 so easy to find. I've always been kind of curious why do some of your emails come from Angela Mills and some from Mills Angela and when you search you get a totally different two different streams but they appear to be the same address. So I think it's because I'm actually home sick today and I've been working off my phone and so I think that's probably why that's happening is my phone registers differently in the system than my desktop at work. Thank you. Sorry you're sick. That's all right. I'm getting tested tomorrow. Hopefully all will be well. Yeah thank you very much for your help. Sure. Bye. Bye. So we'll just wait another couple of minutes. How's everybody doing? We're doing fine but Angela just said she started the recording so we shouldn't chit chat. Okay thank you. There's never any chit chat in official Amherst meetings. There is. It depends on. There is actually there's actually tons of chit chat. I was going to you know different groups have different group culture around things like that and I appreciate ours. Holly's going to be a little bit late so we're just let's wait a bit for John and then go ahead. I don't know if it's just uh. There he is. Great. Hey John. Howdy. Hello. Thanks everyone. Hey, hey, hey. I'm on. Thank you. No, let me go to person on Zoom please. That's just not what we want to hear. For you. I know you don't do that sort of thing. Not that kind of kid. I'm walking the dog. It's freezing. Yeah so this meeting we have two big goals. We're going to make a fine tune our plan for interviewing staff and key committee members and go over the excellent questions and outline that Liz sent and then we'll look at the most recent version of the participatory budgeting concepts that Kathy sent so those are the two big substantive things. Does that work for people? Yes. I have to go at 430 if that's okay. I just I have to. Okay. No. I want to read this thing from Baker again. Pursuant although I've noticed I've been attending a lot of town meetings. Everybody does not everyone does this but we've been asked to do it so. Have we been called to order? I good question. I thought I um anybody aren't calling the meeting to order at 333 but I probably should say 331 because we reviewed the goals and I want to thank John Fenske for agreeing to take minutes at this meeting. I'm going to be organizing it ahead of time so we don't have to nobody's on the spot at the moment and Liz has generously agreed to take them at our January 7th meeting so thank you. So the meeting calling the meeting to order at 333 and we reviewed the meeting goals. I'm going to now read this thing. Pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12th 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law general law chapter 30a section 18 this meeting of the participatory budgeting commission is being conducted by remote participation. I'm now going to have a roll call with everybody say everybody's name and you respond if you're here. Kathy Shane here. McGage here. Liz Larson. Here. John McCabe. Here can you see me now? Yeah great. Yes completely. You can okay good. Well not every part of you but we. Yeah that's a good thing. John Paige. Here. John F. Fenske. I'm here. Great. I want to remind you that's being recorded the meeting's being recorded and could be shown on the Amherst media. It's also available for people who are doing the minutes and want a refresher if you lost conscious lost concentration or missed something or wanted to capture what you actually said yourself. I find sometimes when I'm the minute taker I forget to write down what I said. And if you have any background noise feel free to put yourself on mute when you're not speaking. Okay. Let's review the agenda. As I said we have two primary tasks although a couple of little things also I think we probably want to do. John has agreed to take the minutes. Does this look like the right order? Does anybody want to change the order? I put the interviews first because I thought that's what we actually have to do at this meeting. And then the further discussion of the draft that Kathy has amazingly pulled off once again. That's saying if you want to get something done ask a busy person. Kathy embodies that. I don't know anybody as busy as you. So thank you. Not hearing any comments. I'm assuming this agenda is okay. Kathy I think you're muted. Looks good to me. I just want to take a minute to appreciate our commission's culture and people showing up and paying attention and being prepared. I also appreciate having now sat in on a lot of other town meetings how candid people are that we use each other's first names and we're not a group that knew each other before and we've really I think trust and listened to each other especially with the curveball of the pandemic. I just appreciate it. I was at a recent meeting for example where they came to approve the minutes and they had to have some like several minutes of silence so people could read them for the first time. So Mazel Tov to us. So let's take the John. Let's look at the minutes that John McCabe created. Okay. I have an observation about the minutes. It seems that everybody was there but then there were only six people who voted on the roll call. I guess Liz is missing but I missed one. Oh okay. Everybody was here. That's true. Okay good catch. So the roll call. Where was that? No. Everybody's on it. Who's the seventh? There are seven people listed. No but under number two approval of the minutes there are only six people listed. Oh. Oh. So shall we? Who are we missing today? We're missing Holly today. Oh I'm sorry of course. Can you do me a favor? Can you put it up on the screen because I guess I can help. I don't print things out in advance so I can leave this and go look at the document but if you've got it. I've got it. I've got all these things right here. Was there anybody who is not present? I know I was doing remote for that meeting for the October 1st meeting for my car. So I may have abstained or was there someone else who missed that meeting and abstained from the vote to approve the minutes. I'm sorry this is really nitpicking. Okay. As Meg is pulling them up I think it's also all right. It's right here. Yeah that's just I just I should have put her down. Who am I missing? Holly's there. Meg, me. Who's missing? I'm missing but Liz. Yeah. So shall we amend them to be that's why they're draft. That's right. That's because I did them. They should definitely be draft. The only thing I point out here. I mean this is just pure unnecessary editing. Roll call vote to approve the minutes. You could just say unanimous because we could do that. I just copied the version. Whoever did last one I just used that and it's easier to do it that way too. So the only thing I can tell you that I kind of punted on was when you go to the end of this end of the meeting end of the minutes we we then thrashed out a bunch of other questions and I didn't go there. I just said we agreed that Liz Larson would write them up. I just didn't have any more time. Yeah no that that was fine. I had two comments correction. One is a correction. Sam McLeod's name. He is on the the list of people to talk to for a CPA committee. His name is actually it's Mac M-A-C L-E yeah M-A-C capital L uh no O-E uh sorry E-O-D. E-O-D. Yeah. Okay. I was thinking of the cop show from the 70s. Yeah and then further down on the list for uh under this UMass Sarah Barr is actually with Amherst College. Okay. Where is that? Let's see. Where the point where the pointer is right now. Just go down to the last go down to the last um say Molly Mead and Sarah Barr Meg. Yeah I've got it say Amherst College. Uh yeah Sarah Barr's with Amherst College. I don't I think the others are all. Molly Mead is Amherst College too. Okay. So maybe we should find some more people. I think should we should it be the beginning of the sentence say UMass and Amherst College contacts with that? I think it's fine. Yeah I mean yeah that works. We should probably I'm happy to do that um when we get a little better verbiage um maybe just just look through the poly side