 Okay, so good morning. Today is Thursday, the May 19th, it's nine o'clock and I'm calling the finance committee to order for today, and pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 extended by chapter 22 of the acts of 2022. This meeting is being conducted by remote mean, means members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so why zoom, or by telephone. There's no in person attendance of members of the public permitted, but every effort is being made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time by technological means. And at this point, just want to remind everybody that I am having to leave the meeting actually by zoom link part way through, I will continue participating in the meeting and will be signing on at some point by telephone and that my link later will be by telephone because of that. The Vice Chair of the committee, Kathy Shane to be the chair for today's meeting. And therefore, I guess what I was going to do is just ask that the agenda for today's meeting be put on the screen and I'm turning it over to Kathy. So, Kathy, thank you. So, I think what I will start by doing Andy is what you usually do is just to make sure everyone can. We get a voice confirmation from everyone that we have a quorum and members of the committee can hear and be heard so Andy is clearly a yes Kathy's a yes Lynn Griezmer. Yes. Bob Hagner. Yes. Bernie Kubiak. Yes. Hi, Matt Halloway is here. Hi, Matt. Hi, President Michelle Miller. And I don't see Alicia Bernie Kubiak did I call you already yes. Yeah, you didn't. Okay, so I confirmed everyone and we do not yet have Alicia Walker I will note that she's here. And Lynn will call a council to order if we get to quorum at the council but I don't think we have it yet. Correct Lynn. We do not, but I want to make sure. Uh oh. Can you hear me. Yes. Okay, we do not, but we do have on a devil devil and got here and I want to make sure she can hear us and we can hear her. Good morning. Good morning. Sounds loud and clear. Okay, so I have the agenda for the meeting today's meeting is up on the screen and what I'd like to do since I've noticed that I see that Guilford has already joined us is reverse the order we will if there are any other overview of review the budget questions or and we can come back to that, but I would like to go right into public works and I believe Lynn wanted to make some opening remarks before we hear from Guilford. Lynn has was in charge of this section of the budget for today and sent questions in advance and I believe Bob then center some so Lynn I'm going to ask you to start before we then turn to Guilford. I want to start by thanking DPW for some very, very outstanding things we've seen in town. One is the terrific graph. I'm sorry Kendrick Park, and all the work that was done to design that and do that, and the various other park things that we've seen done. The other thing I want to point out as you listen to what go for it's going to introduce us to and the questions is the comprehensiveness of DPW. And the one of the things that often happens is people will say well, how does our DPW compare to other DPWs and the problem is, you have to look at what's inside DPW. There are many departments to be able to ever do a comparison, because unlike some places for instance have a separate water department, or they'll have a separate sewer department or something roads might not be under DPW. In our case, everything that's under DPW that could possibly be under DPW is under DPW. And so when we look at DPW. That's one thing. The other thing is, as you look at DPW in so many instances, it's things we either take for granted, or we don't see. And so it's probably one of the least understood and maybe appreciated departments in terms of what they do to help our town run literally every day. So with that, Guilford. Thanks a lot. That was really nice. I mean a lot of these projects come about from a lot of different things a lot of people have input into it. But you know one of the things that makes things like Graf Park, not Graf Park, but Kendrick Park work is the staff we have. We have four, actually five people upstairs who are engineering staff and Kendrick Park was designed by one of them. He took all the surveys and all the input from all the people and all the different committees and Paul Death here put it together and he built that park and he oftentimes had designers, designers block and was like I don't know I think she did this and you know but basically we turned them loose and said, make yourself the park you want to have and he took everybody's inputs and made a park out of it. He drove that 100% and made that pretty much the way it is now so it's good people that make this work. As we get into some of Lynn's questions. We'll see that it is kind of a problem. We're having some problems getting people to work for us and some, some realities will be setting in the coming years that the town may not. Well there's challenges for the town farther ahead is the way to put that. So, I'm just saying that. How would you like to start going over the budget. Do you want me to answer that Kathy. Yeah, why don't why don't we go in. Yeah, I mean, different if you want to give an overview that would be fine. We've all had the budget for a while. The fact that DPW covers, you know, a fair portion of the budget book, as well as the funds, but I think if you just quickly review which departments are in DPW. And then also the various funds were also going to look at today just a word or two about them. And then I think we can start with the questions. And I'm sure there's questions from other counselors as well. Right that works for us. Works for me. Sorry. So, like, like Lynn said, there's several different divisions within the DPW. And we actually, as I like to call it four types of money for different colors of money. We have general fund money we have water money we have sewer money and we have actually five water sewer general transportation and solid waste money. We cut we use money from all those different funding sources, as well as capital money. So, in the general fund side we'll talk with them first. We're made up of the administrative department, which are our clerks and office staff they take work requests from people on the phone see click fix request. They funnel those out to the people they need to go to and they feed the information back in. We get to the questions one of the questions is how does that work and that's one of the answers to that but we'll talk more about it. The administrative staff I talked about is also in the administration fund. There's five people upstairs we have the town engineer assistant town engineer, we have an environmental scientist, and then we have to engineering technicians. The engineering technicians and the assistant town engineer spend a lot of time during this season managing jobs. One of the one of the engineering technicians is out on North Pleasant or North Hampton Road right now, getting wet. Overseeing and helping the state with making sure our part of that project goes in like we'd like it to and our part of that project is installing a new waterline before they paved the road. And that waterline replacement in house that was done in house and we passed that on to the state contractor who added it to the state design work. So, inside engineering is a lot of expertise and a lot of capabilities. The next group I'll talk about is the highway division that's the largest group in the general fund side. They handle all the roads roadside mowing. They also handle all the snow and ice. So this group. There's roughly two, two to three, there's three actually three crews in it to highway crews specifically, and then another crew which handles the sign maintenance, and it also handles the parking meters and parking parking signage as well. So we have two people who handle the sign maintenance and parking meters, and then we have basically two crews that do the rest which can range from replacing a manhole to flushing a sewer line to flushing a drain line to rebuilding a drain line to as far as actually taking out pipe and replacing water I mean replacing drain or sewer pipe. So they have quite the capability in that group. As we go down the list on your chart and your organization chart we'll just hit the next one which is street and traffic lights. Street and traffic lights is actually a group that exists, mainly just to hold the general fund money that we use in this endeavor. We have two electricians on staff and they maintain just about everything electrical for the DPW and they also do a lot of work for the rest of the town and the schools as well at times. But traffic signals and traffic lights is here in this budget. This budget pays a little bit of personal cost but mostly this money goes to paying the electricity and the cost of replacing a light or to do some upgrades or to make some repair. The street lights is the same. There's no money for people in that account there is money for maintaining the street lights and for actually paying for electricity. Equipment maintenance is on as the next one on your list that's at the top on your org chart on page page 138 equipment maintenance isn't a general fund. We maintain all our vehicles. They also get receive money from the enterprise funds to maintain the enterprise fund vehicles. So if you look closely at the budget you'll see there's some transfers from the enterprise funds to the DPW. And most of that is to pay for some staff work which is the administrative staff and also to pay for equipment maintenance to repair their equipment. This is not the equipment like in a water treatment plan or that the wastewater plan but it's for their vehicles. Equipment maintenance is mostly vehicles, snow plows, mowers, large machinery like the loader, the backhoe, the large John Deere mower we have to. So this group of three people maintain all those. The group is treeing grounds, treeing grounds, as it is they take care of all the shade trees. They also take care of all the grounds. Mostly the grounds the easiest way to think of the grounds of it is if it's a large piece of grass, we mow it, and we will do things for it. Amy smirking there. There are some overlap in the school department we do some mowing for the school department but then they do mowing too. So there's a little bit of overlap. The town hall people they have a small yard they maintain their yard, the DPW doesn't maintain town hall it doesn't maintain the yard at the, at the Jones library either. So treeing grounds like maintains grove park they maintain Mill River Plum Brook, the commons and those types of things. So treeing grounds also does swimming pools, kind of a neat thing. And we have our new spray park, we do spray parks to the spray park actually is working, if anybody is concerned about it, it does work. And it will magically probably start working tomorrow and stay on for the season, since it's going to be so hot this weekend just so anybody who's listening will know, you can pass the word around. The group does all that. This group also is responsible for our three cemeteries. So they also will dig the graves and close the graves for people who pass on and that needs to be taken care of. So this that group there has a lot of different things and one of the. And this group is, and actually in all the general fun sides is we're just not putting enough into the groups to give the service level that the town residents are asking for more and more the service levels are increasing but the money is just not there. In 2005, the money for the highway or for the construction maintenance group that was budgeted for materials for that group was 100 and was $155,000. That was night that was 2005 budget. This year's budget, or actually the approved budget for FY 22, the number is roughly $60,000. Over the years, we've cut that budget for material down, but then inflation has hit it, and people ask why we can't do as much as we used to do. Well, we just, it's not the money isn't there. I mean, we do use some general funds sometimes when we start running out of money, but operation and maintenance money has been reduced over the years at least in that division and then some of the other divisions as well. So as you think about what's going on, even though, even though the budget lines are going up, that's mostly paying for people's salaries. The money to pay for the materials we're putting in the pothole or for the paint on the road or for signage replacing signs you can't read the sign that that money has gone down over since 2005 it's really I've read my chart I got my chart out and I was amazed to see it but it actually has and I can share with other people they want it but it's interesting so that's the biggest thing that's going on in the does general fund groups is what they do and then money just isn't there and inflation is just eating it away. The other groups we have. We do all water distribution and water treatment and the water operate the water reservoirs and that's in the water enterprise fund. The solid waste fund and runs a transfer station. That's under our group there's only three people in that group and they operate the transfer station. There's lots of talk about zero waste and trying to change how we do trash and Amherst. I really look forward to talking about that. One of the things that popped into my brain recently was the fact that everybody thought that we should have a single hauler in town so we could reduce the number of vehicle trips in a neighborhood. As I was sitting in my neighborhood on a day off and I counted how many times the prime truck, the UPS truck, the FedEx truck went up and down the street, I realized, even if you cut out all those garbage trucks, we've now because of the pandemic we've got the air dime where we have six or eight vehicle trips a day down the neighborhood street that we never had before because of so many. You got the prime truck you got the prime prime truck plus the FedEx truck we got the air truck the ground truck. It would be amazing, but it would be good to talk about trash because trash is going up, the cost of disposal is going up it's mostly tied toward towards the cost of handling equipment, fuel and cost. And we'll probably have to look at raising our rates at the transfer station next to this coming July to meet some needs we have which we didn't anticipate when we started talking about the budget back in November. But now we're seeing rate increases from our our disposal sites and they're quite significant we have a 12 we're going to have a 12% increase in trash disposal. That's coming. Guilford I'm sorry I need to