 Okay, everyone, welcome to the January 3rd Select Board meeting. This meeting is called to order at 6.38. We are a couple members short this evening. One or two of them may show up, but they may not. We'll see. This is the first meeting of 2012. We actually have a fairly short agenda. But our first time to item isn't until 6.45, so we will fill a little time before that with untimed items. In your packets, you had, this is the first untimed item. This is an updated letter of support to DHCD for HAP tax credits for the Olympia Oaks project. This is something that when it came before us about a year ago, that we were asked to submit a letter of support for their tax credits and the various kinds of funding that they might be eligible for. And they are in a second round of that, so they asked for another letter. There's a draft letter in your packet that we thought was all set, but now the folks from HAP are just looking it over and making sure that there might be other specifics that might need to be included. Did Select Board have any comments? Ms. Stein. I think the letter on the whole is good, but I think we could make it stronger. I would change the word support to enthusiastic, but I actually would put in a first sentence that says something along the lines of Amherst has run a homeless shelter for two winters now, and through that work have seen the increased need for affordable housing, something that's specific to us like that is an example of our concern and the fact that we're working on it from another perspective as well, I think would be good support. Okay. Any other comments on it? Okay, so I will work in a sentence like that and combine it with any additions that the folks from HAP might have as far as specifics that they know that DHCD wants to have, and we will get that out. Thank you very much for looking that over. I think I'm not sure if we have a vote. Are we supposed to vote to support this? Some moved. Yes, I can do it. I move that the Select Board support the application of HAP housing for federal and state low-income housing tax credits for the Olympia Oaks Affordable Housing Project. Is there a second? Second. For the discussion, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Ms. Brewer, say aye. Yes. Thank you. Three in favor, two absent. Thank you very much. All right. Next. We've got some annual license renewals. These are just a couple of items that weren't ready for us when we dealt with them in December. So we have a sheet with a couple of renewals for common vichler and taxi licenses, and then we have a couple of in-holder licenses. Ms. Stein, would you like to make those motions? Sure. Let's see where the renewals are. Top of page three. Top of page three. I move that the Select Board approve the applications for, is that the one? I don't think so. The ones I thought you wanted were, I don't know if that's the right one. Is that the one that says annual license is 2012 at the top? I don't think so. That's why I'm looking for it. There's a revised motion list on your desk, which might be your computer. There is? I only have this. Aha. What's the top of page three? Okay. Now it's on top of page three. All right. Not there. There. Okay. I move, that's still, are these all the annual licenses for 2012? All right. These are the ones we need to do tonight, yes. Okay. I move that the Select Board approve the applications for an in-holder license for Hopbrook, Bed and Breakfast doing business as Hopbrook Enterprises at 15 Hopbrook Road, Amherst, MA. Is that her second? Ms. Brewer, you have to be the second tonight. Yes. I do have to be the second. And I actually wanted to ask a question. I was just double-checking. We obviously don't have a lot of bed and breakfast, but I think it would be helpful and not in any way damaging to list the owner's name on both of these. Okay. And so, as we know from our paperwork inside here. So I think the first one is owner Connie Krueger. Connie Krueger. And so we just put owner, manager, I guess, because manager's what we put on all the other licenses. Okay. In this case, they're both so small that they're the same thing. I so move the amended. Okay. So have you seconded that? Yes. Thank you. And we've had further discussion. Any further discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. So I move the applications for an in-holder license for birdsong bed and breakfast at 815 Southeast Street, Amherst, MA, manager Carol Gray. I think. Yep. That's Brewer. Is there a second? Second. Thank you for the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That would be Director Judd for licenses as presented on the document entitled 2012 license renewals revised December 30th, 2011, for the calendar year beginning January 1, 2012, through December 31st, 2012. Second. Thank you for the discussion. And I'm just so impressed the way everything's dated and numbered and named. It's just also beautiful. Excellent. I voted. I might make one other quick comment. Sure. Okay. Um, since these are rare, it's not surprising that we made a minor, a minor thing we should do is make sure we shred these because they happen to include the social security numbers of the bed and breakfast operators. Yeah, that was brought to the office's attention. Okay, next up, we have a public hearing and we have Mr. Chudzik here from Western Mass Electric. This is a poll hearing for a new poll on Sealy Street. This public hearing is being called to order at 645. And Mr. Chudzik, tell us about the poll. Oh, we forgot to tell you to turn on the mic. I'm sorry. As soon as I saw Candice, I knew we forgot to do that. There's a thing right on the top. And you do tell us. Okay. There we go. Thank you very much. I piled this for that. Okay. Actually, what's happening here? This is part of the project that we're going to be doing on Spring Street. And that package will be coming into your office probably tomorrow. All right. And what we have to do is we have to provide a new feed to the church and the parish house, which is off of Sealy Street. So we're going to be setting a poll on Sealy Street, which will be fed from Main Street. It's going to be on the western side of the street, of Sealy Street, southernly. If you have a schedule, you have a copy of the schedule? Yes, we do. Okay. And now it's being currently being fed from the back off of Spring Street. So that's what we're proposing to do there. So you're undergrounding the stuff on Spring Street is what the... Right. We knew with the new proposal that you have requested it's going to be undergrounding Spring Street. That's very exciting. Okay. It was mentioned just for you now, kill for kill, well, we had the option of also undergrounding, but it would have been a lot more involved to bring underground service to the church. That's why we decided to set the poll. Okay. And according to your information, the road supervisor chose the poll location. Right. He picked the location. And was there any issues with trees? No, there's no tree issues. Okay. No tree issues. Okay. Any questions or comments from the select board? We have a lot of time to kill. Isn't there anything you would like to know about this poll? Go ahead. Okay. There's no one from the public here to comment. So then we will, I need a motion to close the public hearing at 648. I so move. And I'll in favor of closing public hearing say aye. Aye. And that is three to zero. And time to deliberate. The deliberation on the poll situation on Sealy Street. Ms. Stein, would you like to make the motion? Sure. I moved that the select board approve the request of Western Mass Electric Company and Verizon New England Incorporated to set a joint and identical location for one jointly owned poll, number 121-7T-7 on the west side of Sealy Street, approximately 51 feet southerly of Main Street in accordance with field plan 6A020094. Is there a second? Second. Further discussion? I'll in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Three to zero. Two absent. Thank you very much for coming in. Thank you. We appreciate the information. Thank you. And the underground ones. Okay. So let's see. Our next time item isn't until 655 and that person may or may not come in. So we'll see. Ms. Brewer, was there something you wanted to mention? Did I just look like you wanted to mention something? Actually, I have a question, which is in regards to and maybe you know the answer to this. The seven o'clock item on support for letter of interest to Mass School Building Authority. I sort of remember doing this two years ago and I thought we'd received more information at that time as to what it was. I realized that largely we're just a rubber stamp on this based on the way the process works and it's really the school committee and the superintendent and the director of facilities, but we don't even have school committee minutes that show any discussion around this item. So when language reads the way the language does, seems odd not to have any background information, but if I don't have it, I just want to make sure we weren't supposed to have had it and we can obviously talk about it more when the item comes up. Okay. Okay. So noted for the future, you want more information about what they're what they're looking for. So I do have a little bit more information about it, but only just a little. Okay, we got a couple more minutes to kill. You are here for the secondhand sales license? Yes. Okay. So that's our 655 item. We still have five minutes till we can deal with that. So all right. Then we've got other issues, which are we've got a couple of new taxi licenses. We might as well do those. I moved that the select board approve a new taxi driver slash chauffeur license from Ramon Nostiri of Amherst, MA on behalf of tic-tac taxi company. Second. Second. Thank you. We all have our roles. Mr. Hayden's second. Where is Aaron when we know it? Okay. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Three to zero. Next. I moved that the select board approve a new taxi driver slash chauffeur license for Shane Davielle of Holyoke, MA, Jay Crenwinkel of Northampton, MA and Stephen Parsons of Williamsburg, MA on behalf of Aaron's transportation. Second. Thank you for the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Sure. What's your question? The medallion that goes on the top of the cabs, do we need to get the approval for those things from the town too or does something different? The one says the cab number or something like that? Medallion, right? I don't think we do those in Amherst. We don't think we have a number. You're referring to just the light that's on the top that talks about taxi or has the number on it too? I don't really know. Everything to do with regulation happens in the inspections office and the rules all happen in the select board office, but we don't know the details at that level, I'm afraid. The names of the taxis are all there, but I have not seen the numbers. I'm not familiar with the taxi number in Amherst. Are you familiar with it? Okay. I would encourage you to call the town manager's office tomorrow. Find the answer to the question for you. Yes, Deborah, who you've been dealing with would help you with that also. Okay, so let's see did we vote on that all in favor say aye. Yes, aye. That was three. Yeah, we did vote. Okay, good. Next taxi license. Was there another one? We did vote, right? Okay, so we can do the liquor license, but other than that. Do you want a different liquor license? Yes, please. Shall I go? I move that the select board approve a special alcohol license for Greg Wardla, Danielle Laferrier of Amherst College catering for a reception to be held at the Mead Art Museum from 3pm to 6pm Saturday, January 21, 2012. Second, further discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Three to zero. Okay, let's see. We can probably do a couple more of these things. How about committee appointments? Sure. I will start with the first ones that I find, which are missing page three, where do you see the bottom appointments? Page three at the bottom just says appointments. Okay. I move that the select board endorse the appointment of Ilana Schmidt to the Board of Health for a term to expire June 30th, 2014 as recommended by the town manager. We always use the word confirm, I think is our role to confirm. Second, further discussion. I have a question. Go ahead. Mr. Towne Manager, do you know whether the current physician on the Board of Health has sent a formal letter of resignation because I have not seen? Yes, David Kaufman has officially resigned. Okay. I did want to jump in and take this opportunity to thank him for his excellent service on the Board of Health. And I'm really pleased to bring forward Ilana Schmidt. Fine. Pediatrician. Wonderful. Good ideas and energy to bring to the Board of Health. Right. Thank you. I just wanted to be sure. Yes. So my question is fine. We can vote. Oh, right. So that's been moved and seconded. