 This program is brought to you by cable franchise fees and generous donations from viewers like you Seen as we have a quorum of the emmerstown council I'm going to call this meeting to order at 6 30 on May 18 2020 Governor Baker's March 12th order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law Allows us to hold this virtual town meeting I'm now going to call on each counselor as well as well as our guests to make sure that they hear me and we can hear them At the same time, we are also showing the public how to connect Via zoom or to join us By by phone those are the two ways in which you can also make public comment so Let me start with the council Councillor Shalini Balmell present Councillor Alyssa Brewer present Councillor Pat DeAngelo present Councillor Darcy Dumont present Councillor Lynn Griezmer present Councillor Mandy Jo Hanneke present Councillor Dorothy Pam present Councillor Evan Ross present Councillor George Ryan present Councillor Kathy Schoen present I'm skipping Steve Schreiber. He'll be joining us later Councillor Andy Steinberg present and Councillor Sarah Schwartz present and then in addition to that Mr. Valkalman, can you hear us? Yes, I can okay Mindy Dom, can you hear us? Yes, I can Okay, and I believe we also have Rod Robert Moran on the phone. Mr. Moran, can you hear us? Yes, I can Okay, who am I missing? John Spenetti, can you hear us? Yes, I can. Thank you That's it Okay, we can go to the agenda and let me just start by saying this meeting includes audio, video, and is available live on Amherst Media it is also being recorded there's no Councillors, if you need help please contact Sean or Athena and if you want to be recognized please use your raise hand is use your raise hand button when you're not speaking please make sure you're on mute if technical difficulties arise as a result of utilizing remote participation I will decide how to address the situation discussion may be suspended and we will address technical issues and the minutes will note if a disconnection occurred Sean and Athena will be monitoring that the town has developed a two minute video you can find it on the website and it tells people how to connect as well as the information that you have in front of you so Sean let's please go to the slide of the agenda where we show upcoming meetings we have two council meetings one on June 1st at 6.30 and one on June 15th at 6.30 they will continue to be virtual until further notice in addition to that we have some upcoming council committee meetings the resources committee will meet tomorrow I'm sorry yes they will meet tomorrow May 19th at 2 o'clock governance organization and legislation committee will meet on May 20th at 2.20 town services and outreach committee will meet on June 1st at 9.30 and the outreach communication and appointments committee will meet on June 8th at 9.30 in addition to that we urge you to connect to the town website and look at the upcoming district meetings district 4 has already held a district meeting just last week the other four districts are holding district meetings either this week or next all agendas can be found there I'm going to take the privilege of the chair or the president and move our next item is going to actually be the proclamation for Memorial Day please remove the slide okay and we're not going to have the proclamation up but let me just say that we're going to be doing this in a way that we hope will capture the spirit and intent of honoring our veterans we're doing that so that it can then be captured and used in a virtual presentation for instead of our normal parade and gathering on veterans on Memorial Day so we're going to start with a reading of the proclamation I'm sorry we're going to start with a vote to suspend rules of procedure 8.4 because this proclamation did not go to GL then we're going to have a reading of the proclamation and then a moment of silence under those people who have passed and then a move to adopt the Memorial Day proclamation all votes have to be by individual people voting since we're remote so we'll start by having a motion to suspend rules of procedure 8.4 in reference to the Memorial Day proclamation is there a second? I'll second but Lynn it's 8.6 I'm sorry I had 8.6 and said 8.4 thank you any other comment or discussion then I'm going to quickly take the role on that okay Elizabeth Brewer Lynn Grishmore I Mandy Johanicki Dorothy Pam Evan Ross George Ryan Kathy Shane Andy Steinberg Sarah Schwartz and Shalini Balmoum and Mandy Johan would you Mandy Johan we're going to go to the reading of the proclamation would you like it shown on the screen? I don't I can read it off of my screen okay thank you would you like me to start Memorial Day proclamation whereas while the nation was still recovering from the horrors of the Civil War people in cities and towns across the country gathered to honor those union who had given their lives celebrating the first decoration day and whereas after World War One the nation came together again to honor those who had fallen in the service of their country and whereas renamed Memorial Day the last Monday in May is when the people remember and honor the memory of all the men and women who fought and died in all American wars and conflicts and whereas in American history thousands of Massachusetts citizens have fought in wars and conflicts to defend our safety and way of life and whereas the residents of Amherst have a long history of serving their country to defend American freedoms and whereas this history includes nearly 30 black soldiers enlisting on Amherst's behalf as members of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry the first all black Civil War of Massachusetts and whereas their legacy of patriotism and dedication to country is an inspiration to all Americans and whereas it is appropriate that all Massachusetts citizens remember the bravery of those who gave their lives so that their sacrifices serve as a reminder of the cost of our freedom now therefore we the Amherst Town Council hereby proclaim May 25th 2020 Memorial Day and urge all residents of Amherst to recognize the sacrifice of past residents and observe this day in remembrance of them. Thank you I'd like to call for a moment of silence for the many veterans who have passed away during the past year especially from COVID including those living and who passed away at the Holy Oak soldiers home. Okay do I have a motion Mandy Joe with regard to proclamation? Yes I move to adopt the proclamation entitled Memorial Day proclamation as presented. Is there a second? I second. Thank you Andy. Okay then without further discussion we're going to move on to the vote to support and adopt the Memorial Day proclamation. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Just go ahead Sarah just nod your head. Shalini Balmille. Yes. And Alyssa Brewer. Yes. Okay it is passed 12-0-0 and one person absent. We're going to now move on to public comment and just need to look at public comment and I need to ask another person who would like to make public comment. Public comment will continue and not pass the hour of 7-15. Two seconds. Okay. I need the person who is at the phone number on the screen to identify themselves. I can't tell. We cannot seem to hear you. I'm not sure if this is public comment. Yes. Please everyone else please mute your phone. Please proceed. Can you hear me? Yes Amy. Great. It's very confusing what's happening. Basically I'm very concerned with a severe housing crisis is that it's going to be very difficult for the public comment here when this should be overflowing. Landlords have posted ads or sometimes overwhelmed. Can't review them and then remove their ads out of fear they're going to get sick. So consequences are huge on that housing demand. It's forcing people to rent elsewhere. I've rented out of town. Now the landlord's fear concludes the fear of disease particularly single family homes. But many of them seem clueless on how to protect themselves in their tenants. So for example someone said to me you have to quarantine yourself for two weeks after you move in. But they're not offering me bathroom or kitchen use. This is basically useless. Then we have the eviction moratorium. That's creating a lot of problems that's evading the problem as tenants can delay move-ups. Landlords cannot guarantee move-in day if a tenant doesn't leave. I know examples of serious tension in homes between landlord and tenants that have involved police intervention. I'm dealing with a frustrated owner here at the Baldur to threaten me with specious court action and try to use the police to intimidate me. So this is rude. So I think there's an urgent need for information to landlords intent on sanitation. We have to have something for the health department detailed health guidelines for landlord and tenants sharing single family homes. And people don't know their rights. They have to sit and match housing law. The courts are supposed to open in June 1. We have no idea if that's going to take place. I've sent you folks information. I've got supporting documents. I'm waiting to move to agenda mode land for all these different issues I've described. And that's about it. I'm concerned. Thank you for your comment. Thank you. Thank you for listening. Is there any public comment at this time? Pardon me, Lynn. If you could just remind people to lower this volume of their speakers or TV before they make a public comment, we won't get that feedback. Thank you. Is there any other public comment at this time? Okay. I see one other hand. Michael Wilkins. And I need you to identify yourself and where you live. Please. Tina. Michael, you're live now. Please proceed. Hello? Yes. Yeah, I have an issue with the farmers market and it not being open yet. And I'm just wondering why it's not open. We'll be addressing that later. Okay. Well, I guess my main concern is with the grocery stores being open and the farmers market not being open for a few years now. I just don't understand why, you know, those places are essential, but the town of Amherst doesn't deem a farmers market like essential. And also like the restrictions that you guys are putting on the farmers market are going to make it very hard for the farmers to be able to get their products to the customers like they usually do. And I just think it's a little ridiculous that the restrictions are more than like the grocery stores like a Home Depot or a Target. That's my main issue. Thank you for your comment. Is there any other public comment at this time? Okay, seeing none. Then I'm going to move on to the rest of the agenda and Dorothy, did you have your hand up for a reason? Yes, I did. It was in relation to Memorial Day. I just wanted to make a statement of support for the placing of the Civil War stones in an appropriate protected spot outside town hall and or on the green so that all can see them in a safe spot. I just thought it was a good time to think about the fact that Amherst has a great history and I think that the residents and the public would enjoy seeing the stones. Thank you, Dorothy. Then we're going to move on to the next item on our agenda and it's really about two or three points of discussion. We're going to start with representative Mindy Dom and I understand Mindy that you've submitted slides and so Sean would you please put the slides up and Mindy would you please unmute and be prepared to speak for your presentation. We want to make sure we have time for questions. Let me know when. Yep. Can I just jump in? Sure. Why don't you start and meantime Sean will be putting the slides up. So you can move to the next one, Sean. I'm just going to give a little bit of an overview around I'm not sure if I can move these slides or if Sean needs to. Sean will be doing them. I'm going to give a little bit of an update about some of the things that are going on in the city right now. This is a major issue. I'm going to review a lot of things that are going on in the community. So we have a lot of activities going on in Beacon Hill right now regarding COVID 19 which really involve a lot of constituent advocacy and assistance. Town and small business advocacy, legislation and policy and I want to review my ways of communicating So as soon as COVID-19 hit, and I'm sure this isn't news for many of you, the state sort of reoriented and prioritized. And the priority is COVID-19 in terms of everything that we're doing. So the legislature is meeting. We are now meeting in formal session, but for the past two weeks. Prior to that, we met an informal session, which basically meant only legislation that was unanimous that had no opposition could pass. And several pieces that are really incredible pieces of legislation passed in informal session, including the rent, that the eviction moratorium and the foreclosure moratorium, to give you an example. We also passed legislation that allowed for towns to meet remotely. Most recently, we passed legislation that notaries of public could, in fact, do their business remotely. But as you know, we moved the tax filing date for the state from April 15th to July 15th to both align with the federal tax day and also to make sure that people had more money in their pockets recognizing the economic pain that was going on as a result of the efforts to, in fact, prevent, to flatten the curve and prevent intense transmission of the virus. And that passed an informal session, but it required us to actually borrow a lot of money, short-term money, to cover the expenses for the Commonwealth between April 15th and the new deadline, July 15th. And in order for us to do that spending bill, we actually needed to be in formal session. And in order for us to do that, we needed to create a way for us to vote because we had not yet voted since the pandemic sort of hit. The State House closed to the public and there wasn't a process by which to take the constitutional responsibilities of the General Court and make them remote. So about two weeks ago, the House leadership came up with a plan that we sort of test drove and in order to allow us to vote last week on a spending bill. And this worked. We were all remote. We were broken into sections. We had monitors. We were on the phone as well as on video. And we took a vote. It was great. I'm not sure how it's going to work when there are controversial things because this wasn't controversial, but we have a process. And as a result, last week, we passed legislation to allow the governor to borrow money to cover our expenses. This week on Wednesday, we'll be voting again on an information technology bond bill which has amendments. And the interesting thing about that is that we'll get to see what happens remotely when there's either disagreement or amendments that members want to do. So I'll keep you posted on that. But that's all by way of telling you. We are trying to pull together to also make sure our process is in motion. As many of you know, we have not done a budget yet in the House. Usually this time of year, the House would have been done with its budget. The Senate would be working on theirs. We have not done that. We're not planning on doing that for at least a month. I suspect we'll do a 112th budget for the beginning of next fiscal year. And then we'll have a better idea about revenue and likely go from there. The budget season will look very different. I don't anticipate that there will be earmarks. In fact, I'm totally in favor of us not doing earmarks, but instead looking to maximize whatever we can for economic relief for cities, towns, individuals, and families. And that we should look at that economic relief as our earmark. As a result of the economic pain that's been going on that we all know about, a lot of the time of the state rep is in an individual constituent advocacy, specifically around unemployment assistance, SNAP, as well as health care. And I encourage this Town Council, if you know people who are struggling on those three areas, they should be directed to my office so that we can help expedite their application and get them onto public benefits as quickly as possible. I've also been able to do some town and small business advocacy, as well as some school advocacy, which essentially is just really giving voice to our experience in Amherst on the state level and trying to make sure that when policies, legislation, guidelines are being formulated, that they reflect the experience of people in the Third Hampshire district. So the more you're able to let me know what that experience is or what your concerns are, the better able I am to advocate for that. I just want to go into a little bit on if we can move to the next one, Sean, on legislation and policy. So legislation right now has a little bit of a different objective. It's not only about trying to get new laws passed, it's also about making sure that issues are raised for conversation, discussion, and actually executive orders. Since we're in a state of emergency, even with the reopening, a lot of what's getting done is either legislation less so, more so executive order. And so legislation, legislative letters, kind of this combined advocacy is really the way that we're putting things onto the list of things to do and to be done in the Commonwealth. And though you can't see it, lots of us in the legislature can see that some of the executive orders are actually reflecting letters and issues that have been brought to the governor's attention by representatives and senators. So I encourage you to continue to bring those to me because that's how we're moving it forward. When I hear of a state practice that's burdensome for businesses and that requires some relaxation, I'm able to take that advocacy, bring it back to my colleagues, bring it back to the legislature, the administration, and actually move it forward because people don't want to stand in the way. They want to make sure that we're making sure that Massachusetts gets back to work. I want to just say a few things about the reopening. I'm sure Julie's going to have more to say about it. It's my alarm. So I hope that we can be partners in it. I want it to be able to make sure that if you have any resources or needs that need to get met in order to have a successful reopening that we can work together. Thank you. Thanks, Mindy, for this presentation and for the many things you've been doing for Amherst, especially during this crisis and even before that. Are there questions from the council at this time? I don't see any, Mindy. So thanks so much. Oh, yes, excuse me. Mindy Jo. Mindy Jo, I took me a little bit. Two questions. The first one's not really a question. I had the opportunity to attend and speak about and answer questions from an eighth grade civics class this past week at the invitation of a middle school civics teacher. And they had some fantastic questions, but I wanted to relay to you and if our superintendent is watching, their biggest concern was when they can get back to school. They want to be back. So any guidance the state can provide to our students for when we might be able to and how that might look because I couldn't tell them much other than it might look different. But the guidance that the state might provide to schools and all, if we can get that out to sort of get to the students, what school might look like if we can get back and when we can get back to that, I think would help the students a lot. They were very anxious to be able to get back. So I thought I'd take the opportunity to relay that to our state rep tonight. Thank you. My understanding though, Mindy Jo, is that probably isn't going to be out for at least another month, but I think asking the commissioner to create guidance for students as well as districts and school districts and teachers is a really good idea. And so I'm going to bring that back that we need to also create some guidance that speaks directly to students and not just to the adults in their world. That would be fantastic. Thank you. And the next question goes to budget. Do you have any idea right now what state aid levels for towns and cities would look like or where the legislators are talking in terms of is that going to be a priority to keep it the same with reductions in other locations or is this one that is considered to be reductions? What I hear from other legislators is a real priority to make sure that funding for cities and towns is a priority. I just want you to know that. And I've heard that from new legislators as well as legislators who were around during 2008. Those are the folks who we often turn to and say, so what happened then? Even though we know it's different now, that was the last time that our economy really cratered and we needed to do some adjusting. I remember because there were nine C cuts because I was overseeing a state funded program at the time and had to sort of scramble in that way. But I think most people are committed to trying to do whatever they can to maintain local funding. Can we do it? I'm not sure. I think the commitment is there and the commitment is there around like chapter 70 and chapter 90. I think the reality of do we have the resources to do it and to what extent that has not yet been figured out. This third or fourth version of the CARES Act and the federal government is critical because it provides a lot of funding for towns and municipalities and states that would allow us to keep those commitments. So I think a lot of it is dependent on what federal aid comes to the state and then a lot of it is going to be looking at what's left for the state in terms of revenue. You know we're facing, I'm sure you know this, in the state I think it's like a 25% unemployment rate I think and in Amherst we're in like the top five. It's over 30%. So no jobs, no revenue and then we start cutting off different places where there are revenue. The reopening should be able to help us with that. If we're able to do a successful reopening of the economy that's successful both economically but also public health wise we should be able not to recoup what we lost but at least start to generate ways to make revenue and that's going to be really super important. I don't have good news on that front but I, question marks are about as good as we're going to get right now. Thank you. Hi Mandy asked one of my questions and thank you very much for a very thoughtful answer on when will you know what. I wanted to turn to the higher education and the one that is I'm not sure to what extent the governor and the people in Boston have an influence on UMass decision to reopen for people coming back on campus or not but it's clearly a major issue as you know Mindy for the jobs and the economy in the town and whether it's a full opening or a partial opening I'm in California do it in different ways so did you have any insight on to thinking around reopening this major campus? I have a lot of thoughts and hopes and question marks about the whole issue of reopening both the university as well as the other two college campuses that are in Amherst and the role that the three but especially UMass plays in our ability to reopen right it's not in the town of Amherst our ability to successfully reopen isn't only about businesses being able to open it's about customers being there and how that is really kind of linked in with what our economic base is and so I think what I can tell you is that a large part of the way I'm going to be advocating around this is going to sound really basic is I'm trying to really make sure that people in the state house realize that higher ed is an educational issue and it's an economic issue for the common wealth and that the two are like this but we have to look at them in that way so that we need to I mean the university has to make their decision as a educational institution but the common wealth needs to know that towns like ours are directly impacted by that and then economically and I'm always sort of interested to see that that's not completely understood that higher ed is viewed as education only and not connected back so we've got some work to do but the good piece of that is I actually think that the the work that the legislature did last year and the work that the town of Amherst did with us on it around like the issue of college closures raised that issue the fact that we were able to have people start talking about the impact on host communities not just on the college campus allow people to understand that oh a lot of people have skin in this game and I think that's going to be very helpful but I don't have any answers for you on that I'm wondering that this may be something that we should continue to talk about not tonight but at another time just so that we can lay out sort of our concerns as well as our wishes you know it's sort of like we want folks to reopen but at the same time just like with the economy we want it to be done in a safe and public health-based way as possible and that puts us in a unique position thank you Kathy thank you are there any other questions at this time okay see none thank you Mandy Mindy I truly appreciate your joining us and you're welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting like you did this week I'm gonna stay for a little bit I'll put myself on you okay so Paul we're up to the next presentation and it's Mr. Backelman and I believe Julie yes and we have slides so some of these will look familiar to you for but first I want to thank Mindy for being such a major partner for the town she's a really smart advocate for us and for the communities that she represents with her colleagues in western mesh they've become a real force at the state house and they are very strategic about how they