interrupt you because we do have to call the council to order so just one second. Kathy do you want to check on whether Alicia can hear you. Alicia, we just check it voice and presence check please. Hello yes everyone I can hear you thank you. Thank you. And I would like to call the town council to order at 925. I've already checked to make sure that on a Devlin got here can hear us and we can hear her. I'm calling on Pam Rooney. I'm here I can hear you thank you, Dorothy Pam. Yes, I can hear you thank you. Thank you all. I'm sorry for that interruption. No problem. Thanks to stop talking I was looking for a place to break. So then we have the sewer division or wastewater division or wastewater division works with our highway division in conveyance and getting the sewage from your house to the wastewater treatment plant. As you see in the budget there's some line items, which actually pay for personnel and equipment in the general fund to maintain the flushing truck, the flasher truck and to do the flushing. The highway guys actually respond to all the overnight calls for sewer blockages. And then the wastewater guys respond to all the calls for any type of pump station issue or wastewater plant issue overnight. And then we cross over there and then we cross money over to compensate for that as well. But the wastewater division runs the wastewater plant specifically and runs our pump stations we have how many me 22 pump stations, 22 pump stations. One of the things we're looking for in this budget. If you if you notice in the, in the capital for wastewater is that we're actually looking to replace one of our pump stations it's a pretty significant number. It's, but it's something we need to do pump stations, pump stations are there to keep the material flowing to the wastewater plants that can be treated. That's one of the, we actually have some great many number of pump stations more than most communities our size which is something else we try to compare our community to another community. And then as a sewer and the number of pump stations we have are not common for a community our size. And then we also we're part of the transportation fund. We have one and a half people who work for the transportation fund predominantly those one and a half people cover meter meter repairs not changing them changing the money or collecting money. We do meter repair and maintenance on the meters, which include the single post meters and the kiosk. We also line the park and lots. We sweep the park and lots. We replace signage in the park and lots and that all falls under our part of the transportation fund, right there. So, overall, that's kind of the, that's the whole big picture of public works and a little. What we do. And what the highlights are the budget so it might be better just to go to questions next if we want. Um, go for it I was thinking that you might want to introduce Amy, because some of the counselors may not have met her although I think you gave a great demo of what sludge looks like in sewers to a council meeting to all of us. Amy is a key is the assistant superintendent. She's in charge of all the operations and most of the divisions group, all the divisions report directly to her for the day to day operations. The she works with me and then the town engineer Jason skills, who manages almost all the he manages all the construction projects we have. We have the three of us are the top of the pyramid and make try to make sure all the balls keep moving in the, in the world. Um, so I sent a set of questions. Go for two. Andy who also sent them to Kathy to Sean and to you and I think I even CC Paul. So, um, I can either ask those questions and have you talk about them. Or you can just start with them but as we go through, we might want to pause as we go through with each to see whether there are counselors who want to build on the question that I've asked. So, you know, if you would like, I will start with the questions. You can do the questions I'll be fine. Great. Okay, I'll be glad to. Let me just find my questions. Okay, so the first one was really about resident work requests as counselors, particularly district counselors. One of the issues we hear about is requests to DPW for everything from potholes to water runoff to, you know, just goes on and on. How do you respond to these requests? How do you follow up and communicate with the complainant? And do you have a quality control system that basically shows how long it takes to respond, or at least to let them know what's going on how it takes, how long it takes to fix the problem, etc. Yes, we have a system. A lot of people, a lot of people would like more from our system. We would like it to do a little more than we have. But we do have a system. We use C-click fix. We did have another system that we were using, but it actually got too expensive to keep paying the software and the annual dues for it. So we got rid of it. So mostly residents will send us a request either through C-click fix or through an email or a phone call. Those that get entered into, the emails and phone calls get entered into C-click fix and then those get distributed, like I said earlier to the division directors they're responsible for. Most of them get taken care of rather quickly, a lot get put into a bigger pile and get taken care of together. Potholes or potholes you put a pothole request in. Unfortunately, we laid off the pothole ferry. So the pothole ferry doesn't go out immediately when you call in. It has to wait for the pothole guys. The pothole guys get a group of potholes together in a certain area, and then we go work that area. And then the next day we'll work another area. I wish we could bring the pothole ferry back, but I don't think we'll ever be able to do that. So potholes are put together in a group to go out and work on. There are people who make a call in with something that which is also not something that can be taken care of immediately. Seeing calls, those things we have to go through a process of calling in and making sure we have all the material to do it. We call in to dig safe and get a dig safe. We have to get material sometimes. Sometimes they can't be repaired when a person calls in because it's the middle winner and we'll just, if the sinkhole is not bad enough, we'll just kind of let it sit until the weather gets better to do work on it. So a lot of things go into when we actually get out and do the repairs. The biggest call we're getting right now is Bay Road is rough. Not pothole, it's just rough. All the pothole patching has made it a little uneven. We are going to pave it. It won't be paved until probably closer to the August time period than July, August time period. So we just have to wait for our paving contractor to come in. We do do some feedback. Feedback could be better. We're working on that. It's just something that takes time to work out and with getting rid of the old program we had just using C-click fix, it's kind of sometimes a little bit of an issue because sometimes it was C-click fix. You don't have to give any information at who you are, how to get back in touch with you. So we have no way of contacting everybody who calls in sometimes. Yeah, I was just going to add that if people, like I would encourage people when they enter work requests in, if they want that feedback loop, if they, like if they put an email, then they even just certain things. This has been forwarded to a division director. This work order has been complete. Those emails will automatically go out. If people don't put that in or don't give their email address, then that's I think where we, there's not an automatic update as some of these things happen. And that's where the communication lacks a little bit because we don't always have the manpower to call somebody back and give them an update. An email would be much faster. If people do emails, then it can auto generate. And then if they have a question, they can certainly follow up and we can get them more details. But at least that automatic email in the system will give them some status updates. So I know that Bob has a question, but will the click and fix allow you to pull out and analyze like a monthly report or something that gives you a sense of numbers of calls, numbers of responses, how fast the responses were going back to the quality control question. It doesn't, it doesn't. So if you just want to know calls and how fast they were taken care of it can do that, but calls that get grouped with other calls. There's no way to track that and see click fix. There's not a, and that's what the work order system we used to have did you could take them and you can group them together and this make it into one work order then you can track that one work order. So some, you'd have some information that can come back from see click fix, but you don't get a full picture because of that grouping of calls we do together. Okay. Yeah, Bob and I also have a question so Bob go ahead. I just wanted to note that many software packages have a screen where certain information is required maybe you could modify the system so that an email is required in order to submit a work request that might then increase your ability to track things. I don't know if you can do that or not with that software. I did ask the click fix and they don't require it. They just, you can be anonymous. So it's just, we just need to tell people if you really wanted to response back put an email address in there and we'll get an email back. I'm just going to follow up on that if I don't want to get off my zoom screen but is that instruction to people in big bold letters when they go on to see click fix like if you if you want to hear back. If you are, you know, put in whatever field. And then the second question go for just on this is the actual data which is in your table on page 141 shows a big decline since FY 17, you know it's down by not quite 50%. I don't have a sense of, of that are more calls coming in by phone not if this captures I just was wondering why there's been such a drop off. It's, and it doesn't look like just this past year it looks like it's been first to decline to 2018 and then the last two years have both been even a bigger drop off so I don't know whether coven somehow has people no longer caring about potholes or whatever you're getting so it's a question both can you alert people to put the mail in and why the drop off. So I don't remember we've we've talked to, I think it's been talked to it a couple times about putting rewarding that are putting that in the information when you fill out a C click fix I'm not sure if it's there or not. I don't use it that often sorry. I think I haven't checked and I apologize. Go for it. I just went in and did a pretend one and it says if you would like the city to potentially connect contact you regarding this issue. Please leave your phone number below so maybe there's something we can do there to to just update that. So the real I mean the real drop off in the customer response work request there is the fact that we used to take the number of C click fix calls and then we used to take the number of work orders we generated on our work order system and add them together. Okay, and then when we got rid of the work order system what you see in the last two three years is actually more. More what people call in is caught capture on C click fix. Okay, so it's a data, a data shift on the way you're catching up. Okay, thank you. Are there any other questions on the issue of resident work orders and that whole thing. Okay, then let's go on to the next. The next was staffing. Are you having any problems recruiting and retaining personnel are their, their specific areas that are more difficult than others. What are the obstacles to recruitment and retention. And then another part was on page 139. You mentioned staff reorganization, could you tell us what that means. So the answer is yes yes and yes to the first three questions. We like every other. We like every other company and enterprise and then is having problems recruiting and we're having some problems retaining and it is getting to be. Maybe more of an issue than it's ever been since I've been here. We are by nature, the nature of the town of Amherst is we are a larger employer. We usually hire people who are looking to take the next step, they may have started somewhere in a smaller community. They come to our community they get more experience and they go to a bigger community. So just kind of the nature of being a medium size, medium size town or small cities just kind of that's our nature. Recently we've had several people, we've lost several people to larger organizations. Springfield water and sewers one. We do spend a lot of time training people. I don't think we've hired anybody. Well, we've only hired one person, I think, in the last year who actually had a water wastewater license. Everyone else we've hired had no license they were interested in the field and had some background, and we've got them, we have gotten them licensed. That goes back many years and that's water and wastewater we hire people that are good workers interested in the field maybe have some sort of experience or education, but we do the investment in getting them the license and getting them the experience and some people stay with us and other people use that to then move on to, you know, higher opportunities and other locations, now that they're licensed and more qualified. I mean, we have one operator in water he came to us through a program to the VA for a job. Career training for a new job. And he's been with us for a long time Matt Yoder. Excellent employee he's one of our water operators. He's done everything we've asked him to and he loves it. Well, I won't say he loves it. It's work. He enjoys working for us and he's been with us for quite a while now and he's been a success story so we do use just about every means we can to try to attract people we we tap into some of the vocational programs we try to get some of those students to come. We have actually one who just came from a vocational school now at wastewater he's starting his career and he looks very promising. We have several, we actually have one you mass graduate, who just came to us maybe a year ago. We have a UMass masters, he's a master's or doctorate. Master's and then he did like a year of from research after he completed his master's. So he was ready to leave the educational world and come back into the working world, and he has, he got his master's now he's working for us. So we bring in a lot of people, and we do have to a lot of training. The reorganization part that we need that we're focused on right now is we've had a lot of retirements are and we have a couple more to go. The other director retired and then his assistant who we were going to, who was going to be the director he decided to go to another entity. So, we had to shuffle and wastewater and get that reorganized we have a brand new division director there, Andrew brace, he's doing a great job. He's the assistant there and he Kaiser Andrew Kaiser he's the gentleman who came from UMass, and then the existing staff is stepping up and doing a really good job to reorganize that. So as you have a retirement and we plan for retirement and it doesn't actually go the way we plan. Those are things we're having to work out. We had a retirement in the office here, Cheryl, Cheryl McNamee who who actually had been here 40 years. 