 Welcome everyone to the December 17th select board meeting. This meeting is called to order at 6 30 p.m. And this is the final meeting of 2012 for the select board. So before we get started I would like to note we don't have any public comment here tonight. I'd like to note under topics the chair did not reasonably anticipate. Since we last met was perhaps the most unanticipated thing that could possibly happen which was that horrible tragedy in Connecticut on Friday. And so I want the community to know that the select board wanted to reach out to the community of Newtown on the community of Amherst's behalf. So we have written a letter to the folks in Newtown as I said on behalf of Amherst to express our townwide condolences. So I'd like to just take a moment to read that letter that will go in the mail tomorrow to Newtown. It says to Miss Patricia Lodra and members of the board of selectmen on behalf of the community of Newtown. On behalf of the community of Amherst, Massachusetts we Amherst select board offer our deepest sympathies for the heartbreaking tragedy that has befallen your town. Please know that the people of Amherst weep and grieve with you. We honor you with prayers, with vigils, with acts of kindness and with efforts to prevent future gun violence and to improve resources for treating mental illness. We salute the brave men and women of your emergency responder forces for their courageous acts and wish them solace for all that they have had to endure. We ache for the teachers, administrators, staff and families of your school system. There are no words. We recognize and appreciate how much your own leadership means to your community right now and we wish you great strength in that. And we hold all of the residents of Newtown in our hearts. Please know that 100 miles away Amherst stands strong with Newtown. Sincerely the Amherst select board. So thank you. I hope that we have captured Amherst's sentiments with that. There's been so much conversation in the last couple of days among people who just they care so much. They relate so much to what these folks are experiencing. It feels almost as raw to us as it does to them. And so since people are looking for ways to help and express that caring, I thought that it would be helpful to really directly express that caring from our community to theirs. So select board members make sure we don't leave this meeting tonight without signing that letter. Okay. Thank you very much. All right. Other items we have this evening. We'll do a couple of untimed items before we get to our time scheduled items. We have the renewal of annual licenses. This should essentially complete or more or less complete our renewals for 2013. We did the liquor licenses at the last meeting and we have essentially everything else at this meeting. Miss Stein, would you like to make that motion? I move that the select board approve the renewals for licenses presented on list entitled quote 2013 license renewals and quote dated December 17th, 2012, subject to receipt of documentation noted as pending for the calendar year beginning January 1, 2013 through December 31st, 2013. Second. Further discussion. Miss Brewer. I could just ask a question. The this version that was in our packet and this version that's on our desk. The only difference I see is that this one includes the comments field as well. And I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything else. That's correct. Okay. That's great. Thank you. Additional further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That was unanimous. Okay. Next up we have. All right. Let's see. We'll do the we'll do the emancipation proclamation thing. We weren't sure if other folks might show up to speak to that, but we do have Deb Radway here who is our human resources and human rights director and who is staff liaison to the Human Rights Commission. And she's going to tell us about the town's plans for the anniversary of the emancipation proclamation. Good evening. Thank you for having me back. We have a great plans for January 1st in Amherst and throughout the Pioneer Valley and we hope the Commonwealth at 2 p.m. in Amherst and hopefully throughout the Pioneer Valley and throughout the Commonwealth. There will be a ringing of the bells of church bells, community bells, town bells, personal bells, all kinds of bells. I watched Lincoln Saturday night and halfway through the film, there's Abraham Lincoln standing in his office waiting for the vote on the Emancipation Proclamation and how did he find out about it? The church bells throughout the Capitol started ringing and that was a great reminder that the ringing of the bells is very symbolic of the emancipation proclamation and the freeing of slaves. Here in Amherst, the Human Rights Commission is inviting everybody to join them at 2 o'clock here on the town common for a vigil that will include the reading of the proclamation emancipation proclamation. We have these great commemorative posters that we're hoping to get multiple copies of and distribute them throughout town because we're also encouraging the business community to pause at 2 o'clock and to stand outside their business and ring a bell. We will have Michelle Brooks, our local renowned singer, most recently who performed on The Voice. She will be participating in this event singing Stevie Wonder's Happy Birthday to you and we're just gonna gather together and remember this event and everything that it stands for. We're inviting the community but if people can't come to the common, we're encouraging them to pause wherever they may be and ring a bell. Terrific, thank you. We asked you to, sorry, also to proclaim January 1st, 2013 as Emancipation Proclamation Day in Amherst. Yes, and there's information about this on the website for folks who are not taking notes necessarily right now. There is. Very good. Let's see, would someone like to read the proclamation that we have? Plus tonight we have time. Sometimes we don't but tonight we have time for this. Yes, I would. Are you going to find it? No, I can't find it but it's in here but you go in there. Whereas in our country, our country is made up of people from every nation on earth who are declared equal not only in freedom but also injustice, both of which are essential for a healthy human civilization and whereas our nation was conceived on July 4th, 1776 with the Declaration of Independence, the classic statement being we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that are among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and whereas at 2pm on New Year's Day, January 1st, 1863 using his war powers as president, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation providing that all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state shall be then, thence forward and forever free. The Emancipation Proclamation made the permanent abolition of slavery a Union war aim and provided the legal framework for the emancipation of nearly all four million slaves as the Union armies advanced. Hearing of the proclamation, many slaves escaped to Union lines as the army units moved south and whereas our nation became totally free only with the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which officially outlawed slavery, it was passed by the Senate and the House and adopted on December 6th, 1865. Whereas this Emancipation Proclamation announced 150 years ago, inspired a citizen led process that eventually promulgated the promise of our Declaration of Independence, that process continues today as we continue to commit to make justice a reality in all civil rights issues from gender to economics that follows slavery from 1865. Now, therefore, the Select Board of the Town of Amherst do hereby proclaim January 1st, 2013 as Emancipation Proclamation Day in Amherst to be celebrated at 2 p.m. by vigorous ringing of bells throughout the community and a gathering on the town common led by the Human Rights Commission. Thank you very much. And let's see, Miss Stein, would you like to make the motion? Sure. Thus proclaiming. I move that the Select Board proclaim January 1st, 2013 as Emancipation Proclamation Day in Amherst to be celebrated at 2 p.m. by vigorous ringing of bells throughout the community and a gathering on the town common led by the Human Rights Commission. Second. Further discussion. Oh, in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Thank you very much. Thank you for helping put that together. And that should be really a lovely event. I love the idea of the bells and I will have to see Lincoln before that. That's wonderful. I'm glad to know that. Okay, let's see a couple more things before we get to 645 item. What can we do quick? We can do some minutes. Okay. Minutes. That's Stein. I have read the minutes and I had two very minor points, which I'll hand to Mr. Musanti. I can therefore move that we accept them. So I move that the Select Board approve the minutes of January 7th, 2012, September 10th, 2012 and September 24th, 2012 as amended. Second. Further discussion. So you had just a couple of minor points. Very minor points. I thought that when we talked about the contract for the town manager, it should mention his name, or at least I think it was for the town manager, you know, and one was a plural that I thought should be single. Very good. Did anybody else have any issues with any of those minutes? I was going to just mention those exact same things. Okay. And I'll in favor say aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Thank you. And we have one taxi license. Okay. I move that the Select Board approve a new taxi slash chauffeur license for Helen Gilday of Florence MA for Celebrity Cab Company for the calendar year 2012. Okay. Second. Further discussion. I'll in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That is unanimous. Okay. That takes care of the ones that we can do quickly. So does anybody have any announcements that they want to make? Because we have three minutes to kill before our 645 item. Ms. Stein. The Winter Common Market is up and running and just a marvelous place. It is so community oriented. Why? I even met your father there. Now it's really a terrific gathering. Somehow it's very spirited. There's music. There's all kinds of crafts and goodies and fresh produce and it's just really a delightful way to start your Sunday morning. It runs from 10 to 2 and it's at the middle school. Thank you. Good thing to remind folks of anything else people would like to mention. Mr. Wald. Since we have Deb here, I want to thank her and the Human Rights Commission for their vigil last week, which the Chair and I attended at the reading of the International Declaration of Human Rights. Always a moving occasion. Thank you. Yes. That was the first time I'd had the opportunity to attend that event and that was really, really lovely. So then I went home and I read up about it on Wikipedia and learned a great deal. I think that there's the potential to bring the whole town out for that actually. I think that we should start earlier promoting that. I can imagine that being a very, very big deal in Amherst as opposed to, there are probably a dozen or so folks. I mean, it's a nice turnout. But I think that if more people knew about it and knew the significance of it, I would think we would get crowds. So I've marked my master select board calendar for next year to really play that up because that was really very moving. Thank you for bringing that up. Anyone else have announcements? Comments? Alright, then as we like to see here, it's like boarded as 644, which is the same as 645. So we have this right away here for our 645 item, which is an audit of the town's human resources, resources, essentially, and she's going to tell us about that. And I'll also mention for folks, because this kills just another moment, is that the information she's talking about is in our packet online for folks who are following along at home. All yours. Thank you. When John asked me to conduct the assessment of human resources that's included in his performance goals for fiscal 13, I was pretty eager to take on the task. I was brand new and had a lot of my own ideas. John had his ideas. But what was really most important is what's actually happening. And for that, we needed the input from town staff, which they've been eager to do. I propose conducting the human resources audit as a means to provide the baseline data in which to develop a plan for the next couple of years for human resources in the town. Let me just take a minute to explain what a human resources audit is. The primary objective of a human resources audit is to take an objective look at all of the town's human resources policies and practices and evaluate whether or not they are adequate, legal, or effective. And then to use the information gathered to decide what policies or practices that need to be created, updated, revised, deleted, or improved. A second objective for me was and is to learn about what our departments do and how they generally function so that a plan can be developed for the stable, progressive organization of the human resources function in the town of Amherst. So what I did was invite every town department head to meet with me and each session lasted individually for one and a half to two hours with each department head. And I invited them to determine who I should meet with. And more than a few of them brought additional staff along. And I let them know in advance what I'd be asking so they had time to think about what