 Okay. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the virtual Cup of Joe with your town manager, Paul Bachman and special guest, Kat Newman, our new COVID ambassador coordinator. Did I say that right? Yep. Okay. And community liaison officer, Bill Laramie and his partner, Winston are also on the call. So good morning, everybody and welcome. Good morning. Morning. So I just want to remind the room that we are going to hear from our guests ask some questions. You're also welcome at any point to raise your hand in zoom or press by pressing star nine if you're joining us from a phone. We also have the q amp a function if you want to pop a question into the room but don't necessarily want to chat with us live feel free to do that. So I'm going to just hand it over to town manager Paul Bachman to welcome everybody and give any updates he has. Hi everybody. So we really want to get to our guests, which we appreciate you coming out to be here with your, your Patriots Winston their bill. So a lot going on in town. We're, we are at a good steady state I think for that this moment in time. And town offices are moving forward on all the activities that we've been doing. People are pretty much all the things that you would expect to be receiving from town. Paul and the services are out there being provided on a regular basis. So, really don't have a whole lot more than that but I think things will come up I'd rather just good number of people in the audience that we'd like to hear from them. Absolutely and I think we've got two semi new teammates here joining us. Bill has been a guest in the past on our community chats, and we have Winston joining him now as well as cat who has joined our team so I'd love to give cat Newman a chance to tell you a little bit about herself in her background her work history and, and how the first few weeks in the new program are going. Sure. Thank you. So a little bit about me currently I'm starting almost starting my fourth week in this role through the town and I wear two different hats at the same time so I work as the town program. Ambassador coordinator and then I also work over at UMass at the off campus student center under Sally Lenowski. Here I run the walk this way in the team positive presence program so that came out of when I was a graduate assistant over at UMass, and I'm starting my fourth year in that program which is exciting because now I'm seeing some of the first year students becoming seniors. A little bit about my background in terms of my history. I'm originally from Reno Nevada I came out this way to study gender studies and Mount Holyoke I was a, excuse me gender studies in Spanish at Mount Holyoke I was a double major there, and then decided to stay in the valley. Worked for a while and psycho social rehabilitation so in a clubhouse setting with adults with major mental illness for reintegrating folks back into the community. I had a lot of housing supports and membership services and ran a transition age youth program there. And then I transitioned over and I worked as an LGBTQ program specialist at a nonprofit. The nature of nonprofit you wear many different hats at different times so I did a lot with workforce investment act folks and was a green energy liaison for a little bit, ran a trans rights education and empowerment program and Franklin and Hampshire County. So that was looking at sort of safer sex education harm risk reduction suicide prevention, all using sort of the positive youth development model and youth leadership is sort of infused without throughout all of that and it's important a lot of my work. After that I worked in admissions for a short while. So traveled and that's sort of the way I got my head and my foot in the door and higher ed. And then ended up at UMass. And when I met Dean when I was ski, when I met Sally I sort of said I don't want to be overzealous but this is amazing work and you're doing amazing stuff and if you don't hire me. I mean I'd really like to work for you. If you don't hire me. Can I come back and sort of pick your brain, because I was really interested in how sort of the trajectory that she came up the work that she was doing community work is really important to me. And luckily she, she chose me and and kept me for a while. So I just finished a master's degree at UMass in social justice education. So it's kind of how I got here. Is that it. That's it. That's a really deep history and I that really gives context to your current work so thank you for sharing that. I want to give, give Bill a chance to introduce his new partner to and sell a little bit about that program. And while we do that I just want to remind the room feel free to raise your hand press star nine from a phone or pop a Q&A into the, to the Q&A chat so that we can get your questions asked. Thank you. I can tell you right off the bat Winston resume is not quite impressive. He's only been alive for nine weeks. Now he's drifted into his first nap of the morning but so Winston joined us September 10 he was sworn in. He comes from a breeder up in Ringe, New Hampshire who's really dedicated to providing dogs that are service oriented so his ultimately he's going to become, as you can see now he's already fulfilled that role as a comfort dog. And what that means essentially is a basic level he's doing what he's doing right now is providing comfort to me and you know when he wakes up he's going to go out and intermingle with our officers and with the community as much as he's able given his age. And then he's over the course of the next year and a half he'll be trained to work in a role to identify. And as an example of we conduct a sensitive case investigation he'll be able to say it involves children or something so he'll be able to interact with children will be that immediate connection. And that's really something we are hungry for right now in this profession is creating connections non traditionally. You know as I started to look at this program I thought this is the perfect time in the perfect community to pitch this and the fact that he was donated made it easy. An easier sell to my chief of police so, and he's been nothing but a hit here so far you know it's like, I was saying to Rihanna before we jumped on here and you know I'm pretty much nobody now I put him on the floor in the morning, people ignore me and they just walk them so we're excited to see him grow and develop his skills and kind of become the best version of himself, you know reflect our department and and serve the community so we're excited about it, but it is admittedly a lot of work it's been a long time since I was a newborn, my, my black lab is nine and my youngest child