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. And that is three to zero. And now I'll do the second one. I move that the select board confirm the appointment of Kathleen Ford to the planning board for a term to expire June 30th, 2014 as recommended by the town manager. Second. Mr. Musician. And I'm also happy to bring forward Kathy Ford's name to fill the current vacancy on the planning board and I'm quite confident she'll bring her ongoing energy and commitment in common sense to the planning board. She served the town over the years in many different capacities from town meeting members to LSEC Commission. She's been on the Community Preservation Act Committee doing excellent work for us. So I'm pleased to bring her name forward for the planning board. Great. Thank you for the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Three to zero. All right. Perfect timing. So it is now our 655 item which is a new secondhand sales license application for Akhil Ahmed of Game Central Station. Game Central Station is on North Pleasant Street. We had originally renewed the license for a Mr. Eunice, Gulam Eunice, and we'll rescind that renewal. That's one of our motions on here. And now we have the new application which has been approved by the chief of police so you can come forward and identify yourself and tell us anything about the business. It's an opportunity to be a little commercial for your business. Yes, please. I don't know about these things. So first I'm coming here. Welcome. And your name? Name is Akhil Ahmed. Taking over from my father's business and he's not feeling comfortable that business is not good and stuff like that. So I'm like, okay, no, I'm going to give it a try. It's not that much time period has been spent on it. So let me try it out before we just say that, okay, we cannot do it anymore. Because we have signed the lease for three years. And plus the renewal stuff too, like it's too early to give a kind of thing on this one. So we're going to give it a try. This one we do video games, movies, which are DVDs. And we allow the some gamers to come and play on this on our facilities too, as well as we are planning to in order to gain more business to take the competition or the tournament kind of thing to the colleges, so that they can do the tournaments at their locations, because our store is just small as a representation kind of thing, but not a real location that a lot of people can come and play. It's like only once you enter the kind of thing. But taking it to their locations and allowing them to explore and come and buy the things from us. That's what the main goal is. Terrific. Oh, good luck with that. And it looks like the economy might be starting to turn around. So you hope so too. Right. And with the competitors around this area, we are I mean, this first of the kind, we are not not really like trying to compete with them. But still, our prices are much better than their prices because they are more corporate driven. And we are not. So we have a control on the pricing. They they even though they get a lot of copies from you know, from the corporate that they can have it available, even though we get very few, but we have more control on the pricing ourselves. So whatever we can, we give it to the students from trade in point of view or buying from the new games point of view to great. That includes, of course, the consoles that you use to play the games. We wish you good luck. And the reason this comes before the select board, most business licenses don't. There are certain certain categories of licenses that do and it's the second hand sales part of this license that does so a small part of your inventory is second hand. Most of your stuff is new. Is that correct? It's mixed. It's mixed. So if we get a lot of new ones, new ones really do not get you a lot of profit. That's the business model. A lot of these old stores or big name stores, they're doing going into the same model to that they buy back from the customers. And buying back is there's a present day that you can give them back, but not 100% kind of thing, because it's already pre owned stuff. So it gives you a little bit more of a profit margin. Sure. And just historically second hand licenses are something that gets checked by the chief of police to make sure that it's not stolen goods that are being sold or whatever. So that's that's why this license comes before us is in one of the categories that comes before. She wouldn't even need to be here if all of your stuff was new. It's just an interesting technology of that part. We do take the IDs of the individuals who try to bring in their stuff that they want to resell. So that we make sure that okay, this is your product. It doesn't say on the product or name of the person or anything. But at least the person that who is bringing in the product, at least we know that who brought it in. And you're familiar with the police chief has certain record keeping requirements that you need to do with second hand sales. We have not been told any of the record keeping point of view, but we are trying to keep as much we can. Because the systems we are not, as I said, we are not like big corporate that we can take a picture and picture will be attached to the transaction kind of thing. That's like a lot of money. But we do take the IDs or the information from the customer so that we can add it to the transaction kind of thing. But as a separate piece, it doesn't go into the same system. But we try as much possible to not allow someone who is not the owner of the product. And also not allowing the the youngs or like, which if you're not allowed to play the mature games, like teenager games, and you're only like 10 or 12, we will not sell it, even though we are trying to, you know, kill our business. But we do not because we have our own kids and cousins and nephews, we don't want them to get the game from somewhere if they're not allowed to play those games too. Good. Okay. Ms. Brewer, you have a question? Yeah, and this is not for the applicant. This is more of our internal thing, just like you saw, we had questions about how the technicalities of taxi things work, because luckily we don't have to know that is that since we had the follow up from the police chief, since again, we don't do a lot of secondhand licenses as new ones. It's just like same old, same old with the same people. He had asked about the record keeping and our usual response is to say let's make sure that when the license gets issued, it says on it somewhere what the requirements are. But the office pointed out that the license form itself does say on the license form what needs to be kept, but as is perhaps not surprising, given some of my other pet peeves for other items on tonight's agenda, it says on the actual license, I recommend, it doesn't say who I is, but I recommend that the licensee be required to maintain written records, blah, blah, blah. What? That doesn't even make sense. So it's probably some vestige of what mass law said, but it doesn't even say that the police chief's recommending that, the select board's recommending that, and I think it's required, because that is what everybody does. So maybe we can ask them to maybe see if there's a little whiteout sort of thing that can work on that, that the language is left over from 1879 or something, because otherwise, I mean, if it said recommend to me, I might think, well, that's a nice idea, but am I required? Okay. We can have the office look into that for updating the form going forward. The right place to track that down. Any other questions or comments? Ms. Stein, would you like to make the motion? Sure. There are two. I move that the select board rescind the 2012 second hand license approved Monday, December 5th, 2011, as part of the list of renewals for alcohol and non alcohol licenses presented that evening, dated December 2nd, 2011. Second. For the discussion, I'll in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. I move that the select board approve the application for a license to operate second hand sales to game central station incorporated at 220 North Pleasant Street Amherst MA01002, Agil Ahmed, owner. Second. For the discussion. I'll in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Three to zero, you're approved. Thank you very much for coming in. Congratulations and good luck with your business. Good luck. This time. We did committee appointments, but I noted that we have two more in our packet that I don't think are on the motion sheet and I wondered how we were going to deal with that. One was for recycling committee. The town manager has the answer to that and you'll remember it as soon as he says it. Maybe I will and maybe I won't. In my town manager report, I was going to mention two appointments I've made. One to the LSEC commission, John Foster and Sue Cairn Okay, cycling, refuse management committee. We don't have information item not requiring select board action. That's what you get for telling us information makes us want to do something. Yeah, I just felt like, you know, I should do this. Let's vote. Sorry, I have two less motions to make. I don't know if I can stand it. Shorten my report. Okay, 705. Where are we? Seven o'clock item concern vote positions on support letter of interest in mass school building authority. Alright, Mr. Bahanowicz is not going to be joining us this evening. Ms. Brewer already alluded to this item. This is something that the select board has to do, as she mentioned, as a technicality when the schools apply for new capital funding. Miss Kruger has kindly joined us. You don't actually have to be here for that license. Okay, so we already approved. We already approved your license. So. Okay, so we'll get to you in a moment. Okay, so this is something that the select board has to do when the schools are putting forth an application for potential funding for those various priority categories, just to stay in the queue, essentially with the mass school building authority. I had asked Mr. Bahanowicz, how come we haven't done this since 2009? It's been a while. It was something that used to happen kind of in the fall every year, but now we haven't done it in a while. And the answer was because there was actually kind of a gap in the in the requests and you only have to redo the vote when you have a change to your request. So in 2010, he called the 2010. I don't know if he means the 2011 funding year, but the concentration was on the middle school windows. And apparently because that was a regional thing, that didn't require the select board vote. So now there's been a gap in the requests, the annual requests. So now that we have a new request, which also doesn't include the middle school, which is different from the past, the middle school, what am I saying? Mark's Meadow, which is different from the past requests. Now we are making this request on behalf of the schools, rather, are making this request on behalf of potential grants that could come from MSBA for Fort River School and for Wildwood School. That's almost everything I know. But if you have more questions, try me. So for those of you who just love this sort of information, again, this is really the school committee's purview and it's the technicality that the select board or the town council has to deal with this. City council has to deal with this just because that's the way Massachusetts is. It doesn't, as it will say in our motion, it doesn't tie our hands, it doesn't commit us to anything. It simply gets ourselves back in the queue, which is something they just require that we do every so often. The comments, the other comments I wanted to make were, one, the school building authority has done a pretty good job lately of putting up the long form application. So if you wanted to know what it said and all that stuff from 2000 not