 Good evening and welcome to select board meeting of November 13th, 2018. I'll call the meeting door at 6 32 p.m. One of our colleagues will be along in a few minutes. Just do a quick opening remarks, announcements, and agenda review. Several items on the agenda, a couple of time public hearings. We will take in difference to some staff that are here, we may take them in a little bit of an accelerated order just to get them through. And some other folks, is anyone here for public comment other than for an item on the agenda? That's not the case then we can kind of go into our agenda. Is there anything my colleagues need to mention to me regarding the agenda or any of that sort? Okay, so if that's a case, just to mention just talking about public hearings, we have one scheduled for 7 p.m. and one for 7.15. So we'll try to fit a few things in before that. And I think to begin with, we'll start with our first quarter budget update for Miss Aldrich. So if you'd like to come forward and take us through that. And then go from there. You hear me all right, Mike? This is the first quarter. I'm Sonia Aldrich, the Comptroller for the town. And this is the first quarter report on our expenditures and our revenues. Since it is the first quarter, it's, there's very little to talk about on here. Everything is as it should be on the first quarter. There's a couple little things. License, well, not really little things. Our licenses and permits are up quite a bit at this time of year. We've already collected 50.5% of our licenses and permits revenue. And that's due to building an electrical. So we're seeing an uptick in that in the first quarter. Of course, that could be that everyone just came and got their permits at the beginning of the year. So it might level off. But if you're looking at the reports online, which these will be posted online tomorrow morning. That's the reason for that. Increase. There's no anomalies in our expenditures at this time. It's the typical IT. They're expended 53% at this time of year. That's because they pay for all their software licenses up front. Employee benefits is up, is spent at 61%. And then again, is because we pay our retirement assessment up front in order to save an additional 2%. Our enterprise funds are where they should be. And there's really nothing more to report on this. It's good news, I think. Are there questions or comments from the board from Ms. Aldridge? It's more interesting through the end of the year. Yes. So there is another item that's under the town manager's report, but it really is the credit to Ms. Aldridge and the health insurance team who might, we are suspending our surcharge. So do you want to talk a little bit about that, Sonia? Because that's, you know, people might say what, what does this mean? So as you recall, we went from a self-insured program to a fully insured effective July 1. Well, we had some runoff claims that needed to be paid out of our self-insurance fund at the end of last year, and town meeting voted $2 million of free cash to go towards helping us pay that runoff. And in order to pay back the free cash, we instituted a surcharge. We're suspending that effective December 1. We've collected six months of surcharge. And our runout claims ended up being about $1.6 million so far. More claims are coming in. This will probably take a whole year or two before all the claims come in. But we ended up with a $1.6 million payment in July. Then we collected six months of surcharge, which is about $840,000 for six months of surcharge while we are collecting it in the process of that. And then Kay's Logar, we kept Kay's Logar on to manage our large claims in file for them, and she's brought in over $850,000 so far. So at this point, we don't want to take too much money into the health claims trust fund because then we're going to have to try to figure out how to give it back to everybody. So we're suspending it at this point to see if we're going to need to continue it in the future. I don't believe we are, but I don't know what's out there for claims. So just done a really great job bringing in that money. That's helped a lot. A couple other things happen. We were expecting a much larger run out. We were expecting that people were going to be running to the doctors right up to the last minute with the other insurance, our old insurance, self insurance. That didn't happen either. So we had a couple good things happen. Is there anything else, Paul? Just a report that we met with the Health Insurance Employee Insurance Advisory Committee last week and reviewed this with them. They were also it was an opportunity to talk about the new health plan and there's some little bumps in the road that we're addressing in Maya and Blue Cross were at this meeting as well. But overall, people were satisfied with it. Sometimes there's a sticker shock when they're when you have a deductible and you're not used to it. It's a new thing for people. I know I felt and others people felt it, but it's a good. It's sort of where the world is at this point in time. It's and I think mostly it's different. The committee also was concerned about, you know, the lowest waged, the low wage employees taking on having a bigger cost of their paychecks being for health insurance. But they were very pleased to hear about the run out. The other thing about about the surcharge being suspended, we're not saying it's over because we don't want to say we want to continue to monitor it. The other good news is that this is also a good good thing for the school department for the libraries and for the town because we put in the largest contribution during the surcharge because it's not just a surcharge on employees. It's a surcharge on the employers too. So this will all these the suspension will help the three entities on their on our budgets going forward during FY 19. Are there other questions or comments? Yeah. Wait, Mr. Sam. Yeah, the other thing I had been looking at and comparing to last year just to see the other thing that I had looked at for this year and from last year to see how they compare the golf course. And at least at this point is I think we've taken in 26% and a year ago in the equivalent report, we had taken it 32% of what we were estimating. Is there any is that just a weather related anomalies or were there any with golf? It's weather. Membership nationwide has been going down. So it's so so the there's so participation and revenues declined. Revenues are down $14,000 from last year and for this quarter and as compared to the same time last year. So we're down 14,000 as you pointed out. What Ms. Bill says is that it is that it is the weather really that's really dependent. Oddly enough that when we had the drought that was one of their strongest years because even though the course was totally dry, there was a lot of people able to play golf. One other thing that they're looking at which I can reference a little bit later is the golf course closed as of today. This is the last day for the golf course and also that they're looking at a providing snowmaking for a one kilometer cross country track on the golf course. This has been an initiative of people in the community who are fundraising to be able to put it on. So that might generate some revenue probably won't be a real revenue generator for the LSSE at this point in time, but they'll be able to use the facility. Yeah, I did note that you had that in your report. You got it so late. The thing that I was left wondering when I read that was given the amount of water that it takes for snowmaking. Has that been calculated by our staff over at the DPW? I don't know if they're taking it from the pond or from I have to find out where they take the water from actually. Good question. Other questions or comments or alter the first quarter budget update? Budget preview. Sure. We can do that. I can answer that. So in your packet is a memo from we want to talk a little bit about the budget in preview. So you have three things. You have a memo from the select board to me. You have a memo from the finance committee and you have a memo that Sonia and I wrote to the departments and just want to give you an update that we have given you follow the directions of the planning of the select board and the finance committee. There is a calendar that's attached to the finance committees that we will have to update because it has some old dates in it that have not been updated. So we will update that and redistribute that. But people are starting or one change we have made with departments is we've said they all have to have their budgets in by November 26th, 24th, 20th, whatever the date is. And then we will be getting doing our budget hearings during December right after Thanksgiving and go through the normal process with that. Anything else on? Just that you said the summer right after Thanksgiving this winter. Oh, the winter. The weeks right after Thanksgiving. I just have a quick question you may have already covered. In our yellow folder tonight we had this 4D budget packet. Was there any difference over what was in our hard copy? It's just a duplicate. Great. Just want to make sure I had something. Other questions or comments about the budget preview and the information we received on that? If not, thank you very much. Appreciate that. Thanks for coming in. Or no surprises I should say. So next I think because we have we're not quite to seven o'clock by which is when our first public hearing is. I think we'll go into there's a we're going to licenses public way and meter parking reservations. We have an application for a common victor license Amherst BV LLC doing business as VV or I assume it's VV. I'm not sure. Correct me. Bubble T 48 North Pleasant Street. Sweet number B1. Nick Gu manager. So I think that's you. Yes. So why don't you take a moment and tell us a little bit about your business and take us through your common victor thing and then I have another thing from him tonight that I'll share out with the with the group and we'll see if we can take care of that as well. But we'll talk about the license the license first. So we are bubble tea shop. So they mainly serve the like bubble tea is like mixed milk and the tea. So we have like 57 type of tea. So and we are franchise like franchise store. The headquarter is in New York. They have over 60 60 stores in so we are franchise. So we under the construction. We're in the construction right now. So it will be like expect. We are starting the business at the next year. The beginning of the next year. So yeah. And I want to apply the parking meter for the for the like dumpster. Yeah. So to that point and I'll share this out with the with the group here. That would be your copy. Grabbed enough. If you'll share that over. So the reserve quest today to reserve two parking spaces on at 4048 North Pleasant Street starting tomorrow through the 20th and this is for for all day for the reservation correct. Yes. For each of those days. Yes. Okay. So we have two things potentially before us tonight. One is just the common victory license which is we had in our packet we were sort of prepared for and then we have this piece which is a allowing for a the reservation of two two parking spots in front of in front of the location. And so do any of my colleagues. Have questions. Yes. We're reminded where the location is. Well exactly. That's 48 North Pleasant. It's not as meaningful to me as it might be. So I'm I'm wondering if Mr Steinberg is looking it up but I'm going to take a quick moment and see if I can explain where you're built where your business is what what building is your build is your business. Oh it's under the walkers. The walkers. The walkers. So it's at the lower level under the lower level. Yeah. Lower level. So on one side of the book store just opened. Yeah. Yes. Yes. And it's it's adjacent to that. Yeah near that space below. The thing I'm going to look up right now is the actual location roughly of where those mirrors are. Not that we can identify them specifically but if they're directly in front of that building I'm curious as to whether the the the proprietors of the works if you've spoken to them about having those spots reserved and having a giant dumpster in front of them. Have you spoken with the folks at the works relative to this reservation for for spaces. For the for the dumpster. Right. In other words if you place a dumpster in front of their business do they know that yet. Oh I didn't ask. I don't I don't know I need to ask that. I will ask because we we have some relations. Yeah we talk talk before about the fairness when we start. That's Krueger please. This request is for tomorrow and I'm not I'm not sure we have enough we're able to act on this given that the the prime location and the other people impacted and just concerned. Yeah. So I think the chair said this came in this afternoon and makes the proprietor was here without bringing it to your attention. So while that all realistically makes sense I gotta assume that dumpster is on a truck on its way here and if it's going to be installed tomorrow. So I am I am very I mean we on the one hand if it was a few days away I would say I would say let's just let the towel manager follow up on our questions make sure that communication has happened and then he could make the decision without us as he has done for us on previous occasions for similar things. But I'm concerned that if nobody knows it's coming and the truck drops it off as trucks tend to do whenever they get around to showing up that it's kind of a moot point. So have you ordered the dumpster already or no no I just told them and I will like when I get the permit I will I will let them know but I didn't order it. Yeah so yeah because we are already in the construction so it's a lot a lot of like stuff need to move out yeah. So sooner is better. Yeah yeah yeah actually. Okay the reason why part of why I ask is I'm looking at the the property and and there are three parking spots directly in front of it so if that's where we're talking about that's immediately in front of the front door of the works. They may or may not care they may be fine with that I don't know and I think that's one question. I think the other question is it's right next to the central fire station. That was my impact on the fire on the fire coverage or is there a better place to you know that this could go that would be helpful and useful you know relative to because that's the parking spots I presume because those are the only ones right in front of the business these are all part of the central fire station. But then again so Ms. Krueger. There are some spaces behind that building for tenants and there's one reserved for the management or maintenance whatever so I don't know if that's been explored or not but since the property owners collecting rent maybe they could help solve the problem. Yeah. Thanks to our neighbor is us the town you know and that also might be you know I don't know if you I mean you have to have a conversation with the with the fire chief about whether not only for the spots in front of the building but if in and around that there looks like the property owner there is a driveway that might be available the property yeah yeah but that's how people get into those reserved parking spaces right right when right at the end that they control that maybe I don't know size fitting dumpster whatever. So I think we have we have two things before us one is just the license the common picture license which we could take action on I think fairly easily tonight. The question would be then what and how we might want to handle the the reservation of parking spots you know to be accommodating as best we can but also understanding the circumstances in which it sets which is right in the middle of downtown. But just to sort of take care of a little bit of business if someone wanted to offer the the motion relative to the common picture license we could we could sort of resolve that one. I can read that one please. I move to approve a new common victuillars license Amherst VIV LLC doing business as Vivi bubble tree 48 earth pleasant street sweet B1 for Monday through Sunday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Nick you manager. Motion is second relative to the license is it for the discussion the only thing I'm going to mention is I think in the in the motion in the text that we have I think the LLC actually is Amherst VIVI or Vivi I think it only has VIV so I think it may need another VIVI it needs oh yeah so it's just just in the LLC the LLC got it thanks so there's that slight correction I amend my reading that's okay is there further discussion hearing none all those in favor please say I I post that's unanimous so I guess it's now back to the question about how we might try to handle the situation relative to the parking reservation so well it depends I would feel comfortable if we delegate to the town authorize the town manager to make the decision and if I did that I would have this motion I moved to authorize the town manager to reserve up to two parking spaces for dumpster on behalf of Nick's Nick you for renovations at 48 North Pleasant Street on behalf of Amherst VIVI LLC is is a motion and then that authorizes the town manager to reserve up to two parking spaces and then he would make the decision as he deems appropriate I'll second but then discuss okay so you have a motion and a second and so yes well I guess with with the guidance from this board that they be you know reasonably near the establishment but the least impact on that area and that looks like it's for a whole week and I wonder with construction if with some better planning maybe the number of days could be reduced that seems like oh we'd like it there because we're doing stuff we'll get your demolition on target and get it brief also typically we charge for for meter we've charged the the sort of permit rate on that so more days is more cost so don't see us waving that and we haven't raised that and that fee should be it reexamined on the reexamination of all fees but that for now it's whatever it was right let's go we please alter the motion to indicate that it's ten dollars a day assuming that any parking meter spaces are used um I have no problem making that amendment uh yes please alter the amendment gave all power to the manager at ten dollars a day got standard that's been included in the motion is there for the discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye and opposed that's unanimous so thank you very much don't order the dumpster until you have agreement from our office yeah you can order the dumpster yes it can't be placed on a public road until I will receive my email is that yes so we will go out and yeah yeah meet with the fire chief and look at this the location thank you thank you good luck all right should I have some o'clock still um do we want to take up before we get into our public hearings which are moments away we could take up other things under the license is public way and mere parking reservations so we have consent calendar and annual license renewals if we would like to do those I move to approve the consent calendar is presented on the consent calendar page attached to the agenda of this select board agenda dated November 13 2018 motion and a second and that list just two I believe consent calendar items is that correct yes so is there further discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye so that's unanimous and then we have annual license renewals if you want to take care I move to approve the renewal of annual licenses for the calendar year 2019 is listed in the annual license renewal table marked 7c on the additional page of the select board agenda of November 13 2018 there is is there further discussion it's a fairly lengthy list I think this is existing businesses doing their paperwork for us that's helpful there's not for the discussion all those in favor please say aye aye opposed all right so that's unanimous as well so we've taken care of all of section seven it seems in our agenda and so we're a minute early according so I think it in the time that it takes for our first hearing which is at seven o'clock which is an all alcohol license for the campus pub keeps students in our Amherst College if you would like to make your way up here I will find the appropriate legal notice and then read that which is public hearing notice in accordance with the provisions of chapter 138 section 12 of the Massachusetts general laws the Amherst Select Board will hold a public hearing on November 13 2018 beginning at 7 p.m in the town room of the town hall four boltwood avenue Amherst mass to act on the application for a new annual all alcohol on-premise liquor license for the trustees of Amherst College doing