 Alright, Darcy, I've made you host and we're recording. Have a great night everyone. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Athena. Good evening. Seeing as there is a form and attendance. I'm calling the December 3rd, 2020 meeting of the town service and outreach committee to order. At 631. Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law allows us to hold this virtual meeting of the town services and outreach committee. This meeting is being recorded and will be shown on the town of Amherst YouTube channel. I'm now going to call on each member by name confirm they can hear me and we can hear you. Melissa Brewer. Present. Darcy, do not present Dorothy Pam. Present. Evan Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Those assisting the meeting will be monitoring committee member connections. Does that even make sense here? I don't think it really. I don't think it's necessary. I think it's necessary to be monitoring it other than us, right? And if necessary, we'll pause the meeting until we are reconnected. We request that everyone be patient with the process. Okay. One attendee. I'm going to go to the agenda and the public may provide public comment at this time and manners within the jurisdiction of the TSO. And if they so choose, they can raise their hand, which it doesn't look like they are going to do. So moving on to action items. We don't have any town manager appointments tonight. Are we going to have appointments at the next meeting? On the 17. I anticipate so we're interviewing next Friday. So it would be in time for your meeting on the 17th, I believe. So it could get something to you and it's the, I think we're interviewing for agricultural commission, disability commission. Maybe community safety working group. There might be one other. All right. So. We don't have a lot on our agenda tonight. So I did add in the agenda item that we've had a couple of times, which is just town manager report update and counselor questions just in case. And the most recent town manager report is in the packet. So just in case any of us had any. Any questions for the town manager or if the town manager has any updates he wants to give us. So, um, I have a hand raised. Have your hand up. I'm glad I can always count on you, Dorothy. Yes. Let's see. Okay, Dorothy. Okay, Paul, we have the opening for a new town clerk. And I know a lot of the things that go into making an appointment, but I just wanted to ask about hiring from within and how you do that. And again, I do not know I have not talked to the acting town clerk. I know her personally just think she did a great job on the election and wanted to know how you were planning to deal people who work already for the town in this process. So under the charter, the position is we will be advertised and posted on the bulletin board and anybody within the town or outside the town can apply for it and. I think you're right. I think the acting kind of took a terrific job with the most recent election. And I think the primary went well as well, which was under the direction of the Shavina Martin. Okay. Any other questions. I did have one quick question and that is, if you have any, any update on Hickory Ridge. So yeah, that's, I was just talking to Dave Zomek about it. It's, it's a, he said it's the most complicated transaction that he's worked on, because there's so many moving parts to it. He's still confident that we will move towards closure. Because there's solar that are on the in the project and so that means there's more moving parts to this than just the land transaction there's also the solar deal. There's lots of complications. So he's still working it is it's it's going he's being with lawyers tomorrow on it actually. So it's not dormant it's still actively managed. There's some things that are outside of our control like the decision by ever sourced to accept the, the solar that the power and also where they are in terms of the trunch in terms of what kind of revenue they're going to get depending on how they fall in the state system so all those things are variables that are influencing the deal apparently. Is there some reason why ever source would not accept the solar. Well you know there's there's a long line there's a lot of solar being put into the system and ever source has a long as you know they have to do the interconnection agreement and stuff on that. I don't know the details of it, but there's always issues with the utility with any solar project. I just my understanding. All right. Thank you, Alyssa. Sorry my question was back about the town clerk do we have a time frame on that I realized it's the holiday season it's like probably the worst time to really be looking for somebody for a job but it has the posting gone up yet and do you have just any I don't think it has but do you have a sense of internally what your goal is beyond you know, sure ideally as soon as possible. Yeah, so we are new HR director is taking this on this will be her first search. And so we will be putting pulling together a search and interview team, and she's been asked I told her to look at what we did last time and just sort of pull it out and let's look at it and hopefully get that out next week. Yeah, I think we need to move on quickly. And, you know, I'm hoping January will get something to the council. And look, we won't get it for the January 4 meeting so I'm looking at your January 28 I think it is meeting. Okay. Anything else. All right, so we're moving on. We took the surveillance, we were planning on looking at surveillance surveillance technology bylaw tonight. But we the sponsors wanted to have more time to respond to the to the feedback memo that the time manager sent out on Friday. They suggested that they might be ready by the end of January so maybe for our January 28 meeting that's what I'm thinking. So we have much less on our agenda than we thought Dorothy. Just a quick question. I read in the paper that some bills that were passed by I think both houses of the Boston legislature. Not signed by the governor yet, and there was a facial recognition was one of the words mentioned so I just thought I'd be interested to know how that meshed with what we were trying to do, whether in fact means that we don't have to do anything. I just thought it was an interesting thing to follow up on. Yeah, yeah, that's a good question that that I could forward to the sponsors to see if they have an answer to that. With regard to the surveillance technology piece of it. I can do that. Paul looked like he had some information. Nothing more than what you said I agree I noticed the same thing I've shared that with with the sponsors as well. And, and, and GOL because it's in their court I think right now, right. That and that piece of legislation hasn't been signed by the governor yet. So, let's just press our fingers on that one. I think the attorney general had some concerns about the facial recognition portion of it and she weighed in on that as well. So, yeah, we, we only really need to have them answer the question, if it actually is enacted. So, going on to the public way policy revision. I elicit you still have a question. I do. I'm a little confused about where we are as TSO in terms of facial recognition and surveillance both. And if you could just remind me of if we're done with our pieces or if anything's still coming back to us, especially based on the report that the town manager provided the day before Thanksgiving that had a lot of information in it. So where do you, where is TSO at, as opposed to the full town council. Well, TSO is not getting facial recognition back to my knowledge. That's what I thought. But we are obviously getting the surveillance technology part back. And you think we're going to do that. You said the 28th of, or was that town council. I'm confused. That's our meeting, the 28th. December 28. No, no, January 28. Our TSO meeting on January 28. As opposed to the town council meeting near the end of January. You're forcing me to get my list. Sorry, I'm just getting a little confused. I'm not. I'm always confused. January 7th and January 28th, and they suggested to me the end of January. So that seems to me to be January. So our work plan will reflect that super. Thanks so much. Yes, it doesn't yet. So the public way policy revision. I'm just going to, I'm just going to go back to the, I wrote the first part of the report that's going to the town council, indicating that we already approved section four of the, of the town managers proposed. Public way policy revisions. And we're supposed to look at the rest of the remaining provisions. Proposal proposed revisions tonight. I am kind of hoping that someone else can pull it up on the screen. But if we're desperate, I will do it. Is there anyone available to do that? If I, do I, do I need to share the posting or something like that? Anyone. Okay. Darcy, I'm working on two different computers, which is convenient for me, but not for you. So I can't help you right now. If I have advanced notice, I can arrange it so that I'm on just one. Yeah, I should. Maybe the future. I'll just, I'll do that. But at the moment I'm working. I have one in front of me, but that doesn't help the rest of you. So I'm like, I can't do it right now because I'm on two different computers. Yeah. You just, you just want to have the public ways memo up on the screen. Yeah. Yes. I can do that. All right. Are we all able to share? I believe so. Let me just give me just one second. Are you going to be able to pull yours up, George, when we get to it? I think I'm going to ask Evan to do the same. If you can. All right. I think that we should probably just go paragraph by paragraph. The underlying parts are the proposed revisions. So if you look at the first paragraph. Maybe Paul, you can do a quick explanation of each one. That'd be nice. Yeah. Yeah. So the general purpose of this is to begin the conversation about what the council wants to. Public ways is a big piece of the council's business and you're starting to grapple with lots of different things. You, you've heard the Sufa signs. You have the parking. You've had the little libraries. You've had a lot of different things. And one of the things that I've been to end in, including some of these signs that were, that had been put up. If someone wants to put a bench in or something like that. What you already addressed is the temporary stuff that's connected with the outdoor dining and all that kind of stuff. And that's, that's a pretty, that's a transitory issue. The bigger issue is how does the council want to manage its business as a keeper of the public way? And one of the big questions is, you know, do you want to do it as a council? Do you want to delegate that authority to a committee attack or whatever? Or do you want to delegate some of it to the town manager, which you've already done on some things or not. And that's totally within your discretion to decide how to do it. And you can change that at any moment. That's the beauty of a policy that you adopt is that it's your policy. It's a policy that you own it and you can say, take this piece and do it. So we don't have to look at it. So it's really sort of, you know, you're, you're, it's a, it's a beginning of a council. You're going to start to play with which, what works best for you as a council. And what you wanted, what you think it rises to the level of the council in which, what doesn't. So this, these changes in the first three sections of this memo are designed to say, you know, you know, you can think of delegating these things to the town manager, which really are, you know, look that through the lens of the public works, fire and police department and planning department as well. So that's, that's, that's the context that we're looking at this in. So the first paragraph talks about delegating a portion of its authority to the town manager and certain other departments under the jurisdiction of the town manager. So there might be things that it might be, you know, you know, you know, you know, you could find up or something that might really live with this superintendent of public works or a, something like that. So it just broadens who, who it, who it goes to. You could reserve that for the town manager. So the town manager is perfectly accountable, but that's the concept of that. The reservation of the public ways for the town common was. More address to the maintenance repairs conducted in the normal way. So that's the one D that your, your cursor is on. And so, and if there are things that are being done on the common, that might, we want to make sure that that's not the North common. We're talking about, that's a major thing that would be, I'm sure you will be spending a lot of time thinking about, but it's anything else that might come, come to play on the common. So that's the concept of whether a tree needs to be moved or things like that. So that's the concept of that. And it's again, maintenance repairs. So it does, it's not like new things or anything like that. The next section is on the next page. Under two. Two C1. I want it has the, and. So that includes hold a public hearing on the request. And refers to the appropriate committee. Yeah, yeah, that sounds good. It's not one or the other. And that's just a clarification. Under three, these are more things that are in the public way. That means sidewalks and in the roads. And this is signage and seating. And so, you know, you saw those sort of speed limit signs that have been put on Amity street and a few other streets. And the DPW sort of got those. That's actually COVID money that went into that. And they put them up and it made us think, well, wait a minute, should that have gone to the council or not? There were some, you know, there's some where we're trying to be responsive to people who are requesting it, but this. And I think if you had said, wait a minute, that's our jurisdiction. We should come to us for all those speed limit signs or yield signs and things like that. What we're trying to do is say, what are the things that are. That are regulatory that we have to put up versus things that. That might not. So the question is like, if we need to replace it, we, you know, there's a place in front of the post office that has a place that we could easily put a park bench. The bus shelters come to mind. And we sort of have a program with PBTA to start to install as many bus shelters as we can. Do you want