 So I'm going to call the select board meeting of October 16th to order at 6.32 p.m. So a couple of bit of opening remarks, announcements and agenda review. So one of the things I'm going to announce is that we have some guests visiting us tonight, the Boyscott Troop 500 from Amherst is here to visit. I visited them at their meeting last week. They came a little earlier this evening and the manager and I took them around the building and showed them some of the ins and outs of the physical structure that we're in tonight and they're here to observe the meeting. It's part of work towards a badge that they're seeking and so hopefully they'll be here for a little bit and kind of see what we do and I just want to extend a nice welcome to you all this evening. From an agenda review standpoint, I think we have something under item 7 with some change to some hours and so we may bring that item near to the beginning of the meeting so that we can ask questions of the proprietor of that lunch cart just so we can get our questions answered and potentially make a decision. One of the things I'll mention is we are being covered by Amherst media live and then later on they will take that recording and put it on their website for us and hopefully if anybody has any photos that they want to take just let me know beforehand it is a bit disrupted for the meeting and we are being recorded so if people need to see who's here at a particular point in time but we've been a bit lax in mentioning that to people so it is disconcerting sometimes when a photo sort of happens in the middle of the meeting and people aren't ready for it so I did want to mention that. Are there any other announcements or agenda items that anyone wanted to mention? I think we do have on our desk tonight an updated motion sheet so there were a couple of changes to that I didn't know particularly what they were but I wanted to draw your attention to that. So I'll begin with public comment. Is anyone here for public comment other than an item that is on the agenda? So is anyone here for things other than are on the agenda that they wanted to share with us so since there's not I think what we'll do is we'll skip down to under section seven of our agenda is item C which is lunch cart license amend hours of operation locations for golden dumplings and so we'll take that topic up first because I think there may be potentially questions for the proprietor about that and so let me find the right spot here. So if I'm correct we're adding one area to the list of areas that you are expecting to potentially operate within and then the other change was on Thursday, Friday and Saturday you are extending your hours to you're asking to extend your hours till 2 30 a.m. Is that also correct? Okay so why don't you come forward to the to the to the chair there and I think we some of my colleagues may have questions for you but if you wanted to just tell us a little bit why you were wanting to extend your hours obviously more locations gives you another place to sort of set up and and sell your wares but can you tell us a little bit about why you wanted the extended hours? A lot of people have been asking me what you want to open on the weekend late night so I'm trying to open till 2 30 if it's possible to move to the to Unitarian meeting house. So that was the area you added it was in front of the Unitarian meeting house. Yes. And then the extra hours is because people are out at that time of night you're hoping to sell them. Yeah the only place that opens the pizza place. So did my colleagues have questions for the applicant? I guess I have two questions and I'll ask and I can ask both the applicant and the town manager. Maybe the one who has the answer. Are there other lunch carts that have hours that go as late as being requested here? I don't think there are any lunch carts that go to 2 30 a.m. I don't know the latest hours they go though. I can look that up for you. I don't know if Ms. Brewer knows what the if there's anything in the regulations since I was you involved in writing it and I was not hours. Thank you. It's good. And I guess the other question that I have it just open up for discussion for all concerned is that there's one real lunch cart that is almost always at the Unitarian Church site that's being requested and it's a fairly large cart as is your cart and so it's a question that I think I'd like to have a little bit of discussion and presentation from all concerned about whether there really is enough space at that location to not be disruptive of other traffic needs in the year. Not during the day but in the evening of Thursday Friday Saturday after he leaves like maybe around 9, 10 p.m. That's when you would want to have that location. Yes. I follow up on what Mr. Steinberg just said. Well, it's not terribly precise memory. The last time we dealt with lunch carts we talked about needing to know not just the locations where they're allowed but to kind of zoom in a little bit more and see how much room there was to actually fit different size carts and we maybe because then all of a sudden lunch cart licenses fell off and we didn't pursue that. So I don't really know how big the other card is. This one is almost 10 feet long. It's 9 feet 9 inches and it would be nice to be able to see in a closer view how two lunch carts could fit and depending on which sizes they were. I've also noticed with the other cart that a truck comes up right onto the sidewalk in order to position that and then it's pulled off and so I am going to ask the applicant how would you get your lunch cart onto the sidewalk location? Normally I park on the side street and then push up. I would like to have another guy with me. Put on this on the side street and push it up by hand. Okay. Just maybe it would be good to clarify things for everyone. I'm looking at the language here in the motion and it talks about the fact that that location has been granted to the Halal food truck. It shouldn't be taken to be reserved. We allow people to operate in certain places but no one has an automatic right to that above anyone else. So it's a first come first served thing. As we review the regulations we'll probably think about those issues too but I just want to explain for the public and the applicant what this means. It's usually there. If I could follow up. So if another lunch cart is already there because it's approved for that location and then a second one comes would be good for us to know for allowing to how they would both fit in that space and if they would. I believe the applicant doesn't plan to be there at the same time as the other. No. He tends to when that other one leaves that he can move in there for the late night time frame. That's not what this is. Right in the way. Well in the the I think the point we're getting at is some some of it is unrelated to your particular plans. But nonetheless it it brings up a few issues that we were recognizing need to be sort of clarified a little bit and we've you know sort of been dealing with it by not dealing with it in in the fact that we haven't had conflicts in the past. But if we don't have clear sort of rules the road as it were it might run into a situation that could be more conflict than we'd like around that. And so I think it's in in preparing ourselves for thinking about these regulations again about whether we want to think about those kinds of issues. And so for this particular circumstance I think it's I mean those are issues we have to consider. I mean obviously as they're written now and this is what Mr. Walden pointed out is that it's kind of a first come first serve basis if two places are allowed for a particular cart. And then you know the applicants you know indicating they're likely to wait until the spots open. So when one leaves another comes in but nonetheless I think we we do want to think about those kinds of questions as we kind of cycle back to the to the food cards. And the question on hours of operations is in section six of the regulations that says hours of operations shall be as approved by the select board. Lunch carts may not occupy approved locations outside of the hours of operation. They may not occupy the approved locations when they're not open and not operating. So it's up to you. So luckily we can keep saying this for any number of issues. Before Mr. Bachmann's time here we were having this conversation and I don't believe that although our regs don't say this right now but in terms of matter of practice any application should be brought forward to the select board in terms of getting through the office just like liquor licenses have to fulfill certain requirements before they get through the office and get to us. They shouldn't be coming to us unless we know how the cart fits. And I know that Mr. Slaughter had to work up a map on short notice in a particular situation some time ago but it never resolved the underlying issue which is that we are now going to have to change this motion to say certain hours for which locations because otherwise the way the motion reads now they're both allowed to be in the same spot at the same time because the hours envelope that the Golden Dumplings has is the same. Now while practically speaking they don't intend to be in the same place at the same time that's not what this motion says. And so the other so there's two parts one is to change the motion in the meantime and the second is in terms of the bigger picture issue that we still have to resolve that's been hanging over our heads is because we don't have a little block thing that shows us what fits and what doesn't. There's absolutely no reason to believe that one or the other say they wanted to be there at the same time that one or the other has precedent that we should know for a fact whether or not both can fit or not so that one doesn't park in the middle because if both can fit then technically and we've approved hours for both it's not first come first serve in my opinion because one's blocking part of the location. So it's a little it's it's got many layers of complication whenever to want to be in the same place at the same time when we first started this people thought they'd all have separate hours and so they didn't tend to conflict. But that has no longer the case. So I think that because we've specific because we don't get if I guess we could go one of two ways one is at this point if we believe that both fit then we could put the hours down as they are in the motion and notify the other license holder that we believe both fit and they need to make accommodations. The other is if we don't believe they both fit or we don't want to notify the other license holder then we need to say that it's only going to be hours that license holder isn't operating there. I'm not sure which we suggest but the way it reads now they could easily show up at the same time because they decide they want to. It's not reasonable. So you have for this applicant you've approved three different locations so it doesn't mean he's going to be at three different locations but it doesn't mean he has exclusive use of all three locations either. So there was one before. He's got to now. He's asking for it. Okay. St. Bridges and Bank of America were approved before. So this is the third right. So he's not saying I'm going to be at both of those locations from 10 to 10 every day. So I don't think there's any exclusivity anticipated. My understanding was that it was first come first serve whoever showed up. They got the space but but there's no reason to believe the space is only big enough for one of them. And so if we thought the space was only being enough for one of them then why are we even bothering to give somebody else the space when the other one's been licensed to be there for three plus years. It seems rather disingenuous on our part. So that's why I would prefer under the circumstances not knowing if they both fit with all the requirements about the sidewalk and people being able to maneuver around in terms of the regular pedestrians and wheelchairs and all that that we go ahead and we specify the hours for that location where that are separate than the hours for the previous two locations. And because it says here hours of operate like on the actual certificate you know lunch cart license. Mr. Slaughter signed that you guys worked on last time is that you can then just make another one that says you know instead of having to muck this one up if you don't want to just make a whole another one that says this you're also licensed to be in this place for these hours. I guess you're Mr. Joe Joe Joe. Did have you had a conversation with the owner of the halal lunch cart about this? No, I'm not trying to be there at the same time when he's there. I know what I'm trying to do is open Thursday, Friday, Saturday night after like 10 p.m. The other days I'm going to be at the same bridge church. So I would be more comfortable if the other lunch cart license was modified if they're only staying till 10 p.m. at night. But we've actually given them a license that goes longer than that on to 2 a.m. on certain kind of understand this if that's the Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So we would have one license that goes till 2 a.m. and another one that goes from 10 to 10. And this one would then go to 2.30 a.m. And we have one out that goes till 2 a.m. So if I'm reading the parents correctly, a little bit confused. So that's why I'm saying write another piece of paper, write another piece of paper for golden dumplings that says hours of operation, the exact hours of operation that he wants to be in the location in front of the Unitarian, and then the type will be on sidewalk at the Unitarian. And that's all that's going to be on the sidewalk. So that's why I'm saying that one will be 4. And that way they're just separate pieces of paper that got separate hours. But technically they'd be separate licenses and there were separate fees. But we'll still have for our benefit. But we will still then have issued two licenses, not two separate license holders licenses for the same time period that they in. We're not talking about the other license holder at all, though. Well, I but if for the second one that we're now about to license, but we're saying the times don't conflict. So it's not relevant. And maybe I'm not reading the times correctly. That's why that's because this motion attempts to combine all of them into one license. And that's a mistake. Given the complexity of this issue, we should leave alone what we put what we previous what you all previously when I wasn't here, agreed to do and then issue a second license. Right. Even with that, you would still have an overlap of time is what she's a little hesitant till 2am. Right. That's confusing. Right. But we don't have halal foods in front of us. I know. So we I suggest we have the notation about it. It really isn't part of the motion. It's a notation for us. Please note. And I'm not comfortable having two licenses out for the same space, even if they say they're not in conflict, doing that without looking to see if two literally fit there. So then I still don't understand the question apparently going way back to the beginning, which is that why would we ever considered doing the time conflict when we don't know for a fact if the two fit there. So therefore, I don't understand it. I understand what the note here says, which would have been nice to have in a memo saying that this but apparently there's a piece of paper like this that says New York halal food cart Monday through Sunday 10am to 2am. Right. And so existing license if that's true, then how is it possible that they're not going to come? I don't even understand the question. So I think what I'm hearing is the following is that we have some questions related to overlapping time in a particular location. And if the two will fit, then we potentially could have overlapping time. And then we just need to tell the licensees that play nice and make room for each other. But if there isn't space, then we need to sort out whether or not we can or cannot actually have overlapping license or not. So either do we ask halal to change their license to shorten their hours and let our current applicant. So I think what we may have to do is hold off on this and get some questions sorted out is what it sounds like to me because I think we have a couple of different pieces here that we want to have clear. So everybody's got, you know, there's no, this understanding is about what can and can't happen in the space that we're talking about. So I think unless my colleagues mind, I think what we'll do is we'll ask you to be patient with us and give us another week because we meet a week from today. And I don't know that we'll reach out to if we think we need you to come in. Otherwise, I think we understand what you're seeking. And so if we need you to come back, we'll ask you to. But I think otherwise, we're going to hold off on this unless someone else has a suggestion to the contrary, till we can get some of those questions addressed. So it's not coming back. There is one additional question that might want to ask, which is to find out whether you would want extended hours at the current location, regardless of the additional location. If the if the other location is not possible, then yeah, I want to extend the hours on the current location. Okay. So so that we could potentially do this evening and then we can clear up the other about the common location with someone else and sort this out next week. So thank you for your patience. So if we can figure out a way to make a motion to alter the motion. So we don't necessarily like the current to our chain. It has nothing to do with the third location at this point, right? I think it's just changing this from 10am to 10pm to 10am to 2.30am Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights, just those three nights of the week. So I think we're still amending the lunch cart license. You can take out change just to to extend the hours. So I think from so what you'd want to do I think is to delete for the time being to include an additional sidewalk location and the specifications about that. So it would read to amend the lunch cart license to extend the hours of operation and skip everything in between. Like to make that motion. I moved to amend the lunch cart license granted to children doing businesses, golden dumplings to extend the hours of operation from Monday through Sunday from 10am to 10pm to 2.30am the following. Could we break that up because I just don't like the way to read it. I just don't like it. Could we just break it up to show what so Monday through Wednesday, 10am to 10pm and Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 10am to 2.30am the day Sunday through Wednesday. Sorry, you are requesting 2.30am not to yes, that's correct. Okay. So Sunday through Wednesday and then Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So let me reread the most was there a second. I did all right. So I will read it again. I will reread the motion. The motion was to amend the lunch cart license granted to doing business as golden dumplings. Sorry about your name pronunciation there. Sorry to extend the hours of operation from Sunday through Wednesday from 10am to 10pm and Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 10am to 2.30am the day following. Second. All right. Is there further discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor please say aye. I have a question for the applicant and so we will work this out and let you know like Mr. Slaughter said in terms of whether or not you need to come back. But one of the questions that arose after you got your license the last time is that your lunch cart was observed located in another location that was not one of the approved locations. And so was it discussed with you by staff that you could not be next to Kendrick Park because you weren't approved to be next to Kendrick Park? I'm sorry, can you sit again? We thought it was indicated to us that the lunch cart that you had had approved your lunch cart, which I've been to that you've had approved that's a bit in front of State Bridges and in front of Bank of America was for a particular event that UMass student had set up that it was parked next to Kendrick Park was that because if that was your lunch cart, that wasn't one of the locations that we approved for your lunch cart. And so even though it's on the list of approved locations, it's not one that we approved for you. So I'm simply I'm not complaining. I'm simply making it clear that you are limited to only the ones that are on the list of approved locations as opposed to the whole list of locations, which you were not approved for. You were only approved for two locations and now more than likely will be for a third. Does that make sense? Because it says here, you know, on sidewalk West Side of Kendrick Park, but that wasn't applied for. So that didn't happen. If you find that you want to pursue some of these others that don't have checkmarks, let us know. And that's how we do this park. Yeah, modify this before next week. All this bit of fun again, we'll get better at it. Not so sure. Thank you. We'll be in touch regarding the other question about in front of the Utarian Church and count to you. Thank you. Thank you. So getting back to other places in our in our agenda, we'll head back to section four, which is action discussion items, which is generally the part of our our our agenda. So tonight we're going to start and hear a lot about water from from Mr. Moring. And so, Mr. Mock, when do you want to set this up while they collect their gear to share with us? So for some time, we've been talking about water and it came to the fore last last year when we had water restrictions placed on on the town. And in response to that, in addition to doing a number of things, we also contracted with Tata and Howard, who did a was a study of our water system. And what we've received the study, you've received a copy of the study. And there's it's online in your packet. But also for tonight, Mr. Moring is going to do a presentation that sort of summarizes what the study says. And this talks about the our gives an overview of our of our water system resiliency of it, and options for expanding it, if that's what we need to do. So good evening, I'm Gil from Moring Superintendent of Public Works. I brought some assistance tonight. So I have with me Lindsay Stroll, who's our environmental scientist. She's been with us about two years now. That seems like a she's does a lot. So it seems like she's always there now. And then of course, you know, Amy Rusecki, she's the assistant superintendent for operations. So as the town manager said, this is actually going to be a bunch of stuff kind of put together. We did have Tata and Howard do a good deal of analysis during the drought. And we'll talk about that. And then we'll talk more about the rates. But all this is information for you because I understand that you want to have a discussion later about how we how we may want to change our rates or if we do want to change some of our rates. So that this is really just a we know there's gonna be questions we know I'd be able to answer some of your questions tonight. We anticipate that'll be a couple of good ones that we may have to go back and get some more information. So that's how we're approaching this tonight. We do have some basic risk recommendations at the end. But it's basically a information giving to you process and we'll go from there. So I'm going to let Lindsay started off. Hi, everyone. Nice to meet you all. So Tata and Howard looked at our current supply and evaluated several alternatives that would work for us to meet our future system demands. This is based on a growing