approach things and just you know so everybody knows she's on top of things and just really give her credit for the work that she's putting in so this is go to the next slide Sean please so this is our normal setup we've already done the last bullet so we're going to be a little shorter but we have a lot of things to talk to you about and next slide so this is slide that we have seen before I had to fix it from the one in your packet so that there's some date corrections and things like that and so I'm not gonna go through the numbers but I do want to note that the state is looking at new methods new metrics that they're following and that we'll talk about in a little bit they're keeping count but they're not necessarily counting these particular things but since we've been delivering these on a regular basis I think this is a good thing for you to continue to look at so next next slide please so I want to give you an operation I feel it's my obligation to keep you up to date on where we are as a town so next slide and it's pretty pretty quick report today in that everything is really going fine anybody who had been worried about being having exposure to COVID-19 our employees are getting tested very rapidly getting the results back and we're working really well on all those lines so again I think the system is working at Coley Dickinson Hospital has been very cooperative the the setup in West Springfield has been very helpful to our employees so when we look at all of our services which these are the key services everything's running safely and going forward next slide so we're going to make some changes we had been doing two live in live call-in events every week we're going to cut that down to one and we just do that one every Thursday at noon and typically we were having a sort of a special guest on Tuesday and then Julie is the health director on Thursday we're going to just go to one on Thursday every week and sometimes there'll be Julie sometimes there'll be someone else depending on what the topic is so we're just want to be nimble and be responsive to whatever the issue that people are sort of bringing to our attention to through the cpo's or through our website or if anything like that we'll have the right person on that little half an hour thing they all get recorded if you can't be there right at noon they get recorded and they're placed on our youtube page as well the next cup of joe which is a longer term thing that will be on June 5th and I think you'll probably talk about these but just to highlight to the public that the district counselors have all scheduled their district meetings over the next two weeks the district four has already had their meeting with a very large turnout and these are opportunities for people to talk to the district counselors about any topics that they'd like to bring up and these are all listed on our website as well and through our sort of social media too so just to make sure that people know that even starting this week on the 21st we have district two and then next week we have three of them on the 27th and 28th so you choose your district you don't have to be in that district to go you can go anywhere any any district meeting that you'd like but you will talk to your actual district counselors at the ones if you sign up for the one that you want to go to so next slide so this is where we want to talk a little bit about what happened today today was the big announcement day and Julie I was thinking what I could do is sort of go over sort of the general guidelines of what the governor said and then you can sort of fill in the gaps does that make sense sounds good okay so next slide okay so the governor opened he has you know announced his reopening plan and he one of the key things that they said is that the reopening will be driven by public health data great news and they've also they've developed this little red light green light caution light thing that they're going to have on their website a little dashboard that you can watch every every day as they as they develop new data and you know and these are the six kind of things that they're they're monitoring on a daily basis next slide and then they then the governor's also talked about the different four phases I think we talked about last time phase one is start good start and on phase one I'm gonna just go sort of go through this I have to refer to my notes because it came out this morning so so first off all businesses and expanded activities including governmental services which is town hall will need to comply with mandatory safety standards for workplaces that were announced last week including social distancing hygiene protocols staffing and operations and cleaning and disinfecting and then the state will be setting industry specific standards for every other industry as we move along so in phase one what's permitted is gatherings continue to be limited to a maximum of 10 people unless otherwise specified in some other way the state is eliminating the essential versus non-essential division and they're focusing more on specific guidance and conditions for industries and sectors I'll call them um so for essential businesses which is what the town government had been we we had we will by May 21st 5th have to comply with the guidelines that have been established there are guidelines established for manufacturing and construction for houses of worship for gun stores and for outdoor outdoor recreation activities such as beaches parks fishing hunting things like that so those are all things that are allowed beginning today and then for the May 25th a week from today they're going to have initial additional openings available for offices and laboratories retail establishments hair salons car washes pet grooming um and expanded elective medical procedures and each one of these has more information so i'm just going to touch on them in case there are some individual questions then we go to phase two um i don't think i jumped into that and um yes we can go to the next next phase so phase two sort of broadens the the broadens it a little bit that's a good one thank you uh and then phase three and phase four they they support it but we're going to focus on phase one right now um so in phase in this phase businesses that seek to open will have to follow a self-certification process in order to reopen they have to the businesses will have to develop a written COVID-19 control plan outlining how its workplace will present prevent the spread of COVID-19 and they the state provides some guidance for that um the department the state department of public health and the and the state department of labor standards are responsible for developing the health and safety standards for each industry sector and and enforcement will be primarily the local health director of board of health they use board of health broadly here and Julie will address that i think um there the um the state will be providing additional documents outlining our enforcement protocols which they have um there will be a requirement so for self attestation posters so that this is on the businesses to to say that they are complying and they must post those posters as well um so i'm going to stop there because that's sort of the thing that will probably generate the most conversations and see if Julie wants to add there's so much there's so much that was released today we're still sort of grappling with all the information um Julie want to weigh in on this sure um so i have several things to say um um so let me start with um as paul referenced um frequently the language that is used is the local board of health um in massachusetts we have 351 boards of health one in each town but large larger communities like amherst northampton etc um have health departments in amherst we have um three full-time health inspectors and they're located over in inspection services and they come under rob mora who's our building commissioner and assistant director of conservation and development so we have um well i should say we have two full-time health inspectors and then we have someone who's a code enforcement officer he does building and health so we actually have um great staffing when it comes to doing um enforcement in amherst i think that is um a really great foundation for how we will work with this um it's interesting when i when i'm seeing what the state has ruled out here in terms of signage and this concept of the self-assistististation a new word for us all um some of this mimics what we do with tobacco control so this concept that we will that the um all of this information is available for the businesses they have signage they need to post and then they need to self-certify that yes we are going to comply with all this really mimics a lot of what we do with tobacco so um the way the the whole approach statewide and is the approach we take with all of our previous codes is um helping businesses to come into compliance so for sure this is going to be new for all of our businesses on the other hand they've been watching really closely um and so as soon as all this information has come out it's being spread all around massachusetts and um so our inspectors will be responding to complaints not doing routine inspections to make sure that people are climbing because complying because we're going to assume that everyone is going to comply just as we do when we ask them when they're serving when they're a food establishment when they open a pool and so um if we find that there's a complaint and we contact a business it's going to be about helping that business to come into compliance because this is certainly new the concepts um around social distancing and disinfecting and so we'll be helping businesses to be able to operate safely um we certainly have already had businesses who are already operating beautifully we've got food establishments who are doing um curbside pickup um we have a nursery that's been operating um so we know that all of these things can um be implemented and um so I think it's great the materials that the state have has developed um they put a lot of work into this um so on the other hand I think everyone was very much waiting for May 18th we're going to reopen um and so here we are as paul has mentioned before it's sort of a slow turning of the dial so today the concept has moved forward that construction can reopen now houses of worship manufacturing so um we're taking a look at each one of those categories and seeing in what ways we need to be proactive and reach out um to help some of those industries with how they do reopen um and then we're seeing that May 25th other businesses come online um and so businesses can um can and do reach out to the town um with questions um I'm going to put out there the phone number for inspection services and I'll invite um Rob Mora who's in the meeting to correct me if this is not what I should do but the phone number for inspection services is 259-3030 um and people who have questions can go there um also I would definitely refer people to the state website because um there's a lot of information there you can look up your own type of business and see what's expected um let's see if I can get that website right and maybe someone can help me it's mass.gov um COVID 19 COVID 19 reopening plan okay great um and uh there's actually it's quite well structured um I think it'll be really helpful to businesses and and to residents who want to see what's opening when and what's it going to look like um so maybe I will pause there Paul you can you can give me a little kick here if you think there's something I should um go over no I think this you know it's a complex plan but I think you know as Julie said it's it's well reasoned but I think there are a lot of pieces to it and I think they don't have a lot of answers to a lot of the pieces so I think opening it up for questions from the counselors would be a great first step. Alyssa you have your hand up. Thank you that's really helpful and obviously the information is unfolding all day today in terms of what the words say and what we think they mean and so reflecting on that I think it would be really helpful to people Paul as we go forward to understand for people to understand what the recreation options are right because there's the formal and informal recreation there was actually no change today it's my understanding in recreation but there are certain kinds of recreation because you've been allowed to do certain things you're not supposed to be playing basketball but you're allowed to walk on you know you're allowed to walk on trails as long as you're doing distancing that's still the same until Monday with some things so I think just the more we learn about the practical application of this like what does that mean for puffers what does it mean for our different trails I just as I'm sure you are doing will be really helpful to people to understand what's the right thing to do at the right point and then separately as you had indicated to me when I wrote you a note last week about the self-certification and Julie explained that really well and how that I understand it better now thanks Julie about paralleling with tobacco regulation my concern remains that people have never had to do this thing before and although they all have really good intentions complaint-driven and we actually don't have a ton of inspectors so I would like to know that when people have questions as to what somebody's doing we're not doing at a place I think that there needs to be a way that we welcome people not to drop a dime on somebody but that we're saying we're not sure they're really understanding this particular issue could somebody talk to them so that we could feel like we could do that right without like getting them in trouble so if that's through that phone number or if that's through an email I don't want anybody to get closed down I just want them to be better educated like you said so I'll take the first piece which is about recreation it's in your right that the a lot of the things haven't changed but they are developing new guidelines and there was a memo that came out today about beaches and things like that that we have and we have a subset of our sort of core team who's looking at how are we going to manage Puffer's Pond in particular and we've always been consistent in saying we need to be looking at this on a regional basis we don't want to be out there you know where's the only one with the pond open or the only one with a with the beach closed we need this has to be done jointly with our all of our neighbors because we're all in this together obviously as people say that but what one town does influences the next community over so but in in terms in saying that we do know that beaches especially Puffer's Pond is is someplace that people are going to go and it has to be managed and so we have a group that are that's working specifically on that right now we have been managing that by having a police officer present on the beach during um you know during the warm days and encouraging people to continue to walk that is or fish if that's what they're doing it's not a place to lay down a towel and and be sunbathing with a group of your friends so but we're looking at that what are the options available what's the recommendation from the state because they have a lot of beaches and parks that they're managing as well and I would just take the issue with one thing we have a pretty robust team of staff here you know as Julie said there's three different inspectors who are available for our businesses and I think that our approach has always been help our businesses comply not as you said like we don't want people dropping a dime but we want to help people to comply with the um and with the regulations that are in place because that's that's what our goal is I think the bid in the chamber are going to be very proactive on helping the businesses comply with this and getting the posters that they need and things like that and we'll help with them along those lines too and turn it to Julie for the enforcement questions yeah um I did want to echo that because I've been talking to some of my other public health peeps around the state and I'm also fairly aware of their the structures of a lot of them and actually for our community to potentially have three full-time inspectors that that's a really robust staffing pattern the other thing is that while this brings on new responsibilities for those inspectors some of their their usual inspections won't be happening unfortunately because for a while there may be for example food establishments that aren't able to reopen because this has been such a hit or because the concept of reopening at such a low level of service won't allow them to be fiscally viable so while we don't want that to happen the chances that there will be less a certain degree less of routine inspections is probably pretty good so but this is absolutely something we're going to be paying close close attention to because a lot of this we also can't predict so the town manager has that's one of the first things he was asking me minutes after this call this morning or the governor's press conference so we're paying very close attention to that because it will be very important but if but that's what I'm talking about I think we have a great foundation to start with I know communities that don't even have that kind of foundation so I'm feeling pretty lucky for what we have in Amherst maybe Joe you have a question yes so I I was watching as many of us probably were what was going to come out of the governor's office and I'm wondering you know this allows us in theory to start reopening our town buildings particularly our library but also in-person services for bill paying and other things at town hall so I'm anticipating receiving a lot of questions about when will we be able to return library materials and when might we be able to do curbside pickup of library materials and also could you talk about maybe some timing I know our library director has talked what she was talking about in terms of likely opening very much mirrors what we're seeing right now from the governor in terms of phasing and all so do we have you know the the groups in place to deal with and look at how we can get them open and how long it might take us to move into for town buildings this first phase of sort of curbside pickup and all so that our residents get an idea of when they might see our own buildings start to reopen in this sense sure so and again Julie will jump in if I as we talk about this more so our first order of business is to ensure our work places are available and with proper social distancing for our employees to come back and work safely we have a lot of employees who are currently working in town hall there are definite guidelines that the state has now issued about occupancy loads for a building like this and that's our top priority opening the building to the public is a secondary priority if we can get we need to get it right for our employees to be here safely we have actually haven't had and I'm just saying on town hall right now we haven't had that much pushback from folks not able to transact their business our our employees are going out into the parking lot to meet people if they have things that they need to drop off and things like that so town hall opening the building to outside people is going to be a while yet and I think even farther down the road it's significantly farther down the road before we open up to public meetings the mission based on Julie's guidance on this is that we do not want to create gathering places for people to be in a room for extended periods of time not a good idea at this point in time and probably not for a long long time in my mind in terms of the library the library director has a plan for reopening it was oddly silent on the governor's front that this there's a very strong library contingency contingent throughout this commonwealth and I didn't see him address any of the issues with libraries but our library staff does have a contingency plan ready in a phased rollout which which I think she talked about in a previous presentation they've sort of identified meeting rooms that they would use for storing materials and letting them rest and you know for multiple days before they start to be handled and things like that so in terms of based on this information I have not had the conversation with the library director about what the timing would be if that if any for if they've taken that into consideration for the curbside pickup option for library materials Julie yes last last I was in touch with the libraries it felt like curbside was a ways off and yes we aren't hearing anything through the department of public health about libraries yet the last I had heard a week or so ago is that wasn't really being seen as very essential at the time that could be changing but we certainly didn't hear anything today um and yes I think I think Paul stated that really well that the first thing we have to do is figure out how we bring staff back safely and there are strict protocols about offices that we're going to need to apply to all of our folks that we bring back who work in offices and so it would it would definitely be a while before people will be coming back into into buildings to do their business the upside of that is um a lot of business while some has been being has been taking place outside a lot has been taking place online really well and people seem to be um very happy with that so I think that um I don't I don't know of any business that has been problematic in trying to getting it to happen we have figured it out um and um I think that's been a really good exercise um I think also um I Paul probably has mentioned this before but he's created a team that's headed by HR who um that I'm advising from the from the point of view of infection control about everything that has to be put in place before we bring more staff into the buildings are there other questions from the council at this time uh Paul next slide so we just want to preview things that we that are still out there that we're we need to address for the summer puffer spawn what's going to happen with swimming pools summer camps a farmer's market you'll be talking about tonight summer camps is probably the biggest issue there for a lot of folks and we're we're hearing from the state that we'll hear something within a week about what they're what the guidance is going to be on on on summer camps again you know the the middle thing about local economy all those things we've already sort of touched on um and we also already talked on the next one the event memorial day and we will not be having independence day fireworks um at this point there won't be any gatherings for independence day um it's just two months away and it's just the numbers are not going to be in our favor for doing something like that um and the next slide the last thing that you have in front of you is um the farmer's market which is something that you'll be discussing a little bit later and making sure that um it's considered an essential business and we want to be able to deliver that in a safe way um to the public and so there's a lot of work that has to go into that before that can actually open so that is the end of our presentation Lynn thank you um Paul I believe we're unless there's questions from the council at this time okay I see none so we're going to go on to the next item on our agenda which is about reopening the local economy and uh this has been prefaced by the fact that the um bid and the uh chamber met first with CRC community resources committee and then they came and met with the full council and made a very definite request with regard who having us look at certain things that could help expedite our um reopening with proper um social distancing et cetera uh our local businesses so in the process of doing that um Paul and the staff particularly um David and his team have pulled together a very enterprising proposal and I'm going to say nothing more than to turn it over to Paul thank you Lynn so I'm going to do an introduction of this and then um Rob Mora and Dave Zomek and Chris Brestreff who all really put this together in a really creative way we'll we'll go into a little bit more detail for you so are there slides for this Paul no they're not okay then please take the slide down so that we can see each other um so we all know that restaurants have been hit particularly hard by this and they've been struggling to make ends meet and to move forward um and we want to help them uh as they move forward as well um and when restaurants move forward they're going to need to be entrepreneurial and flexible and adjusting their their the way they do business and so do we as a town we feel like we need to be responsive to what the what the what the cities what the restaurants are doing um they're going to be changing needs and conditions there's things on the ground um that we don't know what's going to look like until it gets put in place so we need to be flexible for them and and uh and they need to be flexible so there's there's going to be a constant conversation um and so with the requirement for um physical distancing they will need to adapt and so and so will we um so um our basic driving force in this is to make sure that we protect the health and safety of the public and the workers and the owners of the businesses um all at the same time and that's that's what's going to be the overriding um commitment to this um the one of one of our approaches was um if the guidelines from the state are that