 All right, you're all set. Okay. It is, in fact, August 3, 2020, on your screen at this time, you can see how to connect to this meeting of the town council. Governors Bates March 12th, order suspending certain conditions for the open meeting law allows us to hold this virtual town meeting. I will call upon each council by name. At that time, we will unmute their mic and say, present. And please make sure you then mute it again so we don't get the feedback I'm getting right now. When you're not speaking, remain on mute. This is how we will conduct the council. Given that we have a form of the council present, I'm calling the meeting order at 632. There is no chat room for this meeting. If you have technical issues, please let Serge or Athena know to make a comment. You are to ask a question, use the raise your hand function. And if technical difficulties arise as a result of utilizing remote participation, I will decide how to address the situation. Discussion may be suspended while we address technical issues and the minutes will note if a disconnect occurs. Athena and Serge will be monitoring council's connections. And if necessary, we will pause the meeting until we can get everybody to reconnect. So with that, I'm going to call the roll. Shalini Balmilne. Present. Alyssa Brewer. Present. Patty Angelis. Present. Parsi Damont. Present. Lynn Breesmer. Present. Mandy Johannicky. Present. Dorothy Pam. Present. Evan Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Kathy Shane. Present. Steve Schreiber. Present. Andy Steinberg. Present. Sarah Schwartz. Present. Great, thank you. We are just going to have a brief screen showing the upcoming meetings of the council and let me state that in addition to that in the packet tonight are the board of health order regarding masks in the downtown area and a map that shows what the perimeters are of that area. Please make sure you look that over because the enforcement of that starts this evening. Parking enforcement also resumes today. So with that, we're going to move on to the hearings. And we have two hearings that are joint petitions of Verizon and Eversource. The first one is about the Eversource request to install two jointly owned poles on Belcher Town Road. Mass General Law Chapter 166, Section 22 requires the council hold a public hearing on that petition of any utility provider to construct or locate poles, conduits, or underground wires for the transmission of electricity. This hearing is based on the May 12, 2020 petition of Eversource to install two jointly owned poles on Belcher Town Road. The first is to be set at 9-7M on your map placed in line with an approximately 128 feet south-easterly of existing pole 970. The pole center line is approximately 27 feet from the road center line. The second is the 9.71M to be placed in line with an approximately 100 feet south-easterly of existing 971. The pole center line is approximately 33 feet from Belcher Town Road center line. 67 feet from Hartness Road center line and approximately 23 feet to the left of the fire hydrant. This plan is shown on your screen and it is page four of the document. As required by statute written notice of the time and place of the hearing was mailed on July 27, 2020 to all owners. And real estate abutting the proposed pole locations. The Department of Public Works has recommended approval of this petition and reminds the petitioner that a street opening permit must be obtained prior to commencing work. With that I'm officially opening the hearing. Just need to get to my participants. And first of all, Carla Tresino Laramie. Would you have any additional comments you would like to make about the petition? No that it's straightforward. Okay with that are there any questions from the council? Okay I see none. Are there questions from the public? I think Kathy wanted to ask a question. Oh I see it now Kathy. Sorry go ahead Kathy. I was having a hard time getting the raise my hand button so I just raised my hand. My only question is since I can't see how wide the road is I heard the setback from the center line. My question was I don't think there are sidewalks currently along that part of the road. If there would ever be sidewalks are these poles further enough away far enough away that they wouldn't require me get in the way of a sidewalk. So it's I understood it's you said 30 feet you know it's a far from the middle line but I don't know what the side of the road is like and how deep that goes. So that's the question. Carla is that either a question you want to take on or shall we ask Gopher Moring who's with us tonight. Go ahead Carla. Gopher could probably help on that but there are two existing poles there already. So if at any time a sidewalk is proposed then we would have to just move the poles. So instead of moving two poles we would have to move four poles at that point. But that is there's a lot of room between the side of the road and the properties. I don't know if anybody's ever been by there. It's kind of weird but yeah the DPW can probably answer that better than I can. But we will always move poles if we need to in the future. Is there any additional response to that? It is it's a very wide layout in that area and it's flat. So if we actually had to add sidewalks or a multi-use path there's plenty of room to do it in that area. Okay thanks Kathy. Andy Steinberg. Yes I just wanted to say for my fellow counselors a little bit from my select board experience we had had some problems with the trees and the fact that there were objections made after pole hearings about shade trees that were affected by the construction of the poles and as a result we as a select board had developed the practice of asking that the tree warden be asked in advance of pole hearings whether there was any trees that were of concern to him. And I had made a request that Mr. Snowbie ask that question regarding both hearings and I understand from the town manager that the tree warden has indicated that there's not a problem. Are there any other counselor questions at this time? Okay then I do see that we have one attendee question. It is related to this hearing on the poles. John Boniface. Okay they put their hand down. The person has put their hand down. Are there any people from the public who would like to ask a question? Are there any people from the public who would like to speak in favor? Are there any people from the public who would like to speak in opposition? Are there any other questions from the council? Hold on. I want to go back. Is Solda or Tego Bustamante? Is this in relationship to this particular hearing? This is in relation to the consolidation of the polling station? No. This is around poles to be built by the ever source on route nine. I apologize. My connection had dropped out. I will withdraw and wait. We understand. Thank you. Pat D'Angelo. Do you have a question? Yes and I don't know whether this can be answered or not. I noticed in the application for these polls that I said there would be this was not in preparation for 5G technology and since I have resident concerns about that technology I'm wondering if Verizon or ever source are planning anything around bringing 5G to Amherst? Yes. Guilford, please respond. So for these specific ones there's no 5G in the area. There's already I think a 5G site further down towards Gatehouse Road if I remember correctly. But there is no overall plan that we've seen for 5G from Verizon at this time and we're not really sure we will see one. Thank you, Gilbert. Guilford. Are there any other questions from the council? Then seeing none I'm going to declare that this public hearing is closed. We will later in the agenda be voting and an opportunity on this petition. For that we're going to move on to the other petition again from ever source and it's on Blue Hills Road in Orchard Street and Carla did we determine that you're going to be speaking to that as well? Well Michael just texted me while you were discussing this and he thinks if it's a state job the state may be petitioning for that poll. Okay the papers that we have received are petition in fact from ever source and it is installed to jointly own polls the first to be set at number 13 IS on the map 1S to be placed directly across from 13 slash 1 on Blue Hills Road and will support the reverse corner for the moving polls on the main road due to the mass DOT road project and the second is number 99 E2 to be placed approximately six feet from the fire hydrant on Orchard Street. This poll is needed due to mass DOT's road project as well and will support a single phase side tap that feeds Orchard Street. Also both polls will have down guys and anchors. So it is a petition from ever source. Yes okay um what I'm going to do is I just see the project number on here. I'm just going to text that to uh Mike Rosenberg and see what he wants to do. Does anybody have any questions about it? It's like I said it's not my project but if it's just um I'll proceed with that okay okay sure um with that um counselors do you have questions? Mandy Jo Hanneke. Mandy Jo you have been working on it. You seem to be having trouble unmuting Mandy Jo. Okay now we can hear you. Nope now we can. Okay I think I'm unmuted now. I don't know whether it's a low mouse response or not. So I guess I didn't quite understand the petition for the Blue Hills Road one that's going in the corner. It seems like it's going across from current polls now so does that mean that is this a permanent one or is this really just for the during the construction? Because things are moving during the construction and you need to keep the wires there or if it's permanent are the wires going to be crossing the roads multiple times extra than they are now? I guess I'm looking for a little more explanation as to the purpose of this one and why it's a cross from where all the current polls are. Okay Mil, Guilford? Yeah so this one is a new crossing they had to adjust when they adjusted the polls they needed to move the feed up the street a little bit and so they did put a new poll they're asking to put a new poll across the street. This is a permanent poll and it will provide power down Blue Hills. It's just how they relocated the polls on North Northampton Road is why they have to do this. You have a question Mandy Jo? I guess my question is do we like having that many additional crossings or is this the only place that poll can go or could it go to limit the number of crossings of streets? No the poll needs to go where it is to try to keep the the ever source and I hope the ever source person corrects me if I'm wrong but ever source likes to have you know you have to have your forces equal on your polls and to keep the forces equal if they kept the connection where it was they would actually need a couple more polls just as guy polls and anchoring polls so this by doing this it reduces the number of polls and guy wires you have to have along the line. Okay thank you. Are there additional questions from the council? Okay now we're going to move to questions from the public and again this is only in regard to the siting of these polls for ever source. There'll be other public comment at other times. Are there any questions from the public? Any public who would like to speak in favor? Any public who would like to speak in opposition and then I'm back to the council or are there any further questions from the council? Seeing none then I'm also going to close this public hearing and again later in the agenda we will vote on these. Okay we are now going to move to general public comments so could you please take this down surge? Thank you. Let me just state later in the evening we are going to add two additional public comment opportunities one is regarding the whole issue of the movement or the proposed movement of the polling places to consolidate them at the high school and the second is around the issue of public safety following up on our vote with relationship to the budget and the policing budget given that are there any general public comments at this time? Okay Carol Gray. Yes hi thank you for taking the comment one question I have is what time will the public comment be on the limitation the proposal to limit the number of polling spots and my second comment is that I would urge you to have public comment for the public at the start of every meeting pre-town council that was always the procedure for every town committee or board that I was a member of and I noticed that the proposal for a business was prioritized but I think that the comments of the public should be the top priority should even take precedence over business proposals and it makes it more likely that the public will not participate if they have to be listening to a meeting for three hours so I would urge you for future meetings to put public comment right at the beginning where it was pre-town council because we serve the public we you know and we want to make it as easy as possible for the public to participate and that was always the procedure previously so I hope that you will revamp your agendas and please tell me what time the public comment that I want to speak to about the polls will be. That will be around eight o'clock. Is Solda or Tygo Bustamante? Hi I have a question and a comment. My comment regards the proposal to consolidate the voting locations the polls and I couldn't help but reflect on the passing of John Lewis who said my dear friends your vote is precious almost sacred is the most powerful nonviolent tool we have to create a more perfect union regardless of the intention around public health I understand that the public health director did not participate in designing this plan and the other options such as mail and voting and early voting are important to promote however we are expecting some issues with the mail and already threats from the federal government regarding the mail. Regular election workers may be unavailable to work this election that is true but at the same time it may be easier to find election workers for smaller election sites than for one large site. The issue of contact tracing was also brought up by the council around this decision but the problem is that the numbers will make it harder to to trace the numbers of people will be more congregated. The concern about the PVTA bus stop the council cited in its document a quarter mile or half mile but that's a really a concern for people who may be disabled or have small children and the issue also that I really concerned about is the idea of making this permanent and while you can debate the ways to address this during COVID making this permanent then takes us into November where disabled people people with small children who are attempting to take the bus will be dealing with weather so in general it feels like a very rushed decision that is really endangering the voting rights of people who may already be disenfranchised if anything we support you know the efforts that are being made should be redoubled to encourage all all the access to voting in every language in terms of the the comment excuse me but I really want to point out that I've already stated that we're going to do public comment about this at eight o'clock oh I'm sorry I'm I'm I'm just so is the question is this the right time to ask about the $80,000 that you said you were setting aside around the racism issue then because I was confused about when you wanted the comments and when you wanted the question we will probably get to that agenda item sometime around 9 30 neat to say the one about the $80,000 yes okay thank you and I guess this is definitely an example of what the previous person was saying you know when you work all day and have kids and you're trying to do dinner it's you want to try to participate it's very it's challenging to figure out exactly sort of like what is the moment over zoom but I appreciate your patience thank you again we're going to do public comment on the elections and polling sites at around eight and at around 9 30 on the community safety discussion john boniface yes I just have a question about the public comment period eight o'clock will you be devoting a certain period of time for that how much time given that it was stated in the agenda that there would be public comment until 7 30 I'm just trying to understand what kind of time you're allowing for public comment locations um hopefully no more than about a half an hour and I also want to say that at some point during the meeting the council will consider whether or not we're going to be meeting on that specific item again on uh the 10th of august thank you at which point we would do additional public comment uh Gabrielle de Villa hi thank you for letting me speak I just like to say that I agree that I think public comments about the issues of police funding and voting rights should be moved towards the start of the meeting you know as as important as the ever source topic was I think it's pretty clear um from what just happened and that um you would have gotten more public comments on the other two items and you to consider those types of public hearing meeting and immediately seen like a map of a proposed ever source plan which is not necessarily inviting for them to engage with their local government thank you your comment Alyssa do you have a comment at this time I'm feeling super frustrated because I hear the frustration the public has but we have a very different view of the purpose of public comment and so it isn't simply one way and so the idea that we have to let the public frame all of our issues and our decisions over the course of the night by speaking immediately first thing out of the box is in fact not what all committees were doing prior to when the town council came into play and so that isn't a fact that it changed with the town council it is one of the things the town council considered and you've been careful to show although it's really confusing I admit to say this is going to be public comment about this this is general public comment and this is other and I think it's because there's just this fundamental disconnect between the fact that we just listen during public comment that it's not a discussion in any way anything close to a public hearing that feels more like a discussion but also isn't a discussion and so I don't know what you do once people have already not followed the directions I almost feel like we have to now open it up to people so I share everyone's frustration that we wish this was simpler but I don't know how to make it simpler and it isn't that we don't want to hear from the public is that there are things we have to do and hearing from the public is something we have to do but we hear it from phone calls emails and all kinds of places in addition to public comment so I don't know if we can come up with set times that will help people or what but I don't know what to do if we're going to if people are going to keep talking about the things that we're telling other people they can't talk about I'd like to move on with the agenda but Darcy you have your hand up I just wanted to say that if we aren't responding to public comment I don't know why we just took that comment from one of the councilors thank you so I'd like to move on to the resolutions and proclamations we have one for the Holyoke soldiers home and we need to show it on the screen and with us tonight is Steve Connor who is the veteran representative for the town of Amherst and I believe 15 or 16 other towns and Steve would you like to briefly speak to this resolution hi yes I would I am looking for the town of Amherst as well as the other towns within our district to support this resolution the resolution is been written by the committee to support the Holyoke soldiers home the coalition I'm sorry to support the Holyoke soldiers home and essentially as people can see it we are going through the history of the last pretty much 10 years of frustration about the Holyoke soldiers home and the needs that have been there one of the things that's not in the resolution was in 2017 as a member of the western mass veteran service officers association I was asked to do an investigation and get a report to the state rep from our area to address the inequities between the two soldiers homes the one in Chelsea and the one in Holyoke when there was so much study and so much planning done about the one in Holyoke and the needs that were not being met and we really feel like the not having those needs addressed for so many years is one of the greatest conditions that allowed that virus to spread so rapidly throughout the Holyoke soldiers home in the end of March and into April where 76 people who were tested positive for it had passed away two of them were Amherst residents and it's very hard for me as the veteran service officer to have had to deal with that because I was the one who helped them get in there that's part of my job is to assist them in all aspects of veteran life and end of life we did a disservice to these veterans they should have gotten better care this resolution is if the town of Amherst is willing to sign it we are going to be taking resolutions from everybody that we can get them from provided to the governor and to the state legislature to make sure that our coalition has a voice at the table in the redesign and about the funding of the new soldiers home we are very happy the state and the governor has come out and said that he is going to provide the funding but he needs to do it by April 15th and we want to have a voice in that the coalition is made up of other veteran service officers like myself the former superintendent and deputy superintendent members of family members of veterans who passed and we have family members who still have loved ones in the soldiers home and this is an opportunity to make sure our voices are heard we know what goes on there better than people on the other side of the state we just feel like it's really important that towns support us in our efforts to make sure that when we do this it's done right it's done to address the needs throughout massachusetts veterans come from all over the state to go to that soldier's home but we have to do better and i mean a whole lot better so that's that's why we're asking the city to the town to sign this resolution thank you steven thanks for your work um we uh this uh we will take the resolution as it was provided to us and then put it into the format that uh we do for our council so george uh ryan please discuss gol so uh lin we met uh at our last day on july 29th and uh we reviewed this and the committee voted unanimously to declare it clear consistent and actionable okay is there any council discussion at this time yes dorothy pam i just want to second this resolution um having taught having looked at the soldier's home on the hill every time i drove to hcc knowing students who have worked there um and heard having heard so many people speak of pride of that home it was a matter of great shock to find out that the state had let it down and to create this the the chaos that resulted so whatever can be done to restore it to make it a safe place for everybody a place where people wanted to go it wasn't a place where people were put but people wanted to go there because it was a great and pleasant place so i really support this resolution are there any other comments from the town council at this time steve conner you have another comment yes thank you i just wanted to follow up on that statement because what i find quite amazing in my work is that i'm now getting calls now there's gotten stabilized there i'm now getting calls from families whose fathers and mothers uh but the three calls i've gotten are fathers who want to go into the soldier's home now now that the thing is over they still want to go there there is a very unique thing about uh veterans at end of life and they want to be with their comrades they want to be with the people they served with and so we just want to give them what they deserve which is a proper home to have end of life and with a with a bathroom and a shower in their own room i really don't think that's much to ask you think of many facilities that already exist for many and and we had people four in a room my son is a nursing student at hoyo community college and he worked there during the fall semester so he and i were not surprised at how bad this got once it was first identified we can do a whole lot better thank you are there any other councilor comments at this time we will be taking this up as part of the consent agenda which is where we're going to move to right now the consent agenda hold on one second please the following items were selected because they were considered to be routine it was reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy to remove an item from the consent agenda for discussion later in the meeting ask that it be removed when the when i list the consent agenda items the request to remove an item from the consent agenda does not require a second the motion reads as follows to move the following items and the printed motions there under and approve these items as a single unit the first one is adoption of the resolution regarding the holy oak soldier's home the second with regard to the suspension of the town council rules a procedure 8.4 for the following agenda items ever source request to install two jointly owned polls on belcher town road ever source request to install two jointly owned polls on blue hills road and orchard street and the master plan update request when we use 8.4 that allows us to act without having to bring it back to a second meeting this does not approve those items and the final is approval of various minutes those of july 2nd 2020 the joint town council finance committee minutes those of july 7th 2020 joint town council finance committee meetings the the minutes from july 20th 2020 town council meeting minutes and july 28th 2020 joint town council and school committee meeting crocker farm expansion presentation minutes gathie shane you have your hand up yes i i have a comment that is just a correction on the minutes for the crocker farm that were sent in to me of just the numbers aren't quite right so i i consider just a minor edit and i could send that to athena later um it's a correction that was sent that corrects um uh one set of i can read it to you or you can just assume it is it's uh maria capexey statement but it was there was just a missing couple words i i think we then need to pull that off of this agenda and so we will and we'll approve it later in the meeting okay uh darcy you have your hand up yeah i would like to remove um the suspension of town council rules of procedure 8.4 for 8g master plan update request yes okay thank you so this is the motion as it now reads and then i need a second to move the following items and the printed motion there under and approve those items as a single unit 6a adoption of resolution regarding the soldier holy oak soldier's home suspension of town council rules a procedure 8.4 for the following agenda items ever source request