 All right. Thank you so much. Hi. Good morning. Afternoon evening, whatever it is. Okay, so you guys should be all set. Your most announcement. I did not. All right, let me go back and double check. Okay. No, I have you as host. Great. Hi there. I don't dare. Let me get Jim in here. I'm, I'm having pretty bad side effect from a vaccination. Oh, I'm so sorry. Not be. All here, but I'll try. Okay. Well, if you have to go off this totally understandable, I'm so sorry. No, it's okay. I'd rather, I'd rather have this good distraction. Okay. Well, we'll try to be distracting. I've got a full agenda and then some so. I'm going to get Jim in here. I don't think I. Who else is coming? Well, let's see. Who RSVP. I think we have everybody except for Lori and Mikey. Uh huh. Yeah, Lori is, um, is busy this week and Mikey is on vacation. Just great. We have our new commissioner coming in today. So we'll get to meet him. Okay. Oh, there's Jim. Okay. Come on, Jim. Allow to talk. Yes. We'll let you, we'll let Jim talk. Hello. Now can you hear me? Hey, Jim, how are you? Good evening. We're still waiting for a few more commissioners here. Hey, Derek copies of the minutes from the last meeting. Yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't find the meeting. I'm trying to figure out a thing. If something. Did you get the minutes from the last meeting? No, I did not. So then there's some, some having bad on my end. Cause I thought I sent them. Shoot. Well, that's okay. Well, I usually send them out in a couple of days. I can go look at the website. No, you can't cause they're not on the website. Hey, Thomas is here. Hello, Tom. I don't see my picture up there. Well, you got to turn your camera on. It's not working the way it usually does. And I'm, I don't see any place to turn on my camera. It's just totally different. Let's see if I can do something from here. All right. I have promoted. Are you able to hear me? Is that you, Robert? Yes. So you're able to hear me. I can hear you. Hi there. Okay. Great. Hi. How are you? Right. Couple more of us. Okay, here we go. Oh, there you are, Jim. All right. All right. Robert is. Here. I'm here. Yeah. I'm trying to put you in here. You have permission to talk. I don't have you in here as a panelist, but that's fine. Okay. As long as you can hear me. Are you driving? I am driving. Oh dear. We got Dara. Okay. Me is missing. All of us. So we. Okay. Well, welcome to the Amherst public art commission. Meeting of August. Second. 2023. I am Terry Holt. I'm your chair. In light of the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, then Governor Baker issued an emergency order on March 12, 2020, allowing public bodies greater flexibility and utilizing technology in the conduct of meetings under the open meeting law. We're soon to chapter 20 of the access of 2021. This meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to access. They do so in the following manner. We will be able to do that. We will be able to. Person attendance by members of the public is permitted, but every effort is made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. In the event they are unable to do so. Or regardless, we will post this on the town's YouTube channel shortly after the meeting. That is my spiel. So welcome, everyone. We all have. One thing we are missing, I believe, is the minutes from July. So I think Jim is going to get those out later and we can circle back on. On. Reading those when they come in and we'll talk about that in September. Sorry about that. I don't know what happened. It happens. Don't worry about it. Okay. So on my agenda. I'm having. Very exciting introducing. Tom worker, our newest public arts commissioner. Hello, everyone. Welcome. Thank you. Welcome. You're not actually there though, are you? That's just. No, that's, this is. Kauai. Oh, you're not in Hawaii currently with a raven behind you. Apparently. That is there. Well, welcome. We're so excited to have you. Do you want to talk to us a little bit about how, who you are or what you're doing here and. Sure. How you hope to serve on this commission. Okay. Okay. A little bit of background to start. I retired. Last year. Took a gap year as, as young people do these days. And then decided to seek out. Some volunteer opportunities. And, you know, I thought about my interests. And my background. And decided that one of the town committees. Would be something I might enjoy. And with my. Lifelong interest in art. And the art scene and artists. This felt like a very good match. I'm also. Also volunteering at the Kestrel foundation. Pretty much the same basis. Get a little bit of outdoor. Involvement that way too. And with their, with their public. So my work was. Started off in the last century as a French professor. And then became academic administrator. I worked as an independent consultant. I worked as an independent consultant. Since the provost. Then I had information technology. Then I came to Amherst. In 1995 to be it projects coordinator. For five colleges, Inc. I did that for a few years. And then since 2000. I worked as an independent consultant to colleges and universities. On. IT matters. And sprinkled through, and I had 81 clients over the years. And I've been interim CIO and I've been interim library director. And had just a very varied experience. That way. So. When it comes to management, I've got, you know, quite a wide background. Planning. Budgets. Personnel projects. Stewardship. Etc. Etc. So I have that kind of bureaucratic background also. We'll see how a lot to offer. And we're very grateful that you're here. Well, thank you. So my, my hope on, on this committee. Is to. Be able to. Participate and help in a, in a wide, wide scene of things that I understand the purview of the committee to be. And also to partake in the. The reflection leading to maybe. You know, a plan and mission statement, revised mission statement, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm a newbie. I haven't been a new person in anything for Eon. So I'm not