 I think you should have it from there. Sounds good. Good evening. I'm Darcy Dumont. I'm calling the July 15, 2021 meeting of the town of Amherst Town Service and Outreach Committee to order at 6.31. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. Every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time. And you can also view the recording of this meeting on the town of Amherst YouTube channel. At this time, I'm going to call on committee members by name to confirm that you can hear me vice versa. And please remember to mute your mic after saying present. Alyssa? Present. I'm present. Evan is not present. George Ryan? Present. And Andy Steinberg? Present. OK, and I think we've heard everybody else's voice. Committee members, if there are technical difficulties to rise, discussion may be suspended while we address technical issues. And the minutes will note if a disconnection occurred. If necessary, we'll pause the meeting until we're reconnected. So the first thing we have is public comment, which does not seem like it's going to happen since there's no public. And so we're going to move right on to. And we don't have any appointments. That's correct, Paul. Do you have anything to report about that? Recreation director appointment? Not at this time. OK, so just still in process. And the next thing on the agenda is the town manager report updates and councilor questions about the reports. There were actually three reports in the packet. So just if anybody has any updates or if the town manager has any updates or counselors have any questions, I guess not. OK, so moving on to the presentations. Tonight, I'm hoping to have two presentations with discussion. And that would be the first thing would be the Smith College Waste Hall or Options Capstone Project. And one of the authors, Taylor Dittmar, is here to present along with her faculty supervisor, Paul Nolan, who is from the Smith College Economics Department. Taylor is going to give an overview of the report that they made, which is in the packet and looks at possible ways the town and residents could both reduce waste and save money starting by focusing on one to four family resident services. And then after that, there's going to be time for councilor questions and comments. This is an area where the town can make progress on accomplishing action set out in the Climate Action Plan 2. Full disclosure here, I'm one of the founders of the Zero Waste Amherst that who requested the Smith Study. And we were the, you know, like the clients. And that presentation, I'm assuming will take no more than 40 minutes, including the questions and answers. So after that, just going over the agenda, I asked the town manager to prepare some type of framework to discuss the public way request regarding roadway improvements on North Pleasant West of Kendrick Park. And two big questions here will be whether a public hearing is required, if so, when. And because we've been asked to get that recommendation back by mid-September. So and just by my, I think I'm going to make a recommendation that we have a hearing during our August 26 meeting, but we can talk about that later. Another big question will be what to ask of the Transportation Advisory Committee and other town committees who might want to weigh in and how much time they'll need to do that. Excuse me, Tarsie. Yes. You're sharing your screen. Do you intend to be doing that? No. OK. What do you see? We see your screen. So I'm going to stop doing that. OK. I wonder what's happening. OK. You're fine. I foresee that we'll get to the other public way request at the next meeting on August 5. So why don't we just do. Does anybody have questions about this, Andy? Yeah. Tarsie. Yes. The two things. One is my internet connection. So just to let you know, the other thing is to point out there's an attendee with a hand raised now. And I don't know if that's another student from Smith or something like that. So I just didn't want to alert you to that. Oh, OK. I should probably take that because we kind of skipped over that quickly. So yes. This is an unknown name, which I'm going to call on. I'm going to call on the public comment person and bring you into the meeting. So let's can speak for up to three minutes. Mr. or Ms. Enver. And I don't know how to pronounce your name. You may go ahead with your public comment. You have to unmute first. There we go. Well, I just wanted to bring up to date on this matter because I know of your concern about it. We got, Friday night, got a message from Koushyev, which said that he would withdraw these missiles and technicians and so on, providing we. That appeared to be the Zoom bomber. OK, I guess we're going to go forward now. And we can just get started with Taylor, who just as a way of introduction, she is a rising senior. She was the only she was the youngest person in the group of students, all of the rest of whom graduated. And she is a double major in environmental science and policy and Spanish. So would you like to share the screen, Taylor? Yeah, I can do that. Pardon if there is any noise. I am currently in a Smith door room, so that is a little bit. Never really know what you're going to get in terms of noise. But hello, thank you guys so much for having me. And I'm so happy to be here. As Darcy said, great introduction. Thank you. I am my name is Taylor. And I was part of the group of four that did this presentation. I did this research for my semester long capstone research project to finish up my environmental science major. And yes, I was the only junior in the entire class, which we talked about quite a bit. But now on to our project. So just for some introduction and background, which I'm assuming you guys kind of like know a little bit more about given that this is tailored to Amherst. This is our table and contents. We all be talking a little bit about project background, then moving on to the significance of waste calling in a larger context, assessing options for Amherst, and then eventually giving the recommendation that we concluded on. And then kind of to bring things back together, give a conclusion, and then talk about some steps that are possible. So currently in Amherst, as I'm sure some of you are aware of the different complaints for a couple different reasons, including the fact that the price points are very high. And it's also really hard to gather information from the various companies that are contracted in Amherst. The options are really unclear in terms of whether or not there's single or dual stream recycling, whether or not there's curbside, food scrap, or compost pickup. And there are also no waste reduction incentives, in addition to the fact that there is a general dissatisfaction. And so for our project, we were reached out to by, as Sarci said, zero waste Amherst. And our goal was to help recommend a new waste hauling system in Amherst to the current problems that I just mentioned. And yeah, our goal was actually to ultimately bring this and recommend to town council. So I guess that's what we're doing now. Very happy that I did get this far and do appreciate you guys this time. And so for some more background about waste hauling and trash in general, there's 5.6 million tons of solid waste generated by Massachusetts residents annually. And this amount is only going up although unfortunately, in times, trash actually needs to be reduced. And Massachusetts does have a few plans put in place to reduce the amount of trash that is produced in Massachusetts. And the current situation in the United States is an oligopoly due to the fact that there are a small number of large corporations that do kind of run the trash industry now and have been able to buy out a lot of local haulers for example, I know like Amherst trucking, I believe. And a few other local ones that you guys are now unable to use which is really unfortunate. And yes, so as I just mentioned, Massachusetts does have a solid waste master plan of 30% waste reduction by 2030. And so unfortunately, or fortunately, even though waste is kind of like increasing the state and the larger nation definitely do have plans to work towards eventual waste reduction. And currently Amherst residents can contract or use the transfer station, but we found that even though the transfer station was an option, it wasn't super common and less than 20% of residents use that option. So now into the options and criteria for assessing these different options. We have four different options. We will start off with in our research plan, it was always necessary to kind of compare options to the base plan. So our base is a status quo, the way things are going, where individual residents can contract with their hauler of choice, usually either USA or Republic where they can use the transfer station. Another option that we consider it is sticking with kind of the foundations of the status quo, but in addition to that creating information outreach and talking to community members and also to help distribute kind of more information about what is available, because reaching back to one of the problems, a lot of people don't know what options are and will usually stay with option that is really expensive and not great for the environment just because they don't know of any other option. Then we have option one C, which is a combination of a compost mandate and the option that I just mentioned. So in combination of the information outreach and really spreading that information, it would also require that people added a compost option to their USA contract. And then option two is a town contract where the town of Amherst would altogether contract with one of the main waste haulers in the area after going out to bid and submitting an RFP. And this would also give the town a little bit more control over what they wanna prioritize things such as food scrap collection and dual strip recycling. So now the criteria with which we have evaluated all of those options, we kind of used a lot of the feedback we had received from Amherst residents and kind of like how like they wanted to see things improved and use that to assess these options. So first we have affordability, cost of residence and also cost of the town in general. And we have sustainability talking about if there's recycling, dual or single stream, compost, whether that's optional, how expensive it is and then trash in general. And then in terms of transparency, the accessibility level of the information and how much effort an individual has to put in in order to receive information about their plan. And then in terms of feasibility, we always wanna make sure that what we're recommending isn't just totally out of left field and it is something that with a lot of community action and kind of like willingness from the communities is something that like would be able to be implemented if it was decided it was best. So now onto our analysis and results. We actually got some really great data and we were able to reach out to four different towns in the area. I'm actually from Long Meadow. So that was kind of fun to reach out to my town and learn more about the trash land that I had never once thought about before this project because usually it's something that kind of just like you assume is a given and you don't really think about it. I'm also not the one that pays my housing taxes. Shout out to my parents, but. So we will now see here that the two bars in red are individual contracts that are utilized in Amherst. We averaged the USA waste contract in Amherst that you see in white, but against the left, the two red bars do represent Republic pricing information we were giving because although it isn't super frequent that Republic contracts Amherst, it is a possibility. So here we have the prices for a month to month and then also a two year individual contract. And then we see that there is a dramatic price decrease when you look at the towns that do have a town contract and to kind of sum up this information because there is a lot kind of in that we created this graph. And you see that there is actually a 55% average decrease in price when looking at the average individual contract for Amherst and then the average surveyed town contract. And we found by, and we hoped that by using local towns this would be like more relevant price points and not just kind of like, oh, some town in Colorado is having a great deal. Like we really tried to keep it local and use towns that use the RFP process and like long matter that proximity and really just trying to like find these points that would be like useful in predicting Amherst price points. So now starting to look at what we took away from this in terms of sustainability right now with USA Waste and Republic, it's not mandatory to do like dual stream recycling. And this is only something that could really be managed if the town contract prioritized that. And while food scrap collection would be possible with the outreach and compost option, we do recognize that because the USA Waste Compost option is so expensive. We'll talk about this in the next slide, but it's just not the same benefits for sustainability that it could be with a town contract because the outreach and compost option does have a lot of comments to it. In terms of transparency, we found that the status quo is kind of the only option that really failed at that point. It's really hard for people to access information. Like my group members and I, it took a lot of calls to USA Waste to really receive the information that we were looking for. And it's definitely considering the fact that like we are very, it could be an argument that it's like, oh, like some residents may not be able to access the technology, may not be able to find the right websites, but it's like we had four 20-year-olds that are all putting our heads together and it was still really difficult to find the data. And I was really frustrating, even though we don't even live in Amherst, like it's just really upsetting