department. The poly side department is so huge at UMass. Just look and see if there's anybody that I'm just call call email and see if they're interested. Okay so for right now those were the only people we mentioned during the meeting we'll just that's right. Yes um what we can do is come back to that during this meeting when we finish our other two topics. Does that make sense? Yeah. So John are you able to make these edits and get them into uh Angela is the not draft minutes? Meg you can just if we prove it right now just just do it now and I'll do it and they're done. Just respell his Sam's name and get rid of this all right I'll do it no problem just delete that because I have it all right here. If you're doing it on track changes just accept the edits. I'm not I'm just doing them in red but I can change it no big deal I'll take care of it it'll take two minutes. Okay great okay thanks everybody. And by the way I have no problem with this level of detail in the minutes I think it's fabulous but what we've generally been told is capturing a sense the way you said and we had further discussion on such and such that's fine particularly because we also have a video right we've been told we're supposed to capture. I assume that Liz was going to have a nice list of questions that would be a sort of an exhibit rather than me just trying to remember what everybody said. Right and it's just really good to think of it that we're not having to reproduce a transcript you know when you want to capture something it's important I'm not saying don't do detail but but it's fun to decrease the burden when needed. Yeah this is the start I learned working at the library. Yeah okay I think so excuse me did we take a vote do we have to do a roll call? Just about to do that any more comments on the minutes um all in favor I guess we'll do a roll call I'll stop sharing. Kathy? Yes. Meg? Yes. Liz? Yes. John? Yes. John P? Yes. John F? Yes. Okay it's unanimous approval of the minutes. Great and and the minute taker can just notice that Holly wasn't there at the start yeah. Okay I am going to pull up the agenda we actually don't need it because we're going to go now to planning the interviews with the town staff I want to thank Liz for the excellent questions that she sent yesterday did everybody get a chance to look at them and again I would really appreciate it bringing up on the screen so if we have we can do real-time time comments on it and if Liz wants to keep a control she could show a screen or Meg you could either way I just find it easier. Right Liz do you want to I was wondering do we want to talk about the I was just about to ask the questions first or the people with let's do the questions since Liz has them up there. I'm sorry I have trouble with screen sharing here or I can do it. No no I thought that I had done it again. Except it's also showing you my whole screen right? No we're down the side and here's your screen it's fine. We've got a screen in the middle and then it's fine okay all right. Excuse me Meg I have a question are we going to look separately at this one pager I forget what it's called you know the description that's going to be handed out will we consider that at the end? Well that's what I was just starting to ask before we jumped into the three aspects of this conversation who are the people we're going to speak with and some of us still we need maybe an expanded list. What are the questions that we're going to ask and how much variety and how much specificity which is what Liz's piece gets at and then the third is the description of our work which I definitely think we need to look at as well and edit. So people suggested starting with Liz's questions which are now up on the screen is that an okay start good and then we'll go to who people with whom we're going to speak and then we have a little time to refine the description of our work but I thought it was the one thing that was a good start but it definitely needs you know a little more work like everything else. Okay so we're going to now look at these questions and we're assuming that the people my reaction at first was this kind of a cold it starts jumps right in the deep end so we're assuming that people have oh is that Holly? Hi Holly welcome. Hi there. I'm assuming that they will have read the one page description of what participatory budgeting is and so on. So let's take up. I'm sorry if we want to assume that they're going to be reading that first then should we be approaching this in the way that they will be approaching it and start with the one pager or is that a lot more in depth? I think it's better to start with this since we have it up but what do others think? I think we need a real strategy for these questions so that they're useful including that the hardest part of what we do here together is coming up with the most important thing is a strategy for how we're going to get the most useful information possibly varied from person to person what kind of detail do we want so on? So I just have a general observation about the questioning and it relates to the one pager as well. We're going to put some work into that and I think that's great and we can hope that everybody we talked to has read the one pager but I don't think we can assume it and I mean my experience is that busy people do what they want to do so I would think we'd want to open with a very general question which might even let us know how much they know about participatory budgeting or the work of our commission something just along the lines of what message do you have for the participatory budgeting commission or what do you think of the concept just something general like that to break the ice and get their general idea and then likewise at the end we should close with is there anything else that we ought to know or that you're thinking of after our discussion that's just a great my way of thinking about it. I see nodding. I agree with John I it's always good to start from the general and work to the specific maybe the last question just above from the first section maybe that's something a variant of that it's the lead it's the lead general question in the best of all possible worlds and something about you know but something something broad for starters as opposed to what works and what doesn't. Or we could start with just simply were you able to read the one page description and see what they do you have any questions because yeah that's really what we don't want to talk I don't know I think that would help focus the discussion does that make sense to lose to put up here did you have a chance to read the one whatever we're calling it. Well here here I have a I agree with everything that's being said right now so I don't I'm not saying anything not agreement so the opening putting an opening we're here from the participatory budget committee commission something about do you know about it whatever but we we can make this one document we're keeping separate right now so we can in advance send them the blurb that says something about the budgeting commission and say questions we plan on asking you are attached you know and so it's literally one document rather than did you read that document now this so I'm thinking of the way we when we're bringing in people so for statements of interest for participation the council you know we're we're presenting here's what this committee does and these are the and then we also send them these are the questions we're going to ask you so I think we could just we can think of this becoming one document while I agree. Question though is whether we're going are going to ask everyone the same questions and maybe we want to no no Meg I'm talking about tailored things so we go great that we have a blurb at the top that says hi we're this full of brush people and now we're here we're here to talk about participatory budgeting and then we're talking to you as leaders responsible for CPEC or we're talking to you as leaders responsible for CPEC you know and then then the specific questions we're asking them would be framed. So I