 Angela, you may need to do this, actually, we're live. And do we know if we're on Amherst media? We do not know in the room yet. Yeah, I don't see them yet. There they are. If they're there, then we're going to go ahead and call the meeting to order. Okay. Are we recording? Yeah, go ahead. All right. First of all, Governor Baker's March 12th order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, general law, Chapter 30 a paragraph 20 allows us to hold this virtual town council meeting. I will call upon each counselor by name. At that time they should unmute their mic and say present. This will indicate they can hear me and we can hear them. I will call upon each member to mute your mic again. And after saying present. This is how we will conduct councilor comments throughout the agenda. Also using the raise hand function. So. Let me start with. Group. And start with. I'll come back to Shalini. Thank you. I'm present and I can hear you. Thank you. Not dangerous. No. Darcy. Here. Good. Green grease murders here. Mandy. Present. Dorothy Pam. Present. Evan Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Kathy Shane. Present. Steve Schreiber. Present. Andy Steinberg. Present. Sarah Schwartz. Present. And Shalini Balmille. Let me just check. Don't see Shalini although. I'm expecting her. So we'll wait and see what happens. All right. We can go ahead and at this point. We'll go ahead and get started. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm calling the August 10, 2020 meeting of the Amherst town council to order. At six 32. This meeting includes audio and video and is available live on Amherst media. Is also being recorded. There is no chat room for this meeting. If you have technical issues, please let's surge or Angela. Who is taking our minutes for us tonight. We're going to have a discussion. We'll have a discussion on the discussion. Use the raise hand button. If technical difficulties arise. As a result of utilizing remote participation. I'll decide to how to address that. During the situation. And discussion may be suspended while we address technical issues. The minutes will note if a disconnection occurs. Angela and surge will be monitoring councilor's connections. And if necessary, reconnected. I'd like to show the meeting now the slide of the announcements surge and could you slightly enlarge those. We have a couple of town council meetings coming up on the 17th and 31st. I just want to note that the 17th while there will be a regular meeting at 6 30 it will be except for a hearing it will be to completely focus on the town manager's evaluation and while the meeting itself starts at 5 that's actually a reading period. I'm sorry the agenda itself will begin at 7 not 7 30. So we're going to go on to general public comment and let me just state that we're going to go ahead and put the slide up of the agenda for tonight with timing. So we will now proceed with general public comment. Please note that based on the slide on your screen we invite public comment on matters other than those under agenda item 7 a which will take up hopefully by right after this. I'm sorry and also 8 a public safety. I'm sorry 7 a is public safety and 8 a is the polling locations. We will take up polling locations as soon as we complete public comment for this particular moment. But I do want to call attention to the fact we'll have separate public comment for the public safety item which is following up on our discussions with regard to the police and police and budget and also the polling locations which is regard to the polling locations for this fall. So at this point I'd like to ask people to raise your hand if you're general public comment and then ask you that you keep your express your views for up to no more than 3 minutes and hopefully see that we can then move on to the polling question which is the next item Carol Gray. Please state your name and where you live. Hello Carol Gray 815 South East Street Amherst. I'd like to comment on the zoning bylaw amendment that's going to be voted on later this meeting. I read and was very concerned by memo by Janet McGowan who serves on the planning board. She and Michael Burt whistle had submitted a memo and I'm just the first paragraph is very concerning to me. Counselor's Council President Grisimer has indicated that she does not intend to recognize me to speak to the council during its consideration of this motion. In addition planning board chair Gray Mullen has instructed planning director Brestrup to not include this minority report in the planning department's report on the planning board's review and vote on this issue. Therefore it seems to me the only way to get our views to you as members of the council is by this memo. So one concern I have is that in the 10 plus years I was a member of town meeting minority reports were always allowed to be heard orally and submitted in writing in the same form and with the same distribution as the majority report and I think that's a very important precedent to continue with the public and the council should be open to hearing dissenting views. It's also just a matter of respect for our citizens who serve residents who serve on these committees as volunteers spending hundreds of hours. If they take the time to put together their opinions as a dissenting view I think we should absolutely allow them equal time to present. Also in terms of the content of this zoning amendment what it would do as you know but for the public maybe not everyone knows it would take site claim review which is part of how the planning board decides on issuing permits. Site claim review which currently can be decided by two-thirds vote with at least five people present. This would change the zoning bylaw to weaken it in my view it's a form of deregulation it would change it to be only majority would be able to decide site claim review decisions and with a minimum of three. So these could be potentially significant decisions for our community and if at least two or three members of the planning board feel strongly enough that they don't want to support something you shouldn't allow a development that could be controversial to go forward with only three votes. I think that's watering down of the zoning bylaw is not necessary. Also Janet McGowan's memo says that in fact this has never been a problem. There hasn't been a single site plan review plan in the past year there was a chart that was part of your packet not a single one was rejected so this is a this is a solution in search of a problem and it's it's not a good solution. Also her memo points out that best practices other towns have two-thirds vote and it's there in the memo mentioned like four towns that have majority but that tells me out of all the towns in the state probably the vast majority require two-thirds. Yes we just lost your voice. Oh I don't know why. Okay can you hear me now can you hear me now? We can hear her Lynn you can. It might be you Lynn. Anyway hopefully hopefully you can hear me but my point is that there doesn't seem to be a reason to water down our zoning law zoning the preface of our zoning bylaw is that zoning is to serve the public interest. The public interest is best served by having a two-thirds even zoning bylaws in town meeting that always require two-thirds. There's just no point to watering this down. I urge you to vote no and I urge you in the future to always let minority reports be distributed in the same manner as majority and minority spokespeople should always be allowed to speak. You don't want to have less information and you don't want to have a monolith of views that shouldn't be what Amherst is about. I hope you will vote no on this zoning change that will be coming up later this meeting thank you. Thank you for your comment I will correct actually two misperceptions one is we did allow the minority report and they spoke publicly. George Malcolm please raise your hand I mean please state your name and where you live. My name is Georgia Malcolm I live at 950 North Pleasant Street in Amherst. I've lived here for nine years and this is actually my first time attending this meeting I'm a black woman with a black son. I think I sent you guys some information yesterday regarding that. Haven't really been paying attention because you kind of trust things to be done on your behalf but obviously cannot and you know I mean I think the thing that I want to say to you is you know there are some decisions being made regarding the voting and you know funds you know people say defunding I say diverting funds however you want to put it to go into programs to help the black community and I think it's important you know and I really one of the things I've learned is that you know positions such as yours have to operate from a position where you're taken into account the people that are marginalized the people that are disadvantaged and the people that are vulnerable so when you're going to vote when you're going to decide to close voting station our ancestors black people ancestors died for that right fundamental right so you know I was I don't know the full story but this is what I'm hearing that these decisions I saw it in the paper that is so problematic you know I mentioned it to my son who spoke at your inauguration he's like well mom that means that people who don't drive or how they're going to get you know I'm saying he he's kind of in a bubble in Amherst because he expects he he he spoke at your inauguration because he trusts in the system and I'm having telling him the system is failing right now miserably because they're not looking out for black and brown people you know my son had there's an incident my son was hanging out with a friend in a parking lot in in UMass his battery died and he called me at 12 o'clock and he says mom come because my car is died and there are two car police cars there I wasn't even properly dressed but I was through the door this was like George Floyd's calling for his mother every black mother heard that cry I did not want to be here and hear that my son because of misunderstanding and that's what we asked for we're not saying they fund the police the police is unnecessary right but we need funds to go into programs where my son should have been comfortably getting out of his car and walking over to the police officer or the police officer should have been able to pull up with him and say listen guy what's going on but no there's his lack of trust he's afraid he can't come out of the car because he's afraid you know the and let me say the police officers were the consummate professional they were helpful very nice because when I pulled in I'm like I'm going over there my son is on the phone he's like no mom just come to the car don't go over there I'm like no I'm going because then you know black women are dying also I don't want him to think so I went over and they were amazing I forgot their names right but I'm just asking you guys I don't want you know and I really it's really important I get emotional I get upset I cannot go to my bed at night I have text messages I can whenever my son goes through that door he has to text me I'm checking in I'm checking in minute I do not go to my bed until he comes through that door that's our reality why mothers aren't going through that so when you guys make these decisions you have to take into account our voices do you know what I'm saying put funding where it can help people of color so that we don't have to bury our children their lives are just as valuable as yours so you guys are making some really bad decisions and you're not taking into account our voices and it's upsetting and it's painful Georgia thank you for your comment and also for your email to us we do not have any consent agenda items nor resolutions and proclamations there are items during the agenda that the consent agenda items from last week applied to we are going to move on now to 8a which is the election item and with us tonight is our town attorney Joel Bard should we have questions such as that like that arose last week um we are looking tonight again at polling locations and at the election warrant and I just want to say up front I ask for everyone's patience as we move through this agenda item depending on how we move forward it will require at least eight votes to accomplish a change since our meeting last Monday night we have clarified with the two sources we must rely on for legal opinion the secretary of state's office and our town attorney and clarified that we were able we had until august 12th meaning we could poll tonight we could vote tonight therefore at the request of several counselors this item has been added to this agenda because of the possibility of a motion to reconsider first I want to personally apologize to the council and the public for the confusion that arose over this issue last Monday at the very late hour of 10 o'clock and later we never closed till about 11 30 including a motion that was out of order and therefore should not have been allowed second I want to thank both shavina martin our town clerk for clarifying the dates with the secretary of state and paul bachman for consulting with our town attorney this was done before 9 30 a.m on tuesday morning fine and out next of all and later when we take a break you'll see how to do this I want to urge people to sign up to work at the polls because we will need you third in order to consider this motion we have provided several procedural motions as an attachment to the motion sheet in our packet as I move through those motions either vice president mandi joe haneky or I will explain the reason for each and mandi joe will check me on the ones that I've worked on and meantime I also want to thank elissa brewer for her contribution to these motions so we're going to start the first motion is one where we have to suspend our rules and the reason we have to suspend our rules um is because this will allow us to reconsider and we have to do that because this is not a regular meeting of the council as we counted as one of the town attorneys mentioned to us there are rules we can always suspend them it's done all the time so therefore as a council member who on the at the 11th hour thinking we had to vote and had no good solutions I voted in favor of the motion to consolidate I am now making the following motion to suspend council rules procedure rule 7.5 for agenda item 8a 1 and 8a 2 is there a second haneky seconds is there any further discussion or question okay then we're going to move right on to the roll call vote and I'll start with shall we ball mill yes elissa brewer yes tati angeles yes darcy demont yes then grease mersey yes mandy joe haneky yes garthy pam yes evan ross yes george ryan george ryan yes kathy shane yes see shriver yes andy steinberg yes bear schwarz yes okay that's the first of eight um the second motion is to reconsider the vote to authorize the warrant for the state primary election on tuesday september first 2020 that occurred on august third 2020 is there a second haneky seconds okay we have to do this to make the motion so that it has to come from the prevailing side which it did the motion's been made in second and is there any council questions or discussion okay then i'm going to begin with the uh callie elissa brewer yes tati angeles yes darcy demont yes then grease mersey yes mandy joe haneky yes garthy pam yes evan ross yes george ryan yes kathy shane yes see shriver yes andy steinberg yes sarah schwarz yes jalony ball milne yes okay now if we've passed that motion but the next thing we do is we have to table that motion and the reason we have to table that motion is because we have to get to the point that we decide on the polling places um so the next motion is to propone postpone to a time definite consideration of this motion on the table the time being immediately after agenda item eight a one elections polling locations is completed at today's meeting is there a second anarchy seconds okay is there discussion or questions okay then let's move to the vote on that uh de angeles yes demont yes grease mersey yes anarchy yes ham yes ross yes ryan yes shane yes shriver yes steinberg yes schwarz yes ball milne yes and brewer yes okay so uh we've now gotten to the point where we can actually start into the consideration of locations right now to consider the vote on motion to locate in person voting on september 1st uh and 2020 and november 3rd 2020 for all town precincts at amherst regional high school what has occurred that occurred on august 3rd 2020 so i'm going to ask right now do we do an actual vote here no no we we need to vote the motion to reconsider the vote you almost read the whole motion so you need to move to okay okay i move to reconsider the vote on the motion to locate in person voting on september 1 2020 and november 3rd 2020 for all town voting precincts at amherst pellum regional high school that occurred on august 3rd 2020 anarchy seconds okay any questions yes truthfully i i'm not following and i know the people in in the town aren't following i i understand i thought i followed but i think you need to explain why we're taking all these votes and what each one means because i know you thought about it seriously but i just at this point i don't feel that's saying yes or no because i don't know why we're taking seven votes i know i feel very stupid but i don't understand it yeah it's it's not an easy thing to understand and i will just tell you upfront that i probably have reviewed this about five or six times and talked with mandy joe and elissa at least most often so the first one was we had to suspend our rules and we needed to do that because we had voted this at a regular meeting but now we're in a special meeting and this required that one okay the second one was we had to vote to reconsider the warrant which was the last vote that we took on the third okay and so we voted to reconsider the warrant but we can't vote on the warrant again until we have decided on the actual polling locations and so the third vote we took said okay fine put that on the table we'll come back to it okay with me so far uh bell i okay i i truthfully you know i know democracy is a rule of law but i think law should be understandable i i i got lost this last one i understand suspend the rules and we have to change the words and then we have to put in the new places but then you said then put it on the table as if we did it and then we but we're not doing it now but we're we're putting the motion to reconsider the warrant on the table we will come back to it after we decide on the locations okay all right okay and so the um motion that is on the floor is to postpone to a time definite consideration of motion regarding we already passed that motion lin okay okay so now we're on to four to reconsider the vote on the motion to locate in person voting on september 1st 2020 november 30th uh and november 30th 2020 for all town voting precincts free amherst tell them regional high school that occurred on august 3rd 2020 that one has been seconded what this is doing is voting that we will reconsider it doesn't say what we're going to reconsider it just is to allow us to reconsider is that yes dorthy i mean uh kathy just i'll just try to reiterate it the way i understand it this is the vote was taken to consolidate everything into one place and we're now saying we're taking a second look at that and we're going to think of a different one we're going to redo okay thank you okay is there any other question on that darcy tumon yeah i just wanted to say for the members of the public and dorthy anyone else that uh the all the votes are listed at the end of the motion sheet so um they're listed right in order and explained what they are so that helped me a lot so if you want to use that that's helpful yeah thank you and if there's further questions please raise your hand so that we help you and the rest of the public understand these various motions so we're now on the motion to reconsider it's been made seconded are there further questions darcy your hands a lot but i assume we're we answer that Darcy's hand is up Darcy i said Darcy look it down okay any other questions at this time okay and we're going to vote on that we start with de angeles yes tumon yes grace mercy yes hannity yes ham yes ross yes ryan yes shane striber yes steinberg yes schwarz yes all milne yes and breweries yes i just want to note for the public that up until now all of the motions are made seconded and have passed 30 to 0 so now we're going to go on to the fact that we've said we would reconsider this but what are we willing to reconsider and the motion on the table just to remind you that we are reconsidering is the one where we consolidated all of the polls into one location okay so i'm going to move that we amend this okay and to show you the amendment i'm asking surge to put on the screen the precincts and also in the next slide which shows in the column under option two this is a slight variation and i want to explain that it is a variation because it proposes that north fire station all which is precinct two will also vote at the high school okay so this motion that i'm about to make will move only three polling places it will move it will not move precinct one it will move precinct two to the fire station it will not move precinct three it will remain at a manual Lutheran it will move precinct four which is one of the three bank centers that is part of district three and it would move it to the high school it will not move precinct five which is the precinct actually that the bank center sits in it is the precinct that serves the various amherst affordable housing apartments etc they will remain at the bank center it does not move those people in precinct six who voted fort river it does not move those people in precinct seven who voted crocker farm schools it does not move those people in precinct eight who vote at months in memorial and it does not move those people in precinct nine who vote at wildwood it does move those people in precinct ten who vote at the banks and before i i'd like to ask i will read the motion and then i will um ask for a second and then i would like to speak to the motion okay so the motion is to amend the motion by striking all the language after november third 2020 and replacing it with a following language it's locate in-person voting on september first 2020 and november third 2020 at seven of the current eight polling sites and change three polling places to one new site at the amherst pelham regional high school 21 mattoon street as follows district one voting precinct one will remain at north zion korean church hall at 1193 north pleasant street district two voting precinct two will go to the amherst pelham regional high school 21 mattoon street this is a location change district one voting precinct three will remain at immanuel lutheran church 867 north pleasant street district three voting precinct four will change to the amherst pelham regional high school 21 mattoon street location change district four voting precinct five will remain at banks community center 70 bolt would walk district two voting precinct six will stay at fort river at 70 east street district five voting precinct seven will stay at crocker farm school 280 west street district five voting precinct eight months in memorial library south amherst common 1046 southeast street district four precinct nine will remain at wildwood school 71 strong street district three voting precinct 10 will move to amherst pelham regional high school 21 mattoon street location change for this furthermore this will have no desperate adverse impact on access and polls on the basis of race national origin disability income or age this change shall be in place for 2020 the town shall study the election results and patterns by mail and in person with an assessment of any desperate patterns by neighborhood race national or disability income or age and the results of new mail mail voting and report back to the to inform possible future changes in 2020 is there a second change okay Kathy Shane has made a second so let me just speak to motion first of all we heard you this is something that we have had more emails about than any items since we've been on the council um i want to apologize up front i've been so swamped trying to get to this motion that i haven't had time to answer all your emails and so i just apologize for not having answered all your emails um we heard you in many ways um we also heard that it is not a good idea to change polls during a presidential election year we also heard heard that the cdc although i don't always agree with what they say as recommended uh that we keep polling places not in an aggregate but in a um spread out way at the last minute during this last week we did remove north station north fire station recently we did that was because this this is some place where people live is where our student firefighters live it's where our regular fire force lives we would actually ask have to ask them and their equipment to vacate the location for up to three days and given that they are first responders we really feel that is beyond a sacrifice that we can actually ask um and then we looked at the bank center very carefully it's been the location of three voting places for a long time um and the reality is with covid and the need for distance the need for trying to create as many entrances and exits as possible we really feel it would be wise to move two precincts out of banks and try the new new location of the high school and so that is the reason reasoning behind this motion there's probably many people who would like to speak to the motion and i'm going to start by asking andy steinberg who has his hand up yes um i don't know if i need to make a procedural motion before i speak or to we'll have an opportunity to come back to it later but i think that i'm gonna um not make a motion now but explain what the motion would be i am uncomfortable with the idea that we are doing both elections in the same vote as opposed to taking two separate motions tonight one on each of the two dates so that we can have the opportunity to come back and reconsider the november third election based on our experience at the september first election on other changed circumstances and i say that for a couple of reasons there's a some questions about some polling locations and whether they are going to be um workable or not and we are trying and i understand you're going to explain them as we go along for example changes to months and to make it workable but uh it is a very small location in a and therefore the question of being able to get in and out safely in this COVID-19 era is a problem the second is the elementary schools i think that there's not a problem with the elementary schools now in the september first election because of the start of school but we have not had an opportunity to hear from parents of students in the school we have not heard from faculty in the school we have not had an opportunity to observe how the schools are going to be running we don't know if gymnasiums are going to be used at the two schools for gymnasium so that would be the voting places for school purposes and teaching purposes because in trying to spread out students among multiple classrooms in order to reduce volume in classrooms and create more opportunities there may be instruction going on in gymnasiums i think that for all of those reasons and just generally to see how the experiment works out at the high school and whether that actually was a workable experiment that the idea of putting both of the motions both elections into the same motion i think is problematic and i would appreciate hearing a little bit about some of the question locations that i've uh raised we actually have uh poll block man and chevino martin town clerk and jeremy le plant facilities maintenance manager they're prepared to speak to the three changes as well as show examples of some of the layouts for various of the various locations with these layouts will be done for all locations they will be done with the protocols of social distancing of entrance and exits and accessibility are there any other questions before we go to that presentation we'll come back for councilor comments later kathy i just i'll make a longer comment later but i think what's been done here reflects a huge amount of work to try to think through and the one thing lin didn't mention on the reasons this has moved was voter support we even got a letter from the aclu the western regional bill bill newman sent us a letter this this raised such a cry of pain from all of amherst from a long line exposing us to the risk really worried about the virus risks of wrong lines the not disrupting what people know and what i'm remembering is i started last monday talking about just do it once and then come back and i was strongly urged to not do that because changing midstream it's the presidential election so i just want to move on lin to the description of these sites because it it's not just responsive to people but it's extremely thoughtful and we got the equivalent of congressional testimony sent to us that enabled the option to report to be written with citations of lawsuits that are out there of cdc of safety concerns so it's not just that we heard from a lot of people but we heard many voices of amherst offering of such phenomenal wisdom and i i will come back to that a little bit but i i think it was particularly with an eye to november this is a big presidential year and the last thing i just want to say about the elementary schools i remember when i was a kid and we had the threat of bombs and i had to go under my desk for bomb for bomb drills if we had to close the elementary schools for a couple days to vote every child