 Pat, let me know when you've started. Okay, Angel. I mean, I'm sorry. You're all set. You're all set. We're recording. All right, Darcy, why don't you call your meeting to order and then I'll do the whole council. Okay. I'm calling the May 18th, 2020 meeting of the town services and outreach committee to order at 932. And I'm calling the May 18th Committee of the Hill, otherwise known as the town council, to order on at 932 AM. Okay. I'm just going to read the governor's order here. Governor Baker's March 12, 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law allows us to hold this virtual meeting of the town services and outreach committee. I'm going to call each committee member by name and then Lynn will call the other counselors at that time. I'll confirm that you can hear me and we can hear you. Remember to mute your mic after saying present. Melissa Brewer. Present. Darcy Dumont, present. Dorothy Pam, not present yet. Evan Ross. Present. Bert Ryan. Present. Okay. Kathy Shane. Present. Lynn Grisper. Present. Andy Steinberg. Okay. Andy Steinberg. Present. Thank you. Mandy Johanke. Present. Pat D'Angeles. Present. And Sarah Schwartz. Present. Okay. And the rest were covered under the TSO. So we can proceed. Would you like me to put the agenda? Sure. Sure. So there's no chat room for this meeting. If you have technical issues, please let staff know. To make a comment or ask a question, please click the raise hand button. Discussion may be suspended if we need to address technical issues and the minutes will note if a disconnection occurred. The meeting may be paused to wait for a counselor to be reconnected. This is all to just to let the viewing public know that we're still working out the technical bugs, but we've actually been doing pretty well. So we don't expect problems. So the first thing is general public comment. The public may provide public comment at this time on matters within the jurisdiction of the town services and outreach committee. Residents express their views for up to three minutes. Counselors will not respond to questions or engage in a dialogue during public comment. This is the public's time to speak. So to participate in public comment, see the instructions at the bottom of the agenda. If you join the council meeting via Zoom teleconferencing to indicate you wish to make a comment, click on the participants button and then raise hand. If you join the council meeting via telephone, indicate you wish to make a comment and sign on your telephone. So that I will recognize members of the public at this time who wish to speak. Is there anyone here? Four attendees. Ooh, Dorothy's trying to get in, I bet. I see her in the attendee. She is trying to get in and she and I are talking and I'm calling Athena. Okay, so I don't see any other members of the public who are wanting to make a comment, so we'll move on. Okay, so action, we're moving on to our action items and you can send our agenda here. We normally would take up consideration of appointments at this time, but we are, and we have a load of reappointments that we need to look at, but we are delaying them until the June one meeting as we have such a full agenda today. So the first thing on our agenda today is the Farmers Market Public Way application. This is a referral from the town council and is updated based on a change of venue from the Spring Street parking lot to the South Amherst Common, this is being requested. The three documents referenced in the packet are the town manager's most recent memo with updating based on the change of venue to the South Common and answers to councilor questions from the May 4th, 2020 town council meeting and the map of the proposed layout for the South Common Farmers Market. So the town manager I think is gonna present first. Yes, thank you, Darcy. So when we last left this at the town council meeting, there were a number of questions that the counselors had raised. The council seemed to wanna expedite the consideration of this out of consideration to the farmers market the history of their efforts here but recognize that this is a significant step for the town. And the suggestion was made by a counselor to look at other venues, one being the town common. So we had the building commissioner look at and superintendent public works look at alternate locations. And one of the locations that we reviewed with the Farmers Market was the town common. This was their desired location. And so this is what it would look like on the town common utilizing a piece of Spring Street for pickup area and utilizing parking on South Pleasant Street and on Boltwood Avenue as reserve parking for the farmers who would be setting up their tents on the common inside the tree line. So, and there might be some modifications to how this would actually lay out on the ground. For instance, the start and end might be on opposite sides or something like that. So the farmers market was intrigued by this location. It felt like it would be more akin to what had traditionally been done on the common. The common isn't being reserved for the Saturdays during the rest of the summer. And the, because the common is fairly large space we could achieve adequate social distancing. The farmers market asked that all of their vendors be accommodated, which is what this plan attempts to achieve. And so this is a plan that town staff developed to make it easier and to assist the farmers market in their presentation. You have a memo from me that is the original memo from April 30th, it's been updated. And so in the updating, I took into consideration some of the things that the counselors had identified as problems with it. For instance, everywhere it says should. I think I captured it should say it now says shall and identified some of the other things that weren't clear. There were also a number of questions that were written and I tried to answer each one of those either in the memo or specifically in terms of the questions. We also included the farmers market rules because that was an issue that had come up in terms of who is permitted to be in the farmers market. And that was a separate issue that has been raised. And so they, Mr. Spanetti sent me the draft rules, the most recent draft rules from 2020 that I sent out as part of this packet as well. The farmers market tells me that they would like to open on Saturday. And I think they have a lot of pretty, a lot to do if that's what they are going to achieve. But the first question is, is this a location and is it an event that the town council wants to see move forward or not? So that if they're, I'll leave it to you if you would like to invite Mr. Spanetti or Mr. Mahowski to comment. Darcy, it's up to you. Yeah, definitely. I'd like to hear from whoever either John or David who is going to be presenting. I think maybe perhaps a little bit of both of us because David is going to be on the ground and handling the monitoring ahead of monitoring. But I would like to say that this plan actually presents a plan which does not have the pinch points as the town manager has said in the past might be a hindrance to running a market with just a spring street lot and part of Bulwood. So we have actually purchased all the required PPEs including sanitizer and masks and gloves as well as made a provision for having the portable restroom delivered at the site on the common Friday night and will be then sanitized and be ready and locked up, ready for our next Saturday. We have also had plexiglass as part of our material supply, supply and at a four foot by four foot piece of plexiglass and now goes for about $200. In the past, I think I paid like $10 or $15 but that's the name of the game and it's a surge to get materials. So we have provided for those materials and we'll have the proper barriers in place. And I think at that, I'd like to turn it over to David who will make some comments probably regarding how this is gonna be monitored. David? Yeah, can everybody hear me? Yes. So yeah, a couple of thoughts on regards to the restroom issue. I did speak to the in on Bulwood the morning that Paul and I had walked the common and they are willing to let us use it again but just not yet as the restrictions are eased. They're saying that in that time they'd be happy to have us, well, happy to allow us to use the restrooms downstairs again for all of the vendors. What they're doing right now is just overnight reservations so they're only allowing the restrooms for the overnight guests at the end but I'm assuming that will lighten up over the summer's progression. When Paul and I walked the common, I think one of the major benefits about this plan it's and I see it more as a horseshoe actually with an opening, a start area and an end area. So it's in and out, unidirectional. What that does allow for is easy monitoring of the traffic going through and also the distancing requirements and the fact that we're spreading out from the size of the parking lot which is maybe half acre at best to about two and a half acres plus we can easily accommodate the vendors, easily accommodate space between the vendors and also have plenty of space between the patrons walking in and then coming back out. My understanding is John has spoken with a porta potty service and we can have one of those delivered on Fridays. It would be taken away Saturday I believe so we would have it for the market each weekend. So that facility would be provided. It would be there just for the vendors. So I think somebody had spoken last time about not really a concern for the patrons they can take care of themselves but we do need that facility required for the vendors and the staffing. Speaking of staffing, we've got four full-time staff members myself and three other volunteers but we've also got nine community members and during the day of a market we'll have six to seven of those committee members also working as volunteers as eyeballs amongst the marketplace to Stuart Shepard and monitor the spacing and the traffic flow. What I do like about this horseshoe sort of design is that on the map if you're looking at it you see what Paul has written up here. I'm envisioning flip-flopping the start and the end entry and exit points but the market tent would be near the start area and that gives us a line of sight all the way down and back so we can easily monitor all of the traffic going through. We would have a center line of our orange cones down the middle of this horseshoe not allowing people to be going back and forth from side to side. We would have caution tape on the backside of all the vendors tents wrapped around like a before shoe so we would try to inhibit people coming through and I really don't see people trying to sneak into the market per se. I just don't see that as being much of an obstacle. And what I'm witnessing and hadly in some of the other local places that do have businesses open is that people are very respectful to the distancing requirements and the needs and I don't see with that in combination of lots of eyeballs in the marketplace watching and shepherding the traffic flow I really don't see too much of an issue. I think we're gonna have a learning process we're gonna be in an evolution here as the market starts from day one to day two to day three et cetera. We're gonna have it evolve and we'll figure it out but I think there's not going to be too many major hiccups frankly with stewarding what we have planned there. Thank you. I guess what we should do now is open it up to counselor questions of the farmer's market or of Paul. Do we have questions or comments? Let me see what we're doing here. Let's see how do I do this. Paul. Yeah I just want to note that building commissioner Rob Mora is here and Lynn was able to get him into our meeting I believe. So Rob is there anything that you wanted to add to this this is okay with you Darcy. Sure. Thanks. I have nothing to add at right at this moment but happy to help with any questions that I can. Okay we have a question from Andy. Yeah there are a number of events that have historically taken place in the common in the summer. Some of which have actually enhanced and worked in partnership very well with the farmer's market. I give you an example of the big brother's big sister's art there. Have all of those events been canceled because of other concerns or is that competition a concern? And the second question that I have is whether there's any concern about rain and consequent damage to the turf in the common. I'll answer that one then. So we have not don't have reservations for any events for the rest of the summer and the health director we just had a call this morning about discouraging large gatherings of any sort during the course of the next months that that's just not going to be something that we're encouraging in any way shape or form. In terms of damage to the common the common is in really good shape because it's not going to have the town fair and things like that. We will not allow vehicles to be on the common from the farmer's market. They will have to carry their goods across the common from their vehicles to their stands in terms of rain. I think that's just something we deal with every year for events on the common. Other questions? Lynn? Hi, sorry, my hand thing is not able to be done. Yes, I have several questions. First of all, I know we're we built the plan for 32. Do you expect 32 the first week? David here. No, I do not. I would expect probably 20 to 25 the first week. Okay. The reason I say that I think it would be useful to try it out with less than 32. If 20 is great, if not even less. Where will the waiting line to go into the market be and will there be six foot marks that are probably temporary, would wash away with the rain? But I did have the opportunity this last weekend to go up to