 Okay, we're recording. Hello everyone. Good evening. Today is October. Gosh, I can't even get my date straight. I think we are here on the 20th October 20th at a 630pm. Welcome to our regular scheduled TSO meeting pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 extended by chapter 22 of the acts of 2022. The meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via zoom or by telephone. No in person attendance of members of the public will be permitted but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access meeting in real time via technological means. So at this time I would like to hold the meeting to order and I will call upon the committee members and guests just to make sure that everyone can be heard. So, Anna. I'm never first hi. Hello shall me. Yes. Andy. And the meeting is just a journey. Yes, I'm here. I'm hanging up this. Okay. Jennifer, can you hear okay. Can we hear you. Thank you. Yes, I can. Thank you. Okay chief Nelson. Loud clear. Super intended morning. Yes. And this is the superintendent in your second. Can you hear us. I can. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening. John, did I call on you? Yeah. Okay. All right. So. We're all set. So without further ado, I want to first thank you. You have a big thank you to chief Nelson and go for more. We're joining us for this first bit as we move into. Deliberation on the following proposed parking regulation regulation. To prohibit parking on the east side of the Sunset Avenue between McClellan. And amity. Between eight a.m. and five p.m. Monday through Friday. To prohibit parking on the east side of Sunset Avenue between Elm Street and amity street at all times. And to prohibit parking on. One side of Elm Street at all times. And I want to first welcome Jennifer to who gave us thoughtful presentation last time to see if you had anything else that. You wanted to add or say before we move on to questions that were so lucky to have. Chief Nelson and go for more and with us here to answer. Oh, thank you, Anika. And yes, I really want to express appreciation to Chief Nelson. Guilford and Amy for, you know, being here tonight after hours. No, the only thing I think I would add because we, I just wanted to share an incident that we had just sort of coincidentally, I don't know this past Saturday. I touched on it a little in the council meeting, but yeah, so it was a beautiful autumn afternoon. There was a home football game. It was a great, all good. And I was actually a native, a resident called me. Who was on sunset and fearing, and I walked around the corner. And between on sunset between fearing and Brigham Lane. So no parking is permitted on either side of the street. But on this small, it's a small block. There are four group houses rented to students and a fraternity. There's a, that's on one side of the street on the other side of the street, there's one or maybe one group house. And then residents, non-student households that live on the street. So, and it was also parents weekend. So because of all this activity going on, I guess the cars just parked on both sides of sunset, although they're not supposed to, but it creates the situation that you have on sunset between Elm and Amnesty and Lincoln between Elm and Amnesty. So there's all this activity when I got there, someone had called a parking enforcement, parking enforcement officer, was there doing a masterful job of handling a very chaotic situation. Well, it turns out. After I left that at five o'clock that evening, a resident who lives on that block in his 80s, he's lived on that street in his house for over 60 years, and he experienced an allergic reaction to a bee sting and started to go, you know, he couldn't breathe. So an ambulance was called, and the ambulance was challenged to get to the residents, not just by the cars parked on the street. It turns out, you know, there were a lot of party goers, kind of revelers in the street who didn't move for the ambulance, which is another story that the ambulance had to come to a stop. A neighbor had to come out and ask the people in the street to move, and then the ambulance, thankfully, aid was administered on the spot. And the person didn't have to go to the hospital, but it was just a glaring example of what happens when there's cars parked on this narrow street with two-way traffic, you know, the kind of safety issues that it presents. So I just wanted to add that since it just happened, you know, five days ago. And the other point I wanted to, I guess reiterate, because I was, you know, contacted by Amherst Media first story, and I think a resident wrote this in a letter or public comment that was shared during the public hearing and sent to council, but that the 25 to 30 vehicles that are regularly parked on the east side on Lincoln Avenue between McClellan and Amity Avenue pose a safety risk to pedestrian, cyclists and vehicles traffic, but they're not even beginning to dent UMass's need for parking. So I feel like this is, we can provide some safety relief on the street. And we're really, you know, the thousands of parking spaces that are needed for students and employees of UMass are not even, they're not going to be able to park on the street, but they're going to be able to walk it by providing 25 on, on street spaces. So thank you. Thank you, Jennifer. So I see Trace, your hand was up. Then Anna and, um, and Dorothy, if you wouldn't mind, I would like to pause afterwards so we can, um, ask if chief Nelson has anything to weigh in about, um, the, the incident that, um, the meeting hers. I'm wondering if there's any issues surrounding. Around. Sure. Um, check to checking with. Well, I mean, back, back, back up. If there's ever any issues, issue with the, with one of our crews, be it fire or EMS or getting, getting to a sight or getting, getting to, to, to and address. Uh, that's that's logged report. We're pointed up the, up to the chain. It'll get, get to, to, to me and we'll address it. happen here. We talked with the crew. They said they weren't to delay. They said there were a lot of people out. But it didn't delay, delay, delay, delay them. The gentleman, he waited about five hours to call us about the bee sting. So we didn't get called right away. And as I said, the crew said they didn't have any of the issue getting on to the street, getting to the patient and treating the patient who ultimately was not transfered. So in this case, they did not have a problem. So I have to say, I'm just reporting what was written to me. The resident wrote to me. So I'm not trying to contact you. No, no, no, no. I said I wasn't there. But you know, the resident actually had somebody, she had a statement that she had the person somebody sent to me. So I don't know. You know what? That's, that's when folks need to call me and call me right then, then, then, then, then, then, I mean, bottom line, she may, she may have felt that she had had to had to go out and clear, clear, clear the road and all of that. But the folks that were responsible, responsible, responsible, responding, who are acute, acute, acutely aware of any kind of delay and the need to get, get, get there, get to get on scene at a time, time, time, timely fashion, said there was not an issue. And they, and they would not, not be read or reticent about saying that. But I'm just saying that, you know, I mean, and, you know, everyone has did, did different perceptions. So I mean, folks, you know, we could, we could, I mean, you know, that, you know, folks, when folks call, they always say, well, it took you so long to get here. But that, that's because when you're in, in an excited, excited state, time seems to slow down. And in this, in this case, it may, it may, it may, she may have thought, oh, wow, during this is car, car, car, car, car and issue, but it, it, it didn't. Okay. So Dorothy, you got the same. Wait, wait a minute. I'm Jennifer. I want to just make sure that we are getting around. So Tracy, thank you, Chief Nelson. Thank you for that. And I'm sure we'll be coming back to you. So Tracy and then Anna, please. Yeah, so I'm sorry. I'd come a few minutes late to the meeting because myself and Guilford too, we were just at the attack meeting. But I just wanted to, I mean, while people were making comments, I just wanted to comment about my experience on the weekend. And I mean, I understand that the parking restrictions that are being discussed are weekday restrictions, but it did really point to I was on sunset like soon after the football game got out and and what I mean, and Jennifer probably mentioned that there were people parking illegally on the west side of the street where there's no parking. There was nobody parked on the east side of the street. But even so, it was pretty clear that it was pretty much like a one lane road for traveling right at fearing and sunsets. And it was it was like pretty chaotic. So, I mean, it did. I mean, the parking officer was doing an amazing job. Well, there's like a huge party right there, you know, well over 100 people. And it seemed that some of the parkers actually weren't related to the party that they had just been people who had parked at the football game. But it was, you know, and it is a little bit unusual because to have those kind of events. But it does my experience trying to drive through that just speaks to the fact that it is a narrow. I mean, there are reasons that it doesn't. And I worry especially about sunset to that. I don't think that it's appropriate for like even the other section of sunset to have unrestricted traffic on both sides of the street. As it does south of Elm right now, the Elmley has no restrictions. And so just because, you know, other events can happen too. And it just it is really clear that you can have even even like it's centered in fearing, even just one lane of traffic, like basically. Yeah, there's just not enough room, basically. And so and then the other thing is when I I had been on campus and I was walking back along Lincoln and there was a fire truck. They came down Lincoln later on the afternoon and it was trying to turn on to fearing and on fearing. There were cars parked on street on fearing. There is no legal parking on fearing fearing to one of the streets that hasn't no legal parking. And I did notice that the fire truck had to like back up and I couldn't just make a clean turn that you had to navigate through that. But it seemed like, you know, they got through eventually. But it doesn't make me wonder just in terms of with emergency response when the dorms go in and you have those, you know, 824 beds right on the edge of this neighborhood, like how the emergency services will be getting over there and so on. So thank you. Thank you. OK. Honor. Hi. So yeah, I mean, I think that was my first initial thought was the the incident or not in nonincident, depending on who you ask on Saturday would not have been solved by these proposed changes. And so I'm kind of back to my square one, which is if this is a safety issue, it's probably not only a safety issue Monday through Friday, eight to four. And so if it's truly a safety issue and that's what I have questions for for Chief Nelson and Chief Livingstone about, then we should not have any parking, right? So I'm still at an impasse about this because I don't. It feels it does feel discriminatory for folks who work and study at the institution right now. And as we've seen on big weekends like homecoming or parents weekend or whatever it is, clearly it's an issue on weekends, too. And so that's that's my first thought is I hear the frustration that folks have about what happened on Saturday and nothing would have changed about that had we passed these these parking restrictions. So I just want to kind of manage expectations here that this is not that what what is on the table in this motion is a Monday through Friday, eight thirty to four thirty. That's that. And if if there are concerns that are again about safety and if they're corroborated by our public safety officers, then then I think we need to revisit that conversation. So the other thing that I'm I was trying to go through my email and I just don't think I was fast enough. You know, I was reading in the memo and this kind of goes back to point one is that one of the listed problems was that Lincoln was acting as a twenty four seven, I believe I'm quoting this correctly, acting as a twenty four, not my words, twenty four seven parking lot for UMass and the other element was that overnight parking was a concern. Again, this proposal is not addressing either of those things. And so I just once again would like to make sure that folks are understanding that what is on the table is Monday through Friday, eight thirty to four thirty. And if the actual problem that is is being presented to us is that it's a twenty four seven parking lot or that overnight parking is a problem, then we're not dealing with that here. That that's the decision that we've come to. So the other things that are on my mind and coming into this, I was not a fan of eliminating parking at all on Lincoln because I think that it's it's highly used and needed by folks. But I'm in hearing some of the comments, I feel like we're kind of leaving one half of the street high and dry. You know, folks are saying that they were concerned about their kids walking out between cars while everybody on the west side of the street is still going to have what you said it's one side of the street. The motion says one side. Jennifer, I see you shaking your head. I mean, there's no parking a lab on the west side. OK, so then it would be banning on both sides. OK, that's fine. So thank you for clarifying that. So I think that, you know, I'm unclear on one of the original points that I had. And so this was what I was trying to dig through my email on, which is I'm unclear on why we can't paint lines, Guilford. And I'm so sorry, because I know I've asked this question before and I should have written down the answer, but why we can't paint the lines to limit and I'd love clarification on that. And then I'm just looking forward to hearing more of an explanation or whatever else they'd like to share with us from Chief and Guilford about their opinions about this as well. Sorry, I was muted myself. So thank you, Anna and Dorothy. You will be next, but can we just pause because that