 So, good morning everybody. Welcome to the November virtual cup of Joe with Paul and today we have special guests, Amherst finance director Sean mangano and Amherst comptroller Sonya Aldrich joining us to talk about budget and finance. Welcome everybody. Good morning. Morning. I want to give a chance for maybe Paul to do any report outs as well as our special guests to introduce themselves and report out on anything that they might want to share before we get to questions. Sure. So, thanks everybody for being here. This is a couple of Joe so you can talk about anything we happen to bring some guests along because it's usually boring just talking to me and Brianna but you know, so that's why we have Sonya and Sean here. But we'll, we'll talk a lot about budget obviously we pretty much just began our budget process in the last couple of weeks and Sean can talk a little bit about how the budget process works out over time and and just answer whatever questions people have. And while while we're on the topic of asking questions just want to remind everyone how you can do so if you've joined us from the phone you can press star nine and that'll indicate to us that you have a question, or you may put a question into the q amp a within zoom or raise your hand within zoom and we will bring you into the room. So now I will ask our special guests to just introduce themselves tell tell the room and the viewers who you are, and any updates you might have. I mean, would you like me to start. Sure. John mangano and finance director been here since may and before that I was with the schools for a while. And I'll Paul said he brings guests along so that it's not boring I don't know if Sonya and I are gonna. That goal, but we'll do our best. I think at some point maybe not right now but we'll do updates on the f y 22 budget process and where we're at. Should we do it right now Paul or maybe wait till. Let's hear from Sonya see who see who she is who's this new woman here. She's good to the job I think I'm Sonya Aldrich and I've been working for the town for 34 years, probably more than all of you collectively. I have a good question about that. And I don't really have a whole lot to say. I will say in public that I am grateful to have some and gone on our team. It's been a great addition. So gives me the opportunity to say that. Yeah. Because you were wearing two hats for a long time. I'm really happy to have them. All right, well, welcome you both and we thank you both for being here to liven it up a little bit. As Paul said, people are probably tired of seeing our just our faces. So, I want to remind there's a couple new people who joined the room. Please feel free to put your questions into the Q&A within zoom or raise your hand within zoom so we can hear from you live we'd love to, we'd love to do that. I know we kind of packaged this, this meeting with the promoting the budget forum last night is there any updates or information on how that went. Yeah, do you want me to give an update Paul. Sure. So the we did our financial indicators presentation on Monday which is sort of a general kickoff to the budget process that provides information about where the town is at financially. And following up on that on last night we had our budget forum, which is a requirement of the Charter, and we gave an abbreviated presentation of what we did on Monday night, and we heard from probably six or seven people, I'd say Paul. Last night, eight, eight people. We got some good, you know, sort of the first chance to really give feedback on the FY 22 budget. We got some good input into that. And there will be other opportunities as we go forward. One of the things I noted last night is we post information on our website under, if you go to the government tab at the top and then click on budget. There's an FY 22 tab on that page and I'm sure at some point, Brianna will probably post a budget link right on the homepage. So people can get to it quickly. But also on that page as a budget feedback button. So if anybody wants to submit input that way, without coming to a meeting if they just want to send in their thoughts that that feedback gets back to Paul and I. So next really next steps for the budget process is the finance committee and the town council will develop budget guidelines for the town manager to develop his budget. So that's where we're at right now. Yeah, I just want to note that, you know, what the town of Amherst does is really a model for how you're supposed to do things. So we start everything with the financial indicators, which is really a the gathering of the elected officials, which is the town council, the board of library trustees in the school committee. And then the town staff who are the experts in finance, Sean and Sonia will, and I make a presentation saying here's where we are. Here's what it looks like over the past 10 years so you can start to see trends. And so we share all the financial information and all that information goes on to our website. Then we move to the next phase and say, Well, what do people, what are the people's values that they're bringing to the to whether would they like to see the budget to reflect. And then with that information, the town council then starts to work on budget guidelines, which then comes to me as I start, we start to build the budget and I look at those guidelines along with the goals that town council has set. We build our budget to meet the goals and those budget guidelines that the town council has set. So there's a really logical sequence of events that we follow. It's very arduous. There's a lot of it is a very iterative process we're reporting back a lot and listening to a lot and doing a lot of listening is really different than almost every other city in town quite honestly and I've worked in others and worked at the state municipal association so it's really a model for public engagement and sort of a process that's really heavy on the process so you know that I think the