to install two jointly owned polls on bolter town road ever source request to install two jointly owned polls on blue hills road and orchard street approval of minutes july 2nd joint town council finance committee minutes july 7th 2020 joint town council finance committee meetings minutes july 20th 2020 town council minutes is there a second second the angel is thank you pat that was very terrific way to do a second by saying your name um can we we are going to any further comments we're going to move to a roll call vote okay and in this case i'm going to start with hold on i'm going to start with elissa brewer hi de angeles hi demont hi greasemurs yes hannoky yes pam yes frost yes ryan yes chain yes shriver yes steinberg yes schwarz yes ball mill yes okay thank you we can take that item down we're then going to move to the approval of the belcher town road of ever source petition and then we'll do a separate vote for the blue hill road and orchard street so the motion for the first is as follows to approve the order for poll location on belcher town road titled order for joint or identical poll locations dated may 12th 2020 is there second mandy thank you mandy any further discussion we'll move to a roll call vote on this de angeles yes demont yes greasemur yes hannoky yes pam yes frost yes ryan yes chain yes shriver yes steinberg yes schwarz yes ball mill yes and brewer yes okay the vote's 13-0-0 nobody absent we're moving to the next one which is the blue hill road and orchard street it's to approve the order for poll locations on blue hill's road and orchard street titled order for joint or identical poll locations dated may 27th 2020 is there a second second hannoky thank you is there a any further discussion okay then in this case we begin with garcy demont yes greasemur yes hannoky yes pam yes ross yes ryan yes chain yes shriver yes steinberg yes schwarz yes bell mill yes brewer yes and de angeles yes okay that passes 13-0-0 nobody absent we're going to move immediately to the levered extension of water line and before we put the thing up surge let me just make sure that we know who is in the room from leverant i'm here peter dorrico hi peter how are you doing just fine who else do we have from levered i saw julie earlier you need to unmute and tom tom hankinson oh good i didn't see tom hi tom hi how are you really can you unmute how's that good okay all right thank you so um this is a extension this is a request on the behalf of levered to extend our water line in from amherst into levered we do not need to approve this tonight but it has been hanging out there as a question and so i'm going to go ahead and call first of all on um paul paul bachelman who i think then will be calling on gilford mooring and peter dorrico paul yes thank you lin so there's a long history to this that i think levered can go into us the council would like but the consideration by the town council is really about the impact on our water system and the impact that of extending the water line up east levered road so i will again quickly turn it over to gilford who can sort of walk you through what the considerations are for the town council as you consider this matter go for so yes this this started probably about at least 15 years ago um the town of levered is having some issues with some private wells because of their old landfill and they can tell you more about that um we've been one of the concepts has always been the easiest way and the the simplest way to solve the problem would be to connect them to our water system it does require extending the water line it's a little over a mile to extend the water line all the way to the end um you have a drawing i believe in your your packet that shows the where we're going with the water line we're going down east levered road and then we take a left on the teabottle yep so we start at east levered road and we go down to in the lever and take a left on teabottle um originally it was going to be a eight inch water line but then we wanted wanted to provide fire protection to the emmerced residents who are at the end of the line there's three houses in the in the top right corner of the drawing that are actually an emmerced um we wanted to make sure we had fire protection there and lever it wanted to make sure they had a connection for their fire um apparatus as well so it's now going to be a 12 inch line um we're proposing doing this together the town of levered has designed it the town of emmerced will bid it and oversee the construction and we'll also merge in our um repaving work that we were playing to do on east levered road with this project the repaving work if this goes a schedule will probably be about a year earlier than what we thought it would be but to do it all at one time would be the best for the whole project and that's basically the project okay um are there questions from the council at this time yes kathy yeah um i scan the memo and gilford you just said that lever it will be paying for the construction cost what is the estimate of the draw on water um each year so how much um we're about to expand our ability to have water at cost um so how much how much consumption is on not just the putting in the pipes for there's the existing houses of all the existing houses and emmerced and levered connect to this water line you're adding 12 users 12 families to the water system that's it and so while you're saying it's 12 you're saying it's a small set of users and does that a small volume yes it's a very small volume of water and then lever went as they're getting it would be paying the same water rates that we do in the town of emmerced yes um we serve some people in belcher town and powam as now and what we do for anybody who's in on the water system outside of town as we charge them the same rate they're just part of our water system they get charged the same connection fees uh same water rates and if they have backflow devices they are in our backflow program and all the whole nine yards they become part of our system okay thank you um i wondered if either peter dorrico or tom hankinson or julie shively would like to make any comments at this time um i'll do that and uh julie and tom can certainly pitch in as gilford and paul both said this has been going on for quite a while and i want to thank both of them for a lot of conversation a lot of hard work uh connecting us to tata and howard who's a longtime contractor with amherst for this type of project to get this thing worked out uh to also to bring it to the point at which the town of leverett can afford to pay for it even though it's going to also benefit people in amherst that's a kind of a joint community effort to solve problems in lever but would also benefit residents in amherst and as gilford said also add fire protection in that whole area i can speak to any questions that people might have them but i think that the outline of the plan has been so thoroughly uh worked over by uh gilford's office uh that it's probably not really anything left open to uh to question about why this line or why the size and size of the pipe or any of that sort of stuff tom or julie anything else you'd like to add at this time no i would just like to thank um again paul and and gilford for their work on this thank you we're glad to have you here mandy joe you have a question yes um it's a long line a mile extension of a line is is much longer than i was thinking until i looked at the maps and um 12 houses or so as you said would potentially be able to connect so i'm curious what the maintenance on that portion of a line would be over you know 30 years 20 years in terms of um you know how much that might cost what we could expect for that because you know we might only get three users quote paying for that and i know we don't always expect one potential portion of a line to generate enough revenues to maintain that portion of a line i'm just curious how out of sync that might be if at all well it is it is going to be a new line so our maintenance is much less than it would be for the older lines and we have older lines that are over a hundred years old which actually have a lot more maintenance costs to us from the age factor it'll be easy to maintain line we do have routine maintenance we have to do we would have to flush hydrants for water quality we do have to do some sampling we would actually have to move two of our sampling points um out towards this area so that we have a representative sample sampling that we do every every week we do sampling for water quality um it's not additional sampling it just means we have to move our sampling sites farther away so we get a better picture um so overall it's not that much of an additional cost in the next 30 years when you get to around 30 40 years then you might start finding that we need to do some pipe replacements and doing some repairs um just just from normal wear and tear and failures in certain sections of pipe which happens in our system now so for the next 30 to 40 years it's a pretty good deal and low maintenance thank you are there other questions from the council i do have a question and that is you've mentioned the benefit to additional people who live in for water protection but does it also open up additional development the additional development is is actually limited many of the spaces or many of the parcels along this road have actually either been put into um conservation or they have some type of restriction on them that so they cannot be developed so we're not looking if we have 12 lots that we can serve that are already developed there's probably no more than 12 lots new lots that can be served out there if you look at the drawing in the bottom left corner you see a little cross hatch section that section is actually too high in elevation for us to serve without them putting in some of their own infrastructure which we don't normally do so as you start looking towards the left side or the west side of east leveret road the elevations in that area prevent you from developing on some of that property as well so between elevation elevations and the river on the left on the right um you really have some restrictions on what you can develop in that area it won't be it won't blow up into a large subdivision are there other questions from the council okay so we already voted 8.4 which allows us to act tonight um if we want to at this point we would vote to basically authorize the town manager to proceed with an interim municipal agreement with based on mass general law 40 so the motion reads as follows and I'm making a motion to authorize the town manager to enter into an inter municipal agreement with under mass general law chapter 40 section 4a for the purpose of extending the town of Amherst public water supply into leverant 9100 lf to serve certain houses that are downgraded gradient of the closed and capped leverant landfill is there a second this is the mds second and he's signberg his second and is there any further discussion okay then we're going to take a vote and we'll start with Lynn linds i just have a quick question i'm seeing we have a draft of an inter municipal agreement so motion are we basically saying this is a good draft i mean it's got still a they talked about us as having select uh select board so the motion says pull we had and we're seeing the draft is that correct uh the motion the draft you're seeing is um the draft and it can still be edited obviously that would be one of the ways it would be edited um okay so yes we're approving him entering this we're not necessarily the word in this draft is final correct right that's correct okay any other questions we do need to vote to suspend rule 8.4 so the first vote is to spend suspend town council rules of procedure 8.4 for the consent agenda item is there a second hannity seconds thank you we start with this one and greasemurs yes hannity yes ham yes ross yes ryan yes shown shane sorry i'm always after ryan shriver i'm a yes yes uh steinberg yes schwartz sarah i'm sorry yes thank you shallony yes yes elissa bruer yes pat de angeles yes and darsie demont yes all right given that is a 13-0-0 nobody absent we're moving on to the general the overall motion and that is to authorize the town manager to enter into an intermunicipal agreement under mass general law section 40 chapter 40 section 4a for the purpose of extending the town of amherst public water supply into levart 9100 lf to serve certain houses that are down gradient of the closed and capped levart landfall now is there a second but can steinberg elissa you have your hand up just in terms of discussion okay steinberg it was the second of council discussion at this time elissa just for fear that anyone would think i was being inconsistent when it came to intermunicipal agreements i do normally prefer that we see the actual agreement that he's going but i believe that this draft is adequate and that is why i'm willing to move forward okay any other comment at this time okay then we will start with hanakie girthi pam yes ebb and ross yes george ryan yes kathy shane yes yes steve schreiber yes andy steinberg yes sarah schwartz yes shallony ball milne yes elissa broer yes kathy angeles yes darsie demont yes and greece merse yes the vote's 13-0-0 with no absences thank you and we look forward to um having you join us in this intermunicipal agreement thank you very much i want to thank you very much thank you all the council and again to gilford for stellar help and paul for shepherding along thank you all thanks a lot thank you the next two items on our agenda come in the form of updates the first one is the north amherst library update and paul i'm going to call on you and then chris farley from cune riddle thank you lin so um we had an anonymous donor move step forward who's expressed interest in supporting in addition to the north amherst library as part of this funding we did we had some money from appropriate by town meeting that allowed us to move forward on preliminary designs which we have completed and we hired cune riddle to complete the design so where we are now is that we're prepared to move into the um stage where we start to prepare drawings in advance of going out to bid for the actual construction of the addition it's a it's a significant significant addition to the library and i thought it was important for the council to review it to look at it just to make sure we're all on the same page as we as we start to move forward and um and then and then as we move forward we'll engage the community in a larger discussion talk about what should be in it what shouldn't be in it but we have some preliminary um images to share with you and to share with the public so that's what we'd like to do tonight and chris from cune riddle is here um and gilford's been very involved with this as well um so if i can turn it over to chris uh lin please so this is the site plan uh well folder and sir if there's anything else please let us know gris okay um uh well uh good evening to uh town council uh president and council members uh thanks very much for inviting me to come to give you this update um i i will say that i'm calling in from my home in ashfield and there's a bit of a delay and so uh if we have uh any sort of dialogue and it sounds like i'm speaking over anyone my apologies it's just due to the delay um so so yeah we have several images here the first one is the site plan my understanding is from uh mr bachelman that the uh the council has been briefed on the a little bit of the background of the project so i'm going to focus on uh design issues um and so uh starting with the site plan um what we've developed is a an addition uh to the library it's a one-story addition uh on this site plan it is between the parking area and the existing library um the the new accessible entry will be from uh the back of the building the north side uh the the the built the the library itself is quite a gem an architectural gem and we wanted to preserve the look and the feel of it as much as practical so we have the addition and the new entry and back uh where we can preserve the the front facade the south facade of the building um so the the uh what's what's involved with the design is this one-story addition uh and a connector between the uh the the accessible entry bathrooms and meeting room to the existing library uh there'll be a a little bit of a realignment of the parking um and a formalization of the parking will have a several accessible parking spaces and then an accessible path from the parking up to the the new entry in the rear uh and then a an accessible path up to the level of the library which is about five feet above this new the entrance in the new addition um the the work will include a certain amount of landscaping on the two sides and the rear of the building to help the new addition settle into the site um we we intentionally uh just as we left the front of the building unchanged to preserve the integrity and the look of it we've also maintained all or proposing to maintain all the plantings in the front and on the side of the building so that it it really remains really quite similar to to the way it is today uh if you could go to the next slide please so uh this is a floor plan uh the the rectangle toward the bottom of the screen is the existing library um this is the same orientation as the site plan we just looked at so the existing entry is at of the library is up the steps at the bottom of the of the of the sheet the new entry is at the top of the sheet um you we we're not looking at the parking but the parking would be just off the top of the sheet so the new entry comes in and is more or less uh in line with the middle of the existing library um when someone comes in there's a small lobby uh lobby uh to the left are will be two new bathrooms accessible bathrooms uh new janitor closet and a new small storage room to the right would be a meeting room and the intention is that the meeting room could be for library business library functions could also be for community meetings or community functions the the idea is that the the meeting room and the bathrooms could remain open even when the library is closed so there's a set of double doors between the entry lobby and the stairs on this plan uh that represents doors that could be locked to close the library but maintain the the meeting room uh open and then in the middle of the plan there's a kind of a connector piece we we kept it as small as possible and that has a new stair down into the basement a new stair up to the library level as i said it's about five feet and then between those two stairs there's a wheelchair lift and the wheelchair lift is what makes this that makes the main floor of the library accessible someone can come in from the parking on the north come into the building get into the wheelchair lift if they're not able to negotiate stairs and get up to to the main library level where the the librarian is and where the stacks are um let's see here um the other thing i'd like to talk about with this plan is improvements to the existing library so um this design primarily focuses on a fully accessible entry and the other the other spaces that i just mentioned but there are some improvements to the library building which are necessary and will improve the library one is some structural improvements in the front of the library in the basement there's a part of the foundation is being pushed in and that's causing some some repercussions throughout the structure we intend to to have that fixed there will be new mechanical system heating and cooling system installed new electrical where it is possible and practical possibly new lighting energy efficient lighting and an upgrade to the existing fire alarm system the intention is to preserve the existing building as much as possible and practical and so any of these proposed improvements we will try to preserve the look the feel the finishes etc of the existing library if you could go on to the next slide please so these are a couple of exterior elevations the the one in the upper left is the the new entry elevation to the building uh and the one in the lower right is the west elevation so the existing library is on the right with the shingle roof and the addition which is the lower form is on the left so we've taken our cue for the the look the feel the massing of the of the addition from the existing library our feeling was that it was important to again to maintain the the integrity of the existing library and our feeling was to to take all of our architectural and design cues from that building so we've we've we've used the same steep roof pitches we've used a lot of the same materials shingle siding painted wood trim the proportion and sizing of the windows are are taken directly from the existing building we have introduced a few new materials but basically we we really did try to have this addition feel as though it belonged stylistically with the existing building it will obviously be a new addition and it will appear so but stylistically and architecturally it should fit in very very nicely with the existing building if you look at the elevation in the upper left the the new entry there's a very steep gable roof over the main entry and then a similar gable to the right which is a bay into the new meeting room and those roof forms are taken directly from the existing entry to the library which has a very steep roof I think it's about an 1812 18 and 12 roof pitch unusually steep and so we've we've replicated that trying to again to bring some of that that feel and experience of going into the the existing entry into this new accessible entry if you could go to the next slide please so this is a an eye level perspective of a preliminary rendering of what the addition would look like from the new parking lot so from the north side there are the two gables as I said the larger gable that comes farther forward that's the new entry and again the intention is to use some of the same detailing and proportions as the existing building has but to update it a bit and you can see there's a new walkway just to the south of the parking a fully accessible walkway to to go into the building one one more minor feature of this being proposed is a book drop that people can use from the outside I know that that was something particularly that the librarians were interested in including here so we do have a book drop that can be utilized even when the library and the addition is closed and if you could go to the next slide so this is just a slightly different view of that new addition and the new entry you can just see the existing library kind of peeking out on the left side behind this addition I will say that these renderings are really quite preliminary obviously there's no background it looks like we're on a flat plane what we've really focused on in these preliminary images is just trying to represent the massing the form the detailing some of the materials and potential colors of what this addition might look like um from a from a color point of view our intention is to pick colors that are compatible with the existing library but to but to use a slightly different palette so that it is clearly not a period building but a new addition that's been that's been proposed the the plantings that are represented here are really just used for the purposes of the rendering we haven't really taken the design far enough to know exactly what the plantings will be that's something as mr. Bachmann said that we would be doing the architect would be doing in the next phase of work if this project does move forward so so that's a that's a I hope a fairly quick overview I'm happy to answer questions or give additional information if anybody would like that thank you Dorothy you have your hand up um I just want to say it's I love the design and I love the pitched roof which reminds me of a former house but that leads me to a question the addition is one story but the roof is high and pitched will that mean it'll be a high roof inside the meeting room and the other second question is about the handicap accessible entrance um I myself would not be coming in in a wheelchair but I would I would like to avoid the stairs so can a person standing with or without a cane get on that wheelchair lift easily those are my two questions well so uh to answer the the questions in order uh it does the the addition does have a steep roof pitch we will have a probably at least a 10 foot ceiling in the in the addition but a large portion of the attic is intended to be used for mechanical equipment and ductwork to heat and cool the the the new addition so it the the the roof structure will not be exposed inside the meeting room or inside the addition but our intention is that it will have a ceiling that's high enough so that it feels really quite similar to the library if not even a bit taller and then to answer the second question absolutely and anyone who needs help or cannot negotiate the stairs can use the wheelchair lift it has a simple gate that's easy to open you would step onto the platform push a button much like an elevator it's a it would be a hydraulic wheelchair lift and it would probably take about 15 seconds maybe to go from the the new entry level up to the library level and then there's another gate at the top to get out so it's it's very easy to use well thank you very much and Joe you're welcome um mine's not really as much of a question as a you know I saw that the addition of the book drop and and I applaud that um made me wonder and and basically ask to ensure that that the librarians that that use you know that work in the library right now and our library director are consulted on other small things like that that would make their life easier and all of that and I just wanted I assume that's happening but I wanted to confirm that that would be the case going forward too um absolutely um we we've been working with library staff uh from um uh early 2018 uh when we when our our proposal was accepted for the study and it's certainly my understanding that we will continue to work with uh library staff as well as community members as the design moves forward Kathy Shane thank you uh the design looks beautiful um I have to say I have some specifics so I'll just rattle some of them off how many people will the meeting room hold if um let's let's assume someday we're out of the covid world where we all have to be six feet apart so Sarah Schwartz who's also a counselor we don't have a district space right now to meet in so I'm just curious on how many people could comfortably sit in that room um so I'll start with that and then along with that same question is our library that library has very restricted hours right now so it's clear that from the entryway we could get into the meeting room and or the bathrooms without going through the library will there be a way that someone in town hall can push a button and let us in will someone have to drive up there to let us in so how would um weekend access after hours access work so I'll say just there and