they wanted to say to consult with others and to respond. So I sat down with each department head in the town of Amherst, and I actually also sat down with a capi maser at the schools. And the topics that I covered included the overall quality of HR communications to town staff and their assessment of same an assessment of each department's morale, whether they had any issues in from the personnel procedures that they would like to see addressed in the personnel procedures manual or in any of the union contracts that they administered. The status of current mandatory training in each department conflict of interest training, sexual harassment training that we that we need to do other training and professional development needs that they wanted to pursue. Opportunities for cross training with other departments or within their departments to identify what opportunities might exist. To identify what opportunities for offering or taking advantage of our department functions provided regionally with other communities or other public organizations. If there were any opportunities that they saw for regionalizing any of our functions. To identify in each department, who is the best person or persons to provide training to others about that department's functions? Or if we're to do a train the trainer function, who are the people at best communicating ideas and strategies? I asked each of them about the status of their performance reviews for each department and what they thought of the towns or their department's performance review process. I asked them if they had their department had any pending disciplinary issues or grievances and to describe them if they did. I asked them to discuss what their staffing vacancies are and whether or not they had any critical staffing issues that needed addressing. I asked them to assess the benefits package, the overall benefits package offered by the town. I asked them to tell me what they thought of the town's current recruiting process and how it's handled by each department and what the HR department's role in recruiting is. I asked them to assess their current hiring and new employee orientation processes and exit processes. How does somebody leave town employment? And then the treasure trove of valuable information is have I missed anything that you'd like to talk about? And I invited them to talk to me about any items of concern. So I got a lot of information, a lot of earfuls. People didn't hold back and for that I am very, very, very grateful. And the second page where I have the human resources audit and talking points is really a synthesis of my thoughts, John's thoughts and town staff thoughts. And it's really the first steps towards what I think we need to achieve in human resources in the next two years. I can talk about this for hours and I know I have 10 minutes or so. So just give me the hook when you need to. If I could start with what I found out are the really positive and success story attributes of what folks think about human resources in Amherst. You have a really you have a motivated and forward thinking town staff across the board. There's good overall morale, very few grievances, disciplinary actions throughout town. You have settled contracts and collegial relations with your employee groups. There's a valued salary and benefits package, which is a good recruiting mechanism. People want to work here. Our wages are competitive without being best in class. And coupled with a really strong benefits package makes the town of Amherst a clear employer of choice in Western Massachusetts. And that is something to be very, very proud of. The town has robust HRIS IT capabilities in the munis package that the town owns that hasn't even tipped the iceberg yet on what is capable, what we are capable of achieving through that package if we devote their resources and time to it. And I can talk a little bit more about that later. We have pockets of exemplary professional development and training, the resources that we do spend in departments like police, fire and IT. We reap the benefits of that. And departments across the board are eager for more training and learning. And the last positive that I can share with you is that it was heartening to know that HR is wanted and valued by the town staff. Some of the challenges that I learned about are that there's really a desire for more communication from HR about what's going on in town and through HR with the town manager to celebrate some of more of our accomplishments, let people know what we're doing and to do it in a more organized fashion. There was widespread desire for the non-union compensation plan to be reviewed. A number of human resources policies that need a collaborative review and updating. For example, the affirmative action plan, our drug and alcohol workplace policy and our vehicle policy and our safety plan. There's been a lack of coordinated and sustained training and professional development throughout the town. As I said before, we have pockets of superiority of real excellence and we can see the benefits of it, but it's not sustained throughout the community. The Munis HR modules that are out there are dense, complex and underutilized. We need to reenergize employee safety committees and our focus on safety all together. HR staff roles need to be clarified. There's not a big HR staff, but I think we could benefit by clarifying our roles. And there's been a large pent up need for HR strategic assistance that has been requiring me to play a lot of catch up. So those are the challenges. And all of those success stories and challenges lead to opportunity. And this is really what I'd like to focus my attention on in the next year, year and a half, and tell you what I'm going to do to address the positives and the challenges with John's support. And the first is to put together some cross functional work teams to create those standardized HR procedures for performance evaluation, hiring orientation and exit. And I've got lots of volunteers from town staff already to work on those. So that's going to be fun and effective and shouldn't take too long. I have collaborated with UMass Workplace Learning and Development and the Massachusetts Municipal Personnel Association to host a supervisor and leadership training program at UMass, excuse me, at our wastewater treatment plant this spring. And we will be guaranteed at least a dozen slots in that program that will be offered regionally. And I'm hoping that that will be the first step in a systematic offering of leadership training, because I believe strongly that that building from within will staff our departments most strongly. And additionally, labor management workplace education at UMass would like to work with some line staff on basic computer training and English writing skills. So that can be another layer of training that we offer. In addition to build people who can be supervisors. This winter we're going to be implementing Munis modules for employee self service. That will help people be able to log in on Munis themselves update their personal information, update their tax information, their beneficiaries and such, and to look at their time off request. And we've got a working group to evaluate the applicability of Munis, the staffing and applicant tracking and recruitment module, which will require a capital appropriation by town meeting. But if we are successful in that, it will streamline how people apply through our website to the town of Amherst and build in the whole interviewing process and communications and tracking it for EEO equal opportunity reporting and such and it'll be also help to create a staffing plan for the town of Amherst, which I think is another one of of John's goals because we'll use position control, which is a way of saying we know how many labor truck drivers. We have we and budget and need to stay within and how many patrol officers and how many administrative assistants across departments will really be able to get a handle on what our plan is and how to stay within budget and not go over budget and what and what we want for staffing. In my FY 14 budget, I'm also proposing to redefine HR staff roles to focus on HR general and strategic management with me benefits and safety. And then an HR administrative assistant. That's in process and with in under John's consideration. Finally, a plan to assess and address common training needs throughout the organization. That's something I'd like to to do in the next year. And then to work with John to create some simple communications initiatives to celebrate staff accomplishments and get the word out a little bit better about what we're doing to market ourselves to the community. Those are some of the things I'm working on. Thank you. That's a great report and we'll have time for a couple of questions from select board members. And this has been a goal that's been important to select board for a number of years now. And I think when we talk about the town's budget and we talk about that staff, I mean, basically what the town pays for is people to be expert in their areas to carry out the programs and services that this community values. And so to assess our human resources needs and capabilities for those staff has just been critically important. And this is the sounds incredibly positive. And I'm sure it was very well received by the employees. So thank you. Thank you. That's very comprehensive and incredibly fascinating. We probably talk about it for two hours, but we won't. So questions or comments from select board members. Miss Stein. As you said, we've been waiting for this. And it's just wonderful to see it materialized and to realize how much staff had input into it. So I think that's wonderful. And I thank you for it. Mr. Hayden. Yes, we have been talking about this for a long time. And it's great to see the fruits of the request and your labor. As I was reading this, I was struck by a thought which I really hadn't hadn't pursued in our earlier discussions. And that is the role that we may end up playing in a number of these things. And I just want to sort of sort of encourage my colleagues to figure out what that is and support it. And the one that's the easiest to to imagine, because we already do it to a very minor extent is the simple communications initiative to celebrate staff accomplishments. We do that for police officers and fire fighters and fire officers. So, you know, thinking, hey, maybe there's more that we could be doing there because that that I feel that's valuable. It makes me feel good. And it does expose, you know, the people who are doing good work for us to the people for whom they're doing those good work. Thank you. That's a good point. And so for folks who might not understand what Mr. Hayden means when when officers in the police and fire departments get promoted, they come in here and do a ceremonial swearing in even though they've done their real swearing in with the town clerk's office. I think select board meetings are actually an incredibly valuable way of getting some of that information out to the public. And I know that we do it and Mr. Musanti does it as well during the meeting talking about, you know, after the snowstorm last year, what an incredible job the DPW did with with all of the management of that, or, you know, what an amazing job the town clerk's office did after the presidential elections this year and things like that. But, but if we all have a greater awareness of trying to keep those things in mind, and also, you know, Mr. Musanti and I, as we're talking about his town managers report, for each meeting, we can be kind of prompting each other on that too, because because this is one, this is one of many venues that information needs to get out, and this is the venue that gets directly to the community so that the community understands just what an incredible job all of these staff folks are doing on their behalf every day. So I appreciate that point very much. Mr. Walden. To put it in context again, we, as the memo explains, doing an audit of human resources is one of the town manager performance goals, but of course we couldn't ask them to do it without the proper resources, no pun intended. So this is excellent because now we really have the tools in place to do this, and it's, it's a, it's a great report. I think it also makes clear how much of a backlog of work there was to be done. So we know you're not just stepping into a smoothly functioning system here. You've got a lot to reconfigure and make work as you see fit. And I appreciate that. Ms. Brewer. In terms of relationships with the public, one of the things I want to follow up on too is, you know, we've talked about in other parts of town is recognizing volunteers, and we want to make sure we do a better job of that. We also want to recognize our staff every day, whether it's a big project like the snow removal or a particular election or some particular idea that somebody's come up with. I'm assuming that the town manager, and we encourage the town manager to reward that sort of thing with some public recognition within that town hall, but it's always really great to be able to share with the community so and so came up with this new process of doing something. And now people don't have to spend their time doing this other thing. And the more we can do that, particularly in these budget times, seems really important. One other I'm not going to ask you to answer the question per se at this point, but as you go forward with talking about