 So, I'm going to call the finance committee for May 20, 2021 for order at 1pm. And thank you everybody for being here yet again, since we're now this rare time of year where we have twice a week meetings. And this meeting is being held by remote participation pursuant to Governor Baker's March 12 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law general law chapter 30 a section 18. And I'm going to, as we always do check with each member of the committee to confirm that they are fully connected and can hear and that we can hear them and then they will proceed with today's agenda which is the budget review focusing on general government. So, I'm here. Kathy Shane. Here. In Gooseburg. Present. Pat Angelos. Present. Bernie Kubiak. Present. Dorothy Pam. Yeah. And James Shaffler. Here. Okay. And. So. We know what the agenda is focusing on today. And I want to then ask Sean, if you have a recommendation on the order that we are going to look at the sections of the budget. Yeah. Thank you, Andy. So the council slash town manager will go first. I'm just keep an eye on, I know Paul is going to hop on any minute now. And then the finance office and with the finance office we're going to cover debt assessments and OPEV as well. And then we're going to do human resources and employee benefits, information technology, town clerk elections and registrations and then facilities management. And people, I've gave them sort of rough times when to join on so they'll, you'll see people join on throughout the meeting. So the first one would be the town council town manager. However, the star of the show is not here for that. We can either wait a couple of minutes or we can, or we can skip and go to finance, or we could do it since I see Sean Hannon is here. When Sean, Sean, are you there? Otherwise, the only other you can do is split up finance into sections. Yeah, I'm thinking maybe since Sean's here. If you're okay with maybe doing it first and that way he can get out of here. And get no objections. No objection from me. Are there any questions that you would receive to advance on that. Not for it. I do have some questions that I'll bring up when different departments come up that Jane sent in but I don't say anything for it. So Sean, do you just want to give a sort of a brief overview of the IT department. Yeah, great. So very busy year in terms of personnel from last time we met. Don't think there have been any changes. We had Serge Fedorovsky who started about a year and a half ago so he would have been. He would have been here for the last time we went through the budget process. So no real changes in terms of personnel. It had busy different year. Last year, I don't know how much you could get into that but deploying a lot of laptops, webcams, getting everybody set up to work remotely, meet remotely. And transitioning back to working in person. A lot of that upgrading Wi-Fi and some some town buildings we started that and we're finishing that off. Got a fairly large phone project going on now. So we're in the process of replacing our existing phone system that's been upgraded but the core of it's about 15 years old. So it's time to replace that so we're in process of that. We've got the fiber optic cable being installed to replace the iNet. Well, well on its way it's taking longer than we were told longer than we expected but it's it's moving along along with that we've got some some network changes that once that's operational, we need to make some network changes. Let's look at through our budget book. We're continuing the cybersecurity awareness training that rolled out all employees included in town counselors. This year we've also included the through the state grant we've included school and school department employees who use our financial system. Sean's idea made sense we were able to do it essentially for free under the grant. That's major projects in terms of our budget. Nothing, nothing huge in terms of changes salary increases and you see in the budget the biggest, the biggest increases continuing the software maintenance that most. Most of the packages we use go up on an average of 5% a year. Also, many of the products we use use have switched to more of a subscription subscription model. You have seen personally and that their maintenance costs that we pay annually. That are greater. I think that's pretty much it I don't know. Yeah, I'll add real quick. As you can all imagine, Sean and his team have been, you know, one of if not the sort of most integral members of town hall during all this in terms of not only converting public meetings. You know, to remote but also getting everybody the technology technology they need training them how to use the technology again, you know, not, you know, getting it set up in the office is one thing but to get it set up and somebody's home is a is a probably a bigger than Sean can tell you about. And so they've been great at really getting everybody what they need throughout town to so that we can continue to work and continue to be productive and I haven't you know they're really were not huge productivity losses through the pandemic and a lot of that as things to the work Sean did. And he's got the same name as me so I really appreciate that. Yeah, and spell it correctly. And let me see if anybody else has questions. I was going to ask a few along the lines of what was just said but maybe to the in my list of so I can see that the three people who have hands raised right now so I'm going to start with recognizing people whose hands are up and Dorothy Pam. I just recently completed the security training at Holyoke Community College, and I have a printed out the certificate but I truthfully would be unable. I don't know how to go back and even find it to send you it by electronically can I mail you my certificate so I don't have to take the course again. Yeah, I would imagine it's the same. It's probably the exact same training because the state is has funded it so if you've done it if you've done it I'll I'll take your word for it there's a and I'll see if we can check that off in the in the system. I mean to be to be honest I learned only two things. Don't plug a little device that you find into your computer and don't pay your medical bills with a credit card. That was it, but it took hours and hours. I guess the other thing I would add is don't don't hesitate to ask us if some if something looks suspicious. Right. We're happy to happy to help. That was the answer to most questions. Ask your team. I got that. Yeah, I'll start with you said I net is taking longer than expected. You budgeted in a way that you're fine dollar wise on it. Does that mean so I'm basically will it come in at or under budget. It's just taking longer. Yeah, as far as I know right now that the delays are not there. So we are paying costs to the project where they do add costs as we do. Our use of the I net expired through Comcast so we are paying monthly for that. And I believe that's being paid for by cares money but Sean, Sean could answer that. Yeah, so we, we saw authorization from the state to, to use cares money for that because the original delay was in part caused by some of the factories that produced the fiber and they were supposed to get started sooner than they did. So we've been able to charge that because it was an unbudgeted cost we thought we were going to fiber in much sooner. So so far that there has been additional costs but it's been covered through cares. I just have another one related to I net and broadband I saw on page eight of this very long report that the town is anticipating getting $10 million in American Recovery Act dollars and one of the uses is broadband infrastructure. My question was, can the IT department tap into that at all. Does that does it potentially enable us to go even further than you were already planning anything with our affordable housing large apartment complexes or senior centers where we could bring it so I don't know how much you would get involved if that money is available. Would you get involved in making some decisions about that use of broadband. Yeah, so. Yeah, so what I what I can tell you about the fiber that's going up there most for the most part it's up there and in the ground is installed for municipal use only under agreements that we have with the utility companies so we we have the right to go on the polls and in the conduits because we're using the the fiber for municipal use. We can, if the town chose to the town could license the pole attachments basically licensed to have the fiber up there and use it for that purpose in the future that there's a cost to that and then there obviously be a cost to expanding it and connecting non municipal building so the the short answer is yes absolutely what what we're putting up there has the capacity and could be used for something else. It's just, there's, we would need to license it and then we would also need to something something would be need would need to be put into place to provide service on it and support it and everything else which is an undertaking. Okay. Sorry, I just wanted to add. Yeah, that's a, oh, Sean Hannon or the shot. So the, that's an eligible use we're looking at closely we you know we're, there's more details out but there's still not sort of all the details out. What I've read so far about that particular eligible use it's you can do it where the land or high speed internet doesn't exist. You can use the ARPA funds to put it in, which I'm not sure if that were that would apply in Amherst because I think, you know it still exists there even if it's not municipal for Internet it would, you know, there's options for other forms of it. So it's unclear whether we could use it for that because it already exists in one form or fashion. So I think that that eligible use was more about building it out in sort of more rural areas where there is no fiber at all. But not to say that that's a definite. So we're going to we're going to look at that more and see if there's any possibilities there. So Paul has anything to say on this and then turn it go back to Kathy so Kathy don't I'm not losing you. Thank you. I did. So along these lines of you said you need to set up a municipal utility to implement a program like this you can't just offer it you need to have a utility have a revenue stream and do and has to it's a legal process it takes time it takes two votes of the town council and I think even a vote of the people to set up a utility to do this. So, North Hampton is looking at this now it's probably something that the town might be interested in looking at, but it's not just something that we can just run a line down to folks it's it's a pretty elaborate process. We have to get municipal power light company like that. Okay, I think that answers what was going to be my follow up question so that the, the ARPA money, the recovery money might not even be able to be tapped into but it certainly wouldn't do if what Sean said we have to do an ongoing cost if we want to use it. So it wouldn't pay for the operating costs. Very long so I got the answer I was looking for. Thank you. Again it's not definite that it can't. It's just what I've read so far. So, anything else Kathy. And I do I do want to say that I think you guys have been fabulous I with with with both all the zoom meetings we're doing but then you regularly when I say I can't find that the recording you go oh someone wants to see it you get it to us right away. You know if we're looking at it because we're doing minutes or someone is asked to see it and your team has just been amazing. So thank you. Thank you. I'm lucky to have have the team that I do makes my life easy. Yes, let me also add my thanks to everything you've done this year, particularly at the point in time where all of a sudden during the security test. I got set up as one of the scam emails. And so, all of a sudden, I was getting these emails from people. Did you really want me to send you a credit card number, whatever. So, thanks for that Sean. I did. I talked to Sean and he said, Oh, yeah, we didn't realize when we set this up to be one of the random people. Well, I was so much more importantly, for all the amazing other stuff you've done this year. I do have a question and it pertains to software as it is adopted or adapted by other departments and the extent to which it gets involved in that so for example, you know, we're putting in a new piece of software we where we can collect fees for something. Do you get involved in the actual selection of the software. Are you basically depending on the piece of the department, because of their professional affiliations to know kind of what's out there. And how does that work. We pretty much always get involved usually it's it's kind of through the budget process and the requests come through there. First but that we, we get involved there and depending on depending on the department and what they kind of some departments already have something in mind. We work with the department to evaluate the software. Make sure it's a good fit like Warner works works a lot on that and make sure that if it's new ambulance billing software make sure that it works with the collectors and the permanent software is a good example example just because that touches so many different departments and just because it's perfect for inspections. Make sure it's still a good fit for DPW and fire and everybody else and collectors who will use this so yeah it gets involved in in that working with the department to find software that's appropriate and and sustainable in terms of cost. Thank you. Thank you. So, I'll ask one question and I see Bob Hagner's hands up to so I'll get Bob in a second. We've spoiled ourselves and spoiled our community a lot through having all of our meetings on zoom, because our meetings have actually been more accessible to the public and as Kathy pointed out, available to us to use for other purposes and we're going to be in the next fiscal year or even the end of this year starting to transition back to in person meetings. Are we still at the point where the town room is the only room that can be used for reporting meetings or are we have we've been able to follow through with the plans to expand that capacity. And so Paul may want to add to this but what I can say is the town room currently is the only room that we can support recording the meetings but more importantly it's the only room that we we really have equipped to support. We're kind of calling hybrid meetings if they do happen kind of meetings where some participants are remote, as well as in person as well as the public participating remotely and in person. So the town room is currently the only room that the equip to do that. But with the changes to the changes coming June 15. We certainly can look into what it would cost to equip other rooms just to start recording and or support hybrid meetings. Paul. So June 15 is the reason we're able to meet like we do here through zoom is because the governor has a state of emergency declared and there are executive orders that permit this way of. Meeting that expires on June 15 unless they extended or something like that, which means we go back to our old way of doing things which wouldn't means you meet in person. In which the designated room and certain meetings are recorded and others are not. And so I think that that is something we're prepared for. I don't know if the public and the committees are prepared for. And so we have looked at this hybrid and Sean and his team have looked at done some pretty extensive work on what a hybrid meeting looks like and it basically is a zoom meeting with people sitting in the same room together with your laptops in front of you. The council is the only committee that has a town issued laptops, so it's not really transferable to other committees. And it takes some technical support to run those meetings, which would we can we are obviously obviously going to devote to the council and its committees but would not don't have the capacity to offer that to every committee out there. Because there are dozens of meetings a week. So it's so right now it's a unless unless we have and also in order for someone to participate remotely there we have a remote participation. process where you have to submit in advance that you want to participate remotely and you can participate I think in five per year, or four in a row, something like that there's a certain rules. So unless the state changes that you know and we're hoping they change it at least and they keep it as we are now at least until Labor Day, we will be back in person under the normal circumstances as we have in the past come at least by Labor Day but right now we're prepared for June 15. Thank you, Bob. Yeah, I just had a couple of questions. The first you mentioned that you were in the process of upgrading the phone system. And I'm wondering kind of what were targeting for that because company I worked for. They started out with copper lines and then they went to IP phones and then they went basically throughout the phones are all together and just went through zoom or other applications on our laptops and so that's one question. You know, is the town set up to do that the second question I have is on the town computers. So I think that's where strict security protocols. Again the company I used to work for. For a long time I had admin rights on my own computer, and eventually they took that away from