then I'm going to just say one more on the the design of the um new part um there are two bathrooms that you're putting in and I've asked this before why two and the answer is because you have to somehow we can we just can't do unisex bathrooms even though they exist everywhere so I don't know whether it would be space or cost savings but the way I see a lot of them done in Europe a little less frequently here is there's a water closet that has the toilet in it and then the sink is outside the two toilet areas and the advantage of that is if you just want to drink up water or you just want to wash your hands you don't have to occupy a bathroom so it's and then you can have either fewer sinks or one hot water line so I don't know whether um that saves or is that a simple and then my last the stairs downstairs off the new addition into the downstairs of the old library there is a bathroom downstairs and it's restricted public access right now because the stairs going down are dangerous unless you're a very nimble person um we used to use it all the time when my kids were little and then it's it's a pretty tricky staircase so does that be a it could that bathroom um that's down there would that be mainly for staff use so I'm just going to leave it on I have a few others but they're they're picky and so it's more about this new addition okay well thank you um well as far as the occupancy of the meeting room uh the current calculation is between 40 and 45 people could occupy occupy that room if we had chairs that that are you know stacked and set in the usual type of condition um we intentionally are trying to keep the occupancy below 50 simply because when you have an occupancy of 50 you need a door a second door that goes directly outside from the space and we're trying to keep things simple so we can just have that one door from the entry vestibule into the into the meeting room I'm going to skip to the to the bathroom question we haven't we haven't looked at the idea of doing the european style bathrooms with the sinks outside but we could certainly we could certainly do that that would be an easy thing to study and to talk with the library staff about so I'd be happy to to you know as this project moves forward be happy to study that and do an alternate plan that would show that and then the basement the intention as part of this plan is that the bathroom in the basement which is not accessible for a variety of reasons that that bathroom will be removed as part of the part of this work the bathroom will be storage only it will not be accessible to the public so it's really only available to library staff for library storage the the fact that we're putting the two accessible bathrooms in really does make that existing bathroom obsolete so the the the town and the library staff has instructed us to to remove it in order to provide additional storage and then in terms of hours I'm sorry in terms of hours I think Paul I would ask you maybe to address that if you could so the town is moving progressively over time to more the key card access to space instead of physical keys so this would be part of that that process and then that gives you a lot more flexibility in terms of remotely opening doors and monitoring who's in and who's accessed them and things like that thank you Eric Schwartz you have your hand up my questions are a little bit more cosmetic one of them has to do with that you had mentioned that you wanted to keep the colors on the addition compatible but somewhat different than the front and I'm just thinking that the colors of the library are one of the things that I think is most attractive about the library and I feel like because you did and I'm not an architect but because you did such a good job sort of melding the two together I think it would look nicer just to have the same colors throughout it would look less like we just stuck an addition on the back which is what we did but if we're going for the same look I would want to keep it I think the paint colors should go with and then my second question was about the stacks and in the original part of the library and the window seat in the children's section I'm just wondering if those things would remain the same thanks okay well I I think I understand your first point about the colors I think we in this rendering and this particular preliminary design we took a took the approach where we wanted it to be different but compatible it would be quite easy to look at some alternative color schemes we usually do that as a matter of course when it comes to a project like this so I think what I would say is that we would certainly we would look at having the colors be more similar if if not using the same colors as the existing library as one of the options and then we could evaluate that with with the town and with library staff and make a recommendation so I think we we could look at certainly could and we'll look at options and then I'm sorry I've already forgotten what the second question was I was just wondering if this apologies that's okay there's a lot of questions coming at you I was just wondering if the stacks the actual stacks in the main part of the library and there's also the window seat in the children's section I was just wondering if those were going to remain more be redone okay thank you so the short answer is yes the intention is to keep the stacks and and the circulation again the look and the feel the existing finishes to keep them as is the the stacks most of the stacks as they are now do actually meet accessible accessible guidelines the architectural access board guidelines and requirements they are tight but as long as we have 36 inches between the stacks that does meet the letter of the of the regulations and yes the intention is to keep that window seat as it is in the interest of time I'm going to ask Paul if you could just quickly review for us what the next steps are and stressing the fact that there are going to be other opportunities for particularly members of the community that use this library to weigh in so Paul of course thank you so yeah this is just to give you a snapshot see if there's any sort of stop what you're doing kind of comments from the council there's a very lengthy permitting process that has to come into play and conservation commission the planning board or zoning board the design review board they have to get a permit from the state highway we want to do community meetings in the neighborhood to understand you know just to float this and see how people are responding to that the anonymous donor is anxious to keep moving forward on this so we're anxious to accept the funds for this and move forward as well because I think it's a it's a unique opportunity for the town we don't get this kind of thing this kind of philanthropic thing very often so we don't be we want to be courteous and accepting of it because the anonymous donor also wants to work on the construction in terms of making a donation for the construction so we went into this we had the the appropriation from town meeting in 2017 we have used that to get to this point you know anonymous donor has said that they were interested in moving to the next phase which is the design permitting stage till we get to construction documents and then there's a stop point again and then if we have the funds in hand to go to the actual construction we will move forward so we're doing this one step at a time with money in hand before we take the next step so again a really unique opportunity a very treasured building the library trustees are very clear that they want to keep this as a library for the foreseeable future this expands our needed capacity for meeting space in North Amherst and I mean I think I think Conrad will do it just a gorgeous job with the design it takes into account a lot of other things in terms of the layout Guilford's been really pivotal in helping to frame how we should be looking at this and Sharon Sherry has been involved as well from the beginning so unless there's anything negative from the council we will I will talk to the anonymous donor and if that happens we will keep moving on this project. Thank you Paul. Dorothy? Just a quick question in discussions about the not quite ever built new intersection in North Amherst which is right next to the library I've seen some drawings or possibilities which had the road on one side closed I'm assuming that whatever those future plans might be have been considered by Coon Riddle in making this design so that it doesn't preclude any of the options. Yes we're working really hard not to exclude options for either either option for the library or for the roads who are working hard to keep them so they don't conflict. Thank you. I really again would like to keep to as much of our schedule as we can so thank you very much for joining us Chris and then in the case of the agenda. Thank you. Yes we're going to move on to a quick update from the Energy and Climate Action Committee they did place something in your packet very very late in the afternoon but is Laura Drucker with us and Stephanie Tricorello. Hi this is Stephanie Tricorello sustainability coordinator for the town I don't believe Laura is on yet but I can very quickly text her but in the meantime I can get started just bear with me one second okay sorry this virtual world. So we just wanted to go over the the timeline for the municipal vulnerability preparedness action grant that the town received which was to create a climate action adaptation and resilience plan for the town and through that process we created a timeline originally the grant when we received the grant was before COVID and we had a much tighter timeline within our phase one because of COVID we were able to actually transfer some of the tasks into a phase two into the next fiscal year so that actually gave us a lot more breathing room to to work on this process. So right now we've gotten through much of what's identified here as phase one where we've secured our consultant Linnean Solutions Inc. from Cambridge and we've worked with the team of Jim Newman Lauren de la Para who is actually a former UMass graduate student and we are also working with our community member Guzikha Nikowski as a as a community engagement specialist. So for phase one we looked at just basically identifying the team and identifying some of the tasks and prioritizing some of the projects by looking at things that were identified in the phase one process of the MVP planning which was first the planning grant which we received a year ago or so and which we brought community get community members together to talk about what are some of the concerns that people saw in terms of climate change and how they identified those and prioritized those so we were able to bring together that information along with the Energy and Climate Action Committee on their own had done some outreach within the community and so they were looking to also identify priorities and plans for folks within the community and what people saw as some of the issues that they felt needed to be addressed more immediately. So from that they identified a project list and created a project list and from there we then looked to define stakeholder groups and so our process right now is that we've we've moved on to doing outreach within the community and this is where specifically our community engagement consultant has come into play and done quite a bit to reach community members that are either folks of moderate income low and moderate income folks who are from the LGBTQ community also folks who are African American descent or Hispanic so folks within the community that have not often been engaged in a lot of the processes within town government so we were finding a way to sort of do this in a different model and that process we've had the first of two meetings actually the second meeting was literally I just came from the second meeting now where we broke into four stakeholder groups or task groups one is looking at land use the second is looking at renewable energy the third is looking at buildings and the fourth is looking at transportation and each of these groups encompass people that the that are identified as community leaders who work with the engagement specialist specifically and then other stakeholders from the community some are business owners some are residents some are activists some are involved with not even Amherst residents but are involved within the community by working for businesses that work in town specifically regarding energy for instance Lynn Bonander from co-op power was on tonight's meeting so we've engaged folks to meet and discuss these specific topics and so from this these conversations we're going to identify projects there'll be a series of three meetings where we'll then be able to identify projects and tasks from that and those things will help define how we will move forward with putting together the the climate action adaptation resiliency plan and ultimately then we'll have a draft of the draft of the plan that we'll then bring to the community and bring to the council bring to the town manager and we will be vetting this through all different channels and sectors within the town and we will get feedback and then revise that plan even further to get to a final draft that will then once it's finalized will be brought before the council so right now we've actually been very much on task and in compliance with our timeline I don't know if Laura has had the ability to join or not hi Stephanie I'm here okay sorry I just can't see you that's all so so we are very much on task with our timelines so we did revise it a little bit and I let Laura speak to the revisions and why we did so thanks Stephanie and thank you all for having us sorry I just joined I'm in the middle of bedtime over here but yeah we've been hard at work this summer I think ECAC has been able to really embrace the virtual meeting platform and we've been moving forward with our committee meetings since I think later in April so for quite a while we have been as as you know the MVP process is a town grant that that's Stephanie and Paul were able to to get but ECAC has been very heavily involved as this is related directly to our work in developing a climate action or resiliency plan and the charge of our committee so one of the things to Stephanie's point that we've done to help make sure that the MVP work is aligning well with the town timeline is we've worked on adjusting the schedule a bit to make sure that we're going to be meeting milestones around the time when the town council will need information from us such as budget information about projects and budgets um so we will we plan to and we also if you remember we're tasked in our charge to update the town council regularly and we're planning on submitting a report to you all at the end of the calendar year and around that time we'll also have some preliminary information about budget requests that we can incorporate into that process so in addition to just doing the climate action plan and moving forward on our goals I think what the MVP process has has really shown us is really innovative ways to engage with our community we're clearly just at the beginning of this but we're really looking forward to reporting back to the council and to other committees about what I hope will be a successful community involvement with this with this plan and this process um it's hard work I think you know but it's going to be worth it and I'm really excited to be able to share those process that that feedback with you all um you know there's so much to show for climate change and equality and the the connections between how we can both address climate change and and address equality issues but also how if we ignore climate change it's going to negatively impact our most vulnerable community members more than everyone else um so we really have a lot of work to do there um and there's also a lot of work happening you know around climate change and building back better after COVID um and I think the town uh so I hope that our climate action plan will show us ways that we can embrace both of those things uh in the future thank you um again in the interest of time I just want to check and see if there's any council questions at this time they will be coming forward with a more complete report Darcy yes just um just very briefly I just wanted to to thank Stephanie and Laura for the great work they're doing um and and praising them for the amazing process that they've put together for the task forces and the ability to bring together a diverse group of community members in a way that that is really cutting edge it's putting Amherst way out in front as far as showing how to get a diverse group together to do the decision making and so I won't go on because I know how packed our agenda is but I really hope that counselors will take time to look at the material provided and learn more about the work that the task groups are doing in this um upcoming month thank you any other comment at this time we're going to take a five minute break and then we're going to come back and immediately go to the next agenda item that we've got on the schedule and that is the issue of the elections expanded vote by mail and there were a lot of changes that affected elections the secretary of state held a meeting with all of the clerks on last thursday Michelle Tasemiri who is the head legal counsel for the secretary of state gave us some direction answered questions and concerns so regarding elections and I have it here I want to give everyone a citation so according to 950 CMR subsection 51 elections must be held inside a public building and so therefore they cannot be held outside intense it was something that many clerks have considered as we are all examining our polling location statewide the secretary of state is looking at all polling locations in all communities any polling location that is in where there are multiple precincts held in one building clerks are asked to assess those polling locations if social distancing can be achieved we are asked to make those provisions and if we cannot be able to socially distance a precinct then we have to relocate those are the things that played a part in the decisions in us looking to move many of our polling locations prior to the change in legislation we knew that some of our polling locations were unavailable to us we knew that some of our polling locations just in their setup was too small to accommodate social distancing earlier today in a conversation Paul you particularly mentioned the concern with the schools and we've received some follow-up questions like when do the schools actually open are they using their gyms for classes if their gyms are being used do they have to decontaminate the whole school and shut it down so could you speak to that or absolutely so there there's maybe three probable locations that are things that we would have to consider if the council says we don't want to move in this all-in-one location to look at a different option so one of those things we have three polling locations in schools Fort River Wildwood and Crocker Farm Fort River and Wildwood we can kind of put those off to the side because they're both in gyms and can be set aside Crocker Farm presents a larger problem because you have to walk through the building to get into the cafeteria which is where voting occurs the fact that we have initially we were thinking maybe we can use a tent outside because the schools will already have a tent set up most likely there but with the news that we just learned on Friday that you can't use tents as a voting location and we were worried about that anyway in November Crocker Farm becomes an issue and the I think the superintendent and the school committee would expect us to have an industrial decant decontamination of the building prior to re-entry of staff or students at that point in time so the other two buildings I think we can manage that one becomes a problem and none of these are insurmountable I just want to be clear about that so if the council says we want to keep the polling locations as they are we will figure out a way to make that happen we suggested this all-in-one location for multiple reasons one is you know clarity and then the other is to comply with the social distancing requirements of COVID-19 and it was something that the previous town clerk had come up with and then Chavina really pulled it together pulled everybody into a room and said let's walk through these things and see how they work the second location that presents a challenge to us is the north Amherst fire station which is where the voting occurs in the bays now the fire chief has been very from the very beginning he locked down the two fire stations and the police station to outsiders because of the intense commitment to force protection which means trying to prevent his staff from getting infected with COVID-19 which causes if they become infected or it goes through the police for police or fire department it becomes a real problem for us to be able to deliver public safety services so he has been very strong about keeping his those those two properties plus the fire station in terms of trying to keep the public out of the buildings themselves so and that's a major thing the third location is the bangs community center and as you heard Chavina say this secretary of state has asked the clerks to look at any co-located sites which seems a little bit odd because we're saying why not the high school because there's lots of co-located sites we're proposing 10 but that seems to meet the threshold of the allowance for what the secretary of state is saying and that we would we would have to examine the bangs community center to determine if we could have co-located sites or if we would have to find a different location for one or two of those sites as you recall when you go into the bangs community center to vote everybody goes in the same door and then you're dispersed into three and it's very tight at that entry point so how we would maintain the goal would be to maintain uh six foot uh separation while you were waiting in line uh we are prepared to have tents for waiting in line at all the locations if that's what we need to do we're prepared to install benches or seating areas for people who who might get tired when they're waiting in line things like that I think that the message to the council is that there's there's probably going to have to be changes to some of the locations and that the town clerk and staff will work with this to make it as make sure everybody who wants to be able to vote is able to vote so I'll leave it at that Chavina is there anything else you want to add to that yes I would like to add so the secretary of state has a staff member who is overseeing all of the polling location changes statewide so they set out guidelines for clerks to follow and so from the inception since we began this proposal I have been in close contact with her name is Bridget and so I was sending her I've been in close communication with her and I was sending her our site plan what our thoughts were and we were able to get the blueprint for the high school that we were able to submit for the secretary of state to say that although we are looking to move 10 precincts into one location based on the size of the two gyms at the high school the size of the two gyms allow more than enough space for them to be there outside of a global pandemic but also to be able to allow for social distancing we went through the traffic patterns the fact that we will have a single entrance single exit point where there will be no overlap and those measures are what have said you know the secretary of state has given us the positive feedback so those are the things and the thoughts that have already gone in place when we were drafting the proposal um and so that's why we wanted to go with a single location there were many things that were factored in um into air quality move air movement things like that so those things have already we've already discussed those things we've already talked over those things um with facilities managers on the town sign and on the school side um those things have been taken into account inside like to you know to communicate that with everyone I know that there have been many concerns about that and so those things um have been addressed and Shavina just give us an update on the number of people that you expect to vote in a national election which is what we have coming up both September and November and where we stand in terms of postcards that are returned to date sure so as of today our office um has postcards totaling uh 3804 we also uh have received 124 vote by mail applications via email or um what someone has dropped off in our drop box which takes us closer to 4 000 um excuse me 4 000 postcards um I'm going to pull up our turnout rates I hope I don't need you I'm going to try to navigate to get over uh so that I can provide you with those so I just wanted to provide everyone with some statistical numbers um so in our state primary in 2016 our voter turnout was 4,668 voters turned out in that election and then for our presidential election November 8th of 2016 we had 15,096 voters that turned out to vote um moving into 2012 if we're looking at if we're going to compare uh in September state primary 1,957 voters came out to the polls and so uh in the November 2012 presidential primary excuse me presidential election it looks like we had 15,520 voters uh cast a vote and then in 2008 in our state primary 2,206 voters came out to vote and then in that presidential election on November 4th in 2008 12,934 voters uh came out and I think sometimes when we look at the numbers it helps us to um you know to put it into perspective because we've already received uh in a in a matter of two weeks uh 4 000 postcards that have been returned um which means that voters are thinking about um exercising their right to vote right now currently uh in the town um as of Friday we have 17,092 registered voters thank you for that uh you're welcome so let's do some council questions and then we will move to public comment and after that I think we need to as a council decide whether we feel it would be best for us to have another council meeting on the 10th which would be what we have to do at some point because we have to vote uh by a certain date to establish the election uh warrant for um the September 1st election Kathy thank you um let me just turn my so I don't have to hold it down you're muted Kathy I'm not muted um I I I realize this was proposed with good intentions and with a lot of thought but even as it was described now I think what we do know um from lots of experiences is long lines waiting times discourage people from voting and so we don't know for sure yet it we're in the experiment mode on the mail um whether people request it or not there are quite good studies that minorities particular black and african-american are less likely to be willing to vote by