 So just a heads up on that. We have joining us today our new finance director, Sean Mangano and our comptroller, Sonya Aldrich, as well as town manager, Paul Balkaman. So I guess you could tell that the theme of today is finance and budget, but we are welcome and open to all questions. If you do have a question during this session, please use the Q&A function from Zoom. You can alternatively raise your hand in Zoom or if you're joining us from a phone, please press star nine to raise your hand. So I'll just let Paul also welcome everybody. Yeah, thanks everybody. This is really informal. Our ideal thing is to answer questions for folks or have a conversation with you about what's happening. And I was thinking last night about just this year is like no other, you know, with multiple budgets that we've been working on with the pandemic with, I think, really a sea change on racial issues that we're going to be that we're going to really focus on. I think that there's just so much happening and it's a pivotal year. I think it's going to be one of those years. Sometimes people have a certain year, 1970 or something like that. This is going to be one of those years, I think, where we never forget it. And today the seniors at Amherst Regional High School are having a drive-by parade where they start at all the elementary schools, come to the high school and then drive away from there. And for them, I think that's a memorable year too. So anyway, I was just thinking about that last night. So I start with that. But it's really, we can talk about whatever people want to talk about. And I don't know if Sean, since you're new to the team and new to this platform, if you wanted to take a second to introduce yourself. Hello, everybody. I'm Sean. I worked over on the school side for the last 10 years and then came over to the town side. And then bittersweet, I really miss everybody over on the school side, but I'm going to work with a lot of great people on the town side. And it's nice having both perspectives or a lot of things on the school side that came down to us from the town. I didn't really understood how it worked. And now on the town side, I'm seeing that back end. And so it's nice to get that full, complete picture of how the whole town operates. And I'm really happy to be here. Yeah, not just, I mean, Sonia and I are just really happy that Sean decided to come back to on the town side, as he said, because and we were actually kind of fortunate because Sean has a deep understanding of the school side of things. And the school's finance director, Doug Slaughter, had been the chair of the finance committee and a select board member. And he has a deep understanding of the town side. So I think position, you know, we have a lot of great conversation happening across the two sides, which are the two biggest pieces of the budget. And so and just also I just need to acknowledge that, you know, Sonia has been the rock for the last several years, making sure that all of our finances are set, has provided leadership on every level for her staff and for me. And so I want to thank her for the all the time that she's been putting in, and she's not going away. We won't let her. Sean won't let her. So yeah, Sonia's been keeping me on track for, you know, even when I was on the school, she's been keeping me on track. So it's not just me. I'm just going to remind the folks who just joined us feel free love for you to come in and ask your questions live. It looks like our good friend Ken just raised his hand. So I'm going to pull Ken into the room. Ken, if you could unmute and introduce. Thank you, Brianna. I'm Ken Rosenthal. I live on Sunset Avenue. And I don't want to monopolize this conversation. Thanks for the opportunity to get in early. We've always had wonderful financial management in this town. And I think we're going to need it. So I want to thank Sonia and Sean. We're going to be well, you know, far better than those of us who live here that we're being hit by a terrible reduction in income and increase in expenses. And it's a challenge. So thank you for taking on this job and good luck. Brianna, I had sent you and Paul a note about how to change the format of these meetings so that you could see who all is in attendance. And we could see each other, though not interfere with the conversation. And I don't want to be a dead horse if that's really a dead horse to tell me. But is that worth talking about some more and pursuing? Sure. I'd love to address that, Ken. And I thank you for your thoughtful email. And it's something we're very aware of. And just out of us, a few steps of extra precaution. And we can see the participants in the room. The way that we've decided to structure these just for right now is to not allow very open access in terms of coming into the room and being able to view your screen and have people talk all at once. We are looking for safe ways to do that. And just as a government entity, we are a little bit more of a target in terms of nefarious activities. So we are trying to walk the line of meaningful engagement and also making sure our participants are safe. So I'd love to continue that conversation with you. And I will follow up with your email that you sent. We can try to see what steps we can take to make it make you all more visible to each other in a safe way. Yeah, I'll just add so that if anybody listens to it that I was that the proposal I gave you is one that works not to allow anybody to talk who you do not want to talk. So you control the unmuting and the muting. And therefore, there's no way for somebody to interrupt or zoom bomb verbally. That doesn't mean that they couldn't hold up a small sign or something in their little window and be seen by others, but it would keep their voice silent. Thank you for