Greenfield. It's a much smaller market, but they had a very clear way in which you got into line and there were very clear marks in the whole waiting line for you to know where you can stand. To answer, yes, at the market tent, which would be at the entry to the marketplace, you would have a queue building up there. If it's not raining, I can paint Xs right on the turf and those would, as you say, wash away or mow away over time. But I can make it very clear as to where people would stand and queue up to a certain point. And will they go down to Boltwood and in front of the town common or will they go down up to East Pleasant? Or, I mean, these lines I think get quite long and I think it's appropriate to be monitoring the number of people that go in. So I just want us to make sure we work for that. I would envision them going away from the market tent to the Spring Street parking lot, then East down the Spring Street parking lot. And then if it goes longer than that, on the backside of the vendor's tent, down Boltwood on the common there. Okay. I do have a question when it says there shall be a provision for a loading zone and a proposal to manage this area as to whether it is self-service or contactless delivery. What does that mean? So those are the words I put in there. Basically, it was to ensure that the farmers market provided a place where people could drive up and collect their, receive their goods. The farmers market is looking at doing a virtual or online market where you can pre-order and have a box of food for you in advance. And the idea would be that this would be a place for that activity to happen. Okay. When it says vendors shall bag produce orders by shoppers whenever possible to limit distancing handling of produce. Why would we even have any handling of produce? My understanding is that we wouldn't. None of the shoppers would be touching any of the product. It would be vendor only with gloves, but vendor only. There'd be no touching or handling of any of the product. And so shoppers will be wearing face masks and staff will be wearing face masks and gloves. Correct. For understanding. Okay, so then I get to an issue. I did observe this in Greenfield. And that is that if I show up like I normally do with the farmers market with four of my own bags, but I never hand them to a vendor, but I take what a vendor gives me and put them in the bag. Is there anything wrong with that? That's, it's a public health question. I know we're not allowed to take them to the grocery store, but it's because we're not allowed to let the grocery people handle them. But if we're not handing them to the grocery people and if they do hand them to them, they're refusing them. Can we allow people to bring the bags? I'm not sure who the question is directed to, Lynn, but I would not want the patrons handing the bags to the vendors. It's fine if they open the bags and the vendors put the materials in the bags. I think one thing that needs to be clear is that once something's put in the bag, it can't come back. So a customer can't change their mind and put something back add to the vendor stall. That's just inappropriate for it. I felt the training for Greenfield was very good. And I'm hoping we do have that. So I think those are my main questions. Alyssa has her hand up. Alyssa? Yes, thank you. I think you guys did an excellent job of coming up with answers to all of the questions that we had in this rapidly unfolding situation. One of the things I want to emphasize to Rob and Paul is the mention that there were going to be any vehicles on the common because we've been completely inconsistent about that in the past. And so just laying that out very clearly for the vendors so that nobody feels cheated from some other time, but that we're not allowing vehicles, as Andy said, we normally try and prevent that because of tearing up the common. One of the things that I'd been concerned about initially was whether or not we were including crafts. And that's why I scoffed at the number of 32 because without some crafting, there weren't going to be 32 very early in the season. And I understand that in some places, crafters are not being allowed, that it's strictly produced. I just wanted to give the update that I realized as I did before that it supports the other products they sell and I'm fine with it given where we are with the governors, the reopening, assuming that things aren't going to get stricter today, they're going to be moving toward open. So I'm totally fine with that. And I think it is another way of supporting the farmers. Obviously that's why you do it in the first place. And finally, in terms of the rules, Lynn was talking about this and it's talked about in the operating guidelines, we need to find a way to get this information out to the public very clearly. And so there needs to be something in the operating guidelines that says the farmer's market is responsible for getting this out to people. I have read different things from different farmer's markets. I got to say it's too wordy in most places. Most people's eyes are glazing over by the time they get through the second paragraph that just is exactly the things Lynn talked about. You're not going to touch the produce. You point, you buy, you bought it. Your reusable bags are not being handled by the vendor. You're wearing a mask. You want to online order if at all possible. And so just putting something out that says we expect to have online ordering available by such and such. And also mentioning keeping out all but service animals. I know that's all really obvious to us who have been into the details of this, but everybody brings their dog to the farmer's market and everybody thinks their dog's really well behaved. So being really clear to people that's just not the farmer's market we're having this year. So that's another thing for the farmer's market staff to try and figure out. It's not like you have this ginormous paid staff, but I think that those things are really important to communicate to customers. And when I say that, I mean both ahead of time, online somehow, and I know you have a mailing list, but also in a way that people can look at the town website for example, and say, what are going to be the rules if I show up at this farmer's market? So figuring out a way that Paul's staff can help with that I think would be really great. Can I just address two of the points there? Sure. Yeah, first of all, I just want to make it clear that the Amherst farmer's market has never been a craft market. We have a couple of vendors that do have crafts that support the rest of their produce, but in terms of pure crafts, only one vendor who makes wood products from felled wood on his property would be our craft vendor. Everybody else has at least something, if it's not eggs or produce or something they're growing to support their layout. So we've never really just allowed craft vendors and I just want to clarify that. Secondly, the dissemination of information that what we're using now usually, and mostly is Facebook, Instagram and our newsletter, those are the most proactive and I think easily, most easily shared ways to get the information out and there seems to be good response. I've shifted to that two years ago and I find that I'm much better luck getting word to the public out that way than posting on a static website or trying flyers or anything like that. So that would be the way we would put word out to the world in real time and it's ever fungible too. We can change it in the moments noticed with a keystroke. Thank you. Mandy, Joe. Thank you. One question to follow up on the cars and then another question about crowds. With the cars, when I read the guidelines, I know everyone has said cars aren't allowed on the common but I don't actually see it anywhere in the guidelines. Maybe I missed it, but I would strongly urge us to make sure it is listed in the operational guidelines that cars and vehicles will not be allowed on the common because we don't want them on the common and if they're not in the operational guidelines, I get concerned that things can be challenged and we don't have a way to unchallenge them day of. And then in terms of crowds, I think at the last council meeting, the market indicated that they normally have a couple thousand people show up each Saturday, especially in high season. I understand this is slightly different and so we're probably not expecting that number of crowd and number of people, but I get concerned when I read that this area will have a occupation limit, occupancy limit of like 30 to 32 or 35, excluding the vendors and you've got four hours or so. And if you expect even close to a thousand people, I get concerned at how long those lines will get and how long people will be standing in line number one, but also how you will get them through in the time reserved. So a plan for individuals, if the lines get long, individuals that can't stand that long, how would you accommodate them? And if the line does get very long and especially towards the end when the market's supposed to close, how are you going to deal with that? And I'll, I'd like to hear about things. Response to that? Is the plan, as it stands right now, a maximum of 30 people allowed within the space of the market or will be some elasticity allowed to that? I mean, we have almost two acres of space that we can spread people out in. I think we can safely accommodate a decent number and have distancing rules well in place. I think when we, well, we would, I would refer this to the building commissioner. I think what we, when we looked at the number was like you have 32 stalls, one person per stall, how many more do you need? And the, in terms of, you know, we can add the no vehicles on the town common to the guidelines, if that's, I think that's a good idea. Rob, do you have thoughts on occupancy? I'll just add that the area that is between the face of the vendor display to the face of the vendor display where the public will be traveling measures about 20,000 square feet. So we have about a half an acre of open space for those 35 people. I think based on the, you know, I think it's really going to be based on the number of staff that are available for us to consider bumping that number up any and seeing how they'll manage the flow through there from from vendor space to vendor space. One obstacle I see to the flow. Can you all hear me okay? One obstacle I see to the flow is that, you know, people have different shopping paces. So one might stand in front of a stall for quite a while and one might just kind of be expeditiously ticking their way through. So I guess, you know, the question is if you have somebody who is a slow shopper, do we have people just be able to leapfrog them? Which I think might make sense, but I'm not sure how you all feel about that. Lynn? Thank you. First of all, in, again, in Greenfield, there was enough space as I think there is here to leapfrog over past people. And I think that that's appropriate. I do urge that we continue to place a limit on it only because once they're in the market, it's very hard to control anybody. And I guess finally, Paul, I really want to ask the question, who is going to inspect and who will pull the plug if we have to? I don't hope we ever have to, but I just want to know how that happens. So our health inspector always inspects on a regular basis all year round. I mean, previous years, it's always been the health inspector mainly looking at food and food handling protocols and health inspectors report on a daily basis to Rob and also gets their sort of general direction from Julie Fetterman, our health director. So it's, but they are in the inspection services department under Rob Mora. So he'd be responsible for that ultimately. Okay. Yeah, you have a question? Yeah, yes. My wife and I usually shop together. We're in quarantine together. We wear masks, et cetera. Would we be able to go to each stall together or would only one of us be allowed? Typically you're allowed to go together, but they try to limit the number of people. If you could bring a family of six, then they would ask you not, but it's not unusual to have one or two people together. Thank you. Evan. Yeah, so I'm just thinking about how I typically shop when I go to the farmer's market. And I'm scanning the memo to see if my question has already been addressed, but so often I'll do a couple loops to see who has the best carrots out of them. How this is set up, it looks very much like once you pass a booth, there is no going back to that booth because it looks like when you hit the end, you have to go out the exit and it's obviously one way. And so I'm wondering if that's considered to be like you buy it at this booth or you're not going back or if it's possible sort of once you get to the end to just sort of loop back around and go in this continuous loop as long as you're maintaining the one way. We did discuss this and I think, because it would be uni-directional going through the market, if you went through and then came back out and realized that you missed something or wanted to see something else, you'd have to queue up again. I don't really see any other way to do it other than jumping in line and then offending several other people that have already put in their time waiting. So I think we need to have the word out to the shoppers that they need to be quick and careful. And hopefully they're not needing to go back, but if they do need or want to go back, they're gonna have to go through the process again. So another way to address that is you put a sign up in advance that shows all the vendors who are there. So if you have three people selling carrots or something, you know that there's three and you, because otherwise there's a huge advantage to the first person in line in