 I'll call the meeting of the select board of January 22nd, 28th to order at 6.30 p.m. At this time, Mr. Walden and Ms. Brewer are not here. Mr. Walden will not be joining us this evening, and Ms. Brewer will be along shortly. So we'll start with our opening remarks, which I have none. And if anyone else does, they certainly involve announcements and agenda reviews. So we'll start with agenda review. We'll start with public comment tonight. We should only have people speak for about three minutes or so. Are there folks here for public comment? Yes. All right. So we have a couple of people for comment. We'll get to that in just a moment. Is there anything needing to be added or amended in the agenda that anyone noticed? That's our member reports. OK. All right. So first up is public comment. Who would like to go first? So Ms. Bills, if you would please just re-identify yourself at the beginning, and that's what she needs to tell us. Sure enough. Barb Bills, director of Amherst Leisure Services. And thank you for having me tonight. I wanted to speak to you a little bit about Winterfest 2018. We've had some big changes this year. I don't know how hopefully you've seen some of the advertising and press releases, articles, and so forth in the Gazette and in the bulletin. So we've expanded this year to a full eight days of activities, which has really taken us up to a different level. It's an exciting time because we're doing a lot of collaboration with local businesses and nonprofits as well as university to put together a really strong program. We have over 45 different events at least 20 different venues. So it's a pretty amazing feat for our wonderful volunteer committee who has helped spearhead this expansion. I'll just say, so we're starting on February 3rd with our kickoff. I really will have other events that day as well. But in the evening, in collaboration with the Amherst bid, we'll have what's called the Luminaria on the Amherst Common. And it will be 2,000 luminaries that will be lit as well as some other things we're hoping to have some ice sculptures, possibly snow sculptures as well. So it's going to be a great event. So that will be our showcase event for that first day. And in between there, as I said before, there is hockey games. There's skating. There are food demonstrations. You name it, all over town. And I have to thank all of the different, like I said before, the different businesses and nonprofits who have really stepped up to the plate and just said, hey, this is a great idea. Let's do something special. For a lot of them, they just decided their own event, what they were going to do. Some of them, of course, were already on the calendar. Like you'll see the UMass events and so forth. But it's just great. And then the finale event will be at Cherry Hill on the 10th, very similar to what we've had in the past with our signature activities, like the cardboard classic, the chili cookoff, where we have four or five different restaurants, which will vibe for that coveted Best Chili Award. The Best in Snow dog show, Greenfield Savings Bank will be the judges, and they're sponsoring that event. And I also just want to give a shout out to all our sponsors who are making all these events possible. So it should be a great day. Come out and enjoy all of the activities throughout the week, and hopefully, that day is well on the 10th. So if you have any questions. I do not, but do either. I was just curious, because of one other thing that's on our agenda later, briefly, but what's the event on the opening day at Simple Gift Farm? Simple Gift Farm, they are having. And I have, this is really great. This gives you an idea of the breadth and depth of the activities. This is four pages, and I can go ahead and pass these around. But that particular event is a group. I'm not really familiar with the group, and they can explain it later. But they're having basically a performance there at their place. And I understand they've asked for one day, one of them all licensed for that event. It's a stomp box trio at Simple Gift Farm. So that's an independent event that we're sort of co-advertising. It's not something that else to say is sponsoring. Correct. Well, I just wanted to say how, in reading some of the publicity and about this, learning about the week-long Winterfest that I was just impressed with how ambitious it was. And it's your first year as LSEC director. And I was like, you really want to do a whole week of Winterfest? I mean, you've done Winterfest before. But I was like, wow. But I think it's a really neat thing, because you're doing it in many venues, and you're pulling from the whole community. And that part of February is kind of a long, cold, dark part of the year. And so it gives us ways to come together as a community in that long, dark part. So I thought it looked really neat. And I wish you well as you kind of weave it all together. I appreciate that. But it really is the combined efforts of the volunteers on that committee that our community has really stepped forward to bring all this together. It's going to be a fabulous week. So exciting. Thank you. And I'll leave these on the back table unless you want them now. Well, if you give them to our clerk, he'll make sure we all get, if they're for us. I have extras, yes. You can always go to our Facebook page, which is WinterfestAmherst, or go to lsse.org. And you can download or upload whatever you want to. But all the events, the calendar is listed there in a calendar software called Timely. So are there admission charges to any events? Some of the events do have admissions. And if you click on the different events that day, it gives you more information about which are free, which there are many free events. For instance, we have an early release stay on the 7th of February 7th. So we'll be doing some free events, for sure, on those dates for the kids at Crocker Farm, although the entire community is welcome to come to that. Children are invited to that. And certainly, events of library, hikes, and so forth. All those are free. But the admissions are listed, if there are admissions, on the event calendar. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Again, I guess for people who watch our meetings on Amherst Media again, the website has a wealth of information. Yes, indeed. Thank you. Thank you. So if you want to step forward, please. And just identify yourself with the microphone. And certainly, tell us why you're here. Hi, my name is David Clooney. I'm a Precinct 3 town meeting member, and I'm also a member of the fire department. So I'm here briefly to discuss my concerns with the town manager's proposed budget for FY19, in particular with respect to the staffing recommendations for the department. Although I was pleased to see it was the top item on the town manager's list of things to restore, I just really can't express to you guys the level of concern that I have and that is shared by the members of the fire department throughout. Given that we've spent money as a community on a study, which is at least the third such study since 1981 about our staffing levels, and our minimum staffing has stayed the same for the last 25 years, but we haven't committed any money to do anything about the problem yet. I am guardedly optimistic. I did look at the projections for new growth, and I understand that as the town manager said last week that often you don't move beyond 600,000 and you're guardedly optimistic this year to move to 830, and that sounds good. Obviously, all of us are going to be looking to see what kind of money the governor releases in terms of local aid. And I am certainly inspired by the town manager's guarded optimism there as well, but I just cannot stress enough how concerned I am. Just as an example, I think a lot of people look at the way the community is structured and Travis, the consultant from the Carlson Group, addressed this, that the university isn't actually the cause of a lot of our calls. And a week ago Thursday, I think it was the 11th, I happened to be on duty, and it was just a Thursday morning. There were no students in town, and there were a bunch of ambulances out on ambulance calls, which is normal. And I responded back with my partner in A1 to a car fire that was impinging on a structure. And behind us, my captain pulled in in an engine alone, and he had just cleared from another call where he had responded because they thought they were going to require three on that particular ambulance call, and it was just luck that they didn't. And if they hadn't, then I would have been responding back with my partner to Central Station to pick up an engine to then respond to a car fire that was impinging on a structure. In this particular case, the structure had stone siding or cement block, so it was good. But over the last 25 years, we continue to address this, and there just hasn't been anything done. And so I just really would urge you I understand that there are a lot of budgetary constraints, and I understand that there are a lot of challenges that go beyond the fire department, and I appreciate all the work that all of you have done on that. But we're operating at a dangerous level here. And the consultant didn't say that, and that's understandable. He's a consultant, and he's a diplomatic person, and the fire chief isn't going to use that term either. He's the fire chief. He's here to protect the community, but all of us are concerned about the community. And the way that we're operating now just isn't safe. In 1996, we did 3,600 calls or so. This year, we did 6,900. I'm very confident that we'll break 7,000 this coming year. And you just cannot address that emergency traffic without people. So I really appreciate all the work you guys have done, and if you have any questions for myself or anyone else. Also, I know when the consultant initially presented the fire chief and the town manager and the consultant all talked about having a committee to look more deeply at the report. And I'm certainly supportive of that effort. And at that time, it was recommended that the union have a representative on that committee, but that hasn't happened yet. So hopefully, we could have a representative in the future from the union. I think it would be helpful for the community that the people were actually out there doing these calls to be represented when you look at that committee report. So please, if you have a chance, I understand there's a lot going on. Take another look at that report. Take another look at the reorganization study committee report. And I wish you the best of luck with local aid and with Governor Baker's stuff. So thank you. Thank you. Just to frame this, we don't generally, often during public comment, we just sort of take the comment. We don't respond to that. So it's not that we didn't hear you or didn't want to hear you. I understand public comment is three minutes for a reason. But we do appreciate hearing from you, and we do take it under advisement. Yeah, I mean, I've been talking about this for 17 years. So if we don't get it solved tonight, I'll understand. But we need to work on it. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else for public comment tonight? Not on an agenda item, because we have a couple of folks I know are here for agenda items. But all right, I think that's it for public comment. So we'll move on, and we'll go into our action discussion items. First one up is our fiscal year 19 water sewer rates. And we discussed these a little bit last time we met. And so I think Mr. Moren going to present a little bit for us. So if Mr. Moren would like to join us here, you're on, as it were. We're talking specifically about the water and sewer rates, which we took a look at last week, I guess. And we'll potentially take action on this week. OK, good evening. What's been proposed for the water and sewer rates is that water rates shall go to 380, and sewer rates will go to 390, which is a 4% change. The main reason the sewer rates are going up is we do have some expenses that we foresee in the future. And we just want to keep a slow increase so we can build a little reserve in our capital fund for some changes. One of the immediate upcoming projects we have is to replace the gravity belt thickener. This is what is used to take the liquid sludge and thicken it up a little bit. So we're not just shipping 100% liquid sludge to a treatment facility to be processed. That's a device which is around $1 million. So that's our first project we'll be working on. And then we have a couple other things after that. But the goal is to slowly build up the reserves with this increase and keep the reserves high for the sewer for projects we have coming. So I have a quick question. So you've been doing some sewer extension work over the last several years, some out on Harkness Road, I believe, some in the Amherst Woods area out on Wildflower and that. Can you kind of tell us where we're at? And really what I'm thinking about more is just I know there was the phase one of that proved to be a little more difficult than originally anticipated. So that extended the timeline of the project and it may have extended the price a little bit. Did that factor into this choice for the change to the rate, or has that already been incorporated in previous adjustments to our rate? That was already incorporated in previous adjustments. So where the project is, though, Harkness Road's done. All of Amherst Woods is done with the exception of installing a pump station. We've been to pump station out last month and we'll be purchasing it and installing it. Hopefully everything will be installed before the end of the summer. The new sewer lines we have to let wait a year before we let people connect to. That's our process. So the sewer pump station will