41 41 years. She left. She's been with the town 41 years I think she's been with us like she was with the DPW for 35 of those 41 years. She basically started the town when she was 18 and has been here. So in our, so we had a change in the office staff so now we're trying to get people up to speed on what she was doing and also rearrange a little bit and balance out the workload a little more. So those are the things that we're facing in the water division will probably have the division director retiring there shortly. He probably has less than less than five years. He'll be leading and will be adjusting there as well so all these things are going on all the time and we're kind of balancing in the mouth. So back to the issue of bringing people in who aren't licensed and or need additional training and get a sense of how long that takes and the cost to us and whether there is a way to have an understanding that if we invest in you this way. They're giving us back, at least two more years or three more years or whatever the case I mean there. When, for example, faculty take sabbaticals from higher ed institutions. They either have to come back for a year or two years depending on what they do, or they have to pay back the sabbatical. I'd be happy if you want to start sabbatical program. I'm asking about the cost and finding I understand that. In the wastewater water side it can take almost a year to actually get an operator up to speed and actually understanding our system. The licensing is actually can go a little faster getting someone to be licensed is just a matter of going through the testing steps in the water system they've made it licensing so you have to get your grade one first then your grade two and then your grade three. We're actually going to be a grade four system soon so there's time periods and it takes a little longer to hop through all those little time hoops. It depends on whether it's water wastewater or whether it's a truck driver or whether it's an equipment operator we also bring them in, we bring in a lot of our highway and parks and tree tree and grounds people in with no, no licenses at all either and we have to give them get them license which is a commercial driver's license usually and then operators license. So the amount of time varies and the cost varies. We usually spend at least one the $2000 just on the licensing requirements for water and wastewater. And then the rest of the time is the rest of the cost is cost that's the supervisors time getting that person up to speed versus doing what he's supposed to be doing and stuff like that so it's a little hard to quantify the exact dollar cost it takes. I don't know how much the specific classes cost but on the job training part is something we came really put a figure on. And of course the reason I'm asking all these questions is because personnel changes cost money. And that's where the issue for this lies. So Kathy do you want to see if other people have. I don't have anything because I, this came up in a couple of different areas you've already covered one I was going to ask Guilford on retirement it looks. I don't know what you've had more retirements and you expected but you notice that you, you're facing. You're looking forward seeing several are coming so it sounds like it's both the marketplace and retirement that's affecting you right. Yeah. I just wanted to add that, you know, I, I come from the private sector and retired now but the company I work for would, in some cases pay for classes, language classes, other things but if there was a butt associated which is, if you got that money you had to work another two years or something like that otherwise you had to pay the money back so I do think that that is common practice it's certainly in the private sector. I don't know about the public sector, but I would. I think it's, it would make sense to at least explore being able to do something like that. Can I jump in on that quickly. I'm a, I'm a huge fan of that. A couple years ago I think I reached my wits end with training operators and then losing them to other systems. You know, we, we packaged them nicely and then sent them off to their real job is what it felt like. I believe some of the challenge though is that everyone that works here they have an association contract they're basically a union and so there's just the challenge of, you know, making it okay with that and writing that into their collective bargaining unit. So I think it would just be a little bigger process. But one that I'm, I advocate for, for sure. I'm just going to add to that and say, faculty at the University of Massachusetts and staff are unionized as well. And it had to get no negotiated into their contracts. I mean this, this is money that we're investing in people and I think we have every right to expect some level of continuation with us for a period of time after that investment. So both Anna and then Bernie, Anna. Yeah, hi, so I'm curious with you said you've got a decent number of retirements coming up in the next five years. I'm curious if you're doing any sort of formalized succession planning for those roles. I'm assuming that, you know, folks who are retiring have hypothetically been here for a little bit longer, and to replace those roles directly would cost a little bit more because there's training and so I'm curious if you have any succession programs set up so that you can move folks internally into those roles as appropriate. And then hire kind of quote unquote lower down that ladder right so that you can build a pipeline. And also you know that encourages employees to stay etc etc when they see potential for growth, and all of those good things and I'm just curious about what you've got in play for that. Thank you. So in wastewater we had a really good succession plan set up for our wastewater direct vision director when he retired. But then when it came to offer it to the, the next person, we didn't have a compensation plan that can compete with the outside world so our, our succession plan all apart. So the next retirement is in water, we have that just the one in water so far coming up that we know of in the immediate future. If we go out farther there's the more we go out farther there's probably four more. But in the immediate future water and water we've already kind of been working with the person we think is going to probably be the next person to take over and we've been planning with that person. And the only issue will probably come up to the same thing is when we get ready to offer the position, how they feel about the, how they feel about the compensation for taking the position. Sean has his hand up. So in the DPW contract there is an education assistance program where we will pay for courses potentially if it's part of the job. And that program does require that the staff continue working for us for 12 months or they have to pay back part of that. So if that fits in perfectly with the types of things that Guilford and Amy were talking about their sort of specific certifications that may not fall under that. But we do have that a broader education or of course would be covered under that. And that was just recently added the last time we did the contract. I just brought that up to Bernie you had had your hand up it went down to. I think Sean's fairly well answered the question I was just going to point out the fact that the town attorney has a pretty substantial labor law practice and it might be beneficial to bring them in try and resolve this issue because it does pop up with other employees to particularly with police officers. So it sounds like people are making some steps in that direction so thank you. So I think I'm not seeing any other so Lynn, let's move on. Okay, even the size and broad span of DPW is responsibilities. You have various ways you can impact and help meet the climate action goals, and the many opportunities described in the carp plan, which is the climate action. Purchase of vehicles maintaining open space, etc. Does DPW have a plan on how it will contribute with to the achievement of these goals over time. The short answer is really no. We have not found anything on the equipment side we're not really seeing any equipment that's going to contribute immediately to these goals that have been set. So we haven't set up a plan to actually start phasing out the summer vehicles for electric vehicles. So this isn't that the equipment hasn't got there. You can buy a loader that's a battery electric powered battery loader. It'll work for eight hours a day or nine hours a day, but then it requires at least an eight hour to 10 hour charge time on the market right now. The problem with that is is when you go into a snowstorm we can work 24 hours. So do we buy a loader. That's one and a half to two times the cost of a conventional loader to meet the climate plan knowing that we won't be able to use it. We don't know all the time when we need it, or do we wait, and by a more efficient fuel, a more efficient fossil fuel version that will take us to the next point hopefully by that time. There's something for the equipment size that'll work. We are starting to look at some of the smaller ground mowers. The division director and tree and grounds, he's actually identified a few that might work for him, and might be allowed to let us start shifting our smaller molar, molar fleet over. So that's something we are working for in our buildings and in our buildings and operations as our building we've actually been doing a lot of the climate action goals since before I got here. We're always looking to increase the efficiency of our motors our pumps are controlling devices. We've participated with ever source. I think the first day I was here I had to sign off on one of the agreements that ever source paid for 50% of a new motor and wastewater plant, just because it was going to be more energy efficient. And we continue to do that led lighting we've converted all our buildings led lighting. That's the right spectrum or not. The power savings has been very good. The street lighting we converted those led lights. There's been a great savings there and like money, but we've mostly are driven by cutting our dollar footprint, not our carbon footprint, but as we cut our dollar footprint we are reducing our carbon footprint at times. We've really truly been able to grab anything that's in the climate action goals and truly start planning to implement any of that yet. See, I see both Dorothy and Sean Dorothy. I'm not sure I'm trying to do the picture and I can't do it okay. I'm not sure it went with Gilbert just said about Alan snow. Are you talking about leaf blowers, does the town use gas powered leaf blowers, because there's been a lot of complaint from many many conversations about their use, and that seems to be something that I know that that it's an expense to change over equipment, but that seems to be something that the town could do now. So just interested in response. So leaf blowers, we've looked at the smaller 50, the 52 to 48 inch deck riding motors we have, and some of our smaller weed eaters and so forth we've looked at those. We could switch over now. The problem being is is they do cost more than a conventional machine, and we do have to. We do have to have more batteries and more charging capability with our equipment, as we will go through the day so we would have to have some way of charging those batteries whether we have a trailer that's solar powered that can charge the batteries as we're working, we have to go back to the shop and drop the batteries off and change the batteries or we have to buy enough batteries that you can work the whole day and then go back to the shop and let them charge overnight. There are little, there are little issues we're working on, but we are we do think that the Alan's, the tree and grounds equipment is probably going to be the first place we start looking into some of this stuff, and we do use gas powered blowers. Right now, unfortunately, they are the most efficient for the times we use them. So that would seem to be something that that's some of the state money and grants could do to pay for all the expense of the transition and the things you mentioned. So showing your hand was up it did go back down. Yeah, I was just going to a few quick things I think all the departments are struggling with the vehicle element of the carp. Mainly just because of the technology and the availability of some like the police department it's a little easier because of the types of vehicles they use but the departments that use larger vehicles I think that's going to continue to be a struggle. I was going to see if Gilbert wanted to speak a little bit more about there's a couple pieces in the carp that I think you have done some planning on and that's related to like stormwater management and some of the reclaimed water and reuse water that I know those are two pieces within the carp that you guys are doing a lot of planning around. Yeah, so I mean the stormwater part is all part of our store permit and we're doing a great deal with that. That's all, but we're looking at it, not so much from the carp as we are from our permit requirements and probably, I think we've really talked about it last in our own staff is we probably have another two years of things we need to do for our permit before we can actually start deviating off and start doing things that we have in the carp and things that we want to kind of address that more climate related than the permit related. So we are we do have that but it's a little so a year or two out by two years out based on what we have to do for the permit reuse water is something we've been working on since for the last 18 years we've been working on reuse water and we've been supporting the reuse water project with UMass. They may be going a different