everybody. So I couldn't even download printer driver. I had to go through the IT department to do that. And it stopped a lot of problems. So just if you could elaborate on those thank you. Yeah, absolutely. The phone system, what we are going to say what we're going from we currently have a Cisco voice system so it is, it is network based, but we're relying on, I don't want to say old fashioned but these, these PR eyes through Verizon that are, you know, 30 plus year old is essentially their T ones that we're having a lot of quality call quality problems with so we're moving off that we're moving off the Cisco system we're moving to a different voice system voice over IP network system. But it is, it's primarily handset based so for our users and for supporting our users. It's primarily, you know what you consider a conventional office phone, but it does support running a client either on a mobile device or on a laptop. In fact, health department we've been working a lot with them just with the changes with, with hotlines and everything that they've wanted set up for COVID and people coming and going and people working from home. They've, most the users in the health department have have gone to just basically to the PC based clients so they just, they use a laptop and the headphones and they, they're pretty. They work with it. And it works well for them we, for the, for the bulk of our users in terms of making the transition as easy as possible we're going with with conventional handsets but it gives us a lot of flexibility going forward and in disasters working people working remotely. And that kind of stuff. In terms of security of our computers we, we've changed it over the years where we're trying to strike a balance between restricting what people can do and, and making, making sure they can still use the computers so we do. We do lock things down. Some there, you know, they do require admin credentials and the counselors have probably experienced this trying to install stuff on their laptops. There, there are by default, no, no users get admin admin credentials. The other thing that I think is has really helped us between user education. And we use Office 365 for our email and that does a does a pretty good job of stripping out malicious links blocking a lot of stuff it's not. It's not perfect by any means, but it does a pretty good job of, of helping filter out some, some of the garbage so it doesn't get through. Personally it was very irritating not to be able to install a driver but yeah, it really did help with the system security. Yeah, yeah, I think I think it's helped us. Thanks. Thank you. Did you have anything else. I was going to say that your team, it's actually in a previous place I work they did to Bob when you get totally frustrated. They from their headquarters log on to your computer and do what you want. So it's labor intensive for Sean and his team, but they get me that driver that, you know, I can't, I can't install my printer without, you know, so that's been. I think after at first I thought I had to bring the machine, you know, the laptop down and so it was a quick ish fix but it was really intensive. Right. And that's why we have such problems with Windows systems is that anyone with admin rights can get into your computer. Yeah. Anything else and questions. I think. I appreciate all of the great work you're doing and seems that the. We know you can clear about the challenges ahead and understand that the software costs because that big, the industry is interested in their profits and they're getting them from us. Absolutely. Anything else from the committee. Okay, so. Mr. Hammond, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody for your support. So we want to go back and go to the council and town manager office, Sean. Yeah, so Paul, you're up next. So there were a few questions but I'll let Paul do serve an overview of the council and the manager's budget department budget and then I'll go to the questions. So our budget is pretty straightforward. We have the miss, we have 25% of the clerk of the council and 75% of that position is under the under the council. Our staffing is the is the same we have an administrative assistant at 50% of the time. And the communications manager is moved into the to the budget at 75% of the time. So it's still in it and then the assistant to the town manager as well. The, the, the questions that folks had were about whether there's been a lot of turnover or not. Are we doing questions now, Sean. Yeah, you can you can go around a question if you want to go through them. Yeah. So, there, there has been some turnover. So the turnover seems to be about especially at the department have level is due to retirements we have the, the, the health director was retirement, the, the human resources director and the town clerk both moved on to other opportunities. The finance director was filled after a long vacancy which I think we're all happy with the was worth the wait. So, you know, it is something we're paying attention to in terms of what does that mean when there is turnover that reflect anything in our organization. It's something that new HR director and I have talked about in terms of doing a third party assessment of our operations to see if there's anything that any indicators there. And we are seeing that there's a fair amount of turnover throughout the organization. The economy is such that people are taking advantage of making different life choices and also are have additional opportunities out there and we're noticing sometimes our pay structure isn't as competitive in certain areas, especially areas that require licenses as we are in other places. In terms of the, the question was about the $80,000 so last year we put in $80,000 to address systemic racism because that was early in the process and we wanted to allocate funds to have available for that. The funds $12,000. I think it was roughly that we was given as stipends to the members of the community safety working group each was given a $1,000 stipend because we recognize for this group in particular. We were asking them to do a lot of intense personal sometimes work that was and they have really delivered on that work so it's a small stipend but it's just to in recognition of the time of kind of commitment and the intensity of the work over a short period of time that we were asking them to do the bulk of the funds went to a consultant who produced a report that the council has received called seven gen movement collective. And that's a local company that has produced the report on on the police department and community safety in general. We have about $12,000 left. Half of that funds is being offered for training through our core equity team and the other half I've had discussions with the reparations group. Understanding there's some restrictions in terms of procurement but seeking. I've asked them if there are things that we can support their efforts on along these lines and they're looking at into that right now. And open any questions. Happy. I surround staying on the 80,000 I see it's in the coming year budget also and it looks like you're, I had to look at two different places but you're augmenting it with the plan is to augment it with another 30,000 from ARPA. And is that is the intention and that so I'm at 80 and 30 and getting 110 is that your plan is that going to be a permanent part, do you see it an ongoing part of the budget. And if the answer is yes for toward what purpose what function what what are you thinking about. So, we have a lot of work to do in this area, and we needed to start carving out funding to address many of the things that we have to do in terms of as we start to roll out system or organization wide training and for all of our staff. And it's going to take time is going to take multiple years. And so we want to be able to have funds available to that. And as we're creating the D I coordinator role, and they're going to be expenses that go along with that because part of that role is to both work with our existing staff talk recruitment and retention, and both of those things are important functions for us because we can put a lot of effort into recruitment and if we're not able to hold on to folks because of the not our work environment we need to understand what that is. So there is going to be some recruitment expenses that we're trying to be more proactive on and not just sort of putting ads into paper but reaching out to people individually and I think we have the right person who's going to be helping us with that. So, yes, it is not designated for specific things right now other than some of it I know our core equity team I really want to support our in our, our homegrown core equity team that's really working on these these issues and and want to give them the resources they need to carry that out and they're in the, like their proposal was for next year's in a 30 to $40,000 range. So, so I think what I heard you say then you're not thinking that you would actually hire a specific person you're going to be using it in a similar flexible way that you've been using this year's money for multiple can be drawn in multiple ways with that the a fair way of. Yeah, we want to be responsive to needs as they come up in opportunities. Okay, thank you. Thank you I'm going to stay. You said that the 80 part of the 80,000 this year would be for the DEI coordinator is that accurate. No, well for when you say this year to me 30,000. Yeah, sorry. 22. Yes. So it would be to support is not to fund the DEI coordinator position but to provide support for the work that they're doing. Gotcha. Here's my question then. This is a question for the original 80,000 and if I 21. I would like to see as a council member and as a member of finance, a detailed reporting about how that money is spent has been spent, or projection for this next year, and I would really like to have that. The other thing is where this was when I heard that you were going to do something, you know, funding for the DEI. Are there other places in the budget where there's money tech tucked away in a lump that you are actually as going towards the DEI or the Multicultural Center or any of those other issues and are knowing those things would be very helpful. So. Yeah. You tuned out a little bit there for a second but I what I heard is you want to report on this on the current spending for the existing FY 21 80,000. And I can update that for you. I think I sent one back maybe a month ago but I can update that with the more recent information which I'm happy to do. In terms of the allocation for the FY 22 funds I can put that out, lay that a little more detail from what we know at this moment in time. Right. Yeah. And well the other part of the question was, it sounds like you've, you have earmarked some money to help support the DEI. So, to me that sort of tucked into this figure. So are there other places in the budget where you've tucked money away to address some of the community safety working groups concerns and issues in the FY 22 budget. In the same way where it may be part of a lump sum but you're thinking about. Yeah, I think Sean can weigh in on the ARPA money. So that's one of the paths that we're 30,000. Yeah, do you want me to add to that Paul. Yeah, please. So the DEI coordinator position. Again there is a existing part time position 50, it's not a part time person but it's a split position 50% position that's in the general fund budget. So we're going to combine $30,000 or proposing to combine that position with $30,000 of the ARPA money to create a full time DEI coordinator position, who would then help, you know, direct how the $80,000 or guide some of the activities that the $80,000 would go towards so that's separate from the Yes. And then, you know, the human resources budget in general, you'll be talking with the, with the human resources director in a little bit. You know, I'm sure there are also some of her funds that will also support some of these initiatives and we can, we can ask those questions and a little bit when she comes up. Thank you, Sean and Paul. It seems to me that having more access to this information would be helpful to address some of the concerns that we're hearing from the community across the community. The other thing is, and this is a more possibly uncomfortable question. We lost our town clerk to a better position. We lost our human rights director to a better position. But it's interesting to me that one of them was a black woman and one of them was a Latina woman. I am concerned for some of the things that I've heard through the grapevine about some interactions that were not comfortable for those, for one of the women in particular. But first I'm trying to figure out how much is it possible that art, our lack of understanding or I don't even know how you say it. Have we driven some people of color out of this community. And I am concerned I know this is a tender topic but I am really concerned about it. I totally agree Pat. Yeah, I agree. And I mean we put a lot of effort into recruiting strong people into these pivotal these important positions. And then that's why I talked about retention as an important function and also external. And look at how, and is it something I am doing this is something our organization is doing what is why, why, or is it just happens is it just that people hit two opportunities and they chose, but it's because you what you just identified is significant. I feel we need to investigate that and look into it. Thank you. And it's painful and uncomfortable for all of us. But it's, it's, yeah, it's clear that's that's not something we want to have happen. And it could be that people made life choices, or for that's what I'm hoping. But, but, but we need to understand that and that's one of the things we had talked about. Thank you very much, Paul. I am still not sure what our way forward is in terms of the issues we've just been discussing. For example, spending a lot of money on training is what people are doing. I personally don't think it has much efficacy. I do think a clear statement that an institutional statement that certain kinds of behavior will not be tolerated. And real response because it's not so much the institution is the people in the institution that caused the bad situations that drive away people that you have spent a lot of time and money hiring. But I also want to know is where is I mean we were asked the finance committee to come up with a clear revenue stream for the reparations committee. And I want to just say, I think we cannot go on as usual. The aim has been to be organized, intelligent, efficient, planning, doing it right and that, you know, that's been really going great. All right, but sometimes the system has to respond out of its comfort level. We've have four different actions. I think it's for, I mean, life is very confusing right now, going on where people have organized, protested and said, wait, please listen to me. We're supposed to have a role in this government. And if all of them are not fulfilled, if all of them are beaten back, then the institution, you can say, oh, we're strong, we stood it, we did great. But then what happens is the public says, forget it. I have no interest in it. I'm not showing up. I'm not going to listen to meetings. I'm not going to do anything. They can do whatever they want. Okay, I don't care. And, you know, you can run it a town runs easier that way. But it's not very democratic. And I just think we have to. So where are we going to respond. All right. I think we're going to be on the moratorium the way things look. It's, I don't believe that voter veto is going to win I think we're going to pursue with the library we will go forward on the four capital projects but I do think that I think Paul is working with the community right now, but at some point we will have a rebalanced. I hope police social service budget response team I, I believe we will get that in time. So that leaves reparations and I just feel that we're at the time right now when that's something we can't just say well we've done a budget we've done great we've done it all our stuff. That'll mess up our planning. I think we have to mess up our planning. I think we have to come up with something. And you know I don't have the suggestions on that you are the experts. But I'm just saying I think we have to do it. Yeah. So, so I think three things there, Dorothy. First off, I just agree with you on the training. I think training matters. I, I felt the training that I went through with the council for that, those three weekend days was really pivotal for me. I think that kind of work has to be done at the employee level, because it's, it's about learning and creating a space to have dialogue with each other. So I think that's really important and that's what we really wanted. And I think our core equity team is doing that and we're sort of utilizing homegrown talent to help us move in that direction we just had one last week and the employees were emailing and saying what a terrific experience it was so we're moving forward. I think that is important for us as an organization and as a community. In terms of the, how are we responding. You know, I've really appreciated the community safety working group report if you have not read it I encourage you to read it I think it's really a good document. We've been working a couple to about a couple of times this week and to review that