in amherst will remember how much we value the right to vote and the civic duty to vote it will stand in their mind in the strongest possible way so that's what i think this is all about is enabling and making it as easy as possible for people to get to where from where they live to where they go vote um so i know that was a long comment but that that reflection in this column of sites i'd like to go on and have the presentation that paul and shavina and jeremy are going to do and then come back for further comments and questions okay so let's take this down and paul are you sure i'll kick it off thank you lin so shavina martin who is our town clerk is here as is jeremiah leplant who is our facilities maintenance manager and so we have in the last week looked at several of the locations we started with the high school as you recognized and sorry if we can put up slides and if jeremiah if you can um are prepared to start talking walking us through we so we have i think four locations that where you want to just walk you through and show you the sort of standard that we would expect and i'll have jeremiah walk you through um and orient you is this is it's going to look really complicated uh but we'll walk you through this um and talk about how the level of detail that we will go into for each voting location uh that will be reviewed by elections um to make sure it meets their needs by the health director to make sure it meets covid requirements the fire chief to make sure it meets the fire code and the building inspector to make sure that all the codes are met so this first one is what was the original proposal which was 10 precincts located at the high school which is what is being amended so this is not on the table at this moment in time but we just want to walk you through it and jeremiah do you want to take the time to walk through this sure absolutely so when we started the discussion about moving all all of the 10 precincts to the high school we had a small group that went down and had a look at it and and as you say there's a lot to look at it's it's not only how big the spaces and how well it'll suit our needs but but everything around it it's the parking it's the sidewalks it's the accessibility is there restrooms available so we felt that the high school could support all all 10 precincts and we approached it by using multiple rooms so we have the first area where it lists precincts one through ten you see all the little stars this was sort of a queuing area and so we would get people in out of the weather and we can queue up five people per precinct and they would be in sort of a holding pattern until they could get into that the the new gem or the bigger gem and able to to vote so the green arrows indicate the the sort of that that traveling path into the facility you would pause for a moment in this the older gem on the left hand side and then when there was space in the newer gem to vote then you would be ushered in so it would require a tremendous effort from election staff to sort of coordinate all of these individuals inside this space and then inside the next space to the right as you see there is some more green arrows that's this travel path that i was creating so that you would approach this voting area on one side and you would be exiting on the other stanchions would be put in place so that we'd have these individuals leaving as well coming in they there would not be any commingling and and then if you follow the red arrow arrows and that's that's kind of how we we were looking to exit the building it was important for us to find a location that could support all of the individuals all of the community the parking but also a space that they can enter the building and exit the building and relatively the same area there was a strong concern with that if people were to exit in another on another location that they could be disoriented so the high school did seem like a very good fit next slide so this was us looking at bangs i was in a meeting with a number of the council members and we were we were trying to think about bangs in a creative way and how could this work so if we were to look at having a single precinct in bangs you know where would it be and the the best place would be the large activities room outside the large activities room there is a door so we could have a skewing line that followed along the sidewalk and then you would enter in in the large activities room where we're handing out the meals we do the senior center does all the meals so you could enter into that space and then once you do your voting have this exit pathway out the sidewalk is six feet wide so we could stanchion it off and kind of have three feet for for each the people who are exiting should be in motion it is a location that they would be wearing their masks or if they if they could so the time that individuals would be passing or be near one another would be would be minimal so it is a little bit of a challenge just due to the fact that you wouldn't be exiting into a large parking lot but you would be exiting into a public right away so I guess if we can flip to the next slide it's sort of a proposed interior so we see where we would enter into the building there is that half wall on the outside you would come around so again you're a little bit more queuing there you would enter in into the large activities room we would have our check-in desk multiple voting boxes set up on tables that Shavina and her team would would have ready for everyone so they would be able to wrap around that room kind of travel around the outskirts of the room on their way out of the large activities and into the the lobby of the the bank center they could put their their ballots in the box and then exit out the main entrance we do have a restroom right on that ground level for any the members of the community if need what's nice about this space is it is all accessible it is all on one floor and that was some of the challenge with some of the other areas of banks so this really did help us with distancing everyone and and had a nice flow where we have a designated entrance and a designated exit now Crocker farm we were looking at and i think in years past it was in the cafeteria is that correct right so we were looking at having the gym in the library the library was looked like a good fit because you would not be entering into the building too deep and Paul Paul and I and Derek we all evaluated the space and we walked through it and felt that if we could direct everyone to the Shays Street entrance it would probably be the best place because for one there is there is 30 parking spots there's a long long sidewalk that you could queue and then you have all this recreational area that's that's lower than the basketball courts again an area to queue so if we have the individuals park up at this roundabout it allows us to have this long sweeping queue line around the building into the double doors on this the southeast side of the library right through those double doors there is two restrooms and there's a set of fire doors so we can completely isolate this this little space this intermediate space before you can get into the library it would isolate it from the student population and the teachers when you and and then we have our single exit how I guess Serge if you go to the next one we can sort of show so we would enter up in this green dotted arrow we would have this area that would have to be in no stand zone only because we really want these individuals that come in head to the right check in and cast their votes as you see the the restrooms I mentioned there there is a large desk that that's existing for the library we could use that as a space so we're not bringing in any additional furniture one of the the challenges to the space was is all of the bookcases now to they were not modular they were all fastened together so in order to remove all of that it would be such a tremendous effort and Derrick and Paul and I we thought well why don't we why don't we use these and just encapsulate them so if we encapsulate these bookshelves and plastic which were only about three feet tall we could use a portion of them to put the voting boxes on and if you look at the green dotted arrows we have a lower countertop that had it was a like a technology countertop a lot of its computers it was an accessible space so we could have some accessible voting boxes there we're going to we could use the the bookshelves as essentially the table tops for our our voting boxes so that that members of the community could come in check in move through these these bookshelves and then walk the perimeter of the library cast their ballot and then head out the northeast door of of the library now with them entering and exiting on two different sides there would have to be some election staff sort of direct the net foot traffic so people don't get disoriented but but if you if you consider the the last slide we would they would be exiting where they parked so really when they park we just need to capture them on the way in we have the signs we have those election ambassadors telling everyone here's the queue but when they come out they're going to see their vehicles they're going to see the familiar area so I think that works quite well you can go to the next slide so Fort River School I I know in the past so I met with Guilford Guilford today and we kind of walked through this space he had told me that there was some accessible parking up up in the recreational area along the building I did have some concerns with that I know that there's there's opportunities there to get our community members closer to the door I I would say that I would probably want to have this I would want to spend a little bit more time and to consider where we have the foot traffic and where we have vehicle traffic because I would really want to make sure that the foot traffic is is safe so in this slide I just have the accessible parking shifted up as close as possible but remaining in the the existing parking lot to to the entrance so here we we do again have this very large recreational paved area it's flat we we can have a long queuing line there's not a lot of need for all of the stanchions and chains just because we have the individuals entering and exiting probably greater than 30 to 40 feet away so in years past I believe that they would enter about where the green arrow was but instead we're looking Gilford and I were looking at it it's having them enter in the double doors at the north of the side of the building and and then exit out the single door off to the side if we can go to the next slide it's sort of I'm I apologize the orientation to same so you'll have to follow so we have the we would enter in the through the double doors we'd have a check-in desk and it's so I have listed an area that's grayed out and the reason why it's grayed out is when the the schools were sort of de-densifying their spaces this is where a lot of the furniture was collected so that's an area where all of that extra those extra belongings are are being stored so we really only have about half of of the gymnasium which Gilford said this is about all that they typically use so again we have this big open room we can have the observers in the center individuals would be able to work their way around the room to the various voting boxes castor votes and and then exit out of that single door there is a restroom that's sort of through a small office but at least we do have those the the laboratories present so it I this this space worked worked well and now I don't have a slide for the the wildwood school now it is almost identical of a space unfortunately the entire gymnasium or almost the entire gymnasium was used for this these extra furniture tables so we would have to be a little bit more creative if we were to look at using wildwood because it just couldn't happen in gymnasium there there wasn't any space and if we can go to the next slide so here we are at Munson this this one is a challenge just just due to the fact that there's really only one good entrance and that's accessible and that would be right in through those double doors along that that long sidewalk and past the courtyard so here is a proposed setup in front of Munson there are five parking spots we Paul and I had thought that we could keep two of them as accessible parking and they would just shift so one would be so that lower accessible spot is existing the other accessible spot is in the green exit pathway so if we move both of those up we could use the the parking that's up front as a way of having more space for individuals who are queued in individuals who are leaving the premise and heading back to their vehicles since most of the community that that does vote at Munson Park at the church this is the the way that we sort of planned it out so we queue up along the sidewalk there we would have to have I keep calling I call them election ambassadors I don't know what the the terminology but I like the the term so we would have the these individuals that are direct and foot traffic since we have such a long no standing area so they these two individuals one inside and one outside would have to coordinate so that we wouldn't have someone coming and and and leaving at the same time because we do only have a three foot walkway so again this is this would be additional staff to make sure that this worked out well for us and and with this I would need to have Guilford's assistance with ensuring that that our our community members are safe walking along the road there if we were looking at the interior of the building now so we still have that no standing area this is still outside you'd pass through those double doors into that hallway you check in at that green table we have areas for the observers and you make your way around towards the stage here's all those voting voting areas and then we have our ballot box and then you would head out this one of the stage doors into the hallway and that's an area where you would have to stop and that coordination would happen between the the individual that's directing the foot traffic on the inside and the outside and when it was safe to go you got the green light you'd be able to leave the building we did look at the double doors off to the right there up in the auditorium but unfortunately there is two steps and it it exits onto grass now I suppose that if there are members of the community that can ambulate I I don't see an issue with going out there my only concern with with it would be is now we're sort of directing the traffic because if you're going around counterclockwise in the room you would now be passing individuals that are coming in to vote so if if we did allow for that there would just be some more staff needed to help with that that foot traffic so that's that's the interior of months and so so this is a type of thing that Jeremiah is working on for and depending how the council votes tonight will develop a plan like this again in consultation with the town clerk and the health director and all the other agents for the town we know that it will create and we have already put the call out to all town staff that September one and November third are all hands on deck everybody will be all staff unless they're essential to whatever they're doing will be reprogrammed to support the election on those days by being what Jeremiah calls our election ambassadors and because we have a lot of hours to cover from seven in the morning to eight at night and we want to be able to give adequate information to people do line comfort making sure people are in line we will be looking at what else we need to do in terms of ensuring foot traffic is safe like on months and we will be taking one the parking lane out of southeast street there we will probably need police officers to make sure that you know traffic is safe so there's as we move forward we will get into a lot more detail and probably discover other things that we hadn't anticipated but we believe that with all of our locations that you are considering tonight that we can make it work one way or another thank you Paul and Jeremiah and at this point let me just ask if there are questions from the panelists I mean from the council and then we're going to go to public comment Alyssa thank you very much I just wanted to make three quick points one is that when you say that all staffs on deck I appreciate that but I also presume that you are still protecting employees who cannot interact with the public that we still have employees like that that they haven't been forced to retire that they haven't been forced to take sick leave and that they are employees that can do work remotely or in a special office and therefore will not be required to participate in this if that's not true then I have a very serious problem with that plan when it comes to these layouts I really appreciate the detail here I think that it's very clear that before we do this again so say for example for November if there seem to be any proposed changes we needed to see this information before July 20th which we did for the high school but seeing it today makes it a little bit trickier and the only other one I wanted to mention is because you did a great combination of like the easier ones and the harder ones is that North Zion also has the difficulty with the entrance there's an accessible ramp there's a place with steps you can't force everyone to use the ramp because then they're going to pass by so are you looking at that kind of foot traffic control for that area as well because my concern has been and one of the reasons the consolidation was appealing despite all the other material that I was already aware of prior to our vote July 20th is that I don't want to set up a disparate situation where in one precinct you get to have separate exit and entrances but in another precinct oh well it's too tight we can't do that so I'm hearing that we're mitigating that a lot because we're dealing with some structural deficiencies we just can't get around but I want to hear reassurance that that would also in fact be the case for the others just as it is here so clearly on the staffing issue yes if staff cannot be interacting with the public they will not be forced to do that we we've put the word out to all department heads to allocate to assess their staff capabilities and who could be available to the clerk for this this day this is the most fundamental thing that we do as a town maintaining fair and accessible elections is a high priority from the clerk's point of view and for the town so making sure that this comes off successfully in a really difficult time I have to say and so all of our department heads are there standing shoulder to shoulder to support this effort and we have made this a priority for both September and November to make sure we can do it right and yes and not every staff member will be deployed we will be looking at where do we need we have one of our department heads is working just on staffing alone and where we where we have gaps and where we need additional people in terms of you know how we address each each building we look at it through you know ideally through location and being able to provide access but we're also looking at minimizing the number of people inside and using social distancing to accommodate that so if it you know months in was probably the more one of the more difficult spaces and that's the way the solution we came up with is this sort of traffic cop situation where red light green light you the way is now clear and then we hold people and that's one solution to a limited access when there's only one access accessible point so for North Zion that might be the the tool that we have to use as well Shalini you have your hand up for a question yes thank you so just quickly I want to acknowledge the work of the town staff and really bringing out the details and educating all of us what goes into especially this difficult time keeping the space safe for everyone and accessible my question was actually one we received from one of the constituents with respect to Crocker Farm about locating the polling location in the cafeteria as opposed to library could you just highlight why the library was chosen over the cafeteria thank you so thank you so we walk through this Jeremiah and I and Derek Shade the principal of Crocker Farm walks through the entire building we looked at the gym the cafeteria and the library the superintendent had actually suggested the library at the beginning of this conversation because he felt it was separated from the rest of the building it was not going to be used in any substantial way this year so if it had to be closed for the number of days afterwards it wasn't going to impact the students we looked at the cafeteria which in some ways was more attractive to us as as the election people but less attractive to the educators because when the exit we would use for that was going to be relatively near some second grade and third grade classrooms and assuming that if we kept it for November they were concerned about having a full of people going near there and because this the library we were able to figure out a way to do it so that it was really cordoned off from everything else and there were door fire doors that separated from the rest of the building it seemed to provide the protection that the principal was comfortable with then you're muted you're muted Lynn thank you and Mandy job thank you um Jeremiah thank you for that presentation I heard as you were mentioned in it that Wildwood's gym can't be used so I guess my question is what locations in Wildwood can be and what kind of problem or not problem does that present for the school committee those the superintendent in terms of you know the concerns that they've had of essentially potentially hundreds of thousands of people and at least hundreds of people walking through that building in a non sort of cordoned off manner so I actually can answer that because I had a conversation with the superintendent this afternoon and we didn't have time to put a different plan together for you for this um there is a room that they call the movement room which used to be called the music room I think it was maybe originally designed as a community room that's on I don't know the orientation it's at the other end of building from the from the gymnasium it has a separate entrance an exit and doesn't have much material in it and so that would be a room that would be sufficient to meet the needs we think we haven't done a full analysis of that space yet so it could still be located at Wildwood school and we would seek to utilize that other building and the superintendent felt you know I think I think they would like to have known voting in their school's period you know but we recognize that that's not for this election that's that's not on the table and so so he felt that that would be a room that we could examine and seemed to you know Jeremiah and Guilford looked in it and so seemed like it would meet the needs with the access and things like that and in many ways what is actually more convenient to voters because of where parking would be located and visibility right now if you go to Wildwood you have to go all the way around to the other side of the building and sort of find the polling location Dorothy you have your hand up yes in the plans you showed of the high school you didn't have a plan of how you would do the three precincts that are in the revised plan going to be in the high school do you have or maybe you do have one we just didn't see like a little bit of information on that if you haven't so we we have not broken that down you would just basically we would use the exact same space but just eliminate seven of the precincts it would give it provide a lot more room to be able to operate three precincts there are there other questions from the council uh Steve Schreiber is this just questions or is it comments so you could do it I'd like to go on to public comment before we go back to council comments okay are there any other questions from the council right then I'm going to move to public comment and ask people to raise their hand if they feel they want to make public comment on this right now I am seeing seven hands based on that we'll go with no more than three minutes and we'll start with Susan Lowry please identify yourself and where you live and let me just ask that you well may not be as repetitive if we need to we've also heard from lots of you all through your emails but sue let's start with you thank you my name is Susan Lowry I live in South Amherst and would normally vote at Cracker Farm I just want to point out that with shifting the entrance and exit to the building we've taken public transit which was easily accessible at the old voting place into the gymnasium by moving it over to the library there isn't a bus to my knowledge that goes down Shays Street so we need to have a contingency plan for the people who don't have cars of whom there are a large number who vote in that area so I just wanted to point that out thank you very much thank you for your comments sue Zoe Crabtree I believe you were next please state your name and where you live or did Zoe did you take your hand down Serge did we lose Zoe and the transition in I saw her hand up but then it suddenly went away so I'm not sure if she changed her mind oh I see her hand up so I'm gonna I'm gonna thank you Zoe name and where you live hi just wanted to pop in to resolve the mystery I was gonna ask the same question as sue thank you okay thank you Lou Miller please state your name and where you live I'm with Mila Pavlova Gillum and I live at 350 Montague Road in Northamhurst I'm in precinct one and I'm also warden for the afternoon for both voting days I have a question about the warden and clerk's desk during the elections often there are disputes that need to be resolved by the warden it we usually set up a secondary line I wonder if you had considered that in your layouts and if you wouldn't mind actually contacting some of the individuals who regularly volunteer minimum the wardens in reviewing these documents going forward as you finalize all the plans fall yes I think that's a really good point um what we did is um Jeremy put in the bare minimum things that needed to be in there and the there are other things that we normally have like the resolution desk that you mentioned and some other things that our election workers prefer to have and I think a lot of the spaces will lend themselves to maintaining that kind of providing those in addition but we haven't placed those on plans at this point in time but you will be doing that yeah great I mean in general I think I support the distributed model so if that matters to you thank you for working to do that thank you thank you for the comments you know with Noel Bridget may you come in and state your name and where you live hi can you hear me yes we can awesome so my name is Julian Hines sorry it shows up as Bridget that's my mom I'm just using my mom's computer um but I would like to a thank the town staff um for all the hard work that you put in to make sure that our election is as um is as democratic as possible and gets the maximum amount of people out to vote um in both the September election and the presidential election in November um I would like to address Andy's comment I heard that um you were wondering the perspective of a student or a parent in one of the schools and I would say I've been in I went to Fort River as um an elementary schooler and I've been there in years where they closed the schools for the elections and in years where they kept the schools open during the elections and I can say that I felt completely safe and as a younger student I looked up to the people who were voting there um as like oh hey I could be a voter someday if you know what I mean um so I really appreciated that and I also see when the schools are closed that our town values voting our town values the right to vote and I believe that that should be preserved at all costs thank you. William thank you for your comments Tim Nelsonard. Good evening. I just wanted to talk about the uh using North State State Station as a whole only place I mean for years it's been it's it's been a problem from an operational standpoint for us but now in this brand new world brand new world and it's it's even more and more probably problematic um early on we we took steps to to ensure that our per personnel were safe because they were they're here we are here to serve you to take care care care of you and we needed to protect our force there are a lot of the part part departments around around us who uh who who ended ended up losing folks to to COVID COVID in fact actions we have not lost a single per person no one has come come come back or been been ill because and it's because we took steps early on to in in in in in effect build above the bubble around around around our new buildings to protect protect our folks to exclude folks from that didn't have an absolute need to be in the build building and we and we and we continue to continue to do that and we've done done all of the other things uh in terms of mass gloves uh Santa Santa sanitary practices in the build building and when we go out go out I don't call again there are a lot a lot of the part departments around us who can't say that they that they have to add no no no sections at all for me it's you know it's confirmed that you know we're going to introduce really a high potential for infection into our space I mean this this space is a it's in apparatus bay it's um it's it's our our work our workshop is our store storage area area it's it's our gym at time as well but to in and again as to see