listening and thank you again for doing this. I really appreciate it. And that's all I have to say right now. Thanks again. So, Ken, I just want to jump in on this too because, you know, this is a concern that the counselors have, you know, asked for because it is a little alienating not to see your audience and it's harder to visualize what's happening. But we this is not just a theoretical thing. We have had committee meeting zoom bombed where people have projected pornographic images. And it's not something that we that doesn't create a safe space for a place for people to meet. Town of Amherst is a particular target. All of our meetings are public. It's not like a private thing where you're you're here by invitation only. And I really don't want to be a space where that's a possibility. Now, you could say in a public meeting, that's that's possible. But there's a certain anonymity that comes along with the zoom platform. So, you know, I think, you know, it, you know, that's the concern. And I mean, with one of our committees, just I think two or three weeks ago, it happened pre prior to that it happened to another committee. So we're super cautious about it because we have direct experience with it. Thanks, so Brianna, maybe you and I can talk further because I think we can solve the voice one. I don't know whether visual one and if we can't, I would be on your side with that too. But if we can, we'll talk further. Thanks so much. Thank you, Ken. And we will talk. And if you have other questions, just throw your hand back up and we'll bring you back into the room. Brianna, can I respond to his first point? Oh, absolutely. So just following up on the strong financial leadership. Yeah, we have the town has had very good leadership from John Cassanti to Sandy Pooler to Sonia and Paul with Paul's financial background. And we've had very strong finance committees and select boards in the past and now Town Council. And so we are going into a very tough sort of economic environment. But we are fortunate that we are in a very strong place in terms of our past planning around reserves and capital of things that we've addressed in the past. We are in a position of strength to weather the storm. So we'll be planning very carefully going forward. But I personally thank all those people that came before me because they put us in a very strong spot. Great. Thank you, Sean. So there was a question that came into the Q&A. Sarah wants to know if there's any update on aid from the state? Yeah, do you want me to do that, Paul? Or a brief update? So there are lots of buckets of aid from the state. I think last time I checked there were maybe 70 or so different little buckets of aid to different departments. Some go to the fire department, some go to the health department, the schools. I guess the two primary ones that are probably most relevant right now are the CARES Act, the general one that goes to towns. We were on a webinar a few weeks ago. So the town has been allocated about $3 million to help address the expenses related to the COVID crisis. We are in the process of submitting expenditures for FY20 to get reimbursed from that money. And then there's going to be an opportunity to get FY21 expenditures reimbursed as well. There's a lot of people lobbying at the federal level to allow us to use that money to replace lost revenue. Currently, we're not allowed to do that. But that would be another huge approach we could take to address our budget crisis coming up. But currently, we can't do that. The other bucket of money from the CARES Act is something the schools received. The acronym is ESSER, but they received I think a couple hundred thousand dollars as well to help with distance learning and other school-related expenses. And so those are sort of the additional aid packages that have come down from the federal government through the state. In terms of the state's budget and their finances, there's still a lot of uncertainty. At this point, we haven't heard anything about a budget being approved anytime soon. And so we're still just kind of keeping our ears open for what's coming up. Great. Thank you. It looks like we have a question from Jeff. So, Jeff, if you could unmute your mic and introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Jeff Lee from Southeast Street currently in Poland, Maine. Poland, Maine. A little quarantine vacation up here. Nice. First, I just wanted to second Ken's suggestion. It would be great if we could see the participants. It would be much more like the regular cup of joes that I enjoy and get a lot out of. Hopefully, we'll be back to the normal cup of joes at some point. Also, I had a question for Sean. Sean, I think before you left previously, you had been working on a public budget tool that people could kind of explore different scenarios. And I wonder if that's still in the works? Yeah, so I think you're referring to the capital project planning tool and just a little history about that. So Sandy Poole, I actually developed that before he left based on the assumptions around the capital projects at the time. I've adapted it and try to bring it up to date with how things have evolved and done little different things with it. But it's sort of a town-wide project. I think it's up, it's at the point where now it's really, we've used it to help provide some planning information and we can continue to help, we can continue to use it to help provide planning information for the future. I think some of the capital project conversations have been delayed a little bit because of all everything that's happening with COVID. So I suspect it's going to continue to be used for our planning and whatever else the council and the town manager want to use it for. Thanks. Jeff, did you have any other follow-up questions