 I'm calling this meeting to order as the co-chair of the community safety working group governor bakers extension of the March 12 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting allows us to hold this virtual meeting of the working group. Given that we have a quorum present I'm calling the September 9 2021 meeting of the community safety working group to order at 603pm. I'm calling each member of the working group by name. At that time you should unmute your mic and say present. This will indicate that you can hear me and we can hear you. Please remember to mute your mic after saying present. Miss Walker. Here. Mr. Vernon Jones. Here. Miss Freira. Here. Miss Pat. Present. I want to take a couple of minutes to review the agenda because we're only meeting from six to seven tonight as a group and then we have our forum from seven to nine. Just really quickly are on our agenda tonight. We will talk about the Crest program and have an implementation team follow up. We'll briefly talk about the presentation put together by the implementation team. We will have a check in about our consultants. We will as co chairs Alicia and I will share the proposed meeting timelines that we have put together to move our group forward. We'll have a subgroup check in. And lastly, we will check in about the resident oversight board and the successor group. Our first order of business is the public second the public comment. Our first order of business is public comment. If any member of the public would like to make a statement right now, please raise your hand. I will recognize you and ask Miss moisten to turn on your microphone. I ask that comments be limited to no more than three minutes. The working group will not be responding to your comments, but we'll be listening carefully. Dr. Prune has his hand raised. Hi, my name is Doc Brian. I'm a stringer for the reminder. So I will be covering this meeting. Thank you. Thank you, Doc. Do we have any other hands. Next, we'll, well, I guess we can just get right into the members report. This is time for members to update us on any work or events that they have attended. Does anybody have an item that they would like to share. Miss Walker. Yes, so I just wanted to update the group in regards to a meeting. I was able to have a brief telephone conversation with Barbara love in regards to her facilitating the community healing and visioning process. I had the feeling to offer her expertise in helping guide the town forward on this process and we talked about what it would look like generally, but agreed that we would need to have a more formal meeting in order to come up with the exact details and what that process would look like for Amherst, but I left that conversation agreeing to communicate her interest back to the town manager in hopes that he will be able to pursue contracting her and working out the further details for this process. Thank you, Alicia for following up with with Barbara love, Dr Barbara love. I think it would be better if we would be able to get some of the details because I would rather like us included in our report and as part of our recommendation, especially since I know a community policing. I know, I mean, I can speak for myself. I'm not on board with with making any kind of recommendation specific to that but what I'd like to do would be to set up kind of this community healing as a process towards creating something with the community and possibly the police department so that they have something that's cohesive and in partnership with each other. So anyway, a long story short. Yeah, if we could do that before we have some time to do that, and then obviously hand off whatever we can complete to the Standing Committee. Thank you, Mr. Miss Pat. Along the line with what Alicia had said I also reach out to Dr Barbara love prior to Alicia dish out to her I asked her if she would be willing to consider being a consultant in facilitating the healing process and she said that she wasn't opposed to it. I just wanted to share that as well, but I didn't do anything with it I was planning to share with everybody here tonight. Thank you, Miss Pat. Did anybody else have anything they'd like to share during the members report portion. Mr Vernon Jones. Just in light of those two comments I certainly agree with what ever said and miss Pat and Alicia thank you for following up with with Dr love. I think it's important that our report have some description of what it is we're talking about when we talk about a healing envisioning process and I'm hoping we can get some help from Dr love and getting that written before our report is due. Is it possible for you to identify for us the portion of the meeting that Dr love came to, and where we would go to, if we wanted to listen to that piece. I can go through and look but not at this like, I won't have that I can send it for tomorrow. Now, if I just think it might help us in drafting our report if we could go back and take some notes on what Dr love said when she, she met with us. I missed Indy also had a nice article about that particular meeting, which I forwarded to all of you. I'll be happy to send a people's thank you for God, but they had a very nice article about that particular meeting. Thank you miss Pat. Did anybody