 recording. Okay. This meeting is being recorded. Thank you. Good evening. It's February 20. No, it isn't. It is March 6. And this is the regular meeting of the town council. Based on the November 7, 2022 act that extended suspension of certain provisions of the open meeting law. We are allowed to hold meetings remotely without a quorum of the council physically present at the meeting location. However, I want to call attention to the fact that nine counselors are in fact planning to be in the room tonight. We're still waiting for one more. The other counselors are remote and therefore fully participating. This meeting is accessible in real time by Zoom, by phone, and as live broadcast on Amherst media channel 17 and through Amherst media's live stream. Given that we have a quorum of the council present, I'm calling the March 6, 2023 town council meeting to order at 6.34. I'll call upon each counselor by name. At that time, you should unmute your mic and say present. This will indicate that you can hear us and we can hear you. Please remember to mute your mic afterwards. Shalini Balmain is not present at this time, but she is expected. Patty Angelis. Anna Devlin-Goth here. Present. Lynn Greese-Marish present. Mandy Jo Hanneke. Present. Anika Loafs. Present. Michelle Miller. Present. Dorothy Pam. Here. Pam Rooney. Present. Kathy Shane. I'm here. Andy Steinberg. Present. Jennifer Tob. Present. Alicia Walker. Present. There is no chat room for this meeting. If you have technical issues, please let Athena and me know, and if we need to, we will either make note of that or stop the meeting until we can correct the technical difficulties. If you would like to make a comment or ask a question, please use the raise hand button. Before moving to announcements, I want to review the revised order of the agenda tonight. And note we have added a specific public comment period in addition to the general public comment period. This specific public comment period is associated with item 8A. After this, we, after I finish talking about the agenda, and Athena is going to show the order of the agenda on the screen, we will move immediately to announcements. There are no hearings tonight. And if time allows before we move on to our special guests, we will move to the consent agenda. Around 6.45 or 6.50, we expect Senator Comerford and Representative Dom to join us in the town room. The memo in the council's packet lays out the expectations for that portion of the meeting. We have asked them to be with us for at least an hour, but they are always welcome to join us at any time and for all of our meetings. After that, we will have general public comment. There will be a second specific public comment in relationship to agenda item 8A. Proposed amendments to Town Council Rules of Procedure Rules 3.2, 5.1, and 5.2. I am asking now, and will do so again, that if at all possible for the public wishing to make comments about the proposed rules of procedure, that you save your comments for that specific public comment. When we get to item 8A, the item will first be introduced and councillors will have a first round of discussion. We will then have specific public comment and we will not vote until after that specific public comment. And that vote may be to adopt, it may be to change, it may be to refer back to GOL. We will proceed with the remainder of the meeting as it appears on the posted agenda. I want to ask now whether councillors have any questions about the order of the agenda. I'm seeing no hands. Then we're going to move to announcements. Our next regular meeting is on March 20th, 2023, obviously at 6.30. And we will be having a Town Council retreat on March 25th from 8.30 to 1.30 p.m. There's various upcoming council committee meetings and district meetings as well. You'll see both all of those on the screen. However, I'd like to take a moment to show the announcement for the screening of the big payback and a discussion with former Evanston Alter woman Robin Rue Simmons. This is sponsored by the AHA RA. It's on March 30th, 2023 at 6.00 p.m. on the Amherst College campus. Amherst College campus, right. Okay. Please consult the boards and committees calendar and other community events calendar on the town website. We are going to move now to the council agenda. And the following items were selected. If you want to remove an item, please state so after I've gone through the initial list and in doing so, we will put that item aside that does not require a second. Okay. Also, I want to just ask on Athena's behalf, if you have any questions on any of the minutes rather than try to edit them in the meeting, just have them removed and we'll have an opportunity for people to provide edits otherwise. Okay. So the motion is followed to move the following items and the printed motions they're under and approve those items as a single unit. 6A adoption of the 2023 Tibetan national uprising day proclamation. 6B adoption of the 2023 child abuse awareness and prevention month proclamation. 6C amendment to a previously adopted resolution affirming the town of Amherst commitment to end structural racism and achieve racial equity for Black residents. 8A adoption of proposed amendments to town council rules of procedure, rule 3.2, 5.1 and 5.2. 11A to H approval of the following meaning minutes and they're listed on your screen. Are there requests to remove an item? Pat DeAngeles. Pat, please use your mic. I would like to remove item 8A. Okay. 8A is removed from the consent agenda. Are there any other items? Anna? No. No, just wasn't fast enough. Okay. So with that we're removing item 8A on this list and therefore I'm looking for a second for the amendments for the consent agenda. Is there a second? Change seconds. Okay. With 8A removed. Yes. Thank you. Any other further discussion or comment? Seeing none, I'm going to move to a vote. First of all, Shalini, can you hear us? Yes, I can. And we can hear you and you'll be coming on the screen as soon as possible. You brought your computer, right? Thank you. Okay. In terms of the consent agenda, are you an aye or what? Okay. Pat DeAngeles. Aye. Anna Devlin-Goth here. Aye. Lynn Griesmers and I'm Andy Johanicki. Aye. Annika Lopes. Aye. Michelle Miller. Aye. Dorothy Pam. Yes. Pam Rooney. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Aye. Jennifer Tobbe. Jennifer, can you hear us? Can you hear us? Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Alicia Walker. Yes. Thank you. All right. We did do the resolutions and so I'm actually going to, while we're waiting for Senator Comerford to join us, I'm going to ask Shalini Balmil to read the last paragraphs of the resolution with regarding to the Tibetan celebration of their uprising. Okay. Sure. So I just want to first acknowledge the members of the Tibetan community who are in residence. Thank you for being here and our state rep, Mindy Dom. Thank you for being here joining us this evening. So these are the last three paragraphs from the proclamation. Now, therefore, we, the town council of the town of Amherst and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, recognizes the local Tibetan American communities plea for justice for the people of Tibet on the 64th anniversary of Tibetan National Uprising Day and continues to proclaim each March 10th as Tibet Day and further recognizes this proclamation by raising the Tibetan national flag from March 10th to March 20th, 2023 to help cultivate awareness for all residents of Amherst and further to pay tribute to 154 self-immolated Tibetans among the brave men and women who have given their lives for the cause of freedom in Tibet. Members of the regional Tibetan Association of Massachusetts based in Amherst will hold a flag raising ceremony at 9am on March 10th, 2023 in front of the Amherst town hall and a walk for Tibet from Amherst to Northampton and further that the clerk of the town council shall cause copies of this proclamation be sent to President Biden of the United States, Massachusetts Senators Markey and Warren, Massachusetts Representative McGovern, Governor Healy of Massachusetts, the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland and Penpas Searing, President of the Central Tibetan Administration. So I just want to again invite everyone to join town council on March 10th at 9am and I also wanted to share that there is a renowned poet writer and Tibetan activist who's visiting Amherst at the Pioneer Valley and so he did a kickoff event at Hampshire College yesterday and there are two more events, one will be in April. So please look out for that and there is one tomorrow. This is Tenzin Shunju, his latest book, Nowhere to Call Home, he will be there at Odyssey Bookstore tomorrow at 7pm. Thank you. Thank you and we're going to also then have the 2023 Child Abuse Awareness and Prevention Month Proclamation, the last paragraph, Mandy Johanna. Thank you. Now therefore the Amherst Town Council here by proclaims the month of April to be Child Abuse Awareness and Prevention Month and further recognizes this proclamation by raising the Child Abuse Prevention flag from April 3rd 2023 to April 30 2023 to help cultivate awareness for all residents of Amherst and it is my understanding that that flag raising ceremony will be on April 3rd at 2.30pm in front of Town Hall. Outstanding. Thank you and I just want to mention the other one that we voted on, it was a request of Councillor Michelle Miller back when we passed this she brought it to us, she worked closely with as a representative and co-founder of reparations for Amherst and she requested that reparations for Amherst be added as a community sponsor. At that time we were not listing community sponsors on proclamations and so it was just that addition. So with that I would like to welcome Senator Joe Comerford. I'm sorry. Do we want to invite our guests from the Dividend Community if they'd like to come and say a few words? Thank you. Please come forward. Thank you, Shalini. You need to push the button to make sure the microphone is on and keep your finger on it. You'd have to hold it. I have to hold it. Okay. Hello everyone. Thank you so much for having us here and thank you so much for all your support for our Tibet cause. My name is Jamba. I'm the elected Vice President of the Regional Tibetan Association Massachusetts. Thank you so much again. Hello. Good evening. My name is Sering. I live in Sunderland. Thank you. Thank you so much for having us and thanks for all the support that you have given to us. I really appreciate it. It means a lot to us and I've been elected as an accountant for the next two years for the Regional Tibetan Association. Thank you very much. Great. Good evening. My name is Fond of Sering, a member of the local Tibetan community. Again, when I acknowledge and thank the Town Council for supporting this proclamation and raising of the Tibetan National Flag, I think this truly is not only giving hope to Tibetans in exile, but more importantly, to the Tibetans inside occupied Tibet and so this proclamation means a lot and I just want to highlight just three elements of this proclamation that I think is critical. One of the element in this proclamation is the mass DN collection of Tibetans inside Tibet and two institutions, the Human Rights Watch and the Citizens' Lab at the University of Toronto have done a study on this to confirm that from 2016 up to this point of time Tibetans, young children, women, monks are being forced to give their blood samples or this DNA collection and in this process, Massachusetts based company, Thermal Fisher Scientific, which is based in Walton, has been involved in terms of supply, DNA, sequence, equipment and tools. There was a report in the way back in 2019 by the Human Rights Watch Committee, which found these DNA sequence of equipment being sold in the Xinjiang Uighurs Autonomous Region and in 2019 that they said that they would stop doing it any further and a New York report found that even in 2021 they were selling still these equipment. You might wonder why this is such a big deal. Part of the reason for this is in addition to the six decades of repression, annexation or occupation of Tibet, China has launched an enhanced biometric and DN collection of surveillance and so if somebody finds a picture of a Dalai Lama or a national flag or a flyer that says free Tibet in the streets of Amdo or the capital city of Tibet, Chinese police can do a test and based on the DNA identification, they will be able to arrest this Tibetan and so this is a matter of deep concern to us and we hope that the elected leaders in this state will call upon the unofficial to be more responsible. We certainly have no reservations of them doing any business elsewhere, but I think when it is, when they become an accomplice, either willingly or unwittingly an accomplice is of human rights abuse, I think that's definitely a concern for all of us. The second issue that I want to highlight and which I'm very happy to share is that congressman Jim McGovern had introduced the Tibetan Promoting Tibetan Resolution Act on January 26 and as of today, there are six co-sponsors of this resolution. This resolution essentially calls for the United States government to recognize that Tibet was historically an independent nation from ancient times contrary to Chinese propaganda. This resolution also calls based on international law, Tibetans have a right to self-determination and their right must be respected and so as I mentioned, there have been six sponsors of this bill as of today and I know there will be many more but I want to take this opportunity to request our elected Massachusetts U.S. House of Congress representatives to sort of be the leaders in supporting this resolution and finally this is somewhat of a good news but also again reflected in this proclamation is the fact that the Chinese government has forcibly removed young Tibetan children some as young as age of four years from their Tibetan homes taken away to the so-called colonial boarding school so that they can be given a Chinese education and be totally removed from their Tibetan culture, Tibetan language, Tibetan tradition in a way to sort of really indoctrinate this future Tibetan young children so that they cannot speak, Tibetan language, they cannot communicate with their family and in this regard the United Nations Commission on Commission on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights just recently held a meeting in Geneva on February 15 and 16 closely questioning the Chinese government regarding this and they've issued a report today which calls for the immediate closure of these colonial boarding schools and for authorization and allowing Tibetans to start Tibetan private schools in Tibet so I think this is a great victory for the children of Tibet I think we'll have to wait and see if China who is a key member of the United Nations will actually follow some of these the findings of their own UN body. Finally I want to take this opportunity once again to thank all the council members for supporting this proclamation I also want to thank Senator Joe Comerford and the President of Mendidim who are their representatives who will be joining us on March 10th, Tibetan National uprising day and this really means a lot to us and thank you very much for your support once again. Thank you for joining us this evening and we'll see you on Friday. Thank you. So at this point I would like to welcome Senator Joe Comerford and Representative Mindy Dom. We're going to ask them to come up and sit side by side right here in the town room with us and thank you for joining us in person. Athena yes. I'm just noticing that we lost Alicia so I'm wondering if we can oh here she is I just want to confirm that she can hear us. Alicia can you hear us? Yes I can thank you. Thank you so welcome and for the purposes of the audience and those of us here there are nine councillors in the room there are four other councillors on zoom we are all present tonight in addition to that with the we have four other people in our audience and we have 20 30 people on zoom in our audience as well as other people who are watching on Amherst media or live streaming okay yeah we've been doing it this way for over a year so it's very proud of how much we've tried to open ourselves back up after the pandemic so we're going to start with a presentation and then we've provided a couple initial questions and then some questions that other councillors or the councillors might have in addition so the floor is yours. I'm sorry Lynn zoom can't hear Senator Comerford and I'm wrapped down thank you I do my finger good good good or I can just hand this yeah is this better can people hear now yes we're getting a thumbs up on that one okay okay I'm on top of it literally so thank you so much for inviting us I also I'm going to say this throughout the presentation and I want to really extend this invitation again and again to the town council you don't have to wait four years or two terms or a pandemic to have us come back and give a report on what we're doing and tell us what you want us to be doing please consider doing this at least once a year and so you can tell us what's on your mind and it makes us better advocates and it makes us more successful on behalf of the town so that's an open invitation please take us up on it we've created a presentation that's going to go through a little bit about the logistics sort of of the of the legislative process just to make sure we're on the same page and then Joe and I are going to share what our committees are and just some highlights from bills we received some concerns in advance that counselors provided to us thank you for that we're going to address some of those and if we don't address it completely I'm going to trust that folks are going to say wait you didn't answer it or we need more information we have paper pen computers to take down questions and we hope to make this really a productive conversation I'm thrilled to be here so did you want to say it I'll just join Mindy and thanking you so much for making the time I love representing Amherst with Mindy Dom and I really so much appreciate the tireless work of this council and the staff and of course the school committee as well all the public bodies that make Amherst work municipal governance we say this to Lynn a lot because we get to speak with Lynn it is so hard to do what you're doing and so it is an honor to work shoulder to shoulder with Mindy on behalf of Amherst and trying to be the best allies and advocates we can be for you and if I can just repeat that I won't make it too much of a love fest but feeling the same way about working with the council but also you'll hear tonight that Senator Cumberford and I are a team and we're a very strong deep partnership so we support each other in advocating and representing Amherst and we try to play on each other's strengths and we strategize around supporting Amherst so feel free to tell us what you need and we'll we'll figure out how to implement it and how to go through okay let's start thank you Athena so I'll just start with one thing and then I'm going to pass it off to Joe as you know each session is two years so we've been elected we just were re-elected this started a new session in January of 2023 and that's about the length of the legislative session but actually legislation has less time than two years because there's recess there's budget etc there's you know what some people call a slow legislature and so it really comes down to about an 18 month session and that means from the start of introducing legislation to getting through this whole process that Joe will describe and getting across the finish line it's about 18 months but as you know every year we have to develop a budget so that goes along simultaneously with legislation Joe and just very quickly many of you know this cycle and it is of course not linear at all but it even though we've laid it out in a line this is maybe our hoped for cycle but I just want to say that Amherst is expert here we gear up to start the legislative session that happened from August until we got sworn in and Amherst and members of the Amherst community and certainly the town council the school committee talked to us about the kind of priorities that you wanted us to file then we get sworn in as Repdom said and then there's a process of cosponsorship we're in that right now so if there are bills that are important to Amherst we would like to hear about them also if there are bills that are threatening to Amherst we would like to hear about them this is a very powerful time certainly Amherst constituents are telling us what they like and they don't like but this is also the council we especially want to hear from the council soon but bills will flood into committees both the home rules that Repdom has led on and then the other bills that perhaps Amherst is interested in and they'll get new numbers and it'll all change and then the hearing season is upon us once again hearing from Amherst at hearings is critical because you are our people you're our loyalty you know you're you're where our loyalty lies if you say Joe Mindy this bill is really important and you send in testimony or you come yourself that's where we are much stronger because legislators understand the these are my town this is my town council and my town council wants this that's language that leaders of committees really understand and then of course there's a committee decision and then it goes through other committees and then God willing a bill that you want would come out to the floor and both the house and the Senate and then it has to be reconciled so again as Repdom said as Mindy said very well even though we're here for two years it really is compressed because of that joint rule 10 which is a very archaic term which is the first Wednesday in February of the second year so the first Wednesday in 2024 many of these bills will have to have a decision not all of them because we break our own rules in the legislature but many will and that's so that's that's the kind of race we're under right now I just want to also point out that this year the committee hearings will be hybrid and that means that not only residents of western mass but officials in western massachusetts don't have to spend a whole day going to Boston to be able to submit three minutes of testimony unless you want to but you will be able to participate in those hearings as will residents remotely which is huge and a great benefit to western mass that we should capitalize on maximize and deliver so that the legislature sees that when they do that kind of thing when we make hearings remote it's not just legislators saying it will encourage participation but it results in increased participation so here's what the budget process looks like and i'm going to let joe pick this up and i'll just say that both repdomini during the rules debate which is the thing that happens first we were very vocal in having the hybrid option for hearings because of what repdom just said it was one of our priorities both of us so as repdom said earlier Mindy said earlier i think we should just do the joe Mindy yes yeah okay forget this reference it's a confusing situation i can't um while we do legislation over two years we do budgets over one um and so we are in the heat of it my friends because the governor is new she had until march 1st to file her budget that is right i think because how the heck she could she possibly do it um in january but that just means that our season is compressed so we were already in budget season the ways and means committee kicks off tomorrow um with a the sort of the what i call the big dog hearing in boston where all of the agency heads will come and then we take it on the road which we'll talk about a little bit later um then the house goes first the house always goes first in budgeting house does money bills and they go first repdom Mindy will be very active here they file amendments they debate they vote then they kick it to the senate and the senate will do all of this work before memorial day in may and then they'll appoint a conference committee three and three bipartisan house senate and and they will reconcile the budget by to be sent to the governor for her signature or vetoes or amendments and have it all wrapped up by july 1 now we understand that sometimes we don't make our deadline and then we will extend government but i do think that we should be held to account to make this deadline um keep in mind that when the governor makes vetoes or amendments the house and the senate have 10 days to be able to override that um and i is that right or they have and they have a