document and start to put together some numbers to help on the implementation what's it look like to get this plan into action. And we are, you know, hopefully have something for you next a week from today to be able to say have a timeline and dollars associated with it so it starts to look like so people can see there's action if assuming the council wants to create this department that's sort of a certain thing if it's creating a new department it actually requires a vote of the town council under the town charter. In terms of reparations it's that you just had that handed to you on Monday and that's it's it's a referral to the finance committee. We've, you know, Sean and Sonya and I have had some thoughts along those lines but I mean that's a pretty big discussion to have and what's the purpose and how are you going to allocate it so I think that's a significant conversation for the council to have in the public to the way in as well. If I could respond just briefly, but we've seen reparations coming for two years. Remember you all you had town staff delivered us that book at the very beginning of our tenure. I'm glad to hear that the core equity training is good, perhaps we should have some. Bernie. Yeah, just maybe I missed it but I've been looking for a copy of a final report from the community services group I've been, I've read through what's on their website their page and website. So that's still in draft form. It's an interesting document. The community response stuff is something I very very much favor for a variety of reasons. That report falls short in a number of ways which we may hear about in the future and some of that may be corrected. So I really appreciate getting a copy of that final document. And they also made reference to yet another document is going to be available on June 30. So I'm not sure what we're quite missing. Or I'm quite missing. I don't know if you and I'm just seeing if it's on their website yet or not, but I know Jennifer is going to post that. We got it Monday night so I was also thinking that Sean might want to go ahead and post it in the 27th meeting so it's there as well as send it to us but we know that's something we're going to be talking off of so just get it in the right place. When we have the kind of meeting we had Monday night, it's not always easy to find the document you're looking for. There were a lot. Yeah, and just the resident members don't always get any of this information so it'll be helpful for us to get whatever is sent to the council. Yeah, I try to do my best that I can with that. Because the SharePoint program is limited access database to try and pull out the stuff that doesn't end up in the public packet and make sure that it gets to you or at least that you're aware of it if it's in related to the committee work. I think that this last week has been sort of over the top is moving in a very fast pace on several different topics and Dorothy brought up the subject that we were asked as a finance committee to report on something, think about something and report back and having to do with reparations and identifying potential revenue streams. And we do need to get that into an agenda and Sean and I have been talking about that so that it gets placed into an agenda, and it becomes publicly available information that we're talking about it for the reasons that I open legal. Kathy. No, it is I, is it a, I'm going to switch and ask just a pretty simple question that's not related to this so I just want to make sure no one else has their hand up to stay on this topic. No one else has their hand up now. Okay, so my memory of last year is that I could see somewhere what we've budgeted for legal expenses so I'm just wondering is that under general government is that can I see that somewhere somewhere and it's just it's purely a question. Not that I want to know what it is but I just, can I find it was my question. Sonia or Sean. That is a good question I can't remember if it's broken out separately. It used to be used to be a separate section of the budget book but we combined it with general services along with the audit and all the other outside contract type things we did so it's in that line item. And it's separate on it. You can see it. I separated out still in the quarterly reports. Okay. And then we can do Kathy is maybe add it to a few the next budget document can note that maybe we break that out somehow because I know that's a question that's asked frequently by different people so we could list it. Okay. I think that was it when I'm on general I just was kind of trying to figure out where it was. And my others, once we go to general I have some questions when we get to benefits and some of the other pieces that we're working through. Other questions you might if I just read them off. I think they're, they're simple ones. The first one, these are both town council related related power stipends for the council set. And I believe that's all that's charter right. Yeah, I can address that so section 10.7 are of the charter sets the initial stipends for the council and that in the school committee so that was set by charter, and there's a process for changing that. And it's section 2.4, which has a process if the if the council wants to change it, there's a process that you can't just change it automatically it takes a little bit takes some term time to do it. And then the next question similar to that was the but we added funds to the council's section for school committee stipends and the question was sort of like how we came to the number because it's only for four stipends and not for five. Because one of the members right now is ineligible for the stipend. So there's only four budgeted but it's correct to point out that we would have to increase that in the future. The fifth member is an employee of the school district and you can't take two salaries, you have to choose which one you want to. And I think that's it for there's a couple of your questions that I was going to raise at different points throughout the meeting today that aren't related specifically to this section. Anything else then. Time Manager 10 Council seeing none. Got us forward. All right. So the next section is finance. I'm going to do a very brief overview of the sort of the whole group, and we have Sonya Aldrich our comptroller and Jennifer LaFountaine our collector, Sherry Boucher our treasure and Elizabeth Duffy our assessor who are here to answer any questions you might have on these sections. But I'm going to do a very brief overview of all of them just in the sake of time so move us forward. The finance office. Globally is responsible for the overall financial health of the town and FY 21 our major projects we're working on the budget document navigating all of the covert grants, planning around the four building projects, and making some progress on reviewing our financial policies and our open funding plan for FY 22 some of the things we're going to be taking a look at our implementing improvements to the parking system. We have our procedure manuals and modernize modernizing those a little bit, and we'll have more covert grants to manage going forward as well. The accounting department, primarily responsible for tracking all the financial activity and led by our rock Sonya. In FY 21 did a lot of work around improving our procurement system streamlining processes with human resources and payroll, and a big challenge was planning for the retirement of two key staff with two long time employees are either retired already or planning to retire just after the fiscal year ends and so a lot of work has gone into preparing for them their replacements. And in FY 22 accounting is going to be looking at ways to continue improving our payroll and accounts payable processes on the treasurer side. Sherry Boucher she's responsible for managing all of the town's funds. And I want to take a minute to acknowledge all of Sherry's work Sherry is retiring in September, maybe October if I can convince her to stay a little bit longer. She's been in the town over 30 years, she is a meticulous manager of the town's money and it's done an amazing job. She's stepped into roles when she's had to and done a great job and. And this has been a busy year I'll talk more about what she's done in a second but I'm shared you want to take a second and say anything and somebody want to thank Sherry for all her work. I think the town itself for keeping me all these years. I've always enjoyed my job, the people, the public, especially I always enjoyed helping everyone whether it's getting them a tax bill or helping them figure out how to pay it. So I just want to say thank you for all the years. It's been a long haul. Thank you for all of the years. And how well you have managed our funds and thank you. Thank you. I just want to jump on here because Sherry is one of those people when I first started with, she's always been the person who's been new what the, what, what the deal was, especially on the first floor. And she, every people confide in her and she, she knows what reality is, and can set you straight when you need to be straight set straight and. But her integrity, I think, is the thing that's most remark not remarkable it's just who she is and it's a thing that we most value about her in terms of just her friendship and everything but just she has, you know, Sean said something about how she has she follows every dime of the town. Relentlessly, and you should actually talk about, I think her most recent accomplishment which is the latest bond rates that we just got. Yeah, pretty one of the big projects that Sherry helps lead is we just went out for a big, we just did our first bond in five years which is a lot more work than just doing a short term borrowing. And there's a lot of documents that we pull together and a tight, a tight timeline and Sherry and Sonya really did a great job under very condensed schedule getting all that together. And the rates. Oh, and our rates are amazing rates are 10 year bond for $5 million and the rate is about 1.07% and we did a $2 million short term borrowing and the rate was about 0.33% probably two of the lowest interest rates we've ever had would be my guess. And so yeah, it's going to be a very difficult thing to replace Sherry. She's been amazing at training other people. That's another thing she's really great at is cross training and teaching other people what she does and and she has very good notes about what she does. You know, we joke around some of the notes that we found. I won't bring up one about Google that came up a little while ago. But let's just say that, you know, Google became a thing while Sherry was doing all this work. And so it's Sherry is just, you know, she's going to be we're going to miss her tremendously and we're lucky that we've had her. So I'll keep going and Oh, I think Glenn. Thank you. So, Sherry, thank you so much. You've been amazing. I understand you're the person to go to when you want to know where the dead bodies are buried. So please, please make sure that you let Sean know all of that back information. And importantly, having just retired myself three years ago, could I advise you don't run for local government. It's not retirement. But thank you so much for your many, many years of service. I understand you're one of our longest term employees. 35 years is a long time. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Great. All right, I will keep moving on. The next office is the collector's office, which is led by Jen LaFountain, responsible for working the counter, receiving all the bill payments, which is a project that's focused on customer service and making people feel welcome when they come in and when they talk to them on the phone. And FY 21 projects included primary project was putting a lot of our ways of paying bills online so that they could work and continue to be done remotely. And this was a major, played a major role in reviewing all of our fees. We did a fee review comparing to other towns and looking at all our fees in one place and they led a lot of that. And for FY 22, we're going to be taking a look at some of our long standing ambulance billing agreements and the methodologies and how that works and also our cannabis agreements and getting all those things up to date as much as possible. And then the final department within finance is the assessor's office led by Elizabeth Duffy. And the assessor's office does, you know, all the appraisal of tax properties in town, gather all the data helping establish the tax rate, getting money for the town, you know, is a major function for that office. And FY 21, she helped streamline some of our processes to make the data flow between our software databases without sort of the manual entry of it kind of comes in automatically now which is great. And she did a lot of work on the residential exemption study. And for FY 22, we're going to hopefully finalize the residential exemption study and bring information back to the council. We'll be introducing the PACE program to you at some point during FY 22, which is a financing mechanism for sustainable improvements for commercial properties and multifamily properties. And another thing we've, Liz and I have talked about a lot is how do we improve communication to residents about the different programs that are available to them. Once they may be struggling financially or whatever it may be there's different exemptions that are out there and how do we do improve the way we communicate to people so they're aware of these things. And that's about it for the finance office so I will turn it back to you all for questions and we're all ready to answer them. I'm going to start with the last thing you said, and I'm glad to hear that Liz is trying to figure out how it's be easier for people to know what they could get and where to apply because I heard a discussion also for the Community Preservation Act that you can apply and one of the points they made is you can't assume that if you got it one year that you've got it for the next year you have to know to reapply. And so, you know, if you're doing the real estate property taxes or the other one, I think it would be such a service if there was some easy place to go that you had a Q&A that would tell people, you know, who might be eligible. And then if you know it, Liz, but if someone else can also steer someone we had one question that came in directly to the council and I was trying to think of who exactly do we send this to is this and the only person I could think of was you but so if many of us would be more than happy as district counselors, I think to do one district meeting that's saying to the extent you do or don't know about this, this is what you could have. And here's where you would go to just, you know, do a quick look because people don't know that at all, either at all or they know vaguely maybe. I commend you on trying to find a single place you could actually go and find out in lay person's language, what you might qualify for would be great. Liz, do you want to talk about the flyer that we're thinking of putting in with the property tax bill this year that addresses what Kathy was just describing. Well, with the tax bill we're going to hopefully put in what our personal exemption qualification criteria might be and where to go to find those applications and more information. If you would like to find out today about those info that information, including a link to the tack what tax work off. It's also on our web page but our office facilitates the personal exemptions and things of that nature. We're working on the pace program as well, so that perhaps we can have that in the future, which would also offer some financing for things. But, you know, we try to make it one stop shopping just on that page, but always if any citizen is interested and possibly getting help, please send them my way. I will do everything I can to point them in the right direction. And if I don't have the answer I get back to them really quickly so that I can point them to the right person. Thank you. You're welcome. I have a question. It's on page 77 service levels and I'm looking at the tax dollars abated both in terms of absolute dollars and it's a percent of levy and it appears to be going up over time. Is that just noise, or is there some trend there that we need to be aware of. Would you like me to address that. I'm calling you way and so Rob just or Bob sir just to confirm you're talking about the line where it goes from $36,095 and fyi 19 to 177,000 for 19 and fyi 20. Right and it starts at 8000 and fyi 16 so. Sure. Yeah, let's wait over time. It depends on who appeals, you know, who submits that abatement, and in that particular period we had a more larger appellants and things like that we had some large, larger properties. And the other thing that you need to look at is the increase in the mill rate will also impact that the tax rate. And one thing I'll add. I can see why you think why that looks like a trend going up the one thing I'll say is the way we budget, the allowance for abatements and exemptions is gets a percentage of the 1% of the property tax Sonya, is that correct. And so that is a we've never. Yeah, so we have that sort of standard and we, we haven't come really close to using that all in a couple years, maybe longer, we've generally had more than enough in that allowance. So it does look like a trend I can see why you're looking at that but overall we're doing very well at keeping the overall level of abatements and really abatement slow. I did ask whether it was just ran, you know, just noise because I can understand it depends on new appeals and the property isn't all that. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. So general finance question. I don't know if you know it because we've had so many changes and so many unusual things going on in the year that's transpired with grants and different funding sources, different expenditures that were unanticipated. Did you, did you feel it seems from the outside that our systems are set up that you guys really hold it off well. Was there any stresses that in lessons that you learned from this. You know, there Excel workbooks that would knock your socks off. Alright, the, the, so, you know, we, the good thing is we do have a great accounting department. You know that keep has very tight controls over things, everything is in order between Sony and Holly and the rest of the team, you know, that's never a worry. The hardest part about all of that that you just described has been the changing guidance throughout this entire process I think, you know, there's over 10 eligibility changes and the cares grants, you know, it was extended obviously by a year that, you know, there's things that were eligible in the beginning that are no longer eligible and vice versa. So that's really been the struggle is trying to keep up with what's eligible what's not eligible how do we maximize the use of funds with all these different versions of grants. One thing we did a few months ago or maybe just over a month ago is we hired a sort of a dedicated cares grant manager, who's just focused on the grant, not full time apart time, staying up to date and working with staff and that person's working on cares but also on the FEMA side of it the FEMA applications are very time consuming. So you have to enter invoices by line item. And, you know, when you're buying, you know, between the schools and the town, you know, lots of cleaning supplies and PP&E and all you can all the things you can imagine. It's a very time consuming process so I think overall it's gone very well thanks to the people in the county department and the person we hired, but it hasn't been, it's been a big challenge to kind of stay on top of it. And I, I for one just want to thank all of you for staying together and managing our way through what I know must have been an incredible year with just so many new things thrown at us on all sides so thank you. Dorothy, you had a question. I think auto tax. It might be kind of gimmicky but you could offer a reduction for electric cars. Have you thought about that. Are you talking about for motor vehicle excise tax. Yeah, I don't do I don't think we have control over that gen do we. No we don't actually I had that question come up from a constituent and went back and read the statute and looked at the, all of the Department of Revenue guidance and the bills. I mean the whole evaluation system on which it's based is state driven. It's not something we control over. So, Kathy. It has nothing to do with what we're looking at on the books although I see parking permits issued and Sean has already told us that he's going to be our parking guru going forward kind of think of it but one of the thoughts and I sent Sean a memo on some thinking I think we could with a parking permit, give a, to extent we had a rational rating system, the system which I'm not sure we have, you could give a lower fee for an electric car because that's completely under our control and the way we do it so if we wanted to we'd like clean cars on our streets would be better but I think we do have leverage we that's something that we could think about if it didn't make your work even more complicated on different now it's just everyone pays the same fee, I think. Yeah, no that's a great. That was a great observation so Jen and I actually walked around yesterday morning. We're trying to walk around sort of the entire downtown from different angles and with the recommendations we've read and information we from planning and just kind of start jotting down all the things that we think are possibilities or things we want to bring forward. And then we also had a good conversation with the planning department yesterday as well because they've, they've lived through a lot of this for the last 10 1520 years they've been through a lot of studies and reports and it was really helpful to get their perspective on what we saw. And that was one of the things that came up was a we got to look at our whole permit system because it's been some time since it's sort of had a complete look over do or overhaul that that we're going to do an overhaul but since we've really changed anything in a dramatic way. But also within that do we wanted to have some sort of way to continue incentivizing EV vehicles hybrid or fully electric came up so that I think that's a good suggestion and one that we're looking at. Kubiak. Real quick. The American Planning Association just started a whole series of articles on the billion dollar curbside. So getting the planning department involves in that is, is a good idea they make the point that the way we use curb the curbs. We use curbs right now in a very efficient way. So there's a lot of different ways to do that. I'd be a little concerned about discounting just electric EV cars because they're new they're expensive, and folks who have more modest incomes are likely to own one. So that's a that's problem. And then finally, I really do want to having seen the municipal finance stuff from multiple perspectives I really do want to congratulate or say thank the finance crew. In general, for the great work that they've done that and continue to do. It's really a thicket of rules regs and crazy making stuff, and they've managed to, to, to triumph overall of it so thank you. Agreed. So, anything else people have the way of questions regarding the finance department. Andy, I have a couple other little sections that I was going to, I was going to go over to General Services debt and the other assessments and Opab do you want me just to kind of go through those briefly and then see if there's questions on those areas. Yes, and Go ahead. Okay. So general services. I mean, do you want to talk about general services a little bit. That's where our legal line is but what else goes on in general services. I love the warning you give me. Right, put me right on the spot. Yes, so general services there's two parts to it there's the 1198 which pays for the audit and now that's where we moved legal to, I can't think of what other service, our liability insurance I think is in there as well right. Yeah I don't have it in front of me because I wasn't prepared. Hey accounting if you look at the org chart says accounting and then general services. Accounting is pretty much in charge of that whole operating budget we do, we take care of the audit we do the bids for the property and casualty insurance, and so on. The other part, the other 1199 is mostly services and central purchasing. And that that's also monitored through the, we pay for the mail machine and emailing services out of that account. Like I said I don't have it in front of me. One thing I'll add Sonya on the property and casualty insurance. That's something that we're seeing a potentially a large increase we've got in the budget but they're not so much for what's going on around here but what's going on around the world. You know whether it be hurricanes or floods. We saw a pretty large, you know we had a big decrease in our property and casualty insurance when we bid it out and now we're seeing some of the costs start to rise again because of what's going on throughout the country so that's an area we have to monitor closely. So I'll go to the next two sections and then see if there's questions so the next section is debt. So that's page 192 in the operating budget. And so that's sort of a moving target it's always sort of a point in time again we put this together before we just bid out before not bid out before we just did our bond issuance in our, our ban which was literally Tuesday and Wednesday that happened. So this will be changed a little bit hopefully for for the better because we because of the rates that we just received. But the thing to know here is that this budget proposal includes a few debt authorizations. There are some projects within the capital plan. I believe it is a pumper truck for the fire department, a sweeper for public works, and then the chiller for the police station that we're proposing a borrowing authorization and then there's also the design and project management work for a potential fire station and DPW building. So I believe those are the five that are in the, the authorizations that are part of this budget. And then the last thing and I see there's a question is other assessments and OPEB. The big things here are the PVTA assessment charter tuition, retirement assessment from Hampshire County and other post employment benefits for PVTA and charter. There are reimbursements for those so you'll see the full costs in this section of the budget, but then there's reimbursements on the revenue side. PVTA we receive offsets from whether it be UMass or Amherst or five colleges, and on the pension side you know pensions one of those things that we do need to keep an eye on. We had our bond rating affirm, which was great. There were a couple areas that were sort of identified as areas we could improve. One of them is sort of the combination of our pension and retiree health insurance costs. They're at a certain level that you know is is maybe slightly above what the bond rating agencies would like. And so, you know, we cannot it's hard to make immediate changes in those areas because those are sort of long term liabilities. But when we think about when we talk about adding positions, benefit levels, all those things sort of play into our long term liability around those areas. And it's just things to keep in mind not that that dictates what we the town decides to do but it can have an impact on our pension assessment or retiree health insurance costs. And then the other piece there is the OPEB other post employment benefits. We did reduce that from 500,000 as a contribution and FY 20 down to 250,000 FY 21, and we're proposing bringing that back to 300,000 for FY 22. We do want to keep getting that up to where it was at least to 500,000. That was another area that was identified in the so the bond rating is that we do have a plan but that you know in the opinion of the bond rating agency I think, and pretty much every other community in the state, they don't view it as a sufficient plan to actually fund the liability anytime soon. And so we need to do some work on that plan and making sure that, you know, we can we can demonstrate that to them in the future. And Sean, can I just add one thing about the capital plan and the borrowing articles. Yeah, I just want to mention that there's also the fire station facility design and engineering as well as the public works facility and both of them. Yeah. So I just wanted to make sure. Thank you. That was all out there. Did you have questions. Yeah, well it's a question and a comment and something I asked earlier and it's on this, the jump the, it's not in substantial so what Sonya just did it's on the schematic design for fire plus DPW is 3.4 million. So, none of that shows up in the FY 22 budget, but what you see in the FY 23 budget is a jump in debt service which is those plus the library plus other things I realize a 1.5 million. And what I then went and looked at is what's what are we allocating for the operating budget increase that year and it's less than 2% increase. So I'm not finding it tells me what you think is going to happen with health insurance, you know, out for FY, you know, we don't do a forecast on it. But I'm my, my question comment is that we are going to be making a recommendation about the whole budget we haven't really had a discussion on the implications of what we decide for 22 on what it what we're going to be facing in FY 23. Even everyone has seen what the discussion has been around a budget that was able to go operating budget that was able to go up by 2.2% if we're at 1.9% and health insurance was negative this year or flat. So we've got step increases built into people. So I'm worried that we are, and you always said right from the beginning that FY 23 was the tough year Sean, but it's, it's a really tough year, and we're making decisions now that will affect that. So, Andy it's a, how do we heads the brief of discussion with this potential way to do all the big projects in a five year period but if we are, we're also then making a decision about the future with this discussion so I'm looking for carving out a little more time and then just looking at this and I had to, you know, piece together, looking forward. What, what this year's decision for FY 22 will mean for FY 23 24, it looks a little bit better when you get to 24 25 but not great, you know it. And I know we're then in the real forecast world but it has an implications for when we talk next Thursday about the crest program and the community safety if we want to do anything that's new program. Where does the money come from so I, it, so it's over in the capital side affects the operating budget side, and you can only see it by sort of jumping around, you can it's there it's not hidden it's just in different parts and different pages. Kathy, and I just want to ask real quick. Did you look at the sort of the four year projection on page 44 and 45. So you're muted. I found the projection that went out multiple years on the side so I could see both the operating budget and the capital budget and see the jump up in debt service expense, which is because we're making this, and you said it's not just it's also some trucks and other things, the chiller, some other things that are, yeah, yeah, we try to, we try to really make that that projection everything that we potentially might borrow. So yeah, I think the place to look this page 44 and 45. I think the improvement I could make next year, we can make next year in the budget book is maybe put more information about the actual assumptions that are used in those out years because it, you kind of, you can't really tell what we're assuming for some of those different variables around health insurance or other things so that's we could put some sort of key that shows what the assumptions are in those out years I think would be helpful. I think to your point and FY 23, you know we're, we're the projections for 2%, I think it's roughly a 2% increase in the operating budget, and then going back to 2.5% and 24, 25 and 26. So again that 23 still could change we're going to find out a lot this year how quickly we recover so it could be better it could be a little bit worse. And I don't anticipate it being much worse than the 2%, but, but we'll see this year when we start now when the college and universities come back. And I do understand you know we're in the crystal ball when we get out. It's it we're already don't know for sure next year but two years from now but I'm just as we look at those schematic design the library has been voted right now but as we look at schematic some do we postpone something because we come more and sure and then health insurance we were. When you look at that employee benefit line. It is so unusual to see no increase. I mean that's just a gift that's not what the norm has been. We've been most of the operating budget then has been salaries not usually the big hit that's been health insurance, you know combating with it so I'm just, I'm more worried than I more more worried about 23 than I am about 22. Yeah, sure. I have a question. I was fretting about OPEB expenses, and how, how are we ever going to catch up, and the person I was speaking with said, you're never going to catch up. No one is ever going to catch up on OPEB. It's not possible. I said well then what's going to happen our employees not going to get their benefits. And the answer I got was, it's going to have to be taken over by the federal into single payer insurance or whatever. That's where we're going to have to go because, although we are doing a really good job. Most other places aren't and they're going to be crashing and saying they can't do it. So, given that as a possibility in the future. Is it better or worse to be to to be really prudent as we are trying very hard to catch up on our OPEB. This is a thought question. Yeah, no, I mean, I don't, I think we were at a roughly 10% funded, which, given the size of the liability and, you know, relatively short amount of time that we've been funding it I think is pretty good. You know, our plan is, you know, we're putting a we're really focusing funding, not by choice but by law, a lot of our additional funding is going towards the pension liability is sort of the number one piece to get fully funded. And that's on track to be fully funded FY 23 or 33 or 34. And once that's fully funded the expectation is that the, the assessment we get from the Hampshire County pension assist system is going to drop by a lot because a pretty large chunk of our assessment each year is for this past unfunded liability that we're catching up on. Our town and many other towns, you know, previous finance director here was part of his plan is that once we do get that