is 17 so this is a crash course and being a parent of an infant again but again it's been fun, it's worth it. So Bill we got a request from Heather if you could lower the camera a bit to show more of Winston. And I know you're sensitive to this right now but people want to see. Oh, God almighty bill. It's not just Winston being a dog it actually you actually go through training you get trained and the and Winston gets trained to learn to be a comfort dog is that right. Exactly. I think really the training is more for the handler than it is for the dog in some sense you know he's going to learn basic commands but it's about me. Him and I are reading each other's body language you know there could be situations where he's uncomfortable where he's fatigued. So kind of understanding that so it's really, but I can tell you already like the connection we have is, is pretty significant as an example yesterday left him in the operations here the PD and I'm kind of physically disconnected I'm in a different part of the building. I came back and he was standing by the door like looking through the window like where did you go so yeah he's getting plenty of early socialization which is important to his development and I took him out yesterday briefly with with cat and some of the coven ambassadors we did some community outreach and unfortunately or fortunately is to him is most of the time he's carried. And most of the time he's doing what he's doing now so it becomes a pretty significant weight so we can have to learn some leash discipline here pretty quick. Otherwise, it'll be staying in the office, but yeah so that's pretty much it'll probably be about a year and a half before he is at a level where, you know he can integrate into most situations. I can hear him snoring I don't know if anyone else can but that's very sweet. And I love that you mentioned that Winston's going to be helping doing outreach and has been working with the coven ambassadors I wonder if you or cat can talk a little bit about for the folks who aren't 100% sure what the program is about just give a little introduction to the work you're doing. Bill you want me to take that or would you like to speak first. Yeah. Okay. So a little bit about the program. So, as many folks know there's a mask ordinance in the downtown area and the surrounding streets that extends in through the university. So what our coven ambassadors are hired to do are to simply sort of be a friendly face and a resource in town. They're not the mask police, even though we are sort of housed very graciously through the the PD. But they essentially, you know, they walk around on the street and if they see somebody without a mask they offer them a mask. And also if anybody has any questions or things like that they help with education around that. In common we see yesterday bill mentioned we were out in the, in the community and so part of the interview process now is what we do is we invite folks in for an interview and then we actually bring them out in the field so they can kind of see what that looks like. That's something that has developed over time from running the walk this way program because a lot of times folks will hear something about a program here a job and they're like wow that sounds really great and then they go out and they do it and they're like. So talking for a couple hours is not for me or talking to folks like I prefer to be behind a computer or whatever it is so it's a way for people to kind of test to see if the job is a good fit for them. As well as get to sort of see how they'll jive with our current staff members. And we had some folks yesterday that asked questions about, you know, if somebody's coming and coming up on a street and they're running by and what are things you can do in ways to stay safe and it was great to kind of watch sort of the collaborative effort of ambassadors sort of respond to that folks and it was really nice one of our new applicants bumped into three of his former teachers from kindergarten through fifth grade out on the out on the street. So it's been kind of fun, but you'll see folks mostly in the downtown area. What we're starting to do is a lot of door to door outreach as well. So Bill talked about, you know, creating connection and non traditional ways and I think now the pandemic more than ever has highlighted the need for connection and the importance of connection. So a lot of what we'll do is we'll go around and we'll sort of knock on folks door and we'll just sort of let them know that we're there where a resource we exist. So we ask how, you know, folks are doing. I think, saying to folks, especially like now times like now in the pandemic saying to somebody you matter we see you goes a really long way. And, you know, there's a lot of data and different collections that happens and I'm happy to speak to that at a little in a little bit if folks have questions about that but a lot of times people in the same way that the walk this way program right is running usually 10pm to 1am permanent residents to see those folks doing that work. So that's why we're also going door to door because you may meet me miss the ambassadors if you're you know walking through town and you don't see a yellow shirt they're all in very bright. I am Amher shirts. You know and so we're kind of doing that door to door outreach to let folks know that we're there. Do you have anything to add about your, your, your piece of this and the outreach. In terms of how we integrate. So, that comes to us, I think partially recommended by me I mean she's done some terrific work over over at the university so she kind of hit the ground running I'm just kind of here to guide her to get her to understand how our community works how our community works and you know she she's done a terrific job thus far and you know in terms of the outreach that is a significant piece. It's something we, we've done for a while, and it used to be, you know be Tony and I or john and I and then, you know like why don't we incorporate students into this this peer to peer interaction is really significant it kind of sets the tone. We've kind of been able to step away a little bit physically in terms of interactions with students we can answer technical questions and of course we do our introduction to stuff but it's nice to see the peer to peer stuff and really in this time it's, it's nice to see students appreciative of this being there, not only the message we're delivering but the fact that they're having some face to face interaction with someone other than people whom they live with you know. It's just, you can see it in their face. And of course, you know having Winston, it