 Okay, so welcome everybody to our Thursday community chat November 5th. Today we have brand new HR director or director of HR. Donna Ray can you Lee and joining your town manager Paul Bachman and I am Brianna. Normally we will then give Paula chance to give some updates and then we'll have Donna Ray introduce herself. Great. Thank you. Sorry to be late. So, the big news for us has been the university's reopening plans, which is good. We had a meeting with them this morning and they were, they will be presenting to the town council on Monday starting at 630. With a bevy of staff who will be there from all different aspects of the university so that will be a very important presentation that will again be recorded as Monday, November 9th at 630. For the university making presenting its plans and detail more detail about the reopening. And for the winter break and for in January when they seek to reopen. And then the other thing is just our case counts. We have we were in red we came we ticked down a little bit. You know, I think this is a type of thing that's going to yo yo up and down during the course of the next few weeks and we're not immune from what's going on in the rest of the state. So we expect to see some variability and the number of cases that we have. So that's it for the begin with. Thank you for those updates and I before I kick it off over to Donna Ray. I just want to remind those who are live when it comes to q amp a please use the q amp a function in zoom or raise your hand via zoom so we can hear from you live. We have questions that have already been submitted but we would like to hear from those who are in the room if you'd like. So Donna Ray, could you please go ahead and introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Donna Ray Keneally. I'm very happy to be here. I am the new director of HR and human resources. The skills and experience that bring me to the position are. I started my career in 1992 working at the pioneer health group which is a health insurance company. And I specialized in group and employee benefits and one of the plans that I made one of the group health plans I managed was the Western New England college then college health plan and then they were looking for a benefit specialist in 2003 and I went over to work for them in 2003 and I've grown in that area over the last 17 years and various positions in human resources. One of the attractions for that position for me was the tuition benefit. And so I was able to earn an associate's degree and a bachelor's degree in business and most recently, a Juris Doctor degree from the school of law. And I, to the extent possible I concentrated my coursework in employment law and labor law. And as of now to this minute I'm an adjunct faculty member teaching employee benefits at the law school. So those are some of the skills and things that I bring to the position here. So I was born and raised in Ludlow, Massachusetts, and I made a big move in 2009 over to Belcher town when I was remarried together with my husband Joe we have three beautiful children one is actually a student at UMass right down the street so I'm waiting to have lunch with him. We were waiting for a nice day and today is a very nice day so I hope to hear from him. And we also have three beautiful grandchildren the loves of my life. And so that's me on a personal level to I mean, just for my point, Donna Ray brings just relentless positive energy and a willingness to participate in things and I think it's jumping in with both feet she's only been here a few days but already taking on all kinds of things whether collective bargaining situations or working with looking to work with our diversity group or whatever and so it's just really great to have you here Donna Ray. Thank you I'm so happy to be here and I added this positive flower picture for my background so you know I was like I was looking at the background with free right before we you know came online and I said can I just put a picture there. It looks, it looks planned so you're like a two out of nine on room Raider I think she mobilized she grabbed some tax and was doing it for the viewer so real welcome. Thank you. So thank you I'm so happy to be here. Well I echo everything that Paul has said and just the short time you've been here I've jumped into a lot of our working groups and it's been great to have you on board. So we want to know what your first impressions are for working for the town even though you've been here for nine. Today is day nine eight complete days today's day nine. I also love my drive into work it's it's very nice. So my impression so far is very positive of course I've been able to so the town offer so many services and I've been able to meet with a lot of people from different departments the police department fire department the DPW libraries, different different departments with land use planning, and just very thoughtful people who wanted to take some time and really tell me what that you know the value that they their departments are adding to the town they they are very thoughtful and and seem to care a lot about what they do and how they do it and so it's been very interesting and now I'm looking forward to more tours of more more of our facilities, but I will say on my first day it was great. I met Winston, and it was perfect because of course first day of a new job after 17 years I was a little nervous and I got to meet the comfort puppy and and he was wonderful so very great first impressions. My first day was a snowstorm and town was closed so that was my first impression just to balance that with puppy. So the question we have here is, you know, as a human resources professional, what kind of approaches or initiatives are you thinking of introducing to the town of Amherst. Well, so first I want to learn everything about what you're already doing and I have to say some of the things that you're already doing are working and that's kind of reflected in the talent talented individuals I met that are, you know, leading a lot of your areas. I'm learning more about the culture here and then hopefully enhancing it is definitely a goal of mine I think workplace culture. I have interest in I have a background in it a little bit of human resources information technology I want to look at to make sure that, you know, we're providing the best services that are available to kind of, you know, all in the interest of serving the town and helping the employees to best serve the town. One of one of the, I think, I just joined the core equity group, and I'm very excited to know more about. And I think I have an understanding of the town's views but kind of to learn more about current practices and and I was just become, I just became a member of the government alliance on race and equity, and that's a national network for government workers and achieving racial equity and advancing opportunities for everyone working in government so I think that will be really helpful to me in terms of working for local government. So one of the first things I asked. We're talking she's like about her