 Good evening and welcome to the Select Board meeting of February 26, 2018, calling the meeting to order at 6.30 on the nose. We're on time. Excellent. We'll start with an opening remarks announcement and agenda review. Is there anything that anyone needs or wants to add to the agenda as it currently is? I'll talk about the order of events in just a moment, but I'm not seeing anything that needed any change. Is anyone here for public comment other than something that's on our agenda? And if not, then you guys are both here for things that are on our agenda. So since we don't have folks for public comment, we'll move into our agenda. I believe what we'll do is we'll, we have a couple of folks here for some resolutions that we have on our agenda tonight under section six of our agenda. And so we'll take those up first just to get those going and take care of those. And so first on our agenda for the resolution subproclamation is the proclamation 2018 to bet day for March 10th, 2018, which is coming up soon. So if you want to come forward and if you just want to introduce it to us a little bit and just introduce yourself on the microphone so the folks at home can know who you are and tell us a little bit about it. And then we'll do the actual business part. Good evening. My name is Thanduk Tsering and I am Amherst residence for the last 20 years, part of the local Tibetan community. My name is Tenzin Tsang. I'm currently a sophomore at UMass Amherst. And I'm also president of UMass SFT. And SFT stands for Students for Free Tibet. So this year, March 10th is the 59th anniversary of the Tibetan national uprising day. And throughout the world, Tibetans and Tibet supporters will be organizing different events to sort of mark this day and to remember the folks who had sacrificed their life and also to express our solidarity with Tibetans inside Tibet. We have submitted before the select board proclamation request. So I'm not going to go into the details, but I want to just highlight few of the requests that we have made at the select board. This request is based on a bipartisan resolution that is at the state level, which is Senate resolution 480 and a similar resolution even at the Congress as well. So we are requesting the town of Amherst to recognize March 10th as a Tibetan rights day and to apply the Tibetan national flag for 59 days till May 7th because it's the 59th anniversary of the Tibetan national uprising day. We are requesting the town of Amherst to support the Tibetan people's fundamental human rights and freedom, including their right to self-determination and the protection of their distinct religious, cultural, linguistic and national identity. Another request that we have before you is to express the town of Amherst's sense that the identification and the installation of Tibetan Buddhist religious leader, including the future of 15 Dalai Lama, is a matter that should be determined solely within the Tibetan Buddhist community in accordance to our Buddhist right and our freedom. China, which claims to not believe in their religion, have passed certain regulations saying that they are going to be the ones who will have a role and final say in who the next Dalai Lama is going to be, which is totally unacceptable. Similarly, our request number eight is our Congressman Jim McGovern has co-sponsored a reciprocal access to Tibet bill, which is called the Reciprocal Access to Tibet Act of 2017, to promote access for American citizen diplomats, journalists to be able to visit Tibet. Just as the Chinese citizen students' diplomat journeys are able to come and visit this country, and we would like the town of Amherst to express its support for this resolution as well. If there are any questions or clarification that you would like, we'll be happy to do that. Actually, to begin with this question for you, Mr. Chair, it looks like in our motion and in the proclamation we have before us, it doesn't have 59 days. It says March 10th to March 17th. Right. I was going to raise that. We were using the text of the previous resolution there. I did not change that. We can amend it silently or in practice. We can sign the resolution or as you please. I'm also not sure what... You noticed that too. I figured we were pulling it from last year. Yeah. I'm also not sure what, if there are any conflicts, are there other flags to be flown at that time? Not for two months. I'm not sure. We could pass this and come back and add to it if we found out it was possible, but not something we've done before in the other. The other sort of clarification was, in your presentation, you just asked us to affirm certain principles, but that's actually not part of the motion or the resolution, so that would be something else. Right. In looking at the revision of the text, my sense was that the proclamation is a fairly focused thing about the day and the general commemoration. The other requests for separate things and if they should be part of a motion, it should be a separate motion, I think, or a different discussion. May I just ask you a question? Have you received our application for this year? The letter that you are reading? Yes. February 21st. Yes, 21st. In my packet. So, do we... So can we ask the applicant, did they see the text of the proclamation that is drafted? Because there's a disconnect here. Yes, that's what I'm realizing as well. You submitted to us your letter, which we have, but what we did not do was to incorporate some of that language into the proclamation itself. Did you see the proclamation that we had produced and we've obviously altered a little bit to get a little more of the specifics of things from the... I haven't seen the proclamation. The same as last year. I was given a copy of the previous years, not an updated version of this. Oops, sorry. I'm taking suggestions. I was just going to say, since I was responsible for this, I took last year's proclamation and changed the dates to make it current, but I wasn't sure that the kind of things being asked for here were appropriate for proclamation. This is... They're different, you know, to ask us to write a letter or take a stance on something is a separate action. We thought it was best to keep the proclamation clean as in the past so we can go ahead and get that done right away from March 10th. And we can discuss the other issues if we need to. Okay. But to me, they didn't seem proclamation material. Great. So I think that just for simplicity's sake, if nothing else, we'll probably do the proclamation now. And then we can come back to this later in the meeting to talk more in depth about the other topics that you brought forward to us and the other asks as it were. Okay. So I think that'll be the simplest. Okay. And so if, given that, if someone would like to make a motion and or read the proclamation, read the proclamation or both, I would... King of proclamation. Yeah, I'm looking for the motion. Read the proclamation too. Right. Should I read it first? I think you should read it first. Whoops. Oh, you know what? Okay. Do you have the... And do you have the version that has the article 29 of the May 2015? That's from Race to... Different one. That would explain why I'm confused. We have many proclamations. I know. Okay. Okay. Go ahead. Okay. Sorry. This is a discussion of the $70,000 debt as of 2018. Tibetans throughout the world will gather to commemorate the 59th anniversary of the Tibetan national uprising against the occupation of their country in an honor of the more than one million Tibetans who have died in the struggle for the independence of Tibet. And whereas the occupation and ongoing suppression of human rights and freedom in Tibet, and the degradation of Tibetan culture and identity should continue to be a concern for all freedom-loving people everywhere. His Holiness the Dalai Lama is a global icon of compassion and peace and the heart and soul for Tibetans worldwide. And whereas members of the local Tibetan community will gather in Northampton to commemorate this day with a day-long solidarity fest to pay tribute to the brave men and women who have given their lives for the cause of freedom and democracy. And now, therefore, be it hereby resolved that we the select board of the town of Amherst in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts recognize the local Tibetan community's plea for justice on this 59th anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising Day and continue to proclaim each March 10th as Tibet Day and further, by hoisting the Tibetan National Flag from March 10th to March 17th, 2018, help cultivate awareness for all citizens of Amherst. And the motion then reads. So before we read that, did we want to alter that ending date or not at this point? Okay. I think we're not sure we can do it. Okay. So we'll take it as is and then we'll work from there. Okay. And then I move to proclaim March 10th, 2018 as Tibet Day in the town of Amherst and to prevent the Tibetan National Flag to fly under the United Nations flag on the North Common from March 10th, 2018 through March 17th, 2018. Second. So we have a motion to second. Is there further discussion? So I would like to go ahead and we could go ahead and vote on this as far as I'm concerned because we do do this annually and we appreciate this being brought to us. And thank you to Mr. Wald for updating it as well as Ms. Puppel. But then to have a separate conversation about how much of a conversation we're gonna have about the other question of how long and the other details that were read to us that were in the letter of February 21st. Right. Yeah, we'll definitely get back to those much later in the meeting probably. We wanna keep our guests a long time but is there other discussion about the motion that's on the floor? Hearing none, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Looks like there was more to say. Was there another comment that wanted to be, that you wanted, it's unanimous with one person as in. Yes. I just wanna make, before we tell people they can go or they should go or they can come back later or whatever. Once we know that that's true, then I think we have a couple of things to talk about in terms of do we want to find out because it's a particular anniversary if we can do it longer because we just don't happen to know at this point if there are any other flags that we were planning to, I mean, none come immediately to mine but that doesn't necessarily mean there aren't. And then how we're going to talk about the other items because although some of the items are quite easily referenced in the proclamation itself, item seven in particular jumps out at me as being something that I don't believe the select board has any familiarity with as a select board. And so while individuals of us may be very familiar with that and certainly want to sign on in support of such a thing, I'm uncomfortable with expecting the select board to do the level of research to find out that if as a select board, we should do all those things. Similar point. Again, I think there is no example in my experience of flying a flag for more than a month. And so it didn't seem appropriate to put that into the resolution before we could discuss it. And then the same point about some of these things are political statements and so forth. And we have no knowledge or background really to make these judgments without for their preparation, I believe. I was just going to add because if we're going to talk about it later, I think we would be talking about if we're going to at a future date have a more substantial conversation so that the applicants aren't sitting here for two hours and then we, you know, because we're going to talk about it and we're going to, as Ms. Bruce talked about talking about it, but we won't have the substantive decision-making conversation tonight. That's correct, that's correct. So we will take this up a little bit, get ourselves prepared to have a more actionable discussion later, most likely, but we'll discuss this in a little more detail later on, but not take any action. When you say later on, is it going to be today? So we'll, as Ms. Gruber was just saying, we'll probably talk about how we'd like to sort of structure our conversation a little bit, but not get into the specifics of it, and then we'll pick a date and we'll let you know if we... Okay. It won't be, you know, June, obviously, because that would be a little counterproductive. So it will have to, that'll be part of that conversation to sort of what the timing is of that, Ms. Bruce. I, with the Chair's intelligence, I would suggest that there is no reason at this point to presume that we will have a future meeting at the, about this. We could talk about tonight, whether we wish to have it, not just what it would look like, it may not go beyond tonight's agenda. Right, right. So obviously we would let the petitioners know what our decision is, whether it's to have an additional conversation another night, or to stop where we are for this year. Right, so I think that, yes. Just that, I'm sorry that what you were asking for didn't jive with what we thought we were supposed to be doing, because, you know, we get our information, we get our packets at the end of the week, and, you know, but other people, I often look at it Sunday night or Monday morning, and maybe next year we could have more of a back and forth between the language of the proclamation, and what you're asking for, because while we did get it, literally, it wasn't digested in a way until just before that we realized there was this disconnect between what we were asking for and what we were ready to give you, so I'm sorry about that. Okay, that's, I think it's absolutely understandable, and we would also be very happy to provide some of the resources from which some of these languages are taken so that you have the complete information, but I would like to request, if it's at all possible, for the flying the flight for 59 days, because this is the 59th anniversary, and that's how we would like to be able to sort of really mark this day to show solidarity with the Tibetans inside Tibet. So, could I ask a question to the short petitioners? Yeah, because I was a little bit puzzled, why 59? You know, in our decimal based culture, we tend to do things 50 years or 60 years, and does this mean we'd be flying it for 60 days next year and 61 after that, or what would the request, what's the logic behind this? Yes, I think that would be, that would be thinking, that would be the thinking. We thought about a number 160 as a possible number because since 2008, we've had at least 160 Tibetans who have self-emulated in protest against the Chinese government rules and regulations, and we felt like 160 days for flying a flag might be too long, and so to make it more reasonable, we feel at least if we stick with the 59th anniversary, it's much more reasonable than 160 days. You know, it does raise just general questions too. So if we fly the flag for 30 days for Black History Month, and we do the flag for Puerto Rican Month, and so, you know, is there supposed to be any kind of equity between these things, or is it gonna depend on the anniversary? So I think we need a longer conversation about that before changing a longstanding policy. All right, thank you. So next, we have the, since we have guests here, we'll have the proclamation, both of these skating clubs, 50th anniversary, so I think we have some folks here that. Let's pull up another chair. So just introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about your request. I'm Rita Lehman, I'm a resident of Amherst since 1961, and I'm the president of the Skating Club of Amherst. I'm Nancy Johnson, and I'm a new board member to the Skating Club this year, and I have two children that skate with the club for the past seven years. And just give you a little information about the skating club. We began in 1968 when a group of mothers from the community wanted a place for their children to learn how to figure skate, and there just wasn't any. And Amherst College very graciously welcomed us into their faculty and staff and student hours, and that's how we started. And it grew to about 68, 70 members at that time, and we continued to skate at Amherst College. Their season is the short season, just their hockey season, which from November through the end of February. We then, when the UMass Mullen Center opened in 1993, we had the opportunity to extend our season from September through June, and we continued, we took ice time there, and we continued to skate at both all rank and the Mullen Center. And we have right now a membership of about 150 members, and we offer figure skating instruction, a learn to skate program for people who have just learning how to skate. We run adult programs, we run ice dancing programs, power skating classes, and it has really been a very successful organization. We're a non-profit organization, run entirely by volunteers, and we have a professional coaching staff of about 10 coaches. And we really are very excited about marking, this is a very important milestone for us, 50 years. We've always been in the Amherst area. We actually serve as people from all of the surrounding areas, Belcher Town, Greenfield, Hadley, Northampton, everywhere, as well as surrounding states, as well as Connecticut and New Hampshire. So we're requesting that the town of Amherst acknowledge this milestone, this 50 years, and just congratulate us on that successful organization. Thank you. So, to that end, someone would want to read the proclamation and or, yes, please. I'd be happy to. I know we'll probably have some discussion, but as we'll get started. So this is the proclamation of congratulations to the Skating Club of Amherst, 50th anniversary, 1968 to 2018. Whereas the Skating Club of Amherst was founded in November 1968 by the faculty, staff, and families of Amherst College to provide recreational opportunities for the campus community. And soon after, invited the wider Amherst community to join. And whereas the Skating Club of Amherst has continued to operate at the Amherst College or Rink and the University of Massachusetts, Mullen Center Community Rink, and whereas, the Skating Club of Amherst has provided and continues to offer a home to a community of families, amateur athletes and professionals dedicated to the sport of figure skating, provides a safe and positive environment for members physical, emotional, and social development. And whereas the Skating Club of Amherst is a member of the United States Figure Skating Association, the national governing body for the sport in the United States. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the select board of the town of Amherst hereby congratulates the Skating Club of Amherst upon its 50th anniversary. I just voted this and dated this 26th day of February, 2018. Would you like me to read the motion? I move to authorize a proclamation congratulating the Amherst Skating Club on its 50th anniversary. Is there a second? Second. Okay, yes. So as was clearly indicated in all the material provided to us and on the proclamation, it's called the Skating Club of Amherst, not the Amherst Skating Club. Thank you. And that does matter to people. It goes with their logo and everything else. Oh, in terms of the motion. Correct. Yeah, the motion's wrong. Sorry, thank you. You read what you were given. But sometimes I catch it and I didn't need these ahead. Okay, got it. So Ms. Krueger indicated that there might be some discussion and as the petitioners may have heard when this idea first came up, I was a little dubious, not because I don't think Skating Club of Amherst is a fantastic organization. Having had both my children participate, I was just asking my husband now if he remembered when our older son who's now just about 24 was part of Chippin' the Chippets at the Mullen Center during a hockey half-time. And if any of you have been to a UMass hockey game, you know that the fans are not the most genteel on occasion, but when all these adorable little skaters, including that little boy, skated out there, it definitely changed the tone. But I was dubious only because of the practice of some people assume that we should just like proclaim everything. It's a 50-year anniversary. I don't think you run across that too often. And so I'm very happy to go ahead and agree to this. Oh, your reservations fell away. Well, oh my God. I tried not to have it be about my kid, but it is about my kid today. That's quite all right. Then I won't give all my speeches that I prepared. A 50-year anniversary is really good. So is there further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And that's unanimous. Congratulations. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Congratulations. Actually, the hockey game was just Saturday. Chippin' the Chippets performed up. The last one. Yeah. Sackler. And they asked a well-received by the audience. It's amazing. It makes things so much nicer. I know. Thank you so much. We will sign the official one at the end of our meeting and we'll get it to you in the next couple days or so. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Thank you. It's great. So since we're proclaiming things, we have one more proclamation this evening, which has to do with race-emity day, which I don't think we have folks here for that. So if someone were to want to find the right coffee, can we feed that one? I don't want to see when I dive in. Six feet. Either way. So I'll dive in if you don't mind, Mr. Slaughter. Go right ahead. So she says, looking for the replacement. Got it, got it, got it. OK, so race-emity day proclamation. Back in 2015, town meeting had an article, 29 of the annual town meeting session, established the second Sunday of June as race-emity day. There was a wonderful presentation, there was much discussion, there was town meeting voted yes, and then that's all that happened. That was the end of it. And so we realized here on the select board that we should go ahead and make sure we bring this to people's attention again every year. It isn't until June, so this time we have plenty of notice for people, which is great because it can affiliate with Black History Month very nicely. There was just an event co-sponsored by the Citizens for Racial Amity, which was at the Jones Library yesterday. And I double-checked with them to ensure that there would in fact be an event on the 10th because every year the event's a little different. The very first year that it was celebrated, it was celebrated in conjunction with the Human Rights Commission long-running Human Rights Heroes Awards. But that became a little too much celebration to cram into one event. And so they have now separated those events. So it's always the second Sunday, and that happens to be June 10th this year. And I wanted to make sure, and I appreciate the people who worked on behind the scenes, making sure that each year this proclamation includes the town meeting action reference because that is why we do it. It isn't because the governor and his wisdom decided to sign on to it as well at some point, although that's nice. He does lots of things we don't sign on to. But this is something that Amherst should be proud of, and I'm happy that we are doing this again. And we will have more information as the event itself unfolds as to what it's gonna look like this year, where it will be, what it will look like. We'll certainly end up on the town website in some fashion. And I would be happy to read said proclamation as well, which is, whereas the greatest asset of the town of Amherst is its people, and whereas the town of Amherst holds dear the motto of the United States of America, e pluribus unum, out of many, one, recognizing the principle of the oneness of the humankind and the rich cultural, ethnic, and racial diversity of its inhabitants, and whereas civility, respect, kindness, and friendship are commonly shared values of the collective citizenry of the town of Amherst, and whereas the town of Amherst invites communities and neighborhoods to join in reflection on the beauty and richness of our diverse cultures and ethnicities while reaching out with a spirit of amity toward one another. Whereas chapter 163 of the Acts of 2015 of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts establishes the second Sunday in June, annually as Race Amity Day, whereas Amherst town meeting voted Article 29 of the May 20th, 2015 session of the annual town meeting to establish the second Sunday of June as Race Amity Day, and urged all the people of Amherst to recognize this event and to celebrate its annual observance. Now, therefore, the town of Amherst, hereby proclaims Sunday, June 10th, 2018, to be Race Amity Day, a celebration of oneness of the human family. Voted and dated this 26th date of February 2018, and the actual motion reads to proclaim, move to proclaim June 10th, 2018 as Race Amity Day in the town of Amherst, and to urge all citizens to recognize the import of this event and participate fittingly in its observance. Second. Is there further discussion? Bring none, all those in favor. Ms. Brewer read, isn't it an exact match to what was in the packet? The only thing I changed was add, oh, that's because the packets out of date. Oh, it's on my desk. It's on my desk. The difference, the difference was simply including the town meeting article. I just didn't know we have a replacement because we had to sign it later, but got it. Yep, we have a replacement to sign later, as I understand it. That's correct. Any further discussion? Excellent, I'd like to add the word Sunday to the motion, since it's a little hard to add it to the proclamation at this point because it looks nice and we don't want to scribble on it, but if we would include it in the motion itself, yeah, make it look extra good. But to make sure it's clear it's Sunday, since it's not that many events around Sunday. Somebody's seconded already. It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And that's unanimous with one person absent as well. Thank you for that. Had a couple of other groups come in that have some agenda items for us. We have a couple of, under our licenses, public way and near parking reservations, we have a couple of road closures and parking reservations. And so the first of those will take up, which I will suggest we pull out of the consent calendar. The first one is the 2018 Farmers Market Road Closure and Parking Reservation, April 21st to November 17th, 2018. I believe you guys are here. Did you want to speak to us about that and tell us a little bit about, so if you just make sure to identify yourself on the microphone so that folks at home know who it is that's speaking to us, so we'll go from there. First of all, David Mawhusky is my name and I'm the manager of the Amherst Farmers Market. I was invited to come here tonight to introduce myself, so hello to the select board and thank you very much. We are again asking for the parking lot on Spring Street from April 21st through November 17th to be closed off and part of Bullard Avenue for the L shape of the marketplace. And just want to say also to the select board committee that we really appreciate the support the market's been in operation since 1972 in that spot. And we think we bring in a nice commodity and certainly a good amount of foot traffic to the town on Saturdays. Local count lately has been upwards of 4,000 pitter pattering steps through the marketplace that are spending their money. So Saturdays are pretty active on the common. Did select board have any questions for Ms. Brewer? This question may be more for you then or perhaps for both of you is although it doesn't indicate on the application or in our motion that there's any change from last year in terms of the number of parking spaces. Every year the time seems to change a little bit. Now it's quite possible that the time is identical to last year but I just want to verify that that is indeed the time we're looking at that 7 a.m. to 1 30 p.m. in terms of we've had somewhat lengthy discussions in the past about what time starts, what time ends and I just want to make sure everybody's good with that time. Maybe some clarity. The market runs from 8 to 1 30. So the 7 o'clock or the 7 30 or whatever you've seen over past previous years or that flexibility is usually when the vendors are getting there to set up. It's easier for the market to set up earlier. So 7 o'clock would be asked for. Actually most of the vendors are starting to show up at 6 o'clock and that way we're just not ending up elbowing anybody else if there's a comment event or whatnot. But the official time from what I understand and I've been involved with the market since 1986 has been 7 o'clock to 1 30 from set up to closing. To follow up, you haven't been the manager that's been coming before us for the last couple of years. That is very true. So that's why I'm asking. You've been doing it a long time but you weren't the one stuck there in that seat the last couple years. 86 to 2002. Then I left to have children because we just Saturdays are a hot commodity especially raising two young daughters. Absolutely. Shopping in the market in May, they asked me to come back. There has been a litany of managers the last six, five or six years if I'm not mistaken. And so I've been back there this season. Essentially just I can't sugarcoat it. We're trying to write the ship. So getting things back on track and I think we've made a lot of progress this year. Everybody seems to be much happier at how things are going. The vendors are happier, the customers are happier. We've got some nice connections with the town, with Bid, with the Jeff, Lord Jeff, whatever that's going to be renamed as. So the market integration within the town I think is back on a good mend and we certainly had a lot of good foot traffic. So it was just nice to see all around it. It seems to be there's a synergy coming back which as a shopper I got to say I didn't realize what had happened over the last five or six years with the revolving door management, et cetera that had been an issue. As a shopper it wasn't as evident. But I've had lots of surprises this year. Thank you. Did you want to read the motion? Actually I want to ask another question or I guess at this point it becomes a comment which is to follow up on that right. Obviously we are recognizing that there have been several different managers before us over the last couple of years. Sometimes they didn't appear before us. Other times we had questions from the agricultural commission, et cetera. But everything I'm hearing right now is that as you're riding the ship that there is nothing we need to change. There's nothing we need to be concerned about this year. And so I'm wondering if we could go ahead and add to the motion just for clarity's sake this year that the market hours themselves are 8 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. And so the focus has to be on the parking because that's what somebody has to go and enforce. I want to make sure I just, even if we just tack it on at the end for hours of operation or something along those lines. Mr. Steinberg usually wordsmiths that sort of thing for us but if Ms. Krueger wants to do it on the fly that works well for me too. One note of clarity I'd like to throw out there is that there's a request for six parking spaces on South Pleasant, is that correct? Five. First five metered parking spaces on the east side of South Pleasant Street originating at Spring Street moving south toward College Street. So I should just throw this out there on Boltwood Avenue we need a few spots which are in the requests and granted every year. We don't need five spots on South Pleasant Street. I was wondering about that. Pardon me? I don't see it necessary taking up five. In fact, I think that's a bit of an inconvenience, frankly. If we had two, I think we're golden. I'm changing the motion. We can make it two. Less is always easier. We prefer less. Well, there's nothing of notice this year. We don't use those spots. So I don't see the need and having them taking up and being a burden, so. We have two, we're golden. No, go for two. But I just want to clarify, this would be on South Pleasant. Which two? The South Pleasant area. Yeah, I got that. Seven. Yeah. You want to make sure to get you the right two. Is it the first two? Yeah, near the bus stop. So Bill Gowan can pull this little wagon up. Yeah, the first two would be plenty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if we could open those back up to the public, that'd be fine. I was hoping for that. As long as we have this for golden. As long as you have this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, is it still first two? Okay, I'm happy to read the motion. Okay, I'm going to read the motion. It's a little bit long, so bear with me. And I think I've modified it according to what I heard. I move to approve the closure of that section of Spring Street beginning at the intersection of South Pleasant heading east to the intersection with Boltwood Avenue each Saturday beginning April 21st, 2018 through November 17th, 2018 from 7 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. to accommodate the hours of operation from 8 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. Oops, that's probably not where that part, that clause goes. That section of Boltwood Avenue beginning at the intersection of Spring Street running south to the access way to Porter Hall and further to approve the reservation of the first two metered parking spaces on the east side of South Pleasant Street originating at Spring Street moving south toward College Street for the Amherst Farmers Market. David Mikowski. Mikowski, silence, but close enough. Mikowski, market manager. Yes. Is there a second? Second, okay. Probably the wrong place to stick in, but it works. David Mikowski, the returning old manager. Would you like the old? No, are you the old new manager and the new old manager? Both. Either way, potato. Both, yes. 6-1-1. Is there further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Hope you have a good season. Thank you. Thank you very much. Boy, that's a long one, too. And so I believe we also have folks here for the Daffodil Run, which is our other street closure that is on our agenda tonight, which we'll actually segue into our next item, since we're talking about streets. But if you want to come forward, please. And so again, just state who you are and tell us a little bit about the event and why it's a little different this year than in past. And those kind of things. Hi, I'm Jen Label, development director with Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Hampshire County. And the Daffodil Run is in support of Big Brothers, Big Sisters. And we are in our eighth year with this event. So last year was the first year that we requested a street closure. So we had closed North Pleasant from Kendrick Park until Main Street. And we had requested a 15-minute closure starting at 10 AM sharp, which we did. And we actually only needed to close the street for eight minutes. So it was a very brief closure. We are again asking for 15 minutes. And we are also asking for an official closure of what we're calling Old North Pleasant. And I'm not sure if that's actually a real term, but that's how we refer to it. So that's the portion of North Pleasant that extends from Hellick Street to Triangle. And that is where the race shoot is. So the start of the race and the end of the race is along that portion of the street. And in past years, it has been used but not officially closed. But so essentially it was blocked with people and the race equipment, but not with an official closure. So this year we're requesting that, and that is the new request. And I'm not sure when I looked at the packet online, it does appear that folks have maps, but I didn't see it on the packet online. So if you need additional information, I did make copies of the maps. Yes. From that map, though, is it? Does this look like a race on the map that's right? Is it the group maps? So does that seem so? Yeah, so Triangle to McClellan. So that would be, it looks so much larger than I imagine it. But anyways, so that portion of road for the duration of the race and then McClellan to Halleck. Oh, this is the only, well I see, this is only Kendrick. So that's just one request. This is the. So this map shows the new request only? That shows the new request only. Would you like a map that details both requests? We have the group maps, which outline the part. And it's clear from, I mean, hopefully from the motion that the portion that's basically from the start until you get to, whereas at Main Street or so, is the other chunk of roadway, if I'm not mistaken. And so that, obviously, is quickly because it's beginning of the race for everybody. So it's running really fast because they're fresh. Right, yep. Everybody's bunched together, so it goes quickly. It goes very quickly. And we've been working with police Captain Gunderson on this closure. So we feel very confident in the plan. And like I said, we did the closure for less than 15 minutes last year. And I don't anticipate needing more than that. So. Great. In terms of the electronic packet, the map that Ms. Brewer had, that is in the electronic packet. The other sketch plan ones, we saw it not in electronic. Great. Would you like to make it? So I'm going to go with someone else's being clear on what the description is because I never want to go north, south, east, or west and writing if I can help it. But I don't think we should call it Old North Pleasant in here because that's not how many of us think of it. But it's not with the words. And so make sure that we get the East Pleasant and North Pleasant reference correct in there based on the actual finalized map. So I'll leave that to someone more less directionally challenged than I did. Does someone want to read more? Are you scared of some? Well, if it's moving north, it's to the intersection with East Pleasant Street, isn't it? Not really. It's triangle. Triangle. OK. So somebody fell into the streets and are watching it. All right, Mr. Bacomet. OK. To approve the closure of that section of North Pleasant Street beginning at the intersection of Halleck Street and moving north to the intersection of Triangle Street. Sounds good. I am directionally challenged. And then the rest would be the same as. I suppose I could make a motion. So I think I'll do that. So I moved to approve the closure of that section of North Pleasant Street beginning at the intersection of Halleck Street and moving north to the intersection of Triangle Street from 8 AM to 12 PM and North Pleasant Street from East Pleasant Street to Main Street from 10 AM to 10 15 AM on Sunday, April 29, 2018, for the CHD, Big Brothers, Big Sisters, and your Daffodil Runch in Lowell Center for Human Development. Second. So are we clear on where we're closing the roads? We think. We are. Most importantly, as you saw, there's no way to close it. They recommended this. All right, is there further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Thank you very much. Thank you. I am noticing on my motion sheet that there is a second part to the farmer's market. Did we not read that? We did not. We did not. So if you'd like to. But it is on the map. So if you'd like to read that second section of that. Move to approve the reservation of the first two meters parking spaces on the east side of Bouldwood Avenue immediately south of the Porter Access driveway, exclusively for guests of the Lord Jeffrey in each Saturday beginning April 21st, 2018, to November 17th, 2018, from 7 AM to 1.30 PM. And are we going to leave that the same or at Ms. Kruger's justification? Thank you. I think it's clear enough because they did the hours that involved. Second. All right, there's a motion, a second for the discussion. Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And that's unanimous as well. All right, so we've done all the straightforward in quotes sort of things. So I think next on our agenda is back to our action and discussion items. I believe since we have a guest that's come to town to talk to us about our paving plan that we will change the order a little bit and go with section 4B, which is the 2018 road construction and paving plan. First look, and then we'll come back to the Shea Street in school zone after that. So should you introduce yourselves? We know we kind of know who you are, both of us. But hi, I'm Jason Skeels, town engineer. Hi, I'm Salar Shaini. I'm a data scientist and GIS developer with Street Scan. Great. You should have copies of this handout on your desk. So I'm going to go over the, so I remember most of you from last time that I presented here. So I'm here to share with you the results of our second scan in Amherst. And we work closely with Jason and his team. And once we get to the capital improvement plan, I will hand it over to Jason to go over what streets are going to be repaired in the next five years. So this is our data collection van. You probably remember it from last time. We spent a total of four days in Amherst, a total of 40 hours to scan everything. We spend about 10 hours on the field each day. And our van is the same as the last time, which would allow us to make comparisons, where we had optical sensors, cameras behind and in front of the van to take pictures every meter on the roadway. And we had radars behind the vehicle that would gauge the distance underneath the van and the surface. And that would allow us to map potholes and surface, other surface distresses. The data layers that we provided at the end, I'm just going to go over them quickly, which the main driver of the system is the PCI of the pavement condition index. That's an overall rating of the pavement that would give you information about everything from 0 to 100. And 0 being the road is in a very, very bad shape and 100 is in the best shape possible. And the map on the right side is essentially the PCI map of Amherst, where in the dark green areas and light green areas, the roads are in good shape. Yellow, fair, orange are poor and red are in a very, very bad shape. And the second layer that would be extracted from the PCI layer, mainly, I mean there are other distresses that go in there in the decision trees, is the maintenance method layer. That's what we are looking at on the map, is a color-coded map of maintenance methods that each segment or each street would benefit from. So the dark green areas are the areas that we don't have. We have time, we don't have to do any repairs on them yet. Light green are preventive repair, like crack ceiling, microsurfacing, and blue are the rehabs. And orange, they are beyond the rehab stage, and they just essentially need to be reconstructed. And you should be happy that you don't see any oranges here, because there are in meetings that I show this, and there is a sea of orange. So the other data layers that we provided are the pothole and the metal layers. So on the left side, we see the pothole layer, where we have mapped out the location of all the potholes. So this would be a snapshot of when we drove over. I mean it would change frequently. But it would kind of give you an idea of where the trouble spots are and which areas of the town are more prone to deterioration. And on the right side, we see the location of all the utility covers, valve covers, and manholes that the system mapped out. And lastly, for every meter of the roadway, the image from our cameras are available. So if you go to our software and you click on any segment, you would see what that number, if you want to see what, for example, the PCF 60 means, you just click on a segment and the image would pop up. And it would give you a better idea of what that means. We worked with the JSON and its team to integrate this into the town's web GIS. So if you actually go into this link, you would be able to visualize the PCI and click on each segment and see what's the rating for each road. And it's an interactive web map, which is public. So you would be able to view it. Now, after that, I will just go over the results town-wide. So the distribution of PCI in the town are that around 21% are in a very good shape, excellent shape, 19% are in a good shape, 22% fair, 16% are in a poor and 11% and the rest are in a very good poor shape. So we kind of have a same chunk of roads in each category. The average PCI is a 63, and we'll show later how that's compared to last year, two years ago that we did the scan. And around 72% are above a critical PCI level and 28% below a critical level. Below a critical PCI level means when the pavement is exhibiting a structural failure. So that's when we need to, if it's in the right stage, we need to do some repairs before it goes to the reconstruction stage. And it would be very, very expensive for us. So this is a more detailed breakdown. Around 0.9 miles are where dirt roads or concrete roads or they were blocked and we couldn't assess them. Around 2.6 miles were below 10, 7 miles, 10 to 25, 11.5 miles between 25 and 40. Between 40 and 55, you had around 24% of the roads. This is a very critical stage where the road is on the verge of going to the reconstruction stage. So you can save it by doing some rehab work. And 25 miles are between 55 and 70. And the rest are above a 70, which is when the road is in very good shape. Now in terms of the repairs that we need to do on the roads, around 22%, which are around 22 miles, they need to be reconstructed. So they are beyond any other repair method would work. Around 43 miles would benefit from rehab. 22 miles would benefit from preventive repairs or crack-sealing, microsurfacing. And about 13 miles are in a very good shape and we don't need to worry about maintenance. The costs that we used for estimating the repair methods, we worked with Jason to estimate that from your historical repair costs so that it's as close as possible to Amherst. So this is a summary of our findings. So the weighted average of PCI for the entire town was 63. 28% of roads, a little more than a quarter, are structurally damaged. And if you want to repair everything at this moment and bring everything to a PCI of 100, you would need $16 million. And if you include the contingencies and police costs and other things that go with the maintenance, that would add up to around $28 million. This is the annual progress. So from the last time we did the scan, actually the total backlog was reduced significantly and the PCI was increased by one point, which is a significant increase overall because every road is deteriorating and you just can repair certain roads. So one point increase is a good number. And we can see that the backlog has been reduced for about $2 million, which means it's on the right track. In terms of payment management program, so the prioritization factors that the system considers, they are functional class and traffic. So to figure out which road we should repair first, one of the main factors is the functional class. So if a road is a highway versus if it is a local road or residential road, the highway one is going to get repaired first. Then the condition is important, the PCI. So in addition to how many people live on a street, it also takes into account what's the PCI of that road. The third parameter, which is as important as the other ones, are the benefit-to-cost ratio. So each repair method would extend the life of the pavement up to a certain number of years. And that's the benefit that we get. For example, crack sales would extend three to five years. And cost is how much money we spend. So that ratio would give us the value of that repair on that segment. For example, crack sales are very cheap, but they also don't extend the life that much. So if they are done at the right time, they have a very high benefit-to-cost ratio. And finally, the available budget, which is the main constraint for us. These are the projections that with different budget scenarios, how the average PCI of the network would change. So $800,000 would be the minimum that you would need to maintain what you have. And if you want to see increase, depending on your goals, if you want to see a five-point increase in five years to get to a 69, you would require around $2 million each year. So that's the green plot. And with the budget of $1.5 million a year, so if you almost double $800,000, which is the minimum you need to maintain, you would get after five years to a 67. So this kind of shows you gives you an idea of depending on the goal that you have, whether maintained or make it better, how much money you would need to invest each year. So now I would hand it over to Jason, who will show you the capital improvement plan. So this is our five-year plan. And we use their data analysis to sort of recommend what should go first, what the cost-benefit analysis is basically the sort of bang for your buck. And the other big factor is the ADT, the use of the road. So we have to focus on the main roads first, because if they go, they cost a lot more to do full reconstruction versus just doing some maintenance type work, which we're going to do a pretty healthy amount of maintenance work this year on some pretty heavily traveled roads. So some of the first roads that came up on the street scan list were roads that we already had programmed from last year. So Dickinson Street, we had just replaced sewer and water on that. We knew the road was in horrible shape, but also knew it needed infrastructure. So we've already got a contract for that from Maine to College Street. They were also going to be adding sidewalks and parking and redoing the entire road, full depth reconstruction, so that we can work all that stuff into it. Next one is East Pleasant Street, which this was just part of the roundabout work. So it's just an extension from the roundabout to Halleck Street. We're just going to mill and overlay that section just to smooth out the existing pavement from all the trench patches. So those were on the list, but we had already sort of had them programmed in. Then for this coming summer, we have East Pleasant Street, Southeast Street, Main Street, North Pleasant, and West Bay Road are the first, no, sorry, first five. And they were quite big budget chunks, but we're going to try and do a couple of different treatments on each. We're looking at doing a cold in place recycling on East Pleasant Street and Southeast Street, which are both in relatively good shape, but they're starting to fail. So if we grab them now, we should get hopefully another 10 years out of them rather than letting them keep go and then we're going back to square one and rebuilding the entire road again. And the same with Main Street right here in front of Town Hall from Boltwood to Dickinson, or that's going to be a mill and mill and repave job with some additional sidewalk and ramp work on the sides. Next one is North Pleasant Street from North Village. This is North of Campus from North Village Drive to Fisher Street, which that's another mill and repave because it's still in decent shape, but it is starting to go in places. So now's the time to save it before it gets too bad to do a nice rehabilitation on. Then West Bay Road, that came up on Street Scan for rehabilitation, but we've got larger plans for that, including sidewalks, crosswalks, some minor widening for bike lanes. So that one is going to actually be a full depth reclamation job so that we can widen out the road and revise the roadway profiles and stuff. Then the few last ones are some of the smaller ones and they were, some were listed for reclamation, some for minor rehab, but there were other factors that got worked into those, like we know there's some sewer problems on Kohl's Road, oh sorry, Kohl's Lane, downtown, next to Burgers, as well as Webster Street, we have a sewer issue we need to take care of, and so a lot of those were actually going to take care of in-house and we have a paving contractor we work with who can do some of these overlays after we do the underground infrastructure work, so we'll probably handle some of those in-house, which saves us a decent amount of money, actually. And did I, oh, I missed South Prospect Street, and that's just a short little stretch from Amity to Gaylord. We had done the other end of South Prospect Street a few, quite a few years back because there was some talk about some parking changes, so we had left that piece out, but it's gone too far now, so we need to sort of finish out South Prospect Street. So that is our major paving list for this coming summer, and just below that in the blue is the Amherst Woods area where we have just, well, almost finished ripping it all up for sewer. We've got probably a few more weeks this spring to finish out the sewer project in there, and then we'll be beginning to repave some of the side streets off of Wildflower, and we're probably gonna break that into pieces just so it's a little more affordable because it's a pretty big chunk. And some of that work we'll be doing in-house, other parts we'll be contracting out. And then these ones on the bottom here were recommended for this year, but there's some larger infrastructure issues needed. So College and Sealy Street both could use some sewer work that we're sort of working on designs and discussions with Amherst College. Then there's North Pleasant Street through campus, which we're sort of working on a larger plan with UMass to sort of get a cohesive design through campus on what we'd like to see for sidewalks, bike lanes, bus pull-offs, and whatnot. Although they've done bits and pieces of it, we'd like to sort of do a more detailed look at the whole thoroughfare through campus. And then the one other piece is right downtown North Pleasant from Amity to Fearing Street. And we've come to the realization that with our new budding downtown, we probably are due for a sewer upgrade because it's a very old, very small pipe that currently runs down North Pleasant Street from here to there. It's a small six-inch clay pipe. We replaced a portion of it last year from Hallecks, well, sort of in front of the toy box down to Prey Street. And we upsized that to a 10-inch pipe just to increase capacity. And before we do anything with this section through the rest of downtown, we'd like to consider doing that as well just for possible future expansions so that we don't pave it and then rip it up the following year. So that is just the year one list. I go quickly through the years two through five. I don't know if you just wanna look at it. And I don't know if you want me to read it all off or just, I mean, we can take a quick look and you can see that you start off. So our first year is mostly rehab. There's very few reclaim. And then the second year you can see in red here. I've highlighted those are the ones that are reclaims and they're all very short, small streets, but they're way overdue for it. Their PCIs are quite low. They're in the 30s and 40s. We move on to a year. Can you explain the difference between reclaim and rehab? Oh, so yeah. So reclaim is when they take the entire road, they giant machine that choose the whole road back into gravel and then they reform everything. And that's usually when the road starts to have all these ruts or giant potholes and you see this just full sort of foundation failure. So you need to sort of start from scratch, rebuild from the bottom up and do it all over again. Whereas rehab can be anything from like a mill and pave where you just take off the surface. You know, you still have a good roadway profile. It's still relatively smooth and straight, but it's just that surface layer that's failing. So you mill that off and then put down a new perfectly smooth top coat again. So that's sort of the major difference between, there's tons of other rehab methods, but that's our primary one. Although we'll be trying a couple new ones this year. So those are the major differences and you'll see that the rehab streets we're focusing on are major roads. They're heavily trafficked and then when we can and when it fits the budget, we're trying to do some of these smaller ones so that we know our do, but they're just, they're not as high demand. So we do want to get to them, but we do want to make sure our major arterials are functional and make sure we save them because they obviously, they're the longer roads, they cost more, so we try to focus on those. So this is the year two where we have see a lot more major roads. And as we move on here, the major roads start to fall off and we start to be able to tackle some of the smaller side roads and we start to be able to tackle some of these smaller failing roads that we've been sort of deferring maintenance on for too long. And then you get into year four and you see these, this is almost all side streets here and a lot of them are still okay and can be rehabilitated. And so we're getting just a lot more bang for our buck, getting the big ones out of the way and then we can start to focus on some of these side streets, some of these residential streets and then we're into year five and we're almost entirely on side streets and more collector streets. So it's, you know, as far as what we showed for our progress from when they scented 2015 to 2017, I think we've been doing really well. The one thing with this projected five-year list, it is a $2 million budget and that's not what we get from chapter 90. So we'd like to push for more, we know it's hard to find but and we've been trying to be very creative with how we find it as well, you know, incorporating all sorts of different budgets when we like when we do sewer and Amherst Woods that that's paid for out of sewer. So we are being creative with the budgets and trying to stretch our dollars but it's tricky to try and keep that PCI curve going upwards with this only what we get from chapter 90. So I think that's the gist of everything. Okay. So I know I have several questions. I don't know if any of my colleagues do. So I'll go first. I assume that going back to the front page of this list and I think you just hinted at it but the reason these are in blue is the waterfront actually pays for that. The sewer fund, correct, sorry. The sewer fund for those? Yeah, because those all got dug up for sewer. They were also several of them were on our worst and Amherst roads honestly. So many of these popped up. I mean, if you look at the PCIs here that you've got a 23, a 27 and then the others are in the 40s and 50s. So they were failing and we were intentionally deferring them because we knew that the sewer was coming. So we were spending as little money on them as possible. Well, trying to make them still passable but they'd been deferred for a while because of the sewer project. This is a more general question. You know, you did the mapping of the potholes last June. Do you find that where those are located is there a correlation between where those are and generally the PCI grades or is it more isolated failures of roadways? And so you see certain small sections of a roadway that's failing relative to the entire stretch of a given segment. Or is it a little bit of both or I'm just sort of curious how those kind of fit together. Yeah, it's a little bit of both. Sometimes it's just a single spot failure on possibly a perfectly good road but others it's a sign of a more deep failure of a contiguous section. So I'll try to skim back to the map real quick. Well, you're flipping to that. So obviously College Street has its set of them right in the air, that's a thing. And so then if I click back, we just pick that one's piece and then I click back to the, is this the PCI? Yeah, if we click back to the PCI layer, you'll see that, yeah, that stretch, am I on the right stretch? Yeah, that stretch of College Street is yellow and it's in the 50s. So it's at that point where it could use a mill and overlay, if it goes much longer, it might need more. Right. So relative to the PCI, the numbers that you're showing on PCI is from the scan of last June, I presume it's not a linear decline. Obviously they're not gonna go up unless you do work to them, so they're gonna go down. Do you find that is, and maybe that's why 55 is sort of the critical number on that earlier slide as to once you hit 55 or below that the degradation of the road is much more rapid at that point. Is that what you're finding generally? Definitely is. I mean, that's when the road starts to crack, the water starts to get in. This winter prime example, lots of rain, lots of freezing nights, and the pavement's just exploding in places that were in decent shape before, not, and now they're not, but yeah, that's, once the water gets in, that's the end of the road, which is why we also, from the maintenance list, this map here, we're trying to focus our crack sealing operations on some of these that are in pretty, they may have a PCI of like 80, which is in really good shape, but it starts to show those surface cracks, and if you don't seal them, and if you don't get something down on those to keep the water out, it just, the decline goes so much faster, which, I mean, it's just invaluable having a list like this with the maps we can hand to contractors or our in-house and they can go out and we prioritize them by, with the maintenance, especially with the crack seal, they sort of prioritize by best first, because we want to save our more recent investments and make those last longer, because they will if you put them, like Sal said, if you put it down at the right time, if you seal those, maybe there's only five cracks on the road, but if you seal those five cracks, that mile of road buys you another five years of pretty good road, whereas if you just keep letting it go, letting it go, it just, like you said, declines much faster. Especially in this area with all the, with the winter and all the moisture that we get, it's really recommended to perform the crack sealing and preventive maintenance. That's correct. That's a question, one's sort of a question, comment. Route nine is a state highway, but we maintain it, because I know we were out patching, except we were patching. Only Northampton Road, so only from South Pleasant Street to the town line, that's the only portion that is still state-controlled. College Street and Belgium Town Road sections are town. All right, so we own those holes. Correct. Yes, those are our holes. So looking at the five-year list, I mean, I, the bigger, sort of zooming out the bigger picture, so I get trying to keep the good stuff good and where there's heavy traffic and then trying to kind of in a methodical way get to the side streets. Right. And then I look at this and I think, that's great, best laid plans of mice and people. A lot of times, then something else goes and we get to year five and it's balancing those major roads and finally getting to the side streets, because you know, I talk to people like, they never ever have come back and done my road, so how do you, given that not everything on here is gonna work as planned and some other emergency road failures are gonna pop up, how do you make sure that you're always cycling in a fair amount of the side streets that are easy to like not do, because you can't get to them? That is the hard part. I mean, and years four and five are never locked in. They're almost never locked in. They, you know, we try to scan every couple of two, three years and the priorities change every time we scan because some roads may