does helps at the tone. I mean, puppies tend to do that so that's been a terrific piece to so. Yeah, I think I think we're in a good place overwhelmingly worse in the work that I do outside of supporting cat and her work overwhelmingly we're seeing students who want to be part of the solution not part of the problem. You know people are concerned about size of gatherings and you know opportunities to spread the virus but and a lot of our response follow up responses to some of the concerns of the community. Again we're seeing cooperation, really all levels to include size of gatherings you know there's been a couple hiccups where you know we've seen houses with greater people but for the most part, you know kind of 10 to 15 has been our benchmark and we document that and our responses like it's important to me to share that with our property managers and landlords but it's also in this time it's good to know that you know people are are doing their part. Yeah, it's it's also been really interesting just to echo that piece about the solution, you know students in particular wanting to be a part of the solution not the problem. It's been really fun to sit in on interviews. So by the close of next week of completed 23 interviews and we have an current ambassador sitting in on those interviews with us who's helping sort of orient and get folks settled and it's been really nice to hear what attracts people to this work and when they do their first outreach shift they're like, wow the community is so rich here we really wanted to get to know our community better. And that's an exciting I think point and different from a couple years back right of how the town and the university and how the interactions happened and so it's, you know, I feel like to watch a shadow shift happen and have an ambassador sort of walk leaving with a friend and saying that was so fun like you know and having them talk about, you know, we interacted with some older residents yesterday and they just really enjoyed talking to them and so it's, it's been really, really neat and I think the, the collaborative partnership is so integral and so essential to this to this work it's allowed me to, to start a program essentially in three days, which has been pretty impressive so a big shout out to to all the folks in the town and the university and I think what's also really interesting is, we're having to get really creative right so in the same way like, you know, Bill spoke to my experience, I know how to run a program like walk this way that's pretty easy but I haven't done that in a pandemic so having to get creative about it has been really interesting and so what's been really cool to is watching sort of the, the cross collaboration and almost cross pollination of, of knowledge and of care that's happening. So, for example, some of my team leaders I have about 15 students that I'm working with over at UMass for team positive presence and walk this way. We have a couple of folks who are in person and normally every year with walk this way we've sort of fine tuned and developed the training for the onboarding for students. And I worked really closely with folks from fire with inspection and bill and we do a really, you know, three day sort of team bonding experience and we do a block on in particular on crime prevention through environmental design. And what's been really cool is some of our team leaders for walk this way have said oh we're going to take our new hires on Sunday I'm going to do a walking tour and show them crime prevention through environmental design in the neighborhood and then they said, and then I'm going to run a night shift where they can see how different the city is at night and so what's been really helpful and in terms of also sharing resources, you know, so we're going to be starting tabling for ambassadors so you'll see us we're going to, you know, I think everybody at this point is sort of aware of six feet apart, where your mask things like that and to some extent I think a lot of people are almost experiencing mask fatigue and so we're coming up with creative ways to do that so we offer plain white masks to folks in town our ambassadors are going to be running some stations where you can tie dye your mask for example, in a safe and distanced way, but our team positive presence folks are going to be hosting sort of an orientation for ambassadors today on how to run tabling and then working with some of the work that they're doing, we're in the process over at UMass building something called the pure health ambassador network, which is supporting UMass students around health and well being all around, you know, COVID safety and so our entry point for walk this way is sort of, you know, reducing high restricting, but masked obviously overall and health and well being and our ambassadors then are going to say oh so we can use your spinning wheel, but we're going to change all of the sort of prompts and ways to interact with people to be COVID-19 related. So it's really cool to sort of, I think not only see the collaboration from the town and university level, but also like as somebody who comes from youth development and leadership that's something that's infused with all my work it's really cool to watch young people sort of really taking you know the lead and the control and that in that way. And I do also want to point out that we don't just have college students like this is an intergenerational issue and the you know the peer to peer is so important. And so a lot of times I get questions of can I be an ambassador and like if you're a retired person and you have some time in your hands come come to me I would love to field you out in the yellow shirt and you know have you talked to other retired folks right because that's going to land differently and then maybe a college student. So there's a there's a need for everybody it's a community effort in that regard. I think it's so clear. We're so fortunate to have you pick this up. Kat, I think you said you spun up a program and you know, in three days I don't think anybody else could have done that because of your connections your experience, what you brought brought to the table and it was like stunning to me how you're like interviewing in those days you were, you know, people on the streets I mean you have people at the farmers market, you know, they're just to interact with folks that people know that they're you're there so you've done it on so many different levels I really appreciate the work and the energy you brought to making this happen. It's, and we've gotten so much positive feedback on the town, you know we have a covered hotline people call. They'll say