onboarding experience and Donna Ray said, it's a lot of paper here. Is there any way we can do something better than this I said that's your okay, you just assigned yourself the first task which is, look at our onboarding look at how we're doing things. And in the pandemic where we asked people to sign lots of things is there another way to do things electronically and so. So that's her first task is to sort of monitor how we've onboarded her and how can we do it better. And I think even in one week we learned to do things better with Emma dragon our new health director that we did with Donna Ray so. I think that's going to be interesting to see how you can bring your it background into some of the decisions and sort of. I mean, we're not going to get around that we need a lot of people to sign off on our, you know, sexual harassment policy sign off or acknowledge receipt of our it our technology use policy things like that but is there a better way than giving you a folder of paper that then yes there is. There's definitely a better way. Yes, we did that was our one of our first topics of conversation. And I think that approach is just really refreshing and welcome on when you come into an organization, you know we've done some work around making that process better for the public. But I love that perspective from especially a new hire, what a lot of us forget because you do it once. But yes there's so much room for growth there and I'm excited that Donna raise ready ready to roll on that. But but but I do think you know there were some things that I found that are, you know, standard the art top notch your application, your applicant management system you have some really wonderful things to so there's always room for improvement but you're in a good place to. That's a compliment to Brianna right there. Well actually me and the HR team that that work to implement that because they were they were pretty crucial so we're proud about that but that just means that we can expand on it. Now that Donna raise here so. Okay, so what do you see Donna Ray is the biggest challenges that the town faces in the human resources field right now whether that's coven related or, or otherwise. So and not, you know, I'm on day nine, so I'm not speaking really specifically to the town but just any organization this size, it's usually about promoting a positive workplace culture, especially you, you there are a lot of different areas we talked about the different buildings I've been to already so sometimes it's, you know, we're all on the same team we all have the same mission of you know of servicing the town, but sometimes just kind of having everyone together and promoting positive workplace culture and finding ways for constant communication and collaboration. I think is something that most organizations face challenges in so just promoting positive workplace culture so that's something I'm very interested in. I have not recognized any problems yet day nine but that's something I'll be looking at and there are so many things I see that are happening for example, you guys one already, or last year, an award for workplace wellness. So, and those are ways where you can show care and concern for your employees there's a lot of things that you can do to say hey we're really thankful that you're here and, and things like that. And I know you you dove right in and you now part of the wellness committee with myself and some others and that's been really great to have have you on board there, especially with your perspective from higher ed and some of the practices you can bring over from what's been working in that field. So we're really excited to expand upon that those wellness offerings that we can have for the town for town employees which then trickle down to how well they can serve, fill serve their function and serve the public so we're really excited right now to have you know years ago health insurance companies really didn't do much in terms of wellness and in terms of offering but you know a few years ago they started realizing that when you promote wellness that kind of, you know it helps everybody and so I think they, there's a lot of help from the insurance company that wasn't available before it's just now you got to know how to get them to give it to you so I can be helpful in that with you guys on that committee and I think maybe yoga in the comments and really cool stuff that we could do that would be great. What do you think employees need most right now. Maybe you can't say specifically an Amherst but just in general in light of the pandemic and just various current affairs going on. What's the focus. I think employers, you know so your, your best asset is your employees always that's my opinion and so you want to keep your employees engaged. And so that especially in the pandemic it's hard because we're, you know, some of us are remote and I think just communication and helping employees to to understand that you are concerned about their safety and you're, you better be you should be. And so I think, and I see that here in town definitely there's people walking around with yellow shirts giving me masks there's all sorts of good stuff going on here but I think those are important things to help your employees to feel that your care and concern. I really like a movie star so I'm not on TV a lot so I hope I'm doing okay. You're doing great. You're doing great. If I do really well I'm going to make my grandkids watch tonight. Well after this we will share that link with you so you can kind of have a premiere. At home. And I think you'll get a chance. What were both Donna Ray, can you only and our new public health director Emma dragon who hopefully she'll be one of the next guests coming up in a community chat so you also get to meet with her. But they'll get to be introduced to staff on Friday which is really important and difficult when, like you mentioned Donna Ray some of us are remote or blended or hybrid so are you are you excited to get to connect with the staff on Friday even though it's going to be virtual. Definitely, definitely and I want to give the message that I am someone who spend my practice I'm, I want to, I'm very happy to be here and I want to build up credibility and know that they have a person that they can talk with and so I think any kind of introduction whether it's remote or in person is a good way to say hey I'm here and you know, please come to me if you need me. It's really a hard time of yours during the pandemic because we were talking yesterday about, you know, town hall would have potlucks potluck lunches at the drop of a hat almost in any any occasion we could think of flag day potluck brunch let's do it. We can't have those now. And it's, it's, I mean there's a lot of people still working in town hall but we're not sharing food we're creating social distancing and things like that so it's kind of. It's, it's, it's unfortunate that we're in that situation hopefully we get out of it sooner than later but that's kind of the informal contact that we always had with each other is sort of missing. And that's