business as Schwemms pub Keith student center 16 baron hill drive Amherst College Amherst mass Joseph flukeger manager the premises in consideration consists of 971 square feet and has four exits that was on October 15th if that was noticed and so with that I think we're actually at seven o'clock so I will open our public hearing at seven p.m and so if you would like to um although you've come to us a couple of times this fall if you'd like to tell us a little bit about your your application for a full license and and sort of how your experience today has gone with the one-day licenses that you've had so far and sort of paint that picture for us a little bit so my name is Joe flukeger I'm the director of dining at Amherst College my name is Ryan Berry I'm outside legal counsel to the college on this matter speaking to the microphone towards you so you can speak into it so as the Mr. Slaughter pointed out I've been I've appeared before the suckboard a couple of times previously we've talked at length about this project in an effort to create an environment where students can drink responsibly we have offered a number of pub nights with light programming and we've had we've had good success with it we didn't expect it to be extremely well attended and it hasn't been we've on average sold about 10 alcoholic beverages per night that we hosted a pub night the intention is not to sell a lot of alcohol the intention is to create an environment where students can model and drink responsibly and be in an environment where that's part of their educational experience there has been discussion about the impact on the greater community I don't I don't perceive that there's an impact on the greater community in fact if anything we feel like this could have a positive impact in our community in helping students understand how drinking responsibly is to benefit of their their own as well as in Amherst at large so we we we feel like it's it's been a successful endeavor and we would like to proceed with the full license as detailed in the notice so does the excuse me does the board have any questions or comments relative to the license um you have a presentation or someone does there are some slides yes oh do you want to take us through those first and of course okay we'll give you an opportunity to do that as well I can use the clicker okay uh so the for those of you who haven't been into the space before this is one of the seating areas we have essentially two seating areas so 12 14 seats in this space plus a couple you can't see and this is a back room all told I think it's 79 seats between both spaces we also have we are offering food so sandwiches and other items for people to consume while they're drinking or not drinking there's a space there for prep there's an additional space in the back rather on the lower level this is where we keep um beer and wine secured it's actually in a cooler that is locked and then it's behind the door that is also locked and this is uh essentially like a prep slash cleaning area that is behind the kitchen area and so I thought uh was it asked and I thought it was a good idea to bring uh to offer these images so that people could see the space and you know just try to imagine uh how it's being utilized thank you for that I'll start with the first question just speaking of this space you're talking about having some food available um and a limited amount of you know activities to date with the license you've had had you have you had more patrons in that that were just having dinner and chatting and not drinking alcohol because it might not be of age or or whatever what's what's your general sort of turnout man i'm just curious mostly yeah so uh the turnout uh is generally driven by the type of programming that we're offering so if we have uh like we periodically will have jazz nights um that tends to be you know popular so we'll have on average like 120 guests for for that evening um it'll on the the lighter evenings it's somewhere around a hundred um we're not seeing a dramatic increase year over year um the total revenue is up about five percent so it's really pretty much flat year over year the prices haven't haven't changed much um I think that uh the space is it's a nicer space where we we did do some painting and other uh finishes um this summer and that was actually aside from it was not really part of the the pub per se it's more just to refresh the space and so I believe students are enjoying the space uh regardless of whether there's alcohol involved okay great thank you Mr. Simard did you have yeah I just uh there's a comment uh looking at your secretary was at the uh campus and community coalition meeting uh last month at the university of mass just I very much appreciated your being there and letting everybody in the coalition know what you were planning and sort of you know it's a very different approach than is occurring on the university campus but then it's a different campus um the um sort of a couple of thoughts about it one is that um as you know this is aimed at at reaching students who are aged 21 and older and have documentation to prove their age and you're um doing what the law requires and appreciate that um but of course part of the drinking problem on campuses is I think that we probably know from looking at all campuses is people who are um under the age of 21 who are trying to obtain alcohol anyway and sometimes are in a more vulnerable age than people who actually are 21 so I appreciate your being there I know but you are from dining services and I know that um if you um and this is not a conditional license as much as just an observation because of the campus and community coalition connection could encourage others from the college who would be appropriate and who are involved in the questions about student alcohol use and the dangers and problems and encourage them to participate in some way I think that would be greatly appreciated and beneficial I am aware from the reports that I have received that there are occasional and but regular calls to the college for problems that are alcohol related that require EMT services which indicates that it would be it might be a helpful connection and helpful to have that so I just wanted since I had the opportunity and you were here to pass that along screw well um I think similarly to um our previous review when it was kind of the pilot um I I'm really in favor of the concept and I think Mr Steinberg's right that you know alcohol education responsible drinking across all of the campuses or any campuses in order but I don't think that uh necessarily this establishment alone bears the burden I think that's probably a different part of campus life in some ways what maybe can inform each other but I think to pretend that people under 21 aren't already drinking they're not going to be drinking here legally and I'm pretty confident that that's going to be enforced but to have a place where there's social activities, programming, things to do in the evening on campus and once you're an adult that you can have alcohol with all the rules and requirements that go with that I think it's is a good idea and I we've seen dry campuses and I don't think dry campuses are necessarily um overall a benefit to the town so I kind of I like the idea of it space is appropriate for it and we've already had a trial so it hasn't really changed the nature of the cafe that much from your numbers so it's just another other select board colleagues have any questions or comments for the applicant if not is there anyone from the public that wishes to offer a comment because it is a public hearing so we get a chance to ask the public at large which doesn't seem as though anyone's here for that um so if there's not other comment I would take a motion to close the public hearing on this so moved so a motion and a second to close the public hearing any further discussion on that hearing none all those in favor please say I to the public hearing uh say I anyone opposed and if not then the public hearing closes at seven ten so not that public hearing is closed and can continue our discussion or potentially offer a motion relative to the to the request I'll offer the motion and then speak for a second on it I move to approve a new annual all excuse me I moved to approve a new annual all alcohol license for campus pub Keith student center Amherst college 16 Barrett hill road Sunday to Wednesday 5 p.m. to 12 a.m. the following day and Thursday to Saturday 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. the following day Joseph Flukiger manager so did we name it says campus pub here but I think it had Keith well there's the Keith student center but I think the actual right in the in the public reference women there someplace right in the public notice uh it was doing business as Schwim's pub so we need to reference that appropriately in the in the motion so I think instead of campus it should have sc what is the name of the establishment uh well for all intents purposes Schwim's pub yes Schwim's pub okay so s e h w e m m apostrophe s so that was what was noticed yes yes so given the legal notice we gave him what was just said so doing business Schwim's pub Keith student center so the word campus pub is just disappearing okay just making sure we don't have multiple pups technically is Amherst college the licensee I believe trustees of Amherst college are the licensee trustees of Amherst college right yeah for the trust yeah it should basically just go back to what the ad copy says which was for the trustees of Amherst college doing business as Schwim's pub Keith campus center 16 Barrett Hill road if we could just pick that up road drive whatever it is yeah Barrett Hill I agree to the those changes in the motion I'm fine just reflect that I just wanted to kind of repeat what Miss Kruger already said is that you know I think that this is something that I appreciate you're doing and I think that it is good for the campus probably and good for the town because it does provide an opportunity for entertainment of to appeal to a variety of students on campus and you know it appears from the experiment that it was run well and so I think that it fits in with our goals that we talked about previously it is range of efforts we make and this is seems to be one that's valid and fits into that category so I'm pleased that you're bringing us here I agree more some technical aside one is we had an item in our yellow folder tonight that indicated that the police department's check that which we just had a lengthy conversation about the other week is still in process and that's fine that's happened before we just it's just that we know it and we know that the process will work without that having yet been done but and if there was an issue it would be brought to our attention and so we're good with that determination of good character it's not just limited to the quarry but may include the quarry and other items as were discussed at a previous meeting and then the other thing was I had mentioned at our last meeting since typically when we look at these floor plans we might talk about patios we might talk about flow or storage or egress but largely we're not the zba and so they have always had a role in figuring out the floor plans as well and helping figure out the hours so people apply for a certain set of hours sometimes the hours we would be all right with the zba is not all right with etc and so I appreciate that this is a different scenario because we're at amherst college and I know that mr bachman indicated that he'd see if there was anything that needed to be checked associated with that so I guess since the answer is as we suspected know that when abc sees this it will have been through a slightly different process and that it won't have had um rob morris people and that's eba looking at it so occasionally things bounce because they don't like where the storage is or whatever and hopefully your attorney is already familiar with that and it doesn't hold things up but I guess what I'm trying to make clear is that we're not really blessing a floor plan because we don't really have the ability to do that effectively given what we know about the situation so don't blame us is that what I'm saying we're doing the best we can is there further discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye opposed so that's unanimous thank you very much appreciate you working your way through the process with us the timing is just about right oh yes the uh okay thank you everybody in town's in the butter so next on our agenda uh this evening is another public hearing and so I will read the the advertisement in the that was placed in the uh in the newspaper public hearing notice this advertisement constitutes notice in accordance with provisions of chapter 166 of the massachusetts general laws and any additions there to or amendments thereof application is hereby received for a poll petition and wire locations from eversource to relocate and or install polls wires cables and fixtures including the necessary sustaining and protecting fixtures along and across the following public ways number one install hand holes and underground primary beginning approximately 843 feet and 930 feet southerly of centerline of university drive amherst mass 0102 and number two install underground primary in conduit approximately 595 feet southerly of centerline of amity street embers mass 0102 a public hearing will be held by the embers select board on november 13th 2018 at 7 15 p.m. in the town room town hall for boltwood avenue embers mass which was placed on october 22nd and so with that I will open our public hearing relative to the polls and or conduits I believe it is at 718 and so I presume we have someone from eversource thank you so if you just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about the location what's going on we have some materials in our packet but please share with us what you need to nick krigel with eversource um university drive we're looking to at a customer's requests extend our underground conduit onto customer property but we're going through the grass belt which is town taking um the one property we already have existing um electric utilities underground there so we're putting two splice pits to capture those feeds and then be able to feed the new um 10000 square foot mix use building and then um as far as the other one the uh the restaurant we're just coming out of our existing above ground junction at the kind of driveway of the hangar there and we're gonna same thing again underground primary conduits into that restaurant uh site questions relative to this I guess I just to get some clarity on it um is this work um all good done outside of what is the current pavement that is university drive so the two hand holes would be in between I guess the bike path sidewalks on university drive and the roadway so there's that small say four-foot patch of grass between the two and the two hand holes would be in that location and then we'd be cutting across the bike paths or the the two you know double lane sidewalks to go into the the properties is there going to be any effect on uh the traffic that goes up and down university drive as far as vehicle traffic yes vehicle um maybe it was in my packet but can you just say what a hand hole is so a hand hole is uh or it's going to be a splice bit but it's going to be a say five-foot piece of poly concrete in the ground so it's going to be flush to the ground and that's it's pretty much a um a hole in the ground that's going to have a flat cover we're going to make splices in it to extend our cables onto their property essentially allows you access to a make the connections you need to but also to service them if you need to later right yeah these will all be below grade below grade other questions from the board just note that uh the superintendent public works recommends approval of this permit but he wanted us to remind you that you should make sure you pull a street opening permit from the town before you begin work that extreme care should be taken when working around the trees on university drive those very important trees for the town and that we prefer that that the trenchless technology be used in terms of putting in is that your intention um so the site contractor the customers um barry roberts crew will be doing all the digging um there's no way to do trenchless excavation as far as installing the handles because obviously we're going to be disturbing ground there's no trees in that area but where we do pass across those bike paths it does have to be concrete in case and there's no way to do the trenchless excavation and then concrete in case on top of those because they are high voltage primaries so that you know small section will have to be dug and then concrete in case but we will i he did give me that um that as well to make sure we do avoid those trees so then for bike riders along the bike path they're going to that'll be their flow of riding will be interrupted for a piece a period of time right i believe you're going to do in two sections is that it yeah so we're going to go over to one you know the the one side shut down the one side go over it um concrete in case it backfill and then do the same thing with the other one so at no point both lanes will be impacted and so will the bike lanes be restored so it's a smooth surface or i'm not sure and how much of that will be restored because if you want to come up to the right to the mic just share with us that way they pick up the i don't know if you remember but as part of our proposal for this project the bike lane nearest the row is going to be eliminated when this project is all done that's where spices are going to be right out next to the curb so uh right now we have the inside bike lane shut down so that our trucks don't interfere with the bike riders and we're asking everybody to cross over and use the outside one so we do the opposite as we needed to come into the project and what what is the timing for repaving that bike path is it going to be done this fall or in the spring so it'll be rough going for the bikers for a while over this path you'll patch it with oh yeah well this fall it'll be packed yeah but then you're going to redo the entire lane after your project is done is that accurate we want us to wait till spring to do the replacement of the bike path but we will have black top yeah into our project this fall so at that time we'll patch it since you're there was there anything else you wanted to mention relative to this project as far as we're we're moving we have attained a foundation permit for the residential site so we'll be starting well we started on that today even though it rained very hard we have a permit from a town for in closing the restaurant sites so now we'll start on that right away too so if it ever stopped raining right exactly thank you other questions or comments relative to this not i think we can probably take a motion to close the public hearing and then we can move to close the public hearing second motion a second is there for the discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye and so the hearing is closed at 7 24 and so it would take a motion if you we can still discuss i moved to approve the addition of hand holes and electrical con maybe i should say two hand holes and electrical conduit by ever source on university drive to meet the needs of a new commercial property at 70 university drive motion and a second did you have comment that you wanted to offer relative to the motion or no i just should should i add there were two hand holds holes hand holes because that's i think the more specific it's just plural you've done that yeah but other than that i'm two hand holds any other questions or comments this bro we had better maps this time thank you for whoever worked with whoever to make that happen really appreciate that because we have often had little tiny gray things with very unclear things and this had all sorts of information on it so thank you that helps us sort of figure out where you're talking about a lot better so we have a sense of space and scale and that sort of thing we sometimes struggle with the more technical drawings because they're for a different purpose is there for the discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye those so that's unanimous thank you both very much appreciate your time good luck with the project hope it stops raining soon yeah exactly let's go start snowing correct question i was reminded that i had forgotten to make a note of something we already made the decision so it's fine but in terms of the annual license renewals i know that we've probably just carried over what we've done before but the fourth one down the