 Okay, we're recording. Thank you. Good evening. It is May 15th, 2023. This is a public hearing on the finance and the FY24 budget. It is called as a special meeting of the Town Council and the Finance Committee. At this point, we have a quorum for the Finance Committee, but not for the Town Council. This is the first of three meetings tonight. All will use the same Zoom link. The governor recently signed an extension of the Act that suspends certain provisions of the open meeting law. This allows us to continue holding meetings remotely without a quorum of the council physically present in the meeting location while providing the public with adequate alternative access to the meeting. Therefore, this meeting is accessible in real time via Zoom, by phone, and as a live broadcasting, on Amherst Media, Channel 9, is that the new channel? Thank you. Or live streamed on amherstmedia.org. I'm going to skip calling the council to order since we don't have a quorum, and I'm going to ask Andy Steinberg to please call the Finance Committee meeting to order. Is there seven councillors? Okay. All right. Thank you. Given that we have a quorum of the council present, I'm calling the May 15th, 2023 budget hearing to order at 531. I'm going to do a roll call. Please let me know that you're here, and you can hear us, and we can hear you. Shalini Balmillan. Present. Patty Angelis. Present. Anne Devlin-Goth here. Present. Lynn Griezmer is present. Mandy Jo Hanneke not yet. Anika Lopes. Yes, Anika Lopes. Okay. Michelle Miller is going to be a little late. Dorothy Pam. I'm here. Thank you. Pam Rooney. Here. Kathy Shane is not here at this point. Andy Steinberg. Present. Jennifer Tobb is walking in the room. Present. Alicia Walker. Can you hear us? Alicia, can you hear us? Yes, I can. Can you all hear me? Thank you. Yes, we can. Thank you. Awesome. So, we'll keep an eye out for others. Andy, please call the Finance Committee to order, and then I have a few more words, and then I'm going to ask Andy as Chair of the Finance Committee to conduct the hearing. Okay, so I call the Finance Committee to order, and we do have, I believe, a quorum present. I note that there are four Councilor Members of the Finance Committee who are present, and have already signified that they can participate fully. That's Anna Devlin-Gouth here, Lynn Griezmer, myself, and Alicia Walker. We also have resident members of the committee, and I'll ask Brini Kubiak. Present. And Bob Hegner. Present. And I don't think, oh, Matt Holloway. That's here. Yes, Matt. Present. So, with that, we have seven of eight members of the committee who are present, so I'll turn it back to Lynn for a moment, and then we'll get back to the hearing. Just to remind people, there's no chat room for this meeting. If you have technical issues, please let Athena and me know to make a comment or ask a question, use the raised hand function. If we have technical difficulties, we'll decide how to address those at the time and make a note in the minutes. So, with that, Andy, please go ahead. Okay, so I'm going to call the hearing to order and make a brief introduction myself, and then ask Sean Mangano to make a presentation about the budget. Charter section 5.5A, which I'm not going to actually read from, requires that the council refer the budget when it receives the budget from the town manager to the finance committee, which has 30 days from the date of referral to study the budget and then make a recommendation to the council regarding action, and then the council has until the end of June. The 30 days is up on June 1st. The committee has been in a series of meetings where it is receiving testimony from staff and public comment and considering each section of the budget in a sequence that's been previously noticed. The section that I referred to also requires that during that period, the finance committee conduct a public hearing to receive public comment and input regarding the budget, and that's the purpose of this public hearing, and it is an important part of the finance committee process before it makes its recommendation. The finance committee will be completing its work on reviewing sections of the budget with two departments that will be meeting with us on May 23rd, and at the May 23rd meeting will begin its discussion about what its recommendation is going to be and the issues that it may choose to present. So that is the context of today's hearing. The budget for those of you who have not seen it and would like to see a copy is accessible on the town website. When you go into the town website, just go under government and then in the section on the right where it says transparency, you'll see a tab for budget and you can click budget. So with that introduction, I thought it would be helpful to have a brief presentation about the budget, and I believe that our finance director, Sean Mangano, is going to make that presentation. So Sean. Thanks, Andy. Can you all see the power point on the screen? We can. Yes. Thank you. So just building off of what Andy said, I believe Tuesday night, we have DPW, which will be coming to finance committee, and that will focus on all the divisions within the operating budget, but will also include enterprise funds. And then Friday we get back to general government, which are sort of town council, town manager, all the sort of town hall departments except for a few. So that's what's coming up this week. So this is a condensed version of the presentation that was already given to the council on May 1st. So the topic is the FY24 budget. Again, thank you to all staff partners and community members that have supported the town through volunteer efforts and other ways. Everything we do cannot be possible without all of you. I won't go over Paul's quote again, but here it is, if anybody wants to see it. So quick summary, the FY24 proposed budget is $93,457,917. This is a 3.4% increase over the FY23 budget or the recap. And the reason we say that is because we did a supplemental budget in the fall. And so these numbers you see for FY23 include that supplemental budget that we added an extra half percent to operating budgets. So it's 3.4% on the higher operating budget that we had for FY23. Some highlights from this budget, it includes a 3% increase for operating budgets for the town, schools, and library. This is a little bit higher than our norm of two and a half percent. Going into the year, we prioritize operating budgets and we believe going to 3% does that anticipate that we'll continue in the future. The number for the schools is $84,000 lower than what the school committee voted. They voted a different number. But what's being proposed is the 3% increase that you saw on the prior slide, this one here. And we'll talk about in a few slides some of the ways we're proposing for working with the schools in the future. This proposal boosts capital spending up to 10.5% of the tax levy. That's the highest percentage I believe we've ever hit in part because we have these projects coming up in part because the cost of everything has gotten more expensive as well. The proposal maintains discipline and meeting our long-term obligations, our pension obligation. We've been doing a good job on for a while. And this continues to fund our OPEB liability, which is our other large obligation that we have to set aside funding for. And this budget continues out. A few highlights. So in infrastructure, $2.5 million allocation for roads and sidewalks, including Chapter 90 funds, the largest allocation in the town's history, $40,000 added for tree planting based on feedback we received from the tree and grounds division related to some trees that will potentially need removal in the future and needing funds to replace them. And then $230,000 editor field maintenance equipment to better maintain our natural grass fields throughout town and at the high school and middle school. In climate action, $775,000 to purchase or lease two new electric school buses, including charging infrastructure, and we anticipate $200,000 coming back from the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act grant that the town received. $225,000 to purchase three hybrid cruisers, $200,000 for energy efficiency and sustainability improvements. And really, these funds are to implement different components of the climate action plan. That's what they've been used for in the past. And $22,000 to begin establishing a operating budget for sustainability to cover things like the valley bike assessment, memberships and professional development. In community health and safety, this proposal maintains funding for a 10-person Crest Department and it adds $20,000 to the Crest Department budget to continue developing their operating budget as their operations come online. This will cover overtime, which has become a need and communication expenses related to the radios. $725,000 borrowing authorization to replace a fire department pumper truck, $450,000 for a new fire department ambulance. I'll note this one is not actually a funding request. This is, we believe this will come from an alternative funding source that's not related to tax revenue. But it is part of the plan because if we didn't have that other funding, it would have been a capital request this year. So we did include it in the plan. $8,000 to establish a secondly dispatch position at the, it's in the police department, but it's in the communication center. And $25,000 for the public health department, which includes administrative support and funding for the town's mosquito control district assessment, something the town voted a year or two ago. And we get an annual assessment that we needed to set aside funding for. In racial equity and social justice, the proposal maintains funding for a two-person diversity equity and inclusion department. And we've added $6,000 to support training and community engagement, again, continuing to develop the operating budgets for a new department. And $5,000 to pilot a childcare reimbursement program for elected officials. Again, something we offered during town meeting and there was a Desire Express that we should look at this again. And so these funds would allow us to start that up if approved. And then housing affordability. This is something that has previously been approved, but it's notable that $1.8 million from community preservation was allocated for community housing. And within that allocation, there were two projects in particular that will produce dozens of new affordable units when those projects are complete. Moving to enterprise funds. Generally, across all of our enterprise funds, we're seeing higher costs driven largely by wages and benefits and other inflation-related items like utilities and fuel. And then in a couple of the enterprise funds, we're seeing infrastructure investments triggering higher capital costs or debt costs. There is a debt authorization in our sewer fund for $400,000 to help replace pump station number four, a piece of infrastructure in our sewer system. And $70,000 capital requests and solid ways to replace the transfer station scale. And this is notable because we don't typically have lots of capital in our solid waste enterprise fund. I think the last one we had was a roll-off truck that was partially grant funded. And so there's not a lot of flexibility in that fund. So this is partially funded through retained earnings that we'll talk about tomorrow night at finance committee. And then last slide, looking forward. So there's a couple items in particular we're looking to secure annual non-tax funding, but they're for pretty important initiatives. I already mentioned the ambulance. Another one is for the four firefighter EMTs that we hired that are currently being funded through the American Rescue Plan Act grant. One of our highest priorities getting these positions funded within the operating budget. And we're working towards securing some additional annual resources that will allow us to do that. And similarly, looking to secure about $100,000 in annual non-tax funding to be dedicated to safe and healthy housing and activities related to promoting that. We will be coming back to you in the near future to review a plan for allocating the Romanian ARPA funds. And back to the schools, we've proposed a working group to focus on the long-term financial sustainability of the schools. This group would be composed mainly of staff both on the town side and the school side that will look at things like funding levels, cost saving measures, use of facilities to name a few items with a goal of having recommendations back to the decision makers by the end of the year. And then lastly, there's an economic development task force being put together in partnership with our institutional partners. We've had a good run of economic growth in the past few years and we need to make sure that that continues to be able to do the things that the town has expressed it wants to do. And so this group will help look for new and creative ways to promote economic development. And I will stop there and happy to take any questions. Thank you. I just need to make a note that Michelle Miller, can you hear us? I can. Thank you. Okay. And Shalini, you were on and then had to jump off and now you're back on. So can you hear us? Yes, I can. Thank you. Okay. So with that, I think that we can proceed with the hearing. I guess I should note one other thing. There are two things that that happened today that are in the sequence. The charter in a separate section requires that the council hold a public forum regarding the capital improvement program, which is where capital expenditures decisions are made upon recommendation of the town manager. And that public forum immediately follows this public hearing. So while we as a finance committee consider both the capital improvement program and the operating budget as a whole, this is the prime opportunity to provide input to the finance committee before it makes its recommendation to the council. And it is also the only time that you'll have an opportunity though you can during public commented meetings speak about the budget also. But this is an opportunity in the public to speak as on the operating budget. So with that, I think I'm going to just turn directly to public unless Dorothy is if you're asking a process question. Please do so. But we're going to turn to the public. So Well, I can I can be very quick. The putting money in for a babysitting fund is very, very important. But once again, we did not put in for an increase in the salary or the honorarium really for town council members. And I'm very concerned because in order to recruit a diverse and inclusive group of people, we have to change that right now, the public sees the unending hours of meetings that town council members have to be in. And it's never going to be a good time to raise it. It was brought up in the first session. We were told we're too late. I believe now we have until July. But obviously that would be working towards the next budget year. Somehow this has to be done. And we have to, you know, so I'd like to work with somebody to find out when we how we do it and when we get it in. So at least it would be listened to because we have an election coming up. Obviously this will not obviously it is possible that we could raise the salary in this session that would apply for the new people who are elected in the next election. Is that correct that there's still a chance that we could do that? Or if the budget has come and we've gone out done to the seems like 500 hearings on the budget? Are we told? No, you've got to wait next year. This is a question I'm asking really on behalf of the public, really. Dorothy, the request, the promotion that was made was referred to the finance committee. It is still in the finance committee and the discussion at the finance committee has been delayed with the hopes that the teacher contracts and the other outstanding town contracts are settled, but it will be discussed in time for it to be effective should it pass and come back to the council. It'll be back to the council before July 1st. And the reason it's not in the budget is because first of all, it only has to be a half a year's worth of salaries because this council would not get the salary increase. It would be effective in January, on January 2nd of 2024. In discussion with the town manager, it's agreed that we would address that down the road. We would address that in the fall once the obligated free cash is there. And at that point, we may have to add money into the budget. Okay, but the vote has to be taken before July. Is that correct? That is correct. Okay. Thank you, Lynn. I'm very pleased to see that this is in fact moving forward. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. So, Thad, let me turn to the public because this is public hearing and I want to offer the public an opportunity to comment. As I said at the next session, you can also talk about the capital budget. So at this point, I'd appreciate it if all members of the public who would like to speak, there's by the way no one in the room from the public. So the public is people who are on the Zoom call. And the person who's calling from a telephone, you can ask for recognition by raising your hand by using star nine on your telephone and that will raise your hand. And so if you're interested in speaking to the committee and council regarding the budget, please raise your hand. And I will ask that Allegra be brought in for the meeting. Would you like to do three minutes, Andy? Yes. When I asked that you try and limit the three minutes and to assist you, there is a clock on the screen. So, Allegra, please introduce yourself and where you live and please offer the comments that you wish, testimony you wish to provide regarding the budget. Hi. Can you hear me? We can. Yes. Okay. My name is Allegra Clark. I'm a resident of district two. I am calling in tonight for two reasons. One, I was hoping that the council could take some action around incorporating the Amherst school committee budget that was recommended, which included an additional $84,000 that could save some positions in the elementary schools as they are facing significant cuts. My other request is that we fund Crescent Cox. I know that there has been some discussion as to whether or not we're going to broaden the scope of Crescent services to overnight services. And while I know that the next step is that they're going to take on 911 calls, it seems that based on the call volume that they've been working with just on their own the first month of September, they had over 1,700 encounters. So, it does seem like this is a useful public service. And again, my hope is that as we see how they continue to grow and shine, that we will be able to reallocate funding from the police department to the Crescent department. And we are requesting that that be done to the tune of 47% of the personnel budget of the Amherst police department. Again, fund Crescent Cox. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Allegra, and I appreciate your comments. And as said, Zoe, I have to be brought in. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. So, my name is Zoe Crabtree and I live in District 5. Today, as I have for the last several years, I'm asking that you move money out of the Amherst police department budget so that our town can more fully invest in alternatives to policing. As you just heard Allegra talk about, Crescent is now operational and it's been welcome to the town happily and great success from everything I've heard. Even though they haven't yet started receiving 911 calls via dispatch, they've averaged more than 900 support interactions per month since launching in September. That's more than 70% of the total calls that the APD handles each month according to the budget document. And Crescent has provided so much support despite not yet being operational 24-7 and only with 10 staff. In contrast, the APD has 48 staff, nearly 30 of whom are officers moving around out on the street. However, as I'm sure you're aware from looking at the budget, despite offering nearly as much support each month as the APD, the proposed budget for Crescent FY24 is only 12% the size of the APD's budget and only 23% of what the CSWG originally recommended when devising Crescent. Nonetheless, the town is proposing to spend money on electric police cars. I'm in full support of the move to create an operating budget to operationalize the town's climate action plan, but greenwashing the police is not the solution. The CSWG proposed a broad overarching plan for overhauling public safety in Amherst in light of racial justice concerns. I'm very happy to see that the town has begun to invest in one small part of that plan, Crescent, as well as the DEI office. The rest of the plan has been largely ignored, but the plan wasn't meant to be enacted in bits and pieces. The CSWG also recommended cutting the size of the APD in half over five years. Two years have passed since that recommendation was made and there has been no reduction in the size or budget of the APD and you haven't even frozen hiring. The CSWG also recommended investing in community building with a BIPOC Cultural Center and Youth Empowerment Center, a process of anti-racist visioning and healing, and a residents oversight board. I've heard that there are some plans for that in the works, but nothing particularly has materialized on that front yet. I urge the council and the town manager to embrace the CSWG's full slate of recommendations, which have also been endorsed by the CSSJC. I ask that you please follow through on the promises that you all made in 2020 to move Amherst towards anti-racist action and to cut the APD's budget in half. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Zoe. There are other members of the public who wished off her testimony. At this point, please raise your hand and again, first on the telephone and do so by using star nine on the telephone. Could you bring Lauren Mills into the meeting, please? Lauren? Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Tell us where you're from and then please bake here. Yes, Lauren Mills, District 5 of Amherst. I would just quickly like to say that I would like to see in the capital budget monies for planning and implementation for youth empowerment programs and centers through ARPA funds and not necessarily decreasing funding for APD, but using ARPA funds and town departments. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else seeing no other hands raised? I'll give it a moment longer and if not, then I'll ask them if there's a member of the Finance Committee who wishes to make a motion to close the hearing. Before we do that, I want to note that Mandy Jo Hanicky has joined us. Mandy Jo, can you hear us? Yes. Thank you. So still having seen no other hands as a member of the Finance Committee who wishes to make that motion? I move that we close the hearing. Is there a second? Second. So the motion that's made in seconded to close the hearing. Let me just go ahead and take a vote on the motion to close the hearing. Anna? Aye. Lynn? Aye. Bob? Support. Matt? Support. Bernie? Support. I think that Kathy is still absent from the meeting and I'll vote yes and Alisha. Yes. So the motion to close the hearing carries with four voting members voting yes, one member absent from the council members and the three resident members are in support of closing the hearing and I therefore am doing so and turning the meeting back over to the council president. Athena, I just want to make sure that I do not need a council vote to close the hearing. Correct. Thank you. Andy, please adjourn Finance Committee with a reminder that in fact we're going right on to the next public forum on the Capital Improvement Plan and we will be using the same link and it is also joint with the Finance Committee. So you're adjourning both meetings and convening them. Okay, I adjourn the Finance Committee. Okay and the town council is adjourned. So it is still May 15th and this is now the public forum on the Capital Improvement Program. It is called as a special meeting of the town council and finance committee. It is the second of three meetings tonight all using the same zoom link. We've already gone through the fact that we are allowed to meet this way based on the extension of the open meeting law and we have added all of the counselors who are present at this point and made sure that they can hear and be heard. And Andy, would you please call, oh no, I want to say, given that we have a quorum of the council president, I am calling the May 15th 2023 public forum on the Capital Improvement Program to order at 6.02. Andy, would you please call the Finance Committee meeting to order? Yes, I will note that the quorum of the council of the finance council finance committee is present with four council members and three resident members and we have previously confirmed that they can hear and be heard. So therefore I call the finance committee meeting to order for the purpose of the forum on the Capital Plan. Okay. So this is a public forum per charter section 5.7d and per charter section 1.7. A public forum shall meet a meeting during which more than one half of the meeting time on the agenda is devoted to public comment. With that, I'm going to ask Sean to make a brief presentation and then we will move on to audience comments. Okay, to begin? We can. Okay. So just a couple of slides. The FY24 Capital Improvement Program again increases allocation of the tax levy up to 10.5% for capital. It incorporates a plan for the four building projects and how to address them. There's funding set aside to address deferred maintenance of existing infrastructure. It includes a historic investment in roads and sidewalks and we continue to evaluate all projects through a lens of their impact on climate change and we're seeing a growing number of our projects with direct impacts on climate change in a positive way. The pie chart on your right just shows the allocation of capital funds for FY24 across different departments. You can see by far the largest piece is the public works highway again because of the roads. Fire is a little bit bigger than normal because of the financing of a pumper truck and you can see the other departments here. A few highlights from the Capital Plan, many of which you just heard. Two and a half million for roads and sidewalks including Chapter 90 funds, largest single year investment in the town's history. We added $40,000 for tree planting, removal and care, $230,000 for field maintenance equipment, $775,000 to purchase and lease two new electric school buses including charging infrastructure, $200,000 of which we expect to come back in the form of a grant, $225,000 to purchase three hybrid cruisers, $200,000 for energy efficiency and sustainability improvements to help implement components of the climate action plan, $725,000 borrowing authorization to replace a fire department pumper truck and again the $400,000, $450,000 or so for a new department fire department ambulance which we anticipate coming from non-tax sources but would be to replace an ambulance this coming cycle. And those are the highlights of the Capital Improvement Program and I'll stop there and take any questions that may come up. I'm going to I just want to note that there are four people in the audience on Zoom. There is no one in the room. If you would like to make a comment, it's 6.05, if you would like to make a comment please raise your hand. This is the public forum on the Capital Improvement Plan. So if you would like to make a public comment please raise your hand. There's one person who was on the phone to make a comment you use star nine. You'd like to make a public comment please raise your hand. While we're while we are waiting just let me again thank the Joint Capital Planning Committee for their work in making recommendations to the town manager regarding capital. Those are recommendations and to the town manager and the town manager can choose to follow them or do variations on them. That group meets includes people from the school committee, people from the Jones Library and people from the town council and they meet usually once a week for the month of February and March. We're open for public comment we will remain open for public comment until 6.10. Is there anyone who would like to make public comment please raise your hand. Last call for public comment. This is in regard to the Capital Improvement Plan. Before I ask Andy to adjourn I want to thank the members of the finance committee particularly our non-voting residents for being with us tonight and for all their hard work particularly during budget season. I also want to note that the council's meeting is scheduled for 6.30 we cannot begin the meeting until then since it's a posted meeting at that time and so the council will go into recess until 6.30 and begin promptly again with our town council meeting which is a regular town council meeting at that time. Andy would you please go ahead and adjourn the finance committee. I adjourn the finance committee and we will have a meeting tomorrow in the late afternoon regarding the Department of Public Works and the enterprise fund. If anybody is interested please join us so thank you. We will continue on the same Zoom link but we will be reconvening at 6.30 the town council is adjourned please turn off your mics and your photo and turn them back on when you come back in. Thank you the council is adjourned. For counselors in the room and on Zoom please start assembling back to your seats. Dina would you please take the thing down so that I can see if people are back. As you return please turn your video back on so I know that you're back. We won't begin the meeting until 6.30 but I wanted to make sure people had plenty of notice. We had a 20 minute break but that's okay. As you return please turn your video on so that I know that you are back. Michelle, Anika and Alicia can you let me know that you're back. Thank you. Thank you. Hi Alicia. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Are we going to start recording? We are still recording. We are still recording. Okay good evening. It is still May 15th and this is now the regular town council meeting. It's the third meeting of tonight and it is on the same Zoom link. I mentioned earlier that we can meet like this because the open meeting law was extended and we make accommodations for the public to attend because this meeting is accessible in real time by Zoom, by phone, by phone as a live broadcast on Amherst Media channel 9 and by live streaming through Amherst Media. Given that we have a quorum in the council present I'm calling the regular town council meeting to order at 6.31 because we did have a break I think it's best if we go ahead and check and make sure you're all here. You can hear us and we can hear you. Shalini Balmille. Still present. Patty Angelis. Present. Anna Devon Present. Lynn Griesmer is present. Mandy Johanicki. Present. Anika Lopes. Present. Anika. She said. Present. Thank you. Just didn't hear you. Michelle Miller. Present. Dorothy Pam. Here. Pam Rooney. Here. Kathy Shane is absent. Andy Steinberg. Present. Jennifer Taub. Present. Alicia Walker. Here. Thank you. Again, there's no chat room. Please let us know if you have technical difficulties. We're going to put the announcements up on the screen and I just want to note a couple of special meetings that are coming up. We will not meet as a council until June 5th but the Community Resources Committee is meeting with the Amherst Municipal Affordable Housing Trust on May 18th at 7 and then they have two other meetings. The various finance committee meetings are all listed here and GOL will be meeting twice in TSO prior to our next meeting. I also want to mention a couple of community events. First of all, there is a Memorial Day Parade and celebration that is on Monday, May 29th at 9.30 starting up right near here near the North Common. The Pride Month flag raising is on June 2nd at 4 o'clock p.m. Race Amity Day is June 11th. There are events starting at Mill River at 10 o'clock a.m. through most of the day and we will have a proclamation reading but because of the event at Mill River, we're trying to determine the final time for that proclamation reading and the location. And then please mark your calendars for Juneteenth celebrations over the long weekend. I also want to note that the school committee will meet tomorrow night at 5.30 in the Amherst Regional High School Library. We're going to move directly to our hearings. Oh, we can't. They're noticed for 6.40 and 6.45. Thank you. We're going to move to our consent agenda. Can you put the consent agenda on the screen please? The following items were selected because they were considered to be routine and it was reasonable to expect they would pass without controversy. To remove an item from the consent agenda for discussion later in the meeting, ask that it be removed after I read the list for the first time. The request to remove an item does not require a second. So the motion is as follows to move the following items and the printed motions there under and approve those items as a single unit. 6A, waiver of town council rules of procedure, rule 8.6 for the Memorial Day proclamation. We did actually look at this in GOL but we never voted, so we have to do the waiver. 