townspeople should feel really good about there about where we are today and how we're moving forward, even in these pandemic times. All right, well thank you for the update on on the current or upcoming budget year. So one of the questions we had is what about our update on last fiscal year and how did we survive the pandemic budgetarily speaking and any trends that either of you noticed. So did you want to give an update on last year. Well, for anybody that wants to see how we ended up last year they can go into the accounting page and I'm not sure if you posted it on last year's budget page but there's the fourth quarter report that pretty much shows how we ended up for fiscal year we did really well, considering the revenues that we lost we've lost about $450,000 in revenue last year, but we returned on almost a little over $2 million in operational expenses. And a lot of that was possible because of the CARES Act funds that we received to help us offset a lot of expenditures and operations just weren't happening the way they normally happen in a normal year. So that offset that and allowed us to add another about one point about one and a half million to our free cash, which puts us in a really good spot to start off for fiscal year 22, 21 actually. So we did really well so anybody that wants any more detailed information on that go to that report it's pretty informative. Yeah, so we didn't do a lot of things you know we didn't, LSS wasn't running recreation programs, we didn't have the fight you know the police and fire expenses that we typically have during a busy spring. There's very there was pretty much no overtime. And so our expenses were way down, but on the other flip side of that our revenues were down with parking wasn't coming in at all, our water fees were down and sewer fees. So, you know, our revenues were down but our expenses were down to, and I think Sonya is put right on the CARES Act funds that was really critical that's federal money that came through the state to the town. And that anything that connected and Sean's been running this, this multimillion dollar pot of funds available. Anything that could be attributed to co vid. We would take out of that that fund balance. Yeah, and what I tend to leave off I'm always talking about the general fund and should or said something about the enterprise funds to those took a pretty decent hit to their revenues, because you mass closed and there was less water usage which also affects sewer use it sewer rates and transportation parking revenues have not obviously we weren't ticketing and we weren't taking any parking revenue so that hit our transportation fund pretty hard as well. We have an observation from the room that cherry hill golf course made a boatload of money. That was one of the ones that we were worried about how they would do and I think they end up having one of their best years, because that was one of the few things that people could actually do was go outside and golf. And the other thing on cherry hill, we didn't hire any temporary staff this year because of because of the pandemic, we repurposed existing staff. And so that really helped cherry hill as well on the expenditure side because we didn't incur additional costs we we spent our existing ones. So yeah cherry hill, but what I've heard is had a pretty good year. And there was a drought just bad for everything else except cherry hill, because it's beautiful day every day. And how does that compare to some of the other offerings under Amherst recreation or LSC I guess as formerly known as LSC. I think some of the other ones did not do quite as well. I know they had to make some modifications to some of their programming and they were doing some things remotely. But I think cherry hill was really the one that stuck out. I think the pool did fairly well. I'm not sure what the pool, what the number of people that went to the pool I know they were able to keep the pool open. And same things are limit the additional staffing because of the pandemic, and keep that as an option for the community. So that's an option in the room, just as we got talking about pools. They say I think the pools did well also. So it sounds like that was true. And I have a hand up in the room so I'm going to invite Ken to come on in and unmute and introduce yourself please. Thank you. This is Ken Rosenthal I live at 53 Sunset Avenue. There was many more meeting the other night there was some discussion about changes in town as we looked at the possibility of altering our zoning bylaw. And over time, the center of town in particular has changed in ways that are not totally compatible with I think what many of the long term residents here. I don't know if it's a favor, but this pandemic is causing major dislocations in our economy. My children who live remotely distant from New York City are finding that people are retreating from the urban areas into Jersey and New York, and buying their small towns. And we used to have in the center of town residences on the second third and sometimes where there are fourth floors in the buildings in the middle of town now their offices they used to be residences with the changing ways that we work and more working from home. I'm wondering whether you see any evidence yet that Hammers is going to become a residential destination for people who are able to work more from home. And that, of course, will alter the need for housing in town but they also alter the need for services in town and restaurants and bars within a mile or so of the University of Massachusetts. Some of them used to be stores CVS used to be a supermarket restaurant used to be a shoe store. We, I know we can't compete with with root nine businesses but more residences, residents will bring different kinds of demands for services and products in the middle of town and I'm wondering if you see any of this starting to happen now. We're not sure, but what we do know is that residential values are extremely extremely