 You can pull up another chair to that table also, if you'd like. And before you get started, if you would just test the mic and see if it's working. Testing. Thank you. Is it on? I think so, Amherst Media. Is that public mic on? It is. Thank you. All right, please introduce yourself and welcome. Thank you. My name is Sarah Marshall. I'm a leader of a Girl Scout brownie troupe here in the Amherst area. And I have with me tonight one of my brownies, my daughter, Becky Marshall. And we are pleased to be able to present an invitation to the Amherst community on the occasion of Girl Scouting's 100th birthday next week. Calling all Girl Scout leaders, cookie moms, volunteers, current and former young and old from across the ages to a promise circle celebrating the 100th year of Scouting Sunday, March 11th, 2012. 240 p.m. 245 p.m. Amherst Comet reception to follow at Grace Episcopals Church. 14 bolt would have. Thank you. Thank you very much. And what else should people know about what's going to happen on the common? What events will happen at Grace Church? Again, starting at 245, we hope that girls and women who were scouts years ago or who are scouts now or have been involved in Scouting in any way, including dads, would come for some reminiscences and to join Girl Scouts around the country all at three o'clock saying the Girl Scout promise together. That's why we're calling it a promise circle. Wonderful. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming in and we appreciate the invitation. Okay. Take care. Thank you. Bye. All right. And we have no one else here for public comment this evening. Our first time item is at 645. So we'll do some untimed stuff. I will just note to select word I do these lists after all of the meetings. I'm no longer responsible for the motion part of it. I'm happy to announce Mr. Musanti is taking over all responsibility for any little tweaks you might do to the motions. So there you go. Okay. Untimed items. We'll start with the parking reservation request for the walk for Aphasia. This is the third year of the event and the third time we have dealt with their request. And while the letter from them does not reflect exactly what we're going to grant to them, it does reflect what we have granted to them the last two years. So you get a new person, a new student who is in charge of the event there. And they just send out the same letter every year, not realizing that we've actually we originally with their ascent tweak to the details a little bit. So the motion that we will have for the parking request is exactly the same as we have approved the two previous years. So this time I move that the select board approved the reservation of 21 spaces on the west side of Boatwood Avenue between the Spring Street lot and College Street from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, April 14th, 2012 for the third annual walk and roll for Aphasia. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye, and that is unanimous. Let's do some taxi driver licensees. I move that the select board approve a new 2012 taxi driver slash chauffeur license for Frederick P. Kucharski of Hadley MA on behalf of Erin's transportation. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye, and that's unanimous. And before I read the next one, there's a slight tweak. It's the before aye in the first name of this gentleman. I move that the select board approve the renewal of a taxi driver slash chauffeur license for Obleed Hassan of East Hampton MA on behalf of Tisnet Valley Cab. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. How about common vitulars licenses? I move that the select board approve a common vitulars license for DJ Summit Incorporated doing business as mom's house Chinese food market 318 College Street Amherst to be open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and Sunday's 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fred Wang manager. Second. For the discussion, I will note as I've been noting in the past couple of meetings that these are not new businesses. This is part of transferring all of the various licenses onto the MUNIS system within the select board office and finding these things that have been licensed in other offices, but we're missing the select board part of it. All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the select board approve a common vitulars license for the new Bruno's Incorporated 363 Main Street Amherst to be open Monday through Sunday 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. Rula Kofides, Kofides manager. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. I move that the select board approve a common vitulars license for Wheatberry LLC 321 Main Street Amherst to be open Monday through Friday 7 30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday 7 30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sundays 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Jane Goodall manager. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. That's unanimous. All right. What else have we got here? We have some minutes. And so we had four sets of minutes, two of which were in our packet. And then the other two were emailed to us in advance of the meeting. Miss Stein had some very minor edits to, I think it was one set or two sets. And two, but they're very minor. They're extremely minor. I was fine with all of them. Did anybody have any issues with Miss Stein's revisions or with any other parts of the minutes? Miss Stein, would you like to make that as a no? Miss Stein, would you like to make the motion? Sure. I move that the select board approve the select board meeting minutes of December 5, 2011, December 12, 2011, January 3, 2012, and February 27, 2012, as amended slightly. Second. For the discussion. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. I understand from Miss Roussail that brings us up to date. Fantastic. Many thanks to Miss Roussail. Absolutely. All right. Let's see. So we still have a couple of minutes. We have four minutes until our next timed item. And I think we've run out of untimed items except for the letter, which I'd rather talk about during our budget discussion. We have no special liquor licenses, right? I don't see any. I think we've used up our motions. All right. So does anybody have any announcements that they'd like to make? I will note that today was the deadline for warrant article submissions. Mr. Busanti, do you know if the select board received any petition articles? I believe there are a handful of petitions that have been filed. Four total. I'm looking at that town clerk. I think you have received by email at least two of them. I believe there were a couple that came in Friday or today. I think we're only aware of one of them, the one about the corporate personhood thing. Yes. That is in hand. Okay. All right. Miss Stein. Tomorrow is election day. Thank you. Yes, indeed. Super Tuesday. Here in Massachusetts and everywhere. Polls are open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Other announcements. I will note that on, this is going to be part of my report later, but I might as well tell you to mark your calendars for March 27th if you're able to attend is another campus and community coalition lamp lighter award ceremony. This time April McNally from the public health, the committee will be honored as well as a judge from the eastern, what's it called? Find his name. I'm sorry. The honorable John M. Payne presiding justice eastern Hampshire district court. Those would be the two honorees if staff board members are able to attend that. Mr. Moussanti will be making remarks at that as he did last year also. And it just being their shows helps reinforce our partnership with the coalition. I'll be there. But if any other folks can come, that would be lovely. And the location of that? That will be on the top of the campus center in the Amherst room, the campus center. So that's Tuesday the 27th of March from 3.30 till 5. And another upcoming event is March 11th at 2 o'clock. We've noted this before, the senior center's follies fundraiser. And that will be at Buckley recital hall at Amherst College. And tickets are on sale. They are $10 for adults and $5 for children. Anything else? No. Mr. Hayden, go ahead. March 12th is empty bowls. Oh, thank you. Some of us are going to be celebrity waiters. And the rest of us are just going to be waiters. That's wonderful. That's four to eight. You know, let's get your tickets, get your bowl. Get your tickets now because they do sell out wonderful fundraiser for the survival center. Right. Ms. Hayden, I frowned because I can't be there this year. I'm so bummed. But I was just going to pull out my old speech. It's going to be great. So thank you all for doing that because I can't be there. The same night as the land fighters is the League of Women Voters candidates night. Thank you. With the schmoozing at 7 and 7.30 for the program. And since there are contested seats on both library trustees, library trustees, housing authority and school committee. Thank you. All right. We fill dollar time. 645. Our 645 agenda item is makes for the most dramatic television. This