for the 2010 money, that's all online. So you can look at those details as to what they had to fill out. I'm sure the school committee would have seen those in future if we could mention to Mr. Bahanowicz that we should have a copy, I think, of the minutes from the school committee showing that they did this because I wouldn't want to feel like we're doing it before them with, you know, we have wonderful communication and no fighting between us. But in another land at another time, it might be awkward if somehow, for some reason, we had to vote before them and we weren't realizing we were doing it. Although sometimes for deadlines, one has to do things without a border. The other comment I just wanted to make is for those who, for whatever reason, might hear the motion, see the information in our packet, it talks about the priority and these are the categories that the state sets up. This is not wording that we came up with, it simply forms on the infamous checklist that Alyssa sort of likes to use and it checks off most of the items. If I were a parent and I didn't send my children to those schools and I thought that the English language meant what the word said, I would be nervous that my children were going to a school that was structurally unsound or seriously jeopardizing the health and safety of school children or where existing severe overcrowding, which is completely different than two years ago. And strangely, we closed a school in the intervening time as well. I would be very, very concerned. It's my understanding from having served on the school committee in the past that while we feel very uncomfortable with some of the aspects of the schools, the roof is not going to cave in, no one's unsafe from the standpoint of going to school every day. They're not going to fall into a hole that hasn't been repaired. The overcrowding is not so severe that kids can't fit into the classrooms. So please just understand that when you read these priorities, these are priorities that the state's established and that we are trying to make a case, we being the school committee and the school personnel are trying to make a case that we do have some serious needs that need to be addressed, largely associated with the quads no longer being used the way somebody thought they needed to be used a long time ago versus the reality of education in 2011, 2012. So don't take this as meaning something it doesn't. And if you have concerns, obviously ask the school. I personally am not at all happy about having to even vote that these things are true because I disagree that they're true. But on the other hand, I want the application to get in line along with everybody else. I know there are still schools in the state of Massachusetts that are in much worse structural shape than ours and we're not going to be coming to the top of the list anytime soon. It's also true that the Mass School Building Association is going to come out and look at things before they give us money. It's not like we're telling them one thing and then they'll be surprised when it looks like something else. There are all kinds of details that get worked out in the meantime. So that's a long way of saying it doesn't matter what it actually says and I'll go ahead and vote for it. I want to second everything Ms. Brewer just said. And from our collective experience in my former role as finance director current role, your various roles, this allows us to be on a potential funding list for a potential future grant that could be upwards of 60 percent of renovation costs at one or both of the elementary schools. And it's important for us to be in that queue and the vote is being updated because since our last time submitting for the Amherst public schools, our Marx Meadow has closed. So Marx Meadow was part of the previous application from when you voted last time. So there are needs in the physical plant for both Wildwood and Fort River as they're over 40 years of service so far. Having said that, the town through its capital budget and working closely with the school administration has not ignored those buildings. There has been substantial investment. Wildwood roof, Wildwood entranceway, some interior work at Wildwood over the summer, energy system improvements at Fort River School, the regional schools, again the biggest project is the replacement of 400 windows at the middle school with 60 percent state grant funding through an energy efficiency program. So we're not at the top of the list and we're not close to the top of the list and that's a sad statement on the state of school conditions across Massachusetts and across the country for that matter but it's important for us to be in the queue for consideration because we know those buildings do need work and we need some broad-based tax revenue from the state budget to help Amherst make those improvements over the coming decade to Fort River and Wildwood. So it's important that we're on record for this and we will get you the minutes of the school committee when they're available. Thank you and just so you know the school committee has taken this vote so while I don't know what their discussion was I do know that we are officially taking our vote after they have taken their vote and unfortunately we have to read all that great bunch of information to the minutes. I'm up for the task. I like this so much. Would you rather? No, go right. I move that the select board authorized the superintendent to submit to the Massachusetts School Building Authority the statement of interest form dated January 9th 2012 for the Wildwood Elementary School located at 71 Strong Street Amherst M.A. which describes and explains the following deficiencies and the priority categories for which an application may be submitted to the Massachusetts School Building Authority in the future. Priority one replacement or renovation of a building which is structurally unsound or otherwise in a condition seriously jeopardizing the health and safety of school children where no alternative exists. Priority two elimination of existing severe overcrowding. Priority four prevention of severe overcrowding expecting to result from increased enrollments. Priority five replacement renovation or modernization of school facility systems such as roofs, windows, boilers, heating and ventilation systems to increase energy conservation and decrease energy related costs in a school facility. Priority six short term enrollment growth. Priority seven replacement of or addition to obsolete buildings in order to provide for a full range of programs consistent with state and approved local requirements. And hereby further spec- specifically acknowledges that by submitting this statement of interest form the Massachusetts School Building Authority in no way guarantees the acceptance or the approval of an application, the awarding of a grant or any other funding commitment from the Massachusetts School Building Authority or commits the city slash town slash regional school district to filing an application for funding with the Massachusetts School Building Authority. I guess we vote that one and then I read the next one. Yes, Ms. Brewer would you like to second? I'd like to second that. Thank you for the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Next. I move that the select board authorize the superintendent to submit to the Massachusetts School Building Authority. The statement of interest form dated January 9th, 2012 for the Fort River Elementary School located at 70 Southeast Street, Amherst, MA, which describes and explains the following deficiencies and the priority categories for which an application may be submitted to the Massachusetts School Building Authority in the future. Priority one, replacement or renovation of a building which is structurally unsound or otherwise in a condition seriously jeopardizing the health and safety of school children where no alternative exists. Priority two, elimination of existing severe overcrowding. Priority four, prevention of severe overcrowding expected to result from increased enrollments. Priority five, replacement renovation or modernization of school facility systems such as roofs, windows, boilers, heating and ventilation systems to increase energy conservation and decrease energy related costs in a school facility. Priority six, short term enrollment growth. Priority seven, replacement of or addition to obsolete buildings in order to provide for full range of programs consistent with state and approved local requirements. And hereby further specifically acknowledges that by submitting the statement of interest form, the Massachusetts School Building Authority in no way guarantees the acceptance or the approval of an application, the awarding of a grant or any other funding commitment from the Massachusetts School Building Authority or commits the city slash town slash regional school district to filing an application for funding with the Massachusetts School Building Authority. This per second. Thank you for the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Three to zero. Thank you. All right. That part is done. So before we move on to the next one, let's deal with Miss Kruger. So if you'd come forward, just so you know, I apologize for the miscommunication. Untimed items are by definition untimed and we don't expect anybody to come in for them. If we were expecting somebody to come in, we would have timed it. I knew that. And I didn't know if I came back from an appointment in Boston and didn't know if I'd come or not. And then I thought, oh, I can do this. Thank you for granting a hop, breakfast, the inholders and common victuollars license. But the reason I wanted to come in and talk to you is I started this business sometime between, well, I started working on it last January and I opened in March and I had a really hard time figuring out the rules, permits and licenses required. So I was quite surprised when I got a call from Select Board Office informing me that I needed this additional license. So I actually just, I just want, if you could indulge me for a minute, explain what the process was because I have a suggestion to make. And I have no problem with the license request or fee. I'm all for regulation. I love it. Truly. So when I started, I looked in the zoning bylaw because I had this concept of a bed and breakfast in a part of my house. And it turns out that up to three guests are a by-right use in my zoning district and I don't have room for more than three guests. So it was an allowed by-right use. That was fine. I talked to people in the planning department to confirm that. I went to the clerk and I got a doing business as for my business. That was a $70 fee. And then I somewhere along the line knew because I was going to be serving breakfast that I needed to deal with the health department. So I contacted the health department. In fact, yes, there's an inspection and a license fee. It's $175 a year for that license. And Javier Mir came out and did the inspection. It was great. And she said, and by the way, you need to take a serve safe class. And I'll give you information about how to do that. And you need to get your serve safe license. It's the same license that's required for people who manage hospital kitchens, hot dogs, stands everything. So I took a course at Greenfield Community College and paid the $225, took the test and got my serve safe license. I also along the way as part of that had to take an allergen awareness certification online test. I did that. When Javier came out, she said, you need to get in touch with the Building Commissioner. And I said, well, my information is it's a by right use. Why would I contact the Building Commissioner? And she said, well, you just have to. That's how we do it. So I contacted Miss Weeks in the inspection services department. And she said, yes, you're a by right use, but I really recommend you file a parking plan. That way, if somebody calls or a neighbor has a question, I can say you've complied with all the requirements and you have this plan on file. So I drew one up from a aerial photo and submitted it. That was fine. It was not required, but probably a really good idea. I checked for the requirements for a sign for my business. And I met the Zoning Baila requirements for that, so I didn't need a permit, but I put up the sign. And so I really wanted to do it by the book. And there were a lot of steps. But my point is none of this is in one place. And even the experts that I talked to and asked questions of did not know what all the requirements were for a bed and breakfast in the town of Amherst. Miss Murr said, oh, we would like to do an information handout on this, but we really haven't had time. When the woman called from the select board office, she said, we'd really like to do a handbook on this or a guidebook. I don't know when we'll do it. So I would like to recommend that the town maybe, with the Chamber of Commerce, get together and put out a very brief permit information license guideline piece for bed and breakfast so that other people who want to do this will be able to find in one place all of this information. And for some people, they're going to need a special permit. There's other parts that I didn't have to do, but it can get even more complicated. And I just did it. I don't know that I have quite all of it, but I've already, this represents about $530 in fees, applications, et cetera. So it's not a small thing. And if the town was interested, I'd be happy to volunteer to help in putting this piece together because I think it's a really nice complement to our small businesses in town. But I just have to say it was really a puzzle to try to figure out what was required. So it's a little shocked when I found out I didn't have a necessary license. Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate the information and the suggestions for how to improve it going forward. It's nice to have something that's not just a complaint, but a suggestion. Right. So thanks for listening to appreciate you're coming in and I apologize for the confusion about needing to come in or not. That's no, no, I knew that part, but okay. Okay. Perfect. Thank you very much. Okay. Next up, we've got the Mexico cities packed. Miss Stein, tell us a little bit about this. Okay. This is about a request to enter Amherst as a global city in a covenant on climate. And for some reason, it came addressed to me. I'm not quite sure why from a group that's long established in this field called Ickley. I called Stephanie Chickarello, who's our sustainability coordinator, to discuss it with her. And her feeling was very strong that we should not join this at this time, that our energy should be focused on becoming a green community, which will have more important impact in terms of energy conservation for the town, and that this would take away from that effort. There are a couple of other points she made about it that most of the cities that have signed on right now are not from the U.S. anyway. And secondly, that belonging to Ickley has a cost to the town, financial cost. I don't know what it is, because it was not part of the information they sent us, which you all have in your packets. But it seemed to me that since Stephanie Chickarello is in charge of our sustainability efforts, her argument in terms of working on the green communities seemed dead on and I'm willing to vote no on this. Okay. So, Miss Stein had given this information to me a few weeks ago, and it seemed ready to go at that point. And in the meantime, it turns out that it's not. So I think we don't need to take any action on it at all unless Miss Brewer would prefer to take some action on it. We would have otherwise made an affirmative vote, but I don't think we necessarily need to make a vote to not do anything. Miss Brewer. And I would ask, I would defer the exact wording of it to something that we might ever be able to find again, given that it's got a number of different names. But I wonder if we might just put a line in the minutes associated with it that says Miss Stein, you spoke with Mr. Pirello, and this left board agreed that the information regarding the global cities covenant on climate, Mexico City Pat, while interesting is not our primary focus and is not something you intend to take a position on. At this time. Yeah, at this time because of the green. So basically what you just said as a sentence in our minutes and then that way we like doubt with it. If anybody ever says, well, what'd you ever do about that? How come you haven't done this marvelous thing? But it's not something we're continuing to work on right now. OK, anybody want to do anything other than that? Very good. OK, I just wondered if Mr. Musanti wanted to add anything because I know that you also have had a conversation. I just want to confirm I've also had updated communication from Stephanie Ciccarello, our sustainability coordinator since we posted this to the agenda. And it's basically it's we're not ready yet in the queue of things that we're working on in that area. Focusing on the Green Communities Act application this spring. There's a five year energy conservation plan. That's a requirement of that. And when we're done with that effort, we're in a better position to devote the person hours. We need to look at things like CO2 emissions and documenting those, et cetera, et cetera. And Stephanie has some thoughts on the best way to do that and who we might partner with to do it more accurately and efficiently. So so I think it's one of these. We're very interested in pursuing this, but not not just yet. Thank you. OK, then the next item is Mass Municipal Association resolutions for annual meeting. This is something that we do every year. This is a vote to authorize the chair to vote on behalf of our town for these resolutions or against them, as we see fit, that the Mass Municipal Association Policy Committee has been working on and put together for recommendation to all the cities and towns for the annual meeting that is coming up on January 21st. There are three resolutions this time. One of them is these are a little bit more general. I was noticing them. They have been in recent years. They're they're less kind of specifically petitioning the governor to do a certain thing or the legislature to do a certain thing. They're a little bit. They're a little bit bigger in scope and involving the federal government. So the first one is about the transportation finance crisis. And it's basically saying that between the federal government and our local state government, they can't keep cutting funds to our infrastructure and roads and bridges. And it is essentially encouraging adequate investment in that area. The second one is resolution opposing unfunded mandates on cities and towns. And this is sort of unfunded mandates in general, but also about water quality. There's a lot of consideration being being given to actually, I don't know that much about this, so I can't speak about that intelligently, but it has to do with potential ballot initiative. Do you know anything about the ballot initiative? This is sort of obliquely a reaction to the ballot initiative and effort that's been talked about in different referendum writing circles that are out there in the state to have a ballot referendum mandating even stricter water quality standards. And so the concern is that however well intentioned, some or all of those proposals might be when they come with no corresponding assistance to help communities and their ratepayers fund those improvements, then that becomes what we call an unfunded mandate. And so there needs to be two parts of the conversation. One is what's needed, but two, what's the most equitable way to pay for these improvements? And that's where this resolution comes into play. And do you know more about the specifics of the initiative that is being considered? I don't know a lot about that. That particular one. OK. Mr. Comments, I was just going to mention that maybe what you're asking is the thing that somebody's mentioned at least one meeting I've been at where there are people and I came up here before to because there are actually people out there strange though it may seem to us that want to apply the limits of two and a half. That's right. To water and sewer rates, which you know sounds really good to the taxpayer on the surface of it. And then they realize, oh wait, that would be a horrible disaster. So they want to they want to limit those changes in the same way that operating budgets are limited. And it's it's under the guys of taxpayer relief. And that I don't know that that's gone anywhere this year, but I know there was there was something filed at some point, but just like there are lots of things filed, but then don't make it all the way up this up the ladder. There's been noise about such a thing. And so I think it was very appropriate that they went ahead and said, oh, by the way, that includes us doing it to ourselves kind of thing. You know, it's one thing to have an unfunded mandate, but then we're artificially tying our own hands by agreeing to a proposition two and a half limitation. All right. Thank you. So that that is the that is exactly what I was thinking of. And so I'm reading this and thinking, you know, all right here here, they've they've created this and sort of a reaction to that. But I couldn't remember the specifics of what that was. And because strangely, they didn't really include it too directly, right? They didn't say it really flat out. Exactly. So all right. So that's what that one is about. And then the third one is again, kind of very general talking about about federal. It's calling on the calling it calling on the U.S. government to embrace a strong fiscal and economic partnership with cities and towns. And this is really getting to the issue that we've talked about a couple of times regarding our expectations for the budget going forward, which is to say that if the federal government cuts significant programs at that they fund that are funded at the state level and locally, then the state would need to fill in those gaps. So this is about really looking at kind of the complete picture, whether it has to do with grant funding and infrastructure funding, all kinds of social service funding that there needs to be a real conversation going on with the states and with the locality with the municipalities, local municipalities and MMA is proposing to have a big role in a statewide conversation and how that continues with the federal government. I would just add, I mean this so it's about a big picture concept, but it's also a very real issue front and center in the upcoming session. Well, in the second half of the current session of Congress about what's the appropriate role of the federal government going forward as it grapples with its own budget deficit issues and urging our partners in the federal government to continue to play a vital role in serving poor people or through community development, block grant funding that primarily serves low and moderate income individuals and families. Our Title I program, serving some of our neediest students in our public schools, infrastructure, a whole wide range of things, serving people in our community, veterans services, etc. So it's an important resolution and one that will have real debate both in Congress and in the presidential election in the year ahead. So it's kind of like don't don't be solving your problems at the federal level by trying to balance your budget on the on the backs of all of us at the state and local levels. You know, I was saying these are more general than they have been in the past. In the past, they've been calling for things like locally, local option taxes, local option taxes. Exactly. The ability for, you know, the for the governor to sign into law and let the legislature to approve something that municipalities want. And this is that is one element of these. They mentioned don't put any restraints on us in in terms of raising local funding. Right, right. So it's just a little bit different than usual, though. Interesting. Yes, Miss Burr. I was going to add that again, we always fuss about what we're calling this endorsing or, you know, allowing or authorizing or whatever, because again, ironically, of course, the three of us are the ones going to the MMA meeting. But in a case where not everyone was going and people, oh, say on a previous select board I served on, people didn't really know what's going to be happening at the meeting, et cetera. It's important that when something is relatively specific, as these are not, that if something gets changed drastically on the floor, that we're still saying we trust that you'll figure out what to do based on all the