direction with their reuse water. So if that does happen we should know shortly within the next, well we should know this month or last month, hopefully we'll know at the end of June. If they go a different direction we will probably also take our reuse water and put it on the back burner for a little while until it's more profitable for the town to actually install the system for a town reasons not for UMass and town reasons. You're muted Kathy. I'm sorry Anna, please unmute. Thank you. So, alright, I get it with the things like plows that yes you could reasonably, you know, expect 24 hours but I do think, you know, the, the things that do reasonably only run for an eight hour shift kind of at the max. Or at least during daytime right I, it would be really great to see some sort of phasing plan for those things and I recognize that a lot of that is probably what you were saying right is more trees and grounds. But I think it's also important to consider when these things are being used and for how long right like realistically, there are some things that need to be equipped to be able to run for more than the charge time. Right, but, but I think it's also important to recognize, or maybe to kind of consider which vehicles, can we use for for only. Sorry, which vehicles would we only need to use for eight hours that we then could allow to charge for the next shift or whatever right like it goes for one person's eight to 10 hour shift and then, and then charges again and the phasing plan for that could be could be really beneficial just to kind of consider as as we go and as these vehicles continue to be more available and more affordable. I agree and that's why we say the smaller stuff that's in the tree and grounds division is actually showing itself to be the most, most usable in this area and we'll probably, we'll probably experiment with one or two pieces of equipment in the next year or so see how that goes. I more just wanted to clarify on that point because I think sometimes when we're thinking like the equipment that plows and that works overnight we think the highway division, but it is actually basically every single truck in our fleet is out there we have staff from you and water and wastewater and tree and grounds and everything and so. Great, definitely a great point Anna that we need to look at but it's it's a small number of our, our fleet. Unfortunately, so we have to focus on the smaller equipment where we can make a measurable difference. Okay, thank you. I think we can move to the next. Okay. Guilford this is this question is really more to help people understand the breadth of the issues you deal with. Many issues challenges and opportunities for DTPW depend on various federal and state agencies and regulations for instance us and State Department of Environmental Protection and issues related to water PFAS etc. Can you just give us a sense of all of the different agencies that you must work with that regulate the work you do. And you may want to provide that to us in a separate list but just give us a sense of some of it now and I know Amy you have some of these very strong connections as well. Please go ahead. Oh, do you want the list we must work with or we try to avoid to work with. Well now I think must work with where we need to go. So, and the water side in the water side the state of Massachusetts has control over water issues so we work with Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, predominantly on the water side. DCR is actually also involved in those conversations with water they help set the permit requirements and safe, safe water drinking yields and so forth. So we work with DCR. We work with my, you might want to not use that. Oh yeah DCR is department of conservation recreation. Yes, we. We work with them. Many of the other environmental agencies of the state, I won't give their acronyms but there's the Fish and Wildlife people and ecological restoration those people also get involved in some of the water stuff we work with as well. On the storm water side, the main controlling group in the storm water side is actually the US Environmental Protection Agency. In Region one, they manage storm water in Massachusetts because they haven't given delegation to the state yet. So we work predominantly with the EPA on that, but the state also has its rules. So the Department of Environmental Protection storm water group is working with us on that. And then when you start working in the storm water world you also bring in more department more agencies of the state as well. So we have had to also work with the Coast Guard for storm water because navigable waters of the United States is controlled by the Coast Guard and Army Corps. US Army Corps of Engineers has been involved in some of our work as well for permitting. We storm water just gets to be wild, just to be wild and crazy. On the water side, the state also doesn't have control in the wastewater side the primary control agency is the EPA again so we work with the EPA wastewater side. And then we also have the state agency, the State Department of Environmental Protection wastewater people in there as well. So work in wastewater, we also get introduced into a bunch of people who are doing like the Long Island Sound Committee for keeping the Long Island Sound, cleaning up the Long Island Sound of working groups. Some of them are under EPA, some of them are private groups, but they're connected River Valley River, can I get River, can I get River Association right. Yeah, they have things they we work with them on because they're working on trying to keep the Connecticut River clean and that's where we discharge our wastewater to. So there's a group, a group of people there. On the highway side we're working with Mass DOT a great deal, and Mass DOT and federal highway get involved with work we do. So that that is going on. And then department of transportation. Everyone knows DOT. Everybody's got to know that one. The, the, in the, in the, and actually in the tree and grounds division we actually end up working with some really interesting groups. Because we run this run the cemetery we're also there's some issues with our border health and with the state boards that control the disposition of bodies and so forth and we have to deal with that plus tracking, tracking where we tracking the people we vary. In turn, tracking the people we intern sorry. And then there's, there's a whole slew of them, and then almost every day where we're dealing with the town conservation commission we're dealing with environmental protection for the state environmental protection for wetlands and environment endangered species. The meat, meepa, meepa requirements which are the mass environmental. The bigger requirements for they actually can trigger whether you have to do a full environmental impact study or not do a full environmental impact study. Those are things we have to think about just about every day when we're doing projects with roads and water and drainage. The agencies outside the town is quite a big thing we do. I think I got most of them. But building on that, do we have this is a probably a dangerous question to ask, but of the various things that are considered to be contaminants like PFAS. What would you say are issues that Amherst itself has a problem or a potential problem with. So we've been required to do PFAS sampling. All our samples came back negative. So as an emerging contaminant our watershed and our area of town is not threatened by PFAS. The bigger issues we're going to face are more bigger global stormwater issues nitrogen phosphates and just volume. So the nitrogen phosphate is mostly going to come from our wastewater system and what we can discharge into the Connecticut River. And then we're also going to see those contaminants in our stormwater requirements. There's some TMDLs, which are total maximum daily limits, which are going to be set for our stormwater and our wastewater discharge. A lot of that is still being worked out. We have some of the TMDLs that we don't have all of them. Those are coming down the pike as well. Something that is just now getting a lot of attention is PFAS and wastewater. If you've been following the stories in Maine where you have farmers who are out in the middle of nowhere. And their wells are now contaminated with PFAS because they actually applied land applied sludge to their farms for fertilizer because that was a good thing to do then they're now having PFAS problems. So I imagine PFAS will also start to be looked at in the wastewater side to but that hasn't really happened yet. Those are nitrogen, phosphates, TMDLs are the big things that we're kind of looking at right now as being kind of threats to us. When I wrote the question, I couldn't remember what PFAS stands for. Maybe one of the two of you can come up with it. That's an Amy thing. Yeah, it's it's per and poly fluorinated carbons are like, yeah, it's it's basically they're forever chemicals but it's it's a product that was used for a long time to make, you know, your nonstick pan not sticky and to make your chemical waterproof and that sort of thing but now they're finding that because of the structure of that chemical to make it so resilient and make it nonstick and waterproof and all those things. It means it doesn't break down over time in the environment and so that that's the that's the hazard with them. Okay, thank you. That may get to some people not seem like a financially related issue, but it's a very definite financially related issue for new counselors last year I think it was, we did two bylaws to bring us to move us up to state standards, and Amy or in the process of implementing those bylaws and there are some costs associated with coming up to those standards when was storm water and the other one was. It was the ID DE with the illicit discharge and what's the other discharge and elimination program. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for very exciting presentations. Invite us to a meeting. You're right. Any follow up questions on either of the army of that before I move on. My only follow up is are these these are outside testing agencies if we're doing something with soil so I know there was an issue here that Rob Moore got involved with taking down a building, they made it keep the cement base of it because there were fumes there's it's an old trucking site. So do you get involved with any of that or is that just something it's on your radar screen that someone else is looking at. Is that a different entity that is that that's my question on the contaminants issue. We get involved in it if it's in the public way, or if it's one of the buildings and that we operate will get involved in that but we don't get involved on private property with it. Thank you. And we do get involved if it's leached across into something we own to sometimes. Bernie. Yeah, in that laundry list. You failed to mention public safety. DPW is the third component in our public safety response and people should keep that in mind as well. I'm going to turn around go for maybe about twice a month from the transportation advisory committee so I should add my thanks there. I had a question and it may not. This may not fit with our current talk but it relates to the federal infrastructure infrastructure money, which is going to be likely to hit beginning in fall. I think there's both prospects and problems and I would like just to talk about that for a little bit. Yes, there's prospects and promises there but how the biggest thing is we don't know how it's going to be implemented yet we're hoping it's a we're hoping it's a very uniform method where it's more like the chapter 90 program where the town so big has so many miles of money of roads or so many miles of water lines or so many miles of sewer line and you get this amount of money from the program that's kind of how we're hoping it's going to run, but we're not really seeing much yet Sean and town manager Paul Bachman may have the more information on how they're actually formulating those. Yeah, I mean the same. We don't have much more to add from what go for said I think we've heard a lot of funds are beginning going to become available for infrastructure and for green projects but we haven't seen actually how those will be distributed yet. There's some applications coming up I think that will be applying for different things but we haven't. Again, we haven't kind of more detail on how they'll be distributed. And when we bring up sort of looking at specific projects for general funds with with representatives from Congressman govern. They basically say oh there'll be a special. This is a water project wait for there's gonna be a lot of water money coming through those be a sewer project there's going to be a lot of sewer money coming through so it's hold those for those projects. Okay, but it's also going to engender some competition, because when we go to higher contractors. It may be become more difficult given all the federal money flowing down. And Bernie to your point one thing we are working on that we've talked about with go for we talked about with Stephanie is trying to have projects ready to go for when those products when those funds come out because the more shovel ready or the more the better chance we have if they are competitive if the grant itself is competitive if the funds are competitive. You know we'll be in a better position to get those so that is on our radar to try to have those projects ready. Thank you. So, yep. Okay, this one's on building maintenance. In addition to your own buildings I've always gotten a sense that you help do some maintenance on other town buildings that are not DPW. And could you talk about that and how those are paid for. And then also is DPW involved with our new head of maintenance on the development and maintaining building plans with some kind of schedule as to what we should be doing regarding building maintenance and I just want to add the ongoing issue of maintenance has been on a conversation in the council, as long as we've had a council is just the upkeep of our existing buildings. So, we do maintain some building I mean we do help with maintenance of buildings mostly. Mostly it's big things, actually some of this little I guess I say both. The electrician is the biggest thing we do our electricians will come I think we were at the bank center. We're at the bank center earlier this week looking at a piece of equipment that got struck by lightning we ordered the parts and we were in the next day putting it in. I hope the bank center is back working now. There's actually an air exchanger air handler that