population and developing commercial sectors. So our existing sources consist of five active ground water wells and two reservoir systems, our two surface water supplies. Currently, we're approved total of 4.4 million gallons per day from our ground water wells and up to 1.5 million gallons per day from each of our surface water supplies. Atkins has a safe yield of 1.25 million gallons per day and that's based off a 1990 study from Ty and Bond. And our Centennial Water Treatment Plant, which treats the Pelham reservoir system is never really run at full capacity. That's due to a desperate need for some upgrades to the system and some water quality concerns in the summer. High color and high organic matter in the late summer early fall. So we typically have that treatment plant offline at that time and to compensate, we usually run well number four, which is treated by baby carriage water treatment plant. So well five, as you can see noted, it's not a reliable well. It's not very efficient for long term use. It's only 57 feet deep, which makes it the shallowest of our wells. And its diameter is a little smaller than a typical water supply well. So that, I believe, is one of the wells that was targeted in Tata and Howard's study could possibly be replaced. That well is used when we can't maintain, it's basically a backup makeup well for when our other water, other wells can't make up adequate supply in our tanks. Well six, it was drilled in 1991, but due to high iron and manganese in the water in the area, it was never completed, brought online. Our wells are all located in the Lawrence Swamp aquifer. As you can see, we're approved for a total of 4.4 million gallons per day. Even though, cumulatively, the capacity is approved with draws are at 6.11 million gallons per day. The 4.4 limitation is due to the zone two, delineated by MASTEP, which is based on the maximum withdrawal from that aquifer under certain conditions. Excuse me. Yeah, under the most severe pumping and recharge conditions. So our well withdrawals in 2015 were much lower than our approved withdrawals. So we already have some resiliency built into our system, which is a good thing. We currently operate three treatment plants, Atkins Water Treatment Plant, Centennial Water Treatment Plant and Baby Carriage. Atkins is obviously the Atkins Reservoir. Centennial is our three reservoirs in Pellum and Baby Carriage is well number four. We have four tanks in town, Bay Road, which has a capacity of 1 million gallons of storage. The East Pleasant Street Tank, which has 475,000 gallons of storage capacity. The U Mast Storage Tank, which is 1.5 million gallons, and the Village Road Tank, which is 1.68 million gallons. I believe currently, last month, our average was 3.3 million gallons per day in withdrawals of demand. Excuse me. The highest in Tata and Howard's study in the past five or so years was 4.4 million gallons in one day. So that's just the peak. Obviously, our demand significantly increases when the students are back from first school, though. So anyway, I will hand over the reins to Guilford now. Do you want to ask questions about the first section or just go through the whole thing? We could ask questions, but does anyone have any right now that they want to have addressed? Probably clarifying questions. This is just a, so I understand well number five has problems and in the report it talks about air intrusion, which I didn't really understand if that's something fixable or if it's air intrusion because it's just drawing through the bedrock air or if it's air intrusion because it's broken and can be fixed. That one's in the next part. I know there's some plans. I mean, maybe it got answered by my question. Just he's going to answer it. You're going to answer it, but well, the report might answer it too. So I guess we'll just keep going. Yeah. All right, so let's talk out. So we asked them to look at the system. Our biggest customers and we were in a situation we'd never been in last year. Last year was a very strange year. We had a high construction time period where a lot of water was used for construction. We had the drought going on. And that's never really kind of happened at one time before. So we were kind of had some questions. Other people had questions. And then basically what you saw or what Lindsay showed you was the fact that from our permitted capacity, we actually do have a lot of capacity. Tata and Howard made one comment during their presentation to us that they have clients in the eastern part of the state who would kill for what we have. They're taking well sources like number well number six who have high iron and manganese and they're developing those because they have no other choice. We do sit a little better out here in the western part of the state and we positioned ourselves well as as far as having the ability to have sources that are permitted to a level that can be used at a higher level than we actually use them. So when we did the analysis and how to make the system better. We looked at these eight alternatives. There's a ninth alternative, which I'll tell you at the end, but it really has more to do with the wastewater plant, not the water system. So the alternatives were to automate well number four and baby carriage. So the bottom left is well number four on that picture on the rights, baby carriage, baby carriage is a water treatment plant that treats for iron and manganese. It's a very complicated system up until maybe three years ago, three and a half years ago. It was very high in demand for electrical demand when we used it. It was a well we only wanted to use and we only used when we had the students coming back. It was the well we turned on and we let run steady state when the students came back for a month month and a half. And then when the students kind of figured out either they didn't have to shower as much or they didn't shower as much for some reason. Let's also the lawn watering stopped at that time too. The water usage dropped and we could take baby carriage offline and go back to our normal supplies. Since then we've changed the chemicals we used in baby carriage and made it easier to treat the iron and manganese. And now we've realized that what we should do is upgrade it and make it automated because we only ran it for two months out of the year. Basically, it wasn't a lot of automation in there. We turned it on. It had some alarms in it and it was very basic. So one thing they recommended or we looked at was automating it. Next thing we looked at was upgrading Centennial Water Treatment Plant. We've been looking at Centennial for about 10 years now. I was going back over some of the notes and about 10 years ago we were talking about doing the upgrades and we actually got some money from town meeting and we actually had appropriated money to do this. About five years ago we realized, hey, let's hold off. We need to rethink this. We may not be going in the right direction. So Tate and Howard looked at upgrading Centennial. As Lindsay said, Centennials never produced a full 1.5. It doesn't produce that because the way the treatment trains are set up and because of the water quality that comes through the plant. So there is a lot of room for improvement there that can make that work better. Number three is well number five. Well, number five is affectionately called Rudy. When things get tight, we call Rudy off the bench and we turn Rudy on and Rudy runs and runs and runs. And Rudy usually runs for about four to five days and then we need to turn Rudy off. The problem is, as that, as Lindsay said, it's a small diameter well. It was drilled as an eight inch well. That was probably a test well and then it was decided not to make it into a production well for a little while. And then it was decided, well, we have this eight inch well. Let's make it a production well. So it gets air in it because it's not the right size casing for a production well. We run it as a production well and because we do it that way, we suck air in and it's not exactly made the correct way for that. So to make it a 12 inch well, we could actually get probably more water out of it. The consultant believes we can get more water out of it. We are kind of skeptical and are not sure it can do that. But we did look at doing it. It is on the outer layer of the aquifer. If you think about our aquifer being a bowl, you can choose what type of bowl you want the bowl to be. And where it got straws in it, all five of the wells are straws in this bowl. This straw is at the edge of the bowl, not towards the deep part of the bowl. It's on the edge of the bowl. So it has less area to actually draw from because the rock of the mountain starts to come up and close off the aquifer of this well. So you have a much smaller area of water going in. So that was one thing we looked at. The next thing we looked at was putting a well in up at the north. We've been talking about wells in the north end of town since before I got here. Mr. Zomak, when he was director, he looked in the north end of town. Mr. Ryan did, Bob Pariso did. The north end of town has always been looked at for a well site. The site you're looking at now, there's two people who have approached us about possibly buying that property or buying area for a well. The Warner property, which is at the plum tree pit, and then the Nielsen property, which is off 116. This is in the vicinity of the Sunderland well. It's also in the vicinity of two wells for fish hatcheries. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife have a facility. They have a large well, and then the state fish hatchery has a well there too. So it's in a good area. The two sites that are in this study are not necessarily the two sites we would choose, but looking at this in the town, we could probably get another well. The benefits are is it's not in the Lawrence swamp aquifer, and it's also not in the aquifer that our surface water systems are in. So it would be a totally different sub basin in the Connecticut River, which is a good thing. So these are the other options we looked at, taking well number six and connecting it to the system, connecting the just pumping directly the Pellum reservoirs into the Atkins system and treating it at the Atkins plant, dredging the Atkins reservoir, which some people thought we should do, which we actually found out that we shouldn't really do it because there's a confining layer below the surface of the reservoir, and if we puncture through that confining area, we may just hear a big slurping sound as all the water goes away. So we didn't want to look at that too much. One issue that always comes up when we talk to the state is why don't you connect to MWRA? That is an option, it's a very expensive option. This is the table from the book you have, and it kind of summarizes the options for you. We've been working on the first four. Actually, we've been working on the first two and developing a well in central and more than we have been replacing well five right now. The biggest push has been to upgrade baby carriage. It's actually the best bang for a buck. If we can get that fully operational and on automated system, we'll get much more use out of it. As I said, we only use that, we used to only use it for two months a year. We have run it for a full year now, constantly, and we know we can do it. So these are the things we looked at. Actually, I will stop here, and this is the last one I believe. So if there's any questions about this part of the study, I'll answer those. I have a quick question just talking about when you're, so I assume the well that you've run for a full year now that it's still under the existing system or the old system of not being fully automated. So you're having to attend to it a bit more directly more often because of that I presume. If you were to go to an automated system, would you significantly change the method by which you're cleaning water or is it a parallel system? Just it's an automated version of the parallel system. What it would do is allow us to adjust that well. Right now you kind of turn it on, you set it at one setting and you let that one run, and then you let wells one, two, or three do the makeup water into the system. So you would be able to actually have well four and the treatment plant go up and down with demand instead of having the wells do that. So you could take some of the other wells off and let well four run at full capacity. Other questions? I don't think, no Mr. Sandberg. Yeah I guess as I look at the three that you said you were primarily focusing on the one that's the most expensive of the three in some ways is the Sunderland. I think even though the number two is also pretty close in the same range, but is the cost of developing a well in Sunderland because of the need to build the infrastructure that would enable us to use it? Is it because of the cost to negotiate with the landowners or is it a combination? No, and actually we shouldn't really call it Sunderland. I guess we should have changed that a little bit. It's North Amherst. It's anywhere in the north in the town up into Sunderland. We were looking at Sunderland originally because we were working with the Sunderland Water District to help them out, and that's why we call it Sunderland from time to time. But we don't really, we have the option going anywhere from where we just showed you back in the town. Probably somewhere around Sunderland Road in that area there would be a place we could possibly get a well in. The cost does figure in connecting to the water system, but that number is kind of, it's an imaginary number because we don't know where exactly the well is. The majority of that number you see is actually drilling a pilot well, testing it, then doing a full production well, and then the permitting for it. So there's a little more cost to the North Amherst Sunderland type structure, and we won't know the full cost until we actually know more of a site. We were looking at a site that was closer to the eastern part of the aquifer, and that actually would become closer to the well, water lines we have on Montague Road, so the connection would be closer. If we come closer in the Amherst, we actually are closer to the water lines we have in Amherst. If the farther we go away, if we're in the Nielsen property or the Warner property, we're actually, those are more expensive to connect. So the connection cost is only a number, a placeholder in there. The majority of this cost and the accuracy in this cost is actually how to develop it, permit it, and drill a full well. No, thank you. If there's no other questions, please continue. Okay, so I'm going to turn this over to Miss Prozecki, and she's going to talk about the rates. Right. Oh. Recommendations. Guilford did all that. Awesome. So the other portion that I know there's been some questions around is looking at how we do water rates, and I know that some of this has been driven by the question of having irrigation meters, and we felt that it was really important not just to look at the question of irrigation meters, but to look at this holistically, because it is going to impact everything, and you can very easily get on a slippery slope of just allowing irrigation meters, and then someone wants it for their lawn irrigation, and someone wants a second meter, because they have a basement apartment. You just have to look at the whole thing, look at things holistically, and make sure that we're being clear about what we're doing and why we're doing it. So this was, as Guilford said, this is a very preliminary type study. If we want to dig into this, you know, we'll need to actually have a more full-blown study that happens, but preliminarily, we just looked at different billing structures, and they looked at nine surrounding communities near us, so just communities that touch us, and then a few others that are one removed from touching us to see what surrounding communities are doing, and then looking at different user categories that they have. So if they have commercial, industrial, agricultural rates, or irrigation meters in those communities. So when it comes to water rate types, there's four different types of water rates out there. There's ascending block rates. DEP loves those. As far as they see it, that's, it promotes conservation, and so how ascending water rates work is basic, or block rates, sorry. You have a certain rate based on what you think is, would be a good conservation amount, and then if you go above that, you get charged a greater amount for any usage above, above that limit. So again, they say that promotes conservation. Descending block rates, that's, that's basically like buying in bulk. DEP actually has made that illegal in Massachusetts, so that's no longer allowed, and so then there's a flat rate structure, which is what we do here in Amherst, which is you just pay the same amount for every single unit of water, whether you use one or whether you use a million units of water. Everyone pays the same amount per unit. As far as the DEP's concern, they say that doesn't promote conservation, but there's no law that says either way, that's just the push that they make. And one of the other things that we looked at was associated fees. So here in the town of Amherst, I think we pay a dollar per quarter as the, you know, rental fee for having the meter, and that basically is covering the cost of the meter and the cost of the bill that's going out to you and that sort of thing. So it's a really small fixed fee that everyone pays regardless the amount of water that they use. A lot of other communities have a much larger associated fee, and I guess it's just, it's more, here's a stable amount that everyone's going to pay regardless of how much water they use. So it's a different way that some people find to make their water revenues that they need to make. So looking at surrounding communities, ascending block rates, Hadley, Aguam, Northampton, and Sunderland all do that, and then the other communities that they looked at, including Amherst, use flat rates. So there's some communities that do ascending. A lot of communities around here do the flat rates like we do. This was just a quick blush at, if you looked at the amount that say a one person household with good conservation would pay, a two and a half average household using the average amount that the state says that you typically use, and then a five person household that maybe leaves a toilet running or uses a little more water. More just to show the difference, the difference in rates based on sizes, but also based on if you fall into some of those larger usage rates for an ascending block rate study. So this shows a little bit of a comparison for different communities. Looking at rates for different user categories, so of the nine communities that we looked at, only two communities local to us have different rates for other uses rather than residential. So Aguam has a commercial and industrial usage and they also have separate irrigation rates. So they allow irrigation meters and they have separate irrigation rates for that. And then Hadley's the other community that does that. Each of these communities do it differently. I believe Aguam has their commercial and irrigation rates set at the lowest block rate and Hadley sets it as the highest in their ascending block rate. So each community views it differently for those two, but each of them do have a way that they're looking at that. And all the other surrounding communities that we looked at didn't have separate rates for commercial or industrial or for irrigation meters. So we looked quickly at if we were to do irrigation meters and obviously we need to look at this a lot more holistically, but the basic requirements based on Massachusetts regulations are that they're going to need to have separate plumbing that goes to a separate meter and so that would require a cross-connection survey when they install it. Backflow testing which has to be tested annually as well as you know a plumbing inspection to make sure that everything's plumbed properly. So looking at it currently if we don't allow irrigation meters with our current billing it costs people 99 cents per 100 gallons of water that they use. That's if somebody's watering their lawn or whether they're taking a shower with it. If we do allow irrigation meters because they would only be paying the water rate and not the water and sewer rate together, they'd be paying 49 cents per 100 gallons usage. The first year it's estimated it would be about 1400 in fees between the cross-connection survey, the backflow testing, the plumbing inspector, all the different fees that you'd have to pay for that and then every year after that it would be $50 a year for the annual backflow test that you'd have to do. So that's kind of how the rates would change if we did it. At least the minimum. And then this is just for commercial in case people were looking at you know the commercial rates. So looking at a restaurant which is probably low use per square or I guess it's medium use per square area. A grocery store which is going to be not as much use and then doctor's office is going to have minimal use per square area. So again just kind of comparing water usages in a couple different scenarios to see where we fall. In general looking at our rates compared to other communities. We do have nice low rates if you look at these and you look at the residential in a lot of cases we do fall on the lower end but again we set rates based on balancing our budget. So it's fine it's just nice to know that we have nice low rates. So the summary of what this preliminary study said was there again going to side with the DEP and say having a flat rate is going to do little to encourage water conservation. So we might want to look at having ascending block rates and again having not having fixed fees it just gives you a greater fluctuation in revenue based on water usage. So stuff like the drought last year when everyone really buttoned up and used less water that's great. But then budgetarily if you look at our fixed cost to produce water it's sometimes a little bit of a struggle and we have to figure out how to do certain maintenance tasks a little more creatively in that time period. So really what would be recommended is looking at a complete rate structure study that looks at the feasibility of different types of rate structures that we might want to have and the impact on the water system, customer bills and ultimately how it's going to affect the revenue to make everything work. Okay. I have a couple of questions. Thank you. One is how much would a study such as that cost and if it's in here sorry because I didn't need this but I don't remember everything. I will turn to Guilford for that. More or less I know you don't know exactly. Well it's actually the first thing we need to know is how do we frame the study so and once we know what our parameters if it's aside by the water commissioners that we like our rate structure and the way it is and all we want to do is add some different rates like we want a irrigation rate for farm land. If we wanted an irrigation rate for different large farms versus small farms that's a little bit smaller in scope and you need to know what your scope the question you're asking before you actually come up with a cost of how it would be. Some of it we could do ourselves if it's a if it's a small I mean the scope of what we're trying to change is smaller it's easier for us to do. If I could do a pop so let me just speak for myself because we haven't you know we're just starting the discussion so I get it you you want some parameters from us in order to carve out an area of inquiry and so when I read this and I thought it was it was really helpful and I'm glad we're looking at