how you build relationships and you say, and people who might not otherwise have a reason to talk with about hopefully you don't have to talk to the parking enforcement officer but they stop by give it if it's food they're there. And so, so we miss those types of informal ways that we got together as a, as a, as a employee community, which was always very positive. But we're finding other ways and that's why we do these sort of group zoom calls with 80 hundred 80 or 100 employees on asking questions checking in on how everybody's doing. People are usually just really thrilled to see each other, you know, right. I miss you. Exactly. It's a chance to show off your best background or your best coffee mug to so there's that's right. There's all kinds of ways. This is my coffee mug for the day. Very nice. I want to remind the folks in the room we've got about 10 more 10 more minutes so if you do want to ask a question it does not have to be human resources related although you're welcome to ask questions about that. Feel free to raise your hand via zoom star nine from the phone or pop your q amp a your question into the q amp a box. We'd love to hear from you. One thing I will mention, while we wait quickly maybe for a couple questions to come in is the new, the town manager now has his an archive of his reports online on his web page. We also have created a new way for you to subscribe to those reports. And as they're chock full of information so just talking about keeping people connected. It's something that will encourage our employees to sign up for probably tomorrow but it's it's great for the public. You can get a text message or an email when the latest report has come out and look at all of the previous reports that Paul has prepared. And you can do that from Amherst m a dot gov slash town manager, or Amherst m a dot gov slash notify me to get access to all of our categories. So quick plug there. I don't see any hands in the room and at the at the moment so I would love to ask both of you if there's anything you didn't get asked yet or anything that you thought of while we were talking that you think is important to share. Yeah, so I would I'll take the liberty of jumping in. So, last weekend was Halloween we had 8080 registered parties that through our party registration system that the Amherst police department works with the university to do. There were no noise complaints from those the largest party I think was 12. There were noise complaints about other locations which we responded to and we give out citations that in a negative sense of the word for violation of the town bylaw. This week I think there are only two parties that have been registered so that's down I think people got partied out last weekend because of Halloween. I mean it was it was Halloween it was a, it was a, you know, the time was changing. You know, it was the full moon so we were anticipating the worst but it didn't turn out to be that bad actually, in terms of noise complaints and things like that. Going forward with the governor's order we will not be doing using the party party registration system with the university because we feel like that might encourage parties and that's not the message we want to be sending. There's only three weekends left in the two weekends actually left in the school year on their last day of classes November 20th. And so that's the Friday before Thanksgiving so they won't most people if they're on if they're in the area they tend to leave around that time anyway. I think we have survived the fall semester with the university we've learned a lot through the process and enough I think for the that the university felt comfortable moving forward. I think we're going to create a new level of concern for folks because it does limit the number of people who can be gathered indoors at to 10 is used but used to if you're not a member of the household you still have to socially distance yourselves from each other in in the house if you're in the house. We don't plan on knocking on doors and counting heads. The complaints of our COVID hotline has been really good at managing these things. So I think, you know, things keep changing we keep responding to those things. And so, I think that's sort of the biggest thing that impacts the public right now we've been interacting with our restaurant industry industry, the restaurants, as you know, we don't have that many. They want to know they were seeking clarification what does the governor's order mean doesn't mean we have to stop serving at 930 is 930 the last call tell us give us more guidance on how that works and so, you know, again, Amherst police department inspection services, our health director all working with the business community to provide clarification so everybody wants to do the right thing. They just want to know what are the rules for it and there isn't a lot of clarification coming from the state so we're trying to be in sync with the other other cities and towns that are around us. So, I mean, you know, as I'm talking I was realizing almost everything is about coven one way or the other, there's something about coven and it's just as dominating town operations, it seems like. That's absolutely and I will mention, you know, just as a general plug to get those local active case counts for Amherst you can visit our regular homepage Amherst may go where you can link out to our coven specific page. If you want to go directly there, it's Amherst coven 19.org. We have dates Monday through Friday with the current active case counts and we also reflect the cumulative cases for you to look at as well as other information that's pertinent, the governor, governor's orders and, and some various resources for folks related to coven. I think we're going to finish in one last thing. I know we can wrap we're going to wrap up some momentarily. So next Wednesday, November 11 is Veterans Day. And the town offices will be closed but we are, you know, I think town employees are are going to be going out to the veterans that we've identified in our community, and giving gift bags to folks. And we also, you know, the VFW in the American Legion are will be doing some very small ceremony because it can't be big it won't be advertised in advance they'll just do it as a to maintain the tradition of honoring the veterans who served the country. So, we aren't forgetting veterans day it's just we're not we just can't have large gatherings like we have had in the past. It's important to acknowledge that thank you Paul. Great. Any last parting words you want to leave for our viewers, they didn't get a chance to say yet. I just look forward to the meeting everybody and I'm very grateful to be here. That's it. Great that's perfect thank you thank you for joining us today I know it's only day nine. We usually give people a couple weeks to sell in but we figured you were up for the task so thank you for joining us today. Have a great day. And thank you all who are watching right now and from post, we will be back next Thursday at noon in the same the same link. Thank you all. Thank you. Bye bye.