sure that Matt understands like we support the areas that we support completely, the areas where we think maybe like if something had to go you know start here or or somewhere else like what's non-negotiable, what's negotiable essentially. And so I think there's some elements of the projects which at least we're saying maybe negotiable. I'm wondering on the cost piece. So the trail restoration specifically the $100,000 that is that's what we hope we'd be able to accomplish those three trail improvements for or is a hundred thousand just kind of a number that feels right to be able to address projects on an ongoing basis. I guess the short answer is you know the more we have the more we'll get done. But you know in years past when we've asked for a number like a hundred thousand dollars I will say with a smile on my face typically the CPAC does not give us a hundred thousand dollars. They will that's one of the first items to be quote negotiated and if things are really tight with the budget they might say well can you get significant things done for 65 or 75 something like that. But again I'm very comfortable with that but what I'm not comfortable in is saying if you do that then then what are we what specifically are we going to get for the money we're going to get new bridges or we're going to get ADA trails you know the focus of this was a lot of rehab and enhancement if you will re-grading and significant earthwork is more than as I said before more than just wood chips. So we'll get as much as we can get done we typically don't get estimates and it's not like building a it's not like building a pickleball court at Kiwanis Park these are simply estimates of what we think it will cost to rehab some of these trails and the materials we'll need but we we're not getting an estimate from Taylor Davis to do it some of the work will be done in-house by my staff and we'll buy all the materials if we have to contract out for equipment or something like that we do. Very good. All right I'm Matt. Flexibility in this number is what I'm saying. Okay I mean at least this year Matt's not looking at eight million dollars or projects to to pair down to two so hopefully it's more manageable but Matt what's on your mind? Yeah I had a question about the 750,000 that also seems to be sort of more like a stick in the ground that could could vary a little bit. Well that's the matching process so I think that's that stands out against the rest because it is below the level that we think that it's that it obviously will take to to execute that number may end up fluctuating a little bit when you start talking about those match those grant matches but in terms of the other ones there any sort of flux that happens with them I think that you they definitely have areas where the price is attached to pieces it's pieces of the of the proposal like getting rid of money you're getting rid of pieces of the proposal and I think I think Dave kind of said earlier about the about one of them that you know we don't want to go into that process and talk about what we're going to shave off of that I think they're that the proposals are there because those pieces are are important as a whole but but you know there are for those for the three the pickleball for tennis courts and softball I think there are pieces in there that are attached to others but in terms of the 750,000 for war that match process makes it stand out from the others so you think that the 750,000 is the number that is required to meet the match and that if CPA provides less then the town would have to make up the difference that's that's my understanding but I don't well they're certainly multiply right so I mean if that the more we put towards this the larger the multiplier benefit is what I was hearing and then I think actually Dave you're about to speak so I should probably stop I think these are good questions I think we should probably take them back to Amy and DPW and and hopefully you'll have another discussion of these it will come up in this API commission yes oh yeah no question I will say this I don't I would be very surprised if you can build the bathhouse for 750,000 well this was to just enough of a local contribution to get the match right but I'm just saying when you look at the total dollars to do the bathhouse and the area around the War Memorial Pool you know I think you're a couple million dollars into this and hopefully we can get most of it from the state and federal government but I'm just saying I don't think the 750 gets you much beyond the building I could be wrong on that but I don't think we're looking at downtown bathrooms right now and downtown bathrooms we're going to put in a bathroom at Kendrick Park and the numbers range probably from 250,000 and up for downtown bathrooms so this includes showering ADA all of the so you know I'm just saying the 750 might get you the building but it might not so so I'm putting that in perspective you're trying to get the building but everything around it and this is what the we're going to show the state and federal government what our match is we can use the design money and then this construction money to match federal dollars and state dollars that's our goal and we did the same thing with the North Common we put in I think we put in about 800,000 for the North Common and then we got a Land and Water Conservation Fund grant for another 850 or 860 and that's how we got up to about 1.7 million for the North Common is that help or hurt? I'm not sure okay all right again so this is our last opportunity to give map feedback going into those presentations any other thoughts members relative to the negotiable areas that that match would be aware of or you'd like him to hear from you okay I mean again I just had the ones I'd mentioned before Sanjay's on maintenance Jonas is on you know the the backstop so both related to softball and then yeah just clarity on on what how that 750 plays into the match and so forth which it sounds like Dave and Ray are going to have Amy working on as well so okay well I think I think that covers us for this Matt unless you have any other thing you want to ask us