is when we sign reams and reams of paper for the town to issue new bonds. We will be issuing $4.8 million in bonds, municipal bonds. And these are for water system upgrades. Portable classrooms. That marks meadow. Improvements to affordable housing for the housing authority. South Amherst school renovations and the design work for the Harkness Rd sewer extension. We have finance director Sandy pooler and treasure collector Claire McGinnis here tonight to tell us a bit more about these things that we will be signing forever. And for folks who are following along at home, there is a nice explanatory memo in our web packet from Ms. McGinnis about these projects. So welcome. That's me. Difficulties. You broke it. Sure. We've got that. We've got that. Yeah. All right. Drum roll. The interest rate was 2.16 percent. Which considering that we're borrowing most of this money for about 20 years is a very low interest rate. So we're very happy with that. It beat the interest rate that we received on bonds a year ago, which was 2.2 percent and even that was pretty low. So I think it just reflects two things. One is we are in extraordinary times with interest rates across the country for and there's a pretty good appetite for municipal debt. And there's in particular an appetite for quality municipal debt, which this is I think any bond rating that's a double or triple a is considered high quality debt. And we in fact did receive a reaffirmation of the town's double a bond rating or a double a stable standard and pours issued that last week after Claire and our financial advisor David Eisenthal from Unibank and I were on a conference call with with standard and pours. Just a few notes about the credit report because I think is a reflection of the practices of the town has carried on for a number of years quite successfully. The report noted our good financial management, which means that we do all the things that we you're supposed to do when you're managing balancing your budgets, carrying reserves and surpluses. And the other thing is that we have an enunciated set of financial policies about how we issue debt or what our capital projects are. I think one area that has been missing from that, that Claire has been doing a lot of work on that will present to the finance committee once they're sort of done with their budget work is an investment policy. And I think that will really round out our financial policies and I think that would be great. And I give Claire a lot of credit for having done a lot of good homework on that. So again, the S&P cited our good financial management, our good reserves, very low overall debt burden. The fact that we created significant surpluses at the end of FY 11. And they sort of hinted that somewhere in the future it would be possible maybe to get an upgrade. We pushed them on that on the call because I think Amherst certainly is close to if not right in there with some of the triple A's and a lot of our financial indicators. At some point in order to get that I think we need to, as I put it, mitigate the effects of our long-term liabilities which is a way of saying we have to start putting some money toward OPEB. That's what that means when you read through. And I think we're certainly moving in that direction so that's very positive. This credit report will be up on the town's website along with our offering statement that this is a lot of the details of this issuance once we get that back. I think we should have that in our hands this week so it should all be up there. All in all, I think it's a very good sale. It certainly saves taxpayers a lot of money in the long run and enables us to do these projects on a good bond rating from standard and pours. I'd be happy to answer any questions and then as I say, we have a lot of things for you to sign. Okay, so maybe we can start signing and Select Board can ask questions while we're signing. How about that? And Miss Stein might as well start reading the motion which is going to take a while so we'll ask questions. We're all going to approve and therefore signing makes sense. Exactly. We'll ask questions after the motion. I move that the maximum... Oh, I'm sorry. Excuse me one moment. Miss McGinnis. Just because these are going to start moving around the table. The sheet that looks like this are the actual bonds. I didn't mark the signature page but it's in the middle and there's only one signature page. All of the others have hints that help you find the right page. I think the IRS is paying more attention to the issuance of tax exempt debt. So there are actually two documents. I don't think we had last time about the fact that we're tax exempt and therefore we have sort of a privileged debt status. So if we were paying close attention to the documents we signed last time then two of these are new. I'm sure we would have noticed that. And just to make sure everyone has either blue or black because I did bring some extras. All right. Miss Stein. Sorry. Go ahead. I move that the maximum useful life of the portable classrooms for use at the Marx Meadows School to be financed with the proceeds of the $300,000 borrowing authorized by the votes of the town past November 17, 2007, Article 5. And April 28, 2008, Article 7. April 28, 2008, Article 17c is hereby determined pursuant to general law chapter 44, Section 7.9 to be 10 years, parenthesis 9. I further move that the sale of the 4,832,000 general obligation municipal purpose loan of 2012 bonds of the town dated March 15, 2012 parenthesis the quote bonds end quote and parenthesis to Danny Montgomery Scott LLC at the price of $4,956,965.86 and accrued interest, if any, is hereby approved and confirmed. The bond shall be payable on March 15 of the years and in the principal amounts and bear interest at the respective rates as follows. 2003 amount $297 interest rate 2%. Year 2014 amount $300,000 interest rate 2%. 2015 $295,000 interest rate 3%. 2016 amount $295,000 interest rate 3%. 2017 amount $290,000 interest rate 3%. Year 2018 amount $290,000 interest rate 3%. Year 2019 amount $287,000 interest rate 3%. Year 2020 amount $260,000 interest rate 3%. Year 2021 amount $260,000 interest rate 2%. Year 2022 amount $260,000 interest rate 2%. Year 2023 amount $200,000 interest rate 2%. Year 2024 amount $200,000 interest rate 2%. year 2025 in amount 200,000 interest rate 2% year 2026 amount 200,000 interest rate 2.125% year 2029 amount 600,000 interest rate 2.4% year 2032 amount 600,000 interest rate 2.7% year 2027. Further moved that the bonds maturing on March 15, 2029 and March 15, 2032, parenthesis each a quote term bond end quote in parenthesis shall be subject to mandatory redemption or mature as follows term bond due March 15, 2029 year 2027 amount 200,000 year 2028 amount 200,000 year 2029 which is a final maturity date is 200,000. Term bonds due March 15, 2032 year 2030 amount 200,000 year 2031 amount 200,000 year 2032 amount 200,000 that's the final maturity date. Further move that in connection with the marketing and sale of the bonds the preparation and distribution of the notice of sale and preliminary official statement dated February 16, 2012 and a final official statement dated March 1, 2012, parenthesis the quote official statement end quote in parenthesis each in such form as may be approved by the town treasurer be and hereby are ratified confirmed approved and adopted further move that the bond shall be subject to redemption at the option of the town upon such terms and conditions as are set forth in the official statement further moved that the town treasurer and the select board be and hereby are authorized to execute and deliver a continuing disclosure undertaking in compliance with SEC rule 15C2-12 in such form as may be approved by bond council to the town which undertaking shall be incorporated by reference in the bonds for the benefit of the holders of the bonds from time to time further move that we authorize and direct the treasurer to establish post issuance federal tax compliance procedures in such form as the treasurer and bond bond council deemed sufficient or if such procedures are currently in place to review and update said procedures in order to monitor and maintain the tax exempt status of the bonds further moved that each member of the select board the town clerk and the town treasurer be and hereby are authorized to take any and all such actions and execute and deliver such certificates receipts or other documents as may be determined by them or any of them to be necessary or convenient to carry into effect the provisions of the foregoing votes. Thank you. Second. I feel like we should applaud. Thank you, Miss Stein. All right. All right. Further discussion and I would suggest there's not actually further discussion now because we're already signing them so we'll vote but then we can ask questions or whatever. So all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Is that unanimous? Mr. Walton. Thank you. That was unanimous. All right. Now questions or comments about the bonds and all of this information select board members. Anyone have questions or comments? I'll ask Mr. Poole. What can you tell us