see CDC said you know you don't need to in in introduce that in into this type type type type of space I can't take the chance on one person I'm I'm sworn to protect the citizens of Amherst I'm also sworn to protect my personal and and and and their family family is not just about my my my my personal they they they they take steps to protect themselves on duty and often because they know that that the town depends on them to respond to take it to to address their need and protect them so for and and again the space just doesn't land and land itself it doesn't have good good ventilation uh it's it's it's a garage for you know for the longer on the better term you know and and again as I said I'm sworn to protect the tech tech tech these folks and we can't we still don't know enough about this about this uh five five five risk at least you know and won't at least you know it's going to be a while till we know all all there's no no about it I can't take the chance on one person being insensitive I just I just can't and for us it's not about where we're to put a new new place that's not what we're about it's about moving it from this space some some someplace else and that's and that's really all we we want to protect protect our forces we can protect you um and I'll tell you on a per person personal side I mean I I love love the the ACLU but this is you know for us I don't see you see this is you know our our our designs is hard to have have the one place move as voters so pressure and as a black black man I guess I'm not gonna sit sit by and have some some someone tell me that you know that that that that this is going to lead lead lead to vote voters the professor if I if I thought five five five thought it would I I'd be dead that said this said again against it and also I know quite well how valuable our right to right to vote voters I've had family of members that have died that died trying trying trying to get get me the right the right the right to vote when I want to do so so I'm not gonna I'm not gonna you know stand stand stand by and and and have have folks think that well you know that we that we may not know how valuable that that right right right is it is but I also have an obligation to protect the folks that I we they mean the world world world the world to me they mean the world worthy because they're here to protect you that's and that's all that I have Tim thank you so much for your comments and spending time with me on the phone just left just this past week Bailey no no problem Bailey please state your name and where you live hi um can people hear me yes we can great thank you um my name is Bailey batty I live on north Whitney street in district four um I'm gonna be really brief on this I have more comments for later um I know that things are this is you know we're in a terrible situation everything feels like a bad situation um like everything feels like a bad solution nothing feels like a perfect solution um and I get that um but I also think frankly the school issue of like using the elementary schools is not going to be the issue that we think it is or that it is in normal years um and I say this as a teacher that I think we're all delusional if we think that schools are still going to be open and fully in person um by the November election date so I just want to I don't know put that in people's minds that this isn't a normal year and it's incredibly likely that that schools will have gone to remote learning by then um that's all I wanted to say thank you thank you for your comment Bailey John yes my name is John Boniface I live at 30 Harris street in Amherst I would like to thank the members of the town council who will be voting tonight to reverse their votes from last Monday nights council meeting in favor of consolidation of all polling places to the high school and who will now be voting in favor of option two I would like to thank the members of the town council who voted last Monday night in opposition to the proposal to consolidate all polling places to the high school and who will be voting in favor of option two especially councillor Kathy Shane for her leadership in presenting a version of option two last Monday night and in presenting this updated version tonight but most of all I would like to thank all the people of this community who raised their voices under a very tight timeframe with limited public notice to oppose the consolidation proposal and to press for the adoption of option two as the town council president said tonight this new vote is happening because the public has been heard as it should be we expect our elected officials to hear us and we expect as Georgia Malcolm said so eloquently earlier tonight for our government to care above all for those most marginalized and most traditionally disenfranchised in our society what this process on this matter over the past 10 days demonstrates is that when we receive a presentation from those in positions of power we should not blindly accept it rather we should always be prepared to question it and to speak up when what we are hearing is wrong I am glad that we will now be doing the right thing tonight and that we will be protecting the right to vote and the health of our community thank you thank you for your comment John Terry Mullen hi my name is Terry Mullen I live on at 58 northeast street in building 6 I think the only thing that I want to say is that I'm hearing a lot of the concerns of some folks being presented when it comes to the voting but it doesn't seem like the folks the concerns of the apartment complexes and the that they might not be able to use mail-in voting and that they might also not be able to get child care to go and vote in long lines being presented there was a lot of focus on just the COVID problem but not a lot of focus on time that would take people to vote so I think as we as you all move forward it's important to weigh all the voices equally as as much as you can because that was one thing I noticed about the presentation and also thank you for for reconsidering yeah that's it thank you for your comment no other public hands at this point so we'll move back to the council Andy Steinberg yes at this point I'm going to make a motion to divide so that it's separate votes for September 1st to November 3rd is there a second tribe or second okay and I just want to clarify do you want to vote on both motions tonight yes I do and I'm anticipating that we may never get to reconsidering November 3rd but I think that the question is whether the council should reserve the flexibility should it wish to do so after the experience of the September 1st election and after we hear from parents to be able to do so this is not this is just a matter of giving the public and the council flexibility that it otherwise would not have there were a couple of comments made about schooling one was that the schooling is something that is a good it has been a good experience in the past to do it this way but we've never had a COVID crisis before this is really a unique circumstance that this community and this nation have not faced previously if we don't reserve the opportunity for parents and teachers to based upon circumstances that are more evident as it gets closer to the election indicate that they have a problem then we won't have the the opportunity to consider it if any of the polling locations turned out to be really problematic we don't have a problem to consider it and the other point about the the schools is just based upon my experience of having two grandchildren who are in elementary school in first and third grade there's a high degree of anxiety amongst parents about the return to school plans and I think we are not giving those parents yet an opportunity to really comprehend what this means and what they might be thinking down the line and that's why I feel like it's important that we consider this like as excuse me yes I was going to just make a point of order yes on this I believe Andy wants to make that motion after we voted on the motion to amend not before because he wants to divide the main question on the table not the motion to amend fine so Chavina I'd like to just ask that you may not have the answers but we'll need to know by what point in time we would need to start thinking about changing the November setup and the warrant and just confirm for me that we can in fact do that we just don't know the dates yet so the law reads the same so to change the polling location if so choose to it's still 20 days before the November 3rd election and the election warrant I received from the Secretary of State so as soon as I receive it from them that is when I will reach out to Athena to get it on the agenda thank you so much Chavina we really appreciate that um all right are there other comments from the council there is a motion to there is not there's a motion on the floor that's been made and seconded but we are not moving to split the dates off yet is that correct Mandy Chao okay I see you shaking your head okay yes that should be made after the motion to amend that's on the floor is dealt with Steve Schreiber you have your hand up so I'm going to start with a question are we talking about the proposals in general or about the motion we're talking about if you have questions about the overall proposal but the motion on the floor is about the 10 different identified voting locations so I can talk generally about the proposal two and proposal three and proposal one that's in order yes okay um so I voted in good faith for the consolidated proposal I took the wisdom of our town count of our town clerk our public health director our our town manager and I believe that clarity so one of the biggest tools to for towards orders voter suppression is a lack of clarity I'm telling somebody oh you're at the wrong polling place you need to go to that polling place and then they get the next polling place they're told they have to go to another polling place that is um a tacit tool of voter suppression what I really liked about the town clerk's proposal is that it gave complete clarity to where everyone voted you vote at the high school pretty much everyone in town knows where the high school is they don't know it's easy to find every pta pvta bus route in amores goes within a third of a mile of the high school that does not speak to voter suppression to me the other thing is that there's this image played of it's almost like a norman rockwell image of us all walking to the polls you know and we all vote in the gym and there's a civics lesson involved with that that's not how amores to set up if you look at the voting maps actually many of the polling places are miles from where people live they're on one edge of the precinct especially in south amores they're miles from so if you walk to those polls you're really getting good exercise so it definitely works in my particular precinct I walked a while with school and I and I you know I really like that but the experience I have is not what most people have the other thing that so many people have said is that this is not the norman rockwell year for voting in the gym this is more like the Chernobyl reactor room so we this the image of the the um that's the image that you should all be looking at is where do you want to put your trail the reactor room do you want to put it in one place or do you want to put it in 10 different places so I'm not sure how I'm going to vote I really object to a major reaction that the way that I voted was suppression I think that we need a lot more explanation why and I did explain to those who asked me why I voted that way and um and pretty much what I just told you so I'm not sure which of the which way I'm going to vote this time but that's that's where I stand. Alyssa? Since we're talking about everything in general even though I had originally intended to speak to the motion that's been sort of informally laid aside to divide I actually wanted to speak to that in particular because in the general it also applies in the general sense which is that I'm not going to vote tonight in favor of November 3rd polling places I absolutely object to doing that we have not engaged the public enough and understanding why we were doing what we were doing given the obvious pushback we got given the information we put out prior to July 20th which was relatively little most people who then pushed back actually had not read our report or watched our meeting and so we know we have a lot more communication to do I think finding out how things went in September and then and again if the schools are in session which I tend to share the cynical view that they will not be that may also change that it may also just be that one particular location did not work particularly well and required a lot of management and so we may want to change one location but if we don't if we go ahead and vote for the November 3rd now and I totally understand the argument for keeping it the same I get it but again we're in a global pandemic things are different this year this is not about convenience this is about trying to mitigate all the factors and if we wait until the last minute like we basically did this time around for our July 20th presentation then we will be waiting again till the last minute in November and again the public will not have had a chance to weigh in to say yes that worked great no this didn't work so well have you thought about this other thing because this one thing didn't work super but this other place it was awesome if we don't devote two town council meetings to this meaning one where we see a presentation that says here's how it went and the second one when we actually get to vote then I don't think we'll be making a proper decision on November 3rd George I'm glad that Alyssa spoke first that helps me I'm really struggling with this I first want to endorse Steve's comment that I too felt somewhat ambushed or sidewacked whatever metaphor you choose to pick this was all done in good faith it's done by all of us actually the first time out we have listened but our main concern has been public health and in my mind still continues to be but having heard Alyssa's comment and hearing Andy's suggestion I'm going to briefly just say that I could support splitting these and that would give the public a chance to weigh in again and we can reconsider my counter to that of course is I like to keep things as simple as possible this will complicate things a bit but perhaps not that much so I can support Andy's idea of splitting if it comes up later I'm going to support the motion if I still clear in my mind what is actually on the table the motion which would basically move three polling places as being the best of all bad options it only involves it involves my district four and I think well let my colleagues speak for itself but I think that we can manage and we certainly will reach out to everyone so they'll understand that they'll be going to the high school and I want to reinforce the chief's comments that again back to public health we need to protect our first responders period so I support moving that precinct out of the north fire station to the high school but just those three it's complicated enough but I think it's fairly simple and I would support Andy's motion to divide if it does come up later Darcy yeah I would just say that if we do end up splitting it having a vote on only September that we want to somehow make it um so that the November vote or we could make it so the November vote defaults to the decision that we make tonight um anyway that aside I support the option two um in its new form and um I but I wanted to make an additional comment about the PVTA and um I've heard that in the past the PVTA uh and I'm responding to the comment about Parker Farm School um I've heard in the past that the PVTA will modify its route on election day if we if we make a request so that it might be able to um stop might be able to go up into Parker Farm um it might be able to stop at the high school um anyway what I've heard is that in the past it has it has stopped it has made special stops on election day so I hope that's the case and I hope that we can look into that Vina you have your hand up is there something that people have asked or commented on that you'd like to comment on um I want to provide comment um and as you all are beginning to make your decisions I I'm going to speak I want to speak to the um voters that you haven't heard from which are um we have in town 17,000 registered voters and as of today a little over 5,000 registered voters have returned their vote by mail uh postcard requesting ballots for both September and November and so those voters um that's their voice the fact that they have returned their postcard is an indication that they do not desire to go out to the polls and so when we look at the election results that I presented last week and voter turnout in 2015 in a state primary as well as in a general election regardless of a pandemic um the precedent has been set on voter turnout and so I think that in making your decision you should look at those numbers those are the facts and so I think that your decision should be made on facts and so the facts is that over 5,000 voters have returned their postcards which is a clear indication that they will not be showing up on September 1st or November 3rd and they won't be going out in person for early voting at once. Thank you for your comment and for updating us on those numbers uh Dorothy. Well I will very happily support the new option two with the addition that the north fire station will not be a polling place because I do agree that the people who are keeping us safe should be kept safe. Now that it'll be just three polling places that those who would vote at the north fire station and precincts four and ten which are in fact district three which George and I represent will be the only ones at the high school. I have no problem with the high school. I also have great confidence in the voters of precincts 10 and 4. They're great voters and they will vote but I do think that we should think of supporting the voters from the places which are harder to get to. We talked earlier when we thought it was going to be the high school for everybody about providing more transportation. Providing babysitting that's really problematic in a time of plague so I don't know how we could do that but we can shorten the trip that people take by providing transportation directly from some of the population centers where there are a lot of voters who have to go a long way so they can make a quicker trip but we need I think just think we need to think about that. So I am happy with the changes and I do think we have to realize this is going to be a big election and I think Shaveena said that she had bought one ballot box which was going to be at town hall. She can correct me just when I finish. Is there a possibility of additional ballot boxes so some people could go to a polling place and just drop their ballot in the box without having to go in? So that's my question to Shaveena. Shaveena would you like to answer that question now? So on election day ballots cannot be dropped off at polling locations. They have to come to the town clerk's office. They have to go to the town clerk's office. Yes they do. There was last last week and I think is part of this question is can there be ballot boxes in other locations in town that would be secure before the day of the election? They have to be under video surveillance and so we have that at town hall. Okay thank you for that clarification. Thank you. Evan Ross. Yeah thank you so I have a couple comments. The first is on Andy's motion. I hear Andy's reasoning. I hear Alyssa's reasoning. I understand that. I share Steve's concern that the greatest potential tool of voter suppression is confusion over location of polling places. We know especially for low propensity voters that it's already very difficult to get them to turn out. If they aren't sure where to go or as Steve mentioned they go to one place and get turned away they are unlikely to go to a second place. And so I'm really concerned about the possibility of changing several voting locations for September 1. Having people have to figure that out and then changing them potentially again for November. So I can't support any decision that does include both days. With regards to the presentation I've of course voted for the consolidated plan that was presented to us by the town clerk that I thought was a good plan based on what we knew then. We have some new information. One of the big pieces for me was that my understanding at the time was that Crocker Farm could not be used. And that was really important for me because Crocker Farm of course is the polling location that serves the east Hadley Road departments. And I was not willing to move the polling location that serves our most socioeconomically and racially diverse neighborhood while leaving say the polling location that serves Amherst Woods in place. That to me was unacceptable. From what I'm hearing tonight is that Crocker Farm can be used that to figure it out away. And that does change my opinion on what the best path forward is because that is a fairly accessible location for a number of neighborhoods. One thing I do want to bring up though is Wildwood. If you're thinking about accessibility, if you're thinking about location, we heard tonight the logistical challenge of space and Wildwood. But I also want to bring up that if you look at a map Wildwood is really located at the very top of Precinct 9. It's actually not very central to the majority of the precinct. And the only bus line that's really convenient to it is the 3435, which is the UMass shuttle, which one, only really is beneficial to you if you're on the UMass campus. And two, from what we've heard from the PBTA, that might be reduced or eliminated due to UMass's changes to reopening. So while I understand that we might be able to keep a polling location at Wildwood, I actually don't think it's a very good polling location for the district. And I think that the high school, if you look at a map of the precinct, is actually more central to Precinct 9 and is closer to more bus lines. And it's especially closer to both Amherst Housing Authority complexes that exist in Precinct 9. So I am amenable to option 2, but I also want to raise the possibility of moving the Precinct 9 location also to the high school because if our concerns are actually about accessibility with regard to location within the precinct, with regard to walkability and with regard to access to the location from the PBTA, that high school is a much more accessible location for Precinct 9 than Wildwood Elementary is, and that would also solve the problem of right now some uncertainty over where in Wildwood to actually do this. And the very last comment I want to make is of course just reminding us that although we are having a conversation about distributing voting geographically, our real focus for this election should be distributing voting temporally. We need as many people as possible voting by mail. If you can vote by mail, you should be voting by mail. It's great to have this discussion, but if you don't have to vote in person on election day, you should not be voting in person on election day. We also have a fair bit of early voting, which is happening at the Bang Center in the center of town, accessible from multiple bus lines. And so that's weeks of, that's that's over a week of voting that is usually pretty quiet. And so if people, you know, we've been hearing from a lot of people who are saying I'm concerned about my health going to a consolidated location, and I hear that, but my response to that is also early vote, vote by mail. I don't want our conversation, which has been dominated by in person election day voting, to send the message to our constituents that they should be voting on election day. If you can help it, don't vote on election day. Vote by mail, vote early. These are strong things that we have fought for and we finally have both of these things in the state. Voting rights activists have fought for these things. Let's use them and let's not detract attention from them. Thank you. Thanks, Evan. Thanks for the message. Kathy. Thank you. Evan, you gave me a perfectly, perfectly lead into a couple comments. I would love it if we had some signs that said just that. So if we, we heard from someone who, in a housing company, if we have vote by mail, vote early and explain to people how to do it, not wait for them to read it on a website or in a bulletin, I don't know what kind of outreach, but I know up in here in North Amherst, we talked about people would be willing to distribute flyers like that. You know, try to figure out where we can put it up in the post office, in some other places, you know, how to do this. I have a mother down in Applewood and I don't know how many, how much direct outreach is, like get everyone in Applewood who wants to vote, to vote by mail. You really don't want to have a lot of wheelchairs and that Apple would only take four people a little time in a van, so it's going to be going back and forth, but I just want to, those kinds of messages, but making it real rather than you figure out how to do it. The other, the other couple comments is the reason September is different than November, the people should remember, when Chavina said remember the facts, she talked about 15,000 people voting in November last time, so if we get, if we're lucky to get 5,000 of those, um, voting by mail, we're leaving 10,000 people voting in person, unless they vote early, which is the whole reason we're trying to spread people out. It wasn't, the idea wasn't that one place might not be simple, it was the kind of lines that are outside when you have 10,000 people put people's health at risk, more travel and there are, there are precincts that vote near places where people can walk, so maximizing that potential, so I think, you know, I don't know, you know, I'm counting backwards on 20 days and if we talk about September 14th, it's 35 days before, so I think if we vote these together and something happens in September that makes us nervous about all of this, that we've got the default, we can revisit, but we should do it really early, so we're not up against this time piece, um, so I just wanted to make those two points and then the last one is on the ballot boxes that Lynn asked if we can have more in video surveillance, um, I was asked and I have no idea what the answer is, but with the North Amherst Post Office, for example, would it have video surveillance, it's open from seven in the morning to seven at night, there's a person at the desk, you know, so could there be one in South Amherst, one in North Amherst, and one in the center of town, so it's just a question, trying to make it easier for people who are worried that their ballot won't get there on time to get it there, vote by mail, drop it in a box, um, so that, I don't need an answer tonight, but just thinking about the fear that the post office won't post market and my ballot won't get counted is real, we saw it happen in New York, I don't know what happened in that post office box, but the post office forgot to postage stamp the ballot, and so a judge had to decide whether they were real ballots or not, so I just don't know whether we can facilitate that, but the sheer numbers in November are what are saying minimize the amount of people have to spend online and keep it simple, so that that goes with this, keep it simple, don't change it twice. I was on the other side last time thinking, let's see what happens if it was consolidated, break it up, but I think we can revisit it if there's a strong reason, but we should be starting that conversation as soon after September 3rd as we can, Shalini. Okay, thank you. I just wanted to speak and say that I'm not in favor of moving, having two separate locations in September, November, given that it takes a lot of effort to educate people, and we've already heard from people, I also want to highlight that this is one vote that we've had the whole community come together and be on the same page, and we have the experts as well, we're listening, and especially we have we've been hearing from people who don't typically speak up and they've come and spoken with us, so there's a clear consensus that we really want to have these different locations, and I really encourage all of us to step out of our experience and see, try to see things from the perspective of people with disabilities, people with kids, people who don't have transportation, and really make it safe for everyone and accessible to everyone. The other thing I wanted to say was that, yes, we should do a report, as Kathy had mentioned, after our September, so that we can get information from it and maybe mitigate the challenges we experienced, we noticed in the September and do better job of educating people or whatever we need to do, and if everything fails, of course we always have a choice, it's an emergency we can change and consolidate as a council, but as of now I would not support having two different locations. Steve Schreiber. I was just going to mention the other elephant in the room, which was just a couple of days ago we were expecting 7,000 people to be living on the UMass campus and contributing to the to the load on either the consolidated Amherst High School or the distributed, now that's down to 700 people, so we've just, I don't know how many of those students that live on the UMass campus actually in person vote in typical years, but that's a big number, that's a huge number of people that will not be here in Amherst and therefore not voting in person. So as we sort of imagine these long lines and we imagine these