that there was this much gatekeeping for this information. And then in terms of feasibility, affordability, we heard that it's definitely the town council's top priority. I guess you guys can share with us if that is accurate or not. But that is something that we definitely kept in mind. And we actually found out that a town contract would not only save the consumer money, but it would also probably save the town money due to all of the illegal dumping that is from students in the area and the amount that that causes the town to need to contract out to pick that up. And so for our combined results, well, we definitely found that outreach would definitely be really beneficial because it's always good to share more information with your public and kind of like let them know the options they have. We found that the town contract overall was just the best. And while we did find that there are some kind of like snacks and feasibility in terms of whether or not we feel that Amherst has kind of like the will and the resources to put this together because it does take a bit of a small team to put on RFP and really kind of like take it all in, all of the information. It in the end is what we recommended to be kind of the best option and found that it had incredible results or affordability and kind of like what that has in store for residents if this was taken up. And then also it gives you guys the ability to really put forward what you want for sustainability and kind of make Amherst the town that a lot of people see it as and something that is really revolutionary and allows you guys to stand up to that. And then also, as I'm sure you guys feel, it's definitely really important that residents do have access to their price points and kind of like know what they're paying for. So we found that transparency will be great. So now in terms of conclusion and next steps, we recommend the town contract and found that it had way more benefits than any of the other options. And we found that the towns that we had spoken to about it were all really pleased with how it was going and found that illegal dumping had gone down, residents were happier, and they generally received like fewer complaints, even though many people in the Western West area really loved to complain, which was very kind of like great to see that people were happy with this. And again, gives the town more control and helps to kind of like remove power from the forming oligarchy that is always great and kind of like give a more at-home option. And even though I'm in Massachusetts, they have been kind of forming a RFP every four to five years for the past 40 years. And they find that every year price consistently drops. So when the town is able to take back this power, it really is incredible like kind of like what these clients are willing to do to keep these towns. And they find that although they may have to switch between haulers in the end, they're always getting a great price and they're also able to prioritize sustainability, which they weren't sure at the beginning if they were able to. And definitely some solid short-term alternatives, information outreach is always a beneficial thing to do. Even in addition to a town contract, it's always great to inform the public about environmental efforts and just kind of have that option for transparency. And we found that compost mandate, that compost is incredibly expensive, over $200 and it would just be unfair to kind of put that on people. And we think that there kind of might be a general confusion about the way system, as I've talked about a few different times that outreach would help. And yes, as I mentioned, lots of benefits because of illegal dumping and control over zero waste efforts. And in terms of sustainability, we'd also recommend that there's more research put into in terms of total waste reduction for Amherst and local towns, kind of thinking about if maybe residential hauling is the wrong point of intervention for a long-term waste reduction. Although obviously this is really important stuff, there are also other things that can be done in the entire waste process that in addition, long-term would ideally be looked at to kind of help with long-term sustainability in Amherst. And this is our little thank you page. Paul, I appreciate you being here. I don't know if there's anything you'd like to add, but none of them I have. And I'm very happy to answer any questions anyone has. I can refer back to any slides as necessary. Thank you, Taylor. Paul, do you have anything that you would like I can? Nope, you're muted. Yeah, the course was called Sustainable Solutions and Taylor was one of three groups and the other two groups tackled food scarcity and precarity and as well as solar collector arrays in farm fields. And there was a prize given to the best presentation and Taylor's group won that prize. So congratulations to her. And I think they did a fantastic job and good presentation, Taylor. Well done. Nice to see you again. It was well and it definitely has been about two months since we last really we're kind of like in the midst of this information. So I'd be really happy to share kind of the original presentation with anyone that maybe wants a little bit of a clear synaptic. Okay, and we do have the written presentation also. Do the counselors have any or staff have any comments or questions for Taylor? Andy. I believe you are muted. I'm still muted. The water is running somewhere. Oh, I apologize. The water is my fish tank. Andy, can you get unmuted? I can also I'll stop showing the screen I don't know if that would be beneficial. Sometimes it's a little hard to work everything on Zoom. I'm sorry, I forgot and I muted myself so that we would be able to hear Taylor without any background noise on my end. But Taylor, that was a great presentation. I appreciate it very much. And I thought she provided a lot of very helpful information. I did read the report when we received it originally and reviewed it earlier today so that I would be familiar with it. I really commend you for the quality of your research and the thoughtfulness with which you approached this. When you were looking at the other towns that had the town contract approach, should you recommend? Did you interview anyone in any of those towns as far as their administrative experience, what is involved in the administration or the steps that they had to take to establish the arrangement? So that's I guess my first question. Yeah, definitely. First of all, thank you. That was incredibly sweet and I really appreciate it. I had a lovely, lovely group. I wish they could all be here. But yeah, I actually talked pretty in depth with a contact from Long Meadow whose name is now slipping my mind. I'm definitely in summer mode right now but she kind of talked a lot about the process that it took in Long Meadow. And there was a small group mostly on a volunteer basis. That kind of did work with people who were willing to come in from the DEP and kind of just like talk to them about what's necessary and what steps they need to take. But there was a group of about five people that again came together pretty frequently on a volunteer basis and worked with the representative from the DEP to send out an RFP, kind of analyze this, choose what their priorities were and kind of get this started. And now every, as I mentioned, every like four to five years this group kind of reconvenes and it can definitely take kind of new people, switch it out. And yeah, so definitely in Long Meadow, I know relied a little bit on a volunteer basis, which I'm sure people in the Amherst would be more than happy to help with. But it definitely was the guidance from the DEP that really got them rolling that can be really beneficial. Have that answered your questions? In DEP, you're talking about the state DEP? Yes, yes. Yeah. This is partly for our own internal thing on the Amherst side, but I'm sort of asking it, did they say anything in Long Meadow about how the Board of Health was involved? Yeah, it actually wasn't kind of in what we talked about. It didn't seem like it was kind of as prominent as they had previously expected, but unfortunately we didn't ask a lot too many questions about that. And did you talk to at all about any of the financial arrangements for the town that you said you spoke with somebody involved in the town of Amherst who said that it would be cheaper than administratively for the town and I was wondering if there was any additional explanation of that? That was generally due to illegal dumping and just because of kind of like all of the math students mainly and Amherst College and all that, they kind of just leave out a thing end of the year. That was why I was proposed that it would in the end be cheaper for the town. And also I know in Long Meadow that they do make a slight profit off of selling like extra bags needed for trash because the total size in accordance with kind of waste reduction efforts, they do sell that on the side and then are able to make a profit from that which usually then goes back into the town to kind of like deal with more trash-related efforts and kind of just like build up the resiliency of the program. But yeah, I was definitely projected by and I forget the name of the person in the town that was willing to try that with us but they definitely projected that having a relationship with a hauler would greatly decrease the costs and would allow the town to be kind of like working within a system that they had instead of having to outreach for all of this kind of like trouble at the end of the school's year. And I guess the last question I'm gonna ask right now and I might come back later, but I know that my colleague George Ryan has his hand up too. Shoesbury was listed as one of the towns in the study and Shoesbury has a very important relationship with Amherst and a lot of things including that I think that they also have an option of using our recycle transfer station. And so I was curious whether you had any direct contact or any of your fellow students had any direct contact with Shoesbury about any of the topics that I asked about earlier. Yeah, in terms of like would you be interested in reaching out to Shoesbury? Well, I was just curious whether you had a conversation of Shoesbury, we can always reach out to Shoesbury ourselves and I just was curious whether you had. No, definitely I personally didn't, but another one my group members did and they were kind of like very kind. They actually had, I believe an administrative position within kind of like the DPW and Shoesbury that was kind of like the person that managed these things and they were definitely like very willing to talk to us. Yeah, unfortunately it was not me though. I'll yield for the moment Darcy so that you can see what George wants to ask. Sure, George. Thank you Darcy and thank you Taylor for your presentation. If the town would go to a contract system, how confident are you that it would be a competitive bidding situation? When I go out every day, I see USA trucks everywhere. I don't see anything else. And so I'm wondering is there, would it be a competitive bidding situation or no? Yeah, I definitely believe it would be. I actually feel very confident about that even in Long Meadow where it usually comes down to waste management and then I believe Republic. Kind of like every year there are different companies that put in a bid and as long as usually the process for that is just to like clarify a little bit is that you like kind of like put it out and add in the paper sort of thing and then also send it to different people. And usually due to this you get competitors that you were not even expecting. And even if kind of USA was, which understandably they would put in a bid but even having that like competition, even from, I'd probably estimate about five companies as that is usually what we typically see with the other town contracts. So I'd kind of expect there to be at least two others and even having that kind of leverage can usually do so much in terms of just influencing because right now when you just have USA there's really no pressure for them to do anything even having that one other company can do a lot. Thank you. Yeah. Casella is another company that might conceivably bid. Republic, Casella and USA all provide services in this area. Yeah. I don't predict waste management and then usually there's just another one that kind of comes out of the blue. Other questions? Darcy. Yes. Yeah. So the couple of other observations that I have to make and I don't know how far we can really go into this tonight the know what time you want to allocate to it but my experience and I actually did have done quite a bit of work in town government is because I was on the select board before we adopted the new form of government and then was elected to the council and select board member. I was based on to the recycling refuse management committee that developed a solid waste plan. I don't know if you looked at the solid waste plan as part of your research but it was an earlier attempt to delve into some of these issues though. I'd say that you get commended for a lot of good work. It's my understanding, however, that the actual decision may have to be made by the board of health. And I don't know if Mr. Bachlemann will have any comments on this. The current administration of the trash hauling system is actually governed by board of health regulations and the town bylaw that has to do with trash hauling is somewhat vague and only refers pretty much to enforcement of board of health regulations. And as I looked at the state statute that is referred to in the board of health regulations it seems to vest the management of these things in the board of health. So I'm not sure that we don't have to come up with a process that involves the board also. So that's why I was asking about whether you had heard anything as you were going through the process of the discussion because at least that has been what my understanding is and the other observation I'll just share with the group who wanted to share while you were here too is the big change from the recycling refuse management plan is that it's somewhat outdated in time because the technology of trash pickup has changed considerably and USA no longer really picks up bags and throws them into the back of trucks the way that it was done back when we had two carriers they now use an entirely mechanical system. And so that since bags don't exist pay as you throw is not really a viable option because the technology seems to have gone beyond that. And I think that I don't know if you heard about this from other communities, but it seems that Namr's the way that people save money is by reducing the size of their the bin that they put out on the curb, which sort of serve some of the same zero waste goals that were with pays you throw, but when you get into a town contracting system then you have to figure out how you set it up so that the savings get to the people who would have the incentive to do the right thing, which is the people who are putting the bins out on the curb and could be using compost and recycling. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on those topics, but I just wanted to sort of share a little bit of my experience. Have any comments on any of that either Taylor or Paul? One thing that I do want to mention because it's kind of cool is that we couldn't find a ton of conclusive research about a correlation between reduction of toter size like trash toter and a reduction of trash, but there have been kind of like a bunch of small studies done at universities where they have professors, like they just have these tiny trash cans and they see even on a small basis that just because nobody wants to like go bring things places that they produce less trash. And we kind of similar due to the situation with the pay-as-you-throw situation is that people kind of just like don't want to leave their house. And in terms of kind of like what you were saying about savings, I'm not a hundred percent sure if I understood kind of like in terms of what you meant by like the savings getting to the people that need it. Well, let me explain a little bit different way. The idea of pay-as-you-throw is that people would pay a certain amount for a trash bag. And the more trash bags they put out to be picked up, the more they had to pay because the trash bag would be by the bag cost, which is similar to what we have for people who use the transfer station currently because they pay $3 a bag. And if you can use one bag every two weeks, it's a lot cheaper than if you use two bags, every single week, and that certainly provides an incentive to do the right thing and compost and recycle in order to reduce the amount that you're actually throwing into trash. And so then you get to the question is with the kind of technology that is now used by USA Hauling and by a lot of other carriers, how do you translate that to go from plastic bags to the new technology, but still achieve the same results? Yeah, and that's one of the problems in terms of like USA waste kind of owns everything. So they really don't care how much trash is produced. But we actually see that pay-as-you-throw is never really utilized with like, or at least in the towns that we surveyed, not utilized with curbside pickup, but it's more just like at the transfer station pay-as-you-throw. So generally what happens is that each household is kind of charged like a base rate, which is usually included in the taxes. And like for example, in Long Meadow, the toaster is about half to even a third of the size that is the general USA trash toaster. And then people need to buy more bags for the more trash that they produce. But we actually found in Long Meadow that after the toaster was reduced, only now about 5% of, even less 4% of Long Meadow residents kind of need to buy these blue bags. So it's definitely something that is manageable and should not put a kind of a large burden on people who are possibly lower income, like those people who you were mentioning, like it may hit them harder. It's generally something that is really manageable in single household situations. And also even if say a family had to pay an extra $20 a year to get these blue bags, they would still likely be kind of receiving a price reduction of about $200, arguably more if they had bought compost. It's possible to see a price reduction of upwards of $400 if they had been receiving compost or weekly compost pickups. So it's likely that even though there could be the small increase costs for people, if say there's a really kind of like large family and they do produce a lot of trash, it will still be financially beneficial for them, arguably very, excuse me, financially beneficial in the long run, even if they're all the small costs. Thank you. I think we're going to not take much more time with this, but let's take another question from George. Thanks Doracy. My question is really for Paul and maybe it's not the time for this, but I'm obviously fine. Well, I find Taylor's study and the recommendation that they put forward very attractive from the perspective of Town Hall, from your perspective, Paul, what would be the biggest challenges or obstacles from your end to doing something like that? Thank you, George. So I think there's the administrative costs, we'd have to stop at the department to support and do it. And then the second is, how would it get financed if it would be, if it's a separate fee then the town would be billing everybody. If it's included in the tax rate, then it has to come out of something. Our tax rate is already allocated. And so I think those are the two big things in terms of the administrative cost of administering it and versus the financial benefit or the benefit that we could incur, receive as a community. It sounds like we need to analyze that a little bit more. Alyssa? Yeah, it was really interesting seeing this information and put together in a different way from that previous report that Andy mentions because I was on the select board then. And although the headline that's quoted then says that we adopted the plan, that's false. We didn't actually adopt the plan then. And there's a follow-up letter from the chair then of the recycling and refuse management. In the bulletin that explains what we actually did, which I'm not saying he was happy about but it's what we actually did. And we didn't actually do very much associated with what was in the plan at the time. And so since then, there's because we've only had some part-time employees and one time a grant. We haven't had a staff person who devoted to bringing this forward. That's been a resource choice we've had. And so this is kind of languished. And so it's interesting to see this again. I will say that one of the things that concerns me beyond the issues that Paul just brought up and everything that Andy and George have talked about is that our community is very different in terms of rentals. It's not just departments. There's lots of single family houses that are rentals. And the way that trash gets dealt with is obviously not always a great situation. So there's that, which I think makes us very different than every other community that was looked at associated with this just because again, we're not just like just departments and just single family houses that are just by families. So it does just make it that much more complex, but I'm really interested to hear your ideas about the fact that even right now with USA basically having the lock on Amherst that you think they would be interested in responding to a request where we to try and do it a different way. And as I've mentioned at previous meetings, I mean, the Slack board was telling the town manager for years before we changed forms of government to be leery of adding new positions. And so this was one of the ones that we'd had part-time work associated with recycling in the past and don't even fund that now. And so figuring out how to make that work in addition to the tax or the fee work is incredibly complicated, but it's interesting to see an update associated with this information. I just don't know how fast we're going to be able to do anything with it. I also just want to comment quickly on the coordination piece that you point out. I think that you do a really good job of pointing that out that we don't have any. And I don't think most people on the town council had any sense that zero waste Amherst was doing something. We haven't had the recycling and refuse management committee for some number of years. And so while it does fit as Darcy said under our climate action plan, there is obviously a disconnect between different things. And finally, since Guilford's still apparently here that I am surprised to hear that there's a huge problem of the town having to pick up trash rather than landlords being expected to go out that the board of health is finding or doing something associated with that that somehow there's this huge town expense to picking up trash that students are leaving behind that having been around for 20 years, I don't remember ever hearing about. So that'll be interesting to quantify as we move forward to because I think that could make a difference in how people perceive this. So thank you. Okay. I think that's probably all we have time for in this meeting but I really wanna thank you both for coming and presenting and that was really helpful, good background for hopefully some action in the future, whatever that might be. So I think we're going to move on. You are welcome to, if you would like to stay, I can move you into the attendees, whichever you would like. I think it's like second prize, you get to stay first prize, you can leave. So anyway, thank you both. It's really been a pleasure to have you. Yeah, I have to go eat dinner because Smith's dinner closes in 12 minutes but it was absolutely lovely to be here and I do really appreciate you guys having me. Thank you. Thanks very much. Okay, so moving on to the public way, public way proposal North Pleasant West of Kendrick Park. And I'm just wondering if the group wants to, well, since Guilford's here, I think we should just hear from Guilford. Do you have something for us, Guilford? At the town council meeting, we came up with a few questions and they were generally in the categories of what are the issues around one way? What are the issues around parking? And what are the issues around sidewalks on both sides and that green space on the west side? So, interested in how you want us to approach it. Oh, you're muted though, Guilford. Is that better? Yeah. I did teams last time, so Zoom doesn't work. I was looking at your agenda and you were gonna have a discussion about what role you wanted the tack to play in this or tack to play in any type of public way request. I'm not sure, do you want to talk about that first or do you want to address this one street? Cause I can do... I think that it would be good to talk about tax role and also the need for public hearing and how that is going to work. But yes, if you want to talk about tack, go ahead. Well, the question I would have is if you, I mean, as a, you have the authority, I guess, to ask for something from the tack or to refer it to the tack to get a comment from them, that might be where you'd want to start instead of spending your time going through and designing the project in one of your TSO meetings. There is, I mean, there is the experience on the committee that they are two members short at this time. They are, I mean, they would like some more members, but they would take it on and look at it and give you a recommendation back. And then you could take that and decide whether you to recommend approval or not approval. That, if you're going to use tack, that's how I would recommend doing it. If you're not going to use tack, I would just dive in and we'd start talking about the issues you have questions you have now. Thoughts, Alyssa? Well, I guess I want to make it more complicated in that I want to have just those touch base things that we talked about briefly at council that you said you were writing down Darcy that I said Kathy should email to us, but I hope she did email to you so that we can say what it is we want from tack rather than just tell us something, like give us, give them some specifics. Just like when we asked the council to give TSO some specifics for what we're going to talk about in order to bring back a recommendation to give tack some specifics about what things we're particularly eager to hear about. And then they can talk about all the things they want to talk about, but we don't later say, oh, I wish you had thought of telling us this. Yeah, I actually sent that list to Paul and Guilford and asked what the decision points were that we should be addressing. So I think that would be the same list we would send to tack. George. I think it was right. The decision is up to this committee, but I also think Alyssa's right that we should also do our due diligence. So I guess I see it as a dual stream to borrow a metaphor. We should talk about it tonight and we should ask our questions. And then I think at some point we should decide as a committee whether we want to refer it to tack for their advice. I think we probably will, but I don't see it makes sense for us just to send it up to tack and then wait and see what they send back to us. In the end, we're the body that makes the decision. So we do need to sink our teeth into it and get more familiar with it. And then at some point perhaps tonight we'll also send it to tack. Yeah, I would agree with George. And we also, I mean, I assume that tack will need time to discuss it in one or two meetings and then write it up and then we'll take a little while. So because there are multiple issues. And so I guess I'm agreeing with George that we should hear about it and then try to