agree with that that's a little more work I assume that's what we were doing yeah okay good so it seems though that if it's all one document and they have the description it's still relevant to ask did you have any questions about the section above? Totally yeah I wasn't disagreeing with that that's what I said I mean I'm totally did you have any questions you know what are we trying to work on because we're really here to get some ideas about something specific from you that's what we say. And I'd like to add I personally think it's it may sound silly but I think it's important to keep it to one side of an eight and a half by 11 sheet the whole thing so-called one pager and maybe it's an abbreviated list of questions maybe we the interviewers go in with something more elaborate but you give them the flavor of the questions you're going to ask and making sure that everything fits on one sheet one side of one sheet yeah yeah I in 12 point I totally agree I totally agree with that and you know it's just so people don't feel like they've got to read uh something elaborate um but then we'll have to shorten quite a bit the description well but but Meg we can send them two different I'm not saying we can't send them two different documents I'm just saying when we get to the question part we can have a quick lead in up on top that says something and then segue in so we'll see how condensed we can get so going through these questions shall we go through them first with the town manager in terms of each committee or person or shall we go through them all and then go back and identify which would I my main my main thought on this I know we should raise hands my main thought on this is I really like these questions but I wanted to anchor them in specific committees processes so I wanted to break you know I like each of them so I wanted to say when we're talking to the town manager we're particularly talking about the resident capital requests all right those are the things that he's going to be involved with and um you know so then what works and what doesn't work you know so I'm just going to break so this is a nice set of questions so I just wanted to do a lead in that the town manager plus whomever would be asked something to focus on the resident capital requests and then the CPA people would be asked to focus on CPA so it just had a lead in sentence when you think about the resident capital requests right what do you think works or doesn't work or something you know so it's that's that's the opening sentence to interviewing there okay so when we send them the packet with here's the you know quick blurb of what pbc is and our goal here's a list of the questions to expect from us then that question would open with you know you know paul what works and doesn't work specifically in regards to resident capital requests so those can be tailored specifically within the documents that we send to them is that what you're yeah that's what I'm suggesting and paul is the toughest one because he sits on he's not I guess is he in the room or not with the community development block grant but he he takes what the committee has recommended it's only an advisory committee their advisory but but yeah that's that's what I was thinking because I want them to focus you know you know the bigger question I it would love to ask paul but it's too much of a leading question do you think the addition of resident capital requests was a good idea or not you know it we've only had them for a while you know are they are they in any way well you can you can ask a question that gets at that like how is it working right we wish it worked or right so and that's all I'm saying is like what works and doesn't work yeah in your view with the resident capital requests um john would you have your hand up yeah so um I was just scratching my head but I do have a comment I I think I think we should consider um what one of the john said of maybe moving up even this best possible world question um as as a uh open-ended kind of positive question um because what works and what doesn't work I want to ask that very early on but it is inherently a little bit of a diving right into the the structure of your committee or your your it's it's a little bit of a tough question I think to start with so maybe I think that last one might be the best one to move up the in ideal world paul how would you like see residents participate in capital requests I think would be a an easy first question um to start the um gears turning and you might really you might elicit very different it depends but you might elicit very different attitudes towards having you know our participatory budget process in the first place some people may find it that's you know may may have volumes to say on others might say I'm not sure why we need to do that at all um depending but but you know it would be a good place to start just to get a sense of what their general attitude would be towards having more people participate as opposed to just the professionals I totally agree moving that question to number one do we want to ask anywhere in here of this some sorry did I interrupt someone go ahead um that if there were charitable dollars for participatory budgeting would they be open to a pro having a program that would be a question for paul I guess not cpa yeah I totally agree me I mean I'm hoping that's how we kind of we just threw that out there so they didn't think we want to take part of his budget when we met with him um we you know let him know that we'd love to explore with with either the philanthropic world or the academic world or both how how we might get something something additional something something uh that doesn't come straight from the budget um I I would think that would make that would get his ears perked up what do others think I think that might be getting a little bit too far into the weeds right now don't we really want to capture overall the viability of such a program and so for example it could be something that is in this this portion here with the flexibility within your budget um perhaps there we could add something when talking to him saying if there were opportunities for other budget sources or other uh funding sources do you think that could work rather than making a separate yeah separate question where would that go lis uh right up here this one the flexibility line yeah the what one so so flexibility in your budget to commit to fund residents that's good um I I just remember the conversations around the um North Amherst Library where every time paul talks about it he says this is moving forward in part because of private funds so I think we should add that in some way I I think we could add it onto that question and one one quick background on it is when it was proposed john behind the scenes comment is this will not go forward unless it's really private right I was going to say the same thing you said that was that the town manager said this is going forward largely because of private dollars only because he said entirely because of it they're absolutely right happening otherwise and I think for that reason that um especially for the town manager but for all these committees we are kind of um poking at that we're going to be we would like to take some power away from them and allocate some money towards something else so I think putting that in there might soften that question yeah so we're thinking of putting it after part of the one two three bullet four or is it five so I've got it highlighted here good I've just added he's changing it on the screen is okay got it sorry great okay these are we're not talking about questions for paul bachelman any more comments on this which are the of these many questions these well um so the way I've set this up these are just the general questions for the town officials staffing committees and then when we send out the packet they would be tailored to these are tailored to paul bachelman these are tailored to shawn these are tailored to members of the cpa so what I I thought let's do that now then should it make sense to