polling locations, you know, especially for in those precincts which crisscross the UMass campus, that should be taken into consideration. I also want to second Councilor Ross's observation about the possibility of moving the wildwood, which is that seems to be a very complicated endeavor and actually not a very convenient endeavor even once it's accomplished to the high school, which is basically on the same piece of land and more convenient to, it's more in the center of gravity at the precinct where everyone is voting anyway. Dorothy? I think we should keep it simple. The biggest thing that was mentioned and again I do want Shabina to back me up on these dates. I counted seven days for the September 1st primary, August 22nd through the 28th and then I was quite shocked because I had written these in my date book. There are 14 days of early voting in October, October 17th through 30th and if we make a very concentrated effort, that's going to be a great thing. I do disagree with Steve however, I'm hearing that the students are coming that they like Amherst and they're coming whether they're going to be, so they're going to be in the town, I think they're going to be voting, participating as Amherstians. So I think our biggest effort is to, I don't want to change the polling place, I think you've made very good points on it and this is an election, the general election, when you do get the not devout voter but somebody who thinks maybe I'll do it this time, okay, and changing things for them is just chaos and confusion but if we can really organize a fabulous push for early voting and that means I guess we're going to have to help, maybe, maybe we're going to have to get students to help us to do that, okay, we can pull off an election where we all have a chance to vote in person if that's what people choose without unnecessarily risking getting COVID-19. Alyssa, I'm going to take this as a last question and then we need to move on. Alyssa? So I want to clarify something I said about the separation of the two dates and the reason for that is perhaps the public is unaware that the initial, back on the 20th, everybody said yeah we have a lot of concerns but it seems like the best of the situation. Two weeks later, two hours prior to our meeting, we were given a possible alternative that was not fully fleshed out. What I'm trying to avoid is going down that road again when we speak of if we see a strong concern, if we hear a strong concern, there is no practicality associated with those sort of mythical concepts. If we say that we commit to having this on X agenda and X agenda, meaning the first one will have a report prepared by staff, the second one will give us the chance to have read that report, had the public relate to it because it's not going to come out more than a day or two before the meeting anyway and the public be able to give us feedback on that, then we find out yep we made some adjustments, we're going to continue to make some adjustments, that's great. There is not some mythical person who has a strong concern that will somehow magically manage to get it on the agenda, that's not how life actually practically works. And it is absolutely true that of course once we make a change which we will make tonight for September 1, that change is true forever until we change it. It's not that it reverts back to some previous thing, it is changed, period. So why bother with Alyssa's concern? Because I'm talking to you of the practical matter of making sure things are scheduled on an agenda where we have a report that we've received more than two hours prior to the meeting about the challenges associated with what's happened, have gotten hopefully tons of good feedback about how well everything's worked, how much more we're doing for early voting, and then we can say yep it worked great but we need to take the positive way of insisting on doing that, not just assuming that unless a mythical person tells us there's a strong concern we can just not worry about it. I want the public to feel like they can report. I want to vote in person and this was my experience. Motion has been made and seconded and amendment has been made and seconded. The amendment is to split the vote so that we would, Mandy, Joey, please speak. We're voting on the motion to amend the polling locations before we vote on a motion to split. Okay, all right. So we're voting on the motion to, on the polling locations, which is to follow, to amend the motion by striking all the language after November 3, 2020 and replacing it with the following language. At seven of the current eight polling sites and change, three polling places to one new site at Amherst Pellum Regional High School, 21 Mattoon Street, and then we go through. District one, no change. District two will go to the high school. That is a change. District one precinct three, I'm sorry, is no change. District three precinct four goes to the high school. That is a change. District four voting precinct five stays at the bank center. District two precinct six Fort River stays at Fort River. District five voting precinct seven stays at Crocker Farm. District five voting precinct eight stays at Munson. District four voting precinct nine stays at Wildwood. District three voting precinct ten moves to the high school. Furthermore, this will not have, this will have no disparate impact on access to the polls on the basis of race, national origin, disability, income, or age. This change shall be in place for 2020. The town shall study the election results and patterns by mail and or in person with an assessment of any disparate patterns by neighborhood race, national origin, disability, income, or age, and the result of new mailing, mail voting, and report back to inform possible future changes in 2021. Motion's been made in second. Is there any further questions? Discussion. Okay. Then I'm going to move to a roll call vote. And I start with Pep D'Angelo's. Yes. Darcy Demont. Yes. Lynn Griezmer is yes. Mandy Johanicki. Yes. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Evan Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Sarah Schwartz. Yes. Jalony von Nylm. Yes. Lisa Brewer. Yes. Vote passes 13-0-0 with no absences. Okay. So at this point I'm actually going to ask Mandy Joh to take over on the motions to get us through the rest of this. So I believe we still have Andy's motion to divide on the table and I believe it was seconded. Is that correct? That is correct. So is there any discussion on that motion to divide? Alyssa. Yes. I mean I would technically prefer that it not be divided but we can call it whatever we want to call it in terms of I just want to say that it's for the September 1 election period. So whatever wording we think makes that happen I'm happy to support. If divide makes that happen I'll live with it. So a division would require two additional votes. It would be a vote on the motion as it stands right now which is as amended but would only it would be one vote on that motion as it stands only including the date of September 1st and then it would be a second vote only including the date of November 3rd. Andy has his hand up if he'd like to change that from a motion to divide to a motion to amend to remove November 3rd 2020 from that motion instead of a motion to divide. Andy you're muted. Now I want to leave it as a motion to divide. I think that is the appropriate motion so that we end up with two different motions and if we come back if we pass both of them tonight then that's fine but that gives us the ability to come back and amend the second motion at a later date if there's reason to do so and somebody makes that motion at a later date. Thank you Andy. So are there any other questions or comments regarding the motion to divide? Could you repeat exactly what we're voting on please? Yes so I was going to do that. A yes vote on the motion to divide means that if that yes vote means that you want to vote on two separate motions right after this. One to locate in person voting on September 1st at the following at the seven current seven of the current polling sites and changing three of them and all of the rest of the list and also a motion to you want to vote on a second motion to locate in person voting on November 3rd 2020 at seven of the current eight polling sites and change three of them. There would be two separate votes if you vote yes to the motion to divide and it passes. If you want it to be one vote of to locate in person voting on September 1 2020 and November 3rd 2020 at seven of the current eight polling sites and change three polling sites to one new one and then the list then you would vote no on the motion to divide. Is that understandable? Okay um Alyssa has her hands up. I'm sorry I still don't understand because the reality is it doesn't we don't need to reconsider if we if we accept so say we separate it right and we say September 1 and November 3rd right then the offering was given that the reason to do that because tonight is a night for technical things is to reconsider that vote at a future why would we need to do that all we need to do is vote for what's happening September 1st. What's happening September 1st is what's happening for the rest of our lives until we change it again. That's all I'm saying is that if we're we don't need to reconsider the motion of November 3rd if we just say September 1 and then we don't get it on agendas it stays that way. If we get it on agendas but we don't vote to change it it stays that way. It only changes if we get it on agendas and we vote to change it. There's literally no reason to establish both dates tonight unless it's that the town council is sending the message to the community that no matter what those will be the dates because the practical reality is it's not known it will be no matter what unless we act to do something different we don't have to reconsider a motion later we can just come up with a new plan for November there which I'm sure we won't need because it's going to work great. At this time we have our town attorney here Joel Gart from KP Law. Joel could you talk about election law and if we vote to change polling locations now is what Alyssa said regarding permanency unless we revisit it to say even change them back the two that we were looking at moving to Amherst Pellum Regional if we wanted to would that be permanent unless we then voted at a later time to turn them back to banks could you speak to that Joel? I can and in order to do that I'd like to go back to what you just voted to make sure I understand it everyone else does and I'm going to read from it the motion that I have that I believe was read was to amend your last vote and replace it with the following to locate in-person voting on September 1 2020 and then November 3 2020 for the following locations and then the locations were detailed and of course you've been talking about the locations but I wanted to draw everyone's attention to the initial language that you voted was to locate in-person voting for the two dates for the primary and the national election that having been voted and I'll get around to answering the specific question you asked but I just perhaps I need to be straightened out on this and perhaps we all need to have a close look at this but having voted that you have voted those locations for the two upcoming elections not quite yet that motion's the one on the table well I thought that was the motion it was just voted unanimously we had to amend the motion so we we had a motion on the table that was um to locate in-person voting for all 10 voting precincts at Amherst Regional and and the motion we just voted was to amend that from all 10 to the seven that are current and just change three good well thank you in case there were others who are confused thanks for straightening me out anyway all right well then in that case you do have to take the final vote so yes I would agree with Alyssa that if you vote both locations today the well let's go back actually I'm sorry it would apply to those two dates I'm sorry so maybe I'm not agreeing entirely because you've only voted to amend the original vote so now the main motion that's before you is identifying the location for the two stated dates and it's silent as to what happens after November 2020 and given how specific the motion before you is I would say that you would have to in the future vote specific dates for future elections because your motion only speaks to the two dates in 2020 does that answer the question so can I ask the final clarifying we have only ever you know our councils a year and a half old um and previous elections we voted to approve the warrant which has locations in it those locations are historic locations we would continue to have to do that but if those locations what what would be the default locations say for the September the November election in 2021 would it be these locations that we're voting now or would it be the historic ones that weren't were voted say last year or for our presidential one if this motion only has these two dates on it right in my opinion it would the default would quote default back to what have been your historic locations because this motion specifically changes the locations only for those two elections and I also clarify that the motion says this change shall be in place for 2020 that's right and she'll study the election results and patterns by mail or in person with an assessment blah blah blah and report back to inform possible future changes so I will go back to the motion that we currently have on the table which is to divide to split out into two separate votes September 1 and November 3rd 2020 as two separate motions um if we split that out and say vote September 1 but do not approve November 3rd we would have to the November 3rd ones according to what Attorney Barges said would default back to where they were last year or for our pre presidential primary back in March they would not default to the September 1 2020 primaries if we only vote a motion that way if we do not divide both dates would remain on the same motion are there any questions additional questions regarding this motion to divide seeing none we're going to put the motion to divide on the table for a vote I will do a roll call vote a yes vote means you want to vote twice one for September 1st and once for November 3rd a no vote means you want them both on the same motion and the same vote um we are starting I believe with Dumont no Greece summer no Haneke is a no Pam no Ross no Ryan yes Shane no Riber yes Steinberg yes Swartz no Balmille no Brewer yes Angelus you're muted Pat sorry no the vote fails by a vote of four in favor nine against so the motion is not divided is there which means we now move to the main motion on the table which is to locate in-person voting on September 1 2020 and November 3 2020 at seven of the current eight polling sites and change three polling places to one new site at the Amherst Pellum Regionals High School 21 Mattoon Street as follows District 1 voting precinct 1 North Zion Korean Church Church Hall 1193 North Pleasant Street District 2 voting precinct 2 Amherst Pellum Regional High School 21 Mattoon Street which is a location change District 1 voting precinct 3 Emmanuel Lutheran Church 867 North Pleasant Street District 3 voting precinct 4 Amherst Pellum Regional High School 21 Mattoon Street a location change District 4 precinct 5 Banks Community Center 70 Boltwood Walk District 2 precinct 6 Fort River School 70 Southeast Street District 5 precinct voting precinct 7 Crocker Farm School 20 280 West Street District 5 voting precinct 8 Munson Memorial Library South Amherst Common 1046 Southeast Street District 4 voting precinct 9 Wildwood School 71 Strong Street District 3 voting precinct 10 Amherst Pellum Regional High School 21 Mattoon Street location change that is the motion on the table is there any discussion I see Alyssa's hand I'm feeling very frustrated that I'm still not hearing from my colleagues sorry there's a digital paragraph to the motion on the table but I didn't read of course I just realized that the further more this will have no disparate and adverse impact on access to the polls on the basis of race national origin disability income or age this change shall be in place for 2020 the town shall study the election results and patterns by mail or in person with an assessment of any disparate patterns by neighborhood race national origin disability income or age and the results of new mail voting and report back to inform possible future changes in 2021 sorry about that Alyssa you can go on now no of course that that was great and I am going to say again that I don't interpret I interpret those words as a very positive thing the last part you just read about the report I do not interpret them as meaning that we have committed to the fact that we will actually listen to the people who showed up to vote in person which we hope they're very few of because of mail-in voting and early voting but we hope that lots of people are voting so the people who showed up in person which will be the majority of voters and the poll workers who worked at the polls what happened in time for us to make a change prior to November I am not going to rely on somebody thinking maybe it'll get on an agenda I want to hear that we have a commitment as a town council to as we just have stated many times listen to the community about how that went to an earlier point about not wanting to make a change between the two of course we wouldn't want to make a change to the between the two but we need to hear from the public whether or not they and the poll workers whether or not they've been good with it and if there is such a bad problem we would need to change it but obviously we would have to weigh that against the idea of we really wouldn't want to change it unless there was a serious problem there could easily be a serious problem during a global pandemic please commit to the idea of having this on two separate agendas in advance of the 20-day deadline listen I committed and we move on there any other discussion on this motion seeing none we will take a roll call vote on this motion to locate the polling places at this point I believe we start with gree summer yes panicky as a yes Pam yes bros yes ryan yes shane yes driver yes seinberg yes forts yes file milne yes brewer yes the angel is yes dumont yes that is a unanimous vote um i'm just going to announce again that with that vote and hopefully our soon-to-be vote on the warrant seven of the 10 polling places locations will remain the same if you live in district three either precinct four or precinct ten you will be voting at amherst pellin regional school instead of the bank center and if you live in district two voting precinct two and had previously voted at the north fire station you will be voting at amherst regional amherst pellin regional high school um we thank everyone for their comments and we are through that now thank you to all who were involved in that at this time um with that motion passed we will be moving on to immediately um a break warrant motion and the word that is currently on the table is to authorize the warrant for the state primary election on tuesday september one 2020 with polls open from seven a.m to eight p.m at the following location all voting precincts amherst pellin regional high school 21 mattoon street because we just voted different precincts at this time i am going to make a motion to amend the current motion as follows to add an s to the word location and to strike the words all voting precincts amherst pellin regional high school 21 mattoon street and replace them with district one voting precinct one north zion korean church church hall 1193 north pleasant street district two voting precinct two amherst pellin regional high school 21 mattoon street district one voting precinct three emmanuel lutheran church 867 north pleasant street district three voting precinct four amherst pellin regional high school 21 mattoon street district four voting precinct five bangs community center 70 boltwood walk district two voting precinct six fort river school 70 southeast street district five voting precinct seven crocker farm school 280 west street district five voting precinct eight months and memorial library south amherst common 1046 southeast street district four voting precinct nine wildwood school 71 strong street district three voting precinct 10 amherst pellin regional high school 21 mattoon street is there a second on that motion to amend second the angels thank you pat is there any discussion on the motion to amend seeing none we will go to a roll call vote um i believe i am the starting i think i start um so hannoky is a yes pam yes ross yes ryan yes stain yes triber yes steinberg yes quartz yes palmyln yes brewer yes the angeles yes mont yes and greesomer yes that motion to amend passes unanimously um 13 to 0 which brings us to the motion on the table which is the motion as amended to authorize the warrant for the state primary election on tuesday september 1 2020 with polls open from 7 a.m to 8 p.m at the following locations at this point i'm not going to re-read those locations i think we've heard them i know um they are the amended locations in all 10 precincts um with three of them new the seven others remaining the same is there any discussion on the motion as amended i second the motion i'll second it also on the table there's no need to second it but thank you um i see no discussion so we will vote on the motion as amended to um authorize the warrant for the state primary election on tuesday september 1 the first we are up to pam yes ross yes ryan yes fame yes driver yes sineberg yes quartz yes palmyln yes brewer yes the angeles yes mont yes greesomer yes and hanneke is a yes that is a unanimous 13 to 0 vote i believe now lin we are through agenda item 8a completely having voted a change in polling locations and approved authorized the warrant for the primary painful as it has been we are now going to take a break but let me just point out to the audience that on the screen while we are on break for five minutes we will re adjourn at five minutes after eight there's going to be a whole screen showing about voting and at the bottom of the screen it tells you how to volunteer to be a poll worker so we don't want to make sure you know this is here it's on our town website it's one of the banner items on our town website and again we are looking for help at our polls from as many people who feel they can do this and to work with us surge would you please take the thing down so i can start seeing people and when you as you return please show your videos so i know you're back okay we're going to go ahead and reconvene um i just want to mention to nancy buffon and tony morelis and jeff hascock that we have another agenda item before this one and i'm sorry about that delay we needed to get through our voting so um at this point want to make sure that others can hear us and we can hear you so dorthy pamm president andy steinberg president mandy joe steve schreiber here at the end of us president darsie domont here ebb and ross here patrick shane here mr brewer present there are schwarz uh george ryan here shallony volmilm i'm sure she'll be back and i believe that takes care of the council so paul um we are going to move on to an item that was postponed from last week this is regarding the issue of the public safety and i believe you have a presentation and we'll start with that excellent so tonight's um is our opportunity to talk about community safety in amherst so the next slide so at the council's meeting um the the vote was to to approve the fy 21 operating budget and this is a separate motion how we the bold start until the town manager until hold two upcoming anticipated vacant positions in the police department's budget that they not be filled until the town manager in consultation with the town council and residents of amherst has fully explored alternative options of providing services so that's a very specific charge from the town council um and so until we get a path forward we're not to fill those two positions and the deadline for it was january 31 so the next slide search so um you know that um is very specific but it's really not what we really want to be talking about what we really want to be talking about is re-envisioning our community service to build a town in which black residents thrive and feel protected as do people of all colors um really it's it's about ensuring that the people who live in our town and that the services that we deliver to the people with our with the tax dollars paid by those people whether it's police schools health systems whatever it is that it helps the people to thrive um and we're a small community and a and a strong democracy which we just saw play out and this can happen with us and I think it's a real opportunity so next slide so one of the things that we wanted to talk about was um it's how we deliver public safety issues public safety services is really complex and we wanted to look I think with the people who had were advocating for as to look at how we do this um and then look at also in a broader sense the town's funding priorities so I want to mention that um I have a tremendous amount of respect and I can go into this in more detail by won't tonight for our Amherst police department they are they run a superb organization um they have taken on tasks that we've asked them to take on that basically society has walked away from you know when we de institutionalized the mental institutions um there was no backup plan and that those responding to situations like that fell to the police department we're we're fortunate that we have have officers who have dedicated their careers and their their lives to our community and they do a tremendous job that on it um this is a model police agency that has taken on everything that we've asked of it but as I think about this I think well would I know if the if problems exist um you know and we heard Georgia earlier talk today and I've met with her um you know does the department work as well for black people and brown people in the community as it does for white members or asian members of the community um and I as a white person um can't assume that one way or the other but we need to ask um you know as I think about how we would go about this we would we are in academic town we know the questions to ask and how to get real answers we can listen to anecdotal stories which are really powerful but we also can conduct interviews we can use community-involved research principles uh we can learn about town residents experience with police you know in oversampling people of color and people in areas that receive a lot of police calls and dig in and find out people who aren't going to show up at our meetings and find out and do focus groups that we really can learn from our community and that's where I think we are at this moment in time we have to listen and that's where we that's where we need to move um next slide so the town has worked in this area before we've um there have been a police stop committee we can look at existing information that we have um including policies that we have complaints that we've collected um training that we offer you know we can look at resident oversight models and you know overseeing the police department we can like I mentioned collect data in a pretty informed way of people's experiences in Amherst and then we can also look at alternative models um you know like we had talked about the Eugene Oregon cahoots program at Albuquerque has community safety alternative Denver has the star program and there's others who are who are being developed that are being developed throughout this time um so um and the people as we start to go down this path um the people who we need to listen to are the black and brown uh members of our community shelter workers I want to listen to police officers themselves uh juvenile justice personnel school personnel residents of the spots in Amherst that get most policed um and health department personnel social service uh uh agencies uh and business owners I think there's a lot of people we need to focus on listening to and you know it's interesting that a lot of the ideas that were raised are things that the police department had brought already to the forefront you know the idea that do police really have to respond to a lot of things that are real that people where um where the intervention needed is more of a social worker than a police officer who shows up um and people who don't believe belong in prison and that's basically the only tool that we have right now is a as a police officer and a cruiser and that's not appropriate for all all situations and the police will readily admit that so they're open and eager to have this conversation as well so next slide so there's different ways we can do this you know we can establish a working group which is what a number of other communities have done and then we can talk about a charge and the size and the composition and all that type of thing and that's something that might be useful for one aspect of this um and that and it might be the tool that we have as government um to move forward and that's how we traditionally would handle something like this is we set up a committee and to most people they hear that and that sounds horrible like please another committee you're going to study this to death this is not what we're here for so I I hear that and I and I recognize that it might be the tool that we have to use but we want to know that we're moving forward so next slide um so I think that with the first thing we have to what I need to do is listen to people you know the human rights commission is clearly the the one