certain period of time also to set those vetoes no the governor had governor has 10 days to veto we have to do it pretty quickly after that so we have to be mindful that this has to pass within a certain period of time so that if we get vetoes back we have an opportunity to override um otherwise the governor's vetoes will stand this was an issue during the governor baker's term because he submitted overrides that often cut at the core of what the legislature was trying to do and so we had to stay in to be able to override sometimes we couldn't we had to come back the beginning of the next session and we'd take up the whole bill again but in this case we'll see what happens you know it's the beginning of the dance between governor healy and the legislature and i will just say that um the last ways and means hearing which i believe is april 7th and we'll get the council all this information that's a public hearing so um while some are invitation only when they're in the field uh the public will be able to testify and of course we'll be letting constituents know uh because that's a great opportunity and this is a that's a good opportunity we saw that some of the commons coming from counselors were about statewide issues in particular funding issues and how they affect the town of amherst charter school reimbursement was one of those chapter 90 for roads was one the this hearing is a good opportunity to say our town connected with other towns need more because that's where you'll be able to have the audience of ways and means to be able to get that conversation and it also helps us quite frankly because then we're echoing the sentiments of our town which they've just heard and just to draw your attention to the fact that it all kicks off with consensus revenue um which is the the first thing in the budget process that's how much money we're going to make okay and if i can just say something on that so this year on the consensus revenue one of the big question marks is what are we going to how much are we going to get from fair share and when will we be able to spend that that has not been determined so just keep that in mind that that pool of funds that many of us wanted to see that could be dedicated to transportation and education has not been clearly defined and so it may not be incorporated into the budget until it is actually okay thank you with you know thanks so i just wanted to put a page up on home rules because they kind of go with a little bit of a different schedule they don't have a schedule home rules can be introduced at any point during the session and bills can be too but they expect that home rules will because they're relying on towns to take action um it's good if they're filed at the beginning of the session in my opinion because they'll get scheduled with like-minded home rules and that's a benefit i think because it shows that towns some especially if they're dealing with policy it shows that there's sort of solidarity on an issue rather than a town being an outlier so right now amherst has two home rules filed the first one is hd 2929 that number will change when it gets directed to a committee um and that's the one that allows for amherst to have ranked choice voting in local elections and hd 4164 which was the most recent one we received from the town council which has a real estate property transfer fee for the town for the city known as the town of amherst there you go and i think um there was a comment about a third home rule we have not received that one yet but we've been told to expect one um that would allow non-citizen voting in local elections and so once that we get um that documentation i'll go to house council they'll review it make sure the eyes are dotted the teaser crossed and then it gets filed and will have a number and we'll pass the number on to you um it's good that these bills are being filed in the early part of the session because for example the amherst ranked choice voting one will probably be locked in with other local communities looking for ranked choice voting which i think is going to be helpful and the same thing with the real estate transfer fee to be part of a bigger discussion next one Athena so this is just our reminder to you that knowing what's important to amherst makes us better at advocating for amherst i know that sounds really simple and almost kind of stupid but it's also it's a reaffirm reaffirmation of the invitation to keep telling us what's important to you and to the town because that's what allows us to use that information to insert it into conversations with our colleagues to use it as a way to build support and ultimately to affect policies because not everything's going to be done on the floor of the house or the senate because actually very few bills comparatively get to the floor of the senate or the house but this is part of building awareness and support for amherst's concerns in the building next one Athena so um we've just been named to committees in the past two weeks um which is why those bills still have their baby house docket numbers because they haven't actually been forwarded to specific committees yet um i'm happy to tell you that i was named chair of the joint committee house chair of the joint committee on tourism arts and cultural development and i'm extremely excited about it i know that um in amherst i know from our time during the beginning of covid that tourism arts and cultural development are essential not only to our personal development but to our economic development and so i'm extremely excited about seeing this intersection and how we can support and promote it in the commonwealth and i'm also a member of the joint committee on higher education which i guess i don't have to really say too much about why that's important to our town um but you know being a member on that committee and i'll let joe give herself the honors here but being a member on that committee is really important because it allows um i saw this in my first session when we dealt with the legislation on what to do if a college was needing to close and it because i was on the committee i really felt like i had an opportunity to talk to the chair of that committee and influence the way that legislation was moving to the committee this year i'll have a different opportunity and i'll let joe go here and i'll just say i'm thrilled that mindy is the chair of this really important committee but and you can also expect us to work on issues that are important like arts and culture um even if we're not in the chair position so when we talk about the chairs this evening you know we're we can't be on all committees but you can expect us to do work on it for example uh mindy and i brought michael bobbitt who's the executive director of mass cultural we brought him to the region twice you know and that's because we know it's important for michael to fall in love with amherst as much as we are um so where you see opportunities for us to work with state colleagues even if we're not in their committees um we can do that right that's part of what we should be doing is bringing people west so that they can meet you um and appreciate this work as much as we do okay oh this is mindy sorry thank you joe that's so but it's such a good thing to underscore is that a lot of our job is talking with colleagues about the kinds of policies programs and assets that are important to amherst because that ultimately makes building support for the policies you want to see passed easier so i really thank you for doing that so i just i we were asked to give a little bit of our bills i'm just going to point out my bills fall in these categories you can find them on rep mindy dom.com or on the massachusetts legislator website i would have to say that the the three most the three categories that um i'm really sort of prioritizing this year are economic and food security um the climate and um public health under economic and food security i include student hunger and so it's on that in that category that i'm also talking about college affordability because the more we help with students being able to afford dinner the more they can have resources for other kinds of things um i'm happy to discuss more later but i don't want to take up too much time with talking at okay these are my committees um so uh mindy is a member of higher ed i was appointed to be the chair just like mindy's the chair of arts and tourism culture uh that'll that'll be my senate chair position um i'm also the senate vice chair of a new committee on agriculture which again higher education and agriculture it's not surprising that these would be both committees that are interesting to me personally but also important to our region like arts and culture and then i was named assistant vice chair of the senate committee on ways and means ways and means is a joint committee but the senate and the house will sort of stack up their membership um and then operate separately and together um so those are those are my chair position ships or assistant vice chair um and then i'm a member of the joint committee on economic development and emerging technologies um i really wanted to be on this committee so i'm psyched that the senate president appointed me um i'm interested in this area i'm interested in especially small businesses startups um i'm interested in the new ways that people are doing business uh you know the kind of closed loop green technologies certainly i'm interested in the tie of this to climate um so i'm this is a i think going to be fun uh this committee also i asked to be appointed again to the joint committee on racial equity civil rights and inclusion this was a committee stood up by the legislature um after the murder of george floyd it was the next session um they stood up this joint committee so i was a member last session and um i'm glad to come back i think we can do more with this committee and it's got good leadership um in it always does but i'm excited about seeing what we can do then i'm on the senate committee on global warming and climate change this is a little confusing because you're like well we have the telecommunications and utility and energy that's one joint committee in enra um the environment natural resources or it's now enra or enra because we took off agriculture um and now what about the senate committee this is a you know this is an interesting committee senator cindy creme is chairing um she's quite a good chair and it gives the senate an opportunity to look at issues that complement the other committees and so uh not surprisingly because i represent amherst i'm interested in things like net zero energy um construct net zero building um and how it's getting implemented you'll remember that rep dom and i had that bill which we passed uh but you know getting a bill passed doesn't mean anything unless you see it through i'm also interested of course in methane counting and carbon accounting things that amherst folks are leading on and then i'm on the senate committee on rules i was appointed to the temporary committee on rules um which is you know how rep dom and i engaged senate house on things like virtual participation in hearings um and now we get to come back i i've never been on this committee but it does help schedule the senate floor uh and like uh mindy i have different categories of bills they are all on senator joe cummerford dot org dot org dot com dot org your dot org your dot com okay mindy dom dot com it's funny um uh it's but they're all there um with with summaries like like mindy has but i i'll just say that i broke them out into these categories to talk with you tonight so i you know i've i've been lucky to learn so much from towns like amherst on what's needed municipally so i have a transfer fee bill um i know amherst has a home rule in this space mine's uh slightly different but it looks at how how towns get to have a local option transfer fee um for what we call luxury real estate um and it's a great coalition behind that bill i also have a bill to set up a municipal building authority um that would be for municipal and public safety buildings um and dpw buildings the whole suite of them know everything from towns town halls to salt sheds to fire complexes um and really do it like mblc mass board of library commissioners or msba mass school building um uh association authority sorry um and then pilot i pay a lot of attention like reptom like mindy to the payment lieu of taxes we're going to talk about that as work mindy has been leading this is about state-owned land uh both in terms of getting more money and you'll see that the government governor actually um that's been an advocacy something we've shared with governor healy and lieutenant governor driscoll we're very pleased with her number um in her h1 budget we can get it higher i think um so we're going to be there but we also have to actually look at the formula right now the formula disadvantages western massachusetts um which is i think reprehensible so that's what that bill is and then education i i do have bills in the education space um again i've been made smarter by uh you know amherst and amherst regional school committee around special education um i foster school foster student transportation in this space and others that the auditor auditor former auditor bump called out as inequities that really linger in town budgets i also have a bill around a couple of bills around higher education making it more affordable and accessible on climate i focus a lot on pfast there was as you know i think a task force on pfast which was led by a leader kate hogan and senator julie and sear um and so while i had a very large pfast bill last session rather than clutter up the space i they they filed it i cosponsored it because they had the honor of doing the task force but i have one on farms and farmers because pfast and our farmers um is really going to we're on a collision course unless we do it right so um i can certainly talk about more there we also repped on mendy and i talk a lot about solar siding which i know is a very large conversation also land conservation and then in health care um i again i won't go into details but i focus a lot on public health and also maternal health equity uh so i have some i was able to chair a commission on maternal health equity last session and i have a couple of bills in the space um and then of course not not unsurprisingly food security and farms so in terms of regional efforts many of you know that joe and i have been involved with both trying to make sure that we maximize state contributions for library and for the new school project i also want to point out that one of the things we did before um advocating successfully for a change in the reimbursement rate with msba for schools by the foot is we were able to successfully get amherst back on the line for msba when we first got elected i know it seems like ages ago but it really was only four years ago um amherst was not on the line at the time we and we both promised when we ran for office that this would be our number one priority and thrilled to do that kathy can i just say publicly thank you so much for your incredible work on this committee and advocacy um i really i feel like you have made amherst um a much better town and much more engaged by your temperament and your diligence and you've made it for me as well so thank you um and so right now i'd say the currently what we're working on is we're trying to work with you know not only with amherst town council but with other reps and senators from other communities who are in this coveted overage construction costs with their library projects um place and trying to see if we are able to get additional related funds for all these communities who are facing these significant overages um with the school msba as i mentioned we you know i think we've been successful in increasing that rate we're not stopping you know we're continuing to say tell us what else you need and then turning around and trying to make sure that we can get it um joe would you like to tell us about the rail commission or is there something else no i just want to recognize that amherst with the library work the mblc work and lin you know you really are leading this with a lot of good folks in amherst um the kind of organizing that amherst is doing is really actually unparalleled um you know maybe we we're going to brag a little about you you know compared to other folks and with dearfield too dearfield is a good partner to amherst i know but we have three libraries uh you know potentially at at risk threatened amherst our engine dearfield and we're only going to succeed here if we work together and all the legislators house and senate members feel the heat um and the responsibility the obligation that we feel here in western massachusetts so if we were not stronger together they would be able to pick us off frankly and we would not get funded um but we are a force um here we're not we're far from being done actually on the mblc front but we're not we're not going to go down without a fight um and hopefully we'll prevail um on regional rail and the rail commission folks know i think very well there are four regional rail um projects underway currently um in western massachusetts there's the north south that went permanent the valley flyer there's the berkshire flyer that hooks up from new york city um that's in its second year of a very successful pilot it's almost assuredly going that's seasonal though but it's almost assuredly going permanent mass dot has started work already and is seeking both federal funds and we got a massive um earmark which governor healy said that she would release of about 250 million dollars um so that that is happening um east west west east from pitsfield through springfield um and that is exciting and it's a very ambitious um process and we have the northern tier um north adams into uh boston along the route to corridor another it's a different kind of rail project it's not high speed but it's also exceedingly affordable um compared to what i think is a necessary expenditure for springfield at the end of the springfield line so i think we should go for all four um Mindy Mindy and i are pretty solidly aligned here and are really talking with regional colleagues we don't have to just settle for one line like be grateful for the valley flyer and and not advocate for anything else no um we have a right to be hooked up north south east west um and to continue to fight for our fair of uh resources people pay a penny of your sales tax to the mbta um it's time for us to get some money back in western mass so that's the rail commission um that was another uh joint effort of house senate um where we were both very involved getting a rail commission to really look at governance so we want for more rail authorities or rail lines moving we need an authority to govern them figure out about capital infrastructure figure out who's going to run these things figure out about when they run how they connect how the staffing happens so that's what's happening there um and that is actually there's a hearing on march 21st um there is a rail commission hearing in north hampton it's the one in hampshire county and i would just i would you know come short of um bending a knee here you know but just let me say that it would really be wonderful to have a formal statement from the town of amherst if not someone to deliver that and you don't have to be an expert on how the heck we should govern this but to say that this is an economic and social game changer for us and you really want the kind of regional equity um this is providing um it would be it would mean a great deal do you want to do solar siding yeah can i i just want to say one other thing about that that's not joe and i also are strong advocates and work really hard on trying to get more funding for rta so the thing it's not at one or the other it's a it's a yes and for public transportation in western messachusetts the rail piece is critical because it allows for people to go across the state and that could be the for work for tourism um for you know academic purposes etc um people have often asked me i think i've mentioned this to some of you which one does amherst prefer the northern tier or the southern tier and i say whichever one goes first that's the one that amherst prefers but amherst is in this unique position because we're not a stop on any of these trains um routes but we have lots of folks who want to use the train we sort of bring sort of an objective view to the rail so i can't underscore what joe said enough about participating in the march 21st hearing um to talk about what the town would stand to gain from a northern or southern route and additional train um possibilities solar sighting i just i'm going to just talk briefly about this joe and i working with a group from umas amherst to develop a workshop conference that will help municipalities kind of figure develop a matrix for decision making around solar sighting in their municipalities i think that's a good way and so um we'll keep you posted on this amherst is certainly a town that comes to our mind when we were approached when we approach them and they approach us to think about doing it and we think it's going to be very helpful it's not only like what are some common what's the language that we all need to speak when we're talking about solar sighting but it's really about what are the tradeoffs and which are the tradeoffs that towns want to make or don't want to make so it's not telling you what those tradeoffs should be but it's a way of thinking about those tradeoffs um healthcare workforce pipeline will do one piece and you'll do the other so we each have bills that would try to put more people into this pipeline western massachusetts as many of you know has been experiencing severe healthcare um personal shortages even before covid during covid even more so and now as we're still in it but coming out of it a little bit really experiencing this tightly and so the bill that i have is one that looks at what a commission um commission that was working at was examining foreign trained um physicians and how to facilitate their work in unites massachusetts without having to go back specifically to do a whole medical residency the bill basically creates a pathway for that and i'm really proud of this bill because i think it's important for our neighbors to be able to the opportunity to share their talents it's good for patients to be able to access um to physicians of all kinds but also culturally um competent physicians at the same time and i'm thrilled that the center for new americans um that lorry moment the executive director participated in the original commission that then became the model and so did joe no no yeah let's for time for time let's we can move on i think but i agree with you midi this is very exciting so this is just what we provide what we bring back so we have local earmarks or investments i'm gonna say this because you won't take credit for no stop um so joe um was very instrumental in developing the equitable approaches to public safety program in massachusetts and bringing home funds that initiative that launched the crest program the food security infrastructure grant program benefits folks in amherst the mass cultural council last this year is about a half a million dollars to amherst individuals and organizations small business grants i really want to point this out i don't want there to be any confusion during covid the amherst chamber of commerce and the bid helped to bring over two million dollars in small business grants to this town it's a fact we can provide you with the data if you need it um they did that in a variety of ways that was state money that they brought in and that doesn't include the close to 350 000 that the downtown amherst foundation raised through like a go fund me and then provided to small businesses as well and those grants hopefully will continue to see small business grants come into the town of amherst we have public health funding joe maybe you might want to talk about that and the pilot increases um joe mentioned and also amherst is in a few bonds specifically around affordable housing and climate resiliency and information and some cultural organization ones and with a new governor this may present a new opportunity to trigger those bonds that was thank you um and i just want to say that when you look at these i think what you should think about mindy and i is that we can and are approached for individual ear marks as legislators um but we can and are approached also um for can be an r approached for line items specific line items that are