about the portable classrooms? What's the status of those right now? Stationary. Wise guy. The portable classrooms are basically sitting, not being used. The school is closed there. We are looking for buyers if anybody out there needs a portable classroom. We have some and I think we've been in some discussions in the past with UMass about the possibility of buying them but we don't have a deal at this point. We did have to sell these bonds now because we borrowed short term. We issued some bans which meant for several years we paid only interest to buy those but you can do that for only a set number of years under federal law and so we have to start paying them off this year and that in fact is what we're doing why we're permanently sending permanent debt for that purpose. Any questions or comments? Mr. Stein. I was interested in that too and I was wondering if there was any chance with enrollments approaching sort of our maximum whether there's any chance we might end up using them? Mr. President. I've been in touch with representatives of the Amherst schools and it really was, I don't remember the exact date, but I believe over a year ago now the school committee at the upon the recommendation of the superintendent declared the portable classrooms surplus no longer needed for school purposes. Since that time we have been looking for a potential buyer of those classrooms. They're in excellent condition. We're still the owner and we still have obligation for the acquisition price and even with this bond sale we're still in a position if we were to realize proceeds from any sale to apply those proceeds against future debt service for the portables. Thank you. Other questions or comments? Regarding the housing authority improvements for affordable housing that will be the debt service will be paid by Community Preservation Act funds. Do we, when we talk about Community Preservation Act funds at town meeting we don't talk about the cost of borrowing. Does that get charged to the CPA funds also the portion interest rate or whatever other costs there are? Yeah, they pay the full debt service costs the principal and the interest payments and we don't at this point allocate to them I think the issuance costs because that was not part of the vote to them. We do allocate that among the enterprise funds and the general fund. If there were a lot more CPA debt in the future we might ask the CPA committee to also vote that portion of the issuance cost but because they didn't formally do that what they do pay is their full share of the interest in principal. Okay, thank you. Other questions or comments? Mr. Aden. There's also the sewer extensions and the water treatment plant upgrades. Those are also funded from the enterprise funds not the general tax. That's correct. Other questions or comments? Mr. Mersant anything you'd like to tell us about? Just reinforcing Mr. Poole's opening line or lines tonight. This in my judgment is outstanding results. We are in a position where we are going into the bond market for a 20 year bond to fund some critically important work and have secured an interest rate. I know it's the lowest interest rate on a municipal borrowing that I've ever been involved with over the course of my career. 2.16 percent for 20 years will take that any time. The savings from that come back to the town compared to all of our estimating that we've been using on projected debt service which has been typically 3.5-4 percent as we look out. To the extent that the interest rates stay low and to the extent that we maintain our bond rating and we're on a path to doing so we're also as Mr. Poole indicated really for the first time in my tenure in Amherst getting indications from the bond rating firm that you know at some point if trends continue and we make some additional steps toward our long term fiscal health that Amherst can be part of a conversation about a bond rating upgrade to AAA which is the top of the pile, top of the heap on this stuff and that's important because it's another indication from an independent source that the financial management and the financial position of the town is very, very sound and that allows us to do our capital investments going forward at the lowest possible interest cost which frees up money to address other capital needs within the dollars that we allocate. So I'm really, really pleased and I want to thank Mr. Poole. I want to thank Claire McGinnis and all of the other members of our financial management team and really all of us in town government have worked as a team on restoring the fiscal health of the town. We've had a pretty rough stretch the last four or five years in particular and it really has been a team effort where we had some significant cuts. We've reduced the town workforce, the schools made very difficult but necessary decision to close one of our four elementary schools with town meetings support. We adopted some local option taxes, meals tax and an increase in the lodging tax and the voters as we coalesce behind a plan, the voters approved a proposition two and a half override. All of those things coupled with our financial planning, budgeting and managing the appropriations that were voted we've been able to begin to rebuild our reserves to much more appropriate levels and hopefully we're entering into a more stable period in terms of delivering services and there's some things we need to keep working at but we've been given that tickler by standard and pours that keep it up and we're on the track to be considered at some point in the future for a bond rating upgrade. So I think it's all very, very positive. The other thing that was noted in the standard and pours report that I would encourage everybody to read. That's a good summary of the big picture in finances for the town of Amherst from an outside source. They describe our debt burden as very low. Now I'm not advocating that we issue debt wildly for this and for that but it really has given us, because our debt burden is very low, given us flexibility in our capital planning and our ability to manage our way through this fiscal crisis. But it also especially with the very low cost of money on the borrowing market puts us in a position to actively consider debt taking on debt in a managed way for other needs of the town. You know that we had town meetings support last year for a road improvements bond. We have some other needs that Sandy and others are identifying through the capital planning process but it puts us in a position to actively consider those and perhaps take on some of those projects in an era of historically low interest rates where we can stretch our capital dollars that much further without creating an outsized debt burden for the town. So I think all of that puts us in a good position not to sit back and relax but to really actively plan and be proactive and really continue to try to address our backlog of capital needs because you know that we have many. We have many facing the town. So I think this is all very positive and I think we're in a good position. Thank you. And the select board certainly seconds and supports what you were saying about what a tribute this is to the financial staff of the town to have this excellent bond rating and to have this excellent analysis and report reaffirmed by standard and pours about the fiscal shape that we're in. And they give an economic environment. Do you know what a triple A rating would be worth as far as an interest rate as compared to double A rating? Would that be you know a half a percent rate? Any sort of rule with them? Right at this low end of the curve it's historically low interest rates. I would say it's going to be a fraction of 1 percent. It might be a third of a percent something like that 30 basis points is what we sometimes talk about. You know when interest rates are higher those spreads widen. But it would be somewhere in that range I would guess. Thank you. It's very interesting. But that's about 15 percent lower than the rate we just secured. Even 30 basis points on 2.16 is one seventh of that rate. Right I mean if it was in that range. So for 4.8 million dollars borrowing over 20 years that would be worth. My pay for some sidewalks. You don't have to answer that question. But it's real money and so that's a great perspective. Ms. Brewer. I hesitate to bring this up because of course we are the select board and the school committee and the school who needs to make the decision about Mark's Meadow. But knowing that it has been somewhat contentious over the years because by the time we were finally able to afford to purchase the items we were no longer able to afford to staff them. So we have not ever used them the way we'd intended to. However there are continuing concerns as Ms. Stein brings up about once we bring in some additional school choice children special ed programs we might consider developing here so that we can continue to keep people in house. And also the much hoped for but difficult to say when it could ever happen renovations at Wildwood and Fort River would certainly require some sort of swing space which we no longer have by not having much