rates I don't actually think the low rates are serving us that well because I'm looking at the package I'm looking at what we might want to do to improve our supply availability in the long term I mean we might have some good years and bad years but 10 20 years out so if we need to increase the robustness of our system I like the associated fee idea because and I wanted to ask you you said the meters and the billing but does it also include going out to the meter to read it or is that done electronically because if it's sending somebody out that's a bigger cost and I thought it was in here but yeah and I'm not sure if it's in here specifically or not the I mean right now it's it's a dollar per quarter right but does somebody go out and fee yeah and so it just means that when we're looking at our annual rates in general that that has to cover the cost of the person going out but somebody does go out so that's my question yes we do have someone that goes out okay so my thought about the associates that we should have as other towns do an associated fee that represents the actual cost of servicing the meter and doing the billing because that happens whether you're using water or not I might be in another you know part of the globe for six months not really using any water but you're still coming out and reading my meter so I like the idea of having that sort of flat fee that goes that's dependable that's not based on the fluctuation of use as you said we saw what happened during the drought we need to have the system be really sustainable so that would be one thing I would want in the study piggyback on that idea for just a moment the other thing I was thinking about and I think it sort of hinted at this a little bit is that the type of equipment that people have relative to their use makes a big difference too and I the question I have is whether or not you know if if your sort of attachment to the water system is much larger because you have the capacity or the need at times of large water use is that inherently more expensive for you guys to interact with than say a single family home and so I'm sort of curious about that because I get back to that question of what do we charge for a fee if we're trying to recoup you know we want to sort of set those rates that match with and I think some of the communities depending on how big your connection line was made a difference about what they charged you are there really differences in what it cost to sort of service those in the whole sense not just meter reading but the other things like when the line breaks or etc etc so could you kind of paint that in a little bit for us you can either one go ahead so I mean you think about what you need to think about your water line if you're a house you probably have the smallest one and as your water line gets bigger to your house or to your business there's more complicated it's probably more complicated things going on inside your building so as you get more complicated that requires us to do more things the biggest thing we do is backflows in a residential house your backflows are kind of built into all the devices in your house your sink has a little hole for overflowing so that the faucet doesn't go underwater your toilet will flow out on the on the floor and flood the floor versus backing up into the system the shower has this kind of same thing so a residential house has these built-in backflows where you start getting into more commercial and more complicated structures you didn't have to look at backflows in a more more whole more holistic in a more broader way UMass has some buildings that probably have a main backflow two main backflow devices on them and then have smaller backflow devices throughout the whole building so that is much more complicated to manage we manage that by the backflow program where we actually charge a fee because we have to test those every year so we'd have to look and see as you break down the services and the uses which ones we which items were causing us more concern so that's so so I think that's a good add-on to the study potentially the scope the other thing I well I am very interested in allowing for irrigation or agricultural uses so I would want to see that in the study and how we'd structure that and how we would do that what you'd need to qualify to be a user what those rates would be what that equipment would be did it it does outline a little bit about the equipment but detailing that and then my big question is some of these communities talk about commercial users I'm wondering about institutional users and one if we're allowed to have different rates for um institutional users some of our big users and what that would look like whether that would be less than the residential rate more than or maybe more than up to a threshold and then less or less up to a threshold and then more so it looks like a number of different ways but if we have some really big users right now it's flat and that doesn't seem to me to be sophisticated enough for the kind of community we've grown into and so I'm really glad we're looking at it yeah I mean I'll just say you're right that this didn't necessarily look at institutional users and that is something that would be we'd have to look at a couple different communities than what we're studied here maybe not necessarily our neighbors to look at as as peers in this but there certainly are other communities in massachusetts that we could look at their rates and and get some guidance on how it's handled just one one quick comment about that so we used to have us a block rate system in Amherst the block rate system you know kind of at the time when I first got here the people who paid the most in the block rate system were the institutions if we were actually to go to a block rate system now and I'm not saying it's bad or not you'd also be some of the apartment complexes would now fall into the block rate system usage at some of the apartment complexes has become as high as the institutions it's just I don't know I guess maybe it's a social thing but there's a lot more water usage going on at some of these apartment complexes and they would fall into that as well so you're not really looking at your institutions you're looking at your large volume users is what you'd be looking at and then it's not just institutions now I mean just to follow up on that you know one of the things I thought about around some of the tier approaches that do you then inherently disadvantage you know so we build big you know affordable housing complexes but then they pay a lot higher water rate because of the nature of the usage in that location you know we have to keep that in mind as we go or you know we can kind of cut off our nose to spite our face both from the standpoint of our largest customers but also of our other customers just you know you're not wanting to be punitive to folks who are already on the edge economically as it were if if that's the case you know you can penalize people for being in a certain kind of living environment that that may or may not be as fully under their control as some of the rest of us have as far as you know their their options and control of circumstances Mr. Seinberg you had a question yeah I did first of all I want to just comment on the question of the value of us having had relatively low water rates over the years I think has been important because we have relatively high property tax rates and it's been a benefit to be able to go to our community and say but we have the segment of something we provide to you that is lower and I think that it it has a value and but on the other hand we have to have a system that's sustainable and so it's not the be all and end all the other question that I have that becomes then involved with us is where it ties back into the sewer rates for the wastewater treatment facility and which and which is which is a different enterprise fund but they're related because we bill our rates based upon water usage for sewer usage and the one of the purposes one of the arguments for creating an agricultural use was to be able to enable farmers who are using a fair amount of water that is never going back into the disposal system to not have to pay for something that they're not using and but then the question comes up well if we do that then what happens to the rate structure of for the rest of the people who have to pay for that particular enterprise fund and make it work so as we look at this rate question further I think we need to look at both rates and not the single rate something to add there I just want to make sure I want to say thank you for making a comment on the behalf of the taxpayers of the town because the water and the sewer system are taxpayers to the town of Amherst we're taxpayers to the other towns as well because we have facilities outside we do pay pilot to the town it's based on the what we own in the town and what we are assessed so we understand that as well and so just so everyone knows it's not when you think about if you're raising the water rate there should be a direct offset in taxes we're really functioning as a business so we try to keep that separate and it's not really all tied to taxes we do get a lot of people who call and say my taxes are high why am I paying for water too and we have to explain to them we're an enterprise system we run as a business and yes we pay taxes to Amherst as well so just wanted to make sure just that I think what you raised Mr. Stenberg is interesting but I've never said to somebody don't worry you know taxes are high but your water rates low I think we're managing public resources and I think that's really different than what people are dealing with with their real estate so we could argue probably till the cows come home but whether it's good or bad to have low water rates and how people feel about that but I think it I just think it's time to we tend to not look at our fees and rates I mean except any every rare once in a while and now we're at that rare once in a while and we have a chance to bring it forward and I'm not you know I pay my share of water and sewer I understand the sort of pain of that but I am also open to a number of changes some are increases and maybe decreases for some of that institutional or agricultural users and just I just think it's high time till we dive into this Ms. Brough so I do tell people that at least their water rates are low so I have used that advertisement I have used that advertisement so sorry it doesn't always fly but I have brought it up so how does our discussion about what parameters we might be looking for and we've touched on that already and I assume we'll want to talk about it more before we wrap this up tonight is how is that impacted by the stormwater issues that are on the horizon that are causing huge bruja haas and holy oak and Northampton and elsewhere in terms of how those payment structures are going to have to work just give it I mean I realize you could talk about that for hours but just give us a sense of maybe we'll want to do some pieces but not others because that's coming or maybe we'll want to wait for that or like give us a sense of what that is because we've been hearing about it for years in a very vague cloud-like sense whereas you guys obviously know all the details it's very vague and cloud-like we look at what's coming in the stormwater side there are certain things we're going to have to do fortunately for us our predecessors were very smart to build a sewer system and a stormwater system we weren't built as a combined system so we don't have to deal with the fact of separating the systems what we have to deal with more is the fact that someone was putting in a connection and got to the first pipe drilled a hole in the first pipe it didn't shoot water at them so they said oh we'll connect to this one so sometimes it wasn't the right pipe we have a few of those we find them every once in a while they still kind of happen every once in a while so we don't have a system which has to have a lot of separation to it that's good so that's a lot less we do have some drainage issues in town they're relatively minor except for the people that happens to then it's a big deal for them but if you look at the flooding that's going on in places like another communities I mean Northampton the bridge almost always floods downtown that underpassed by local burger and by the other nice place that almost always floods we don't have many places like that we have some streams and rivers that overflow we won't be able to do much with streams and rivers that's kind of good but we will be hit with some of these things as far as nutrient loading nitrogen phosphorus some of the other things right metals yes aluminum those type of things we'll be hit with trying to keep those from entering into the rivers and streams and those will be the things we have to figure out how we're going to handle and how we're going to treat could it be a lot of little pocket treatments all over town which will cost a lot of money and then once you have to do this do you have how do you pay for it is it part of your tax rate is it a separate fee which would be another utility a stormwater utility those are the that's the utility in Northampton this kind of seems to be front and center in the Merrill Merrill election over there Chickapee they have a utility system for their stormwaters stuff but Chickapee is also got a lot of cross connections they have a huge been doing a huge cross connection separation project still going on they probably put our annual budget into that almost over the last 10 years they probably spent our annual budget and cross connection stuff so we don't really know hopefully we'll know more as it goes along right now what we truly see is our biggest issue we have to overcome is the nutrients and the metals going into the stormwater and getting to the rivers we have two pieces that are okay and then the third piece we'll have to deal with okay Mr. Wall speaking of costs you know you have a nice nicely outlined here how you could handle for example separate irrigation meters do you have any this stuff the top of my head do you have any sense of how many people take advantage of this because I could imagine people think I'd like to do this but then when they find it it costs $1400 plus annual fees and so forth they might have a second thoughts whether general figures or percentages in surrounding towns or just in general because there's a lot of work for you obviously implement that program as well well and I I think that's partly why we need to delve into this a little deeper and why we also need to be really deliberate about what we allow and what we don't allow because I'm not I guess we would need to know what your intent is whether you want to allow everybody that has a lawn irrigation system to have a separate meter which is going to add a lot of accounts and a lot of bills to go out and everything or whether this is really intended for larger larger farms excuse me Do you have a sense of what our neighbors do in that regard or Based on what's going on probably the last five years there's probably about 10 farms in the town that have come to us over the course of periods of time and said hey we'd like to only pay for our water we do have people who have farms that are not in a sewered area so they're not charged because there's a sewer because there's no sewer there so some of those farms are already taken care of we have other farms that are near sewer they have to pay the sewer fee we have some farmers who went ahead and drilled a well and they just take well water there's pros and cons to that Pro is they're drinking from the same bowl we're drinking from for drinking water the con the con is they're in the same bowl we are I'm being really good not to use my usual analogy here that's really hard so they're drinking the same bowl we are the pro to it is is it's not going anywhere it's going to the field you do have some evaporation but it is infiltrating back in so there is it's not being piped off and dumped into the river that's good so there's different ways to look at wells so I think at this point if we don't have other questions I think I'll take this opportunity to sort of look at the broader crowd I think we lost somebody that had a comment unfortunately I had to go I guess because it's getting a little light for them but are there other people that might have a comment so have to come up to the mic that's all right you can come up and ask it and then they'll come back up and answer it so we have to put a little musical chairs here if you would be so kind and just introduce yourself so people on TV know who you are and Ronnie Wagner kind of was the thorn in all of your sides last year one question for the DPW I had was regarding the sewer and the costs of repairing maintenance is there any trends that if I've heard through the rumor mill as the talk's been coming throughout Amherst that a lot of DPW time is spent in repairing drainage issues or sewer issues because of excessive baby wipes down the toilet or like the unwanted that you're not supposed to flush like you guys mentioned in the last brochure that you sent out saying make sure not to flush these are there any costs that are associated back to the property owners for the time and energy and repairs that is due to their negligence that the town has to suck up or does the town just suck it up and move on that makes sense right yeah okay I would love if people flushed flushable wipes and had like the address of where it came from so we could send them about no I absolutely I wish we could pass that find a way to pass that along to a homeowner however a lot of times by the time it gets stuck in a in a sewer main it could be any number of houses and so it's really hard to definitively find it and that's why a lot of times when we find it in an area we'll send a targeted mailing to that area to say hey remember these flushable wipes are not yes you could physically flush them down the toilet but they do not disintegrate in the ground and they they cause a lot of problems so yeah so that's great because that gives me an opportunity to plug here that flushable wipes there's no regulation about who can and cannot use the word flushable wipe on a product that they're selling and they don't disintegrate in the ground and so they get caught on the littlest of root intrusion or crack in a pipe or anything and they they really do cause a lot of sewer backup issues or they get wrapped around pumps in our pump stations and cause a lot of work and headache for our guys so yeah any advice on what if someone were a user of those I assume there are some that work okay and some that don't or do none of them work or and if they do work okay which ones should people look for just since we're none of them work do not take anything that says flushable wipe on it and put it in your toilet take it and put it in your trash can none of them work it's uh it's a fallacy that you can flush them and they'll make it all the way through to the treatment plant unless you're standing at the last manhole in the line that's right before the treatment plant will that make it to the treatment plant okay that's good to know so along those lines if we're going to talk about the wipes I also think we have to join planet reality and people are going to flush them because that's what they say and so that's what they're going to do so we can get mad all we want but if we we can't fix the fact that as you indicated if they have tree roots or other play you know it may never get to the facility but if it gets to the facility it's on us that we don't have something to protect the pumps from those because like so we know people are going to do that we do have a large grinder at the water treatment plant we've got 20 small pump stations throughout the town that pumps the wastewater at piggybacks all the way in and those aren't equipped with um grinders so that would be a major upgrade a lot of times it gets stuck it it does at times get stuck around the pump but a lot of times it gets stuck in a line on the way to the pumps so try why not given we're talking about flushable wipes would you like to remind the public about sewer cam just so they can see how our system works oh our sewer camera so we do have we we had a working sewer camera that was really nice and that we now have a much smaller sewer camera which works well too but uh we do have videos of the sewer lines so you actually can go on the town gis and you can click on sewer lines and you can see the sewer line in front of your house and we videotaped it you can have a tour of your sewer line there are interesting things inside the sewer there are interesting things in there there's um well there's frogs and there's mice and there's other things you'll see in some of the lines I think the best one is the frog and there's a little frog and there he's hopping along with a camera but we do have we do videotape them so we can check and make sure everything's okay other questions comments just for you I think we have to wrap up but right if you've given enough direction or if there's we haven't given any direction sorry I think you're right what do we do next I guess yeah so I was gonna so what I was gonna suggest and we can like this or not like this but what I was gonna suggest is I think we need to we as a select board need to sort of digest this a bit pardon the pun a little bit and think about what kind of parameters we want to want to consider so that we can sort of frame the question a bit better because I think there's a few things you've given us to say here are some options and some things to think about and I think that that starts to help us but I think we'll have to have a collective conversation about what we think are the the bigger more important things that we want to potentially address first or investigate first relative to variety of constraints that we we can think of here and then that'll help frame sort of next steps that we might come back to you and say hey we think this is the best next step and you can either respond or I mean you will respond to that but you can say okay we'll do that or you can say that's a crazy idea maybe a different first step or I would suggest this or so I think we have to kind of I think process through this a little bit more is my sense because I certainly want to spend some time thinking about these a little bit more deeply thinking about the the public feedback we've gotten on some topics but also some things that you presented tonight that are different than and and more of you know some of the other ways other communities think about it and and how we might want to think about it and and then what questions we want answered did you have something you wanted to yeah so perhaps what we can do is come back to you with a memo that outlines some parameters and then you can pick and choose the ones you say yes that's hits at this one I want to expand this one I want to narrow and then we can offer you the alternatives that you have in front of you in a little more coherent way yeah I think that would be very helpful Ms. Brewer thank you yeah that's exactly what we need only one thing I well so I mean as non-professional what are people looking some of us some of us have a bit more familiarity with these kinds of things and others of us but it's helpful to have a framing but certainly those of a higher level expertise would be quicker to get to that answer than some of us so we'll probably ask you for a little more framing of it in the future but not too distant future we set ourselves at least a rough timeline because it's really you know it's like the lunch card thing we could come back to this in six months or we could say you