terms of the vendors. And I don't know, Rob, I don't think there's enough room, I mean, the whole point is to be uni-directional is to have that flow and not have people backing up into people, right? That really is the point of it, but just so you know, there is 34 feet between the centerline and the display, the face of the display tent. So there's quite a bit of room there. You know, easy passage by one of the earlier questions about somebody skipping by a vendor space. So there's quite a bit of space there. We have another question from Melissa. Thank you. One is to follow up on what Paul said about a sign that shows who the vendors are that day. And just like we already get the email blast that says this is who's gonna be here this week, that's actually great when it's online so that you can click on the link and say, oh, right, Apex is the orchard that has all the apples I normally get. But if you just write Apex, I realize that longtime farmers market people will know what that means, but the average person will not necessarily know what that means and we wanna be accommodating to them too. So I hope that you'll figure out a way to, you know, it's a whiteboard or something, right? Just like when you go to the CSA and this week's share has carrots, tomatoes, whatever. You just say three vendors have tomatoes or something like that because I totally appreciate what Evan said. That is very much part of the whole farmers market experience. Do the loop. Maybe I'll get my green beans here and maybe I'll get my onions from them because I wanna support everybody kind of thing. Along those lines, if you don't have online shopping, like now, ready to go, I'm not gonna come. And so I am gonna have a hard time dealing with this new reality given the members that are at risk in my family. And so I can't strongly enough encourage you to offer some online ability. I know Simple Gifts has been working on this. Other places have varying abilities. I know it's a huge amount of work, but if you don't have some online ordering, it's hard for me to perceive that there aren't a lot of other people in my same position who desperately wanna go to the farmer's market, but are not yet quite up for this experience and would love to be able to order online. A couple of quick points if I may respond. We do have a large white sandwich board, which is a white board, which I think is a great thing to do. And we'll be listing the vendors on that. And one thing for sure, the patrons will have plenty of time in queue to read it. So I think that, you know, putting the information out there, they'll have something to occupy themselves. They can read it while they're standing in line. So I think dissemination of information that way is good also. So there will be a white board sandwich board out there waiting for them, giving them something to occupy their time while they're queued up. Secondly, we have established an online market now through Cherry Tree. It's a third party vendor that we're working with. And I think there's 11 of the vendors that have onboardered, I've encouraged everybody to do so. I'm hoping soon that the entirety of the market offerings will be out there. Some of them already have their own individual online venue. And obviously I can't force them to go over to Cherry Tree, but I am encouraging everybody to make an online marketplace for the Amherst Farmers Market there. But between the two, every vendor should have some sort of online capability for somebody to want to place an order and meet at the pickup area and be done with it. I think that that's gonna be happening. I think it's an evolution that's just a natural gravitation anyway. So we're getting there with that. Can I make a comment? Yes, John. Yes. As a handicapped 83 year old farmer, I didn't realize that no vehicles would be allowed on the common. I am bringing a very strong person with me hiring a person to assist my unloading and carrying goods onto the common. I usually use my vehicle as shelter and as a rest area to get me to the markets. I also use my vehicle as a place to store some of my goods that I wouldn't want out in the open on a warm day. I see a number of problems for me there. I mean, I could stay in my vehicle some of the time, but as I understand the rules that are being set forth, every vendor has to have a second, at least one second staffer who will then handle the cash. That all cash transactions would be made by an a plexiglass and no cash person handling would touch any of the produce. So I've arranged to hire someone to assist me both in setting up carrying goods across the common as just described. But I would have a very difficult time, perhaps getting to the market in terms of my health concerns when the convenience of having a place to shelter me. I don't know if I can personally get through a market with this particular situation, not realizing that this choice of the market would have put me in this situation. Thank you. Thank you, Lynn. Yeah, I didn't hear you mention your website, but I hope that you will also update it. I actually go to websites to look for current information and I know other people have observed that right now it's out of date. So please do that. Otherwise, I have to just say thank you for all the hard work that has gone into this very thoughtful plan for answering our questions and so forth. It's really impressive. I would say the same thing. Thank you very much. And I don't see any more questions. Is that truly the case? And it's only 10. I have to say one quick thing for Lynn's statement there. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, and I just wanted to say that she's absolutely, Lynn, you're absolutely right about the website. It's our static site. I mean, the website is a static site and it's the thing that gets the least amount of traffic right now. What we were waiting to do before we updated that was we wanna just make sure we had something concrete to be updating with and I didn't wanna be going back and forth on the website. We've used most of the other tools for social media but the website will be updated now once we have a better idea as to what we wanna put out there and what we're gonna be looking for for the summer. So good point, it's gonna happen. Just wanted to make sure we were putting out something that's tangible and concrete before I did so. That reassures me. I was one of the people who went to the website to see what was there and also to your Facebook page. So I think the older generation will go to the website and to the Facebook page to see. And so to the extent that we can get the word out there, that would really be helpful. So we do have the proposed motion. Whoa, that was fast lane. This is the motion that was on the town council website. So why don't we take a minute just to look at this motion, see if it needs any changes. Alyssa. Thank you. I was struggling with my raised hand button for some odd reason. I was like, it knows I've talked too much. I shouldn't get to raise my hand again. I actually just wanted to ask Rob and Paul to work with John and any other vendors who may be trying to figure out, I understand completely what John was saying. And of course, John is special, but it's also true that other vendors may for whatever reason also have some difficulty without having sort of that separate vehicle as shelter kind of deal. And so if they could continue talking about anything that they might do to continue to accommodate that, I think that TSO and the council would be highly supportive of that. We don't want to keep people out because we vendors out or people who've been making their livelihood here if we can at all incorporate them appropriately despite my loathing of vehicles on the common. Just respond to that, both David and John, David had said, he would prefer his members have access to the common with vehicles. And from staff point of view, our recommendation is that that not be approved, but it's your call. And maybe I'm not making myself clear. I don't want vehicles on the common, but I want you to talk about creatively what else you might do or if there's just a particular place that's a rest area or something. Like we've had, you know, for mothers of tiny infants for other types of events, but that's close enough to where their actual booth is. Okay, got it. A quick question, if I may. Sure. The parking along Boltwood Avenue and on South Pleasant Street for the vendors for their unloading and loading morning and afternoon, will that be marshaled by the parking staff of the town or is towing, I don't want to be towing people, but I want to make sure that those spaces are reserved. Will they be bagged on a Friday night or something like that or? Yes, we will bag them in advance. That'll be our responsibility. Great, that would be great. Thank you. Any other comments about the motion? Clearly the important parts are that it requires the farmer's market to sign a written agreement that complies with the memo that we were just talking about, the town manager's memo that includes all of the guidelines and requirements that we want to have fulfilled and secondly to authorize the town manager to be able to continue to modify as things change or as we get feedback or as we find out how things are working in the market. So unless we want to change anything about that motion, I'm just going to read it. And Alyssa, your hand is up because you want to say something or not? I will wait and see if there are questions about some of the things that I asked to be added to the motion. So I will take my hand down for now. If I possibly can, given the little button, thank you. Moved to recommend that the town council approve as amended the long-term event use reservation of the town common, south portion under town council policy regarding the control and regulation of the public ways further to approve the resolution in charge of the first 15 meter parking spaces on the east side of south west side of south west south west. Are you hearing that, Echo? Yes. Maybe we can just accept it as is. I will, I will. Without my reading it. Do we have a second? I'll second. Discussion? Okay. Oh, Alyssa. Since people generally didn't see this ahead of this meeting, I realize you're all super fast readers, but you may have noticed that I inserted the words at no charge to be clear on that because we've had that discussion before at town council. I'm not saying someone won't change it at town council, but I wanted to make sure we were clear that that was what the motion was saying, that we weren't charging people. As Darcy said, the signing part being clarified that it continues to allow the town manager to continue to adjust that. And the other thing that I tried to emphasize here that I don't think is in the operating guidelines and reflects back to what David just asked about was not only the parking along the sides, right? Like we always have on the common for the vendors, but because of our new special pickup spaces, which I really appreciate are now far more of them. That in my understanding of this to make sure we all the same shared understanding is there's going to be spaces designated for pickup. Those are not just for generic farmers market customers and they are not for vendors. However, the rest of the Spring Street lot is for whoever happens to be coming there as opposed to reserving the entire Spring Street lot, which means that the online pickup spaces need to somehow be marked that way so that people aren't just parking there because they're going to the market. Thank you. Any other discussion? All right. Okay, well, all those in favor then, I guess we need... Darcy, you have to do a roll call of the TSL members and Dorothy is in the room now. Yeah. So we'll start with Dorothy. Hi. Alyssa. Hi. Kevin. Hi. And George. Hi. And Darcy, hi. So that's unanimous. Do you want to call the... Well, I guess it's just yes or no, isn't it? So that's unanimous approval. And we'll move on to the next agenda item. Just a quick question for clarification. Yes. So with the approval, we are allowed to open on the 23rd of the month this coming Saturday, is that correct? We didn't actually discuss that. Well, it would be a good point of discussion because also if we are allowed the 23rd, for example, and we can't get the porta-party situation worked out, although I do believe we have it, we would then move it back a week. We have it worked out. Okay. Hi, John and David. It has come to the town council tonight for full approval and it's early in our agenda, so I'm hoping that we'll be able to move on. Okay, got you. Thank you. So moving on to... May I ask one question, Darcy? Yes, call. Does Lynn, I guess a quick question, do you want John and David at your meeting tonight? I'm here. If it's not too inconvenient, I think it would be a good idea, but given the fact that we have about nine or 10 counselors here, I don't expect it to be much of a discussion. Okay. Be happy to be there, but it's your choice in terms of whether or not you might need some input from us. Thanks, John. Sure. I'll ask Athena to send you both a link to get into the meeting. Okay. Thank you. The meeting starts at 6.30 p.m. Okay, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Yes, thank you for your presence. Okay. Thank you both. Anything else on farmer's market before we move on? So we're moving on to the next action item, which is the wage theft bylaw. This is our third presentation and discussion of... Someone needs to come in here. Councilor Cochran, there's our weather's again today and their Pat D'Angelo's, Mandy, Joe, and... That's not weather, I don't know. We'll be waiting for that. No, no, no, no, I was waiting for you at all. Your call is what you want to talk about. So quickly responded to Councilor Concerns by rewriting the box. In