deteriorate faster, others may have held on better and we can't always get to the entire list of what we should do for maintenance, what we, you know, what we, if we could crack seal that entire purple, all the purple on that map, it would be great, but it's, we can't budget for that either. So it's tricky and yes, years four and five are tough. Some of the stuff we're doing, like for example, Belcher Town Road, route nine, we're applying to the statewide tip to get on that repair list. It's just a question of how quickly they'll put us on it once we submit that back in to the tip. There's one comment on that because we have other clients that deal with this. Is that the, like now we have the data on your web GIS and just having the public engagement because everyone thinks the road in front of their house is the worst, but when they look at the map, they see, oh, that's why they are fixing that one. So that usually, that strategy might help. So that's a great segue, my last thing. So looking out to five years, which is somewhat best guess. So I'm a resident, say, and I just picked this one. It's not where I live, but so I live on Summer Street and I'm wondering, well, when are they gonna get to Summer Street? How do I find this list online? How do I know what you've got planned? How do I see it? Oh, oh, not to worry. In five years, they're gonna get to me. I don't know that we have published it yet. We were hoping to present to you first, obviously, but I think we can publish it at this point. I don't see a problem with that. Just, I'd like to put a caveat in there that, you know, this is a $2 million a year budget, not what we get per year. It probably needs some contextualizing, but, you know, you're right. People are gonna go and look for their street, obviously. Right, right. Mr. Oll. Yeah, thank you. This is very good. Nice to see you both again. And this has had half a comment and half a question. I recall, for example, when I was in the Joint Capital Planning Committee, Mr. Moran came with plans to address Ms. Kruger's question. Mr. Moran had plans, you know, he was saying, we could do things like cul-de-sacs if they're close to something else because then we're saving time and so forth. As opposed, otherwise, we're just redoing the main arterial roads over and over again, never getting to them, which is what you asked about. But then there were, I think, quasi-political decisions that said, we're not gonna do cul-de-sacs, we're gonna do other roads. So that got, you know, what the plan that was developed by the professional engineers got changed for other reasons. So I don't know if that's probably a factor as well in some of these things. If we are doing a main road, and it's right next to a side street that is failing, I mean, there's just a, there's an economy of scale where you've got all this equipment there already. It's a short cul-de-sac or, you know, and the main road, you know, it's a minor percentage of what the main road would cost. We do try to sort of focus geographically, and we've actually worked with Street Scan to kind of give us, you know, we wanna do the best we can, but then if it's geographically in proximity to something else that's being redone, then we try to combine them in there. And also when we get the list from them, I go through and I look at at least the next couple of years out, and I'll, if I see something in year four that's right near something in year two that can need as much attention, I bump them around. One example is a Pomeroy Lane is coming up in a year or two, and I think Pomeroy Court, which has had some flooding issues, was out in year four. So I group those two together because we wanna take care of the flooding, the road, and both roads while we're there. Second question, I was thinking about you guys a lot lately. When I drive on West Bay Road, and I see the sign saying rough pavement ahead, you know, right there, it's sort of delamining. You've got huge, not so much big potholes, but just large strips that are down, they're gonna inch or two and so forth, I mean, large surface areas. Is there been inconsistent quality of the paving or is it about local conditions? I know we have problems, for example, with Thunderland Road, we tried the new process for repaving years ago. So actually, West Bay Road was an in-house overlay, which is at best a Band-Aid fix. Because you're waiting for the big. So, because we were waiting for a bigger picture and we knew, you know, we can't go out there every other day potting potholes, so we try to do like a nice in-house overlay. We try to make it stick as long as we can. Certain ones stick better than others, and you know, we are working on that, but that was a pure Band-Aid, and we knew it was coming up, so we Band-Aided it and hoped it would last longer. And it is, some of them, Pellum Road, I think is another example, just like West Bay, where we've Band-Aided and Band-Aided, they're coming due. So associated with the website, I wanted to comment, first of all, on how much we appreciate the really regular updates we get when the roadwork is happening and continuously encourage neighbors as I see things happening in their area. I subscribe to this, do you subscribe to this so that you know what's going on? And so I think that those are incredibly helpful, so thank you for going to the extra work of getting those out to all the places that the Chamber publishes it, et cetera. So that's really helpful. When you decide what to put on the website, say under the project page, because DPW has done project pages a whole bunch of different ways, I will just say you probably don't need this graph for the average reader, just, you know. True, now I don't think we'll put the whole presentation in. For the engineering geeks, they would love it, but yeah, but the charts are very helpful that way too. But as one of the criticisms we've faced in the past is that when we do say our priorities online, then they get changed and the webpage doesn't. And so that's the danger of giving people information as it becomes outdated. So just thinking when structurally, when you think about how do we wanna put this up there and what's an easy way to fix it if it turns out we get this chunk of money or the weather goes this way or the contractors go that way, we can just cross that section out and move on to the other because in some ways people get the hurt set on something happening and then it doesn't for a whole variety of reasons and we say, oh, we don't know why it's changed so that would just be helpful to people. But something that's easy for you to maintain because I realize it's a ton of information. Other questions or comments? Well, thank you both very much for coming and sharing the list with us and kind of giving us the background again and sharing that with the public at large as well. It's very helpful to us and appreciate the work you do. And I certainly, I was saying this to the manager the other day, I've been given the kind of winter we've had which has been extraordinarily difficult for the roadways. I have to say I've been personally pleased with the response time on you guys getting to things because I understand it's, I drive in one section of town but I know that it's happening in all sections of town and so when some of those more profound potholes show up and within a day and a half or so it suddenly filled again, I appreciate that that's pretty good job of getting to them pretty quickly and I appreciate that and I'm sure drivers in town do too but it's never fast enough obviously but that's you have your limitations on time and energy and effort and all that sort of thing but we appreciate what you do for us. I'll pass that on. The guys this winter have basically been taking the plows off the truck and going to get a load of asphalt right after so. Wowing it up and putting it back. Exactly, it's been a winter. Thank you. Rotating door there, thank you both. So next on our agenda we'll go into action and discussion item 4A which is Shays Street School Zone and Crocker Farm School which I think Mr. Moria's going to present to us and we had a lovely pair of maps here. Good evening. Good evening. If you'd be so kind as to take us through the school zone request and the sidewalk lining. I'm organizing myself a little final pitch. What you saw today was based on two million dollars. So if two million dollars doesn't come it doesn't all get done. So that's the thing to remember. Good news for those who think we're not doing anything and just sitting there playing cards in the break room is the asphalt plants. Also we're gonna probably start opening up this week. So we have one plant that told us they will be opening one or two days a week depending on how the weather goes. So we'll be able to get more than just cold mix. We'll be able to get hot mix as well. We have our little machine that makes its own asphalt out and we've been running two trucks every, well two trucks every day to get cold mix. So there's basically three groups out there patching right now. And that's because the budget gave us enough money the last two years. The last two years have been able to do this. If we don't have that extra money and we spend all our money paving in the summer we don't have anything in the spring when everybody really, really wants it because they're tired of the potholes. So that's my public service announcement or public service pitch. So on Shea Street, we got a call from the schools about looking into a school zone for Shea Street. And then shortly thereafter we got a request from some residents about improving the traffic light or the crosswalk visibility at Shea Street and went worth, no, went worth manner. I keep wanting to call it went with farms, that's kind of, I don't know why. So we actually had to look at both of these separately. A crosswalk improvement is a crosswalk improvement. If the crosswalk had been closer to the school zone we could have been able to lump these together. So we looked at the school zone and there's never been an approved school zone on Shea Street for Crocker Farm. So we drew that up. It's in the drawing. This is the drawing for it. Kind of shows you the entrance for Crocker Farm School or recommending the school zones. This is the advanced sign. This is the school zone sign. Another school zone sign, advanced sign. So we rec, and that's within the standards of the Manual for Uniform Traffic Control Devices. That's the guidelines we go by. There's a federal version and there's a state version. We both use both of those. So we found that it does qualify and we do recommend you put a school zone in. Most of our school zones when we put them in we put flashing lights there. But then we got the request for enhancements to the crosswalk, which is just to the right here at Wentworth Manor, this little section right here. We realized if we actually put enhanced lights there, pedestrian activated lights that we would have pedestrian activated lights and we'd have the school zone lights flashing and we'd have a little bit too much going on there. So what we came up with and we're recommending is that you approve the school zone. You also approve that we put in enhanced pedestrian lights at the crosswalk. We only make the west crosswalk sign a lighted sign and the east sign is just a plain sign because you'll also have the crosswalk sign. I mean the crosswalk lights there as well. So during the school time when children are crossing back and forth, those lights will be going so we didn't want to have the both lights going at the same time. So that's our recommendation here. It's a little different than normal because that crosswalk is so far, it's in the school zone but it's not where it really, we really want it to be in the school zone if we were doing it ideally. So any other questions? I'm still a little confused. Which, we're talking about two different crosswalks and I understand that. Which one has only the one blinking light and the one, is it the Wentworth manner? The crosswalk at Wentworth, which is this crosswalk, that'll have a light facing both directions. Okay. The school zone will only have a light at this end facing west. Oh, at that end. Okay. Yes. That says school zone, that's the school zone. Okay. So on the material in our packet, it says proposed rectangular rapid flashing beacons. And I think I remember Mr. Schill's talking at a meeting I was at last week that the rectangular ones aren't allowed anymore and they have to be round. So I guess we need a little update because regs are changing all the time. Well, if you actually read what's in our recommendation, it tells you that it's. It did. The advanced warnings on it. Approved pedestrian activated crossing lights in accordance with the manual for traffic control devices. So that covers both. It covers both. But it won't be the rectangular. It won't be rectangular. It'll look exactly like the ones we have now except it's going to be a round light up here at the top. Okay. Which is what the approved light is. I was paying attention. So yeah, there's a bit of a legal issue going on around the rapid rectangle rapid flashing beacons. And the federal government says you can't use them anymore until they resolve the issue. So we can't put new ones up. We can keep the old ones up until they fail or they get run over. And then we have to put up the circular light. Okay. Other questions? Yes. So on the one hand, I'm always surprised we don't have more school crossing zones. We've done one quite recently at Fort River as well. And so I'm happy to see us go ahead and do this because it's obviously needed. At the same time, I'm wondering what the purpose of our attack is if they didn't have any conversation about this because that's where we're trying to send people is to the Transportation Advisory Committee. And if the better thing to do is to send people directly to DPW or if this is an exception because it's a school, I would just like some clarity about what we're attempting to do with TAC because I would. So my interpretation of TAC was not to be looking at school zones, that that really is the purview of the select board, that TAC would be looking at other items in terms of sidewalks and things like that. But in terms of whether there should be a school zone, it's a pretty formulaic thing. You can say, does it meet the requirements of the school zone or not? If it does. And for some reason, this was never identified as a school zone until the school department brought it to our attention. And parents who are walking to school were saying, why is there a school zone on West Street but not on Shea Street? It seemed that then the question goes to the town engineer, should there be one there? And if his answer is yes, then he brings his recommendation to the select board. It's really not a traffic issue. It's more, from my interpretation, it's more, does the select board want one there? It seems to meet all the warrants for a school zone. So to follow up and as I'd indicated, we consider it separate because it's schools and it's safety and it's right away. I'm totally fine with that. But it's the Transportation Advisory Committee. It's not the Traffic Advisory Committee. And most traffic things are in fact ours and none of them are going to get decided by the Transportation Advisory Committee on its own. So that's why I wanna continue to emphasize to people that they're out there, that they're working on figuring out a process for people to talk to them. But in terms of stop signs and that kind of thing, that is separate. And the way you are interpreting it, and I think you and I would agree then, that that is separate than the school zones, which hopefully now we've covered completely associated with all the things we've been doing recently. But that other requests of this nature should go through the Transportation Advisory Committee so that they can figure out the larger picture and obviously they're working directly with the DPW and then eventually some things will get to us from the Transportation Advisory Committee and the DPW. Thank you. I could add on that. And I think maybe Mr. Moran can back me up. But I would, I know they've talked about school zones as you know, in a priority criteria kind of way, I don't know if they talk about this specific set of proposals, but I would imagine there's enough conversation back and forth between yourself as the major staff person for the Transportation Advisory Committee and the committee so that you'd be able to update them on whatever action we might take tonight that wouldn't be like a surprise, like they'd be driving down Shays Street and all of a sudden like, hey, where did that come from? Like, it'd be a way they would know what would, they'd be in the loop. Correct. And most of the Transportation Advisory Committee right now is only talk about school zones or talking about sidewalk priorities and bicycle priorities and trying to connect the school areas back to the village centers and so forth and the hubs and that's kind of where they've been focusing on with their discussions of sidewalks and bicycle ways. So they're actually trying to figure out better ways and which areas should be improved for those types of modes of transportation. So that's kind of what they've been focusing on when they talk about the school zones in their minutes, if you read their minutes. And I'm gonna say for the third time that if somebody wants stop signs or traffic calming, they belong going to tack, whether tack talking about things like bike lanes and sidewalks as their particular focus right now, that's still where those requests are supposed to be going as I understand it, okay. Thank you. Other questions? So I believe we have a motion relative to the school zone and the crosswalk lights, if someone would like to offer that motion. I can just because I found it first. I moved to establish a school zone with school zone signs and advanced warning signs as shown on the plan identified as proposed Shea Street School Zone for Crocker Farm School dated November 22nd, 2017 of the Western School Zone sign lighted or lit and the Eastern sign unlit and to approve pedestrian activated crossing lights at the Shea Street in Wentworth Manor Drive, says road on our map, crosswalk all in accordance with the manual of uniform traffic control devices in the Massachusetts amendments to this manual. Is there a second? Second. Is there further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. That's unanimous. Thank you. Appreciate that. And so we move to our next agenda item which is the secondary, would it be, it's not a secondary water meter, it's a second water meter. I'm gonna tell the district. If you wouldn't be so kind. I know some folks are here and wanting to hear this conversation. So in your packet, you have the proposed regulations for agricultural meters. We chose to call them agricultural meters because we truly are, this is for agricultural use, it's not for a secondary meter for a house to water wands or field pools or so forth. We're very clear and concise on what agricultural use is, that's in the definition sections and what it is not. We just really wanna make this to address the issue it was brought up right now and only that issue. So it's roughly two and three quarters pages is the regulation we came up with. There is a one page form that we'll go through that'll be used for gathering information from the applicant for this. And then the one page on the backside is for the DPW and the water guys to actually fill out as we go along and mark off the steps that are complete. I don't wanna read the whole thing to you so I'll just go for questions. Were there questions for the second board regarding this? We've discussed it a couple times but I didn't know if there were any particular things that jumped out at anyone that they wanted clarification on or anything of that sort. Why do I always go first? Okay, just a few things including we should, once we do this we should date it but first paragraph, I was wondering when you list this policy shall not apply to domestic residential commercial or manufacturing uses. Is it worth adding recreational to that list? I don't know because fields and just a question and then I was wondering and I don't, maybe we had this before and I just didn't remember why in order to meet the definition of agricultural use you had to be in this 61A program or the APR program. I mean, can't you have an agricultural use that's legitimately agricultural and not be a participant in one of those two programs? We'll wait for that answer. So recreation, that's fine if we wanna, that would be fine to add that. This was kind of the definition that was come up with and I think we ran this by the Ag Commission or we didn't add it by the Ag Commission. I don't think they met. Well, they met but they didn't have the formal language. Okay. So it was a more general conversation than that specific. This was a more of a way to kind of narrow down the people who would be using it. We don't want it to be a farm that's just growing flowers or and they call themselves a farm. So could I add to my, so it may be true that currently if there's