 24th select board meeting. This meeting is going to be a little bit different because at 7 o'clock we have an election with a joint election with the library trustees to fill a vacancy on that board. So that will start at 7 o'clock, but we do have other things to do before then. So it's public comment period right now at the moment no one is here but I am expecting some folks to show up. This is them right now. So we'll start with public comment since our public commenters are here. That's right. So please sit down and introduce yourself for the folks at home. Well hello everyone. I'm Terry Rooney, Chair of the Amherst Public Arts Commission and I'd like to share with you the progress and invite you to the opening of the next Amherst biennial which will be opening on October 6th. Art Inexpected in unexpected places as we did last time. What is so wonderful about this biennial is that it's bigger and better. We have five museums, four galleries, three colleges and I'd like to thank Jim Wald for helping us get Hampshire College. He worked as an intermediary and I've gotten a firm confirmation today from the president of the college, Jonathan Lash, that they will be hosting the White House project. The installation that we did with Emily Dickinson earlier, we're hoping to install it at the entrance which I think would be quite dramatic. And this is just one of 20 sites for this next biennial. We will be having art in the Eric Carle Museum. They've given us a beautiful space at the front entrance and they will be opening the museum for free for all comers on November 1st during the arts walk and I believe that this is the first time that this will be happening. Another site also for the first time is the Hitchcock Center which is also celebrating a big birthday. It's going to be their 50th anniversary and we will be having some installation artists, Nancy Winship Millican who did the sales that were on the two farms last year. We'll be doing an installation of course with the approval of the conservation committee of making bricks out of local clay, straw and sand. She's going to be teaching a class at the Hitchcock Center and having her students make her bricks with her and these bricks will be making figures that are farmers in chores that seem to be disappearing in our recognized age. For instance farmers milking their cows, spreading seeds, gathering eggs. Another site, well we are so happy to have the colleges on board and University of Massachusetts, we've been working with the director Loretta Yarlow who was also one of my co-curators as well as Elizabeth Barker from the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College. At University Museum they held over the banner project at the front of the Fine Arts Center which has given it a beautiful splash of color to that building. We also will be having a performance artist who will start at the pond of the Fine Arts Center. The artist is Samuel Rowlett and he believes that the journey of an explorer and an artist are tied in the exploration of art or land or whatever. So he will be attaching and this is a continuing performance that he has done throughout the region of an eight foot blank canvas on his back, eight foot by six foot and he will walk from UMass to Amherst College to link the two campuses and will be walking through downtown with this canvas on his back and I presume probably interacting with the artworks around town on his way. So that will be on the during the opening celebration on October 6th. We're also doing a very special installation at the Jones Library. We have worked out with the maintenance manager a way to install this, how can I explain it? It's a flying door which I thought was a wonderful symbolism of like the door of knowledge or whatnot but it sort of continues playing on art in unexpected places. One of the most exciting things for me last week I got Hampshire College but also we got an empty storefront, brand new. We got the storefront in the LEED building behind Judy's and they want us to run it as a business and so we will be open on weekends and run it as a gallery and what we will also do is I mean part of the biennials to help artists with you know income and exposure and such so we will be selling 2D work in racks and have a display there but I think that this will become Amherst Biennial Central for this upcoming. Another thing we're doing we've been working with John Musanti the design review board to bring more art to Kentrick Park. When I was going to the meetings for the Kentrick Park one of the things that the community brought forth is they would love a natural playground and the curators have selected these original rabbits, life-size rabbits that will be installed on rocks so that children can climb up on the rocks and pet the bunnies and it ties in and is a wonderful homage to the author who wrote Uncle Wiggly. So this is just sort of a quick cross-section of what we're doing. Well let me also mention one special place is Amherst College. We not only got the Frost Library Gallery which we installed it this weekend so you can get a sneak preview of the biennial there but we're going to have an artist in residency in the stern's steeple in front of the meet. The artist will be working most weekends if it's doing an installation using natural material and if it's raining she will be inside the Mead Museum making watercolors which will be on display and or for sale there or someplace else in town. Terrific. Before I ask you one question I just want to make sure you folks are here for licenses right? You're not here for public comment. Okay go ahead. Okay. So where should people go for more information about this? We have a website www.biannialamherstbiannial.com the town I'm working with Chris to have a link that site should be starting the town site will be linked to it and we will also Bonnie has been working on a map. Do you want to talk a bit about this? Hi Bonnie Yesman new on the Public Arts Committee and one of the projects we took on was getting a GIS map which was supported by Mike Olken and he's linking the sites with photos of the artwork which are going to be there so it's a very nice interactive map which should be available again through links to AmherstBiannial.com. Just another thing to focus all eyes on Amherst because well many people think of Amherst as a really a forefront of educational institutions when you start looking at all the museums that are here it's really a fantastic place to see contemporary art so this biannial it just amplifies that even more and I think the publicity that's going to come out of this will again draw a lot of attention to Amherst as an art site. Wonderful thank you very much thank you for coming in and letting everyone know about this so you said October 6th. October 6th through November 30th and is there a particular kickoff time on the 6th? 5 to 8 all over town what are the only sites that will there are two sites that won't be open that night Eric Carl as I said will be open the first for free they won't be able to be open that evening and the Lord Jeff has three weddings that we can so they won't be open either but this is another new first site I sent everybody on the select board a copy of the catalog so feel free to enjoy it okay thank you very much for your time thank you very much thank you for coming in. My pleasure. Okay other folks here for public comment Mr. Noonan come forward and introduce yourself for folks at home. Good evening I'm Kevin Noonan Executive Director of Craig's Doors just wanted to take this opportunity to thank Diana for bringing it to the attention of the select board and the select board for your support and for John's reconsideration of the expansion of Craig's Doors we really appreciate it and it's a perfect example of how we when we put our heads together we can get get the job done it's really all I came to say I appreciate it very much thank you very much thanks for coming in anyone else here for public comment okay then we'll get a couple things done before our 645 item one thing for select board we are scheduled to meet next Monday October 1st and I would like to propose that we not I know that would just break your heart and what I would like to do is ask for your consideration to pencil in October 29th that is not a date that we're currently meeting and I will try to not have us meet then but because town meetings start so late and all the warrant deadlines etc are so late we really don't have much to do like nothing to do next Monday October our big jobs are dealing with the warrant articles taking positions on the warrant articles and also dealing with budget policy guidelines even the budget policy guidelines there isn't much to talk about in advance of our October 11th meeting the four boards meeting where Mr. Pooler will be giving us the initial projections so while we I'm sure we could sit around and find something to talk about next Monday I don't think it's necessarily worth it so if folks are good with it that would have our next meeting be October 15th are we too brokenhearted to do that to not meet next Monday okay so and and our folks okay if we pencil in the 29th I will try not to schedule anything then because that will have us meeting I think it's like four four Mondays in a row or something if we get that one but just in case we need that because it's a little bit hard to predict the scheduling of the town meeting stuff at this point I just want to have that in reserve so okay thank you I will also note that at the next meeting on October 15th I will propose to us that we consider actually I'll propose that we make a decision about starting town meeting at seven o'clock this time so people can be thinking about that that's not a decision to make now but I just wanted to put that out there because we're going to be signing the warrant on the 22nd so the warrant's going to need a time we have raised this issue before and have looked for some feedback from TMCC I'm not sure that they've gotten to that yet but because town meetings starts so late this year November 19th which really gets us close into the the holiday season and and when folks time will be really at a premium this seems like a good time to give that a try so we'll have that discussion on October 15th but I did want to kind of plant that seed with folks so that they know to think about that for then okay um so it's 644 which is essentially 645 um folks here for common vitulers license for the glazed donut shop is that you please come forward and so this is for the glazed donut shop so please uh introduce yourself um my name is Karen Rhodes this is my husband Nicholas Rhodes and um we are originally I'm from Amherst he's from Shrewdsbury we're Amherst high school graduates uh we moved away for a bunch of years through education and whatnot and um we own the mini donut factory at the holy oak mall which you may or may not be familiar with and now we are moving home and wanting to open a mom and pop full line donut shop in Amherst and this is in the carriage shops in that end space right yeah we're the Verizon store used to be right wonderful and uh when are you scheduled to open uh well we had been hoping for the end of August um um all the work should be completed by the end of this week or beginning of next week so as soon as the inspections can be scheduled will be up and running um so hopefully the end of next week maybe the beginning of the week after wonderful of course so uh you come to us for a common vigilance license which we essentially grant as a matter of course but we have you come in just so that you can do a little commercial for your new business to the to the folks of the community so that they know what to expect so anything else that you'd like to tell um yeah well just we're planning on doing it's a it's gonna be a gourmet donut shop so not just your run of the mill um powdered or cinnamon sugar donuts but really high-end gourmet um toasted sesame orange ginger um butterfinger like really sort of like the fancy cupcake shops but on donuts instead of cupcakes we're also gonna be carrying a line of gluten-free baked goods which we're still working out the details because my my family is celiac or gluten intolerant and my standards are very high for what's acceptable if i have to like it or it's no good so so um at this point we've got popovers and some muffins um and we are working very hard to develop a gluten-free donut but it turns out to be exceedingly difficult to get it just right um so we're hoping that that sort of that there's a need for that in this town to have a wider variety of gluten-free baked goods and we're hoping to fill that need as well. Terrific. Any questions or comments for these folks? Miss Brewer? I was just gonna say if people had seen their adorable setup at the Black Party they had wonderful lots and lots of little tiny cute little donuts there it was a really good setup and a really good way of spreading the word so thank you my son's totally excited waiting for you. Yeah we got a very warm reception at the Black Party it was very very nice. Great. Other questions or comments? Justine would you like to make the motion? Sure I moved at the slack board to approve a common victorias license for Karen Rhodes doing business as glazed donut shop at 233 North Pleasant Street sweet 43 Monday through Sunday from 5 30 a.m to 5 30 p.m Karen Rhodes owner slash manager pending issuance until any slash all outstanding town department regulations have been satisfied. Second. For the discussion Mr. Hayden. Welcome back. Thank you. And for the discussion all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous congratulations good luck and we look forward to your opening. Keep an eye out for the signs. Indeed take care. Thank you. All right next up we have a lunch cart license for Paris Valley evening. Thank you for coming in and so your name is Paris Valley is that correct? Right. And your business is Paris and ties and this is going to be a lunch cart tell us a little bit about it. It's actually I just I'm from Amherst I grew up right here on Main Street but I've been in New Hampshire I married somebody out there so we had a restaurant together and I got divorced so I came back home and I've been doing the food truck up in New Hampshire since 2003 so I've been here actually I'm still doing it up there on fares and stuff but I would like to do something downtown yeah. And what kinds of products do you offer? I do all barbecue I smoke here in the unit I smoke all the meats on that do like pulled pork sandwiches baby back with barbecue chicken pretty much barbecue. Questions or comments? Miss Stein? Oh certainly yes Amherst media if you could increase the what do we call that I always forget what you call that yeah the sound from the speakers in here so that we have so that we can hear ourselves and that so other people in the room can hear us so it's these these speakers in this room and I keep talking because that helps them keep increasing right so so it will get there so thank you for pointing that out okay so lunch cart licenses this is something that we're kind of still in the process of figuring out exactly what our role is in in regard to them we have the the town regulations are a little bit unclear on them as far as what our role is but we've been advised by town council if we want to be dealing with these in any great specifics we should be dealing with the regulations themselves as opposed to kind of ad hoc issues with each applicant that being said does anybody have questions or comments about this license? Mr. Hayden? Maybe not about the license but I'm wondering about the varieties of barbecue as as some of us know it comes a wide wide variety but what about you have? I mean all my stuff is freshly made you know I smoke all the meat right in the unit in the day of the event and I smoke at like really slow temperature and I actually do really well I do a lot of events at Merrimack New Hampshire at the Budweiser plant and I do a lot of small town fairs and I do well and I think with the students here I probably can do really well. Great. Other questions or comments? Ms. Stein would you like to make a motion? I move that the select board approve a lunch cart license for parent Paris A Valley doing business as Paris and ties to operate within the public ways of the town center of Amherst M.A. from Thursday through Sunday from the hours of 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. pending issuance until any slash all outstanding town department regulations have been satisfied. Second. For the discussion Mr. Hayden. Also welcome back. Thank you and for the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. That is unanimous. And I had a question because I know like because I'm not new to this. A lot of towns have areas that you could go so I was wondering what the locations are here. We're really not that specific that's part of the regulations we don't know about. So I think unless you get a complaint you're probably going to be all set. Right and I'm thinking a long term maybe I could find a space to rent. Great. Great. But I want to make sure everything's okay before I look into that. Right. Well good luck to you. Look forward to your business starting up. When will folks be able to expect to start seeing you around? I'm ready to go. I'm actually in business fully every weekend I'm up in New Hampshire somewhere so hopefully next week sometime. Okay. I've been waiting for this. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming in. All right. The next two are Pledge of Licenses for a high horse. DBA is High Horse Brewery and Elephants of Mercy DBA is Monendove. We had talked in the spring and I know this because I've been working on the Slycord annual report which sneak preview for untimed items is not done yet but it's getting closer closer closer. We had decided in the spring that for licences liquor license changes that were technicalities essentially things that didn't require a public hearing that we wouldn't actually require the people to come in and I hadn't actually remembered that at the time the agenda was made. So I don't think the people are necessarily coming in for this because that is consistent with what we have been saying about that. So what this is is when folks own a business they can if they have a liquor license they can use that as collateral essentially towards their borrowing with a bank and that is what this is all about. We asked town council about this places we're always trying to learn more about the things that we sort of treat as technicalities to make sure are they really technicalities what are the things should we be considering in regards to this and essentially places treat these as technicalities. If we were to deny it it's possible that the borrowing could be denied but there's no real reason to deny it because there would be other issues related to the borrowing anyway. What is clear though is if this person if any person who was in a situation like this pledging their liquor license if they were to lose their license as part of the loan we still maintain control of it so that's really kind of the bottom line that's interesting to us even if it were to go to someone else it would still need our approval to be operate in this town. These are all just fill-in details have nothing to do with the specifics or the likelihood of default or anything like that on these applications in front of us it's just we somewhat recently last spring I think had a had a pledge of license also and at that time we sort of said oh let's try and learn more about these for this time and I think that's everything I know in a nutshell. Questions or comments about this pledge of license? Mr. Hayden? You've touched on on the high points I appreciate that I wanted to just just also often appreciation for the the miniature treatise that we got from from our attorneys just helping us sort of pick through case law and get to the same high points that you mentioned. We're not going to deal with it tonight in any great length and that's kind of unfortunate our viewers at home don't know that we had that on our desk for a couple of days to try to figure it out and maybe I would just reiterate one point and that is that the pledge doesn't allow it doesn't somehow or other change the our responsibility for accepting or denying or continuing or discontinuing a license so we don't lose maybe the most important thing that we have regarding a license. Exactly and that is the key point it's an interesting thing I don't know why this would be worthwhile to the bank to have in this way but that is not our problem. Ms. Stein would you like to make the first move? Sure I move that the select board approve the petition for change of an existing all alcoholic restaurant license relative to ABCC license number 12-00240012 High Horse LLC doing business as High Horse Brewery 240012 High Horse LLC doing business as High Horse Brewery and Bistro at 24 North Pleasant Street Amherst to include the pledge of license in the amount of $54,000 and no sense to People's Bank in Holyoke MA at the rate of 3.99% for a term of five years. Second. For the discussion Ms. Stein. I'm delighted to do anything to help out I've had a number of wonderful brews there so. Very good any other questions are coming. Then I'll in favor say aye. Aye. That's unanimous next one. I move that the select board approve the petition for for change of an existing all alcoholic restaurant license relative to ABCC license number 12-002400053 Elephants of Mercy LLC doing business as Moan and Dove at 460 West Street Amherst to include the pledge of license in the amount of $54,000 and no sense to People's Bank in Holyoke MA at the rate of 3.99% per term of five years. Second. For the discussion Ms. Raiden. Another fine establishment with a completely different atmosphere. For the discussion. In favor say aye. Aye. That is unanimous. All right coming up at seven o'clock we have an election that's still a few minutes away and we don't have a candidate so we will wait a couple minutes more. Unless Mr. Hoffman did you have a comment about that? Okay. So let us do a couple of untimed items. How about the parking and street closure requests. I move that the slide board approve the closure of Overlook Drive from house number 59 through 75 of Sunday October 14th 2012 from 11 30 a.m. to 5 p.m. to the annual high point hill neighborhood block party. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the select board approve the reservation of one meter space in front of 31 Spring Street Amherst beginning Thursday September 20th 2012 through Friday October 5th 2012 at a fee of $5 per day per meter for Marnie Electric. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the select board approve the reservation of two meter spaces and the handicapped space and access aisle in the Kellogg Avenue lot for one day certain during the time period of September 26th 2012 through September 28th 2012 at a fee of $5 per day per meter for the Unitarian Church. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. That's unanimous. How about taxi licenses? I move that the select board approve new taxi chauffeur licenses for Michael Diamond and Julia Mahoney both of Amherst on behalf of Taxi Express. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. I move that the select board approve new taxi slash chauffeur licenses for Edwino G. Jernondes of Amherst on behalf of Ziqui Taxi. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. I move that the select board approve a new taxi slash chauffeur license for Anne-Marie Cloutier of South Deerfield on behalf of Celebrity Tab. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. I move that the select board approve the transfer of an existing 2012 taxi license for Edward Cage of Amherst from Ziqui Taxi to Gotta Go Taxi Company. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. All right. We've got candidate. We've got electors. We are ready. Okay. So at this time I'll ask the library trustees to come forward and grab your seats. They are labeled. And if Mr. Pam would come forward to this table please. And I will just explain briefly what it is we're doing here. When there is a vacancy on an elected board, school committee, library trustees, redevelopment authority, things like that, the Mass General Law chapter 41. Thank you. Calls for chapter 41, section 11. All right. We don't know the exact MGL reference. I believe it's 11. But at any rate it specifies how we manage that. And the way we manage that is through a joint election of the select board and the remaining people sitting on the board with the vacancy. So that is what we are here to do tonight. We have talked about this in late August about setting this date, putting out a call for letters of interest to fill the seat. The deadline for letters of interest was Thursday, September 20th. And we received one letter of interest. And we're so glad that you're interested. We still need to have the election even though it sort of seems like a technicality. It's not a technicality. And in fact, asking questions of the candidate which we're not required to do but we all have the opportunity to do is a good way to help the candidate kind of get some feedback and some sense of what the position is expecting and how he might serve. I'll note that there are a couple things specified in state law about this. One of them is that the candidate requires the majority of seats of all those remaining eligible officers. So there are the library trustees when fully constituted have six members. At this point they have five members. The select board has five members. That means 10 people are eligible to vote all together, which means that six votes are needed for the winning to win the seat. And that is regardless of attendance. So I'll note that one person is either absent or at least not here yet. You're not expecting Mr. Wolf. Okay. So Mr. Wolf will not be with us. So we still need six votes even though one person is not here. The other thing that it states in state law is that this the person filling the seat will serve until the next annual election. So this is not filling out the seat. If this if this seat I don't I don't actually even know if this seat no this seat was just filled. I believe well it doesn't make any difference. Whatever the term is on the seat because everybody gets a three-year term that this person would not inherit that same term. It only goes until the annual election. So assuming Mr. Pam receives this seat this evening if he wanted to run for the three-year term he would or to fill out the term he would have to submit nomination papers do the same processes as required for running for any townwide seat. Okay. So before we get started does anybody have any questions about any of that or about what the process is going to be? Okay. So I gave everyone a memo last week and this is in the select board's packet that talks about how this is going to work. We have a process for how this works when there are more candidates. We only have one candidate so it's much simpler. But basically Mr. Pam has the opportunity to make an opening statement of up to two minutes. We will then go we will alternate as practical between select board members and library trustees for asking questions of Mr. Pam and he has up to two minutes to answer each question. As I said no one's required to ask a question that is your opportunity. When we're done with the questioning he will have the opportunity to make up to a one-minute closing statement and then we will have our vote. Mr. Hayden. Just a question of process. Does the chair of the library trustees need to convene his meeting? That's a good point. Sure. People deal with that sort of differently whether you formally or informally convene. Mr. Starr would you like to formally convene your meeting? Having heard Mr. Hayden's praise for various places of libation I think I should take his instructions. So I'd like to call the meeting of the library board of trustees to order. If there are any objections to that please speak now or forever hold your peace. And that is so convened at 705. All right so first we will introduce ourselves just so Mr. Pam knows everyone he's dealing with and I will start on my left Mr. Boston Sarad of the Jones Board of Trustees. Alyssa Brewer select board. Diana Stein select board. Stephanie O'Keefe select board. Jami Santy Amherstown manager. Aaron Hayden select board. Earl Erickson Jones trustee. Hamson Ailey Jones trustee. Chris Hoffman Jones trustee. Thank you. And if I could remind everyone at these tables to please try and speak into your mic because this is being broadcast by Amherst media. All right Mr. Pam welcome and please tell us about your interest in serving. Thank you. I heard that there was a vacancy. I have some experience and skills that I thought might be useful to the library board and consequently I put in some papers. The experience that I bring to this involves many years of working for the New York City Controller's Office where I was involved with both reviewing actions that came before the city's Board of Estimate which at the time was the equivalent of a board of trustees for the city as well as spending some 15 years or so with the city pension funds most of them as the director of contracting portions of it as the overall manager of the staff there. During that period of time I've also been involved on a volunteer basis with number of libraries. When I worked in New York City I lived in Port Washington while there the library is an excellent library but it had gone through a period of some controversy and in order to recover from that having had their budget voted down twice in a row and their director resigned they decided that it was an appropriate time to get some additional community input and they created a long-term planning advisory board. I served on that and we spent two years working through some of the issues that were necessary involving both physical plans priorities in terms of services activities that needed to be done there were reasonably successful the town approved not only the regular budget of the library and were positive towards the new executive director but also approved a major capital expansion of the library. Subsequent to that we lived in Norfolk Connecticut which is a very small town of some 1600 people but which has one of the better libraries in the country you know the libraries of the country have a rating system and the highest rating is five stars and this happened to be a five-star library and my wife was the president of the friends of the library for a couple of years and a member of that for a number of years beyond that I was involved with that to the extent that seemed appropriate but some of the things that you learn by spending a fair amount of time with librarians and doing some research and thinking about the issues involved may be helpful to Amherst and may be of use to the board of trustees. I understand this is a six-month appointment I don't look to direct anything here what I hope to do is to make some contributions that may be of help thank you. Thank you very much. All right so I will now alternate among select board members and library trustees starting with library trustees on questions and so Mr. Pam has up to two minutes to answer each question and I will do the best I can to to basically raise a finger when you have about 20 seconds left. Okay so I'll start with Mr. Sarah. Thank you very much. Before I ask Mr. Pam a question I'd like to express the gratitude of the Jones library board for the great work that you've done in dealing with this vacancy. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Mr. Pam thanks for your interest. Your credentials are very very impressive. I want to pose a hypothetical for you. You should feel free in the spirit of most politicians to refuse to answer the hypothetical. I promise I will vote for you in any case. Here's my hypothetical and I want you to treat it as a hypothetical is a hypothetical of a staff member of the library buttons hold button holds a member of the trustees while in the library and says that he or she has some concerns about the performance of the director of the library. Could you work me through with me how you might respond to such a such an approach if you were the trustee. I'm not familiar with what is normally done at this library than the normal practice would be first to make sure that they are going through whatever the standard process is in terms of talking to their superior going through the the normal chain of command. If there is such an issue and I know that there is a personnel committee of the board and so I would think that the appropriate thing to do would be to bring this as a question to either the president or to the chair of that committee. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Select board members Mr. Hayden. Yeah I have a vision question if you will. I'm hopeful on my account that you've delved into the tasks that the trustees that you hope to be joining for the next it's more like eight months that you've you've seen or got an idea of what it is they're up to. Given your experience and your knowledge and I appreciate you laying that out so quickly in two ish minutes or less how are you going to help them. There are a couple of areas where I have some I think useful experience. One has to do with budgeting. Is this working. It is for the television. I've looked at the budget for this year. I've looked at the budget for last year. There are things that I would think might be clearer. There are things that I would ask some questions about and so that is one area that I think might I might be of use. As I said I think some 15 years of my life have been spent with some of the best professionals that I know in investments and so I know that there is an investment committee and there is an endowment and so I would want to at least take a look at that and offer whatever advice I might have that was useful. Third I have spent some time looking at the Jones building not so much the two branches and there are clearly physical things that may be better used or being better conditioned and so if that was an area that the board would like me to spend some time talking about I'd be happy to do that. And fourth the central use of a library is its collections and the collections are meant to be available to the public and the question that arises there is what is the current process for making decisions on those. This is not necessarily a board decision this is more a staff set of decisions but it would be something that I would like to understand better and we'll go from there. Thank you thank you. Library trustees raise your hand if you have a question. Mr. Erickson and please speak into your mic. Yes ma'am this is a short term appointment. I am relatively new to the board myself so I'm extraordinarily aware of how much information hits you and how long it takes you to get your feet on the ground. Have you given any thought to whether you would run next spring for a either a brand new term or the rest of this term or whatever it turns out to be. Given any thought yes. And that thought was during the six or eight months that I will be serving I will discover whether or not the board finds it useful to have me there and that will be a major component of any decision that I make. I would hope and expect that there will be other candidates who will bring their names forward some six months from now if they seem to be better suited to do the work then I don't feel a necessity to run. This is not something that I've spent my life waiting for. Thank you. I'm going to vote against you. You select board members. Mr. Walms. This has been very useful so far. Could you tell just as an outsider looking at things with a fresh eye this may pick up part of your already statement you're just made. What do you see as the biggest challenges facing the Jones. There are I don't have enough information to say what what the challenges are with respect to members of the community knowing about services and to what extent they actually make use of those services. So I can't answer that but that's clearly something that would be of some interest. My impressions of the collection have been generally positive. There have been times when I wish there was a book that I didn't find but that's not really that unusual and there is an interlibrary loan system so you know that's not a critical issue but the thought comes that that there may be ways to improve on that. I don't know on the business side of things whether there are efficiencies that could be created somewhere and the fourth one and the clear one is are the finances in such a state that that they the library can do what it needs to do. I speak as a trustee but also as a librarian. Libraries are a lot more than books and holdings. While that's very important there are so many programs and so many needs in the community and I'm wondering if you had looked into any of any of the programs that Jones offers have you had any familiarity with any of them? In the week since I heard there was a vacancy I have done enormous amounts of research. Let me put it this way I am basically a government person a scholar of government if you will I've spent 15 years teaching public service in one kind or another and budgeting. One of the ways that I learn about things is I look at the bulletin boards I see what's going on I see what's listed as activities for the day. I've been doing that since we moved here two and a half years ago so I'm reasonably aware of some of those. I've been a participant in a number of those that involve children because I've got two grandchildren and we've been taking them to all of the things that one takes a child to. There are an enormous number of services that I was familiar with in the two previous libraries that I've been involved with so I am aware of the range of services that are potentially available and some familiarity with what is available here and that's about all I can tell you. Okay thank you. Thank you. I'd like board members. It's time. You mentioned that Norfolk I think it is has a five-star library. Yes. What would you think we need to bring the Jones to a five-star rating if there is such a thing for us? I can't answer