appointed committee that has this as their charge um we have staff who are already engaged in this area with the the community participation officers who are very plugged into the community they're newly formed organizations like Defund 413 the racial equity task force um the idea of people's assemblies that we can um ask to participate and if they're willing to share what their feelings are we can look at um existing organizations that have been out there for a while um again community surveys reaching out to community organizers or hiring community organizers um you know I think that we've learned a lot from the MVP outreach efforts that have been so successful and um Healthy Hampshire has been really successful at really connecting with people in a very real way and I think that that's a model that we would look to is in terms of engaging the public um and then I as I mentioned I do want to talk with police and fire leadership and to rank and file they're the ones who are on the ground in this area as well um you know um so next slide please there's that it that's my last slide okay um so so and to close I do see this as um as an opportunity um to make a art community safer for all residents you know uh again I reflect back on what Georgia said at the beginning of the meeting and that's very powerful about her experience and her son's experience as opposed to my experience as a white person there's so much work that needs to be done um I think that one of the outcomes for this could be from the police officer's point of view that maybe there's better job satisfaction that they feel like they're being utilized in a in a way that's appropriate to what they've been trained to do and um we have other people responding to things that are that are more um appropriate at that level um and I also think that this is a moment to to take advantage of that we are we need to start moving forward we have a and I think I appreciate that the council put a time frame on this um we the town council saw the wisdom of appropriating $80,000 which will be utilized to support this effort these things aren't don't happen for free people's time is valuable uh we need to have the resources in place to support people to participate in these types of events and so um having a sum of money available for that kind of support so really to begin with this is the opportunity to consult with the town council and those are my initial thoughts and open it up to you I want to let you know that you know we will you know I have reached out and we'll continue to reach out to other groups who want to engage in this um in a more direct way um and be welcoming those kind of comments as well so turn it back over to you Lynn thank you um so surgeon thank you uh we will now ask the council to make comments and then we will have public comment unless the council would like to hear from the public first perhaps they would Darcy please unmute yeah I just wanted to say that I think it's really important for us to listen to the public um and um it it seems logistically to me that it makes sense to hear people's thoughts about how to set up maybe an initial task force that then makes recommendations about what to do for the long term but that that somehow we hear from the public about who should be making those decisions and who should be participating and how how they you know what what the charge is and what the composition is of that initial group so I I am looking forward to hearing what what people have to say tonight about that there's no other council comments this time I'll go to attendees and then come back back to the council um Gio please state your full name and where you live hi my name is Gio um I am in district one um so as the council extends us an opportunity to be heard rather than a grounded commitment to providing community members with actual power in determining how the town approaches community safety I'd like to read this quote by author Michael Denzel Smith defund the police is an abolitionist call part of a set of ideas to reduce the power of police in the short term and to eliminate police and policing in the long term abolition demands an overall restructuring of our economic and political order it holds that decriminalizing those things that have been treating treated as criminal matters but are not violent the possession use and sale of drugs and sex work for example would result in tremendous reduction of harm this restructuring would also require a massive public investment in the general welfare safe housing healthy food free education free healthcare basic income for those harms that would still occur in such a world abolition asks that we find ways of addressing them that do not include the further violence of punishment but prioritize the needs of the victimized to be made whole and require the perpetrator to make proper restitution and to be rehabilitated so he doesn't commit the harm again the council has stated that this is an opportunity to change the harm that has been caused for generations changing this harm means changing the conditions under which this harm has been allowed to foster changing this harm means releasing the delusion that any inherently oppressive institution such as policing will ever lead to justice or freedom if the real mission here is to re-envision community services to build a town in which black residents thrive and feel protected as do people of all colors then we need to be committing to a vision that fully abolishes the police programs which sustain the institution of policing will always ensure the reproduction of harm the brunt of which poor people and black people of Amherst are facing actively advocating for incrementalism and reformist progress is a moral failure i do not want your reforms i want the cops stripped of their power as we work towards eliminating policing as a whole and for the abundant resources which they receive to be allocated to caring for our community thank you thank you for your comment jeff please come forward state your full name and where you live so yes this is jeff maser i live in uh on ridgecrest road and i am part of i think uh district one now and i'm uh like listening to this call and hearing the like the steps that are wanting to be taken with um getting comments from our town i think that's in our residents i think that's really valuable and i am also concerned that that that there will be listening but there won't be a lot of action taken and and the moving of resources from the police into the hands of social workers and other people who can really take care of the needs of the people of the town versus policing i think is a very valid and beneficial argument for everyone in the town and i think will uh really contribute to the greater public good so i'm i'm just uh hoping that this will not just be an exercise of of listening and then having a continuation of what's been happening um in the past and that we will actually be able to have some real change that is made in this town and that feel like that we and amherst can really be leaders on this front and this is an opportunity for us to um represent and be the change that we want to see in this world so i'm hoping that um the town council will listen to the residents of amherst and allow for that opinion to actually take hold and go forth so thank you thank you for your comment bailey hi um it's me again my name is bailey batty um i live in district four um i'm sort of early in the public comment so i'm gonna have to adjust for i was gonna say a bit um so you heard a lot of facts and data about policing in amherst during the initial budget meetings um and i think you're probably gonna hear a lot of facts about policing in amherst again today and you're going to hear a lot um effects about police alternatives that have been done in other towns uh i'm a science teacher so i always think that data is the best way to make any point um but i'm not really going to tell you any facts today because i don't think you're ready to hear those facts and i want to mostly ask you why many of you said initially that you couldn't take any action without research and without a plan i think a lot of that was maybe trying to dodge the issue but okay i'll engage with that we gave you research we emailed back and forth to counselors we shared plans that other towns have used we put in more time we put in more effort to try and educate you our elected representatives some of you responded that these plans were not enough they want what you needed they weren't specific enough you responded that you couldn't use information from your constituents because we're not experts residents spoke of their personal experiences with the apd cited the town's own statistics and showed understanding of a wildly convoluted budget process what is it that you think an expert looks like in my opinion i think let me like make a guess here to you an expert is somebody with a criminal justice degree who you can pay to tell you what you want to hear that you're doing a great job and that you don't have to make any changes so i'm asking do you actually want to hear from constituents do you want not just to listen but also to act on what we're saying i know you know how to do that because you just listened to constituents about the polling places and thank you for that thank you for making that change but it also makes it more insulting that you won't act on the police issue do you only care about constituent voices when there's a quick fix solution that you can just like instantly do to make you look good why should community members who are directly affected by overpolicing in amos be vulnerable and relive traumatic events in the zoom meeting when all you're going to do is like shake your head sympathetically and then vote against what they asked for why should community members invest hours of their lives into researching the police into researching kahoots programs and doing your job if you won't hear it from us or take on that research yourselves why should we continue to educate you on things that we all had to teach ourselves if you won't take the next steps to implement that learning so i've heard a lot today and in previous meetings that you're listening to the community that you want to hear from us that you're so glad that we're engaging but based on your lack of action i really don't think you are listening so i'm asking you in conclusion are you going to actually listen to us and are you going to show us that you're listening by taking action this time thank you thank you for your comment Allegra hi can you hear me yes my name is Allegra Clark and i live in district two i am a 2003 Amherst regional high school graduate and i did return to the Amherst area in 2018 to raise my family i'm also a forensic social worker and i see racism in my role within the criminal justice or injustice system on a daily basis in the courts i've seen what community safety is not five police cars responding to a man expressing paranoia to his community outreach worker causing an aggressive reaction resulting in criminal charges member up before the court perfiting the description of a black male in a brown jacket which the mass supreme court in commonwealth versus war in 2016 has deemed racial profiling a woman held in custody where she would be quote unquote Sandra blanded and destroying the cell resulting in further criminal charges the community as a whole can't be safe if our vulnerable residents are BIPOC neighbors our unhoused community members are disproportionately affected by structural violence there are viable alternatives to a militarized police force especially for the 90 plus percent calls of nonviolent behavior that BPD receives there's been numerous citations of the cahoots model in Eugene Oregon Eugene is a town about the similar racial background as Amherst and they have replaced police on many calls when they go into the local fire police ambulance communication center that they will dispatch a team consisting of a medic either a nurse or an emt and the crisis worker who has at least several years of experience in the mental health field this week hoots provides immediate stabilization in case of an urgent medical need or psychological crisis assessment information referral advocacy and in some cases transportation to the next step of treatment if needed that sounds to me a lot more like community safety than sending police with guns to respond to people facing mental health crises so i asked myself what is community safety focusing on a community where we promote wellness rather than punishing illness a place where all residents have equal access to housing food health care education employment and recreation opportunities i hope that that can be a shared vision with this town council and the residents of this town to move forward and make Amherst a place where the police are obsolete thank you thank you for your comment zoe hello can you hear me yes we can thank you and so tom manager bachmann you said just a few minutes ago that people's time is valuable and that this work costs money and i want to underscore that yes yes it is people's time is valuable and yes this work costs money and we've been telling you in these meetings for the past two months feels like um that you need to be paying black people and black organizations to guide this work in our town instead of asking for quote newly formed organizations like defund four and three amherst and the racial racial equity task force to continue to continue doing this work for free you need to be paying people which is what we've been saying you've heard us ask you to spend that $80,000 to pay a black consultant and instead you've decided that it should go to the human rights commission despite having said previously that you were open to hearing from people about how the money should be should be spent and we've heard from a member of the human rights commission that they don't really have any intent to act and that they're really slow and and that it probably won't go anywhere if this is going to put in the hands of the human rights commission so it's already kind of insulting enough that your call today to do more interviews and research and focus groups and more studies about the the past work that the town has done that that call the values the work that that we have done for free um it also devalues the stories and testimony that community members have shared during budget meetings as as bailey said earlier it makes us feel like all of this work that we have done which you have asked us to do we continue to do because we believe in this work that that work is not valuable because it has it because it's been done for free um and it doesn't inspire confidence that further work will lead to action because the work that has been done so far has not led to action it's led to promises to listen now um furthermore um talking about implementing incremental reforms over probably years shows that you aren't really viewing this as a real emergency um unlike covid covid prompts a real emergency um where you make immediate changes within two weeks um instead in in the public health crisis of racism you aren't reacting like there are actually people being harmed now that we should be doing anything and everything we can to lift up and protect but there are that is happening it is an emergency instead this approach shows that you're comfortable where you sit you feel safe and you're willing to make empty motions to us your constituents for long enough that we'll stop talking and that really really sucks so thank you for your time thank you for your comment Demetrius Serbas hello can you all hear me we can okay great um thank you for um listening to the people it is really important that we as a community not only listen to one another but feel we are heard so i appreciate district five um holding a session a listening session and it sounds like you heard us i appreciate that and all of those who also voted to not consolidate what i'd like to speak to at this moment however is about the abolition of policing in Amherst and you know i was not initially a supporter of this but when i looked at the research of defund 413 Amherst and looked at what other folks are doing across the nation i see the sense of it i see the sense of having something akin to cahoots that works in partnership with the five colleges to do wellness checks where someone is not uniformed or armed um you know going in to see about someone who has a history of a mental health issue i also see the sense of it because my sons my friends and neighbors sons who are people of color have been targeted and profiled i have as well and for the life of me i couldn't figure out why the police they were following me you know until i realized oh i'm in my skin as a person of color and that is what they are indeed seeing in addition i'd like to speak to um town manager bachelman's $80,000 and what the council has appropriated let me say as a person who studies history who respects the history and contributions of all people of this nation $80,000 is insulting it is insulting because when we think of reparations that needs to take place not only in this community but across this nation for the work and the contributions that indigenous people were forced to do in this country but african-americans it is insulting and so i begin to think about well what could we do with $80,000 well $80,000 could help in perhaps creating what we have done with the racial equity task force in a people's assembly in paying community elders and community young people in creating a council that then decides through deliberation and consultation with community members how we are to be represented in amherst our voices are not represented historically where is the monument for indigenous people where is the monument for african-americans we have a plaque project that for 15 years has been in storage there's a few of us in the community who have been working on it this plaque project represents the voices and the sacrifice of both black and white soldiers during the civil war we have yet to have a full-town council be a part of that and placing these historic plaques in a place that is visible and that can be appreciated by both community members and folks who visit just like how they visit you know emily dickinson's home we need something like that that is something we could get behind in addition we need when we talk about police abolition if we are to retain the police in any form we need a commission that is headed by folks selected from the community and we need subpoena power because we will need to see documents of past wrongs committed by police officers and we will need to then work to make sure that these police officers are no longer employed so when we talk about you know what to do with $80,000 again insulting it's not enough but if it's going to be a start it has to be something where community members decide what to do with it the HRC does not represent the community the HRC how it is configured has very little teeth it is symbolic at best we need something more than that and we deserve something more than that there is a petition going around for reparations in this community it has to do again with the history and it has to do with what is a way forward I suggest you all I will gladly send it to you if you have not seen it but it is a start in terms of this conversation thank you thank you for your comment Lydia Lydia hello could you hear me yes hi my name is Lydia irons I live in district four um so I also would like to call back to what town manager Paul Bachman said about time being valuable um as a community organizer in this town who has been working with um not the academic set but the community set we did some work for you we sent out a survey to the BIPOC community of Amherst on how they would like to see the town council held accountable for the vote on the most recent budget so we sent out the survey and our question was how would you like to see the town council show accountability after their racist vote on the budget some of the responses were in order to add new answers and opinions so we have percentages here for you um 59 percent of the people who responded to our survey said that they would like you to share resources with the town residents that are clear concise and transparent on how the budget process works so that next year we can set up strategies for how we can be more effectively involved in these meetings so that you have no choice but to cut the APD budget because you will hear from so many of us 51 percent of those votes asked that you publicly recognize the harm you have done publicly recognize the harm you have done more than half of the people who took our survey said that 48 percent of the people who took our survey asked that you donate money town money to the youth of Black Lives Matter to counterculture educators and to other Black led organizations in our community 33 percent said that the budget process needs to be more transparent and less bureaucratic multilingual and accessible i'm going to say that again multilingual and accessible these meetings are very silencing they are unbelievably hard to participate in and the fact that you do not have translators and interpreters you don't even have this live on zoom with closed captioning for deaf and hard of hearing folks is absolutely ridiculous 33 percent of people who took our survey said that we just need to vote you all out i personally i'm in favor of that we had some write-in suggestions as well that having the funding that goes to APD go directly to community initiatives i think is a wonderful one we also had hold hearings where they deeply investigate what younger residents want that they are overly focused on the needs of the older set and the people in Amherst who are economically comfortable and i just would like to end my public comment to you tonight with the fact that we're doing this work and it is not taking us so much time because it is not knee jerk there are real people's lives at stake and real people in your community want to see these things happen and want to see public safety changed and the way we do it here thank you thank you alisha please state your name and where you live you need to unmute thank you okay hi my name is alisha walker i live in district three and i'm an Amherst resident and the parent of three young black children in the Amherst regional public school system i attended elementary school in this town and i'm an alum of the Amherst regional middle school the Amherst regional high school and a graduate of UMass Amherst with a bachelor's degree in sociology and a focus on equity and anti-racism i am also a part of the one percent of teen moms who earned a four-year degree by the age of 30 i currently work in the criminal justice system advocating for anti-racist policies i just wanted to touch base on the town manager's comment that his perception of community safety does not equate that of the BIPOC community and although i singularly do not represent an entire community i can share with you that my experience as a person of color who has lived in Amherst for their entire life has shown me time and time again that my safety has never been connected to policing but instead has shown me that for certain residents it is completely the opposite a threat to our safety rates of recidivism are extremely high among black and brown men who are Amherst residents who are continuously profiled and arrested for misdemeanor crimes cleanly said arrest and incarceration don't work and do not keep our community safe just as many black and brown men i grew up with have taken their own lives in the past 10 years which i cannot separate from the racist systems of the singing Amherst this pulls many many fathers from their children and their families and enables a vicious cycle of trauma these same men grew up relying on community organizations like the tapestry health the Amherst survival center the hub youth center and the center for women in community this is because these places do work and they do help the community feel safe what if patrolling police were replaced with boosts and community workers for mental health services like service net sexual health like tapestry and teachers professors who lead educational and healing spaces for youth and adults of color isn't that a world we'd all like to live in don't our black and brown youth deserve it we need to center the voices and needs of the youth of color who live in Amherst for the educational social and economic opportunities they deserve and are too often robbed of these voices continue to fear our police and jails and continue to trust our community partners i demand the town stop talking and asking black and brown folks to retraumatize themselves by sharing endless stories and start acting based on the community feedback that you already have appoint educators youth and families of color these people are the experts and they will help navigate the anti-racist work with equitable compensation it is your job thank you thank you for your comment georgia hi how are you lind so it's been a long evening right so i you know i'm just going to read a letter i wrote to you guys because i think it kind of captures you know how i feel um i to be honest i kind of left the meeting and i just want to say this um you know people are saying what paul is saying and i have to say you know um you know when you're in these positions people have to such as yourself paul bachelman you have to excavate your identities because there's biases you know you're not you know and i have to say i'm quite disappointed with paul bachelman because i scheduled the meeting with him to discuss hiring practices right i'm like talk to the district you know during conning she has a great product you know a great system in place to be inclusive to have different voices at the table and he basically was very dismissive you know and he says we're not there yet end of conversation so i got it you know i'm saying there's no real commitment to do in the work and there has to be a commitment to want to do it so i paul i got you very loud and clear there's no commitment so i never responded because i have to pick my battles because i have to tell you i am fighting this i work in the school district and because of the racism i face there i'm taking medication and i am doing therapy because it's been ongoing so right now i'm under social justice fatigue i'm in the union and i just was like i can't so i want to read my letter because i know i have limited time my name is georgia malcom a black woman an immigrant and a nine-year resident of amherst in district one i moved here with my black then ten-year-old son carenton in 2011 after the death of my mother when i moved here everyone told me amherst was great oh yeah social justice it's fabulous what i have to tell you amherst is not so great there's a deep-seated insidious white supremacy culture in every fiber of the institutions in this town i was cautiously optimistic when this new government was elected but deep down i felt trepidation and that is why i was not surprised by some of your recent decisions what i'm disappointed what i am is disappointed i am disappointed because i lied to my son about the work you would do and the wrongs you would work to undo my son and i spoke when he was writing his speech because he was the student speaker at your inauguration and i promised him that you would listen to all the voices in amherst regardless of skin color because as elected officials that is a promise you made to your constituents with that in mind the fallen is an irked excerpt of his speech at your inauguration this newly formed town council is a catalyst for possibilities and an opportunity to bring unity and reassurance to our community at the end of the day this newly elected government is encouraged to listen to and engage with the people this is not about individuals this is about amherst and its people making sure that most people feel that their voices are heard although there will be some disagreement or opposition the important thing to recognize and acknowledge is that people have different visions but ultimately they want the same result the very best for amherst with that in mind we will move forward because it is our solemn duty to dedicate our efforts into continuing to make amherst better so that we can pass a sacred mantle onto the future generations without any regrets knowing we did our absolute best to lay a foundation for a brighter future lastly i just want to share with you a quote from president obama's speech writer cody kinan who said i know what idealism can be hard to be an idealist to open yourself up to the possibilities of what we can do together it's never an easy thing thank you and good luck to everyone on this journey because amherst is depending on us all so here we are witnessing amherst a microcosm of what is happening under the trump administration against bifurc community and immigrants i am angry and i'm saddened by your recent decisions they have lacked courage and instead are meant to retain power because racism operates from a position of power if george floyd's death did not revoke any kind of compassion from you and a call to action did nothing well black and brown people in this community have gotten your message loud and clear consolidating voting stations that is voter suppression and impacting our fundamental right to vote and be part of the decision making process the right that many of our ancestors died for so we could have a voice at the table a dear friend said to me recently white people will march with you all day long they will hold signs in their yards be out the black lives matter but they will never share power she also told