only five potentially eligible farms and they all fall into that, that's a convenient way to do it but I'm thinking we may have a new growth industry coming that has some agricultural products although not defined as agricultural exemption. I'm thinking of the different ways of cultivating legal marijuana and they may not be one of the five and so I'd like to make sure that a legitimate agricultural use could be included in the agricultural meter bylaw without it having to be a 61A or a APR. That's just, you know, I don't. So you had like a broader definition, you think? Yeah, I mean I wasn't part of the conversation that narrowed it so I'm not sure the thinking but when I read this I was like why so narrow? It's legitimately agricultural, not like fake agricultural. If you go to the state definition, the medical marijuana is not gonna fall on their definition as it's written. Other things would but medical marijuana will not. It's not considered an agricultural use but I wonder if we might consider it agriculture for the purpose of the second meter or not, maybe not. I mean it's a different kind of enterprise but I was using that as an example but we might have another small farm operator coming in that we don't know about that isn't a chapter land or APRs. I just, I ask that question. I guess that was my main thing. I let the other stuff as minor. So just to follow on that a little bit, what are the requirements to be in chapter 61A? I know there's certain benefits to being in 61A as far as if you wanna operate a farm just sort of what constraints is it placed in order to qualify to be in that 61A program? Do you know of him? I mean, you may not, it's not. It's not really my belly wick. But you do have to qualify for it. It's not, I mean your land isn't permanently in 61A. That is, it's just a tax benefit for it and you do farm it and you have to meet those requirements. There's 61A, which is farming, 61B, which is forestry and there's 61 recreational as well. So we only chose the agricultural side, not the forestry or the recreation side. So I'm sorry if this was answered and I just didn't understand the answer. I understand that AgCom didn't get a chance to look at the very specific detailed sentence, but are there not in fact farms that already exist in Amherst that aren't either of these things that we would consider farms that might potentially be this? So I'm just trying to understand if, you know, to name a few, simple gifts, Brookfield Farm, are they, is every place they might want to do this already in that program? And so therefore, it covers everybody except for a brand new thing that we haven't heard of or are there smaller farms that aren't currently parts of those parts for some reason or another that I don't need to understand, but I don't want to exclude if we don't have to unless it helps us to define a group in a useful way. So most of the large farms in town most of their land is in 61A. If it's not, because you get the tax benefit for being in 61A if you're a farm. There are a few farms, there's one on East Pleasant Street, it's all the name. I had the name in my head, it just went out. It's a, basically they grow the mostly flowers and they might grow a few vegetables. Stonehouse Farm. Yes, Stonehouse. It is really like a B&B with gardens or something. Yes, but it's not a food production garden and that's a very small lot. It's less than, I think it's less than four acres. So there are a few of the very small ones. The ones we came up with, if you want I'll read them to you so you can. So there's a Wagner farm on 305 Northeast Street, a Mitchell farm on Northeast Street. Small ones farm, Bramble Hills. Hammers this farm, which is also many hands farm. Swartz Farm. Amherst College has the Book and Plow Farm. There's the Hampshire College Farm, the Brookfield Farm, Wysackie Farm, Mitchell Farm, Delta Farm, J&J Farm, Wysackie, oh sorry, Wienzek Farm. Mitchell Farm and a Sherwati Farm. There's also the possibility that UMass is developing their little farm program on North Pleasant Street. Simple Gifts is also one Stone Free Farm, which is the one on Russellville Road. The Zala Farm on Centralin Road. And the Poverty Mountain Farm in Shootsbury, which is actually all forested, but it had I think an APR on it is why it ended up in this list. So those are the ones we found which are more like what you would think of as a traditional type farm. And all of them were in 61A or APR land. Most of them actually have the majority of land in APR. Yes. Having heard that list since it wasn't provided to us in our packet, I think that I feel comfortable that we could go ahead if we feel comfortable with other parts of the policy with using that definition. And then if someone comes to us and says, I'm different for this reason, then that doesn't mean we couldn't talk to them. We wouldn't just say nope, don't mean the letter of the law, I'm not gonna talk to you. But that sounds like a fairly extensive list of the places that most of us perhaps think of when we're thinking of the different places this could include. To pursue that a little bit, I think hearing the list gives me some comfort, but somebody new to town who's entering into an agricultural business doesn't necessarily know that you just come in and ask for something and make your case. They're like, nope, it's not allowed. So my hesitation with this limit is somebody entering into agriculture. And given this break, I just don't understand why it has to be tied to those two categories. So we did struggle with the definition and felt like what my feeling was we wanted to tag it to something real that was a statewide thing. That was the easiest way, because anybody can claim they're a farm and say I'm growing a tomato. I consider myself of an agricultural use and I have a pool happens to be next to the tomato, but so to me, it was like, what do we tag it to that statewide recognized that it's got a pre-ordained definition. I understand what you say, well, it could be someone else and the board could broaden the definition, but at this go round, we said, let's take something that's tangible that everybody can know if it's yes or no versus a definition that we were gonna try to construct ourselves. Although if you really are gonna, sorry, if you really were gonna come a farm and you would ask for the agricultural, the 61 tax break, that would be something you would definitely ask for. Because if you take land that's developable, you're not gonna pay as much as we'd like you to, pay full tax rate on it. You're gonna try to make your... I hear your point. Why wouldn't you apply for it? Yes. Because it's only one tomato. And a huge swimming pool that you... Other questions? I was gonna make the same point. So I think that the reason we called it, we called this an agricultural exemption because the purpose of this regulation is to encourage agricultural use in the town of Amherst. It's not a secondary water meter. We had that conversation. And so no, we really, the purpose, why are we doing this? Because we wanna encourage those farmers and the people who are operating farms to be able to easily afford to be able to do business in this town. And just so you know, so the first six farms I read off are the ones who are being billed for water and sewer this time, if they use water. And there's only three possible additions to that list, which is the UMass Farm, Simple Gift Farm, and I believe the Zala Farm. Those are the only three possible ones that have sewer adjacent to their properties that we would, if they asked for a water meter, we would charge them water and sewer under the current rules we have. Other other questions? All right. I think I'll bring this up at the moment. So I will share with you at the Ag Commission meeting, we didn't have the specific language available, but the consensus of the group, they didn't take a formal motion, just it didn't work out that way, but because they didn't have a formal thing in front of them, so I think that's part of it. But they were obviously in support of this because it does definitely support and promote agriculture within the town. And so they were definitely in favor of this, this second year for agricultural use. So I did want to report that out. Excuse me. A second question that we discussed a little bit at the last time when we discussed this was about the sort of cost of implementation. And whether or not to hold harmless those existing farms, is there a way to frame that in such a way? Did we want to take up that? Given that there, those that you listed have paid water ends who are for a number of years, did we collectively want to acknowledge that in some way by virtue of some holding them harmless in some respects relative to the installation of a second meter if they chose to do that? If so, what would that involve? How would we constrain it? We wouldn't want it to be a circumstance where that just went on in perpetuity because then we're doing things that we wouldn't do for any other sort of new customer for the water. So that wasn't included in this memo. I didn't know if you had any thoughts or information on that. And I think of these as, I don't want to, I would think of them as two different things as far as action by the board. Let's not say we wouldn't do both or won't do both, but I do think they're distinct pieces of the puzzle. Yes. Well, except that we, perhaps, let's look at the money first before we. So let me explain what you're looking at. Yes, please. So at the top, these are the current water and sewer fees. If you are a residence and you want to come build a house and town and you're gonna tap into the water main, you're gonna pay $1,000 for your connection for water, $1,000 for your connection for sewer. If the town had gone through and put a water main in and left the stub for your lot, even though there was nothing there, you pay $2,000. You pay $2,000 for the water, $2,000 for the sewer stub, we leave you. If you have an existing water main that was there and the building was torn down and you want to try to renew that, it's $100 to try to renew either a water or a sewer stub. And then your backflow device for a residential house is $100. So those are the current fees we have. And then I put the commercial fees just in case you were curious and then there's a street opening fee at the bottom, which is $100 as well. So for the people who are in the sewer extension program, the sewer expansion program, the sewer line is free. They will pay the $2,000 to connect. They will pay the street opening permit if they, well, they don't have to go in the street. So they just pay the $2,000 if they're a residential lot. They have to pay for all their plumbing changes in their envelope of their house and to get the sewer from the house to the stub at the street. So that's a cost that varies per house. That there's no rule of thumb I can give you for that. It's just there's people in Amherst Woods who have their septic systems in their backyard. So they have to go inside their house, change the plumbing in the house, come out the front of the house and then go to the street. There's people in Amherst Woods who have their septic system in the front yard. They just have to tear out their septic tank and plumb a little way to the street. They're much better off. So that number is there. So if you take that as far as, what we were proposed is with the paragraph below is that we give people until any of these six people, possibly nine people, if they apply by July 1st and we approve that they are agricultural use, that the town won't go in and if they have a usable service which doesn't need a lot of changes. Sometimes find services that are in very poor repair and you can't do anything to them except replace the whole thing. And that for some people, that's a small job. For other people, if you're 500 feet back from the road that's a large job. So if we find that the service is usable we would propose that we would come in, we would split the service apart, we'd have a service that went to the domestic service that went to the agricultural use and that we would install the backflow device and then anything that is beyond the backflow device which we consider during our survey to be a cross connection or an area of concern that could contaminate the water that would have to be corrected by the property owner because once you get past that meter and in some of the larger farms which have piping everywhere that could be a substantial cost to the town. So we could basically come in and set everybody up for business, the backflow, the new meter and have it all set up for them and then it goes from- At no charge to the property owner. At no charge to the property owner. As long as the service is reusable. If the service is not reusable then we can sit down and have a discussion with them about coming up with some way to make it usable and cost sharing or something like that. I don't mind doing that. So just a question in where it says proposal that the paragraph we're talking about. It says for meters approved before July 1 the town may waive the requirement to connect so I'm wondering what will waive, may waive. I understand there's some caveats because of cross connection and if it's a mess but how do we give some surety about what- If you say- What will be waived and what won't be waived because may waive is a little vague. If you accept it then it would be waived. Will waive. Shall waive. Will waive, okay. Shall, right, because that's- Shall. Shall is the more legal, yeah. That's, so, okay, much clearer. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions regarding this component of the conversation? Is it in our motion? I think it's a separate motion. Yes. So without getting into actually designing a system which I don't wanna do, I just wanna understand flow of the wording and so I get the part about waiving the requirement to connect to the water main if an existing usable service is available and will pay for the installation of the backflow prevention device because otherwise the sentence implies that there are other costs that are going to be born even though we just said waive. So is it not accurate to say is available and the town will pay for the installation of the backflow prevention device, period. No word only because only implies there's something else they're going to have to pay for which I know they may have to pay because the usable service may not be usable and that's the more extensive conversation but if it's straightforward it's that the town shall waive the requirement to connect to the water main if an existing usable service is available and the town will pay for the installation of the backflow prevention device. And that makes sense. And will pay, yes. We keep making it shorter, yeah. I feel like I'm in that movie, River Runs Through It, where the guy's sitting with his dad and his dad says too long, shorten it. Too long. An applicant's responsibility should probably be and possibly be possessive. Okay, well you get that. As long as we're messing, because this probably is going to be the second page of this movie. Right, so are there questions regarding either part of this that we've been discussing this evening? Is it time to hear from? It is. Are there people in the audience that wanted to comment or? No, come up. Come forward. So at this. Tell us who you are. Right, Ronnie Wagner, part of the Farms on Northeast Street. So right now you guys are saying that there would be no charge unless it's overly complex. Like this is what you're proposing. If it's just installing the back meter, there would be no charge to the actual property owner. What did you guys conclude about or propose about the maintenance fee annually? Because I know that was discussed at the last meeting. So I think that the year over year, there's a year over year backflow inspection, I guess is test and inspection that would be. Mr. Morgan, did you have a number on the cost for that? Memory service, it's like 35 to 50 dollars was kind of number I remember, but I may have missed remembered. I don't think it's in the memo. This memo, last time we talked about it. Yeah, it's 35, it's. Hi. Hi. Let's see again. Look at cozy. It is 35 dollars for one type of device and another device is 50 dollars. Right. Who would be responsible for that with this? So I think that was part of the conversation we were gonna have tonight in some respects, I think. Do any of my colleagues have an opinion that they wanna offer at the moment regarding that? Obviously, when, if you had the service installed, you'd have a year before that would come up as a cost for the business. You know, I'm of an opinion that that's a bit of the cost of doing business to some extent, but I don't know if my colleagues feel the same way or not regarding that. But I'm open to hearing what other. I'm making an assumption that because it wasn't in the proposal that whatever kind of staff level discussions happened to prepare this for us that it was a disinclination to add the annual fee and I am disinclined as well. I think the concern that we run into is because it gets a lot more complicated in a hurry is one thing I think about is, so for example, the current owner of the farm has this, you know, a particular benefit, let's say, about covering that cost of the backflow, but then they decide to not be in farming and either their heirs decide to be in farming as it go with the property. It's one of those things like a deed restriction. Does it become grandfathered indefinitely on that piece of property? And then what happens if the property changes? And so it gets a really complicated in a hurry if it's something in perpetuity because of the land ownership may change in ways that we can't anticipate. I mean, that's the sort of complications I think and again, it is sort of part of the, I think of it as a little more as a cost of doing business and that's not to say it's not free obviously and it is burdened to the farmer, but I think it gets complicated down the road, not in the, and it becomes a permanent cost for the town to take on and it may or may not, if the circumstances such that the business doesn't stay as an ag business then becomes back into being an ag business, does it still qualify for that or not? That's where I think I struggle with it a little bit because it becomes, currently the suggestion we have is for the installation and so that's a one time beginning sort of cost and then where is that backflow sort of testing is a year over year thing and that's where I think it gets complicated with regard to the long term horizon and change in ownership, change in land, change in all sorts of things like that that get a little harder to kind of stay fair with what happens because the thing, a person buys a new piece of property somewhere else in town that's not on town water and decides to make it a farm, obviously they wouldn't get the benefit of this but would they get the benefit of not having to pay for that backflow testing? So I see it as a complication that's difficult to resolve well and fairly over a long period of time so that's my complication with it but I don't know if my colleagues have any other comments on that? So I would like some more information from Mr. Moreing to help provide some context which he's done here with some numbers but again trying hard to understand is only the very basic that I have to understand to make this work is that we talked about the residences that are going to be connecting to the sewer due to the expansion and so that's a $2,000 connection fee we talked about and how complicated their plumbing's going to be in various situations and if they're residential they're paying $100 for a backflow device yet for commercial they're paying $500 for a backflow device. If we could get a little more information about what the value is that we are already offering here with the proposal as shown and then the second part of the question is what happens if when it comes time for the first inspection they don't pay the inspection fee? So those are my questions. So the value, I can't really give you an actual number but I can give you what there's a device cost the backflow device that a farm would use is actually substantial it's expensive. It's probably in the order of several hundred dollars and the $300 range just for the device. That's what that would be. How the house or how the existing service is plumbed and that's all based on the survey we do inside the house. I mean if it's an older facility and it's a galvanized service that opens up a whole ball of wax where the galvanized service may not even be able to we may not be able to cut it apart and do the changes we need to make. Hopefully it's a pretty up to date it's a copper service. I actually didn't look at what your farm is. So if it's a copper service it's easier to change and rearrange things inside the service. So you could have a residential meter and you can have the sagging meter side by side with the backflow device meter backflow device. So that would be relatively inexpensive except for the backflow device. So it's hard to say that. And if they do not pay the fee for