6A is the adoption of the Memorial Memorial Day proclamation. 6B, adoption of the proclamation recognizing June as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, plus, LGBTQ pride month. 6C, adoption of race, amity day proclamation 2023. 8D, approval of the surveillance use policy, police department, in cruiser, video and audio. 9A, one approval of town manager appointments to the Amherst Housing Authority Board of Commissioners. 11A and B approval of the following meeting minutes, May 1, 2023, regular meeting minutes, May 10, 2023, special meeting minutes. Are there any items that anybody would like removed? Michelle? I'd like to remove 6B, adoption of the proclamation recognizing June as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, pride month. Okay, we will take that up possibly momentarily, since we're still trying to get to the point where we have our meeting. Are there any others at this time? Seeing none, we'll do a roll call vote. We need a second, please. I'm sorry, a second. I need a second. Pat D'Angeles was a second. And we're going to a roll call vote. Just note that 6B, the adoption of the proclamation recognizing LGBTQ plus pride month has been removed from the consent agenda will be taken up in just a moment. So I'll begin with Pat D'Angeles. I. Anna Devlin-Goughier. I. Lynn Grismersen. I'm Andy Johanneke. I. Anika Lopes. I. Michelle Miller. I. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Bruny. Yes. Kathy Shane is absent. Andy Steinberg. Hi. Jennifer Taub. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. Shalini Balmill. Yes. Thank you. I am actually going to ask, as we do as our custom for the Memorial Day proclamation. Pam Bruny, would you please read the last paragraph? Certainly. Now, therefore, we, the Amherst Town Council, hereby proclaim May 29, 2023 to be Memorial Day and urge all residents of Amherst to recognize the sacrifice of past residents and observe this day in remembrance of them. Thank you. And I'm going to skip LGBTQ for a moment and go to Jennifer Taub and ask her to read the race Amity Day proclamation, the last paragraphs reminding us that we may be changing the date, I mean, the time and location. Thank you, Jennifer. Yes. Thank you. Now, therefore, the Town of Amherst hereby proclaims Sunday, June 11, 2023 to be Race Amity Day, a celebration of the oneness of the human family and ask the community to join in a celebration at Town Hall Steps and on the Commons at 3 p.m. on June 11, 2023. Thank you. Michelle, you asked that the proclamation regarding LGBTQ plus be removed, would you like to speak to your request? Sure. First, I just want to apologize to the counselor sponsors on this. I did not have an opportunity to reach out to let you know that I plan to remove it. And the reason that I'm removing it is in light of recent reporting regarding the treatment of trans kids in our schools. I was hoping that we could either, you know, to avoid wordsmithing tonight, maybe send it back to GOL. And maybe it's a multi part motion to approve it tonight with some additional language that would affirm our support for our youth. And so that's the reasoning that I'm removing it. And I'd point out that we do not have a council meeting between now and the time that this is to be read. So given that and that it is almost 640, we're going to return to that agenda item. In the meantime, perhaps you could craft the statement that you would like added and send it to the town clerk. Sure. And I, if that's not acceptable to the council sponsors, I have a suggestion for how we might approve it going back to GOL, but approve it here, if that's possible in terms of our process. But it sounds like we need to move on and come back to it. It needs to be done as a motion. Sure. Yeah, I have, I have some idea on motions for that. Pat, you have your hand up. Thank you. Please speak into the mic. One of the things that I want to say is that we have reached out to Saga and I never remember what the initials of our mandate can do that, which is support group at the high school. We're reaching out to Sunrise Amherst and the other organization. Generation ratify. And so I'm, I'm really not sure. I want to hear what it is that you want to add because we're even hoping some of the kids will be speaking. And these are kids who are both gay, straight, trans, you know, and things like that. So I need to hear more. I'm pretty uncomfortable with this, not the support of the kids in the high school. So that's why I want to hear what you have to say. Mandy, Joe, you have your hand up. I was going to mention that there is no council meeting before the flag raising, which has already been mentioned. I don't want to take up much time while we have our representatives from ever source here. So I think I'll hold my comments until we come back to this and have finished with the ever source hearings. I'm going to pause this discussion and we will come back to it after we do the hearings, which have been scheduled for a time specific. Okay, so we are going to start with the first of two hearings, both involving ever source. And I might mention that we now have seven people in our audience. If you would like to make public comment regarding this, please make sure you have signed in with Athena, who is the woman over here with her hand raised. When we get to public comment, I'll also be asking the audience who is on Zoom to raise their hands as well. So hearings are held so that the public has an opportunity to speak to issues in this case regarding the public way. We're going to start out with a brief presentation about the first of the two petitions by ever source. Then we will make sure the counselors have any questions. Then we will open up for public comments and questions. And go back to counselors based on that the council can then decide to close the hearing or not. And if we are going to vote tonight, it would be later on in the agenda, although very soon after this. So with that in mind, the first hearing is regarding ever sources petition to install new underground electric duck bank from South Pleasant Street to College Street. Please come forward, state your name, where you live, who you're representing. Thank you. Please take the consent agenda down. Thank you. Good evening, Madam President and through you to the members of the council, my name is Mike. And the last name is Kane. I'm from 11 Lynn and drive in Holyoke. Also out of the Hadley area work center of 55 Russell Street. I'm joined here with a group from ever source, our project team that has been working on this project. We have Michael Fraga, I'll have him introduce and operations manager Nick Kregel, our senior supervisor of operations. Dylan Swabby, senior designer and Mitch Hubbard from our engineering department. And again, I want to thank you for hosting this public hearing for us. It's a very important project that we have going on here in Amherst, as you know, the electrification of Massachusetts requires a lot of work by by the utilities. You've seen a lot of work here in Amherst, where we've worked on our transmission lines, working on the substation. And now this is more towards our distribution. So again, thank you for hosting us. I have Mike Fraga here to talk a little bit more about the project. Good evening, Michael Fraga, FRAGA, 1068 East Street, Ludlow, Massachusetts. I'm the operations manager in Hadley, 55 Russell Street. Please speak into the mic. Sorry about that. Thank you. So I'm the operations manager here in Hadley for Eversource for this district. And I'm here to go over the project. We are petitioning the town to install underground manhole induct from our substation on College Street to South Pleasant Street so we can tie into the existing manhole system. This is going to coincide with our substation project that's currently getting getting kicked off and in the planning stages to I believe, but what it's going to allow us to do is to upgrade the infrastructure through College Street. We've worked very closely with Guilford finding locations that are suitable to the town for our project here. We've also with Guilford's help, we're able to add the scope of bearing the electrical distribution lines from Dickinson Street through the Common, which I think is going to be a benefit to the town. We have up on the screen there, but from the railroad bridge right up to South Pleasant now, the electrical distribution system will be underground, including all the customers fed off of there. So we've added that to the scope for Guilford's request. And this is really a good project, I think, for the town as well as us. It allows us to get our our feeders out of from the substation to where they're needed. It's going to allow us to upgrade Amherst College in the future. There's long-term plans for that, as well as any low growth that's going to take place in the downtown section. Any upgrades? We have a lot of customer requests for new buildings, low growth for electrifying heat pumps and trying to get away from fossil fuels. So this will give us the infrastructure, almost unlimited infrastructure really for downtown growth in Amherst. So we think it's a it's a good project and we're requesting the town's approval for at least the underground portion of that this evening because of the location of the construction, our construction window is pretty much reduced to when Amherst is going to be out of college. So we're looking to get started at, we have bids awarded, we anticipated since we've been working so closely with Guilford that we would have a favorable outcome here tonight. That's all. Okay. I'm going to turn it over to Nick and Dylan. They're the project designers and construction supervisors, so they will answer the board's questions. Okay. Council, excuse me. With that, I'm going to ask the two of you to go back to your seats. We want to make sure that the public has equal access. And while you're doing that, I'm asking counselors if you have questions at this time. Okay. Mandy Jo, please go ahead. Does Paul want to go first? I'm sorry, Paul. Thank you. I was just going to remind the council that we have Superintendent of Public Works, Gilbert Maureen, who may be able to give you some additional context, if that would be helpful to the council. Please. Thank you. I'm going to go ahead. Guilford, please. Additional information? Guilford is our superintendent of the Department of Public Works. Good evening. Everett Swartz told you a great deal about the project. I mean, I would just like to add this is the first of many we're going to get to help electrify and improve the services downtown. So the whole purpose of this is to support the new buildings going downtown, going in downtown. I'm sorry, I have a bit of an allergy thing going today. But so that's the main purpose of this. And then the side benefit is that we do get to now get to address the College Street entrance to the town. We'll be able to work with Everett Swartz and then we'll have to work with Verizon and Comcast to completely remove the light poles. And we'll also have to work with Amherst College for that as well. But it's a great project. This is like a once in a lifetime project to actually look at a street when we're done with it, have all the people who use the street, Everett Swartz, Verizon, the town, Comcast, Amherst College come together and rebuild the street. So this is going to be a project which goes on another couple of years for us to get our part of the town's part of this down with the street. So I'm really kind of excited if they can't tell. And Everett Swartz has been a great partner working on this. Paul, anything else? Okay. Mandy Johanicki, one of our at-large counselors. Please go ahead. Thank you. One's kind of a practical question. And then the others are more of the theoretical variety. I'll do the practical one first, which is the petition says the manhole cover where the manholes are six feet by 14 feet by seven feet and eight feet by 14 feet by seven feet. And you never talked about the covers. So I'm kind of like, oh my gosh, are the covers that insanely large or are the covers that are actually at street level that we're going to see much smaller? Is that just the size of the underground hole that you're talking about? And the cover will be the typical manhole cover size. That's the practical one that I figure I know the answer, but I thought I'd ask it. The other ones are, I just want to thank you. This sounds fantastic to start moving lines underground. And you answered one of my questions, which is this will allow at least initially the lines, the electrical lines between South Pleasant and Dickinson on College Street to be moved underground. So my question with that one is what about the other lines that are on all those poles? Guilford kind of mentioned it, but like, is this all of them or is this just the electrical one? So will the poles have to remain once this is done? Because not all the lines are going to be going off of it. And that might actually require a Guilford answer to. And then beyond College Street, are roads off of College Street going to be able to be going underground due to this project or not? Is the next question. Why don't we have you, whoever you're going to send forward? We'll do some introductions. So Nick Kriegel, 181 Mill Valley Road, Belcher Town. I'm the senior supervisor out of the Hadley Work Center. And this is Dylan. I'll let him do the introduction. I, Dylan Swabby, SAW-ABI 27 Chapin Circle in Ludlow. And I'm out of the Springfield Work Center 300 Cadwell Drive. And like Nick mentioned, I'm a senior engineer designer here. Sure. To start off, so the manual covers their 36 inch round cover. So they're not going to compass the entire street. So good reassurance. Thank you. As far as the other streets, this will allow for the possibility to grow into the side treats with underground, but it won't encompass them. So we're the intent with this project is to tie into the existing overhead with the manual system to the existing overhead systems on the side streets. And the other question. The non electrical wires between on College Street between South Pleasant and Dickinson. So as Dylan mentioned, you know, working with him to design this project, they've kind of strategically placed manholes at every intersecting street. So as load growth is on those streets, we can build off that manhole system and, you know, take kind of each street at a time when load growth presents itself. As far as the process of, you know, getting those lines underground, it's going to be very similar to the project we worked with Guilford on Spring Street right around the corner a couple of years ago. Typically, in that case, I believe the town put it out in the civil infrastructure. In this one, every source is putting in the civil infrastructure. So it buys, you know, quite a bit there. But yeah, you are correct that our primary wires, the wires top of the pole, our secondary wires, the wires down just below them, and any kind of transformation equipment on the poles, that would be going to underground pad mount type. But at that point, yeah, the other communications would remain until the infrastructure civil products for those companies were to be installed, and then they could relocate underground as well. And then at the very end, every source would come back to pull the poles once all the lines are pulled off of them. Do you have a follow up question? Oh, okay, Guilford. Oh, sorry. Yes, we do have, we will have to go to ever, I mean, to Verizon and Comcast to work with them. And we'll actually have to work with five college fiber as well to get those off the poles. And those will be separate