was a lot there. And so could we have both weigh in by Guilford and Chief Nelson and also if you would, please. I believe this would be for you, Guilford, to also include, we did have questions from our last meeting in regards to the difference in width between Lincoln and Sunset. And would that have any impact on parking recommendations? I'll flip you, Tim, to see you go first. I'll go first. I'm taller. You go first. You have less hair, too, so I guess I could go first. Yeah. So so the first thing is, yes, the roads are different. Lincoln is about two feet wider than Sunset, so Sunset's narrower. The roads also up until this point, Lincoln has been a straight shot from Route 9 all the way into campus to Mass Ave. That's why Lincoln Avenue probably gets more traffic than Sunset. Sunset has two restrictions on it that make it a little incompatible to be a good commuter route. One, you have to go to Amity Street to get on Sunset to go to campus. And then once you get to campus, you can only make a right turn. And you have to drive by all the dorms on Southwest with all the students on the sidewalks, which the sidewalk kind of grows a bit at certain times during the day and will be the road as well as a sidewalk. And then you also have to deal with the two crosswalks, the one that crosses Sunset and then the one that crosses Mass Avenue, which is the one where a lot of in the area where people there's a lot of injuries and other things that happen there. So that makes Sunset really not a very good road for driving. So the traffic on that one is a lot less. So if you had parking or band, if you allowed some parking on Sunset, you're going to have less interactions between the driving public and the park cars. We're on Lincoln, you're going to have a lot more interaction between park cars and drivers, bicyclists and everything. But now Lincoln's closed at Mass Avenue. So it'll be interesting to see what happens if that stays closed. Right now, if you go to Lincoln, you have to turn left to North Hadley, and then you end up back at the same spot you were on Sunset, then you have to cross students and then you have to cross because only construction traffic is going into the construction site. People at school are not going into that construction site. So it's kind of an interesting dynamic you have going here. When you Jennifer's telling me, no, I'm wrong. I know that it's closed. You can drive through a parking lot, too. But that's got construction stuff in it as well. But there's gates at least. It's reopening. No, that may not happen. I mean, the university has says it would. But yeah, the university has not made their formal. Well, the town manager reported that in one of his reports recently. When they talk to us, they say they haven't made the decision. But it hasn't changed the parking situation. Correct. What can we please just let go for so we can go around? Thank you. So the other issue is, too, you do have a lot of students moving in. And the rule now is that you can park overnight. There's no overnight parking, winter parking ban, which is what kept students from parking on the streets in the past. We've already seen in some neighborhoods that neighborhoods become parking lots and cars will stay there for quite a long time. If they have a permit or even it's just free parking, they'll stay for quite a while. And we've towed several of them during storms. It just happens because there's no, you don't have to move the car at night because there's no parking ban. So the future, I can't tell you what the future is going to be. And I don't think anyone can tell you what the future is going to be. So it's if you think about this, you probably need to address just this point now and know that in a year or two, you're going to be back doing it again. And this is coming from the guy who's been here 20 years and every four to five years, I talk about Lincoln Avenue in a meeting and what to do about parking and it doesn't really just keeps coming up over and over again, no matter what we do. Thank you, girlfriend. Jeff Nelson, did you have anything to add in? I'll just say that, you know, as as as is now now, you know, so so summertime, spring, when all of that, we we can still get down down down down that that street. Would it be better for us if there there was no no no car parking? Sure, of course. I guess for me, it's we can't allow, allow, allow, allow it to get worse you know, we get to get get get any worse than it is now. But as Gil Gil Gil Gil said, it's kind of hard, hard to predict how what will happen once once all once once those dorm dorms are built, you know, because those it says citizens on one on their students cars and all that have not been made, made yet. But I guess for me, it's a case a case of as long as we may make sure that that it does not become an issue, you know, right, right, right now for us, it's it's not. But we just kind of I think at some some some point, you have to maybe make a decision to say, OK, we we won't allow this to impact emergency vehicles, even even though it doesn't really impact us now. Thank you. Sure. Thank you. And Dorothy, you've been out there so patient and then Andy, I've seen you and then we will go to Shawnee will have a chance to speak in. OK, I have a couple of things to say. One is why the resident did not call right away. And that's because there was no problem right away. He'd had a number of beastings earlier this season. He's a farmer, but this time it was different. It seemed to be OK. And then it all of a sudden he broke into hives and then very rapidly it began to move to a bad situation and he began to not be able to breathe. So we don't call the ambulance when we get bitten by a bee. But if we start to get a serious reaction, that's when we call them. So that clarification was interesting. Now, I remember that we were talking at our last meeting about banning parking all the time or the original motion on Monday, Friday, business hours. And I believe that Lynn said for our hearing, our forum that all we had to do was to have a statement that people could relate to and talk about. But that did not mean that we in our deliberation could not change the motion. The fact that that's what we have posted for the hearing does not tie us to it. And Anna before brought up the question of saying perhaps it's not safe all the time. And I'm I'm really beginning agreeing with her. I'm agreeing with her and I understand that as Guilford said, we can reconsider this in time. But this is a problem that keeps coming and keeps coming. It is a problem. And I think that we should just say no parking. The street is narrow right now. There's difficulty. My husband, when he did his first driving again after his foot surgery, what did he do? He went up Lincoln and he found, oh, my goodness, the first car pulled over and let him pass by. Because you can't have two parking and two lanes of traffic. The second car didn't care. Just rammed at him. OK. So that's going on all the time and you've heard all the other things. So I do think that I would like to change the motion or to offer a motion that we consider banning parking on Lincoln. Twenty four hours, both sides and not have it separate. So we brought Jennifer and I brought this up at the CCC meeting yesterday and they said that the sunset problem is not one that they'd had in the past with games and they would deal with it. They also revealed they had a very complicated parking plan where they said they would make it even better because they did end up being full, they had they were communicating with the parents and the guests about which lots to go to and how to get there. And then when they closed up where to go, but they underestimated, they underestimated. So some of that probably was overflow parking from the game. They also mentioned they had a number of big games coming up. OK, so we're going to have a fall, a very interesting fall. And my desire is to have things be safe sooner rather than later. I don't want to wait for the article in the paper. I want to just we've talked about this. Guilford has had experience with it for 20 years. I think we should go ahead and have taken an action. And I'm suggesting that we say that on Lincoln we have no parking 24 hours, you know, seven days a week. And on sunset to stick with the other statement that was made, we'll have to look at things when we get that new townhouse development. I believe, at least when we went over it, that parking is provided for the residents. All right. And I believe it should be sufficient. The only problem would be if all of the residents decided to have a big party and had lots of guests, but our hope is that the townhouses will be mixed in terms of age, family, student, whatever. And so that shouldn't be the same. That shouldn't be like being it's not a fraternity house. It's a mixed neighborhood with apartments that are suitable for students and suitable for families. So that is my suggestion. Thank you. OK, thank you, Dorothy. And I'm just looking at time and being considered our guests. So Andy and then Shaun and then we'll loop around. But if if we are those of us that are counselors that have spoken, if we could be mindful of about three minutes, that would be helpful. OK, so Andy, please. OK, well, thank you. I'm going to respond to Anna and therefore to Dorothy, too. I am not convinced that there's a big gain by banning, making it a 24 hour day ban. And there are a couple of reasons for saying that. One is that the biggest number of cars that we've had there has been during the day. And I understand that there's a concern about the Lincoln apartments. And I think that that's a valid concern when they open. But the need, what the people from who are living in apartments are concerned about is where they can leave a car and not have to go back and continually move it at various times of the day. And so if we are just banning during the day and allowing it at night, I think for most of those people, they're going to have found parking places because they're living in Lincoln for the purpose of commuting to school because they could walk across the street to school. They're living in Lincoln because of the convenience and they're trying to find a parking place and having to force them to continually move their car does not make any sense. The second or the additional thing that I've thought about a lot is we have had and continue and even in this round of comments, written comments, had comments from people living on Lincoln who are concerned about being able to entertain and not having enough parking places within their driveway for entertainment purposes. And I think that that's something that ought to be considered for those residents if it's not going to affect the safety aspect. And when they are entertaining, it's probably on the weekends or in the evenings, it's not going to be during the day when you get the people who are trying to commute and use it as commuter parking and for that, those reasons, I'm very much in favor of moving forward with a restriction on both sides of the street during the day. But I'm very uncertain about the idea of moving it in the evening, because I don't think that that's where the big safety concern is now. I don't think it's going to be worse because we are safer if we make it 24 hours for the reasons that I've already stated and I think that I would rather see us go back to the resolution that was passed in the last TSO and then defeated in the council on the tie vote, which was that the ban on both sides of the street be during the day and from the period that is between I think it was September 1st and May 30th, because I looked at it just today. So I'm sure that that's where it was. And allowing the parking in the summer, if it turns out that things are different than we thought they would be. But the summertime parking has been very small. I don't think the Lincoln apartments are going to make it worse during the summer months, because a lot of the residents aren't going to be staying there all year round. And there's more parking available all over in the summer months. So I would suggest that we consider the motion as passed by the last TSO once again. Thank you, Andy. Chief Nelson. Just for one, something that I forgot, forgot, got that is that calls on on Sun Sun Sun Sun said we went we went to the same same place twice in the in the core course of the afternoon. It took us three, three minutes to get there for the first time. It took us three and a half minutes to get there to set the second time. So that goes to my point about we didn't have an issue, an issue getting there. Thanks. Thank you, Chief Nelson and Shauna, please forgive me. I forgot to. Oh, no, definitely. We want to hear from Chief Nelson more than you want to hear from me. But that was helpful, actually. But I was also actually going to refer to the emails that we received from the residents who live there and totally agree with Andy that people who don't have driveways in 24 hour ban would be I don't understand where would the guest park. But then I'm also referring to the emails that talked about during the daytime if you have contractors and guests, where would they park? So that's one question. Is that could be offered? Would you be able to answer that question? I mean, the contractor or contractor or guest is going to have to park on your property or you don't have to talk to your neighbors and pass the park in their yard and on their driveways and so forth, if there's no parking, you can get a temporary parking permit by going to the town of Andrew's office and for some type of work where you need to put a dumpster or you need to park like there's being done right now at Judy's and the subway, you can't get a temporary work permit to park. But other than that, if you just have a service like your heating service guy showing up, he has to park in your driveway. So that would be how it would be done. Right. So that's for people who don't have driveways or have cars in the driveways. It seems like that's going to be impeding on the experience of living on that street. And I think the other thing that was talked about was well, so that's one one reason why I feel hesitant to support this. But then on the other hand, I think it's a compelling argument that there are only 20 to 25 parking spots. Is