important not only to the town but the people in the town and so that's that's what this is sort of meaning to be here is that we're we're active and sometimes it doesn't look like oh this is a grant to amherst but it is a grant that we might think would benefit say for example a farm and amherst or a cultural center in amherst and so when you're thinking about the totality of money that we keep our eye on and fight for you can think big because whereas earmarks are you know a little bit one-off and on the smaller side sometimes grant funding is not and just here's a great example of advocacy paul town manager noticed that the equitable approaches to public safety was not funded in governor healy's budget amherst has gotten two of those grants they're called eeps it's an unfortunate name or an unfortunate acronym and for some reason i don't know why the governor chose not to fund it but it's zeroed out so when you know when paul emailed i was able to say yeah i saw it's not in there and of course it's on our budget sheet for our meetings because it is consequential to amherst to the crest program here and so you know that's the kind of that's the that's what we're we're looking for so you can talk to us about all of it you know solar grants you can talk to us about public health money you can talk to us about traditional chapter 70 chapter 90 money all of which comes back to amherst okay i think we answered this and i really i'm not sure we want to take a more time with us just talking at you but i guess um so we talked about home rule petitions i'm gonna go up the up the chain open meeting law this was a concern that we we heard that some counselors had as you know um the open meeting law and being able to do hybrid has been extended till march uh 2025 and the senate will do that yeah and i think there are there are some bills that are cooking around in the house that would require it we're aware of how amherst feels about the requirement and also how we feel about the requirement without um additional resources for towns to be able to tap into and so we'll be advocating and also bringing you into that discussion because this is going to be one of those bills it's going to be critical for towns to come to speak during the public hearing about what is the impact of the proposed legislation and how could it be changed to be better this is really going to be critical um they i'm just going to jump around you can talk about the governor's budget hearing okay um the affordable housing and zoning um we're continuing to you know we're waiting to see like you know the governor's produced her bill but she's also named a special secretary of housing how do those things come together and how can we better support amherst again please let us know pilot proposals we are looking at legislation we're waiting for data from the town to make sure that that legislation accounts for the the uniqueness of amherst situation um but we are looking at legislation that not only is joe's legislation also legislation to look at how does the formula need to be tweaked but maybe a new way of looking at pilot yeah and the governor's budget we talked a little bit about this so ways and means will hold these regional hearings on uh select topics so on march 13th we will be at the university of massachusetts at amherst amherst it's an invitation only hearing um which is the way that ways means does these um but we amherst has gotten an invitation um to speak and so i think the town is figuring out who is going to represent the town i'm hoping for uh it's on it's on both education and local aid uh so um i'd like amherst to sort of straddle both of those uh and speak a little bit to both um the education funding formulas in the budget and um and you can speak of course to early ed to hire it um and then also local aid uh so that's march 13th and we're working out all those details now i think that's it in our contact information right and we the town has these and so this is how to find us but of course i hopefully you feel like you can find us easily um and we should be available for you we actually work for you so we should be available all the time and for the public watching and for counselors or anybody else that presentation is in our folder so all of those contact and um social media locations are also known so with that i want to open the floor for counselors and i do see already one counselor having their hand up and that is um Athena you had your hand up first i wanted to just check if you needed to i'm just making a quick note that counselor miller has left the meeting so if i'm trying to reach out and see if she's rejoining i'll let you know if she does i believe she is left the meeting for the evening okay um thank you dorthy pam just a quick question any progress on the death with dignity bill thank you so much for that question i have filed it again with great uh house support and of course mindy is a great supporter um leader jim oday and rep um ted phillips or the house leads and i have it with senator brownsburger and senator moran it will go to committee like the other 6300 bills um you know however many were filed we'll get that number soon it'll probably go to the public health committee and i am hopeful um that they will give it an early hearing i've asked for an early hearing which is something that you can always ask us to ask get it get it heard early so it can get decided early and have time to live on the other side of it okay i'm hopeful i'm very hopeful for the session thank you uh kathy thank you for the tour to force that you the dynamic duo just did for us um i have a question on how broad the march 13th on education is but just on some other big topics and i sent some of these in advance but the charter formula um particularly hits us hard and i got from the schools uh over the weekend that it's um over a three million dollar net drain and i forwarded that to lin so i know when you ran you were talking about trying to fix it you know whatever the fix is but it's pulling resources directly out of our schools um so it goes with my second question is when i think many of us voted for fair share we thought the word education included k through 12 um and what the governor came out with didn't seem to or didn't seem to do very much and then the other side of her budget didn't say but we're going to put a lot of money into chapter 70 so again i'm just focusing on education first and there are a couple other they're not small but they're smaller so trying to think of where in the budget money could flow more quickly where you don't have to completely change legislation but you could change how existing things work so education then on fair share my second question is the other side of it is transportation i thought might mean roads as well as mass transit and when you get out to our part of the world we're in a less competitive situation when we go out to get our roads done and the cost of tar has gone up so each dollar buys less road so enhancing it either through fair share or the other way is just chapter 90 i mean anything on that it's it's so visible for people who are taxpayers on where where's their tax dollar going so i'll just stop and my last i've already talked to you on solar just um somewhere along the line instead of having excess money at the end of the year which happened last year but thinking can there be solar money that says if a public entity is willing to go to net zero we'll help you buy the solar whether it's put it on your affordable housing whether it's put it on your fire station your police station or your school but just something that not just says climate change but says climate change and we're going to help you do it i'm going to take a first couple ones kathy i'm going to really suggest that whoever's going to speak for amherst at that hearing talk about the reason why funding refund redoing the charter school formula and and making sure that towns don't lose money gets addressed i think this is a great opportunity because there's going to be people from the eastern part of the state who have a different orientation towards charter schools and charter school funding to hear about what the impact is on a town and what we're expecting i also think it's a fair opportunity to say when you get around to thinking about what to do with the fair share money here's what amherst would like you to do with it and then identify charter school reimbursement chapter 90 and making sure that roads are included in transportation remember they haven't quite yet figured out not just how much is being generated but the formula to use to be able to start divvying up so use that hearing in our backyard as an opportunity to say here's what we would like you to use that money for and i would really on the charter schools i think it's critically important to talk about not just how much money is coming out of the district but how much the district is down right now in terms of and what it's looking at in terms of having to make cuts because that's a real scale kind of moment you know what i'm saying and i would say that the governor put out a fair share blueprint with her budget so you can see the kinds of programs that she apportioned um some of the initial go at fair share again it's very much in development and i think everybody knows that this is you know her budget is important it's a marker but the house is about to do something that is not more consequential but certainly more lasting because the house will do its budget and then the senate will do its budget and the house and senate budgets are going to be the ones that get haggled over so that's that's important it's you know it's a it's a trio and and the governor set up marker on chapter 90 the formula is is really completely unworkable for communities with more roads that's that's a more road mileage right chapter 90 works if you're a dense little city with not a lot of roads road miles to maintain that's why we did the winter road program last session amherst benefited from that because it was miles it calculated by miles not by per capita um and so that's of course per capita is nuts for us out here and so we need to continue to push for chapter 90 reform either reform chapter 90 or really fund something i don't think we should call it the winter roads program but it it was the the name that we gave it last session and did the mileage versus population so we can do we did that once we can do it permanently um and i'll just agree with uh mendy you know i think amherst can say a lot about the effective charter both in terms of the formula change that's necessary but also funding the charter mitigation line right but there's other line items there's regional school transportation there's special education funding there's the circuit breaker there are numbers of different ed lines that are very consequential for amherst that that i think amherst can talk about and with also you know in that context of a rural school with low-ish or declining enrollment in some cases right that's the that's the rural line that is in the budget governor healy to her credit put more into that right that used to be a slog in the legislature she got us going um and cheers for her i think we can do better um and you know we can talk about what the consequence of that would be for amherst is that a fix for the rural school issue that's before us no absolutely and that's a conversation that rep domo and i will have with replay and others who have been leading this but think of that hearing as an opportunity to spell out what amherst needs um and why because don't assume that the folks who are going to be there with the exception of our senator is going to understand the context of how these issues play out out here this is why this is such a great opportunity that it's happening in western mess okay um andy first of all thank you very much for being here and thank you very much for your presentation um of course i'm always the one who's talking about fiscal issues and i i know that two two of our representatives from the mass municipal association are going to be out here for the hearing on friday and i have the i have the privilege of serving on the fiscal policy committee and they really did ask the committee a lot of questions and i think that their testimony but also represent not just this community but i think all communities and what we're facing so i'll just touch on two things really quickly one is we've been really hit hard as has everybody else by recent inflation inflation affects everything that we do and so developing a budget for inflation is going to be really uh that is going to meet the needs of inflation can be really hard and i very much appreciate the fact that this is a very tough year with the 1.6 increase in the consensus budget projection for revenue and i know that the governor proposed a uh unrestricted government aid number that's higher than 1.6 but not much higher and certainly doesn't come close to inflation when you put when it's two two percent and um for us it's going to be and i think for all municipalities because i heard it universally from every community that reported during the mma fiscal policy meeting that the the two percent is under inflation and represents substantial problem in trying to just maintain the core services that this community and all communities provide and for many schools we support the student opportunity act but there needs to be some balance between the high needs schools were identified in the student opportunity act and the rest of us because when you get $30 a student which is what the governor proposed for pupil for us it comes out to a half of a percent increase and so for you know we're in the real hard time and the last thing i want to say so i don't take up any more time is that our voters and the amateurs were big supporters of the fair share amendment we had a very high positive vote and i am concerned that the fair share amendment when the decisions are made about what the transportation needs are and what the education needs are that to remember that our k-12 schools and our transportation needs which are heavily in roads is a big part of what's needed so but thank you for for what you're doing and i'm sure that those sentiments are going to be expressed both by the mma and by our own witnesses uh friday so something just to keep in mind um is that in the budget in the again the brief proposal on fair share they're setting up things like you know an rta pilot fund for microtransit that'll benefit that's that they have us in mind um they're also going to put money real money into western mass rail again that they have us in mind with those two transportation lines and i you know i hear we hear a lot a lot a lot a lot about fair share and making sure that we get our fair share and fair share because we did a lot for it right western mass really put it over the line and i just want to say and we've said this in different groupings that's that's our job right our job is to get a fair shake of the 55.5 billion dollar blueprint maybe it'll be a little more after the house a little more after the senate we don't know but that's that really is our job so it's not just fair share fair share is a tiny little piece of this sea of money and i think it's really important for us to focus on that larger um pie as we go for if we as we make sure that we get a you know a fair shake at at the other kind of new money coming in and some of that new money is coming into higher ed and i agree with you completely completely that chapter 70 doesn't work for amherst the way it is right now and and it is you know abysmal and we do at north hampton's in a very similar boat and hadley like some of these the sort of smaller middle income communities and it is something that we have to do hold harmless is not working and that is completely true but i just want you to know that it's like we are like hawks on this money because it is our job to make sure it comes home not that we can't do it without you and entities like the mma i know so there's a way andy thank you so much for your service with the mma because you really are so valuable to me when you're in meetings being able to kind of share what's going on from the mma's perspective in terms of the state i also want to point out that next tuesday i think is the chapter 90 hearing actually in the legislature um and it's an appropriate time if people wanted to put pen to paper to email concerns about making sure that roads in western massachusetts are viewed as a priority area believe me we will take this i'm taking this in and i will be speaking about it as much as possible um but it's not a bad idea to put it on the record that we want to make sure that chapter 90 kind of views roads in western massachusetts as a high priority right and bridges in small culverts all of these things are unique more unique to us than eastern mass for sure um by the way who knew what a culvert was i mean i really didn't but now i feel like i'm married to culverts really i mean who knew the things you learn as a legislator now it's all i want to talk to anything i kind of like town council we learn every day uh mandy joe yeah um i won't take up too much more of your time because my comments echo both kathy and andy's comments um the budget the governor's blueprint on the fair share amendment spending is very concerning it spends a hundred of 490 million dollars in transportation she proposes 181 just for the mbta yet only 25 for those regionals which is not just our pvta that's the wuster one that's the cape one that's you know there's not a lot of road funding in there at all for western mass um so i hope you'll consider um not and that's just the transportation side of that that's just half of half the side the ed side i was shocked to see there's almost no k-12 spending especially when over the last decade and more we have seen the state's share of the spending at the k-12 level of our budgets dramatically drop um we continue to raise our contributions to the education funds in our town um and our regional district year after year after year and we're making up for a lack of statewide investments in our schools where the peter's here he could probably tell us the exact percentage but we're just in the last five years we've gone from an estimated 33 percent at the region being state funded to 31 percent that's only in five years i think the decline has been even more dramatic if you go back 10 years or 15 years and we really need to see that k-12 spending higher ed spending is great except when it doesn't reflect the pilots that we need because of u mass's effect on this town um so without a pilot uh a fix to the pilot formula that really reflects a rural community like ours that gets an extra 20 to 40 000 people into it every day to work um because of a state institution it's it that that investment needs to be there too um i just want to say i hear you uh i hear you completely and remember that is that's her blueprint that's not the house's blueprint it's not the senate's blueprint but i agree with you the mbta continued investment in that travesty um is you know it's enraging um when we think of the things that we don't have out here like night and weekend service and enough stops and enough routes and enough frequency i totally get it we also don't know what and schools we don't know what the relationship's going to be between um the fair share amendment and regular funding right fair share amendment is over and above the regular funding so does this mean that she's anticipating that everything else would be completely funded by the budget and that this is extra and how will the house and senate view that so we'll see um it that information will start to um sort of come to the it'll start to emerge from the legislature i think in the next month after these hearings that are happening um i also want to make note that Mandy joe is on an mma policy committee and uh paul bachelman is on the mma i'm sorry public works public works committee so you got a couple eyes and ears from mma yeah and we encourage mma to bring it um no joke in this right this is part the government only works when people make it work um and boston needs to feel the the collective interest of mass municipal association on this budget this is a consequential budget it's it's our governor's first she's a wonderful governor and great lieutenant governor but we have to make sure that she really feels us out here absolutely um anika i know you've been thanked already but i have to thank you again earlier uh this presentation was great um i really appreciate your energy i will probably never mumble again about numbers of committees and congratulations to you both thank you uh i just well i really wouldn't know where to start so i'm not going to take up too much time but i really want to uh just thank you both for really um energizing me and really pointing out that this really is um a relay race you know us us working together and i really appreciate that um and thank you just for recognizing really just like the challenges of you know covid recovery and that's devastation on um most most everything but especially you know with challenges for economic development and recovery and recognizing the bid and the chamber um i'm so really excited about the railroad i that i just think about that's just such a gift of what it would not just give um to the community but also what we would gain from it as well it's like a gift that keeps on giving um and yes there there's so much else and my questions were covered but i'm sure i will have many more and send them to you so this was fantastic and i hope that this is a regular thing what do you hear right thank you in the episode too thanks uh Anna echoing the chorus thank you both so much um i i don't say that to be flipped and i think you should hear all of the gratitudes that that you deserve so thank you truly um i have a couple questions about advocacy and and how to best advocate as you know uh we as a council in order to advocate on a particular issue as representing the council need to have voted on a letter or something like that um i've been sort of tracking the uh what's going on in the legislature and i know that there was recently a vote to um an attempt to expand the notification window for hearings and that did not pass and so i believe it's it's a relatively short amount of time to be clear the expansion wouldn't necessarily have helped us either but because we don't meet every week how is the best way to stay appraised of what hearings you think would be particularly helpful i'll note to my colleagues i've got it in my calendar to start drafting a letter about trains so uh we'll we'll get that one in but um yeah what's the best way in terms of making sure that we know which which hearings you want us to prior or you believe would be a priority in addition to us determining which ones we believe would be a priority and then similarly on issues that don't necessarily have a hearing yet is there a way that we as a council should be um advocating beyond just to you as our legislators can i jump in here um so thank you so much for that question um you know the mass legislature has a website ma legislature.gov that has all the bills and then you can track individual bills um i would recommend that you not wait to see when certain bills get scheduled because of your schedule and if you want to participate start drafting those statements and then as the hearings come up you'll be able to submit testimony or present testimony depending on availability so for example if i just went by the home rules i'd say that first of all definitely start drafting testimony on the two home rules that america submitted but you may want to also submit testimony on behalf of like joe's bill which is the enabling bill for um housing transfer fees for the whole state because if that bill went through we wouldn't need necessarily home rules so you know you kind of want to work on both levels the same thing with rank choice voting um i think there is enabling legislation for rank choice voting in all local elections and we can get you that information but base and also the the pilot legislation start developing it and the best way to do joe and i've talked to people about this for testimony is not just to say what bill it is and what and that you support it but tell the legislature why why is it important to amherst what is the problem that the legislation's trying to solve that amherst experiences why do you think this is the remedy and then if you think it needs to be tweaked put in your suggestions for improvement legislation is a conversation