high properties are going in the market and being bought very quickly. The real estate market is very robust we have people just clamoring for properties to purchase. And I think part of it can is just what you said people are saying are saying I can work anywhere under this new reality I don't have to live in commuting distance of New York City or Boston I can be someplace that has a good school district and and all the outdoor amenities that we have plus a vibrant downtown. So how it's going to play out in terms of our downtown area, it's really not, not certain. I think, you know, we sort of, you know, there used to be residences and their offices and now they may go back to residences downtown there are challenges for our older buildings and transitioning to anything to new use because most of them don't have elevators and putting in elevators is a gigantic challenge and makes it very hard economically to make that that work. I don't know, Sean Sonya do you have any thoughts on that. I mean the one thing I'll add and this really started pre pandemic but it'll be interesting to see if it continues is that we have seen a lot of development just in Amherst in general, our new growth numbers. So new growth is how much we add to the tax rolls each year from new developments or improvements to existing properties for the past couple years that's been pretty high and has been doing really well. And this past year was pretty strong too so we track that number every year is an important indicator of you know just what's going on and out there on the for our properties so that's a number we can track going forward to see if anything new is coming on. One of the things I feel is that when we do, I think the town is going to be very resilient and that we're, when it comes time, when the pandemic passes we're going to bounce back quicker than most places because we have to the, you know, the university and two colleges, sort of has, they have concrete in the ground, they're not going anywhere, those fundamentals won't change, there will still be students on those campuses they'll still be tuition's being paid. And so the businesses that support those, those, those industries will still be there and just as a side note congratulations former intern president of Hampshire college for a gigantic $5 million gift that was given to the college and if people don't know Ken had been a long time leader of Hampshire college the staff historian, as it were, and also was the interim president during a very critical time that really helped stabilize the college. And this week the president, the new president announced a $5 million gift, which is I think Ken the largest gift or the second largest gift the college ever had. Thank you Hampshire alum Paul Bachmann for those nice things. Yeah, it's the second largest gift since the very first years of the college Harold Johnson skip that made the college possible. But just to stay on this subject for just one minute longer yes when the colleges and university reopen and and again that the demand for housing in town meets what if we suspect will happen with people wanting to come to this very desirable community now to work from home. Then I have one more worry and that is that we continue to drive out of town, the people who work and live here because the housing housing costs rise too fast. So, just my last word is a pitch for housing that's affordable enough so that we can keep the people who work in town, able to walk to work able to live in the town where they work that's always I think our ideal is to live where where we work. And we have private organizations trying to do this we also can do so through zoning and I hope we keep that in mind as we do the planning for the town. Thank you for listening to me this morning. Thanks again. Thank you. Thank you Ken. I just want to take a moment I do see that we've got some folks in the room and I'm not going to put them too much on the spot but I'd love to offer if you want to come in and say a few words, just to raise your hand and I will let you in and that's my name is Lynn Griezmer, and we also have LSEC commission chair Sarah Marshall in the room if either of you have anything you want to say about your work, please feel free to raise your hand and I will pull you into the room. If not, no worries. We'll give them a chance to think about that. Oh, there's Lynn's hand so just a moment while I'm. All right Lynn you're in the room with us if you want to unmute. Thanks. First of all, happy Thanksgiving, but be safe and with masks and distancing and washing hands. First, I want to really point out something that I think sounded a little subtle and I just don't want it to be subtle and that is we did come through the COVID first phase if you will ending in June. In good financial shape. That doesn't mean you know we have money to burn it just means we came through in good financial shape and that is really to the credit of Paul and Sonya and Sean and the whole team of financial people. You know and as we look to the next year, we know that there's tensions around the budget. And we know that there's demands on the budget and we really want to hear from people want to hear from people in terms of how they see us spending money what services are most valuable to you. What services you want to make sure we are still doing, you know, five years from now. Please join in every opportunity to talk with us about the budget, and there'll be plenty. Thank you. I'll just go back out of the room. Thank you Lynn thanks for popping in and saying hello. All right, we have another question here that we've gotten a bunch over the last, I want to say year. There are four major capital projects. Is there any update on what's happening with them. Where are we with with that process. So the four major capital projects are the new element elementary school renovations to the Jones library, a new DPW facility and a new fire headquarters. And those are have been on the table