our packets. John's mic is still on. That's what we're getting. Yes, I got that. Lynn, you can mute them. Yes, got it, thank you. So I'm going to let the Councilor, I think Mandy Joe is going to be speaking to us today. Describe the amendments and then we'll have some time for discussion and questions after the presentation. Mandy, Joe. Yes, so thank you. We have sent you a couple of revised bylaws. We are now down to two instead of three. It includes everything that were in the three, but we decided to, for the responsible employer and tax relief agreements, because there was a lot of overlap between them, especially in the definitions that we combine them into one bylaw. It saves that overlap in definitions and repetition there. And it also saves some cross-referencing that we had had in the bylaws. So we did that. That's basically what happened with those two. There weren't any substantive changes beyond what was needed to combine them. On the wage and tip theft, we took the concerns that were mentioned by the TSO to heart and we had some discussions and we made some changes. And so that one looks a lot different in a sense. The main changes we did were we added a successor and interest section to the very bottom so that that's exactly identical to the successor and interest sections to the responsible employer and tax relief agreement. That will mean that an owner, a business that might be having some wage theft issues and not complying with the law can't close that business reopen under another name and not have to comply with this bylaw and potentially wage bonds and all of that in licenses. And so it will prevent some of that from happening. We added several items to clarify that Evan had pointed out that the bylaw violations might not be as broad as we were hoping. We realized that might be the case in terms of enforcement. So we added essentially the same phrase in many different spaces to ensure that if the license commission mainly could revoke, suspend, require wage bonds for licensees as violations of state and federal law happen, not just of the posting, mainly the posting requirements that the bylaw itself requires. But the biggest thing we did in listening to all of the concerns was with surrounding the wage theft advisory committee, we got rid of it. We looked at already existing options in town in order to keep some of the duties and some of the sort of notification and reporting requirements that were there that we had assigned to the wage theft advisory committee. We reassigned them to an already existing position in town hall, which is the human rights director. The human rights director is a bylaw created position that is already in our bylaws, bylaw section bylaw 3.3 has that position. And the assigned duties that we've added onto that position are very much in line with the duties that that position already has in bylaw 3.3, the human rights bylaw. In bylaw 3.3, the human rights director can already investigate makeup regulations and policies, enforce policies, resolve investigations, report issues to state authorities, update the human rights commission, report annually to the council. There are already all duties that the human rights director has in town as it relates to human rights policy. We are adding duties on or adding sort of what I would like to say as a sector of reporting and all to the human rights position, director position, the addition of the duties, the additions include potential investigation, but not really reporting recommendations, education, all of that. That's already in the human rights director's position and description for human rights policy. It will now be in the director's position and responsibilities for wage theft policy. And so we've gotten rid of, I think the concerns about it being a report to a multiple member body with open meeting law concerns, creating another committee in town that has already has a lot of committees. And so we've tried to respond to all of that by just getting those duties into a position that already has very similar duties in a different sector. And I think that summarizes all of the changes that we've done pretty well. Kathy or Pat can add to that if I've missed anything. But this is Kathy. The only thing I would add Mandy is you're doing the cross-reference. We've put in the human rights commission and the human rights commission already has sweeping oversight on human rights and an annual report. So we've created a piece that if these issues occur, we would be having public reporting, but again, it's cross-referencing a commission that's in place and giving them that responsibility. Thank you very much. Alyssa, do you have a question? Yes, yes, I do. Beyond all the wonderful things that I never give enough of to thank you for being so responsive and getting a great deal of information updated and back to us. The other thing I just feel compelled to point out is of course we don't have a human rights director in town. We literally don't have one. I realize our by-law says we have one. I realize we used to have a human resources slash human rights director, but we don't. And that position was not hired to be the human rights director. It was only hired to be human resources this last time. On the other hand, that sweeping oversight of the human rights by-law as Pat and Evan know from being part of by-law review, the human rights by-law is significantly out of date and was clearly written before the kinds of open meeting law we have now were in place because of just as you were very reflective of the concerns expressed about how to talk to a town committee effectively about your personal issue without it somehow being public. And so the human rights by-law clearly indicates that people can do that now with human rights violations and yet that's not actually done because of open meeting law. So my point being at this time, although it feels kind of weird to me to say that the human rights director is gonna do a bunch of things when the human rights director doesn't exist, I agree that that's where it makes sense to have put this and the human rights by-law is in the same position right now as in referencing a position that doesn't exist. So I guess I'm good with it even though we don't actually have that position defined meaning staff doesn't have that position defined per se. And I think that's just an unfolding conversation just as it has been since this human resources director was hired without that literal responsibility. It used to be HRHR and now it's not. So unless the human rights commission has a reason to not agree with this, I assume you reached out to them and they said, sure, that looks good. Then I'm okay with it even though at the same time it feels a little bit weird to be saying somebody's responsible for something when that somebody doesn't exist but that this set of responsibilities still exists. And I think it makes sense that we are defining those responsibilities and then town staff as the town manager has to figure out how his town staff can accommodate it. So thank you. Can I respond to that? Pat? Yeah, currently we learned from Paul that Jennifer Moisten and Evelyn Riviera-Riftgenberg are the people who are sharing the duties of the human rights director. And since that is a common thing in town that staff are sharing duties of other positions, we feel like there is someone, there are two people who would be available to do this work. Thank you. Evan? Yeah, so the risk of being a little bit repetitive of Alyssa, first I have obviously been one of the more, how we say, difficult people on this bylaw in the discussions we've had. And so I wanna echo Alyssa's thanks for the responsiveness of the three of you. When I was reading through it over the weekend, I thought, oh wow, all of my concerns have sort of gone away and been addressed. And so thank you for being so responsive and thoughtful in that, although having worked with some of you on other things, I'm not even a little bit surprised that you would be responsive and thoughtful. One thing is, and I don't necessarily need this now, but I think it would be useful at some point maybe when this comes to the council, just to sort of walk through what this looks like in practice and implementation. So if I was an employee at a restaurant and I felt like there had been a violation of this bylaw, like what does that actually look like for me to do this? And so I think that a lot of this sounds very complicated when you read it in a bylaw form, but it's actually probably pretty simple about what they should be expecting. And I think that that FAQ that you all provided was really useful, but just sort of walking through what that looks like. I share some of Alyssa's concerns about the Human Rights Commission, the human rights bylaw itself has some issues. And so the only other thing I would say is, and this is maybe forecasting to GOL since we have, actually, I think the entire GOL committee with us, unless some people have logged off, is perhaps I assume this is gonna go to town attorney before GOL review if it hasn't already gone to town attorney. And this might be a good opportunity when this is sent to town attorney since it now brings in the human rights bylaw to also say to town attorney, hey, look at this wage theft bylaw and this is your priority, but while you have the human rights bylaw in front of you, can you also take a look at that and let us know if this is OML compliant and how it might need to be changed because then you should have killed two birds with one stone and then GOL could maybe take on the task of bringing our human rights bylaw up to snuff. But other than that, I've seen my concerns addressed and thank you for that. And I'm ready to go on this. Great. Thank you. Kathy. Thank you. And thank you both Evan and Alyssa. We, as you noted, we bent over backwards. We had, who said what and how can we address it? So just on your comment on PATH to make it not, I would love, I drafted the FAQs and then everyone read them. But if you could give me any comments on there's one FAQ, what would I do? How does, who do I notify? If you could just give me some, because we can make that longer or we could have it a standalone. So there was an attempt to do it briefly. I'm in favor of things. I don't always succeed in getting them to print out on one page two-sided rather than to go to three or four. But if there are some suggestions on how to enrich that, to make it clear both to the council, but also to the public, we would like people to understand what's been put on the books if this gets passed. So just, we'd appreciate comments. Great. Any other comments, questions? Evan? Yeah, just to follow up on that. I guess, and this isn't fully thought through, but maybe it's not part of the FAQ or something that happens right now, but I'm thinking once this is, I assume, I hope passed and implemented, I'm trying to think like maybe something on the town website that's like, here's what it looks like. Something, I'm just trying to think of what's the, I'm trying to think of when I was when I was in some of these positions in retail, how would I have found out about this and how would this have been made easy for me? And I don't actually think that is in an FAQ because I think what you wrote is very clear. I'm just trying to think public-facing, which is I think what you're getting at, maybe on the website or something like that, how can we make it so it's welcoming and easy and accessible for people? That's helpful. And as you know, one of the requirements is a posting of your rights. So in the drafting of the posting, this could be posted at the workplace. What do you do as well as another place so we could try different places that people could get that information? Okay. Any other thoughts, questions? This is Rose from the Worker Center. I don't know if this is the time when I would like weigh in on it or if I should weigh the... Feel free to make a comment. Okay, sure. I don't see the hand raised thing, so sorry to interrupt, but maybe I don't see, sorry, my kid is also here. Yeah, come on. I was just gonna say that I think a big piece of this is helping unions and organizations to have a tool to better respond to when workers have needs. So I think it is important, of course, the language, but really this is a tool for organizations that are advocates of workers to be able to have that available. And so I think that there will be some workers that probably look at the ordinance, but really it's making something available so that workers can turn to organizations for support. And then for the council and for the city of Amherst to be there for them when they need it through this ordinance. Thank you. Yeah. Dorothy. Okay. I'm not sure if it's, I'm sure it's covered inside, but if a worker made a complaint, can they do it without their name being revealed to the boss? Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. All right. I am hearing that we have consensus on moving forward with these motions. So we do have a couple of motions prepared and do you have them, Lynn? I sent the amendments. Yes, I do. I'm getting it right now. But I can also read them. There they are. See if these are the correct ones that the councilor sponsors, if you can verify that these are the language that we should be using. So they're referencing the amended versions. We also need to rescind the TIF by law that currently exists. And I don't remember the number of that right now. No, that's not true. Actually, we don't think we need to because it's a slightly different. Okay, thanks. Thanks. And just as a note, the TIF gives a specific reference to the MGL. What is TIF? So having it is helpful without putting a lot of other pieces in. Okay. And I guess we could put these two motions together. We could just move to do both in one motion. So why don't I move to recommend that the town council rescind the responsible employer by law 3.4 and 3. and adopt 3.xx, responsible employer, public construction contracts and agreements for tax relief by law revision to 2022. 