we appreciate that you that you have people out there doing that, and that for the town orientation, it's a lot of it is the students but we also know that it's not. There's gatherings all over the place there's lots of people who are we are interacting with and you know for the town's point of view it's. We also are dressing sort of gatherings at Mill River at gruff park things like that. With, with similar types of groupings and trying to help people and again it's the education and creating a culture of compliance and those are the two things that that we really lead with because that's sustainable. It's more impactful and it's something that's going to last. Yeah, yeah we're always as good as our teammates right and I think I think we have a really impressive team I was that's why I was able to do that work and I think in the same way. We see overall we see a ton of mass compliance in the downtown area. So I think right every time that you put your mask on and it's not only a protection for you and others but it's also helping create that culture and set that tone. Yeah, I see a hand from Diana so I'm going to allow them in so Diana if you could just introduce yourself. You might have to unmute your mic. Actually it's all Paul Peely I'm sorry it's. Welcome. It's okay. I don't know how to change the name setting. I just wanted to know how to sign up for this and what is the minimum minimum commitment. Sure. So currently there's an application that's listed on the town website. And you can, even if you just sort of Google, you know, Amherst COVID ambassador it's what'll come up under the job openings and the minimum requirements is that you want to make a difference in your community. I really believe like when I approach my work my practices that relationships and connection or at the at sort of the helm of that and I think that really anybody can create connection so if you're interested in doing that you can be qualified. And really what I do I'm really accustomed to working with students so their schedule changes every semester. So in terms of minimum sort of requirements for the program, you're able to work up to 19 hours a week. But if you had five hours available and you wanted to do that, I'll work with that like I think it's really important to meet people where they're at and you know we we love to hear from from folks like you Paul in that regard of wanting to make a difference so definitely come and send me an application. And if you you're having trouble navigating it on the website, you know we can we can work with that too. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for your question Paul and you can find that at Amherst MA.gov slash jobs or send send one of us an email and we'll get you connected to cat you can email info at Amherst MA.gov if that's easier. All right, so I see any of that and you want to stop in the police station I can also I'm there many days as his bill so we can kind of help you navigate it that way too. Lots of options. So we have a hand. Jeff, Jeff if you want to unmute and introduce yourself, please. Hi, this is Jeff Lee. Good morning, everyone. Jeff. I read on the UMass COVID-19 dashboard that Tuesday there were four new cases and this was after more than a month of zero or one cases every day. And nothing's been reported since September 22nd so I was wondering if this is a cause for concern or possible outbreak. So I'm I don't know we have a meeting at 10 o'clock with our core team so I'll learn anything happening there I mean I think what we should expect me we've had inordinately low numbers for COVID positive tests. And we're doing a lot of testing we are the fourth largest testing site in Massachusetts the only cities bigger than us are Boston, Worcester, Cambridge, and then Amherst. So we're doing a tremendous number of testing the kudos to the University for this testing system that they stood up and it's really working really well. They're testing symptomatic and asymptomatic folks, we would expect and we had anticipate I thought this was going to happen weeks ago if there was going to be something that you know we would we would anticipate there was going to be some kind of increase or something along the way and you know, you know, it's been sort of astounding to us that nothing has happened, you know that with the number of people we have in the kind of fluidity we have in our community at some point, you know, if it is going to something's going to pop up I would assume. We hope that it doesn't we don't expect anything will but you know, but because I think we have a very robust testing schedule going on and, but you know we do have people who in our community who travel have family who travel to different places. So, you know, I think that, you know, we have to be vigilant about that we want to continue to work on on that so I don't know, you know, I have not looked at the university's website for a while so I don't know what the status of that is. But we usually I usually get an update on Friday mornings from our health director. So, thank you. And I will just add to from the from the visibility and outreach standpoint we've done a lot of you know door knocking and one of the messages that we always do to folks is say, you know, we we talk about, you know, keeping your gathering small we talk about ways to keep safe and we always ask, you know, if we're doing student sort of outreach we always ask have you been tested and you mass students are tested on campus, twice a week as well as off campus students and I know I haven't checked the dashboard I like to look at it every morning Paul but I know as of yesterday there were about 50,000 tests that have been conducted so far. So it is like the amount the volume that's coming out is pretty impressive. But we are also having those conversations in the community and reminding folks. And so I just say that Jeff is like, you know, I think when we see an uptick it can be kind of concerning but overall and bill you can echo this too I think that every student we've talked to I haven't actually encountered a student who hasn't been tested in the last couple weeks. You know, the other thing about that is, I haven't seen, and I looked at my own kids for this too is that everybody's like sure why wouldn't I get a test, you know, it's sort of like, yeah if it's available and I don't have to pay for it and that's the fact that the university opening the open the testing to anybody who lives in the area was really appreciative of that because I think that was really key to having sort of as much ubiquitous testing as we can. And, you know, again we'd like to open up to all members of our community that you can