 Okay. Please go ahead. Thank you. Okay. Good evening. It's November 20th, 2023. This is the first of three meetings tonight, all of which will be on the same Zoom link. This is a regular meeting of the Town Council, although it includes a recess for two public forums. From 5 to 6.30, the Town Council will hold a reading period to review the town manager's evaluation documents. There will be no discussion at that time, unless I have to ask people if they're ready to come back into session. At 6.30, the Town Council will recess the regular meeting for a 6.30 PM public forum on the FY25 budget, and on or about, and not before, 7 o'clock PM, a public forum on supplemental budget appropriations, including the proposed increase in the bond authorization for the Jones Library renovation. The regular meeting will resume following the public forum. In addition, I would like those people who are in the public at this time to know that we will not be voting on the library this evening, and I'll talk about that later. The open meeting law has been extended. This allows us to meet virtually and in person at the same time. This meeting is available real-time via Zoom, by phone, and as live broadcast, and on Channel 9 and then live stream. Given that we have a quorum of the Council President, I'm calling the November 20th, 2023 Town Council meeting to order at 5.04. I will call on each person. Please let me know that you are here, and then please mute your mic again. I do not see Shalini yet, okay? Pat DeAngelis? Present. Anna Devlin-Gothier? Present. Lynn Griesmer is present. Mandy Jo Hanneke? Present. Anika Lopes? Present. Michelle Miller is not present yet. Dorothy Pam? Here. Pam Rooney? I'm here. Kathy Shane is not present yet. Andy Steinberg? Present. Jennifer Tob? Present. Alicia Walker? Present. Thank you. Alicia, for later on, your mic is very low, okay? There is no chat room for this meeting. If you have technical issues, please let Kthina and me know. There will be three public comment periods tonight. The first two are related to the public's forums starting at 6.30, and then during the return to the regular Town Council meeting at general public comment. As I mentioned earlier, we will not be voting on the Jones Library tonight, however, it will be the focus, partial focus of one of the public forums. The Finance Committee has not completed its review and will convene on Tuesday, November 28th at 2 o'clock. And again, on December 1st at 1 o'clock, it is anticipated that the vote regarding the library will come before the Town Council on Monday, December 4th. So with that, I am going to ask counselors and point out that all of the material you are now to review is in your packet. One of the items in your packet is a compilation of all of the Town Council's responses to every one of the 13 goals and any additional, so you don't have to actually go through each individual counselor unless you care to. In addition to that, there is a, what I would call the first draft of the Town Manager Evaluation Memo. When we are finished at 6.30, we hope as soon as we pick up the meeting afterwards, we can go into the rest of the public forum, et cetera, and not come back for further reading. So with that, I'm going to ask if Kathy Shane can hear us. Yes. Thank you. And Shallonee Balmillean? Yes. Okay. And am I missing anybody else, Athena? I think we're still missing, we're still missing Michelle. And that's it. I'll keep an eye out for Michelle and just note when she joined us instead of interrupting people. So at this point, counselors, you might want to turn off both your video and your audio. Michelle just joined. Michelle, can you hear us? I can. Yes. Thank you. Thank you very much. And as I mentioned, all the materials that you now need to be three during your reading period or in your packet. So I'm going to ask counselors to turn off their video and their audio. And we will reconvene at 6.30. Answers you have about 15 minutes. Or actually less or like 12. Please wrap up so that we can begin our public forum in about three minutes. Athena, would you take the notice down and put the screen up? Thank you. I'd like the counselors to turn their videos on. So I know you're here. Alicia, are you back? Thank you. Thank you. So we're actually going to. Take a recess from the regular town council meeting. And go into two public forums. Okay. Thank you. Are we ready now? Okay. Recording. It is November 20th. And this is the public forum regarding the FY 25 budget. We will have a second public forum. On the financial orders and the proposed. Bond. You have a potential. Not to increase for the library, but that's not this one. This was on the budget completely. I'm calling the meeting to order. If you would like to speak during this public forum. Please make sure that if you're in the room, you have registered with the clerk of the town council. And if you are in the audience on zoom. with a quick overview of the budget presentation in a much abbreviated form. I believe Paul, you and Holly are doing that. The town manager and Holly Drake. Finance committee needs to call to order. I'm sorry. Finance committee needs to call to order, please. Thank you. I also need to actually officially call the council order. Thank you. So I am going to call the council to order. I do see that all counselors are present. And so I'm not going to take time for that. But Andy, would you please go ahead and call the finance committee to order? Following the finance committee to order and we have members who are counselors, but they have already been consulted about their connectivity. I just want to make sure that Bob Eggner can hear me and we can hear him. I'm present. And Bernie Kubiak. Present. I don't think that Matt Holloway is here. I don't see him. So that's a committee that's in call to order. Thank you, Andy. The town council after this will have a public forum on the library. And the other financial orders, we will not be taking a vote on the library tonight. Okay. So with that, I'm going to call on the town manager and Holly Drake. To talk a little bit about FY 25. Thank you, Lynn. So tonight is our chance to listen to the public. Last week, you heard us talk a lot and tonight we will be listening. This is a team effort. As I mentioned last week with Holly Drake, who is our comptroller and Jennifer LaFountain, who's our treasure collector, both of whom have stepped up to take on the, to work on the finance director role. And Athena Keefe, who's the clerk of the council, who has assisted as well. So tonight is the second stage of our budget process. The first stage is where we presented information last time. And then tonight we listen and then the council begins to work on the financial guidelines. The next slide. So we're going to be brief because we know, again, we want to be listening. The challenges are not unique to the town that you see on the screen. They, we have not lost sight that the goals of the town is to build all four capital projects. With a fifth roads being one that's also been elevated in recent years. We also are highly cognizant of the impact of all of our decisions on taxpayers and have been working on strategies to expand our revenue options. And, you know, just to note, again, losing the finance director has been a big impact. But again, we have are really fortunate to have really stellar staff throughout our financial offices. And they've stepped up and haven't missed a beat. We have a very strong financial foundation. It's no accident. We've been working at this for a long time. We have implemented. We have maintained conservative budgeting, both on our expenditures and on our revenues, which results in usually healthy free cash, which we allows us to move forward with many of our initiatives. And we have maintained a we had a long term fiscal strategy to help us stabilize our budget. And it's important that we continue to stick with that. Holly's got to take the next few slides. OK, so good evening, everybody. So this is our our sort of basic budget projection. This is an early iteration. This is just a draft at this point. We take into account what our new property tax revenues will be with our estimated new growth. We take into account our local receipts and our state aid. Our state aid is still being projected basically at what our FY 24 levels are. We'll have a better picture of that come January when the governor comes out with the first draft of the state budget. And we get some better ideas on state aid and then our other financing sources, things like the ambulance fund and the debt service from community from CPA from the Community Preservation Act reimbursements from our enterprise funds, whether we're going to use overlay surplus or free cash or stabilization fund, which we are not projecting to use in FY 25. So the top half of this or this page is the the revenue side of things. And next slide, please, you scroll down. This is our expenditure side. So obviously, when we get to the end and we get some better projections and we revise this many, many times, we'll end up with a balanced budget that will be presented by May 1st. So right now we are projecting a 3% increase for all of the operating budgets, the general fund town operating budget, the elementary school operating budget Jones libraries operating budget and the regional school district assessment. And then we are hoping and projecting to stay with our our capital goal of 10 and a half percent of the tax levy that would be dedicated to capital expenditures. And then with the additional expenses on appropriated uses and some miscellaneous expenses right now. This projection is showing a deficit, but again, once we have state aid figures and once we have some better ideas on local receipts, we'll get this into balance. This is just our first draft and it's not uncommon to see a bit of a deficit there when we start, but that will certainly be taken care of by the time we get to some solid numbers. So next slide, please. And these are just a few slides from our financial indicators presentation that was last Monday night on the 13th, operating revenues. These are the local receipts. These are the ones that are economically driven things like meals tax and sales tax and motor vehicle excise tax. Permitting and licensing, you will see that in FY 23, it does show a small decrease in the percentage of the overall operating budget. But just wanted to point out and we we talked about this last week in the financial indicators presentation is that the operating budget in FY 23 was higher than it was in prior years due to some a bunch of transfers in and out of the reserve funds. So that percentage is, if it was to be adjusted, if it was to be adjusted for the transfers in and out of the reserve funds, it would be about 4.8%. It would be very similar to what it was in FY 22. Again, these are the ones that are the revenues that are more controlled by the economic development. I'm sorry, economic growth factors. You know, people going out to eat people buying new vehicles and, and, you know, fixing their homes, taking out permits, etc. Next slide, please. This just shows a little bit about our revenue. These are our three main sources of revenue property taxes, which is increased by 2.5% each year, you know, per mass general laws. And it is also adjusted for inflation, which just shows that when adjusted for inflation, it's not growing quite as rapidly as it looks like, which is the red dotted line. And then our state aid, which once again is is slowly increasing, but when adjusted for inflation again is is fairly flat fairly consistent for us. And the last line is the local receipts. And, you know, you'll see that it dipped down in 2021 due to pandemic but we are right back to where we had been prior to the pandemic we are recovering nicely. Next slide. And this shows our excuse me. This shows our operating revenues per capita compared to our peer communities and some local communities here in western mass and just showing that when you sort of break down the numbers on a per capita basis. When compared to the entire state and when compared to communities that are similar to us are operating expenditures are are pretty low per capita. Next slide. Okay, we'll turn it back over to Paul. Yeah, thanks Holly. So all these slides plus more were in just discussed in detail last week and that that presentation is available online. So we want to talk a little bit about the highlights and ongoing challenges. And I think one of the things I always like to start with is that one of the strengths of Amherst is the collaboration among elected officials, including the library, the schools and the towns and the staff of those three departments. It's unusual, but we have a really strong tradition in Amherst that has been there for decades that has produced strong leadership amongst all three and it actually has minimized the number of disputes between the different elected bodies. So this process begins with the town council, the town council establishes goals for the town. Those goals get translated into goals for the town manager, they get incorporated into financial guidelines that all three bodies are asked to follow. And then those guidelines are incorporated into our budget development. And that includes the schools in the libraries. And then that should be reflected in a budget that's presented to the town council. So we try to align all of your your policymaking with the budget because the budget is the plan for how we're going to work in the next year. I want to note that we did include a 3% increase for operating budgets, which is a higher increase than we have at this point in time previous years, but we think our revenues support it and we know that our operations need it. The challenges that we have are, many of them are just out of our control. We do not control inflation. We do not necessarily control the growth of our tax base in terms of the demands on services and establishing strategic partnership agreements, which we've been successful with with the university. It's still a two party agreement and we are working to get those with the other two institutions as well. Next slide. But going forward, the big picture, you know, we I'm not going to read the slide, you see all of them here. I just want to make sure that the public knows that we have not lost sight of the four capital projects we have to who are that are well on their way, the library and the schools, and we have to that need additional support and attention from the town and I, and I hear that. We continue to manage our resources frugally and that usually develop results in a healthy free cash, which allows us flexibility and what we're going to do to maintain our reserves and to do additional things like pay additional roads. And then we've been really suck very, very successful at getting grants and using those for our major capital projects. Almost every one of our capital projects is supported by grants that includes the school, the library, the centennial water treatment facility, the town common, the crest department, the four firefighters, which came from our strategic partnership and roads like the roundabout at Pomeroy village was a was a grant the sidewalks on throughout the town. Many of them are grants and on we'll be working on some sidewalks on Belcher town road and on Bultwood Avenue, and then the repaving of Kellogg Avenue next to the housing authority. And I'm going to turn it to Athena. So it's just very quickly where we are on the budget process like Paul mentioned the town manager presented the financial indicators at the meeting on November 13. Tonight we're going to hear from the public on that FY 25 budget in December, as you said the council will adopt budget guidelines and goals for the town. In spring of 24 JCPC the joint capital planning committee will meet and give input to the town manager on the coming budget. We'll have a public hearing on the budget. I'm sorry, the school and library budgets are due in April. The town manager will present the budget to the council on May 1st. And then finance committee will begin reviewing the town manager's budget. The council will hold a public hearing on the budget. And on the capital plan before voting on the budget in June of 2024. And there are multiple ways of getting involved. There's this public forum tonight. There is going to be meetings of the finance committee on development of the budget guidelines. Those meetings are posted on the town website under boards and committees calendar. The council is also considering the town manager goals that will be discussed a little bit tonight. And then again at the GL meetings and the council meetings in December. The council's email address and the town manager email address are posted here and the upcoming public hearings are listed here as well. That concludes our presentation. If you take the presentation down, please, we're going to move to the public forum, the public forum will be in session until at least seven o'clock. If you are here in the audience, and we'd like to note that there are 19 people on zoom, three of whom have raised their hand to speak to the general budget for FY 25. Any people in the audience. One. Okay, then why don't we begin with the audience. Vince O'Connor please come up state your name and address before you make your comment. Vincent O'Connor 175 summer street. I would ask that one council goal. That the manager include the full elementary school budget as voted by the school committee in the in his balanced budget. I'm not asking that the school committee committed itself to voting for the school full school budget as voted by the school committee only that it be included in the manager's balance budget. So that the council can weigh the comments and thoughts of the manager of the finance committee and the budget of the school committee itself. Without an exercise and have the potential to exercise its right to vote for the school full school budget, notwithstanding the charter provisions that say you can't raise them out. So that in the middle of June, the council will not have to decide do we vote for the full school budget and thereby put the budget out of balance. And what cuts would we then have to make to the manager's budget for the town departments in order to balance the budget. The the next two comments I have been that I have goal for the council would be that the council establish two committees, one of itself to negotiate with the university, either for the direct payment from the university's parking fees or some joint effort directed at chapter 90 money from the millionaire's tax or otherwise that would allow the town to collect annually impact aid to a road repair fund of the of the community. And I think that the reason to do that is that the council, the elected counselors have the moral and political equivalent of the two legislators who represent this community and the state legislature, and therefore their efforts with the university will have more credence. The second the second committee would be a joint committee with the school committee to negotiate with representatives from Amherst College to make for the purpose of persuading the college to make a substantial contribution annually over a lengthy period of time to both the elementary school budget and the regional school budget. The purpose of supporting education, it seems to me that a single country, and the reason is that part of the reason is this, and many residents, present residents don't know this that in all the older college dorm now dormitories were taken off the town's tax in the 80s on a five year declining basis after the university I the college that's had determined that it was not a good idea to have men and fraternities and women in dormitories as a social mix. It was the right decision, but the financial impact on the town of the college removing those then fraternities from the tax rolls has created a budget hole that has lasted for over 30 years. And the way to address that is to get an annual contribution from the college and the appropriate people to do that are members of the council and members of the school committee, who again will have the moral and political authority that is nowhere else to be found. We need you to wrap up community. Thank you. We have one more in person comment. Okay, then let's go to birdie Newman who was in the audience. Please enter the room state your name and where you live. Hello, my name is birdie Newman and I'm a district three resident. I'm calling in to advocate for an FY 25 budget that prioritizes racial justice, innovative public safety and community building. I hope to see a budget that reflects a reduction in the size of the Amherst police department, the expansion of crest operate 24 seven, and then devotion of town resources to get a youth empowerment center and BIPOC multicultural center off the ground. All of these asks come from reports by the community safety working group and I know you've heard spoke, folks speaking up to support them a lot over the past couple years. It's important to me that you know that we are still watching we are still voting and we will not stop advocating for inequitable and safe Amherst. Thank you. Thank you for joining us birdie. We're going to return to the audience. Liz. Hey, good. Please come up and stay with everybody. My name is Elizabeth. Hey, good. I live at 143 log time road. I go by she, her, her pronouns. I'm here on behalf of the human rights commission. And I'm not sure how many people did receive our letter requesting additional funds for some of the many cultural and diverse events that we produce throughout the year. As an effort to promote the diverse cultures and Amherst community, the human rights commission has been sponsoring several cultural and heritage celebrations in the town. These events help to promote and educate our community about the riches of our town. And it is very inclusive to everybody. We are under the operating budget of not a lot. If we were to have our druthers. We would need to spend between 21 and $23,000 a year. The more events we have, the more we're asked to do more events. Our goal is to have at least one cultural event each year. They promote harmony and they allow community members to know who we are and what we can do for them. And it brings everybody together. We're asking for, I think, last year, the commission. The council gave us 2000, we're asking to increase that from 2000 to 10 to 15,000. The rest we will do a fundraising for. And they go to a number of different items like childcare, food. Educational tools and things like that. So if you all, I don't know, did everybody receive the letter? I know you're not supposed to ask that. Okay. But if everybody received the letter, I ask you to carefully consider it as we go forward with trying to bring harmony to our town. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. We're going to go back to the zoom link. And this is comments regarding the FY 25 budget. There is a second forum following this. Jeff Lee, please enter the room stage your name and where you live. Allegra Clark was ahead of. Oh, I'm sorry. You had already brought her into the room. Excuse me Allegra, go right ahead please. Can you hear me. My name is Allegra Clark. I live at 189 Cherry Lane. I am calling in tonight. In support of a fiscal year 25 budget that would prioritize racial justice and community building. I'm honored to speak after Liz Haged who was my high school coach and is a pillar of the community. I think she embodies the work that we want to do with youth and a youth empowerment center is one of the priorities that we should continue to look at funding in this town. I know that we spoke with the community, the community safety and social justice can be heard from our AmeriCorps volunteer who's working with youth. And so there are some promising steps being taken in terms of programming but we do need a location and I hope that there will be some funding for that. I think that funding for cultural events, especially through the Human Rights Commission is really important they put on some great events and it has really brought the community together so I'd like to see that continue. Again, I think the Crest department should be operational 24 seven and I would love to see once dispatch is sending 911 calls to Crest. What the impact of that is when we're evaluating public safety staffing, and to see if positions would be reallocated from the police department over to Crest as their capacity grows. Another thing I would like to see is the request that was put forward in the African Heritage Reparations Assembly's report about operationalizing the two million reparations endowment fund within four years. They have laid out some great options so I hope that one of those will be taken up. Affordable housing is always a priority as well. There are some great projects in the pipeline and I would love to see the town continue to put funds to it I hope that the CPA requests will go through I know that doesn't really pertain to this budget right now but it is one way that we can fund affordable housing we need to be on the lookout for other ways to increase funds for projects. And last but certainly not least, I think that we need to work our hardest to avoid any more position cuts in the schools this year. My child has certainly felt the impact of not having the library para educator, and it has been really sad to talk with the librarian about the things that haven't been able to be done in the schools because they don't have the extra support in the library. There are also, of course, short staffing issues across all the departments but I think that, you know, the schools were significantly impacted with the number of cuts and how that has affected morale. So I would hope that we can fight to keep our schools funded and keep positions intact. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to make sure that if you're here to provide testimony with regard to the FY 25 budget that you have signed in with Athena. We're going to go back to the audience and Jeff Lee. Thank you I'm Jeff Lee from District five. The budget presentation touts the town's conservative approach to spending and it's, it's fiscal discipline. I have to say, with regard to the capital capital budget and the building projects I find that we're neither conservative nor disciplined. Capital improvement program lists the department, the DPW facility and the fire station as being in critical condition, high priority while the library is in fair condition and medium priority. Yet we continue to throw money at the library project. In fact, it's the most expensive library project in the of the 33 in the 2016 17 grant round from the state for library projects. And while the capital campaign has done a good job trying to raise money, the fact is that the commitment from the town still ranks up among the top three of the 33 libraries that are getting state grant money. I recognize that the town is has done a good job at securing grants for various needs, but we shouldn't be letting grants dictate what we what we do with very expensive projects. Very expensive projects like the Jones library, and it strikes me as the tail wagging the dog which I don't think is appropriate. So I'd like to see the DPW and Central fire station take the priority that they should be. And apart from that, I'm concerned about the fiscal cliff for the schools which we keep hearing about with Esther funds going away. We really heard a solid explanation of how we're going to deal with that. So, there's obviously some funding needed there. All right, thanks for hearing me out. Thank you for joining us. Nancy has listed as Nancy's iPad please enter the room state your full name and where you live. Robert 166 Lincoln Avenue, and I'd like to address the health department budget and please make sure it's funded fairly Amherst has 40,000 almost 40,000 residents. And East Hampton has 16,053 East Hampton has 200,000 $20,000 more in their budget, North Hampton with 39,000 for the health department. And this is taking out grants and taking out the inspector so we're looking at it evenly and North Hampton with 10,000 less residents of 29,000 they're spending about three times what we are spending for our health department. And I'm very concerned if we have another pandemic or other crisis that the health department will not be adequately staffed. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Pat on a buck who please enter the room state your name and where you live. Good evening, can people hear me. We can. Okay. Pat on any back home. 28 Amara drive. I'm here to urge you all to ensure that the crest department and the eye department are fully funded. With this. Budget. Circle. As was recommended by CSWG. We know we all know what is happening at press department. And that's because you guys did not fully funded. And we shouldn't let that mistake happen again. It's a priority. Safety is a priority. So please consider fully funding it. I also, I hear about the four important capital projects. You know, I get it. However, I didn't hear anything about the youth center. And I want to echo what Allegra and Boardman had said earlier on. We do need a youth center. It should be a priority. We also need a bike, a bike park center. As a black woman, I don't feel safe. Going to certain buildings in our town. We should have our own space. That we feel safe together. So again, it's a safety issue, safety could be psychological, it could be emotional, it could be physical. Please consider youth center and bike park center as well. I also agree with Ms. Hego about adding some funding for human rights because they do a lot of activities, cultural events, and it needs money. That's, you know, people should be priority in our town as well. And resident oversight board when I served on CSWG, it's been more than two to three years now. Nothing has happened yet. Please consider putting funding, steeping for folks that will serve on that board. I would like to see resident oversight board, you know, happen quickly. Also, we have free cash. I hope that money will go to some of the funds will go to reparation as well. Let's fully fund the $2 million and not wait till several years to come. And I know this is not the right time, but I just want to put a plug very quickly. It's been two years that our funds were being distributed. And yet my group, Black Business Association, our existing businesses have not received anything. I'm very disappointed tonight that there is no agenda item to give updates about upper funds. Meanwhile, Black owned businesses are suffering. And finally, we need you to have. Excuse me. We need you to finish up. Okay. So very quickly, my neighborhood is being targeted again. This time the town or farmers want to put pickleball in my neighborhood and behold, our bodies are opposing it. Maybe this is not the right night to talk about it, but I just want to raise an awareness that it will lower the quality of life of my family and other neighbors. I support pickleball, but it should be a non-residential area. Thank you. Thank you. Lou, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. You need to unmute. There we go. Okay. My name is Lou Conover. I live at 120 Pulpit Hill Road. I want to ask a question about staging for the library expansion project. This is a large construction project that will require a large staging area for, you know, the various construction equipment, cement delivery of construction materials and all of that. I can only assume that that's going to happen in the parking lot behind the CVS. That parking lot is already in terrible condition. The construction project will take that parking lot out of commission, basically fill it with other things until for two years, you know, the duration of the project, which is basically two years. Just as the parking lot in front of the old gas station behind the North Amherst Library was also fully occupied and unavailable for the length of that project. So first of all, we're going to have a big parking problem because we're taking a number of spaces out of commission for two years. And the second thing is that when the project is finished, I assume that, you know, the parking lot will be vacated of construction equipment. But then what what's going to happen with that parking lot, the town will be down many parking places, a good deal of what are of our downtown parking. The parking lot will probably be rendered unusable by the project, the beating that it's going to take in that project. It's already bad, it's going to get worse. So there's going to be an additional expense at a minimum to, you know, reconstruct that parking lot. It's not just a matter of paving it over. It's going to have to be the foundation of it is going to have to be rebuilt. I know there's been an impetus to build a parking structure behind the CVS. So if that happens, then that's going to be yet another expense. So these are unaccounted expenses in the budget for the library expansion project and I'd like to know how the town is going to take care of those things. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. I think that there are no other comments for the FY 25 budget either in the audience or online. I'm going to ask Andy to adjourn the finance committee, although we'll be recalling them back again. Andy. For the purpose of this forum, I adjourn the finance committee. Likewise for the purpose of this forum, I adjourn the town council. So immediately into the next public forum. That public forum is on the appropriations outside the annual budget. And it is also a special town council meeting of the council and the finance committee. So it is November 20th. The council meeting law allows us to meet in this manner where we can have people both in the audience. And I want to mention at this point, we have about 18 to 20 people in the audience. We also have eight counselors present in the audience. And we have the other counselors are online. I mean, in the town room, I'm sorry, there are 35 attendees. We have a quorum of the council present. I'm calling the November 20 town council meeting to order for the public forum purposes at 710. And since I have already done the role in the past, I'm going to move past that. Andy, do you need to call any further people together for the finance committee. I call a finance committee together. I think we're all except one person present, which is a quorum. Okay. The purpose of this meeting is to hear briefly about the financial orders and then also to listen to the public with regard to that. There is no chat room. And there will be no vote subsequently at this meeting of the town council, either now or later during the regular meeting regarding the library authorization. There are two finance committee meetings coming up. One is on November 28 at two and the others on December 1 at one. And it is anticipated that there will be a vote done before the town council on Monday, December 4 regarding the library. With that, I'm going to ask the town manager to give a brief overview of the financial orders. Thank you, Lynn. So again, these public forums are really designed for me and the town council to hear from the public. And it's designed as included into the charter specifically for us to listen, but I will give a frame outline what is on the topic for this, this public forum. So I'm going to start with the supplemental appropriations or do you want to start with the library so I'm going to go through the we have a number of appropriations. There are annual fall requests for financial or actions. So the first is a transfer of funds to general stabilization fund to comply with the town's councils financial policies. The second is a transfer of funds to the reparations stabilization fund and keeping with the town's reserve policy for that as well. The third is a transfer funds to the capital stabilization fund, which is again and keeping with the towns reserve policies at the end when we have our free cash certified, which is the funds that we get certified from the state. We then take actions with this money and put it in certain reserves or funds so that they're available to the town later on, but we've accounted for them all. There's a new appropriation before the council asking for $1 million for road and sidewalk repairs. This the goal of this is to continue to chip away at the backlog of word road work that we all know is so much is needed so much. There's an appropriation of funds for four new firefighters. These funds, these firefighters have been funded through ARPA, but now with the strategic strategic partnership agreement with the university we have a funding source. So we would like we will incorporate them into the budget pending approval by the town council to do this. And then we appropriate funds into two revolving accounts. One is for cannabis and one is for opioid. These are funds that come to the town for specific purposes. The opioid funds come from a legal settlement and the cannabis funds come from cannabis shops that are operating in the town, and they have to be spent on certain things. So we can put them into a revolving fund so that we can track the revenue and track the expenditures on those funds. And the last thing that's, that's on this sort of generic list is an appropriation to from the sewer free cash, what we call retained earnings for $500,000 to the sewer enterprise The sewer department, the DPW can expand these funds for operations of the sewer department and sewer means wastewater treatment plant and the pipes that are underground. We had some couple of several large expenditures this year. You may recall there's a major break of a sewer line on Snell Street that took a lot of resources from the town. And then also there is some damage to some property, not damage, but some things that broke at the wastewater treatment plant that we had to fix right away. So these funds basically replenishes that and allows us to do some preemptory work on the sewer lines to help us hope we don't move forward. Don't have additional breaks. The next one is the library and I know we've had a lot of conversations about the library and there will be more. And I think that's really important. So what I'm asking tonight is to adjust the sum that the town council previously approved for borrowing for this project. This will move the project cost from 36,279,700 to 46,139,800. This is an increase of $9.8 million. The funds, the funding sources that you see on the screen, this town share stays the same at 15.751810. The MBLC grant which was at $13,870,000 moves to, do we have that on the screen? Maybe not. There we go. That's the same. That hasn't been increased through efforts by a lot of different people. But also we do always recognize our state rep and state senator for the efforts they put into that. That moves from 13.8 million to 15.565 million. The Jones library commitment increases from $5 million to $13.8 million. And then we also account for a million dollars in community preservation act funds. The fundraising side, which is the Jones library side has been very successful. They, in addition to getting the additional $1.7 million from the mass board of library commissioners. They have gotten an earmark at $1.1 million in federal funds funds from Congressman McGovern for sustainability measures within the project a grant from the national endowment for the humanities of $1 million and a gift from Amherst college for $1 million. All impressive statements of support for this project. The vote of the town council is to authorize us to expand the to appropriate and borrow for those funds if necessary. So again, the funding sources from the town 1528 million is not changed. The money from the CPA, which is town funds is not changed. And the question is, why do we need to do that now? So the first is costs have gone up significantly has happened with all of our projects. Everybody sees it happening. We need the town council to authorize us to move to the next step. Back in 2017 town meeting approved seeking funds for this project. The total project cost was estimated to be 36.3 million. Due to delays in the significant impact of COVID, the estimates have increased this cost of 46.1 million. And that number seems pretty solid. We had two independent companies look at the plans and make cost projections for what it would cost projecting forward to when we would actually bid it out so they build in some inflationary costs for that as well as well. We don't anticipate much variation from this point on, unless something really that we never saw before comes up, but we don't anticipate that happening. They pretty, they know the building pretty well. So with these cost estimates and the number being at 46.1 million, it makes it seems the time is right for the council to appropriate the final funds for these for this project. The town in many different venues have supported the project. And I think that this is the request to the council to take this final action. I think I'll leave it at that. Okay. So, I'm sure we will go past the amount of time that we need to in order to meet the requirements of the charter. So, I'm not going to even worry about that. What I would like to do is, if at all possible, those people who would like to speak specifically to any of the other financial orders, except the library to go ahead and speak first please raise your hand if you are on zoom. And is there any way to tell that from the people that have signed up from you Athena. No, no, is there anyone in the room who wanted to speak to the other appropriations. One fence, would you please come up and state your name and address before you make your comment. Thank you. Let me start by saying public comment will be limited to three minutes. That's fine. This is very great but I, I see that this item is on the cons has ended up on the consent agenda. I did want to comment on it. I actually do appreciate the activities of the two counselors who have put forth the street lighting concern. And I would just like to make a comment, even though this is on the consent agenda. And that is that I think the counselors have identified one of the primary barriers to effective street lighting, which is the intrusion of the street lights into people's homes. Making it sometimes difficult to open windows during the summer and essentially creating a light intrusion into some of the bedrooms and you can see it in apartments, as well as single family homes. And it is a great annoyance and it's one of the reasons for the opposition to the installation of street lights. What I'd like to say is that the shielding that is being proposed and is used now is it would be worthy of Paul Revere of many centuries ago, but it's really not worthy of this century. If you want to see how effective shielding works. Go to your local automobile repair place and take a look at the interior of a headlight. Those are very carefully, skillfully designed shielding and magnification of the energy that's put into those headlines. And that is what we need in order to both achieve greater energy efficiency for our street lights. And also to eliminate the intrusion that makes street lights and annoyance to so many individuals homeowners and tenants. And I would just urge the council and the two sponsors to focus on that issue. Effectively done, you will reduce the energy cost of street lights and you will reduce the social problem that they create for the people who have to live with them in their current state. There is a way out of this problem. We need your effective shielding. Thank you. I assume we have a number of people who have signed up to speak to the issue of the library, how many. And if you're in the audience and you wish to speak to the library, please raise your hand now. I'm sorry on zoom. Thank you. I have my audience is confused. You're 11 people on zoom. I'm going to hold us to that number and how many in the audience. In this town room, seven, seven. Okay, let's start with zoom. We are going to be very strict on the three minutes. Please note the clock on the town on the zoom website. And it turns yellow and then it turns red turns yellow with 30 seconds left and red at 15 seconds left. So, Jeff Lee, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. I'm Jeff leave district five. I really believe that town leaders need to start being more honest and open with the public regarding the Jones library project. Mr Buckleman's introduction continues to claim that the town share remains at 15.8 million and will not change, even with the supplemental borrowing. But as we heard last Friday at the finance committee meeting, the town now estimates that borrowing for the library project will cost the town another $9.1 million. To me that's very significant and that money could be put to a lot of other uses. People who claim, I even heard the finance committee chair claim that interest rates should not be considered that they're not important. But if $9.1 million is not important, then why can't the library pick up the cost and not the town. Aside from that, I think we need to stop perpetuating the idea that repairs are more expensive than the expansion project. So, this is a little riddle analysis, which will cost most recently estimated to be between 19 and $21 million. It's just, it's not something the town would responsibly do, especially without getting a commitment from the library, like we've gotten for the expansion project. That would be totally irresponsible. This has been applied to the Cune Riddle analysis, the way we've done for the Jones library project to the tune of millions of dollars. And if we did have to go with the repair option, the way to do it would be to do it incrementally in affordable chunks and not in one multimillion dollar fell swoop. So town staff has spent a considerable amount of time looking at plan B for the crucial repairs and we've heard very little about that since the supplemental borrowing has been proposed. So I'd like to hear more about that possibility as well. Thank you very much. Thank you for your comments. We'll go now to the audience that's in the town room. Allegra. Yep. Why don't you come up? I know we're going to take turns. So please state your name and address before you make your comment. Thank you. Sure. My name is Allegra how and I live in precinct seven. And I'd like to speak in favor of the appropriations for the library renovation project. I think that it's a something that I, my understanding was that our, we decided as a town that it was a value that we would choose to work on the library as a future place for activity and life. I don't feel like the repairs would be sufficient to that end. I think that we could create a town space that's more welcoming inviting as I have three teenage children. Unfortunately, they will have aged out of this, but this was a possibility for future generations. I've been to many other vibrant libraries in which they're there were gathering places and people wanted to children saw teenagers there. So the cycle was perpetuated of a great place to in which to be. I think that, you know, the town is placed the value I understand the cost is going up, but I think it's important that we stay with the value of what we believe to be important. I'm thinking of the borrowing and I was thinking if somebody if we as a family had decided the values to send a child to college and someone gave us, let's say $23,000 and we had to then match it and maybe even come up with more I think that our value would be that if this was something really we wanted we would figure out how to do it and I guess that's what I'm relying on the town to do. So I thank you for your time I, I hope that the library is able to have the renovation. Thank you. I'm going to go next. I'm going to go back to those people who are on zoom and kitty axels and Barry, please come in. Please go ahead. State your name and where you live. The town of Amherst has an opportunity to be a national and a regional leader by conscientiously supporting local people in the local economy, rather than unconsciously supporting the global finance sector, whose wealth and building mission is consuming or financializing housing natural resources and more. We could authorize an extra $2 to $5 million in interest alone to the otherwise. It's an affordable Jones library project, but another possibility is to purposefully increase our awareness as a town of the extractive economy and what it means to us, and to conscientiously take steps to move away from it. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to go back to the town room. Nancy Campbell. 369 Middle Street. Please lean into the mic and make sure the green lights on. Thank you so much. Son. Nancy Campbell 369 Middle Street, seven year member of the board friends of the Jones libraries. In April 23 the Jones library received a challenge grant of $1 million from the national endowment for the humanities for expansion renovation project. After surviving a highly competitive rigorous application process. The director of the any age office of challenge programs wrote, I quote, I am delighted that the chair approved your excellent application for funding, the ambition ambitious project to create a humanities center and special collections space as part of the Jones library with any age's mission and receive strong support at all levels of review. You may be interested to know that this is the largest award in this round of infrastructure grants through the challenge programs office. A panelist wrote, This is one of my favorite projects. Deep humanities connections increased access to public gathering spaces for the community and partner community organizations. This project looks like it is long overdue for a public library serving a diverse and historic community. Another panelist wrote solid fundraising plan with an established team. State representative Mindy Dom shared her excitement, quote, a national panel of experts acknowledging what we know locally. Jones library collections matter Jones library is the civic center of our town. Jones library infrastructure needs to be improved to serve our community. And we have an excellent well vetted practical ambitious plan underway to renovate and expand Dom said, Emma should feel great pride in receiving this hefty NIH grant indeed. But it expressly cannot be used for existing program space it is only authorized for our renovated expanded library. The fortress like structure that is the original 1920s Jones library will endure for generations to come. But continuing to cut corners patch up make do will not sustain this venerable building into the 21st century. As the visionary multifaceted library community center that it was designed to be from the very start. I urge the town council to make this weighty but logical decision to vote yes, to authorize borrowing for the Jones library renovation expansion project. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. I'll go back to the zoom line up Peggy Matthews Nielsen, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Hello. Can you hear me. Yes, we can. Thank you. I'm Peggy Matthews Nielsen. I live at 27 T Berry Lane and District five. Those of us who love books agree that libraries are important to our town. But we recognize that the quality of life for town residents demands that our leaders balance wants against needs and come out on the side of what residents can afford. Amherst streets and sidewalks desperately need funds are our two other capital projects, a new fire station and DPW headquarters are pending. These were ranked by residents as higher priority than the library, and they are at risk. The Jones library expansion was wasteful and extravagant when it was estimated to cost just $37 million. Now spiraling costs would require spending the obscene amount of $47 million just to enlarge one of Amherst three public libraries. A wealthy town like Concord, Massachusetts, which has the equivalent number of year around residents about 17,000 spent only 12 million 12.2 million to expand its historic public library, and it's set to open next year. It's time for Amherst town leaders to direct library trustees to pivot to a more financially responsible plan be to renovate Jones library within its existing building footprint. I ask you to vote no on committing $10 million more in taxpayer funds for what is essentially an elite vanity project that Amherst residents cannot afford. Thank you. Oh, and my husband has a separate comment, we're on the same computer if you could work him in. He needs to do that within the minutes that we have, or you could re register for him to come back in. Okay, thank you. Thank you. We're going to come back to the audience in the town room Eugene Alfredo. Hi, I'm Eugene Alfredo. I live on Middle Street in South Amherst, a Jones library trustee elect, and I'm here speaking in favor of amending for the borrowing cap for the library project. Well campaigning to become a trustee both when I was getting the signatures for my nomination papers as well as when I was knocking on doors of the people I spoke to over 98% of them expressed approval for the project. My position was clearly in favor of continuing the renovation and expansion, aligned with the five incumbents that were seeking reelection, my worthy and kind fellow candidate was open about his concerns with the project. Voters made their choice once again supporting the office holders who are in favor of continuing renovation and expansion project as planned to reject the project would be a costly mistake. We would lose over $23 million of federal, state, corporate and personal funds. Pretty much all of it is contingent upon the project is it's currently defined. The town will have to finance more over time to pay for the repairs necessary to keep the Jones usable and would not get any of the benefits of the expansion and the renovation project. We would lose the benefits of a building that produces significant operational savings and increased economic activity from planned programming improvements and expansions, a building that is accessible to all a green building that eliminates fossil fuel usage and contributes to Amherst sustainability goals. If we stop now, we discourage civic participation by overriding our own committees, volunteers, town voters, patrons both inside the town and outside of the town, as well as the various state and federal financing sources that we will rely on for future projects in the town. The cost to the town has not changed nor has the trustee's commitment to cover the cost beyond the established town and state share of the project. Let's move forward with this well planned and fully vetted project so that our town could start to tackle the other needed infrastructure projects like the fire department, the DPW, the roads and the rest of our long to do list. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us. Going back to the zoom participants, Rudy Perkins, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Hi, Rudy Perkins, Cherry Lane Amherst. Can you hear me? All right. We can. Great. I'm going to repeat a little bit the comments I made at the finance committee, because I think there's some folks who may may not have heard those last week. I sent a letter to the town council a year and a half ago when you're discussing the, the barring then. Opposing the or expressing my unhappiness with the way the budgeting was done and the scope of the project at that time. And one of the things I worried about, and I just want to quote my letter then is that we have already jeopardized our progressive climate commitments for later buildings. By severely capping the budgets of other town capital projects in order to support the funding in this library expansion. I haven't seen new numbers. I don't know how badly we've impacted those later projects DPW and fire. But as we know there, although life cycle costs may be better for net zero buildings. Sometimes they have higher initial costs and I want to make sure that if you do vote for this extra barring. You will do whatever you have to to make sure that there is plenty of money to do the fire station. And the DPW and any later projects covered by the net zero bylaw as net zero projects. I don't want to see this project impact those. And I want to come back to the comments I made about amending the MOA if you do go forward. I think the memorandum of agreement needs to be tightened up to make it clear that the library is responsible for all of the costs beyond the MVLC contribution and the town's 15 plus million contribution. Right now the statement of the library share is expressed. You know, it's potentially interpreted as a dollar a set dollar figure. And that shouldn't be the case it should be the library should be responsible for all of the remaining costs, however high they may go. I think the MOA needs to be amended to require the library to pay back the town for any interim borrowing done to cover where we're borrowing to cover the library share until they can get the money into the project. I think there needs to be a schedule for the library's commitment to come in earlier in the project to reduce the borrowing. And I think we should look at a mortgage or other sort of enforcement to make sure that happens. This project is one that's important. You know, but this is not like a town building this is owned by another entity. There's only a 30 year commitment of public use for it. It's not covered by the net zero bylaw. So there's a lot of differences of this from a town project that I think needs a little more control. If we go forward with the additional borrowing and you could do that by a second amendment to the MOA. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Rudy. We're going back to the audience in the town room and Anna Balkan. Did I say your name correctly? Okay, thanks. Please say your name and your address before you make your comment. Thank you. Hello and thank you. My name is Anna Balkan and I live on Bay Road in South Amherst. I'm in ninth grade Amherst Regional High School. Something drilled into us throughout my social studies classes in middle school was the importance of community. We learned how communities are responsible for caring for each other and how we, as a community, need to ensure the safety and well being of other community members. One of the major and arguably most important community centers in Amherst is the Jones Library. The library is so much more than a place for community members to get books. It's also a place to spend time with friends and to learn new things. Members of our community very clearly showed that the Jones Library is an extremely valued part of our community when Amherst voters decided to go forward with the Jones Library building project in the vote in 2021. My family celebrated when we heard the results and I was so proud to live in Amherst, a town where we chose to care for such an amazing aspect of our community. Another thing we learned in middle school social studies classes is that democracy is important because it allows everyone to have a vote, a voice. I think most Amherst citizens have used their vote and voice to make it clear that they want the library project to go forward. It's pretty obvious considering about about two thirds of Amherst voters voted yes to the library project in 2021. I am asking you now to support the will of the voters. My friends and I looked to the library to meet our social needs and we could rely on it even more if the project went forward. When we go to town after school we often end up at a coffee shop or a bubble tea place. One of the amazing things that a new library would provide us is a safe place for teenagers to spend our time after school without having to spend $6 or $7 on bubble tea. If the library goes forward then by the time my little brother gets to middle school he and his friends won't even have to think about this at all. Young people in Amherst need the new library as a place to hang out with friends and to check out more books. My peers and I cannot vote so we rely on the adults in our community to make responsible and informed decisions about the future of Amherst. Voters stepped up in 2021 and voted yes for the library project. So now the majority of Amherst voters need you to vote to raise the borrowing cap for the library project. Your vote will ensure that my generation and generations to come are able to enjoy many services that the new Jones library will provide. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us this evening. We're going back to the zoom audience and Ken Rosenthal, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Thank you, President reason arm Ken Rosenthal. I live on Sunset Avenue, and I'm in complete agreement with the sentiments expressed by the previous speaker. This is a town in which knowledge and education are vitally important. And so is the Jones library. I think we need to understand that under those circumstances, when more than a third of the voters who bothered to come to vote, vote against a proposal that is not a cause for celebration it's a cause for reflection and reconsideration. And I'd like to point out that the vote that was conducted in 2021 is for a library that is not proposed now. It's had alterations that are changing drastically, but more importantly, it's at a budgeted price. That's significant. I'd like the town to be a little bit more honest about what the town money is how much town money is going into this project. It's not just $15.8 million. It's also CPAC money of a million dollars that equally comes from the taxpayers. And then as President reason were told us the other day of interest of at least $8 million, which is also town taxpayer money. So as presently budgeted. It's a $25 million project. And that's before we have the opportunity to see the only real numbers account which are the numbers that are going to come once the project is put to bid at the beginning of next year. This is a premature action now. We should wait to see what those actual numbers are next year and then decide whether we can afford it. If we can't, there is a good alternative. And it is the plan that has been in the files for how this library could be repaired and brought up to current standards, something that we can use be proud of and be able to afford. Thank you for all of you for working so hard on this project. And thank you for listening to me this evening. Thank you for joining us. Back to the town room. Good evening. My name is Amber Kano Martin. I live in district 2. My address is 318 Grant Wood drive. I'm coming here tonight to actually speak against the supplemental bond authorization for the library. There's many reasons for this, but I will go into but first of all, I would like to remind folks that we just finished an election season and as you know, I was the candidate. And I was very closely following and giving statements myself as to what should be done about the library. I would just like to remind folks here that many of the counselors presence also gave statements. For example, in the Amherst Indy. And Kathy Shane, Lynn Griezmer, Pam Rooney, Jennifer Todd, Anna Devlin, got there, Manny Joe Hanneke, Andy Steinberg and Alicia Walker. All said that the town should not be at risk for more money than the 15.8 million plus 9 million in debt service. So you can go back and check the Indy if you want to see. And then the day later, this agenda item came up to ask for more money for the library right after the elections funny how that happens. So, I just want to say a couple of things about that. First of all, I think a lot of people voted for you all thinking that this wasn't going to happen. But it is. And secondly, this is a holiday week. A lot of us are with our families. A lot of us are off. This timing is really terrible and it's not good for democracy to be making these kind of decisions right now. We did vote yes on this project 2 years ago. The money was the amount of money was a lot smaller. There were probably features that were included that are no longer going to be on that project. The project has changed. And then I want to talk about some of the things that we could do with this money saying no to this authorization is not just to know. It's also a yes. It's a yes to a lot of other things that people in our town want. I knocked on many doors in my campaign hundreds. I talked to hundreds of voters. And they want other things. They want better roads. They want better sidewalks. Some of our seniors would like to age in place, but they can't because the property taxes are too high and they're on a fixed income and project like this are going to make them go up even more. We can say yes to Crest. We can say yes to DEI. We can say yes to sustainability. We can increase the number of personnel in our sustainability office. We can say yes to our teachers who just wanted a fair salary raise and para educators who just wanted a living wage. I have children in the elementary school. And my child lost their para educator this year that para educator made about 30 K. We could not find 30 K per para educator per a library that my child uses day in and day out. But somehow we can find another 10 million for this building that we rarely visit. Our priorities are off. I ask you to vote no. Thank you for joining us. We're going to go back to the zoom and I rebrick please enter the room state your name and where you live. I also want to note that four additional people have raised their hand since we cut it off at his old or Tego best to Monty. We will have those people speak but we really have other business we need to also get to tonight. You hear me. Yes, we can Ira. And none of that counted against your time. Thank God. Okay. I'm going to go back to 55 strong street. I enjoy doing work in many Western mass libraries but I have to say less so and Amherst. The years of deferred maintenance the worn carpets and furniture the leaks and poor space planning, maybe in anticipation that one day a great library would replace the aging Jones makes it dreary. I would love a nicer Jones library. I think it had been had it been better maintained over the years we would not be in the situation. If you live in Amherst you must know we need a working public works building a fire station in the south and we need to make progress on our truly horrible roads. How is it that this mega expansion that has grown and cost and shrunken quality is taking up all the oxygen in the room. Is it not true that the Jones has 19,000 library card holders. If so I have not heard any sensible explanation of why we're building a library for 50,000. The Jones have excellent libraries. We also have branches that people love. If it's because the library now claims to be the place where all kinds of new services need to be located. We could easily house those programs that the soon to be available while with school. That location has plenty of parking and is connected to the middle school in high school. It's a perfect location for the many things that Jones is claiming to be needed. I have to say also that this project is another example, a big example of how to grow divisiveness and are already tense town and end up with something lacking public support and buy in. Though everyone is still claiming that only 15.8 million is owned owed by our taxpayers the entire balance of the project is being guaranteed by the town, which I take to mean by its residents. The objective source like a bank thinks we can afford that liability. We can't afford the tax consequence if the library goes off track. And part of the problem is the lack of transparency. I don't know that it's not already off track. Today's Gazette points out how Amherst taxes are already the highest around. I'm curious what risk we're taking. I want to know that the decision makers know what they're deciding. I know the project supporters are saying that donations will make it all whole. But why are donations lagging now? I think a financial backer of the library would have pledged by now knowing how much a little more support would help. Watching the library board members speak at the League of Women Voters Forum. I was surprised at how much of what they had to say was that they had faith and confidence that it would all work out. But not much that built my faith and confidence. If I was the lender, I would not rely on the borrower's faith and confidence. For all these reasons, I urge the town council and town manager to not approve this increase in our guarantee and instead direct the library to pursue the plan B maintenance and repair option the library board has been dreading. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. We're back to the town room. Deborah Leonard, please come up and make your comment. Hi, my name is Deb Leonard. I live on old farm road in Amherst. And I support the town council to authorize the bond for the Jones library project. Just as you did in 2021. The merits of the project have been debate debated and resolved not to everyone's satisfaction. But according to an extensive and robust six year process that involved community listening sessions, town boards, commissions and committees consisting of elected and appointed members. The acquisition of private and federal funding and a definitive town vote in 2021. And to hear ago in December 2022. In this room with regards to the high school track project and in 2017 and reference to the first school building project. I submit them when speed when specious arguments. I submit that when specious arguments detract from following procedure and protocol, the credibility of the town is jeopardized. The well being of current and future projects are at risk. And the town government is undermined. The MLBC process is different from the MSBA. We will not be sent to the head of the line again because of the condition of our building is so dire. If you deny this bond authorization. The bond authorization is part of standard. MLBC grant funding requirements involves no additional costs to the town than the bond from 2021. In my travels to other schools to watch my kids play at other other athletic teams. I've been struck by how superior other schools facilities are high school commerce Belcher town among others. And I've always put that in perspective in terms of community values. This past summer I spent some time in downtown Madison, Wisconsin. And in their library in the central library and took photos bright, well lit, clean, extensively stopped library facility. I sent them to my book loving friend Sharon, with the expectation that we would soon have a facility that reflected the values of our community. And I still believe that. Thank you for your time this evening. Thank you for joining us. Allegra Clark, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Hi, my name is Allegra Clark I live in District two on Cherry Lane. I am here tonight. Because I do love libraries. And you heard me talk earlier about the school libraries and how by losing operational budget for positions in the libraries, the quality has changed. And if my understanding of what was said at the finance committee meeting on Friday is correct that the endowment is kind of the backup if the fundraising does not hit its target. And that is a really dangerous place I think for the library to put itself in if that is, in fact, accurate. So that would be my concern my concern is that if the fundraising does not get to where it. It should be, what is the implication for the town, whether that's covering the operating budget of the Jones after the endowment windows down, or if we are then asked to cover the difference. So again, like, some of the other colors I've asked for, I would like to see more transparency in the actual dollars and I would like to know what the real cost is once the bids are in. And so that was that on the library situation I did want to say something about the opioid funds. I don't know if there is a plan for that or if that's something that could go to either like public health department or crests since both of those departments would have some interfacing with either preventative measures around opiate use or educational measures. And that is just something that I've been curious about and would love an answer around at some point. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Are there other people from the town room. Okay, then we'll move on to Maria Capecchi. Maria Capecchi South Amherst. I do not support the authorization of $46 million for the Jones library demolition and expansion project. Less than two weeks ago, just one day after the local election. This item had been scheduled for a vote by the council for tonight. The final analysis had been offered until minutes before a finance committee meeting later that week. The full cost estimates had not been released, and the basis of design and one of the two estimates remain elusively missing. The financial model that had been used previously to analyze the town's capacity to undertake for large capital projects, plus all our other capital needs is nowhere to be seen. A careful exploration of the impact of the debt for this project on all of our other capital needs has also not yet been produced. A careful and thorough vetting of promised fundraising has not been performed. Proof that the plans will meet the new stretch codes and that the budget will support those plans has not been provided. A guarantee that the library will be able to cover the shortfall of fundraising, or bids in excess of the cost estimate is not possible by the trustees on admission. So what have we been offered by the town manager, the library trustees and some town counselors to secure an affirmative vote. Just trust us. We think the bids will not exceed the cost estimates, despite ample evidence of trends to the opposite. We think we can raise another $7.5 million, despite the fact that the project is even farther now from its goal than it was six years ago. Don't worry about interest or interest rates. Don't dig deeply into the details. This is not responsible governance, and it does not engender trust. I've watched leaders in Amherst argue for hours, days, even weeks over a $20,000 item in the capital budget and refused to fund a $30,000 library para educator in the schools. And yet they are somehow unprepared and surprised about immense concern and resistance to committing $46 million plus interest for a project that was always controversial and now has become reduced to an even more problematic version of itself. Expanding the Jones library is not the most pressing need of the town. This overreaching project is not worth having the town spend not just 15.8 million, but many, many millions more in interest as we cover the states and libraries share while we wait for reimbursement that may never come. A thorough financial analysis will show that authorizing this borrowing will harm our ability to maintain our existing infrastructure, including roads and sidewalks, and build a fire station, a DPW, a youth center, a senior center. We need to take off the rose colored glasses and be honest about this very problematic project. Thank you. We're going to move on to Bob Pam please enter the room state your name and where you live. Hello, my name is Bob Pam, I live on Amity Street. I am a trustee of the library, but I am not going to speak as a trustee of the library because I don't think that's this is the proper proper forum for for me to do that. I just wanted to go through this as a place where people who are interested in this project are listening and are thinking about it. And so the, my comments is very short and fairly simple. There's been an outpouring of letters and emails supporting continuing the project, moving forward with it. And I appreciate that we appreciate all of the pledges and donations that have already been made. These are important, and they are very much why we have some confidence to go forward. But in the next two weeks or so, the town council will take a vote on whether the project proceeds. Now would be an excellent time to make or increase pledges and cash gifts. I don't want any pledges that have been made into cash, because this is exactly when people on the council want to know whether it's real. And I would like to be able to say that over the next couple of weeks, there will be some additional contributions. This being November. It is an excellent time. The internal revenue service recommends that people who want to get a tax deduction this year do so as soon as possible. So I'm just going to say what is obvious and clear to everybody. If you want to make the project move forward, it would be an excellent time to make increase or become new as a donor to this project. Thank you. You forgot to mention required minimum distributions that have to be spent before the end of December. Thank you. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't resist that. I have to put my glasses or take obese. Please enter the room and state your name and where you live. Good evening. District five. Can you hear me? Okay. I'm in my car on the side of the road next to a grocery store because that's that's how much I wanted to participate in between two meetings. Thank you for joining us from your car. Thank you. And I will say that there is nobody who's dedicated to children, youth or the vulnerable in our community who doesn't love books and reading and spent time in the library of in any town they live. This is not about being against the library nor anybody saying you're against books. I know everyone is feeling very self satisfied with an electoral system very, very clearly designed with very large districts that are very expensive to run in and so I'm hearing a lot of references and comparisons that only refer to residents of a certain income level it would be very interesting for town officials to study who is voting and who is reading because if we are so focused on the most expensive library and western access we might ask how our children learning to read and the measure of any society is how we educate and support the most vulnerable. I would ask everyone and I can certainly email them to you to look at the reading outcomes for the most vulnerable in our community and see that there are some very serious issues for many of the people that are never spoken for and not represented on this council, except when we need to show some sort of diversity activity. And so I will say that I have been in contact with Rosana Salazar because she is constantly talking with residents in all of the apartment buildings and Amherst and people who are working families, and the kind of needs that are going on with, you know, having to take two buses to go to the grocery store, having to deal with getting children who cannot be in an after school program, not having enough school transportation, not enough vouchers and support for childcare and after and the incredible needs of kids who are watching younger, young kids watching younger kids until 6 and 7pm, which contributes in turn to health outcomes and to reading outcomes. One of the issues that has been brought to my attention that I had to bring today is that there there's a number of families who have mass health limited, who have been waiting since last year to be seen, since last year to be seen at Musante Health Center, sent to Holy Oak Health Center, there is nothing available, and they don't have a PCP, and there is no access to medical care. And there is a way we need you to wrap up please. We need a way to support the health center, and we need a way to support reading in the schools by hiring paraprofessionals and supporting other activities that are needed for the families that are not supported. I'm not going to get to fundraise for my own programs as was done a minute ago, but I will say it's incredible to watch such self satisfaction when there are such high degrees of We need to have a wrap up. I'm not going to listen to how we don't support the library because you all are not in touch with the needs in town. Thank you very much. Nancy, please enter the room. I want to make sure. Nancy Gilbert. Can you hear me? No, it's not Nancy Gilbert. It's Nancy. Nancy. Yes, please enter your room. Nancy Gilbert, 166 point in the avenue. I'll start by saying I love the Jones library. I've used it. I use it. My children used it. My grandchildren use it with me. Baby. Everything changed drastically in the past two years, and I really asked the counselor to reconsider this project. We need so many other things in town we've heard about the Fire Station. If we have another pandemic. have the capabilities. We can't buy the right equipment for the fire station because we don't have the right fire station to house it. We need a new DPW. We need a new senior center. And I don't think that the library is an appropriate place for a teen center. I've worked with teens in Holia and in Springfield. And I can say they like loud music. They like loud things. This is not an appropriate teen center place. So I'm asking you not to vote for this money. More money. Our taxes today is right in front of the newspaper. The average house of $500,000 is going to have their taxes increased by almost $500,000. We need so much more in town. And I'm asking you to just re-prioritize where our money is going. That's what I have to do as a family. That's how many families have to do. And I ask you for the family of Amherst to reconsider the priorities of our spending. Thank you. Thank you. Joshina, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Hello, I'm Joshina Reggae. Can you hear me? Yes. And I live on 96 Farview Way. My husband and I are retired Amherst residents on a fixed income who've seen our property taxes skyrocket in the past five years alone. And this is before the increase that we'll see from the new elementary school, which from the new school, which we voted to support and the most recent announcement of the substantial increase in property taxes across the board. We're acutely aware as many people have noted that there are additional and major important capital expenses that will also have to be incurred soon. New fire station, DPW roads, other important town infrastructure and resources, as well as the costs of maintaining the quality of the existing school system. We strongly urge you to stand firm on your previously stated commitment not to increase the burden to the town of this library project. I know that the council has already voted to support the project, but provided that the townshare of the cost would be restricted. And there was a set target, a set maximum, the meeting packet asserts that the town would not be committed to any additional expense if it approved the requested additional authorization. So does the Jones material that I get in my email. But as I understand it, and as many speakers have already pointed out, the town would have to take on the risk of borrowing the total amount and that that 16.8 million counting the CPA does not include the interest burden that would be incurred. We haven't seen as yet any projections explaining how the debt repayment would affect the town's capital budget. And of course, we don't yet have any actual bids. As a retired English professor and an immigrant, I'm passionately in support of the town's libraries and the activities of the Jones. But after all, as a previous speaker said, the Jones library is a separate entity with its own endowment. And ultimately, it must take responsibility for managing its own finances. Already many, many young families, the very ones whose children should be attending the proposed new school, cannot afford to buy a house in Amherst. And my husband and I are afraid that after 33 happy years in this town, any further tax increases are going to drive us out. Thank you very much for your serious condition, attention to this matter. Thank you for joining us. Tony Cunningham, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Hi, thank you. Tony Cunningham, Oh, and drive. You have a difficult decision ahead of you, which is not made any easier by the very strong and differing opinions your constituents hold on this project and the complicated funding plan. I appreciate the work that has brought us to this point. We're all here because we love Amherst and want good facilities, good services, good roads and good schools. But after looking into the details on the bond authorization and the ripple effects it would have on other aspects of our town's finances, it is my opinion that the risk and the impact on our other capital needs is too high for a project that does not top my priorities. I agree with the comments made by Rudy Perkins about the memorandum of agreement. The current agreement does not adequately protect the town from being on the hook for much higher costs, as well as interest on the library and state shares. I asked the town council and the town manager to be forthright on the risks and tradeoffs of the financing plan and cost. This will help councillors and residents to make a decision with eyes wide open. Reasonable people can disagree and we each bring to this decision our own tolerance for risk and our priorities for limited tax dollars. Here's what I understand to be some of the tradeoffs. One, committing to this level of debt service would consume a significant portion of our annual capital budget, which is already insufficient to keep up with the backlog of needs, and will result in deferring critical needs. This is the same pot of money to pay for roads, sidewalks, school repairs, vehicles, etc. Two, taking on this dash will delay a new fire station and DPW, since the money to pay for those projects would also come out of the same pot. Three, the debt service could result in a reduction in reserves to cover peaks in debt service. Four, the current agreement commits the town to paying interest not only on the town share, but also on all other money that is borrowed to pay the cost of construction as we await payments from the state grant and the library trustees. There will be at least one million more on top of the at least eight million in interest on the town share. The current agreement states the library share is due when the last MVLC payment is received, which is apparently June 2027, a year later than was shown in the cash flow document. This means the town will be paying interest on the library share for longer. Contrary to what was shared by Amherst forward on their listserv, the town is not responsible for a full building repairs plan if the expansion does not go forward, nor has the town committed to retaining fossil fuels in the library. Any plan B could and should make the library fully electric and comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Seven, the town, the Jones library is not owned by the town of Amherst and maintenance is the responsibility of the library trustees. According to the town's capital inventory, the library is rated in fair condition and is medium priority, while the fire station and DPW are rated in critical condition and high priority. If the town council prioritized funding according to the capital inventory, the library project would not get the first bite at the apple, as is being proposed. I hope that a decision can be made with full knowledge of the consequences and respect for those that make a different choice. Thank you. Peggy Matthew Nielsen, you've already spoken and so I'm going, oh, this is your husband, I am so sorry. Please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Thank you for reminding me of that. Hi, this is Sigurd Nielsen. I live at 27 T. Berry Lane in district five. I asked town counselors to vote against committing another $10 million to the wasteful and unnecessary expansion of Jones library. The town has higher priorities, its streets and sidewalks, a new DPW headquarters and South Amherst fire station. The Jones expansion project has been divisive from the beginning, as others have mentioned, and the design has been watered down from what was promised because of the escalating cost. It's time for the Amherst town council to pull the plug on this expansion plan and direct the Jones library trustees to go back to the drawing board for a reasonably-sized renovation of Jones library that is affordable for Amherst taxpayers. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Pat, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Good evening. I'm on the back again, district two, Samarack Drive. So I wanted to add to what everybody else who opposed the expansion. I do want to state that when my kids were young, we did use the Jones library. However, when they became teenagers, I did not allow them to go there. They didn't go because it was never a welcoming space. I think we need to be careful in this town when people are trying to use BIPOC kits that the library would be a welcoming place for them. It is not true. Seven Gen research that Dr. Demetria Shabazz led, they did thorough research and spoke to BIPOC youth and they were very clear that the library is not a welcoming place for them. And this is why CSWG recommended youth center. I don't know what you all are doing. I look at the Jones library controversy as an issue of elitism. It's all about politics. It's all about being reelected. You all know that this is not the right thing to do. To have seven, eight million dollar interest that the town has to pick up tax dollars money. The money belongs to all of us. Why are we squandering it like this? This is not a good way to spend tax dollars. History will judge it and all of you how you perform in your public service. Another thing that has not been mentioned tonight is follow the money. Who will benefit from the Jones library project? Would there be BIPOC contractors that would be involved in the project? And also I want to state that I don't think anyone is opposed to renovating or upgrading Jones library. I think the issue is that we want to spend money that we cannot afford. There are so many low income people in this town who are struggling. There are people who don't have access to transportation to go to medical appointments. I'm sure the town manager will not put that in the budget to have funds where people can access for charity, for medical transportation to put food on their table. Some of them need to wrap up that work for you. Please let's stop this craziness. I oppose the expansion of Jones library. Thank you. Julian Hines, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. I want to note that there's one speaker after this and that's when we will end the public forum. Hello, can you all hear me? We can. Thank you. My name is Julian Hines. I live at 41 Pine Grove in District 5 and I am speaking tonight out of concern that a library project in the increased borrowing for that project will leave the town astray from our fire station and DPW priorities. I don't know if the counselors have all viewed or seen both of these buildings but they're really in deplorable conditions to work in for our first responders and I think that it's time for the town to consider its priorities given that those buildings are both listed as high priority and in critical condition where the library is not. I wouldn't suggest doing away with the library entirely but at least hitting the pause button until we can make sure that our essential services are preserved and that these workers have healthy working conditions. I think that the many on the town council don't haven't seen what it's like to work in some of these buildings and to provide these services that the town relies on out of these buildings but just that you don't see it when you go downtown or just that you don't work in those buildings doesn't mean that it's not a higher priority rather it just means that you have had a privilege of not having to do that and I think that it's important that we as a town consider what is going on in these facilities that are much more important compared to the library that might have some peeling paint might have some HVAC issues but it's not close to a state of structural collapse like the DPW or has cancer, causing chemicals like the fire department. So I think that it's important that we get our priorities straight and make sure that not only these workers health and safety are preserved but also the morale. I've seen the town council talk a lot about the morale of police officers after the July 4th incident. I've seen a lot of folks talk about the morale of the school committee members in public comments and how that affects them but I think it's really interesting to see this project moving forward with 10 million additional borrowing which could theoretically fund half of the fire station or DPW projects entirely and just to see the town sort of turn a blind eye to the morale of the firefighters and DPW workers is really disheartening and I think that the town needs to come back to prioritizing these values and making sure that when folks go to work they can be healthy and safe given that that's where they spend the majority of their days not just Monday through Friday but around the clock actually. So that's my concerns and I would encourage you to hit the pause button on the library project until those concerns are addressed. Thank you. Thank you. Laura Drucker please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Hi Al, can you hear me? We can. Great. Hi, Laura Drucker. I live on Rosemary Street in District 1. In 2019 I remember attending some community meetings talking about the four capital projects and the town staff that put on those meetings were very clear that we had four equally dire capital projects, the elementary schools, the library, the DPW and the fire station. Even then we knew the library and the school were going to come first because of the grant cycles. That's all. That's the only reason it's not because they're prioritized over those other two projects. If we then we went to a town, I mean you all voted 10 to 1 in 2021 to support this authorization through the MOU. Out of an abundance of concern for concerned residents, you went to a town-wide vote and the town voted 64 percent. 64 percent of voters supported this project. I'm really not clear when people are saying this is such a controversial project, where that data is coming from. 64 percent is not controversial. That's a strong mandate to the council that the community wants this project at the 15.8 billion dollar or million dollar, sorry, amount that the project still is. The same folks that have been pushing against this project since day one are still pushing against this project, that doesn't make it controversial, that doesn't discount the fact that we did a town-wide vote and 65 percent of the voters voted for this project. Please don't undermine democracy by stopping this. There's no pause. This is it. Then we go back to the drawing board. We still have a building to repair and those repair costs are estimated at 19 to 21 million. That's all town money. Even if we got some donations towards that, it's still going to be as much if not more than this current project. Let's move forward. Let's keep the plan as is. We want to get all four of these projects done. Not putting this project forward is not going to help the other two projects get done. Thank you. Thank you. Andy, before I close the public forum, I just want to check if you see if there's any reason why the finance committee needs to reconsider their votes on any of the financial orders not including the library. I actually have to ask the finance committee that question just to explain to people who don't understand what's going on. This is not regarding the library. The finance committee has not made a recommendation about the library funding as of yet. There were six other orders that were part of the earlier part of the forum and the finance committee did vote to support and recommend to the council adoption of the other six orders that are on the agenda for tonight. If there's any member of the finance committee who wishes to ask for reconsideration, they should raise their hand now using Zoom. We don't see any. I'm going to adjourn the finance committee meeting. Seeing no member of the finance committee making a request to put in a motion to reconsider the recommendation on the six orders. I adjourned the finance committee. Our next meetings are November 28 at 2 p.m. and December 1st at 1 p.m. And we will be taking up the library and making a recommendation for the council at one of those two meetings. Thank you. And with that, I am going to adjourn the town council public forum and we will take a 10-minute break, come back at 8.40 p.m. It's a 12-minute break, and continue with the regular meeting. Thank you. Make sure you turn your mic off and your video off. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to get back to work. Excuse me, counselors. I'm not supposed to call you ladies and gentlemen. I'd like to consult with the clerk of the town council, please. If you are returning, please turn your video back on. Myself included. We are now ending or we are reconvening the regular town council meeting. I know. Don't get too excited. Very quickly, there's announcements on your agenda sheet. But I want to start the announcements by recognizing and thanking Shalini Balmone for putting together a really outstanding event yesterday that Anna and I were able to attend. And it had just wonderful entertainment. It was well attended. The food was terrific, although I didn't get to eat much. And I even had to borrow a scarf so that I could get up and dance. See, you didn't stay, Paul, for the best part. So thank you, Shalini, for really doing that for the community. There must have been close to 200 people. Paul was there with some staff, a lot of the staff, and Paul was also there. Just want to mention. Right. Thank you. You mentioned the council. Human Rights Commission was there. The DEI department was there. And Paul and several other staff were there from town and the rec rec department. And yes, rec really helped Becky Demling from and Alex from the Jones library trustee were really helpful. And Chris, folks from Chris were there, really supportive. And of course, Joe gave a really moving speech. And Mindy Dom came later. She had a family event, but she did come later. So it was great. But the main thing was like, I think it was really meaningful for the South Asian community that they've not had a place like this to share and celebrate. It was very meaningful. Thank you again, Paul, to everyone. One of those things we hope you'll continue to sponsor, even though you won't be on the council this next round. All right, we have no hearing tonight. We are going to general public comment. If there's anybody in the audience who would like to make general public comment and make sure you've signed up with Athena. And if there's anybody in the zoom audience that would like to make public comment, please raise your hand at this time. There's comment. Okay. Vince O'Connor, please come on up. Thank you. Your name and address before you make your comment. And if you would please push the and there's nobody on the zoom link. And so I'm going, that's going to be the only public comment. Thank you again, Vince O'Connor 175 summer street. So my general comment is this, I've been for the last five or six weeks giving ride to young lady who lives near the new, the new building on spring street, manager children to a preschool. And so I drive past the police station in the new building very regularly. And it occurred to me that when the police station was built, one of the concerns of the then police chief was the problem with the Jones building on the right directly south of it. The thought that maybe that building should be demolished as a security thing. What, what actually happened was that the, they planted Arbor by day to essentially screen the station from some of the windows in the Jones property. Now, so I went to the hearings for 2017 and 2018 read 31 pages of four days of hearings of the planning board first for the first iteration of the project in the second. And they did have a request from the police chief that the blank, that the walls, the north facing walls of those buildings be blank. The only problem is that the southeast corner of the building faces has pretty good views of the police station. So I have two recommendations. One is that that the some by some method or other that the plantings that have been placed the same kind of plantings that were placed in front of the or in the rear of the Jones property to the south of the police stations be put in place near the that southeast corner of the new building in 26th spring Street, the archipelago building and that those be done before the buildings open. And so it's it is I think pretty important. The other thing I read when reading those 31 pages of four days of hearings on two separate iterations was that I think that the planning board and the zoning board of appeals really need to understand that not everything in the zoning bylaw you don't get to you shouldn't get to do everything that the bylaw allows unless you provide something in return. And I think some of the aspects of this building were just were just it was disturbing to read about what had been granted zero lot line access and so forth. When there's there was events you need it. Yeah. Okay. When there wasn't much give back in terms of facilities to either the town or the residents. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks very much. Okay, we are going to go on to the consent agenda and I have consulted with the town, the clerk of the town council, and she agrees that unless there's objection from the any of the any member of the town council, I am going to place a supplemental budget appropriation requests eight eight through six on the consent agenda. Is there any objection please raise your hand. I will note that they came out with unanimous support from the finance committee. The entire list unless you'd like to have one removed giving time for people to consider that Lynn, would you please list items when you make your motion. Thank you. When I make the motion I will list them as individual items. Yeah. Okay. The following items are selected assuming there would be no controversy if you want to remove an item after I do the first motion after I make the motion before we have a second. Let me know that you want to remove it. Okay. So to move the following items in the printed motions they're under and approve those items as a single unit eight a one council order FY 24-05 C and order appropriating funds for the town of Amherst sewer fund capital program sewer collection system what and wastewater treatment facility equipment and repair eight a two council order point point of order excuse me I'm sorry point of order. Yes. Can you say why you're not reading eight D and eight and nine a one through one and two as well since they're all on the consent agenda. I'm going through eight a all of the eight a's and then I'll do eight D and then no nine a one to two. Thank you. Thanks for the clarification. Okay. So eight a one I've already read that's regarding sewer eight a two council order FY 24-12 a an order appropriating from free cash to the stabilization fund eight a three council order FY 24-05 B and order appropriating funds for a portion of the town of Amherst capital program roads and sidewalk repair eight a four council order FY 24-04 B an order appropriating a supplemental increase to the town of Amherst operating budget for fiscal year 2024 to incorporate four firefighter positions previously funded by ARPA eight a five council order FY 24-16 a an order appropriating from free cash to the cannabis impact special revenue fund eight a six council order FY 24-16 B an order appropriating from free cash to the opioid settlement special revenue fund where is okay hold on one second I just wanted where's reparations oh that's right thank you thanks that that's right it's there were three different things there okay moving on with the rest of the consent agenda eight D direct the town manager to develop an updated streetlight policy based on the streetlight policy proposed by counselors devlin gothier and hyanaki nine a one to two approval of the town manager appointments to the affordable housing trust board of trustees and personnel board are there any items people would like removed from the consent agenda and let me just mention we will be discussing the streetlight item later this is just to do the referral to the town manager okay uh pan pan can we take off please eight D eight D okay Kathy if if she just said streetlights that's what I was removing it so that's the one okay all right is there a second re noting that we have added all of the financial orders and we have taken off eight D the streetlight second thank you then moving to a vote we begin with shallony ball melton yes uh pat the angeles on a devlin gothier hi Lynn greece mersen I'm andy johanneke hi nika lopes hi michelle miller hi dorthy pan yeah pan maroonie yes kathy shane yes andy steinberg yes jennifer tov yes alisha walker alisha okay alisha can you turn your mic up slightly okay okay so that takes care of that and b item b on the agenda was is postponed we now move to item c and this is the proposed this is a first reading only so there is no vote but it's the posed rescission and replacement of general bylaw 3.50 residential rental property and proposed regulations for general bylaw 3.50 residential rental property first reading we're going to start with a crc report by mandy joe and then a gl report by pat so you've seen a number of different reports from crc um about all of this but it is a unanimous recommendation from crc to adopt both the bylaw and the regulations all gl had please use your mic at the november 15 meeting gl members reviewed crc's proposed changes to bylaw 3.50 for clarity consistency and accessibility it was moved and seconded at the end of the discussion to find it clear consistent and actionable particularly since the bylaw had been reviewed by kp law and is currently being reviewed by finance and pat you might mention that during the gl meeting the committee made some changes for the purpose of clear consistent and actionable based on the recommendation of kp law yes we did that okay all right so the floor is open for discussion and question michelle i know we can't anticipate um every legal challenge but my question is we received some emails um from some landlord associations um and i'm wondering if kp laws uh advice included or took into account those uh those emails that we received mandy joe or pat um so paul might be better able to answer this but um in addition to kp law receiving the draft that um they reviewed in terms of the bylaw and regulations they also had in hand at the time they were reviewing that the legal the the threat of the lawsuit letter that we received from the landlords association so that was part my understanding is it was part of their review because they had a copy of it is that paul is that um do you confirm that yes yes so kp law had the letter from the landlords association and asked them to incorporate that into their review when they wrote their letter back to the council great thank you and and it was the reason why some of the items were mentioned that were changed at gol particularly to refer to state and federal law okay andy yeah andy point of order you can't be heard thank you gave me a second to try and find what i'm looking for but um i have one question that i think needs to be investigated further and i thought about this previously asked um both mandy as chair of the committee and rob morrow is the staff person who worked with it about it and the issue had to do with the fact that if a tenant objects to having their particular rented property inspected what are the rights that the tenant has and it gets the answer seems to be in sub section l sub section four section l is consent and sub section four has to do with it says if there's a known violation which impedes on the health safety or welfare of the occupant or the general public and the tenant objects to such inspection the code enforcement officer may apply for an administrative warrant from the appropriate official before the code enforcement officer inspects the non-consenting tenants dwelling and what and i had a follow-up conversation with mr morrow about that even though i pretty much knew what the reference is to an administrative warrant it is going to the housing court um and asking a judge or clerk of the housing court to order the right to make the inspection and they can then issue a warrant which allows the inspections department to go through with the inspection the problem that i had with it and this was partly in response to um an inquiry from a constituent who is a professor at UMass who is kind of speaking about concerns that he heard from his students is that uh they're actually when you read the bylaw and the regulations in their entirety there's points where it says that all units must be inspected at some point that for if for a new uh it depends upon the size of the number of units in the building there are a whole bunch of things and i'm not going to get into all of them but there are circumstances where there would be a requirement and there's no the way that section subsection four is written there's no provision that would allow an objecting tenant to go to the housing uh or to ask for a warrant or to object to having it inspected and that strikes me as an inconsistency okay so i uh i would suggest that before we get to second reading that there be a little bit more inquiry with kp law about that issue in consideration as to whether there might be a modification of um section i consent because i think that it can be modified um to address this issue okay mandy joe you have your hand up yeah um we have i believe crc was informed during conversations or through prior kp law comments on drafts that or through conversations with rob or kp law we've had a couple of conversations over the course of a year plus um that if there is not a health or safety violation then a warrant cannot be applied for or be issued to go in um because you can only ask for that essentially search potentially of of a unit against a tenant's consent if there are known or suspected health or safety violations um so to issue a regular permit we are the bylaw does provide that if you have 25 or less dwelling units in order to receive a permit those dwelling units will need inspected at least once every five years that is what the committee has proposed in the bylaw on regulations um the consent part of the bylaw requires that the landlord make a good faith effort to inform the tenant of the inspection and rob has indicated that they must obtain consent prior to going in if there is not consent what the bylaw allows that if there's not consent from a tenant um the bylaw has a conditional permit option under section g4 and a residential rental property that complies with all requirements of section g except for the inspection requirement either because it did not pass an initial or renewal inspection or has been scheduled for one that has not yet occurred um they can be issued a conditional permit that will have a time frame um it is my belief that that covers the situation where a tenant that is currently occupying a unit does not give consent for an inspection a conditional permit could issue in that case as long as an inspection is scheduled and our inspections department would need to work with the property owner to schedule that inspection at a time they expect the unit to be vacant i.e. between leases and then there would not be a tenant need to consent because the dwelling unit would be vacant and then they would be able to be issued a non-conditional permit yeah a regular permit and KP law has said one of the reasons also one of the reasons section um bc c was added the language in section c regarding the u.s constitution the massachusetts constitution was added by kp law was to make clear that this bylaw is not overriding tenants rights regarding the security of their apartment and you yeah i mean i guess that the question then becomes whether a landlord who has a long-term tenant where there's not turnover which clearly will happen in larger number of rentals but it's not impossible that we could be talking about a small property where there's a long-term tenant and the landlord is only getting a conditional permit for an extended period of time and uh it seems like there could be some fix to that and i just uh was uh feeling compelled to raise the issue but um i do appreciate the point that you've made and uh about the uh conditional and the fact that trying to wait for the unit to become vacant and turn over um and uh mr morrig did share that with me okay are there other questions or issues that people want to raise about the bylaw or the regulations we're not to the fees yet the fees won't come before the council until probably december fourth and it i would assume we would not want to pass the bylaw until we have passed the fees or until we're ready to pass the fees kathy uh yes um i've been concerned from the outset that in trying to go after what we all think of as problem houses that we've created a new small bureaucracy in town um and so one of the things i've been looking for in the wording um both and i have a uh some ideas on the fees is trying to reduce the number of inspections where we don't think we need to inspect every unit um including right now the way it's worded is under 25 not only is the property inspected but every unit then at 25 or more it's kind of an odd wording because it has set a sample of 20 but a minimum of 25 and a minimum of 25 for a building that has 25 is 100 so it's no longer a sample so i have i i can't see a rationale for that so i don't know why the threshold might not be and i looked at the number of buildings that have 10 or more 15 or more why not a threshold of 10 or 15 and under that you're inspecting all the units over a five-year period and then at 15 or more a sample and why not a sample of 10 percent i'm why 20 percent you know so i'm trying to see that see why why we'd be going after the larger buildings with multiple units which tend to be more recently built and the inspector would always have the jurisdiction if there were problems they could then we could write a clause say if they found a problem in the samples then they go after a bigger sample so i'm trying to reduce the number of annual annual inspections and i've drawn attention to the other place on exemptions in multiple other towns rental permits they exempt properties that have been federally inspected we reserve the right to inspect them again and i don't see why we reserve that right i i've heard the rationale why but it was may wave rather than just say they're exempt so they first get inspected by the subsidized housing not all of them are inspected so what other municipalities appear to have done is try to increase the exemptions including owner occupied and focus the target sampling inspections on places that they think might be problematic and i know we don't know which things are problematic on day one i'm just saying that a unit that has 25 or more in it having to inspect at least 25 of them means you're going to go to every unit and that's expensive in labor time so i'm trying to see how can we get this up in operation then the other general comment is could we phase this you know could we say you know in the first year we'll go after i don't name what you know we'll go up something with the permit fees but but name the non-owner occupied units of less than 10 or less than with less than 10 units in it so we've heard several of the landlords talk about the cost to them of the inspection plus the fees so i'm looking at the fee structure too but here in the wording i've gone through for the frequency and the scope to say we don't need to suddenly have a huge group we have such staffing shortage all over town to suddenly get up to three inspectors and i'll stop there because i'm just worried about what it means and i don't want to say this in a non-positive way but so far our health inspectors have not always been the friendliest to new businesses so i also don't want an inspection you know we want to have this done that we're really looking for health and safety violations and we're i believe we need to do this so we really want to limit and focus so it's on those thresholds is where i thought we could also cut down on the number inspections and then the reserve the right to do more if we think there's a problem me and joe i'll attempt to answer the questions so the bylaw is phased it is phased in over five years it just allows the inspections department to determine which ones they start with instead of us setting forth start here then go this and this it will be the inspection services department that determines how that phasing is done in terms of which specific properties are chosen and inspected in the first year in the second year in the third year in the fourth year in the fifth year but the bylaw and the regulations are written such that for five years that's when by the end of the fifth year after the essentially effective date is when all rental properties will have had to undergo that initial inspection so it is phased um why aren't we exempting properties that have been federally inspected um because the short answer is our building commissioner has asked us not to fully exempt them that he wants the capability of being able to get a town inspector in there in order to issue a permit because the federal inspections or the state inspections if they're state housing inventory do not cover everything that our bylaw asks to be inspected our bylaw requires that the inspection will consider all zoning bylaw and zoning permit requirement meet meeting all of the conditions of any land use permit that property has been issued and that will be that will be looked at during the inspection a federal or state housing inventory inspection does not do any of that and so our building commissioner asked for the flexibility to do those inspections and CRC unanimously believed that the building commissioner should have that flexibility the threshold CRC looked at a number of bylaws and the threshold tended to be 25 the reason that above 25 has a minimum of 25 is because it seems a little bit unfair that if you have a building of 25 all 25 need inspected but the minute you go to 26 only 20% of them do and so now you're down to five need inspected seems a little bit unfair um so you keep the threshold at a minimum number somewhere and if the council would decide to go down to a building threshold of 10 or 15 units I believe the committee would probably say keep the minimum at some percentage but no less than whatever that cutoff is for 100% of the units so if if instead of 25 units get 100% and then you go to a percentage no less than 25 if you say well we want buildings above 10 units to start getting reducing and having a sampling done um CRC would probably I can't speak for everyone but to keep it consistent with that consistency of well if you have a 10 units and you want 100% of them inspected all 10 when you get to 11 unit building you'd still need 10 you wouldn't just do one because that would be a slightly inequitable to the 10 unit building versus the 11 unit building and we were trying to keep that equity there in terms of as you build up the the number of inspections stays at least at what the building unit dwelling unit number for the building below it had if that makes sense so samandy can you why not start at 10 then say a minimum of 10 you know so I'm just looking but I'm that's that's a discussion for the council I just I told you why limiting the total number hold on hold on okay so that's one so you're you I understand that rationale but so the threshold then you could go lower and still have this minimum okay and the answer Mandy Jo was that's a council discussion okay are there any other questions so one of the questions that I know an individual counselor asked before the meeting and I just want to repeat it now and that is can we still make amendments to a bylaw in the second reading and the answer is yes and then the other thing that I mentioned earlier is that finance has still not recommended the fee schedule and this will the fee schedule will need to come forward as we do the second reading the