to look at the location of every bus shelter or not? And that's just your choice, right? So under three reservation public ways, it includes road and sidewalk closures, but signage and seating. And if you go down to 3D, it talks a little bit more about what, what that includes. And so you would be delegating out anything that control, that relates to the control of the public way, like crosswalk signs, speed limits, yield stops, things like that. We often get requests for, you know, crosswalks at certain areas. Everything that we do has to comply with the uniform code of transit, transit, whatever it is. There's a big book that the DPW, the town engineer uses to say what kind of sign goes where. And it's just so there's uniformity throughout the country on how signs are placed. You can't just make up signs as you go along. And so, so these are things that are outside the general bylaw where the general bylaw addresses some of those sandwich boards and things like that. And then, and so in terms of putting in public seating, if someone wants to put a bench in or something, and we think that's a good location. I actually would have a proposal, I've been working on to put benches along, along the past. So people, there's some other, another community where my past community put in a thing called a legacy bench project where they wanted to encourage people walking in a loop, but recognize that people sometimes need to sit as they're walking and like every half mile putting benches to allow people to rest as they're taking a walk. For instance, that's still in formation, but that's the type of thing. So it's, it's those things. That you would say, yes, we don't need to see those things. And, and then down, then on under three E, it's, so not detailed above. That actually means. It's like it just means excluding. Oh yeah, yeah. Sidewalk signs by shoulders, et cetera. So, so, yeah, so this just sort of says, well, I took a stab at like what should be included and maybe there's more you want to do. Maybe you don't want to do any. It's just want to start the conversation. Okay. We have a couple of counselor questions. Alyssa. So it's. It's rare that I would use this phrase. Now I say that now, and I'll probably end up using it all week is this feels a little bit like a solution in search of a problem to me. I'm very comfortable with the changes we've made associated with the pandemic. I'm very unclear as to what kinds of thing I understand what these words say. I also was a keeper of the public way for many years prior to being on town council. And I can tell you that the vast majority of things that are on this list as possibilities are things that never came to us because they never happened. We didn't replace speed limit signs. We're not talking here about delegating authority for changing speed limits. That's that whole other issue, right? That we're trying to decide if that's a TSO attack or where we're going to talk about that issue associated with townwide speed limits. We're trying to figure out what's going to happen. We're trying to figure out what's going to happen. There were a couple of times when stop signs got added to neighborhoods, but this is talking about things that don't actually generally happen. Benches don't generally get added. Sufa signs don't generally get added. Maintenance generally doesn't get performed. And certainly the town council and the previous keepers of the public way. We're not preventing. We certainly didn't prevent any maintenance from happening either on the North Amherst Common or anywhere else downtown. There are metal railings directly across from there, for example near. Russell's liquor store that have been in decay for decades that haven't been worked on, but they never got brought to the select board to for approval. They just never got done. And so I'm trying to understand if this is because we now have a new focus on doing some of these things. And therefore we want to keep them moving on along on a pace. And I know like the Sufa thing came up because right, we had grant money basically, and we had a cool new idea. And so I can put that to one side, like does the town council want to be involved in things like Sufa signs? Cause that's the thing that's just come up. But most of the other things described here are things that were net that just never came up during years of the public way of being described. Unless it was a new project. So like when we redid pine street, then obviously we had to talk about where would the signs all be. And honestly, some of that got kind of boring. And I might have referred it to tack given the option or certainly to TSO, but I'm not clear on why town staff should be deciding where we need bus shelters just themselves or where we need. Benches just by themselves. So I'm not sure what we're trying to solve here. But I'm not sure what the actual needs to be cut out of that decision-making process. And I say cut out because. Once the benches installed, you know, a month, getting a monthly report doesn't really change that any. So I'm just not really. If I felt like we were holding things up, then I might be much more interested in this, but I'm not seeing what problem we're trying to solve here. And it feels like it's taking away any influence on our built upHands itself because we need to think about the, you know, some of the localHands associated with the public way. Thank you, Dorothy. Well, I'll follow up with, I began to have some concern when we were looking at the Sufa signs, and I looked at some of the pictures and I saw a bus stop sign. I saw speed signs. I saw the shelter. I saw newspaper stands. And I saw that the edges of the North Common were gonna be blocked by rows of different items. And it crossed my mind that some thought had to be taken to, I mean, some things have to be done in a certain way, but thought should be taken as how best to do that without ruining the aesthetics of the view of looking into the park. Cause we don't wanna have to have all those things there. So as Alyssa was talking, I was thinking, you know, Central Park has a Central Park Conservancy, well, of course, and they raise money. So I'm not suggesting that we do that, but perhaps there are a lot of details. There are things that are happening now that I guess weren't happening in the past with these. We're gonna be doing more things in the green, the common conventions that maybe a committee or a subcommittee, maybe of TSO, I'm not sure. Some group should try to look at the whole, so that each different department, well, we need to do that there, and then we get a random kind of unorganized assortment of things there. So I would like to have some town council input on that, but does that mean the whole committee, the whole council, or does it mean a committee that concentrates on? We're losing you, Dorothy. Dorothy, okay, we're gonna move to George. I would just suggest that we work our way through this document as you originally had suggested, just section by section starting at the very top. I think we just, oh, as far as- Just as there's a suggested changes here, and let's go through them and decide if we wanna keep them, or what questions we have. That, unless anyone else has any more general comments, I just wanted to mention that, I guess this made me wonder why you are asking for this call, and the charter is pretty clear that the town council gets this responsibility, and it feels a little bit like, as Alyssa said, that's being carved into, and I'm not clear on why. So if you could explain that a little more, Paul. So I think this is a, you've already taken some of the responsibility for the public way and delegated that out. That's what's already in the document. That's what's not being changed. I think, as we work through this, and we start looking at additional things coming up, and for instance, and it's not to imply that the town council doesn't have good judgment, or it slows down the process or anything like that. That's not the intent of this. It was more, does the council want to handle this level of detail on things? And if it says yes, that's fine. We will, whatever path you want to lay out, we will work with. I mean, specifically it came into my mind when we, the signs that say you're going too fast, we got those through COVID, and those were installed, and it's like, well, that did not go to the council, and should it have gone to the council or not? And so it made me think, does the council want that type of thing in front of it, or not, at what level of detail does the council want? And so it's things like that, that came to mind from my perspective. So it was more to lessen the load of the council than it is to, and to look at things that are more maintenancey and sort of ongoing work versus the council's job as being more higher level future of the town type of things. That's how I feel it, at least. Hey, let's, why don't we go with the first paragraph? I'm not completely sure. This is a good way to do it, George, because these things are interrelated. Why don't we start with because I'm a little confused about the first one. Why don't we go to maintenance and repairs and see, Alyssa already already made a comment about that. Does anybody else have, I'm a little confused about why this is under reservation of public ways the town commons. Just because it addresses the town common in particular. Well, I'll add a small thing that Kathy has been reminding us of in the finance committee that every time we do anything new that we must include in the budget some maintenance money. And we're gonna be doing a lot of wonderful new things on the North Common. So just to be sure that like I hadn't really noticed that there was some metal pipe that was corroded. But if I noticed it, I would not have been happy that the benches be maintained and that we don't forget to include money in the budget to do the upkeep on the new things. But beyond that, I would assume that if we do that that maintenance would happen in an appropriate manner done by the town without having to come to us every time. Evan. Yeah, I don't have an issue with this one up. Sorry, I'm scrolling all the time to forgetting that I'm sharing my screen. So my first thought on this was that it was unnecessary because one C says exempting maintenance and repairs. And then as I thought about that, I thought so one C exempts maintenance and repairs but then it never, usually if there's an exemption I guess you, I'm not sure what you would assume, right? So if you just saw that maintenance and repairs were exempted from one C, you don't necessarily know if your assumption is then the town council is the keeper of the public way in that case or if it's delegated to the town manager, it just says that maintenance and repairs are exempted from this section. And so I do sort of feel as though if we're gonna call out that we're exempting maintenance and repairs from other alterations, changes and uses, then it needs to be clear what the default is under that exemption. And so I think that this just clarifies something that's already there. So I don't, my assumption and I was on GOL when this was written, but I don't have that good of memory to remember what the discussion was around this. But my assumption is that because we put in the language but exempting maintenance and repairs that we did not intend for maintenance and repairs to be to have to see council approval. Otherwise we wouldn't have put that clause in there. And so I think that this just, this doesn't change anything substantively, it just clarifies something that's already in there that right now I think is working on assumption and this makes it work on explicit statement. Alyssa? So Evan, maybe you could find a way to reward that or somebody from GOL could because these words don't actually make sense. You talk about reservations of public ways and then you talk about maintenance and repairs. You're not reserving the common for maintenance and repairs. So under C you could be, like there could have been some problem that needed, that was literally not an event event, but like a sinkhole opened up in the common. And so it needed to be fixed. That's not an event, but you had to close the common for X period of time. You don't wanna have to come to the town council and say, God close the common, there's a sinkhole. Like you just close the common. That part I get, and I understand what you said about, if you exempt it here, you need to talk about it somewhere else, but I just don't, maybe the problem is the title of reservation of public ways because nobody reserves the public way to do maintenance. Like that doesn't really make sense. So maybe it's just a matter of refining a way to rephrase where maintenance repairs belong because it doesn't belong under reservation of the public way. Public works is not filling out a form that says there's a sinkhole in the common, which of course there is not, but there's a sinkhole in the common. So we need to reserve it. Like that what, there's electrical cords sticking up out of the bark mulch. So we need to reserve the common. That's not true, but I understand that staff doesn't wanna feel like they shut down the common to do a maintenance thing. And then town council says, well, how come you did that? You didn't ask for our approval. And they say, well, it is maintenance. Like I get the part about the maintenance, but first of all, this implies that we've been withholding maintenance, which we haven't been. And secondly, it also is talking about a reservation when it's not a reservation. So maybe it's just a matter of it belongs somewhere else in this document to make exactly what you talked about, Claire. That makes sense to me. I would go along with it if it seems like it should be like Roman added to Roman numeral C1 to say accept for maintenance and repairs, which is delegated to the town manager or designee or something like that. Anyway, I think you get, probably get what we're saying here, Paul. I don't have any problem with delegating that to the town manager of maintenance and repairs, but it would be good to make sense in the context of this section. Paul. What if we just took out the word that under one reservation in public ways and just had town commons? Because we're talking about geographical areas. And then you talk about the short-term use, long-term use alterations, which is a permanent change and then maintenance repairs. And so you just take away the