 There are 246 town meeting members, 124 constitutes a quorum. The constable informed me prior to the special town meeting that a quorum is present. The first session of the 260th annual town meeting will now come to order. And we already elected a temporary clerk, so the clerk will now read the call and return of the meeting. The annual town meeting, April 30th, 2018, Amherst, Massachusetts, Hampshire, SS to one of the constables of the town of Amherst, Inset County, Greetings. In the name of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, you are hereby directed to notify the registered voters of the town of Amherst, of the annual town meeting to be held in the auditorium of the Amherst Pellum Regional Middle School. Inset Amherst at 7 o'clock on Monday, the 30th of April, 2018. The following articles will be acted upon by town meeting members. You are hereby directed to serve this call by posting attested copies thereof at the usual places. Hereof, fail not and make return of this warrant with your doings thereon at the time and place of said meeting. Give it under our hands the second day of April, 2018. Douglas Wesley Slaughter, Constancy Krueger, Andrew J. Steinberg, Alyssa V. Brewer, James J. Wald, Select Board. April 4th, 2018, Hampshire, SS, in obedience to the within warrant, I have this day as directed, posted true and attested copies thereof at the designated places to wit. Tom Sarna, Constable, town of Amherst. Thank you. A quick schedule review. It's my understanding that the Select Board will not be making a motion to adjourn to a Thursday on Wednesday May 2nd or on Wednesday May 9th. Once we get into the week of May 14th, there may be a motion to adjourn to a Thursday, depending on the progress we've made to that point. Therefore, the upcoming town meeting schedule looks like this. Session two will be on Wednesday May 2nd, session three on Monday May 7th, session four on Wednesday May 9th, session five on Monday May 14th, session six on Wednesday May 16th. The auditorium has been reserved for seven additional dates beyond May 16th. A couple reminders from the moderator that I held off on until we got to the annual town meeting. The election of three members to the town meeting coordinating committee and nine members to the town meeting advisory committee will take place during the May 14th session of town meeting. If you wish to be a member of either committee or if you wish to nominate someone else, nomination papers can be downloaded from the website. The nomination deadline is May 8th at 4.30pm. You can submit nomination papers and candidate statements here at town meeting or at the town clerk's office. The town meeting coordinating committee is limited to town meeting members. The town meeting advisory committee is open to all residents of Amherst. I'm now going to list the articles on the consent calendar which came out to you in the second mailing. If I hear a call of remove on any of those articles, I will call for a show of hands. And if I see five or more hands, the article will be removed. When we reach the end of the list, I will call for a single vote on the remaining items on the consent calendar. If a majority votes yes, all items will be considered passed. I propose that the eight warrant articles listed below be included in the consent calendar of the 2018 annual town meeting. Additional information may be found in the finance committee report. Article 1, reports of boards and committees. I see no call to remove. Article 2, transfer of funds, unpaid bills. Remains. Article 3, acceptance of optional tax exemptions. Article 4, FY 2018 budget amendments. Actually, I'm taking this one off the consent calendar because I feel it doesn't meet the criteria that I myself stated. So just to make sure we're following the rules, could five people raise their hands? Thank you. So article 4 has been stricken from the consent calendar. Article 5, retirement assessment. I see no, I hear no call to remove. Article 6, regional lockup assessment. Article 7, other post-employment benefits, OPEB trust fund. I heard a call to remove. Do I see five hands? I see one, two, three, four, five. Yes, I do. So article 7 has been removed. Article 9 reserve fund. I hear no call. So we're now going to have a single vote on articles 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 9. And just requires a majority and the motions as indicated in the consent calendar or the motions we're voting on. All in favor of the remaining motions in the consent calendar, please say aye. Aye. All opposed, please say no. Consent calendar passes unanimously. Pardon me? An electronic, can I hear it again? I wasn't sure if I heard correctly. Did you request, okay, an electronic vote has been requested on the consent calendar. It's a majority vote. The vote is before you. One is yes to is no. 143 yes and 3 no. And the consent calendar passes. I'm now going to be accepting two procedural motions. The first from Mr. Hoffman. Can we have a microphone up here, please? I move that we hear the library services portion of article 8 on Monday, May 7th at 7 or 5 p.m. Motion has been made and seconded. You may speak to your motion. Basically we have a few people who would have trouble making a meeting this week who should be here for the debate. And we know that they will be able to be here on Monday. Is there a discussion before we come to a vote? And by stating in the motion that it's 705, it means that it will be the first thing that we discuss on Monday, May 7th. I see no hands. All those in favor of the motion, which requires a majority, please