integrate it with whatever tack is recommending. Andy? Yeah, I'm basically in agreement with where you and George are figured be helpful for us to just, you know, for the purpose of this conversation today is to identify the questions both ones that can't be raised to make sure that the frame is the way that we think is most helpful. And any additional questions that we've thought about and or think of during discussion and then have a comprehensive list that we can share with tack and but then hit pause because they have expertise and they might add to it but it would be worth having some discussion today just to sort of feed into that process. Yeah, I know that, I know that tack, I know I've had some communication with Tracy Zafian and she's already been looking at it, of course, and has, you know, there's some issues that, you know, I'd like to ask Gilford about during the process. So, you know, some of their comments and questions might be able to be integrated in our discussion too. And I wonder if there's someone, there's someone in the participants that I wouldn't be surprised. It's a phone number though. Yeah, no one has their hand up. No, I realized that but I'm wondering if it's Tracy. So, I guess we're deciding that we want to hear from you some substance about this proposal tonight. So, before I can't raise my hand so that's why you have to just jump in. But it would be helpful as we go through this process to provide, to know what the role the TSO and the council would like to see tack play in terms of, you know, ongoing. Do you want us to go to them early on in the process or do you want to say, this is the thing we want to give to tack for their advice? Or, so I'm always struggling with that. What their role is, you want to see tack play on this type of thing. So, you don't have to answer that now but in terms of, this could be an instructive time too with two different projects in front of us, how you want to handle them. Yes, and one of them, I'm assuming this one requires a public hearing and the other one doesn't. Because of the inclusion of parking in one and not in the other. Alyssa? So I think that's a really excellent question, Paul but I think we don't know the answer to it yet. And so this is a really good time to start that conversation because I think to a degree it depends on the complexity of the issue and it depends on the likelihood of tack liking it because if, you know, if Guilford's going to take something that's like way outside of the box I'd rather he took it to tack first and saw what they hear what they had to say rather than taking it to TSO. And I said, well, that sounds quite a good when we don't have the expertise. So I'd appreciate that he'd take something complex like that to them first. But on the other hand, I don't want to put them in the position of pouring over something for hours and then TSO saying, we're never going to recommend this to the town council. Why did you spend all that time doing that? So, I don't know enough about how these things arise to know how easy it is to bring it to TSO first, say, or town council first, that's the other issue too, right? And say, you know, what kinds of questions would you have about this if tack wants to look at those things based on their charge and based on their interests but without getting too far down the roads? I'm thinking similarly of Guilford saying things in the past, like we don't want to design something when there's great amount of detail with all these maps and all this time intensive work, if it's not, it's going to be anywhere close to what you want. So we don't want to waste people's time, but I also don't want to put tack in the position of feeling like we've been hearing from some other committees lately that, well, you asked us to do a thing, we did a thing, now you have to accept all the things that we gave you because that might not happen. George. Yeah, we are ultimately the deciders on the council, first of all, and then TSO in a sense in the sub role, we are the ones who, so it seems to me it's decided by when it comes to us. So it gets referred to us, however that happens from the council, then it's now our task and we then proceed. And probably in many cases, we would very much value the help of the advisory body, which I see tack as, and so we would go to them and ask them to weigh in without any assumption that somehow we're going to do what they say. We're the ones who make the decision, but we need help and that's exactly what they provide. So I guess I don't see this as that complicated, but I'm probably missing a few pieces. It's basically, it comes to us, it's referred to us by the council and we discuss it and we agree that this is definitely something where we could use help from say tack or some other body for all we know. And so we go to them and ask them to weigh in and then they send it back to us and we look at it and then we decide, we're the ones who make the decision, we vote and then it goes to the council, the council votes, tack doesn't do that. They're an advisory body and they're very valuable and we've already seen that. So I guess I don't see the complication but maybe Paul or Guilford can help me see it better but it doesn't seem to be that complicated. So maybe give me an example where you just throw up your hands and you say, what do we do with this? We don't know. This came from the council to us. So if it's not something that's been referred to us then I guess you can do with it what you wish but once it cuts to us, we would probably turn it to tack for help but no promises, just please give us your advice. Right, there is a possibility that we could, there were six issues and we think two of them are issues that we could just decide on our own that don't really need tax expertise but we wanna hear from them on one way versus two way or whatever. So yes, Guilford. So I agree with everything you're saying and if you wanna do it George's way, I think that's great. The world I'm living in right now is I'm living in the chicken and the egg world. What comes first, the chicken or the egg? We get requests all the times for things to be done to make changes to public way but the town council policy is that the town council approves changes to the public way. So how does someone request whether it be another committee whether it be a citizen, whether it be somebody else how do you request to get your issue in the process and moving along? The issue you're wanna talk about tonight was brought up by the Kendrick Park committee and the Kendrick Park plan that the Cecil group made. They came up with an overall concept for the park to improve parking on North Hampton Road or I'm sorry, on North Hamer Road North Pleasant Street so that there's more parking next to the park. They also came up with a concept of sidewalks. We took that and ran with it and came up with a plan you have now. So that's how that one got into the system. But I mean, truly the question I have and the TAC has is how, I mean, if every request for a change goes to the council, the council refers it to the TSO and then the TSO can refer it to TAC, that's one way or if someone requests something it goes, it's requested to the town manager and the town manager decides we work on it and we're ready to present it, we present it to the council and then it goes like George says. There has to be an input in here. Someone either has to say an egg materialized out of nowhere or a chicken materialized out of nowhere so we can start the process and know which way to go next. That's my only concern. And if I can jump in, so we get numerous requests for speed bumps say on every road in town pretty much. And to the residents, does that stop at the management level or should all of those requests filter to the council and then you judge them? Or so yeah, it's mostly to service the citizens. It's like, so they know, how does my request get heard? How do I know when it's a yes or a no? And I think it's very frustrating to people and we feel bad about that. So. Alyssa? So we're gonna fight. Cause tech had that as their charge to develop that system. Tech chose not to develop that system. They said they didn't have time. They didn't want to. They joined it after the time that charge was developed. We've been having this conversation since forever, since well before Guilford worked for us about what do you do with the speed bump? What do you do with the stop sign? And then what do you do with like amazing things like sidewalks? And there was never any answer. And everything just went different ways. And people felt like if they knew somebody, something happened. And if they didn't know somebody, then something didn't happen. And so we specifically wrote tax charge at the select board to ask for a system to be developed. Tech chose not to develop that system. So the reason we don't have a system is because we asked for one and we didn't get it. So is now the point where we ask tech to help us develop that system? Or is staff still not interested in making that happen? Because you have had that charge on the tech for all this time and chosen not to do it. So why are we complaining about the town council when the Commonwealth and our charter says the public way belongs to the elected town council? It's not like in other towns, they just let the DPW decide everything. It's not like in other towns, they just let the TAC, which we have a much more experienced TAC, I think the most other places do, decide things. That's what elected officials do. So I'm not getting the frustration except the system hasn't been developed. And it feels to me like you've had a lot of control over developing a system and have chosen not to do it. Oh, that must have been a, that buzz must have been on your end, Alyssa. George. So we're the elected officials. So in my district, somebody wants a crosswalk at Amity and say Lincoln. And I'm just one of the two district reps or maybe both of us say, okay, this is a good idea. Or we want to push it. So then the question becomes, where do we go? But it seems in the end, it should come down to us. I mean, people, part of our job is to have people complain to us. I mean, it really is, and it shouldn't just be staff. It should also be us, we're the elected representatives. And so again, why shouldn't we be on the hot seat? In a sense. So it comes in, then we, it's our job to figure out. So you talk to DPW, you talk to Paul, and then they have to make a decision what to do with this request. So I guess their question here is, however it gets to us, something like a stop sign or a crosswalk, what are we supposed to do with it? We send it to Guilford and let him decide, do we send it to TSO and let them decide in a way when I'm thinking about this at the top of my head, it sounds like, well, we're the town services committee and this is a basic town service. Why shouldn't we be at least the sort of the place where the rover meets the road in terms of deciding what should be done? But then we get into levels of detail far, far beyond what we can do or should do. And that's where Guilford, I guess, is making his point. A lot of these things are decided, it should be decided in a much lower level that's really practical stuff. And where do you draw the line? I don't know. I don't know. Alyssa, I look to you because you've been Andy because you guys have been doing this for years. We have a new form of government. We're the elected representatives. The way I encounter this stuff is people come to me in person and say, you know, what about this, this intersection, what about this stop sign? What about speeds on Amity or whatever it is? What, well, the Lincoln parking, whatever it is, that's how it gets to me. Andy. Yeah, I mean, it has been a problem forever and it probably will be a problem forever too. Everybody is an amateur traffic engineer and they all have their opinions but we employ people who actually have expertise in the area and we need to have a system that gets the requests in and gets the input as soon as we can feasibly do it from the professionals. But I think the frustration has come about over the years because we never get to that step. It's sort of like people make the request and then it just sort of falls into some void. And what we were hoping I think out of tack was that it wouldn't fall into a void that it would get addressed much more quickly. So whatever we do, I think we need to get back to at least the goal of having put an under tax jurisdiction if that doesn't make sense and it should come under a council committee. We still need to make sure that we're hearing from the real professionals soon. And back when this was assigned to CRC and it was fairly early in the life of the council, the issue was the speed limit on North Pleasant Street because there had been a debt there. And the both people from Guilford staff and from the police department came in and talked to CRC at the time about what the legal limits are on changing speed limits and what the options are in changing speed limits. And that was professional advice that we needed. And we're still gonna need that whether it's speed limit speed bumps, crosswalks or whatever because everybody likes to think that they're the expert but they're not. Alyssa. So I guess I have two other things. So then what is this? I mean, this is really useful. What is tax roll? Because they're not doing all the things that are in the charge that we asked for originally and charges can change over time. So what is tax roll except to work with the town council? So let's flip this around. We have a different form of government now. We had a bunch of different things before we had TAC, we had a public works committee. Guilford probably list off all the thousands of separate things we had. So now where we are now that we have this TSO, which we didn't have, we're only in our 30th meeting by my account. Maybe is the TAC, maybe are we finally figuring out that we're at the point where