get a test whenever you need it. I'm working really hard on that because I think we will, I anticipate a lot of people traveling during, you know, Thanksgiving Christmas holiday holiday seasons, and people before they travel or when someone comes to Amherst they want to get a test and so it's, so I think that you know trying to make sure that there is testing available to people in the town of Amherst is one of our, our big priorities right now. Appreciate it, thanks. Thank you Jeff. I'll just take this quick chance to remind any new attendees who've joined us feel free to raise your hand to come into the room and ask your question or use the q amp a function. And I can ask your question on your behalf. I have a couple of questions that we, oh, actually, here's Paul again so Paul, just unmute. Yes, did I just hear you say that community people can get tested for free at UMass, or did I misinterpret that. No, I may have misspoke Paul no community people cannot get tested for free at UMass. It's just for UMass students and staff. The reason for that is there's a limited capacity that the university has in terms of supplies and all those types of things and what they've contracted for what we are working with is looking for another venue to be able to offer test to people or I think you can get test that's a frequent question we get on our coven hotline. Where can I get a test Holyoke I think it's the closest location at this point for a free test, and it's a drive through situation there. And there's I think maybe West Springfield might have another location with our state rep and state senator we're advocating to having a testing site located in Hampshire County at least but you know we're and we've offered to host one in Amherst. So no, yeah, UMass is not open to the public to the general public but we're working on that piece. Thank you. Thank you Paul. So, I have some questions here that we've been kind of getting throughout, you know, the last couple of weeks with the program and the COVID hotline. So what's the connection between COVID ambassadors and complaints that come into the, the hotline or via email to the to the town. Can someone talk a little bit about that. Bill, do you want to speak I've just been doing a lot of talking so do you want to speak first and I can add in. I can discuss that a little bit so I have in terms of the complaints that are coming in I do have access to those and kind of what I do in reviewing those is determine, you know what is the best fit. Angela Mills up in town hall will document who she's forward that along to. So I will look at that. Okay, there's, you know, some type of complaint about large gatherings on mass people not social distancing concerns of overpopulation so I would look at that so okay that is the sound at some level it is a three pronged approach that could involve the police that could involve code enforcement and our health inspector and it could involve the coven ambassadors so what I'll do is, you know, sometimes I will email cat or we'll have a face to face discussion about okay here's, I think we should go or here's a hotspot based upon some of our call activity like, for example last week. We saw an upward trend in activity over in like the high street Gray Street South Whitney area so I said let's, when we do our outreach that we did it last right we do our outreach, I want to focus on that specific neighborhoods we went over there. So we did welcome packets kind of discussed with students the expectations we have of them as as a police department. You know concerns around large gathering stuff like that so that is how we kind of comb through that that data and decide what is something that requires follow up. There's no further follow up it seems as though everything is followed up on either with a phone call, but then I'm kind of circling back to see what will require an in person follow up or maybe a connection with a property manager landlord so there's a lot of, a lot of moving parts and a lot of different people involved in trying to create a solution to the concern of the community. So that's sort of that prevention and postvention follow up, and we're going to be also switching over to have ambassadors in the next couple of, hopefully by next weekend but don't hold me to that because we're still building the program. On the weekend hours we're going to hopefully have an ambassador be staffing the COVID line as well. And they'll just be sort of logging the calls, because we talked again about connection right and if you see something and you're feeling nervous to be able to talk to somebody and have them sort of log that and then it goes into our system that we have created versus leaving a message, we're going to start doing that. And it'll be for limited hours but that'll also you know kind of help bill kind of sift through those as well. I think the community members who've been using the hotline would appreciate that and we do see the trend coming you know Friday afternoon and into the weekend is when we get the bulk of our communications from folks so I think I think people can look forward to that. And I put the plug in. Oh, sorry, go ahead, Bill. That was something we identified and I discussed it with the chief of police like I think it makes sense to have a man dedicated to answering those calls because there's nothing worse than, you know, being in a moment of uncertainty or fear, and you call and you get a voicemail so we're going to work hard the next week to try to get this up and running and plug some people into them and train them on, you know, what to discuss in what the appropriate referral is. So yeah, that's we're shooting for next Friday we'll see. We'll let everybody know once it's once it's settled. I have a question just jumping off what you said bill for training. I've had a few questions. Are the COVID ambassadors specifically trained in any certain areas before starting or as part of the onboarding process. To what extent, in terms of communication skills or public health protocols anything anything that would help their work is there an onboarding process and what does that look like. So I'll speak a little bit to what we do in terms of the police so we've conducted one orientation with our first group of hires. In the police perspective it's about visibility, making connections, but also under understand the intersection you're going to, you're going to run into some people in our community who are simply not going to wear a mask and it's not your job to try to coax them to wearing a mask to get into confrontation with them. It stops with giving them some education offering them a mask if they say no. We're not in