conversations we've had in the past. And, you know, not that Amherst vote is likely to make big difference to somebody, but occasionally with, you know, some things like local options, there've been really some heated debates between different parts of the state as to how that plays out for them and the fact that it doesn't protect them enough or offering up to them in comparison to other things. These are all so broad that it's kind of hard to imagine them not just going sailing right through and moving on to something else. It's funny that you mentioned that because that was specifically in my notes from last year that are on my calendar for this item for this year is to explicitly ask for the ability to use my best judgment on amendments that are made from the floor. Because I mean, technically, the vote here is authorizing support of these. But, you know, they do get tweaked a little bit on the floor. So it's a sense of, okay, is this still in the spirit of what we were approving? So I was going to specifically ask for that. Ms. Stein. Can we change the word endorse in the motion to vote for? Sure. Because that's actually what you do, right? All right. So let's get to the motion sheet. Let's see. Where are we? It's on the second page. Second up from the bottom. Okay. Yes. All we're altering it. You want to put in or amended the three proposed resolutions. We wanted to say to authorize the chair to vote for. Yeah, to authorize the chair to vote for because that's who normally gets the vote. But you know, to make it clear that we knew this was going to happen. And I don't know if we want to if we need to bother saying anything about the sense of using your best judgment, although obviously you're welcome to word that in there. And the other thing I was just going to say is that the January 21 2012 meeting for everybody who's going to be reading this next year. I'm wondering which year we were talking about this fascinating resolution. Right. I think that's a good point. Okay, to January 21st. Yeah. That's the way they that's what they did it. Okay, so to vote to authorize the chair to rather to authorize the chair to vote for the three proposed resolutions to be considered blah, blah, blah. And I think I think it can just be an understanding about using your judgment and on amendments that's okay with you. Where are you going to put the date in the title? After meeting. After association business meeting. January 21st 2012 on transportation finance. Okay. All right. Would you like to make the motion? I would. I move that the that the select board authorize the chair to vote for the three proposed resolutions to be considered at the annual Massachusetts municipal association business meeting on the transportation finance crisis, opposing unfunded mandates on cities and towns of the commonwealth and calling on the US government to embrace a strong fiscal and economic partnership with cities and towns. Somewhere in there. It says January one with the date and that's wonderful. And Alyssa is happy to second further discussion on favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Three to zero. Okay. Next up by 13 budget update. Mr. Musanti. So this is our last meeting before we meet on Friday, the 13th for a budget presentation meeting. So this is we had a preview of the budget at our last meeting in December. And now if there's any sort of further update to give us about that is going to start actually, I apologize with the announcement of the FY 13 water and sewer rates, which we have a memo in our packet about the memo suggests a motion on approving this, but we're actually going to approve this at our last January meeting so that folks were just kind of announcing the rates, getting them out there so people are aware of them. If they have any concerns about them, they can express them between now and our final meeting, which is the 20 what of January 23rd. Thank you of January. So why don't you tell us first about the water and sewer rates? Sure. And this is really a preview of a vote. We are recommending you make take at your next meeting. The budgets that I will be recommending for the fiscal year beginning July 1st include some, what I think are modest increases in both the water and sewer enterprise fund budgets that fund the water treatment and distribution system in town and also the sewer collection and treatment system. Those budgets, since really the 1980s when the town went to this model of using enterprise funds, we recover the full cost of both operating and capital costs to operate and maintain the water and sewer systems from rate payers. And so rate payers pay rate per 100 cubic feet of use. So the more water you use, the more you pay for water and sewer. And we are recommending to support the recommended budgets increases to the water and sewer rate of approximately 3% each, be an increase in each rate of 10 cents per 100 cubic feet. Water would go from $3.30 to $3.40 per 100 cubic feet. Sewer would go from 3.35 to 3.45 per 100 cubic feet. That will cost the average four-person household roughly an additional $12 per year, $1 per month increase for water and a comparable increase for sewer. That will bring our average water bill for a four-person household to $408 per year and the average sewer bill to about $414 per year. I've cited in my memo to the board that's in your packet that even with those increases our rates remain substantially below many other communities, water and sewer rates in our region and substantially below the average water and sewer rate across the Commonwealth. We rely on a survey that the engineering firm, Ty and Bond, conducts each year that suggested that even two years ago now, which is the most current statewide data, the average water bill statewide was $470 and even with this 2012 increase that we're looking at for the town, ours is at $408 for water and this average sewer bill statewide is $638 and even with our increase our sewer bill on average would go to $414. So we still feel good about the competitiveness of both of those rates and we feel good about the budgets and operations that that supports because we continue our long standing effort to adequately fund prevented maintenance and capital improvements, both at our treatment plant as well as the collection and distribution systems and that will this funding in both of those areas that you will see in the recommended budgets for next year. I do want to mention for the record we had a unanimous vote from town meeting back in November to approve the select board and my recommendation to fund sewer extensions to the wildflower drive area in Amherst Woods as well as Harkness Road, which were recommended on the sewer extension master plan that the board supported this fall. Those capital outlays which will be reflected in debt service over the next couple of years will have a nominal effect on rates because on the on the sewer side because at the same time we're implementing those sewer extensions and those two neighborhoods were retiring old debt for the Chapel, Middle Street sewer extensions that were funded about eight years, nine years ago now. So the old debt service is being replaced in the budget with the new debt service. So that these rate increases really are not related to that effort. And there was no increase in water rate last year. That's correct. There was a sewer rate increase of 10 cents last year. Is that right? Yes. So it's been two years since our water rate has increased. Right. Exactly. Okay. Questions or comments about this from the Museum of Safety? Ms. Brewer? Well, first of all, Ms. Brewer wanted to really thank the fact that the memo includes reference to not just Harkness Road and Wildflower Drive, but also the sewer extension master plan to make it really clear to people that this is a plan that we're following. And those are the two particular areas that are happening at this particular time. I just think that's a really useful reference. The other thing, and you know, I was really worried this is going to sound like I'm going to say I'm just curious because I hate those words. And I'm not just curious. I think it's really weird, but I'll bet there's a really easy explanation for this that probably no one here has off the top of their heads. But does it strike anyone else's odd that between our water and sewer, there's only a $6 difference in our rates, but there are much bigger differences in a lot of other areas like, you know, $36, $97, $168. I'm trying to, I just wondered, you know, why, why, why are we so much smarter than everybody else? That like our bills are so much closer, whereas particularly when you mentioned, you know, the statewide average, the sewer bill is just astronomical. I think from the statewide perspective, you know, many of the communities that we compare ourselves to are in the greater Boston area. So the greater Boston mass water resources authority district, they're paying the local share of Boston Harbor cleanup, which is it's both water and sewer, but the bigger impact on that cleanup is on the sewer side, both with sewage treatment and dealing with what's called combined sewer overflows, where when you have a heavy rain, the sewer system has infiltration and it doesn't have enough capacity. And so there's overflow that occurs into the rivers and harbor. So there's a is a multi billion dollar program well in place to deal with that. And so there's a lot of federal financial support for that effort, but there's also a very significant local share. So the average sewer bill and some of those greater Boston communities is at or above $1,000 a year for the four person household. Thank you. That's really helpful. Miss I was wondering if if it's comparable to you from one town to the next, the percent of homes that are on sewers. I'm not aware that that data exists. It may exist, but I haven't seen it. You know that we're roughly 93% sewer just think back to the factoids related to the sewer extension. That's useful, which is a relatively high percentage, particularly for a more rural community like ours in Massachusetts. You might think that would make a bill higher. That's why I was asking. Yeah. So that's good to know. Okay. So that's just a preview that so folks, especially the public knows that that is that the budget, the water and sewer budgets are based on those rates and the select board needs to approve those rates prior to the budget going forward. And we will do that at the end of January. So I would just add that these are rates that we're recommending be effective for July 1st. So another advantage that we've done the last couple of years is try to take action on these rates right around this time so that there's five or six months notice to customers that there's an increased pending on their next quarterly bill that they would receive beginning this summer. Exactly. Thank you. That's an important point because in the past, once the new bills came out, people were saying, wait a minute, when did this happen? And it was realized through some, you know, there were some complicated discussions back then that this these rates are baked into the budget proposal for the new year. So they might as well be brought front and center at that time and called out and announced so that people recognize, as Mr. Musanti said, the notice, the few months notice that their rates are going to go up a little bit at that time. So Ms. Brewer. Which asks me to just belabor that for a moment, which is that although we know that, and of course all our reading public and listening public knows that will that actually go in the next set of bills that goes out, you know, the select board voted on January 23rd, 2012 to make a rate increase in July. I'm not sure we've normally done that, but that would be even better notice if we were able to do that. And there's kind of a rolling screen. Yeah, we'll look into that. We have the capability on our software to insert messages. So I will follow up on that. That formal notice might be even better. Use it while you can. Okay. Stock piling of water at the cheaper rate. Okay, moving right along. So the FY 13 budget update. So anything else for us to know in advance of the January 13th presentation? I don't have any real new information, although we're very much looking forward obviously to Governor Patrick's presentation to the Mass Municipal Conference on the 20th, you