that true? How many parking spots would be be losing? Let me look that up. I'll get back to you. OK, I think Jennifer had a hand. Do you know the answer to that? I don't know. Yesterday, I counted. It wasn't the full length of the block, but I counted twenty three cars between McClellan and going almost well, about half. I'd have to look at the address, but it went. They were probably from Amnesty. Dorothy helped me here. It went from McClellan to a couple of houses. Past the ratners. So it wasn't the full length, but that was they were end to end. I counted twenty three cars. I also want to say I my driveways on Cosby. No parking on one side. No parking until three o'clock on the other. We have a small driveway, so we always do have to have service vehicles park in our driveway. I mean, we have no parking on the street where a driveway is or in front of our house. So it's just something we have to deal with in our neighborhood. But if we could have Anna and Dorothy, then we'll come back to shop. I mean, I think one thing with the question is service vehicles. I mean, all over town, right, that there's delivery vehicles. There's people providing lawn care. I mean, there's a number of neighborhoods that have restrictions and it doesn't seem like it's typically an issue. I'm even, you know, I think that sometimes the vehicles will park in the driveways. But like, for example, right now on Sunset. Two, I mean, there's a lot of construction going on. It seems like I don't know. I mean, I guess that would be a question for the police about, like, how much it's enforced, but a lot of these neighborhoods, it seems like it's mainly enforced based on people calling to complain or things. So I mean, for example, you know, like Amity doesn't have parking on the lower part of Amity, but I see Amazon trucks just park in the middle of Amity, you know, going down the hill and things. So it seems like you can adjust around it. I did have a couple of comments just both about the situation with Sunset and the Sunset Ferry neighborhood over the weekend and a few others. But I mean, one of the issues that I saw over the weekend, both like right on Sunset and also with Ferry, is that the issue was that people were parking where it's not even legal to park. So maybe, you know, one of the challenges, I mean, one way that could be addressed is just by bigger enforcement, you know, jorn these times where there's going to be a lot of parking pressure. Like I think the parking enforcement officer, I heard him tell tell somebody, well, it's not legal to park on this side of the street. And so the issue wasn't coming up based on it was coming up based on rules that are already in place that were not being followed. You know, and the thing with so one thing I do, you know, in terms of Lincoln and I'm on Lincoln almost every day, going back and forth to campus and walking around to downtown is that I agree with what's been said in terms of the main parking pressures on Lincoln are during the day. It's not busy at night. You know, it's not busy over the summer. I mean, Jennifer Chavin, her presentation, she showed the slide show about like what it looked like before the beginning of the semester, what it looked like after the beginning of the semester and you'll see the same on a typical weekend or over the summer at night and so on. I mean, during those off peak times, there's very few cars parked on street. So the 24 hour ban doesn't seem necessary. The other thing was when the tack looked at it and we were recommending to have like proactively to have some parking restrictions on one side of sunset and one side of Elm, those were not just going to be Monday to Friday restrictions. They were going to be 24 hours, like 365 days a year. And we were just looking. I mean, as Guilford just pointed out, I know that Ken Rosenthal, who lives on sunset, has come talking to the number of the meetings. And he's always said that sunset is one foot narrower than Lincoln. But tonight, Guilford said like sentence actually two feet. And so the our concern was that just that we didn't see the need to allow parking on both sunset and Elm on both sides of the street. And so just for safety reasons, just as I experienced on sunset in this busy section of sunset, sunset and fearing over the weekend, there just isn't if there was ever going to be some parking demand and if Lincoln, for example, did have restrictions, it could push demand over to sunset. It just seems appropriate from a safety standpoint to just say, just like we do on Lincoln, that at least one side of the street has no parking allowed for safety reasons and for traffic flow reasons and so on. So I still, I mean, from my perspective, I really worry a lot about like if all of a sudden there were parking demand on sunset and Elm and people were parked on both sides of the street because then the streets would not be passable and would not be safe for almost anybody. So thank you. Thank you, Tracy. Anna, please. So I want to be clear. I'm not convinced of a full time parking ban at this point. What what my point was and is is that if we need to do this for safety, we need to do it at all times. Like if safety is the reason and I'm I believe that that's a potentially really valid point here, which is why I wanted to hear from Chief Nelson, which is and it's helpful to hear about the response times. And I I want us to always check and I know this is a hard thing to hear. Sometimes perception and reality of call times are different, right? And I am not saying, Jennifer, I see you shaking your head. I know that you don't agree with me here. However, when we know the legitimate time that it takes someone to reach a house on sunset and on fearing and on Lincoln, that does matter. And I'm not saying to ignore perception either. However, we need both ends of this. So people can't only be safe Monday through Friday, 30 to 430, if safety's the concern. That's not how this works in my mind, right? If we did this and someone was hurt because an ambulance couldn't get them on a Saturday afternoon, wouldn't we all feel pretty damn bad about that? Sorry, wouldn't we all feel pretty darn bad about that? If people want to entertain, why can't we make sure they aren't blocking the driveways at night either? Right? So I think that there's a difference between inconvenience and and not being safe. I'm not saying that this is an argument between the two things, but I think we need to really interrogate what which one we are addressing. I do not think that we can set that we can say we are truly addressing a safety concern, we're addressing 70 percent of a safety concern. Is that all we need to do? I'm not sure. Once again, I do believe the better solution would be to line and or meter the spots. I know that doesn't take away from the narrowness of this. And then Guilford might hate me for saying it. But I do believe when I looked at the pictures that Jennifer sent, when I read the the the the statements from folks who live on the road or who travel the road in my mind from what I'm gathering, what I'm gathering from that, there we go, is that the one of the bigger concerns is folks coming way too close to driveways or way too close to that buffer between the next street. I know the narrowness issue wouldn't be solved. But if we were able to paint curbs, which is something the residents had talked about wanting or if we were able to put lines or if we were able to put meters that end at 6 p.m. and don't go on Sundays or weekends, would it would that not address many of the issues that we are we are looking at here? That's that's what I got for you. My mind is very clearly not made up. So I'm exploring all the options, but that's where I'm at. Thank you, Anna. And just real quick, before we move on to Chief Nelson again, I just wanted to also add that so Paul could not be with us this evening, but he did have some questions. Answer we have quite a few questions asked by residents last week. So a couple were that were in regard to the the police department where can the police give tickets to cars that are parked, that are overlapping a driveway? And if so, is this done on a call service from a resident or is it something that you would do with a patrol by police or traffic enforcement? And the answer was we can ticket for being within a driveway. It can be initiated by the home owner, notifying the police department of the driveway being blocked. And there was also please provide a record of incidents and injuries on Lincoln Avenue for the past five years or whatever time frame is readily available. And the answer there was for the past five years, there have been 12 total accidents on Lincoln Avenue, but this does not include accidents at the intersection of Amity or Farron Streets. We also had in regards to the school, is it true that a bus route to Wildwood had to be rerouted because of traffic delays on Lincoln Avenue? Were any buses rerouted or told to avoid Lincoln Avenue? And this came from a school superintendent, which was we only have one bus traveling on Lincoln Avenue, and it is for Wildwood. The driver has managed to negotiate the road for school pickups and drop offs. Any other of the questions we are lucky again to have both Guilford and Chief Nelson. So whichever Guilford or Chief Nelson, please take it away. I just want to one, one, one, one to that. Don't think for us as a second that if I thought there was an issue is issue with us getting getting down on Lincoln or some of the other street that we wouldn't take action. If if that was the case, you all would be getting complaints about the fire, fire, fire chiefs having cars towed all over the place. OK, so, you know, so don't again, if if wherever we we we we may see a problem that's hitting our ability to to to to respond, we take action. The case in particular, particularly Lincoln Avenue. Oh, yeah, I'd be be all over it, you know, because our people people people people would be of open arms. But we haven't seen that yet. So thank you, Guilford. Hi, I've didn't I forgot to talk about painting. If you want, if you want to paint, if you want to paint lines on the road, we can do that. It's just we'll probably do less of something else because we're now painting more lines. There is a cost to painting lines. We can put meters out there. There is a cost to meters. Ticketing. Like you just pointed out with the football game, which actually I'm glad I didn't park there because I was going to do that during the game before. Ticketing and painting and meters are also labor intensive. You have to have people when the parking enforcement is not on and has to do police officers. We're a bit low on police police officers right now. They're trying to get more people, but they they're having issues. We're having issues getting employees. We've had some employees leave because they've decided it's this is not the community to work for or to live in and they're moving somewhere else. Those are things that have to be that come into the picture as well as how how do we keep the manpower up to do these things if you want to do it? We can do it. You just got to decide we just have to know that we're not going to do something else and money is going to be used to do this instead of something else or more money has to be put in and then you have to enforce. There has to be people to enforce because there's nobody enforcing. I mean, if we had enough people to enforce, we could have told them to go on Saturday for a football game and we could have paid overtime. And with the first five or six tickets they wrote, they would have paid further overtime and it would have it would have been an enforcement issue that wouldn't have been a drain on the accounts. So that's just something to keep in mind, too. Thank you. OK, so we can I think probably do a last round. So Jennifer yet to you and then shall any Dorothy Tracy and then we can see if if Andy has anything else on out and then last questions for our Chief Nelson and Gil heard out of consideration for their time. Go ahead, Jennifer. The first thing I want to say to Chief Nelson is the so the resident who wrote me about Saturday, because I wasn't on that there at five o'clock, she said that the ambulance came right away. So there was nothing but appreciation for the fire department. This is what she said. I'm just going to read it when the ambulance was called for. The patient was outside. I could hear the sirens. So I walked into the street. They, meaning the EMTs, arrived very fast, probably only five minutes, although it turns out it was only three and a half. They came on to Sunset from the Fearing Street and the Southwest Dorms. There were a lot of students down there. Once the ambulance was on sunset, there were about three or four kids right in the middle of the street walking towards the ambulance that didn't even get out of the way. The ambulance almost had to come to a full stop before they moved. And that's what, you know, so that's what she said. So it might not have, I acknowledge it might not have been a big deal for the ambulances, they deal with things all the time, but she did appreciate how fast the ambulance got there. And again, you know, I know I have heard received emails over the, you know, even heard before I was a counselor that I know at 209 Lincoln. And again, the ambulance, I'm sure, came right away. And this may not be an issue. You're right. It may just be the perception on the part of the residents, because you're in a panic that you've had to call the ambulance. But that on one occasion with the same resident who had to call an ambulance twice for a family member, they couldn't enter the driveway because cars were parked over to narrow driveway, and then they had to park like a block and a half down the street. I think that's how they related to me because the cars were parked. So again, it may not rise. So I just want to, you know, that this is what I hear. It may not rise to where it has to be a report for the fire department. But but they're always there was never any issue. They appreciate how fast the EMTs arrived. So I just wanted to acknowledge that. Thank you. I can co-sign to that to you. Thank you, Chief Nelson. And then so, OK, shall need Dorothy and I have a comment myself. OK, going back again to the residents who wrote to us who live on Lincoln and