the TAC is actually kind of the working committee of the TSO. So it actually is much more closely related to the town council rather than say a conservation commission or historical commission or something that's completely separate is maybe they're the expertise arm of the town council. And so that's one question. And then just as an aside that I don't wanna get too distracted by, but I do wanna make really clear my point. I don't want people asking individual counselors for stop signs and speed bumps and change limits. Just like I don't want individual people asking town counselors why their brother hasn't been hired by leisure services or why their tax bill person sent their tax bill at a certain time. Yes, we're town services, but that doesn't make us know anything about when a stop sign should be there or when a speed bump should be there. And I think it's a false thing that district counselors are like, ooh, I can do a thing for a neighbor. And like, that's not your job. That is not your job. We have professionals who tell us, you know what you do, this kind of speed bump, this kind of neighborhood you do this kind over here, this is the council discussion that you'll have to have associated with that. I feel like it's fake to offer people the ability to say, ooh, what I really need is a stop sign and my town counselor is gonna get me that stop sign and then they can put it on their reelection poster. Like that makes me nuts because that's not the way to approach things. It's not who got the ear of the right town counselor. And that's why the system is so important. So again, circling back to the idea, is there a way to make a close relationship between TAC and TSO, not so that they feel like beholden to us exactly because under this form of government, they're appointed by the town manager, but he's appointing them based on their professional expertise. We're confirming that as a town council that we agree they have professional expertise. But I guess I would want to hear a little bit from Guilford about what are the things that TAC's doing that don't have anything to do with town council because I don't think there are things like that. I think that they don't have to do with town council for a long time. Like when they work on a really big plan, they might not need to come to us for a really long time until they develop it. But I think in the end run, like kind of everything they do is a town council public way thing. And so if there are separate things, maybe we need to do those differently. But the things that are public way things, whether it's a long-term thing about bike paths or whatever, that's all tied up in town council. George. Maybe before I launch into my defense of going out at night and erecting stop signs without anyone knowing it and painting crosswalks at 3 a.m, we should hear from Guilford in response to this question if he wants to respond to it before I try to defend my vision of what I think the council are supposed to do. So I'd rather hold on that and just continue with the thought of what Alyssa was raising, what is tax role and what's its relationship with TSO? But please don't forget me later, Darson. Okay. Guilford. So, and the, you look at other communities that have sort of a transportation advisory committee, you actually find that it's kind of a hybrid committee, sort of like the finance committee where you'll have some counselors and where you'll have some citizens on it that have experience and knowledge in what you're doing. We at one point were wondering if that was what was gonna come out of the reorganization with the council. It's kind of not what happened. The tack did send a revised charge to the town manager and it's been discussed a few times, but if you wanna keep the way we are now, it would work. We just need to decide how the tack and the TSO and the council will interact and then how we will bring things in. I've tried to, and I've worked with the tack about well, this is a maintenance activity. This is not something you wanna get involved in. Some of them have a problem with that. They wanna get involved in maintenance things because they wanna say they got the crosswalk painted. But they've also worked on other things. They've been working on a priority plan for bike and pedestrian improvements. That would definitely come to the council when it's done. We've been working on the standards we wanna use for crosswalks. That will probably come to the council in a month or two that says this is what we wanna use. Although we're moving ahead with kind of using those already because we're pretty confident everyone likes them and they're gonna be good. So those are the things they're working on. But again, the question comes in when someone asks for these projects. I mean, the way it worked in the public works committee world when that was around, this would go to the public works committee after we were done with it. And we give it to the public works committee and they would make a recommendation to the town manager that it was ready to go forward to the select board. So that's the way this could work as well for bigger projects. They do have a priority. They have three projects that they've voted on as being a priority for them to get done. One was the North Pleasant sidewalk upgrades from by Alyssa's neighborhood out to the North Amherst area. The second one is to do the East Pleasant sidewalk improvements and the third one I believe is for improvements down on 116 by Hotline. So those are things they've kind of laid out as things that they'd like to see done. And as a department, I just kind of have them in my file of things that we're working on them. When we get to a point where we're ready to start bringing them forward we'll start bringing them forward. Like the North Pleasant street work you're gonna see next time. The tack has seen that several times and there's made comments about it several times and we've incorporated some of their suggestions and some of their suggestions we've left off mostly because we're keeping the price trying to keep the price down. It's gonna be a little expensive but that's kind of how I see it working. So we just need to figure out that sweet spot where we wanna be and what they should be doing because they're willing to do the research about how to make these plans and these standards but they're also willing to look at individual projects and kind of say, well, why aren't you doing this and why aren't you doing this and how about this or how about that? Yeah, I just have a little follow up before I get to your question or comment, George. And that is we just went through a fairly extensive process with the West Pomroy village and getting a report and recommendation from TAC on that which we incorporated. Do you see some kind of problem with how that process ran its course because that's sort of what we've done so far. That was sort of the first project we did like that. The problems or the issues that come up is you're really not asking just the TAC about it. You're asking every committee in town again to talk about it and if the Pomroy village center wasn't a village center but was an agricultural area, you would want comments from the agricultural commission you would want comments from the agricultural commission and all these other committees. Like you got comments from the DAAC, you got comments from the DRB which the DRB really has no authority in the public way. It says so in there. Yes, it's my least favorite committee. So you went through a bunch of things that went to a whole bunch of other people. I think planning board looked at it. I think a bunch of other things. I think DRB looked at West Pomroy because way back when it first started, they were kind of working on that project and they kind of designed that project. And so I guess it went back to them for that reason. But those are kind of the things that kind of need to be ironed out. If we do this, do we then get to a point where TAC says or someone says it's ready to go to all these committees and there's a circular around the committees and then all those recommendations come back. That's the other piece that does need to be kind of figured in here. Yeah, I'll just go to George and people have other comments about that. Is it go for that there's just too many chefs at times? It's just, you know, the kitchen has just got a bunch of chefs in there and it's just, is that part of the challenge? Because what you're describing here, TSO is a body that does research. It has expertise. It presents plans and occasionally even proposes projects but primarily is kind of concerned with the overall transportation picture in terms of pedestrians, bikes, walkability, something that's important to all of us. That's kind of their general area and they do these kinds of things like visioning and research. And they're also a body that the town council committees can turn to for help. So that's valuable. That all sounds good to me. That sounds like, that sounds great. And so I guess it's just the times that there's just so many committees, so many voices coming from 15 different directions that it gets me like a simpler cleaner process or is that just another side issue? Because what I'm seeing here of describing a TSO, I don't know, we haven't seen their new charge yet but that sounds good. And they are a great asset to us. So Alyssa's idea that in a sense, they're kind of an important offshoot of what we do but they also do other things. It's not, they're not just a subset of us but they're valuable to us. Okay, Alyssa, yeah. Alyssa? I mean, they do a ton of things but they eventually all end up with us. It's just that some of them are wicked long-term projects and some of them are much shorter term. But what's wrong with that? I mean, we're the official, yes. That's great. I'm just saying that makes it even more likely that we can sort of consider them part of us in terms of whether it's eventually become sort of hybrid committee, like Hilford's talking about exists in other communities and they're actually part of what's currently called TSO but they're actually part of that or they're just somebody that we like list on our agenda all the time as having a sense of what they're doing. I know Tracy comes to all of our meetings because she's a glutton for punishment but I mean, if we, how do we improve that relationship when it's just a bad idea for them to be working in a silo and then have us question them later, right? We wanna be able to say, yes, awesome ideas. Not ever put them in the position of having put two years of work into something and then have the council go, I don't even know what you're talking about. I had no idea you were working on that. I would have sent the people at my district meeting to talk to you if I had known you were working on that. So I'm trying to avoid frustrating people. Believe it or not, Guilford, I'm trying to avoid frustrating people so they know where to go about when but also that we can connect in those people who say to us, well, what about blah, blah, blah? And we can say, oh, turns out tax working on that. They've been working on that for a year. Why can't you go talk to them about that? And then that would be a really valuable place for people to talk to stuff about stuff. And Alyssa, I think you're completely correct and George, it doesn't, it's not the number of cooks in the kitchen that bothers me. It's the issue of we don't know which cook is supposed to be doing what and where that cook is in the assembly line. Yeah, that's really what we're saying here. And I mean, Alyssa kind of said it, we're not trying to make people or take people out of it. We're trying to make sure that everyone has their peace in it and if you want them to have their peace. I mean, if you want to be a diner with one cook, be a diner with one cook. If you want to be a four-star restaurant, one of those really fancy restaurants with a Michelin stars restaurant and you have lots of cooks, then be one. But we just need to decide what we want to be, I guess is what I'm saying and how many cooks we want to have and how we want to sort the cooks in. George. I don't want to stop this discussion because what I'm going to talk about goes back to something that Alyssa earlier about what I see as our role. I do agree with her that it's not about getting something done in that sense, but it's just, I want to make sure that if somebody comes to me with a problem and they say they're not being heard, I just want to follow up. So I usually reach out to Paul and Paul will eventually get back to me. He's very good about that. I see my role essentially is that. So if somebody has a problem in the neighborhood with a crosswalk, I just want to make sure that it gets heard. And that may very well end up before TSO. And that's what I see. Whether it gets done or not is a whole different question. Same with Lincoln Avenue. My personal opinion in some sense doesn't really matter. There are a large number of people that were concerned about something. I just want to make sure they got heard and they have been. And how it gets decided in the end is out of my control. But I see our role essentially as just making sure that people's voices get heard and that they don't feel like, I raised something and then I never heard back from anybody. When I hear that, I will reach out to Paul and try and find out what the hell happened. And he's been very good about doing that. And at that point, I've done what I can do. I know that may not be the view that every counselor has, but, and I'm not going to name names, but that's what I think our job is, just to make sure that people get heard. And at large can do that as well. It's just a matter of making sure that people have a chance to feel like, their question got answered. Whether they got the answer they wanted or not is different, but at least it got heard. So as far as how we want to handle this issue around TAC, I guess I'm assuming that we are