drop in nine or 10 years in the pension system is that we would put some of that savings towards getting OPEB fully funded. I don't think we can rely on the federal government taking it over. I don't think that's a strategy. Maybe that would have been I'm not sure. I know, you know, we're probably better funded than the state is when it comes to other post employment benefits. But it's something that we would take seriously it does liability the auditors look at it the bond rating agencies look at it. And I think, I think you're right that we are doing better than many other communities and we want to kind of keep that ship going in the right direction. So thank you for reminding me that it really does. No matter what happens, it helps our bond rating, which really helps us all. And, you know, and the, and the long term sustainability pieces. You know, our retiree health insurance costs on an annual basis are rising pretty sharply. And if we, you know, the goal is if you get enough money set aside in this, in this fund, you can help mitigate those annual increases. We're making investments now for 20 or 30 years down the road but if we don't make those investments now 20 or 30 years down the road. Things could be in really bad, you know, much, much worse shape than they are now. So, you know, we're really making an investment in the future and trying to pay our fair share now so that we don't pass on these really high retiree health insurance costs to future generations. Anything else. Do you have something you were. No, I was just going to say, I can talk to Dorothy directly, since I'm following all the federal things the interaction with public or private sector on healthcare is not as straightforward as even as you just talked about it so. I think that we are paying, you have to understand we are paying every year for our retiree health insurance we're just not prefunding it and almost no one in the private sector has totally re prefunded their healthcare liability. What they have been doing is cutting back on benefits and we've got a pretty. But I had just heard, I, we've got a good package that our people are going out with. So, I'll just, I'll just stop there. Yeah, I think one of the, you know, I've heard this mentioned by others I think one of the, you know, public sector employees, you know, think about municipal employees don't usually make as much as you can make in the private sector but one of the areas where you have to offset it a little bit is with benefits, generally being better than in the private sector so I think it's a given take on that front. I can just say a little bit of my experience from the private sector and basically health insurance. I retired. One of the last people probably that had what we would consider a good health insurance policy with a PPL and the people who are hired up, you know, a few years ago, basically just were given a catastrophic health insurance policy, which, you know, really doesn't do much for you. The company paid some of the premiums but I'm telling you it's even in the private sector the the benefit right now is not getting better it's getting worse. And we did just to round that out, you know, we did. We are also trying to manage the cost side of the equation as well not. We did switch to Maya a few years ago which did make the benefits not as good as they were before because we introduced things like deductibles and and co pays changed a little bit. So, so we are also sort of actively managing the cost side, in addition to the pre funding and send aside money for the future. And also we want to talk about regarding finance and the whole bundle of issues that have followed the discussion. So if not, there's a number of staff here who come and I really appreciate it. Thank you. All right. The next department is human resources, and our human resources director Donna Ray is here to give you an overview of her department. Hi everybody. Nice to meet you all kind of. Maybe someday in person I hope. So, as Sean said, my name is Donna Ray Neely and I'm the director of human resources. I've also invited you'll see our HR manager Joey and Missy Isaac here to attend and see what we're doing here as well. So the human resources human rights department is made up of one full time HR director one full time HR manager and we have a half time administrative assistant. So HR is responsible for, and I know this is kind of written in the budget book, but I'm just going to give you the overview. So we're responsible for recruitment hiring onboarding some training, employee relations and administering employee benefits. I am new to the town I started on October 26 so finishing up seven months. It's been very busy. A couple of things that we are working on. So prior to my appointment the town engaged. A municipal HR consultant called human resources services to review our compensation and classification program for our part time temporary and seasonal positions, and we are using information and their recommendation to implement a new classification plan wage chart for our part time seasonal positions effective seven one. We have over 700 part time temporary and seasonal employees that'll be, you know, that were included in that study. We're also in the midst of labor negotiations with the fire department. So I can imagine, I think, one of the things that really keeps us busy is the pandemic response. Because of all of the uncertainty related to the pandemic HR was really, I think a vital area in terms of serving as both consultant for leadership and counselor to employees. We've had a lot of time thinking about how to protect our employees. We work closely with the health director, based on mass public health guidelines and we've updated. Many times our standard operating procedures which are our safety guidelines for onsite staff. We've developed a COVID related remote work policy, we've updated travel policies and all sorts of stuff like that that's just kind of ongoing and changing. We've ensured that the EAP is available and talked with our employees about health coverage for a lot of the mental health issues that have arisen or or did arise during the pandemic. Just, you know, the uncertainty the stress of it all isolation in some cases so you name it and it's been developed reviewed updated and changed related to the pandemic so we've been working on that and we're happily moving in the right direction with reopening. So, you might imagine and you probably have heard that recruitment has been challenging because I would imagine probably because of the excellent unemployment benefits provided by the Commonwealth so we've been thinking of creative ways to attract and our, the town's communications manager Brianna has been very helpful in helping us to make flyers and recruit to recruit to different social media platforms. Let me see. I think it's also important to talk with you about that it's been about a year since George Floyd took his last breath and so the town, I think a lot of you know is focused on addressing systemic racism and that and you might be aware that the town became a member of the government alliance on race and equity. It's called that programs called gear and their national network of governments that work to achieve racial equity and advanced opportunities for everyone. And then, in addition, the town formed its own core equity team. And I'm the chair of the core equity team, along with my co chair, Jennifer moisten. And I could tell you about the mission and and read about the mission to you. But also I do want to let you know that Jennifer recently developed a training we've also actually talked about or worked with consultants about kind of where to go next and we're in the process of engaging with those consultants. Does anyone have any questions so far I'm just going on. I'm looking for questions I don't see anyone yet. Okay, I'll keep going then so let me also just quickly tell you that we also work on employee benefits so we went through a health insurance renewal. Sean mentioned a little while ago the town is with Maya, and I think that we use, we get greater discounts through Maya by belonging to this collaboration, and we had a great renewal this year they actually called it a 1.1% premium increase but they also gave us a premium holiday, which the employees and town will enjoy in November of 2021 which is for coverage for the month of December so. And I think that's related to the fact that when the pandemic started a lot of people stop going out for healthcare so there wasn't a, there wasn't a huge cost to the insurance companies I think we've seen so. I forget who maybe Catherine someone mentioned what's going to happen next year and I agree I'm wondering what's going to happen next year we will, we will see about that. But this for FY 22 it was really good in terms of benefits the town also offer some voluntary plans so that there's no cost to the town there. Just I think a nice thing for the town to do use its group buying power to offer things like dental and vision plans to employees if they want. And we're currently working on the life insurance renewal but I think those are the highlights and there's a lot of stuff mentioned in the budget book as well. Yeah, I had a couple questions. I'll start when you said that you were doing a review of compensation for part time seasonal and temporary and there were over 700 people in that category. Does when you do that, is that just the town or are you also looking at school so that's 700 or schools and library is that you know what. It's not schools. And that is just I mean that's from every temporary, I mean, election workers, our call force for the fire department every, every, every position that essentially is not a full time position I would include in that. Okay, the second one is on health benefits and Maya. Do you get to this. I'm, I think probably the answer is yes but do you get a report to show you what kinds of reserves they built up because yes the, the, what the cove it did was people stop the doctor in the hospital and electrics. So a lot of elective so a lot of there's been pressure on large companies, big insurers to give back money so it's really nice that they've given us the holiday do we get an accounting and I realize we're part of a bigger pool to see how much they built up during that time period. So, well, I mean, we are we're fully insured so we don't, we, we do get a lot of information but I don't, I don't recall talking with them about the research but I. Oh, go ahead. Since I worked there previously. They Maya health and benefits trust has about $400 billion in assets and so and they, they're well capitalized and are very careful they have one partner blue cross blue shield that they work with. They, they have lots of actuaries that look at their reserve status and things like that. They only ensure cities and towns and local government entities there's the largest insurer. And I see and Maya those are the two largest insurers of public employees in the state. So they, they're incredibly conservative in terms of maintaining assets to cover their, their costs going forward. You know and I didn't, and pull I didn't mean it that, you know, there was a reserve that was specific to Amherst, I'm just, you know, I'm just saying that the premium flow in. It's a very unusual year and a year plus where the expenditures plummeted in terms of use of the hospital use of, you know, getting hip replacements, you know, just along a whole long list going to the doctors so somewhere in that health care world, there's a pot of money, and it looks like the premium holiday was part of the way of giving it back to us. Yeah, so the Maya board of directors is made up of local officials. So, you know, managers and HR directors and things like that that's who makes up the board of directors for Maya and they are the ones who vote on these types of things and they're all people like me and who then say we've got a lot of money in the bank we should give a premium holiday type thing. Oh, Paul, I could have told him that just kidding. Thank you. I was looking at the on page 85, the family coverage individual coverage numbers. And I was just trying to see if there was trends on employees choosing family coverage versus individual coverage if those, if they had an option. Of course, family that has multiple with multiple employers, usually goes to the best deal. Are we still an employer that is giving it this portion of chair of employees choosing to be covered by us. I don't know that to be, I mean, I don't think there's been any major changes I mean we did a the big change that happened was when we went to Maya and we did a full reenrollment. Which means everybody, you know before if you were enrolled it just kind of carried over when we went to Maya everyone had a reenroll, and we saw a pretty big change in how many were in family plans versus single plans and how many were in HMOs versus PPO's. So there were some benefits that way and some people also to took advantage of switching off of the plan for a variety of reasons at that point as well. So I don't. Yeah, it's hard to answer that question. But I know our health care coverage is benefits are still strong. They're not. You know, compared to others, other employers in the community so I think we still have a strong benefit package relative to UMass or other entities. This is a question about hiring from within and reminded of two things in, I guess was the evaluation of the town manager last year. Some went in employee comment some employees said they don't hire from within. And I know right now, ACC is all stirred up, because the new president hired a lot of consulting firms brought in a lot of people from the outside, didn't even notify people who've been with working for the college for years that there was a new position. And it caused a lot of problems so wanting to know whether what your provisions for hiring for within and retraining are within the organization. So I'll start that in Donneray you can jump on. So under the charter we're required to post all of our jobs externally, unless it's a, you know, someone's changing job titles or something like that. And we do that. And, you know, I am a firm believer in supporting growth in our own of our own workforce. But we also want to make sure that we are we're also actively trying to diversify our workforce as well and we know that we aren't diverse right now. And so that's a piece of it and that's one of the reasons we do additional outreach. But when you know we want to promote. It's how we retain good employees is by providing growth opportunities as well. So it's a fine balance that we that we follow. Donneray, do I add anything to that? No, I think that you're exactly right. I think it the charter does say that we do advertise every every new permanent position and so we do that. I there is growth opportunity from within we've just had in fact our management assistant in the town clerk's office just became the assistant town clerk but it was a whole process and I think that you're exactly right Paul the reason is because we are trying to diversify the workforce and so we do want to are and by the charter we have to post those positions. So, but I hear you Dorothy and I do agree I like promotion from within it's a great thing and it's how we keep our best talent. I just want to add one thing that I know that some of the feeling at community colleges might be similar to in town, which is the full time staff through loyalty. See the organization through times of difficulty and trouble, such as we've had this year. We know that our templates from what Paul has reported our town staff, they have learned new things worked across in other departments, and has shown a lot of loyalty. And, you know, I understand the need for diversity to we all do so. Maybe you'll have to hire some additional people in order to to both do justice to your staff that has been loyal with you and flexible during this time, and to get the diversity which we all agree we need. So what do you think, Paul, do you have anything to other questions or comments. regarding human resources, human rights. Human rights, of course, has become major activity of its own with all of the demands from that we start thinking about diversity issues. And the community respond to her program and everything else is coming along. Very conscious community about those topics. Yes. That's what I do for my first time. All right, good. Okay. I was just going to say it's very nice to meet you. Thank you. It's very nice to meet you all. And I'm glad that Sean are here too to help me when I'm like, Oh, what's the answer there. And I should say to meet both of you even though Joanne has been notably quiet as we pepper you with questions, but it's great to meet you. I thought we need a town picnic. Yes, the workers we face to face out in the green. I would love that yes, Donna Ray and Joanne make a tremendous team we really appreciate their work. Joanne keeps us all healthy with all the fruits and vegetables that get put in the engine that yeah. So Joanne put in for a wellness grant through Maya as a matter of fact and got almost $20,000. And she's got, I mean, we have Fitbits we have. They're like this but they're way better they're like flasks that say the town of Amherst for water but also she's getting fresh fruit and healthy snacks delivered to every department. And we shut up. You know what it's really nice though because it