from this work with the ever source. And what do you see? I'm just going to build on this question and then come to other counselors. What do you see as the time frame for getting all the wires underground in the best possible case scenario? So ever source came to us with this and we started working on it pretty quickly, but it will probably be after ever source finishes this year, it will probably be another one to two years to get everything else underground, because we'll have to identify funding to apply over some grants and get the numbers and hopefully get some money from Amherst College and from the other two utilities to help us do this. So it could be another one to two after this. And once you dig these manholes, will you have to go back in and dig them again or do anything that will be as disruptive as the first round? Once ever source puts their their duck bank then they won't have to go back in because they've actually made plans to stub off of each duck bank down each side street, which is what Mr. Kriegel was talking about. So they won't have to go back into College Street, they may have to go into a part of a side street to get to it. We will, the town and Comcast and Verizon will have to work. We'll be working on the south side of the street putting the infrastructure in on that side for the Comcast and Verizon. Okay, I'm going to go to Jennifer. Don't leave. I have the feeling you're probably the next response to Jennifer, Tom. Well, a little following on what you said, I'm just wondering in terms of the digging, like what on what will, how will the public see what's going on? I mean, will there be, I'm just trying to get a sense of, I think it's a terrific project, but are streets dug up or is it just a part of small area? Yeah, so this project includes along with the manholes, a 12-duck bank concrete encased formation going down the road, you know, PVC conduits, concrete encased. Typically, you're going to see for the majority of the street, a trench cut approximately four feet deep with conduit installed there with concrete encasement. That'll be a smaller trench because the formation were coming down the street. It's typically going to be four conduits, wide three conduits high. So we'll keep it as tight as we can to minimize the amount of black top cutting in the mount. You know, we're taking up of the college street. Obviously, wherever any manholes are installed, those are, you know, very wide and it'll probably take up in that, you know, short duration area. It'll take up one lane of the road. But typically, the manhole install can be limited to a day and we're back filled and we're at that location and we're onto the, you know, smaller trench. Thank you. Do you have other questions, Jennifer, at this point? No, I was just interested in the digging, you know, living near North Hampton. It will be nothing like North Hampton Road. Right. Pam, Rooney. Thank you. I was going to ask a similar question, but that was it was more if we have a trench going down the sidewalk from roughly South Pleasant Street all the way to Sealy Street that it converts over and goes into the road. We are really going to be looking at a major construction project on College Street for the next one to two years. Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. Thank you. So once you get the 12 Conduits in place, I just want to confirm that all of the other, the fiber optics, the Verizon lines, everything else that's not electric can actually get housed within that duct bank. Is that correct over time? So that duct bank is just an ever source duct bank? Just an ever source. Correct. So I have to ask the question, where do all the other lines go if we are going to actually get the other lines underground? Who's going to be doing that? And when does that happen? So that work, that work will be this year, you'll see ever source doing their work. And then hopefully the beginning of next year, you'll see the town and Verizon and Comcast working to put their utilities underground on the south side of the road. So the section where the poles are now on the sidewalk on the south side, that will be basically where we can fit in Comcast and Verizon and five college fiber. Thanks. And then the last question I had is that the opening statement was that that there will be occasional tie-ins to the overhead system so that we can quote unquote electrify the downtown and Amherst College. But if I look at the plans, there is only one location, which I think is Dickinson Street, where there's actually shown a connection from the manhole to an overhead pole on Dickinson Street. And then the only other location that that occurs is actually down near the substation, where there were two or three tie-ins from manholes to I think the substation by Amherst Media Building. So are we really creating that many opportunities for connection to the downtown if there's really only that one overhead connection on Dickinson Street? Yes. So it's not shown on the map here, but there is an additional tie-in on Northampton Road. The permitting that we had to obtain from that was through the mass DOT. So there is another tie-in point just past the intersection, actually the first pole on Northampton Road at the top of the hill at the intersection of Northampton and South Pleasant. Just to clarify, because I found this out the other day, from the center, I guess, of South Pleasant, the going west is the State Highway. Going east, the town owns it. Okay. So that's why you had to go to get the... Yeah. So the entire manhole dock system will continue through the intersection onto Northampton and then reconnect to the existing overhead going down towards the shopping centers. Okay. Thank you. Pam, anything else? Final question is, so who does the repaving for that entire stretch of College Street? Is that town or is that ever sourced? So that's something we're still working on how we resolve it. We have a project with Amherst College where they want to improve the crosswalk. So they've committed some funds for doing crosswalks. We also have a sewer project in the area that we're doing to connect the sewer line so it doesn't go underneath the tan brook, no, fearing brook. And we also have another sidewalk project we're doing. So the town has three projects kind of going on there already, and one's with Amherst College. So we'll mush all the, hopefully mush all the funds we have together and come out with the paved road, paved sidewalks, new crosswalks, and new lighting. And what's the time frame for that? That's the last time I've done one or two years. All right. Okay. Andy Steinberg? Yes. We know that there's another hearing following this one regarding whole locations on Dickinson Street. And my question is whether there is linkage between the two in that if there's not positive vote at the same time on both petitions, will that affect the other petition because we don't know what's going to happen in the second hearing yet? Yeah, that's right. So in short, the answer is no to that. We have some flexibility on Dickinson Street and how we configure the poles that's not going to impact the undergrinding structures. It might impact where that ladder, where that pipe comes up on Dickinson Street, but we are going to work with Mr. Call. We have a meeting with the resident there tomorrow to make sure that we place that pole in a location that is suitable. So we are okay with postponing the vote, respectively withdrawing that petition for the whole location until we work with Mr. Call for the overhead portion. Andy, did that answer your question? Yes, it does. And thank you very much. Okay. Dorothy. Just very quick clarification. Underground wires and everything from South Pleasant to Dickinson or how many blocks is it going to go? Yeah, so that is correct. From the intersection of South Pleasant at the Town Common all the way to Dickinson by the entrance of Amherst College, that entrance, the Dickinson entrance of Amherst College. I don't know how many blocks without pulling up the map and counting them, but Just for the purposes of the council, Dickinson is the street right before the railroad crossing. Thank you. Okay. Well, that sounds great. Thank you very much. Mayne, did you have your hand up? Yeah. My question actually directly relates to that. Is there a reason why the lines won't be going underground with the duct bank going from Dickinson all the way to the substation? Why aren't the corresponding lines on the poles that are between Dickinson and the substation going underground too? So we recently tried to encompass after working with Guilford bearing these lines, there's some heavy equipment on those poles right at that intersection to feed Amherst College, mainly metering equipment that we don't have the current real estate for. There's nothing saying that at a future date we couldn't look at that option, but right now for this project it seemed that that was the most beneficial to bury those lines from Dickinson to the town common, the most impact to the town. Other questions from the council? I should put my hand up. So how much is this going to cost the town? The Eversource project? Yes. So the Eversource project is a Eversource funded project so there is no cost to the town for our capital project. Guilford? So we haven't worked out the final numbers on the second part of the project yet. Do you see this as the type of project that will attract grant money? I'm hoping it does. I really am. I'm also hoping that Verizon and Eversource, I mean Verizon and Comcast will chip in as their fellow utility to make a nice improvement and then Amherst College is also talking about what they might chip in as well. Once the project is completed with the ideal that all of these wires from all of these different companies and Amherst College are now underground, who will take the poles down? Eversource will. Okay. So the poles belong to Eversource? Correct. Eversource is joint owners with Verizon but there are set areas so we would remove them once all utilities are off of them. Okay. And then do you repair the area around the pole? Yes, correct. So most of these poles are in grass belt so we would make repairs to the grass belt. Okay. I feel for this is really getting beyond this but perhaps we'll talk about it in finance tomorrow. The rest of College Street, needless to say but it's mostly in my in Pat's and my district and boy do we hear about it. So okay. And one more question. You are restoring or you're doing something with a crosswalk for Amherst College? When those crosswalks were originally installed, my understanding is that our emergency vehicles would start taking other routes because they could not exactly fly over the crosswalks because they were so high. Is part of your project changing those crosswalks or is that part of the town's project or Amherst College project? The Eversource is actually going to take out the concrete and paver and put in asphalt but they'll still be raised crosswalks. And as we do the crosswalk renovation that Amherst College was talking about they'll stay as raised crosswalks. And I assume Amherst College is going to come to us with a request as keepers of the public way. We're working out how we do that because now this project, this project, if you'd asked me about this project six months ago I would have told you it didn't exist because it didn't. This has been something that just kind of came out, Eversource saw a need and started pushing it really hard because they need to do it to support the town and it's growing and the project's just rolling really big. It's getting going to be a great little project for us all done. Sounds like it. I hope our residents have the patience to get through it. Pam? I have one non-public hearing question and that is while all the Eversource people are here. What is the rough timeframe for finishing the completion of new pole installation? We have lots and lots of poles with old lines still attached to the old poles. Just would love to hear when that all gets wrapped up. Thank you. Yeah so we certainly focus on our double pole counts every week. We have a meeting to discuss internally. We try to turn them around as quick as we can but obviously as you know with this project everybody's attached so we use an internal system that once we're off the pole it goes right to the next contractor telling them hey you're up you know you need to go move your lines. Unfortunately we don't have a ton of we can't put a ton of pressure on those other companies because they are separate companies. We notify them and you know from the time that that pole comes back to Eversource saying hey it's ready to pull we get right on it. So typically we try to keep ours while below 90 days more in the 30 day range but obviously that's you know every company has a part in that. Okay I don't see any other counselor hands so I'm going to ask you to step back again and we're going to move to public comment and I'm going to ask if you're in the audience how many people do we have two and if you are an attendee by Zoom at this time please raise your hand if you would like to make public comment. I'm I'm sorry thank you it's for the hearing regarding the Eversource petition to install new underground electric duct bank from South Pleasant Street to College Street. You ready? Erin you're up please come up to the mic say your name and address before you make your comment. I have to say I don't think I missed the banging on the wall to get the media to start at the session. I'm Erin Hayden today I'm wearing the campus utilities engineer hat for Amherst College. I may be the best position in the college to understand the impact of this project both the long-term benefits of it it's going to be it's it's it's as I see it the vision is to improve the availability of electricity of power downtown to help the decarbonization that's that's good it's going to help the reliability of the system too we all know about winter storms and car accidents involving poles. It's also going to have the added benefit and I guess this is a little bit new of undergrounding some of the wires now we hear that it's only the high voltage wires which are going down now the low voltage and the cable will go down later I hope. The college we really appreciate the collaboration that has happened between the public works and the college in organizing this project and getting it ready. The college is probably going to no no probably the college is the butter that will be most acutely affected by the work on this project. Yeah they're going to be working in the road but I get daily deliveries deliveries where they have to close the whole road to put in a manhole at Sealy street. I have two major construction projects going on on campus with large trucks that will be going many many times we're going to put a lot of traffic on to route nine on college street. I have really valued the work that we've done with with gilford and by extension with the town to organize all of that to reduce the impact on the campus. It also helps us realize and for us to offer you know the little things that can help out when they're working in the sidewalk between Sealy street and the and south pleasant they're going to probably park on our lawn a little bit and that's going to be okay we'll be okay we'll help them out with that as much as possible also the spurs that go off those will impact us and that we have to figure out how to dig and where to put the the new green boxes that will be associated with that. Again you know the collaboration the work that we've been done with the public works and with the folks behind me has been great. We really appreciate that so we very much support this project. The one comment I would like to make is that I really appreciate the new maps that you all get. There was a time when I sat on the other side of the table when we didn't get nearly as much information. This is this is really great that that you're getting that and you know I really appreciate their help in helping us understand what it is change is hard and this is a big change in many ways and I'm counting on it being for the best. So thank you very much. Thank you. I just want to clarify that we're talking about College Street from South Pleasant to Dickinson. Yes thank you. Are there other is there other public comment? No not for this one you're for the other one. Okay thank you. Are there any people in the audience who would like to make public comment? Please bring... I should wear my glasses. Hello? Okay thank you. Thanks Athena. Are there any other people in the audience who would like to make public comment? Okay Anna you have your hand up. I do. I had not previously felt the need to file a disclosure for this. I'm an employee of Amherst College but after hearing the enthusiasm from the college which is great for this project I feel like I need to specify that while I work for Amherst College this decision or vote has no impact on my employment nor is it impacted by my employment at the college and I will happily file a non what's it called a disclosure form with the clerk of the with the town clerk. It's just it'll do I'll do it right now so it'll be a little late. Thank you. But just just to clarify no I do not feel there's any conflict of interest in voting in this hearing. Stack them up with all the rest of them. Okay seriously. Are there any other comments from public? Are there any follow-up questions from the council? Jennifer. So I guess as we get closer we'll um have a conversation I guess with DPW about how this will affect traffic because it's such so one lane in each direction on College Street there but I know we have to bite the bullet but Gilford. Yes I mean this has not just been me working with everybody it's my staff too. Jason Skeels and um Jimmy, Jim Jordan has also been working with them and as they've been posting notices for Route 9 we'll be doing the same thing like you always do for how it's going works going on College on College Street while we do this we kind of like do that constantly so yes they will be talking and passing things out. Okay. Are there any other questions from the council? Then I'm going to move to close the public hearing on the Eversource petition to install new underground electric duck banks from South Pleasant to Dickinson Street along College Street. To the Eversource substation. To the Eversource substation. Thank you. I want to make sure that the clerk of the council has the motion as it needs to be stated. Is there a second? I'll second. Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments? Seeing none then we're going to go to a vote. This time we start with Anna Devlin-Gothier. Hi. Lynn Grismers and I. Mandy Johanicki. Hi. Annika Lopes. Hi. Michelle Miller. Hi. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yes. Kathy Shane is absent. Andy Steinberg. Hi. Jennifer Taub. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. Shalini Balmille. Yes. Pat DeAngeles. Hi. Okay. So the hearing's closed but we haven't voted. That's after we get done with the next hearing. Okay. So the next hearing that we're opening is the public hearing regarding Eversource's petition to install a new poll and relocate a poll adjacent to 140 Dickinson Street. Would you like to speak to the petition? Yes. At this time we would like to respectfully withdraw that petition until we meet Mr. Call. Thank you. We submit once we make sure we open that poll in the location and that's suitable. Athena. We'd like to suggest leaving the hearing open so that we don't have to re-notice it. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So the council can continue the hearing to a future meeting date. Would that be acceptable? Okay. Can I ask? That's beneficial for us. You said you were going to meet with him tomorrow. We are meeting with him tomorrow. Right. So would you like to plan to come back as early as June 5th? June 5th. We should have. Yes. Okay. So then I'm going to make. Yes. Go ahead. We ask some questions so that they have their meeting. Sure. We're actually officially in the hearing. So even though you're withdrawing the present plan and they're not withdrawing, even though you may modify the present plan, how's that? Okay. Mandy, Joe. Thank you. Because I think it'll pertain to the meeting tomorrow with Mr. Call. I noticed there's a poll. There are two polls near the two you're proposing to add, but one of them you're proposing to move. So we're going from two polls to three polls according to your plan. But my question is, why aren't we going two to two? Like there's one sort of on the other side of the driveway that's currently there that is proposed, I guess, to stay there. And I'm not sure why that one's proposed to stay. Could that one be? It's the southernmost one in blue. Well, that's above College Street. That's north of College Street. The one directly below the two proposed ones. That one. Why is that one not being proposed to be eliminated? So that poll is an existing poll. And the reason that that poll isn't being eliminated is because we're going to be bringing condo it from the intersection to the proposed relocation poll in the middle there. And then the set the poll just below that, it's going to be an isolating device for the campus's primary meter. So that poll that you are seeing just nor the league of the on Dick or the northern part of College Street in Dickinson, that's where it rises down to feed the campus. So that's a primary meter there. So we were not eliminating that. So there's there's one poll on the top of the page that's being relocated to the middle pole. So there's the poll to be relocated. That's 34 over two. We're moving that 47 feet southerly. So that poll will remain there just we're moving it southerly. And there will be a new poll set, which I have listed 110 feet northerly of the intersection and 16 feet off the center line of Dickinson Street. And so one main, but I'm sorry as they will remain a poll 20 feet south of that right on the other side of the driveway. Yes, there's a there's a green belt there or treat about there. So I don't remember exactly, but it may be across from the driveway, which is the concern that one of the residents brought up, which is what we'd like to address tomorrow. I'm talking about the one in the light blue outline that one. Yes, I guess I'm still not quite understanding why that one can't be eliminated are literally lines going to be going across the street, even though we've just put everything underground between that pole and the one that's on the south side of College Street. So what it is, it's a it's one pole that's being relocated. So it's one additional pole. And so the reason we can't fully eliminate it because it's it coincides with that existing pole, the primary meter, it serves as an isolating device to to shut off that primary meter. So by extending conduit up the road, we're going to attach to an existing pole to reconnect. So that itself is one piece of equipment. So we have to relocate that pole or the piece of equipment that's on it to accommodate the new underground. And because we're relocating it, there's going to be a new protection device on it to isolate that primary meter, which is for the campus there. So one poles to bring the underground up and reconnect to the existing over it. And the and because that pole is existing, it already has an isolating device. So we're just relocating the isolating device to accommodate the new underground. Is that does that help answer the question? Vandy joke, follow up. And why can't that isolating device be located on the new pole that's going to be 20 feet north of it? The light blue pole itself is the actual metering the equipment to Amherst College. So the light blue pole is really where the underground portion is going to start. We when we work with Guilford to try to figure a location where we can start the underground process, we chose to do it just after Amherst College primary meeting, the two feeds one into the college, because that does tie right into their automatic switch gear that where they have auto flop over. So the relocation of those poles and that infrastructure there is is would involve quite a bit of work from the college and a lot of coordination. It's something that I know as the college upgrades their services and we're looking at bringing another feeder in that may very well happen. But for the sake of this project and getting the lines buried going up through the common area, this was kind of our delineation point. And because of that, we do need the extra pole to really bring up the infrastructure and being able to isolate them properly if they do have a fault in their in their service. Bindi Joe, Paul, you have your hand up. Yeah, I think the message to the Eversource is as you consult with your dear butter that the consistent comments from the council has been they want to reduce the number of poles in town not increase the number at least keep it the same. And I think that's what the council is talking about is like, why are we increasing the number of poles and if you can look at it as you look at it in context of what the butter says, maybe there's a creative way to keep the same number of poles versus adding a pole. So just take that back and think about that. Certainly. Okay, Anna. Hi, my question. I'm over here. Hi, my question is more of a process question and it might go to you all, it actually might go to Athena. One of the reasons why we were in the situation with the butter is that the notice he received the notice, I believe, three business days before the hearing, including today. I'm curious if there's part of our process that requires a better notifications to be sent out a certain amount of time in advance to give folks an amount of time to reach out and meet if they want to. And I want to thank you all for meeting with us about it seems like that's going to be really productive and helpful. So no, this is not a critique on that process. And it's more curious from our end if there's a time frame. Yes, they're required to be sent 10 days in advance. So it's unfortunate that it took that long in the mail. Yeah, yeah, we do send them out 10 days in advance. Thank you. Every source provides the butter cards to us. And then once we have the hearing date sent, we send them out. That's what I thought based on conservation commission requirements for the butter notifications. So thank you for confirming. I've got to support our USPS apparently a little bit more. Paul, you still have your hand up. Dorothy, Dorothy, you're muted. Thank you. Okay, so really agreeing with Mandy Joe to reduce the polls and Paul did say it correctly. So when he explained why the polls were there, I have to admit, I couldn't follow it. But I understand that people who are skilled in this very complex business had made a plan and that was the plan. And it seemed to work for them. So I just wanted to do an imagination exercise. Pretend that Mr. Call's house was the house of the president of Amherst College. Would you then find a way, this obviously very complex thing to make it the poll so they didn't kind of stand right there blocking his at his driveway, because I understand this is money. But it's also the kind of thing that makes a place look awful. Just poll after poll. And I've got a whole bunch of new ones on my street. And this is a beautiful area. So I'm just hoping that more imagination can go into how to not have and Mandy Joe's right. She's always catching one that they pull the lines across the street. And that's something that we really want to avoid that whole tangle of wires that blocks our architecture in our houses. So would it be different if that were the president's house? That's it. Guilford? No, would not. I mean, I think we work with every resident that has a concern when we send out these about our notifications and try to place polls in the least impactful location if possible. You know, there's times when we can't, we do think there's opportunity here to find an agreeable solution that's going to satisfy Mr. Call. My initial conversation that we had with them today, we do think that we're going to be able to come up with a solution there that's going to work. We are also reviewing some of our standards here and we're looking at the possibility there's a reliability function that that additional switch is going to allow us to isolate the school and pick up a little quicker if in the event that does something that we do have a cable fault there. So we're currently also reviewing that if the event that we cannot get this poll that, you know, if it's something that we want to relocate our facilities down further or actually just know that we have a less than ideal operational situation there that we can work around. So that's another reason that we want to come back to the board with some more information the next hearing. Okay. Guilford, do you have your hand up? Yes, but Pam can go and I'll just my comments and overall comment. Okay. Pam. Thank you. Yeah, one last comment for me and that is given the emphasis on supplying Amherst College with power and the fact that there's a real concentration of whatever they are transformers or whatever is on the north side of College Street at that location. Why not one more section of Duct Bank that passes under College Street to the south side where all of Amherst College's infrastructure can be assembled and distributed across the campus? Why not one more chunk and and really serve them well? It would take a considerable amount of infrastructure upgrades from the college as well in order to be able to facilitate feeding them underground. Mostly the primary meeting equipment has a very long lead times and we would need a footprint and a very congested area for some large equipment to be able to meter them. So that is why it's not included in the scope of this particular project right here, certainly as the college upgrades the infrastructure and we have I think long term plans again of bringing a new feeder there to be able to add growth in the college at that point. I can't say for sure that you know because we don't have the scope of that project at this moment but it was not up to include it in the scope of this one at this time. Dilford do you have your hand up? Yeah I just want to make a general comment. I know and we work really hard with Eversource to get rid of the polls but it's not like a water system or a sewer system where everything can be underground. There's a lot more safety issues and reliability and access issues with electrical units than with some of our other utilities. So as they do this there's going to have to be a question you and ask yourself is do you have another poll just because one poll Kate hold everything so you need to put something on the ground and now you're going to see a green transformer on the ground and this probably I mean as we've been told by other people they don't like seeing green transformers but as we keep moving this process electrifying and building the reliability back into downtown you're going to have to think about as as keepers of the way where do we put transformers and switch gear that can't actually go underground. So Eversource works really hard and we work really hard to try to find things and put things in places where we can hide them and people don't see them but there will be times when you'll have to have maybe have to have a poll just because it's safer to have a poll than it is to have it on the ground or you may have to have a ground mount something a transformer switch because it's safer so those are just things to think about in the future I know the goal is to get rid of all the polls but sometimes you can't get rid of all the polls so we're like a sewer system we have pump stations around town everybody complains about some of our pump stations they don't look very nice but if you don't have the pump station the sewage doesn't get to go to the next place it needs to go so this is just a comment. Are there other answer questions at this time the floor is now open for public comment if you are in the audience we're going to have you come forward please. Matthew Cornell please come on up get your name and address before you make your comment. All right it's Matthew Cornell I live at 34 Dickinson Street it's that green Victorian where Spring Street intersects Dickinson and it wasn't until I saw the map that I understood I think that there's no impact to our house is that true to the the work stop at the parking lot of Amherst College there on Dickinson Street? I need to ask somebody back there to answer that question I want to chew up my three minutes here I think we can be generous okay yes that's correct okay well I don't