 for recording. Thank you. Good evening. It's November 21st, 2022. This is our public forum on the FY24 budget. It is the first of two meetings tonight and will be followed by a regular town council meeting. However, we will remain on the same Zoom link for the regular town council meeting. This meeting also includes the finance committee, and after I call the council to order, I will call on Andy Steinberg, chair of the finance committee to call the finance committee to order. Earlier in 2022, an act was signed into law which extends the suspension of certain provisions of the open meeting law, allowing us to meet remotely without a forum of counselors present in the room. Therefore, you can meet with us either by Zoom, phone through Amherst Media or in person. We welcome you. Given that we have a forum of the council present, I'm calling the November 21st, 2022 special time council meeting to order at 6.06 p.m. I'll call upon each councilor by name. Please unmute, say that you are present, and then please mute again. Shallony Balmille, not here yet. Patty Angelis will be absent tonight. Anna Devlin-Goth here. Present. Lynn Griesmer is present. Mandy Johanna Keen. Present. Anika Lopes. Present. Michelle Miller. Present. Dorothy Pam. Yeah. Pam Rooney. Here. Kathy Shane. Here. Andy Steinberg. Present. Jennifer Taube. Present. Alicia Walker. Here. And has Shallony joined us yet. Present. Great. Thank you. I didn't look up. OK. Andy, please go ahead with the finance committee. So I'm going to call the finance committee meeting to order also for this evening's meeting. And we have two members who are not members of the council. But I know we're present. I think Bernie Kubiak is not present. But Bob Pegner, can you hear? Here. And I think that Matt Holloway is here. Matt. Present. There's no chat room for this meeting. If you have technical issues, please make sure that Athena or I know about those. If you need to ask a question or make a comment, use the raise hand button. And if technical difficulties arise as a result of utilizing remote participation, we'll decide how to address them at the time. There is one public comment period during this public forum. There will be three public comment periods, some of them specific to topics such as a poll hearing and track and field later in the regular town council meeting. That meeting will begin at 7 PM and or later at the conclusion of this forum. Let me just quickly mention that we're going to have a brief presentation. And then we will be opening the meeting for public comment. OK. Sean, I mean, sorry, I'm sorry. Tom and your Paul Bachman and Sean Mangano, our finance director. Paul, before you get started, Athena, can you enable sharing? There it is. Thank you. Thank you, Lynn. So this is a public forum on the budget. So we start the budget every year by doing our financial indicators report, which we did a couple of weeks ago. And then this is the first time we get to hear from you, the public, in terms of what you think should be the priorities for the town as we build the next year's budget and also what you want us to consider as we start to review this budget. It's an important time because this informs the staff's work and also the elected officials' work, who ultimately have to approve the budget. This presentation is a team effort. Tonight, we have with us Sonia Aldridge, who is our comptroller, who announced her retirement for next year, which we will celebrate again in the future, and Sean Mangano, our finance director. But it included other people in our finance team who helped build this. Next slide. So we have about eight slides that we're going to go through because we want this to be short, so because we're really here to listen to you. Major challenges that we're facing, continued rising costs, and the need for economic growth, which helps us offset those rising costs, continuing to prepare and budget for the four major capital projects, recognizing the increased pressure on taxpayers during a difficult time in terms of the economy, and then balancing our investments and new initiatives and maintaining our fiscal stability and sustainability. One of the good things that we have is that we have a good, strong financial position. We have an approved balanced budget for FY23, and we continue to focus on growing our reserves so we can meet all the demands of our budget and the needs of the people. We work from a strong financial base. This is something that we not only look at, but that outside bond rating agencies also identified. We have excellent fiscal management and forward-looking planning. We have strong financial systems, which again, due to the credit of our finance department led by Sonja Aldridge for 30-some-odd years, but also every member in that department. We have strong working relationships with the library and the school department and with our state officials and other partners in the town. And when we are approaching problems, we try to be thoughtful and try to share information as clearly as possible. And our budget is premised on some slow, steady growth. So everything that you see tonight is on the town's website and additional material as well. And if there's anything that isn't on there, you can let us know. So I'm gonna turn it over to Sean now. Thank you, Paul. So I'm gonna go through the next few slides kind of quickly because it's mostly what was presented at the financial indicators made in a couple of weeks ago. So this is a snapshot of the revenue projection, our baseline revenue projection for FY24. We are projecting overall revenues to go up 2.2% as of right now. The one thing that we are not projecting yet, so it will get better is we're not projecting any increases to stay-date or we're hoping it will get better. And the reason we're not projecting any increases to stay-date yet is because there are some concerns about economic recession coming and because there's been a change over in the governor. So when we do get the governor's initial budget proposal, which will be a little bit later this year, it'll be later in February, we will update this and hopefully this revenue picture will get a little bit better. On the expenditure side, we are proposing a 2.5% increase for operating budgets, moving capital to 10.5% of the levy from where it currently is, which is 10%. And we are projecting a little bit or not a little bit, but a larger than typical increase to our retirement assessment. And that's related to the two new departments that we created last year. So all this together combined with the revenues that we're projecting, we currently have a deficit of about $200,000. So that's significant, but because we don't have stay-date in here yet and because we're so early in the budget process, we think that's manageable and will be updated as we move forward. There's a few slides from that financial indicators presentation that were sort of key slides that we wanna just present again because we do feel they're important. So this first one is economic growth revenues as a percentage of operating revenues. So these are some of our key revenue categories that are indicators of how our local economy is doing. So it's new growth, it's building permits, motor vehicle excise tax, meals, tax revenues and things that are a sign of the economy. So what we wanna just highlight here is in 2021, you can see the dip down to 4.1%. That was sort of the midst of the pandemic. We have bounced back to 4.9%, which is more in line with the prior years, a sign that we've come out of the pandemic, at least in this measure. But this is something as we look forward to a possible economic recession, we would wanna monitor closely because these are the revenues that would potentially contract if we were to take a downturn. This next slide is revenue per capita. It looks at three major sources, property tax revenue, local receipts and state aid. And the key thing we wanted to show here is the dotted line, which is the revenue per capita when adjusted for inflation. And so while our revenue per capita has generally gone up, when you do adjust it for inflation, you can see most categories, it's flat or it's actually declined a little bit in local receipts because of the pandemic. But even in our largest revenue source, which is property taxes, it's gone up, but it's gone up very marginally when you look at it over a 10-year span. So what that means is we can typically afford to cover what we currently have in terms of expenses and staff. But when we look to do new things, we have limited ability to do new things because there's not really new revenue to do it. And this last chart from the financial indicators presentation is our operating expenditures. So this compares us to some other communities in Massachusetts and sort of at first glance, it looks good. It looks like we're being really efficient with our dollars and that we're spending a low amount per capita. But when you couple this with what is a higher tax rate around $20, one of the top 20 in the state, it doesn't really make sense when you think about having a higher tax rate below expenditures per capita. And the reality is that what I said last time is we have a large number of residents that live on taxes on housing. We still have to provide services and services to those residents, but we don't get tax revenue from that taxes on land. And so what ends up happening is that we have to be extremely frugal and somewhat limited in our ability or in our financing ability here. So again, this is good in one respect, but it is a unique thing about Amherst that we have such a large taxes on base with many residents that live on that tax is on land. So I'll highlight it, or I'll go through some of our highlights. So in FY23, we were able to do a 3% increase for the operating budgets, which was good. We typically do about 2.5%, but the council approved an extra half percent to help with the impacts of inflation. We were able to increase our investment in capital and in sustainability funding. We created two new departments, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Department in Cres, and we were able to use ARPA funds to beef up our public health department, support the COVID recovery, and also support some key council initiatives like adding the four additional firefighter EMTs. On the challenge side, we have to slowly integrate those four firefighter EMT positions into our general fund budget. It's something we'll look to do in FY24 and FY25 over the next couple of years as the grant funds that currently pay for those positions start to wind down. But it is a key challenge that we'll look to coming up. And the other one I'll mention here is completing those strategic partnership agreements with local educational institutions, mainly for the reason that I just described on the prior slide about with how important those institutions are to the town's fiscal health. And the big picture going forward. So on the concern side, I'll just highlight a few of these. We are continuing to prepare for funding the four building projects, inflation, which has impacted residents and our employees and in the town has had a huge impact on our planning for the four building projects as the cost of those projects has risen, interest rates to finance those projects have gone up. It's really made that challenge even greater. And I think the other one I'll note here is we've funded a number of new initiatives over the past couple of years and we have to continue to sort of work to make sure we're doing it in a financially sustainable way as we move forward. On the strategy side, we'll continue to manage resources frugally and use our reserves responsibly. The town has done a tremendous job acquiring grants over the past couple of years. So we'll continue to look for grants that are consistent with the goals of the town and what we're trying to do. We'll continue to look for ways to increase development but be consider sustainable ways of doing it, meaning we don't want to increase development that will put a burden on our systems and on our departments. We want to do it in a way that we can support it. We'll continue to look at debt, aid debt exclusion as part of our plan to address the major capital needs. And as we do start to hopefully put some new facilities online, there will hopefully be some financial benefits from that. There will be some cost savings if we are able to have more economies scale with our facilities. Hopefully from the net zero investments we make, we'll see some savings and utilities and we might have a couple of sites that could be repurposed and bringing some revenue as well. So going forward, this slide just shows a little bit about our budget process and some key points for interaction. So on November 7th, we have the financial indicators which sets the baseline for the rest of the, sets the financial baseline for the rest of the year. Tonight is the public forum. In December, the council will work on adopting budget guidelines and on goals for the town manager. Those two documents are really the key documents that guide the development of the budget. We try really hard to make sure that the budget document we present in May reflects those two documents. So I think when we talk about input and sharing feedback, those are the two documents where we would look to see that reflected. On the capital front in February and March, the joint capital planning committee will begin meeting every Thursday to make a recommendation to the town manager on the capital improvement program. Those means are public and so anybody can submit public comment at those meetings. On April 1st, 2023, the school and library budgets are due. So the school and library budgets follow separate tracks and work within their governing body. So usually for both of those departments, January through March is the key time for providing input into their budget before the school committee and the board of trustees approve those budgets. Once they do approve those budgets, they come over to the town manager to be included in his budget, which is due May 1st. During the month of May, the finance committee will review the town manager's budget in detail, including looking at inviting every department in and asking questions about their department, looking at their service levels, really getting into the finer details of every part of the budget. In May or June, I don't know if it's been scheduled yet. There will be a public hearing on the town manager's budget will be, which is intended for the public to provide reactions to the town manager's proposal. On June 5th, there will be a public forum on the capital June 5th of 2023. There will be a public forum on the capital improvement program. And then in June of 2023, the town council will act on the budget. And this last slide is really just trying to outline some of the ways to get involved with the budget process. So obviously tonight is a great first step. We also have set up a engage Amherst webpage, which you can access by clicking the link here. On that page, you can submit feedback or ask questions on the budget. And that will go directly to staff who can answer those questions. As I said before, the budget guidelines and town manager goals are being developed. So now's a good time to submit feedback on that. You can do that by emailing the town council or town manager and you can see the addresses there. And then the public hearing in May or June would be another opportunity. And on the capital plan specifically, the joint capital planning committee meetings in February and March and the public forum on June 5th of 2023. And all this information is, the town manager set is on our town website. If you click on budget and then upcoming budget, all this information is there. And that was it, thank you. Thank you. So during the public forum on the budget, which is established to charter section 5.3, our goal at public forums is to allow residents to make comments and or ask questions to the extent that we can answer them at this time. Thus it's slightly less formal than regular public comment. So at this time, we have both people in the audience, there are 23 people in the audience on Zoom. And we have about another 20 to 25 people here in the room or some more people out in the hallway and welcome. It's nice to be back in person. So I'm going to ask anybody who would like to make public comment to raise your hand. And if you have not signed in, at some point we'll ask that you sign in so that Athena, the clerk of the town council can make sure your name is recorded, okay? So Athena, I'm going to ask you to assist with this public comment period. And how do you wanna manage that? Do you wanna put it up here by the microphone, the sign-in sheet? It's good if people come and sign over here and then I can call on people from Zoom and in person like we did last time. Okay, all right. So let me suggest that we begin. Okay, the first person here is Jean Fay. Welcome Jean. We wanna be able to hear her please, thank you. Thank you. My name's Jean Fay. I've been a resident of Amherst since 1985. I've been an employee of the Amherst public school since 1998. Almost all of that, I worked a second job. I'm at the top of the pay scale for paraeducators and the percentage of increase that the school committee is proposing would give me exactly 50 cents additional per hour. I wanna give you a little bit of a history of paraeducators in our nation. My mom was a para. She did it for over 20 years in Newtown, Connecticut. Back then the money that she earned was actually referred to as lipstick money. I am not making this up. So for a town that considers itself to be so progressive, we need to get ourselves out of the 1960s. What we are paying our school employees should not be considered secondary income. The last time I checked on the employment form, it does not say that you need to have a second job in order to work here. We are losing a lot of our good young educators. An educator that spoke last time, her last day is tomorrow. My last day is December 23rd. We are understaffed. Our morale is abysmal and we need to do better. I am embarrassed as a resident of Amherst that this is what we are doing for our educators. If you live in Amherst and you say that you support education but you do not support educators, you're lying. And that's all I have to say. Thank you for your comments. We'll alternate between in-person and Zoom public comment. The next person is Felicia Mednick. I also did fail to mention that we would like people to keep their comments to three minutes and there is a clock, so it's a little small. Maybe we can change that. So go ahead, please. Okay, go ahead, Felicia. Okay, my name is Felicia Mednick. I lived at 137th State Street in District One for 27 years now. And I'm one of several members of the Amherst Climate Justice Alliance that are here to speak to you tonight. We're a newly formed coalition of about 10 groups who care deeply about the climate crisis. Amherst Sunrise, UMass Sunrise, Greater Amherst Mothers Out Front, Extinction Rebellion, Climate Action Now, Progressive Coalition of Amherst, Zero Waste Amherst, Unitarian Universalist Society, Green Sanctuary Committee, the Earth Ministry team of the First Congregational Church Amherst, UCC, and the Jewish community of Amherst Green team. We see ourselves as advocates for the good intentions of Amherst to follow through with our climate action and resiliency plan. And its goals for 2025, 2030, on our way to full decarbonization no later than 2050. So we will advocate for reduced greenhouse gas emissions in all sectors, as well as increased carbon sequestration, while at the same time promoting climate justice here and in the communities our emissions impact while lifting up all voices. Amherst has set very important climate goals, but we cannot hope to meet these goals without doubling our staff to just two people. Amherst didn't meet our climate goals of 2022. A few members of the Amherst Climate Justice Alliance met with Stephanie and Paul a few weeks ago, confirming all the work they are doing and sharing some of our concerns. Even though Stephanie hires some student help, no matter how talented they are, they can't provide the ongoing history and expertise and relationships that are necessary to achieve our climate goals. And they don't have the time to research and apply for grants, which could bring in a lot of money for future budgets. Paul encouraged us to come to the town council budget meetings and request for another staff person to work with Stephanie because the town council, not the town manager, is in charge of those decisions. So here we are. Some examples of 2023 goals that will be helped by more staff include speeding up our application for community choice aggregation, ensuring robust citizen participation for the new climate dashboard that will be built, working with property owners to retrofit multifamily and apartment rentals while preventing displacements by using the C-PACE program. And more staff can set the stage for meeting our 2024 goals by beginning research in financing tools for locally sourced renewable energy, having resources for homeowners to get full home energy retrofits. Right now, ARPA funds are only for heat pumps and finding the feasibility of Amherst to have net zero retrofits for all existing buildings similar to what Ithaca New York is now doing because if we can't do it in Amherst, what is the hope for the larger world? Thank you for your time. Thank you for your comments, Dana. Okay, next we have Max Page. Good evening. So my name is Max Page, I live on 84 McClellan Street. I grew up actually there and I went through the public schools here and my three children as well went through all the same public schools that I went to. I teach at UMass Amherst. I'm also the president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association which represents 115,000 educators in the Commonwealth including the members of the APA. So, and also I should note that this will become relevant that we also were key to, and these members and our association were key to winning passage of the fair share amendment of two weeks ago which would provide $2 billion a year to public schools and colleges and transportation. So that should figure into the conversation here. So I was just listening to the comments about how we are in very strong financial position. We have seemed to have a goal of growing our reserves and we spend a low amount per capita. I really want to have us and I noticed I was sort of shocked when I hear that but I looked around and I didn't see much shock there. And what I want to suggest to you is that there's an ideology behind that. We do not exist here to grow reserves of course, right? And we don't have a strong financial position to have a strong financial position. And much of that is paid for by underpaying your educators. So that if you say you have free cash, I love the phrase of free cash, that's produced by underpaying, meaning paying poverty wages, people like Jean Fay who's been here for 20 years for our education support professionals. So I really want you to look again at that when we talk about sort of and take pride in our strong financial position, what are we not doing? And doing for the thing we care most about, I think most of us consider one of the prizes of Amherst is our public schools. And our public schools do not function without all the people behind me. So we need to do much better. The school committee over the years and this town has underfunded the pay for these educators, 1.43% over the past six years and the current offers are simply not even keeping within pace with inflation. So I think what we need to do, but I need to ask you to do is rethink this budget or think about this budget and frankly free up money now so that the school committee is empowered to and forced to actually pay fair wages to these educators. I also heard things about the upcoming recession and economic uncertainty. We hear that when the economy is booming, we hear that when the economy is middling and we hear that when the economy is doing terrible. This is part of what I would call a neoliberal project that of course just always a problem. Therefore you have to cut back and you have to underpay public workers. That's not what we believe in. That's why the MTA fought so hard to break that down by taxing very wealthy people and returning $2 billion to the public covers in order specifically to pay for public schools and colleges and transportation. So I'm gonna ask you all as friends and neighbors to do right by this most important institution and the most important people who strengthen that institution, which is our public schools, pay fair wages in order that we can retain, recruit and retain and have equitable public schools. Thank you. Ashwin Ravikumar. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Fantastic. Hello everybody. My name is Ashwin Ravikumar and I live in your district Lynn. I just moved here a few months ago and I also served on the energy and climate action committee for a couple of years here in town. And I've just found a lot of resonance with a lot of what's already been said. I appreciated a lot the technical presentation about the budget. And the thought that really comes to mind for me that I want to remind folks of is that a budget is at base a moral document that expresses the values of the community. As a town, we are ostensibly committed to climate justice. We've committed to net zero emissions by 2030 and a 25% reduction over 2015 levels by 2025. We're committed to racial justice. We formed a DEI committee. We took seriously the community safety working groups recommendations in creating crests. And we are also committed to economic justice. You can see how we voted on the fair chair amendment. And if we think about those values, I think we need to take seriously the criticisms and concerns that people are raising about the budget that we actually see and ask ourselves questions like, does having dozens of cops who have been continuing to enact racialized violence in our community while maintaining just one person who's in charge of all things climate related on staff and underpaying teachers who have to work multiple jobs in order to make ends meet consistent with those values. To me, the answer is no. I also do agree that there is an ideology that kind of undergirds how we're thinking about this, namely the idea that we need to prioritize economic growth at all costs. Ultimately confronting all of these channels, racial, economic and climate justice requires us to think beyond economic growth and revalue things as a society and as a community. We need to really think about value and care work, the work that is done by, for example, the crest program, but cannot be done enough unless we fund them to have full-time sponsors. Eight more staff is what I think would be a reasonable starting point, unless we fund teachers and pay people that actually raise children and provide care for people in our community and fulfill the other recommendations of the community safety working group. That means creating a BIPOC youth center. It means making sure that we're taking seriously all of the recommendations that they made, including reducing the size of the police force by half. That's something that we can do. That's a pot of money that could make up for these shortfalls, serve as a bulwark against a potential recession and continue to express our values much more clearly, establishing a victim compensation fund for those who are mistreated by the police that comes out of that budget and fund an extended process of community racial healing and visioning, which was a key part of the community safety working groups recommendations. So fundamentally, this budget does not reflect our values of climate justice, racial justice and economic justice. And the good news is that there are proposals on the table from the community safety working group and from people that are here today to insist that we pay teachers well and that we take care of each other in our community. And one really great source of money to fund those things remains the police department. So I recommend, and I hope that you will consider cutting the police budget again, funding the recommendations of the community safety working group and paying our teachers a living wage. Thank you. Next, it's Angelica Bernal. Hi, good evening. My name is Angelica Maria Bernal and I'm a parent of two children in our school system. My daughter is six years old. She goes to the coming on this program. My son, Bodie is 10 years old and he goes to Wildwood in the intensive learning center. And I'm here to talk to you about making sure that we pay a fair wage to our teachers. I just left my kitchen, my kids, my husband's watching them. And to do that, as a parent it's like a mess at night. I wanted to come here just to speak plainly about how important that is for us. My son has special needs. He has autism and Down syndrome and he depends on his para as his lifeline. His para accompanies him every day as his one-on-one helps with his feeding, his basic needs, his education, his mobility through school. When I learned that our para's were making what they were making, it was a great source of shame. I've been here for 14 years. I came here to work as a professor at UMass and I want to set up roots here with my family because of the school system. And when I began to read stories about how underpaid our teachers were, I just was like, what kind of community is this? This is not what I thought I was moving into. This is supposed to be a progressive community. How can our parents not be making a living wage? How are teachers working two jobs? How is this possible when we're building a $100 million school, which I am proud to be on that committee and be working and doing that labor to do that. But the contrast to me is just appalling. We cannot do that in this community. We can do better. We must do better. We have an opportunity for a different kind of growth, a growth that builds for all of us an equitable future, an equitable future that means in our teachers what is fair, we can do that. And I think that's all I have to say. Thank you. Avni Jarawala is next. Good evening. My name is, I'm using somebody else's computer. My name is Lydia Vernon Jones. I live at 17 Gaylord Street in Amherst. I'm here tonight as a part of the Amherst Climate Justice Alliance also. I've been engaged on issues of climate change for many years in Amherst, including being part of the group that worked on the net zero public building bylaw. I'll admit that the severity of the global climate crisis scares me. Humanity seems to be having trouble making the changes that we need to make. Here in Amherst, we have the potential to do our part by working now to reduce and then eliminate our carbon footprint and help folks adapt to the climate changes that are already here. Remember how hot it was last summer? There is so much that we could be doing. Much of it identified in the Climate Action and Resiliency Plan, which is known as the CARP. But the town needs more staff with climate expertise, able to focus on helping us achieve our admirable climate goals. Just to meet our 2025 goals, our Alliance feels strongly that we need to double our professional climate staff by hiring another full-time person to work with our Director of Sustainability, Stephanie Ciccarelli. What needs to be done far exceeds what one person can do. To offer just a few of countless examples, an additional person would make it possible to extend the current policy of looking with a climate lens at purchasing, extend it to budgeting, construction, repair, hiring, and other decisions that involve energy. Training of staff, boards, and committees about how to look with a climate lens will need to be done as well as monitoring and data collection to be available to the town council and to the public. This person could work with the Climate Action, with the CARP, to develop detailed three-year plans that would provide timelines for each action item. For meeting the 25% reduction goal and start looking ahead to see what advance work needs to be undertaken. Now to make it possible to implement the action steps for the next five years in a timely manner. Looking further ahead and in greater detail will save money and time, as well as increasing our efficacy. Staff time must be dedicated to helping people adapt to climate change. This requires significant commitment and creativity. It's too late to focus only on reducing emissions. We must help the most vulnerable adapt to the changes around us. In order to be there, in order to have a robust resident participation and carrying out the plans of the CARP, there needs to be a coordinated effort to getting residents and those working and going to school and Amherst involved in lowering our public and private carbon footprints. Please direct the town manager to include an additional professional staff person for climate action in the FY24 budget. Thank you. Next, we have Danielle Seltzer. Hello. My name is Danielle Seltzer. I'm a resident of Turner's Falls. Thank you for having us again. So at the last presentation, town manager and finance director listed 14 or 15 towns as financially comparable to Amherst. Those are Agawam, Bilrica, Franklin, North Andover, Plymouth, Dartmouth, Nadek, Farnstable, Andover, which is separate from North Andover in case you don't know. Wellesley, Chelmsford, Reading, Needham, Hingham, and Arlington. So what I did between that meeting and this meeting is I went to every single town with their website and I looked up their educator contract. And I looked up, what does a teacher at the very bottom, very entry make? And then I looked up, what does a teacher with a master's degree and eight years of credited service make? And then I looked up, what does a teacher on the highest step and lane make, which is commonly known as master's plus 45 or doctorate? And what I found is that all of those towns, Agawam, Bilrica, Franklin, North Andover, Plymouth, Dartmouth, Nadek, Farnstable, Andover, Wellesley, Chelmsford, Reading, Needham, Hingham, and Arlington, every single one of those towns pays their teachers more at the beginning, at the midpoint, and at the end of the salary scale. And I have hyperlinks to every single contract where you can find this information. So, and Athena, you might wanna look up what those clerks are getting paid because I have a suspicion that those 15 towns might pay some of their other employees more than Amherst. So why I bring this up is because it really feels like your finances, it's happening on our backs. And it's not just happening on the backs of teachers, it's happening on the backs of DPW. It's happening on the backs of the fire department. It's happening on the backs of town employees and town hall employees. And the longer this goes on, the higher the tension is gonna be. And you're gonna keep seeing us and you're gonna keep hearing from us. And the longer the school committee shuts us out and the longer that they don't have public comment and they just have someone scrolling through emails that people write in, we're gonna keep showing up, we're not gonna stop, this matters to us. Our salaries matter to us, being paid a fair wage matters to us. And it was really disheartening and insulting to see. And by the way, North Andover, Dartmouth, Wellesley and Needham all have college campuses on their towns. They go through the same issues that Amherst does. And in the last 20 seconds, I'll just say I don't understand why getting compensation from UMass and Amherst and Hampshire college, it just doesn't seem to be a priority for this town. I've read your reports and all I see is conversations are ongoing. And then like in May, that whole line item just stopped. I didn't see any report about what's happening with strategic partnerships anymore. And if I were a taxpayer in this town, I would be really angry about that. Thank you very much for your time. Next is Zoe Crabtree. Hey everybody, my name is Zoe and I live in district five. So I just want to talk for one moment about what I've heard from other folks so far. I think that I agree with everything that everyone has said this evening. One of my friends who has since moved away and is doing a master's program elsewhere was a para for a couple of years in the middle school. And the whole time had two or three jobs, working nights and just scraping by had to move apartments every year. And it was rough and they don't live here anymore because it wasn't possible. So now I'll move to my prepared remarks. So here's what I would like to see in next year's budget. I'd like to see funds for eight more Crest staff or more including both supervisors and responders so that they can operate 24 seven. I know that they're increasing their hours in January. I think it's gonna be until 10 p.m., seven days a week. But that's not 24 seven. I also want them to be able to maintain their independence. And I know that the folks there are working really, really hard and that with the staff they have currently it's hard for folks to have sick time and vacation. And I want them to not burn out. I want them to last and to continue providing the service to our town that they have so amazingly been doing so far. I'd also like there to be funds to solve whatever issue is keeping Crest from getting set up with dispatch. I've heard some stuff about technical challenges. I work in tech. I know the challenges of doing integrations between systems but those are solvable. Those are solvable issues and they need to be solved as people who call 911 should have the option of working with Crest responders. I'd also like to see funds to launch a BIPOC cultural center and a youth apartment center. We've been saying those words into the air for several years. And I think last year there was some funds for some research into one of them. I know that we have a DI director now who has these things on her plate and I'm very excited to hear where they go but she can't do them without funds. I'd also like to see a smaller budget for the APD. I've been saying that for four years. Other people have been saying it for longer. Now's the time. Someone said earlier that there's a $200,000 deficit in a projected budget because state aid hasn't been factored in yet. That's two police officers. We have like 40 or more. Anyways, Crest has proven that they're effective at providing public safety services. We just can't keep investing in services like the APD that are doing harm instead of the ones that are making our community safer. I'd also like to see funds for victims' compensation fund and for an extended process of racial healing and visioning as discussed in the CSWG reports. The town council is here. Have the power to affect next year's budget. You heard Sean talk about the guidelines. You get to shape what they're looking at and where their priorities are. I encourage them to invest in the vision of Amherst that the CSWG knew was possible and that so many community members have been asking for. Thank you. Next is Claire Coco. Hi everyone, my name's Claire Coco. I live in Amherst. I live in South Amherst and I also teach middle school and I've taught at the high school here. I didn't expect to talk tonight but I just felt I should. I am a taxpayer and a resident here. I just wanted to tell a little bit of my story and just also a little bit of advocacy. So I moved here. I was a teacher in New York state and I moved here because I wanted to raise my family here and I loved the area. I had friends in the area and there was a wonderful position open at the high school and I was like, this is where I want to be. I know this community has great values and great school system. And I took a substantial pay cut to move here but I was willing to do that because this is where I wanted to be. But I moved here and was unable to afford a house and we lived in rolling green apartments for seven years not saying anything against rolling green is great. It was wonderful. But eventually we were able to get a house in this community. It is hard to live here on a teacher's salary and I really am committed to being here and raising my family here. I graduated from a liberal arts college, Haverford college with a degree in history. I went and got my master's after that. I, my daughter is about to go to high school and I just know there's no way with the way the college tuition is now that she's going to be going to or would have an opportunity to go to a comparable liberal arts college. It's just, I mean, that's just one thing. I've worked extra jobs, extra gigs ever since I've come to Amherst. The idea that teachers have a cushy job where they have time off in the summer and they have time off under aches that is a myth that's long past. I've worked summer school for the past 10 years and many other teachers who have many high degrees have worked extra jobs in through the summer and it's exhausting. There is very little break for teachers because we all put in extra hours and extra time. I just want to quickly say about the cost of living increases that for the past few years, if you go back and look at the data from all the way to 2016, you can see that even back then cost of living increases were less than inflation. So inflation was a 2.1% back then. It sounds miraculous, but our cost of living increase was only 1%. And as you look through the years, you see that we haven't been keeping up with inflation for quite some time. So, and then you fast forward to 2021 where the cost of living increase for teachers like myself was 0.6% and inflation was 7%. And now we're being told it'll be 2% cost of living increase with about 8% inflation. Thank you. Next is Birdie. Hello, my name is Birdie Newman and I'm from district three. I'm really, really excited about this public forum because I'm hearing demands for climate justice and for fair pay for workers and fair pay for workers that will also uplift children in our community. And so it's very clear to me that the people of Amherst want a just town and a sustainable town. The comment I wrote is specifically directed at public safety and anti-racism. So that's what I'm going to be speaking to. I've been so excited to see the town council pass initiatives like Cress and a reparations fund in response to hard work by town committees and passionate advocacy by residents. However, there is still a very long way to go before everyone in Amherst experiences security and fair treatment. The Amherst police department causes particular injustice and harm in our community. There's been much needed conversation lately about specific incidents such as the July 5th noise complaint and the restraint of a cooperative Hampshire college student. But of course the events are part of a larger issue. I want to remind the council of the research by the seven generations movement collective in 2020 which found that BIPOC residents experience with the police falls predominantly into the following categories. Fear, dehumanization, distrust of the police, lack of APD cultural competency, lack of diversity on the police force and disrespect for communities of color. In the context of this research, the fact that the town's FY23 budget allocated over $5 million to the police department compared to less than $1 million to Cress and the DEI office combined indicates that the Amherst government's financial decisions do not yet align with its stated anti-racist intentions. And I want to add from other comments that clearly they're not lining up with Amherst intentions around education and climate as well. A few recommendations to align our spending with the community that we dream of. One, fund eight more responders for Cress. Two, maintain Cress as an independent town body. Three, fund a BIPOC cultural center and a youth empowerment center as indicated by the community safety working groups part A report. Four, reduce the size and budget of the police force by half. This will free up lots of resources for the important initiatives being discussed tonight. Five, establish a victims compensation fund for those who are mistreated by police as asked by the community safety and social justice committee. And six, fund an extended process of community racial healing and visioning as indicated in the community safety working group part B report. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak. I'm really glad to have an input on the upcoming budget. Thank you for joining us. Next is Keith McFarland. My name is Keith McFarland. I'm not a resident of Amherst. I've been an employee in the district for nearly 20 years. I am a resident of Sunderland where I'm on the Sunderland Elementary School Committee, the Frontier Regional School Committee and I sit on the Frontier Regional Budget Subcommittee. I've spent much of the 10 years, last 10 years developing the budget for both the regional high school and the elementary school. I've looked at my role on school committee as one to advocate for students and by advocating for students, it means maintaining facilities, providing up-to-date materials and compensating a highly qualified and professional staff. Budget developments are never easy, but it's been our mantra that as a school committee member, it is our budget to develop. It is our budget to present and it is our budget to defend. And it's also our mantra that we have to present a true budget what it really costs to maintain facilities, provide materials and compensate a highly qualified and professional staff. Many years I've heard in Amherst that that is not the system that actually happens and I have some concerns. I've gone to many budget meetings with the superintendent where we are told this is what the town dictates is our budget this year. At recent school committee meetings, I've heard school committee members say we don't have any involvement in the budget process, this is what the town tells us. That's concerning to me because it is the school committee's purview to develop the budget, present the budget and defend the budget. And it represents what they value, what they want to invest in. There are issues with infrastructure, buildings and obviously there are issues with compensations for staff. When the school committee doesn't take an active role in that and they're told what the budget will be, you have the instances where you at that point you're banging a square peg into a round hole in your cutting programs and we've lost automotive programs at least at the high school where I work, we've lost consumer ed programs, we've lost culinary arts programs, we've lost early high childhood education programs. There are still students who want these so that we have to provide regional transportation which actually cost the districts more in the end. I would encourage the school committee, I'm here to encourage the school committee, it is your budget to develop, it is your budget to present and it is your budget to defend and I'd encourage you to work that budget to maintain your facilities, provide update up to date materials and to compensate a highly qualified and professional staff. Thank you for your time. Next is Martha Hanner. I'm Martha Hanner, I live in district five and I'm speaking on behalf of the Amherst League of Women Voters Racial Justice Committee regarding moving forward with racial justice for the fiscal 24 budget. The Racial Justice Committee of the Amherst League of Women Voters commends the town for establishing the Department of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and the community responders for equity, safety and service as important steps toward building equity and justice for Amherst for all of our residents. Outstanding leaders for both these programs have been hired and it is exciting to see their work beginning. As the council begins to consider the fiscal 24 budget, we urge you to commit to supporting both DEI and Cress at the full level they need to carry out their work successfully. As a new program providing an alternative to traditional policing, Cress has begun gradually. Four pairs of responders, eight responders have been hired and undergone intensive training. They are now engaged in expanding their role as experience is gained. For fiscal 24, Cress needs, Cress funding should increase in order to expand their service so that they can have the full 24 hour coverage originally envisioned in order to serve our town. The director and assistant director of the DEI department have been hired. However, the fiscal 23 budget did not include additional funding to initiate programs. We urge the town to increase support in the fiscal 24 budget so that the department can create programs and activities and also to provide the necessary administrative support for the DEI to accomplish its goals. We encourage the town council to continue to implement the vision goals and framework that the CSWG initially proposed and which are implied in the town's December 2020 resolution to end structural racism and Amherst. Thank you. Next, the name is Defund. Hello, my name is Sabrina and I believe I live in district three, but I go to, I've been a resident, less of a resident, I'm a college student and I've been going to Amherst. I've been at UMass Amherst for school for the last three years. And today I'm asking you demands regarding the police and safety. As a POC student at UMass Amherst, we have had similar instances of police brutality and racial profiling on campus with the UNPD. And so what's really important to me is also seeing Cress and DEI being things people are rying around. So fully funding eight more responders for Cress as other people have also said and maintaining Cress as an independent town body. A funding of a BIPOC cultural center and youth empowerment center would also be valuable to the college as well to reduce the size and budget of the police force by half as well as establishing a victim compensation fund for those who are mistreated by police as well as the funding of an extended process of community racial healing and visioning would also be beneficial to those affected and BIPOC people in the area as well as the students who come here. This is really important to me because as I said before, there have been many instances of profiling on campus as well as students who may be around Amherst and have that