 You don't want to reboot or you're going to reboot? It appears to be working now, but I'm seeing an error message. So if I need to ask you to pause the meeting so that I can reboot or address the error, then I will ask you to do that. Thank you. We're not yet recording, are we? Yes. We are recording. Thank you. Good evening. It's March 18th, Special Town Council meeting and a Finance Committee meeting with the Town Council. There are two meetings tonight. This is the first one. It's a public forum on the appropriations outside the annual budget regarding Community Preservation Act project allocations, and we're required to hold a public forum for these kinds of appropriations outside the normal budget. The open meeting allows us to continue holding meetings remotely without a quorum of the Council physically present. However, I'd like to welcome all of the Councils who are here tonight in the Town Room with us and those who are online. This meeting is accessible in real time by Zoom, by phone, and as a live broadcast on Amherst Media, Channel 9 and live stream. Given that we have a quorum of the Council present, I'm calling the Special Town Council meeting to order at 6.33. I'll call upon each Councilor by name, and they indicate that they can hear us and we can hear them. Then please mute your mic again. Pat D'Angelis. Present. Anna Devon-Gothier. Present. Councilor Ate. Present. Lynn Griezmer is present. Councilor Hannake. Present. Bob Hegner. Present. Councilor Lord. Present. Pam Rooney. Here. Councilor Ryan. Present. Kathy Shane. Here. Andy Steinberg. Present. Jennifer Togg. Present. Councilor Walker will be joining us, but she is not with us yet. I want to just check the audience and make sure she is not there. No, thank you. I'm going to now call upon Bob Hegner, Chair of the Finance Committee, to call the Finance Committee meeting to order and make sure that if there are other members of the Finance Committee besides the Councilors, that you make sure they can hear us. Yes, I'm calling the Amherst Finance Committee to order. We have a quorum of the Committee present, and the only person that I haven't, well, Alicia is not here, and Matt Holloway, I don't see him either in the audience or on screen. So we are, we're good though, we have quorum. Thank you. There's no chat room for this meeting. If we have technical issues, and I'm warning you now, we've been having them all day. We may have to pause the meeting while we reboot, et cetera. There will be a public comment meeting period as part of this first meeting, but it is for the purpose of speaking to the proposed allocations of the Community Preservation Act funds. There will be a general public comment period in the second meeting along with public comment during the two hearings that we're holding, but we'll try to be explicit which ones are for special purposes and which one are general, okay? The order of the agenda is as posted. So with that, I'm going to ask the town clerk, the town council to please put up the list of the appropriations for the Community Preservation Act. We are not going to have a special presentation on this. There has been a presentation to the council, though brief, but a much more thorough discussion at the finance committee meeting. After this meeting tonight, the finance committee will be meeting again and they will make their final recommendation. And if you would just go to the chart. So this is the list of recommended proposals and they fit into three of the four categories of community housing, historic preservation. There are no open space proposals and there are proposals in recreation. So with that, I'm going to ask if there are people in the audience who would like to speak to the particularly the Community Preservation Act proposals. Athena, were there any specific people for that? Okay. Are there people on Zoom who would like to speak to the Community Preservation Act proposals? Please raise your hand at this time. Okay. This is just for the Community Preservation Act proposals. Simeon Strong will unmute you. Please go ahead and make your comment. Hi, I'm Georgia Barnhill, the chairman of the trustees of the Amherst Historical Society and Museum. And I just want to say simply that this grant to the Historical Society will help us move forward with needed changes and we're aware that we will be applying to other sources of funding. It won't be totally CPAC, but I just encourage you all to let this proposal go through. There's a good chance or a possibility that we'll actually get some funding from the Massachusetts Cultural Council to cover part of the $75,000. If so, there will be unspent money that will be returned to the town. So we'll hope that happens, but we won't hear that until June or July. That's all, thank you. Thanks for joining us. Are there other people in the audience on Zoom or in the room who would like to speak to the Community Preservation Act proposals? We're going to hold this public forum until 6.45. So if anybody would like to speak to these proposals, please raise your hand. Point of order. We can close the public forum early, but the regular meeting can't begin until 6.45. Right, that's what I was really asking. When is it that we can close the forum? I think we... 6.41. I'm sorry, Athena, thank you. As soon as you get your computer booted up, we'll make sure you can hear us and we can hear you, Alicia, okay? Last call for any comments with regard to the Community Preservation Act funds. Oh, there's a hand. Please come forward. Okay, thank you very much. Vince O'Connor, 175 Summer Street. I did not plan to speak to this issue, but hearing the chair, I have been the ride to work and a young lady's transportation for her children to preschool for the last five months. I started the week that I announced I was going to run for city council in North Amherst. And I will tell you that a young lady lives at Jesse's house, which is the old right next door to the first church. So it was the minister's house in historic times. There is a really bad sidewalk in front of the house that makes it look like a slum. And there are some other issues at the house that I think should be addressed. It is certainly a deserving and appropriate recipient of CPA funds. And I hope if it's not in the regular budget that the council will consider going to Jesse's house, taking a look at that sidewalk and talking to the residents, I think they have four or five families in one bathroom in that building. And see what you can do. Thank you. So seeing no other hands for public comment with regard to the actual CPA funding recommendations that have come before the council, I'm going to close the hearing. Would you like to make a motion to close the hearing? Yes, I would like to make a motion. It's not a hearing. To adjourn the public forum, thank you. Right. I'm going to make a motion to close the public forum. Is there a second? Second on adjourning the meeting. Thank you. With that and no further discussion, we'll take a roll call vote and we will begin with Pat D'Angelo's. Aye. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Aye. Councillor Ate. Aye. Lynn Greismers and aye. Councillor Hanukkah. Aye. Bob Hegner. Aye. Councillor Lord. Aye. Pam Maroney. Yes. Councillor Ryan. Aye. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Aye. Jennifer Taub. Yes. And Councillor Walker has joined us and how do you vote? Yes. Thank you. You need to push a button. Yes. Thank you. That meeting is adjourned. At 6.45 in two minutes, we will begin the next meeting. Lynn, do you need me to adjourn the finance committee? I'm sorry. Yes, Bob, I do. Yes. So finance committee is adjourned as well. Thank you. Aye. It's 6.45 and this is our second meeting on March 18th, 2024. It is a regular meeting of the town council. As I mentioned in our previous meeting, we are allowed to do this because of state law. And we do have a quorum in the council physically present in the room, although that is not required. And the meeting is accessible by Zoom, by phone, and as a live broadcast on Amherst Media and also live stream. I would just point out at this point that there are 11 councillors in the room. Given that we have a quorum of the council present, I'm calling the March 18th regular town council meeting to order at 6.45. I'm going to quickly call on each councillor again, since we're having some connectivity issues, to make sure you can hear us and we can hear you. Pat D'Angelois. Present. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Present. Councillor Ette. Present. Lynn Griezmer. Present. Councillor Haneke. Present. Bob Hegner. Present. Councillor Lord. Lord, President. Pam Rooney. Here. Councillor Ryan. Present. Kathy Shane. Here. Andy Steinberg. Present. Jennifer Taub. Present. Councillor Walker. Here. Let me explain that we have two hearings tonight during which there may be public comment as well, pertaining specifically to each of those hearings as we have them. Later, after we get done with those hearings, we will have general public comment. If you would like to make general public comment and you are in the room, please sign up with Athena. If you would like to make general comment and you're on Zoom, do not raise your hand at this time because we need to have hands raised for people associated with the hearings. I will call on you at some point. Okay, very quickly. We have two council meetings coming up in April. The first is a regular town council meeting. It'll be here in this room and it is regarding the regional school budget. There will be a date by then set for the actual meeting where we will have hearings, et cetera, on the regional school budget. We don't have that date yet. We will also meet for a regular town council meeting on April 8th. At this time, I would like to recognize Kathy Shane who is just going to give us a brief two minute preview of the upcoming Fort River groundbreaking on March 26th at 3.30. Athena, will you be able to put up the slides? As she's putting them up, I decided I'm so excited about the fact that there's gonna be a groundbreaking on March 26th and everyone here is invited at 3.30 at the Fort River parking lot that I would share a few pictures of the school since many of you less saw it a while ago. This is a view from the entrance and one of the things you're gonna notice as first the school and then the parking lot is built is there are solar economies and here they're the ones you see out near the grass. They're gonna be protecting bicycle racks. So they're also serving two purposes. Next slide. We're at the early design package work begins phase, March 24th, so there's been a series of milestones. The project for the school is gonna go out to bid in July with September construction beginning on the school and the fields with the expectation and we're on time for the school opening in September, 2026. Next slide. There's been a lot of work on both interior and external design on the charts I showed when I was talking about the school you could see the backside of the school. What we've just finished with a fantastic playground equipment working group is laying out the playground and equipment which is full of exciting new kinds of play structures. One of the people in the meeting, one of the teachers said we've created a playground wonderland for kids of all ages. It's really very exciting. Next slide. Just to sum up, as we said at the very beginning, we have an amazing school that we're building thanks to all the residents. It's an innovative school with creative places for indoor and outdoor learning and play. It's a climate action school. It's gonna be the town's first public net zero building and we're getting a new community resource. We're restoring the fields. There'll be playgrounds, trails, a rain garden and more for families of all ages. So the very last slide is the sign that's going up at the construction site to say this is really underway and I'm gonna just say now and keep saying a big thanks to everyone in Amherst who has supported this school. Thank you very much. Thank you. We're going to move to our first public hearing that is an AT&T petition to install a small cell device on an existing ever source pole adjacent 25 East Pleasant Street. Is there, thank you. Please come up, introduce yourself and proceed. Thank you. Good evening, my name is Edward Perry. It's P-A-R-E. I'm an attorney at Brown Ruddick, one financial center Boston, Massachusetts. I'm here on behalf of AT&T. I don't know if you have the slides available from our plans that we submitted. We do. Do you want to put the slide up, Athena? But you can proceed while she's getting that. Terrific. So AT&T is an FCC licensed provider of wireless services throughout Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States. AT&T is having some network, thank you, that's fine. It's having some network issues in this area on East Pleasant. It's actually on Prae Street and East Pleasant. You'll see there's a depiction or a photograph of the telephone pole or utility pole that we plan to use. It's actually already located there in that island. Small self facility consists of three components. You look up at the top of that pole in that depiction, that's the 24.9 inch antenna. There are conduits that run down to that equipment box which contains the radio and switching equipment. That box is about four feet long, two feet wide, about two feet deep. There's a shutoff switch below that and then an electric meter so that national grid can capture all of our electricity uses and bill us accordingly. That's the extent of the facility and what AT&T is proposing. We'll use the existing pole. We do comply structurally with the poles only at about 17.5% loading after AT&T's installation. Likewise, we'll comply with the emission standards and everything I've mentioned this evening is in the town council's packets. With that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Okay. Are there any questions from the council? Seeing none. Are there any questions from the audience either on Zoom or in the room? Please come forward, state your name, where you live. Hi, my name's Edward Mone. I'm from 45 Applewood Lane. More of a question to AT&T and maybe not appropriate, but how do they decide where to upgrade because South Amherst is a wicked dead zone and just wonder is it because we have students at bars in the center of town that we're upgrading or just a question? Would you like to come forward and talk about where you decide to upgrade? I will. So now AT&T's obvious coverage and capacity needs. This is an area that the radio frequency engineers are noticing they were having a degradation in the network. There are limited budgets, limited resources. AT&T picks the place that feels is the best for the network. That's how they're selected. So they're done through engineering. There may be more coming in the future, but this is what we have planned right now. Thank you. Are there any other questions from the audience? Either on Zoom or in the room? Are there any questions from counselors? Happy? I have one that you can, but maybe the answer, but maybe the town can. This is an adjustment specifically for AT&T. If Verizon also in the same zone needed to do something, are we talking about telephone poles with multiple attachments or utility poles? I mean, are we, I don't know, when T-Mobile comes along and says, you know, I'm just imagining what this pole starts to look like. Yeah, unfortunately, there are limitations to the poles. National grid will only allow one small self facility per each. This is just for AT&T. So in your hypothetical, if Verizon needed to want it to provide coverage, they would have to find a different pole and attach their equipment to it. Same with T-Mobile. I do think in doing our research when we submitted the application, I do think the town council has handled one or two of these in the past. I'm not sure where they're located, but I did notice there was an application previously submitted, maybe in 2017 or 2019. But each category would have their own and national grid only, as I said, only allow one attachment. So then on some level, the town would have to look at the poles that do or don't have something on it and start to think of when these, because we as a council won't know that what's already been given, but to make sure that people who have different services aren't somehow having dead zones because their pole has already been taken. So I appreciate your answer. There could only be one on one pole. That's correct. You're welcome. Are there any other questions from the council? Okay, seeing none, I'm going to make a motion to close the public hearing. Is there a second? Second. Are there any other questions or comments? Kathy, you still have your hand up. Thank you. Then I'm going to move to a vote to close the hearing on a Devlin-Gothier. Aye. Councilor Atte. Aye. Lynn Griezmann is an aye. Councilor Hanakie. Aye. Bob Hagner. Aye. Councilor Lord. Aye. Pam Rooney. Yes. Councilor Ryan. Aye. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Aye. And for top. Yes. Councillor Walker. Yes. Pat DeAngeles. Aye. Thank you. Thank you for your attention and your consideration. Thank you. Thank you. We will be voting on the actual motion to approve as we get to that part of the agenda, okay? So now we are opening the hearing in this case for a public hearing on a Verizon petition to place four conduits on College Street through new manholes between Boltwood Avenue and Railroad Street. Please come forward. State your name and please provide us with an overview. Certainly. Good evening, Don Bonner with Verizon. I trust everybody has the plans. Yeah. They do. We will show them on the screen. Dewey, I'm sorry, Athena, you've got them. Okay, got it. The purpose of this plan is to remove all the telephone poles along College Street. Can you speak closer to the mic? Certainly. The purpose, oh, that's much better. Yeah, you're right. The purpose of this plan is to remove all the poles along College Street from Boltwood down to and just under the railroad bridge. I walked earlier this evening, took measurements and they're pretty accurate to what you see there. Give or take a foot or a few. And there were no stakes or spray paint where the holes or manholes were gonna be, but the measurements were approximate to what you do see for the two poles on the end. And the length from where the new manhole would be at Dickinson to Boltwood. Okay, I noticed that Gofford-Morring is in the audience. Gofford, did you have any questions or comments? Yes, I just wanted to point out this is a request made by the town. This is part of the project of taking the wires down on College Street. We've talked to all the utilities except for one and we're slowly getting them and working out plans for how to accommodate their utilities in the road. And this is gonna be the much larger project we talked about. Eversource will take their wires off the top. Verizon, this is their proposal where they wanna put their wires and then we'll be talking to Comcast, Go NetTel and actually Charter. We have to talk to Charter next to design how they wanna put and where we'll put their conduits in the road. We'll take all these plans once we have the other three and there'll be a construction plan drawn with exact locations based on their plan for the future installation that hopefully we'll be able to put together a project with the College of Amherst College. So Mr. Morring, at one point, I was under the impression that this should be done. We should do a continuation of this hearing because we were awaiting additional information. Is that true? No, we're going to do this piece and then there will be another hearing for a piece of telephone wire, Verizon wire that we're gonna take down Sealy Street as well. Okay, thank you. Are there questions from the council? Pam Rooney. Will the construction of the duct, is the duct bank already in? I know we went through a lot of construction last year. This is tying into the now an existing structure. Question. No, we will put the all the utility or the telecommunications utility plans together and do one construction that we actually install all their conduits in at one time and then they'll come back and pull wires through them. There'll be one more utility construction project. There'll be one sewer project and then the road project on College Street. Did that answer your question, Pam? Well, actually, so it just raises the question, will College Street on that stretch be under construction all summer? Not this summer. But sometime in the future. Sometime in the future. Okay, and we hope that we give residents plenty of warning. Are there any other questions from the council? Okay, then are there questions from the audience either in the room or on Zoom? Please raise your hands. I'm seeing none. I'm going to come back and just make sure there's no more questions from the council. Okay, with that, I'm going to make a motion to close the public hearing as their second. Second. We'll move to the vote. Councilor Ettaeum. Aye. Lynn Griezmer is an aye. Councilor Hannake. Aye. Bob Hegner. Aye. Councilor Lord. Aye. Pam Rooney. Yes. Councilor Ryan. Aye. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Aye. Jennifer Togg. Yes. Councilor Walker. Yes. Pat DeAngelis. Aye. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Aye. Okay, the hearing is closed. Thank you. Thank you very much. We will be voting later on. Okay. With that, we're going to move to public comment. This is general public comment. So if you are in the room and you want to make public comment, please make sure you've signed up with Athena. Thank you. If you are in the audience and you would like to make public comment, please raise your hand at this time. I would like to point out that there are 45 people in on Zoom attending this meeting that does not include an unknown number who are on Amherst media. Again, I'm going to make one last call that if you are on Zoom and you would like to make public comment, please raise your hand at this time. Are there any other people on Zoom? Last call. There are six people on Zoom. How many people in the audience? 14. 14. Let's begin with the audience in the Zoom room. And at this point on Zoom, after the six, the last person is Michael Purdy. Okay. So please go ahead and call on. Three minutes or two minutes? You have 14 and I now have one more. Eight, three minutes, two minutes, two minutes. Thank you. So public comments or matters within the jurisdiction of the town council. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to two minutes at the discretion of the council. Based on the number of people who wish to speak, the council will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during general public comment. Public comments are not reflective of the opinions of the town council. I also would like to just add, for those of you who have signs with you, that please make sure that if you want to show your sign, you don't do so in a manner that blocks someone else's viewpoint. Thank you. Okay. With that, we're going to start with Jean- Hargan. Good evening. My name is Jean Hargan. I live in precinct three. I'm here tonight as chair of the council on aging and a longtime resident in town to urge you to commit the remaining ARPA funds to the renovation of the banks community center, an area dedicated to the senior services. I invite all the seniors here this evening to rise and or raise your hand in signs to show our town officials. We are here to raise some cane to ensure that our voices are heard. Woo-hoo! Of the five meeting rooms at the bank center, only three are currently available and able to be used by the five municipal departments that reside in banks. The senior center offers over 45 programs each month from food distribution, exercise classes, music classes, rainbow coffee hour and more. Cultural events like the MLK celebration happen at banks. The bank center also offers its spaces to community groups like Boatwood Project. Clearly the bank center is well utilized by the entire Amherst community, young and old, day and night. The bank center is 95 years old and needs to be brought up to code. Lighting, signage, bathroom pull cords and security cameras are a few of the critical improvements which need to be addressed. Not to mention the elevator, which is currently out of use and has been for nearly a month now, restricting those with mobility impairments for moving around the different floors of the building. The ARPA funds are a once in a lifetime opportunity to fund needed repairs to banks that would otherwise take years to fix. I strongly endorse the remaining ARPA funds to be spent on updating of the bank's community center. The entire Amherst community will benefit from this investment. Thank you. Thank you. Please, I have to ask that we not demonstrate in the room at this point. What it does is cut into other people's speaking time. So, thank you. We're going to move to Jennifer Schau. She is in on Zoom and we will unmute. Please proceed, Jennifer. Hi, my name is Jennifer Schau. I live in district five and I'm a member of the Amherst School Committee, but my comment today is my own and does not represent the school committee. One of the items on your agenda today is the town manager's appointment to the elementary school building committee. The charge of the ESBC indicates that it needs to include a resident with experience in energy efficient public architecture, engineering or construction, which you have an architect Jonathan Salvan, a teacher or resident with knowledge of current educational mission and function of current facilities, which you have in Jonathan and resident member Angelica Bernal and a resident with experience in effective community outreach, a position I don't see filled amongst the current members and a function I don't see mentioned in the town manager's recommendation memo for Mr. Bruce Coultham. As a side note, I don't know Mr. Coultham and I mean him no disrespect. I understand from the memo that he has followed this project closely from the beginning and I thank him for his interest and involvement in this important project. Getting back to the committee charge, it also says that preference will be given to parents, guardians of young children who may be in the elementary schools in five years. The charge was adopted in June 2020 so five years from then would be 2025. Another applicant for the position, Amber Kano Martin has a child in the second grade in the Combinantes program and she has a skilled experience and accomplished community organizer. In addition, she herself is bilingual in English and Spanish. The ESBC does not need two resident architects at the expense of a parent of a child who will attend school in this new building and who has both deep and broad experience connecting with the community. This project is so important to the school community and I urge you to prioritize community engagement. The town manager may tell you that the time for community engagement has passed. However, it's always a good time for community engagement. In fact, I learned today that there will be a groundbreaking open to the public in eight days, a session, an event I did not even know about. So that's always a good time for community engagement. I urge you to vote no on this appointment and send the town manager back to follow the committee charge and appoint a parent with community outreach experience. Thank you. Thank you for your comment and for sticking with the time. We're back to the audience. Dirk Younger, I'm sorry I can't. Pardon me. I'm sorry. Thank you. Please come forward. Dick Yorga, Triangle Street, Namhurst. Please lean up to the mic, sir. Dick Yorga, Triangle Street, Namhurst, and Namhurst resident for 61 years. As sign says it all, the bank senior center needs help and the help can only come from you folks. Now I represent the senior center which is one of only five residents of the bank center but the building's not up to code. There's over 5,500 seniors that need a better facility and deserve a better facility. You know our needs. We will keep those in front of you so that they don't get forgotten amongst all your many other demands and responsibilities and we just respectfully ask that the needs of the bank center and all its constituents be addressed. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. We're back to the Zoom, Chad Bastwell. Please unmute and proceed. State your name and where you live. Good evening, council. Chad Bastwell here, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Excellent. District three, yes, I'm calling tonight. I mean, I'm not sorry, I'm not calling. I'm tuning into this Zoom meeting to express my concerns over the DEI policies that are currently being implemented in the municipality. The law abhors racial discrimination and it appears that this municipality is engaged in discrimination via its adoption of its DEI policies which exclude certain applicants for a variety of benefits based on their skin color. No racial discrimination is benign. It is always, it always demeans the dignity and worth of every American to be judged by his or her race instead of by his or her own merit and essential qualities. It appears the city is in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 42 USC section 1981, which states all persons shall have the same right to make and enforce contracts to the full and equal benefit of all laws as is enjoyed by white citizens. This statute protects the equal right of all persons without respect to race. Exclusion is illegal. Yet you have allowed yourselves to be hoodwinked by racist doctrine huddled by mentally ill communist faggots funded by Yidds. These people drug their children with Jewish pharmaceuticals, traumatize them with satanic grooming, then convince them to chop off their genitals so as to completely ruin these people. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You are in violation. I suggest you get with your municipal attorney immediately and correct and abort this DEI policy that you are implementing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. My apologies to the audience. Vincent O'Connor. Thank you. Vincent O'Connor 175 Summer Street. And I have a completely separate topic this evening. The council has received my written statement of that I made in January about raising additional revenue for this community. But this evening I have a four part proposal to deal with this community's most serious problem which is housing. And I'm just going to summarize the issues because of the shortness of time. The first is asking the council to request a special act of the legislature to revive the Amherst Rent and Review bylaw which was enforced in the 1980s and early 90s to deal with our outrageous rent increases. Second, asking that the council enact controls on what standards landlord use to qualify prospective tenants. Basically the standard that says that if you're a prospective tenant you have to earn in one week enough money to pay your rent. I have presented in the written document that I've given the council why this is a very discriminatory provision especially against families. Third, asking that the council enact a protective ordinance that would keep landlords who are part of a subsidy program that have family tenants from demanding from those tenants a full last month's rent despite the fact that they have a contract with either a state or federal agency that provides that they will get paid every month. Your time is up. And thank you. The landlord, to the landlord's share The final thing is in writing. Vince and everybody else has to comply by the two minutes. Thank you. And thank you for your written statement. Michelle Miller is on Zoom, please unmute. Hi, can you hear me? Speak a little louder if you would though. Okay, let me, how's that? Good. Okay, great. Hi, my name is Michelle Miller. I use she, her pronouns. And I live in district one. In the past couple of weeks, I've been included in email communications between residents and counselors regarding the distribution of ARPA funds. It is clear to me from these discussions that some residents are not clear about the distribution process, particularly who at the local level is responsible for distributing the funds. I'm here to share with you what I'm hearing in the spirit of providing a governmental system that is transparent to the public and a governmental system that is transparent and responsive. There seems to be a perception that the distribution of funds, by some people at least, is the town manager's decision and that the council has no say in the way the funds are allocated. While it is true that through the town manager's executive powers, he is tasked with deciding how the funds are used. It is also true that the council through its legislative powers is tasked with providing the policy that informs the manager's decisions. Specifically in December 2020, the town council passed a resolution affirming the town's commitment to end structural racism. This resolution is the policy set by the council that the town manager can use to make decisions like how ARPA funds are distributed. Additionally, the town has made a $2 million commitment to reparations for its black residents, another policy that the town manager can rely on when making decisions. It is my understanding that a request from a nonprofit organization that directly advocates for and serves black residents in our community has been made to the town manager. I urge the town manager and the town council to consider the policies that have been set by the town council regarding its black residents and also to revisit the treasury's guidance in terms of equity as it pertains to ARPA funds. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Going back to the room. Next, I have a Robert Menton. Menton? Okay. My name is Robert Menton. I live 33 Colorado Road. I'm here to speak for the survival center. Is that the survival center needs a lot of repairs. Used to make windows for houses and for everything. I notice the seal on the windows. I let them cold air in so you lose the money on the heating. Need to be repaired. I notice cracks on the cement in the hallways have to be repaired. We need more money to have more funds to get more residents to have fun. It's, I noticed the savings that there used to be a lot of people. We need the space, how important to raise the money to repairs and other things. I want to say thank you for the council. It's my time to talk to you and thank you. Thank you for joining us. We're back to Zoom. A person with the first name of Albert. Yes, thank you. Can you hear me? Hello. Hello. Can you please take your full name and where you live? Yeah, Albert, there's district three. All right. I had a little thing here. I heard the one talking earlier about diversity and equity and inclusion programs. And I wanted to say the diversity means fewer white people. Inclusion means the exclusion of white people. And equity means stealing from white people. I saw this on a flyer and there's a film called Defiant by Devon Stack on gtvflyers.com. And it really just kind of woke me up to just how much anti-white hate is out there. And then I had a little speech here I wanted to read. The Goym are noticing a great amount of anti-whiteism coming from the federal state and local governments. We have government run programs that give assistance to non-whites only such as housing vouchers to asylum seekers. We have a criminal justice system that lets criminals burn, loot and murder but investigates Christians praying at baby murder factories. We have six Jewish corporations controlling 96% of our media. And how can white people be fairly treated when the whole system is rigged against us? How can we be expected to want to live in a society that puts a target on our backs? I'm calling from the city council to pass a resolution condemning the rise in anti-white hate. We have a right to address our grievances and regardless if you like or not it's your job to hear these statements. White people are sick and tired of being attacked, robbed, raped and murdered. You can learn more about at gtvflyers and goingtv.tv. In Northville, Michigan a group of blacks lured a white family to a home with a Facebook marketplace ad. Then they proceeded to hold a one year old baby and a father at gunpoint where they raped the mother. You tell me how this is acceptable in our country for our women to be raped by violent criminals? Just this week, a few weeks ago at Heaselwood High School in Missouri a white teenage girl was beaten by a black savage to the point of being hospitalized in critical condition. She had her head bashed on the concrete multiple times during the attack. Multiple blacks were seen acting out in a blood thirsty rage. These types of attacks are the new normal for us whites and now we're sick of it. I can't condone violence against the blacks but it's just discussed in the way they treat us. It's great to see a massive amount of red pillage going on here. People like to pretend that, oh, it's just the Zionist and Israel and Palestine but it's all the Jews stupid. Jews absolutely hate non-Jews and they are the real... This person's time is up. Thank you. Fuck the Jews. We're going back to the audience. Next we have Yasmin Brandford. Hi, I'm Yasmin Brandford. I grew up in Amherst actually. I went to Croc from school. I run Amherst Extensions and Media Salon on 116 for about 15 years now. I was asked to speak by my president, BBAAA. And I just want to say that when I applied for the ARPA funds, I was told I didn't qualify but I thought that the ARPA funds were here for black businesses and to build up our community through small businesses. And then they told me something about some time thing. Like I didn't qualify because of the time and all this other stuff. And so I just want to say that I thought that was unfair and but I'm not surprised that we were overlooked. We were told that they didn't, you guys didn't know we existed. That you guys didn't know black businesses existed in Amherst. We were told that but we're not surprised. We were told that, I wrote down some stuff. Okay, basically, you know, I'm just, you know, I... And you guys will be seeing me more often. I should have been coming to these meetings more often anyway. I'm part of this community. I've been here my whole life. And so you'll be seeing me more often but, you know, we're gonna keep on because we feel like we deserve to be recognized in this community. You know how many black kids, mothers, parents call me up and they're so happy that I'm here? I'm the only black hair salon in 20 miles of this whole entire area. And they're so happy. They're like, oh my God, we didn't know what we were gonna do. Okay, so we're not gonna like go away and disappear. And like I said, you guys will be seeing me more often. I'll be around. I should have been coming more often anyway. To these meetings. I'm part of this community. I feel like I've built up this community somehow. I've been here my whole life. So thank you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Will please go to Michael Purdy, who was in on Zoom. Hello, my name is Michael Purdy. I'm the CEO of Hiltown Community Health Center, a federally qualified community health center housed within the Bang Center. We provide healthcare, including primary care, dental care, behavioral health, community programs, and eye care at Bang Center. And I'm here to ask that we, if you guys could use some of the ARPA funds to do renovations to the Bang Center, that would be great. Paying particular attention to the signage, both internal and external for the building. I think that would be hugely beneficial to all those that utilize the Bang Center. We've had several cases where individuals, both patients and vendors have come to the Bang Center and have been unable to actually find the health center. And then also looking at space. We've had to really prioritize services that we provide there. As an example, our laboratory, we've done away with the Base Day Reference Lab and utilized that room that the lab was in now as alternating days between behavioral health on site and other days using it as insurance navigators because we don't have room for all the services there together. Another example is that we use one of the dental operatories, alternating it with eye care services. Again, because we don't have enough space for all the services to coexist at the same times. So again, just here representing both the Bang Center and Hilltown Community Health Center, asking them if it would be possible to use some of the ARPA funds to do some renovations for the Bang Center. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Back to the audience. Ed Cage. Yes, my name is Edward Cage. Wow. So many things that go through my mind when I come here because I want to be able to say something that makes sense. I think about the ARPA funds and what it was said to do when dispersed by our town manager and the people that make the decisions. I did a lot, having a chance to have a service, a taxi service and Amherst. And I volunteered a lot more with it than I actually made money because Craig's Doors needed some help. I came, I delivered people that were homeless. I took them to wherever they asked me to take them. But that's what we do a lot here is volunteer. We're only good to volunteer most of the time when it's time to really look and see how it could benefit us, like being able to restart businesses that were impacted by just what happened. Not just the endemic, just the tough times. Town manager, we really would appreciate if you could look at small businesses like the one I ran when it was above water. I want to come back. I want to be able to help people. I want to be able to help myself and my family. So if you would just have any consideration to the folks that were left out, the ARPA funds would be a good way to help people that are struggling, that have been struggling, that are volunteering, that try to do work in this community to be a part of it. Consider that. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. We're going back to the audience. Deborah Ferrara. Can you hear me? We can. Okay. Hello everyone. My name is Deborah Ferrara from Amherst. I'm one of the co-chairs on the Community Safety and Social Justice Committee, but today I'm calling and the comments are my own and my own opinion. I just want to urge the town manager and town council to please consider giving some of the ARPA funds to the Black Business Association of Amherst Area, the BBAAA. They have submitted an amount and I'm hopeful that you all will fully fund their amount. I ask that you fund their request because they were passed over during the first distribution of the ARPA funds. This will go along with your commitment with the town of Amherst's commitment against racism and really dealing with the infrastructure of structural racism within the town of Amherst. And as we know, the BBAAA, they do want to commit some of the money towards youth development and youth empowerment. And that was something that the Community Safety Working Group wanted to focus on. And since that hasn't gotten off the ground in terms of the youth empowerment center and the youth programming, this would be helpful. So please, I want to really urge you all to look within and think about and really funding these Black businesses. They are part of Amherst and they deserve to thrive. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Back to the room. Vera Dugmani Cage. Good evening, my name is Vera Duongmani and I'm president of Amherst Media. I reached out to counselors, greetings, friends. Good to see you both here at the town council. So town manager Paul Balkaman, you know, Amherst Media, we all know we want to build on Maine and Gray, down the road here. And we put in a request for $250,000 to help us get there. I hope that everyone understands the importance that we provide as a nonprofit to this community. We're the longest running organization that does local access. And we just wanted to get this type of support so that we can build the Dr. Dmitriy Shabazz, Rujo Shabazz Media Art Center, which is available for everyone in this community, no matter where your politics land. So that's an important feature. I also want to speak in support of direct cash payments to household, something that is a feature of the Black Business Association of Amherst Area Request. I was really moved by my ex-husband's public comment earlier that, you know, this really should be, this second round should really help to rectify what didn't happen in the initial round, because we are really talking about individuals being able to support their families. Ed operated Little Eddie's clothing and accessories back in 2003 in the town of Amherst. So we are people who have been contributing to this town. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thanks for joining us. Amakar Shabazz, please unmute and continue. Thank you. Yes, Amakar Shabazz and South Amherst. I have to say I'm rather scared to give my own address where I live with the kind of folks that are coming out of the woodworks. It really is threatening. It really is scary. It really makes me cry and grieve for our town. This is so hard. And, you know, everybody of course entitled to their opinions, we're definitely at that, but it seems like I would really want to look at policies to know how much, you know, you gotta, we have to deal with here. But yeah, again, it's also good to know what's out there and what it is we're really striving to overcome. And as a former counselor Miller was saying, you know, we said we've come a certain distance with the resolution of 2020 with the whole charging of the African Heritage Reparations Assembly to do the work it did over two years working with all facets of the government of Amherst, all facets of the community, community listening sessions that open to any and everybody. You know, we've come a certain ways and it's one of the areas that our report indicated was the help for businesses. This is in the spirit of ARPA too. ARPA had a certain thing. I love bangs, bangs is housed in the Civil War tablets, which I'm so appreciative for, but you know, bangs gotta come out of another pot, you know, but the critical spirit of ARPA, I think is for the businesses and I think for Amherst media as the kind of critical business that it provides for our town all through pandemic and everything else. And so I hope really we'll see progress in this direction in the very, very troubled times we'll live it in, thank you. Thank you for joining us, back to the room. Allegra Clark, do I have to push? No, is the green light on? Then you don't have to push anything. Thank you. So my name is Allegra Clark. I'm a resident of district two and I did come here tonight to speak to ARPA. I remember hearing that ARPA was supposed to be utilized for the most vulnerable and most impacted people and businesses from COVID. So I do think that there is a place for senior center reservations to fall within ARPA. And I do think that the bangs hosts DEI and Cress as well and having those departments have better access is also important. I did visit there the other day and the elevator was out and I just thought how are people going to get around that might have mobility issues? It was actually a big topic that we spoke about at the community safety and social justice meeting the other day. Again, our black residents are disproportionately impacted by COVID and so I do support what the black business association of Amherst has put forward, especially with their focus on youth. And finally, I wanted to speak about youth and mental health having two children, one who was just four months old when the pandemic hit. I noticed differences in how they have adjusted to the world post the major wave of the pandemic. And I know that right now the regional school is facing cuts. The school committee has voted to reinstate some of that money, which I fully support and would like you all to support as well. But I think one place that ARPA could be utilized would be to restore the mental health positions that were on the chopping block as well as the restorative justice positions. I know originally there was money set aside in ARPA for the move to the middle school and it was like a couple hundred thousand dollars. There was also $500,000 for mental health and 300,000 for early childhood. So I think with that money, there's some that could go towards youth mental health as well, please. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry, I was distracted. Lauren Mills, please enter the room and state your name and where you live. Generally, where you live. Yes, hi. You're now hoping to meet with me. Hello. You're breaking up a little bit. Yes. Okay. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Please start the clock. Okay. Good evening. My name is Lauren Mills. I have lived in Amherst for seven years and I wanted to speak specifically about the need to break out of these box-up ourselves in this white, what is black. Amherst is a multicultural community. It's an inter-generational community and the main center is the main community center. Community includes young and includes old. It includes everything in the community. And our school's inter-generational are... I think we just lost you, Lauren. Perhaps you would like to send us your comments in an email to the town council. I'm sorry for the disconnection. Back to the room. Lemikio McGee. Correct me if I'm mispronouncing. Please correct us if I'm mispronouncing your name. Thanks. Good evening community members. My name is Lemikio McGee and I am a dean at the middle school. Listening to the comments tonight has demonstrated that we have a long way to go in educating our community. This is a no-brainer, financially support black businesses. It may make you uncomfortable, but do it anyway. The regional school committee took a bold stand last Thursday to protect the quality of our schools. We cannot continue to cut the school budget every year and expect to maintain the quality of our schools. I grew up in Springfield. The quadrangle is a beautiful place with beautiful museums. There's a large, wonderful library, lovely parks, great transportation. So why are homes more valuable and little bitty amourst? The schools. Let us remember that our schools will determine whether the community will be able to read the books in the big, big, big new library. The schools determine the value of our homes, not the library. I asked the town council to take a stand to protect the quality of our schools and protect the future of amours as a thriving, educated community. Now that we have a dream team regional school committee, I believe we can once again be amongst the best schools, systems in Massachusetts. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. We're going to go on to the Zoom. Excuse me. Thank you. Jocena Regge. Good evening. Can you hear me? We can, Jocena. My name's Jocena Regge, and I'm a resident of District 1. I'm town manager Paul Buckleman. As you decide how to allocate the remaining ARPA funds, I hope you'll give priority to support for black-owned businesses, providing assistance to low-income and BIPOC families and seniors in Amherst, building a permanent homeless shelter, and funding academic and mental health support for low-income youth who have not had the resources to catch up on what they missed out on during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our town must do better to live up to its stated values as a diverse, equitable, and caring community. Too many families of colour, black families in particular, have moved out of Amherst because they do not feel at home here. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you for joining us back to the audience. Jill Brevik. My name is Jill Brevik. She, her, I'm in District 1. I want to speak tonight to bring to the council's attention what seems to be an ongoing pattern of discrimination against marginalised residents. I want to take a minute to urge you to weigh in in support of the Black Business Association's request for ARPA funds tonight to right past wrongs and to show a commitment to equity that Amherst residents so badly need in this moment right now. I also just want to take a moment to reflect on the recent ceasefire resolution that was passed on March 4th. Now, this meeting has passed, but I don't want to move past what was a problematic example of an area in this town where we need to see a lot of improvement. At this meeting, councillors were openly rude to Palestinian Arab and Muslim residents who went to great lengths to speak about their suffering during what is an absolute atrocity that is going on right now and to share honestly about their treatment in this town deplete with the council to see them as human. The council, councillors promoted racism by introducing and voting in favour of two problematic amendments to that resolution showing they were refusing to listen to hours of education provided by marginalized residents in this community. They gutted an overwhelmingly popular and fact-based resolution in favour of a few unfounded views and their own deeply held racist beliefs. As the public's ability to tolerate these abuses and silence reached a breaking point, the council failed to uphold their code of conduct. Certain councillors called us shameful, divisive. They dehumanized the residents in the room in the same way that they were able to dehumanize civilians in Gaza. And while the resolution may have passed reluctantly on behalf of many who are still shaken by March 4th, I request a public apology, a formal reprimand of councillor Ryan. I plead your statement. The completion of promised anti-racism trainings and the addition of a trauma-informed training. Thank you so much. I would like to, okay, I'm gonna pause a moment and just ask again that there be no audience demonstrations. Thank you. We have one other person, Jeff Hellman. Oh, Lauren knows how to hand up first. I'm sorry. Oh, Lauren, yes, I'm sorry. Lauren, we lost connectivity with you. Please come back and begin your statement. Hmm, Lauren, it's not going well. Maybe you could use off your own instead. Okay, I'll just submit my comments. Thank you. Thank you, Lauren, for your efforts to join us. We'll go back to the audience. Steve Brevik. My name's Stephen Brevik. From District One, go by he, him. This won't take long. I just want to reiterate what others have said. About the council's demeanor a few weeks ago on March 4th, the way the meeting was managed. It was a circus. There are a few of you on this council that I hope have done some reflecting since this meeting, specifically Councillor Ryan, Councillor Steinberg, Councillor Grisimer. I hope you'll do the right thing and apologize for your tone, your language, your behavior, your ignorance, who's out of line. Listen, you guys got a tough job. Like, we get that. But you have been entrusted with our leadership in this town. To treat the residents in the way that you did at a point in which they were quite vulnerable was abhorrent. Our community deserves better. I just want you to think about that. I also wanted to offer my support for the ARPA funds being allocated based on the recommendations of the Black Business Association. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. We're going back to the audience on Zoom. We lost one, but I do see Fanny Rothchild. I'm speaking to support the allocation of $250,000 from ARPA funding to support Amherst Media's campaign to build a new building to serve all our community. I have been a member of Amherst Media since I moved here in 1983. I was a board member in the 1990s. The station has been a lifeline for me, providing me with community and skills and a place where I feel strongly that I have been making a difference in my community. Why do I value it so highly? Well, I feel like by assisting residents in creating media programming, Amherst Media brings together people, their heritage, their passions, and their interests by giving us all a voice. Amherst Media provides a container in which we can flourish as political, responsible, and equitable citizens and town members. But producing a rich array of programming, it covers the gamut. For example, town council and committee meetings, educational events, and spiritual, artistic, and literary pursuits. It fills the gap left open by local TV stations and newspapers. It covers everything. By documenting and sharing minority happenings, it gives a voice to those who wouldn't necessarily have an outlet by providing training and TV and social media production. It brings our children into the community, providing them with skills and a sense of self-worth, gained by their newfound abilities to create media and communicate out to the world. By covering human rights events, like my local chapter of Amherst Media International, Amherst Media is helping our town to be a more just and equitable community. In summary, I see Amherst Media as providing and strengthening community and therefore well-deserving of $250,000 of phase two ARPA funding to ensure that this building is constructed soon. Thank you, thank you. Thank you. Back to the audience. John Boniface. Good evening, my name is John Boniface. I live in district one. I want to endorse what's been said tonight by Jill and Stephen Brevik and by Dr. Shabazz and others. I'm here to address the question of accountability. Elected officials must be held accountable when they act in ways that are contrary to their public duties and responsibilities. I have four points of accountability to raise. Point one is a basic tenant of our democracy that people who serve in public office are public servants. That councilor Ryan said at the March 4th meeting on the ceasefire resolution, you think we basically work for you. Anyone who thinks that they are not a public servant does not belong in public office and councilor Ryan should resign. And if he does not resign, this council should publicly reprimand him for his conduct. Point two, it is important that members of this council as in any member of an elected body stay awake for public proceedings. If you cannot stay awake because you have a condition or you're too tired, then you should not be in public office. There were members of this council asleep during key portions of the testimony on March 4th, during heartbreaking testimony. They should not be on this council if they cannot stay awake. Point three, we need people who are honest and transparent with us as constituents. We were told in one particular meeting with a member of this council that she could not talk to us about her views about the ceasefire resolution because it would violate open meeting law, which was preposterous. We confronted her on that point and she then went ahead and began to share her views. And point four, this council needs to be accountable to the resolutionate past to end structural racism and commit to reparations. And that means supporting a portion of our funds to black businesses. Thank you. Jeff Kalman, please enter the room, state your name and where you live. My name is Jeff Kalman. I've lived in Amherst for 25 years, district three. I've been very impressed with what people have spoken about, how people have spoken about most things tonight. I am seriously concerned about the caller who called in at around 720 who spewed anti-Semitic rhetoric. And I'm shocked that the town council has not said and reminded people who are commenting that they will not tolerate that. And I expect that the moderator would cut off someone who is spewing anti-Semitic rhetoric or any hate speech whatsoever. It makes me feel that you are complicit and that you condone this type of speech, which I know or I hope that that is not true. And I have two children and a wife. We are committed to this community. And right now I'm feeling very unsafe with a caller like that. When, and you have that person's name. So when that, if that person steps up again, I think it's important that you remind him and everyone else who speaks, that that will not be tolerated. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your comments. Back to the room. Leila Mushebek. Hello, Leila Mushebek, she, her district one. I'm here today to ask the council to advocate for the Black Business Association of Amherst requests for ARPA funds and to repair the harm caused to marginalize communities in Amherst both during the first round of ARPA funds allocation and during the March 4th meeting where a number of counselors displayed disregard, cultural insensitivity, unprofessional conduct and racist rhetoric causing harm to grieving and at risk members of this community. Like many families, my Palestinian Colombian family moved to Amherst because of its progressive values and so that we could raise our kids in an inclusive and equitable environment. Organizing around the recently passed resolution in support of a ceasefire in Gaza was my introduction to Amherst politics and my first meaningful insight into the positions represented on this council. During the March 4th meeting, several counselors were at best dismissive to my community's experiences or completely oblivious to the harmful racially coded rhetoric they used during private and public discussion around this issue. At worst, counselors were overtly hostile to the grieving marginalized Palestinian Arab and Muslim community members who were required to educate and audition again and again for recognition in this community that we enrich. I'd like to take a moment to thank and acknowledge the work of counselors, D'Angeles, Walker, Hanneke, Lord and Devlin Gautier who recognized and acknowledged the harm caused by their colleagues during this meeting. The council now has before it two opportunities to repair the harm it has caused and support the diversity that each of you has committed to nurture. I urge you to listen to the expertise of the Black Business Association of Amherst Area and its recommendations for the needs of black business owners and residents. I ask that the counselor address and acknowledge its pattern of discriminatory double standards. I ask that the council complete its promised anti-racism trainings and update the town with progress on social justice goals. And I ask for a public apology, especially from counselors Grisimer, Steinberg, Tob, Shane, Rooney and Ryan. Perhaps then this council may begin to rebuild our trust. Thank you. We have no more people on Zoom. Is there anybody else in the audience? Pat, Hanneke, good evening. Can you hear me? All right. So I'm Pat on an tobacco district too. I'm a 40-year resident and I am the president for Black Business Association of Amherst Area, BBAA. First of all, I wanna thank all our supporters tonight who have spoken in support of BBAA getting upper funds. Some of you may recall two years ago, I was the whistleblower who exposed discrimination cost against existing black businesses. Some of you, town counselors, you approved a white nightclub drink $300,000 and when some members of my community some members of my group tried to apply for upper funds, they were denied. Upper funds were supposed to help the most vulnerable and most impacted by COVID. Do the right thing, repair the harm that you caused and yes, the economy is recovering but you must understand that it's very hard for black businesses to have access to capital due to lending discriminatory practices. We are asking for $1.5 million but it will impact both black residents, youth and black seniors. I think we should prioritize upper funds to marginalized group, including Hispanics, Asian and other low income, not just only black people. I see that my time is almost up but let's do this, do the right thing and let's not drag the civil right office of Attorney General. Thank you for joining me. And lastly, I wanna really thank, I want to congratulate Councillor Elisha Walker for his award a couple weeks ago for Black excellence and I didn't see that on our town website. Why is that? Thank you. Thank you. George Malcolm? Anybody else from the audience? George Malcolm? It's George Malcolm and I work with the high school. My son was the one that was a student speaker and I looked at his speech and I thought, what a crock because the very things that you supposedly want to uphold is just, it's all a lie. I mean, five years later, Mr. Buckerman told me that the continuum which shows where you towns are, he's like, okay, we're not there yet. And there's no effort. Putting black faces into positions don't mean anything because we have quite a bit of black faces in positions that are some Clarence Thomas and some Herschel Walker. So we are our very own Herschel Walkers and Clarence Thomas in this town in positions of power. I want to acknowledge the school committee of Amherst, the region, because we finally have someone in there that understand the importance. I mean, like Mika said, I mean, the education system is what drives the value of the homes in this town. And I mean, you guys are so short-sighted because Paul Buckerman spent a million dollars on dirt. A million dollars on dirt. I remember I was in here once. There's a social construct. I'm gonna send you guys a video during the Black Lives Matter movement. Somebody shared it. And whoever those two people that called in, they don't have to worry. Amherst's white supremacy culture is very intact. So don't worry. The DEI is just a for shot. There's nothing happening at the schools. There's nothing happening here because I've said to Paul, you need to involve people with different perspectives. And he told me straight up, no, he wants the power because you guys have given it to him. So apparently just like with Mike, you guys are just figureheads. But I want to remind you that you have a social contract. And that contrast as elected officials is to ensure the wellbeing of the people in this town. I don't reside in here in Wartangot and the students in the public schools. It's really problematic and disappointing to say the least considering I had myself be a part of it. Kathleen Anderson. Good evening, my name is Kathleen Anderson. I'm a long time resident of Amherst. I moved here in 1974. So I've been here almost 50 years. I'm a former elected official to the school committee. I'm also co-founder of the study circles dialogues on race and class. We spent six years discussing the issues of racism and classism amongst the adults in those community, as well as the students in the high school. I'm not gonna repeat stuff that other people have already said in terms of the systemic racism issue or the ceasefire issue from the March 5th or 4th, sorry, March 4th meeting. But I want to stress the importance of understanding what racism is and what it is not. And racism is a system of power and privilege that only white people have. And the only category or the only group of people who can be racist are white people. And so we have asked in this community to educate white people around racism and to how to eliminate the effects of that. And one of the ways that that has been able to be done or has been attempted to be done is through the diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. So I'm going to end, but I want to make sure that people understand the importance of being socially just and having a socially just system. We're supposed to be the kind of community that