have to ask any any more questions then I appreciate the work that they do to have the service there so reliably in the town I saw the last thing is I saw 140 Dickinson Street a reference I don't think there's a 140 there's a 140 college street I might be wrong though I will check the address okay all right thank you okay thank you so much are there any other public comments people on zoom okay are there any other comments from counselors at this time so Athena do we need a motion to continue the hearing yes you should pick a date and a time okay Mandy Joe is going to make the motion move to continue the public hearing on the ever source petition to install a new poll and relocate a poll adjacent to 140 college Dickinson Street we're confirmed it's 140 Dickinson Street to June 5 2023 at 6 35 p.m second just want Athena to confirm that that's a fine time still second we don't have any other special meetings happening before the regular meeting so I think 6 35 is okay as long as it's okay with you then excellent okay uh so the motion has been made to continue the hearing it's been made and seconded it will come back before the council um we assume with some changes in plans and uh that will be on June 5 at 6 35 is there any question from the council just need a vote I know okay I'm just wait making sure that everybody's on board with what we're doing because we don't normally continue hearings okay then in this case I'm going to begin the vote with Lynn Griesmer it's an I Mandy Johanna key I Enika Lopes I Michelle Miller I Dorothy Pam yes Pam Rooney yes Kathy Shane is absent Andy Steinberg I Jennifer Todd yes Alicia Walker yes Shalini Balmille yes Pat D'Angelo's hi and Anna Devlin got here hi it's unanimous with one absent we are going to just hang in yeah that's my plan so skipping around on the agenda just a bit okay I'm going to move to action item 8a okay and the motion under 8a that I'm placing on the table is as follows to approve the order for pole location at Meadow street that's not the right one huh yeah so okay go ahead so it's to approve the order for underground new underground electrical duct bank from south pleasant street to ever source substation along college street and then we need to add the dates that I have to look up I'm looking to Athena yeah so let me see if I can find it dated 13 of March 2023 dated March 13th 2023 as indicated on the plan marked gosh um 8 0 3 9 6 8 7 6 dash 1 1 7 6 4 9 7 8 okay seconded is there any further discussion or question this means we're approving the big project okay all right with that I'm going to move to the polling vote mean to Johanna key hi Anika Lopes hi Michelle Miller hi uh Dorothy Pam yes Pam Rooney yes Kathy Shane is absent Andy Steinberg hi Jennifer Todd yes Alicia Walker yes Shalini Balmain yes Pat D'Angelo's hi Anna Devon got here hi Lynn Griesmer is an I it's unanimous with one absent thank you we'll see you on the fifth I'm going to move back to the general order of the agenda which means we are now at general public comment okay um there's nobody left in the room except for the counselors Paul and Athena and our clerk um if you would like to make public comment and you were on zoom please raise your hand at the please raise your hand at this time I see no hands and so we're going to keep moving on we've already done the um consent agenda uh and under resolutions and proclamations we are now back to um the potential for a motion to amend the proclamation recognizing June as LGBTQ plus pride month Mandy Jo did I miss something no I'd like to make a motion okay I moved to adopt the proclamation recognizing June as lesbian gay bisexual trans queer plus LGBTQ plus pride month with as amended by amending the final two whereas clauses to add the words quote including our youth and quote after the word resident in each clause can you place the it on the agenda on the thing okay there's been a motion made I need a second that's a second okay I'm waiting for it to go on the screen sorry I can't do it that fast take your time are you looking for the proclamation or a motion up on the screen the point of order Lynn it is point of order Lynn yes um I sent the I think the language that Mandy just suggested um over to Athena um in a word document so if Athena can find that she should be able to just pull that up okay all right right but you want the entire proclamation you can just show us that paragraph yeah what Michelle sent is just a motion I would have to go in and change the the proclamation now but I can do that let's take our time and do that so that everybody's clear what we're voting on okay Athena do you need did I I can't remember if I sent you a word version of it okay sorry just making sure I think that phrase will name comma's both before and after it but I didn't quote it's including the youth it was including our youth our youth yeah okay so um as one of the um sponsors of the proclamation the motion has been made and seconded and Michelle then are you agreeing that this captures what you were looking for earlier absolutely yeah thank you very much all right so the motion is on the floor um to approve this as it has been amended is there any other question or comment seeing none we're going to move to the tally vote well we're going to start with Anika Lopes hi Michelle Miller hi Dorothy Pam uh yes Pam Rooney yes Kathy Shane's absent Andy Steinberg hi Jennifer Todd yes Alicia Walker yes Shalini Balmille yes Pat DeAngelo's hi Anna Devlin got here I Lynn Grieshmer is an I Mandy Johanna key I it is unanimous with one counselor absent could we recognize Anna Devlin got here yes Anna thank you since its inception the Pride month proclamation has held a slightly different meaning each year as it is impacted by the country we live in uh and the consistent fight for people to be empowered to live their lives as their true and authentic selves I'm truly grateful for Pat and Mandy's work on this year's proclamation as well as for former counselor Evan Ross who authored the original version sometimes we hear comments about the need for Pride month celebrations or similar proclamations in a town like Amherst this sentiment applies to a variety of other historically and currently harmed communities as well it is easy to not look too closely and to see everything in our community and our area as fully and perfectly inclusive of LGBTQ plus folks those of us who are in the LGBTQ community or have loved ones who are in the LGBTQ community know that there is no such thing as a bubble of protection from hate or bias it shows up in subtle ways it shows up in obvious ways all of them causing harm in the past few weeks another damning example of this harm came to light this time with the youth of our community in a place that should be one of learning and support while our proclamations and flag raisings are symbolic symbols carry power let this proclamation carry power in its message of love care compassion and fight we will continue to fight continue to love and continue to care for our community to our LGBTQ residents and visitors and especially our youth we see you we support you we celebrate you and we're going to fight like hell for you and alongside you we hope that you will come celebrate and uplift one another on june 2nd at 4 p.m. and throughout the month at a variety of opportunities around town with that i would like to invite mandy joe hannagy to read the final statements from the 2023 pride month proclamation thank you now therefore we the amherstown council do hereby proclaim june 2023 as lgbtq plus pride month be it further proclaimed we the amherstown council encourage all residents to celebrate and affirm our proud and diverse lgbtq plus community year-round be it further proclaimed that this proclamation will be recognized by raising the progress pride flag on the un flagpole from june 2nd to june 30th 2023 anna already mentioned that the flag raising will be at 4 p.m. we are looking forward to welcoming everyone to that and especially our saga members who have helped be the community sponsor to the pride proclamation this year great are there any other comments at this time then we are going to move on presentations and discussions there are none we have already dealt with action item 8 a action item 8 b has been delayed until june 5th after the continuation of the hearing that brings us to 8 c which is the proposed bylaw ensuring safe access to legally protected reproductive and gender affirming health care this is sponsored by anna and mandy joe there will be a motion in fact i'll ask one of them to make the motion um and to refer to g ol so let's begin with the motion and then we'll go on to the rest of the presentation for the to you mandy joe excuse me um well now i want to make it right and i'm worried i'm going to do it wrong all right um i would like to move i had it i lost it i would like to move that the town council refer uh the the draft bylaw ensuring safe access to legally protected reproductive and gender affirming health care to the uh to g ol for a report back within see reading the motion sheet would have been the helpful thing to do and and i was reading the bylaw uh for a substantive review and a review of clarity consistency and clarity i assumed they would do that do you want me to start over okay uh as well as clarity consistency and action ability and the report and they were will part back within 60 to the count July 7 July 7th wolf man you're never gonna call on me again by July 7th please i'm gonna i'm gonna 17th please do you like me to do it again advanced warning instead okay i will second that as written on the motion sheet okay do you want me to read it with identical what that's good it's good all right so uh it wasn't good but that's okay if you uh speak to the priest speak to the motion or speak to the bylaw yes please uh i'll try to do better at this so this bylaw is uh it's preventative in nature and what it does is it looks at our state level protections and looks at what we have an obligation to do at a local level so if you read our memo you will have noticed that there we talked about the one of the origins of this was the 2022 ruling from the supreme court on dobbs v jackson jackson which overturned rowey wade we have talked about this we have written resolutions about this and what we are trying to do is to reinforce the july 2022 state level action signed by governor baker which was an act expanding protections for reproductive and gender affirming care and the reason that this is especially important in amherst is that we need to make sure in a community that sees so many residents coming in from other states states that may not be uh supporting their their own residents in receiving gender affirming care in receiving reproductive care and receiving abortion care all of that we need to make sure that if they are pursuing that care here they are able to do it without fear of of their information being shared in with people from their home states who might be seeking it and so this the state law doesn't specifically address the things that we are trying to address in our local bylaw so this is supposed to be this is intended as a reinforcement at the local level of that state level action making sure we've covered all of all of their all of any potential gaps that exist to protect our residents and receiving the care that they deserve to receive mandy do you have anything done nope okay uh there's a motion on the floor for referral and it's an opportunity now for counselors who have questions should the motion pass are things that you want to make sure that gol pays particular attention to pameroni can you kindly give some examples of the gaps um it occurred to me when i read it that in fact massachusetts covers a great deal of this why is there something at a local level needed that is not already available under mass law uh mandy do you want to take this one so the the massachusetts law really focused on um people the lawsuits you know texas in some sense has has authorized lawsuits for people who can't perverse borders their borders leave texas to come to states like massachusetts to receive reproductive health care and and gender affirming care and then the state law really focused on how to protect those individuals from those lawsuits the actual lawsuit and what we're trying to do is to ensure that our town doesn't help those lawsuits proceed by providing information to anyone who might have filed the lawsuit the state law doesn't appear from our readings to cover the provision of that information or the um the holding of individuals if there were a warrant out for someone's arrest based on some of those lawsuits and criminal filings texas has also done criminal filings um and and criminal complaints and so you know as anna said it's a preventative measure um we would hope it would never have to be used but if those those laws that have been passed in states like texas um begin to be used against people who may come to massachusetts for their care or who live in massachusetts um um we and help people who came to massachusetts we want to ensure that it's they're not going to get help from the town um we don't want to wait till it's already happened we want that here to to state you know we are not going to help you we did this very similarly um with immigration laws um back a number of years ago it might almost be a decade now i think where we did this and it was it was somewhat preventative but in the end it did get used i i believe so and it became very important that while it might have been preventative the at the time we were considering adopting at our town meeting was it became a very important thing to have on the books andy yeah i mean i my question was the long i think where ham was going to i have uh stated previously that i'm concerned that we are making a lot of reactions of referring bylaws to committees that take a lot of time of committees and have really begun in many circumstances to bog down our council processes and our committee processes and that we also are passing bylaws at times that don't readily address an issue that is likely to occur so i was just i my question was pretty similar and i think you've answered part of it but i'm still not really comfortable in that um i haven't seen a real demonstration that there's any likelihood um or any significant likelihood that um what is being talked about which is town participation um given the fact that providing information would be for anybody who had the information that was in in all tippa would already be there's already the legal prohibitions that have much stronger consequences than we're talking about and uh or um and so i'm i'm still not quite clear in my head as to why it is that this is needed other than that we feel and i think that it is important to make a statement but um a statement in a bylaw um is a big leap between the two and i'm still not entirely sure why the bylaw is necessary Lynn may i respond yes please go ahead so respectfully andy i think what you were saying says more about our committee processes than it does about our bylaws and i think that if we start going down a road of not doing our jobs because we don't know how to run effective committee processes that's that's a problem in my mind and needs to be addressed more from the process angle than from the legislative angle uh if we only legislate reactively we're doing a disservice to our residents i really strongly feel that this is it is not uh i don't think it's a safe assumption to say that this isn't likely to occur so many people said that row would stand as the law of the land right i don't think that we can make any of those guarantees and there are so many people out there right now looking for these loopholes looking for the opportunities to to pursue people who are seeking the care uh we need to ensure that we are matching and outpacing them in protecting the rights of our residents and there's a you're right there is a difference between making a statement through a proclamation or resolution and putting a bylaw in place and to me and i don't want to speak for mandy but i believe from andy as well this issue deserves and has opportunity for a bylaw to back it up our proclamations don't stand anything against folks coming in to try to get information or or um to to seek that out and i don't think that our our town employees