that. Sorry. The reasons that that library received that rating involved its enormous importance to a town of that size. It was the community center. It was the place where people came together on a regular basis. Movies were shown. Artworks were displayed. There was an enormous number of programs of all of the kinds that we were talking about and yes I'm aware that many of those things are done here. This is a very different environment. The UMass, Amherst college, Hampshire college these I would not call them competitors but they are alternative places where people can gather and they do. So I don't know that the same kinds of approaches would work. Thank you. Library trustee Mr. Hoffman. Okay. I'm trying to decide to turn a softball and a trick question here. I'm the last trustee. Generally you know lately the budgets have been relatively good. We've had a few lean years but let's assume that sometime while you're well I guess potentially you only hear for a few months but if you were here longer suppose the town said it looks like the budget is really bad. You can really expect a lot less money from the town than you had planned on. The library had planned on. What would be your approach in terms of increasing funding or looking at the budget to make cuts? How would you, what are your thoughts on that? Partially the answer depends upon what kind of notice that you've got. There are lots of ways to do fundraising which may or may not be done currently. You know I have been in towns where the amount of money which is provided by the town is very small. In Norfolk it was a thousand dollars a year and everything else came out of the endowment and the fundraising that was done on an annual basis. You know that's not likely to be replicated here and I hope it isn't just to go on record about that. But nonetheless you know there was a much larger endowment. There was much greater effort being made to involve the town people and the town people did not seem any alternative ways of maintaining those services. Would I be supportive of finding efficiencies? Yes would I be supportive of cutting staff only if it made sense? There are issues with everything. Is Brewer passing? No I can't think of anything more exciting. So then I'll ask the final question. Fundraising and advocacy on behalf of the library is a really big part of what the trustees do. Could you speak a bit about how you would advocate for the Jones in this role? Well I would hope that the Board of Selectmen would be supportive and to the extent that I could provide information or an approach that was reasonable to all of you I would try to do that. Beyond that there are any number of different kinds of activities that can be used for fundraising. I don't know how far they are currently going on. I know that there is a research now going on about alternatives and opportunities available in fundraising and I know since I don't know anything about what is happening on that I can't comment on that. If there is a way to increase the endowment or increase the yield of that endowment I would want to look into that. If there are ways to increase the number of people who are providing voluntary support you know through the friends or through other mechanisms would want to do that. There are some libraries which get specific grants for activities that they do. I don't know how much of that is going on so I can't give anything specific about that. But in each of these areas there are opportunities and one should look at them. Thank you. All right everyone has had an opportunity to ask a question who wanted to ask a question and so now Mr. Pam if you would like to make a closing statement of up to one minute. I hope I have been reasonably clear. I am better at advocating for some things than I am at myself so I hope this does not disqualify me. There are I think important reasons for having a strong library in any town but in particular in a town which has the kind of interest in intellectual life as well as the entertainment that comes from CDs DVDs books on tape and all of the other forms of information sharing that occurs through a library. It is important that it be as strong and as available as possible. Thank you very much. All right so the other thing that is specified in Mass General Law is that this vote be by roll call and so I am going to call on each member. Again I'm going to alternate. When I call your name you'll state your choice and your choice you really only have two choices. Your choices are Mr. Pam or to abstain. So when I call your name please offer your choice. Mr. Sarrett. Mr. Pam. Ms. Brewer. Mr. Pam. Mr. Hoffman. Mr. Pam. Ms. Stein. Mr. Pam. Ms. Ely. Mr. Pam. Mr. Hayden. I'd like to offer an appreciation for Mr. Pam's very direct and useful answers and I'd like to defer my vote to let a library trustee put it over the top. There's one in every crowd isn't there? Mr. Erickson. Mr. Pam. Thank you. Mr. Hayden. Mr. Pam. Mr. Wald. Mr. Pam. So Keith is Mr. Pam and you've unanimously won the election of this esteemed joint body. Thank you very much for participating in this. Thanks to all the library trustees and the select board for participating in this. As I said it does sort of seem like a technicality but at the same time I think that this has led to a very interesting discussion and I hope that it's helpful for you. You will need to get sworn in by the town clerk before you can take part in your duties as a library trustee so do make sure that you do that and again thank you very much for your interest in serving. The town clerk will be aware of this vote. I'm sorry. The town clerk will be aware. Yes we will make sure that she is. Thank you all. Mr. Hayden. I think the chair needs to adjourn his meeting now. Thank you. Mr. Sarrett would you like to adjourn your library trustee meeting? If not. Is there a motion to adjourn the library trustees meeting? I'm moved. I'm moved. Is there a second? Second. All in favor? Placing both. We're going to adjourn to one of the prior names established. In that case select board. All right thank you very much library trustees adjourn at 727. Ms. Brewer has a question. Just in terms of our records it definitely is section 11 if we could somehow specify that when we did this vote we did it because of the vacancy caused by the resignation of Emily Lewis under MGL you know somehow so it's in our minutes right even though even though you know I'm not sure what happened per se yeah we don't need the motion we just need the vote but somehow I think our minutes should reflect those that correct I'm not sure why that had a mistake in it but we've been referring correctly to this on the agenda and everywhere that's referring to resignations that's what the notice of vacancy is a different section the right procedure to select the replacement is section 11 exactly but my point is when the minutes are kept for this particular meeting they will there is not a motion that for this particular item I want the minutes to reflect that particular MGL and the fact that Emily Lewis resigned that's all I'm asking the minutes reflect those facts that we all know but you know it doesn't have to be added to the minutes John I mean to the motion it's not there is no motion right in there I think we're clear on this okay moving right along okay so 720 item it is now almost 730 we have public works issues mr. mooring is here welcome hello good evening so I'm here to talk about the Pellum Road bridge this is a project mass hobbies and working on for quite a while they've finally agreed on what they want for easements from the neighbors and so we're here to accept them actually the first thing we have to do is the sewer commissioners the sewer commissioners need to grant an easement to the project and then the select board needs to accept that easement the in your packet you should have a drawing of all the easements there's a little easement down in the left corner that's yellow it should be yellow unless yours is black and white that little yellow one is the one the sewer the sewer commissioners have to grant for the project all right so we're granting this and then we're accepting it as a select board is that right correct all righty then I think it's some good hats you could put on for sewer commissioners and then okay so this is this is taking care of a bunch of little teeny pieces that have to happen in order for this bridge work to proceed we do have a bunch of information about this in our packets as well as a nice color coded map dealing with all our different easements so before mr. stein makes the motion is everybody clear on what we're doing here okay mr. stein how about you make the sewer commissioner motion I want to make sure I've got the right one is that the first yes okay I move that the select board grant a temporary construction easement am-te-1 on land located on pelham street as shown more particularly on the plan and title quote plan of land in the town of amherst hamster county massachusetts main street and pelham road altered and laid out by the town of amherst prepare end quote prepared by surveying and mapping consultants inc dated august 2012 to the town of amherst for the pelham road bridge reconstruction project second for the discussion mr. aiden just that this is this looks like builds on the the work of town meeting or town meeting approvals for taking these easements we took the last last fall last fall I just avoid that out other questions or comments on favor say hi hi hi that's unanimous and so next what are we doing mr. more so we actually now need to accept this easement which you just granted and then some several other easements the school committee was asked to give some permanent easements and some temporary easements along the fort river because the fort river school actually abuts the river right here so they granted two permanent easements and two temporary easements and then we have two neighbors mr. luddy and goldstein who have also been asked to grant easements the luddies are granting two permanent easements and three temporary easements and then the goldsteins are granting one two temporary easements one has a different name but uh they're two temporary easements the whole purpose of all these is so there's enough room to work on the slopes and align the channel proper or protect the channel properly and actually work over the side of the the right away which is actually very close to the bridge is a very narrow right away and then there's also a temporary uh pedestrian bridge that'll be installed and so a couple of these easements actually accommodate where the temporary pedestrian bridge will be great questions or comments for mr. mooring everyone knows what we're doing mr. aiden yeah sort of getting in front of it this time again these these additional easements i see are very familiar from from town meeting yes right mr. stein would like to make the motion i move that the select board execute an order of taking and accept the permanent easements and temporary easements shown on the plan entitled quote plan of land in the town of amherst hamster county massachusetts main street in pelham road altered and laid out by the town of amherst end quote prepared by surveying and mapping consultants ink dated august 2012 which easements are granted or acquired by the town for the pelham road bridge reconstruction project as authorized by the vote taken under article 12 of the november 9th 2011 special town meeting second further discussion well in favor say aye aye that is unanimous thank you so we actually have three three packets i need signing okay so the first one you sign the left side and the right side and then the next one next two you just sign one page okay because remember your sewer commissioners and then your select board we'll mess it up and would you like to give us the paving update while we're doing our signing we figured since you're here we could just have you talk about what all the ongoing construction is around uh town so folks know the status of things and what to expect and look forward to so uh just we got off to a late start with our paving contracts this year because of some issues with the appropriations from the state and then there was some delays in getting the proper word back from the state that we could go ahead and proceed so we were supposed to start this week paving uh the con both contractors were delayed and they will start next week next monday the sundaline road the one contractor has been doing some minor prep work there but the recycling hot in place recycling contract will be in next monday to start that road uh cherry lane and lower cottage street will be reclaimed starting next week and we'll probably have the base paved by the end of the week so it will no longer be a dirt road um the top coat will probably go down a little later maybe a week or so later town hall lot will be paved the second week of october the gay lord sidewalk will be put in the third week of october uh looks like the third week of october will also be when they mill lincoln avenue south pleasant street university drive and north pleasant street will go shortly after sundaline road and we don't have an exact schedule for when they'll what order they're going to go in but sundaline roads the first road they'll do and then they'll go to one of the other four and they'll be done by the second by the end of the second week of october and that's as long as it doesn't rain so it's supposed to rain this wednesday which may push us off one day to start because the contract was working in other places so that's the annual paving contract if you have any other questions the main street project still going on and akins is still going on questions or comments from mr moore okay mr could i request that you put a sign next to where um if you're coming um from south hadley towards the circles there's a sign that says two bay road and people who don't know that 116 is uh to the left at that point could end up very confused and i've had a number of people asked me about that i would gladly do that if i could if you could i have no control over the signage and the intersection right now the state controls what signs are going up and what signs will be put up so i'll make a comment to them but other than that i can't guarantee it okay all right well thank you any other questions or comments from mr moore all right thank you very much you're welcome we are almost done signing is this it there's more right so uh well we finish these up um mr mucanti would you like to start talking about the reallocation of cdbg funds on recommendation uh yes thank you and uh you do have in your packet a memorandum to me from dave zomek uh on this issue uh we had uh some monies from our 2011 cdbg award that were originally uh allocated for property acquisition related to affordable housing a parcel off of west street for a variety of reasons that is not able to move forward therefore there's 205 000 of cdbg funds that are subject to reallocation and it's per terms of the federal grant there are deadlines of the end of this calendar year to use those monies or there they need to be returned uh to washington uh in anticipation of that uh the cdbg advisory committee through our normal process posted a public hearing and on august 23rd heard presentations on i believe seven proposals for potential reuse of those monies uh the board uh determined uh you know applicability to cdbg uh priorities and identified three top priority projects for recommended funding uh to me that i want to share with you for whatever feedback you can give me before we move uh as a town to proceed the first uh recommended project is uh for 95 000 and that would go to replace windows and doors at a amherst housing authority project uh the gene elderhouse at nine chestnut court and this is a this is a accessibility barrier removal project second is uh 20 000 to the emmerced survival center uh would go to purchase a walk-in cooler freezer uh at their new center well they've done a marvelous job with fundraising and their poise to open their new building at the beginning of uh 2013 this is another key piece of equipment uh that will serve the uh users of the survival center and it is a most appropriate use of community development block grant money the third item recommended for funding is a total of 90 000 and this would be to the town of amherst uh and this would go for mitigating hazardous material removal and also demolition of the house and barn uh at the hawthorne property at 235 east pleasant street this uh proposal as you know that property was purchased by the town a couple years ago with the support of town meeting for three uh three future uses affordable housing on the front frontage portion of the lot on east pleasant street uh preservation of open space for a portion of the property and then recreation uses in the back this allocation of 90 000 allows us to proceed get a step closer on the creation of two affordable units on the front property this house uh has gone through a demolition delay process and then an extensive feasibility study to determine the feasibility of saving some of all of it for historic preservation purposes with the ultimate goal of reusing or or building new to create affordable units town engaged uh consultant to study that potential reuse came back with some estimates that are in the five to six hundred thousand dollar range in terms of preserving and then restoring into just two affordable housing units and a very high price tag it's certainly doable but at a very high price tag i also asked the historic commission to look at this issue and offer some advice and recommendations and their memorandum is attached to this packet of information as well and their basic conclusion was uh that it wasn't uh feasible uh to salvage uh the house and the barn in an affordable way and really the bottom line to me in the end is the goal here is to create affordable units and so by definition that needs to be done in an affordable way and this is a way for us to uh clean up that site and allow us to uh take action steps in calendar 13 we hope in the creation of two affordable units you can anticipate assuming this proceeds that there'll be a community preservation act proposal to solicit proposals for the creation of two units on that property we think that can be done at a substantially lower cost per unit that will attract multiple potential bidders on such a project whereas the price tag of preserving and renovating and and some building of new is just cost prohibitive in terms of the agencies we've talked to who might normally have an interest in in such an affordable housing project it just wasn't seen as feasible so that's the basis of uh the recommendations and we're ready to proceed and i wanted to give the select board the benefit of that briefing before i proceed further thank you so the memo as you mentioned is in our packets and also includes uh four projects that were presented that uh are not being recommended to proceed the the seven projects were ranked in order of recommendation by community development committee and the reasons for not proceeding with the other ones and for ranking them