american post of the america amherst post one amert post 148 i don't care about that what i care about is the all alcohol on-premise license things are a little confusing when it comes to veterans clubs but when we do our liquor license quota we call out veterans clubs separately and we charge them a lower amount so while it is indeed all alcohol it is not the standard all alcohol on-premise as our quota report reflects it's a veterans club all alcohol license which we only charge different communities charge different amounts but we only charge 1500 four instead of 3,500 four and it doesn't impact our number of all alcohol on-premises as i understand it so just to make that clear in that last column that it's the little special kind of all alcohol license i think that's great and it's already clear on our liquor quota report right thank you for that so is mr. zomek still working searching for the for the items relative to the conservation restrictions so i believe um i think the next thing we could go to in in the short term is um if you want to talk about charter transition sure uh number of things under this the um first i want to recognize that these are the invitations which you can have as many as you'd like uh to the event on december 2nd which is the first town council inauguration it's the swearing in ceremony of the town council it's sunday december 2nd at 1 p.m at the amherst pellum regional high school auditorium it will be followed by a reception in the cafeteria of the amherst pellum regional high school that's an exciting thing that's happening um i'm going to give you a list of dates and what's happening and then there are a couple substantive things that are before you in terms of one is the board of license commissioners charge and the other is the committee vacancies and appointments so i'm just going to give you a quick update first the council elect will have a workshop on thursday uh november 15th at 5 30 p.m at the student union uh cape cod lounge or the student union at the university of massachusetts this is their first gathering it's there's no decision making happening there um but the public is welcome it's a post we've posted it so people can participate or not parts that they can attend and observe um the and one of the reasons we're doing it there is that there are two uh trainers who are putting on a presentation about um municipal board retreats on friday and we were able to get them to come in early and talk to this council on thursday night and so that's that's the plan for that uh senator uh former senator rozenberg will be sort of uh coordinating this evening uh to help the council uh begin its work the second um workshop there will be a second workshop on thursday november 29th at 6 30 p.m at the bangs community center and at this workshop the first hour or what i'm not sure what order it will go in but the first hour will be the town attorney doing trainings on the open meeting law the public records law the state ethics um commission think things like that um and the second hour will be a presentation by the bylaw review committee which has been chaired by mr bob richie and they will go through kind of the presentation they've already delivered to the select board what we have done how we've uh what our task was how we've approached it um what you can expect from us that type of thing after that on sunday december 2nd will be the inaugural um swearing-in ceremony and then after that will be on the first meeting of the council after it's been sworn in will be on monday december 3rd and the time of that of that first meeting will be 8 p.m in this room with the crossing our fingers that all the work will be completed and we can hold it in this room um so that's sort of the the schedule of events leading up um to december 3rd which is the first day of the council meeting just as part of that um the select board has a meeting on november 26th which is monday we've also reserved a time for saturday december 1st probably 5 or 5 30 in case there are last-minute liquor licenses or any last-minute business that you need to attend to hopefully it won't be anything the meeting won't be necessary but in case there's any last minute thing before the council gets sworn in you'll have the ability to do to take care of that um i can go on to the next two things which might have more extensive discussions unless we'd like to go back to mr zomek mr zomek are you prepared to to go all right so why don't we pause there and we'll come back and and have mr mr zomek take us through the two conservation restrictions acceptances that are within our materials here and and in some ways have been some pieces of have of them have been before us before but not all of them and first i apologize you didn't get hard copies of this last week was kind of chaotic for us and but you got it electronically you have hard copies on your desk tonight so thank you very much um i'll try to be brief i am here before the board tonight to quickly review two projects that have been in the pipeline for quite some time um the hurl cr which i believe you got copies of both the document itself as well as a map and then a brief memo from me is a project that the town has um minimal um involvement in if you will we are not putting any funding into this project it has been facilitated by the kestrel trust you may recall that the town did participate uh financially using cpa funds to preserve over 60 acres of mr hurl's property on southeast street this is all part of a larger block of conserved land at that time mr hurl held out a flag lot of just over four acres and the kestrel trust has facilitated a conservation project which results in that being conserved this is all being done through the state uh it is i would call it a formality if you will that the town is being asked to approve um the conservation restriction in effect this will conserve this land so that it is preserved in perpetuity to be added to the agricultural purposes of this larger farm block so with that i'm happy to take questions um i could yeah questions if there are any supportive questions relative to this property i will say that in looking through our materials the this drawing exhibit b at the back end of this is sort of the mirror image of what's on the screen as far as north southeast west so the flag lot in this drawing i'm holding it upside down now is is that what as you look at it normally toward the bottom of the the larger piece but these properties identified there on the screen above us so again the town has no financial involvement in this project um it will in effect make make sure that the conservation restriction itself is geared toward agriculture often conservation restriction conservation restrictions are not this one really complements the ap r land around it would you would you like to do these as a pair would you like me to describe the other one or would you like to i'd say why don't you describe the other one because we'll need motion language on both i apologize you did not see motion language i think um i have a consulted with sharon everett and we have motion language to share with you in just a moment again fairly straightforward why don't you take us through the the epstein properties um a little bit smaller but that's all right um so again the the board is very familiar with the epstein property and the project again the town participated in this with cpa funds the result will be a a conservation project protecting 28 plus acres around the epstein pond with the kestrel trust owning the land that is remaining this is one of the last steps in this project if cpa funds are used to protect a piece of property whether it be an ap r agriculture block or in this case a conservation property then the town even though we are the owners of the property and we uh the land is managed under the care and control of the conservation commission there must be a third party essentially watching the town to make sure that we adhere to the conservation purposes of the acquisition in this case our partner the kestrel trust has been doing this since the cpa um came into effect in 2002 2003 so we've done this a number of times i'm going to say maybe eight uh those properties that we purchased kestrel holds a conservation restriction in perpetuity um and does annual um visits to the property to make sure that we are managing it the way we said we would manage it so that is essentially the second property and as i said this is the final step in this we turn this all in and then um magically we get a reimbursement because we actually expend the funds to purchase the property we get a reimbursement for the amount of money between the purchase price and what we are leaving on the table uh in cpa dollars so um this is all part of our work to make sure that the accounting department keeps us keeps us honest in all this so if i could i have motion language that i could hand to the as you did uh of course there's this oh thank you there's this odd slice that is in the middle of the property that's not part of the transaction that are you talking about this yes yes um to remind us on what that is reserved for by whom and second question is since it means that uh there's not a conservation restriction on the land bordering the pond for a large eastern section are there any concerns about the preservation of the pond so it's a very good question there is a three acre exclusion on the frontage on bay road that was purchased by the kestrel trust as part of this project they are going to take up to two years to do their due diligence to see if they would like to cite their permanent office building there and education and outreach programming there um they're doing their due diligence now they've had architects look at it landscape architects look at it and their executive director christin debor and and her staff will be looking at that um if they deem it not feasible to uh site there then they will sell the property now um mr. seinsberg mr. seinberg's question is is is a valid one there is no conservation restriction on that property however we own and control the eastern edge of the pond and everything to the west and everything to the to the south and everything to the east so if kestrel decides to sell somebody could have a wonderful property there and they will have some rights on our pond they could paddle there with a kayak they could fish there they could enjoy a picnic there um but they really can't do anything to the town's property i would i would see that akin to um mr. sharkin's property on puffers pond if you will if kestrel decides not to pursue their office there um then it will be sold but again the land all around it is permanently protected so it clearly if kestrel wasn't there we would have to perhaps keep a closer eye on it if you will because it would be in private hands but i see it very similarly to uh the one property on puffers pond actually there's two properties on puffers pond that have private access to a public pond so i think it's very similar other questions for mr zomek relative to these two conservation restrictions if not then certainly the uh motion language could be uh could be undertaken at this point i think instead of both two would be moved to approve a conservation or would it be exempt no it is approved it is approved and the second one is specifically to grant the the difference here also in in mgl is um one has to do specifically uh the hurl has to do 31 32 and 33 of mgl chapter 84 has to do specifically with conservation restrictions and then the the the epstein is actually specific to the cpa language 12a 40 in 44 b is specific to the cpa language offer motions or air of motions i should say you want to go okay i i i moved to approve a conservation restriction on approximately 4.1346 acres of land at 908 southeast street owned by james w hurl pursuant to section 31 32 and 33 of chapter 184 of messages general laws and described in exhibit a and shown in copy the copy of a recorded survey exhibit b in book 11 um 464 page 99 in the hampshire registry of deeds is there a second is there further discussion hearing none all those in favor please say i is that unanimous before we go on just to make sure um i just wanted to exhibit a should we say the exhibit a to what or just exhibit leave it as is yeah so i believe the exhibit a it's on page 13 it says exhibit a is a description of the premises which is attached to as the last page of the conservation restriction that's in your that was in your on your desk and then exhibit b is a reduced copy of recorded plan of the premises which i don't think you have a copy of that rest of you or you do have it this one's upstream but i think let me look at the other no no it's it's there it's just in a different this is obscene still may i spit right but the actual conservation restriction itself would contain exhibit a and b correct you should which is what's referenced by you should have page 19 which is exhibit b page 19 we don't have page 19 so okay i think it's okay fine that clarifies yes clarifying and i'm sorry if i space this out um why don't i understand we do what kp law tells us to do that part i get but why doesn't it say valley land fund anywhere in our motion whereas the approval of select board says it's to valley land the thing we're signing later tonight says valley land fund question valley land fund valley land fund merged with the kestrel trust um doesn't mention kestrel either for that matter it doesn't mention anybody it's an excellent question valley land fund is now part of the kestrel land trust but a separate llc so i guess i have two questions one is is it good enough and two if the if the part where that we actually signed tonight is one of these and it says valley land fund it is that going to be problematical for anybody i mean i'm less concerned about it matching but i'm more concerned about saying oh actually need to sign a different one because this one says valley land fund no i would propose a change but neither is it mentioned in the motion actually so we have a couple different issues on the table one is if we need to change the motion and the other is is it acceptable to sign the thing that says valley land fund because that's the actual thing with our signatures like please so the the actual conservation restriction is to valley land fund ink so that's with all the language in the actual conservation restriction itself and that's why that document which will be signed is consistent i don't right yeah i i i still think we're okay on hurl i think we're okay you're you're that is mike i just want to make sure we're moving to approve a conservation restriction on the acres that are owned by mr hurl pursuant to section 31 32 and 33 um i should have been more specific so earlier castrell is involved they are orchestrating this they are facilitating this when they merged with the valley land fund they retained uh a relationship with my understanding is an llc which is valley land fund in this case valley land fund is um the grantee if you will so so so they are going to be the party um actually watching over if you will the cr with the town is that clear yes and no in that i'm fine with it being valley land fund instead of castrell but what this says that i'm going to sign later tonight is that we approved the word including valley land fund that we did not just say that it will be done under mass general law and we don't care who the partner is it specifically says we voted to say valley land fund was the partner and we didn't vote to say valley land fund was the partner you voted to approve a conservation restriction that you were presented with right but this says we voted this is the thing we're actually signing and this says we voted to approve the conservation restriction from james hurl to the valley land fund we did not vote that we voted the wording that talks about this i'm just uneasy i don't know if we attach that to it or what but just on the phone to syrin everett moments ago if if the board would like to add the valley land fund into this motion i think that would be fine um that that's what i mean so the signature page right so if we if i understand this correctly if we change the motion that we already passed to add the words valley land fund to reflect what it says here which is the thing we're actually going to sign because we're not sending them this we're not actually sending these words in we're sending these words away with our signature on them this piece of paper is just a piece of paper you're i'm a little confused you're voting right you're voting to sign a conservation restriction whether it's to the kestrel trust or the valley land fund if the board would like to add the kestrel trust i mean excuse me the valley land fund that's fine i think i think what the goal is to bring consistency to the board's motion to what they're signing and i think to do that after the word on the motion after the word hurl if you add to the valley land fund incorporate it um because now pursuant to that would work because that tracks the what the board has been asked to sign tonight exactly because otherwise if we sign this i am not signing a truthful statement because i did not vote on a motion that included the words valley land fund i want to vote on a motion that includes words valley land fund so i can sign this and i will have done so that's what i want i want i want my signature to mean that i actually did that thing that's that's fine there's only one exhibit referenced and that is valley land fund and hurl but that's fine i found exhibit b it's on the back of the memo from mr zomec there's page 19 that has the actual picture of the property that's not on the back of the actual full document itself so would the board accept that language from mr bonham they already voted so you'll have to re-vote yeah i um i'm sorry how do we want to do this so we could formally reconsider it and have a vote to reconsider and then take up a new motion or i move that we reconsider uh the conservation restriction motions is there a second sure second why not i assume this part doesn't need discussion all those in favor please say hi so now we're back to before so we could take a modification of that motion at this point which i presume is is a friendly amendment to uh to the motion that that the uh motioner would would accept which was to it's not it's not an amendment because it's a new motion now right because when you reconsider something you kind of land fund incorporate it after the word hurl say that one more time i'm sorry so i think that the language would be um vote to approve a conservation restriction on approximately 4.1346 acres of land at 908 southeast street owned by james w hurl to the valley land fund incorporate it pursuant to sections 3132 and 33 of the chapter 184 of mgl and described in exhibit a and shown in the copy of a recorded survey and exhibit b in book 11464 page 99 in the hampshire registry of deeds so moved second is there for the discussion hearing that all those in favor please say i i posed okay so we tied it up the language just to smidge there so hurl stuff and so so just to clarify the upstain is the town of amherst granting a conservation restriction to the kestrel trust on property we own i want to start this one with a move to have the town of amherst granting conversation you know something like that so if we could just take a minute to read what it is that we're allegedly signing in on page 14 of the upstain piece maybe it tracks more closely to the motion that was provided to us no not really not actually at all um and like i said i don't really have a problem if we said see attached but what i do have a problem with is this piece of paper goes into our minutes and this piece of paper gets mailed away and they don't have anything to do with each other or relative they they aren't completely connected to each other so in an ideal world kp law would have given you all this language and it would be on page 14 already and that's what we would be voting that just didn't doesn't always happen i think what we would do is we'd move that the town of amherst granting conservation restriction to the kestrel land trust in approximately 28.1 acres of land etc etc etc i don't know if we need to reference the town meeting action but it wouldn't hurt so we could say pursue it to town meeting action of April 3rd you know etc etc at the beginning town meeting vote is attached to the conservation restriction i mean i think oh yes please i mean you may just i mean try to track the language in the actual conservation or just make that the motion because that's what they're signing and it should have everything if they it's been looked at by a dozen attorneys i'm sure right now except it's not as detailed