be finished and everything will be all set for that section of Amherst Woods for the end of this construction season. We do have work, which will start in Station Road and we'll do some Station Road work. The only thing we have left to do after Station Road is to do the Iduna-Cortland area, those neighborhoods, and we're kind of playing around with how we want to do that section. That's all low pressure sewer, so it's not a big pipe, it's a small pipe, but that's where we are with the whole project. And as I said before, that was covered in the increases and the rates before. Other questions? Yes. A couple of weeks ago, maybe more than a month ago now, we had a presentation about some possible future water supply projects. And I see that right now you're not asking for a change of rate for the water, but I'm wondering, does that mean when we get to those projects we will not have built up our reserve adequately? So you speak about building up the sewer reserve for future anticipated costs, and I saw a couple of things on that list that seemed like they would potentially be a very high priority, and I'm wondering would now be the time to consider the water rate. So in reference or in comparison to the two changes, the improvements we need to make of the wastewater plant and what we're proposing for the water side, the water side changes and water side costs are a lot less. So we haven't fully figured out all the costs on the wastewater side, but we're looking at a substantially larger number than the water side. So right now the water rates are appropriate for what we plan to do. There will be some changes as time goes on. We do not know what our permit for water is going to give us as far as requirements from the state, what we have to change. But as far as the actual capital projects, the additional possible well in the north and the town, and then working on some other things at Centennial, those things will probably fit well in the existing rate structure with small increases, not large increases. So it was a very interesting discussion. We had where you presented a couple of alternatives about water, and you did mention that you wanted to wait till we were through this permitting process before we dove any deeper. But I'm wondering what you anticipate in terms of that coming back around and us having a more substantial conversation about what of those options we would be pursuing vis-a-vis water. So I think when we talked about, we said we were already starting to do taking care of baby carriage and making baby carriage a little more user friendly is a good word for it. We're working on automating baby carriage or working with someone at this point to do that, putting together the scope of work for the being the project. We've already put a generator in at baby carriage to improve, or we purchased the generator. We have to install it. And then we're going to purchase a generator for the well for, which actually is part of the baby carriage system. So that system we've already started working on, and we're starting to upgrade that. And then we're doing some smaller repairs at Centennial and at Atkins as well. All within the money, we allow K for capital planning. So those are already going on. The bigger changes will be if we actually do a full upgrade to Centennial. And then if we do purchase land for the well in the north end of town, and we actually install the well. Installation of the well and connecting the well is a much more costly process than just purchasing the land. And that will be something that will be something that is driven more by the permitting than anything else because there will be some changes in our facilities and what we have and what we don't have. So that's an estimated timeline for coming back and looking at that. Probably in the next budget cycle, we'll talk a little more about it. It'll probably, the way we're looking at it is we need to find a piece of property first. And once we find the piece of property, then we can then start figuring out what we need to do for the site. We'll do some testing on the site. We'll do pump testing. We'll do water quality testing. We need to know whether the water has iron and manganese or any other issue that has to be treated. Then we can start playing around and developing a treatment process for the site. So a couple of years and doing that and then we'll probably be coming to you. So maybe three years out once we start. When is the permit from the state due to be renewed? We've already submitted our renewal application. We're waiting from the state. They just, whenever they're ready, they'll tell you. Yes. Other questions for, yes? Yeah, I noticed when I was looking at the material presented on January 5th that included historical data that when you look back, water rates were always higher than sewer rates and rated per 100 cubic feet. And, but they've been creeping towards each other. The sewer relative to the water has just, and now we're actually at the point where it's gonna be greater. And I was wondering if that is the experience in other communities and what trends other than what you've already reported might be contributing to that? Well, we've actually, when I first started here, the water and sewer rate were actually the same. So they separated a little bit and now they're coming back together. And I think what for us has been the driving forces, whatever capital projects we have going on and that drives the more of that difference in rate as the more than anything else. Different communities will have different rates sometimes. Some communities will have the exact same rate. So across the state it's different as well. So, but as Amherst, we've kept them within, within probably, I mean, they've always been within 50, 60 cents of each other. Are there questions from the board? If not, I would entertain a motion for the change in the water and sewer rate or the water to set the water and sewer rates, I should say. Okay, I move that the select board acting as the water and sewer commission is prescribed by the Amherst Town Government Act hereby maintain the water rate at $3.80 per 100 cubic feet and increase the sewer rate from $3.75 per 100 cubic feet to $3.97 per 100 cubic feet effective July 12th. 2018, there's a second. So it was $3.80 and $3.90, correct? Is there further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? That would be unanimous, one person absent. All right, so next on our list, again with Mr. Warren here, is we've talked a little bit about over the past few months about a secondary water meter for agricultural use if you share with us a little bit, that would be great. So you have the memo we sent out earlier. Roughly we found there was probably 12 farms in the entire town. We got that list from the agricultural commission and the planning department. They have a list actually on their website of listing the farms on it. Based on that, there's about five farms in the area that actually are in areas where they're sewer. So there's only probably five farms that would be affected by this change, but if we make the change, we would standardize it for everyone and bring it into compliance so that they're all the same and we two are all the same. So the proposal before you is that we just don't charge a sewer fee to anybody who is using the water for agricultural reasons. And agricultural reasons we mean to be raising a crop that's consumed and raising animals that are for raising animals. I won't say for consumption, because some people don't. It was for an agricultural purpose of raising animals and foods. So it's done differently in different places. We found it's kind of varied depending on where you were. The minimum we found was that people just charge you the flat water rate because you are using water that's been treated to potable standards and you're using it for the crops, which could be used for human consumption instead. So that's why our proposal is, is that we do not charge the sewer rate. We do make them install a separate line that goes to the agricultural use. There's a backflow on the separate line and that has to be properly inspected yearly in accordance with the state laws. That's basically it. If there's any questions. So just one quick question regarding the backflow. It's a regulatory requirement of the state anyway, or is it just ours? It's that we're required by the state to enforce backflow rules. And if you're not using it for residential and it's not got residential uses, there has to be additional protections that have to be installed. Okay, great. That's what I wanted to be. I was thinking that was my understanding of it as well, but I just want to make sure of that. Mr. Bogum, do you have anything you wanted to add about? No, this is an item that had come to your attention by a member of the public and you had asked us to look into it. And so this is the recommendation. If you say, yes, we want to do this, we would come back to you with actual language and parameters in terms of defining what defines an agricultural use, what are the requirements for tying into the system or separating the system and trying to quantify some of those expenses so people would understand what the options are for them because a lot of people might say, well, I'm looking at putting in a well, I'd like to compare that to having a separately metered use for my agricultural use. I think the purpose of it, and I'd like to make sure we're on the same page on what the purpose is, our understanding is that the purpose is to encourage agricultural farming specifically, but also livestock in the town of Amherst and that's sort of the reason that we would do this. It really is focused on agricultural uses and I'll just make sure that we're on the same page on that. Questions or comments from the board? Yeah, go ahead. Well, we've talked about this for a while and I'm really pleased to see it before us. I guess we're not gonna be actually voting anything, but it's something I strongly support. And I think Mr. Buckleman's clarification is important. It's not just all uses that don't take water out and then put it in the sewer system, it's specifically agricultural uses that don't use sewer because there are other things people talked about their swimming pools or whatever where you could also make an argument, hey, charging me sewer rape or I'm watering my lawn a lot. We're not talking about those uses, albeit they may not be also entering the sewer system, but this is in recognition of the cost burden on agricultural users and wanting to promote as much active farming in our community as we can. So I'm hoping soon we'll be able to actually have that additional information so we could get this on the books. Mr. Steinberg? Yeah, I was pretty much gonna say the same thing. I also firmly believe as I look over at the town seal on the wall over there behind Mr. Merzbach and that has a book and a plow, and I think that the plow is there for a purpose that we have a tradition of agricultural being a part of the tradition of this community. And we have a lot of land that we have tried to encourage into remaining in agriculture through the incentive program. And I very much want to try and find a resolution that economically makes it more viable for farmers to succeed in what we're hoping that they can do. Mr. Brewer? So in addition to that on a different note, I wanna express some confusion. One, we had received back on the eighth, our standard water and sewer rates memo, which we got another copy of tonight. And there's a sentence tacked on to the second last sentence before the recommended motion that says an authorized implementation of a policy for use of agricultural irrigation meters, which is not discussed anywhere else in this memo and was not on our motion sheet for tonight. And tonight, I don't understand, I don't have any idea why this, what we just did was an agenda item tonight because we said the same things before. We still don't have any language. I don't understand what we just accomplished by posting this for the public to come in where we didn't get any additional information. We didn't get a repeat of what we'd gotten before. So were we expecting that the public would come in and remind us how important this is? Were we expecting that we were gonna get some things on the desk tonight, which is what I had assumed since it wasn't in the packet. Not that I need us to repeat things, but if we're getting to authorization of implementation of a policy, we still don't have anything and nothing has changed since the last time we discussed this to my knowledge. So I'm just confused about where we're at. I think that when we set the agenda, we were thinking there might be an opportunity to gather together that framing language around articulating agricultural use in advance of the meeting tonight, and that didn't happen. Which we would have hoped it had, but we didn't. It was an optimistic agenda item. It had, we would. Right, I was hopeful for language that we could vote on as well, but it wasn't such that we could. But it does, and we do get the opportunity to articulate clearly that this is a discussion about agricultural use and sort of try to articulate that a little bit, even though we have formally sort of dug out the language potentially from like state law or our own bylaws, because we've taken action at town meeting around defining farms for farm stand use and things like that. So we'll do diligence there that will hopefully be such that we can get it articulated and hopefully when we meet again, it'll be ready to go and ready to vote on it. We won't have to drag Mr. Moring out again. We might have some people here to speak to us. So I do agree with you that. Is there anyone, thank you. Is there anyone from the public that wants to comment