mail so we've got some statements in the report that I don't think are factual um and part of that is a historic distrust of mail that you you you want to put your ballot in a box um and you think it might not get there on time and we know there's been a threat there's a real threat to the mail getting delivered on time um coming not from the post office but from a political arm so there's been a lot of people are saying what we need is more not fewer polling sites um to make sure that we have fewer number people because I even think um the notion that we can space inside putting a crowd outside in a long line is people putting people's health at risk so when I'm looking at the November statistics if we had 3,000 or 4,000 voting by mail if they all voted by mail 11,000 are showing up to line up to vote in person um I don't know what Whole Foods or some of the other places that handle crowds but I know what those lines feel like and I don't think it's 11,000 all you know trying to come in in one day so there's I think there's a real concern that we were suppressed the vote and we were distorted that with some people uh just giving up on voting um the other thing is um you know just I'm going to back and forth with the report a little bit a lot of it's true that some locations you have to travel to get your current voting site but a lot of them are near where people can walk they can just uh get there with a quarter of a mile and a half a mile and when I was looking at distances um from North Amherst it's going to be four miles from South Amherst down on Bay Road it's five miles. Applewood has a van but they're restricting it to four people in the van at a time so that is uh a lot of back and forth and unless we make a concerted effort to sign them all up for mail if we had a long wait time outside um in the heat the rain anything else the elderly aren't the older people aren't going to show up I mean they're not going to stand in line for a long period of time so um I've got an alternative proposal but you're giving me some sites can't have it because of other reasons like banks I'm not clear whether we have to reduce to only one at banks or potentially two but the idea of opening up the high school as an alternative place um if we had to move some of banks in um one two or three there are three precincts that vote there now if we literally cannot use the fire station thinking of September 3rd is our experiment um so only doing this change whatever changes we do for now and really study and then have a fact-based uh deliberation on what did the turnout look like do we see any biases by neighborhood did we make it harder for some people and if the grade schools are not open on September 1st some of this decontamination concern won't be there for the primary so we can kind of see what that and get a good feeling for what that looks like and then assess um whether if you asked for a postcard filled it out you vote by mail did you vote by mail because there are going to be some people that are afraid their ballot won't get it there in the time and they're still going to want to come so we're getting suggestions from a lot of residents could we next time around think of drop-off ballot boxes you know where you've got your your ballot and you just bring it and you stick it in uh Oregon has it I think Colorado has it I know we don't have it now so I think our goal should be protect the health of people but don't suppress the vote and that to me is a smaller number of people potentially at each voting site um not a larger number so I'll stop there I put a written statement in where I found a few citations of Brennan and others on the disparate impact on minorities but also the impact as people reduce polling sites on what happens to turnout and Wisconsin had that experience so I know there was a concern about older poll workers being fearful of being at the polls so I think we do a full four full uh course to get those to get some young people they are being poll workers it's never I've had poll workers who had no previous training that did a perfectly lovely job um checking me in to me my ballot you know and no one pronounces my last name right anyway so I won't worry about that so I just I'm really concerned and I think there is a good evidence of my alternative is to just focus on September um I open up the high school as a new place but I I heard uh Lynn told me that we can't offer choices so you're either at one side or at the app another because I was going to open up the high school to anyone who wants to go there but if we can't do that you know in some banks or some or all of the banks please go to the high school because it's not that much further um and then talk more about that and then then figure out what happened um if we can still vote at the two churches uh see what happens um there and proceed along those lines um I think this took everyone by surprise I know when it was last presented to me I went home when I read this report and I said where was I out two weeks ago because I clearly was asleep at the wheel um alarm bell should have gone off then so I I didn't do my due diligence but I I really urge us to be not hasty on this um we certainly wouldn't want the impact of lower voter turnout and more crowds and waiting times and people turning away saying I'm not going to wait out here um whether it's the I think this is an important election I want everyone who's willing to vote to be easily and safely today so I'll stop there with that ramble um and um remind counselors to try to keep their comments to no more than three minutes uh don't offer a response I'm sorry Dorothy Pam okay I would like to second the idea that we actually do seek some additional polling places I I am concerned however in having us meet again on the 10th and I would need strong assurances that we could get the detailed information out to all the voters exactly where the changes changed polling places would be I do think the idea of tents for people in line um it's a good addition I totally support the ballot boxes at any polling place that we have official polling place because that allows people to go to the one that's nearest to them uh or the one they're used to going to um I see a lot of problems uh certainly if I'm not prepared to vote yes on this tonight and certainly not for any plan that would be permanent we're going to do something for September and then I think Kathy's right we're going to look at it and analyze it and say how can we make this better for November um and then make that vote then so I I understand that this plan was put together with the best of reasons and with a lot of thought but the response to it is tremendous tremendously worried and against it so I think we have got to listen to listen to the people because voting is the most important thing Andy Steinger yes um but I guess that I was thinking about two questions one was um in the statistics that were presented for the number of people who voted in the 2016 presidential election did that include the people who voted early voting and how many if so how many people voted early voting in that election um the other question that I have is uh going back to the school's issue because uh do we know yet whether their intention is to set up the gymnasiums at Fort River and Wildwood for classroom space to allow for more spacing and if so what will I do for the November election in addition to the question of do we have a start date for school yet scheduled. Shavina you might want to go ahead and answer at least the first question and then I don't know Paul if you have any further knowledge on the schools. So the first question the uh the results do include the early voting I didn't I did not um manipulate the uh the search to get it from early voting to um to actual election day results but I what I will add is in the March primary this March in our presidential primary 363 voters requested an absentee ballot and this is pre-pandemic pre-mail-in vote and 320 of those 363 returned their ballot so that is an indication of how voters respond so when a voter requests that we in our town when a voter requests a ballot they return their ballot they cast their ballot um and so with us having nearly 4,000 vote by mail applications in our office we can make a a clear assumption that those ballots will be returned to us I also would like to add we've ordered a ballot box it'll be here before the September 1st that will go it'll be a free-standing secure ballot box that will go on the main street side of town hall also the distance from the nearest uh bus stop to the high school is about a quarter of a mile as well and PBTA has agreed to assist in creating a travel plan for any voters who will take the PBTA bus to the high school if the um proposal passes I spoke to Paul at PBTA on Friday if you want me to weigh in the high school will not be in session the way I understand it on September 1 and staff are fixed I believe are expected to be back on September 1 for the elementary schools but students are not expected to be back and do you know when students will be back for the elementary school well I don't think they've actually made that final decision yet there's lots of different plans out there but I don't know off the top of my head um and do you know whether they're planning to use their gyms for classrooms I don't I can find that out though okay George you have your hand up a question for Sivina um if I understand you correctly um the high school as a potential location has been vetted thoroughly by the Secretary of State as meeting all the requirements for COVID-19 um and that's set but no other are traditional 10 polling places 10 sites or whatever but are not and so they would all have to pass some kind of state inspection or review and it's clear that there are some that probably won't or can't and so from your perspective there's just enormous uncertainty about where um you can even have voting locations so part of the logic behind this proposal is actually to be clear to the voters early on that this is where they will go and that's it that's that's and that solves that issue so I guess my question for you is these the other the sites we normally use don't they have to be if we're going to use them they have to be examined by the state and meet all the various requirements for COVID-19 before you can say they can be used that is correct and so that's our biggest problem is with the banks because um the if there's three precincts in there and so two of those precincts we can't um accommodate for social distancing so we would have to find two other locations um while we can reduce the amount of booths and yes we can have uh voters wait in a line outside at our other site um that that particular location would still create a need or a necessity for us to find another location um and then with us not being able to use the um the north fire station we'd also have to find another location so that would be three precincts that we have to find in addition to Crocker farm so now we're up to four um locations that we have to relocate um anywhere and I would think that would create enormous confusion amongst the voters and it would cause a great deal yes and I think the greatest threat of suppression of voting is the simple fact you don't know where you're supposed to vote and that's what the issue seems to be here and uh this is not an ideal solution but we're not in an ideal situation and I think the most important thing is that for anyone who wants to vote physically um they know where exactly the one place is and that's it and it seems to me it would be prudent for many people especially those who are concerned about COVID-19 um to vote by mail and we're already working very hard to make that possible we've gotten a very positive response um so I'm really struggling with some of the arguments I've heard earlier that somehow this is some attempt to suppress the vote it seems in fact that the vote will most likely be suppressed if we don't follow this plan because people will be absolutely confused about where they're supposed to go and by the time they figure it out it'll be much too late uh Shalini um yes I just uh we had a district five meeting and I just wanted to again share that most people were very against this for several reasons that have already been stated one of the things that was really important is that even if we have pvta or public transportation that's doing the shuttles for people people don't know about that so and that's the hard part is how do we let people know so the confusion about where where to vote and how to get there even if we solve these logistical issues the important gap is always in how do we let people know that this is happening um so that's a big gap and then um I'm and I think there was a little confusion about 15 000 maybe not 15 let's say half of the people vote online but they're going to be standing in a line like 8 000 people standing in a line they waiting to vote how what that's going to look like and how will the precincts be divided within the school so there was a question around that and I think one of the suggestions was to just have three places like in north central and south so to have three polling and the last thing is even if you do go ahead with this it needs to be a temporary thing just for this year not a permanent change if I miss anything Darcy do add to that thank you okay Steve Schreiber yeah so I just wanted to mention the I mean others have said this but what a remarkable thing that we actually have 4 000 polling places right now basically people's mailboxes first time in first time in history that we've had that been polling places so we really need to keep that in context that really the effort is to keep people away from the actual physical polling place trust the mail I still trust the mail no matter what what said or no matter what effort it is to take away your right to mail who can believe that we're actually saying that but um so far it's been working for me the other thing is the more choices and I think councilor Ryan said this to a certain degree but the more choices you give people the more likely it is for people to go to the wrong place so we are the informed and a lot of the letter writers are the informed you know the people that show up at your district meetings the people that write you letters these are people that are paying attention and these are people that will know where to vote and these are often also people that have a long history of voting but that's a very that's a subset there are lots of people that are new to town you know particularly in a presidential primary year maybe they're students just maybe they're new to town for other reasons they often go to the wrong polling place so that to me is a form of voter suppression you show up at Wildwood you're supposed to vote at Bang Center you don't have a car it's raining out you're finished you're not going to vote or you might vote a provisional ballot at Wildwood that vote won't be counted or maybe maybe the town clerk can correct me on that but that to me the more choices you give actually the more chance for error you introduce so my other comment is that there literally is no place in Amherst other than the old Bertucci's that is better sort of by public transportation than the high school gym so every stop in Amherst either stops at that stop in front of every bus in Amherst either stops at that bus stop near Bertucci's or the UMass circulator buses um turn the corner onto east pleasant street and they stopped right in front of where the bank of america etm building is so if you're taking a UMass circulator route or if you're taking one of the more long distance pvta routes they all stop within a third of a mile of the high school gym so i think having a single polling place i totally get having 10,000 people wave in line is a terrible idea but on the other hand of clarity of people understanding that oh it's an election let's go vote at the high school is is um actually helps actually helps enfranchise the okay mandy joe hannicky you have your hand up and i also want to mention that superintendent dr mic morris has offered to join to answer questions about the schools and he's uh coming in um as soon as he gets the right link uh mandy joe thank you um i've struggled with this decision um and i'm still struggling with it but i want to clarify a couple of things and hopefully there are tongue clerks in us she just mentioned that there will be a drop-off box so i i want to know how many there will be it sounds like there might only be one but that means that anyone who requests a mail-in ballot can actually drive at any time from the time they receive that ballot until election day to drop it off in that box so they don't have to rely on mail so i want to confirm that that is correct um because i think that's huge um i want to confirm that if we do consolidate all into the high school it will operate similar to how the banks has operated which is that once you enter the first gym there will be 10 lines of people one for each precinct not one line with one check-in table for all however many thousand might decide to go to the polls in person that day because again i think that's a big concern and then i'm curious about this electronic poll books i did a lot of reading and a consolidation of all of our precincts into one location such that anyone who is voting can vote at that location um as steve was just saying um is something that actually many states are moving to um because of that convenience of ease of knowing where to vote without having to know exactly what precinct you're in um to do that um this one might operate slightly differently so i'm curious whether we are allowed to operate multiple of these vote centers um or even one with electronic poll books where it doesn't matter what table you check in at um that that all 10 or 12 or 15 however many check-in tables we might have can take any voter um such that we could maybe operate two vote centers one at the high school and one somewhere else maybe and i would have no idea where that could be where all voters can go it sounds like though that that is not an option um in massachusetts at this time and if that's not an option our option is to designate a location for each precinct um and then we run into the problem that at least half our almost half our precincts are changing locations um no matter what it sounds like and so what do we do with that it seems like advertising for one location where everyone goes is a bit easier to get the name across and the place across than four people four sets of precincts are changing um and trying to have just those figure it out um i was struck when i was looking at pbta lines that all of hampshire college is not served by a bus to their current voting polling location which is the months in library all students at hampshire college must somehow have a car or find a ride to get to months in because there is no bus that takes them to their polling place whereas if we move that polling location to say the high school there is a bus that takes them within a quarter mile because as steve said all buses go within a quarter of a third mile so if you were taking a bus to your polling location already you can still hop on that bus and get to the high school and i think that's huge um we could i i think the advertising and the knowledge is solvable um i was concerned when i read the cdc guidelines because they recommended more polling places not less um so i am a little less worried about that now that our public director of public health julie fetterman has signed off on this and believes that this is better um it still concerns me um so i guess the only other thing i want to say is i don't think i can vote for anything that might change after september i think we need a plan for both september and november because if we're changing polling places and we get everyone on board in september we don't want to have to change it again in november and try and re-educate everyone else that makes it even harder i'm okay with and maybe it's wise to whatever we do for these elections be for september and november but then revisit it in january and february when we're maybe through or can see the light at the end of the tunnel um but i don't think we should be doing anything between september and november whatever we decide should be for both maybe a couple questions um did you want me to answer her question please okay okay sure uh first of all i want to thank you for your comments and concerns so our the drop box that we ordered it's one drop box that drop box can accommodate a little over 16 000 ballots i went with the middle of the of the road size drop box um and then as far as the precincts and lines so we would have moving the polling locations to the high school we have to maintain the 10 separate precincts so there would be 10 separate lines between the two gyms so they would not be just in the main gym we would utilize both gyms um and so that's how we get to do the social distancing as well um in addition with the e poll books when i'm when we were in our meeting last week i clarified so the e poll books will be uh their program to be precinct specific however they will expedite the check-in process because it's easy to just type in three letters of uh voters last name and first name versus having to flip through pages to find their street go down that whole entire street and look for voters name so the use of the the use of the poll books and the reason that poll books passed in legislation and they were certified on friday um was to in a hope to to reduce voters having to be in a line if they opt to uh vote in person and lastly i agree um in and evaluating all of our polling locations um it was the you know it was my intent to have something in place that would cover both of these elections i i believe i mentioned this in the original um july 20th um proposal um when i first came on paul and i discussed moving polling locations and it was never um our decision or thought to change polling locations in 2020 um and and from a professional standpoint moving a polling location in a state and federal year is kind of like election suicide however um because uh we're in a global pandemic we have to respond it's always better to move a polling location in a local election year because it's slower you have um it's and i hate to use this term but it's just the facts um local elections are less popular and so voters can get acclimated to the change when you're because we have so many elections in a state and federal election year they're popular and so we try to reduce any confusion for the voters and we try to keep um things the status quo so we were already planning to evaluate polling location changes for 2021 however we have to respond to the global pandemic and thus that's why it's before us now and time is truly of the essence thank you shabina evan you have your hand up yeah so i think much like mandy i struggled with this i i think i left our last meeting saying okay this makes sense and then we started getting uh quite a bit of constituent correspondence and that caused me to reflect on this a bit more and i actually really appreciate this conversation that we're having um because it's helping shape where i'm at especially some of the comments from uh george and steve and from mandy um because one of the things that i think is important to note a lot of the emails we've been getting have been saying keep things the way they are keep the polling places where they are and what we're hearing is that's not possible some polling locations we're gonna have to move and that gets me thinking too there's going to be some people who are lucky enough to keep their polling location and others who are going to have to figure out where their new polling location is and there's going to be different new polling locations all around town and i think that actually has the potential to create a lot of confusion anytime we move a polling place you create confusion and so it's great if we never have to do it but it's clear that we do have to do it um and so i'm coming around to what i'm hearing from from mandy saying if some people's polling locations you have to move if we have to already educate some people about their new polling locations it's easiest to say everyone is going to vote in the same place i think that actually creates a lot of simplicity um you know in the 2018 election i remember we had uh early voting on campus and i had a student in my class who missed it and she told me at the end of class she was going to go vote and i said great where's your polling location she said oh i'm just going to vote at the student union i said no that was just early voting and she said well i don't know where to vote then and so i sat with her and we put her address in which was a little weird teacher asking her address but we put it in we found her polling location and she said i'm not going there um and i said well why she goes this is too much work this is too much hassle and i think that's an important thing that was brought up by by steve which is that um low propensity voters anything that creates confusion anything that makes them charter don't turn out i mean when i was running you know i had a student who called me i think it was a student who said um are you offering rights to the polls because it's raining out and i'm not going to walk to the polls in the rain and so we got them to vote we got them a car and so thinking about this in terms of reducing barriers and reducing confusion i've come around to the idea that actually the least amount of confusion would be to send a message to everyone in town that this year everyone is voting in the same place um i really appreciate kathy's creative thinking i i also appreciate as a scientist the idea of gathering evidence and making decisions however we know that voting patterns are sticky we're already changing some stuff around i can't imagine the confusion if people vote in a different place from the primary to the general i think that that'll actually make the situation worse so i don't think i can support that um and so i think that as far as creating confusion i think this makes sense the one last thing i want to say is we keep hearing um this idea of like oh well if 8 000 people show up can you imagine 8 000 people online like come on guys the polls are open for 13 hours right and i just checked 1200 people voted in my polling location in 2018 and um i was the only person in the gym when i went to cast the vote for myself right because that doesn't mean 1200 people are going to stand in line it's spread out over um 13 hours and the last point i want to make because i know we're trying to make this brief is that spreading out we're focused so heavily right now on geography spreading out geographically but i think that our focus really needs to be as a council and as a government how we can spread out over time so how can we one on election day get people to come at different times and i don't