or? No, no thanks. Appreciate it. Okay, thank you. We have another question here just in general, what this year has been like in terms of your budget process compared to other years? Sonja's built a bunch of budgets. She's gone through a couple budgets of this fiscal year. You want to talk about how many you've put together, Sonja? About three or four. Different budgets. It's been chaotic. It's really kind of crazy. We were doing really well with the budgets like Alicia. It's been a lot of changes over the last few years with the new government and everything. It took us a long time to get a straight path. In my office here, Holly Bezos and my assistant and I spent a lot of time trying to document a process that would go smoothly. We were really rocking it and then COVID hit and just and everything dropped and we were dealing with the COVID crisis. And now we're just trying to pick up the pieces. We have a one-month budget all ready to go. I think we're in a really good place. And we have a balanced budget at the moment until we find out what state aid is going to do. We budgeted for a level state aid. And I'm not really good at these open needs. No, no, it's true. But it's true. I mean, we were there on the FY21 budget and then just we're in the stages of let's put the book together. And then this whole thing blew up. And then everything got delayed, which was good. We were grateful that the town council delayed the submission of documents. I think that was a wise action. So we have submitted and the council will have a public hearing on Monday on the one-month budget, which gets us through July. And it's just basically what our normal budget, what we normally spend in July. So it's not a one-twelfth budget. If you do the math, it won't be one-twelfth. It's about one month. And then a month later during July, we'll be going through a budget line by line, just like old times with the town council on the FY21 budget. And then that's the real document that you're used to seeing in terms of a lot of supporting documentation and things like that. Though there's the hearings and that will happen during July. I think the finance committee is meeting twice a week all through July to go through that. But I think we're pretty confident. We have a really good plan of make sure that we're meeting all the requests, all the services that we've typically provided. But we just have to acknowledge that this is a nutty year in the schools, what that's going to look like in the fall. That's a major source of expenses for the town and what that's going to look like. And I think they've been doing a spectacular job figuring things out over there. Really kudos to Mike and his leadership team for putting education first and along with safety of the students and the staff. So I just have to say that we had this thing done and this thing blew in and everything got turned upside down. So if I could just say one more thing, I am extremely grateful to have Sean on board. Any happier is the best outcome I could have hoped for. I'm making her say that. I told you. We do have a hand in the room and this person's display name is not up but I think it might be Phyllis. So Phyllis, if this is you, you are now in the room. If you want to unmute and ask your question, introduce yourself too please. Phyllis, Lara, Pond, your drive. I have two items, one to Kent and Jeff. If we have to have visual eight o'clock means we have to be dressed and we can't eat our oatmeal and drink our coffee because that's rude. But my sort of economic question, I don't know if it would help the budget or not is, will we be able to buy dump stickers on July one? We'll get it on you. I think so. I don't think there's anything. Yeah, I think that they expire on July one and we're going to be prepared to sell them. Yeah, I can follow up with that with Guilford but I think we're looking at putting them online, right Sean? Oh, yeah. We can follow up with an email Phyllis once we get more details and we can send it over to you if that's helpful. Appreciate that. Thank you. Bye. Bye. On that note, one thing that's been an interesting development is that we've seen our revenue for our transportation and for our dump go up this year. I think everyone's seen a lot of people doing their yard work and cleaning up things and tackling projects that they may have had on hold. So one unexpected consequence of the COVID crisis is that our revenue has actually gone up in that one area. Phyllis, any follow-ups or? No, but thank you very much for doing this. I really appreciate it. Thanks for joining us. Okay, so we got a question that came in from Mora. She wants to know will the capital budget planning tool be made available to the public at some point? Yes, it will. Again, this whole thing has been set off the side. We actually had been, even after Sean left the schools, he had been working with us on getting that tool up and running. So it's not ready for public. It's a very complicated tool and we want to make sure that the public has access to it in a way that makes it understandable for how to use it. So once we reorient to reorient, once we go back to getting normal to how we're doing things, and we can start refocusing on the major capital projects, which should be relatively soon. Once we get through this budget process, I think that's what we'll be having that conversation with the finance committee again. Anything? Yeah, one thing I'll add is we also have to look at some of the assumptions now under our current economic situation that weren't present last time we developed the tool. So when the tool was being worked on before, the economy was going great and our reserves were very high and we weren't dissipating having to use our reserves for anything else besides maybe supporting the capital