me anytime you're planning because i'm like i said i'm an executive board member on the union and she said to me whenever you're at that table and you have a voice the decisions that you make you have to take into account the people that are most vulnerable and disadvantage if you're committed to achieve an equity and inclusion because the people that are privileged will not be adversely affected by these decisions i was special and angry how when i heard how you came to the decision on redirecting funds into social programs and programs and training for police do you know why because my sweet innocent trust in black son you need not think of him and other black boys and mothers when you made this decision i was told that the decision was made based on like equal you know people for and against i mean it is ludicrous because the decision should have been made based on the bible community because they're the most valuable vulnerable and disadvantaged black men are being killed at the hand of the police at a disproportionate rate how many white mothers have lost their sons at the hands of the police none instead their boys are riding off in the sunset with no care in the world because the world is safe for them for us not so much my son he's out now and i can show you my text he texts me every half an hour i am good i am good i'm on my way home and then only when he comes in through that door can i go and put my head on the pillow if he says i'll be home in 10 minutes and 15 minutes i grab my car keys and i'm headed out the door that that is what that is my reality the reason i felt compelled to write is because of an incident with my son on thursday he was hanging out with a friend and the car died he called me after 12 o'clock and said mom can you come that was george floyd calling for his mother his car would not start and a police car kept coming in and out of the lot and then another police car joined him he said the police were sitting there watching him but he can't leave because the car is dead he was scared and he would leave the vehicle because he says you know mike blackskin right after all he's a black boy he should have been able to feel comfortable getting out of the car and asking for help from the officers but he could not why he knew his black skin would have been seen as a threat and the difference between life and death i immediately drove to my son approached the police officers vehicles and told them that my son's car would not start and if they could assist one officer left and like i said the other two officers were fabulous very nice we chatted they chatted with my son it was great but the outcome could have been different i could have gotten a phone call that my son was killed this is what i am we're asking for we're asking for ways to for the police officers to be trained we're asking for for funding so that we can develop a relationship with the police officer and there can be a mutual trust between law enforcement and the community we're asking for de-escalation training and we're asking for investment in social programs and in order to save our lives and you know really and truly there has to be some anti-racism training for the police and for paul muckerman for all these people who are at the table because i'm gonna tell you the lens that are being used are not the lens that can make decisions that is going to impact positively the black and brown people in this community and i don't want to be you know i'm a straight shooter mic morris will tell you i just you know you know race stand with me i'm not going to make it sweet and sugar for you you know i'm saying i can be an ally i will be there by your side but you guys have to do right by yourself i'm sorry and and i'm wrapping up but you know the need for collaboration in this work is apparent and why it is important to have different voices at the table you have to include people who have lived these experiences because race is a social construct someone that identifies as a black or brown person doesn't count because chances are they they go about in the world looking like a white person and they don't have the experiences that i will have or another black person will have the town council has some serious work to do if they're committed to serving in all these to serving all their constituents there's a need for some serious anti-racism work to take place to help in dismantling this white supremacy culture in your organization because it is impacting your decisions and i'm hoping that you know that the voices here tonight have somehow reached decision makers in this process because it's a difference between life and death and i'm sure you do not want the blood of black and boy the black boys on your hands thank you thank you michael hi there uh my name is michael in alvis i live in east emmerst and echo hill i'm in district two i've been a resident of emmerst for about four years now i just want to thank everybody for sharing the stories and the comments that they have and also thank you to the council members for being here tonight and i would like to share a quick story of my own so one day i was driving down gatehouse road this was about a month ago when i saw two kids a girl and a boy in the middle of the street and i pulled over to see what was happening and at first i thought they were just playing but then i stuck my head out the window and asked if everything was all right the girl a black girl shook her head and said no and my heart kind of dropped so i put on my blinkers and got out of the car and when i got over there the boy was on the ground his bike was a few feet away he was crying he said he couldn't move his leg there wasn't any blood and he was on his back one hand on his right knee which looked like it might have been starting to bruise his sister arrived shortly after i did and she said that their mom was coming soon i wanted to do something to help but i don't really know any first aid and i wondered what is a person supposed to do in this situation do i bring in the police do i call the police to supposedly help a black girl and a brown boy or do i call an ambulance potentially settling a family with an enormous cost no i don't think the police would have helped this situation in fact i know that having an officer there would have only escalated the situation and as has been echoed by many others the police do not invoke a feeling of safety but anxiety and fear from many people in our community once the mother arrived the mother of the boy she she burst out of the car she eyed all of us that were standing around there and she said to her son what are you doing up here what are you doing up here what are you doing up here now this was on gatehouse road and so i only assumed that they lived down the hill in the apartments and i knew that she knew the terrible things that can happen to her son outside and inside their own home and i knew that too and that's why i didn't call the police there but you know what would have helped in that situation and what would make me and i think a lot of other people feel more safe is knowing that there are culturally sensitive people who have received non-racist training even multilingual medical and mental health professionals available to call at all hours of day people who don't have a mandate to arrest and who carry who don't carry a lethal weapon so that's why i'm asking you really just to expand your imagination council people of what is possible and to take the immediate actions and the last thing i will say is if you want to find a place for the money of defunding the police there is not a single educator or teacher in this country who would not be elated to receive two million dollars or one million dollars or any amount of money so amherst public schools is one place you could send it there thank you very much thank you for your comments we're moving back to the council now and uh are there comments at this time on this issue so the town manager has put before us a proposal or the beginnings of a proposal and thinking about this and uh he is looking for our feedback based on what he has said and what we have heard from others Dorothy well with a certain amount of fear interpretation i will read some of the questions that i wrote down when i read this my first one was who is speaking there was no name on the report two where is the place for research three are there only those three models which are not explained the best way to examine how to deliver social services to all people um in need um including those with mental health issues uh and four will we examine in detail what we do now i don't know what happens for example if there's a mentally the boy there was a mentally distressed person in front of the library um this past week a neighbor came and told me that she and other people watched as the police were kind of wrestling with him trying to get handcuffs on him they did not have on masks and the man said i want to get my mask on i want to get my mask on now i don't know the details of the story i don't know where he was going but question is we've never talked about what happens when the police pick up somebody who has been behaving because he'd been yelling in public okay near the library what happens we don't have we don't have social workers we don't have any of that do we take them to what agency do we take them to and where does that agency take them why do you need to be in handcuffs to go there i mean i know our mental health system is in complete absolute disarray and i know that our police make very difficult choices but we've never even talked about what they do so and i think we need to know that before we talk about what would be a better way to go so i i just also the same question would be for people with addiction problems because if they're just taking them to jail they're not going to be kept there it's not going to help them and we all know that so um $80,000 can't fix a totally destroyed mental health system um in this country but i don't really i don't really feel like a lot of talking about generalizations about this and that when i don't even know how people are treated and where they go and what happens to them in our own town that's my comment shalini i just feel it's really hard to it's it's it's very difficult processing it's it's heart-wrenching to hear what people are going through in our community and um and what might be the steps forward because clearly there's a breakdown of trust and anything we say is is not important at this point it's what we do as a council so that's it's really really important for us too and that's what we are doing here and and paul has presented the program so i'm i'm just happy that we are here we talking we're sitting in the midst of you know this discomfort of just uh figuring out what what are the right steps to do so one of the questions that's coming up for me is um is just the intentionality as a council can we create a clear intentions for what would we like to see happen for example are we are we looking at the public safety are we is that the intention that we want to ensure the public safety or is it we're looking at systemic racism in our town or are we just looking at policing so what is our intention as a council together what would we like to see happen the second thing is that um i think there's been a lot i mean it seems like there are some immediate steps we can take for example what we're hearing is in having a committee or having people who can be called like a team who can be called like for the example that was given right now when kids have fallen or someone needs help in town and who are trained in culturally and bilingual and could we create some immediate steps or those would be the immediate steps of creating a team that can be called for addressing these kind of issues but then i also see there are some long-term systemic issues that need to be studied so i'm not talking about a committee that's going to sit and talk about it but there are models out there that have researched and one example is in chapel hill where they're using human center design for community engagement and what that looks like is where we are reaching out to the community members especially the people who don't don't feel safe to come to these meetings but we find ways to engage people and and use the the stories and the lived experiences and maybe even pay people for their time in what and receiving that information but then it's through that information we redefine even the questions that we're asking because a problem often is that we can come in as if we know the solutions and this is what what you need but i really feel we need to look at what are the root causes of the problems in in let's say if it's public safety we need to reach out to the different stakeholders including children including the youth at school what does public safety look like to them including parents and teachers and youth and BIPOC communities and so really reaching out to all the stakeholders because we've also been hearing from a lot of people during this covid time what happens if the police is taken away and how do we ensure the safety when the students come in the businesses are concerned about how do we ensure safety in downtown if you take away the police so there are these seemingly conflicting needs in our town and we have to find a way maybe it entails creating two caucuses for the BIPOC and for non-BIPOC people so there are systematic ways of reaching out actively reaching out to people and then having the two caucuses talk to each other and figure out so i don't know i'm just saying that there there are things we need to do in a very systematic way there are things maybe there are things we can do immediately but then there are models out there using human-centered design where we can systematically engage the community use empathy in the research models and this is not academic research but this is really grounded research action research where we are working with the community members to define the problems and to figure out the solutions together that yeah okay that's all for now thank you. Pat DeAngels? The only thing i'm clear of right now is that i have no wisdom but like many of us i need to speak anyway i am very i was appreciative paul of what you created as sort of a general outline of a working group of committee about bringing community together about surveys and all of these things um and what i feel very strongly about it i don't know i honestly don't know what next steps are but what i feel very strongly about is that the that we need to have this committee this looking at um policing looking at systemic racism and amherst looking at racism and housing uh we need to have the community of color the BIPOC community open themselves up in ways that they feel comfortable and then for them to create this committee to have representatives from the the the diverse BIPOC community here in amherst and and really ask them to move first and for them to create the charge for this committee um and for you know i'm i'm sort of stuck here um because i want to be involved um i feel very strongly that they're that each segment of the BIPOC community uh elders young entrepreneurs business people people who are working hourly jobs for less than minimum wage etc and students we need their voices and their work um and i i'm i'm a mess about this i guess i'm really not carrying any wisdom but i know that it needs to be driven by the BIPOC community but i also am asking the BIPOC community to join to join me uh in in sharing information you know i i spent i've been spending a lot of time these last few days reaching out to people of color in my life um and uh finding out what their experiences with the police i've been doing work on my own and i've heard mixed reactions from i have trouble with beltertown and hadley police but amherst police are pretty good i'm scared when it happens but and i'm not somehow or rather it can't just be that you holler at us and call us out as racists i own my racism i know i was raised as a racist but if you want me to work for you i need to hear you and i need you to uh step forward and and meet with me and then believe at some level that i'm hearing you and also believe that if i vote for something that you don't agree with it isn't necessarily because i i'm uh i i am sunk in my racism i may be voting anyway in a certain way because i feel strongly that it what would it would be beneficial for the full community so just i need you to speak with me and not holler at me in the sense of uh and i'm speaking very much right now and i'm sorry i'm ranting i'm speaking very much right now to the white people who spoke the young privileged white people who are telling me that i am a bad person when they don't know me and i am getting really resentful of being prejudged by other white people you know nothing about my work and you know nothing about my life i have much more hope that i can make real connections with people of color than and then i can make with white privileged people who think now that they have the right to judge over and over again every other white person and literally i think not look at themselves and i didn't expect to go there and i'm sorry um but i am going to stop right now are there any other counselors that would like to speak to this time or provide paul with additional thoughts on next steps alissa oh i'm sorry i didn't think my hand was up next um that was very powerful um in terms of trying to say things that are different right so we don't just say what everybody said humans do love stories but that doesn't make it incumbent on bi-pop people to share their stories with the white power structure so to all the people who feel like they felt pressured to do that at a zoom meeting you know or some other uncomfortable space i'm really sorry for that you're right we don't have all the right spaces set up but it is not your job to prove something to me it is really helpful when we can talk one-on-one or potentially in small groups because as many of you have mentioned we have this crazy public comment thing that's not a dialogue one of the things i keep talking about and so when i was talked about organic groups when i talked about progress is doing an action some actual things and i'm hearing from some people that they want to do actual things and i think that's great but i don't want those actual things to be as other people have reference just talking about things i personally have been involved with taking the anti-racism basics course that was offered to the school teachers 15 years ago i've been part of some informal study circles on race and class which were amazingly organized even though they were informal we used to have becoming a multicultural school system we used to have becoming a multicultural town and i'm really desperate for us to not just do some cool work together and then kind of just let it fade away which has been my experience here in Amherst having been involved in all those things and so i really appreciate whenever anybody can offer to us and that's when i refer back to the organic part of what would various segments of the BIPOC community want us to do right now i understand that some people want us to abolish the police force right now and i don't think that's something that's going to happen right now practically speaking but what is it that we can do that would help us make progress toward using those models from other communities what are things we can do i am both to send this off to some committee that we argue about for hours how to even compose when it's going to get appointed by the town manager and be subject to all the frustrations of open meeting law so how do we get how do we as a council offer the opportunity for people to tell the town manager this is what i want to do next and then the town manager come to the council and say you said you want to report it every town council meeting what i'm doing this is what i'm doing next and then we say wait did you hear from people about that and he says oh yes i need to talk to these other people i also just want to clarify in case nobody else gets a chance that no one's given that $80,000 to anyone yet it's not gone to the police it's not gone to human rights human rights commission it's not gone anywhere and i agree we need to figure out a way to start spending it even though it's a very small amount of money but i'm really looking forward to hearing some concrete ideas that don't involve setting up a formal committee yet as to what to do what's the next thing we can have before our next town council meeting and the town council meeting after that sarah schwarz you have your hand up so i i guess the same as pat it's it's it feels hard for me to make any kind of a comment on this when i i'm white and i know that i was raised and just by being white in a racially biased situation and i'm racist i think that there's there's a lot of us who are more than willing to own that i think that i'm very moved by all of the pain and i also have to say that you know what we're hearing over and over and over again and i'm hearing from people who are younger generations from me saying that people want action and i i think that alissa is is right in the form that we have to show action i also think that we have to we have to make sure that we are able to explore our biases and i think that one of our biases as as people who are either have a certain income and always have or have family to support us or you know who are white is that i think that all of us need to have some training on the fact that i think what i'm hearing a lot is that privileged people and white people see the police as protection we're the only people that seem to think that police are protection and i think that we have to find some concrete ways i think we need to take a look at i think as shalini said you know what what is policing and what is actually taking care of the public and and public safety and you know people want us to defund the police and we really have to take a look at what they're saying because they're screaming it and they're they're they're they're pleading and it comes from a deep place of pain and it is an emergency for them that is true and and i would like to see if there's any way that that even as a council or that we have some training in like the fact that dorothy said i don't know what happened like genuinely at least she's reaching out and saying i don't know what happens when these people you know do we arrest them what happens i think we need to see some concrete steps on on maybe looking into what does it mean to defund the police and what does it mean to set something else up and i think that we need to have deadlines and we need to make people feel heard because they're really just feeling like this is lip service so that's i guess it's pat said i'm not sure that how much wisdom that is but um i want to be mindful of everything else we have on our agenda tonight and we went to 11 30 the last time we met um and that what Paul has asked for is some thoughts from the council about next steps and so i'm going to try something just whether it's a committee or not the real one of the things i keep hearing is let's look for alternative models for dealing with homelessness mental illness and um drug addiction and so for things that we don't think are always best dealt with by by police and we ask the town manager to at least begin looking at those models and come back with us with the idea that as we move into our discussions for the next budget we start thinking about how can we fund a model that provides some different ways to deal with mental illness drug addiction than we presently provide i'm i'm i'm a person who wants action and i can't continue to think that it's going to be productive for us to have further conversations without saying let's do something and that's one theme i've heard okay that's one thing i've heard many others about other kinds of money that we should put elsewhere but one theme i keep hearing is let's find alternative models deal with mental illness homelessness etc maybe others in the council don't agree that that's a place to start but i'd like to just and and i really have to say we do need to move on we have other people waiting and so let's make sure our comments are on the issue of how do we move forward dorthy i have a simple step towards equality and that is something i've brought up before fund internet for everyone in town you've heard the old saying don't give a man a fish teach him how to fish the inequality of access to internet um in this town is perpetrating inequality so that is something we could do it's expensive but it would make a great difference in the lives of many people so i'm just putting it out there okay shallony i think the other tangible um action is that that was brought up is the transferency in the budget and educating people about budgeting process so they can be they can participate um that's one thing the second thing i do want to emphasize is that what i agree that let's take these immediate actions like the one that lent proposed which i think we we're clear i mean that we need alternative models to address these issues so there's no no issue with that but any other solutions that we provide i think is again we invest all that money in providing a solution but that's not the real core problem the root cause of the problem might be the education system the that youth don't have uh they don't feel empowered or they they're not equal opportunities for BIPOC people to start businesses or get loans or so if you don't know what what the problems that our people our different community members are encountering we cannot fix those problems so i really would want us to to figure out a way like i said a human centered design approach or some other similar approach where we look at and identify what are the problems that our people are encountering with its transportation whether it's getting to groceries whether it's getting health or education and and and then let the solutions come from there rather than us saying that the simple solution is this and i know what the solution is because we don't know the solution George we have a committee the town services committee um public safety is a fundamental service that provided by the town to its residents just strictly from a council perspective that would seem to be an appropriate place for a conversation to begin amongst at least five counselors with input from others as they see fit we're not going to be able to do this 13 of us all in a meeting like this if we're looking for a way for us to move forward as a body apart from what's happening in the community at large um would seem one possibility is to turn to one of our committees and ask them to begin to explore some of the things for instance that you've suggested lin and others um it's a standing body and this is what it's supposed to deal with this town services um i'm perfectly fine with some of that but i think we need some response back and i think you need to be working closely with the town manager since he is your liaison anyway i i really feel like we need to move on it's now 10 21 we have several more items on our agenda and when we get to the 17th we really don't have time for this we will again on the 31st when we meet this is a very wrenching issue and we all feel that way so um and i think we all feel like we don't have any solutions um so i'd like to move on to the next issue which is got its own area and that is the issue of the higher ed student return the update we have various things we want to talk about but we've been joined tonight at our invitation by Nancy Pofone associate vice chancellor for university relations Tony Merulis executive director external relations and university events and Jeff Hescock executive director environmental health and safety and emergency management and they provided us with a report right before our meeting and uh i'm going to call on Nancy i believe is the most senior of the group to talk about the update on from umass and let's start with that sure and i i do recognize that it's been a long night for all of you so i will try and keep this short because i'm sure you all have questions um i i think that overall our goal has been to try and create an academic environment for our students that was um safe both on campus and off and so um we have had a number of different plans and those plans have changed because we've been watching what has been happening with uh the COVID-19 virus in the state and so as you all know last uh Thursday evening the chancellor um made a uh shift to move away from having a lot of students on our campus we will end up with a max of about 1200 and 1250 students on campus we have encouraged our off-campus students uh to not move into their off-campus student apartments uh we recognize that that is challenging because many of them have now signed visas and so they have financial commitments and we are hearing from them and their their families but uh we are um limiting their access to campus but um we have not at all backed away from our commitment to making sure that they are following best health public health practices and i think um tony and jeff can tony can speak to the uh collaboration that we've had with the town around student behavior and some of the success that we've had in the the best approach and jeff can talk about some of the testing protocols um i do want to just comment quickly that um there's been a lot of talk about the UMass agreement that is the document that um we have outlined both for students on and off-campus about our expectations for their behavior related to the pandemic and so um i don't want to um go through this document um line by line um