the business of creating confrontations, you know safety is our number one concern your personal safety but also in terms of public health so that's kind of what we're we are doing initially. I do think there's going to be some additional training once you know our staff is really up and I think once we have an established team, then we're going to offer like some de-escalation training and I know Kat's got some other ideas that she can speak about but so yeah we're going to be as the program evolves so does the training but at the very basic level we do our orientation with our newest hires that's kind of what we discuss and what we go through. Yeah, that's a bit of why we chain you know the orientation process includes that shadow shift for two hours and we get to work with folks in the community so they kind of get to hear, you know, modeling is a really helpful tool I think for orientation purposes and onboarding purposes. So they get to hear both sort of folks like Bill or Tony Maroulas or John Thompson or Ed Smith or Salomonowski we had Betsy Cracow out with us last week in the university. So they get to hear sort of those conversations and then they also get to hear, you know, staff who have been doing this type of work either if they're walk this way students coming out on behalf of the peer health ambassador network, or other ambassadors so we'll sort of work with them work them kind of how to do that. And I'll probably model a lot of this after the way that I've done a lot of my work with walk this way which has been pretty successful. And one of my things that I like to do again kind of coming from a youth development asset based mindset is I really love to connect young folks to a larger framework because I think they then the work resonates with them differently right I think it's really easy for you to be like okay I have to walk around the street today, but if you kind of get to see the data you get to see the impact you get. I say to folks all the time like, you know, Bill and folks like Sally have been phenomenal and coming and meeting with my students the Vice Chancellor has come into some other meetings with my other students staff and, you know, and then they kind of see like wow this is part of this other big thing because I think even when we think of like, we're in a pandemic that's a really large kind of overwhelming thing right so then when you think okay what are actionable steps that we can do in that way. So typically what I do is and we have to again get creative about this because we can't have 20 plus people in a in a room because we have to be cognizant of social distancing. So generally we'll put in a one time a one time a month kind of staff development professional development for my staff when I work with them so they can have those takeaway skills. And then one of the things that we do is at the end of each shift for an ambassador they complete a fairly detailed. It's kind of like a Google form on their phone, and that includes sort of data collection and we're actually going to be refining that this week to kind of include more data that we're looking to get. But it also includes questions about more qualitative data, but questions around what are some of the interactions both negative and positive that you've had in the community. You know we've been really great and really fortunate with feedback and help from support from the police so we ask about that. And then there's also a space where ambassadors can sort of tell me if there's any reoccurring questions that come up on shifts. And that allows me I review that data each week. And then I send that up to Captain Ting to bill to Paul and the chief of police and so that allows us then on a weekly and a daily basis to sort of know okay what other training or what other supports do our do our staff need. And there's specifically a follow up question around any support that I or the PD or folks can can do. And we'll do a lot of different, you know, I come come from these developments, I got a lot of skills, a lot of tricks up my sleeve that I'm really excited to to do in different ways with folks, and also using the ambassadors themselves, we have a lot of folks for example, I have an ambassador who's doing census work right now. And really, you know, and hearing how he articulates the importance of this work and why it matters and things like that. And a lot of our new ambassadors were like, Wow, he's really good at this and so then we said, Okay, can you pair that up and we started sort of a mentoring system, you know, in different ways in that regard. So we have some folks who are retired teachers that are applicants that I'm excited to see how they can kind of use you know, pedagogy and approaches and scaffolding different things for training folks so I think there's a lot of resources right in our own community in that regard. And I am excited for our shadow shift at three o'clock today. So we just have to get our t shirts on and we're excited to see how how all the wonderful things you're describing play out in in in our community so thank you for that. I'm excited you'll be joining. One of the things Jeff Lee had was in before and said other UMass site hadn't been updated for several days and I just checked and it has those updated at 1am this morning. So, I think sometimes, you know, I had to refresh my browser because I had, I had a few day old thing because they don't check it every day like you do cat. So just wanted to clarify that for folks that they do update their right that dashboard that every day. So, I think my computer just goes into protest mode because they're like you've been on boom for seven hours. We lost Winston. Winston's now under the desk chewing on stuff. So I do want to remind folks that we we do have some more time for questions live questions or pop into the Q&A function so feel free to use that. Over the next few minutes. I think, I think most of the questions that I've had submitted. We tackled. I want to give you guys the chance to say things that you haven't been asked so cat or bill or there anything related to your work that you want to share that you haven't specifically been prompted to to talk about yet. And I'll, I'll hold off one second because I do have a question from the room, and that takes priority. Hi, my name is Marissa and I am a campus organizer with mass perks students at UMass Amherst and I wanted to know if the program does any voter education outreach for students similar to the census work. Great question Marissa thank you. I'm going to put that to the folks in the room. Sure, so I will say as of right now we have not done that, but I love to partner with folks. So