 I was, I moved to different things. Do you need what would be helpful? Oh, no, I, it was my attempt to pull things up differently. Okay. I'm looking for the end of the recording. So I'm just going to not worry about anything and we'll just, we'll just. We'll just go. Okay. It doesn't pay for me to get organized because then I get too concerned about organizing and I make it too complex. And I don't complete it. So that's what happens. So it's on the agenda. The absolute first item is the presentation on roads, but first I have to read the statement, which I do not have in front of me because I do not have the. Agenda in front of me. I have not been able to find it in the last few minutes. Do you want me to share my screen? I have it up. Okay. Thank you, please. I found an old agenda, but not the right one. So here it is. I got it. I got it. Oh, you got it. All right. Yeah, I do. It was just here. Okay. I just got frazzled because I couldn't get onto two machines the way I wanted to. Okay. Pursuant to chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 extended by chapter 22 of the acts of 2022. This meeting will be conducted via remote means members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via zoom or by telephone. The instructions below. No in person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every director will be made to ensure every director. That seems very weird. That's what it says here. We'll be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time via technological means. I will call the meeting to order. And I will call the members of the TSO committee. And we'll start with. Anika Lopes. Can you see in here and just say yes, if you can. Yes. Okay. And Dorothy Pam is here. And. Anna Devlin go to a. Present. Present. And Andy Steinberg. Present. Right. Yes. Right. So we're all here. And we have with us two distinguished guests. We have superintendent, Guilford mooring and town engineer, Jason skills. Who have present us a lovely presentation. Which I actually read and have notes on so. We can go and do that now. I think, I think I put public comment after the presentation. Just in case any members of the public. Were attending so they could ask questions in relationship to this. If that's okay. Great. So I turned the program over to you. And you decide who speaks first. Are you guys okay doing your slides or would you like me to put them up? I can do the PowerPoint. I tried to send you the whole thing today and it didn't, it was too big to send. So I can run through it. No problem. So should I start sharing my screen? Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. Sharing screen. And there's PowerPoint. For Jason starts Jason's office, the town engineer and his staff, they managed this program for the public worst department. And we've been using this vendor now. This is the third time they've done a scan for us. Yeah. And I scan about every two to three years. So about nine years now. So we've been doing it for a while. And we used another, we used another system before this system. And we kind of like this system the best. And it's been, it's had some hiccups, but it's a new system. It's had a few hiccups, but it works really well for us. And Jason's definitely the one to, who has all the questions. So I'll let Jason continue on with the presentation. So yeah, here, let me just go to full screen mode. Oh, wait a minute. I got a switch. Can you guys see just one slide? Are you looking at two? Two. Okay. Let me just. Flip. There. One slide now. Good. Yes. Okay. Excellent. So this is our pavement management and paving plan. The company we use is named street scan. This is a sort of cartoon version of their vehicle. But next slide is the actual vehicle. It's a Honda fit outfitted with a GPS unit. So it knows where it is. And it, you know, and then it's got a 3d 360 camera on the roof. So they get basically similar to Google Earth imagery or Google street view imagery. And then there's a 3d laser camera on the back. That measures every single crack bump. You name it. And as well as getting the imagery of the actual asphalt surface. So that's the street scan vehicle. This time around, they came. I forgot it was, I think it was June. They came this past June. June 2021. They drove around town for five days. Did all 103.5 miles of road. Including some yet to be accepted subdivisions. Because they're sort of on the horizon for being accepted. And then they took about three to four, now closer to four months to process all the data. And we got delivery sometime in November of 2021. So that's the vehicle they use. And I'll go to the next slide. This is all the stuff they get out of the 3d camera, all the different pavement distresses, including bumps, pop holes, existing patches. They get the longitudinal cracks, the horizontal cracks. These are, this is called block cracking, alligator cracking. And then they can even detect when it's been crack sealed, which is just a preventative measure. So they collect all that different bits and pieces of data, including location. They run it through this sort of complicated algorithm. And they can spit out. They spit out PCI. PCI stands for pavement condition index. And it's a scale of zero to 100 zero being the worst 100 being the best. Go to the next slide. Oh, and then the PCIs get ranked. They rank them by color. So 85 to 100 is excellent and so on and so forth down to zero to 10 as a failed road. And once they analyze all our streets, Oh, here's, here's just some examples. So this would be looking at this. It's like a brand new paved road, basically. So it's 85 to 100 excellent condition. Go down to good condition. It's pretty good. It's got a little, it's been crack sealed once. It's got some other cracks forming, but it's got a good shape overall. So that's a 72 and 85. This is getting into the very poor. You've got all this alligator cracking. You've got some sort of rutting going on. And it's this road is pretty close to getting another couple of years of freeze thaw. And this road will be failing. Then you've got, this is failed. This is all sorts of patchwork quilts, potholes, patches, cracks galore. It's almost back to dirt. So that's an example of just a near failure. Then once they tabulate all that info, they, they process our results and from those results, we get a townwide map, a color coded townwide map. With all our different street segments, color coded from good to bad green are all in relatively good condition. Yellow is still fair. Orange is heading down the downward spiral. And then the reds because those are the really bad roads. And you can see here we've got just a few short stretches of red around town. There's up here is Market Hill. There's a tiny side street off of rolling ridge. I think that's Birchcroft. We've got Old North Pleasant Street here next to Kendrick Park, which we've got some plans for. We've got Kendrick Place, Woodside Ave. You know, there's a section of old farm road. There's a little bit of Pomeroy Lane. And one of our top complaints this spring has been Bay Road down here and you can see it's bad, but it's not the worst. It did go through some extra. So the scan was back in June of last year and this winter, Bay Road suffered some additional distress from the freeze thought cycles we had. So that's the map we get. And that's sort of what we use to base our paving decisions on. Should I stop for questions in the middle? Does anybody, or should I just plow right through, finish out? I think it go through and then we can ask our questions. Although I see Anna's hand is up. And find a way. I just wanted to raise it before I forgot. So go ahead, Jason. Okay, great. So this is another thing they provide, which is useful, but on a more macro micro scale, they have actual distresses mapped out with all these symbols. It's hard to see from this scale, but they categorize all the different types of distresses. And that that's actually helpful when it comes down to deciding what surface treatment you want to do, like how you want to repair the road, because certain certain failures don't lend themselves well to certain repairs. So that just sort of helps in your decisions on how to repair a road. There's nothing better than actually walking the road, honestly, but, but this help from the office, this is a good step. So that's our distress map. And then we get an entire list of every road in town. We have 732 segments total. And, you know, some streets are just one segment. Other streets are broken up every from every side street to every intersection to every little piece. So some roads have 50 segments. Some roads are just one segment. And they all get their, their PCI, their length, and they're, they're basically, they're, they're grade. So, you know, you've got 74s, 40 blackberry lane is not so hot. Thistle lane, not looking so good at a 38. And then we get this whole tabulated index. This is just an excerpt from that list. But that helps us with our decisions. And then we get, this is our, this is sort of our overall report card here. This is our 2022 PCI status, our average condition. You take all the road segments, take their average. And we have an overall of a 65, which is pretty good. And then you calculate the backlog, which is a big scary number, almost 50, 50 million dollars. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to go forward just yet. So close to 50 million. That's a big scary number. So we're going to take, to take this needle and sham it up to 100. And it's a lofty goal, but that's not something I think we could ever really reasonably achieve. We can keep the, keep the needle climbing hopefully. And, and we'll go from there. This is from our last scan in 2018, our average was 63. And we had a couple that were in failure. We had this 8% of the roads were zero to 10 or sorry, 10 to 25. And we had a full failure road. I can't remember which one it was honestly off the top of my head, but we have have at since taken care of those roads. And I know it's pie chart versus bar chart, but if you look now, we've gotten rid of those really low, those really bad roads. And we only have, you know, a few in very poor condition, very, you know, only three miles of it. We've got a fair amount in the orange, which those all need work to, but, but so we've definitely improved. We went from an overall 63 to a 65. So that's good for three years worth of work at a very reasonable budget of under, under 2 million a year average. And we'll get to that a little later. So I'll just keep going forward here. Then we go through the algorithm to figure out what we repair, when we repair it and how we repair it. And the program is very useful for running different budget scenarios. You can kind of do a shoot for the moon budget. You can try to maintain a certain PCI or you can just take the budget you're given and run that out over five years. And that's, that's more, we do do some pie in the sky dreaming like how much money to get it to a, you know, a 70 PCI. And it's always too much money that you don't want to, don't want to hear the answer to, but basically, so this is our decision tree. So from zero to 40, we'd have to do full depth reconstruction, which usually reclaim the entire road, turn it back to dirt and then repave it. And that's, you know, about $100 a square yard. Mill and overlay when it's still between a 40 and a 70, you can usually get away with that. And that's a quarter of the cost of full depth. Then there's crack ceiling or surface treatments. Crack ceiling average is about a dollar a square yard, whereas some of these other surface treatments like a, like a rubber chip seal. We haven't done a lot of those in town. Hadley does a lot, but those are like $5 a square yard. And then from 90 to 100, we typically try to leave it alone unless it needs a little bit of crack seal because it's good to preserve when you're, when you're in this 70 to 100 range, it's really good to keep those roads preserved because the longer you can keep them up in that end, the more you get out of your budget. So we'll go to the next slide. This is just one of the outputs of the program. It can do a repair suggestion table where you put in a certain budget number and it spits out a list of roads and the different kinds of treatments that should do an average cost. So, you know, blackberry lane mill and overlay $38,000. And you can spit out a million different scenarios and you can prioritize by main road, by side street, by, you know, by whatever traffic volume is. And we sort of tend to put a little heavier weight on the main roads because we get more complaints on those. And then we put lesser of a priority on some of the smaller side streets and dead ends, but we do try to get around to them eventually. So this is just one example of a repair suggestion table. And there can be, there's also, you can look at it on a map scale where they tell you every single treatment you should do to every single road. Not that we could afford to do all that, but you can kind of look at it on a zone by zone basis and see, you know, the green ones are all in great shape. The blue ones just need some real basic maintenance crack ceiling. The yellow could go for mill and overlay. And then the pink ones are those ones that were also red and they need more full depth reconstruction. So then you get your repair suggestion map. And this is our, this is our, our bat or naughty list. Basically this is our worst roads of spring 2022. Based on the scan from June of 2021. And these are all the roads with a PCI below 40. And you can see a lot of them are small, very short roads. This piece of stony hill is just one of the small little turnoffs off of stony hill. There's a small section of old farm. It was a pretty big section of Pomeroy lane. A lot of these are short little, short little sections of North pleasant. So this is a good chunk of college street, which really blew up this spring and could use it. And just, you know, this is just our worst, our worst list and it take care of them would be about $2 million. We, as much as we'd love doing the worst first, isn't always your best investment though. Sometimes you really have to stay on the main roads, stay where the traffic is heavy as to stay ahead of those and take away at some of the small ones as you go. So as much as we'd love to just wipe this slate clean and be done with it at the same time we'd be losing some of our main roads. So we'll go to the next. This is just going to be a list of the roads we've done over the last six years and sort of the average budget we've paid over the last six years. And this is all sorts of combinations of funds and mostly chapter 90, but sometimes water and sewer funds other times, like CDBG projects, there's sort of a whole combination. I didn't list funding sources on this table, but you can see 2021, we did about $2 million worth. 2020, we did about a million. 