embraces those kinds of attitudes and behaviors. And I want to encourage people to take that on and to do that. If you need any resources, ask me. I've got plenty for you. Thank you for joining us. Monica Cage, good evening. My name is Monica Cage. I live in District 3. I own a business in Amherst called Crown by Cage. I'm also on the board of the Black Business Association of the Amherst area. I hope that if the ARPA funds are allocated towards BBAAA, I would use the funds to scale my business in this town because I really would love to stay here instead of finding a place that would be more lucrative or supportive. I'm constantly finding myself trying to preserve the integrity and defend the culture of this town when new members of this community come to me for my business, but sometimes I can't help but just stay silent and nod and agree when they do bring up the structural racism or their own experiences of racism in this town. Instead of keeping that negative light on the town of Amherst, I bring up the Black Business Association and how we put on community events that promote Black culture and excellence and history, not just for February, but for all throughout the year. And so I just want you all to keep that in mind when thinking about how these funds should be allocated and how it supports our community. Not only does BBAAA want to support young people who want to start businesses in this town, but for everyone who needs to find community or resources or anything that our businesses are used for. So thank you. Thank you for joining me. That's the end of our list here. Thank you. Before we close public comment, although we have taken our last comment, I would like to provide the following information to the audience. It is just as shocking to those of us in the council to hear people say the kinds of things they've said tonight, but the First Amendment broadly provides individual rights to address the government, to speak and to express themselves, including their right to say hateful and offensive things. I'm generally unable to shut those conversations down under the First Amendment to the US Constitution unless their level of speech falls within an exception articulated by the courts, which have ruled on this issue, such as fighting words, truths that threats to a particular individual, harassment of a particular individual, which we came close to, or incitement of imminent lawless activity. If a question exists as to whether a particular speaker is engaging in unprotected speech, I must defer to the principles of freedom of speech. This is an issue we have spent enormous amounts of time with our attorney on and will continue to do so. It is as uncomfortable for us sitting here in the council as it is for you sitting at home and in the audience tonight to have the kind of hateful speech that we heard tonight. Thank you. I'm going to... Oh, Lauren, you have come all the way here to speak to us in person. Please come forward. And thank you for that special effort, Lauren. My son's crocs on a hybrid house. Yes, my name is Lauren Mills. I've been living in Amherst for seven years. I am on the board of health, but I am speaking of my own words and my own experience. I think what I was trying to say is that we need to get out of the blocks of what is black and what is white. Amherst is unique to me because it is a multicultural community. And that means that it encompasses intergenerational folks from baby, youth, middle years and up to adulthood and seniors and elders. The Bang Center is the Bangs Community Center. It's a community space. And I'm happy that in this current time we were able to hold a started drumming circle in the Bang Center, the Bangs Community Center. I am concerned though that the council and also the way that things are shared or not shared by the town manager and by the town counselors as far as funding makes people feel like they have to choose one group over the other or over another. And that should not be the case. I feel that again the community, a strong community is an intergenerational community. And the Bangs Center, Bangs Community Center should hold programming not just for seniors but it should also hold programs for youth. And I just would hope that the politics of the town would not hit loops against one another. Thank you for coming all the way from your home to join us when your connectivity didn't work. We really appreciate it. The council is going to take a break. We're going to take a 10 minute break and then we're going to come back to the next items on our agenda. Please make sure you unmute your mic and take your picture down. And when you come back, put it back on. We need to be returning to our seats and getting ready to start again. Athena, I have a question. We're going to be moving to the consent agenda but I'd like the council, first of all, make sure you're all back. Kathy, camera, thank you. Okay, we are all back. If there is no objection and if there is, please raise your hand. I would like to add to the consent agenda the two poll, the two public way polling things. Mandy Jo. I don't object, I'm just confirming that's in case people in the audience don't understand what you're saying, adding the AT&T petition where there was a public hearing today and adding the Verizon petition where there was a public hearing today. That is correct. Is there any objection to that? Okay. So the following items were selected and maybe the clerk of the town council could put the motion up on the screen and add in the two items. The following items were selected because they were considered to be routine and it was reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy. To remove an item from the consent agenda for discussion later in the meeting, ask that it be removed after I've gone through the list once. The request to remove an item from the consent agenda does not require a second. I would also like to make sure you understand that while we may include an item and vote on it in the consent agenda, there is still an opportunity when it comes up on the regular agenda to discuss that item if you'd like more background. To move the following items and the printed motions there under and approve those items as a single unit, 6A, adoption of child abuse awareness month proclamation. 8A1, approval of the AT&T petition to install a small cell device on the existing ever sourced pole 350 over three on Prey Street adjacent to 25 East Pleasant Street. 8A2, Verizon petition to place four conduits on College Street through new manholes between Boltwood Avenue and Railroad Street. 8A3, approval of the Amherst Farmers Market request for long-term use of the public way. And I will just pause for a moment and say we have checked with the Powell and they did not express interest in using the common this year. 8C, referral of bylaw 3.26 nuisance property to governance organization and legislation committee. This is referred for legal review purposes and their consistent inaction ability. It's the first time the group will have taken it up. 9A1, three to five, approval of town manager appointments, conservation commission, Rachel Loeffler, director of community responses, responders for equity, safety and service, Camille Tariq, elementary school building committee, Bruce Coldham, Jones library committee, Alex LeFave. Are there any items that people are asking to be removed? Councilor Walker. I would like to remove the appointment to the elementary school building committee, please. Thank you. Are there any other items? Okay. So the motion is up on the screen and unless there's any further questions or requests to remove, I'm going to move to a vote. I'm gonna second the motion. Thank you. That would be good. All right. Lynn Griezmer is an aye. Councillor Haneke. Aye. Bob Hagner. Aye. Councillor Lord. Aye. Pam Rooney. Yes. Councillor Ryan. Aye. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Aye. Jennifer Todd. Yes. Councillor Walker. Yes. Turning the page. Pat D'Angeles. Aye. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Aye. Councillor Ette. Aye. It's unanimous. Thank you. Thank you for your patience and for hanging out. Thank you. We've already done the resolution and Councillor Haneke, are you able to read the last part of that? Yeah. So this is a resolution, well, it's a proclamation, child abuse and prevention awareness month proclamation that declares the month of April as child abuse awareness and prevention month. So now therefore be it resolved that the Amherst town council declares the month of April to be child abuse awareness and prevention month and further recognizes this proclamation by raising the child abuse prevention flag from April 1st to April 30th, 2024 to help cultivate awareness for all residents of Amherst. That flag raising ceremony is on April 1st at 4.30 p.m. Thank you. We're now moving on to presentations and discussions and we're going to have Paul Bachman is going to do a presentation on the ARPA funds. Thank you, Lynn and are my colleagues who are going to join me, say David and Leah and Martha. Leah and Martha. So we need to bring Leah Carver and David Zomac. And as you do that, I will introduce these people who are coming in. David Zomac is the assistant town manager. Leah Carver is the assistant comptroller and Martha Martini is our ARPA grants administrator and Holly Drake who is our comptroller and acting co-executive co-finance directors in the audience and can join if she'd like. Please raise your hand if you'd like to be brought in. Holly, right now she's going to stay where she is. Oh, no, she's going to come in. Come on in, Holly. Okay, thank you all for being here. Please proceed. Thank you. So I appreciate the opportunity to present this proposal or this proposal. It's a plan of allocation of ARPA. I'm going to take this off. It's better for people. Opportunity to prevent this plan on allocation of ARPA funds. And I just want to note that this is a plan that was developed before the compelling comments that we heard tonight, which I appreciated and also welcome comments that will come from the council after we make the presentation. This, the goal of our allocation, this is the third round of allocations is to align the allocations with the town council's goals. And to recognize while we are grateful for the funds, it's also been a challenge in terms of administering all the funds from an administration point of view. And to state how I think we have done a really terrific job in utilizing our funds. Next slide. So the agenda for tonight is to talk about the background to go and give you an overview summary of where we are and to talk about the operating principles that we used when we were looking at the allocations. And again, I'll welcome your thoughts and comments at the end. I want to thank the staff who put a lot of time into this. They put a lot of effort into thinking about how we could best allocate the funds. And one of the things that we always think about is that as we allocate funds, we know that there will be an audit at some point. So we're always, they're very diligent about ensuring that any kind of allocation that we make is in alignment with the ARPA rules and regulations. Next slide. So you may recall that under ARPA, which is the American Rescue Plan Act, the town received $11.9 million in funds. And this is the funds were specifically to respond and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. And just for perspective, this is about half of the money that the city of Northampton received. So it's a substantial sum of money, but not nearly as much as some of our neighbors. The budget that we allocated in the first round of the 11.9 million was 9.8 million. And this was based on multiple efforts of reaching out to the community and talking to a lot of key stakeholders. For reference, the funds that we have, all the funds must be obligated by December 31, 2024. That means the funds have to be under contract, however they're being spent. And all the funds have to be spent by December 31, 2026. Any funds that aren't spent by December 31, 2026 are returned. We are going, we have to report on the status of all of our unencumbered funds by March 31 of 2024. And we do, we make reports regularly to the federal government on the use of ARPA funds. And in 2023, in our round two, we had allocated, we made some small allocations, including $50,000 for food delivery by the Survival Center. These are pre-existing, initiatives that had some pre-existing efforts made, $150,000 in additional aid for resident aid, resident's assistance, $100,000 to develop the resident oversight board, $100,000 for, to repair wastewater pump number four, $100,000 to cover remaining FEMA and CARES expenses, which we can explain to you a little bit different time, and $295,000 for repairs to overuse recreation facilities. So what we'll do now is this sort of mirrors the last presentation. So I'm going to ask Leah and Martha, if she needs to jump in to sort of walk through where we are on each of these initiatives. Leah? Can you hear me? Yep. Okay. So the public health category is sort of continued funding. We've continued to fund the four new FIRE and EMS staff. They will continue to be on ARPA through the end of the fiscal year. We've continued to fund a portion of the public health staff, an assistant and a part-time nurse. We have finished up the premium pay for employees, and we are working continually on translation services and sort of trying to increase that townwide as we speak. And some of the funds did go to the implementation of the Cres program as startup costs. Excellent. For our resident aid programs, as Paul mentioned, we did introduce some additional funding. The two very successful programs, the resident emergency aid program, which has given money to residents throughout Amherst and continues to have money available if anyone is still in need. And to the survival center to continue their mobile delivery program, which also is a need in the community. Also the acquisition of the former VFW site for a future shelter and for permanent supportive housing that has been purchased. And we are still working using some of those funds to sort of aid in whatever the next steps are demolishment probably of the building. And a driver has been hired by the senior center for added transportation to and from their programs. I think next. I think Dave was gonna do this one. Yeah, good evening everyone. So I think most people are familiar with the Wayfinders project down on Belcher Town Road and utilizing the former East Street School. And we've allocated $1 million to housing, affordable housing. I think we're all very aware of the crisis both in Amherst and the region for housing in general and affordable housing specifically. So this allocates $600,000 to this from very exciting project. We are well underway, design is moving along quickly. This will produce 78 units in the East Village. And one of the important things here, a huge takeaway is that our investment of $600,000 is gonna leverage 40 to $45 million for the project. And that's really exciting. At this time, we're looking at new projects to get in the pipeline with the additional 400,000 that is remaining in this category. And the goal always, you've heard me say this before is to get those next projects ready to go. So we've got this exciting project in East Amherst. We have the wonderful project up in North Amherst Valley CDC and then additional projects coming down the way. You'll hear more information about wayfinders. They hope to be in the 40B permitting process later this year. Next slide. Okay, as far as infrastructure goes, we have increased funding again for this category. The major additional funding was for facility repairs to recreation areas that were very well used at the height of the pandemic. So some repairs and updates have already begun on many sites around town. There was a need for placement of the wastewater pump for which actually fits in very well with the infrastructure investment by the Treasury that they encouraged. So we did fix a portion of that. The funds used to close out the FEMA and CARES grants probably will be a little less than 100,000. But that is simply the FEMA and CARES grants that started in the middle of COVID had many adjustments in terms of what was eligible expenses and they changed it many times. And sort of in the end, ARPA sort of came in and knew that there were a bunch of expenses that people thought were eligible and were no longer eligible. And they gave the authority to use ARPA funds to cover that. So we will need a small portion of that. And then we're still working on continued funding for the other categories of cybersecurity, public Wi-Fi, municipal fiber, a new downtown public restroom, which should be hopefully going in shortly, repaired to some trails, and then some enterprise fund support, which was basically revenue replacement at the peak of COVID when parking and sewer revenues were not coming in. Next. So in the education, the preschool programming that was started at the last presentation has continued and it will continue through the remainder of the school year and those programs are listed in the pie chart. The school funds that were originally requested were specifically for the sixth grade transition to middle school. Unfortunately, this goal was postponed by the school committee at their meeting in February of 2023. And the new timeline does not fit in with the ARPA spending timeline. So that contract has ended. So I'll jump in here. We've continued some of the great work that the town is doing across the community in terms of sustainability. We've allocated some of that figures you see in the pie chart to some smaller projects like updating building inventories, fleet inventories for vehicles, equally as important support for the mobile market, which is a hugely successful and very popular program bringing healthy and affordable food to many members of our community. So that will continue to get funding. It also has a small amount of money has gone toward our community garden effort down at the Fort River Farm where we have over 40 gardeners participating in that program. Recently, we launched the sustainable dashboard. I'm sure many of you have visited this. This is really kind of the one stop resource for sustainability information in our community. It includes data, energy usage for buildings, transportation information, and collaborative resources for things we're working on in our community. And then finally, the large piece there, $385,000 will go toward a program that is just being launched now. The heat pump program for residential heat pumps. And this is a real response to a critical need to help residents create opportunities from themselves to convert to green power that's also affordable for them in their residences. So that's how we've allocated those funds. Okay, category diversity, equity, and inclusion. We did add an additional of 100,000 for the creation of the Resident Oversight Board, which has begun and is still continuing. And the other programs are still being worked on. Amherst Recreation still has their money for programming and for a few upgrades to their facilities, namely the pools. The youth empowerment money still exists. The community engagement money still exists, although most of that was used for the COVID ambassadors during the first two and a half years of the pandemic, I believe. And there was money put aside and used already for some staffing at the beginning of the opening of the office of DEI. Next slide. Under this economic development and business grants, there are actually two expenditure categories according to the Treasury. One side of that is the small business, which we did a lot of money for new businesses. So new business grants, growth grants, technical assistance grants, and economic empowerment. There is a chart of some of the grant recipients. And the second half of that category was to provide aid to impacted industries of the arts and tourism, which the Treasury had set aside as a separate category to provide economic development to towns and also provided economic development to artists and performers. And also benefited the surrounding downtown businesses. Thank you, Leah and Dave, and jump in, if you want to, anywhere. So just to summarize, and I'll go through this quickly since we just already did it, $1.8 million on public health and safety. And some of that was the premium pay for the essential workers. We added four new firefighters, EMS positions, which are now being transitioned into our regular budget format. Public health staffing, there's support for the development and establishment of the Crest Department and translation services. The resident aid program included funds for to purchase the site of the VFW for the future development of a homeless shelter with support of services. And that's a big win for us. It's been a long time goal and this gave us the opportunity to act very quickly and be able to purchase that site, which is a great location. A lot of effort being done now to secure the site. We will be demolishing the building and then actually making that available for other uses while we continue to investigate exactly and assemble funds to build a permanent year round, 24 hour a day, homeless shelter with support services and housing. And then there was also funds for the survival center for food delivery and funds to support the senior center van, which transportation was a major priority for the senior center. Dave talked about the million dollars for design and development of affordable housing and 600,000 of that going to the way finders proposals at the East Street School and on Belcher Town Road and 400,000 coming up with other programs as we develop additional sites for affordable housing. 