as uh as was done is included in the memo does anyone have any questions or comments from mr. musey miss brewer the reason that i had asked for some additional material to be placed on our desk tonight and to be up to be uploaded to the packet was because i wanted to recognize the extra effort the the planning department had gone to and the members of the public who turned out for a public forum that was held on june 19th to discuss the results of the cultum architects study the same material that's here which is on the hawthorne web page which as you all know we spent a lot of time working on in the past so i just wanted to make that connection for everybody to make it clear that it wasn't only at cdbg only a historical commission there was also a whole another separate public forum that had been held outside of funding issues just to talk about so that bruce colden could talk about what all they figured out and peter jessup was there speaking a little bit for you know on his perspective both from cpa and habitat etc and it was it was a well-attended meeting and i think people i think it's fair to say that people there accepted you know that that was the reality that it was just going to be too expensive to do it that way so thank you that extra information was very helpful uh and gave great context other questions or comments mr wilde just in that vein in part because i shared the original demolition hearing on that structure and then more recently attended a meeting with mr misanti mr zomek uh mr malloy and uh mr jessup you know this was this is i think this is an example of how the process works properly the demolition delay was imposed primarily as a sort of precautionary measure because there are no immediate plans to demolish anyway and it was clear from the start the building was in very tough shape and again you know people may say why do you do this the answer is that you have to judge things based on their intrinsic intrinsic significance but also their degree of integrity and as the report from the historical commission explains the integrity of the building was compromised to begin with that would have been further compromised by the process of renovation rehabilitation and then it's about affordable housing when you're talking about six hundred thousand dollars for two units you're approaching the median house price and amherst anyways that's not affordable and it's a question of priorities and the goal here was affordable housing so this was a very uh you know not a not a totally pleasant decision but a necessary and sound one i think the process worked well all the all different parts played their well well their roles very well the committee cdbg uh the public and so forth thank you very much um and i'll note mr uh hayden you could probably grab that other microphone from the table from the library trustees and then you guys wouldn't have to share anymore okay other questions other questions or comments about the recommendations for mr musanti anyone before miss bruer okay miss bruer yeah anyone before miss bruer come on she was on the top again um i i want to make sure i don't miss speak since i just received this information today but um i had forwarded to the rest of you that i'd also just received today that it was the deadline for the next round of cdbg proposals in general so this is reallocation of money that we weren't able to spend before but the next round of money which would include money for non-social service activities which we can't call capital we have to call non-social service activities um and i do not see that any of the four items that were not recommended are in fact on that list so this is not something that looks like we'll be revisiting anytime soon whereas we may have made that assumption simply due to the timing it does not appear to me that any of them are on the list of proposals for non-social service activities for 2013 money but maybe as they get fleshed out you know next round after that other questions or comments all right this is about select board feedback to the town manager on these recommendations that have had a public hearing process but um if members of the public would like to comment miss greeny come forward please good evening my name is whaling greeny i just have a very quick question now if the fund's going to be spent to take down the buildings is there any plan in the future to build affordable housing on the site after it's demolished thank you if uh things go according to schedule uh you can expect the demolition to probably take place sometime during the month of november we have had staff already begin looking at preparing a cpa funding request uh in time for the annual cpa projects consideration which would be later this fall and over the winter for possible action as early as the annual town meeting in may so i think it's quite likely you'll see a proposal that will be considered for funding for affordable housing purposes by the cpa committee in this round thank you other questions or comments all right so uh mr musanti has brought these to us for our feedback lack of feedback uh suggests that we're good with all of this miss burr has given us more context but uh the memo lays out the rationale for all of this very clearly does anybody want to speak to anything uh other than support for mr musanti moving forward mr hayden um no i would like to support it but um the the comment that i would make is that mature that we got which included a transcript or a minutes of the meetings was very helpful for somebody who couldn't be there to understand what was what was happening and sort of make it easy to take a decision thank you and i appreciate mr wild's points very well about the uh the process that he was speaking sort of specifically to the demolition process but really the whole process for this uh it was quite sound quite robust and so thanks to all involved consider the feedback supportive there you go all right next up we have uh review and finalize fy 13 performance goals okay so at our last meeting let me pull up my correct document at our last meeting we talked about the goals that we have been talking about all summer um and we had a couple of specific things to think about we agreed at that meeting to think about goal number three part b um and that was about gathering information about strengths and weaknesses and municipal service delivery um our discussion last time was around whether we were talking about active or passive collection of such feedback and whether we were talking about kind of the quality of town services in general or the act of soliciting the feedback on them um so so we're all supposed to chew on that so i have chewed on that and this is something that i believe that i initiated this years ago years ago seems like so very long ago now um and and i consider it to be uh active feedback from the public about town service delivery so something that you could answer the question um how are you soliciting feedback from the public about municipal service delivery but i seem to be the only one who feels strongly about that so uh unless other people have chewed on this and decided that is also an important goal i think it's important to um to get rid of any ambiguity about this finally so i'm willing to give it up if this is if this is something that i sort of see in this way and nobody else does then that's perfectly fine with that because clarity is more important than anything um so that's where i am does any has anybody else decided that they feel strongly that uh that being able to answer that question what actions are you taking in order to increase feedback about municipal service delivery that that is or is not an important a goal mr he well as i as i've masticated on that um i i i don't have an answer directly but um i maybe i would make a point that i i i tried to to bring up last time and that is that we do have i was gonna say mechanisms but really we have information that that could be could be used to indicate exactly that so sort of back up a little bit i mean the reason for the question is that one of the most important things that the town does is deliver services and so you know to determine or to gauge its success you'd like to know how well it's you know delivering um and and so that is that is important and valuable valuable the uh on one hand on the other hand um we have there are resources already in place that might be pulled together a little bit differently and that maybe that's your question is how to pull them together into something that we can gauge more precisely that's not my question my question is um do we do we want to keep this as a goal my question is if this is a goal do would we agree that that it is then mr musanti's problem to figure out how we gauge and collect the information um so so at this point the question is we either agree that this is a goal that is important and is defined as what what are you doing to collect public feedback on municipal service delivery or we don't so so basically you need to weigh in on whether you think that goal as defined as such you want to keep it or not and i'm i'm hearing that people aren't crazy about keeping it um then the answer clearly is no unless we're much more clear about what it is that we're asking to gather okay miss burr i feel like that comments exactly the same one we had before and instead of what i feel like is some progress maybe because it reflects what i think which is i totally agree with miss okief's statement that she made about what we are looking for so i think we absolutely need to keep it as a goal and i think it absolutely is not something that we currently gather in any fashion random letters that say what about the stop sign did you do something about stop sign or not what i'm looking for what i'm looking for is something with again without prescribing what it is it's not we know it's not suggestion box we already had that conversation but it's something that's saying here's something i tried in a particular department we've had some concerns raised about x y and z so we tried out this one way of gathering input and it's not this whole huge thing for the entire town every single department blah blah blah blah it's a way of looking at one of the many ways that we really interact perhaps directly with the public something that perhaps has been a concern that hasn't been timely as well as it might have been or has been awkward at some point and to say this is what we did to try and make this one work better and that would be great i'm not looking for a huge overall system i'm looking for an attempt to measure something that we think is worth measuring that shows that we're doing better at something or that we have a way of addressing it if we aren't expressed perfectly what i'm trying to say mr wallam it's time mr wallam pretty much on the on the same page i agree with the chair's interpretation of the goal which is progress beyond last time i think that's clear now and i pretty much feel the same way miss brewer does i guess my only question would be uh the town manager has a lot of goals already we have other things we're trying to accomplish so i'd be a little bit hesitant about making it a a major undertaking uh so i think either if we if we are clear that we understand it in a limited way as miss brewer suggested or if maybe we were to phrase it in such a ways to suggest uh i don't know this it doesn't get the whole thing uh developing a plan for such or preliminary phase i mean i would think the other we're sometimes unclear about goals and sometimes unclear about what it means to fulfill them so i'd be just want to be very very cautious about not making a large open-ended demand here that can't be realized this time this sort of came up in terms of human resources and maybe that's the way to do it for next time because we are in a state of change and there are a number of things that are going on and maybe that sort of input from the people involved um might be useful i'm thinking of people not only um like ever radway but um leslie tholsberry and maybe case logar because she has seen it before i don't know quite how to mesh those two ideas but that's a case where they did come up that we thought getting some input beyond um what we had would be useful so maybe that's the first place to look i don't know so i'm not sure what you're saying well the idea that elissa put forth was that this kind of feedback would come from one particular area and i'm saying that perhaps that area ought to be human resources okay so so i think we're we're still not on the we're still not all talking about we're thinking of the town at large yeah so so i'm thinking very much in as far in the line with what miss brewer was saying so that you know um mr mucent might put out to his department heads you know find ways of of uh figuring out if the public is happy with what we're doing or so it and and i'm talking completely hypothetically here and not giving him a list of things to do but you know maybe one department the thing that they might do is they would call people they dealt with to follow up to see how things went or maybe somebody would send out a letter to you know everyone who passed through that department to see how things went or you know maybe it maybe it's a specific event or a specific you know something you know a point in time for which you're trying to get feedback about how the town did that um the example i used last time is you know in kind of the corporate world people say okay how are we doing how do we do better and they find ways of finding out from their customers and as mr wall said you know you could sort of do this in this like global town wide how's the town doing everything it's doing which i don't think is is that's not what my intention is with this but it's just to say okay how do we as a town how are we taking steps to try and find out what how we're doing in the different ways not not holistically but but in general to show that uh or i said in general but i but i can even mean specifically you know that we have found ways to try and um get a sense from the public for whom this whole operation is about serving how they're feeling about how we're all and doing our jobs and by we all i really mean that the you know the departments of the town so you know if you had issues with with how your street was being maintained or something like that maybe there was some mechanism for for finding uh for finding out how the public feels about that if you had issues about how your conservation trails were being maintained that there would be just some sort of a feedback mechanism um but again nothing nothing global like we're talking about the the facility's plan or something like that just you know indicators that that you you're trying anything to get feedback on municipal service delivery miss bruer yeah i mean because along those lines i really feel like although in so many ways we are not a business yet at the same time we do have customers we serve and if we don't call this out as a specific thing as we're concerned about strengths and weaknesses i think we're not doing part of our job because we're not drawing attention to it i think everybody comes to work every day assuming that they're doing the very best they can but they know there must be ways of tweaking something that would work a little better for people somewhere so if they can come up and again at you know building on what they so keep said individual departments would do different things it's not necessary and i'm not even saying every department i'm not expecting that he would come back saying every department did a project even just suggesting a way to start a place to start doing that so that it becomes part of our culture that it is an ongoing thing it's not a one-time and done goal for me it's an ongoing part of our culture that that's something we try and figure out ways to appropriately measure not an mcast measurement but to appropriately measure mr. Hayden and miss stein since we're kind of on the fence here i think the the mcast reference is apt what you measure is what you're going to get and if it's if it's a measurement of popularity okay if on the other hand it's a measurement of the percentage of roads that need resurfacing the number of potholes the percentage of potholes that are filled within you know one day of being reported of four days of being reported these are more tangible parts of the service that i think providing i'm not sure that i'm not sure that that's satisfaction clearly satisfaction is the object that they're satisfied with the services our neighbors are satisfied with the services but that's such a an intangible difficult thing to measure um whereas uh you know i'm still going to advocate at some level for um paying attention to the the precise measurements that we already do have and maybe um if there's a goal that it involves expanding on those um i mean i am dissatisfied if i report a pothole today because it broke my radiator even if it's repaired tomorrow whereas sort of in the general satisfactory um uh uh doing your words and in part of having the work of filling potholes done in a satisfactory manner that's okay i don't have much to add my point i guess was reflecting staff comment and that sort of thing and not looking to the public at large but just sort of what was going on in town government um so i think i'm torn about this one i i can't imagine what kind of a instrument would be used to to allow the townspeople to put that kind of input in it just seems a little bit a little bit hard to fathom what it would be okay so i think we dump it because we need to uh you know five of us need to um rate him on the success of this next year and if at least two of us aren't even thinking about this the same way that three of us are then there's no point um so um i think that mr musanti is hearing what we're saying he is either saying oh thank goodness they got rid of that or or i don't know it um and and sort of see what he does with it um but i don't think since we're we're clearly not clear on this uh and and we've tried this for a couple of years now and not been clear on it i think it's time to dump it and go forward with it just as being rephrased as um basically it'll be three a that will just be a sentence instead of having a an a as part of it mr waltz is there is there a way mentally or bureaucratically to file this for as a reminder that we still want to return to it at some point or sure you mean as something to think about next year right or beyond because it's something that we can help to think about along the way also because you know if we're imposing a goal we should have some suggestions about how it could be achieved but because i think it's a worthy objective we're just not ready to do it right now apparently okay all right yep i can make a note of that all right so we're going to strike it any other comment on that okay good so that's three is done okay so i believe that we were done with all of the other goals that are presented on our document at the last meeting we were presented with two goals from um from the public and that we were also supposed to