going forward. Now we're in a place where we have to be concerned with state aid and possibly using our reserves to help supplant whatever state aid reductions we have. So we just also have to be mindful of that is that our current economic situation is a little different and so we have to be thinking about how that affects the tool and the planning going forward. Great, thank you. We do have a question that came in from Sarah. She'd like us to discuss how pilots or payment in lieu of taxes are determined and how that may change for the next fiscal year or two in Amherst. So pilots are typically what they are. We use them most frequently on solar projects. So instead of taxing the equipment on the land, there's an agreement in this sort of standard format that David Burgess, our assessor, put together and it sort of looks at the value of the equipment and then we agree on how much that entity will pay in taxes every year. That's where we use the pilots most frequently. Okay, I see your note. So you're thinking more about, no, we're not talking about that. We're talking about the college as a university and how they are paying us. So we were in the middle of negotiations with the university when COVID-19 hit for a new strategic partnership agreement. They have made a commitment and have continued with a new commitment or a commitment of dedicated funds to the schools. Those discussions have been turned around also because much of our discussion with them was focused on the additional EMS staff that we would always have to bring to the table during peak seasons in the spring and in the fall. And now there are no students who are here and our fire calls have been flat or ambulance calls have been flat. There haven't been that many. So their point is we're not placing a demand on you anymore. They understand that this is short-term and that they also have brought to the table that they are under extreme financial stress as a university. So a lot of the agreements with the Amherst College and with universities based on ambulance runs and we look at that historically, what kind of ambulance runs have been made to those two locations and then how that, you know, and we go back in time on that. So you weren't talking anything about that, about how that's all put together or not? Such a partnership agreement? No, the ambulance funds are collected on that. The ambulance funds go directly into your receipts reserve for appropriation account? I'm not sure what you're asking. How the budget works? We're going to need more than an hour for that one, I think. So did that, let's see, Sarah, if that didn't address all of your questions, please just pop another question in the chat and I'll make sure that gets clarified for you or feel free to raise your hand as well. We have a question here about, is the town getting extra money from the state or federal government and how can that money be spent? Does it have to be spent on COVID specific items? Yeah, I'll just, I'll kind of clarify a little bit more about what I said earlier. So we are getting money from the CARES Act which is from the federal government and has flowed through the state. Currently that money, the money that's the big pot of money for the town can only be used to reimburse COVID expenditures, COVID related expenditures that were necessary because of the COVID crisis were incurred after March 1st and were not budgeted for. So there's, they have eligibility criteria and they give a bunch of examples of things that can be covered. One example just to highlight that is, so PPE and cleaning, you know additional cleaning equipment or contracted services related to cleaning, those types of things are all reimbursable covered under the CARES Act. If we had to hire additional staff at the fire department or in the EMS services or pay them overtime because of the care, because of the COVID crisis that those costs are also reimbursable. Going back to putting my school hat back on, if we had to purchase additional computers for distance learning, those types of things or even computers for town staff to work remotely because they kind of come in because of the stay-at-home order, those types of things are also reimbursable through the CARES Act. The other source of funds that we are looking, what we will be pursuing are FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Group there. They will reimburse 75% of eligible costs and the CARES Act we can use for the other 25%. So in addition to applying for the CARES Act, we'll also be submitting an application to FEMA to get reimbursed for any of the costs we've incurred that are eligible. So we are, there is, there are funding sources from the federal government in the state right now and there's a lot going on to get additional funds as well. Great, thank you. I do see in the room our Council President Lynn Griezmer. I'm going to give her a chance if she wants to raise her hand and come on in to say hi to the group. If not, we understand. Oh, there she goes. All right, I'm going to invite Lynn in. Lynn, if you could unmute. Good morning. Hi. First of all, let me say thanks publicly again to Sonia for not just keeping Sean straight, keeping Paul straight, but for letting the Council sit at her doorstep and ask all of our inane questions as we began our term and continue to ask her those questions. Once in a while, Sean learned something from the questions we asked. I just want to say I appreciate all the questions about the financial position of the town. This is going to be a very unusual year. And I just want to say up front that next year could even be more unusual. And in that case, I mean, not good. So we're facing some tough times. Those of you that have been around through the 2008, 2009 and 2010 period, that was tough. And this will be