metal available to us. So I'm a little low actually at this point for those portables to disappear and I'm wondering what the criteria will be when a possible buyer comes along in terms of what we're you know at what point do we decide it's worth dumping them because we need to try make back some of our money or do we hold on to them because it turns out five years from now we're really going to wish we had them and since they're not really decaying in some fashion one would think we could still use them. Without betraying confidences I can tell you that those kinds of questions and conversations have occurred internally primarily via our shared facilities director with the schools Mr. Bahanowicz. One of the fundamental issues with these particular modular classrooms is their location so they're located on the campus of the university. The university has short term and long term plans for that property. There are practical obstacles primarily cost to relocating those even though they're in excellent condition the cost of picking them up and relocating them to some other site controlled by the town begins to approach the acquisition cost for just going out and buying new or nearly new portable classrooms if and when the town was ever in the market for them so those conversations have occurred and I and at this point I have received no indication from the schools that they have an interest in retaining those particular classrooms for the for those are those potential potential that potential things or anything else at this point portable is really kind of a misnomer really in this whole thing yes Mr. Heaton just one other while we're being congratulatory about the bond rating there's one other player that I would like to remember in this little saga and that's town meeting we've had as part of this process we've had a great deal of energetic debate about these various bits and pieces of the budget and they we have have you know stayed the course and taken the hard decisions and done the right thing in the end and now reaping the benefits you know we have a proposition two and a half that we dealt with a little while ago we've had a number of pushings and pullings on the budget that were resolved in a very the most constructive manner it turns out thank you all right anything else about the bond anything else you folks want to tell us or thank you thank you for all the work you did to put this together both all of the the with the work with the actual financial people but also the collating and copying the stuff just to prepare for this meeting for our signatures I mean this it's it's an extraordinary undertaking from start to finish so thank you very much thank you for coming in thank you thank you all right next up we have perfect following discussion the FY 13 budget discussion I'm not aware that anyone has submitted questions to Mr. Musanti which we're trying to do so that we don't put him on the spot with any complicated questions at this moment asking about minutiae of the book I'll say that as I've been going more and more through the book I keep coming up with kind of minutiae which isn't really a hugely constructive way to have these conversations a point that I would like to make for folks who are watching this is this is a level services budget this is a budget that is the result of multiple years of of cutting and trying to to stem the bleeding in different places we've as Mr. Musanti has already talked about eloquently with the bond issue we have taken great steps to get the budget to where it is now so there's not a lot of policy considerations that are within the budget right now we what Mr. Musanti is proposing is is protecting and bringing forward what we've been working on for the last multiple years so I don't want anybody to think that just because we're not asking in-depth questions about this every week we're not paying attention it's because those questions have already happened those have been happening for the last couple of years so now we're kind of down to you know what does this number mean how come this is whatever so so just to kind of position that a little bit as part of this discussion this is a good time to talk about the letter that we talked last time about sending a letter of advocacy to our legislators about the potential 65 million that should funds be available the governor is proposing making that a supplemental appropriation to cities and towns in the fall much like what happened this past year MMA our lobbying group and others are pushing for that money if the if the revenue is anticipated to be included in the unrestricted general government aid that that gets allocated to cities and towns up front so we talked about writing a letter to advocate for that that letter was in your packets and I had asked if anybody had any revisions to make to please submit them to me so that we might be able to sign this tonight I only got a couple of tiny revisions from Miss Stein I think there were three little word tweaks to it that was didn't change any substance or meaning in any way and so if folks are good with that letter then we have that to sign tonight anybody have any reason to not sign this letter tonight you want to make further revisions to it looks like no okay mr. Heaton no revisions I mean you got my email but I just just wanted to be appreciative that what what the letter is asking for really is is almost more a policy change than a financial change I mean if they think they're gonna get the money they should tell us now and not wait until it's too late for us you know caused all kinds of problems it's a simple thing it so they feels like sitting here right right it's important to reinforce to them the difference you know it might is sometimes when you're moving all these numbers around it might sort of seem like oh well it all comes out and the same in the end so you know now later whatever but it's not that's not the situation it's a very big difference for us to be able to plan to have that money versus getting it later on in particular we have a significant hole in our school budget right now school starts in September the planning for for how the school year will look is happening now if we get money at the end of next October that doesn't that doesn't have a positive impact on what next year's school year looks like so then if folks are good with the letter I don't think we actually need a vote for it but we'll just make sure we sign that before we go mr. Mecanti would you like to talk it all about what any update on the status of that 65 million the likelihood of it what what that's looking like to folks on Beacon Hill at this point well you've you've stated the arguments why if there is cautious optimism at the state level that there'll be a year-end surplus the wisdom of including that amount of money at least that amount of money in our base state aid support for next year so that we can do the things that you were just talking about the year-to-date state tax revenues are slightly above the benchmarks that were used in the development of the state budget although it's been a little there have been a few bumps in the road the last couple of months compared to benchmark I know that people at the state level are watching very closely the results for February and March and so the House will be voting on its version of the budget by the end of April so in particular those March returns will be helpful for that so it's hard to put a a the odds on whether this happens or not but I think it's really important that we make make the argument make the argument thank you and thank you and mr. pooler for your help to me in drafting that letter very appreciated okay anything else about budget before we move on then town managers report sorry miss burr I'm sorry so is the letter for us to siphon yeah I have it you want to sign it now or me just make sure you sign it before you leave okay you sign enough your hands can rest for a little while okay town managers report talked through a couple of items the first item is a bullet point on the agenda Amherst media relocation planning I wanted to give a brief update to the select board and the thousands of those at home watching watching this meeting I've been working with the executive director and the board of directors of Amherst media there's a subcommittee that has been tasked with working with the director and the town on relocation efforts after 20 years of very successful partnership using property owned by western mass electric company on collard street at very favorable lease terms western mass electric has indicated that due to power grid longer-term planning that's underway and upgrades to their system that they intend to need that building for their own use we did I did convene a meeting the missile missile keep joined us at along with senator Rosenberg last fall or summer I believe it was no about it last spring I think it was with western mass electric coming out of that meeting western mass electric agreed to a lease extension that is certainly not indefinite we indicated that through Amherst media extensive planning efforts were underway to look for a