say aye. Opposed, no. Passes unanimously. I now call on Ms. Teilman to make a procedural motion. That we hear the following three articles on Monday, May 7th at 7.10. Article 10, which is the assessment method for the regional schools. Then the elementary schools under article 8 and the regional schools under article 8. We will all be here. Motion has been made and seconded. You may speak to your motion. It would be good to have all of the school pieces together on one night. And everyone will be here. Is there a discussion? Yes. So the motion is to hear the following three articles on Monday, May 7th at 7.10. Article 10. And then the schools dash elementary portion of article 8. And the schools dash regional portion of article 8. And they will be heard in that order. And the procedural motion states 7.10. And what that means is that these three articles will immediately follow the library service portion of article 8. So next Monday we first hear library, then we hear these three school articles. Is there a discussion before we come to a vote? I see no hands who come to a vote. This requires a majority. All those in favor of the procedural motion, please say aye. Opposed, please say no. Passes unanimously. So the next thing that happens, the first article on the consent calendar that we passed is the article allowing for reports to be given under article one. And I have requests from two different committees, the Council on Aging and the Town Meeting Coordinating Committee. These reports, I request that the presenters keep them as efficient as possible, but they are not under effect of our three minute or five minute timing. These are oral reports by committees. So I call on Mr. Koffler for the Council on Aging. I'm Richard Koffler and I speak on behalf of the Amherst Council on Aging. The Council is a nine-member advisory board whose purpose is twofold. One is to identify and advocate for the needs of seniors. And second is to recommend and evaluate programs and services to meet those needs. The programs and services offered by the Amherst Senior Center are an invaluable resource that helps seniors to maintain health and well-being and to age in place. The list of different programs and services is too long to describe individually, but you can pick up a summary listing on the table in the back of the room. On any given day, there are between 10 and 15 programs and events for seniors and caregivers. A calendar of those events is included in a newsletter called The Senior Spirit, which is mailed to all Amherst seniors 59 and older every two months. A relevant fact is the growing population of seniors in Amherst. In the 10-year period from 2000 to 2010, the population of seniors, as measured by the federal consensus, increased by 39%. A similar increase is expected by 2020. A Council survey taken in 2010 showed that older residents want to continue to live in Amherst as they age. I'd like to show you some photographs taken in the Amherst Senior Center at the Bangs facility. The reception and lounge area looks spacious, but there are often activities that overcrowd the space because there is no room for that activity elsewhere. Staff offices not shown here are too small and are often overcrowded. The kitchen area is clearly too small. Nevertheless, it serves 30 congregate lunches daily, which must be prepared offsite due to the inadequacy of the kitchen. In addition, there are four routes of home-delivered meals, which are organized and delivered by volunteers as part of the lunch program. Despite the small kitchen, on Thanksgiving, we prepare food for 80 dinners for those in need. Some are eaten at the senior center and others are delivered to homebound seniors. The computer room shown here with computers along the wall often must be scheduled for two or more simultaneous activities due to a lack of available space elsewhere in the building. Also due to a lack of space, recipients of the bread and produce program often wait in the Bangs entrance foyer. Those sitting on the steps block the flow of traffic in and out of the senior center. The center maintains a supply of convalescent equipment, walkers, wheelchairs, shower seats, etc., which it loans to seniors who have need of them. Storage space for these items is limited to three small closets, making them difficult and dangerous to get at. In 2016 alone, we loaned out 369 pieces of equipment. The music appreciation classes and other meetings of this type are held in a shared space, which is barely adequate for the large audiences. There are three major shortcomings that prevent the Amherst senior center from reaching its true potential. First is lack of sufficient space. The total space is 7,400 square feet, but two-thirds of that is shared with other organizations. Lack of space that is appropriate for many of the scheduled activities is a second shortcoming. And third, there is a lack of sufficient and free parking. There are numerous new senior centers in communities in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and I'd like to show some of them to you now. The Northampton senior center has 18,500 square feet. The Groton has 36,000 square feet. Chickapee comes in at 21,000 square feet, and Holy Oak has 20,000 square feet. And now I'd like to show you some of the typical rooms in the newer senior centers. A reception center, a library and reading room, a gift shop, an appropriate computer room, a game room, an exercise room, a spacious auditorium, a commercial-grade kitchen. Oops, your slide jumped ahead. A spacious dance studio. People often comment