quite sure how to do it. Oh, jump right in. I'll pay attention and try to be helpful. Very great. Well, thank you so much. And welcome. Very happy to have you here. Thank you. I'm glad you're with us. Thank you. I have a quick question. Did you send anybody else a chair reporter? Did you just send it to me? I just sent it to you. Okay. Fine. Thank you. Okay. So, um, if you have the agenda headed in front of you, we'll just move right along. First invite public comment. I thought we had. Somebody from the public joining, but I, they may have gone away. I do not see them anymore. So. I don't think we have a person from the public. So we're just going to move right past that. Okay. So we're going to move on to the chair report. And I will read that to you. I'm going to skip a little bit because I want just for time, because I'm. You'll be able to read it all. But we have to focus on one particular subject on this meeting. So poetic dialogue. I talked to Camille Peters for repairs and. He is wonderful. And now I was informed by our comptroller Holly that Amherst cannot pay a bill. And to an invoice until the work is completed, we can't prepay. I'm learning things along the way, of course. So, um, So I told Camille that when he is finished with repairing poetic dialogue to let me know as soon as possible. So I can get Holly to start working on the check. So we get him paid. So Camille said he will let me know as soon as possible. He's been. Putting in the bolts or some, something. So I'm excited about that. I hope that will be finished before the presentation. Because I'd like that to be part of, you know, downtown looking great. So, um, So there's that. Um, The portal gallery of boltwood. Very exciting. We have a winner. Um, so on Sunday, I sent letters to Dominique. Dominique is our winner. Um, and I sent letters to the other artists who submit a proposal saying, thank you for sending in a proposal. Um, We now need to come up with a timeline for Dominique. And I'm excited about that. I hope that will be finished before the block party because I'd like to have a timeline for Dominique and give her a reasonable amount of time to work on the rest of her project. So we have four pieces per the windows. And we need to come up with the budget for replacing the sign. So what I probably need to do is contact DPW or somebody needs to contact DPW and, uh, Tell them what we'd like for the new sign and ask for, uh, an estimate so we know what we'll be spending. So as far as I know, um, so the winner is getting 1500. So that's a good number. So that's a good number. And I'm excited about that. I think we've agreed on in the call for artists. So we still have, um, About a thousand more than that. For the sign. We don't need that much. So we'll, we'll, we have some buffer. So that's good. So, um, I will report back at the next meeting, I hope. Uh, with the update from DPW about what that's going to cost. Um, so the APAC town of Amherst web pages. Um, and, um, Um, I'm going to talk a little bit about the, the public innovation Brianna Sunridge. Um, she, uh, she, she, we sat down and talked for a while about our web pages and, um, she was, uh, she told me that really public art has the, the largest number of pages on, on the whole website, which is pretty cool. I've been up all the other commissions and committees. We have the most pages. Um, and it makes sense because we're art. Um, we have a lot of, um, a lot of work to, uh, work on auditing our pages and updating them and, uh, updating some forms that are on there, which Mikey and I have talked about. We need to update the town hall form because it's outdated. Um, for instance, we're not asking $20 to, uh, to look at, uh, applications. So that's been waived. Um, to make it more equitable, which is, um, I'm really happy we did that. Um, I'm really excited about that. So, uh, we also talked about, uh, the possibility of having some branding for, uh, public art, which I'm excited about, as you know, uh, and, uh, I asked them if we could have a logo and branding, et cetera. And, uh, both Paul and Briana said, sure. Yes. That's fine. And expected. Many commissions do so. I'd like to have a more visible brand for what we do. So, um, I'll be working on some ideas for that and I'll put those in front of you guys. Um, I've got a really cool idea and I'll tell you about that later. Um, I'm going to take a look at some of the things that we've been talking about in our, in our, in our, in our, in the last three years, I've also talked about, uh, the possibility of having some branding for, uh, public art, which I'm excited about as you know. Uh, and I, I, I asked them if we could have a logo and branding, et cetera. And I'll tell you about that later. We also talked about having a web presence, like having a website. I know we have talked about that as a commission and. Both Paul and Brianna said that that's not a good idea. And I have to agree with them because of sustainability. It's just really very hard to keep a website going. I mean, I'm a web. Designer admin, but once I'm gone, you know, it's really hard to sustain a website. So I totally agree with them. So I want to continue working with the town of Amherst and keep those pages updated as much as we can. I think that's the best, the best plan for us. The September 23 block party, I have asked Matt Holloway, the Amherst cultural council co-chair, if we can have a presence, a table at that event. And they have said yes, I filled out an application. So we can talk about what we'd like to do at that. I think we had a couple of ideas last meeting, but I think just very simple how, you know, kind of just tell showing people who we are talking about our projects. We can talk about the portal gallery. We might be able to talk about making a public will see, not sure. And we, I had this idea of possibly having an activity. Really just a very basic activity of just making art because we are public art. So I thought that might be fun to just bring some materials and allow kids