Sunset, I think that we received quite, I should have counted, but we received a bunch of emails from them saying that they did not want the ban. So how do we resolve that? Like there's some residents who want the ban and some who don't want it. So how do we, you know, respond to those people who don't want the ban? Secondly, if you're talking about safety, doesn't have doesn't having parking parked cars slow down the speed of the other cars and that's safer rather than because if you remove that, people are going to just zip over or zip through. Like when there's no parked cars, that's just a known fact that when there's no parked cars on the street, cars are going to speed. And when they're parked cars, it just slows them down. So there's going to be and it's not like what I heard was there were just 12 accidents in five years. So it doesn't feel like safety. You know, how does yeah, I'm still grappling with the safety argument here. I mean, if it's inconvenience, then yes, let's just talk about that. But if it's safety, it almost feels like having cars parked is making it safer because cars are going to be slower. And the third thing was is parking permits, not meters, but parking permits, a solution that's being considered. Or is it the same idea that's going to be labor intensive? Guilford, you have an answer to that question? Yes. Parking permits do require enforcement. So yes, we can do permits. And usually when we do permits, you'll have some you'll have more signs that say no parking permit or permit parking only. So you'll have some people who will pay attention to it and and they'll not park there. So but that the only program that's available right now is resident parking permits, which then means if you did that on Sunset, the fraternity houses, sorry, the large student houses on Sunset would be residents too. And they would qualify for the permits as well. So but enforcement is a bigger issue there. What was the first one? I'm sorry, I just kind of. Well, I guess the first one was more for the residents too. Like, how do we resolve that some residents want parking over there and some don't? And then I think the other one was about doesn't having parked cars slow down the speed and make it safer, therefore. Yes, the park cars, park cars and narrowing the roadway do slow people down. But then if you drive the road repeatedly every day, you tend to become comfortable and you're actually very good at driving through it, even though it's night narrower and you'll drive faster and actually younger people who have better reaction skills than I do it now right now would be would be able to drive faster, faster than I would. It would take me maybe a few weeks of driving it every day to get used to driving through the fast, driving through where they'd be a little quicker. So there is a there is a point where it diminishes. When you first start doing it, people slow down. But when people get used to it, they start speeding back up. And there is a break point and usually a few miles lower than what it was before, but there it will kind of go down and go back up. And is the average of that 12 accidents in five years? Is that excessive or is that normal? Or I mean, I don't know how to assess the safety on that street with that number. For a road and airmars that's got predominantly residential road, that's kind of a little on that's kind of high. OK, thank you. Thank you. Gores, I think that I'm going to stick with Andy's argument. The original motion was done according to the TSO policy, which was well thought out, it was completely supported by Guilford mooring. And the only reason it didn't go through was the question of what would happen or would this be changed because of the closing, temporary closing of Lincoln at the top for the construction? Some of the issues that I know, Shalini, you're trying to be thorough, but, you know, I live on a street with absolutely no parking, Amity, and we don't have any problems. The traffic flows. If there's a truck that's needed, it comes into my driveway. And if there's a party and there are two more cars in my driveway, I send them to the public parking up the street. So we have a full social life and there's no parking on my street. OK, some of the worry about how would we know what the neighbors want? Well, neighbors have told us and if you actually want to do a professional poll, you would find out that maybe three people have said, I don't mind or I like it the way it is and 30 or 40 say I won't need the change. So it's not even close. It is not even close between the few that have said, no, I don't want to change and those that have said they do want it. So people have been talking about this, talking to each other, emailing, communicating with each other. We have, you know, we meet once a month for a community brunch and they talk about it. So it's not that we don't know what people want. I think that Gofford has brought up questions of safety and of enforcement. I mean, many of the ideas that we've had depend on more enforcement. So I think something that is simple, that is clear, is something that could work. And that I suggest that we follow through. Otherwise, I'm not quite sure. And I also had real problem following Anna's reasoning as to why this wasn't a safety issue. If you're saying it's not safe when there's cars parked on one side of the road and two lanes of traffic, then that could be a statement that's true. If when the cars are not parked there during the day and there's two lanes of traffic go by in a safer way, well, that's to do with safety. So I just couldn't follow how you said, therefore, this is not about safety. It is about safety. And I just feel that if we don't, if we can't solve this and follow through and pass this and try it, then I really will say I'm just totally losing any faith I have in Amherst self government. Thank you. Tracy. Hi, so so on the question of safety, I know Anna has brought up before the idea of having a 24 hour parking van for safety. And I think at that time and I still feel the same way is that it's really not uncommon, you know, that there are streets that are, you know, that they are much busier at peak times and there are more safety issues there and that then I mean, I could where you only allow parking at off peak times or you don't allow parking at peak times when the traffic flows are the heaviest. I mean, that's something that's done a lot of times where you'll see signs like parking only allowed at off peak times. Cities do that a lot, downtown areas do that a lot and so on. And some of that is a safety issue. Also, I mean, there are a number of neighborhoods north of the UMass campus to including off of North Pleasant Street. They also have bands on on street parking from eight to five. Some of those neighborhoods have those bands for one side of the street, some have them for both sides of the street. So, you know, what was being proposed in the original proposal and is still on the table is to have it from eight to five and be consistent with that. And for the same types of reasons, I mean, when the traffic is much lower, the safety issues are much less. And the convenience factor, you know, as people have pointed out where people have guests at night or on the weekends or things like that should be considered. The question about do the park cars slow down traffic? I mean, they can. Some cases, right? You're narrowing the travel lane, but at the same time. And that's particularly the case with one way streets. I know sometimes attack. We get emails from residents who say to bake the traffic in my neighborhood better and safer, you should make everything a one way. And that and that was actually discussed about Lincoln and Sunset. I don't know when maybe 10, 15 years ago, Guilford would probably remember. But that actually can make roads more of a speedway. And so there's that's one reason that plays some places that have had one way streets have said we're going to have two way streets because we've realized that it is a traffic calming to have two way traffic. And also just in on Lincoln and, you know, Dana and Blue Hills Road where I live, the traffic, the speed tables, the speed bumps were introduced in 2013 and they do significantly slow down traffic. And I think that it's probably the case on Lincoln, too. And it really has helped with the speed issue. But the issue about the sight lines with parking is still a big issue. It's when I worry about on Blue Hills Road where we don't have any sidewalks and we have a lot of parkers and it's an issue I see on Lincoln, too. And just one last point. I mean, both Dorothy Pam and Annie Seinberg have advocated to go back to the motion that went to the council in October of 2021, the one just focused on Lincoln, focused eight to five school year only. I think it was a great idea, but I really do worry a lot about sunset in Elm. And I would urge when the motion, whatever motion moves forward to the council, that it also considers having a restriction 24 seven on one side of Elm and one side of Sunset to prevent future problems and future issues. So thank you. Thank you, Tracy. Andy. Yeah, actually, it's good to follow Tracy on that because I was speaking only about Lincoln and not about sunset around Elm. And I agree wholeheartedly with what she said on those two streets. I wanted to just briefly return to the policy that was written very carefully by the last council and see if Guilford has any thoughts about whether he still believes that it's correct. What we came to in the last TSO is that there were three main criteria. Roadway classification, available pavement with and traffic flow data. And then we were presented with information which I believe came from you, Guilford, that explained that we have arterial collector and residential streets and that what the width that is needed for two way traffic and what is needed for one parking lane and that when you take Lincoln, it's sort of right on the edge with one parking side and two way traffic. If it's considered a residential street, but that that was part part of the consideration, so it was given in the discussion that I recall from the last time we talked about it as a committee, which was not in the only holdover member from that time. There were a number of other considerations that you could get to. But we were to get to those considerations unless we couldn't resolve it with the first three, which were the primary ones. And I think that the other ones all speak towards what we're talking about for Lincoln, because it's closest to downtown or village centers or in this case, also UMass, which wasn't mentioned in the policy, accident history, public safety, observed parking demand, resident input, and some of the other safety issues like for pedestrian. So those are the kinds of criteria that were there. And so if Guilford, if you feel that the lane with questions remain exactly the same as they were because they were built on national standards, I would very much when we'd hear to that policy. Guilford. Yes, we. Thank you for giving me this good question. Yes, we we do have it was laid out and we do kind of think that's the best way to do it. Lincoln is on the edge. When you say, even as a local road, you would say eight foot travel lanes, eight foot travel lane and a seven foot parking lane, you'd have one foot left over, I think, if I do my math right. So Lincoln is right on the edge. The question then comes down to traffic volumes and traffic volumes have been relatively low in the last year or so because well, last year because of the construction. So yes, that's how we. We would really. Yes, we believe that's the way we should look at roads when we try to decide what to do, but you do have to make some kind of personal judgments in there, whether the road is more or whether the traffic is more or less than what you you count on the counter based on the day you do it and so forth. So this is a that is a great guide to use. It's a starting point and we'd like to use that more often. Well, thank you. I guess we would also then probably need to have knew the inquiry that you and Jennifer were discussing earlier, which is the certainty or are not as to whether the Lincoln Avenue would be open all the way to the university because I think that if Lincoln is open to the university and the apartments are there and I would be assuming that the traffic would return to historic levels on that street. Thank you, and thank you. OK, Jennifer, thank you. I did want to clarify that all the residents on Lincoln do have parking, do have driveways. And to reiterate what Dorothy said, you know, they're you're never going to have 100 percent of one opinion, 100 percent of people are going to share the same opinion, but at our second district meeting, I think Andy was also there. That was kind of the hot topic of conversation. I think that was April and that's when I realized I had to bring the motion back to council again. I can't. Just what I'm kind of flummoxed by is the road has been closed at Lincoln and Mass Avenue while they're constructing these two enormous storms. We know that 824 residents will be living on the north corner of the street in fall 2023. There will be 100 on site parking spaces for these eight or approximately for these 824 residents. That we. I, you know, the town, I mean, I maybe this is the first time hearing that there's some possibility the road won't open. This the town manager did report that in one of his reports to you know, town manager reports to council that UMass announced they were opening the road as it is. If you drive down Lincoln, you can't access right now during the construction mass out from Lincoln, but you can just make a little turn onto North Hadley Road and get onto Mass Avenue, so you actually still can access it. But to in any way imagine that traffic and demand for parking is not going to increase with 824 new residents. I mean, we have a year on population like 17,800 actually is a percentage. I mean, that is a huge number of people. If anybody can imagine 800 residents moving on to their street next year. And I think that it is our responsibility as elected officials to plan for that and not say, let's see what happens. And as I have gone back and read report after report and memo after memo going back to 2015, when that's as far back as