just put parenza at the end of each one and then put the names of the people or the the who's going to be asked who would pertain to I I think we need to ask um I don't know if there are any don't we need to ask everybody the same questions I in fairness some of them if I if I go down what liz has put here number one works for everyone yeah so you just put everyone in parenza you know and number two works for everyone so which is two is it the bullet that's what works and doesn't work yeah I'm just going bullet okay got it but but what I'm thinking you know so for for each of the one liz said tailored in the best of all possible words what would you like to see at the participant patient in residence in resident capital requests is the way we would tailor that or in cpa project proposals you know that so the question context changes by dropping in we're talking to cpa people you know so that's so it's and then can you describe the process for ranking assessing proposals that's the third that worked to me for all of them also yeah good and then what current input do you get from staff or departments required to assess the proposals what's interesting is um 100 the proposals for capital come from town staff 100 you know and then when we move over to cpa the most recent one is 80 but but I think it's still a good question for all of them because it gets kicked back even in cpa and Liz you may know more for I haven't watched the the or poly the block grant process if something comes from people not as familiar with what to do they will be asking staff on a what do you think about the cost estimate you know is this in conflict with anybody does this fit within the guideline to the pro I mean they're always so I think that question what current input do you get but then I would break it because the second part I would make that its own point could town staff be made available that one I would make its own vote that's a separate thought its own separate not a sub bullet under this one right okay so having been on the charter commission the cpo's were because originally that there was a one full-time position to so that participatory budgeting would have staff if it went forward but I think it's the way Paul's handling it is good but but but can I just say something Megan cpo whatever the larger vision for them is that the likelihood I'm not saying they couldn't but the likelihood that a cpo could help you price out your you know they wouldn't be able to do that it would be some other staff person or how much is a crossroad a crosswalk or how much is a bridge so this says could town staff be made available to assist with proposals um and I would just boot ig costing them out um you know the idea of the cpo there that lis has is that the cpo can help the residents figure out whom to go to and help them get their questions answered more efficiently than if they're just would that make okay so this this piece needs to be this needs to be done with the net other question then that needs to go here okay yes yeah all I'm saying is that's it it presumes that cpo's would be doing that way but instead you might say you know if something comes in and it's a sidewalk right away dpw's asked to give a put a price tag on it you know rather than first we find the right cpo to have them go to but what's the right path it's just id putting out yeah or yeah then that raises the whole thing of how dpw comes up with their costs but anyway that's another topic um but I think that's they need to I mean this is probably an important one because to have community folks with good ideas and good intentions um maybe it's maybe it would be better to have town staff so yeah I can call gilford's office and we can get an idea because people sometimes have no idea that it costs a million dollars to to pave a little tiny road I just don't even know how to those things can be answered up with a phone call pretty quickly without everybody having to have put in a meeting and time and whatnot so maybe someone could be like an expediter for the for the residents with their ideas uh huh great okay keep it going here and just let me build on this point and right now when on cap on the capital request when the resident fills out a form it goes to a specific person and I think at this point at sean mangano if it doesn't have a price tag attached to it someone just says sidewalk or crosswalk they could get a price tag for it you know say you know it's got a blank you know so what I think the way it's written right now is right you know on a you know what can we do to get something priced out if the person doesn't already have it um and I'm assuming if someone says the one one I watched which was pretty interesting someone wanted to uh renovate and change the clubhouse on cherry hill to make it a year-round facility and one when asked what it would cost and he said I have no idea isn't that your idea that my idea is can't can't someone tell me he says maybe $200,000 and they said well maybe we need a study to figure out how much he said good let's I'll ask for $10,000 for the study but it was like in real time help me you know it was like help me out here um right well we had estimates for our new traffic light in the middle of North Amherst that went from $60,000 to $250,000 depending on various circumstances not not much of a change in the light but anyway we got it for 60 so but in any case I like the wording of this so I'm just it's like could we could we do this um great and it would apply I think it applies to all of the ones we're asking about cpa cdb you know so I'm thinking each of these is it unique no all of these work for the three major sources we're talking about okay so now we're next one so is this is this this this one right here is this uh sub bullet or a separate bullet doesn't matter I think I think it works is in my opinion it works as a sub bullet because it's part of the same okay all right but this is for all this question okay all right so now we're down here with the flexibility but we've already talked about that one kind of well this is the first time we've asked whether they'd set aside money right is there any place we that's the beginning of that thing yeah so I don't think we've asked that until now yeah no I'm sorry I meant as a group we've discussed this question yeah I I think it's a great question and I would ask it um I think I would definitely ask it of the capital projects and cpa I'm a little less certain on the community develop block grant okay so is that rcr uh you've got it up but what is rcr I don't know what the resident capital request yeah that's rcr and cpa is definite but cpa uh cdbg I think that's not no that's got a defined source yeah so the next one seems to apply to I had a small wording I go for it John I did have a wording idea on this one um possibly what could it make sense to say is there any flexibility within your budget to dedicate funds to resident proposals good it's a little more specific um because I would argue you know a lot of cpa proposals are resident proposals but they're organizations so maybe dedicated funds to resident proposals I think that's a little more specific yeah one of the things I'm wondering is that these different committees are in very different head spaces in terms of their uh likelihood of being sympathetic to this so cpa cpa I know is already wrestling with how to have more community input how to have better uh support for people who are submitting proposals and they actually have a I think John and Sarah have a subcommittee working on it I guess we don't need to that wouldn't change the questions but I I think we're going to find very different levels of receptivity to this among the different parties is that I guess I agree and that's what I'm just looking at the next one what are the limitations here's my here's where I I wouldn't ask this question um I'm just highlighting it so we all know what we're talking about yeah so what I'm thinking is that this first set walking all the way through we are going to be hearing from people there's no way Jose I'd set up a