clarifying roles, et cetera, one of the things I think the public also is really interested in understanding is the difference between human resources and human rights because we have combined those positions for several years now in terms of what that actually means. And so I think a lot of us can understand because of our regular work a day world, what we think human resources means. But the way that that interconnects with the human rights work I think is really important for people to understand. And one example of that is the ADA transition plan. I know that the DAAC committee is very familiar with those details, but outside of them I don't think very many people have any concept as to, it might be one thing to talk about access for employees in a particular situation, but to understand what our town's responsibility is associated with those things. So like you said, lots to do, but stuff we look forward to seeing more about. So thank you. Other questions or comments from select board members? Mr. Museum, anything you'd like to add? Yeah, I just want to also, this is a fundamentally important task. And I would encourage those who haven't read this overview prepared by Ms. Radway that's posted online and for tonight's meeting packet to do so. It really distills down into about three pages. You know, here's what's working great. Here's what some of our biggest challenges are. And here is a handful of most important needs going forward that is the basis for an action plan over the next couple of years. And it really has crystallized, helped crystallize for me and others within the organization with, you know, roadmap going forward. And this really is a long term effort and will be a marathon, not a sprint, not that I use that overuse phrase, but I just did. But this really is a roadmap to make our organization that much stronger. And I would reinforce the training pieces there. I think Deb very accurately described. We have pockets of excellence, but it's there's much more to be done. And I've encouraged Deb to use her, you know, years of experience and build additional partnerships. And you see that reflected also on the relationships through the HR professional associations, as well as the university, which will have a direct benefit to our supervisory and line staff in the coming year. So I think it's an excellent report. There's a lot to do and it's great to have Deb on our team. Indeed. So if you, as you think of it, can let Mr. Musanti know or let myself know when you hit some milestones that you think should be talked about, we can do updates on that stuff at these meetings, which is another good way of getting that information out there. And I'll try and keep it on my kind of tickler file to be checking with you for updates to the, I'm sure the Munis stuff is really fascinating and how that all develops. I'm sure we would like to hear much about. So thank you. This is a tremendous report and really very much appreciated. Mr. Heaton. I'd also like to sort of comment that that the reason that this was important to us, to me is that I think it demonstrates good stewardship to one of our greatest assets, certainly one that we put a lot of value in, like 88% of our budget value in it. So this is, feel like the stewardship is maybe a little bit better now. Indeed. I mean, it's all about the employees, you know, the people who are doing the job of town business every day on behalf of the community. It's all about that. So, so trying to serve them as best we can, making sure that they have the infrastructure and the support and the resources that they need to do their job is, is critically important. And this is really just a tremendous framework for, for helping to support that. So again, thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me in. All right. Our seven o'clock item. We appreciate your patience, folks. If you could come forward. This is a public hearing for a liquor license alteration of premises. And this is for Mission Cantina at 485 West Street. And I'm calling this public hearing to order at 709. So you folks can introduce yourselves. We have the very big packet of information as part of the select board's web packet. So folks who are following along at home can check that out as well. And some additional very well. Great. Thank you. Maternity here in town representing Sam Cohen, who's the manager and the main owner of Mission Cantina in South Amherst. Actually, several months back, we went through the process of obtaining a special permit for the expansion of the restaurant. He's essentially doubled it in size. And we're here tonight to ask that the liquor license be approved. The expansion of the restaurant be, be approved as far as the liquor license capacity goes. And, and the packet is here. If you have any questions, I guess, feel free to ask. Okay. So folks at home know, we talk about this a lot, there are certain elements of the liquor license that are just incredibly specific and any change to them whatsoever needs to come back before us for approval. And among those is exactly the footprint for which the license is covering. And by altering the premises by, by indeed expanding the restaurant, almost doubling its size, that has significantly altered the premises. So, so that is needs to come before us for approval. I will note, as Attorney Bodine noted, that this did go to ZBA for the whole, what do you call it, change to their Yeah, the special permit, the alteration or whatever of their special permit. So that dealt with all of the issues like parking and, you know, all of the technicalities of, of how to make this thing work and how to make sure it fits in the area and the neighbors are protected and blah, blah, blah. So the only thing before us, all of those, all of those very minute details have been worked out. The only thing before us, and I will also note, so that means they are allowed to expand the restaurant. The only question tonight is whether they are also allowed to serve alcohol within that expanded area of the restaurant. So just to focus us. So do Slack board members have any questions for Attorney Bodine or Mr. Cohen? Mr. Maybe not, not a question so much as a comment that really kind of enjoy the prospect of, of considering this since it is demonstrating a very successful business and very, one where it's supposed to spend some time. Other questions or comments? By a successful iron means that you often can't get in. Maybe I'll actually get to eat there. Oh, it's always worth the wait, I assure you. All right, questions or comments related to the license, Mr. You're not going to change the menu or the service at all. Just going to get the menu will expand in size by a few dishes. We're going to add a few more things to that, not the liquor menu, but the actual appetizers will get a little bit bigger. We're running two kitchens now, which is very much helpful to us to get the process more, you know, to get everything out faster. So we're going to have a little more room to play with some new things, which is pretty exciting. So and you're me serving lunch? Yes. That's very exciting. And late late night, too, actually. All right. Anyone from the public like to comment? There's no one here from the public. All right, then I will entertain a motion to close the public hearing at 713. So moved. Second. For the discussion on closing the public hearing, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Time to deliberate. Yes. Yes. As I said, this really is a technicality that they already have the special permit to expand the area. This is really just about expending their liquor sales. Everybody loves Mission Cantina. It's all good. Win win. Mr. Heaton. Yeah, I mean, I if it was a place that was misbehaving or had problems or I didn't enjoy so much, I think the comments would be filled up with all kinds of stuff. The comments I think are, you know, thank you very much and looking forward to it. And, and, and yeah, indeed. All right, Mrs. Stein, would you like to make the motion? I move that the select board approve the application of NGBI LLC, doing business as Mission Cantina, ABCC license number 002400111 485 West Street Amherst MA relative to alteration of license premises to include expansion into adjacent space, increasing total occupancy to no more than 49 persons, including employees with hours of dining service from 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. seven days a week in accordance with special permit FY 2012 dash 0024 to modify FY 2011 dash 0016 and an approved floor plan dated June 7th, 2012. Sam Kochan, manager. Second. For the discussion, Mr. Hain, are all those numbers right? I don't know. They look like it, but I, I mean, I just just don't want to get them right in reading them. Yes. Yeah, they're referenced from the application and the permits themselves. So all those numbers right? That's what the only number that wasn't, it's MGB one, not MGBI. Yeah, thank you. Sorry about that. All right. For the discussion, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Congratulations. Thank you very much. When is this all going to be opening and ready? Thank you. Well, when is it going to be ready? Last April. Yes. This is going to, we're waiting on this to get everything done so we can open up and have a kind of a grand opening and have everything intact. So probably mid-January, I would think. Terrific. Looking forward to it. Thank you guys. Thank you for coming in. Thank you. All right, next up, we have, okay, we made this a time that I am in case this was something that people were going to want to come in and speak to. This is a proposed amendment to the over the street banner permit regulations. The, this is for the banner on South Pleasant Street. It is, as far as I know, the only over the street banner that we have in town and we had a suggestion from a citizen recently about how this might be improved, how the regulations might be improved. And so those, those suggestions were incorporated into the regulations. And Mr. Musanti, would you like to tell us more about that? Yes. For many years, we've had a policy that allowed groups to have the town DPW hoist a promotional banner across South Pleasant Street for one week. And one week only, we were approached about whether we would be open to, on a space available basis, allow a group to have the banner up for more than one consecutive week. And so there was a suggestion made about how we might amend that and that's what's before you tonight. And the practical effect of all this is, look, if there's not a competing group that has requested a new banner go up in its place for the following week and you let us know by, I think, the previous Thursday, you for a very small fee, you can have your banner up a second or more week on a space available basis. So we thought it was completely workable, worked it out with our DPW and office staff. And we're recommending it. So this doesn't bump anybody. It only is leaving up the banner when otherwise it would have been taken down and there would have been nothing in its place. That's right. So I think I think it was a great suggestion. And I really appreciated that the town manager's office just seized that and made the change happen to bring this recommendation to us tonight. Questions or comments about the change? Mr. Walden. Just a trivia one because section number two is called content. So I wanted to remind the public that occasionally there are questions about what goes up and why and that we're not regulating or endorsing content. This just states that they're nonprofit or not for profit organizations are allowed to use the banner. Thank you. Other questions or comments? And I will note that this material is also in our packets on the web packet with the highlighted material being the proposed change. Mr. Hayden, your name tags are backwards. It's not confusing me because I know who you are but I'm just noting. Oh, I wasn't paying attention to that. You look different tonight. I'll be the speaking things looking different this this since the last time I put a banner up this form is much much clearer and easier to use. I don't know when that changed but now that I see it I very appreciated for that as well with the rules that HR thing. Thank you, Deborah. All over this my assistant. Lots of good things going on on the third floor right now. Other questions or comments? All right. Miss Stein would you like to make the motion? I would. I move that the select board amend the over the street banner permit regulations by replacing section three with the following applications for banner permits are to be filed with the Department of Public Works. Permits are limited to seven calendar days beginning and ending on Monday of any given week. Should the subsequent week remain unreserved through 3 p.m. on the Thursday of the week a licensee spanner is displayed. The permit T may apply for an additional week by contacting Department of Public Works no later than the close of business that day. The extension fee must be paid prior to Friday by 3 p.m. of that same week to ensure extension. There's a little bit. Oh, yeah, sorry. No more than two extensions may be granted per permit. Any extensions granted will not count toward the two non consecutive weeks per year for separate dated events. Second discussion. Mr. Wild. Tiny one about the text. Since the wording of the unless I'm we're still confused about who we are. The motion says replacing section three with the following but section three is actually much larger. Does