and i don't know any legislator well i do know some but they're not whatever that thinks that when they submit legislation word for word that's what they want to get out anybody's we're all going to be happy if things just move in the right direction so if you have an opportunity to improve make the suggestion the other thing i'm going to say is if you're if you're going to speak in person or submit a writing send a copy to joe and i because we can also take that copy and send it to the chair just to make sure they saw it or to use it in our conversations with committee members including ways of means if it ends up there to get it out so it gives us a little bit more fuel to our advocacy but i think we we got some of the areas of concern but you should feel free to send us more and then we'll send you bill numbers you can track it yourself but i wouldn't wait for the hearing to get scheduled if there's a bill that you're concerned about thank you that's very helpful and i would also say that amherst has committees right that are tracking that are that have priorities right planning climate you know people churning on that they'll have bill numbers so will the mma the mma has policy priorities that amherst could consider um so there are there are a range of things and of course the budget process happens on the same timeline every year um and that has both numbers and it has outside sections right policy possibilities but i love the question shallony yes thank you again and i think this is also for the public to know that you know it's so great to have representatives who are so accessible and i've always felt so supported in asking any and all questions and in my initiatives so thank you and um my question was about housing i mean all the others have been addressed but as you may have heard there's a shortage of housing and nationally um and statewide specifically i was talking about thinking about workforce housing because we've done a lot for affordable housing and in new hamshire there was a workforce housing law that was passed in 2011 and i wonder if anything's happening here in massachusetts that would specifically address workforce housing i think i think there are lots of bills that have been filed around this issue um many of them actually have come from legislators i think who are in the northeast for some reason like the lauren smary mac valley area i think um a great young rep whose name is andy vargas um who i work with a lot has quite a few bills but if you want us to look up and specifically see what those bills are and pass them back to you for you to consider as a body i'm happy to do that so that could be one way that we could be helpful to you is we could identify what are the bills currently in there now i'm not sure um you know there's going to be a new secretary of housing so where that person prioritizes workforce housing which i think is probably going to be pretty high um and then what that means in terms of what the administration is going to want to support that could change the calculus for what happens to bills so there will be so i want um you may already know this there will be a housing bond this year in this session and that's an enormous opportunity especially when we have a governor who says that they're committed to doing housing to get local not only big picture but also local picture so like um if there was a particular project that amherst wanted that was housing related this might be a perfect bond vehicle to be able to look at that because it's going to be a housing bond and we have a governor who's supportive who wants to be spending money on house um i think that's yeah i'll just say that the really i love that you brought this up and in addition to what mindy said um the good thing that's happening here is that amherst is and as you know is part of two very large bodies now that have been formed one formed recently one ongoing right the western mass network to end homelessness um and then keith fairy of um way finders has formed a housing production group this is excellent he is excellent um and you know so he's identified through donahue a 13 000 unit gap um that we're going to face in just a couple of years of units in up and down the valley um including amherst but not exclusively to amherst and i do think that we have to get stealth like nobody's business right and really think what are the number of units under production right now we know that thanks to keith's efforts up and down the valley and what's the delta the delta is considerable and then how do we move it out here and so i'm hopeful i'm more hopeful than i have ever been that out in western massachusetts we have a watchdog group unifying the builders and the developers and really pushing us toward it a numeric empirical goal um it is sobering right because we're so so far um from where we need to be but i really just want to celebrate keith's leadership and and way firefighters and all the developers certainly here you know the amherst affordable housing trust has been a massive mover in both of those spaces so um i you know i we can't let up i was going to say i also want to celebrate amherst i mean amherst has taken on some you know several incredible projects in the past four years that i think are going to yield a hundred new units within a couple of years so you know lots of towns don't do that they want they see that housing is a problem but they don't pursue it and they don't cultivate it and they don't um endow their local municipal committees with the ability to make those calls and move that in that direction and all the credit to the affordable housing trust but also to the town for doing are there any other comments from counselors so let me just say i think we hit all the buttons um and we just want to thank you you've now given us an hour and a half of your time or more plus everything else you do um and uh my one last parting comment is rail is great but we need roads to get there yeah it's just a little additional side there Anna we'll see my letters about trains but we'll okay um but thank you so much for being here um i'm grateful for my colleagues expressing the many many things that are on their minds and we hear about them and talk to you regularly about them so paul did you have anything you wanted to add you sure okay thank you so much for your service and for giving us this opportunity very great just again don't make it Athena did you want to add anything else i just wanted to ask mendy and joe if you'd like to turn around at the camera on the wall and say hello to the people on zoom because they've been looking at the back of your heads thank you so much um before we move to take a break when we return the order of business will be as follows we're going to do a general public comment but it's during that general public comment that those people who would like to speak to um the um agenda item eight point or eight point a or eight a uh that we will have a special public comment during that time so we're going to take a break uh 10 minutes we'll be back here at eight 20 and um then we'll proceed with general public comment please turn off your video and your mic and when you return please turn your video back on thank you you have less than two minutes to get back to your seats and get going as you return to your seat and uh please turn your video on so that i know you're here all right uh we have two public comment periods this is a different than many of our meetings one of them is general public comment and the other will be specific public comment after we introduce the proposed changes to our rules of procedure so my first request is going to be if you are either in the room and we do have one person in the room with us um make sure you have registered with the clerk of the council and if you're in the audience and you would like to make public comment general public comment please raise your hand so we have one person in the room and two people on general public comment on zoom are there any other people on zoom who want to make general public comment all right athena how would you like to proceed Peter Demling do you want to come up and okay um your first public comment it's coming up please make sure the mic is on state your name where you live and proceed all right thank you hi i have three minutes that's all okay hi uh Peter Demling 20 hours circle i'm also a member of the emmer school committee in the emmer's column regional school committee speaking for myself tonight and not on behalf of my committees um that as a as an amazing dynamic duo to follow i could just plus one the shout out to capi shane who's been amazing on the building project um but what i'm here to talk about tonight is a request um to the town council for me uh to please be clearer more direct and more frequent in explaining to the public the constraints that you're currently facing in funding next year's budget and the reason i ask is that it feels like the school committee has been doing a lot more explaining of the town's funding constraints for next year than we have either the capacity or the expertise to handle and i i feel like we need help we are honestly having a hard time explaining this to the public and getting the message across um so right now we are projected to cut a combined uh two million dollars from level services including 30 lost staff positions for next year and the kind of question we get on school committee when we present this is well we have high property taxes already and emmer says it values public schools so so what are we doing here um and to answer school committee can begin to explain this is because our school's level services have increased by more than six percent from last year because of inflation and a variety of other factors and that there are not undiscovered millions hiding in our budget especially after we've cut more than four million from level services in the last six years but why can the town of amherst only give two and a half percent or or three percent as um as it may be um so in school committee we've been trying to explain that this is because the two and a half percent limit on the increased property taxes that you face the 25 dollars per thousand dollar limit on property taxes that you face the lack of pilot funding that we just heard a little bit about um the reserves that you need to hold back to fund multiple deferred core infrastructure projects the limited space there is in town for new business tax growth and so on um but this is hard for us and and having and you're having the power to set this amount and in owning this decision of how much money we do get this council knows better than we do and is therefore in a better position to explain this to the public so to have no staff cuts and to give our unions what they're asking for right now would require an additional four million dollars above the two and a half percent guidance that you've provided four million dollars you know that's impossible that a budget is a pie and not an infinite well uh and you know the reasons why this is a difficult conversation to be having with the public to to to present and to be discussing what to do about deep cuts in our school services it's it's not easy and so i would just ask you to please help us in explaining the town's fiscal constraints to the public so that we can all arrive at the best solution as quickly as possible thank you very much thank you for your public comment and for joining us in the room um we have two other people carol gray please enter the room state your name and where you live you have three minutes oh hi thank you for your time carol gray 815 southeast street i i would like to tag on to what mr demling just said about uh the schools and uh i think that a town makes sesus priorities about budget and i think that the teachers now on work to rule absolutely deserve the the raises if you have three percent in uh in a time period when inflation rate has been far above that in fact it's a pay cut it's not even a raise so but but we should look at it in the broader context we're talking about a proposed library project that is now 50 million dollars and if it's four million a year to give the teachers what they're what they deserve well you divide that by 50 million we could get quite a number of years of adequately paying our teachers it's not that there is no money it's how is the town going to allocate the money that we have and what kind of choices are we going to make are we going to invest in teachers uh or and that's just one of many capital projects uh the new schools you know perhaps there should be a public ranking of what capital projects and what priorities the town believes in perhaps people would rather spend uh money on increasing salaries for teachers and building new schools instead of a 50 million dollar library um i also wanted to weigh in because i'm not sure if i'm going to be here for the later public comment i think public comments should be at the beginning of meetings uh i thought that i'd get to speak at six thirty but i waited two hours and the idea that you want to cut public comment i find very troubling we went from a form of governance that had 240 voices in the room to one that has 13 voices in the room to then say that we don't have time to listen to the members of the public who come to these meetings and want to speak for three minutes because something's very important to them i think is really egregious and not the direction we should go in so i think that you should allow uh public comment and and usually it's probably fairly short in time but the times when it needs to go longer like the one time when there was that issue about race that just got abruptly cut short and caused a lot of friction in our town that wasn't appropriate people need to be listened to and there the there should be a three minute time limit just like there used to be in town meaning like there is now and it should not be cut short and i i know that you all work very hard and you work very long hours but cutting the public's right to speak is not where you should cut and you should have the courtesy to put public comment first don't make people wait two hours don't make them wait until the end of the meeting they have a right to be heard in the beginning which is what used to happen with the select board thank you for your time thank you for your comment uh alegr clark please enter the room state your name and where you live hi my name is alegr clark i am a resident of district two and i would like to speak briefly tonight about the schools um i'm a parent of a wildwood kindergartner um all things going as planned i will be a parent of a kindergartner at the new school if it gets built um and i'm a graduate of amherst regional high school and i just i i appreciate that mr demlin came and asked for more clarity for the public i think that that is important but i also just i am a little bit confused because the december and november financial indicators it appeared that everything was rosy in in some of the presentations that were given and to to go from we think we have level service funding to we are cutting 30 staff positions is i'm i'm just a little bit baffled um and if four million is the number that we need that number i hope we can find i know that um alison mcdonald had put out information that about 354 thousand dollars might be made available through some state aid and i would like for at least that money to go towards the schools perhaps to help with some of the cuts um i'm very concerned that para educators are going to be cut especially in the libraries and the elementary schools that will cut the ability for our librarians to have support services around some of the special programming that they bring in such as um just this past thursday was read across america day and umass athletes from various teams came and read to all the students and and all the classrooms in wildwood um and i'm sorry it's just my my son loves the library it's his favorite specials class when i tell him that wednesday's early release days he gets so mad because he doesn't get to go to the library and have his library class and to think that some of the support services around providing books to our students providing books to our teachers and allowing for the freedom of knowledge to flow throughout the school um the support for those programs is going to be cut it's just infuriating to me when we're talking about building a hundred million dollar new school which i think is important and i hope happens i i don't want this council to think that i'm not in support of that or i'm saying we can only have one or the other but if we don't have this the staff and the teachers to staff a new building we're just going to have a shiny empty beautiful school and and how are we going to have learning there if we don't have teachers who feel respected and students who understand that their teachers are supported by this community that's all i have to say thanks thank you for your comments so that concludes the general public comment and let me uh then say that we are going to move on to our action item the first one in fact is the proposed amendments to the town council rules or procedure um the i'm we are going to ask the town clerk to put those up on the screen and um note that one of them is actually in rule 3.2 and the others are in rule five gel had a conversation about this just this past week and so i'm going to call on pat de angeles who is chair of gel uh to give a general report of that committee we're going to start with looking at 3.2 which is regular council meetings we're suggesting replacing thank you yeah no i can do it this will be a choppy report i apologize anyway we're looking at 3.2 uh we had a discussion that uh we perhaps should try to end meetings at 10 o'clock and take a roll call vote um with a and if a majority of counselors want to adjourn the meeting we could do that so there was quite a bit of discussion about that um but uh it was deemed 3.2 itself was deemed unnecessary we work until the work is done um and uh having a goal that we never can meet seemed um not really important um we did we did quite a bit of work on other sections of our op but let's look at rule five public participation um and basically we're talking about um section uh a request to amend 5.1 by adding a new section which would limit the length of public comment to 30 minutes minutes and then moving the agenda forward to address action items um discussion went on about that and it came it's a motion was formed uh to limit the initial public comment to 30 minutes move to action items and then come back um and that's been very controversial for many good reasons which is why I chose to pull it from the um consent agenda um so that was and that's and that's really where I think we are tonight and that's what we need to focus on um you know some of the other sections are pretty direct and uh just have to do with the uh changing a line or adding an expression uh like in 5.2 we're talking about adding by majority vote of the council regarding public hearings that's kind of no brainer like 3.2 so I'm gonna stop there um and say that we need as council to have a discussion and then we need to open it to public comment okay so the floor is open for the council at this point and then we'll move to public comment Pam thank you um so the question is the expectation tonight is that we will talk about it and then GOL takes this back home with them and works on it right so let me just explain there are any number of options we can split off parts of it or not we can also vote to just send it back to GOL having a discussion tonight so that people get a sense for GOL to then get a sense of counselors and the public's comments okay so I I did have some comments about it and I think 5.1 B which said that individuals um get up to three minutes but if there is a is if there's a backlog of people wanting to speak that that the president can reduce it which has happened on a couple of occasions but that it would waste the two minutes so thank you for at least upping that limit um I thought hard about cutting off public comment after 30 minutes and I understand the the interest of being efficient with time and getting to our action items but I think of our actions is to listen to people and the public comment period is what it is and I don't believe that we should be trying to cut it short and with some some sense of saving time because I think we have we have other ways of saving time and it's typically not a a long public comment that that drags us late most of the time public comment is fairly quick it's like five to ten minutes it's usually not an issue my third comment is the section must be three so it's e three um about non non-residents and any person not on the register that also struck me as very odd um I understand when we see a name in the attendees list you don't really know if they're a non-resident you don't really know who they are until they introduce themselves and um I never understood why that that line was in there to begin with and I'd like to have the whole thing struck number three it really is irrelevant it's public comment that's on it thank you um question a couple questions bunch of questions I'll just be honest a bunch of questions um 3.2 I I understand that I understand the rationale in terms of removing yeah 3.2 um I understand the rationale that you gave in terms of removing it I think my question is actually for for Lynn um as you've been the only person to serve as president whether that rule is helpful in setting agendas right if you know that there's a um a goal of getting it done by 10 is that kind of a helpful benchmark and in terms of kind of what to fit in to an agenda um I'm happy to run through all my questions or hear answers now I don't know um wants to tell me let me make sure I'm recording okay so then it's really is 10 reasonable no it's more of it's more of is it helpful to the president in their agenda setting to have a deadline like an end point to shoot for um you know if we ever had a president who was a night owl I'm a little scared of what could happen if if you know they didn't have a an end time um but that's playing in hypotheticals second question is uh if the if GOL looked at other towns and and what they did with um public comment in a really quick look you know I noticed that um most towns do not have a time cap most towns that I found which was a very limited look but uh did not have a time cap um but they did have shorter many had shorter time periods so holy oak has 90 seconds um which to have it measured in seconds feels a little brutal but minute and a half uh you know east lung meadow has three north hampton has two uh four if you need a translator and they kept theirs at 90 minutes so I think I'm just curious about what other models were out there that were explored um or if this was the initiative of the committee which is fine I'm just curious um and then the other question I had is why the removal of clarifying questions being asked um if folks could address that and um making sure that we are putting reasonable asks on our clerk of the council to upload if that's if it's reasonable to ask the clerk to upload by noon um on the the day of just to make sure that that's possible um and then lastly you know to the save the save the most controversial for last I think when we look at the idea of um I believe one of the reasons and correct me if I'm wrong one of the reasons that moving public comment was discussed was that you know our meetings are really long and and it's late um one that's that's true for the public as well and if they're there to speak on a specific matter um that's at the beginning of the meeting and then we're making them wait till the end if they happen to hit that mark is that is that fair um I also feel that it it feels a bit like a game of chicken right it feels a bit like a game of accessibility of meeting chicken because it seems like we're saying well you know if you if you don't get the first 30 if you don't get in in the first 30 minutes then uh and we we choose to move this to the rest to the end then we'll wait you out right and I I'm very uncomfortable with the way that that I know that that I am very clear that that was not the intention but that is how it's reading to me um and how it feels to me so I I do have concerns with the 30 minute cap I also recognize that we don't often hit it um which for me means that when we do hit it it means that there's a really hot issue that we should be listening on um and that pushing that to the end of the meeting um again it also is is making folks who don't necessarily need