dedicated fund or we can't we can't within the way cpa works we would love to get more proposals but we can't set aside a fund I think we're going to be getting that um so what are the limitations you know limitations or even the council can't get a dedicated you know but so I'm not sure I would ask that highlighted bullet I think if we take good notes um but is there a different thing would such a dedication require so would it be more direct would we say they would dedicating funds require a separate bylaw or other kind of policy change you know so instead of you know so I'm trying to think of it I think it's a good but I wouldn't ask the beginning of it would maybe there aren't limitations but it's also not just the changing the the the funding part of it it is the um how we how residents would vote on them how that would happen and then if the residents voted for something but was vetoed by someone I think that's what I was trying to capture there but maybe maybe this is something we don't ask now but we leave that to be worked out by whoever has to implement our recommendation right well I'm curious I am curious so I don't know whether I've got the wording right but um if we got a response that we could not dedicate a set of funds unless there is a change in our committee charge the bylaw that sets this up you know we don't we we would not be able to um is it captured by why or why not appear and that's what I'm thinking we'll get Liz you know so that's what I'm hoping that we really want to know why or why not and so that's why I'm saying maybe we just don't need the next bullet because why or why not there will if we ask it enough um we're going to get all the reasons why they they love the idea but they can't do it you know um like in CPEC it might be sure we'd love to set up a pot of money but we can't um Holly were you trying to have a comment I was just trying to think of a because I I'm just trying to think of a way of another way of sort of wording that like would do you foresee any legal obstacles to um and I can't and I can't but um any legal obstacles to setting aside money for participatory budgeting in your committee I don't know I'm just trying to think I think that gets at the same thing Holly I agree you know just something like that would be um it's just it's not the person's opinion alone but soliciting them from me them that's what I'm looking for the laws the there's no way we can do that or but I don't know I was just sort of a thought of the legal yeah what about and there might be a question for us and not want to ask them because the answer might be lengthy but maybe what because limitations and obstacles both have a um baggage with them a little bit what if we said what rules govern your committee's decision making or I'm trying to think how to say it so for example CPA say there are state laws that dictate how we can allocate this money or CDBG might say there are federal laws that actually dictate how we can spend this money um well but but that I I want to I agree I'm agreeing with what you're saying but the the issue is we should we should make sure whoever team is talking we totally understand that CPA can only spend on these four buckets right what we were trying to find out is if they could they within their charge and within the state law do a set aside a dedication of funds for resident proposals do they think they already could do that if they wanted to or would and then the other side of it is they wanted to do it and then they have to the town council has to then decide on the list you know but we should go in knowing how this is governed so they don't have to right yeah right absolutely I think generally we do don't you think I do but I don't want them to have to let me explain to you how CPA work you know right that would be a waste of our time so that's a question probably for us yeah a question for us rather than a question for the committee uh member then yeah that's why I was thinking I I don't potentially delete the whole thing and hear what they say um so you know I know I've taken well in our discussion rather than just saying carve out a hundred thousand dollars call it participatory budget set up a whole new thing we've said could we build on what we've got already and we may discover it's just as easy hard to build on what we've got already yeah with any commitment of funds um we could make everything work better absolutely could you just change just simplify it says are there are there possible other funding sources that could be tapped is there any reason why they can't be yeah keep it simple they might and then and they'll if there is they'll they'll tell it they'll they'll know them or what would it take to have access to the yeah we're just is there any reason why that why why a set aside couldn't be arranged yeah as whether they want to or not is there is there any legal you know just is there any reason why it couldn't be done that's a good one yeah rewarding is there any reason why dedicated funds couldn't be yeah there might be a legal restriction or there might not or they might just not want to do it list is can you okay so yeah I'm having trouble so are we we're getting rid of this one and putting more up in this section do it that way you could just follow it up are there a possible funding source that could be tapped is there any reason why they can't be tapped why they might not is there any reason why they couldn't be tapped well I just we really need to get I getting other funding is a different issue than can we dedicate funds right yeah right we just have to keep I'm not saying take that follow-up up but I like sure are there any reasons why a dedicated amount couldn't be set up I like that wording okay and that's going after I think it's after tapped I thought it was um oh there you go well I'll put these in and then you can tell me to move them right it can also go after just the last bullet I and I've totally forgotten what the end of the sentence is why why dedicated funds could not be set up or could not be specified right then you can delete the next one yeah and then the second one goes so this one goes yeah this goes by gone yeah yeah what do you think of changing all these two numbers so when we're talking about them um that's a formatting thing and it would take me a while to figure out how to do so we can do it later but not right now I can in word I can do it I just need to it would take me three tries to figure it out and yeah I'm not going to do it now I'm just saying maybe for the next version we might want numbers so we can refer to it it's not I can show you how to do it too but here we are thank you so I would my vote on this one would be just to lead it um to make the list shorter because I think the next one procedurally couldn't we keep the periods open longer could they be aligned and then I'm not sure what the last one is I'm just going down to the last bullet seems to be other sources of money so yeah that's this this one that we moved up here yeah so I just um the examples we can find them pretty easily but I wouldn't take the conversation time up of the examples okay I think though with Paul there might be an additional question or we're at the end of this section well let's just say but would people agree see the highlighted to just delete that yeah I'll move that yeah because we've captured above okay and then the last sentence are we also deleting the lessons wait what about this one I like that one okay and then are there other town that we've captured because we already put it up in the other I mean yep that one gets zapped also okay okay that's good I have to go in about 10 minutes so the academic ones I'd love to have some input let me ask you quickly quickly we can come back to it though but um if there are any particular questions for paul as the chief executive for example um inviting him to be think more broadly are there any other ways that you can imagine that the residents could participate in the budget process that we haven't thought of yeah he knows a lot about other communities and um just