fee schedule only requires one reading it doesn't require two readings Mandy Jo I would ask that if there are counselors that wish to make amendments that they allow the courtesy of Pam and I as chair and vice chair to see them since we are intimately familiar with the bylaw and regulations if we can see them ahead of time to make sure that all of the interlocking changes are you know if you're trying to amend something in one place ahead of time would be good to make sure nothing else needs changed somewhere else that was happened to be missed because there are a lot of cross reference sort of cross referencing things that changing something in one place might have to flow through in three or four different places and it would be helpful to make sure that is covered in any amendment that might be asked to be made ahead of time so we don't miss something night of um Kathy are you would like them to work on language like you're suggesting yeah so my I have a question um I it's probably in the packet but do we have a version of KP law was pointed to a few places where it was inconsistent or recommend change do we have a version that has already adopted those or should I be looking at the KP law version the are the documents in the packet have been reviewed and voted by GLL after the KP law opinions were provided and so GLL has corrected all of those inconsistencies as they saw necessary and and actually had a very good discussion about that and took that because it was those very issues that made it clear consistent and above all actionable okay uh so Kathy I want to just go back to you are Manny Joe has asked the courtesy which I think is appropriate that she and um Jennifer see no I'm sorry Pam sit as co-chairs of CRC see any motions and I was asking you do you want them to see what it would do to change the threshold to 10 uh yeah so I I I did a markup with comments on it but what I'll do is change that to something that's separate from because I've worked on the KP law one so I'll change it and I'll turn it into a recommendation and then I'll send it thank you so it's not in it's Mandy already saw those with little comment bubbles where I just KP law had a comment bubble and I put comment bubbles but I'll change it to be actual suggested wording in a section so at this point the bylaw as approved by GLL or as recommended by GLL is the bylaw that we are to work with okay are there any other questions or comments or thoughts about other changes people might want okay seeing none um with an assumption that finance will can finish this before the fourth this would be then on the December 4th agenda if not it moves to the 20th uh proposed street lighting policy uh Anika or I'll do it I was chairing the meeting yeah I thought you were so I was going to say Anika or Anna so Anna I got you Anika um okay so what I'm also a sponsor of this so I get to talk about it a lot um so basically what happened is that at TSO there was a lot of discussion about street lights as there has been many many times before and uh one of the main messages that we were receiving from counselors as well as from uh TSO specifically was really questioning you know how how to move things like this forward when we need significant staff um significant staff input and there was a belief from some members of TSO that this really should be coming from town staff uh so I think you know Mandy and I wrote a pretty comprehensive memo um comprehensive but short for for a memo I think that outlines what occurred at that meeting but essentially Paul offered at that point to take this to his staff as something that they would um look at our draft and develop something to bring back to the council at a later date um that would TSO uh voted fully in favor of that and Mandy and I are very amenable amenable to that option as well okay um Pam you asked this be removed and just please go ahead and speak to that I think it's part partly a clarification on process um the the consent agenda item was to direct the town manager to develop a policy which I think is great it didn't say specifically you must form a task force although that was the second document in the second of third documents about the the topic um and I think it's it's I think for me and for the public it's very difficult to understand when something simply goes into the town manager's performance goals and says we need we want dark skies tell us how you're going to do dark skies and come up with a proposal for it and and in this case it's being very specific we are in a in a sense we're circumventing the town manager performance goals by by creating something very specific like this um with a direction to in in fact do it a task force that to me is is sort of it's not necessarily taking advantage of the situation but it's it puts it puts something like this in line before all the other priorities that are that are in the performance goals for this coming year it makes it it makes it a very specific to do item as opposed to a specific or general goal and I just would appreciate some conversation about how this is encouraged should should we be encouraging this kind of activity or do we in fact just say okay counselors you just put your stuff into the performance goals and and the town manager I'm sure will make sure they happen this is a very this is a very proactive way of doing it but do each of us get to do this and put our little action items as an action to the town manager instead of in the goals okay Kathy you also wanted this removed yes as as I read the motion it was to take the go theory and Hannah can Hannah key outlined policy and work on it if it had just said to ask the town manager to come back with a policy he's been in all of this I would be fine with this but I still see this as overly prescriptive it's not a policy per se it's a policy plus a regulatory document so I think the reason it never got out of TSO is there was a feeling it might be voted down by the town council and if it got voted down it couldn't come back for a couple years so I'm comfortable with referring it to if we think it's important for the town manager and his staff to spend time on this to generally refer the issue of streetlight policy with all the discussion that he's heard and have them come back would be fine so it would be a rewording of the motion then secondly I saw later a creation of a task force so if we're creating a task force why is the town manager developing a policy why wouldn't the task force develop a policy so I didn't understand how the two worked together at all you know that if if we were going to pull together something with seven people to come up with street lighting policy they should be working with what do the shields look like what's the glare and all these issues to have them assign that work when the staff and the manager is already working on it those two seem completely inconsistent to me and I didn't mind a task force I again I wasn't sure this rises to a level of such a high priority that we want to create another committee to work on it so for both of those reasons I pulled it off the consent agenda because the two things together didn't make sense to me and asking him to in general develop a policy and come back I'd be fine but not as as described in this specific memo honor so I'm going to try to tackle some of these and then if it's okay I'd like Mandy as the other sponsor to be able to respond before we go to more questions we would have loved for it to pass out a TSO that would have been great right like this is not the this is not the way that the sponsors wanted it to go of course the discussion in TSO was really generative and led us in this direction in terms of you know thinking through how bylaws come forward and how we move in that I'm really looking forward to the goals discussion because I think that what this has unearthed for a lot of us is how we set goals and how prescriptive those are however I do not think it is fair for us to hold certain items to processes that we might change in the future so I think that if we change the goals process for 2020 what year we're going into for 2024 then it would be absolutely you know it'd be fair to say okay well this is not in the goals so it's not going to go forward but the way that the goals have been written in this year it allows for councillor leeway and you know it allows for us to bring things forward that we care about and that our constituents ask us to carry forward so for me the the the fact that this item isn't specifically in the 2023 goals is not a precursor to getting it done and I actually really worry about the precedent that it sets to say if something isn't in the town manager goals the town councillor can't work on it if it needs town manager support right I think that that precedent scares me a bit in terms of how we're ever going to get anything done but I think that the other part of this is and it gets a bit to Kathy's question which is that this is that the motions motions is based on right so town manager can develop a policy what we were trying to get at with that language was here's a start you know and if we consulted a lot with with TPW on this on the development of this this is none of this is a surprise to TPW right about what's in the bylaw what's in the policy but if they decide to shift they decide to shift Mandy's going to tackle the task force part of it but really I just wanted to highlight based on doesn't equal present the same bylaw and yeah I think ultimately I just I caution us for limiting things that aren't directly in the town manager goals in terms of getting of what we can move forward I think that that's something that yeah I would would stop a lot of our work and and limit us as councillors and bringing things forward and allow Mandy to or not allow ask Mandy to continue what I was saying so I'm going to take out of line for a moment maybe you're going to speak to the task force I'll just speak to the task force so the task force charge is in there because the policy that we presented to TSO that is referenced in the motion to direct the manager includes the formation of a task force it is the motion is not directing the manager to form a task force it is not requiring that the manager come back with a policy that includes forming a task force it's just part of this iterative process that we went through for the last year and a half resulted in this policy can do one thing but a task force or some something potentially given the the processes we've been following for the last year and a half we recognized that certain parts of the original proposed policy required more conversation at a more community conversation and that's where the task force was going and that's where it came up back to TSO and so that's there as part of if TSO had voted out a recommendation to adopt the policy that was in front of TSO that would have included forming the council forming a task force and so the reason the task force is in the packet is because it's sort of part of that original presentation that would then may or may not come back from a manager because he could he would come out with his own policy which his proposal if this goes forwards may or may not include more than what our policy did it may include a number of the things that the task force would have done it may not um but that's why the task force is in there right now Lynn may I make a quick note yes the policy that comes back from the town manager would would go back to TSO to continue that review process with input from finance committee and then it would go to GOO before it comes back to the council for a vote Andy yes so I uh want to speak for a moment as a member of TSO who spent a lot of time on this was not a cosponsor but I want to make it very clear that I am not speaking for TSO I'm always speaking of my own impressions from having spent that much time on it this is not just a dark skies policy it is a policy that is trying to look at a number of issues having to do with street lights that have frankly have never been visited because the original street light policy was really a budget cutting policy and not anything else and this is a lot more and it's recognizing not only is there the dark skies policy which we've heard all about from the advocate for that perspective but there are also substantial other health issues health for human beings as well as health for wildlife including birds and part of the problem with street lights and I found this just when I was canvassing as a candidate and spoke to somebody who raised the issue unsolicited I said what are your concerns that you want to share with me and that was one of them because he has a light that shines in his bedroom window and it's hard to sleep at night and it has to do with the height of the street light the brightness of the street light and the fact that the street light is not shaded and he said he's lived with it for long enough and he wanted to bring it to my attention as a counselor so the policy is really dealing with a lot of those issues that he cited the brightness the location and the questions of the color of the light and the intensity of the light I think that what my concern was in the way the policy was beginning to develop is it was getting very technical in how it was stated as to what the standards would be for the street lights to be purchases opposed to saying we want you to purchase street lights that provide the safe lighting but tend to these issues and the town manager came forward with the suggestion that he would be willing to take a stab at trying to develop with the help of you Mr. Mooring Guilford Mooring the policy so I thought that that was a very good suggestion and that's why I'm going to support this this request from the co-sponsors and the last thing that well I think all the task force I am a little bit nervous about task force but is the general policy not just about this one and that is I think that we underestimate how much time it takes our staff to oversee boards and committees and the amount of time that gets put into things like just keeping minutes getting meetings posted and everything else I think about DPW administrative staff and what they do to support the TS the attack and so I was curious as to whether it was possible to either combine with another existing body or replace an existing body so that we don't have yet another existing body and I do think that's a live issue but I really would and perfectly willing to let that be part of what being referred to the town manager so I do support what is done on the floor tonight for those reasons Jennifer yeah I guess I'm concerned about kind of what what struck me about this was how the process by which something gets elevated to a task force and I know that we've been discussing this but there there are so there are issues that you know well I guess when we talk about like what issues we heard when we were campaigning and there were other issues that you know many that were very consistent that we've been you know also talking about on the council and that you know I know that there was a suggestion I I think Pam you know maybe it was the first council meeting um about a housing task force to address some you know issues that have been talked about by you know many many people in town and that we were told that you know there were two that would be too time consuming there were too many task force would take up too much you know staff you know energy and resources and when I read the description of this task force there's like 10 items on it I mean it seems incredibly time consuming so how did sort of street lights and I know that we've just discussed the process but it's still something doesn't quite feel right about how this jumped to the front of the line and now there's you know looks like there could well be this very involved task force that a lot of will take a lot of tasks staff time and technical skills when there seems like other issues that many people in town have been concerned about for a long time you know and we were told well there's not the resources for a task force so that's my concern Dorothy well my my question was one that um of total ignorance um I don't know how a task force gets created I guess I didn't know that the town council could create it on its own um for the things that people have been mentioning you know they after I put my hand up people began to clarify this a little bit more but so I really like to know how does the task force get created how is it staffed and what are the rules that's it can the sponsors respond to some of the questions that are asked I think we've got answers to them sure um so I think just to shed a little bit of clarity uh I think what Mandy was saying is that this motion does not necessitate does not uh require a task force to be formed if Paul decides that that's something that he wants to recommend I believe the council would have to still vote to authorize a task force um and if he doesn't decide that he wants that then that won't come back to us um where the task force came from was from the significant community engagement that we did so that was where that idea that's why that idea was placed into the bylaw was because um the folks we had been engaging with were basically you know we we kind of got to this point where um we were we were spinning in circles right we we weren't able to really find that middle ground and so the and I want to credit Mandy for her um immense community engagement work here with folks from with residents who wanted to engage they they said all right look we need to pull in experts from different areas to the table to develop this um and I think that you know if if this motion passes and if Paul takes the lead on it I think he also has different mechanisms for doing that engagement it might not be a task force um but just to give folks clarity on why that and where that task force idea came from it was out of the efforts for um deeper community engagement work um and again it does not that is not a requirement of this motion if Paul decides to do that he would bring it back to the council um I believe in the council would vote to to create the task force much like we did for the um similar to the solar bylaw working group that would be that that'd be the closest I think that that I could give you as a reference point thank you so you're just saying the council has the power to create a task force that was my question okay yes we do Pam thank you I think it's it's really good timing because we're as I said before we're studying the the uh town managers goals and I think we've been told a number of times to keep those goals fairly general so that it doesn't restrict the town manager in how to to tackle them how to address them and I'm I'm thinking as we go into our discussion specifically on that topic that in fact we may want to be much more specific because we may want to insert the need for a streetlight policy into into what we're asking for um I think it's great that you brought this forward put all the work into it I think it's just what's what's catching in my head is is just the process of it so let's be more specific with the town manager goals and that will have the same effect as coming forward with a very specific um topic for him to work on michelle yeah it sounds to me like we're having two different discussions here and I will uh admit that the process discussion is getting me a little fired up because I think there is a legitimate concern about the way that we move through process here and whose initiatives get you know taken to the level of the possible creation of a task force I myself have tried to initiate such task forces um I have the reparations successor committee that I'm trying to have created and feeling some you know various pushback on that so I know I that I'm personalizing it a little bit but just to make the point that we all have these things that we care about and I think that that's wonderful and that's why we're elected officials but that we also have to be really mindful of um the sort of equity within the council in terms of using resources of the town and I am curious actually to hear from Paul on this um I've been following it a little bit I thought that Paul without us had the authority to create or put a group together even and and maybe I'm wrong about that but I I thought that he could do that without even if he decided that that was the best way to move forward that he doesn't need our permission necessarily to do that so I wanted to hear just from Paul if he's so willing in relation to this like what the thought process has been if there's one that is there Paul sure so um it this came out of um I think we're still learning how to do things and I think you're all raising really important questions and points about how do the goals intersect with initiatives that counselors want to bring to the table which might by outside the goals process and I think we're seeing that play out in multiple different ways um and and I think no counselor wants to give up their their autonomy or ability to bring an idea forward this one this idea was voted by the town council to refer it to the TSO committee so it gave it some standing it was in TSO where there was a struggle with with how to sort of reconcile all the different concerns we had the TSO committee had just gone through a pretty um laborious but successful process on doing sewer regulations and water regulations if you recall and that was done with a council sponsor plus or a council lead a counselor who was in the lead with one of our staff members Amy Rusecki and that seemed to me to be a pretty successful process and that's what I had in mind when we I said maybe the staff can help on this I did not have in mind establishing a task force I think you're right the town manager can establish a task force as can the um the the council anybody can can start a committee what and I think the um a point was made earlier that staffing these committees is quite intense so we tend not we tend to I tend to try to avoid them if we if unless it's really compelling reason to do it um so I did not have in mind to create a task force for this in particular I could see the council wanting to establish a task force when it when a work product comes to them and they start to want to engage with the public more about what it looks like and you want to have some advocates or some people who were more sort of knowledge experts who were going to be able to convey what was happening to the public but my view was very fairly simple was which was let's talk to the people who are operating this the street lights and see what they would come up with looking at all the work that had already gone through in the education that counselors had already done uh and see if we can model that model it on the um prior successful um development of the water and sewer regulations. Thanks Paul. Anika. Thank you just wanted to chime in about the um the task force also uh so we had you know we have the process which you know many members of TSO and even council has has said throughout time that it was very prescriptive. The task force also originated and came through some other concerns which were safety um that was primary primarily one because you had a lot a lot of concern about whether it was loss of lighting or the need for additional lighting and so this came down to um better lighting right more secure lighting where you could see sidewalks so you know for instance the difference of how this can impact people who rely on public transportation just to navigate the community um to get to work to buy food just basic needs those who are relying on public transportation late at night and for other reasons other than um you know leisurely strolls and walks so of course the you know tack and some others are a great concern about um where lighting would go even though the initial proposal did not add lighting it just changed the type of lighting and coverage that we had so that was one of the major reasons for the suggestion of the task force to my understanding to really be able to potentially