else have anything they'd like to report during this time. Okay, so I guess we can move into the next part of our agenda which is a crest implementation update for the group on the last two meetings that we've had. So I want to use this time to report back to the group in regards the implementation meeting that happened on September 2. The implementation team was able to have an initial meeting with leap to do introductions. Scott Livingstone, Tim Nelson, Gabriel Tang, Mike Curtin, Mr Vernon Jones, Jen and Alicia were all able to attend alongside the leap team. Mary Beth departure from her position as director of senior services and also facilitating the crest implementation team we have been moving slowly, but surely. Mr Backelman is looking to hire someone in Mary Beth's absence. Mr Vernon Jones has volunteered to join the implementation team and we're excited to have him on board. I can speak to as to the last meeting I don't know if Mr Vernon Jones or Miss Walker wanted to chime in as to anything that I may have missed. Okay, and to miss for era. So I guess like at the last meeting, just for me to be clear, I guess it was more so in terms of like adding Mr Vernon Jones because Mary Beth had left and, and that was basically more so what it was about it wasn't around like, you know, any updates on job operations, where we're at with the actual implementation of press. At this point, there wasn't any discussion. So to answer your question to answer your question before we go to Mr Vernon Jones. I wasn't able to make last week's meeting but from the summary that I got from Miss Walker and Mr Vernon Jones. It was an introduction meeting for the leap team to get to not to get to know but to meet the chief of police and all of the different people on the implementation team. Mr Vernon Jones. Yeah, it was mostly sort of building relationships with leap they brought a three member team. The head of the team was an African American woman. And it was Amos or one who had done the written, he was co author of that study that compared all the programs across the country, and then they had a white man who had been a police chief for many years and then worked in social service after that, with some of these community responder programs. It's a really interesting array of expertise that they brought. They did raise they said that it looked possible that the primary need for calls for community responders would be either mental health or mediation de escalation conflict resolution kinds of things. And they just sort of asked us, you know, if we had any feelings about whether or not, you know, that would work out or was that, but, but we basically we agreed that many of the things we had questions about couldn't really be answered until we have the data. They're working on the data, both with regard to types of calls and when the calls come in. And I did write to them after that meeting and they sent me back a draft of job descriptions for sort of program director positions from two different cities. And we'll be looking at those over against the draft that the implementation team had already drafted for Amherst, and seeing if we can't, you know, merge the best features of all of them. But human resources is working on, you know, the sort of categorizing analysis they need to do on the job description. So that's the next step is the job description for the project manager try to get that out as soon as possible. And then hopefully soon after that we'll have data which will start to answer a bunch of other questions. Thank you Mr Vernon Jones for that thorough summary that definitely filled in the gaps from the summary I provided. In regards to the meeting that was supposed to happen today. It was canceled because not all members could make it but Jen myself and Russ still met so that we could review the PowerPoint that we put together for today's forum, which I think moves us right into our next topic. I do want to thank members last week for being critical about the forum details and pushing us to put together that PowerPoint, and the information. Miss Freira, thank you and other group members for really getting on us because Alicia myself Jen was we're able to put together something that we believe is really thorough for the community to see later this evening. So the agenda item is consultant follow up. Alicia and I were Miss Freira. So, so just again, like, so for us, though, I know this is like more an implementation team kind of thing so for us, other members that are going to be on it. We did just to kind of listen to take notes, what it was our directive that you always want was just the support that you would want from us, I guess. So we're envisioning that all the CSWG members should be present for this forum just because we have engaged the community and put together the Cres Program people feel comfortable sharing experience with us. We want to have this forum to listen carefully. And for myself, Mr Vernon Jones and Jen, we will be taking very detailed notes so that we can bring those voices that are at that at the implementation team to the team with their concerns and questions. Thank you. So with that said, we can move right into the consultant follow up. Alicia and I were able to meet with Jen and Sean and