seems like we should take advantage if we get you know some one on one or two on one time with him to ask him that something like that yeah maybe you know can you envision what can you envision a way that the participant participatory budgeting would make your job easier or make you a more effective that's why I keep trying to keep trying to get him to realize no it could be it could be better instead of worse you know well I'm suggesting not saying participatory budgeting because I think we're as a commission have moved on we're just talking but uh John yeah um well this gets to when we eventually talk about the uh the draft of objectives to the section b and I've been thinking about how it's conceptually different from sections a and c and it kind of comes out in the lack of questions around the uh surveys referenda and uh this idea that I've been pushing a little later I don't know if everybody's caught on but the idea of creating handles or easier ways into budgeting for your uninformed citizen um so in other words what I'm saying is what's to my thinking relevant to section b what's missing here are any questions that try to elicit uh whether uh Paul in particular and others have ideas for how we would do a survey or how we would use a referendum in order to get information about existing budgeting priorities whereas most of these questions are about this the general participatory budgeting concept of having a a pot of dedicated money to a specific project that people vote on um and and just more generally I would say I'd I'd like to know if if the rest of you are really on board it seems that I've been the one who's been supporting the ideas behind section b of pushing for referenda or creating uh additional ways in for the ordinary citizen into the budget and it's really not um you know the traditional participatory budgeting concept with uh either money from outside or a dedicated pot of money I think the way I'm looking at that is our we're kind of the big picture so we're we're doing giving a net we're putting together an outline and then this outline will be given to the next group of people who will actually figure out how to how to approach and how to work with the universities and do all that so a lot of the ideas that you're developing which are really cool and exciting um I see another group being responsible for figuring out the specifics on those so that's I kind of left it really general I think John's idea I think John's asking a somewhat different question of whether we're interested in opening the subject of not so much participatory residents participating but would it be helpful to have better ways for the public to understand the budget process it's a different topic really but it's in our memo is that accurate John well yeah yeah I mean you know the basic question is maybe then this idea of surveys and referenda uh and more handles for the public uh maybe paul and and town staff and the town council none of them have any time and they're not interested they get enough information enough feedback from their district meetings and so forth I I mean we really ought to if it's a viable idea there ought to be uh some way to get paul and the town counselors and others interested in it rather than just have it be a you know an idea that's thrown out in the in our report Kathy okay I have a suggestion on this because Meg you opened up this and John jumped I think rightly on it so you wanted on when when we have paul in the room so I'm thinking number one we have paul in the room more than once we have him once where he's focused on resident capital and you open it up with any other ideas of ways of improving participation so we could have a set of questions that we particularly want feedback from paul and John having you jumped in I'm wondering if for the next meeting you could draft a paul set that starts out this more general and you know we'd love your reaction to the idea of referendums or polling um you know and thoughts on that so we could open up those ideas and get his reaction and so this would be this would be an addendum to the questions we're working on that would be uh meant to address what's being proposed in section b right and I sort of bigger picture and that set might also be a good set to interview Lynn Greysmer if she's president of the council with you know on a ways to improve participation what do you think about this and just so I don't forget I want to get it on record that I'm going to send people a link to Melrose where I was on the Melrose town for a completely different reason but their mayor I assume their mayor wrote it but he's done that interactive budget what is the budget where does it come from what does this term mean in a chit chat thing you know you can just click through it so it's like a 101 for people who wanted to know about this so someone invested in that on their budget site it's pretty it's very cool I went all the way through it that's great yeah that's what I would imagine uh eventually community participation officers would keep up to date and help people to engage more easily more readily with uh you know what are otherwise arcane budgeting issues totally as a former budget person if people don't understand the budget they make up their own narrative and it's usually totally wrong yeah it really helps to share information so if we get to it which I don't know to the to the memo I added a section on some of the tools that are available and they might apply here so for example the idea of a referendum there's open source free technology that's available so people would say oh we can't have another whatever so we might want to weave in here later some of those tools that we've discovered that might facilitate my suggestion I'll make it more as a proposal is we're at 429 so I was going to delegate to John Fenske a draft of questions that start with bigger picture any other ideas that you might have on increasing participation and referendum and then Meg it'll be a place you can drop in you know there's some free available but it's just kind of a separate document than honing in on you know get any excitement on some of the other stuff we're doing in this first town committees so yeah is everyone in favor of that yes sure I would just like to point out that um what what you said Meg about the tools that's I think tools are cool that's that's well and good but I think the really tough work the kind of work that I'm glad Liz has handed off to the successor to this commission is devising the right specific questions you know and deciding whether it's ranking or yes no kind of thing the way things stand now we come up every once in a while with the big overwhelming question yes or no and override and it just seems so crude to me right right but um I agree with everything you said and I also agree with Kathy pointing out what time it is so today we don't even have the option of going after five because Angela is hosting another meeting at five and she said we could find another host or holly you know I could have asked you holly but I just said we'll be done by five I have to go I'm unfortunately because my I have to switch meetings yeah so I wanted to knowing that you have to go to suggest that we come back to the academic and the groups I like what's there I'm a little I'm not quite sure what the second one means but I think I do but I like what's there and I think we should think of people like Tony Marou was when we think about it because I think Tony's a good deflector I like telling a lot but he's we need to get him to think of ways to get him to think specifically about what we might do with the university or or you met or Amherst as well yeah that's kind of what it means the I didn't it's like the how does the town gown work together on this yeah and instead of it being a we're not looking to pick a fight with the university we're looking for a way to do something fun together you know yeah so I wonder thanks John yeah I have to go I'm really sorry so I wonder if we want to take if we're we've did a really good job of honing you know