 I'm not going to be accepting power. Well, let me just talk about it. What's going to get started? They think it was time to give up the patience to have a lot of good, but sophisticated patience. Where is the living? I know, because I'm saying... I know, because I'm saying. I've been right across from Emma's Medical. I live on the animal's doctor's home, my wife, for nine months. I'm right before the dump, but it's not the dump anymore. But I wish I'd known I was going to be able to work different shape and a little more stressed up. But I have it not really like this. I just have on a shirt and represents the students of English regional hospital in the quest to end cancer. That's cool. I almost ruined my other cancer. I'm just kidding. I don't know why I was so scared. I was scared. Let me see the screen. I was scared by the gun. You see the gun here. I'm sorry. I'm going to try. You want to try? I'm feeling it. I haven't gone through it for a long time. It's a good one. I got a lot better. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It was definitely a lot better. No, I know. Not the one. I got. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. The time is. Okay. Um, The time is nine 10. In the morning on Sunday, October 8th. I'm calling the meeting to order pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021. This meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be provided. To ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. During the public common period, the chair will recognize the chairs. We'll recognize members of the public when called on. Please identify yourself by stating your full name. Preferred pronouns and residential address. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes at the discretion of the public. Based upon the number of people who wish to speak. No speaker can cede their time to another speaker. The HRC will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during the public comment. Thank you. So do we need to do roll call? I don't have the list. So my microphone is on. But only if I keep my finger pressed on. Deborah, would you like to note Laverne starting this way? Just say who you are and that you're present, please. Laverne Kelly, present. Deborah Cologne, present. Elizabeth Haygood, present. Ronnie Parker, present. Rizwana Khan, present. Tyler Maxwell, present. Also present are Jennifer Moistin and Pamela Young. And absent right now are Asa, Joy, and Jacinta. Shall we begin? Is there any public comment? There is no one else in the room. So no public comment. Shall we move on then? Well, good morning, everybody. So we're here to hold the HRC retreat. And the first item under the action and discussion items is introductions. And that is to include an activity for you to have an opportunity to get to know each other a little bit better. So in your packet is an I am poem form. If you'll take, you know, you know, five or six minutes to complete that form, then we will, that'll be the first activity. And there is a person in the, oh, we have two participants. I thought I saw one with their hands raised, but they're not. Yeah, just check in. Do people need a minute more? Or this was not easy. I'm still confused. So I don't have everything filled out yet. And I'm hoping when people read theirs, I'll judge something for me. Right. So are we ready to begin? Yeah. Purpose of writing an I am poem is to give you each the opportunity to share a little bit about your, your family, your values that come through through the prompts and the poem and it's used, I would say in lots of different contexts, often at the beginning of schools as. As students are gathering with new teachers and new classrooms. And the purpose ultimately is to make the group a strong group by creating bonds among you, which I think will happen as you see similarities in your responses as well as connection points. So if someone's willing to, to go first, they can do that or I can model for you by, by going first. So I'm seeing him hand saying that I should model. So where I'm from, I am from my maternal grandmother's China cabinet filled with cakes from the red wagon that ensured my mother was named airy. I'm from two wrongs do not make a right. And a small yellow salt box home with a jungle gym. I'm from my grandmother's flowers, P&Es and azaleas, whose color and scent remind me of unconditional love. I'm from the music in my grandmother's cafe and the aprons around their waste. I'm from Richards and Leonard's, Kirby's and Nolan's. I'm from gardeners and bakers. I'm from parties and generous hospitality from church on Sundays and Wednesday evenings. I'm from the old rugged cross. I'm from Rosie Kirby and Artemis Fletcher from pound cake and sweet potato pie from Rosie Kirby, a survivor of slavery and Margaret Blithers sold into slavery and separated from a son from the log cabin bank given to me by my grandfather that sits next to my bed. I am from those moments. I garner wisdom, strength, faith, compassion, hospitality and hope. Beautiful. So I have had the advantage of doing this many times, but and of starting it and then coming back to it because I did take a look at it yesterday filled in some of the blanks and was unsure about what to do from the others and then having a second opportunity. So I would suggest at some point for your own benefit is that, you know, we can give you another blank copy and that you do it for, you know, again for yourself because it can be really powerful just to go back to all of those references. So there are no right and wrongs. Each voice will be strong. So whomever would like to begin should do so. So with some of the mics, they will stay on with others. You have to continue to hold the green. Yes, it is. So mine's a bit different where I'm from. I'm from Mysore, India. Use the mic. I am from where I'm from. I'm from Mysore, India, where the king had local power to resolve conflicts. I'm from a home with lots of people all around and lots of children. I'm from a beautiful rose garden where children were not allowed. But we went there anyway. I'm from dance, glittery dance outfits. From Pune, Swami and Parker. I'm from bold, strong and smart women. And from a supportive family. I'm from women who managed the household and all our lives. I'm from Sunday games organized by my church. From women who had, from a woman and ancestor, from a grandmother who had 13 children and eight lived to adulthood. I'm from those as an Idlis. I'm from a passing grandfather, my grandmother pregnant with her 13th child. I'm from poverty, loss of land and home, resulting from my grandfather's death. I'm from a combination of tight family of women, supportive, smart and the church of South India. That's it. Thank you. It's going next. Some of them. All right. Hi. I'm from Lahore. And the tree trolleys from jewelry, my books of romance and clothes, fancy clothes. I'm from big, I'm from big homes surrounded with grounds, with flowers and mango trees of aliche and persimmons. I'm from the flowers. I'm from the big French windows with fresh air breeze circulating whose flowers outside in the spring greeted me on my birthday. I'm from my paintings and my TV that was large. And from Zaman and Khan, I'm from Atlantic and loud and from angry laughter, bipolar from males. I'm from prayer rugs and scarves. As-salamu alaykum, inshallah. I'm from Pathan's and Jalandar Bastis from ice cream, mangoes and Bindi. I'm from Muhammad Zaman and from bureaucrats, postmaster general, collecting make-believe money and digging for aliens below the earth. I am from those moments, person, I'm from those moments with access to privilege that made me evolve. All right. I guess I can go next. I'm from steam radiators, from desktop computers and library books, from white snowy sidewalks and urban community. I am from rabbits under the deck who are always under foot. I am from chemistry exam, from Wolters and Matsuo. I am from traveling endlessly and overthinking everything. And from constant writing, from dinner table discussions. I am from Christmases. I am from Danish migrants to Australia and Danish fishermen, from miso soup and fish, from intercontinental oceanic age of stale voyages and from intercontinental 20th century voyages. I am from University of Minnesota faculty halls and I am from those moments visiting family around the world. I'm happy to go next. I am from a forsythia bush that bloomed every spring from tennis rackets and basketballs. I am from a corner house across from the high school where my immigrant grandparents lived upstairs. I'm from the beach whose ocean is in my veins. I am from a guitar and a baritone sax. From Coladney and Smith, which is not a real name, but one foisted upon us at Ellis Island. I am from makers of good trouble and makers of amazing jazz and from workaholism and speaking truth to power. I am from love your neighbor as yourself. I am from Jack and Lily Smith, but really Smolovich. From chop liver, a recipe passed down from generations and brand new recipes cut from the newspaper. From Jack Smith fleeing home at 14 on foot from Russia through Europe, boarding a boat to Mexico, walking to Guadalajara to live with his brother for a few years and then walking to the United States to live undocumented for decades. And from Harry Coladney watching the Cossacks kill four of his siblings at his childhood home. I am from careening down the rapids on a camping trip. I am from these moments and from generations of trauma and resilience and the dreams of my ancestors. In this moment, all of me is brokenhearted from what is happening in Israel, Palestine. I am from television in the living room with no cable from playing music on the record player and clogs. I am from the house in the middle and cozy. I am from African violets. I am from an infant but who's sassy. And I am from journal and Walkman. From kind and caring. From Johnson and Brown. I am from kind, kind and caring. And from spiritual, from adventurous. I am from Sunday school at Goodwin, Ami Zion. I am from Phyllis and Adele from macaroni and cheese called Al Capone. From Nova Scotia in Alabama to Massachusetts and from Blank, the legal vision video games. I am from these moments guided by Johnson and Brown. I am from a deck of cards when Shuffle makes a pretty picture. I am from Totola, St. Thomas and the South. I am from a blended family with my mom, her two sisters, her best friend and all of the kids. I am from laughter and folks all around. I am from a concrete structure where we struggle during racial tension. I am from a bowling ball and running shoes. I am from Skeleton Todman's and Robert Frazier Scales. I am from family reunions and cookouts and from clam bakes. I am from a family who prays together and stays together. I am from Goodwin Memorial, Ami Zion Church. I am from Maddie, Virginia and James Alfred and from chickens and ham as those were my grandparents mainstays. I am from a dad who never went to college but worked very hard and a mom who finished college at the top of her class and from a mom who died way too soon. I am from the moments who taught me how to love unconditionally. I don't think that mine is completely finished but I'll go with what I have. So I am from Bleeding Heart Flowers, from Rotary Phones and Walkmans. I am from a place that defines community and where it takes a village to raise a child. I am from the woods whose trees became forts and streams were hopped over from rock to rock. I am from roller skates and merry-go-rounds from Walker family to the Moisten family. I am from love and laughter and where all the neighborhood kids were cousins. I am from adoption. I am from a Catholic church that did not accept me and then I skipped down to like I am from collet greens and pies and an old black woman with silver purple hair sitting on porches. Thank you everyone. So during lunch we'll have another opportunity to do an exercise to get to know each other. We have a bingo card that we'll share. So I can continue on with the agenda or I can turn it over to the co-chairs to, I don't know if you've had an opportunity to think about how you wanted to go through the rest of the agenda. I'm personally okay with following the agenda as is. So if you want to just lead with the bylaw review. So next on the agenda is the bylaw review and in your packet you have a document that includes language of the current bylaw as well as the proposed changes. So I think it might be wise to just give you a few minutes to review those documents and then we can enter into discussion. So the chart looks like this. So before we do that or while we're doing that, I'm just curious, before we do that, I'm just curious whether the town manager has looked at this and what his response has been. So I have not yet received any additional updates from whether the document has gone on to legal. Excuse me. Can I have a question? Can I ask you that? Yes. Basically right now that what we are looking at over here, that is the charter and the modifications that we need to do. So this has been in the process for a few, I guess for some time, I guess, because I just entered this commission last month. So Tyler and Ronnie and Hamela all worked diligently to make the proposed changes and it's been with the town manager, which it then needs to go to legal and then come back. Okay. No, this gives me a good context as to the situation right now. All right. Thanks. Folks need a few more minutes or are you? Actually, I'm done. Thanks. I'm all set. If we're all ready. So I was just going to wait for Tyler to get back to his seat and then I think we can do just a little bit of an overview about the process, how we got to the revised vision and then you can ask additional questions. So last year at the HRC retreat, the commission decided that they wanted to undertake a review of the existing HRC bylaws and the proposed changes to the bylaw. Philip Ronnie and Tyler, and I think at one point, Ben Harrington worked on looking at the existing bylaws and making suggestions at the end of the process. It was primarily Philip Ronnie and Tyler who were making final suggestions for the proposed changes to the, to the bylaw. Amendment occurs in town requires that the commission make a recommendation for changes to the town manager who then has the authority to accept or not accept or send them on for a comment. At this point, the, the bylaws, I believe were sent to the town manager. I want to say May or June. Yeah, yeah, I think it was May or June, but it might have, it might have been later and we are waiting to hear back from the town manager about a response to the recommendation. So. I think I think that it was sent to the town manager May, June, like they mentioned before I came on the commission, but because it had been sitting and nothing had been done, we decided to give it a second go. And so we revised it again and gave it to the town manager in July since it wasn't going anywhere. We did a further revision. I think that we really sort of need from the town manager and the town manager and answer about when he's going to answer. So the, the last conversation I had with the town manager, so he got the final revision from the commission and he requested that I create the chart that's before you so that has the original bylaw side by side with the proposed changes. So we're at the, you know, we're at a position where we're looking for his response, but it's also because we haven't gotten a response. If there are additional changes or suggestions, then this is an opportunity to, to make further changes. So I have a lot of questions. And can I just like jump into them. First of all, I have a big question, which is, what is the town manager who is a hired person get to have a commission or to negate the work of a committee, like structurally procedurally, that makes no sense to me. And I'm not, I'm just going to lay out all my questions. I don't actually expect the answers to that one. The next question I have is the definition and the proposed change for 3.3 are totally different gender. The first, the existing bylaws about gender identity and the gender identity. So I think that's a much more broad reaching paragraph. And I don't understand. Yeah. How you was there. They're just not parallel. So was there no language with this broad reaching. These broad reach reaching demographics. So I actually think you're probably pointing out an inconsistency. I think the, the first paragraph definition was to change language and for it to be consistent throughout, but it went back and forth through several different edits. And that's probably a miss. So if you'll flag where you, where you think that there's inconsistency of language. There was a lot of time spent on the definite, the first paragraph definition. And that is the definition that I, I think that the HRC wanted to see consistently throughout. And I will. And in some ways, I hate that we're doing this before we get to the charge. I actually, that was probably an error on our part. But in response to your first question. The, the board by town charter and by bylaw is advisory. So it, there are only to my understanding, I think one or two boards that have more authority to like direct the actions of the, of the, of the town, but every, all of the other boards actually serve in an advisory capacity. Yeah. So it would make sense to me that the town council has the authority to review our charter and our bylaws and give final decision making, but it doesn't make sense to the town manager who's hired by the town council has that authority. Just in terms of like basic standard governance design, that doesn't make sense to me. But, you know, I, I don't, I don't know where the place is to address that. I would just say that in the proposed changes between the very first one, they're not parallel. And it doesn't seem like the proposed change quote unquote should replace the definition of gender identity. It seems like it just, there should be a gen, a definition of gender identity. So that, that was the only one I saw that didn't make sense to me in terms of lack of parallelism. In general, I will just say that reading through the proposed changes, I had to work really hard to find out to see what was different. And I'm wondering if other people had the same, because the changes that were not highlighted in any way. And so in order to try to be thorough and make sure I got everything right. I had to work really hard and I'm not sure I did find everything that was actually a change. So like in the second section, I don't think genetic info is in the new paragraph. I don't know why it was taken out. I could see additions and the additions made sense to me. So that's just a question. Moving right along in the very long section D of the role of the human rights director and in addressing complaints. I'm very clear that it's your job to do the investigation when something has been raised, but I'm not sure what our job is in reviewing or assisting or informing. So I'd love to know the answer to that. So we're going to go over the, the complaint process, but I will say that there was a lot of discussion among the HRC members last year about the role that the commission has or actually it should be more blunt about the lack of actions that the commission as a body can take. There's some historical rationale for why that doesn't occur. And, but I think again, that is up for discussion. And I, you know, so Ronnie and Tyler can probably speak more to their thinking about the specific changes that were made in the in the document. So maybe I should stop talking, but I just have a couple more questions and then Ronnie and Tyler, you can just fill every all of us in on all of this. Maybe just two more questions. Yeah, two more questions. And section five, which I don't know what page it is because they're not paginated, but you know, if you keep scrolling down, if voluntary action is not forthcoming or deemed by the director to be inadequate. The director shall after notice to all persons involved and I don't really see what the difference is, but one of the potential actions that you could take Pamela is to report things to the Massachusetts state police. And so I'm like, our criminal act complaints coming to this body and why would we assess a criminal complaint before it goes into the criminal justice system. If this is in fact a system by which I'm forgetting the word now, but there's a formal legal word when you. So it's not an adjudicatory body is that where. Well, I'm just confused like yeah, if it's not, then why would a criminal complaint come to us? And if it's criminal complaints don't come to us, why would we refer something to the state police? We get all kinds of complaints. And so sometimes we need to figure out where those complaints actually lie. So that may be why that statement is there. Okay. So then it's, it's, that's a matter. Then we wouldn't do any analysis of it. We would just decide where to move it. Okay. Yeah, so this preface then if voluntary action is not forthcoming or deemed inadequate, that doesn't seem like it's correct. It's accurate. It seems like there's an initial assessment of whether the complaint belongs to this committee and to the office of DEI. Right. So, yeah, so I will just say that complaints come in a lot of different ways. So they can, a person who's filing the complaint can call the office that happens or they might submit a form online or they could do so in writing. And generally the director and the assistant director will make an initial assessment. So for example, last year when we received an online complaint about the situation with the high school or with the, yeah, it was at middle school, middle school. Yeah. Immediately the response was that, that the complainant should, should file at MCAD because we were, we're not going to be in a position to really invest. Yeah. I totally understand that. That makes all the sense in the world. I just think this language doesn't capture that there should be language that says, you know, upon that will be an initial assessment when a complaint is made as to whether or not it belongs in the scope of authority of the office of DEI and this commission. And if not, it will be directed, you know, to the appropriate venue or something like that. So one other thing to think, oh, I'm sorry. One other thing. So I was thinking if you could figure out or write up some things like that, and then we could think about it and find out and where it goes maybe before the end of the meeting or by our next meeting and next week. So, so what I would say is that there is no complaint process that's described anywhere. So this is the bylaw, right? Not the complaint process, which is another issue altogether. Got it. Okay. So maybe what needs to happen is the complaint process is described and that then language from that is moved into this bylaw in summary or something like that. I hear you, I'm not going to continue talking about it right now. And then my last question on the proposed procedure is that's all new, we need to submit a report apparently to the town manager and civil rights agencies outside of Amherst as we deemed as deemed appropriate. It says we take reasonable precautions to protect privacy interests, but I'm not really clear what the content of the report is supposed to cover. And I'm assuming it's like, oh, we did this, you know, this is what we did all year. Phillip did write and submit a report so that we can send out a copy of the report. I think if memory serves me right, it was about it was like a summary of the actions of the committee. So it talked about the process of looking at the bylaw. It also reported on the number and the types of different complaints that have come in. It requested additional funding for the commission to carry out their cultural events. And you know, someone else, you know, fill in the blanks if they're not going to have things out. Great. And my apologies because it's in my blood. I have a law degree. This is how I look at documents. I just have a general question. Do we get do you, does the office get calls saying not necessarily a complaint, but I have this issue. Where do I take it as opposed to I'm making this complaint to you. So I would say yes, because we get all different types of complaints. So another recent example was that we got a call. With a complain or an issue with the Amherst housing authority. Right. So there are specific federal and state agencies that have authority over the housing authority, which would be the, you know, the best avenue to re. To resolve a complaint with the housing authority, but we don't have a specific public authority. So I'm just going to give you an example of what we can do with our housing authority. We don't have the authority to intervene to the extent that we can. On behalf of folks. So another recent example is that. Someone came into the. Office to make a complaint. Against a private. Sports organization in town. So I mean, as you said, lots of different types of complaints. of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and the Human Rights Commission are places where they can voice a concern. So could I just get clear on how we're handling this, what the processes that you want to follow are we going around and posing our questions or are we going one by one or what are we doing here? I'm not sure how to. So I think it's as co-chairs it's up that decision is up to you. You can ask me questions or you can decide that you want to review paragraph by paragraph. I think that people should just like Deborah did, you know, we've all read the document, we have some questions and voice our questions and see where we go from there to go tediously point by point if there's no point and going to that point makes no point. So we go ahead and deal with the questions Deborah raised because they're all quite significant and ones that we have talked about. So I think Tyler and I can provide background on some of that. I'd like to take number one because I was the one who changed the definition. And I think everyone felt like the focus on gender was not sufficient that the Human Rights Commission has a broader mandate and so I just went to the UN document that I could find most easily that had a broad based definition and put that forward and I think it got stuck there. I don't think the intent was to somehow reduce the importance of gender but just to have this be more about broader cover everything including gender identity. The second issue was that I think going way back to Ben Huntington. Before you continue I just want to say if that was the only definition, wow, like how did that happen and great that you expanded it and no need to just focus on gender. I totally agree. Okay. The other issue that came up and maybe Tyler knows but this I think went back to Ben Harrington where the definition of gender identity that was given in the previous bylaw was considered flawed and outdated. I didn't address that because I don't have the skills for that but I did focus more on the fact that this is a Human Rights Commission and I felt like there wasn't enough within the commission or in the way we presented ourselves to emphasize human rights and they are very well articulated in so many documents as you know. So I wanted it to be broader. So it wasn't, yeah, so that's what was behind that and I'm certainly open to elaborating on it but I don't want people to read it and think this is a gender commission, it's a commission about all the human rights. So then I'm going to just address one more thing which was the question of reporting to the town manager versus the town council and then that one I think you can add more on Tyler and then you can speak to some other questions that were raised. I think this is really a question we talked about and when we presented or when Philip presented the Human Rights Report to the town council they explicitly asked us to advise them on human rights policy. So I think we should put that in here because they asked for it and I think they understood that was part of our job. I don't think the town manager can negate the work of a commission. What it says here is simply that the town manager may or may not choose to bring it up with the town council but there's nothing stopping us from bringing up an issue with the town council but we may need to be more specific about our mandate to advise the town council to sort of reserve and make explicit our option to go directly to the town council on issues. That's fantastic so maybe I misunderstood Pamela you're saying that these changes went to the town manager and he's supposed to either approve or reject them and that's what I was speaking of like does Paul have the power to say no I don't agree with these proposed changes? One of the questions the town council member asked when we presented the Human Rights Report we noted in there that the bylaws had been changed but we were waiting hearing from the town council and actually one of the town council members asked why hasn't it gone through and has it not and I think I said no it has not it's waiting for the town manager's approval and it still has not been approved so that's why I was saying it would like we would like to know when we'll get approval or what's holding up holding him up from sending it to the legal team that has to look at it from a legal lens. Oh I see so it's a process check to ensure that everything is legally okay it's not his analysis of whether or not he likes this word or that word that's reassuring. Yeah okay yeah I think that I got the impression when Philip presented the Human Rights Report that the town council was very open to the commission and I've had informal communications that they want us to be doing our work and reporting on our work. I think with regards to the complaints process I also definitely want to see a active role for the Human Rights Commission in adjudicating complaints but the problem with that is the volume of complaints and the amount of time that each one demands is simply too great for a commission that meets for a couple of hours once a month to handle. Theoretically it could mean that we end up with complaints sitting for months waiting for review and we don't have the time to conduct even superficial analysis because in the span of a couple hours of meeting we're going to have debate as we try to figure stuff out we won't have as much ability as an individual person would in their spare time to look up corroborating information or even to send a response email to request further information from someone filing a complaint. In general we're just not versatile enough to fill an active quasi-digital role like that. However I think point seven under section D although I don't really remember the full numbering scheme so it could also be section D under point five or whatever but point seven under the complaints process I think is where we end up with a bit more potential for the commission to take an active role. I'd like to see not under the bylaws but under our working procedures and I think that I did leave some notes on that during the bylaw review although I don't have my computer with me now so I can't pull them up to check but I'd like to see something where or complaints that are deemed to be within the scope of the commission that seem to be worth further investigation then the co-chair of the commission bring it to the attention of the entire commission so that we can conduct a more general discussion and I also would like to see some of these processes surrounding reconciliation surrounding any investigation that could be within our purview to be conducted by the commission as a whole for cases of sufficient complexity sufficient gravity that in some way shape or form qualify for broader commission review although of course it is worth noting that any case that comes before us is going to be a very large time commitment on our part so that would not be something for the majority of instances I'd assume. One of the things that we need to be really careful of especially when we have handling complaints is the number of people allowed access to the complaint can sometimes get out of hand when it comes to confidentiality so that's one of the areas in which we really need to be careful as to how many people have access to information. So not just the number of people involved but anything that's before the entire board would have to be done in a public