know in a month we're going to give you enough direction so this is a my probably least favorite time right now as we go into budget season but every year's budget season we do it every year we do look at the rates every year so if we want if if we talk about this we can't have something probably middle of November as we start talking about budget rates and come up with the things which may deal with at least one of the issues you have on front and center before you I would not and we will not recommend that we do a lot of big changes right now one reason is because we're in our permitting for a water permit so we have a new water permit which we should have in another year or two 2019 some of the things we talked about tonight may be required in our permit DEP may say you shall have block rates ascending block rates you shall not give these people separate meters you shall not do this as they taught conservation some of these things may come out so some of it we may say no but you should wait another year we can get more information together the piece about agricultural rates is something we can probably work out in this budget cycle and work into the fee into the fee structure if that's truly how you want to go and we can write the memo that way and let you know what we what we think should be done can be done right away and what we should hold off until we have our permit in our hand would associated fees that concept have to wait or could is that something we could look at right away we can start looking at that because really you're looking at the fixed costs it costs so much to go and then you're looking at the variable cost if we only produce three million gallons you're not using as much chemicals you're not using as much electricity those are the things you're there's a variable cost we do have mandatory testing we know what that testing is we do have a bunch of mandatory other stuff we have to do we know what that is so we could start breaking down our budget as we go through this budget cycle showing what are the variable pieces of the budget and what are the fixed pieces of the budget that would be helpful yes I think that memo that Mr. Bachman talked about will be really helpful because personally I'm particularly interested in the agricultural issue and so if we can deal with that immediately as Mr. Moering has indicated is probable that we could actually be looking at some numbers associated with that before we get into the fee setting that we normally do in January and February even though we the other things are important if we could at least say maybe we'll get that and then like the near mid term is the some other things and then there may well be a whole list of things that you say please let's wait until 2019 short, mid, and long right so yes if mid-November you could kind of come back to us with some things that would be fantastic I think we'll be through town meeting and that part of it and you guys will be is that a bet you know if we meet three nights a week but but nonetheless I think that you're you know in some ways it coincides nicely with the budget because you're already sort of looking at some of the aspects of this anyway by virtue of you know preparing for the fiscal 19 budget but so hopefully it's coincidental and cooperative workload and not separate and larger but anyway thank you for your time this evening I think you've primed thank you so anybody just being watered to say about tea break we need a water break like the sound of running water all right exactly so I think we'll since we have some folks you're here for specific issues we may come back to the Rental Appeals Board and we'll we'll go ahead to the special town being warned articles now the thing I will note we are looking at tonight article 10, 11, 12 and 13 which are the first two 10 and 11 have to do with the schools and so I'm going to actually yield the chair it's Mr. Walt because he's my chair this week so tag you're it and then the advisory committee then I'll I'll probably take back the the chair and and if if anyone feels that my sitting in the room although I'll not participate is problematic I can exit and then come back when we're done with those two but if not I'll just sit here quietly and do my best poker face to not indicate but I can move to the back of the room if that helps and so if Mr. Walt would be so kind as to take the chair do we need to do anything formally that we know of I don't think so I think you I can just yield the chair to you and you can go through articles 10 and 11 which have to do with regional school district planning committee and the resolution regarding charter schools funding and expansion so was that right there taking notes yeah I'd like to get started right they out there listen Karen you've taken a break so so I don't know if we should take perhaps a quick recess and let people yeah I think a climate recess would be good well let's do that then when we come back we can take more sorry to keep you waiting but we'll be back in a couple of minutes yes we do yes we do at the back table if you want Sean to keep it I have a question for you sure I was told the comments was 30 in case it wasn't then you said it's kind of things that are really agenda so right right right you know part actually came and did that oh I'm sorry if I need to stay until February or because I didn't realize that was totally would have been seen before that um let me just take it for people I'm sorry I didn't really I didn't put two and two together when I spoke with you earlier let me look at generally what we like to do is give you an opportunity to tell us about things right that's not you this is you it seems to ban to acoustic mm-hmm you know space is well I guess I guess the real question generally is it is whether you want to take a moment to sort of explain what you're going to do so it gives you a chance to sort of gravitate a little bit and if you'd like that then potentially what can do when we come back to the moment where he says you can potentially take this out okay and then that have you stay gravitated because it's what are you going to say hey we're going to we're going to yeah it's broadcasting I'm either watching you say there are a few questions though that are logical to ask and I won't pose what they are now and I guess the question is that you just have to balance how to win appearances to the schools as your to members of the school committee and the school staff right here and I don't know the answer to that but I do want to ask questions about noise level and effect on the Clark House and things like that and about some of the legalized questions that we routinely talk about it's okay so I think given that I will check with with them I don't want to make you stay forever okay but at the same time I also didn't realize I just wanted to check in because I noticed that though yeah otherwise it could be could be could be like 10 30 30 yeah yeah exactly exactly so let me just okay check with them I think Mr. Brockman was there at the last last time there's going to be less than what they had last time nothing except it's poking face back there when they lit your license and the the energy oh fine oh okay so you wanted to go first could you come up and ask you didn't even ask no wash okay so you're gonna just sit over this is he gonna I'll breathe yeah can I sit over first or not oh well maybe we're just kicking you out of your chair once you get organized right you're going to take a nice actually oh good something else we're gonna yeah yeah change our mind again I didn't realize one of the people we had here waiting was was actually kind of in the same vein as the the license we took up right at 630 so I would have done this earlier and so I think this won't take too too long but in our in our licensing group of things fire and water yoga has a request for a license which let me find the right thing so part of it's under the consent calendar is all of it and then there's a part that's not 7a A, 3, and B right so we've got a couple of pieces here right so I think there's a couple of pieces to this but I think we could potentially do a couple aspects of it but both are under the consent calendar so I think we ask questions and we're satisfied we could just lead deal with them the consent calendar right so we can actually take vote of it there but there's also an entertainment license which is is that oh that is all considered part of the consent calendar I think the the key thing for us is maybe not that we take the vote right now but if we have any questions for for the applicant then we can we can take those under consideration so why don't you step up tell us actually more importantly tell the community who you are and what are the couple of licenses my name is R. E. A. Kerinsky I'm the owner manager of fire and water yoga studio we have a juice bar coming as well we have an application for a food service there and this next Saturday we're doing a promotional event live acoustic music with snacks and alcohol okay so that's the application we have in all right and testing so questions about the motions and so this isn't your fault this is our paperwork so we have item under the consent calendar we have items A3 and AB and B and the name is not spelled the same way both times so under B it needs to be corrected to reflect reflect the spelling which is A-R-I-E-H likely correct thank you and the other thing is there was a cut and paste error there as well in that as I understand it because item three is a wine and malt special liquor license one day event for October 21st and the entertainment license is not just for October 21st the entertainment license is an annual item that's what it says on the application it doesn't say on the application it's for just one event I'm confused so according to the manager's office there is no particular license for the one day event so they use the annual application and you need to apply for that each time there's a special alcohol event that's they're two separate things the may I Mr. Slaughter yes please so I don't know what the other conversation is but what I can tell you is that the pieces paper says it's an annual license for the entertainment and it's a one day license for wine and malt of course you do a one day license wine and malt for this particular event just like we did one for another event for this there was another application privacy earlier for the actual entertainment license which I was a discussion on short notice the last time it was had that's an it doesn't have a date on the annual event so where the date came from in the motion is completely mysterious except for the fact that they're obviously for the same event but the other question is why would we bother saying it's when the process is an entertainment license annually which we have a whole list of which we do annually why would we do it differently for this one event I actually raised this question with Ms. Pupple this morning and what Ms. Pupple explained to me is that under the rules you're not permitted to apply for an entertainment license if you don't also have an appropriate liquor license that they are tied together the one is dependent on the other and that therefore that in order to get the entertainment license for the one event that it's tied there that they become tied together for the event I completely disagree I don't see how that is possible we have entertainment licenses that we've processed before that didn't have alcohol at them for outside events obviously they didn't have alcohol associated with them this is either something new in which case our paperwork needs to be updated because it doesn't make any sense to say it's $5 annually and yes we're arguing about a $5 annual license right now thank you we really appreciate that twice now but there's I'm sorry I don't buy it so this is a basically another place where we find a hole in how we do things and rather than hang up this applicant I mean if we can do it but to say that we need a new application and perhaps a new fee and restructure this maybe there is a one day that goes along with one day alcohol and maybe we also have the annual and to separate them I don't think we can solve it now if people waiting but we're not suggesting that he pay yet another no it's not that's not what we're suggesting we have to give him what he needs so he can do his event and then we have to figure this out so Mr. Bronco since this is the second time last time he had this event it was actually amplified music and Mr. Zomac and I both independently stopped by there just to check on things and it was there were zero complaints received that weekend about this event and it was very well run and well staffed so I can attest to that personally but that's not the issue I'm attesting I'm trying to answer questions on the actual event that you're going to be talking about so this gentleman doesn't have to wait I have no problem with the event both the entertainment for five dollars so just to be clear the event that you're having is on the 21st of October correct okay and so people who want to go to this event should be attuned to fire and water yoga at 39 Boatwood Walk on October 21st 2017 correct presuming we find some way to do our business that takes care of you we'll take care of you we'll get it done so I think what we'll do at this point and unless someone is ready to make a motion that makes sense I start today we don't want to keep you any longer is the short story we didn't want to keep you know so we wanted to take an opportunity in case anybody had any questions about about your particulars not our particulars those will sort out later so we may wait and then do our bit of business a little later if if along those lines the last time this conversation came up and again we have so many issues associated with our licensing which is a system that Ms. Pupple inherited it is not her system that she it's something she's been trying to work with all this time and you know you can see that we photocopied this thing on an old mimeograph at some point prior to using it and so it's it's a little dated and one of the things that causes issues with this that we will want to address in future but that came up the first time this happened is separate from the entertainment which I really appreciate the report you gave us on that because we were concerned because we haven't had live entertainment in that particular area and we didn't know how it would travel to the neighbors on the separate issue of a one day wine and malt thing because our application again not through anyone's fault but just because we haven't updated it it doesn't show that the person who's listed is somebody who's had the training that we normally ask for and so frequently for example we have a different application in front of us tonight where an existing licensee is going to go off and go to a separate premise and and serve there and we know they've had the training because we've had those questions with them in the past that's not asked for on this license but it's something we ask for when we bring people in front of us so obviously we need to fix the application but in the meantime what's the conversation that was had about that last time and does it apply to this time and can we just say yes we do have tips certified my wife is tip certified from the last event so if that helps the chief the chief doesn't have that conversation the chief always requires tip certification okay good so I think at this point I think we'll hold off on actually taking a motion on this we'll sort ourselves out later I don't anticipate any problems for you as far as being able to have your event on the 21st but I thank you for your patience Mr. said just one quick question do you anticipate that the people who are going to be attending this are going to be a significant number under 21 or most of the 21 plus it's 21 and over the event and you're going to enforce that at entry into the event correct okay thank you fantastic that's really helpful thank you appreciate that and appreciate you being patient with us sorry to keep you waiting so now we'll come back to that later figure out some way to make a motion that makes sense to everybody yeah okay or at least enough sense right we'll process ourselves in such a way but now if we could we'll go back to vote and assign positions on 11-6 special time meeting award articles articles 10-11 which have to do with schools and so I'll yield the chair to Mr. Wald so thank you and thank you okay thank you so the amusing part of the meeting is over and now we get down to some other businesses I don't know maybe you guys are finding we'll find out anyway we're continuing here taking positions on the upcoming special time meeting warrant articles and the first two articles we're taking up tonight numbers 10 and 11 have to do with the schools and number 10 has to do with regional school district planning committee and Ms. Hazard and Mr. Demling will speak to that and just please identify yourselves and be sure to speak into the microphone for the benefit of the viewing audience thank you for having us I'm Phoebe Hazard I'm the chair of the Amherst School Committee and I'm Peter Demling and also Amherst School Committee so I will be presenting these articles Mr. Demling is here to help with questions or anything that should come up he took sort of a leadership role on the article 11 so he has done a lot of research in that area and we also have Mr. Manganov a fine instructor who is happy to help answer questions as well so article 10 regional school district planning committee so you all have in front of you a slide presentation which covers the background information on this article which will be asking town meeting to vote to form a regional school district planning committee to explore regionalization between Amherst and Pelham elementary schools this covers votes so far rationale and the ensuing process should the articles pass major areas of focus should the towns form a board together and the potential financial impact and I just want to note that it has recently come to our attention that we might want to consider this to be a pre K through 6 regionalization discussion or a study as opposed to only K through 6 which is what's currently listed and not not to and that would not be a binding addition it would just be a a way to sort of leave the door open for further discussion that's has not been brought before the Amherst school committee but I am going to bring that before them tomorrow night and the Pelham town meeting is happening as we speak right now so I have connected with the Dr. Morris and I have connected with the chair of Pelham and so depending on how that goes we'll see we'll potentially go in that direction as well so that if that comes I don't want it to be a surprise um so just in terms of process Pelham and Amherst school committees both vote unanimously put this on the table I'm sorry this article onto their town town's fall warrants and Pelham is voting on it tonight and tomorrow night we will be having a joint meeting with Pelham in order to get a presentation of sort of the implications and an opportunity for questions and no deliberation and opportunity for Amherst Amherst school committee to to vote to support it officially so I just want to call attention quickly to the third slide in what you have in front of you which is rationale particularly the third bullet which says this study is not a commitment to regionalize but simply an exploration to understand the implications for both towns of this option with real data so it's very important to realize that this is not a vote for regionalization this is just a vote for a study group should it's a it's a process that involves a lengthy process and then a town meeting vote in order to actually get to the point of regionalization so further on the rationale for going forward with this there are financial challenges in both towns which causes is causing both districts to be seeking new external revenue streams and if you look at the last slide potential financial impacts there is a 200 there is anticipated approximately a $240,000 transportation reimbursement that would come annually that would be of course portioned between Pelham and Amherst plus a single bonus or yeah single amount of a bonus aid that would be phased out over a few years so there are some financial benefits just practically that the two districts already share many resources and curricula and regionalization obviously has been looked at as many of you know this is a significantly less complex scope than has been looked at with the K through 12 regionalization study which involved four towns and involved then that not this one but the K through 12 regionalization study involved opening and changing an existing regional agreement there is no regional agreement between Amherst and Pelham so this is a its own separate entity it doesn't involve opening anything that exists in terms of costs to the town the superintendent is planning to apply for a grant to fund any outside expertise that is needed to help with this process if that grant money doesn't come through then that consultation will be covered internally so we don't anticipate anticipate any extra costs on that score in terms of consultation so in terms of benefits mentioned the the potential financial benefits and there have there are enough potential further benefits that it may be in the town's interest to explore this further I don't want to get too far on that because Amherst has not actually voted voted to endorse it yet so in terms of timeframe on this estimated one to two years the previous study was much longer but this is a much hopefully less complex process so any questions or comments Mr. Steinberg Yes though I have to at least start by saying that the subject of regionalization usually makes me get hives or something related to it the transportation reimbursement is the one revenue that you really can count on but the $240,000 amount is that what is that based on and is that also based upon what we would get if the state legislature fully funded transportation or is it based upon where they are now with the percentage that they're currently funding so it's a last year they funded about 70% a little above we base this at 65% which they have funded in the last five to 10 years so we try to make it a really conservative number it definitely could go higher at the state finances get worse it could go lower but we try to be conservative so it's based at around 65% and the bonus age is I mean that's something that is really discretionary question that you really can't count on from what my recollection was yep it's that is subject to appropriation so any year the governor could take that out and then that wouldn't be on the table so we do try to always note that that is not a revenue to consider when making a decision it's just sort of the bonus to regionalize so we do factored into our models just because it's there but we don't encourage that that's a major part of your decision-making okay thank you and those are the budget questions the one thing that Sidmus Hazard was that the transportation would be reimbursement would be a portion between the towns well the actuality what we would be doing is combining the budget and then setting up yet another system in agreement on how we're going to do the regional assessment because it's an assessment methodology so it's really an income it's a revenue stream into a two-town system but how it gets a portion depends upon what we've discovered in the four towns is a complex process and could be a complex process here also because we just don't know how this is going to come out I can see some of the benefits of going forward with this study and