on this at all, or are you, you certainly can. If you do, I would love for you to come forward to the mic so that we pick it up on the audio. So feel free to. It has comments too. Nice. Bring them up. I'll steal the phone. Just make sure I identify yourself for the audience at home, please. Ronnie Wagner, Veronica Wagner from Northeast Street on the farms, one of the farms there. So a couple of questions that have come about, obviously the language hasn't been developed yet. Who would be responsible for actually developing that language to present to you? Don't think we want to take that. So we've been working with the assistant town manager has drafted up some language that came in late this afternoon and would review that with the superintendent public works and we'll put that together in actual policy for the select board to respond to. Okay, next question. As far as the cost of the secondary meters, would that burden be falling on the actual property owner or would that be assumed by the town? I believe all the costs would be incurred by the property owner if this is something, a path you want to choose to follow. Okay, as a question from the exemption as we've identified services not rendered with the sewer charges up to this point, which you guys have heard probably too many times to hear again, with the fees, because we've isolated the issue at hand, how is it fair to then push the reconciliation fees onto the property owner again? Does that make sense? Right, I'm not sure I understand what reconciliation fees means. Basically the cost of installing the additional meter. By seriously, yeah. Like to actually fix the solution, why is it then the property's owner's responsibility to do so? And I guess what I was saying is that would be our recommendation to the board, is how we do it and the board can judge that. Okay. Ms. Gruger, do you have something to add? Well, maybe I'm not thinking about it correctly, but when I think about it, what I think is when I'm building a house to live in, I have to put in the equipment for the different meters and devices and I actually never thought that this wouldn't be a cost for the property owner. So if I'm not thinking about it correctly, maybe you could explain, but I just thought that the operator is the one who provides the equipment. From our perspective as the farmer, and please do not. I really wanna understand. Yeah, and this is basically our issue at hand is bridging the gap between the two. And I appreciate everything that you guys have done to entertain this topic, believe me. But pretty much the monies that we've already paid into the sewer system over however many years this policy has been in effect has been money that's gone. And I can understand installing the correct apparatus as part of an operating expense, but at the same token, it's kind of like hitting us with another blow and with it only being five farms in the town of Amherst. I mean, if it's $1,400 times five, you're looking at $7,000 roughly, sorry, on the spot can't do the math. It's a drop in the bucket for what the town spends on operating expenses. So I just think for the benefit of truly being pro-farmer, I don't understand why these farms that have been suffering this consequence for so many years has to then be yay, I don't have to pay $1,400 in sewer fees, but instead I have to pay $1,400 for a meter. I understand it's just for the first year, but at the same token, from our standpoint, it's still a little frustrating. Don't get me wrong, I understand Amherst isn't the only town in the state of Massachusetts that is looking at this issue. One of the things that I know, I'm assuming you guys all got to see the letter from Ms. Jones from CINDA, where the state is actually looking at the APR program and auditing the state's conducting an internal audit on the Department of Agriculture. And we've been invited again to discuss topics with them at hand, and this is one of the topics that came up at the first meeting, which it's saying go Amherst, you're working with the farmers, keep up the right momentum, where we really want to just do the most fair thing possible. So could I do a follow-up? Sure. If we did entertain your suggestion of absorbing the initial installation that would still under the discussion we've had, there's an annual inspection of the backflow that's required, and that cost, the way I understand it's the proposal would be borne as well by the property owner. And I'm not sure what that can, maybe Mr. Moren can tell us approximately what that would cost, but do you have an objection to that being charged to the property owner? From my standpoint, I wouldn't. If I remember correctly, and sitting at that initial meeting I think you said $35 to $50 for the annual inspection roughly, like forecast. We probably haven't said it yet. Okay. Oh, okay. I mean that type of thing could be even seen as like a permitting expense, where in order for us to have a burn permit we have to pay the fee every year. Like I can understand that. It's just kind of the installation that when you don't have much to work with, it's challenging. So you look at really evaluating all aspects. Right. I think the thing I think about with regard to that is not unsympathetic to it by any stretch of imagination, but I think that what we would have to consider as a board is that moving forward. So absent of the current five that potentially are available now, there could be somebody somewhere else that might decide to do this two years from now. And so if they're starting from scratch, then maybe it's appropriate to charge from that installation fee. So I think if we were to entertain an idea of it, there's a certain grandfathering or articulating of that relative to folks who've been, and I'm not saying we will or won't, I'm just sort of brainstorming ideas here that it may need a certain grandfathering if we did that just to not place a burden on our water system that's an unintended consequence of some sort of inclusion of installation there. I jump in because we haven't really had a chance to discuss this and usually I'm all about having people pay for stuff and opportunities for revenue, but I'm thinking about the four million now maybe doubled for the installation of sewer in Amherst Woods without any betterment fees where people said, hey, I live here, why should I have to pay? Whatever the argument, I can't articulate the arguments, but we have just provided quite a lot of public benefit at public expense for sewer work without any cost to the homeowners. Other communities choose to do it differently. So when I look at that example, I'm more open to the idea that, and I agree with you about sort of prior users versus somebody who comes in next year, hey, it's cost of doing business and they haven't paid into the sewer fee to the sewer fund. So I think in a way we have kind of, at least for discussion purposes, a rationale for looking at that suggestion. And I think just back to the separate from this, but the sewer connection, so the extensions of the sewer service, generally speaking to date, we have not charged a betterment fee which is sort of part of the cost of actually building the sewer lines themselves. The hookups, if you choose to attach your house, you still are on the hook for the hookup. The added value of having a house. But that's a different, that's a much different level of cost. And that's, again, this is sort of separate from, I'm just sort of painting that picture for folks who don't know what betterment fees are, but. Yeah, I mean, they're two different things. They're very different in a lot of ways, but they're not. Ms. Virgil, do you have something you want to add? Yeah, and I was glad that we got to that point before I needed to talk. And so because we're trying to, we're trying to be sensitive to what's the context of other things that we do this way. And always trying to get people to pay for things, as Ms. Krueger pointed out more delicately. But at the same time, this is one of the public goods that we do. And given that it is a small number, I would be incredibly interested in looking at, okay, to take care of this group of people under these very limited conditions. It's a very small box. It's not like somebody can say tomorrow, oh, didn't you know about me? I'm a farm. It would be, as you indicated, somebody new, doing something new. And then they have so many other new charges at that point that this is not gonna have an effect on them. And they haven't been impacted the way the other firms have been historically. And this is a chance to do better than we used to know how to do. So now we know we have another way to do it. I would also express despite my concern that we wished we would have, lots of things happened and we wish we would have had information tonight. It's not reasonable to assume that we would get information on the Friday and necessarily vote it on the Monday because we would perhaps want other members of the public if they were interested or if Wagner's felt like they really wanted to come back again, et cetera, if there was anything confusing about it because it's clear that if it had come to us tonight, it would not have allowed for the possibility of not charging them. We wouldn't have known what that looked like because that wouldn't have been the recommendation. So that doesn't mean we won't think of something else, a different aspect of this. So I just caution us to, as we develop it, try and get it out to SASAP with the rationale, which could still be the same rationale from staff, but understanding that we're gonna want you to also present, I think that's becoming clear, the alternative of doing it this way and what that might look like and how it, as I indicated, I think it's a fairly small box that people fit within rather than it's sort of becoming a precedent establishing issue. Thank you. Mr. Simon. I'm not looking for this information tonight, but I think what would be helpful when we get to the discussion is a lot more detailed explanation of what the costs are to implement this change if we go forward because I have no sense of where one has to put in essentially the bridge, the why, that in the line so that you separate out the two uses of water and how much piping and plumbing is required and whether that varies by farm because of logistics within each individual property, which seems to me to be an expense that is additional to the question of the expense of the meter itself. So I think that, did you have other questions or comments? No, that's amazing. I didn't know if anybody else had questions, but I can step down so Mr. Moran can step up. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Mr. Moran, you had a couple of things to add, I believe. So as you think of this as a box and it being a relatively small box, you also need to think about a limit to the box because as Mr. Steinberg says, each farm is different. Some of these farms have been in existence since before Amherst was Amherst. Thinking about that, they have buildings scattered around and then when they got water, whether it was well water or town water, they plumbed it together the way good New England farmers plumb things together. So to say the town will resolve all the issues on a farm to put this in the play may actually be quite costly to the town whereas if you say you will put in the device at the separation and then as the farmer wishes to, he can correct or he or she may correct the other issues as time goes on and we give them time to do that and help them identify what the problems are, that is a much more, hopefully a much more acceptable way. There's a couple of issues we have on another side of town which if we didn't have old inspection reports we would actually be in houses right now trying to find out whether they're connected to some old piping and stuff but we actually had all the documents and it basically was an old farm that was taking water off a spring and they just piped it in and when they built a house for the son or daughter they just piped that one in and piped that one in and it was a huge connection but they had disconnected it all and actually had documented it all because one of the people was a plumber. So that was very fortunate for us and them. So it can get very expensive and it can get very detailed. So limits on the box is what we'll present to you and then we can go from there. I totally forgot the question. I told you I'd come up here and answer. That flow cost year over year. So it depends on the device and it depends on what you're doing. So I believe it is a $50 and a $30 fee. There is one device that's inspected once a year and there's one device that's inspected twice a year. So I believe the $50 once a year and the $30 is twice a year. I wouldn't hold me to that right now but that's how it goes. So that's really the cost of the device and monthly or yearly inspections. So thank you for that. We'll look forward to some demo from you and the assistant manager probably. Yes. So we'll try to have something to you at your next meeting. Okay. The sooner is better, obviously. On that. Thank you. I think February 5th I think is our next meeting. Yeah, next meeting February 5th. But I think to your point and to Mr. Steinberg there's a sort of, there's a reasonable limit for what the town can kind of take on regardless of sort of holding harmless the farmers. There's a certain piece that's kind of definitely theirs to own as far as costs and currents and that sort of thing. So we'll try to define those well. I don't know if we've heard specifically on this issue from the agricultural commission and I know that they've had some problems meeting and are down a couple members and this might be an opportune time to say to people who might be watching or listening that if you're