happen to them. I know there are many who, there was just like a protest today actually around that in the administration building on campus. So the students here are very interested in a Cress on campus as well as well as in the town. So I guess in conclusion, that's why I'm asking to for a cut of the APD budget as well as a reinvestment of money in a way that centers the needs of the BIPOC community in Amherst. Thank you. Next is Kathy Axelson-Berry. Hi, Kathy or Kitty Axelson-Berry from District Two in Amherst. And so many people have been really eloquent and I know that we're running out of town time. So I just wanna thank them all, including this Danielle Seltzer who did so much research about the low wages of our school staff compared to other comparable towns. I hope she's also looked up how much the administrators here and in other towns are paid. I wanna reiterate that I so often hear that town hall doesn't have enough staff to do X, Y and Z. It does seem clear that we need more staff in town hall and I'm wondering why that isn't mentioned very much. Also, I would love to hear an explanation of how to combine we need to be frugal and yet not prioritizing our educators and students, our operational costs, our maintenance and making this a year round place where there's a year round population and a year round economy. Instead, we're like apparently trying to make this into a tourist destination or to coddle developers so that they'll create high end student housing that no family could possibly ever live in. I'd also like to hear what these strategic partnership agreements are because as one person says we keep hearing them mentioned and yet we never hear what they are and then we stop hearing about them. Similarly, what is sustainable development that doesn't put a burden on police, fire, roads, et cetera? I'm curious as to what we mean by that as a priority. So that's all because I know we're running out of time and other people have been very wonderful and eloquent. I hope that the town council will take all of their remarks into real consideration. There's been so much said about the need for paying school educators and para educators more, so much about sustainability, so much about priorities. Thank you. Thanks for joining us, Kitty. If there are any others in the room who'd like to speak they can sign up over here. We just have some folks, five more people online. The next is Julian Hines. Hi there, my name is Julian Hines. I am a resident of district five and I am here to speak to you about how critical it is that we fund $400,000 to implement and initiate the CARP plan as we have not fully funded that plan and the timelines are getting closer to the 2045 and 2050 goals that the town has set. As we approach those dates need to be cautious and careful to confront this climate crisis and actually complete these goals rather than sort of whitewashing over the top of them. This includes $40,000 for tree planting that is sorely needed in our public works tree and grounds budget as well as developing new bike lanes and renovating existing ones in our town. In addition to those two issues we also need more staff in town hall and in the sustainability office to implement these critical programs. Turning away from those three critical issues I also would like to express my concern personally around our educator pay. And I believe I spoke to the council about this last time but I stand firmly in solidarity with my teachers, my para educators and all our other school staff and professionals in requesting more than a 2% raise and some respect for the work they do every single day. And I remember some of our counselors and town staff were rightfully concerned about the impacts this would have on other collective bargaining agreements. And I would say that it is equally critical that we pay our DPW workers, firefighters and town hall staff 8% wage increases in addition to giving them safe working conditions and living wages. They deserve it just as much as our teachers do who do not work the nine to three that a lot of people assume they do. They're grading well into the night I'm getting emails from them and sometimes also early in the morning that assignments are graded or prep has been done or information about a field trip I'm taking. So I would just urge you to consider those things as well as our climate priorities when you go to do the town budget. And that is critical that we also can provide these funds whether it be from increased taxes on developers or from getting money from UMass, Amherst College the police department, there are all plenty of places where these funds can be acquired. It's just a matter of whether the town council believes they should be funded. And I would urge you to fund them obviously. So I appreciate you listening to me tonight as I see my time is running out. Thank you for your time. Thanks, Julian. Next we have John Root. Go ahead, John. I'm sorry, can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Hello, my name is John Root. I live at 23 Greenlands Drive. I've lived in Amherst since 1983. I'm speaking on behalf of the Amherst climate justice coalition of which zero waste Amherst is a member. As former chair of the town's recycling and refuse management committee, I participated in creating the solid waste master plan that was submitted to the select board in 2017. This comprehensive document was applauded by the select board and accepted for consideration by them, but none of its major recommendations is yet to be adopted. I would like to urge the town to take the steps necessary to change to a town contracted refuse and recycling system that would not only include universal curbside pickup, compost pickup but also adopt a pay-as-you-throw fee structure that would incentivize waste reduction. Many towns take on the responsibility of waste management. Northampton and Amherst are the only towns of our size are larger in Western Massachusetts that are allowing the national haulers to have free rain. All others either provide hauling directly or contract with a hauler. Other municipalities implementing pay-as-you-throw have experienced immediate and dramatic declines in waste in the range of 30 to 40% fewer tons of garbage being hauled to landfills or incinerators. As I'm sure you're all aware, both unnecessary waste and consumption of non-essential food and non-food items have huge impacts on greenhouse gas emissions. The current policies being proposed by zero waste Amherst would most likely achieve the most significant impacts in reducing Amherst's carbon footprint in our town's history. We are excited that the by-law proposal is moving along in the town services and outreach committee and that the town has been awarded a grant by the Department of Environmental Protection to get the ball rolling by researching and drafting an RFP or RFI. We need to commit town staff to do the important upfront work to start up the program. We have offset the need for staff to some extent by having the assistance of the DEP Municipal Assistance Coordinator and the assistance of zero waste Amherst with research and with neighborhood outreach and education, with its sustainable neighborhood teams once the program is launched. But commitment of town staff is also needed during the startup period which will hopefully be in this fiscal year once the startup work is done. It should be a smooth sailing as in all the other towns that have adopted this model such as our neighbors, Shutsbury and South Hadley. We hope to launch this campaign, this change in solid waste management in January 2024. With this timeline, we would need funding in the operating budget for a small percentage of one staff person in accounting to do the possible quarter building and a percentage of another staffer to be in charge of contract compliance. Moving towards zero waste is a big part of the new normal. It's often looked at as a minor piece of climate action plans because those plans focus on landfill and incinerator emissions rather than the embedded emissions in our overall consumption habits. If we reduce our consumption with pay as you throw incentives, massive amounts of additional emissions created in the process of producing and transporting all that stuff that we have now decided to buy secondhand. On behalf of zero waste Amherst, I request you include at least 15% of two full-time employee positions in the FY24 budget so that we can start on time with an estimated price tag of about $30,000. This is a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time waste reduction coordinator which was the highest prioritized request in our 2017 solid waste master plan. Most municipalities the size of Amherst do fund a full-time waste reduction coordinator and recognize the importance of having someone on board to take on this essential responsibility. The town is totally on board with zero waste efforts illustrated by the number of groups that have endorsed this proposal and the fact that both the Board of Health and the ECAC have been active in promoting it. Also on behalf of zero waste Amherst and as an individual, I am requesting that the town not include funding for artificial turf on the high school track. Artificial turf only lasts about a decade and both disposal and replacement have unacceptable climate impacts. There is also much research showing that athletes competing on artificial turf are significantly more at risk for injury than when games are played on grass turf. I urge the council to instead find a way to fund natural turf. This is a perfect example of how we can't continue business as usual. As new data appears, we need to be remaking ourselves to the new normal just as we hope to do with our new waste hauling system. We'll all be proud if we follow through with these measures to take responsibility in achieving meaningful institutionally initiated carbon reductions. Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak. Thank you, John. I also want to mention to those people who are joining us that we are still completing the public forum on the FY24 budget. At the conclusion of that, we will move on to the regular town council meeting which was posted for seven o'clock. Okay. Ah, go ahead. Next we have Yaping. Hi, my name is Yaping Douglas and I'm a resident in district four. I wanted to share my enthusiastic support for the demands that Defund 413 Amherst has put forth. I think they all make a ton of sense. I'm going to read through them again even though you may have heard them because I think they're so great and they're worth hearing again. One, to fully fund eight more responders for Cress. Two, to maintain Cress as an independent town body. Three, to fund a BIPOC cultural center and youth empowerment center. Four, reduce the size and budget of the police force by half. Five, establish a victim compensation fund for those who are mistreated by police. And six, fund an extended process of community racial healing and visioning as outlined by the CSWG. And I also want to echo other people who have talked about the importance of paying paras and teachers more so they don't have to work two jobs and for actually funding climate staff for the town. And yeah, I just, I think there's a lot of data and a lot of reason to back all of those demands put forth by the group. And I hope that the town council can strongly consider taking them seriously. Thanks. Thank you for joining us. Ronnie Parker. Hi, are you hearing me? Yes, we can, Ronnie. Okay. Yeah, so this is Ronnie Parker, district three. I would like to speak about our capital budget which seems to be really good. And we seem to be good at setting aside money for those capital projects. But I fear that that is happening at the cost of maintaining what we have already. So I suggest we use some of our capital funds to improve sidewalks focusing on areas that are most commonly used. I've personally fallen down on our sidewalks several times including just a couple of weeks ago on Triangle Street. So I think those really need to be fixed. And I wonder if we could focus on the downtown area and then secondarily focus on areas where there are lots of elderly residents because the older you are, of course the less likely you are to survive a fall. I also hear a lot about buildings being in disrepair. And I would really like to see an aggressive strategy of maintaining what we already have, repair things as much as possible so that we don't have to tear down and rebuild at a much higher cost, not only financially but environmentally as well. And the second thing that I wanted to talk about is Amherst expenditures per person for services in this town which I understand are the lowest in Western Mass. So I would like to suggest that we enhance our services in a number of ways. I want to support some of the ones that have already been stated like the paraprofessional staff and teachers. They are so important. I just cannot believe that they don't have the kinds of high wages that administrative salaries occupy relative to other towns around us. And then I want to emphasize the town's planning staff who appear to be in a permanent state of overwork. This is the staff that I have encountered the most in the town and I feel like they need multiple. I don't know the exact number because I don't know the town's management structure and staffing very well as a fairly new resident but I see that they're very conscientious but they really, really, really need more people. And I think this is essential not just because the current staff appear to be so overworked but also because proper planning is key to achieving our development goals in the long term. If we don't plan properly, we have a disaster in the future. So I really want to make a strong case for that. I think that with regard to Cress and the police department, I feel like some investment is needed to ensure that they operate in a more coordinated fashion. We said that Cress was going to take over some police functions and are they taking those over? Is that happening? I think that more efficient management can occur between those two entities so that because we don't have enough, I assume a budget to triple Cress staff so they can be available 24 hours but that need not be an end result. I think other things can be done. And then, yeah, no artificial turf it's been spoken about. And just one final thing, there are meetings held of the budget but they're held like at 1030 in the morning. Many of us who work simply cannot do that. I've tried and tried. So it would be really nice when you start formulating the budget to have some other time slots so that those of us who have full-time jobs can participate in those. Thank you. Allegra Clark, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Hi, my name is Allegra Clark. I live in district two. And I am speaking tonight as a resident of Amherst, not a representative of town committee. So I have a few things that I wanna say. First, I am fully in support of all the demands that the educators have been making. I think that, you know, I am a graduate of the Amherst Regional Schools. My husband and I moved back to the area in part because we were so proud of the schools that we went to and we want our children to go to. And, you know, the staff needs the support to stay in this district. And that comes with a monetary price tag and they deserve it and we deserve them. And we wanna keep them here. So I support their demands for more pay. I also am in support of increasing the staffing for Cress. I think that adding more coverage will be important to the ongoing success of the program. And I think that not only do we need more responders, but we do need more supervisory roles in the department. So that Mr. Miller is not taking that role on all by himself. I again, think that it would be helpful to, you know, freeze hiring in the police department until we have some data as to how Cress has operated. Since it's roll out. And ultimately I am in support of the CSWG demands as they had laid them out in their previous reports to reduce the size and scope of policing and Amherst. And also to add proactive services such as the Youth Empowerment Center and the BIPOC Multicultural Center. I also would like to speak related to the capital stabilization fund that I understand has been recently talked about. And I just, I hope that in the conceptualization and roll out of that, that DPW and the fire department projects don't get left behind. I really would like to see the new fire station and the new DPW headquarters happen, especially the fire station knowing that the downtown station is not safe and doesn't really have the space for the equipment as needed. So I think we need to support our fire department and DPW as well. Thank you. Thanks for joining us, Allegra. We've concluded public comment and we're going to move on now. Andy, I need you to adjourn the finance committee meeting. Finance committee meeting is adjourned at 7.25. Okay. And the town council meeting is adjourned at 7.25. However, we will remain on the same Zoom link for the regular town council meeting, which will begin immediately. So good evening. This is now the regular town council meeting. It is November 21st, 2022. We are meeting based on the open meeting law of Massachusetts, which allows us to be both virtual and in person. Given that we have a quorum of the council present, I'm going to call the meeting to order at 7.25. And I just want to do a quick check for sound if people can hear and be heard. Shalini Balmille. I'm present. Kathy Angelis is absent tonight. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Present. Lynn Griezmer is present. Mandy Johannity. Present. Annika Loeks. Present. Michelle Miller. Present. Dorothy Pam. Now, come on, Pam Rooney. Present. Kathy Shane. Yeah, I'm here. Andy Steinberg. Present. Jennifer Taub. Present. And Alicia Walker. Present. And I'm going to go back and see if Dorothy, it looks like you've taken a brief break. Are you back? I'm half back. Okay. Thank you. Let me explain the process of this meeting. There will be three public comment periods, okay? The first is related strictly to a poll application by ever source. And in that case, we just ask people who would like to speak to that, to speak to that. The second is a general public comment period. And anything people would like to say, the restrictions will be based on the number of people in the audience. There is a third specific public comment period related to item eight C. And that item and the public comment will begin at eight 30 with some general discussion motions. And then we will move to public comment and come back for votes. That is on the transfer and appropriation order for a portion of the town of Amherst capital program regarding the school track and field rehabilitation. With that, I just want to point out a few announcements. And Athena, you were going to include a couple of slides. We do not meet next Monday. We're actually going to take a Monday night off, our first one in a while. We are meeting on December 5th. At that point, we'll do the state of the town address and the regular meeting and various other council meetings are scheduled as well, committee meetings. In addition to that, there are several events coming up in Amherst that Athena has prepared slides about. One is the very merry maple. And that is on December 2nd, right out in front of town hall and starting at 430. The next one is the very merry holiday, which is the following next day, this Saturday, right after that. And then sip and stroll. And that is on the 15th in downtown Amherst. So we hope that you will join in the celebration of winter and the various holidays we celebrate. With that, are we Athena? Who am I expecting for the hearing? I think we have an Aversus room. Oh, please come forward. Introduce yourself. This is a hearing. I'm going to open the hearing. And it's a hearing by Aversus request for a poll placement at 142 High Street. Hi, my name is Ryan Morich. I work for Aversus and I'm here for the poll commission. Okay. And can you tell us just briefly, it's a single poll? Yes. There's a tree currently there being used as a stub pole. We're going to remove the tree and install a pole in its place with a guy wire that goes across over the sidewalk with sufficient room for the snow removal equipment. Okay. Are there any questions from the council? Mandy Joe. A couple of questions. The first one is, can you explain what a stub pole is? Will it actually have the, I just don't know what one is. I don't know whether it's actually getting wires on it or not, or whether it's doing stuff. And then can I get that explanation before I ask the other question? Sure. Sure. So I actually have a picture that I brought with me. Yes. I actually, I brought a picture with me. Is there any way to put it on the screen or. Did you submit it in advance to. I didn't know. Okay. Why don't you give it to me and we'll pass it around. And then we'll place it in the packet so that it is available. Is there a way Lynn for that to get emails soon so that the folks who are on zoom can see it. If we're not able to have it pass to us. Yes, we'll figure that out as soon as we can. Thank you. Take a picture of it. Send it to Athena and we'll see if we can put it up. Awesome. Thanks. Athena, is it in the packet? Yeah, it's in the packet. Okay. So that's the picture of the tree stump that's being used as a telephone pole. Okay. Yeah. So my next question is it, I'm still not sure whether there's actually wires on that pole. There were some red stuff and there was some green stuff. So there'll be a guy wire that attaches to. There's a pole on the corner of Harvard Ave and high street. And there's a guy wire that goes across high street. To that tree. And it supports the pole on the corner. So we're going to replace that with pole. There'll still be a guy wire that goes across high street. And then there'll be an anchor to hold that pole. And then there'll be a guy wire that goes across high street. And then there'll be a guy wire from going into the road. So it supports the. The pole line on Harvard Ave. Okay. So I think that means that the language in the draft. In the request for a pole petition that says that ever source would agree to reserve space for one cross arm. For the fire and police telephone signal wires belonging to the municipality and use for municipal purposes. So that means that the pole itself that would be being installed is not going to actually have any. Active wires on it. It's basically a support pole. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. And then my next question is the order itself says it will be installed on the sidewalk. And so I get worried when the language is. On the sidewalk, not next to the sidewalk, not. But can you confirm that it like, is it going between the road and the sidewalk? Is it actually going to be on the paved sidewalk? No, it's, it's going to go exactly where the tree is. So we're going to dig. We're going to cut the tree down, dig the stump out, add dirt and put the pole in its place in between the road and the sidewalk. And then there's a, um, there's a guy. A guy sidewalk guy wire that goes over the sidewalk. So it's going to be on the sidewalk. And supports the pole. So there won't be anything in the sidewalk or the road. How high will the wire that goes above the sidewalk be? So it'll be, um, I think I put it in there for, uh, it'll be 10 to 12 feet high. And then it'll be, I think you guys wanted six feet across. So I asked for eight feet. So the snow equipment, uh, can make its way through. Thank you. Are there any other questions from the council? And Athena, have you gotten the picture? This is the picture that was passed around in the council. It has since been sent to all counselors and it will be in the packet. This is so the public can view it as well. Uh, Dorothy, you have your handle. When are we going to have wires put under the street? That is getting to be so unsightly. Just wire stretched all over the place. When is, when are we going to start putting them under the road? Do you want to speak to the issue of wires under the road? Um, I can't speak to that. I'm just here to talk about. All right. And that's not this particular pitch petition. So, um, that's a separate conversation, Dorothy, and one that, um, you've raised before. And let's recognize that. Are there any other questions from counselors? Anna. All right. I want to follow up on, on Dorothy's comment, not to you, um, right now, but I think something that might be interesting is that it seems the only time that we have ever sourced in front of us is when there is a poll petition, which is appropriate for the time that ever sources in front of us. However, uh, this issue has been raised before regarding the planning process and strategy around polls. And I'm curious, Lynn, if this is something that we could ask ever source to come to a meeting and discuss with us at a future time. I'm making note of that. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Um, I would recommend speaking with your account executive about that too. Um, I believe it's Esther Ballardini for the town of Amherst. Right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Are there any other comments from the council? Um, I'm going to open up for public comment about this poll placement. That's the only public comment right now. Are there any people of the 20 people who are in attendance on zoom and this four people who are in the audience with us who would like to speak to this issue. Seeing none. I'm going to return back to any further questions from the council. Okay. Sure. The council's debate on the merits of the petition shall follow the vote on a motion to close the evidentiary portion of the hearing. So, um, I'm going to move to close the hearing. I'll second. Is there any other question or comment? Then I'm going to quickly move to a vote. My extra sheets. Shallonee Balmille. Yes. Allen Devlin, got here. Hi. Then Greece. I'm into your hand, Mandy Jo Hanicki. Hi. Anika Lopes. Hi. Michelle Miller. Hi. Dorothy Pamm. Abstain. Pam Rooney. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Hi. Jennifer Tob. Yes. Alicia Walker. Yes. Okay, that is 11 in favor. No opposed one extension and one absent. Correct. Got it. Thank you. We are going to have this on the consent agenda unless a council removes it. And thank you for joining us this evening. Thank you. Okay. We're going to now move to general public comment. This is not public comment related to the track and field that will come later. So I'm asking any people in the audience. Or in the town room. Either on zoom or in the town room to please raise your hand at this time. If you would like to make general public comment. We do have one person signed up for public comment in the room. I'm sorry. There is one person signed up for public comment and thank you. Please. Jennifer show. Hi, Jennifer. I live in Amherst when I want to under make sure I understand what you said about the three public comment periods. There's this one that's happening now. And then you said there would be a public comment about item eight C. I thought you said there was going to be a motion and discussion and then public comments. And I'm looking at the detailed agenda and it says one council discussion to public comment three motion and vote. Council discussion. You know, in the last couple of meetings, we have found that if people are going to have a motion and any amendments that it's useful to get them out on the table, have a discussion about them, but not vote and then go to public comment and then come back to vote. Okay. So then you and I exchanged emails earlier today where I asked about the presence and the role of regional school committee members on this topic. And you told me that as a regional school committee member, I had a right to come and speak at public comment as any member of the public does. But I want to make sure that my comment is heard before your discussion, not after it. Then I think you should go ahead and make your comment now. Okay. So the topic of my comment is about the track and field project. As you all probably know, the regional school committee discussed the track and field project at several meetings from January to March of this year. And ultimately the committee voted to authorize borrowing $1.5 million for the track and field project. And if an additional 2.2 million can be raised through grants and fundraising, then the funds would be used on a project to reorient the track and install a synthetic turf playing field. I was part of these votes and I voted in favor. However, at no point in our discussions and debates on this project were we ever informed about the chemicals called PFAS that are used in the manufacture of the blades of artificial brass, nor were we informed that PFAS are man made forever and that do not occur naturally and do not break down. I admit that I'm at fault for not doing my own research on the risks of artificial turf. Had I done some cursory research, I would have learned that many cities and towns in Massachusetts are grappling with the issue of artificial turf, including Nantucket where they put their plans for their athletic complex on hold due to concerns about PFAS and artificial turf. And Boston where mayor Wu blocked installation of artificial turf, many communities have publicly discussed and debated this issue. In fact, the Nantucket school committee held a 90 minute workshop session specifically on the issue of PFAS and artificial turf in February where they brought in experts and heard from community members on their concerns. I would have loved for the regional school committee to have done something similar so that we could make a fully informed decision. We've since been informed that the Amherst hurricane boosters have been a big part of the project. We've since been informed that the Amherst hurricane boosters have done their research on PFAS and have found no issue with it. And I would love to have to see or have seen their research so that I could feel as comfortable as they feel. And again, I fought myself for not doing my due diligence and researching this issue. But because I didn't and because district leadership and other school committee members didn't bring it up, we never discussed it. So I want the town council members to be clear and know that the school committee approved to the project with artificial turf, not after robust discussion and debate about the risks, but in the absence of it. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Are there any other general public comments? This is general, not about the artificial turf. Okay. I, I. Jennifer had who's a member of the school committee. Had asked that I, I really hate to ask you to hold off, but we have scheduled this for eight 30. And I really wanted to keep all of those comments together. Okay. We're glad you're here. Okay. So. Are there any other public general public comments at this time? Seeing none. I'm going to go on to the consent agenda, which is also changed. And I just want to collect check with a clerk. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Christina. We are not going to do any of the minutes tonight. Correct. That's correct. Okay. So. These items were chosen because they were considered to be routine. To remove an item from the consent agenda for discussion. Later in the meeting asked that it be removed after I go through the initial motion. And before we look for a second. To move the following items and the printed motions they're under and approve those items as a single unit. Six a human rights day proclamation 2022. Six B proclamation and support a small business Saturday and Mary days. Six C citation in honor of Monty's March for the food bank. Eight A approval of ever source requests for pole placement. At 142 high street. Eight B authorization for town manager to negotiate. Acceptance of Kestrel lane and Hopbrook road as public ways. Are there any questions from counselors. Then I'm going to proceed and look for a second. Second. Nandy. Anna can have it. Thank you. Okay. We're giving on to the second. Okay. Moving on then of. Since there's no discussion unless you wanted to take something off. We'll start on a Devlin got here. I. I, Nica Lopes. I. Michelle Miller. Yes. Yes. Hi, Jennifer Todd. Yes, Alicia Walker. Yes, Shalini Balmillan. Yes. It's unanimous with one absent. So just let me regroup for a moment. With that, I would like to ask. No, I asked one of the human rights. Mindy Joe, thank you. This is the human rights day proclamation that we do on a yearly basis. So I'm going to read the now therefore clause. So now therefore the town, the Amherst town council hereby proclaims December 10, 2022 human rights day encourages our community to embrace every opportunity to reflect and embody the values of the universal declaration of human rights in their work for the community and urges Amherst residents to celebrate this day with a communal reading of the declaration of human rights on December 10 2022 at 6pm on the town common. And I do encourage people to come it is quite a humbling experience. I was, I was not able to join it in the past where you're long underwear if it's cold, but it is a very, very meaningful event and we gather around in a circle and read. So thanks Mandy Joe proclamation and support a small business Saturday and Mary days. That was. Thank you. I'll finish up with now therefore the Amherst town council proclaims November 26, 2020, you need to speak into the mic honey. Can't hear me. Yeah, go ahead. And therefore the Amherst town council proclaim proclaims November 26, 2022, small business Saturday and urges the residents of our community to support Amherst wide small businesses and merchants on small business Saturday during the Mary days celebrations and throughout the year. Thank you. And the citation in honor of Montes March for the food bank which started this morning and continues tomorrow. And if we, and we did pass this, and I'm going to call an honor Devon got here to read the final paragraph. Thank you and before I read it I encourage anyone to who would like to jump in on the Amherst portion or the entire part of the March tomorrow. So thank you for the endless plug here at 830 we're meeting at the bottom of Amity if you want to walk with us up the big hill, and you can jump in at any point along the route as well so. And then the other thing is please read this proclamation the, the assistance that the food bank helps is that the food bank of Western Massachusetts provides is is pretty astounding so through a bunch of stats in here that are very, very meaningful so please read this. Now therefore, the Amherst town council heralds the achievements of Monty Belmonti and the staff at the food bank of Western Massachusetts honors them with this citation and expresses its deep gratitude for their important work to end hunger in our community and beyond. I know that Anika and I will be joining on at the survival center around 10 or 1030 tomorrow and 30 and anybody else who wants to join us we're going to present the proclamation at that point point, and maybe walk a mile or so. Anything else on it. Okay, I'm good I'm done talking for a little bit. I'm actually going to now pick up agenda item seven, which is presentations and discussions. Okay. This is a little out of order from what we intended but since we've said that the discussion regarding the track and field will be at a time certain which is a 30. We're going to try to get a few other things done. Okay. On the elementary school building project. Paul, maybe it would be best if you explain what changed and then I'll explain the second part of it and Athena do we have the charts. Okay. So I don't have the chart in front of me. So what has happened is that the mass school building authority has adjusted its schedule. We were anticipating being on their agenda in December. They have now moved their dates, which requires us in order to get the material in have to extend that farther out into January. And Kathy, you should just chair the committee you can jump in here. Yeah, please Kathy. Just a little bit of a correction we were originally aiming for the March meeting Paul but they wanted that material. Just after Christmas. Yeah, they changed the when it would be due date. Yeah. So what you can see from the chart in front of you, it doesn't change the actual date of the completion of the project. It just changes when things will be turned in, and when the MSBA will make their final decisions. And these chart that you're seeing on the screen right now was provided by the owners project manager right. And anything else Kathy or Paul that you would like to speak to regarding this chart. I think the important thing is that the time frame is the same as the upfront time that has been extended but they, the opium believes that everything will be completed, according to the end date in terms of occupancy. One other thing I would add is that we are really hoping that the MSBA at either the December meeting which is a strong possibility or their March meeting which is before April will increase the per square footage price allowance, which will lower the town share So, not only did they make it almost impossible to get to their March meeting because of the early due date, but they just buys us a little bit of time that would accrue to our advantage because you, they don't do anything retroactively. So if they do, we'd already been there. You have one more day of school and five. I'm sorry. I don't know where that's coming from but I'll stop. I think I was clear. And in fact, they have already had one discussion about increasing their reimbursement rate and they are having their second discussion in December. And we can thank both Senator Comfort and Representative Dom for getting the ball rolling on that discussion, they've done an outstanding job. But because of this change, what we were really looking at initially was trying to go out for the debt exclusion in March, but we'll look at the next chart or the next timeline. And after consulting the various calendars for the schools, all of whom are in session till at least the second week of May. And looking at school vacation dates, etc. This is now the proposed process. This is the proposed timeline. So that the first time the town council would actually look at this is January 23rd. And then on January 6 is when we would vote the debt exclusion language, based on the cost of that estimate, and we would vote for the date to place it in front of the public. And with this calendar that recommended date would be May 2nd. So with that, I'd like to open it up for questions from counselors. Mandy Joe. So, I guess it's more of a comment but it's a little bit of a question but I also first want to thank start with a thank you to Lynn and Kathy and Alicia and Paul and everyone who came up with this calendar, even if I'm not totally sold on it right now. In terms of the date, because you confirmed that the universities and colleges were still in session and I did look that up myself the earliest one to finish this year is Hampshire college who ends on Friday May 5th. And so I do think it's vitally important that this vote be held while half of our population is still in classes, so that we know they're here. But I guess what I wanted to ask is, is it possible to hold the vote earlier and and I know there's some reasons about the desi vote on April 26 and there was some statements about how we wouldn't want to vote before that. But with the timeline you presented, nearly all of the campaigning happens before that desi vote. And in fact if we do early voting voting will happen before that April 26 desi vote. And so I'm curious whether it's important for us to not hold the election before desi actually votes so that the final results right there or, or what's the thinking around that since we won't have the final number through most of the campaign in terms of what the town share is versus what desi has said, the state will pay for Kathy. Well, I'll speak to that Mandy the we could do the vote before, but the will have the cost estimate is not going to change you once we get the revised cost estimate there. Two things I think that are important we have. We have some room during that January, February, March to talk about how we plan on financing this in terms of what beyond the debt exclusion would finance the total package. We don't have an amount certain, and it's MSBA it's not actually desi but we don't have an amount certain from them, we can get them to look at the spreadsheet that we're using that they give to us and kind of bless it. Rarely would change that so it's not that the number would change but we don't have an absolute number until then and a couple of the things that are in play is both the amount per square foot but also they now have a cap of 8% of the total cost on the site. There is some discussion about going up to 10%. So any of those changes would really make a difference for ours. We can instantly compute that, but you wouldn't want to compute it and then re compute it before you start talking about it and be able to talk in general in the campaign. I also think one of the advantages we have I think May 2nd is a good date because the campus is still will be in session and some of the groups have looked at how many students do we have who are registered to vote in Amherst, who actually voted in the midterm election. And a lot of them, the student bodies are really interested in climate and net zero so there can be some targeted work around the net zero features of the school and the sustainability and we'll have a much better sense of all of that, including good numbers on how energy efficient this building will be so I think there's some time to prepare the materials and I'm talking about one pagers or four paragraphs worth that can be but work by others that are targeted to different groups and and mailings. So I think that little bit of extra time by Zasila. Paul, you have your hand up. Yeah, so I think one of the other considerations is that May 2nd, if you move it earlier out by week August, April 25. That's the second day back from spring vacation for the school. So the early voting or what all the outreach, the idea on this is to make sure that everybody in the community can weigh in on this. If they, if you come back on to school on Monday. We want to make sure people have their heads on straight and can really mobilize to go to get out to vote. So, giving that extra week for people for school to be back in session for a week for the elementary and high school for for the students not not the colleges I'm talking about. So I think that was a consideration as well make sure there's enough time for people to be back in town and to be able to exercise their right to vote. Okay. And Joe for their questions or comments. Nope. Thank you for the responses. Okay. Are there other counselors who have questions or comments. We are not setting the date firm today we are waiting until we have the full package to set that date. Okay. Thank you. It is, I'm going to let I have just one other I have a question. So you had up on dates for the council to look at the cost estimates, you know, get a sense of the town share. Is there a point we need to do what we did for the library where we take a vote on the whole package, as well as, you know, the debt exclusion. So, you know, to authorize it. And does that happen after the debt exclusion. So I just didn't see, you know, it's just a question I don't need to see it on a calendar but I think there's there is that step also and and then my follow up. That's the one where we need a two thirds vote of the council is that correct. The two thirds vote will be when we authorize the debt. Right. And, and the vote of the citizenry of the residents is a majority correct 50% plus one. Thank you. Okay, Paul, did you have anything else to add to that. Okay, these are just the first time any of the counselors, including the original council members have ever gone through this process so it'll be a learning curve for all of us. It's also the first time that Amherst has gone out for a debt exclusion override in a long time. So, it's again a learning process. Paul surveillance use report did you want to go ahead with that and then we're going to take a brief break, and then we're going to come back. Okay. A year ago, the council passed a surveillance technology oversight bylaw and gave the town staff adequate time to work through it, understand it and implement it. So what you have in front of you sort of a summary of the report is a complex report and complicated report and we're hoping that we got it right and so welcoming your comments. I went to every department and shared the bylaw with them, ask them to determine if they had any technology that applied to it. Under it and the bylaw and on the second page I believe lists all the things that are included and also all the things that are excluded. A lot of things are excluded and I think the writers of the bylaw took into consideration the sort of normal operations of the town that they did not intend the bylaw to apply to but there were things that they wanted to capture. So, the one thing for sure that we know is, is needs to be addressed by under this bylaw is for the last 25 years or so our police cruisers have had in car cameras that get activated when there's a traffic stop. And so that it will be something that we will have to get a make a detailed report to the council on this report also gets noticed on the town bulletin board, and then the council has the opportunity to approve or disapprove of the technology. And if, and I think that we've tried to address all the things that might, might have been included or not. So we anticipate some other things that are coming up in terms of what else could be coming down the road. And I sort of summarize those at the end of the memo. For instance, I anticipate that the police department will be asking for funding for body cams that would clearly be subject to the bylaw. The library is looking to have an automated materials handling system that has RFID technology that may be subject to the, to the bylaw. But if every department who I reached out to has gotten back to me said we have nothing that applies to it other than the police department. So in this really not the police department is probably it that will be put coming together putting this report so the next step is for me to put that report together and get it scheduled on the council's agenda, which could be as soon as we as December 19th, if that's if depending on what the council wants to put on its agenda. And then 14 days prior to that we post it. And that's how I anticipated the process moving forward, but open to sort of how you would like to handle this this is going is more working into your, your workflow at this point in time. Questions. Comments. Andy Joe, you were one of two sponsors on the council. This was during the previous council. And that de Angelis I believe is the other one. So let's start with Andy Joe. Thanks. Thank you for this Paul. And I just want to respond to some of your comments of, I think, when we were going through this process to get to the point where the council could vote whether to adopt the bylaw or not there was a lot of concern from town hall about what would apply. And we tried really hard to make sure it only did it for things that we thought were necessary. And I think your report today shows that we probably made a, I don't know whether we went too far on the excluding stuff but but we definitely didn't. I don't think we're over burdening the town because I know that was a big concern so I just wanted to mention that that that I think we worked cooperatively and collaboratively to make sure that both ideals were sort of met. I did want to mention to the council, the council will have what the bylaw requires is sort of it's sort of a pocket approval, similar to how the charter is written with council town manager appointments. When it comes to the council, the council will have I think it's 150 days 180 days or something to approve to vote to affirmatively approve or disapprove the, the use of the technology if the council does not act in that time frame it is approved. So, you know I just wanted that was one thing missing from the memo that I thought I'd mentioned for the council. I want to say to Paul I look forward to seeing the, the, the planned use policy and also the impact report I think I read the current use policy and it is missing some things that I know the bylaw requires to have in it so I'm curious to see what those will be. So I just look forward to implementing this for the first time. And I'm happy if others have questions, since it was Pat and I that sponsored it so we can try and answer questions too. Right. Shelling. Am I correct in understanding that body cameras for police are not allowed according to this bylaw. So we do not have body cameras it's a technology that the council could. A the council would have to appropriate funds to purchase them and to be able to operate them and be the council would have to approve the surveillance technology policy after we gave you a presentation on how how this technology would be used. I would probably go hand in hand, quite honestly, because I don't think you're going to want to purchase into big investment of funds if you let them purchase body cams without knowing how they're going to be used. So I think we would probably match them up together as you went through the capital request project process. So, I'm not advocating one way or the other, but I just want to make sure that we have the flexibility to do that and you're saying that you are going to study how it would be used and then. So the council has two, two actions. One is to approve the purchase of the body cams and the second is to approve the use of the technology so if you say no to either one of those, they don't, it doesn't move forward. Does that make sense. And that by understanding Paul is that the request is probably going to come through the capital request path for the smaller capital projects, if you will, and that process will begin right after the first of the year. So it is something that will need to appear on agendas in the coming year. Because again as Paul said you don't want to approve the purchase