1.8 million for infrastructure projects, which included the downtown public restroom, which is nearing the ability to go out to bid, recreational facilities, capital project management, which we have the experience of the person who's helping us through the elementary school and the Jones library and a bunch of other capital projects to move them forward. We talked revenue replacement for enterprise funds. This is, that might sound strange to people, but it's for our transportation fund, which relies mostly on parking revenue. That pretty much fell through the floor. The ARPA funds were provided, were allowed to be used to fill that emptiness there and improve our cybersecurity, reestablish our fiber from connecting all of our town buildings and facilities, and then also rebuild our downtown Wi-Fi network. Paul, could I jump in before you stun on the VFW? I know folks have been patient as we've moved forward with that project, but I just wanna put out there, in addition to what Paul said, that we are in the process of hiring an architect to begin the visioning process on that project. So we should have somebody on board, I would say within a month, and our goal is to partner with, of course, Greg's doors, work with and in collaboration with our housing trust, but also members of our community. So there will be a couple of public forums where we work, have our architect lead those forums, where you as the council and other committees and boards can join us and really participate in creating a vision for what that site will be and the needs it'll serve in our community. So it's been a while coming, but I just wanted to put that out there that that is a spring goal of ours in the planning department. Thanks, Dave. The next category is education where we have $180,000. It continues to support pre and after school programming for kindergarten through elementary grades. Dave mentioned the climate impact projects to improve food security, inventory, our town sustainability needs, and the one that we're really excited about is the heat pump program, which will actually help people to install heat pumps, which can be a high upfront cost, but have a long-term savings. The $949,000 on DEI and community engagement, including the youth empowerment funds, which we have retained so that that project can move forward, recreation, establishing the DEI office and then the new $100,000 for the resident oversight board, which is making progress in the next few months. $419,000, which includes a major portion of that going to the Drake, which had a specific area and arbor that was carved out for it to help arts and tourism and also downtown business areas. And then we have funds set aside through 1231.26 for grants administration, including the legal work that has to be done, the audit that will be done, et cetera. So I want to talk a little bit about what were the operating principles that we used when we talked about, so ARPA, as a program, continued to develop and they were continuing to send out new rules and things. And we always had to continue to comply with the new rules. So our first cut was whatever we decided to do with the funds, it had to comply with the updated ARPA requirements. The second was we did not want to give any of the funds back. We wanted to make sure the funds were protected from any potential clawbacks by the federal government. That's not as real a concern as it was about a year ago when members of the Republican Party and the House and Senate at the federal level were talking about if they, trying to take funds back from the ARPA program. So we have a plan in place if that initiative ever comes to fore, we know how we can protect the funds. One of the things was we wanted to do is to avoid or minimize the creation of fiscal cliffs where this one-time money would be used to fill an operating budget then that would create a bigger cliff the next year. And we have, and also would increase operating costs. So we've been pretty good at avoiding that. And then really to pay attention to what the council had previously identified as community and town identified needs. We looked at, we made our presentation which identified many of these needs last June and got feedback from the council at that point. So after we do all the counting for what's been encumbered or expended, that's about $8.1 million, which leads us with a balance to be reallocated of $3.8 million. And the conversation tonight and what I'm really interested in hearing you your comments on is how that $3.8 million is to be reallocated. Next slide. So we have three major sources for pending allocations. The first is improvements at the Banks Community Center. And Dave, you were gonna talk about this one? That you're muted, Del. Yeah, thanks, Paul. So part of our goal here, and we've heard from many, many community members about the importance of the Banks Center, both broadly, but also as our senior center, the space there is hugely important to the many seniors we have in our community and their voices have been heard in letters to the council. So part of the goal here is to take a look at the entire building. The building has received some capital funds over the years, but really does need some upgrades in some major areas, not the least of which is energy efficiency and making the building more sustainable. But the goal here would be to bring on an architect and to kind of do a mini-visioning of what that building could be, both for seniors, but also for the broader community. So we'd be looking at categories of work, as I said, energy efficiency, HVAC, defining the senior center space in a more reasonable way, looking at lighting and ventilation, looking at partial fire protection for the building as well as a commercial kitchen to make the building more usable from top to bottom. So those are some of the major categories. I would also add that there are flooring issues there, window treatments need addressing some of the windows there are woefully old and not energy efficient. So these are many big ticket items that we'd love to include in this category to make the bang center both stronger and more accessible and more welcoming for seniors, but also more broadly make it usable for the entire community. So I think one of the things we talked about was having a kitchen, creating a more contiguous space for the senior center that can feel like more of a senior center on an entire floor, creating a more hospitable home for our board of health, our Crest Department and our DEI office, and then the common areas in terms for, it's a very heavily used building for meetings and exercise and all kinds of initiatives, drumming circles we heard tonight right now. And also we want to make sure that the senior center had space to create an exercise room so that that could be utilized because that's one of the high priorities that the senior center has identified is we have the equipment, we need a space that's safe and that can be monitored. So all those things we hope to get out of the renovation of the Banks Community Center. Next slide. So last time when we talked about solar, installing solar in our town, we had talked about the regional school district because that was a site, a priority site. When we got into looking at that site, there were many issues that came up. One was we don't own the site, the regional school district did and we would have had to work out some agreements with the regional school district about the construction, who would own it, who would take care of it over time, not insurmountable, but just another thing. And then we started looking at other locations to meet that goal, the goal of producing more clean energy by utilizing solar on built environments as opposed to on forest land. And the opportunity at Fort River presented itself. If you know our Fort River, we talk about being a net zero building, which is being met by geothermal, but also with solar canopies that Kathy had mentioned earlier today that covers about a third, maybe a little bit more of the parking lot. So there's two thirds of the parking lot that do not have solar canopies. We could utilize ARPA funds to place these solar canopies on, this won't get the entire, it'll get about a third, another third of the parking lot with solar canopies. The advantages of this is that, and because it'll be a brand new parking lot with fresh pavement, so there's no preparation, the contractor will already be there putting the solar canopies in, this could extend it. So meet the sort of goals that we had said last time about the regional school district would put it on the elementary school. It aligns with our priority for in our townwide solar assessment. Over time, there's a distinct benefit of the solar is giving us credits on our electric bills that if applied to the school district would provide electricity credits over a long time. A member of the school committee actually had asked about this as an option. It could qualify for tax credit payments. We might, we need to look into that more. There might be some issues with that, but also it's additional solar panels and a highly visible impactful project that is gonna be a real proud moment for the town, but also for our children as well. And then the last was one that I heard a lot from a lot of you about our roads and sidewalks. And I think this came up a lot during the election as you were campaigning. And while this is our sort of catch all as much money as we can put in here, we will put in. We know that there's a large need for additional investment in roads and sidewalks. We would take the money that we had the 300,000 plus if anything else over the course of the next few months isn't going to come to fruition, it would flow into the roads and sidewalks. We know we can spend money on roads and sidewalks. The need is there. We have the technical capacity to get the money out the door. So that would be the plan for this. So this is our website. So I welcome your comments and thoughts on this plan. We are now to a point where counselors are welcome to comment. Kathy. First of all, thank you very much for going backwards and telling us where the money has already been allocated. So I had just a few questions on that. And then your last comment was to extent any of those estimated obligations doesn't need as much money. It would just be redirected to roads. That's what I understood you. So when Dave talked about the million dollar for affordable housing and that there were 600,000 obligated for the wayfarers leaving another 400, we have to obligate by the end of December as I understand. Can it be to a general category called affordable housing or do we have to have another project that we say this project is getting it? So just trying to understand whether, does that 400,000, if, and I don't like a user or loser way of thinking about it. So I would rather say we have a project and this is where it goes. So do you want me to list each of them or Lynn, how do you want me to? However you'd like to comment. So that was the comment on that one. Sure. So Holly or Leah or Martha may weigh in on this. You can't just put it into a general category and say it's for this. It has to be under contract so that it is guaranteed to be spent or it's scheduled to be spent and you can show a contract saying, yes, this is gonna be done. Leah, do you want to weigh in on that? Yes, that's correct. Okay, so that's a remains to be seen that other piece. Then on the- But it may go back to that. So that's a good example. So Dave says he's got other projects in the works but if they don't come to fruition in the near future we're going to say we need to program that money. And what I'm telling you, what I'm showing you tonight is here's how we would look to reprogram that money if it didn't become available. Then the heat pumps. I think that those are terrific. So I don't exactly understand how you plan to have that work, but heat pumps are definitely eligible for federal tax credits. So however you're getting them into and as I understood them it was help people afford a heat pump. So however you're planning on getting that out making sure there's some assistance to people to understand how to apply for both the federal side and the state side would be important. Just so people have public buildings heat pumps aren't eligible, but homeowners heat pumps are eligible. So- Right, so this program and Dave may know more about it than I but Stephanie Chickarello, our sustainability director has been working on this. It's really to help lower income folks who don't have the capital to invest in heat pumps to be able to access it because it does save energy and helps promote climate action, climate whatever resilience in the future. And so it really is about not helping just helping a broad range of people but specifically helping lower income folks who don't have that ability. That's why I really like it. So I just think that this other piece is if it's an 8,000 or 5,000 and there's a thousand you can get back making sure people understand that. We can help educate folks to that. And Leah or Martha, Dave? Yeah, I just wanted to add, no, Kathy, you're spot on with that and I know Stephanie is on top of that. We would be working with a company to actually run the program. Stephanie would oversee that contract but we're not gonna do that work ourselves, the outreach and all of that but Stephanie will oversee it. And as most of you know, if you really study our energy usage in town, the university and the colleges are actually doing quite well. The town is doing well in its own right and launching the new net zero school is wonderful but the actual demand, the actual usage is in residential development. So this is both, as Paul said, providing funding for people who may not be able to afford that upfront cost but it's also addressing those fossil fuels that family that might be using oil or natural gas and helping them to get onto electricity and more sustainable fuels. Holly Drake has her hand up. I'm assuming it's in relationship to this, Holly. So I just wanted to briefly state that the heat pump program would be similar to the solar installation program that the town sponsored several years ago. It would be for residents to get lower cost heat pumps installed very similar to the solar program. Thank you. Okay, one more on the first, the sixth grade moved to the middle school got moved off. I mean, my memory is we had about 500,000. They're going to move at some point. Where will the money come from when they actually are ready to move now that the upper way of paying for this has disappeared? So we had offered those funds to the school district in anticipation of them moving. I think they used like $30,000 for planning or something like that, but they notified us a year ago saying that we were not going to be able to expend those funds in a timeframe that we won't be able to contract it by the end of this calendar year and expend it in the next two years. So that's what we went with. So it leaves a hole in- I'm not sure exactly what their plan is for relocating. Okay, maybe hole is not quite the right word. I'm not sure if anybody on the team knows more than I do on that. Unfunded. So I think I'll stop because I see other hands are up. I do have a question on banks. Not so much the dollar amount you've talked about, but in JCPC and the joint capital planning committee, one of the proposals is for roofs, a big amount of money, 500,000. And it was proposed for part of banks. So I'm wondering if this is here, it can lower the other or this is in addition to that. Okay, thank you. This is in addition. Anna. All right, so Dave, you said something and I tried to take really fast notes and I might need you to repeat it. And it's about the heat pump program again, because I think when I'm hearing about this, I'm like, well, I wanna make sure I'm getting the information out to people. And so what you're saying is that this is a longer-term program that you're establishing the ability to coordinate that Stephanie or our internal team wouldn't be coordinating it. And this money will be allocated in the timeframe. I think I had that question about a couple of the projects. So you've got that plan. So first of all, it will be allocated, it will be spent within the ARPA deadlines and timeline. That's no question. What I meant was Stephanie will be coordinating it, but we will be working with a company that actually does the installation and the work itself. And so as Holly said, it'd be very similar to the residential solar incentive program we did a couple of years ago, the idea of trying to help people break through that threshold and those upfront costs can be pretty significant, whether you're putting solar on your house or heat pumps in your residence. So we will be coordinating it. I don't have a launch date, but all of that will be coordinated through Stephanie and there will be significant public outreach and an application process and all of that. You guessed one of my questions, but not the other. Do you have a thought on anticipated impact of this program? How many residences or residents or residences you may be able to reach? I don't know that, but I can take it back to Stephanie and get more information. I don't think it's an urgent question. I'm more curious. Thank you. Jennifer. Thank you. Yeah, I just had a couple of questions about the youth empowerment. I'm not sure if that was for a center or programming of $500,000. Was that to implement or to study or both? So it won't build a building, but we want to develop the plan for it, identify a site and actually get within the next two and a half years and get something up and running. That's the goal. That was one of the goals that we identified earlier. I mean, one of our challenges, just to be frank with you is that we lost our finance director and he was sort of the cinch pin for many of these projects. And losing him, I think we would all agree was a major loss. And I appreciate Leah and Holly stepping in, but some of these things have dragged a little bit, but we did not want to lose the initiative because that was what identified early on was a high priority for the town. So we have that in with effort to be made, knowing what the deadlines are to move that forward. I had another question about the bank center. I was just, it sounded like part of the money was gonna be used for an architect and to do planning for the broader needs of the center, but would like a kitchen actually get built? With that money? Yeah, the intent is that we would have an architect come and work with the residents, the council on aging and the people who occupy the space, talk to the community about what their needs and desires are, and then try to design something within the budget that we have to see how far we can get. So yes, it's in, we would wanna be able to bid that out and get under contract by the end of this calendar year. So the two and a half million might, we get a new kitchen, but it might not. Commercial kitchen, it's on our list, but they're very expensive, and we have to see how that, where the number's coming on that. But that's the plan, Dave can address this, that is included in the plan now, right, Dave? Obviously. Yeah, and actually the commercial kitchen, given all the other needs of the bank center, the commercial kitchen is there. It's not an insignificant amount of money, but it's not actually the biggest ticket item in that 2.5. I did wanna say too, because I was listening to earlier comments about community needs, and somebody did talk about the bank center. So it's no coincidence. Paul just mentioned the Youth Empowerment Center and that we don't have the community resources right now to build a new building for that, but we are looking at how we can better utilize town buildings to serve youth in our community. So the bank center makes perfect sense. So there is a synergy between youth empowerment work in our community and the bank center. So we're looking at that. It's downtown, it's central, it's on the bus line. It serves so many people now as we're illustrated in many of the letters we got and you got and also what we heard tonight from some of the speakers. So invest in that building. That's what we're looking at. Jennifer. Yeah, no, thank you. I have to admit, I didn't realize. Okay. Councilor Hananson. Thank you. A couple of questions. I think the one on the senior center for me was slightly answered, which is, is two and a half million enough for everything that was mentioned. Because it seems like there was a lot mentioned and two and a half million isn't that much. But the question that came up to me was if we don't have a architect yet, how is that money getting encumbered by December 31 if there's no design yet? So you have to hire an architect, design, do all the outreach for the design, create the bid documents, get them out, and then sign a contract all by December 31. That seems like an extremely tight timeline. Is it doable? I'm looking to Dave. You're right. It's a very tight timeline. We need to get into it. We know the work has to be done on the banks. And so we need to know what has to be done. And the goal is to use ARPA funds to support it. I'm gonna show you more detail in that, Dave, in terms of time frames. No, it's an aggressive timeline, no doubt. We're ready to go. I mean, we're ready to get an architect on board and working with our internal team on that. So we're ready to go on that. I think I might've used the word vision about the bank center. I think it's more program. What is the program? And the program will center around, of course, the first floor senior center, creating a space for seniors to feel safe for exercise, for meetings, for all of the things that have been identified by the council on aging and our senior center director. So, and of course our facilities team. So it's an aggressive timeline, we're ready to go at ASAP. Yeah, so I just add that town staff have already done a fair amount of work on this. They've done some plans, some layouts, talked with people. So in terms of the occupants laid out how could this be possible? That's how we got to the 2.5 million. We know that it triggers certain life safety features that we would have to address. There's some building issues that they know, but it's not like we're starting cold. They've done a lot of some already done some plans or just to see sort of what we call a fit plan. Does it fit? Right. We've had meetings with health, DEI, grass, and of course the senior center, council of aging have participated in those meetings. Okay. Well, if it can get done or you think it can, I support the work at the senior center just a couple more Lynn. Please. The youth empowerment money. One of the things you talked about as your, one of your goals was not increasing operating costs or using this to support operating costs. If new programming is created through a youth empowerment center, how is that going to be worked into future operating budgets? Presuming it will have some ongoing operating costs. That's a very good question. We know that the demand is there, I think for an autonomous youth empowerment center. And putting aside