Gano last Tuesday. And last Friday to move our consultant needs forward. After our Friday meeting we are under the impression that the request for services would be sent out, but the town manager didn't get to review and make edits until yesterday. As far as I know, everything has been sent out yesterday. It's hard to correct me if I'm wrong, Jen and Alicia, but from what I understand Sean will solicit quotes from seven Jen and the ADMHA for the racial justice component. If both quotes are over 10k we would need to solicit one additional quote for the second piece of work that we're looking for we would solicit quotes from leap into other firms. Sean helped us find two consultant firms 21 CP solutions and OIR as the other two firms who are experienced in community community safety research and reform. Given given that the deadline for the consultant work is October 5, we're cutting it really close. I'm very disappointed that the consultant work has getting consultants and doing this whole process has taken so long given that we've known from last month that we did this and we're specific, but also on that same token I want to move the group forward. So Alicia and I have put together their two different schedules to move us forward with consultants and without consultants. Ms. Rara. I mean, I just want to say that though again for the record, I'm sorry, I'm like, you know, Brandon you just brought it up. You know and I was thinking about it today. It wasn't just last month we've been bringing up the whole thing about the consultant from the beginning of us right after we finished doing the part a started doing Part B, and we had brought that up from day one that we need a consultant so for me it really feels purposeful from the town's end that we at this point like we have five more weeks left before presenting to the town council on Part B. We still don't have a consultant. I mean this is ridiculous this is basically sabotaging us and and and making it because for me and my thought is just that they don't want us right because we're we've been a very powerful group. We've been pushing the envelope on these issues. So really it's been purposeful so that we don't get to a lot of these. A lot of these issues, so that then when it does move on to the standing committee was likely what they're going to do is dilute that standing committee so that's not powerful, so that then this work does not get done. And so I'm just going to voice what I feel right now and in terms of what is happening here, because this is, it's, it's, it's just ridiculous, you know, that we don't have it of course we're going to keep on doing the work. Of course we're going to do as much as we can, but in our report we're going to have to be very clear about what happened here, which was purposeful. Thank you Ms. for Miss Pat. I don't want to repeat what Deborah just said, but this is what white supremacy looks like. When issues that involve BIPOC community, they keep stalling it, keep delaying it. This is insulting to our BIPOC community. The town council, the town manager. I'm fed up. This is not okay. Why should it be up to October 5th? We've been asking, requesting for consultant for part B for a long, long time. And yet the town have no problem bringing up money and the town council to do other projects. When it comes to our issues, it's nothing. They just want to check off the box. I said, oh, we put together CSWG. Oh, we did this and nothing happens. This is very insulting and ridiculous. It's not okay. Thank you, Ms. Pat and Ms. Freira. I just want to quickly add that I 1000% stand by and agree with what both of you said. Moving us, the best way to move us forward is to get on paper the recommendations we have now and to continue to follow up to push forward for our successor group and the resident oversight board before we disband. So I'm going to quickly share my screen. Given that we have, can everybody see my screen? Okay. Given that we have such short time, what I'm thinking to move us forward is that tonight we create, we create a subcommittee or a small group of people who are willing to work on the recommendations that we have all agreed on. So far we have the successor group, the resident oversight board, and our agreement on traffic control and traffic alternatives. I'm thinking that we take next week off because our consultants are up in the air right now, as to whether anybody will take the work on such short notice, and we will meet September 23. My proposal is that on the September 23 meeting, in addition to the Crest implementation follow up and the successor group and Rob follow up, we divvy out how we want to make sure the topics that we can address do get addressed, whether that's delegating them to the successor group or the resident oversight group, and we find a way to develop language to put that in our report. And it's critical that if we don't have consultants that we reiterate in the report that we, we requested consultants we are specific about what we needed from consultants. And that we'd like to see the work through with this work schedule, what I'm thinking is we have three meetings, and at these three meetings we're going to have to do a lot of work. So the subcommittee will work on drafting the final