and people just to come over and make some art. And maybe we'll figure out a place where we can put that so that it's a fun thing to do for kids and stuff. And we'll talk about that. Moving on. We have a new featured artist. And I'm going to share my screen. Karen Reese Tennell, Karen Reese Tennell is our newest featured artist. And let me see if I can share my screen here. I talked to her and email and she just moved here from Georgia. And she lives in South Amherst. She actually lives, I think, a few blocks from me, which is really exciting. She has, she took these beautiful photos of South Amherst and her meanderings and different seasons. And then she came back and did colored pencils and these are all colored pencil drawings which blows me away. They're all from South Amherst and they're beautiful. So if you get a chance, scoot on over to Town Hall. Take a look at those, this beautiful exhibit that Mikey of course helped put up. Thank you so much Mikey. I know you're not here but very grateful to Mikey for all her work, selecting these artists and helping put these, these paintings up. So, this is really nice. Excuse me for interrupting but I'm now going to need copies of those for the minutes. Okay. Thank you. Let's see. Okay, so we're going to move on to making a public although there are, I don't think there are enough of us to make forum. Four out of seven. Yeah. Okay. Tom, are you up to date on what what we're doing for making a public I know you. Yes, I've been following the minutes and the recording of the last. Wonderful. Okay. So, I've been doing a lot behind the scenes to try to keep this going, as you all know. So, I wrote up something about where we are so I shared with the commission that our liaison Gabrielle Gould for the grant. I have with me some thoughts about the future of this project and I sent, I will send that information. Which is, I'm concerned about have a lot of concerns and I wanted to share this with you so that we can come to a decision together. I have been having challenges contacting her regarding the timeline for making a public project. I noted in June that the emails from the New England foundation for the arts to her and me weren't being answered. So, I'm concerned about Gabrielle has been like many of us on vacation. Makes a lot of sense for periods that it didn't time line up well with our contracted timeline. So the any FA reached out and let us both know that Amherst would need to renegotiate our contract, because we miss those those deadlines. So, I met with Paul last week our town manager and he is the only one who can sound sign contracts. He told me that he will work on renegotiating this contract so that we can hopefully revise those deadlines and get us back on track. So, that's the contract so we need to discuss the future of this project. It sounds to me like we are going to be losing Gabrielle on this project as our liaison. And she has suggested that we end the project, but of course this is our call not not not the bids. It's our grant money so we have to make some decisions. The four of us I think we need the whole the whole commission to actually make this this is a big decision. We put a lot of work into this. I put a lot of work into this. We put this out to the public it's been promoted we've been very excited about it it's a public art project celebrating our BIPOC community so I'm really, really on fire about this. So, we need to discuss what we're going to do. I reached out to Angela Mills who is out of town until Thursday, so that I can get some guidance from the town because I feel a little over my head here. I don't think we can unilaterally say yes we're going to go ahead with this project if we don't have some kind of representative from the town, because it's, it's a lot of work for a commission who meets monthly to do this work with open meeting and it's really, really difficult to get projects done. So we need a project manager of some kind. So, so what are you. Can I, sorry, can I ask you a question Terry, please. This is Robert. I'm, I guess I'm a little confused and I know I missed the meeting a couple of meetings ago but the last I recall I mean this is unfortunately been quite a saga, this project, in terms of getting getting support from the town in a consistent manner. And so what, I don't understand what happened with the BID involvement because the last I remember when Maureen who was the top planner who was the staff member when she left to take a job in a different town. There was that void and the BID stepped in. And then what, what happened with that I, I missed, I missed the part in between when they were, when they became the latest liaison and now that apparently they're not anymore. So, can you just bring me up to date a little bit on that. I can try. I have not had a lot of communication from Gabrielle about the challenges that she was having so I'm, I'm only taking the email that she sent, which I'm going to read so that's in the, in the record so that I think that's what I'm supposed to do. I didn't have any idea you read it. Okay, you read it. I'm going to if you read it I'm going to have to attach it to the minutes and it's going to be public if that's what you want that's fine but just FYI, I don't want them. I don't think I want to do that. I'm going to summarize. I actually don't know yet. Just, I think, if I could suggest just tell people what happened without reference to the email. Okay, because I agree. I wouldn't touch it. So it seems to me that Gabrielle has been having some, some private problems. And I think that has made it really hard for her to continue being the liaison for us. And so she would like to back to back off. And she suggests that we also kind of drop the grant. I think because of the lack of support. I mean, I don't agree. I don't think we should. I'm, I was, I've been very excited about this project as you all have been. So, in your conversation with, I'm sorry, I, I don't mean to, it's hard on the phone because I can't see what