to be here want to be here for every item have to stay here for every item we do have to stay here that's that's the job and I agree with with Pam that our job is also to listen um even when even when it's listening for for three hours thank you yeah Jennifer Jennifer we can't hear you I know we've heard you earlier this evening no no we can't hear you uh we'll go on and come back okay Andy so um try not to repeat what we've already heard so there is some positions that have been expressed are things that I support I I do think that we are here to hear from our constituents and to make sure that their views are expressed and so that we can consider them as we move forward so I um not very not comfortable at all with the idea of uh doing anything that curtailed people from having the right to speak by an arbitrary limit on time but I do agree that um a time for each speech is important in order to encourage people to be succinct but one thing that I liked in the rule that I wanted to point out because it hasn't been mentioned is that frequently uh the president has said um are there any more people um or I'm gonna not recognize any additional people raising their hands asking for public comment and then still five minutes later hands go up so there's a rule change that makes it very clear that that's uh not to be expected and I think I urge the public that are watching this to understand that if we knew the number was going to be much larger the president might choose to cut from three minutes two minutes but she can't make that decision if she doesn't have an accurate reflection at the beginning of the number so I just wanted to make that additional point but um I don't feel that people who do get their hands up when it's requested should not be recognized the other thing that I want to ask the committee to respond to at some point but not now because uh we're on a different topic but I submitted a proposal for some um changes to the whole legislative process of how bylaws are introduced and handled and um one of the things that I was very disappointed in is that there was no response in no inclusion of anything along those lines even a very different version what I what I submitted I submitted a very particular thing at the request of the president for process um I I feel like one of the things that we do is we don't handle certain things efficiently and that's the other flip of time it's the other use of a lot of time and so not instead of taking time out by curtailing the number of speakers I think we should be thinking about how we can make our process more efficient and what kind of screening we can do in order to um try and make efficient decisions up front as to whether a bylaw proposal merits the amount of time that it's going before all of the committees and the council ultimately uh that uh that that discussion needs to have some way of efficiently happening at the beginning and I felt very firmly about the topic when I raised it previously and hope that it comes back again yeah please do on that one Andy I apologize that you didn't get a response but we haven't gotten to section eight yet so that's why we we're not discussing it we're not bringing it up yet we've been working through straight through um numerically uh we are going to change to moving to look at liaisons at our next meeting and we can bring this up then too but I want you and understand why it hasn't been addressed yet and we've actually already spent the better part of two GL meetings on just the ones that we have brought to you and others we've had discussion but then said now we've had a discussion let's put them to the side and we'll come back to them so it's um this is probably the most thorough review of our rules that's been done since the rules were created it but there's been previous reviews but uh thank you for raising that Andy so that people understand that thank you to Pat for the response yeah uh Dorothy you have your Jennifer can we come back to you and see if we can hear you can you hear me yes I have there's nothing different I can't explain it but I'm but I'll speak um so I just want to say that I um support I guess what Pam and Anna uh had expressed that to me this is it's not broken I I don't feel that our meetings are extended because of public comment most of the time we don't have public comment that goes on for a long period and when we do it's because there's something really important to the community that they want to speak about so I am happy to stay as late as need be um for all members of the public who want to speak to be able to speak and to be able to speak at the beginning and not after 30 minutes have people to have to wait till the end of them after the council has voted and conducted business I would also ask that I guess 5.1 c should be removed I guess that's it the whole new language I also wanted to question I think it's 5.1 b3 that a member of the public who's participating remotely couldn't raise their hand to speak after the first person has after public comment has begun and I find that a little problematic if if public comment is people are speaking and then someone makes a statement that you might want to refute I don't understand why if public comment is still happening you couldn't hit the raised hand button if you're participating remotely and um I did also what I didn't understand why we're removing counselors asking qualifying questions so to me the way I guess it was before worked and it feels like we're fixing something that isn't broken thank you okay thank you Jennifer uh Dorothy um I don't really need to add anything to what the people of Amherst have already said I have received so many intelligent and eloquent emails on this topic just you know every time I'd open my machine today there'd be more and more um the um people have to have a chance to speak and saying that you can put something in some kind of online portal or just post it so people can read it or not read it um and it often comes in really too late I mean because the idea that we're sitting here with absolutely not going to work doing nothing the day before a town council meeting and not leaving the house not eating any meals whatever that's a fantasy so trying to see what's coming in at the last minute is very difficult we need face to face either in person or on zoom that kind of comment um so I mean right now in Amherst we're a very liberal town and we're in a liberal state but we are being surrounded by non-democratic movements in the US and around the world which are you know the word is being used to describe some of them is fascistic because they're very efficient but democracy has never been it never said oh to have a democracy you'll have a really efficient organized form of government because that's not the thing about a democracy the thing is that people have a chance to speak and to participate now we've made the big move from town meeting the town council and many people have come to and we were told we would have still have chance to participate and to speak up and I think now saying we're going to cut that or curtail it or time it or limit it and put all kinds of rules on it I think is really not a good idea um I think Anna said that if it lasts a long time then there's a reason okay and it means that there's something that people want to speak about that they feel very strongly about I do not like the idea that people have to kind of sign up and register at once particularly since you know they don't know people who unless you are in the meeting as a participant you don't know who's in the room with you I attend many many meetings just as a participant as an as an onlooker and I don't know who's there so it's there could be nobody there there could be 100 people there I think that the chair of the town planning board has started to read off the names for town council that might be too long but I think not even knowing who's in the room and being told you get signed up right away or you can't speak I think that again is the kind of rule that makes people feel I'm just nothing they don't think I matter that I don't value I'm just not valued so I I am very upset truthfully that these suggestions were even put forward the response from people is one of such really outrage kind of like what did we do to deserve this putting us in some special little box we so we shouldn't waste your time speaking or having thoughts or ideas or participating so I I think it's a bad idea and I would not do any of the changes thank you man did you so in case people haven't figured it out yet I am the one that proposed these to start a conversation I'll own it um I was actually surprised it made it through GL on a unanimous recommendation with one absent because I expected a conversation to be started so that we could have what we're having tonight to discuss what is the role of public comment not just during a meeting because public comment comes at us as we can all acknowledge all the time and should we be privileging one form of public comment over another and saying one is more important than another so these conversations are good I'm happy to take it back to GL to continue that conversation I did want to address Anna's question about I think she was one of the ones that said what about other councils so I looked at 20 or 30 today I don't have a full list and councils with total time limits holy oak they have a 90 second per person but a 10 speaker limit which means 15 minutes total Northampton as Anna said a 90 minute limit Framingham has two different they have a 15 minute limit for general public comment and then when they put in a public comment period on for an agenda item they have another 15 minute limit for each of those Melrose has a 10 minute limit that is only suspended by unanimous consent councils that don't even put public comment on their agenda include Somerville and Limitster councils that have registration requirements where if you're not registered before the meeting starts not before public comment starts but before the meeting starts you can't speak at all Agawam, Methuen, Newburyport, Watertown, Cambridge, Pittsfield Cambridge is registration is online only councils that have other rules Bridgewater and Medford most of theirs are that they have their public comment at the end of a meeting Bridgewater actually does not allow non-residents to speak during public comment so it is a wide variety of things that I hope GOL will continue to discuss to see what is best for Amherst because each town has to decide what it is best for itself thank you Kathy I'm I'll start out by saying I don't want to limit just so I can be clear and if this is going back to GOL for more creativity that's fine we even had one public comment say 90 seconds wouldn't be unreasonable that you ought to be able to get a verbal comment down to that I like the idea and I don't see it here that if our town clerk is able to put in a document for us everything we've gotten in writing that people feel that we actually saw what they sent in so that is the people don't feel like they can only give public comment verbally the night we're meeting so I'm not sure that says that anywhere here I'm not sure at all why we needed to rewrite the numbering is maybe e3 the non-residents in the very long one we had this other non-residents as well as residents not on a register since we haven't had a register it's not clear to me that that's never been in effect and non-residents we have usually just adjusted to let everyone speak so I wasn't sure why we needed to even rewrite that since it hadn't come into being so part of my question is as GOL is looking at our rules if something is not making things work badly why change it I think we've been adjusting particularly the president's more recent in the last year or so saying everyone who wants to talk please raise their hand if they she sees that there's 60 or 70 or 80 people I mean we can look at that list and see there's a lot of people and you could go down to two minutes so we've got a lot of flexibility to make sure everyone can speak so I'm I'm urging GOL to go back and not feel that there's a need just to rewrite things for the sake of rewriting things if they're working all right I do have a question I don't understand I think we currently have counselors staff may ask for questions of fact and it's being removed counselors may be recognized as a presiding officer I'm not sure why that was taken out and I'm not sure whether we even know it's there so that's a question and then way back when on the 10 o'clock I think it's a good thing to set a goal even if we never do it I mean 10 o'clock says we would hope that sometimes we would get out of here in three and a half hours I mean we'll or we can make it 10 30 but that purpose of it was just at least have an aspiration and maybe we'd rearrange agendas if it looked like we need to meet more frequently because there were three in depth so I'm not sure it's smart to just be silent on an aspiration and I'll stop I'm going to pass and go on to Anika and then come back later after others have commented Anika okay so I might go a bit against what my comment is by commenting but um you know I um I want to appreciate Andy's comments about how we can be more effective and also recognize that um I believe every member of of GOL knows that we need to listen to residents in order to govern the town and guide us so I I hope that this will not be something that is weaponized but I also feel that you know if we sometimes and I don't say this to shut any of us down because I do it just as much sometimes we have 13 people and and sometimes just kind of repeating the same thing when maybe your questions your comments your thoughts have been addressed and I feel like if you know I and again this isn't to shut down I don't you know tell us each what to do but I feel like we could probably maybe knock off an hour just with that um you know in in certain cases you know I think that it is important for us to express ourselves but you know sometimes we do have just a you know repetitive everyone is expressing the same thing with maybe a few different words and now I'm repeating myself so I will let that but that was just my my thought there thank you Shalini um I want to appreciate Mandy Jo for being brave enough to bring this up but I think I want I appreciate the intention behind it that we have a conversation which is what we're having and um I mean dare I say we're amorous we're only each is silent so you know we definitely want to hear counselors but I just appreciate what Anika just said that I think it's on us as counselors to role model how we can avoid repetition I like to hear who's saying what so if they vote in a particular way I like to know what they're thinking so I want to hear everyone but maybe the person can just say that I agree with what Anna just said you know I agree that the 10 o'clock rule would support maybe guide the president to define the agenda that way so I don't have to go over the whole comment so maybe that's one way and I think for democracy to work um it's it's a dance between the public and the residents and the staff and us council members so for us to make good decisions in council it's important that we don't work too late and so it's also incumbent upon you know the the residents who are coming to to be sensitive to that and maybe also say okay come in and say I just want to support the comments that have been made instead of reading the whole comment again so it's just like just being empathetic towards each other um that's what I want to say for now okay are there any other counselors who would like to comment um clearly this is clearly this is probably going to be a referral back to gol um that I'm not making a motion because we promised public comment before we would do any motions or votes um let me just say that first and foremost public comment is a requirement of open meeting law it is requirement of all committees to have public comment and when somebody tells me that some other town doesn't even provide it I want to go you're kidding me right I value public comment in fact tonight is a perfect example of reading where we are with something and adding a specific public comment because it became quite apparent beginning with emails probably Saturday although I try to take Saturdays off believe it or not um and actually then on Sunday and on into today so that as late as four o'clock this afternoon I reworked the agenda to add a specific public comment in addition to that as we go back to and take this back to gol there's some other practices that we have had one is specific public comment others include having an hour before a regular meeting of the council where a specific topic is discussed and um there's public comment sometimes an expert might be added in um in addition to that we've added some other things in fact even tonight Athena has a qrs code that she can show you that you can take a picture on the screen that will allow you to go immediately to the place where you can post public comments and what somebody did ask whether it was reasonable to have public comments that people have agreed to have posted which means you've submitted it through the general public comment page can we we did discuss with Athena and can she do that by noon on the days of meetings yes in order to separate it by topic no that is a much more labor intensive thing to do um and even now I have probably 10 additional emails I haven't responded to I will get to them I'll try to do it in an updated kind of way um and as mundane as Scott Merzbach suggests my emails are which is fine um I like the mundane emails uh so I this is a very healthy conversation I'm glad the council is having it uh and uh before I'm going to take two more comments one from Dorothy and one from Athena and then we're going to go to general public comment Dorothy you've already spoken once but what else I want to say that I don't think this is the way to have a conversation the emails I got were very disturbed uh people were upset they were expressing a great sense of distrust of us counselors and of the whole town council and we're moving towards a moment of a big vote this is a time when we're trying to show the town is in order the council is paying attention to what its needs and wants are and we're proceeding in an orderly rational way so I don't I don't think it's funny the emails I got were very very disturbed and we're showing that people were thinking my government is not really listening so I just want to express that that's it Dorothy I was not in any way of applying that was funny adding an additional public comment no I didn't I didn't say you were thank you okay I didn't appreciate that uh Athena you have your hand up quick correction the open meeting law doesn't require public comment periods but our charter does ah thank you our charter does um so other other governments obviously don't uh Alicia one more comment and then I'm going to general public comment um yeah thank you Lynn I I wasn't going to talk just because I was opposed to this for every reason that was already said but one thing that I wanted to emphasize um that I wasn't sure was emphasized enough was that I also agree with having public comment first so not limiting it but having it first because I do think it it can be an equity issue to have people wait through entire meetings um or you know who can stay is who can comment when people can come at the beginning and comment I think that would work best in terms of making sure it's equally accessible to all people okay thank you so uh with that please raise your hand if you were in the audience um on zoom and you would like to make public comment right now I see five hands six eight nine okay so let's try this uh we now have 12 hands for public comment I'm going to go ahead and do the three minutes that we generally do but I really would like to ask people who have raised their hands to speak that they if you know it's a if it basically says it's been said recognize that and go on so we want to recognize you for weighing in and let's see how we can do this so the first person is Jeff Lee please enter the room state your name and where you live hi I'm Jeff Lee from district five and I oppose any shortening or rescheduling of the time allotted for public comment at town council meetings as elected public servants you should be encouraging public discourse not throwing up obstacles I think listening may be the most important part of the business you conduct I'd also like to urge town council to encourage state representative dom and senator cummerford to continue advocating for permanently allowing remote public participation in local government meetings this is another important step in promoting local democracy thanks for your time thank you Jeff um may gage please enter the room state your name and where you live hi everyone I'm Meg gage I live at 208 Montague road in North Amherst and I have two pages of notes which I'm going to try not to repeat what anyone said but I first of all really appreciate the hard work that all of you do and I really think I understand how difficult serving on the council has become uh and I uh I think this proposal is an effort to make your meetings more efficient and shorter uh and some would have us and to work better uh and I think there are things that could be done to make that happen and I particularly hope we pay attention to the opportunity in 2024 to review the charter and look at how things might be restructured I'm not sure but solving the council process by reducing public participation invites ridicule and is in my opinion the opposite of what we need now it's almost like a so unnecessary self-inflicted wound it it's a bad look but more important than being a bad look for or of appearance um it's it's a really bad idea for a couple of other reasons we have some intense issues right now that the public cares deeply about as others have said budget issues race improving communications with the police and so on um and working to win this important wonderful new school this is not the time to alienate residents or reduce the input of residents and the second reason this is sort of unseemly is that it's not coming at the same time as alternative proposals for meaningful participation um it seems you don't because it's an idea to limit participation but not creating some new mechanisms that might be more meaningful it seems calo in my opinion i'm going to skip that next paragraph uh the town has a lot of people with significant knowledge about an experience with organizational development specifically about how to build meaningful participation in public processes let's talk to those people let's think about other things we could do the school building process is an amazing example where we no one can say they didn't have a chance to have input and their input was ignored and as a result of that process and what must have been some tedium of listening and listening to a lot of input everybody's behind this project everybody i know and um we have a really strong school campaign i was on the charter commission and one of the powerful arguments advocates of the new charter made was that creating this new government would bring a huge improvement an increase in public participation many of us remember that promise let's try to make that real thank you thank you good evening i thank you meg for joining us allegra clark please enter the room state your name and where you live uh hi allegra clark district two again um i would like second what everybody just said i had two specific concerns that were raised by some of the other counselors concerns as well um i think the first one is about raising you know a member of the public not raising their hand immediately when the public comment period starts um i think there are a number of barriers to that for one um for example tonight the first general public comment period was posted on the agenda as a specific time and i believe it started at least half an hour if not more later than that time so if somebody is for example in the middle of a shift at work and signs on to to give public comment because they are made aware that that's the time it starts and they don't they're not sitting there for the whole meeting that would limit their participation um i think the other concern that i would have is around limiting non-residents to speaking during public comment um um there are so many non-residents that the town budget impacts um in terms of people who work in our schools people who work for dpw people who work in the police department in chris who can't afford to live here because the housing prices are