so I'm going to be inclined to be supportive of that because I think that's always important to understand what you're for and against and you can't do it unless you actually take that step of looking at it that's what you're really asking people to do just the last two things I haven't to note is that we've now signed the warrant and it says kindergarten through sixth grade and to expand that the pre-kindergarten through sixth grade depends upon the decision from the moderators to whether that motion would be within the scope of the article and I cannot make a prediction on how that would come out I don't know if Mr. Backelman has anything to add to that nope I don't and my last question and I'll yield is could you say a little bit more about anything that you've thought about already an educational vision for how this will benefit the education of the students in Amherst and if the answer is that's what the study is all about I'll accept that well it's also I feel a little awkward as I we have not actually just deliberated on this as a committee so I personally Phoebe Hazard have some thoughts about it but I I don't want to represent what the what the committee has not yet discussed I think I mean I can speak having worked with the the Pelham chair and sort of thinking where they're coming from on this they have put quite a lot of effort into school options and how we might you know could could that be looked at as a magnet school that's something that they're examining so you know I think from their perspective they're saying look we could this could be something that could be interestingly educationally to Amherst as well and to it could offer something else it's also very nice building and so so I think that they're I think I think there are areas there that are definitely you know interesting to explore educationally thank you Mr. Krueger my question is in doing the study committee what additional resources might you need for you know expert consultation or guidance whatever and if you could speak to what you think the associated costs would be and how those will be divided up so we are not that's when I referred to a grant that Dr. Morris is working on applying for which we are hopeful that we're going to get that would cover any any such costs and if if we weren't to get it we would cover it internally within the staffing that we have so it wouldn't be further costs I mean to answer that a little bit in part when we had the last regionalization process it was essentially we hired two consultants one to work on the educational part and to help us look at those questions of an educational plan that would work for merged region and the other was the financial piece which we had to do kind of the budgetary questions as to how it would be financially structured department of elementary and secondary education does have grant funds available at times that they can provide and they did provide us funding at that time which paid for the consultants that did both work other questions questions Ms. Luck-Board Ms. Brewer I was trying to see if I could find the language from when we last did this to see if we had actually said pre-K in that one I can you know the answer I do know the answer what do we say we said K through 6 that's what I thought yeah and we talked but every single time if I may every single time I used the phrase I said pre-K to 12 even though we voted pre-K to 6 well or last time we didn't talk about K to 6 last time we said K to 12 that's what I'm asking you is did we say because we referred to it usually sitting at the table as pre-K to 12 once we were doing the work but I'm not sure how much difference it really makes so oh sorry so I was I'm actually referring to when regionalization was with Pelham was looked at previously which was earlier and that was K that was K through 6 which is actually where we pulled the language and at that time there was not a preschool at Pelham but there is now and we did look talked to council and council said there is no concerns about about that that addition and it's not it's actually not binding either way so and there was at that time there was something in the time the context of that particular time that people did not want to have it include pre-K but there are no reasons barring that at this point so if that's for the investigation took you'd be part of a conversation anyway and wouldn't be violating the scope of the article that's that's the reason to include it I see interesting in our that's the justification yeah other questions from the board comments okay are we prepared to vote on these one by one or how would you like to proceed if you feel comfortable we should dig it's completely unrelated to the other item it's what it's completely unrelated right that's time are you ready for a vote then yeah we could have I mean a motion yeah I moved to recommend to um to November 6 2017 special town meeting article 10 regional school district planning committee member to speak to the article on behalf of the select board at town meeting second okay is there any for the discussion all in favor aye aye okay so that's four to zero with one recusal not taking part one absent and then we're going to move on to our next article which is article 11 resolution regarding charter schools funding and expansion and again we have Ms. Demling Mr. Demling and Ms. Hazzard and Mr. Mangato on call in case we need him I don't know how far you want to go into the weeds to explain the background of this larger issue as opposed to a very specific one here so use your best judgment and we'll ask you questions if we think we need more so I have I have a little background blurb so I'll read that and then you can see if you need more so the Amherst School Committee voted unanimously on September 25th to put this article onto the fall town warrant this article arose from ongoing concerns about the funding formula for charter schools which we believe is fundamentally flawed as it is based on the spending level of the district is taken directly from the sending districts funding and does so without consideration for the need level of the students sent for districts such as Amherst and Amherst Pellum Regional that choose to substantially invest in strong programs and resources for students with disabilities English language learners and economically disadvantaged students it escalates the budget impact this formula actually creates a dis incentive for districts to service special needs students with their peers within district programming furthermore the state's charter school reimbursement program has not been fully funded since 2012 the total cost of charter school tuition to Amherst and the region in FY 2017 was $3,288,413 given that the elementary school and the regional budgets combined make up approximately 42% of Amherst budget the Amherst school committee feels that an issue of such financial impact in the schools is appropriate to bring before town meeting the body charged with overseeing the town's budget this resolution asks that the legislature develop a funding formula for district public schools and charter schools that adequately funds their respective missions and that the state not approve any charter school expansion requests until this formula has been corrected I just want to make as a further note that there's recently been media coverage that legislative bodies in surrounding towns are similarly considering and passing resolutions that express concerns around charter school funding and expansions for similar reasons thank you did you both want to speak to this now or just in the question session nothing to add right now okay questions from the board Mr. Steinberg seems to have I have just more of a comment I really appreciate you bringing this forward I think that it is very important for the community and to speak on this issue and to speak to the state very clearly about the effect that charter schools have been adequately funded and if they are allowed to grow without consideration on the impact of local districts has to really destroy the public education that we otherwise offer so I think that it's very important and the one thing that I would have added to the motion had I been involved with it is that the in part deals with the question of expansion of charter schools and granting new charter options within the area and to speak more towards the educational impact and the impact on our ability to adequately staff our classrooms at appropriate grade appropriate levels at each grade level at each building but thank you for doing this Ms. Brewer I was just going to say for those watching at home the reason that it doesn't seem like we're like really worked up about either one of these articles which are completely separate from each other is one Mr. Steinberg and myself was previously served associated with regional school district planning and y'all have been hearing about that for years so that's not like a new thing it's just that it's new for the reasons that Ms. Hattert outlined in terms of it only being two towns and pre-K to six and the other is associated with the charter schools I appreciate all the information and the way it's been put together for the public but it's something that we have been dealing with and we wrote a letter specifically about to Bessie last year as a select board just as various groups and legislative bodies are saying in general we also had a specific letter associated with a particular expansion and so this material I'll fit in with that which leads me to my segue which is that when it's time for those comments to be made about future expansions in this area please let the select board know with enough advance notice that we could decide whether or not we were going to do that again Mr. Demlin so December 15th is the deadline that Department of Elementary and Secondary Education has given out for public comment for on the expansion of the Charter School in Hadley there's a their request is to expand from their current approved enrollment maximum of 535 to a enrollment maximum of 1035 and so they ask the public for input from both approval and those who approve and those who don't approve such expansions and they listen to individuals and to committees and to boards so it was part of the motivation for bringing this to the town meaning and Mr. Steinberg referenced earlier that there may be some additional reasons he feels that aren't included in this resolution the school committee is looking at is currently in the process of drafting our own letter which expands on additional reasons we felt like there were some additional arguments above and beyond the Charter funding formula but the school committee was in the best position to to speak to and had the the time to speak to and an extended letter so sometimes hard on the floor of town meeting to get into details and answer all questions on many different arguments and so we felt this was the best vehicle here but I would strongly encourage you if you are so motivated to to have your own board statement for whatever reasons you feel are are appropriate and speak to that and to encourage others other in the town to do so as well. Thank you and thank you for introducing that background because some of us knew that it was related to this and some may not and now I think the public has a better sense and thanks to Ms. Brewer for reminding the public that these are not new issues to us by any means. Ms. Krueger questions. Could you just repeat what the deadline was for submission for the individual letters? Yeah, so to kind of frame it slightly in terms of how the whole process works at Desi is that the request goes in so that request went in July 1st of this year and then Desi will set the schedule for a public comment to the commissioner of education and so that's December 15th and they have we can I should have brought it here but I think it's DOE charters is the email but there's an email and there's an address and a phone you can submit and they accept again input from boards as well as individuals at that point at some point the commissioner will make a ruling whether they approve or not whether they want to submit that to the board if they don't approve the if the commissioner decides not to approve the charter expansion the request can still go forward to the board but but with less probability of approval without the commissioners support and at that point the the board will meet and then vote and right now Desi has said that they schedule the schedule for the board to vote it is January 23rd of next year so the first there's the deadline for input to the commissioner and then there is the the January board and they don't publish a specific input deadline for input to the board the board is sort of just open for for comment and so a lot of the input provided last year was it was in the days and the weeks leading up to that that board vote and in late January so so that's how that that's how that schedule goes we can send you an email with that information down there thank you Ms. Brewer that would be helpful because I do want to make it well actually I do want to ask a completely separate side question we've had arguments in the past as to whether or not this is Bessie or Desi we're talking about B or D this time so there's the board of elementary and secondary education which is part of the department of elementary and secondary education but it's actually Bessie that's the so the board that makes the final approval vote or not is Bessie the commit the board and the commissioner of education are both under the organization of Desi okay so I can keep saying Bessie and the other thing is I wanted to to make it clear that we were separating the issues and I really appreciate that the warrant article does separate the issues of general our general experience with charter school funding throughout Massachusetts as well as locally that's one issue and there's the completely separate issue of any individual expansions that might be on the table at any given time and so to have those separated in time I think was a really valuable and important thing to do and I appreciate the time you put into that when you do write your letter about the separate issue it would be useful that we would see that in enough time to do our letter accurately because the last thing we want to do is have conflicting data between our two letters we need to show that we know what each other's talking about so obviously we'll look at the last letter that we did to see what might have changed since then but we would not want to for example quote statistics that have been updated and then look like we don't know what's happening so thank you it sounds like we're talking about two things we have we have a warrant we have a motion to be a warrant article and then we may also decide we don't have a motion about it but as a board that we want to write such a letter and we could decide that tonight or we can probably do it next time where it's not really on our agenda not on the agenda it's not on the agenda but just to be clear when we're talking about the letter that's all interesting background and we may well do that but we're not there yet but right now we have to do the our position in the warrant article which I would be happy to read the motion unless people want to talk some more any further and we can still talk after I make the motion but please do cut it off okay um I move to recommend to the November 6 2017 special town meeting article 11 resolution regarding Charter Schools funding and expansion second second thank you motion has been made and secondly any discussion in that case we'll come to a vote all in favor once again that's 4 to 0 with Mr. Slaughter Epsons and I believe he will resume the chair at this point thank you very much for coming and waiting thank you for all the materials you provided excellent that was very helpful thank you Mr. Wall for literally keeping the chair warm physical chair clarify that a little bit so next up is article 12 uh a general bylaw public shade trees so I believe if you could just give them all to Mr. Steinberg so if you could pass them that way you don't have to trip over the courts well then we can figure out our own way to share all right so if you'd be so kind is to into the microphone announce who you are so the folks at home know I'm sorry and then tell us a little bit about the article if you would be so kind my name is Nani Birak I'm here for the public Shaitree Committee I'm sorry we didn't get to follow the DPW because the Shaitree Committee wholeheartedly urges people to remount their sewer lines regularly prevents big disasters and further excavation which usually damages trees so we have ordinance that we've been working on for two years it doesn't ask you for anything we're asking for your support the money that John Usanti arranged for us the $200,000 was a five-year grant it has ended we have really no way to keep putting money into our count in order to keep planting trees people that are supposed to pay they're supposed to pay for taking down trees they're supposed to pay penalties for taking down trees without permission and we there's no we have a policy but it's not a by-law and we really need a way to collect money at the moment the tree warden figures that were owed about $15,000 outstanding trees are going down faster than they're being replaced this is a crisis climate change is bringing in a lot of lights and bugs that hadn't been here before that native trees are not able to stand up to we're planting as furiously as we can but money is run out and we're not asking the town for money we're just asking to be able to collect the money that's owed to us tree ordinances are very common in the Commonwealth and there's a list here of all the other municipalities that have them we've been working with the Department of Conservation and Recreation who have great tree and forestry resources and we've been drawing on all of them and they've been very supportive that's really all I have to say okay fantastic so I'll ask my colleagues if they have questions Ms. Brewer so I have questions and I also have to pull out the notes we made last time but I question okay in regards to because there were some wording changes over the various variations that we got of this and I'd like it to be pointed well first I wonder if Mr. Backelman could point out to us what actually got changed if anything in the final version of the warrant article I don't have the exact changes that we changed the things that you asked at the last meeting yeah the dimensional things I reviewed that with Town Council and since it was duplicative of the state law we did not have to put that the one foot from the ground by law and that whole definition so she said we just don't need to include it at all in this bylaw great that's what we were looking for because we in fact had that exact question and I still have that question in that I'm still not clear when I look at the public shade tree committees charge what why we need this warrant article and so while the words all sound good and particularly now that we took out the confusing part about what public shade trees actually are and their measurements is that the public shade tree charge says that you know the public shade tree committee has public shade tree policy policy subject to the approval of the select men obviously a very old wording and it talks about an annual report to the select board and I'm just trying to understand you've mentioned very specifically that you haven't been able to collect dollars because you don't have this thing we've never heard of that issue being brought to the select board as being a problem so I'm a little confused as to why I mean if this is what we have to do is what we have to do I'm just confused why it never came to us as like you should do this so I think the reason that this is coming before you is that this while the public shade tree committee can establish policies this actually puts into bylaw the ability to establish regulations that you would approve and this and the shade tree committee could recommend to you one thing I do need to clarify is that fines from this do not go into the public shade tree committee it goes into a the general fund the only money that this public shade tree committee can get is from an appropriation from town meeting so under our our current bylaws under non-criminal disposition that all those funds have to go into the general fund but the other thing that this does do it allows us if someone does not pay is it allows us to use the non-criminal disposition procedure to collect the funds right now we issue a fine and there aren't really many mechanisms we have other than going to court and that we tend not to go to court and I think that's one of the reasons that the shade tree committee would like to see this because we can use the non-criminal disposition which is a very low level of enforcement but it's effective so I was actually going to ask the same question as Miss Brewer because it strikes me as being very similar to the demolition delay bylaw which has similar per day penalty the exact same per day penalty but it was never presented to the town as being about making money was about preserving buildings and resources so I'm actually a little bit taken aback that a representative of the shade tree committee comes here and gives a justification for this article that's not either rational or even legal it's just it's I'm sorry it's a very sloppy presentation this is very it's confusing to us and surprising usually rational is an elaboration on something or justification but these are just totally there's a total disjuncture here so I assume that'll be clarified by the time town meeting rolls around and warrant review that the law law will be explained in terms of what's supposed to do and not some imaginary financial benefits Krueger sorry I know we look alike well I hear your point Mr. Wald but I think with the clarification about where the monies go in the rational Mr. Bachmann explained about being able to use non-criminal disposition as a way to collect those funds what I see now is the language in the warrant I'm comfortable supporting this because in some ways comports with the state law that they're already under there will be regulations we've clarified that those regulations come to the select board going back and looking at the charge we see that the shade tree committee should be giving us an annual report now we've been reminded of that we'll be looking for that there are other boards and departments that do collect a number of fees you know from you know wiring the specter on those don't ever sit with that department's budget so we do have quite a number of examples with large amounts large amounts of money that come in that go to the general fund we have enterprise funds and they're they're under specific laws where we are allowed to use them and like the water fund your water rate can only go into the water fund so can be used for some of the things we talked about earlier tonight when you hear so just to be clear and understanding but I think this has been improved and some of the concerns I had I think have been addressed in the redrafting and working with the manager and back and forth with the shade tree committee so I I could go with it I'll add one thing and then I'll speak to you so the one thing I would add is I I do think just the notion of collection of fees and they almost all go to the general fund not all of them but almost all of them go to the general fund however when we look at the budget in springtown meeting we often in the budget book and also in the report from the finance committee they sort of imply that the fine you know the fines and fees and whatnot are collected reside