fine tuning these questions for Paul and these other committees there I don't think you can see my cursor right because I'm not sure but we want to divide them up now and both divide ourselves up into pairs um and and put some of give us some specific assignments are we are we done with this draft for the moment well we're done go ahead John I was gonna say it it might be redundant but I think our conversation evoked um that we should probably at the end ironically because I asked to move that question the beginning say any other strategies you would suggest to increase participation yeah I it is a little bit redundant but I think ending on a question like that is also probably important and we might the response might be um I don't know if I don't know if we want to prompt them with the polling but a response might be we need more information from residents on a regular basis yeah I like I like this and I like the beginning and ending uh book book ends it's it's really nice so I'm also looking at these questions although the font is on the smaller side but I'm thinking we got them down to enough of a set that they can be the bottom half of a page with a blurb up on top you know what we said about keeping it to one page so we and then academic stakeholders I had one idea to add to this but it's not it's around my head might this be of interest of professors um and bringing students in to make it a professor and student project um so let's before we go down to academic I want to just do a check of where we are in the meeting and what I'm suggesting that here are the three things that we might do now keep going with these questions even though John wanted us to not do academic until he was going to be here uh but we could continue the questions we could assign uh people in pairs to pick wait I keep showing you my cursor but you can't see it to I don't think we should plan to hold any of these conversations until after our next meeting which is January 7th correct and the question is do we want to schedule any for later in January and February between now and then and if so we need to assign us in pairs is I think what we agreed to do this in pairs I think I think going to that's a really good idea and then the addition I'd make to that is we Liz will send us this and whoever the pair is on CPA or on CDB takes the shot at the one pager for that so we're looking we're taking we've got the questions down at the bottom reworked so we're looking at that so we'd be ready to go to do interviews when we leave the next meeting uh huh okay does everybody any comments um I was just going to say I think you know in terms of meeting people we want to focus on the town officials first that this this group this is really our our core group and then move on to the other two so we can table the conversation about the other two sets of questions um and then come back to that at a later date and focus on getting the meetings and questions ready for the others right so we're okay yes great stop so we're talking about I keep moving my cursor okay so I'm going to stop sharing no no we're done with this share but could you move your cursor at the says town official staff committees includes so we're talking about this set of people here right yeah okay good so now I decided not to try to set this up ahead of time do people want to pair off and claim one that they'd like to do or two I would love to do CPA because I'm in the middle of conversation with him but that may be why I'm not the right person but yeah I also am having some issues and conversation with CPA at the moment so I'm probably not the best person to engage with that group and CDBG obviously would I mean my husband's on it my next door neighbor is on it so I don't know if I'm if that's appropriate for me which would you like I'll take whatever's left any Kathy okay I'm I would volunteer for any of the three to be free say them again I see more than three resident capital requests uh-huh CPA and CDBG those are the three we're talking about right now okay not the town manager well the town manager is the person who is he has to be in the room when you talk about resident capital requests because he oversees all capital requests he has to be in the room but don't do we want a conversation with just him in the room yes that's what I thought we talked about a separate conversation with him okay so we have the CPA, CDBG and the resident capital requests and then the town manager also right right so I am just for the time being focused on these seven questions or however we have that are earmarked to pieces of money right not on big big picture right so I am saying I will do any of those three and I'm willing to do as many as two but not all three so I am I am I my conflicts are I'm liaised a council liaison to CPA and I am the chair of JCPC but I have zero control over resident capital requests I'm not staff so I don't it's not really a conflict and I know very little about CDBG but I'd be happy to do that interview so I'm just volunteering for any of the three and I'm willing to do too so given that I'm willing to take on communicating with each of you in the next two or three days if that would facilitate this process which one you want to do and even also if there's someone two people would like to work together you know how to do a doodle poll may I do because if you do a doodle poll it'll come back to you but you can put each of our names and then you can say check the committees you'd be willing to do good I'm gonna do that I do know how to do that great idea I just think yeah okay and then you can all talk to each with each other if there's somebody you'd really like to do it with I don't think it really matters much I'm happy to partner with anybody but okay I will do that before hopefully tomorrow so at our next meeting we're going to come back and at our next meeting we're going to fine tune our plan for these first set of interviews and continue on with the with Liz's list of questions for academics and so on and then the only thing that does if you can get the doodle poll results back to us so what I heard Liz say is Liz I heard you indirectly to say a couple of them are more problematic for you but maybe resident capital requests isn't problematic um yeah so I mean I can do that one and you know I was I was actually starting to put you down for that one yeah so you know so all I was thinking Meg is if if we can get before the next meeting potential teams you could assign any of them to do the one the draft of the one you know just so we can be looking at a document so what I'm offering is to do the doodle poll and then to create the teams and if I need to in consultation with the phone I'll phone you up and say would you rather do this or that okay maybe maybe in the doodle poll you could set it up that we do a one a number one a number two and a number three floating right yeah no like bank choice so that if your top preference yeah exactly to reveal your preference um yep yeah okay I just like to volunteer for cdbg because I think I'm too close to cpa and I certainly don't want to be working with the town manager on on these issues I'm just cdbg will be my my top choice I know very little about that one great thanks for volunteering Holly I wasn't sure if you were going to have time or not but thank you um okay I think we have a plan for this and just to make I hope don't want to be repeating things too much but we're not doing any of these actual conversations until after our next meeting on January 7th to find our plan and make sure that we all like the one page cover sheet and everybody is going to create their own one pager once these have been assigned is that's reasonable to do for the next meeting I think it has to be um I wait are we talking about the one pager that I sent that says intro summary uh well I'm hoping we're going to get to look at that now the one pager yeah the intro summary and the questions that's what we may not be able to do by next yeah the that's one point I'm a little confused on is wouldn't the one pager be the same um for most