2019 was 1.5 million. And if you look at between 2020 and 2019, there's sort of some repeats here. And that's just because we split these roads in two parts. We did the base coat in 2019. And then we held off and did the top coat in 2020. And that was a lot of that was used sewer funds. That was part of the sewer expansion project in Amherst. Hill Amherst Woods area. So that was a combination of funds and it worked out to split it year by year. So we could. And then there's just the three years prior to that, we did, you know, 1.9 million, 1.2, another million here. So that's, that's our average, you know, our average budget is ranges from one to two million, depending on what we have for extra funding. And we try to spread it out as much as we can throughout town. We try to hit as many main streets as possible. And a lot of times if we're hitting a main street and there's a really bad side street next to it, we try to hit both of those at the same time because it saves us a little bit on mobilization. So then we've got our proposed work for 2022. And this is what we got out of the program. We kind of use the program to do our planning for the next couple of years. And so what we'll be going through is just, this is we are rehab and reconstruction 2022, our preventative maintenance for 2022. We've got a sidewalk plan for 2022. We've got some other grant funded projects that are going forward in the next year or two. And then we've even projected out to 2023, which I sometimes I'm afraid to do because people tend to hold you to them. And if the budget doesn't allow, sometimes the budget doesn't allow, but we'll go through them and see if we can set these goal posts and achieve all these in the next couple of years. So this year, this is currently out to bid. We're opening bids next Thursday. So these are already out to bid. We've advertised. We're waiting for prices to come in. These are our estimated costs. Bay roads, a big one. We've got a ton of complaints about that. East Hadley road will help wrap up a CDBG project where we did the multi-use paths over there and did some widening for bike paths or bike lanes. And then we're going to hit Russellville road. That is a major complaint road that is, has gotten pretty bad over the last winter. Meadow street while we're on Meadow street, we're going to hit Russellville road because it's right there. And it's fairly similar condition. Then we've got pulpit Hill road. Oh, that's, we're doing pulpit Hill road because we're going to do Levitt road and they're right next to each other. So it makes sense to do them at the same time. And then since we're also doing Bay road and that touches Harris mountain, we're going to hit Harris mountain while we're there. And then we've got Kellogg have, which wraps up, we've got a current CDBG project to do the sidewalks on Kellogg. And doing the road right after the sidewalk project is completed. We'll sort of put the bow on that project so that we can afford it. We can, we can spend our CDB dollars on the sidewalks, concentrate on that. And then we use chapter 90 or paving funds to finish Kellogg, the remainder of Kellogg house. And then Pomeroy lane, which I'm praying makes the list. I hope our prices come in. I'm not all that optimistic based on inflation right now, but we'd love to hit lane, except it is about a million dollar chunk of the budget. So that, that adds makes our budget, our estimated budget puts it up around $3 million, which I know we don't have. And, and you know, I'm realistic about it, but I'm hopeful that the prices come in lower than we anticipate. And we'll just sort of have to see where that goes next Thursday when we open bids. The state also released a little bit of extra funds this year, which I'm just not sure when we'll see those funds. And if they'll be, we'll be able to go apply them to this year or next year. But that's all the chapter 90 and the extra chapter 90. Then we've got our crack ceiling plan, which we plan to start within the next month or so. We'll get out and crack seal. And these are all roads that have been recently paved. They're, they're basically you consider these as our investments. We've, we've repaired, we've rebuilt these roads back to brand new. And we want to keep them that way. And if a small crack opens up, water gets in it, water, water freezes and thaws starts to blow the road apart. If we can crack seal it ahead of time, stop any water from getting in there. That saves the road in the long term. So we try to spend, you know, and these are, this, the, our current contract, it's only 44 cents a square yard, which is just, it's, you know, it's, it's the best money you can spend on short, it's best small, it's, it's pennies over pennies over dollars basically, as far as the repair, you know, how the longevity works on those. So it makes sense to keep, keep up our preventative plan. And keep our good roads the way they are. And we've got our sidewalk replacement plan. We had a couple of lists from, from a couple of different boards and committees. I think one was the DAAC. I'm blanking. Guilford, help me out. Did we have another list from someone else? Or was it just DAAC? There was a couple other wish lists for school routes and whatnot. And we sort of went through and picked out some sidewalks that were in bad shape. Some that were relatively easy to do. So we picked out some low hanging fruit to try and get some of these sidewalks back in shape. And we settled on, we're currently working on Amity street. Oops, sorry. I didn't mean to click that. We picked Taylor street from Mattoon to high street. Gray street from Taylor to Maine. McClellan from Lincoln and North. Pleasant street. If we can get the tree hearings done in time. And Amity street, like I said, we're already working on both sides of the road. From Lincoln and North prospect. And then chestnut street is sort of a maybe if it fits in the budget at the end of the, at the end of the projects, we'll do chestnut street from East Pleasant to the middle school. So that's our sidewalk projects. I'll go on to our grant funded projects. We just had our pre-construction on these two CDGB projects, which are bundled into one bid. One is Mill Lane from West street to the graph park entrance, which will sort of complete the multi-use path we did on East Hadley road. And sort of connects East Hadley road to graph park to the new spray park. Gives much better improved pedestrian access by the end of the project. And so that connects East Hadley road to graph park to the new spray park. Gives much better improved pedestrian access, bicycle access, everything, and improves the safety on all of it. So that was CDBG funded. We had to come up with an additional $67,000. To, to make the total here, because the CDBG funds didn't cover everything. So I think that just came out of general fund money. And then Kellogg have, we're doing the sidewalks with CDBG money and we'll do the roadway with other funds. And then we've got the mass works grant for the West street and Pomeroy Lane intersection, the proposed roundabout, which I'm excited about. I hope we can afford to do it for 1.5 million. That's a little bit of a stretch, but we'll make it work. And this is our 2023 list, which we just sort of put together. This covers a lot of those small side streets that were in the red. Actually, we're trying to hit a bunch of those as well as some main roads and trying to keep it under at least 1.5. This is, you know, it's a, it's a lofty budget to meet, but we'll see what we can do. We'll see how the bid numbers come in. And so this hits a lot of those really small side streets that had that were in the red, as well as some of our major roads like college street, Farmington is a relatively major road, Market Hill, it's out in the edges, but it gets a fair amount of traffic, old farm, a lot of collectors in some main streets that will hit with, with our 2023 list. We've also got our crack seal list for 2023, which is some of the roads we've done in the last couple of years. Again, crack seal is pretty easy to, you know, easy and cheap to do. We'll have to do a new bid for that. We had a three year bid that just ran out. And that's it. We can go to questions and comments. This is a picture of a mill river basketball course that we did last year. We got, we got all your three different sizes of rollers. We got the, your dump truck with the asphalt. And this is the paving machine. And yeah, I mean, that's it. Okay. Well, thank you very, very much. Your comments did add to the presentation, which was pretty thorough. I'm going to call on us and she put her hand up early in the game. And then I'm going to call them myself. Right. The bad news is I have three pages of questions. The good news is that they're small pages. So yeah. All right. So Dorothy, I'll ask a few and then I'll try not to dominate too much. So question about this. I'm really glad to see Bay Road on this list. It's something that got obviously really ripped up. Full disclosure. I live on Bay Road. And so I did witness this quite a lot, but we also have gotten a lot of constituent comments about, in particular that section from the town line to Holst road. So I was really, I was grateful to see that on there. My question is about the timing. So you're, you do the cool little car thing, which I believe it, we contract that that's a separate company that comes in. Yeah. They do that. You said, yes, thank you. So they do that in June. Yeah, they did it in June of last year. We try to do it around every three years because the data holds pretty steady for the first couple of years, but then certain roads deteriorate. They have these deterioration curves that they use. So that when they scanned it in June, 2022. And you look at it in 2023, that adds six months of deterioration. Yeah. But the roads don't always follow the model. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I like to keep it fresh at least every three years. We feel comfortable using the data that's two years old than the data that might be three years old and maybe four years old. But after that, it's time to go back to the drawing board and rescan everything and see where the actual deterioration has gone. Okay. Cause my question is about how this, that cycle fits with the budget cycle because you did say you're using mostly chapter 90 funds, I believe. I mean, how do you then waiting another year before scheduling, scheduling these, or is it, you have a rough enough idea of what your budget's going to be that you're still able to fit them in on a timely manner. I'm thinking about like June is right before the fiscal year. And we've got our budgets set by that point. Hopefully. So what's, how does that impact? Is that a problem at all? Or does it work? So this year's paving list, what we've put out to bid already, we used our old data for that. So we already had those roads chosen from our old model. We also keep our eye on the roads too. It's not, it's not, it's, we don't just fly blind looking at this program. Bay Road, we knew was going to fall apart and we've been watching it. And so that one was a note that one was on the list. Before we even had street scan do it. So we usually have our next year's roads picked out the year before and we, we just try to stick to them. Sometimes other priorities come up and we don't necessarily have to drop one or another for, for a priority. But for the most part, we can use the old data until we get the new data. Once the new data rolls in, it just helps to make a better informed decision. As we go. So then, so then when you look at the different repair options, how do you factor in the longevity of each? So obviously patching doesn't last as long as fully resurfacing a road, but it's a lot cheaper and easier and more applicable for some damages. How do you fact, what is the, what is the lifespan of each of the, I think it was slide. Slide 16. Is that right? That you talked about the different, the different options. So that's part one of that question is what's the lifespan of those part two is how do you determine, how do you determine the, are you using the classification as like an arterial roadway, a main roadway as your determining factor, you considering like speed limit, which I know factors into arterial versus main, et cetera, et cetera. Is that the classification that you use to determine which street. Okay. Yeah. It's not just if it's like a residential neighborhood. No, we do. It's arterials, collectors and locals. And so we put a little more weight on the arterial. So if those, if an arterials in poor condition, we'll probably hit that before a failed local. Great. But so there's just a little bit heavier weight on those. They obviously cost more every single time that they're the heavy, they're the big heavy roads. They cost a lot more to repair. They're usually wider. They're usually bigger, more traffic. And we have to do a more intensive treatment on them. So just this, this decision tree has basic repair methods. And we have a few more than just these up our sleeve. So for reconstruction, that's reclaiming. If we're doing an arterial road, we'll do reclamation with asphalt injection. And that actually turns all the rubble into like an eight or nine inch binder course. And then we'll put five inches of new black top on top of that. So that's sort of the Cadillac treatment for roads with heavy, heavy traffic. If we're just doing a local road with reconstruction, we'll just reclaim it and pave over it. Because they don't see the heavy truck traffic, but anywhere we know there's heavy truck traffic, we do a slightly more intensive treatment. And that one would probably be more like. One 25 per square yard versus the regular $100 a square yard. And then for mill and overlay, there's a couple of different ways to approach that too. That won't necessarily last as long. But it, if the roads in decent enough shape, it'll hold for a while. It's not going to hold as long as a reconstruction. Like a reconstruction should get you like 20 years. A million overlay should get you say 10 years. And then there's other treatments within the realm of surface treatments that get you 10 years on a road that's in really good shape. And we're, we're trying to lean into some of those. We'd like to see some. Either rubber chip seals or there's one called a Cape seal where they do a chip seal and then they run a smoothing course over it. So it looks like regular asphalt. Cause I know some people don't like the chip seal look. I don't know anybody familiar with a lot of the treatments they use to get to the surface. So they might be all the way through. You know, you have a lot of sites where they just have to be fixed. And they just, they might be all the way down the road. And then they drop stone on it and the stones are loose for about a week or so. And they kind of fly everywhere. You go through, you sweep them up with a sweeper. And so this Cape seal is similar, but there's a surface course on top that sort of lose everything down. And it looks and feels a lot more like what we're used to for dry as like we only do three things. There's a whole lot of other stuff we like to do. We like to try new things. Sometimes those aren't always the greatest but we do a fair amount of experimenting and try to feel out what works best. And we've really been happy with the full depth reconstruction with the asphalt injection on the major roads. We've done that on East Pleasant Street, Northeast Street and Henry Street last year. So we're really pretty happy with that treatment. It's really solid. We see the trucks driving over it and it's not deforming. It really builds a really nice foundation and then gives you something good to put your pavement on. Yeah, okay. I have two more quick ones, Dorothy, if that's okay. And then I'm done until we get to sidewalks. So first one really quickly. When you're looking at the roads that are reconstruction, you know, I have to do my due diligence as a cyclist here and ask about the cost implications of adding reflective paint for the shoulder lane as well as the potential of adding a rumble strip for roads like Bay Road that are really fast. So roads like Bay Road where people do bike and run on them, obviously you can't, well, maybe not obviously, I don't see how you could add a sidewalk without that being a huge, huge, or a separate bike lane without that being a massive project. So I'm curious about what are the cost implications and are there considerations because it's not about expansion. It is within the project. What are the cost implications of adding? I'm particularly interested in the rumble strip idea, but also that reflective, you know what I'm talking about? Like that, I mean, I'm sure you guys know what I'm talking about, like that, the plastic kind of, thank you, Wilford. I knew you come through. It's raised and super reflective, yeah. It's like aggressively reflective. Yeah, so I'm curious about if that's a consideration as you're doing specifically that reconstruction. Not, obviously it's not for a mill in Overlives, maybe not, right? So just for the reconstruction. You could do it anywhere, honestly. Yeah. I mean, we do a lot of our painting in-house and we use regular water-based paint, and it lasts about a year. We do sprinkle the reflective beads in the paint while it's still wet. So we do get a little bit of reflectivity, but it's not a raised bump like the thermal plastic is and it doesn't last as long. We have to redo it every year. I'm not sure exactly what the in-house paint costs, but sort of the industry standard is like 20 cents a foot versus the thermal plastic is upwards of a dollar to a dollar 50 a foot. So it's a pretty big cost when you're doing a couple thousand feet a road. But sometimes in these high traffic areas where it's difficult to even, even when our guys go and paint it, it's not comfortable to be riding down Bay Road with cars honking at you and you're taking up a lane. So sometimes where we think we'll get five years out of it, if we do thermal plastic versus paint, it sometimes it makes sense. On the roundabouts, we like to do thermal plastic because there's so much wear and tear of the vehicles all turning on your paint marks. We'd like to do thermal plastic for roundabouts for sure. And we, you know, the new downtown crosswalks, those are imprinted thermal plastic and we really like those. So I mean, we look at it on a case-by-case basis and sometimes it makes sense. Sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes the budget dictates that we can't afford to do it after we've done all the $2 million worth of roads and we have to just paint it in-house. So. And then the rumble strip. The thin, not the thick rumble strip, but the thin rumble strip. I'll answer the rumble strip if you want, Jason. Oh yeah, go ahead. We haven't done a whole lot of those. You just mean the one that down the white line, the edge, the rumble, okay. So we have not done those because people complain about the noise. Like neighbors. Yeah, residential. Anytime there's a house nearby, if there's a truck that's gonna cut a corner and... Got it. Everywhere. Yeah. I mean, people complain about noise from potholes now because pretty much the town of Amherst has gone from a rural community into a very urban