got broken. So, immediate things like that our electricians usually show up water issues, we do a lot of little water things. If you don't need a plumber but you have a water issue we show up for those. We've been asked to come or been asked to come and deal with some sewer backups at some of the buildings, because we can take the backdoor and we can clean up the service lines and stuff. When we do, we do electrical work or something like that usually the building maintenance fund pays for the work we do. It doesn't pay for our time it pays for the equipment we order the parts we order. We do mow some of the buildings like I said earlier we mow around, we mow the big area around the months and library we mow around the Northamers library. I think we were doing part we were doing the big field behind the fire station at one time we may not be doing that anymore, but we were doing that one. So just things we do are not really reimbursed for those. As far as being involved in a discussion about a bigger building maintenance. That's been on the table that we need to start talking about it. We've been kind of sidetracked by the pandemic and stuff but there has been discussions and small discussions about and we hope to get more more than going on. We are going to be starting in the DPW. We're going to more formalize our asset management plan. We're going to start with the water department and that will actually talk about many of the things you're talking about here roofs for buildings, paying for buildings, doing things like that for the asset management plan and a more detailed scope of work for when they need to be done and when they need to be looked at. That's something we'll be starting with water and we'll probably go to wastewater next and then to the rest of the public works buildings with. Paul, I see your hands up. Yeah, just to add to that so really DP facilities aren't responsible for the town buildings but they do call DPW and DPW is really responsive, especially if we need an electrician or someone like Gilbert said and there's and it's helps us a lot because it's, it's, it saves us money saves the town money. And also, they're just read readily there in the schools I think draw on them occasionally as well. It's basically just a team effort on on those types of things I know it takes it away from other jobs that this folks have. But it's it's very is a pretty good relationship in terms of the facilities management or facilities manager is responsible for building that kind of maintenance schedule and he's working on that building by building, except for the DPW DPW maintains their own buildings and they just what Gilbert said they're going to be working on that same kind of asset management program. So, you know, there is. I think we maintain our buildings and pretty well. The buildings that we've inherited we don't, you know, they come in in poor condition so I find it hard to be responsible for that. And so, but it is a cost that we need to account for as we go forward as especially as we look at building new buildings. So, I just have a quick process question that maybe Athena or Paul or link and answer, Andy is in the audience as an attendee but he's on a phone and Athena said she can't promote him. I need to count him for us to have a quorum of the finance committee because it appears that both Michelle and Alicia are not with us right now. And we need, I believe we need three members of the council. The five of us, is that correct so Andy is here he's just in the audience so I just want to acknowledge that we still have a quorum. And then I think we're one short of a quorum or the council right now because I'm not seeing two counselors that were here that are both. So it's all right, it's all right to continue correct. Yes, good. Thank you. Yeah. And Sean you have your hand up and then I have another question that builds on the maintenance issue. So just, it's this was related to a question Andy sent in to me. So he asked about how the DPW works with the regional schools and some of the services they provided the regional schools and I think Gilford touched on some of those they do a lot of the field maintenance. We rely heavily on DPW or the region relies heavily on the DPW to tell tell them when the fields can be used after it rains that's a sort of a newer system that was put in place. And I know DPW does a lot to maintain the region's pool. That's another big piece that they rely heavily on DPW staff or so those are few of the things I'm sure there's others Gilford or Amy if you want to add. Usually when we do something else for the region. We do get called in sometimes or potholes they asked it's a pothole this year but we couldn't get to it. We sweep the schools. Every year we sweep the schools and they actually pay for the sweeping. We do line painting in the schools they pay for line painting. There's other things we do on a case by case basis that pop up. I'm just going to add with several of the town buildings and with the schools I feel like we always get roped in every year to help with the treating during a snowstorm and then helping them plow because they they often just don't have the the capability to do it as efficiently as we can. So building on Andy's question. That was why I said I had an additional question. Does do the schools then compensate us for work we do, especially the regional schools. Some they do some they don't. If if we're if we're preparing a field for a regional football game, they don't compensate us for that. If we're going through and they're we're treating the treating the parking lots after a snowstorm, we send them a bill for the salt and they pay for the salt material they don't pay for their labor. If we are going to this we're working on the soccer field lights right now. They pay for all the equipment they don't pay for the labor so all the material with was bought for that they pay for it. So some they pay for some they don't pay for. And this question goes back and go for probably knows it goes back probably forever in terms of since he's been here trying to quantify. There's a big change of services because there's lots of things the town provides to the region that the region doesn't pay for. There's some things the region provides to the town that the town doesn't pay for use of space for recreation and I don't know if we if the town paid for town meetings and things like that when they use the auditorium so so it's always been this sort of understanding that there's going to be some shared services. But we are, when we can we do try to quantify one of the things Gilbert and I are working on now with Amy, are just sort of identifying all the things that the pw provides to different people in town and what are the payment mechanisms for those different activities so that if we do want to make changes in the future. We'll have a basis to start from Kathy shall I go on. Please do. Thank you. Under the street and traffic lights, you mentioned in your statement on one page 153, the number of streetlight trouble calls peaked in FY 21. Can you give us some insight into what's going on. We think it was just everybody was released from COVID restrictions. The general release of because actually we had a lot of our streetlight complaints kind of peak during the during COVID lockdown because people were at home I could see their streetlight more and they were like why is it still on or why is it so bright. But then again, everyone could drive around again and the traffic lights didn't seem to be doing what they were supposed to be doing again so we got a lot of calls for people just saying stuff like that and we think that's what the reason for it. There isn't any. You know only real issue we've had with our street lights and I'll go ahead and that's probably something we should talk about is, we had some failures in the pedestrian buttons and they weren't working right downtown. And I think there's a capital improvement project that was approved to actually replace all those but that was those were some additional calls that we didn't anticipate. We're just walking more after the pandemic and the buns weren't doing what the buns are supposed to do which is beep and chirp and tell you it's time to walk. Kathy Bob has his hand up. Go ahead. Since we're on that page. What is a traffic light knockdown is that literally a light post being knocked over. Yes. Traffic lights are just on the small 12 foot or 12 foot poles and they're in the corners and intersections and usually a tractor trailer will wrap around it when it's making a right turn or left turn and sit tight intersection. Sometimes we truly have a vehicle hit it. The car will hit it because they're going too fast in the intersection but it truly is a knock down. Unfortunately for us, fortunately for us we've never had one of the big poles knocked down which is good it's always a small poles. Up in North Amherst Bob, we used to have a light that got knocked down regularly. And so, so just on that intersection. What's your perception of how well the smartness of the smart light is working in terms of adjusting for traffic flow east west. You know, and, and that's one question you know is it, is it able to adjust that sometimes a day. It's worse in one direction versus another, and can itself adjust or do you have to do it. And then my other is at one point when you were installing that which turned out you staff could do it all by themselves and save us a lot of money, which was great. So we're going to install the ability to count cars count people and count bikes, and I'm just by observation. It feels like we're having a lot more flow than we used to and it's partly because those North Square apartments are now full and their people in them, and it's anticipated. So is it can it count. And are we counting and then do you have a sense of the flow is I get complaints about flows but I don't know whether you get complaints about flows. So we do get complaints about flows, they go out there and they'll analyze the situation and watch it for a while. The biggest I'm going to be polite. I'm sorry, I may say this wrong if I say it wrong. The biggest problem with the intersection are people who do not pay attention to the light. They will stop. They'll be doing something in their car don't know what they're doing in their car. And then the light will change and they won't move. So then the light thinks well why didn't anybody move. There's no must be no one there. So it might take off a couple seconds off the cycle for that leg when it doesn't need to take off seconds from that cycle. So then someone will be and then I'll realize and I'll move but then it won't be. So that's the biggest issue we're seeing as people not paying attention to the light when you're, you know, it's time I'm sorry when you're driving please drive when you need to do something else stop somewhere and do something else. But don't just drive pay attention to what you're doing. That's the biggest problem we're seeing. It does the light. We never we haven't found a good system yet for counting pedestrians bikes and vice pedestrians bicyclists and vehicles all at the same time. So we haven't put that system in yet so we haven't been counting. We're still trying to find a system that we can get that'll work. We've been talking to a couple of people there's a company called rhythm we're talking to now. We might be able they might have what we really want to use. So we haven't been counting traffic volumes are up. And predominantly the intersection works well except. It works well most of the time I don't. When I go through to go home, I don't get really stopped. Like make it through in one cycle. But during peak hours like when I was driving through it after graduation I set through three cycles of the light. But there were a lot more cars and things were changed. So that's really what we're finding any wants to say something else. Yeah, and I more just want to chime in on that particular intersection so it does. Add and subtract time based on how many cars are queued up so that's the smart part of this. Go for correct me if I'm wrong but like three to six months ago. We took a deep dive after we just kept getting all complaints that things weren't working right and we actually took a deep dive and found that there was, we made like kind of a more major change to the timing the programming on the timing and so I think we had a lot of calls before that and we don't we haven't since we made that change so there was just something that we realized in this the cycle of how I think basically if somebody pushed a pedestrian button, rather than it saying okay I was just going this way so now I'm going to go this way, it just started at the top of the cycle every single time. And so at times, it just kept queuing up in some directions, because it kept, it kept starting with. Okay I go back to the, if it gets interrupted it goes back to the start of the program so. Thank you for that and at least one of the residents up here wrote me. Did you do something because I think it's better so the answer is, you did do something, you know a perception that it got better so it sounds like complaints help. Well, in that, in that case, it was, it was a couple of police officers who got a call and they went up and they watched it and they came in and they said we noticed this really weird thing. They took someone really observing it and taking the time to watch it to notice it so I'll give credit to the police department, a couple of officers for noticing that and then coming in and letting us know so we could take the time to look for that glitch and fix it. Thanks very much. Hopefully it doesn't come back. So Kathy I want to note that Michelle Miller is back. So there's no question of a quorum for either. All right, so equipment maintenance. What is the timeframe for implementing the digitized vehicle maintenance schedule. We've been we've been saying this is a priority for many years. Right. That's why I'm asking. It actually, it's actually a lower priority than some of the other things but usually just drops off this drops off the work table and we keep saying we want to do it. We never gets done. When we start playing with and doing our, we start building our new asset management system, there's actually availability of add vehicles into the asset management system we're working on for water, and we'll be doing for wastewater. So that'll actually give us a chance to actually look at adding them in and being a little more, a little more thorough and getting that done. But it is, of all the things we do that kind of just keeps falling off because it is a lower