2005-15 and recommend that the town council adopt the 3.xx wage and TIF by law revision nine dash 2025-15. Do I hear a second? Second. It's George. Great. Any more discussion on that? Alyssa. First thing is I'd actually prefer that it be separated, but if this is the desire of the council, of the TSO and the council, that's fine. I just think it's always a mistake to combine too many things into one motion, although I agree that these are part of a package. It is entirely possible. However, that if people are unhappy with one version or another, that they would be happy to support one of these and not the other, although that seems somewhat unlikely. That's why I discourage us from putting them together as was just done live in front of us. The other question I have is probably more associated with our process that we don't quite have yet, which is when we recommend this to the town council, so this will be in our TSO report, right? And this is time sensitive, but not like the farmer's market tonight in terms of like we're expecting the town council to vote on the farmer's market tonight. So my question is, as Evan brought up, the idea of town council looking at this, what's our expectation? I'm sure the GOL could weigh in on that too, but what's our expectation is to telling town councilors who are now being peppered with emails from organizations to tell us to vote in favor of something that's not actually linked to the email, whether or not this, we feel like this is close, except for a little fine tuning by town council or do we suspect there might be anything else going on there? I just don't know how much the cosponsors have worked with them so far and we don't have a process process for that yet. I can just say that this needs to be referred to GOL next. And so that would be like the stage at which that would happen at the town council would weigh in associated with GOL's process, which is fine with me if GOL wants to tell me that. I was just trying to be clear on when that was. It was referred to both of the committees and it is unscheduled to be referred automatically to GOL after it leaves us. So any other, Evan? Yeah, so this is again sort of an internal TSO thing. We don't have necessarily a process but we know part of our process is going to be trying to figure out stakeholders and getting their input. The last meeting of TSO, I asked Darcy to invite Anthony Delaney from procurement to offer a comment since we were spending a lot of time in the wage and tip theft by law, but the other one, obviously you're going to affect procurement and given that the whole point of this committee is to look at how different things might affect town services such as procurement. I'm wondering if we were able to get any comment from him or if I know Paul is in this meeting, if he had any thoughts on this, just so that we can say we did our job of investigating things that might affect town services. Oh, I have no recollection of that. I will have to admit he was being, this was being requested with regard to the wage theft issue. Yeah, so because the responsible employer by law is going to impact, is going to be, have to be implemented by procurement. And so it seemed sensible to get a comment from our procurement officer on this, just as reaching out to stakeholders. So I wasn't sure if we were able to get that or if Paul has any thoughts on that since he's in this meeting, because I think that could be an important thing to include in our report to the council. Paul? So I have not had an explicit conversation with our procurement officer on this. If it's something, it's, when people procure things, public contracts, they have to comply with all kinds of laws. This would be another one that they would be required to comply with. It would just be if they wanna do business with the town, this is something that they'd have to abide by. So you, I mean, the downside is people might say, oh, I don't wanna do this and I won't bid. And on the plus side, it would protect the workers who are being employed on the job site. Thank you, Kathy. I just wanna point out that we do have a responsible employer for the procurement contracts on the books now 3.4. It's because of some things we've said it's not written quite as strongly, but in theory, right now we are policing that and we can terminate a contract, we can assess penalties if they're in violation. So there are clearly some added steps here, but part of the added steps is that the agreement and contractually to abide by this bylaw, but also the state laws where they always were supposed to abide by them. So it's strengthening it, but not by adding a lot more of, it's more the town oversight has a new tool, I think. But in any case, we fortunately had that bylaw on the books already. Yeah. Alyssa. Yes, we had that bylaw on the books already, but reflecting back to minutes ago when we were talking about the human rights bylaw, which we can't actually follow in its current format, that doesn't mean that the procurement bylaw we had was great. And so I think Evan's point, although this may not be his exact point, I don't wanna speak for him, inspires me to say that we aren't doing our job as TSO if we don't know that the people who have to enforce this say yep or no, you can't include that phrase because at my public, at all my professional training, I have found that this particular turn of phrase is really problematic, but we never fixed it because that law has been on the books for several years. So at some point, if TSO is going to say that it matters as a value add rather than this having just gone straight to council, then one of the things we should have done is we should have known that the procurement staff thought this was possible to simply comply with like all the other things they comply with or if this was right for something that needed a little tweaking. And so obviously, as I've said before, I don't wanna slow this down, but I don't understand why we wouldn't have already had it run by them to understand that if they had any concerns and when that's going to happen rather than handing people a bylaw that they can't enforce. I think Rob Mora would make it, would again, not speaking for Rob, but would not appreciate it if the planning board said, well, we have zoning bylaws and Rob enforces them. So we'll just make a different zoning bylaw and that'll be fine. Rob actually has some significant input as to how this actually practically works on the ground. So at some point, can we be assured that procurement will have a chance to look at this and say, yep, that still looks entirely workable to me and I'm so glad they did this excellent thing or hey, there's this one little spot I'm concerned about. It sounds like something that we could look at at the town council when the town council finally gets the issue. So are these hands still up? I just put mine up again, just because if it's simultaneously going to GOL, one of their jobs is to make sure it's actionable, that it's clear what are your three, these wonderful three words. So that's the other place that would normally be checking in both with town attorney, but also is this wording, is it gonna be clear what you need to do and can you do it kinds of things? So I'm just saying that we've got a couple checkpoints just as my analogy would be the percent for art. We got reviewers, but then we had town attorney tweaking some words that made it okay, that works, kinds of final changes that weren't substantive, that were exactly the things both of you are raising. Thank you, George. As I'm listening, I'm trying to sort this out myself from the GOL perspective. Kathy raises a good point, but and I'm gonna have to take it through my committee. Normally I would think just speaking for myself, knew that would happen, that this would be something TSO would deal with and Evan's suggestion is that we're still working on our process that we would do this kind of, this committee would do that kind of thing. So I don't think GOL would normally be talking to the procurement officer and looking into that aspect of the issue. So I was gonna suggest that we could just have the chair reach out to the procurement officer and have them get back to her and she would then have the information that could be then shared with the town council and perhaps even could go into a report. So briefly, it seems like this is an issue for us, TSO, not for GOL. Dorothy? Well, building on that, this whole process is beginning to sound just too Byzantine for me. And we just have to find some way to simplify it. If we're gonna talk about things and then it goes another committee and they talk about things and it comes back to town council and they talk about things. At that point, I'm just totally confused. And I just, I don't wanna stand on ceremony so much. If there's a question and issue and this has been brought to us and it's supposed to be in our area, then we should find out the answer. And that's just my comment. What are you suggesting, Dorothy? What answer? I feel that this is a hall of mirrors, that things endlessly go from one place to another so that I lose track of what we were supposed to be doing and who did it and did we do it? I do think the suggestion that we check with procurement is an excellent suggestion. So I would suggest that the TSO chair would do that and then report back to us. If the continual round of committees is what gets me. So the idea that TSO would do it and then write a report and then I don't know, does it go to, that can't get to town council tonight. So then do we wait two weeks to go to town council or does it go to, it just seems, from the common citizen point of view, I just think this sounds ridiculous. That's what I'm saying. I'd like to see it simplified and shortened done with the most common sense kind of way. Okay, well we have, we're in, we have a motion on the table here and now we've heard suggestions that that we should delay hearing the motion. Is there, I, you know, I felt that we had consensus that we were going to go forward with this. That's why we put the motion on the table, Alyssa. Since, you know, these motions are new to us and obviously we'll be filled in probably by Mandy Jo on the actual numbers. If we can find a way to simply state in us, we can rather than stating in this motion, if we can pass a second motion that indicates that we don't have that information on procurement, but that we, you know, I don't wanna say, you know, we recommend this even though we don't know the one thing that some people might have thought TSO should actually find out about. So maybe we just make some other motion separately that says that the TSO chair will discuss it with the town manager, talk to Anthony and whoever else and if they have concerns that then it'll come back to TSO, but that somehow to keep it moving, right? And to not refer here, refer there as Dorothy's talking about just since that didn't already happen and I think should have happened before it got to us the first time, but to not slow it down, just have that happening in parallel with something written down other than just we're all agreeing at TSO and we're gonna write in a report that maybe someday somebody will talk to Anthony, like something that firms that up, however the town manager thinks that might be a way to provide that direction to have this looked at because it doesn't, it seems to not be a GOL issue, it seems to be a TSO issue, yet TSO wants to be done with it unless procurement finds that there's a problem with it. Kevin. Yeah, I wanna be clear, I was in no way suggesting that we not take action on this today. I'm ready to take action on this, I'm ready to vote, I'm going to vote in support of it. I guess the point is we all recognize we're sort of doing this one as a one off because we're doing it before we have a process and I think by doing this we're learning what we need to do in the future better and I think one of it is that from the beginning we should have identified stakeholders and brought some of them in. And so I'm not suggesting we hold off on this, I do think we should take action on it now, but I would support directing the town manager who's on this call to talk with procurement and perhaps for when this gets to the council have some type of statement from the procurement officer about implementing this because I don't think it actually belongs in GOL because it's not about something can be actionable but difficult or actionable but complicated. And so it'd be nice to know by the time this gets to the council just have a statement from procurement and if that statement is hold on red flag which I don't think there will be, but if it is then the council can always refer back to TSO and I know that gets against what Dorothy said but to some extent we're learning because this is a new committee. Any other comments, Paul? So I heard what everybody said we'll have something back to you from our procurement team by the end of the week. Great. Okay, so I guess we will move forward with this motion then. All those in favor of the motion? It has to be a roll call. A roll call is Alyssa? Aye. Darcy? Aye. Dorothy? Aye. Evan? Aye. Dorish? Aye. Great, all right. So thank you very much to the counselors that put a lot of work in on this and all the advocates and we'll hear from the town manager about the procurement issue by the end of the week which is great. Okay, moving on. We're actually on schedule. Okay. I just want to take a second to thank you all. We're going to sign off, but thank you for your hard