tough in a similar way. So that said, we're still trying to keep our eye on the ball of the capital projects to the extent that the state even can go forward. And we're also obviously working with Paul to extend dates for budgets and things like that. So I just want to thank all of you, Sean, Sonia and Paul for their financial aspects of the town. I think Lynn brings up a really important point because we've been focused on FY21, but as we talk internally and with Lynn, she knows this FY22 is going to be the challenge. We think it depends. There's so many uncertainties. The state doesn't even have a budget yet. But that's the time when we think we've used a lot of our basic tools this year, but FY22 might become a bigger issue once we know what the true costs of this are or how long it's going to sustain or how long the economic recession will be. So Sonia, you've thought about the FY22 as well. Because a lot of our revenues are lagging a year or two behind like PBTA. The five colleges and the UMass portions are a big part of what comes in for revenue on PBTA. And it's based on ridership, but it's based on ridership from two fiscal years ago. So eventually this one is going to catch up and we're going to have less revenue the year. So we have to plan for these revenues that we know are going to go down on FY22. Hopefully the others will go back up and we'll be okay. So if anybody has a question while Lynn's still in the room, feel free to raise your hands, star nine from the phone or use Q&A. We had a question. We've gotten this a lot as well. When is Town Hall reopening? And just general questions about continued access to town services, bill pay, et cetera. Yeah. So I think, well, let's talk about the online services. We're making really great progress on that. And somebody here probably has better information than I do in terms of the, and maybe Breonna, you do on the permit software and things that we're moving forward on. And I know that you've been working hard on getting some other aspects online. So let me, but I'll talk to the other piece. So we are bringing employees back to work beginning on June 15th. The building will not be open to the public though. We are first making sure that our employees are safe and can work in a safe place. We will continue to serve people, you know, through the back door of Town Hall, through the side door of Town Hall, every department's worked with anybody who's needed something. If they needed marriage intentions or something like that, something that physically has to be done, our Town Clerk and others have worked with the folks who need it. So Town Hall, I don't anticipate opening at least until after the 4th of July to the public. And in many, when you see some Town Halls opening, you'll see that it's by appointment only. And that's might be where we are in terms of like meeting with building contractors and things like that. That's sort of one of the key functions that people come in. Almost all the other transaction things can happen online or through the, we have a box on the side of the building, you can put tax payments and things like that in. You know, in terms of public meetings, you know, we've found these Zoom platforms to be pretty successful in terms of public meetings. And in fact, more successful than in-person meetings, because we get more people to show up many times. And people have better access to, if you have mobility issues or something, they have better access to our meetings. And we're recording all of our meetings now, which so they're, people can watch, and they don't have to be there at the meeting at that time to participate. So I've found the Zoom meetings to be pretty productive on that end. There are downsides. Obviously, we don't get to see each other in that sort of, you don't get to read the room, which is, I think, what Jeff and Ken were talking about. You know, it's, you'd like to see people in their body language and stuff like that. So I don't anticipate opening, having public meetings for quite some time. And the reason for that is that when you look at the spread of COVID-19, if you were to say, let's put a group of people in a small space for an extended period of time, that's the recipe for spreading the disease. And that's exactly the thing we should not be doing. And so in terms of bringing people into a room, that by definition has to be open to the public for public meetings. And with the, with the capacity of the room limiting it, I think that's going to be a bit, a bit of a ways off in terms of the senior center. We don't think that's going to open probably at all this year. Our senior director is on the reopening advisory committee for the state. And so you will see some rogue, some different towns with a senior center that might open here or there, but by, by and large, most senior centers will be closed for the rest of the year. Do you want to talk about the online stuff, Brie? Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of bill pay right now, most things you can, you can pay online motor vehicles, parking tickets, which you probably don't have right now, property taxes, real estate utility bills. You can also enroll in automatic billing or paperless billing. And coming as of Monday, for those of you who haven't gotten your dog licenses renewed yet, and, and or need access to vital records, we will be bringing those online for you to request and pay online. And then the clerk will send them out to you. So that'll be something that's coming up on Monday. And we're really looking for ways to kind of optimize that digital town hall, if you will. You can make service requests if you're seeing potholes on in areas right from our website as well. So we're hoping to improve the kind of one stop shopping for online services as we move