people are talking about. But in any event, in your conversation with Paul Bachleman, have you discussed, you know, the idea of someone from the town kind of taking the lead given that as you pointed out already, you know, most of us are new to this commission when this whole project started. You know, none of us had that none of us had that training. It was all kind of amorphous when we began. Yes. So is there anyone who staff who can be assigned to this? That's a great question. So when I met with him. I was still under the assumption that when Gabriel got back from her vacation, we would just kind of move on and we'd have our deadlines rewritten by the NEFA and we could just, you know, put it back together because I really think we could still do that. And this email that I got from her was a surprise. So I don't know. It is my understanding that they are still one planner down. So I don't know if there is a representative who can step in. I know Angela Mills has done a lot for us and I don't know if Paul will ask if she can do it. So I'm going to reach out to Angela. I'm going to talk to the folks and set up some kind of a meeting so that we can figure out what to do next, but I wanted to first get a sense of what you all think we should be doing. Harry. I have, I have the impression that since Paul did not try to dissuade you from going ahead with a negotiation I think I would read that not as any kind of guarantee. Right. Right. Encouragement. But I would, it feels to me like, again, easy for me to say as a newcomer but, you know, it's time to double down on this and try to get it, try to get it into place. We're well along in it. It's a good idea. I think it's enough publicity or information shared about it that we wouldn't want to walk it back. And just as a general matter. If, you know, in the world of grants, if you, if you turn one down or pull out of it, it really comes back to hurt your reputation one way or another. I'm glad to say that I'm inclined to go ahead with it. And having said that, am I frozen. Excuse me. Yeah, you are. Okay. This might internet connection is unstable is, can you all hear me. Yes. Yeah. Okay. I have a question about the word negotiation. Okay. Much negotiation sounds like it could be a tiny thing or a lot. So it's hard to tell. So I am not a negotiator or a fiscally aware person very much. I'm understanding that because the contract was written very precisely about certain deadlines being being met. Once we passed those deadlines, it kind of made the, it made it the contract, not null and void, but needing to be redrawn. And it's because of the grant money like it's tied to money. So, so redrawn means changing the deadlines. It means changing the deadlines and having a new agreement agreements. And the town manager who can sign contracts said to you that he would take care of that. Yeah, he said he would take care of it because he is the person who signs the contract. Yeah. More like a technicality than a substantive problem. That's how I think it is to Tom. So, so yeah, what I think could happen is maybe we'll get another town representative to help. That's my hope. I don't know if the BID will withdraw its sponsorship. I think that would not. I don't know what's going to happen. So but I wanted to see what you all, how you felt and it sounds to me like you're interested in going forward with the project is that my understanding. I think it would be a terrible thing to turn down a $10,000 grant that goes to an artist. Well, but I agree also that it would be, I think it would, you know, to echo what's been said, I think it would be very. Unfortunate if we were the only town in the Commonwealth to receive the grant and we can't get our act together to actually carry this through carry this through to fruition. I just think it's, you know, it's frustrating as I think we expressed earlier on in the process that. There just hasn't been more attention paid to it by the town and I don't quite understand why that's been the case and I. I'm for moving forward but under the same conditions as you know we talked about the last time we were kind of in this decision. At the, at the same sort of crossroad in terms of, you know, I think most, if, or many of us obviously have full time jobs and don't necessarily have the time to devote to the project and I just feel like there needs to be some. Some staff leadership on this for it's really, really move forward so I guess I would give a, I would give a qualified yes to moving forward but I really, I would hope that there would be some support. I think there will have to be. And that will be my conversation with Angela and with Paul, Sarah. So, what would the staff person be charged with doing. Well, if so just like the town planner. It's a person who can can pull everything together so the reason so we have three proposals that are out there that I have not even looked at because I was supposed to be one of the judges and I did not want to be. I don't know what those applications look like or what what that is because I've been trying to stay, you know, uninformed so we need someone to lead it so that so that it has the lack of bias and it has a direction from the town. Because we, you know, again, we are volunteers. It's a timing thing to Dara it's a, it's a amount of time spent on a project is also as as volunteers I've already spent a lot of time on this and we need to have a paid employee who can, who can help us carry it forward. So, I think that the town would agree and I don't think to speak to that what you were saying Robert, I don't think the town. To lose either. This is what's happened because of it and with Maureen leaving it did leave us in a bit of a lurch and they are still trying to find a new planner so so. Right because we haven't, we haven't even selected a the, the right, I mean, in terms of the people who are going to be made. So that that still has to be done so there's a fair amount of coordination that has to be done. Yes. In my opinion I realize the