about our inadequate facility. Here is a typical comment. It is extremely sad that a town as progressive as Amherst has a senior center with such a limited footprint. Amherst seniors deserve better. That was a statement made by David Stevens, who happens to be the president of the Massachusetts Council on Aging. The council is very much aware of the shortcomings and has been looking at solutions for the past 10 years. The most obvious solution is a new senior center facility, and that is what we seek. Here's what's been done so far. We have visited 16 new senior centers in Massachusetts and Connecticut and have interviewed their directors. We've attended seminars and had personal conversations with senior center architects. A council report on the senior center shortcomings and needs was sent to town hall in 2012. We have spoken with town manager Paul Bachelman on numerous occasions. He understands our needs and has been supportive. The Amherst League of Women Voters conducted a year-long study of aging in Amherst and two of its findings were one that Amherst needs a new well-funded and modern senior center and two the league supports public funding for senior services. We have the following goals. We would like to obtain funding for a new building feasibility study. We want to continue working with town officials to identify a suitable site. We wish to have a new senior center added to the town's capital projects list. We want to contact an architect to prepare preliminary plans. And lastly, we'd like to obtain permission to initiate fundraising. At this point, I'd like to express how appreciative the council on aging feels to have Nancy Pagano as the director of the Amherst senior center. For over 45 years, she has been a tireless advocate for seniors. Her creativity in the director's chair is responsible for the large number and the diversity of programs and services that we have in spite of the building's limitations. I would also like to acknowledge Jack Wolensack, a senior center volunteer who has provided all of the photos in this report and most of the data. Lastly, I strongly urge you to pay a visit to the Amherst senior center and see it for yourself and to support in any way that you can the effort to get a new facility in the future. And I'd like to thank you for your attention. Thank you. I now call on Mr. Riddle, representing the town meeting coordinating committee. Good evening. I'm Chris Riddle from Precinct 2, but I'm speaking as a member of the town meeting coordinating committee. As the moderator noted, we are holding two elections during the course of this town meeting. Both will take place from 6.30 to 9 on May 14th. Yes, that does work. I was looking at the dates that we are going to meet. They are to select members of two committees, the town meeting coordinating committee and the town meeting advisory committee. What are these committees? The town meeting coordinating committee, the one that I serve on, acts as a facilitator for town meeting. We work to help members be informed about procedures and about the content of the warrant. Toward that end, we organize the warrant review, the zoning forum, other informational forums, the warrant discussions, the meet your precinct candidate event and the bus tour. We manage the town meeting pages on the town website, amherstmah.gov. And we also organize the dependent care reimbursement, a listserv, and the public email system. The town meeting advisory committee is new, that's TMAC as opposed to TMCC. Its job is to review the warrant and prepare pros and cons reports for town meeting on the articles of significance and complexity. It is similar to the finance committee which reviews and reports on articles from a financial perspective. The advisory committee provides the same service put on a range of other issues, like impact on neighborhoods, on special populations, on history and culture, on public safety, and on the environment and others. You might ask, why are we holding these elections considering the limited lifespan of town meeting? Particularly, why are we creating a brand new committee, the TMAC, the town meeting advisory committee, in that context? The answers relate to the fact that there will almost certainly be at least one more town meeting, maybe more, and that the services of both committees will be needed for it. Further, the TMAC, a citizen committee vetting proposals for the legislature, is a good idea that many people have worked hard on and that once in place, it might be very applicable in some form to a city council form of government. Bearing in mind that your time commitment will be constrained by the limited future of town meeting, please seriously consider running for either of these important committees. The process is to obtain a nomination form, copies of which are on the back table, or at the town clerk's office or downloadable from the town meeting page on the town website Amherst-Mah.gov. Fill it out and return it to the town clerk's office by 4.30 p.m. on May 8th, or bring it to town meeting before May 8th and hand it to the town clerk or to a TMCC member. There is an optional 50 word statement that we ask you to email separately to townmeetingatamherst-Mah.gov. Thank you. Thank you. The Finance Committee and Select Board will be issuing reports under Article 1, but not until we get to Article 8 in town meeting. So we now move forward. Article 1 has been disposed of, as has Article 2 and Article 3. They were both in the consent calendar. So we next move to Article 4. And I call on Ms. Teilman to make a motion. Do you want