going to be developing a list of decision points for us that we could also send to them to get input. You know, recommendations on these five different issues or whatever around this particular proposal. And we have to decide whether we want to ask anybody else, is there any other committee that's relevant to this particular one? And, you know, it was a little different with West Palm Roy, I think, because there was a clear, you know, disability access advisory issue. Maybe there is here. George. Are you envisioning that the public hearing would be held through TSO, which is something I think makes sense, but I don't, is that what you're thinking or is that what anyone else is thinking? I was, that's what we did the last time. It seems to work and it takes the burden off the council. I mean, it's a public hearing, but it's run through a particular subcommittee. Yeah, so, I mean, I personally think we should have it in one of our August meetings. This 26 would be better from my perspective because it's gives TAC more time. Some of the vacations is something to keep in mind, but yeah. Right, well, either one in August would, and, you know, we're supposed to be. August may not be a good month is what I'm suggesting, just given that people are out in the way. Yeah, I mean, the alternative is that we can ask the council for more time on this. Because this is one that they asked us to get back to them by mid-September. And so that's up to you guys. Andy? The one thing that we never got around to the list of questions that Kathy and others have thought about, not all of them are actually TAC questions. I can think of one example of something that she brought up, which was the parking places that are being added around Kendrick Park. How do we make sure that the purpose or the use of those spaces in the end are to serve the needs of visitors to Kendrick Park and the playground? And is there a fear that they will become parking places for people who are living in residential buildings or mixed use buildings that don't have parking? And there may be, it may be not a TAC issue then. There may be that there is no downtown parking working group if we ever created something like that. But it's not necessarily a TAC question. The flow of the traffic and the one way, which is the other subject that I've been thinking about is really much more of a TAC question and that's where we return for advice. So we need to know what the questions are in order to press them out. Right, do you have that list in front of you, Paul, that I think? I do, I do. Right here. Do you have it? I have it, do you wanna go run through the list? Could you? It's pretty short. It's pretty short, but let me go through what the concept is. So like I said, when the park, when the Cecil group finished up their park concept, they recommended having additional parking Jason to the park so people can go to the park and have a place to park. Yes, how you keep the students from parking there or renters from parking there is an issue that would be, have to be addressed as well. But how you put the parking there is something to think about. Cecil group put about eight parking spaces and angle parking, pull in parking, because that's, we weren't talking about back end parking at that time, but they just put in eight angle end parking close to the south end of the park and they left the rest of the parking alone. We looked at that and saw that that was really probably not enough parking for the park. We do hope that most of the people who come to the park walk, but there will be people who will drive. There will be people who drive by and they have a meeting or they have an appointment and they see the park and they decide to stop and let the kids play for a little while before they go to what or else they're going to. So you would want some parking there for them. So then we looked at the best ways to add parking there. And there's basically two ways to add parking to the road as it is now. One is to take the parking which is on the west side of North Pleasant Street, North of McClellan Street and move it to the east side and put it right next to the park. And that changes, that doesn't change very much. But what that does is give you more parking spaces because there's no driveways on the east side of that road. You lose a bunch of parking spaces on the west side because of driveways. The next thing we looked at was, well, if you did that, you don't really need all that angle parking and you could put regular parallel parking along the whole length of the park and then you could possibly take over some more spaces on the west side between McClellan and Halleck. Halleck, you could put some more parallel spaces there. Then we realized if we wanted to be adding spaces, we really needed to go one way. If you made it one way, you have enough room for parking, travel lane parking. You don't have enough room for parking, travel lane, travel lane parking. So one way gets you parking on both sides which really increases the number of spaces. But then the Cecil group also wanted to have a sidewalk that went around the whole edge of the park. And when we started looking at how you put that sidewalk in the whole edge of the park, you end up taking down a lot of the significant trees that are on the west side of the park. It's just, there's a slope there that goes up and to get a sidewalk between the existing curb and into the park and make it at least a five foot sidewalk, you're gonna cut the trees down and you're gonna grade the bank back and you're gonna really change the shape of that side of the park. So that's why we went with a, if you want the most parking, parking on both sides one way and then you shift the road over into the green belt which exists on the west side of the road to save the trees on the east side of the road. There are no trees, it's only grass on the west side of the road and you would save the significant trees on the east side. And then as we've done the past in town, we could offer to property owners to plant trees on their property behind the sidewalk to give us the tree canopy we want down the whole road and make it in 50 years, make it a very nicely canopy tree line road like Snel Street. Snel Street is probably the Snel Street and State Street of the two roads in town that have the most and best tree canopy, I think, along them. But you could do that downtown as well as long as you have enough room for the trees. So that's kind of how we put it together. So one way is so you can maximize parking. If you don't want to maximize parking, you can leave it two ways. Sidewalks, we have sidewalks on both sides of the road because there's an existing sidewalk on the west side and the Cecil plan recommended one for the park to be on the edge of the park. Parking is like we said, we wanted to try to maximize parking, but also have parking adjacent to the park. So if you're going to the park, you're not walking across the street with your small kids or your dog or whatever, you can park against the park and be at the park and not have to wander around if you actually drive. Outreach, there's not been much outreach about the plan you have before you, about how Kendrick Park was to be laid out and the sidewalks and all that. There was a great deal of outreach and when they discussed what to do with Kendrick Park. And just about everything you see in the Cecil plan came out of several meetings on what the people wanted to see at Kendrick Park. And that's kind of the list. If people want the image on the screen, I can put it up on the screen. Are they okay? That would be good to see. All right, Ms. Lemon. The one way proposal came after all of the Kendrick Park discussions. Yes. And the one way North is because if you're leaving, if you're in one of these apartments on the West side, one of these buildings and you're leaving, you would go up to Triangle Street. If you needed to make a right turn, it's an easy turn. If you need to make a left turn and traffic is heavy, you can still make a right turn, go through the roundabout, change direction and go to your left. And you would not have to wait, although some people may not understand that. But that would be an easier way to do it. If you make it a one way southbound, you have people coming from East Pleasant and Triangle Street, if they're turning into North Pleasant Street, you're making a left hand turn across traffic almost all the time. And there's really no other option, but make the left hand turn or drive farther down the road and find a place to turn around and come back to make a right hand turn. The roundabout gives you an easy place to change directions if you're going the wrong direction. Whereas when southbound, you have no easy way to change directions and come into the neighborhood or leave the neighborhood. Could it just have a signal? I would not recommend the signal because of how close it is to the roundabout. If you wanna really gum up a roundabout, you put a signal relatively close to the roundabout and that usually gums up the roundabout quite well. So that turning issue exists now anyway, with it being two way, right? It does, but you have the option, if it was with it being two way, you have the option of going down and coming in from the other end and going out the other end. That's why it's not such an issue right now. And is it true that once a street is turned into one way that the traffic speeds up? Some people have said those things, but then again, we have a small street here and most of the traffic will be park traffic and residential traffic. So we're not a connector street of any sort for other neighborhoods or other streets. So if we wanna look at other things like a raised crosswalk in the middle of the block or doing some other type of traffic calming along the street, we can do that. You're also gonna have cars parked on both sides, which will also funnel you down and make it look a little narrower and thinner. Hi, Andy. So what was the logic of having the section between McClellan and Halleck Street be two-way and not have the one-way start until McClellan Street? And there's a related question to that. Are there standards for angle parking on how wide the street should be to make the angle parking effective and safe? For angle parking, there are standards. There are standards for every type of parking that makes it safer, safe and efficient. So those are standards that do exist. The reason we chose not to make the park. Andy. No, I was just letting, I didn't mean to interrupt. Joe Fried. The reason we didn't make it one-way between McClellan and Halleck is there are a lot of, there's a lot more people on McClellan and Halleck and we wanted to allow those people to still use and have a little bit further range of motion driving by making it one-way where we are now. It really only impacts the park and this little section neighborhood, which is about one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight buildings right there. It doesn't go beyond, it doesn't really go beyond that for the one-way impact. I thought that that's what you would probably say, which then gets back to my question is, the way that it's currently drawn with angle parking in that section that is between Halleck and McClellan, does, is there significant width in the street to have two lanes of traffic going in opposite directions? And safely use the angle parking that's shown? If you put angle parking like the Cecil Group designed, yes there is because the parking lot, if the parking space is, if you look at them, the parallel parking is already offset from the travel lane. So it's eight feet in from the travel lane already and then they get the additional space they need for the angle in parking by cutting into the green space on the, in the park. That's one of the reasons why we're not very, we propose that to be parallel parking. And if you wanna have more parking to get rid of the tree built on the west side and make that parallel parking instead. And that way you don't cut into the park area green space. So, Guilford, the parking north of the park, of McClellan Street on the west side is currently permit parking, right? It is. And you're proposing to move the permit parking to the other side of the park? Yes, there's, I mean, there is two options. You can move it the permit parking to the east, to the west side of the park or the east side of North Pleasant Street or you can actually move that permit parking closer to the sidewalk on the west side and then add a strip of new parking against the park. And that could be metered or that could be some other type of parking arrangement to allow it not to be used by the residents except at night. Alyssa? So we don't have to get into the details tonight, but I need to understand better why we need residential permit parking there at all. And so I'm ensuring that it's for you can't see my cursor. Why am I moving my cursor around? For those houses there, as opposed to which have been there for a long time as opposed to being for the building. So it's supposed to be, it was my understanding it was supposed to be basically for those people just like we have other parts of town where people don't even have driveways. And so they need to be able to park on the street. But I don't want to mix the concept of like my thing about not wanting to have residential parking permits for the residents of the large newer buildings versus the houses that have been there forever that have residential permit parking. So we'll have to figure out a way to slice and dice that but I'm not sure how best to do that moving forward. So. Because I'm sharing screen, I can't raise my hand. Oh, okay. I mean, I can raise this hand, but I just want to be clear that, excuse me on this map or on this plan it shows the parallel, excuse me shows in the angled in parking but Guilford, you are proposing to take that out and replace it with parallel parking. Is that correct right here? Yes, we're