difficulties which are significant. Am I here, my frozen. Can you hear me. Yeah. I said, in my opinion, I understand the difficulties that have occurred and this problems of work load getting the project done but it looks to me like giving it some priority might be wise. Right. Terry suggestion in talking with Andrea and Paul, you might want to try to sort out. You know what division of work might be possible. What do we need a staff employee to do right, what might you know volunteer from the committee be able to do without endangering. You know, there's some partiality that's, that's, that's required. Right. It seems, you know, just that a guess, you know, it could be one of these situations where, you know, you've got the town, the bid, and us, and everybody thinks somebody else is doing, you know, some of the lifting. Right. And so, if we go to the town and say hey we need a project manager we're going to dump it all in your lap. We're going to do that. Yeah, that's a much tougher, tougher proposition than to say look we need a certain amount of help. And you know we put a lot of volunteer time in this already and we'll continue to do that so let's kind of work out a plan and a reasonable division, because that way Paul isn't doesn't feel he's, he's making an open ended or, you know, ungoverned commitment. Well, I hear that but I also know how much work it is to get these things done. And if we can find a tactful way to, to solve the problems you just mentioned which I hear, we can find a tactful way to get somebody staff of sign that has appropriate number of hours to devote to it it would really be wonderful. Yeah. You muted. Oops. I'm freezing a lot. And I wasn't frozen I was, I needed to unmute. So, I'm confused by your saying that you were didn't look at the proposals. Right, I did not. But why would you have been looking at them. Because I, I am the one who wrote up the call for artists, I'm the one who did everything. And so I have access to the forms. But I have just the reason that I was selected as being one of the judges. Nobody else on our commission would like to step in. That's really fine. It's just at the time when we talked about it nobody else had the time to be a juror. So I put my name in and so I was going to be but I don't have to be somebody else would like to be. But if you are the juror, isn't the jury already constituted. So I have reached out to Gabrielle reached out to a number of judges that we had, we gave her a list, and I wrote up a letter with the help of Lori. And we and Gabrielle use that to send it to our judge list, and we were waiting for people to get back to us that was how this was left. And the fourth was the last email I believe that we got back from a judge saying they were interested, and the response from Gabrielle was, we're still waiting for a few stragglers for replies. So that's kind of where things were left with the jury. So what can we do about that, stepping in. I was thinking Gabrielle was going to be coming back in vacation to go forward. But I haven't got a lot of communications about the difficulties that she's having so. So yeah, that's where we are. I think the five of us are in agreement that we should go back, we should go through with this with caution Robert I hear what you're saying about, you know, asking for asking for help, obviously. And when I meet with Angela and possibly Paul, I will bring that up. As for how much labor this will take Jim I really don't know I don't know a division of labor this, this kind of project would take this as my first, you all know how green I am. So in terms of time I really don't know the time. Based on my service in the previous. Before you showed up. I'm going to make a guess it takes a lot of time. Right. And so is the problem about your being. So if I understand, you don't think you, there's an issue in your mind about being looking at the proposals in advance. I don't, I don't feel like I should be looking at the proposals in advance, but you would be looking at all three of them in advance correct. Very selected, we would be giving the given, we would be giving the link to view the proposals to all of the judges. And so at that time I would be looking at those. The difference between looking at them before the process actually starts the jury process and looking at them once it does start I think that's a very significant difference and we can make it clear for the record today. You know the Terry has take has taken a very scrupulous step to be careful about neutrality. Absolutely. And this is a really important project celebrating the BIPOC community. I am not a person of color I am a person who is a white person. And so I want to stay. I want to be scrupulously unbiased and allow our other jurors to, to look at these proposals, and have a conversation all together that was how this was intended in the beginning. I want to stay true to. Oh, well, you know I'm not, you know, if it would help a lot that you looked at them in advance. Then I'd like to discuss it because, you know, like judges get briefs. I'm a lawyer, by the way, just get briefs, and they read them in advance of the hearing, and nobody thinks there's anything wrong with it. As long as you're looking at all of them if you looked at one of them and not the other two I think that'd be terrible but if you're looking at all three. What is the harm I'm trying to identify a harm. So tell me this what is the point at this right now at this juncture me looking at the proposals. Is there a reason for me to look at them because I don't see one until we can forward with this project I don't see a reason for me to look. Okay, then don't look I thought it was an impediment I misunderstood you. So don't look. There's no reason why so if there's no harm and not looking I thought there was a harm and not looking because it's making hard for you to manage do your job is the chair of the committee that's what I impression I had that's all. No. It's not really it's not really impacting how hard the