 There are 247 town meeting members, 124 constitutes a quorum. The constable informs me that a quorum is present. The fourth session of the 260th annual town meeting will now come to order. Quick schedule review, our next session will be Monday, May 14th. Session six will be Wednesday, May 16th. The auditorium has been reserved for seven additional dates beyond May 16th. They are listed in your finance committee book. Please, we could stop talking. Some seating reminders, the seats on the floor of the auditorium may be occupied only by town meeting members except for the front row, which may be used by members of the press and by members of town committees and town staff, participating in the presentation or discussion of articles. Such persons must wear non-voter stickers, which are available at the check-in table. The seats in front of me on the right are occupied by the five select board members, the town manager, the finance director, the assistant town manager, the assistant to the town manager and IT staff. The finance committee is seated to my left. Spectators and town residents who are not town meeting members may be seated in the bleachers in the rear of the auditorium. New information for town meeting members can be found on the back table to my left, old information on the back table to my right. Amherst media provides gavel to gavel coverage of our proceedings on public access channel 17, and I again would like to thank their staff and volunteers. Videos of town meeting sessions are replayed frequently and can be viewed on the Amherst media website. If you wish to speak, you must raise your hand and be recognized. As per our bylaw change from the fall, you must hold up a card to indicate your position. Green indicates yes, red indicates no, and a white card indicates that you wish to speak without advocacy or ask a question. When you are called on, please first state your name and precinct. If you forget, I will interrupt and ask you to do so. If you need more than three minutes or more than five minutes when speaking to your motion, you must request additional time before speaking and town meeting will vote on your request. If you're speaking from the floor, please speak into a microphone that will be provided. This will allow viewers outside of the auditorium to hear you. The microphone will be on when it is handed to you. Please hold it close to your mouth when you speak. Non-members who wish to speak should stand at the rear of the right hand aisle and you registered voter of the town of Amherst who is recognized by the moderator may speak without special permission. Others may speak with the permission of a majority. Please stand when you speak if you are physically able to do so. If you're making an amendment to a motion, the amendment must be presented in writing with four copies submitted to the town clerk, the moderator, town manager and staff and the finance committee or whichever board is seated to my left. Procedural motion such as a motion to refer or a motion to dismiss do not need to be presented in writing. If you make any motion from the floor, it must be the first thing you do after you've been recognized. You cannot speak first and then make a motion. If you haven't already done so, please check your cell phone and make sure to silence her off. The election of three members to the town meeting coordinating committee and nine members to the town meeting advisory committee will take place during the May 14th session of town meeting. The nomination deadline was yesterday, May 8th at 430. Tonight is the last night for corrections to the they represent you flyer. The draft version and correction sheets are on the back table. Please check your listing and submit a correction tonight if one needs to be submitted. If at any point in time you are confused about the proceedings, it is appropriate to call a point of order and ask for a clarification. It's also always okay to phone me, send me an email or see me prior to town meeting if you need an explanation of any time. Kind. I wanna make one other quick reminder that in town meeting, we do not allow any audible expressions of approval or disapproval, either as the result of a vote or result of a speaker's presentation or as a result of a moderator, recognizing a speaker. So there's been sort of audible size and chatter and mumblings and grumblings and things like that. Let's try and be silent and respectful during the proceedings of town meeting. We're now gonna do an electronic voting test. Let me just review a couple of points before we do it. All votes taken at town meeting will initially be voice votes, after a voice vote, if the moderator or any member so requests, we will take an electronic vote. Make sure your device is turned on. You should see the number of your device displayed on the screen. If you don't see anything displayed on your screen, press and release the power button in the lower right hand corner of the device and it should turn it on. The only functioning buttons are one, two and three. One is yes, two is no, three is abstain. You never need to press any other buttons on the device. Other buttons will have no effect on your vote. A vote to abstain will be recorded, but it will not count towards the results. There may be a lag time of a few seconds from when you press the button to when your vote is displayed. If at the end of the voting window, you feel that your vote has not been registered, you should raise your hand and call point of order and we will deal with it. At the end of the evening, please power off your device by holding the power button until the LED display is clear and then hand in your device. Always return your device when you leave town meeting. If you do not, you will get a call from the town clerk's office the next morning requesting that you immediately bring your device into the clerk's office. Okay, we're ready for our test vote. There's anybody who does not see their vote displayed on their screen. Now's a great time to let us know. So it's a close vote. As for the real answer, the real answer is maybe. And if you find that unbelievable, then go home and look it up when you get there. I'm not recognizing any procedural motions at this point. Tonight's agenda is Article 11, then Article 12 and we move on from there. So we begin with Article 11 and I call on Ms. Pavanelli from the Finance Committee to make a motion. Let's get that microphone working. Hello. There you go. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I move in terms of the article. Motion's been made and seconded. You may speak to your motion. The revolving fund, which was created at the 2012 annual town meeting to fund the activities of the after school program managed by LSSE and reauthorized every year since is now subject to the Municipal Modernization Act of 2016. This requires that the municipalities now establish a new bylaw for authorization that specifies the purposes for which the revolving funds may be spent, the source of the funds going into the fund, the department authorized to expend the funds, and the maximum amount that can be spent from the fund. Once this bylaw is in place, it will not be necessary to re-vote it every year if there are no changes. The Finance Committee recommends this article to you by a vote of 6-0-1 absent. Thank you. Mr. Steinberg for the select board. Select board recommends this 4-0. Select board recommends this 4-0 with one member absent for all of the reasons stated by the Finance Committee. Thank you. This requires a majority vote for passage. Is there discussion before we come to a vote? I see no hands. We will now come to a vote on the motion in terms of the article for Article 11. Requires a majority. All those in favor, please say aye. Opposed, please say no. Ayes have it, it's unanimous. I hear a point of order. Jennifer Page, precinct eight. Just the very right hand part of the screen is obscured by the curtain a little bit, which I don't remember from past nights. Is it possible to open the curtain a little more? This other side. Oh, okay. Before we begin Article 12, I actually have a statement to make. Included in the CPA Committee recommendations, you will see a total of $90,000 proposed for the future Amherst Dog Park. I am the chair of the Amherst Dog Park Task Force. After consulting with town council and the town manager, I have concluded that it is not necessary to recuse myself from moderating Article 12, and I do not plan to do so. I will not participate in any discussions regarding the dog park, and I will call on speakers in the same manner as for all other articles. I now call on Ms. Stein to make a motion. And I should explain, Article 12 is divided into a Part A and a Part B. Part A in turn is divided into different sections, and there are different speakers I'm gonna recognize for the different sections. But I'm calling on Ms. Stein first to make the main motion for Part A. I may have been in terms of Part A of the article. Motion is made and seconded. I actually want to note before we continue that there is a Scrivener's error between the, in the warrant it refers to fiscal year 18, but it should have read fiscal year 19. So if in the warrant you see fiscal year 18, and it's highlighted up there. So you can see where that FY 19 and the 19 is in red. If you look at the original signed warrant, it's 18, but I've ruled that it's a typo, a Scrivener's error, and it's acceptable. Okay, I made the motion since I am both a member of the town meeting and the community preservation act committee, as is Jim Oldham. Nate Buddington, who's up here, is the chair of our committee, but not a member of town meeting, so we couldn't make the motion. We have divided up the CPA presentations as follows. Affordable housing will be addressed by Jim Oldham. I will speak about historic preservation, and Nate will cover the remaining parts of part A. Thank you. So I'm now calling Mr. Oldham, who's gonna speak to affordable housing portion, and then we'll have a discussion on that portion, and then we'll move on to the historic preservation portion. Mr. Oldham. Thank you. Jim Oldham, precinct five. So as was noted in the community preservation act committee report to town meeting, in allocating funding, the committee had a number of considerations that affected broadly all the areas. The projects had to have support from committees. They had to meet ongoing legal obligations under the preservation act. They had to have clear, specific, achievable results. But besides that, the committee this year and last year has really wanted to focus on housing and recognizing the particularly urgent need for more affordable housing in Amherst. Amherst has a significant and diverse housing needs that have been described in a variety of housing studies that have been done and are pretty evident to many of us. We have residents who are either homeless or home insecure, and because of that suffer other impacts on health and economic impacts from that. We have a lack of affordable rental housing more broadly, and we have limited home ownership opportunities for people with low and moderate incomes. At the same time, however, we are fortunate that a number of organizations in our community and more broadly in the valley are create a fairly rich ecosystem of resources that are addressing these things. And the four recommended expenditures that we're looking at tonight represent sort of a diversity of approaches targeting different areas of our housing need. So very briefly, Amherst Community Connections, we're recommending $112,815 for Amherst Community Connections for a proposal that would provide three housing vouchers to chronically homeless Amherst residents over a three year period. And what ACC does is it helps people who are currently homeless get into housing using these vouchers and stabilize their lives in a way that then allows them to tap into other resources and move into more permanent forms of housing after which that voucher can become available for a second person. ACC has successfully used this model in the past and this would be a continuation allowing another three years of services for three people. The second proposal is for $266,200 its Amherst Community Land Trust would be using this money to create two permanently affordable houses for families of low income families below 80% area median income. The way it would work is they would purchase, ACLT would use the funds to jointly purchase homes with homeowners, ACLT purchasing the land while the home buyers are purchasing the house on the land. And there would be a lease arrangement that would create permit affordability and assure that when the house is sold it would be sold to another family meeting the same income requirements. ACLT is just completed or is just in the process of completing a project with Habitat for its first two affordable homes in Amherst. It's an organization that was formed in 2014. And is also lining up some possibilities for donated homes, donated property that would be additional homes in the community. The last two proposals are both recommendations for funding for Amherst Municipal Housing the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust which is an entity set up by town meeting a number of years ago. It's an entity of the town that is dedicated to providing, addressing the problems of affordable housing in Amherst. And it has a goal for a near term goal of trying to create 250 affordable units. There's 40,000 has been recommended for a consultant for the body. It's a volunteer board. So to have a professional consultant with experience to help develop projects and 150,000 has been recommended for the purpose of starting a large scale project that then would bring in other resources and leverage money to create a large scale affordable housing project. And I know someone else from the committee will be speaking to that shortly. Thank you. Before we get into housing in detail I neglected looking at the bigger picture of 12A to call on the finance committee for their statement and recommendation. Ms. Pavanelli. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. The finance for the reasons stated by the previous speaker and for additional information in the finance committee handbook. The finance committee recommends this article to you by a vote of five, zero, two absent. And Mr. Steinberg for the select board. Select board recommends this four to zero with one member absent. And just wanna add one thing that I'm the liaison from the select board to the community preservation act committee. I attended many of their meetings this year. The process that they use is extremely thorough, extremely thoughtful and extremely open and public. And I really appreciate the hard work of the committee. Thank you. When we eventually come to a vote on 12A it will require a majority for passage. I'm now gonna call on Mr. Hornick from the housing trust to speak to the housing portion of 12A. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. John Hornick, town meeting member precinct seven and chair of the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust. As Jim mentioned, the housing trust was established about four years ago. Its focus is on the development of new affordable housing. About five years ago, the town published its housing production plan which anticipated the development of 240 new affordable units. Only a small fraction of these have come online. So we have our work cut out for them for us in continuing to pursue this goal. The housing trust depends upon CPA funding to support its work. In past years, we have received funding for both a consultant and for money to pay for due diligence investigations. For example, we have just received services from an environmental firm to assess the presence of wetlands on a town property in which we are interested. This past year, we requested in CPA as recommended funding for a continuation of consulting services and for development support. First, the consultant. About six months ago, we contracted with Ms. Rita Farrell to be our primary consultant. She had recently retired after a long career with Mass Housing Partnership, a quasi-governmental organization formed to support the development of affordable housing throughout the Commonwealth. Since becoming the housing trust consultant, she is guiding us through our initial foray in planning. She also initiated a successful grant proposal to Mass Housing, another state agency to pay for some of our planning activities. The second area is development support. This is a new area for CPA and the trust. CPA operates on an annual funding cycle. Our concern was that if we are able to develop a new project requiring support in advance of that cycle, we would not have access to necessary resources. We have two projects that we thought might need support sooner rather than later. The first is a project to develop affordable housing at the East Street School. We propose to the select board and the town manager that we look into whether it would be possible to reuse the school building and the property for affordable housing. That process is underway and discussed when we reach Article 27. The second project is an initiative of Valley Community Development Corporation, a Northampton-based not-for-profit developer of affordable housing. They have proposed developing a studio apartment building for low-income individuals and are currently looking for property. The CPA Committee is recommending the transfer of funds to the trust in the event that one of these projects is able to move forward in the next year. If we do not spend these funds, we will continue to maintain them in the trust until we have an appropriate project on which to employ them. We very much appreciate the support of CPAC and I hope that you will join me in voting to approve their recommendations. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you. We will now open up to discussion on the affordable housing portion of 12A. Is there discussion or questions from the floor? And I see a hand right in the aisle. They are the white card. Hilda Greenbaum, precinct one. And this question is going on, I'm sure sound offensive to some people, but I have to ask it anyway. Is there a way of prioritizing people with an Amherst connection for the community connections housing or is it whoever comes who may be able to profit from that kind of a unit? Mr. Oldham. I had hoped to have a chance to talk to the director of ACC today just to get clarity on some things. My memory of the discussion in front of the CPA committee is that their services are directed to people who are resident in Amherst. They're homeless, I mean, they don't have an address, but there are people, many of whom have been here for many years, many of people who've become homeless while in Amherst, but they're serving people in our community. Yes, I see a white card in the third row there. Andy Churchill, precinct three. Question about the community connections funding. It looks like it's multi-year funding or it's for three individuals or both? I think it looks like if there's three individuals, that would be 37,000 per individual. So I'm just trying to get some clarity on, is that 10,000 a year basically? Mr. Oldham. It's three individuals over three years and actually it will probably serve more than three individuals as it was explained to us with the vouchers they were currently using. They were able to move people through the voucher system and get them into other types of available housing in the area in a shorter time and then that feed it up for another individual. Thank you. For the discussion, let's move on to Ms. Stein to talk about historic preservation and technically you have three minutes so if you need additional time, you should request it now. I am requesting an additional three minutes in case I need them. An additional three minutes for total of six has been requested without objection, you may proceed. Thank you. The North Amherst Community Farm, which I will refer to as NACF, is a small local not-for-profit organization devoted to preserving farmland and promoting sustainable agriculture in our community. In 2005, NACF bought a farm of about 32 acres in North Amherst located just south of the North Amherst Historic District. NACF has provided a long-term affordable lease of this property to Simple Gift's Farm, a for-profit entity which operates in an organic CSA, which is community supported agriculture. The farm and its new farm stand provides fresh produce to a large area. Simple Gift's Farm has worked hard at improving the leased farm, drilling a well, installing an irrigation system, clearing brush that encroached the fields, adding greenhouses for winter production and putting solar panels on a barn. Simple Gift's Farm are now the owners of the historic Ingram Dickinson Farmhouse built in about 1833. And if we could have the picture of it. There you go. The farmhouse has been submitted as an addition to the Massachusetts Cultural Resource Inventory. However, the farmhouse is in great need of exterior repair and rehabilitation, including removal of asbestos cement siding, roof replacement, repointing of the chimney and the foundation. The farmhouse is vital to the success of the farm. It houses the farm apprentices who live and work on the farm. In fact, it provides affordable housing to the workers that we can account towards our affordable housing inventory because who lives there will not be decided by a lottery. Restoring the building will enhance the neighborhood which has two new buildings, one on either side of the farmhouse. And ACS is requesting 130,000 for restoring the exterior of the building. Two additional historical preservation requests for CPA funds are from the Amherst Historical Society. The first is for funds to complete the assessment of the textiles stored at the strong house. Last year through CPA funding, Amherst Historical Society hired Lindsay Bassett, a textile and costume historian and a nationally recognized specialist curator. She and Marian Curling, an assistant curator, reviewed many objects in the textile collection. For each item, photographs were added as well as much new information. The data gathered will become part of an online searchable database. And here are some of the fascinating findings so far. A woman's fine linen daycap from the mid 1700s. No other that old is known. An extremely rare green and white gingham coat from the late 1820s. A woman's bonnet from 1830 to 1835 that was worn for mourning the death. The only other example of this kind of bonnet is in the Smithsonian. A woman's sweater from the early 1860s, the Civil War era. A salesman's sample straw hat from the local hill manufacturing company about dating to about 1900. And lastly, Mabel Loomis Todd's bathing dress from the early 1900s. In case you don't know who she was, she was Austin Dickinson's lover. The Amherst Historical Society is requesting 13,580 to study the remaining collection, which will include children's and men's clothing, accessories, and household textiles. Lastly, the Amherst Historical Society requests $30,000 to change from two inefficient boilers to one modern boiler to heat the strong house. One of the boilers is more than 70 years old and originally used coal. The other is smaller and gas fired. The single boiler that will replace both will use oil be very efficient and take up much less space. These requests were voted six to zero by CPAC and we hope town meeting will support them. Thank you. Is there a discussion or questions on historic preservation? I see a hand in the back there in the center. Michael Abert was a little precinct too. Could someone clarify the ownership of the farmhouse, the Ingram Dickinson farmhouse? I'm unclear as to which entity actually owns it. Ms. Stein? If I heard you correctly, you're asking about the ownership of the house because it belongs to Simple Gifts, is that correct? Yeah, I don't know who owns the house. Yeah. All right, Simple Gifts Farm nominally owns the house. It doesn't own the land under the house and the reason it had to be put in their name is to be able to get a bank loan, to be able to put up the farm stand. Otherwise, they weren't in a position to get funding. It's things like that that made it more efficient to put the farmhouse portion of the farm in Simple Gifts name, okay? But there are restrictions on the house, both for use and also also in terms of when it gets sold, that amount of money is also controlled. Thank you. Further discussion on historic preservation? Yes, I see a hand right there. Make gauge, precinct one very briefly. I want to put in a huge plug or appreciation for the North Amherst Community Farm, which is a minor miracle in our fragile part of the town where we have 11 apartment buildings and all sorts of things that are not like a community farm. There's been a huge tag team of effort to raise the money, last one of which is my friend Bruce sitting right here. We've paid off the mortgage and I hope everybody comes and shops there. It's a fabulous farm stand, all organic food, and we have these fabulous interns who've graduated from places like Princeton and Amherst College and Dartmouth who want to be farmers and come and live in this beautiful old historic house. And truly the farm wouldn't be possible without their labor. It's kind of an interesting social thing, how many of our kids are graduating from college and really expensive colleges and going into farming. I think that's a good sign, but I'm really grateful that this is on the list and hope everyone will come to North Amherst and buy your organic vegetables. The other thing about the farm stand is that it sells vegetables and fruit from many local organic farms. They all bring their things there so it's a place to sell. So you should try to go there. Thank you. Further discussion on historical preservation? Yes, I see a hand over there, white card. Maria Kapiki precinct date. You said for the $30,000 boiler that you currently have one that used to use coal and one that was using gas, and you're gonna replace it with oil, but why would you replace it with an oil-burning boiler instead of gas if there is a gas line there or some other modality? Ms. Stein? I'm not sure I can completely answer that. I believe they consulted with the various heating companies around and this seemed like the best option. I really can add more to it than that. I've seen the quotes. Yes, Mr. Walts, select part. Sorry. I can answer part of that. I'm on the board of the Historical Society. What the situation is, there's the 18th century house which has the coal-fired furnace, which became an oil furnace in the basement, and it's a rental apartment upstairs, just one small unit powered by gas heating, and the curator was thinking this was partly a safety issue. If an oil system goes haywire, you have a leak or a fire, if gas goes, you know what happened recently in Amherst. So she thought it was a safety issue for the collections, oil being preferable in that case because of emergencies also. Yes, I see. Are you holding up a red card? Then, okay, why don't you hold up a white card if you want to hold, thank you. In the front row there. Rob, customer precincts. This may even be a point of order, but can this body stipulate something like the previous, previous, previous speaker asked about, like the type of heating system? If we can, then it seems like it's worthy to debate, but I'm not sure that's impossible. No, they cannot. All we can do with CPA recommendations is vote them up or down. We can give them less money, we can't give them more money than what the CPA committee has approved. Further discussion on historic preservation? Let's introduce Mr. Buddington to talk about open space and open recreation. If you need more than three minutes, you should request in advance. I'd like to request an extra three minutes. Okay, without objection, you may have an extra three minutes. Thanks, I'm Nate Buddington, I'm the chair of the CPA committee. We have two open space proposals, two recreation proposals, and an administrative piece that I'll talk about in a bit. For open space, the Amherst Dog Park Task Force has requested $90,000 to build a dog park in Amherst. This park will be built in, I guess sort of the southeast corner of where the landfill is between Old Belcher Town Road and Amherst Woods neighborhood. It'll be a little under two acres. The $90,000 allocation is that from CPA will fund a reuse study, which is a DEP reuse study which is required by the state. There will be surveys and will fund 10% of the cost of actually constructing the dog park. The remainder of the expense will be funded by a grant from the Stanton Foundation out of Eastern Mass, which gives money to build dog parks. It'll be fenced, so the dogs will be contained. We have a due diligence fund that we would like to fund $25,000. This is money that we set aside for appraisals and related studies that often can make the difference between having a land proposal that goes through and one that cannot. It's a very important cost that we would like to fund. Two recreation proposals, Amherst Baseball Incorporated has asked for $44,550 to complete the restoration of the two baseball fields in Mill River. There was a 2015 CPA grant of about $126,000 to completely restore the fields. That, for a number of reasons, that amount of money was not enough. And this will complete the proposal to put in sunshades on the southerly field to bring irrigation to the fields and to build two batting cages which will complete the process of reconstructing these two little league fields which are heavily used. The town through LSSE is asking for $50,000 to completely reconstruct the basketball courts at Mill River. These are heavily used basketball courts. They're really the only adult outdoor basketball courts in town. Last year CPA allocated $50,000 for this project. When we got into it with a contract or it became clear that it was $50,000 was not gonna complete the project. The entire surface is gonna be removed. All new hoops and we'll be building two smaller hoops for smaller kids who can also play on that same surface. We have an administrative fee which is $3,500 which we need to pay our dues to the Community Preservation Coalition which is a statewide coalition of CPAs. And it also pays for things like public meeting notices and things of that nature. That's $3,500. Thank you. For the discussion on any of the sections that Mr. Buddington just covered. I see a hand right there in the front row. I hear a point of order. Wait for your microphone please. Amy Middleman, Precinct Five. I don't believe you've told us anything about the town of Amherst Epstein property acquisition. Okay, hang on a second. First of all, that's part B of Article 12 and we haven't even heard a motion on that yet. We're talking solely about part A of Article 12 right now. Okay, because it was under open space. I'm sorry. Right, but it's still part B which will be dealt with separately. And now, front row, yes. William Kasem, Precinct Three. It's a question about the dog park. So I'm a frequent trail walker and trail runner and pretty much every single time I'm out on the trail there are off leash dogs and they tend to run toward people running, very frustrating. So I'm hoping that some of this 90,000 or some future monies can be used to spread the word about this new, hopefully wonderful dog park and also to help with enforcement of people having dogs off leash. I know that there are bylaws about that but I'm just wondering if that's been part of the discussion because I haven't been able to follow it too closely. Thank you. Yes, Mr. Buddenkin. The $90,000 is simply for the construction of the dog park but the hope is that we're gonna get dogs off the trails that you're talking about by getting them into the dog park. Yes, I see a white card. Third row from the back there. Erica Zika's Precinct Eight. Has the Stanton Foundation made the commitment to the matching grant and just in case they haven't, do you have a plan for what to do if the additional 90,000 doesn't come in? Mr. Zomak. The Stanton Foundation has not made that commitment yet. We've been in touch with them for a number of months. They know that we are applying. We think we have an excellent chance of getting the matching funds. If you meet the criteria, in large part they grant the funds. We're going for a design grant first and then a construction grant to follow. So it's a very organized foundation. Again, they're very open and supportive. Agawam, for instance, recently got one of these grants and some other communities in Western Mass and Eastern Mass as well. So we feel very confident that if we meet all of the guidelines of the Stanton Foundation that we will get the money, both for design and construction. Thank you. Yes, over there, close to the wall. Janet McGowan, Precinct Eight. I have a question about maintenance and cleaning of the park and how much that will cost in terms of town services. I have dogs. I use the conservation trails every day with my dogs on leash, usually. And we have a lot of problems in terms of trail maintenance and the Hopbrook Bridge is, you can put your leg through it. I'm concerned about how we will fund that year to year and how that will be maintained. As I see a speaker at the back of the aisle there, if you would identify yourself, I believe this is a registered voter in Amherst. Why don't you identify yourself? I am a registered voter in Amherst. Hi, I'm Anna Devlangathier, Precinct Eight, non-town meeting member. I have my sticker. So our plan is to establish a Friends of Amherst Dog Park group and that will function similarly to the other Friends groups in Amherst. That is our sustainability plan. So they will be the ones who are responsible for monitoring, organizing pickup days, things like that. We have lots of plans for them, but the goal is that this is a long-term solution. So the task force are not going to be the ones establishing what the Friends group does. The Friends group will be much more open in terms of numbers and will create that plan. That being said, we will have a plan as we move forward. It's not just gonna be left up in the air. Thank you. Further discussion on any portions of 12A? Yes, right on the aisle there. Lawrence Quigley, Precinct One. I'd like to know, Mr. Monterey, if it's possible to separate the affordable housing decision from the historical preservation decision. I would prefer to vote separately on affordable housing. Yes, it is. So if it's requested by any one town meeting member and it meets the sense of the article, we can do what's called a motion to divide and I'm gonna accept your question as a motion to divide. So that means we're gonna vote separately on the affordable housing you want to separate. So we're gonna vote separately on affordable housing and then we will vote on the remainder of 12A. Let's continue to have discussion on both and then we come to a vote. We'll come to two separate votes. Is there discussion? Yeah, I see a hand in the center there. Alan Powell, Precinct Four. I just wanted to let people know that if they're interested, TMCC produced a video of the bus tour that covers a lot of these areas and it's available on YouTube. It was on Amherst Media for a while but now there's a lot of competition for that time. And you can just search TMCC Bus Tour Spring 2018 on YouTube or there's probably a link on the Amherst Media website as well. I hear a point of order. Mike, right behind you, if you could hand the microphone to that person and if you could. Paige Wilder, Precinct Ten. If we're separating affordable housing and historical