meeting right so there would be no privacy for any of the individuals which is I think traditionally why the practice had been that the director so prior to this role of investigation falling to the office of diversity equity and inclusion it was handled by the human rights sorry human resources director and generally the conversations would be limited between the human resources director and the commission's co-chairs more involvement beyond that means that it's public and the ability to protect the privacy of the individuals is compromised and that way there's also there's specific state legislation which allows for an exception to the open meeting law if the conversation is mediation which is why it talks about mediation and because the body does not have the authority to subpoena or to mandate participation it has to be voluntary. So if if either of the people involved in the allegation are wrongdoing are unwilling to come before the commission or to interact with the director there's nothing that can be done. So we did start to discuss some options for that normally the commission would meet in person and so everybody in the public would hear the complaint but we did talk about options where instead of just going to the co-chairs because the co-chair seemed to know all the details of all the complaints and I said well what do we do what why have the rest of us. I think we can pick a subgroup we can pick any two people from the commission per complaint so that's an option we talked about it doesn't have to be the co-chairs it may be that it's about an issue that Debra knows more about or is one and knows more about and so that way the commission the commission all the commission's resources come into play and it's not just the co-chairs who are always involved in the cases and at the same time you maintain the confidentiality of the of the parties involved I don't know what happened to that idea but I had come forward with that and Jen has her hands up. I was going to say that that Jennifer had her hand up one time ago. So I was just going to give some more historical context about the way that the human rights complaints have been handled in process so at one point the chair would participate with the acting with the director of human resources who was also the director of human rights in the complaint process when it came to the mediation piece of it and the advice and then at some point it was kind of hard to schedule a time to have the chair to come so this has gone back and forth within these bylaws of different ways based on who is that in the commission and how much they can participate and so at that point the chair wasn't able to come so then it was just the human rights human resources director and then it became the human resources director and then I was reporting back to the human rights commission leaving out the major details about the individual themselves but the thought process was if we reported back and say within six months there were eight complaints about I don't know Jim Dandy's ice cream shop right then that would be a cue for the human rights commission to kind of want to step in and get a little bit involved or find out what's going on or find a way to really approach Jim Dandy's ice cream shop right because that there was a pattern that was there because there were so many complaints and so this is something that forever changes because of the people who serve right not everybody can always leave work to come and sit in a mediation period so it's forever changing so I don't know if you necessarily want to have it so finite that it doesn't leave room for the flexibility for the next group of people who come in but I also understand that you don't want it so broad and I having so prior to the pandemic these meetings were held in public in a room you know maybe two or three people would attend the meeting but it could you imagine trying to bring a complaint to the HRC in that manner and then there was the thought about going through executive session and then having that person approach the group during executive session however depending on who it is the person who they're complaining about or the entity that they're complaining about could still somehow be in there right like if you think about it if they know that they're going to the Human Rights Commission and its executive session that both individuals could be in the room and when they break for executive session one person leaves but the other one doesn't so to some degree there's this need to protect the complaint if right that's the most important thing so that's just a little bit of history that goes back it just shows a lot of change yeah that's really helpful I want to clarify I'm not arguing that the Human Rights Commission should be the entity that you know overseas the complaint process at all Jennifer what you just mentioned really something you just mentioned really appeals to me since I've been here I haven't seen any reports on the aggregate number of complaints the categories of which the complaints are whether or not there are any patterns in terms of the folks who are being accused of you know doing something that would fall within our purview so I have no information whatsoever of what the history is and what the current docket is and it does seem to me that if we're going to be in some relationship with this process that we should at least get informational reports and yes they can be totally purged of identifiers of names right and I would love to know if there are any patterns you know so I think and then if there are I think that's something for us then to discuss and I I totally hear the public information you know the the nature of the public information requirements and how that limits our capacity to take action and if in fact it can be the co-chairs or two designated individuals that doesn't require that public facing you know transparency that's that would be great so to look at that if we look at part H not less than twice a year the director in conjunction with the town manager should inform the commissioner of the director's activities that's where we would get some of that information and given that I had a question about that does this happen in writing or during one of our monthly meetings and then the other question or comment that I want to make other than what's already been discussed because I had some of some other questions but we've already discussed them is we have now given this our town manager our report twice it is now october so he's had it for at least three months and what is our next step to say to him hello we really need to get moving on this so I don't have proposed that we report to the town it is on what's off I would propose that we report to the town council on this retreat and that we're limited by the fact that our bylaw has been stuck with no no idea of when it might even be released I wanted to make one other comment and it's about the complaints which I think it's really an important part of our function so I do want to see the commission involved and I think it can be done protecting confidentialities it does require that we be honest about our availability and not just jump on cases unless we're willing to put in the time that's required to do that so I think that two things so obviously I think reporting back to the town council that's probably a smart move to do on the issue of the complaint what Jennifer and I have done previously is we've made the co-chairs aware of complaints that have come in and the since the annual report which included everything through the end of June I don't believe we've had like Jennifer can correct me have we had a formal complaint come in that's my other concern that there were only seven complaints in all of last year on the report and I I saw it when the when I saw the annual report and I thought well what only seven complaints in all of Amherst that seems shockingly low to me so that's one of the reasons that I felt the definition should be made clear and put out then there should be education to the public I would say the I would say the majority of the community probably does not know that this is a process what I would say is prior to working for the town I did not know that this was an option and so when you think about whether or not if you knew it was an option before you became involved in the HRC too it just kind of shows that this isn't out the way that it should be and then the other thing is we there's only so much that HRC can do so some people are turned off by that right like we're there's not much that we can actually do we can't sanction anybody we can't go into any entity and say you have to do this or do that we can you know for the most part what we do is is bring people along that driving to say bring it along the journey of the complaint process right so help them get to MCAT help them get to the labor law you know whomever general attorneys general's office if they need help with getting paperwork or information to them we help with that but there's only so much that we can do I will say with that being said though it's very interesting that I have seen things change very quickly when an entity gets a phone call from the director of the human rights right like when you get that call from the town some people do move to make the changes that are needed in order because they just it you know even though they might not know that we don't really have any there's nothing that we can do having that phone call come in can change the behavior sometimes it's also important to document these things so that we have an idea as Deborah was saying earlier I think if we start to see patterns of types of complaints and those can be taken up by appropriate bodies within town I completely agree and but the other thing is that's why it's so important to have people fill out the form itself so that because that way we have an actual document it's not necessarily just a phone call and then you're working with them having them complete that and so for people we will have them come in I will type up their complaint for them in the form and then have them sign off on it if you know they feel like they can't do that but it's important that it goes through that process of the form so that we have that actual documentation there and it stays and it's housed in a in a space where you know we can pull stuff out from excel we can pull all of the the complaints out of you know through an excel spreadsheet yeah I have a question also is anyway crest people are involved in this process of complaint documentation or mediating are just the process the crest people not currently no no so I just want to say that um when I read the H of the bylaw and read the process or the lack of a process last year when I started the position I had a very strong reaction I think that creating a commission that takes on more of an adjudicatory process of investigating reviewing complaints and trying to respond to them in my opinion is a little bit ill advised because you do not have the authority to act upon them and so there is a real wrist and people feeling that this is an avenue that can provide them with you know with a resolution to a problem when you don't have the authority to do it so one of the things that I mean and the commission felt very differently than that so you know you as a body will just decide what you want to do in the retreat materials from last year I provided the and you all have those copies of the those documents because they were emailed to you provided examples of the work that's being done by human rights commissions across the Commonwealth some do very little some attempt to do very a lot and I think the important thing is to try to find the middle ground where you are both being you know effective in your roles but taking on responsibilities that you don't have the legal authority to do is ill advised it's ill advised for the commission and it's ill advised in my opinion for those people who would be making complaints because you can't resolve their problems they the problems have to seek resolution elsewhere and to suggest that we can can resolve a problem when we can't it has to be voluntary it's only mediation and and that's a very limited authority so I several things are popping up for me one is that I think we have agreement in the room that we need to educate the residents of Amherst that this process exists and what it is that it's that it's voluntary potential for reconciliation and agreement that we're not in a judicatory body and to that there I think it would be great to have two people two members of this commission maybe the co-chair two co-chairs that that's what they want to do maybe a co-chair and another person whatever it is to work to support Pamela when an issue a complaint arises where people are interested in voluntary reconciliation so we can support that process add you know whatever expertise intelligence and I don't know whatever we have I also want I just am reminded of this the profound impact that this can have because when I lived in Portland there was an entire organization devoted to victim support services and their job was first of all to provide trauma informed care to those who were harmed and thus then to direct them to whatever process does did work for them in terms of adjudication just as you're describing and then to help maybe even journey with them to assist them as they walked through the process of making a complaint to this body or that body it was very impactful it's not nothing I just want to say it's not nothing and a lot of the people everyone they supported were people who are who did not have privileged resources money you know they couldn't go to daddy and get daddy to hire a lawyer to take care of something right there were immigrants refugees people and poverty people who were traditionally didn't have access to ease of you know solving problems legally so I I just want to say it's not nothing it's actually something very significant but it can only be significant if we actually educate people about what it is and I agree with you Pamela I don't think you know I don't see how we could be in a judicatory body we don't have those rights vested in us so yeah thanks oh and I did want to add that I just for those if anyone in the public is here I just joined the commission in June so when I say I haven't heard or I haven't seen it's only been a couple of months yeah I don't think when I I don't think the idea is that we would do anything more than be part of that reconciliation process but that I would like it not to be so hierarchic that it's only the co-chairs that are notified but that we try to spread it around so that other commission members can be involved in particular because we have so many resources that I think can support and help you all in the process of managing the complaints um that's on the managing side there's still the education side which I guess we'll talk about what our plan is for that when we get to planning so one suggestion might be um sorry would be to then suggest a revision of the of that section of the by-law to say that um the complaint process will include the HR director and two members of the commission to be appointed by the co-chairs or however I mean I'm just thinking that that that might be a revision that you'd want to include already says the DEI director right and it sounds like you already do work with the co-chairs right that's what I heard from Philip yeah we do work with the co-chairs I'm just saying it doesn't have to only be the co-chairs because the rest of the commission like I joined then wasn't until I saw the annual report that I realized there were even any complaints so so I'm thinking that I think you're saying the same thing but a different way yeah I'm just saying it doesn't have to just be the coach right and so I'm saying that what I'm suggesting in is a revision of the by of the by-law to state that because the by-law now talks about the relationship between the director and the co-chairs you so you'd want the language to reflect the director and any two members of the commission so that you would have the ability to appoint any two so Ronnie you would have to make you would have to make a motion that that would be a revision to our by-laws you would then have to hit a second then we would have a discussion and then a vote well I'm not ready to make a motion because I think the motion isn't that the DI director adds on to that work by deciding who the two people will be but rather maybe there isn't a change required that it just comes to the you do what you normally do and we say okay we can't say that if it's not in the by-laws to say it Jennifer I was just gonna say before you yeah before you vote to put that in there it would be great if you really flesh out how that process is going to happen when it occurs right because you don't want to have to wait to have two people choose it in the middle of a meeting because you guys meet once a month and that would be part of discussion via email because that's problematic too exactly wait wait wait as part of procedure that would be part of the discussion so before we go forward if there was going to be a change in the language there needs to be a motion a second a discussion and a vote so all of this that we're talking about is null and void unless we have a motion and a second could can I make a motion before you do that could I just ask that you alert everyone so we all know which text we're looking at like what number is the thing that we're changing so everyone knows what we're voting on and then you can go ahead and so actually I think that this change as I'm looking at it now might have been already included so if you look at the fourth page in your packet uh f six it states the director shall inform the chair and vice chair or co-chairs of the commission of all complaints and utilize any member of the human rights commission with subject matter expertise and provide a summary of the final outcome to the co-chair so I think that would accomplish what you're describing I agree I agree and I don't so so I just have a curiosity and then maybe a different motion this says that you will provide information summary of the final outcome to the co-chairs is there any way that the entire commission can get at every meeting a summary of the current dockets of complaints with no you know totally with identifiers removed so I think you'll you should define what you mean by docket do you mean the name of the complainant or do you mean the type of complaint and when the complaint came in and remember that any document that we produced will be a public record and be right so um if I if we're discussing maybe I need to make a motion about um having um monthly reports to the entire commission that have no identifying information whatsoever but are categorically described so we know if there are uh complaints against commercial establishments and what the nature of the complaint is you know discrimination or refusal to serve or I don't know or is it a complaint against the state's town of Amherst or is it complaint against another municipal entity so I so we know the category of who is who is accused of doing harm and we know the general category of what the harm is and we know how many live complaints there are so for month to month we'll know if there were three live complaints in January and in March there's no live complaints that whatever the things have been taken care of that's not a motion to be very careful no I just need the motion piece you to go back to the motion right because you kind of went on with the motion right because people were asking me for clarification I move that there be information that would there be mandatory reporting to the commission without identifiers no identifiers of the docket of current of active complaints monthly monthly yeah I have monthly reports to the entire commission without identifiers of active complaints so you have a motion by Deborah second by Ronnie discussion the one piece of the discussion that I would like to add to that before a vote is that if we're asking for a report then it is a report not a discussion at either monthly meeting because we can't have too many people discussing all of these complaints so you have to be very clear that it is a report not a discussion so I agree the only other concern is then that goes into your packet which is public so but I would say if you think about it from the person who's bringing the complaint that that might not feel as comfortable as you would like it to well if the complaint were described as being from an individual or a business or you know it it could be anybody right do you think people will feel threatened if we say an individual brought a complaint against a business that had to do I mean here's the thing about making a decision for other people is you just have no idea and so some people are going to feel some kind of way and other people will not I just ask that we take all of that into consideration first so I would make a suggestion that that the report simply be a list of the type of complaint received and the date right that would give you information about the number that was coming on without information about whom the complaint was about against or who or who might have brought the complaint so we received a complaint alleging housing discrimination on blank date or failure to provide access on blank date so you just have the subject matter in the date I see Tyler is trying to speak yeah yeah I'm not sure what would be accomplishing by putting a report in the bylaw as opposed to just the procedures by which we process the complaint my concern is although I don't really see anything wrong with the report right now and I think that for our current needs it's probably a good idea my concern is that making a bylaw overly specific risk 10 years down the line that practice for some reason or another no longer meeting the needs of the community and as we've seen for the over the past year revising the bylaw is a rather complicated process and imposing a monthly obligation on the chairs imagine for example that in 10 years the commission meets once every two months or twice a month and then the needs for updates on complaints changes or if it turns out that monthly reports end up subverting anonymity because everyone can tell within the span of a month what the report was about and then we decide later that it should have been every six months I think that having it in just procedures or in the policies of the human rights department makes it more versatile obviously the disadvantage of that is that then you just need to trust that the human rights department and the co-chairs are going to faithfully see that as a duty keep it in the procedures but I don't think that we have an environment in this town or in this commission where that would be much of a problem at least for the near and medium term and secondly I also see the commission's role in some of these complaints and in any response to the commission as a whole could make as being more of a fact finding role since as an advisory commission we obviously have a huge stake in fact finding and figuring out what's going on in the community so that we can appropriately advise the town manager and council on these issues and I think that that fits in well with our lack of subpoena power because you can still conduct fact finding processes without being able to compel testimony I think as well that that also could fit in the in just general policies rather than in a bylaw but I think that what the commission should be doing in a fact finding role when that should kick in what sort of complaints and what that would look like definitely merits further discussion down the line if not now in the next couple of months as we're looking over the policies for handling complaints in the aftermath of them okay can I just send my motion is that allowed procedurally I totally agree with you belongs in procedures and not in bylaws I think I was driven to make the motion because there's an incredible amount of specificity specificity in these bylaws many of which probably belong in procedures and not in bylaws because what I agree with everything you said you can rescind it does that now negate your question because you had your hand up to respond to something actually I was agreeing with Tyler also because I right now see there's a lot of nitpicking about these details but overall the role of human you know this human rights commission is basically to investigate and complete complaint resolution and and the way we do is by investigating complaints related to human rights violations and discrimination and we mediate disputes conduct hearings and recommend remedies to address these violations so basically I agree you know with what's going on because we need to look into it and more and it should be our responsibility so how we do it is a process that we need to come to thanks so Deborah would you like to now rescind your motion I rescind my motion and I'm look forward to working on the procedures and we might also want to assess whether any of these other line items belong in procedures and not in bylaws and we're okay with that Ronnie as you second yeah I wanted the discussion and we've had it thank you okay no vote necessary motion rescinded so sir any further discussion on the bylaws or are you do you want to move ahead to the commission charge the only other thing that I still have is do we talk about how we get our town manager to either respond or what our next step is if he doesn't respond I think that one of us Pamela should say to him or write to him and CC either the commission or the co-chairs that we he's now been in part um he's now had this document for three months and we're looking for how to proceed based on his recommendation approval or denial and what we need to do in the next steps are you guys like to add that we should ask him when what date we can expect a response from him yes are you making any changes to the bylaw though today well I'm not places I want to clarify this question on number five where we talked about the messages at state police is this okay or is their new language coming from Deborah I do think it's confusing I can offer other language I also have to admit that these are excerpts I have not not seen the entire the bylaws in their entirety and so I say you look at it and respond to to the commission yeah if somebody could get me the entire bylaw document that'd be great thank you and then the last thing that we loved standing was the all new part at the very end are we resolved on that is that okay as is and if not what are we going to do about that I think there was a question raised about just had a question mark here I think you had raised a question about content of that report of the reports right yeah and again you know going back to Tyler's point I don't think this needs to be in the bylaws okay but I do have a curious yeah okay so just to be clear my director from the commission is to have a conversation with the town manager and obtain a date when you can expect a response on the proposed bylaws can I clarify one more point about the question um is he responding to you as he responded to the commission we have a meeting on october 18th we have a meeting on november 15th so those are two dates he we could actually ask him to attend our meeting and respond or is he responding to you I think that's you have the power to decide the answer to that question but you have to decide whether you want to invite him to one of those two meetings or whether you're uh want him to respond to me so in the meantime I'm assuming that we are going by the old bylaws until he approves the new bylaws so I make a motion that we invite the town manager to our october 18th meeting to respond to our proposed bylaws hear from the commission answer any questions and have his approval by our november 15th meeting date made a proposal did we hear a second second all in favor wait is there any question yes um if he's coming on the 18th and he's not due to approve till the 15th what do we want from him on the 18th I want him to be able to come ask us any clarifying questions um see where his head is at um have him challenge us um have us respond to him um have deba ask him all these questions that she has and then have him respond to us he may have questions if he doesn't have questions then he can say I've looked at him and I approve him as of today I support him coming I would like to rethink giving him any kind of november 15 deadline because if he's coming he needs to be able to ask his questions and say yes or no so I'll just so given that given that today is the seventh eighth and we don't have work tomorrow which means he won't get this um proposal or this request until the 10th though he has had the report since the july I proposed that the meeting be on the 15th that gives him more than a month to look at and deal with the situation so I I just want to um um to point out two things that you should think of if you invite him on the 18th and he has questions there's opportunity for you to have a dialogue and then for him to go back to uh legal counsel he's not legal counsel and if your questions require uh review of the attorneys then it you know he's not going to be able to to do that so what I'm not clear about you know I don't think he's making any decision I think he's just passing it on to the legal counsel so why isn't he passing it on I guess is my question it seems like a simple clear thing to do I mean passing stuff on to the legal counsel all the time because we hear in the town council meetings that legal reviewed this and legal reviewed that so the question is why is this not moving along we don't know if it's not moving along and that's one of the reasons why we wanted to come to the meeting to find out where the stuck places I'm sorry we do know that it's not moving along because he hasn't said that he's given it to the legal counsel hasn't I I don't know whether it's gone to legal counsel counsel or not um I I will also point out that the KP law which is the legal counsel for the town represents about two-thirds of the cities and towns in the Commonwealth and as in any you know as in any community as issues arrive some things that are placed on the table get pushed down because of other priorities like so I'm not saying that that should happen but realistically over the last you know few weeks months there have been some very important issues that have risen um up in line on the priority list and that's just a reality of life so are we back at the place where we're inviting um the town manager on I don't believe so yeah great I would just add one small comment that important is a subjective term um that's it so again I made a motion for the 18th excuse me I just would like to add that in between the time of the date 18th can he give us some kind of a response via you and so we get to know what we expecting on that specific date that is the next meeting so can I just say first I made a motion I need a second before all this discussion is supposed to happen okay I'm seconding that motion for October 18th right so a motion made by Elizabeth Haygood second by Ronnie and by Deborah now that discussion that we just had previous to this should come forward and and so I mean I cannot I can propose or ask a question I cannot guarantee or dictate what the response will be understood any more discussion all in favor hi hi hi so opposed any abstentions motion passes six to zero that um Pamela asked our town manager to attend our meeting on the 18th to discuss where we are without bylaw revisions and I commit to checking out that one place when I have the entire bylaws which is does not need a motion I don't think and I have a quite curiosity we have mentioned that there's no procedures in place and we have also talked about like educating the populace about this role of the human rights commission and I don't know how those things move forward they're not bylaw revisions they're just actions I'm just looking at the agenda I really want to be sure we get to point f which is our priorities and goals for 2023 and maybe then we can talk about what those are and how we would do them um yeah I don't want to be completely stuck here and there are procedures by the way right there are no procedures by handling a complaint didn't