restaurants are going to need to reduce their seating capacity within their existing footprint which is what's going to happen we want to say how can we help make sure that your business is viable if the um and one of those things that we can do is say well how about if we expand additional seating outdoors make use of public ways um come up with creative ways to to create the physical and social distancing that's going to be required for a business to successfully open so this proposal which I totally give credit uh to um Rob and Chris for and and with you know just sort of brainstorming with with with David um is to create to temporarily relax the zoning and the planning requirements for for a business who who want to open for a period of time and we put out about 180 days which will be the basically the end of the calendar year to allow this the staff to work with our businesses to be able to open and it will require actions from the town council to do this um so it's a big thing but it's also something that we want to show that we're nimble and responsive to the community for it's important for the lifeblood of our downtown which is restaurants and that's who we are as a town if you look at our business my makeup it's really about restaurants and food establishment area in uh industry um and it involves zoning include it involves the public way and it involves liquor licensing so with that um we want to get a little bit more specific because it's an important issue and it's something that we want you to really understand so uh I know you're not going to approve it tonight we have no expectation of that but it we do want to have a pretty robust conversation about it tonight to get it read if this is we're going in the right direction so I think Rob is going to take off on this now uh yeah uh good evening uh thanks for having me so I'm going to start with talking about the zoning piece of what Paul just described and this would be by the way of a amendment to the amor zoning bylaw to create temporary zoning that would be uh in effect for about 180 days or till the end of the year approximately and then at that time uh this particular the way this is proposed that particular zoning change would uh would disappear and our original zoning would go back into effect at that time I'll first start by talking a little bit about the process for the types of establishments that we would like this proposal to affect and that that would be for retail establishments food and drink establishments and personal care establishments so this is all geared specifically to those only those types of establishments and all of those currently require a land use permit our zoning bylaw will um will direct a applicant to a process it would either be a site plan review process which is handled by the planning board or a special permit process which is uh most of the time handled by the zoning board of appeals but sometimes handled by the planning and I'm going to go over the general process here just so you have an idea in your mind of the timeline it takes to get through this process uh most of it's uh following the procedures that are laid out in mass general law 48 the zoning act that we don't have any control over that we have to ensure uh occurs for the decision to be and the permit to be uh legitimate and uh acted for the applicant uh typically we would have a pre submission meeting uh with the applicant and and put together the appropriate staff to talk about the application and this is the opportunity that we take to ensure that the proposal is as complete as it can be uh we have no idea what the decision will be when it gets to the board but uh our goal is to make sure that all the materials are there so the board can make their decision uh the the applicant would then submit an application uh our job then at that time is to make sure it's completed has has everything that we need in order to move it along including things like the fee and and a butters notifications and all the documents that we know the board would want to review the the application gets filed with the town clerk now that's the starting point that's when this process officially begins for consideration of the land use permit uh during this uh following the submission to the clerk the filing with the clerk the bylaw zoning bylaw requires that the next 35 days be used for gathering uh comments and input from various boards uh public officials and staff so we circulate the application to a large group and and try to get feedback to prepare for the the upcoming hearing also during that time there's a advertisement that's required by state law for the application that we posted and noticed to a butters and there's a minimum of 14 days for that that advertisement uh we are at that point selecting a hearing date based on the board's availability and their next available date uh we will then go into the hearing and most times the hearing is is resolved or completed in in one session certainly sometimes more complicated cases are continued but most of the time the applicant walks away that evening with a verbal decision then we we need about two weeks for the staff to prepare the written decision so everything that occurred that night at the hearing is put into the written form it's circulated to the board members for their final review and if all of it looks good they sign it and then we file it with the clerk that that ends the the the decision making process with the board now for special permits both zoning board or planning board special permits then there's a 20-day appeal period that starts so the use does not take effect we do not issue building permits or any other permits for the use to proceed until that 20-day appeal period ends and then there's a recording requirement at the registry so um and the reason why I went through all that is so that you can see that the best case scenario for a special permit is about 70 days if everything lines up perfectly with a meeting schedule and a board that's available to hear the case and it's a little bit shorter with the planning board site plan review process if there is an appeal period necessary but generally the steps are the same and again that's that's really best case and unfortunately doesn't always happen even in that 70 days so now I'd like to move over to the proposal I don't know if Sean has this and wants to put it up for everyone to view but this is our draft article 14 temporary zoning and it's relatively short so I'm just going to go paragraph by paragraph through it uh we uh we currently have an article for Rob maybe you want to put this up Sean please you have it I'm looking I'm looking for it right now great go ahead Rob okay so we our bylaw we we currently have an article 14 that is reserved it was a an older section that was removed uh so it's it provides a nice place for us to consider something like this we want to make sure we we have a clear place in the bylaw because if we were to move forward with this any decisions we make in the future we want to be able to know to go back and be clear about how a certain use may have been approved so this is a first paragraph we're talking about its purpose so it's for reopening existing businesses but it's also to provide an opportunity for us to use these procedures to open new businesses so I just want to make sure that that's clear as as this is proposed and and we're looking at this for a period of up to 180 days the affected uses now newer existing uses in the bgbl bbc bn and com districts and for pre-existing non-conforming uses in any zoning district and the purpose of that piece is because we have say a restaurant in a residential district that is a pre-existing non-conforming use and we want to make sure that we have an opportunity there for that type of business to also take advantage of these these temporary measures if needed or requested again what we are focused on are retail establishments now the retail establishments can be grocery store bakeries convenience stores we're looking at personal care establishments salons barbers laundry and dry cleaning services are the uses in that category and then the food and drink establishments we have restaurants that are designated class one or class two and the difference there is the late night hours and bars we are moving on to the next section we want to make sure that accessory uses are provided for now the accessory uses for these principal uses that I just described follow the same approval path whether it's a site plan review or a special permit so the timelines and steps that I went through earlier would be the same for any of these accessory uses that are proposed to co-locate with the principal use as an example the outdoor dining to a restaurant if the restaurant already exists but does not have that outdoor dining component the special permit process that I described would be applicable for for that to be considered uh we make we we include in our proposal a section on waivers and modifications these are sections that the permit granting board uh zoning board or planning board currently can waive during their process oftentimes there are reasons to waive pieces of uh the the sections and we want to make sure that that's available just uh as an example of where that would be useful is uh if we were to consider a parking area for some outdoor dining or display for retail sales uh that would likely reduce the parking that was allowed or required for that establishment possibly putting it below what the bylaw requires for a parking count for that that establishment therefore we would need to grant that waiver or modification and this would allow us to do that as part of the process the design review board this would be applicable for uh downtown and design review district where we would be suggesting that the normal process be suspended for certain things signage lighting outdoor furnishings for either retail display or outdoor dining anything that we would see as non-permanent uh we would ask that the design review board process be suspended during this time myself along with the planning director would be reviewing these applications and we would be looking to apply the design review criteria when appropriate but not sending it through the formal process with the design review board so moving along to the application process we need to specify something here because otherwise the bylaw has a very very thorough process that requires very specific type of material to be provided and refers to the rules and regulations for both the planning board and the zoning board of appeals and this is again what we're looking to do is relax some of that look for ways to speed things up and and not compromise the application but move it along so that the preparation from the applicant side is maybe not what it normally would be for timing and bringing in the various professionals that would be needed so we would we would be creating our own application process here which would probably look a lot like a normal special permit or site plan review process except we're not issuing site plan reviews or special permits so we're looking at an administrative approval here so we would have an application that would be available to be submitted to the conservation development department again for myself and the planning director Christine Brestrup to review we would be looking to create through this process our own set of specific standards and criteria for the various types of requests and that's important because what we know you know for example of issuing a special permit for a restaurant we are we are typically dealing with a a set of conditions that are applied to the the establishment in order to meet the criteria of the bylaw and that could be anything from occupancy limits to lighting restrictions how noises handled crowd management ID checking certifications for staff bartenders or crowd management staff music trash and recycling so we want to make sure that we have all those good things that you know help a well managed establishment conform with our bylaw criteria we want to make sure that those conditions are applied during this process in addition to that we will be having specific criteria and conditions established with the guidance that's put out by the state as things these types of establishments reopen so moving along you know we would be authorized myself with the planning directors assistance to issue an administrative approval which would be in place of the normal land use permit that would be would be granted and the purpose here is to really you know remove ourselves from the the lengthy process following the procedures in 40a and get to a decision on the the merits of the application quickly the decision would either be approved approved with conditions which i would expect most of them would be or a denial and we would want to do this rapidly we're suggesting 10 days from the receipt of a complete application and and we would make these decisions and writing we would file them with the clerk the town clerk and have them on record in the conservation and development department for future finding as with any decision that the zoning enforcement officer makes that could be appealed through the normal process to the to the zoning board of appeals so that that pretty much takes me through the proposal again it's really a an attempt to create a administrative approval process not unusual i guess for us for the reviews that we do currently we have administrative approval in the bylaw so we have a you know procedures in plays for establishing criteria application materials review of management plans for businesses and consideration for administrative approval but certainly expanding it into an area that we're normally not permitted to grant these types of approvals so i think that's that covers the zoning piece of it so and chris did you want to add anything to that there's a very thorough presentation rob thank you i don't think i have anything to add okay thank you thank you so we're open for questions lin do you want to take questions now or go on to any other parts of the proposal no this is it okay uh kathy uh thank you for it for that um actually very thorough starting with how long does it take now to what you're proposing to do and certainly the sentiment of being more agile and flexible if we can be during this period so my my questions are how much do we want to do so i'll just i'll list i think i have four um and i'll just try to save them very quickly um suppose you have two establishments existing restaurants right next door to each other and they both want to use outdoor dining um you know there's this expedited review and approval um how do you guard against the risk that one is better known or has uh you know linkage with someone so accusation of favoritism that you can't both use the same space or since there's not in a butter notification here so it's sort of a spillover onto public space from adjoining places secondly um this is a temporary waiver of zoning um existing zoning and procedures um would any of the permits be temporary as well like you can do the outdoor donate zoning dining now but we're only doing it for six months that we're not saying you can permanently use it so just trying to think of to what extent some of the expedited are are also temporary would and could a new business open up in your categories um next to another in a way that was potentially competitive so again it's it's it's a couple people making expedited decisions without public hearings and then um there's I think you're saying in this um there's no public notice or hearing before the final decision is made to speed it all up um so how can you be protective that you've um there aren't um special interests that start understanding how to fast-track things and get them through and my very last is if it's a new brand new as opposed to existing I'm assuming they would still have to get a license if it's a license to operate a restaurant so you'd be coordinating with the board of licensure that they'd still have to meet the criteria of a restaurant to open up anything that needs a license so that's a question um with that step this is a zoning step but they would still before they could be open for business they would still need a license all do you want to field the questions no I think Rob can answer those those are good ones good questions okay Rob okay yes um so first question about the existing uses side by side uh considering um the same available public space first what I want to remind everyone is that zoning this zoning article that we just went over applies to the private property not to the public areas not to the sidewalks or parking areas that might be considered that's the other piece of this or another piece of this that I think maybe Paul talked about again after uh and how he would make the decision uh on which and and how the spaces are used and by who so this is this is zoning if this is an outdoor proposal under the zoning article it would be on their own private property they'd have to have available for to be considered um I do believe that many of these proposals that we're going to see will be temporary uh I expect that we will issue uh approvals that are conditioned with an expiration probably to go along with 180 days unless something else is more appropriate but we specifically do at this point for your concern for the consideration as it goes forward um suggest new businesses as well uh you know and the idea there is uh to help fill the gaps if there are any uh if there's a if if storefronts are vacant uh and and a new business uh can come in and uh get up and running quickly uh we would consider that that would be one that would remain uh with the investment that they would be making uh to set up the establishment they need to be able to rely on this decision and hopefully stay there at longer term so some things like the outdoor activities uh would be temporary but some of the others uh inside the buildings could be more permanent um so uh we we are expecting there to be new business this process does not follow the procedures of the typical land use permits so there would be no public notice uh there wouldn't be that 14-day advertisement at the beginning and that 20-day waiting period at the end which is generally there for the public to be engaged so this is um this is an effort to create administrative approval like we have other administrative approvals built into the bylaw for home occupations uh accessory use apartments and minor changes to establishments that would otherwise require a site plan review where they're granted a waiver or administrative approval the question about licenses there would absolutely be all the other licenses that are normally needed of course we're waiting for some news from the abcc about how alcohol licensing might change or be relaxed going forward but we have our other licenses here the health department licenses the health inspector licenses building permits regulations all of those things apply as they normally would those codes have not changed in any way during all of this so this would be specifically to the zoning land use permitting step thank you and just to add on to the very first one about share if there are competing uses for the same space that's the other two elements of the proposal which is the access to allowing private enterprises to use public space say a sidewalk in front of their business and you know I think we would have to look at it on a case by case basis and communicate with other people who might have a a call for for that same space which I don't really can't think of many opportunities like that but I think it's about communication with all the businesses in the neighborhood when we're starting to do that to see what the impacts are okay andy steinberg hi um so just actually this is going to be really quick because it's more of a suggestion I'm a little bit confused about how the timeline for this is going to work as to how long it's going to take to run the zoning amendment process through to get it back to the council so the council is actually voting on something that has been through the required processes and then how long it takes for the first business to get through the process that is then established if you could provide some sort of calendar maybe through the community resources committee assuming that it's referred there and then it can be shared with the rest of the council I think that'd be really helpful thank you andy I'd assume that comment was in part to me as well as to um Rob and Paul yeah it's a general suggestion that um I think we really need to understand how the time can work on this when we come to the motion we'll talk more about that um mandy joe yes thank you I am going to follow up on both Kathy and Andy because I have similar questions um so I just want to on on a follow up to Kathy make sure I'm clear on the operation of this if we do this temporary bylaw that the bylaw expires within 180 days it's not from what I heard from Rob it's not automatic that the approvals granted under it would expire at the end of the at the same time the bylaw expires I think that's what I heard so I'd like you know a confirmation of that which means if a business wants to potentially make this a recurring process if it's an outdoor thing where they might want to try to if this is working do it next year they then would have to go through the typical process um I want to make sure I'm correct on that for potentially next year or something and then for a new business from what I gathered I think what I heard from Rob was the new business license would probably be permanent so they would not have to go through sort of a concurrent process public processes as Kathy was asking for the land use of that location if it's a new permit so that's that's just sort of confirming what I heard but then following up on Andy um since I'm chair CRC zoning bylaw changes generally require a public hearing do we have any confirmation from the town attorney whether that would still be required in this instance or not and if so so in other words I guess I'm asking do all the rules of I think it's chapter 40a apply in terms of passing zoning bylaws even though this is a temporary one meaning do we have to hold that hearing and does the planning board have to hold that hearing that require 14 days notice of butters all sorts of things like that and then the second question that goes along with that is is this something that could be adopted under an emergency measure portion of the charter that allows us to forgo the two readings required for bylaws um and if we did adopt it under that would we be able to forgo the required public hearing initially in adopting a zoning bylaw change because the charter says we can forgo some things or not and if we did it that way my understanding is since the charter says that's only a 60 day thing that we would have to then re-adopt after holding two more readings within that 60 days to make it go for the full 180 I guess I'm just trying to get that process there and hopefully we have some answers or can get answers from the town attorney on that so thank you all yeah I think I think Robin Chris had the conversation with uh Joel Bard our town attorney on this so yeah so uh I'll just I'll start with the first question about um and I think you've got that right that there would be potentially temporary uses that would have an expiration that go along with it such as activities that are happening outdoors that may end at the end of the season and that business if it's still interested in doing it would be able to you know utilize the normal process or whatever process is in place next time if it chooses to and there would also be new businesses you know for example a new restaurant that came into a building that had a vacant space we want to make sure that that business doesn't you know is able to invest in that property invest in their business and know that they're going to be there at the end of this so that would be a decision that's made without the condition of any expiration and be able to remain so so both will be happening under this proposal we did talk with our town attorney Joel Bard about this the adoption process is as you know it and as you're you're working on currently and what we would have to get answers on is the emergency process that you described I'm not sure exactly how that would apply but the the adoption process is is not relaxed or waived at all for this any other follow-up on that one with Chris or anybody else Mindy Joe did that satisfy your question that got me far enough to be able to talk to the planning board about if we get referrals about potential hearings yes okay Darcy Pam okay I had a couple of questions so I gather that the planning board the zone zone DBA and the DRB all of them would be completely outside of this process but on page five of one of the handouts it has soliciting comments will be solicited from other applicable public officials and staff including fire chief police chief public health director superintendent public works of town manager which of course I understand and agree with that but by completely cutting out the three agencies which are the ones that usually handle these things I totally understand why the usual process can't work or we wouldn't get businesses opened up in this time of emergency but there're going to be conflicts first of all particularly when you're using the public way using the sidewalks which are shared with people who may or may not be planning to eat at or use the services of the individual stores