not only helps with wellness and keeping your minds on healthy eating but I think it's been great because the employees feel like they've received like a nice appreciation from the town even though we got it from this Maya grant but it's just been so great so I want to thank Joanne for getting that for the town it's been awesome. I want to add one thing I was I was walking up North Pleasant Street in the rain, and a fire captain came running across the street in the rain and said Paul Paul Paul. I want to tell you, it's so great to get this box of fruit and vegetables because we're we tend to walk across the CVS and buy candy. And now we have this healthy food there and we know we should be doing it. And it's right there so we don't even leave the station now we can get the things that we need and he was just like everybody on the force we're really appreciated it. So it's a little things like that. And it's a healthy thing and everybody wants to live a healthy life but candy is so prevalent. And so, and delicious and delicious. Well now we know there's not a lot of firehouse cooking, maybe know that they've got the maybe these vegetarian chili that will be a mission, the menu at the firehouse. We'll send them some peppers for that chili. There you go. That's right I hope they share it though. We're out of the fit business. And another thing that was about the which I missed it. Let's go back some years now that because I think John was still a town manager then that human resources got fit that's for everybody knows challenging everybody to achieve walking distances. I would show you my camera we just got some more we're ready to do it again. And we last two years ago we competed against Pittsfield right Joanne you organize that yeah. Yes, but we lost unfortunately. We lost a couple of steps, but another thing that Joanne and Donna Ray are doing this week is recognizing the first responders. Do you want to talk a little bit about the work you're doing for that. Sure it's a secret still well they don't know yet but yes so we were getting some baskets together to bring over to fire and police to an appreciation for everything they do the various ships. I'm very grateful to our first responders. I also want to say I've, I've, I've worked a long time I started working when I was 17 and I'm 75 so I have quite a history. Looking at you, having the staff respond in these meetings makes me realize what a real sense of camaraderie there is, and what real collaboration is and I am very respectful of you Paul, but each and every one of you in the department because I can see the kind of respect that's there. So thank you very much. Thank you for saying that I feel that too. So, how should we go, Sean. Take your. Yeah, sorry. Thank you Donna Ray. So the next up is the town clerk, who's going to go through the town clerk's office registrations and elections. And I just want to let people know I have to hop off a little before three o'clock for a American rescue plan webinar update from the state so you'll see me jump off at that point. And at that point, we'll be waiting for these management. Yeah, so the two departments left will be the town clerk's office with the sections as soon as and then and then Jeremiah and and maybe Rob more will be here for facilities to go through the different sections of the budget. So so do you want to give an overview of those three areas. I'm glad I came on quick, because they're early because I missed something here. Sean Hannon was supposed to go to 45. Yeah, we switched the order. I won't say why, but we. Okay, that's okay. We switched the order. Okay. All right. Well, hello everybody. For those I see if there's anybody that doesn't know me I'm Sue, I'm the town clerk. I almost said acting town clerk, I'm the town clerk. And I was just listening to Donna Ray talk about the food and I want to announce that I am the food Nazi around here. With the whole healthy eating I've, I've gotten on the healthy eating being wagon whatever you want to call that about four years ago so I don't grab candy I don't grab sugar I specifically just real whole food so anyway. So this is my first time to I not quite sure what is expected but I just wrote up a little script of what's been going on in our office and what to look forward to in the future. So, general government so the town clerk side of things. I know as you probably heard this a few times already today or even in the past that this fiscal this past fiscal year has been a challenge. Not only work with protocols in place, but we held three elections in our office one of which was a very contentious presidential election. And we've had a departmental staffing shortage since September of 2020. So we've been down to people instead of three. It forced us to be especially flexible and creative. Many of the normal services that we provide had to either be put on hold or offered in a different way if possible. We were able to successfully implement an online portal for two of our most frequently requested services which are vital records and dog licenses that works out great. We've also utilized as many other avenues as possible such as meeting people outside town hall to receive paperwork or swear them into office, whatever else we can do outside of town hall. Services such as notarizations passport applications and photos and the taking of marriage intentions. Those had to be put on hold because these are very labor intensive procedures and require a lengthy amount of face to face time. As a result, obviously revenues were down from levels and past years due to not being able to provide these services. On a positive note, we have successfully transitioned a new town clerk me and assistant town clerk amber Martin. And we've also just recently completed the interview process for the management assistant position. We're currently in the negotiating process for that. We'll be back up to full capacity and with the opening of town hall shortly, we should be able to get back right away to offering our full complement of surfaces. One of the goals for the upcoming year under the town clerk section of the budget is going to be education on a personal side and on the townwide side. A personal side continuing education for the town clerk and assistant town clerk in working towards the certified municipal clerk designation is is hopefully going to be happening. And onboarding the new management assistant will and getting them up to speed on office procedures will also be a priority. And then on the townwide side education continues to involve conflict of interest training, open meeting law training and knowledge of public records law. We have two elections and registration. So stated earlier this past fiscal year we successfully administered three elections, two of which happened during covert times. We also dealt with new state election laws, sometimes on a daily basis something new that were implemented to compensate for the pandemic, such as the allowance of a ballot drop box, allowing for early voting by mail and expanded early voting in person. This resulted in an increase in administrative and supply costs to handle the volume of requested ballots by mail and the need for additional election workers to help with the cleaning and line control at the polls. On a plus side though we were reimbursed by the state auditors division for some of these early voting costs, actually in the amount of $24,814, which was nice. The challenges that we faced were met and they were overcome by the outpouring of support from many in the community and town staff, and by the hiring of a third staff person to help specifically with the fall elections. We were applied for and we were awarded a grant by the Center for tech and civic life, which we got in the amount of $34,051 to assist in the expenses incurred as a result of covert, which was extremely helpful in many many areas. It allowed for the purchase of multiple supplies that would otherwise have been paid for out of our elections budget, or we just simply wouldn't have purchased. In a stated earlier the goal of education under elections specifically speaks to voter education. The town charter section 1010 states that the town implement right choice voting in Amherst for town elections, which will require the education of voters in a big way, as this is an entirely new way of voting. This educational campaign will be undertaken early, often, and through multiple media. The impact to our budget will not only be an advertising and personnel cost, but an equipment needed to read the new ballot style. And there is currently a capital request for this new voting equipment in the self coming fiscal years budget. We anticipate one upcoming town election on November 2. If not subject to code with protocols at that time, we would not need the increased number of election workers as in this past fall. And could staff each precinct as normal, which is about six workers per precinct instead of eight to 10 challenges and elections continue to be polling place locations for many reasons, some of which include incompatibility as a polling site. If the site is too small, there is insufficient parking, or the site has security issues. In summary, the biggest challenges to our budget are to add back one full time staff member, the purchase of new voting equipment and the outreach costs associated with rank choice voting education. The offset to all this of course will be resuming all services bringing revenue back up to prior COVID levels. I don't know if I've throw questions at me I probably missed a bunch of stuff, but I'm happy to answer anything anyone has. Any clarification on rank choice voting and whether it will be in place for the September November election. It does look that way. No, no, it's not going to happen. It does not look that way we've not even scheduled for hearing. And if it nothing happens by July one. There's just no way to implement it. And even then it will be a serious stretch. I'd like to add passport when will passports be viable. When can you do that again. Paul, do you want to answer that question we've decided to take them out of the clerk's office but we were. Paul was going to look into moving them to another department. We have a conflict of interest with doing them in our office to begin with, because federal law changed in 2007, stating that if you are able to issue a birth certificate, you are not able to touch a passport application. So, when I first started here in 2005, all three of us were able to be passport acceptance agents, but then that changed in 2007 we had to determine who does the passports and who does the vitals. And that was by state law, town clerks and assistant town clerks must issue vital records, we had to pull the two us to off and leave the management assistant alone on the passport so it makes it very difficult, you know, and you're trying to offer services. You say oh here we're here Monday through Friday to 430 and then that person's out on vacation or that person's out for a day, you know, one person has a hard time covering it also. It stopped when we closed town hall we actually withdrew from the program. So, I know there's talk about if we rejoin the program who who is going to offer that in in town hall. As you may know Athena was our key person on that when she was working in the clerk's office and, you know, when when we terminate it when we close town hall became something we couldn't support. And we have to look at this carefully because I think so it was always an issue for the clerk's office to be able to accommodate it. It's a service we don't have to provide it the post office also provides it, but I think people. Our experience has been that when we ran that people loved coming to town hall because we gave them good service and we're available and responsive to them. So we'll look at that again because I think it's a good thing to offer to our to our residents and other people who come here, but we just be able to have to be able to staff it and figure out if it's going to be all the time or just on the shirt now or some things like that. And we have to have a backup person to that and that's Athena knows more about the details of this. I want to add one reason you're going to need more passports because to everybody has to get that real license, but for someone like me who has married widow whatever I have a lot of names. They said, if I can't come up with papers for everything that I did in my life, that the way to do it is to renew my passport, then I can go get the real license. The real ID so they're going to be a lot of other people in my situation. We're going to want to get a new passport. And if it's a renewal Dorothy, if you can just renew it, you don't need an agent you just do it by by mail. I let it lapse. Oh, okay. Choice voting. And when you said you're going to be out early and often when is so 2022 will the first be the first time. No, we won't. There's no local so you've got a big time. Got time. Okay. Yes, two years. Yes, just adequacy of staffing and early and often and we can all watch what's happening going to happen in New York City, when they've got the number of candidates they've got up for mayor, plus they've got all the other pieces so we can. Yeah. Okay, so, so it's not, it's not going to be a huge drain on your time in terms of getting it up and ready. That's good. No, not a short. No, in fact, at the end of April I was part of the East Hamptons demonstration of the voting equipment which is the same voting equipment will get. So I got to watch all morning long how it works with the software with the hardware I got to put ballots to the machine so I've got a hands on. You know, knowledge of it now yeah and then new tabulators aren't that much different than our old tabulators it's a software that's the biggest change. So I also just wanted, you know, we've been doing thank you notes for people as they come at the. I had to do a vital record for my mom, and then I had to do, we do my dog license and your, your team is great because little things like I'm supposed to send in a stamped envelope so you can mail me back to the dog license. Someone knows that I forgot to put the envelope in and it's sitting on their desk it's just at the level of personal service is pretty extraordinary so thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We try. So, on ranked choice voting. We have the equipment that are we going ahead with buying the equipment even if we did though it appears we're not going to be able to do range choice voting for our next round of municipal election. Is there any other changes that come with the new equipment or will it read ballots that are in the format that we that everyone's used to. It's able to read the old ballots is going to read the new ballots as well. Also, I believe it's in the capital budget so it is. It's in line for proceeding but from the time that I got the quote on the equipment and the availability to putting together my responses here for the budget first meeting at JCPC. We, well actually probably after that, we found out that there's a waiting list on this equipment now so as you know a coven and parts from China. These tabulators are assembled in the US, but with parts from China. So the vendor is having a hard time getting the parts. So he's got a waiting list they had a whole bunch of equipment they sold them all out and now there's a waiting list. So even if you know we're. We don't know what the timeline is at this point with covert lightning and things coming back to normal maybe that won't be a problem when we're ready to purchase them but as of actually I found this out at the end of April when I was at I'm remembering now I was at the demonstration East Hampton that's when he told me. So end of April. Yeah. I think we had gotten the quote in February though. And then my other election question is so we went through quite a back and forth. Last year about location and numbers of voting places. And in addition to that we did a lot with mail and voting that we didn't do it reduced the number of people who needed to vote at voting at precincts. And I also recognize that we had challenges with COVID in just fun making sure that we had enough people who could work as election workers and putting all of those things together. Any recommendations for the council is things that we should reconsider on these issues of the number location of voting sites. Well, I can tell you precinct to the north fire station really does not want us there. It's a fire station. It's always been an issue. We always have pushed back with the schools. We just I think this is an ongoing area that we need to come to some kind of resolution on the early the voting by mail is going to be over and done with at the end of June so we're going to go back to normal times on how people can get their ballots. So it's back to just absentee or in person for town elections. So I think that's going to bring the numbers back out into the precincts. You know, you may have heard more than me but I didn't get any complaints at all on the high school on election day we had none. People were just you know the usual phone calls like where do I go to vote again we tell them and then, you know. So the high school is definitely a viable option for permanency. Polling places in there is I don't know we'd have to you know, I think one of the issues with that location is electrical plugs. Where do you plug in the tabulators. But there