we review procedures I remember commenting on them so I wanted to say that if are we done with our bylaw review discussion because then we can move on to our commission charge and some of these things will come up and as we go over the commission charge the complaint process and the roles and responsibilities which is the in the next agenda items so I want to ask if people would like to have a five-minute recess yes I was going to say for those of you don't know the restrooms are right outside the hallway on the right hand side okay we are back in our meeting the next item on our retreat is our commission charge panel yeah so the commission charge is page three of your packet and I would give you just a few minutes five minutes or so just to read over it the charge sets the framework for the work that you are scheduled to do as a commission just wanted to give new members an opportunity to have that document in front of them and ask any questions if they have any so it seems that everyone has had an opportunity to read the charge there are two things that I would like to bring to your attention that I noticed the the charge states that four members shall constitute a quorum by vote of the town meeting with the human rights bylaw I'll need to review and double check that that because by number your quorum should be five and it may have been that at the time that the charge was written the commission was smaller in number the second thing that that I wanted to bring to your attention for you to think about is the charge summary one suggestion I would make would be to make sure that the language in the charge summary is consistent with the language of the bylaw that might be a place where you would want to have identical language but that's you know at the discretion of the commission and can I just go up to say the appointed authority is the select board we don't have a select board do we so I think that should say town council and or town manager now I don't think any of these documents including the the appointing committee handbook have been updated since the charter I think that the town council at some point made an attempt to go through and do all of that because they gave a template for what they would want the committee charges to look like so that everyone's was you know the same I think it's just something that they haven't fully completed yet that process for those of you who are new we used to have a select board but we do not have one anymore so that needs to change immediately I have a few questions of clarification about the text sorry were you speaking Deborah they're just questions of clarification so there's reference to to ensure that and to ensure that INSU already and it may be because English is not my first language that I just want to be sure do you mean to ensure and if it is to ensure are we really expected to ensure we have no authority whatsoever so that's just a question I don't really you know I mean I'm fine having ensure in there but I don't know what insurer means so I just want to be clear about that because it's repeated and then I have this question at the very end of the mission where it says and I don't know how I missed this before assist the town manager and human resources and human rights director in the achievement of affirmative actual action and equal opportunity objectives so it would be good if you could circulate those to us because I don't think I've seen a statement of the town's affirmative action and equal opportunity objectives so those are my two questions the affirmative actions were revised and updated I think in 2016 there was an Amherst college intern who came in and created the or revised the current revised the affirmative action goals but we can send those out to you thank you and we also take a look at gender and add gender identity as if you have gender identity and or take out gender and put gender identity or leave them both and whichever I don't care so I'm the language actually you know obviously predates me and I don't but insure is the wrong word right right I think I mean insure insure right exact neither insure nor insure are within our capacity right neither it's within our capacity so I don't matter you don't have to parse that it does matter I'm wondering our process here are we actually editing this in this moment do we need to put out do we need to vote on things like what's our process because you mentioned Pamela that it should be five members I don't think we need to vote that's a fact we move from seven to nine members the quorum is five can we just say that but that needs to be updated so I believe and Jennifer will have to correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that the charge to needs to be corrected and that is outside of the purview of this commission but I the purpose of including the charge in today's retreat was to have everybody understand what the roles and responsibilities in the work of the commission is but in reviewing it last night I noted several things that I think need to be corrected so I don't think we have the authority to correct them but certainly things that need to be corrected we should we should observe and point out so that they can be great so can we go in order can we all agree that the quorum we need to propose to the town council that the quorum be changed from four to five do we need to discuss that I hope not it's like nine members that's just what it is I actually was thinking that the select board language doesn't have to change because this is historical on nine in June 15th 1998 there's no select board for us to be correct so the town council approves our our gotcha so yes thank you so do we need to vote or call a motion can we just say that Pamela you'll also go back to the town council and change the select board to the town council fantastic um and then I have a question um which I don't want us to spend time discussing but I just I have been concerned and confused and weirded out by the fact that I'm a special municipal employee since I joined this commission I'm not an employee I wasn't hired I'm I'm not paid I am a I am a volunteer so I'm not gonna it's not gonna I'm not gonna leave this commission because of this bizarre language but I don't understand it and I don't know that I need to be educated but I wonder if anyone else has that curiosity so that's coming up and that's in the you are by legislation so regardless of whether you whether you want to be or not by state legislation you are considered so yeah I don't like that either and I was given same answer I think that's just what they want to call us and they can do what they want but as I see it I'm a volunteer by any definition in any statute other than this one an employee is someone who's hired and paid you know but whatever okay moving right along I think that's why specials in front of it because it's not the same moving right along all right so we only have two things that need to be changed so that they're accurate on that first page on our mission the next page um Liz said wait aren't there there are three things on the committee charge that need to be changed oh what was the third so the inshore part the appointing authority that's on the commission is that all right also in the committee charge yeah oh oh I see I see yeah yeah yeah so what word should we use I think the intent was ensure and I fully understand that we cannot ensure but I think that was the intent anyway we don't write this document the we just need to understand what it's saying because and isn't the appointing authority the town manager though he appointed you guys well not town council under the charter I believe it's the town manager who's there they would have to approve your charge we probably have to go to Gia governance legislation and organization but or TSL one of the two I could swear the town council voted on our appointments they did they do but the town managers appointing you right okay yeah they're simply approving his action but he's taking the action so rather than us debate what the right word is I think maybe Pamela if you could go back to whoever and say that that word inshore is not accurate and ask them to modify it so that it's appropriate so we don't have to work at and then that we'll do whatever they do if they change it we'll change our mission which is on the next page to use the same maybe use the same word or since it's our mission are we in charge of that document of this few paragraphs there's some other things in here on go back to the committee charge and the commission in conjunction with the human rights director should say the DEI director so under the current deaf definition of the responsibilities of the DEI director the DEI director has wears both the human rights director and the DEI director hat so in the proposed bylaw we noted that the human rights director is currently the DEI director so I think you can leave that language as is but do a hashtag and put both I'm just asking hashtag was that thing that backslash back backslash it is but they're also the town manager could appoint another person to be the human rights director like at one point we had just a specific human rights director which was different so the town manager is the appointing individual there so that's I do think that there's another point that's somehow simultaneously overly technical and overly broad but might be worth looking at which is that a kind of central part of our charge and mission and it's also repeated in the bylaws is that our duty is to ensure that no person public or private I don't know exactly what it means by public or private with reference to a person I'm pretty sure that's meant to incorporate corporations in which case there's a whole nother thing there but shall be denied any rights guaranteed pursuant to local state under federal law on the basis of and then it lists a variety of protected classes my issue with that is I know under federal law at least and under state law as well and I'm fairly confident under local law it already states that if there's a right in that law it can't be denied on the basis of any of those classes it seems like a bit of a redundancy like obviously I can see why it's in there because our mission is to ensure the 14th amendment equal protection is implemented but the way how it's phrased seems to introduce a degree of redundancy and I wonder whether that bears relevance upon our mission in the way that we should be conducting our duties I'm not sure the answer to that question Tyler but I appreciate your focusing our attention on that paragraph because I didn't even just skip right by it and I have another concern there so while we're holding open the question that Tyler raised I want to say that affectionate or sexual preference is outdated language that is no longer used sexual orientation is the phrase that's used and lifestyle I think likens to the same outdated language although maybe it's supposed to mean something else like if you live I don't know in a multi-generational house I have no idea but I think it's alluding to the garden under a bridge so that was my suggestion is that whatever language is adopted for the bylaw be replicated here so that you're consistent in your language for both the bylaw and the charge and so is this mission statement what's in the bylaw I'm trying to figure out the next page or what's the mission no it is not so the the bylaw language is the proposed bylaw language is very different from either the charge or the mission so is the proposed bylaw change what you that first yeah so so the proposed bylaw definitions and I you know this is the current bylaws are is a historical document so I don't know why only gender was defined under definitions but if you looked at the proposed bylaw where there's a definition of human rights I would suggest that that definition be carried forward from the bylaw to the committee charge to the mission statement and so I'm very sorry then this is out of order I see that this new revised definition does not include sexual orientation right I think that that you had pointed that out so before and there was a little bit of discussion about why can can I make a motion to just add sexual orientation to that original definition and carry it throughout I actually hadn't noticed it before I was just confused yeah but that thank you I second that motion all in favor yes I okay unanimous and then in terms of using that definition both for the bylaw and sorry both for the charge and also for the mission sounds great yeah all right so just to clarify the proposed definition of human rights is going to have an we're going to add sexual orientation to the list of categories and then the suggestion will be that that definition be used both for the charge and the mission statement yes I so there was such an emphasis on the gender piece because at the time there wasn't really anything about gender and there was something that was going on nationally when it was revised the last time where it needed to be put out the different ways because you know year after year we become more progressive to some degree and so I think it was really to bring a broader awareness to gender identities I don't think that we had a problem with that I think the other the problem was that it didn't include anybody else except for those under gender identity yeah I I think there's so there's there's one other category and I'm sorry to open up a can of worms but I think it's an important one for us and that is civic participation that it's not included and we do have a right to participation in our systems of governance locally and it's not in that definition is it okay I'm sorry I didn't hear you so I'm sorry that's why I'm looking a little bit yeah that's right so what's not included in the definition and I'm sorry I said I'm sorry to open up a can of worms is civic participation and you know things like our right to vote and so on those are I don't know how strongly people feel about those things but that's an issue in Amherst right now because green card holders refugees a whole bunch of people who live in Amherst who are not able to vote in our local elections so it may be sort of a hot thing to topic to introduce at this point when you have a big agenda I know that but it could also be an easy solution like in my mind it's really clear so I'm just so I'm I'm just trying to figure out what it is you're suggesting we do so maybe add civic participation along with the let me just say this I'm making a motion to add civic participation along with other categories to the definition my confusion is second my confusion I second it and my confusion is that in your definition of civic participation I think you included citizenship status but that's no not citizen just saying that people who live in Amherst should have a right to vote in town elections and participate in town meetings and so on and so forth and right now they cannot they cannot vote so that's why I brought up the voting people people who are not US citizens may not vote in town elections and that's on you I mean a lot of towns around the country allow residents to vote I totally agree with what you want but I don't understand how it relates to this paragraph because this is an articulation of the basis on which people are protected so if you added civic participation to that paragraph what that reads to me is that I can't be discriminated against because I'm on the Human Rights Commission and I say something that annoys someone else right that's different than what you want to accomplish I'm saying agree with what you want to come so I'm just saying I don't see how it belongs in this paragraph I'm saying that this is a paragraph that defines what our human rights are and we do have a right I see it as a human right to be able to participate in your government in your local government but I don't want to take too much time debating it if there are issues it's something I do plan to bring up actually when we get to our goals yeah yeah I agree with that but then we will have to add refugees and asylum seekers and there's no we're not adding people are talking about rights not about people I am assuming that you are saying that I cannot be discriminated against because I'm a democrat not a republican or an independent and have the right to vote in any town as opposed to those who do not have the I don't want to say right because our legal or whatever it is based on their status I'm thinking that you're protecting those of us who have the right to vote or have the right to have a difference of opinion about certain political town national statutes as opposed to those who don't have those rights yet based on their status as immigrant foreigner whatever way you want to put it just to clarify the town of Amherst has actually said that it is fine for residents of Amherst to vote in town elections but the state of Massachusetts has not approved it so it's something that if we put it in we would take up as an advocacy measure but I that's why I'm happy leaving it out I just felt like I should mention it let's discuss it in a different forum and Ronnie nobody's disagreeing with you I don't think you're hearing what we're saying we agree with you I'd love for everyone to have the right to vote but civic participation as a human right I don't think that's that's the language that's going to get where us where you want so nobody's saying we don't want to take it up or that it's you know it's or that there's conflict about it so it is it is in stated in human rights in other human rights laws but that's just my suggestion is that it should be there because it's a human right but if people disagree that it should be there then you know I don't think we're disagreeing that it's a human right I think we're disagreeing on who based on the laws of Massachusetts has that right or something like that this is a list of who gets access so in order to achieve what you want to achieve it would have to say something like non-citizens right this is this says if you're queer you get to vote if you're black you get to vote if you're Jewish you get to vote so we would add if you're not a citizen you get to vote okay civic participation yeah that's a category in which the right is applied I do think that also right now um us all of the documents it's pretty consistent in that it doesn't define specifically what rights we're protecting instead it points to other sources the definitions gives the broadest possible explanation of rights that we have simply because we exist as human beings the remainder of the documents defer the question of what rights were supposed to protect to local commonwealth or federal law I think that the right to civic participation which is very poorly protected under federal law if at all I mean our Constitution was never properly amended to we don't even elect a president directly so okay yeah I focused on the part that just said these rights are inherent to us all but that is fine I'm withdrawing my request and I think Ron, Pamela has the so I think that the current definition which is an attempt to list human rights very broadly could include some language around civic participation so I pulled up the universal declaration of human rights and they actually have three statements in the document and so it might be worthwhile to think a little bit about how it could be included but article 21 states everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country directly or through freely chosen representative sub clause two everyone has the right to equal access to public service in his country and the last one the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government and this shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures so I do think that there is room for civic participation perhaps just a little bit more thought about that term how to term it but I feel I would say that it's an appropriate place for in that first paragraph so I just thought in my head the I think our stuck place was resident versus legal by defined by federal law or the Commonwealth of Massachusetts legal resident so citizen that's where I think we got stuck yeah so I don't know that that that Ronnie in her first motion mentioned anything other than civic participation did you list is the definition as it's currently proposed doesn't include that it just says human rights so this is how I would envision that paragraph human rights are those rights we have simply because we exist as human beings they are not guaranteed by any state these universal rights are inherent to us all regardless of nationality sex gender sexual orientation national or ethnic origin color religion language or other status they range from the most fundamental the right to life to those that make life worth living such as the right to food education work their health civic participation and liberty so I think you could make make that addition without there being any reference to citizenship or immigration status I agree it does belong in terms of grammatical consistency and that's that last sentence I guess I'm concerned about civic participation we want to talk about voting then we should say voting because civic participation could be the right to go to a town square and speak your mind or write a letter to the editor or you know convene a march and I don't want to have confusion about it I'm happy to say vote because be part of the democratic process or whatever you want to say I'm open to other thoughts because is there something wrong with leading a demonstration in town if you're not uh do you have to be a citizen to do that no no no no Ronnie Ronnie I agree 100 with you please stop looking for ways you think I disagree I want to start there I agree 100 I'm trying to secure what you want the word civic participation to me does not say voting what what does to you you want to say voting yeah I mean I I don't want to limit I want to have the full expanse of what you want to be unequivocally understood to me voting is limited it's limited to a very specific thing civic participation is broader um so I chose the broader option but I'm I'll go with voting if that's what that's the current I think that what Pamela read is what we should be adopting and just leave it at that I'm sorry what Pamela read something that added civic participation that does include voting that does include demonstration that does include free speech that does include all of those things that we keep going back and forth about but we're all again on the same page saying it differently yeah so Pamela could you repeat what you read human rights are the our rights we have simply because we exist as human beings they are not guaranteed by any state these universal rights are inherent to us all regardless of the nationality sex gender identity interrupt you're reading what we have here I I think it was what you drew from the universal it's getting there okay so um these universal rights are inherent to us all regardless of nationality sex gender sexual orientation national or ethnic origin color religion language or any other status they range from the most fundamental the right to life to those that make life worth living such as the rights to food education work health civic participation and liberty that just says the word civic participation when you said that Pamela captured it I what I went back to is what you read from the universal declaration of human rights I'm not going to object to the use of the phrase civic participation I just find it vague and I oh you find it vague yeah so here's one thing that I would offer so I think that this definition is meant to be very broad and and encompass a lot it's simply an example right so it doesn't state every category which is why you have they range from the most fundamental to and I think by I would agree with Ronnie that using civic participation is as a broad term is probably wiser than using voting as a specific term because of the state and federal laws that would encompass who can who's who's eligible to vote who's not so by saying civic participation you avoid that because everyone has a right to civic participation and it might vary by class depending on whether you're a citizen or a non-citizen or some state some cities as you pointed out allow non-citizens to vote others do not but if you use the broader term you there's an avenue for people to to to have discussion about all of those specific things if you look at it a little differently we have a right to food we have a right to shelter so if you take a look at we have a right to food according to certain folks we're supposed to have three meals a day plus two snacks but it doesn't say we have a right to three square meals a day and plus two snacks it says we have a right to food I think that's the difference in what each of us are struggling with all right so you're going to entertain a motion to to make that final or was it the motion was made is there a second to add civic participation to the definition I'll second discussion in favor I'm assuming we had discussion I see six hands and we have six members so motion passes normally does all right so we are up to the complaint process and and then we'll we'll hopefully we'll we'll have a working lunch as we talk about cultural events and I'll have to dash out to pick up lunch in a few minutes so there there's no document in your package that details the complaint process because the process has not been formula formally written before and Jennifer and I can explain what has happened traditionally so the complaint process complaints come by come in by phone walk-in email email or online so anyone can make a complaint to the commission by basically any method generally Jennifer and I will connect with the person who's made the complaint the complainant ask them to come in and meet with us for for further to gather further information that we have a an in-person meeting with them we may take a statement and additional information they will have an opportunity to review that statement to make sure that we've captured the information correctly we'll investigate the allegations that are that are alleged which means that we're going to speak with all of the parties the best example or most recent example would be to to think about the complaint that we received from a member of the community last year alleging that the town's building inspector had had taken actions that were based on racial discrimination so we spoke with all of the parties involved so the named parties the person who brought the complaint everyone the person who was alleged to have done the wrongdoing and then all of the peripheral parties right because there were other folks who were involved through that process we took statements from everyone they were summarized and sent to them for further review or for clarification you know did did we hear the information that you reported to us correctly and they had an opportunity to correct any misstatements that we had made and that case we also actually went sought expertise from outside of the town so that case involved whether a ramp in two different locations in town met the requirements of the massachusetts office of disability so an m o d representative came out saw both locations spoke with both parties further we got gathered further information from from from the m o d rep and then based on all of that information we then come to a conclusion about whether we think that there has been any wrongdoing and what then asked the parties to to enter into a voluntary mediation right because we can't necessarily take action against anyone and that case the one of the parties the parties were not interested in voluntary mediation and they decided to pursue other avenues so the conclusion of the of the investigation was that there was no discrimination and that's actually was based on a lot of a lot of material based on the conversations based on on documents that have been submitted into the building instructor and the history of interactions between the building instructor and the parties so i mean that one was certainly i would say a rather complex case with lots of like different information from different sources but the end result is that you know we as a body this body or the hr the human rights director can adjudicate a case we can make suggestions we can ask people to enter into a voluntary mediation but if they choose not to do that then there's very little that we can do there were some suggestions made um to the town about how they might approach the work that they do differently for the future some and again you know not as a body can't order folks to do it but we can at least provide some insight um and i ask a question about that i wonder if um you know if you're the complainant and it's been determined that your rights have not been violated then you're going to be less inclined to participate in some kind of mediation right what's the incentive to actually participate in mediation if it's been decided that you have there hasn't been a violation so i i think there in this case and this one was very unusual right and that the allegation that was brought was not brought by the party who was alleged to have been discriminated against so a and i would say a third party so your motivation could be for a positive change to prevent it like you this the person who brought the complaint um did not have a direct relationship to the action because in the way that the bylaw is written anyone can bring a complaint to the commission to allege um any wrongdoing so there's there would there would not have been a remedy for that individual if we had found discrimination i think um had there been you know so i have a question also i actually think that the um that the strongest resource that we have is the right is the resource of referral right um referring people to mcad or other state agencies making them aware of um what rights they have and other avenues for pursuing their complaints is what really the human rights director can do best um this will come up in the later discussion for one when we talk about cultural and other events but there was um one of the events that we have planned for december for the community is a know your rights event where the mass commission against discrimination has uh volunteered to come and do an evening presentation and they will provide a bilingual trans translation for that so informing i think the educational piece is where uh i think that this commission has the um has the has is an area of growth for this commission and where you can have the biggest impact because there is just no adjudicatory power in the in the case with the building inspector there is probably more of an opportunity to see change right because it's one town department informing another town department and the town manager about systems or policies or procedures that we think that they might be able to do differently but if it's external to the town you know there's there is absolutely you know no authority for me um to have over any private business or one of the colleges or you know we can make these recommendations but there's there's very little power behind the suggestions at the time make any changes that that were recommended by the e i so to be honest i don't know i'd have to ask the question i have is given that we are a regional school district do the other three entities have access to human rights within their towns or are we just amherst or do we also oversee levitt-pellum shrewdsbury so the way that the bylaw is written anyone right who is within the town of amherst so a student if they lived in one of the other communities but attended amherst public schools that student or parent could take advantage of of the human rights commission because the action occurred in the town of amherst so only if it if it occurred in amherst not if it occurred in shrewdsbury or levitt okay most of the cities and towns in massachusetts have a human rights commissions i mean that i don't know specifically about shrewdsbury or levitt but almost all of the cities and towns have some human rights commission or board another question regarding this is there any has there been any incident where the town had to pay and you know pay off somebody for their grievances they sued and so on i am just curious so that have come through the human rights commission because i mean i think the answer to your