that mean that we're striking the final paragraph about holiday Mondays and so forth I assume that's not the intention but it could be wrong. No the only difference on the on the right policy itself is what you see in yellow right so we should really reword the motion shouldn't we. Yeah we should say by replacing part of section three with the following. It seems to me and I don't know this for sure since we went with the highlighting method which I appreciate. It's the highlighting method starts with the word should. It does not include the first two sentences so I think we're just adding. So it's by adding the following section that's what it looks like right now it's partially replacing to know it's not because that we've been given no indication that any of this is it's additional language it's not replacement okay. So these two sentences didn't need to be part of the motion because they were already in there and it starts with the third sentence should the subsequent work and that's all just additional information. We didn't have to. So I think I think that's right I think in the motion itself then replacing the word replacing with adding to section three the following. I still second. Further discussion. Thank you Mr. Wilde. I keep thinking the name tags is going to drive me crazy. Now that I've noticed it. Okay. Is there still more issues with that. No it's okay. I think we should leave it as we've got it now. Okay. You're sure you're good with that. Okay. And all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Thank you very much. And then we have a second motion. As part of this I move that the select board set the fee at sixty dollars for each subsequent week extension for banners banner display granted. Second. Further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Okay. Banner permit regulations amended. How our next item is a town manager's report and we start with our first progress report on his FY 13 performance goals. And once again this memo is in the packet on the website. Sure. And thank you. And as Miss. Miss O'Keefe said we've had to practice the last few years by the progress report. Sometime you know roughly halfway through the fiscal year. And that's the purpose of tonight. And so I have again tried to summarize briefly next to each of the 11 specific performance goals developed by the board this summer and fall for my work and the work of the town. I wanted to highlight just a few of them. So I'll just go on the key ones. Goal number one which is a recurring goal but obviously important in this day and age especially with limited resources and some would call the new fiscal reality facing this state in this country. Developing recommendations for consideration to generate new revenue reduce expenses negotiate collective bargaining economic development et cetera on new revenue. I think there's three three good examples over the last six months or so. We were newly designated as a green community by the common wealth which was a really collaborative effort on the part of town staff are many citizen groups in a partnership with the common wealth in July we were designated as a green community and that gives us opportunities to receive and put the good use grant funding for energy efficiency uses and we were awarded a three hundred and two thousand dollar grant our first green communities grant we think the first of many we've developed a plan we're awaiting now the receipt back from the common wealth of the signed contract we've gotten approval from them we now need the actual signed contract will then place the order through the state bid list for LED street lights and you can expect to see LED street lights installed all over town in the first quarter of two thousand thirteen we expect that will save a lot of electricity and save save us a lot of money. We have some rough estimates somewhere around the forty thousand dollar a year range in our first year. So that's one example second example with your support. We have executed an interminiscible agreement with the town of Pelham to provide assess property assessing services to them we're able to do that without increasing our staff and piggyback on to our investments we've already made and database and our professional staff that will be new revenue to the town of about twenty thousand a year we've also been some continuing success on grant funding. We were awarded a land grant in November for the Ritchie property which is one of the last unprotected large parcels along the Holyoke range off Bay Road and that was seventy percent funded by the state three hundred fifty three thousand and the balance funded by town meetings strong support for community preservation act funding in terms of efficiencies and harping on health insurance keeping those costs under control and the biggest initiative this past year we moved over two hundred retired school employees mostly teachers after a long process from the state GIC health plans on to the town plans in the course of doing that the vast majority of those retirees will save money between premiums and copays in the school system both regional and the town schools will save over a hundred thousand a year in premium costs as a result of that so that's immediate fiscal savings to keep those costs in check we're also implementing we've expanded our online bill pay so it's easier to pay town bills online it's also faster and cheaper for collection staff to process those and we're also you can expect us to be rolling out electronic billing paperless billing for water and sewer services in the first half of two thousand thirteen all those frequent reminders you get from utility companies and others we want to be that part of the municipal conversation as well and do it that way strengthening relationships with the university and the colleges safe and healthy neighborhoods initiative safe and healthy neighborhoods work group you may ask is a major player and that in terms of enforcement student education student code of conduct other leadership provided by the university on that so that's an ongoing effort we've reintroduced joint patrols you can expect to see more in different types of joint patrols in the spring those are being actively worked on with with very strong collaboration with the mass police department and our chief and campus leadership and myself also later in this fiscal year the first quarter of two thousand thirteen in particular I've already had some preliminary discussions with the university about discussing and executing a successor agreement to our expiring strategic partnership agreement which we're in our sixth year on which governs many of the relationships we have with the university public safety and water and sewer and ambulance and all those kinds of things I wanted to highlight that the HR human resources audit Ms. Radway give a very comprehensive and thorough report tonight that's an active effort and so you'll be hearing more about that in the months ahead making great progress there goal number nine you also heard about staffing plan all of that is a precursor to a more detailed plan you'll have specific staffing recommendations both for FY fourteen and longer term in the budget document but as we've talked about in the evaluation process and subsequent having a standalone report that puts all of those into context where it's just about staffing needs short and long term is very much under development and you can expect to see a briefing by myself and Ms. Radway in the months ahead you've added there was a goal about promoting and creating additional opportunities for affordable housing in our community the key action step over the first half of the fiscal year is the development of a housing production plan we have a draft report that has been reviewed on a preliminary basis with our housing and sheltering committee and staff and you can expect to see those specific recommendations talked about more and have how they translate into action steps again in the months ahead and then another goal about addressing neighborhood health safety and quality of life issues broken record safe and healthy neighborhoods initiatives safe and healthy neighborhoods work group we have a very actively engaged group representing a wide spectrum of perspectives there's third such meeting as tomorrow and they are at work expecting development of very specific recommendations for possible action at the springtime meeting to me no later than March 1st I know tomorrow's meeting is a focus on the rental registration issues and processes and formats and all those kinds of things again looking at any number of examples so I'll stop there thank you very much and so I'll note again that this this memo is in our web packet and Mr. Miss Andy just did sort of a quick summary of some key points so it's much more detailed if folks want to read that and I remind us that among the reasons we do this are to make sure that we're kind of on track with everything but also to give him feedback in case we think that you know he's misunderstanding the intent of the goal or anything like that so this is our opportunity to try and say wait a minute you know we're we're not on the same page so if that were to happen this is when it would be and I will also just point out one thing that you did not mention that but I think is really critically important to mention under goal number two with the improving the relationship or whatever it says with the university colleges etc is at the very end of that paragraph he notes that he's pursuing ways the colleges can partner with the town to reduce demand for ambulance services you know this has been a very very serious issue in town for a while a growing issue and I just want to make sure he gets to do credit for all of the efforts he is putting in with different levels of the university administration through our fire department our fire chief to try and to try and deal with that so that's a money saving situation it's a it's a health and safety situation for the town and for for students and so that's really critical so I just wanted to highlight that questions and comments from blackboard miss burr yeah I was gonna say he skipped whole paragraph so there's lots more you can read and it's really dense to it's not all bullet points that we were conserving trees I want you to know this I wanted to compliment him on item number seven with the phrase much more remains to be done before I submit a detailed report thank you for that perfect I like that very much I feel so much better now I was thinking about you actually when I wrote that I thought maybe you were thought maybe you were and moving back to safe and healthy neighborhoods safe and healthy neighborhoods let's look at one D that mentions the March one date and you just mentioned the March one date so the idea is these guys keep meeting and meeting and meeting and they've already had three meetings in like two weeks like crazy and the idea is they get you recommendations by March first then what happens between March first and town meeting and when when does the public really I mean obviously can follow the process they can come to meetings but when they're ready to like I have a thing to react to that's kind of a big context document rather than here's some individual pieces that are going to happen at town meeting how do you perceive that my it's an ongoing process that has a public component starting with basic information sharing with the wider community primarily through the web page we have a home page for the safe and healthy neighborhoods initiative and work group if you go to the home page of the town website Amherst m a dot gov and click on living on the home screen you'll see you can then click on safe and healthy neighborhoods so the best practices from other communities the charge of the committee meeting minutes past meeting minutes future agendas the rough calendar of what's happening when I know there are at least a couple of public here not public hearings but workshops if you will where public meetings that will be getting that will be completely devoted to getting feedback from the public on the drafts as they exist to date those will be in the evenings on January 22nd and February 19th and so I think you know regularly at select board meetings through myself and committee members and work group members but primarily through the chair Dave Zomek updating as appropriate so I don't expect this big vacuum of you know no information and March 1 is when light is shine it's supposed to be a iterative continuous public process and if I could just add up after that then it becomes an item for the town meeting warrant and goes through all the same processes that all the all the warrant articles go through sure but right one is no the in between part other questions of comments Mr. I hate to be but for number 11 I really think you need a little bit more about the the first sentence and rather than jumping street to the roads I think that the people who brought this goal forward really were talking much more about the nuisance the disruptions the attacks on the property all kinds of issues beyond the roads I mean we hear about the roads I'm not saying the roads aren't important but I just think it's disproportionate the first sentence with the amount of space devoted to roads and number 11 understood I was just again I know because it was a detailed answer number two but yeah I understand what you mean yeah I just want to pull back a little bit to the general I wanted