interested in participating on the agricultural commission we very much have the welcome met out for that committee and it's a group, you know, we have a number of things that have come up such as this, we really like their input but they need to add some members. That's correct. Thank you for remembering that. Thank you, Mr. Moran. All right, thank you very much. Thank you. So next up in our agenda is chapter 61A, notice of intent to convert 1.6263 acre parcel off of Bay Road for residential purposes, not to be too precise with the measurement of the acreage there. As my name next to it, we have a memo in our packet I believe that discusses both the property as well as a memo from, I wanna say, planning board relative to this particular piece of property. Mr. Joachim, do you wanna paint a bit of a picture for us here? So this follows a typical process that when someone wants to take a piece of land out of chapter 61A, it requires the approval of the select board and you usually request the advice of the planning board and other boards and so those are the memos that are in your packet. It's a very small piece of land and I think the planning board did vote seven to zero to recommend that the town not exercise its first right of refusal. Under the state law, the town has the opportunity to purchase this land if it so chooses and it's not a piece of land that we believe the town would be interested in. Any other questions or concerns regarding this property? Maybe this wasn't the material and I just remembered I believe when property comes out of chapter land status, there's a repayment of deferred taxes and I'm wondering what that amount would be coming in. Total rollback due is about $1,000. It seems to me more. I just couldn't even, I... So I'm barring any other questions. I would entertain a motion. I move to vote to not exercise the town's right of refusal option in accordance with MGL chapter 61A section 14 to purchase approximately 1.6263 acres owned by the late Mary Snyder said land shown as parcel B of an unrecorded plan of land dated November 28, 2017 included in the notice of intent to sell and marked exhibit A further identified as a portion of parcel 56 on assessor map 27C formerly known as 10-27C. Is there a second? Second. Is there further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? That's unanimous with one absent. Next up, since Mr. Brody is here, we're going to reverse the order and have him come forward. We have the cultural district signage placement at realignment park. And so I believe you've come with a sign, share with us and tell us about this if you would be so kind. You bring the sign. I wonder if we could put it where one of the cameras could pick it up. Actually, if you said it, I think in front of me, usually right in front of me will work. I think they can. Get a little home and see it. That'll be perfect. We've now become part of a cultural center. Cultural district, I'm sorry. We've been harboring these signs now for nearly two years. So we feel excited about the possibility of actually having them erected sometime soon. You have in your packet some information on it. As you probably know, as part of becoming Massachusetts cultural district, we are required to erect a minimum four of these signs. And all the cultural districts have the same design and the same size. Just the names change. So we have four, three of them are on private property, but there is one that is on town property and that's on realignment park. And we are looking for your approval to erect this sign adjacent, as it shows, to the cow and realignment park. And I'm happy to answer any questions. I know it came before you once before. And I think there was some concern expressed that it may have been too high or if the tree that's near leafed out, the sign wouldn't be visible. I'm not sure whether that's still a concern, but I'm here to address it. If, or any other concerns you may have, the public art commission has approved the placement of it. And we now require that the select board also weigh in on it. So yes, so we're trying to coordinate the application process there because there's three private applications. Plus there's one building permit sitting on my desk waiting for your action. We will package this up so they all flow through the different permitting boards together. So the permitting boards have one conversation about all four cultural district signs. The only caution on our part is that before the sign is installed, the town will wanna, there's a lot of stuff underground there that will be really cognizant of on the actual location. Not all four signs go through the same boards. For example, there's one that goes through the local historic authority on the Amherst media property, but the others don't. So it is a little complicated puzzle to get them all done. We're trying to schedule it so it happens efficiently. Great. Ms. Brewer, you had a. So who actually does the installation? The one in townland would be the town for sure. The one on private land, not really sure. I would like our motion to reflect that, since we're only talking about the one when it says to be erected on a post, it doesn't say by whom. Yeah, good point. Any other questions or comments, concerns? Did you have a modified language you wanted to offer as part of the motion? I don't know if we wanna say by the town or DPW. I was kind of hoping Mr. Bachman would make something up that he wanted to write down. That's the last thing you wanna. Why don't we say after the word park, we had by the town. Someone like to make the motion. I move to approve the placement of an Amherst cultural, Amherst Center cultural district sign to be erected on a post at the north edge of realignment park by the town as requested by the Amherst Center cultural district and approved by the Amherst Public Art Commission. Second. The motion is second. Is there further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? One absent. Thank you very much. Thank you. It matches the cow colors, doesn't it? I hope the cow in that sign. Okay, next is our remote participation policy revision which Ms. Brewer has thankfully very quickly crafted. We had, last time we discussed this, we changed the termination date to not be anything. I guess we made it to infinity and beyond just because I have to say that. But there were other changes to it that you were making relative to state law and so we have a couple versions of it in our package. Do you want to kind of walk us through the contents of that, please? Sure, so we talked about this on select born on December 18th and we had a motion that just eliminated the sunset clause and thereby removed the expiration date of December 31st but we knew that there were some other changes that needed to be made and so as we were busily getting ready for MMA, I was sent an email that said, so what are all those changes? And I said, oh right, we were gonna talk about that several weeks ago, weren't we? So we pulled them together and here are the changes. If you look at the actual, this is not in the order I would prefer but one never knows what order Alyssa would prefer so there you go. If you look at the stapled packet, the second item is a four page document that's the policy on remote participation. It still shows voted date, 123 at the top but if you notice the footer, it says it's revised tonight, assuming we revise it tonight and the only change on that first page, which hopefully is in color print, is the second last paragraph says extended indefinitely by simple majority voted, select for December 18th so that was the thing we already did. We had that motion and made that happen. Now we need to do the other things. So if you move on to page two of the policy that starts definitions in scope, you move about two thirds of the way down the page and because there used to be specific, how shall I put this? Incredibly overreaching reasons that were provided by the attorney general's office even though many people told them that was a bad idea, they had them in there so we had put in some of our own language to show that what we were trying to incorporate into those five items and now we can just take those out because now you no longer have to say what your reason is so you don't have to explain whether or not childcare is actually an emergency because none of that needs to be discussed, fortunately. And you no longer have a determination by the chair which is something that made us nervous years ago whether or not your reason was good enough. You just have to say that you have a reason and that goes. So we just lined out all that material there which then you'll see on page three, permissible reasons for remote participation instead of having those five reasons, it now is effective October 10th, October 16th. The only reason that need to be stated is that physical attendance would be unreasonably difficult and that can just be said like that. So then on page four, oh look, no edits except to the footer. Then if you move back to page one again, sorry about that, of your stapled packet, it's the remote participation policy and regulation, remote participation checklist. So this is as people, okay, I've read the policy, now what do I need to know? And so you just move down through this and again, we are clarifying that it's physical attendance would be unreasonably difficult. We no longer have to say what the specific one of the five things is but all the rest of the script remains the same. And then in terms of the person who's applying that checklist is for the chair basically. The person who's applying prior to the meeting, you'll note it says at the top that it's been revised as of tonight and we simply take out the one or the more of the following factors. We just say my physical attendance is unreasonably difficult and leave it at that. So we just had to pick it up from all those sections. We are reminded as we read this that although communities can set their own regulations, as long as they don't conflict with the regulations that the state has provided that was an argument we had a long time ago about geographic distance. Well, was the state deciding what that was or what we were deciding? Luckily, that is no longer here. However, one of the options specifically that I wanna make sure we're clear on is that the state did give us the option of saying that bodies could opt out. We specifically chose not to do that. We said if we're gonna do this, it's available to all committees. And so it's been used very little. It still has the limitations in terms of number of sessions in a row and number of sessions per year. And we've not run into anyone saying to us that that was unworkable. So we didn't make any of those changes. These are all simply to reflect what the current regulation is from the Attorney General. Thank you. Any questions or comments? Yes, I have a couple of things that are minor, but I first of all wanna thank Ms. Brewer for doing all of this work under such incredible time constraints. Just a couple minor things on the third page of the remote participation policy and regulations. The page at the top begins with regulations for use of remote participation. And we should make it clear in the strikeouts that we're also striking out the first iteration of the words permissible reasons for remote participation with the citation to the regulation, otherwise it repeats twice as it will be adopted. The reason I didn't catch that is because I still don't know what you're talking about. Where are we? Above the red, right above the red, you have permissible reasons for remote participation. But you have it again in the second. I see, you're saying the heading could be removed, right? One times enough. One or the other? I meant right. Exactly right. So I just wanted to strike that for duplication purposes. Will someone make an upple on that? The other thing that I wanted to point out is that in the attachment, which is the remote participation request form. Request form? After the strikeout words, sort of in the middle of all of that, there's a colon where the words, my physical attendance is unreasonably difficult and that should be a period and not a colon. So I would like to have that change made as we adopt it. And yes, Ms. Pupple, I sent her an email that said, change this paragraph, this sentence, this paragraph, this sentence, this word right now. And she did it all. So I'm sure she will adapt. I understand that. I was just trying to be careful. So I didn't give her those, so she didn't make them, so it's not her fault. So thank you for that. We don't have a motion on it. I am going to move and I have this in writing for Mr. Pockelman if he needs it. I move to approve the amendments to the remote participation policy and regulations as presented to the board in preparation for this meeting as amended. Is there a second? Excellent. Is there for the discussion? Hearing none. Yes, please. I'm sorry. We've had this a year and I think these are really good improvements and thank you, Ms. Grover, for doing them. I'm looking at some of this language that we're now getting rid of that I think we got from the statement, like a last minute lack of child care, elder care shall be. It was required. We had no choice. I know, and that's problematic as it's trying to define the distance. If it's only a mile, but you have to walk because your car's broken and you have, I mean, it just becomes absurd. So I think, you know, both the state and us, we're learning this and I think this is a much better version. Absolutely. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And that's unanimous, if you want to have some. So next on our agenda, we have committee boards, appointments and reappointments. So I didn't know if Mr. Steinberg wanted to offer any comment or introduction to these three that we have in front of us tonight. Well, I wanted to just say a good comment, but as of right now, Ms. Kruger and I have actually been performing together in the appointment process. And I think that it's really been working very well. It's sort of, we were thinking of it as a transition process, but I really appreciate her expertise because she has worked with these for such a long period of time. And we need to take these separately and the Community Development Block Grant Advisory Committee. I think that Ms. Kruger may have been involved in the interview on this one. And it is my understanding from having the conversations that Ms. Kruger and I had that this is a committee that was really in great need of getting positions filled so that it could have a quorum to actively participate during this process. And it's my understanding that this person has been reviewed and is recommended. And the Transportation Advisory Committee was an interview that was attended to and Ms. Kruger can speak to it. Well, I'm just pleased that we're bringing these recommendations to you tonight. Mr. Bachmann was part of the Transportation Advisory Committee interview and then we have his own recommendation on Conservation Commission. And I'm just struck with the high caliber of volunteers and there's some people, a couple of these, there were more people than openings and we're hoping there'll be opportunities for some of those people to serve in the future. And I think we have a couple of other candidates that are gonna come before you in the next couple of weeks. So people have been applying, some new members have been recommending some other people and helping with the recruitment. So I'm just really impressed with the people I've gotten to talk to as we go through our kind of streamlined interview process for appointments and I'm just really pleased that we have these three for tonight. So with that I would move to appoint Janet Daisley to the Community Development Block Grant, CDBG Advisory Committee and Mark Rabinski to the Transportation Advisory Committee, TIC through June 30, 2020. Is there a second? Second. Is there further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Opposed? So that's unanimous with Mr. Waldabsent. And if you'd like to, Mr. Mockman, did you want to say anything about your appointment to the Conservation Commission? Again, to echo what Ms. Krueger said we had multiple candidates for this slot and both of them very good. Excellent candidates actually. So it's really exciting to hear to see a younger person but also just two people who are really highly qualified. So it feels good to have someone ready to go if there's another vacancy. So and they're both highly qualified. This was the one that was recommended from the group that interviewed. Great. Thank you. So if you can have a motion. I move to confirm 10 Managers' appointment of Gin Oil Fair to the Conservation Commission through June 30, 2020. Is there a second? Second. Is there further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Mr. Slaughter. Yes. If I could just re-emphasize what Ms. Krueger said earlier we do still have openings on the Block Grant Advisory Committee. We do in fact have a couple of applicants but we do not even have sufficient applicants for the number of seats that remain open. So we would very much encourage people to continue to look at that and they're doing their work right now. So if you have time right now in your schedule now's a great time at the time of year that they do the majority of their work and then they will wrap up their work by the early spring. And so if you're a person who has big commitments in the late spring and early summer this could be a really good fit for you. So please consider applying and of course the information is all available online. Great. Thank you. Okay, so that takes care of all three of the appointments under the committee board's appointments and re-appointments. So now we're into section seven. Licenses, Public Way and Meter Parking Reservations. We have a Consent Calendar. Although I think we have some questions that were raised about the Consent Calendar. Yes, I have three. Oh my goodness. Well, then you win because I only have one. We might have the same one. We can see you can tell me if you'll tell me in a moment. Sounds like more like the dissent calendar. No, not dissents at all. But first of all I would ask my colleagues here to just quickly grab the page for the two University of Massachusetts top of the campus ones. And I think that what you will find is that the one that is marked number three relating to an event at Memorial Hall is in fact a special wine and malt license and now all alcoholic. And number four, if you look at the reverse side of the same page, you'll see that it's a special license for all alcoholic beverages in old chapel. So those got reversed and I did try and call Ms. Pupple to see if I could get a reprint of the motion sheet because that would have been the easiest way to do it but Ms. Pupple was not available today so I'm having to do it this way. The other thing that I have on those two is that traditionally we had the motion read something like this, motion to approve this special license to top of the campus incorporated and that's emitted from these. And I think that it's probably a better practice to indicate who we're giving the license to. So I would like to change number three to read move to approve the special license to top of the campus incorporated to serve wine and malt beverages at a reception in UMass Memorial Hall with the remaining language staying the same. And the next one move to approve a special license to top of the campus incorporated to serve alcoholic beverages at a reception in old chapel and the remaining language. And the other thing on Winterfest it's again two things. One is that the address of the event should be 1089 North Pleasant Street, not 241 Pine Street. And I would prefer that we move to approve the special license, grant of a special license to simple gift farm to serve wine and malt beverages and then change the address to the correct address for the event as listed in the application 1089 North Pleasant Street. So those are my three. Let's move on. So thank you so much for catching those with top of the campus. And yes, we should have a more consistent structure and that makes total sense. Otherwise you'd have to add top of the campus to the end of board member or something. And like you say, we normally have it in the middle. And thank you for noticing they were switched in terms of which types of license they were as well. Cut and paste will do that to you. The other is that I need us to pull the special license for simple gifts at the correct address that Mr. Steinberg indicated out of the consent calendar. There is nowhere near enough information for this to be in the consent calendar. So I wouldn't give them the changes to the two motions that Mr. Steinberg suggested. Actually the changes to the motion, all three of those motions I would suggest we probably do each of those individually. And then since there's only two of that, we might as well give you two as consent. We'll only do the consent calendar as amended while still pulling one out because our practice is anything can get pulled out. But I think we can leave the ones he amended in just say, I would say, I moved to approve the items listed in the consent calendar as amended for the January 22nd, 2018. With the exception of item five. Wait a second, amended comes at the end, I'm ahead of myself. For the January 22nd, 2018 agenda as amended with number five removed. Yeah, if you want to be really clear, that would be part of the event. You've already read those. Okay, so I'll second that motion that Ms. Krueger just made. Thank you. Is there further discussion about? One through four. One through four. One through four as amended. No, they're beautiful. All right. Hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed? In one absence, so we've got it. So if, well, I write this down if Ms. Brewer, would you like to go into number five a little bit more? I'm sure I could pull up my email that I had sent to the town manager, but I'll just, let's start out simple. We don't have enough information. This is an applicant that does not normally serve alcohol. We cannot process this in the short of a timeframe without some additional information. We ask all kinds of questions about serve safe alcohol or tips training, which we don't require yet because we don't have a policy that does so, but we can't ask that applicant about this. We don't have any familiarity with this particular spot being licensed before to the best of my knowledge, et cetera. This is another reminder that we haven't purposefully, we have purposefully not updated our form because we know it needs a lot of revisions to it and one that would be helpful to the applicant as well is to be able to say who's going to actually manage the service because I have a very hard time believing that this individual is someone who is terribly familiar with serving alcohol. So in terms of regulations, whereas many times organizations such as this will go ahead and hire a caterer or hire someone from one of the other licensed facilities in town who clearly has the appropriate certifications. And I know that sometimes we say, well, the police chief will talk to them and I'm sure it'll all work out, but this is, this has nothing. We don't have a memo from them. We have nothing here to work from. I guess I have two concerns, two things. One is that handwritten on the application form is you should have my workers comp and tip certification on file. If the tip certification on file is on file and I'd be willing to have that be a part of the motion that it is conditional upon it being on file, but we do not have another meeting prior to February 3rd and we just had a very good presentation about how important Winterfest is and how much advertising has gone on about Winterfest. I would be very hesitant to do something that would disrupt an event that is being advertised associated with Winterfest at this point. So I have information. I came in since you started your meeting. First was an email from the chief who said one of the questions was had there been any incidents with this group before? And he said, no, there haven't been. And from his pupil said this group has had a special license before. The tip training is a requirement of the chief to ensure that we provide them with the information on where they can purchase the beer at such a mass general laws. And typically we don't issue it until those requirements are met. So that's the scant information I have for you. So because I raised the objections, that's incredibly helpful to me. We need to stop doing it this way. We need to start having a memo in our file that says he's done it before, he has the tip certificate, he maybe hasn't met with the chief yet, but he's planning to and we won't issue it until then, rather than assuming that's all gonna magically work out. It's unreasonable to put that kind of assumption both on this body and on this pupil and other staff to assume that they will have to remember to do all those things, which if they can do those as a checklist, they can do them before we get the information. But I also recognize that you mentioned that this is coming right up. They didn't turn in the application until last week. And so that's one of the reasons this has gotten so complicated is because they didn't turn it in in what might be considered a more timely fashion. They only turned it in on the 15th. So. Received on the 18th section. Exactly, and received on the 18th. So that all does give me more confidence. I'm not associated with the situation, but I would really strongly, so that I don't have to give this lecture again, ask that we not do this again this way. Or at worst case, have the person show up so we can ask them those questions if we can't get the information into our packet. Well, I appreciate that concern. I mean, it's sort of, okay, it came in without a lot of lead time. I am inclined to do this conditionally if we need more information. But it sounds like our form is pretty deficient in alerting people to what they need to give us. And so that partly puts it back on us. So I'm willing to be more lenient than strict given that even if it's an interim form before we get to the ultimate form after we do our policies, we just need to clean that up and say, have you had tips? You know, whatever those questions are, they're valid questions. We really need to have a form revised for the reasons you stated, Ms. Brewer. If you crafted a motion for us, Mr. Steinberg. I think it's a good idea. As we speak. I'm gonna pause there to sort of give another 30 seconds or so. I could have just kept going while he was writing. Once again, we're, okay, so what I would do, what I'm gonna move is conditioned upon the approval of the chief of police and proof of TIPS certification to approve the special license to simple gifts farms to serve wine and malt beverages at an event in conjunction with Winterfest Amherst at Simple Gifts Farm 1089 North Pleasant Street on February 3rd, 2018 from 12 to 5 p.m. Jeremy Barker Plotkin Manager. Is there a second? Second. Is there further discussion there is, Ms. Brewer? I'm not concerned about it because Mr. Steinberg likes to write the motions and that's fine with me. I will mention that we have said in the past that we are concerned about putting the word conditional in the motion itself, but we have somehow reflected that it is in fact conditional based on those items, so whatever phrasing works for you to make that so, and I'm sure that when we do write our alcohol policies, we will come up with a better word for that because it is conditional, but it isn't that we're gonna come, our approval changes is that they actually won't hand out the thing. Our part is actually done. It's that they won't give it out upstairs. But I think that's been more of a concern with permanent licenses when they're missing a document or something. Yeah, right. Is there further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? And so that unanimous will come up. Thank you. So next on our agenda is the town manager's report. So if you'd like to take us through. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a few things to update you on since our last meeting. Usually tell you about the Cup at Joe. We had about 10 people show up at Atkins Market at the flagship store on January 12th and it was a really good conversation. It was the day after the budget was presented and so some people came with that. Other people had just, some people came just to talk and listen. So it was a really good session. The next one is on schedule for February 12th at 7.30 to nine and at a location to be determined. So I figured out where to do that. We're sort of starting to reuse places. So at your last meeting, we discussed social services funding and I asked you to hold on that and we had select board representatives and others had a meeting subsequent to that meeting and came in after educating ourselves on some of the procurement and financial requirements and limitations. One key thing being that we are able to use these funds for a period that goes beyond July one, which really helped us rethink how we wanted to approach this. We will be issuing an RFP for food security and outreach into the Latino community. Hopefully in the next week or two as we build this and that will be the primary use of the $60,000. We will offer that out to the community to service the members of our community. This was identified as the highest need from members of our staff and as we started looking at what the options were in terms of how we would evaluate different things. In terms of managing this project, it was determined that it was best to have just one project moving forward instead of two, which is what the previous memo, which I was anxious to move forward on, but got ahead of myself. So that is the proposal, that is the path forward. And I think the members of the select board who are present are in agreement. I'm not sure if you wanna comment on that or I can update you when it goes out and all those things. Well, my only comment, thank you, Mr. Bauchman, just that we were very much looking at what would make sense to do that may not be a recurrent or ongoing program or project. So we wanted to pick something that was discreet that we could do in the time, allowed with the money that we had that was, people recall, an additional appropriation for human services from our community services that happened at our annual time. Yes, I'm reaching back now. So this met the sort of basic criteria that we came to through discussion plus the identification of community needs. So that's going on there. Got it? Thank you. As you recall, the town of Hadley issued an RFP for ambulance services to begin on July 1, 2018. We did not bid on that. Their Ambulance Study Committee invited us to meet with them, which we will tomorrow night with the fire chief and the two assistant chiefs to answer some questions that they have to comment on the services that we're providing to them. So we've reviewed the RFP submission by the one vendor who had submitted it, which they would be charging $290,000 for the ambulance service to locate an ambulance in their community. That was one of the requirements of the RFP and one that we could not meet or would not meet because we have more of a regional ambulance service model where we take our ambulances and our fire, we have firefighter paramedics, so they do both jobs. And so when they have to respond, they have to be available. And it didn't make sense to us to locate an ambulance in the town of Hadley and that was one of the requirements of the RFP. So since we couldn't meet that criteria, it didn't make sense. And there were other things and they're smaller things that were just not in conformance with law. So they were asking us to do certain things that we didn't think were appropriate. So we'll go and talk to them. We hope to have a very good conversation with them. This, one interesting thing about this is it did point out that we've underpriced the service. According, they went to the market, the market spoke and that has informed us so that we have not been recouping the money we should be doing for this service. In conjunction with that, we've also gone out for an RFP for ambulance billing services. We've received those responses. There's a small committee that reviewed the responses and then we matched them up with the pricing, which is the normal process. We have a company called Comstar, which I've dealt with before and that they do a number of communities in the area that we've checked out and they're very good. We're, there's a meeting last week with the treasure collector and the assistant fire chief to talk about logistics. I have to talk a little bit, you know, I have some questions that I need to have answered, but we're hoping to look at that in terms of how we are handling our own internal staffing obviously we have someone who's doing that work now. And so I think we have a pretty good plan for moving forward in the relatively near future. The goal on this is to have a service that would do the billing for the ambulances and they're usually much more efficient about and comprehensive in what they actually bill. So that's something I look forward to. So two things on the ambulance front. One is we'll be meeting with the town of Hadley tomorrow night. The second is the billing system to most people, if you're, they're more, they're more focused on billing the insurance companies and they know how to collect the money better that way. We've already talked about LSSC. The, also we had two police cruisers that were damaged on the same night. One was damaged pretty heavily and it was one of the oldest cruisers so that will be totaled and replaced. The other was, had this very minor damage, a newer cruiser that's going to be correctly fixed and it may already be back in service. Nothing major on that one, it's just body work. The town of Pelham is seeking support from us as they start to replace their treasure collector. One of the things they're looking at is either asking us to do the full service. For instance, we already do the assessing service. The other thing that they, in fact, I saw a couple of the members at the MMA meeting. They've asked if they're not able to hire someone by the retirement date of their current treasure collector if we could help them out and I've talked with Claire McGinnis about this and we're sort of looking at what that would entail. We always are interested in working with our neighbors and providing the services that they need if we can do that. I'm sure we'll be able to work something out. The Dog Park Committee is meeting this week. They are sort of narrowing their search or their focus on a portion of the, I'm gonna call it the Southland Fill because it's old and new, it's confusing to me. So it's the Southland Fill. So there is a small parcel there that they would be doing a site visit on Wednesday to look at the one or two acres that they need for the Dog Park. It seems to fit with the overall management of the plan. This would be in conjunction and the permitting would have to be done in conjunction with the solar array that's being planned for the Northland Fill. We will probably have to do some kind of environmental work to make sure that this passes muster with all the different state agencies and local agencies that would have to approve it. The key for me is that I was really urging them not to seek to buy a piece of land and take another piece of land off the tax rolls. That's probably the smoothest path to getting a Dog Park if you wanted to do it expeditiously is to find a piece of land, buy it. And I think that we're really moving forward and utilizing an existing piece of town on land for this purpose. And there's some more steps to follow but I think that the Assistant Town Manager and Superintendent of Public Works have been working hard on this to see if this site actually can work. It's a great site. It's on a main road. There would be a parking available. It'd be adjacent to a place to walk your dog if you want to walk on leash around the landfill but then off leash adjacent to the landfill. The North Amherst Library, the proposals are due on Wednesday. This is for the design services in accordance with the town meeting article. I'll be setting up a small committee to evaluate the proposals that come in. There was a site visit last Wednesday or Thursday and four firms showed up to view the site. This is actually during the snowstorm so it could be, we don't know how many proposals will come in but we assume if you show up to site visit you'll submit a proposal. I've asked a member, a representative from the Board of Library Trustees. I've asked the library director to designate someone. Our owner's project manager, Mr. Moering will be on it. I've asked the Assistant Town Manager, Mr. Zomek to be on it because of his connection with the work that's being done in the all North Amherst. And I've asked the lead petitioner Ms. Holland to serve on this committee and she has agreed and they've all agreed to serve on this committee and this is just to look at the proposals to see who do we want to hire to spend this $50,000 on. It's not to, they're not submitting designs or anything like that. They're just saying, here are my qualifications. Here's something that, here's the, and then in a separate envelope they put how much they would think they would need to charge to carry out the work. I want to remind you that the School Assessment Formula Group is meeting, or the four towns meeting is Saturday and that'll be an interesting meeting. Health insurance continues to be a very hot topic. We have formed a small group of four people from the insurance advisory committee and four members of the staff and we've been meeting pretty regularly on a weekly basis to dig into the town's health insurance. Big issue for us, as you recall, we've had three increases this year in order to stabilize the trust. As a reminder, the trust, we don't buy insurance. We are a trust, the town and the employees put money into basically a bank account in essence and then as the bills come in we pay them out. We hire Blue Cross and Harvard Pilgrim to manage those accounts, the relationships with the hospitals and doctors. They get paid an administrative fee on top of that. So what we're trying to do is not let this happen again and so everything is on the table. We will look at whether we should stay self-insured or go to fully insured program. Had a couple of really good meetings with Blue Cross at the MMA meeting this weekend. We'll be working with them pretty closely and also we'll be considering whether we should have two plans right now. We offered Harvard Pilgrim and Blue Cross. It seems that seems to be two companies offering two plans each. Each one offers an HMO and a PPO. They're very identical. So there's some cost savings that may be had there. It's a really good working group. We have a meeting again on February 5th and then the full insurance advisory committee is coming back together on February 7th. Our goal is to have recommendations from the insurance advisory committee to the trust administrator, which is the town manager by the end of February in terms of what direction we want to go in and how we wanna move this forward. It's the most important benefit that every one of our employees receives. So it's really important for them. It's important for the town because it's a major budget item for the town and we're really, I'm very pleased that we've had a very successful work in relationship with our retirees and with our unions. So we're gonna hope to keep moving that forward but some really hard decisions are gonna need to be made and not everyone is gonna be happy but those decisions still need to be made. That's pretty much it. Oh, Senator Markey will be at the Amherst Regional Middle School on Sunday at 5.30 and the chair's been asked to say a few words and I think the chair of the regional school committee will be asked to say a few words as well. They expect to have some musical performances but it's basically a town hall meeting where the senator will entertain comments from the public or make some comments and they anticipate several hundred people to be present at that and so you're all invited, obviously. And so that's Sunday at 5.30 at the Amherst Regional Middle School in the auditorium. So I think that's my list for tonight. Any questions or comments on the report? Yes, Ms. Brewer. So one of the things that came up in passing in conversation at MMA was the fact that because the group insurance commission dumped out on state employees of which my husband is one for all of you who have forgotten that he works at UMass that oh, surprise, you don't get to choose from a whole bunch of plans anymore, you only get to choose from three and so this was done with basically no notice even to the people voting on it and so there's obviously a big hue and cry about all of this but the mention that was made in passing to me and that I hope you'll incorporate into your future, a future report from us is that this could impact the small number but certainly there are some staff who are connected to state employees who when you have a spouse, obviously you can choose which of your plans will be the one that you have