preservation, where does open space go? No, we're separating affordable housing from everything else is my understanding. So there'll be one vote on affordable housing and there'll be one vote on the remainder of the CPA Article 12A. Further discussion before a vote. Yes, you hand over there, third row. Joanna Morris, Precinct Eight. I have a question about the boiler at the Historical Society. This may be a point of order. If it gets voted and supported and is funded, is it, are they required to put in an oil boiler or might they be able to use the money for a sustainable energy source? Ms. Stein. I believe for the reasons that Slickman-Wald said, oil is the safest. This is a very old house and you need to protect it. So putting gas up there might not be the most safe way. So that's one issue. I'm sure, you know, I've looked, that's about, I think I should just stop there. Further discussion on any portions of 12A. Yes, okay, if it's a point of order, then let's hear it. Rob Kustner, Precinct Three. We've split off the affordable housing item. Are each of the items in each of the budgets also splitable? Is it going to be dealt with line by line or is it just the bottom line of each of the categories? Technically, a motion to divide is acceptable if it makes sense. So it does make sense that they're not interrelated. I would hope that we not do that because I don't really think it's necessary. But technically, if someone moves to divide out a single line item of a CPA article, it is a legitimate motion to make, but perhaps not necessary. Further discussion before we come to a vote? Yeah, I see a hand right there. Chris Riddle, Precinct Two. Back to the boiler question. Those of us who are advocating for zero net energy buildings, an article will come up in front of you later on in this town meeting. This is strongly recommend against oil fired, fossil fuel, gas fired heat sources and would suggest all electric solutions such as mini splits or other forms of air source heat pumps. These are extremely safe and safer than any fossil fuel source and are much more energy efficient. Ready to come to a vote. Yes, I see another hand right there. Rudy Perkins, Precinct Two. Mr. Moderator, I'd like to move to separate the open space also from the historic so that we can vote the three sections separately. If that's it. Well, there's technically five sections because there's affordable housing, historic preservation, open space recreation and administrative. So what would you would like to divide open space out? Yes, well, actually I think it'd make more sense if there are five to vote each of the sections separately. I move that we do so. Okay, so you want to separate all five sections? Yes. I have a problem with separating open space and recreation from each other because one of the line items in each of them is the dog park task force and it's split between the two. So it doesn't make sense to separate them. So what would you like to try another proposal or are you okay keeping everything together? Rudy Perkins, yes, I'd be actually fine with your suggestion that the open space and the recreation be kept together. That does make sense since that has two and the administration, I mean, that could go with that one too I suppose so that we divide it three ways. Okay, so we're gonna have three separate votes, one in affordable housing section, one on the historic preservation section and a third vote on open space, recreation and administrative. Are we ready to come to a vote? And I see a hand there, third row. Mary Sarah, precinct three. I'm confused a bit about this process because at the beginning we were told we had to vote that we couldn't reduce the amount this year. Oh no, no, no, I said you can't increase the amount. You can move to reduce the amount which would in effect be to remove a line item or you can vote no on the section. You just can't increase the amount. Okay, so if we're voting now, we would remove everything in section, the first part of the meeting. If there was a no vote on the affordable housing section then all the line items there would be voted down. That's correct. I hear a point of order. Am I the only one who didn't hear seconds on those motions? A motion to divide doesn't require a second. Okay, great, thanks. Okay, a little town meeting trivia. I see a white card in the third row there. Jennifer Page, precinct eight. I just might suggest that we go ahead and separate out the administrative too just so that it doesn't get tied up in something that people are gonna vote down. I'm sorry, what do you wanna separate out? The administrative section, you're combining it with, just yeah. We can separate that out as well. Are we ready to vote on the sections? No, I see a white card in the third row here. Steven Lourdes in precinct two. I'd just like to hear an explanation of how the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust Development Support Line Item interacts with Article 27. Are these a coordinated, well thought out package that are meant to work together or is, or some other relationship? Mr. Hornick, would you like to speak to that? Okay, thank you, Adrienne. As I mentioned earlier, there are two potential projects that we are looking at that might need support before CPA begins its next annual housing cycle. One of them is mentioned in Article 27 or focus of Article 27, which is the potential for reusing the East Street School Building and Property for affordable housing. The other one is a initiative of Valley Community Development Corporation that's looking to build a studio apartment building in Amherst for people with low income or very low income. So either of those are possible, but we aren't certain about whether either of them will come to fruition in the next year. So essentially we want it to be prepared to be able to support one or both in the event that we are able to move forward. So in a sense, you're correct in saying that it is coordinated with Article 27. On the other hand, if you don't pass this, it doesn't mean we can't do Article 27. They're not that closely tied together. Does that answer the question? Thank you. Yes, I see a hand back there in late card. Lydia Vernon Jones from Precinct Five. Mr. Moderator, now that we've separated out the historic preservation, can we separate out individual items within that? So what's been done in the past, not that I recommend it, is if somebody has a strong objection and doesn't want to include a line item, the way to do it is to move for a smaller amount. And then we would have two different amounts and when we come to a vote, we vote on the larger amount first. And that's kind of the traditional way it's been done with CPA if somebody has an objection to a line item. Having said that, we could also separate it out and have a separate vote, but they kind of have the same result when you think about it because it's all majority votes. It seems like it would be faster to separate the amount than to have to come up with a, to move something and have copies of it and have it up on the screen and have it voted on and. Could I request that we separate out those three items? Because it seems like there's some contention about one of them and I'd hate for them to all go down. So you're talking about, you're moving to divide the three line items in historic preservation into separate votes. Yes. Okay, I'll accept that motion to divide. Thank you. And I'm hoping we're ready to come to a vote soon. I see a hand there with a green card. Nils LeCour, Precinct Nine. I'm a former board member of the Historic Preservation Society. And while I appreciate folks' concern about doing oil in the building, I just recently put solar panels on my 1912 farmhouse and so I certainly understand that. But this is one of the most historic buildings in Amherst. It's also one of the most untouched buildings in Amherst. It's already plumbed for baseboard hot water, which is what this boiler would go for. So while I can appreciate the move away from fossil fuels and wanted to do that, it would be a whole lot more money and a much more disruptive and historically not compatible with that historic building. So I would recommend going with the proposed amount. Thank you. I see a white card on the aisle right there. Jeff Blast, I'm Precinct Six. I call the previous question. Motion to the previous question has been made and seconded. If two thirds of you vote yes, we're gonna endivate on all of Article 12A. We will have separate votes as things were divided, but this isn't a previous question, just on the first section. It's on all of 12A's who understand that. All those in favor of the motion for the previous question, please say aye. Opposed, please say no. Moderator, here's two thirds. So we're gonna go down the list of how I think they've been divided and somebody can, and I'm sure somebody will correct me if I get it wrong. So the first section is all of affordable housing, which the total is $569,015. And you now see that in front of you. This requires a majority vote. All those in favor of approving the affordable housing section of Article 12A, please say aye. Opposed, please say no. The ayes have it unanimously. Hang on while I write it down. We now move on to the first line item in historic preservation, the $130,000 for the NACF farmhouse preservation. Just that top line there. Requires a majority vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Opposed, please say no. The ayes have it again unanimously. We now move to the historical society textiles, $13,580. Requires a majority. All those in favor, please say aye. Opposed, please say no. The ayes have it unanimously. We now move on to the Amherst Historical Society boiler for $30,000. Requires a majority vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Opposed, please say no. The ayes have it. We now move to open space and recreation together. Total open space is $70,000. Recreation is $139,550. So not administrative yet, but the other two sections requires a majority vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Opposed, please say no. The ayes have it. And we now move on finally to administrative. Total of $3,500 requires a majority vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Opposed, please say no. The ayes have it unanimously. And we now move on to section B of Article 12, which is open space borrowing authority, Epstein property acquisition. I call on Ms. Stein to make a motion. I move in terms of Part B of the article. And Mr. Buddington. Hang on a second, let's hear if there's a second. Motion's been made and seconded. And Mr. Buddington is going to speak to your motion. This is a pretty exciting land purchase. The town of Amherst in coordination with the Epstein family wants to preserve a 30 acre parcel that's kind of, I guess, at the southeast corner of the double rotary. You can't really see it from the road because it goes down a little bit. It's 30 acres, it's filled with wildlife habitat and streams and wetlands. And there's a significant pond, a big pond on this property that we really want to preserve. This would allow us some contiguous land all the way up to the range, to the whole yoke range. The old trolley line runs through this property. So we want to be able to utilize that as I continue that trail from Bay Road right up to the top of the range. The town has secured a significant land grant which I believe funds more than half of this purchase. This is a, we feel kind of a once in a lifetime opportunity to preserve a really remarkable piece of property in town. And we're partnering with Kestrel Land Trust in this project. Thank you. Ms. Pabinelli for the Finance Committee. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. For the reasons eloquently stated by the previous speaker, the Finance Committee recommends this article to you by a vote of five, zero, two absent. Thank you. And Mr. Steinberg for the select board. The select board recommends this four, zero, one member absent for all of the reasons previously stated by Mr. Buddington. Thank you. This section of Article 12 does require a two-thirds vote for passage. Is there discussion before we come to a vote? Yes, in the front row there. Rob Custner, Precinct Three. This would have been a green card also, but since I have a question for perhaps more than just the proposer, is the form of acquisition of title going to allow that trolley line to be used for a, not just a hiking trail, but a, as it were, a rail trail? It's a former railroad, it was a trolley line. I ask this because this is one of the few low-grade crossings of the Holy Oak Range and as a chair, maybe it's now a former chair of the Norwatic Rail Trail Advisory Committee, there's a big effort throughout the country to try to secure old rail lines to use as rail trails. Doesn't require paving or anything, but just the question is whether the form of acquisition of title will allow this to be used as a trail of that nature that has both a recreational conservation and modest human-powered transportation function. This is Ome. So first, for those of you who don't know where the old trolley line is, let me just use my pointer and show you. Mr. Custner was referring to the trolley line which connected Amherst with Granby, South Hadley, Holy Oak, and that old trolley line is still there and it hugs the western portion of the Epstein property right here. As you're coming around the double roundabouts, here and here, this is Atkins. As you're coming by the double roundabouts, you can actually see it. There's a small transmission line that still carries electricity up the old trolley line. So in answer to the question, we are acquiring that frontage on the old trolley line. And I think we will be getting what's called a land grant from the, we've already gotten it, already received it from the state. I think modest improvements to that would be allowed. I think it's safe to say that paving that would probably not be. But I know that people in the community have hoped for many years that we could once again secure that old trolley line to make the connection all the way up over the Mount Holy Oak Range into South Hadley and Granby. So I think certainly initially, trail hiking would be reestablished and mountain biking, et cetera. So I think it leaves the option open for the future for a bike connection there. For the discussion. Yes, I see a hand in the second row here. Wait for the microphone. Pat Holland precinct one. I'm just wondering whether swimming is going to be allowed in that pond. Mr. Zomek. We will not be able to prohibit swimming, but unlike Puffer's Bond, access to this pond will be limited by the parking areas. So there won't be direct access or direct parking on the frontage. So I'll point to where the access points will be. So to get to this property, someone is gonna have to hike in the future. So there will be a new trailhead here. There's going to be a, for those of you who travel 116 South to South Hadley, there's a new subdivision going in here put in by Mr. Cole. We'll talk about that in a later article. There'll be eight new homes here and Mr. Cole is donating this six acres of land to the town and he is going to build a trailhead right there. So that'll be one of the access points in and then up to the Mount Hoyoke Range. Likewise over here, there was an existing trailhead on this as part of the Sweet Alice conservation area that people will be able to use there on Bay Road. So those will be the two access points. You'll have to hike in and it's a decent hike to get to the pond. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, it's a little bit faded. The pond will be here and this property, the house and about three acres of land will be excluded. We are not buying the town is not buying that. Thank you. Further discussion? Yeah, I see a hand over there. I'm wondering about the role of the Kestrel Land Trust. Jennifer Page, precinct eight. I'm wondering about the role of the Kestrel Land Trust. It sounds like the town is purchasing this property from the Epstein family. So what's the role of the Kestrel Land Trust? Mr. Zomek? The Kestrel Trust has been very supportive. They were supportive of the land grant that we submitted to the state. The Kestrel Trust has for many years been looking for a permanent home in Amherst, first in the region and then more specifically in Amherst. So they are currently in discussions with the Epsteins as to whether the three acre exclusion might be an appropriate place for them to have a permanent home. So they are exploring that. Further discussion? Yes, second row from the back there. Paige Wilder, precinct 10. What is the total purchase price with the land grant? Mr. Zomek? The purchase price of the acreage, which is about 30 acres. And I should be specific that most of the land is not buildable. There was some confusion about that that weren't reviewed. It contains the pond, which is about eight acres. A lot of wetland streams and likely one building lot. We didn't fully explore that, but about 30 acres. And we'll be purchasing that from the Epsteins for $270,000, which is the appraised value. Thank you. And I see a hand over there. Maria Kapiki, precinct eight. Could you please talk about, you said people are going to have to hike in. Is there going to be any place for people to be parking or is there gonna be cars kind of lined up along people's property there that could be irritating? And could you just explain how people would have access? Mr. Zomek? Sure. So as I stated, there will be two parking, two trailhead parking areas. One at the so-called coal property, which as I said before, will be an eight home subdivision right here and that is under construction now. Mr. Cole will be, as part of our agreement with him, has agreed to donate construction of an informal crushed stone parking area here. So there'll be a trailhead here and we'll talk about that in an article coming up because we need an easement on his subdivision road. And he's agreed to donate that to the town as well. So people will be able to park here. There'll be roughly six, eight, 10 car parking area here. And then off of Bay Road, we own many, many hundreds of acres of frontage here on the Sweet Alice Conservation Area. This is an old orchard and it is very flat, very easy to develop a parking area here as well. It'll be modest. We are not talking about a lot of cars there, but there'll be enough for trailhead parking, 10, 20 cars, something like that. Thank you. Ready to come to a vote. I see a hand there. Rob Kessner, precinct three. I shouldn't speak so often, but in this one case, we talk about parking. There's a lovely bus line that runs down there. Route 36, you may hear about it later this evening, but it provides service daily to Atkins Farm and the area there all the way up to the center of town. And if you're thinking of using that pond to swim in during the summer, you should support keeping the bus service running on weekends, especially during the summer. Ready to come to a vote on 12 Bay. I see a hand wherever there. Lisa Berry, precinct two. I move to call the question. Most of the previous question has been made and I believe I just heard a second. We will now come to an immediate vote. If two thirds of you vote, yes, we will then vote kind of an immediate vote on 12 Bay. All those in favor of the motion of the previous question, please say aye. Aye. Opposed, please say no. My very hears unanimous motion passed. We now come to an immediate vote on part B of article 12. This in turn also requires a two thirds vote for passage. All those in favor of the motion under article 12 B please say aye. Opposed, please say no. Moderator, here's two thirds. I'm now calling on town meeting member Jeff Lee who would like to make a procedural motion. Jeff Lee, precinct seven. I move to reconsider the article eight transportation enterprise fund appropriation. Motion has been made and seconded. You may speak to your motion. Thank you. I don't take tinkering with the proposed budget lightly nor do I take lightly adding to the hours you're devoting to this town meeting session. But I think that the future of the local bus system is critically important to Amherst and last Wednesday's transportation budget vote which took place at the end of the evening with nearly half of the town meeting members absent deserves revisiting. As you have heard, the PVTA is planning significant service reductions due to state budget cuts. I have learned that in the past week there's been some research by a town meeting member into the extent of these cuts and into the possible process for the town to bring about a partial restoration of planned service reductions. While I agree with those who argue that the ideal outcome is for the state to continue to fund public transportation at previous levels, I'm not confident that our decision makers in Boston will value Western Mass public transportation to the same degree that Amherst does. This is especially true with last week's resignation of Stan Rosenberg who has been a strong advocate for public transportation in the state Senate and who co-founded the legislature's regional transportation authorities caucus. Service level cuts beget lower ridership. Without support we could be seeing our public bus system if not beginning to fade away at least seriously wounded. With due respect both to the budget process and to our residents who rely on the public bus system please reconsider the transportation enterprise fund budget allocation. Thank you. Okay, so let me talk a little bit about process here. So what we're gonna be discussing now is the motion to reconsider whether or not we want to bring back the transportation fund to section of article eight. Mr. Lee was permitted to make that motion because he did not vote with the minority on the last vote on article eight transportation because he was absent. If the motion to reconsider fails we are done with it and we move on to article 13. If the motion to reconsider passes then we find ourselves right where we were just prior to the final vote in favor of the article. If you remember that article had two numbers a higher number and lower number but we already had failed on the higher number and the lower number is the one that was before us and finally passed so we'd be back with that lower number which was the original finance committee motion. At that point if reconsider passes I expect we would have somebody make a motion to increase the amount again. However what we're talking about first is the motion to reconsider. It's a difficult thing to do but as much as possible I want the discussion to be limited to the pros and cons of reconsideration not the pros and cons of the transportation fund or adding money to the transportation fund. I understand that it's gonna be a difficult line to draw I'm gonna do my best to draw it. So in discussing the pros of reconsideration you might talk about new information that you have that you didn't used to have although that's not a criteria for reconsideration but it can't just be a debate about why we should be spending more money we already had that debate and voted on it. We're talking about why we need to reconsider. Like I said it's gonna be a difficult line. I will be interrupting speakers if I think they're over that line. I'm really not all that interested in points of order disagreeing with me because I'm making these rulings kind of ad hoc as we go but the moderators rulings stand on whether something is in scope of what we're discussing. So I'm gonna try and draw the line I will do my best and we're gonna open up discussion now to the pros and cons of reconsidering the transportation fund portion of article eight. Don't see too many hands. Right there in the third row with the green card. Gordon Freed precinct six. Maybe this was answered last week I apologize. If we increase the amount of money that money will go to the Pioneer Valley Transportation Authority. Do they put that money where they want or do they put that money where we want? Hold on just a sec please. Oh good question which I forgot to say. That could have been a point of order Mr. Towne manager. Yes the motion to reconsider is a majority vote. And in fact it's even a majority vote if the original motion that we're considering was a two thirds vote but in this case the original was a majority also but it is a majority vote to reconsider. Yes Mr. Lay. This vote is just for reconsideration so it doesn't have anything to do with money transfer. I expect if it passes there'll be an amendment made which will get further into details of how money might be transferred. Thank you. I see another hand way over against the wall. Jim Oldham precinct five. So I'm supporting the motion to reconsider I actually abstained. I didn't feel I had, I was supportive of the sentiment but I didn't feel I understood fully the situation, the impact of the cuts on the buses. I now have more information about that both from what was provided on the back table and got a bit of an earful from my daughter who uses the buses and whose friends rely on the buses and I heard a lot about how the students stay past the so-called late bus that's provided for them doing activities beyond that and rely on the buses to get around even after the university folks have gone and we're in the reduced service. So I've got new information from various sources and I think I have a better understanding too of how the money would flow which again we'll talk about more later but so I, whereas before I did not feel I could support the motion, I'm moving to a different place now, thank you. Further discussion before I come to a vote on the motion to reconsider. I see no hands, this is a majority vote. All those in favor of the motion to reconsider the transportation fund portion of article eight, please say aye. Opposed please say no. Moderators in doubt, we will have an electronic vote. The result is yes 85, no 52 for abstain. So the motion on the floor is now the main motion of the article eight transportation fund section. So we see that motion before us. Mr. Kussner, okay I can't read this so could you give me a legible number please? Let's wait to get it up on the screen and then you can make your motion. Okay, Mr. Kussner, you are now recognized and you can make your motion. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Rob Kussner, precinct three. It's longer than I remember. Sorry. I moved to the town appropriate $872,121 for the transportation fund and to meet such appropriation, $872,121 be made available from the transportation fund revenues of the current year and from the transportation fund free cash balance. Do I hear a second? Motion's been made and seconded you may speak to your motion. Okay, I have a point of order on the front row here. I'm Sonia Aldrich, the comptroller or interim finance director at the moment. The funding sources have to be specific so it would have to say 800, 19,000, 121. And 53,000 from the available free cash. That was what I was trying to scroll and I thought it wouldn't go to the piece of paper. So what should the motion read to be a legitimate motion? To meet such appropriation, 800, 19,000, 121 from transportation fund revenues of the current year and then 53,000 from transportation retained earnings is the technical term, if you want that. Okay, I'm glad we have that lunch. Thank you very much, Ms. Aldrich and Mr. Towne manager. Can we get the motion on the screen just so I can ponder it for another 30 seconds or so? Time to 819. Okay, everybody got that? Okay, Mr. Kussner, you now have five minutes to speak to your motion. Thank you, Mr. Moderator and fellow members and for helping with the arithmetic. You know, I'm one of those kinds of mathematicians. Some of you may have gotten a document that looks like this in the back. This sideways version of it is I'm afraid where things are heading. There's so many cuts proposed to the PVTA service system wide that it takes about eight pages or nine pages of fine print to detail them all. There are hundreds of little cuts. There are little cuts that many people won't notice but there are little cuts that start to cause the bleeding of the ridership in the system and I mean that metaphorically but it's unfortunately the way many transit systems disappear. It's in some sense the way our railroads or passenger railroads disappeared during the last century. I hope that doesn't happen at Amherst. Amherst is proud for being one of the leading transportation hubs in the world for fair free transit. It's something that all of us have taken advantage of over the years and I hope you still will. The cuts that are listed here are just the ones in Amherst. The ones on this side of the two pages are ones to buses that are mainly used by five college students and run between the colleges and tend to go in very reduced service periods during the non-academic year. The cuts that I think hit the hardest in Amherst are the cuts on the three bus routes in addition to the bus route that I mentioned earlier, the 36 bus, that's on the front side of the sheet. Now, I'll put it on here but it'll again be too small to see. Cousin, I think it'd make better use of your time just speaking. Okay, there are four bus routes that go through the center of town that serve many residents of Amherst besides the college students. The route 30 bus serves Belcher Town Road, goes through the center of town through UMass and up to Puffton Village. There's the 31 bus which serves South Amherst, South Point, the Boulders, areas like that, an area where community development block grants are now being expended to help people get, for example, to the Graf Park Recreation Area. And a lot of people who live there, live there year round and they use this bus, the 31 bus throughout the year and every day of the week. The 33 bus used to be called the Amity Shuttle. It connects people who live in North Amherst and near Puffers Pond, the apartment houses there. It goes by the Survival Center. It's gonna be a bus that connects to the new development in North Amherst. I forget what it's called, the Dirty Hands District is what I know it as, but a lot of new housing is going in there. And the 36 bus serves Village Park and Olympia, Olympia Drive housing and also comes down to South Amherst, to Applewood and Atkins Farm. Some of the most severe cuts are gonna happen on weekends during times when the university isn't in service. And as you heard someone mention during the discussion of whether to reconsider, those cuts affect real people. They affect people who cannot drive because they're too young to drive. They affect people who cannot drive because they don't have driver's license. They affect people who can't afford a car or even people who choose not to drive a car. They affect a lot of people. The people who use these work in our community, they go to school in our community, they're just community members and they need transit to get around. It's, if you remember a few years ago, we had an enterprise fund that had to help provide sewerage service to a part of Amherst that never had it before. And we opened our wallets through that fund to provide that service to that community. I think the same sort of thing applies here. Although it's a lot more pleasant to ride a bus than to travel that way. Anyway, the dollar amount, $53,000, I'll get into this a little bit. I don't wanna get too deep into details because those are really at the pleasure of the town manager and the transit providing authority, which would be UMass Transit. PVTA, if it should get a lot of its funding restored, would be in a position to obviously make this money, $53,000 go a lot way longer. But a direct contract with UMass Transit is not only possible, it's been done many times in the past by this meeting. And the dollar amount that's proposed here. Mr. Kussner, if you would finish up, please. I will, I'm about to finish. My last sentence, if you allow me. The dollar amount proposed here is based on restoring the cuts, mainly to weekend service that are indicated with asterisks at the rate that UMass Transit now charges. So that's the reason why this dollar amount was suggested. Thank you very much. Mr. Slaughter. Could I ask for an additional minutes? Yes, you may without objection. I don't think I'll really need five minutes, but just in case. I'm gonna speak against this and it's not because I don't care for busing. I will tell you that the PVTA advisory board in which I sit along with representatives from the 24 communities in the Pioneer Valley really struggle when the budget gets tight and we have to talk about these kinds of things. The difficulty that we have in going through this process is profound and one of the methodologies that is used in order to come up with these cuts is to look at how can it affect the fewest people the least amount? And so one of the things that happens is in more urban areas, you tend to find that you could potentially eliminate parts of service because no one's riding in those parts of service in rural areas. More like what we have, you run into situations where if you don't provide the surface then it completely cuts people off. And so the idea with how the cuts are proposed and then work through through the public hearing process is so that we affect the fewest riders as possible and we try not to leave anyone without any service whatsoever. And so the process of that is why there's a public hearing process. The PVTA takes federal money and therefore when they go through the process of changing routes, whether it's to increase or decrease, there are a couple of requirements of that. One is to have a public hearing process. The second is to do what's called a Title VI analysis. Title VI analysis looks to see whether or not the changes are disproportionate and disparate which has to do with whether particular race ethnicity groups are negatively affected or whether different socioeconomic groups are negatively affected. And so when changes are proposed, those analysis have to be done, they are not free and they are intensive and you have to have a public hearing process so it's required to do that. As was suggested by the speaker, the idea of contracting separately for routes is a possibility that might exclude us from that process but nonetheless if you're talking about routes like 31 which goes into Sunderland that carries into another town the way our assessment is apportioned is by miles driven within our community and not miles driven external to our community. The other piece of it is that we pay as the town of Amherst roughly 15% of the total assessed charge to our community. The other 85% is paid for by five colleges incorporated and UMass and so depending on the potential changes we would be funding there, those two entities would have to be brought along in order to fund it fully. So I think there's a lot of complications here. One of the other critical problems is that the money that's proposed to be used is one-time money, it's not recurring revenue, it is a savings account. Once it is gone, it does not get replaced and that means we take our current fund balance of $91,000, you take $53,000 out of it that allows $38,000 which is also used for things like if we're doing the North Common and we're redoing the parking lot on the North Common that's how we fund those sorts of projects. We won't have the resources available to us to do those kinds of projects if we use it for something like this. The other thing is a year from now, we'll have to come up with $53,000 from some place and right now that would not be available in the fund balance because we would have spent what we had and not had a way to