reservation public ways section. George. Paul took the words right out of my mouth. This is, it's designed geographically. So you want to keep maintenance here, but you just change the title. And the simplest would be just say town commons and then you have your four subcategories. And Evan, I think very nicely answered my other question, which is why is this necessary? And he showed me why it's necessary. So I now agree that it is needed because of what's in C and it does belong under one. And we just need to change the title of one. And maybe the simplest as Paul suggested is just say one, town commons, two, parking and three, over 3D, roads, sidewalks, et cetera, assuming we, right. So. Alyssa, do you still have another comment? Yeah. And I think, and it's just a, it's just a clarification under maintenance. So once we take off that, so it just says town commons, right. Cause that's what we're focusing on right now is the town commons. So one of the things that I know there was some town council discussion around is how much time did we really need to devote talking about electrical connections and electrical boxes on the town common. And that's not, that's not clearly covered by this because that's not just maintenance, changing a box. And so I'd actually like to see that in here. Like I don't care about that. I would totally expect public works and planning to figure out the best way to put in big new electrical box, if at all possible. So either this needs to clearly specify that that concept, which is one of the very few things that's actually been brought to us associated with the common is ours or not. Because I can't read this in the current way to understand if we would get that or not based on the description that we have. And like I said, I don't want it. If we can give it away, I'm more than happy to but it needs to be clear here because if that's the whole goal is to say, oh, I don't want the town council to feel like they should have been doing something that they thought they hadn't delegated. That's actually a thing that we had to do that was really boring. So our Evan, do you have another comment? Yeah, first of all, I agree with Alyssa on that. But I guess this is actually just a process question. So this has been referred to TSO. This is sort of a document that's rightly in the jurisdiction of TSO, is the assumption then that we're going to be making the revisions that are being suggested. My assumption of what's happening that I wanna clarify is that someone likely Darcy as chair is going to make the revisions we're talking about now and bring back a revised copy to a future meeting. Or are we thinking that we're gonna vote on this tonight? I was assuming that we were going to vote on it tonight, but I'm perfectly fine with making revisions. Yeah, I can make revisions and come back on November 17th. That would be fine. If we agree on what they are, I can propose what I think we've said here, which is basically just changed the title of number one to town commons. Is that correct? So far that's been what suggested, strike, reservation of public ways and the dash. Okay, well, depending on how complicated this all is, if the types of changes we're making are the simple, we might be able to vote on it today, but let's just see how it goes. If they're not, then I can come back with a revision. So are we okay to move on to the next proposed revision? I know the answer to the question about the electrical box and if there's a way we can just tack that in there as being capable of maintenance or something because at this point, you can't, you don't know reading this if that would have fallen under that or not. Repairs of an electrical box or placement? Placement. If I may interject, my concern is more anything, any sizable addition, if you put something, I mean, we had something the utility company came, right? And I wanted to put a huge six foot or whatever it was, object, plop it down on the common, as I recall. Anyway, objections were raised, I think rightly. So that's my concern, but if DPW has to swap out an electrical connection, replace one box with another, I consider that routine maintenance and repair. But if they're going to install with a concrete pad or make some kind of visible and apparently substantive change to the physical appearance of the common, I think probably we'd like to be notified of that. So I don't know if that's what Alyssa's thinking of or if she- That's what I'm thinking of it. I'm just not sure where it falls in the words that exist right now. Okay, fair enough. Evan? Oh, I'm sorry, Paul, let's hear from Paul. Okay, yeah, I mean, I would look at that. I agree with you that that's something you should definitely be looking at. And I would say that's a construction of a structure. I mean, that's something that's above ground, that's physical, that's gonna be there forever. That would not be delegated at all. So you'd see that that fits under C where it says construction of structure or other uses that are intended to be permanent in place three months or longer. And you would not consider it maintenance and repairs. So I could complain if I didn't get to talk about the exciting new box on a new pad because DPW just said, sure, ever source, go ahead and do that. Well, I guess the question would be, suppose they say, oh, this one's outmoded, there's one there now, we're gonna upgrade it to our standard, blah, blah, blah. Right. Does that mean- It's maintenance. Yeah, yeah, sorry for the question. That's what I'm confused by. So this does not appear to require any change. So shall we move on? Paul, you have another comment? Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. Okay, the and seems fairly self-explanatory. No problem for me. All right, moving on. All right, so sidewalk and seating, signage and seating. And then that's in the title and then the George. I'm just guessing here, but I'm imagining that part of this might have been motivated by the recent changes we've been making, allowing outdoor dining, et cetera. But somebody wants to put it, just a simple sign on the sidewalk, messaging where to pick up food or whatever. Surely we don't want this sort of thing coming to us. So those kinds of temporary signages, movable signs on public sidewalks, advertising of a business, not covered by the general or zoning by-law. I certainly have no interest in having to see every single one of those being sent to us. And maybe that's part of what motivated this. I don't know. I do have a concern, obviously about permanent structures like bus shelters, bus stops, benches. These are things that at least some folks get really agitated about and probably is wise that we at least weigh in on it. So people have a chance to address it, but so maybe we can divide this up a bit. But I guess in my mind, there's distinction between permanent changes that are quite visible and then the kinds of temporary things that I don't think we need to be dealing with. So this is kind of a mix of both. It seems to me is my initial thought. Other comments? Alyssa? Yeah, in terms of George's theory of splitting this up, which is gonna turn into one of these fun editing on the fly things. But if we split this up into some subsections underneath placement of road and sidewalk, instead of having it be a paragraph with one thing under it, maybe just split it up in a couple of different ways. So that, cause I agree with George completely on things like anything that's associated with temporary stuff, one of those sandwich boards that's outside of the bylaw, which already controls some of that stuff. Moveable signs, sure. I mean, do that stuff, but to clarify, but a bench that's screwed down, that's different. And also it needs to be the signs. This sign thing, I don't know what the deal is here, but the crosswalk speed limit yield, stop signs. Nobody's brought any of those to us in decades, except for like two that I can think of in decades. So nobody's being held up doing these things now. They're just getting done by DPW already. So I think what it needs to be clarified here is that it's replacement of signs or like to comply with state standards, as opposed to you're gonna change the speed limit from 55 to 25, or you were going to have a crosswalk where you didn't used to have a crosswalk, right? It's more of that maintenance aspect of things like I don't need to know you're putting a stop sign back where somebody pulled one out, just like you haven't been telling me that for 20 years, you don't need to start telling me now, but you can't suddenly just put in, or can you? Then the question is, then that to me is separate from, we're gonna add some new stop signs, we're gonna add some new crosswalks and staff's just gonna do that based on their best knowledge versus talking to the town council about it. Okay, Evan? Yeah, so again, just organization-wise, I guess so three, even if we take out reservation of public ways which I think we agreed to do with all of them, we're still titled road or sidewalk closures. And then we said signage and seating. And it wasn't completely road or sidewalk closures because then we had this, what I guess was formerly D, I assume, permanent changes to the road or sidewalk. I'm just thinking, GOL did a really great job with this a year and a half ago, but as we're taking this closer look at it, I think there's some organizational challenges. And so to some extent road and sidewalk closures are a very unique thing. And I don't know that we want to even, even if we divide this into sections, I don't think it belongs in three at all. And I'm not even sure if E belongs in three. So I guess I'm wondering actually if maybe five miscellaneous is a place that we actually expand and add this because it doesn't seem to pair with closures to me. And then I agree with separating it out because a bus shelter versus a crosswalk sign, they're just so different. It feels like a kitchen sink to like anything that we could think of, we just drew into this section. And I actually agree with all of it. I would like to delegate all of these. I don't want to say I need these as part of the town council, which I think puts me a little bit in disagreement with George and Alyssa about some of these things. I don't, please don't ever ask me if we should put a bench on a particular part of sidewalk. I don't care if planning and everyone and DPW think that we should have a bench somewhere, put the damn bench there. And don't ask me my opinion on the location of a bench, right? But if George wants to have a public hearing about it, then that's his right. But I think that we should divide this up and I think it maybe should be part of section five. Okay, George. The hand should be down. Evan makes very good points. We do need to separate this out. And Alyssa makes an excellent point. We're not going to do it on a fly, which is not pleasant, but that's what we have to do or come back to it. Okay, so do we have agreement that it shouldn't be in three and that it should be perhaps put in five? I would suggest to separate. You just a four and just a sort of four and make four or five, but give it a title if we can. If we can't, then I guess it goes in miscellaneous. Okay, Paul. Yeah, so I just want to a couple of notes. One is the bus shelters. I guess it's a philosophy. The bus shelters would go and approve bus stops already. It wouldn't create any new bus stops. And the question is, do you want bus shelters at every bus stop or do you want to say, we want to look at every possible bus shelter and a bus stop? And there's logic on both sides. So that was just putting that out there. In terms of traffic control, I think if it's required by law, I think the town has been doing it, but when we raise the issue of these sort of optional slow down signs, the question came up from DPW is, should I bring all these signs, the speed limit signs on Lincoln, all these things? Should we bring those, all those questions on where they are posted to the town council or should we abide by what is required under the Uniform Manual of Traffic Controls? And so there's a question to you, is do you want to, I don't think the select board had looked at these before, but I'm raising it to say, legitimately, these are in the public way. They should, you should say, I'd want to look at it or I don't want to look at it, just ask you to make an affirmative decision about it. And we're, again, okay with whichever you decide on that. So it's the, and these are the signs that are required. If you put in a crosswalk, then you need the sign in advance saying there shall be a crosswalk ahead, all those types of things that come with you. Slow children signs are discretionary. So that might be something that you want to hold on to because everybody wants to have a turtle crossing or a salamander crossing or slow children signs if they have slow children, I guess. So we were looking at the things that are required by the Uniform Manual of Traffic Controls as being something that you would say, yes, if we agree on, if there's a stop sign and you're supposed to have a stop ahead, sign 50 feet ahead of it, you should just put it in and don't come to us with that kind of discussion. Okay, George, is that a continuing comment? And down. Dorothy. I think that when it comes to safety and rules and state rule books that those items should be handled by the town staff and that they should not come to the town council. And it's given how difficult it seems to be to change anything on the streetscapes through the town council. That could be, if it has to do with a safety issue, that could be very bad. So that's something that I think that we should delegate and keep delegated to the town because they have to do with regulations and state things. And they know what the rules are and they know what the sign should look like. Okay, I am hearing from some people that if we divided this up, that perhaps the town council would keep installation of bus shelters at approved bus stops and placement of seating on public sidewalks. Am I hearing that correctly? That's sort of where I am falling on it. And that the other issues of crosswalks, speed limits and stop placements of movable signs on public sidewalks could be delegated. Alyssa? I think that's a really excellent division there, Darcy, that bus shelters, even though they're already approved bus stops and seating because actually bus shelters sometimes includes seating and sometimes not. And I