no that's good thank you so I'll stop I'll stop this sharing okay we're we're at 820 right now which is certainly longer than I'd like I'm wondering Ray the the pickleball piece is that something we need to okay then the cherry hill finances I know we did we've we talked about maybe having interest in like a subcommittee that could help provide you some guidance so maybe you could give us an update on that and then also by the way you're on mute maybe give us an update on that and then let's let's see if there's some immediate next steps Dave I don't know if you were planning on staying for cherry hill finances but that that leaves it up to you and if you don't stay thanks for thanks for joining us um I can make this really really brief trying to respect your time here I know we've been over first of all we're gonna get to at the end but I really appreciate Jean and Andrew taking taking the reins here of this meeting I think it fits for the for the commission it's your meeting I love to be a part of it but I think this is good I apologize to them for giving them the reins right when we're talking about CPA because it almost seems like we're throwing everything at them because that's the time for new members this is the time when when the commission commission meetings sort of get longer and maybe more involved but as we get into this piece here I can say that I've spoken at length with Paul Backelman I've spoken at length with Dave about the what I see as being a financial crisis at Cherry Hill are being overspent are being are trying to find inside of our budget the ability to to act responsibly to act within a given budget but trying to reconcile that budget with what's in front of us in my conversations over the last couple of weeks with Town Hall one of the things that that we've really I think it has become a major point for us is that we are going to put together a working group to deal with the same issues I that I mentioned to you all when I say that the goals here need to be threefold we're looking at finding out what the use need and the future of Cherry Hill is in the community that's a really important piece of this we can tie that into a working group of working group that's put together by the town involves representative or two from this commission that are interested in being involved in that but to basically get a sense for what the use need and the future of the courses to look at how we can secure the funding that that I've outlined for you that the course needs in order to in order to to be successful the funding that isn't currently present in the budget the current the funding that that's really important for for being able to raise revenue being able to limit limit expenses and certainly even being able to protect the the the asset and the revenue that we create there to those are those are the things that are built into those those sort of ads those wish ads that that I mentioned to you and then the third thing I said was coming up with a you know the the best available options for what to do if we can't find those resources if those if those resources don't come to us through the budget process is it possible for us to secure that else what and other means or even to find somebody else to find who and what is best capable of managing that those awesome resources there the and so the numbers I shared with you I can certainly answer any questions that that you may have about that I can answer that now or you can submit those to me individually I think it might work if you guys want to submit those questions to me individually I'd be happy to answer any questions here now especially with Dave still here but to give you a sense of what that sheet is telling us is we make more money than I think is the the understanding there the there's much it's much more complex than just looking at how much money we take in but that money is not insignificant in the grander scheme when I gave you the adjusted numbers to run us to 290,000 we're $290,000 plus as we just closed the course last weekend and so that's not insignificant and it's and it's a significant amount more than what we're spending we are spending more than we're supposed to spend which is a crisis for us we're spending more than we are asked to spend more than we are budget to spend and it's not a question of some of I think we could be making more money honestly if we if we were able to spend more freely but we can't spend more freely because we are already over over budget and so being creative is built into our management of that course right now how creative are we how creative should we be that's what we can do for the for the for the course of the year we are going to be putting together that working group I know that we had some folks that that said that they'd be interested in participating and looking at that I would be happy to advance your names as as we get I'd like to get started yesterday but I'd like to be able to get myself you know putting together a working group from the community including the commission including rec staff including including community stakeholders including people from the golf and from the golf world in the golf community I would like to be able to use people as as comparisons to try and come up with a plan for this town as to what we do with with an asset and resource that we haven't we haven't found we haven't found out how to to successfully support it at to this point and so the next step maybe it's like a fork in the road it may be to go this way it may be you know that way we want to try and put together a group town hall is committed to to participate that situation so so the town hall supports it do you want to do are you the one who's setting up the that committee ray that's what that's what we have to talk about where that is technically I believe Paul is the one who town manager is the one who signs off on all working groups who puts those together I certainly have some say Dave has some say but when we put together those working groups I think that we are the ones you know we want to put together a team that is thoughtful and and and involved and it's that's