forward out of necessity, but also to make it easier for you to go about your business and during COVID. So you'll be seeing more and more from us adding to those digital services. And if there are things that you see that aren't there, we'd love to hear from you. If you have an idea about something that we could be doing better online, let us know. Email us at info at AmherstMA.gov. Yeah. So the other thing that the IT department is working on with the inspection services is getting building permits and all that online. That's a big one. That's a very big project, but it will be something that's well worth it. And we will see certain types of permits trickle in online first. I think one of the first ones will be rental registration permits to be completed, which it can already be done online, but we've moved to a new platform, should make it a lot easier for the user, as well as contractors who are trying to do work in our town and get it permitted. So that's coming. That'll be rolling out this summer and continuing to add different types of permits to that. And Brianna, I'll just add people are still in the office answering phones. So if anybody has a question, they want to talk to somebody. There are still people here answering phones during the day. So feel free to call if you have a question. Definitely. I think in Amherst, we've tried to offer many different ways for you to get in touch with us, the way that you feel comfortable. Phones, you can still mail us something. Email, use our Dropbox. So any which way that you're comfortable. Okay. So I have a question here, what's the single biggest budget challenge we're facing right now? And that might not be easy to pick just one, but if you guys want to address that. You want me to go first? Sure. So I mean, I think this year just has a unprecedented level of uncertainty. There's always some uncertainty with budgeting, but typically the way the process works for the state, there's some numbers that are known that we can bank on for our budgets. This year is very different. We don't have any numbers from the state that we can bank on our local economy is very uncertain in terms of when things will come back online. The status of the colleges, which really impacts our economy is uncertain. What the schools will look like, as Paul mentioned earlier, you know, what version of the schools will come back. So it's sort of a broad answer, but I think that's the biggest challenge this year is we're having to have a very wide range of planning because things could come back better than expected or they could come back worse than expected. And that range is very wide. So for me, that's the biggest challenge is that there's really very few knowns at this time and we're just doing our best to go with the best information that's available. And I'll echo that. Paul Lynn? Well, I'll jump in and then I think for me it's partially budget, but it's also the demands on the staff because we've taken everybody out of their comfort zones on how they do work. And like Bre, you talked about the permitting software, that's happening, but it's all happening remotely with remote meetings and things like that, which is not how we normally would do that. We'd have the people, the users and our staff users in a room talking to each other. And now it's all being done remotely and just lots of different things that we're going to be asking our staff to do. We've asked a lot of staff to do things differently or do different jobs, quite substantially different jobs. So I think managing our budget, because ultimately I think we want to get back to the budget normal. But in the meantime, we've got all this disruption happening. And so that uncertainty with the budget, I think we providing a bit of stability to our departments and predictability is the hardest thing for us right now. Yeah, and I'll say the one of the silver linings that I've seen in my short time here so far is that we are using resources the best way we can. So if there's one area that has been impacted by COVID or if it's parking or the front counter here, we're reallocating resources to where they're needed. And those conversations are going on constantly about where do we have additional staffing needs and where do we have some area where we can move or we have staff that are freed up because of COVID. And so we're trying to be very flexible and adapt to the situation as we go. And from what I've seen so far, the town is doing a good job of that. And Lynn has her hand up too. So go ahead, Lynn. I think absolutely the unpredictability and this time it's even more unpredictable than 2008, 9 and 10. The good news is that you've got people like Andy Steinberg and Doug Slotter who were actually on the finance committee during that time and have continued in various government roles either elected and or now in Doug's case working for the schools where he worked before. And then, you know, there's a couple of us myself included who've worked for quote, state agencies in my case. So we've been through some of these budget cycles. It still makes it very tough for a council, 13 people, to comprehend and anticipate because you just can't anticipate if you don't have good measures to go with. Our experienced staff and our leadership, I think, is very critical to us at this point because they've kind of been there done that. And we're doing the best we can to navigate through uncertain times. Yeah, just adding to what Lynn said, one of the strengths of the town that I observed on the school side, I'm sure Paul and Lino Leco and Sonia, this is how good the relationships are between all the departments. A lot of times towns can have some, you know, butting of heads between different departments on the budget or different situations. In this town, since I've been