how I mean in New York City the question of the sidewalk is very big businesses are always moving in and taking over the sidewalk making it impossible to go by safely also the matter of taste is a big issue and I know the idea is an expedited system and I agree with that but somebody's going to have to be making some decisions about this this yes that no this is too much this is too far and I just think it would be a good idea if the groups that normally do look at these and provide a lot of interesting input the planning board in the zone of appeals and the design review board would at least be allowed to to give a comment and then my other question well that's a statement my my question is under new businesses I hope this wouldn't be a way for a business that would normally need a lot of hearings to be established in that particular location for example a new marijuana place that would not be well received by a lot of people so I just want to add that note okay if I can answer that Lynn so I think you know Dorsey raises two important things and sort and identifies the two reasons that we're pushing this that we're suggesting this pushing it one is that speed in our minds is of the essence because when these businesses open there's a very limited seasonal time when they can actually be outside utilizing public spaces so I think that that that speed is of the essence and that's why this is an expedited process that that narrows the number of people who can weigh in on it and and the other is that it is temporary other than the new and that so any these are not permanent changes unless it goes through the the whole process so if there's a um if it's something that people hate it's going to be done at the end of the at the end of the six month period so I think that those are the two things the reasons that we're suggesting this option could I just add that in the city they often put these clear plastic covers and roofs over tables on the street to extend the system to extend the season and you know so the season doesn't necessarily begin to stop um in the middle of september uh garcy yeah um I guess um I have a I see those two different categories of of applicants as very different seems like the the overall purpose of putting forward um proposal for temporary relief um is really directly related to COVID-19 and all the different um changes we need to make in order to get people up and running and doing things with social distancing and so on and so that part of it really makes sense to me the opening of a new business as as Dorothy mentioned that's a little bit more concerning to me to give a permanent permanent ability to start a new business without having to go back and doing that on an expedited basis that feels a little bit more problematic to me because of the possibility of of um some new business getting started that we wouldn't otherwise would would otherwise need a lot more discussion about starting up um I understand where you're coming from but um I guess I really just see those two categories as very different from each other all or Rob do you want to speak to that Rob yeah um yeah so um that's fair we I think we agree that they are they are very different and the um the intent there was to um have at least an opportunity if you know some number of businesses do not survive this time and are unable to reopen and we know how important those those spaces being filled are that we want to encourage whether it's a restaurant or retail establishment to take advantage of this expedited service and there's a permitting process and and consider locating here to help to help recover the downtown but it you know it's well understood your your hesitation there Chris you have your hand up so maybe that you want to say something this so I wanted to say two things one thing is that um Rob and I have been um you know working with the ZBA for a long time and we have a pretty good sense of the conditions that they would impose on various businesses um so you know we have long lists of conditions that they normally impose on particularly restaurants and restaurants if they're open late or if they serve alcohol so I think we could probably take care of the conditions that are related to new businesses especially in a interior space and with regard to new businesses using exterior space I think those would probably be considered the same way that other businesses using exterior space would be considered and it could be that all of these exterior uses are expiring at the end of 180 days and if they want to continue next year they have to come back and get the traditional type of permit so I think there are um ways that we can make this work that we can you know take each case as it comes and then put the red conditions on it and um not be left with something that the town really wouldn't want to continue Shalini yeah I first want to just acknowledge the hard work of the folks at the bid the chamber our town employees this is for me and I'm hoping for all our businesses a very exciting message that we're having this discussion so thank you so much all of you I want to emphasize a couple of facts one that we have the highest rate of unemployment in massachusetts which is 40 percent of the people are unemployed and that's because a big portion of the economy is dependent on entertainment and restaurants the second thing the people who are hurting the most right now are not the drive-thru chain restaurants it's local businesses and if we want to support and rescue our local businesses that we love so much the restaurants we love going to we really need to be agile and uh and be responsive to that my recommendation to the council is that we take action under the section 2.1 of our charter where we can't uh vote on an emergency measure and not delay this any further we need to act on this in today I mean with according to 2.1 subsection b an emergency measure may be passed with or without amendment or rejected at the same meeting at which such a measure is introduced so I would really encourage all of us to really send out that message to the businesses you know our the town councils on this and how we're responding to this is really gonna boost the morale of the businesses every day counts for them it's a make or break for many of these businesses so I really encourage us to think about voting about at least the current businesses that are out there that are seeking just something simple like outdoor dining just to thrive just to be able to survive right now um let me see if there's anything else um and I mean we could do this as a 60 day measure which is the emergency measure and then um and meanwhile well we in the meanwhile we can send it to CRCO wherever but at least give a 60 day emergency measure approval for um for people to start working on this right away thank you Evan shall in the action said uh some of what I was going to say I I have a lot of thoughts on this all positive which I will save for when this is in front of CRC where I expect it will be but I did want it to take a moment uh while they were here with us um during this meeting to thank especially Rob and Chris for this uh we heard I think last time we met um and certainly in CRC from the bit in the chamber um some pretty devastating news about our local economy and what's happening with our local businesses and they challenged us to think boldly and creatively about how we can provide support and earlier in this meeting we heard from Representative Dom uh that one of her priorities was to find barriers to businesses and she said quote not stand in the way and I think I was uh taken aback when I learned tonight that it takes uh over 70 days for a business to be able to put tables and chairs outside and I think when we get back to normal times we should come back to that um but I think that what we recognize right now is that uh that's just certainly not acceptable in this period right now as we're looking for recovery so um I want to just really really thank the staff that put a lot of hard work into a proposal that is I think really responding to the crisis um with the urgency and with the boldness and the creativity that we need to respond to this crisis so thank you so much and I look forward to supporting this in committee and in the council are there any other comments from the council at this time paul is there additional information you would like to present sure so there are two other elements to this proposal um in addition to the zoning which is the big one there is also the utilization of public ways for outdoor dining or retail establish establishments and that is within the purview of the council you have delegated some aspects of your purview of the public way to the town manager so it would be I would ask you to look at that to see if there are things in there that you'd like to delegate as well um and then the third thing is the utilization um liquor licenses alcoholic beverages licenses are controlled by the state um and you know there is a process for adjusting them to create a new area where you can serve alcohol but it's a kind of a cumbersome process it's not something that we can control but if there is an active conversation at the state level recognizing that this is not just unique to amherst it's every community in the commonwealth that has a has liquor licenses that's this um it has to address this because all of our restaurants are going to be depopulated by 50 percent maybe more and so these businesses are going to be doing um financial calculations as to whether they can stay in business with reduced attendance at their restaurants and whether people are able to work there make a living wage off of the reduced number of people in the restaurants so this is one way that doesn't cost us anything that allows us to expand to the footprint of this of the businesses to be able to conduct their business as long as we do it tastefully and you know we understand where all the parameters are but I think that the key thing for this is you know for the liquor license especially that the state would need to relax some of those things and that would also have to go to our board of license commissioners for review we have two additional hands up alissa thank you very much I wasn't fast enough on the raise hand earlier um I I do think and I appreciate you taking the time as you tried to arrange this agenda where we knew there was a lot going on and there still will be more is that it's important to get the concerns the town council has on the table tonight before it goes referred out to everybody and so if Evan you want to hold on to your kudos that's fine but when it comes to like people's questions and concerns like we've been hearing so far I think it's really important that those get out there before it gets out to the different committees and I want to make three other separate pieces about this one is when Dorothy of course said the word marijuana and so alissa has to say a word about marijuana which is when Dorothy mentioned well not opening a new marijuana place because that might be something where a lot of people have input but I wanted to point out that I'm pretty sure she's referring to a new retail place whereas the one thing that could in fact be in front of this process is the new marijuana delivery for adult use also known as recreational in some circles because those delivery applications are going to be issued by the cannabis control commission they're only for a certain subset of population they're allowed to have those licenses for now in order to get delivery in Amherst you won't necessarily have to have a delivery place in Amherst so it's not actually essential but if somebody really does want to come in and start in a vacant place like we've been talking about that is in fact something I would be fully supportive of this process working for that particular issue and that would be a newer thing for those who are nervous about newer things two other points one is that I'm assuming that if this went sideways if people felt really uncomfortable with what was happening that it could be revoked that we could vote to get rid of it and that's always the the thing I look to is what could we do if we decide we don't like it anymore doing something now and then finally I'm I know how hard everyone's worked and so I hesitate to use the word disappointed but I am disappointed that we don't know why we haven't pursued using section 2.10b like Shalini mentioned like Mandy Jo mentioned because if we're not using it because we're concerned that it's a zoning bylaw like I would understand that as a rationale but the fact that we're just not using it right now makes me somewhat concerned and I wonder if we could in fact go ahead and do the emergency portion if you're allowed to do that with zoning bylaws which I have no idea because I'm not an attorney and then we would of course then have the hearing process for the part about making it last longer because I know that that's not likely what the charter envisioned but of course no government document that's at a municipal level ever envisioned the bizarre circumstances we find ourselves in I appreciate the people who've said you know this has got a lot of work to go back and forth to committees and and actually try and get this going so is there a way do we know definitively that the reason we haven't pursued using that provision is simply because we don't know that zoning bylaws fit in that because honestly we're not going to learn anything at the hearings we would do them because we had to check up a box but we're not going to learn anything there that's going to tell us you know what we shouldn't do this so rather than going through that exercise purely for the sake of exercise if our town attorney thinks it's defensible to use the emergency provision in the charter then I would wholeheartedly support that okay Paul or anybody else have come in for that uh no I think that's uh how the council wants to process this request is up to the council okay Chris did you have a comment on this particular issue I do I just want to know if you are designating the conservation and development department to make that inquiry of the town attorney it seems like it really is um something that the town manager's office should handle because um it's bigger than zoning and we don't usually get into questions related to the charter requests like that usually come from the council and go directly to the town manager thank you okay um mandy joe you have your hand up yeah so um it goes directly to that my understanding from rob and christine's initial answer to my question was that in order to pass a zoning bylaw we have to hold our hearings under chapter 40 a as the state requires if that's the case using the emergency measure tonight process wouldn't be possible because the zoning bylaw hearings have not been held um that doesn't mean I'm against using it we just don't have that answer I was hoping we would have that answer whether we could use the emergency measure without holding that hearing so that maybe we could get started on something like this tonight while going through the typical zoning hearing process over the next 60 days to make it sort of a more permanent change um if we have to hold the hearing what I want to know is CRC was already looking at the potential of having a joint meeting with the planning board on June 3rd um that is 16 days from now I believe um and if that's the case is there a possible way we could get the required notice published in the paper that is a 14-day notice to hold a hearing on this Wednesday so it's published on Wednesday so we could hold a hearing on these bylaws on June 3rd um at least the council and since it was since the planning board has a meeting scheduled for that day the planning board too um can we get those notices out tomorrow so that they are published in the paper and to whoever needs to have them on June 3rd on 14 days ahead of time and then the seven days or one week after that in time to hold a hearing on June 3rd and then would the council president be potentially willing to call a meeting of the council on I think it would be June 8th the next Monday where we don't have a meeting scheduled in order to vote potentially on these bylaws on potentially an emergency manner and using the emergency measure at that point so that we could vote that night because they require two publications multiple publications in the bulletin we could meet all of that but the charter requires two readings unless we do an emergency measure so that could we vote on that one and then two weeks later vote on the non-emergency portion by getting it in something like that so that we can with the emergency measure the other benefit of that is we don't have to wait the 14 days for it to become active after the vote unlike the typical charter 2.10 for bylaws that requires a 14 day before they're effective if we use 2.10 then even if we have to hold a hearing and then redo it later we can get that bylaw effective potentially as early as June 8th but I think it's stuff that we need to figure out I would be very hesitant to vote an emergency measure tonight having heard what I heard from Rob and Chris about what our attorney said on having to comply with the hearing requirement from the planning board but if we can get those notices out by Wednesday I think the planning board and CRC can hold a hearing on June 3rd to maybe get this enacted by June 8th. Chris you got a comment? I do so we just sent out notices for June 3rd last Friday there's a certain amount of time that the Gazette needs to publish notices what about June 10th as a possibility that would be the next Wednesday and if we can get the planning board members and members of the CRC together for June 10th we might be able to hold a public hearing that night. Mandy Jo you have a comment on that? If you know obviously we have to talk to the planning board and ourselves that was not a date we were looking at for joint hearings but it would be certainly from my chair point of view I would be certainly considering it there's no way we can send a notice tomorrow I know it would be late the Gazette can't work with us for something like that. They have not worked with us in the past on something like that. Paul we can certainly call those Gazette and you know this is good money for them they're in a financial pinch so we can certainly push it to see if we're it's able to be advertised properly we certainly can take the up make the effort at least. Okay Shalini? Oh okay I'm still not clear about the emergency aspect of this if this is in which it is we haven't seen anything like this before and it's impacting so many people as we speak if it is an emergency then do we really need the public hearing what I'm reading and of course I really defer to Mandy Jo and all of you in this but what I am reading in the charter is that it's a proposed by-law except an emergency measure shall be published in the town bulletin board and all of those things so it seems like an emergency measure does not need to go through and maybe I haven't understood correctly why we need to go through the public hearing process. Mandy Jo. So the public hearing process is not part of our charter which is why we need a town attorney opinion on whether we can do it. The charter requires certain things for bylaws but the public hearing process is required by the mass general laws chapter 40a for specifically zoning bylaws and I don't know whether our charter trumps that on this instance and that's why it sounds like the town attorney initially said no it wouldn't that you'd still have to comply with the MGL requirement for public hearings for zoning by law changes. I don't know whether the governors put any orders out that might waive that and that's what we need to hear from our town attorney on. Mr. Bachman. So yes so it's I think Mandy Jo hit it that we can there are two different processes one is the state law which has not been abridged by the state at all so that's a process we have to follow and then we have the local expedited process but you have to do you have to comply with both which means that we still have to adopt a zoning bylaw in accordance with chapter 40a and I'm confident that that's what our attorney would tell us. So let me just summarize for a moment and see if there's any other comments one of the things I'm hearing from across the board is enormous interest and support for this and gratitude to our staff for coming up with an innovative approach. I'm also hearing that if we thought we could pass it tonight there are some people who might like to do that but at the same time we're hearing that we probably cannot do that and if we can move things forward the question has been raised would the president be willing to call a meeting of the council for May I mean for June 8th and the answer is yes as long as we have a quorum of counselors able to attend. So I do see one other question Dorothy Pam. My comment is that I think that we need to do whatever we can to do this as quickly as possible but that I do think that we need to do it with a public hearing because whatever we do is going to please some people and not please others and not are not having a hearing would be injurious to the whole enterprise. So I think we should try to to you know hold the presses and use all our influence and get the notices in and move forward as quickly as can be to support this process but to do it with some kind of public hearing. Okay. Chalani. I just want to clarify one thing that I would agree with with generally the sentiment here about you know we're not going to please everyone but right now the question is not about trying to please people but save people's livelihood. So I would err on the side of saving people's livelihood even if it means we're not pleasing certain people. So we have a motion and augment the motion just very very June 8th or June 15th so that we can continue to try to move to the 8th should we be able to get everything posted as needed. Okay. So it's a very long motion. I mean I should put it up on the screen. While he's doing that let me just say that in the process of anticipation of this we have already spoken to the various committees the chairs of the committees that this is being referred to so that they are aware it is coming they're aware that it is absolutely critical that they meet and that they get their recommendation to us immediately and I have checked with the town manager and he has had a conversation with the chair the board of licensed commissioners as well so that we kind of set it up so that every committee knows that it's coming and every committee has a committee meeting so they they can address this. I also want to mention that both the head of the chamber and the head of the bid have filed comments in support of this and I am sure that they will be at every one of our meetings where we are going to discuss this. Can you enlarge that Leeshawn? Thank you. So you'll notice wherever it says June 15th we're going to say by June 8th or June 15th. Okay so the the motion is to refer the town managers memo of May 15-20 request to town council to approve steps to expedite the reopening of businesses through the following public bodies community resources committee for a report recommendation and to hold any required hearings on the request to adopt a temporary zoning bylaw through the council by June 8th or June 15th 2020. The planning board for report recommendation and to hold any required hearings on the request to adopt a temporary zoning bylaw through the council by June 8th or June 15. The governance organization and legislation committee for a determination of clarity consistency and actionability on the request to adopt temporary zoning bylaw to the council by June 8th or June 15th. Governance and organization and legislation committee for a report and recommendation on the request to revise the town council policy regarding the control and regulation of the public ways section 3B through the council by June 1st 2020. Town services and outreach committee for a report and recommendation on the request to revise the town council policy regarding the control and regulation of public ways section 3B through the council by June 1st 2020. And the Board of License Commissions to encourage expedited local approval of the expansion of premises for alcohol service outdoors and to encourage consideration of new licenses for the consumption of alcohol and on public ways in response to the COVID-19 state emergency. Is there a second? Second. Are there any any further comments or questions? Darcy? I just wonder if you meant to say June 8th or 15th for the TSO committee. No, I didn't. And why why? I wanted to leave those as June 1st so that we can get at least that piece of it done. The more we have anticipate and get this done the more Rob Moro and his group can get ready to make it all happen. Do you feel you need an extension Darcy? No, I just know that I mean TSO will be meeting that day so it will be another day like today. Okay. It was a good day today. Alyssa? Yes, thank you. Just before we vote and when I mentioned earlier about getting concerns out on the table I want this conversation at TSO about the public ways policy that we use for that policy to take five minutes and so if people have concerns now would be the time to share them because I don't want them to come up for the first time on June 1st. So I'm just wondering if you wanted to ask since Paul didn't go into an elaborate presentation on that because it's pretty straightforward he's going to be able to make decisions on use of the public spaces versus