project will be. When you do one of these projects you have, you have to figure out how to pay people you have to talk to the artists about timelines. Each, you know, and you have to, we select one and then we have to work with that and we have to get a contract there's a lot of, a lot of things in there that I can't do, I can't write a contract. You know, I can. So at the end of this there will be a celebration and I plan to be the person who will help create this. That's where I shine event planning is fun for me. So that's the time I hope to anything else about this project or should we move on. Can I ask one last question? Sorry. What was the original timeline published in terms of notifying artists? I guess I asked because for the three people who have submitted proposals. Obviously, I mean, it seems at this point we're not sticking to the original timeline. I think just in a show of respect, we might want to notify them, at least to give them a sense that, you know, the timeline is likely going to be changed just to keep them apprised so that they have some sense that, you know, they, they haven't been rejected or they haven't been accepted, but at least let them know what the status of the project is. Okay, I agree. And I can do that I because this happened today that I got the email, I, I haven't, I haven't known what to do. So, I understand. I'm just saying it might be useful to do that. Yeah. Maybe I should also let our judges know having a delay. So, yeah, I guess to the extent you know who the judges are at this point. I think that's an idea. Thank you, Robert. At least one of them does. Somebody knows. They're very well sequestered at this point. Yeah, so I think that's a good point. I will, I will reach out to them. I might wait until I talk to Paul. I think at this point, another week or so is not going to make a difference. I just think, you know, as having been on the other side of grant applications and things, you know, you sometimes feel like you avoid and it's just nice to have an update even if it's to say that, you know, our timeline has been pushed back to X and, you know, just wanted to let you know. I have a caveat, which is it's not done until it's done. So we don't have anything accomplished right now. And so to say the time I'll be pushed back to X when we don't have our staff we don't have a new contract we don't know what the deadlines might be we don't know if they're going to give us the contract. I'd be careful about making definitive statements until. Maybe it may be enough to say that we're delayed. And, you know, not say a whole lot more than that. Right. Yeah, that's fine. I was just giving an example, but yeah, I think just something to indicate that whatever timeline we had originally published is not necessarily in effect and Okay, just so people are aware. Okay. Thank you for that I will follow up on that. All right, anything else on making a public, do we need to vote to move forward I've heard what you've all had to say. Maybe let's have a formal vote so that we have it in the record is that okay Jim to vote for on what I don't understand that to still to continue to move forward with this project. Oh, do you think that we need to have a vote on that. I think everybody I can just put in the minutes that by acclimation we agreed to keep going. Okay, thank you. Okay, I think we have all agreed. Okay. Okay, so let's move on. Let's see making it public. Okay, we need to come up with a timeline for the portal gallery at boltwood. And I don't have any sense for what that timeline should be. I think that our artist has already created two pieces of art for our project that takes five pieces of art. So, it was my feeling to ask her to finish this by the end of September. If it's too fast, then I can certainly have a different date. I don't really. We don't have anything in writing yet and I looked through our records that I have here. I can't really find much about how they ran this in terms of timeline and contracts so I'm a little starting from scratch here. I might be able to come up with something great. I think there was some time requirement from who was at the cultural council who who granted the money I thought that they, I thought that they had set some kind of schedule. The fiscal year, I mean, is was over June 30 and paying paying out for this project is going to need an extension and I can talk to Matt about that. Project completion I don't think that Amherst cultural council really dictates that I think they just, they just want an update. So, it's my understanding that we'll just be able to pay our artists and for the new sign out of our funds and tell the Amherst cultural council thank you and we hope to apply for many more grants next year and be much better about time. So, you might want to propose a date to, to Gabrielle. You know, if you ask her an open ended question about when do you think you can finish it that may be a little bit harder for her but if you say, September 30 and she says oh no can't do it. Right, I can propose it. Yeah. Okay, so I sent a letter congratulating her and I told her we would be following up with her and so I think in the follow up I will, I will ask her house of end of September looks and see what she says. So, good. There is that too soon. No, I don't think you should ask her. Okay. I think you should have real deadlines. Okay, so what is your feeling about what the deadline should be. I don't have the original call in front of me so I don't know exactly what was hinted in that call. But if you want to put it up by a certain day, you have to give an artist a real deadline and they have to hope to meet it. Right. Well, I have the contract that we draft contract that we did in 2022 so I'll send it to you. So that would be really helpful. Okay. All right, so we can give her a solid deadline. What do you suggest that is then. Well, I have what is the date you need it by to put it up. We don't have any end date in mind. I don't believe there is. I don't believe we have a