here at least the last 10 years, all the departments work very collaboratively. We solve problems together. Everyone contributes to solving the problem. There's not, you know, there's not one that sort of tries to stay out of it. We all work very well together. And I think that's a huge strength of the town that we want to keep going forward. Absolutely. So moving forward, what are the best ways that our community members can stay up to date on the budget? How can they participate? What's the next big milestone that people should be paying attention to? So we will be putting the budget calendar is now already on the website. We'll be putting the budget calendar on the website. Brianna, just the other day, showed me how to access the budget feedback form. So there's a form on the website that residents can submit questions on the budget or their thoughts on the budget and we'll get that directly and can address it. They can also email Sonia, Paul or I. They can email their counselors questions. And we also always welcome them residents at meetings to ask questions on the budget. And there's going to be a lot of meetings on the budget. Once you see the calendar, you'll see there's going to be a lot of opportunities to ask questions on the budget. And there will be budget specific meetings for different departments. So if your question's on a specific department, whether it be the schools or public safety or DPW, you'll see that there's a specific meeting set up for those. So there's going to be a lot of opportunities and we welcome your input. That's great. And we will, as we move forward into, as we get deeper into this and more information becomes available and meetings are on that budget calendar, we'll be sure to share that out in a way that's prominent and easy to ask access for everybody. I think the arena really shifts once we submit our budget shifts to the town council. And, you know, Lynn and Andy, Andy is chair of the finance committee and Lynn is president of the council are managing all those. There's a lot of places where people can involve with public hearings and public forums and things like that. But that's really the venue for public engagement is at those public meetings. And there's also, we should mention, there's also a budget page that will keep filling things in as it become available. So I think it's amherstovay.gov slash budget. And you can get everything on that one site and links to everything, schools, library, everything that we have. So let's see. Sarah asks, how is the census proceeding here in amherst? And I'm happy to answer that if, if, yeah. You're the expert. So the census right now, as of yesterday, we're at an amherst 61.7 percent self-response rate. Historically, in the last census, we were one of the hardest to count communities in Massachusetts, largely because of our large student population. So this year, we were expecting a hard count again, and then COVID happened. A lot of the students who were living off campus moved home. So where we're at right now is we've got confirmation from the three colleges in the university, two colleges in the university that the students who were living on campus will be counted by administrative record, despite if they've left and gone home at this point. The tough thing for us will be making sure that the off campus students were able to answer their census where they lived while they were in college. So there have been some efforts directed to those students who were living off campus, mainly at UMass. So that number is not extremely high. We'd like it to be higher. I will say that that percentage does not include the administrative record count from the colleges and universities. So it might be falsely low, but we are still encouraging folks to go online, answer their census, fill out the paperwork, or do it via phone. And we just recently received a grant from the state secretary's office to do some targeted outreach to some of our more vulnerable heart to count populations. So we will have some programming in July specific to families with children under five with low income renters or to community members who might not have English as their first language. So we will be doing targeted outreach to those groups and to seniors as well, leveraging the existing partnerships we have with the school, with the senior center, etc. So that's kind of where we are at right now. The deadline to self respond is August 11th, unless the federal government agrees to change that. So we're going to use July as kind of a rally call to make sure everybody's counted and immersed. And I'm happy to answer any follow up questions, Sarah, if you do have them based off of that. Okay, I don't see any hands right now or any questions in the Q&A box. Is there anything any of our panelists would like to say that they didn't get asked yet? I don't have anything actually. It's been, it's been, you know, a lot going on. And we had, yeah, we had that tragic accident on, on West street. Just a lot of things happening in this community right now. And we do realize that, you know, not everybody wants to contribute to the conversation live. It doesn't mean you still can't ask your questions to us or pose thoughts or ideas to us. We, we love to hear from you regarding those things. I've got something. Sorry to interrupt you. That's okay. That's, so just want to start to talk about the reopening of our businesses. And so the governor approved restaurants to be able to bypass local zoning and start to expand their footprints outside. And we've been, we've been having meetings with the business improvement district and the chamber to expedite that. And we're, I think we're the first out the door with being able to accept applications. I think the experience is a lot of restaurants are