know if there's some way to do it we say hey polling location's busy right now maybe try you know later if you have the ability to do so um like some gyms are like it's busy don't come now um two getting as many people to vote by mail as possible and three getting as many people to early vote is possible because early vote is always much slower and i'm actually wondering if it makes sense to add early vote locations more than it makes sense to add election day locations because those are always great because much like we're talking about now i've really voted on campus i've really voted at town hall anyone can early vote at any location that's sort of the beauty um and i hope that's what we move towards in the future is the ability for anyone to vote at any location because i think the days of precinct polling locations um we really need to move past those because they only create confusion so this is i think like everything in this pandemic whether it's UMass reopening or schools there is no ideal solutions right we have a whole bunch of unideal solutions but i've come around to the idea that the most straightforward way to get people to vote given that we cannot keep our current locations is to just say everyone votes here this year thank you Evan Darcy i'm going to take your question then go to Mike Morris okay Darcy please unmute Darcy you need okay sorry um i just wanted to respond to um Evan's statement that um it seems like the most the least confusing thing to do would be to keep things as much as they are now that would be the least confusing thing to do um and i think i heard the town managers say that we could keep our current polling stations except for the bank center which Kathy's motion actually deals with the possibility of moving those um polling stations to the high school um and the high school could be that alternate um polling station i guess i feel like um we've heard from a lot of people in the last two weeks and i don't think i've gotten one email from anyone who said yes let's let's change to one polling station they pretty uniformly been opposing doing that doing the change so i'm kind of surprised that we're not listening to the residents and what they're almost uniformly saying in all their messages to us um i do feel sheepish about my reaction two weeks ago which was um support for the idea but after having our district meeting in district five um i i do feel like um there was a tremendous backlash and that we should be listening to our constituents um and we should so i'm leaning heavily to support Kathy's motion um although i've always additionally supported having a polling place at UMass also um and i think that we could manage if we had to make a change just for september and evaluate it um and i definitely don't want to make a permanent change this year earthy i'm i'm going to skip for a moment and ask mike to talk about the impact of voting in general at the schools elementary schools and specifically this year mike thanks for joining us i have not been watching tonight so i am coming in without the information of the last couple hours in the dialogue so i apologize we've got our own set of meetings multiple meetings this week so i i apologize that i wasn't tuning in but paul and i spoke earlier this morning and a couple things to note one is that based on tonight tomorrow night the school committee will be considering phasing models basically when students start in-person learning uh the short story is they all the models essentially phase in much more higher percentage students at the elementary level than the secondary level in terms of the specific locations you all are discussing at the high school at um at fort river net wildwood the nice thing is that there is a separate entrance that voters who come in do not have to enter anything any part of the school except for the gymnasium you know have talked to the town manager about industrial strength cleaning that could happen uh the reality is for our schools we are not allowing and nor is any school in massachusetts visitors into our buildings including parents guardians so i will say that i've gotten feedback of how unusual it would be to have the strictest rules around visitors that we've ever had in the history of schools and then for one day go the opposite direction and that is making staff in the school is very uncomfortable it is making custodian staff as well as other staff very uncomfortable that we're building in incredible safeguards for student and staff safety and somehow those don't go away so again the nice thing at the high school is there won't likely won't be too many students at the high school at that time and the use of the gym is less essential um if fort river and wildwood were reused it's a little more problematic because the quantity of students in the school crocker farm is our large problem and it will continue to be a large problem and i won't speak for the school committee i only speak for myself but the only way that voting happens at crocker farm is people entering the school and our plans now based on state guidance is that we would have our youngest students there our preschool students our kindergarten first grade and that's right where down where the voters would enter it will make our school community very uncomfortable in my opinion to have voters there one day ending at seven or eight at night and then our youngest students coming into the building 12 hours later no matter what cleaning can go on as opposed to the other schools there's not a good way to this terrible phrase but i'm tired and i wasn't expecting me on this meeting so i apologize there's no way to quarantine where the voting area is into an external space like there is at the high school there is at fort river there is at wild wood so in my personal opinion i have significant concerns about voting happening at crocker farm because of the there is no way to sort of court and off that's probably a more appropriate term where the voters would be located in that site and i think this was a concern that we heard from our community members for years and years and years before kovat about the safety of voting at crocker farm just because this voters have to enter the full building in order to go in and in a in a during a covert world i think it is something that i have significant concerns about certainly i can bring to the school committee to get their opinion about that but crocker farm is really different animal than the other schools because of the architecture and the structure of where voters would go i want to acknowledge that the people who had safety concerns in the past about crocker farm i agreed with uh you know school committee did some advocacy with the town to remove potentially remove voting uh or at least provide additional support for voting at crocker farm um but there were significant concerns pre-covid and and while they're not coming up apparently here i do want to acknowledge that um that they um it is a major concern school is closed that day i want to be really clear but with voting ended at eight o'clock based on our safety protocols we would certainly have to have school closed for multiple days that week and it would be awkward because it would just be for crocker farm so it leads to a multitude of issues for us because of that site we've looked at other parts and other areas of crocker farm where it could be held but they're not accessible the way they need to be for all voters and that was a problem so that's more than i plan to say but i do have some really strong feelings on the topic particularly as it relates to crocker farm and i'm happy if there's any counselors who want to have questions for me great if not i'll go on my merry way okay thanks mike we're not done alissa you have your hand up and have not spoken yet and then i do want to give the public an opportunity since we gave them a time specific and we've exceeded that time right and we have exceeded that time and i was going to see if you wanted to have people ask questions of mike but if he can hand it out for a few minutes maybe then great i'll go ahead so thank you um for those of who are concerned that we're not listening to our constituents we are listening to our constituents but in fact and and i say this in the kindest possible way but being a leader is hard and it doesn't mean you just add up the number of emails and the number of public comments and you say oops that's clear public sentiment guess we got to go with that we're more than that people expected more than that from us when they elected us to this position otherwise you could just run a poll for everything and we wouldn't have a purpose so i want to make sure just to say things that are slightly different than other people have said because all these concerns are very real obviously and i just want to emphasize again i'm trying to make the best of a bad situation we can't do umass right now i helped set up umass in 2016 we can't do umass right now when they're having the only people on campus or people who've signed an agreement about their global pandemic behavior it would not be appropriate for us to drag a bunch of people in there for one or more multiple early voting days our job and our partner at umass's job and hampshire which as mandija pointed out is not even on the bus line right now for voting and amherst college is to get everybody to vote by some means necessary and the easiest way to do that i still believe is the way by listening to the expertise of our town clerk by listening to the expertise of the other people she worked with yes i'm well aware there are studies out there about suppression of votes i'm well aware that there are people standing in line in other states that don't run their elections as well as we do and we don't want to see that happen and that's why we're talking about tents and benches and the way that will facilitate the lines this is making the best of a bad situation let's also remember that our neighbors in greenfield south hadley belcher town they've been voting in one place for years it's not a problem this is not an insane thing to do it is a very appropriate thing to do in response to this particular situation i totally agree with taking out the permanent change right after we've learned from these two elections we will learn learned a lot we don't know if vote by mail is going to continue to be a thing we don't know a lot of things but we can do a better job by taking this seriously right now i would much prefer that we voted tonight after we hear some more public comment than waiting another week because all we're doing by waiting another week is losing another week of opportunity to educate all of our voters and to find our way into every social service agency every precinct every time tell people why we made the decision and how we're doing our best to get them to the polls rather than arguing over the semantics of one particular thing that happened somewhere else thank you i'd like to move to public comment and have a show of hands of those people who would like to public comment on this issue at this time i'd like you to limit your public comment if at all possible to two minutes but understand that you may not be able to we will start with jeff mauser hello yes uh can you hear me yes we can i live on a ridge crest road i think it's precinct one now it was three um it might and i've been listening to this conversation and my overall thought around this is that if a lot of people in the town are saying that this is going to be more challenging for them to vote it's they're the one and we're talking about voter suppression like if people are saying this is going to be a problem for them that's really important to listen to and i've heard the logistical issues around some of the polling places but now i think having as many polling places being the same as possible is it would be like my first preference if not you know with with clear information for those three or four sites that that can't do it through the newspaper notifications and flyers to have that all be in the high school and have something other than that but you know i know you all are thinking off this through and i definitely agree with um mandy joe of whatever is happening for september needs to happen for november to keep you know it's it's going to be hard enough people will learn the hard way unfortunately whatever is happening now for um during the primary but if people are really saying we don't want this to happen they're they're saying it because it's going to make it more difficult for them and they're not just saying it because of the logistics but it's it is about getting as many people to the polls as possible so i think that's really important so i will end my comment there thank you thank you jeff for your comments gabrielle de villa please feel free to correct my pronunciation of your name and state where you live uh hi my name is gabrielle doggie lock i live in district five thank you for agreeing to take my comment first i'd like to thank my representatives from district five i was really happy with the way that you received our feedback and i appreciate you representing us well um one thing before i really get into it is that while hampshire isn't on the pvta bus line and there's no tvta bus lines going from hampshire college to the munson library that's why hampshire college provides their own buses to their students who want to vote in massachusetts elections so i don't think that should be a big concern um secondly i'd like to say on the topic of confusing voters by having too many voting locations i would first i would never accuse the people on this panel of intentionally moving to suppress the vote but when votes are intentionally suppressed and proven to have been intentionally suppressed it's never done by expanding polling locations it's always done by closing down polling locations or enacting strict voter id laws so and in terms of confusion while it might seem like the least confusing thing to do is to have everyone vote at the same place i think it makes more sense that the least confusing thing to do is to close the least amount of polling places so the least amount of people have to move to a different place in addition while it's true that voting is open for 13 hours uh voting is on tuesday so most people are going to be working for those hours so it's likely that there will be a long line long lines are hard enough to drive people away from voting and that's in years where there isn't a global pandemic that's extremely serious so i really want to thank the people from district five for reflecting our views well i would also urge you to vote on the tenth so that you can take in more feedback from the people you represent and i think that um in in terms of town level community i especially do appreciate it when the representatives are willing to listen to what people are saying i'd also like to make the point that in terms of voting and voter stoppage from lines it impacts working class people disproportionately and people of color disproportionately because they are working more hours during the day especially on a workday so thank you for taking my comment and i urge you to make the right decision thank you for your comment um myra ross please state your name and where you live you need to unmute myra can we assist her um i've uh i've asked her to unmute but i'm not sure if she's by her computer there we go okay i'm unmuted thank you thank you myra didn't work the way it was supposed to um i agree with the previous speaker and i agree with kathy shane's position i'm really worried about the line outside although it will be broken into 10 lines inside it will be one line outside it will be a very long line we don't have enough data about how many people are really going to vote in person we know very little about primary elections for example the 2016 figure that was given uh there was really no primary state primary there this is the first one that's been very big and we don't know how many people are going to vote we do know that a lot of people will vote by mail but not everybody will vote by mail and putting them all in one place is a problem i think that when you have fewer places rather than more places it does look like you're suppressing the vote even though you are not intending to suppress the vote if wildwood and fort river are doable and months in library is doable and one precinct voting at the banks is doable that's four um and if you are going to put maybe two in one of the gyms that's six and two in another gym and you can use two different doors to do that i know the building there is also a music room that is right by a door and it could be used for voting it's big enough and there is a cafeteria that is right by a door and none of those lines would converge on each other so the lines would be a lot shorter so i think you can displace the fire station and two of the banks and maybe one of the churches and or crocker farm and use the high school and not really endanger people's health i think you're not ready to vote on this yet i think it's a little more complicated um than then um you know then it then it appears at first and i really think that it's important to maintain the health and to and to make it as easy as people can't you vote in where the place that you used to vote in and you don't because we can't use that place anymore for the people who can't they get a robo call they get a mailing they get all kinds of information that says this is where you vote now and the rest of the people vote where they used to vote so thank you for doing this this isn't easy but i think it's really important that we yes encourage people to vote by alternative means but make it really easy for people to not feel like they're going to endanger their health and i'll try to unmute or mute sorry thank you for your comment myra jose lugo jose i forgot to mention this but you can also decide if you want to let it see your picture that's your decision please state your name and where you live surge is there a problem as far as i could tell uh jose is not muted so i'm not sure jose can you hear us jose i'm going to suggest that we go on and jose maybe you can please get back in line because we would like to hear out now you're unmute now you're muted but now you're unmuted no now you're muted can you unmute jose i've just asked jose to unmute okay jose can you hear us okay we seem to be having a difficulty at this time carol gray you're next so let's go to you okay by the way there's no way for us to show our picture we just get the option to put on our mic so i don't thank you um so i'll start with john lewis one of the last things he said that was commented on in his funeral was this is the most important election ever the presidential election i'm going to be very candid what you're proposing is draconian this is what republicans are doing all across the country you're proposing eliminating 90 percent of voting polls in an election year that couldn't be more most important election of any of our lifetime by far that some people i also find some of the language and discussion a bit more welly in uh because there may be three possibly four sites that have to be relocated people are saying that okay maybe 40 percent of the people will be lost but it would be more efficient to have a hundred percent of the people lost that doesn't make any sense to me um in addition miss brewer commented that the cdc is saying that you should have more polling sites i don't know why any local public health official would go against the cdc that's part of the problem with the whole country is states are not listening to the cdc we should absolutely be listening to the cdc creating more sites not fewer also if you read the cdc's instructions they say to think about completely things that you're not talking about yet consider drive-up voting for eligible voters if allowed in the jurisdiction where possible in your jurisdiction offer alternative voting options for voters with symptoms those who are sick or known as co good 19 positive post signs to discourage anyone with symptoms from entering the polling location buildings these things need to be talked about and you should read the cdc guidelines on polling stations um your i thought there was going to be an alternative proposal tonight that would keep the voting polls exactly what they are i'd actually like to see a proposal next time to increase the number of voting stations that you mass is not being allowed to do early voting it's critical to have a site there i think with students why not look to non-public buildings ask banks public libraries amherst college to open up their spaces uh in addition you should be plugging for poll workers uh i i know that they're looking for people but offer training call for volunteers if you're short on the budget i would volunteer if they were a plexiglass crocker farm um i i vote at crocker farm it's one of the easiest polling sites is i can imagine you walk in a side door walk up three steps and walk 10 yards and the room is on the left i don't see why that couldn't work well with schooling um in terms of voter suppression this is absolutely voter suppression in atlanta they reduced the number of polling sites dramatically people waited for three hours you can't have people outside waiting for three hours it's november people will get cold also the atlantic magazine had an article entitled the voting disaster ahead one of the things it said was that georgia virginia and massachusetts have reported record turnout for their primary elections and will probably see double or triple that in the general so you have to be prepared for that you should absolutely have at least the 10 different sites relocate before that you have that you have to relocate but um it's just also mail-in ballots so the atlantic also reported that uh in 2016 the united states election assistance commission reported that more than 300 000 mail-in ballots were rejected if a voter forgets to sign the ballot envelope if they sign the envelope the signature does not match the one on file or if the elections office misreads information many mail-in votes are tossed out and the studies from the n double acp legal defense fund said that the proportion of of votes that are tossed out that are mail-in votes are more asked you to wrap up please yes thank you i was going with the three minutes because that's what the online information said people who are people of color have their votes rejected at a higher percentage i think you're going in completely the wrong direction and this is a perilous time to do this and there's no way that you're going to increase voting by eliminating nine percent of the voting sites this is draconian don't help the republicans please please reject this i mean it i mean this is exactly what republicans are doing all across the country please don't do this thank you megage you're up thank you i'll be very brief because i've written to you and i trust that at least most of you read what i wrote or some of you um who is this it's me my husband just yelled who's speaking now say moi um i don't think this is draconian i think the town clerk has tried to deal with very real challenges and difficulties with at least some of our polling places but i don't think the solution is to change voting for everyone our polling place in district one hasn't been mentioned it works perfectly fine uh and i think we need to solve the problem we have and not take a problem and then solve something bigger uh if bangs is a problem then let's have everybody at bangs vote at the high school that's an easy message everybody who used to voted bangs now votes at the high school there were some things in the report on this proposal it just totally didn't make sense and i don't think helped the case which for example if there's needed there was an outbreak and there needed to be contact tracing it would be easier if it had all happened at the high school it doesn't make sense if there were more people the contact tracing would be easier it's just totally counterintuitive maybe there's some sense to that but somebody needs to explain it i don't want to repeat what i said in my memo that i sent to you today but i strongly urge you to take some kind of middle path we know it will suppress the vote we know it will suppress the vote to have everybody voting in a different place showing up at the wrong place not having the energy to figure it out maybe they'll read a sign on the door of the north amherst community building that says go to the high school but we'll we will have much less turnout i don't think amherst massachusetts is going to determine the presidential vote which of course we're all worried about well many of us are but i do think we nonetheless want to have our voting be have as much integrity as possible i hope that was two minutes thank you thanks meg uh john boniface please thank you for you live yes thank you my name is john boniface i live at 30 harris street in amherst i serve as the co-founder and president of free speech for people which is a national nonprofit legal advocacy organization fighting to defend our democracy and our constitution we've been around for more than a decade i have practiced voting rights law for more than 25 years free speech for people is currently engaged in key voting rights cases in several states including cases in pennsylvania and texas on behalf of the nwcp state conferences of each state challenging unsafe and unequal voting conditions a primary focus of those cases is to ensure that the states expand rather than reduce polling locations especially in the midst of this pandemic the plan to consolidate all polling locations to the high school is however well-intentioned extremely misguided and ill-informed councillor hanky helpfully highlighted how the cdc says we should be expanding not reducing polling locations i would just add to that that we issued a report in april of this year entitled safe voting during the covet 19 pandemic we issued that with infectious disease expert dr joy amuker g who's a professor at harvard medical school physician at bringham women's hospital and the partners in health chief medical officer she also happens to be on our board that report stated as one of the key guidelines that we should be expanding not reducing polling locations to ensure that we're having less people at each polling site so as to minimize the risk of transmission of the virus council ross as well you know 1200 people and he was there and nobody was there put 8 000 people in the middle of a pandemic it increases the risk of the transmission of the virus from a public health perspective this proposal to consolidate all polling locations to one place makes no sense from a voting rights perspective it makes no sense we work with the lawyers committee for civil rights with the nlacp with hundreds of others groups all over the country we're part of the national election protection coalition i know of no other voting rights expert in this country