me to read the whole motion or move in terms of the article? No, because you're not moving in terms of the article. So, yeah, you have to read the motion. Okay. I move to amend Part A, the action taken under Article 9 of the 2017 Annual Town Meeting Fiscal Year 2018 Operating Budget by increasing the appropriations and the amounts to be raised by taxation. The appropriation and the amount to be raised by, I'm sorry, for the, let me start here. Let's go back. I move to amend Part A, the action taken under Article 9 of the 2017 Annual Town Meeting Fiscal Year 2018 Operating Budget by increasing the appropriations and the amounts to be raised by taxation for the general government account by 125,000 to meet such increased appropriation by decreasing the appropriation and the amount to be raised by taxation for community services by 125,000. To dismiss Part B and to amend Part C, the action taken under Article 9 of the 2017 Annual Town Meeting Operating Budget by appropriating to the Health Claims Trust Fund a sum of $2 million for employee health insurance and to meet such appropriation transfer $2 million from free cash in the undesignated fund balance of the general fund set appropriation to be reimbursed to the general fund via a temporary health insurance premium surcharge to employers and employees until such time the total appropriation has been reimbursed. Motion's been made and seconded. You may now speak to your motion. I will defer to the manager or the finance staff. Mr. Buckerman. I'll do the big one. You do the little one. So I want to talk to you. This is going to talk to you about health insurance because that's the thing that's driving the budget decisions and that's the big number that you heard the chair of the finance committee mentioned tonight. I'm going to take a minute or two if you could put up the chart, please. I want to explain to you that how we do insurance now and how we're going to be doing insurance going forward. Right now we are self-insured by the Amherst Pellum Health Insurance Trust. That means we charge the towns of Pellum and Amherst and the Amherst Regional School District a fee and the premiums for their employees plus the employees put in a portion of their salaries as well. This money that's gathered from the employers and the employees is put into a trust, a separate bank account in essence and the only thing that that money can pay for are claims of our employees. So because we're self-insured, we're not fully insured, the more medical services we use, the more money that gets paid out of the trust. Our claims, if you look at this chart, the red is the income and the blue is the expenses should be the opposite, I know. And the line that goes through it is the balance and the trust. And in FY 2014, we had a $7.9 million balance in the trust and that was when we were having more revenue come in from deductions from employees' paychecks and from the premiums that we were collecting from the employers than we had expenses. And then that turned around. And so in 2015, the expenses exceeded the income and that continued. Some steps were taken early on. In 2015, there was a small increase on the PPO to drive people to the HMO, which is a better managed program. In 2016, benefits were changed, but just minor changes. And on July 1, 2017, we increased the PPO by 10%. And then that wasn't enough. And so on October 1, we increased the PPO and the HMO another 10%. And then on February 1 this year, we increased it another 10% to 16%. $100 for an individual and $200 for a family plan per month. So these are increases in the premium. But remember, we're self-insured. So all those claims that are coming in still have to be paid out. So this, just raising it more money wasn't an option. We weren't going to buy our way out of this. We worked with the, we have to work with our insurance advisory committee, which is a 14-member committee that has representatives from every bargaining unit in the town and in the schools, plus a school retiree and a town at retiree. With their support and with their effort, we went out to bid. We looked at everything. I said everything was on the table. We looked at joining other groups like the Hampshire County Trust. We went to look to joining larger trusts. There's a statewide trust called Maya that's run by the Massachusetts Municipal Association. Ultimately, so one of the questions came up is why did our expenses go up? There were three real reasons. One, just typical medical inflation. And we didn't increase our rates enough to keep up with medical inflation. The second was we had a large number of large claims. Now we all, everybody in town pretty much knows someone who has a premature baby or has medical treatment for cancer or something like that. These are large claims that get into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. We have insurance to pay for these things. That's why we have insurance. But it's all money that comes out of the trust. We do have reinsurance, but at a very high attachment point, $250,000. So we pay the first $250,000, and then on July 1, the clock starts over. So we start paying $1 again. Plus, our plan design was very attractive. And so we increased our enrollment by 9%. And so our plan design was more attractive to a lot of people. If you have two options, if you're a two-income family, you say, well, which plan is better for my family? People made logical choices to come to the town's plan. That's why the claims drove up so quickly. So we decided we needed to do certain things. We took three steps. First, we consolidated