is it exact that's the odd thing if the board is more comfortable making a motion out of what's on page 14 that's less specific than what is on the motion sheet but that is correct and if if if what i understand that kp law wants this and i want to do what they want us to do it's just that when i sign this again i'm not they're not the same thing and so this isn't getting attached so it doesn't really matter what this says if i'm signing a piece of paper over here that doesn't include this language so if this language is important it should be the thing i'm actually signing so i don't know if we just tack it on i mean somebody writes it in there i mean i don't really care how we do it i think it this is a different one in that the other one we could just change our motion so that somebody could connect the dots between the two this one if she really wants this level of detail in here it's not there so if i could explain i mean page 14 is standard language in any conservation restriction done in the commonwealth of messachusetts that's why it doesn't include specific language about the parcels about about the book and page so what we typically do is we would attach the select boards approved minutes and the motion to the conservation restriction and send that as a package for our reimbursement i i've never not had the commonwealth accept that as long as there is consistency between the vote you take and page 14 which is you signing saying yes we do accept and approve of this conservation restriction on this piece of property in south amherst you know with this specific language so i still think the motion again i've never had one of these rejected because it contained more specificity what i would maybe suggest just to sort of blend those a bit is that we could move pursuant to the authority granted to the select board by the vote taken on our article 12 b of the april 30th 2018 annual town meeting that the grant town grant a conservation restriction to the kestrel land trust etc etc so it captures the how we got the authority to do this this is what i was suggesting there but i don't know if that satisfies sort of the two pieces of the puzzle we're trying to stick together here or not that would work yeah i guess i i personally am not troubled by the language was provided by kp law because i think that between the town meeting vote which is a matter of public record and document itself that they all are consistent with the motion our authority and our action are implicit in documents that exist and i think our the reference to the authority is only needed if somebody challenges the authority and that's clearly covered and as far as the authorization as the document itself the restriction it's covered by the restriction that was drafted that we're signing so i guess i'm a little you know wouldn't be offended by a change but i don't think it's necessary i do see this one is slightly different as you've indicated these are somewhat different programs and what the first one was that concerned me is it said at a meeting duly held the select board voted to do a certain thing we had not voted to do a certain thing we had voted to do most of that thing we had not included valley land fund the phrasing is different on page 14 for this one and given the level of detail you want over here and given the level of detail that's in here i guess i don't feel the same way about it because it's not phrased that way in this thing that we're signing in this thing that we're signing i think it's more evident that there's something else out there somewhere that has it and as you've indicated you will put it all together so because there's a lot of content that we'd have to shift between the two if we wanted to actually make the motion be perfect so i guess i'm not as worried about this one for the reasons mr steinberg outlined someone want to read the motion as written and i moved to grant a conservation restriction to the kestrel land trust on approximately 28.1 acres of land owned by the town of amriston located on bay road parcels 25 b-21 25 b-25 and 25 b-59 described in exhibit a and exhibit b in book 13077 page 217 in the hampshire registry of deeds meeting in the requirement uh excuse me meeting the requirements of section 12a of massachusetts general law 44 b we have a motion and a second is there for the discussion all those in favor please say hi thank you very much i promise not to bring either one of these back to you ever again you've only got a few weeks anyway so the opportunity is minimal but thank you for that so we've taken care of those a couple of items and so i believe at this point we're not meeting on december 1st for this the other topics under the charter transition topics for free so um thank you i'll give you a couple other verbal things and then we can go to the documents so the bylaw review committee has been meeting regularly they met with miss brewer and mr rozenberg to go through some detailed things they met this morning and they will meet again next Tuesday at 9 30 a.m they continue to work on pretty much finalize the document that that migrates the bylaws for the zoning bylaw and the um general bylaw into a new format for the council to adopt that would address the issues with the bylaw says for instance town meeting where does that go does that go to the council used typically that's usually what happens so they have a roadmap that they described in great detail to you and we'll provide even more detail to the council i'm sure um one of those things is the um they one i think the approach that they're taking is to say take this document rescind everything else and substitute this and i think that's as they're doing a wholesale change and that's what they're recommending instead of going through you know a hundred individual changes um in order to do that for the zoning bylaw they have to to change the zoning bylaw you need a recommendation from the planning board so they planning board has advertised a public hearing for november 28th to move that document to the planning board they can initiate it themselves or the select board can vote to give it to the planning board which is what the bylaw review committee is going to ask you to do on november 26th i'm giving they don't have anything to give you yet um but they know that the deadline to get you something is next tuesday because of the holiday we're going to get the packet the packet has to go out earlier so um that's their intention so they would hand it to you you would say thank you we refer this to the to the planning board planning board has its hearing on on wednesday the 20 i'm getting the dates wrong whatever it is the 28th i think it is um and then they um will make a recommendation to the council that's the way i'm and this is in referenced to uh mr richie has been having conversations with joel bard about how to facilitate this so they will give you more detail want to give you a heads up that this will be on your agenda on the 26th um the other thing that the other document that they're putting together uh two other things one is a recommended rules um to um i forget they call it rules and procedures they're recommending that the council adopt as temporary rules and procedures roberts rules of order 11th edition plus a number of other things and one of the things i want to make sure they include is the remote participation policy or that the select board is already done that they just transmit that to the um to to the council and as a piece maybe update where it's where says select board change it to council so the council is ready to handle requests for remote participation which they're going to get on get very quickly i think into their term so they have a system in place and i'm trying to think if there's anything else they should be clearly taking on so if there are other things like that that you think of please let me know or jeff kravitz know um the last thing that they're trying to put together is um they don't have a name for it yet they they were calling it the town code but in one place something that incorporates the town charter the general bylaws the zoning bylaws and all the all the accepted statutes all the policies um that have been adopted and then all the regulations that go with anything just so people can in one place online people can find everything they will possibly need in order to understand how the government works they're not going to have that incomplete but completely completed by the time they hand off the document but that's their their goal is to help encapsulate all the laws that anybody would possibly possibly need to know so that's one of the tasks there that they've undertaken so that's the bylaw review committee and it's been a good committee they're very active and um and jeff kravitz has done a tremendous job of serving them yeah let's see with that so um don't don't be fooled i didn't see anything detailed while i was there we were talking more about general concepts but um i assume that while they're talking the one of their projects the one you spoke of last was associated with basically putting everything in one place which wouldn't that have been amazing to have for the since 1954 but um great so but the board of health make sure that they're thinking of putting because the because nobody nobody many people don't realize they need to go off and look over there too because it's a separate place the next item in the part of the transition is the one of the first committees that needs to be appointed is the board of licensed commissioners and in your in your packet i believe um or somewhere is a draft charge for the board of licensed commissioners and this is something that um we sort of took a shot at and um tried to leave it flexible but it allowed for us to begin advertising um for the for licensed commissioners so i'd welcome any comments or suggestions on this and and just to give some context this so this is the board that takes on by definition the common victor's licenses and and this is in the charter and the liquor licenses uh we have we would move that function from the mezzanine which is the town manager's office to inspection services the second floor which is does all the permitting for everything else anyway um rob mora would be the lead person that would serve the uh the license commit the board of licensed commissioners we have posted an internal posting and have a we have an empty slot on the inspection services uh floor steven mccarthy has been selected from three internal candidates to take on that that position so that's sort and he will be responsible for helping the commission getting all the material that's needed and i think he's really quite capable we have three really strong candidates for that position internal posting um and they all could have done it and as but they recommended that mr mccarthy received this to do this job so do you have a comment relative to the charge oh plenty i bet if anybody else wanted to go first more like um i'm responding to the consolidation of all licenses and permits down here any thought about the physical space people i'm thinking people queuing up because that's you're sort of funneling um a lot of things to what sometimes already gets clogged up and um there's not really any seating there there's the bench but if you're sitting on the bench you can't tell it's your turn to go up so i'm wondering if there's a way to make it more user friendly that's a good idea we'll look at that and probably try to put more things online for people they don't have to come in for things that's a good point other people who want to offer comment on the on the charge there what kind of sign do we want to buy the flashing one that says now serving you take a ticket you can see it outside it can run 24 hours flashing if it's outside right vibrates in your pocket so you can go away for 10 minutes get pager that's an even better idea i like that a lot so i don't know how much of this there's a time sensitivity here obviously but i don't know how much detail you guys want to hear about this but why don't i take stab at it and see where we're going so one is i do not understand why we would refer to review and issuance when it's just issue it's not review and that's referred to twice in both groupings it's simply issue licenses and of course there are renewals and that's something else but that's part of issuance so i would just take that out because it it might mean something to somebody that it doesn't actually mean it's just issuance like it says in the charter in terms of i appreciate so just the reason for that was yeah um i guess it doesn't make any sense as i was thinking well what if they don't issue like it's like it's their job to issue but that that makes perfect sense actually you know they can review but not issue yeah right so just issue and then if they decide not to issue it then they've made an issuance decision so to speak um i appreciate that the first grouping is as was indicated in the charter clearly chapters 138 and 140 and that's great and then there's another section of things on the second page that are things that aren't under 138 and 140 however i think they're mixed together in a way that's not necessarily going to serve us particularly well one reason is that keg licenses have had absolutely nothing to do with any body approving it and so unless you're proposing a change to that i don't know that that belongs in there that's part of our bylaw that may need to be reviewed but it's got nothing to do with these other things even though we call them licenses right just to confuse things so there's that and then fuel storage we do very rarely because mostly the only people who need to do you mass and we don't usually get to decide associated with them and um then auction taxi marijuana again all things that aren't under 138 or 140 so i get that they have to be called out somewhere because they might happen again let me go through another taxi period etc in which case i don't i guess i just want to be clear that when we're not talking we're not talking about um the town manager amending the actual permits that there's just a phrasing issue you're talking about amending this list this list is is the known list of things but maybe there's something else out there that would fit in this list because it isn't under 138 or 140 and so something like not limited to or something along those lines that doesn't make it sound like you the town manager then go off and alter the fuel storage license but that the list itself or it could just be the town council it doesn't matter how we do that but it may be amended what i'm saying is yeah it's the list yes you can put the word which add list which list may be amended something along those lines and then for marijuana it it's not going to be a bylaw it's going to be a regulation it's not well i assume they'll be called ordinances someday but they're not it's not going to be an ordinance it's going to be a regulation to the best of our knowledge at this point if there's a local licensing process it wouldn't be by law so the reason just two comments one is i just want to call out that marijuana should be if someone's looking at applying for this they should look at it because they can't they can't have conflicts of interest so if you're involved with marijuana be alerted that this might pop up and on your on your radar screen we don't know what that's going to look like or where it's going to live so it could be by effect by bylaw or or some other or other means i guess except there there isn't going to be a local licensing process that's a bylaw just like there's not an alcohol licensing process that's a bylaw it's it's not a bylaw and it's not an ordinance it's something else and i have for a fix first of all i think on marijuana it should have the word license added like in so many other comms so somebody knows um we're not talking about the whole shebang and then it could just be parence if enacted if enacted perfect yeah perfect solution we don't have to argue whether they're ordinance regulations codes etc wonderful thank you that solves that problem so i have two more let me just come in on the fuel storage license actually is an important one it's such a wacky you know we have we've had this experience where the someone is putting in a new fuel tank and it's a slightly bigger as a gas station right they get signed off by the police chief or the fire chief they get signed off by the building commissioner and the law requires the select board to approve it and like we this we just came across like what what you know is this right and we had to call counsel and they said well it's actually about the same size so you don't have to really but it was like we had never we couldn't find anything where the select board really handled a fuel storage license and what capacity do we have so it is i just don't want to take that off the list for that because that would be perfectly located on the second floor already right and i actually do you have two examples for you then one is the reference i've made to umass when umass changed some things around but but then it turned out it was one of the many things we couldn't make money off umass for we can only do that with certain kinds of inspections and others they have their own inspectors for the other one was the fuel tanks for the sunwood development down off of pine street the select board had to do something associated with the propane tanks there and so that was a long time ago it's in the law right but that's the last time i remembered doing it but that that specifically occurs to me so i appreciate that it's called out but fortunately it's rare um the other two comments i had were um you need another you need another category and i'm not sure if you if you stick it under the part where you've just said since we took out keg licenses because they're not issuing those um if it fits under there but it's actually not an issuance either and that is the weirdo bizarro thing we have that's called kino notices all right mass general law you can write this down i looked it up for you mass general law chapter 10 section 27 a and it actually references chapter 138 so it does tie back in that that's that that's why a local licensing authority gets to look at the keynote under the first category but see you don't issue kino notices that's the thing that's difficult is that you only get to say no and then the state says no you do really want this is the reality you don't actually get to say no when it comes right down to it so someplace we need to just i don't know stuff it somewhere as being a thing that's making it clear we don't issue it but when that notice comes in that should go to that body for them to decide that then for the state to decide that they're wrong um which luckily the state doesn't do on things like you know tobacco and alcohol and everything else but they do get to do it for kino and then the other one is to ask and i don't know that we'll necessarily be able to do this in the charge at this point maybe it's an update to the charge under the membership i understand that the words here are taken from the charter in terms of interest directly or indirectly however given the major employers of the university massachusetts hampshire college and amherst college all of which obtain alcohol permits on a regular basis i think we need counsel to specify for us how close somebody can be to the food services associated with those three agencies because if we're if we'd simply be interpreting it which i hope we wouldn't be to say if you work for you mass you can't be on this that's going to take a lot of possible people out of the pool and so i think that it's important that kp law come up with where they think that line should be is it somebody who works in food service maybe not but or where the the spread is and obviously amherst college and hampshire college are much tinier organizations and you know we can see that we obviously wouldn't have suggested that the amherst college food service manager be on the license like that's totally clear but what if somebody just works in the dining hall and and might occasionally even serve as a bartender who knows i mean so i just like to not not take everybody out of the population if we don't have to just because you're talking at five people you know what i'm talking about is where it says shall have any financial interest directly or indirectly which special municipal employee status aside if i work for the dining commons do i have an indirect interest in whether or not my cousin who runs the part where they have the small bars at the fire nurse center that we do license after license for are actually approved so i that's why i think we have attorneys is for things like