who thinks we should be reducing polling sites as a way to help people vote i know of none of those groups in that coalition who endorse the idea that we should be restricting the number of polling sites we should be expanding it's uniform in the voting rights community that that's the standard we should be applying for but don't just listen to any of that to council brewers point that we've listened to the experts how about listening to an expert who actually is study the impact of closing polling locations on voter turnout mark marieth is a professor of political science at the university of pennsylvania he's a leading expert on this very question he happens to be an expert in our case in pennsylvania that we're about to file a 41 page affidavit that he's drafted for us and here are his conclusions in three short short points that he makes number one after studying this and on top of all the other scholarship he has number one the cost of in-person voting when he talks about cost it's not just monetary cost but opportunity cost the cost of in-person voting increases when a potential voter's polling location is not located in the same building that it is normally located in when a potential voter must spend more time traveling to the polling location and when a potential voter must spend more time waiting in line at their polling location before casting a ballot number two increases in the cost of in-person voting will cause some potential voters to cast a mail ballot instead of an in-person ballot while causing other potential voters to abstain instead of casting an in-person ballot in other words not participate all and number three racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to be disenfranchised by increases in the cost of in-person voting in part because they are generally less trusting of mail ballots so we've heard tonight that there are problems with the bank center fine let's make an alternative for the bank center and that's the amherst high school but this idea that we should just throw out all the other polling locations that work according to the secretary of state makes absolutely no sense from both a voting rights perspective and a public health perspective and as to the point of studying this after september the reason to do that is because we are going to have one primary that where the schools as i understand it are closed so all the concerns that the superintendent laid out tonight are not relevant to the primary since those schools are closed and the schools are available and it gives the council more time to figure out other alternative locations that are close to people's home that don't require travel but consolidating all the one location is not a solution from a voting rights perspective the last thing i'll say is that it is completely incredible to me that four days after the nation marked john louis's life who dedicated his life to the right to vote who gave blood for the right to vote that four days later this town council would vote to make it harder for people to vote i cannot understand that and i urge you both to vote down this proposal and to vote for councillor shone's alternative proposal that will ensure that we can study this further after september one but not close all polling locations and leave it to only amherst high school thank you sue laury you're next uh i just would like to point out that a quarter to a third of a mile might not seem like a long distance for able-bodied people but moving all of the voting to the high school will absolutely disenfranchise disabled people who do not have their own vehicle and a quarter of a mile is an enormous distance for people that have cardiac disease pulmonary disease orthopedic issues neurologic problems and it is unconscionable to me that we would have all of the town's voting be taking place uh so far from the public transit system um so i'd like to point that out thank you thank you for your comments sue we have somebody who is at a phone number and i need to identify yourself and where you live yes hello yes um okay thank you you can hear me um my name is julian hind i live in district four and uh i am going to comment on voting um rights and my concerns around um voter disenfranchisement by moving the polling location to the high school my first point is that the ideology that um that it will help the public health situation um to move 8 000 voters um coming in um in a 12-hour period to the high school is absolutely incorrect there would be um there would be upwards of 8 000 people coming within a 12-hour period probably most of them having to wait in a very long line that possibly would not be socially distant so i do not believe that that is the right goal from a public health perspective when you can have fewer amounts of people spread out across um across our 10 precincts and not have that issue my second um issue is on the heels of the decision to not cut the amherst police budget by 82 percent this would be a double blow to people of color and low-income residents of this town um who have been traditionally underrepresented by counselors um and their government officials so i do not expect and would not like to see a third or a second excuse me decision um that does that my third issue is that for people with disabilities people low-income people who often have to work two or three jobs to get by they do not have two hours to go through the public transit system then walk three quarters of a mile and then after that wait in line for two hours risking getting COVID-19 to vote that is the exact um that is the exact definition of voter disenfranchisement um we have seen in many other states um polling locations be reduced for example in Georgia this has lowered not raised voter turnout so i understand the the town clerk town officials and town council members do not have the intention to disenfranchise voters however i would like to make sure that you are aware that that is the unintended unintended consequence of what you are doing and um you need to be very careful that it isn't disproportionately affecting residents of um low-income backgrounds and residents with disabilities and people of color so um my last point to sum it all up is i believe that even though there might be one or two um locations that are not available we can move those to an alternative location like the high school or somewhere else that we think of and that only changes for 40 percent of voters rather than 100 percent of voters if you want 40 percent of voters to be confused and a small margin of those not to vote or do you want 100 percent of voters to be confused and then not vote i think it's pretty obvious that 40 percent is the better option so i'm going to wrap it up because i believe i'm going over two minutes here pretty soon um but i strongly urge you there's many voting locations the same as as possible by what state law allows thank you for your comment i i would like to ask people to stick to the two minutes if at all possible zoey crabtree please state your name and where you live zoey can you hear us i can hear you can you hear me now lovely yes i could uh log into my computer again for some reason um i just want to say first of all i can i really 100 appreciate all of the hard work that has gone into this proposal i hear that um shabina has been talking to a lot of people a lot of officials and really trying to make the best decision for our town um but i agree with all the residents that i've been hearing on this call um i think it it is an appealing idea from a marketing perspective to say like okay we're changing it and all you know the only message is everyone goes to the high school um then i work in marketing that's a much easier message to share um at least it's it's easy to to frame it as an easy message to share but i i also find that what some other folks are saying um to be really compelling which is that like it doesn't matter if you know where you're you're polling place is supposed to be if you now can't get there um so one of the things that i noticed as a student um but even more as um a resident of this town for the last um three or four years um the the bus system is sorely lacking in you could even if you can get where you want to get which maybe you know all the buses go through and stop near the high school even if you can technically get there um it's going to take a while and and yeah people don't have a lot of time in the middle of of their work day uh to get off work or to show up late for work or to leave work early um to take care of uh voting and their family responsibilities and their work responsibilities so um getting there is going to be a really big challenge even if you know that's where you're supposed to go um and i also want to point out that um we spoke earlier about how um the percentage of vote by mail ballots that we received back was very high in their recent um primary i think this past march but we're in a different world now where a bunch of people are being encouraged to sign up for vote by mail um ballots that haven't necessarily done it before um because of the pandemic and so and we said we like 380 something for this past election 4 000 people have have submitted um applications so far that's a much higher number um obviously vote by mail is great um but we can't expect to have the same return rate on those ballots as we did previously because we don't know if people um are just doing it because they are feeling compelled because of the pandemic but they don't actually know how to follow through or intend to follow through I just don't think that we can count on that conversion rate to be the same so please uh I really think that Kathy Shane and Dorothy's not Dorothy um Darcy's comments earlier about trying to keep as many polling places the same as possible um would would be really best in the situation thank you um thank you for your comment Jocelyn Ford please please unmute and state your name and where you hi this is really Barbara Ford and are you hearing me I hope yes we can Barbara okay I live in uh District 2 and I am awarding in one of the precincts was and I've had many people come to our precinct who don't know where they should vote and um I'm thinking I originally thought that having this in a central place is a good idea because most people should know where the high school is if they don't I think we can publish an old-fashioned map early on and put it every place and um my other idea is this is all going to be key to help transportation help because people normally get to their polls by car or not or walk as you say and I think if we had a transportation at every old precinct that would take people directly to the high school and back eventually might be a good answer to this and it's possible that other folks who work in all of that in odd places could find their way to one of the precincts where they could get a bus or something to go there so that's my my thought on the matter and that's it for now. Thank you Barbara. Adrian Terrizzi please unmute. There you go. Yes hello thank you thank you Lynn my name is Adrian Terrizzi and although I'm a resident of District 5 I'm speaking tonight on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Amherst we have sent you a rather long statement but I will be very short tonight. Our main point was to ask for a postponement to a near date on a vote on this consolidation report. We feel that given all of all of the issues you've heard tonight that address the fact that details of this plan have not been communicated either in the proposal such as the health risks the potential impact on the communities around our neighborhoods the impact the adverse impact on voter access based on race national origin disability income or age of Amherst voters it's yet to be known in the details of this proposal and our thinking is that if you postpone and delay for a near date that the proposal can be better fleshed out to give residents the opportunity to both understand as well as to provide additional public input which you have allowed for tonight but residents of Amherst are typically accustomed to having a great deal of public input and at least some more time to consider the effects of this of this change so we understand that Amherst-like communities across the nation we face substantial challenges in preparing for the upcoming election in the midst of this pandemic and we're aware of the outbreaks in massachusetts and the the thought that's gone behind this proposal you're presenting tonight please consider delaying and postponing this vote until the issue is further worked out among you a conversation i've much enjoyed listening to tonight and that solutions and citizen input can be better fleshed out thank you for your time i'm so appreciative of it thank you adrian um we have a few more comments and then we do need to move on please uh john page please can you hear me yes this is john page 683 east pleasant street speaking as a resident we've heard a lot of critiques with the plan for polling places so i just wanted to raise some of the strategies we discussed in the what we called the post-election stakeholders round table immediately after the 2018 election um with margaret um i think at the end was there george as well um one of the things we discussed was infrastructure on campus and off for national elections we worked with mass perk and other advocacy orgs on campus for absentee voting and early voting um and i know that work is happening now with the expansion of mail-in votes um but we also worked with umass democrats and other volunteers to commit to ride sharing to the polls and even having a number you could call for a vote mobile to transport you there so one of the most important decisions that we came to in that round table was that with campus officials committing to this was the establishing polling places on campus for national elections as the default every two years because we struggled to build that infrastructure from scratch each time um so hopefully i'll become part of no normal operating procedure i i do realize that during these extraordinary circumstances there aren't as many good options i'm a practical person so i understand that the 2020 primary and general will not be a model for elections going forward but i still want to raise these ideas that we discussed back then a couple years ago now um so they're part of the conversation and i would be happily happy to help with organizing any of those initiatives as well as i'm sure league as atrin just spoke thank you very much jose can you come back in and make sure we can hear you thank you see me oyen yes and then the place when i know she's told us this uh kia solamente hablar un poco de um esta tema de de información pasando la de los de la gente de la comunidad a ver cómo van a votar cómo van a llegar ahí a su lugar y si no uh entienden la idioma de ingles but did y'all catch that how many of y'all caught that it's kind of confusing right you don't understand because you only speak english right well the point i'm trying to really make here is now we're talking about having confusion limited now we're going to be making changes we're going to be making changes in another language are we i don't know if we are we don't have an interpreter here a large percentage of the voice of the amherst voters is not being heard we're not being served and so i'll just leave that one there for you to consider and i'd like to go back to the um i went back and i did a a a little quick review of the uh amherst regional high school accessibility report that was released in february of uh 2019 and i don't know if any of this is done as i was kind of disappointed that uh mike morris had left uh the meeting but there are some issues in there that uh the site parking and interest issues the main lot lacks ban accessible space and lack signage at the head some of the designated accessible parking spaces the parking configuration is not compliant in some of the areas passenger loading zone is not striped and lack signage uh we're talking about walkways have excessive cross and running slopes and abrupt changes in the level those are those are real challenges to people with disabilities and then of course we also have the disability of people who are immune autoimmune compromised and we're trying to put them all into one big space no matter how we we we decide here as a community to to line everybody up to put everybody in the safe space we're putting a percentage of our population at risk and we're going to be confusing them if we don't have the appropriate language we're going to be giving them a disadvantage and we're going to sit there and silence that majority of that part of our of our community's voice and so I wanted to share that with you uh just as to continue with uh everyone else's comments about how it is better to serve our community and it would be if we have to change one location rather than change many and just forget uh that there's a lot of other people that might be uh involved in this okay thank you for your time thank you for your comment Jose uh Jonathan Seville hi everyone in my audible yes you are good thank you um thank you all for your time and your hard work um I understand the difficulty uh that the task really asks of you to resolve public health guidance and state guidance and I want to thank especially the clerk for their really hard and thoughtful work on this issue and I can hear in in everyone speaking uh for the most part um your best intentions um but I want to second and emphasize the concerns we've heard here tonight and and give you a little framing um from my field so as a special educator we talk about the difference between intent and impact um and sometimes even with the best of intentions the decisions we make that affect other people uh can have an impact on them that's negative um this is something I try to teach my students and my own children at home um because the positive intent put forward doesn't negate the negative impact that comes after right uh there's a really great podcast that just started coming out called nice white parents and it discusses in a school system in New York the way a group of really well intentioned um but also well resourced and very privileged parents interacted with this community um and and I think it it describes really well this relationship between intent and impact um I think you should use as your barometer for the impact the voices of the community that you are hearing I've discussed I've heard discussed several times that the huge number of responses that counselors got and the very clear message they got from the community um and I would like to shine a little light uh critically on on this sort of framing around well um it's hard to be a leader and sometimes we just have to trust the experts I think we've heard from experts here tonight uh experts on voting rights experts on disability experts on their own life um and they are telling you um this will harm me and the people that I care for um so I encourage you to put your vote to the 10th vote no for this proposal this evening thank you I don't want to take any more than is my time thank you for your comments Jonathan Lydia irons hello can you hear me yes you can so I just want to um give you all a second to take a deep breath and think about all of the things you've heard tonight you've heard from experts you've heard from your community and I am getting this very strange sense of deja vu of other town council meetings that I've been a part of where you have heard over and over and over again what your community was asking of you and you know what you dis appointed us heavily and wholeheartedly and you broke people's hearts so just sit with that for one second I'll take a deep breath of my two minutes so that you can sit in that discomfort knowing how disappointed your community was in you so I want to use the rest of my time to take you on a little journey because I'm not just someone who's been a part of these meetings but I'm also someone who has two small children and does use public transportation so I have two small children one of whom is too small to wear a mask the other one will wear their mask but it is hard for them and it is difficult and hot and it's hard for me to keep that mask on that child so I walk to my nearest bus just about a mile away I get on that bus and then I'm in a bus that is a small and enclosed place with my two children and myself and I'm on that bus for about 15 minutes before I get to the high school and then I have to take those children off that bus and walk to the high school and again be in a small enclosed place so I just want you to think about the people who have small children and do not have access to all of the amenities that you all might have access to and that other people in Amherst have access to because this is an accessibility issue shutting down polling places will mean that mothers like myself cannot vote and someone here on this call said that I've never had a problem voting by mail well then you've obviously never had issues keeping track of things in your house you've also never had things be lost in your house you've never had more than one person collecting your mail and I just feel like that is not listening to what people are saying vote by mail is an option for some but it is not an option for all especially those who live in apartment complexes where the mail is sorted and things get lost so please do not shut down my polling place because I won't be able to vote and that will be on all of you thank you for your comment going back to the town council and we I think we need to get a sense from the council as to whether or not you want to continue the discussion tonight and bring it to inclusion or go bring it further on discussion on the 10th but I do need to check with Paul and the town clerk as to what is required by when in order for us to set some dates certain Chevena are you still here so the deadline we have to make a decision is 20 days before an election to move a polling location so let me take a peek where that brings us I'm sorry I didn't hear that oh I'm sorry the decision the decision to move a polling location you have to vote the council would have to vote on it 20 days prior to an election and 20 calendar days correct correct that brings us to tonight okay and if the first election is on September 1st and we voted on tonight we meet that requirement if we delay till the 10th we do we still meet the requirement I am checking to I'm checking the the expanded legislation to see if the deadline change let me grab early voting not early voting sorry to hold people up but I think it's important that we understand what our deadlines are when I had down early voting August 22nd I wrote that in my date book early voting is done at a single location and so I guess the question you're asking is whether or not we have established that location I feel I believe we have you're pausing because Chavina is checking the recently my yes go ahead Chavina sorry my apologies my apologies for the delay I have I have so many I have so many of the MGLs printed so I wanted to let me just double check the deadline to see if it moved it does not appear that the year has been a change in the 20-day deadline and does that also include the question of early voting no because we are discussing changing our our regular polling location early voting um we we decide uh whatever location is ideal for early voting because that's just uh at a certain time it's not a permanent okay our regular polling locations are okay and am I correct that early voting at this point is scheduled to take place in the lobby at the bank center that is correct so um I'm looking at hands and I uh Dorothy okay I have a couple of points that are have not been yet made and I'm talking about COVID-19 and Dr. Deborah Berks saying that we are now entering a new phase and being a little vague but kind of scary about it and talking about the re-emergence of hot spots so therefore every time I hear about ride sharing I say gee I'm not allowed to even have my grandchildren in my car um or to go into their house I would not offer the a ride to somebody else uh in case I were positive or they were positive so the old ways of ride sharing I don't think that's going to work I also share uh Lydia's worry about the bus um I raised my kids without a car for the first um 12 years and I know what it's like to be taking them with you everywhere you go but on a bus now with COVID-19 I wouldn't do that um I think um the other area of COVID-19 that I'm very concerned about is the workers at the polling places particularly at the high school the the we keep learning more about this terrible disease but one thing seems to come clear that it's the intensity and the length of the exposure which seems to determine the severity of the illness and the polling workers our poll workers or the wardens are going to be in that high school for a long time with lots of people coming and going I just see it as as what they like to call a petri dish I mean I was for the idea for for the reasons that you the program was put together when it was first presented it made sense to me but upon further reflection it does not make sense to me and I think that wherever it is if there's any kind of concentration of people the shifts must be shorter for the poll workers even if they're young poll workers because young people are now getting it so the only positive thing that I come up with from our discussion is keep the polling places that work add new ones as makes sense um and really increase early voting um and if early voting can be done without having to have the specific precincts then you can make a couple of early voting places north center and south of Amherst and I think a lot of people will be very happy to vote in those circumstances and we can avoid crowds lines indoor air I just think of the air in that high school near the end of the day it would just have so many germs in it it would be rather terrifying so I hope we can work something out and I think if we could work something out sooner rather than later it would be better Andy you have your hand up yes I appreciate all of the comments from all the people we heard from today I end up with two things that I think about a lot though one is that um we've talked about the importance of people being able to know where to go to vote that that knowledge um inconsistency and therefore consistency is important and so it would seem that what we established for the primary election to have consistency carrying over to the general election when we have um predictions of even greater turnout seems to be particularly important which then gets back to this I'm sorry that we I couldn't ask questions of Dr. Morris when he was with us um but the question for me is not just what can be done in September for the primary and elementary schools you know not just being cracker farm because I think you spoke you spoke very clearly and strongly about cracker farm and why it's not an acceptable location for