I got this issue, parking on Lincoln came before the select board. Really, how much more time and resources and energy need to be devoted to implementing some parking restrictions on a small part of Lincoln and a smaller part of sunset? You know, because we're going to say again, deadlocked six to six at the last council because they wanted to see what would happen when they close the road and the road is only closed temporarily. And now we're going to say, well, let's see what happens after 800 residents move in. I mean, I think we need to just apply some common sense and do some planning because. You know, life is going to change, you know, and traffic flow and parking demand on the streets. Where these, you know, to 824 bed dorms are coming. And when Dorothy refers to the townhouses on the corner of sunset and fearing, there's a townhouse development being built. So we have a lot going on in this neighborhood. Thank you. Thank you, John, Anna. Sure. So. My last points, I promise Dorothy, I'll try to be be more clear here. When I say that I'm not convinced that there's a safety issue, I'm listening to the people who are driving the ambulances to the houses. Right. And so I believe that our very, very capable fire department would would make a ruckus if they could not get down the street. I believe that they have the full interests of the residents in mind and they want to be able to get there. I am not. I am not convinced that there cannot be parking on one side of Lincoln with very clearly delineated limitations on how close to driveways and intersections those cars can go. Personally, I believe the best way to do that is through lines. What I'm hearing from the folks who, again, drive the ambulances and fire tracks is that they can get down this road. What I'm hearing from the residents is that they feel their safety is compromised when there are cars parked end to end and encroaching on their driveways. My point about safety is that if there were that concern when cars are parked end to end and encroaching on driveways, I don't want that to be a possibility on that road if that is the safety concern. So I'm in two directions here because I understand that. And if I go that route, then I'm going to say we shouldn't have parking at all. And I recognize that that's a huge pain for the people who live on that road and would like to have friends over once in a while. But what is what is stronger in my mind is that the access of emergency vehicles is not hindered. I agree fully that we cannot do Lincoln and not do Sunset and Elm and the other two other areas. I fully agree with that. My ideal solution here would be to do the lines on the road. I recognize that we would have to ask Guilford to pause on something else to paint those lines. I hear you. I'm not clear, though, on how enforcement would be different with lines. And I'm not even saying meters. I think just lines. We can keep it free parking. That's but keep it with lines so that they don't go past them. But if it were no parking, you'd still have to enforce that if a car parked there. So I want to just be clear that enforcement would need to happen, regardless, and especially right at first, if there were suddenly no parking, I think that's that might be hard adjustment for people. So those are my my closing three things. I will I will stop talking now. Now, thank you always, Dorothy. OK, I think you're right. The issue when brought up mentioned ambulances, but that was not the only or even the main point, the main point was the cars end to end so that people could not get out of their driveways and people can't cross the street without and see things and it's very easy for there to be pedestrian accidents. You know, the whole question of whether the road is closed or not is is kind of irrelevant because when those students come and want parking, they they don't need to have. There's no reason why they can't walk a block or go east Hadley. That's really not the issue. So I just see a great reluctance to do this. I think that Tracy gave us an awful lot of information. She pointed out that other neighborhoods in a similar situation have the no no parking. So we're the only one, one of the few ones around that still have parking. That's why we're so popular. I I don't know why it's impossible for people to listen to the people who live on the streets, they have been consistent and clear, have come to meetings, come to forums, written letters, spoken at meetings and it's way it's nowhere. It's not even close. It is the majority, strong majority would like to have something done. I certainly brought up lines on it. That was one of the things I brought up early and Gofford's answer was what about the snow? It's not just that the lines fade and have to be repainted, but you can't see them under the snow. You can't see them under fall leaves. So they help, but it's not a simple answer. So I'm just saying what is the problem here? Is there a thought that somehow people just make things up? I don't know. But I think if we value people who live in our communities, we do have to listen to them and they have been very clear about this. And Gofford has given his very informed opinions and they have said the street is too narrow for parking in too late to traffic. And they also told you tonight why the one way solution, which we spent time considering, is not a good solution and that we do have speed bumps. So the park car solution that Shalini mentioned is not really necessary. Speed bumps on Lincoln are good. I have to remember that because if I'm not going slow enough, it makes a big thwomp in my car. And I say, whoa, I was really supposed to get down to 20 miles an hour for that thing. So that's. I just would like to see us vote on this, get it done and remember, as Anika said, we can revisit this in a year. Thank you. Thank you, Dorothy. And I also want to be a remiss. I want to come in and speaking of if we value people in our community. I do want to touch on some of the comments that we heard last week and some of our public comments. We had a gentleman excuse me for forgetting his name who really spoke. And, you know, and it touched me about how we refer to students as sub community. And, you know, I want to first really thank you, Jennifer, for your thoughtful presentation and, you know, to all of the residents who spoke up and are in favor and would really like these restrictions to take place for reasons that I understand. I see you and for all of the residents who spoke on, you know, really pushing that we as a town need to find another solution for parking. I see you too. And, you know, myself, admittedly, I do not drive. So I really do not have a dog in this race. Number one for me anywhere is walkability. You know, so that is probably one of the most important aspects for me. And so one of the things I noticed when I came, you know, returned back to Amherst was, you know, walking around and reconnecting with the hometown and the nostalgia was, you know, the signs. I see so many signs. Everybody's welcome. I've never seen so many line lawn signs in my life. Everybody's welcome. Black lives matter. Never seen so many black lives matter. But I've also never heard the use so freely and casually of things like student slums, student ghettos, our people debating about who that is when referring to our, you know, college student community. And, you know, I understand the inconvenience. I understand it in terms of safety, aesthetics. But, you know, I think there's also this tone that, you know, the majority of students are sent here with disposable income to disturb the piece and we know that's not true. I mean, this is a state school. We have lots of percent of students that they themselves probably do not appreciate their conditions. You know, do we know how many of them are BIPOC and this is actually our community? Like this is a good number of our BIPOC community. How many deal with food security homelessness? You know, hearing things like any of us, any of us determining who is our community or anything. I mean, that speaks to me. You know, my family goes back here since before there was a name Amherst, you know, and to the first black people in Amherst, double digits, single digits, rather, I should say, in slaves and three people. And at one point we were considered not to be our people. So I just wanted to, I'm going to miss to not point that out. And I hope that we can move forward and really put our money where our signs are and be mindful of really the language that we're using when we're talking about our community members. I know we have work to do and I know there's lots of disturbances, but I think that we really need to be cautious, mindful and smart, you know, smart like our university students when we are referring to community. So that was just I would have been a miss not to speak on that. And with that, do we have any other last comments, any last comments from Gilford, Chief Nelson or Tracy? Yes, Chief Nelson. Sure, just a couple of things, I guess. I think first I want to be I want to get in, in, in, in invite to one door, door with his wild power for parties, right? I just want to just want to get to get that out, out, out, out there. The other thing is, you know, yeah, yeah, do I think there's going to be a change with, you know, addition of dorms in town, town, town, town, how, how, how is this? Yeah, I'm probably probably will. I don't know what that change will be, because I'm not, not to try to traffic in, in, in, in, in engineer. That's some, that's a different thing. So, but, you know, but yeah, a big problem. It needs, it needs to be looked at and plan, plan, plan for. The other thing is, you know, for, you know, for you to reach out to all of your constituents, if they feel that there's an issue or a problem or, or, or a concern. Get hold of me. Phone, phone, call, email, whatever, whatever, whatever it takes so that we, we can find, find out what, what, what the concerns are and address, address it right, right, right away. I'm, I'm, I'm around most, most, most of the time. So, but I would encourage you to, you know, let your constituents know or remind them, you know, just, you know, give me a call if I don't care what, what the concerns are and is big, small, or whatever, you know, if, if they have, have, if, if they have a concern, then it's a big deal to me and we'll, and we'll, we'll address it. So, and thank, and I want to say thanks for having, having me here tonight as well. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you. You really have given us a lot of time and we thank you for what you do every day. So, with that, are there, were there any final comments at all? Shalini, you want to take it home? Well, I just wanted to find out what are the next steps for this? Because, I mean, I think based on what I've heard today, I feel ready to support the change, given that, you know, what Guilford said, that the number of car, the accidents is higher than should be in a residential area, given that we're losing maybe 20 to 25, which I understand is a lot of parking spots. But I think relative to the impact it has on the residents, it feel and it's not really solving the parking problem, but it has a huge impact on the residents living over there. It sounds like the majority of the residents do want the change. So just keeping and the painting of lines at this point does not seem a feasible option. So just giving all these different, you know, different pieces of information I feel ready to support. So I just wanted to know what is the what are the next steps? Andy. Guess the next step is to make a motion. So I'm going to move that the town services and outreach committee recommend to the council changes to parking regulations as follows to prohibit parking on the east side of Lincoln Avenue between McClellan Street and Amity Street from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday from September 1st through May 30 to prohibit parking on the east side of Sunset Avenue between Elm Street and Amity Street at all times and to prohibit parking on one side of Elm Street at all times. Second, Shalini. OK. Thank you. All right. So with that, I'm going to call to a vote and I will start with you, Dorothy. Yes, thank you. Shalini. Yes. Andy. Yes. Anna. Yeah. OK, and I'm I'm a yes as well. Just muted myself. OK, so with that, thank you. And I want to extend another thank you to to Chief Nelson, Guilford Moren and Tracy Zephan. Thank you so much for being with us this evening. Thank you. And I want to thank Amy down there for being so patient with us down there. So I will say good night unless you would like to stay with us. I'm not sure. Guilford, are you staying with us? You say, OK, of course. So for Jennifer and Chief Nelson, you can stay with us if you like. But thank you. I'll go into your audience. OK. Now I'm going to get out my wife picked up Chinese food for tonight. So OK, I'm going to have a seat. Enjoy. Thank you. Thank you. Take care. Good night. Good night. OK. All right. And OK, so without further ado, Amy, and pass it over to you. Awesome. And now we're going to talk about stuff that's totally light and fun. Do or use regulations, right? Anna, did you want to give any introduction or do you just want me to dive right in? I am I am happy. I know that any introduction I give would be kind of crappy. So you can take it away. I know what was that pun intended? Totally intended. I've been planning that all. Oh, I appreciate that. I do just before Amy starts, so I do want to thank Amy hugely on this. I have been so slammed at work that Amy really kind of has been able to to run with this, and I'm just incredibly grateful for all the work. And if you looked at the presentation, you know that we are in for a super, super exciting learning opportunity about sewage. So thank you, Amy. And I also just want to note that there were at least, if not more, 1,500 edits in this document and so truly like if if people would like to buy Amy coffee or I don't know what other things, but 1,500 edits in that document. So thank you, Amy. Thank you, Gilford, and take it away. Cool. So as Anna is kind of suggesting, obviously, I mean, there's a lot of edits in the sewer use regs and in some of it is just kind of we learn some stuff by going through the process with the water use regs, but because they