broad question is has the town ever settled any complaints would be yes i don't know of complaints that have been settled that have been brought to the attention of the human rights commission but again my knowledge is limited to the last year so this is we just received information from barnstable for their second invitation for us to participate in one of their human rights forms i'll call it a form do we ever interface with specifically levitt pellum and shrewdsbury and i'm only asking for them because of our regional school districts so i have not um but i think that's a you know that's certainly a possibility in the last year the the only other um well i'll say this so there is a massachusetts dei coalition so diversity and equity directors from around the commonwealth have formed a coalition and through that coalition we get i get lots of information about different activities around the state to share out so we're connected through them we've had some conversations with the dei director in springfield and the dei director in pitsfield there i don't know of other specific dei directors in the western massachusetts um in in addition the other board that has had that has reached out to um to addition to to collaborate with additional communities are the disability access and advisory committee and they have done some work with the north hampton their north hampton counterpart but certainly that's something that you know the commission could pursue thank you and jennifer had her hand up before jacinta came in and i would also before jennifer speaks welcome just sent her to our meeting yes welcome jacinta i would just say that we have not had a lot of connection with any of the human rights commissions i don't know that levitt and shrewdsbury have their own or not i know that we've had connections with the north hampton's human rights commission in the past um and i don't know but locally about the other one towns either like south hadley or grand bay well the only reason i'm asking is because i remember when we did our um when we did our joint meeting for fair housing affordable housing with um we invited we put our flyers in our schools which meant that folks from levitt and pellum and shrewsbury were then informed that we were having this so that's why i was specifically interested in those three because of our regional schools um any i'm sorry i thought i had a press as we're looking at formalizing the procedural um a complaint process that would also include formalizing or documenting the complaint process so that there would be um public facing information about what people can expect when they file a complaint any other questions about our complaint process yeah i would like to know uh how long will this take this you know formulating uh process and the complaint process so there was a lot of work done on that last year and i actually um uh included at the last retreat some suggestions for what a complaint process might look like i i think you know we could certainly put that information back on the your agenda and and um you could you know vote up or down whether you're interested in or making changes so then we go then be excellent it'll be so nice yeah i would appreciate that as well and it sounds like from our earlier discussion we added to this which is that when a complaint is filed um you will part of the process it's a contact with co-chairs right um because i didn't hear you articulate so it's uh 12 uh five after 12 so i um might suggest that you have um begin your working lunch while i go to pick up your lunch so there and your working lunch is another activity to get to know each other which is um a bingo card so i will distribute that and while um while you guys are working on your bingo card i will go and actually pick up your your lunch do we go offline during lunch or no and is there anybody not if it's a working if we're having a working lunch we have to stay online is there anyone here there's no one in the audience just remember this is being recorded i'm the only one that can't be seen so since i don't know how bingo is played what am i supposed to do with this what do you mean fill it up so um the object of bingo is to um create to go in creating creating a to cover a square either vertically horizontal or at a diagonal so um in each of your squares there's a little there's basically um something so you need to find someone with that attribute so for example one of my squares says has been on television so in conversation amongst yourselves you would find someone who has been on tv okay and then you would um cross off that square so it's going to require that you're up and around and moving and talking to the other members of the commission yeah it's an opportunity to get you out of your seat since you've been sitting for like you know several hours so i um hope that everyone's had uh learned something additional about the other members of the commission through the bingo activity and got it another opportunity just to learn a little bit about yourselves um the next thing on the agenda is the cultural events and so jennifer has put on the screen the major events that we have planned for this year um so there's an um MLK celebration um and you should be able to see it from your we'll check a lunar new year we'll try um which we didn't we were unsuccessful last year in doing a women's history month um event uh autism awareness these are these not we haven't committed to each in all of these events but these were the lists that we came up with there's international transgender day autism awareness earth day which is a town-wide cleanup arab-american heritage month a api lgbt qia plus pride month and we will have a celebration of marriage equality um the youth hero awards uh juneteenth and an immigrant heritage month world relief then um the frederick douglas reading which many of you participated in last year um there's a women's equality day hispanic heritage um indigenous people's day which is tomorrow um human rights day and wanza so um this was the list of cultural events that we that the commission sort of looked at last year and we jennifer and i worked out what we thought would be um a budget to support the majority of the events and so while i you should know that we do not have twenty two thousand dollars in our budget the events have been primarily supported through um some funds in the dei office some funds through the hrc has a friend's account and then um support from uh nonprofits and businesses uh around town so for the example for the latinx heritage event if you were present for that event you would have seen on the on the flyer um support from amherst college coon riddle amherst rec department d i and i know that i'm missing um another agency or another company that provided support for that event i know that ronnie and i and you have been meeting with um becky temling to support a civil of lights yes and so was that on there for our this um list was created before we took that on but that will definitely be a cultural event that the hrc and the dei office will support and the date for that is scheduled for november 19 i believe and does everybody know what that means so di valley is the festival of lights it's a hindu festival but is really pretty much celebrated in many countries around the world because it's about lights and good food and lots of food and it's also about good winning over evil so one of the great things about di valley is all the stories that are in different cultures and each story is something exotic but um it's always where the where good overcomes evil good is small evil is big and ugly and then but then good beats evil so can i tell you quickly the story like where i grew up the di valley story so there's a giant name my sheshwara we lived in a town that was called my sore my sheshwara as the giant my sheshwara would go outside come to town every day or every week or something on a regular basis and claim the first son from the family so nobody could kill my sheshwara because if he spilled a drop of blood it would turn into a thousand soldiers and they would destroy you so these two this one woman did not want to give up her chance so she and her sister came up with a plan to take get rid of my sheshwara and so when he came to get their child one of the women cut his slit his throat or cut his wrist or cut some part of his body and as the blood was coming out the other woman drank it up before it could be converted into soldiers and that's how um and my sheshwara fell and so there are these hills outside the town of my sore that if you extended your imagination could be the humongous body of a dead person and so that's supposed to be my sheshwara's body and so Diwali is the celebration of overcoming the town celebrated because my sheshwara was finally gone and he wasn't stealing all the children from the town so this is just one they're like hundreds of these stories so it's always something even when I was in Trinidad working one time they had their own stories and they were celebrating Diwali so it's just a great festival that has all good things about it so one of the things that we've it was so one of the things that we've tried to do this year is include so we were asked by one of the town counselors to take on the festival of lights which is an event that she had done in the past and another counselor actually asked us to take on the marriage equality event so we're going to take on those two events um but we are definitely putting on events on a shoestring non-existent budget and one of the things that I thought that would have made it to the agenda but didn't is a discussion about um the ability for the commission to do some fundraising through the friend's account so the friend's account like the jones library friend's group is an account that allows support for the work of this body that's outside of the town's appropriation for the for the body or for the for the work and at some point probably not during this meeting we should have a more in-depth conversation about what activities can happen to support the friend's account and how we can start to build up some financial resources to support this work because you know to do it right it is quite expensive and we don't currently have the resources to do it in the report that philip presented to the town council at the end of the year he did request financial support for the hrc but i do not believe that that was responded to the town is just beginning to start its process of budgeting for the next fiscal year because that happens in the fall and the decisions are made in the spring so one consideration will be to make sure that you're looped into that process to see if there is a possibility of obtaining some funds to do to do this event and i think my thoughts are and other people may think differently that it's going to require a collaboration between the town appropriation if we can get one and working with a non-profits and other businesses who would who would support the activities the cultural events and activities that are being promoted throughout the town yeah i have actually concerned that in the town right now people and the communities are very much involved in the truth and healing commission on you know indian boarding school policies in the u.s because it ties to the right now to the holiday also and it is very local and i i would have assumed that we would have done something and raised the awareness or because we do have a human rights commission does play a part in it and it shows that we feel for them also the indigenous people so and you know we could have identified with the legal experts and organizations who are doing it or initiated some kind of contact with the through emails or these organizations who are involved with indigenous rights and we should have done some thing that would have showed that we are also concerned and we are part of the and that is the whole point of us being here because we want to be reflecting what the community is right now doing i have a question and a thought the question is i see the twenty twenty two thousand seven hundred fifty dollar budget number and i heard you say that we don't have that's more money than there is is has any money been budgeted this year here i also heard you say appropriations are upcoming for next year so so i i don't believe there were any appropriations made for this current fiscal year for the hrc so where did where did the money for the cultural events come from so to jennifer's credit she has been able to fundraise and get support for these events and we were able also to use some dei funds but the one of the biggest challenge for the cultural events is that these events generally are a celebration that includes food and the state procurement laws for buying food and beverages are very strict so to the extent that we're able to build capacity financial capacity through the friends account then it makes it easier to do to do those celebrations the other thing that you should know is that and jennifer will be able to provide like the dates but um representative mendy dom um did earmark some funds for community engagement which we think can be used um for some of the cultural cultural events so forgive me because um as you all know i'm relatively new um i my question which might be considered somewhat um provocative or problematic is if there is no funding for this why is there such a priority on it why are there so many events happening um unfunded priorities are very problematic in governmental operations attached to that i would say in terms of supporting into uh different distinct demographic communities there are other things we can do that i think might have great value like i testified in support of making what is now called columbus day indigenous peoples day and i did it as an individual but boy what i would and i would have done it and i did it without the human rights commission imprimatur but i would rather have been able to say i'm rabbi deborah coladney and i'm i'm a member of the amherst human rights commission which of course i didn't say because it wasn't something that we had discussed and that we agreed to there's a lot we can do to get um the message out the support out that might actually have a concrete impact in the constituents that we are um concerned about so um i guess i want to put on the table is cultural events the only thing we're doing that's affirmative and if it's unfunded why is that the case can i just step in so i don't think it needs to be the only thing because i think in order to create an inclusive community that we will need more than just community events per se or cultural events i think you have to hit it through different genres if i would say i would say what i will say about the cultural events is when we had our first latinx our first a api our first lunar new year the response from the community was this is the first time i feel recognized by the town of amherst right and when we have juneteenth it's so big and it's on the common that it pulls people who don't necessarily know what juneteenth is to the event and so it was it's one way it's not the only way local government is tricky with funds so the twenty two thousand seven hundred fifty dollar budget that you see up there is like best case scenario if we could have all the funds that we wanted can we do this can we do it that way right i understand i would just say if there's an if something's not funded starting from a premise of we'd like to do eleven things seems like more of a stretch than necessary if we had five events and you know had that as our goal and had the amount of money it would take us to fund those five events as a fundraising goal personally i'd feel more comfortable you know to start from absolutely zero and ask this commission to join jennifer and finding the funds just seems like more of a stretch and i will also just confess that i didn't come on to this commission to raise money for cultural events i came on to support the human rights needs of the community i love them i blessing we should stop them i'm just saying why eleven why you know yeah juneteenth was unbelievable we shouldn't stop that you know so can we prioritize them i mean i think that you guys can prioritize which if you want to bring them knock them down to what you would like to see and the amount that you would like to see and i do think that we need to discuss the list and then among ourselves take a decision maybe in terms of what our priorities are in terms of how involved will be in this versus education about what's human rights or yeah how do we communicate to get more people who are facing violations to speak up or i don't know what but i think there's a tradeoff there but i also am curious because i get the sense that these things you guys de i is really doing the work for all of this in the time that i've been involved there have been three or four events and i don't think we did anything i mean that was to became unsupported yes members of the commission were there to help serve food or clean up or do this or do that but in terms of the organization of it it was de i that did it so one question i have and it does make sense that this is something that's a total trip with de i um one question i have is about why you don't take the lead on it more publicly and have us be sort of the sisters and just what i thought on this coming up to the rally one of the things that really struck me about the de valley discussion that made me open to it was that the town councilor who brought it to us immediately rattled off local associations that were willing to fund it and support it and she said in fact last year they had more money than they needed so it was something that seemed like an easy yes it's a fun event that draws a whole bunch of people of different nationalities it's a place to raise the profile of the human rights commission and it's already funded so that's part of what made it appealing to me so i would say first prior to the de i department's only been here since january 2022 so in the past in order to make these events happen i had to panel or channel them through a committee and so it was the human rights commission made the most sense to do that too um and the the notion behind them was just to do them and do them well enough so that people look forward to them every year right and so they do i don't have a problem if you guys don't want if you guys want to prioritize a certain amount it's going to be very hard to prioritize or to say hrc will do these five and then the de i department will do these six however that works i'm not quite sure i don't know that panel wants to take that on under just us and i would say that there's been a mix of people who've contributed to the different events over the years depending on who is part of the human rights commission so last year victor cruz who was a high school student and philip created the latinx heritage month celebration right they they owned that and so i typically do try usually there's a proclamation associated with it so we try to have community members from that culture represented in there and have them help us create the event itself and then let's go ahead i just wanted to expand on what jennifer said um because of the people that were on the committee last year and because of the folks in the town that don't know who we are these cultural events brought people to us therefore making us more accessible to the overall community of amherst not just the folks who know about town council and what they do and cannot do for them it made those who look more like us um aware that they had certain rights there was intermingling there was community and it was important to the people of the town that were underrepresented to know that they had a place to go when there was an issue which is why i think some of these events are important i also know that we had a group of people on the committee last year that were instrumental we all took one of the events and we all led one of the events so it wasn't that you know we was doing all of this willy-nilly there was some um discussion about which ones we were going to do and we had um high school students that were gung-ho we had young people we had older people that helped jennifer does a lot of work behind the scenes i do a lot of work behind the scenes sometimes when i couldn't be leading i would meet with jennifer and we would do the gist if you will so it wasn't just that you you know the question was why are these so important they are important because it shows the folks that are underrepresented that there's a place to be a place to go and a place to feel important to the town and that's why these are important um should we do 11 or 12 which is one a month or two a month or three a month probably not however do not think that these are not important to the people who look like me in this town because they are very important to the people that look like me in this town okay totally agree and i cannot overemphasize the fact that these events are very important and the fact that it's been just a year less than year and you have started you know found ways of finding it and organizing it i really enjoyed it but my um i guess suggestion is that um we need to amplify their impact basically as you know my experience also we need to get this because we are the stakeholders in it so if we somehow amplify it and create the importance of our mission also through those events so that we can and the civil society groups can come in and the non-governmental organizations also partake in those events so if it becomes bigger as you know because the last one that we attended was the Latinx and there was you could see that we had a limitation we cannot do more than that because we don't have the resources so if we involve other organizations and get the resources that like Rani said about Diwali you know that you know the counselor came and she was totally confident that they can get the resources so if we play a part in getting that because we need to amplify our importance in there so people who identify as you are saying also they see that they are important people in the community and they need help when they need help they know where to go and how to get the complaints in so if we have a complaint process also clear at that time when the events are happening we have forms ready we have all these handouts ready and all that so we are all there for them also can I just add one more thing yeah um if you look at that it would look like that's all we did however there was a bunch of us that did other things as well Philip and I met once a week for months with members of the health department and the CSSJC and we tackled and put together a forum for fair housing where we had folks come in and talk about their experiences with housing in Amherst and things like that so there's so many other things that were that happened other than just and I don't want to say just because the just means that it's not important but we had cultural events we also had a lot of work on some other things as well as we had seven complaints that we had to well more than seven but we had seven that we had to vet if you will so um sometimes it might be um a dull undertaking and other times it's going to be very active so um we are important we just need to continue to make ourselves known to the folks of the town so that they know that they have a place I mean and I I think another part of it I'm also a community participation officer which means that I work on trying to bridge the community to local government so what I can say from my knowledge and learned experience from doing that and as a person who lived in the town of Amherst for 30 some years before becoming an employee is that there's a lack of trust right and so you can't always just show up somewhere and expect this large crowd right and so one of the things that has you know since we've gotten bigger with most of these events and now's the time to invite in those other entities and the other local you know the other departments in town because now there's a little bit of more trust there where we can do that right so everything is somewhat purposefully done the way that it is right because there is this really lack of trust right and so part of bridging that is it's through these events that does help because when people feel recognized that's one of the first ways to get them to the table because at the end of the day for me it is really to to increase the participation from those who we don't see at the table right and so I think that these events do help with that but there's also lots of ways but it's also very hard to get deep into the community where the people who are affected the most by the rules and regulations and policies that are created through town are affected by I guess like one more thing I just want to add to that question is like from what looked like on the document there was only like like six or so that didn't seem like they needed funding and so I guess like the ones that actually do have the funding like that question would apply more to kind of like we don't we don't necessarily have funds but I guess it does help like having come from a position of like not knowing how this commission operates at all to hear that this is like a channel for sort of like community members to come and seek out resources or have us help them point them in the direction to those resources to host these community events that's interesting but yeah so I see and I went to the Frederick Douglas one and that one didn't seem like it required anything other than like little snacks but it was super like fun and I got to meet everybody so I do like that the commission does have events that aren't necessarily overly funded or necessarily a cultural event that has to have a lot of posters or anything XYZ like that there are some and then there's lots of so they're like for instance there's there's there are organizations that do celebrate specific things and we can try to link like there used to be the MLK breakfast I don't really have a good understanding of what's going on with that but when that was starting to you know after they haven't had the breakfast since the pandemic but that was done a grassroots organization all on its own and then we here at the town had a proclamation that we would read every year and what it meant was the town council and like maybe three or four resident community members would go and then the council would read this proclamation and I was like well I think we could do a little bit more than just that proclamation right just to support and to enhance what's going on because as a town even not everyone might agree with me but I feel like as a town we have an obligation to celebrate and to honor the cultures that are within our community that we're aware of and as they come up and to include them and so some of these and again this budget here is like oh if I could have every possible dollar that I wanted to fund here that's what this is this is not like an actual spend as well as there were a few that have zero balances because we didn't know if we would celebrate them or not but like that's usually yeah that's usually done by the community participation officers so that doesn't necessarily is that on here yeah that doesn't necessarily need to be on here that's done through the CPS we should still do that just because it happens around it happens around earth day that's why so here's the other thing we are not stuck on any of these cultural events I just want to put that out there as well there are other things that we do to make ourselves accessible we had a table at the at the block party even had a table at the block party before but that came from us saying hey or I asked the question last year hey this person had a table how come we don't have a table yep so just little things like that where we can we have to if we don't have to do any or all of these actually but we need to be able to get out into the community and let the community know who we are and let the community know that they are important to us as a town as well and I think that's part of our charge yeah plenty of other community events that happen outside of the town where people can table that as well nature see can table so this actually you spoke to one of the things that was top of my mind which is I totally agree with the outreach need and I think we should do an inventory of what all the events are that are happening and see where we can get a table and have access to people that's number one number two since I came on I've been to every event and I haven't always seen a table and I have certainly haven't seen a table that had a handout with here's the human rights complaint process you know and here's the phone number that you call or here's the email that you write to so if that's the goal we need to get our act together on making sure that we're maximizing the use you know of these events whether other people are hosting them or we're hosting them and I just I want you know we can have a hundred events I'm just saying if it's not funded you know to have the human rights commission be the entity that's supposed to fundraise for it it's like everything I just heard this is an argument to the town council to fund these things you know I agree this should be something the city takes seriously and that means that the city should put their money where their mouth is or the town sorry I am so glad you said that because Lynn Grishamaya I think she attended every single one and she commented at the Frederick Douglass reading how you know that was last Philip's last official event and she commented on how the council with under his leadership was able to bring all of these events to fruition and for and how important she felt they were so that was a good segue because I was going to think about saying that too okay I know you just have to remember though that the problem with budget it's harder they probably have to have special legislation and go through a process in order because the low we cannot spend the taxpayers dollars on food which is why we have the HRC gift fund which I mean I wouldn't necessarily say that you guys should go out fundraising right I would say if you know particular organizations that would be interested in supporting them that might be different but I'm fine doing it as for now but the other part of it was either a friends group or a what was the other one Pamela so I looked into two legal options for providing funds to the group so either through some sort of a trust account or through the friends group and there are legal arguments for both there is and I'm going to forget the proper legal name but there is a mechanism in the state or municipalities to actively fundraise for specific purpose most of the time that's done for around affordable housing and before he left Sean Mangano shared a document that he had created for the school department for school employees for teachers and specifically to fund race for activities so there is a way of doing it but we you know we need to have it finalized and then have people engage in the process I hear you on they are not being able to fund food but that's not the only cost I would assume like there are people who come to perform but they can't fund they don't fund them either if there's nothing that can be funded by the town in this budget then again I'll just say I'm not going to participate in fundraising maybe that's the way I'll say it I didn't I I didn't join this commission to do that work there's so much else that I want to do and I'd like us I love what you said Liz about this isn't the only thing we're doing and I'd love a calendar of all the things that you know we are doing cultural events and other events and some of us will you know prioritize this and some of us will prioritize that I'll come to the events but um yeah I just don't see that yeah I can't I got I have another idea also by you know we can always include the churches and the centers religious institutions hospitals and put our handouts over there and with a little bit of a donation and this way there's two things happening this way first they're getting the awareness that there's somebody out there in the town of Amherst HRC who's looking after you and we we get into into these areas those points where the participants or community is going anyways so