are quite a few precinct precinct one no parking we've always had this issue. I really don't know what the solutions are, you know, there's always pushback with voters because they like their little neighborhood precincts but it comes to a point where you know, if the location doesn't want you there then you do have to find some other location. I hope that answers your question. It's an ongoing conversation and it seems like we need to be thinking about it in the process to that works with you to try and address it proactively and not wait until the end. You have some thoughts on it or other subject. Yeah, so the two previous town clerks Margaret and Chavina both had the idea of a centralized polling location which many communities do. And that's where the proposal for these consolidated location at the high school came into play and that was, you know, I think you got a lot of negative feedback on that and made a decision like we can do that for some but not all because people do different values of play and we don't want to disenfranchise folks. And that was the sense of that. So I think that that's one solution but otherwise we're going to be fine trying to find locations and there aren't many available other than schools and there are many public buildings available right now. Yeah, I mean it strikes me that it's going to cause us not to necessarily go back to further discussion of just one location. But on the other hand, whether we can maintain the number of locations and have to be creative about thinking of new locations. So what do we do with back at the fire station doesn't really want us is there another option that's available to us. I know that in the past. We asked permission from Emmanuel Lutheran Church to put two polling places in there and they were agreeable. So if precinct two had to be moved. It could move over to precinct three it's not that far away. One solution for one little problem. Yeah, I don't know if the university would be willing to allow us to use space and any building that has parking like its own place facility, for example, you remain there. So, Linda, do you have other things that you wanted to raise. I just want to say that I actually made it a point to go visit polling sites on election day and I saw no problems at all. However, I just don't want to go through what we went through last August. Thank you for Kathy, working side by side with me to rewrite an entire plan for polls. We would have been up a creek. And I, one of the things I just to lay out a sense of calendar. We don't have a primary this year. There's only a general election, and it will most likely not be ranked chose. And then the next year is the state election. And by then we will have gone through redistricting, which means there may be some changes to polling places anyway. So that is a roundabout way of saying, Sue has her plate full to make sure we get through. Because then in 2023, we implement rank choice voting. So the next three years are really very different election lands, if you will, for Amherst, and if we have to change voting locations because of redistricting and redistricting, then there's a lot of education that has come our way for that too. So, thank you so for everything you're up to. Yes, you're welcome. Thank you for the clarification. Dorothy. Yeah, real quick, voting by mail as we had it. We don't control it. It's state controlled. That's correct. I got into my question. Thank you. Okay. Anything else. What did you do with marriage intentions. I feel bad about that we, you know, it's married. There are a couple of hands, a couple of towns locally that are taking appointments. I know Belcher town is but they're only doing it for their residents. It's all these conditions. So we're just telling people start calling around seeing who will take your intent, your intentions, but it takes about 15 to 20 minutes depending on the couple to fill out the paperwork. Well they could just live in sin that wouldn't be. It's just, you know, I've had, you know, I've had personal people asking if I would marry them and okay and then we can we file our intentions with you I'm like, yes, no. I feel bad. But yeah, I'm, you know, with the opening up and we'll figure out how to do it, you know, it was always just tough here because what do you just stop what you're doing for a half an hour maybe go downstairs and just sit and wait while people because the forms can't leave the building there are all these requirements around it. They can't take them home and then bring them back. So it just was what it was and luckily we're at the other end here now. I have to tell you I've been working since I was 13 my first job was cutting onions in a snack bar to make onion rings. Oh, I love it. Worst job ever. Together for coffee when my worst one. Okay, sounds good. Anything else looking for the committee lists if anybody else has any other questions that they haven't yet. I know it's been a challenging year and many probably every respect for you and I really appreciate on behalf of the entire council and say how glad we were to have you come on board as our clerk and I think that the way you've managed us through these crises has proven that that's right. Thank you very much. Thank you and amber to amber deserves just as much praise she's like my second command. Yes, a really strong second in command. And since she's out on the call, please convey our appreciation to her also. I will absolutely. Okay. Thank you. Jeremiah is here and he can tell us all about anything that he's observed about polling locations since did a lot of work and getting us there. question we had asked was, Jeremiah was, I think you might have not come on board. Whether there were any observations about where we ended up with in the voting locations and whether there anything that we learned from that that we would want to consider as we're going forward. Yeah, and I should have I should have mentioned the entire maintenance staff they were phenomenal and all this and and DPW, but he pulled together so many things and set things up. It was amazing and I think, well the biggest glitch that we found with the high school was you we all went in there and checked out the space it's plenty big, but then it was like okay where are the plugs and they were just stealing like 30 feet up. Okay, we can't exactly reach that to plug in tabulators. There are only a few around the edges. So that was that was a hurdle to overcome but I think the biggest thing was the porta potties that's learning going forward no porta potties. Nobody liked the porta potties. We have so many complaints from our workers. But you know the thing is like various. We couldn't use the bathrooms in the in the facility so it was the only other solution. I'll let it over to you Jeremiah. Yeah, I did I did hear a little bit of that and I would have to say you know it was it was most certainly a challenging election, navigating all the safety protocols, due to the pandemic. And on the backside of that, I really do see a benefit of having that central location with each of the facilities that we do have for the polling locations. Some of them I believe lend themselves well, and then there are others that are quite challenging. And I think that if we could somehow utilize that single location, and everyone is comfortable doing so. I think that would be a great benefit. There is some of the facilities, I would almost have zero a vehicle traffic. It's extremely hard or extremely difficult to place vehicles. So driving up. They work well for foot traffic, but driving up just as it just doesn't work. And then there are others areas that have great, great parking and that are very expansive, but then those facilities are a little bit more remote for the foot traffic. And so if we could bring all of those together, I see the high school as being a benefit has sort of both. It has you know the public transportation, you know it's it's fairly centrally located and we do have a lot of parking. And perhaps I think I just think that maybe the conversation should continue with that I see I see benefits to it's it was it was challenging with the elections, but it was also a lot of fun. I enjoyed, I enjoyed it. Actually, can we have a system where people can now that we're not using just paper books but we're in today's technology, can people choose a location to go to or the state law still require that people vote in person only at the precinct that they registered at. So that would require state law change to to take advantage of technology and look and solve some of the problems that way. I know there's still very old fashioned laws on the books. I was wondering if any advocacy with the legislature. I'm afraid the secretary secretary to commonwealth may be less flexible in the legislature on this one. Well I do know that galvin is trying for early voting to be a permanent thing. So if that you know not early voting I'm sorry mail in voting mail in ballots. So if that were to pass and it became permanent for all elections. Right there helps out a lot for people who can't get to their polling places or, or what have you. We'll see what happens. He's fighting but hasn't passed yet. Yeah. But that requirement that you have to vote at the specific precinct does limit option is another way of limiting voter options. Right if you want to vote in person right you still have to stay with your precinct but if you have the option of not having to go out to your precinct you could vote by mail. Yeah, nearly voting gave us a second location for everybody. Any other questions. Pat, your hand up. Yeah. I'm going to get away for a moment to get some water. So I might have missed this but when we talk about having one polling place what that impacts people without transportation without personal transportation, very directly. And so how would you be addressing that. I know the bus route is only it's a quarter of a mile away I think that was already looked at. Just about trolleys. You know, that would be something we could further discuss though if there are any kind of ampoules that could be put in place. That sort of thing even a, even school buses. Yeah, because it seems to me that if there's only one polling place it impacts people very differently which is a kind of it can be a real block to voting so it would have to be considered and have to be implemented I think. But currently, the polling locations are not within walking distance, a large part of the population. If you happen to live near your where your polling places, you're lucky but those people are on distance. Right now people depending on where you live and what is, you know, if you live like Applewood I know Applewood has fans that sort of thing for their population. I know most people just rely on their own cars but if you don't have that call a friend if you don't have that I know this is always an issue. Right and it would but it would directly impact people with low income people who are reliant on public transportation from areas like the boulders and south point and stuff like that. So if we're going to do that we have to provide something to make the voting fair. And it can take several hours to do something by our public transportation system. And there's, you know, so it's just something to seriously consider. And let me go on. Bernie. Yeah, I think the hopefully the advocacy around mail and voting and early voting will continue and we'll get somewhere with that because going to a single polling place, which we did in Belcher town. So we'll appreciate the design of the middle school in Belcher town because it was designed deliberately to use the gymnasium as a polling place so you can close off everything around. And I guess there are enough plugs. But, you know, we're, we're going to inconvenience people if we, no matter what we do in terms of how we vote so we really need to find something that's optimal for people and and I, you know, I, I would encourage all of us to talk to our reps and senators about making voting easier. Making better public transportation. Well, yeah, well we're so don't get me started with public transportation I mean I, I live up, I live a half a mile away from a bus stop that I can't depend on. Right. So, you know, because the transportation is tied into the university and the five colleges so exactly. But, you know, if we do go to a single point of to a single polling place. I think it'd be incumbent on us to try to find some way of getting people there who want to vote in person, and hopefully that mail in voting will make life easier for all of us. I want to just clarify the way the voting is done. I haven't paid attention lately, but when I used to go in the reason that you have to go to your polling place is that there's a book, and the book is for the people for the blocks that are in that place in the book. There would be cards or that had your name and address on it, or do you use that or do you use printed lists. So it's, it's a printed list from the voter registration system it's the voter list we print them out by precinct, they go into a binder it's, it's by street name and then alpha within the street well by number and then alpha so you know you approach the check in table you'd say I live on Alan street, number 24, and my name is, and then Alan 24 there you are check, if you're active. So yeah it's it's the it's the voter list is what we print. So that could in fact be at all the polling places if you needed it. We have to be, it is already. Okay, but one reason you, I would think you might need to vote at your own dedicated polling place is it is partly a, making sure that somebody doesn't vote twice, you know hitting all the polling places, which theoretically could be caught. Or if everything is electronic, but I have to say I really don't I'm not in favor of everything being electronic because people are having, they're losing confidence that that's safe. So, but you do the printed out voting should so that should that should work. So then the last thing is a suggestion on the new school that will be built, perhaps what Bernie mentioned that when they do the gymnasium they do think of it as a possible place, and include the plugs the whatever that would be required, and the bathroom and the ability to shut it off from the rest of the school. So you're not compromising students security. Okay. No, that's good suggestion. We'll pass along to the chair of the school building committee. So Jeremiah. There's nothing else on elections than I really do want to thank Sue and make it official that we're not going to talk about elections and guys facilities and move on. All right, thank you all. So, turning on two facilities maintenance. Any introductory piece that you want to give first. Sure. I'll just do a brief overview. First off, my name is Jeremiah a plant and the facilities and maintenance manager for the town. I supervise and coordinate all of the maintenance and custodial work for many of the town buildings. Those buildings include the town hall police department banks community center. Woodwalk parking garage. East street school. South Amherst campus, Amherst childcare. North Amherst campus in months and Memorial library. But my, I would say my assistance also goes beyond those buildings, my often communicate and collaborate with the libraries and with the schools as well as we saw in the elections. So I coordinate prevent preventive predictive and corrective actions for all of these various sites, just ensuring that we, the buildings are looked at. They're cleaned. They're in good repair. And then the grounds are obviously taken care of as well for all weather conditions. I maintain records of the equipment, the building in the assets and use those for short term and long term improvements. Some of the work that I've done or a lot of the work that I've done over the past year has been coven related as that has has really impacted much of our lives. One of those areas was the elections that we were just discussing. And others were was just general safety, ensuring that all of our towns municipal employees, as well as the public are safe in each, each one of those those buildings. So just working collaborating with the individuals who work in each of those locations, setting up sanitation stations, various barriers. Just all of those protocols just make sure that we are following the guidance and keeping everyone safe. If there are any questions, comments from the committee. Start with Kathy. On the, on the buildings. I had, I had a question about I think when you're talking about the North Amherst campus that's the old school up here across from the library. South Amherst campus correct. Yes. No, but what about North Amherst. North North Amherst school. Yes, across from the North Amherst library. Yes. Okay, so my question about that is, and this is probably of the two of you with call. We rent. We were renting out that whole top floor. There was head start and then you maps had a piece of it that they were supporting. But my understanding is at least the UMass piece was through a parent granting community servicing where they had the space. So with that part closed down. Are you actually in and out of that building how are we using that building right now. Do you do maintenance there do do. We work with a tenant, and I know down, we've got head start then downstairs we've got wick so just some, and then my other question is with the hopefully fairly soon expansion of the North