we I think can get really creative Marissa around, you know, tabling or ways like definitely come and talk to us right now our main thing. You know and I realized this when I was interviewing applicants and I would introduce the ambassador I said he's been with us for about two and a half weeks and I've been with us for about three weeks. And you know this program is still I want to name and acknowledge that it's still really in its in its infancy. But, you know, there's a lot of, you know, conversation that we're having about ways that it grows ways that it's connected to the community things like that. So definitely, I don't know if I can kind of drop my email in the chat or how to do that but I would welcome, you know, hearing more for how we can partner because as we've seen in this work, we're as strong as our partnerships you know. So I can respond to that too. Yeah, I can tell you honestly it hasn't even crossed my mind how we could make that connection but if there's a person that could do it cat is certainly the one with the, the energy and the drive and again I'm just here to support her and using what knowledge I have over the course of my time here in Amherst to make her be more successful in her role. You know, it's a really good point, Marissa because that's a high priority for the town as well is not just voter registration getting everyone who's eligible vote to vote, but educating people about the ways you vote there's lots of different pathways to voting you can do early voting you can do mail in voting, you can vote on election day. So I think that's our and that's a one of our highest priorities for the fall so I think connecting with the ambassadors is a brilliant idea we should connect you with our town clerk as well. We can we can do a lot of education where I sit around how to vote safely right and how to stay when you're voting because I think that's a barrier for a lot of folks and especially for folks that are maybe I'm you know compromised or that, you know have hesitations about certain methods or things like that so I think that if we can I think we can definitely, you know, chat and maybe if that's you know, coming up with some informational pamphlets or chops or tabling or you know coming around with us or you know different things like we can we can definitely look into that. And I did just send Marissa, I sent you cats email. So hopefully you guys can get connected, but also the town clerk as Paul mentioned. We're hoping to do a specific push to students around some of the options and registration so you can also be in touch with the town clerk town clerk at Amherst and made up of. So I do see a hand from someone who doesn't have a name but there's some numbers so I'm going to ask you to please introduce yourself. Good morning, this is Phyllis Lerner. I'm a member of the League of Women Voters of Amherst, and we do have a website there's lots of voting information on that and I would suggest people to do that. And thank you to the volunteers for your ambassador program I think that's wonderful and everybody loves the dog. So thank you, Bill. And I don't know if your ambassadors could mention that the last day to register vote is October 30 or something like that. So but thank you for doing that and thank you for letting us all speak to you. Bye. Bye Phyllis. Nice to hear from you. So one of the things I want to maybe Bill can talk about one of the things that I don't think the public really knows that how the town and university work together on just general things so every Monday there's a meeting called the on call meeting and this includes people from the fire department the Amherst fire department Amherst police department UMass police department, other officials from UMass and basic inspection services and they all get together and go over the weekends, what happened over the weekend they look at all the calls that came into the dispatch at the police department. The people on the ground sort of go through them and see, are we looking at trends are we are who's, what kind of follow up do we need to do on these things you want to talk a little bit about that bill because it's a really impressive partnership that happens very every week and includes all the right people in the room at the same time. Yeah, yeah, so this, this has been in an existence for many, many years I really think it's gained strength over the last couple of years. And, as Paul said it's an opportunity to share information we look at, you know trends we're seeing in terms of behavior we look at comparisons of calls. There were nearly comparisons so there are 200 calls this year there were 150 last year, and that is done, both by us, the fire department UMass PD. And then of course, our code enforcement team is there so we'll discuss, you know complaints they've received again it could be overpopulation it could be sanitation whatever the case may be. The UMass Dean of students is there so we'll make referrals to them about behavioral issues we're seeing it could be something or enforcement action has taken it could be something about a concern we have over someone's mental health will make a referral through them. And the meeting is really just the beginning that kind of sets the tone for the week, and then we're taking that information and, you know, we're in communication with UMass daily. And it's sometimes multiple times a day at 10 o'clock I'm connecting with Tony Maroulas we're going to meet with a property manager who has some concerns about some activity out of at her, her property that she manages. Yeah, it's, it's ongoing. I would just want, you know, sometimes a lot of what I've heard this year is about what is what is the community and what is UMass doing about this and when we have the opportunity to speak with people I like to connect with people in person to one thing that I've done to kind of circumvent this COVID issue and social distancing is when I, when I want to connect with students or I want to connect with somebody from UMass I'll propose let's meet at the Mill River rec pavilion, you know we can socially distant I just like the face to face interaction we can really get down to the nuts and bolts of what the problem is and what are we going to use to provide a solution to the problem so when we do our outreach, you know, a lot of the same people that are in that room during our on call or the folks that come with us doing community outreach and with that said I just had a conversation with a woman yesterday I'm going to pick up a North Amerson I encouraged her you are welcome at any time and this goes to anybody to come out and do community outreach with us. It gives you an