they see us and at the time of need they can call us and the and they can donate also when they see that we are effective and people will they're actually looking for HRC you know human rights everybody is looking for us it's not that we don't have a need in the community I'd like to move that we discuss money at the end and at the end you know I think we need to get our program priorities in order and let's deal with the money part at the end if that's okay because I'd like to get through the section where we talk about what our goals are for next year so stuff that's before that so I'm proposing I'm moving to wait for the money discussion till the end so on the calendar events as well I'm not sure if all our proclamations are listed there we do flag raising for pride month we do a flag raising for black history month we do a proclamation for Martin Luther King day so not all of these things are money making things we do a charge in December where we all gather at the town at the town common in the freezing cold and read our proclamation for the year it was proclamation of the bylaws declaration and all of us if we can be there should be there where you went to code because it's cold so there's other things that we do and if we bring other people to some of those things you know there's this event going on or the flag raising for black history month we did right on the town common it we had hot chocolate because it was cold my gospel choir sang at it we raised the flag and it wasn't a huge thing it cost a bunch of hot chocolate and that was about it and that and those are kind of things that if people if I'm coming and I bring three people with me and you bring three people with you and you you know then we have more than that was there last year so there's other things that we do and the town council's there they read the proclamation and we raise the flag and it's it's great a lot of people don't know about it a lot of people don't want to be outside in February but it's it's another thing that we do that's not on here that costs no money that makes people aware of who we are so one thing that I would I'm sorry to interrupt you but I was one thing that I think Philip did very well last year is prior to the start of each event he talked a little bit about the role of the HRC and so even well I won't say that the cultural our events are an opportunity to talk about what you might consider the more substantive work so they actually go hand in hand I would sort of make a note to myself that having a brochure it's really interesting so I think this is one of the areas where I'll just say for myself like for my generation having a brochure and having that public is would be something that I would think is really important for other generations having a brochure is not really the way that you communicate the information and we have some hopes of enhancing perhaps the website so that people have an opportunity I think it needs to be updated anyway and so that might be another way of having a QR code or something that like you know that brings in people from a variety of different so some paper products some QR codes so that you can share the the information I started to laugh because that's what I was going to say so having both options there I also would just say because we're not going to talk about money to later in addition to the other stuff that we are doing like I know that there was an event for Jewish History Month in March because my colleague Benjamin Rabbi Benjamin spoke at it but it's not on this list that's because the council the the counselors brought that forward all right so if we could have an omnibus list of everything that the town is doing because one thing that you know is troubling to me is to say well why isn't Jewish History Month is here when there was even an event you know so it's not like it's excluded right right but it's good for me to know like if I'm somebody's asking me you know what's happening in town Rabbi for the Jews then I want a handy dandy reference sheet right so to be able to call that to and that was also I think no money it was just a few speakers right so that so that kind of list I think is really helpful because of what we were talking about earlier which is that there are places that events that we don't have to organize but we could certainly ask to go and have a word about the Human Rights Commission or we can ask to set up a table and so we would get a lot of benefit without really being the organizers and we would establish those partnerships that would come in handy in other ways one last thing sorry it would have to be the friends group that's that did that um how so I just want to point out that when I go ahead I did ask when I started if there is a full list of the events and to my knowledge that that doesn't currently exist so that would need to be created and there are lots of people who are you know or organizations because some are being brought by the town council other are being brought by other we can make an attempt to perhaps review the events that occurred last year but um there is no guarantee that it will encompass everything and we didn't Jennifer and I had a discussion about the proclamations about whether they should be included but some are being um are being made by coming from the HRC and others are not so it will give us a little bit of time to create that sort of omnibus less basically the the list will be very fluid because it's every day you have new issue and it's evolving but we definitely are concerned with the local events that are happening example is again the indigenous I don't know whether that event was up on the list but that's good if we add to it and finalize it and work with that it'll be a good advertising for us also if we have a table in every event thanks I was just going to tell Deborah that we can have a couple it usually says human rights commissions donations or something similar to that like a donation box at an event where people will donate money for events that's fantastic because I'm happy to donate when I'm at every one of these events but I just don't want to ask other people no and I don't I mean I don't you don't necessarily have to but so that money goes into the the human rights gift account right so that's where we pull funds because we've is that is that a tax deductible account it's a tax deductible account because it is associated with the town so um so what was the goal of this discussion were we supposed to just yeah I think that just I mean the whole purpose of the retreat is to acclimate um new and old members and go over the roles and responsibilities so just sometime I think we can maybe go on to the next agenda item which um our roles and responsibilities the relationship with town council open meeting laws conflict of interest and other laws and rules and um early this morning I don't know if you guys had an opportunity to to see it but I did say if you were able to bring your appointed committee handbook that will spend just some time going through some things that I want I won't spend time in detail but just to point out information there why don't you just go ahead and summarize for us what we need to know with regard to this sort of follow it if you want because I don't you know I think it's going to be hard to discuss all six items here in one shot and be confusing so if you want to just tell us what we need to know with regard to this we can ask questions and then after the questions we'll consider ourselves informed you're making the assumption that I know all of this information like the back of my hand which I cannot make any assumption that you have the documentation included in the um appointed committee handbook the first thing that I would draw to your attention which is the that's one two three on the fifth page is the conflict of interest laws so um as we discussed earlier um even though you are unpaid and are volunteers appointed to this board the uh state statute does consider you a special municipal employee and as a result um you need to be aware of conflict of interest so if I were to summarize that very quickly I would just say that for any um financial interactions that you are involved in or immediate family or business associates you need to be aware of whether that um interaction would create a conflict of interest so you would receive some game or a family member would receive some gain based on your position as a member of the board um so that's uh very very brief but the information is contained in more detail in your uh in your book you point it um how about our relationship with the town council are there are there limitations as I understand it we basically submit our report to them they ask us to be there's also a reference to us being an advisory body so I would imagine that if we have some policy advice or a human rights lens on policies that they're in the process of undertaking then I would imagine that we could submit a letter or make a presentation ask to get on the town council's agenda is there more no I think that's a good summary so the the human rights commission is an advisory but a body to the town manager and the town council so through my experience with the HRC last year the committee provided advice to the town council through the means that Ronny just mentioned by appearing in joint meetings with the town council to raise issues of concern by writing letters and having those letters become a part of the public record so those are the primary ways but that the HRC has interact with the town council uh open meeting laws I think you again had an opportunity in your in your original packets to be aware that whenever there is a quorum yep there are as there are open meeting laws that you need to be aware of the in the past the body would have met in person as Jennifer described the governor has allowed for the extension of the rule which allows you to meet via remote means so meeting on zoom having public comment all of those things are part of the requirement for the open meeting laws the documents that you that you draft and are included in the packet are all subject to open meeting laws which means that any member of the public can request them and they are would be viewed and you know and obviously this is redundant but open to the public for review could you also explain why we're often asked not to reply all and that part of the law so uh you're asked not to reply all if if Jennifer and I send out an email asking for additional information um you're asked not to reply all because your email communication um between and amongst yourself would be considered to be um meeting right to be deliberations and you're not allowed to deliberate outside of a posted open meeting are there any questions among the members regarding these topics of laws pertaining to our activity the only question I had and I think I might have asked for this um it's not about any of this stuff but when I mentioned the relationship with town council it was more like okay so we have to offer a report once a year is that the only relationship that we have you know do they I guess they could call upon us if there's something that's in our docket or in our portfolio and they want to learn more about it um but I I just feel like I have no relationship with the town council whatsoever I was appointed I got my documents I show up I love having relationships with all of you but it just feels like there's no vertical alignment or there's no vertical engagement so there is um a town council member who it serves as a liaison to and um who's invited to attend them the minutes or the meetings of the HRC so that person would um also be able to report back to the town council or will sometimes give advice to the commission about um uh actions that they could take so the the best examples that I can give you is that um the the liaison to the community safety and social justice committee often provided advice about approaches that that uh can um committee could take about their interactions with the town council the liaison to the disability access and advisory committee often hears information in that committee and takes information back most recently the disability access and advisory committee received a request to endorse a piece of legislation that was pending at the state house and the liaison um said that she would also take uh make a request to the full town council for them to also endorse that legislation so there is that formal relationship between in our case in all the time I've been here I've never seen any town council member participating and I don't know who our liaison is so if you could inform us that would be helpful so we can invite that person and get them more involved right so I believe that you're the the the liaison that's um that was listed for last year I believe was pat de angeles um I'm not certain if she still has this assignment for this year um because she's also the liaison to the disability access and advisory committee and she typically when she's able to attend those meetings the liaison receives the same zoom invite that you all receive for each of the of the meetings right but we don't know who the who our liaison is and we should so I would like to suggest that we send a note to Lynn greasmer asking that we be told who our liaison is yeah so as co-chairs you could you could do that I yeah I think we I'm ready to do it go for it the other piece that is difficult for me is um I'm not sure like I don't have the bandwidth to look at every commission and committee and the town council's agenda and see if it's something that I as a human rights commission member should show up for that's a level of research and diligence that I don't have bandwidth for so I don't even know if there are items on the agenda for the town council that I as a human rights commission member should attend that meeting because it's going to impact what we do or it's going to provide information that's important for what we do and so I just feel like there's a wall there's nothing so it's great that we have a liaison but I also want it to be that person to be telling us oh there's going to be a meeting on this date and we're discussing this topic they'd be great if you could show up because it's going to inform your deliberations so not just with town council there are other committees that we all need to be paying attention to I regularly go to cssjc meetings I've gone to one on tuesday I also go to the um fair housing trust meetings and if I can't get there I get a report from one of the fair housing trust committees so we all should as commissioners be looking at other the other entities and seeing which ones we want to go to just as informative sometimes they will call us in to speak and sometimes we are there just as an attendee their reports back to the human rights commission and again we we get information and requests from other human rights committees um along the state I've been to the one from barnstable on um the hearing impairments and there's another one coming up and I didn't really look at it yet but so we can be aware of that um I was not going to say okay I just went somewhere else in my brain I have a question then so should there be some kind of a matrix that lists all of the committees and what they focus on and then we should each take one there's going to be our responsibility to be the liaison for that committee I just feel like we're in a vacuum at least in my experience there's nothing formal yeah yeah I think there's no communication amongst us might be that is missing and that that's the reason we are feeling alienated and there's another reason or another issue or just small detail I was wondering if we get those business cards you know the cards that we can use are there any that you gave out as a rule you know so could I could I go back to the unfinished discussion about us participating sorry I do believe you sent a header hand up a little while ago yeah I guess I just wanted to um um the comment about you know what you were talking about how there are a number of different commissions that have like more specific um more specific purposes so kind of how human rights committee is a broader um umbrella of things and then so thinking about accessibility I know like on Amherst college campus we have a lot of um we lack a lot of accessibility access um for people with walking disabilities um etc um hearing disabilities um and so for that it's sort of like does the commission help to point people who have human right complaints towards those more specific commissions that can um you know deal with those issues and bring forth those issues with the necessary resources for those things I feel like because this commission is so has like a broader title um it allows people to kind of say okay I need to go here and then sort of be filtered through that um and I guess I would I would also say that I feel like people who have more experience on this commission probably have more answers as to you know how to go about the town council um and getting issues I know coming at the end of it seeing the human rights complaint about this uh student who was harassed by a police officer um I felt like I saw a lot of action being taken by the committee um to have even though it was years ago um to actually get some change or bring forth that issue so I do feel like at the moment it might feel I think coming off of summer um it can feel a little bit like nothing has happened but I do I do have faith that this commission has you know dealt with these issues um excuse me I yeah are you pointing out at Amherst college that they are not inclusive because of the access disability access and other services is Amherst college you're pointing out you said in the beginning Amherst college I mean that was an example but yes Amherst college has like a number of um to me what would be considered a human rights violation but I don't know if that is a human rights violation by the town um definition yeah there is a discrimination if disability is an you know you need to have an access coordinator for that um UMass has several of them and it is it's a really important part of inclusivity and and human rights also so no doubt so might be that as a human rights commission we approach Amherst college or something or raise awareness over there if you go to Amherst MA.gov and HRC there's a form there and that's a starting place and if you don't want to fill out a form there's a number to call and so on so I think really anyone who faces what they think may be a violation um I think that instruction is clear the problem is we haven't really made that clear beyond the website not everyone thinks to go there and I I actually looked at it and I think it is a very um well articulated process that in my view is just not well marketed yet um and then to go back to Deborah's question about all the places there's an issue with human rights as you said too that it's so broad where do we go I went to the um list of committees on the town government website and there are over a hundred of them literally so for anyone I think to sit down and even create a matrix by the time they're done the list will change I guarantee you so my recommendation I can tell you what I did I just went through the list and when saw the ones that had headings that I thought may be of interest to me and I think we should all do that so that we can then combine our interest with the representation of the HRC yeah so the CSS JC as um and the housing trust as Liz has mentioned you know we're closer to because there've been people here who've gone on a regular basis and so we should find the others and I can tell you I went to the energy group I attended their meetings I attended the shade committee meetings because I'm interested in trees and so on so go to a few of them and then eventually you'll run into one that you think you want to follow and where maybe you can report to the HRC on a regular basis yeah yeah that's a very excellent point actually and it opens up another uh Mindora's box because uh town of Amherst has all these institutions educational basically they are the ones who are generating a lot of revenue and so on so if we approach uh if we actually interact with them directly and that'll create awareness and it'll give them also the um you know the fact that it'll give them the opportunity to meet us as a HRC you know and that's a good thing if we can have a dialogue with them and and they can help us uh advertise our services also uh to the students and and we can give them ideas and strategies I think that's a great idea Ronnie and I I'm looking at it right now and I'm like oh the cultural council why are we throwing cultural events why isn't the cultural council doing that I'm just that's an honest question not a blame or anything like that Jennifer they give out grant money they're not they're not like a cultural they give out grant money so they support Juneteenth for us that's the committee that they give them so that's one of our sources of income yes okay all right if no one else is interested in schools I'm on it trust me I've been following them I'm not reporting on them but I've been following them as someone who just retired 40 years from the regional school district I think certainly the schools could use a fresh eye but yeah whatever but each of us could do that yeah I don't want to short circuit your great idea no that's fine I I'm just saying that the second part of that is that the idea then is that you would report back to the HRC at our meetings and that you're in your relationship there and the information you gather and that you're able to give back will also inform how we work and so we can be more effective but I think we have to do our own work individually as far as figuring out which one is the one or two that you want to go to because there's so many so are there any more questions concerning C roles and responsibilities okay so then moving on to I'm sorry can I just I want to make sure that this is clear and I'm sure everybody is aware but the human rights commission only really has power as the commission itself so as individuals you do not have the permission necessarily to speak on behalf of the HRC so your power is in within the vote so it means when you guys are all together that you're acting so what are the implications if for instance I'm at the CSS JC meeting and somebody says oh the co-chair of the human rights commission is here and asks my opinion on something do I have to say I'm speaking as an individual resident not as the chair yes yeah yes are you guys can I take this down this can easily be found on Amherstma.gov and it's also another way to get folks that you know involved so then do you want to do you want to facilitate the next one rules and procedure for public meetings oh it's public comment time is there any public no it's not public comment time we just need to make sure that we understand the rules and procedures for public comments and one of the things that you it's also in the open meeting law educational materials that you should have received once you got sworn in so you should be familiar with that one of the things that I learned as a first meeting commissioner is that when there is public comment that's what it is we do not respond to public comment as much as I wanted to Jennifer said no I did ask can I respond to that so that's one of the most important things but from public comments if there was something that we need to put on the agenda for in a different meeting we can do that but it's just for us to hear what people have to say and sometimes it relates to what we're working on and sometimes it does not okay I'd like to in a different meeting go over the public comment because it can become an issue also how do you address the public comments no we don't address public comments what I mean is that if there was something that's relevant that comes out of public comment we can put that on the agenda for a subsequent meeting but not comment on it while it's happening in live feed so the rationale behind that is that if you receive a public comment about something that that's listed on the agenda that you're currently deliberating on you will as part of your meeting would take action on it so there would be no need for you to have conversation back and forth because it's already an agenda item that you are presumably going to take action on if someone raises an issue that's not listed on your agenda then you're deliberating on something that's not hasn't been posted in the public you know in your public notice of meeting so that's another rationale for while you would be listening not responding and then placing it on the agenda for the future meeting so that if it's placed on the agenda for a future meeting the public has noticed that you intend to deliberate on that topic so that helps to explain just a little bit why so it looks like the next thing that you asked to be placed on the agenda and this is a discussion that I assume the chairs and co-chairs will lead is supporting other organizations so I asked actually for this to be put on the agenda we received an email a request from someone to support something and the question is should we or shouldn't we and my question was we need to take a look at how we are supporting other organizations and which ones we are supporting we can't think just oh this one wants us to support them how do we support them we'll be talking about in person are we talking about helping them fundraise are we talking about going to the event and being a willing participant as an organization how will we supporting them so the question is not specific to that organization but taking a look at how we support other organizations especially when requests come in and I would add to the organizations just other national events that happen so the co-chairs prior to this group used to write statements they had the permission from the HRC members to write statements of support for different events that were happening nationally that affected us locally so you know for instance still born Ukraine or the murder of George Floyd like so the co-chairs wrote these statements small statements and I would put them on if you look on the HRC webpage you'll see there's all these links to different statements and then they also go up on the Facebook page I would really like some order to that because when I saw it I thought well why are we talking about Ukraine but we're not talking about another place so it would just help me a lot to I think these statements I don't know I mean they have to be okayed by the commission and that you know we have to have some reason or some sort of deliberation I guess deliberation if needed but I'm not really comfortable having the commission tell the co-chairs you can write them when you think it's appropriate because I I mean is there no way under open meeting law for us to have a group open email exchange why we say oh this just happened in Israel so or this just forget Israel this just happened in Zimbabwe so we are go we would like to write a statement and have the statement reviewed and approved by the commissions online so I think that the the two co-chairs usually the topic would go to the meeting the problems they don't meet for another month so they would give the co-chairs the permission to write the statement that they were just like oh I woke up this morning and I'm gonna no I read this in the news and I feel a statement has to go out that's not it so it is pre-approved yeah the issue by okay thank you that's clearer to me but I I think you raise something that's important which is I'm not a fan of statements personally I don't think they do anything so I mean except they do help the public the community know where we're coming from but since we are a body that serves Amherst for us to make statement on Ukraine or anywhere else I question how important that is in terms of the use of our time but what that leads me to is what are our criteria for doing anything that's not part of our like regular template of activities whether that's supporting another organization or writing a statement and so when I say what are our criteria things that arise for me are like they're clearly connected to our mission and you know we could show that it's connected to our mission number one number two our constituents are gonna get some benefit out of our doing it otherwise like why are we spending the time out of it on doing it three I'm a fan of partnering with organizations on campaigns so like not signing off on statements and I don't mean political you know electoral campaigns I mean um all right what's a campaign oh we're all gonna get together and say we have to you know relieve student debt and there's 2,000 national organizations and 20,000 local organizations doing XYZ to make sure that we cancel student debt that's a random example I'm not saying that's something right so like it what's the impact like there's a discernible impact and there's enough resources going towards it not just our resources that there's a hope of something changing so those are criteria that are attractive to me there might be 17 other criteria that are attracted to other people and maybe nobody likes this idea at all but that's like a real break we are creating so we have a consensus based on that I think also oh sorry go ahead Jacinta oh I was just gonna say like um all human rights violations are important equally important bringing attention to one versus others does create like sort of a what like what about the other one so I can kind of see how you can make a statement or include in that criteria that for any anything that kind of is grabbing attention in the media um if you're thinking from a sense oh okay now the HRC sends out an email talking about like the most recent thing that's happened and then pointing to other things that are happening at the same time it's an opportunity to like use that sensationalism to bring awareness to other things happening um and just also you know letting the constituents know that the HRC at a local level are are thinking about numbers of different communities that are going through those experiences yeah there's also the fact that we have refugees from many places that are far from here and so there are issues that are pertinent to them that you know they live here but they're there those violations aren't happening here uh per se so I don't know I mean I think the criteria discussion does need to be had I'm not sure where it would lead us perhaps not because I think the majority of our issues or our concerns or statements should be focused on the constituents in the town and how are they affected directly or indirectly basically I feel that otherwise the issues are too many unless as you and Deborah said it's a student loan type of a big issue and so on but I think we shouldn't get too political but the fact is like racial justice is very current over here I stand out also for racial justice so that is very close to our hearts as citizens over here so if we just isolate those issues and work on them personally I think I have one that's on the docket now and that is the youth um the voting whether or not to support the changing the age of increasing the age of yeah yes 22 21 22 yeah they're asking for 21 but you know there's evidence that it takes until age 23 for your brain to settle down so it depends on it was 25 for oh well and also where I was looking at it is that you can be in high school until year 22 so maybe 22 should be the number because it's already something that's governed by our laws of the state so do we can we address that issue right now can we talk about it or what we can but I also want to just also address the reason why we got this while while I put this on for the agenda for today all of you all should have gotten this email um I'm a coordinator with the western mass asylum support network we have been active as a group of volunteers providing mutual aid about 2018 we have supported dozens of asylum seekers make the transition into the area and getting settled working with them to secure housing legal support and work permits among other things I'm writing to find out if the commission has any small grants to support social justice groups like this um I'll be great for any information that this leads now as we was just talking about some of the other entities that we may want to