their purposes but to hear a little bit more about what the plans are for the other two elementary schools when it comes to the November election because if they have educational uses planned for the gymnasium then to think that we can plan with certainty to have elections in those gymnasiums come November um I I'm just not certain and that's why it would have been helpful to be able to have that discussion with them beforehand um if they are trying to move classrooms into those spaces it will be very difficult to do that um and the question also is had the number of days they have to close schools because in the end the we built school buildings for a purpose and the purpose is not to vote the purpose is to educate our children and that's the highest and most important use of those buildings um so that sort of gets me then to the final point that I just wanted to make which was um sort of my reaction to what Kathy has proposed earlier and I if we end up reducing the number of polling places but trying to maintain polling places in multiple locations to the extent possible and if that's where the council is a group is we as a group decide to go I would encourage us to still look for the fact for the question of consistency between the two elections and making sure the elementary schools are used for the purposes that we have elementary schools and the benefit of having some people voting at the high school but would be at least it provides some test to that so I think with that I will leave it and let another member of the council comment listen I just want to make sure we emphasize that if you don't want to ride the bus to the high school you can still ride the bus or walk if it works for you to early voting in downtown Amherst which at this point we believe is going to be at bangs and I just want to clarify that there are a lot of things we don't know and there are some things we do know I know that the town council doesn't get to decide where early voting is so why people are making up ideas as to how they're going to decide where that is is not helpful I know that it's not legal in Massachusetts to decide to vote it whatever precinct you want to vote at so when you combine those kind of wouldn't these be cool ideas with your rationale for why this is such a bad idea it's really hard for me to sort the wheat from the chaff there um town council doesn't decide where early voting is the town clerk decides that town council is providing that early voting is available vote by mail is available I understand that vote by mail is a new thing for us but to say that it's going to work exactly the same place it worked other places I'm not comfortable with my final concern is that I think we should make the decision tonight whatever it is and move on with educating people I don't believe we're going to gain additional information between now and next week and we're just going to lose a week in publicizing whatever the plan is I'd like to start public segments in the plan now Andy Joe I agree with Alyssa that we need to decide tonight one week delay is one more week we don't have to educate residents on where they need to vote and we know at least some people are moving so you know I read Kathy's motion it doesn't even declare where two of those precincts would be voting we need to decide that so we'd have to figure that out tonight and I'm not saying that that's not possible I am seriously concerned that the school committee will tell dr morris not to allow voting at cracker farm fort river and wildwood especially for november but if not also for september because while the students might not be in the building in september on september 1 the educators will be and if they're putting classrooms in those buildings they're going to be moving those classrooms in and they're going to have to figure out how to educate in those locations in those buildings and I am seriously concerned that we're not even going to have any of the schools available if not in september not in november because we can't tell the superintendent we can't even if we want them there we can't say open up your building um you know and so I munson is really tiny um I'm not sure I've heard from our town clerk that that is actually a viable location with social distancing um you know I voted there for now a year and when you take out and make the six foot distances the where where the line is everyone's waiting outside anyway because of how that line works if you even get five voting booths in there um you know it sounds like north amazon fire station wouldn't even be open we're not looking at potentially just three locations changing we're looking at potentially six of the eight changing if we don't have either of any of the schools or bang center for two of the three I guess it would be five of the eight but not seven of the ten precincts changing we're between a rock and a hard place this is not an easy decision but um you know I think the ease of saying everyone is at the high school and the space the high school allows will give some measure of knowledge and certainty to all of our residents and this is not where I was 12 hours ago or eight hours ago um but I think it's the best we can offer right now with 27 days until people vote at these locations um I think you know just like the school committee doesn't have anything any good options for schooling this year we got no good options here um and I think we need to pick the best of what's presented and I think that's at this point the high school for everyone Sarah so I can see the the fact that it would be hard to try to find other polling places um and that you know although Paul the time manager said in the beginning if we wanted to try to keep as many as we could we can find a way um um I think we have to find a way to have as many polling places open as we can and I will I'm gonna tell you from the things that I heard from people in my precinct and I'm gonna tell you from my own experience two kids with autism uh you could try to take kids into a restaurant with autism and I tell you how people are gonna react with that um not well people it's it's hard I raised my kids I mean I walked everywhere and my kids were attached to me because I didn't have someone to watch them that's not unusual um and autoimmune disease runs in my family I my mom had lupus and a heart transplant if I had to try to get my kids and my mom my mom could not get into a restaurant if she even with a walker if she had to walk a quarter of a mile I think the things that people are bringing up are very very real and maybe they're not real to all of us or it seems like it's simplistic but it is real and I I think that we have to work a little bit harder and and try to keep I mean even if you say to me you know well maybe only four could be open four is better than one and I think we need to try I'm ready to vote tonight and I think we need to try to keep as many places the same and open that's it. Melanie yeah we've heard from so many residents and we've heard from experts we've heard from doctors today and it seems like even if you have to work extra hard to make this happen we need to do it and one thing I would say is that I would go for the consistency between the primaries and general elections because yeah I mean and I do agree we should have the reports still to figure out what would the gaps so we can address them and do a better job of but making sure that we reach more people or whatever the problems were so we should do a report after the primaries but but we should still stick with the same and just the marketing cost and getting the message out is going to be really hard if it's two different places but I am totally for after hearing so many people and their challenges with people with disabilities and then so forth so anyway I think if we need to stay all night and figure this out game on. Kathy when I when I wrote the motion Lynn emailed me later that there wasn't a possibility that the high school could be an option for everybody that we have to have specific places move to the high school so Mandy's correct I didn't name which banks center of the three would move so I'm looking at the map and it looks like five and ten are closer to the high school and four is closer to bang so if I had to pick one to still go to bank you know I do it based on that because I'm focused on making you a it possible to walk to your polling site and keep your own if we literally can't use the fire station so I'm going through is it the fire station to it banks go to the high school the fire station and if Crocker as of November cannot be used then Crocker I heard Mike and we could verify and say that he can make the gyms work at Wildwood and Fort River will take some working and decontamination but he couldn't he didn't say absolutely not so I think I'm counting two precincts from bang move to the high school the fire station moves to the high school and Crocker moves to the high school and I originally wrote it that we make that decision for September and revisit I can understand the argument that we want to keep it the same for November but learn what happened because we need to we're not going to need to have a lot of information for that point including did the mail work did people vote by mail because you know we're going to we're going to know what kind of crowds we got where or didn't get crowds and so so I'm so I'm amending my motion to say with these exceptions and and name the two from bangs that would move fire and Crocker but I'm sticking with not one not so that that I will be voting against the consolidating everything to one so I don't know how to I mean if people want to move to that's I think emerging as the other option and Andy said he'd love a better answer on the two other schools but what I heard about the Zion church and the Lutheran church is those are feasible we have to rent them and we're going to have to decontaminate them but they are there and they are a close walk up up here design church there's riverside apartments there's mill hollow apartments people can walk and then the last thing I didn't make enough of the UMass decision as I understand that UMass doesn't want us to come on campus I'm wondering whether Paul with all your eloquence I'm getting the chancellor to listen couldn't say suppose UMass staffs an early polling place at UMass what we heard is students students will go local if if they don't know and that can we get them to staff it and police it the they have an entrance and an exit a perfect place to do early voting I voted early last year last time that was available because it was so easy so I think UMass is a real issue we can't go on campus and we don't want them coming off campus so we've got a whoa wait a minute does that mean you know and they're not going to be back in time to register for for September they may be back in time for for mail they'll be back in time to register mail for November so maybe we can get everyone so I just urge that we don't give up on a possible UMass and one a letter of can the chancellor rise to the civic duty of making voting possible on campus if we can't make it happen could the higher ups at UMass so I'm just saying that as a side because I had several people call me about UMass and not not leaving them out so I'm amending my thing where I just said the two places from bangs would move because it sounded like we have a I'm not totally sure on the fire station you couldn't decontaminate a cement floor if we're in a bay but if we just can't then then move that one so that we're trying to provide an alternative to keep as many as possible Kathy in order for us to actually have the motion I'm trying to figure out how we can I can I can type it into mine and show it on the screen I mean I just you know I guess Lynn do you want to there are it seems like there's many voices asking for more than one there are some happy with one and I like to make a motion I think the issue is getting the motion clear and make sure that it is consistent with the kind of motion that was put forward and we have two different motions one is the little locations and the other one is the actual warrant and part of me wants to say we're going to pause for this come back and vote before the evening's out uh and see whether or not we have um we can we can also try the vote that's already on the that's already on the motion sheet and if it fails then we come back with another one so um I'm let's let's go with the vote that's on the motion sheet and if it fails before the end of the evening we'll come back with another vote okay so George are you willing to I am ready to put into motion the motion that is on the motion sheet which is to locate in person voting on September 1 2020 and November 3 2020 for all 10 voting precincts at Amherst Pelham Regional High School 21 Mattoon Street as this will have no disparate adverse impact on access to the polls on the basis of race national origin disability income for age is there a second Mandy seconds okay just can I make just one comment on that the positive statement that that this will have no disparate impact we can't make that statement we're hoping but we can't say that you know even if you want to vote for consolidating we can't say it will have no disparate it's I believe the law requires us to say this I believe that it's required of us to say this because if we can't say it then we can't do it well we can't we cannot say that the evidence is that it could likely have a disparate impact so I've looked at that that it will not is such a we know for sure it will not um anyway I just want to point that out to those of you who want to vote for this motion so it's not there because I have absolute certainty it's there because the law requires us to put it there does the motion include the word this change should be permanent as the as the written thing came to us it does not I should not say that did I say that that's what I'm asking you I'm asking you if it's said well you're listening I read the motion so it changes again if you like okay that's good it changed I include that the it would be permanent it only is for select the election on September 1 and November 3 we begin with any further discussion Alyssa we also can't say that retaining the current polling places does not have a disparate effect we already know that we have pockets of town that don't vote now at our current polling places for many of the same reasons so it would not be factual to say that leaving it the way it is does not have that impact and since there is no such thing as leaving it the way it is literally even if we change one thing we have to give a report that says it does not have a disparate impact and so even if you only change one polling place you're going to have to say that and of course none of it's factual so it's just the best we can come up with as George said it's the law I also want to create two previous misstatements of fact students are in fact back in time for voter registration for the primary as is clearly stated on the town website the primary the voter registration for the primary is august 22nd classes start the 24th obviously they're back in time we've been talking about them coming for weeks the other point is you can talk a really nice game about how UMass should be wanting to provide this what I would say is that UMass should be wanting their students to vote UMass should not be wanting to provide this because UMass can't bar me from showing up on campus to vote I didn't sign the agreement about covid they can't make it a private polling place only for people who signed the agreement that's illegal so please stop offering up things that are not legal to do in in order to comply with your intentions I will be voting in favor of the motion as stated Kathy Shane give your hand up I'll take I'm taking it down and Andy Joe you have your hand up I just want to also mention whether this if this fails and Kathy's motion goes on the table Kathy's motion must also include the phrase as this will now have no disparate adverse impact on access to the polls on the basis of race national origin disability income or age because anytime we vote to change polling locations we must make that determination so Kathy's motion is a motion her intended motion if this one fails is a motion to change the polling location of four polling places four polling precincts and we would have to make a determination for that one too that it will have no disparate adverse impact on access to the polls on the basis of race national origin disability income or age and one of those that she just proposed was Cropper Farm up to the high school which we've heard from many people in South Amherst would have some sort of disparate impact if it has it for our for this motion here then it has it for Kathy's motion too um so we can't have it both ways is my point uh moving to the high school either has a disparate impact on those four locations that Kathy proposed or it doesn't and if it doesn't it doesn't have it for this motion and it doesn't have it for what Kathy would like to propose but if it does have it for this one it also has it for the one Kathy wants to propose as I said we're in a rock and a hard cry between a rock and a hard place but I'm going to vote for this one because I think is the least bad option here. Andy. I'm still stuck on the question about the elementary school and I want to come back to the email that you sent to the council earlier today which I believe I can now reference to and I maybe Paul or Shaveena need to respond to this but one of the bullets that you included was the school committee has asked us not to use the elementary schools because of cross contamination that includes three additional sites um and that was of course in precluding three additional sites they have uh to close the school for the election and then for a few days after the election to decontaminate and their plans are reopening including use of gyms for classrooms which is where the polls are located. If that is information and is pertainable to the November election I think that we need to know the answer to that because that's critical to a lot of our thinking about what is possible and if and if we're going to vote tonight we need to do the best we can with available information to us it knocks out three locations that are very important locations but it is the reality. Okay my mate uh Paul you have your hand up. Yes thank you so I did ask Mike that question are you using gyms for classrooms he says not for core classrooms but yes for special ed um and so that was his answer to that question Andy. Does that answer all your question Andy? Well it's hard to tell because I don't know what special education uh whether it's something that gets set up and is for continuous use or whether it's down I just don't know the answer to that Paul. So frankly I don't think they really know Andy because they haven't voted on a plan and I think everything's in flux so we're just making the best decision we can um and that they'll be voting tomorrow night. I understand and and the statement that I made was based on the best information we have at the moment it is totally in flux Dorothy. Okay um this is a question I that perhaps Paul and Chavina can answer is it not possible to use some private places I mean for example a bank or Amherst works a former bank I could see Amherst works being a very fine polling place centrally located. So a polling location has to be a public location and it has to have the accessibility and the private location if that's what you're referring to would have to say yes to allow us to use your location and so we're just at a shortage of locations in town but it might be a good place I'm trying to remember the entrance whether it's successful or not oh there's just Bob said there's a side entrance to Amherst works oh yes okay it might be a very good place. Thank you um Shalini? I had a question for Paul or whoever can we with respect to schools I heard that one of the issues is in cleaning the place for and making it ready for students and if you could get over you know get staff to do that I mean should be doable but I don't know what the challenges are in that and the comment and I wanted to make a comment about you know if you had to about will it have a disparate adverse impact on access to the polls between the two options here based on what we're hearing I mean obviously we don't know I in either case but if I had to choose one where I feel more confidence it would be with the option of giving more polling options based on all the people we've heard and experts and doctors and people with disabilities and kids and so forth and they all are favoring that they will come and vote if there are multiple and closer polling locations so I would feel more comfortable making that statement but this will have no disparate adverse effect if you go with more polling options than one. Darcy Paul you had your hand up. Yeah just just to answer that question we will whatever is required in terms of industrial cleaning the town would take care of that we'd be responsible for that well with COVID money pay for that we could use to COVID money to do that yes that's useful to know but it does but Paul but Dr. Morris did say that in Crocker Farm they would have to close for a couple days afterwards to completely clean the school because you had to go through the school to get to the polling place. The November election is a bigger challenge for them than the September election because students don't come back until mid-September under the current plan that they're looking at now but staff are back on August 31st. And the same thing is true for Fort River and Wildwood but in those cases only the gyms would be used and they're accessible from the outside so only the gym would have to go through the deep cleaning. Dave Schreiber. Yeah so this is Amherst and we're going to get conflicting information about everything so for example the discussion about accessibility that exact same discussion can be made for you know whether or not the high school is accessible that exact same analysis can put pretty much every polling place out of business if we really took that kind of you know analysis on the slopes and the location of typical handicap parking so I'm I'm still there's a huge body of voters in Amherst that we actually have not heard from but we've certainly talked about and that are the students so I've lost track of how many precincts are actually crisscross the actual UMass campus but it's a substantial number I know that um for the five districts cover part of the UMass property so that's where the voter confusion is which is something that I talked about earlier one of the speakers Barbara Ford mentioned the confused voters that come which is working I think she said when she's working at the polls so honest that's the group that I'm concerned about are not the the voters that who are really paying attention which are us and the lots of people that are speaking to us but people that are new to town are people that aren't engaged in this process so those are the ones that are operating sort of outside of this knowledge base you know the ones that will become the most disenfranchised because if we console I'm totally convinced that if we consolidate all the precincts into one bill we will be helping that group of voters who are would otherwise be confused so I'm voting yes there you have your hand so it seems to me that people in town generally figure out which precinct that they go to and if they want to ask someone they usually ask a neighbor they usually ask someone who's in their precinct this is where people know where to get to this is where people can walk to I cannot stress to you enough that there are a majority of people that are disabled or of autoimmune or have little kids or don't for real don't have a car and the thought of seriously do you would you want to bring your young kids or would you want to have an autoimmune disease and be on a bus for however long I think that we keep open as many places as we can as far as the schools go how many days did we lose last year to COVID if the worst case scenario is that we lose two or three days while things are deep clean then we lose two or three days of school to deep cleaning I think that confusion is going to be a lot greater for real if you have 100% of the people now not knowing where to go and also people cannot get there I can't stress that enough you have local polling places so that people can walk and can get there that's the importance of it that's why we've always had it that's why and this is this is a huge election we're not talking just about governors or town counselors we're talking about the president of the United States um Shalini and adding to what Sarah just said this is COVID and we prefer and the more people can walk it's so much safer than having people go and bus public transportation and all of that so the more we can disperse crowds the more we can allow people to reach places it seems like that's more I mean even if I didn't hear from anyone that just seems more logical but the fact that we've heard from experts and doctors and all the people to me is like we need to make this work somehow that's how I feel okay so the motion on the floor is to locate in-person voting on September 1, 2020 and November 3, 2020 for all 10 voting precincts at Amherst Pellum Regional High School 21 Mattoon Street as this would will have no disparate adverse impact on access to the polls on the basis of race national origin disability income or age it's been made and seconded and we'll start with Mandy Jo yes Dorothy Pam no Evan Ross yes George Ryan yes Kathy Shane no Steve Schreiber yes Andy Steinberg yes Sarah Schwartz no Shalini Balmille no Alyssa Brewer yes Pat D'Angelo's no Garcy Monk no and Lynn Griezmer I've been here before I'm actually going to vote now I am feeling very very torn by all of this and I would like to see a something that allows us to keep as many of our polling places as possible and move the rest of the high school I'm feeling very very torn Lynn yeah I have a I guess it's a point of order or a question this might be for the town clerk the town report that we had to file three days before voting to change a location had the location changes for the high school for all the precincts do we need to file a new report three days before we vote to change to any for any other changes yes so that means we cannot vote tonight on any other option am I correct in that you know since we file I'm reading it I'm rereading it now what was the vote by the way seven to six seven seven seven people voted against and six people voted for should build a new change or the new change would require a new report because the new report would be on the changes to the new location and that the new location wouldn't have a disparate effect on those groups right Pat D'Angelo's you have your hand up yeah I was just going to say it seems to me in a sense we can't vote on a new amendment that it would be good for