potential relocation sites in town I have worked with them to try to assist their own efforts looking at some private parcels but also exploring the potential for some town owned potential relocations and what I do want to say is that work continues one of the town sites that I am working very closely with Amherst media staff to do some further exploration on is that of the East Street school which based upon the criteria that Amherst media has developed for their needs on a bus route next to fiber near fiber having the space itself have adequate size and qualities we think the East Street school and I share this has some potential there is some feasibility work that is just underway being undertaken by Amherst media and I will keep the board informed about how that is progressing but I wanted you to be aware that we're actively working with them and that East Street school is a potential potential site that could work for both them in the town thank you very much and I wanted to thank Mr. Musanti for doing a great deal of work and trying to assist Amherst media in finding various options and in the meeting with the western mass electric and Senator Rosenberg and representatives from ACTV and Amherst media and their board was very productive very important and and it shows what an incredible partnership there is between Amherst media and the town unsurprisingly what we're doing here and so much of the work done by boards and committees is so critically enabled by Amherst media the the ability of the town citizens to stay informed this way through their broadcast as well as their fantastic website is just huge and so it really is a partnership because we're so important to each other we've been talking for a while about a facilities plan and it would be you know in an ideal world you would have your your facilities plan and the the concept for all the potential future uses of all of your potential future properties kind of part of a larger discussion and all laid out but but we don't live in a perfect world and so that facilities plan is in place I did think it was important to get out there to have Mr. Museum to present the idea of the East Street school as early in the process as possible so that this isn't kind of you know that we get told oh yeah yesterday that became Amherst media because while the town properties are under the town manager's jurisdiction he's really kind of the caretaker of them on behalf of the community I'm sure I am not alone in having fielded other ideas and requests for that building from various folks in the community I'm sure if we sat around and brainstormed we might come up with a hundred more things that that that building could do or be but considering the circumstances considering the timeline for Amherst media considering how very closely linked town government is with Amherst media I think that it's a an excellent possibility if that works for Amherst media and I just think that it's really important to get out there right now so that if there's different kinds of feedback from the community you want to hear it before this this deal is done so Miss Stein had her hand raised I was just gonna say I assume that's as a rental as they are renting facilities now I can tell you that even without having totally finished the townwide facilities planning report that I would be recommending that the town retain ownership of that property because of all the advantages that it offers in terms of the condition of the building the location proximity to other to the main street and other locations nearby so if and when we got to the point where Amherst media was a tenant there would be in a lease arrangement with the town any questions or comments anyone okay next I wanted to also reference an upcoming event there's a invitation and flyer in your meeting packet that's been posted online for an event that's being called digital games playing in the valley which is happening on the afternoon of March 15th from 12 30 to 4 30 p.m. at Hampshire College this is an event with a number of sponsors the three primary sponsors are Hampshire College an organization called Mass Digi and the Western Mass Economic Development Council and we'll be looking at inviting preq the many and growing number of Massachusetts based practitioners in the digital game gaming industry which we think is a fast growing cluster of high-tech job creation in this state this organization called Mass Digi is our is a relatively new quasi public agency whose mission is to promote the nurturing of this job industry industry in this state and they're looking for partners they're looking for locations in Massachusetts in addition to the you know Cambridge cluster that could be appropriate locations to nurture this industry and bring bring job growth to Massachusetts and I had the pleasure of meeting with representatives from Mass Digi and Western Mass Economic Development Council recently and strongly stated to them that the greater Amherst area with its cluster of major research university two other leading colleges in the country and the whole five college areas is is an appropriate location to encourage this type of entrepreneurial spirit and development so this is an invitation that's gone out I'm very honored to have been asked to speak at this event both in terms of welcoming remarks and on a panel talking about this industry and digital technology clusters of such companies and I'll be joined at that with Hampshire President Jonathan Lash Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray and Congressman Jim McGovern will also be there and join me join us and Alan Blair from the EDC on a panel and be a whole afternoon of events and I want to encourage select board members and others in the community who have an interest to attend if you look at the flyer on the town website for tonight's meeting you'll see all the contact information about registering I think it's very exciting and we want to see what's possible thank you did they did they come to us and say that they want to do it here or you've been working to get them to have this conference here they've been talking with a number of people in the area both in the digital gaming industry and there are a handful of local relatively new companies in this business including this company called Hit Point Studios which is based in Hatfield there's going to be an open house over at Hit Point right after this event but all these types of folks will be invited the mass Digi people reached out to me and so we're working with them and I have Dave Zomac and other town staff involved involved with this as well that's great it's wonderful to be on the radar for for something like that to have this Amherst in this region be on their radar other questions or comments about that Mr. Burr I was just going to mention and I'm sure Mr. Walden knows more about it than I do but Hampshire College definitely plays a major role here in terms of their digital program they don't advertise themselves the same way that a Becker College or WPI does but they do have a really substantial program and I know I'm sure that I'm overlooking someone but I know for example that Anne's have been studios I think was started close to 10 years ago locally and so it is it's like a critical mass is developing and it's wonderful to see great thank you yeah next couple other items yeah two more items Hawthorne property on East Pleasant off of East Pleasant Street I wanted to give a brief update you know that recently within the last two weeks the LSE commission in partnership no pun intended with the former housing partnership Fair Housing Committee has completed some recommendations to me about the future redevelopment of the Hawthorne property on East Pleasant Street which as you know was acquired using Community Preservation Act funds voted by the CPA recommended by the CPA committee and voted by town meeting about a year ago that property was acquired really with two well for three reasons one was it was for the development of affordable housing and there's some potential with either reuse of the old farmhouse and barn or depending on a feasibility study that's underway about the practicality of reusing that new construction along the frontage of East Pleasant Street for a couple of affordable housing units and then the middle third roughly I'm using rough figures of the property given its topography and characteristics remaining as open space and then the back a third of the property the property closest to the Wildwood school being redeveloped in some fashion for recreation fields so I'm in receipt of those recommendations they are quite lengthy and I wanted to give you a heads up kind of on next steps we still have a ways to go on this the next step is this affordable housing feasibility study we expect a an award on monies that were also approved by town meeting for a consultant to come in and look at the historic preservation affordable housing redevelopment potential of the of the building buildings themselves and we expect that study to be completed this spring I'm also going to be working with town staff to digest this this set of recommendations