if you don't have a policy that approves the use. Okay, anything else on that. I'm sorry I'm still not clear who's going when is it going to come to a time console. Okay, yes, that's all I want to know that we have that discussion. Yeah, I mean the capital. Plan for the year is advisory to the town manager but then he includes it in the budget and we have hearings and we have to prove it. Okay. Dorothy just want to make sure that I get the negatives and double negatives. So the list of technology that is and is not included in the bylaw includes some really scary things such as the biometric surveillance technology, or software that lets you access an access a computer. So, if I'm interpreting this right. We don't use those now, we don't have them, but if somebody wanted to use them they could not use them without coming to the town council. Is that correct. That is correct. So I appreciate that very much, because I think that it's very easy for an agency to get excited about new technologies, and to just go ahead and adopt them. And then before we know it we're into a real, you know, kind of spy state. Thank you. Great. Pam Rooney. I was curious how that the original list of included items was developed. And it seems like there are more things on the included or excluded list and there are in the included list. We started this bylaw with some ACLU model bylaws, as well as using Cambridge is one of the, I'd have to go back to my notes to see which other communities we use to sample as examples but Cambridge has one very similar. And we started sort of with a split. And then it was a negotiation, basically in TSO between town staff and the sponsors and TSO to see which things should be moved from one side to the other, I would say. And it was, it was, there was a lot of concern about the cost and the time. When you look at Cambridge's they didn't exempt as much as we did. And they had to, in the first six months of this when they were doing this process which is the stuff already in use. I think it was over 100. It was an insane number of items and technologies that the council had to approve to be continued to be used. And that was a real concern in a town that's a whole lot smaller than Cambridge and how much work that would be. And so we, we as sponsors tried to focus on what we felt was the most important technologies that we wanted to make sure the town residents knew and the council knew we're being used for potential surveillance purposes. And so that's where we focused. Okay, Pam. Okay, Anika. Yes, so my question was also around the body cam cams used by the police department. And so I'm just wondering around for documentation and safety, have they ever been used or what was the reasoning around not using them. The town has never had body cams force police officers. It's a very expensive technology. It's the town's never appropriate funds to do it. But I think we had our chance to have that discussion. Kathy. Anika was there anything else I'm sorry. Okay, Kathy. I'm mute. I just, I'm just a follow up on the body cams. The Lynn, when you said the sequence would be first is JCPC. I think first is, do we want them or not. And then because they have JCPC even looking at this. So that timing has got to be January ish, if it's going to go on a potential purchase list for JCPC starts meeting in February, and it's been about the middle of February. So I just want to make it as an agenda item with a, if it's being proposed, how would it be used, how expensive are they. Not for approval, but just that to have it come first, rather than second. I think that's a very good suggestion, Kathy, and I'm looking Paul, who's going to have to come forward with what would the use policy be and we'll have to discuss that. I don't think we want to try to do all of that in December. I think if we do that in January, it would be sufficient. Jennifer. Yeah, just kind of a curiosity question I recall reading that. Maybe it was the school committee that discuss cameras in the schools and is that something that's totally apart from the council but that's a school committee decision. I was just curious, Paul. I think the school committee voted to install cameras in certain locations in the new elementary school that's the question are we putting cameras in the new elementary school or not. I think it probably it may have to come to the council because no for security reasons that's an excluded technology actually. I'll also add we defined the town of Amherst and the bylaw has any department agency bureau and or subordinate division of the town of Amherst accept those under the jurisdiction of the school committee regional school committee or library trustees which is language that mirrors the charter language, because as sponsors we were concerned about usurping another elected bodies own authority. Okay. Thank you. And I read the same article and I was sitting here thinking, hmm, should I raise that now or later. So thanks for raising that Jennifer. Are there any other comments or questions from the council. All right, we're going to resume at 830. We're going to take a break. We've had a much deserved break since we've been sitting here since six, and we're going to resume at 830. Exactly. So be there and have your cameras on. And at that point we're going to take up the appropriation and transfer order for the track and field. We will have discussions about that discussions about potential any other amendments. We're going to public comment. And then we will come back to the council and vote on that issue and then after we're done with that, we will take up the rest of the agenda items. Okay. So we are on break and Athena will note that and so forth. I think it's been separated. Yes. They're��고. And in fact. I'm not. I'm very much. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. And the news is that it's very, very complicated. I think that that's the, um, it's going to be, it's natural, whereas in other, yeah, for women, I'm sure it's going to be something that's not at all, which in my, I don't know. So the next thing is we are, I mean, and that's, and my point again, is that yeah, um, but, you know If I can have your attention for those of you in the room, we're not going to start yet, but if you would like to speak to the council as part of public comment, there's a sign up sheet over there. And we want you to sign up so we have good spellings of everybody's names and so forth. Okay. I just want to remind you that if you do want to make public comment for those of you that are in the room. Please sign up over here. That's a shame. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You're two minute warning to get back to our seats and get point again. Let's take the notice down. And as counselors return, please turn on your video. We're about to get restarted as soon as I see videos of various people still waiting for Michelle, Sean Sonia David, superintendent Morris. There you are. Thank you. Okay. Good evening. It's nice to have people in person. We sit here on Monday nights and it gets lonely so thanks for showing up. We have, I would say about 25 to 30 people in the audience. We have 26 people on zoom, and we don't know how many people are watching through Amherst media. I just want to just mention just because many of you have not been in the town room at least with this town council. That while it's very tempting to display how we feel about what somebody has said, either positively or negatively. We, that's not part of the rules of the road here. So keep the tempo down. We're going to conduct business. We are really delighted that there are so many young people in the audience with us tonight. This is democracy at the local level, and probably one of the most direct civic lessons you'll ever get. So, we're going to begin with, we're going to follow the following procedure. Okay. If you want to speak, and you're in the room, you need to sign up on the sheet over there. That doesn't mean you can't decide you want to speak later you still can. Okay. People who are on zoom will have to raise their hands. I haven't asked for anybody to raise their hands yet. We're going to move out by discussing the motion that is related to this. And then there may be some amendments or some other thoughts about motions. And we're going to ask each of the counselors who have any of those ideas to do that and we're going to have a council discussion. Then we're going to move to public comment. We will not have taken a vote on anything. But we'll move to public comment because we want to hear from you. And when after we've come back from public comment, we will then move on to votes for the evening on this particular item. I do want to mention that we've been joined tonight. Looking for Ben Harrington. He's right there. Now I'm seeing you. Great background. Also, from the vice chair of the regional school committee is Sarah best Kenny, and she's joined us. And I want to make sure that you can hear us and we can hear you, Sarah best. I'm here. Great. And Ben, same thing. I too am here. And while not an officer at present Allison McDonald was chair of the regional school committee at the time this discussion began. And so they are here to answer questions. And also with us tonight is superintendent, Mike Morris, Mike, can you hear us. Yeah, thank you for having me. Thank you. All right. So the council has received a two or three page memo that outlines the history of how we come to tonight. That memo is in your packet is in the public packet. Okay. And I just want to review a few things on that memo. This conversation began with the regional school committee. And it was at that point that they looked at three different options called option one, two and three. And they chose to move forward with option three. They have taken that and discussed it at a four towns meeting. Those four towns meetings generally take place on Saturdays and sometimes on other week nights. I think we had wanted five or something. One time this year. And based on that, they are now going to each of the four towns that are part of the regional school district. And they are asking us for money. So they began that request with the town of Amherst, and the town of Amherst, then voted on May 2 of 2022 with a vote of 10 to one in favor, and one present and abstaining and one absent. At that point, we approve the original debt authorization for 1.5 million. That's the schools for the track and field. And then on July 18, 2022, the town council voted 11 to nothing to zero with two absent to approve the CPA debt authorization of $800,000. And then in both instances, the, especially in the second instance, it was specifically named option three. So during a joint council meeting on October 18, we actually delayed this vote. At that particular meeting, we just ran out of time because of other things that were on the agenda. And that brings us to tonight, which is November 21. And the motion that will be put on the floor, particularly related to this item is the following to adopt appropriation and transfer order FY 23, 05 C an order appropriating funds for a portion of the town of Amherst capital and school track and field rehabilitation recommended by the finance committee on October 17, 2022, and shown on page six of the draft motion sheet. Again, that draft motion sheet is in your packet. And the, that order is excuse me, Lynn, right here. I'm sorry. Pardon me. The, the, it's already been made and seconded since it was postponed so it's already on the floor. Oh, thank you. So it's a motion on the floor. Thank you. Athena is the clerk of our council, and she keeps all of us on track. So just don't mess with her just. All right, so having said that that is the motion that's on the floor. It's been made and seconded. And I'm going to ask counselors who are in the room, if they have questions about that motion, or if any of them have particular amendments or other motions they plan to make. Michelle. And as you know, I have a question about the memo specifically. And we talked about you addressing the four options that we have been given on the memo. And to specifically address, and this is really. And I hope will be a very full and broad discussion. But to understand why amending the current motion on the floor to include a different option, whether it be option one or two is not in the clerk's mind or wherever that decision stemmed from within the purview of the council to do. Okay. Let me review the four options that were in this memo. The first option is a vote to adopt the proposed appropriation and transfer order, which is consistent with the project proposed by the regional school committee. If adopted. That project will proceed as proposed. And basically, the CPA funds will become available and all the other funds. That's option. The first option. The second one is a vote against appropriation and transfer order would require that additional money be raised for option three equivalent to $900,000, which is what the appropriation is for. The final funds that total 220 22.2 million by January 16 2023. If this does not happen, it renders the CPA vote null, and the initial debt authorization would revert to the track resurfacing option, which is option one, it does not reorient the track. The fourth option. A vote to postpone action to a date certain keeping in mind that present deadline of January 16 2023 that the regional school committee included in their debt authorization. And that's stated above in the same memo. And the fourth one is a vote to request that the regional school committee reconsider their original vote for option three. To adopt any other plan, including option to the natural gas grass option would require the regional school committee to rescind the FY 23 debt authorization for option three. Consider their other options, or vote on a new option. And this essentially starts the process all over again. Because it was already, it's a vote of the regional school committee. They then come to us for money. That's what our job is in this case. And if we aren't going to give them money for the vote that they have taken, then basically that starts the process over again. Lynn, that doesn't quite get to the answer that I'm hoping to understand here. May I ask you a follow up question. Sure, please. Okay. I just, this is really about process right now because we're trying to have a conversation here in which we can trust each other, and that we can trust that decisions are being made transparently and according to processes. And so I'm trying to understand why if we as a town council want to make a gift to the school committee for $900,000 and we want to specify the way that money is used. So whether it be for natural turf or option one or whatever. Why are we not. Why is that deemed inappropriate for the council to do. So the question is, can we do this as a gift. And I'm, I'm frankly at a loss and I'm going to have to learn I can do me to weigh in on that one. Please. So, so the mechanism with which the town provides the money to the region is, is not really the issue. I think whether it's a gift or if there's a reimbursement, all that type of stuff would be worked out in some sort of agreement between the region. Amherst and the other three towns. I think the question is whether, whether it's whether again it's appropriate for the town of Amherst to give funds to another entity for a project that they haven't approved or they haven't requested. And I think that's where the appropriateness comes down is should the town of Amherst set aside money for a project that hasn't been requested. And I think the core of this is that the town of Amherst doesn't own that land. It's regional school land they decide what the project is that they want to pursue. And then as Lynn mentioned they come to the towns for funding their projects. So, if the town of Amherst did decide to amend this and set aside for the grass option. It wouldn't be enough for that option one, because the other two funding sources the CPA and the debt authorization wouldn't be available for option for the natural grass option. So, so it wouldn't be enough funding for it anyway so it would, when we took a step back it just doesn't really make sense to amend it, because other funding sources are in place. And it's not what the region requested, Michelle. Follow up. No, let's go on. Thank you. Kathy. You know, I'm assuming we're going to get to be able to also give you our reconsidered comments on the actual option three with artificial, but the question I have is a little bit building on Michelle's if and timing. And you just laid out that should the council vote that we would actually like the regional school committee to reconsider which option they're going for. There's three pieces that need to be reproposed. As I remember when we voted on the track only 1.5 million. To this extent, I understood what I was voting on. I didn't understand that that money could only be used if it was option three. I understood it as if all else failed, we would just do the truck. And that was, we actually had a debate about that. But this, this was enough to do the track, and at least one counselor was concerned that if it wasn't the whole thing, then didn't want to do it. But I didn't understand it was that link so I could come back to that but I would be happy to say that that authorization is for the track. And then you can come back to us for the reorientation of the crack in the fields. And CPAC, I think they could, the Preservation Act. They were told option three was the option they cannot fund artificial turf under their rules. So they said, they could do a field part. I can't imagine if they said, if we said we'd prefer option to now when we learned more about this, that they would say, Oh, we don't want to field with grass because they couldn't find artificial turf anyway so they were funding fields so I think that timeline is not like we'll still be out there's 10 months from now we could be this could move pretty quickly. If the regional school committee decided for another option so that's what I don't, the implication is we'd be at it forever I don't think we would so I'm not sure why I do understand all those pieces have to move that's what Michelle was asking about that we can't vote money for something that hasn't been proposed to us. We want to have another proposal come for us. I don't see why all the pieces couldn't move should the regional school committee reconsider their original proposal. I don't understand why that couldn't happen. Andy, I'm going to ask Colin Andy. It's a complicated process and superintendent can comment on this too. But the original request for one and a half million dollars or the track specifically referenced that the if enough money was raised that option three was going to be the option. Option two is not included in that motion so that if it goes to get to a grass field at this point, it have to go back to the very beginning and the very beginning would probably have to start with the school committee asking for a vote and then it going back to all four towns with the request with amended language. The additional problem that follows is the other three towns have annual town meetings they don't have year round government as Amherst does with the council. I want to honor the intent of the whole process which is to give each town an opportunity to respond. It would need to be within a town these meeting season, which means that it would have to wait until late April and May when the town annual town meetings occur. So the start over would delay it for at least a year and then whatever cost increases come, we all know about cost increases now with time that those occur. It really has to do with the process that regional schools have to follow in getting capital approval from member towns and the full timeline that ensues from that. Okay, I'm going to ask Superintendent Morris if you have something to add to that. That is accurate. What Andy said I'm trying to be thoughtful and cautious I do have some thoughts on this topic but I see this counselor's hands up and so since I think Andy did a really nice job explaining that I think I'll probably wait unless it's a direct question to me or I'll wait my turn to offer my thoughts. Okay, but thank you. If Dorothy or Jennifer have questions on this particular topic minds a slightly different topic so they should go first Dorothy. These motions. I read them. I think I understand them. Then you explain them and they slip away again, but I'll start with responding to Andy. My understanding is that the four towns have not spoken and are still going to have to wait for their town meetings. One has said no, and the others haven't voted on this yet. I guess I really want to say I do not want to have the complexity of the problem used as an excuse to vote for something which many of us are totally against. So, whatever the process is required, whether it means go back to the town school committee. I just want to say that many of us have talked briefly and talk to people in the public. Yes, the tracks disgusting. Yes, the town has let the athletes down. Yes, we have to do something. But for us to go into artificial turf at a time when the early adapters are moving away from it. One of the very good reasons would be a silly and expensive mistake. Also, many things have not been brought into this but so whatever is involved in the process. I don't want process to stand and to make us say yes on something we don't believe in. We can figure it out and do it step by step. Fix the fields, reorient the fields, drain them do whatever is involved, grass turf, and then do the thing that Amherst does not seem to know how to do pledge to maintain those fields, whatever the expense. So that people are students have a safe and good playing surface, but not doing for a cheap option which seems to look good. It's not cheap. It's extremely expensive option that kind of promises great great turf all the time. That will cause sickness, perhaps even death, and will don't absolutely degrade the environment. So I'm for taking all those little steps, taking it back to this committee, take it back to the four towns, and doing it, bring it all the way back. And we will not have delayed it that much, but we'll do it right. Thank you. Mike, you raised your hand is it that you would like to speak to that particular comment. There's one part of what was said that I just I feel I do feel urgency so I do want to thank our really dedicated DPW crew who takes care of our current fields they're in terrible condition. They've made them better over the last couple years to tireless work and so I think you know I just do want to comment I know this wasn't intended by the counselor but that our town has some of the some I believe excellent dedicated DPW workers who take care of the fields I think unfortunately they're the amount of work they have and the amount of work and particularly compromised by the condition of the fields and the age of the fields. I wouldn't want anyone leaving the meeting feeling like they're not dedicated they don't work hard to maintain the fields, they do a great job it's really comes down to how many there are in the funding attached to that and I know that's perhaps a different one but I think it weaves into this one, but I did feel urgency to thank them publicly for making the best they can out of really poorly designed and irrigated and drainage fields have all sorts of problems so I think they are not the problem I don't want to say that publicly, because I think sometimes that gets critiqued. Thank you for that correction. Jennifer. Yes, so I did want to pick up on think what Dorothy meant was that we whatever decision we make that we commit to allocating the funds to maintain the field, not that it's reflects a lack of effort but a lack of resources and funding. So I had a question on Andy in terms. So, because the this is going back to the other towns in the regional school district that they will be at their town meetings be voting on. Is that just their CPA money and they've already allocated. And that's what I'm a little confused about is they made allocations but they still have more to make. So even if whatever Amherst appropriates and whatever they appropriate it for that it's still going to go before the other towns, I guess town meetings. Please, Andy. The reference that I was making was to the original motion that funded the track and provided an opportunity to fund option three. But since option three was tied into the language. It has to go back to the beginning. And so it's the town meeting opportunity. And I'm going to use that very clearly. And specifically and I'll explain why has to do with the in going back to the original amount of money for the track which would might be, as I noted, greater than the original amount because of the extra year that would get tacked on to the process. And the whole thing was built on the idea of doing the track on time. The reason that I said opportunity was that the way that the state statute and regional agreement read pounds don't have to approve, but they have to have the approval to disapprove. And if any town disapproves then they