opportunity to see what we're doing. It also gives you an opportunity to evaluate we're doing and critique it and maybe provide us some solutions how to do our, our work better because, again, it's just, it's a collection of thought and action by group of pretty talented people and thankfully it just helps it you know, our relationship extends beyond you know when I leave at four o'clock it doesn't mean I don't communicate with these people have friendships with them so it's been really good and I think that that helps but again, if, if you ever want to come out just connect with me we'd be happy to take you we do a lot of outreach. And I think it, it reassures our community that, you know, we are dealing with this. And again, it's, there is a admittedly there is a learning role of us in this changes daily the information changes so we're just kind of being as pliable as we can and responding to the needs of the community to make everyone feel safe. Thank you bill. I do see a hand from Nathan and Pearl so Nathan and or Pearl, please unmute and introduce yourself. Good morning. This is Pearl and Marguerite. I'm sorry I joined late, but I see cat is smiling and taking care of our beloved town mascot that the whole of the Grandwood area. This is for these kisses off for Winston. Over the past few years, we, we in our entire neighborhood have become quite frequent partners with Bill and Tony and cat and Sally and I can thank you all enough for for being such valuable partners to our community. And Nathan and I had that wonderful opportunity to actually go for a neighborhood walk. And we were very, very impressed with Joey and if I can quite the students who it was her maiden trip in the neighborhood and when she knocked on the students how she was just so proud and kind of a bit anxious and saying that was my first visit and you know the interaction went well. And I think certainly from, you know, all these different partnerships. You know, I just wish everybody a lot of success because I'm enormously and so all of all of us in the neighborhood impressed with what you, what you've done, and trying to, you know, keep the entire community safe and respectful of each other. And we recognize particularly in a family neighborhood. It's kind of difficult at times because you're living with people who, you know, have come of age in terms of their own freedom and not necessarily complying to the to the norms and more as of a community so and then lastly I need to just thank Bill as well because at the last moment he came on a invitation to walk around Grandwood Drive when the students went back to school. So it was a Wildwood School event. He came with Winston and the officer Mike came to keep us all safe in the street and that was just, just a wonderful, wonderful way of community policing interactions and everybody was speaking about it for days after. Thank you to all of you. We really appreciate what you're doing and and we wish all lots of success in keeping us all healthy. So thank you. Thank you so much. And it's so fun to always work with you. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so we're coming up to to our hour so I'm just going to give a last call for questions. Use our q amp a function raise your hand, or press star nine for those of you joined from the phone. With that being said, I'm going to give our special guests a chance to wrap up any thoughts or comments that they didn't get a chance to share yet, as well as the town manager. And if nobody has anything to say I am going to make a plug for answering your census. And probably everybody on this call has done that but please ask your friends and your neighbors. Anybody that you come across please remind them to answer their census by the end of the month. Yeah, we're in crunch time on the census and we're really need people to be connecting with folks. It could be the first thing when you see somebody say hey just do your census yet. And it really is 10 minutes but it matters it matters a whole lot to us. So, I think I'll just close by by just saying thank you like I mean, I got connected to this work through bill and through you mass and things like that and it was, you know, working under Sally's office was one of the most rewarding parts of my, my graduate career. I just feel like very, very blessed and privileged to be doing this work and and doing it in the ways that I'm doing it and I, I genuinely like, you know, I wake up and I look forward to work every single day and I love to hear from my, you know, I love to hear from all of my staff things like that and I'm really, really excited to see sort of where this program goes and I just want to echo a, you know, just profound appreciation to you Paul for your support and Brianna we've been trying to connect and I'm always all over the places I'm starting to get things off the ground and just, you know, with Chief Livingston and, and, you know, the sergeants on shift and Bill and Gabe and everyone like it's just been, it's been really wonderful to like start this position that I have a lot of support and that I can ask questions and, you know, I'm new to this role so definitely give me feedback I love feedback and learning and fine tuning systems and things like that so excited to learn but really just feeling just very privileged to be doing this work at this time and in this context so thank you. I really appreciate you coming on board and your energy and enthusiasm is contagious so I'm looking forward to we're all looking forward to working with you in this and other ways as we move forward. So thank you for that. Paul, Bill any, any final, any final words before we we wrap I, I do want to just mention to the caller, the attendees that we will record this. And it's going to be posted shortly after the meeting in case you want to go back and revisit any comments or just stare into Winston's eyes. They're open. Thank you for hosting us. I think this is a great opportunity to connect with the community and non traditional ways and for them to understand that, you know, all of us are out there working really hard day in and day out the connection with you master as strong as ever. If there's anything you need if you need a Winston kiss, email me, I'm his agent. I'm happy to do that. Yeah, again, thank you. Have a great day everybody. Yeah. And I'll finish with just putting this out this to the room or the people who are going to be viewing this later if you have a question or concern related to coven you can email us at coven concerns at Amherst MA. Or you can call us at 413-259-2425. So thank you all for joining us and a special thanks to Winston for gracing us with your presence. Bye everybody.