so out of control um that by not allowing that by not allowing them to speak at public meeting because they are not residents that's not an equitable solution to public process um even though they don't live here the decisions that are made in these meetings have a major impact on their life um and if i did not mention teachers i i apologize they are obviously a group that has come forward and talked about how they can't afford to live in this town um with the wages that they're currently being paid so i would urge you not to limit public comment to just residents as many people can't be residents at this point in this town thank you thank you for your comments allegra kaley brow please enter the room state your name and where you live can everyone hear me yes we can um my name is kaley brow i live in hadley um although i will note that i work at amherst college i was a resident of amherst for 10 years and i spend a lot of my time in amherst um i'm calling because i disagree with the changes to the public comment policy that have been proposed um i agree with a lot of what has been said i feel um really encouraged a lot of counselors are also um pretty appalled at this um proposed changes um as someone who spends a lot of time in amherst and has lived in amherst for a long time i'm personally pretty um frustrated by the proposal to keep non-residents from making public comment i think that it's ridiculous for towns especially in our valley which is a really interconnected community to try to keep um public comment limited to only uh the town that you are in um i live a minute and a half from amherst and the decisions that you make affect me and impact me um i would also like to say that it's really important for a council to weigh the severity of the impact of limiting public comment um and public discourse right now at a time when nationally our right to protest is under attack uh we need to really seriously consider the impact it will have outside of just um pushing town council meetings sometimes uh late um i think that council needs to think about why some of our meetings are running late if a ton of people are showing up it's because we really care about an issue and we really deserve to be listened to and not push to the end of a meeting or limited in um what we're saying thank you that's all i've got to say thank you for joining us uh hildegreen brown please enter the room state your name and where you live hildegreen bound 298 montague road district one and i will not repeat everything that everybody has already said the issue of the non-residents not being able to speak was one of the things i wanted to mention and that's been said uh i want to say that i was very angry and very appalled this morning when i got an email to immediately contact my counselors because i'll write to speak and public comment was being abridged and i said my god this is at the council with no checks and balances the charter promised us that the council was going to be more open to listening to what the public had to say than 252 town meeting members were and so i just want to say that i'm really happy that other people agree with me and i don't have to repeat everything they had said there's one reason i did want to add that hasn't been said yet and that is you have one committee c r c in particular that is taking on huge projects that are extremely contentious and there is nobody on that committee with any expertise with regard to number one the economics of being a landlord the laws that we already have in place from from the town the state and the federal government and the commission against discrimination federal and state that these people know nothing about that we have to pass anyway so you really need for that and also the huge article on zoning they have no clue whatsoever about land use so what planning board a zoning board did and they've been told by those two boards that they don't know what they're talking about and that's the reason you need the public comment and the public interaction because committees are going ahead writing 44 and 45 page documents about which they know nothing and so i'm trying to be a little bit less angry about this now that i'm hearing a consensus and i will pass the mic on to somebody else thank you for joining us held on Lenora brick hi everybody um i i want to i i echo everything everyone's already said but i want to point out a little bit of an irony tonight of how we had Mindy and Joe here and you know wasn't it great aren't they awesome how they invite participation how congenial and atmosphere how mutually respectful like i've talked with them i've been at their meetings that's one of the things we love about our you know dynamic mod squad that we've sent to the state house and part of why that is is because they get it they get that more of us is better even though more of us is messier and not efficient and not all they but they get how much intelligence and heart there is in the greater room and and you like that i saw how much the counselors love that you know and so let's just let's be that in Amherst let's let's not you know the town's morale is really down you know that you know that we're feeling disconnected and polarized and this is definitely not the way to unite us and so i think we should be doing everything we can to increase public participation to increase morale to and to and to unite us to to bring more um mutual respect i do get that you guys work really hard too hard too much um your job is too hard and maybe the amendments that need to happen in the charter need to be in other things like like maybe you need more counselors you know to spread it out more maybe you need more outside expertise in some formal way to be introduced maybe you need to have uh maybe we need conversations with a different format that isn't just the the town council meetings i don't know i'm sure there's ways to figure out we don't want you burning out we don't want to burn out we care about each other we we serve each other like let's make this work for everybody the other thing that um just the i think the last two comments oh first of all we shouldn't be comparing our second third of all we shouldn't be comparing ourselves to towns that have less participation shame on them don't even look at that that's that's ridiculous um but and and i do agree that that what's best for amherst what's best for each town each town has to decide but part of those decision makers are the public you know we're all in this together we all are invested um and and it would be really lovely to create a friendlier way to um to participate so i i thank you for your good work i really do i know how how hard it is um and i and i hope that you can not have these midnight meetings but do this in a different way thank you thank you for joining us lanor jannah keller please enter the room state your name and where you live jannah keller i live at 120 pulpit hill road and um i just want to say that you're making the rules that will govern the way we and our families live and whether we'll thrive in our community for a long long time so of course we have really strong feelings about um these things and we want the reassurance that you've um taken our lives into consideration um and we want to see that in the preparation and um so i'm with those who who are saying please please keep the democratic more democratic process and inclusionary process public comment doesn't take much time unless there's a really big issue and then we need to take the time to thresh the issues out um and i want to agree that more upfront work on threshing out the real core of these proposals not not the legal details but but what it's about and what the problem is that it's supposed to solve and how it will solve it um um and how it relates to the underlying conditions and the benefits to folks lives um i think that would help a lot um and finally um the preparatory meetings that some of these are discussed in um i have to note that there are at times that are that close lots of people out i can go to them so i'm not complaining about myself but um people who have to be at work and taking care of their kids can't can't come to these daytime meetings so thanks for hearing us out um and uh i appreciate all the work you've done and um appreciate that that you did um give us time to be heard tonight thanks thank you janet anita sorrow please enter the room state your name and where you live um thank you um my name is Anita sarrow i live on chapel road in district five i won't repeat what i put in my letter or or many of the really good comments that i heard from both the council members and and from the speakers um but i do want to comment i was struck by the comment that this proposal was brought forward um out of the need to start the conversation and i'm confused and a little troubled by what was the conversation that needed to start if the conversation is about increasing the efficiency of council meetings or generally the work of the council then why focus on limiting public comment um so i will ask you that when this goes back to gol for reconsideration that it be put in a larger context it be put in the context of making your lives a little bit easier by being able to get you know on with your lives before midnight um because i do appreciate how hard you work but instead of focusing on one aspect of your agenda one way of of doing your work to broaden that conversation and and to hear some of the really good comments that one of the speakers just a little while ago had or that people have written to you and as far as listening to what other towns are doing i was reminded of my junior high experience asking my mom could i stay out after 10 because my friends were and the comment always was if they're going to jump off a cliff or you're gonna follow them so we are independent speakers in this town and i do hope we continue to do that thank you for all you do thank you Anita thank you for your comment julian hines please enter the room state your name and where you live hi there um my name is julian hines i live at 41 pine grove in district five um and i would just like to echo echo some of the other speakers concerns about this um and also would like to thank lin for giving us the time to speak today and add that unfortunately if we were to implement the changes that seem to be proposed or something similar to them after 10 comments pushing off the rest of the comments to the end of the meeting which on controversial issues sometimes go to till midnight 1 even 2 a.m um would not be feasible for many youth like myself we have school at eight nine a.m in the morning and to make our bus routes we have to get up at six or seven a.m in the morning so it's not feasible to end up making a comment at one or two a.m because that's when the end of the council meeting is so you're going to be driving out youth voices if you make um a policy such as this and you're also going to be driving out the voices of teachers and dpw workers and other folks in town whose work day starts at that same time so um those would be my two comments and i would urge you to vote uh against this proposal or at least revise it to uh allow youth and town staff and other folks in town to have more access not less town government thank you very much julian thanks for joining us fill up a villa please enter the room state your name and where you hi can you hear me we can hi my name is fill up a villa i live in district two and i will just say that i am in disagreement with the proposals that have been made so just want to echo a little bit of what everybody has said but i do want to focus on why this conversation was brought up like what is the reason for it and i think as um counselor tops put it if it's not broken why try and fix it so if the reason is not to fix it then what is the reason for this type of conversation to limit public comment from my recollection of the past six months probably a little bit more i think the public comments periods that's gone over 30 minutes have been on racial issues education environmental and policing i think all those topics we can all agree deserve more than 30 minutes of public comment for people to weigh in their opinion on it as residents of this town so what's the reason for this conversation in my mind i think it's a manipulation technique brought by the person that has put forward this type of discussion last i think that this person who brought this conversation up should reflect on her implicit bias and her promotion of structural racism that she often walks back in the public eye yet still works behind back channels to move that agenda forward i hope that the residents of this town are paying attention and voice their opinion come this november when it's time to vote out people who silence marginalized communities thank you thanks for joining us philip briana uh i briana oh and i think please enter the room state your name and where you live and you need to unmute briana you're now unmuted can you hear us yes i can hear you can you all hear me we can hear you yes okay my name is briana and i live in north amherst i want to emphasize well first i want to thank you all for your time as counselors meetings are really long and i get that and with that you all should be receiving a reasonable wage that aligns with this huge job in my experience joining town meetings the times that public comment is the longest is when people are being represented the least i think it's critical for each of you to hear different perspectives from different people living in different districts i also want to harp on the fact that this is a huge equity issue and although i'm a broken record reminding you all of the 2020 resolution to dismantle white supremacy in amherst i'm doing it again the council is a white space even for me right now it gives me anxiety to speak if i went in person it would be even worse but public comment over zoom gives me a way to participate in big decisions and to have my voice heard i'm very concerned and i hope to see you all start to lean on the cfs jc this group has a skill set that note this this group has a skill set that the council does not and it pains me that they're not being utilized as a key component as their charge is representing underrepresented residents and promoting inclusivity to all residents in amherst those who may be affected most by this we're not northampton we're not holiope we are amherst and this is a channel for people in the community to participate in a government in a way they didn't before over zoom and over public comment please stop making it hard to engage with with government leaders it is not only upholding but promoting white supremacy as the council has such minimal diversity public comment provides an opportunity for different views to be heard please don't destroy democracy in amherst ryan thank you for joining us darcy demont please enter the room state your name and where you live good evening my name is darcy demont and i live in south amherst i'm commenting tonight on mandy joe hannoky's proposed council rules change limiting public comment to 30 minutes i wanted first thank dorothy in particular for her comments and and many of the other counselors i'm unhappy that you've made me and others wait until 9 30 to give our comments when we thought we were going to be giving them at 6 30 i'm sure some left because of the weight i firmly believe that public comment should be at the beginning of meetings actually disadvantages people to have special public comment periods later in the meeting this is not a good look for amherst to limit the time for public comment when many of the meetings that have gone long on public comment have been regarding issues around racial equity the look is particularly bad first it looks like the council seemed to slip these changes through by not adequately labeling them on the agenda there's no way that a member of the public simply looking at the agenda would know that this was going to be discussed putting the rule changes on the consent agenda is also not transparent my understanding is that items on the consent agenda are those that would reasonably be assumed to be unanimously agreed to does someone think that this rule change would not be controversial please discuss the use of the consent agenda at your upcoming retreat the council also put councillor hannoky's controversial zoning bylaw proposal on the consent agenda though it was later removed how a referral of a zoning bylaw proposal could ever be on a consent agenda is beyond me in particular when zoning proposals under state law require a much higher degree of support for referral based on automatically needing to be referred to the planning board and automatically required to provide a public hearing within 14 days doing seemingly sneaky stuff like this erodes trust in the council I understand that the council needs to limit the time spent in council meetings but there are more creative and people-friendly ways to do that than limit the public comment period to 30 minutes curtailing public comment appears partisan to those attempting to get their views across one example of wasting the council's time in my opinion is reviewing the council rules annually required by the g.o.l charge which was written by hannoky after five years an annual review is unnecessary and just an invitation to partisan tinkering thank you thank you for your comment Darcy I see no more hands therefore concludes public comment pat you have your hand up yes I I'm having a lot of trouble with attacking um Mandy Joe is definitely not a perfect person and I am definitely not a perfect person nor is anyone else on this council or anyone in our community I am tired of us us the community using where Mandy lives what she thinks what she does um I don't know what underwear she wears so I can't comment on that um and I'm not trying to be facetious we have real problems in this town and I want to take responsibility for making a mistake as chair of g.o.l because Mandy proposed a conversation with the committee and somehow or other I allowed a motion to be created so I want each one of us every one of us here and everyone in the community to think about what they're saying and if you want somebody to change what you consider their racist or attitude or their privileged attitude or their rich attitude then how can you engage with them so they can hear you how can we do that together it I'm sorry I'm taking a lot of time patty when you were complimented by Joe and Mindy that was wonderful and it made me look at myself because I get irritated by you frequently and I'm saying that not to be silly but because I can be dismissive don't dismiss opportunities to argue to fight to talk about what's real but don't miss opportunities to collaborate to see each other for our strengths as well as our weaknesses to see each other across our differences stop attacking each other I'm going to leave the room for a minute totally understand are there any other counselor comments at this time then I'm going to move that this be referred back to CRC and look GOL GOL I'm sorry thank you not not CRC GOL and I'll be looking for a second a second it okay are there other comments at this time Dorothy you know the minutiae of the rules is not an area where you're going to find me leading but is there no way that we could have a vote and say vote yes or no and support these rules or does it have to go back to committee and then come back to us for another vote or can it be killed in committee I want to know how much more time will we need to spend on this issue so as in the past emotions been made it was seconded and if you don't agree with that then you vote no and you can make a counter motion okay and the counter motion could be that we could I mean would or would we be allowed to vote it up or down now in this meeting that would be we have to bring the first motion to the floor okay and then if we vote to refer back and it passes then that's the end but if not another vote could be taken and it could be a vote to yes or no on this okay because we certainly have a conversation we have definitely had a conversation okay any question Dorothy on that yeah I think I get it thank you okay um Mandy Joe um since the chair of GOL has stepped away to answer Dorothy's question we have a whole list at GOL of proposed revisions that many counselors have submitted we're working our way through it some of the list has GOL has voted not to make the change and so you haven't seen those so um I guess what I'm saying to Dorothy is sending this back to GOL could result in it never coming back here as a change or could result in a different proposal coming back but it that's what we've been doing and working through the rules that were proposed what does GOL recommend be changed or what does GOL say no we don't recommend the proposed changes that came to GOL okay Dorothy does that is that clear for you yes it is that's kind of clear yeah okay so the motion that's been made in second it is to refer this back to GOL obviously with the knowledge of this conversation the many emails we've received etc um is there any other comment Shalini um and I think what I'm also hearing is that one of the reasons we want this to go back is to have a further discussion on ways to reduce the time that I mean reduce the time console time including Andy's you know recommendation or other strategies because I think that was the core purpose of this conversation being initiated and I don't think we've come to a resolution how we want to do that so I look forward to hearing what GOL will be discussing further okay Jennifer I guess it's seeming to me a little like apples and oranges I mean if if GOL is going to address how to make our meetings flow more efficiently that's to me very different than whether we're going to reduce public comment I mean I'm inclined to want to see a vote on these up or down on these recommendations and then GOL can continue to have a conversation about more efficient meetings or it might be something we want to take up at our retreat but I don't see that limiting public comment or changing public comment really has a lot to do with the efficiency of our meetings so I just you know want to say that I think they're two completely different issues are there other comments from counselors right there is a motion on the floor Pam quick question so aren't we discussing streamlining our meeting process as part of a retreat is that part of what we plan to do as a full discussion there I thank you for that comment and question Pam we're in the process of developing a list of those issues and you sent some earlier today as well and Michelle is not here for the rest of this meeting but we actually have a meeting tomorrow to talk about planning the retreat and I'll talk about that a little bit in a moment so the only reason I brought it up is that is that we can focus on the changes that we apparently didn't want on this maybe separate from the whole conversation of the streamlining effort yes I hear that Athena I just wanted to add something very quickly we can't hear you Athena I wanted to add quickly that there you counselors do have a the ability to make a motion to postpone something indefinitely which effectively kills a motion that's on the floor but I what I understand your the intent of your motion what that would do is kill everything that's in the proposal from go well so if counselors want some of those things to go back to go well and then come back to the council then a motion to refer would would be the way to do that so I think what Athena is doing is is providing the options okay the options are we're back to go well so they look at it in the entire context of the rules that they're looking at at this point and the other is the option to postpone indefinitely a vote on this the second option means it remains to be brought back up but in the meantime gol may come back with a dish with different changes a vote to postpone indefinitely is a vote to not take it up again how about taking up a change a different change I think referring back to gol would be the best way to do that right yeah that's okay I just want to make sure people understand the options okay all right so referring back to gol clearly that's the motion that's on the floor that's been made and seconded that gives gol the opportunity to look at in the context of the larger issue as well as the possibility that that's part of how we one of the issues we discuss at our retreat the other option is a postponement indefinitely which means it's basically done so are there any questions okay the motion on the floor is refer back to gol that's