know, several hours after I submit my recommended budget. So we're looking forward to that. And Mr. Poole and I are completing the budget proposal and summary information primarily that will be the basis for the presentation on the 13th. And hopefully you'll get your beautifully bound budget book that day there. That's what we're expecting to be able to do. So I don't have anything really new for you tonight. This is really just on there to as a placeholder in case there was any new information, any dramatic new expectations or whatever on your end or questions from the select board prior to the January 13th presentation. So are there any questions from select board? Okay, then next up we have the town manager's report, right? And I have a few items and let me punch through these relatively quickly. First item building commissioner recruitment. We are in the midst of a recruitment process to hire a new building commissioner to replace Bonnie Weeks who served her last day in town service. Last Friday, December 30th, I want to thank Bonnie again for her service to the community. We have received a number of applications for that position that we've been advertising. A screening panel has been named by me to screen applicants and bring to me during the month of January one or more candidates for my consideration. I will then meet with those individuals and make a decision about who and whether to make an offer to and my goal on all of this is to have these interviews occur during the month of January and make a job offer by the end of January with the start date to be determined by the circumstances of the successful candidate. But we're very excited about this. It's a very, very important position in terms of keeping the town safe and life safety and building code issues, serving as our zoning enforcement officer as well and really looking for an ideal candidate that is very responsive to those needs, being able to both enforce the building code appropriately but also be able to work constructively with applicants, current and prospective people wanting to invest time and money in the town of Amher. So it's an important position and it's a high priority for me in the month ahead as we work to name a new permanent building commissioner. Related to that, I did appoint Dave Wojciewicz, who's been a building inspector for us for a number of years. He is now serving as acting building commissioner effective January 1st and will be in that capacity until a permanent commissioner is appointed and quite confident Dave will be able to handle things in the interim while we complete this process. Thank you. Questions or comments about that? Ms. Brewer? I just want to thank the town manager for including the advertisement and the position description. I think that's really useful information and I'm not going to keep it because I know it's online but I think it's really valuable when we do these major hires like that to have a good sense of what those positions are. So thank you. All right. Next, I just wanted to, for public consumption, briefly talk about the fact that we've reached a contract settlement with our last of four bargaining units that I negotiate employment agreements with and that's our AFSCME DPW unit which is comprised of most of the members of the Department of Public Works. Water, sewer, solid waste, streets, cemeteries, parks and grounds do a lot of work for us and I'm pleased with the terms. It's a two-year agreement that goes through June 30th, 2013. There are two key provisions and one is the wage provision. The contract calls for a 2% adjustment January 1, 2012 and then another 2% adjustment July 1, 2012. That is consistent with the wage package that was agreed to by the SEIU bargaining unit earlier this winter. The second major provision is I've agreed to appoint management representatives to a labor management committee that we will create with union representation and we will look at compensation data by job title within the unit which is not a reclassification study which is a whole different ball of acts that the personnel board has undertaken in recent years with non-union positions. This is a wage and compensation study comparing job titles. We would work to identify a list of comparable communities and examine wage and other compensation data between the communities and see what conclusions we draw and that will be just useful information for me to have going forward and I look forward to having that constructive dialogue and data analysis hand in hand with the union representatives and we'll see where that leads us so I was happy to agree to that proposal that they made and it's something we haven't done in a formal way for that particular set of job titles in a number of years so I think it's a very timely exercise and will help us in our planning going forward. Excellent congratulations and thanks to the AFSCME folks for their cooperation with all that. Questions or comments for Mr. Musanti? All right, next. Next, Lord Jeffrey in is reopening. Yes, they're reopening in January 2012. It's been a long process but an incredibly worthwhile one. I've been asked to participate. I know the select board was invited to an opening ceremony that is occurring this Thursday morning, January 5th at 10 a.m. at the Lord Jeffrey Inn. Very, very excited. The Amherst College, the owners of the inn, have invested upwards of $14, $15 million in this renovation. 49 guest rooms have been renovated. They have a function room, ballroom that's been added to the inn, a new restaurant called 30 Boltwood. Pub style, upscale pub style with a focus on local farm to table. Cuisine is opening in a matter of days. Very excited about that. Right on the edge of Amherst Common, some indoor and outdoor seating related to that. There'll be ability for local groups, business and other groups to have events there, weddings, et cetera. So we're really excited. I know there are many people in town and in the downtown business community eager to see the Lord Jeff come back to life. And so we're really excited about their reopening. This dovetails with work the town has labored to complete on rehabbing Spring Street itself, including the sidewalk on both sides of the street and the inn in Amherst College funding a number of the improvements on the sidewalk side on the inside of the street as well as town investments to improve the Spring Street parking lot. So all that's come together nicely. We're looking forward to the opening. And having 2012 be a really momentum building year with the reopening of the Lord Jeffrey Inn, the launch of our business improvement district and the renewed energy focus and money on marketing and event planning and putting on events and other enhanced services in our downtown. So we're really excited about it. Thank you. That really is such a vital part of the downtown tab. That be back in business will be huge. And to have it be new and improved is very exciting. Ms. Brewer, question? I'm going to so rudely interrupt the town manager's report to perhaps saying something the chair was going to say later. But because we're talking about the Lord Jeff, to mention that it's also being starting to be publicized that the community open house is on Saturday, January 14th from 1.30 to 4.30. And I'm sure they'll have various personages of great importance there as well. But the big deal one with the ribbon cutting this Thursday, as they say, by invitation only. Maybe I'll try and sneak in since my other meeting got canceled. But the community is being welcomed by the management. Saturday, January 14th, all afternoon they'll have tours, et cetera. So people should watch for that. Thank you. And next in my report, Ms. Brewer did mention this earlier in the form of a question. Just for the board's information, I have made appointments to fill the vacancy on the LSSE commission. John Foster, who's been an active volunteer, coaching, and other things in youth activities. A lot of energy and good ideas that we want to put to use on the commission. I've appointed him and then Sue Cairn on the Refuse and Recycling and Refuse Management Committee. Again, they have a lot on their agenda in the coming year with looking at the future of our transfer station and all of our recycling initiatives in town. So two important appointments I wanted the board and the community to be aware of that. Next, briefly, public tree debris removal update. I reported at the December 12th meeting we had engaged through competitive bid local contractor Wagner Wood to assist the town in completing what we called the public portion of the tree debris removal from town right-of-way trees. And that work is ongoing and we expect to complete that by the end of this week. That's the most current estimate I have from the DPW superintendent. We do have letters that have gone out to property owners that have piles of tree debris that are on their property near the public way that Mr. Snow from DPW has inventoried all of our streets and identified a series of piles that are debris piles from private trees. We've made an offer to property owners to have the town remove that debris using Wagner Wood at a group discounted rate of $28 per cubic yard, which would cover the town's cost to Wagner Wood for the disposal of that. And it's up to the individual property owner whether they want to take advantage of that offer. And I want to encourage property owners who should have received a letter within the last several days from the town to decide whether they want to take advantage of that offer if they have questions. Pleased to contact the Department of Public Works and see what can be done. So we're making steady progress there. And we're also looking forward to submittals we will be required to make to the state and federal governments for reimbursement for up to 75% of the disposal costs of the public tree removal portion of the debris. And I hope to be able to report back to the board in the coming months on the status of that. Thank you. Questions or comments about tree removal? Debris, tree debris removal, tree sark. Next briefly, I just wanted to I know there was some notice in the newspaper recently. The Hitchcock Center and Hampshire College made a major announcement that they have entered into a memorandum of understanding non-binding that could result in a new state of the art environmental learning center to be owned and operated by Hitchcock Center on the grounds of Hampshire College and there'll be some exploratory work in the next few months between those two parties to see what specifics can be agreed upon and that would be the basis then to negotiate a long-term ground lease between Hitchcock Center and Hampshire College. We've had a long-standing relationship with the Hitchcock Center and Julie Johnson, the executive director because they've been renting space at Larch Hill Conservation Area for many years. So we've been in the loop on this right along. We're entirely supportive of giving them an opportunity to grow and also stay within the town of Amherst and we applaud that partnership with Hampshire College, helping Hampshire College fulfill its mission to be a leader in environmental education as well. So I wanted to highlight that. Next, I wanted to mention University Health Services. You know that in recent weeks the university announced some cutbacks from their expanded hours of service that they were offering. That the chancellor has named a new special committee to review those proposed changes and they'll be looking to identify cost savings and developing a financial plan for their goal of building a new health services facility on campus sometime within the next five years or so. And the campus has reached out to the town through Nancy Bafone. I've been in touch with Nancy Bafone and there will be opportunities for myself and town staff, fire chief, health director, et cetera, to offer input to this committee and Nancy will help make that happen. So I wanted the board to be aware of that effort and that's what I have for now. Questions or comments from Mr. Musanti on any of these issues or anything else, Ms. Brewer? I appreciate that relationship with Nancy Bafone who also happens to be my next door neighbor but their relationship with the town and the fact that you mess as we've talked about on several occasions has really stepped up in the last couple of years and really giving