saying, yes, I want to do it. And then when they start to look at it a little closer for them, for their own operations, how much, how much business they would generate to open, it becomes, it's a harder conversation for themselves, whether it makes sense for them to go beyond takeout. But we're really excited about identifying some locations of supporting businesses that want to open. Some businesses are working together to create a sort of place where a lot of, where it can be more active. So this will, and we were buying the, the stuff that you need to do to, to separate out sidewalks and things so people can still pass while having restaurant attendees sitting outside. So I think that's really exciting. And that's something that our, our second floor inspection services staff has been working on. And that team has also did a terrific job of getting the farmers market open last week. And it'll be open tomorrow at 730 on the town common this time. It was a huge turnout. A lot of the vendors sold out all their goods. So that was a really positive harbinger of spring in a lot of ways. People were anxious to get to someplace that felt like a little bit of normal. And it was different, but it was nice for a lot of folks to see the vendors that they're used to seeing. Thank you, Paul. Sarah did ask a question while you were talking about businesses going back to budget related matters. Are you planning for possible decreases of state aid? For example, a reduction by 10%, 20% and what are we doing to plan for that? Yeah, Sonya, do you want to talk a little bit about the plan for state aid? You're muted. First time. Nice. Good one. Sure. We have a balanced budget right now. We balance the budget not using any of our reserves. And we assumed level state aid for fiscal year that we have in fiscal year 20. So once the state gives us more information, whether they're going to cut our resending out, that's where we would go into our reserves. That was the plan that we had to help us get our budget moving to go forward because we're not sure when the state is going to come with information. It could be halfway through the year. So yeah. And along those lines, our community along with a lot of other communities are planning to have to revisit this budget in the fall when more information is available, whether it's making budget adjustments or making budget adjustments to reflect whatever comes out of the state. We just have no sense of when that information is going to come out. It doesn't seem like it's going to be anytime soon. So I do not see any other hands in the room, any other questions. If you do have one, now is your chance to get it in under the wire before our wrap time. Paul, can I ask you a question of Paul? Yes, you can ask. You have to raise your hand, though. So Paul, as a parent of a six-year-old and a two-year-old, I'm very interested to know when the spray park is going to open up at ACROF. What's the timeline there? Second that. Yeah. Boy, have you driven by it? No. Oh my god, you should. It's spectacular looking. It's very close. It's, you know, probably not we're hoping for around the 4th of July. The contractor is still on site, so the fencing is still up. There's still a lot of work. They have a lot of testing of the equipment and things there. It's a pretty complex water feature, actually. Now, we also have all of our playground equipment still roped off, although we've had active discussions about what that's going to look like in the summer, because with UV rays that does inhibit the virus and because we don't really have the staff to wipe down the playground equipment constantly. But I think that that's something that we're, we, again, talking with our health director. But, you know, once, you know, and it will also be staffed. So, you know, you talked earlier about reallocating staff, people who aren't needed in one place, we're putting them someplace else. We want to have someone there at the beginning, especially to help monitor it and make sure people are doing proper social distancing as best they can. But it's a pretty neat looking place out there on Saturday morning. And so, I don't, again, Dave's home, I keep saying don't make promises. And, but, you know, internally, we're saying if we could get it by 4th of July, that would be pretty spectacular. Thank you. All right, any other questions, whether from our panelists or attendees? It doesn't look like I see any in the room. Okay, so any last, any last words from anybody before we, before we wrap up? No, just thanks for doing this, Brianna. You always do a masterful job at sort of monitoring everything. So it makes it so much easier when you're a participant. For the audience, they should know that it's where we have someone steering the ship here. It's really nice. No, well, thank you. It's my pleasure. So if you have folks that you want to share this with, this video will be up on our YouTube channel, along with all the other content that we've been creating, whether it's meetings or our community chats. So feel free to check it out there. We'll probably put it up in the next hour or so in case you wanted to refer back to something or share a particular piece with somebody. And again, I'll just go back to saying, like Sean and Paul mentioned earlier, if you have questions, you can call Town Hall, at least in the town manager's office, you'll get either Jen or Angela at any given day. Or you can always email us and we'll make sure you get the information you need. So if there's no other questions, I want to say thank you to Sonya and welcome and thank you to Sean. We look forward to having you working with us going forward. And thank you to Lynn for jumping into the conversation as well. Yes. Great. Thanks everybody. Good to see you. Have a good weekend. Stay safe.