the change on this honing if we could hear if we need to hear anything before we actually have that five-minute item on June 1st TSO agenda. Any questions? Okay, seeing none the motion's been made and seconded I will move to a roll call vote and we'll start with Darcy DuMont. Yes. Griezmer is a yes. Hannity? Yes. Pam? Yes. Ross? Yes. Ryan? Yes. Yes. Shane? Yes. Schreiber? Yes. Steinberg? Yes. Swartz? Yes. Balmone? Yes. Ruer? Yes. DeAngelis? Yes. It is unanimous 13-0-0 nobody absent we are going to move to a brief five-minute break. How's that? Good. Okay. We're going on to the consent agenda and the consent agenda the following items were selected because they were considered to be routine and it was reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy to remove an item from the consent agenda for discussion later in the meeting and ask that it be removed when the president lists the consent agenda items. The request to remove an item from the consent agenda does not require a second to move and the motion is to move the following items and the printed motions there under and approve those items as a single unit. Suspension of Town Council Rules of Procedure Rule 8.4 for the following agenda items 7b long-term reservations of Public Way, Town Commons, Parking Roads, and Sidewalks Amherst Farmers Market and also Fiscal Year 2021 Budget Policy Guidelines. Refer 7g refer referral of proposed revision to the general bylaw unlawful noise bylaw 3.24 to the Community Resources Committee and 10 a and b approval of minutes for May 4 2020 Regular Town Council Meeting in May 11 2020 Special Joint Town Council School Committee and Library Trustee Meeting. Is there any item anybody wishes to have moved? Dorothy Pam? Yes. I would like to the noise violation bylaw. I would I would like to remove that. Okay. All right. Anything else? All right. Is there a second to the motion the way it's now been? Dorothy Dumont? I have a question. I've actually had a little trouble with the whole consent agenda and the rule 8.4. So are we we're just voting on the suspension of the rule that says we have we don't have to have two readings. That's correct. So we're still going to be talking about these things. That is correct. Yes. Okay. Okay. Alyssa? That was actually my question as well because I couldn't very well turn to Dorothy on Zoom and say, is that what she really means to do? Because again, we are not trying to pass it through the consent agenda. We're just as Darcy just said. So I don't know why we need to take it out. But I suppose if I talk about it long enough, it'll take that much time anyway. So sorry. We're not taking it out. All we're doing is agreeing that we don't need to read it twice. Okay. Okay. What I'm saying is I don't want to not talk about it. I want to be able to talk about it. Right. So you want to be able to talk about the unlawful noise bylaw. Yeah. I want to be able to talk. I don't want to say it's okay. Fine. Let's not talk. I have removed that from the consent agenda. So the consent agenda now only includes suspension of town council rules and procedures rule 8.4. One is for the farmer's market. The other is for the budget policy guidelines. All that does is allow us to do it on the first reading. Okay. We have removed the unlawful noise bylaw. And we have kept in the approval of minutes. Is there any further discussion? Is there a second? I'll second. Okay. Is that it? Mind you, Joe, seconded. Any further discussion? Then begin with Hanakie. Yes. Pam. Okay. I'm not quick enough. You said you included the minutes in that? I included the minutes. Yes. Were there two sentences that leave out the key words in the minutes? Then you have to ask that they be removed. I asked to be removed. Okay. So the consent agenda at this point only includes the suspension of town council rules and procedure for the town common 8.4 for the town for the Amherst farmers market and the budget policy guidelines. Okay. Motion's been made and seconded. Hanakie. Still a yes. Pam. Yes. Ross. Yes. Brian. Yes. Shane. Yes. Shriver. Aye. Steinberg. Yes. Schwartz. Yes. Balmille. Yes. Werwer. Yes. DeAngelis. Yes. DeMont. Yes. Riesmer is a yes. All right. It's unanimous. We're moving on to the long-term reservation of the public ways, town commons, parking roads and sidewalks, Amherst farmers market. And I believe the first thing we have is a report from TSO, which was written since this morning. Yes. So the TSO voted unanimously. I don't know if you all got to look at the report. It came in very late. TSO voted unanimously to recommend to the town council that the farmers market application to reserve the public way be approved. The actual motion that's in the report is not actually correct. I have to correct that, but basically we moved to recommend that the application be approved. There is a lot of complicated stuff in there about parking spaces. And we move to require that the farmers market sign a written agreement to comply with the guidelines set forth by the town manager memo that is in our packet. And also to authorize the town manager to continue to modify these guidelines in response to the COVID-19 state of emergency. And that this would all continue through November 21st, that we had a robust discussion about it. Town manager presented again Mr. Spannetti and the farmers market manager both presented. We had a counselor discussion and deliberation for about an hour and brought up a number of different issues and are ready to put it forward. The motion has been made as their second. Let me just say I don't think the motion has been made. I will read the motion as it needs to be seconded. Okay, this is the motion. I move to approve the long-term event use reservations reservation of the town comm and south portion under town council policy regarding the control and regulation of the public way and further to approve the reservation at no charge of the first 15-meter parking spaces on the east side of south pleasant street originating with spring street moving south towards college street and further to approve the reservation at no charge of the first 21-meter parking spaces on the west side of boltwood avenue originating at spring street moving south toward college street and further to approve the reservation at no charge of the first 10 parking spaces on the southwest portion of the spring street parking lot to be clearly marked for customer curbside pickup only to accommodate the Amherst farmers market each Saturday beginning May 23rd 2020 through November 21st 2020 from 6 a.m. to 2 30 p.m. and further to require that the Amherst farmers market John Spannetti market manager sign a written agreement to comply with all operational guidelines set forth in the town manager memo April 30 2020 Amherst farmers market application updated May 14 2020 as further updated with recommendations by the town services outreach committee and the town council on May 18 2020 and further to authorize the town manager to continue to modify these operational guidelines to in response to the continuing COVID-19 state emergency and continuing through November 21st 2020 is there a second I seconded okay I would like to offer an amendment and before you go crazy let me explain that it's very straightforward there was a discussion this morning about the issue of the space between the vehicles and the actual stands and that for some of the more elderly and or handicapped farmers that this creates a lugging problem and possibly even creates the need to hire additional staff and so as you may know if you are a regular market goer normally the whole area of boltwood from the spring street to college street is blocked off anyway and so what I would I'm going to propose and I have the amendment will show you the amendment is that the south the east line of the market be backed up so that people can have their trucks right there and have their table right in front of their truck so they don't have to lug things a very far distance and that we then ask the market manager and the person who works there on setting up the whole market to make sure that the people who need to be closer to their food and their trucks be placed in those positions and it's a simple modification to the existing memo and I mean to the existing motion is there a question Dorothy Dorothy you need to unmute I agree with you I was debating bringing that up because I felt it was important to have some leeway to address those problems and you did it very well so I second you so Sean would you please put the motion with the amendments up and then Mandy Joe so I don't quite understand what your motion is so before I ask my question I need to see it in writing okay I'm Sean's working on getting it up there Sean is there yeah I'm finding it the zoom windows are getting in my way so I guess I'll ask my questions without seeing the motion I'm not I don't really understand what you were proposing in how it would affect the motion are you proposing the closure of boltwood avenue from spring street to college are you proposing the whole market on the common be expand expanded to even larger portion of the common are you proposing the whole market be moved to the same sort of portion of the common but chopped towards spring towards boltwood avenue a little more so that those that are on the west side of that u-shaped line now have double or triple the amount of space to walk I guess I'm just really confused okay it sounds like you're proposing the closure of spring street the whole way are we now the market in the road no it's all I'm proposing is the closure of boltwood avenue from spring street to college street okay and would it be best if you saw this in a map I think we need to see both okay all right so Sean thank you and now we can so anyway what this does it adds in and boltwood avenue from spring street to college street and then the other ones basically just take care of the parking meters so so that that motion doesn't actually close boltwood avenue you don't have the right language number one okay um because you don't actually say the closure of the road um I'm concerned about closing the road and all of the common and half of the spring street lot um that's that's a whole lot I get the concern um but but we're approaching I I I wish I would have had time to think about this mainly I'm just concerned with it I don't think it's a simple motion okay could you show the map please Sean can you find the map yeah that's the the specific one for the farmers market yes yeah just one second it's the one that's in this the memo the more recent memo where it's on the town common it's seven b a f m the layout nope that's not it sorry hold on listen while we're waiting um and and to Lynn's great credit I asked for a creative solution this morning I didn't expect to get it this morning I didn't expect to get it tonight and so this is the punishment she gets for trying to come up with a solution on the fly like this I as Mandy Joe points out no matter how great an idea we think this is that the motion's not worded correctly you can't wedge it in that first sentence because that first sentence is about the common it's not about a street closure so we'll just tack something on at the end but the other thing I was going to say is if this just gets too complicated for us tonight I want to point out that APD can always close boltwood if they think it's safer and so we don't have to make that happen this immediate time these first two weeks that might be the best solution but we have a little flexibility in that if we can't quite get it started tonight so in this map if you look at the longer set of booths okay all that would do is move over toward the parking that's the only change it actually creates more distance in the middle questions Andy experience from having dealt with these issues before with Alyssa in our prior election position when we've had conversations and made attempts on closing that section of boltwood avenue there are also concerns of the end of boltwood and and to make this kind of a decision without having taken the steps of consulting the end is a problem and there were also a large traffic and signage problems that occurred as a result of that so that while it's attempting easy solution I don't know that our experience is that it makes an easy solution okay Darcy Darcy you're suggesting that all of the tents on the east side are just shifted over so they're closer to their vehicles that's correct and that why that why would boltwood avenue need to be closed no it may not need to be closed that I I was thinking they could back up to their tents but they don't necessarily need to back up I will point out for those of you that are familiar with the market boltwood avenue is closed all the time for farmers market so I didn't think of this as being dramatic but it may be it doesn't need to be closed Mandy joe yeah I can't support the amendment um boltwood avenue is never closed all the way from college street to spring street for the farmers market last year I believe we closed it from just that turnaround point between the in and the dorm that resides south of the end so you could still drive there you still have parking on the southern part of boltwood avenue and this one would close off almost double the number of parking spots because it would add those 20 on the other side and as Andy said lots of you know lots of issues with potentially the in and traffic issues and it would I would I'm concerned about flow with it because if you move the tents and you close off the road I'm not sure you have two-way traffic on both sides of this farmers market given that it has to be certain fencing and all uh and and so yeah I at this point I can't support an amendment like this Andy well Mandy picked up on one of the points that I was going to make the other thing is just that I think uh though I'd have to defer to others too that it's actually not going to be that easy because I think from boltwood down to the common is actually a hill so if you're talking about it being a friendly approach I think that it needs to have a closer examination to make sure that that is correct and that that of itself poses one of the problems that's there and I think that there might be other solutions which I think the farmers market could work out for themselves such as making sure that the people who need the bowl the booths that are closest to parking places have those location preferences I think that our most important thing tonight is to get this approved so that the farmers market can be up and running in the earliest possible date then in this case I'll just withdraw the amendment we'll go back to the actual amendment but before that discussion about the proposal please read and leave the map up there okay I see no further discussion about the proposal so we'll go to the amendment which was made and seconded is ready for the discussion okay then starting with Dorothy Pam I have a question you said the amendment made and seconded what are we actually voting on thank you can we put up the motion that we're actually voting on yes Dawn do you have that motion right there it is Darcy you have a question yeah I just wanted to make a comment that that I understand why you put this motion forward Lynn and or this amendment to the motion and that if there's anything that the town can do to accommodate either older farmers or people with disabilities so that they don't have a hardship getting from their vehicles to their tents maybe we could figure something out about that because um that that's what this is all about right well any further questions about the motion okay seeing none the motion has been made seconded we'll go to a roll call vote we begin with Evan Ross yes George Ryan yes that's Shane yes Steve Schreiber yes Andy Steinberg yes Sarah Schwartz no uh Shalini Balmille yes Alyssa Brewer yes Pat D'Angelo's yes Darcy DeMont yes Reese Berze yes Hanna key yes yes the vote is 12 1 0 and no absences 12 in favor one against okay moving on the next item on our agenda uh is the fiscal year FY 2021 budget policy guidelines uh and what slide would you like up there the full memo or what um I actually do a very brief introduction while Sean looks for a specific slide to put up and the one that I wanted to put up was one that's called FY 21 budget guidelines table and uh if you could look for that uh basically what I wanted to just put out to begin with is that there's a couple of things to note one is uh the finance committee submitted five items for your consideration tonight they'll have little pieces that go together there's the finance committee report there's the document that went along with it it was just labeled uh draft for discussion the only uh it's a uh set of three budget analyses that were presented on the day after by Sonia Aldrich there's the proposed guidelines themselves that's a table it's now up on the screen and then there was the FY 23rd quarter budget report which is really not as germane to this but it's important um just to know where we're going with our budget um as you recall a week ago tonight there was a presentation that town manager made with um Ms Aldrich who's um was the interim finance director and I think she's now back to being comptroller because we have a finance director who started on last week and he made a recommendation to us after really presenting the problem in a very clear manner that we needed to do something in order to move forward with both the FY 12 or excuse me FY 21 budget and with the one month budget for the month of July and um what he suggested was that we begin with an assumption um of level funding and for state aid and just uh trying to accommodate other projected losses through um cuts in the budget and the question was um whether we should what assumption we should make on three levels of the budget presentation uh which were labeled as bad worse and worst and um we at the finance committee then reviewed it in great detail and looked at that additional document to have a better understanding of the numbers is how they worked out and um came to the conclusion that the assumption of the middle ground is a reasonable choice but there's no guarantee that it's going to be actually what's going to happen that's what we probably can say is hopefully going to happen we think it can happen but we don't know there's a lot of assumptions in it so what the chart on the screen is doing is saying that the proposed guidelines which which say what I just said that uh we're okay with going with the worst that's what we're recommending that you do but we looked for you to um provide us with information through quarterly budget reports that can be reviewed in thorough detail by the council to see if mid-year budget additional mid-year budget cuts are necessary and um that you um and other um staff that are involved with budgeting um at least plan for the possibility that there might need to be additional budget cuts but to go ahead and develop budgets for us that use that middle ground are worse category so what you're seeing on the screen um when you look at the right hand numbers and I'll just go to the minus 614602 what that is is the guidelines that we proposed in the um assumptions that we made based upon the projections meeting in November that um were for the amount that's in the left hand column and that's um before COVID is how it was marked because there were adjustments that were made by subsequent budget reports which the finance committee watched and talked about and had reports on from Liz Aldrich throughout this middle column is where we would be under the proposal that we are now making so that the difference between what would be developed for the town budget and that's the municipal services departments in comparison to what we thought it was before this COVID thing came up is that 614602 figure and then as you go down in each of those four lines for the operating budgets you see what the operating budget differences are we wanted to make it clear that going from level services which was the assumption of the November budget uh November December um guide December guidelines and November projections to where we are now um of level funding is a significant reduction and um it is going to have a significant um effect on what services that can be provided and we tried to give some guidance in the proposed guidelines as to how to go about doing that the other two major pieces that were cut i'm going to skip to the third one because it's easy to explain was to reduce our contribution for other post-employment benefits by half through the year and then but the other major cut is for um capital and because debt service is a legal obligation and we have to maintain our debt payments that portion of capital isn't affected it is the piece that we do each year for roads and vehicles and maintenance of buildings and that comes up that is obviously a very significant reduction as you can see on the screen so i wanted to um have this on the screen so that you understand that uh the what the consequence of what we are proposing is though um the finance committee unanimously uh believes that it is what is necessary under the circumstances on the very bottom of the screen are additional reductions that uh we're not going to take them as reductions we would take them out of reserves if there are cuts in state aid and it gives um 10 15 and 20 percent and as discussed in the proposed guidelines when you get into some of those numbers it is an effect on our reserves that has a significant effect but again as noted um we look at reserves in part as a rainy day fund and as we've said several times it's raining hard so uh we think that's necessary so that's kind of the brief summary i wanted to give i don't want to go through the entire guidelines because i hope that everyone's had a chance to read them and if they have a have questions about them they should ask them and also of course welcome any additional comments from other members of the committee um comments at this time mandy joe um yeah no my comments go more towards um the funk you know how this is going to function in real life in a sense um particularly to the regional budget uh have we had any conversation with the regional school committee that they're that this sort of level funding from amherst um and the reduction from our share of about four hundred thousand dollars is something that they will abide by um because if they don't that really affects our plans throughout the town um or for reserves um and to go along with that i was reading um the desi commissioner's guidance on one and twelve budgets as they refer to them for regional school districts and one of the guidance was that if the regional school district is going to submit a one-month budget and seek to use an alternative assessment method beyond the statutory method for that one-month budget they must submit letters of supports for using the alternative assessment method for the f y 21 one-month budget from every member's select board and or mayor um i assume that's paul i don't know whether that would actually be us or not um you know mayor i assume goes to manager has paul received a request to sign a letter of support for that um and if not because there's a gene one deadline for that do we know what the region's going to do because a non alternative assessment method will also really affect potentially our um operations and the bottom line for the region budget so those those two go together for the region um my second question is does level funding for the library and there might be other departments that this affects to satisfy the requirements for the state for receiving state funding um i know there's a materials acquisition state aid for the library some i don't know what its acronym is um that has funding requirements on year to year basis will this proposed guideline satisfy that so that we get the state aid um and my third question goes to us as counselors this is more of a budget issue and not really a budget guideline issue we receive a stipend for the charter if the counselors decided as a group um that we might want to reduce that stipend to zero is there a way to do it within the charter compensation guidelines that say we can't actually do that by measure um because any measure can't take effect until after the next regular town election but is there a way to do it by zeroing out the appropriation because the charter says members of the council shall subject to appropriation receive compensation is if we as a council wanted to would it be legal for us to do that by simply zeroing out that budget line andy do you want to yeah so i can respond to some of those questions and might ask paul um also about if he's had any further discussions with um superintendent morris about the regional school budget and regional school assessment we have had discussions with the regional schools and there is a whole process and in the end we're only a part of the process it's a four-town process and it will require a revision of the budgets and it's a complicated um subject i um on behalf of the council with the agreement of the president have had conversations with um key people who are either uh chairs of select boards chairs of finance committees town administrators in every one of the other three towns and have put them on uh have explained our dilemma and explained the consequences if uh we can't come to some agreement on some budget modifications what that's going to mean not just for us but down the line for the region um but that is not a completed process because the school committee ultimately has to make a proposal for um how it's going to do