with the department and so they there's a sort of demonstration that we've collected a certain amount that helps offset the cost but it does technically go fully to the general fund and so so there is and it's understandable to me that that in in some respects people think in terms of a quid pro quo as it were for those things when actually it doesn't exist but but nonetheless that is it is often for the purposes of demonstrating that the fees are collected and they sort of help augment the department expenses although it's technically through the general fund could be confusing to that point but anyway just walk I'm totally in support of this and I'm glad I agree with Ms. Kruger it's been cleaned up so it's much easier to understand I'm just saying aside from the fact that it's it's not helpful to us to have the thing presented incorrectly you know town meeting is a fickle bunch and we've seen people Jim I will not speak at town you know we've seen them get upset about a typographical mistake in numbering of the zoning bylaw and send things back for referrals I just want to make sure good make sure that make that just you know town meeting doesn't get focused on some little thing instead of on the on the merits which are important for the sake of the environment and climate change and everything else Ms. Brewer so keep doing it keep doing it go ahead I dare you tell my blood sugar is getting low with this appointment focus is missing there there are obviously I asked to have the charge put in the packet which I really appreciate that we do have but we also know that there's the section there's several sections of mass general law you know at 87 here that talk about some of the specific things that are in fact already true which was part of my initial question about why are we doing this at all except for the 300 and the non-criminal disposition so now I get that part and I'm glad we took out the parts that were duplicative of stuff that's already in there what I'm trying to understand and it won't affect how I vote on this but you know when we're talking about a topic I'm trying to understand is there anything so for example the fines right now that are uncollected so they have been assessed based on girth of the tree is my understanding is that regulation that says x amount of inches because there are different inches and different people's ordinances and we've seen it done different ways how much of that is in the MGL because it seems like relatively little of that is in the MGL and how much of that will actually have to come back to us as a regulation rather than just continuing on with the way it's been done because what I'm trying to understand is I don't think that by passing this that means those amounts can continue to be assessed on homeowners until it comes back to the select board unless there are some specific MGL things that can and I think those have to do with cutting things down without permission versus the charge so I don't want to mix the different things together and obviously it's not my area Mr. Bachman, if you have a third I think that's a good point the general bylaw the general law Chapter 87 just covers general things what would happen with this is that the Public Shade Tree Committee would create regulations that they would probably and they've already done this work actually and presented to you and then that was where that's where the conversation would happen and then you would approve those regulations and it would be those regulations under this bylaw that we would then go to enforce so if there was a you know so much so much dollars fine for per inch or what would constitute or who can you know anything like that whatever the regulations are what what kinds of things they want to see enforced through the process the appeal process to the select board whatever so to that point if I may follow up on that so if we if town meeting votes for this would we and you're saying that a fair number of these things are already essentially been hashed out by Public Shade Tree Committee so could we expect fairly quickly after town meeting perhaps December January that we would see a bunch of these I'm thinking that it would be nice to get them then not because we need a lot more to do but because there's not a lot of tree cutting going on in January and so if we get things in place before the season when people start to go out and cut trees in a more real you know in a more extensive way there may be some that happens with snow storms and whatnot but I'm just saying in a you know if if those are in place or a good number of them could be in place and to us fairly quickly because I presume this will I'm of the the mindset that town meeting would largely be supportive of this if the distinctions are clear as to what this allows us to do then I would hope that we could get regulations to us fairly quickly so that and again it'll be probably a tiered thing where some things are really simple to do and we'll do right away and some other things we have to think about a little more deeply and et cetera et cetera but hopefully that's the case Mr Steinberg want to point out the last sentence of the article I think that there is the capacity to find prior to regulations because of what's placed as 300 dollars unless there's a regulation that says otherwise right and I don't know how that number relates to most of the fines that have been levied and unpaid or the fines that might be levied in the future under regulation but that is there and a little bit of carte blanche in some respects well I guess and this is if we don't know the answer to this this is certainly something that the Shaitree committee and with Mr. Snow's help can address a town meeting so that's part of the purpose of us doing these those little recommendations show for the public is also so that you might hear questions that we think town meeting would ask is that trying I mean we've been through several versions of this but trying to read that as in the absence of a regulation if I'm working under an assumption which is not a good idea that the type of violation this would be is you go out and you cut down public shade trees without permission that's the kind of thing and then without a regulation that could still happen that you could still get in trouble for that is what this is saying this is and that might reflect back to some authorization and MGL that says you can't cut down trees without permission but on the other hand the part about you're going to remove some trees and so based on this calculation even though you think it's too much money we're asking you to replace or pay this payment that's different than just going and cutting down trees and so I'm assuming the 300 thing is applying to the going and just cutting down stuff that you don't have authorization to cut and the other issue is regulations that we'll have to see that say this is what you're charging people this is what the appeal process is if they say they can't afford that this is and that's a separate thing is that our understanding that's the way I understand this right Mr. Wall and right it's again it's like demolition delay same kind of thing and if I understand correctly Mr. Backelman that's the legal maximum we can charge for these kind of violations or actually there is no legal maximum under state law but under our non-criminal disposition three hundred dollars is the maximum I'm willing to go along with that interpretation although literally how it reads it doesn't explain not sure we can go with that voicing that understanding and communicating that that is sort of the ground rules until the regulations are promul promulgated so are there other questions or comments regarding this then I would entertain a motion regarding article 12 I will be happy to make a motion to recommend I move to recommend to the November 6 2017 special town meeting article 12 general by-law public shade trees someone to speak on behalf of the select board town meeting second further discussion yes so one other question I and I think we talked about this before but I'm not sure I remember the answer which is that when it comes to talking when we do get those proposed regulations here which will look just like the ones they've been using so that'll be relatively quickly then we don't have to have a legal hearing unlike some other things that we have to do like when there's an argument about whether or not to cut down trees and it goes from the tree warden and the planning board over to the select board and that's an actual legally noticed hearing like a big age hearing this is the kind of thing that we would be of the regulations we would be able to do at one of our regular public meetings as a regular agenda item we would obviously try and publicize it ahead because it's something new that we want to codify but it's not something we have to like quote you know you have to have two 14-day notices apart in the legal notices section of the paper kind of thing it's not that kind of hearing correct the the this would be treated just like when the personnel board comes to you with their change in regulations they'll have a public hearing but they will explain what they were trying to do under the bylaw okay is there further discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye post no I thank you I think if I'm wrong I'm sure Mr. World will correct me think we're the only committee that actually gets their hands dirty we will have our last planting at the end of the month it's really good for the soul it's good for the body we have a marvelous time the one we're doing on the 20 whatever is what we call an ants it's an annual neighborhood tree steward the neighborhood agrees to adopt the trees that we plant it means they will water them for three years and they give us lunch if I may they had a very good turnout on Saturday morning at Kendrick park planted you came with your coffee but you didn't take it I didn't dig a hole but but they had they had about 10 people there all planting trees so it was a really good turnout so thank you thank you so much thank you thank you thank you yeah I was thinking thanks for waiting so long yes absolutely thank you so next up is article 13 the general by-law on town meeting advisory committee and unless Mr Mirzak is going Mirzak's going to talk to us about that one I think we don't have someone here so they were invited like I presume they were sorry but nobody came and they didn't tell you they weren't coming that's really I didn't get I mean I thought maybe they were just like not coming because they were watching the clock right could be versus I can't quite believe they wouldn't tell us they weren't coming so verify that with Ms. Pupple but yeah but I'm I don't recall seeing an email and I last looked at email around five and I didn't directly to you yeah so I I don't remember seeing anything today anyway that said they weren't going to make it so we have two choices I suppose we could take it up in their absence or we could wait and then see if there was some confusion about dates and times so I'm open to the committee and well I guess one question we could just potentially address is whether we should take a position at all because this is you know a advisory committee two town meeting by town meeting so you know we we may be of the opinion to not have an opinion but I don't know if if we want to discuss that part of it separate from the merits here there but Swann as far as taking it up it's on the agenda was publicly posted we don't issue engraved invitations so it's not a right problem if nobody shows up right I think it is we should take up because in some ways it cuts to the heart of our whole system of government I mean also part of the rationale being presented is that the petitioners that they I mean those behind the article are not satisfied with the information that is given to town meeting about the warrant and the recommendations about the warrant come from two main places the finance committee and us I mean for specialized questions the school committee and so forth but we're you know we take a position of every article or have that option so since that in it in the sense is addressing their faith in our ability to do our jobs I think we have a right to take a position about that and maybe an obligation sure so I think we have we have the possibility of discussing it tonight which we didn't have previously when we did warrant review identifying areas of concern and questions we don't have to take a position tonight we can wait and give them an opportunity to come if we want to and give a presentation before we finalize but we we now have the opportunities since our agenda talk about it absolutely and I know that our agendas in the coming weeks are fairly busy so I don't have an opposition to taking up to whatever extent we can Mr. Roe so I believe we should talk about tonight whether or not we're going to take a position because it is on the it is on the agenda it's not on the word it is on the word too it's on the agenda and unless something went horribly awry they were invited to come because we've known for a couple of weeks already that this was going to be the night that we were doing this this was on a previous schedule that we saw and obviously they would know because they're associated with I mean coordinating committee they know how we do things and so maybe there was an illness or somebody couldn't come for some reason which is why I'm finding it so strange that no one showed up I'm I'm adamantly opposed to rescheduling it for another night unless I hear that we screwed up somehow and because you know it is what it is we got to move on and we got other things to do so whether or not we take a position because we decide the select board wants to take a position based on the things we've already said is a different matter but I think deciding that tonight is entirely appropriate I find it also very strange that we don't have any materials from this group and I just don't really understand how that's possible I myself happened to attend a meeting as as did Mr. Wilde here in this room that was put on when they were still developing the warrant article and as we know from our previous discussion not about warrant as Ms. Kruger referenced not about the content of the articles in terms of our positions on them but in terms of the readability of them and the ability to make sense the public to make sense of the warrant article just as the shade tree version went through several iterations just as others have gone through several iterations this one has also gone through several iterations and now it more closely hues with what's also in our packet article one from our town by-laws that establishes the town meeting coordinating committee and so it it much more it was kind of to the side now it more closely hues with that but it is also frustrating that we don't have anybody here to talk to us about it and we don't have any handouts and I know that the first mailings going out this week so obviously they're working on and it is the timing coordinating committee is my committee and I just don't really have any idea why their subcommittee hasn't done this don't have an update so I guess I have a couple of comments one is I find it very ironic because the suggestion is that we as a select board are not providing adequate input about the pros and cons of proposed articles to town meeting but we can't assess pros and cons unless the groups come forward and tell us the reasons that we should before their article so we can't do a pro without understanding what it is and the best source of it is people who aren't here tonight so I can't help but recognize that irony one of the cons to consider is the additional staff time that might be necessary to meet with this additional committee town meeting in and of itself consumes tremendous amount of staff time and is one of the things that I think has been talked about in the community for some time and might be helpful to know whether there's been any assessment done of the cost to our employee staff time to present in to another yet another committee any feedback on that um we have not assessed any cost what cost if any would be associated with this I really don't know how often they would be meeting if it would be something that would be done in conjunction with something that's already been done or if they would require separate attendance at meetings the challenge with this is that if any if you have staff or petitioners seeking to have an item go before town meeting and get approval tell me you go it to as many places as you can to get support and each additional hoop you have to jump through creates another night out and I actually am spending a fair amount of my time managing staff who are required to go to lots of meetings at night that's not free that's not just people showing up because they're entitled to compensatory time which means they don't they have time off during the next day or whenever so and sometimes you will ask for staff to show up at meetings and I will question do we really need this person here for that reason or not you've experienced that directly for me so that's the type of management we would have to manage we'd have to do in this situation but we have not done any kind of cost estimate of what kind of staff time it would take I just have no idea so I think that's part of my concern is when they talk about and I've I've had this concern from early on I saw earlier versions of this about analyze the benefits and impacts to the town of Warren articles and show reports findings to town meeting and analysis of pros and cons that it identifies this is really unclear and to me it's adding a level of government that replicates or duplicates what should already be in place which I feel is in place and I think I can't read between the lines and that's why I'm really missing having the presentation but I'm worried that there'll be then a coming that this somehow then will create an expectation that this committee will have access to certain town resources expertise and whatever and I don't think this is the time to add another layer to our our town government so I've been very concerned about creating this committee as another part of the legislative branch Mr. Oll I know a little bit of the background of that and I you know I think one of the things they said is that Ms. Bergen correct me if my memory is faulty in any of this you know one of the things that they said is that they they like the work the finance committee does that we have this booklet that lays out things and so forth I think one of the complaints they had about us that made us too strong a word you know that occasion we take positions and articles but we don't for example in recent I don't know how long the state's back the planning board now has given positions on articles that it's bringing forward you know we should change the zoning to this these are the pros these are the cons I think they like that you know a little bit like the league of women voters guides to articles but they want to go beyond that and not just say the advocates say this and the opponents say that but they want a judgment so they're asking to take a position here I think that they maybe felt make up the sense they felt our positions maybe weren't articulated in that pro plus Conway we just give the summary judgment and then I think since we only intermittently or when time and other contingencies permit issue a written report in advance of town meeting they like that I mean I think the problem with this though is that it's fatally flawed and the logical as well as the political level so I'll stick to the logical I mean I thought Ms. Krug was going to go in a little bit different direction and say and talk about I mean even if we lived in a fantasy world where there were time and money and staff to do everything it implies a level of rigor that I think doesn't exist and parking you know to to gather data and establish impacts is something that very per you know professionals take a long time to do the other thing about this is that they like the model of the finance committee though they were not under they didn't understand that the finance committee doesn't just handle the stuff to staff that finance committee actually works hard but finance committee works all year long to do things through an entire budget process involving departments CD you know the budget coordinating group and the joint capital planning committee and so forth we take positions and articles because we sit here day in and day out for 12 months and we know the process and we know all these things and how they came to us or we're brought up to speed if they're a little bit outside things we normally take up what they're asking people to do here is to have this group of elected people these I was at nine members you know elected randomly through a popular vote of town meeting members to amass the necessary expertise on every article in the warrant in every possible area from housing to zoning to budget to libraries to schools to anything like that and so just on the level of logic I don't see it there's any value added there that would replace or even meaningfully supplement the work that we do and the finance committee does and that's that's I can't get beyond that logical problem I wanted to leave a door open Mr. Wilde for you to be able to talk about the problem with establishing impacts it's not an exact science but it's it's this article suggests to me and I've also heard it in comments that when we or another board says these are the impacts or these are the reasons for that we're not believed so if a different group coming out of town meeting looked at it they would come to a different conclusions I think there's a definite agenda to this that is if a different group of people were looking at it they would find different adverse impacts to certain things we might have supported and so to me it adds to the divisiveness of the way we're we're discussing we discuss issues in our town I didn't want to talk too much but that actually it was exactly how it came up at the meeting again this maybe Ms. Brewer will care to amplify but it was put that way that people regard things coming out of town hall and select board with a certain amount of skepticism and I countered by saying well people might exactly what you said people were regard this was skepticism I didn't say people are not to be trusted I said there is the impression that there are these sides and this would simply reinforce that division so that was my reading of the conversation they had there I don't know if Ms. Brewer read that differently nothing to do with what people think about us but you know we can follow the had the example and I'll quit but just that it seems to be again a a polarizing I know I didn't did you want to comment Ms. Brewer why why yes I would love to so I've not been going to these meetings of this subcommittee on policy and procedures in fact I haven't been going to the vast majority tell me in coordinating a committee meetings either so I don't have insight from that what I do have in the absence of any written material which is so very strange even a draft version prior to the one that I'm sure they're working on for the mailing is that one of the documents that was indeed provided at that meeting on September 13th which was I don't believe recorded unfortunately and I don't believe there was any press at either but there was a handout dated June 15th even though it was September 13th when we were talking about it and I will I am incredibly biased I'm not going to pretend that I'm not biased about this I am very concerned about what this document says and I said that at the meeting and understanding our history as a select