support either as a group or an individual this could be one of them do we have small grants no is there some other way that we may be able to support them maybe and that's part of what we needed to talk about directly but also these are going to continue to come in and how do we address them or and or prioritize them when they do not directly affect the members of the Amherst community or there might be members of the Amherst community that this affects we don't know yet um but I just wanted to have us start thinking about how we um support other entities when they're asking for us our support we don't have small grants to give them but are there other ways to support this group of people um I guess like I don't have answers now I'm happy like to have that conversation I'm excited to see what people have to bring forth for that I guess what I also wanted to say about the statements conversation is like also celebrating like human rights you know like things happening maybe like just the idea that like there's violations but there's also ways that we are advancing in some areas too so I feel like bringing attention to both things also is important I don't know the right word I'm looking for but you know the idea that like there's joy and there's also like serious issues at the same time okay basically our accomplishments you're saying we should also celebrate those accomplishments um I don't think we would go about doing either but I feel like if we do choose to bring attention to certain things we should also bring attention to the positive ones as well yes so clearly one thing that's happening now throughout the country and I'm not sure to what extent Amherst is taking in but there's a huge inflow of refugees from so many different places in the world and you're seeing American cities take them in to me that's really a very positive thing that would not have happened at a at another time so but it's not the only thing that's happening in that area of course but it's the brighter side it's not like everybody's being killed at the border there are people who are getting through and these you know like a hundred thousand Venezuelans I think just got legally authorized to work in New York in Massachusetts just gave drivers license to everybody so there are things like that that are happening that I think are allowing people to live whole lives which is they're right I know Massachusetts also like made it free to get your your undergraduate bachelor degree once if you're 25 um and can't afford it so it's great yeah at the community college so I um I just want to draw your attention back to the beginning of this conversation because I'm not sure that I had heard a resolution to the question about whether the co-chairs would be authorized to act on behalf of the commission in drafting letters and I I think it's important for you to have some clarity about that so and Jennifer can correct me um if I'm wrong but when the co-chairs acted in the past they would send in the document to Jennifer and I who would then send it to all of the members who could respond back to us so if someone had a strong objection to something that was in a draft document they would have an opportunity to um to bring that to the attention but would it would still be done in a way that did not circumvent the open meeting wall but you I think you need to decide yay or nay whether you're going whether co-chairs are going to have that authority or not have that authority so there's just clarity okay before we go into I just have this point that as per say reply all is just the email thing when we have an email from you so we will be sending our approval as a reply all no you cannot do that so you'd have to send in your comments to to Jennifer and I is this like a reply all it's as if you were having a meeting and we can't have a meeting so that's why you can't use the reply all like a google form no because you're not allowed to deliberate um outside of a posted meeting so a google form would allow you to deliberate because every people would have the ability to add comments make comments and that would be deliberation it's like a hub of a wheel so somebody draft something sends it to Jennifer and Pamela and then they can send it out to everyone else and everyone else can send an email back to what whoever sent it to us so it's uh inefficient but it's the way we need to function I know there's one step to that which is that a letter doesn't get first it gets discussed here and there's a decision that a letter will go out then the co-chairs will draft something right and I wanted to say that I have this is something I have had experience with I volunteered to draft something and so I want to and the co-chair said go for it so I want to say that I don't want it to be limited to the co-chairs and I'm not sure why it is I think I'm happy saying the co-chairs um or whoever they delegate it to but you know if the co-chairs have to do everything if the co-chairs have to write the letters and the co-chairs have to represent us here or there and the co-chairs that whatever have to be involved in the mediation that's like that's too big a job there's you know we can have up to nine people so why can't they delegate I would agree to adding the delegation part so the co-chairs don't necessarily have to be the one's writing the letter that's just what the other group did so you guys have the ability to pick whomever you would like to do that or no one and just say any member and then that way that's inclusive of the co-chairs or not you know to everybody in the group the important piece from that perspective from from me and Pam was pleased that you guys are not replying all so just sense it to kind of finish up your question the google doc itself because you can send me a google a google doc and then I can change make edits to it that is deliberating in a meeting a google a google form is just a survey form yeah but anything that's going to require the group to make any kind of decision or any kind of like oh we could all meet on this one day we can't have you do that on a google form because that's deliberating does that make sense I mean I'm not like it it's it doesn't hit this google form or not yeah no I agree I I hear what you're saying it's just the way that it operates because it's an issue of transparency for the rest of the community right so that the groups aren't having like secret meetings and and having other discussions that aren't that the public aren't aware of and then there was something about the problem with the statements and things happening and the HRC and one of the reasons why the I think the co-chairs were designated as that individual because things don't happen two days before our meetings right things happen two days after our meeting and then we don't meet for another 28 plus days so that was another reason but anybody you know if we know that there's something national and Liz sends an email to us that says hey I think that somebody should take a look at this reply to Jennifer and Pamela if you're interested then maybe that would work but it's just that we you know things don't fit in these neat little boxes right like the way that we would want them to their they happen sporadically yeah I personally feel it's fine for the co-chairs to delegate because that makes it less confusing for you yeah I agree and and there's another thing that I think totally I want to share also that we should always have one statement per month like when we have a meeting we should do that as a you know rule so that you know we are out there and we are basically publicly advertising ourselves also as you know HRC from Dono Amherst so often in the past when there have been big you know so Amherst is a welcoming community right and that was something that's on the HRC webpage and that statement came from the superintendent of schools the town manager and the police of chief chief police I'm trying to go to the webpage because there's another one where the chair often in uh the chair of the commission alongside the chief of police and the town manager have signed off on statements before and so that's another thing is that sometimes it's not that the HRC takes it on but the town takes it on and wants the chair or the co-chairs of the HRC to sign off on it. So going back to the original question was about supporting other organizations I would suggest that if there's a request that comes in from an organ other organization asking for our support if we have not had a meeting and we have the time to put it on our agenda we should do that for the committee to discuss and if we've already had our meeting then the entity needs to know that our next meeting it's not going to happen for 28 days and we can't do anything until we discuss it as an organization. How about that? I second. I agree. All in favor? Yeah. Any opposed? Oh six to zero. And then do we ask the question about the delegating for like more um uh for things happening sooner um or that need like to be called to attention like sooner? Is that something we have to agree on? We discussed that a little bit in uh meeting in August or August or someone. I'm going to screen share this one because I think it's a great example of. Well Jennifer's um uh pulling that up I I thought that the answer to your question was that the um there you guys had reached consistent consensus that the co-chairs would designate someone to write a letter if one was needed um you know prior to a meeting or there would need to be a rapid or quick response that they're so the co-chairs would either write it or delegate it okay. My apologies for leaving the room briefly but do we still need to discuss those two requests? If the request was monetary the request is monetary or other so the monetary request we cannot do we don't have the money to do it so that's easy. I would suggest that if in fact there were members of the community I would like to know from them what the other things are they talking about giving people rides are we supporting them as an organization are we supporting them as individuals um and how that kind of thing will come about um it's not our town government of governance is that the right word so it doesn't mean that we have to um but as an individual you can if you would like but not as a representative of the human rights commission if we have not all decided that we are going to do it as a unit. Well I'm just trying to ask are we trying to call the question are we going to do something collectively is that on the table I know we can't give money the other piece was can we do something else and my question is are we talking about that now or I personally I'm not talking about that but if you'd like to you can I'd like to put it I don't want this to just I think we did put it to bed which is that we said we would discuss it at the meeting. Is it this meeting? No we're going to discuss it next week. Are we discussing these particular things right my question that I don't see why not I think it can be really quick I don't think we should do anything for the asylum seeker group there's hundreds of congregations and community associations that are doing this kind of refugee. We act on the things that we take the initiative on right I think I don't I don't know we're talking about like we're going to go attending meetings from other groups and we're going to we have right now we have 11 cultural events and we're going to be mediating disputes like I don't have the bandwidth as a group to say yes as a group we're going to figure out how we're going to support this western massachusetts asylum seeking network so I would say we would say sorry we don't have money to grant and we don't you know we our docket is filled in terms of activity I feel like for the the agenda for today supporting other organizations I don't have like the full context as to what groups specifically came forth for any so it came up because this group asked us for our support and so my assumption when I got the request was that this is not going to be the first time so we should have a discussion at our meeting or our retreat as to how we proceed when other people asked for the support so that's part of it and then I for one and Deborah as well have said we I can't as a unit don't suggest we move forward with supporting them we don't have the resources or the time given what's going on in our own town but what were they like I don't know who you heard Liz just read their request that was 100 percent of the information that we have do you want to hear I think she's I think she's no I think she's asking there was the specific and then the general I think she's asking how we proceed with the general no um there were two organizations so I guess like maybe I had like a brain freeze or something but um just I wanted to know like you mentioned an asylum seeking organization and then one other one right and we're taking this one at a time so the asylum seeking organization Liz just read the one email that we got from them that's it and then once we decide if we're going to do something there and I think maybe Liz should read that again then we'll go back to the other organization so the other one was that we keep getting requests from Barnstable Human Rights Commission but they're more asking us hey we're doing this Zoom webinar can you you want to join us and listen in and I personally wanted to listen in and report back and say hey you know they're doing work around the hearing impaired and they had some very good ideas and suggestions and definitions and maybe we can bring that person here so that we could better understand how we support as a council the the hearing impaired in our own community right so that's one thing the other thing is a specific request for support monetarily and or I'm assuming physically and right now with that organization I'm saying personally I given what's already on our docket because I'm assuming that we're going to start getting some more stuff when we have some changes coming in on our legislation for the town we have elections coming up for the school committee in town council we don't have a superintendent for our schools well we have an acting superintendent for our schools right now we don't have an assistant superintendent we don't have a department of equity and inclusion in our schools we started the school year without a seventh grade guidance counselor we need to be aware of some of these things and how do we respond or listen and be ready to support what's going on in our town so when someone else it's like this group is asking us to support them she's saying and she didn't even know all of that stuff was going on when I just mentioned that that we have a lot of other things in our town to deal with and we can't don't have the um I don't know what's the word you use bandwidth bandwidth and or resources and or um capacity right now to take on someone else's town or someone else's agenda because we're going to have we're going to be full in our agenda in January we're going to have a new town council right now we have an interim school committee in January we're going to have a new school committee and we need to look at all of that and be aware of all of that as we move forward with everything that we do so before you move on to the last of the agenda items I would um wait sorry that was adult right and I don't think we've ever made a decision on that and they came to our meeting like two months ago right so I thought we did decide and we did sign off on it did we do you know what happened so you wanted to support it but didn't know exactly what you were going to support and how you were supported this is what happens when committees meet once a month this is why things get uh tables for so long so I thought I had forward everybody the template that was sent to us right and then I didn't hear anything back so I sent the template and I needed someone to like sign off on the template and then we can forward that template because they give you an already statement already drafted that you guys can sign off on and send on it's and send it back and send it to the legislative legislative state legislators have we passed the time the deadline I seem to remember there was a deadline I have I don't I don't remember that piece okay I think we should send it because I think that our agreement was that we would send it and all they need is our signature a statement of support they don't need anything more from us and I think we all supported it right so can we now agree that we will send it so Jennifer do you need one of the co-chairs to sign off or something or can what needs to happen if we all agree well I think so here's something that you guys need to figure out do you want your co-chairs just to sign it do you want it to say on behalf of the human rights commission do you want your co-chairs to sign it and say on behalf of the human rights commission that is up to you guys how that's done I don't care about the signature but I think we do need the stamp that has the human rights commission because that's the strength of you would like a stamp that says human rights commission in a meantime I also have a sign it that's an additional thing that depends on yeah are you all okay with having us sign it plus the stamp I'm so okay with having you sign it I want this move forward yeah I like that yes that done we'll work we'll work with Jen on her and yes to the youth and note we're not saying no to the refugees we're saying no to the specific request from this organization all right so we're moving on to just going to suggest point of order take official action on that so you need to have a motion have it second take a vote that the commission is taking action to send a letter of support for the legislation revising youth offenders right and similarly you also would need to have some sort of motion second that you have decided as a body to inform right which could be through the co-chairs drafting a letter the asylum seeker refugee that you are unable to respond to that you know to their request I move that we sign a letter of support for the youth legislation changing the age of majority I second that we've had lots of discussions already so we've heard the motion we've heard the second we've already had discussion is there any further discussion all in favor aye any opposed any abstentions vote passes six zero we're looking for a motion to I move that we inform the folks from the western Massachusetts asylum organization that we can't be we cannot say yes to their request at this time I second that so you heard the motion you heard the second are there any further discussions Jennifer I'm just going to say that they weren't really asking for anything except for the grants and I already told them that they don't we don't have grants but that I would follow forward the email to you all to see if there were other ways that you would like to support so I'm not sure that anything else really needs needs to happen there because I already I mean I'll on my behalf send it and say like we don't I mean that was that's all I did I just said we don't do grants okay so question then um so are they trying to raise awareness specifically or were they just at they're just asking for grants they're not looking to raise awareness they were looking for small grants so that they can do their charge so they can fulfill their mission okay so what is that something like that we could talk about as part of it like it sounds like we have a lot of other things to take care of um but I guess my question is sort of like if they were looking to raise awareness would that would some part of that be us having a conversation about in the agenda of like the state of refugees um in Amherst, Massachusetts I mean it could be as simple as that too right like we just we just promoted not promoted but we just brought attention to their organization by having it in this conversation that will be recorded that someone will view one day I think it would be helpful actually if you for instance could take on or a couple of people on the commission could take on the job at looking at the numbers of refugees and the population of Amherst and bringing that to us to discuss as and putting it on the agenda so we can look at the state of refugees in the town of Amherst because I know the refugees where they all from and I understand the Cambodian refugees have been here I think the longest and we should look at that we should we should even look at that history of our acceptance of refugees and are we giving them a fair shake um yeah and I don't know lots of Zair war refugees that I know are isolated because they don't they don't come here speaking English they're more recently they're the Afghan refugees same thing yeah so I guess like for that like I I guess I just what I find important is the acknowledgement that they approached us I'm sure they approached a bunch of other organizations as well um but just kind of acknowledging that like they were looking to have like to spread awareness at a local level as well and then I guess part of that is yeah so some committee like committee members can take that on privately but I guess in like a group setting or on a like agenda as a piece of the agenda kind of imagining what that could look like for supporting organizations of having a conversation about it um I had another idea but I can't remember what it is right now but anyway it doesn't sound like we have to like yeah basically I don't know their mission also what they are looking at are they fulfilling their own awareness or what is the mission so we don't know and plus we as in the beginning said we more I think personally I think for myself I'm more concerned about the what's going on in town of Amherst if we have what kind of demographics we have and refugee buys so I guess my point was more just like is it helpful if we do talk about it and it is like recorded um for them to have that sort of like advertising on like a as part of the conversations by the HRC for their potential to apply for grants so like we can't help them monetarily but in spreading that um cause we could possibly I mean I think to some degree does have to go on the agenda whether you support it or not because I can't tell the individual that you guys aren't going to support them which is what I could say with we don't have any funds for grants but I will forward your email to see if the commissioners have other ways that they can support you which is what I did and then you guys feel like you they didn't but it will we will follow that type of pattern I would assume regardless right so when the the youth lift the age for the the youth came about she sent me a big thing I forwarded to you guys we put it on the agenda she came to the meeting and we talked about it right like it'll always move in that way because myself I don't have the authority to tell someone that you guys will there will not support there's another thing also that came to my mind is that refugees versus the alien you know who are coming without the visas they're two different entities and they are also having problems and issues the refugees get a lot of somewhat a lot of funding from the federal aid also you know so they're living everything is done for them so what basically what is going on is this cultural differences that are being mitigated so otherwise refugees are from where they're coming it it was difficult you know war environment and all that but they are funded by the federal budget okay so I guess for that in terms actual what we're talking about and not in just specifically that example um we could email them back and say hey if you would like to come to a meeting and have a representative talk about it then we can respond to that as to whether or not this makes sense with our own mission specifically um so that they can be heard other than just on the email as a way to support other organizations yeah but again the contention is whether they're interested also obviously in in raising awareness the mission might not be that awareness for them maybe they just want the grants and might not be interested and it might be it's a waste of time for them if we say again you know we don't have funds so if Jennifer's already responded saying we don't have the grants I was merely putting this on the agenda because we're going to keep getting requests not necessarily to discuss this one however um once Jennifer says we don't have the funds if they said are there other ways that we can support then we would put them on the agenda for whatever the meeting if we have space for the next whatever the next meeting is and then they could come the request should come from them not from us I think uh maybe I don't know I I just want to raise a concern that our meetings are filled with these kinds of requests and then we if we say yes to one we say have to say yes to everyone and um I've only been on for a few months and you know we've already had the youth group come on which was fantastic and this request and so I have no I like and then if once organizations get wind that if they ask we'll have them and there's public meetings I just have a concern about opening up the floodgates like if if you say yes to one then you say yes to all and that might be a totally irrational concern it might be so I share your interest and I also have this concern we've had more than that because we also had the one from the jones library um um gender thing that we said we would support and then the other factions didn't support so it didn't go anywhere you know so we we we have our cinema yes don't tell me you didn't go anywhere I thought we all support so we have we have evidence however I do believe that Pamela sent us an email if I'm not mistaken stating that we would support it but it was contingent upon the other folks supporting as well and the other folks balked so therefore that did not happen we said yes other folks did not so we have to remember all of the I would like to know what happened with that great memory like the final word on what happened with that because I thought we supported it so this body did vote to support $125 towards a $500 full donation to Amherst cinema but you did not get support from two of the other four two of the other three bodies and so there was not enough funds to do it so we didn't have enough to fill that gap no we don't know your your coffers are pretty much at zero so I find it very frustrating that we have no money at all and we're given a mandate like ensure that human rights are protected and no power shall go unchecked I mean come on I think we really need some resources if we're going you know we don't have any clout to resolve problems but we should be we should have the resources to increase awareness I personally think we are more like a pressure group and that's good also you know pressure group on policies and so on so because because we are all volunteers and once a month we are doing this so my suggestion given that fallback and given that we just took a look at a great budget for a great number of activities that we could be doing that we have no money for and given all of that we should as a group make an appointment with the town council and part of this conversation with them would be just that now if that was to happen we'd have to do it request to be on their docket and then we would have to show up not just one or two of us but maybe all of us right so Pamela has some suggestions about that because I can see your mind I read and write through her yeah so I do think that the annual report that Philip presented to the town council is a good starting point for that conversation about financial resources and the town is just beginning to start the budgetary process for planning so the timing is right the unfortunately like the report that was submitted at the end of last fiscal year came after the decisions about finances for appropriation so you're now at a position where you have last year's report you have a better understanding about what you want the scope of your work to look like and to be able to do and so I think you're at a position where you can make an argument as they go forward with appropriations to think about appropriations to the human rights commission as I'm reminded all of the time you know the budget is tight and limited but that doesn't present prevent a very strong ask and you know I would say garnering some support from some of the town councils to support whatever that ask is thank you I'm just going to say that you know one of the things that I've been thinking about with the different boards and committees just because like the folks from CSS JC came in or the community safety working group and so much of their charge with regarding the budget same with the ahra but had no idea about how the budget process worked is that in for the next meeting I will put in the presentation for the budget and how that process rolls out so that you guys can see and I would still say yes to the the state of the human rights but it never hurts to go to public comment and speak so here's what I'm going to say about that if we don't ask we won't receive if we do ask the least they can do is listen I mean the most they can do is give us the money the least they can do and listen and say we don't have it so and we're not going to get it if we don't ask but I think we should be well prepared before we go in front of them do we need a motion for this if I could just make one more comment there is always discretionary money in all the budgets so I certainly would not rule out the monies they have now we're talking about not being able to support at a time when all the stuff that's going on with gender in this town not being able to support this movie series because of a few hundred dollars surely that's available in discretionary funds so I think we should go for it and say set aside some for us now but that wasn't the ask about the ask for next year that wasn't the ask the ask was for 125 dollars from each of the four people and we fulfilled ours so but if the other folks didn't fulfill them that wasn't the ask we responded to the ask right I know we responded to the ask but we had the choice I mean within the system if it's important to us and it's not important to anybody else that doesn't mean I'm not happy or content saying okay it's not important to them so it's done I would have gone back and said where's where can we find the other 300 dollars or whatever it was and it had to have existed in the system none of us asked for it because we had it all chopped up to make it more accessible I understand but if we have an issue that's important I think we need to go after that well I think that's good advice for the future but I think the moment has passed for this particular ask so my question was do we need a motion to say we're going to approach the town council with the budgetary request or can that just be something that we do and my second question is the last time I got an invitation to join the representatives of this commission at the town council I got that invitation 48 hours before the meeting and I don't usually function with that kind of availability you know 48 hours notice so yeah if we get on their agenda do we can we get more than 48 hours notice so go ahead so I was going to make a suggestion that the co-chairs write to the town council president seeking an opportunity to be on their agenda and I mean the town council president generally sets the agenda and would select a date that would be made known to us and there are sometimes some flexibility so if I give for example last year the community safety social justice committee went back and forth on a date like it's sometimes difficult to to select a date because you have their schedule which is pretty much set in stone but then coordinating that with the others but I would start the conversation that that way this is where it would be really helpful to have our liaison because that person is talking to the town with the town council they're deliberating on all kinds of things and they could say oh wait we could use this 15-minute block for the HRC I'll send that note out also to or we will send that note out to Lynn Grasmer as I'll draft it and Deb the 48 hours is because meetings don't have to be post they have to be minimally posted 48 hours in advance and so I don't I'm not a hundred percent sure where the meeting notice