think the town council might have an opinion on that. And I'm going to say very clearly that I am not saying that our town staff would do this, but I think we are all aware of other communities where well-meaning professionally trained staff installed benches that prevented homeless people from sleeping on them. We would not want that to happen more than likely. So having the town council have that authority over anything that's seating that's permanent, not temporary, but that's permanent, I think makes sense to prevent that kind of worry from the public, et cetera. But that's just bus stops because they could include seating, benches that include seating. And then if you just throw in some phrasing, Paul, about that uniform traffic controls, whatever that right term is, I think that makes it clear. Oh, obviously, right? That's the stuff you should absolutely do. Okay, so that's, this is going to move and it's going to be subdivided into those parts. And Alyssa, you just were speaking as if Paul was going to make those revisions. I'm happy to work with you, Darcy, on this, if you'd like. You can give you the language so that you're not trying to find out what Guilford's book is called or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And all right, so do we have anything else here? Oh, not detailed above. That is also seems like health explanatory. Anybody have any issues with that? So why don't we go back to the top because we have the first paragraph. Yeah, I just, I did have a question about that very first item. And maybe Paul can just clarify why it's needed as opposed to just saying the town manager and assuming that in the end, the buck stops with him. So maybe he has a good argument. I'm sure he does. Why he thinks that phrase is needed. Yeah, I think the only, I think that that's in reference to 3AII where it talks about delegation to the fire department, police chief, fire chief. I think that, and there's some other, and I did some delegation to other department heads that wasn't captured previously. So I think that's just a cleanup thing. So that seems, I don't like it. Alyssa? I'm sorry, I don't like it. I'm fine with what it already says about police and fire chief. I think that adding that in there implies that there are times when that people that work for the town that he can't delegate things. And I don't know why we'd wanna, I mean, to me, that's the converse of that, right? If you put that in there, that means there might be circumstances under which he's not allowed to delegate to his department heads and like, what? That's not a thing. So I would just leave that line out of there. I just find it makes me question more than anything would. I assume that the town manager's gonna let the police chief do police chief things. What do other people feel about that? I don't care one bit. I'll have to say that because I think they either way, the meaning is the same. Does anyone have any strong feelings other than Alyssa on this? Yeah, I think you may be a minority of one, Alyssa. How does it feel? I can vote against it. It's no problem. So, all right, so I think unless anyone else has any other comments about this document, maybe I can just work with Paul to make those revisions, bring them back at another meeting. It's not, it doesn't need to be back until the meeting on the 25th of January. So, I'm sorry, Darcy. My understanding is this also then has to go to GOL. Is that right? Where did I go? Oh, there I am. Okay. Okay, but I just, I'm just for clear. I believe it does GOL has to look at it as well once we have done with it. Okay. Well, let's assume we're gonna be done with it on the 17th of November. Hopefully the revisions will be simple. Alyssa. Could I just say one more thing about that first sentence? So re-reading that, that says that we're delegating public way authority that the town council has not to the town manager, we're delegating it directly to department heads under the authority of the town manager. I don't know why we would do that because that implies that Guilford can go and do something because we've delegated it and he doesn't have to tell Paul about it. That's what I'm saying. This wording is not helpful. It still needs to go through Paul. Paul can tell Guilford that Guilford can do whatever he wants, but the town council can't tell Guilford that Guilford can do whatever he wants. That just doesn't make sense to me. Yeah, I think it's just supposed to reference this part that I highlighted. It doesn't do that. Because those people still work for the town manager and they're still gonna have a communication associated with that. They're not gonna go off and do this on their own without talking to him. What's this with notice to the town manager? Dorothy? It sounded like you were through with the document and we didn't discuss D or did I just miss that? I thought we were gonna discuss D. One D? No, three D. It sounded like you were saying this whole document was gonna have some revisions and we'd look at it again later. And I'm thinking, but we didn't talk about three D. Yes, we did. We then, okay. No, this is the reason that we were going to subdivide. Paul and I are gonna work together. We're gonna move it to be a section of its own and we are going to carve out bus shelters, installation of bus and a placement of permanent seating. So we're not gonna do what D, little I is, which town council delegates, the review and authority, the town manager. I thought we had talked about it informally, but I thought, I didn't think we had totally tied that down. So if that's clear to everybody, time. Yeah, I think that we were agreeing that we would delegate to the town manager, the other items listed other than bus shelters and placement of seating on public sidewalks. That means you're not, so we're not gonna have anything to do with where the Sufa signs go. I thought the Sufa signs were big enough to be kind of something we might wanna have. So there's not just a random assortment of things, that I felt that the picture lacked organization and aesthetic, some of the pictures we were given. Now that may be one bridge too far, but I guess maybe I thought the Sufa sign should be included in that. The question is, are they permanent or are they not permanent? I think they're kind of quasi-permanent. They're kind of in a category of their own, which I'm not sure how we would... I can see what you're saying Dorothy, because it did seem perfectly appropriate for us to be looking at the Sufa sign issue. So if you can think of, if people agree on that and we can figure out what to call that category of sign, we could add that in. Well, first of all, we said that when it came to safety and to state regulations, we weren't getting into it. So the speed limit or a sign saying bus stop or whatever, we can't get too far into that. But other things we could. Right, well, traffic signs are different from Sufa signs. So how do we categorize them? And there was also, there were some pictures, there were some bus stop shelters that had benches seating and some that did not. And it seemed to me taking up a lot of space to have a bus stop shelter with no seating and then to have a public bench next to it. And it just looked so busy and it was kind of, you can't see the grass, you can't see the trees, you're just seeing all of this kind of urban stuff. Each of it has a function like a waste basket has a function, but there were just so many of them that some kind of organization or coordination. I thought would be a good idea. And we haven't really talked about whether we wanted bus stop shelters to include seating or not to include seating because we were shown lots of pictures some with and some without. Right, well, this, but this isn't about the substance of those requests. This is about, you know, what we are going to delegate to the town manager or keep. So Evan. So I think Dorothy brings up some interesting points that got me thinking, you know, we're opening up sort of a bit of a Pandora's box here because we could go down a whole bunch of different rabbit holes with this. And so signs can, so we have here signs relating to the control of the public, control of the public way. So we're thinking about traffic stuff. We have placement of movable signs and then signs on public sidewalks, advertising businesses. And so in theory, the Sufa signs would fall into the advertising signs because they're going to have that advertising. But if they didn't have that, then they wouldn't fall into any of these three. And so they would sort of slip through this crack. And so the next thing I'm thinking of is wayfinding signs, right? If the town wanted to put up a wayfinding sign, that wouldn't be advertising of businesses. It wouldn't be movable, it'd be permanent. And it wouldn't be control of the public way. I have no interest in wayfinding signs coming to the council, but I would hate for them to have to come to the council because they slip through this little crack. Then the other thing that Dorothy said that was interesting as she mentioned, waste baskets. And I thought, well, what about permanent trash cans on the sidewalks? That's not covered by this. And so my worry, we could go on for this forever, right? And so at some point, and maybe this is, we need to maybe come back to that. Maybe Dorothy can ruminate on this and bring forth a draft. But we need something that gives people some clarity so that if the playing department has a sign, they don't have to sit here and go, well, it's not movable and it doesn't have advertising. So I guess this sign has to go to the council. But hey, you know what? If we slap a Buena Huesano sticker on it, then maybe we can call it advertising and we don't have to go to the council, right? I mean, there has to be clarity here. And I worry with how D is written, there just isn't. But I also, if we remove D, there also just isn't. It would just all fall into everything else, right? And so, but I also don't want us to have to go through this process where we have to think of every conceivable thing that could ever be placed on a sidewalk like waste, but Dorothy said, waste baskets, I thought, Jesus, those aren't in here, right? So do they have to come, if they wanna put a recycling bin, do they have to come to the council? I really hope not. But you could argue under what we have here, they would because it would fall under this miscellaneous. Any request not specifically falling under any section of this policy. And so I think we need some clarity here. And I think it's gonna need some time to think about what do we as a council really wanna see and why? And maybe articulating what we want to see. I don't know, but it's clear as we're talking that this needs some work because right now, there's a lot of holes. Okay, George, can I hear you? I'm gonna take my hand down. Okay, Alyssa. So before Evan brought up waste receptacles, which is so important. It was actually the first question I asked as a Newtown meeting member, why do our waste receptacles cost $10,000 each? And that was back in 1999. So thank you for bringing that up because then we could certainly argue every time one came to us, which one hasn't, but every time one came to us and said, but did you put a recycle bin next to it? How many recycle bins did you put next to it? And so, because there's only limited space, we did it fact at one point, that big belly thing that crushes things, that we did have to approve. And so I agree that the real goal here, one of the most important goals here is for staff to be able to look at this as Paul referred to many hours ago and say, does this fall under it or doesn't? And I think the Sufa signs are still a problem, a challenge that way in terms of figuring that out because I know there were concerns raised. On the one hand, I'm like, adds wayfinding, who cares? But if it had been a two foot Walmart advertisement next to the wayfinding, then maybe I'd have a problem with it. So I don't know how to fix that. But I think we should add on waste baskets and what my original idea was gonna be is does it help at all under item D as we break up this long, nice long paragraph into things? Does it help at all to remove the word all? Does it just say placement of signs that do this, that do that, that do something else? Yeah, okay, right. Just take the word all out. Good. And so that nobody's trying to cram it into one of those categories. And then maybe what actually makes the most sense is for Paul to take this new description that he and Darcy work out and show it to staff and say, does this cover all the stuff you would think about? That sounds good. So I'm kind of hearing that what we want to delegate to the tone of all the list of all the things that we mentioned are traffic signs and movable temporary signs on public sidewalks advertising businesses, but that we want to retain everything else except possibly not waste baskets. Waste baskets should be coordinated with bus stops and benches. Okay, it's fine with me. That's where people sit there with a cup of coffee or something that if you don't have them in the right places, you get trash. All right, so I have on my list permanent non-traffic related signage, bus stops feeding, bus shelters feeding, electric boxes, charging cores, waste baskets. Sufasigns? Those are permanent non-traffic signage. Okay, or structures? Or structures. So anyway, I can, Alyssa, do you have a- I'm sorry, I do have a question quick. So two things. Actually, one is the Sufasign, so what does it count as now? What did we decide? Is it in or out? In, I mean, it is staying with the town council. Days with the town council because of the advertising component? I think it's the permanent aspect. Yeah, I think it's permanent. Okay, and then even though it's also arguably wayfinding, which if it just said Amherst cultural district, we'd be fine with it, right? So wayfinding that doesn't include advertising somehow, like the bueno thing, yes. Okay, and then the other question was, you mentioned electric boxes and charging because of course that was also our recent conversation. So what about the electric car chargers? Yeah. We've had to do those in the past. So are we keeping those or are we giving the, are we living those with staff? Up to now, we haven't had any say about it. Is that correct, Paul? No, actually we have. We've had to do it in the past. We've done it as part of the public way. When I was on the select board, we did have some