that but i would just hate to see us cut people completely out of all employees period out of that loop because we obviously already aren't having people who work in restaurants and that's one of the ironies to this too i mean i appreciate you don't want to have a financial interest but at the same time you're kind of taking out everyone that has any expertise with it because they're not allowed to have a potential financial interest so none of our local restaurants that have alcohol would be able to serve common vix wouldn't be able to serve etc even if they're recusing for their own permit and their own license they couldn't serve doesn't doesn't that's not what these words say to me that that's not what this says i hear you but it might make sense to have it something that's more inclusive right the the difficulty with someone say i work in a particular restaurant if i say no to somebody else's then they're not going to be able to have a license and i can that helps my business out so that's one of the reasons for in another in another community the the mayor had nominated a lawyer who worked in a firm that represented and they got a legal opinion saying that was fine but the council did not like that they even worked in the law firm that represented clients and even though that person doesn't so there's just you know i think i think they may have learned from that to make it broader than what is in the other charter that they approved or it may also be that the charter commissioners didn't truly appreciate how many people we were taking out of the pool by the way we were writing it so it may be something needs to be revised in future but just to be clear that we're not keeping people out to be difficult it's just that as it's written we're keeping out a lot of people and so i'd like at some point kp law to advise you how close somebody can be to the facilities within one of the organizations i'm assuming restaurant employees automatically are just out but does that mean you mass employees if they're not affiliated with restaurants or so i have one question probably more than one in the end but the uh section 3.3 c of the charter provides that multi-member bodies should be composed of residents of the town of amherst that the time of appointment and throughout the term of the appointment unless otherwise approved by the town council and this doesn't indicate that this particular board has to be residents of the town so i i think that we until there's council action it does have to be members of the town and then it depends upon how the council acts on it so are you suggesting that we take that section of the charter and put it in that you have to be residents of the town to as under the membership section yes who can be a member that would be smart sure yes um it it's technicality but um why omit it from right doesn't hurt right so we can just track the language exactly from the charter right yes it's a section 3.3 c good that's excellent so the rest of the charges and whatnot you put in here this is a new one and whether or there are other conflicts like that because i know with the ad commission well i don't know if that places that in conflict with 3.3c i mean everything's under the charter right i think we should limit our scope right now to this one so this will be a i mean this is the opportunity to create what you want a charter a charge to look like too so this is the opportunity to say we'd like a you know we want a format that works and makes it easy for people to read and um and all it has all the information on it and so whatever would be really helpful especially with your eyes and say this is why i want all future charges to look like and over time we will put all the old charges into this format and if all these categories type and stuff that needs to be up front or not capitals you're going to capitalize certain second words then they should all be practice excuse me i think we have a practice of dating these so we know when it was created and then right what are in them when it's revised so that it could be as as voters right adopted categories yeah for the licensed commissioner charge thinking more globally associated with the template that we never really got finished doing and hey you know now we've got new stuff um i'm not thrilled with the way this the top is fine i'm not thrilled with the section 6.3 and then purview part because some but i can appreciate at the same time that it just i don't know it doesn't track very well to me but i can appreciate that that first sentence is trying to show where did this come from just like the authority says up here the reason we have this is because the charter establishes it some another one of these could say authority is a is a topic yeah i i like i mean i really like having the authority at the top i'm just not sure that this is very authority explaining purview purview kind of maybe yeah maybe repeat authority is it yeah maybe just repeat authority because that's exactly yeah that makes that that makes it track more and they're all so different and as we see in our packet in terms of explanation as to why they exist and which parts at the front like like we've talked about with the bylaws for example now the new format will be right up front it'll say who enforces it and how much you pay but we never thought to do that we're evolving we're evolving we are we are blossoming and metamorphosizing and doing all sorts of things at this time what did you want us to do in terms of special municipal employees since we currently can grant that status do you want us to just go ahead and do that why don't we bring why don't i bring this back to you at your next meeting and all of our next meetings got another meeting coming up we got one well do do we have the authority to grant that in advance because they won't be formed you'll sort of a weird sort of in between thing i presume we could yeah because you're creating it for positions right we approve this as amended tonight i'm fine with that i mean i we want to re-review the changes but with the changes that were suggested i'm happy to prove i think so because the faster you can get moving on it the better because uh once the select board dissolves you'll have no even i guess you have the authority yeah yeah it's it's all on him in between that's right i don't want that good delay as long as you feel comfortable you just sit on it all you want but yes i think it would be perfectly reasonable to move to approve the draft your to move to approve the the charge of the board of license commissioners as amended second is there for the discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye and then there should be a second motion in which case i move to grant sme status to special municipal employee status to the board of license commissioners motion and second regarding sme status for this new board is there for the discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye so both of those both okay so the other thing is this uh as you know under the chart of this select board supposed to provide a list of vacancies on multiple member bodies to the town council president and the town manager what does that mean um so what we've done is just give you the documents that you're familiar with which is a list of all committees and boards and their membership the one page list of all committees and boards and their vacancies and then we for the committees that have charges we made copies of all the charges which are in various formats and configurations and pretty consistent but they're they come in different shapes and sizes and so so it's a product that you have to provide to the council and so i wonder how you want to what we can do to help with that first thing i'll mention is that the ag comp charge has not been updated since we changed it okay so that needs to be amended to reflect the changes at town meetings so that's the one i know yes right on the top but i'll start with mr. simer yeah um so on the one that is entitled town of hammers committees and boards and then we have a bunch of beginning and end dates and a bunch of end dates that are December 31st 2018 and i actually think that that's not correct because at the May 7 2018 select board meeting we passed a motion that the terms would continue until the person is replaced or reappointed by the council and therefore um that date is inaccurate and i think it came to mind because uh miss brewer and i received a memo from a chair of one committee who is concerned about expiring uh dates and uh urging quick action for special needs of the committee because they wouldn't be able to meet quorum and of course she took the 12 31 date that was correct but that wasn't what we voted i was wondering about that too and i appreciate that somebody went to all the work of going in and changing a whole bunch of them to 12 31 2018 but i wasn't i did i appreciate you looking up the reference because we went around and around about this because we didn't want to both tie we didn't want to either tie the town council's hands or force them into making a ton of appointments at moment one or things couldn't meet and so then we were depending on that idea of until replace that you were allowed to continue until replaced to give people a little room but yet give the council the ability to say goodbye and thank you for your service when necessary i wonder if the modification to the list could be an asterisk on all the ones that say 12 31 that explain that so that you know sort of still keeps that as a placeholder it's conceivable that it could end then but you know sort of dot dot dot to be continued we could just make a notation an annotation for all that the minutes have been actually adopted by us for that particular meeting may 7 2018 so that it can just be lifted from the minutes easily just annotate the words directly you could just put that at the end with the asterisk that that's what the asterisk yeah so i had i had one thing well when i saw this in my packet um you know i had ptsd i was like oh my god it's back um because i and many others on this committee also who've been involved in committee appointment work this needs like continual sort of monitoring and watching and trying to update and i i've been away from it for a while but when i you know the first one was the amherst affordable housing trust and there's always been this confusion about so the start day um was when they got put on the trust but many of them were on the prior housing committee for many many years so in it i'm not always sure which counts as the start date but it if the council were to follow sort of a similar practice that we had of not having people serve for more than six years or something close to that and then we did make some exceptions as well it's really hard to tell from these start dates the begin date column for the trust if the some of these people are hold over some of the other housing committee and um so i i don't know how you had to deal with that squig studsman did not start in 2016 it's been like eight years so it doesn't really reflect the length of tenure like with one candidate i'm sorry i think i'm mr kegelman it does list his term with the housing sheltering committee in the designation i always see but not for others i think the one i want to look up on studsman and hornick um are the other two that were carried over that's not an issue right the other issue if i can continue where it notes that uh mr slatter is select board member and i have the same issue myself for downtown parking working group you know do we as individual people decide when we step down or do we kind of decide on a practice around that or you know i thought it was because this is in front of us it was worth discussing maybe an approach if we wanted one that was consistent about that right i've been thinking about that a little bit too um probably because i think like for example with the affordable housing trust um you know that because that has to do with adopting sort of state law and that sort of thing i think that as of the third of december i'm no longer a select board member and so that seat is then yielded to potentially a council member effective immediately i think i think in that circumstance i think in some others that we do that aren't quite as bound by state law and that sort of thing um we may have more latitude i don't know i'm not sure i think again it begs the question of how should we approach some of this i would suggest generally this i mean the simplest thing would be is that we're not select board members anymore and for those seats that have that formal designation downtown working group uh parking working group um you know my seat on the amerson recreation working group potentially um i can't remember from that charge i haven't looked it up certainly the the trust is one that falls into that category there's some other ones that i serve on that are not uh as dependent i can serve as a designee to say pvta so many of the people that serve on that advisory board that's not on here that's a separate list right that needs to be provided as an example of you know things that we serve on that that right trust in parking the two or there's some other sleepers in the recreation working group you mentioned it would be helpful to me to have one one kind of position and just follow that rather than me deciding when i leave the committee um another alternative would be to pair at the language that we had previously discussed and said that um and have a motion tonight that we move that um in any designation where some where a member of the select board is currently serving on a committee because of the requirement that it be filled by a member of the select board that that member shall continue to serve until replaced by the town council or the member's resignation we passed that motion that would allow um in case of the housing trust for example mr slaughter to continue to serve which gives them one more point of flexibility for getting to a quorum if nothing else and um it doesn't take anything away from the council because council if there's a council member very interested in serving on the housing trust and wants to jump in immediately um and that's what the council decides so it's the council decides building they're scheduling they're trying to schedule a meeting for the sixth so if on the third they decide to appoint them that's the case but anyway separate from that um i presume if we had the authority we potentially could have that motion yes mr quorum i like that motion a lot and reflecting what you mentioned earlier about amazon recreation working group if we had we almost have page numbers yes we do page one um at the bottom is where it should have said select board member under designation for you mr slaughter it just doesn't because we do that sometimes um but those do seem to be the only ones because we may get a point of not several years ago we took jcpc off of here we took bcg off of here because those were not things we were appointing as our authority we didn't carry school committee on here the reason those is because those were members that were then sorted amongst each of the bodies but they're not they're specifically not listed on here for a reason in terms of you may have put the charge in here but they're definitely not listed on the committees and boards for that purpose so once you know bcg wants to start meeting then it's going to have to either let some select board members come or it's going to have sent some town council people so can't hold up school committee library trustees but then there's the finance part of it too so a little more complicated but i like the language that you have as the carryover again it leaves the council a little more wiggle room in terms of how quickly they have to do things and i think i can guarantee that they will not be making appointments on supper third at eight o'clock at night it seems highly unlikely that that's going to be on the agenda but i'm trying to figure it's it's it definitely is the downtown parking working group the amer center recreation working group if you look at the charge it doesn't i mean it's a town manager appointment but i don't think there's anything i don't think we called it out i think it's just that mr slaughter was interested but right but but but it's not he's not there because of his there's a select board members there isn't he is there as a select board member though in all reality now he's a select board member who happens oh it does say select board does say select where i'm sorry uh-oh does say so it that would that would that would apply all right i was wrong he just didn't let us argue about it because he wanted it so that is designated all right i'll just try this one more time i'm i'm kind of uncomfortable with this carryover it may help the committees but i still think it's awkward with council to um sort of okay you know kind of your times up now we've got somebody maybe we could have a finite limit like yes hold over but only until march or something i just i'm on that committee because i'm on this board and whether i would be on it if i were citizen who was just awkward in that open ended continuing well i think also the other thing when we when we and we've done it very rarely but when we put a select board member on a particular body it was with a very specific intent of bringing that you know viewpoint and in some senses authority or perspective specifically and when we're not serving in that role anymore than we don't have that you know um so that's the thing i've been thinking about is that well i'm you know well versed in the topics in the groups that i'm in but at the same time i don't carry the same you know authority or or perspective even once once december third rolls around um and so i think you know it it would be uh i think wise to to be limited in that regard and you know the sooner the better to be honest but so for housing trust that's a nine-member board with only one vacancy so if you vacated they would still be above quorum plus one having so much trouble getting quorum if they only have one vacancy because they need the committee to take that's not our problem so in terms of the december 31 date what the charter says is the terms of all members of appointed multiple member bodies shall continue for the balance of the terms for which they were appointed unless otherwise provided for by this charter upon the expiration of the term of office or upon an earlier vacancy in any multiple member body the successor shall be appointed as provided in section blah blah um we read that when we were working on this we did that on purpose you did december 31 on purpose no we did did the language until replaced to reappointed by the town council or the members of that that was already voted or not we voted we voted in may to do something that's slightly not comporting with okay so to give to allow for flexibility because that did not yeah because what that said basically was that put us in the position the way it's written in the charter put us in the position trying to recall this whole conversation but put us in the position of saying oh well then should we give somebody another three-year term but then the council's got them for three years when they might not even want to have that committee anymore and that starts getting all kinds of awkward so i appreciate that on the one hand the charter said we're not going to kick everybody out we also said well we don't want to re-up people for a whole long time because you might want to feel like you have some flexibility to change things around and it feels more flexible if you haven't just reappointed everyone for three years so everyone just be clear because i'm just gonna catch it up with you guys anything that says 12 31 18 we'll have an asterisk by that in accordance with your mace 7th 2018 vote that says you will continue until it's replaced unless you quit right okay and some may want to quit but so maybe we should have that after our name so what but no i think that what the problem is is that this is a different classification it's people who are serving on something because they were we designated that a select board member should serve and we really want to cut that off which i think was a point that mr. slaughter was making um i'm going to come up with the date of february 28th because it gives essentially three months because december 3rd i mean it's beginning of december so that's december january february the motion that i would offer um and i'll read it now but i'm not offering it into the listeners agreement to this or some consensus would be moved that when a select board member is serving on a multi-member body as a member of the select board that member shall serve until