proposing to leave the parallel parking that's there on there. Right. And just, so this would not be, it wouldn't be there. Okay. Why have parking at all in this stretch? Why not just have this a two way street? Is the addition of these extra spaces all that valuable? I'm just wondering, because it's not a very long stretch and people are basically, I assume if they're coming down here they're coming because they want to go here. Well, actually, of course they could be going. Anyway, any thought about just not having any parking here at all? We could, but those spaces already exist now. George has metered spaces. Right. Okay. We just wouldn't change them to angle spaces like Cecil recommended. I guess the other thought I had for what it's worth and it's not worth much, I'm sure is that if you have parking on both sides of the street and that obviously is traffic calming that's going to slow traffic down. I don't think traffic speed is going to be a big issue here and you could actually take other steps if you needed to, but you're going to have parking on both sides, correct? We have children and they're crossing street. That's the one thing that frightens me a little bit. If there's parking on both sides of the street it makes it really hard to see a child. But maybe that's just me, but obviously we need the parking and so I'm not sure as much you can do about it, but that was the only other concern I had was that the cars parked on both sides of the street, if you have children crossing the street other than where they're supposed to cross, it makes it really, really difficult to see them, but. Those are valid comments and that's actually, if you actually decided to do it, if we wanted to we could actually break the street up on our plus this section up and put in some raised crosswalks, maybe one raised crosswalk across the middle and just kind of like slow it down a little more. And also give a place for hopefully for people to cross instead of just jumping out, yeah. Well, you have your cursor now. There's a little connection, that little spot in there somewhere would be a good spot for our crosswalk maybe. Right in here. Yes. Okay. And actually the parking that exists on the west side of North Pleasant is actually town center parking permit. Well, it's kind of like the idea of preserving trees. I mean, it would be tragic to lose those trees, but that's a plus for me. Sorry. For me too. I just want to do a time check because it's 816 and I am not completely sure what we want to accomplish today with this. I think it makes sense to maybe talk about when we want to have a hearing and what the decision points are that we want to be trying to look at again at the next meeting and forward onto tech. So any thoughts about any of that? Can I make a suggestion? Yes. So on this project... Paul, did you want to say something? We didn't. Yeah, so Mike's internet is screwy. So on this project, I think we have your questions. If you have more questions, but I think given the timing that we should get it over to tech, if you want tech's advice on it and then schedule the public hearing for, I would suggest you do it after Labor Day, quite honestly, just so the tech has the time to meet and review it, but if you... We could ask town council for a return time of later. I don't think Len would have a problem with that. I think that would be easy. Yeah, the other one easily got a longer time period. So that is fine with me. When's our first meeting after Labor Day? Do we know? It's not the 16th. And it's not the ninth. It's not the ninth because it's the Black Party. It's not the 16th because that's in the middle of Yom Kippur, or it's actually at the end of Yom Kippur, but Yom Kippur won't be over. It's not appropriate to meet that night. So we were talking about this last time that we have a little bit of a problem with September. So if we're looking at trying to do it in September, then... So maybe you do need to do it in August then. But what... Let me ask a different question if I could, Darcy. Let's just skip what town council said in terms of getting it back to them. What's the timing like in terms of what do you guys want professionally? Like to get this in the plan for when to... What's the right time of year to do this? What's the right time of year to pay for this? I mean, aside from yesterday, when do you need an answer, Guy? Well, actually to tell the truth, everything you have coming for you now is really something we're trying to line up for next year's construction season. We're looking at the fact that we have to get these approvals. So if we want to move things along, we just need to be a year ahead of ourselves and getting things to the council so we're ready for the next construction year. So this... None of this work would be done until probably next spring, next summer. So that's how we're looking at it. As far as your schedule is concerned, the TAC meets on the 5th and they meet on the 19th of August. So if you're meeting the 26th, they should be able to have put together a recommendation for you by then. They also will have decided whether they agree or disagree with us, with staff on parking. If they say they want to keep parking the way it is, there's no need for a hearing. You would only need a parking hearing if they say, yes, we want to add parking and we want to rearrange parking a little bit. So I think the TAC could definitely have something to you by the 20, where you're meeting on the 26th because of the way their schedule is. Are people okay with that, George? Just something Gilbert said, it just didn't make sense to me, but it's probably me. You say if TAC doesn't want to change the parking, but why is it there? Maybe I miss her, did I miss her? Yes, TAC may recommend not changing the parking then. So what? I mean, that's, well, that's that they think, fine, it comes back to us and we say, yeah, we want to change the park. They don't decide that, we do, correct? That's good, so then we'll still make the 26th if you want to schedule the 26th as the hearing. Yeah, I mean, if they say they want to change the parking, then we'll certainly discuss that at the public hearing, but in the end, we make the decision, not them. Okay, thank you. You said, I'm not trying to be, you know, grandiose here, I'm just, isn't that the fact? Am I right, correct everybody? Okay, so, right, okay. So, well, does it make sense to have it for, started at the beginning of the, at 6.30 on the 26th and then just go as long as there's a hearing and then we'll, you know, we'll switch over to our regular meeting if we, if it's less than two hours, the hearing is less than two hours. Does that make sense? Melissa's your hand up. Melissa? So two things I think it's important for us to clarify for TAC, one is if we have an opinion on parking like George just referenced, then we need to tell them that because we don't want to send them down the path of, it's fine to leave the parking exactly the way it is. If we have a strong opinion, otherwise, or if we want them to look at multiple options, we should tell them that, that would only be fair rather than saying, well, that's nice, but we don't care what you think. So let's be, let's be clear what we're telling them through Guilford. And then the other part of it is, how specific of a proposal do you want to be able to advertise for the hearing? Because if TAC's not meeting until the 19th and the hearings on the 26th, like that's not a lot of time for people, people aren't supposed to come to the hearing and look at the proposal for the first time. That's not what hearings are for. Hearings are for things people know about that have been on the town bulletin board that might have had a newspaper article written about them, et cetera. And so I think it's, I really appreciate that Guilford's saying that TAC thinks they could have something to us for our meeting on the 26th because of their meetings on the 5th and the 19th. But it feels premature to me to talk about having a hearing on that night when at this point we don't even know if they're gonna recommend parking, changing or not changing. And we may have people who have very significant opinions who live in that part of town as to what that should happen or people who were involved in the Kendrick Park plans, what seems like forever ago, but has happened now several times over the years. So, and of course this being the academic town that it is, it's always a little nerve wracking to me to have hearings right at the time that it's the change over the end of August beginning of September. So I'm leery of having a hearing on the 26th. I think that it would be great if we got a report from TAC in time for us to read it before our meeting on the 26th. And if we have any specifics we wanna send them about parking, we should tell Gopher that now. TAC may want to be participating in the public hearing and hearing the input from the public hearing before they give us a report is my guess, but. That's not how you have public hearings. Public hearings are not brainstorming sessions. You have a proposal. That's what you have a public hearing on. How else would you advertise the public hearing? You have to have a proposal. You have to have drawings. You have to have something to give the public. A hearing is not a brainstorming session. So TAC may revise its opinion after it hears what happens at the hearing and it would be great to have them give a presentation during the hearing, but it's not just an open-ended thing. George. I think Alyssa's right again here and given my district from past painful experience, it's these are people who have very strongly held opinions and many of them live not far from Kendrick Park. I think it would be important that as Alyssa said that there'd be adequate notice and they have a chance to come and express their views. So I'm thinking the 26th just isn't gonna work for a number of reasons. And unless there's some compelling reason from Gilford or Paul's side and I'm open to hearing that, I think we should err on the side of, I think we're looking at the 23rd of September right now as the likely date. The second is absurd I think for the same reason that the 26th is. And then we have the ninth and 16th seem to be out. So it looks like the 23rd of September, if we're really gonna have a genuine public hearing where people actually have something that they can look at and then offer their views on. Right. And that date is not currently on our agenda but we can add it and we have a September 30th meeting. So I think we're gonna have two. This could just be, it could just be a public hearing, TSO public hearing and that's it. And then the 30th is our regular meeting. Right. Well, we can figure that out later. But people, I mean, I'm just saying, speaking for myself but I just don't see how we can do this in August unless there's some reason we really need to. That's fine with me. Is everybody on that? Paul. Yeah, I know I agree with both of you, all three of you on that, that it gives more time for the public to know about this project. And after Labor Day is always better. I just wanna be clear that the TSO has the authority to hold the public hearing or is it a council committee to hold that to TSO. I know CRC can do it for zoning bylaw changes but do we have a policy or should I check with Lynn on that? Well, what was the role for our hearing for the roundabout? That was a public hearing, was it? We already held one. Right. So maybe we do, Paul maybe right, we need to clarify that but we did already do one, I believe. So we'd be doing the same thing again but maybe I need to, well, maybe raise this with Lynn, Paul anyway, just to make sure but in my mind, I'm not clear how it actually works. I just assume that somehow because we're a council subcommittee, we can, you can call a public hearing, we don't need any special, as long as the council is aware or whatever. Yes, and we've brought it up in the council meeting and suggested that we would be having the hearing public. Let's clarify with Lynn, but yeah, I think we're okay, but we should double check. I can do that. Please, that would be great. And as far as the decision points, maybe what we could do since it would be good to send them out to TAC before our next meeting, which is not for three weeks, right? That maybe Paul and Guilford kind of laid them out. Those were pretty much the points, weren't they, Guilford, that you covered? Could you send them to me just so I can look at them? And then we can maybe jointly send them to TAC to with a request for... I don't wanna take up time, it's late, I know, but if somebody could just bullet point this one more time just so I know what it is that we're sending to TAC, or maybe the rest of you have a clear grasp of these main points if you do find. I don't, but okay, so listen, I don't. If you could just bullet point it quickly, what are the key things that you're planning to send to them for their review? So I guess the first one would be to add additional parking on the east side of North Pleasant Street. Okay. If that's done, then the question would be, do we remove, do we make the road one way? Right, right. And then the next point would be, do we remove the green, the grass spelled on the west side of North Pleasant Street and move the sidewalk on the east side into the existing roadway? Those are the four points basically. I think another question that came up at the council meeting was, which way should the one-way go? Thank you. And we are at this point not taking a position one way or the other. This is a question raised, I think it's by Alyssa, but we have not made our decision. So we're just asking TAC what they think. Now, Alyssa was concerned about that, sending them down a road, but at the moment I don't think we are at the stage where we can make our own determination, but I'm just asking. Alyssa? Yeah, I guess my point is simply that if we definitely want them to add parking, then we should ask TAC to do