reimburse ourselves for that. So I think for those variety of reasons, this is while well-intentioned and I can tell you right now the advisory board would love to put service back. They held off on implementing the changes until September in hopes that the legislature would be able to provide greater amount of support for regional transit authorities not only in our area but across the state but I think it's not a wise way to spend our money. Thank you. Yes, I see a hand in the back corner there. Vince O'Connor precinct one. So I'm gonna support this motion and I think the reason to support it is that it is quite frankly unlikely that this will be a more than one year situation. In fact, it may be a situation that doesn't require any action at all and the money will stay in the reserve fund area. The House passed its budget but the budget is not yet online. The governor's proposal was for $80 million for regional transportation authorities. My understanding is that that amount was bumped up very slightly, one or two million. The Senate budget, the Senate Ways and Means budget is not yet online and so we have no idea what will happen there but my understanding is the Commonwealth's revenues are running 800 million ahead of projections for this fiscal year that we're in now and again, the likelihood is that this will be a one year situation that in fact if because a particular route like the 31 route goes into Sunderland I would expect that because Sunderland might have an interest in it, that the very small amount that that route would take up in Sunderland would in fact might be forthcoming from the town of Sunderland if they were asked and so I just, I think that our worst fears about what is going to happen if we make this appropriation will not come true but I think it's the kind of action that we need to take in order to both send the message to our regional legislators and to the governor that this service, regional transportation authorities needs to be better funded, needs to be at least level service funded or in fact increased. This community will not function well without the kind of bus service that we have gotten used to. We do not need the kind of increase in automobile use that these kind of bus service cuts will amount to and I would just urge people to keep an eye on the larger picture and vote for the larger amount and hope that it sends the appropriate message to those who are responsible for these budgets statewide. Thank you. For the discussion before a vote. Yes, I see a hand on the aisle there. Andrew Rose, precinct four. I'm gonna vote against this unless someone can answer question differently than what I think the answer is when the PVTA advisory board, whatever it's called gets together, they're thinking about the entire area that PVTA covers and the fact that Amherst has some cash in the bank to spend I think makes it an economic justice issue that we can spend it to give ridership a boost in our territory. If we were going to do this, I would wanna just give the money to the PVTA advisory board to distribute as would be fair. Yeah, I see a card right there on the aisle. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Andrew Parker in the precinct five. I was wondering if we could make some sort of an amendment to this motion to remove the funding source away from transportation fund or retained earnings perhaps from free cash and perhaps that would solve Mr. Slaughter's issues in regards to taking away any retained earnings that could be used for other services? I don't think so because the warrant article talks about a specific, actually hang on a second, does it? Yeah, I think we actually could do that. I mean, you can't do it because you've already spoken about it. But I believe a motion to change the funding source would be in order because the warrant article itself doesn't talk about a funding source, just the motion dead. So it would be a substitute motion. That's what I think so far. I'm gonna hear it, Mr. Slaughter has to say. I would suggest that it's the same problem of a different scale because when we look at... Hang on a second. Now, I've recognized Mr. Slaughter to speak. If there's a point of order, I'll hear it. My answer to the question of the previous speaker is I'm not sure I'm still thinking about it. And then I recognize Mr. Slaughter to speak. So just to clarify, I think that we run into the same problem. It's a different scale because when we look at free cash or stabilization, those are both, again, savings and retained unspent revenues from previous years. It's not a recurring revenue source. And so it's the same kind of problem. It's just the current pot on those two is larger than what's in the transportation fund balance. So I think it's the same kind of problem where it's a non-recurring revenue for a potentially recurring expense. And that poses the same kind of problem just a different scale. I hear a point of order. If somebody's going to do this, is it going to take... Wait, wait, wait. Oh, thank you. Lawrence Quigley, piercing cone. If someone's going to do this, is it going to take another four pieces of paper? Absolutely. And these are legal documents. We need to know we're voting on them. We need to know exactly what we're voting on. I encourage someone to start that process if they're thinking of doing this. Thank you. Mr. Steinberg. Yeah, I actually am very concerned as to whether this would be legal to take anything from the reserve fund to supplement the transportation enterprise fund. The whole purpose of enterprise funds is that they are to be separate enterprises, that they are businesses that the town runs with revenue that comes from a dedicated source to support the services that are related to the purpose that the fund exists for. And I'd have to delve into the statutes, which I can't do now, but in all of my work in the finance committee and in the select board dealing with enterprise funds, enterprise funds are distinct items. It would be like, would we think it appropriate to take money from free cash to supplement the water fund in order to serve some purpose there? And I really would be very cautious about coming to the conclusion that it's an appropriate thing to do. Right, from the moderator's perspective, it would be, from the moderator's perspective, it would be an okay thing to do. Appropriate isn't a word I'm gonna get involved in actually, but it would be an acceptable motion from my perspective because again, the budget article just says we're gonna pay for the budget with funds and it doesn't specify the funds, it's only in the motion where the funds are specified. I think if you tried to use money from the transportation fund to support something in the solid waste area, there you get into legality of what an enterprise fund can be used for. Yes, Mr. Kussner. Yeah, I wanna thank Mr. Steinberg for making that point because we used to serve on various joint capital planning committee things together and I believe that's where I would have come down to although I also respect the moderator's view on possible amendments. I think it's best to keep it in the transportation enterprise fund budget because this board did something, I think quite wise last fall, they tweaked with parking regulations which is one of the local sources for funding the transportation enterprise fund and if you look in the town manager's budget which is not included in the orange book but it's a much longer document, you can see the pre, it's not an echo, it's whatever happens before things, the premonition of additional funds coming into the enterprise fund. So I think this is the right source for the funds and I do hope you'll support this modest amount. I do believe that this will be a one time thing and maybe a zero time thing. I'm really hoping that the legislature will see fit to fund this whole enterprise of regional transportation authorities at a level that meets their level service budgets but regardless of whether they do that or not, it's important if we're gonna keep the service in this area and in the Pioneer Valley in general, we need to have a budget in our transportation fund that actually will support that additional funding we might get from, the PVT might get from the state so I hope you'll support this, thank you. Yes, I see a white card right there. Hi, Peter Everett, precinct two. I wonder if somebody could explain it, I'm sorry, I don't understand. The transportation fund retained earnings who generally has jurisdiction and what would the timing be of disbursement of those retained earnings free cash if they were not to be appropriated this evening? Can they be dispersed later on for certain needs if they're needed or is it just a town meeting time that this $53,000 or other dollars from the retained earnings could be dispersed? Yes. Hello? Good now. It can be appropriated in a future town meeting or council meeting at this point. Yes, back of the aisle, it's a white card. Well, Aaron Hayden, precinct eight. I have a short question. I'm an engineer and I can do the arithmetic sort of in the back of my head but I'm wondering practically if what service could be restored for this amount of money? It's not just a matter of adding another bus. There are other practical issues that are often involved and I'm wondering what positive effect this might possibly have. Mr. Kussner. Excellent question, Mr. Hayden. I took quite a bit of time with the director of UMass Transit, Glenn Barrington during the past week to get an idea of what can be done and what in his opinion as a professional operator of the transit service is what should be done with this amount of money and that's where the dollar amount came from. UMass Transit currently charges approximately 360 per mile for its service. So you can decide that's for a bus service with a driver and all the maintenance and things that go into that. And he suggested that that figure up to $4 so that's a 10% interval be used in trying to budget for restoration of the weekend services that were going to be severely cut under the proposed cut list. So that's an example of what could be supported with this and if you like, I will go through the arithmetic but not too much. It's per mile, it's a certain number of miles for example the Belcher Town Road to North Amherst route is 12 miles. You look at the number of cuts and so you multiply them all out. The figures that are on the sheet that I passed around have a 10% range. I didn't think it was meaningful to do it to the nearest dollar or penny but they're 10% ranges and that's where the numbers came from. It's essentially this would support for example, the restoration of much of the weekend service on the four routes that were mentioned during the non-peak, the so-called reduced service periods of the university's EMS transit service. Those times when the EMS students aren't around. That's not necessarily what has to be done but that's where these numbers came from. So it would provide restoration of the deepest cuts, the ones that would essentially cut off service for most people during those times. Let's see, let's see. It's that red card on the aisle there. Paul Wright precinct seven. I'm reluctant to vote for spending town funds on this to overturn the PVTA advisory board without any information at all about ridership on the lines that are proposed to be cut. Anybody care to comment on that? Mr. Cussner. These are all routes and services that were recommended over the years because they had good ridership. It's because of this very dire one year cut in the state's subsidy to the regional transit authorities that these cuts are coming down. And as Mr. Slaughter pointed out, the board agonized over what to cut. I don't have a list of tables for each trip that's cut because that wouldn't even make sense. Many of the cuts were the form where instead of having hourly service, it would become two hourly service or the whole day is being cut. And another form of cuts are to the very last and very first buses of the day. And as you may know, as I alluded to earlier, this is how transportation systems tend to get amputated. First, go the fingers and the toes, then go the hands and then go the arms. So often these first and last routes of the trips of the day are the ones that have somewhat lower ridership than others. So if I were to tell you, I just told you the dollar amount per mile. I don't know if you do itemizing your tax returns. It's about 15, 50 and 60 cents per mile for your private vehicle. So if you have six or seven riders on a bus, eight riders on the bus, you're doing better with the bus than that. And so many of these buses do quite a bit better than that. Certainly the ones, if you've ever seen them coming through town during school days, the passengers almost hang off the mirrors. Mr. Slaughter. So to the point of ridership, the reason why the particular choices were made as far as days that were cut or particular timing of routes were cut is precisely because of ridership. In other words, this had the least impact. And it also played out by virtue of what was heard at the public hearing process. So at the public hearing process, at Amherst, at UMass, and at the Bank Center, as well as throughout all the communities of the Pioneer Valley, they had hearings and they got specific feedback from people about the days and times, the parts of service that are more critical and not critical. They did analysis of their ridership. They do a regular accounting of how many folks are on their buses at all times. So they know which routes and which times of day carry more riders. And the idea behind these cuts, PBTA would rather not make any of these cuts. But if you have to, it is what's gonna have the smallest impact both from a standpoint of timing for people as far as ridership as well as total number of riders. And so this level of cut was to try to make the dollars match for what we thought revenue would be for the, depending on what the state funds the RTA and the other sources of revenue for the regional transit authorities, but also try to impact riders the least. We're ready to come to a vote. Yeah, I see a white card second in from the aisle there. Nope, behind you. Marilyn Blaustine, precinct six. From what I understand, Mr. Slaughter said, 15% of the cost of the PBTA comes from the ton of Amherst. So I mean, it sounds like what Mr. Cousner is proposing is that the ton of Amherst foot, 100% of the bill to restore those routes. And what I wanna know is that the real cost of what it would be and whether that's something that's appropriate for the ton of Amherst to do. Yes, second in from the corner back there. Okay, I urge people to vote for this. Identify yourself, please. Well, Hank Vandenberg, precinct four, I'm sorry. I urge people to vote for this. I just wanna read town budget here. Show my age there and put my reading glasses on. Out of the town budget for 2019, the mission statement that goes with the transportation fund is to provide a parking and public transportation system that meets the needs of Amherst residents. So if PBTA does not want to make the cuts, we are looking for a way to not make those cuts and restore the service and maintain it. I urge people strongly to vote for that. It's very simple. You should thank us for being willing to make these payments to maintain the bus system instead of looking for all kinds of excuses to cut. We need to maintain the service. As again, the speaker who presented the motion mentioned, once you start cutting, it's a slippery slope and it keeps going down. We need to resist that. And I think this is a very good way to make a strong statement to do that. Thank you. Perhaps ready to come to a vote. I see a hand there just as a tip. When you hold up your card, don't hold it at a direct plane so I can't actually see it. There you go. But yes, the green card there. Hint, marry, precinct five. I understand that Mr. Slotta said when cuts are made, it's the least ridership. But the least ridership affects real people. There are so many people, some I know personally, who work entry-level part-time jobs. They have to take two buses to make it to their work. And for part-timers, sometimes, if they don't accept Saturday or Sunday shifts, they don't get the job. These people are single parents who have to take a couple of buses to make it to these part-time jobs and they pay most of it to babysitters. So imagine if we cut the buses for them, they cannot work and earn money to feed their kids. Yes, I see a white card in the fourth row there. Ruth Hazard, precinct three, I call the question. Motion for the previous question has been made and seconded. We will now come to an immediate vote. If two-thirds of you vote yes, we will then be voting on the transportation fund portion of the budget, voting again in terms of higher number first than lower number. But first motion for the previous question. All those in favor of the motion of the previous question, please say aye. Opposed, please say no. Moderator, here's two-thirds. So we will now come to a vote first on the higher number. Requires a majority if that passes. We've disposed of the transportation portion of the budget. If that fails, we then vote on the lower number. So the higher number is the 8072121. All those in favor of that appropriation, please say aye. Opposed, please say no. Moderators in doubt, we'll have an electronic vote. The vote is 90 in favor, 54 against. So the higher appropriation passes. We will now take a very strict five-minute break. Please be back in five minutes. We have lots more work to do tonight. Okay, we are now taking up Article 13 capital program equipment. I call on Ms. Krueger to make a motion. I move that the town appropriate $1,136,925 to purchase, repair, and or install new or replacement equipment and to meet such appropriation, $576,925 be raised by