the group. We offer Harvard Health and Blue Cross. It's not really insurance. It's just the card that you use to use their networks. We said we're just going to concentrate on one plan and one carrier. And that was Blue Cross. Second, I wanted, and the insurance advisory committee said, we need to get out of the self-insurance business. We're not really that good at it. And we want to go to a fully insured product so that the dollar week, the price we get on July 1, sticks with us through the entire fiscal year. And that's our second option. And then the third was we had to face reality and see that we had to make design changes, plan design changes. And we introduced deductibles onto our plans for all the employees of the town and the school district. So the good thing about being fully insured, the carrier, we went with Maya, they guaranteed the first year and we were worried about getting spiked the second year. So they guaranteed a modest increase the second year, no more than the midpoint of their entire trust. And so what's left? We still have this trust. The trust is going to end the year in a deficit. And we have to pay the tail. Those are all the claims that if you go to the doctor on June 30th or something, that bill doesn't come into the town until July or August. So we have to pay for all those expenses. So the $2 million is to pay for that tail. And so that's a surcharge we're going to be putting on to the town, the school district, and to all of our employees. And that surcharge will stay there until we replenish the money that we're borrowing from free cash. We estimate it will be about two years. It could be less than that depending on what our claims are. We don't know who's gone to the doctor or had a procedure in May or June yet. So we anticipate it will be about two years and then this money will be back into free cash. So that's my attempt to explain our complicated health insurance to you. As you may have noticed, I'm letting giving him more than five minutes to explain all this. I think it's worth it. And I'm still going to call him as McGinnis to explain the other portions of article four that weren't covered. A of this article is moving savings from one functional area to another. As Mr. Bachmann explained, we had three increases for fiscal year 18. One was budgeted for the July 1st, 10% on PPO, so it was budgeted for. The second two were not. He made a commitment that we would pay for the shortage and the appropriations budget by utilizing savings in the operating budget. So our health insurance benefits are located in the general government portion. So we're moving that 125 to general government from community savings. And the savings from there are from changes that were made in leisure services this year. Would they reorganize the department? I don't know. And our health department, there were savings because the health director voluntarily reduced her hours to 30 hours. That was a personal choice of hers. So there were savings there. And then there were savings and veterans benefits this year. We're not reducing veterans benefits for 2019. We're just taking the savings that are there for 2018 and using it to cover some of this. So we're moving that to the general government. So we're moving that to the general government for 2018 and using it to cover some of this shortfall in 2018. Thank you. I now call on Mr. Slaughter to make a statement for the select board. The select board recognizes that this article, which we generally have every year at Ann or tell meeting is how, is part of the process we go through to sort of balance out the current fiscal year to finish the year within the amount of appropriation that we appropriated last year at this time. And so as we experience different comings and goings of our budget, health insurance being one of those things, savings in some area by either deferred rehirings, rearrangement of staffing and reorganization of staffing, we're able to offset some of our higher expenses in one area with savings in another and therefore it helps us bring our budget and balance before the end of the year. The select board unanimously recommends this to you. Thank you. Yes, Ms. Talman. The finance committee unanimously recommends this also. Thank you. This requires a majority vote for passage. Is there discussion before we come to a vote? Yes, I see a hand right near the aisle there in the center. Can we get a microphone? It's late. Very wise precinct. I'm just curious about what you called Mr. Backelman called re-insurance. Is that the same as stop-loss memory from my select board days as we had stop-loss insurance? Mr. Backelman. It's the same as stop-loss insurance. Any claim that goes above, it's $250,000 the insurance company pays for that. There are some claims that have been lasered at $500,000, so we pay the first $500,000 on those claims. Okay. Other questions? Further discussion? I see no hands. We will now come to a vote. Again, this requires a majority for passage. All those in favor of the motion before you under Article 4, please say aye. Aye. Well as opposed, please say no. Moderator, here's your unanimous vote in favor. It is not 10 o'clock, but I'm going to see if the select board, I'm going to put the select board on the spot, and if the select board wants to make a motion to adjourn, I will let them, because I think we've earned it. The Royal Way. I move to adjourn until Wednesday, May 2nd, at 7 p.m. All those in favor of the motion to adjourn until Wednesday, May 2nd, please say aye. Opposed, please say no. We are adjourned. See you on Wednesday.