got submitted at the same time, you're seeing a very marked up version. But because of that, I have a kind of a hopefully a quick presentation that partly I feel like there were a lot of questions that came up that people seem much more knowledgeable about the water side of things rather than the sewer side. So I just kind of wanted to go over a couple of the basics and then go over a couple of the wholesale changes and I am hoping that that's going to make the rest of the conversation as we're talking about the nitty gritties a lot easier to kind of understand the big picture. So if you guys can bear with me, I should have the ability to share a screen. OK, here we go. Can someone give me a thumbs up that you're seeing the screen? OK, cool. So here's my update. So we're going to just go quickly in the overview of how a sewer works, because some of these questions lead into this. So Anna will tell you sewer works on gravity. Yes. OK, cool. That was the interactive part of this presentation. OK. So it basically means that everything flows downhill. So you not only have like, say, these houses here that all go into a sewer main and it goes down to a low point. You've also got, say, this building here that goes into a sewer main and runs gravity. So like basically from both sides, things run by gravity down to a pump station. Then a pump station is going to pump it up a hill and then it's going to break to gravity and it's going to go down to the next low point. So for example, like Southeast Street, there's actually a series of four different pump stations that go over those little hills as you're driving down Southeast Street. And so that's important to know just as you're. As you're looking at some of the things in the regulations, but also, you know, so you see, we talk about sewer force means nothing connects to a sewer force main. And at times you're going to have a force main right next to a gravity mean, because things have to go down to the pump station and then get pumped up. Was there a question or no? OK. Kind of just what if there's a house that's below and it has to be pumped up and is that what the sewer force main pump up hill is for? No, well, we'll get to that. So that's a good question. Yes. So this is. No, OK. So this is kind of how the the pipes itself work. And so when it comes to the services, the services all have to go in by gravity. And so like this one, you know, this building here is going to go into a gravity mean that goes to a goes down as opposed to attaching to a sewer force main. Pump stations kind of run like a sump pump in your basement. They don't run all the time. It's not like the water distribution system where it's constantly pressurized. Instead, it's you have a big pit and it collects enough sewerage. And then at some point, the pump turns on when it hits a high level and it's going to pump down to a low level. So that's kind of the overview of how sewers work. So when we look at the different components of a service line and again, this this comes into a lot with the regs. So we all know the the line that goes from your house down to the main line. That's your sewer service line. There's an element called a clean out, which is it's almost like a smaller manhole, but allows people that's over your service line. Is this it's not very common in Amherst right now, but it basically allows you to have access to the service line to be able to flush things out. We'll talk about that a little more going down. There's also backflow devices, which if you have a fixture in your basement, you know, a toilet or a shower, or if your house is kind of lower than the, you know, if your house has the ability to maybe have sewerage come into the basement and back up, it's something that you may want to have to protect yourself and basically make sure that water only that your wastewater only goes one way, which is out to the town and never back into your house. And then oil traps and grease traps. I feel like everyone kind of has a pretty good idea of where those are. And generally that's a commercial application for big industrial sort of settings. So how we connect to the sewer line is you're asking Shalini. So gravity, everything has to run by gravity into the sewer line. There are instances like you were suggesting where the house is lower than the road. So for those, they have to pump up, but we don't want them going, them being pressurized, going into a non pressurized line. So they have to basically pump it up such that it breaks to gravity before water goes into the line. And there are some of those in town. So anyway, so that that's how that one works. And then the last one, you're going to notice, I think there were a couple questions on this, there are a couple places where somebody had a septic system and the septic system failed and rather than them just doing a new line all the way, what they did is they basically dropped like a sump pump into their septic system. So all of their house plumbing is still going into the septic. And then the sump pump is going from the septic out to out to the the town line. This is something that's no longer permissible, but there are a few in town. And so it's the sort of thing that any time any time we can kind of clean that up, if somebody is looking for a permit to expand their house or something like that, we're going to start. Those are getting eliminated. And this is this is something that's regardless of these regulations, it's something that is being grandfathered out. So that's the only kind of exception to either gravity or pumping into the system. It's kind of a hybrid, I guess. I have a couple of crude drawings that I grabbed from some stuff. So this shows you the house. What I like about this one is it shows you the clean out where I can get a, you know, we could get equipment in to clean out a portion of the line. That's the importance of a clean out. Without that, there's only two ways to access a sewer line or sorry, a sewer service line. It's either you're going into someone's basement and going into that service line to clean things out or you're going up the service up the sewer main and you have to have a special piece of equipment that can go up the main to where the lateral is and then kind of has this arm that extends out and up. And that's pretty tricky and that's a pretty specialized piece of equipment. And it's one that if the town's going to take over partial ownership of the service lines, it's something that we're going to need to invest in, but having these clean outs gives us an additional access point. So we're going to talk about this a little bit, but that's something that with the change in ownership of a portion of the line, we're going to start requiring these clean outs are in there. So that's some language that you'll see in there. So I wanted to point that out specifically. That's going to allow the town to be able to to take care of the portion of the line that's now our responsibility. So ownership you'll see in there. And this is the same as the water line as we were talking about and what the town has decided they wanted to do, which is the town owns when the sewer line is under the town property and the owner owns any time that it's not under the town property. And so that means not only on their own property, but that also means sometimes you cross a neighbor's property in order to get into the nearest sewer. So that's consistent with water. The difference on the wastewater side is that it's a lot more common to have a sewer because everything runs by gravity. So we've got to we've got to take advantage of terrain. So there are a lot more sewer lines that run. We might have a sewer main that runs through the backyards of entire neighborhood. And so every single one of the neighbors runs into a line that baby goes through their backyard as opposed to down the middle of the road. So the town has easements for that. But the town has easements only for the maintenance of that sewer line. The language is sometimes very specific on that's the only thing we can do. And so what we're proposing and what several other towns already do in this sort of scenario is the owners responsible for the service line, the entire way to the main trunk line. And the town is only responsible for the trunk line. So basically, even if we have an easement on your property, you're responsible all the way through. So for people that where their service line attaches to a main line that's an easement, nothing's really going to change for them, I guess, is what we're what we're putting out there. And again, this is I looked up a lot of different communities and how they do it in a lot of communities that do what we're proposing to do. This is how they manage easements. And then cleanouts, like I talked about, we we want to require that on any sewer service line located about the property line. So it's almost a parallel to the shut off, you know, to the Watergate on the water side. But we do have language in there about it being triggered whenever there's new construction or a new connection being made or when work's done on the service line, so we're not saying everyone has to go out and have a clean out line installed now, but we're going to slowly pick away at making sure that those are in place in any place, you know, in any service line that the town, you know, town now has to maintain. So these are just a couple of drawings that I doctored off to kind of to show. So we've got the property line and just showing the ownership of both of them. So town owning on our side, customer owning on the private property side. And again, I just stole this from another community, but it's a sewer lateral that's in a easement and it's showing, you know, customers responsible for the entire line. They are still recommending a sewer clean out, although according to our regs, the clean out wouldn't be required in that case because the town isn't necessarily responsible for any portion of the service line. All right. We threw in this was something. Sorry, go ahead, Pam or Dorothy. I know you're trying really hard to make this clear and I'm feeling a little bit dense. It's OK. So the situation, it's something to do with the language. OK, so let's say you have the pipe that you own the pipe, the owner, the homeowner owns the pipe underneath or on their own property. However, like in the case of my sewer, the town main was quite a bit away. It was further down the road. So you would then the town would then own from the end of my property to the main or as the case for me, I had to pay it all the way until I made the main. Just I know that you said it was like the water, but it seems more complicated. So I just want to be sure of where the ownership begins and ends on this. Yeah, no, it's a great question. And this does get a little more complicated because because of gravity. Yeah, just sewer lines that are in weirder places than water lines. And so it gets a little more complicated. I guess basically it means and I don't know the specifics of your house. If your sewer line, you're saying your sewer service like comes out of your house down your driveway, goes on to town property and then kind of you had to run it down the road. Yes. OK. So once it's on to town property, the town owns it, whether it's just going into the main or whether it's going 10 feet down underneath the road or 20 feet to get to the sewer main. Good. OK. So it is it is similar to our water one then. OK. Yes. Yeah. It's it's still the the town property is what the differentiator is. OK. Thank you for ownership. Yep. Cool. Resolution process. This is one of the things that got changed in here. I know there are a lot of comments on just kind of what's the due process for anybody. This I I literally cut and paste what we had in the water use regs. So this is nothing new to you guys, but it's new to the sewer regs, that there's a process of anybody that that disagrees or wants an exemption or anything else to the sewer use regs. Sewer collection system extensions. So there was a lot of questions on this. And so we put some clarifying language in there. But basically, there's kind of three ways that the town would do a sewer extension. And one of them is the DPW it proposes it. So that's we base that on our Amherst wastewater master plan. And ultimately, I know one of the questions that came up was like, well, you know, how come the town council doesn't have a say in that? Well, ultimately, any time we're doing a sewer system extension, it's going to be a big ticket item. And so we're going to be talking to the FinCom about the financing and ultimately in our annual budget, it does go in front of the sewer commission. So you guys do have you do have a say in that. And obviously, you guys can, you know, yay or nay. There can be groups outside of the DPW that propose it to that propose a potential extension. And it can be based on redevelopment, new development of an area. It can be offering sewer to a neighborhood that has a bunch of septics that are failing and the community decides that they want to do it either way. The step there is, you know, the first thing is we need to look at it to make sure that there's capacity of the system and the treatment process. So, you know, an example of this is when when the sewer line, granted, it was an Amherst project or a DPW proposed project to extend the sewer up to Pellum. And we, you know, self-serving, we need it for a new centennial water treatment plant, but we had to look at the pump station down at the bottom of the road to make sure that it had the capacity to pump the additional volume. And ultimately, we had to upsize some of the pumps in that pump station in order to manage that flow. Sometimes that's possible. Sometimes that's not sometimes adding additional flow means that you need a larger sewer main or you need a larger pump station to manage it. And so we do have to kind of just evaluate whether the system can handle the extra flow, as long as the DPW says, yep, we can handle it or yes, we can handle it, but this improvement has to get made. Then ultimately, if this town is going to fund it, then again, it's going to go through the budgeting process and the sewer commission is going to play a role in that. And then the last possibility that can happen is a private sewer gets ultimately conveyed to