report, we will meet Thursday, September 23 and at this meeting we will hopefully look over a rough draft that the subcommittee can put together. And I'll have comments and feedback for our October 7 meeting, we will make our final revisions to our report and hopefully move forward with graphics that we'd like to see in the report. And again, finalize how we'd like to see our work be continued. And then on our last meeting, we would reflect and have a last follow up on where our standing committee in the implementation team is. I know that this look doesn't this draft is only three meetings and I know that we could maybe meet more, but just reading it and thinking out loud what I'm thinking is maybe we meet. On Thursday, September 23 and follow this meeting schedule and go from there to develop to map out the rest of our work, because we don't know right now whether we will be or will not be working with consultants. Mr. Vernon Jones and then Ms. Freira. Thanks for doing this I love to have it all laid out like this. I wonder if we could ask our drafting team to get a first draft of the report to everybody in time to read it before the September 23 meeting. So that some of that meeting could be feedback and additional ideas and then some time to work on it before the next meeting. Okay, I think I agree with that. How much time you think would be needed a week or. We gave people five days to read it with that before September 23. I think that's reasonable I think if do we have members of the group right now who would be interested in participating interested in being in a subcommittee to put together the final report let's start there. Let's not call it a subcommittee because that gives us open meeting law problems. Okay, let's just ask to do the job. I'd be glad to be part of it. I don't really want to do it alone though. Wow I can see everything I don't want to be the main person but I'll help, because I just know my time right now is crazy crazy busy, but I can help. Well, you and Brianna did well on the first draft first report right. That's true. Can we use the same process this time. I, I, yeah, I think that's a good idea. So myself Mr Vernon Jones and Ms Ferrara will get a rough draft of our final report on the recommendations that we do have. Do we want to say by Thursday to 16th or do we want to say by Saturday the 18th. So if we get it to the group by the 18th that will give them five days to review it before the meeting on the 23rd. Let's say 18. Okay. Ms Pat. Suggest, first of all, but for three of you that volunteer. Thank you very much. I have a suggestion I was wondering if we need to meet like next week. And then maybe then I will give like two weeks. So that we have an idea what the draft, you know, what the draft looks like if we can like start the conversation, and then it will give us two weeks, instead of sending it to people if we can meet to review the draft. Next week, and then we can meet two weeks after. So I don't know if we'll have enough time to put the draft together because we'll probably have to start something up and then talk. I guess, right. Yeah, I think the 18, like meeting the 23rd would give us more time to work on the draft and then we could use the meeting on the 23rd to review the draft like live time and kind of go over it and like, like at the meeting, September 23rd, we could go review the draft for that work and take next week off. Yeah, I think that would work better and then we can meet on the 23rd and if need be we could then meet on the 30th if we needed it, you know, as opposed to skipping a week at that point but I think we need that that time to kind of put this together and give you all time to read it and then we could review it on the 23rd. Mr. Vernon Jones. Is there a decision process once we open the quotes for the consultants and can we delegate that to our chairs or how do we want to handle that, because we can't afford a delay after the quotes are open. Another reason why I left the week of the 16th off was so that when we hear back from the consultants Alicia and I can sort of figure that out and by the by our meeting on the 23rd will have a better idea of where we stand with consultants. That was my thinking there. Well, can we delegate to our coach chairs that the decision about, you know, whether we go with. And again, you have to take the low quote. If you if you're going to take one, but if it's not satisfactory or it doesn't have has too many strings attached or anything. You're going to we can need to make a decision right away about it I think I'd be happy to delegate that to our chairs but we can't wait until the next meeting to to make a decision about it there won't be any time for them to do the work. Miss Pat. So for several meetings, we talked about having we identified potential consultants to give us what would have how much something will cost. It looks like it's going the opposite way with Sean mangano, suggesting to additional form. I don't understand that you see the one like making decision for CSWG, I don't get that. I just feel that the whole process for consultants will take much longer without even know if they will even do it for us. Why can we why can't like seven gen tell us like next week if yes or no they can do it, instead