for a long time. The town hasn't built a new building in over 30 years, typically a town like us, given the number of buildings we have you'd expect to be to be a major renovation or building every 10 years which sort of sequence out and let you manage your debt load. The town hasn't done that and so we have this big backlog of major capital projects that we're facing. We were fortunate to be admitted into the mass school building authority program, which will fund a major portion of a new elementary school. That's a very detailed long process multi year process. Sean has been through it before has served on a building committee. He's on the building committee again. And counselor Kathy Shane is chairing that building committee as we move forward. But that's, that's, we sort of marched to the beat of the MSBA in that process. And that's the biggest and I think for the council and the community that's the highest priority for us right now and that's moving forward. The Jones library has received a 15 plus million dollar grant from the mass board of library commissioners and that sort of propelled that into a the conversation very early on because it was a grant that we had to use or lose basically and so the council is now looking at all the numbers and the options around the Jones library to determine what it wants to do with that in conjunction with the board of library trustees. That's a conundrum for us has been the DPW and the fire. Everybody knows, like, almost without a doubt that the best location for a new fire headquarters is at the DPW site which is on South pleasant street most people don't even know where the DPW is because it's kind of hidden from the road. All the studies that we have done indicate that the South Amherst isn't as well served and that moving the central fire station a little bit farther south would serve both the downtown and South Amherst better. So that's the location but then it's then the question becomes, what do you do with a public works facility, and it's really, really, really hard to locate a public works facility for two reasons one. Some people don't want a, what would be called an industrial site in their neighborhoods. And secondly, it needs a lot of land, because there's just a lot of trucks and movement and piles of sand and salt and things like that that that have to be accommodated there. And it's a 24 hour operation so and the other thing is that the town doesn't have that much land that's not developed. So it's been a real challenge we had one site that we looked at that the Amherst college had offered us, but the neighbors in that name in that area really. And I think the council ultimately decided that members that it wasn't appropriate location. So we're struggling with finding a location for the DPW and but the council had a retreat last Saturday, and pretty much, put, sent out the message that we need to move on these projects and that's, that's our mission right now. Yeah, I'll just add. We all want to do the projects and one of the challenges is financing all those projects and coming with a way to afford all them and so that's one of the big challenges for us the next year or two is coming up with a financial plan. That allows us to do that so like in the capital improvement program which is sort of part of the budget process it'll be in the spring. That's one of the areas we're going to aim to address is what how can we afford all four of these projects, or the next five to 10 years. And I'm confident there's a way to do it but it will mean we have to operate within our fiscal realities in terms of what we spend. And Paul, when we were originally kind of having this conversation about the capital projects we had a pretty robust outreach and engagement process do you envision something similar happening again. Or in the next iteration. Yeah, I think the conversations at the council level at this point in time, you know, it's up to staff to come up with some options in terms of how all the finances fit together and that's what what our mission is at this point. And the council did do a pretty robust outreach as you mentioned before the pandemic where we had lots of meetings we had a facilitator come in do a lot of listening. So that information is gathered. But I think when the actual decision comes to be made. There'll be a lot of public input at that point in time I think. And then here from the room from Phyllis and South Amherst. When will a permanent bridge be constructed on station road. So, we received a grant from the state to support part of a bridge and you know the the temporary bridge seems to be working well people. People tell us don't change it because they like it because it makes cars slow down. It's a one lane bridge and there's a process where you can you can allow one. It's two way traffic up into the bridge and then you take turns crossing the bridge and station road doesn't have that much traffic to begin with. But ultimately it will have to be replaced we did get a grant. But that only will cover a portion of the bridge so we're looking at that how we're going to manage that the bridge the temporary bridge will last a very long time we're not there's no danger in it but ultimately it will have to be changed now. The thing that's going to be sort of jarring to people I think is that when you replace the bridge is going to be a lot bigger than what's there now just because of environmental concerns and that's the span that we have to cross so it's going to be. I think people are going to get a little stunned by how big the bridge is going to look and whether they really want that or not it's going to be a big question, but it's going to be the be especially if the state is helping to fund it. It's what it's going to have to look like. Yeah, Paul I believe this is the one that we're also applying for another grant for a FEMA grant to help us pay for some of it as well because it's an expensive project for the full replacement. Yeah. I just want