invested in where it's going but also is objective enough to be able to to create an honest picture makes sense Matt you want to jump in so I'm just trying to understand what what you're trying to who you're trying to convince you is the problem that the budget is not reflective of reality so do you need to get the budget adjusted do you need town council to so you're needing to make a presentation to town council to change the budget or is is is are you trying to do something else other so so what I what I'm looking at is the the needs for cherry hill will be tied into my my tied into our budget process the budget process I will present those needs to the to the finance department when we start talking about and to the town manager when we start talking about what our budget should be for the next cycle that's a that is a really important part of our presenting our future here it's not to prove to you you all don't I I could I could share that that that same argument with you every week from now until the end of time and it still becomes me getting you all to say yeah I hear you I understand this is a hard business you're running this is everything you're doing there I think that I'm sharing with you all because if the reason why my goal in trying to share with you all what those needs are is is basically framing the question when we when we go through this process and if the if the if the budget process doesn't yield those needs then then essentially I'm looking at my commission to say can you help find how to get that or find who can who can operate that in a different way the town is the town hall is going to put together that working group to do what I think I'm I was I was trying to stir the commission into seeing what our challenges are with cherry hill and so representatives from the commission can help me by by being being a part of and voicing the concerns of cherry hill as you may see in that working group and that's now where I pivot and say the commission can help me yeah so you're saying the town is putting together a working group to either propose a a better budget or propose a different solution it's two separate things I will be working through the budget process the working group will be looking at the long term we'll be looking at this year next year and years in the future and seeing what it is that we can do we won't it doesn't necessarily work the two of them are not the same thing I think there is a budget process that we that we that we work through but in terms of trying to see if there is a way to get I'm like I'm not overly optimistic that all of my requested needs the things that I've acknowledged as needs come to us in the in the budget process I didn't present that as saying that this is what we have to have or else I present that to you all as saying that these are the things that if cherry hill is going to be successful these are the things that I see as being as being important necessary vital parts of operating of taking pressure off of our major budget prices of of protecting our our resources of of looking at in both in terms of equipment and in terms of our revenue in terms of protecting what we have those are the things that I've acknowledged as being needs for us if we don't get that through the budget process which is not the only way to do that but if we don't get that through the budget process it's an elliptical what happens next that working group is the one that that I think I think the the way I see that that push that working group is the one where I should be putting most of that energy into trying to say this is what we need do you in your in your research do you see this and how can we get there All right Dave let's see your hand up please jump in so I think I'm going to stay very similar to what Ray said but maybe in a in a different way so I think you know I've been around the the Cherry Hill table for a long time and and the course and so first off I think Ray outlined this well there's the budget process which will begin in a couple of weeks for us for for the next fiscal year starting July 1, 24 I don't see anything it's not like anyone is talking about stopping golf operations in 2024 or anything like that Ray needs to work through with his staff with our finance folks what the needs are his job is to part of his job is to outline what are the needs of the course are those you know in 2023-24 have become crystal clear and and there's there's a price tag for those both on the operating side but also on the capital side so notwithstanding that the town manager has asked us to work together Ray and myself with with input from you and other community members on this working group and again Paul will certainly take in names through Ray myself perhaps and and appoint a working group but I want to be honest so Ray came in just a couple of years ago Cherry Hill has been running a deficit off and on for 20 to 30 years this is not a new issue but it is a very real issue these are not these are significant numbers these are you know 35 45 $50,000 a year that's a significant operating deficit it's not every other year it's not every third year it's almost every year it is very hard for the the town of Amherst or any municipality to run a nine hole golf course and break even let alone have a have a of a surplus that's not even including capital which doesn't even really show on on on on Ray's budget so the working group their job is very broad is to look at the current state of the course the operating the capital the capital needs over time how is everything looking out there irrigation pumping carts clubhouse all the things that recreation has done to enhance the facility working with Nordic skiing working with events like winter fast all of that and what is the whole package look like and as Ray said to outline to the town manager some options continue as we're going well what will that take from a capital standpoint and an operating standpoint so look at other options one that we've explored in the past I think we've even done it is the possibility of putting out an RFP to see if an outside entity would operate cherry hill golf course that's