of comparing prices with the folks in sprinkler than seven gen I don't I don't get that. Why do we have to go like, you know, lowest price and stuff like that. That's not what we talked about when we get with the media for several weeks now. Thank you miss Pat miss moiston. Just for clarity we're not using the bid system that we did this is a quote system so we're asking them for the quota to the amount of work that it'll be to do what we've asked on under the scope of work. So it's not that we have to take the lowest it's not a bid like we did before with the first consultant and the way that we contracted with seventh gen. This is us asking. Seventh gen and ADM ADM HA for the work with D I like we discussed at the last meeting to tell us how much it would cost for them to do that work and to identify what work they could get done in the time frame. So do we choose then we choose one of them is that what it is or with the two funds. It's going to depend on how it comes out so if ADM H says well we can do part one and part two, and then seventh gen says they can do three and four. I'm just, I'm just pulling out numbers there's nothing to that, then we could move that way as long as everything was under the $10,000. So quote comes back under $10,000 that's when we have to go out for bid. So we're hoping that we can get everyone to come in. And so we, I believe we discussed in the last meeting that we were going to break up the, the quote so that the leap, we could ask leap for the information but leap has a current contract so it just seems like for best practices for the accounting department to find another firm to offer and see how they, what they said, but how much of the work they said that they could do as well. So I guess for me like Sean Mangano, you know, recommending to, to companies, who are they, you know, did he go through CSWG, you know, how did that come about, you know, have concerns around that, in terms of, you know, who is leading those organizations, is the BIPOC led, or is it white establishment, I want to know that, because it doesn't matter with the work that we're doing. And my understanding also is that the folks in Springfield, you know, could do some of the work for us and serving Gen. I'm not having, you know, the two groups have to compete or like when we're picking one, one group because they're the lowest day. That's not what we were discussing this meeting so I don't agree with that. We don't have to do that. I mean, we're not asking them to compete. We're just asking them if they can, if they can complete the work that's on the quote. Does that make sense? As long as we're giving the two groups, if we invited them to give us quote, I would like for us to have the two groups do the work for us and not, you know, pick and choose is what I'm saying. We'll see. We'll see what. So if we can divide it up. So if they both say we can get this work done by October 5th, and they both say they can get the entire scope of work done, we just split that scope in half so that both of them are doing some of the work. Is that what you're suggesting? What I'm saying is that what we're discussing this meeting is that we'll reach out to 7 Gen as to what they cannot or cannot do. We'll reach out to those in Springfield as to what they cannot or cannot do and the LEAP program is where we left it at. And now I'm hearing that some of the, you know, we're going, the two BIPOC-led organizations are going to be competing for the scope of work. But that's not, this is not a big process that we're doing. Yeah, it's not a big process and we're not asking them to compete. I think you're very right. Again, if one identifies that they can do AB and the other one identifies they can do C and D, then we can have them both do it. If they both say that we can do all of it, then we would have to find a way that we can support them all doing the work. Right. And as far as it goes with the second part of the charge, you know, he sent it out to LEAP. And I don't have the information on the other two groups. I have more information on the other two groups because Sean did ask Alicia and I to look into them before we move that forward. One of them looks like they are not BIPOC-led, but it is very hard to find a group, a consulting group that does community safety working group who is not local but willing to do this work on such short notice. So he sent us those two groups and additionally, in addition to that, we also reached out to LEAP because Alicia and I did get a chance to meet LEAP. We asked Amos Irwin if he had any partners or any people that he could recommend to us and he said that he didn't have anybody he thought he could recommend to do the work on such a tight time frame. So I did look into the two groups. They do look okay. The first one, 21 CP, they claim to be diverse. And they talked a lot about the 21st century policing model that we explored in the first part of our charge. Mr. Vernon Jones. As I read what Jennifer put in the packet, the work has been divided into two groups. One is sort of a anti-racism, how do we create an anti-racist department. And the other one is a list of other questions about specific policies, use of force, et cetera, and some contract things. If LEAP and the group in Springfield