to remind I see some new folks in the room. Feel free to raise your hand if you have a question or pop it into the q amp a or star nine from your phone. So another question we have here is, what are the, the biggest challenges going forward for the FY 21 budget year and beyond. Sure. So I can start with a few. You know, we say this over and over again so it's starting to my head be very redundant but maybe not for everybody. But just the amount of uncertainty that we are dealing with is, as we develop our budgets and make projections. Normally there's a, you know, a small amount of uncertainty with certain areas but really most of our budget, at least on the revenue side there's a great deal of it, whether it's state aid and what the state will do with its budget next year and what the impact of the pandemic will be. What the university and colleges will do in the spring and next year where they'll be back to full strength, how long it'll take for the downtown to kind of rebound and parking parking revenues to come back. So there's just really across the board there's a lot of uncertainty because of the pandemic, and when we'll get back to normal. So I'd say that's that's the biggest challenge right now. At least in terms of budgeting and projections is the level of uncertainty. So, Sonia, and you've been here over three decades what does this time compare to any other time that you can remember. What were other challenges to put this in context. I think the recession back in 20, I don't even know the year anymore was challenging, but not like this. I mean that was just totally budgetarily. This is where the statement made mid-year cuts in our budgets. Right, right, right. Yeah, I really don't have a good answer for that. I mean that seemed hard. This is, you know, people are scared for their health. So it's not just financial, that's interesting. Right, right. So I'd say coupled with the health issue. And how it's disrupted our operations. I mean we've really changed all the things that we do, you know, people working remotely and new sort of safeguards in our building to let people be able to work safely when they come into building. Right. And worried about people getting it in the building and what does that do to our operations. Employees have been really terrific, you know, with their own insecurities and everything and offering to help out and come in and it's been great. We have great employees. We're going to send this recording to them later so they can, so they can hear all these nice things we're saying about them. So Sonya is usually known as, as a person has to say no to a lot of people. Just so you know she does appreciate everybody. So we have a question here this semester kind of just is winding down at UMass and it looks like classes won't resume until February 1. And so this question is about what's what's the impact on the town's revenues and subsequently budget for, you know, when the students are gone, or is there any big impact. Yeah. So, the biggest, the most noticeable one was our water and sewer funds and just when you have, you know, however many students 10,000 or, you know, more that aren't in town consuming water and sewer that has a large impact on the, on the revenues that go into our water and sewer fund on the flip side if they were here this year we probably would have had challenges with our water supply because Paul mentioned earlier we had, you know, not a lot of rain this summer so it's sort of, you know, good and bad. It's also just an impact on our downtown and, you know, restaurants and businesses, parking and things of that nature from just having so many fewer people in town for such a long period of time. Do we see that getting any better over the holiday season. Maybe not over the holiday season maybe in the spring with the estimates I've heard of the colleges and universities bringing back more students, not all of them but more students, we would look to see some of our, some of our revenues start to rebound a little bit then. We've got a question here from the room. Sarah asks, do we anticipate any water restrictions in the spring. Well, we, it's, it's hard to judge we don't, I don't think so. Atkins reservoir has been recovering quite well. And we're making repairs to one of our wells that had to be fixed up with the depopulation of the campuses it really wasn't much of a challenge this year, but you know we're always paying attention to this week and when I first started in 2016 there's a real concern about water with the university and the colleges and the town has had this experience previously to where they had to actually ask all the college students to go home in the middle of the semester. But you know it depends on the amount of snow and we are noticing, you know, it's hard to reckon, you know, attribute any one thing to climate change but it just seems that there are some things that we're sort of noticing a little bit more and more but if we can we monitor atkins reservoir which are our major surface water source and we have five wells as well and mostly around the Lawrence swamp. And so with all those sources I think we're generally are in pretty good shape. One thing I'd like to mention is like yesterday was it was sort of a funny day we had more meetings yesterday I think it was the biggest meeting day of our, you know, we had, you know, we had the CPA committee making decisions we had the first meeting of the community safety working group. This town council had one or two meetings going on and we had the human rights commission meeting and there was and I think zoning board I mean there's just like all these meetings and typically we get there's a stranglehold over rooms like oh you can't meet tonight because the zoning board is in the town room so you have to pick another night but with zoom. We have limitless rooms in essence so all these things are happening at the same time and counselors and people are just like jumping from room to room to room is just