inspection every year it's a failure by the state law and we have to shut off the service. Thank you that's quite straightforward. Yeah the state kind of told us that very clearly. So is there further questions or comment relative to these items? If not I would entertain a motion on either. I agree to one more little statement. Sure please. Just to leave it before you vote. So basically thank you again for having the discussion about the agricultural sewer rates in Amherst. As a reminder this has been presented to the current assistant town manager to select boards and add commissions for over a decade. Installing the secondary meter and assigning any financial burden to the property owners holds an illegal merit. Does it do away with any of the monies that were illegally collected from services that were not rendered. So once again as we originally discussed I mean we'd like to implement the ag exemption for the existing farms as far as future farms like you said potentially grandfather them in. Who knows but once again I'll remind you that those future farmers I mean new property owners I'm not saying heirs I'm not saying inheritance didn't have to suffer the burden of giving the town money for something that they didn't do. So once again we're kind of from the farmer standpoint and I apologize I didn't know the ag commission had met to discuss this. So I was not present at that meeting. I don't know what discussion was had. But lastly I mean if you compare even the $30 every month that you would be charging for a farmer to have the inspection considering the thousands and thousands over $10,000 over 10 decade over the decade of the money that you've already collected once again why is it fair for the farmer to have to continue to pay. Yes. So I'm happy that we're making an effort to address this issue I think it will be more fair and promotes our values of promoting agriculture going forward to put to find a point on it but I really you may disagree with the past policy but to say that it was illegally collected is not accurate it was not illegal it was within the scope of the law and so I think an accusation that we were doing an illegal practice is something that I would wanna correct. So you may have disagreed with the practice but it was a legal practice. We're now doing a remedy to reflect current thinking. But I mean I'm not trying to constantly debate and argue but in my stance it's not just an opinion I mean I don't understand how legally it was merited to do that. Like nowhere has it been explained that it's okay to charge for sewer that you're not using. I mean I don't get to charge for stuff I don't produce. I think it's really probably and I don't know how much you know how state law works relative to water and sewer services in towns. It's part and parcel of how that law currently is constructed at the state level I think that allows you know communities to charge for that even though that you weren't taking advantage of it. You know the sort of plain reading of it is fairly clear and I think that's part of why this select board has been interested in taking action on it because the like you say the sort of plain reading of it is such that you know it doesn't seem very fair but at the same time I think you know was allowable under the law and was you know practice of the town and I presume depending on how we vote tonight will not be the practices down after that but I think that that's you know sort of a cork of state law in some respects with regard to that but. So two things one is if we could have clarification from Mr. Moreing associated with how often this inspection is because now I feel like I'm hearing both month and annual. It's depending on which device you have. There's two types of devices I won't confuse you with the names they confuse me. Thank you. One device has to be inspected semi-annually so that's twice a year and that's the $35 fee I believe and one device is inspected once a year. That's the $50. Okay that's 50 years or 70. So it's 50 or 70. That's what it comes down to. You didn't get that either. Okay. Okay. I assume they're gonna get the bigger device which is gonna be once a year you inspected because the use the smaller device which is inspected semi-annually is a small device and it's for restaurants. It's yeah by nature it has more of a failure rate because it is a smaller device and the larger device is much beefier and it's much more reliable it's used in bigger applications. Thank you that's helpful and also I'm gonna come back to the money in a minute but in terms of as you had written this Mr. Moreing for us when you said for agricultural meters approved before July one would there be a problem with saying applied for prior to July one? Do you feel the need to get this all done in a particular timeframe? Just from the standpoint of people may have more research they wanna do this being February and thinking if they just applied and again that would be the deadline. You know it wouldn't be that five more farms some other day would ask for this but. We kind of felt that the farmers would come in and wanna be done by June or May because of the season. They start watering pretty early and it's important to water when they're at that point so we figured everybody would come in really quick about this by July everyone that might be an issue to water. Would give more flexibility. The reason I just wanna give the flexibility in case we have trouble getting it approved prior to July 1st even though they've applied prior to July 1st because I know things get complicated. I'm happy if you say that but it's pretty much if someone comes in and we're gonna probably do it the next day we're gonna start talking to them. That's very helpful thank you. Then I have a follow up question associated with the fee so it is complicated for all the reasons we talked about. The only possible thing I could see associated with the inspections is the possibility of waiving the first inspection but fee not the inspection but the first inspection fee. I can't imagine doing it beyond that and that perhaps gives again some feeling that it's not a huge amount of money it's more recognition of this particular subject in this particular time. I don't wanna fight about it but that seems like a way to do it I'm not comfortable with saying for X number of years or until the next owner or until something else changes or forever but just like this is a one time offer for installation at no charge although the policy will be ongoing in terms of this particular, this separate issue as you say is separate from the policy. The policy would be in effect anyway but in terms of this price proposal this would be associated with one time and then potentially one time waived inspection fee but only the first again if it's twice a year if it's the $35 one then that gets more complicated but because that's twice a year and so in terms of saying first but the first years of inspection fee I don't know I'm starting to feel like a car advertisement or something and then zero percent down. How about if I make the easier motion and then we're gonna if we get into rates or fees tonight we're gonna need a motion anyway so you could draft it that way or somebody could and we could try. One about the reg. Yeah and I have changed it a little bit from our motion chief but I moved to establish regulations relative to water meters for agricultural use as shown on the policy and regulations for water meters for agricultural use dated February 20th, 2018 as amended and I would like the date that's the end of the motion I'd like the date to be under the title and not on a footer on the second page but that's the motion. Is there a second? Okay so a motion and a second is there further discussion? You've got somebody out there? Yes, some more. So you're accepting the definition as it is here is what you're saying, okay. Did you wanna add? Well the as amended is adding the word recreational. And we're adding recreational to the. Did you wanna add recreational? Yes. Yeah and we're adding recreational. After the word commercial. Commercial recreational or manufacturing uses does that make sense? Yes. Then the date in two places under the title voted means such and such and then also in the footer, okay. Footers change, right. But saying voted not just date which could be the date that it was given to us. So voted to 26. Someday we'll have a template for such things, okay. I just didn't like the draft dated. Yes. Is there further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. That's unanimous with one person absent. So on the other component piece, did someone want to offer a motion relative to that? Try and read it. Let's give it a shot. Okay, so let's try it this way and see what people think. I move that for agricultural meters or agricultural water meters. Should have water. Agricultural water meters applied for before July 1st, 2018. The town shall waive the requirement to connect to the water main if an existing usable service is available and will pay for the installation of the backflow prevention device. It will be the applicant's responsibility to address any cross connection issues beyond the backflow prevention device and to pay the necessary inspection fees. You're not exempting the first year. I'm open to discussing that. I just want to make sure we address the inspection fees somewhere in here, whether we do it or not. So that's okay. Yes, and that's for agricultural water meters applied for before July 1st, 2008. The town shall waive the fee requirement to connect. Yes, right, because I was reading that and I was like, wait, the whole point is to connect. Okay, so there's a bunch more changes. Shall waive the fee requirement, thank you, to connect to the water main. Well, wait, because they are connecting to the water main, which would normally cause a fee. See, this is the whole, I don't want to understand how this works, but you're gonna have to tell me something. You're waiving the fee to connect, yes. So that word was just missing. Adding that word. Waving the fee requirement. It makes more sense to say it that way, even though I didn't write it that way, but listening to your talk, it makes more sense. Shall waive the fee to connect, not the fee requirement, the fee to connect. Right, I'm waiving the fee, not the requirement. Yes, exactly, that's where we were getting hung up, because the requirement is the whole point. Shall waive the fee to connect to the water main if an existing usable service is available and will pay for the installation of the backflow prevention device. The applicant's responsibility to address any cross-connection issues beyond the backflow prevention device and to pay necessary inspection fees. The current motion. You can leave the last part off about inspection fees, because when we do it, we would have to pull the permits, so we would pay the fees in an hour. Okay. Okay, so. You're talking about the annual inspection? Yeah. Different, different than this. I'm talking about the other inspection fees. It sounds like that would be another whole other clause. We can do that as a separate sentence, if you'd rather. So we could just end it at backflow prevention device. Why don't we vote that separately? Why don't we do that as a separate motion? Yes, okay. Even though it's beyond the backflow prevention device, period. Second. Does that work? And there's a second. Second. Okay, is it for the discussion? So I think we're clear on what we want with this. I think we're confident with what we wanted for this, and then we can have the separate discussion about. Mr. Buckum, did you get all that? Yes, I did. Okay. We know for the discussion all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Oh, that's unanimous. And so, do we want unanimous? Did we want to entertain a motion relative to the first or subsequent inspection fees for meters and solved prior to July one, or applied for prior to July one, 2018? Or not, or? I want to fight over or die over this, but I have the same thought as Ms. Kerger that if we're trying to do the right thing and correct what was an awkward situation before there's not of our making, and then to be told we're doing things illegally will be seen in the federal court. I mean, I'm not terribly sympathetic. And that was one applicant who did that. It was one. All applicants will be, I hear your sentiment. Did you look as though you might have a comment of some sort or some clarifying bit of information this year with us? It's totally your call how you wish to do it. If you were to say that it's waived into all the property is transferred outside that is sold, we live with that. That's fine. If we say it's only for one year or two years, five years, we live with that. So from the standpoint of making it work, don't take that as being your driving factor. I'm trying to relieve one of the issues that, so that's all I have to say. If you decide you want to make it just something we have to do, it's something I wouldn't like to do teamly, but I understand you're in a position and that you may need to have to make this decision. And however you make the decision, if you decide something, we'll make it work. So don't feel you have to do something because you think we can't make it work. Thank you. That was incredibly helpful. Thank you. And so because I know that actual implementing of things is often way more complex than anybody wants to think about, except the people who end up having to do it, I would move and see where it goes that we waive. What would you refer to this inspection fee as so as not to confuse it with the permit fee? This is the required backflow device inspection fee. Could you add annual? Or it should be semi-annual. It's going to be semi-annual. Sorry. Required backflow inspection device. The first fee? Backflow device inspection. Backflow device inspection fee. Backflow prevention. Prevention device. Backflow prevention device inspection fee. So what I'm trying to get at is the first year's worth of fee. Is it the first fee or the first fee? It's the first year's worth of fee because we don't want to encourage anyone. We want to, you know. First year is no better. We're taking the pain away from one year. But you also want to qualify it for those that have applied previous to July 1, 2018? Yes. Because otherwise it's a perpetuate. Exactly. For those who have applied prior, for the meter prior to. It's really just an additional sentence if we approve it as opposed to being a completely separate concept. So you move as part to amend this to add that. That's a good way of doing it rather than pretending it's a complete separate thing because then that covers the July 1st part. That it only applies to this limited set of circumstances. Okay, so adding a sentence, we're mending the whole motion and adding, can you read it again please? I absolutely cannot. And to waive the first year, the first year's inspection fee for the required backflow prevention device. Okay, I second that amended motion, whatever it was. I think this is being videotaped so you can replay this about eight times to get it right. And that's an amendment to the previous motion that you just approved. All the other language, the same, plus this is another motion. Right, and that being my point is so we didn't have to go through the explanation again of how it's applied for by July 1st. It's only for this limited subset so it's a limited time offer. It's small print. And then it will be over after this set of people apply by July 1st and then get them installed, get their first year's worth of inspection fees waived and then this will be like it never happened because moving forward, everyone will be subject to all the normal charges and fees and annual or intermediate to connect. And I do feel like despite the frustration that's been expressed on a couple of occasions here that it does fit in, it's a relatively small amount of money and it does fit in with our values as supporting the agricultural nature. As you said originally when we wrote this, we wanted to make it really clear that we're encouraging agricultural use not that we're just looking at a second meter sort of situation. And so in support of that is where I'm coming from associated with that even though it doesn't benefit every farmer but it benefits this small subset and seems to be the overall process of what we're doing with all these words is going to be a substantial benefit to them over time, which is a good thing and we're happy about that. Is there further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. It's unanimous. Can I do away with the shorter version of this in the minutes so that the minutes can just be the one we just amended and not have it. I think we would have had to. We did amend the first round. We can sit around and it'll be fine. Okay, we don't. Robert's rules all of a sudden. I was like, what if we're done with Mr. Mark we have a short break. Absolutely. So thank you very much. We appreciate you coming in to spend some time with us. Thank you Mr. Skeels as well. We'll take a short recess. The agenda because we've been all over the place. I know. I think we're getting there. We'll enroll the dice and just pick stuff. The best laid plans. Although we're pretty far along, quite frankly. Yeah, I think at the end of the year we had to do that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I mean, that's, I think, why that label has that sort of thing. It makes sense. No, I thought you explained it well in talking about state law and our type and our regulation. Right. And, you know, one of the things that complicates the bill is I could imagine you always being thinking about small water service. Yeah. You know, we were big enough that we're able to more easily than others are. But if you think about it, if you look at it, none of these got as well in there. They may have water service. That's right. That's right. But there are 10s that have a smaller size. Right. And they don't have the sophistication to do that kind of bill. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's a new order to try to sort that out, right? You know, and you have other people that are just on sewer. Yeah. Or how we know those people if they're just on sewer. Yeah. Like, if you have a well that you're on sewer, it's like, yeah. We're on water by the end of the sewer. See, the thing is, when you're on water, and your sewer bill is based on how much water you use. Yes. There's a lot to do. But if you're just on sewer, I didn't ask that question. I'm kind of glad I didn't, because I don't know what they do. And we're the circuiters for sewer. Right. We should know. But I don't know how they bill for people that are just on sewer. Maybe there is an interesting question. Because if you were, because you could legitimately be just on sewer, put a well in your backyard, because you want your own well, or you cut rainwater, or whatever it is you want to do. You know, I don't know how they would, because you're really gonna bargain in. That's a good question. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm hooked up to water, but I use 10 gallons a year. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, our water's cheap, too. It'll come through at the most places. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. I mean, you know, like I said, there's multiple ways to argue the point. And I would think that, it's kind of like when Connie brought it. You get the same, you run around about one of them, if he's repair or not repair. Yeah. Yeah. It's not cool, man. Right. Not cool, but it'll keep us a little later back to you. No. And then that heckling from the back of the room. Yeah, is she getting what you want? We can take it, but why? We're still on. We're still on. We're still on. We're still on. We're still on. Where's my rental appeal board? File? At it. Yes, file. Oh, that was a work of art. You mean your work of art? Yes, exactly. My beautiful work of art. I don't think I brought that. Nobody ever keeps the old stuff, because then I would actually do a little bit. No, I kept that and I shared that, to Guilford whoever was right. No, Rob Mora. All right. So, are we about ready? No, that's all right. So next on our agenda is actually a discussion item 4D, which is the rental appeals board. And we have two pieces of work under that. The charge itself and the special municipal employee status. I believe we had in our packet, lots of things that capture some of that. We'll pay the picture of course. So, last week you talked about the rental appeals board and you had a rough charge and you made some comments and we took those comments back and tried to incorporate them. And the second thing that you identified is whether these employees could be received special municipal employee status and so you have a list of all the special employees' status positions since 2007 and you have two motions to approve or the charge, if you want to make changes into, grant the rental appeals board special municipal employee status. And again, this is the board that would get together if someone had an appeal of the rental registration bylaw and the board concludes the chair of the select board, the chair of the planning board and the chair of the zoning board of appeals, whoever happens to occupy those seats. Pretty. There you go. So it's been at the term of appointment for three years but then realizing that the designee may be the person that needs to have a three-year term. Maybe it doesn't need the other folks. It's actually not supposed to have a term on it. It does not need to have that. That was the intention is that it was gonna be something different. It doesn't fit in with all of our other things. No, whether or not with the designee, though, whether we would have that as a limit, obviously with elected officials, they have, you know, to get re-elected. Other people have to get re-appointed. And get re-appointed. You just have no, because it travels with the position, you would not, I guess you would not have any term. You don't have any term. And so the term of appointment is actually not supposed to be on there, just as it wasn't on there to begin with. And what is supposed to be on there is very helpful, has the annual town meeting piece. It has special needs for the employee, assuming we vote that. But it also doesn't have the fact that it's an ongoing committee. I forget what we've tried to phrase that at one point. But it's as opposed to a time-limited committee, like downtown parking working group, for example, which we may renew, but at this point is a time-limited thing. This is an ongoing, but ongoing may not be the word that we're looking for, but that's the best I could remember from what I said last time. So type, some people use the term ad hoc, some people use task force, et cetera, but what I was trying to get at was ongoing. So I'm happy if somebody can come up with a different word, but ongoing is versus time-limited, so. Permit. Sometimes it's called standing. Standing, standing, I like that. Yes, but they're not doing work until they have to. Right, I like that. I like that standing is very nice. And. We're in the mode of making things up as we go. We're doing an awesome job. And so we remove the term of appointment and then my question is associated with the chair's reference. Do we wanna clarify that it's, now that I'm reading it again in a slightly different format, that it's chairs of the select board, planning board? Yes. So it's always the chairs unless they send somebody else. Unless they designate. Should we, I guess we have to approve the charge and then the SMA? That's the right order of events. Usually what we do. Usually what we do. It says yes, we voted the second one. It's one of those chicken and egg kind of problems, but anyway. Yes, it is. So if there are not other edits that people can think of, I would take a motion. Somewhere here. It's that motion sheet. To adopt the rental appeals board charge as amended. And there's a second. It's there for the discussion. Hearing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. And that's unanimous. And so, the second piece would be this special municipal employee status. Do you want to do a little quick reminder to the general public about that? Of course, without that. Oh, that's why there's all this material in there. But there is a fairly lengthy description of it in our packet. Yes. So basically, if you're on a committee, you can't ever, unless you have a special municipal employee status, you really can't represent to any other committee. And so, if you're someone who has, in normal cases where we worry about is you're someone who has clients in town that you might need to represent before another board. And this is somewhat different because it's already chairs of boards, but it seems just more appropriate to go ahead and call them special municipal employees so that no one has any confusion about the fact that they're supposed to be serving multiple roles. Would you like to make a motion? I move to grant the Rental Appeals Board special municipal employee status effective immediately. Is there further discussion? Well, just to add for people who might not know, and what Ms. Brewer said about special municipal employee, because our conflict of interest sizes are appropriately strict. In either status, that member cannot present in front of their own board. But it's like if you weren't totally unrelated matter before, say, the AGCOM, if you didn't have the SME status, you could potentially be in conflict. So it's very broad and this allows, especially in a smaller community where people do wear multiple hats. But just to be clear, you still can't for your own board. Which is just complicated because it's not the same as doing the work of your own board in this case. And so whereas the example you gave is entirely appropriate for other bodies. So it's an odd sort of situation, but it seemed better to go ahead and squeeze it under SME than to not this community, this variations of the select board have over time pulled in and expanded the number of committees that are covered by SME status. And I am always in favor of expanding the number because it encourages participation by more members of our community. And there are still very strict rules and people, if they ever have any question, there are people who have thought about applying for committees who have said, I may have too many clients here where I may end up with a direct interest and therefore I still wouldn't be able to do it even with SME status. So I just wait until I'm retired or I change jobs and that's entirely appropriate. So thank you. I think that makes sense. For the discussion? And so would it make more sense, however, instead of saying effective immediately, which I guess I've never done before, we should go ahead and say effective now because- You said that in your motion? Yes. 226, 18 as opposed to immediately because the odd thing is we're not having to make the secret step of appointing people. Usually we approve the charge and then sometime later we appoint the members. In this case, we're done already. Right. So effective immediately or 226? Whatever works. It'll be effective after tonight. Right, exactly. But if the rental appeal had to be called together tomorrow and we should make sure that on the bottom of the charge it shows what date we voted the charge because again, footers change and we don't have a particularly permanent template associated with committees. So we say the date we approve the charge was 226 and the SME is also effective 226, whereas that has not always been the case. There have been charges that are much older that then get SME status much later. All right. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. In that she is. Thank you. All right. Let's go take care of that. I think next we have a committee board appointment for NC Gilbert to the Board of Health through 6.30, 2020. I think it's just a confirmation of the manager's appointment. I think in our packet there might even have been the... Wait, we don't have them. We do have a motion, number five. Yes, we do have a motion and so unless someone wants to add something else regarding this particular appointment. I just want to say that we had two really excellent candidates for this position and I've talked with the other person that I'm not recommending but have talked to her and she's very eager to serve in some capacity for the town if not on the Board of Health and something else and so it's just, I think Ms. Krueger and I both felt it's just remarkable in this community how many talented people are out there who are willing to provide their service to the town. I will move to confirm the town manager's appointment of Nancy Gilbert to the Board of Health through June 30th, 2020. And there's a second. Is there further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor please say aye. Aye. So thank you and congratulations to Ms. Gilbert. So next, I believe we have remaining on our consent calendar, one item, which is a special alcohol license at the top of campus incorporated at UMass on 427. So, somewhere. It's been there somewhere. I think I've heard of it by myself. A question. Yes, please go right ahead. I won't hold this up because it just needs to be done but in future it would be helpful if we would clarify and I know this is just expecting people to fill things out but I don't know what that means. I'm assuming that means outside but when we say plaza area and we don't usually license outside premises. I mean that's atypical for us. They're usually confined within walls. I'm not saying it's a problem. I would just like to be clear when they apply in future as to whether or not they're doing something inside or outside. I hope people enjoy the outdoor weather and do nice things with one day licenses but and that of course will be. I see. But do you see my point? I mean I don't know what the plaza area is at the Fine Arts Center. I mean I can guess but. Everything in front of the pond. Right. How far does it extend? It gets to you but. Because normally we think of things as being one of the ways you control the event is that it's within an actual building envelope not wandering all over the place. And that's before graduation so the students will still be here. And so we don't, we have open container laws. We don't want to conflict with those. I'm confused. So if staff slash chief Livingstone could follow up with making sure we understand what they asked for. You can find out where it is. That would be helpful. You can bring this back if you'd like. Do you want to take the motion or do we want to wait? I actually want to know if it's outside. If I can, if we can wait because we can because it's April 27th. I'm just not sure precedent-wise. I mean we might be totally fine with it. I'm just trying to understand and draw a picture or something. I mean what are you, are you talking about in the back where the pond is? Are you talking about in the front at the Haggis Mall? What are you talking about as the Plaza? And it may be that there's an art exhibit because they put art right there coming outside. Or is it courting off in some way? How will they manage people that are at that event versus somebody walking around close with an open container? How will they manage it? So if we could have that postponed, that would be really helpful. Because we won't have to, we won't be forever away. Right. I mean, they're going to get it. Well, there's time for that. So I believe as far as particular items. We did all the motions, I think. We did all the motions. And so I believe we're now into the town manager. OK. Thank you. Interesting. First off, I wanted to remind or tell you and you know already that the school district has taken proactive steps in addressing school safety issues in light of the recent shooting in Florida. And it was good for them. The president of the union, along with the superintendent, wrote a joint letter to all the staff when they came back offering assistance if there were any issues. And encouraged them to be sensitive in their conversations. Because obviously, in a place like that, there's going to be a lot of concern. And I think it was really smart for them to be proactive and be on top of this going in. And speaking of school safety at the request of the school committee, we will be placed in an officer at the Crocker Farm School on Election Day in terms of the police department did a threat assessment. And they felt like the other two locations where we have polling locations could be secured in a good way. And Crocker Farm was the one place where people had to walk through the school and that the officer on site there would be useful. And that seemed to be the request of the principal and the superintendent and the school committee, in fact. And I'll put more of this in writing to you next time. The assessors, if you recall, there's the opportunity to appeal your assessment. We had 38 residential appeals and 10 commercial appeals. And of the 10 commercial appeals, five were for large apartment complexes. And that was not a surprise to us. And because those values of those properties went up 28% based on the market, the 38 residential property appeals were about average. There's nothing unusual in that number. Today, the North Amherst Library project, the committee that we have reviewing the proposals for that, not the proposals, but the architects who want to do the work, they initially narrowed the group down from five to three. And then they interviewed three of the groups today. And I'll be looking at that at their assessment of those three architectural firms shortly. And also, along those same lines, the food security, social services, RFP went out. We received two proposals back. And we'll be reviewing those as well. We have a small group. I didn't write down that. Nate Malloy, Julie Thetterman, and Marta from the school. Yes, from the schools who are on the review committee for that. We received notice today from the Amherst Housing Authority of the vacancy that you're all well aware of, unfortunately. And so we have, I'm sure if it wound up on your desk or not, but OK, so you do. So we received it today. And we sort of put together, since this happened fairly recently, we sort of mimicked what we did in the past. So something for you to look at, we picked a date of April 2 for the, but we can, I think what I'd suggest is that we look at this at your agenda-setting meeting tomorrow morning at 10 when we talk about this to see how that fits in on our general calendar, if that's the right date to have this joint meeting with them or not. So that'll be tomorrow. But just to sort of lining that up, this election between you and the Housing Authority come together there to elect a new person. We'll just give in the timeframe. We'll happen after the annual election. And it was too late to put it on the actual election. So that's why we will be doing it this way. The, I want to update you on health insurance. We continue to work with our insurance advisory committee, which is made up of 14 people, which includes representatives from the municipal retirees, the teacher retirees, and then every collective bargaining unit in the town and the school, and includes representatives from the town of Pelham as well, because we provide health insurance to the regional school districts, to the elementary schools, to Pelham, and to municipal employees. We continue to work with this group in a very cooperative way, and trying to get to an agreement where everybody feels like it's a good solution going forward. The goal is to achieve a level of predictability going forward in the next two or three years. There are some complicating collective bargaining issues that we cannot address at the table, but people have certain rights under their collective bargaining agreement. So we will continue to work this. At a certain point, we may have to bring additional recommendations to you and to the regional school committee. But at this point, we're really looking forward to a meeting on March 6th as we continue to work on this. And people have been very willing and cooperative and it's been a good process, but the clock is ticking, and so we need to make decisions because once we look at July 1, we have to start taking, we implement it on June 1, a month in advance of it, and then we have to give people adequate time to choose the plan that they wanna be on, and also to educate people about the options available to them, and also to give Blue Cross time to enroll people. So everybody has a card in their pocket when the new year begins. So that's the goal. And we're putting a lot of time into this and looking at lots of different options as people request us to look at different options. We continue to do that. So that's moving forward. You'll hear more about that every week probably. We were fortunate to receive a technical assistance grant from the District Local Technical Assistance from the Pioneer Valley Planning Association. Yes, and so what we requested was to do a bike and pedestrian network plan and to map out where our sidewalks and bike paths are, and so PVPA will, PVT, PVPA, you know what I got it. PVPC. PVPPC, I get one of them, commission. We'll throw some of this up there. We'll be doing this work for us, and there's a small 5% match which we will match with an in-kind services. And so I'm excited about this because they'll look at our current planning documents, review all of our street and bike plans, and then help us sort of conceptualize how we can make sure all these things are able to connect. And this is, I think, one of the things that the TAC has been involved with, so this will really support directly their work. And so the only, so I'm excited about that. We just received notice of that. What's the dollar? You know, they don't. Okay, if you don't know, never mind. $20,000. It's good. In services, yeah. Yes, we have a $1,000 match. Then the other thing that has come up, I just honestly can't remember if we talk about it here, was the idea of having signs of, say, vote today at our polling locations and other places in town. So the legal women voters have an initiative to put their signs up, which have their logo on it. I was hesitant to encourage that, even though it's a great idea because they want to have these signs out to encourage people to vote. I didn't want to do anything that was different this year to feel like anybody was influencing anything, so I want to bring it to your attention, to see what you thought we could bring, pretty quickly turn around, have some signs made up that say, vote today, town-sponsored signs that would be placed at certain locations. I wanted to get your read on things first before I did that, if you thought that it was something that you, many communities do this already. They put these signs out, and my sense is that we could say vote Tuesday on it as well and you put it out the Wednesday before the election. I think sometimes when you put signs out to say vote, your vote matters or something, people sort of forget about it. The idea is that let people know to vote on this day because this is the day to vote or to vote coming Tuesday. So I just want to get your read on it. If so, I'd pull together everything. Now it's fine. Oh, so I just taped my vote? I'll stick around, I guess I'm in the mood, but I think getting people to vote is great, and I'm not sure how that would be influencing a side in a particular, because you don't know who you're getting to vote who might have just forgotten. It might be a good thing to start now and do forward. It's not because a particular content is up right now. So I think always trying to encourage voting participation is a good thing and that also kind of comports with our values and tried to do that. We haven't had this particular request before, but I'm trying to see what would be wrong with doing it, but Ms. Brewer looks like she might know. Is that what you like? That's very funny. And the reason I bring it up today is because time's right. If we're gonna do it, we need to do it. So we all know rules about public resources, blah, blah, blah, blah, and all those details. And like you say, other towns do things and get in trouble too, but this isn't one of those things. This appears to be one of those things that is clear cut that you're allowed to say. You cannot say, remember to go vote on question one, sponsored by the town of Amherst. So that would be perfect. Exactly, don't forget, there's a race for town meeting members today, but we can certainly say vote. I like the idea of saying vote Tuesday because if you put it up too far ahead of time and then people get confused, and you drive through Hadley, as we all do at some point or another, and since there's only a place to vote right there at the intersection, it says vote today on a sandwich board and it's like, oh, that's really useful to people to be reminded of that on their way to work the night before and the next morning. So I think it sounds incredibly useful. I think it is incredibly simple. It's vote Tuesday and I can't think of anything else that needs to go on the sign, but and I do think it should be separate from the league as an active leave member. First of all, we depend too much on the league to take care of us for things like this. Also, they don't always know where all the signs are. And so instead of collecting them off people's portraits, they can put theirs up too because theirs are non-partisan as well, the more the merrier, but they just say, what else would they say, vote Tuesday? Town election Tuesday or something like that? I think they should just say vote Tuesday because the most primaries and most general elections are on Tuesdays and our town election is almost always on, again, almost always. Could we have some identifier like the town logo or something so you know that it was put up by the town? It wasn't just a student group who decided to do this thing. Not the flag. I refused to do it. Oh no, I didn't, no. Town logo, right. Logo. The letterhead type. Not the town flag. Right, not the town flag, not the American flag, not the Commonwealth's flag, but the letterhead logo for that. The one no one knows what the symbol is. Exactly, but they recognize it as being