but what you can see and there's there's two pieces to it so one the first two pages looks at the Amherst area in particular um and then the second the third page looks strictly at Amherst and we're still developing um the analysis around some of those statistics but overall um what you'll see is that there is um a high level of positive engagement from our students especially our undergraduate students who have signed the agreement and will um you know have promised to abide by the terms of that um for those who have not yet responded or who have declined we have staff that are following up with them because we view this as a really important agreement um that there there's an understanding between the campus and the students that um they they recognize certain steps that they need to take in order to help keep both the campus community and the broader community healthy and that's what's really um critical for us right now um i'm gonna stop there and maybe tony do you want to talk a little bit about some of the um engagement that we are doing in partnership with the town and then maybe jeff can talk about testing i'm also going to suggest that we take the screen down so that we can talk for each other thank you okay thank you everyone um thanks for having us on um so uh you know many of you know some many of the steps that we that we do do but you know for the public and for those of you who are not familiar um we we take a multi-pronged approach to intervention and outreach and it's with our partners in town uh led by uh me and sally linowski and on-campus student life bill larry me from the um the amherst police department john thompson uh town building inspector uh we do a number of different steps including proactive outreach to off-campus student renters um that happens every year but this year we've been um doing that proactive outreach including even in the summer as it has been a summer in which um there have been uh a number of uh complaints about students uh and student uh parties we do outreach with amherst residents uh just recently we're at councillor schreiber and councillor um ross's neighborhood meeting we do that often we've been at councillor pam and ryan's district meeting as well and um we are more than happy always to meet with members of the community to talk about work that we do uh we have regular meetings with area landlords and keep a very close contact with them as you might expect it's been of the utmost importance particularly um given uh the changes to uh the campus uh reopening um that we were aware of what trends look like off-campus um there has been a lot of volatility in the market this year as um we have uh come up with our plan and um there's been a lot of indecision in the market seems like the rental market at this point is uh near what it normally is there have been a lot more inquiries lately but this is the kind of information that uh that we get we're still not completely 100 clear what our numbers off-campus look like but we will continue to follow up with you about that um we do follow up on all noise and nuisance calls so we get a noise report from Amherst police department each week and we follow up um and make sure that we are meeting with the students the landlords and at times with neighbors to talk about community standards and what we expect for the semester and those calls are you know often um terrific interventions and are are lasting um for um the both the you know whatever semester that we're in so um if it's if it's in the fall semester it's usually a lasting type of thing we continue to check up with those students throughout the um throughout the full year as well um we also um as many of you have known we we do employ alternative environmental design principles um we work closely with area landlords around uh problem areas where there are a number of large high high risk gatherings um you know most notably the townhouse apartments where uh working with landlords we changed some of the environmental um conditions so that it's less hospitable for large gatherings to occur and that is an active committee of the campus and community coalition it meets quite often um and then um you know as Nancy was talking about there is the UMass community agreement which is a new tool in our toolbox for this year um and uh you know with the success that we've seen with the number of students that have signed the agreement to this point um we are um really pleased that that many of our students are taking the upcoming semester seriously so there are many other things that we do including countless meetings that are in partnership many of them overlap the campus community community coalition is one some of you have attended those meetings we also have a weekly on-call meeting with public safety um dean of students office and also the town of Hadley participates in that as well so that where we share information concerns and come up with strategies to intervene where we need to so i'm happy to take questions later but i think we can pass it off to Jeff for some of our testing um discussion just before we do just a piggyback with what Tony was saying um about um you know creating a culture of compliance is really an important test right now and it's a similar approach i think to what you all are doing with the board of health mask ordinance in the downtown that it's really about education and not enforcement and so we are working on a public health messaging campaign and what was really interesting was the first rounds of concepts that we shared with our students the feedback that we got back from them um it was a small focus group but it was really that it was um too authoritarian that if they didn't want to be told what to do that they wanted something that was engaging and empathetic and so we really went back to the drawing board and our um our new campaign which uh you will see soon all over campus and we want to also um extended uh in our partnership with landlords and property owners by giving them some posters and other things that um represent the campaign but we're trying to have a little bit of um lightheartedness without um being um too quirky about it so we have a dual campaign uh that is focused on for faculty staff and students and there's um one of those the tag lines will be it's hard but it helps and so you know it's it's hard to wear a mask but it helps it's hard to social distance but it helps and then the other um flip side of that which is geared a little bit more to our undergraduate students um is it's weird but it works um so it's weird to you know being in your uh res hall and wear a mask or what we've got all kinds of uh fun things I know the town is doing a yoga mat for social distancing our agency came up with um 17 vegan burgers for social distancing make sure your 17 vegan burgers part so we're we're going to be utilizing that all over campus and like I said um partnering with uh property management landlords to give them some of the posters as well with that I'll turn it over to Jeff all right thanks Nancy Tony so good evening everyone um thank you for for the opportunity to speak this evening so I'll give a couple just a couple an overview of a few things and then happy to answer any questions so one I just want to state is we really have a great long history of working very closely with uh the town of Amherst and the board of health department Julie Fettelman and her team there um for many folks you know sometimes as we're educating our campus community campus community and students that we do serve as a local board of health um for the campus and that strong partnership we have with the town is so important when we talk about contact tracing from any types of infectious disease and from planning and training we have a long history of partnering with everyone so in terms of even now as we're preparing for the fall semester with students that live on campus or off campus we do partner with Julie and the team public health on that content contact tracing element and we're hiring additional staff to be able to help out with that so we can partner from that perspective in terms of testing a couple things so you know we've been doing symptomatic testing at university health services basically since mid-march and that include any student living on campus off campus faculty staff member that works on the campus and then from there working with their appropriate local board of health if somebody did um test positive we originally were sending out those test results now university health services for the symptomatic testing is actually able to do those test results in house and it's been about a day turn around time and um even a little less sometimes but that will continue for the fall semester no matter what you live on campus you live off campus employee faculty staff if they have symptoms so every student again no matter where you live is asked to do a daily health screening a daily health check basically monitoring your symptoms and if you have any of those symptoms um employees go one route students go a different route and then they'll be able to get in that day to get tested the other thing that we're doing we're spending significant resources on this is coming up with a surveillance asymptomatic testing center so as part of our public health team that has been working closely um you know since the spring and early in early summer and even looking at what different cdc guidance says that says asymptomatic testing is not something they recommend we uh we went above that recommendation and we we do think it's an important element here um as we bring students back so from that perspective uh we've actually started testing this last week this asymptomatic surveillance testing center is going to be run out of the mullen center basically nine to five monday through friday with some different times um as we welcome back students to the community the first weekend coming back next weekend and all students that live on campus or off campus prior to their arrival or shortly thereafter uh to the amherst area will get tested from that perspective so we'll be working closely and there'll be some uh specific specific targeted outreach to all those individuals that will help us tremendously from that perspective and then what we are going to do is conduct uh twice a week surveillance testing of all students living in the res halls as well as any off-campus students who have face-to-face classes and then that also include we will we're still working this out but we will do weekly testing for employees that are designated on site and also includes researchers and our faculty members so a lot of these folks also live in our in our communities um in the amherst area so these individuals will also be part of our surveillance testing program and then in addition to that to further monitor you know off-campus students and students in residence we're going to conduct what's called an adaptive testing program so basically what we'll do is continue to evaluate we have a a team made up of a lot of individuals that are our advisory group so we'll continue to monitor trends and then we can bring individuals in um to the mullen center to be able to conduct additional testing from that perspective people ask kind of how we're going to do this so this is a strong partnership with environmental health and safety university health services in our college of nursing so um we're going to have a number of college of nursing students that are able to help support us for the fall semester which is key to this from a staffing perspective um we have contracted with the Broad Institute um and that is the institute that is also working with other institutions of higher education so when individuals come through and get registered it's a self-administered self-administered but observed test that individuals will do and our goal is to so it's like I said saying earlier we'll do that every day Monday through Friday nine to five and then those results will be sent out that evening and then those results are coming back within 24 hours so then after those 24 hours we'll get the test results back and then we'll be working with um you know with our campus partners on um on follow-up uh with that perspective so with that I could talk for a while but I'll turn it over to to Nancy or Delaney and not happy to answer any questions thanks um yes we'll start with questions from the council Darcy is there any possibility of testing the people of Amherst who have not been tested people are very worried about the students coming but we don't really know whether we're all asymptomatic we don't know we know nothing that's um this is a real question yeah so the the testing facility is for UMass faculty staff and students and there's specific designations that individuals have to have in order to get tested we um we're spending significant resources in terms of to support the testing that we have right now from that perspective so um so that you know part of it too I would say it I don't know from the the uh the state government and looking at if there's opportunities for them to bring additional testing centers out there but like our goal right now we're scheduled to do about 10,000 tests a week if you're looking around the Commonwealth right now I don't know of anybody doing 10,000 tests a week so our staff we're maximizing what we are able to do for our campus community and area thank you George you said two questions so one it seems you've had a pretty good uh response rate from students in terms of signing the UMass agreement is that fair reading I'm just looking through what you sent us it seems I see a figure of like 99 percent um is that true of all students across the board or is that just students who've listed Amherst as their uh as one of their home addresses uh and plan to access the campus um I guess I'm asking what is the percentage overall or do you know of students who've actually signed the agreement that's my first question so I think uh actually the 99 percent is of of all students who um all students who have how do I want to phrase this who have answered the agreement 99.5 percent of them have have signed it and agreed to abide by it there are students who have not yet responded and so they so that's not I'm not including them in that 99 99.5 so very high engagement and if I read that agreement correctly one of the things that they signed themselves to was to limit their social engagements to groups of 10 or fewer is that correct that was an older version of the agreement george it has been revised because the uh when the first draft of the agreement was out the governor changed the regulations in terms of gatherings so there's been some just adjustment to that what we are recommending through our party registration program which will only be there really to ensure that there is instruction and education prior to anyone registering it's not about sanctioning parties of course it's more about making sure that students really understand the risks of what they do understand their leases etc but within if any student off campus does go to register a party the recommendation will be to keep gatherings under 10 but there is I guess then tony in the current agreement or the agreement that these students are signing there's nothing that explicitly addresses social gatherings that's not in the document social gatherings or social gatherings are addressed the number is not explicit number is not explicit that's correct or specific not explicit sorry mean did joe george was getting to my question a bit which is we've heard a huge amount of concern about both indoor and outdoor social gatherings by residents in this town particularly young students but obviously as this pandemic goes on longer and longer many more people in town want to have these social gatherings so it's not just limited to young students but you guys are here with humas so the question I have for you is um you have and and we've worked out an agreement and a nice um working relationship with the town and humas regarding noise complaints that uh the apd might receive on a night it gets forward and if it's determined that it's a humas student house or something someone who lives there is a humas student it gets forwarded to you is there some such agreement regarding gathering complaints or failure to wear mask complaints um violations of the governor's orders I know he just changed it last Friday um to a maximum of 50 um we'll be talking about that I think later tonight but a maximum of 50 or 8 per 1000 square feet outside and a maximum of 25 or 8 per 1000 square feet inside but also I think there is a thing of if anyone is over 10 number number of 10 people must have masks on so if the town receives a complaint and it is on this list of residents that happen to be humas students are you guys prepared to respond to that and follow up in the same manner that you respond to noise complaints and enforce it that way too yes so we're talking about also with the town and within the working group around an email line and a telephone line uh that will be hosted uh by the town uh then then any complaints that may involve students would be routed to um likely to me and to Sally Linawski for follow-up um we will work it from there but yes we do expect to respond in the same way education first I want to make sure that I emphasize however so um egregious complaints of course would have disciplinary um a disciplinary action or do you have a question just a quick follow-up Tony in the past I believe um you needed police reports to um bring about any kind of disciplinary action um this alternative phone line or email messages to you or to someone in your office would be a somewhat more informal process would that be sufficient from your perspective if you had to move to some kind of more severe disciplinary action or do you uh would you still need an official police report um in order to proceed um it's hard to really answer that without specifics but you know I think you know from the hypothetical situation uh from a hypothetical perspective I think it's a case-by-case basis so uh you know we already respond when we don't have a police complaint but if there's an email that comes in that that cites a certain address we will be in we were usually in contact with the landlord to you know get the the student renters and then we have a follow-up meeting so we're already following that process I think what we're doing with the line during the pandemic um and the email address again administered by the town but um what what we will be doing as those complaints are routed to us is you know the same thing that we're always doing but there is a line that people will know and will be able to easily find and can I just correct something on the data yeah just quickly to clarify for George because I want to make sure we're clear on it the the 99.5 percent positive response is for students who have provided a local address that doesn't mean that it's necessarily right here it could be western mass it could be in the region and to have indicated that um they will be accessing the campus so I just want to be clear about that thank you uh Kathy Shane um I I just want to follow up Tony on um the question of um it's not a noise complaint it's another kind um I heard of a couple in the last week and how would a neighbor who sees 15 cars with New Jersey license plates thinks do I call the police do I call someone else it's not yet noise and then looks over it's 25 it's 30 it's 40 people in the backyard with masks on at some point it's going to be noise how will they know that there is an email and a phone number um will it be you know in some of these neighborhoods could we put up a poster could we you know so people don't naturally think of somewhere on the town website is something beyond a police number um and in one instance they did call a police number and they said if it's not noisy yet we won't do anything and so wait a little bit and then call again and then there wasn't a record so it's just that it's how can the community help I have no idea whether counselors can help at all on this but knowing that it's gone beyond just a noise complaint now but it's around mass it's around gatherings Kathy the first thing I have to say is that I take exception that you bring up New Jersey it's just not fair isn't New Jersey no I'm a New Jersey I'm from New Jersey place and I know about New Jersey place but but they were they were emphasizing I'm kidding we're easy it's all right no you bring up a good question we're in the final processes of coming up with the the phone number and the email address I think call you might want to jump in here because again it will be administered through town hall the the actual phone line and email line but once that is settled we will certainly publicize that and make sure that it's known and then I think it could be reiterated during town council meetings you know we'll make sure that you know through you know different different means we'll be able to get it out with our partners whether they be the business community or you know other means so Paul do you want to add anything to that or sure so yeah we we have we'll have an email address and a phone number that people can call in we will have people monitoring that line it won't be like a 911 call or anything like that the idea on it is to gather all of those types of reports so that they're not going to 911 they're not going to the health inspectors that where they're already unindicted and that we have somebody who can triage the calls and then sort of deal them out if it's a university issue or if it's a police issue they can sort of deal out the field the calls and then deal them out and we hope to have that staffed pretty regularly or at least have someone on call so that we can respond to it and pretty in pretty real time not it won't be like actively answered that's at least our impression right now so there's a group that will put it out in a little newsletter it doesn't go out to a huge you know but goes out to people and we can add some names to that that are in neighborhoods where it's more things are yeah we'll try and spread the word as best we can yeah and you can help amplify that Alyssa knowing it's late but that we needed to have this conversation and this is the first chance we've had to have it so this I guess then is directed at the working group which includes Lynn and Paul and following up on what Paul and Tony both just said is the traditional follow-up like George was talking about with police reports and Tony was saying well it doesn't have to be a police report this a huge amount of this is about managing expectations right Kathy's talking about posters and putting it in newsletters people need to know what's going to happen when they call they're not going to get someone show up from the university at the house what they're going to get is either the police are going to show up or the police are not going to show up and later at some point in the future UMass is going to be discussing this as they do with other types of behavioral issues so we just need to make sure we're making it clear to the public that Tony Morales is not coming to their house at two in the morning because the students next door are having a party we are going to be talking about the governor's order later if we're not asleep by then and that specifically empowers the police to follow up on things that aren't noise complaints and we have obviously huge concerns about how we're going to manage that in Amherst so that's a separate conversation but I just want to make clear to the community no matter what we put in the newsletter we need to make it clear nobody's coming to your house or to the house next door to deal with this the night of because that realistically is not happening that's not being negative that's just being fair to the public to manage their expectations the other thing is in regards to the data we received tonight a few minutes before our meeting started we obviously didn't have any time to digest it and so while I appreciate that it was provided because it's always better than no information and we can think about it later it's not something we had any chance to look at obviously since the meeting started it also does not include any copy nor have we ever received a copy of the UMass student agreement so when we tell people that students are signing something because we want to show yeah UMass is taking responsibility nobody knows what's in that agreement it says students themselves and finally I just want to be clear that I understand all the struggles that the university is dealing with people have heard my disclosure before for the fact that my husband works there and I work part-time on campus but I want to be clear that looking at these numbers it doesn't emphasize the number of students who haven't responded at all obviously because that doesn't tell a good story but it also doesn't say anything about what happens if they refuse to sign it I appreciate that staff are taking the time to reach out to them I know it's been confusing I know graduate students have expressed concerns but if they don't sign it I don't think it matters and so I think it's important that our community understand that as well I appreciate the positive educational approach it's a bit of great success in so many of our neighborhood work so far but it's not fair to tell the community that students have to sign an agreement when in fact it doesn't matter if they sign it or not because most students are not going to based on the new decision have access to things on campus anyway if they wanted to go to a dining hall before they had to sign it now the dining hall is not going to be open to students from off campus as I understand it in this unfolding situation therefore they don't have to sign it so that it doesn't affect their behavior on or off campus so it's purely an optional thing as far as I can see and I think that we need to again manage people's expectations about what's happening there and yes be taking this very positive educational approach but not expect people are being punished whether it's by having Tony come to their house at one in the morning or that they can't somehow access classes because they were refused to sign the agreement neither of those is true um could I just make a couple of notes and Alyssa you're right I'm not going to someone's house at two in the morning I hopefully will be asleep but we will respond that that is that is one thing I do also want to emphasize just froze I'm sorry to say I did no am I here can you can can you all hear me we can see you're real time I think Lynn is frozen on my screen now so um one one thing I just want to emphasize is that the needed on today Mindy Dom and um Joe Comerford have been working on trying to get a can you hear me we can now yeah Mindy Dom and Joe Comerford have been working on trying to get a state testing site uh in town however frankly with Smith and also Mount Holyoke now deciding not to have on campus classes the call in in terms of the numbers are in some people's minds going down I think for many of us uh the issue of the actual number of people living off campus in Amherst is the big issue and that's something we continue to work on given the lateness of the hour if there's any more questions I want to thank our panelists invite them to stay since we're going to continue to talk about um safety and and um for the next couple of minutes and uh perhaps you'd like to hear about that then could I just say one one last thing uh two quick things one the students had to sign the UMass agreement by July 31st so um if they did sign it it is in place um and it doesn't it it's not impacted by their inability to access the dining comments the other thing is that the UMass agreement is on the UMass website we've tried to be as transparent as possible if you go to UMass.edu slash coronavirus we have FAQs that are updated on a regular basis um the agreement is there if you can't find it I'm happy to send the link and Alyssa I will send it to you so that you have it but we are trying to be very transparent about everything we're doing thanks for the opportunity tonight well this are me we'll send to the rest of the council um so thank you both to all three of you Nancy and uh Jeff and Tony um I'm sure we will have more questions in Poland I'll be meeting with you again on Thursday um I want to just quickly say I don't unless anybody feels we need to go over the board of health regulations or Paul you have any comment on that uh I think we need to move on to this the latest governor's report Paul any comment on the border health regulations no just that they did pass it um it went into effect on august 3rd um and it has it it's a defined area in the downtown area and there are signs up uh at the entrances throughout and throughout downtown to make people aware that it's a mask required area shall we have a question about this yes there was a concern from constituents at least in district five to remove strikeout one of the lines involving the police because it is creating concern for um yes that is being reviewed by the the board of health on Thursday thank you thank you um and then the governor recently uh put out an order reducing group sizes again um and this we included that order in your packet including some yellow marked areas are there particular questions about that Dorothy I can't hear you Dorothy constituents have asked why it's not a bigger mask area and perhaps they thought just this just said the three village centers um and certainly the bike trail has come up a lot of people reporting people on top of each other not masked and a really unsafe situation um so the the other thing is the governor's order