the uh what what it's going to propose for a budget which gets into of course the assessment method because that's not different what what the uh legislature did is and what the um desi did which department of elementary and secondary education and the um piece that you're talking about um is really not different from the current process all four towns have to agree and um otherwise you run to you have to use the state uh the statutory method and uh so we would be stuck with the statutory method and the consequences of it um so that was also a discussion that I incorporated into the conversations that I had that I referred to previously um and uh the um so I don't I don't think that that's going to necessarily be problematic I think that if we've agreed on an alternative method already that the other towns are um going to be agreeable to it I think at this point the key question is what the regional district and regional school committee has done and that's why if Paul has anything to add you can as far as the library issue that you raised um that actually has been um uh was subject to substantial discussion back uh in 2008 and 2009 there is a provision in the regulations of the board of library commissioners that allows um exceptions to the rule that you were referring to that would suspend state aid if you don't need to stand meet the requirement of the amount of local support I actually did the calculation we're very we're pretty much right at the amount that's required anyway the way that is calculated without going into gruesome details of how that calculation gets made but the board of library commissioners has already indicated that they're going to be um very flexible on the application of that exception provision this year so I don't think that that's um something that should be concerned as far as the last issue um I think that's uh something that probably we need to work to do some research on and finding the answer as to whether um stipends can be reduced other than voluntarily by any of us who might make that choice um the uh possibility is if it can be done through the budget then um we would have to um work on that piece we have not given that guidance to the um town manager at this point as best I can do on that one Paul do you have additional comments no I don't um I will tell you that there has been a legal ruling because at one point the school committee asked the same question and we can pull that legal ruling out as I recall it could not it it was voluntary um Kathy thank you um I'm on the finance committee and I just wanted to um say a few more words about their report and the implications some of which are stated in sentences but to make sure I think we all know that we're in the middle of a crisis and that this um the guidelines are going to require belt tightening this notion of staying at last year's budget when health insurance is going up the only way of adjusting will be to do something on the wages and staffing side and there are multiple ways of getting there um top level people could take a temporary pay cut people could forego wage increases but these are are going to be challenging and and one thing we talked about on finance is we may need more and we we've reserved um and uh Paul and staff agreed that we will be tracking this as we go in because there's an expectation that the economy will start to pick up by January um and so some of the shortfalls will start to not be as dire but that may be looking at again then the second thing I wanted to draw out is that we were we talked in the report but I want to emphasize that it's really time to take stock and be thinking not just about this next year but the next several years the cut that you can see in this budget on capital that line called cash capital brings us in the coming year far below where we have been for the last several years it's a big cut and that's our roads our building repairs our equipment repairs so we're going to have a backlog a year from now of things that we had as high priority but they weren't quite critical um if we can live within this capital budget so this is a one-year budget right now a best guess at one but there's likely to be more and at the same time we're drawing down on reserves so the third point um on trying to think about taking stock is that we've got these big building projects in the pipeline and as you look at the scrunch that we've got on capital and the backlog we're going to have to start thinking I personally think we start to think townwide where do we need what services um most of us um when asked separately would put the school that's going to come up we hope in a couple years for funding if we can get through the planning process and but that's going to hit two or three years from now maybe three years from now and we have to have reserves as well as the ability to pay because we may have an inability to go out and ask for more from our residents with a tax override people have lost their wages they've lost their jobs so it's not just us so I think we have to really hit the pause button and talk about what are we really going to be able to afford and the one that's coming up and everyone knows this the soonest is the library and it may be both for design reasons that how would you design a library now that we know about the virus but if we know a school is coming where would you put what services where would you put community rooms um let's think about using our resources really wisely so I just there are implications of what's happening to us and what we think is going to happen over the next two years not just the next year and we'll be lucky I think if we start to come out of this in two years Alyssa thank you very much and I really appreciate the questions that have been asked so far um going back to my school committee days thank you Eddie Joe and Andy for all the assessment work associated with that and then also that library minimal investment and you know you've all heard me say before that I always say to our various town managers let's not hire any additional people because we can't afford them and the short term are the long term given our pension and health insurance liabilities and yet as a representative town meeting members since 1999 I'm certainly aware of the importance of our bond rating and our OPEB investment makes a difference in that absolutely but I cannot agree to support a reduction from the OPEB investment from our usual 500k to 250k when we're already talking about asking people to take pay cuts asking people to potentially lose their jobs I think we should zero out OPEB this year I think that's absolutely entirely appropriate and we should be considering how we can keep the people we do have because I'm not okay with the idea of letting any of the people that we have go because we are not going to be doing less we're doing more with the people that we've got than we've ever had to do before just like we're stretching our dollars we're stretching our people and they're having to work in very different ways than they've had to do before I want to protect the town employees we have now I will not agree to put any money into OPEB this year I hope that you will all consider that our bond rating while incredibly important for our capital investments is not going to be destroyed by not putting money into OPEB this year it is not going to make percentage points differences on our bond rating in comparison to everything else that we do completely separately I am appreciative of the comment that was made associated with the stipend and that being a voluntary turn back just as many of us have invested some of it in various downtown business funds etc I think it's entirely inappropriate given the level of work that the town council does at the expense of doing other work to suggest that in order to show that we're in this together that we would give up our stipend I do not think that's at all entirely appropriate but my important point is associated with OPEB and I cannot support putting money into OPEB this year unless someone can really convince me it's going to destroy our bond rating three years from Andy Andy you have your hand up yes sorry I just did you just viewed it again okay the point that was made about the capital projects I just wanted to I understand where Vice Chair of the committee Kathy was coming from on that that was not a matter discussed in the committee we didn't get to that level of discussion about capital projects we did however agree that the whole capital projects is going to have to be reassessed because the questions of timing and extent of projects is something that needs to be there but I'm not I there are complications in the library proposal that are going to come before this council in an appropriate time in an appropriate manner if we get there and I just wanted to say that just make it clear that those it went a little bit beyond as far as the OPEB I would turn to I don't know if there's been a count discussion with bond council about the likelihood of any peace affecting bond ratings I really have to turn to the town manager on that that was a very strong expression of from him a week ago and we did have some discussion about that and felt that OPEB still is a major liability of the town and that we do have to continue to make investments of it whether what the consensus quence is of postponing it through that amount of money I don't think that we have at this point a clear answer without being able to hear from people who actually set bond ratings and I don't know the answer to that Dorothy I want to speak strongly in keeping as much OPEB as we can I do not believe that our economy is going to go up and up and up I think there's going to be what it has been every 10 years if we're lucky not more it's going to be like writing a bucking bronco it's going to be it's that's why people often don't have their OPEB paid up that's why when towns go bankrupt people who work for the city and have counted on a retirement find there is none that it is gone and I think that the fact that that you have promised retirement benefits to people I realize the pensions in a separate fund but you've promised certain benefits to people you have to regard that as something you promised and you have to deliver so I could in the discussion we agreed some reduction but we didn't agree to strip the OPEB fund because the good times aren't some going to be some nice little rides that we're going to get to and it's going to be a straight sailing it's not going to happen so it's always difficult to put away something that you don't have to do what you should do so I do not agree that we should just spend the OPEB down are there any other comments from counselors um okay then I believe we need to move on to a vote the motion for this is to adopt the council of FY 21 budget guidelines in the document revised budget guidelines for FY 21 as presented is there a second second okay any further discussion all right then we begin this one with George Ryan yes Kathy Shane Shane yes Steve Schreiber yes somebody needs to mute please Sarah Schwartz yes Shalini Balmille yes Alyssa Brewer no Pat DeAngeles yes Darcy Dumont yes Lynn Grease-Merzy yes Mandy Johannicky yes Dorothy Pam yes Evan Ross yes The vote is 12-4-1 against no abstentions and nobody absent we're moving on to the next item on the agenda is which is the permanent change the public way roads and sidewalks and I just want to point out that this is probably a referral um and we'll start with um showing the layout and Mr. Bachman you might want to speak to this so this is a request by the developer who's um I think you have the material from the zoning board of appeals in your packets to make a significant change in in the right of way along University Drive south which is the section of University Drive that crosses Route 9 and goes to Snell Street and to accommodate the development one of the things that the the town had looked at with the developer and with the zoning board is to and what you're seeing on your screen right now is a rendering of the new building that would go there to orient you um University Drive is at the bottom Route 9 is crossing through the center if you were to look at it Amherst College would be on your left and so you can go to the next slide there Sean if there is one so these are all the different renderings so that's University Drive south as it and now we're seeing the proposal on how it would look with a modified roundabout at the intersection of Snell Street and University Drive south and so to at the top right is the University Drive going towards UMass and then you have Route 9 cutting across from top left to the bottom right and go to the next slide this is the existing structure that's the structure as you would see it from um from from Route 9 keep going and okay that's that's from a different angle on Route 9 that's another angle from Route 9 just keep going um we don't need to see all these I'm looking for the map actually it might be in a different spot okay that's fine this we can yeah okay let me look at it while we so what the proposal is is that um is if you can well I would just have the one with the building on it yes yeah I'd like to stay there so what the proposal is to is to create parking along University Drive south and then create if you see at the top left of the picture there's a bit of a roundabout to create a roundabout at that section it would require adjustments to the public way which is in the responsibility of the town council so it's a pretty in-depth analysis I think it's something that your committee will want to spend some time on then we can have our town engineer and our planning director there to answer the types of questions so it's a referral to a recommended referral to the I assume it would be a referral to your committees to review this yes any questions before I move to the motion to refer Evan uh yeah I just curious about um timing on this I know with the last referral that we had that was a public way request they could not start construction until they got approval whereas other public way requests we've had construction beginning wasn't contingent on our actions so just curious the relationship our action is and what they can and cannot do until we act um so I don't know the timing that the attorney for the project is in the audience I'm not sure if you want to have this conversation um at this point or you want to do it at your committee level I mean it'd be nice to know before you refer to a committee what the time constraints are Athena would you please call upon Tom Reedy can you hear me yes perfect thank you um so Evan to answer your question I I think we're not going to start construction until we do get this approval assuming we get the approval if you look at the conditions from the ZBA it's pretty specific that their approval is effectively contingent upon receiving this approval from town council so we wouldn't be doing anything until unless and until we get that approval from town council okay Evan any further question on that okay then uh elissa broer you had a question thank you Evan and Tom addressed the first part of it which was timing which is that it answered it and it didn't answer it in that we don't know and obviously we're in a COVID situation here what their intention was in terms of when they would like to be working on this and what's realistic as to how fast we can do this I think it's really important for the town council and the public and the applicant to understand that the town council's never done anything this extensive I never saw the select board do anything this extensive in my nearly 12 years on it in terms of the public way and so I'm not I'm no problem with us doing it I'm just saying we don't know how and so reflecting back to what I said much earlier in our meeting so many hours ago and perhaps a point of difference I have with our town manager is we keep hearing well you can talk about that at your committee but in fact this should be as much as possible a full town council and so if we're just going to keep having joint meetings of the town council and the TSO to do everything then we might as well just be doing it at town council meetings because a lot more members of the public would know what we were doing so I would discourage us from saying well that'll just be dealt with at the committee level let's not answer questions now I would really like to see people's questions dealt with so at least we have some direction moving into the TSO discussion of this because as I said this is much more elaborate than other pieces has more more pieces to it than anything else we've been asked to do so far and so to just say well TSO I'll just deal with it when they get to it I'm sure a bunch of other town councils are going to want to be there because of the newness of this situation and because of the level of detail it requires so I'd like us to take some time to get some of those at least some of those questions out so we know what direction we the town council wants to hear back from us on. Darcy Darcy sorry I would just say as chair of the TSO I would assume that if this gets referred to the committee that it will go on our June 1st agenda at least for an initial discussion of what we're going to do with it so I would really appreciate it if the council did not try to organize the agenda of the TSO by giving us time constraints when we're I think that there should be some trust there that we're going to be able to prioritize the things that need to move and that we will do that. Darcy this one is not you have 90 days to report back. This one is has a motion that says that. Yes okay well the last meeting we had a motion accelerated that so that's that's my point. Okay Dorothy. I'm agreeing with Alyssa on this I went to a number of meetings and I never keep straight which ones they are whether it's the planning board or the zoning board of appeals but I've seen very detailed presentations on this and I think the idea of having committees talk about it without that kind of expert input is really kind of a waste of time so the only reason for committees to do it without having the expert input is if we're just going to say well they looked at it carefully and I'm going to say okay by me so if we seriously are going to be asked to have input on this then I do think that maybe the whole town because you can't have all the experts and people come in for all these little committees that's just ridiculous and they're not going to do it so I'm with Alyssa and that there are important issues here and we should make them with information and there was a lot of information given and you know I don't have a particular problem with this but I remember there was a lot of interesting points brought up and answers given that I think we would need in order to make a decision. David Zomac you've joined us please um come on in. Hi good evening can you hear me? Yes. Good evening Lynn and the council um I just want to do echo some of Paul's comments earlier regardless of the direction the council wants to take with this. Town staff did work closely with Attorney Reedy and Barry Roberts the developer so either way we're happy to bring in the the town engineer Mr. Mora and Ms. Breastrop also worked closely to come up with this this proposal if you will for use of the public way. We do feel as though it's a creative opportunity to potentially partner with with Mr. Roberts on this. There is some income potential income generation through parking fees and parking permits so we welcome your questions as this moves forward whatever process the council would like to take it through so we are here to offer support and input um in the weeks ahead so thank you. Okay thank you David. Pat? Um I'm not going to be directing my comments so much to process but this project really intrigues me and interests me and from what I can see and I've been looking at the roundabout um really just directs traffic on to Snell it doesn't seem to um cause any kind of change that's a very um underutilized area it might the building and and tenants and stuff there might increase traffic so I guess that the one question I have is what impact in terms of additional traffic might there be on what's a very quiet street normally but this is an excellent use of this corner and in terms of affordable housing and everything else um so I would really like to see this project move forward as soon as possible. Any other comments? Minja? Yeah um I I echo Pat on the liking to see this move forward you know I think it's a good use of sort of space in an area that could potentially use more parking and metered parking and all um to my Pat mentioned traffic um potential increase in traffic um and that Snell is a quiet street uh having lived near Snell for seven years um my initial thought was no it's not so that Snell is regularly used as a cut through to avoid um the downtown intersection to get from Route 9 to South Pleasant and and South Amherst so it's it may seem like a quiet street but from my point of view it's not actually a very quiet street um so I'm not too concerned with the additional traffic I think it's a good design um and I think we should we should move on it so that the construction is not delayed. So the question that's come up is whether or not it's referred to TSO or just done in the council. Evan? So I I don't want to interrupt you because I think maybe you were going where I was going which is we we refer things to committee if we feel like they require some further vetting or some further discussion um and I think I agree with Alyssa that it's helpful to us if when you send a referral you have specific things you want us to look at it was really useful with the southeast street comments that you said hey take a look at the designer review board recommendations and so we had a concrete thing I haven't heard a concrete thing except um Pat's uh statement about traffic and so I guess I'm I'm curious if there are concrete questions or concerns or things that people want the committee to look at and if there are not um I once again would ask what the value add of the committee looking at this is are there additional questions that the council would like addressed before we either refer or vote on this then the question is do you want a motion that we just approve or do you want a motion to refer I'm open Mandy Joe um I don't believe we have a prepared motion to approve tonight and it would also require suspension of the rules and it's really hard to go without written pre-written motions I would recommend if we don't want to refer that we put this on the agenda for June 1 as a second reading and and do it then with an actual written motion for us to consider would you like to see it on the agenda with additional presentation by the people who are proposing the project personally I I wouldn't need that is there anybody on the council please raise your hand shall any yeah I don't believe there's a need to do that I think every time we do that it adds more cost to the people and so if you don't have specific questions we shouldn't expect that Dorothy well I think if we're not going to refer to the committees which is what we had said to do and then we bring it to the town council and we haven't had some discussion that we may be opening ourselves up for something but I think that we could have a brief report from Dave Zomick said that and Chris Brestrup would be able to tell us the basic facts of this project what is new what is different and I think that could be very brief report and that we could vote in a more informed manner as a group Darcy oh I'm sorry Alyssa you're next no problem I like the way this is this is seems to be running which is that we could have that basic presentation on our town council June 1st agenda so that everybody kind of felt like any questions they had either that they've already developed this weekend or you know that they develop over the next week or so they could get to the town manager they could have those answered if not ahead of time on June 1st certainly at June 1st and then we could just vote it's just not something I'm seeing that TSO is going to bring an additional level of review too at this point it feels like a full-town council thing okay Darcy so this this is part of the TSO's charge and if we do this in this particular case that will presumably set a precedent that we just do that in all public way applications so is that is that what we want to do I I don't have any particular opinion about it but that is in the charge of the TSO and Darcy it's in the charge of TSO upon referral so if the council feels that it's not complicated um if the council feels comfortable voting on it with a brief presentation at the council then they choose then not to refer and what I'm hearing from people is that a brief presentation at our meeting on June 1st may lead to a vote of the council to just go ahead and approve and therefore there would not need to be a referral is that precedent setting not necessarily it seems to me that it is I'm a little bit worried that this is just going to be a streamlining process for or getting public way requests approved quickly uh and not really looked at carefully but like I said I I I don't really you know I'm not invested in having these come to the TSO but I think that might have been the original intent when the charge was put put together charge I think that it would be wise for us to to have some kind of presentation and hear from the engineer and from Dave Zomek briefly but thoroughly I'm sure they'll do a good job and at that point if questions or problems arise um the