board in terms of our positions on warrant articles there without going in too much length one is of course the point that we're here every week every couple weeks and so even when we aren't particularly familiar with an issue like say the Shade Tree issue I will argue that we knew what they were doing already but we didn't know that we needed this thing and so we had to get brought up to speed on that when it comes to a lot of other issues they're things that have been pocketing up all year around and they're related to other things that we're working on and so when a warrant article comes forward it's like oh yeah that fits in this slot of all the things we've been talking about at these publicly posted meetings sometimes with public input so by the time we get to a warrant article like for example the school articles tonight it's like everybody's like what that's all you're going to say it's like no we've been talking about this for years about charter school funding and so we don't need to have a whole new conversation and we don't have the time to lay out a pros and cons chart on that particular article because guess what we don't have time to figure out our regulations on entertainment licenses and so we have a whole lot of other things to do and so for us to say we've been talking about this for years we all know what it's about we've talked about it in public we are deliberating open and under open meeting law yeah sure those articles sound great I suppose there's somebody out there in town meeting who might think well that's not really enough time that you put into that it's like that's because we've talked about it a million times already so we have also in sometimes at some points over the past several years we have sent out the last year what we did the most recently was we just sent out our votes you know four one four zero whatever and we didn't say why but we did send out what our votes were ahead of time again so that people would know what they were we did put that in the packet in past years we have sometimes forced ourselves to make the time to come up with paragraphs that explain why we voted on the way we voted and then we kind of realized we didn't we like that idea a lot but we didn't really have time to do it so I'm gonna quote from this with that background I'm gonna quote from this document passed out on September 13th by the committee concerns that may be raised about adding an advisory committee and it talks about several it talks about different boards and committees how many people might be interested in serving it talks about other things like warrant review for example which will be next week in this room on Tuesday and precinct meetings etc so it does it does try and address lots of issues but I have never been one to to really complain when people say we have an agenda because we have to have an agenda because you know that's what we're elected to do and we have a list of topics we have to post and so agenda shouldn't be a dirty word in my reality but the what it says here I think does speak to a different way of looking at our town government than I think our select board looks at it which is the select with the the question is the select board already serves this function and it goes on to say the select board makes recommendations on Warner Gargles before town meeting generally include an oral explanation of why they're in favor or opposed because of the press of regular business the select board has very limited time available to research and review articles moreover its comments and recommendations are only offered orally at the time the article is considered thus there is no time in advance for town meeting members to consider such pros and cons as the select board may advance in detail finally to the extent that the recommendations of the select board and its boards and committees are perceived to have a quote town hall bias the advisory committee can be understood to raise questions and take perspectives that belong to town meetings representative legislative function for the entirety of the town so based on the speech I just gave I'm sure you can hear that I was pretty annoyed when I read this at that meeting on the 13th and I said look what like what are we doing here and so then there was lots of fuss about who's biased and what bias and etc but one of the things that I come back to is that on the one hand I'm really miffed about what I feel like is the attitude driving this on the other hand how can you argue that people want more information I mean more information is always good right I mean I'm not going to be the select board doesn't want to give town meeting information that's a horrible position to be in the thing I pointed out that was not well received as well beyond pointing out that no in fact staff doesn't write the finance committee book they have a huge amount of work in terms of all the formatting and providing data for it but the finance committee itself has to write huge swaths of that as our former finance committee people know but this committee did not is that all these things they're talking about doing can be done by town meeting members right now because they're not subject to open meeting law and so when three town meeting members decide to show up at this meeting or a planning board meeting or a finance committee meeting and then right on a listserv to a bunch of other committee talking about great that's awesome have some meetings have some online meetings you can do all of this without having to put into place a structure that I am also concerned is going to be we said we have a warrant article we have a new bylaw that says staff will help us to do this and I just don't see that as being something I want to feel right about saying to the town manager yeah we recommended this and we think that's what that means I would argue that even if it passes a town meeting which I assume it will because it sounds good to have more information that it's puts the town manager in an awkward position because if he's saying no I'm not sending my people to one more meeting to do this you're going to have to find a way to combine it with other things and they say but the bylaw I'm really I'm frustrated by how the reality of day to day would work versus the nice theory that it sounds like so I think if I'm I can sort of collect these different points I think there's concerns with the the cost of staff to do that and whether we have the capacity and or you know and the capacity can be either existing resources or whatever additional resources we might need for this to function in some real way concerns about whether there's a real value add here or not in the sense that we have existing structures that are built to do some of this work and there's no impediments for current town meeting members to participate in those processes the thing I think about with regard to this article is is you know like has been mentioned by a couple of you about the work both the finance committee and we do on a on a sort of very regular generally full year basis to be attuned to and and interested in and monitoring these different issues you know there is a certain to my mind there's a certain responsibility of folks who run for town meeting to be paying attention all the time now there's your town meeting member all year long you only go to town meeting for the dozen nights a year that we have town meeting but it is a responsibility to bear until you no longer run or not and so there's a piece of me that that takes exception with regard to the absence of seeing that point in that the there is a responsibility to be informed on the topics whether anybody prepares a report or not in other words you know in attending to you know town business and voting on a budget that begins discussion in October it is inherently part of the responsibility of the office to inform yourself throughout the budget process which is very public and so I take a certain amount of exception with regard to this because I think it's to it's a layer that already exists so I think it's redundant in some respects and I think that it's also you know it if I were a town meeting member as you know elected as I used to be there's a piece of me to be slightly insulted in the fact that you need to you know spoon feed me this when I'm supposed to be paying attention to this all the time but nonetheless I think that that I do have some concerns about parallel it's you know it's a parallel to the select board so but yet they don't have I mean we have certain you know and specific responsibilities around the public way and water and sewer commissioners and things like that and we can hand out liquor license but I think with regard to but the the lion's share of what we do around policy things in direction to the manager etc etc is very parallel to what this is suggesting and so I I don't see I think if if people are concerned with the information they're getting or you know the the floor of town meeting is an opportunity to ask the questions of us or staff to to be able to prepare and and vote on the issues at hand in addition to other work they can do in in keeping track of what's going on in town throughout the year so I I have my my difficulties with this as well I think there's some common themes that we've brought up that that sort of clearly articulate our our struggles with this particular warrant article Mr. Wall sorry I didn't we've no I'm finished since I'm so talkative tonight I'm glad that the chair said that because that was the other part of my concern you know when I went to this meeting I said well really if you pass this you're handing the charter commission a big fat Christmas present because to me that the problem is that it's not if I might take a little different stance in this brewer it's not that they have they want more information it's it's too much if I didn't bring it with me but if you read the email that went out announcing that meeting it said town meeting members don't have the time to understand the articles properly and my response was exactly the same as Mr. Slaughter's well then why are you there you know we've been here and this is again this is 11th hour trying to prove the virtues of town meeting in the face of the charter challenge and we're not taking position on that and so that's not my point here but the point is that I mean politically it's a total it's a total own goal I can't believe anybody would do this and think it's helping rather than hurting but what bothers me again is what Mr. Slaughter said the implication that there's too much information you know if there's such a great deliberative body legislative body place a public debate and contest and so forth then you have to do your homework so I think this is going to make people pay less attention rather than more to the details because I have this pre-chewed version in front of them I you know so I think on on every front it's just it's just it's not good and I can't see any of us supporting it what the rest of the town meeting will do I don't know but no I did say something I did say something I started out I put two comments so we so long ago now since we've been railing for 25 minutes no I'm just kidding but if if if we are to the to a point of agreement perhaps or exhaustion perhaps a motion would be in order if we're ready to do that work on this please I move to not recommend to the November 6th 2017 special town meeting article 13 general bylaw town meeting advisory committee TMAC is there a second there is a second is there further discussion hearing none all those in favor please say I I I I post all right in that passage I was about to say we're going to need to make assignments on speaking soon but yes so did we have our assignment sheet was going to be on our desk tonight I I don't think it was printed for our desk tonight it was going to be there was an email that had the finance committee one I think but and we also got ours emailed and it's it is landscape but we're supposed to have it should we should have had on your desk I'm sorry about that okay so we'll well it'll be updated so that we have it in front of his pack and we'll choose who speaks on the items fill in the blanks right yeah it's Ms. Brewer for all articles that have voted tonight all right so I think we've dispensed with that next on our agenda is the fiscal year 18 time manager performance goals if you notice on the agenda the E for this one is very tiny I don't know if that's to minimize its effect or if that's formatting yeah it's it's sending a message it's slightly comical on a certain level but in your packet and I did see it there was the last sort of version of these and I I mostly wanted to take these up tonight not that you know we didn't have enough to do already but I I thought we were fairly close and then of course I missed a meeting where he might have polished him up but I did want to solicit any additional changes and if not then it would I would like to sort of turn these from draft into final for the for the manager I mean granted there's a fair number of these it's not like we've left you in the lurch for the first quarter of the year I mean you there's just several of these that that you've been working on in advance of us of us sort of finalizing that were there any other changes that people wanted to make or or fine tuning that people wanted to do or have we once again exhausted ourselves and so we're going to go with it as is I just didn't know if there were a couple of things where I tried to personally add a couple of things right and well but then I haven't looked at it closely in a while either so I've kind of left it as is but there were a few sort of things I tried to to flesh out hopefully that leading paragraph caught some of the intention that that we wanted with regard to the charter vote and depending on how that turns out but I didn't know it does anyone have any other suggestions and I'll give everyone a moment till look through it again even if they're typographical errors or changes is bro so if you could point me because I didn't I'm sorry I didn't get enough time to look over my notes in great detail of each version etc so since as Miss Kruger said you are intimately familiar with this document it looks like under section two relationship with select board the addition of item eight begins to approach the concept that we discussed several times about select board policies and as long as the town manager because that's the whole thing right if he understands what we're asking him and so if the town manager understands that that means yes doing exactly that cataloging what we've got and to go here and publicly available but but before the publicly available part like giving them to us would be a really good start and then we could look at them and see if they were actually still true and because as it turns out you know select boards 10 years ago don't really get to decide what select boards today do accept that we should probably have said well we aren't going to do that thing anymore or we're going to do it this way instead so assuming that it's not just oh look we found these 10 things they're in a folder and now they're on the website yet no that we're not quite at that point yet but it would come to us as here they are we found them they're in a folder now that everything that Ms. Pupple's been gathering for us over the years and which things are ready for public consumption and which things aren't so should we put in there so it currently says beginning the process of cataloging select board policies into a coherent and publicly available format should we perhaps say beginning the process of cataloging select board policies for review by the select board with the ultimate purpose of having to go here and publicly available for me I'm joking a little about the terminology but you know where I'm going with that I would say goal but these are goals so right it's the goal right the intent with the intent thank you oh nice yes into with the intent to so I I'm not proud of words but that right at this moment and I I think if that makes sense to the to the town manager because I know we've bounced this back and forth a couple of times in terms of what our expectation is then you could have worded to fit what you believe expectation is rather than be feeling like I have to word Smith it so one of the things that the personnel board has done is they've in addition to looking at the regulations they've also assembled the policies of the of the select board that they have that has that refer to personnel issues so cool they're cataloging that in terms of when they come to your presentation they'll have that in addition to their regulations that they're recommending I would make a motion if you feel ready Mr. Chair with so I'm going to I'm sorry wait we're beginning to check if there were any more edits or you just Oh I thought that was your only one I'm sorry Oh please really thank you Miss Krueger for assuming that you were ready thank you for assuming on that and so the other was associated with the charter issues associated not only with the transition plan but also the additional work that's being done as questions continue to come up what does this mean how would this work who's actually responsible for that is that buried in here someplace it is a little bit I kind of thought it was but I couldn't quite find it and I was looking for at this time and so I hoped you could I want to say you're talking about the part on is it can you find it I had it here a second because it's it's the stuff that happens before the transition Oh here it is it's beautiful it's beautiful Mr. number five Mr. Bachmann why didn't you say look it's number five Alyssa why don't you remember that preparing materials and information as needed in advance in the March 28th charter vote there it is right in front of us thank you I think I can can we just go on record and say you have too many words on these pages but you know aside from that it's all good they're good words was there anything else those were those were mine those were yours Mr. Walt I mean one could get into things like why it says develop in some place and developing and others but I didn't want I don't care I guess I guess I just want to make a comment that I was half the time this my brilliant ideas occurred to me when I'm doing the evaluation rather than reading this document and so when I but when I come across the fiscal management you know pursuing sustainable inappropriate development I mean in a sense the town manager can't pursue any kind of development I mean you know he he shapes a vision for the town he advocates and so forth so I just you know I think a lot of this really depends on understanding what these things mean so we that sometimes it may imply the town manager is responsible for something where in fact he's he's playing a role but we're not holding him solely responsible doing these things so he's bringing an environment for right yes right I just want to make sure that he understands that we understand these are reasonable expectations and we're not there's no arbitrage allowed yeah any other comments no I think that we have collectively done a very good job over an extended period of time too extended to come up with the compilation of a list of things most of which if not all of which probably Mr. Bachmann is not only doing now but really doing with a lot of energy and talent and which appreciate it I move to approve the FY18 town manager performance goals as amended second is a further discussion all those in favor please say aye aye okay thank goodness we got that so I will thank you put in the 16th on the first paragraph instead of xx we'll make the edit to the number eight under section two as we discussed it in you will have official goals to thank you to chase and then could you put the clean copy back in our packet absolutely back towards and then when it goes up on the town website our although we all have many more important things to do and then worry about how beautiful our web pages still we are adding too much stuff to our web page in terms of like water report and this report and that in the fire report and all that in terms of like trying to keep it at the bottom in terms of related resources and there's a whole big section about the evaluation since the evaluation is complete especially with us having set the goals we can now put that in the archive there's an archive section with the eval for each year and just have these goals there and then it'll be like it'll see free up some icing space what's going on there absolutely thank you and thank you to staff for managing that part of things as well so next up I think we'll go ahead and go to the committee board's appointments and reappointments and we have one of those and I believe we have a motion to that effect is unless someone wants to speak to that and they're in any more detail than the motion so someone would like to make the motion I move to appoint William Keisen to the public art commission through 6 30 2020 second motion a second any discussion all those in favor please say aye aye and that's unanimous which reminds me I want to mention that we have an opening on the immersed housing authority applications are due at four o'clock on the I don't know the date Thursday before the 30th 26th right and application means a letter of interest a letter of interest yes not an actual it's not a caf it's an actual letter of interest and it can be sent to select ward at the rest of may dot gov I believe obviously a actual letter in physical form can be sent as well I wanted to make sure to mention that site I should probably remit it later there's more detail on the website for anybody who's interested exactly just in case people are listening and didn't know that there was an opening on the immersed housing authority board of commissioners this is because somebody resigned and this will be under the state law a joint appointment of the select board and the board of commissioners for the housing authority to fill out a term until the next local election which is in March so somebody a number of people show interest we'll we do an interview in public with however many people have shown interest and we jointly make that decision in public and it's it's until the next local that doesn't preclude the person from running in that local election but that's the process right thank you for that quick reminder and it also doesn't give them the advantage of having incumbent next to their name when they run but that's okay because that's just how these appointments work the the news and announcements that Ms. Pubble put up does include a link to our 2014 policy which unfortunately is a bit out of date in terms of some of the logistics of things we actually do but it is a good enough overview for the applicants as well as for ourselves and in fact I've asked Ms. Pubble to send me the word version of that so that we can make some tweaks based on our experiences last year when we had to do this twice if you'll recall and our new experiences coming up this month and say you know we really ought to write that in the policy so that it's up so it's up front to everyone the other thing to be clear on about that that we did emphasize last time that we did not put not yet put in the policy is that when people when the press is gone obviously call up or other members of the public call up to ask who's applied or how many people have applied they don't get an answer they get an answer by looking at our packet that's published on Friday that's how they find out the answer to that and if people want to say hey I'm running they can do that but we aren't going to give out anybody's name or how many of them there are until the information is published on the Friday