and coming up with my own set of recommendations for the board and ultimately town meeting to consider if and when we go back and ask for funding from CPA and or other sources such as state grants to pursue affordable housing and or recreation projects on on on that parcel I can tell you that we're making progress but nothing is imminent you won't see any proposals for example at the spring town meeting I've got some work to do as does the staff and wanted to give you a heads up on that thank you miss for it was my understanding that bids were due today for the affordable do we get applicants I don't know the particulars of what bids we actually receive I know there were a handful of the firms that had expressed interest in the days leading up to the to the bids other questions or comments all right next great last I wanted to make reference to something you probably saw in the morning paper related to a property a multifamily rental property on collard street that unfortunately required our police to have a visit as well as an ambulance on a weekend night last weekend this past weekend or last weekend and related to you know a large gathering that had occurred it was occurring at the house that had gotten a little out of hand and so that was brought under control in the course of the police being on scene they did become aware of concerns about the structural integrity of the floor choice that there was concern that that was creating an unsafe situation that prompted some follow-up visits from our building department and health department and they ended up issuing a temporary eviction notice for those tenants while some emergency shoring up work could be done to make the flooring as well as some shortcomings with the fire alarm system being fully in place and operational to get that back up to appropriate levels and to allow those tenants to come back to the property which they have done done so over the past couple days I wanted to highlight that because it highlights a what I think I hope is is kind of a model going forward where a problem is identified in this case in on the part of public safety staff inspectional services staff were notified of a potential problem there was prompted follow-up action and working between police fire health inspection services planning staff and the landlord and the tenant working collaboratively with the landlord and action plan to correct on a systematic way and logical way for both property owner tenants and the town the town oversight in a way that makes the prop property safe safely inhabitable and so I think that's a model to keep in mind as we move forward with you know all the things we talk about when we talk about safe and healthy neighborhoods initiative that we're looking to identify not make work issues but we're looking to identify properties that maybe have some deficiencies in them in terms of life safety or sanitary issues and work collaboratively with property owners to begin to address those so that the community is safer and some neighborhood quality of life issues are addressed at the same time thank you has the landlord been cooperative in this my understanding is that he has been is it possible to use this as a hook to inspect the landlord's other properties this is such an egregious situation that I would think that maybe we might have some leverage there the town might be able to kind of put the squeeze on that person to to get into the other places and and get a sense of if that's a similar situation those those conversations that are ongoing and so that would be our and our intent but I just wanted to you know no one's happy that the situation existed but we're happy that when the the town officials became aware of it and the property owner was contacted that he was very cooperative and beginning to address this and so we take that as a very good sign going forward thank you I'm glad that the town has been pursuing that because when you when you find evidence of a landlord who is really not paying attention at that level the the problems that that could indicate in other properties is significant so I think we really need to leverage these opportunities Mr. I'd like that we hear a follow-up on that at some point because I think it's really important that you not find a way to just have it be like well yeah he was cooperative to a point but well no he's a he's a big property owner and and also the others are watching that's exactly right and you know this ends up as a scarlet letter situation then you know so be it I mean we we have to work with the situations that we have and this is as I said an egregious situation a serious health and safety situation we appreciate the cooperation to this point but it's about joint expectations going forward so all right thank you anything else that's it any other questions for Mr. I was wondering if you had any the risk of going beyond when I was hoping to a dream you had your first bid meeting is that right oh yeah I attended my the first board of directors meeting of the Amherst business improvement district last Friday and literally the bid is starting so they are beginning discussions about proceeding with the appropriate structure and process to bring in full-time leadership for the organization via some some type of executive director so that there's a subcommittee that was developed to pursue that and in the coming weeks we'll be looking at the different committees that were formed and they'll be reporting to the full board of directors and making recommendations on things like marketing and beautification there's a parking subcommittee that I'll be actively involved in given the town's you know direct involvement and all things parking at least in the publicly owned areas and so you can expect a series of announcements in the weeks ahead I think from the bid about plans for their first full year very very excited lot of energy and talent involved on behalf of the members of the bid to bring it to life very exciting development for downtown we'll look forward to those updates thank you other questions or comments mr. actually not regards the bid that's okay announcing on camera I'm going to be out of town but my house will not be empty not that there's anything good there anyway but just wanting to let you know that I know that one of the things that you know that came up in the newspaper that I was thinking wow if this happened while I was gone I might not have heard about this that I thought was was very positive and the bid makes me think of it because it seems kind of like a bid project is the partners that are working together to clean up the area around rails and I think that that's a real positive we talked about that here associated with the mural that we allowed to have placed there which then of course people unfortunately took advantage of I suppose one could look at it that way and it has been an area of some blight and concern for some time and and to just try and look at how to redo the whole property to fit in with what we've done over banks I'm just really pleased to see people stepping up associated with that and I was glad it was in the newspaper more press I can get the better because it's just one of those really positive developments that when that's fixed it's gonna just get it's gonna make a huge difference to have that area thank you thank you for mentioning that all right moving along member reports JCPC anything JCPC devoted the entire meeting to information technology for the town and for the schools I think perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the expended of proposed expenditure of capital funds is for rebuilding the wireless system if you remember we got wireless as part of a grant and the University I think took full responsibility or some people there from to getting it set up well it's wearing out and in order for us to be able to have it working we need to have enough you know repairs and so that I thought was more unusual than you know that usual routers and and so forth that are necessary every year to maintain our system I don't know if Jim wants to add anything to that but I really have one thing about wireless and the schools wireless system has about a thousand people on it at any one time seems hard for me to believe but anyway do I have that wrong Jim no I had that same number too I guess the point to make I think about the wireless system there's a prioritized list from IT and number one instead of the core equipment but number two is the wireless and as we know from the agenda meeting that's also on the town manager's list of priorities yes because we're really pioneers but as Miss Stein said the system now needs to be upgraded and the thing to understand there because we always get these questions well couldn't we spread it out over time Mr. Bracunas explained very clearly that for technical reasons it's got to be done all at once you can't do it in phases so that's the thing the other request I thought was interesting actually which we'll see what JCPC does when it begins to deliberate was for a car because Mr. Bracunas notes that IT people are often traveling about whether it's