council could decide appropriately to refer it and TSO would be where it would go so I'm comfortable with where we're headed I don't see this as a necessarily a precedent setting act um the council can choose to refer or not refer that's its prerogative and as long as we get a presentation um which we will um once we hear it and questions can be raised um we can then make a decision okay Pat um given who the 13 of us are there's no way that this would set a precedent um this is a um one of the most simple changes to the public way and given what that corner is like and the potential of of tax and money from this building the the kinds of um space and will bring to the community in terms of housing um is is phenomenal and but I I wouldn't feel like that if um it didn't feel like there was kind of a cleanness or simplicity to this so I don't think it's going to set a precedent particularly for the group of us unless I hear otherwise I'm going to move that I'm going to place this on the June 1st agenda there will be a brief presentation uh that we hope addresses the questions of the council and at that point we will either vote to approve or vote to refer okay all right given that we're moving on to the next discussion which is the amendment to the town council rules of procedure rule 4.2 and uh proposed rule 4.6 starting the addition of consent agenda to the first um to the uh council rules of procedure this is the first reading there is no vote and George I believe you're the person that's introducing this. Thank you Lynn um there's not a lot to say you there is a an overhead that goes with this if we want to put it up and maybe there's also a brief report about it in the um GOL report the committee unanimously voted to recommend these changes and this addition to the rules of procedure um we felt that um this kind of consent agenda item hold on that's not it it's 7e is my my note no that's not it that's it thanks thank you so um essentially inserting as item 5 consent agenda and then adding the language in 4.6 describing the consent agenda explaining um its function and giving examples of its use and also of its misuse so again we voted unanimously unanimously that the council approve these uh these changes and additions again this is first reading uh are there comments at this time okay seeing none this will also be on the June 1st agenda um we're now going to go to the community activity form this is the second reading Evan this is you yeah so last time when we got to this it was pretty late and so I didn't really give any explanation introduction um it's late again um but I think it will always be late when we get to this so I'm going to um give a little bit of background on this so um Oka over the past year and a half or so um in dealing with appointments has worked probably most intimately with the community activity forms um and what we recognized was that they're not super useful um there's a lot of variation in how people fill them out and what they fill out and if they fill it out um and so one of the things Oka turned its attention to starting back in September 2019 was potential revisions to the CAS that make make them more useful um at the same time we had an ongoing debate over whether we would want to both in Oka but also on the council over whether to treat CAS as public records or personnel documents um and what the implications were for both transparency and privacy and so Oka had been working through these two sort of separate issues of uh separate but related issues I should say um about how to better extract the information we're looking for from applicants while also figuring out um how we can how we can come to some type of resolution about this debate over public record versus personnel documents at the same time I as as chair having dealt with this also recognized sort of a third challenge with the CAS and that was under the current Oka process that was or under the Oka process that was adopted in December on December 9th um we required people who were members of a committee and were applying for reappointment to submit a new CAS but we did not require people who had applied but didn't receive an appointment um and were still interested to submit another CAS but we also didn't tell them they didn't have to and so it created a little bit of confusion with the public about well when do I need to submit a CAS I submitted one six months ago but now there's a new vacancy do I submit a new one uh and so what started happening is um we were getting multiple CAS from some candidates in fact I think um there's there's one applicant who in the past two years has submitted five different CAS to the planning board um and then there were other applicants who would just submit one and it was starting to get a little messy and a little cluttered and so we also felt like we needed to deal or I shouldn't say speak for the whole committee I felt as though we needed to sort of come to some resolution with that is it provides some clarity to the public about when they need to submit a CAS and when they don't need to submit a CAS so we've been debating this and having uh I would say some trouble coming to uh solutions for for the first two of those and then we went through we being the council the school committee vacancy and what we recognized on OCA or at least many of us recognized on OCA was that the statements of interest that we got from the candidates for the school committee were so much more useful so much more informative um than anything we have ever really seen on a CAS and so what what I what was um what we acted upon and what we did to amend our OCA process in response to this was essentially um to move to more of a statement of interest situation and so briefly what OCA is doing now and what are what our thoughts are on this and require some council action on the CAS is CAS exists as a way for someone to express their interest and that's it it's contact information and demographic information so we can look at diversity statistics but it's really just them saying hey I'm interested and if you submit a CAS within the past three years you don't need to submit a new one we know you're interested because right now the processes uh when we go to make an appointment I as chair have been contacting everyone over the past two years who submitted a CAS and saying are you still interested that would continue it would just be over the past three years and we wouldn't require them to submit a brand new CAS then once we decide that we're ready to move forward with a vacancy we'd go back and we'd ask all those people who have submitted CAS over the past three years hey are you still interested and if they were um then we'd say great we'd schedule the interview and then we would ask them to submit a statement of interest to us that would very much follow what we did for the school committee vacancy the benefit for this and what we didn't necessarily experience with the school committee vacancy is part of the process that OCA adopted is that we would um have adopted the selection guidance for that vacancy in advance of asking for the statement of interest and we would send them that selection guidance when we ask for the statement of interest and so they would be able to write the statement of interest knowing what are the skills attributes experiences characteristics traits that we're actually looking for in an appointment and I think that's one of the ways that we would get better information from applicants than just a CAF where it just says you know what are your skills we would actually say much like when you apply for a job and you have a job description this is what they're looking for we'd say here's our selection guidance here's what's guiding our decision and then they could specifically write their statement of interest in response to that um you know to some extent I was thinking back to when we were doing the school committee uh they can see and Kathy said um during one of the meetings I'm really looking for someone with some budgetary experience because we're facing some tough budgetary times that's something that would have been worked into selection guidance and then they could write their statement of interest directly in response to something that was said so we have that information going in so this is the OCA OCA has adopted this process of selection of statements of interest and we're going to be implementing it with the planning board appointments slash reappointments that are coming up what we need from the council um is to fully implement this require some changes to the CAF and while the OCA process to come to a recommendation is an internal OCA process the CAF is owned by the council itself and so what we're asking the council to do and you'll see it on your screen is to amend the community activity forms and there's essentially three major changes one is to get rid of all of the questions on the CAF except for those that have to do with contact information demographic information and also the question of how to do here about this the second thing is to add some language to provide more information to the public what we've recognized in which which I can speak to from having talked to the public is there's still a lot of confusion over our processes which makes sense they're always changing at scenes um but also there's been people who've said I submit a CAF and I don't know what happens next or I submit it and then then what and so we added some text to the CAF that essentially clarifies what the process looks like and what happens after they submit a CAF and all of this is just meant to provide some public the public some clarity and then the final thing which says that the very bottom is striking that the CAF so I kept on file for two years and replacing it with three years and that is just to line up with the length of a of a term and so OCA is implementing its new process um but we're asking that the council make these changes to the CAF since the CAF is a council forum and with that I'd be happy to field any questions I just want to clarify that this is CAFs that only come to the council CAFs that the town manager receives that's correct this is only for the planning board the zoning board of appeals and the finance committee right Darcy yeah um am I on mute no um I spoke at the last meeting and I'm hoping that this is not considered the second the last reading and the last discussion about this because we had we had our first discussion cut very short um and didn't really have a chance to talk about it the last time so um in any event I propose that we keep the current CAF application form with its current content questions in addition to whatever else we decide to do and this isn't something that I argued for in OCA my my reasons have evolved over the over the days and weeks but um to my knowledge no one at least in the town council has attempted to improve our CAF system as far as people responding to it we haven't really tried to think of ways to get people to fill out the form or to think of how the form could be required and uh if it's if it's um um if that's the problem we didn't we haven't tried to fix that problem so I think not only is the CAF process valuable but the content in the forms is also so if the SOI process is used um I believe it should be not instead of the CAFs but in addition to filling them out in full um we we need the information on the CAFs at the outset so we we need to know what experience training or interests each person has we need to find out what committees they're currently on or served in the past and for how long that's extremely relevant and important and I'll give an example of how the proposed process doesn't work it we could have three new people apply for the planning board and the CAF form would only tell their name and their demographics so when we get to the part of the process when we're determining the sufficiency of the pool we won't have any information to tell whether the pool is sufficient because the forms won't tell us anything substantively about those people so the bottom line is that we're looking at the CAFs because there was a move to look at whether we need to make them more available to the public as they do in Northampton a while back OCA voted on whether to create a different CAF process for the town council from that used by the town manager appointments which I supported even though at the time it seemed like uh unnecessary rearranging of the deck chairs because I thought it was a sign that we were moving toward being more transparent but this proposed process does not do that and I urge counselors even if you like the idea of suys to keep the current CAF and and I feel that it needs to add a sentence and a checkbox that would inform applicants that the application will be deemed a public document which is what they have on the Northampton form so we need information on the CAF we need it so that sitting counselors and hopefully the public can serve as a check on the person in charge of assembling the pool that was the argument that I made last week um so I urge you to keep the existing form with the content even if you also want a statement of interest not dangerous um yes um I'd like a couple of Claire I have a couple of questions I'd like to help me think through this right now the all council members get the CAFs um but um is that going to continue to happen uh or is it going back to it's a private pool I am also feeling very much I've wanted from the very beginning for CAFs to be public records I don't believe that they're personnel records I and um so I really would like to see them be public um and since an SOI carries so much more information why are we saying that it's okay that that's a public document um when the the boiled down the uh CAF is only going to be name address and yeah I'm interested in these committees is that going to be made public what what are we actually trying to do here around transparency um I I guess I'm stumbling there a little bit but if I have another question I'll ask it but I'd love to hear some responses from Evan or anyone on the committee I guess Evan please go forward yeah of course um so the first question which was would the CAF continue to be distributed to all councillors and the answer is is yes um so right now when an applicant hits submit on the CAF uh the email address that the submission goes to is town council at amersonna.gov so that that wouldn't change nothing that we're proposing changes that so the moment someone hits submit you would know that they have applied uh what we saw with regard to the second question what we saw is that there had been this debate over personnel versus public record and we've been going back and forth and and I think there's strong opinions on both sides and and this sort of felt like um a a bit of a compromise proposal to me at least I'll speak for myself and the reason is um when someone applies and their contact information their demographic information um which they might want to keep private all of that would be maintained as a personnel record right um but the actual reasons they're interested in a committee what they feel like they bring to a committee well that's the stuff that we sort of feel like the public's actually interested in and that would be part of the statement of interest and that would be posted publicly and I should say because they're referencing Northampton this would actually make our process more transparent than Northamptons so right now for Northampton um their CAFs are public documents but the only ones that are publicly posted are the people who are being recommended to appointment so it's not everyone who applies it's those who are being recommended to appointment this would make the SOIs of everyone who has applied and is interviewing a public uh something that would be posted publicly um and easily more easily accessible than any of the documents in Northampton so the only thing that's different is that the person's contact information and demographic information would be held as a personnel record but the stuff about what people might care about or what I think are what people care about because I don't think you know people care about how old someone is necessarily um it would be available as the SOI uh uh listen avoid not repeating anything anybody else already said I just want to make a couple of points in terms of why we continue to want people to fill out CAFs at all and the reason we do that of course is so that we develop a pool and we want to make sure we're doing that always and so we do not want to wait for people to depend on when we make the vacancy notice that we're required to make we want somebody to say hey they were talking about ZBA what's the ZBA I'll ask somebody I'm going to put it in application even though they might not be appointing anybody else to the ZBA for another six months we want them to go ahead and get that information to sort of strike while the iron is hot kind of thing what we don't want is we don't want them to try and fill out the equivalent of a statement of interest when we don't know at that point what we're going to need in those future ZBA members and that's why the report that that Evan wrote reflected how we talked about how all this process comes together we want to make sure that we are encouraging people to apply whenever we are not discouraging them from applying by the fact that we're going to just publish their name because they happen to put in an application for the ZBA in July when there weren't any openings but we will be publishing their statement of interest when the time comes and that will have all that really valuable information in it I also am trying really hard not to take offense at the idea that this concept that maybe no one on the town council has ever tried to improve the CAF having served 12 years on the select board we made a lot of attempts to approve the CAF and it turns out you can't make people fill things out as it turns out also though as we saw with the statement of interest and as we've seen in other search room stances with statements of interest when you give people clear information they find things to write about right now we have people who are filling out CAFs who aren't mentioning the current town committees that they're serving on it's false information it's misinformation we avoid that by moving to this two-part process and we don't lose anything Kathy I do under I have been listening to the back and forth and I guess you know when I think of the CAFs which clearly are filled out as everyone has said unevenly I do think if we if someone is willing to at least say a few sentences on what they've done in the past in town if they've done anything why they might be interested or someone what their experience is the simple things this pool we've got is also a recruitment pool that you can say oh these people are pretty interesting let's go out and say there's a new opening coming up with it's a database and if we strip it of those kinds of questions we have almost nothing to go by so you will get some people and I also feel like this notion that somehow you're repetitively filling out a form we must be able to work with it to do it in a way where you have a little box at the bottom and say download this form if you want to and also would you like this resubmitted if an opening opens up you click and it becomes automated the way you know like you you automatically renew your magazine prescription or something it's just a box you click it and the computer regenerates that application when the other slot opens up but but stripping it of information doesn't seem helpful to me on the other hand I love it when we actually in the active interview people do want it this position this to get them to do a statement of interest and that's not extra work then because the CAF has the barest minimum and now it's this is the position that's opened up so I'm going to write an essay about why I want this position because some people are checking planning boards owning boards several different things but it's just useful to know and otherwise we're going by name recognition you don't go back in the pool so I would keep the minimal information in the CAF Northy yeah okay so I print things out and it's been a real waste of paper printing out these CAFs because there's been nothing on them lately so I in my mind I said okay CF is really like a pre-registration of it where you get yourself on a list and you don't necessarily have to keep all these five pages of paper if they don't have anything on them except their name and their contact information and demographics but that's a list that's useful and you have a date when it was filed that says I'm interested send me information and guidance for the SOI when something comes up so I think that the SOI is the document that we want I would increase the period from one week we would get all of them to 10 days because the at this moment it's only when we get the SOIs we have any idea who these people are who are applying and whether we feel that we should kind of beat the bushes or tell a friend or say you know you should apply while there's still time there is a way to get people to put more information on a CAF however you this is we do it all the time you put an asterisk and it says and particularly the thing is online it says the answers to these are required and if you fill it out online it won't let you go until you do that there things really have changed from pen and pencil so I think there's a lot of good a lot of work has been gone going on in this committee and I think that we will be able to reach a good understanding very soon but I do hope that we keep it as transparent as possible and so I'm very happy to know that the SOIs are in fact public documents that's it. Can I add one thing? Yes I'm sorry go ahead Evan. So I just wanted to say because I think Dorothy's point about add an asterisks so right now there actually is an asterisk on the first two questions on the SOI I wish to serve on this committee and I have the following skills so they are required to do that. The problem is to comply with that all you need to do is write a couple of words and OCA had discussed over the several months options of having a required minimum word count also required maximum word count and it just started to get kind of slapping confusing and then again when we got to the school committee vacancy and saw the utility of those SOIs we went oh this is just so much better than anything we get on the SOIs and so it just seemed like there's a better way to get that information. Okay Darcy. So we we that OCA adopted a process whereby the SOIs are required to be submitted so there was there is really no reason why we couldn't couldn't adopt a process where CAFs are required to be filled out so that I don't understand anyway the question was asked whether CAFs still go to all counselors new CAFs go to counselors but all applicants CAFs don't go to counselors because if they if they applied up to three years ago they under the new process don't have to file a new application so the sitting counselors won't know that those people applied. Also on the issue of North Hampton whether North Hampton or Amherst are more is more transparent North Ham we have set up a process the proposed process now that where the public and counselors for the first time see planning board applicants one week before the interviews in North Hampton they're published long before that they get published on a link at the at a um town council meeting before they're referred to their city services committee and that is probably somewhere about about three weeks before they would be interviewed so there's a big stretch of time where the public and the the rest of the town council knows who who is applied and their CAFs are right there on the website so everybody can see them including the public um so um they are more transparent than we are and I hope that we consider that when we're deciding when we're when we're ultimately looking at the motion and deciding what we want to do because we can continue to have our CAFs get them filled out have the information there in addition to whatever other process we want to do later on indica thank you um i'm going to support the amendment to these CAFs um um we have heard for a while and we've seen on our own with the ones that have been sent to us that the information that is seeking to be deleted from them is not always helpful to us because some people fill it out some people don't some people are much more extensive some people are a lot less extensive and if we continue to allow that information to be submitted in addition to requiring a statement of interest some people who submit it earlier might prejudice the thinking of individuals before we see all the statement of interests based on who has more knowledge of whether to put that information on a CAF number one number two we are seeking appointments to three very different committees um zba planning board finance committee that require or seek many different skills and if someone is interested in finance and planning board and zoning board of appeals or two of those three to write why am i interested in these committees for two completely different committees on a CAF is very hard and i say that with experience when before i was involved in the charter commission and before i was involved on the council i myself filled out a CAF for probably about five or six different committees in town that were totally different and i had no idea how to fill out that what experience relevant experience do you bring because for each committee i brought