tell us that they can do either piece for under $10,000, we can hire whoever we want. If they come in over $10,000, then we have to have asked for three quotes in order to be able to award it to anybody. I assume that's what Sean was thinking about. I've had no conversation with Sean about anybody, about any of it, but that's how I understand it. Thank you, Mr. Vernon Jones. Miss Pat, did I answer your questions? Let's move on for the sake of time. I'm very honest. I don't think that we will have any consultant work done for us prior to the end of our charge, which is November 1st. So this is just all delayed practice. It's not going to happen. I'll be surprised to have to see any consultant that will pull this off in six weeks. That's impossible. They'll only have three weeks. Exactly. By the time the contract signed, they'll have enough to do it. Exactly. I'll be really surprised that anybody will take to take it on. It's white supremacy. They're playing us. They're playing this committee. I've lived here for more than 35 years. So it's all check the box, the big and the powerful people. We need to change town council November 2nd. Thank you, Miss Pat. Miss Ferrara. Yeah, I mean, obviously I'm in agreement with that, you know, it's going to be a true miracle if we get anyone and anyone that's going to be able to do work, which was, like I said, by design, which was purposeful for us to waste our time, because obviously you all, the co chairs, everyone, all of us have been perusing and going over this from day one after we started working on part B, right after we finished with part A, you know, and so just us spinning our wheels and that's what they wanted us to do. And then at the end of the day, we're not going to be able to complete what what it is that we want to complete. And really, as as Miss Pat said, it basically short changes of the BIPOC community, the communities that are the ones that that needed the most. And, you know, make sure that we do not get to the work so that has to be a huge part of our report and not of the recommendation is talking about the white supremacy talking about the fact that this was purposeful so that we wouldn't get it because Mr. Bachman was very clear right from the beginning. All he was interested in was in the oversight board. That was it. You know, he just wanted us to complete that everything else he didn't he really didn't care about, you know, and so, you know, so for us, it was basically trying to sabotage us throughout this process. The other thing though, too, I know with the dates that we talked about. So we're going to meet with them on October 18. I'm assuming we're still going to meet two more times. So before we end up where we meet one more time before, before November 1. Because I would like to obviously depending on how the meeting goes, you know, process and maybe have some, you know, kind of final remarks and stuff like that, in terms of this whole process because I don't want to just, you know, not have a meeting after we meet with the town council. You know, is that that's going to be the case right. Yeah, so I did in in this in the schedule if we don't get consultants will still be meeting at least two more times after wants to review the draft and wants to reflect I saved a whole meeting so that we can reflect on our time and work. Thanks. And whatever the outcome is, I'm still pushing that we need to give a gift to our town. We need to write our experiences in a booklet. And, you know, donate them to our local libraries, our, you know, future generation should know the work of CSWG how we have been supported, you know, the experiences that we went through just to, you know, make some changes and reform in this town. We have to live a history, and we have to call out including the town council, how they try to undermine our work. It needs to be put in print. They cannot silence us. Thank you, Miss Pat. Miss Walker. So I just wanted to say because I'm not sure if we reported it earlier that we were in touch with Mr. Backelman in regards to our interest in having a presentation for the town council on the 18th. However, it did come back down to us that that is not going to be a possibility. And so that was one of the things that we also I honestly just because of the time. I don't know if we have a decision we want to come up with right now but they wanted to know if it would be possible to consider a date in November or what we would want to do but that the agenda for the 18th is currently full and with things that cannot be moved to other dates. So we will not be able to present the town council on the 18th. And now it's insulting. And now it's insulting. My suggestion is, you know, the two coaches go back to the town manager and have the town council have a special meeting for majority BIPOC committee CSWG. Let them come out time in October to meet with us to do the presentation by our coaches. By BIPOC folks, we do matter in this town. If the agenda items are full, October 14, let the town council meet another day so meet with CSWG so we can do our presentation in October period. Thank you, Ms. Pat, Ms. Ferreira. Yeah, I'm in agreement too. I mean, this is again, you know, slap in the face, you know, showcasing again how the issues that