really kind of, you know, a lot getting done and because people are being more efficient. There were 11 public meetings yesterday really. Yeah, I have a calendar and there's just a big overlap of what else was going on. And there's a dog park was there a dog park. Yes, there was a dog park. There was the budget forum human rights right. For CPAC tack. And I'll community preservation at committee I have to be better with my acronyms transportation advisory licensed commissioners on services and outreach committee, your community safety working group participatory budgeting and rank choice voting commission. So that's one day. And I know you were presenting to the council, Brianna for some proposal. And I just want to make a plug for the community safety working group is it was a, if you can find the recording of that. And I'm not sure if it's up yet, but we'll get a prior go up today or within a week I'm sure. There's an opportunity for the people who've been appointed to introduce themselves. It was really powerful to spend a little time listening to all the seven members who are on the committee to sort of introduce themselves and why they were interested. It's one of the most exciting groups that the town has created in my time here. And once the video is up, it'll be a dedicated playlist for that for that committee and all other committees that are recording their meetings and it will be linked on their committee web page so it's something worth talking about too. And normally we don't record all these meetings. It's usually under our contract with Amherst media they have to cover the school committee, the town council, and the planning board I think and nothing else would get recorded but now everything is right we're recording everything. We are by and large recording everything. So it's up to this discretion of some boards. I don't know if the trustees of the library are recording but we have upwards of 50 hours per of meetings of public meetings per week happening in town. And they're all taking place on zoom and for the most part being recorded and put on our YouTube channel. We're seeing exponential increase in viewership on our YouTube channel, you know by five 600% over last year because we have so much content available there so basically everything that's happening is being recorded and put it up on our channel, including this, including this and including our Amherst community chats. Basically, anything that we can record we're putting up there and out there so we're seeing a lot, a lot more people accessing the information maybe not in real time although that has increased as well. Live attendance and meetings, since we've become virtual but also post meeting viewership is up in, you know, so exponentially compared to last year so you may have like eight people watching live but then at the end of two weeks you'll see Oh 90 people actually watch the meeting over time that just, well, because people don't have to it's not appointment TV, you can watch it. You know at your leisure. In some cases Amherst media will pick up some of our content and actually play it on their channel, or cross post it to their YouTube channel so there's a lot of different ways that our information is getting out there now. So, so one of the things that came up at community safety was one of the members said, we'd really like to have a meeting and this comes up really frequently Brianna. So we'd like to have a meeting where everybody can see each other. It feels awkward to do it the way we do this. Can you talk and I know we've explored lots of different ways of modifying it and things. And I know that we've been zoom bomb but do you want to talk a little bit from the IT perspective because why we do it the way we do this. Sure, I'd be happy to and I just want to acknowledge that I do see Lynn's hand so I'll call on you Lynn and bring you in the room in just a moment. And so for this. It's a really fine balance between you know creating a safe and private environment for a safe environment for our meeting attendees in the public we're watching as well as our, our panelists and our board members. The current best practices for us to in terms of public meetings to keep as much security as possible in order to kind of match up with what the flow of an in person meeting would be which is observance with some prescribed public comment period so in the public meetings we've been a little bit airing on the side of caution in terms of how we conduct the meeting and how participants are able to be seen or viewed. You know with with some more community based meetings we've been able to be a little bit more lax in those terms because of this the standards are a little different. So in some community based meetings we will set it up as a meeting and invite everybody into to be seen and sometimes that requires pre registration. And so we've been trying to make sure that there's as few barriers as possible, but it's as safe as possible so that's kind of the perspective from the technology standpoint we've taken with things and I hope over time. With Zoom, new security features have come online and hopefully we get to a place that that gets enhanced enough for us to be a little bit more open in the future as technology catches up with with where we're at. And I've been in a meeting that has been zoom bomb and so all of our meetings we post on the web they get picked up, especially public meetings and certain types of committees get picked up. And when you're zoom bomb it's a traumatizing event and it can be a traumatizing event that you can't unsee things you see can't unhear things that you've heard. And one of our mission our mission is a public entity is to make sure people can conduct the town's business the people's business in a safe environment. And, and I know people say well I'd like to see who's in the room like I can't normally but you don't get to see who's watching on Amherst media or anything like that. But I think that we have had