the family on and this could impact your discussions here just as it's impacting what people are deciding over at UMass and the many other state facilities that our various townspeople work in so it's just one more piece of complication to add in at a time when you're already trying to sort things out so we appreciate any thoughts people share on that and how they might perceive that impact playing out. It already is happening. We've had even members of our insurance advisory committee talk to their members and they say yes, we switched from my spouse's plan to the town's plan. The town offers a very rich plan at a very low cost and it's just a rest, it's not a sustainable model so that's why we have to make plan design changes. We have to make in many ways we are attracting people. People are coming to work for the town just for the health insurance but as we went around there's 14 people who are on the insurance advisory committee pretty much all of them said oh yes, I know someone who's jumped onto the town's plan from the university or from another community. Northampton has a GIC, Greenfield has a GIC, the university obviously has a GIC. Hampshire County Trust which is about 72 members in it, very small towns typically. They have a GIC-like plan and that's sort of the model we're looking at in terms of the benefit structure to just bring us in alignment to what other public organizations are offering their employees. That's the sort of blunt reality where we are right now. Yeah and that was, I think there's gonna be a lot of hue and cry about what the GIC decided and without notice to anybody and I know there's a lot of organizing around that issue already. Other questions or comments from the manager? If not then we'll move on to member reports. Who would like to report? Or do we have any member reports? Maybe that's what I would ask. I do, I just waiting to see if anybody else is stepping forward. I don't forget the kind of Gisaki, Sister City, they're coming for their annual visit and there's always, there's the opening reception as the junior high school students come and meet their families here in the town room, March 21st and it's typical to have the town manager and one member of the psych board speak. I've done it the last few years, I don't know, since Mr. Slaughter is now into the chair position and he's been a host family if he would like to take that role. Other things related to kind of Gisaki, we have been trying to set up a couple of meetings with them in which we would do it by Skype or other technology and the first one will be some members of the Sister City Committee and some members of the Lifelong Learning Center in kind of Gisaki and I hoping that that happens within next month or so. I did hear from kind of Gisaki over the weekend that they're ready to proceed with doing that and I don't think that this is a remote participation problem because all of our members will be here and people from kind of Gisaki are not members of our committee. So the other thing having to do with Sister Cities, however, is the last select board meeting at the beginning of the month, we received a letter from Terry Johnson regarding the consideration of a additional Sister City relationship with the community in Italy and at the chair's request I drafted a letter to Ms. Johnson and I have a draft which has been, I've talked with the chair about and it is a description of the existing Sister City relationships in our attempted Third Sister City relationship and the challenges and difficulties in those relationships and just it does not take a position because that would be inappropriate of course but if she decides to go forward that she give consideration to the issues of how to recruit a group of people to serve on a committee and how what the goals of the Sister City relationship would be and how it would be funded since the town is not in a position and does not fund any of our Sister City relationships and I'm hoping that that information will be helpful and then it loses it to Ms. Johnson to decide after receiving that whether she still wants to go forward or not. It does not suggest an answer to that question. And so I think that that was with Sister Cities and Mr. Rackam has already mentioned the Forton meeting and I have been doing some additional discussion and work with people on this question that will be a difficult part of the conversation on Saturday which is the regional assessment method and talk to several people for advice during the MMA conference which I found to be a very helpful conference this year both in the sessions that I attended and the networking that I was able to do on these and other issues. I really appreciated the opportunity to attend the conference and so I just wanted to conclude with that comment. Thank you. Next, while we're talking about our recent attendance at the Mass Municipal Association Conference annual meeting Friday and Saturday, I was able to, I was invited to present along with senior planner Nate Malloy on a parking workshop which I think went very well and we were actually asked by Susan Planning and training collaboratives if we would maybe repeat that in March at their conference that's usually Holy Cross College. So I asked once they had once the MMA staff, Daniel Dominia had time, he would scan in the evaluations that he has so we could actually look at them because I always find it helpful to see what said Paul was able to see part of that session. So that's kind of neat. While we're talking about parking, the downtown parking working group did meet last week and as you know, we're kind of on phase two of recommendations. We had a whole bunch of work on phase one. Those things have been implemented, they have come before you and now we're doing kind of a second round look at certain things and we've sort of started our list of recommendations and working on that for the spring. So we're kind of in the middle of that. I attended as liaison the Transportation Advisory Committee meeting last week and I believe that the complete streets proposal that they're working on or policy, I should say is going to come before this board in February and those of you doing agenda setting probably have it in your sites and remember the last date I saw it in an email from Amber. But that's coming to us for approval. And then lastly, Ms. Brewer and I both attended our adult use for our marijuana working group what we had been calling recreational all this now by the state being referred to as adult use. So I'm going to kind of leave that for her but we had our internal team meeting last week and then we both attended a session on adult use marijuana at the MMA conference that was helpful and I know we have a look at what Mr. Kravitz prepared to submit and the first week in February there's some hearings or meetings across the state and some of us are going to one session and Holiuk and some are going to a session in Greenfield. So with that I will stop talking. Thank you, Ms. Brewer. So I could keep talking about marijuana for hours and hours and hours but in our packet and speaking of our packet, Mr. Steinberger are we going to get a copy of that letter about the Italy Sister City Committee? We will and there's another question that has come up because as I pointed out, Ms. Johnson's letter to us was not posted into the packet for that meeting in January and I merely made the point that the chair needs to make a decision on consistency to make sure that if we put one and we put both in. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I understand. That'd be great and it's always tricky when we're responding to something from a previous packet it's like then where do we put that so that people could find it. So good luck with that. But we do have items in our packet, one written by, one sent by Mr. Kravitz based on his drafting it and many of us giving him input and him graciously including that input and then also his memo to the town manager with copies to health director and planning director who are part of the internal working group but again so that these documents can be shared with the different groups so planning board can see it so board of health can see it and in addition to all the reporting back we all do verbally to have some documents and writing as to where we're at. When it comes to what happened at MMA, I will say that it did not, it was an incredibly informative primer on marijuana that Ms. Krueger I could have given to ourselves for 45 minutes of the majority of the presentation. So it was one of those unfortunate things that it wasn't communicated well what was to be done at that particular meeting or the expectations that we may have that are too high because Amherst is so far ahead of the game in this respect too and so for people who have been avoiding it up until now that was probably a useful time for them. For those of us who have not been avoiding it and have been trying to dig into the details it was extremely unfortunate to not be able to ask more questions of one of the CCC members being their CCC, not our CCC. Kay Doyle who in fact formerly was with KP Law and also Margaret Hurley who many of you have gone to C speak about this same issue. So things got a little unmoderated and out of control from the standpoint of not, it was perfectly all civil and everything, not that kind of unmoderated but the kind where you don't get to the part that you were looking for by being there. In my subsequent discussion with KP Law about how that went it was suggested that there could be a conference call between myself and Joel Bard from KP Law and Kay Doyle at some point to follow up on the points that Mr. Kravitz has already made on our behalf in addition to us showing up at the hearings at the first week of February which as Ms. Krueger pointed we're gonna kind of divide and conquer and Mr. Kravitz actually is a way that weeks we're gonna somehow have to survive without him driving us there and supporting us and having right written material for us but we will always testify on our own as well so we will manage to do that. We wanna hit both Greenfield and Holyoke again because there are gonna be a number of people there who are just open, who are there as we have seen so far who are there for free for all which is not where we're at with regulation or who still just don't want anything to do with it which is not where we're at either we wanna be able to figure out what possible things we can do locally associated with licensing because at this point all we're hanging our hat on is one sentence that says there can be a local licensing authority but it doesn't give any indication of what it can do and so I don't think this is one of those situations where we can do whatever we want until we get sued but we'd like to get a better understanding of how that's going to work and another issue that came up during the particular presentation was some confusion associated with social consumption. All these wonderful terms we're working with, adult use and social consumption and social consumption is covered for those of you who I know spent hours reading the draft regulations is talked about there but the confusion arose because it makes it sound like oh, well, social consumption, this is how it's going to work if you wanna have a place that could be either a primary use or as a secondary use, you could have a yoga studio that might wanna use some infused oils, you could have somebody that might wanna use creams, you could have somebody that might wanna actually allow vaping on their site, et cetera and they said, well, you can't have alcohol at the same time, so that was an interesting decision. So they've come up with some rules associated with that which is more than apparently anyone else in the US has done in terms of details but what they didn't say is oh, by the way, remember there's still this part in the law that says if you wanna actually have social consumption in your community, there has to be a petition of the residents to make it happen. So then the argument from the original writers of the ballot question is we didn't really mean for it to say that. So they didn't get it worked out when the legislation was written to try and clarify all these things so the CCC is trying to work with all these different piece parts and pull it together so that is in addition to the issues we brought up in this letter that issue came up during the thing and I said, wait, what now? And Ms. Doyle said from the CCC, no, of course you still have to do the particular petition process which always seemed kind of strange to us because it's not like any other petition process. Normally a place like a select border or city council would say yes to something or if they chose to say no, then the residents would petition. Not that we couldn't say yes and that the residents would have to petition. So please don't look for social consumption to happen anytime soon because it's still being sorted out. Ms. Brewer, can I just add, jump on to your comments because I think it's happened, you had to leave for your own session but one of the things you'll see in Mr. Kravitz's letter and we had a little discussion before the conference here on our team, it asks the town to let the cannabis control commission know if the applicant is in compliance with local laws, mostly meaning land use regulations and zoning by law. And Mr. Kravitz was really concerned that since our process is a special permit, how could you say somebody was in compliance if the zoning allowed it but they hadn't received their special permit yet or if the special permit took more than the 60 days, of response period and there's a bunch of consternation about that and I think you'll see that in the letter but I was able, at the very end of that