the town mayor's logo. Official, that's official. Well, also the other thing is by being identified as the town, there are things we as the town can do as far as putting things in the public way that are distinct from what others can do relative to the public way and relative to what might be construed as a political sign, which it isn't. It's a sign to encourage people to vote. Civic engagement sign. So you're planning to put one in the common. That's what you're saying? No, I'm not saying that at all. Because we don't let anybody else do that. No, no, I'm just saying that you have a point. The right-of-way is like next to the street is part, your right-of-way extends. People don't use any way, but they're not supposed to. So could we also just say that it would be the manager's discretion about locations? Yes, obviously, I don't want to personally get there, but I'm just, if per chance, that we're in a location that- I think that's a great idea. And after we do it once, we'll get a good idea of how many of them disappear, where people comment it on them, and then we'll see how it works for the next time, and then we'll be ready for the primary in September. So that sounds great, because I wouldn't want to just make it sound like it's just a town of Amherst election, but I like the idea of having the logo, so it's clear that we produced it, but it's for any Tuesday vote pretty much. It should be really good for the September primary, because that's how to cycle. So at that point, do we mind a day after Labor Day? Yeah, that's bad. Great, that's all I have. That was all you had. So now we're on to member reports. It's kind of a quiet week with the school vacation. A lot of meetings didn't happen, because we, as a town, generally don't meet during those time periods. So I've kind of given you a little bit of a report myself. The ag commission did meet, and they had some guests, and they asked them if they might be willing to serve. So there may be some CAF applications coming our way relative to that, and they did support the idea of the agricultural use meters, and we had to speak broadly about any sort of financial question, which we spent a fair amount of time talking about tonight, but didn't have much for particulars on that, but we're obviously supportive of that as well because it helps promote and encourage agriculture in town. I don't remember what else they discussed in their meeting. They got a report from the Farmers' Market Manager about the coming year, which we got. So I think that's it for me as far as member reports. So I don't know if I'm trying to recall if there's anything else, but if anyone else has anything, yes. Just to ask you a question, did AgCom decide to do anything about either decreasing their core, potentially decreasing their form as opposed to decreasing their measure, their membership, or one or the other? Yes. They had conversations about that, and so I think that their staff liaison is going to look into pursuing changes to membership counts. So one thing I found in looking up the state law relative to Ag Commissions is that by state law, seven is the maximum, although we have nine. I don't know if we did a homeroom petition to go to nine, but so there were also some potential refinement of the language of who's eligible to be on the AgCom that they were wanting to explore. Although, again, state law has some things to say about that. So I think there's some due diligence going on in the background relative to that, but they were open to the idea of reducing membership a little bit, and then potentially they were thinking about broadening who might be allowed on, and so putting both of those into some motions for town meetings, so we will likely see that come forward. But there's some, like I said, some due diligence that's being chased at this moment about how that would work, yes. Just to belabor the point a little bit, to really be clear on what was the previous town meeting action that got us to where we are, because we started out with a farm committee before agriculture, because we're always so forward thinking before the state came up with that. As I recollect, we had our own farm committee, which we then turned into an official Ag commission, and so that may be part of why we were able to do what we did, or we just did it anyway because we're immersed, and that's what we do, but to know what that wording was in addition to what the state wording is, so that we capture the spirit of both in order to accomplish our goals, that would be helpful because I know that people don't always like looking up those old pieces of paper, but that's not cool. Yes, so what we have explicitly voted by virtue of town meeting versus, and how that compares to and puts us in conflict with or not the state law around that, that's part of what, regardless if there's a conflict, we'll have to resolve that at a minimum, but also if there's ways we can fit those together neatly. Because there's actually three pieces, at least. The Master General Law, the annual town meeting action, that whatever the most recent one was that turned us into an ag com, there probably wasn't another one after that, but I can't swear to it. And then what our charge document says, because sometimes those three things are not as clearly as related as you might imagine, so. So we will chase all those. Something fun for an annual town meeting. Does anyone else, Ms. Krueger? I'm going to leave any adult use marijuana dates from Ms. Brewer, but we did have a campus community coalition meeting last week, and they passed out this flyer, and there were extras, and so I brought a bunch back and asked that it be in the packet, and then, amazingly, we got it on our desk tonight, and we got it in our packet. The one in the packet was stapled to something else that really kind of had to do with the CCC, but it had nothing to do with this, so I don't know why that happened. And I wanted you to know that our very own Ms. Brewer is one of the fourth diamond down local police chiefs and municipal leaders, and I have emailed Eric Bielin and said, why don't you say the names of those local officials? But he did not. I guess that wasn't as exciting as the other people, but he knows who they are, and he could have listed them. But maybe Ms. Brewer will want to say some more, but this is something that the municipal strategies, subcommittee of our CCC has been talking about, and Heather Warner from Spiffy and Eric Biel, said UMass is an exact title, but a community liaison position. I've been working on it, so just so people who are listening to me ramble on the Alcohol Retailers and Municipal Leaders Forum Monday, March 19, 2018, it starts at 9 and goes to 11.30. It's at the old chapel at UMass, which always makes it even nicer. And registration is free, which you can do by email or phone. So I gather this is probably in our electronic packet now. So I wanted to just let you know why that was in there. I also went to a Transportation Advisory Committee meeting last week, and that was informative. They are kind of working away, and it seems like they're getting clear on some of their priorities. They were excited about the District Local Technical Assistance Grant that Mr. Bachmann just told us about. I also went to a zoning subcommittee meeting last week and got kind of a preview of what they're working on for zoning articles that we'll be reviewing when we do our article review for Springtown meeting. I'm not going to go into them, what they are, unless you want to know. And Mr. Steinberg and I have been working with Mr. Bachmann on a potential revision to the zero energy bylaw. I'm working with some of the petitioners. And I think that's been productive. It's actually been a fair amount of work, because we're on a pretty accelerated timeline. But so far, we continue to collaborate productively. So I think that's what I've been doing. And it was nice to have a somewhat quieter week last week, because a lot of people weren't around. And that's all I can think of, so that's my report. OK, thank you. Ms. Brewer? I have a question, actually. I'm really sorry. What did you say was the last thing we're still working with Mr. Steinberg on? I totally missed the topic. The zero energy. Thank you. You just blanked out when you got to that point. OK, great. Which is not cool. Well, because I knew we also got a piece of paper on our desk tonight, which was a memo about. Oh, I forgot that. That's amazing. Oh, I'm thanking you. So that's why I was thinking you were actually mentioned that, and I'm spaced it out. But it wasn't in my bulleted list to keep me from forgetting things. So I thought it was going to be letterhead, but not with the draft taken off. But it might as well, because it's not on our agenda for tonight. But we wanted you to have this something. Mr. Steinberg and I worked on and had Mr. Bachmann review. So we had been asked if there was a way to simplify the number of interviews that we were doing for committee members. And this is a set of ideas. It kind of relates to the agcom appointment. And if there were some appropriately interested members, potentially just the select word liaison could do an interview or a phone interview, or maybe in conjunction with the chair, and we wouldn't need to do the full team thing. And it gives some criteria for how to make that decision. So I'd suggest you look at this, and then it will be on. We'll formalize it and put it as an agenda item. Agenda item. Yeah, just to get your thoughts. Otherwise, I can't really talk about it. Thank you for reminding me, Ms. Brewer, since I meant to tell you about it. So I'm going to suggest, when I'm on agenda setting tomorrow, that we do take the word draft off of it, because it's not a draft. No, it's a mistake. Not a draft. It's not the new proposal. It's just a report right now. You weren't supposed to see it naked like this. It says attached, and there wasn't an attachment. So do we have that available? OK, so will that be available? We'll fix that. That's what I'm trying to get at. Probably not. Since we never see at agenda setting what we're actually putting in the packet only, speak of what we're putting in the packet, I was just trying to understand that. That's something we. Yeah, probably not. We would expect to have available? An attachment. Because it says there's an attachment. No, we're going to update the language. So not to be mysterious. We tried to do a cut of some committees that would have like the full tilt and some not, just to help decide. And it didn't seem appropriate to actually attach that kind of a list right now. And so that should not do a meeting? No, I think not. OK. I think the word attached will be removed. So let's take out the words as attached and take out the word draft, but still republish it as February 8th as a memo. Or you could update it from whatever date. So I think the manager's office will turn this into Mr. Bachlemann knows the change. So I think it's better to leave the list a little fluid. I just don't want people looking for an attachment. No, you found it. I said it's wrong. We're going to take it out. This was a prior iteration. It's all good. You know that was still in there. You take away the attachment and you forget to take the word out. That's right. Thank you for remembering. Other reports? So yes, as I am now one of the famous municipal leaders. See, the nice thing about that is just like pretty much anybody could share. They'd be fine. Or you could just sign that to go. And that works out really nicely. But the reason I was invited was because I served on one of the many working groups that was under Treasurer Deb Goldberg's alcohol task force. And when I last looked when Mr. Beall confirmed this with me a couple weeks ago, the final recommendations of the various working groups were gathered together by the people on the actual task force and submitted to Ms. Goldberg. But that's never been uploaded to the website as far as I can tell. Only an intermediate report from last August. So yes, the Commonwealth at work. And so I can't really tell you to go look at it because I don't know what it says myself. So yeah, so that was an interesting experience. And so I'll be interested to hear it because there are other local people that also were on separate working groups who are going to be associated with this meeting as well. So in addition to all the other thousands of things we'll talk about. The other thing is because it was so nice of Ms. Kruger to let me speak of marijuana because it's such our favorite topic in our packet. There was the email, which is not particularly beautiful, but went to the Cannabis Control Commission at six minutes before their deadline on the 15th. Because we'd previously written to them, we have testified in front of them numerous times. They know us by now. But we wanted to follow up on some items. And I am incredibly pleased to report that as of today, due to, I'm sure, Amherst Memo, as opposed to all the state agencies that came down on them, including Governor Baker's office themselves, that they are postponing action on delivery only services and postponing action on cafes, basically, social consumption locations. Because it was just getting way too, which as I said in this email, it was just getting too complicated. And that doesn't mean they're putting it off forever. And I was actually quite encouraged to see that the gist of the conversation seems to be that in order to meet the social justice issues that we all voted for this thing for in the first place, that they would potentially be looking at rolling it out with a special group. No pun. Yes, exactly. To give people priority, as was intended, when they started writing the regulations for those particular things. And that, for example, a craft cooperative would potentially be allowed as a delivery service once they do start doing it, as opposed to just anybody can set up shop as a delivery service. So it seems like the best of both worlds. It's pushed off a little bit. And it's put into the giving special precedence to communities that are especially impacted. Now, they haven't quite clarified what that's going to look like in terms of who qualifies under those rules. But that's obviously something they're working on in the rags. And then they're going to have to come up with more details on. But it's one of those things that I do feel like we're actually, we are making an impact, even if it turns out that it was perhaps not us that convinced them to make that decision. But we certainly were the people that, by us going and talking to them about the fact that we're in support of doing this, we're not anti. We're just trying to figure out how to do it well. And I think that that's making something of an impression. Just remind us of the deadline they're up against, and which I think they're going to say they're going to. They're going to say they're going to issue a March 9th for it, because March 15th is their deadline. And they're meeting basically all this week to try and sort out their details. So that will be very interesting to see how those details do, in fact, come up. And then we do have items that we know are going to be mostly zoning items, as far as I can tell at this point, associated with our trying to predict the future, associated with what they're doing. But then hopefully we can word, there've already been a couple of hearings on potential zoning amendments before town meeting that will probably be more. And they will hopefully be worded well enough that depending on what the regs actually say before we sign the warrant, the words can all magically come together to make sense about what we're trying to proactively do to make sure this is implemented in a safe and reasonable way in Amherst. So we have continuing things that are going to be happening associated with that. There will be additional warrant articles associated with that. Let's see now. That's it. Well, Mr. Chair, that reminds me. What happened? We had that discussion about the request to come before us. That'll come up at agenda setting? OK. All right. Just not forget about it. Anything, Mr. Walsh? I do have one other thing that I definitely want to mention, that Wednesday, February 28th, at 7 PM in this room, the Amherst Center Recreation Working Group is wanting public participation in a process regarding the master plan for recreation fields in the center of town. So we want anybody and everybody that has any interest in those to come down and offer their opinions. The folks at Weston and Sampson, who we've hired to help us out with that, are going to be here to talk about those things. And so we're trying to get the word out and get folks to come and talk about that. This reminds me, just relative to the grant that you were just talking about, and not that they're completely overlapping, but there are some when you start talking about sidewalks and you start talking about recreation downtown and thinking about how those can be complementary processes, just that I would encourage the PVPC people to have some conversations perhaps with the Weston and Sampson folks just to coordinate around, because there could be sort of activity paths that involve streets and sidewalks that exist in town. So you have PVTA hearings? PVTA hearings are coming up. They are, let's see, next week. Oh, OK. So it's early March. And they're on the website. I know, I just think. The 6th is 1 and the 7th or 8th, I forget. It's almost back to you. We'll always talk about PVTA. I know. We haven't met. And I did thank you for reminding me of that though, because those sessions where they want public comment, again, relative to changes to both routes and rates are coming. There'll be an on-campus meeting one day and a meeting at the bank center the other day. And again, we want to encourage people to come and hear about what's being discussed. And offer their feedback to PVTA around those issues. Will you be able to go to those or one of those? I believe so. I'm going to double check my counter. But I believe I won't be able to go to the one on campus, I don't think, because I think it's a little more in the middle of the day. But the one that is at the bank center, I believe I can make. I believe I've kind of set aside time to do that. So I will try to attend and hear firsthand. I know, people at the TAC meeting were very interested in those dates. Yes. So I appreciate staff making sure that got up on the website. That was helpful. So I think that's the last of what I had, now that I've forgotten those things. So just to double check, the fields meeting, for some reason, I had my calendar for Tuesday. So it's Wednesday. It's the 28th. Good. I'm just making sure. Excellent. And of course, it's posted as a meeting of the center work group. So it's this week. That is this week. It is day after tomorrow. And I have a question about the MMA legislative breakfast. Palmer, really? That's as close as we can get this year, it looks like. So that's even further. So I mean, unless there's some. I ignored that email. What was it? They have a nice candy shop. The first one's Friday morning. One of the very first ones is Friday morning. Palmer seems to be the technically closest. It's another option to go to the spring and fall legislative breakfast, where they give us the update as to what's going on. It's also going to be one of our last opportunities to see some of our reps potentially, given how many retirements are happening, depending on who's showing up for that particular issue. But for that particular event, because they always run a couple of them on each of those days. And so I'm not sure who's going to Palmer. But are any of us going to Palmer? Am I going to Palmer? I'll buy myself. I will go to Palmer. I'll buy myself on Friday if I have to. But let me know if anybody else wants to go. I cannot do Friday, but. I know that other people have to hike when it's here or in Northampton or Belcher Town. But somehow that just feels further than usual, because it's not within our four towns or exact neighbors. My calendar says it's the Indian holiday of Holly. I'm slightly busy throwing colored powders around. And it's also the day that afternoon is when you and I are going to that event for dial self, for the youth engagement summit thing. Yeah. It'll be fun. It'll be fun. Because it'll be high school kids. Exactly. They'll be interesting, I'm sure. I haven't decided. Well, let me know, because I'm planning to go. Planning to take the day off work, because between the beginning and the end, I don't have another option. Lunch in the middle, let's go. I know you're going anyway. Yeah. Yeah, I won't drive. I'll take the bus. OK. Any other reports or comments at all? If not, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn. I'll move that we adjourn. Is there a second? All those in favor? Welcome home, sir. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. Perfect. Absolutely fair. You're on your way. I'm nervous. I am on my way. All those in favor, please. We're adjourned at 9.51. I was trying to check the time, and I held it down too long. Has it ever said that before? I don't think it's ever said that before.