work and careful consideration. Sorry to interrupt. Thank you. Thank you very much. Margaret, Rose and Lisa. So we're moving on to another action item which is the Southeast Street public way application which Evan is presenting. Wait. Are you talking to me? Yes, because it doesn't make sense to me that we would end with a vote on a recommendation and not have any mention of when it is that we think it's going to go before town council. So we always need to be talking about next steps, not just what we're done with it. We on the committee need to know beyond your conversation with Lynn which you could have right now about when you think this is going to end up on the town council agenda because it sounds, you know, we don't need a separate motion. It's fine that Paul's going to do that and that'll be by the end of the week which is obviously before the next town council meeting. But what next town council meeting? We should know what the next stage is after we do something, not just say, well, we did our parts or whatever. And the report. I can report the recommendation in the report because it's going to go to the council today but it won't be taking it up. I'm pretty, the next step is that it will go to GOL. I don't think it needs a referral because I think it was already referred to both committees. So it's- So what agenda are we talking about? Are we doing this in June? I mean, I think it's important, particularly when people have been coming from the outside, not just counselors and people are writing to us that we'd be able to tell them, yes, it goes through a process. Yes, GOL is working on it. Yes, we're working on it. But when can they expect we're going to work on this? In July, in June? I mean, we must have some sense of when that's going to happen. I don't have an answer to that, Lynn. Odyssey, thank you. It's automatic referral to GOL. If GOL can get to it at their meeting on Wednesday, although it's not on their agenda, then it could come to the council as early as the June 1st. But if there's a decision that it needs legal review, it probably won't be until June 15th. Thank you very much. George, is that a comment you want to- Just to clarify, it is not on GOL's agenda for Wednesday. And I don't think it will be on its agenda for Wednesday because we have a very full agenda already. It also is going to need legal review. Okay, thank you. All right, now we're ready for Evan. So I'm taking the lead on the Southeast Street public way of request. I don't have a whole lot we... I reached out through the town manager to the developer talking about when they might be available to come in. But I thought for today, before we drag a whole lot of people into this meeting, I thought it would be useful for us to have a conversation as a committee about what questions we have, what we would even wanna... I don't wanna force someone to come to a meeting for us to go, yeah, it looks good. So I thought that today we could use this opportunity to have an initial discussion about this proposal and talk about what questions, concerns, comments we might have that we might want some input on. And then of course those could be sent to Christine Brestrop and also to the developer. And so I think our first step is figuring out what our questions and comments are, what we wanna focus our discussion on to see if we... And what it would look like to have a larger discussion on this. So we have all had the presentation on this project. We've read through the documents so I'm not going to represent them because we have all looked at everything. We know from the council discussion, one of the things we were asked to look at was the design review board recommendations and whether those are things that council wanted to build into the public way request. And so I think that this is a good opportunity for us to just have a discussion about what we're intending to focus on, what our questions and comments might be so that if we need it, we can have a larger discussion at our next meeting with responses to those questions and comments. Darcy. One question that I have is, I see from the initial a letter from Berkshire Design, I think is their name, that they don't expect the owner developer to need to do this until fall of 2021. Is that correct? Darcy, are you handing this over to me to moderate? Should I be calling it? I'm assuming that you're still going to chair this discussion, but it... No, I'm assuming you are. Oh, okay, sorry. Okay, yes, so the answer to that was yes, right? That the work would occur after the building's up. So the actual work would occur in the fall even though they need our approval before they can begin construction. I see Paul's hand up, so why don't we go to him? Sorry, I just want to update. We have... The engineer can show up on June 1st, but we have not heard back from the owner. So that's why I've not been able to confirm if June 1st is the actual date for the presentation to TSL. Since I hear back, I'll let you know that. I also see that in attendees, we have Christine Breastrupt and she has her hand up. Lynn, I'm wondering if you can move her in as a panelist. Yes, give me a minute. While we're doing that, Dorothy, I see your hand up. Do you want me to speak now? Yeah, go ahead. Okay, I just have some questions that I think that we should consider above and beyond this individual request. And that is, what do we feel about the common way, the public way? And do we feel that there may be some differences in adjustments because of the age of COVID-19 and the promise or the threat of future ones? So like, is this something, is this a public good? Is this something that should be preserved for the public? How wide should it be? How, what is the minimum for a sidewalk to be? I mean, I'm on Amity Street. In fact, we have a lot of land on both sides, public way and one side of the sidewalk, public sidewalk and then good setbacks on the yard. But if two people are walking on Amity Street, which they do all the time, they really can't socially distance very well because it's a three foot, it's a narrow sidewalk. If that were to be done again and the town should decide to redo that sidewalk, it should make it wider because gardening near the walk, people can't even walk by. So I have to mask, wear a mask just gardening in my, you know, near the edge of it and people are passing much too closely. So that's point one is that I think this is a public good and that we should think about how we want it to function in this changed universe. Also, who owns it? I mean, if the public owns it, then why are we giving it away so easily and so cheaply? This is a question for all over town. So I'm interested in this particular project but I'm really interested in the general topic as to what are the minimum expectations for preserving this good, which is the public way from people who want to build up to it. I mean, for example, according to some of the things that have been built now, you can build up to the edge of your property line. I think you would not want to walk on Amity Street if we had built up to our property line. It would look bad, but you'd feel like you were, had no space to even move in and that you'd feel like you're walking into somebody's private space. So I see that we seem to be allowing that a lot. So my questions are very general that I think that TSO should take up as to, and to look at all the ramifications which I'm sure are many, as to how strong can we have protections for the public way? Right, and I think one thing I want to make sure we're being clear on is we're not giving the public way away. We'll remain in the public. This is someone who's asking to make modifications that are viewed as improvements to the public way. So we're not giving anything away. It's being maintained as the public way. It's just it will be improved. So I guess that this committee has to figure out what we're looking to do when we review these public way requests because we have this one and I assume we're also gonna get another one tonight at the council. And so I think for us, I think my mindset on this is first and foremost, are the improvements or the modifications that are being proposed to the public way? Do they benefit the public, right? Are they in the public interest? Do they produce some type of public good? Which is I think what I'm hearing from you, Dorothy, right? Is our land, and if we're going to let people modify it, do we feel like they're doing so in a way that improves the use of that space and the public use of that space? Right, but with one, yeah, I'm still here, with one follow-up, the idea of properties coming so close to the sidewalk, that is something that I feel we have to really address. Well, that's a zoning issue. You can improve the other, you can improve the other side of the sidewalk, all right? With a bench or a piece of some paving or whatever, a tree, and that's nice, I like that. But if the other side of the sidewalk is right up against the building, I think that we have, that's not good in terms of public way. In general, I'm not talking about this particular project, because this is something, an issue that goes way beyond this one. Kathy, I see your hand up. I wasn't sure if I wasn't committee member, but you asked for questions to get responses to. What I had had is the request to permanently use has some lawn on it, has a sidewalk on it, has a bench, a waste paper basket. So would there be in contract language to permanently maintain as well? So if it gets installed, but then would they be mowing it, would they be fixing the bench if it fell apart? So it's a maintenance question. And I just, I'm building on, so that's just a question on maintenance costs. There may be minimal, but if you've come up to North Amherst and walked on some of our sidewalks, you'll notice that they are footpaths through a forest rather than a sidewalk. So they work well with a mountain bike. Now I don't think that's gonna be the problem there, but it could deteriorate. So will it become maintained? That just building on Dorothy's, because we have such a big public way here, it happens to be large. We agreed to a smaller frontage setback on than would have otherwise been. So I just want some assurance that that's absolutely necessary. So if we ever came back and said, we need a wide enough sidewalk that a bike and a person can go on it, because there's no really good bikeway along that road. So just thinking in terms of what's the world we wanna look at, or if we ever wanted the road wider to allow a bike lane, then we're eating into the public way again. So just thinking of complete streets in this, like where might we wanna be if we have a chance to think this through? So those are my questions related to this request. Okay, so I think that I'll probably defer to Christine, but my understanding was part of the special permit condition was that they would maintain all of these improvements to the public way with the exception of the light posts, which would be DPW, and that was in the special permit contract. But I'll defer to Christine, because she would have the authority on this. But you need to unmute. Unmute, Christine. Unmute. Yeah, unmuted, then you're re-muted. There you go. Okay, so good morning. Thanks for inviting me to join. So I wanted to make a couple of comments. The comment that the engineer made in his letter about not needing to do this work until, I think you said the fall of 2021, is not actually true. Much of the finished work will be done at that time, but the project itself needs this part of the public way in order to fill. The building is going to be put on a couple of feet of fill. I don't remember exactly how many, somewhere between three and four feet of fill. The site is very wet, and in order to get the building up out of the wet, they need to fill the site. So that means that they're going to be filling out into the town right of way. So that's one of the things that needs to be done in order to allow the building to be built. Then of course, the other site improvements can come in later on once the building is built. So that was one thing I wanted to mention. The sidewalk width, in response to Dorothy's question, the sidewalk width is proposed to be six feet wide. So Dorothy mentioned that the sidewalks along Amity Street are three feet wide, I think she said. So anyway, these sidewalks are proposed to be six feet wide. All of the sidewalks, the one that goes right along the road and the one that goes along the building edge. So that was another thing I wanted to say was that there are actually going to be two sidewalks here. A sidewalk that will run along the roadway edge and a sidewalk that will run along the building. So there's going to be plenty of access here. What else did I want to say? Oh, in terms of the public good, you know, I'm not advocating for this project necessarily, but I think that this plaza and set of sidewalks and tree plantings and the bus stop, et cetera, is going to be more useful to the public than what has been there in the past. What's been there in the past is two front lawns, essentially, that the applicant has been maintaining over the years. In fact, I'm not even sure that he knew that these front lawns were part of the town public way. So the houses sat very close to the road and the land in front of them was essentially grass lawn and there were some trees on it, but it really was not useful to the public in any way because there was no feeling that the public was going to be invited there. Whereas with this plan that has been developed, there is a sense that there's a gathering space there. So if someone were to go to the pizza shop across the street or Cumbies or someplace and get something to eat, that person could come and sit in this plaza and have it. So I just wanted