been made and seconded all right we're going to begin the vote with Pat D'Angelo's yeah this is the referral back to gol that's the motion on the floor okay on Devon got here I Lynn Grismers and I Mandy Jo Hanneke I Anika Lopes Michelle Miller is absent I'm sorry Pam Dorothy Pam no Pam Rooney I Kathy Shane no Andy Steinberg hi Jennifer Tobbe no Alicia Walker no uh Shalini Balmillan yes the motion passes with eight in favor four opposed no abstentions and one absent is that how you confer thank you we're going on to the next it's a conversation it is not a vote it is regarding the town council meeting format although we what we learned this evening is that it appears that there will be an extension of the present format coming from both the house and the senate but they have not acted on that yet so with that I'm going to call on Athena who put together a memo in your packet and she has a slide or two to go with this thanks I'm going to quickly um just review some of the things that you you need to speak into your mic again I'm sorry honey I'm going to give a quick summary of what I put in my memo and raise a couple other points that I think should be helpful for your discussion so the current status that will expire on March 31st allows meetings with the provided adequate alternative means of access so that means fully virtual public meetings and they could be held with less than a quorum so we're all used to this this is what we're doing now what happens after March 31st if there isn't legislation passed public bodies are subject to all the open meeting law requires requirements as of April 1st if there is new legislation public bodies may continue to meet virtually without a quorum physically present if there's a gap between what we have currently and new legislation which which we saw happen the last time there was an expiration date then in the interim public bodies would need to meet in accordance with all the provisions in the open meeting law we plan to give the council timely updates about that legislation and what's going on but I want to raise a couple of issues meetings that are planned for after April 1st may have deadlines that are before the expiration date and maybe before we hear about what the legislation is doing so for example on March 24 we have a public forum on a debt authorization for the school I'm sorry that's happening on later in April but the deadline to post it is March 24 so that's something that we need to be aware of the council has a meeting on April 3rd the deadline to post that is before the expiration date finance committee and CRC are meeting the first week of April so I'm just reminding chairs to take that into consideration when you're planning your meetings we need to think about where those meetings are happening and what's going on with the current legislation like Lynn and Mandy and Joe said the legislation is underway so far the house has passed a supplemental budget bill that extends that would extend it to March 31st we need to hear from the senate and the governor before that will go into effect so for meetings after April 1st like I said public bodies should be prepared to meet in person if there is no expiration if there is no extension before April 1st members may participate remotely but they need to request that from the chair and then the town has a remote participation policy that regulates use of remote remote participation at public meetings I strongly encourage counselors to review the remote participation policy there were links to it in my memo a quorum would need to be physically present and I think it's going to be worthwhile for the council to consider what will happen if the chair or the president has too many requests to allow a meeting to be held do we cancel that meeting how do we give preference to which counselors I think there are some issues of equity there that could be worth considering for the council that threshold would be six counselors more than six counselors requesting remote participation and then it's much smaller thresholds for committees so CRC, GOL and TSO are three and five members for finance we agree with what Mindy and Joe said that virtual public participation works and we're committed to continuing that forever Paul for as long as we're doing this for as long as we can and upcoming decision points for the council if the council determines that they want to change the format for committee meetings I think we're planning on having an agenda item at the next council meeting and we can take that up then and I also wanted to mention that the planning board met recently in person and they just used the one camera rather than everyone having devices so it could be worth considering when we're having a discussion about committee meeting format if that's going to be an option that committees are more comfortable with that would be slightly less labor intensive in terms of managing the meeting and and maybe committee chairs would be able to manage that themselves and people wouldn't have to bring their laptops if they didn't want to and so on I before we move on Andy I I'd like to ask for clarification so you said they used one camera right so this this camera up here that shows the wide angle of the room you can see on zoom with my name there was we had a table set up in the middle of the room and all the members were seated around the table there was still room for attendees in the room and on zoom and they didn't have their individual cameras on it was just that one camera that was on did they take public comment through zoom I don't know so they did do a hybrid meeting right it was hybrid but okay just with one the one camera rather than everyone having their cameras and when they did that did they have an IT person backing up the meeting okay that's that's where the problem lies for council and council committees we we always have a minute taker um it would be up to chairs whether or not they're willing to take on that task but um I'm committed to making sure that this will work the hybrid meetings will work if committees decide to go hybrid so I feel confident that I can work between myself and other staff members that support council committees we can make that work okay um it okay Andy go ahead yeah actually it's just follow up on where we were so um you spoke into council and council committees but our form of government is loaded with lots of boards and committees of all kinds and all are subject to the open meeting law do we have the capacity to do anything other than uh in-person meetings for the large number of committees that are exist mr. Brockman not at the level that we support the council committees the council and its committees um we we are looking to outfit several rooms that can make it as um to make them more accessible um but many times we have more than the three rooms or four rooms that we have available for public meetings so um our default would be to be in-person um with the ability trying to expand the ability for people to at least watch uh remotely okay Andy did you have further questions okay um I just want to speak to the council and the council committees but separately I want to really emphasize what Athena has said all along we have been committed to continuing the hybrid mode so that people can attend meetings either by being in the room or attend virtually and in both instances can make public comment and I personally see no reason to change that in fact I was quite surprised to recently realize that neighboring towns haven't even gone as far as we have that they've just continued to meet virtually and I mean their town councils so we've been in this mode for a year plus probably 14 months or so uh 15 months and personally I love it when people and counselors have continued to come back in the room um I think it makes for a much better meeting but I also think that we've learned that the public really does participate more if we provide zoom um access either participate by making public comment or it's just another way of watching when it comes to committees I'm going to be very interested to hear from various committee chairs about that because in the past when we explored that it was almost like we needed to have one of the committee members being able to manage zoom and some of us have gotten better at that until we have a hiccup and then we're not so good at it so I that's I think another another consideration however I do absolutely want to speak to April 3rd is a critical meeting for this council we have to have a quorum planned to be in this room and the person presiding has to be in this room because we did have a huge gap in there and as Athena just said we have to post that meeting by the 24th so uh because we have a public forum at that meeting about the school bond uh motion so those are just some things and um other than that I let's move on to other people's uh comments Dorothy um well I want to look at this um as somebody who is trained in the theater and um I want to get something cleared the picture that we're seeing now of the town room um I'm just a member of the public looking at it I can't even tell if those are people sitting there um I have no sense of that so I there's nothing to watch there's no people there's no facial expressions um I didn't even know Mindy and Joe were sitting there until you asked them to turn around it's just blobs to me and supposedly my eyes are normal although zoom does stress them out a lot so I just see that as a really boring thing for the public to watch um because you're saying that we're going to cut down the technology because the because right now I see you because each one of you has on your own laptop in front of you and you're looking into uh its camera and somebody is coordinating that um I got to tell you production values really matter and I don't see people being happy um looking at that room and thinking that they're at the meeting or seeing the meeting I don't um so I don't quite know how we're going to do it but um today is in the world today we don't go to lower levels of technical proficiency we keep going to higher levels and people are used to being able to see things and whatever and I think you'll find that people don't like going back to that even though it might be easier on lots of other people you know our staff and whatever so Athena I don't think you were suggesting for council that it be any different than we see it today is that correct no I wasn't suggesting that change for council meetings yeah so we would all remain on camera um on individual cameras Paul you have your hand up yeah the key point here is that this is not a choice if the legislature doesn't act by March 31st it's not a choice for us the law allowing us to do this way fall goes away and then we have to go back to the pre-covid times where everybody has to be in the room this is not a choice that we're presenting it's Athena was trying to lay out what could happen if the legislature fails to act by March 31st so and and we are trying to be prepared for that eventuality because they don't often and they didn't act by March 31st last time they they went well into the next two weeks I think so we will have this time period where we have to figure out what we're allowed to do legally so the meetings can be considered legal meetings right so Athena and Paul I have another clarification before we move on to the next one and that is can we still have public comment by zoom if they don't act yeah yes we can thank you we can we can have meetings like we have been we just need to have the chair and the president in the room and a quorum in the room okay thank you I just wanted to make sure that we all understood that side of it and if I can clarify my suggestion for the the one camera was for committees to make it easier for council committees who would be if there's no legislation before March 31st required to meet in person and that was a suggestion just for discussion I'm not pushing that either way got that Pam you had your hand it was it was kind of a stupid question and that is why does it matter if the if the state hasn't passed it we still hold our meetings they still get recorded do we get fined if we you know do it like that yeah okay I'm the crashing at the door and the meeting wouldn't be considered a legal meeting so any actions taken at that meeting would not be considered anybody could challenge that action that was taken by that committee we would be considered in violation of open meeting law okay Kathy it just to um since when when we first ran the first couple years this absent but present rule you had to file out a piece of paper I mean they it was an online piece of paper and then the chair because I at or the presiding officer had to agree to have you not be there accept on remote you know so it's a pain in the neck is is when you know we could as long there's seven of us here we can keep meeting but the old rule was you actually had to say in advance you weren't going to be there in person and this is how you wanted to be there in remote at least remote's easy now the old remote was you called in on a phone number and it was horrible it was really horrible I feel I remember shallony was one time not able to be here and was phoning in and I think we lost connection with her three or four times so um this this is the preferred remote participation yeah yeah if if I can um speak to what Kathy just mentioned it is cumbersome to have to file that piece of paper when you're doing remote participation but it's really important when you need a quorum in the room to to make sure that it's okay with the chair yeah no I was just saying it's the there's that extra step it's not hard it's just an extra step right well and there is a strong suggestion that except an emergency it be filed 48 hours in advance so right because then a chair will know if they have a quorum right I mean it and you know that little email I send out to you that says will you be in person or virtual you're you're going to start getting terrible reminders if you don't answer because I need to know I've got a quorum in the room um Kathy anything else that's okay Mandy Jo so to I guess get back to where we are I support staying with how we've been doing this if the law doesn't get passed seven of us have to show up right as a council to answer Athena's question as a chair um if we have to go in person um as a chair I would want to be able to access the screen um I don't know which camera or figure out I know we used to be able to do that and there were some issues with it and all because at least for CRC we we've gotten really we do it in GL a lot too and it was a lot more cumbersome pre-zoom but we do a lot of sharing of so everyone can see it so it would be really important for someone in in the room to be able to access the screen and also whatever's going out on zoom to be able to see that screen too and um so that that would sort of be the one request you know we'd need three people in the room so it would be really important for people to have to submit those forms so that we knew we had the three on the other request from Athena you know in terms of if a chair got as a committee chair if I got three requests for remote and I needed to hold the meeting because it was a public hearing say as CRC sometimes does I I would probably without further discussion unless we discuss differently would start with those who I would start with seeing if there are ones that of people who are not in town for the meeting and would probably think to approve them first and not necessarily approve for remote the ones that are sitting in the town um but that would be my first initial instinct but I'd love to hear from counselors if that happens do we cancel a meeting or how do we choose who to approve remote or not right and one of the things is the between now and the 20 the 20th when we meet again I believe every committee has a committee meeting whether it was posted on your agenda or not may be a different issue I'm thinking about finance particularly um and you know you may want to have a discussion among your members um regarding that so we're not voting tonight one way or the other on this and even if we vote on the 25th we may not be voting with any knowledge of what the legislature's going to do okay are there other questions or comments or other chairs of committees or just counselors that went away in on committee meetings okay then I you're done with that and we'll move on to appointments there's none committee reports uh CRC mainly Joe um we started the hearing um it got on the the duplex and other bylaw proposal it got continued till April 5th 6th what's the Thursday 6th until until April 6th at 435 um and we will be we've got a meeting next week and a meeting on the 30th and those will mostly be on rental registration again um we're starting the appointment process for finding appointments and candidates for recommending appointments and finding candidates for the ZBA and the planning board so start putting your feelers out the next meeting um CRC will be approving the bulletin board posting to go up on the bulletin board so make sure people don't fill out anything until that bulletin board posting goes up approximately a week and a half from now okay um Kathy elementary school building nothing to report okay uh Andy finance finance committee uh I we submitted a report so I think that I at this point principally of course if somebody raises their hand um we'll ask that they be recognized to in committee will respond to questions that are asked um committee is meeting tomorrow is going to be a one of our different meetings because the major major items include some annual requirements that are very different one is to review the audit with the auditor and the other is to remove review an op have document with the actuary who uh uh did an update of um the analysis that's required to be done every other year on where we stand as far as what our other post employment benefits requirements are third item that is on the agenda and I don't know how much time we'll have for discussing it but it's because of the deadline we do want to start it as the referral from the last meeting about counselor compensation um it has not been discussed in the committee because it was referred to the day before um and we couldn't notice that so it is on the agenda for this meeting as I transition from are there any questions for finance as I transition from finance to gol am I correct that the finance non voting residents we might have one vacancy coming up and when does that get done gets done by gol and it gets done in the spring so we've got to get that scheduled okay uh pat gol well there's not a lot to say um I do uh we are going to be continuing our work with the rules of procedure uh on the 15th and then our meetings now start at 9 30 what I do want to say is sponsors of resolutions and proclamations need to get to me by the friday before which is the 10th a clean copy of their proclamation or resolution if it's only a date change fine but if there are any additions or changes I need that clean copy sent to me directly and then I will make sure it gets in the packet friday by five o'clock friday by 4 30 okay thank you oh and that's for the arbor day uh jewish heritage and I believe I don't know if anything is really going to happen with the women's history so the folks working on the jewish heritage um I have to have it on friday okay and arbor day in the third one what was the third one okay all right um um any questions for gol um and stated earlier gol continues to work on all of the many suggestions around rules of procedure um jcpc kathy our meeting thursday i'm just trying to figure out exactly we have schools on it and planning it's the last meeting where we're going over the proposals so next week we start talking about what we've heard um putting together what our recommendations are and then we continue that and at some point we write our report and and just so everyone remembers we the report is a recommendation to the town manager um from the original proposals we have so uh that's the schedule I just checked Sean has not posed posted yet the documents for this thursday but it will be schools and planning um for anyone who wants to come and listen thank you any questions jones library anika we have not met since the last meeting tso anika okay so we met uh this past thursday and uh we had the bulk of the meeting went to conversation around the proposed bylaw for refuse collection and recyclable material so we had a informative update from paul and the expert our expert with this susan white and um that discussion was carried out by sponsor leader shallon our next meeting will be this thursday march ninth and upcoming agenda items are the surveillance use policy and street police policy thank you any questions for tso any liaison reports including not really liaison it's ahra but uh michelle is not here pam sorry question for tso can you tell me the status of the snow and ice bylaw joel oh is it joel now so you'd like to ask joel that question i'd like to ask joel that question okay joel doesn't want to answer um right now i'm waiting for uh information from the tree warden um so we're it's on hold it should come up at the next meeting but if i don't have more information from him about what he needs i've gotten some information from uh the director of gilford mooring but it doesn't quite jive with the letter that they send out so i have to figure that out with the warden and that'll be coming up so there's still chance to insert a word or two of course okay uh send it to me uh that would be helpful okay um any liaison reports ham you have your hand up but i think it's from before okay uh seeing none town manager i'm sorry dorthy um this is going back to pat um my brain wandered uh i have a couple of emails that i've gotten recently about the snow shoveling are you saying that that questions that people have sent me on that i should send to you yes okay thank you because i really do want to have a response i didn't have any answer so i will be sending two things later tonight thank you okay are there other questions or comments regarding committee reports liaison reports all right then we're going to move to town manager report uh there's a written town manager report and paul sure i do have a few things i'd like to report on um we are scheduling march 24th as a cup of joe with kathy shane and sean megano to talk about the schools have another opportunity for people in a more informal setting just to come and talk about the school the new elementary school building and um concerns or anything that people want to share with that um also to let you know the town hall will be closed on thursday uh this thursday from it will open at one o'clock we are trying to take four mornings a year to do professional development for all of our staff what we have found when we've tried to do that in the past and try to keep um some of the keep the offices open and that some people were disadvantaged and they didn't have the opportunity to join and uh it was it just created some friction so town hall used to be closed every thursday morning um in years past um and we we kept we opened it um but this is one opportunity for our staff to be able to get some professional development we're focused on dei training at this one um the third thing i want to mention was the um we do have the big night which is where the salamanders move across the road and do their thing um this we're working with the hitchcock center because it's a it's a very popular thing in amherst they tend to be on henry street and north amherst we will probably on the night that it actually happens it's it always happens on a warm night in march or april when it's above 40 degrees in rainy um and that's when they go to do their mating ritual um and a lot of people are on the road trying to protect them as they cross the road if they don't use the little tunnels that are built on that night uh we will probably close henry street to protect the people most like in in the salamanders and detour people around we will have signs up alerting people that this may happen in advance uh we usually you know the forecast and the scientists know when it will happen but we just think that talking with police and fire and dpw they felt the safest thing to do is to detour people around that section of henry street so that will you'll notice that at some point i do mention um grease in a town report town managers report it's an important thing for us because it's really the the impact of grease going down drains especially from our restaurants is really damaging our wastewater system so um i