say over it. And then it seemed like we didn't suddenly have any say over a more recent one. So it's been done both ways. Yeah, I think we've been informed. The town has figured out the sites. We have been informed and we have not had any objections to their proposed sites. That's not a fact in terms of what happened prior to the town council. That's right, I'm talking town council. And so I just want to have, what I'm asking for here is that there be clarity, that it be shown that the car charging stations are either in or out and they're not, like trash receptacles, they're not currently on the list. So put them in or put them out. I honestly don't care which, but specify them because they don't count as one of these other things. And we may as well address them because there's something we actually have had before previous public way authorities. Thank you. That sounds good. Paul? Yeah, and then put in that same loop, same as the bike share locations which have to be public way. Totally, totally. Okay, what a great list we have now. All right, so I think we've covered all the parts of this and I will work with Paul to come up with a revised version for the 17th. How's that? Everybody good with that? Paul? Yeah, so one last thing in that. So you're going, you will continue to have the poll permits from the telephone utilities coming into you. You've had several of those so far. Those will continue to have public hearings just as they're required to now. So that's by state law. So just so you're aware that that's not being done. That's what they added, yeah. Yeah. Is that what you can delegate that to under state law? Is it always whoever's in charge? Can I look into it? The question would be, do you want to delegate it or not? Yes, that would be the first thing we would delegate is those bloody poll hearings where we can't read the maps anyway. Yeah, I mean, if there's a way. Where does it fall under the policy? It's not, it doesn't, it's not mentioned. So you hate it. But there's mass general law around it. I have to look into that. Yeah. If you would, that'd be an awesome thing to get rid of. Do other people agree with that? Because it should be covered in this policy. It should be mentioned as an aside then on this policy, like, you know, if it isn't something we can delegate, then it should be mentioned. That still has to be done this other way because you might think of it as falling under this policy and yet it doesn't, it isn't called out. Okay. I'm trying to remember Spring Street. I think maybe it was the planning board that was involved but there was some changing around of electrical poles or there was something to do with poles. But I think the planning board dealt with it in its site plan review. Does that strike a bell with anybody? It did, but the council still had to approve the location of the poles in the ground. We did have some reason. And I think that we did not accept without alteration what was put forward. I mean, so that there was some feedback from the body. I don't remember the details, but yeah. And Paul, are you, you're suggesting that there is nothing preventing us from delegating that authority to the town manager? I don't know the answer to that question. So I'm going to find that out. Okay. Okay. I hope I will be able to read my notes here. Right. So moving on. Somebody else has anything else to say. All right. We have a presentation from Dorothy and George about the town-wide residential parking policy, which they provided a document about. So Evan, if you would be kind enough to pull that up, that would be nice. And what time is it? Very low tech here. I'm just wondering, it's already almost eight. I don't think we're going to have enough time to have a very thorough conversation, but I guess we can just get it started. I don't really want to go past like eight, 15, if that's good with people. And then we could pick it up at another time. Is that okay? George and Dorothy? It's fine by me. I envision 10 minutes and mostly just because you have a written document and if you don't have a written document, I envision 10 minutes and mostly just because you have a written document and if people haven't had a chance to really read it carefully, we could always do it next time, but it's mostly just to get a sense from the rest of the committee based on this document. Whether they think we're headed in the right direction or if they have concerns or questions or whether they think we need to go back and start over, but this is kind of where we're at. That's, and I think this document hopefully spells it out pretty clearly. So we're kind of looking for feedback and if people aren't ready to give it tonight, we can wait. That's absolutely true. Or we can talk about it. So it's really in the hands of the rest of you based on what we have here. And if you haven't had a chance to look at it or you don't have any thoughts on it now, we can come back to it at some future date. We're gonna continue in this direction. I guess our fear is that we're gonna continue in this direction. And then someday when I come to a meeting and find out that the three of you think we're just headed in the wrong direction. And so we don't wanna do that if we can avoid it. So we're just trying to get a sense of where your concerns are. And I don't need to go through this, I think, item by item. So how would you wanna proceed? Well, I mean, one question is whether people are comfortable with some of this coming to this committee. And if the answer is no, then that's an important thing for us to know. Paul has mentioned that other towns and cities in the Commonwealth create a separate body. The town of Northampton has a separate body. That deals with some of these things. That's certainly an option. Another option is that TSO takes off a piece of it and says, bring it to us. We will conduct the conversation, discussion, whatever you wanna call it, relevant parties, and then we will make or not make a recommendation to the council and the council will decide. We focused here exclusively on parking in basically residential parking issues. But relevant to some of the things we've been talking about tonight, perhaps some other things could be added to that list or perhaps not, you may all feel that no, you don't want any of it or parking is enough, but there are other issues that residents do occasionally raise. And it doesn't strike me as completely crazy to imagine that there is a town council body filled with elected representatives who are ultimately responsible to the constituents that is a place where they can go and express their desires, concerns, wishes, complaints, and then we can choose to act or not act. So there are a number of questions here and other branches that depending on what the decision is can go in different directions. The first one simply is whether this body would be comfortable having residential parking issues brought to it and discussing them. And then after applying a certain set of criteria, making a recommendation to the council as keepers of the public way that you should do X, Y, or Z. Remember, we started with Lincoln as the, that's what we started with and the recommendation to time from the committee was go back and think about this from a big picture perspective. We had the conversation with Guilford. He expressed an interest in pursuing some kind of town-wide uniform policy for residential area only. So parking in residential areas, not downtown, not village centers. And he thought that this could be helpful. We're still waiting to get something back from him who's a good man. But some of what you have here in this document reflects our conversation with him. So I know there were some of the criteria that might be employed either by this body, TSO, or by some other body. A third option is don't do anything. I mean, yeah, it's not perfect but it's not terrible either. So just let things kind of just go the way they are. So we presented three possible options. We did not, at least and Dorothy can weigh in on this but we did not recommend using TAC for any kind of formal process. So any kind of process that would involve making a decision finally about what should or should not be done should probably fall on the elected representatives not the group of volunteers serving on TAC. So we're not saying, we have no position on what TAC should or shouldn't do but we didn't feel it was appropriate for this kind of problem. But again, people could disagree. So there are a number of things in here. The numbered tried to highlight the basic questions. Perhaps the best thing is to come back to it some other evening when people have a chance to look at it but we're happy to respond to questions and or comments now. Right, and just to follow up on a few things. So it wasn't that we were saying because once some of the questions have been does TAC continue as a committee and what does it do? We were not having a position on TAC continuing or not continuing as a committee but on the issue of residential parking I think George is a very important point that if a decision is to be made on that it's better it be done by elected representatives than by an all citizen committee or volunteer committee. And we know that TAC has been working on complete streets, biking and pedestrian and it has an agenda already. What I would like to follow up now was that in with George and I had a useful and long discussion on this a few days ago and he mentioned that Paul had mentioned that such a committee existed in North Hampton. And when George gave me the facts of it my first response was, oh, I don't think Paul would like that because it included two counselors it included some regular members of the public about four and it included a number of town staff and I thought maybe he wouldn't want to have that. So what I would like to hear now since Paul is here and we're not particularly rushed is what are his thoughts about a permanent committee which included citizens, counselors and town staff that would be involved with a wide variety of topics only one of which is parking but would include this parking. Paul? So I think my first criteria is when residents have a request that they get to that they don't be given what's felt what they feel like is a run around that they don't go to a committee that's advisory and then goes to somebody else who makes a decision then goes to the full counseling and they have to go like three times I think just in terms of good public and good customer service you want to get them to the decision makers as quickly as possible with as much information as possible. Northampton is one model we've been collecting information on how cities handle this and there's lots of different models for how cities do this and I can share we can finish that up and get that out to you so you can sort of see look at how other cities have done it and it's sort of across the board some will have a the police chief fire chief and superintendent public works and planning director making decisions some will have a separately appointed commission that makes the decision that the council really delegates the authority to a different body like the licensing commission some of it some have council committees that do it exclusively and then there are the hybrid committees like Northampton has so there's lots of different models out there that I can summarize for you and send it out to you if you'd like that. So I think you were wise to say let's look at residential parking because otherwise it gets too complicated too quickly. So in terms of having the right people on committee I think you want to have the right people on the committee whether they're voting members, decision makers or not is a question for the council. I mean, and that's the case of of the police chief fire chief superintendent and possibly the planning director. You know, I do find that you should either be a council committee or not a council committee. I think hybrid committees become really difficult just for lots of different reasons. I don't need to go into here. Evan. Yeah, so I would be interested in seeing some models from some other cities to see how they do it. My initial reaction to this which I think is what George and Dorothy are sort of looking for. You won't be surprised to hear that I do not want us to create another committee. I've been pretty sure. I would like this council not to create any more committees at all for this town. I think we have enough. I don't want the town manager have to spend more of his time trying to recruit and interview for and appoint other committees. However, don't necessarily, you know I love how this is written because it shows its hand a little bit with we could do nothing. We should keep just muddling along which doesn't necessarily inspire confidence in how we feel like we've been doing things. And I think that's true. I think when we had the Lincoln Ave hearing there were a lot of people with members of the public and also counselors who said, why Lincoln Ave? Why has Lincoln Ave come to us? Is it because they're the loudest voices in the room versus the most pressing concern, right? And we had, you know, certainly people who have reached out about parking concerns on their streets that have not been shown the same privilege as Lincoln Ave. And I think that there might be valid reasons for that but it still doesn't stop people from wondering why. So I don't necessarily know that the current process is working. I don't necessarily know what the answer is which is why I wanna see some models. My concern with having it be a TSR responsibility and I'm open to this, but my concern is and this was my concern back when GEOO was first debating the formation of TSO is we don't want TSO to just turn into the complaint committee, right? And will it just be parking or will we then become the place for people to come who say concerns about the condition of their sidewalks and condition of the roads and potholes also wanna speed bump? How do you just limit it to parking once you open that idea of, because there's multiple public ways things that technically fall under our jurisdiction. And so how do you have sort of an orderly process in which folks would be able to come to TSO and give their claim and feel like they're being heard? And I think Paul had a really good point with that is you want people to feel like they're not just being pushed off or given the run around and you wanna feel like