Amherst library which is a town building. The community space will your team be part of taking care of that building that North Amherst library, you know, at least struck the structural sides of it so those two pieces. I mean, I understand the town other town building so I just want to know those two. So North Amherst school right now is being used by the head start and reach program that's a portion of the top level. Community action wick is using the office space in the ground level, and then the remaining area of the ground level is used by the town for documents storage. As you said the UMass tenant, I believe is is heading out and Paul might be able to answer this better, but in my interactions with individuals from head start it sounded as if they were looking to grow their area and take up that whole first floor. Through this pandemic it has been in large empty vacated. I make it a point to go through every one of the buildings. Weekly if not more. For one I know that there are children that would typically be in that building. So it's important to me to make sure that the water systems are up to par. So I do weekly flushing of the all the water systems throughout the building, because I really don't know when they'll be back so I really want to want to be sure that the water safe there's no stagnation. That also helps me I'm able to put eyes on all of the equipment the major equipment in there, the HVAC electrical, really just to keep an eye on the building. Because I'm sort of the steward of these places so I want to put eyes on it and I will go from the basement right to the attic and have a look. So, at least minimum weekly sometimes more often. In the North Amherst library I know some of what the work that's being done is repair of the building as well as the renovation. So, and part of you had a request on roof but is that also under your you or is that just one that sort of sits out there as an orphan. It's not. I mean, the Joan Jones library says, you know, the building is the town, you know, the right, the staff is the library but I'm just, it wasn't listed under the buildings we and months and was so it's my question. For this one, I would think that maybe I should look for a little bit more clarification. I know it is a town building, but at this point I believe the Jones staff assist with that building. If you are correct it is a town building in the Jones library essentially occupies that building, but they've also been supporting that building with cleaning and maintenance. Okay. So to the extent there was a maintenance need. At least they would have come. If it was at a capital level they would have been the group that would bring the capital request. I mean they're having the more recent one with their series of repairs going on. So I'm just, you know, I love it that you're doing all these buildings, you know, and, you know, and in paying on just so people know on JCPC one of the things Jeremiah was talking about with a capital fund that he has is worrying about the exterior of all the buildings so that there's not getting through so it's not just, you know, boilers and chillers I think it's fabulous that we have someone that is thinking inside outside. And as you just said, even water systems. It's fantastic. And that was why I was wondering if this one I orphans not quite the right word but it's any, you know, it's going to when it's rebuilt and expanded it will have a bathroom. It will have a community room. And yeah, so. Okay, that that you answered my question. Yeah, I mean there is a issue for somebody's going to have to deal with, but I think it's really not in the council's role, necessarily to be the ones. The community room needs to be managed when it's not being used by library functions question will be, how does it get utilized and managed. Paul. Yeah, so the library director and I have had those conversations that the library won't be scheduling the community room there be present obviously, but we manage the months and library and the months and memorial building now, and we probably do that. And the same thing, plus we're looking at doing as much electronic sort of access control as we can in the new addition so that it doesn't have to you don't have to have a key to get in and things like that. So, as much as we can do it with 21st century technology, but there will, it will be an expanded responsibility for the facilities department. Do you have something. Your hand is up. Yeah. So are there other questions. Yeah, go ahead. I have one. I mean, I know we're supposed to only be focusing on FY 22 but Jeremiah Maya skills in terms of looking at all these buildings I'm assuming you're not always also over in our school buildings but I think you were starting to look at the extra on the capital side for for fire. Again, we hopefully are building a new school and one of them becomes great then would Jeremiah be part of the team that was thinking of potential reuses or alternative uses, you know, including when we're saying, you know, what could the space be and Paul, you know, if their staff expansions their functions that right now we don't even have the space for that we might want. Because that that kind of assessment would be look at it, not as an elementary school but looking at it is okay now it's a building. And the open classroom might not be a problem if you're using it for something else so that's my sort of who's part of a team that's starting to think of it as a capital resource and what what it's short term and long term maintenance needs or renovation needs might be. So, so that's very good question so when, if, if, if we have an access building. We have a property committee review a committee that can review that, but a major property like a elementary school is a pretty big conversation I have at the town council level and, but you'd want a reuse committee or somebody who's looking at what, what do you want to use do you want to sell it do you use it for something else. And I think on, if you're going to use it for something else the facilities manager is key, because they're the ones who are going to be maintaining it and they have the inside scoop. That's why we have Rupert on the elementary school building committee when they start designing something you want to know from the people who are doing the work, what's it going to take to maintain. Jeremiah and Jeremiah bring such a broad set of skills we're just really fortunate to have him. So we keep piling more things on. Thank you. No, that's what Paul you did see me trying to start to grab Jeremiah there as we as we're not not waiting to think about it for years from now but thinking about it over the next several years. Thank you. So the other question that I would have only because I'm sort of anticipating what areas of interest, other members of the council would have at some point we're going to have an energy plan, and the energy plan is in place. It's probably going to want us to move in certain directions and what steps we can sort of anticipate coming up in the structure administratively to get us there and financially to get us there. I don't think we want Jeremiah to get into the nitty gritty detail he did with JCPC about BTUs and everything like that but one of the reasons in the budget was to create a fund that was available so that he could be opportunistic about and with working with Stephanie about getting outside funding to do energy efficient things. Do I give an example or two of that Jeremiah do you have something like that. Yeah, and we could, we could say that just looking at months and the recent conversations we've had with replacing the HVAC system over there. I would say that I use I use that as as my guide, when I'm approaching some of these different projects that to think about the energy conservation and sustainability. And now with with that wonderful ADA report that we have just both using both of those as a guide. When when thinking about any of these projects. So I it's gone as far as looking at replacing some of the flooring at at months in in reaching out to Stephanie and saying, you know, from a sustainability perspective, you know what what what could I do. And you know I just want to ensure that that I'm always pushing to reach those goals because they are, they are achievable, but they are also lofty so I think it's important to have that right in front of me at all times, while assessing the buildings. So, like getting solar on roofs of buildings or parking lots. We're looking for some opportunities and you in one one example of that would would be the Amherst police department. So, working with Sean about different capital projects you know kind of shifting some things around. I needed to move the chiller up front a little bit more than the roof but when we get to that roof. Absolutely, I would love to see solar on that roof and that's going to help offset some of the increases that we have in our, in our energy or electrical expenses. But there are other opportunities and I think that the town has is looking into some bigger energy opportunities. This is a good roof bangs is nice and flat. The building surrounding bangs also have have solar so these are things that we definitely look at in the future. Looking for the committee anybody else have questions. And we're glad to have here. I'm glad to be here. I'm not going to hold you any longer if there's nobody else who wants to. There's a question they want to pose that your budget I really appreciated. I was. The information is provided very helpful and I know you've worked with Sean to make sure that the information is available so thank you. You're welcome. Very, very, very helpful. If not, then the. I appreciate you having been with us and you're welcome to stay but have your other things to get to. I'm going asparagus picking. So, Thank you. Have a good night. Thank you. So, I think that where we are as the committee is. Getting near the end of the process. I just want to remind everybody to keep up by trying to keep up with sections and part that I've been assigned to it's been hard. So I appreciate that it's been hard on the rest of you, but if we want to try and get reports to the council as they are available to us to do that. It'll say it'll make our final process so much easier because we won't have to go into detail reports about departmental discussions. So I just want to make sure that. So I wrote up my report on the elementary schools. Is that all you need from me. I think so because what we're going to do in the end is that we're going to vote on whether we have recommendations. Recommendations to support the budget as proposed or whether we have recommendations to the council to take other action and what I'm looking for is to make sure that when we get to that stage, which is going to be under a very tight timeline. We don't have to go back and write up descriptions of departmental presentations. So I think the answer is yes because if the if there's anything that comes out of the discussion in the last section that I described the work is written up there is going to flow from that meeting in that conversation. Thank you. Andy I just a little bit more on the report because I'm feeling that I had fire and it was pretty straightforward. Should I talk about some of the challenges they put forward in terms of maintenance and things like that that are in the in the budget or so I'm a little unsure of what I should be focusing on. I can talk to you separately if that's yeah no no it's fair question to ask and I think it's probably worth talking about as a group. By the way, there's been no public attendees most of the day so that's why I haven't done anything about public comment. I don't know why I really pushed to get the first one out and did several departments and community services and landed one of the elementary schools one of those in the first report that was sent to the council. It gave her sort of a range, because I think the Lynn dug a little deeper into a little bit of her own research I think I was in enrollment trends fire call. Yeah, I just added the enrollment trends and get Kathy directed me to leave. I'm going to go back to the pages. And what I did in mind was focus on the discussion. That was not not the presentation. discussion. Really the questions and to the extent that there were written questions and responses to written questions as there was extensively and for several of the different departments. I think that document of itself could form the basis of the report where we want to do is to make sure that it's in a format that is easy to consume by whoever, whether it be a counselor or the public, because this is our opportunity to say what we heard regarding each of the departments. But I don't think that we need to repeat what was in a very comprehensive document. A lot of the work was done. I think I've seen sections like the senior center. I certainly went back and looked at the budget book, but tried to think about the topics that came up during conversation. Right. Okay, that's good. Thank you. I just saw, I thought I saw Rob Moore come and go, were we going to be talking to him today or was that just him coming into the wrong meeting. There was a rob war that came on and off. He, he supervises Jeremiah so he was there for support. Okay, thanks. Right. Yeah, there was no same budget section specific. Okay, fine. I just didn't know we had whether we had someone. And we have a biggie coming up when we do plan conservation development. Because that's, he will be back. Are you are you going to hold the next version. So, well, what's my deadline, because I have not written up police. Would you. So, Pat and I have fire. I have police. She's fire I police. Bob's got the biggie. So when would you like those paragraph to two paragraphs whatever we're planning on writing up is question number one and question number two we did the Q&A's and Sean has posted them. Okay, are you thinking of attaching them to the write up so that to extent people don't go and look, you know, so some of the original questions were answered in what Sean collected and then we don't have to write those. They were, that was part of the conversation so I have that two part on question. I have an opinion collectively about that because there's two way to handle that. One is to attach to the physical document the others just to put links into the physical document to get people there. preference links. I vote for links. And I'm creating a budget document with links in it. Let's utilize it. So, you want to do is. If there's something that you think is important or you could just say that the number of questions were asked and information is provided the committee and it's available. And then do it as a link. You're looking for a fairly brief report from us. Yeah, I think that's why I say, if you don't have that. I'm trying to remember which day it was where we had schools and to the community services departments recreation and senior services. It kind of gives you a model I did it early so that you have at least some context to place it in. And Dorothy has done on the library, but I was waiting to have a grouping to put it in. So as far as the date is concerned, it's too late for next Monday. We're not going to get a finance committee report that's going to have comprehensive section with a number of things so it's probably middle of next week. We are early next week is early next week as you can do it. And that would give us time to get it in and if we have to do an additional report to the council that is sent by email and then put into the packet of the next meeting for the public. That's your option so we if we have to do multiple reports we will, but let's just try and get a moving and appreciate it. So I think that the other thing only other thing that I'll just mention real quickly so we can be done is on schedule. We know we have two meetings on the 27th, just to be aware that there are those two meetings and I'll try and get through the first one as quickly as we can. So that there's some reasonable time in between because the community serves working group will be with us later. The complexity that we have is that if we also need to come back to discussion which we do about how to permanently fund reparations, we may have to add that to the first meeting on the 27th. And that will put a little bit more stress on the situation. I have one suggestion and not for the, for Bob, Bernie, Jane, to the extent you want to spend a little extra time on what we're going to see on the 27th that discussion that will be presented to the council Monday night. Am I correct, Lynn. No, so you would at least get a flavor not so Paul sent you, you got the document but you'd hear the initial questions people have and because they've, they've, in addition to a reporting on what they've done they've provided a potential this is what the whole new staffing could look like and the price price tag on it so if you wanted to hear them talk about it that's Monday night so provide you the link but my estimation which is, as always, quite optimistic that he at around 730. Stop. Always, always you guys. Okay, anything else. I have no anticipated business. Let me just check to see we do have one attendee now. That's Jane she's joined by phone. Okay. So, um, so we have no sort of no public comment and nobody's come up with anything additional and anticipated business. So I will treat us as adjourned. Thank you. Good night everybody.