can't in the borrowing. I believe it's not allowed Sean or Dr Morris and confirm that. So that it's really. There was no votes in other in the other towns, because there was no action on the floor of the town meeting to disapprove the proposal of the school committee. So I just wanted to correct that because that had been brought up to they are voting for something after we vote. And if they've been asked to provide CPA or other town funds for option three, they would. But as far as the original track only proposal with the add on that if additional funds are raised that another option would be pursued. I'll go back to the beginning and that does not require a vote. Yes, we as a council have taken the position that we should vote, just to get the sense of the council, but it's actually not required. When I was on the select board, and for prior select boards, the select board would make a decision, frequently in virtually every case, not to take it to town meeting by not putting it on the warrant. And as a consequence, it just automatically reached the number of days that are specified in the statute and in the regional agreement, which I believe is 30. And then it just automatically happened. So it doesn't necessarily require a vote, but it gives each town an opportunity to say no. We got a letter from someone in Pellum. I think he was on the Pellum CPA committee, and he was referring to when it came to them for a vote. As I said that had to do with an additional CPA amount, it did not have to do with the original motion. Kathy is this still on the same. It is still because Andy, when you're saying it delays, unless they vote the CPA money, the whole option three can't move forward so I think they're completely tied together and I understand one happened before the next, but the towns are still going to have to unless they're just going to pay for all of it. The other towns still have to do their CPA so I don't feel like it's a big delay because they still haven't taken their CPA vote, and I realize our CPA would have to detach it from option three so I, I think there is this Ryan hasn't left the station yet in the same way, as, as you said, and I do understand that that it was originally worded in the other way but I don't see why this can't be reconsidered as a package since we weren't supposed to be the only town, to have our CPA money and fundraising to go beyond the track, and we miraculously came up with this $900,000 otherwise it would be our booster clubs that were supposed to be raising this money, and we would, we would be in the hole for this money for our CPA so it feels like the package is still being put together, rather than, we can't do the track, if we're going to reorient it, before we reorient it do the fields they're all, it's, it's all part of the bigger package, and I think we're all in favor of redoing the fields and reorienting the track. The question is artificial turf. So I just want to question the long delay because it seems like it's all part of a package. Yes, I'm going to Dr Morris. Yeah, let me see if I can help. I'm not sure that I can but I'm going to try on the process piece. Again, painting me not to talk about the content but I'll get to that later. So, this was voted by the regional school committee, regional school committee at this point has not reconsidered. So whether other towns vote in CPA funds or not there's a set dollar amount that has to be raised in the next by the end of the next, you know, roughly two months from now for the project either move forward order river back to option one which is the track. So for all the CPA committees and all the towns, doesn't matter of Amherst, Pellum, Leverter shoots very the idea is, can funds be raised, along with funds that are privately raised and I want to thank you thank the boosters for their tireless efforts here to get to the number where the project can move forward as option three and if not it's option one. So that was voted by the regional school committee so if Amherst chooses to vote in the 900,000 or not. So this is whether it's contributing to get to that target number for option three or reverts to option one. So I think the piece that I think Andy is trying to share that if the regional school committee change or reconsider their motion, it would be a reconsideration of the whole piece would need to go back to the four towns for additional funding for the track, as well as potential additional funding for whatever option emerges so I think I don't want to quote Andy, because I wasn't writing quick enough to do it and he's better at explaining process than me. But I think the delay that's being referred to is that it would take what was voted by the regional school committee involved with change which then goes back to all four member towns for their consideration. As Andy said typically they would reconsider in the spring as it heads towards town meeting when their capital budgets as well as operational budgets are under consideration so I think that was the delay that Andy was referring to when he was speaking, and I'll stop there because I'll start merging about talking on about content. Thank you. Okay. I do want to respect the fact that we have regional school committee members here, then or Sarah Beth is there anything you wanted to add to this piece of the discussion, Sarah best. I'm sorry. No. I think that Mike explained it pretty well. So, I would refer to folks to multiple presentations that Doug slaughter had given to the regional school committee probably like four or five times over the course of the last year, explaining these funding mechanisms, and they all add up and you're like, they all need to fall into place in order for option three to go forward. And this is one, one of the biggest decisions of those, those decisions but they all need to fall into place in order to happen they're not sort of dependent on each other, if one of the other towns. If we're trying to get to a total number of funds raised doesn't matter. It doesn't really matter where it comes from. We had a sort of the plan that Mike that Doug had outlined showed possible different sources. And one, if one of the four towns doesn't vote doesn't vote to support that with the CPA funds that just put pressure on the other sources of potential fundraising to raise that amount, and also makes it that much riskier or less likely that will that will be able to see that full amount that the regional school committee had designated to be raised. Yes, they're interconnected, but it's all sort of how do we get to that finish line of the minimum threshold that the school committee had designated as needed in order to move forward with option three. Are there any other questions about this piece of this for the moment. From the council. Mandy jump. I guess we're ready to move. Thank you. I'm not making a motion now but I wanted to preview a potential motion to amend. Before we get to public comment so counselors can also be thinking about it and it's a, an amendment it would be an amendment to the appropriation and transfer order that would basically say that the 900,000 was contingent on the regional funding to establish a public advisory group that includes certain people, residents, students, government officials, public health officials. And that that resident advisory group would be evaluating and make formal recommendations on selections of material options, testing requirements, environmental impact steps, allowing public input soliciting advice from experts on the multiple areas. In order to ensure that the materials that would be used for option three are validated by independent third party testing sources to contain zero or near zero levels of PFAS in accordance with guidelines that that public advisory group might set. It would be to recognize that PFAS is a big concern, but to not stop this project and to minimize as much as possible. And given that there are many new materials and none of us are experts that can minimize those levels to make a turf field as safe as possible. For reasons I will save for later discussion as to why I would support, not just this potential amendment but a turf field, an artificial turf field in general but I wanted to put that option out there of, you know, in some ways trying to ensure that the best materials to minimize PFAS in the artificial turf would be guaranteed to be used if we voted this money. Yeah, I was mulling something similar and as per usual Mandy's phrasing is perfect so I would support something along those lines I feel like this is an evolving science and that there are ways that we can set our parameters on what we would want to what we would want to see in order to keep our community safe. And that pulling together a group of qualified folks to discuss that, and especially the elements of testing schedules and ongoing testing schedules. The other thing I would consider is what to do if it fails a test right so that sort of the next step plan. And obviously that would need to be done in very close conjunction with facility staff at the schools. I think, once again, we as counselors can take in as much information as possible and we need to ensure that we are tapping the experts who do this work and trusting them, as well as the folks whose original job it was to make this to make this vote and in this case, in my mind that's the regional school committee so I am excited to support Mandy's motion if and when she places it on the table. Pam. Well I'm delighted to understand that there is a way to talk about adding contingencies to our funding and I think that's delightful to hear. I would also like to add that if we are talking about the $900,000 is contingent on something that it also be contingent on the consideration and and comparison with grass fields which I think need to put it out on the table. And I think we're going to have many, many people support both sides of this so if we're going to add if we're going to add any contingent anything. It's also going to include the contingent use of grass fields. Kathy. I'm not saying what Pam just said but Mandy's wording didn't allow for the decision to use grass instead of artificial turf as I read it. So I will speak later to PFAS having tried to learn as much as I could over the last couple weeks but there are other concerns with artificial turf that I want to mention, not to mention that it's starting to be considered a toxic substance so when you repair it, it's cleaning up asbestos to put it in a dump. It's not cheap. So I think we need to get to that discussion, because this is information that just the town of Amherst did not have when we had the multiple previews of this and I admit to not being one of the people who came into this. But in the past few weeks, including a hearing that the facilities commission of the schools held where they asked the designer, can you have artificial turf without PFAS and the answer was no, you can't doesn't exist. And the levels tests aren't out there yet for a lot of the materials there's just a couple of CDC so I think when we get into this discussion I'd like to have it a whole, but that amendment didn't seem to leave room for a decision to go for grass. It seemed to anchor it only in artificial turf, as I understood it so when we are actually allowed to discuss this rather than how we're going to discuss it. I want to come back to that. Sean, you had your hand up at one point. Yeah, it's only to say that it seems like we could have a lot of contingencies. And I think we would want to. I'm looking to Sonya to to see what her experiences in the past but I would be concerned about having an appropriation order of contingencies, especially if they're not things that are very well defined or very clear whether there's something would trigger, you know, moving forward or not. So, I think just keep that in mind if we go down that road of contingencies. What is the trigger and is it really clear clearly defined so that anybody would say yes, that that has hit like the one the regional school committee did, you know, has money been raised or not that's something that can easily be demonstrated. Sonya, did you want to add to that because I've, you and I've had that contingency discussion where we talked about CPA. No, I think Sean explained it. I think Sean explained it pretty well. I don't really have anything to add to it. Thank you. Hello, everyone. Welcome. Good to see you all. So I'm a vegetarian. I don't use pesticides in my lawns and I do thermal and I do everything I can. I do everything still learning a lot of new things like this was a new thing for me to learn. So I think this is a very important conversation and I'm so glad to see so many youth here and so many young people and adults who are learning about PFAS and plastics and what it does for the environment. So that being said, what I'm concerned about is that we take one piece of this information and, and just treated in isolation from the other pieces and that's, that's what I'm concerned when town council is coming in at this point. And yes, we can talk about, like now that we know about this PFAS concerns. And now that we've all sort of done some research, but there's so much conflicting information there. But we also know there are alternatives out there and which I was looking at the European Union, which is way more progressive than USA, unfortunately. And they are moving towards a 2030 ban on PFAS on non essentials, which includes consumer goods and firefighting foam and all kinds of things. So as far as athletic fields are concerned, they are talking about phasing it out, but in favor of using these alternative materials. I'm still talking about artificial turf, but using, you know, using these other materials and yes there will be some amount of PFAS and that. And I'm just going to say one last thing, like I'm concerned about as cherry picking, you know, our decisions around PFAS now that we all know PFAS is bad. And we probably all know, there's a lot of it in barbecued meat how many of us here are going to stop eating meat. I just want to know. So I just want, I don't want us to be cherry picking our decisions but to think about it holistically and keep our youth in mind it's important for their mental health and well being and, and it's important for environment as well we're all interconnected. So the decisions you make about your fields is also about the environment so I do stand in favor of what Madi chose proposing and I've heard that that is going to be the case there will be a public advisory committee. And maybe I mean could we have an easy like we have an energy climate action committee could we have a member from there to be part of that committee or. So the there is that climate lens that we're bringing to that discussion so that's what I would support for now. I'm going to ask if there's any other counselors who have comments this time. Dorothy. I've been talking about PFAS but there are other arguments against artificial turf, and one of them is that you students athletes can get MRSA from the blades of grass, and I take that as a very serious item. In addition, there seems to be a lot of research on more injuries on the artificial surface, as well as temperature problems, great, because it's not natural and it just gets up to a high heat. PFAS is a big topic, but that is not the only argument against artificial turf. Grass is better. Grass takes a lot of work. But you know what, when you read about the artificial turf you say, Oh, it has a 10 year life warrants. Then what do you do you then go spend great money to dispose of it, because it's got contaminants in it. And then you go buy another one, and then you have to spend money on special equipment to maintain it. So there are a lot of things involving this artificial turf that which are not put in the original motion, which did not consider the difficulty and expense of maintaining it. And from my point of view, any surface that that increases abrasions and the chance of getting MRSA, which is a deadly disease is not good. So think about the children, not just about, I mean, I understand the pent up feeling of having had fields that weren't good to play on. I understand that. But, and going to other places and saying oh their fields are better. But by the time we finally get our, you know, artificial turf down the other towns will be getting rid of theirs. We will be behind and wish we hadn't wasted all our money. That's it. I'm going to make a general comment, and that is, I'm actually allowing a bending of calling a point of order, because the discussion for us is about the money. But because so much of this discussion around money has been based on the issue of artificial turf and PFAS, there's really been no way to separate the two issues, but I do want to just recognize that the council's role is the money. Okay. So, Shalini, before I go to public comment. Yes. Right about that. Um, okay. So I did have a question about turfs and since we're talking about grass and artificial turf, can we hear from the committee why they chose and why they chose artificial turf and what advantages does it have over grass and why wasn't grass. You know, why wasn't it like either this or that it seems like they came with a very definitive preference of turf over grass and can we hear what were the reasons that athletes or, yeah, yeah, whatever. Good segue. Ben, Sarah Vess and Allison, who would like to speak to the committee's decision to go to option three. Ben. Yeah, I can speak to it. Parts of it and then my colleagues can jump in and fill in the blanks but one of the biggest factors for us was usability like how long do you have to use fields right. And with the turf field, the downtime is like minimal, whereas our other fields need to rest right and that's that's really what has led to the poor maintenance that I've heard it called that it's not poor maintenance it's overuse of fields right. And so like the alternative to that would be to create more fields, right to make up for for fields that have to rest like a field can't be used year round or well a natural turf field cannot be used year round you have to give it rest time and those sorts of things. And so you have longer usability. Right. Also, I'll leave it at that for now. I'll let one of my other colleagues speak to. Sir best. First, thanks for letting us come tonight. So I have a couple of pieces about this. So, like Ben said, there's a. You can use an artificial turf field much, much longer and much more than you can use a natural turf field. For example, like, like Ben was alluding to the building and maintenance of a natural turf. Of a grass field. All of that most of that maintenance needs to happen in the spring and in the fall. So when you're watering fertilizing aerating slice eating all of those things you need to do to build a healthy grass field. They all happen during the student athletes seasons right those are spring and fall times. You know, and we, we looked, you know, we had many presentations on this on this report, the report is 160 pages long, you know, and we went, we went through it at great lengths. You know, and so with, I'm sorry, I'm looking at some notes because I had a lot of feelings about this and I wanted to make sure I was more organized in my thoughts so I apologize. For that. So, when people are looking at our schools and moving into the area, athletics is a factor that plays into where people choose to move their families. Right. And having having a turf field. Gives more time for athletes to be on their field. And so that, you know, ratchets up our school symptom. To the next level. And we looked at the cost to maintain both natural. To maintain grass and to maintain artificial turf and the differences. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but it was a huge difference. And once the turf field is in the kids can play on it right away a natural a grass field in order for our students to play on it in order to have it be that robust field that it sounds like people are looking for. None of our current high school athletes would be able to play on that turf on that field, but between the installation and how long it takes to grow that field. None of our current athletes would have the opportunity to play on that. And the maintenance for a grass field. And like, is the kind of person you need to be able to do that with a special skill set and knowledge is equivalent to someone who like runs a golf course right that's the kind of knowledge and skills that you need and that position. Often is the salaries over $100,000 a year for just that one person. And I, with a turf field. We would also, because there's, there's so much less downtime, we'd have the opportunity to build a rep to build revenue stream from this, which would mean that we could host playoffs championships, invitations tournaments. Which would not bring, not only bring extra revenue to the school, but also pay for the maintenance cost of the fields. I think those were all my points I tried to hit. Thank you. Allison, did you have anything else to add that goes back to the history. I think everything that Sarah best and Ben both said is, it's just building on one more aspect about sort of why option one and option three and not option two. It was driven a lot by recommendation from the district so both the superintendent finance director AD facilities director, all recommended option one or option three. And the reason is because of the cost of option two, we're not getting any significant enough benefit for the $2.2 million additional that that would cost us. We're getting, we're still getting grass field that doesn't change it doesn't address the needs of the students teams the student athletes that are using fields, because we still have grass we still have the same overuse risk, and they not enough you know too for that space. So it's not addressing it. And so not really worth $2.2 million in order for the goalies of games to not have to squint into the sun. As one of my colleagues said we could buy sunglasses for the goalies for a lot less than $2.2 million. So that really that was another piece that contributed to it that if we're going to do grass, then we should just stick with the current configuration. Thank you. I'm going to suggest that at this point we move to public comment. Okay, and Athena has assists me in that because when we went back to having people in the room, and also on zoom, we, or we go back and forth and coordinate. We do one person in the room then we do one person outside so what I need to do at this point I'm sorry Pam, I still see. Okay, Pam. I'm going to talk about the cost in both options two and three a softball field is shown. And I just want to clarify is the cost of that softball field. Part of the 3.77 or 4.74 million dollars cost estimate. Thank you. Who would like to answer that question. I can look into it while we're into the next phase. Thank you, Sean. Yeah, I just had a quick, a really quick note on something that was said previously this was some research that I had done as, as part of I know we all have done a lot of research on this topic now. Staff infections and Mercer, there have been studies that have really disproven the, the idea that the staff bacteria is harbored in turf. And it actually found that staff is more prevalent in grass fields, and that most likely what is happening is that Mercer is in unsanitary locker rooms and things like that. Anyone who has kids who are wrestlers has seen wrestling mats might know that that's a, I'm not saying ours are wrestling that they're obviously very clean and perfect, however, that's a common place for Mercer to exist so just to be really clear when we talk about research I think it's really important to also make sure we're fact checking it and noticing that grass fields have a higher prevalence of staff bacteria than turf fields and and as well Mercer is not a significant source of, of those infections to her fields are not a significant source of Mercer there we go. According to the research done. Thank you. David so much. Thanks Lynn I just wanted to clarify that I am quite sure the softball field is not included was not included in this first phase. The first phase really, you know option three includes the field and eight lane track, and the associated, you know, other features ADA walkways etc but Sean can look up that report, but I'm quite sure it did not include that the softball field. Thank you. All right, so I'm going to go back to explaining public comment. If you are on zoom, I would like you to raise your hand if you'd like to make public comment. And if you have not signed up and you would like to make public comment and you're in the town room with us tonight. Please make sure you sign the sheet that's over with Athena she's her hand raised. But meantime, Athena, let's, is Athena is going to call on people. We're going to limit public comment to three minutes. And if you can make it for less that's fine. We do have a clock. And we're going to start with in the room I'm, is my understanding. Okay, the first person of Mary clays. We can't hear. I don't have a commanding voice generally but thank you for everyone for coming. There's