deal with the BIPOC community in Amherst is not important at all. Because how is it that, you know, Mr. Bachman and others in town government and town council and so on and so forth said that we needed to be done by November 1 that we need to be disbanded by November 1. They're saying that they don't have room for us in the meeting. You know, either, either they need to make room for us in the meeting and put some other things to another day, or as Ms. Pat said, they need to create another meeting for us to meet with them. Because this is ridiculous. This is like, again, slap in the face and very insulting for them to now say that, you know, they don't have any time for us to meet. I thought this was important to them. That's what they said during part A, right? But obviously that's not what they're showing. You know, it's they talk the talk, but when it comes time to walk the walk, it doesn't happen. Thank you, Ms. Rara. Before I call on Mr. Vernon Jones in this moment, and I just want to be clear that in August when Alicia and I met with Mr. Bachman, we were flexible as to the dates of possibly presenting in November, but you all indicated in our August 26th meeting that you wanted to finish. So we went back to him. Wait, Brianna, I think we have a miscommunication here. It's not that we indicated we wanted to finish. He said that we were done on November 1st. I don't know why it's coming down to us saying that we wanted to finish. No, are we a group still after November 1st, or are we not? I'm not going to do things as a what, as a disbanded group after November? No, he's the one that messed up. He's the one that said I was very clear when I talked to him. You all were there when we were there in person that day, when I was just like, can we work beyond November 1st? Can we work into December, into January, into February? We wanted to work many more months. And he said no. So then, yeah, I missed the meeting or whatever. And then I come back and it's like, Oh, well, yeah, you're disbanded, but you can present after November. No, that's not how it works. That's insulting. That's again, a slap in the face. Are we a group? Are we not a group? Are we going to let them just push us around and do whatever? That's why I said, if you are disbanding us on November 1st, then we're disbanded on November 1st. I'm not doing any other work on the CSWG after November 1st. No. You know what I'm saying? I'm not going to be pushed around. Period. Thank you, Ms. Ferrara. Mr. Vernon Jones. I believe the president of the town council is in the audience. We want to see whether she would consider having a discussion with us right now about a possible presentation date. I'm open to that, Ms. Walker. Oh, sorry, Ms. Bowman. I'm sorry. Ms. Bowman had her hand up for a while. And I see Lynn is now in the audience with her hand up. So, okay. First of all, I wholeheartedly agree with everything that Ms. Fiera has said, and everything that Ms. Anabaku said. I don't want to give any more of my time at all after November 1st, to this group. I know that I've been a little MIA over the course of summer. I had a lot going on, but I'm tapped out. I'm tapped out because I watched the same racist crap happen. I'm very early on. I've been complaining about it. I've been calling Mr. Bachman out on it and telling him that he's full of it and he tells us one thing and tells the next person the next thing. I'm tired of it. It's exhausting. And as far as the, as far as the town committee is concerned, I feel like they knew that our last day was, was November 1st. So they could have made time in this schedule. Regardless, regardless, regardless of whether or not they heard back from us, they could have a lot of time in their schedule to have us present, or have us present. And I'm just not feeling it. I'm so tired of the, the, the, the level of undermined, underhanded racism that comes from the white people in this town. I'm tired of it. And they, you know, and these are the same people that will turn around and be like, I don't know. I'm an ally. No, you're not. You're not an ally. First of all, you don't get to say you're an ally. You get appointed an ally. First of all, let's just start there. But second of all, like, it's about putting your money where your mouth is. It's about putting your time where your mouth is. Like you, you can say all you want to say, but it's how you show yourself. It's how you present yourself in real life. And this is real life. These are people's lives and they give zero about people's life. Oh, but let us talk about the library. Yes, I know the library is important, but that's not somebody's life. And that's how it is in this town. And that's, you know, and it's like, and it's like, there's a part of me that was just like, oh, I should not do this. It should not be part of this, because all it's going to do is cause me stress and high blood pressure and frustration and literally like just not liking people because I'm just so exhausted from it. You know, and these are the same people that don't come across my front door. They're not going to come they're not going to interact with us so this doesn't affect them because they don't have to sit and look and be in the presence of BIPOC community. These are people that are in