to to observe that there's nothing here which is a surprise this is all stuff that we've talked about the stuff that we've heard about we've been really kept abreast of all of this I know I which is not to say that I don't appreciate this because it does help nucleate our discussions and you know individual items that we can begin to to find other questions or comments this time just to add on to what Aaron said it's important that this be out there for others to understand even if we're aware of it that the specifics of how the town manager is evaluated and self-evaluates are critical for people out there to get absolutely and just kind of building on Mr. Hayden's point also you know that all the things that we do all of us do week to week and month to month really fall under the umbrella of these performance goals and so it's a good check in to just make sure that the kinds of things that we're talking about on an ongoing basis are in fact the same things that we have set for goals you know that there's not some distraction that's taking his attention and the town's attention off into a new direction and if there is do we need to do we need to address that and update the goals appropriately but it just it's kind of making sure that that everything is on the right path so I think it is a really valuable check in and the detailed information is very important for all audiences. Anything else on this? All right next Mr. Zanti. Next was an update on here we go again safe and healthy neighborhoods initiative update in the summary I did just give you we talked about the meeting agenda for tomorrow for the work group focusing on rental registration. There's some specific examples from other communities and should be a should be another good productive discussion. So the the other thing about safe and healthy neighborhoods isn't isn't just the work group it's it's what the staff is doing internally and so that included in our packet Mr. Zanti gave us the updated report from Rob Mora the building commissioner about the status of complaints and violations that are being followed up on that is on the safe and healthy work group or safe and healthy web page and is updated twice a month he's trying to do that on the 15th in the in the end of each month so that's a really good way for folks to be tracking it doesn't have it doesn't have you know micro information about stuff but it does present a picture of the kind of volume that's being dealt with in that department and the kind of follow up that's happening. So there are there any other staff things not related to the working group but related to just the staff's approach to dealing with these issues. No other than to just reinforce and you heard that back in September when they were all here they're fully engaged on this and so I know in inspection services report there's over 90 90 issues that are have either been followed up to resolution or in progress to some account and just having all those listed is very very helpful and so the staff's all over this. It's two things one is I was double checking that I could find the safe and healthy neighborhoods page again and if we could put the when I say we of course I mean everyone who isn't me someone could put in the those two feedback sessions on the town calendar as soon as possible. That'd be awesome. It's one of those things where we don't have to worry so much about the agenda being perfect is not that it's more of a save the day calendar things when people hunt for it. My other question was in regards to this document which I may have been distracted by my computer when I was looking at this this is in our packet. The reason we don't put the specific street address is for privacy concerns. Yes. And this is as I understand it a precursor to a more robust complaint tracking system that's exactly right. This is a I'm consuming but necessary you know giant Excel spreadsheet exercise for translating into reports overlooking at something that's linked with our permit tracking software. So it's all housed in one you know parcel driven database. And so planning, inspections, health, fire, IT are all engaged on that effort to make that happen. And while the exact addresses of properties aren't listed on that spreadsheet if one is the neighbor who's complaining about a particular violation of a particular property once we get this complaint tracking system that person would be able to follow the exact status of that complaint. So a technical question is this a module in the munis? No, that's a that's a spreadsheet. So that was with the munis permitting modules and and that is the goal. And that's the vetting of how that might be structured. Right best. Yep. I'll just note that through all of this process I've I've gotten to deal with and talk to Mr. Mora much more than I ever had the opportunity to do before. And it's been really fascinating to me just how complicated as if you wouldn't know right how complicated this job is. But it his ability to get into a property to pursue a complaint is so restricted appropriately by state law that and the burden for proof whatever it would take to actually, you know, you have an allegation you say, you know, she's, you know, clearly 10 kids are living here. Well, how do you prove that 10 kids are living here? That's actually incredibly difficult to do. So a great deal of his time is spent building a case. Everything is an investigation and he has to get enough evidence that he feels is a sufficient burden of proof to prove that allegation. But it's not like you just walk in and you say, clearly there are there are eight kids here or you know, there are six cars in the driveway or whatever. It's much more complicated than that. So it's really been a fascinating learning experience for me. And I was saying to him the other day, I hope he has the opportunity and takes the opportunity as often as possible to be talking about just how complicated that is on his end, because I don't think that people realize how how tied his hands are by state law and other laws. So it's pretty pretty interesting stuff. Okay, the questions or comments from Mr Musanti about safe and healthy. Moving along, I put into your packet a summary from the mass municipal association summarizing the governor's mid year state budget cuts, some of which he has executive authority to implement some of which require legislative approval. They're looking at a $540 million estimated shortfall in the current year budget compared to the estimates used to build the budget. So he has outlined I think somewhere around 300 million in cuts and the last 200 million from the state's rainy day fund to close the gap. Some of those cuts affect school grants. I've heard from the superintendent that the dollar amounts affecting regional school transportation and the special education circuit breaker monies. While there's there's there's cuts there, they're not gigantic or very material number, certainly not welcome, but not not everything's relative, not calamitous like several years ago with the magnitude of mid year cuts. There is a proposed $9 million cut to unrestricted general government aid, which is the successor name for lottery and additional assistance aid, which is our largest individual state aid account. That 9 million is a 1% cut. That would be about 71,000 to the town. That requires legislative approval to enact. We are waiting to see the legislature has indicated that they do not intend to debate and act on the at concept until January when the legislature reconvenes in the new session. There are a number of legislators who are expressing serious misgivings about that and so it remains to be seen whether that particular cut will be enacted. But we're following that closely and that kind of segues into, okay, does this affect at all our FY 14 budget planning? You know, I'm finalizing a budget recommendation that I will present an overview of to you and the finance committee at a meeting on January 16th. We think these mid-year cuts, we are certainly keeping a very close eye on that. Sandy and I do not think at this point that that affects our projections going forward. The next big milestone on this is what the governor proposes for state aid in his budget proposal for next year, which we expect to see the last week of January. So we're waiting to see. We think we came up with conservative but realistic projections for next year that are essentially level-funded state aid with a very tiny less than 1% increase in school aid. So we're very much paying attention to any inklings we may be receiving out of Boston about how the governor's proposal may be impacted by that, by what they're seeing in the current year. They've had a revenue hearing in Boston last week where various economists make their projections. They're looking at overall state revenue growth of the mid-range of the estimates is 3.9%. And so it remains to be seen how that translates into state aid and other priorities in the state budget. So we're watching that very carefully. And then that's the legislature's turn after the governor's proposal. How is it then sent? Questions about governor's budget cuts or FY14 budget prep, Ms. Brewer? So although it's only a few thousand here, a few thousand there in the larger scheme of things, the as you mentioned on the regional transportation reimbursement and the sped circuit breaker both. Obviously schools make a plan that it'll be at X level of reimbursement. And then sometimes it is and often it isn't. And it's just not outside the realm of possibility in any given year. It's just to have it come down as a clear cut at this point during the year is obviously not helpful. One of the things I'm wondering is what's your sense of the context of that in regards to veterans benefits reimbursement? Because you know, for school aid, for example, we always said, you know, regional transportation, we get like 60, 65% in a good year, you know, originally the legislation, of course, was 100%. But it varies a bit from year to year. We always say 75 for benefits. How does this I've never seen I never noticed them cutting this before. And so I'm the legislature to its credit has fairly consistently supported the statutory funding of the state share of veterans benefits, which is 75%. So we don't anticipate that percentage slipping. I think there might have been a small cut to that line item in the governor's cuts. It was more an updated projection of what's really needed to meet the statutory level as opposed to cutting the level of benefits. So we'll continue to monitor that. And there's an ongoing effort with the state to be able to have their systems in such a way that allows a reimbursement to happen sooner than 11 months after we pay it, which has been the long standing. And Steve Connor, our veterans agent is now a leader of the statewide veterans agent association. And he's actively working with the state veteran services department and others to on this whole processing side, which is another longer term thing. Other questions or comments? Did you want to talk more about the FY 14 budget prep more than you've said already or you want questions? No. Do you want to give the slide board the update on having met with DHCD? Oh, I did meet with Department of Housing and Community Development key personnel related to our community development block grant funding status for the next federal fiscal year, which begins October 1, 2013, for which we've already started our planning. Our status for grant funding was changed with their review of our updated demographic information where we were no longer considered a mini entitlement community, which has allowed us to receive 900,000 per year for social services, non-social services, as well as administrative support. We had a very good discussion with them about the reasons for that. And we've received, I received very positive feedback from the state folks about us receiving a minimum of 450,000 in CDBG funding for next year. They've also encouraged us to apply for what's considered the competitive grant, which was, this is probably the key piece of information that I learned at this meeting. We thought it was an all or nothing thing where we may be in eligible for this one time transition funding of no more than 450,000 or roll the dice, apply for the competitive grant in a much more difficult competitive field, and maybe get some portion of as much as 900,000. We received very positive indicators that even if we were to apply for the competitive round for up to 900,000, that there was a very strong likelihood that we would receive a minimum of 450,000. So it's kind of like we're in a situation where we're actively now following up and exploring with them what's really needed to have a competitive grant in a competitive grant cycle, given the late calendar and given the different criteria there because there is more leg work that's needed to do that. I was reassured that that would not put at risk unless we totally botch it. And I say that in all professional seriousness, we have, and it was acknowledged by the state, we have a very well administered CDBG grant locally with all the appropriate contractual safeguards and documentation and all that kind of stuff. So having that good baseline puts us in a very good position. So I guess the main takeaway is there's a chance we could receive more than 450 all the way up to the 900. And we're we are actively looking at now before finalizing whether to apply for that whole amount by February 15th, which is another