actually a lot of students really not represented here. These are teammates who are going to talk on behalf of these talk into the mic. So they'll be talking on behalf of themselves and their teammates, their coaches, what they see. I'm sad to hear that this might be another am or strap the ball for our kids. I'm really hoping that we can come up with a resolution that's not all or nothing, because we all have views on environmental impact and we're, we're in a situation where we want to teach our kids on evaluating all of these different pros and cons. That's what I teach my kids is back check. Look at everything. Okay, don't just look at a an, this is an article that says this can you read the article look a little at PFAS is scary. It's in everything. I don't want to scare you anymore. But I think some of you who are reading and research it researching are seeing that PFAS. We have state legislation pending on the articles of clothes, the furniture we have in our schools, things and children's materials, fire retardants, I can go on and on. We understand that the environmental, the turf, the synthetic field industry is making strides because people are pushing back and so we do need to have people raising these issues and we understand boosters. So I'm a parent, I'm a booster I've been in this town for nearly 30 years now, and I support children and not only the education sports is a fundamental part sports and the theater arts so some kids are gravitate towards sports, some towards theater, some towards both. It's extremely important that we support our kids in these endeavors. For some of our children, this is the only thing that is getting them through school, getting to their team. So in the sports, there's rules for maintaining certain grades, maintaining certain behaviors. They can't play in games when they're caught vaping. They can't be in games if they are in drugs or getting into trouble. So this is a way to build community for kids who may not have it. So my, I'm looking at the PFAS and yes, it's important to look at. We have materials now that the infill of the, the, the, the pellets in the rubber there's organic materials. And yes, there's some PFAS on the blades of brass that is evolving as well. Did you know those same PFAS grades of glass, brass have a way to be recycled in the Netherlands, which is a company that was looking to come to the United States. And now there's recycling available for everything except for the backing of the brass blades. I'm a little frustrated again, being an Amish resident and I do want to thank all of you because you all have so much more patience and I don't know, personality that I don't have. So I am here because I am passionate about this. I've been working on this for over six years, believe it or not. Okay, so this is not new. Okay, people have been looking at this this field and the track has needed to be replaced for over 10 years now. And this is how our town responds. When we do these urgent things, and then we, a lot of people are in committee committees looking for the best options. Now, PFAS, PFAS, what about the 50,000 gallons of water needed to keep one field in use. What about the pesticides and fertilizers, fertilizers, yes, that have PFAS in them. Those same PFAS are in a lot of everyday things. Okay, I'm not discounting the danger of PFAS. I'm saying we can, we can look at trying to mitigate our circumstances, but please don't do it at the expense of our children, because they need safe fields. I want to go to the injuries. I can't tell you how many of our own athletes have been injured on our own fields. Do we need a lawsuit to show that this is what's happening? We had a wonderful student graduate in 2022. She's very articulate. I love to hear at school committee. Ruby Kane, her sports career ended with the injury on our field. She spoke about that. So we have many people who are getting injured on our grass fields. When we're looking at the articles and information that's just being dropped by some of the people who are sending their kids to private schools. Some of the kids, some of the people who have options, remember that about this town. The people who don't have options are the ones often who need these fields to have the outlets. We're not talking about the mental health benefits of sports and kids who need the serotonin releases. We're not talking about a lot of the things, especially with COVID that has caused great mental health crisis. Opioid issues, suicide in our kids. I'm sorry. I mean, if you want to hone in on PFAS, you're very privileged. And I will say that right now. Our kids need better. And we don't need to kick the can again. This has been kicked for 10 years. And it was how convenient I was anticipating this argument in March. I did my research. I whenever I'm going to stand for something, I'm going to look at all the points. I'm going to analyze and look at the pros and cons. Nothing is 100%. Nothing in this world is 100%. Everything you have to do, you have to weigh. And I'm weighing in favor of our kids. The boosters purposefully looked at all of these options. If we were a town that could commit $10 million a year, like some of the towns that are in some of these reports, I would vote in favor of organic fields like anybody else here. It'd be unanimous. But let's be realistic. We're Amherst and it's not $10 million a year that we're going to allocate. We're fighting over $990,000. And that's just one time. The boosters are really trying to do this the right way. We want to have contingency fund. We want to be able to see that this will not happen again. And we're going to see that this is going to be something that's going to be expected. So I'll stop there because I think you need to hear from the athletes. You need to hear from the people you will let down if you don't allocate this and kick the can again because PFAS. PFAS is everywhere. Please look at the state bills in progress. It's a lot more important to get PFAS out of your takeout order containers. The ones that they're giving when you're going out to eat. The ones that stop and shop, trade your joes and cold foods. So please focus on that and let our kids have healthy outlets so that they can have a wonderful school experience and be supported by us. Thank you. Thank you. I am going to remind people to please keep your comments to two to three minutes. And thank you so much for this opportunity. So, Athena, we'll take the next person from online. It's Sarah Ross. Did you hear that? I did. Hi, can you all hear me? Yes, we can Sarah. Oh, great. Thank you so much for this opportunity to address the council on this very challenging topic. And, you know, thank you to Mary. She's been working so hard in this and I really appreciate her passion and to all the students I can't see. It's amazing that you're there. This is a great opportunity for engagement. You know, I really respect that this body is trying to work together to find compromise. It's a beautiful thing to see. I also understand that human nature being what it is, we all want to believe in the possible. You know, we all want to believe that we can have a beautiful playing field but it's easy to maintain health and safety for student athletes, and playable in a climate changed world that is to come. In other words, we want it all. But we need to ask ourselves what evidence do we have that that magical solution exists. As I included in my written remarks and industry representative made the statement just last week at a conference that there is no such thing as an artificial turf field that does not contain PFAS. And I wanted to say that safe shells a product offered to consumers as a way to address safety concerns was found to have higher levels of PFAS than the conventional material. The difference before me is that this particular industry has continued to shape shift in ways that are praying on the caring, passionate and overworked athletic directors, facilities directors, district leaders, and parents who want it all for our kids, especially after these last few years we want to believe that a solution exists. Everybody knows this. If we choose artificial turf, we are signing up for years of managing this risk years of a continued testing as new infill is brought in to top up the field, at least once a year and as the field ages twice a year, as I heard at this conference. It'll be years of keeping a committee on call and staffed with the necessary tools and expertise to maintain compliance with whatever level of forever chemicals we deem safe, and an industry that will no doubt continue to shape shift. This is an obvious role for our Board of Health, and yet the director has already expressed her opposition to installing artificial turf. Are we really in good conscience going to put a part time volunteer committee up against an extremely powerful and sophisticated industry. A vote to approve funding for artificial turf is putting unrealist expectations on a volunteer committee at installation, and for years to come. And lastly, I just want to add, you know, again PFAS is just one of very many issues. I touched on a lot of them, and what was probably a very too long comment for you all to read with the mountains that you had. But I just want to say, you know, the motivations of the school committee are clearly and appropriately centered on playability and, you know, secondarily on revenue generation but given the evidence that at a mere 80 degrees on a sunny day. The turf registered 139 degrees again this was per this industry presentation that I attended last week. I'm very concerned that we are not looking ahead at more intense, more frequent, more prolonged outs with extreme heat. And we are being unrealistic about the playability of these fields both in the shoulder season, when our students we would be playing them and presumably during the summer when we would seek to do more revenue generation. Thank you so much for this time. Thank you. Athena. Next we're going to have some coaches who will be introduced by Victoria Dawson. Hello, can everyone hear me. I don't think I need a mic but I'll still use it. So hello my name is Victoria Dawson and I'm the athletic director for Amherst Regional High School and Amherst Regional Middle School, and want to take a moment to introduce some of my coaches who are here with me tonight. Our coaches spend countless of hours to ensure that our student athletes have a safe, fun and competitive experience while they're at Amherst Regional High School middle school. I hope you all hear their important areas of emphasis. They'll be making tonight with us tonight with us with here with us tonight. We have coach Don Fraser, our girl soccer coach, our girls across coaches Patrick Schilling and Andrew McDougal, one of our basketball coaches Cedric Gannett, and our football coach Vinnie Giel who's online virtually. Before I hit it up to the coaches I would also like to echo Dr Morris and thank DPW, Adam Nassaf for putting in all the effort that they do on the fields they do a really good job. It takes a lot of time and resources to do everything that our kids really need. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Don, Fraser. My name is Don Fraser. I'm the girls varsity soccer coach. Our season lasts only eight to 10 weeks so maximizing practice time is crucial to the continued development of the program. In field conditions we practice in the gym more often than the varsity field during the second half of this past season. Officials considered stopping games due to safety concerns for players and every team that came to our field in October complained about field conditions. Any of you that have been on our fields understand something needs to be done. In most of the most phone games due to field conditions every season, we are forced to play too many games and too short a period of time. The girls soccer team played 12 games and 24 days from October 3 to October 27. Our student athletes are at a disadvantage when they cannot train on fields due to standing water divots and deep mud. Most of the teams in the vision to that we play against in Western mass and throughout the state play on turf. Our student athletes are a significant competitive disadvantage not only by not having a turf field to play and practice on but also not even be able to practice on our grass fields much of the time. I know all of you want the best for our children in the community as a whole. Having a turf field will give our student athletes a fair chance to compete, having a turf field will allow us to play and practice without having to worry about field conditions. Our field is an early spring and late fall without fear of playing on a dangerous surface or damaging fields. Thank you and hope you consider all the positive aspects of adding a turf field and track to our school and community. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. I'm going to call on coach Vinnie Giel. Hey, can everybody hear me. Perfect. My name is Vincent Giel. I am the head football coach at Amherst High School. I want to say a couple of things. Thanks for everybody. Given their time to weigh in both positively and you know the other way in favor of having turf. A big thing I want to say right off the bat is our students are at a giant disadvantage, you know, athletically playing on the field that we play on. And when it comes to teams coming to play a home game at Amherst, oftentimes they are not happy with the field conditions, among other things. Playing on turf is, in my experience, not dangerous and I will put it to you this way. I played football and I wrestled in college. My injury that I've ever sustained in football was at Amherst High School in 2011, where I broke my leg playing on that field. When that field gets wet. It is almost impossible to have good footing. When you play or injuries sustained, you know, end up coming from when you play on turf. There isn't as much give non contact injuries are not as prevalent while you're playing on turf. The ability to play on turf while it is raining is substantially safer than it is on a grass field. There is no mud on turf. It is not as slick. It is all around a safer playing environment and this is coming from someone who's coached for a long time, along as played. In all of my time playing on turf, which was a lot in college and in high school, never once did I get a bacterial infection such as MRSA. Probably the only time that I did get it was on a wrestling mat while wrestling in college so I don't know, you know, if that study is peer reviewed. If that study is something that is even remotely correct turf is not going anywhere there are multiple schools. There are big division one schools across the country this year alone that put in turf. Boise State being one coastal Carolina schools all around the country are moving away from grass for obvious reasons. I think that to get our student athletes to the next level it's important that we really take time to think about this. Colleges use turf when a coach comes to know when a college coach comes to check out one of my athletes to get them to the next level. Oftentimes they comment on the field and how playing on turf is something that student athletes need to get used to. You know growing up in a grass environment. I think that all around the, there are way way more positives in having a turf field and there are negatives. And I just want to, you know, say that for the student athletes playing and for the student athletes who want to take their game to the next level, moving to turf would be not only safer, but a better avenue to get kids into colleges. Thank you for joining us. Next is Andrew McDougal. Hello, I'm Andrew McDougal on the one of the girls lacrosse coaches. Thank you for letting me be here and thanks for taking the time to deliberate upon this. I don't want to pile on I'll try to keep my comments sort of brief I think a couple things come to mind. That actually had been said earlier I think actually been captured very well to me this is really access and availability is making sure that our teams can get on the fields to have full seasons. And minimize risk of injury as well as was alluded to earlier. We typically have the first three weeks of the spring season is essentially wash we're either in the gym or out running on pavement, because we can't access our fields. When I, when I first took this position, Victoria asked me which field would I prefer the one that's wet or the one that faces opposite and into the sun. So our choices were pretty bleak. We opted with the field with the correct orientation which resulted in, you know, even more last time for for athletes. A couple points to I just wanted to comment on as well is that I was chatting with a landscape architect friend of mine early today and you know the notion of calling that grass like turf natural turf is a little bit of an oxymoron there's really nothing natural about maintaining a turf field. In terms of the irrigation, the overseeding, you know the field rotation. There is nothing that can happen with the turf without a lot of human intervention. So I did want to point that out another comment was made relative to fields being pulled out in the future and us wanting to do that and we don't even have to leave Amherst to see Amherst college. You just added a turf field right I think if there's any institution that could afford to have that groundskeeper on staff, Amherst college is probably a good candidate, you mass added I believe just three with in terms of the bubbling to outdoor turf field so I'm not seeing the fields come out I'm seeing them added in. I'm totally on board with the, the desire to focus on the science I think that there are some innovations that have happened in the short term that mitigates some of those concerns relative to heat. Relative to the recyclability of it. I am, I'm in favor of this, I hope that upon your deliberations your as well. And thank you for your time. Thank you for joining us. Laura Fitch and lions written. Good evening this is lions written. Thank you for holding this forum this evening. I am coming before you tonight in in two roles. I'm the chair of the Amherst water supply protection committee. My day job is that of a license site professional. I do assessment and remediation of soil and groundwater. And I wanted to share with you that the, the biggest new topic to come along in the 30 years that I've been practicing professionally is pfo a and bfos. It is everywhere. And I would strongly urge that the town of Amherst does not need to buy a plastic field and maintain it that you're inviting a situation that we don't have a full grasp of yet. And it's not a situation that, that, that we want to get into. I understand the pressures of the fields. I was a recreational soccer coach in Amherst for 14 years, I, I understand wet fields and kids desires to play and all of that. But I don't think that we need an artificial turf field in Amherst. It's inviting a problem. It's a long term liability for the town as a whole and your public water supply. So, thank you. Thank you for joining us. Next is Patrick Schilling. My name is Patrick Schilling. I live in precinct two and I'm also the JV girls lacrosse coach. So I just wanted to read to you a statement that I prepared that I am the current JV lacrosse coach and I'm today in support of the installation of a new track and field and turf facility at the HRS. I am also the parent of three daughters, all of whom participated in athletics at Amherst regional high school. My support for the turf field is for the following reasons. One, safety, the current JV girls lacrosse field is unplayable for the first three weeks of the season. We often start the third week in March in the fields are waterlogged. The girls often need to have practice move to a gym and the first three or four games are canceled due to unplayable seat, unplayable conditions on the field. Two, competitiveness. Our teams without access to turf fields are at a competitive disadvantage lacrosse team made the state tournament last year and that game was played on a turf field. Turf fields make for faster play and unless you're practicing on those fields you cannot compete with other teams who have access to fields at the state level. Three, school pride, although our grounds crew in DPW put a valiant effort they do not have the manpower or the equipment to maintain our fields putting in a state of the art track and field facility demonstrates commitment to improving accessibility sports and recreation. Four, skill development. Although I am a coach I'm also the parent of a four year varsity field hockey player who started every single game. The grass field they currently play on puts them at a competitive disadvantage at in the standard for field hockey currently is artificial turf. This is especially true for new players who are trying to learn the skill set and to learn the game. Five, revenue generation, having an eight lane track and field facility with artificial turf means we can host events. We also could use this facility in the off season for other things such as Amherst Recreation, the sugar low fat mountain athletic club and also for hosting tournaments throughout the community. Thank you again for allowing me to speak tonight and appreciate all the time and effort that you put forth. Thank you, Patrick. I'm online. Can you hear me. We can. Hi, everyone. My name is Sam McLeod many of you know me I'm the chair of the Amherst community preservation at committee. I am not speaking on behalf of that committee I'm speaking as an individual parent and resident of Amherst. I'm the current sitting board member of the Amherst use soccer association, former coach for five years and player and Amherst high school soccer and involved with youth in town. I can say unequivocally that a access to an all Susan field in Amherst will make a significant difference for the kids. I'd like to say hello to Don Frazier, who we coached years ago in a summer league at district select. I'd like to give thanks to Dave, Dave Zomac on his leadership with the rec committee for working with this vision. Anyone who has coached kids in Amherst understands the need for the field. And anyone who has coached kids and had to tell kids that they can't play today, or they can't play this week, or their home games are gone. It's not going to be in their faces what it means to them. I drove kids all over town I drive south Amherst village park everywhere I went to take them to the games and I agree with an earlier person who said that this is a big part of their lives. You know I missed a lot of time in high school to an injury for one of the sports and I can tell you it was significant for me at that time. There were some issues related to concerns that folks have, but my son played soccer for Amherst. I had no concerns with him playing on other turf fields or in Amherst I would let him play again. But the main thing I want to say is it's unequivocally important for the kids. Anyone who's a coach or a player understands that. There are experts in town in the athletic department and the school, the other bested members of the community have spoken in favor of it and I'm in favor of this while I hope the town will take advantage of the opportunity to provide an opportunity for the kids to play more The stories of the Amherst lacrosse girls team not being able to play at home that's their one year. When you're a senior in high school you get one year, and if you can't play, it's done. So it's a big issue for the kids. I'm one voice, I'm making my voice heard. Thank you all for your time. Thank you Sam. Next is Cedric Gannett. Good evening everyone. I'm Cedric Gannett, one of the coaches for Amherst basketball team as well as a coach for a formerly coached for the youth football team as well. Being on this panel is very great opportunity for me. And one of the things I think about is the word opportunity, especially coming from outside of this town. Originally from Philadelphia came the UMass for football, played that football and then I ended up getting an opportunity here in the education room. So I've worked a lot with students and and then through athletics is what gave me the opportunity. And one of the things that I, I appreciate about this situation is that bringing in the turf field would bring opportunity and advantage that other kids that come outside from here could come to and join us. But one of one of the things coaching about coaching these kids is his relationships and and these relationships are very important to me and important to them on the field. But also, these kids are also playing a sport that they sacrifice and put put in the time for as well as coaches. And one of the biggest things is that I always look at Amherst as a place of a landing spot. A lot of families come here to create a home for these for these young athletes for these kids and through that is not only just education but also athletics is a very big place for that. And if we're going to have a, I believe that one of the saints for athletics is if you look good, you play good, you play good, you get paid good. And I believe that our field looks good