priority. And I assume that the asset management system, Sean will feed into the capital inventory. Well, hopefully, I mean we don't know yet until we have one but I think I think if they're if the asset management system has every vehicle in it and it can, and it can produce a list we can use that as a sort of a check against our inventory to make sure we have everything covered. We may be able to start adding maintenance costs to the inventory in the future potentially if it provides that level of detail. You know so there may be some, some additional pieces of information if it's if we can pull it out efficiently that we could add to it. Go for any of your comment. We're not expecting to be at that level for many years. The asset management requirement we're being working on is something that's being required by one of those great people we talked about earlier. Department of Environmental Protection so we're gearing more towards water and wastewater to start and that's kind of how we set it up to move the process along as quickly as we need to because we have a time period under Department of Environmental Protection to do it. The program is a box program that's managed by one of the consultants we have. If we want to do when we start pulling it out and doing other things with it we're just going to have to, it will be a year or two at least actually be two or three years before we're at that point and then there's will be more to it and more cost associated with it. But it can do vehicles and we're hoping to do vehicles. So even though this next question is under equipment maintenance it really applies across the board. And it's the issue of whether your FY 23 budget takes into account inflation for everything from fuels to equipment, etc. No. So, so we've looked at, we've looked at our fuel budgets and I think we're going to be as one of those things we're going to keep an eye on closely so we've, when we look back we've had some flexibility in those lines where that would cover some of the inflation impacts that we're seeing. But I think the, the amount that it's gone up, if it stays at that level for the entire year, it's going to be a concern. Okay, so we go ahead. The easiest way to remember that is we start the budget process in November. Right. So all these numbers you're seeing are numbers that were put together in November. You know nothing about Ukraine and nothing about the fuel prices going up and the baby formula shortages, those numbers had no impact at that time. Right. This. So my net, my, my follow on question with that one really is, this always relates much more to Sonia and that is that as we do the quarterly review on our budget. Are we going to be able to identify where inflation is impacting us in and in what areas because well it seems to some ways leveled off. It doesn't seem to be going down. I can answer that. We have to show up on the second quarter. Okay, I mean we can compare it to the previous years and you will see whether it's up or level. So we do that line by line so we can do that. Okay. Any other comments before. Well, I just, along with that go for indicated that it looked like we might have to do a fee increase for the. I think if it is the town dump, but you know and reset the solid waste. So if we're going to do that for you increase do we need to do it before the beginning of the year to cover those operating costs. It's going to be something we're going to see as the council, because you're the revenues you're forecasting or lower so just, it's a timing question so linds was a timing question to on when are we going to see higher operating costs that we couldn't have anticipated and this is one you mentioned quickly we haven't gotten to the enterprise funds but you mentioned it when we were talking about what's going on and it sounded like you're anticipating an increase in that fee. Okay. Sure. So we're, like Sonya said, we're going to be doing quarterly reports if it doesn't look like the enterprise budget that's there now can cover the increase in the fee. So you got to separate revenues and expenses so everything still has to come in underneath the expense budget. If that expense budget cannot accommodate that we would have to come back and ask for some sort of supplemental appropriation to cover that. Can I say something else. We're already seeing the effects of prices going up I don't know if you remember in the third quarter when I mentioned that a lot of operating budgets are really starting to see the inflation. So they're very close. I don't see some operating budgets that are already gone over, but there are savings in from vacancies in in the pay salary lines to kind of offset that. So we're already feeling those effects, because I know Kathy you said when we feel those effects we already are. Yeah, you, you told you pointed that out when we did the quarterly review. A couple of meetings ago. I was going to call him Pam Pam. I thank you. I'm glad the fee, the fee conversation came back up again. I was going to ask if there is, if you would kindly consider a fee structure for use of the transportation that, you know, has sort of single family homes versus three and four unit apartments versus apartment houses. And, and I'll just call them trash haulers folks that that go around as, as handy persons, you know, doing trash and so forth. It seemed that the single family homes are actually, you know, paying a much larger percentage of of fee than the multiple users and I just wonder if you could describe the current structure and consider a higher fee for the higher volumes. Thanks. So if you're a resident, whether it's a duplex, or a single family, you usually get a sticker for the resident price, which is $100. That's the access stickers $100 to access it to if you're a commercial entity and identify yourself as a commercial entity you get a it's a 120 it's $120 $125 I believe for the sticker fee. So yes that's the way we're set up now, and then there is no difference in fee on what you bring in. So it's the same price for a bag of trash for single family residents as a commercial person. It's the same price if you're weighing or we're just estimating your weight is the same price. As a fall, is there an opportunity to increase the commercial fee. We're going to look at all of them across the board, increasing them. So this is, well, we get actually if we increase the commercial act and treat three and more too much they'll just stop using us, which I guess is okay. But we may price ourselves out of their market. They do pay more disposal costs because they bring more stuff in. So it's kind of an offset of what you're doing there. So I guess you see in the commercial because that doesn't cover like the large apartment complexes right now if the larger car, most of the large apartment complexes by a commercial sticker. They buy it so they can bring like mattresses and TVs and those type of things in the things that they're, that their horror won't pick up from their dumpsters. They bring tires and stuff like that so that's what they use their sticker for they don't use it for bringing in the residential trash. Medium sized apartments and like rental properties, they may buy a sticker and bring everything in. And then you have some apartment groups like the co housing in North Amherst, they have a residential sticker and everyone is on uses that one residential sticker but they're very, they're very well versed in how they bring their trash in. They bring a very small amount for the number of people that are living there and they recycle very well. So, you said Andy had his hand up also just to add on this. So to be clear, there is there is the annual fee that just gets you the sticker that lets you walk drive through the gate and then when you get there you have to pay for the stuff you drop off. The more you pay for it and as their specific charges for tires and TVs and stuff like that. So, you do, it is priced by, by, there's a fixed price and then there's a volume price. And did, did Andy have his hand up, or did you just bring him in Athena, I can't stand up. Okay, Andy, Andy are muted you can go ahead. Andy. Kathy while we're waiting for Andy can I ask another question that he submitted. And this sort of was covered a little bit already but Guilford has the price of oil affected the price of paving materials. Are you able are you seeing the bids doing getting less for the money that's been allocated for roads that the bids are increasing the price of paving is increasing. And as the first year we've been where our estimate was actually not like was not higher than the low bidder we actually were pretty much had the same estimate the low bidder had. That's usually doesn't happen we're usually we're usually quite a bit higher because we use higher numbers just be sure. So the prices have increased and mostly it's fuel fuel cost. What the price increases, just moving the asphalt from the plant and having the equipment moved around and powering the equipment that's really the biggest price increase. So I am Andy's hand is still up but it looks like he's muted Athena so I think I'm going to go to Anna but Andy if you can unmute we will. I'm trying to figure out what's going on with Andy so on a. You may also want to bring Alicia into the room. I've tried to promote her a couple times. Got it. I will I will happily pause if either Andy or Alicia chimes in. What magic. So, okay, I hear you with the fuel cost Gilbert and I think what's kind of coming into my mind is gosh wouldn't it be great if those were electric. And I know that I am a broken record on this but I think what I'm curious about is, you know, feels not going to get a lot cheaper anytime soon and so what I'm wondering is if you've worked with the sustainability coordinator on creating an actual plan here for for the future because I mean I looked at the, I was on JCP see we see the five year vehicle buying plan. But I guess I'd really love to see some of that strategic planning and some of that okay. If it doesn't work exactly the way we use our fossil fuel vehicles now what would we need to do to shift over right it's it's not a guarantee that we can function in the exact same way. It's such a major change and so I think something that I'd really like to see and and I need to see is that we that that five year plan starts to look a little different as we switch those major vehicles over as possible and, and that you're, you know, I think that's something that I'd really like to see as we as we know that these costs aren't going down. I know that they're much more expensive up front but those those longer term costs over time. Yeah, I think it's something that I'd really I'd like to see coming from DPW in future years. And just just to be clear that the costs we're seeing this is the contractors costs so the contractors who are bidding our paving projects are having increases in their fuel costs and we're seeing that passed on to us in the bids for repaving roads. I understand sorry I do understand what that prompted for me is just kind of general fuel costs right in terms of running running the vehicles that we do currently have. Yeah, and then you gave you gave me a great opportunity to put my plug in. And that is the contractor who's doing the contract work. He's paying fuel tax to maintain the road while the electrical driver is not paying any fuel tax to maintain the road. It's odd that you said you put your plug in. So, I, I think Andy's hand is still up and Sean's hand is up so Andy. Can you can you hear me or not. Yes, yes. Okay, the question goes back to something that Sean had raised a little bit. That was when I asked about whether the increase in fuel costs was affecting paving material and the answer seemed to be a partial yes. But then the other thing comes out of that is, is there any indication that all of these cost increases are affecting the price that we're going to get from contract is for paving and how is that going to affect our achieving goals for paving with the capital improvement program. So, it's going to reduce what we can pave is what's going to happen. The prices, usually, usually our price like I said our estimate is much higher than what we get for bids. This year it wasn't so not that fluff we had put in the project, we were going to try to pave one more road this year. We probably will not pave that additional road so one road out of that group was bit as an option and that option probably won't happen this year. Yeah, I think this conversation and a lot of the questions today. They align with one of the themes that we tried to put into this budget is that as we go forward, we really have to prioritize the operating budgets and think about the operating budgets and within that include the capital. We have new initiatives and new projects that are being proposed and with four building projects obviously, but I think this department when you look at DPW and here from Guilford and other departments. We're really hearing that we need to prioritize operating budgets because inflation is taking away what they can do. There's always more being added on to what we want them to do, and everything costs money so I just, I want to remind people that is a theme of the budget this year that as we look forward. And when when new initiatives or new projects are put out there that that we have some work to do here to get us back to like go for 2005. In terms of what we can do. Thank you. I think I'm Lynn, I think I don't see any more hands Andy's hand is still up but I think it's just he didn't take it down yet. One more question in the operating general operating or the operating for DPW before I move on to enterprise funds. This one's around tree and grounds and it's carry over from other years. Thank you Bob Higner, and that is do do we want to remain as a town in the cemetery business. And do we even have a choice. So I'll break that into two questions. The question one is, is do we want to continue to maintain the cemeteries which I assume their town property and we're going to want to maintain them so that part we're going to probably want to say yes to. The second one is, is do we want to continuing off offering new burial spaces to the residents of Amherst. And the answer to that question is, is we do we is if we want to do that we need to buy more land and find another place to expand the cemetery. There's probably about 10 and 12 lots that are not sold at this time. So we have very low inventory of unsold lots we do have, we do have lots that are sold that are empty are usable so I imagine we would stay in this cemetery business but will we continue to sell a new future