dropping off a computer making repairs or so forth and so he actually found a dedicated vehicle to be an important priority as well things you didn't know about till you go for the budget I should say it's finally there was one a third thing I mean two parts of IT the town plus the schools at the end Mr. Mazzanti came and Alan Snow speaking in his capacity as both free warden and his new position talked about the ambitious look Mr. Mazzanti talked about the ambitious plan to plant more trees why we need to do it for environmental reasons why it's good for the towns aesthetics health safety environmental policy and everything else and laid out that you know scientifically the benefits of given trees what types of tree replacement programs we need for example what types of species what sizes and so forth as well as partnerships with the community so we hold on this can help but we'll have more about that later and then DPW will be deferred till this coming Thursday Thank you. All right other liaison representative reports we only met a week ago so I hope there aren't too many of these this time. CPAC has finalized their recommendations. So for housing it's habitat for humanity the Olympia Oaks project general construction. Do you want to know amounts? I'll just tell you the projects. West Cemetery fencing for the Dickinson plot. The it's that's a historical commission or preservation allocation as would be the Amherst Historical Society's roof repair for the Strong House. Also the database that we mentioned last time for doing an inventory of all the artifacts that are there in and we're still paying off the town masonry debt for leisure services the Plumb Brook debt. Let's see the Hawthorne property which as Mr. Missanti mentioned has a bunch of possible uses so they didn't assign it to any of those divisions yet. Recreation that's interesting it's it's a little hard to read this but there's an open space surveys and appraisals 25,000 and also a property called the Nixon process property that's up near the North Amherst community farm and I think that's 25,000 for putting a conservation restriction on that property. But I'm not sure because I'm finished reading the whole report but that is as far as I know they've also kept 200,000 for budgetary reserve so that's not spending the whole 700 plus thousand that they had and then there's a small amount for administration administrative expenses. Thank you. Mr. Missanti the Hawthorne request is that just to start dedicating money to a future? No it's debt service because they bought the land. Oh it's debt service on the CPA funds used to acquire the property. I didn't understand that thank you. I'm sorry. All right other liaison reports I'll mention that campus and community coalition I've met in two different subcommittees since we last met. One is municipal strategies and one is a working group that doesn't have a name that is both are dealing with the question of spring is coming, what role do we have in trying to make spring as pleasant as possible for everyone? The municipal strategies group is looking at it from an off-campus perspective, the working group is looking at it from an on-campus perspective and how much alcohol that ends up at off-campus parties comes from the dormitories. It gets into the dormitories then it comes out of the dormitories. It travels on buses. It's it's actually quite a scene. So there's a lot of discussion going on about kind of very short-term looking at spring and what we can do to help facilitate communication and coordination and get other messages to other folks about needs that we see. So both from the off-campus and on-campus perspective as I said, so those conversations are just beginning and whatever lessons we learn now, whatever we don't get to or whatever well you know fall is after spring. So it is an ongoing an ongoing issue, an ongoing discussion. Anyone else? Ms. Stein? In going over the minutes, two things jumped out at me that we haven't followed up on as a group and I'm struggling to remember what the second was but I can certainly say what the first is and that is we were supposed to have a homeless shelter oversight committee and we're almost halfway through the season more than halfway through the season and nothing has been done about that and that makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable. I wish I could remember what the other one was that also was in the minutes. That is something that we still need to do. I'll go back through my minutes and figure it out. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for the reminder about that and figuring out how we move forward with it. On the plus side, we haven't heard of any concerns. Staff is in a lot of contact with the folks running the shelter and nothing has risen to the level of my even being aware of it. That's exactly right and there have been a series of meetings between staff and the representatives from Craig's Doors operating the shelter. Staff have also done site visits during the hours of operation of the shelter and we have daily onsite visitation from Amherst police officer. So all of that stuff is ongoing and no news is good news. Okay. So I think that part of what we will do is be taking the results of this shelter season and helping that inform what what goes forward with this committee, which we never quite figured out exactly how we were going to pursue that anyway. But but now we have more information that will help us come up with a model. So so thank you for mentioning that. Okay. Other liaison reports. All right, Miss Brewer. What is the closing day? April 30th. April 30th. Sure. Yeah. So we're almost there. All right. Miss Brewer has in our packets a for the open meeting law update a bunch of information regarding the remote participation that we have talked about and why don't you tell us what this document is and what you why don't I totally confuse you by going ahead and giving my other liaison report. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. My mistake, which was that I was psyched last week that we were going to be having the first regional school district planning committee public forum on Wednesday the 29th. Then, you know, it's note. And so we didn't. And therefore we don't have any idea when we're gonna have it at this point, except we know it's going to be after March 17th because I am one of the other three committee members is going to be away until then. Um, and then we know we're running up against town meeting. So we're kind of frustrated. We're also frustrated, but so not surprised to report that we don't have an answer on the grant yet. Because as it turns out, there are 100 applicants and I don't know what they expected, but they range from things like closed system pressure washers for boats out on the Cape to regionalized public health services to mean it's just a huge, I don't know how they can possibly judge capital items versus. So they haven't yet. There are a couple of speakers coming in, which I'll try and get up on the R S D P C website before I go that are just coming to meet to present to the representatives from each town that's working on this, just so we hear some more from the state about what the state's thinking associated with regionalization right now. And the grant is obviously the big deal that we're all waiting to hear from. So there's that. In terms of this piece of paper with Oh, such fine nice small print. Um, I had originally indicated that I was going to draft a letter, the letter to Amy at the division of open government with our questions, except then I realized that I still had a whole lot of questions before I knew what I wanted to include in the letter to her. So I think I want to send her a short letter that asks her a really easy one like local public body, Jones library trustees, Amherst housing authority, Amherst redevelopment authority. Are they under us or not? You know, little quirky things like that that they they didn't really necessarily seem to have thought about. I don't know at this point if the regional school committee has discussed this at all, it is up to them to do it for the regional school committee. But for us, for us to decide it affects all the other committees. I don't know how much time you might have had to read through this. I think that there are some significant areas where it's not clear what the intent of the what the purpose of the regulation was in terms of what they were trying to accommodate exactly. It sounded so good on the surface. But then the more I started digging into it, I got confused. Like, it's very specifically says, for example, item seven, more than halfway down the first page. I'm pointed out that it says and these are the section numbers that are on the following pages. It says personal illness and personal stability, which sounds like one of those things from a place I used to work that says you can call in sick for yourself. But if you call in sick to take care of your kid, then you're going to get docked. It just I'm not clear on what they were trying to make sense with my overall feeling about this. And I think some of my concerns probably become