people truly traumatized and by the kind of vile things that can be said and shown when you lose control of a meeting which has happened multiple times with our community. And we add one last thing to compare to other communities, you know, Amherst from day one has allowed live public comment participation and with all the risks that come along with that that was important to us to make sure that we didn't lose that element and some communities are accepting public comment via email or before the meeting and not introducing any kind of live elements. So, in many ways, we, we have been ahead of that for a long time and some people are just coming online with live public comment and participation. So I am going to pull Lynn into the room. So, if you could unmute Lynn you're in the room. And first of all, I want to just compliment our IT staff for rising to the occasion and bring up part of that. We, you know, we had to go slow within the first month until we just kind of ramped up and had all of the technology technology that we did, and some committees were frustrated because if right now we are literally full board, full ahead on all of our committee work. But one of the things that's interesting about this and we'll all come back to this over time and that is we've learned stuff through COVID. And one of the items on the council's agenda down the road is to talk about what should change about our meetings, based on what we've learned once we return to in person meetings. And how can we create the opportunity for participation, using some of the technology that we've used for people who literally don't or cannot get to town hall and make public comment but yet they would like to make public comment or they would like to participate as a panelist on a certain issue but it's just not convenient for them to be there so I think in this case technology and the use of technology during COVID, while all of us are a little bit zoomed out as we on the other hand, we've really learned some things and we need to incorporate that and how we think about moving forward with our meetings. That's a really good point Lynn and we've been thinking about this and discussing this and what's it going to look like when we're back to normal quote unquote. But from the IT perspective or this perspective that I take is that it probably is never going to be back to what it was and we're going to have to come up with some sort of hybrid or new new way of business so it's important to think of those things now to prepare so it's a really, really good point thank you. Lynn and the council have set up a really strong standard on making announcements at the beginning of the meeting, what the protocol is for people announcing making sure that Lynn checks in with every counselor to make sure that they can be heard and she can hear them. And even if they take a break they come back she checks in with everybody again that she has one anybody sitting there saying why didn't hear a word you guys said. I think that it's cumbersome because every vote has to be by by a roll call. So each of those things but then the council adjusted to that they created a consent calendar so they don't have to take 20 votes on minutes and things that are just sort of pro forma things. But yeah I think the hybrid thing is going to be interesting and where technology plays because if we would have half the counselors are in the room and half aren't. How does that look and how does that feel the people. I don't know and yeah. I think there's a lot of exciting ways. You know if the structure of meetings in the future allows for us to, to gather public input and participation in new ways to hear from some of you reticent voices that might not be able to like Lynn said be able to come, even if it's not into a town hall but might not be able to make that couple minute window for public comment. There's a lot of exciting things coming. So, so let's talk a little bit about that we have to two big things coming up that's going to involve a lot of things coming up that involve public participation. And what's that going to look like and for interest instance we have the North Amherst library renovations we have the Hickory Ridge engagement process once we close on that piece of property what's that what should happen with that. We just got a grant yesterday for $1.5 million to work on the Pomeroy West Street intersection and what should that look like. And it's all, you know, this is a town that engages the public and so what's that going to look like and I know Brianna you've dug into some alternative ways of sharing out information that doesn't where you don't have to be in a room at a designated time but there are other ways to engage do you want to talk a little bit about that. Sure I'd be happy to. So, in addition to whatever we have going on right now for our current process, we are bringing online a public participation platform, which is, you know, 100% online projects will will live their projects and initiatives and you can interact with specific projects subscribe to specific projects that you're interested in and just get updates on that, or as many projects as you want, and built into the platform are all these. I guess, micro opportunities to engage and give your feedback that are outside of the public comment period of a specific meeting. So over the lifespan of the project will build in opportunities to to poll community members, ask important questions survey have discussion boards, and then be able to at the end of the day because it's a cloud based solution have really solid data and analytics to compile with other more traditional methods of gathering public input and get a really rich robust picture. People think about a particular project or initiative in ways that they can engage when they have time. It might be at 10pm they come in and do a five minute poll versus being able to attend, you know an entire couple hour forum. So it's really going to give a couple more