different relevant experience and it felt very onerous to try and set it all forth in one response for different committees because i had no idea which one i might actually be considered for and that's essentially by keeping these questions on there without any guiding principles as to what committee we're actually going to interview them for um makes it really hard to fill them out and so given that i support removing those items from the community activity form um to respond to Darcy's point about well we only get on when we're active counselors whether this is good for two years or three years or one year there's always going to be a possibility that the active counselors don't actually see in real time all the community activity forms because you become a counselor on January fifth 2022 say someone who applied in December of 2021 their CAF is still valid come June when we're seeking to appoint planning board finance and zoning but if you're a new counselor in January you won't have received that email in December even though it's less than eight months old and so so to me that is not a reason to say we can't extend this to three years or we're less transparent because that's going to always be a possibility unless we go to we don't accept them unless we're actually having an opening and that i think defeats the purpose that elissa said of we want to get people when they see something and get interested and catch them while they're hot did lin just leave the meeting that's right a blamer i'm gonna try and reconnect her as vice president i'll wait for her for a couple minutes i know it's past my bedtime she's trying to reconnect now she's just lost connectivity okay i'm waiting for dinner you haven't eaten yet no he bob has been holding the london broil you know yeah i don't like to eat before town council meeting they go on too long they're very demanding and eating dinner makes me relax and sleepy so i do not eat before the town council meeting um i mean you know staying awake is it's a it's a challenge sometimes but we're doing it do we have an update athena lin is rebooting well rebooted yes i i will take over until she's rebooted so we don't wait who knows how long it might take her for that um evan i think you're next on the list yeah so i just wanted to to provide make sure we're all on the same page and provide a little bit of clarification um because the the there was a statement made that suggested that the change the amendment to okas process um made it so that people don't have to submit a new community activity form um when they are interested in a in a vacancy and that's actually not true the process that we've been using actually didn't require people to submit a new community activity form every time they were applying and so the question of will you know the idea that we are only getting these ones forwarded to us post october 2019 um that actually doesn't change between the two processes because it's always been sort of the same way um and that we go back and we ask people but uh seeing also that it's getting late um i also wanted to just put a motion on the floor um so i moved to amend the current community activity form for town council appointed bodies to reflect the amendments shown at the end of the okah committee report dated 429 2020 for 5 4 2020 town council meeting referenced as community activity form proposed revision 427 this is the second motion i have heard a motion and the second there is still at least one hand that is raised so darcy yeah i just had my hand up from before but i just um is this a time to move to amend this would be the time to move to amend if you seek to amend yes okay so i moved to amend the motion to add this sentence to the the current caf forms once this form is submitted it becomes a public document if there is information you do not want open to the public please do not include it on this form afina were you able to catch that during the reading i'm sorry i've got lin on and i i got some of the words darcy can you read that again yes i moved to amend the motion to add this sentence to our caf forms to the town council caf forms once this form is submitted it becomes a public document if there is any if there is information you do not want open to the public please do not include it on this form this is this is by the way the statement on the north hampton so so that sentence afina were you able to get that yeah okay is there a second to darcy's motion i seconded so dorthy pam has seconded it before i take comments on that i want to clarify the motion and this is a motion to since it's a motion to amend the current motion on the table that means that you are seeking to add that sentence to the form that is being presented as amended is that correct darcy um i said to our current caf form so that is not a motion to amend the the motion that was originally on the table then yeah it is it's amended to to um the motion on the table is to amend the current activity form as shown in the okah report right and so why can i not amend that to so you you could amend that but the motion you made was to was to amend the motion on the table to add a sentence that's why i was clarifying so your motion was to add a sentence to the activity form that was was presented in the okah report not the current activity form so that's why i was asking for clarification your you wanted to actually amend the motion to reject the current the amendment shown in the okah report and instead amend the current community activity form with that sentence yes correct so that's a different motion um thank you i would have to withdraw my second because i i thought she was amending the amendment the and the amendment changes the current activity form so you would to to add that sentence you would say i want to add the sentence to the proposed amended form or language of that sort which is not that that's not saying you're amending the original form because they're not talking about the original form anymore they're talking about the amended form no but mandi joe just changed it so that it would be amending the original form no i haven't actually changed the motion yet i was clarifying what you were seeking to do because what you were seeking to do was not actually what you moved to do okay well i i would like to change it to the rejecting the motion language okay so i'm sorry to interrupt lin is joined she's on the phone she's on the phone excellent so there's been a cool in welcome back when i took over running the meeting um i'll update you on where we are and you can decide whether i should continue until we get through this portion or not because i think you're going to be confused um i'm watching where you are and i think you should continue to get through this portion okay are you up to date on where we are yes okay so darcy um in order for your motion to be what you want it to be it would need to be i move to um you would actually want to defeat the current motion and then submit a new motion if that motion is defeated i think is what you would need to argue that's correct yes yes so we will um darcy has withdrawn her second because it was misunderstood how the motion was as chair i'm going to rule that the motion is out of order because it is not seeking to amend the motion on the floor um it is seeking a different motion um but okay well why don't see what what i'm going to tell you what what you should be advocating for is a a vote no on the current motion if you like what i said what i just said and then i will make that motion it so what your argument would be is to ask the councillors to vote no on the current motion so that you may make the motion you just tried to make to amend the current CAF as you just that's what you would want to argue to the councillors to do what you want to do so i will leave the floor up to you for now and then i'll recognize elissa um i think that i'll just um okay i'll with i'll withdraw that motion do you want to make any more statements darcy before i recognize elissa well i urge people to reject the uh motion on the table elissa pass no longer need to be recognized thank you for playing moderator for us mandy joe that was very helpful you're welcome darcy okay um i move to amend the emotion to amend that those words that darcy received repeated and that athena wrote down be added to the new amended CAF i'm just putting this out there athena do you still have those that sentence yes i do do i hear a second to dorthy's motion i'll say that is uh darcy was that a second to you yes is there any conversation on the new motion to amend which is in order it would add that sentence to the amended CAF to the proposed amended to the proposed amendments to the CAF capi okay i i have a question as i'm looking at the text um on this abbreviated calf um when it says when the town council is ready to make an appointment council will reach out to confirm your interest and schedule an interview would if we're if we're intending of always getting a statement of interest would we want to tell people there that at that point we'll ask a statement of interest for the specific position so just you know i'm i want to signal that you know you're not just going to walk in so it's it so i'm not talking about amending the whole thing but it's this prologue note there may be a lag between da da da and when you're contacted but but that something else is going to happen this isn't the only thing we're going to know about you because now you've just literally put checked a box and given me your name right as would do you like to respond to that yeah so i i i don't have strong feelings either way on catholic suggestion i think um when i uh because i i wrote this language i was just trying to give them what the next step was instead of sort of outlining the whole process one of the thing so we could add that um we could not i think again my intention was just here's what happens next as opposed to like here's the full thing forward one of the things that okah is working on and will be the part of the focus of the next meeting and we'll send to the council is sort of a whole document that describes everything okah does and has done and one of the pieces in that is actually an FAQ for the public that's like so you want to serve on a committee here are all the steps um and so our hope i think my hope is that we will pass that and that will also be um available in a bunch of different places and so um i don't have strong feelings on that link on your suggestion either way i think we could do it i think the other option is in the future once we've adopted that is we could also link that FAQ to this or we could send them to a web page that has that FAQ um because that gives the full it describes what the interviews look like and all of that and the only reason i ask this is what disturbs me about the current form is it's got no information in it and i would hate the thought that we go into an interview without having gotten some information so i want it's not so much that they should know the next hoop but that we are assured that before we sit and listen to an interview with someone we have something on a piece of paper other than her name is Kathy and she's interested right and that's the statement of interest yeah so it's it's less all the hoops you're going to go through and more that we are going to ask you for something more before you go into the interview i want assurance that i'm going to have something to read before i hear someone be interviewed i've never interviewed anyone for anything without having something in advance so and i will say that the process that okah uh has is operating under um it requires they submit a statement of interest to be interviewed so we're gary we are assured that we would have that statement of interest um at least one week in advance of the interviews otherwise they won't be interviewed um but yeah we could also add it to this i think that would we probably want to vote on the motion on the table and then if you wanted to add an amendment to add that language we could also do that alissa so here's why we shouldn't do the things that dorthy and kathy just suggested the reason we shouldn't do what kathy just suggested is because as evan said it can be handled in the faq and we do not want to tell people on the caf that they're going to have to have a live in-person interview either because that might not be true by the time the caf is actually brought together the process we have now is an excellent process because okah has worked to death to make it an excellent process a future town council or even a future committee of the council that's doing interviews may choose to go without statements of interest and that would seem really strange to both me and kathy but that would be their choice and then of course when they brought it to town council as a recommendation i would tell them that they were dumb and that they shouldn't have brought me names if they didn't have that sort of information before they went into an interview and i'd reject their recommendations so that's how we would manage that so i don't feel like we we actually been trying to make this shorter and shorter and just give enough information to get people to the next step but we can certainly make sure we beef it up in the faq portion which we will which you know we are now handing over to other committees which hopefully will continue to use some that process without making drastic changes like removing things like the statement of interest agreed and when it comes to Dorothy's suggestion about going ahead and doing what Darcy has asked to do remembering that the only northampton cafs that actually ever publicly released without a public records request are the ones that are being recommended by the mayor which of course it doesn't work that way here in amherst we don't get the cafs from the town managers appointments and that isn't how we do it with town council appointments i would ask that we not say that public information statement there because that is unhelpful it is unhelpful for me to recruit someone to ask them to apply for zba for an opening that might occur a year from now and say that oh and by the way if any random press agent or person in the public calls and says so did bob apply they would get the answer yes bob applied or no bob didn't apply that doesn't make any sense to me in terms of improving our ability to recruit people to be interested in in being in these positions so i can't see that it's helping us at all not with transparency and not with recruitment does anyone else like want to speak on the motion to amend the most the original motion seeing none we're going to move to a vote on the motion to amend athena can you read the motion to amend not exactly can you read the sentence yes go ahead and read the sentence and then we'll clarify what that would do i'm sorry i'm trying to get two windows in the same to amend the new cf form to include a statement saying once this form is submitted it becomes a public document if there is any information you do not want released to the public please do not include it on this form does everyone know what they're voting on if not raise your hand we're going to move to a motion we're going to move to the vote on the motion to add that sentence into the proposed changes we're going to start i think with well we're going to start with evan i don't know whether you were the one up to be started with but evan no george no no kathy yes steve no andy no sarah no uh shalini no alissa no pat darcy yeah lin lin is still on the phone no thank you lin mandy is a no dorothy yes the motion to amend the motion on the floor fails with two yeses and eleven nos that brings us back to the original motion on the floor which was to amend the three yes sorry three yeses i can't count three detent yeses and ten nos thank you for correcting me i didn't count correctly um it fails and so that brings us back to the motion original motion on the floor which was to amend current community activity form for town council appointed bodies to reflect the amendments shown at the end of the oca committee report dated 4 29 2020 for 5 4 2020 town council meeting referenced as community activity form proposed revision 4 27 is there any additional conversation on this motion seeing none we will move to a roll call vote on the motion we start with george yes kathy no steve yes andy yes sarah yes shalini yes alissa yes yes darcy no lin yes yes mandy is a yes dorothy i was unmuted yes and evan yes the motion to amend the caf passes i believe 11 to two with 11 in favor two against that's right okay thank you athena for confirming that means lin would you like to resume chairing the meeting are we going on to the noise we are on to the noise violation bylaw referral all right so let me let me give you background on this uh this as you recall we did a substantial revision of our bylaws at the time there were three bylaws that were referred to gl one of them was about noise violation gl has completed their report and so i'm going to call on george to discuss that report okay um thank you lin and once again this is in the gl report so if you read it you only know what i'm going to tell you but we reviewed this and we felt that the change being requested which was to delete item under a item four raised substantive issues that were beyond the purview of gl and hence we voted unanimously that we would recommend to the council that this be referred to crc and the reasons were given in the report we felt it raised a number of questions that went to substantive issues in terms of neighborhoods economic impacts and housing so that was the rationale also a number of one of the members of the body wanted this to when it did get if it does go to another committee like crc they wanted that other broader issues of noise and its impact on neighborhoods and livability be considered it wouldn't just be focused on this particular issue and a second member asked the issue if it does go to another committee not the issue of gun noise in south amherst also be addressed so this is in the report of gl and uh that's the background to uh the decision which was unanimous by the committee okay are there any questions at this time yes i have a question okay Dorothy okay um i would um not want to take out the the lawn mowers leaf blowers and snow blowers other similar i would say okay that sentence is too broad but i've had several constituents come to me over the last two years talking about the two cycle or two stroke gas engine particularly leaf bower there's two things about it one is it's extremely loud but it's also an extremely device so it's not saying that somebody can't have a leaf blower although we don't do that but it means that it can't be of the type that spews out um all of that uh it's both of the two kinds of polluting gases it the oil and the gas and it has a very very inefficient rate in california over a hundred cities have banned the two cycle or two stroke engine in fact as part of their clean air act um i guess benz and benzene is one of the things which is emitted in terms of pollution and that is very dangerous there is some bizarre speculation but i suppose that with this banning they uh they create as much pollution as the cars on the roadways in california it's a little hard to believe that that wasn't a james fallow's article which was sent to me by a constituent so i just uh i didn't totally understand um we're supposed to delete this now and then CRC will see it and look at it um perhaps that's going to be great but i just wanted to make sure that i brought up the point that the phrase that you're deleting is too broad but i do think that the two stroke or two um cycle gas engine should not be allowed because of the pollution and because of the noise so i just wanted to make that point to whomever is going to deal with it uh it says one third of the fuel is unburned and it goes out is excreted in aerosols all over the place are there any other comments no hands okay um given that there's no other comments this is the motion it's to refer the document titled unlawful noise bylaws 3.24 and the 2020-05-18 gll report to town council for a proposed revision to the general bylaws to the community resources committee with report back to the town council in 90 days is there a second mandy seconds thank you any further discussion okay then we're going to move on to the vote i'll just pick somebody i think it's george ryan to start i'm on a roll here um yes uh kathy shane yes Steve schreiber yes indy steinberg yes sarah schwarz yes shall we ball mill yes ellipso brewer yes pappy angeles yes dorsi du mont yes then grease mersey yes mandy johanneke yes dorthy pamm yes and evan ross yes 13 0 0 no absence to refer okay we're moving on to the approval of minutes and i am going to unless anybody objects i would like to defer these minutes to another meeting only because they've been taken off the consent agenda and trying to edit meeting minutes by committee at this point is useless so we will defer the approval of these minutes until june 1 any objections okay moving on um we have the town managers report you have the written report i have nothing to add to the report unless there are questions okay are there any questions i had one i rather than raise my hand just paul i saw you um we're talking about uh getting ready to have committees that haven't been meeting up and running and with it staff and zoom i got a question on when will committees like a transportation advisory committee do you have a sense of when committees will begin to be able to meet again so we're just setting up the standards now i think you know during the next month or so it depends what they have on their agenda i saw that would come in the request came from one of the members not the chair i don't think about that committee so i know that went over to gilford so i'll double check on that one in particular thank you all right i see that i commit i admitted appointments we have none committee reports community resources committee manager i will be very quick um most of it is in the report i just want to highlight a few things um we are still working on the process for the flowchart um for zoning bylaw revisions we will be sort of moving through that for some zoning bylaws that are in front of us but we will get a formal proposal to the council soon um zoning bylaw proposal is upcoming we heard of one tonight um the other one that might be coming with a hearing on potentially june 17th is um the amendment for changing the voting requirement for the voting quantum for site plan reviews in the planning board that's been discussed a little bit the planning board is discussing it and i think in two nights um master plan update is continuing um and the only other i think that's all i wanted to point out at this point read the report for the rest of the information thanks okay finance committee andy andy is there any additional finance committee for unmute andy you just remuted there's nothing to add to what was reported earlier okay um shon would you please take down the visual so that we can just see each other uh gl well it's in the packet i have nothing to add jcpc kathy the the main thing to add is that we are meeting this week we're meeting on wednesday i saw that you listed council committees lin but jcpc is technically a committee of the town and so we're meeting wednesday at 5 30 and there will be a packet with um a list of proposed capital projects that's been winnowed down to be the most urgent ones as well as a five-year plan and those should be up now along with an agenda okay ebb and outreach communications and appointments there were two reports one was dealing with the ca yet but the other one was about planning board um so just make sure you uh got to both of them but i have nothing to add beyond the report okay town services and outreach committee darcy yeah um we had a meeting this morning and um we actually had three unanimous votes um one was the farmers market one was the we had the third presentation of the wage wage theft bylaw proposal um and we um unanimously um recommended that the council um approve those that goes to next um and then we also voted on the approved the public way request for the southeast commons so we're we're um meeting again on june 1st and um actually there are a lot of things we were going to take up and now we've we've dealt with them and we're not getting the one university drive so um uh we we have about six things on our list if you look at the report okay all right moving on town council comments let me just mention that we've got three things that were on the agenda tonight that actually moved to next town next time we meet we also have the public ways for uh university drive and the southeast street public ways so the two public ways we've got a couple things on zoning we've got the lgbtq month proclamation and then we have the budget under under the budget we have the automatic referral of the one month budget to the finance committee and hopefully by then we will also have scheduled the public hearing on that one month budget as well um which we probably do for as finance committee but do as a committee of the whole uh tentatively we are holding june 8th for that um the finance committee is um also going to be recommending a one month budget back to the council but that will be for later uh and i think that's basically it for now is there any other future agenda items okay then let's go on any other council comments okay then topics not reasonably anticipated we already did that no executive session then i declare that the meeting is adjourned