us someone direct to talk to that we know is known by our chief, our police chief knows her, et cetera and so they can have those conversations because as one might imagine since I work part-time on campus although I don't work for UMS there's been a lot of upset associated with this discussion and so it's nice to know that we have a place to share our concerns as well. So thank you for that relationship. All right, member reports please on the representative reports. Anyone? Sure, that's done. See, the Agricultural Commission canceled their meeting last month. The Board of Health meant and they are still working on the outdoor wood boilers for many different perspectives what kind of fuel, how they should be licensed, recommended practices, public health issues and so on. And they're also working on the emergency preparedness coalition which would be for Eastern Hampshire County. And I hope to report in more detail on that next time. Okay, we also, there's a Hampshire Regional Emergency Committee that has been doing practice exercises in such long before the Halloween storm and the hurricane. And they got some grant money which has been divided up amongst the participating communities for supplies that will help prepare for future emergencies. So I thought I should announce that. The Community Preservation Act Committee met in December and discussed briefly the proposals they had received. I think it was very clear that their new proposal letter where they gave much more guidance as to how a proposer should submit their proposal gave very satisfactory results. They saw a big improvement in the way the proposals came through. And so that was good news and that they are interested in trying to make sure that when the public hearing is held on February 16th they will have sufficiently good publicity because some years we get a lot of people coming to the public hearing to voice their opinions on what should be funded with CPAC funds and some years nobody shows up so they're gonna work on that. So that seems all that I need to say about CPAC. I thought Aaron was gonna talk about this but since he's not here I will. TMCC has put together a meeting for January 31st which will be at 7 p.m. in the Jones Library, the Amherst Room. And it is a meeting to interest new members of town meeting. People who have any interest in joining town meeting are curious about it, would like to talk, hear a presentation, talk to four or five different members representing different points of view who serve or have served on town meeting. This is the opportunity to do so. And I encourage people who have any interest in running for town meeting to join this group and go to this meeting and find out about it because it's an excellent opportunity. And we are a participatory democracy so this is your chance to participate. And I think that's all that I was gonna say. So I'll just mention related to that, that every town meeting seat is up for reelection this year because of the redistricting that was required by the 2010 federal census. So every one of the 240 town meeting seats is up. Anyone who is interested in running for town meeting it only requires one signature and that can be your own. The forms are available at the town clerk's office and they must be returned by February 14th, Valentine's Day. Ms. Brewer. I appreciate you mentioning that because for whatever reason, and I'm sure it's my phone's fault, not the town websites, but the town website under the elections calendar doesn't say a word about the 2012 election yet in comparison to the 2011 and 2010, et cetera. So it's probably just a little glitch there. So thank you for reminding us that that's coming up because we see that in our, on our table tonight we also had the information about town meeting schedule which I'm sure we'll be talking about more but it's good to remember all these things coming together in the spring with the February 14th date. The other thing I was sure Ms. Stein was going to mention was the planning board discussion being how tomorrow night. The zoning is true. Five o'clock. But that's Aaron too. Yeah, that's true. But I know how excited you are about zoning priorities. But I'm happy to have my calendar so you're correct. Go ahead. It's six 30. Yeah. We don't have that posted and I'm not planning to attend or anything. And we wouldn't be deliberating anyway even if all of us showed up. But so, but. So this is when they lay out, they listened to comments from people in town about what zoning issues people should be working on and what they're and give input on such things as article 17 last time, how they would like that changed. Right. And so that folks know there's also going to be a round table discussion specifically about the North Amherst and South Amherst rezoning at the following zoning subcommittee meeting which is two weeks from tomorrow. So that is the 18th, January 18th is going to be specifically about North and South Amherst rezoning. So they want to get all of the feedback from folks from how article 17 was proposed the first time and how it should go forward in the future. And the zoning forum, which is tomorrow night, January 4th at five o'clock, they do this after every town meeting. This has been a twice yearly occurrence where as Ms. Stein said, they solicit all the input from the public about what sorts of zoning priorities there should be going forward. It will not concentrate solely on the North and South Amherst rezoning because that will be a specific meeting on the 18th. But folks are encouraged to attend both of those meetings because that's a very important way that the zoning subcommittee and the planning board determine the priorities for what the community wants brought forward for the future. Okay, anything else on those items? Ms. Brewer, do you have any ways on the board? Quickly, CDBG advisory committee met last week. Oh, I should say not last week, I just looked before that and right before the holidays. And they, as we had discussed before, are looking at what information they're going to ask of the various applicants so that they know, so that they have a better sense moving forward. The next time someone applies for something, exactly how the money was used. So it's one thing to apply for the money and think you'll have a program that does X, Y, and Z, but occasionally things go off schedule. And so they wanna make sure they're able to follow that throughout the process. So that's coming along nicely. They really appreciate having six members just as I'm sure leisure services will very much appreciate having seven members. They haven't had seven members in three years to the best of my knowledge. So it really increases their ability to go ahead and have a meeting when quorum is for. So that will be really great. The only other thing I wanted to mention at this time, and I obviously need to put a lot more work into this effort of outreach myself, is the housing and sheltering committee has almost no applicants associated with it right now. Obviously the holidays were a difficult time to be doing that. Kind of at the end of town meeting, holidays, et cetera, but that's something we're gonna start mentioning a lot more. And the other thing I should mention is the Regional School District Planning Committee, which is having a meeting, our second meeting this week at 4.30, followed by a meeting at five, which is going to be with representatives from the other towns in our region, Pelham and Schuetsbury Committees, so that we can talk about a grant application opportunity that came out just like that. And I mentioned earlier tonight my frustration with words in the English language that don't seem to mean what they say they mean on paper. When I looked at the grant application, I said, please, we're nowhere near ready to apply for this, Amherst can't do this, we don't have these figures, we don't know this, we don't know that, even though we've put a lot of effort into this in the past. And we were assured that it was kind of a hurry up situation, unlike say the park grant, and we were supposed to actually apply in the middle of January and find out in February whether or not we got the money. And apparently they need plenty of applicants for this particular pool of money, so it all comes down to who else applies and who else is dissuaded by the language, so who knows? At this point, it's not supposed to be planning feasibility money, it's supposed to be planning, but not feasibility, it's very confusing. But some other people agreed to work on it from the other town, she was very in particular, was taking the lead, Catherine Oppie from the town of Amherst. And so they were trying to work on that over the holiday so that we'd have something to submit. So if you hear something about that, don't worry, it doesn't mean that we've committed to doing anything. We're just looking for some resources because one of the things we found when I was one of the three people that worked on the last iteration of this group is that nobody had time to develop all these figures. You know, we'd say to Rob Detwiler who we see coming before us to sort of budget things. So how about you spend another couple of weeks developing this set of information for us? Well, when was he gonna do that? And the same for the superintendent, et cetera. So in hopes that we can find somebody to develop some of that information for us because it seems like it should be easy to find but not necessarily so. So again, those meetings are coming up and we're originally hoping to have the first of the set of many public forums that's associated with town meeting article in the middle of January but I suspect that when we talk about it later this week we'll say wow, but it's coming up really soon and there's a lot of other stuff going on too but we'd like to get going because some of the other towns seem to be a little further ahead of us in terms of the process because they've been talking about this for the past year whereas we've been kind of on hold for the past year. So I'll keep you posted on what's happening there right now, it's meetings and a possible grant. All right, thank you. All right, anything else? My only liaison report is Campus and Community Coalition met right before Christmas and the thing that they were talking about that folks they were reporting on was that UMass night out that thing that they did on December 2nd where they had all kinds of activities going on late into the night, maybe all night long, December 2nd into December 3rd. That was very successful. They believe 12 to 1500 students participate in the various activities. It was mainly coordinated by the student affairs folks but it obviously involved participation from a lot of different departments who helped to make it happen. So those folks are now looking at it, kind of seeing how did they do, what would they do differently for the future and they're very excited about it and hope to make it monthly for the spring semester. So they hope to do it February, March and April one night in each of those times. So that is exciting and it's something that, again, that was directly in response to a lot of town and public safety feedback to them saying, you know what, what students are telling in particular our public safety folks is that kind of these marauding bands of parties that like just groups of kids, huge groups of kids moving down the street looking for something to do is because there isn't anything going on on campus, they really don't have any alternatives. So the university has really embraced this and they're trying to make some fun alternatives. So we'll see how that goes. Additionally, the coalition has been doing a lot of work on trying to figure out what its priorities are going forward and in particular what the, kind of the strengths and weaknesses of the organization are. One of the things that we've identified is that we need a way to include landlords and property management organizations more in the discussions. We do have a municipal strategy subcommittee that does include a landlord president of the local landlord association but we need to be having a much greater dialogue with them so that they understand what the issues are and kind of what everyone's needs are. It was really great to have public health director Julie Fetterman talking with David Valencourt who is the new, I can't remember how all