session, Ms. Doyle said, oh, well that, we're really looking for whether it is possible that it could comply because they've had instances where they got in medical licensing where it got way down the road and they found that it wasn't even possible in the local community and so they wanna make sure that the zoning would allow it were the special permit to be granted of course all these things have to get clarified again and reiterated so I don't think it's bad that it's in the letter but that was kind of my guess on a common sense basis that if it's a special permit, you're just saying you could happen in the zoning district but it doesn't mean the ZBA is gonna say it's okay for any number of reasons because they have their special permit criteria so I think that was an important clarification note. I was glad I stuck through the 45 minutes of by last summary to a little bit more of the action on stuff we didn't ask the question someone else did but it was important. And on the subject of unsight social consumption, I was wondering if there has been any indication as to whether there's a conflict between this law and the law that was passed by the legislature banning smoking in public places and how that is being addressed? There is in fact going to be a way that they are, thank you, that they are going to in theory that an organization, an owner of a business will be allowed to ask that there be smoking. In fact, not just other forms of consumption but to actually allow for smoking but it seems to be in a very infant stage of being developed in terms of the rules but there is a theory, there is some provision there that indicates that despite the fact that there's even the law, as we talked about at town meeting that says you can't smoke where you can't smoke that they're trying to allow for it in certain types of businesses if that's the business model the business wants to have but obviously that would bring up all the questions we've always had about smoking and its effects on staff, et cetera. So it's unclear where they're going. That they haven't killed it off. The other is of course the concerns of the Board of Health and our belief that the Board of Health should be able to pass appropriate regulations as they have for many years on the question of smoking. Still a lot more clarification. A lot more is going to need to come out even though they wrote a lot of pages. And they're working hard on it. I mean looking at a lot of things I never even thought about in terms of representing small growers, small business operators, minority business operators. So they're trying to at least have some equity in this new business so that it's open to not just big corporate marijuana companies but that there's some pieces of the pie for other people too. I bring this up because if we have two members of the Board who are representing us in essence of these hearings that you're aware of issues that we're concerned about and I raise them in that. Our health directors. Absolutely. And thank you for reminding us from that standpoint. And then she is also, she doesn't necessarily intend to testify but we have incorporated that into what we will say at the time based on whatever news articles have come out between now and then as to what particular things are happening beyond the issues we specifically mentioned here associated with zoning and associated with areas of disproportionate impact which is also an area that is really unclear as well as local licensing. And so again, they are doing an amazing job. I mean if we think back to when they got this deadline we thought there's no way they're gonna get this done. And they have done an amazing job but they are also trying to do more than anyone else ever has apparently in terms of designing this. And to the point that some of the medical establishments are saying, you know, you don't really have to work on some of this yet. And then saying, no, actually we do. We need to work all these details out. So it's going to be a race to get there to get some of these things worked out but we are still looking for a local licensing role for a local licensing authority which we serve as in this town associated with alcohol and a very similar thing as to what Board of Health is allowed to do with tobacco. And so when we talked they, Board of Health was very happy in terms of like serving sizes and everything that they started outlining in much more detail associated with the regulations. Great, they're happy with that. But you know, just because it's legal federally to sell two loose cigarettes it's not legal to do that in Amherst. And so our Board of Health has an opinion about that and should be allowed to do so. Did you have other member report items? Do I not just get to talk about it? You can stop there I'm giving the opportunity to do other things. So I will go ahead and say because it is our chance to do so that Mr. Backelman and myself also served on a panel that was about hiring a town manager in a time of change which was kind of a nice subtle envelope for all of the difficulties that a variety of communities have faced with hours of the passing of our town manager others where they were going through a charter change and of a completely different kind of charter and another with a very surprise resignation and then also hearing from a consultant who'd worked in a variety of complicated situations. And so we were not really clear when we got there who was gonna show up. Again, much like the marijuana issue would it be people who've not heard of this before or people kind of taking the graduate level course? And in this case, would it be assistant town managers looking for a job or would it be selection at the meeting because it obviously wasn't counselors? And so it did seem to be a mix of people. I'll be curious to see if they do get what evaluations they do get and what they say associated with it. But we each spoke briefly and tried to be very brief about what particular things stood out to us about our particular circumstance because in some ways searches are searches but given things that happened to us what we learned from those and then we got to hear from the candidate's perspective as to how they thought it all worked. And so I thought it was super interesting and I hope that some of the other people did too. And I thought that went very well. So we were glad that MMA included us in that. And oh yeah, don't forget, I also got to judge the annual town reports which they did not even have there in person for people to page through and say how wish that those were the reports they wrote but people did get certificates and that was nice for them and that was lucky. And there were also innovation projects and websites that also got awards. And so that's always nice to see your colleagues being recognized for all the work they put into things. Are you ever gonna volunteer to do that again? Well, certainly not that particular task and I'm quite certain they won't ask me to do it again given how complicated it turned out to be the intensive scoring rubrics. The other thing I just wanted to mention totally not related to marijuana or MMA is that it's town meeting time again. And so on, what does my cheat sheet say? On Monday, February 5th which is the same date as our next meeting, at noon all the citizen petitions are due except the ones that are simply resolutions. And I know I'm not saying resolutions are simple because they don't matter, I'm saying they're not by-law changes and they aren't money articles and they aren't zoning things but everything that's not a resolution meaning non-binding is due on noon, Monday, February 5th, then the actual ones that are resolutions are not due until Monday, the 26th but that's new this year. For those of you thinking about that please don't say you wish you'd known because it's been on the town website for many months now and that information is out there. So we will be on February 5th reiterating the fact when we're at our meeting that we are not accepting any additional warrant articles and they only require 10 signatures at this time of year other than resolutions after that meeting and of course town committees and boards are still continuing to work out the language of their things. We may have articles, who knows but anything that's citizen petition wise the warrant will be so to speak closed on Monday the 5th other than those articles. So I just want to remind people of that because it is a change from previous years and it is like coming right up given that town meeting doesn't start until April 30th. Thank you for the reminder, yes. So I didn't mention the MMA annual meeting because I thought you would do that and I'm glad you did. 13, the MMA annual meeting is the largest gathering of municipal officials in New England and New York in fact and so 1,300 officials were registered to show up it's the largest trade show in the area. I think we were the only community that had panelists on two different sessions and that's I think that's something that the townspeople should be very proud of because it's competitive to be on these panels and they try to pick topics that are breaking news or something that's really informative like the marijuana panel every year. So I think there were 27 panels, 27 workshops total and so we had representatives on two of them and I think that really speaks highly of the kind of work that we're doing in the town. For next year they begin thinking about workshops for next year, April, May, June type frame so we should be thinking, we've talked about this on staff already, what are things that we think they should do? They sort of internally brainstorm on these things but if we have things that we think has a broader interest in the commonwealth we should think about what the topic is and what we'd like to present and who would be good at doing that. They're always, not struggling but they're always interested in hearing the perspective from the field as it were because they do get a little Boston centric, little state house centric and sometimes hearing what we're going through and sort of I wish there was a, I wish there were a workshop on this topic. I think that would be a useful thing. So you're thinking caps on for the next year and we're always doing a lot of interesting things and people want to hear what we're doing. Maybe we should have an agenda item where we just brainstorm our 10 favorite topics. I thought of one already. Oh, what is it? I thought of regionalization. That's not necessarily school regionalization, that could be its own topic but I think what are best practices, hurdles that people run into? We've had a couple of places where it's worked well to do that, Veteran Services being a prime example. We've had other places where we've had a lot of struggle and we've looked at it for a number of years and some of that's 911 dispatch. And so I think there are other places that have economic constraints that regionalization sort of this obvious sort of next step for people to take but how to do it, how to coordinate it, how to... So that would be one I can think of off the top of my head. Might be of interest to people. That's not me volunteering to do anything but I don't know what to do to that. You'd like to learn more about it. I would like to learn more about it. I would like to see successful models of regionalization. Yeah, exactly, something, anything like that. But anyway, that was what I thought of off the top of my head. As far as my own personal report, I don't really have much report. I do have a rather busy week coming up for me though. So the MPO, which is the Municipal Planning Organization I believe is what MPO stands for, I can never remember but it has to do with massed up projects in the area. They're meeting tomorrow. And I think we're getting ready, now's about the time we really get into the heavy swing of looking at the planning for the coming federal fiscal years and they do what they call the TIP which is the Transportation Infrastructure Plan and getting that sorted out for the next year and so that'll be coming up. And on Wednesday, the PVTA Advisory Board is meeting and proceeding that the Finance and Audit Committee which I'm on is meeting as well. I can tell you now that it's given the current information regarding what the governor plans to propose for funding for the regional transit authorities. It looks like it's gonna be a very, very difficult year and that the PVTA will likely look at both rate increases which we haven't done in about a decade and it's been a good five years since we last looked at rate increases for ridership but also probably service reductions. Both of those will be topics on the table and the frame in which we'll look at those will be probably the heart and soul of the conversation on Wednesday about how we go about deciding which things to offer and get feedback from the public on. Anything that gets ultimately proposed will then go to an extensive round of public hearing like we did last June. The goal is of course to get that process started earlier so it's not quite as panicked to timeframe for folks and so everyone has more time to offer comment and suggestion but also to adjust if changes are made in preparation for the coming fiscal year. So it could be a very, very difficult fiscal year coming up for PVTA. So those, I think those are the only things I wanted to mention in my member report. I'm sure there are other things but I can't recall if that's what I had. But I also think that we have exhausted our agenda for the evening unless someone else has something not anticipated. So given that I would entertain a motion to adjourn. I move to adjourn. Second. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. And so we are adjourned at, which is for the big 40.