uh is just too excessive too many people and um I I believe do we have a motion on our motion sheet saying um group should be limited to 10 there's not a motion on that that's if the issue is going to be whether or not the board of health could deal with it as an additional regulation and then the issues are important yeah I froze again Lynn yeah well I would just I'm going to conclude to say there's a lot of concern about masks all over the town of Amherst and about groups and I've received a lot been receiving a lot of mail to please limit the group to 10 20 at the max outdoors okay all right and other comment I'm sorry I need to go to my participant thing uh Lissy you have your hand up I'm sorry if it's since no one else has asked the question what are we going to do in response to the governor's order in terms of using police for enforcement we obviously just heard as I have heard before as was discussed at the board of health meeting itself whether or not to use the police to enforce the board of health's order that's one question and even if the board of health strikes that out of the central mass thing which is they're entirely empowered to do that's just for them the governor's order specifically empowers the police to respond so my question is what are we doing in Amherst just as in the past when we had decriminalization we did not prioritize police showing up I think it's very clear that many in our community want the police at the at the neighbor's house that has too many people and they want them there right then and the next person down the street obviously doesn't want the police there at all because it's an armed response to you know a party so what is our direction here well so it is not our intention to use police to enforce the social gathering or mask bylaw we are looking at alternative means we are hiring a bunch of ambassadors for mask wearing but also hoping that they can move into a broader relationship where they can help respond looking at having them do be on off hours or an evening hours where they can either go with a police officer if there is a situation to try and have somebody other than a police officer respond to situations like that the board of health intends to take it is by understanding that they are going to be reviewing the role of police and its regulations on thursday the governor from what I understand from the police community added the police as being the enforcement agency without really talking to public safety officers and whether they had the capacity to enforce this and so what I'm told is there's more definition of this to be coming down the road but so at this point police are under the governor's order police and other inspectors are able to respond to it but if someone says there's 27 people in a basement in someone's house we're probably not going to send a cruiser there Kathy am I I just want to follow up on Dorothy's mask rule if we think that masks should be mandatory in the village centers so up in North Amherst where our little complexes are is it each individual counselor just reaches out to the board of health and expresses it as an opinion do we do something more as a group so it's a question I've been asked to do that by people here and I'm perfectly willing to do that I'm just wondering is how how best to express that that we have other places where lots of people are getting in and out of cars that are little shops and we we don't have a big area up here but there is an area so unless the council decides to take a position so it makes a motion says the council wants to do this I think the bet your best avenue is to contact the board of health directly and say this is a concern that I've heard from lots of the people that I listen to you know it's not something that staff are recommending or pushing forward at this point so George I for one would appreciate the board of health input at least on just from a purely public health perspective given the town we live in which is different from many other towns and Massachusetts whether gatherings of 50 people or 30 people where they're not masked and not following the guidance that the governor's laid out is a serious public health threat and whether we either through the board of health or as a town council should consider a more restrictive number whether we should accept the governor's numbers and and work with that I don't I have conflicting views on this I've certainly heard things from constituents who the number 10 keeps coming up that's not necessarily my number I'm not sure there is a number the governor's number is 50 and 25 inside I just would like to hear from the board of health and from the the health director some public health guidance some thoughts maybe they think I just don't know what they think and it's I don't believe it's on their agenda for this coming meeting but they do have a 48 hour rule and I really would like to hear from them if they're willing to weigh in because if we were to consider as a body say setting a limit I don't think we would proceed without their input anyway I mean I think we would turn to them and say you know from a public health perspective does this really make any sense and then obviously Paul there's the enforcement issue that you've raised and if we're not going to send police you know maybe we just live with the governor's order and just hope for the best so I could reach out to the health director and ask for an opinion or a recommendation to that might come to the council or to for your consideration as a bylaw change or might go to the to the board of health for their regulation it's not on their agenda but if you want to get the health director's opinion that's something that I can certainly request it seems to me that the the request is that the board of health consider two things the idea of further limitation on numbers of people and the second is extending the mask rule to other to the village centers and I would like to add to that because it's not defined as a village center university drive I would encourage you to put that into a motion so we can convey a motion to the board of health if that's what the council wants to do right anybody want to make the motion Alyssa I tried lowering my hand yeah didn't work fast enough all right why don't you make a motion to request that the board of health report to the town council in time for a date somebody else is going to name meeting whether they would consider extending the mask order to additional areas including north amherst university drive and whether they end to provide advice to the town council on possibly limiting gatherings both indoors and out more strictly than the governor's order 46 does is there a second I second that George okay is there any further discussion Darcy you need unmute I think your your original suggestion Lynn was all the village centers which Alyssa only lists to the university drive and north amherst yeah I would like to make sure I would like a friendly amendment to that that it be all village centers and university drive yes thank you got it cool motion's been made and seconded shallony do you have a comment I just want to again I'll reiterate what we heard very loudly in our district meeting and that was again it's not represented of the whole town I understand but these were people of color by park people who stated very clearly that getting why can't we enforce this using ambassadors and friendly messaging because enforcing it through making it an order and a police involving the police is it is creates more fear and safety issues for I mean it's a dilemma and I don't know how to do this well let me just mention that because we running so late on time Paul has not had an opportunity to describe the ambassador program that he in fact is setting up through and Paul why don't you just give us a quick update on that yes we have hired someone to sort of oversee the ambassador program and we're recruiting now for a number of probably student ambassadors who will be identified and be able to walk around downtown give out masks to people educate them trying to create a culture of compliance if we're able to get them training and feel that they can be safe and be sort of side by side with police officers when they're responding to house parties things like that but it's that's those things can you never know where those things go and it's up to the individuals if they are welcome welcome to that but it's something that the police definitely want to explore Alyssa I'm sorry I just want to follow up on something that was said earlier about 25 persons that's actually not factual you have to read the entire statement indoor gatherings are limited to eight persons per 1,000 square feet of accessible indoor floor space never more than 25 in a single enclosed we do not have any houses in town that would allow for 25 persons in a single enclosed floor space if you're only allowed eight per 1,000 square feet only allowed I'm allowed less than 16 people in my house not 25 so let's just make sure we're not asking anyone to weigh in on 25 we're talking about maybe something that's clearer than this rather than measuring the floor space of your house but the limit is not 25 it is eight per 1,000 and if you have a huge house never more than 25 so that is different because there are students who are going to hear I live in a big house and we can have 25 people and so that's not I think the message we want to give Evan I just wanted to request that the motion be read back before we vote okay is there any other questions at this point if not Angela can you read back the motion Chancellor Brewer moved to request that the board of health report to the town council by blank meeting whether they would consider extending the mask order to North Amherst all village centers university drive and provide advice to the town council on the feasibility of governor's order number 46 to limit the number of individuals at social gatherings indoor and outdoor can I ask that that the response come back to us in time for our meeting on the 17th that may not be possible just meeting wise okay then as soon as possible and no later than August 31st yeah how's that is that a friendly emotion amendment Alyssa yes absolutely absolutely just like yeah clarifying not sure how the words came out on the governor's part of it but it was the idea was being where we're going to be more restricted than the word strictly was in there yeah and more restricted you were the other seconder is there any other discussion on this if not I'd like to call the question all right then I'm going to go ahead and take a vote um Shalini yes Alyssa yes Pat DeAngels yes Darcy Demont yes Reese Mersey yes Hanna key yes Pam yes Ross yes Ryan yes chain yes driver yes Steinberg yes Schwartz yes the votes 13-0-0 none absent uh we are now at the point where we're going to move on or we're going to read delay what is the wish of the council at this point if we delay we have to either add this to an agenda on the 17th which is generally reserved only for the evaluation of the town manager otherwise it moves to August 31st I'm hearing nothing so okay George well maybe I should be quiet since you've heard nothing I think we should just soldier on but um should we try to get through it tonight I know it's late I'm tired I'm everyone's tired but my vote would be to continue all right then second Gaffey Gaffey my question is of the things that are still on the agenda are the things that if we don't soldier on the moment passes to work on them um you know so that they're they're very time sensitive um I have to I think of the agenda in front of me you know so what I mean is there's there are a couple big items and I just don't know whether we want to go to one or two in the morning so so if if there's one or two of them they're not time sensitive they're just our time that if it's August 31st it's fine it's not like the roof collapses but if it's something that actually needs a decision sooner rather than later um I also want to point out that um Chris Brestrup has joined us Mandy Jo you have your hand up yes there is under chapter 40 mgl chapter 40a section five um I'm not sure of the exact date but the zoning bylaw amendment must be heard within 90 days of the town council hearing the town council hearing was June 17th we're already up close to that 60 day 60 days um so you know we have to vote on it within 90 days not just hear it um so we're getting closer to that time where it would run out um so I would be concerned about postponing it too much longer because of that but it could be heard as late as the 31st and still be within 90 days unless there's a councilor right to postpone then I would get concerned okay um and the valley cdc chris we may ask if you are there and awake which is a big order at this point uh do um where do we stand on the valley cdc's hearings um valley cdc is continuing its public hearing with the zoning board of appeals we don't expect it to be concluded before sometime in september at least right then I think we can defer that so the zoning and the master plan request manager you want to weigh in on that can be deferred um I don't I mean christine the planning director can speak to it um it is it would simply be a vote to essentially say don't work on the update um and give the planning department clarity so I'm not sure she's working on it now um as a delay anyway so I'm not sure two more weeks would have her putting time into that unnecessarily then I'm going to suggest that we um can in fact defer defer the valley cdc project to august 31st um we can in fact defer the zoning bylaw 11250 to august 31st and the master plan update to august 31st and the capital inventory to august 31st any objections pat de angeles no I was jumping ahead I was going to suggest that committee reports be saved because they're in the packet we should have read them um and so I don't think they have to be spoken thank you heaven Ross I have no objection to um the if those items being delayed as someone who has to be up at 6am tomorrow um however uh given that this would be the second time we delay the SPR vote in quantum and given that our planning director has been on on the has has been on zoom for the past five hours thinking we were going to get to it my one request would be that we put it as the first agenda item at the meeting on the 31st if we do delay it out of courtesy for staff I would suggest we move all of those out of courtesy to staff and the others as well Alyssa I would much rather do the quantum of vote now because we've been getting letters from the public we've had staff wait and I am concerned that if someone moves to postpone in August then we are going to have a problem with our deadlines apparently although we don't have that in writing any place as to what that interpretation is this zoning bylaw 11.250 yeah pat de angeles you have your hand up I forgot to take it down thank you all right let's go ahead with the zoning bylaw 11.250 and make sure we get done with that so the motion I'm going to ask first of all call on Mandy joe hannicky community resources committee report yeah I will be brief because I gave a more extensive report last time I'm just going to remind everyone of what the community resources committee voted and what the planning board voted on this the amendment itself as presented was supported by the planning board in a five to two vote and supported by the community resources committee in a four to one vote I would like to ask Sarah I know she was not at the meeting where we first presented this I did present her position there but I think it's always nice to ensure that the person in the minority that had a dissenting vote have a chance to speak to the position of themselves and their vote and since she didn't have that opportunity the first time this was brought up I'd like to offer that to her as as a member of CRC. Sarah do you have a comment at this time very kind of Mandy joe to that I will keep it very very quick um I just um from the discussion I felt that it was that it was just few too few people and we hadn't ever had that few people before having to vote and it I think um one of the planning board members had said that not having um a decent majority to vote on something like that had not happened in the last year or two years or three years and it just it made me feel uncomfortable um that it was just three people I didn't think it was sufficient okay thank you for your comment so let me read the motion and then see if we have amendments to amend zoning bylaw 11.250 planning board decision to delete the phrase at least two-thirds but not fewer than five and replace it with the words a majority so that the section 11.250 reads the concurring vote of a majority of the members of the board participating and voting shall be required for any decision on a site plan application abstaining members being considered not to be voting is there I'll second that okay and just for clarification in this case a majority would be how many so um if this was zoning bylaw that this amendment passes as written if there are seven or six members present and they all vote um it would be four if there are five or four members present and they all vote it would be three to pass the site plan review okay there's a hand up Kathy Shane yes um Mandy could have kept saying if there are four vote people present and one abstains it could be two you know so it keeps it keeps going down you know um if there are three still voting the way it's now worded so it could go down to as few as two so what I don't know is there is a I have a substitute that would put the word four in a majority but at least four so at what point do we first vote on the with no minimum do we then come back um you now need to amend okay then I am proposing that amended and the concurring vote of a majority but no fewer than four of the members and then the rest would read the same as she has um so it puts a minimum of four which is a majority of seven so it is getting rid of the two-thirds um a majority but it's going to majority and keeping it for and I just want to my thinking about this and I express excuse me Kathy I need a second okay is there a second Dorothy a second did it is yes if you want to briefly speak to it thank you okay so my thinking is that you know I realize reviews have often got unanimous there if it's a very important site plan review I'm hoping that as many members come as possible and it gets scheduled at this time making decisions by fewer and fewer people in town for things that affect the whole town doesn't feel to me like the way we want to go and we've reduced the size of the planning board and so saying that it's got to be at least four is as Mandy said if there's six people there four would be the number if there's seven four it's the two majority so leaving putting a minimum number of people um to me says we need at least four positive votes before we go forward with the site plan okay so that it is a majority and keeping it at that floor the motion's been made in second there's now an amendment so that the motion would read to amend zoning bylaw 11.250 planning board decision to delete the phrase at least two-thirds but not fewer than five and replace it with the words a majority so that the section 11.250 reads the concurring vote of a majority but no fewer than four of the members of the board participating and voting shall be required for any decision on a site plan application abstaining members being considered not to be voting comment Darcy yeah i i just very briefly would say that no i thought it was i unnecessary to to change it from supermajority to majority to understand why that was even proposed but i would support this compromise that Kathy's putting forward as a reasonable compromise okay mandu joe yeah i i just wanted to do a couple of housekeeping so there was a main motion Kathy made a motion to amend our next vote will be only on the amendment to add the phrase not not fewer than four right on the whole thing i also wanted to mention that the planning board chair is in the attendee section in case there are any questions for her to ask of the planning board that she's attending to along with our planning director evan you have your hand up yes and i'll try and be brief i want to just need two quick points one for me why this is important and i guess respond to Darcy's question about why even change the number um a lot of this to me is about the message that we're sending about our community we talk about branding ourselves as a community that's open for business that's not um anti-business and that's something that we hear sometimes and i think when we require a supermajority for site plan review something that we say is something that fits with the zoning bylaw and that we want not a special permit but site plan review i think that sends the wrong message to people who might be looking to invest in our community and what concerns me i understand Kathy's rationale what concerns me a little bit um is that if we have a minimum bar of four at all times um i worry that in circumstances where one or two members are absent um we we we still create a supermajority vote and i think that that's fine for site plan for a special permit but i think that sends the wrong message about our community um to people who are looking to invest in it with site plan review because the site plan review is something that should go through and so we shouldn't be erecting unnecessary barriers to that i also want to just note that we had a supermajority vote of the planning board in support of the original proposal on the on the table and a supermajority vote of the CRC they were not unanimous votes but to me it's also important that we respect the the deliberation that occurred at the planning board which talked about a number of four Kathy's proposal with our amendment was brought up during that meeting and the planning board which are the people who actually do this who so i think they we need to give weight to their decision because they're the actual ones who are debating this and having to do this by a by a supermajority vote recommended the simple majority over the threshold before and i think that's important to consider that the people who are actually implementing this by a supermajority went for the simple majority versus having a threshold number Randy Joe you have your hand up i just forgot to lower it sorry Melanie you have your hand up yes uh what helped me make a decision in favor of what we decided in CRC was the an explanation for what a site plan review is and what i i think i would appreciate maybe chris giving us what the purpose of that to help other people the counselors to understand that this is not you know it's not something like a special permit and and the reason i say that is because i've been hearing from professionals but not i'm not talking about big developers and stuff i'm talking about doctors and other professionals who are so exhausted and it's so costly for them every time they put in these things that are not necessary that it creates an an excessive burden on them and i know a doctor who's thinking of moving out of amers and we don't have that many doctors here we don't have i don't think they have many dentists we don't have many professionals who want to open the business in amers because we make it so hard with every time there's a change they have to bring in a lawyer they have to do all of that and so i would really like us to consider what is the purpose of a site plan review and can it be done in the most peaceful manner for the professionals in that community and ultimately i mean our neighboring towns like Northampton have a simple majority as well so Chris would you please give us a brief explanation if you could please christine chris you have to unmute um i'll start over excuse me um the use that's being proposed for a site plan review is something that's considered to be acceptable and ordinary in the location in which it's being proposed and that's as opposed to a special permit a special permit is really a use that is considered to be potentially slightly disruptive or inconvenient or may pose issues to the location where it's being proposed so site plan review is really the planning board looking at the details of of what's being proposed rather than the use so they're the planning board is looking at the parking the lighting access it's really the physical manifestation of the project and and they're you know they're looking at the use of the sense that they want to know what the management plan for it is but they're not looking at it in the sense that they would be considering denying it does that does that help are there further questions steve schreiber oh i'm just going to urge all of you to respect the vote of both the planning board five to two super duper majority and also the crc four to one i think councillor ross just mentioned that the other thing is that um sprs by themselves are often non controversial projects resurfacing of the amherst college fields you know things like that the controversial projects spring street one east pleasant um and i'm sorry i'm losing track almost always come with a spp so there's spr site plan review there's almost always an spp special permit planning board attest to that so we're not touching at all that special permit planning board requirement which will remain two-thirds of the body so that that'll remain in not if i'm saying this correctly christine i think i'm saying this correctly but almost all of those the ones that make the newspaper the controversy is almost always about the special permit the spp part of that not the spr it's not challenging the the use of this or the right of this building to exist but it's challenging the right of the building to be that high or that close to the street and those are not affected by this vote and not in every case but in most cases garcy well i i know that some towns do have something like this but the majority of towns actually still are two-thirds and having a majority i don't see how it becomes a supermajority to have a minimum of four um the part that bothers me are the phrases present and voting now that means the very few people could approve of something if there aren't that many people present in voting then you can reschedule the meeting because what this i see this sets up is first of all i say why now okay um and it does kind of raise some my antenna um and i think it opens things up to gamesmanship and to manipulation um because they could say oh these people are here now we can get this thing through if there's a problem we schedule the meeting um yes many of the projects are not that controversial but why reduce it for something like three out of seven which is not a majority all right it's a below majority it's a minority could do it and i believe that the planning director herself said that she favored the minimum of four because she thought it was important that with buildings and things that are coming into shared spaces that there be a bigger buy-in um we have our share of controversy in this town and i think we'd all be happier to have a little less of it so that i think that we could just remove the two-thirds majority but to keep it as a majority a minimum of four we could get business done we're not going to be putting undue burdens on people but it would cause um more people to think about it and i think we'd have more of a buy-in and it would be a more peaceful situation so there's a motion on the floor it was seconded and there's an amendment to the motion on the floor and it's been seconded we're going to move to the motion of on the amendment the vote on the amendment is to add in the phrase but no fewer than four okay i'm going to start with a roll call vote and i'll start with hannoky no ham yes ross no ryan no shane no wait a minute am i voting i'm voting in before yes you're voting to add in this phrase yes driver now that was the first um i'm voting no lost track time for no forts no ballmail now i'm sorry no brewer alissa i'm sorry my phone has decided i'm driving and so that made it complicated the question is to make sure i'm clear is four that catie's amendment and my vote is yes the angeles no umant yes and greasmer is no so the vote is one two three four in favor and nine opposed and no abstentions so the the amendment to the motion dies so we're back to the original motion and the motion is to amend the zoning bylaw 11.250 planning board decision to delete the phrase at least two-thirds but not fewer than five and replace it with the words of majority so the section 11.250 zero reads the concurring vote of a majority the members the board participating voting shall be required for any decision on a site plan application of staying members being considered not to be voting i call it's i'm gonna move to the vote and this time i'm going to start with pam no ross yes ryan yes shane no schreiber yes steinberg yes schwarz no all-milm yes brewer yes the angeles yes jimant no greasmer is a yes and uh hannoky yes the vote is nine in favor four against and zero abstaining and it passes could i just note for the record that it needed two-thirds and it received the two-thirds thank you um all right i'm looking at the rest of this agenda i believe that we are going to do the following we are deferring until a later on august 31st the cdc project the master plan update the capital inventory criteria there's no appointments committee and liaison reports are in the thing are in the agenda packet your approval minutes can wait until august 31st uh questions on the town managers report seeing none paul your thank you for your report any town council comments i have none okay any further topics no executive sessions i declare the meeting adjourned at 11 40