deadline right now. I think it makes sense for us to set, do a hard set on a deadline if we can't, if we can't figure out what it should be in terms of, you know, getting, giving her the good chance to do a good job. It doesn't sound like we're terribly constrained by other, other considerations so I don't, again, I want to go back to what I said it's it's not a question of really floating too soft a proposal just say, you know, something to the effect that, you know, we're, you know, the council is the council is looking at the end of September as the deadline for completion. You know she wants to then come back on that and say well I need another two weeks. In that case we'd be in a situation where we could finalize the deadline and feel a little more confident about it. You know, and say well October 15th, October 30th, September 30th and we're just, we're just shooting in the dark. Well I don't think we would be if we knew when the pieces were meant to be displayed. Like when do you want to have it up by well we're going to have some kind of a celebration. No, well it's what it's when we decide it is really. I had, I talked to she's shown a little bit about this project and she told me that when they've done it in the past they have a small celebration to kick it off. And the artist artist comes in some towns and people come and the commissioners are there so I thought, but she didn't say a particular date so. So why don't you set a date for wanting to have it up and your celebration of it and then work back from that. Yep. That's usually how we do project management right. We think so. Let's do that when there's a real reason to know that that's the good day. Okay. Let's see. Let's now look at the. The call and see what it had what we had in there consistency with past practices would be a good indicator if it's if. Well the problem is that we don't really have a legacy of documents and information about how this was done in the past because six of us are new. So we don't have a lot of the leaders of this commission moved on so we're all kind of figuring things out on our own here. I'm going to see if I could find this call real quick. Here we are. So I don't know if we actually gave time. I'll have to find that later I don't see it right now. Oh, here we are. Okay. In the past. So in the past they did this in the spring, and it was awarded in May. So we are past the time that this has been done in the past. We were pretty busy at that time. So we didn't get it done so we are past our deadline and I hope that this will be the only year that we are past our deadline. That is my plan. We have good reason to be past our deadline so I'm going to talk to Matt, make sure there's no problem with paying our artists. And I think we will pick a date we will say end of September. So that we can have a celebration in early October. That's not okay. For me. I would also be talking to DPW to get some kind of an idea of what a new sign would cost. Okay. If she gets back to me and says I can't get this by end of September, we'll renegotiate so place to start. I'm sorry, what are you going to do again. I am going to talk to Matt about the award money to make sure that there's no problem with paying the artist and for the sign out of the grant that we received from Immersed Cultural Council. And I am going to communicate to our winner that the end of September will be the deadline, and we will have a celebration in early October. And I will also be reaching out to DPW to get an estimate for the cost of a sign. And we're going to do the sign a little bit differently. The sign that's there presently you've already seen it, it's one sign on one piece that gives information about the gallery and the artist. And that wasn't a really great idea because we changed out the artist so we need to redo the sign so that it is just a sign saying what the boat with gallery is. And that it is Amherst public art. And we will have a separate sign for the winner and I think that is something we can seriously have a screw on sign thing that we've put on the side of the wall, like you do for other art galleries so. So that's what I'm thinking so that sign would be a more permanent sign. Does that make sense. Yes. Yeah, Robert, you good on this. Yeah. Okay. All right. Anything else on portal gallery should I move on. Dara how you feeling fun hanging in there. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Back to my agenda. We've got. Wait on the strategic planning we've got a lot to discuss. I think Robert and I are going to have a few more power hours about how we wanted to get started with our strategic planning and our discussion on goals. I am looking forward to kind of honing in on a new mission statement that reflects this current commissions values and what we hope to do in the coming years. I'm looking to make a three year plan if possible. And part of that will be applying for grants and finding out how we're going to be funding our projects. And those projects. We need to get more input about from the public about what we should be doing as public art and that's something I feel very strongly about and I think you all do too. I think it's a really good thing that we are following. I want us to talk to our, our, our residents and find out what what we can do to make our town better. Terry, could I just make a suggestion. It seems like the block party might be an opportunity to get feedback on that. If there's some, you know, simple way we can. You know, figure out just have a sign asking people to, you know, write a note about what they think of as public art or what they want to see as public art in the town and, you know, that that seems like an opportunity to collect some information from people. That's a great idea. We could have a, a form there on the table and we could also have a QR code to an online survey if we wanted so that we could get people who are. We're right there in person and also people who are more technologically advanced so that would get kind of