of these conversations I think it needs to be the same so that everybody is getting being told the same has the same background but the problem is if we really want it all on one page this has to be dramatically cut I'm not so sure oh I know I know I mean I think if two sides of a page is perfectly fine but I mean I think there's a lot of stuff in here also you know I was a little bit concerned about um we're kind of um uh I can't think of the word right now but we're kind of telling people here's here's the conclusion we've already reached and now we're coming back to talk to you to have you support this conclusion that we've already reached so I'm wondering if like all of this just is not included and say that we're you know we're looking at some different ways of working with what we've got that's why we're here to talk with you rather than maybe too much into here's here's here's the conclusions we're currently drafting maybe we reword what you have here just say one of the things we're discussing is ways to build on what we've already got and that's what we're here to talk to you about as well yeah you know are you right I think you're like here's where we're going do you hate it okay so I can I'm happy to go through and you know basically I just cut and paste this off of Kathy's document I'm happy to go through and do some serious editing on this I can get I can get all of this down to um you know a third of a page wow so that people can know here's you know your basic here's here's you know what a participatory budgeting is here's why we're doing this here's what we're thinking and then if people get into the conversation in their interviews and say I really don't understand this can you explain it more than we can but so my only we can give thank you Liz for offering to do that and should we give you any feedback that we have having read it I have one feedback which is it seems to be a disconnect to talk about what participatory budgeting is and then what we're recommending is clearly not that I think we need at least a sentence that said about the pandemic yeah I think implicit in what a number of us have been saying is that we want to have it pitched more or less this is what other towns have called participatory budgeting and we see our charge as imagining how Amherst can achieve some of these objectives in other words we're trying to imagine participatory budgeting for Amherst and we're not you don't want to prejudge anything you don't want to say this is what we're doing or this is where we're going to go uh our mission is really to see how the participatory budgeting concept could work together with existing structures we're not proposing anything that's we're we're proposing modifying the opportunity for residents to make requests or to submit proposals but they're not actually voting on anything just seems to me that our our project changed after the the document right now has voting in it Meg because you asked to have it end right it does there is a tool if people want to use it but no no it has specific that we would solicit proposals and in some way get people to vote on it has that I'm not saying it's going to remain in the document but I think what we're just saying is um you know we're at a point of trying to figure out what might work in Amherst you know imagining and if the sentence you know given the pandemic and we're considering the following and want to talk to you about it um I just think we should say considering what's possible given the current climate it's definitely changed things I mean if we weren't in this dire situation you know we'd be out talking to foundations maybe I don't know what we'd be doing but you know anyway okay and in condensing it Liz the if we're in the room with CPA you don't need B and C right you know so just in thinking of you know the top page of talking to academics would be in addition to other things exploring you know so I'm just saying that the top half would be different from the general conversation with Paul so that will make the top half shorter right good okay all right so I'm not going to try to edit this right now but I will what you've just the feedback that you've given I will edit it based on that and then I'll send it out again before the hopefully before this weekend but probably not okay I am I'm struggling a little bit and I think um so what Meg said that there it's a there's two sections is um I both don't want to eliminate what formal participatory budgeting might look like because then we're almost giving away it's like we're in a negotiation and we're already have moved all the way to the other side so I do like keeping something about what it's kind of the most the purest form of participatory budgeting is but then on the other hand I think we really should keep a B and C because for example with CPA a fruitful result of the conversation might be that we need to get students high school, college, elementary, whatever they are involved in the CPA process so that they talk to their parents and talk to their neighbors and we get more proposals so I almost I almost think that the second part is I think that both are essential and I don't know how to um transition from one to the other because I think in a CPA conversation you actually might want to bring up how could the university be involved or in a university conversation you might want to bring up um I don't know um something about the budgeting process so um I want to note this we have 10 minutes left in our time and we have a couple of things to do um let me see if I have understand what we're going to do between now and the next meeting we're going to very quickly have a doodle poll and in conversations with you and with you with each other assign in pairs uh people to take on these particular assignments the town ones not going down to academia and every each pair by our next meeting will um prepare a version of the questions in the cover sheet for that particular interview is that accurate I thought um that I was going to cut back this cover sheet send it around and then I don't know if we'll need to have feedback given on the at the next meeting on it wait that's in January isn't it um yeah I thought we were going to discuss that okay all right so we will um discuss it on the seventh and very soon thereafter each pair will create their version or we by that point we will essentially done it ourselves Kathy the pair the pair part could start where the questions start and with a blank place plop in the beginning and then just thinking about the CPA thinking about the ret you know so we said each of those sentences needs to be modified so we're ready to pop in the why are we here yeah I can I'll put parentheses in it saying you know filling you know okay good so um everybody so we're all set right yep we uh don't have time to go over the document but it's making progress Kathy are you still up for if anybody has any more edits yeah this is what I would suggest on the document is these interviews are going to be crucial to what is emerges as a document that becomes more of what I would call a working document that you know if we encounter strong can't do this can't do that we're going to have to write stronger on how we think you either could do it or we're going to drop drop something right um so the main thing right now would be um if something is completely missing I tried to restructure at least gave some useful reader thing that something came too late and it was embedded in something else to move it up um and the last meeting just so people remember since it was a while ago um I plopped in something up at the top on executive summary where we said even if nothing else happens we think the periods to apply should be kept open longer it would be nice to coordinate them it would be nice to provide some staff to support proposals you know something like that so those were bottom line kinds of things that we were going to recommend even you know so those are up at the top now from my notes from last time you know we wrote them in so I think doing much more revising on