the earliest of replacement by the town council the members resignation or february 28 2019 lets people quit it lets people quit but people always can do that and you know if any member any of us who serves in that capacity feels uncomfortable continuing to serve or unable to serve then they should have that right of course can't tell somebody they can't resign you can't leave until february 28th it's called involuntary servitude i think there's a constitutional amendment dealt with that one um i would second Andy's motion do you want to offer that as a motion yes i offered that as a motion and i can give wording to the town manager as i was there floppy written it out it gives us a specific end date and requires some action but right but it gives us a graceful right right well and certainly you know i think in particular with with the thing i think you've been thinking about is that there is some need to transmit some information to the new person and from the viewpoint of a select board member so on those committees where we serve in that role oh if it's a council member to the council member who takes our place it's it's an important potential you know transition element that we can offer to them if they want to take advantage of it or not but i think it's you know it's valuable as far as keeping those those committees working in and functioning well so i think we do this anyway but i might just remind you to myself we i think we're the only two implicated we could let our committees we could let our committees know the vote tonight of course absolutely do you have another comment oh my gosh i have so many comments so one of those comments is associated with the pvta slot you have for example and we i understand why well i assume i understand the way the chargers written to have this phrase which is great but it doesn't allow for understanding that because that isn't part of this list so we do need a list of other things that we've been doing and we still we started one we had we're gonna have a little purple folder for it or something i don't know what happened but pv so the pvta and then the mpo yep and utac that's you yes so and hams community coalition we serve but i don't know if it was by a vote to do that but it was mentioned yeah i think that should be on the list just pvta utac ccc pvpc nmst one mpo the mpo that kind of serve on i'm going to keep running that hams county select board association even though we don't have a select board anymore yeah so we do have a motion which is related but distinct from that so if we do have any other comments or associated with that motion that motion so i guess i have a question which is are you given that you are the two would you rather we pressured you to quit now or are you willing to do it a little bit longer because if you'd rather by fiat we decided you should quit now we can help you with that it feels like a good compromise to have a specific ending date but not necessarily i mean we can still resign and we can still not go to meetings so it doesn't but it kind of is a placeholder right i think it gives clarity to the to those committees there's a fixed horizon for for replacement for one thing and it also does the same for the council to say hey you have to make this decision at least by this point in time and i'm you know happy to continue serving and or yield depending on the council's pleasure we have a lot of vacancies to fill because we've been carrying a lot of things absolutely yes so there needs to be a cover memo to this cover memo to all of this that addresses that motion we just did that 1231 thing asterisk we did so the motion asterisk this is what's going to be presented to the council yes on top of this so we have cover memo from the chair that talks about the motion from the select board about the select board positions with the February date then there's also the list of other select board positions that you will not find in this report because this isn't where we manage that information and those five agencies listed off will be in there and then it will also have an explanation of the asterisk for the 1231 even though it's going to be at the bottom of the page it's worth calling out why we printed something in four-point type at the bottom of the page associated with that that'll be useful and then a couple of other things i'd like that memo to include one is some of these things we can fix and we won't have to put in the memo other thing if we don't have time to fix them then they do have to be in the memo if there are any references which there are currently and we don't get a chance to pull them out on old charges that refer to a select board action on June 15th of 1998 for SME status that is simply to be removed white that out that is no longer in pout that that was replaced so it never got fixed on all those charges there are some date again June 15th 1998 there was at that point i like the word fiat tonight there was a fiat at that point that everybody did have SME status and then it was pulled away from everybody then it was applied to some then it was not that has to be deleted from that simple sentence is supposed to be deleted and it's just one of those things it's on it was on Ms. Pupple's list back when she was still Ms. Roussel we just never got time to go back and take it out from all of them that does not mean other references to SME status need to be removed just that one date it's that one date it's this one it even references mass general law and it's just wrong it's like they pasted it on the bottom of all these that's easy so that if we don't get that fixed we need to mention that that that's not fixed so that's one another is that another thing in this memo as we're helping people understand what this thing is we all understand what the town of Amherst committees and boards chart looks like because we've all suffered through it at some point or another but it needs to be made clear to the council that those acronyms at the beginning of those are meaningless those acronyms were simply for the purpose of a database at some point acrwg is not necessarily a thing acc is not necessarily a thing they are not accurate acronyms and so you know you don't have to take them off it's just that those aren't the those aren't the real acronyms for things because they were just made over time so that something would fit on a chart so that's cool the concept of town code me is meaningless and so some of these old charges still reference town code now that might become a new thing but the problem is for example La Paz Centro says town code 19 well yeah no that's not a thing what it probably meant probably at some point was the fact that we have I think I said yesterday three and it's actually at least four types of committees we have mass general law we have town bylaws that have established committees like human rights commission that's not a mass general law thing but as a we have town meeting action committees that did not establish bylaws but created committees like La Paz Centro which is probably not a bylaw but is a town meeting action and then we have as I wrote here made it up which would be you know water supply protection committee for example when the town manager decided they needed one of those town manager committees and there's select board so there's two more categories so they're they're the made it up category and that they're not related to mass general law to a town bylaw or the actual town meeting action and one of the projects a million years ago was going to be to make sure we sorted that out when we were talking about making a template because like I said you look at La Paz as it says town code 19 that might even be referencing that there was a town meeting article about it at some point but we obviously do not at this very moment have anything called a town code and have not had such a thing although maybe someday that's what it's going to be called so if the bylaw review committee wants to have one of their people who's now so familiar literally with all the pages of our bylaw sit down for a minute and look at these that might not be a good a bad idea because they're way more familiar with our town bylaws than we are at this point town code has to refer to something well at some point it did that's why I'm saying maybe it's town meeting action committee board of assessors I'll have a town code of some sort yeah finance committees under the town government act so town code 14 I'm not sure what that references so I guess the question is do you want to have revised I'm not sure if this is we have the capacity to do this in the time remaining to change all the committee charges and bring them back to the board no I'm saying that's what the cover memos for so the cover metal covers all those issues it says we have five different kinds of committees if you're kind of the people one category and and that in fact town code is not because what I'm all I'm trying to avoid is giving this to the council and them thinking it means something it doesn't it might have meant something to somebody at some point that then helped them figure out which part of the town meeting action it was in because I'm I'm confident there's at least one committee we have that's based on town meeting action that's not a bylaw but so the only changes we're going to make to these charges is to remove that that's the only thing I would say we really should get rid of because that's just just a flaw it's just a flaw that should get rid of but other than that I think you can just explain hey these have been developed over 50 years they're not consistent this is the board's intention to have that be the document you want to present to the council with this cover memo with this plus the charges is that what you're and the vacancy list the whole thing this whole packet right plus the cover memo right got it I think it'll work and and Mr. Wall it's similar to this I noticed that committees are described in different ways like sometimes they'll say committee and sometimes they'll say standing and I'm I don't know I'm kind of assuming the same thing but I could be stupid and the other times they'll say ad hoc other times they'll say time limited there are at least four or five designations yeah at least it's the flag in the purple folder there right that's actually a good point too you could make a note of that could be another note that that type is it is is a very erratic erratic just because I think I'm erratic in a memo standing ad hoc time limited standing when does because that's what type of committee committee yeah that's my favorite too yes the category is committee and the and it is called committee yeah erratic so I don't know so far the memo recorders yeah so far the cover sort of like says you know what what you're seeing what's in here what's not yeah I don't know if that's the place I wanted something that explained our own practice of encourage you know enforcing encouraging to term limits with exceptions we modified our own policy when is that an actual policy well it was our practice practice it's a practice and they can do whatever they want clearly but to just say you know in looking at these dates some you know some members have served more than six years or two terms and you might want to think about that or have a conversation about that if you know it's all over the board because sometimes the committees really want to keep their people and we really wanted the turnover there's a new group coming in to do appointments so it's just an awareness that had become our practice but it could be something else right mr. Steinberg do you have something you want to offer I mean it's going to take a little bit of time to modify the practices because most of these committees will now become town manager appointment subject to notification to the council which will have 30 days to act upon it if not then they become members automatically and the council is going to need to set up a process to review that and make a decision as to whether they want to bring it to the council you know how they want to handle it so there's there's a lot of things in process what we want to do is assist the council to have that discussion and so as you put something in there like we had been limiting to the extent possible because of these reasons appointments to two three-year terms and you know it's informative but I think that they have a lot that it's going to be on their plate to say establish a process to deal with all of this because they'll be still reviewing all of the committee appointments recommended by the manager and and of course there will be a number of other committees that may be subsumed into some form of council committee so they may say we need to talk about parking there's already a downtown parking working group and a transportation advisory committee we're going to make a council committee that has a number of counselors on it and we're going to invite a bunch of people that were already on those other things to help us make that transition but instead of saying tell manager you must appoint more members of the transportation advisory committee so that is certainly coming so I wonder if maybe what we want then is we want one cover memo that has all those things about where charges come from in terms of master in the law the fact that code is probably such an old reference none of us can remember what it is that acronyms aren't accurate that our that our type is erratic that's one memo and then I think there should be a separate memo that should be probably written by one of us that says some of the stuff about the practices that we found useful because it should the two terms part and the CAF form I think is important that that didn't just magically come out of the air that that was worked on over time and for a purpose doesn't mean it won't be changed completely but and the interview process that any of those three things jump into my head is like if you don't know those things about how we got to where we are then you're going to have a harder time even beginning to struggle with what committees need to exist it reminds me about the whole database issue like we hate the CAF but we were we we failed at changing it because it was so linked to the way the fields are set up and that whole effort sort of ended up for not so that's still out there I might want to for informative purposes say technology behind all this is like a major part of select board work so I can work with the chair on that first memo that you described who's going to take on that second memo so I think with regard to that and just to remind everybody we do have a motion on the floor but I think on the second part that actually leads into a conversation we've been having over the last several months of of you know making that much you know much like Mr. Hackenbuckner did for you made a sort of list of things to keep an eye on this could fall into that category this is an area where we have a much more extensive or expansive bit of writing to do um and I had fully intended and yet failed to do that for this meeting but certainly will before our next meeting try to compile that list because I've got a series of notes where I've made uh notes about things we want to share with with the council um and this topic I think's come up more than once in varying forms so I I think in some ways that could be part and parcel of that so you're gonna do that so I can take that on as far as uh just so it's in some way I'm down with that I don't want it buried in with all the other things that we're never going to have time to flush out I want this one flushed out so can we at least well this can be absolutely much much longer and then you can just say the other ones I don't have time to write about no the rest of them maybe just bullet points this one may be like a page and you'll have a subtitle in bold and a whole paragraph right so this one could be much lengthier obviously because it has a lot more to it than the other ones which are more you know maybe just informative of here's another thing you should kind of notice that you should need to take attention you pay attention to or here's here's a reference that you'll want to have um you know it may be as simple as a link to you know action we took you know a year or two ago on some particular topic so it could be some things maybe literally one line and others obviously like this would be much more extensive so um anyway so I think that we're a little late but nonetheless or I'm a little late in putting that together but certainly want to put that together for us and and have that for the council because um congratulations to the two of you but also there's eleven more who haven't done this before and uh so we have a draft to review prior to our last meeting on the 26th exactly okay holding you to it that's right yes so no jinxing involved but when you break your hand coaching then this part needs to be written about the committees even if nothing else gets done that's right yeah dragon speaking that football season ended on Friday so all right so we're good so we're good because there's a whole bunch of things but this one since we just focused on it I think it would be incredibly helpful because it's something they're going to have to start eating away at the edges of fairly quickly absolutely there's no doubt there's a fairly larger work to be done here the other the other part that I wanted to follow up on as you mentioned we were saying you know the only thing to go in and fix on the actual charges because we don't have time and although the bylaw review wanted to take a quick look at some of them that might be helpful but we could just ask them to do that whatever you think works for that but if they have so much on their plate okay they only have one meeting left in that school but the other thing while maybe the council will assign it to the next version of the bylaw review committee to actually dig some of these up but the other part of it is because I'm really not going to spend that much time on google on the old town meeting actions at this point because that's pretty hard to google results from but at any rate is you specifically mentioned agcom hasn't been updated so we should not give them that without it being fixed and the other one is public shade tree hasn't been updated either and so I realized that the regulation thing is on my plate but the charge itself says there's not a town bylaw associated with it and in fact there is so we just we have to do something and we did one other thing which is the request from La Paz Centro to dissolve that's true I believe that's coming up in six months if I recall correctly it's been a while but we should check back with the committee chair ms Danak and ask but they are very firm that they want to dissolve and it was tied to the final grants that they're going to make to the town of La Paz Centro which will dissolve the fund that we have been caring for them they have not been raising any new money and at that point the committee doesn't tend to dissolve it was requested to so back to our motion for a moment it's a further discussion on the motion which term limits it was so long ago miss Kruger and I but it was you know the the conversation was was was important to have in in regard to the other related topics so any further discussion this remind me of the motion we're voting on uh I think Andy and the Andy's motion that's relative to okay we'll resign be replaced or be replaced by the end of February yeah all those in favor please say aye aye opposed and that's unanimous excellent that homework that I'll actually might be able to get done because I'm not spending quite as much time winning football games yeah we did win on Friday that was nice we'll see you were going to make a grid for us then we were each going to have to write pieces and so it's worked out super well for us that you just have to do all of it now guilty because he didn't do it um along those same lines your problem in your pat on your desk tonight is a resignation letter from mr schreiber who says I am resigning from the planning board on December 2nd 2018 it has been an honor to serve with the wonderful volunteers and staff of the planning department for almost 10 years I look forward to the next three-year adventure sincerely Stephen D Schreiber so the challenge the for the council the the planning board gets reduced from nine to seven members on December 3rd um and so this brings us down to eight members on the planning board on December 3rd and for the zoning board of appeals it moves from three to five members and so the early on the the council will have to address the two who who will move up either from associates or appoint new people it's up to the council to