the town. So that's something like when the Amherst Hills neighborhood was being built, they went through, they proposed an entire project and part of that is looking at the sewer, so they proposed it as part of a planning and subdivision process. And so again, that goes through DPW review for system capacity. And but then ultimately, you know, several years later, sometimes then if the roads are accepted by the town, then we're going to accept the utilities, including the sewer as well. So those are kind of the three ways that we can be adding to the sewer system. We're all good with that school. So prohibitive substances, I had a lot of comments on this. I didn't need to gross people out with all the nastiness that can go down a sewer line. Yes, Shalini. Yeah. And this doesn't have to be answered if it's not relevant to our discussion, but just there were many neighborhoods in South Amherst that had that question that why isn't our sewer system being converted, taken over by aren't we getting the town sewer system because they're on septic and they wanted to know what is the criteria that the town uses for like the certain parts of Amherst Woods that got converted, but not let's say Elm Street or whatever that is. Yeah. And so, I mean, if if the town of Amherst, like if the public works to barb it, had it in our sewer master plan, we did have a sewer master. Sorry, you want to go ahead, Guilford? Oh, no. Go. OK, no, I was just going to say, like we have a master plan that kind of looks at the big picture and assesses the engineer assesses where they think the the places are that we should be looking at expansion. You know, that being said, things change, right? And so that's where they can actually go through that second process where they can if if a neighborhood wants to look at expansion, you know, we've got to look at, you know, can it flow by gravity? We need a pump station. What's the cost associated with it? Can we, you know, can the pump station that whatever they're putting in manage the flow so we could go through that process? But certainly we have for a couple of neighborhoods that have brought it forward. Sometimes it goes forward. Sometimes it doesn't. But it's, you know, the kind of the first step is just to understand what the cost is, because sometimes why the master plan didn't propose it is because it's cost prohibitive. But then again, 10 years later, when all the septics are failing, sometimes it's a different conversation for sure. So then if anyone wants to do it, they should present their proposal to the DPW. Like if someone wanted to get the neighborhood assessed for for this. Yes, go ahead, Gelford. So I'll jump in here now because Amy wasn't here when this actually happened. So the South Amherst neighborhoods that were not included in the sewer expansion back in 2002 and a little bit later, they actually cost a great deal of more money than the sections that were expanded and you actually had to expand into the sections we expanded into before you got to those. So as we were expanding, we added Amherst, Amherst, Middle Street and Potwine were the two we did. And they were generated by neighbors coming forward to the select board at the time, saying that they had failed septic systems. And this was an expensive price from the do it. They wish the town would take it on. The study was done. It was found to be one area that could be done and the price was chosen. And the sewer commissioners at that time said, yes, we're going to expand into it. The next thing we did was Harkness Road and Amherst Woods. And after we did that one, there was a cry that we were creating too many developable lots in areas that weren't developable at the time. And we were told we're told there's not going to be more. So if the people who aren't sewered now wishes to push for another project, I would say they need to be talking to their counselors and then that needs to be brought to the town manager. And then the town manager and we us can start the process again. We have updated numbers. We we read it. Well, we have kind of current numbers, but we have the plans. We know what needs to be done and we could put together a proposal if the council wanted to see one of what it would be cost to do expand the sewers into those areas. So that's kind of how it did happen last time and probably how it should happen this time is the same mechanism as just the council is talking to the town manager saying we want to look at this. Thank you, Andy. Yeah, on the subject for just discussing, isn't there always a question then, Guilford, as to how we're who's paying for it and whether it is going to be absorbed by the Enterprise Fund and then the cost is going to be spread across all of the current users of the system or whether the people who are benefiting from it are going to pay the costs through a better room fee. Yes. The town of Amherst decided sometime in 2000 that the way they would do sewer extensions would be like sewer extensions like we're done on Middle Street and Amherst Woods is that the the sewer system would pay for those once they were approved by the sewer commissioners and that there would be no betterment charged. But then after we did a few of these, there was discussion that maybe betterment should be charged, but that never went any further. But the policy that we've used in the past is that the sewer system absorbs the expansion. Can I? Yeah, cool. Amy, could you just because we're talking about this, could you skip to slide 22? Is that up to date? Could you skip in your I was looking at your presentation earlier. Could you skip the slide 22 where there's the map just so we can see what we're talking about here when we think about. Because it's some sections of South Amherst and full disclosure. My house is on here in the gray. And then there's also large sections of kind of north that northeast Amherst. And yeah, so folks kind of have a reference point for where we're talking when we say that the people who would need to petition. I think what's what's challenging sometimes I just want to name this is that, you know, speaking for where I live, I don't live in a neighborhood. And so it's it's a little challenging sometimes for folks who live on busier roads or who aren't in sort of the more suburban areas of Amherst to kind of band together necessarily. So it's my neighbors are great, but it's a slightly different situation. So it's helpful to know that the process would be for folks to advocate to their counselors, but, you know, I think it's it's also incredibly helpful to know that what you would then come back with is an estimated price for what it would be for that area, because you just do one house, you do a large swath, right? Exactly. Thank you. Any other questions on this before I go back? Yes, Dorothy. So I'm looking at a lot of blue lines. And some of them are, you know, right around the center of town. Is that good? Or do you want to kind of move out the blue lines and bring them into town owned sewer lines as we go along? I mean, I kind of got I mean, so those blue lines, those are like privately owned sewers. And so it's where there's apartment complexes, where there's the university. So those ones near the center of town, that's Amherst College. Yeah, this isn't labeled. So that's a good, but yeah. Right. OK. So because I agree, it shouldn't just be your power to lobby for your area. It should be some consideration of, you know, what's the best thing to do? So yeah. And the master plan looks at that holistically, but it's every, you know, maybe 10 or 20 years that that that gets updated because it gives you enough, you know, recommendations for 10 or 20 years. And certainly sometimes, you know, residents disagree with what the engineers recommendations are, so there is a process outside of just what our master plan tells us to do. All right, I'm going to try to get back to where we were. I believe, yeah, yeah. We're talking about all the gross stuff that grossed you guys out. So I think initially we had a couple of different sections where we were talking about illegal waste, prohibitive substances, they were broken down, there's a lot of duplication. So ultimately I put that together in just one section, but it's kind of broken out in illegal waste, which are like hazardous waste. They're basically items that you're not allowed to dump down a drain by state or federal law. So it's gasoline, it's oil, it's, you know, a lot of that stuff. Prohibitive substances are items that there might not be a law that necessarily says you can't put this down, but it's stuff that's going to interfere either with the sewer collection system or the treatment process. So the next grouping within prohibitive substances. And then the last thing is items that cause violation with DEP or EPA permit. And that's that's a little bit of a catch all just knowing that we're not going to be able to create an exhaustive list, especially since things keep getting identified. An example of that is if we were having this conversation five years ago, no one would have mentioned PFAS. And now, obviously, we don't want someone taking firefighting foam and dumping it down the drain because our treatment process isn't going to treat for that. And ultimately it's going to end up in the Connecticut River. So so that's that's that's kind of how we broke out the prohibitive substances. I will say that there's a lot of detail and a lot of specificity in that section. We understand that not everyone knows. A lot of this stuff is it's prohibitive at the large scale, right? Like you can't have a blood bank taking spoiled blood and pouring it down the sink. But let's be honest, if you cut your finger while you're chopping vegetables and you rinse your finger underneath the sink, that's not a violation. You know, so some of it's based on the concentration or the volume level. If you guys have a question, certainly we know this stuff and we deal with this stuff all the time. We do have a nonstandard discharge permit, and that's the process for if somebody wants to request a discharge that might violate some of the prohibitive discharges. And that's the sort of thing that we go through a lot with like UMass and Amherst College stuff like they need to pump out the bottom of an elevator pit. And so they're going to test it to make sure there's no PCBs, but there might be a little bit of heavy metals in there. They'll send us a report. They'll let us know. You know, we also get it from the colleges once a year when they melt all the ice at their ice skating rink, which have, you know, a couple of chemicals and some paint in it or some coloring in it to make it look white. So so that's something where sometimes we just allow them to dump it down. No problem. And sometimes we say you can dump it, but not more than XGPM so it doesn't overload our system, just a little more into the prohibitive substances, because I'm going to stand on my soap box for just a second. There's kind of two ways that things can affect the sewer system. And I feel like a lot of times we've been talking about the stuff that affects the collection system, which is, you know, a lot of the stuff that's going to clog things up. There's also stuff that affects the treatment system. So the treatment of the wastewater treatment plant, it's a biological system. We have these microorganisms that need to be kept happy. And so when we get slugs of different things, it's going to affect the biology of it. So things affect in different ways. So when you have inflow and infiltration, that's going to increase the flow. That not only affects the collection system because you have additional flow that needs to get processed and passed along, but affects the treatment system because you've got additional flow that needs to get passed through the system. Fatsoils and greases in the collection system, the problem is it can solidify and clog things up at the treatment plant. The fatsoils and greases, they can make our bugs very, very happy or they can grow the wrong type of biology. And, you know, that is going to kill the right kind of biology that we want. Flushable wipes, you guys hear me talk about all that all the time. That can get that and other things that shouldn't get flushed down. That can affect the collection system because it can cause blockages in the treatment system. Again, it can clog pumps if it's not broken up by the time it gets to the treatment system. But then on the treatment system, we also have chemicals that can upset the biology. You also have chemicals that the treatment system was never intended to treat. And that's stuff like, say, medications, if somebody flushes medications down down the drain, the treatment process doesn't remove it. And ultimately, again, it passes out through to the Connecticut River. And some of these things are actually a violation of our permit if it's found on the discharge or it's going to be a violation of the permit if we find it in our sludge. And so so some of the things that we're prohibiting, it's because it's going to be a violation of our discharge permit because we're held to high standards. And then I'm just going to show you a couple of awesome photos because this is what we do. So this is this is very recent. This was just a couple of weeks ago, but this is what fat soils and greases can do. So this photo up here is what a clean manhole should look like. So you can see the flow coming through. It's beautiful. This one is all mucked up with a bunch of fat soils and grease that have solidified. You can see that you can actually. There's only half of the passage of where the water should go. So this section right here is is just about to clog because, you know, you've got you've got solidified grease on the top. And then, you know, this photo here, our guys had to take this manhole and clean it out with shovels. And so that's that that's not only, you know, a disaster waiting to happen, but it's actually pretty gross work for our guys to be shoveling that out of a manhole to clean it up. So and then rags, I think you guys have seen some of these photos before, but, you know, the rags are the the flushable wipes as we, you know, we call them rags. But the flushable wipes, they make it to a pump station. In this case, there were so many flushable wipes that they bound up a pump and it broke the