funds to both create it and to help it get launched. And then looking at a recreation department model in terms of maybe there's a way to generate revenue in some ways, we don't have an answer to that one. Okay. The solar tax credits that you said might be possible. So if I'm understanding that correctly, I just want to figure out if I'm understanding this correctly. We would spend ARPA money on it for solar canopies and then potentially receive federal tax credits back that would then be able to be used without a timeline for other capital projects. If that's allowed, that's what it would work for. Right, that's why I understand. Okay. And Kathy knows it better. If I could just add in at least one other town they have checked, could they use ARPA funds for this and get a federal tax credit? The answer seemed to be yes. Oh, okay. You know, I mean it was, it's a little odd, but and just it's a 30% tax credit. So when you compute what it is, it's not insignificant on panels. My last question, so thank you. Please go ahead. For your announcements. I know there's a lot of talk about needing road repairs and all. I'm having a hard time understanding how ARPA funds and road repairs relate to the original purpose of ARPA funds, which was issues related to COVID. And starting with 300,000 when there might be a lot more, if this is your default into what we would spend it on come December 20th to contract out from affordable housing from potentially youth empowerment from all of these places, senior center, even if solar can't get, there's a lot of places that there's a lot of, we hope we can get it contracted by then, but we might not be able to and our default is roads. Can you talk about why you believe roads is an appropriate spending for COVID money? I mean, Martha Lee, I can talk about whether it's an appropriate category. I can talk to you about why we chose roads. The first was because the council repeatedly has identified that as one of its highest priorities. The second is that we know we can spend it. We can actually go back in time and allocate funds that we've already spent to ARPA based on these roads freeing up those funds for future road projects. So we know we can get it out the door if depending on how much we use. Leah or Martha, do you wanna weigh in on the appropriate? Yeah, is Martha here because I think it is one of the newer eligibility categories. That's it exactly. As was mentioned, ARPA continued to develop new categories, subcategories, and requirements, regulations, and they specifically added on roads and sidewalks as a permitted use. May I just make one last comment about that to follow up? I feel like given the uncertainty with all of the rest of the spending that starting with 300,000 already in that one is a bit much and that I feel like much of that 300,000 could be spent for other categories before we default to roads and sidewalks because we have nine months to find a way to encumber it in other areas. That's my initial sort of thought. Okay, thank you, that's useful. Okay, Councilor Walker. Thank you, Mr. Bachmann for I'm sure the considerable amount of time that went into making this presentation. I have a number of questions and comments. I'll try to pick ones that have not already been asked, but I did wanna say that for the type of learner that I am, the presentation was really hard to follow because of the way that it was set up. And so it was hard to distinguish what has been spent versus what is being allocated in the second round. And then we have a slide that says summary of allocations through 1231-24, but that included things that were in the first round and the second round, but then we had another category that said pending allocations. So were those not included? Are those not due to be allocated by 1231-24? I just think it was really hard for me to follow, especially for just having received it today. So that's just some feedback for me. And then also in terms of clarity, in terms of where the funding is actually going, there were some things that were hard for me to distinguish, for example, repair overused recreational facilities. Like what does that mean? Where did the money go? What did it address? That's very unclear. Also capital project management. Where did that money go? What did it address? Like a lot of it was very broad blanket categories that didn't give me a very good idea as to what the money is being used for. So I would like some more clarity on those things. Like what exactly that means? Capital project management overused recreational facilities. And then just some comments in terms of some of the challenges with establishing affordable housing. Like I am always happy to hear that our town is looking to invest in affordable housing, but I still do have the concern about how are we determining what affordable housing is? Because we said 68 of the 78 units will be affordable units with a mixed units. So some will be for extremely low income. So what does that mean? So then how many of the 68 are actually gonna be affordable housing units? That's also very unclear. And then the 100K for the resident oversight board, it says that work has begun and it's going to continue. I would love to know what has happened there, how we plan to use the 100K and if that is actually going to create the resident oversight board or is that just still to look into things? Also in terms of the monies that was gave to small businesses, the chart had two categories that said growth grants versus startup grants. I would love to know what amount was offered in each of those grants because it's my understanding and I could be wrong, which is why I'm asking that they were considerably low compared to, for example, the amount of money that was awarded to the Drake. And so saying that we gave $5,000 to a business is very small. And so I would like to know the difference between a growth grant and a startup grant. I also would like to know the senior center van transportation. It says that we allocated money for that and I know we got a lot of comments about the frequency that rides are given and so did that increase the frequency or is that just maintaining the current schedule? Also, some clarity on what pending allocation means. Does that mean we're definitely allocating that or we're still thinking about it? I also wanted to know what would happen the tax credits when they're received. Is that something that would be determined at another time or is that something we can determine before those funds are allocated? And I also wanted to just make mention of, there was a statement that you made in the beginning before you started your presentation that said this presentation was developed before some of the compelling comments that occurred tonight. And while I know some comments from tonight were specific, like some of the details were specific to tonight, but a lot of the comments that we had tonight, we have heard multiple times well before this presentation was established. And so I'm kind of concerned that a lot of those were not addressed in this presentation. So when I think about like, what is the purpose of ARPA funding? We think about addressing issues that were exacerbated or created by the COVID-19 pandemic. And when we think about populations and just categories of residents and resources that were disproportionately affected by COVID-19, my brain goes to number one, first and foremost, black and brown residents and businesses, seniors, youth, low income families. And so a number of those things have been addressed with these allocations, but one of the things that is still severely lacking is black and brown residents and businesses. And I think that's a major concern because it is clear, I think research shows everywhere that these communities and businesses were already disproportionately addressed before the pandemic and the pandemic just further exacerbated that. And so those areas are in significant need of attention. One of the categories that we have that was to address a portion of that, in my opinion, was the resident aid. And I know I've talked to you about some of these concerns before, but it feels like significant enough to bring it up again, that there are a number of requirements and restrictions around accessing those funds that almost make it insignificant in the way that we are distributing those funds. So for example, if a family was really affected by COVID in terms of their finances, they can only receive the resident aid if they are behind on their rent enough that they have already received an eviction notice. There's no other way to access those funds. So that means, I didn't mean speaking from myself as someone who has grown up living in poverty and as a low income mother, sometimes you have to make decisions as to which bills you pay and sometimes you can't pay them all. And I'm sure that that was the case for a lot of residents during COVID and sometimes people pay their rent as opposed to paying their electric bill or their heating bill, which we are not allowing residents to receive aid for those things because of the way that the restrictions on these allocations are. And I'm hoping that that can be changed because we would have such a greater impact if we had different restrictions requirements in terms of how we're allocating the resident aid. Sorry, can I just say one last thing? And I think the BBAAA in their proposal was addressing that also. So you could kind of address two areas, should that be something that you include? That was a lot to put into one question. So I'm going to ask the town manager to begin with wherever he would like to and then we may have to come back and be prompted by what some of your other questions were. So these are really terrific questions. So I thank you for them. The presentation, it is complicated and it was unclear because things are moving a lot in terms of categories and things like that. What we tried to do is match up, is to look at how we present information in the past and try to do that. Obviously we could have done a better job because it's not as clear as people would like. So we can work on that. You asked a lot of specific questions about how specific money, we didn't get that in writing to you because I think we have that all documented. I mean, Martha could pull that up but I don't think it's time well spent for the council. But each one of those things on the recreational facilities, what did we spend it on? Capital projects management, affordable housing, how many units, the $100,000 for the resident oversight board, how, what's that gonna buy? Is it gonna get all these, I get, I have all these questions. The small business grants growth versus startup by grant amount, senior transportation, what did we, I think a lot of them were like, what did we get with for our money? It's a basic question, which is really, you're saying exactly what we should do. Depending on allocation means that that's what we have said, that's how we're gonna spend the next tranche of money, the round three. That's what the pending allocation, it's not been allocated yet, but because I want to talk with the council. The tax credits, I forget what that one was. I was just wondering if once we received tax credits is where they would go and if that's something that is determined at another time or if that's something we can determine before we allocate the funds. Yeah, I think that's a separate transaction when the money comes back into the town. I'm not sure how that works quite honestly, we'll figure that out. And then in terms of the focus on black and brown residents and black and brown business owners, I appreciate that. And then the challenge, we have talked about the challenge in accessing resident aid funds. That program is run by Family Outreach of Amherst and we have not heard others really complain, maybe Leah or Martha have heard others, but I know that that's been a very popular program. That's why we put more money into it. So... Can I clarify something about that program? Yeah, of course. I just, the requirements are you, we can overdo utility bills are an acceptable allocation. So we've had plenty of people who have submitted for electric gas. I think I heard you say that it wasn't an eligible expense. You need to have a shut off notice. That is part of the requirement. I have reached out directly to the program. Yeah, or an overdue notice. So we've done plenty of applications where the rent is overdue, the mortgage is overdue, utilities are overdue. I just wanted to make sure people aren't not applying because of that. Cause I haven't heard of anyone that has been denied an application except someone who tried to apply twice. I also would like to say that we have received emails to our council email of residents complaining of such. So... That's interesting. Cause I haven't heard of that. We can look into that Councilor Rock. Yeah. Okay. Sorry, if I can just say one last thing, I'd be happy to resend my list of questions cause I have them written down just to make sure. But I was hoping that just before we move along that you might be able to speak to the absence of additional funding and support for black and brown businesses and residents and why we don't see that even in the third round of pending allocations. So when we looked at, there were many competing needs and many very worthwhile things that we could invest funds in. And when I was looking at how to expend the funds in a timely manner, these are the things that I put on, that I identified. Again, as I said, this is, you know, hearing your comments tonight and others, we will take all the comments back and talk about it tomorrow. Thank you. Councilor Pam Rooney, please. Thank you. I also want to appreciate the staff putting this together. It is a little difficult to digest when it comes in after five and you've already gone off to make supper before the meeting. So this is the first time many of us, I think are hearing the details of this. I appreciate the background look, but I would reiterate what I just heard from Councilor Walker and Councilor Hanakie. The roads in this case, given that we have this looming crisis in the schools, I want to make sure that we are, that we're aware of this really broad looming fiscal cliff. Question on solar panels. So is with the money towards solar panels in this case, be in addition to what has been allocated for the project now or would it in fact help cover some of the solar panel costs to the project, thus enabling us to lower the amount that we would borrow? As far as digesting this information, would it be possible to post the breakdown, just to remind us all in detail where the money was spent? A little bit like a JCPC capital budget, just line by line of where the previous monies went. Resident oversight board, the 100,000, Alicia brought that up, but is there still money in there? Can we complete the creation of a resident oversight board with the 100,000 that was originally identified? And then go to the bank center. I am a strong supporter of putting money into the bank center. I would like as whoever is doing the space allocation process to recognize that from whatever we've heard, there is already a dearth of space for the health center. There's already too little space for the senior center and their functions. We have staff there. I would love to see the staff not be in that building and find them a home where the building itself can just be completely a community center to try to shoehorn in a youth empowerment location as well at this point in time. I think it's not possible. And I would hate to try to go down that path in a hurry and I'm jeopardizing all the other programs that are just sort of competing for the space needs today. I think that's it for now, but I appreciate the information. I would not, I guess it grows as a catch-all. That's fine, but given our fiscal cliffs, I think we do have more looming, hate to say it, more looming issues. Thanks. I was brief. Did you have a response to any of that? No, I think on our website, which there's a link at the end of the presentation and just apologies for you getting it. We were working on the presentation over the weekend and today is of two o'clock also. So it's just how we're in the middle of budget season just everything's hitting all at the same time. So sorry about that. So on our website, Martha can confirm what is on our website. Sure, on the ARPA page of the website, it has the past presentations that were given to the town council as well as each quarterly report that we do online to the federal government. And then each, we called them snapshots. Each individual project has a snapshot that outlines how the funds were originally intended and some of the metrics that go along with that. So all of those are available on the town website. Thank you, Martha. And one of the challenges we had for tonight was to really want to focus on the pending allocation discussion because I thought that was where the council's interest would be as opposed to analyzing how money was spent in the past. And so we didn't really focus as much on that, knowing that that was on many of that, much of that information was on the website. Utilizing my privilege as a counselor. I just wanna go back to the solar canopy. We've already, I believe, designated an additional five million from our reserves toward the school project with the hopes that that would be reimbursed somehow or another through tax credits. Am I correct on that? To a certain extent. If I may, we would need to look at the solar canopy as an almost a distinct and separate project from the school project. Meaning the additional five million that we... No, the one million that we're talking about tonight. We would be looking at that as a separate one. Right. Okay. I keep going back. I'm totally in support of the elementary school project. I'm just wondering if the five, we've already done the five million from reserves, whether or not this is the place to put this money. Although I personally don't wanna see it, lose one dime of this money. So I totally support projects that can get done and be done in time and allocated now. I think I'm gonna pause there. A lot of other people have mentioned most of the other things I would have asked about. And so rather than take up time, I'm gonna go on to Councilor Lord. Thank you. I wanted to first bring up the idea of affordable housing and how much money we are pouring into it and the developers. There is a Bloomberg article about how college towns have the highest levels of income inequality. I think when we are figuring out what affordable is, we do it based on a median or some kind of income average. And when we're including the professors of Amherst College and UMass, I don't think it paints a fair picture. I don't know what to do about that if we could ever disaggregate or separate those and see what affordable housing is for those that aren't tenured professors or presidents, et cetera. So I'm grateful that we're taking steps towards affordable housing, but I think we still need to do a deeper dive into making it accessible for lower income families because all of us bring such richness to this town in our different socioeconomic brackets and our different ethnic backgrounds and religious backgrounds, et cetera. Another thing I do, I would like to see some money allocated to more black and brown businesses and families because part of how we feel we belong is we see ourselves represented in the stores. And specifically in food, I see a few different ethnicities well-represented. And I don't, now we do have a cake place, a bakery, yay. But I was very sad to lose a restaurant in town that could not get the help of our funds. One more thing, oh, and also I want to agree with Councillor Walker around getting access to the help you need. I was unhoused here in Amherst for nine months in 2010. So now rent is the thing I pay even if it's on credit cards because housing and security is real. And so what if I've been buying groceries and rent on a credit card and I don't have access to the help I need because it's not an electric bill or a rental bill, eviction notice. We have a free store here in Amherst and we don't check people's incomes. We don't look at what car you drive in here. We walk out on faith. I know we can't really do that at this time with this money but if we can have a little more grace and faith for people to get the help they need in the world that I want to live in, it'd be like, hey, if you need it, come get it. No questions asked. And those of us who don't need it don't take it. We're not there, but that's a world I dream of one day and I'll stay delusional. I do thank you for all the work you put into this. Oh, I'm sorry, one more thing. Those solar canopies, that's tricky for me because I do, I think people are hurting and I want to prioritize our families and our businesses but I also know we're moving towards a green. Also nod to the house poor, quote unquote. I'm glad we're making some room for homeowners that are low income because they often get left out. Thank you. Andy? Yes, as far as the roads is concerned, the act, the statute that created the ARPA program clearly permits that. And the Massachusetts Municipal Association Committee in which I'm a member, which is a fiscal policy committee, did earlier in the process, try and do a little bit of an informal survey on how different communities were using ARPA funds and why. And the reason that that was placed in the statute was the recognition that COVID crisis caused an inflation and construction costs. And therefore it was looking for places where communities were falling behind because of the COVID crisis and the increase in construction costs was one of them. As we look back on what happened with roads, what we found was that because of materials costs as well as labor costs, but largely materials costs, that the cost of constructions of roads went up tremendously and we were able to do far fewer linear feet of roadway than we thought when we originally had allocated money for it. So it does seem to me that catching up on roads is an appropriate thing to consider. And that is what a number of communities reported that they had done in some fashion, not necessarily roads, but the whole range of different kinds of projects. The other thing that I wanted to ask the town manager is with the business grants that were given out in earlier rounds, the economic development and business grants. Some of that was of course