challenge, strongly leaning in that direction. And we wouldn't learn for sure the outcome of those applications until the June timeframe for implementation this fall. So it's it's not as good as just continuing to be a mini entitlement, but it's not as certainly not zero. And it's there is a possibility, even though it's it's, you know, the odds are steep that we could receive more than 450 in the coming year. Thank you, Miss Stein. What would it take for us to get back to being a mini entitlement? We were just a hair over. We're hair. Yeah, we're hair under. Yeah. And we've hovered from a hair over to a hair under these last many years. The state has committed to a review of the criteria really over the next year or so. And we intend very much to be part of that conversation. And we've we've shared with them some specific thoughts we have about methodology and those kinds of things. And so they're they're actively listening at this point. And, you know, I think that's to their credit. Mr. Aiden, who's who's putting together that the grant request the application? Well, we have the benefit now of our CDBG advisory committee and working with Nate Malloy primarily in our planning office. We have the social service project applications in hand. And so we've been using the HUD and DHCD recommended criteria to evaluate those. So those are in very good shape. It's tougher on the non-social service portion of the of the grant. There's additional hoops to jump through. So I have Nate in particular following up with the state in which we asked for and they committed to providing some technical assistance. So we fully understand the different hoops. And so that's that's happening in earnest right now. And I'll be meeting with the CDBG advisory committee as well, give the lay of the land and action action steps. Any questions and comments on this? OK, that brings us to. Oh, I'm sorry. Ms. Brown, just another, you know, because of going to CDBG just to ask the town manager to say now what I'm going to say, which is that he had double checked and made sure that they're even with the transition funding or with the competitive funding. We could not change the percentage. Oh, yes, I did ask that explicitly and was told unequivocally. This is a HUD federal guideline. We have we and the state have no flexibility, even in a so called transition year, to amend our percentage allocations. So the social service agencies are 20 percent of whatever the award is. That's that's kind of the one that most people are thinking about. So that was good to know. And we can spend all of our time about putting together the strongest possible applications versus, you know, speculating and about allocating a higher percentage. And so their hands are basically tied on that. And we had a good discussion about it. Thank you. Thank you for bringing that up, Ms. Brewer. OK, anaerobic digestion. Yes, just when you thought it was safe. This is actually a very exciting initiative of the Mass Department of Environmental Protection. Looking to reduce the amount of organic material, food waste and yard waste that goes into our landfills across the state each year. It's greater than 25 percent of the total, which is a huge percentage. And so in terms of extending the life of landfills or just being sounder environmentally, there's a number of initiatives, one of which is anaerobic digestion, which is a practice that has been used very successfully, mostly in Europe and especially in Germany, to reduce the amount of solid waste from organic material. And so the DEP has launched an initiative to site up to three facilities in Massachusetts over the next couple years. And they've identified a potential site on state-owned land, which is actually university-controlled land in Hadley, immediately adjacent to our wastewater treatment plant off of Mullen Centerway between the treatment plant and Massachusetts Avenue. There's an empty area there. They're thinking of that being a viable spot because there's organic waste and sludge are key ingredients to a waste-energy facility such as an anaerobic digestion facility, so proximity to institutional organic waste generators such as a university and next to a sludge-producing entity, which is one of the byproducts of our treatment process, makes it a potentially very viable site. We're very much interested in it. We've had preliminary discussions with the Mass DEP, University leadership and the state. There was a community meeting in Hadley. Last week, the DEP came out. There were a half-filled community leaders and I know Stephanie was there with some other staff representing Amherst with myself. So there's a feasibility study period that will be underway in the first part of 2013. We're actively engaged on that effort and the DEP has committed to us to look at, help us examine what issues does such a facility have on our wastewater treatment process itself because there'd be the material that comes into our wastewater plant from such a facility would change the mix of our collection system, if you will, and that has treatment implications. We want to fully understand them and understand what, if any, cost implications there are and the state has pledged to explore that with us. There may be some grant funding to help us do such a feasibility. So there's been good dialogue so far. Our DPWs directly engaged on this with the DEP and I think there was support for proceeding with the feasibility stage. I think the state has a goal of having a facility operational sometime in 2014 after a competitive bid process, assuming a feasibility study, you know, is successful. And I'll just add a little bit to that. That it was a really interesting meeting and I got to talk to a bunch of people who know a lot more about something like this than I do, which is practically everybody. But people who really have a lot of experience in this kind of thing and they were telling me that really this is from a conceptual standpoint, this is all good. This is an alternative energy source that is just a win-win. It, as Mr. Musanti said, it dramatically reduces the amount of waste that goes into landfills and it turns it into alternative energy. So it's a very, very viable and robust technology that, as he said, is well used in Europe. The main concerns people have about it are the kinds of concerns that they have about everything. Traffic, how does it change the traffic situation? Aesthetics, you know, what does it look like? How ugly is it, you know, is it going to be a blight on the landscape? Smell, does it produce any terrible odor or anything like that? Those are the primary concerns. I encourage you to go through those power points. The meeting was just basically those power points. What they want to do now is make sure that the feasibility study addresses all those kinds of questions. So whatever kinds of questions we have about it, the folks from Hadley have about it, folks from UMass, all the kind of potentially impacted stakeholders have, they want to make sure that that question gets included so that it gets studied in the feasibility study. So anything that you think of when you go through those slides, send to Mr. Musanti because he has all the contact information for the guy from DEP who's going to be doing all of this. Ms. Stein. I thought it was very reassuring that there already are six wastewater treatment plans that use anaerobic digestion in Massachusetts. Right. Okay, so it's not like just Germany. But I did have a question. They talk about the UMass site as being the UMass dammer site being a good potential site because there is feedstock of 1,990 tons per year of organics on site. And that I didn't have a good image of what the organics are that are on site. I can understand collections of organic material from local schools, the colleges, local producers, supermarkets. But what's on site that is that much? Aaron knows. Sludge. No, he talks about sludge as the second. Well, OK, if you add the two together, I guess that's where the I get it. OK, thank you, Aaron. Yeah, there's a lot of sludge, which is not UMass produced. OK, it's not directly. OK, all right. If the organics from the colleges are considered local or on site, then I guess the sludge makes that's where it comes from, the two of them together. Mr. Heaton. So one of the questions I'm going to ask is whether or not the combined heat and power plant will be part of it because the the cogen plant at UMass now can't use this gas directly. That's part of the feasibility study phase is how it best interacts with our treatment plan as well as the cogen operations on campus. And another question. Can we help? Make sure that it happens. This is very exciting, very exciting thing. It's it's there are many benefits to it. I would say questions, you know, troubleshoot any of the kinds of concepts that the community might have that that would stand in the way of this. And we actually at the end of the day don't know if the state needs anybody's permission to do this whatsoever. But they do want to they do want to be good partners in this going forward. Encouragement, not so much permission, but encouragement. Yeah, but you know, I think that like so much we experience and so much that we do here. There is community concern about what if. So, you know, if you can be sort of wearing your community hat and be getting in those what ifs so that they are all proven and reassured through the feasibility study, that would really smooth the process. You got it. And yeah, please funnel those through me. And this and the DP has been clear. And this last community meeting was one example of that of wanting to get all of those any of those issue types of issues vetted and answered during the feasibility phase. I just just a full disclosure. I grew up next to one of these plants which in itself was on the other side of it was next to some of the most expensive real estate in the country. And it was a great facility. So and there were no problems with it. Good to know. Miss Stein. I'm still having trouble with the way that's phrased. Because it says plus organics from nearby colleges and local producers, plus possible use of onsite waste water treatment sludge. So I still go back to the work it's phrased makes me think there's another 1990 tons there. And that I just don't get. You agree? Yeah. I see. I know there's an answer to that. I just don't know what it is. And that will be spelled out much more specifically also in a feasibility study of why this site works or doesn't work. Right. I mean I could understand if they didn't you know have to have to have to have to have to have this plus. I will also add I know from the university's perspective and they were expressing this at the community meeting and the meeting we had on campus with the Chancellor. There's a research component to this that is also attractive to the university. I'm all for it. But I just wouldn't like to understand it completely. Anything else about anaerobic digestion? So by all means to get this right. Get those questions in as soon as you can because the feasibility study is going to be happening. It will probably start after the first of the year. Is that true? So time is of the essence. Okay. Next up where we have solar. Solar the old landfill project neighborhood meetings. We're expecting we're identifying dates in the month of January to have those meetings happen. Hallelujah. So we've also been working with the developers on this ongoing effort to specify how the footprint would be, you know, made smaller. So there's less of a visual and other impact. And so that those revisions would be a fundamental part of the project. And so we're expecting to have those meetings happening. And so we're expecting to have those meetings. A fundamental part of those meetings after the first of the year. We're also in communication with a perspective development in North Amherst, which is a precursor to a permit application that would likely be submitted during the first quarter of 2013. And we're also continuing to receive updates about perspective solar array developments in nearby communities that we may have an interest in, also in terms of purchasing a portion of our electricity from that renewable source out of town. Again, which would also help us meet our needs while reducing the footprint of the solar array that I've recommended at the old landfill. I'm going to ask the question that I'm sure all the listeners at home want to know the answer to. Is this still in court? The lawsuit is still considered active. There's no real action going on. There've been multiple amendments to the original complaint, but none relatively recently. Anything else on solar? Okay. Anything on recent and upcoming activity? I just wanted to highlight quickly the, I mentioned the land grant for the Ritchie property. We did host the Department of Environmental and Energy and Environmental Resources. Secretary Rick Sullivan and his team were here in this room on December 5th. Announcing grants to communities in this part of the state. We were one of the larger grants for the Ritchie property. That's very exciting. Jim Ritchie was also here that day. It was nice to talk with him. Myself and Dave Zomek and others thanked him and thanked he and his family for their patience as this deal was developed over a very long period of time. I wanted to mention that portal sculpture that you've been enjoying for several years now in Kendrick Park. We have reached an agreement with the artist that will allow that sculpture