community. There's houses everywhere. And whenever we do something or we don't do something, and noise is a consideration, we hear about it pretty quickly. So we've stayed away from rumble strips. We were going to put rumble strips on College Street when we put in the raised round, the raised crosswalks. But that was one of the considerations was that you'd constantly hear that sound of people driving across it at night and it wasn't something people wanted. So that's why you've never, we've never done those in town. Thank you. I'm sick of hearing myself talk. So I'm gonna stop asking questions. I'm sure other people might have the same questions as me. So Dorothy, you're done. All right. For now. I have four classes of questions. I'll be quick. I like your list of roads, but I noticed a few blocks that weren't in there that are in terrible shape. One, I'm sure you're aware of the block of Lincoln between Amity and North Hampton Street. It is, it's a scandal. It's, you know, I have a new car, but when my car, I drove some of these roads again today. It was just, you know, banging up the whole car. The other one is Nutting Street, Philip Street, and the beginning of Fearing. Those streets are very bad. And I'm, so I'm gonna ask you why you didn't include them. I'll save my sidewalk later, the question till later. But this tie, my next question ties very nicely into the question about rumble strips. I mentioned to you earlier, the effect of the reflectors that Deerfield, the town of Deerfield had put in some new road project, which helped me drive in a terrible fog the same night that a pedestrian got hit on Mass Ave. And I saw how wonderful it was to have reflectors on the side of the road, so you even knew where the road was, and to have them on both sides of the yellow line telling you pass, no pass or whatever. So I wanna ask if you're gonna use those. And then my third question is about bike lanes. I will tell you that when I go back to Long Island City, Sunnyside Queens, the neighborhood's in a complete uproar because the mayor is, well, the previous mayor is totally insane for bike lanes. And what he has is you have the sidewalk, then you have a bike lane, then he has cars parked in the road, and then he has moving traffic. And we see that as death trap. So I just was wanting to know your philosophy of bike lane and that will be it for now. Thank you. Which one do you want, Jason? Oh boy. I guess Lincoln Phillips and Nutting, I mean, we did look at those, we seriously considered them, but they're not as high traffic as the ones we have chosen. And they can hold out another year. I don't know if they made that second year list. I didn't pay as much attention to that. My 2023 list. I mean, they really should be on a 2023 list. The Lincoln block is very short. So Lincoln is better than, if you look at all the PCIs in our 2023 list, they're all 40 and below. And Lincoln was just a little bit higher than that. And it's, I mean, and it's right there with a bunch of other roads in town. I'm sure Phillips and Nutting are all about a 45. Well, I just want to urge you to put them on because one of the things, when you see a road like that in a neighborhood, which is perhaps some people would say under threat, it makes people think, oh, nobody cares about this street. I can do anything I want here. And that means I can litter, I can party, I can just do anything because nobody cares. So that is just something for you to think about. Okay, the next question. Dorothy, I mean, that's really comes down to a lot more money. Because if you want to have a, I mean, that means everything in the 60 to 70 range and we need a lot more money to take care of them, but the budget just won't support that. So we do take the worst ones. And I understand there's a lot of neighborhoods who say the same thing you say. We have potholes on the street. This street looks like a third world country. I'm curious which third world countries they go to because a couple of the ones I've been to, some of them are a lot worse. So it's just people's perceptions. And it's true if people perceive it's not being taken care of, but then again, it does take more money. We're getting more money and we're working in more in there. For the reflector question, we've not used reflectors in town. They typically run, well, the last time I looked was about five years ago. They typically ran anywhere from six to $10 a reflector. And if you wanna keep them from being plowed up by the snow plows, you have to recess them. So that is a little additional money is to cut a groove in the pavement for a recess for the reflector. Even though it didn't work that well. I just walked a short stretch of the state route 116 at the bottom of West street. There's reflectors all over the gutter line. They all got plowed out. Even though that the recessing works very well. I don't know how much, I mean, some of them stay, but I don't think you get the best return on your dollar for those. But I guess with them the reflective paint that Anna was talking about, because I think it really, really is important. We get bad weather, we get fogs. It's important to know where the edge of the road is and where the middle of the road is. So then the reflective paint is possible. At one time, the bike community wasn't very thrilled about the thermoplastic paint because the thermoplastic paint does get slippery. And if you're in a bike lane and it's raining or a little foggy or the snow's melted and it's wet, you could, if you have to make a movement fast or across the line fast, you could slip. And that was one of the reasons we stayed away from thermoplastic. We can go back and talk about thermoplastic or epoxy paints. Epoxies aren't as slippery, but you're still talking at the higher dollar amount for installation. They do, it does last longer though. And there's some, can be some cost benefit with some of the projects we do. On the bike lanes. Yeah. You actually might see your proposal to do exactly what you were talking about sometime in the world at Amherst. There is a lot to talk about moving bike lanes closer to the sidewalks. So that you aren't, the bikes are not in the travel lane with the cars. So there could be a proposal at some point too, put parking next to the travel lane and bike lanes next to the sidewalk. The thing about Amherst is, is that we have narrow public waves and we don't have enough space in the public way to put everything people want. You can't have really wide sidewalks. You can't have really wide tree belts. You can't have parking and then the travel lanes and bike lanes is just, that's a lot of real estate. And some of our public ways just don't have that much real estate to have all that in there. So you have to figure out a way to share it and make some compromises to make it all fit. And that's kind of how we try to make it work. Okay. So I'm just gonna let you know that the people where they've done that where they have wider roads, there's a lot of people who are very unhappy with it because they think it's unsafe because you can't see the biker coming out from around the parked car. But you're saying we can't really do that anyway because the roads aren't wide enough. No, there's only a few. Yeah. I'm gonna call on Shalini. Yeah. So what I heard you say is that you have, you have certain criteria even within the roads that are pretty critical. That's like 1.9 million. So I'm sure like even within that, there is criteria that's being used to prioritize. And one of the criteria I heard was the number of cars going or the like main streets and so forth, right? So could you elaborate on the different criteria that is used because I can imagine things like, but that's maybe more for pavement that what I was gonna say is more relevant like seniors walking or school paths and so forth. So maybe just both, like for roads, what is the criteria used to prioritize and also for pavements? For the roads, we really only do a short, like a very small preference for arterials and collectors. It's about a 40, 60 split. So we put like maybe 60% towards arterials and collectors and then whatever's left over, we try to spread amongst the locals that are in bad shape. So we don't do a heavy preference for them, but they do carry heavier weight and they take bigger bites out of the budget. So the second you put an arterial in front of a local, the arterial eats up most of the budget and then you have little bits and pieces left to fill in the local roads. So it doesn't take much to give a little bit of, they carry a lot more residents, they carry more traffic, that that's where you're gonna get your more complaints is on those arterials and the collectors. So it's in our best interest to do those. We're gonna get the most complaints, we're gonna get claims for damages. If only four people live on a street and it's upsetting to say it, but if there's only four houses on a street, it doesn't get that much traffic, it doesn't carry that much weight and it can last another year with some pothole patches. We do get to them, like if you look at this 2023 list we're hitting, I think Bellevue Circle has two houses on it. We do get to them, Fissel, I had this brought up at a dinner party, someone who lived on Fissel Lane and there's six houses and she says, why hasn't my road been done? Extra fun dinner party conversation. I'm like, you have six houses on your street, I'm sorry. We have major roads that carry thousands of cars a day that need a little more attention, but we do try to get to them eventually and they might have to suffer an extra year or two till we get there, but we get there. And the pavements, which are like maybe closer to schools or seniors or is there a criteria like that for people? I feel like that would be more like sidewalks and we don't- I mean sidewalks, yes. So the company we use, the street scan company, they have a method to scan sidewalks, but it's fairly labor intensive, so they take these little baby stroller versions of the Honda Fit and they can walk every sidewalk in town. I think they even have one of those two-wheeled things. I can never remember the name of those things. Segway. Segway. Thank you, they have those little two-wheeled segways that they can, with the sensors attached to them and they can ride up and down all the sidewalks in town, but it's gonna take a whole lot more than five days and it costs a whole lot more than I think we paid $5,000 or $7,000 for the streets to be scanned. And I think, did they give us an estimate, Guilford? Do you remember? Around 60, I think it was 60 to do the whole thing. I think you're, yeah, 60,000 to scan all the sidewalks in town. So that's a big chunk of budget that we didn't- Sure. So what is pavement then? I was taking pavement to mean sidewalk. Oh. In India we call pavement sidewalk. It's the road, I mean, both the sidewalks and the roads are all pavement, but for the pavement management program, we focus on the roads and typically if the road has an adjacent sidewalk, and if it's in need of repair, we'll usually do both at the same time. So we try to create the sidewalks when we do the roads if we can, if we can afford it. But as far, there's no, we don't have a specific sidewalk management plan, like a sidewalk pavement management plan. We try to keep an eye on it. We do take input from the different boards and committees who have a say in that sort of mobility type stuff. The sidewalk lists I had up here, where'd it go? This sidewalk list was built based on some specific requests from the Disability Access Advisory Committee. So, and that group has a lot of activity in the schools, a lot of activity at Bang Center, some seniors on it, some mobility challenged people, some visually challenged folks as well. So I think it represents a good spectrum of the population that we do want to pay attention to for fixing sidewalks and making them more accessible. So we take it on a case by case basis that way, but we don't have a great management system for how we address all our sidewalks in all of town. Right. Can I ask one more question, then? About... Okay, and then Anika, I see your hand over here. Yes, for sure. And is there a way to share this chart and the priorities that the town staff is laying out with the public so the public knows what to expect and anticipate? No. Should we do that? Should we be doing that? No. We actually do do it. Every time we do a scan, we'll update the town website and you'll actually be able to go to the map and you'll be able to zoom into your street and see how your street relates to everybody else. Really? Yeah, it's on the town website. Not yet, we haven't updated it yet. I think the old stuff is there. I think the 2018 version of this map is available online and you can physically zoom in to specific segments, your specific location, your road and see what its pavement condition index was and we're working with IT to try and get this updated map loaded as well. So that it's a zoomable, usable functional map instead of just a fixed image. It's under the Public Works Department under Pavement. Thank you. And then you can also, if you're on the GIS system, you can click on a road and it'll tell you the index for that road but we have to have that updated too. So it just tells last scan up indexes. And then we only post probably two years worth of pavement lists. We don't usually post the whole five-year plan. We've done it in the past, but like Jason says, people have some really long memories and when year five shows up and we didn't get to their street, it's like, it can be very painful. Yes. Okay, thank you. Anika. Thank you. Yeah, so I've learned a lot, namely how to refer to the different types of damages on the streets. I would have never thought alligator cracking, but now I can't unsee it. And the majority of my questions have been asked I am curious as to whether the results on the distress and the average scale, did they match up or align with the top complaints? I'm especially interested to know how did Potholes line up? Like were they number one? I can't remember if you've seen that. And also, unless I'm mistaken, if the scale was saying that 40% of the roads, the town roads were in poor condition, do you know where, like how that averages out, Nick, maybe within the state for different towns? Like where do we average up? That is a good question. I don't know, haven't really compared us to other towns. The state has the numbered routes categorized and I'd say we're pretty close with the state numbered routes, even though they have probably quadrupled the budget we have, quadrupled probably 10 or 20 times the budget we have. So I think we're equivalent with some of the state rankings, but I don't know on a town by town basis, a lot of different towns use a lot of different systems. I could talk to street scan actually and see what other towns they do and what their sort of averages are. They do a lot of towns in Massachusetts or across the country actually. So we could talk to them and find out about that. Could I ask one more just about the sidewalk question? Is that okay? So this is Ramon Chestnut Street, glad to see that was on the list, but I do also walk on McClellan quite often and I don't think that this is probably an issue that's limited to McClellan, but I've noticed that on some of the sidewalks, it's almost like you're walking on a wave. And so I'm interested to know is that through wear and tear or was that like the design of the sidewalk and that it was paved that way originally? I think, well, it's a little bit of both honestly. A lot of times it's gonna be tree roots, the tree roots make the sidewalk buckle and those are those little peaked sections of cracked pavement and that'll buckle the sidewalk. Other times it's just the method that was used to pave it. If you don't pave a sidewalk using an actual machine, like a sidewalk paver, if you're just kind of shoveling asphalt out of the back of a truck and raking it as smooth as you can get it, you can never get a perfectly flat surface. It's always gonna be some thicker and thinner spots and you will have that sort of wavy treatment. And 10 to 20 years ago, Hammers did a lot of sidewalks by hand or highway crews used to do a fair amount of sidewalk every summer, but they were doing it by hand and it doesn't always come out perfect. It's really hard to rake something smooth and then hit it with a roller and have it stay that exact same smoothness. So it's a function of tree roots drive. A lot of times that people put a driveway in after you do a sidewalk and they'll just drop the sidewalk down and then make it inaccessible. And if they didn't pull a permit, we don't always catch it. So there's a whole list of factors that come into play when you come about sidewalks. Are those issues addressed when they're repaid? We do try to address them as best we can. The driveways especially, that can be a really sore subject when you've got a perfectly accessible sidewalk then somebody cuts their driveway a foot deeper and just drops the sidewalk down and now it's no longer technically handicap accessible. So