evident in reading through this is that we're so I would think that the the Division of Open Government says that basically open meeting law, I quoted one of their things promoting transparency with regard to deliberations and decisions on which public policy is based. I think one of the things we have talked about as a community is that we would love to have more people a wider variety of people engaged in local decision making. I don't see how this helps that at all personally, which does not to say that it doesn't serve a purpose. It just that it doesn't serve that purpose in the way that I might have hoped it would. And largely that's because you still have to have a physical quorum someplace. And the chair has to be there so it isn't like you suddenly have a much looser meeting service. What I would like to do since I'm leaving town is I would like if you guys would look over this and see if some of these things make any sense to you in terms of whether or not we would ask questions about potential restrictions, which is halfway down the second page. Talking about because when I talked with Amy personally after the MMA conference, one of the things that wasn't clear, and I'm sure I've said this before, is that she said, Oh, yeah, it says there that you can have a local bylaw or policy. And I said, Well, you know, bylaw doesn't really sound like the way you want to go and some of the stuff you want to do policy. Well, of course, there's the problem that one, how would we promulgate a policy around here when do that on a regular basis. But then secondly, whether or not within these things we actually do have would be able to have policy discretion. So for example, it seems to be fairly clearly written right now that it would be say the select board would say, Yep, sure, that sounds good to remote participation. Every single chair of every single committee would have the power to decide whether or not a member who said they wanted to do remote participation was allowed to do it. And that makes me uncomfortable. Maybe I could stop being uncomfortable about it, or I would be outvoted on that. But it's something that I think is worth thinking about because we already know that we have a huge variety in terms of way meetings are run, the fact that we didn't used to have minutes for some of our committees and people with all good intentions, no, no no. It was it's just it's a cumbersome process. And I'm a little concerned about the potential for favoritism or perceived favoritism. If some people were allowed to do the process and some weren't, we have committees and then I know I'm kind of randomly bringing out comments here. But this is to encourage the public to run out and read this four page dense document that's already on the website. You know, it doesn't we have committees who always meet in the police station. Well, you know, they don't have the same equipment that we have in here, et cetera. And so I'm just not sure given all the possible problems, if it's something that's worth considering doing and trying. And then it says we can revoke it again. Or if we want to ask for some particular restrictions up front. And I feel like until we have a better sense where we as a board stand on some of these issues, it's hard for me to know exactly what sort of public process we would want to proceed with. I'm not sure I'd want to, I can't perceive sending this much detail out to every committee chair saying these are all the thousands of things that occur to Alyssa about this. I would think we would want to come up with something a lot more concise before we got to them. So I think in reading this what it made me think is that there are there are maybe three sets of issues in this list. Some of it is for the Attorney General's office and maybe counsel or something about what the what the intent and interpretation is about the law. Some of it is actual kind of infrastructure issues, capability, things like you said about the different rooms or whatever. And then the third is the policy questions about how we would want this to happen locally. I think that once we get more information about interpretation and intent, then we can have the public policy question. And I think that this is a great start for the kinds of things. And I guess maybe what I would think is that we take your list of the things that are policy questions, and then we add to them or subtract from them or whatever. And then we have a public process where we say, so these are the kinds of policy questions give us feedback on this, you know, you do it in a meeting, you do it by submitting comment. And so then it will be the community's wisdom in helping us decide what Amherst policy would look like. Do you know from the folks at the Attorney General's office if any other community has adopted this yet? I was looking around on the website, I have they haven't come up with any other they haven't published anything yet. And I haven't seen their minutes yet from their February meeting. It might be worth asking them that and maybe asking MMA, right, so that we're both for information about how those folks are interpreting it questions that came up in their process. Right. You know, they might have things that we didn't even consider. And as a community, we wouldn't consider, we wouldn't have considered, but but it would be good for for us to know that they already thought of it. Right. So, because I have looked over some of their minutes and it's still not just like our minutes. I mean, it's not every single word of what happened at the meeting. And it is also, in fact, interesting that our MMA representative on the committee is, in fact, now the chair of that committee. So Peter from Reading, Heck, Blakener, something to that effect. So what what should I do next? Maybe it would be helpful if you if you get your your Attorney General questions to the Attorney General, the things that are more most about their intent. All right. So if if you can flesh those out more, then once we have answers to those, some of that will inform the policy questions. And then and then we can go from there. What does that sound? Does that make sense to folks? I'm just thinking about how often how I have written for two years to speak in terms of sorry how I've written for two years trying to get a situation about the quorum straight down and to no avail. So I wish it could take some time. I'm really not convinced I'm going to have time to do this before I leave town. Oh, sure. No, no, when I get that. Yeah, so we've got and who knows, maybe somebody asked them in the meantime. So maybe the maybe the meeting of the 26 there's something you would have some information for that. And if not, then we're going to meet. Let's see, starting the 19th, we're going to meet every single week until the end of June, except for the week of town elections. So we'll have plenty of time to have conversations about this. Although, of course, the meetings in April will be very busy with town meeting stuff. But I may be able to break up. I mean, one of the things they always report on and they had their annual report on the website, et cetera, is how many queries they get. And I think I'll help inflate their numbers by like separating some of this because I want to have simple questions that maybe they'll just go ahead and answer. And then the other things that sit in somebody's pile for a while. Great. Thank you for for getting us started on questions and comments. Mr. Haynes, just when I went over this, I think that your categories are right. But I noticed that there's there's a huge absence as a whole here. And I know this is not the whole thing, but from the little stuff that we had before, I think the whole remains that there's there's no sense of whether there might be functions that a committee has that are appropriate to have remote participation with and others that it just isn't. Right. As an example, for if this body were to consider it, our regular Monday meetings probably would not be appropriate, but the four towns meeting, which is really an informational session as much as anything, it might be appropriate. This is completely mute on that subject. And I know, having been on boards where there are specific rules about physical participation and whether or not you can do your work when you have your work depends on who is there and who was there and who was available. So that's just the whole that I wanted to. It's a giant can of worms. I mean, it just it creates so many new questions and just saying no doesn't solve them either. I kind of noticed this. Yeah. All right. Anything else from members about anything? Chair's report is chair has no report. I think we've covered everything. We meet again on March 19th. We do not meet next Monday, the 12th. We meet the 19th. I already said we meet practically every week thereafter. So ready for sort of the end of our relatively quiet period and the beginning of our extremely busy period. Anything else? Anybody wants to say or ask before we adjourn? And Mr. Hayden, I would move to adjourn without objection. This meeting is adjourned at eight oh nine. Thank you very much. Thank you.