are our town uh all the folks who are covered under our definition uh are trying to share it but we want to protect them and having a reason that they can say no i'm not going to and this gives them that mandy drew and i i talk a lot about information sharing but there are parts of this bylaw that refer to holding in custody those who have aided or assisted those seeking reproductive and general stent and dirt affirming care um much of that information is not legally protected healthcare information that would fall under HIPAA so not everything that could be asked for or could happen is HIPAA protected um or covered by the recent baker signed law that we referenced and so we're just trying to ensure that we've done what we can to protect our residents and those who might come into Amherst seeking care and did you have a follow-up question just a quick follow-up comment and i'm in the lower my hand and that final comment is um to what uh Anna said yeah i mean it is about our processes but our processes um are complex because they need to be complex um and they involve also getting advice for the complexities go with it and uh i think that the discussion actually has served a major purpose that i brought forward that i really think that the council needs to have this discussion and not just make automatic knee jerk referrals i think we now have a discussion and i appreciate the responses um i'm trying to imagine a situation that where this would occur okay and first of all i there's no question in my mind that i want to protect the rights of all of our residents and um you know the the lack of import anyway the whole situation that is brought up by this so i just want to be very clear about that from the beginning my concern about a bylaw by like this is describe the situation in which it could occur describe what the town would be doing to protect the individual and then describe the enforceability of the bylaw i so i'm having i i mean i when we did immigration it allowed us with any number of actions and testimony to continue to protect julia and with the unbelievable gift that um the church gave us in all of that i'm just trying to figure out what this looks like okay and um so mandy joe you want to speak i'll try two hypothetical situations um that don't necessarily involve hippo information um the first is i'm just going to pick myself i decide to help a friend who lives in texas obtain some reproductive health care in massachusetts and someone in texas files i don't know is it criminal now civil both maybe um a civil lawsuit against me and then texas itself files a criminal lawsuit against me um when that criminal charges filed against me they send the warrant for arrest up to amherst because i live in amherst this bylaw would prevent amherst would allow the amherst pd to say no we're not going to execute that warrant no and we're not going to extradite that's what the spy law would do a second example similar say the person i helped got care at the musanti health center um yes whatever care they might have received in the center might be protected by hippo but there's video cameras and say the lawsuit that was filed seeks the video cameras from the town videos at the doors to the banks center this would prohibit the town from distributing and releasing those videos to the people seeking them okay thank you for those examples dorothy um i find similarity here with the fugitive slave law and massachusetts uh was known for trying to fight against that and this the language of these new laws are coming from the same place it is not rational they both relate to human bondage and that they will stop at nothing and they like to do some demonstrations like sending the the busload of people or maybe it was a boatload of people to martha's vineyard i can imagine there might be some staged events where they're trying to snatch people and do exactly what mandy joe is saying to try to put fear in the citizens of the of massachusetts um that their laws will not stand and that the laws of texas or kentucky or whatever you talk are going to come and supersede our so um you know it's a small thing but i think that we have to be prepared they you know in the age of media and filming everything i would expect there's going to be some some things that people have in mind and we and mandy joe's right we have to have we have to have the police and law firms notified ahead of time and thinking about it and thinking about what they would do and how they would do things so i say it's a small step and it's not complete and it's got there's a lot more work to do on it but i think it's a it's a start and it's something that we have to do because this is this is where the battle is now and i think that some of it will come to amherst thank you michelle i have a couple questions and a comment um mandy just coming back to your first example um right now under the state law would you be protected as the state law stands um if they as you said passed on that uh you know criminal charge came to the to the police department and said you know would you be protected already give me a couple minutes i have to go back to read the law okay um absolutely and and just along that line i would imagine we would seek a legal review for this okay great um and then i wanted to just say with respect to process um i do appreciate andy's concern um and pam's concern and um i do appreciate that we're having this discussion prior to referring it um but i also want to say that you know i'm really happy to see that we're like scaffolding this beyond the original resolutions um you know so we we have these resolutions that we've already approved as a town council and now we're taking it to that next step um and moving beyond a speech act and um and and so i just i'm really appreciating that and um while we do have a lot that uh we are responsible for as a town council i want to respect the individual rights of counselors um to bring forward initiatives that they um feel are important as the legislative um individuals responsible for uh for the town so um that's that's my comments right now thank you okay pat thank you i have a personal response to all of this uh the sanctuary bylaw was brought to the select board and town meeting by a group of us who were trying to prevent the possibility of people being deported uh at the time lucio was not uh we weren't trying to protect lucio per se we were trying to protect a group of people who were being uh treated inhumanely in many respects um i joined town meeting to help pass that sanctuary bylaw and all of us who were involved in the amherst sanctuary were floored when we had nearly a hundred percent vote and support there were only three dissenters in the entire town meeting one of those dissenters ran in district two for the original council that's why i'm on the council because i couldn't have a person like that sit on the council i also at the age of 17 had an illegal abortion and i bring it up because i had no protections um the doctor i went to who confirmed that i was pregnant um when i came back no longer pregnant because i had had an illegal abortion um a set basically a self-induced abortion um that doctor told me oh i wasn't pregnant and i was pregnant i was quite pregnant luckily early enough um and i bring that up because i'm not different from a lot of people who will now have to revert to illegal abortions illegal health care trans people people born into the wrong body who feel they need a real change risking their lives to become the person that they want to become so god damn it i don't care about your process i don't care about your reservations this is needed if it saves one person an amherst protects one person that's it thank you pam man did you or did you a comment i haven't response to michelle's question okay um go ahead so the state law as i read it um declares the act of filing that lawsuit in texas or whatever um a interference with the exercise and enjoyment of the rights secured by the constitution and laws of the commonwealth and a violation of public policy of the commonwealth it doesn't stop the lawsuit from proceeding it just declares it a violation of your rights in massachusetts and the next clause then says you can then sue them for violating your rights in massachusetts and so so the state law doesn't really talk about the distribution and the the all the requests for information and stuff that come with filing lawsuits or criminal complaints and other jurisdictions it just says well if that happens to you well you can file a lawsuit in massachusetts how i read it now i could be missing some stuff because the session laws are really hard to sometimes read but that's how i read the law that was passed michelle did you have any follow-up on that no thank you okay ham so that sort of answers my question and that is you know how might this by law prevent a lawsuit against somebody in massachusetts and i guess it does not um but it just simply says as i understand it that no additional information would be provided with the help of town employees it doesn't say anything about non-town employees um but it's simply being assisted by anyone in the town employee so i um wanted i was on the periphery of the immigration protection but actually pat and i met with the pastor at the church and um it was about the time some permissions were expiring and it was important that we get an extension and one of the things that was so critical was that it was consistent with how our police had acted it was also consistent with the um refuge that a church provides so i'm looking at this and i just want to make sure i understand it means that if somebody um came forward with a lawsuit that our police our subpoena or whatever our police would not deliver it okay and the second thing is that if they wanted to look at our videotapes our police would not deliver that is that where we're saying or it or it or anybody else okay all right thank you i appreciate your taking the time to unwrap the law for me and and what this does and what it says to our town employees are there any other questions a motion has been made in second it's a referral of this bylaw to go well to then be returned to the council after substantive review and review of clarity consistency and actionability by uh july 17th 2023 is there no seeing no other questions we're going to move to the vote it was seconded yeah uh we're going to start with michelle miller hi dorthy pamm yes pamm rooney yes tathie shane's absent andy steinberg hi jennifer tov yes policia walker yes shallony bellman yes patie angeles hi anna devlin gothier i increase mers and i mandy johannity hi anika loaves hi it passed unanimously with one absent the next item on our agenda was approved on the consent agenda unless somebody would absolutely like another break i'm going to continue on okay all right um we do have uh departments for the amherst housing authority board of commissioners was approved we're going on to liaison reports mandy joh crc uh i wrote an actual report that's in your packet sorry it was late but nothing was really on the agenda for tonight but um any questions i can answer michelle do you have a question about crc i do and i'm just i was reading um the report that um mandy just referred to um i'm sorry just give me one second i didn't think it was going to be so fast um okay here we are um so this is about the sufficiency of the applicant poll um for the zba um it's it states in the report that the zba uh it was insufficient um and it also states that it's extremely important for us to obtain a sufficient poll in the next two weeks um given the vacancies um so i was just wondering i was looking at our council policy um on uh sufficiency of the pool and one of the criteria in there is um that it says you know that one one criteria is that the current needs of the body to be appointed including any current burdens placed on the body by a vacancy is a reason um for considering a pool sufficient um and i'm just wondering if that what sort of weight you might see that carrying um and if you could just provide any given the urgency if you could provide any input on that and whether this is a policy that could be amended given the circumstances or if it's um really directly to the charter and needs to just be um needs us to uh you know what's the word that i'm looking for anyway i think you get the gist i won't go on not um yeah so so basically in about two weeks that's the latest or so CRC can wait to declare the pool sufficient and still complete the process or hopefully complete the process um by the June 27th last council meeting before July 1 when the council would vote because the terms expire June 30 in the last four years the council has dealt with this in various different ways and and CRC and GOL have dealt with sufficiency of appable pools in different ways um CRC definitely has had conversations about what do we do if we just don't have the numbers we're looking for um and we will continue to have those conversations and as the deadline gets closer the determination of sufficiency may change um because of where the deadlines fall um but given where we are now um and where the timing was at the last CRC meeting CRC did not feel confident declaring the pool sufficient based on the criteria and the numbers we have and if people are wondering we have four applicants for six spots so that's where we stand right now. Well thank you i'm sorry if i could just follow up to say if there's any information that if you've already sent it i apologize um but where we could share with folks to try to get some people to apply um that would be fantastic thank you let's send that email out again okay uh Jennifer was that your hand up yeah i took it down i was just gonna say Athena sent that information after the last council meeting so maybe but no i was really just gonna say just get the word out right you can hear yeah i nab no i i nab someone at kappa joe because he said he was an engineer i said i sent him the yes she did i was sitting i mean you went on the other side grocery store right um so uh we'll reset make sure that all counselors are recent the information about these positions that are open uh and any other ones um alisha kathy is not here and paul so i'm gonna ask if either you or paul have anything to say about the elementary school building committee besides the fact that it's fabulous that we're celebrating this alisha um yeah we haven't had another meeting since the last council meeting but we have uh broken into subcommittees so we have a subcommittee looking at um specifics for the interior of the building and then we have another um subcommittee that is looking at the playground and the outdoor space at the school right now um and they each have had one meeting and they'll be meeting weekly um and i don't think the elementary school building will have another meeting until june so we're sort of just working on the details right now there will be more public forums and and we encourage people to come to the subcommittee meetings if they have any input for either interior or exterior design okay paul did you have anything you want to add oh that was perfect thank you thanks alisha um finance committee andi yes i think that the only thing to do is to just quickly go over the dates of the remaining part of our process just to its reminder i think tomorrow at 5 30 p.m uh we're having another one of the budget review meetings where we're going to be talking about part of the public works in the enterprise funds on the 19th which is friday at one o'clock we'll be talking about general government and uh conservation uh planning inspections or conservation and development however you want to call it um then we're nearing the end uh that was to be the end but two departments were postponed till the 23rd which was going to be our first discussion meeting so those are public health and fire ems and we will begin the meeting with those and luna and i haven't had a chance to talk about it but i assumed that the first part of the meeting will still be posted as a council meeting so that we continue the practice of counselors being able to ask questions of all um department heads as they come forward at that point um in the meeting when that's completed we'll start shifting to what's the work of the committee itself which is to then take