came from but that's the way that they it just has to be done 48 hours in advance so if Ronnie makes it has conversation with Lynn about a future time then Ronnie can respond and say this is will be when the meeting will be but you might not get that zoom link or information until 48 hours in advance yeah so I'm just asking that the commission members be notified before the public notice is made so that we I want to be there I want to come I want to comply with your expectation that we have a hundred percent attendance I really do and I generally need more than 48 hours notice to be able to do that normally we would know when we're invited more than 48 hours and that means that we would get that information to you the zoom link if people can't come doesn't have to come till 48 hours prior I think that's what I was trying to say you're at priorities and goals is your mic on no sorry in terms of dealing with priorities and goals our last agenda item do people have priorities and goals they want to lay out and then we'll discuss each or how would you like to do it that's the only thing that I can say off the top of my head and I can start with some okay so I have four possible priorities listed here one is this whole question of education about human rights what are human rights so people understand that it applies to everyone and then the whole education piece about it and all the stuff that needs to be done so I would imagine some kind of goal setting about human rights the second thing is that you know we it's about CSS JC and Cress I think I'm not sure how we want to get involved but one goal might be there because there's a lot of distress and certainly I keep getting emails on a personal level about going to those meetings and speaking up and I know there's a lot of concern and we've HRC has long had a close relationship with CSS JC the third thing oh the increasing the age of adults we've already addressed that and the fourth thing was this whole question of voting that we have huge segments of our population who are refugees or other kinds of stateless people who are not participating in our local elections so this whole question of what sort of that's more of an advocacy thing we would have to advocate the barriers not at the town level it's at the state level so we would have to take on an advocacy campaign at the state level to bring it to vote to force our state representatives to vote for or against that kind of local vote okay I would suggest that we go around and say our items and then we can try to organize them and discuss them in in clumps okay I'll just start with the fact that now we are electing are we actually choosing fire chief and then the superintendent for the schools and you know what Liz has also told the middle school and so on so I would really promote us getting involved in it and being there when the decisions are being made and so on this is the police chief or what chief police chief okay Liz do you want to go next we'll just go down the line well my two main priorities three main priorities was the superintendent search police chief and cssjc as it relates to what's going on with cress I love when there's intersecting priorities my main priority was cress and the question I raised earlier about whether or not it's possible for us to provide testimony for human rights issues and I gave the example of the indigenous people's day and this you know a whole indigenous rights agenda of I think five pieces of legislation and other pieces about including um factual education in public schools I'm not sure of what the rest are at this moment but that's just an example so providing testimony in statewide legis uh and the statewide legislature the main thing that I'm interested in at the moment is about the police chief search um it's one more information I guess um uh coming from out of state um not really living here holding that kind of college student role only here for four years um part of that is study abroad um so I think like in terms of human rights priorities and goals um and just thinking about how to get students more involved in that as well um because I know all of my close friends have no about the commission um and we've lived here for two years at this point um and also just in general about town um town local politics um it's something only really economic not economics um social jurisprudence and social thought majors deal with at Amherst college specifically so that's like about 1800 students um so I don't know I guess for me HRC priorities I want to get the reason why I want to take on this role is so I can get more exposure to things happening at the local level um now that I'm of age to vote um so yeah that's um one of the things is sort of getting our initiatives more out there to people within my demographic okay so um the ones that have the most um interest are the press CSS JC role and the police chief selection so maybe we should outline what we can do with regard to those did you have a process in mind for this family I'm just sort of taking over here we didn't decide no no no no this is meant to be your retreat so you have to take I mean you have to take the initiative about where you want to go with us yeah okay all right so maybe we should talk about those first is that a good way to go is um press first and then the police selection um and the superintendent I'm going to say that me personally that I think there's an intersection with the CSS JC and crest um that was the word I'm looking for right now in flux flux you could say transition and transition and I think that it also because of where the crest came from that they intersect with the police chief search yes no maybe okay let's look at them together and have the superintendent search be a separate discussion then or are they I was good putting that's just my opinion now it doesn't have to be everybody's well I'm making a proposal because I think we need to move forward so shall we talk about those three together does that help you right now when we're taking a look at all the stuff that's going on in the town um and also with the school committee those are the three things press um superintendent and police chief those are the three things on this list that is most prevalent and the folks that I talk to and what they are concerned about and have some um tension about um okay so just to be clear this is our goals and objectives for next year and it ideally would align with right as it as it results as it pertains to how we're supporting the rights of the citizens of Amherst these are the things that folks are talking about these are the things that are in the newspaper right now these are the things that are um need our immediate attention as a town these are the things that we're in influx I don't know what the word I'm looking for we're flexed about flexed about and they're urgent they need to happen sooner rather than later yes we have uh an acting superintendent yes we have an acting police chief however we need I think as a council we need to be aware and more involved in how these processes are making the active more permanent and maybe um help die down some of the tension and the um the rhetoric and whatever else is going on in the minds of the folks that we need to most serve that's the good girl say that word insecurity that's a good word I like it so what are we going to do about it in the next year is the question so remember you need to have your mic so what are we going to do about it is the question so I do believe that you and me and or me was asked to be part of whatever the police search is um as part of the human rights commission I think I got that and I'm not sure and I know I'm sorry that I got some information some emails from Paul at the beginning of September and then my sister passed away so I was just like I've been on and then since then I've had five more deaths in three weeks period so I have been not paying attention and now I'm actually receiving text messages about um beloved Barry Brooks and his memorial service there's a gentleman in our town his name is Barry Brooks senior he is an instrumental part of the african-american experience in the town of Amherst he it was um a guidance counselor and then as retired he was an ombudsman for the regional schools he was a guidance counselor at the middle school he raised two children here he was he and his wife his wife Judy was a beloved first grade teacher at Pelham elementary school Judy belonged to Goodwin Memorial Amy Zion church Barry belonged to Grace Episcopal church they were also resident directors for many years at the in the ABC program they are pillars of our community Judy passed away several years ago Barry passed away last week so right now I'm in the process of helping his daughter in part of our Goodwin Memorial community plan his very public memorial service that will be on october 28th so given that I also lost my sister on september 8th and some other folks in between um I also just um moderated the memorial service of Dennis Jackson who was another african-american man and a pillar in our community especially when it comes to education and um um growth in youth empowerment um and his memorial service was Friday Friday night so um I haven't really been paying attention to the police chief search and now I am telling you in person and on air that I am now back in that fold um so um and as a member of the Amherst regional school district since november of 1981 um I'm very much interested in the superintendent search so I don't know how we as a group do these things I know that we've been asked to be a part of the police chief search so so I'm gonna suggest that I fill you in uh on information I can fill you in on an information about Crest definitely um and also the police chief search and also a suggestion so the CSSJC had requested specific information about the police chief search which we provided them some written documents so Jennifer can make arrangements to send that information to you and she may be able to fill in more information but what I understand is that following the first round of uh public forums about the selection of the police chief that the consultants inform the town manager that there is a need for more information gathering so they are I think going to gather some more information from individuals in the community and um at the point in in time when a search committee is formed that it would include a member from this committee and a member from the CSSJC when the actual work of selecting a police chief occurs and Jennifer please fill in if you have more details so I have a question so I I want to see if you all did I know that everyone on the human rights commission was invited to meet with the consultant did anyone else meet with them I mean apart from the two of us you did did you meet with them okay thank you go ahead well since you've already met with them first of all I was going to say well since you've been at a commission you should meet with them but you already did so that's fantastic so never mind I think um I don't know if I was allowed to since I wasn't sworn in yet as a member have you been sworn in now then you're allowed to now can we get her on the list since I think yeah you just replied to the email I would like to say that in the course of my interview with the person it didn't happen at all like and it structured information gathering session like there was no introduction that said this is what is this here's the process first we're talking to you then this is going to happen this is going to happen this is going to happen there did not seem to be an order to the conversation so it sort of doesn't surprise me that they come back and say they need to talk to more people I wonder if we could somehow ask for them to be a little more structured in their questions or if they're unstructured still follow some thread because there wasn't any which made me deeply concerned and their own role they said seemed temporary and uncertain so they said you know I said what are you going to do with this information like there was no discussion of what they would do with the information is it confidential will you be quoted in the report none of that was presented and when I asked them they said that they would report their findings to the town to the town manager and when I asked about well what do you mean by that how are you going to analyze this qualitative data they gave me no the person I who interviewed me gave me no was not able to talk about how they were going to analyze she said oh well do the main points so I said so what about all the minority comments the comments that are not among these main points will they be included in an appendix or will they be left out or is it just the main points and she's then she didn't seem to know she said oh we'll include everything so I said well you're going to include everything everybody says so how then are you going to analyze what everybody says and really it's possible that I was being difficult in the way I was asking my question because I work with qualitative data myself and I know it's very easy to budget so I felt very concerned about the way the loose way in which they were dealing with the information they were getting and the fact that there's no end to their involvement also concerned me one thing Pamela that would help me a lot is to know like what's the plan like is is the idea that at the end of one year there'll be a new police chief or at x point they didn't even they said the town was going to develop the job description not them so I can see them submitting a bunch of information to the town about you know people are concerned about you know they want cooperation with crests they want this they want that they don't want gun use they want a gentle touch with young people particularly BIPOC youth so I don't know how all that necessarily changes anything about a job description that could be written today and they also said that the town this is my last point the town does not have the money they said oh don't feel bad you know it's not like it's not the town's fault that were she didn't use this term but I'll say in disarray she says it's not the town's fault they don't have the money but I find that hard I can I be talking to can I finish are you interacting with the person the person who I was asked to do my interview with the consultant who is doing the police search okay so it seems to me that's not acceptable because we don't have a police chief for one whole year which means we have a year of the police chief salary that we made that was allocated but is available potentially for this so to then say not to speak of whatever budget HR has for hiring but then to it doesn't seem believable to me that there's no money to hire a new police chief such an important position in this town so anyway I I left feeling very sort of saddened by it because I think it's an opportunity especially when you're willing to be open and I have the sense from everything I've heard that everybody wants you know a good police chief who can work with crests and you know be legitimate have legitimacy in this very diverse community with a lot of concerns I know everybody wants that but I felt disheartened from what I heard that's just my report of my interaction in responding to the town manager's email to all of us about signing up to talk to the consultant I just want to say that I had a very different experience than you had um I was able to say all the things that I wanted and needed to say I was able to get some answers to the direct questions that I had about what the next steps were going to be and just to clarify we do have a police chief right now it's acting but we do have a police chief yeah I also had a great experience in my interview um although the one thing that is your mic on it is I had a great experience in my interview and the one thing that was the same Ronnie is what you experience is um they didn't have an end game in terms of like here's the 12 steps from talking to you to hiring this police chief um because what and what they I was explicitly told is they're in game in this moment is writing the report from the data collection and then the town would make a decision about what happens after that so that seems like it might be similar to what you had so I would love Pamela if you have more information about the sequencing of this process that'd be great so I don't have a lot of information because I haven't been involved in the process it is my understanding that this first phase would be completed and then the second stage would be the formation of the search committee and I'm not certain whether responsibility for writing the job description would lay with the consultants or whether that would be in-house by the HR department I'm I'm not I'm not certain so as far as we are concerned as far as we're concerned the next step for that week where we can be involved is to have one representative on the actual search committee is that correct I believe that's correct yes one invitation from from here want to clarification is the search committee and the interview committee going to be two separate groups or one group or do we not know that I think that it's one group when I saying the using the term search committee I think that was the body of people who would review applications and interview but again you know take what I'm saying with a grain of salt because I haven't been intimately involved in the process but it's my understanding that you would be a member of this group would be on the deciding among those individuals who would be making a recommendation to the town manager and I'm going to assume that all the information that is shared within the search committee cannot be shared outside of it because these are personnel matters and so we can't know who the who all the candidates are and what the criteria are so to the extent that people have prioritized the police chief search as connecting to the commission besides having a member of our commission on the search committee is there any other way we could possibly be involved so I oh so when we was selecting a principal there was the search committee and the interview committee and then the candidates came to the school and met with kids and staff and so I'm not sure that that's a true statement and if it is a true statement then I for one will bring up how before there's a final selection made that members of the community should be able to meet and greet and pick their brain and you know we was also able to even though we did not have a final say because I wasn't on the search I was able to put my suggestions and my thoughts and feelings in a little box for people to review great great yes what I was thinking is like if you get 50 applications that that information does not get shared widely but once you have like three finalists perhaps then what you're talking about can kick in yeah yeah I'm sure I'd like to add just completing the earlier discussion that I did get to say everything I wanted to say and I think she I think the person interviewing me did hear me I what I was reacting to was my questions to her my questions to her about what her purpose was and how the information collected from me would be used okay so before we move on to crest do you need to have any further conversation or take any action or are you satisfied with that well I want to make sure that what Liz suggested which is that there's a role for us as a body to meet with the finalists or you know give an input to vet them and give input at least all right so where would where would we go to or who would be what do we need to do to ensure that the commission can be more fully involved so I can inquire about more details of the process from the town manager I just I personally just don't know the answer to that question right now I do think that the process that Liz described is the process that would be used going forward but I don't you know I cannot say that with a hundred percent authority right so you can find out and get back to us and if this is not the process what would be our process for advocating for that yeah so I think your your process for advocating is always you're having advisory role to the town manager so you could send a letter or memorandum advising so and you also have that advisory role to the town council so you could do that as well but I would love the opportunity just to find out some more clarity about the so the next most important agenda is or equally important agenda I will say that is um crest crest so I can give you lots of information about crest so the town manager met with his executive leadership team I think now like three or four weeks ago and to have a discussion about setting up an interim leadership team for the crest department and at the conclusion of that meeting which was on a Friday I was told that I should think about taking on that uh taking on the that interim director role when I met with the town manager the following Monday I laid out to him or discuss with him what I thought would be really important scaffolding to put in place in order for me to do that which was to create a leadership team um because I do not have public safety uh as an expertise and so the leadership team includes chief Nelson the fire of the fire department sergeant Janet Griffin from the police department myself and cat Newman from the crest department cat has served in several roles and crests so she was a program assistant which was a union position which was envisioned as the second to Earl or to the director's position and she is currently serving as the implementation the grant implementation manager so at the time that the director left the position or was placed on leave the uh program assistant position also became vacant that person resigned so there was definitely a leadership void over in the department the the implementation leadership team has now been in effect for three weeks we met with all the responders in the first for our first day that we took over the role and had a full one day retreat where we reviewed the the mission and goals of the department I I I think hopefully they would agree with me and when I said that within the department there's there had been a little bit of like mission drift right that what people thought that they were higher to do and what they were doing there was a little bit of a gap and so each of the responders was asked to describe the air work in one to three sentences and then as a group we created a very brief mission statement that looked at what the actual mission of the department should be we also we meaning the leadership team have also put in some structure I think to help the department during this interim period so uh Janet uh Kat and I are on site the DEI office moved to the second floor of the bank so we are all there so uh Janet Kat and I meet every morning at 8 15 to talk about the department and then following that we try to have a morning meeting every morning with the responders to review their activities and plans for for the day we have tried to designate Tuesdays as an in-service day where they are starting to receive training on and refresher information on a variety of different topics we have tried to get have them begin to use more formally the use of their radios calling in following procedures around how they record their calls we're reviewing policy we're making some recommendations we again the leadership team are making some recommendations for about the structure going forward the the intent is that this is a temporary leadership team not meant to be in there permanently in fact I've said at every meeting it is my goal not to be in this role come January 2nd like I'm only guaranteeing my participation through the end of the year so the town needs to move quickly to decide what a future structure will be as the town manager pointed out in the documents that will have Jennifer share with the group this leadership team looks very similar to the implementation team which included members of fire police department Jennifer's role as the in the as a DEI so it's sort of a similar structure I I I would hope that if you spoke with the responders that they would feel that we are trying to listen to concerns that they have about how the department has operated in the past and we're trying to address some of those concerns I would say from a management perspective we've also sort tried to address some of the concerns that management had as for as wearing identify I don't want to call it a uniform because it's not a full uniform but having people show up to work in their crest identifiable you know shirts and apparel so that you know that they're crest responders and one of the things that I've tried to do is model that so if you see me Monday through Friday I'm wearing a gray crest shirt so to model that expectation and we did unfortunately have two responders resigned no one has been one individual has taken an opportunity at within the school department the other person you know I don't know but you would you know if if you knew who they were you'd have to ask them specifically about their rationale them for we have the right to know who they are know yeah well generally personnel matters we wouldn't you know yeah but so the I think that the group that remain are still very committed to the work there is still some discussion about what that work is there have been some obstacles that the town is moving to overcome as far as like the concern that they're not that the responders are not receiving calls from the 911 dispatch system yet but there were some legal obstacles as far as collective bargaining with the dispatch union that have been have been mostly resolved and so things are moving along in that way on Friday our earlier during the week last week I received a call from their union representative who wanted to just check in on the status of the of the leadership of the department we arranged for the union rep to meet the entire leadership team so we were on a zoom call with him answered any questions that he had and then left that meeting so that he could have a private meeting with the responders so that they have an opportunity to you know raise their issues the trainings that are the in-service that have taken place thus far was a refresher with the dispatch department and a training that was on domestic partner violence and then two responders and Janet both participated in a two-day workshop around suicide prevention and working with youth around a number of issues so that we've asked the responders to provide us with a list of requests for things that they would like to have more information on or have a refresher and they've done so we met with them on Friday afternoon to go over to have a group discussion about professional goals both short term and long term as well as educational attainment so I think we're trying to be as supportive as we can and to have the have the department in a position where there will be an easy pass of passing of the baton to whomever next directs the department well thank you for that update does anybody have any questions I know I just have one okay yeah the fact that we not sure as to why this happened that there's the vacuum and the top you know the crest and I don't know and there is a lot of privacy around that also but how can we be sure that it won't happen again so I think the answer is that you can never be sure that there won't be some sort of issue that might come up but because it is a personnel matter we're not allowed to really discuss that and in full I think you can and the town the town manager in his conversation with the town council reiterated his commitment to seeing the department be successful I think you can you know you would have to take him as his word that that is true I think that the members of the leadership team certainly are all there to make sure that the department is successful when I spoke publicly about the leadership team for the on the first opportunity was at the last September meeting of the CSSJC I said you know I am late in my career I did not sign on to this task to be a part of something that is designated to be a failure my goal in taking on the role is to for it to be successful I was adamant so I take all praise and criticism together about the formation of a leadership team because the idea of me being in charge of this department without any public safety background would just be in my opinion nonsense and so the goal is to put together a team that can really provide the structure for that easy handoff so that has required like looking at the current policies and procedures that were in place about and making sure that the responders understand the difference between labor and management and how what rights they have as part of being a part of a collective bargaining unit I mean there's some real I guess complexities because they are part of the same union that the dispatchers on and normally when I think or it's easier for you to envision like resolving collective bargaining disputes when people are working in different unions right and so you have to reconcile between the two they are actually in the same union as the dispatcher so there's a lot of nuance to to having that conversation and then of course on to that that there are two unions for fire and two unions for the police department and all of them have to interact with the Cress responders so as I said to the responders as well and to the CSSJC if you can envision a way in which this department would work without having strong relationships with those other departments then you know please let me know but I think we need to establish strong relationships between all three public safety departments in the town the other thing I think that's important to know so we the Cress department recently like a lot of their funding is coming from the Department of Mental Health they recently did a site visit I think they were fairly pleased with what they learned about this interim transition leadership team we'll hear back from them if they have concerns the department under the leadership of the prior director had applied at least twice before to be a part of a government leadership lab through the Harvard Kennedy School this past spring they were awarded that non-financial grant to be a part of this government lab so all of the members of the leadership team and I will be meeting with this cohort and the cohort is a group of other responder type departments across the country to learn from each other and to get advice about how to move the department forward and this you know as you saw if you read in the paper right each city and municipality is making their own decisions about where best to house this type of work if they want to do it and Northampton is being housed in you know in a public health department and some places it's embedded in fire and other places it's embedded in the police department and here the town had previously decided that it would be a standalone you know department a third public safety department okay Deborah had a question as well yeah actually I have a comment and a question this far precedes your involvement I just want to say that I understand collective bargaining complexities I used to be a staff person at a labor union and my job was to negotiate collective bargaining agreements but I have to go on record as saying that I'm very frustrated that people were hired and the staff was you know the department was created without having those issues resolved first because core to their mission is to be getting these 9-1-1 calls so I'm just very frustrated maybe I'm even a little aggravated by that so it is there's nothing for you to respond I just want to say that because that what has happened is the trust and credibility and excitement and hope for this department has been so greatly diminished far before you know the director was put on admin leave I just want to say that I also am frustrated and concerned at how long this administrative leave has been dragging on and I think that you know whoever is accused of anything needs to have their due process but have such a tiny department lose its head and have you know be in the position of needing to have interim and have no hope in sight for when another search process is going to happen or when he's going to be returning further diminishes the trust and faith and hope and