taxation, $260,000 be transferred from the ambulance receipts reserved for appropriation account and $300,000 be transferred from the overlay surplus reserve and further to authorize the application for an acceptance of any gifts, bequests, or grants. Your motion has been made and seconded. You may speak to your motion. Mr. Monerader, could I have an extra two minutes? I don't, I may not need it, but I would like to. Yes, two minutes extra for a total of seven without objection, you may continue. Makes me less nervous. First I'm going to report for the select board at its meeting of April 18th, 2018. The select board voted foreign favor in one absent to recommend this article. So I'm going to speak to you about the two capital program articles, 13 and 14 together in general terms right now, and then more specifically about equipment which is Article 13 under this article and more on buildings and facilities when we discuss Article 13, Article 14, excuse me. You all should have received the report from the Joint Capital Planning Committee which we call JCPC for short. You should have gotten that in your first town meeting mailing, but just to review a bit. Capital needs are initially identified by town staff and capital requests are reviewed by the finance director and the town manager who work closely with department heads to look at these requests and prioritize spending needs. Starting in late January, the JCPC started meeting weekly to review these requests. The committee is made up of two representatives each from the select board, finance committee, library and schools as this represents the groups most involved with capital needs and projects. The mailed report you received inadvertently left off the member names and I want to let you know who served on JCPC this year. So as myself and Andrew Steinberg for the select board, Mary Liu-Taylman and Bernie Kubiak for the finance committee, Alex Lefebvre and Tamsen Eli for the library and Eric Nakajima and Phoebe Hazard for the schools. I can assure you that this group took its work very seriously and had meetings with all the departments where we asked really hard questions. We like to think we're not pushovers. This year, we're recommending a total of 9% of the town's budget be spent for capital projects up from 8.5% last year. We're pleased that we'll be continuing to move towards the goal of appropriating a full 10% of the town's budget toward capital expenses. It's taken a great deal of discipline within the overall budget process to continue progress towards the 10% capital goal. As you can well imagine, there are always more legitimate capital funding needs than we can address each year. So we try to be thoughtful and prudent about what we choose to recommend to you. Public safety is high on our list of priorities. Also preserving assets we already have in order to prolong their life and reduce repair and operating costs is also very important. In some cases, deferring expenditures to a future year may make sense. And for other items, this may not be the best course. We did try something new this year. We asked residents who had capital spending ideas to submit them to JCPC. We received three, all for road sidewalk or crosswalk projects. We directed these to either the Transportation Advisory Committee or to the Department of Public Works directly. We hope to see this public process continued next year but with more detailed guidance in a timeline that moves these projects up in the budget planning cycle. This year, the town manager recommended and we concurred that we postpone purchase of some vehicles to call them rolling stock, I think that's cool, that would have been up for replacement in the established rotation schedule but instead to recommend increased spending for roads and sidewalks. We'll talk about this more under Article 14, buildings and facilities. Some vehicle purchases remain in the equipment budget where it seemed really compelling to proceed with purchase this year. When JCPC reviews the capital requests, it does so by department and functional areas. This is shown by the colored Excel spreadsheet attached at the back of your JCPC report. The part of the report also shows what was spent last year and what is projected ahead for the next 10 years. The out years are often our best guess but show that project costs are being anticipated many years out. Tonight, we're focusing on the column with the heading FY19. These items are then regrouped by either equipment or buildings and facilities in the table with the gray bars in the narrative section of the JCPC report. This is, and it's also in your finance committee report on, I think it's page 55. So those are the line items we're gonna be talking about and in the JCPC report there's a little narrative for each of those. So there's two ways that we look at these monies. It can be confusing. And they appear differently in different parts of the report for accounting purposes. So the following requests are recommended to you under capital program for equipment. Thank you. In my report. Mr. Kubiak for the finance committee. The finance committee unanimously recommended this article 13 to the town meeting just to follow up on with, Ms. Gruger I had to say, this is, and you'll notice in the report from the JCPC, this is a one year budget but a 10 year plan. It's something that's not carved in stone. It's tried to, we tried to catalog those capital requests that met the interim criteria, the immediate criteria for inclusion in the plan. We tried to catalog them. We tried to arrange them and categorize them both in terms of their practicality, their financial costs and also the opportunity costs knowing that you have to make trade offs. And if you do one thing, you may impose some opportunity costs on another department or another plan. This also encompasses the JCPC report encompasses all sources of funding. So if you look at the JCPC report, you're gonna see some capital items that are paid for in other ways and have been voted on at other times by this meeting or may still be voted on by this meeting. So we just again direct your attention to pages page 55 of the report that first section for the capital items that we're voting on now. I trust that you will approve these and thank you for your time. Thank you. This requires a majority vote for passage. As the previous speaker said, we are looking at pages 54 and 55 of your finance committee report for article 13. And there's a list of line items and what I've done in the past, what I'm gonna do again is I'm gonna mention them in bunches of two or three. And if you have comments or questions or discussion on the line items that I mentioned, I'll take a few of them then we'll move on to the next bunch and the next bunch. And once we get through a few questions on all of them, then it's open up to any discussion but at that point the motion with the previous question would also be acceptable. So, looking at page 55, is there discussion on infrastructure or software applications? And I see a white card over there in the third row. Gordon Freed precinct six since infrastructure is one of the largest items, who's infrastructure? Yes, Krueger. If I might, I would suggest that Mr. Hannon with the IT department explain that, the computer. Oh, is that what your question? So, the computer part of our work was complicated because it actually shows up as a bunch of different lines. We have some library in there, we have some overall town, we have some school that's separated out but I think to speak to it in any more detail, unless you just wanted to know what meant computers. I just wanna remind everybody actually, the town meeting isn't a discussion between two speakers so there's not an engagement back and forth. So when you respond, you're really responding to everybody and if the speaker wants to speak again, they'll raise their hand. Any more discussion on infrastructure or software applications? Let's move on to cruisers and in-car radar units. I see a white card there, second row from the back. Carol Gray precinct seven. I was glad to see in the write-up that there's a mileage component that you don't replace cruisers that are under 100,000. When I was on the Joint Capital Planning Committee, it turned out some of the cruisers were actually significantly under 100,000. I wanted to know what is the actual mileage on the three being replaced and also are we looking at buying any hybrid cars and also is there any money in that line item from last year? When I was on the JCPC I discovered when asking that question that there was actually tens of thousands left over from the prior year. So if someone could answer those three, how much left from last year, if any? What the mileage is? Because every year we buy three. So the chances that every single year there are exactly three that are over 100,000 seems kind of unlikely to me. So if you could tell me if that was checked, how much is from the other year and why not hybrids? Because some police departments in other parts of the country are using hybrids. I recognize the gentleman lurking by the podium there. Scott Livingstone, police chief. We currently have four hybrid vehicles in our fleet and as long as I've been chief, unless a vehicle's been involved in an accident, we've never gotten rid of them with less than 100,000 miles on them. Thank you. Further discussion on cruisers and incariator units? No, we're gonna move on. We'll do a follow-up later if we need to. Ambulance or microwave communications? How about the next three? Park replacement or library technology equipment or school bus? I see a hand there in the fourth row. I understand- Identify yourself, please. Mary Sayer, precinct three. I understand that a year ago or something we got a grant for an electric school bus and so my question is, did we get it? Did we use this electric school bus and are we considering buying more of them? Mr. McPherson, there you are. You should introduce yourself. Good evening. I'm Jim McPherson, facilities director. Yes, we do have an electric school bus. We do use it as much as possible. It's extremely unreliable at this time and I would not recommend another purchase. Anything on special education van, school furniture, backup generator? Anything on the last three items and we're open to general discussion on anything under Article 13? I see a hand there, third row from the back. Mary's street or precinct date. I've been in town meeting for 15 years and I try to do my homework but I have no idea what an overlay surplus reserve is. Did someone answer that? Yes, from the front table. Every year when we process the tax rate, we have to raise 1% of the tax levy to set aside for abatements and exemptions when people come in from their tax bills and want an abatement from that. So after a few years, we have to keep only what we have that's still receivable on the books and the rest can be closed out. So it has to be declared by the Board of Assessors a surplus and then it's closed out and during the fiscal year, it can be used for any lawful purpose. It has to be appropriated as a funding source. So we just closed out 16, 15 and 14 and we are using it to support part of this article. Thank you. I see another white card there. Chris Riddle precinct too. This is a question about the public wireless system in the town of Amherst, which I think it's wonderful that we have such a thing as a public wireless system but it could use some help. I'm wondering if any of budget budgets for that are in the two line items that look like they might be there, but I can't tell. Mr. Hannon, you should also probably introduce yourself. Sean Hannon, IT director. Yes, there is money in there and that should be happening this summer. Further discussion on Article 13. I see no hands, we will come to a vote. This requires a majority. All those in favor of the motion before you under Article 13, please say aye. Opposed, please say no. The ayes have it unanimously. We now move on to Article 14 and I call on Ms. Krueger to make a motion. I move that the town raise and appropriate $2,007,864 to repair and or improve buildings and facilities and to meet such appropriation, $2,007,864 be raised by taxation and further to authorize the application for an acceptance of any gifts, requests, or grants. Motion's been made and seconded, you may speak to your motion. Okay, first I'll start with the select board position. The select board voted April 18th, 2018, foreign favor one absent to recommend this article. Article 14 includes the capital needs for buildings, roads, sidewalks, and certain eligible plans or studies. There's a part of the building and facilities budget I wanna point out to you on page seven of the JCPC report if you have it. You'll see some fairly large numbers. One is 550,000 for design services for new fire station headquarters. And one is for $350,000 for design services for new DPW facility. These are shown or when we would develop this budget we showed them in the FY19 budget because at the time there was a possibility that these two projects would be ready for design funds by perhaps the fall of this year of 2018. However, current information is that they will not be far enough along for consideration in FY19. Although they're shown as expenditures, no funding was identified so spending for FY19 does not need to be adjusted for the delay of the design services for these two projects. So it might have caught your attention, their big numbers, projects we hope to see go into design but they're really not active for this budget. As I mentioned with article 13, some spending for vehicles was deferred until next year so we could increase the amount of spending for roads and sidewalks. At the select board meeting of February 26th we heard a presentation by town engineer Jason Skeels and a consultant with a company named Streetscan in the report was titled Pavement Management through Multisensor Data Fusion. They reported after doing 22.5 hours of field survey work driving all of our roads and assigning a pavement condition index to each street. You probably don't need a pavement expert to tell you that our roads and sidewalks are in really rough shape. Our chapter 90 funds, the money we received from the state for road maintenance is the same as it was last year. It's in the budget, $841,833. We wanted to reach close to the $2 million spending level recommended by those consultants in order to keep up our roads and prevent further deterioration without crippling other areas of the capital budget. So for this year's capital budget we recommend town spending of $968,364 on roads up from 273.562 last year. We're also recommending increased sidewalk spending up to 100,000 up from 80,000 last year and I believe 40,000 the year prior. This is actually a real stretch for the town and I'm not sure how we're gonna sustain this level in future years but we feel it's really important right now as a priority. So with that I know we're gonna get into the specific items but with those two things called out I wanna recommend that you approve the recommended capital program for buildings and facilities for FY19 and thank you for your patience listening to all these numbers. Thank you and Mr. Kubiek for the finance committee. Thank you Mr. Moderator. The finance committee recommends this budget five to zero with two members absent at the time of the vote. I would in addition to what Ms. Kerger had to offer I just wanna point out if you look on page eight of the plan you'll see that there is 841,883 road maintenance and improvement money. This is chapter 90 money. This is money that is not voted by town meeting. It doesn't need an appropriation. That's in addition to the two sums of money that she mentioned. So our expenditures for roads and sidewalks for the next fiscal year is on the order of 1.91 million. So it's a fairly hefty amount of money. The other thing you'll see is the Mill Street bridge is on the capital plan but there's no money allocated for it here because it's being paid for through a grant. Again I would hope that you these items meet your enthusiastic approval. Thank you. Thank you. This requires majority and you can see the line items on page 55 under article 14 and go through them in groups again. So we're gonna start with the general building envelope repairs and the four town hall line items. Any discussion on those? And now the bangs line items, three of them. No discussion. Munson and police station and school building security. Yes I see a hand in the front there. Rob Kestner precinct three. The police station is one of the few buildings in town that was built in a way that has a beautiful steeply pitched south facing roof. I'm just wondering when the JCPC will recommend with perhaps some engineers and architects advice putting photovoltaic panels on that roof. They've just been begging to be used. It's Kruger. I just wanna point out this expenditure is to analyze what is needed but I would turn with the moderator's approval to Mr. McPherson for any more details about the police station roof. Mr. McPherson, you wish to speak? So this year we're planning to design the replacement of the roof and I believe next year actually replace the roof. Thank you. Yes I see a white card there, third row. Maria Kapiki precinct eight. The Munson Library air conditioner unit is that once again a traditional air conditioner unit or are we looking at air source heat pumps for that? Mr. McPherson. So we are looking at both air source, ground source and solar panels not on the historic building but potentially on post outside. And I see a white card there, second row from the back. Van Caner precinct two. Another question about the Munson Library air conditioner. I am a user of that building as and many people in this room are. It's used for dancing as well as a library and other events and it's a, I believe putting an air conditioner in will cost the town money down the road that I wouldn't advise and the reason I say that is we have asked many times to have more control of the heat in that building because often it is extremely hot and we can't control the thermostat as a user and we open the windows. And when dances happen there, we open the windows regardless of whether there's air conditioning or heat. Dancers do not like air that's stagnant. So I feel like if that use is fairly large if that's that building. So I just would question the the value of putting an air conditioner in a place that is used and energy is wasted when we open the windows. So there at least needs to be better control of the temperature. Thank you. Ms. Krueger. Your point. We had representatives from the library on the committee and what my understanding is is this air conditioning unit or air conditioning for this building has been asked for by users for quite a long time. And it was also thought the humidity is a problem and also put some of the resources at risk. And I could ask further information from our facilities director with the moderator's approval, but this was very much requested. Yes, I see a white card there in the aisle. Carol Gray precinct seven. I request that we divide out as two separate articles the new fire headquarters for $550,000 and the new public works facility design at 350,000 two separate items outside of this. Hang on, I'm looking for them. Which are the two things you want to divide? Page seven on the second and fourth one down that half a million plus fire headquarters and the 350,000 hang on. Pardon me. Yeah, they're not there in the article. If you look at article 14 in the finance committee book, those things you say that I believe aren't included in that to me on appropriation. They're on the list of things that look to be, it says cost item and description. So I'm reading from the JCPC report. I think you need to read from the finance committee book. Ms. Aldrich, am I right about that? On page seven of the JCPC. Hang on, hang on, let's hear what Ms. Aldrich has to say, go ahead. The JCPC report has all the capital items in there, but these two were meant to be borrowing items. If we went forward with them at town meeting, they're not part of this town meeting. They aren't on the warrant. What's on the warrant is in the finance committee book on page 55. 