to point that out. And then in terms of the multi-use path idea, well, of course the town will continue to own this property. So the town can do whatever it wants to do in the future. It can tear up the six foot sidewalk along the roadway edge and replace it with a 10 foot multi-use path if that seems appropriate in the future. So the town will maintain control over this property, but the owner has told the planning board that he is committed to maintaining it. But of course that would have to be documented somehow with an official contract with the town. So I think that's what I have to say for now. Alyssa. I wanna thank Chris for taking the time to be here because that is exactly how I read the material that you provided to us. And I really appreciate that. I totally understand what Dorothy's saying in terms of the larger picture, but in terms of this particular project, all the things that Chris said were incredibly useful summary of the materials that we've received. So thank you for that. The questions I actually have because as you know, I questioned at town council why we're even talking about this at TSO, why don't we just go ahead and have the town council vote on it? Is that was suggested, as Evan mentioned earlier, that it was because of the DRB recommendations, right? So the DRB can't mandate, but they wanted the council to look at. So my questions are actually not at all for the developer and I see no need to bring them in on June 1st, although that's what you guys want, that's fine. But I actually would like some more information from the DRB because they gave a completely incomplete answer as to why they made the recommendations that they did. The idea that someone just said theoretically, you know, I wish we had more recycled containers as though this would suddenly be the place that we would start having recycled containers just blows my mind. And also, but more specifically, along the lines of, you know, people not recognizing obviously that if you put out a recycled container, then somebody has to empty it and it's gonna get filled with trash, et cetera, et cetera. And there's a reason we don't have recycled containers very often even throughout town. You'll see that it rarely even happens with some town comedy events, although that's not gonna be true this year. The other part, and so I'm not absolutely going to support putting in a recycle bin of some kind. The other part is associated with benches. I know there's talk in different design circles and of course with ADA compliance as to what's the most useful kinds of benches and that people want arms on them so that people are able to lift themselves in and out of the bench. This isn't about transferring from a wheelchair. No one would do that at a bench like this. And so I would just need a better understanding before I accepted the DRB's recommendation that some have arms and some not have arms as to why they picked that particular set of things because that's not at all clear in the memo that we were sent. Okay, thank you, Alyssa. I don't know if Christine had any insight into the DRB's decision, otherwise we can refer those questions to them. Yeah, Christine. So I was at the DRB meeting. I don't understand all of their decisions well, but I think one member of the DRB did not like the look or functionality of benches with arms and she felt it was an unfriendly gesture towards people who might tend to lie down on the bench. And so she only wanted to have one of the benches have arms and other members of the DRB advocated for having at least one bench with arms because there would be potentially some elderly people or people who might need to have that extra boost. So that's what I know about the bench. The acorn-like light fixtures, they were objecting to some degree because there are a multitude of different light fixture styles in this particular village center. Each private landowner has a particular style. Mr. McChie has put in the acorn lights across the street with some work that he did over on that side. So he's proposing to do that same thing on the west side, which is in keeping with the lights that we have downtown, although we're changing those over. So there was a lot of discussion about the acorn-like light fixtures. I think that you may want to call in either the town engineer or the superintendent of public works if you have more questions and comments about the light fixtures. And the recycling receptacle, Mr. McChie is going to maintain this property. So I think he would be the one to be emptying the recycling receptacle if that makes a difference to your thoughts about that. Okay. Only in that I think it's an unreasonable expectation, but thank you. Thank you, Elsa. Darcy, your hand is up. Oh, your hand was up. Do you have, no? Kathy and Dorothy, are these new hands or residual hands? I think they're new. No, I can't find, it's not letting me raise and lower it anymore. So lower, it's down. It's down, okay. Thank you, Kathy. Dorothy, this is a new hand. Okay. Well, I don't think I was at that particular DRB meeting, but the issue in lots of places with arms or no arms has purely been that it was considered that arms kept people from sleeping on them overnight. But I am really convinced, perhaps because the age I am now, that a bench without arms is really hard to sit down on and really hard to get up on. I've seen some designs, which if somebody really wanted to sleep on them, they could put their feet through the arms and it's, you know, so you could do it. But I guess the idea of a bench with no arms, I don't care if it's pretty, it's really hard for people to sit down and to get up without them. So that's just my input on that a little bit. Okay, any other questions or comments? George. No, I'm trying to raise it lower. Shit, there we go. Yeah, as I'm looking this over, I don't see any reason to bring the developer in. And I'm really struggling to see what is so crucial here that requires further reports or further investigation. We're talking about a recycling bin, which doesn't seem to be all that necessary. We're talking about light fixtures that already are on one side of the street and seem to fall within just the general, you know, the builder has some, right, to create what they want to create and whether a bench should have an arm on it or not. And that's it. So I'm really struggling here to see what is so crucial that we have to spend another meeting or two. This is, it seems to me, pretty clear improvement to the public way. And the only reason that it's become an issue is because apparently once upon a time, there was a town common that extended a lot farther than anybody really seemed to pay much attention to. So maybe my colleagues can help me understand what the profound issues here are that this committee needs to investigate further because I'm really struggling to see what they are. It seems like a definite improvement to common space, a definite improvement to the common good, providing housing, it's in a village center, provides a space for a bus stop, provides a sidewalk where there's any sidewalk. So help me here. Yeah, so I mean, I think again, this has come to us to look at. And I think, again, my perspective on this has been, if we're going to grant use of the public way or modification, do we feel like it's in the public interest? Does it serve some public good? My personal opinion, as someone who walks through this village center daily, since I live right by it, is that this would be a vast improvement over what's there. And I think it contributes to sort of our goals, to have our neighborhood to one, develop our village centers, but also to make them sort of walkable, multi-use. I mean, the fact that you can now bike, walk, and ride the bus based on this one site that right now is just lawn on a fairly busy street, I think it's a big improvement. So I guess our discussion here needs to be, do we feel like we have questions that require us to make a decision at our June 1st meeting to gather information between there? There's been a few questions asked. I think all of them, Christine has answered. So what are our remaining questions? Thirsty, I see your hand up. I guess I assumed that we were gonna hear from the owner developer. He was gonna be at this meeting, but I guess I, first of all, read through all of those documents and was pretty amazed at the process that this whole thing has gone through. And amazed that Dorothy went to all those meetings and succeeded, she and others, succeeded in improving the proposal from what it was at the beginning to what it ended up. There were a lot of improvements made and it's kind of concerning to me that owners and developers are, it seems like it's a lot of wasted time. They should just come with the good proposals at the beginning so they don't put us through all of this. So it just seems like a lot of work to get the improvements that Dorothy was pushing and other people's were pushing. Anyway, at the last time council meeting, Steve brought up the possibility that public way requests are the town's way of, the town council's little piece of leverage that we have to influence these proposals. They don't have to be narrowly focused on exactly what is being proposed for the public way itself. And I'm not suggesting that for this now. I'm just saying that I don't really like this development and I don't think we need more one bedroom units. And I think that we need moderate income housing and we need a sustainable housing that is solar ready. We need a lot of things in the big picture in this town that this to me doesn't represent. And so I don't, I'm hoping that in the future are that we're gonna have some master plan and zoning that will put, send things in this direction so that they'll come with us with plans that are sustainable and that actually provide what the town needs in the way of housing, not the single family or this single unit stuff that I can see Alyssa just going crazy over there. That's how it's going. All right, so it's Alyssa and George and Dorothy. So I was having trouble hearing Evan there, not sure. Since we're talking about personal opinions now, I will give the personal opinion that I don't think some of the changes that were made to the project were actually positive changes. I think the higher number of units that were initially proposed was actually better. I understand that that's not the decision that was made and that was a decision to be made not at the town council level. I agree with everything associated with the master plan but when Steve was talking about leverage I don't want us to use leverage inappropriately to undercut what other boards are doing that are within our zoning bylaws. If this kind of thing encourages us reflecting to something Dorothy said earlier to say, you know, we should really change our zoning bylaw to include a certain setback then we should absolutely go ahead and sponsor legislation like that and ask the planning board look at that and then have it come to the full town council but doing it on a case by case basis to punish individual developers. And I do say punish because I see zero reason to assume that the developer was going to come in because what the developer was going to hear when they came in is that people didn't really agree with this project and that's not really helpful to the developer. What we need to do is communicate what we think matters associated with the public way in this particular case given the approvals that have already happened. I think it's clear that it is an improvement as George and others have said and I would like us to go ahead and vote today on what to do with the DRB recommendations and put that forward to town council that the motion which, you know I'm not in charge of crafting but the motion along the lines of that we recommend the use of the public way as desired with the following conditions that we can put in. I don't know if conditions is actually the right word for us but that we could put in associated with the recycling bin. I don't want the benches that I do want to have arms at least in some cases and whatever else the DRB wanted if we could have that up in front of us and I'm done with this. I'm ready to say whatever the majority says on those particular DRB issues is done having the developer come in and tell me things is not going to change whether or not I want arms on the bench and it's certainly not going to change whether or not I think this is a good use of the public way. Great, thank you Alyssa. George? I think Alyssa has made my points. I don't want to belabor this. I don't think this is the venue for this sort of discussion but that's maybe a discussion for another day. Also remind the committee that as Christine pointed out the reason for the developer's point of view that action is required by us in a somewhat timely fashion is that they have to do some fill work that will spill over into the public way. So there is a developer concern here that we should respect and I don't think this is the place for us to be relitigating an issue that's already been decided by multiple committees and boards. The issue before us is fairly specific and I'm still waiting to hear from my colleagues as to what specific questions they have. Apparently they don't need to hear from the developer. Maybe somebody has a DRB question they'd like to have answered Alyssa seems to think that it might be something there. I'm perfectly ready to vote on this right now and send it to the council with our approval. So again, maybe those who aren't ready could help me understand what they want specifically to be answered and who they want to answer it. So I'm gonna go to Dorothy next but I'm wondering if Lynn can put the DRB recommendation up on the screen so we can have some consensus on that. Dorothy. Then