think about and um make recommendations on tonight so would anyone like to make recommendations on that miss stein well um i thought the goal of of searching for affordable housing was a good goal i thought there were i i think i sent um a comment to you by email after the meeting that that seemed like a worthwhile additional goal i think it's something we work towards um but i still thought it might be useful for the town manager to sort of be looking um for ways to increase affordable housing we know we have tremendous concerns about um if we fall below 10 for example so i think that that is a worthwhile goal i don't the way it was written and unfortunately i didn't bring it um thank you alissa um i didn't feel that um that the subsections um where it it made specifics specific mentions of how to do that or or including i i thought the goal of looking for affordable making amherst and more affordable community was a good idea other comments miss brook um knowing that the answer is probably no because i didn't come up with specific wording um again i wasn't i was not comfortable with the specific goals that were laid out here in terms of the x number of units um and the the way of approaching you mass but in the spirit of those things i do think it would be quite reasonable given the effort that we have all expended that we do throughout our community committee system that we do at town meeting i was trying to think if there was a way to sort of parallel it to our goal eight have a similar same way we talk about green efforts to talk about affordable housing so that it's a sort of a constant theme for us whereas we were very specific um in in the goal here for eight it does not say go and build a solar farm on x property and it doesn't say make sure you get at least 2.1 kilowatts by the end of next year we'll give you a not satisfactory what it does say is it's a it's a constant sort of touchstone and i think that we could do the same thing with the affordable housing concept as a start at least perhaps it would get more specific at another time but that would be something that would keep it in the forefront as a reminder to everyone that this is a really important town wide goal and all the things he already reports to us frankly associated with affordability would fit under it it's not really asking for something new at this point it's just asking for a continued focus okay mr walton i could accept it in that way too i think the original proposals miss stein said with all the specifics is not something we need and it is something we're doing the town manager has spent a great deal of effort on the current shelter as we all know uh this is part of the master plan as is the green uh policy as a whole so i think in the sense that miss brewer described as a reminder of things that we're doing constantly it's good but i'd be wary of attaching too many specifics to it i was just going to to to suggest as mr walton hinted at that the the language parallel the master plan goals that we already have along those lines you're saying you would want to make the language do that or that it already does i would want to make the language resemble it a little bit more and and then sort of the the you know where we're going with you know more general and sort of bigger ideas i think is is in the right in the right direction okay um so i think i share the the sense that everybody has expressed so far um so my discomfort also is in the the details of this um because i think that in a lot of ways it was kind of getting out in front of the um the housing production plan and kind of the community-wide goals that are going to be determined and and that we're collecting data on um but i would be satisfied with the first paragraph of number one that reads the town manager shall help amherst become a more affordable community with more housing being created that is safe decent and affordable he will initiate and advocate for new housing efforts and programs um i might tweak that wording a little bit but i would i think that's i think as far as expressing a value of the community in the same way that we have with the green goal is a good one um but the the specifics so basic i would just get rid of everything after that um because i think that the second one that's a the concept that falls under the first one um so i didn't i hadn't considered this option or else i might have come up with with other words um but i i think how do people feel about that first one with potentially tweaked words shall keep amherst shall help amherst become a more affordable community um mr sandi any thoughts about this as you hear us well yeah i think clarity on uh you're really talking about housing related uh issues um and you know it does express the value of the community as articulated in the master plan and elsewhere um and has without it being an explicit select board goal i'm not arguing against that but um movement on the shelter the uh the engagement of the consultant who's right in the middle of helping us create a housing production plan the tangible creation of affordable units on long metal drive uh 42 units at olympia oaks in development etc um but you know i i understand where you're going on with the analogy to the green being green um so then the specifics follow that kind of restatement and articulation by the select board that it is a select board priority you know that provides greater encouragement okay so i propose that that we um we accept the other document as we've talked about those goals are all set and dealing with the the 3b thing that we talked about tonight um and that we work with the concept of that first part of number one and even though i hate to drag this on longer um i'll bring back proposed wording for us if it needs to be tweaked and perhaps it doesn't but i just i hadn't been thinking about it as just sort of pulling that part of it out um so i'm not i gotta i have to continue to chew on a little bit um those words if if we're okay with that miss brewer i i appreciate your compulsion to chew on it a little longer i would be fine with doesn't have to be perfect i would be fine with just sticking with that unless mr hayden is planning to provide you exact wording from the master plan i would suggest that we just go with it because uh it's done so it as a concept i think we're very much agreeing on the concept at the same time when we think about how we parse all of these words because they become the words that then we're individually parsing in our evaluations next year i just want to make sure that we're good with them from that perspective so um if you wouldn't mind that we stretch this out a little bit okay okay i suggest that you bring the complete set of goals with that intercalated and then we can just vote it and be done with it because i see you ten pardon then we'll have a nice even ten goals and uh because i think elissa is right i don't think you ought to chew and chew i'd rather um you had the time to finish your annual report done with that frankly i just because i don't think i know i think it's well worded uh if i thought it there was something dire i would say so but i i just don't think it's sort of like me in the minutes you really don't need that comma there okay um i hear what you're saying you're saying stephanie let it go um um i just don't want this to come back to bite us next next summer when we're talking about it so um so if you don't mind we can always change it next year so will you bring us back a nice a final version since i've kind of ruined mine um for f y 13 including this then yeah so i think that it's clear it's not as though mr santi has nothing to do and i mean he knows what the the the goal doesn't have to work on anything but the intentions of the select board are very clear and the the goals are clear and just the fact that he doesn't have the memo in his hand does not right um doesn't change anything okay miss greeny welling greeny uh thank you very much for your accepting the first part of the language and i'm here to um just to kind of ask you if you'll consider given the housing needs are not equal the housing shortage is not equal across the board even the affordable housing is the goal but as you know that there's an extreme shortage of housing for people who are currently homeless and last time when i was here i was able to rattle off 16 people who were identified by the town of emmerced to be currently homeless so if you would allow me to just quickly in 2005 uh came to kowsky who came to the select board asking because there was a homeless woman in our town and he was torn did not know what to do so that was seven years ago and this past seven years we had gone through three town managers first miss fairy del castello then mr larry shaffer and now mr john mucanti so in three town managers of seven years in the past this particular person this woman who had prompt mr um was a kowsky to come to the select board to ask us to address the homeless issue this person is still in the town of emmerced is still homeless so that's just to show you that this shortage is very severe so i ask you to put in this priority in your language understanding the housing shortage is not equal the housing needs is not equal so i would like to ask you to consider saying that the town manager should prioritize the housing shortage of residents and ensure that safe decent and affordable housing be available put that as part of your sentence one that you would like to add in other words recognize the priority and a severe shortage in this matter that i would like to ask you to consider thank you very much okay so i think we're good on what we're expecting next time and hopefully that will be the last time we discuss the goals until it's time for a private report before next thing you know okay good thank you very much then where are we town managers report mr mucanti thank you i've got several things to update you on first uh you know that on friday last friday i announced the approval expanding the home emergency homeless shelter at first baptist church by six women only beds for the shelter period that will be this november first through april thirtieth of next year this increases the capacity at that shelter from 16 beds 22 beds i very much appreciate uh select boards uh discussion and feedback and the feedback of others uh we've worked out some building code and other issues with the cooperation and coordination with uh pastor mozal jerry gates craig's doors people and uh we're poised to have the shelter open on november first and serve more people in town this winter i joined uh select board members o'keith broor and stein last night at the first baptist church for an open house that mr noonan mr gates and others hosted we also had a couple representatives from the housing and shelter and committee and it was good to see the site again and get another walk through with some of the specific improvements that'll be made made for the season so please to see where we are on that thank you very much and uh i'd like to thank the town manager for um for soliciting the slide boards feedback at the last meeting and i think for really hearing us for um what what we were looking for from that to be the the the greatest capacity that could be safely and practically accommodated and uh and i think that that went well um i do have to say that um i think we have to be very careful with this going forward and and we think about the relationship with um craig's doors um craig's doors is doing a fabulous job running the shelter for us and this has been a great year and we're looking forward to another great year um that whole process got very uncomfortable however i think that as a vendor of the town as as a an organization that's holding a very pricey contract for the town services once that turned into an active lobbying effort by that organization kind of against the town that was a very peculiar situation to get into and that was really um that was a very non-professional way of handling that and i think that when we think about partnering in the region when we think about what it means when we talk about dealing with these issues regionally uh it's very important to the other service providers to know that amherst's representatives the folks that we're doing business with the folks that are on the front lines of amherst's response to homelessness are um good and professional partners in that kind of effort and i think it's going to be very um concerning to the other folks that we need to be dealing with regionally if they need to worry about being in a situation where once you start disagreeing on things it becomes a like a strange public law being effort so um i just wanted to kind of let folks know that the this whole expansion thing in my opinion very much happened um despite the lobbying effort and not because of what we had was was facts and information to deal with um and then the rest of it uh made things unnecessarily complicated and and i think it could be damaging in the long term so i i just i just needed to get that out there questions or comments for mr misand here myself miss burr i was just going to say i said something not that eloquent but to that effect to the housing and sheltering committee because again reminding us that it's a fairly new committee it you know it came together it only has a couple of people on it that have been through these issues for a long time a lot of the people of not familiar with town politics and they were they were you know having a hard time understanding where do they fit into this because obviously they have some opinions on sheltering role but we also know that they're not managing the shelter in any fashion and how can they effectively provide feedback and we did see a memo come from their co-chair who has mike giles who unfortunately has had to step down due to other responsibilities but um but that was his last thing that he was able to send us i um do not mean to sound mean but um it was i thought it was very unfortunate at the black party to have people feel that an appropriate way of going about doing this was to ask people to sign serve it to sign petitions for eight more beds i thought that was not something we would do in any of our other types of dealings with other vendors in town and i thought perhaps it led people to i don't know why they did that i know they wore the stickers i don't like petitions i think petitions are generally not the way you get things done and i would definitely say that i agree that this happened in spite of those efforts not at all because of those efforts those efforts did not help this situation at all what helped this situation was people working through channels and working through the necessary process and all the necessary steps that needed to take place so i just think it's important you know this is we're all we're all kind of learning as we go along here and i think that this is maybe kind of just an important point in the development of of craigsdores as a vendor and how they're working with the town and how they'll be working with other organizations on behalf of the town to uh to just um kind of be thinking about this from kind of a more professional organization standpoint and not just as uh as advocates because people it's going to be very difficult to partner as we need to do regionally with folks if they are going to worry that they're going to be kind of lobbied against in that partnership that's not really how these things work all right other questions or comments about them well i just don't happen to agree with that take on things so i have to say that um i really think that whether we allow expansion of the homeless shelter was of great interest to members of community and i think the amount of email that we got favoring an expansion indicates that it was a policy decision that really mattered to a lot of people in town especially when they thought it wasn't going to happen um they recognized the need and i don't believe for a moment it's going to impact our regionalization efforts because i think north hampton has been doing things for a while with various kinds of um um establishments so i say like this and i don't see that we would be less apt to to undertake a regionalization effort with them because they have done something prior to the regionalization effort i mean we we both had health departments before we decided to go together on a regionalization one didn't preclude the other so um but i don't think we need to carry the discussion on any further i just think we have to be very careful how to distinguish what could be perceived as policy from what is just dealing with a vendor thank you okay we're gonna move on now next up okay uh safe and healthy neighborhoods update i wanted to give a couple of updates uh in our ongoing efforts to uh take meaningful action steps working with members of the community colleges and the university and others uh to make positive changes in some of our neighborhoods that are that are under stress and i wanted to say a couple things on rental property registration uh we've had a uh voluntary effort that was part of a letter uh mass mailing as well as an online registration effort that has resulted with well over a thousand properties being having information provided on their status and that's very helpful uh in our ongoing efforts to have good information about all of the properties in town we have had a concerted effort on our inspection services and health and fire inspection teams really on a complaint driven process um you know at any given time particularly in recent weeks there's 40 or more uh complaints that are being acted upon and i think we are beginning uh i know we are uh with the resources with your support in town meeting support that have been put in place uh becoming more responsive and timely responsive whether it's from the building department uh health uh health or fire on responding to those uh complaints that come in that are code and code related and otherwise uh one such proactive effort and i brought some extra copies of the of a of the handout uh from our health department um a brochure was created and leafleted in uh houses and rental units particularly those closest to the university campus looking at uh you know responsibilities uh about renting um um want to look for as tenants uh for basic safety needs uh some additional feedback about good neighbor uh practices uh rules and regulations and best practices on accumulation of trash and cleanup uh and some updated education efforts on uh the amount of furniture in particular that's stored outside and um we've had based on feedback from uh residents as well as our own feedback from staff out being in the neighborhoods all the time that we've had a decrease in the amount of exterior mattresses and furniture and overflowing trash kind of complaints in some of these neighborhoods that's not to say that there is no problem that's to say that there's some progress uh that is being made and there's a concerted ongoing effort uh that's underway it's complaint driven or just prevention in the first place through education and then a a more timely follow-up by