allocated with the assistance of the business improvement district. Was there a process of establishing criteria that was with the town participation in establishing the criteria and what kind of oversight role did the town exhibit when it allocated those grants? Leah or Martha, do you wanna take that or I have some notes on that? So when we started thinking about the criteria for the small business grants, it was really, there was no guidance from the treasury. There was no real guidance of sort of how to do the process and it was a lot of looking at other communities and seeing what other communities were doing as criteria and then also following some federal guidelines. So a lot of the criteria has to be brick and mortar, had to be within Amherst, you know, less than 50 employees. All of that came from sort of what everyone else was working on at the same time through their ARPA money and how it could contribute to economic development. And also the amounts that we wanted to give out. We also took into consideration the fact that way back then at the beginning of the pandemic, there were still a bunch of money available from other sources that had COVID money for small businesses that they hadn't been able to give out. So all of that thinking back like maybe three years now was taken into consideration. It was reviewed by different departments in the town. It was reviewed by our attorneys. Try to remember who else we actually reviewed the criteria with. No, I have an answer to that. Okay, go ahead. So this is a question that was asked last time by the council. So I can just read you the answer that we provided. Yes, there were written criteria created by the town and provided to the bid as the focus of this program was economic development. And so we had to take into consideration the amount of money that we were offering as the ample, the town determined that allocation between startup and growth grants. We limited the maximum grant to $10,000 and we required that at least 50% of the funds be awarded to BIPOC, LGBTQ women or other marginalized community owned businesses. Businesses had to demonstrate that they were negatively impacted by the pandemic. The applicant's payment of taxes had to be current and in good financial standing. We kept small businesses at 50 or fewer employees Okay, thank you. George. Just a quick comment on putting money into roads. It's much more than just filling a pothole. Potholes, you're all going to drive over tonight on your way home. It's also about bike lanes, crosswalks, crossing lights. It's basically about pedestrian and bike safety. It's not just fixing up a hold or two. It's about traffic calming. So putting money into roads is about a lot more than just fixing the road itself. And we should keep that in mind. It's a very big need in town. We hear it all the time when we talk to our constituents that keep in mind it's about more than just the road itself. It's also about pedestrian and bike safety. Anna, I'm going to go to Pat since she's not spoken at all. Okay, Anna, please go ahead. Two quick comments. I think one of the things, Alicia, you asked the question about the definition of affordable a while ago and I looked it up and I forgot to show the answer. That's my bet. Because I was curious about it too and I think it's a really, it's a valid question of where can we create definitions that apply to our community? And what I found is that the text of the ARPA bill does limit it to the United States Housing Act definition. So we're bound by that, by the definition there, which I can send you the text of. It's really long and hard to get through, but I can send it to you. So I think we are bound to use the ARPA funding by that definition, if that makes sense, in terms of how we define very low income and low income. That was the one thing I wanted to mention. And then the other thing was the solar canopy project. I think one of the things coming in today, I was looking at the extreme fiscal cliff that we're facing in our schools and I'm recognizing that one time ARPA funds will not stop a fiscal cliff. They can hypothetically postpone it, but finding an allowable use for ARPA funds in that is a little bit tricky. The reason why the solar canopy is really compelling to me is because it would eventually or quickly start to reduce operating costs for that school building. And I think that we have seen the need to reduce costs anywhere other than staffing that we can. And this has the potential to support that vision. So that for me is one of the really extremely compelling cases to be made for that particular project. Thanks. Pat, are you ready? Thank you for reminding me, but on the mic. Thank you for talking about the criteria that was created. I would love to see more money in almost every one of these areas. So, but one of the things that I've been thinking about is what is community and that it's not one thing. Would I like to see more money into small businesses owned by black and brown people? Yes, but as we went through this, I wanted to say that I felt that the way that the ARPA fund has been distributed and potentially will be distributed has tried to directly address a lot of the issues that have come up from the community safety working group, from members of the BIPOC community in all areas. There was a call for a resident oversight board. Money is going there. There's call for youth empowerment center. Money is going there. We created Crests. We created a DEI department. The mobile market is being funded, which directly creates food access for people who have lack of transportation by bringing basically pop-up markets, Lauren knows about issues in on the creation. That directly affects BIPOC and low income white people. You talk about heat pump program. You're talking about resident aid. Is there enough there? No, is there enough for small business? No, but I want us to acknowledge what we have been trying to do and that I think we've been doing a decent job. It's very easy to criticize and say what's wrong. Let's take just a breath and look at what we have heard and what we have tried to do and are trying to do because I think that we have done a fairly decent job. Thank you. Councilor Haneke? I'm gonna be really quick. I raised my hand to say the same thing, Anna just covered about the solar of it reducing ultimately operating costs at our elementary schools, which seems very important right now. So plus one to those comments and since I'm going after Pat, plus one to Pat's comments too. All right, I think we're done with the comments and we do need to move on to the rest of our agenda. I am going, I'm sorry, Councilor Walker. I just have a quick question about process. So now what happens with our allocation funding? Does the town manager just take into consideration our comments and then it comes back to us like will there be any changes made? Will it just come back the same? Will we be asked to vote on it the next time that it comes? First of all, I know that the town manager will take into consideration our now our plus discussion on this and the many public comments as well. ARPA funds are actually nothing we do. We don't vote on our ARPA funds, okay? So we can ask for a report back at some point, at any point in time in meetings as part of the town managers, report and or any time besides that. So this doesn't come back to the council? I'm sorry, I didn't hear it. This doesn't come back to the council? Not for a vote. But for a discussion or for anything? Like this is just the last time we talk about it. It can always come back to the council for further discussion and report. Okay, thank you. Okay. So given the hour, I am going to suggest that item four, five, six and seven. All, if you will notice our referrals to the town services and outreach committee, all of them ask that we in the motions hear back from them by May 6th. And so I would like to combine all of that into one motion and that if there are questions from the council that either they be brief and raised tonight or that we send, we ask counselors specifically to send those to TSO. Is there any objection to combining the motions? And I just want to check on which ones you're talking about. So are you talking about all the ones that have with roadways? I'm talking about everything regarding roadways. So it would be Beltertown Road Improvements. It would be Heatherstone Road Improvements. Okay, that's all. I'm fine and I have question and comments, but I will put them together and send them to TSO. So I just want to make sure they're, maybe when they're being discussed that we get an alert for those of us who aren't on TSO so we can participate. I don't have a question on every single one of them, but I have a question on a few. Okay, Anna. I have questions on every single one and I'm just kidding. If we have questions specifically for Guilford and we would like Guilford to have a chance to ponder those questions prior to going to TSO, should we send them to Paul or Guilford or who? To Paul. All right, thank you. Okay. And also I actually would prefer that all questions regarding any of these four items be not just sent to Paul, but to be sent to the chair and coach and vice chair of TSO so that everybody's kind of looking at the same pool. Okay. Could you remind us who the chair and vice chair? I know the chair, but who's the chair? Indy is the chair and George Ryan is the vice chair. Thank you, Mr. Ryan. Thank you. So, Athena. I'm getting you a motion. She's trying to put this into one motion. And just to be clear, Lynn, if we're sending you to chair and vice chair, can we also copy Paul? Yes. Okay, good. I just want to make sure that we aren't sending some questions to Paul and other questions that you're in vice chair. That's fine. It's just... Do all three. That's great. Thank you. We're pausing for just a moment. Okay. So, all right. Would you like me to read this? I think that would be good. And then one of us can put it in motion and the other we can look for a second and then go on. Okay. To refer the following permanent changes to the public way to the town services and outreach committee with a report to the council by May 6th, 2024. Permanent changes to the public way on Beltertown Road as shown on the construction plan titled Beltertown Road Route 9 Improvements, STA 2 plus 72 to STA 11 plus 43, dated March, 2024 to the town, sir, oops, I'm gonna take this out. Permanent changes to the public way on Heatherstone Road as shown on the conceptual plan titled Heatherstone Road Sidewalk Concept, dated February, 29, 2024. Proposed changes to the intersection of Amity Street and University Drive to convert the existing intersection from signaled control to a full-sized roundabout and permanent changes to the public way on West Street as shown on the conceptual plan titled Sidewalks and Double Splitter Islands, dated January 2nd, 2024. So moved. Thank you. Thank you. Second. All right, are there any further questions or comments? Guilford, do you have your hand up? I was just gonna say that these are pretty straightforward changes mostly just adding sidewalks. If you want to be bold and ambitious and save yourself several more meetings, just vote to accept them and we can move on. Actually, a couple of them do require that there be some public comment options. So I certainly expect that TSO may come back to us and say accept them. Okay. We'll see. The motion's been made and seconded. Any further comments? I think we're to Councilor Hannake. Aye. Bob Higner. Aye. Councilor Lord. Aye. Pam Rooney. Yes. Councilor Ryan. Aye. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Aye. Jennifer Taub. Yes. Councilor Walker. Yes. Oh. Pat DeAngelis. Anna Devon-Gothier. Aye. Councilor Ette. Aye. Lynn Griezmer is an aye. It's unanimous. Okay. We are now on to item B, which is the $1.5 million regional school debt authorization. I'm going to call on Bob Higner, as chair of the finance committee to provide us a brief introduction or review of this and the summary of the finance committee's vote. Thank you, Lynn. I'll try to make this very brief. On January 23rd of this year, the regional school district voted to rescind a $1.5 million authorization that had already occurred in the past in 2022, and then it was revised in 23 for relocating the Amherst High School, regional high school track. And then they reinstated the same borrowing but they changed the wording to make it less specific in terms of what the project, the final project would look like. And there are four basic options. One is to keep the current track as it is, just replace it. Then the second option or one B is to keep the current track where it is, but enlarge it and put it with a grass inner field. The third or the second option, option two is relocate and reorient and reenlarge the track with a grass inner field and then the final option was the same thing but with a turf field. And we looked at the, and all this is in the report, we looked at what the cost estimates were back in 2021 and try to estimate how much they would appreciate so much. And then we looked at the funding sources available to the regional school district. And these are all laid out in the report. Suffice it to say that with existing funding, certain options can't be paid for. So additional funding would be required. And that's with the 2021 estimates. If you inflate things, the existing money may be enough to enlarge the current track, but it probably isn't just so everyone knows. So the committee was split on this. We did approve it, but it was not unanimous. And we had some serious concerns with the project. First is the uncertainty. We don't know what the final project will be. And especially with now the school, the regional school being having such a funding crisis, I don't know if we can, where this project will stand as we go forward. The existing funding, as I said, may not even be adequate for, we certainly, it's not gonna be sufficient for the reorienting the track, but it may not even be sufficient for the simplest repairs. Timing, there's a timing issue in that updated cost estimates won't be available until the April or May timeframe, but we only have till the 23rd to make, we the council to make a decision on this. I should point out there's three things we can do. We can say yay to reauthorize the debt. We can say no to reauthorize the debt or we can do nothing. And the debt then is after 60 days, and I'm not sure whether that's a calendar or a working day, but after 60 days, it's a pocket approval if we do nothing. So the three choices we have are to say yes, say no, or do nothing, in which case that's a pocket approval. Then there's no issue, another issue is the long-term maintenance and replacement of the facility. It's not clear whether these are included in the costs. And then there's an issue with stormwater drainage and how well that's replaced. And then finally, there's a lot of facilities, strategic plan, which was developed in 2019, and it does include the only thing it really has in there is the track and field, but it includes a reorientation of that. So if the school doesn't choose to go to reorienting the track, then that strategic plan is basically obsolete. So again, the committee voted to reorient the track to accept the reauthorization of the debt, although we had reservations about the project. Is there anybody else from, yeah, Cathy, please go ahead. Just to expand on Bob, I agree with everything he said. And the reason we voted to move forward with a recommendation to say yes is otherwise the money that's on the book disappears. It disappears from the regional school budget. It disappears from our capital budget and what we're, and it's important to keep it there. So the decision on what will be done, there's a deadline based in this of November. There's additional money the town of Amherst has voted for as well as we voted for it of our cash surplus, free cash plus CPAC money. Some rewording would be needed on that, but there's enough money to do more than just a track once there's a decision on what to do. So the majority on the committee, and Mandy's hand is up because she was in the minority, voted to advise the council to move forward and say yes. Councilor Hanneke? Yeah. So I was the one no vote voting to not recommend this, which was with a heavy heart because I really believe we need to resurface and reorient and do a reoriented track project for our students and for equity purposes. But if we approve the borrowing now, I have a real fear that the only project that will get done if something gets done is a six lane track in place, which as Bob just said, makes obsolete a downtown fields master plan, does not do anything for equity in sports and in sports access. The school committee wants to take November to make a decision, but they want us and tell us we have to tell them now without any choice or any knowledge as to which project they actually favor, which projects they will actually choose or whether any of the funding is actually doable for anything other than an in place six lane track. I think it's too early for us to be making this decision. I thought that two years ago when we voted and they said we had to do it now, it was important, we couldn't delay anything. They needed a project so that they'd be building in nine months or two years later and they're looking to build in another year. To ask us to do this when there aren't even cost estimate updates from three years ago. So I'm not even sure and I'm not confident that the million and a half would cover a non-reoriented track. I don't believe if our manager came to us with as many uncertainties that the regional school committee is asking is coming to us with that we would ever vote to borrow money. I think we'd demand more information. We'd demand updated cost estimates or even at least just projected inflation estimates from those, even if they're not fully updated to not demanded of the school committee just to keep something on a books while that might be important. I don't think that outweighs all of the uncertainties that Bob so well summarized as to my concerns. And so I regret that I'm gonna have to vote no but I'm gonna have to vote no. George, I'm sorry, Councilor Ryan. So just someone to help me, maybe Kathy or Bob but what you said was if we don't, the money goes away. So Manny seems to be okay with that or she's not okay with it but she knows the money's gonna go away. So maybe the question is to Councilor Haniki that money goes away. What, that sounds like not a good thing. So your thought on the question is really to you. So I was advocating in finance for us sending a strongly worded letter basically or some message that says it's too early revote the authorization when you have updated cost estimates was the big one. When we know whether one and a half million will even resurface a track which we don't actually know right now. They could do that this month or next month that would start another 60 day clock but it would bring it within the town meetings forms for the other towns to put it if they wanted to on their own warrants without having to call special town meetings. This was done off cycle so that the other towns if they wanted to have the discussion we were having now as their legislative body would have had to call a special town meeting. I was advocating for going back to the regional school committee and saying give us more information and revote it better. Pam Rooney, please. Thank you. I appreciate the fact that the school committee has opened up the conversation and I'm sorry and acknowledge that there may be some options some better some worse. I'm going to take the attitude that as everyone told me to do for the library. Excuse me point of order. I can't hear the counselor. Thank you. Is it my voice? Pam, hold on. It is not your voice. We're taking, I'm going to call a recess for a few minutes. Pam, you're not in the room we're going to call a recess. We can't hear. You can't hear a zoom? No, we can't hear you because of background noise in the hallway. Pardon me Lynn, did you say how long we're taking a recess? I did not. Can we have a five minute recess please? I can't hear you. Can we please have a five minute recess? I would like to call a five minute recess. So counselors can turn their cameras off and get up if they like for five minutes. I'm extending the recess for another five minutes. Please turn your cameras off. I think we come again. Could we? Athena, I can reconvene. Yes, thank you. We're going to reconvene. Please turn your cameras back on. Pam Rooney, I believe you were in the middle of asking some questions or some making a statement. Please go ahead and then I'll go on to Councilor Lord. Thank you very much. I have no idea what was going on, but I guess I wanted to be clear on my support for this project. I understand it has gone through several iterations, but I appreciate the fact that the school committee is broadening its perception of what the project might be understanding that it may not fit some of the categories in the master plan. I think as many, many people said to me during the vote to extend funding for the library that maybe we just need to trust in the fundraisers and allow them to do their work between now and November. If in fact the school committee can't get its act together and the fundraising, including CPA funds from other towns, we'll know by November if it's a go or not. I would love to see resurfacing of the track, even if it is, and I would love to see it in the large track for sure. I would like to see how much in fact we can build of the project and I'd love to keep the opportunity open to do just that. Thank you. Councilor Lord. Please forgive me for asking the obvious, but I've heard go away a couple of times. Does that mean the towns reabsorb it? Is it a federal thing? What does that go away exactly mean? Thank you for asking that question. Paul, what does go away mean? If we vote no, okay, we have options. We can vote yes, we can vote no, or we can not do anything which is equal to voting yes. Okay, if we vote no, what happens to the money? So if you vote no, I don't think that automatically disqualifies the project. I think it needs three towns to approve. I don't want to speculate, I should find out. Athena, did you have something to say? If the towns don't approve the borrowing, then the money's not borrowed. It doesn't go back anywhere because it's never borrowed in the first place. Is that what you were