all of the information that we've obtained including tonight's hearing and finalize our recommendations and try and move it to a report uh with meetings also on the 26th and 30th um and uh try and see that we can complete the work by june 1st which is the 30 days it's allotted by the charter um so we have postponed all other things that were we were asked to look at we do have a list of things dorthy pam brought up one that we have not forgotten about which is the uh whole subject of councilor compensation uh uh john mangana provided us with uh an analysis of the costs of the various components were recommended um and uh we will get a uh recommendation back to um the council cognizant of the need to do so so that there can be action prior to the uh deadline that's established in the charter which is uh it's very beginning of july so those are our highest priorities um right now is finish the budget and make sure that we get the item that also has a very strict deadline to it and let me just mention we already did um move make a motion about water and sewer rates and that will come up back to the council on june 5th yeah and there was one other which was the optional tax exemptions that are provided by state law and um there's an option that's given to local municipalities to extend it and provide a higher level of benefits for those who qualify that also was voted by the midi we did not view those two items as being per se part of the budget um to the extent that we needed to hold off until we completed the process and had the hearing so those two things have been voted right and both of those will come up on june 5th um i just want to also be clear several several councils have been regular attendees at the finance committee meetings and it's led to a really robust conversation um the next two three meetings next two will be fully open for the council the meeting on the 23rd will be open for the two discussions with the department of health and um fire and ems and then it reverts to just the finance committee who has to make their recommendation um which will come to the council on june 5th are there any questions about that okay then g ol pat uh yes thank you we've been really busy we've been working on the obstruction of the public way formerly known as snow and ice removal we have taken paul's advice and thought about one enforcement agency we're choosing right now inspection services and we realize that there would have to be an education process going on for dpw and police and inspection services so that people actually know where to send the calls both the community but the departments themselves um we also um have been working on flag policy but this last meeting we looked at the policies regarding the control and regulation of public ways because we looked at banners the banner that flies um and we've come up with several things about that one we wanted to be uh government speech and um which means uh and we're giving still the authority in most instances to you paul as the town manager so uh the united states flag mass flag the flags of the university's things like that fine um also banners welcoming students and congratulating students or providing um seasonal cheer as we decided to define it are also something that you will be deciding it does not have to come to council uh flags and banners on advertising events on the town common again that would be um the but for all other flags and banners the town council would remain uh the keeper of the public way is because we felt like given the issues that have come up around flags we needed to be able to ensure that we could have limits on what was flown across on a banner so and you'll be getting them i'll be saying we'd like uh kp law to look at that and then they were continuing to work on rule six which is the code of conduct in light of the supreme judicial court what are you saying supreme judicial court south borough decision pat i can't hear you i i don't know if if you're buttons pressed sorry i forgot the button jennifer is that what you're doing i didn't yell it was michelle anyway um you're there so you know what's going on michelle so anyway thank you and we meet again on uh may 24th and then june 7th at 9 30 okay um anika jones library building okay so the jones library building media still has not met since our last meeting the meeting scheduled for thursday june 1st at 4 30 has been canceled so the next meeting will be june 8th at 11 am at the woodbury room and that will be to review exterior brick samples um with architects on site and then followed by june 15th at 4 30 to review the reconcile cost estimate and then on june 22nd to review the updated landscaping plan um tso anika oh i'm sorry there is there a question okay anika tso so tso the report is in the pocket i think fairly detailed i'm happy to answer any questions um aside from the regular tso business we also wished council steinberg a happy birthday so i'm wishing him a belated happy birthday did he skip the meeting we forced we forced him to excellent um are there any questions for tso okay liaison reports any uh reports to share jennifer you have your hand up i think use your mic please are you right the affordable housing trust remember that um so they um are going to be having a listening session at the bank center it's in person on tuesday june 20th from 6 30 to 8 30 p.m and this is um let me get my notes here it is a joint session um between the affordable housing trust the human rights commission the board of health and the community safety and social justice committee and um they're you know being very you know proactive and trying to get the word out to as many residents as possible and it sounds like a really be great if counselors can be there really um terrific evening they'll have different tables and different groups and again it's really just a listening session so all those you know different um entities you know committees and commissions can you know really hear from residents about what they need in the area of affordable housing what's the date again um tuesday june 20th at 6 30 p.m 6 30 to 8 30 at the bank center and you might you'll probably hear through other channels but and you know if you want to share that with your constituents as well um and then this thursday may 18th at seven o'clock p.m the housing trust will be having a joint meeting with the community resources committee and we'll be um you know starting to look at where the uh you know what our priorities are in our housing the gaps in the housing that we have available in amherst uh looking at approaches to reducing the housing gap priority areas um and then determining kind of between crc and the housing trust of where we could work together and then where we might have our you know take on uh different responsibilities to look at providing more attainable and affordable um housing opportunities in amherst and then i guess the last would be um the housing trust is really busy but they the belcher town road project um all can correct me if i if i get this not quite correct but that they have uh the two sites have been combined by the town and that where it looks like they are now is the um architectural design continues to be developed and that they are wrapping up the schematic design phase and we'll be moving into the design development phase so that project is is moving along as is the east street school i don't have as many details on that so anyway they're really interesting meetings one thursday a month at uh seven p.m okay that's that's it thanks thank you pam thank you i was just going to report on the planning board the planning has taken the duplex i'll call it the duplex triplex uh converted dwelling etc zoning and they are they are discussing in depth um sort of each of the categories so there have been some really uh good in depth conversations about what what that means what what might be unintended consequences and uh so the next meeting um will be focused on the triplex the three family units jan for you have your hand up yeah there was another thing i forgot to add about um the housing trust which you might be interested in is they invited representatives from university of massachusetts came to their last meeting to discuss the student housing situation okay thank you are there any other uh liaison reports see none uh we've approved the minutes paul this is one of the weeks without a written report any thicker comments you want to make i do i have several um first to recognize that last thursday may 11th was the end of the pandemic state of emergency so you'll notice that the limited capacity for our rooms are removed um and that's really the biggest significant change for the town building so we're back to regular capacity i think people are going to be self-regulating and again we are a mask welcoming community if people prefer to wear masks we still have them available and people can choose to wear them if they choose um coming up in the next two weekends will be graduations this weekend uh may 20th is hampshire college's graduation then the next weekend will uh may 20 the weekend of may 27th will be umass and amherst college um both graduations on the same weekend again that same weekend will be the memorial day um commemoration on monday i think it starts at 9 30 and typically what we do there is that we gather in the spring street parking lot and then we march this is a memorial event it's not a celebratory event it's to commemorate people who serve in the military who have passed away and so we march up spring street to south pleasant street down north pleasant street turn up triangle street and wind up at the memorial at the um at the veteran memorial near the swimming pool uh and then there's usually a few people who will speak there so you're all welcome to join in the in the march in the parade um or or you can join us at the um event itself um in anticipation of all these events there um the next few days will be um a lot of paving going on on north hampton road they will be doing um the intersection at south pleasant street and amherst and north hampton road and college street which is a major paving project and also at north hampton road and university drive these projects will be done at beginning at 2 a.m. so they can be wrapped up and out of there by 7 a.m. to try to avoid the um the biggest times of heavy traffic they also require detours uh to side streets so they can be more efficient they will also be doing this section in between um that between the two intersections down north hampton road so this is it'll all be happening this week a lot of it is weather dependent it's going to be a little bit colder this week so we're hoping that they'll still be able to meet their schedule um at last um saturday night uh there was a sewer break and this is just one because i happened to be watching them a lot and it was helpful this happens this is our crew right there they're out there on saturday night um trying to repair a sewer main break uh with a lot of rental houses and um housing authority uh so that they could continue to use their facilities we had crews there overnight to keep pumping the sewage through the system and then sunday morning at 7 a.m mother's day we had a crew of dpw employees come in to um to a temporary repair so until they get back and do a permanent repair so just credit to our highway water water and wastewater divisions who are all on site helping out you know you know one guy spent the night but then he said he had a new baby at home and his his first baby and he said i can i cannot miss my wife's first mother's day so he left at 7 a.m to be home so um but just they did this amazing how they step up it's complex what every one of these projects is difficult um they you know you're dealing in this situation they're dealing with the clay pipe that had collapsed uh they tried to do you know immediate repairs but it's clearly it needed to be replaced so um you know gilford mooring was on scene as they were trying to scope out what the problem was they put a camera through it to see as far as they could um so it's just you know it just admired the work that they did and they come in and on saturday night and sunday to be here and just appreciated that um the um we have a couple big projects that we're starting to get ready to launch that you have approved one is the construction of the centennial treatment plant so that's a really big project that will impact the town of pelham because it's located in the town of pelham we're working with the town to make sure to stage the work um and so that's a major construction project and then also the gravity belt thickener at the wastewater treatment plant another one that you love to talk about so um just don't think about i think um good projects moving forward um so along all those we we're also experienced a lot of staff um turnover and we have vacancies so for instance as we have pressure on our dpw they are down five people and we continue to try to recruit it's hard to find people um that um will be able to work in art and have the skill sets that we need so you know there a lot of people are covering for each other and it was really readily apparent during the water main during the sewer main break that they were all sort of really sort of working over time they literally were working over time so and then also um just to recognize our hr staffing as you may know we'd lost two of our three employees in that department so um our hr director is still there and she's she and we have some additional support for her but you lose two people out of your office there there's they were just trying to keep the um things moving through because it's a very busy time for hiring and that type of thing so credit to melissa for powering through and the last thing is just wanted to note that um it sounds like the boston globe is going to be doing a story on first amendment audits if you remember what those are that's where people come into the town hall typically and they've been here um and they take videos of people and and sometimes can be provocative apparently there is an incident at the lexington public library that was very controversial they were at the um arlington town hall um with our former finance director sandy pooler as the town manager who was featured um in their in their show so um but the globe decided that they're looking to do a story on it and since we had i did a memo back in 2019 on this which has been uh shared pretty widely throughout the state and that's sort of we did a webinar on it like last year i think earlier this year and um and so they were really eager to hear our perspective and how we got started on it so hope that's likely to be an article in the globe at some point um and that's my report any questions anybody has other questions town manager pat i don't have a question i would like you to send from the council i am speaking for the council right now to thank the workers the dpw workers who've put in that time and that effort for this community oh it'd be pleased to do that thank you thank you pat do we need to vote on that um are there any other questions or comments to the town manager anna paul could you provide a quick update on where we're at with community choice aggregation please does anything move since the last update yes um something moved tonight actually and i haven't really looked at it it's like i knew i'm just kidding did you no i'm just curious i have a i have a sixth sense about community choice aggregation it's my one hidden hidden psychic ability so we're trying to schedule we're trying to schedule something and i just saw that they're trying to schedule something this is definitely chicarello here we go um in early june for a community session be held jointly with north hampton palom uh and amherst and we'll have a some introductory remarks of a presentation but they're still trying to get the nail down the date that everybody can be there so thank you early june thank you okay um town council comments i have a written report that will come with the next meeting uh i'm going to be checking in with a couple different committees including ahra as to when you will be ready to come forward to for the council um and um we continue to shuffle the future agenda items are there any council comments at this time okay it's 843 and we're adjourned