primarily uh the health department our sanitarian uh when complaints do and those those issues are being dealt with faster so i'm pleased about that uh next i want to let you know that uh you know there's a real action agenda here uh whether it's rental registration some of the code enforcement issues uh there's bylaws of various types uh under various stages of development um i am intending to work with the chair and and uh bring forward ideally at your next select board meeting regular meeting on october 15th a summary of of a detailed action agenda over the next several months uh that would culminate in in a number of uh action proposals at the spring town meeting outline both uh substance and process in much more detail at your october 15th meeting thank you so this is something that uh town manager and i have talked about it there's a bunch of stuff going on internally in relation to this issue but the community doesn't know about it yet and the community is frustrated with these issues understandably i mean it's frustrating to all of us to to um to see some of the the problems that are ongoing um so to to find a way to comprehensively present this so that the community knows that this is being worked on in all of these different ways i think will be very helpful to folks um and that's why we've tried to uh prioritize these safe and healthy neighborhoods reports in general try and make them more detailed but we really need kind of a broader and more detailed overview at our next meeting so that was more than we could do at this meeting but just so you know that's coming up also uh just related to that on october the ninth i think it is if that's the tuesday i'm going to be speaking at amherst club about the town's safe and healthy neighborhoods issues also so this is this is really about letting folks know just how many resources just how much time how much staff how much creativity is being directed at this problem solving both in the short term and in the long term so look forward to that on the 15th questions or comments this time i'm just um i think it was alissa that asked for this police report um was it you that's part of my campus and community coalition stuff okay this one yep i'm i'm depressed by the statistics because i know how hard people have been working and i know how much it's been going on behind the scenes and it just seems like it gets worse and worse we'll get to that in a little while for with liaison reports but uh but yes thank you for mentioning that sorry i just thought that was supposed to be part of this miss poor so you're gonna bring this part it wasn't clear if this should be part of the safe and healthy neighborhood discussion or if it will be right part of the packet it was not clear yeah no it goes with the it goes with the university letter and the sign and the um collegian article were all pieces from my campus community coalition and then my other comment is in regards to the safe and safe and healthy neighborhood um report and it doesn't really fit in with the plan as you're outlining it but something that i think we should have clarified for us because it's come up now with both a neighborhood and a property owner who's talked about having private security and i think just as a board and as a community we need to understand what the limitations are those like what does that even mean i mean so they come and knock on my door so what what do i care um is it in my lease is it you know what are they what's their role in case that continues to i know it happened a couple of years ago it's happening now and hopefully it'll never be needed again but just to clarify where that fits that would be good okay all right next uh in your packet is a an update of the parking system uh issues where we are addressing one by one in the rollout of our new parking parking machines in the downtown and this is a status report really as of friday and i just wanted to highlight a couple of them there's some new software item b being loaded that will improve the speed of processing of a transaction because sometimes in the what seems like an interminable amount of time which really isn't but it's a matter of seconds but it's not infrequently is causing a customer to attempt to figure out if it's registered or trying to reverse an entry and that creates additional complications so this uh next update on the software we should make that issue much better there's some lighting issues in the lots and in town hall the power connectivity issue has been finished and the light fixtures are being scheduled for installation you'll notice when the town hall is paved that the lighting back there will be much better for example which has been a concern concern for some time we're also working with the parking machine manufacturer on an appropriate light fixture for the machines themselves because we've had complaints about visibility of the screen in the evening hours that's proceeding item e uh blue p lot signs that's the international parking symbol just greater identification of where our public parking spaces are in fact for those who aren't sure and that's part of a downtown wayfinding and sign project but it's been broken up into phases has been a staff group meeting that also included a representative from the business improvement district may have come up with some signage and banners for this phase one of this effort those are the those are the so you also included a a draft of informational sign oh yeah i'm sorry on the back side is a we're looking for feedback this is not the sign that has been ordered but this is a template for feedback and it's one of the uh one of the issues is um legibility or having the instructions right at eye level so that when you're doing your transaction into the machine we've looked at other communities as well and it's not uncommon for the kind of step-by-step you know procedure to be posted on a sign near the machine in addition to the on-screen display so this is a this is a uh a template that we're working on and any and all feedback to myself uh mr pooler would be great thank you miss burr i was just going to mention that um get there are obviously all these little things to be worked out but on the plus side when i called on on this on september 11th and said you know it says there's all free parking and the lot across from the library and they said yes we know we're working on that and like i got right through to a person i didn't identify myself and uh it was i was just a random caller and they were quite helpful over the phone like don't worry about it you know if you're going to be there longer than three hours then yes a parking enforcement person might come by but they had the whole thing worked out in terms of response rather than wow no so we're doing a good job responding to problems as well so that i thought that was a good test of it other questions or comments um i would just note that um the it's getting darker earlier so quickly so the lighting if that if that can be prioritized um that that's been people's biggest complaint i think the complaints kind of go away in the summer time because it stays light it's not a problem um but it will it's going to be so dark so if it's possible to kind of get a rush on that i think that would be very helpful okay okay next quick excuse me updates and a couple of studies that are underway first our housing uh study um we are using funds to create a housing production plan and the town has engaged uh Karen Sonneberg she's a housing and planning consultant from the eastern part of the state she's done these types of plans for 35 other communities in massachusetts including fairly recently northampton's housing plan very well regarded in the field the basic timeline of things is she is scheduled to be completing her housing needs assessment and you heard an example of that earlier in comment period about some needs in one one category of housing so there's a whole data gathering phase going on with town staff housing and shelter and committee umass and others on data gathering um they'll also be an evaluation of the town zoning by-law and how it helps uh either create challenges or identify strategies that help in the production of affordable housing uh we expect uh in terms of the public process here uh on october 24th there'll be a second meeting between the consultant and the housing and shelter and committee and that'll be a review of the consultant's draft needs assessment um there'll also be a public forum with the housing and shelter and committee the consultant and the planning board to hear from residents it's really looking at the draft uh or the draft of the draft uh and then december 1st is the expectation that a draft housing production plan will be submitted there'll be another public forum in mid december with the goal of having the plan finalized by new year's day so that's the housing uh study so that there she's involved full bore on this and uh there's a detailed timeline now to get get us to the finish line which is when the hard part starts now that we have a more organized plan identifying specific tangible ways we can fulfill the needs that have been uh identified thank you questions or comments miss brewer since this was the other thing elissa um got into associated with this particular project i just want to state that i had no idea that the town manager was going to do an update which is wonderful um at this particular meeting it worked out really well but the reason i was got involved in this to begin with is because i'm the liaison to the housing and shelter and committee they had asked back when the rfp was originally sent out for the whole thing back in july they sent out this this memo that never quite got to the select board and there was all this confusion and yada yada yada and we weren't meeting as often et cetera so finally by the time it was going to make it into our packet of course times had changed and so then i went to a couple more of their meetings and i said look i've got to write a cover to this because this is gonna it's changed a little bit and it lays out very specifically you know these three things will happen but actually those things have changed a little so i wrote one and guess what more it changed so nate fixed it all up for me i had written at the bottom all mistakes or elissa brewers not nate moly's and instead he just went ahead and fixed it all so um that's what you have in front of you that they've written september 21 at the top of that john has just gone over and he makes it sound so straightforward but when you consider all the different pieces that people were confused about and that people were confused about at these various meetings this tries to help address what some of those things are and but i think that your overview was terrific but that's just what that was about was trying to explain where they had been where they were headed and where we are now and i thought that was very helpful so thank you other questions or comments okay next okay next transportation task force study we had a committee that met several times in the late winter and through the month of june an rfp had gone out to engage a consultant to assist the committee develop a townwide transportation plan and keeping with the principles of the town's master plan there was only one bid received and the members of the task force felt pretty strongly that there should be another attempt to solicit potential interested firms that is the next step on this that rfp is going back out and we'll see if we can engage more firms on this so they haven't met since the end of june there is a consensus at that meeting back in june that there's no way we're going to finish this project by the end of calendar 13 they want to extend their term and i'm very open to that see this see this through questions or comments so refresh our memories this is the same or different than whatever the university was going to do for us as part of the gateway settlement it's it's similar but different i mean umass has their own transportation plan so that information and data is assisting the town effort doing something townwide so the university was going to do something for us or do something for them that they were going to give to us or something that is a transportation study for the town or for that general area the neighborhoods around the university yes and do we have that or not yet we do we do yeah and is that a public document it is a public document i'm not sure if it's posted though i think we've asked sure and i would like to see that yep okay good other questions or comments about transportation studies all right uh recent and upcoming thank you i want you all to thank ants i'm trying to catch your attention at five of nine ants is amherst neighborhood tree stewards and i had the pleasure of this past saturday the 22nd of joining a group of neighbors on woodside avenue maria hyman her husband helped organize this with alan snow and uh hope corollus and others from the public shade tree committee and this is our first real live group of neighborhood tree stewards so there were a woodside avenue it's a beautiful street but there's some big trees along that roadway that are old or dead or dying it was a neat identified working with alan snow our tree warden identified locations and species for tree replacement and saturday morning was a combination community gathering tree planting demo best practices and then the team of neighbors with with alan and the shade tree committee folks spent the rest of the morning planting 10 trees up and down woodside avenue and it's a great example of what we hope to see a lot more of over the next three years when we plant upwards of 2000 public shade trees in amherst and i just wanted to do a shout out on that for all the all the people who were involved to make that happen it really was a wonderful wonderful morning to see that that happening um also um equally as exciting to some letters will be going out in the next day or two to all of our licensed taxi companies in amherst the draft regulations are ready and as i indicated at our last meeting there'll be a process where those draft regulations are sent out to the taxi companies we'll be getting those to you electronically and we'll post them on the town website there are a couple of meetings with taxi company owners they'll be invited to those meetings they're happening i believe in the third week of october we'll get the specific dates in the letter to meet with town staff get some feedback on the draft regulations as a and you'll see the draft rags and we'll talk about them at your next meeting on the 15th as well and then we're hoping that we're in a position to have you be able to take a position on those and enact some updated regulations as early as your november 5th meeting for application for the renewals that go into effect jr one questions or comments about the taxi rig process all right and uh i'll stop there any other questions or comments from Mr. Musee about anything all right then member reports first member report is bcg update bcg had its first meeting of the fy 14 budget calendar planning process and the summary points are in your packet there are three the first one just summarizes the year end budget information that we already had a presentation on from uh mr pooler and miss aldrich at the end of august i believe it was and the third one is about upcoming meeting dates so those are kind of easy and obvious um the one that i wanted us to just pay some attention to is number two and that was about the 585 thousand dollars in additional state aid above what was budgeted this was part of this is something we had lobbied state government for this was about 65 million dollars if the if the governor and the legislature were really quite confident of having that money uh ahead of time to please add it to our bottom line of unrestricted general government aid as opposed to making a one-time appropriation in the fall which is what happened last year uh they didn't make the decision to do that until of course at the at the end of our budget process so uh so that was not incorporated into any of our plans so we have a balanced budget without that money um the recommendations from the town schools and libraries last spring because this is all for this year's money uh fi 13's money was that if we were to come up with revenue in excess of what town schools and libraries had budgeted for that that money would be put into reserves uh and consistent with the select board's budget policy guidelines to the town manager last year we said we wanted a balanced budget that didn't use reserves and that uh didn't have additional spending if we had additional revenue we wanted that to either go into reserves capital or opeb um so the select board has had these conversations multiple times and we haven't had any personnel changes uh unlike some of the other boards and committees uh in the meantime so what bcg is looking for is feedback from each of the boards and committees about the recommendation from uh mr musanti and from mr pooler that that five hundred and eighty five thousand dollars be the initial deposit in our uh created but unfunded opeb account and that this would happen at fall town meeting in the future perhaps as soon as spring town meeting will have a recommendation for how we might be funding that going forward uh that would be essentially a line item in the in the budget part of the warrant um in the same section as where we do our assessments to the hampton county retirement board uh things like that that would be some kind of opeb uh deposit we're currently undergoing a new actuarial evaluation of our opeb status so so that will change what whatever that giant number is of liability that we owe um but this is the recommendation is that that money uh consistent with what the policy has been to not spend any additional revenue that came in to put it in reserves to actually make that the specific kind of reserves which is to say opeb um and uh and to consider that for for fall town meeting that is the recommendation am i missing anything critical here mr musanti am i missing anything about the recommendation uh no so that's the that's the put out there for us to think about some questions or comments miss brewer so as your other bcg rep who had to both come late and leave early my favorite kind of meeting um associated with that i gave my usual yeah i don't really feel a terrible need to put the money in opeb speech which i know all the reasons for and against um but what i was and what i'm not clear now on is the timing i'm assuming that we're going to be going forward with a town meeting article and it would just be nice for bcg to help coordinate to help serve as a point of reference for the fact that every board's gonna have that discussion before they get to town meeting obviously but we would be taking a position on a town meeting article so i'm just a little confused about what the feedback mechanism is right now are we just waiting and having a discussion associated with a town meeting article for the fall about that specific amount of money and we're assuming all those and