55, thank you. So it's easy to divide them out because they're not in to begin with. They're not being considered. Let's move on. Are there questions involving the energy management upgrade? Yes. Sure, third row there, white card. Gordon Fried, precinct six. We had a meeting in which we did not have a new elementary school. The school shooting in Parkland happened after that. Now we are worried a lot about school safety. Now we have to deal with two elementary schools, existing elementary schools. So can someone, perhaps the police chief, talk to us about school safety of the building envelope of the Fort River and Wildwood School? And is this part of that discussion? I don't, it really should have happened way earlier when we were discussing the police budget. Here we're talking about capital items and none of them have to do with security as far as I know. School building interior upgrade, sure. We haven't quite gotten to it yet. Okay, school building security. Okay, I take it back. It's right there. So is there's anybody who wants to speak to school building security? And I see Mr. McPherson. Hello again. So yes, we're working on both the physical hardening of the school primarily associated with the doors as well as alarms monitoring through cameras and duress alarms within the schools. Thank you. Anything on the energy management or on school building interior upgrades or school asbestos management? Yes, I see a card right there. Rudy Perkins, precinct two. I wonder if we could get just a very quick description of the energy management upgrade from the reports that look like software maybe for the HVAC systems to control it, but are there other features that we're adding? Thank you. Mr. McPherson. So yes to that question. And also we're having difficulty controlling the equipment that we have in a variety of the buildings because the Wildwood boiler is being replaced this year. This is an opportune time to correct the control issues associated with that. Thank you. Any discussion on Fort River roof or exterior doors? Yes, I see a hand in the front there. Forgive me, this was actually Rob Custer, precinct three. This was an item earlier that we just jumped over. Early in this list was the police station facility. Then we jumped over the police station roof and I would still like to hear from the new staff member what the plan is for solar panels on the south facing roof of the police station. Mr. McPherson. So the plan at this time is unknown. We're not certain that we will be able to support it on the roof. We are not certain that we will be able to get the correct exposure. We will do what we can that's practical and effective. Thank you. Anything else on Fort River or on Wildwood exterior doors? Anything on downtown wayfinding, school crossing or street lights? Yes, second row from the back with a white card. Russ Vernon Jones, precinct five. I'm all for our town being a tourist destination and welcoming people and helping them find their way. But I note in the JPCPC description, this is part one of a two year request. Do we really want to spend $180,000 on signs? Ms. Krueger. We do. And I'm gonna, if the moderator will recognize her, have planning director Christine Brestrup come and speak to this, but I worked on this as other people have Mr. Wild and others here. This has been underway for quite a while and it's a really important part of the experience for users, both residents and visitors of our downtown. But if you could recognize planning director, she could add to that. Ms. Brestrup. Good evening, I'm Chris Brestrup, planning director. There's been a group of people working on signs for the downtown for quite a while. It started off with a grant that we got from the state and we worked closely with the bid to develop a sign system, a family of signs. Maybe you've seen some presentation about this before, but then downtown parking, or excuse me, downtown wayfinding sign working group really kicked into gear last spring and worked with a sign designer, Seth Gregory, from Northampton and developed a family of signs that we think is really great for the downtown area and we may get a preview of it pretty soon because I think the bid is gonna pay for putting in some signs in the roundabout at Triangle Street in East Pleasant. But if you're interested in seeing some of the signs that we came up with, I think I'd be happy to show you if I can have this overhead projector turned on. I'm not exactly sure how to do that. Is there an IT person who can help me? The idea is that you are not really clear on how to get to the downtown when you enter the town of Amherst and we've had a lot of complaints from parents of students who didn't even know about the downtown, they come up Triangle Street, they go straight towards US and head back out the same way and they don't know where downtown Amherst is. So part of it is to welcome people to downtown and let them know where downtown is. So this is kind of a welcoming sign that we're planning to have at four quadrants of the town. And as I said, the bid is paying for putting in two of these signs at the roundabout and I think those will appear very shortly. We also have signs that will help people to get oriented. Once they have arrived, say you arrive at the Bultwood parking garage and you wanna find out where is the Emily Dickinson Museum. You can check this type of sign here. Similar to the things that they have in New York City where you have a map and you can tell where it is that you're going. So we think that's gonna be very useful. There would be smaller versions of those that you could see en route to various locations. So if you're walking down North Pleasant Street and again you wanna get to say the Mead Art Gallery over at Amherst College, you'd be able to check on this map here and be able to tell where that would be. We also have some interpretive kiosks that have been designed so that if there's a particularly important historical feature or even something like Town Hall, which is very beautiful and a wonderful architectural specimen, you could find out more about that by looking at the interpretive and I guess I'm running out of time. There's one more post sign that would help you orient yourself and as you're driving point you in various directions. So we've gotten two estimates from two different entities on this sign system. It's very well designed and it's very durable. Thank you. More discussion on this section. Yes, on the aisle there, the white card. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. Jacqueline Maidana, Precinct Five. I believe it was last year or the year before we had a bunch of signs that were throughout the town. They were on the poles and they were pictures of people and there were also signs indicating UMass and I haven't seen any this year so I'm wondering where they went. I actually picked one up off the ground and brought it to the police station one. So where are those? I mean, we paid for those so. Ms. Brestra. I haven't seen them. That was a sign system that was designed and developed back in the 90s. It was never fully executed and it wasn't very durable and so it started to fall apart pretty early on and fell apart to the point where the town decided to remove the remaining pieces because they were so deteriorated. Thank God. Any discussion on sidewalk repairs? Yes, right here in the front row. Hi, William Gays in Precinct Three. I'm sad that my pet issue's coming up at the end of a very long night. So I was one of the joint authors of the JCPC Citizen Request along with Tony Cunningham and very excited to see that the town is committing to put more money into sidewalks but it's very vague in this about how that money exactly is going to be spent so hoping that Guilford could step up and maybe speak a little bit about where that 100,000 is going and also about the TAC's priority list for sidewalks and how that's coming along. Thank you. Mr. Mooring. Guilford Mooring Public Works Department. So for this 100,000, we haven't actually set an exact place where this 100,000 is going to be spent. We're actually working on the 80,000 you appropriated last year. That's actually being pushed through the process now. That 80,000 is being used to make some repairs downtown that's going to be used on the Main Street sidewalk and then a couple of the outlying sidewalks is where that money is going for. The 100,000 hopefully will be there to when the TAC gets the prioritization plan in place, we'll have 100,000 that we can start early in the spring of next year and start doing sidewalks there. The TAC is going to submit or has submitted to the Select Board their complete street policy. That policy hopefully will be approved by the Select Board. That'll allow us to compete for some funds with the state. That also allows the state to give us some money with some money we're getting from the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission to actually make a prioritization plan and pull all our stuff together. So in the next six months, we looked to actually have our prioritization plan pulled together and then be able to talk more about which sidewalks are going to be the top priority and which areas we'll be working on. The goal is to take some of the money and put it into new sidewalks, some of the money and put it into existing sidewalks. So there's a lot going on and it should start rolling out more and more and you should see more construction starting up here shortly. Thank you. Yes, right in the front row there. Allen Rood, briefing to five. 100,000 bucks to deal with the sidewalk situation in downtown is chicken feed. And we've been dealing with this for years and years and years and it should be put at the top of the list of things to get done and get done completely. In my estimation, I've fallen four times in the past few months. I'm going to have to have both of my knees replaced and I must say to you, I've watched people mostly elderly who have fallen and it covers, it's unreal. What are we trying to do to people? It's time, I mean, with all due respect, Mr. Moring, I think you need to have a dramatic change in the way you deal with sidewalks. Thank you. Kind of in the middle there, white card, second row from the back. Hi, Rolf Karlstern, precinct 10. There's one particular sidewalk that I've become much more interested in since my mother moved into Applewood a couple of years ago. It's been promised, I think, for many years and I just want to hear since Mr. Moring is up front that in fact that will be happening this summer as has been said for many years. Mr. Moring. That depends. It depends on whether you actually take, actually vote to authorize a select board, take some of the easements that are coming up later in town meeting. So if you actually do that, then the plan is almost set and we'll be actually be able to move forward and do those sidewalks. The sidewalk is going to go from Applewood. It's going to cross at Prince Way over to, it's actually the Eric Karl Museum, but it is the back entrance to Hampshire College. So we'll cross over, connect to that and there'll be a sidewalk that connects to the sidewalk that they call it goes to nowhere at the Eric Karl. So you'll be able to go all the way to the Eric Karl and into Hampshire College. You'll also be able to walk on West Bay Road from Applewood down to Atkins. There's one question, Mark, how we handle the piece in between Rambling Road and Gould Way, which we haven't resolved yet, but hopefully we'll have that resolved before we start construction. But as long as you approve the article that authorizes a select board to take that property, then we're good. Thank you. All the way in the back there in the middle, back row. Dorothy Pam, Precinct 10. I live on Amity Street and it's a very well-traveled sidewalk. People walk at it all the time, but when it comes to going to the movies, I drive, which is crazy, because I don't dare walk on the sidewalk home. This is particularly between South Prospect and North Pleasant. It's one of the most dangerous pieces of sidewalk I've ever seen and it's a very well-traveled sidewalk. I do hope that you include that one. Yes, over against the wall there. Jim Olden, Precinct 5. Mr. Moderator, I would like to divide the article to separate out the way-finding signs and I would like to know if I can use my time to speak about that and other aspects of this. Yeah, so there's a motion to divide out and vote separately on the- No, actually. In this case, because, hang on a second. I think what you'd have to do is to make a motion for a lower amount if your proposal is to, what your intention is to not fund it. Hang on, let me look at the wording of the motion in the article. Yeah, in the article in the motion, there's nothing divisible there. In the detailed line items, you can see what things are costing. So if you wanted to, if your intention is to say, I wanna vote yes for all this but I wanna vote no for this line item, then what you do is make a motion to reduce the bottom line and then explain why and that would be a valid motion. But there's nothing to divide if you look at the warrant article and a motion to divide has to be a division of a portion of the article. There's nothing to divide there. There's just one number there. So the answer. Can I use my remaining time to speak about my concerns? Yes. Thank you. So, Mr. Moderate, we are looking at the first of $290,000 to, that would be used to produce some obviously very attractive and potentially useful signs. But we've also struggled in this town meeting to win support for really crucial services and we learned the other night, for example, that we have a situation where we have children who can't afford to go to preschool in our town. We just heard from a speaker, we're putting a similar amount, we're seeing a similar amount being proposed for way-finding signs and for sidewalks so you can know where you're going and you can crash on your way there. This doesn't make sense. I appreciate the hard work, I appreciate the vision that goes behind the signs, but it's totally out of place when our streets and our sidewalks are in the way they are. I personally believe we can think about money between the capital and budget and I would point again to the many dire warnings that we heard as we raised $60,000 for social services as we added $15,000 for vouchers. But we're gonna spend 180 and that's not counting what's already been spent because we got a grant, we spent money in previous years and this for lovely I'm sure way-finding signs as again the elderly in our community and others are the runners in our community are injuring themselves on the streets. It makes no sense. So if I have an opportunity, I will try to be recognized. I really don't want to remove the money from the budget, I would rather redirect it. But if I or someone else can figure out a way to make a motion, I hope that we will find a way to remove these signs from the budget until we've dealt with higher priorities in this town. Thank you. Okay, I'm actually gonna move on and make sure we cover the remaining line items at least a little bit and then I'll open it up to anything but at that point to motion for the previous question will also be available to you. So any discussion on the road repairs line item? I hear a point of order. Okay, wait, microphone. Pat Church, Pruising 5. Are we not going to answer the people who have hands up about sidewalk issues? Yes, there