the presence of BIPOC community. These are people that hide in that little community, you know, their little whatever, their little red line communities, whatever, and that's what they do, and they don't have to be part of this. And so I said it before, Mr. Bachman doesn't even live in this community. Like, he has nothing invested in here. There's no reason for him to care about what's happening over here. You know, and it's like, I'm just like, I know, know, know, they give us another they give a meeting specially for our group, or they make time for us in in the group, or we don't present personally, that's, that's where I'm coming from. And, and if we don't present we need to put out a very clear statement as to why we did not present the community with our recommendations and what and, and directly hold Amherst Town Council and Mr. Bachman responsible, hold them responsible and hit every major on the front page of major newspapers, because I'm tired of Amherst looking like this. Oh, we do such good for our community we do this down there you do nothing, nothing, when there's, there's room to make change you do nothing. So, we need to really put it out there because we could have been on the forefront of change, and we're decided they like, it's been decided that we're not going to be on the forefront of change so we need to make that know we need to make that really, we need to make that know we need to make a big fuss, and make it really know that look we put all this work in, and there's just there's, you know, there's just they they made no time there's nothing to show for it. Everything we did we got criticized about it, everything like every, every time one of the BIPOC community tried to say something about it, they got criticized about it Oh that's, you know you misinterpreted this that me other. Sorry, I'm hot at my oven on cooking. Um, but yes, so please. I'm that's that's kind of that's where I am. I'm so mad right now. I'm just really, really, really mad right now. And I'm really trying to hold it together, and not just be like, why finish it out, but I'm not that type of person like I'm, I, I want to finish this out, there's not much time left, and I want to be part of it, but like, really, I feel like I've, I wasted my time. This community wasted my time. And I'm just, I'm really frustrated with it. I'm really frustrated with it there's so many other things that I could have been doing. And I'm not doing it because of you know because I, I was trying to be invested in this community and support. You know, I support support my community and the thing is, and the thing that frustrates me is that it's not by pop by pop people only who are going to who are going to benefit from this. You know what I'm saying and so that frustrates me even more because it's like, you know, it becomes a whole. It becomes a whole economic thing. It becomes like, it's like, you know, if you come from money, you can, you know, if you have, you know, money, monetary roots in this community then your, your voice matters but if you're not that person and, you don't matter. And it's, it's been married made very clear in what happened, what's been happening right now, in that there's no housing for anybody, anybody, anybody, anybody. So that's a whole, that's a whole nother thing but that just adds on to like how little they care about the community that is here in Amherst like, why, why did why, why, why did I even like waste my time like why, you know, I have to. Thank you for sticking with us to nation. Thank you miss Bowman. Miss Walker did you want to add anything. I guess we can move forward and invite the town council president in right now, if that's okay with the group, and see what she has to say in regards to a separate meeting date, and then we can go over the last agenda item which is the successor group and the resident oversight board group. I just want to chime in and say that we have seven minutes before our forum starts so I think we run the notion that if there was not a large turnout then we could continue the meeting and in the forum. Before or after folks spoke. Thank you miss moist and. First of all good evening, and I hear you loud and clear on Monday night, I will be presenting to the town council the possibility that we add a meeting on October 25. It would be for two purposes. This would be one of them. The other one would be for additional feedback and a vote regarding redistricting, which is also a very important issue and something we have to finish by the end of October based on state law. So I think the best thing for me to do would be to get back to the co chairs, after Monday night to see whether or not that is a possibility with the 25th be acceptable to the committee that works. Yeah. So with that said I'm going to hand it off to Alicia now to update us quick. Well, actually, should we just adjourn the meeting and continue our last agenda item after the forum is the group okay with that. So with all of our business complete I want to call this meeting adjourned. And we're on a different link for the forum. Yes, you should have received a separate link for the form. So that's what it was. Okay. Oh, you received to yeah. Yeah, okay. Okay, great. See you guys soon. Thank you all a little bit.