to stay on a permanent basis. There is an acquisition price. I'm pleased to report that all of those funds will be from non-town funds mostly private fundraising. There is a small cultural council grant that will fund a portion of it. In the Amherst Business Improvement District has pledged $3,500 toward this purchase which would be the last $3,500 of the $10,000 needed. So excited to see that and the conversation about other art in the downtown or public spaces is a long-term one. There's clearly public art is one of the uses identified for the future of Kendrick Park. And so I was comfortable moving forward on the sculpture but there's a lot more conversation with public arts commission and others before we think about other locations there and elsewhere. Any other questions or comments from Mr. Mutanti? Okay, thank you very much. Next we have member reports liaison and representative reports. And before we start with that I would just note that I was having a conversation with a resident recently and they were suggesting that we once again do what you folks did a while ago and have done intermittently which is publicize the openings on the vacancies and not just the ones that exist currently but also as we get closer to the ones that are expiring at the end of the year that believe it or not not everyone pays as much attention to this stuff as we do. So the idea of kind of looking through committee by committee on the website was not very attractive and didn't seem user friendly to this person and so I mentioned that this has happened before this person and we should mention here publicly that folks should fill out CAFs all the time just having them in the pipeline that's a citizen activity form and it's available on the town website having them in the pipeline is very important vacancies come up unexpectedly even on committees that are full so we're always looking to fill those vacancies but people shouldn't wait until a specific time of the year to get those in or whatever I think with Diana and the sluff word off town manager office really about these exact issues but we were in fact we wished we had done it during town meeting but we realized that staff since it's all the same staff was too busy with town meeting to help us sort this because sometimes it's making sure that that list is the most up to date is not the highest priority thing in the city but it's not quite always 100% to the moment updated and perhaps as we move forward with that we will be able to find a space where like on the CAF page or something we can have a little thing that says current openings that would be easy to update you know kind of thing that people could go and look for too but like it's not always updates and I will add that unfortunately not the town website is not always up to the minute on showing where there are vacancies on a given board or committee or commission so we can usually get that from the town manager's office but we need to do it again next time okay I was at that wonderful awarding of the land grants and got to shake Mr. Richie's hand which was nice to be able to put a human being behind that property on December 6 CPA committee met and discussed the proposals that have been submitted to the town manager and I have almost one and a half million dollar requests and only about 361,483 dollars approximately to spend which means we can only fund about one in four and that's partially because the debt service on four very worthwhile projects from past years so we're going to have to they're going to have to deny unfortunately three out of four which is sad let's see December 7 was the staff party which was lovely and December 7 with the downtown summer farmers market folks they've met at least once and are trying to work out how to incorporate more farmers into the downtown market but the problems are large because you don't want the market to be so big long timers so it's it's a difficult situation Ellen's story was at the meeting which was interesting because she's through her economic initiatives is interested in promoting agriculture so it was a very worthwhile discussion and they're going to try to get more transparency into the process to get the summer common market the one downtown to formalize their rules and they're trying to get the commission to state very clearly what the goals and best objectives would be for moving forward they did have a question actually about that the permit comes to us and we approve it is that correct we approve their use of the a lot of the spring parking a lot yes okay all right and that's in March usually comes to us in March yep thank you they start up in April so sometimes it's late February sometimes it's by late March okay and that's all I have to report on anyone else Mr. In couple of things this last couple of weeks for me there's a lot of between efforts of various different committees and in town as an example the public shade tree committee is asking for an intern to help them do two things one is promote their first Saturday tree plantings but also to this being that right now it's imagined that it would involve not just the public shade tree committee figuring out how to do that but a whole bunch of other committees to work on that the recycling and refuse management committee similar I guess Sue was at the at the sludge thing I think is that that was the nickname for it and the proposal right now what they're working on is bringing forward a request to create a process for developing the zero waste policy in Amherst and not quite sure what the request will be and of whom but they're going to be working on that the hope again is to get across supportable implementable policy when the time comes finally sort of looking into the future when there are no more holes to throw garbage into public works the public works committee is sort of reheating the traffic calming plan I guess that got shelved a number of years ago not that long ago and there have been a number of requests basically ad hoc traffic calming implementation here and there and it became incumbent on them that we really should have a policy to begin to organize our thinking about this so they'll be warming that up and the public transportation and bicycle committee are is thinking about making a recommendation for bicycle shelters in town there have been a number of requests for them I know of two anyway but it turns out that's also kind of an interesting issue so they're going to be putting together a recommendation for us on that so stay tuned also the public transportation bicycle committee are working on sort of following up on town meetings approval of the northward extension of the bike trail of the Arthur Swift rail trail northward they're going to be putting together a new mass they're trying to make sure that that is in fact has moved off of top dead center and that work is continued that folds in with the CPA money because a large portion of that funding was approved through the CPA process so that's what was going on Mr. Wild was desperate to go but I went ahead and stole it um leisure services and several education commission is meeting this week and I don't have any recollection what's on the agenda so I can just tell people to go and look at the website um and housing and sheltering committee is planning to look at the draft of the housing production plan again you'll be doing that as soon as they find a date the CDBG advisory group will be meeting again they were originally intending to meet last week but weren't able to and working at looking at having some sort of public hearing associated with the new application process we just outlined so again just watch on the website for all those things if you're interested in those particular topics and I regional school district planning group for those of you and we saw the stuff about the governor's mid-year budget cuts um there was there were cuts to the areas of the grants so that the regional school district planning board is applying for and we thought oh great we finally get to this process with this point the process we're putting these great grants and how they're going away and although those line items were decreased we believe that we will still be able to the grant but we may still we will end up with a grant when all is said and done with the first one more like 60,000 instead of 90,000 and the CIC grants it's way too soon to tell exactly how that's going to play out but well over 100 applications were received and that's the one where we're competing with all kinds of other things all over the state not but we are one of the few groups that are looking at regionalization of education it's not true but again it will be probably at least February possibly even March until we hear an answer on that so things are perking along please have in your calendars one you already have the four towns meeting associated with January 19 12 12 right it's not the 19 it's the 19 and then there is to be although we don't have 100% confirmation we believe that we will be having a meeting on Saturday February 2 which we will be inviting all four towns to hear directly from two consultants that we have hired so that it's not just what committee members are reporting back to them but directly from the consultants themselves on February 2 so we'll work on that but watch for that we'll try and get that as a save the day in the calendar as well right thank you questions or comments from Mr. Buerk right Mr. Wald yeah it's miscellaneous things the Design Review Board continues to do its good work on various run-of-the-mill projects no big controversies there is some controversy in the historical commission residents are challenging that trying to appeal that process which to my mind has never been done before so that's working its way through the system meeting about that this week historical commission made its own list of rankings for CPA projects as this is seen in the sort of raw form also be hearing I assume in the near future from residents around the university who are interested in creating a local historic district along the line so the one that's been proposed is a great trend those are the main things there Mr. Musanti mentioned a lot of of course about public arts these days that the larger takeaway was that they're very pleased with the efforts of the biennial and think it was a great success and if anything maybe you should do more to publicize it so it's not just sort of the opening nights but the all all day round thing for the whole month again they're the missing bunny does not have one we don't that was don't mean to make light of it but that was one of the another instance of tragic and stupid vandalism where a project that was created for the biennial was stolen by a person or a person's unknown and not yet returned but it may show up we don't know and then of course in January Ms. Stein and I start up with JCPC in the budget process great thank you I don't have any liaison reports we've talked enough about safe and healthy communities coalition stuff going on this week anything else I've either missed their meeting or I don't have anything to talk about Mr. Aten I I learned a long time ago but didn't write down that I really got to write down things that I need to say so any event I left one off the I wanted to make an announcement for the town meeting court in the committee that they would they are urging us to attend two week tomorrow and Wednesday on zoning tomorrow of course it's the the safe and healthy neighborhoods meeting but on Wednesday it's the zoning subcommittee the planning board are meeting at five o'clock to discuss zoning issues particularly around rentals student rentals up rentals right what they're doing is they're holding their semi-annual zoning forum and their zoning priorities going forward so folks who want to get something into their hopper and pipeline really should should make sure that they are there yes please thank you Mr. Wildes we've got our names mixed up we're both forgetting things just one other thing that's related to that as we know the town meeting had approved cpa money for the north common project which was dependent on getting a park grant which we didn't have but among other things it needed a larger public process you know you're at the grants on the schedule and you get what you can but there hasn't been a full round of conversations about that space and how to use it so as part of the possible re-application there will be some sort of public process involving historical commission and leisure services and I believe the 24th of January is the first proposed date I'm not sure it's firmed up yet but I think the plan is about to shape that piece of the common right outside town while here thank you that reminds me Mr. Hayden did TMCC have any feedback on the 7 o'clock start time for us did they get many surveys back yes but I don't know what it is okay when you do you'll let us know you'll be the second to know the second okay all right so let me give you some background here okay so you'll recall at our last meeting I finally about two months late gave us our FY12 select board annual report and so in going through the notes for each meeting about the things that we did to write up the annual report I found a couple of things that sort of fell through the cracks and one of those was that of 2011 we took up the master plan implementation committee charge this was drafted as a recommendation to us by the planning board Mr. Walled had worked with planning board