rungs on that ladder of engagement and participation that we're always looking to do in town to expand and offer new ways for people to interact with us. So, so that's that's a company called bang the table. And for, you know, I think it's a great name. So we'll have a, you know, a custom branded engagement site for Amherst, and you can interact on even, you know, more fun, easy going photo contest type things, but into bigger projects like a master plan, for example, or the the Hickory Ridge project so they'll be kind of like a buffet of things for people to come in and interact with in ways that they feel comfortable. And that should be coming online in the next couple of weeks to months depending on how things go so we'll we'll do a big push and some announcement about that and maybe even do a meeting dedicated to it to preview it to the public. And one of the things about the COVID-19 pandemic is it's forcing us to move quicker into areas we've been looking at bang the table for a while but then, but that's like well wait a minute we got to do something now and it's moving us to do things online quicker than we normally would have and that's a good thing. And the other advantages, you know, we have this pot of cares money that we can utilize for many of these initiatives, and staff just have to have been great at stepping up and saying okay, now this now that let's keep moving and adjusting how we how we move projects forward. Yeah, I'll just jump off on that you know with the work that I do it's been it's been great, you know, it's a silver lining I would say, in all of this is that we've been able to kind of really push the digital first and expand our offerings and services to our community members in different ways, so that it's more convenient for them and everybody's on board and department heads are excited about bringing things online so it's it's an interesting time I think. All right, I'm going to give another call to the room to see if they have any questions we're coming up to the hour so if you have a question please pop it into the Q&A or raise your hand star nine from a phone. We'd be happy to hear from you live. So I don't see any hands or anything in the chat yet but I'm going to give folks another minute. Anything that any of our guests have going on that they wanted to share that they didn't get asked yet. I'll just do a shout out to Sarah Marshall who's in the room. I think CPA made a lot of progress last night and reviewing projects and Sarah chaired that committee this year and I've been a few meetings and she's done a really good job, bringing along new members and running a very, very nice process to consider all the projects. I don't know if Sarah wants to give any, any information about some of those projects that were discussed last night but if not I'm sure it'll be coming up soon. Has they finished their work or they still more work to do. I think they have one more meeting, maybe two I'm not sure if it'll be wrapped up completely at the last the next meeting. Wow, that's efficient. They did a great job. Sarah says thank you Sean. She she'd rather wait to her, their report is final before she gives any updates but she, she did ask. She was out of the room for just a quick moment is wondering what the status of Hickory Ridge is. We have a purchase and sale agreement with Hickory with the owners of Hickory Ridge. There are a couple things we're still working through on the actual close in order to close on the property. You know, several weeks away, still from that because they're just whenever you're doing a transaction, it's a very complicated transaction because there's a solar array that is going to be part of the development that the current owners want to maintain and sort of like what does that really look like and how, how are they access that and things like that. But it's a, it's a, you know, everybody knows it's a wonderful piece of property it'll be it's a great purchase for the town. And so that will, that will happen. And we have a willing seller in the town the council has approved the project so we're willing buyer. So it's just a matter of getting all the sort of details. We're just doing all the due diligence we have to do before we purchase a piece of land for the for the town, including 21e things and all those things that you typically would do to make sure that the ownership is legit and, you know, we are very careful when we purchase a piece of land. But it will happen. I'm very confident of that. And that's a perfect project that we'll probably have in our public participation platform so so stay tuned. All right, any more questions from the room. Final, final chance here for today at least. All right I don't see any hands or any questions so any any parting words or statements or things that you want to leave people with for Paul or Sonya or Sean. Thank you. I look forward to doing one of these out out in public at some point ever since I've started they've been the virtual kind which is not bad. It'll be nice to actually get out there at some point. And if there are any financial questions or budget questions. We're always willing, we always want to be there to answer them for you so don't hesitate to reach out. For more information like Sean said earlier by going to our homepage and clicking budget or Amherst MA.gov slash budget new documents are getting added there all the time by Sean and his team. And there's a budget feedback button so feel free to sense questions that are budget related that way too. Anybody else. What's for Thanksgiving Sonya. What's your thanks Turkey. This is a very good couple things for the office inside that here. Well I want to thank you. Thank you all we will be putting this recording up on our community chat playlist. In case you want to refer back to it or share with a friend. If you want to follow up with us feel free to send an email at info at Amherst MA.gov and we will connect with you there. Have a great day. Good Thanksgiving.