the town clerk Shyvana to move ahead with investigating what she feels are the best options with the other places that we've talked about and that would give us time to then vote on or not I mean we have we've I'm not sure exactly how this works because we denied the motion to move everything to the high school but but we can't vote tonight to accept Kathy's proposition or amended or anything but if Shyvana is working on it in the meantime and then we set up the vote for when we need to have it I think that would be very valuable I will have to call the Secretary of State tomorrow to get direction because tomorrow honestly is the deadline for any polling location to be changed tomorrow is the 20-day deadline so I will have to call Michelle Tassimiere to get direction wait a minute that's new information yeah it's not 20 days from September 1st it is 20 calendar days oh yes with that question was raised in the beginning of the Shyvana please tell us again what you just said yes so in order to make a polling location change it has to be voted on 20 days before an election and when you asked me that earlier I said we had to you had to vote tonight on the change because the September 1st election brings us right to this week yep it's not 20 days it's not 20 days so I'm just not understanding the math 20 calendar days well it brings us to tomorrow tomorrow is 20 calendar days what no calendar 20 business days is she mean business days no 20 calendar days well 20 calendars days from today is uh the tomorrow no is the 20 is it 20 calendar days before the registration deadline no it's 20 calendar days before the election and the election is September 1st but but if we did it on the 10th that is 20 days before September 1st on my not 20 calendar days do not I think you mean work days I think you mean work days well that's I think what we're asking is it a Monday through Friday or is it yes but that's not a calendar day that's a business day the day is a day on the calendar because I just read the thing and it did say calendar days so I I just have to find that um so there is clearly a difference between is it Monday through Friday or Sunday through Saturday it's Monday through Friday Lynn yes can I make a motion to reconsider the last vote yes I moved to reconsider the last vote under all our council rules eight seven point six allow any counselor to make that motion second I think and who made the second seven point sorry seven point five b motions from the non-privileged side any counselor voting with the non-privileged side may move for reconsideration when such motions accompanied by submission of new additional information which is that we only have till tomorrow to decide and I seconded Steve you seconded thank you is there any further conversation yes I don't believe that a calendar day is the same as a business day I don't believe it so I'm trying to look it up on the on the uh computer on my phone okay because calendar day mgl excuse me what are calendar days every month contains 30 to 31 calendar days so a calendar day is a day on the calendar it is not a business day Monday through Friday so we have time excuse me Shaveena I'm going to provide you with the mgl citation one moment and yeah but I'll be with you in a moment the mgl is mgl 54 section 24 and what does it say it says the the alderman in cities except where city charters provide otherwise and the selection of towns divided into voting precinct shall 20 days at least before the biennial state or annual or biennial city election in 10 days at least before any special election of a state or city officer there and designate the polling place for each voting precinct and cause it to be suitably fitted up and prepared therefore it says that's 20 days it doesn't define day we have fine days it's I look it up on the internet and you'll see our favorite you just told me I need you point of order actually use the raise hand feature and not just shout out thank you and leave your hand up yes I wish that we had time to research this I don't know if Mandy knows the answer to this either but it seems to me that when I have dealt with the statutory deadlines in Massachusetts that the number that how you count days depends upon the number of days before a deadline and that for a shorter period of time you do you do not count week and days and for a longer period of time weekend days are included but we'd have to find that statutory rule it's not just something we can make up there is I think a statutory rule about how you count deadlines maybe Joe I can see her looking carefully at something Sarah go ahead so I just want to say with all due respect because everybody's been working so hard and I have not been here for 30 days so to all of you who have been working so very hard I just have to respectfully say though I it upsets me when this is such a big deal that we would actually come to vote on this without actually having an option because if that if we had to if we basically just had to vote yes tonight because we had no other option that's not a vote and that's upsetting so but I say that with all due respect because things have been really hard and I get it I didn't realize my hand was up but now that it is up I agree with Sarah that is there a way for us to meet as many counselors that can meet tomorrow and do this because it feels like we're doing this under like time pressure and it's not the right thing we're clearly hearing it from our community and this is like really diverse groups of people coming to us and it just does not feel right so if there is a way we can find an exception like the calendar just the definition of calendar could that be used to say that we are defining calendar to include Saturday and Sunday and get away with it but we're looking for the legal definition let's just wait off wait on that one Evan Ross you have your hand up this was actually in response to something earlier but I think it this obviously is getting very very difficult for all of us I understand Sarah's frustration I think part of it is that when this was presented to us on the 30th this council unanimously said yeah sure this sounds like a good idea let's go with that so the reason we weren't presented with many options is because we informed the the the town clerk to move ahead with this and to prepare before and so I'm not going to fall hard for not giving us options tonight because we all said yeah let's go for it one thing I did want to just push back on actually it was Pat's point of giving Chavina some time to investigate some of the other options we put out there you know Chavina she put a lot of work into this proposal it was well considered it was well researched she talked to the right people and if we're not going to move forward with it I think it's on us to come up with the solution because I don't want to send back to her and say we don't like that bring us another one and who knows if we'll shoot it down or not and so if we aren't moving forward with that regardless of what these deadlines mean regardless of the report is I don't want to leave here tonight if we're not moving forward with the consolidated plan without giving the town clerk guidance about where we want the polling places to be and she can come back and say that's not going to work but I don't want to say to her hey we know you did all that hard work we didn't like it so do another thing that maybe will reject I'm not willing to do that because she has put in a lot of hard work and when she last talked to us we said this looks great and now we're coming back to her and saying eh try again and I'm not willing to do that uh and waste her time again thanks Evan uh Kathy Kathy just so I understand if we vote down the consolidation tonight and we don't think we can meet again to talk about an alternative for the primary everything would stay the same nothing would change because we wouldn't have put out any motors we could right we can do that but go ahead okay so but that's if if we can't you know if we don't have an if Mandy's point is we can't come up with an alternative right now I rewrote my thing to have four precincts moved to the high school but if we can't do that tonight because we have to have a memo that explains it and we can't have a memo tonight so we can't do that tonight we're all willing to do it tonight um this is we we're in a box if we do nothing nothing changes we could change it for November 3rd I mean we have more than 20 days before November 3rd so I just want to we're not in a we can't make a change but um and and yes we heard on July 20th a proposal to consolidate everything I don't know why we didn't hear it earlier because I do feel that this time pressure um and trying to think it through is what hit everyone and if you remember July 20th was the budget and if you don't think we were on under we were hearing a lot about the budget and it's still reverberating so I think some of us and I will say I'm one of them I was asleep at the wheel I did not think oh my gosh what are we doing all I raised was transportation issues um but but the the number of people um Sarah can talk about what happens in precinct one we walk people walk from all all you know and the student housing up here I know you don't Alyssa because you're I'm just saying there's a huge number of people in some of these precincts that walk not that everybody can walk I don't do I think the lines make sense absolutely not but that's going to be a larger discussion why one side of the street goes one place and the other side the street goes another this is we you know it's kind of like why well that's the way it is um for for precinct one and three particularly but even when you but I just think if we do nothing tonight if the thing fails then we are every current polling site is in place and then we have a problem with bangs is the only one I've heard it we literally have a problem with bangs because of space constraints inside and Andy had asked me uh whether banks could hold two precincts but not three you know whether there are two floors where we could have one entering and one different so if we physically can't do three there then we've got a problem with bangs but but we're in if 20 days is not 20 calendar days and Mandy says we can't have this report with a different thing I mean I could write rewrite the whole report but it's it's going to be a lot of rewriting because it was rewritten around why going to one place made sense it it needs a major rewrite but we're talking about I counted it up it's two two two current users of bangs move the fire station and then crockers an open question of could it be closed for a couple more days for a deep clean and we use still use crocker for crocker that seems to be a possibility with three days of of less of people in that building so it's not an impossible thing to do for both September and November so I just want to it's not that we have no options if we do nothing tonight everything stays the same and then we have to come back and say do we want to change November I'm done you had a comment was that me did you say me all actually trying to check with our town attorney Mandy Joe do you have any further clarification I can't give legal advice I think it's the town attorney that needs to do it a cursory search has not found a definition of competition of time in the MGLs Steve so just there is a motion and a second on the floor to to vote to reconsider on the basis that we don't know what the definition of days is and the best information we have is that tomorrow's our deadline so I think that's pretty important so if that turns out not to be the case and we find that out then we can hold another meeting a week from today and reconsider that vote but I'm much more comfortable moving through this reconsideration vote to see if we have a majority that want to do that and then re-voting on but basically re-voting on the issue okay there is a motion on the floor it's been made and seconded it's to reconsider shall any I just want to be clear that just because we are now reached a different position of voting does not mean we don't respect the work that the town clerk did in this report I think one of our jobs as district councillors is to reach out to our districts and we did that and we heard from our residents and we heard overwhelmingly from diverse groups of people and that's what's changing our opinion it has nothing to do with the town clerk's effort and I do realize that she's put in a lot of effort and we appreciate that completely but I think that yeah that's all George Ryan one more time the town clerk has told us we have 20 days it's just a town clerk banks we have to move the north fire station is out shut down can't be used it's two at least the school superintendent has begged us basically not to use crocker but some of us at least are open to shutting the school down for a couple days just so we can use it again for what it was never built for in the first place leaving aside for a moment the other two schools that many people have expressed concerns for a long time about being used as polling places and now in the age of COVID-19 we're going to send countless numbers in there even though we know many don't want it so yes there are a lot of voices to listen to some have been here tonight but there are lots of other voices we've heard from from a long time and they're also voices of expertise like the school superintendent the town clerk they seem to have some weight too this is not an easy decision it's not the best decision by any means but it seems to me it's the only one we really have well you have your hand up I'm hoping you might have information I don't have information I hesitate to wait wait in on this because it's going to be my opinion we're so it's not a legal opinion so I don't know if that's appropriate or not go ahead so I think that if you if you the question is could we take a vote could the council take a vote tonight and the reason the sense you might not be able to take a vote on say the modified proposal was that there isn't a report three days prior to that now you could say that the report that was prepared it was larger and you're modifying it down so you have done the you know the broader broadest way you would have the most radical thing you could have done and you're going to broaden it you're going to narrow it down so you could could argue that this that modified vote could suffice we don't know that uh town attorney probably asleep not answering texts but um the if you vote that then you could if that's if we find out tomorrow that that's through the secretary of state's office that's not legal then we'd have to come back and visit it again but but recognizing there is a motion for reconsideration on the floor I guess Paul I'm trying to figure out what you were suggesting that we could vote a modified something so the the we if the sense of urgency is that the 20 days expires tomorrow and that you can't vote tonight because there hasn't been a report done three days prior um if either of those things is not accurate then you have time but we don't know so what is the best scenario forward I would actually so I say take an action tonight um the modified thing or reconsider there's a motion on the floor to reconsider yeah and um if there are any other comments Dorothy you need to unmute Dorothy you're still not unmuted Dorothy okay I just have them having a very Orwellian feeling that words are being defined in ways that I don't know we have a vote and then because some people don't like the vote then we have a motion to reconsider um I'm feeling pretty unhappy about that I think we heard a lot of things we heard from many a big cross-section we have an idea of how we can do things I don't want to be part of creating a COVID catastrophe and this election is big and it's huge there's going to be so many people I really don't want to be part of having made that or helped that happen so I hope that I would agree that we can do as Paul suggests and say that we had a larger very dramatic proposal we have then been reducing that it's a modified proposal and that we could go ahead and vote to stick with the vote that we had tonight that gives time for the town clerk and the schools and whatever to come up with a new plan and that could include as I said before checking some private places as well I just don't I think we've got the talent we've got the energy to do it and I think that they can come up with a great plan that would reflect what we have been saying here tonight and I hope we do listen so just a couple quick things yes it's absolutely ridiculous that we don't know how computation of time works for that particular MGL that's that's just bad yep that we don't know if it's calendar days or business days that's just a fact but we don't know it and it's too late to call anybody to ask them Manny Joe knows how it works in our charter and we know how it works in our bylaws because we've specified that but different MGLs actually have different ways of computing time so there is no standard so it doesn't matter what you googled or what matters is what the state says the interpretation is and it could even be that different levels of the secretary of state's office won't even agree on what it is so now we're stuck we're in this box right that we don't know what we can do I disagree with Paul I'm sure that will shock him in that the report actually isn't can't just be modified the report's not something that we can just modify into something else not that I agree with because one of the reasons I'm saying it's not a disparate impact is because we were moving everyone when we're only moving some of the people which in fact we are going to do there is no such thing as a default to the way it is now we are going to move some of the people and I can't I don't see a case I have not had seen a case made that that will not have a disparate impact on certain parts of town to move some people and not other people we might be moving some of the most vulnerable populations to a different location but leaving all the people who are used to being able to drive their car or walk leaving them alone so that to me is the very definition of a disparate impact so I can't say that the report could be used that way and let's remember as we keep saying we can't default to normal unless you're going to say sorry Chief Nelson we're opening the fire station so if if if the calendar computation is I mean whatever you want to call it the computation of days that Shireen is working under is today then that means the default is our current locations therefore we are going to open every single thing we have you we can't change that if that's true and so if we don't control use of the schools it doesn't matter really what Mike thinks now versus what Mike thinks two weeks from now he can decide at any moment that we can't use the schools Paul can't make him let us use the schools so we are in a really difficult place here and just exploring more doesn't answer what's going to be available to us on September and November Shavina did the best she could to define the places she thought would be used in September and November we can't control we can't say oh the school committee can just close down the school for three days to clean it's not our choice we don't get that option but we've put ourselves in that box if we let it default I agree that if we can find out tomorrow we can change it then we should nothing okay in the long report that we were given there is a paragraph on an act relative to voting options in response to COVID-19 section 11 the first sentence says notwithstanding section 24 of chapter 54 of the general laws or any other general law to the contractor then it goes on to say at least 20 days prior to the date of the primary election um it's a very it's a notwithstanding and and I'm reading the early voting it's seven days before the election and the seven is a computation based on September 1st it's not 10 days before it's seven days you know it's it's the way we would define it rather than business days so I think 20 days is in fact calendar days now I know that doesn't leave us with this but I I don't think you can read this any other way because it's notwithstanding and we can't get an attorney thing but we've never had a section 11 an act relative to the voting options in response to COVID-19 before this is brand new enacted and this has the same pieces that the three days prior to changing the polling place you have to make publicly available on the website at the office as a law report on its evaluation and so I also think the report that I read I can't accept that report in several sections and several sentences so you know whether or not I believe in consolidation I so I think the report has to be rewritten anyway to argue but I just think 20 days is in fact 20 calendar days reading this notwithstanding section 11 um and we're in the new horrendous world created for us by COVID which um and so that's that's all I can say is I mean I think we do have time if we want to take it Felony yeah and we just received an email that sent that we have several cases so I just like to cite one of them just pair versus spell 21 massachusetts 354 1826 which says after a time period is longer than one week sundays are counted unless they are expressly excluded could we just use that as the basis for our decision tonight thank you to the person who sent us the email the problem we have with um using that is it's not our town attorney and I I received the same email and appreciate the information provided um that it would be better if we had our own town attorney give an interpretation or frankly we had somebody who could look at this law and tell us what it is the way it was meant Dorothy Pam there's a new emergency amendment 22 has changed to h 4768 oh bob it just went off okay um it's about um COVID it's notwithstanding section 24 of chapter 54 of the general laws or any other general specific law to the contrary select board board of select man town council city council may vote to change any polling place to be used at the primary election or general election at least 15 days prior to the day of the primary election or general election if it is determined that the public convenience or public health would be better served with the select board board of select man town council city council determines that the public convenience or public health would be better served they may house all polling place in a single place the municipality if such a building is suitable so it says you can do this you can do that you can make your changes according to public health 15 days so we're getting all kinds of things all right there's a motion on the floor to reconsider it's been made and seconded i'm going to call the question we start with pan no ross yes ryan yes yes chain no fiber yes steinberg yes shorts no all male no rower yes the angeles no demont grease firm i'm going with a yes hannocky yes it's seven four and six against worst vote i think any of us have ever had to take because there's no good solution absolutely none and if we waited for another 40 minutes we'd be in tomorrow so um we still have several items on our agenda i'd like to check to see whether or not some of them can be delayed i think we need to vote i have a point of order um and actually i think that he just made that point of we voted to reconsider but we haven't re-voted great great okay okay thank you steinberg thank you so now we are voting to reconsider and um we're back to the original motion and that's to locate in-person voting on september 1st 2020 november 30th 2020 for all 10 voting precincts at amherst column regional high school 21 mattoon street as this will have no disparate adverse impact on access to the polls on the basis of race mesh origin disability income or age and we'll start with ross yes ryan yes shane no shriver yes steinberg yes forts no all known no brewer yes the angeles no uman no rissmer is yes anarchy yes so it's seven to five six the dorthy needs to vote no i'm sorry dorthy i did i miss you yes okay it's seven to six pat yes i'm going to make a suggestion not about um this vote we have a very intense agenda i would like to um move that we have an additional council meeting on the 10th so that we can complete this agenda but that we should stop at the end of this now and you know or the next few minutes second there's already is there a second i second that okay is there any further discussion point of order yes i guess i'm clarifying the motion stopping now or stopping after we vote on the election warrant i'm sorry i thought we had voted on that i'm very tired um after we complete the vote on the election i would like us to adjourn the meeting and agree to meet on the 10th to complete the agenda particularly because you know the policing issue there are so many things that uh master point and update things that really need to be looked at and if we don't add to that agenda it can be a shorter meeting does that help mandy yes so we have one more vote uh we will vote on the vote on the motion that has just been made and that is to carry the rest of this meeting over and to uh of august 10th at 6 30 and so the motion's been made it's been seconded i'll start with pan hold on if we do that now we can't vote on the warrant ah thank you all right then i take that back are we how do we put that on hold yeah we can table it till after voting on the warrant yes that's what i thought we decided now the next motion that is to authorize the warrant for the state primary election on tuesday september 1st 2020 with polls open from 7 a.m 8 30 p.m at the following location all voting precincts amherst vellum regional high school 21 mattoon street any joe you have your hand up yeah if there wasn't a second i'll second it um i had a comment on the warrant that it it needs i think two modifications it needs to say amherst dash pellum regional high school um and the third line down on what elect offices counselor has eight district i think that's supposed to be eighth district okay make sure those changes are made before it's signed this is a roll call vote we're going to work with evan ross yes you're drying yes yes sathy shane no yves schreiber yes indy steinberg yes garish wartz no ellen eval millen no and mr broer yes pat de angeles yes and pam no the vote is eight five against no abstentions and nobody absent we're going to now move go back to the table and that is to um meet on august 10th 2020 at 6 30 to continue the agenda that we did not complete tonight the motion's been made and seconded i'll do a roll call vote and that starts with george ryan yes sathy shane yes yves schreiber yes indy steinberg yes garish wartz yes ellen eval millen yes elissa broer yes pat de angeles yes garcy demont garcy i said yes oh thank you lynn greece mersey yes mandy joe hannacky yes berthie pam yes evan ross yes given that the meeting is adjourned and we will see you again on the sixth i mean on the 10th at 6 30 thank you thank you thank you thank you all good night thank you