lots is really a good question to think about. There's a follow on question that might happen to come across this piece of information when I was looking at the elementary school lots that are under consideration for the new school and that is there's a piece of the Wildwood cemetery that actually is on the other side of the road. And is there any intention to ever use that. So Wildwood, Wildwood is a private cemetery we do not maintain Wildwood. Okay, thank you that right there is the answer to my question. Any other questions on this yeah. Bob has his hand up. Since we're on tree and ground that maintenance I noticed that you mentioned the issues with ash trees and maple trees from the emerald ash borer wondering if we're part of the Massachusetts State Department of Agriculture control program. Or are we doing it on our own. Mr snow he works with the state program and he does coordinate with them a lot that are really mostly what they're doing is just monitoring there hasn't been much treatment coming out of them so far as my understanding. Okay, thanks. And I have one and I feel for I'm just not sure if I'm switching over to enterprise drainage and catch patients so when water runs off a farm into a ditch, and then there's a catch patient. Is that you maintaining pipes. Is that part of our stormwater system. So if, if there are concerns that it's clogged and not getting water, that's farmers contacting you. I mean, meaning you the DPW. It is. But most of the time what it comes out to be the promise is that there's a drainage way which never had an easement placed on it, and it was never given to the town to maintain. So then it never fell into our system to maintain. And so we maintain the cross culvert on the road, because it's in the public way, but we may may not maintain the ditch up into the farmers fields or from the road back to the stream. And so changing that would be someone would have to go after an easement to to get to allow you to go in and do that work. Is that correct. We would, we would need a right of entry or an easement to be on the property. The other issue is because we haven't maintained it. It isn't. It isn't in a maintenance program, there would be a lot of permitting that goes with it, which eventually as part of the stormwater program or MS for program. I would actually be bringing in ditches and these things into the program and then making a plan that's in cooperation and coordination with conservation department that these are the ones we maintain and this is how we maintain it. And this is what's allowed. So that's something that will come into the stormwater program at some time. Okay, thank you. I'm going to move on to the enterprise funds, and I actually am going to skip over my question on the water fund, because we've had a lot of discussion recently about Centennial and I know we're waiting for the state to make a decision about our money that would possibly give us big boost in that area. When can I just speak to that question I just want to say one thing for the record. My question was updates on Centennial project cost I think I said this last time but I just want to say it again. We will be coming back to the council in the near future to request additional funding for Centennial. We need to have the funding in place for the whole project by June 30th right go for is the date and this is so that we can enter the drinking water state revolving fund program which will give us a low interest rate and possibly some loan costs. And so we need to have the full funding in place. And so right now that looks to be in the $18 million range for the full project. And so we'll be coming back. You'll be going to update soon in the form of a memo and propose timeline. As president I've scheduled that for the 6th of June. And if we need hearing our forum because of that, I need to understand that as well. The timing yeah. And one piece of that just when we think about advocacy so there's the drinking water state revolving fund program there was also the forward bill that the governor put forward. And I got an update yesterday at a conference that they got put forward there's some legislators who want to sit on that and wait till the next, the next legislative session and governor come in. And so, you know that poses some challenges for us because we saw that like, it'd be great if we had access to those funds this fall. That may not be the case. I think we do want to continue to advocate with our legislators that that's really important to us, regardless of whether when we get it. That would really help get that project back in line with our sort of original estimates for the cost of this project. Yeah. And I know that at least three letters have been sent to our legislators from one from Paul one from DPW and one from me on behalf of the council. So I'm going to move on to solid waste. You may get a little my own personal bias in this one. Are we planning to resume take it or leave it. It's a, it is a recycling function. And many people would like to see it return and although we understand that some staff are not particularly in favor of it, is there a way to make it return. So, the easiest way to answer that question is, is that take it or leave it will not return in the form it was in before. If we want take it or leave it to return. We need to reimagine take it or leave it and come up with a methodology and a way of making it work. So there's not a pile of debris left behind that then the town has to pay to dispose of, because it truly wasn't a take it or leave it item it was just truly trashed that someone set in the take it or leave it pile because they didn't want to pay for it. So, we need to, I'm all for trying to reenvision this I do believe that there's a lot of neat things that people have picked up. I still have my cross country skis which I got when I first moved here from the take it or leave it which were like the best things I think I found there had to buy new shoes but the skis were great. But we need to reenvision how it's going to work so that there's not a liability to the enterprise system to have to pay for a large amount of stuff that is not reusable and just just becomes trash at the take it or leave it. Is this something that many several of our environmentally focused groups and Amherst might be able to organize volunteerism around. I think it I think it is I mean we need to start thinking more like what you know some of the things like North Hamptons doing what they have a program for toy spots and they have a toy program for doing the exact same thing. It actually doesn't reside at the transfer station it resides somewhere else, but they have places to collect things and then they can go through it and make things happen. That's really something. Yeah, that's really not how it needs to kind of come about to be sustainable. And by the way, other places that have donations like survival center and Salvation Army, etc. They have the same problem. People just leave stuff because they don't want to pay the dump fee. Paul you had your hand up. I just want to mention that the Salvation Army goodwill there are lots of places for people to do this exact same thing if they want to. So it's not like the take it or leave it as the only option available. You know, but just on that theme, you know, Lynn I like the idea of some people could weigh in and come up with a system because Salvation Army has a gatekeeper who particularly under COVID, they made me open up my box. And they said we're not going to take what you have in that box. So, so I agree, you know, some, if we reopen it when I think we need a thoughtful way of figuring out how it doesn't become a dump it rather than just leave it. My second question is also personally motivated. Unfortunately, my son loves Dunkin Donuts, but you won't take their plastic cups, even though they have the recycling mark on them in the recycling program is why? So it's, so it is a plastic. Plastics have those recycling marks actually tell you what type of plastic it is. And only about three types of plastic have a recycling market. There's like seven, seven different types of plastics out there that you can see on that. There's one through seven on the marks. If you're not in one of those three categories they recycle. You basically are just adding trash to the recycling stream, which then the person we transfer the bottles and cans to has to screen out and take and pay to get rid of and trash. So it's recycling is changing a lot. The paper market is very strong again it's doing well. Plastic containers. If you have metal containers, if you have glass containers, metals are doing really well glasses doing okay. We could use a nice glass recycler in the area. But plastic containers. There's so many people trying to pass their plastic container off as being able to be recycled, but people don't want to recycle them so it's just clogging up the recycling stream with those those containers. It would be better if Dunkin Donuts cups or one of them. It would be better if Dunkin Donuts went to a paper cup that can be composted and got it. It's for the other question that I had here is basically related to the solar array but it's on the landfill. So it's, it's not clear what it is. At some point, when that solar array is fully connected, it will generate electricity is the town going to use that electricity. Are we going to sell that electricity. How will the proceeds of that electricity either be attributed to town departments, or if sold off, where will that money go. You want me to take that one covered the answer Sean. So, so that's a really good project for the town. There's a few different revenue streams so there's a payment that we will get each year for $78,000. That payment is broken down into three different types of categories. One is property tax for the land that's being used. That will flow through to the town, like other taxes. So that won't benefit the solid waste fund directly. There's a pilot payment for the system itself. And that one I still have to talk with the assessor about whether that can go to the solid waste fund or that also has to be treated like other taxes I think it has to be treated like other taxes and would also come to the town. And then the third one is a basically a rent fee or it's whatever the difference is between the 78,000 and what the taxes are calculated out. And that that amount will go into the solid waste fund we think it's at least $20,000. It'll slowly change over time as the taxes go up. They'll eat up a bigger piece of that 78,000 so the rent piece will shrink a little bit. And then there will be a decent size chunk of funds that will be going into the solid waste fund each year. And then there's the other benefit is the electricity so the electricity is going to go to the town. It's going to come to us in the form of credits on our bills. And so we have to assign those credits to different accounts. We have to assign those three point nine or three somewhere in that area megawatts so it's a big chunk of our electricity it's, you know, around half maybe a little bit more than half. And we have to assign those to individual accounts. And then when we do that, whatever budget line item pays for that electricity, they're going to see their costs go way down. Tonya and I have to think about how it's going to cause some realignment and how the electricity budgets are split in town. Because whatever ones we pick they're going to see all this budget relief and we don't, you know, we need to think how we spread that out fairly. So it's going to require a little bit of rethinking of the electricity budgets throughout the throughout the system, but we'll see some significant savings there as well. Is that happening in time for the FY 24 budget? I think from in time for the FY 24 budget. Yes. Okay. And when you in. When do you anticipate that the array will actually go live. I don't know. I know they're moving along well. I don't know if you've seen any newer updates. It seems like they're getting pretty close to at least testing the system if they haven't already. Yeah, so we're hoping to do a ribbon cutting event, probably in June, Lynn. We're thinking about that timeframe. Yeah, I just asked this is a terrific question, Lynn, but for the where you put the credit one. One question that was raised with Centennial is whether we since it's a big electricity user once the plant gets up and open, whether we could do a solar array to offset that so my question is you start to think this through Sean. That would affect water rates that are being affected by Centennial. So some would, would the allocation have to go to general fund or could it go to enterprise funds that weren't there weren't solid waste. I believe it can go to whatever accounts we select so you know one difference on the town side from the schools on the school side we had like five electricity accounts and it was really easy and simple on the town side, I was 4050 different electricity accounts, maybe more than that. And so, you know, some of it is about administrative ease by picking some of our bigger users for the electricity and applying it to those accounts. The enterprise fund accounts are those. So the wastewater account and the water treatment accounts, those are some of our bigger bigger users so I could see it being applied to those that being said I still think we need to give more thought to how the savings are shared throughout the entire system. No, I was thinking that too. I'm just glad to hear that thinking is going on and then, as you know with in capital, we just, there's a five year plan that a lot of Crocker would be moving off of fossil fuel and so it might be some of the buildings that we are upgrading in terms of being more climate action. And I hope get the offset because they're moving to more electric use if they're going to see something on the electric, you know, just so trying to think of a rationale for the allocation as well. Yeah, thanks. I also want to be aware, Michelle you said you needed to leave by 1120, I think. And I do, or about 1125. If you wanted to have certain questions before we move on to others. You know I unfortunately missed a portion of the conversation so I, I may have had a question that already got asked so I'll just I'll follow up maybe after. Thank you though. Go on Kathy. Yeah, I don't see any hands one. Okay, so the transportation fund. At least we during COVID it seemed to take the biggest hit and is also seeming to be slow in recovery. What do you project regarding the future of the fund. And should we be considering adjustments to it somehow with fees or whatever. Yeah, I can