can tell you as much as you want about that but our we have a really an interdisciplinary team from wastewater from dpw from health the board of health our our inspectors all working together on that um the um we've been hearing a lot about the condition of our roads and we do have a bid going out um in the near future um and we don't know what the um how much is going to cost to do the roads because there are only three companies that really are participating and who can do um road construction um and all the cities and towns and the state are all vying for these contractors so we're we have our bid going out we hope we hope that we get a good attractive bid on it um and we get as many roads paved as we can and we continue to looking for options to develop you get more funds to help address the really bad condition of many of our roads in town there's a lot of roads i mean attention the um on tuesday andy mentioned that the finance committee will be here receiving the audit this will be uh sonia aldrich's second spawn song her last day of work was friday thank you to the counselors who were able to come in and wish her good luck she was going to be um helping us on certain projects and helping sean on certain things but this will be her last sort of formal meeting in terms of because we really wanted her to present the audit because it's such a terrific audit um so kudos to her along the same lines you all saw that uh chief livingstone police chief livingstone has announced his retirement um so 46 years of service to one community is just remarkable um he's a he's an amazing leader and has really guided that department through some really challenging times with with just enlightened progressive leadership so he's going to be hard to to replace i will be sharing with you some ideas on how to involve the community and how to move forward on that search process it's a very very very important position i recognize that and i know the community will want to weigh in and talk about what kinds of characteristics they would like to see in the next chief so it um it will be the follower normal department head that where the town manager appoints the council will have the ability to either approve or disapprove the appointment and that will go through the normal process um the last thing is we had the event on saturday and um it was um it was much worse than it had been prior years um typically it's more of a police event where we're managing crowds which is what we did and we're well prepared for that with multiple people multiple agencies helping us um the largest gatherings were at townhouse in north amherst and on south whitney street off of main street there were lots of other parties as well um we had hoped that the weather was going to be in our favor because there was a parking band the night before there was snow on the ground it was seen as a challenge and uh make it even more fun i think by many of the people participating people participating we think were primarily they were all student aged but there was a large contingent that came from out of town so there it became more of a destination party for many people it's a this is a party that starts at people start drinking at 6 37 8 o'clock in the morning and then go throughout the day so we had our normal contingent of officers from the state police and our other agencies plus the crest department was available you mass police we have five we usually go to five communities northampton belgertown chicopee um there's a couple i forget all the names of them and that and that worked and that that worked well as i said but what's different this year is the huge number of uh transports for medical calls um which has not been the case it has not been a medical event in the past and that this was different we had 38 total ems calls for afd for amherst fire department 25 for transports to coulee dickinson um of those 38 28 were alcohol related um we had our four paramedic ambulances staffed plus two paramedic level engines plus another engine all in duty uh we had our normal mutual aid communities that were helping us sending an ambulance belgertown hadley northampton south hadley south county ems there were so many calls from 11 to three basically that one o'clock um with a call spiking we called for a regional ems task force which gets triggered through mema which then is a statewide call and it sort of was misleading because it to the people who were listening like the press they thought it was a mass casualty event which is what usually you make one of these calls when there's a lot you need a whole bunch of ambulances um but we had um the task force responded with ambulances from agarwalam chickabee long meadow ludlow west springfield and westfield this is a huge draw on resources from the entire region which means those ambulances are in the town of amherst they're not in circulation in their own communities we we have not heard of anybody who did not get served in any of the communities that that participated but it's still a huge drain um coley dickinson reported that they had 46 patients um aged between 18 and 25 that reported that so that's our 30 our 28 plus others who went on their own um and that was the largest um day they've ever had in their emergency department um so and we also on top of that we had 82 calls of service for police support so super busy day as i said in the email i wrote to you you would not have you couldn't have been prouder of the how your staff responded managed the crowds at one point they decided they needed to break up the crowd at south whitney because it was so large several thousand people it was blocking the road they had to just move them and um there you have a lot of uh young adults who are have a lot of alcohol in them but the police incredible restraint uh just engaged in them and and help them move start to move and um because at certain points the crowds get so big they feel like they have to address that um so there were two arrests by the amherst police department and two arrests by the umass police department um both for uh i don't know nothing major to sort of alcohol um by possession by a minor or something like that they tried not to arrest that's really not the business there and they're trying to help people enjoy themselves but to be safe that's the whole mantra that the police use um so the the big thing you might have heard is it's called the borg you know blackout rage gallon which is um a gallon of of um container of water that has water and vodka typically and other flavorings and pedia light and things like that so uh it was a challenging day um and so there was a pretty long meeting today with the the primary responders having a debrief we will have a debrief on our end um we will debrief with the university the university is having its own debrief after after action report uh the cooling tickets and has asked for a meeting for us with us to talk of this through as well so we are concerned about next year but more importantly we're concerned about this spring because with the universities uh usually there by the end of april they're pretty much done but this year they've extended that to memorial day so there's four more warm weekends that we are um conscious of and we'll have to prepare for and it won't be as easy because these one day a year things where we get lots of our partners to send officers um they can't do that every weekend because they all get busy as well so it becomes a real challenge for the department at that time we have no time off policy for our police officers which is already you know we have a lot of vacancies for police and fire so it's going to be a stressful spring I fear um we have really good people who will step up but um it's it's going to take its toll um we didn't care all we had some complaints from neighbors some people some mostly I think the neighbors or the people in the community were appalled at what they saw but I don't think and I think that we didn't have a whole lot of noise complaints or anything like that so um but you may have heard more that you might want to share but it was a big event for us um it got a lot of coverage um and continues to get coverage as well there's a new article in the globe today about mostly focused on the new drinking thing so if you have any questions I'm happy to answer them okay uh we have several hands up Anna I'm fine if other folks have questions specifically about the this event mine's not related okay are there questions about this event Dorothy um let me just start actually Mandy Joe you raised your hand yeah um one about this event and one not um but first a thank you to everyone who responded um alcohol's a dangerous thing and to have to transport so many and and deal with all of that so thank you to all of our first responders um a couple questions related that which is does UMass contribute to the costs of managing this event I don't know whether we have first you know like um mutual aid costs but also with all of the overtime our own officers in our own crests and our own fire AFD have to do do we see some financial contributions from UMass for this every year and have you had a chance related to this but other things to talk to or meet or have a discussion with the incoming chancellor and what will be on those discussions related to this and maybe some other things on a non-related one so I don't have to take the mic again um you've had in your report a couple times a flagpole policy and the language changed this week I think from the last time where you said you were developing it to this time where it's out to an attorney when is the council going to see that because I would assume it's a council thing that has to be adopted since it's mostly on public ways and we're the keeper of the public ways all right um so I the only time I met the new in the incoming chancellor is when he was here for interviews and that was just I was part of a group that was part of that interview so nothing other than a hi how are you a type thing in terms of charging the university pays for all the overtime from the police departments that come to town um the mutual aid is just seen as mutual aid those each of those communities absorbs those costs um we absorb the cost of the our Amherst police department that's working overtime um and because most of the events are on townland you know it's not on the university property in terms of the flag policy it is being reviewed um by Pamela Nolan Young wrote it she did a really terrific job um the question the town attorney had was whose policy is it because and the differential so we have some flags that are on the town building which is a town manager typically this would be a select board policy which equates to the executive but there are the our two main flag calls are on the town common so they're looking at the charter and how and who controls what so that's that's their what they're working on are there are other questions about this past weekend Dorothy uh no Shalini I think you're next and then Dorothy so in the past uh I think UMass organized concerts to keep the students busy and I wonder if they did that or will they be doing it in the you were saying the other events coming up in spring so there aren't other events it's just warm weekends when people tend to gather in large parties um they did not do any counter program that I'm aware of this last on Saturday uh Dorothy well at a community and campus coalition meeting we they talked about this and had said had been getting quieter and quieter the last few years they weren't anticipating knock on wood anything more I did say that I you know I I still teach as you know felt a great urge amongst young people to get together again and that I said I hope you'd have a lot of exciting things happening on campus um I did see driving down from Sunderland uh on I guess it was Friday night that there was something on campus with a lot of people coming with those big the borgs right but you know in terms of what happened um on Saturday night it was quiet on on my street but on the upper ends on Fearing Street and North Prospect Street um it was not um I tell you besides I think Mandy Joe's question about the money was one that was very big on my mind which is I don't see why the town of Amherst is paying the overtime for the Amherst police I don't see that and all these towns who lend their ambulances do we ever have a chance to pay back by um does or are they all are we going to always be in their debt um do they call upon us does our ambulance go and help them um and that the last question is about the pictures that were in the paper were up but I guess um the townhouses the brick townhouses and they had the um wrought iron fences which I believe had been put there as a way of crowd control and when you mentioned the crowd of the big crowd of students I just had this horrible thing says you know this I guess it was Korea um bunch of kids got it was at a concert or something and they got crushed to death um I think in the street and I'm just thinking maybe it's time to rethink that big wrought iron fence um because it didn't work and you could get crushed to death on it I mean the big crowds to me are terrifying so those are the questions and comments I have there so uh to go backwards is that that was a very strong they had a lot of conversation back and forth with the fire department police department and um the owners of the property about whether that fence they have gates on the fence whether the gates should be open or not they had that they were had pre-planned when they would open those gates because that concentration of people inside in the fear of there being people trying to escape all at the same time through the same location was was very real so they were alert to that um so um the the um so and just rethinking the the gates were put up at the request of the our community service officer thinking that that would hold people out the only way you could get into that bite was going through someone's apartment um so but that was still the location um in terms of the I forget what the other ones were the ambulance and mutual aid yeah so a mutual aid yeah so that's there's a whole system throughout the state so there's the mutual aids where we have all the people that we call on and they can call on us and we if someone says we need somebody we send an ambulance we do that quite often actually and most often to Northampton or to Belcher town depending on what is going on in their communities we tend to be a a recipient more than a than an offer but we do have a pretty robust system um that where we can send uh resources to other communities especially the smallest towns when they have anything going on um for fire or fire especially for fire apparatus um and so it and then there's a broader statewide system which is what we this task force thing where like there was the um fire and the Brockton hospital and they put out a call they needed dozens of ambulances and everybody sort of sends sends an ambulance there there is a lot of communication and support too because nobody can step up for the worst eventuality there has to be this mutual support um Anna all right I'm going to pivot us a little bit Paul um in your town manager report you gave an update on the community choice aggregation uh and I'm trying to figure out if the jce is is stalled right now you're working on it um which would be great to kind of keep moving and that doesn't impact community choice aggregation is what's stalling cca like why where are we is it not stalled why it feels like we haven't had a big move on it anytime recently and I'm trying to figure out where the sticking spot is yeah I'd have to get more details from Stephanie on it um I think what she has done is pulled them apart and said the jpe right jpe isn't moving quickly but she didn't want to hold back the the community choice option so I think she thinks that we can disentangle the two and move forward on the on the one I'm not sure much more than if it's possible I'd love to get an update on that at a future meeting thank you she has told me I just don't no worries it's it's totally thank you and when you send the response just cc the pro council um so paul I do have one more question that is for all these people that are transported by ambulance is their insurance cover that do we get reimbursed for that yeah so we for all all the people no one was held overnight according to coley dickinson so they're all processed um which indicates something I guess yes we bill almost everybody has insurance especially if you're a student you have to have insurance so we do probably do bill them and we'll collect from them okay we had a somebody asked that question in a email earlier today are there any other questions for the town manager for the his report okay seeing none uh then we're going to go on to town council comments um I did get you a president's report are there any questions with regard to the president's report ana thanks um could you please go into a little bit of detail about the amherst media contract and the representatives from the inspector general's office um specifically when is the could you remind us and I apologize for not knowing when the contract is up and the interpretate sort of what what's being discussed in that and as as you see fit yeah I I mentioned it my my report paul actually is much more involved but so I'm going to look to you to answer the question uh that ana's asked yeah so the contract between comcast so there's two contracts one between the town and comcast which is a license agreement and that expires in 2026 but the um ascertainment process starts about 14 months prior to that so that'll be it could just start a little bit before then uh as comcast is going to give us a schedule for when they are going to file for their relicensing agreement the um contract between the town and amherst media is concurrent with that but that usually happens after we've gotten the agreement with comcast so we know what kind of money is coming in then we negotiate the contract with uh amherst media right now there's a matter of interpretation about how we can use certain funds capital funds specifically because they are in a rental property that is privately owned and um so there's just some procurement issues that we've had and they've had prior explanations from the inspector general's office um and so we had a meeting with the inspector and it was different than how we were interpreting the uniform procurement law and so I think we just sort of said let's get the inspector general in and ask the question and we pose the question as a group and give them some written documentation and then the inspector general will come back to us and tell us what they think and they also offered to talk to the attorney general's office too to help us with our interpretation right thank you any other questions um then also let me mention um that WHMP is going to begin a segment where they do counselor comments uh where they interview counselors and so um I was Andy's known the person that's doing this for a long time we both got an email and I'm meeting with him to talk about what that might look like but over time it does seem that it's not just something where these are this is counselors all over the valley okay all it's all of western mass but there may be you know maybe individual chairs and committees might be interviewed at some point or a certain topic or something like that but it's only once a month but I just wanted to mention that I had just recently gotten that contact um and trying to still sort through what um that means for us and how we do that let me just mention I did talk with Michelle earlier today uh we are looking at we are meeting tomorrow for the retreat the um we've gone through a whole process of looking for facilitators and have come up with the fact that Pamela Young will be our facilitator and then we also we're looking for how best to deal with having somebody who is not a counselor who knows our rules of procedure and our charter and state law and um Athena has stepped to the plate so the team for our meeting Paul will be there but the team for the meeting if you will is um Athena and Pamela and we're looking at sometime early this week you will be sent your reading assignment which is going to be to reread the charter and to reread our current rules of procedure and some identified summary of roberts rules and then we aren't going to require that you read all of roberts rules then we're also going to collect from you questions so that we can collect do those so the beginning of the meeting will be clarify questions you might have then we get to g during gol there's already a starting of a list of what might be the topics related to this that would get discussed in the meeting and um it's called the cheat sheet at this point which is not a good term at all but it's the kind of the list of topics okay and Pam you mentioned one today specifically and that will go on the list the third portion of the meeting will be around priorities and I need each of the committee chairs to send me an email I'll send you a reminder what are the open issues that your committee has on your agendas or anything that is still there because as those of us who are on the council as we ended our first term we now need to be starting to consider what are we reasonably going to be able to get done and there needs to be some level of status about how each of those things are disposed of are not carried over to the next term so that and that will form the basis for a discussion about priorities I don't have a whole lot more detail than that because the group that's planning this which is Michelle and myself and Athena and Pam have not met yet okay and Pam will but if you um have this burning need to join us please let me know Pam you have a question I do and we have been carrying in the CRC a list of leftover items that have carried over from first council right none of which have been voted on by current council none of which have been endorsed by current council we've never really had a conversation about do we even want to see them and so I periodically say can we please just take those off when we're providing an agenda we don't really want to be reminded of all this bird this baggage from last council but I've said it in a nicer way than that so yes I'm aware of the list do we have time before a retreat on the 25th to have a committee meeting to have a committee discussion and even get to those items to even come up with a consensus of what our committee feels is a priority to carry over and this would be a GOL yes CRC we GOL has items too it may be that we're not going to resolve all of this even on the 25th just to know yeah I hear there's a few on that TSO even has a few that got carried over huh yeah um so I don't have a satisfactory answer for you at this point um Shalini it's a related um question to what Pam just that just asked um family on Dr no sorry what am I saying okay anyways I'm really brain dead but I do need to get this said so regarding priorities I've always been saying what is a criteria for priorities and so that kind of talks to the question that and I feel like as a council again what are the criteria we're using within committees to prioritize and then I feel there's some input that's needed from Paul from the staff side in terms of timing costs you know what according to the what the staff knows is the priority so like can we create some way that we do that because again as I've said earlier committees that while I appreciate and I think it's really important for counselors to propose um bylaws and policies but there has to be a way that committees can discuss and I think that's what Andy was also alluding to that there needs to be a process or set of criteria that we agree upon how do we prioritize as committees and as council as a whole so maybe that's the first part of the discussion on priorities yes criteria yeah no I hear you um thank you are there any other comments or questions Pam you have your hand up still okay any other counselor comments in general I want to note we're going to make it before 11 o'clock I'm sorry Dorothy your question just a quick comment to Paul to thank all of our staff our police our crests our fire for dealing with this weekend um because nothing nobody died okay um and that's well that's important nowadays it really is terrible things happening everywhere so just let them know that we appreciate what they did we really appreciate it thank you that's we all we all agree with that one thank you Dorothy seeing no other hands the meeting is adjourned and it is 10 49 thank you