that. If we definitely don't want them to change the parking, then we should tell them that. If we say we don't know, then that's okay too. I just don't want to give them... If we know, the more we know, the more we could give them, but I don't think we... I think you're right, George, that we don't have a strong opinion about it one way or the other. I think as the decision already been made to retain the proposal, includes retaining the trees inside the park. I guess that would be another point to discuss with them. I mean, if you decide you're not going to move the sidewalk into the existing roadway, then you've also made the decision, you're going to remove some of those trees. But my understanding was that your recommendation was not to do that. Yes, my recommendation is to move the sidewalk into the existing roadway so we can save the trees. And so if we agreed with that, we wouldn't be asking TAC. Is that correct? If we are going to remove the trees or consider removing the trees, then there's a whole other committee that has to be consulted about that. And the public shade tree committee. So there's that and one other issue, I think was that if it's one way, the way it's shown on the drawing, what you do about, do you allow left turns onto Triangle Street plus the street at the end, north end of that one way. George? So I think on this is right. We don't have any strong views, at least that as a group, we've got a lot of questions, we've got some, and so I guess what we're asking TAC is on these points, what do you think? As long as it's made clear to them that we're asking for their opinion and that doesn't guarantee anything, but we would value their input on these points. But at the moment, I don't feel like we have any specific thing we could say that would don't consider X or Y because we're going to do it no matter what. I think it's likely we're probably going to have lots of parking. I think it's likely we're going to probably not want to see the trees go away, but I don't know. And we can't decide that tonight. We're not going to. So I would just make it clear to them that we would value your input and then leave it at that. And hopefully they won't be offended if they recommend something and we decide not to do it. So Paul, do you want to, or Guilford, do you want to put that list in writing and send it to me or do you want, okay. I can put it together. All right. And then, yeah, the sooner we can get it to TAC the better. And then as far as our discussing this at future meetings, before the hearing, do we need to have more discussion before that hearing or shall we start with the other public way request at the next meeting? Any thoughts about that? So if you're going to have the hearing later in September at your, you will have a recommendation, hopefully have a recommendation from TAC at your August 26th meeting. Right. And then you can just say, okay, we want to post this as our public hearing. You'll have a definite proposal. So I think that would be a good place to be for this proposal. And then at the next meeting, you start to tackle the other projects you have coming to you. So that would be the August 5th meeting. We is our next meeting. So we could start with the other. Alyssa. So I'm sorry if I misunderstood what you just said, Paul, it sounded really good. The TAC would get, because they're having two more, they're having two meetings before we meet again. They would have, no, they're meeting on 5th and the 19th. At their meeting in the 19th, they will be able to finish something that we'll have ahead of our 826 meeting. And that at the 826 TSO meeting, TAC will be there. We'll have already read it. We'll have a bunch of questions for them. Guilford will talk to you and Guilford. And by the end of that night, we'll know what we're gonna put in that public hearing notice that's almost a month away, so that people have tons of time to look at that, given the transition back to school. And then from what Darcy's saying, since we have a TSO meeting before that in August, then at the meeting on the 5th, for wait, what is it Darcy, is it, what's our meeting in August? 5th. Yes, the 5th, then that's the one where we'll talk about a completely different project, which is the North Pleasant, the long thing. And then we'll decide where we're going with that, having thrown it around at our meeting that day. Yeah, and I haven't talked to Guilford about this yet, but we did get that grant from the state that it has some time constraints on it, which is about some crosswalks and things like that from Triangle Street and Prey Street. So that probably will need to be given to you on the August 5th meeting as well. Okay. All right, so that's the third one that we're working on. Yes, that's gonna have to jump the line, right? Yeah, you have not seen that yet. Town council hasn't seen it yet, it's just all new to us, right? Okay, cool, just making sure we're talking about the same thing, great. Paul and I do need to talk a little bit about that, because to tell the truth, there's only maybe one piece of that, which is actually new work, all the rest is kind of a maintenance type of work. It's not changing or adding anything new. And that's exactly the kind of thing you've been raising all along, that kind of gray area that can slow everything down. And that's a good question, how does it work? Is that related to the grant, the planning department grant? That's what that is. Okay. So it sounds like the only thing that would be under consideration, if it's gonna be under consideration would be the new thing, the new crosswalk, whatever. Everything else would be just, that's maintenance, that's not something that should concern us at all. And whether the other thing should concern us, apparently right now it all does. So we'd have to weigh in on that and hopefully we could do it very quickly. But I understand here, that kind of concern and frustration is that, yeah, that's another step. Okay. So I think we're, we understand what's going on with this now. And I will communicate with Paul and Guilford and we'll get something out to tack. And hopefully then we'll have our hearing on September 23rd. Sound good? Alyssa? So a question about the thing that had to jump the line that's mostly maintenance, but a little bit of us. So that hasn't even been to town council yet. So we talk about it on the fifth, but town council's not meeting again until the 23rd, right? So, I think they meet on the second, right? Town council, well, town council meets on the second, but we don't meet till the fifth. So what I'm saying is, if town council can't act on what TSO thinks of this until August 23rd, that's kind of getting, that's more than a month from now. So how do you guys feel about that? Given the timeframe that you mentioned that there are timeframes associated with that, is that going to be too late? It's all, TSO does it on the fifth, but one can town council to it. Right. So if it goes on the town council agenda on August 2nd, the town council will decide if they want to act that night or if they want to refer it to TSO and then we'll follow the August meeting. So you'd survive if it didn't get through town council until the night of the 23rd, if you had to, but maybe it'll be something short we can do at the meeting on the second and just be done with it. Okay. Gilford, do you still have something? I was just going to say, it's very, what the new piece of it's very simple. It's very straightforward. You're going to like it. I don't think you're going to refer it to anybody else. And then we just have to wait for a four to six month delivery date. Okay. Sounds good. Got it. Curiosity is piqued. Okay. I think we've finished this portion of the meeting. All right. What's next? Adoption of the June 24th minutes. Oh, that got rid of Gilford pretty fast. Don't plan it. I make a motion to adopt the June 24th minutes as presented. Okay. And I second that. I'm assuming no discussion. Alyssa. I'm just going to abstain. Okay. Darcy. Yes, George. Yes. Andy. Yes. Okay. And let's see. Doesn't look like we have any public announcements. Do we have any announcements? If any of you want to come to the field trip to Martin's farm to look at compost processing possibilities, there are still openings for Monday at 1pm. And it should be very, very mucky and sloppy. That's stinky. I would assume. You see, don't wear open-toed shoes. So anyway, you're welcome if you want to come. We have three counselors going so far. And then future agenda items. We have. On our list. Those two public way requests. Three actually. Any update on the residential parking proposal? I nudged go for it. As you can see that he's very busy. This is the busiest time of the year, I assume. But I have nudged him and I'll continue to nudge him gently, but the ball's in his court at the moment. Okay. And Alyssa, anything new on. Your two possible. Suggestions. No. The permit parking. Are you interested in putting that forward. And, and. Pushing the town manager to. Move on his end. Me push the town manager. I'm sorry. Did you really just throw me that soft? I'm assuming that Sean isn't ready to talk about this yet. Then I think, I mean, it's too late for the people who already signed leases for the fall for those, for the two larger buildings that I'm referring to in terms of residential parking. So. Because they would have already signed them by now. And so this would be something that would be taking effect for when people start doing leasing next spring, if it even happens. And so. Timing is not particularly pressing, but it's a matter of working it in around other things. And I need to get. So I know the old information on, you know, I have all this accumulated information, like I've sent to George about various parking schemes, et cetera, but I don't know what Sean's working on right now. So when Paul lets me know that that makes sense to have Sean do that, but sometime between now and not actually never, but like in order that we would have some kind of decision making preferably before this town council is done would be nice. Okay. And the other thing that came up over the last. Week or two was the. Issue of COVID-19 outreach to the. Latinx community. And just wondering if that's something that, that makes sense to. Cover. Do you have a thought about that, Paul? We're, we're, we've done some outreach. I know the health director had a meeting with the, at the mobile market today to get. I'm not sure exactly what to do on what, what she was there for, but I think it's to get permission to continue to be present at the mobile markets. So that's just a, a little bit of a, a little bit of a, a little bit of a discussion and offering vaccines. We have had conversations about contracting with additional. People for. You know, through family outreach of Amherst to do additional outreach, but. I'd have to check with the health director where she is on that. Okay. Yeah. This came up. I don't know if all of you or some of you were on the emails thread that went out to many, many of you were there. I think that's. Yeah. It's basically. Suggesting that. You know that the Latinx community needs more outreach to make sure that there's a higher percentage getting back. And that's statewide. Yeah. Yeah. So. Just don't know whether we should cover that as a, as an actual agenda item coming up or. I think that, you know, if you and Paul have something in particular that you think it's important to bring back to us for outreach, then we could consider that. But it's late and I have a couple of other things I want to make sure we add to our upcoming list. But I am concerned that on the one hand I just said you and Paul can talk about it. On the other hand, I'm kind of concerned that we had such a long presentation tonight about solid waste when the TSO never agreed that we were going to have solid waste presentations. And so I don't want to put you in this awkward position of saying, oh go off with Paul and schedule it and then say, I'm mad that you scheduled that. So I just am not sure that this is something, I mean, as long as he's responsive to the fact that, and obviously we're having a change in the health director of doing this, then it doesn't feel like it needs to be an ongoing TSO topic since we don't have a big outreach arm right now. But I'm glad they brought it to our attention and it'll be great. Because one of the things that I have a question about for Paul that I'm hoping he can address at our August 5th meeting where we may or may not have gotten something from the council earlier that we may be not, it just be the easy night. So if it's the, if we can just do the easy new thing that jumped the line at town council, then the thing we can talk about on the 5th is the north pleasant part, the long one. And then we can also talk about where we are with the various director positions. And so whether it's recreation, health, DEI, et cetera. Because I think that's an important part of where we actually do play a role, whereas I don't see us playing a role associated with the other outreach. Right. And we might, if you're covering it in your town manager report in any time in the future, we can just ask for an update. Andy. Yeah, it was so alluded to a little bit. But I do think we need to have a discussion about whether we need to go to the council for clarification as to whether we actually have their support for our having a discussion about the trash hauling and sort of come to an understanding as a committee as to where we are with that. And also the issue that I was trying not to tread on too heavily with our speaker earlier, but the relationship between the council and the Board of Health on this issue. Any any other thoughts about future agenda items? OK, it doesn't look like we have anybody here for public comment. And there are no items not anticipated. So I think we're done. So thank you. Thank you, Paul. Good night. Good night, everyone. Good night. Good night, everyone.