and brings in turf and and the track that I've been here for 10 years now that we continue. And I've heard this when I first got here into athletics that they talked about this, we're going to get a new track we're going to get this and it's still, I'm still waiting on the 10th year. I haven't seen any progress. No, no, not to us, you know, we're always trying to work in proceeding things but I definitely just advocate for an opportunity for these kids to to play on the turf field. Actually, from where I'm from, we were actually one of the first to get turf field in New Jersey, and this was a actual current problem back in 2007, or excuse me 2004. And then we got the turf field and then everyone follows suit and turf field was popping up like daisies in New Jersey. So, and it became a vital thing and one of the most important thing is that we're talking about financial moves is that, unlike colleges or professional leagues. We just as a high school we just don't have the financial stamping right now and a lot of things are already we talk about how budgeting and finances are very tight through education. Through housing and things like that. So, I just believe that bringing that artificial field right now would bring some what of also financial backing as well. Down the road that that we really want to provide for not just only our athletic programs, but for our schools and our education. So again, this is just like, I know that we were very concerned about the effects of the cons of the field, but I also see a lot of pros to this and this is a very educated town. So, you guys do your research very well. And so I believe that the research is there that supports and backs the artificial field and and track. So I thank you for this time. Thank you for the opportunity, and I hope that we can continue the opportunity in this talk board. Thank you for joining us. Alberto Morales Fernandez is next. Hello. Hi. Hi, so my name is Alberto Morales Fernandez I am the current JVB coach for Amherst boys soccer. I'm also a veteran of the Amherst soccer program. And I would like to just speak briefly on the experience of that this season as well as the seasons I was a player. So, as a player, playing that varsity field in the center of the track. That season, it was difficult to, you know, really start getting our team together to prepare for what was the championship run. And, you know, that season we did end up having a player who broke their ankle in a pre season practice due to the condition of the field that we were playing on. And besides that, through the course of the season we did have a significant amount of injuries. Just from the little dinks here and there but also because you know players were going down with little ankle injuries due to the, you know, the unevenness of the playing surface fast track to now. As a JVB coach. There were numerous times this season where I did have to cancel practice just because of standing water. And that was due to light rain, it would never really rained a significant amount. And that, you know, would normally cause some sort of cancellation, like on a good grass surface, but you know due to the standing water and the inability for our current field to drain properly. It was really difficult to get any practice time outside. And it also made it very hard for players to, you know, make that transition also to practicing indoors, because a lot of these players they're young they don't have cars. And it's oftentimes, you know, difficult for them to go from school to home, and to a later practice time indoors because they just don't have those resources. Other than that, I would like to speak about the risks too. I mean PFAS is everywhere. But also, you know, you have to consider that we're not the only person considering building turf, a lot of schools in the area have also built turf you have to look at, you know, top schools in the region like Long Meadow Minute Chog, Holy Oak, South Hadley put in turf recently. So, I mean, if you look at the risks, they're there, but you know, everyone is at risk. Your kids are going elsewhere to go play on turf. If you're playing outside of, you know, the Amherst area, you're likely going to end up playing on turf for athletics. So it's just something that needs to be considered that, you know, for the long term, and for the development of athletes at Amherst and for, you know, people in general, it's, I see it as a good thing. Thank you for joining us. Hi, my name is Tim Schmidt. I am a hurricane forever. Graduated a long time ago when we, I was a four sport athlete. We used to go over to Amherst College and use their track. We didn't have a track. So it's great that they're putting in a new track. I am also a long time official football official umpire for softball. And I do feel embarrassed many times going to these other schools. And I don't want to put some of the schools down, but to go to like Marhar, a small town that has a wonderful facility stands press box first class operation. And we've allowed our athletes not to get that advantage to compete. I had two children that competed in Amherst. My daughter was a field hockey player for senior year. Amherst was the first in first place in Western Mass. They could not play in Amherst in the playoff game because the field was so bad. So they went to their opponent that they were playing and got beat. And I really, it was a big disadvantage and people have mentioned that disadvantage is already that our athletes are subjected to many times. Again, the turf thing is here to stay. I mean, I see it all the time talk. It was mentioned how hot it is. I've done college games in early September late August. And yes, the turf is 100 110 degrees sometimes. But I also think you take any consideration. If it's 130 degrees, we aren't people aren't playing on that field. I can't believe, you know, for the health reasons that are obvious. So, obviously, I'm here to promote turf to be put in. Some of the schools I wrote down Aguam just put in a new turf field. South Hadley did West Springfield. So it's happening all around us. And as the former speaker said, the kids are going to be playing on fields away from home. So why shouldn't we have a field here in Amherst? And I hope that's the way we go. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Next is Felicia. Hi, I just want to say that I from Amherst I've been district one and my daughter went to the high school was on varsity sports and so I'm aware of the fields not being great. She also went to other places to play on turf fields. I really hated that the amount of abrasion burns that kids got on them infections afterwards was not insignificant. So there's there's pluses and minuses for both kinds of fields. And so there's no easy answer here. But I do know that we are, I mean, Joe Cumberford is fighting to ban PFA is we may start to buy something that's going to become banned because it's so dangerous. The CDC has now come out against PFA is I think their latest reports is now saying long terms effects include cancer, liver, liver damage, decreased fertility and increased risk of asthma and thyroid disease. So it's long term things we're thinking about and these things do go into our water and especially as climate changes that are harder storms with more rain. We're going to need the grass and the trees more to keep the ground in place otherwise more is going to be washed out and I was listening to what was written was saying about the condition of the water supply and Amherst is something to think about. I think they're very, very deep questions that have to be considered. And I understand that the students really want places to play in that's hard but I'm not sure that turf, even though it's going up. It's like this really strange thing that we all know better. There's a bad idea, more people are doing it we've got to get used to it because that's how we're going to win but more something bad is not necessarily the right way to go. And maybe it does mean we're going to have to put more money into to grass fields and making them better. And that's significant, but the cost of, and also the cost of turf, the putting like the maintaining it and then getting rid of it is another 75% of the cost but that's like in the future so that's not included in the way that they're yearly upkeep of grasses so I think we need to really deeply study the cost for cost of turf. So I haven't looked into it deeply it's as far as I've gone but it's something that's a big concern to me. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Next is Neil Cunniff. Hello my name is Neil Cunniff, and I am a student at ARHS. I play football, just this last season. I also play baseball. Even with playing, I have a lot of friends who play other sports such as lacrosse soccer, field hockey, softball, all sorts of things. The problem that I see on our fields is the boys lacrosse field behind the school has been coined the snake pit, because there is a massive dip into the woods, which is the a raft. And the field is actually that is part of the field. It has a lot of problems, not only for spectating, but for safety reasons, as players are having to run down that to go chase balls, and lacrosse is a contact sport. So people being pushed down that that is a big safety reason, which I think having a new field would help with. Another thing is the grass field in our in our track right now inside it. It is a mound or a hill is the best way to put it. If you are sitting down on one side of the track you are not really able to see the other side as the grass actually is higher than it. So going on that it is extremely unsafe as there are also many holes in the field and spectators watching it. You can't always see what's going on, which is not fun. Along with that, I played football just this past season, and our field was heavily damaged by water and us having to practice on it. So before many of our home games, we actually had to be very careful about where we actually were standing and moving. Otherwise, we could have destroyed a decent part of the field. The reorientation of the track and field is also really important, I believe, because, although you could just buy sunglasses for people, which was brought up earlier. That seems ridiculous to me, to be honest. There was a lacrosse game that I watched this past season where the sun was shining so bright on this side closest to the school that multiple players were unable to see along with the officials. And even if it was just a Amherst problem, the other team had to go the other way too. So it causes a disadvantage for both teams playing there. I'm in support of the eight lane track reorientation and the turf field, because I believe it gives people in our school system, the best chance at athletics. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Next, we have Charlie Edwards online. Charlie Edwards, you can unmute and make your comment please. Yes, we can. Hello. My name is Charlie Edwards. I'm for six years was varsity coach at Amherst. I've also worked in within the sports industry for 14 years, the majority of which has been at turf facilities. As numerous people have mentioned, our teams are severely disadvantaged by the current field situation. With regards to the concerns of drinking water, there are currently nine turfs in the town of Amherst, six at UMS and three at Amherst College. So the fact of one more turf substantially impacting our drinking water is surprising. Our season begins the third week in March. We are not able to access our fields typically for a week and a half to two for concerns with water and the ability for them to be used in 2019. There was a tournament held during our season where our fields were destroyed. Two weeks of the fields not being able to be used. Thankfully Amherst College gave us about five days of practice on their turf fields. But that means we had seven days of practice with in a gym at the end of our season when every other team with functioning fields was out on their fields. Frankly, at this point in 2022, it's embarrassing and a disgrace compared to other programs in Western Mass and college and prep school programs in the region that our students see and our students are embarrassed to have to suffer these differences or circumstances. Thank you for your time. Thank you for joining us. Next is Patrick Stadenmeier. Hi, I'm Patrick Stadenmeier and I'm currently a junior at the high school and I play soccer. I want to preface this by kind of reiterating what Superintendent Morris had said, which is that I don't want to put blame on like the workers that were tasked with fixing up the field they were given a dumpster fire, kind of to fix up. But with that being said, the current field is in very, very bad shape and has led to injuries. I myself have experienced those spreading my ankle three times over the past three years. And while I'm sure that is probably due to my irresponsibility of not keeping up with my PT. I think the field also has some blame. It also cannot deal with the climate as people have mentioned games have been canceled or postponed due to rain, which I experienced a lot this season. Another big thing is that in 2021, we're supposed to host a state playoff game. However, that had to be moved to South Hadley, which I think kind of suck for the seniors and others, we're looking forward to playing on our home field. And soccer and other sports in general they bring people together. And I'm friends with people now that I'm pretty sure I would not be friends with before. I think investing money into sports will lead to this and will be in the best interest of the town. Thank you. Thank you. Marcus, Marcus Smith, please. Go ahead. Hello, yes. My name is Marcus Smith. I live in district two. This October, I had the distinct privilege of umpiring the women's field hockey senior game. Yet I was appalled by the state of the playing surface that was provided by the school for the competition. I mean, I shouldn't have been appalled. Field conditions at the school have been this way, at least for the eight odd years that I've lived in the town. A bad field is not only outside the spirit of the game. It's positively dangerous. Speaking with the athletic training staff, they bemoan the level of injuries to ankles and the like across all sports from just the field, let alone the game itself. I have coached the field hockey team at Amherst High School and now umpire field hockey in the local area. Amherst is renowned in the area for its terrible quality fields. Back when I was coaching, the excuse that was was that the town did not have the equipment necessary for the provision of a compliant surface. This never changed. In fact, the head coach at the time brought her own lawn mower in to at least try to get the grass down to the required maximum 1.5 inches in length. We've been talking a lot about the drainage. It's also about being able to cut the grass at these fields. Now Amherst's tale of grass surfaces is not alone in this area, but Amherst's surfaces are amongst the worst. So how so much so that field hockey umpiring the signer has stopped forward in complaints of the playing surface to the school knowing that nothing will change. But why doesn't it change? It pretty much comes down to money. The town and the school district does not put the money into the grounds. It is required to bring the quality close to that of an artificial surface. There are school districts in the area that do come close. One of those is frontier. They run their fields like a golf course with all the infrastructure and investment that it requires, including the use of chemical fertilizers and weed killers, along with copious irrigation. The field uses unethical and under or unpaid labor from incarcerated individuals. Smith Academy again. This district invests in their surface just as it frontier. Same with long meadow as well. So how do we Amherst get to this level. Do we use incarcerated individuals use copious amounts of chemicals. Even this cannot guarantee a playing surface. Even these bastions of good athletic fields cannot provide fields that can cope with the modern day usage requirements while they adapt to climate change. This year, the field at frontier was not available for many games with goal mouths being challenging as well. One way that you can provide necessary usage for athletics to utilize is to utilize low PFAS artificial surfaces. The high school provides some excellent athletic opportunities for two for students, but that is adversely affected by the quality and availability of the playing surfaces across the sports available. A rounded education specifically includes access to opportunities outside of the academic. Access, we are hamstringing the development of the potential for every student on our campuses. I urge you to vote in the affirmative to bring one low PFAS athletic surface to the high school to free students development to its fullest. I would also like to add from my personal experience. I hope I have a little bit of time. I used to coach play an umpire down in the northern Virginia area about 10 to 15 years ago. We went through a similar exercise and putting artificial surfaces at the high schools in that area, one of which I was coaching at. At the time, the concern was not PFAS, but it was of the rubber crumb surface infill. We still move forward with that and I can pretty confidently say nobody has died of cancer from that since then. So that's my comment. Thank you very much. Thank you. Tyler Farrow is next. I'm Skylar Farrow. I play lacrosse at Amherst High School and I want to talk about my experience playing on the field by my school. So it's nicknamed the snake pit. Um, based on how bad the field has been in certain years, um, you know, starting this season, we'll go up to our games. We'll have maybe three or four outdoor practices due to the wetness of the field, other issues, so we're practicing inside. We're not able to put in certain plays, things like that, and we're playing teams and practicing for a couple of weeks. So that's a really big competitive disadvantage. Um, the field is tilted. So in certain spots, you're running uphill against a defender who has is above you on when it gets really wet. It's almost impossible to run on you can't cut in different directions. You slip a lot. And then on a different topic, we don't have like stands next to our field. So people don't really come to the game, you know, at the football games, people have to stand you. There's not really as big of a sense of community when we can't all sit on a similar area and cheer for your team. So yeah, that's what I say. Thanks for joining us Scott. Elizabeth. Hey, good. Good evening, everybody. I don't know where to begin. Hi, Lynn. Hi. My district and chair right there. Um, I have been a longtime Amherst resident. I came here in 1977 to go to UMass. I have stayed here. I've raised my two sons. I have five athletes. Five. Do you follow those letter? We played five sports in high school. The other one lettered in two. I currently have a freshman on the football and hopefully lacrosse team. And I have an eighth grader that plays football and lacrosse. Along with my other three younger grandchildren. I recently retired from Amherst regional high school after 40 years. I taught phys ed. I taught health and I oversaw. All the after school entities, except for athletics. I coached track and field for 25 years. And I currently travel this country. I've been in the track and field at high school at the college and at the national level. I've seen many athletic fields. And the one thing that hurt my heart is to be asked to deem our field in our track suitable for competition and having to decline that I had to condemn my field that hurt. We keep talking about the athletes. I want to talk a little bit about more than the athletes. I want to talk about the community members that use our fields. I want to talk about our adaptive PE classes that try to use our fields. I want to talk about the PE classes that I could not teach on our fields, because we had to wait for them to dry. We had to wait for them to be mowed during the school day so that they can compete on them at night. I have to wade through knee deep mud to get from the stairs from the parking lot to the track when I was coaching track. I want to tell you back 26 I think years when we was having the same discussion about getting from Cinder to all where the track in the first place. And the fact that some of the things that I asked for were not there, they weren't put in place. And now I feel like we're having the same conversation. I know people keep talking about the money part, but isn't the kids well worth the money. I think we're having the same conversation with our school and our town, cutting the things and cutting the legs out from under our most vulnerable people that are just trying to be. Where our work. I come from a high school where everybody went to every game. When we say cheerleader, that's what we meant. They cheered, they led the cheer, everybody in my town knew all the chairs, they led, we cheered back. We're talking about our kids, we got a dog park, but we can't get decent athletic fields for our kids. Think about that statement for just one minute. They desire to play. They desire to be a part of a community. They desire to be with their peers. They desire to do all the things that I was afforded growing up. Okay, I not only coached track and field, but I also coached indoor track, I coached basketball, and I also coached cheerleader. Everybody thinks that's funny, but it's not. I did. I don't know about money. I don't know about PFAB or whatever the thing is, but I do know sports, and I do know kids, and I do know them. I don't even teach them anymore. They still know me. Why? Because I still go to their games even after my retirement. That's how invested I am. And that's how invested I want you to be. Thank you. Stephanie Hawkman. Hi, my name is Stephanie Hawkman. I am the treasurer of the Amherst Hurricane Athletic Boosters and also a mother of a junior football player and baseball player and a daughter who is a soccer player. My daughter also desires to play D1 college soccer, and this school is putting her at an extreme disadvantage. But instead of spending my three minutes talking about things you've already heard, let me dispel some stuff. I would never, ever put my children in harm's way. Hence, I did the research and I sent it to the town council. So let's talk about it. There's lots of fields around us that still use crumbled rubber. That sucks. Yes, it's going to increase the heat of the field. It's going to cause more abrasions. It can cause damage. The Tantasqua just instilled a field through Shaw's Turk. It uses cork-o-nut, which is a combination of coconut husks and cork to create shock absorption. It has a geo-fill that they put in there with the sand that reduces the temperature of the heat to that of grass. It then has a shock-absorbing pad that they put underneath that is made with 80% recycled material, no water usage, and keeps you from having to recycle the turf. If Tantasqua can do this, why can't we? And if that doesn't work, why don't we go to the new state-of-the-art yarn that is being produced by New England turf store? Read the research I sent. We have alternatives out there to put a safe, low PFAS option, and we're only asking to do it on one field. So we free up the rest of our grass fields so that they are not overused. There is no player and no team that is going to spend 100% of their time on the turf field. But giving them that option allows them to have the skills they need to play in college and to compete with the players across this great state in playoffs. Do what's right for the students, but by all means do the research the options are available. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. That's all of our public comment. Okay, we're going to come back to the council. And I will officially make sure you understand there is a motion on the table. It's been made and seconded and it's to adopt appropriation and transfer order FY 23-05C in order appropriating funds for a portion of the town of Amherst capital program school track and field rehabilitation recommended by finance committee on October 17, 2022 and shown on page six of the draft motion sheet that motion's been made and seconded for the discussion or comments. Mandy Joe. I would like to make a motion to amend. Okay. I will amend appropriation and financial order FY 23-05C an order appropriating funds for a portion of the town of Amherst capital program school track and field rehab rehabilitation shown on page six of the draft motion sheet by adding the phrase quote. Provided that the regional school committee votes to establish a public advisory group, including residents, students, municipal government officials and public health officials from member towns that would one, evaluate and make formal recommendations on the selection of material options, testing requirements and environmental impact to allow for public input and solicit advice from experts in the applicable areas and three ensure that materials are validated by independent.