it's not really that bcg has to do something else right now other than have given everyone the alert that that's what's going to happen right and it's sort of a check in with all of the home boards and committees as i said there's been a lot of personnel change on school committee and library trustees the same group that agreed to you know we wouldn't spend it we would put it in reserves we wouldn't make a recommendation to town meeting to fund new spending um those folks haven't checked in on that so it's a bigger question for them than it is for us unless we've had some sort of dramatic you know change of heart that like suddenly we want to you know build a half million dollar something um so but but really any kind of feedback about it because the recommendation will ultimately go forward based on feedback either as putting the money directly into um free cash or stabilization or to put it into opab so if all the boards and committees say opab i don't think so then it would just be a reserves appropriation i guess i just wanted to to follow to follow on that then that i would hope that they all remember to share as we heard and i had not fully processed before this particular meeting which was that if we put the money in there although we can't just treat it like other reserves we can use it for current health care costs and i think that is a that to me is a huge piece of the discussion as well so even if we were to decide that no we're not going to have a regular schedule of doing this which would be against what the finance committee i'm sure will recommend to us but if even if we were to decide that it's not like the money's just stuck sitting there waiting for some day to be spent there are ways that we are perfectly authorized to spend it now on current retiree health care costs as i understand it yeah mr pooler uh went through that a little bit to the benefit of the budget coordinating group because there are the current page ago related retiree health and other benefit costs and then there's the unfunded future cost liability of those that we're trying to develop a funding plan so that it doesn't consume a greater and greater share of the operating budget over a long period of time like 40 years right and so i appreciated that it's not as flexible as it might at first appear right so miss brewer and others have have expressed the idea you know what if the landscape changes entirely as far as how opeth how uh not how opeth how this um liability is considered and how uh what approach one takes to retired uh health care retiree's health care benefits um the the bottom line is any money appropriated to this trust fund can be used for retiree health benefits it's not like it's sitting in some it's sitting there until you get up to your magic valuation number or whatever it can always be used for that so so you know you have some kind of sea change in in sense of whatever and that just means you could be taking the money that it serves very much like our health care trust fund um you could be using the money from there in future budgets if that was necessary miss time well the point that i was going to make is i've heard people say well we have a million dollars extra we ought to spend it for this or that and what i think it's really important is that people realize we have these liabilities that we have to deal with sooner or later and it's just going to eat up more of our budget later so that any dents we could make would help thank you any other thoughts or feedback and uh just so you know we will have another meeting before bcg's next meeting bcg's next meeting is the 18th so we're meeting on the 15th um which is after our october 11th meeting where we get the uh budget projections from mr pooler and mr musanti so that will all give us kind of a greater context for any additional feedback we might want to give so i think we're kind of where we are at this point unless people want to mention other things but i will bring this up again on the 15th so that we have that uh information from the october 11th meeting okay liaison and representative reports anyone miss raden i have i have a couple um first of all i want to report on the um recycling and refuse management committee's summit meeting um rather i think an unusual um um organization of it uh they had um we invited jim to come and moderate um so that in the time that they in the course of the evening um they were able to the rmc was able to identify the needs and and and establish goals for zero waste um for for amherst becoming a zero waste town there'll be a report susan is putting together sort of collecting all of that stuff and so i'll be bringing that forward as soon as it's ready um it may even be presented at town meeting in some form right susan any event um i also sat in with the town meeting coordinating committee and um a number of things i'd like to report from there first of all um a little demonstration um in the town room there is a prototype of the new sound system you've heard me mention this a couple of times before uh so these microphones live in the closet over here they they're in chargers you just pop it out you turn it on so you get the green light and then you just use it for your meeting unfortunately as as miss thine has just demonstrated the modulation is entirely in how you use the mic and not uh in the system so uh that'll be helpful but still um know how to use those they spoke briefly about our um suggestions for town meeting and um are seriously considering consent calendar that that seemed to be the one of the ideas that really got some traction with them um they spoke about their their budget their need for a budget um they spent quite a bit of time on discussing the need for funding dependent care for um for town meeting um it's never been a part of their budget um since 2004 when town meeting um put in some money for one year so that's an ongoing discussion um just um they identified um not only need for child care but possibly for um elder care dependent care so also um they're starting a new initiative they're organizing uh or planning to organize a number of environmental forums there's a number of issues which they've identified as being um important to deal with um they want to invite folks like uh mr mckibbins to come in and speak to us the citizens about um global warming and environmental issues um they they want to get involved with uh recycling a number of things so that's a development that that um I'm curious to see how that that moves along uh last um very brief conversation about minutes about feeding committees getting their minutes onto the web there is a process um which um we're double checking to make sure still in place about a year and a half ago we got a memo that described a process where the chairs would get a password they could get on the town website and just enter their minutes or or assign somebody the task of using that password and entering their minutes so that's something that I'm hoping to make an announcement here to chairs um well in a little while uh mr pagunas has to get back to me on whether or not those those directions are still good but that that mechanism is in place in some form and we'll just have to get it out there thank you questions or comments from mr hayden very good is bruer and then miss nigh um actually two things on tmcc one is that would be great if it turns out that it's the same or it's different or whatever with mr pagunas and the uh chairs signing in but I mean we've had chairs change since then we've had committee members change we've had committees who clearly have lost that memo um speaking so I can think of so um it would be good to resend that information out to remind people of that expectation that people would like to see have happened the other thing is I'm I I'd like to the way you phrase the uh environmental forums comment tmcc I really don't have any idea what this has to do with tmcc's work frankly and I don't I'm a little uncomfortable with that but tmcc is a body of town meeting and so I guess it's up to town meeting to give feedback to tmcc about that but I'm not clear on beyond the fact obviously these are all things we're all interested in um why it's the role of tmcc to have forums like that but I unfortunately couldn't stay for that the the rest of that discussion around that so I'll I'll let you know all right this time okay for my reason I just have two um one is the personnel board meeting that I attended along with Mr. Musanti um Deb Bradway was introduced she noted or it was noted that Leslie Salisbury would be a professional assistant to to um you in resources um and also noted that Nate Malloy got a well deserved promotion to senior to a senior planner position which is going to be called a community planner um Sharon Sherry presented a potential reorganization of the library staff with the goal of increasing efficiency of the staff and parity and the personnel board will consider that at a future date the ag commission had their first meeting with a quorum um for their first in a while um because of the quorum issues and the first question they asked me was had I heard anything from the attorney general so I could at least report that they are now working on this issue of how quorum should be determined in committees of small communities um they are interested in growing food in Amherst and selling local food in Amherst um some of the issues that were touched on were the community gardens which are somewhat um not in as good shape as they should be and they were thinking that we really need a committee to work on this um they also are interested in getting tunnels um near the edge maybe of farms on farming that's happening on conservation land and permaculture these are all different ways of growing food as well as far traditional farms they talked about the summer market um and the winter market will be on again this this year uh it'll start two weeks after the summer market ends and they noted that Greenfield had gotten a big grant for storage of and selling of local um products over the whole year so like a big freezer and that sort of thing so that they wondered if they would be able to maybe with area farms be able to come up with that sort of funding too so that's my report thank you any questions or comments from this thing thank you other liaison representative reports oh it's Brewer's um CDBG advisory committee so I'd sent you all an email today that just happened to just alerting the CDBG advisory committee I just forwarded you that email that Nate had sent to them saying hey all the proposals are in he's already got it up online um the links weren't working earlier today but they should be now so if you want to see what those are obviously it's for way more money than we have but that's the way it always is and when they get to make hard decisions their hearing is on Thursday evening at 6 30 at the bank senate so that is coming right up and we already talked about the reallocation issues so there's that um I have nothing we report on LSSE commission disability access advisory committee although I haven't been going one of the things that they are pursuing that I'm aware of that's very interesting to them is the um coordination between the town and the schools on the ADA transition plan the ADA transition plan is something that has to get funded every so often it's a big deal kind of plan um it hasn't been worked on for a couple of years in the town side it's been unclear as to the coordination on the school side both with the elementary and the region and who's responsible for the playgrounds and how does it all fit together and we've got a lot of new players between the facility our facilities person is still you know new or associated with these plans and then the people at the schools that are responsible for transition plans have also changed so they're very excited to get another look at how all that's going to work with our new um human resources director as well so they're pretty pumped about battle coming together and knowing who to talk to when they have concerns about a particular aspect of the transition plan because who's responsible for what BCG we already talked about regional school district planning committee and planning board just keeps uh jumping right along we have meetings seems like every week but um between the subcommittees and the others because we have a really tight timeframe we've got one grant that we're in for we've got another grant that we're about to apply for in hopes of just making these things work you saw at the bottom of the BCG and also another piece in your packet about a four towns meeting associated with regionalization issues not to be confused with the usual four towns meetings but um quite cleverly was realized that this is something that needs to be talked about by all the different bodies of all the different towns so that everybody's on board and understanding what's happening with it in addition to the big press release pushes that will come on later on in the process so that's something to look forward to I hopes that many of you can be there and then for housing and sheltering committee the I believe I've already done that too so oh yes except for the fact that one of the things they're excited about is that um between having Denise Leduc from Amherst housing authority on that committee as a member of the committee and their own interests they were able to come up with a tour that we're going to take tomorrow associated with various affordable housing projects in town both existing and um you know recent and ongoing and just to give people a sense of you know like for example I did not know that Clark House actually has an affordability expiration coming up at some point you know we always think of rolling green in the near future but there's others out there too and so we obviously aren't going to be going around and like peeking everybody's windows we'll at least get a sense of how things are laid out and what types of things we have around town because not everybody in town knows where all those things are so we're getting a lot more coordination on that side so exciting stuff thank you questions or comments from Ms. Brewer how soon is Clark House expiring that kind of scary now I scared you didn't I it's actually not until 2020 so see you got plenty of time yeah yeah exactly exactly but to actually see it you know written down it's like amazing you know other questions comments from Ms. Brewer other liaison reports okay um I will mention then campus and community coalition so in your packets I gave you several documents and I'll kind of talk about them in general and then specifically um so we had a meeting last week and this was the first one since the new semester started one of the things that we did was kind of share feedback on how things are going so far and as you can see from the police statistics and as you've read in the newspaper it's been a tough beginning of the semester it absolutely has um it was a tough meeting because it is very frustrating for us all to be working very hard on this in very many ways and to have numbers that are going up so the numbers this is in your packet document was talking about police response calls arrests and summonses in the first three weekends of the year and and it raises a lot of questions um among them how do you measure the success of what we're doing and unfortunately you know what we have here is a three-dimensional problem and so the numbers themselves aren't going to tell you something so for example I was I was saying to Captain Pronovost who presented the numbers I said you know what what kinds of tools what else do you need what what would help the situation that you see on the ground he says well you know more cops would be one thing um so all right we've got public safety needs for sure at the same time if there were more cops in general uh and we were talking specifically about a particular disturbance at meadow street uh the townhouse apartments where there was a really huge disturbance and there was like one arrest from that I said you know what's going on on the ground there what do you need had he had there been more resources in terms of officers there we would have had vastly higher number of arrests would that mean that was then less successful you know so the numbers the numbers are complicated you know so we've got this new nuisance house bylaw well guess what now that we have a nuisance house bylaw we have nuisance house violations being issued before we had the nuisance house bylaw we would have had zero nuisance house violations being issued but that's not the same as not having nuisance house problems now we just have a way of of um marking them and and penalizing for them so so numbers aren't going to be how we how we determine the success of this obviously the fact that there is an ongoing need for these responses um that is very frustrating and I think we also have to be realistic in knowing that that part of it isn't going to go away I mean you're never going to not have any off-campus parties I don't think that that isn't really the expectation but but how how you how you measure the success of this is is a complicated question and one that the one that the coalition is is struggling with one thing that I think is clear to all of us is you know you cannot see what isn't there so you're not seeing all of the stuff that isn't happening because of these efforts and so all of our information suggests that that the things that we're doing are very effective in fact just at the chancellor's reception on friday I was talking with someone from the university who told me that the $300 fines very very effective that is that is something that has a lot of traction with the students who end up in the dean of students office so that's good you know so that's one way even though they've gotten the fine um they so you could say that that's that's unfortunate or that's a measure of lack of success that they got it I would think of it more in terms of the fact that they're not going to do it again by and large when you have a gigantic student body as the university massachusetts does there are going to be a lot of people who need to learn these lessons the hard way but the fact is the repeat offender situation is extremely low so I just want to give a little bit of context for that none of which changes the fact that it has been a very difficult especially from the public safety perspective first couple weeks of the semester mistyne a couple of things so one is that one of the periods this the more recent uh 2012 data is one day longer than the other period measured and the second is it would be really interesting to know how the weather compared because we know that really gorgeous weather sigh is more of a problem um and brings out large numbers of students wanting to congregate and so on and so forth right yep so so the data the data tells a certain story it raises certain questions it answers certain other questions um it's all it's all information and it's all useful but again you know exactly what you do about it is hard to know um so then the other things that that I gave