they're being heard. But how could TSO, if we do go that route, how could TSO provide that service without us ending up becoming a committee that spends a lot of its time just sort of hearing public way complaints from residents because we do have a lot of other things on our play. I mean, we've been a fairly busy committee in just the past eight months or so that we've existed. So that's why I think I would be really interested to see models from other cities but I'm really hesitant to create any more committees in this town. That's why I wanted to hear, oh, excuse me, more from Paul because I could think, oh, that committee is a great idea but if it involves town staff, I really do wanna know, because I thought you were in Evans camp. We have enough committees. Let's stop proliferating the work. So we don't just choose a beautiful model but it's not one that you wanna do because it's not practical. Is that addressed to Paul? It's to Paul, yeah. I don't feel he really answered me fully on that. So I guess I don't under, what is your question precisely? So what if you showed us a lot of these models and we said, oh, this committee sounds really great and involved a number of town staff. Would you say that's great? This is a good logical thing or would you say my staff is overwhelmed and they have too much to do and I didn't want us to do another committee? I'm in favor of not creating, so towns tend to have lots of committees, cities tend to have fewer committees. That's just the nature of the beast. Towns grow up with lots of committees. You go to a city, they don't have nearly the number of committees that we have because just for lots of different reasons. So I think that I'm all in favor of not creating more committees and if there are committees that don't need to exist, they should be sunsetted. But I think that having the, on this particular, these types of questions, which may not be policy questions, but maybe technical questions, you may want to have, I mean, you can't make a decision about parking only can have without knowing the fire chief police chief and DPW director's concerns. So whether they have to be a member of the committee or not, they're gonna weigh in one way or the other. So their commitment of time is there. So it's not an added commitment. It's just whether you want them in a decision-making role or an advisory role. Okay, so I just found a sentence I really like, which is let's make a distinction between policy questions and technical questions. That helps clarify things in my mind. So that might help us go forward. George. The town services committee, don't want to forget outreach, but the town services committee is the town complaint committee, right? That's kind of right. It's town services are things that people have complaints about and a lot of them are not necessarily legitimate, but they need to have their voice heard. And I know Paul deals with this all the time. People come to him all the time. They come to Guilford, I'm sure, all the time with complaints. And we are elected to represent the people, those with complaints and without. So I guess I kind of thought that was part of the job is dealing with people's complaints. And the complaints are like crosswalk it, Amity and Lincoln or a sidewalk that looks like it came out of World War II. I mean, these are complaints and we're supposed to be the committee that deals with town services. So a lot of what we're gonna deal with are things people are unhappy about. And our job is to try and listen. First of all, give them a sense that they're being heard and then do whatever we can, which maybe isn't much to try and help address that. And so, that doesn't bother me. I, you know, it's what we're supposed to do. So this is something that people complain about. They complain about parking and they complain in all different parts of town. And, you know, it turned out that Lincoln complained really loudly and they had two really hardworking, dedicated counselors who went and pursued it. But the question is a fair one, which is what's the townwide policy? How are we gonna deal with this? And so I certainly do not, I agree with Evan. We do not wanna create a new body. But if the four of you decide, or the majority of you decide that's what we wanna do, then we will go and do that or at least we'll see what we can find out. I would prefer to work with what we have, assuming that there is an issue here that we should address as the elected representatives of the town where people have issues about parking and perhaps a couple of other things as well, but we're starting with parking. And, you know, the folks on Lincoln complained, at least they feel like they've been heard. They may never get what they want. First of all, who's they, right? I mean, not everybody agrees, but maybe a majority of them want X, but at least they've been heard. And so the point of the issue I think is, can we create a simple policy and a procedure that everybody knows? As Paul said, it's what's important is people know where to go and know that these are decision makers or the next step to the decision. And they know who to go after when they don't get what they want. And that's part of our job. So this is a suggestion as to the issue of residential parking with TSO at the center of the, you know, where the target. But if you want to create a new body, and we're not a city, okay? I mean, in reality, we're a town. So I don't think we need a huge, you know, multi-member, multimodal, we just need a procedure and a process that we can write down black and white and say to people, this is what you do. And somebody has to, you know, run the show. Somebody, you have to be a group you have to go to. And that's what I think TSO is part of what TSO is supposed to be. It's town services where the citizen interacts with the town. We're supposed to have some role in that. And let me see, how do I make this thing go? Okay, I'm raising my hand here. I'm sorry, is it Dorothy or Alyssa? Alyssa has her hand up actually. Yeah. If I may, great. So I too would like to see models since you've already gathered the data, since we're not sending you out to gather data, I would like to see that, but I would like to also point out that what other cities do is what they've always done. Almost nobody sits down and has a retreat and says, should we really have our committee set up this way? Mostly they just say, oh, you got elected. Now you're on such and such committee because that's the committee that exists. And that's just how it is. So bravo to us for trying to figure this out. But we should definitely, we should look at other people's models, but understand they may not really be their preferred models either. It's just what they've lived with for 20 or 30 years. In terms of whether or not we have enough committees, normally I would agree with Evan on this, but in this case, we don't have enough committees because we aren't doing what Paul just talked about and what George just talked about. We are giving people the run around. There is no clear path to get people's needs addressed. That has been true for decades. And I know TAC loves to talk about their work on the bike trail and the bike, not the bike trail, but on the bike path and on complete streets. But TAC was given a very clear charge by a previous government before the charter change that said, you need to develop a process so that people don't get the run around on these kinds of requests. And they refused to do that part of their charge. They just didn't do it. And we have no ability with committees to say, oh, well, you didn't do one of the 12 things we asked you to do, so you're fired. They're doing great work in other areas, but we knew this was a problem that is why we assigned it to TAC and TAC chose not to pursue it. So we are still in a position in 2020 of having no way of consistently addressing people's concerns. And that does in fact actually extend to sidewalk condition. And it does extend to potholes because before we started doing the Amherst Connect staff and even when we first started doing that, that was all dependent on staff processes that were completely opaque to the public and completely opaque to elected officials. So having a thing like George says, where it's like, if you have this problem, you go here. If you have this problem, you turn in a form that does X and I know TAC finally developed a form at one point, but again, it doesn't go anywhere. So I think that is incredibly helpful. And I think that does put TSO in the position of being that committee simply, you know, kind of due to process of elimination. That's where we are, TAC's not gonna do it. And there are reasons, even though they are not making the decisions, they could have developed it because of all the other work they were doing. It kind of, we thought it had a nice synergy. Well, it didn't work out. So maybe they might still have some advice based on what they did do as to how we can develop this over here in TSO. I think that it may turn out that eventually some things could be passed off to another group, just as, you know, obviously we're gonna look to expert opinions when we have no specific parking width and height and all that jazz. But there may eventually be kinds of things that we say, you know what, when it comes to that kind of thing, this group is actually better placed to talk about that. But until we start doing it, I don't think we're gonna be able to develop that sense. So I do think it is us. I'm not looking forward to these conversations about stop signs and parking in front of people's houses. I've done this before. It's not the funnest part of the job. But it is in fact, something that I do think elected officials have a responsibility toward. I totally agree with George on that. And I do think that since we haven't come up with some other solution after decades of trying, I think we should definitely try having TSO serve in this function. Now, unfortunately, you know, I'm hoping not a lot of people are watching this and decide they need to open the floodgates and start sending us all their concerns. Cause I don't know at this point how we're going to prioritize those, right? Cause that's been our conversation all along. The other part of it that I think is important for us to remember is that if something just comes to town council, like we've been getting some emails that I think we can safely assume we're gonna be showing up at public comment at town council on many that we literally have no idea how to deal with that are concerns about something that's not happening in town that we can't control. Like it's not a policy, it's a, it's a thing to do that a staff member needs to do is that, so when that person comes because it's public comment, right? We don't respond, but as a town council, we later in the meeting may well say, oh, well, we're gonna ask the town manager to look at that or oh, we're gonna refer such and such matter to a committee to look at. And who would the town council refer a parking thing to other than TSO? Like, there isn't anybody else. And I don't think it makes sense to try and create a new thing when literally we tried that and it didn't work. And so having TSO do it, I think would be really helpful. The one other direction I'm taking this though that I hope that Dorothy and George can talk to us about next time is I don't have any understanding whatsoever as to why we would take out downtown and village center parking. I think that absolutely belongs to elected officials that does not belong to the downtown parking working group and it hasn't for years. It was supposed to move over to TAC when downtown parking working group was done and it didn't. It is not supposed to be, in my opinion, a private committee that only advises the town manager which we did three town managers ago. It is something elected officials are absolutely responsible for being responsive about is village center and downtown parking. But that doesn't mean that's the first thing we're gonna work on, right? Like TSO could say, sorry, man. We're focused on neighborhood parking right now. We're not doing downtown parking. We can't do everything. But I think I don't know why we would cut that out of here because it isn't anywhere. It literally doesn't exist anywhere else either. Thanks. Dorothy. And then I'm gonna... Okay. So I don't believe that George meant we weren't going to do downtown parking. What we said was now we're trying to do something which we've agreed with Guilford, that Guilford is interested in, which is an offshoot of our work on Lincoln Avenue. We're going to look at residential neighborhood parking because it needs to get done. I think later when that is hopefully arranged and organized in a way that makes sense so people do know how to proceed and that we have clear understandings, then I do agree. I think we are the committee that will be dealing. I'm not sure in what way. And we'll be enlightened by Paul and other people at some point, but I think we are the ones that will deal with the downtown parking, but not at the same time that we're dealing with this. We want to do a limited thing. Guilford was very open to it with the neighborhood residential parking and kind of gets that problem that's been bugging them for a long, long time, get it kind of taken care of so that we have a clear structure. And then we can move forward on a different problem. Now, George, have I said anything that you don't agree with? No, you haven't. I think in each of the time and we still, I think I'm seeing evidence is hand up as well. So, but I'm just trying to get down in my own mind what you all would like us to do. And what I'm hearing is you certainly would like us to come back with some other models aside from the Northampton model, which we did provide to you, you'd like some other models of how other cities or towns deal with this. And I'm getting, I may be wrong here but I'm also getting the sense that when we come back to you what, or at least what I think we'd come back to you with would be a very specific proposal based on our conversations with Guilford as to how TSO, we would suggest TSO would deal with residential parking issues, that specifically without, you know, for judging other things that we might eventually take on. So I guess two things. One, you want more models and be, I guess I'm asking, do you also want from us then a specific concrete proposal as to how TSO could in theory deal with