that's why we have driveway permits, not everybody takes them out when they do a driveway. We try to catch them, but we don't catch everybody. Right. Thank you. Okay, I'm gonna call Paul out of turn on it just because he may have something that to get in the right now. Thank you. So there are two things I'd like Jason to address that relevant to what was just asked by Councilor Lopes. One is, I know that when you choose sidewalks there's sort of harder sidewalks to pave than easier ones. Like if there are trees nearby then you have to like take down trees that adds cost to a project. And the other is the way is how ADA requirements. So you have to follow the grade of the road and if some of our sidewalks go up or down and you have to then excavate and make that accessible. And so rather than do that you might say, I have all these other sidewalks that need attention. I'm gonna put my money, get the most bang for our buck. Is that how you think about things? Yeah, it is. I mean, we looked the section of Amity we're doing right now is the flatter section of Amity. The after you pass Lincoln Ave on Amity Street the road grade drops down to close to 10 or 12%. And that's technically illegal for a sidewalk but there's a variance. If the road is 10% the sidewalk can be 10%. And that's not great for wheelchairs and stuff but it's allowable. The tricky part comes at the road crossings. So for at every road crossing you're supposed to have a level landing area for handicap accessibility which is a 2% or less level landing. And if you do a 2% landing on a 10% hill you now need to do a 12% sidewalk to catch up to your 10% hill. And so it's sort of a, it's a game you can't win without doing some zigzags or retaining walls. It starts, the project gets extremely expensive very quickly when you try to do roads that are steep or roads that have a hundred driveway cuts. Those costs really begin to add up because you have to, every time you cross a driveway with a sidewalk you gotta make sure that a Prius can get over it without bottoming out. So sometimes you have to pave 20 feet of driveway just to make sure that driveway still works. So a lot of times, for this year we did, we looked at sort of the low hanging fruit, the flatter roads, the easier sidewalks and stayed away from the ones. I mean, if we were to seriously do Amity to try and meet all the handicap standards I think we would probably have to go to the accessibility, the access, accessibility access board, the AAB and request variances for that one. So like, I really don't think there's a way to legitimately make that road 100% handicap accessible. It's without doing some really crazy zigzaggy sidewalks or retaining walls up against people's property that aren't exactly that appealing and certain aspects like that make some of these the handicap rigs make some of these sidewalks very difficult to do over. Or you have to use handrails and putting handrails at the intersections or in front of people's houses and then having the handrails at the appropriate place but then having enough room for the snow clearing and then having it so the snow clearing doesn't destroy the handrails. That's why we try to do the easier ones first. The other difficult ones are the ones adjacent to wetlands where we actually need to widen the sidewalk. Yeah, there's a stream crossing. Crossing wetlands and getting permission to widen the sidewalk, which is good for people, means it's got to be bad for the little animals in the wetlands and that makes it harder to do as well. So we kind of shy away from those as well. Okay, Anna. You can speak. Jason, you don't like freezes. So the freezes, they're just very low on the ground. So they are low. Okay, so question about, I wanna sort of endorse Anika's question and really back that up that it would be great to hear from you all if you do reach out to streetscape, hear back from them. I mean, I think, I know I'm not alone and one of the top things I hear all the time is I know exactly when I switch, when I cross the town line because the roads change, right? And I also know that you all are working incredibly hard. And so I think it's, I really would like to be able to back that up and talk through. I know you don't wanna have a concrete calendar out there because if something shifts, then it's really hard for folks to adapt. But I also think if we can provide some of that benchmarking and saying we're doing this at the same rate or using the same equation or something like that as neighboring towns, I specifically hear this a lot, switching from Pelham to Amherst on Pelham Road. And so that's, for me, that's the number one anecdotally that I hear about. The question I have is about sidewalks. So sidewalk, I sat on JCPC this year, which was so exciting and that wasn't sarcastic, it was truly exciting. And one of the things that gets brought up a lot at JCPC in Guilford, I think you said this right every year, someone wants a sidewalk in a new location. And so I'd really love to hear and you just outlined a lot of reasons why you can't answer this question. So I'm still gonna ask it. I'm curious about the lifetime cost of a sidewalk and sort of what it is per, maybe not acre, but however, whatever distance it is, when you consider how often repairs need to be made and if there's a rough estimate that you can provide so that when we look at budgeting, repairing old sidewalks versus adding new ones, because yes, I do believe there are many places in town that would benefit greatly from sidewalks being added, but it's important to consider the longevity, the lifetime costs. I'm curious if you have or could get a rough number about what those costs might be. And I know there's so many factors. I know I'm asking for something impossible, but I'm curious. We can give you a rough number based on just a sidewalk in a nice place where you don't have to talk to conservation commission and there's not ADA issues. That'd be great, that'd be really helpful. And actually sidewalks do last longer than roads. I mean, the two things that, well, the big thing to destroy roads is weight. So the heavier something is on the road and the more vehicles you have is more deterioration. So on a sidewalk, you don't have a lot of weight normally. So you don't have to worry about that. The vehicles are people, they're light, that's not that big deal. The biggest threat to the sidewalk is a tree. Yeah. Tree roads have the, yeah. And then the last thing, I'm so sorry, I lowered it and then I remembered. So the last thing is I do wanna just reflect on what Dorothy said earlier. I think that using a formula, the way that you all are using streetscape, using that sort of system is the most equitable way to do this process. And I really, I appreciate it. I think if we move to a system where streets are, or no one was proposing this, but my concern would be in moving to a system where streets are repaired in neighborhoods who feel where their character is getting damaged or something like that, really privileges older, more affluent, more areas, right? And so I wanna back up using this in a very methodical, equation-driven way, because I think that's the most equitable process. And I would just, yeah, wanted to stamp that. Thank you. We agree with that 100%. This algorithm takes the politics out of the paving. There was a former superintendent that did, what did he call it? He called it quieting paving. So if he got a lot of phone calls about a street, he would go pave that street and that would save him 10 to 20 phone calls a week. And that's not a fair way to do it. It doesn't work out in the long-term budget. Thank you. Okay, now here's a question. I saw Shalini's hand, but I see that the Andy's picture is up front. So I don't quite understand the technology, but Shalini's picture is up front. Just Andy, because he hadn't spoken, so I put it down. Yeah, all right. Actually, I was gonna say, go ahead and do Shalini first. Okay, so let's do Shalini, then we'll do Andy. Okay. Okay, so the question was around when you are redoing a certain road, is there a plan to put in bike paths? And I don't know if that was sort of answered or not. So in the past, we have tried to do that and we basically did try to do it when I first got here. But if you think about a bike path being four feet and two four-foot lanes, that's eight feet. That's almost the width, that's two thirds of a width of a travel lane you're adding to the road. So two things happened. We found we were spending more money on paving a road and we weren't getting enough roads paved. And so we kind of just started paving what was there already. Unless it was really, really easy to put a bike lane in because adding a bike lane does the same thing as a sidewalk. You sometimes have to expand the road. You go into, you have to cut into a bank. You have to cut into a tree. You have to widen over a wetland. So right now we typically target where we're gonna do bike lanes and we try to do the major roads only, but we haven't been doing as many as we used to because we've been finding, we were just spending a lot of paving money, widening roads that we could have been used for paving more roads. And we were falling farther behind in maintenance. Okay, so that's a true answer. It may not be, oh, let me kick down my own hand. It may not be the answer we like, but he gave us the true answer. Can I just add to that? It's not, I mean, I agree with what you're saying and it's practical and it makes sense, but just keeping in mind that climate action, and I'm not even a biker, I wish I was, but I'm afraid of biking on streets because I didn't grow up that way. So, but just thinking that if you're trying to incentivize people to promote more people biking for climate action goals, just to kind of keep that in mind that is there a way that we can start thinking about making that a priority? Let's just make it a priority and try to keep figuring out, keep it in the front of attention. We do do it on certain special projects. Like, so for East Hadley Road, we got CDBG funding for, it wasn't for the roadway itself, but it was for the sidewalks, the multi-use path, and we were able to squeeze in a little bit of roadway widening. So we did, we added bike lanes there, we added a multi-use path. And that was sort of, when we have special funding, when it's not just the bulk of our regular budget, we try to squeeze those in under special projects. And then there's other times where the road might already be 30 feet wide, and sometimes you can squeeze an extra foot on each side, and then you get a three-foot bike lane on each side, it may not be a perfect four-foot, but we do, if it's an easy enough, if it's already close, we do try, and there's not a whole lot of trees, wetlands, et cetera in the way, we do squeeze out an extra foot or two here or there, and we do try to squeeze it in where possible. I mean, you look at Henry Street, and there's trees and salamander crossings, and it's a scenic road, there's wetlands, there was, I would love to put bike lanes on that street, but there's just no way you can get away with it, there's too many obstacles. So we do, on a case-by-case basis, we do try to do it. Excellent, thank you. But maybe not a full four-foot wide, and maybe not the perfect scenario, but we try to accommodate as best as possible as many times as we can. But you have to remember that everyone likes a smooth road, and when you're talking about trying to accommodate everybody and making all the means of transportation, a bus going over a Potipoly Road is probably worse than riding in your car going over a Potipoly Road. So it's always the condition and the smoothest of the road, which actually brings the most people for mass transit, for bicyclists. They're gonna enjoy it and get as much benefit out of it as the motorist is. So that's really the biggest, your biggest bang for the buck right there. Okay, Andy. Oh, I appreciate the presentation and the discussion. I waited a little while to raise my hand for a reason, and that was that before our current form of government, the last presentation, and this was made to the select board. So I was the one who was there in the last presentation. And I wanted to see if things were different from where they were last time. And I would have to say that my observation is, in general, no, the names of streets have changed because some of the streets have been done and other streets have worked their way up on the list. But the basic questions and concerns were all of the same. And my other observation is probably from my finance role as much as anything. And that is the biggest challenge that we have is, I think it was Anna was talking about driving from one town to another and noticing the difference is a question of what our budget capacity is in Amherst and the demands on our budget because it's both revenue and money coming in. The chapter 90 is really based upon a formula and everybody is fighting over getting as much of a favorable formula out of the state money as they possibly can. And so when we're left with them, when we've got the number that comes from the state, then it's whatever we can add to it from our own funds. And so you're given to then dividing up the capital budget and trying to see if you can do anything to reduce the operating budget so you can add more to the capital budget so that you can take streets and sidewalks because our constituents do complain as much about streets and sidewalks as about anything else that we react to. But I think that in the end, we do have limits and we don't probably need to discuss that especially in the budget scenarios in the town services scenario. And but I'm not gonna try it tonight to go any further than I have. But I then am left with my final thought on the subject which is, and this is said by others, is that it really is helpful to have a system that is based upon a set of principles and not based upon what we hear from certain constituents or the number of constituent calls beyond a certain point. I mean, I think that we sort of realize that at some point, if you get enough repeats, requests on the street, it is worth sort of asking then the next question as to why that street is where it is on the list. But I think that it's actually helpful for the legislative body to ultimately say that the executive branch makes these decisions as to how to allocate very limited funds. And we certainly wanna hear how that decision is being made, but I would be very reticent to put ourselves in the position of second guessing those decisions. So those are my comments, so thank you. Well, thank you. And I see that Anika, I have a comment but I'm gonna wait, hold a minute. Anika has her hand up. I just have a quick comment for Jason and that is that I think that you should add another sign behind you and coin what you said about taking the politics out of paving. Okay, I wanted to ask a question. When you have a choice of fixing a sidewalk or dealing a bike lane, I'm going to put in my thoughts that the sidewalk comes first because it deals, it's used by people of all ages and all physical fitnesses. And there's so much scientific study coming out just on the benefits of simple walking. I understand the answers on the Amity sidewalk and it is a steep hill and it's a steep hill on North Hampton Road as well. And yet when we were discussing the new studio apartments on North Hampton Road, we were told that most people wouldn't have cars and that we were to just imagine them walking up the hill with their groceries and we know that they do. And I will tell you there's tremendous foot traffic on Amity of all ages and running clubs from UMass, people walking their dogs, people with families. There's no alternative really to either Amity or North Hampton coming up the hill. So this has just made very vivid today. Today after a rally, there was a man with a walker just trying to walk on the side of Amity near the Amherst coffee. And it wasn't particularly a bad stretch of sidewalk but he had definite mobility limitations and he felt, you know, he didn't want any help either. I gotta tell you that, that he should be able to walk with his little walker on that section right there in the center of town. So I am really glad that you've chosen to do the sidewalks in Amity which relate more to the public areas of the town. It's a very challenging system that you have in trying to do this, but just, you know, we do have one thing that town of Amherst has that many towns don't have is we have rail trails which just during COVID we discovered some of them for the first time. You have handicapped accessible, well actually Hadley has it, but the trail Silvio Conte State Park and also the rail trail in Amherst where people can do walking if you have a car to take you there, okay? Cause they're kind of inaccessible otherwise. So I think we have a lot of good things that are in the works and I appreciate all the work that you're doing and let's figure out ways to get more money to answer Andy's thing. Yes, this takes money and we need to get some more money. So I see Paul's hand is up and let's see if we can talk a little more. So quickly, I just want to thank Guilford and Jason for the presentation. I think this really instills confidence in how we approach these decisions. These are very complex decisions that we're very systematic and scientific about doing it. And there is the sort of, we have a town engineer and experts who go out and look at the roads themselves and they look at them and things change from year to year. That's what we learned with Bay Road this year is that it wasn't on the list. And then this winter it really blew open and not only we knew that by driving on it, but we also heard from our constituents. But also then, if you look at the, if we get $857,000 from the state for chapter 90, if you look just at Bay Road, that's a $660,000 project, that money doesn't go very far. And that's why we are always, you'll hear us always arguing at the state house for more money for roads. The state has not increased money for roads for a very long time. Andy Steinberg is on the fiscal policy committee of the MMA and I'm on the public works policy committee. So we are always advocating, the state has to step up and put more money into roads, especially for semi-rural communities like where we have a lot of roads and not many people. Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much. So I will ask my question, are we expected to do anything in response to this report? No, okay, great. If I could, so what we wanted to do is take this presentation and sort of encapsulate it and put it on the website for the pavement where the pavement is so people, others can watch this. I think that's a very valuable presentation. I think it's very educational as well. Okay, thank you very much. I did announce this in my newsletter, but I don't see too many other people attending. We have an awful lot of meetings and a lot of things for the public to do, but I think this was a very worthwhile presentation and we learned a lot. So I thank you very much. So thank you, Jason and Guilford, and I guess you are free just to spend your Thursday evening as you wish at this point. And we will, I guess, if you let us know when you get the website updated so we can inform our constituents, I think, Shalini, you really wanted to have more public access to the information and that would be very helpful. So are we, I think that's it for this topic today. Anyone have any counter suggestions or are we done with this? Okay. Also thank Jason and Guilford, thank you. Yes, I really find your descriptions, your explanations really, really useful. So I appreciate it very, very much. Thank you. Thank you. I'm gonna stop sharing my screen now. There we go. Okay. So we have the next action item is the referral from the town council proposed revision of fees under general bylaw 2.50 on residential rental property. And we've talked this one around in various ways and we have, I think, two options before us now. One is to accept the report as presented to us by the committee understanding that this is a temporary fee raise and that they're redoing the bylaw and we'll have a more detailed thing to look at later or that we would continue discussing what we think it shouldn't be. Okay, so laying it out. Jairi, did you say there was gonna be public comment after the- Oh, I did. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. I really appreciate that. Thank you. Okay. So yes, we are gonna have public comment on matters within the, okay. You can, are welcome to express your views for one to three minutes at the discretion of the chair based upon the number of people who wanna speak which there aren't too many in the audience. We will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during public comment. So in order to do so, Athena, I think they know how to do it. If not, tell them how to do it. You'd like me to say that folks can raise their hand if they'd like to make public comment? That's right. Okay. And we can take a look and see if anybody is raising their hand. Okay, so attendees, we have six. Okay, I see two. I see Chris and I see George Ryan. Okay, so Chris, please speak. But Athena has to let you in. Okay, is there a problem with letting Chris in, Athena? This is in. Okay, so please go ahead and speak, Chris. Chris needs to unmute. Oh, that's right. Okay, has to unmute and give full name and address, please. I still see that Chris is muted. There's a little line through the microphone. So Chris, can you unmute? That's not happening, okay. Athena, sometimes you can do something at your end. I'm not quite sure how or what. So I can send a request to unmute and I did that a couple of times. Okay. So we can come back to Chris. Okay, so let's go to George Ryan, who is unmuted. Okay, go ahead, George. Thank you, Dorothy. Just first of all, I wanna echo what I think a number of you just said. That was very informative on what just happened. And as a former member of TSO, it seems to me exactly what TSO should be doing. I was impressed. Lots of information, lots of good questions. And department, people talking to counselors. It's unfortunate that more people couldn't be present from the public, but I think you're right that this can be shared. It should be put on a website. So I wanna just applaud what you did this evening. I think this was really good and I will certainly do what I can to share this information. Just a question, I don't know anyone can answer it. I think the relevant parties have left, but it mentioned that the full list is available in something called street logics. And I can't find that. And maybe it's not available to the public and maybe no one here knows the answer anyway, but I was curious to look at the full list, which gives every street and its rating, what we just got in the report were excerpts. And what it says is that it's available in street logics, which sounds like it's something you can just look up, but maybe that is not the case. I don't know if Paul knows or if not, maybe I can find out on my own. But again, impressed by what happened this evening. I really think it was good, thank you. Good, and notice that Dana Road is down for probably crack ceiling or something. So, good moments. Okay, Paul. Yeah, so we will be adding material. I just looked at the link. So our last report is from 2017. So we have to upload all this information. We wanna add this presentation and the slide deck as well. And I'm not sure about the report. I'll see if we'll get that report uploaded as well all on the same site. So thank you, George. Paul, what about, can you upload the recording of this part of the TSO meeting? I just thought there was so many interesting comments. That's our intention, yes. That is our intention to snip this piece of it and put it on. Excellent, excellent. Okay, Chris, once again, we're asking if you can unmute. Okay, great. Okay, Chris, give your name, please, and address. Hi, I think I've succeeded. Sorry for the poor usage of the technology. My name is Chris Hochman, and I live on our road in Pelham. So I am a grateful user of the 2020 Pelham Road resurfacing. Delighted that that 4,000-some-odd feet of roadway got milled and overlaid. Little sad that the sidewalk did not receive that any attention at the time. It is at spots that I feel bad for anyone who is handicapped because there is no way that they can navigate that around the various trees and the angles that are there. However, it has been delight. One thing that I wanted to comment on was the opportunity that I think is missed when it comes to people who use C-Click Fix to report issues with the roadways and sidewalks. I believe that is an excellent opportunity for the DPW to reach the people that are obviously concerned enough to actually contact them. When they do, I've watched many times. I seldom see a proactive response to the people when they ask the question of, what's the plan? I can say that I have never seen them directed to a five-year plan, a two-year plan, any plan, or directed to the website to indicate. I've seen them directed to your bodies and told to, oh, talk to your representatives, but never given the plan or directed to some place where they can educate themselves first off. So I would like to encourage that opportunity to be taken by DPW to, for when those people in the public reach them, outreach to them, that they take that opportunity and try to educate them as opposed to the standard boilerplate response of assigned to director and thank you for your input. That's all I have, thank you. Okay, and I remember Chris coming to my first office hour and announcing he was from Pelham and complaining about the road. And at that time I had no idea what to do about it. So I just listened, but I guess we all see in time, things get done, okay? In Amherst, they will get done. So that's- It's advocating, not complaining. Advocating, advocating for the rest. Right, absolutely, absolutely. Okay, so I think that there is nobody else with their hand raised. So we will end the public comment and we will then go back to what I had brought up before, which is the residential rental property. And I see that Mandy Johannike is in the audience. So if I guess we have a question we could call upon her as one of the sponsors of this suggestion. Okay, Shalini, you had your hand up to tell me that I'd forgotten public comment. Were you also wanting to make a comment on the topic of the residential rental property? Yes, so I completely understand what we're doing here. This is just about, this is not related to inspections and all of that is gonna be looked into. This is just about the rental registration fee. And my concern, though, after speaking with a bunch of different tenants in town is that what we're proposing is gonna be the burden of the increase to $250 not equitable across our residents. So for example, a single family tenant is paying $250 and a Povton village tenant is paying 50 cents. So I know that we are looking at from the point of view as a town we're providing the same service so we want to charge the same thing whether it's 250 units, 500 units, or a single house. But our decisions have consequences on the people and residents who are living here. So I just want us to be aware. I don't want us to, I understand that we may not be able to do anything about it at this point because we're hoping to fix and make our system more efficient and raise funding through this system so that we are able to then put in place a better inspection system. But I also want us to confront the fact that we are putting a burden on single family tenants who are now going to pay $250. And I spoke with a bunch of people and they did say that they are charged a lump sum. Anytime a town increases any kind of fee, it goes directly and they're asked to pay that as a lump sum. And now if you're a single family tenant and you have other kind of expenses, this is can be a lot of money for some family. So I just want us to confront that and know that we are putting the burden on these families. And so it doesn't feel equitable to me. Okay, Shawani, I was looking over the rate chart, which of course I can't locate the papers right now earlier today. And I was thinking of there's combinations of ways that I think we could deal with the equitable property. First of all, we look at what some of the other towns do. We notice that they charge a fee for either one unit or one to six units. All right, so that's the basic fee. There's a reduction if it's owner occupied. Then for larger properties, some of them charge a lesser fee for the additional properties. And I think that I did some numbers and I came out to 800 a year to 1200 a year for a 30 unit place if you gave the set fee for one to six units. So that would be having the, that would just be in the fee. Though I believe that the proposal was thinking that the increased fee for larger properties would be in that inspections would take more time. Inspecting a small property does not take that much time, but inspecting something with say, I'm using 30 units is my thing would. So I liked some of the features of the reduced fee for additional units so that it doesn't get crazy. And also some of them had a cap that you would do an additional fee up to a certain sum. The one thing we learned when we looked at the chart is that there's no one path. There's absolutely no one path. So in terms of trying to make it equitable, I think that we could take or the sponsoring committee when they're redoing it can take features from these other ones to try to spread it so that it does seem to be fairer. So I do think it's a good point you're bringing up. We have to always think of what we were told that we had to pay some attention to ease of ability to do it without going crazy. So one of the questions that Nika brought up a very good point of the person who lives in town has a small property that they're renting out, but they do not live on it. And I believe that we were told that that would be really cumbersome for the town to be searching whether the person lives in town or does not live in town. I don't know. I think that's something we can look into. It could certainly one could in some way, owners who live in town should be privileged to out of town owners, I would think. But all these, the whole questions of how to do it so we can do it and be equitable are challenges that I don't think we're gonna come to the answer now, but again, I'm gonna just throw it open again. And so the big question is, are we going to make a design that we think or are we going to approve the temporary situation and then wait for the sponsoring committee to come in with more details later? So that's kind of what we're, I think, dealing with. Okay, so I'm gonna take my hand down and I see Nika's got her hand up, great. Okay, so I trust the sponsoring committee and their intentions. I do feel that it would be wonderful for instance, Dorothy brought up landlords who have, say a house or a few and they're enamors and they've had no complaints whatsoever where maybe to take the burden off of the town to research and find who these people are to give landlords the opportunity to introduce themselves as such. And I just have a few other comments because I do feel that this should go to the entire council for broader discussion is that perhaps some of the, I'm sorry, some of the provisions or the president should come from within Massachusetts. So like Massachusetts municipalities as opposed to following and leaning on out of state and also perhaps with just the website maybe being more informative because even though I just said, I'm talking against using out of state regulations, if you do look at other cities where rentals are big business, tenants have a lot of rights and they're aware of them and whether there are 311 members informative numbers, like it makes it a lot harder for a neglectful landlord. So it's like, unless you have in your legal lease, your tenants are usually in the right. And so tenants can easily call and have an inspection and go to the health department where I know that's available here being Massachusetts having some of these strongest laws but perhaps just guiding, being a little more informative for tenants here and guiding them through because you do have to go through multiple channels to get that information and assistance. So for even tenants, that's like the biggest tool that prevents neglectful landlords and kind of let's say, no, this is a business, you're not entitled to just have these permits. So it secures both. So I think some focus on that would be great and I do trust that the sponsors can incorporate those suggestions if possible. Okay, thank you, Andy. So I was thinking of a couple of things. One is that if the owner of the property applies for the rental permit, they will provide the information and we will know the information as to whether they live in town, they live in a town nearby or cross state or out of state altogether. And if they fail to register voluntarily and our staff has to search them down, I think that we owe them no break whatsoever and no sympathy because I think it's incumbent upon them to do the registration to begin with. So I think that we actually do have a system for people who reasonably meet standards that we may establish to implement those standards. I do worry a little bit that there could be some type of legal challenge if you are treating property owners differently by the place of residence and whether there's gonna be, we're opening ourselves up to any challenge to that litigation. And so there is the question of whether we should be at least asking the town attorney that question. And I guess the last thing that I felt was is that ultimately I really liked the idea of owner occupied because I think that the recent stated for having a lower fee for owner occupied makes absolute sense because they're renting out a room but they're also there to manage it all times to keep an eye on what's going on in their property. And I like that element to it. And ultimately the last thing is that the charge for trying to move some of the charge