appoint the zba huh who's off the island are you mr schreiber the plan um we do a little palpin just like wait wait don't tell me just to note to the manager I have in conversation with a couple members of the council elect um I don't know that there's wide understanding that there are associate members currently of the zba and uh good to give some wider knowledge somehow on that topic along those lines is this is current then because in fact they're short of full member right now so they've been having associate fill in because they haven't had a board yeah according to this and so um the other part of it is because depending on the year and depending on everyone's schedules sometimes associates have had very little opportunity to actually serve and so they might not necessarily say oh yes I can't wait to be full member they might say I've never actually been except to an administrative meeting they've been serving now because because because we've been short somebody more of them have been in but we went through a period where associates were not able to serve very often and that might have worked out great for their schedule but it also meant they weren't necessarily interested in becoming full members so that point of like informing the council educating them the zba associate member is a pretty unique situation and they have to sit for the whole thing they don't just come in dirt when someone can't be there and we don't have that for any other board or committee so it's not like oh the zba why don't we do that for this committee or that committee this is a real special case for a special reason so um I guess they could create it down the road but we have not wanted to do that it's the only board so that's a quasi-judicial board in the town so it does have special standing yeah but the charter doesn't have associate members for the cba well it's going to change oh right you're right it's going to just becomes the what you say is totally valid because people should not misapply it to another situation it's going to change it was it was a very specific situation and and do not make assumptions that it would be a really cool thing to apply to others it was there um you to get an affirming vote you needed all three to vote in your favor and so that will be different with the five-member board all right yes thank you on an agenda to the town manager report okay so first apologize for not getting this to you I think what we can do is if you haven't had time to read it which I assume you have not uh we can also put it back in the packet on for the november 26th meeting um number of things we talked about the health insurance which is a good news story and we're really happy and the employees are happy that we will not be taking money out of their paychecks or we have suspended that um there will be a cup of joe uh with brianna sunred who is the new communications manager for the town on friday from eight to as eight to ten thirty i think eight thirty to ten um at the overbuilding at umass we had been asked to hold one of these things at umass and this is a great opportunity she's part of the school public policy program they have talked it up at the university it also coincides with several things that are happening at the university this week which includes the mass municipal management association conference the um what is called elected leaders or ELGI meeting and then there's the women in government meeting all happening at the same time so uh it's a it's a busy day at umass and also very proud that the town is now part of a um partnership with umass in the international city management association to have a student chapter at umass so those are all very good things um in your packet you and i wrote in it there is the new alliance between the jones library and the friends of the jones library to coordinate their fundraising and the actual agreement is in your packet um there is one these sculptures i believe are all removed at this point the from the cross town culture culture xtca there's one sculpture that's still in kendrick park we're negotiating with the owner of that sculpture to keep it for one more year with a defined termination so once we get all the liability issues and all those things worked out will be good to go with that um the um town clerk and her whole staff worked really hard to conduct two elections on election day and pulled them off successfully um we learned a lot she has a lot of ideas after going through this process about polling locations how she wants to set it up how she wants to staff it going forward how to publicize things and i think with a new council they'll all have a direct experience with the election process and we'll have their own ideas um as part of that process the town clerk is having debriefing meetings with all the wardens to find out what worked what didn't work in your particular warden um you know one idea she has already surfaced with me is maybe we should be making greater use of town existing town staff so there aren't as many people calling this sick you depend a lot on people to come in this isn't uh and just show up on that day and um this is an unusual election because there's two elections it'll never happen again because from now on all local elections will always be in the odd numbered years in all state and federal elections will always be in the even numbered years um so this is one of those oddball things but we will have more elections coming up and she wants to get it right um let's see the half marathon that went on uh sunday no was it sunday a week ago um went off successfully um it was uh it was unfortunately on homecoming weekend for you for the university and i talked with the owner of one of the establishments in in kushman and asked if it was was helping his business or hurting and he said it doesn't help it and they were busy he says but homecoming is one of their biggest weekends of the year so i think in all in future um scheduling we should avoid homecoming because that's an important day for a lot of businesses and to disrupt traffic a little bit um was a little bit problematic for them um the um congratulations to lssc for his 50th anniversary halloween fest which went out they had hundreds of kids downtown they thought about almost 500 uh people downtown for this event it was a really important thing um talking about that the um wanted to announce in your packet is a memo from the group that we set up to review marijuana licenses request for recreational retail marijuana licenses and um just to give a little background on that they were we received um we put out basically an rfp uh for who wanted to open up a retail uh which is recreational marijuana store um in the town there were six responses that were received they went to a town review team that included um the um building commissioner the fire chief um let's see who else was on it please i'm sorry planning chief the planning director the health director economics development director and miss kruger from the select board and they interviewed all you you may want to talk about this through and came back with a recommendation of three that we should pursue with a host community agreement so uh that the host community the draft host community agreement was finalized on friday it went out to all of the um prospect prospective um applicants so the goal on that is to get that um wrapped up and get those host community agreement signed so they can move forward to the state which is what that's the thing they need to do for the state so the reason we're all looking confused is you emailed us that report but it's not on our desk tonight so we have your town manager report but we don't have the additional attachment that you provided us it wasn't attached to a town manager report okay that's my bad it's just but that that's why we were like going like that's like we know we've seen it where is it it's not in our packet it was emailed to us it was not in our physical packet it was not on our desk tonight but we did read it in email because we do we just jump and read your emails as soon as they come in no matter what but it wasn't in the PDF that's what that was I emailed out last night no it was in the p it was not on your desk it's not in our desk it's not in our hard copy we have nothing to look at so what i'm saying is could we make sure that it gets i'd like it to be separated from the town manager report when it gets uploaded so that people can easily find it right because that was a very useful yeah the thing that you just told to us that you had previously emailed us okay so but we don't want it buried at the end of the town manager report if you could just everything on the town manager reports none of us buried it's very important but read the entire time and separately um what are the things so let's see um oh uh we are going to we're going to start alerting people that it's supposed to snow on thursday night i don't think we're going to need a snow ban but we're using this as an opportunity to start alerting people that we do have snow bands that do come out come up and using the next day or two to start to send out alerts saying pay attention to the weather if it's a snow ban the blue lights will blink we have a whole protocol of things that we do it probably won't be needed because i don't think the weather's going to be that bad but we thought this was a good opportunity especially before thanksgiving to say these things happen if you're going to go away for thanksgiving think about where your car is things like that so you'll see some notice about that and you'll say it's not going to snow that badly but this is more of a practice to help people understand remind people that winters here be prepared um let's see update on station road bridge replacement so so far what we have a as you all know we had a public meeting that was very very well attended at the fort river school seems like maybe two weeks ago and we have have a web presence with the um with a bunch of material on it memos and a frequently asked questions memo that tried to address many of the questions um as of today what the superintendent has said is what has already happened is that the wetlands delineation has been completed the delineations determine the presence location and physical limits of wetlands and surface water in accordance with local state and federal methods we've also completed the survey work which is the fieldwork that collects physical information such as wetland flagging existing utilities pavement bridge structures significant trees and other drainage structures so that is done what's going on right now is the an existing condition plan is being prepared which we think that will be in mid uh december this step takes the wetland delineation and survey fieldwork which is now completed and prepares an existing conditions base map used in the design process to determine impacts of the proposed plan um we're preparing the mass department of transportation municipal small bridge program application which that may be done in this week um this is the end this is how we apply for funds for state funds to for the bridge replacement and then we're working on the design of a replacement bridge which is we expect the 10 design which is the first step to be done in january this is the analysis that will develop the basic bridge replacement concept for permanent and temporary structures so we're moving forward on both permanent and temporary because if we if if we're going to have to make a decision at some point that says whoa we can do a temporary but that means you know permanent replacement is extended out maybe if we are a little bit we keep the bridge closed a little bit longer we can get the permanent bridge done right away without doing the temporary so there's going to be a decision point all the work that's being done now is going to be needed for whether we do temporary or permanent no matter what all the wetlands work and all that kind of stuff um the geotechnical borings this is the actual collection of subsurface material that is analyzed to develop the foundation for any new structure that's scheduled to be done on december one and the dot will begin review of this of our small bridge application as soon as we submit it so i'll upload this to the website so everybody in scent will keep people noted up to date on what's going on on this because i know this is a hot button issue and very important to people because it infringes on their daily lives so we're going to continue to work on this going forward let's see so on the station road bridge on the station no sorry puffers pond we are now going into the permitting process for that conservation has determined that that hammerhead thing is probably going to need some permitting through conservation so they're beginning that process and so it won't infringe on us being able to get this done in a timely manner but it is another step we have to go through for that um gruff park we went out for bids the bids came in too high and so we didn't have enough money to do it so um we are looking at doing two things one is and we went out to bid at a certain time of year where we were worried about uh companies feeling like they had too much work and they were going to up the price we will go out to bid again in january when maybe the work people have more time to focus on their bids um and we may be um value engineering the the design of gruff park to see if everything is there is is really needed or not yeah how big a spread was there i don't know the number is it no it was like 20 so yeah um let's see the other um i want to mention some personnel things i mentioned that brianna sunrid has taken on the new title of communications manager um jennifer lefountain has taken on the title of acting collector and we'll get that as a we've went through the personnel board and they will they had to create a new slot for her so she will be the actual collector and that was a good promotion um i mentioned the administrative assistant and the licensing commission we are now um we've have a job offer out for a shared customer service person so if you recall when we um outsourced the ambulance billing it meant there was a person in treasurer's office who's that function was no longer needed that person applied for and got a position on the second floor but her her her seat on the first floor was never filled and that has created a problem on the first floor at the same time leisure services lost a their front their first their front desk person who retired and so instead of giving leisure services a full-time person we determined that what would be better is to take that that slot and divide it so half time on the first floor here and half time at leisure services not strictly half time but when leisure services are really busy they'll spend more time down there when we're really busy and on the first floor here they'll spend more time down here and the idea on this was also to try to diversify our language capacity in the town hall and at leisure services and I think we if we get the person we want that we will have accomplished that and then a piece of not such good news is that Captain Jen Gunderson not good news for us but good news for Captain Gunderson was um was appointed as the new police chief in the sound of South Hadley and that builds on a um a history of the town of creating chiefs and there are about you know we have a list of about 12 chiefs that have come out of this department it's a losing Captain Gunderson's a great loss for the town she was clearly a strong leader inside the department and in the community she did a lot of work with the university which was really important work um she she got Amherst I mean she's had deep roots in Amherst um through her family and um just was the epitome of a good police officer so South Hadley congratulations um good for you um but the good thing for the town of Amherst is that there's a lot of great um police officers in our department who are in the leadership stream who will be able to step up and fill that vacancy so congratulations we're really sad to lose her but um she'll still be in the neighborhood um and then the last thing I want to mention was about you know you all heard about the fire at the Ann Wayland Apartments uh last Thursday morning and um that uh um you you know I get I got a call early in the morning on that and typically when I get a call about a fire I go down there and I sort of pay attention to firefighters and they are doing a great work job and I sort of acknowledge that and then there's nothing to do but in this case we had 60 or 70 um uh all different age people coming from Ann Wayland Apartments who um had been rousted out of their beds and came to the bank center um in their pajamas and bathrooms and uh with hardly anything because they had to get out of the building right away the firefighters responded incredibly quickly and got the fuck got the fire out with minimal damage uh police officers helped went door to door um to get residents out um and then we at four in the morning we had lots of people in sitting in a dark room at the at the bank center and so you know with a few phone calls you know how staff were just pouring in a phone called senior university and they as soon as they opened up their kitchen they baked a bunch of of baked goods for the residents and shipped it over to to us um because it's at five in the morning none of this none of our normal stores are open yet and um and you know the senior you know the director of senior services there the health director the assistant town manager everybody came in instantaneously and started working the phones at the the um facilities people um getting the building opened up getting the heat turned on um getting coffee made for folks all those things and and so everybody chipped in you know I don't need to go through all the litany of everybody who helped because it was there was supposed to be a council an aging meeting those volunteers came in and started helping inserting coffee and stuff to folks and sitting with them and helping to entertain them it brought a tv over everybody was chipping in to help keep them in but you know I just wanted to say that the real heroes were the residents of Ann Whalen because they were the nicest people and really inconvenienced they're sitting in chairs like these for you know at first we thought it was going to be four or six hours but it turned out to be longer than that and there were no real complaints they weren't happy of course but these are people who were mainly concerned about getting their medications getting their clothes getting their pets and taking care of their pets and the firefighters police officers and town staff were just great at sort of accommodating them as best as possible but they couldn't go back in the building but these residents were patient they were appreciative when they heard news that they liked there was applause at one point and it was the least entitled group I'd ever seen who deserved so much they were like you gave me a bottle of water in a granola bar that's so nice of you it's like you know these guys are sitting there in these chairs and it was just really wonderful to see and it made us um for many who work for the town has said it was they felt like it was the best day they worked for the town it sounds terrible to say during a tragedy like this but they felt that it was such a rewarding day to work for the town because everybody was pitching in together and the residents who they were serving were so appreciative of anything that was done so just want to thank the town staff all the volunteers who came through the businesses who contributed food whole foods you know you know pita podcast brought over a bunch of everybody was jumping in saying what do you need we'll bring things over so it was a tragic day for the town but um a great response and it also taught us a lot um is a poor housing authority director was on her fourth day on the job and um had you know and get helping the housing authority um get organized the the inspections office which is something I learned was that a lot of times this happens to your house or your business and you don't know who to call at five in the morning and in our inspection staff can't tell you what company to use but they say here's what here are the things you need to do you need to get a company to come and start doing cleanup is it are there companies out there yes there are here's how you find out about them here's the next thing you need to do they're so they provide direction and guidance which is what people need because a lot of times these things especially in private homes you get just people hear about the fire and they show up and offer you their insurance