residential parking issues? That's the sense I'm getting. Okay, I wanna weigh in but I wanna hear from Evan first. So I can be really quick. One, to answer George's question for me at least is yes. I think from what I've heard and where I'm leaning, it sounds like this will likely end up as a TSO, you know, in the options you gave, option two, give to TSO. And so I'd like to start thinking about what that actually looks like, right? What it actually looks like for TSO to have a process to deal with these and evaluate and prioritize. And the second thing I wanted to say, I guess it's slight disagreement with the list is at this time, I think I would prefer to keep this to just residential parking. And the reason for that is that when we're talking about residential parking, we're talking about parking that is completely on the public way, which is within our charge. When you get into downtown, I worry it becomes more complex. If we're thinking about the downtown parking working group, part of that was parking on the public way, but they also talked about perhaps a private parking garage. They also talked about parking agreements on private lots, which are technically out of the scope of TSO. You might also start talking about the downtown parking district, which is really a zoning thing, which is part of CRC. And so I just think once we get into downtown parking, it starts to get a little bit more complicated and is gonna require us to think a little bit more closely about where the boundaries are between TSO and CRC responsibilities. And so just to simplify things, I think starting with just residential parking, I think it is an easier place to start because I think that the downtown parking is really gonna have to have a conversation between TSO and CRC to figure out where the boundaries are given that they're sort of split jurisdictions. Really helpful. Yeah, I would just, I guess I was under the impression that we were going to try to come up with a policy as opposed to being receiving individual resident complaints. And I personally think that we, that it's, there's much more to receiving complaints than just parking. It's, as far as traffic and parking, there's the whole gamut of, people wanting speed bumps, people wanting their sidewalk fix, people wanting the speed limit. I have 10 pending issues right now in South Amherst of people that have pretty important issues that aren't related to parking. And so I thought we were just looking to come up with a policy based on those criteria that you have listed in your memo there about how to deal with parking issues across the board so that it's easier to deal with them. So that's one thing. And secondly, before I came to the meeting tonight, I attended an hour of the TAC meeting because I'm deliated. And I can tell you that actually every time I attend a TAC meeting, I am pretty much totally silent because I don't know anything compared to the depths of knowledge of the people on that committee. I mean, there are a lot of experts and I'll have to hand it to you, Paul, for appointing this crew of people on the committee. They know everything about every street. I mean, they know where, tonight they were talking about bike lane. So they knew where every single bike lane was. And anyway, stuff that I have no idea about. And I don't think that this committee, I mean, maybe Alyssa has the expertise, but I don't think, I mean, the amount of depth of expertise that they have on TAC is pretty amazing. And I'm interested to know, like I know Alyssa brought up the issue of, wanting to have them come up with a way to prioritize these complaints and hear them and deal with them as they come in. And I'm just wondering how that was conveyed to TAC that they were supposed to do that and what the current status is, because I'm not clear on, what has been expressed to them that is the expectation. And whether, I guess I feel like in somewhere or another, we need to figure out how to use TAC because they're a great resource. And, but I don't, I don't know what would be the best way to use TAC. And so maybe we can come up with some way to do it. I feel very strongly that residents need to participate in town government. And, like I was reminded about the Charter Commission final report about how, talks about the five key strengths of the new charter, resident boards and committees and how people can participate and how we have all these wonderful boards and committees. And that's one of the big ways that they sold the charter. Residents can serve on boards and committees. Well, we wanna be able to encourage them to actually do so. And to, if they have all this expertise, figure out how we can use it in the best possible way. And, we don't expect them to be making decisions but they can, they could advise us, they could do research, they could do a lot of stuff. Anyway, I hope that we can figure out a really good way to use TAC in this whole process. And I would like Dorothy and George to look at that, figure out, talk to Erin and figure out what might be some possibilities. So anyway, yeah, are you clear, Dorothy? And I'm not completely sure when we'll have time again because we have the North Common and the next agenda. We also said we were gonna bring back the public way policy, sorry, don't think. So we were waiting on Guilford. He was very interested in the town-wide residential parking as an issue and he's been working on it. So George and I are waiting on what he says. And when you were talking about TAC, I was agreeing with you and I was agreeing with George, which was elected officials should make decisions. So I see you actually agree with that statement, but your statement is how can we use, make use of the expertise? And I think that's a very good question. So when George and I talked, one of our issues was, where and how does TAC fit in? So if I were to, and I will put where I think we are, and then George and others can comment, we're waiting to have our meeting with Guilford. We're hoping to come together with some kind of a policy on what should the status be or the issues be or the guidelines as George put down in residential parking. Then Paul is gonna give us some models of other committees. Paul is gonna give us some models of other committees. We will have that to look at. And in all of our discussion, George and I knew that we had to come to some understanding, whether it's us or the town council and or Paul, what is the role of TAC? And that's not something that we can decide. That's something that we need input. And you gave some input, we need input from Paul also because to be honest, there's been a strong feeling that there was some one or more groups or people in town hall weren't sure whether TAC should continue as a committee and I'm not in that. I don't know the answers to that. I do know there is expertise. But we wanted to come up with something that was simple. I think that everybody, Evan and Alyssa that you have enumerated, we must have a simple and Paul certainly did a simple understanding that we could put in language that people can understand. What do you do if you have a complaint? Where do you go? What is the process? And how can we simplify that and make the combination of citizen committee, elected town council members and staff coordinate in some kind of way to deal with these problems because these are the things this is bread and butter government. This is what makes people really interested and concerned and it's serious, it's serious stuff. But George, have I gone astray on this or do you agree with me? No, I agree with you completely. And I again, just want to be absolutely clear and people should speak up if we're mistaken that the deliverable that you expect from us at some point in the future is some kind of process that involves TSO and residential parking period. That's it for the moment. What goes beyond that? Who knows? But that's what you want to see. A process? A description of what do we mean for TSO to deal with resident parking complaints. Oh, that's not what I want. But we need to because I'm not going to spend the next couple of weeks or months producing something that you don't want. So somebody needs to, that's my understanding. Well, we said policy, the word policy and process. First there was going to be a policy of a street, had to do with street, with type of road, volume of traffic, accidents that we had to work. How do you evaluate, how do you evaluate requests? What criteria do you use? Right. I'm going to get help with Gilford on that but we gave you, so that would be part of it. That would be the policy. And then the process. Process people would, yeah, they would go through. Right. We had given three options and the committee yet hasn't really given sufficient feedback. One process would be, they come to TSO and this is how they would do it. Another process would be, they come to this committee that does not exist. No, we can't produce. There will be some further. No, so you're, okay. So that's, I just want to be clear that that's what we're going to go off and do. And if you don't want us to do it, we won't do it. I'll come back to you and tell you, this is what would happen. Here's what we think it should look like if a citizen has a residential parking complaint and TSO has to deal with it. Okay, so it'd be a policy and a process to do with TSO and parking. Right. And it would certainly involve, what would be the role for TAC? What would be the role for department heads and so on? In terms of what it would look like. I don't think it's all that complicated but the point is we would produce that and you'd look at it and say what you think. Or do you want something else? Do you want a list of models that you can all read through and say, oh, I like this one. I like that one. Right, what do you want? Okay. So George and I know what we're talking about. Now it's up to you to ask questions or comment. Alyssa? So you asked the question Darcy, how does TAC know that, how was it conveyed to TAC that they were to know to do this? It stated directly in their charge with the town manager or designated staff, the TAC will develop comprehensive, clear and consistent procedures for residents to request transportation improvements or regulatory changes. These procedures shall establish a single point of communication between residents and the town relating to all transportation, blah, blah, blah, blah. All transportation matters and to establish a single process by which requests are evaluated and prioritized. So it's probably worth putting the TAC charge back in our packet on a regular basis because we're picking some of this stuff up as TSO, right? So, and that's fine. And I will point out that I said at our September meeting that I'm continually impressed by the level of expertise TAC brings to the table in all the areas that they do work on. I'm just disappointed that they didn't do one of the things they were directed to do. I was on the select board and we appointed the TAC. We know we created the TAC. We appointed the members, some of which are still serving. I'm well aware of the expertise we accumulated there. And I wanna use that. I always feel bad when I say use them, but I wanna use them for everything that we possibly can. At the same time, I think what Dorothy and George are doing right now, if I'm understanding it correctly, is they're not saying TSO will never talk about these other things. What they're saying is TSO will develop basically this process I just described associated with residential parking. And once we develop that, because they're getting help from girlfriend and everything, once we develop that, I think that will give us a better sense of, okay, here's one thing we developed the process for. Now, what's our overall policy for what are the other things that we will develop processes for? But here's a process we can actually develop and use for this kind of thing. And then probably there will be more parts and there will eventually be an umbrella policy over all of that, that then shows which committees do the process. But I think it's okay that they're jumping right to the process associated with residential parking because that's what we're focused on right now. And George and Dorothy, could you make sure that you ask Aaron Hayden if TAC already has a written process because I think they might. George, do you have an answer for this? I know that Tracy's Atheon is on. I met with Tracy recently, but I think George reminded me at our meeting that we in TSO when the TAC came before us asked, maybe it was Alyssa asked them to write out, to fix their charge and to write out, to clarify what it was they were doing. So we don't have that yet. I don't know if they were supposed to get back to us or somebody, but. Over the years. And one of the things I'm pretty sure they did is come up with this process or something like what you're talking about. It might be general. It might not be focused on residential parking, but just ask them. I think they may have background on it. I think you're right, Darcy, that they talked about it. They created a form at some point. There's zero process and there's no means for the public to actually use any process that they might have developed. But because they already worked on it some, it's certainly worth learning what they learned from that. I think the process is more around, and Tracy will probably talk about this, but around a criteria that they use to prioritize complaints, but anyway, so all right. I think we're set and I, we can, we know that you're probably not gonna come up at the next meeting, but you can just tell me when you have had luck getting information from Guilford. Right, and I don't feel that we're pursuing Guilford on this because he showed a willingness. He was actually interested in doing this. So it's just that he said they're still working and pulling information together. So we will definitely do that and we'll get back to you. Good. All right, can we move on? Yes. All right, so we have, we would like to accept the minutes except the minutes of 11.19. Does anybody had a chance to look at them? They're a little, they're amended slightly. I did not have any chance to look at them yet. Alyssa, is that hand current? Are you looking at them now or are people ready to vote on them? I've looked at them, I'm ready to vote on them. Do you want to move it? I move we accept the minutes from November 19th as apparently as amended or