their titles work over there. He's the new vice chancellor or something like that for off campus and graduate housing. Somebody who's been with residents life for like 20 years or something but now he is heading up an off campus resource center. So that's really gonna be a place that they're funneling information through for off campus stuff. So really great discussions between those two and great potential for how kind of the town and the university look at these issues going forward continues to be a very good group. That's my only liaison report. Yes. Actually I have a question regarding a liaison report and a question for the town manager. Great. Did you say the CPAC hearing was February 16th? 16th, thank you. I know that comes up at some of the committees I go to. Thank you. And I'm sure it's on the town website. And my question for the town manager, I'm sorry if I blanked out on this somehow. I know we're really excited about the building commissioner position. Have we actually hired the cone enforcement inspector? Cause I know how originally what we'd intended to do but where are we with that now? We've completed the interview process. We're in the midst of a discussion with our leading candidate. Okay. It's exciting to think that all this is coming together. Great. Thank you. Okay. Open meeting law update. Yeah. Another thing which was so great. I said to the office, we should put something about this in the packet but I don't have time to look it up and they just looked it up and here it is. So the piece in the packet is talking about knowing or knowingly violating open meeting law, which you can imagine the kinds of comments that kind of go around in cyberspace associated with this concept. I understand what the attorney general is trying to do here and I appreciate that they're asking us for comments although again they never give us much time to do that. They want us to have this done by the time we basically leave for the MMA meeting on Thursday the 19th. I don't have anything prepared so if anybody has any thoughts about this particular thing we're gonna have to send them in individually. I am planning to send something in saying that as an individual member of a body this is what I think. My two concerns in reading this a couple of different times and looking at it in different websites is it talks about whether or not a violation they're looking at, this is like kind of inside baseball for people who really don't care about this stuff for those of us who have to deal with it all the time. It talks about whether or not the public body or the public body member has been informed previously by receipt of a decision from a court of competent jurisdiction or advised by the attorney general that such conduct violates the law. So that seems pretty clear from the standpoint that okay the attorney general told you in January don't do this again and then you do it in June well then you're gonna get a fine for doing it again. Okay that's clear. You go to court over it and you find out in February that you lost the decision well then you better not do it again two years later because your town's kind of already on the map for having done it. What I'm not clear on and I doubt that they are either is what informed and by receipt means because we get memos from say Copeland and Page that say there was some random court case. Here you go. Well sometimes we get those memos and sometimes we don't get them till we show up at MMA and like do we know if they really apply to us or not and what counts as being told. I mean I can totally get that if your community was told then you would know that but because they're putting all this other stuff up on the website which I think is fabulous I'm a little concerned about what they mean by informed. I'm also concerned about what's sufficient because in terms of if this goes far enough from another standpoint which is the example that I will provide to them which is not as unusual as I'd like it to be which is that if one knows of a committee that's planning to call an executive session for example for a particular reason and you as a person who is so fascinated by this topic is convinced just as another volunteer that that's not a good idea that that would not meet the legal requirement but the other person says you also chose. You know what how much blame does the person take at that point whether or not they do it given that we supposedly go through this training we supposedly read the stuff if some of the people at the table say I'm pretty sure that's not a good idea and other people go ahead and do it anyway well whose fault is that then? I mean we're all volunteers we don't wanna make people's lives unnecessarily cumbersome but we want people to feel like they have some responsibility to find out like go ahead and ask get an okay from somebody so I'm just planning basically to ask the office when I write my little note because I've decided one of my New Year's resolutions to write something kinda small and not too beautifully worded just to get it written is you know what is their thinking behind that as to what happens when you have difficulties within a community for example because we see that all the time in newspapers you know the planning board in some other town thinks the select board's doing crazy stuff and they wanna complain about it but they're not attorneys and they're not the attorney general's office so at what point does a volunteer need to listen to whoever? Okay. So you're gonna submit those comments? I'll submit, yeah something along those lines. And so if we have particular thoughts on it we should submit individually also Miss Stein did you have your hand raised about that? No I think Alyssa's covered it I was just gonna help with the discussion as I understood it but I think she's really put a figure on the important issue what is informed? You know a blanket statement shot into the world may not reach the people who need to hear it and I'm sure there are times when people act against the open meeting law out of ignorance they just simply aren't aware that you know that crosses the line. Okay. All right next up chairs report the only thing in chairs report is I just wanted to review the fact that town meeting is coming up feels like it's just ended and it has but it's coming up again. It begins April 30th that's just a couple days early this year usually it starts in May. So it begins April 30th that means we have deadlines coming up for articles the citizen's zoning petition deadline is February 6th so that's about a month from right now. There is a month difference between the citizen's zoning petition and articles and then citizens other kinds of articles and all other articles so that other deadline non-zoning non-citizen zoning article deadline is March 5th and those dates will all be upon us before we know it. We already talked a little bit about the election the annual town election is Tuesday April 3rd that of course will be upon us very quickly also and so there's just a lot going on in the next couple of months which is a good segue to the calendar preview. January we only meet, we only meet I'm putting meet in quotes one other time in January and that's the 23rd but actually we meet a whole bunch of times before then. Our next regular select board meeting is the 23rd of January but we will be meeting as a reminder to folks in about a week and a half on Friday the 13th. That is the four o'clock meeting joint meeting with the finance committee here in this room for the town manager's budget presentation. We are also meeting this coming Saturday the 7th for as many of us as who can show up the meeting is posted. This is the four towns meeting when we get together with select boards finance committee school committees from the other towns in the region and talk about what the regional budget situation and circumstances looks like going forward. That is this Saturday the 7th. We also have coming up the annual Martin Luther King community breakfast that is not a meeting but is something many select board members attend and the MMA annual meeting and conference as we've already discussed all three of us who are here tonight will be attending that as well as Mr. Musanti. So it is a busy month even though we have only one regular quote regular select board meeting during it. So this is the beginning of what 2012 is looking like. Any questions or comments about any of the upcoming scheduling issues? Okay, let's try and finish up any untimed items and get out of here minutes. Minutes is the big thing. Is that the only thing? Yes, we already did the appointments. Yes, okay. I looked through all the minutes and I was fine with all of them. Pardon? I looked through the minutes and I was fine with all of them. I have very few corrections, but I do, what's that? I wanted to see if you caught that one. It's a simple typo. It's so irrelevant. No, I didn't. I caught where you were left off even though you attended though. Are you sure? I'm pretty sure. But we were only, I have my little points. I mean, we're missing certain things like submitted by and list of documents off a number of them. But they're not things that we need to discuss. There are just two things I did want to ask about. This is September 12th and this is more a question of follow-up than anything that has to be changed, okay? It says at the end that a working proposal based on previous discussions and Ms. Stein's recommendations of 729.11 was drafted with the goal to assist town staff not to fill an oversight role. The board coalesced around the idea of a body that meets formally a couple of times a year but is mostly available to management as a group or individuals if and as needed. The point is that, I don't think we followed up on that. Oh, right, we haven't done that yet. So that's something for us to follow up on. So I will just cross that out. And then also on that same set of minutes there was a talk of drafting a letter to the committees and boards, et cetera, that don't have liaisons. Have we ever done that? You were gonna sign it? I think that Erin did draft it and I don't think that it did go out but I noticed that in the minutes also so I need to follow up on that. Those to me were just points to follow up on. And that's it. The rest are typo type things like missing the documents and minutes that ended abruptly, nobody signed off on them. Okay, so if those are all just technical corrections that are clear, they'll be clear for Ms. Roussel. But if not, people can write to me and say. End of this one too without typo. Oh, here's another one. It's just a typo. It's just a typo. And that's all mine are, but very few of them. Also I just said, here you go. Yeah, the ones in orange are Alyssa's, the ones in black ink are mine. Okay, so Ms. Roussel will be in touch if so we need to vote on approving them as amended. Yeah, and I think we can kind of do that as a lump which is great. But I would also mention that as the town manager's making a note there, it should say select board present, select board absent. It needs to show present and absent. That's clearly in the new open meeting. Well, didn't used to be, but. Very good. So, all right. I can make a motion. I move that the select board approved the minutes of July 25th, 2011, August 29th, 2011, September 12th, 2011, October 3rd, 2011, October 18th, 2011, October 24th, 2011, and November 7th, 2011 as amended. Second. For the discussion, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Three to zero. Two absent. Thank you very much. Anything else we need to talk about before we adjourn? Mr. Riesanti. I did have one excruciatingly brief comment to make that I meant to make at the end of my town manager's report and that's about me. I'm back at work officially full-time. Yay. That was very stern advice from my medical team to pay attention to what my body tells me but I wanted the board officially to know that and the community to know that and it's a good feeling. It's good to have you back. Hallelujah. Absolutely. Okay, then if there is no objection, the next time we shall all see each other, many of us will see each other on Saturday at the four boards meeting and then the next official select board meeting that we're all expected to be here for is the 13th for the budget presentation four o'clock in this room. And then without objection, this meeting adjourns at 8.35.