impeller. And so then we had to buy a new impeller. Not only you had to take all these wipes out to figure out what was going on, but then we had to buy a new impeller to repair it. And this right here was the wipes with the grease solidified into a solid 12 inch block in our sewer system that, again, ultimately caused sewage to end up in somebody's basement. So anyway, that that was the end of what I had. So Anika or Dorothy, I see a couple hands up. You guys can go. I very quick question. As I say, flushable wipes were one of the things that they found at the stoppage that on our property. So, but I think I've heard that flushing tissue, not toilet paper, but tissues like the kind for your use for your nose is bad. Is that correct? It's not as bad as flushable wipes. I mean, basically, they say anything that isn't going to break down in like 10 seconds. That's at least the standard that I've seen, although it's not an enforceable standard. So if you think about things that break down easily, I know growing up even some feminine products, you were told, yeah, you can flush this when you're done. And now I know how horrible that what people taught me. You know, bad advice that the flushable wipes, a lot of that stuff. So. So Anika said that she's having a little bit of trouble with her sound. So she asked me to call on folks. Dorothy, did you have another question? You're muted. Yep. No, I don't. I'm taking my hand down, but thank you. Amy, thank you so much. So other questions folks have the next steps here. We hopefully people had time to review the regulations. We also will need to talk about the by-law. We are not going to make the same mistake twice that we did with water. But do folks have Amy, do you? Do you have a direction you would like us to go? Otherwise, I believe what we would like to do is make sure that people have had time to review and ask any questions they have about the actual regulations before we move anything. No, I think that's good. I tried to kind of go over what the the big changes were so people aren't intimidated by all the track changes and just understood the important aspects of it. Absolutely. So I'm looking for some confirmation from folks that we are before I make a motion and I want to wait till Anika is back, but before I make a motion on the regulations, yes, Dorothy. Just a general statement of confidence in the work that has been done and that includes you on it as well as Amy and the department, I think that we went over the water very slowly and carefully and kind of established the things. And basically what I heard from you was that it was good to have a chance to look at things, redo them, make them consistent. And one example was your thing about what you can't flush down. You referred to particular categories so you could change the details in that category without having to change your bylaw. So I think that you probably have a really good workable document here. And I'm feeling very much willing to support it. So that's it. Thank you, Andy. So I guess what I'm going to ask is on the finance side, just if I ever can escape the finance side. We had a fairly substantial discussion, the finance committee, about what the cost was going to be to the enterprise fund for the change in responsibility for where the lines were of responsibility were drawn between the homeowner and the enterprise funds itself. And I don't think that there's been any discussion about what costs would be incurred on this enterprise fund. Other costs and the things we should know about. Yes, there are definitely costs. Yeah, I thought I remembered seeing. Yeah, I'd have to pull it up quickly because I don't have that off the top of my my tongue, but yeah, I mean, similar to the water side. If we're assuming cost or sorry, if we're assuming responsibility for a portion of the service line, then there's going to be a cost associated with that. And I know we, yeah, we did the math on that. We were, I mean, frankly, we're talking to Sean Mugano to get a time to talk to the finance committee to really dig into the nitty gritty, but yeah, there's certainly a cost associated with it to get the parts of materials, the man hour, everything that we're going to need to do for us now owning half of the line or in Dorothy's case, probably two thirds of the length of her line. So Amy, is it the is it the the slide that talked about if Amherst owns sewer service lines within the right of way? Probably. It's like 18 and I can share my screen if you would like. There you go. You want me to do it or do you want to do it? Sure. Yeah. It's why I attached the I have never delete any slides in the previous presentations because it's all in there. Well, try to zoom in for you a bit here. Hang on. Stand by. I'm trying. All right. If Amherst owns sewer service lines within the right of way, average cost of repair within the right of ways, 7300 bucks per repair. There's estimated 100 to 200 sewer service lines that need to be repaired or replaced each year. That would mean 730,000 to 1.46 mil annually within the sewer budget. This does not include special conditions, does not include capital purchase and does not include hiring or over 10. So I'm having trouble seeing it because it's size, but I can try to zoom in more. Seven dollars. Is that better? Yeah, it's seven thousand. You know, the question then is also I think that community council as a whole is going to eventually want to get a report on the effect that it will have on sewer rates down the line so that we can go through the same kind of thought process that we went through in the water discussion. Yeah, I agree, Andy. I think that that's that'll be really important before we actually approve these as a council. And if that's something that you'd like to wait before we make a recommendation as TSO, that's I mean understandable. That makes sense to me. But I think before we pass it as council, absolutely. What are your thoughts in terms of now waiting for it as TSO versus sending it to council? Well, I'm in a strange position that I since I'm the one person who sits on both committees, I will hear it. I think that the question for the rest of you on TSO who are not also in finance is whether you would want to be able to hear that information and consider it. But also, Andy, can you remind me? Finance already did look at water and sewer. Would we want to refer it back to them? I don't, you know, I actually had this discussion and we did not think that water needed to be referred back because there was a substantial discussion about how water race would be affected, as I recall. And several other members of the committee confirmed my recollection on that. And the. You know, Bob Hegner had the only one who had non-financial questions. And they were forwarded to you on and incorporated into your prior consideration. So we didn't feel like we needed to come back to water. We felt that was ready, ready to go when TSO was done. But there is the question of just understanding what the effect is going to be on rates for this enterprise fund. Because ultimately, the rates are to have to be recommended through the finance committee and back to the council. So then, you know, personally, I think that as the town services and outreach committee, it's important to consider the impact on our town services, right? And so if the impact includes needing more staff, it's I I'm not uncomfortable. I would like it to go back to finance. I agree that that needs to happen at some point. I think I'm looking to other counselors to see if you believe that we as TSO should wait until we have that information or if we are within our purview as a committee and finance would be within theirs to look at it. And we can make a recommendation on these regs without knowing, excuse me, the impact on sewer fees, sewage fees. What are they called? So sewage fees. Is that right? Sewer fees. I'm on a septic. You can't, you know. My poor road is still in gray. Anyway, sewer fees. Yes. I'll let it go. Other folks have any any burning on this? Would you like to wait and get insight from Sean or would you like to pass these? Dorothy. So this is a question, which is probably silly, but does the town sewer system get better when under this new thing? Or is it kind of will that not make any difference? Just makes a difference as to who is it? Just a question of who pays or would the town's increased role result in a better sewer system? A good question, Dorothy. I'll do it. OK. Overall, there will be a better product at the end. Yes. OK. Yeah. Thank you. Any other. So Dorothy, how are you feeling about? I guess I'm going to go point by point. Dorothy, how are you feeling about would you like to wait and hear about the impact on sewer fees or would you like to recommend this? This is not this is not a formal vote. I'm gauging I would like to be. I would like to recommend that we that we vote on this and send it to the finance committee, and then we will look at it again as town counselors. When we get the report, but, you know, if the people don't agree with me, I would understand. Shalini, I know you're unmuted. Do you have any thoughts on this? Um, I generally like to get more information, because I feel like they're connected. So I like. Anika, are you back with us? Do you have any? I am back. I am back. You know, I, I feel honestly, I could go other way. All right, so I love when y'all make me the tiebreaker here. Yeah, here's my thought. It's my favorite. All right, I think that we have got some really solid regs here. I think that there is going to be an impact on the on the sewer. I think I'm Dorothy. Try not to fall out of your chair. I think I agree with what Dorothy is saying. But I think that we can we can approve these as our perspective from town services and outreach and finance can contribute from there and that we have the discussion as a full council. For me, that makes the most sense on putting them together. So if that feels at peace for other people or or enough at peace that you don't want to fight on it, if you want to fight on it, now's the time to fight. But my question then is for Athena, because I know that Athena is probably watching the clock and wondering why the heck we're still here, which is Athena, do we need to make a formal can we make a formal motion to send this back to finance or does the council, does only the council have the ability to refer it to another committee? It's already been referred to TSO and finance. So I would say that if TSO, if you feel that TSO is finished and is ready to make a recommendation, you would make a recommendation to the town council, which the council would consider along with the recommendation. You know, finance didn't discuss the the right along along with a further recommendation for further recommendation. OK, thank you. All right, so let me write this down and then I can make a motion if folks feel prepared for that. All right. So I'm going to be I'm not saying yet, but I want to confirm that the the motion will be recommending the town council approve the updated regulations with further review to recommend the town council. Adopt the form on the inside. OK, the regulations as presented. No, no, no, with with further recommendation by the finance committee or something like that. Oh, you're right. All right, I'm ready. I move that the town is an outreach committee. Recommend the to the town council the adoption of the sewer regulations as presented with further review and recommendation by the finance committee. Somebody second me. Second. Thank you. Do you want me to call the vote, Anika? Right. Yes, please. Anika, while you're unmuted, how do you vote? Yes. Thank you, Shalini. Yes, I couldn't unmute. Yes, yes. And Andy. Yes, I am a yes as well. So well done, everybody. We got one more. We got to do the bylaw bylaw. And and that I do not believe was in our packet, but hopefully we will get that done with minimal minimal issue. We also have a quick issue with the the motion that we or the the bylaw that we approved last time, which we did not. I thought that we were good to do it, but there were still some things that weren't actually filled out in the sample that Paul sent. And so I believe we will need to revisit that. And I'm just trying to figure out if we need to revisit it at TSO or if the council can revisit it. So I will keep you posted on that, but hopefully we can bang out to bylaws next week and be done. Does that sound good to everyone? Time to write. Reading is what I meant. I don't actually know. OK. And unless there are any other questions, I'm going to thank Guilford and Amy for every single thing that you do. Thank you. Thank you. And turn you loose and turn it back over to Anika. Hopefully wrap us up after. Great. Thank you, Anna, Amy and Guilford. Thank you. OK, I'm going to actually ask for a bit of help. I'm not sure what happened with the technical difficulties, but I cannot see. So at this time, I'm wondering if we have public comment and anyone in the audience would like to make a public comment, please raise your hand. But I would I just want to let us know that I cannot see the hands raised if there are any, so if either of us, you know, or Anna, if you could help me, please. I got you. There are two people in the audience. There is no hands raised, except Andy put his up and then put it down. So I'm not sure if he has some some insight. OK, there there doesn't have any hands for public comment. OK, all right. So moving on, has everyone had a chance to review the minutes? Yes. OK, I make a motion to approve, unless there are any questions. Is there a second? Second, Dublin got here. OK, thank you. Let's go. So shall any. Yes. Andy. Yes. Do I see? Yes. Anna. Yes. And I'm a yes as well. Moving on, unless I'm mistaken, I cannot see. We do not have town manager of proofs, months and games, big appointments at this time. And for our next agenda, which we need again, if I'm mistaken, this will be on the 10th and we will continue, we will continue with these sewer regulations and bylaws and I believe also maybe tack charge and we'll start to move into street lighting and and speed limits. So with that, if there are no further comments or announcements, thank everyone for being here this evening. Have a great evening and meeting adjourned. Thank you, everyone. Good night. Bye. Good night.