as... As amended, right, I second that. All right, we have a vote. Alyssa? Stain. Darcy, yes. Dorothy? I have to abstain. Uh-oh. Evan? Yes. George? Yes. Okay. All right, so I have our calendar and our work plan on the agenda. We don't have to go into them much because we're this late. We are gonna do the North Common. You know, the rest of the counselors have a deadline of the Friday before our meeting to try to get their comments in. Nobody put any comments in about today's FYI. And, but I have gotten a few comments about North Common already. And so we'll also look at the public way revisions. We are going to get those a couple of by-law referrals. We thought we were gonna get them on Monday, but they're going to be at the following meeting. So you won't have to worry about them quite yet. So, and then surveillance technology end of January. So our calendar is, it's in the package and it's a proposed calendar. There's a couple of dates in there that say this date and then in parentheses, they say or this date. And just assume it's the one that's not in parentheses unless we end up deciding that it's the other one. But, and so we're going to have to go through but the non-parentheses rules, but think about it, whether there's a reason to go one way or the other, we don't have to decide that right now. And there's a couple of dates that say optional. And that's because there, the town council has two meetings in a three week period. And I just put one meeting in and an optional date that corresponds with the town council meeting, but if we can get away with having one instead of two, we will do that in those two situations. So we have one that's elective. If we have a lot of work to do at that, we can meet on that elective date. So any questions about either of those things, the work plan or the calendar? I have a question about the work plan. Okay. I just have a, it's actually not about the work plan per se. It's about something you just said about getting a couple of bylaw referrals. I know I was pretty surprised, shall we say, by the number of referrals we got at the last town council meeting that all had short turnarounds. And I know there were a variety of reasons for that, it was kind of like, hey, TSO is just like getting the load. And luckily, Evan thought of something we could go ahead and do right away and we didn't have quite as many referrals. But when you say we're gonna be getting bylaw referrals, do we have any idea what those bylaw referrals are? I think we should have some sense of that ahead of time if we know. Yeah, they're on the work plan there. Oh, okay. That's what you mean. The ones that are on the work plan. Right. Yes. The ones that are on the work plan are the only ones that we know are. Not something new. Thank you. Yeah. So anything else? One, we, Athena has, you got the communication from Athena about how she's going to try to sort of upgrade all the web pages and make them uniform of all the committees. And so she did upgrade ours quite a bit. She added a link to the review process and most of what's in our SharePoint is on the web page now. So that's helpful. Oh, D'Arcy? Yes. What I like is, because my town computer is not, I can't get, it's not working for me, is that I can go to committee's meeting, go down to the audit and I can see the TSO committee meeting and then I think you put in something right there with the meeting notes where it says materials are here and there's the link you click that takes you directly to the packet. Yep. I like that, I like that a lot. I did that. Athena, that's a new feature that's great. Yeah. So, okay. And I think we may have public comment. Um, let's see. If Tracy is, Tracy has her hand up. Okay. So, Tracy, how can I move her in here? Here we go. We may be seeing her. Okay. Tracy, do you have some public comment? Hi. Yes. Oops. Yeah. Thank you. So I had, so as Darcy was saying, we had a TAC meeting earlier this evening and we really appreciated Darcy being able to join us until the TSO meeting. You know, in terms of, I guess, you know, hearing the discussion tonight about the TAC, the TAC charge and so on. I mean, the things that Alyssa were referring to, I wasn't a member of the TAC then. I mean, the TAC, the current TAC charge was the TAC charge under the select board, right? And of course, so the TAC was told earlier this fall to work on revising it. We have done a few drafts of it internally. I know that the TAC chair, Aaron Hayden and the town manager are in touch on this and the town manager will be giving us feedback on the charge. I mean, some of the aspects of the former charge, in terms of developing a comprehensive system of keeping track of all requests and monitoring all the work programs, they really do seem to be outside of the scope of a voluntary committee. In addition, we don't really, we don't directly connect with staff. And, you know, for example, sidewalks, like a lot of the minor repair requests, like those aren't things that I think were, I don't know if they were ever intended to come to TAC, it hasn't been our practice to look at those very much. There is on the TAC website right now, there is a citizen request form. I don't know how much people use it. It's a PDF form. I think it probably does date back to the select board days of the TAC. It is not an interactive PDF. It's like a PDF that you have to download, print out, fill out, send in, right? That's very old school. There is like a, you know, there is the C-click fix system. And you're looking at that today, there are a lot of requests that come in there. I know that the town manager gets requests. I know that the director of public works gets requests. A lot of those requests, they don't come to TAC. You know, we didn't meet, you know, I was appointed to the committee in the fall of 2019 and we met until March and then we didn't meet again for eight months. So obviously there were requests for repairs and things during that time and we weren't involved with any of that. We do meet with Guilford, you know, regularly Guilford comes to the TAC meetings. There is a priority list of projects, both in terms of big projects, in terms of like reconstructions of intersections and then also smaller projects. He does keep a running list of all of the requests that come in from residents and we review those regularly at the TAC meetings and discuss about like potential priorities, you know, based on town plans and the other priorities that have been expressed to us by the approved documents. So, I mean, I did have some specific comments related to parking and potential parking criteria. But I think that, I mean, the reason, you know, one reason when I looked at the town parking policy approach and saying the TAC didn't need to be formally involved, I mean, I do think it makes sense for TAC, you know, given our expertise, I mean, that we do know a lot about the town, we know a lot about transportation and how the different systems connect. That, again, we aren't staff, so it makes sense for us not to be involved at that level and like the details of what I can see TSO doing. And we are not decision makers, you know, we are just providing advice based on our expertise and it's still up to decision makers to make decisions who and the decision makers are elected bodies and town staff. But I mean, I do think about, you know, one of the things with the parking policy, just thinking about things from a policy perspective, you know, we're thinking about like people mentioned the idea of speed bumps and parking and like there's a lot of things in how they all interface together. And like what do we, if you look at each, if you look at each request individually, like in the end, what kind of system do you end up with? Right? So one of the things we're doing with the prioritization plan is looking at, you know, based on the criteria that are used for prioritizing projects, you know, in five, 10, 15 years, like what does transportation and the network, both the public way aspects and the other aspects look like in town. So, I mean, anything like speed bumps or roundabouts and things, they all, you know, have bigger ramifications. And so, I mean, I can speak briefly about some of the criteria that I thought might be helpful to add to the parking policy, but if it's going to be read done, I don't need to add those. So maybe you could send your comments to us. That would be helpful, yeah? Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, just, you know, some of the main ones were just, you know, like I know that one of the things that happened with the Lincoln complaints, right? Where the people were concerned about the sight lines when there was so much parking on street. And so just making sure that there's clear sight lines with the intersections and sidewalks. And also they just, the idea again, how these systems interface, like if you're gonna have one consideration with on street parking was, do you have sidewalks on those streets currently, right? Or are the people who are walking gonna be walking next to parking and, you know, just some of those bigger picture things. So I think, I mean, we didn't talk about it attacked tonight, the parking policy. We did talk briefly about the charge. And we also working on finalizing to bring to your review, the TSO review or the council review. And I know Aaron wants to follow up with you Darcy on this about PVPC had prepared a pedestrian bicycle network plan. And we just received this fall, we only had the text, but we also received a map that would identify like the priority areas, like the priority parts of the network, the areas with the most issues and so on. And the tack is reviewing that currently. And then we would bring the plan, you know, to the TSO council for approval and then move for, you know, and then that could be used as one of the documents that goes into decision-making based on all the work that went into that. So, right, thank you. Yeah, thank you very much, Tracy. You know, it's very helpful, Tracy. Okay, so item's not anticipated. So I think we're done. Let me ask one quick question. Just to make this do. Okay, we've talked about this area that we are not working on yet, that we TSO are not working on yet, which is the downtown parking plan. I could see TSO playing a role, not TSO, but TAC, TAC playing a role in looking at that policy and then sharing their thoughts with TSO. Does that seem reasonable? Say that again, Dorothy, I'm sorry. Downtown parking policy. I went to a couple of the meetings of it. It's very big, it's complex. Some things were looked at, some things were just brushed aside and not given, I don't think, the consideration that they deserved. When we get to the downtown parking policy, I would think that TAC could play a useful role in looking at the systems, how they interact with each other. And then I assume it will have to come to TSO at some point too, but maybe I'm wrong. But I was just thinking that's an area because they do with the interfacing of systems and certainly the downtown parking thing is very complex. I was just wondering if you think that TAC would play a good role in that. Who are you asking, Paul? I'm asking Paul, I'm asking anybody on this. I mean, you all have points of view which are valuable and relevant. Yes, I say yes. I think we're part of what the perceived conflict and I'm hearing some frustration from TAC and they're hearing some frustration from me and I understand that some of that frustration is over not getting to meet for many months and I understand that some of that frustration is over them believing that perhaps a volunteer committee shouldn't do the things that they were charged to do but the people who were on that committee before the current person we just talked to who I appreciate very much for being willing to come forward and say these things as she did in September because I do really appreciate her expertise and the other members but TAC never came to the select board and said we can't do this, right? We just kept waiting for them to do it and they kept not doing it. So this is not a problem of, well, you shouldn't have asked us to do it. Previous people, well, then they shouldn't they should have not been appointed to the committee. They should not have agreed to serve because they weren't doing what they were asked to do which is a much bigger question, right? In terms of what committees are charged to do. So I think it's terrific that now that the town council is not the appointing authority that now that the town managers the appointing authority for TAC it makes total sense that they are working together to figure out what's a sensible charge for them to have but they had a sensible charge and it wasn't what they actually did. I think them having a sensible charge now is going to be different because a lot of things are different now and they did although they were never they never did become the downtown parking working group which was also in their charge to do that which is not anybody's fault per se it just never happened is that I'll bet they do have some good ideas like Dorothy said because of all the other things they've talked about because of all the synergy because of a rallying for bike paths and just how did the back paths line up just like with our new temporary stuff with the bike paths. So I think that will be really useful but let's remember there isn't anybody working on downtown parking right now other than staff there isn't a committee for that that's not a thing right now and so when we get to it we absolutely should be looking to whatever they recall from their conversations about it and how they interface together because I do think they've worked on a lot of different issues even if they haven't formally done XYZ parts of the charge. Hi, we need to remember that there are a lot of a lot of the members of tech are new at least half of them you know don't have that history going back to the select board you know they're relatively new. The charge is the charge until the charge changes it doesn't matter who's on the committee the charge exists so but that's also a function of our committee system. Yes. If our committee system doesn't say look at the charge to see what you're supposed to be doing then we have a problem with our committee system. I think we're done. Anything else? All right. I declare us adjourned at 8.55. You tried and I failed. All right. I feel it was a good meeting. Okay. I feel it was. It was.