not to say we would lose the asset it's not to say that some of the other things that happen there like winter fast or Nordic skiing couldn't happen but perhaps there's a company out there that would like to run the golf operation and do it more efficiently and profitably than we could and still offer golf at this wonderful nine whole golf course Ray's predecessor Barbara Bills who some of you know and probably worked with did a wonderful job an amazing job with with cherry hill and the golf operations there and even Barbara at the end of the day who was both a golfer and did a lot to bring more women into that golf course and women's tournaments and really broaden the membership had trouble at the end of the physical year making the numbers work and that was with very minimal capital investments so I think this working group can take a look at partnerships create creative options and creative revenue streams as I think Ray alluded to and that's their their purview and we will come up with a charge for the group so so perhaps that kind of rounds out what the town manager is is thinking about we're you know honestly the next 10 to 15 years of budget cycles in the town of Amherst with our four capital projects two of which have already launched are going to be very challenging we are not going to be doing significant new initiatives we're doing four capital projects we also form the Crest program and the DEI departments and so operating budgets are not going to get much bigger they're going to get tighter in the next five to 10 years so we have to be more creative as staff and working with you so that's kind of my summary of what we've you know we've we've been talking about Ray and myself with the town manager and happy to take questions if you have any thank you Dave and Ray let's go to questions and then just uh yeah I mean if we can sort of keep them brief uh that'd be great Jonah's about to get started yeah I'm wondering have you thought of a partnership with UMass golf team I looked it looks like they currently do it they golf at Hickory Ridge Hickory Ridge is being closed right are they golfing I think they golf at Amherst Golf Course or Grumpin Fox I'm not sure Ray may know it looks like it's saying they're at Hickory Ridge well they're they're definitely not at Hickory Ridge they're definitely not at Hickory Ridge Hickory Ridge isn't even in operation anymore it might be at Grumpin Fox I'm not sure and they need to update their website but but yes that would all be part of the purview of of this group is looking at partnerships broad broadly okay thanks Jonas Sanjay I'm I'm interested in participating I think in the working group as I've mentioned before I might one of the things I will be interested in is that Cherry Hill is discussed treated and evaluated in a way that is similar to the way that other recreation to fill other recreational facilities in town are talked about discussed and evaluated excellent all right I think we've got some good presentations Sanjay's express interest Chris I know in the past you have as well yeah I'm I'm still in on that all right I'm still in I'm just I'm just processing everything David and Ray yeah I didn't I didn't mean to volunteer you yet I was just but in terms procedurally so Paul will be putting this commission together you all take names forward I you know this actually sounds more formal of a process than I expected I mean any reason to expect that we couldn't get you know at least one or hopefully two Chris and Sanjay both want to be there on the board and then I guess another procedural question is do we just sort of insist that there is rec commission parts you know like that that a rec commission member needs to be part of the commission part of this task force I would I would certainly I would certainly believe that the rec commission has to be involved in the working group I would I would argue that that that it's essential for you all to be involved in it uh if we had two people that were looking to rep be represented that would not be a problem for me either we don't want to involve if it's redundant then it'd be one thing but I don't think that having two people in this example would be a problem for us to to uh to involve in that group I can check with with the uh tell manager on that okay all right now that sounds good so Sanjay and Chris expressed interest and then I should have asked was there anyone else who had an interest in participating all right okay I guess so Ray and Dave then you got two names from us folks very interested and committed to helping out here any idea when you would anticipate this task force being set up it will be being it's uh it's a matter of priority for me so I'd say within the next month all right you got all my information you're not a good old thank you Chris yeah thanks Chris and Sanjay for stepping up all right um I think that would wrap up that order of business then unless Ray Dave anything else to add awesome oh thank you all right thank you we're gonna push pickleball off until next month and then you know basically same for meeting cadence we'll look I think it's kind of this first Monday I have another commitment on Mondays but I'm hoping to keep it either you know very close to the beginning Jean and I Jean Ray and I talked about that a little bit as well but we'll get a a date out for you right now that would be December 4th and then if there's no other items Ray or Jean that you want to bring forward I was just gonna ask Ray do you have any updates on meeting in person a hybrid format you just said that and Dave snuck away I was gonna ask him before before he left I haven't heard specifically about that hybrid I can I can get back to you I can let you know on that okay thanks Jean all right and that note thanks everybody for the extra a little bit of time we won't go this long moving forward yeah but I appreciate all the questions and and just being active participants is great enjoy the rest of what's left of your evening we'll see you in about a month thank you very good night thank you everybody good to see you good to see you good to see you good to see you good to see you