over to where inspection costs are to cover inspection costs makes absolute sense also. And finance committee does intend to take a look at it from a very brief, I'm thinking that the finance committee the limit should be to look at the amount of money that we're gonna raise and whether the fees that are being proposed match the purposes for which the money is to be spent. But I'm trying to not have the finance committee repeat the discussion we're having now because I think this is a town services discussion when you get into the kinds of criteria that we're just talking about. Yes, that's right. Okay, good. Thank you, Andy. And I just looked at the list of panelists and I see that another member of the sponsoring group Jennifer Taub is listening. So we can draw upon them if we need to. Anika, your hand is up and Anna's hand is up. Anna has had a question. Okay, she said, go ahead with you first, okay. I was just wanting to add to what Andy just said is that in the event that there are no legal implications and in favor of landlords that live in Amherst sometimes with the single family homes they are responsible for upkeep. So whether that's lawn maintenance. So they are engaging with the tenant and the house they are overseeing that upkeep and just being such a small town most of them are probably no more than five, 10 tops maybe 20 minutes. And I would doubt that away from their property. So perhaps that is a... I agree. I was just talking to a landlord the other day and his response was if there's a problem I want to know right away. Meaning I will go there and take care of it. So I think that's the kind of response that we do want as opposed to the long, long hand from far away. Anna. So I mean, to be very blunt I firmly believe we need to vote on this tonight. I think this needs to be done. And so we have been talking about it and I don't think we've come up with anything really drastically new. And so it might not be a consensus vote but I mean I really think this needs to go back to the council so that we can move forward. And part of that is because part of this is as you stated Dorothy, I believe the sponsors are working on a new rental registration by-law that will include a new fee schedule and a new set of fees, right? So I just, I wanted to name that I'm planning on or I'm hoping to make a motion on this tonight. So where I'm going, where I'm coming from with this and if I sound like a Berger Necker, I apologize but I do want to say it is that our responsibility is to look at this from a town services perspective, as Andy said that does not mean we are ignoring the needs of our constituents. That does not mean we're not taking them to perspective and that does not mean that we are not considering the impact of our actions. We are always doing those things. However, my concern is when we start charging different amounts for the same work for the same amount of town services work that's concerning to me because that then feels like we are privileging some groups over others. Once this by-law shifts and it's a different system that requires different amounts of work, absolutely it should change. However, in this moment, the amount of work is this it's a filing fee, right? And so I strongly believe that the sponsors have it right in their proposal from that town services perspective. The only thing I also wanted to add that I don't think I have said before, which is exciting is that when we look at that fee comparison, we are, you might say, well, Boston is so much lower. It's $25 per unit for the first time and then 15 per renewal. Boston also has a whole lot more apartments than we do. And so when you compare to cities that have a similar number of apartments, you know, it's a lot closer to our numbers, right? So I do think they're on target and I do think that they are fair given the amount of work that goes in. I do not think this is disadvantaging small landlords. I think that this is taking into and I can see disagreement and that's fine. You can disagree with me, but, and I know, I do not think that this is a major shift for those small landlords because we are maintaining the same price for those who are owner occupied and we're shifting to that complaint driven, we're adding that complaint driven inspection fee. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Anna. And I hope that you will be preparing a motion. Okay, Shalini. It's all ready. Great, okay. I think it's a question of disadvantageing the tenants because the standard is that if there's an increase in any kind of fees, it's passed on to the tenants. So it is disadvantageing a single family tenant who's trying to live here and they are paying $250 for living there and a Buffton village person would be 50 cents increase, which probably the landlord is absorbing. So it is disadvantage, but I am willing to vote on it today just because we do have a bylaw that's going to hopefully consider and they are promising that it's gonna consider all these different variances and there will be a bigger discussion. I just wanted to voice my concern about the impact it's gonna have on the smaller single family tenants who are already struggling with increased costs of electricity and this winter and a lot of other increases and 250 for some of us may not be much but it is a lot when it's being charged suddenly for no change in services being offered to them. They're still getting the same services also but now they're gonna have to pay $250. The aim is to provide services to the town in general by being able to get some more help in the inspectors. That's, so the money wasn't gonna go into the general pot. It was to go to try to make it more effective for inspections but I appreciate what you say, Shalini. I guess I'd like to call in Anna to make a motion to present a motion. Okay, Athena I'm gonna give it a go. I moved to approve the proposed revision of fees under general bylaw 3.50 regarding residential rental properties setting the fee at $100 for buildings with one to six units with an owner occupant and $250 per parcel as well as a $150 complaint driven inspection fee. Okay, that emotion has been made. Do we have a second? Well, I'll second it. Okay, Anika did you second it? Yes. Okay, so Anika has seconded it. Okay, any discussion? Shall we call the question? Okay, I'll call you. Oh, Andy got your hand up. I just wanted to make sure I understood the motion first. I do. Was the motion saying that the fee for somebody who's renting would be and it's a owner occupied that there's no inspection fee under any circumstance or is there a $150 fee if there is a complaint driven inspection on an owner occupied home? I can amend it to offer clarity because I think that's an important clarification. The $150 inspection fee applies to all owner occupied or not for that complaint driven. Right? So could you either assure us that's one more time? I'll act through this one more time. And Athena, you tell us if you have received it, okay? So Anna, you'll send and she'll catch. Okay, so I moved to approve the proposed revision of fees under general bylaw 3.50 regarding residential rental properties, setting the fee at $100 for apartments with one to six units and an owner occupant and $250 per parcel for all apartments as well as a $150 complaint driven inspection fee. Let me add for all apartments at the end. Athena, I will email this to you. Should I do it one more time because I bungled that. If you could tell me your exact words because I can't type that fast, but also I'm just going to ask that you begin that with to recommend the town council. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you, Athena. Okay, great. Good, fifth time. Do I need to read it again, Athena? Not if you send me your words. I'd appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. All right, so the motion has been made and seconded. We have had discussion. Andy, is your hand still up with a new point? Yeah, I still think that, I mean, what I would be looking for probably is to make sure that the part of the motion that is the charge of $150 per inspection that's required under the bylaw is written as a separate sentence and that they're so that it's clear that it is not applying just to the paragraph that's immediately preceding. Okay. Let me give this another go. Okay. So Andy, if I separate that out into another sentence, do I have to add we recommend the town council accept again at the beginning of the second sentence? No, I mean, you could say something like for all rentals, that there's an additional $150 per inspection fee. Okay, I got it. I think I got it now. But I don't, okay. Right now, as far as I understand it, we're not saying that all people who get a permit will be inspected. Correct, it's complaint-driven. Complaint-driven because we don't have the staff to do that, the other thing, okay. Let me try one more time. I appreciate everyone's patience. The motion writing is a learning curve. All right, so I moved to recommend the town council accept the proposed revision of fees under general bylaw 3.50 regarding residential rental properties, setting the fee at $100 for apartments with one to six units and an owner occupant and $250 per parcel. Additionally, for all rentals, there is a $150 complaint-driven inspection fee. That sounds good to me. Andy, did you like that? Yes, thank you. Best times to charm y'all. All right, thank you. Okay. So I believe I might need a new second on that, Dorothy, just, Athena, can we do that? Do I have a second for the reworded motion? Yes. Okay, we have a second. Andy Steinberg, very good. I will now call the roll. If there, unless there's anyone, everyone's all set to go. We're all set to vote, okay. Andy, how do you vote? Yes. Okay, Dorothy, yes. Shalini. Yes. Anika. Yes. Anna. Yes. Very good. Thank you. It's a unanimous vote. And we have sent this back to the, we're sending this to the town council. Correct. Okay, wonderful. So there's another item on the agenda. Well, actually I'm going to skip ahead. We're going to talk about committee charge and I definitely have some thoughts on that, but I think that we should go quickly to the town manager appointment because we're going to make it through. We're going to be through by nine. That's good. But let's go move ahead to the town manager appointment filed with the town clerk, community development block grant advisory committee and town manager Backelman, would you like to speak on your nomination? Sure, thank you. So there are, these are two appointments for the community development block grant advisory committee. Gregory Bascom and Suzanne Schilling. Mr. Bascom currently serves on the council on aging, has been involved in town government for many years in many different capacities. He is an attorney and has, in talking about the CDBG advisory committee, he's identified transportation and housing and social services as the areas that he feels need to be received the most attention. The other person is Suzanne Schilling. This is the first time that she has volunteered to be on a town committee, although she has had extensive experience working in the schools with the PGO and with different sports, sports groups and a very high level organizer and very interested in committing additional time and getting more involved in town politics. So I think they bring a nice balance to the CDBG advisory committee. Any questions or comments from the assembled? All right, so I guess I would entertain a motion to accept the recommendations. I move to rep. Oh, I think, oh, Anika's got it. Okay, great, Anika. Let me, all right, I'm gonna try it. Okay, to recommend that the town service and the outreach committee recommend the town council approve the town manager's appointment of Gregory Baskham and Suzanne Schilling to the community block grant advisory committee as filed with the town clerk on April 14th, 2022 effective immediately for terms to expire June 30th, 2024. Did I get it? Second. Very good, very good. Yes, okay, any conversation, discussion? Well, then we can move to a vote. So let's go, Anika. Yes. Dorothy, yes, Shalini. Yes. Andy. Yes. Anna. Yeah. Okay, so town manager has two new people. Thank you. For the committee. Okay, so the last item is to talk about the committee charge and there are three papers, which again, one is the original charge, which was drafted. Let's see. In the 24th of February in 2020, we're operating under and then there were two revisions, two proposed revisions and okay. So have you had a chance to look at these two revisions? And this came to us from GOL that was just looking at committee charges. The first one, let's see, was to, okay. No, I can't see what this one is. Well, one of them took out outreach and added economic development. So I think that's the last charge. It has, right, okay. I think originally they wanted to take out outreach and add economic development. We discussed and various members had strong feelings about the outreach section. So then the second revision included outreach and added economic development, which we need to discuss. So we have a lot to discuss here. Shalini, you've got your hand up, let's go. So my understanding is that the proposal is to remove outreach from TSO and economic development from CRC and create a new committee, right? So yeah. Oh, hold on. No? No, I'm only talking about the TSO charge. I'm not talking about the new committee. Okay, yeah, yeah, sure. I just want to understand where we're going. The TSO committee, the suggestion was, the second suggestion was to keep outreach but to add economic development. We had two suggestions in our packet. We had no narrative. So I read through them and I said, okay, now the first one took out outreach, added economic development. And I know that we had, many members of this committee had expressed their interest in outreach and it seemed like that would not be a good thing to take away. But the question is, we can stay exactly as we are now. We can also stay as we are and add economic development. I think that's how the choices were but I will call upon people and see if anyone else has read them. That's what I got from reading them. Okay, Anika, what do you have? So I understood as well that it was removing both, removing outreach from TSO, removing economic development from CRC and creating of a fifth committee. Not that it was adding, not that we would be adding economic development to TSO. Well, okay. The draft I have that says 2022-02-16. There were three things on charges in our packet. That one is called TSO. Oh, I see. Oh, you're right. Okay, it says name, Outreach and Economic Development, OED. You're right, right. Okay, so I'm going to turn it over to Anna. Nope, same comment. Okay. I'm not force setting into committee. This is not my proposal. I'm not going to speak for it. So if anyone likes it, please speak for it, okay? Yeah, I think it requires a clarification of what is outreach from the perspective of the TSO committee or any town council committee, for example. My understanding is that's mostly the town manager's office that is handling outreach. And so I think it'd be helpful to understand when we talk about outreach as a part of TSO, what does that entail? And I think the same thing goes for economic development is not even our, that's a CRC issue. So I'm not going to go there. Anna. Sure, so I don't know if this comment is necessarily for or not, but I think the way that I'm looking at this is having now experienced the lovely TSO for a couple of months, we're swamped. And the reality is that I'm really concerned that we're not going to be able to dig into outreach how outreach deserves to be dug into. And I think from observing CRC, the same could apply for economic development from their perspective. So from that end, I do think that TSO has so much to address. I mean, like look at tonight, we also set water and sewer on the kind of aside for another meeting because we were just so, I know everyone was excited about it, but we were so swamped. And so I think that in my mind, having a committee that actually can dig into these issues that are less immediate boots on the ground, bylaw driven and much a little bit more conceptual and vision driven is really exciting. The concern that I have is capacity. I mean, I think we saw counselors who, myself included who knew what their limits were in terms of signing up for committees and weren't able to sign up for three or two, two or three, depending. And so I think we need to have as a full counsel as we want to do this, do we accept that we're not going to get it done at this committee level and say, we're just not going to get it done? Do we adapt our current committees to take something off our board? Okay, I'm not hearing you right now. When are you frozen? Okay. Can you repeat? I think, yeah. Anna, I think you would want to... Anna, go back a little bit. You're back. So, rewind. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. Okay, it's your internet probably. Sorry, sorry. Anyway, can I just go back a little bit? We missed you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, I think we need to, these are kind of the things that we need. I would love to discuss with you all, right? Is what are the merits of either taking this out of TSO and we'll focus just on TSO because I personally don't think we're actually going to be able to dig into it like we want to, given the things that are steadily coming our way. Two, do we look at dropping the size of committees? There are major implications to that. Can we even do that? And three, do we as a council have the bandwidth to shift, to take on additional committees if the committees are not as broad in scope? Doesn't necessarily mean the time would shift, but it might, right? So I think those are the questions that are coming to mind for me and I'd really love to hear other folks' thoughts on those. Okay, so, Shalini, I'm gonna call upon you. Yeah, I think I agree with everything that Anna said and the only comment I would make is my understanding of outreach so far is that what is expected of us as a town service outreach committee is this one-time task to create an outreach plan and I don't even know what that is within our purview, but I am anyway going ahead and doing it because I got some sense that it is required. So it seems like it's a one-time creating this and working in coordination with the town managers, staff, and coordinating what that plan would look like so that we know as counselors what is our role in outreach and what is the community participation officer or the different committees, what is their role. It feels like it's more of a one-time planning event and then it's gonna be distributed across all the counselors or committees of the council that are gonna do the different outreach at different times and so it's more of a one-time thing. So I don't think we need a separate committee unless we're saying that somehow the council members, in addition to our district meetings, in addition to all the other emails we respond to, there's some somehow we are gonna be doing an outreach or in addition to all of that. So that's the clarification I was looking for. Okay, and Anika. Okay, so I agree with everything that's been said and whereas for me personally, this would sound like the dream committee. I feel like it speaks my language and sings my song, but I do also have concern with separating, well, aside from really having clarity in terms of our role for outreach, the implications of separating economic development from a committee that also deals with zoning. I feel like this is their fabric and intertwined and both through the lens of economic development and in terms of business owners and what they're looking for, it's kind of like, it's like a chicken and an egg. So a lot of investors, business investors are also looking at zoning to kind of know where to go next. And so I do as much as I think this sounds fantastic in many ways and see how it's really complicated and limited in numbers, I do have the concern of separating economic development from CRC mainly because of the relationship with zoning. Okay, Anna, and then I'm gonna make a little comment. So I'll put my hand up. So I have a follow-up question to Anika and I'm trying to look at our list and see if anybody here crosses over Shawnee or in CRC. I mean, I'm curious if it's come up. Like, do you feel like CRC has been able to dig into economic development at all? Is it coming up at all? Like what's its current status? I think a lot of the decisions we make do impact the economic development of the town. So the zoning, if you're allowing for more density or whatever, it's generating more revenue to the town. And are we talking about economic development for the town or for the residents? And if it's for the residents, I don't know, again, what impact, what bylaws we can create because we're concerned with the legislative branch and stimulating the economy, creating more opportunities for, I don't know, businesses or permitting, making that easier inspections. All of that is really Paul's preview. So again, that's why economic development in the realm of allowing more density, where should the housing be? Those kinds of things are impacting the economics. So again, there's not a complete clarity around what is the town council's role in economic development over and above what we're already doing. Okay, so I'm gonna just take my little turn here. I was on CRC for a number of years and certainly working on mixed use zoning very much. It involves economic development. I think I am against creating another committee. I think that the workload for a town council now is reaching too much. I am spending so many hours per day, constituent email, local problems, just preparing for things. Is it 10 hours a day, eight hours a day? It's taking up my whole life. So I think trying to ask people to take on one more committee is not a good idea. Economic development, yes, we don't have an economic development person, but we have the town manager working very closely with the bid and they're really trying to come up with economic development and outreach, which we all wanna do. The CPOs are doing my only criticism now is we're coming out of COVID, knock on wood. And I would like to be invited to their outreach activities as I was in the first number of years. It was really useful for me as a counselor to get to different parts and not in my district. They were out of my district just to get a better sense of the town. I enjoyed that. So I would like us to work with our CPOs a little more closely, but I just don't see that making a new committee to do this is good. So I agree with Shalini. I think we can keep outreach. We can talk about a plan. And we're gonna get a presentation from our CPOs very soon and we can think about what do we wanna talk to them about in detail and what kind of visions do we have? And I think we can do that. So those are my thoughts on this topic. Okay, so Anna, your turn. Okay, so I want us to be very aware that the bid is not a substitute for an economic development director. They are not a town agency and we cannot equate them with an economic development director. That's not their role. They have done a lot of work for economic development for Amherst, but, and I think Shalini, I'm a little confused by your question, not because partly because I don't understand it, economic development for the town versus the residents. And I kind of feel like they are one in the same, right? In my mind, like I think economic development for one benefits the other and I don't know what it would look like to have economic development only for the town. So clarity on that would be helpful. But I mean, I think that one of the things that strikes me about the potential of this committee and I don't want to negate how big this conversation is, right? Is that we don't know what we don't know. And so to have a committee that focuses on economic development might allow for an opportunity to actually commit to some more efforts in that area. And I do think that there are significant legislative impacts there, right? There are licensing, I mean, we just talked about registration fees, you know? I think there are all of those things do fall under our umbrella. And so I think that there are a lot of things we could do to make the pathway to business ownership or to general economic development more accessible and amorous and and that goes for outreach as well, right? Shalini, it's great that you're writing a plan and I'm hoping that we get to it and get through it. You know, I think that that's my concern is that if there's so much we're going into defining what outreach means, but we don't actually have the bandwidth on TSO to follow through with it, you know, what's, we don't know, we don't know. And so my thought is potentially a committee could start to answer some of those questions. Okay, so Paul and Andy, can I call up? Oh, Paul, I didn't see your hand, sorry. Thank you. I don't want to jump to Q, but so the two things, one, and I have, you know, the council should organize itself as it sees fit and that's your discussion. I do want to make two comments. One is on community participation officers, you know, we have talked with the chair about when they can come in and we had some extenuating circumstances are on our staff sides that we, when we were scheduled, we couldn't really deliver. So we're looking at the next available meeting for the TSO committee, for the three CPO officers come in and talk about what they're doing, talk about what's coming up and to get feedback from the town councilor's TSO committee on things that they can be doing better. There's a lot happening and, you know, it is more than a full-time job for people to do, but we have three really talented people. And we're also sort of examining that model, quite frankly, you know, when we went into this, I thought we, you know, we had three very, people had three different skill sets and we're just sort of, you know, we were in it three years hence and we're just sort of doing a self-examination. Is this still good model? Is it working for everybody? Should we think about something different? So we're open to those kinds of, that kind of feedback from people. So that's on community participation. So we will be bringing the CPO officers in to make a presentation to the TSO committee at a future meeting. For economic development, you know, I think we did not fund, you know, we shifted the funding for the economic development director in order to place a higher priority on our DEI director, which I think is a strategic decision that was in the best interest of the town. This is during COVID and, you know, economic development wasn't really high on the list. We were doing lots of different things for that. In terms of a economic development, it might be worth thinking about not just a council committee, but maybe an economic development committee that had broader representation. And I'm open to having that conversation with people. I think that that, you know, that might be a path that people might find more engaging. There are lots of questions to ask and answer about what that committee would look like and what its role was. I think Shalini just sort of referred to some of those. And also, you know, we are contracting, we have some limited funds from ARPA that we're contracting with the bid to provide some of this economic outreach activity. We chose to go that route for a number of reasons. One reason being that for us to create it, you know, to hire someone for the funding is limited was probably not gonna be very conducive to finding someone who's talented whereas the bid is much more, it's a bid and the chamber, they're much more flexible and able to be very quick about bringing someone in. So we're working on that contract and I think it's nearing completion with them. This is a contracted arrangement. So I think that there will be more activity on the bigger picture things along with this sort of smaller picture, how do you start a business, how do you get a business started? So those are the two sort of focuses. Okay, thank you. And I think it was Anika next, but your hand just went down. Oh, okay. Okay, so then Shalini and then Anna, okay. Shalini, I can't hear you. Nope, sorry. So you had to differentiate between, they definitely related the economic development for the town versus the residents, but they're still different in the sense of how do we increase the towns? Like if you think of the town as a business unit or as an organization, we have all these costs and we tend to focus on the costs of building the capital costs and then there's operational costs, but then there's a revenue side of the town's balance sheet, which includes the revenues that we raise through property taxes or all the different revenues. So when I'm thinking of development on the town side, I'm focusing on just those things. And then even to raise the, and then when we think of how to make a town a good place for investors and startups and all of that. So that's looking more focusing on how do we, what do the people need? And so that seems to me more of an executive branch thing. And I think a great solution is to get a committee of diverse artists and startups and engineers or land owners and all of that to come and tell us what they're seeing, because I hear it all the time. Like I hear a lot about new systems that are put in place, but they become really cumbersome. We're trying to improve it, but it's cumbersome for a small restaurant or a small business to go through those things. And that's more of an executive function unless I'm not understanding. And that's what I'm trying to understand. Is there a role that the town council can play in those kinds of issues like permitting or inspections and all of that, but that to me feels more executive. And so what is the role? And I'm not sure what the role of the town council is. That's maybe a poll question. Okay. I think some good questions there, Shalini. Anna. So, yeah, thank you, Shalini for clarifying that was helpful. I think one of the things I keep coming back to the capacity question, right? And so I think I'm looking to Anika and Shalini who both have identified economic development as like priority areas. And so I am curious, you know, do you have capacity? Like if we created this committee because it's right up your alley, is this something that you'd be like, yes, I'm gonna do this right now. And so that's more of like my informal question of just realistically speaking, we got to get to five people on this thing if we created it. And so how do we do that? So then question two is if this is, you know, if this is something that doesn't feel like a realistic option for us right now, is the, can we as TSO say, you know, thanks GOL for this proposal, we would like to recommend the creation of a mixed council resident committee focusing on not the outreach component maybe, but specifically it seems like economic development has captured more of our attention. So is that a recommendation? And I guess I'm looking to maybe Paul or Athena to tell me officially if that's something that we could pitch back to GOL or would it just come to council or would it go to Paul? Like what would that process be like? Cause maybe that makes more sense. Cause while we do have a lot of really savvy, you know, folks in business on our council, we also have a lot of residents that we could tap into. So tap into their knowledge. Okay. So I can call on Paul or Anna right now, Anika right now. I may have Anika speak and then we'll ask, let Paul respond to both. How's that? Or does Paul wanna answer now? I would defer to Anika. Okay. All right. So Anika, your comment next. Okay. So I think that it would be really helpful to know what the parameters could be around this because I think you just send this day and time to not focus on economic development. I mean, it's clearly so important right now, but I think that it would really be important is to have what that we look like to find. So we do not have a group of well-meaning people just kind of sharing ideas of what they think should happen and what they think would be great ideas and really know what is the control, what we can do so you're talking about having execution. I think it's an excellent point. Okay. Anna. Okay. Sorry, a really quick one. The only other consideration that's not in this memo as far as I can tell is staff time. And that would apply to this or a resident council mix committee if that is a real thing. But I do think that's a consideration is who's gonna staff it and do we have the staff for that right now? Good question. Excellent. Okay, Andy raises his hand. Go ahead. I think this has been a great discussion. The TSO will always have some role if there is the question of staff assisting the effort. I think that's been referred to a little bit in the discussion. And I think that we're not totally abandoning the role of being therefore involved with the question of economic development should that become a necessary element to it. But I've been just wanting to hear what everybody else in the committee had to say. I have no problem with the conception that's come forward with supporting a separate committee and possibly asking to well to reconsider the composition of the committee whether it should be should have and we could even follow the finance committee model of non-voting community members who can contribute as they do on the finance committee. Okay. And I'm gonna raise my hand so I can come out later. Shalini. Did you want to comment first? Dorothy, you have any comment? Well, okay. I don't think that, and Paul, when you have a chance to answer you can answer this. I don't think that he meant something like the finance committee. That is a council committee that has some non-voting members to add some practical stuff. I think he meant a committee where everybody would be equal and some of them might be counselors and some of them might be local people. But again, Paul will have a chance to clarify that when he speaks. Are you ready to speak yet, Paul? And do you want to hear Shalini first? Happy to hear