deal with those issues separately and then make sure that they're inclusive of you know people who would need to be at the table who you know making sure that there are people who represent um people who depend on planes trains uber and taxi and their feet and bikes to to get around as well make sure that that um they're at the table and I think because of this is something that really impacts the majority of all residents regardless of which side you might be leaning to that that was really my understanding and and also it was you know sent back to TSO with that recommendation to be sure to work with the community members that were bringing up those concerns that really related to um the for or related to forming a task force so I just want to add that. Melanie um I'm also seeing two conversations happening here and I want to acknowledge both because I really do want to acknowledge what Pam um has said about the process and I think that's something that's really important um and something we are discussing in TSO um I'll speak to that in a moment but I also want to acknowledge that a lot of work has gone into uh this and we didn't have that any other process other than what within which Anna and Maddie have managed to have worked so I just want to keep the two things separate I did vote no on that final thing because my understanding at that time was and what I was hearing from Paul is that they appreciated the fact that Anna and Maddie Jo did the work because the town staff didn't have the work and what I had in mind was that uh to continue doing the work that is being done in TSO but with more um engagement of the community in the besides public comment have a way of listening to people who use the roads and biking and so forth and also um with better coordination from the tax committee as a whole because we were hearing from individuals and there was a lot of lack of clarity within the tax committee what is their role with respect to this bylaw so there was a lot of confusion and I was hoping that but given that the majority of the committee voted and what I'm hearing Paul now say is that something um he's comfortable taking on with the staff leading I'm okay with that but in the future I do feel that the discussion we're having in TSO is around there's a lot of staff burnout and council burnout when on the one hand and yet we also want to encourage councillors to come up with proposals outside of the town manager goals and so what that process might entail because the discussion we had when this was sent to the TSO committee was very limited I think there were a few of us who questioned is this a priority in this but we didn't really have a framework to have a robust conversation and it was sent to the TSO well the TSO will decide whether they want to have this conversation or not and when it was in TSO we were told that well the town council wants us to discuss it and provide a report it almost felt like we had to go through the process so there wasn't really a good process and I'm just using that as an example but really moving forward I think and that's what we are working on right now is to have a legislative guide that would allow this would have real clear expectations from sponsors and especially like new councillors who don't know when they come when they want to propose something what should go in the sponsors memo to the town council and the sponsors could include questions could include the problem the solving and where is this coming from why is this important and then the main thing is that the town council would be able to ask the town managers specifically in terms of what are the resources what resources are needed needed including existing staff or consultants and what is the timeline for staff to work on this given their current priorities so like having a process where we as a council can look at proposals outside of town manager goals but in conversation with the town manager who can look at where the staff is otherwise we are all putting in our ideas with putting the town manager in an awkward position to not be able to say no to anything so that's a discussion we need to have separately is all I'm saying and we are working on that in DSO honor thank you yeah I mean I think one I'm wondering how many if anyone's counting how many times we have as a collective body have said the word process tonight um because I think it's been a lot but I think you know Michelle to your point I agree that or what I'm taking from your point is that we need and and from Shalini's point as well is that there isn't a consistent consistent way that this is happening I do think it's a bit of an unfair framing to insinuate and I don't know that this is what you were insinuating but um I want to just clarify that I don't think that there was anything um special about you know the way that Mandy and I went through this that warranted different attention than other proposals have gotten and so I do want to if that was the framing I do think it's a bit of an unfair one because the way that this happened it could very much still be could have been right it's not this is not the way it is happening but the council could have said no to this right this wasn't an automatic thing we were developing this bylaw um or editing this bylaw and bringing it back to the committee it was in and that was where this change happened we weren't bringing it together we weren't bringing it to the council as a standalone separate thing um and I think that it's a valid question to ask why proposals for other task forces haven't been you know brought to the the council for decision I think that that's an indication that we don't have a process um but I I do think that just to be clear that this this was part of something that the the committee and the council would have voted on and would have absolutely had a say on um it was not a sure thing in any way shape or form and and at this point you know it's with the way that this motion evolved um it's absolutely not something that is a is a is what the council would be recommending paul do right we're just we're saying paul look at this and do what you what you need to do not um paul do these exact things I hope that helps to clarify thanks so using my privilege as a counselor um this brings up many issues for me one is very much the process issue that various counselors have raised and it also brings up for me how do we in fact then balance things that are brought up at any point in the year by counselors which is their right with an already established set of goals that we've asked the manager to accomplish and or at least work on and you know we're going to get to you know looking what that looks like both through the evaluation and the goal process so part of me wants to say I want to hold any decision on this until we have the goals discussion so that we look at it in light of the goals and in light of what do we as a council agree on the priorities of where we want the town manager and our staff and our time to spend on what priorities and that you know that really does get back to something I I know shallonies you know worked on and talked about all along so I'm not sure where I stand and it it has not it's separate from whether it has anything to do with street lights okay I separate from that that's I'm raising these questions okay with regard to street lights I would hope that a group like tack would actually take it on public ways take it on and not create another task force or committee that has to be staffed I look at you know various committees that have been created and the amount of staffing that has gone into them and it's a lot so I'm I'm just kind of sharing some thoughts I haven't come up with a decision thank you Anna retroactively holding counselors to a process or a list or something that was created or that was not in play when they brought emotion forward is absolutely unfair it is absolutely unfair when when we tried to do this around counselor compensation and it's unfair now it is absurd to say that we should be now taking away someone's someone's ability to bring something forward when it's our fault there wasn't a process but we can't now say well we should have had it so we're not going to let you pass this until we do have it in play and then you can bring it back that that to me is is undermining what we do have currently which we which the council the sponsors of this myself and Mandy Joe followed and I and to your second point Lynn tack is not the appropriate group for this to go too slowly because of the content of the street lights policy this is not just a transportation issue it encompasses far more than that which is why are the proposed task force was broader than that as well so that was why we didn't we discussed that as a possibility and ended up not based on the nature of the the bylaw but my main point here is I I think it's it is absurd for this council to start saying to counselors and I held this to other I said this exact same thing when we talked about council council compensation and finance it is absurd to say you followed the process as we explained it to you but we decided we don't like that process and want to fix it and so we're not going to do the thing that you brought forward even though you followed the rules so I I think that if we start down that road it's I mean that's just awful to me Mandy Joe I want to talk about the process we've already followed about a year and a half ago Anna and I per the rules of procedure brought to the council a proposal to adopt a bylaw that proposal per the rules of rules of procedure was presented in a form adoptable by this council there was a motion this council passed that motion that motion was to refer to TSO review and recommendation of that proposed policy TSO discussed that referral for over a year in fact last this past august about four months ago TSO voted a recommendation on that referral that recommendation was to adopt the to recommend the council adopt the proposed street lights policy when that recommendation was brought to this council after the full process was followed the council then had a motion to send back to TSO the proposed policy that TSO had already recommended the council adopt for further conversation and another report and recommendation TSO went to tack as the second referral requested tack came back with some comments we went back and addressed those comments and TSO made another vote another recommendation that is the recommendation we are sitting here talking about tonight a recommendation from a committee this council tasked with making a recommendation and TSO's recommendation was the second recommendation was to recommend that the council direct the manager to develop a policy and that is the recommendation we are supposed to be talking about tonight we followed the process the process as set out in the rules the motions as this council passed have been reported on yet most of this conversation has dealt with not should we direct the manager to do that or not but about do we like the process that's a completely different conversation we should be talking about the TSO's recommendation which was a 4-1 vote thank you for correcting us Shalini um to to recommend that the council direct the manager to do this if the council does not want to direct the manager to do that that is fine that is the council's prerogative but the process has been followed the council may not like the process it may hate the process it may love the process who knows but the process has been followed per our rules Kathy I I think what you're seeing here Mandy is for me anyway a five-year learning curve that when it first came up I should have just said no that this wasn't you know I understand what you're saying when it first came up don't refer it as Paul said we gave it a status by referring I am totally ready to vote on this yes or no tonight I'm totally ready and what I raised is I just didn't want it on the consent agenda because we are referring a development of a policy to the town manager and that I wasn't going to raise the larger issues because I think you're right and I'm going to be smarter I think in the next couple years I've started looking at rules of procedure more carefully to figure out when I should use something you know a couple of votes we've taken I didn't know what the number of votes were on something but I'm getting better at it I said I'm a slow learner on the the rules part but on this part I wish I had voted no at the beginning because of everything else I thought we as a council needed to do and we as a town needed to do so I'm just saying I'm ready to take a vote on this I'm going to put the motion on the floor and have a second and then people can continue to speak to it the motion is to direct the town manager to develop an updated streetlight policy based on the streetlight policy proposed by councillors Devlin Gauthier and Hannah Keith is there a second second sorry go ahead Andy you got it Steinberg seconds okay Michelle I think we're we're not having a linear discussion and that sometimes happens and it was helpful for me to hear like what I would consider the method or the process that happened and I understand that it's our responsibilities counselors to follow the reporting on these initiatives and understand sort of what the process has been and it sounds like Mandy when you say we follow the process what you mean is that our rules the process was followed I am just a little bit personally activated by the use of the word absurd because it makes it hard for me to like express myself in the face of that kind of language but I understand I think I guess I actually got lost a little bit Anna with what you were saying I wasn't following where like what point did you hear that we were asking you to go back like I'm genuinely confused about this conversation and at what point that was communicated when you use that it's absurd that this council would ask that we go back and follow a process that you know so was there something else that I missed or are you just talking about like the general comments that were being expressed may I respond since it was so sure so I apologize that that my word choice set set a block for you I what I was trying to say it wasn't go back I think what I was trying to say is that I do not think that it is a fair expectation for us to retroactively set rules I think that because we don't have a process for the establishment of a task force or the you know all the things that were stated that folks would want to fix about our process I don't think it's fair to hold a bylaw that was created before we fix the process that followed the process the rules that we do have to then say you now need to follow rules that don't exist yet right I think that that's what I was saying I personally found out that's the part that I found absurd because my brain was having trouble wrapping my head around why someone would have you know we'd followed the the way that we were told to bring measures forward why now that was incorrect because we uncovered gaps in our process I hope that clarifies what I was intending with that thanks Shalini yeah just to clarify I was very clear in saying that there is a process and then there is the bad and I was not I was very okay okay so yeah okay so that's that but I do want to say in terms of TSO followed the process and from my perspective they were lapses in terms of the community engagement because I was asking for the safety and and I'm sure you did your due diligence and but the fact of the matter is that we did hear from people about the safety impact and on certain streets and and when that was raised that's why it went back so it's not like it was just arbitrarily sent back it came to the council and then it was sent back so it sounded like it was just arbitrary going back and forth some of it is the lack of process but the fact of the matter is that TSO processed it to the best of the TSO information that was given by the sponsors and then when we heard there was new information about impacting safety in the council we decided to send it back and have a more thorough conversation with TAC and then in between by then TAC was confused what is their role and all of this is not to put any blame on anyone and again like where I stand I'm supporting the recommendation that's the motion that's at the table if the town manager is comfortable taking it on that's on him and I think that is something I've heard we need as a town because there is no policy so that's great that all the work has been done but I still maintain that there is no process again that is separate discussion and hopefully we will have a robust conversation and pass something that's going to be helpful to the next council to move forward in a more systematic manner. Jennifer. Yes I mean this in a friendly way but actually as I recall I think three of us didn't vote to refer it so yeah but you know but we followed the process so I think you know Kathy was saying she wish she hadn't and I think maybe Kathy and I maybe Shalini didn't but the majority did so that thought went into it but I have another question are we voting now specifically to authorize the task force or just for the town manager to decide if that's what he wants. The motion is is only to refer this to the town manager to develop it it has nothing no task force is assumed. Okay thank you. Dorothy. We had many discussions on the issue of streetlights we had some areas where we had quick agreement but the areas where we had disagreements were to do with pedestrian safety particularly at night around crosswalks bus stops and those things so I believe that sponsors said they would sever the placement of the lights from the policy but then we got into the color and the height and the shielding and lots of very technical things at that point although I was going along with it understanding it I felt and I thought Andy did join this discussion we began to feel so maybe this isn't what we were supposed to be doing as town counselors getting into such technical specificity that it needed to be taken have more staff input and now they had had staff input but it needed more that we didn't feel that we could you know new enough and I certainly don't want to learn enough to know all about streetlights I've got other things in my life so I don't have a problem with the current situation where the town manager has said okay I will take care of it I will look into it he'll deal with the staff because that gets to the point where I felt that you know technical stuff like that is not what we're here for all right so I felt that the things were coming to a reasonable conclusion that's it. Pat quickly I had trouble with the beginning of our discussion where people were saying I didn't get something and they did and I need us to look at ourselves individually all of us to figure out how you participated in that because it undermines the workings of the council and I'm tired of it but I'm going to do we are it's clear we need to get into the discussion that GOL is bringing forward about specificity in the town manager goals so I am going to call the question. Question's been called that does not require a second yes it does is there a second second okay we move immediately to the vote on the question being called and then we move to the actual question. Pat? Aye. Anna? No. Lynn Griezmer is an aye. Mandy Jo? No. Anika? Michelle? No. Dorothy Pam? Yes. Pam Rooney? Yes. Kathy Shane? Yes. Andy Steinberg? Yes. Jennifer Tob? Yes. Alicia Walker? No. Shalini Balmilne? No. Yeah I have it. No you need a two-thirds vote. Oh it's two-thirds I'm sorry we continue with the discussion. Alicia you had your hand up. Thank you I just had a really quick question also about process and it's just that so if we were to pass this motion to ask the town manager to create the policy would there be further consultation of the council? Yes can I answer that it comes back to TSO after the town manager does it so it would go through the full process again Alicia it would go back to TSO go to GOL go to all of the all the places. So just for clarity the main reason for it to be happening this way is more so that he can manage the smaller details with staff input and do sort of that tedious work that isn't necessarily something that we can do more of. I mean you call it tedious I was having a great time with it I it's more so that TSO believed that the town manager staff had the expertise to to write the policy with the level of complexity that it required. Alicia any question any further questions? Sorry yes just one for follow-up so when it comes back to the council to go back through TSO it will come as a recommendation from TSO then to the council and the council will have another opportunity to sort of vote and possibly change or amend things in what is recommended from the town manager and also from TSO that's correct it goes to it'll go straight to TSO with input from finance and then it gets a review from GOL before it comes back to the council okay thank you that is very helpful okay are there any other questions okay there's a motion on the floor the motion's been made and seconded the motion is to direct the town manager to develop an updated street light policy based on the street light policy proposed by Councillor Devlin-Gothier and Hanneke it's been made and seconded we'll go with the vote yes is there a timeline we're giving you to do this no may I when I when I wrote the motion it was you know the council reorganizes in January and then when they elect a president then the president makes appointments to committees so I wasn't sure if the council wanted to include a deadline for the town manager because of all of that would put it out at the end of January or the beginning of February and we don't have a council calendar yet or we're expecting to bring that to the council I think at the next meeting so I don't even have a meeting date to put in there but if you'd like to include okay you can if you want you can always ask for amendment okay okay the motion's been made seconded we start with Anna Devlin-Gothier aye Lynn Griezmer is an aye Jane Mandy Joe Hanneke aye Anika Lopes aye Michelle Miller aye Dorothy Pam yes Pam Rooney yes Kathy Shane no uh Indy Steinberg aye Jennifer Tobbe yes Alicia Walker yes Shalini Balmillan yes Pat D'Angeloz aye it passes a with 12 in favor and one opposed we're going to move on to the town manager evaluation we have two options besides we can either discuss this or people can send me on an individual basis their request for changes and feedback I'm open for discussion I request we discuss I'm sorry okay yes please do Mandy Joe so I want to thank Lynn for the work there is a summary evaluation statement that is on the first two page of this document of 21 pages but then it goes into listing all of the policy goals and then making a quote evaluation summary under each of the policy goals and management goals it struck me as very strange that nearly every summary quoted was mostly quoted or the bulk of nearly every summary was a verbatim quote from counselor Griezmer's evaluation with very little added from any of the other 12 counselors that completed evaluations of the manager such that I can't at this point recommend any specific changes because I think nearly every evaluation summary needs massive changes because it fails each one fails to generally summarize the entire council's statements okay Dorothy I just couldn't figure out which was your summary now I have the thing in front of me that may be your summary that has up at the top a little in small print for the purpose of this document this evaluation terms should be defined as it defines commendable satisfactory needs improvement could that be it no it doesn't have your name on it and it doesn't say summary the it's the item that you should have been looking at is a memo to Paul Backelman and it's from Lynn Griezmer dated November 20th it's possible I didn't get it I I've gone through the pages trying to sort them out and then I had a chance to read the where you amalgamated the counselors which took way more