representatives to do that we had a very full discussion about the charge we talked all about how we were who previously served on the comprehensive planning committee what this committee was supposed to be and ultimately that this charge captured it what I did in the meantime is I've gone back last week and I listened to the full discussion about that so it's all very fresh in my mind now and after this lengthy discussion we decided to change one element or two of the charge that had been proposed to us and that was as it was originally written it said to present a report to the community at a public meeting by annually which is to say every two years and after our considerable discussion we decided that really that should be annually and that it should happen at annual town meeting everything else we decided we liked about that the general sense was this committee will figure its work out as it goes along and after a year or two of its work it might need to come back to us and have its charge tweaked as we do with other committees so we had this big discussion we said okay I would make those two changes that I said instead of it being by annual it would be annual instead of being in public meeting I was supposed to format it in the way that we're standard formatting our charges now and that just never happened I don't know what happened but that just never happened I never did that so it has been thoroughly approved everything on the select board and happened just the way it was supposed to happen but my putting those finishing touches on it to get it up on the website did not happen it did not feel right to suddenly have not passed so I wanted to bring it back to you and so I put it on the agenda as reconfirming the charge or confirming the approval of the charge and that was basically just to give me a way to talk to you about it and say sorry I missed that and that's the status questions or comments Ms. Brewer it's been so long yes thank you for going back and listening to that that's more than that really nicely I would just say that now that we have the field for special municipal employee status it brings it to our attention we may as well give this committee special municipal employee status as limited as its value is it is better than not having it so I believe that it should have it and I don't think we intended I don't believe there was any discussion unless you heard differently that said oh no this committee doesn't get these setting parts and you said special municipal employee no but we didn't talk about it you just said not give it to them but I think it probably should be yes okay any other thoughts about that Mr. Aiden after a very long discussion on the conference of planning committee about these issues I would agree but I'm wondering if there's a technical or not a special it does not have special municipal employee status by definition and you're not supposed to mix statuses within a committee do you have the status yeah so rewinding back we haven't had a special municipal employee status conversation in a long time so it's true that the status applies to the individual which doesn't make any sense at all and cannot be special municipal employees maybe that figured into the reasoning what's your thought on that it certainly didn't figure into my reasoning no I didn't think about that at all I thought I was thinking more along the lines of the fact that generally speaking it used to be anyway frowned upon for people to serve on even more than one committee at the state level in terms of in terms of who were they representing for the town you know they were part of the town or they were representing this part of the town and of course those things were originally written associated with paid employees not so much with volunteers but it does get tangled up in volunteers and of course we all know of communities when we go to these other meetings we find out there are towns where there are five people who do all 57 jobs and obviously they've figured out a way to do it we can say no I mean at this point we don't have anybody to populate this we haven't put it into place but we have a special municipal employee status no one frankly knows what special municipal employee status really means in most cases anyway anyhow so it probably doesn't make a lot of difference and we could leave it as no for now and I could go either way so I think that leaving it the way we approved it a year ago and meant to put into place probably makes the most sense for the municipal employee status can the rest of the committee have it but the select board member simply doesn't just because they don't and then we could change it if we want but that would be good information to have anyway Mr. Hayden thank you for doing that because I think the three of us who are on that committee understand the value to recruitment that have even this the modicum is important for attracting you know qualified and important people okay yeah I'll look into that's a good question to have answered for it will come up again if we don't get an answer now so okay again I apologize about missing this and do we want to vote to reconfirm it or we just want to all not our heads in agreement but yes that's right we should probably tell the planning board we actually did it since you don't know anybody on the planning board that might be difficult but I'm just saying that in a in a world where we didn't all know each other as well it would be important since they wrote us the letter in the first place I will I'll send a officially let them know we finally did it yeah send a mea culpa email to the chair or like okay so we did that okay one other little thing this will get mouth on the website as a committee yeah that that will definitely happen okay so that brings us then to the chairs report because you don't have any open meeting law paper okay chairs report so first thing on the chairs report is food truck regulations as I reported to you I met with the chamber commerce director and the bid director right before town meeting about the food truck regulation situation we are trying to draft regulation at this point our regulations are practically non-existent food trucks just aren't terribly anticipated and they're not anticipated in sort of the way the reality is in the existing regulations so figuring out what is covered by the whole hawker and peddler thing was kind of the part of the conversation the other part of the conversation is how to strike the right balance of determining appropriate locations for food trucks to be and appropriate time limits for them to be there so this is trying to balance the concerns that we've heard from some business members as well as the public's desiring to have food trucks around so we are having a second meeting about that this week we every time you sort of go down a path with any of this it just raises a whole bunch more questions so hopefully we've gotten a lot of those questions answered so that we can come up with a draft kind of a bullet point draft of what the regulations might look like not written in draft language or in regulation language and get those circulated to all the stakeholders folks in the business community the select board the food truck folks themselves enforcement folks you know this has to be something that is able to be enforced et cetera so that meeting is going to be later this week depending I'm hoping we come out of that with this bulletin type list that I'm talking about it might take an additional meeting after that you know how these things go I hope to get them either at our first or second meeting in January we are looking to move quickly with this so there's not going to be some great big lag time an important point that was a question at our first meeting was do we have the ability to change these regulations once the new licensing period starts or if we renewed the licenses for these folks have they their license now cover the regulations as they are when they got their license so town council says no you can change regulations at any time however the food truck licenses license renewal information is all going out with a letter that says as you know from the paper and as you know from conversations specifically with the staff in the select board town manager's office new regulations are being considered are expected for late winter or early spring so all of these folks are well aware of what's going on so that's just to give you an update on where that is and like I said I hope either at our first or second January meeting to have something ready for you to think about and discuss so any questions on that okay then the other thing is this is as I mentioned at the beginning this is our final meeting of 2012 wow it's been it's been quite a year it's really been quite a remarkable year in many ways and so I just wanted to take this opportunity and thanks to some folks town manager obviously for your excellent work your excellent work with us and on behalf of the town I think that the select board's relationship with the town manager just gets better and better and we really appreciate your good communication with us and all the good that you do for Amherst so thank you Deborah Roussell and Debbie Gordon in the select board town manager's office whom we could not work without our preparation work so much of everything that comes that happens after a meeting you know we do all of the stuff that they've prepared all for us but then it all needs to be taken to the next level and they keep us prepared organized and informed and we are incredibly grateful for that staff you know there are too many staff for me to mention the recommendations that we get from so many staff members on so many different issues the budget stuff is obvious but there's so much more than that I mean we know we've got the quarterly budget updates we've got the finance director the comptroller we've got the assessor and the treasure I mean we have so many folks coming in here to keep us informed about so many things DPW folks conservation director everything that happens from things that we make without all of the homework that's being done by them for us and for the community so just special thanks to them the committees we've been talking about committee appreciation and all these vacancies and whatever I mean it's quite extraordinary when you think about the volunteer labor force that is working on behalf of Amherst on all of these incredibly important work and real implementation work on the the issues and in the areas that are most important are defined by the community these folks then carry out that work on our behalf and make recommendations again to us for town meeting and for the kinds of things that fall under our jurisdiction if we had to do the kinds of things Mr. Hayden was talking about earlier the policies on the traffic homework and legwork on all of this stuff in order to make a policy decision I mean that we all know that this job takes vastly more time than we have anyway it would simply be impossible so without the committees doing what they're doing we just could not function Amherst media we are so fortunate to have them thank you folks in the booth there right now there is just incredible staff there they are a really critical part of keeping the community of Amherst informed so that they can participate in their local government I mean being able to be exposed to so many meetings either live in rebroadcast or my personal favorite archived on the website to watch any time that's an incredible service that is a real blessing to our community so a huge thank you to them they end up working a lot of late nights with us and other unfortunate committees and they are always just so in such good spirits they're so helpful to us they're just wonderful so thank you folks at Amherst media and also my colleagues just really it is an honor and a privilege to work with you this has been another great year for us and looking forward to another great year in 2013 I want you to know just really what a privilege it is to work with each and every one of you so thank you for your devotion to the town of Amherst Miss Stein first of all likewise and we are incredibly grateful to have you as our chair who take on way beyond what the rest of us do and we very much appreciate for the fact that you keep us going secondly since you mentioned Amherst media I sent in my membership today and I strongly urge all the members of our community to support Amherst media because they do so much for our community and lastly I'd like to thank the staff who write the wonderful grants that allow us to live beyond our revenue we have gained so much from those grants over the years and this year too so thank you to them especially thank you anyone else want to add anything Mr. Hayden I think I've mentioned this a while ago and it's an interesting maybe mixed media to use the television broadcast also recall it as a fellow who sits behind me every night that we're here was also here very late and so I appreciate the newspapers they don't always get it the way I would want it to be gotten but I do appreciate them trying so hard every week thank you very much alright anything else then with that we close the 2012 select board meeting schedule and look forward to meeting again on January 7th right here in this room Mr. Hayden so do I get to move to adjourn you get to move to adjourn without objection this meeting is at 9pm thank you very much to everyone happy holidays and happy new year thank you