asking? Okay. Yeah, my understanding is the money has not been borrowed yet. It's just been authorized, but not actually acted upon. It's not, we don't borrow money until there's an actual project. But on each, on our budget schedule, the school budget schedule, there's a line item going out 10 years to pay for this. Yes. Each year they're saying, we're going to be spending this amount of money. If it's rescinded, that line isn't there anymore. Councilor, did that answer your question? Okay, Councilor Haneke. Yeah, I just wanted to clarify something for Pam when she talked about CPA funding. We asked a little bit about CPA funding and the timing of CPA funding in finance committee as it relates to this project, particularly for the other three towns because their funding schedule said there might be 200 plus thousand available from those towns. When questioned further, the acting superintendent indicated that he has not the regional school committee or the school district has not yet applied for any CPA money from any of the other three towns, that they have a funding cycle that is already passed for a fiscal year that begins July one. So if they applied on the next traditional cycle, that money would not be available till fiscal year 2026, so July 1, 2025, unless they asked for it off cycle. But to ask for it off cycle, there would have to be CPA money reserved and he could not answer the question as to whether if they asked for it off cycle that the CPA committees have money that they could grant off cycle. And if they cannot get it off cycle, given that they have to have all money in hand before they sign a contract after bidding and that they hope to bid in December of this year, 2024, no CPA money would be available for the project itself because they haven't done it yet. So that was also one of my concerns in voting no is even their current funding plan doesn't seem to meet the cycle. They've told us they need to meet. I guess the dilemma for me is how to not walk away from a needed project and how to do that without completely killing the project. And so I don't have a great answer to that. I am asking that question because this is a project that I and many of us have supported and would love to have seen it go with a reoriented track and so forth. And I still would love to see that in support of our athletes and youths of Amherst and of the region. So what can we do that doesn't kill the project? That's my question. Jennifer. Well, I'm asking another question and answer yours but what is the harm if we approve it and then it comes in at higher than the funds are available, they can't do it. Or they'd have to go, they'd have to figure it out at that point, what they needed to do. I shouldn't say they couldn't do it but what is the harm in us giving them the go ahead and hoping that they can do it? Kathy. I think that's the right question, Jennifer because this gives them the go ahead to keep going and Lynn, there's potentially, I mean, the door is not completely closed on the other towns, CPA as Mandy said, it's unclear because they're out of cycle. They did turn down the other towns, the schools did go to them with a larger project and they turned down artificial turf. So that was turned down. So that money that might have been there was not there. So I think this is a go ahead to see how far you can get. So we also had, we have a new cost estimate of the schools that isn't, I don't wanna say something negative about the first group because it's a well-known group but they have, they do mega designs and so there are parts of the project that could be the final lights or something that could be done. So I think moving ahead, they're gonna get a cost estimate how much we can do with this amount of money and we will know more over the summer. I feel more certain about this project moving forward than the funny financing of the Jones Library. I just have to say that. I mean, and there's promises there that they're gonna find the extra money but the gap here is smaller on the amount more money that will make at least a smaller project worth doing possible. Councilor Walker. Thank you. I am a member of the finance committee but I was not present for this discussion so I just wanted to state my support for moving this forward for a couple of reasons. One, because this is not changing the amount of money that we had committed to prior. So there is no real great change to the council's commitment. There was a wording change in terms of making it more vague towards what they could apply the funding to but I think that's to the benefit of our community getting something done. And I remember the council meeting where we had this in discussion the first time around and we had a significant amount of public comment in regards to the safety concerns with the field. And so we all know funding is an issue in our town in general. Like every project we're trying to do right now we're having issues with funding. We know ideally we would want to do all things possible and spend as much money as possible to have the track reoriented, resurfaced, new grass, what have you, that might not be a reality. We need to do something. There needs to be some addressing of this situation because we saw how it's affecting our community and I think giving them something is better than giving them nothing because it's not working towards a solution. So I think right now the council is saying this is what we can provide. It's the same amount we said before. I think the other towns have already showed their approval towards moving forward in this way and let's see what we can do. And if we can't do it, they'll either have to come back to us or somewhere else. And at that time we can make another decision but I don't see a huge negative consequential outcome here. Although I do understand Mandy's concerns and they're valid, I just don't see it having a huge negative impact on the council. Thank you, Anna. So I think the other part of the public comment that we heard talked about why the track and its current iteration wasn't working and I think that that is getting lost a bit in all of the conversations that we had about artificial turf. And so I think that I'm hearing the regional school committee and the other towns concerns about the artificial turf. That does not seem to be something the other towns are interested in contributing to our region for. The non-reorientation of the track is making this really a non-usable surface for some sports because they're staring deadly and like dead into the sunset. And so I think that for me, the sticking point is that reorientation and that's really why I'm stuck. It's what sports can access the playing fields, what sports can use access and use the same thing. Sorry, I'm starting to get tired. I'm really concerned about a plan that resurfaces it, that we have to continue to take care of which is understandable, but doesn't do that reorientation and we lose this whole, I'm not wedded to the master plan but the master plan talks about the reasons why we want to do those things, why we want to reorient it, why we want to expand it. They bring an incredible amount to our community and to our town. So I'm really stuck on this and I'm trying to figure out why we can't say we approve this but not for option one. I don't understand why we can't do that, why we can't say we want this track reoriented as the town of Amherst because of what it does for our sports and our town and our community including the students from other towns, not just Amherst. So I'm a bit stuck on why we can't do that and I'd love a good answer. Mandy Jo. So under this vote that we have to take today, we can't unless we say no. And I think that's ultimately where my thing is and my opposition to this is, is because I've lost the confidence that their funding plan will get to anything other than a resurface in place. Whereas two years ago I had that concern but they had a plan that I could look at and say is possible but here their plan includes things that are almost impossible now. If we say no, one of my arguments in finance was, well we say no with a strongly worded statement of some sort that says bring this back with one and a half million but a promise to reorient. But right now if we vote the one and a half million it is all up to them on whether to reorient or not because the borrowing authorization that is in front of us is a default to non-reorientation and non-expansion still six lanes still the wrong dimensions for half of the sports. It's not just that it's not reoriented, it would be rebuilt in place at one and a half million if that's enough money, which is six lanes not eight so can't be championship events is the wrong inner dimensions to do most sports we do. So you can't actually play on the inner field for most competitive sports right now and that's what this borrowing authorization defaults to and that's always been my concern but we had school committee members and superintendents in front of us with a plan and fundraisers in front of us with a plan last time that I could believe in we've got no one in front of us now and an acting superintendent that has admitted 200,000 of it is basically high in the sky because they haven't gone after it anymore. That's my concern so yeah. Okay, councilor Walker. Yeah, I appreciate those comments just because I'm thinking about all of it but my question is then what is the alternative because if they don't, we're not the sole funding source. So if they don't come up with enough money, they don't come up with enough money. I mean, we are giving a portion of the funding that they need to do either one of the options. The funding is coming from other places and so I think that, I mean, can we not just include a statement that like we recommend this option. This is what we would like to see since this is what we've heard at the council level without changing the commitment without changing what's in front of us in terms of the borrowing authorization. Like does it have to be super strict and confine our decision to, we will only give money if it's not number one or can we just say we're reaffirming our commitment to this portion of funding. We hope that we can address X, Y and Z. Is that not an option? That's an excellent question, councilor Walker. Jennifer Topp. Yeah, I would just think the school committee wants, I mean, that they would want to get to number two or certainly one B. So if we authorize, we approve the authorization, one A is the default, but I, in this case I do have confidence they may not be able to raise the money but I would think the school committee and the school as much as anyone wants to be able to reorient the track and have it be eight lanes so it's competitive. They can have competitive tournaments. I mean, I would think they want that at least as much as we do. Is there a possibility that we can do two motions? One is the motion to approve and the other one is the motion to send the strong message. So the general law is specified that each of the member towns has an opportunity the 60 day window to express its disapproval. And if one of the member towns does that then the borrowing wouldn't be authorized. So there's the only action that the council can take in terms of the borrowing authorization is to like, Bob had said earlier to approve, disapprove or take no action. If you wanted an additional motion to send resolution to the school committee then you could do that. But it wouldn't be part of the action on the borrowing authorization. It's not binding. The general laws are really clear about what the council can do with that authorization. And it's not binding. Yeah, any further motion wouldn't be binding. Okay. Councilor Walker. You have your hand up. Oh, sorry, I just didn't put it down. Councilor Hannake. Yeah, I just wanted to say if the borrowing is approved they can use one and a half million for any of the four options right now because that's what it's written as. And the assumption from the school committee and from the superintendent was that one and a half million even if they receive not enough money for the bigger projects, the reorienting projects would be enough to repair a six lane track in place. Which means it would never come back to us. They could just make that decision. And I guess that's where I'm concerned because if we authorize it now, they could just say, well, we don't have money for a reorient and either grass or turf, right? If they don't have money for either of them, they can say, well, we're just gonna repair six lanes in place. Andie. I'm sorry. Were you done? Well, I was gonna say, so I'm not comfortable with that default, which is where I get concerned. Andie. I just want to confirm my understanding of what Athena reported. It's my understanding of the statute is if one town says no, then the borrowing is not authorized for any towns. That's my understanding as well. Anna. Whoa, sorry. Part of, I think why my head is spinning on this is that it took us so many meetings to get to a vote when we've discussed this in the past. And we are being asked to do this. I know finance talked about it, but we are being asked to do this in one meeting within an hour. We didn't hear from the public. We didn't hear like on this issue again. We heard from so many folks, and this is a different council that's addressing this this time. This is a different school committee that's addressing it this time. So I'm feeling pressed and pushed on a topic that we have not given adequate attention to. And so I'm just, I'm voicing that I'm very frustrated. We had strong letters from the former superintendent from the athletic director. We had coaches, we had students, we had parents on all ends of this coming in. And now we are about to completely change what we said, what we said strongly twice. I think we've done this at least twice. We had 17 times, I don't know, somewhere between one and 17, I'm not sure. We voted three times. Thank you, three times. I was right, between one and 17. But the fact that we are now doing this within an hour without adequately, in my mind, speaking to the folks engaged in this work is so alarming and concerning that I'm having a really hard time getting to yes. And that's just where I'm at. I'm really frustrated with this. And unfortunately, we are up against the 60 days. Kathy. Well, I'm ready to call the question but I don't wanna have to have a vote on call the question. We just wanna say on it, the very first time we saw the 1.5, there was no prolonged discussion. It went through really quickly. It was when the extra 900,000 was coming in. The question was what the field could be. That first time, we basically, the way it was worded, said if we don't raise enough money or you're gonna get us a track, that was the thing that's now being rescinded. They said if we get more money, we're gonna do an option to be or for whatever the number was. But the very first time, there wasn't much discussion except a few people really didn't want to anchor it to artificial turf. And Mandy, at that point, also didn't like the original one because it potentially was gonna get just a track. So the first time around, there wasn't really much. It was not even an hour, I think, when we voted it. But the second time, there was a lot. And with CPA, we didn't have a discussion. We had a lot when we came up with that last tranche of money. But I'll just stop because I'm a strong yes for this. So we'll see whether there's a willingness to vote or not tonight. Councilor Walker. Yeah, I just wanted to respond to Anna's comment in terms of the amount of feedback we got the first time around. I mean, I do agree that it's really helpful. I love when the community is involved and letting us know their thoughts. But residents could have come to public comment. And so maybe this is an issue more of transparency and people not being aware that this is coming up at the council meeting today for this reason. And that happens for a lot of the things that we do because it's really confusing to follow initiatives when they bounce from committees to the council, to a committee, to a council, to committee meetings that are during the week when everyone's at work. So people have a hard time keeping up. So I get that frustration, I agree. I think that's a process issue. But I don't think that that should stop us from making a decision tonight because this is part of the process that we have. And this has been in front of us for a long time and things are being updated and changed. And so that's why we're revisiting it. I would like to move to approve the funding. Let me read the motion and go for a second, okay? Councilor Walker. Thank you. Okay. To approve of the 1.5 million aggregate principal amount of debt authorization by vote of the Amherst-Pellum Regional School Committee on January 23rd, 2024. That's the motion, Councilor Walker. Did you want a second? Yeah. Okay. Got it. You can even make the motion if you want it. And I'll second it, how's that? Yes, I was trying to make the motion, but I just couldn't find the motion sheet in my packet. So I was just saying I moved to approve and I was hoping that the rest might just follow in, but I'm also happy to second it either way. The motion's been made in second. Are there other comments, Councilor Ryan? Just humor me for a second. If I were to vote no and if we were to vote no and the borrowing is can't go forward, what message does that send to the school committee or does it send one? What would be their reaction? Given the conversation tonight, I think it sends a mixed message. One is we're not happy. Another one is we really don't want to kill the project, but we don't like the uncertainty. You named, there's a message in everything. Councilor Walker. I'm also just clarifying that because this is a debt authorization, do we need to third's approval or just a majority? It's a majority president in voting. Thank you. All right, we're gonna move to the vote. Are you ready? Bob Hegner. Aye. Councilor Lord. Aye. Pam Rooney. Yes. Councilor Ryan. No. Kathy Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Aye. Jennifer Tob. Yes. Councilor Walker. Yes. Pat DeAngelis. No. Anna Devlin-Gothier. Aye. Councilor Ate. Abstain. Lynn Griezmer is an aye. Councilor Hannake. No. Passes nine in favor, three opposed and one abstained. We're going to do a little dance and get a couple, one or two more things done. And that's it. So, I'm going to, at this point, we're going to go to appointments for the design review board. Would you please place Councillor Hegner in the audience since he is recusing himself because of this vote. Sorry, Lynn. I just have another comment on the previous topic. That's possible before you move, Bob. Yep. Well, I would like to do this, but not if there's not other general interest amongst my colleagues. But can we also address sending a statement with that in regards to our, I think there's general consensus in hoping that the school committee will proceed with not option one. I'm more than happy to do that. How about the possibility that since I don't think anything's going to happen between now and April 1st that we draft up something and bring it to the council for the April 1st meeting. Okay. Great. Thank you. Pam. Yeah, point of order. I thought we were, I thought the, not the design review board person was taken off, but the elementary school board appointment was taken off consent. It was. So we're going to start with the design review board. Okay. DRV was not on consent. It was items one, three, four, and five, and four was removed. DRV not on consent because Karen Bloom is the wife of one of our colleagues. We don't need to say the reason for Bob's attention unless we'd like to share that. I am going to make a motion to approve the town manager. I believe Bob still, if he's recusing himself needs moved. Thank you. Okay. To approve the town manager's appointment of Karen Bloom effective immediately for a term to expire June 30, 2025 to the design review board as filed with the town clerk on February 27th, 2024. Is there a second? Second, Brian. Are there any other questions or comments? Okay, then we're going to move to a vote. Just get my votes. Councilor Lord. Hi. Pam Rooney. Yes. Councilor Ryan. Hi. Councilor Shane. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Hi. Jennifer Tob. Yes. Councilor Walker. Yes. Pat DeAngeles. Hi. Anna Devin-Gothier. Hi. Councilor Ette. Hi. Lynn Griezmann. Hi. Councilor Hannity. Hi. And that is 12 in favor and one person absent. Now we're going to move to the elementary school building committee. We're going to make a motion to approve the town manager appointment of Bruce Coldham effective immediately for a term to last the length of the MSBA building process to the elementary school building committee as filed with the town clerk on February 27, 2024. Is there a second? Section Ryan. Okay. Ryan is a second. Are there comments at this time? And I'm going to look first to you, Councilor Walker. Thank you. So before I make any comments, I just want to state that I also personally don't know Bruce Coldham and I don't have anything against him specifically. But I did want to bring attention to some of the public comments that we did receive in regards to this topic, specifically to the composition of the elementary school building committee board. And so there was specific reference to what the charge states would be the composition of the members of the committee. And the member whose spot this vacancy is filling was not only a parent, but was also a woman of color. And so we're losing those two identities on the board with this appointment, which I think are two very significantly important identities to have on this committee, considering that we're building an elementary school, I would love to have another parent whose kids will attend that school. I think that's a significant perspective to have, but also another BIPOC resident, which we all know are not represented equitably across boards and committees in this town. And because of how the process works, we don't know who else applied. And so I was not aware of any of this before the public comment that stated that we did have other applicants. And so like my two piece in wanting to pull this off the agenda is to just make a statement that I would support a parent and a BIPOC resident to be on this committee to fill up the vacant role because that is part of the demographic, someone also who has experience with community organizing and community.