we'll look for it. Thank you. So part of what's concerning me is that developers come in and ask for all kinds of changes and he is during the process of this proposal he has made many, many changes because of wetlands he discovered that made it difficult to put the number of parking in and he was given many, many ways to deal with that and so he doesn't even have two parking spaces, doesn't even have one parking space for each unit. So all kinds of rules were changed but yet nothing triggered affordable housing. So how do we, we have the system where we have a rule that says if you ask for something special then you should at least include 10% affordable housing but somehow that never happens. And I know that's not our job, okay? But he was given access to put his building further to the, right up to the property line and to then be able to go on to and offer some amenities on the public way. And it's just like a little piece of frosting on a cake. The cake is missing something important. And the telling thing was when I said, I see that you have two handicapped accessible apartments there. Why can't you have at least two affordable units? And the answer was because I'm required to have handicapped accessible apartments. And to me that was a really important moment. It's what we ask for that sometimes people will do things if required but if they're not and they don't feel like it they won't. So I just see that we're just kind of doing all kinds of things around the edges and things were changed because of information but we didn't get to the heart of something that we've talked about at every, everybody. I don't know anybody on the town council that doesn't wanna have more affordable housing. And yet changes are always put into these things and none of them seem to target it. So that's really the sense of frustration here that the public way is being limited to some extent by having a building right up the property line. And yet we don't get the affordable housing but I understand that's not what the issue for TSO today. Right, I mean, that's not an issue for TSO at all. I think that's really within the domain of CRC. So what I wanna do is because we were specifically asked about the DRB recommendations, there are three of them. One is to add a recycling receptacle, one is to provide one bench with arms and another is to provide two benches without arms. And the other is about these acorn light fixtures. And so we were specifically asked by the council to render some type of recommendation on whether the public way request should also include a condition that has some of these DRB recommendations. And I think, George keeps saying what are we trying to do here? I think that this was something that was specifically asked of us. So we've heard Alyssa's opinion on this. We know that, but I'd love to hear from the other committee members if you feel like these recommendations are things that should be worked into our recommendation to the council about what to do with this public way request. So any thoughts from the other committee members about whether or not you feel like these recommendations should be worked into the public way request? George. Probably made this clear, I'll just repeat it. I don't see anything here that I feel leads me strongly to insist that it be somehow a requirement for this developer to be able to make use of the public way. I don't agree with the recycling. That seems to be arbitrary. The other two seem to be minor in the extreme. So I have no particularly strong feeling about requiring this at all. Christine. So there was one statement I made that might have been a little confusing and it had to do with the issue of the lights. I think what Mr. Michi is actually proposing is to use the lights that are used uptown, the lights that have the shading on them. They're newer lights that we have used in the vicinity of the library, the Jones Library as well as the Triangle Street roundabout. So those are the lights that he's proposing to use. The comment of the DRB was that earlier when Mr. Michi did improvements to the east side of the street, he put in the acorn lights that at that time were being used uptown. So their plea to him was, well, if you're going to ever replace your acorn lights on the east side of the street, can you please make them match the ones that you're currently proposing on the west side? And so that was the concern about the lights, that he might end up with two different styles of lights, acorn on the east side and the ones with the shade on the west side. The planning board, I believe, prefers the lights with the shade because they're dark sky compliant and it's hard to make the acorn lights dark sky compliant. And we've also received complaints that the acorn lights shine in people's eyes when they're driving down the street and prevent them from seeing what they should be seeing. So acorn is not preferred, the ones with the shade are preferred and that's what that optional recommendation was about. Darcy. Wow. So Evan, are you asking whether we want to condition our approval on these conditions that were put forward by the design review board? My understanding from the council's referral was one of the things they wanted us to look at were the recommendations from the DRB and whether we wanted to also recommend those and I guess we could recommend them or we could work them into the approval. What do you mean by that? I mean, we could support their recommendations but not necessarily require them, they could be recommendations or we could, I mean, in theory, also work into our approval of the public way that one or some of these be required. I assume we could do that, it is our land. Yeah, it seems like if they took the time to make the recommendations then and they're reasonable and make sense that I support these recommendations. And if Christine says that the owner is going to take care of the recycling then it obviously is good to have a recycling receptacle. All right, Alyssa then George. So I don't support any of the DRB recommendations, I don't think any of them are necessary, I think they've been communicated to the developer and what he chooses to do associated with those, I think it's especially unfortunate and the DRB obviously struggled with what Christine just said, which is that they're not actually talking about the lights on this project, they're talking about in the future the lights across the street matching this project. So this is, you know, when we're trying to figure something like this out for the first time it is not easy. Therefore, I would prefer that, I don't know if the motion's been prepared yet or not but I would prefer that the motion that reflects what the town manager told us in the original like page one of this very long document that we have up right now is what the TSO recommends and I would not include any of those items as conditioned and I would say that we make the recommendation to town council saying, we recommend what the town manager has presented or the words we need to say. And in the report we say, we looked at the DRB recommendations and we did not feel like they were necessary to condition your approval, then when the town council gets that report they can say, well, we really feel strongly that we want the recycling container and I'll argue about why it's bad idea and Darcy will argue about why it's a good idea and the town council will make a decision. I don't have any need to do anything other than make this recommendation today. I don't need to see this back again at TSO. I want it to go to the full town council. Okay, George. I agree with the listen. Okay, so I think that we're probably wrapping up this discussion and I think that it seems like we can vote on this today. I don't see any questions that came out that indicated we need another meeting or to drag the developer into this. So I'm going to try and offer a motion and then if people want to offer amendments they can do that. And so I'm going to, or if they can tell me why the motion doesn't make sense. So I am going to move that we recommend the town council approve the public way request for 133 and 143 Southeast Street, AKA Southeast Commons as presented in the town manager memo dated April 30th, 2020. Second. Okay, so motion's been made and seconded. Are there any comments or amendments? So I see Dorothy. Just a clarification. So the town manager's motion doesn't, I can't read the small print in front of me. Okay. Does or does not include the design review board suggestions. It would not make those mandatory. Well, okay, but we were talking about recommendations as opposed to mandatory. I would like to include them as recommendations. Okay. I see no problem with that. And I think that I think the thing with the lights is sensible. It's only at some time in the future. If you need to do that, then to do the lights that the people around there and the drivers would prefer because of the shading. Okay. I see nothing wrong with that as a recommendation. We can't mandate it because it says that's, if you should decide to change them in the future. The question of the benches and the recycling thing are so minor that I don't want to argue them up or down. But I would like to include the recommendations as recommendations and leave it at that. I think that's kind of what Alyssa said that at some point. Let me, let me just, let me just clarify. So there are already recommendations from the design review board that have gone to the developer. So they already have these recommendations. They're aware of them. Are you saying that the council also wants to make a statement that we are supportive of these, but not going to require them? Or is it sufficient that the developer has them as recommendations generally? I think that's a sufficient that the developer has them. Okay. I didn't want to vote against them is what I'm saying. I don't want to vote against the recommendations, but as long as the recommendations have been made, then that has been fulfilled. Okay. Great. And Darcy. So I just want to make sure that Dorothy, you don't want to move to amend to add that we are recommending. Supporting the design review board recommendations or. Is that not what you're suggesting? Well, I really don't know because this is not where my worry is. Okay. My worry is not about a bench and recycling bin. My worry is about no setback. That's what my worry is about. It's about builders building right up to the very, very edge of the public way. So that you feel like you've kind of lost your arm space around it. Okay. So I don't have a recommendation. How's that? Okay. Any final. Comments. Okay. Well, then I will call the question on the motion. Okay. Brewer. Hi. You want. Hi. Pam. Hi. Ross is an I, Ryan. Hi. Okay. That is unanimous. Relinquish my moderating responsibilities. And put more. Okay. All right. Darcy. Yes, Lynn. Thank you. Thank you. And now go back on the June 1st. Council agenda. Okay. So we're over time here. I think we could probably. Adapt our minutes at the next meeting. If people want to put that off. Anyone. Really want to approve our minutes. Okay. And I. Moving on to announcements. I feel like our agenda is really. Got in the head of us, although today. I'm amazed. We just posed. A whole lot of stuff. And so I. I don't know if we have a discussion of the review process at a separate meeting or a retreat or something like that. Maybe we can, maybe we can bring it up at the next meeting. Let me look at the agenda and we can see whether there's room. In the, in the upcoming agenda, but we will have a referral. With regard to one university drive. Public way request. And we will have a bulk. Request for reappointments. Plus we'll probably have other appointments. In addition to that. So we may have. Be tanging up a lot of time on appointments at the next meeting. Yes, Lynn. You will. We'll have a, we'll have a, we'll have a, we'll have a, we'll have a. Proposal for the. Helping assisting businesses to reopen. You will also have a consideration of an item there. Okay. We'll ask that that be done at your very next meeting. Because we would like to pass the entire thing. By. Thank you. So. Sounds like not much time for the review process at the next meeting. Do. Counselors have any thoughts about the possibility of having a special meeting or a retreat on. Just separately on that issue. Wait a minute. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Actually, it's not in regards to that. I was appreciating what Lynn brought up one about the town council agenda on the previous item. And then also tonight's meeting because if she hadn't been here, I was going to announce that I had requested that tonight's motion sheet, which has a long list of referrals associated with the town managers reopening proposal. Temporary zoning bylaw and all that jazz. That we get a referral from that too. So that would be on our next meeting agenda, which is June 1st, right? Our next TSO meeting is 9 30 on June 1st. And then those, as we saw from our town council motion sheet that's in the public packet, there are various deadlines that all these referrals are trying to meet, but we would definitely need to talk about that no later than June 1st. Okay. Great. So we're, we already have a packed agenda for June 1st. So, and we, that's the next agenda item. That. June 1st reappointments. The university drive. The referral that we just mentioned. About the moratorium issue. And that should be enough to fill our agenda. And yes, the reappointments. So. Any other comments or there are no items, not anticipated by the chair for eight hours in advance. Any final comments from counselors. Okay. I think we're adjourned. Thank you very much. We accomplished quite a bit today. Thank you, Darcy. All right. Thanks, Darcy. Bye bye.