credibility of the department all of that has nothing to do with you so I totally agree with you I feel like the legal questions should have been answered well before they were sworn in but all of that history predates me and I don't know why decisions were made I just don't have any idea I do think that the town has been working probably not at a pace that is visible to members of the public on the aspect around the paid administrative leave and coming some to some resolution but I think as you know like it those things tend to take time the town did hire an independent investigator to investigate the matter and so all of that takes time and then there's just a process involved in doing it go you go ahead because I have to digest what she just said just given everything that you've said given everything that you've said I'm just wondering you know apart from the disappointment that many people including myself feel about Cress and sort of anyway my question to you is given that you are now have now become quite familiar with Cress and what it has to offer and you know the HRC really well I'm just wondering where do you see the windows of opportunity for us to be involved so I actually um Rizwana had a really good suggestion that I wrote down when you asked the question earlier about Cress taking on the role of helping people to walk through some of the processes or having some involvement in that I I don't know the complete answer to that because I think right now I would say that the the majority of the responders are taking on the role of gaps in social service agencies so they've been very helpful with working with seniors the inspection department has asked them to assist with individuals in town who are subject to eviction because of hoarding but that is not what was envisioned as the primary work of the department and so I see that once the department starts to receive 911 calls their their work and the ability to do those things will be shifted quite a bit um and I think it you know it is yet to be seen what the demand will be for response to 911 calls and what their capacity is I I mean I have lots of thoughts in my head that are I have said to the town manager my goal is to provide um you know a pretty comprehensive report of like what we've done during this interim period as well as future suggestions but they will be you know they I've described them as wild ideas so I'll just say like publicly one of my wild ideas is that I think that the Crest Department even if it is a standalone department should probably have space in the new fire department that is going to be built at some point in that building right so that there's a more intimate collection to um to one of the public safety departments um you know one of the ideas that the responders floated themselves was whether they should receive training to become EMTs I mean so there are lots of good ideas floating around but I um I don't know where the department will be and you know three years time or in five years time so the way I see it from a human rights lens is that part of the reason for Crest's formation was that there were violations of human rights being carried out by the police department and there were a number of studies done prior to my move to Amherst but I've read the studies and they've all called for some sort of barrier between the police and their training and their particular way of responding including the way they're socialized to respond and the person on the other end and it seems to me that Crests can get lost in all the needs of any society in America like Amherst where there are huge disparities in healthcare and elder care in all kinds of fields and what I see is that they're getting distracted by those true needs however addressing those needs is great they're legitimate needs too but in terms of the human rights violations that were occurring some of them very blatant particularly against BIPOC youth and for other BIPOCs people um I don't see I mean Crest was supposed to be that space and my question is what can we excuse me what if anything what sort of role do we have to highlight the need for that barrier so that there's it reduces the likelihood of violations occurring when there aren't many eyes on it you know on the event that's taking place where such violations occur so I think that the that the need for the barrier was well documented in the prior reports that you've talked about and I think that the um that the responders that is the work that the responders really envision themselves doing the primary obstacle to doing that work has been receiving calls through the 911 system at least in my opinion I would say that's been the primary block and then so overcoming that obstacle will I I think lead to more responders being able to do that type of work and that's why I say I would be reluctant to say oh the um you know the responders will be able to do X Y and Z with the HRC because I think when they are fully uh designated and um able to do the work as it was envisioned for them they will not have the time to do some of the social service uh type of actions they've been in basically I'd like to share my own experience with Crest because that reflects very well and positively reflects positive impact that they made on my life because I had just entered this community Amherst and I had bought a car and it turned out to be lemon law it was dealing with a local you know garage and they you know they were not they were very uh and if I had I known I would have come here because they were very uh there was racial intonations and they were really treating they were very aggressive my um you know the uh seller car sales people so I don't want to take their names but um I did get a loss also on that and they did everything illegal so how I got to get Crest involved was because they were in the library at the time and I frequently went there and they were very nice and very cordial and I got to know them just saying hi and so on and then they I said you have this badge you know you have this Crest and they said yes because we are doing this there was Q there and then I think Brittany was there so they actually were so good they said no we are going to go with you we will accompany you because I didn't have any male person so there was this underlying gender issue also going on because I am coming I am a stranger I'm coming out of the community there's gender there's a there's a misogyny going on there and they went with me and then the person you know my um because the the seller he said who was supposed to give me return my money that was substantial for me at that time and because the car was junk so um the Crest Q said no we will come back again with you so after a couple of hours they accompanied me again because they knew that it was unsafe place for me that that business was very unsafe for me and I felt also very threatened so I did not register the complaint here because again the process of complaint is has not been implemented so the Crest people helped me but I wish I had known that I could go further and take it along because I didn't want to go into the small courts claim I went through the attorney general and she followed up and I was right I will I had the money hinged on to it but they did not even deem necessary to call back or even do anything and this is a very old business on the main street on the Pleasant Street it's a garage and so in the end nothing came out as you say there was no mediation but the Crest people did protect me so I have to let you know that so I would say that um that the Crest responders the work that they are doing that has been in that more social services realm is very meaningful and impactful for those individuals and I should also point out that the department has a memorandum of understanding to work with the school so there are a couple of initiatives that they are doing with the schools and that the department does have a presence in the library and the plans are that they would have some office space in the in the library so one of the issues that came up and just reviewing the work over the last few weeks is that you know at one point the department we had there had two shifts of working from eight to four and then from 12 to eight but that the department is in the bank center in that building is closed at four so you had responders who were in a building that was really locked away after 4 p.m and although there are notices on the doors you know call this number right you didn't have access to them and so one of the suggestions that I would say going forward would be that you know if there's a night shift that that work should occur at the location of the library which is open to the public rights so that you would have people have actually have access to to responders so the the plan is at the conclusion of this interim leadership to provide all of this information to the town manager and to whomever is going to be in the future leadership role for them to make ultimate decisions right now we have three responder positions that are open I had said at the very beginning that taking on the interim role that I really did not want to hire right I think that should be a decision for the next director however because we have we only have two complete teams and one team that's only has one member we will probably hire one responder so that we have three complete teams well you actually answered my question which is are we filling the vacancies that is the question is written right there in black and white now then so I will move on to my comment and it has to do with the part about um our past director our current director being on administrative leave and that comment is that it's taken me aback a little bit about um money I'm going back to money because we have him on administrative leave we have raised my taxes for the building of a new school I fully supported that okay I want everybody to know I fully support that but it seems to me that we are spending money on events that are tearing us apart as opposed to bringing us together we have bought out the past superintendent we have folks from the middle school that are under investigation and on paid leave we have a crest director on paid leave and I know the different parts part pockets of money come from different places but I think it's ironic that we have this money to put folks on a leave while we're doing these extensive investigations but we don't have money to fund the events that bring us all together as a community I think that that's ironic and we need to fix that quickly not us I'm talking about the town by the way so I think we're back to this question of how to prioritize our goals for next for this coming year like what are we going to really focus our energies on um we seem to have talked quite a bit about this so maybe we should talk about some of the other things so we can actually come up with things we can do so I'm looking at with crests and CSS right so those are two priorities is to keep those in the forefront of every conversation I think we need to have updates on them at each of our meetings I think that one of us needs to be on the police search and the superintendent search and these are the three items crests superintendent and police chief that we discuss each month also I'm in education about human rights I think that we need to develop Jennifer some kind of pamphlet or something I think we talked about this a little earlier and also how to incorporate the rights of our students as they navigate our town in the few years that they're here they may not want to I do we have a student here that's very interested in that and I think we need to support her and that mission and do they know some of the things I know that UMass has a department over there do they not that helps students navigate things that may come up when it comes to their human rights I'm not sure if Amherst College does Amherst College like a lot of the like routes that you can go to when it comes to like a couple human rights violations like sexual assault discrimination they're all sort of combined into like title nine um the person who represents that um title nine board or whatever um and a lot of students have their own anecdotal testimonies having really bad experiences um and then Amherst tries a lot to deal with sort of on-campus on-campus incidents like there was recently a um anti-black racist slur that was spray painted on one of the columns at a dorm on campus um and so they sort of sent out they just sent out a statement saying that they're trying to you know make amends with the situation um and that they're really upset about it but it's a lot of statements um and then kind of continuously just kind of brushing things under the rug like never hear about it you never hear about the investigation um or who's held accountable so there are a lot of things happening on campus that students are aware of and then a lot of these conversations happen in affinity groups um about you know like I feel uncomfortable but they're not often had with actual people that can make disciplinary action um or any other action of that sort so I guess to me it seems really important uh specifically with the police chief's search uh search because there we have our own like um well actually I don't know but how the different um Amherst police departments work I know there's like town of Amherst and then there's one more that's slightly bigger we have town of Amherst you have UMass police and you also have a police department on Amherst college yeah so Amherst they interface with each other mostly when there's off-campus entities however I know that for UMass sometimes if something is large they'll call an AP to Amherst police department to come over and assist with that yeah oh I'm sorry so I was just going to add that both for UMass and for Amherst college uh there is a state statute which allows them to have full police power so they are considered like a city police department for the campus um so they operate just like a municipal to police department would yeah and so I feel like um a lot of students have brought forth that like BIPOC specifically um when they feel like they're being intimidated by a police officer on Amherst college and so we had there's been a large ongoing conversation that often never gets solved because students are filtered out so quickly in the system um especially since COVID now that um students are not and I mean I think it was really um intense during COVID just because there was so much policing in general about like quarantine and everything but I know um now that like more social gatherings are happening that there still can be incidents um but I don't think people know how that those situations can um inspire more change um and so I feel like a lot of those conversations stay within the affinity groups and kind of have like a social um so would it be I was wondering if there would be room um for us as a an organization to go over to the campus and do some kind of workshop with the students around human rights and taking some of our documents over and talking about the laws as they pertain to their human rights and or answer any questions that they may have um are they invited to our meetings are the students inviting to does the campus get um notification that there's a human rights meeting happening on this date and they can come in and have public comment um things like that would be way that we can move forward um and when is human rights day or human rights December 10 December and yeah and maybe we can um go over to your campus on that day or a couple of days leading up to that or maybe even a day or two after that and talk to your students about his the rights you have as students uh we have to be careful because I think Amherst College is private as opposed to UMass which is public so we'd have to we carefully as to we'd have to be invited actually so that would start with you I think I also wonder if these discussions that happen in these little affinity groups those concerns of those issues can be brought to a higher level if somebody were to file a complaint with the Human Rights Commission because then there would be a way um just to raise it to a higher level so that the authorities realize it's something that needs to be addressed um I think that what's not clear to many people and even Crest didn't think to send Rizwanar to the Human Rights Commission but it seems like we really do need to spread the word that the commission is here if not to solve a particular problem at the at that point to elevate it to a higher level of attention while preserving the complainants um confidentiality yeah so I feel like the conversation about Crest was really illuminating especially because um I didn't know what that acronym stand stood for um I haven't heard of that organization um but reading like a little bit about it it already seems like um like it would alleviate situations that could escalate with a police officer or help when there is a police officer to provide support for students for people who are shaken in those situations um or like if you get pulled over you can call Crest to let them know that you have been pulled over um and that there is a police like altercation and even if it doesn't escalate just having someone to go to in case a situation like that that's really traumatizing for a lot of people um but I know that I I've never heard of it and I don't think Amherst has done enough to you know even acknowledge the fact that there's this organization that's trying to partner with so um Crest would not currently have the authority to enter onto Amherst College since it's a private university right and you have your own rules and regulations and policies and your own police department I do would say that you know one of my recommendations for the town in the future would be to think about the growth opportunity for the department if it were able to enter into memorandums of understanding with UMass with Hampshire and with Amherst College but that doesn't currently exist so they wouldn't have authority to be on campus there were um UMass students who were very interested in having UMass create a Crest-like department for the university so you know there there may be a growth opportunity for the department and the town in the future but that doesn't doesn't currently exist one other thing that I want to say before I forget is that so um universal declaration of human rights takes place on december 10th the town common is going to be under construction so Jennifer and I discussed and have sort of thought about moving that uh celebration to the courtyard at the bank center for a candlelight light um candlelight lighting event and then moving the reading of the declaration of human rights indoors to the room 101 which is right adjacent to the courtyard at the banks and the day um the next day on december 11th the um mass commission against discrimination representatives will be here to do a know your rights workshop um and they will provide a translation services in spanish so that's in the works for that event could I uh before we lose um Jacinta's issue all together I could I clear could we clarify that Amherst students can still file a complaint with the human rights commission they can't access Crests but if they want to file a complaint confidentially like anybody else in the within the bounds of the city of Amherst they can file a complaint if they definitely want to learn more about how the town and like um Amherst work in terms of like policy so in general um colleges and universities may maintain authority over their campuses so while it's true an Amherst college student could file a complaint with the human rights commission the town itself would not have the authority to dictate a change in Amherst college policy or you know actions because of the private nature however as uh Ronnie has pointed out it does elevate the profile of the complaint complaining about an Amherst business right a business that lies with outside of Amherst college which we then would be able to help and support and you also might want to check in with Sarah Barr because she is the uh what is the proper word that I'm looking for um Nancy and Tony are our town gown representatives from UMass and Amherst and Sarah is our town gown representative for Amherst college do you notice I don't know if you know Sarah Barr or not but and I know that would like when we send things out saying like we're going to have these events or that events that Sarah Barr actually takes that and forwards it to the community at Amherst college so I know recently Amherst rec did it for the block party and Sarah they were able to get multiple people who came in and did face painting for the youth and I just for the kids let Deborah speak for just one second please I need to go and I'm going off the mic right now so it's really hard to follow that and be present that's um but I'm looking at the time and I'm looking at the fact that at least three of us have another event to go to shortly after we dismiss so I've been taking some notes a little bit about some of our priorities um the one was to plan a human rights information and or workshop at Amherst college however I do believe that we can invite your folks here for the MCAD workshops that are happening on December 11th so that's a priority and um if we can help you get some flyers or whatever to put around campus so that we know that that's available and maybe even UMass and Hampshire college so that the students can be present if they wish to be at that at that event on December 11th I also wrote as part of one of our charges is to follow up on press and keep that as an agenda item for each of our meetings um a member of this committee or members of this committee being on the police chief search I also wrote members of this committee being on the superintendent search I wrote meet with the town council recording the budget um and I wrote um trying to get a pamphlet um regarding the HRC and as in education about human rights being as part of that pamphlet so education about human rights and what this commission actually is about being as part of that pamphlet so those are the ones that we've already discussed I'm sure that we have some other things there are other things on this agenda that we haven't gotten to but I also know it's 20 minutes to four and we have already worked through lunch and we have a four o'clock deadline so um one thing we didn't discuss and I'm happy having it postponed to our put put on our next meetings agenda is this question of whether we want to advocate for voting rights or that part of our mandate for residents of Amherst obviously it won't apply to this year's election but if we did um it would be something that would be relevant for two years from now yes and I'm you know agreeing with you that is more of a statewide thing as opposed to just an Amherst thing so we'd have to take a lot of hard look at that I mean we can advocate for the other folks in Amherst but we'd have to also interface with our state when it comes to that right but we are advocating for folks in Amherst to be able to uh to vote I agree okay all right it seems like that covers it in terms of what we're doing I don't see like big priorities and I see that priorities might shift depending for instance on how Crest goes and uh the thing that I see as the priority that we all agreed to is having us pick out um committees that we think we want to take a more active role in and then making it official so that we can then join those committees or just go and listen to what's happening and come back and report as our way of connecting and also um maybe speaking at those committees to let people know that we exist and what we do and how to get more information about our about us so that would be my last thought so maybe we should go around and have some last thoughts before we uh leave is that well according to our um agenda we should open it up again for public comment then we have member reports and then any other topics we did not think about so that's why we have 20 minutes for that and maybe we can take five or 10 minutes for that and then go around with final thoughts from each of the commissioners if that's okay with you Pamela so do we have anybody in the public's well while he's not speaking I do want to say that he's our wingman when it comes to lifting and bending when we have events because he's he gets put to work hsc member reports um I think the biggest report is that the css jc is having a meeting on Tuesday at 6 30 they're not having a meeting anymore is that the 11th whatever the 11th is Wednesday at 6 30 um their primary um goal is discussed uh the discussion of crest so if people want more information about crests or more in depth I'm not sure exactly where they're going with it I was just invited to come to the meeting so and they're posting the Friday the zoom the meeting has already been posted for Wednesday no no meeting is but if you go to the town calendar at amherst ma I mean that's something else that we should probably do at your next meeting and show you guys how to utilize the town calendar so or the town website so if you go to amherst ma.gov on the scroll down to the calendars for the 11th there'll be a zoom link attached to that I could show it to you now if you needed to but I think you actually the actually the hard part is not going to the calendar and finding the meeting the hard part is if you missed the meeting and two days later you want to hear it finding it is nearly impossible well yep because it posts the meetings on Fridays next Friday if I wanted to watch it and I hadn't attended I could watch it yep you can always call and ask for us to send you a copy of it oh okay thank you so if I may I will ask that the committee members take a look at the amherst mass.gov and take a look at which committees they are interested in attending and letting us know that on our next meeting which is October 18th if that's okay and also what are they thinking about do they want to do which of the searches do you want to be a part of if we if you can and how we then get that to the folks leading those searches candidate searches um so for those to be posted on our agenda for our next meeting so I just want to interject for a moment to say that Wednesday the 11th is also the candidates night for potential candidates so department heads will be here in town hall to meet with individuals who are running for office so I will not be in attendance at the CSSJC meeting but in their current package which is posted you would find more information about press as well as a DEI update and the I can't remember the title so Jennifer you'll have to tell me that one of the items on their agenda was concerning the co-responder for lack of a better word at the police department can you just provide some information about that so the Amherst police department for a few years has had a co-responder from CSO which is clinical services option and so they've been working as the mental health to help with folks who have mental health issues that the police interact with and so one of the things that are on the agenda for the CSSJC is that position and how it will interact and how it almost mimics what they I think envision that crest will be doing so yes there was there was a note a request to a fairly broad listserv I think I don't know who all were on it but I know it was a big list of asking people to come to the next CSSJC meeting because they're going to be discussing crests so if you're really interested the next one is an important meeting to go to excuse me so go when I checked their meeting they were discussing crests so it was the whole time and so they were always press is always on their agenda so they request monthly updates on crests and DEI so it appears on their agenda every month I'm just noting that there was a special email that went out of which I and I don't know how many dozens of people got that said please come to the to the CSSJC meeting next time I've never been to one before although I've wanted to so I don't know what goes on in general so this I also want to um say that Ron he's going to take the first stab at a letter to the town council so that we can meet with them regarding our budget or lack thereof and that will be on our agenda should be on our agenda for the next meeting as well um and I'll do the email very quickly from the two of us with your approval to Lynn Griezmer just asking who our liaison is right so I have two agenda items and I did not sure that I had captured everything but um town council budget invitation to the town manager where there other things that were that I missed I don't know so the two agenda items that I recorded for the 18th or budget discussing the budget with town council and an invitation for the town manager to come to this meeting correct well in the police chief search um I was just saying that we need to um so members need to bring which entities from the town government that they would like to be a sub part of that they also should be taken a look at which if they are available for the police chief search and a superintendent search um of course they will have an update on press for the next meeting and Ronny will have the two letters that she is drafting available for our next meeting don't I miss anything ladies and gentlemen in the back one that I would like to get out just with the co-chairs approval and your advance approval is just the email requesting information about who on the town council is our liaison yes the other letter the budget letter will come to you from both of us for approval next and we just want to make sure that we also approve for Jennifer to um send our support to the increase of age of adulthood when it comes to legal issues I thank you all for today's wonderful discussion so it's nice it's nice hearing all the different things that we need to focus on for the coming year and I look forward to working with everyone it's always important to me to have a diverse group of people in here that come from different backgrounds discussing the same things and sometimes we can get caught up in our own language if you will but I think for the most part we have all said some of the same things that are important to us and no judgment for anything I think that a little bit of tension is good and um I think we have a lot of work to do and I think that we have a good start in some of the things that we find found that are important for us to um work on in the next year to come I'm really glad we had a chance to focus on sort of a few things to work on next year and it's really helped me a lot to hear what's on other people's minds I usually have very clear ideas myself and it's important to have my ideas poked a little bit by others and I appreciate that very much and feel like we are ready to push forward somehow together and I want to thank Pamela for the uh uh introduction because it really highlighted for me how truly diverse a group we are um and that we can come together around human rights is really awesome hello thank you for showing a great leadership over here and the fact that even though we are all different but we have the same passion and the same zeal to make this town a better town with all these topics that are coming actually there's so many complexities over here and and but I'm very positive that we will go through that and make a difference in this community thank you everyone uh so um I would say I love all the committees that I work with but I really enjoy the work of this committee and um it was I think you have great leadership last year this committee was phenomenal and setting goals and moving towards those objectives and and I can uh anticipate that this year will be the same so at a time when we're always meeting in zoom I think it was really great for this group to meet together in person I think it fosters you know deeper relationships and connections and I look forward to the work that will be done in 2023 2024 also for the next agenda I forgot as um a calendar of events we need to take a look at what we're going what are cultural events and or other events we're going to be dealing with in the next nine months okay all right so then uh it is what time is it three fifty four at three fifty four we hear by adjourn the retreat of the human rights commission thanks everyone for being here