speak to that a little bit. So the, the permit system changes that were adopted by the council that'll help that program long term. I think we'll get a really good sense how far it's come back from the pandemic with the fourth quarter financial report, seeing how much it's been used may through June or April through June. It seems like downtown has been pretty active and pretty busy. So seeing if how that compares to the fourth quarter of let's say 20 f y 19 will be interesting. And we'll get a good sense of, you know what percentage we are getting back. So I don't think we have to make any adjustments right now we have tried to. We have a lot of mortgage expenses in that fund so we have one parking enforcement a part time position that we haven't filled yet we've left that vacant to try to keep expenses down. We will probably look to fill that in the near future if we can as parking comes back and we want to make sure all hours are being covered when enforcement needs to be done. We are looking at some infrastructure changes we talked about more signage we talked about. We have to make some decisions print the near future about meters because we have decided we're going to stick with the standalone meters or move toward towards kiosks. I think our interest is probably moving towards kiosks it's a little cleaner. You know they can manage multiple spaces, and the information you can pull from them is better in terms of usage and you can make just to make changes easier. The other thing we're you know we see coming up there's been some changes to parking that will have to monitor there's the North Common Project and see how that impacts parking in the future. There are some new developments coming in downtown that will I think increase demand for parking so. So I think it's on the right track and it's getting back to where it needs to be there's going to be a lot of things that will be increasing the demand for parking downtown, which will be good for the fund I know there's those other options that we need to consider around the supply of parking, but I think the demand is going to get back to where it was pretty quickly. Thank you. Guilford has his hand up to go for go ahead. So, one of the other things that is going to impact the transportation fund is, what do we want to do with our downtown. We've been doing the back end angle parking the tries and experiment. We've fit some spaces in. We've done it quite well other people's don't use it quite well. Do we want to have more parklets do we want to take out spaces with parklets. We need to, and we've been talking about this holistic type view is what do we want to start making changes to the downtown, and then those changes may affect what we have for parking spaces on the main roads. So, that's something we've been talking about and we need to continue to kind of focus on is what do we want. Do we want to make changes downtown do we want to start making a bigger sidewalks and have more dining and then moving the parking off the streets. Those are things that really need to happen. I mean we haven't finished painting the downtown for this season because we're not sure what's how what we want to do. That's just something that's in there to think about too. Where do we stand on the Council's vote, regarding the back end parking. I think it was the earliest one we did which is, you know, down in front of Antonio's. Are we still good or do we need to renew that boat. I think they've expired. Then I think we better get it on a council agenda. Thank you. But the thought is, do you do you want to keep that type of stuff do you want to explore more. And then does that have that give you more spaces or less parking spaces, and that directly affects what happens to the fund. Raise my hand. Go ahead, Paul. Just a note, we are hearing from businesses about people who want to continue to have outdoor dining again with the extension of the law so that is still that information still being gathered we know of two businesses now who have asked for that that we are looking at. So that this is still playing out. So I've got. I think three items on the June 6 draft agenda that deal with public way. Is there any possibility that we should vote on extending at least what we have on June 6. So question Paul to you and so I'll look at that now look at what the existing original vote was. Okay, thanks. Lynn, I just want to jump in on the back in parking where go for said we've had some experience now with it and some people can or can't manage it as part of the North Commons lot removal. I was one of the ones who questioned where we were going to do the back end parking on Main Street across from the bookstore. So I just like to feed the experience that we've had with it because one of the ideas let's try it out. And whether we think that's a good idea before we replicate that just because we said we would do it. I don't know if it was five spaces but it's right by the bus stop. And it's right by the turn where the buses come in to that street. So it's, it's less protected than the back end places are that we currently have. So I just, I just want to get whatever experience we have to have people say wouldn't do it. Okay, if he whatever. If we want a larger discussion we probably have to look at either the 13 third last are the optional last meeting in June, but let's just keep it in mind. And I wasn't necessarily saying putting it on the same list I was just saying that North Commons is coming in along the pike so let's not forget it's got back in parking to. Yeah. So that's the end of my questions on enterprise funds. Yeah, I have one question on the transportation fund I noticed on page 243 that we're paying $30,000 to the business improvement district and it's coming out of the transportation fund. And I question a why we're paying that in the first place and be why it's coming out of the transportation fund. And I guess the other third part is, if we do work for the bid do we get reimbursed for are they are we billing them for it. So number of things so when the bid was set up. There were three partners. They were there for partners to business owners. And then there was the Amherst college universe and the town and we all agreed to contribute a fixed amount. When the town said where was that fixed amount coming from we said the transportation improvement fund which is funded by parking revenues all from downtown seem to be the logical source for that funds because this business improvement district is a basically a parking benefit district that supports the local businesses and there was a logic to drawing from that. I think, you know, there are a lot of things the town does to help local businesses dpw spends a lot of time and they're important constituent in terms of listening to what the concerns are about the downtown infrastructure but I mean go first team is, you know, they thank go first team a lot because it go first team puts out a lot of information a lot of stuff for Mary maple and things that benefit the entire town but it's initiated by the bid. And we sort of work more as much in partnership with them and they contribute, you know, they pay for the $20,000 a year to put lights on the merry maple. We help them in different ways by hanging banners or doing things like that. So, and I think, you know, if the bid did not exist. We as a town would want to do some of these things just to make our town look good like, I think I'm not sure about that they maintain the flower baskets that are downtown. I think with that but I think go for you can correct me but when they hire that you know hang the spring is here banners or graduation season we hang those we do that the equipment to do it. Okay, thanks. That's fair. Yeah. Um, I just want to check, Kathy. Yeah, you do you still have a quorum and yep. I think we still do too. No, we don't. So I'm going to adjourn the council meeting but that does not mean that the counselors that are in this meeting can't continue to ask questions they actually can. So the council meeting is adjourned at 1117. Well, I had one last piece and it's I really want to just several people have asked about where we are on the DPW facility and let me just direct it to you versus to Guilford, and there you go. Our mission continues to be, you know, to build four new buildings which is the elementary school the library a DPW facility and a fire station. We know that the fire station the best location for the fire station is the DPW facility. We have looked at many sites we had one site that was donated by Amherst College that was deemed not not to have too much neighborhood opposition on Stanley Street and Southeast Street. Since then we have struggled to locate a site that you know we need a number of acres in the town of Amherst that's unencumbered, and that meets zoning requirements and is flat and can accommodate a, you know, multiple eight acres, you know, probably site. They're not easy to come by. You know we did an RFP. We had several responses some from other communities who said we've got landed Hadley that you could use and we've looked at those pretty actively. So our mission right now is to find a location identify location there's we feel we're feeling a lot of urgency on this because we got to get a site because we got to get these other projects moving and keep looking at options available. And there's additional pressure now because of the increased cost on capital. And, you know, we're, our mission hasn't changed but we will be reviewing you know Sean is updating the model so the council, once we get through our budget season, you can have more time to focus on that there's a complicated assessment of things. So I think once we get through that, you'll have a better sense of where we can where we're going to be financially if we have a location or not. And if the council still wants to move forward with them, you know, where our mission hasn't changed where we're continuing to move forward on all four projects. Okay. And let me just mention that Paul did mention that after budget season is winding down. We have asked Sean to do an update on the model. And the large capital projects actually in addition to coming under the purview of the council also comes under the purview of the finance committee. So that when we did the model the last time, it was really we did the dry runs with the finance committee. And we haven't decided how to do that in this time but the finance committee would be involved in that discussion. So Kathy that includes my short set of questions but obviously not. Thank you Lynn. And thank you very much, Amy and Guilford so I don't know whether there are any other questions and if they're not one of my requests would be. This was an excellent set of questions so when we write up this section, we might want to append them. And I'm seeing Bob just raised his hand so first I'm going to ask for any final remarks before we for questions. Thanks Bob. Yeah, I just had a question about the temporary bridge on station road. So what's going on with that because I know that last time we, we met with you, you said that we had to replace it the state was going to require us to replace it. I just wanted to kind of know what the plans are now. So we're, we're still going through the permitting process for the new bridge with Mass DOT at this time, permanent transportation. So that's where we are. The price is still significant we do have a small grant that would pay for half a million of it but the price is more than a million. So we're just working it right now it's. We do have to replace it Mass DOT wants us to replace it and our consultant who actually signed off on us doing it the way we did it, they, they're a little leery of us, keeping it longer. We're just, we're moving it along slowly. Any other questions of Guilford and and Amy while we were there with us. I'm not seeing any hands. I think we will thank you very much and you know Lynn's opening remark were and then we just saw it today, the scope of what you work on is amazing. And the, the level of which engagement when you're coming back to us and for those of you who weren't around for last finance time when we did this. One of the things that was impressed on this is how much your teams work with each other because Bob asked a lot of questions on how do you figure out the salaries because some people are working sometimes in an enterprise fund and something on. So then there's clearly a management to all of this, in addition to the permitting and working with the agencies. So, so we, we thank you for both being responsive and working on behalf of all of us in town. Thank you. Kathy, I also want to just say, and highly recommend that if you have not viewed the presentation about sidewalks and roads and how we do that assessment and the prioritization on it that was given to TSO. Please go view it, it actually finally answers a question and takes a lot of the mystery out of how these decisions are made and the data that goes in to making the decisions about sidewalk and road repair. We can reflect that also in the report, Lynn, you know, just as a crossference. Yeah. So, so I think we're through with this section. And the next, I do want to open it up for public comments, but I want to make sure for people in case anyone else is did Michelle is still with us. That the next agenda item next Tuesday is general government. And Sean will be posting or Sean and Athena will be posting that. And we postponed three of what we were going to do on Tuesday so we will be meeting that X, at least tentatively we will be meeting that extra time slot that was to, if needed. And last comment, and I think Andy, let me see if Andy is still here so I'm just going to say. Okay, so what the process we've used for all of you who have a section is that people have sent Andy draft paragraph of their section that will become part of our report. And he is going planning on sending last years to everyone so you can see a model. So I just want to make sure we do that. And then I think we can. I think both Amy, Amy and go for you can both leave. I think it was fantastic. Your time spending with us. Thank you very much. And, and I wanted to open up. Let me, we do still have public. So I want to see if anyone in the, our public has a question and we're open for public comments right now. If you have any please raise your hand. I'm not seeing any. Since I am the temporary chair, I have no items that I did not anticipate the last 48 hours. So therefore there are none. And I think that means we're adjourned and we will see all of you, all of us next Tuesday, when we do general government. Thank you very much.