more equitable access to a form so we can get some feedback that's a really great idea. Yeah, I think to make it as simple as possible and I mean, I've seen some doing some reading on other times, you know, they have sort of large boards and people write, but then someone has to transcribe all that. I think, however, we figure out to gather the information and the easiest possible way but it seems like there'll be a lot of people hopefully it'll be, you know, good weather for that. And, you know, it just seems like a good chance for us to get, get some input. That's a great news for that table. That's fantastic. Thank you. So if you want to be part of the people talking about survey. We can meet early September after our next meeting so that we can put together some good questions or we could start that process now, or we could start it online and not talk about it but then come together and talk about it at our next meeting does that sound good for everybody. I like the idea of starting it starting it online and then picking picking up the initial contributions and. Okay, so I got it. I got to do the open meeting thing you can send out and you cannot discuss them. Yeah. Yes, we don't discuss. And you can you and nobody else can discuss them. In particular, if, if a talks to be and be talks to see and see talks to do you now violated open meeting law because that is form. Yeah, that's why I thought we could send. I could send out some initial initial thoughts and we can compile. Can we only can we just compile and then talk about it for the August, September meeting. I think you're getting pretty close to the line if they're initial thoughts that usually the things that get sent out to all the members of things like minutes to be approved and documents and that kind of thing but if there's if there are thoughts which constitute a discussion of the subject matter I think that might not be two eyes. Okay, these bars are challenging. I think that I'm individually on our own. How about we come up with some really good survey questions that we can bring up at our next meeting. We can talk about putting together the survey what that would look like. I think you could probably send a document says draft questions to be discussed at our next meeting. The problem with committees always is, you know, you don't want to fall into the trap of only thinking about stuff for the hour that you meet right. Now we do have the constraints of the open meeting laws and have to be very, very careful but I think we've come to a workable idea here. Okay, so we're all going to get together for the September meeting and with our ideas and we'll put together our survey at that time. So I think it's okay if you want to make a list of here are some survey questions, survey questions I think that's all right to send out. Okay, if you see anything more I think you're, yeah, shouldn't. Okay, I'm right. We've done, we've done this kind of survey with the town of Arlington so I have some kind of I have some basis for comparison I can also reach out to the Mass Cultural Council. There are some, you know, I don't have to reinvent the wheel there's lots of places I can get these kind of questions. So I'll put that together and send it out to you. I'll also be sending you a Google Doodle link for our September meeting. And we'll get together then and talk about the survey and make a plan for how we are going to man and woman and other the table. How are we going to, who's going to be there and etc. Robert, do you have anything you want to add. Just one question about the meeting schedule. Earlier in the year I thought we were trying to consistently meeting on Monday evenings. Personally that worked well for me I was like, I don't know, was there some reason that we kind of deviated from that because it's just, it seems like it's getting harder to schedule for everybody and if we could choose, you know, a regular the third thing, you know, just throwing that out as an example but something something that's just consistent from from month to month it might be easier for people to plan. I think with with summer. It's been really hard to get everybody in the room. The Doodle has helped us get consensus for what days work. I do agree with you I would rather have a set day of the month you know what first Monday or second Monday or, or something like that. I can send out a question to you all about that and see if what we all think. Because I would love to say you know the calendar the first Monday is when we always meet. The other thing maybe 630. Yeah, I have no problem with starting a meeting at 630 or even seven o'clock was fine for me. Okay, I will send out. I'm going to send out one Google about that question exactly Robert about what day of the week works for everybody, and what time of the month, does that make sense, like, so that we can actually narrow this down. Okay. That sounds great I can do that. Thank you. I see that we are a 701 you know how punctual I am so I am going to call. Well hold on to make sure I've got everything here. Is there any business not reasonably anticipated prior to 48 hours of this meeting does anybody have anything else they want to bring up. No. All good. Anything. Nope. Okay, so I am going to call to adjourn if I can get someone to give me a second. So moved. All right. Thank you so much for coming to this meeting. Tom, thank you so much for participating we're really happy to have you here. So there I hope you feel better. Robert be careful driving. Can I just ask everybody to adjourn right. Yes, I think that was understood. Jim, if you'll get up those July meetings minutes when you can and we'll look over those and we'll approve both July and August at our September meeting. That'll be a couple of days. Awesome. You can send it to me if you need some. On another hand with that I'm happy to look them over. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you everybody have a great night. I'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Good night.