you are kind of to tell partially to to tell more of the story also I guess not partially very much and to tell the rest not the rest more of the story so part of that story is the email from jean kim who's the vice chancellor student affairs that this we call it essentially like a safe celebrations email that was something that went out um the week I guess it's about two weeks ago now um talking to students about expectations and consequences and accountability I just wanted to give you this as an example of the kinds of ways that these messages are being sent by the university they're being reinforced at every opportunity now the fact that we don't have 100 compliance from the students come on now we're not going to have that but I think it's really important to show how the university in the town are really on the same page with this stuff the university has been a tremendous partner in this incredibly responsive to town concerns and we really are moving forward on this together another example of that is the poster the colorful poster that is in your packets that was something that they did they had been communicating this message verbally in different ways but this is the first time they did it as as a picture and they're going to be even more kind of explicit with how they get this message out going forward but this is specifically about students in southwest this is a poster that was hung in all the southwest residence halls um encouraging them to go to and from downtown via mass av instead of going through fearing street Lincoln av through the neighborhoods and so it's telling students specifically the message about being respectful of your neighbors and better yet kind of stay away from the neighbors and and try and keep yourself on the more appropriate pathways these are the kinds of messages that that are being sent and and kids need to be reminded of all the time we've talked about other ways of doing that we think it was two years ago they tried to incentivize a certain route by having the food truck out there and whether or not that was an optimal location is a question but how to how to encourage the things we want and discourage the things we don't want are constantly being evaluated and tweaked so you have that information um and then the other thing that I gave you is an article that was in the collegian last week about the UMass you make a difference day and um I think it's really important and I think it would have been really nice if the coverage of the weekend that included all the information about the meadow street disturbance etc also talked about when you think about student impacts off campus over the weekend a very significant student impact off campus last weekend was 200 students partnering with the town on different service projects it's a really great article um one of the projects was a big cleanup effort at puffers pond uh and Dave Zomek headed this up and uh he he gives some comments in the article but uh he and I have talked about it at greater length what this means as far as not just making puffers pond uh cleaner and getting it in better shape right now is all of the staff time and resources that either don't need to be put towards that or weren't going to be that we simply don't have the the staff and the the time and the money to do so that is a lasting impact on puffers pond and on the community that is uh that is really important and folks need to be aware that there is this whole other kind of way that that students are very quietly having having very big impacts very positive impacts on the community all the time um so there were lots of projects like that it was about 20 kids 25 kids at puffers pond uh and there were about more than 200 students participating all around uh Mr. Musanti worked with Lisa Queen and then other folks from the university to put together these volunteer opportunities and uh and they're great and so that was a very organized event there are things like that going on all the time um we all know about students who volunteer with the town with different service organizations who are generally having a big impact on the community all the time so I just kind of wanted to get that message out there also um one of the students even says in that article and they're referring specifically to the uh to the bad thing that happened at puffers pond last spring when when truly the the property was incredibly trashed by a bunch of students on a beautiful day um the student was saying you know what that's not us you we should not all be tainted with that um and uh and we are a positive force so I thought that was really powerful and I wanted folks to have access to that also um these are ongoing issues just in every way uh we've got the neighborhood issues we've got specific public safety challenges we've got communication issues with the students I mean it's everything and um and so I want you to know how dedicated the coalition is to dealing with all of these issues how dedicated Mr. Musanti is and how much resources staff and time resources he has put into the coalition work as well as the uh the other stuff that's happening just internally within um town hall and really again to say just what incredible partners the university has been in this this is something I've actually been doing a fair amount of research on lately and if you think that this is a problem that is common only to Amherst you're just totally wrong I mean this is this is what happens in college communities these exact same challenges often much worse results than what we have um one of the things I was looking at is uh code of student conduct being enforced off campus which is something that um the coalition uh was able to interact I really took a lead role in getting the university to change their wording and make that very unambiguous that seems like a no-brainer that is not a no-brainer that is a very complicated thing to do especially legally and it's a question that many universities and colleges have faced and and come to to different decisions on so the fact that that is happening the fact that that is a regular part of the conversation with students about the accountability that they will be held to for off-campus behaviors um it it's really a sign of how allied the university is with the town and with the community's concerns for addressing these issues pause for a minute Ms. Brewer I know it's late and I know we're all tired um one thing I two quick things that I I so appreciate the women's work you deal with this whole project I mean and every time I meet anyone whether it's at the chancellors or when I was at um the thing that Dave Solomon ran last week it was always we deal with Stephanie all the time she's such a pleasure to work with I can't believe how hard she works on these things and I say and this is just one of the things she works on so thank you and um associated with that I think one of the questions that has come up perhaps in an email at some point or something was um someone was questioning what numbers is it are there that you want to see in terms of student discipline and I I'm sure that you would have shared with them what I assume is our shared opinion which is something along the lines of x number of students went through this type of training that we make them go through x number of students had to do community service because they did something last year it was this many this year it was this many three students got thrown out two students got thrown out people just want to hear that something happened rather than they took care of it and went into this black hole I mean there doesn't seem to be any question that that would be messing with anyone students privacy it's just that kind of you know again how do you interpret it but I mean very basic categories is what I think people are looking for not that we're looking to find out that Bobby Joe got in trouble last week right right so we did have um questions from a journalist at the collegian and uh and I didn't copy you all on my answer I apologize sometimes I forget to do that and I don't notice whether it came into all of us or whether it came into me um but uh yeah so that is about again the university trying to be responsive to the community because there is this perception that the university is incredibly permissive and that they turn a blind eye to things that happen off campus and that is simply not the truth um but my telling you that isn't enough they need to find ways to be demonstrating to the community what is happening on their side and they are of course very concerned as as you alluded to the privacy rights the federal privacy rights of the students but um but we've made very clear that nobody is looking for as you said you know Joe Schmoe what happened to him for x incident it's about what does the discipline process look like what do the outcomes look like what do the numbers look like um what kinds of uh kind of interventions and educational efforts are there what kinds of numbers are there for suspensions and expulsions and other types of measures um I think that people see something bad happen and they say oh you know the kid should be expelled well guess what the university really is not in the business of expelling students this is all about trying to you know put them on the right path to being um to being good uh good citizens good functioning members of society and uh you know your your first your first line of defense isn't to cut them free and say oh you screwed up you're done it's to say okay you know let's think about what you did let's talk about it let's talk about the impacts and and have a uh a punishment that is appropriate to the violation and they are and so some of those violations require extremely serious punishments and so we're going to be getting the numbers on those so they are looking for a way to give us that information in sort of an aggregate that is meaningful to us that is kind of demonstrating the kinds of things we're looking for but also kind of internally they've got their own logistical problems of you know they need to separate you know uh a kid who got disciplined for having a candle in the dorm that which is a serious offense in the dorms with the numbers they give us you know so that the the candle in the dorm thing that's not relevant to we're talking about um what off-campus responses look like responses to off-campus issues so they've really never broken things out in those ways so so they're working with their own information and trying to figure out how to give it to us in a meaningful way but uh that that will be forthcoming and I think pretty soon actually that's terrific and the other comment I just had is I don't even know if this is a fact so if they could clarify if this is a fact and if so what the context behind it was which is if alcohol is not allowed in residence halls for age 21 students if that is true that they are not that no matter how old the kids are they aren't allowed to drink on campus no I think I think that it is allowed in the residence halls if you're 21 that we that would be nice to clarify that would be nice to clarify because it does vary between colleges and the university and if that is true I think that that takes away the people who complain who say well they push everything off campus because if they are allowed quote to responsibly drink in their own room because they're age 21 then no they're not the the whole problem is not off campus but there is only one alcohol outlet I believe on campus at this point but in terms of their the residence halls I think it would just be good to get that clarified okay I'll get that information for you forget I responded to it in any way just in case I'm completely wrong yeah I don't know I'll find out other questions or comments all right Mr. Wilde your final chance to take it or pass Mr. Rooney I think covered everything oh right thank you all right um open meeting while I'll be so as you might have guessed when you got this in the packet you thought huh what are we supposed to do with that it was you're supposed to get this and it says request for comments on collective bargaining FAQ which is referenced at the top of this page and once again magically the division of open government has requested comments and as I wrote in the email today if a tree falls in the forest because if you send out a request for comments and you don't send it to anyone then you don't get any responses I looked at you know a specific set of minutes that said two municipal officials had responded to a particular request for comments however a bunch of the the mass publishers association had responded legal organizations have responded because they all knew about it well we didn't even know they'd requested comments so yeah so luckily our representative who who our town manager knows as a fellow town manager um at the division of government the open meeting law advisory committee the MMA seat at the table um has been working with them on this and really trying to get them to come up to speed on this and so although MMA is trying to do better at getting information out um we've been told that before too and I also if you saw in the email pointed out that I don't even read the beacon piece of paper old news I mean that is just out of date by the time I get it as far as I'm concerned although I do have to remember that there are those communities throughout Massachusetts that don't even have dialect really access and so maybe they do need a thing like the paper beacon but the idea that I would look to that and also the timing is impossible because that only comes out once a month and these requests for comments are usually six weeks or less less so hopefully they'll get there they're taking little baby steps they're having trouble with it but we definitely have the ear of our seat at the table in terms of trying to get some real help on this now as to this actual request for comments on collective bargaining agreement FAQ I guess y'all can look at it and see if we want to talk about it but I don't know if that's highest on my list of anything to worry about but it's just good to know it's out there because it's been kind of nice that they're trying to do all these FAQs even though they're not getting a lot of input on how to do them thank you questions or comments from this board all right chairs report I think I covered everything I could possibly say in the early parts of the meeting a couple untimed items still to do let's take care of those and I have a question yes before I make motion um there was no motion going with this sugarloaf um I don't know if this was supposed to be in my packet or if this is the original I think it's an FYI is that what it is it looked like John was there a request with it I was thinking maybe it was an FYI just like when we hear about Kendrick otherwise I'm ready to fly that's nice to know yeah those aren't we don't do those so I think that okay they're a mistake or an FYI okay so it's an FYI fine I just wanted to be sure random FYI okay thank you I just I wish somebody would put it yeah I wish they would write that at the top random FYI that would be good all right um the public shade tree um motion I move to accept the charge for the public shade tree committee as a standalone seven member committee as presented and the charge that you have I might say benefited greatly from Diver Roussell's revision from the original charge that we got and now it has been corrected to reflect the the membership that the public shade tree committee wanted so I so moved second uh further discussion so we had had a discussion about this a while ago we agreed to the charge in principle and then and we said oh it doesn't need to come back to us you know the formatting in the words we can just take care of that but that's actually fairly ambiguous and it turned out that it still had some issues so we decided to just make it nice and formal and bring it back so that's what we're doing further discussion all in favor say hi hi hi it's unanimous right I'm going to go to the special licenses I don't think we've had um I moved to approve a special wine and malt license without the S for Amherst Brewing Company to hold an october fest on approximately 50 by 75 foot area of the parking lot contiguous to the patio of Amherst Brewing Company on saturday october 20th 2012 from 12 p.m. noon to 5 p.m. john p corporate uh owner manager second for the discussion oh they were saying hi hi appointments I moved to appoint Michael Hutton Woodland of Amherst to the public shade tree committee with a term to expire June 30th 2015 second discussion all in favor say hi and then we have the minutes and I be I have some suggestions but they are trivial and so I'd be willing to excuse me to move to approve them as amended but I don't know how other people feel about that um you might as well make the motion and then we can okay I moved at the select board approve the select board minutes of june 30th 2012 august 20th 2012 and august sorry the first one is july okay not june july 30th 2012 august 20th 2012 and august 27th 2012 as amended further discussion so mr stein has some amendments they're just they're really minor and I'll just hand them over to John okay um I had on the ones for august 20th uh like two sentences got a little mixed together that I would change it talks about um that um that I uh summarize the process for the town manager valuation feedback um then in the next sentence it says how I tried to synthesize all of the staff and public comments into the draft composite and of course that's not what I do I only synthesize our stuff into the so I think that the the part about the public and staff was meant to be in that first sentence about the um about summarizing the process so if I just move those words to the other sentence can we consider that friendly amendment yeah and I was and it also needs the documents list oh no yes I had that done okay anybody else have any issues with minutes all right uh it's been moved and seconded been discussed all in favor say hi hi hi it's unanimous that's all I know of okay we've got everything I think we do have everything here okay yes so anything else I want to tell you before we go so we've agreed we're not going to meet next monday yay we'll meet instead on october 15th we will pencil in uh october 29th though I will try and keep that blank if at all possible um but we'll see each other the 11th and we will see each other on the 11th which is the four boards meeting in this room where we get the big projections and the updated financial trend analysis from the finance director and I'll be here thank you unlike last year so uh I apologize for not having the select word annual report done but it is much closer as I said and uh it's really fascinating to go back over the last year and be like wow and the other thing that I'm finding in doing this is the various loose ends things that have just kind of fallen through the cracks so I'll be presenting you with a list of those things also better like oh no all right uh then mr. Hayden I would move to adjourn second without objection on this meeting adjourns at 939 thank you very much