services and stuff so people need a trusted face to help get people back into their apartments um so a lot of um support from people um there's been a fair amount of post-event counseling that the um social workers at at senior center are offering and um and and so it's just uh some people are just very nervous about going into their homes now because they've experienced a fire and that happens to you you get nervous overnight um so helping them survive that is really important um so we we've done a term I hadn't heard before a hot wash which is what is just basically a debrief or after action analysis we did that um internally and learned learned a lot and also know what we need to do and um so just as a follow-up we had already planned a tabletop exercise for emergency planning in January or February and for this event we were fortunate to have the bang center handy but we kept thinking what if this happened at colonial village or at the boulders or someplace and we had a hundred people that had to be housed in the middle middle winter what would we do and that's the kind of exercise we need to go through you know what are the facilities that are available what vehicles are available how would we transport people in a heartbeat um who and and do we have everybody's phone numbers is that up to date um so and uh we're going to have a debrief with the housing authority staff as well uh so we're all sharing the same kinds of information so it was really an important day and um just but overall the message is to thank the residents of Ann Whalen um for being so gracious and understanding of uh and appreciative of how we were trying to get them back into their homes if I may just jump on that for a second um I was at the end uh at the bank center probably a little after seven o'clock that morning and saw staff um you know in action and it's uh it's phenomenal to see you know I mean we know we have great staff but uh to see him sort of fully engaged in all of their different roles and responsibilities and it really had you know sort of top to bottom and you know people involved because fire was involved police was involved inspection service involved senior senator was involved uh health director was involved assistant now manager was involved you know so all of those people involved in ways and and constructive and and you know part of why we love to live in this town you know because we've got people like that that do phenomenal work for us yeah and the Red Cross I forgot to mention the Red Cross and they were helping to get people we were driving people at 530 the social workers and Jen Reynolds and driving people at 530 get them into motels getting them vouchers um and then they had to find some a hotel that would take pets because someone had their pet so it's just they were they were really well organized and um it was really good because I think that's my um like Miss Kerr want to mention that sad outcome of that fire yeah unfortunately the the woman whose apartment where the fire started uh did not survive she had very serious burns was um taken immediately Bay State which did not not Cooley Dickinson Bay State and then from there they couldn't handle the or they they chose to seek um they bed flighted her to Boston for sure and we knew early on that the first few days were going to be very touch and go and she wasn't wasn't able to survive unfortunately aspects to your are you going to talk about okay um so now we'll move on to to member reports I have one but I want to give the others to mention anything they have I just wanted to have a follow-up quick to um something that was in the town manager report which was associated with the bid ban shell yes I would just like us to continually make it clear that when we don't say anything in the really great descriptive paragraph about how it's not a done deal people assume it's a done deal and going and looking at libraries awesome and people voting and getting excited about it is awesome but it has a whole lot of other steps to go through none of you know right which has a ways to go people might be looking at this for the first time and not get that you know new counselors just to to emphasize remembering that lots of people don't know anything about the process up to this point but they see that over in the library they're going to say oh they're building a ban shell period that'd be helpful thanks mr. summer just since we're following up on town manager report just another quick thing um I think I think it's great that we have this plan for Thursday to notify people to be aware of what our policy is when it snows and parking um one place we might contact is the off-campus housing office at the university because they may have email links to a number of student renters and that actually is a frequent source of problems that I've observed great mr. wall since somebody mentioned ban shell so the jury sorry the jury has met and made a decision as to a favored design I shouldn't call it first for preferred concept um and the next day then the examples the full range went up in the library so just to clarify and to amplify what was brewers said um the choice of the design that will be pursued with the person who submitted it is up to the jury not the public the public is expressing its reaction to these things which will be taken into account and will be in honor of her anybody who was uh so favored but that has nothing to do with what actually happens and as far as what actually happens again to fault miss brewer you know the bid has a very small amount of money the bid specs the first vote or it doesn't matter it's a conceptual design it's not you know it's not fully engineered it's just a very beginning idea of what something might like might look like in that place and the amount of money the bid has is very small and the specifications given to those who submitted designs specified $250,000 as the price range and that might not even cover things so there's a long gap between a few tens of thousands of dollars here and $250,000 and approval and everything so it's good to make that clear that the ideas to spark interest in the site and what we can do for a heavily used and beloved piece of town property but nothing is happening anytime soon so the thing of the library with the voting glanced at it was that like faux voting because that's not really going to decide the preferred choice I wouldn't call it faux what would you call it well that that implies something dishonest but now I did bring up the question at one of the meetings of the jury and I think the idea was that we want people to take a look at it and that there's an honor in having people express a preference or some kind of approval for something they see it's just separate from the process but that was an issue to think about so it should be clear that it's really a way of honoring the designs in yet another way and getting a sense of what the public thinks too sir it is well it's just not spurious are there other member reports I do have one but I want to make sure other people have an opportunity to share that's not a member report but after we're done I do have one additional item before we adjourn okay won't be long all right so a couple of things that I have um first thing I'll mention is the Puerto Rican Heritage Day celebration which is this coming Monday I believe which will be at 11 o'clock in this room correct it's supposed to be outside and they're prepared to have it outside I think we surprise them by thinking that we're going to have a meeting in here tonight so there's a lot of cleaning that went on before you came in so we'll see what condition the building is right so we'll hopefully have it outside hopefully it'll be about 55 degrees and sunny and we'll be able to have it outside and the organizers know that and they do know that and and I will be able to attend that because I'll be here for a gender setting either just before just after I can't remember which and so I'll come in and and be available to be at that so I did want to make that available to the public at large to know that that event's coming up um next Monday at 11 o'clock um second thing and I sent this uh in an email to ICC the group the uh select board on this um was relative to the PVTA funding um we've had some conversations with the folks at PVTA uh relative to restoration of some routes um and long story short is that because we cannot guarantee uh continued funding to support those routes and in in the future um that sort of restoring them and then taking it away that inconsistency is really problematic in a lot of ways for the for the for the transit authority and so the decision that that we went with was to not do anything at this point as far as using that funding to restore routes the routes that I think they're hearing the most about as far as reductions um are not ones that we can really very well uh uh support because a lot of mileage that's not in town and so that gets into a strange place as far as some of the the legality of it and and some of that sort of thing so it's a difficult circumstance it's not a pleasant place to be as far as not being able to to to do that I do want to mention however though but that the kinds of of reductions in service that were under consideration when town meeting met versus what actually got applied were much much different the actual reductions that were put in place were far less um about probably a sixth of the size of the reductions that were originally considered I may have the math off a little bit on that I'm doing it quickly in my head but it was originally a 3.1 million and it ended up being around 700 000 so maybe a quarter um but nonetheless it was a much so so I think if those reductions had been more severe then I think the urgency for us to utilize that money to to do some restorations might be a little greater but again we'd be in the same place um with regard to sort of putting service back and then taking back away a few months later um and I that doesn't go well in the long term what I do think has come out of this series of conversations though is uh we connected with with the university about this topic of funding and and uh we'll do a similar outreach with five colleges Inc. I think and I think our resolve to essentially lobby um our legislators and the legislature in general to support the regional transit authorities is something that is of significant importance and that's something I want to convey uh to the council um but also I think that we should you know sort of continue the momentum we have by the approach of having some some meetings with some folks at at the university to to really strategize on how we can best uh you know have an impact on that on that on that funding that the legislature undertakes starting in January so I think that's a a positive uh that's coming out of this um I think there are some other pvta related things relative to routes that run into the big wide parking lot or not it's interesting uh some back and forth that's going on there the the landlord had wanted them to to not pull into the lot I think a number of riders had had you know expressed concerned about that and the difficulty that it posed I think some of the businesses that are in there have have reached out to pvta and said hey you got to come back into this so I think they're in a state of of review regarding that I mean I think from a uh from a purely driving a bus standpoint it's a difficult parking lot but I think we'd all agree it's a difficult parking lot regardless of what kind of vehicle you drive but I will be at pvta on Wednesday and so I which is tomorrow I'll be there tomorrow so I'll convey that you know that that we definitely support you know what's best for for the riders and the needs that they have and so we'll try to you know be supportive of the needs that they have to to get to the services that they need because that particular route that runs through there is is actually called the shopper's shuttle so you know one of its intentions is to get people to the grocery stores and not just one of them so um I think that that you know intention behind that route needs to be uh you know that we need to you know provide our support for that and so it it may be difficult for pvta as far as drivers are concerned but I think they've done it and so they can continue to do it but we'll I'll see what the situation is relative to that report back that I'll certainly convey our our you know support of the riders and and their and their needs um trying to think if there was any other thing I wanted to mention or I certainly can answer questions about that so go ahead maybe it'll remind you um so one of the things I hope that when you're working with UMass and the five colleges as we continue come and as we have done in the past but perhaps do even more effectively in terms of lobbying legislators to remind them that there are people that we've gotten letters from that said they can't get to work now and so I understand that one route in particular that I'm recalling from an email we can't about ensure that mileage is out of town but we don't seem to be able to you know a logical person might say well why can't we shift it into Amherst funding and they shift Amherst funding over here so that people can get to work and so I realize that frequently there's you know two or three people this affects but it's a huge impact on their livelihood and so to remember to be able to provide those letters for example when you're talking with legislators that you you know oh well that's not got a very high ridership well that person no longer gets to work and so that that's a really big impact as opposed to it's inconvenient for me to wait an extra 15 minutes kind of thing I think that the the points I have made and will continue to make relative to this is that you know people make decisions about where to live based on right you know the the ability and the availability of the public transportation when it changes it it puts them in a bind and so I also make the argument the the dollar spent on that public transportation are very high leverage in other words when you think about having an impact on citizens of the Commonwealth in a very direct way these dollars really do and when you look at PVTA in general I don't know about you know the other RTS as much you look at the ridership and who is affected by that we have a lot of people of lesser means that are affected very negatively and so that's again why it's a it's a high value return on on investment there I think the other thing I think about as far as you know a strategy with regard to you know the university draw students from across the Commonwealth and so in a sense they can speak to all the legislators because their constituents are affected by these bus routes not existing or existing or to what extent they do and it makes it you know we talk about people being able to get to work or not it also makes a difference about whether people can go to school or not because if the finances of of their living circumstances have changed significantly enough that you know the bus doesn't run so they didn't have the car that's a whole level of expense that that may not fit into their financial plan as far as how they're going to school so it it's a multi-layered you know impact when you start to change these sort of things so I think those are all cases to be made relative to to better and consistent funding for for those RTAs thank you I think that's really important and the other thing you'd mentioned that possibly we'd look at funding for sort of dovetails with the big why conversation and I appreciate that we're taking that on is also the shelters discussion right we said well maybe if we can't use the money over here right and the fortunate thing with regard to shelters is that if they have they have some capital resources set aside for shelters and so if they have some in stock and we have a location if we can provide essentially the concrete pad they can oftentimes provide the shelter if it's appropriate you know appropriately sited in an appropriate location they try to put them in places where it makes the most sense as far as providing you know relief to the riders and and that sort of thing so certainly you know and last I checked which was a few weeks ago relative to the shelter question they did still have some in stock you know they buy them in sort of blocks of I don't know 20 or 50 or 100 I'm not sure without my head but you know they buy a set you know a number of them they still had some and so if we find whether it be for that particular route or some other route that we we think that oh a shelter would be really a good thing here there's potential to at a fairly low cost to us be able to to to provide that accommodation and they're you know willing to work with us on those kinds of things so then my point would be if you would make a note of that for your successor absolutely which may be well be the town manager but that that that should continue to be discussed whether it be there on that chopper's route or somewhere else right so are there other member reports if not Mr. Sember you had some well yeah the question that I had has to do with minutes and there are a couple of things one is is that we are still lacking some minutes that need approval and I know if we have only one scheduled meeting left it's my understanding that there's a bunch to come I don't know how many the bunch is and I don't know if I'll be able to do them all or not depends on how many it is so may need to share them because we need to it looks like the 26th is the date to try and get that done a second aspect of minutes to concern about having been involved in this process of dissolving of boards and committees that dissolved is what happens to the minutes of the last substantive meeting that you have do you need to have one other meeting even if only for one minute solely for the purpose of proof approving the minutes of that last meeting and so I don't know what we want to do because we are going to have a pretty substantive meeting 1126 and what happens to the orphan minutes so I just pose that question without suggesting the answer now but I do think that it needs to be considered and the last thing on the subject of minutes is amongst other things that I noted about the minutes of May 7 it was with some great degree of embarrassment I had to note that the section that I was reading from was in fact mistitled because it says appointments under transition provisions of the audit well and it should have we should have caught that when we approved those minutes because it should say of the charter so I don't know if it's possible to just treat it as a Scrivener's error and have it changed online it is I want to get into but solving the problem about the last minutes but is it like legally possible to authorize a member to read them and review them at some future time and and adopt them without having us to convene as a board which is because we don't exist you don't have to have our approved minutes legally there's no requirement just to put them on right so but we could we could designate a member to just to prove them for accuracy or something like that and be done with it string to call from some of the members DRB meetings the practice of the staff liaison was to issue reports which were not called minutes but an accurate account of the meeting it may depend on how detailed the business is but otherwise we have to have it you know a minute long meeting to approve the minutes but you may have to have another meeting to approve those minutes essentially have a meeting that that you that you wrote and recorded the minutes at the end of that meeting we feel self-referential but but anyway that's the only other one I would ask about that although like I said I'm confident of that from reading I've done in the past that you just you don't ever have to approve the minutes you don't have to vote you don't even have to accept them by consensus they just are what they are is the other aspect though that we should double check that we've done is that we have found that we've gone through executive session minutes because there's probably a backlog a couple of town managers ago that it's just worth remembering that that's still a thing out there that needs to be done and really that's a legal counsel question always too because is it something where we should still be releasing or and yeah exactly but we should put it on their plate rather than feeling like it's still on ours yeah so the minutes discussion doesn't take too many more minutes I actually moved the we adjourned because the motion is second any further discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye and we're adjourned at 9 57