Shalini first. Okay. Go ahead, Shalini. I remember us voting that we didn't want counselors like in ECAC, didn't we vote that we didn't because it made it on because of the power dynamics that counselors hold even though we don't think of ourselves as super cool or anything. But apparently we do have an impact on people. So we had voted that we don't want counselors on resident committees. So that's one consideration. I would be fine if it's just a residence committee and they set the agenda like and they are like artists, business people, professionals, whatever, and they are identifying this is where we're finding problems in our town that new businesses or businesses with second English as a second language or finding real good space for setting up a startup. They identify and set the agenda by identifying what are the issues in our town and then present them to us and then we kind of support them in the process. That's how I'm envisioning it. Right, because you're saying that they could propose and do whatever but the vote will have to come in the town council. Okay. Okay, Paul, we have now presented you with a lot of thoughts. Yes, I think they're great thoughts and I don't think we're not gonna resolve it tonight because I know your time is short but it really is food for thought. And I think that thinking it and I think that the real conversation is going to be about what's the territory that we want this group. I totally agree with them because that we don't need a group that's gonna go and sit and talk. They need a charge with a mission and whether it is the big picture, things like what's the big industry that we need to bring into town or if it's like let's fix our business processes and let's get feedback on how we can do that better. Those are two very different sort of skill sets and also different people you would want involved with those decisions. So I think we really need to think a little bit more about what that looks like and I'm happy to work more aggressively on that. Okay, so, oh, Andy, please speak. Yeah, as I've been listening to the last part of the conversation, I suddenly reflected back on the fact that a long time ago before Paul was even in town, there was a committee that was like this and I forgot even what the exact name of it was but I remember that Kelly Irwin who's on this current district configuration was a member of that committee and Kelly is still around town and actively interested. So it might be worth somebody just checking with her on what happened with that committee and what was good about it and why it disappeared. Okay, that's an interesting comment. So my question is we can respond to GOL and say, at this moment, we are not supporting the new committee, New Town Council committee, but we are encouraging the town manager to look into the possibility of a multiple member committee, which would work on these top, the economic development and then would present as proposals to the town council. I'm sure there's other ways to word it better. So Anna, do you have any ways to word that better? No, but Anika has a hand up. Okay, Anika. That's not sort of worded, but maybe just to point out that we're not, I mean, are we opposed to it or do we just need some more information and more discussion? Okay, well, I want you to sit down with the list of 13 town councilors and put them in committees and add a committee and see how many people have three committees. And that was my first thing I did when this came up. And I just think that's a serious problem. I'm one of them. Yeah. So. No, I'm not alone. So, Shalini, you've got your hand up. Yeah, I was going to just say the same thing. That would be my ideal committee, actually. It could not just like Anika, the economic and outreach. However, then I would quit on TSO because I wouldn't be able to be here and there and CRC. So, and then who would then be in, so it just creates more committees and when we can get the job done and maybe even better, if you actually give the space and empower group of residents who are already doing the work on the field and know what are the actual issues. Because when we try to call, I try and email so many different people and never get the feedback. But if it's just the residents in their network and they already have networks and they talk about this stuff, but if you empower them to have those conversations and present us, that might be more effective. So I'm actually not in favor at this point of, I prefer what you propose that they think about having a town manager, Economic Development Committee. Okay, any other thoughts on this? So, Anna, I recognize you. Dorothy, was this, sorry, and I apologize. Is this an official, do we need to, or maybe Athena or Paul, is this something we need to vote to, we not recommend or thank you, Athena. Yes, thank you. What is our next step? So this was somewhat informal because it's sort of committee to committee. So what you can do is Dorothy can relay this discussion to Michelle as chair of GOL so that when GOL takes this up at their next meeting, they have the feedback from TSO. Okay, so you're saying informal communication would be sufficient at this time? Yeah. Okay, okay. You don't need a formal vote. It's just relaying the conversation that TSO had to Michelle so that GOL has that information when they have their next discussion about it. Okay, but if Anna wants to firm up that message, I will certainly hear her words. The only thing I wanted to say is I was, I don't wanna say that we are all opposed to this committee. I think that that feels not as capturing of our conversation. I think one of the big things that we talked about that I think would be really important is just logistically the capacity of our current counselors is pretty low. And so we were concerned about that. We do believe these are two areas that deserve focus. And we would love to see a resident committee comprised of, I guess I'm gonna call them, Shalini, if this feels appropriate to what you were saying, subject matter experts in those areas for a resident committee. Because personally, I mean, personally, this is great. I love this. If capacity weren't an issue, if staff time weren't an issue, this would be phenomenal. I just don't know how we would pull it off. Right, and one way you could pull it off is to end TSO. Well, that would never work. I think that's part of the issue, okay? I mean, TSO's first year, it was, who are we? What are we doing? Is there anything for us to do? And then it seems all of a sudden we're very, very busy. But so Paul, here's my question to you. As counselors, we on TSO learn a lot from the presentations we receive. Does do the town agencies actually need our feedback? Are we performing a useful function to the town by being a committee, listening to these things? You are a policy-setting committee and you're a legislative body. The reason, for instance, tonight we talked about roads is because you're responsible for the public ways. So that's definitely within the purview of the town council. You have the ability to look into anything under the charter. You can look into other things. You've identified the idea wanting to talk with the senior members from the council on aging. And the community outreach is definitely part of the council's prerogative. So from the council's point of view, it's about policy and legislation. And that's where I would say you need, you can't do everything. We have interest in everything, but that's where your job is, is policy and legislation. But do you see any conflict between a new committee on economic development and outreach and TSO? Is there room for those two committees? A new council committee or? Yeah, because what the suggestion was, as thank goodness you, the committee members corrected me, was to add a new council which would be outreach and economic development. I think it's capacity. I think it's staff capacity. I think it's councilor capacity. I think you need to pick and choose where you're gonna put your energy. You can't, it's just, there's a lot out there to do. You need to figure out what you want to prioritize. Okay, adding, I think adding a fourth committee. I mean, that means someone has to support it from the staff point of view. And it's Athena's taking this one on and there's minutes and all those things that go along with just having a committee set up. Right. Well, okay, so Anna, I understand what you're saying. You're saying that theoretically you would find, and Shalini too, there would be a great committee, economic development and outreach. What am I to give in my informal report to Michelle? I think saying, TSO discussed this, we appreciated the idea and believe in the need for economic development and outreach. However, at this time, we do not believe that our counselors have the capacity to add, we don't believe we could find five counselors with the capacity to add another committee. That's my read on it. I don't know, Shalini, Andy, or Anika if you have a different take on that. And I would add capacity of staff time to that. Correct, yeah. I do wanna just toss it out there that personally I think TSO has an incredible opportunity and is an extremely important branch between the legislative and the executive. And so I just wanna defend TSO's honor here a little because I do think that we do really important work. And I think like you said Dorothy, those presentations are hugely informative. And even when they're just to us, they're being recorded and put on the website. They're now useful to the town. And so yeah, just wanna throw a little stamp in there. Right, and a quick question to Paul before I call Andy, will the town council get this presentation as well or is it just us? Which presentation? The roads and sidewalks presentation. This is just for the TSO committee the presentation and we will share it with the counselors and take and watch it at their leisure. Okay, because I will say it certainly makes us better counselors to have had this presentation. As this is the language that our council, our constituents speak constantly. Agreed. Okay, so Andy. Yeah, getting back to what I was suggesting is the report that we about this particular suggestion. I think the other thing that was in there so we were also talking about whether there was another committee besides the council committee that might be the best mechanism to address it and that should also be in the report. Yes, yes, thank you very much. That would definitely will. Okay, any more hands today? It is five after nine. We have our understanding of that report. We didn't have to do a vote. Preview of the next meeting. Okay, again, that's on a piece of paper. Which I can't lay my hand on right now. Do you want to approve minutes quickly, Drecky? Oh, yes. And Athena, you know the future agenda? Let me just see. It's on a piece of paper somewhere, but I can't find it when I'm here. I could certainly email to the group some of the items on the future agenda. Okay, I've got it. Okay. Okay. Before we do the okay on the minutes, I just wanted to say an agenda setting meeting that I had with Paul and Lynn, our May 5th meeting, 630 Kendrick Park hearing on any issues related to public way, finished recommendations and all items and Guilford was to give us a memo on how to regulate these spaces. Water by law and regulations, sewer by law and regulations. We're going to discuss the finance committee still needs to discuss cost options. And we would hear that, I think before we would make our final recommendation on those two important pieces of business. And we have voted on the rental registration. So we don't have to have that on our next agenda. Possible topic is crosswalk. I guess it's really happened. Crosswalk on East Pleasant Street, Garcia's only if not voted by town council on April 25th. In other words, that may go directly to the town council without going to us first. But if they send it to us, then we have to talk about it and appointments. So those were things we'll switch for down for our next meeting. Our May 19th meeting is when we're gonna have senior center and senior services. We're gonna get our presentation on outreach from the three CPOs. We're gonna talk about speed limits, talk about the role of TAC and reworking of the charge for TAC. So that's our preview. So that's a lot of stuff. Okay, it's true. We've got a lot of stuff. At some point we may run out of things to do and we'll figure out what to do with our extra time. Any questions on future agenda items? Otherwise we'll go to the minutes. Thank you. Thanks, I just wanted to quickly let you know that the public notice for the hearing on the parking regulations along Kendrick Park has been published, was published today and it'll be published again next week for the hearing on May 5th. It's also on the bulletin board and the town did propose that those spaces be metered at 50 cents an hour between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Is that, did I have that right, Paul? I don't think we have a global record. Was there a two hour limit on the parking which was one of the items of discussion? Yes, and the reason for that is that's the most aggressive parking regulation if you want to scale that back. It gives you the ability to scale it back. But it also allows for more turnover so people can come and park the car and use the park, which, okay, great, okay. And I just have to say once again, thank you, Athena. We really, really, really appreciate you very, very much, okay, and thank you for posting those notices. Okay, Shalini, you have your hand up. It's a future agenda item. Can we include our communications with UMS outreach to UMS? Yes, thank you. Thank you. When I read over the original charge, I said, oh yeah, we're supposed to be talking to UMS. I did go to the CCC committee yesterday on Zoom and they were talking about the new extended calendar. All right, Dorothy, what's the CCC? God, I don't, community coalition. Is that a town? Is that a town? It's a UMS committee of all the UMS people and public safety officers that it deals with student behavior and actually, I know somebody who knows the answer. Andy has his hand up. I think he knows it. Andy. It has campus and community coalition to address problem drinking or something. That's, I think, close to the title. And it includes largely town staff and university staff, though some students who work on student behavior issues around excessive, you know, it gets into behavior issues, but it was originally formed around alcohol and other substance. Right, it had, there were many interesting aspects and one was that the walk this way, people have, first of all, it's been very cold. They have not been very active and many of them were terribly distressed about the death and the traffic accident. It was also about can marijuana be delivered to the dorms and can alcohol be delivered to the dorms and some people had done some, set up some operations. I would say it's a very thorough committee which is trying to deal with and anticipate and predict to avoid major student problems, such as may have happened in the past. But I know that Paul, you certainly had some strong comments about the sudden change in the university calendar without even mentioning it to committees at which town officers were there. This is supposed to be part of TSO, we haven't done it. And I guess I'd really like Paul to comment on what you think we can do in terms of, because I know the town itself, you have more power than we do, is having trouble getting real conversation on some issues with the university. What can we as a committee TSO do in terms of university relationships? I just wanna point out quickly that this was brought up as a future agenda item, so we should get it. Okay, very good, thank you, thank you so much. Okay, I'm gonna add that to May 19th, maybe. I'm just gonna put that down, but that is a very important point. And we can avoid that discussion. So let's go back then to the approval of the minutes. And unless there is a problem or comment on the minutes, we should go ahead and approve those minutes. Does anyone have a comment on the minutes? I move we approve the minutes of April 7th, 2022. Thank you very much, and I'll call the question. Andy, how do you vote? Yes. Okay, Shalini. Yes. Anika. Yes. Anna. Yes. Dorothy, yes. Okay, then the minutes have been passed. And again, thank you, Athena, for the minutes. I will add that if I am to give a report for the town council meeting on Monday, I would appreciate the minutes if you have them, okay? And I'm gonna try to get that done tonight or early to morning. I will send them to you momentarily. Oh, thank you so much, that would be so great. Okay, because we've done a lot of work and we want to be able to report to the town council on what we have done. Okay. Any closing comments from anyone? I'm looking particularly at the town manager, but he doesn't have to. Okay, he's done. Okay, thank you all for your hard work. And we can say we did our job. Okay, thank you very much. Meeting adjourned. Thank you. Good night, everyone. Bye, everybody. Bye-bye.