will be an opportunity to do that after we cover at least every line item a little bit. See the danger here, if we have 45 minutes on one topic there, then somebody calls the question, we haven't even touched on other things. Thank you. So we are talking now about road repairs and I see a hand right in the front row there. Thank you, John Fox, Pruising 10. I think what a lot of us are worried about is the basic safety of the town. My wife and I have lived here for 34 years. I've never traveled on the roads as fearful as I am, having to weave on the wrong side of the road to miss a huge pothole, then weaving back and driving at night, you don't see them. So Mike, question, I realize that you've struggled with all of this and none of you wants to maintain dangerous places, but I'm wondering if we could know what would it take to make all the roads not dangerous? In other words, because the responsibility of the town must be basically to protect us from injuring ourselves. And we've heard talks about the sidewalks being dangerous. All of us know that the roads, I mean, throughout the town are really dangerous. So what would be the budget that would allow, let's just stay on the roads to not make them aesthetically beautiful, but to eliminate all of the areas in the roads throughout town that we consider dangerous, or would you would characterize as dangerous? Thank you. Mr. Bachmann. Thank you, Mr. Moderator. I think there's a large group of people share your sentiment and the roads are in terrible condition and that's why we've quadrupled the amount of money that the town is putting in. Your question was how much would it cost? So the study that we did and had the company come in and analyze every road, said there's about $12 million in repairs that need to be done, that we need to start to get to about $2 million a year of investment in our roads to bring them up to where would be considered a acceptable or a road worthy good condition. I feel like we can't do that all in one jump. We made a significant jump this year by going to close to $1 million in town funds that would compliment the funds that we get from the state. We consistently lobby the state to get more funds because they have more money than we do. And to get to that million dollars, we moved a lot of things off of the capital list and deferred it for a year. But ultimately we need to elbow room out in our budget to put to invest more in our roads and that's what we're, today's, this year's budget is the first attempt at that. Thank you. We'll take a little more discussion on roads. I'm looking for new hands that I haven't seen. I don't see any. Yes, right there in the front row. Kitty Axelson Berry precinct six. Have we ever been sued by people who have claimed that they've had an accident or because of our roads or sidewalks being in such disrepair? Mr. Baccoman. So anyone who has a claim against the town is referred to our insurance company and our insurance company handles all of that. Whether them and actually, usually those things get resolved between the insurance company and the person who has the claim. And whether there's been an actual lawsuit, I can't, I don't recall any. Thank you. Yes, in the back, foreign from the... Pat Church precinct five. I live on South Prospect Street. It's a one-way street from Amity to Route nine. I live on the Route nine end. I would like everyone here in the next couple of days to drive down the one-way street and then take a right and go back up Lincoln Avenue. It's a challenge. So, I don't know. I don't even know what to say anymore about this. We have said this over and over at town meeting and people think it's funny that we have streets to complain to our DPW people about, but it's not, it's really bad. We're gonna jump forward now and see if there's any discussion on the remaining six items starting with waste processing just to clear those out of the way and then we're gonna open up to anything. So discussion on waste processing through to flood mapping revisions is what we're limiting to now. Yes, over in the front row there. Denise Barveret, precinct nine. I was, I see we can't divide this particular item from the article. I'm not ready to make a motion to lower the amount, but I do have similar concerns to the previous speaker's concerns about the way finding signs. This is discover, list, and price all personal property. And in the JCPC report, it says complete discovery of personal property in town, potential revenue growth, very exciting. But I'm gonna totter down memory lane for a minute. About 10 years ago, I seem to remember that there was a flap in town over some unpaid personal property taxes. I believe Larry Kelly was the one causing the flap. And I think it got to the point where certain taxes that were owed were forgiven because it would have cost more to actually do all the processing and the collecting and things like that. And I'm not sure that there is an exemption for a certain, up to a certain amount of personal property taxes, but here we are wanting to spend $40,000. I'm assuming that will be another consultant. It's a lot of money. It certainly sounds like a lot of work for the complete discovery of personal property in town. And I'm wondering if what we're going to gain from it is really worth that expenditure. Thank you. Ms. Krueger. So I can't really speak to flaps from the past that you mentioned. I know it's come up at different times. I do believe there is a threshold which we may have raised. But I'm gonna try for a minute to channel Mr. Burgess, our principal assessor. He's not here, but what I remember is his asking the Joint Capital Planning Committee quite specifically for this money so that we could contract with a firm. We do contract this out because it's time to update the list that we have. A lot of the personal property taxes actually paid by the utility companies less with, and again, I'm kind of remembering as best I can. But because it's time to update, his feeling was that once we had a better list we might actually recover most of the costs and it's time to do it. If somebody here wants to add from their memory of this item, their other, I see an affirming shaking head from one of my committee members, but that's why we put it in. We're really trying to balance a lot of things. It was time to do this and we were asked quite directly to put this in so we could get done in a timely manner. Okay, just a little more maybe on those last six line items. Yes, I see a hand right in the corner there. Vince O'Connor, precinct one. So I have a similar problem with the flood mapping. We hired a consultant two or three years ago. The consultant produced maps. We've had maps of especially of North Amherst. We actually redid the flood zoning for the Fort River and its tributaries, oh, maybe 15, 20 years ago. But every time flood mapping gets done of North Amherst, it indicates that there is the, that on the property of the largest private landowner in Western Massachusetts there are flood plains and that information is never brought to town meeting, has not in the time that I have been in town meeting, has never been brought to this town meeting for action in terms of ratifying the professional staff findings or the professional consultant findings and putting that flood mapping in place. So why in heaven's name would we be spending $40,000 to do more of it when we have not yet been able to put in place the two or three previous studies in North Amherst. The Fort River seems to be fine. We can always, we've redone the flood mapping there, but every time we flood map North Amherst, the action, it's never brought to town meeting and I don't see why we should spend $40,000 to do more studies if we're not gonna take action. Ms. Krueger. We had quite a lengthy debate about this ourselves at the committee because we needed to understand this. I might mention that town meeting doesn't ratify flood plain maps, but planning director Christine Brestrup spoke to us and it was compelling and convincing when we got our questions answered and if I might, I think she could give more technical information about why we need to do this. I hear a point of order. Sorry, Mr. Moderator, but we don't ratify anything here. We do zoning. Okay, I'm interrupting right now. That's not a point of order. If you disagree with somebody else's comment, maybe you'll get recognized to talk about it, but lots of people disagree with other people's comments. I'm opening up the discussion to anything and which means also I will accept a motion of the previous question if it happens to appear before me and I hear a point of order. Jim Olden, Precinct Five. Mr. Moderator, this follows up on the earlier question I had about dividing. So, and I just want to understand is, do you see these capital items as similar to budget items in the operating budget where we are voting on the bottom line? Does it, if we pass this amount is would the, would it be within the power of the executive to spend the money differently from what's in this list? And, or another way to put the question is, does this body have the capacity to change items in the list or again, only the bottom line? I believe only the bottom line. That's my understanding of how it's been done in the 26 years that I've been involved in town meeting. That suggestions can be made, but it's I believe the town manager who gets to determine how the money is actually spent or the different departments. Yes, right there, five rows back in the center with the white card. Michael Greenbaum, Precinct Six. My question really builds on the last several items. I would be glad to be shown why I'm wrong, but I'm not sure why consultants such as the LSE consultant that was my concern at the $15,000 item belongs in the capital budget. We faced this many years ago in town meeting when comprehensive planning was the issue, but could somebody explain why consultants belong in the capital budget rather than say the operating budget or the CPA budget? Ms. Krueger. And I'm gonna look for some backup on this from either Ms. Aldridge or Mr. Bachmann, but it isn't readily apparent just from reading what is capital, but actually plans and studies do fit in the capital category. And like I said, if I could have a little backup on that and if the moderator's willing. Mr. Bachmann. That's true. You're allowed to use plans and studies under your capital budget. Yeah, way over against the wall there. I hear a point of order. Jeff Blausdine, Precinct Six. I hate to ask this, but do we have a quorum? A lot of people left after the last question. Are you formally asking for a quorum call? And that if the rules of town meeting are, if a quorum count is formally asked for, we need to count. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna use our electronic voting devices and it doesn't matter if you press button one or two or three because we will count all three together and see if we have 124, I believe I said. Did I say 124? 124. 124. So press any button, one, two or three. Okay, could we freeze the vote please and do it again? Okay, so we're not gonna count this vote, actually, if we get a quorum, we're gonna count it. So let's see what happens. If we're one short, we're gonna wanna fix that device. Okay, that's true, we can do that too. So you can go ahead and display the results. 85 plus 15 is 106 is 106, we do not have a quorum. Hang on, hang on, everybody? Everybody, could everybody take a deep breath? We are going to do another count. We're gonna do it again. Everybody has to press either one or two or three and we'll see if the total adds up to 124. Hang on, is there still a point of order? Microphone please. I just thought that it might be good to do an actual physical count because what if somebody just chooses not to press a button, I mean it's. No, we're gonna do an electronic vote. Is there anybody who's planning on not voting because I would ask you to walk out now if that was the case. But I think everyone's put in the time in there here so we're gonna use the electronic vote to determine it. So we're gonna do this again, see what we get. Okay, one or two or three. 97 plus 21 is 100, who can do the math? 126, we have a quorum. I hear a point of order. Stand up if you call the point of order so we can identify you. Steve Schreiber, precinct nine. So there are 254 town meeting members. Wouldn't a quorum be 128? So 254 divided by two is 127 plus one is 128. There are 247 town meeting members according to what the clerk told me. Some people may have resigned and up and replaced or something like that. So we do have a quorum and we may continue. So you've been recognized, identify yourself. Jennifer Page, precinct eight. I moved to reduce the buildings and facilities appropriation by $90,000 removing the downtown wayfinding system. Motion's been made and seconded. So the only, the pertinent part of the motion is to reduce the bottom line by 90,000 and your reason can be in the motion but the pertinent part is removing the bottom line. You may speak to your motion. Thank you. It's late so I'll be quick. We recently have been discussing debating spending $15,000 on after school vouchers. $25,000 on a preschool and now we wanna spend a small fortune on signage for downtown Amherst based on what sounds like anecdotal evidence from some UMass parents who may not have had smartphones I guess because most people these days when they wanna get somewhere will look at their smartphone to find how to get there. So thank you. Okay, so when we come to a vote very soon now we will first vote on the larger amount and if that fails we will then vote on the lesser amount. Is there further discussion before we come to a vote? I see a hand in the finance committee. Tim Neal, precinct four and finance committee member. I'm gonna oppose this. I do think earlier on we're talking about a bottom line with the manager's discretion and taking $90,000 out to satisfy a particular need or position that they don't feel the need is there. I think a short sighted. I think we should approve the full amount and have the town manager take the discussion that we've talked about in this town meeting too late and appropriate the appropriate funds. So I would be very, very hesitant to reduce the total dollar amount for that reason. Further discussion. Yes, I see a hand way back there. Wait for the microphone please. Nancy Pagano, precinct five. I'd like to call the question. Motion of the previous question has been made and seconded. Okay, I hear a point of order. Amy Minnellman, precinct five. The previous speaker raised a red card. You have said many times that- Wait, wait, I did not see a red card. I saw a white card. I'm sorry, but if the red card maybe was visible to you but I saw a white card here. Sorry, I saw a white card and I called on her. So whether she raised a red one or not I called on her thinking a white card. So I'm going to accept the motion for the previous question. I hear a point of order. Please de-call in precinct nine. We have a new motion and aren't we supposed to be able to hear at least one point of view from each side after we get a new motion? I'm accepting the previous question because I feel that we did hear points of view before the motion was made. I feel it's been discussed enough that if two thirds of you feel that it's discussed enough that we can come to a vote. If two thirds of you don't feel that, so if more than one third feels we need to discuss it more we will, but I feel that it's been discussed enough that it's an acceptable motion for the previous question. That's a good point and there would be some cases where I wouldn't accept it, but in this case I did. So we're now going to come to an immediate vote. If two thirds of you vote to end debate we will end debate and then first vote on the higher amount than the lower amount. All those in favor of the motion for the previous question please say aye. Opposed, please say no. No. Moderator, here's two thirds, but I'm pretty sure someone's gonna want electronic vote. Okay, all you have to do is say electronic vote please, okay? Let's have an electronic vote. 86, yes, 36, no, two thirds has been achieved. We will now come to an immediate vote. So we are first voting on the higher amount, which is $2,007,864. If that fails, we will then vote on the lower amount, which is $90,000 less. All those in favor of the motion under article four, I hear a point of order. Yes, so there are two dollar amounts that are before us. One is the amount in the initial motion by during capital planning committee for $2,007,864, and then there was a motion to lower that by $90,000, so the second amount is $1,917,864. Our first vote is for the higher amount, $2,007,864 requires a majority. All those in favor of appropriating the higher amount please say aye. Opposed, please say no. No. Moderators in doubt, we'll have an electronic vote. Okay, we've got another one that's dead battery perhaps. There's no way to kill it. Can we just shut it off the screen? Thank you, good. Good job. There's always a power switch at our disposal. I hear a point of order. Is Lawrence Quigley precinct going, is the higher number always- First, thank you. What we vote on first, yes. Okay, are we ready? So let's bring that vote back on the screen. Don't hurt yourself. Okay, this is again the vote for the higher amount. The vote is yes, 65, no, 62. One abstain, the higher amount has passed. I now call on Mr. Slaughter to make a motion. Move to adjourn till 7 p.m. Monday, May 14th. Okay, hang on, before we vote on adjournment, everybody make sure to turn your devices off and return them. Everybody look around you in your eye away and clean up the trash. Everybody come here earlier on Monday. We had a 709 quorum, which is not good. All those in favor of the motion to adjourn, please say aye. Oppose no. We are adjourned.