than an hour and a half okay but I haven't come across it lately is it possible that you could send it to me again yes we will make sure that we do it's in a link also from the memo but there should have been a copy of it in the package delivered to you the package that was delivered included the compilation of all the town counselor evaluations and ratings and each counselor evaluation and ratings it didn't include the memo but I did send you Dorothy I sent everyone in the council a direct link to the compiled ratings and evaluation and the memo okay so I will get it from there thank you thank you very much okay Kathy I Mandy basically said my overarching comment fine however I have but I don't know what would be helpful to you because I know what else you've been working on in the past week so I did go through all 13 of us and there were some interesting themes I thought emerge and I only call it a theme if at least two or three people said something you know if a lot of people were smartly terse this took me forever to write my paragraphs but I thought picking up on some of those would be helpful so I don't know whether you want us if we send you comments to say hear us some themes we saw because that would make us do the work that you just tried to do but you know so I would like to be constructive if possible rather than just go through rewrite this or too much of that so I also thought the other thing I saw among the 13 of us is that to varying extents we we picked out different aspects to write longer about them and I found a lot of them very interesting reading to see you know what people had focused on and there was a general theme of are we giving staff enough time to do the things we think are really important you know so it is is there either not enough staff are we pulling them off on other things so that was something that happened in different places and some of what we don't know might be behind the scenes there's more work going on than we know so so Lynn that was just my thought was what would be helpful given what you just had to do in reading lengthy evaluations and pulling together this memo Alicia so my comments are essentially the same also as Mandy Joe and Kathy that I just generally would have suggested changes to almost every summary and so I'm wondering if my question was pretty much the same as Kathy if it's helpful for us to send like recommendations as to what like we think would be helpful to include in the summary because some of them I just think were like incomplete didn't include certain things that I think should be included a few of them I didn't like I just didn't agree with how it was worded and would suggest those things and so would it be possible or how would we be able to sort of make those types of recommendations I think doing that on a council meeting might be a little bit too long and so maybe sending in recommendations to you and then is this possible to revisit it and would that work within our timeline in terms of the budget cycle and all other things we have going on generally what we what I've asked in the past is that you individually send me recommendations I can send you the word document to do that with or you can send it to me in any other way that you want I accept the criticism but I also want to share with you my own personal philosophy of how I was trained to do evaluations and that is that you start out by talking about the things that have gone well and then you move to the challenges and I think the things that have gone well are what I tried to summarize in my own evaluation and then in my own evaluation I use did move on to what I think are the challenges in the areas for improvement in the process I'm not I perfectly accept the fact that I have not captured everybody's so but I before people say yes I it's because I write evaluations by starting out with assuming nobody's going to read anything else even though the town manager has written I don't know a 69 page document uh that usually I start with some kind of something that recognizes what has been accomplished and then go on to the other if that is not the desire of the council then I um you know I stand corrected it's basically how I've approached for the last couple years Andy yeah I mean I have somewhat of the same concerns but I appreciate all of the evaluations that were written by all of the counselors I think everybody gave a lot of thought to it and I really appreciated being able to hear by our read I should say everybody's comments but I think that what got left out of it is a result of what we were doing and so in this a lot of this had to do with time I have to admit that I was very delinquent on getting started on it because I was so involved in the campaign to get reelected that I it sucked up all of my time and I by the time we got around to working on it I was pretty well cooked from the campaign but I did but when I did mine you know each paragraph I started by looking at what Paul had written and you know recognizing how much had happened and how much was successful and then of course I ended up as I think all of us did focusing on the pieces where we were concerned about what didn't happen but I don't think that that resulted in balance all of the time which I don't think there was any of our fault I don't think we did it intentionally but it was gets back to Lune's point that those of us who have done evaluations of employees in regular settings that know that it's important in doing an evaluation to give a balance and I wasn't sure that because of the time constraints and I so I really think that what was happening was really a problem of the amount of of faults in the process itself and you know a very complex process that because of the timing this year we had little time to deal with and we put the two together and we ended up with something and I appreciated the fact that Lynn was trying to strike a balance in between those all of those problems that I just cited I think what we do need to do is go back to the and not do anything tonight because I think we've learned a lot and we'll have a little bit more conversation I'm sure but to think about the point that Lynn was raising to look back at Paul's rather lengthy and complete self-assessment of what he did and our own concerns that were expressed in the collective set of documents from each counselor and see and then think about what is the best summary memo appropriate but to do that at 10 30 at night is not a good time to start right I just another thing I'm going to share with you as I was looking at the composite of all of the evaluations I received most well not really only about three evaluations arrived on time the rest arrived at various of the times during the week so I want to just be straightforward that you know I'm spent trying trying to get them in but I have seriously considered giving you the composite which I did give you and saying okay counselor X you write this one counselor Y you write this one and the other one write this one rather than you know me trying to summarize it all in the space of you know of two days of trying to write because I don't claim to have any magic about writing these I've done tons of evaluations but I also enjoy the richness of what people have to say and that's one reason why I think it's useful to both look at individuals and read them and then also look at the composite of what is said by 13 different people under each goal because it gives you a sense of the themes that you know that you see with each of the goals so and I think it's the sense of those themes that I'm hearing people didn't like and they also don't want me to write the first paragraph or whatever it is the way I do Anna so yeah I think I appreciate the amount of work that goes into it into this process and as one of the people who was late I think I can commiserate with how time intensive it is I'm also looking and I'm like oh man I wrote paragraphs and I guess I didn't really have to have other people sentences and so I think for me to be fair I'll probably always write paragraphs and then I can try to edit them down but I think for me this is we're going to use the the magical the the P word again right of this is something that I hope GOL can take up in the next term of what this process looks like because I think that it's not only time intensive time intensive for for us it's more time intensive the way that it's been conducted in terms of how it's compiled and so I think that GOL could do could do some serious work on that and it's I hope that it's something you know I see pat writing really really diligently so I'm hopeful that that gets brought in there but I think for me you know when you when you try to over focus on balance sometimes you lose really valuable feedback and it can it can feel almost disingenuine right because you you push things out that are really important and for me my frustration was it wasn't actually just that things that I had written that I feel are very very important weren't reflected but it was that I wasn't the only person that wrote them you know that they were in they came from multiple people and they they still weren't in there and so I think that for me you know and I respect that this sounds or I understand that this sounds like a critique on you're pulling things together and I want to note that I actually think it's more of an indictment of the process right that you had to go through and find those commonalities and pull things like that and so I think that I overall I'm not holding us to that for this year because I just went on a whole tirade about how I don't believe we should do that but I do think for next year I hope this is a process that we we shift and I appreciate I would appreciate having a word doc go out that we can add comments to and yeah I agree in the future having counselors take a section having whatever that looks the way that finance does for for budget presentations makes a lot of sense it could be I'm going to say this knowing that she is too far away to smack me but I you know that could be something that gol handles in the same way in in future years you can't reach me thank you Jennifer yeah I was just gonna say I think next going forward there has to be another process so that the you don't have to do you know the council president doesn't have to do the whole compilation I mean I just it's a huge task so thank you I can't I would not take would not take that on so I think anything we can do to not have it all be on one person and just the only thing I also want to just add when you you did point out in your summary that the maybe the one thing everybody agreed on and it was I think accommodation commendable across the board was Paul's relationship with the council so I think Paul that was a huge compliment or tribute that we all feel that you're responsive to us and for 13 counselors we don't agree on much that's I thought that was kind of extraordinary but you know pat yourself on the you know that really was a tribute to you so thank you so given the holiday coming up is it reasonable to expect that I can get comments back by next Tuesday can you specify I'm sorry oh I will send you the word doc tonight could can I clarification would you prefer comments that suggest changes of things we would like to see or what what types of comments would be most helpful for you in this process I mean obviously changes would like to see but sorry are you are you saying you want specific language we want added are you going to say that you want us to attempt to summarize other folks comments as well what would be more helpful to me track changes are most helpful sorry no I okay I understood that but are you are you looking for us when we go into this document should I be looking at everyone else's as well and saying this is my opinion of what the summary would be or am I just saying here are the elements of my personal review that I want to put in here and I know I think you need to look at all of the comments on that great thank you which is only fair yep thanks for and and to remember that our practice has been that we only that if only one person mentions that we don't go out of our way to bring that up but if we're looking for themes I think themes is the right word here okay Dorothy I just want to be sure that you your voice will still be unified throughout the document I don't like the idea of different counselors writing different items because that would be a mishmash that's that's the challenge but yeah so do I if I understand it if I feel that one of your answers was not sufficiently responsive to the remarks that were turned in by the counselors I will let you know is that correct yes and suggest ways in which you would have it changed okay using track changes or if you feel the summary should have had more qualifiers in it or you want to just write a whole new summary that's fine I do do want to say that this is two days before Thanksgiving you know and there's that I I think pushing this through at this moment is not a good idea that's what I'm saying I think we should extend the deadline and people can do what they can do now or they can do it but but you know let's talk about this being put together to you next week that's why I'm asking for Tuesday okay not tomorrow Tuesday a week from tomorrow thank you okay oh I'm sorry you didn't realize I was no yeah I yeah and I was busy tomorrow I forgot it all all calls I have my own plans thank you Kathy just just a quick comment and and the uh for those of who of us who want to do this I just knew what I'd written and I went looked at all 12 of the others to see how many people had a similar theme and different and where there were differences that was the easiest way I could say is there a nugget that's been missing or is there um something that's been overplayed because three people said this and four people said that it's just an easier way to read it if you know what you said mm-hmm yep okay uh we're going to move on to uh how many of your goals and Pat you want to talk about gol we talked about how specific my fingers on it you have to move it closer sorry at the last gol meeting is that okay um we started to talk about how much specificity should be in each goal uh and we started to look at the document um a little bit and that's and you can see some of your clear in the clean copy you'll be able to see some of the slimmed down version we didn't reach agreement on this it was a discussion and what we realized is we needed to come back and get input from all of you and paul it I know you were there for one of the meetings but I think that tonight we also need your input um it's you know the discussion we had previously about streetlights um and and the reaction people had and was too specific it was and then I'm thinking about well waste faller we have that in our climate action goals and we very specific about what we want and that didn't bother anybody so this is a real issue what is it that we're looking for when we create goals for the town manager do we want it to be a checklist or do we want it to be the implementation of policies like the carp or or the comprehensive housing policy what what is it that we want um so I'm going to open it up it a little bit to I mean I see honest hand so with your permission Lynn I'll just call on her okay um so I think uh so I was curious if joel had discussed and I apologize I wasn't be able to make it and so I'm trying to tread that line of not asking you to rehash your whole meeting and if you said we deliberated this is where we landed I accept um I was looking at when I was thinking about this um yesterday I was I was looking at different town manager evaluation processes across the state and what folks do and to be honest with you most of them are pretty inefficient as well but I think one of the things that I was that was very compelling to me was looking at there was a city oh no I wrote it down I'm not going to remember which one but I'll find it for you um and what they had was they oh Chatham Chatham had the structure where they had the objective as we do but then they had specific action items within it and they broke it out in a in a way that I think made it a little bit more doable right the objective is that the purpose statement is really what we're getting at the action items it looked like we're able to be modified much more easily throughout the year as time became more clear as you know folks not modified to add a bunch of stuff but modified to say like okay is it is implementation still the answer do we need to shift this um and it allowed for us not needing to go 12 months before saying oh wait we're not on track right they also um the MMA talks about and their best practices for this talks about having you know middle of the year um check-ins and things like that as part of the process but I was really I found the idea of having the purpose and the objective and then the action items really compelling um because I think that for for me when I look at our goals we go from big to small and big to small and that's really tough um and I think it also allows us to say like okay we can we can ask Paul about these action items to know how many roughly we should be putting that still gives us a little bit of wiggle room if something comes up during the year it gives us I think a better roadmap one of the things that came up in GLL was also mid-year a mid-year check-in and also periodic conversations about costs as things develop and and whether or not there are trade-offs that we need to make I would love it in any way if you would react Paul because this yeah I mean I think you characterize exactly what the what the what the dilemma is do you is it a checklist which is sort of you is it it's a it it's a binary you did it or you didn't right or is it a more of a you know are you looking for the chief executive officer to be doing something in this area I think the number of goals is really challenging I think if the the value of a goal in my mind is if I can get our towns if you can articulate the core core goals that you really care about and I can get every town staff member to say what that is you know if you walk up to somebody they know what it is and we're trying to do that with climate action and racial equity we say that all the time we want people to really embody that and feel that so I think for a lot of goals it's it's sort of like what do you what does the council want to accomplish this year so I think it's fair but then you also are using your goals to judge the performance of the town manager so it's sort of a too too prong thing and I think that that's where we sometimes struggle a little bit I think the idea that what Chatham does I'll talk with Jill and see if it works for her there you know they usually have a pretty good process so I think I think one thing is instructive is find out how other people have done this you know in the other councils have done it you know so yeah I don't think there's there's we have the most laborious process that I know of any any but any other manager I mean you know I will I look forward to reading the 212 pages at Thanksgiving choices are in laws or not um yeah so thank you bam I would love to have gel focus also on the timing of the whole thing the the evaluations are are noted as f y 2023 when in fact it is calendar year 23 that that the work is happening and yet the budgets aren't established until halfway through the calendar year for a fiscal year coming next and much of the funding doesn't even show up until June or actually for July 1 for many of the items that the town is supposed to accomplish so I think if we're really trying to be active and and proactive with putting our priorities forward is this the right time of year to do it or should it come prior to July 1 where July 1 to June 30 is the action year which doesn't if which is not in sync with our terms of office Anika yes so I touched on this in my evaluation and so one of the biggest challenges I found except in addition to the time was also that there are certain goals where we've asked for change um specifically the social justice um and equity racism we've asked for goals that are or housing whichever that are decades and centuries in the making and we've said do something within a year but we haven't been specific with that something um the something is not measurable so so I don't think that does other the council the manager of service in this regard because many things are up for interpretation and I do I think flexibility and leaving room for creativity is great but if we can't say you know for instance I'll just take health care which is probably we're immersed in regards to like people of color also specifically um black women and low income people is probably where we would have the highest percent of inequity and um you know for instance if there were something like that we want to have at least something implemented that maybe there is a database or something for you know people to either report on or something that works for EMTs or something at least that is specific that we're saying like here's a systemic issue um here is something measurable that we would like to see implemented so at least like in the period you can see you know what what has been done um you know some of it it was just like okay this is 500 years old and so what specifically what specific changes have we asked to see um so I think that you know that would be helpful I know that that really you know stumped me where it was like how how do we how do I give an evaluation that holds myself not in the town manager myself as well accountable to um what that is you know where where what did we do throughout the year to check on these things did we even have an opportunity did we even understand what we were asking to do was it clear so um I definitely agree with the points that um Anna has brought up and that you know Paul had said that he would look into so there's just more meat um and to have these goals been achieved or not you know Mandy um so as a general practice I'm not a big fan of specific checklists for a CEO um because number one I think that micromanage is a job to a point where the CEO the manager can't perform to their best because they have to fulfill a checklist even if they don't believe that's the best way to accomplish an objective or a goal um so I would rather have slightly more generic but when I say slightly more generic I want them somewhat measurable as Anika was talking about um and and where I'm going to give an example is our current the the goal in housing or the goals in housing affordability that that we just evaluated the manager on included things like explore strategies to stabilize year-round population for example that's not really measurable what does explore strategies mean versus one of the proposed rewrites is proposed measures to stabilize it doesn't say to the manager what measure or how what that needs to be whether it's a bylaw whether it's a policy whether it's something else but it says we want to see a proposal it doesn't have to be big it could be small but give us something and then you've got a measurement capability there which explore doesn't you know whereas if we were to then say you know I'll get one of the other ones in housing and housing is just the easy one for me to give examples um you know one was about diversifying the housing stock it said increase the diversity of housing stock available to all residents um the one of the changes in one of the two documents we have is proposed measures to increase the diversity that's somewhat generic but if we went specific in a checklist we would sit here all day arguing over those specifics increasing the diversity are you going to propose a measure for duplexes triplexes townhomes apartments what what what do we mean you know whereas if we just say this is our strategy in general propose something we give I think the leeway to the manager to figure out the best strategy he believes that to meet that whether it be in climate action or this carp for example we listed seven or nine different specific carp ones