for the public and the press although it's true that as letters come in the members the current members of the housing authority and the members of this body do get those so they come in as they do but we do not share that information until the Friday before a Monday meeting right second very briefly add also on the website is a short description of what that it's very helpful position entails if people are wondering oh what does that mean being a commissioner of the Amherst housing at 30 so thank you for that reminder as well so if you would all remind me meeting next Monday correct which will be so again do that earlier in the meeting to remind people of that so in the news and announcements part of the meeting at the beginning I mentioned that but if if collectively we can recall that we'll kind of go through this all again at the early part of the meeting when potentially more people are watching and as closer to the deadline we'll do that so next up we have section seven of our agenda which license is public way and meter parking reservations we have a consent calendar which we've done one piece of which was the seven C right side of the motion which is I moved to approve the items A, B, and D listed on the amended consent calendar for October 16, 2017 agenda as and amended second okay discuss so are you saying Mr. Steinberg that just given all the confusion and the fact that we don't want to hold this applicant up and we all know what we meant even though the words on the papers don't necessarily agree with us that we're going to go ahead and have the motions actually say that the entertainment license is only for that date I think so because of the if the business wants to come back and ask for additional dates I think I actually think they might be entitled to it without payment of fee but they can make that request his request tonight was very specific he said that his request was for the night and we want to get that done and I I think the other piece to that is that there was a difference between what was in the previous annual entertainment license and the current one so he'll actually hold two simultaneously that have different allowable things technically although he again indicated the single night was what he was most interested in but that leads us to another problem which is you can't have an annual in a one day at the same time I mean so that's just a whole another paperwork problem we need to sort out at some point in the future because the document that we published the document that we had in front of us didn't ask for a specific day it just said an annual license and so in future one we're hoping it's never going to happen again and two if it does we need some direction in our packet not just to look at the motion sheet which may or may not have been revised by the time our packets delivered to explain why it is the motion is completely different than what's on the on the form so that would be helpful but hopefully we can take some time at some point I have no idea when this magical time is to sort out some of those difficulties so that it's easier for staff easier for applicants and easier for us yes I agree in the amendment amended is different from the original since it got confusing because D was added right and that's why the there's two different sheets correct so we had a change to the Halloween pumpkin decorating so it got amended twice first in the presentation to add D and then in the motion to subtract C right so now that we've got that sorted out are we sounded like an algebra problem that's right that's right so so it's a further discussion hearing none all those in favor you say aye aye aye opposed and so that's unanimous on the consent calendar as as amended that decision say that takes care of that so I guess the rental oh right thank you for reminding me yes in the minutes let's we have minutes we have the establishment of the rental appeals board and then we have of course the managers report select board member reports so I think what we'll do we'll do them in that order I think so the establishment of a rental appeals board Mr. Bach when you want to sort of frame this for us a little bit please thank you Mr. Chair yes so the you have a memo in front of you that recommends that we establish the rental appeals board and compliance with the our rental registration bylaw what I'm recommending to you is that we're not sure how often this appeals board will get called into action so rather than name specific people to the rental appeals board we're recommending that you constitute the a board by creating three positions the chair of the select board the chair of the planning board and the chair of the zoning board of appeals as being the appeals board the logic in that is that these are three people whoever is holding that those three offices at the time who are familiar with the rental registration process they're used to conducting hearings and establishing regulations and know how things work so we don't anticipate any action for this group at any time at this point in time but if it were to be required to call into action we wanted to have a and you had requested this that we have a system set up if it turns out that there's a lot of action then you could revisit this and then name specific individuals but given the history of where we've been with the rental appeals board there have not been any appeals it was not needed so we would recommend that you appoint these three positions to serve in that capacity once established we would recommend we will try and convene this group so they can review some draft rules and regulations and on exactly how someone files an appeal where they file it we assume it would be the town clerk's office but we want to be explicit about that create a form for someone to file an appeal so the whole process is laid out and we'd want to review that with whichever group is set up to handle these appeals so I think this is it's great that we're moving on this and my I had one concern slash question so I don't have a problem with like designating like positions or slots and then whoever is occupying the position as chair of each of these can serve that's fine except it doesn't allow any out like it doesn't say or a designee so if you really need to do this and say the chair of select board can't be here for a couple weeks you're stuck and you know I would want it you know and I would guess that if the select board chair couldn't be there it was really struggling because maybe they were you know family issues whatever their designee would be somebody who met the criteria you just said is you know knowledgeable about rental registration knows how to run a meeting but so you really locked in to all three of them being in town and being available Mr. Walton the similar question about designee but I guess now that now to think about Ms. Krueger's question there's never not a chair of the select board so if the chair recuses himself the vice chair takes over so I mean in a sense there's always a chair of the select board right the question would be if you want to designee somebody outside the select board to take on that role because well I mean in principle we're all equally in clump it's not clear though or not like well I think the way I would we would look to the chair and say here's when can we meet and if the chair said oh I'm I can't do it I think Ms. Krueger's right there isn't a mechanism for the chair to say oh I'm out of pocket or I have a conflict right so I can't serve this function so I would like to I'd have to recuse myself or whatever you could say the designee has to be from within that Boris I mean that's my question read with this automatic or not that's what you want to do so just just to sort of paint this picture a little bit one of the things I'm just glancing at under the appeals it says all appeals must be filed within 14 days of the decision and the more important part for this conversation and shall be heard within 30 days of filing so we do have a there is a time limit there so if I don't know I was going on a cruise around the world that was going to be you know chairs on a lot to do you know I'm not available yeah even by remote participation then you couldn't be right right and that's the other thing I thought about is what happens if it's something that needs more than one meeting to resolve for whatever reason like our summer schedules where sometimes people are going for so I think that that would be the only thing if within our motion perhaps we could articulate something to that effect I mean also I'm not as familiar with the does the zoning Board of appeals have a Vice Chair that is designated I mean there's only three and then they have associate members associate right so it's like do they have a Vice Chair by default whereas we have a rotational version of that but we have one and likewise with the planning board do they have a Vice Chair all the time so that's that's where some of that also comes up is that it could be any one of those three that could have a conflict or a problem or personal conflict I mean that's the other thing is there maybe a circumstance where it's you know you're an extra neighbor so we could add something like this should the chair of any committee not be available that chair may appoint another member of that board to serve and that way it's clear it's still the chairs designated still the chair has to be from the board I didn't like to use the word that too many times but I needed to make sure that we know that it was if it was the planning board chair couldn't come it was the planning board chair that would make the appointment from the planning board and it had to go across the board so that's why I worded it the way I did so then the motion which I will state again in its entirety and treated as a motion I moved to establish a three-member rental appeals board in accordance with section 14 of the residential rental property by-law the chair of the select board the chair of the zoning board of appeals and the chair of the planning board said members to serve by virtue of their position concurrent with the term of office should the chair of any committee not be available that chair may appoint another member of that board to serve second is there further discussion yes oh yes there is so I have I have several comments that I think will help us continue moving this forward one is that after I assume we vote for this unanimously we need I think probably the best way unless Mr. Backelman can think of another one is we need a rental appeals board charge we don't need we don't necessarily need to list it the way we list other committees but we don't have a good way of putting a piece of paper that says what we just said that we can put in a file with the bylaw so that it's a thing rather than calling it a policy I think maybe using using the charge format would work another item is I really appreciated you mentioning that you would even though there aren't currently because of that short time frame I think it is important that even though this particular group of chairs may get lucky and never have to do this just as it hasn't been done in the last four years that they should review some draft rules and regulates just to get a sense of like what it would be like if this happened so to make sure that everybody realizes oh yeah we have the form for that this is how I would do it this is who I would call this is how I mean some of those logistical things because otherwise if it comes in and you have that really fast turnaround I mean even though you don't want to like meet for like two days about this because you may not get one right you need some basics I assume sometime long after Faltown meeting and when I tried I tried really hard not to get not to not to take it as a particular phrase that was meaningful in some timing sort of way about the board identifying itself a task we've been asking for the rental appeals board for four years so again that wonderful phrase before your time Mr. Bachman several town managers ago through several town managers and so one like four years is a really long time so thank you for making that happen but two the reason I have little less cynicism about the whole thing is the fact that you had done something that I thought was really helpful after annual town meeting which is that you went through the warrant and said here are the follow-up items from the warrant we've never consistently done them before in the 10 years I've been here so were something like that to happen now I have much more confidence that this would stay on a list of something to get done because this is certainly not the first time this has happened associated with town meeting action and I really I think that that particular method of dealing with it is as will show to be productive so that we don't have gaps like this in the future so thank you for that methodology is there further comment hearing none all those in favor please say aye aye opposed all right so I pass it unanimously you know I've buried my agenda okay so that's the rental appeals board I think next just for the sake of expediency we have minutes of July 17th 24th August 14th and September 29th and so Mr. Steinberg would like to give us any insight there's much insight I did review all four minutes and a few changes were made before they were sent to you based upon my review though I encourage you to have reviewed them also I tried to catch blatant errors and this was my standard so I'm going to go ahead and move to approve the minutes of July 17 2017 July 24 2017 August 20 August 14 2017 and September 29 2017 as presented and then if there are amendments I'll amend my motion is there a second I wasn't here for the new submission shouldn't be seconding it is there a second for the motion for the minutes okay so we have a motion and a second and then is there further discussion I mean it's there they are thank you Ms. Pupple for so one thank you for getting these done because you know it's been a while since you since Ms. Pupple's had a chance to look at minutes again and so we really appreciate you guys finding a way to have her have space to do this because it's really useful we know that open meeting law just came out with some guidance about getting stuff done sooner with minutes so that will kind of nudge us all along but the other thing I wanted to mention is that I'm doing my usual abstention because I am like going on record is like never fully reading every single page of the minutes apparently ever but I really appreciate that Mr. Steinberg reviewed them before they came to us and I don't think we technically have to say in our minutes who seconds or who makes a motion but if it's a convention people are familiar with using that's fine but it's just another piece of work in terms of keeping track right I think technically it's just the vote that has to be recorded not who made the motion the motion has to be recorded and the result and not who made the motion or seconded it but yeah I the one thing because it has some import for what has happened since I just wanted to point out that in the minutes of July 24th at the beginning under public comment is it's recorded about the presentation of a process that has been the subject of some discussion since then so just wanted to note that also so we have a motion before us are there any other comments or corrections to the minutes hearing none and the motion on my motion sheet oh here it is I'll call for a vote all those in favor please say aye all right opposed you can you can you can I can't believe it's an accurate record right so so let me let me call that vote again so all those in favor please say aye aye opposed abstaining so two abstentions that would be it's not that I don't believe that Mr. Steinberg has done a fabulous job it's that I feel guilty because I didn't check a lot of the details so so separate from abstentions it's unanimous that'll make for interesting minutes later on all right so we were not here for most thank you all for that and thanks to Ms. Pupil for grinding through those because I know having done minutes for a long time thanks I fully appreciate that so at this point I think we're in to the town managers report thank you Mr. Chair I always start with my Cup of Joe thing we so we had a coffee at Cushman Cafe and Market on Friday with health director Julie Federman we had a really good turnout Mr. Steinberg came by the owner of the cafe stopped by and had some comments and on how to do something for the town and we were able to connect him with the people he needed to talk to a lot of people who are interested in bikes and making the community safer for biking and walking so it was a really good turnout very lively discussion we stayed well after nine so I appreciate it everybody who made the effort to come out I've mentioned to you previously about meeting with employees to we're doing this twice a month to different employees every time to brainstorm ways we can make the town better and that's happening the first one will be November 1st the town is offering free flu shots to town and school employees and their family members on Thursday from 8 to 10 a.m. at the bank center and we really encourage people to take advantage of that I want to mention that I will be away at your next meeting on Monday the 23rd Mr. Zomak is prepared to be here in attendance to staff the meeting one thing happened on Saturday it was just really interesting to me that there's so much happening in town and a lot of staff are also participating in town so on Saturday we had the open house at the fire station there's a lot of firefighters there who are helping to educate people and student firefighters who are offering ways to how they break into a car and things like that the tree warden was as well not break into a car disassemble a car save a look the break can happen someplace else the tree warden was at the that the tree planning at Kendrick Park with the the public shade tree committee the high school principal was at the abc fun run on the common and the treasure collector came in to wheel out our new parking machine to the farmers market so people could just sort of and she would encourage people to come up and just try to work it and is very it is actually very helpful for us to watch people you know she would give them a quarter and say try and buy some time and show me and just watch people how they interact and that's been very educational to us so I just want to appreciate that all the towns all the employees who come in on the weekends to do these extra things that are really important because it's sometimes the only it's the only opportunity for towns people to come into town and it's a really good way to interact with people so we continue to meet on to establish procedures and protocols for implementing the winter parking ban during snow emergencies the meter rate changes the new parking machine the introduction of the new parking machines and all the new regulations there are numerous issues to be addressed and we are still targeting November 6th as our first day on with as much as we can hopefully everything set up and ready to go a lot of effort tomorrow will be spent on figuring and developing our rollout plan so everybody knows so we're out on the streets communicating we're talking about having someone for the first couple weeks just being around the machines to help people you know in the parking enforcement officers being more concierge is more than enforcement to help people get familiar with the new machines I think there are some things about the new machines that are different while I was with the treasure collector 100% of the people said they hate at the old machines 100% and some of the we've asked them how do you like the new machine and probably about 60% said they like them a lot of people said I don't like machines in general so or so there's a range but it was a there's a lot a lot of work to be done we're putting a lot of effort into it it involves the treasure collector the police chief the the superintendent public works planning department economic development because I think the most important thing we're going to be doing is communicating with businesses about how it's going to work and then and so they have a level of comfort that there's a way for them to educate their their customers as well in terms of the fire and police staffing we continued to staff up on weekends this weekend is a homecoming so there will be staffed up for that last weekend was parents weekend for a lot of for UMass and the weekend after this is Halloween it's a it's a weekend before Halloween so we anticipate these next two weekends especially with the long-range weather forecast making the weather look very good to be high volume weekends and I mentioned that the fire station the fire department had a great open house they had really good turnout and they always do a really terrific job the we have as I mentioned we have one of the parking machines they're still scheduled to arrive on November 1st which is our target we have one on wheels and we will be moving it around doing the applewood test taking it to different places you know we'll bring it up to the second floor during warrant review whatever it is we can do to help educate people so a lot of times I think what we've discovered is that people are uncomfortable approaching at the first time when they don't know what button to hit if we get more people to do it in an informal setting when they're not really trying to put money in it and there's people behind them we think it'll roll out better the transportation advisory committee has distributed a design for crosswalks and they have spread that out to the world and I'm not sure if we'll talk to the chair if you want it specifically on your agenda or in how you want to handle that going forward I signed an agreement with that would for the school with the schools to allow LSEC to use the district's pool on Tuesdays Thursday Saturdays and Sundays according to a very specific schedule and that's a really good thing for swimmers and also I really appreciate Bart Bills the interim director of LSEC for making that come making that happen let's see the another follow-up item is the firefighter study and developing a plan to review the recommendations and come back to you with some information on it'll it's on how what things we can implement how it will impact the budget there's some analysis that needs go on with all these different things that were recommended by the fire staffing study on the mass mass works grant for North Amherst we have not received word that we are getting funding or not we do not think will be funded this year but hope that next year will be the year but we have not received any official word from the state yet I wanted to thank Sonia, Claire, Holly and Maria for doing a great job on the presentation for the financial indicators and I also want to note that Lindsay one of our efforts for you is to encourage people a little bit down in the ranks to have opportunities to present that's why Holly was presenting at the financial indicators that's why Lindsay was here tonight because we're looking at our next generation of leaders who are coming up part of the things that they don't get the opportunity opportunity to do very often is to present in public and you know giving them some a little bit of exposure to that it's we find it's helpful for both the department head to educate them on how to do a good presentation and for them to have direct experience talking to you which is an intimidating audience and they're on TV but it was it's a but I think she did really well so we appreciate the work that she put into that I went to the important announcement is that our town clerk Sandra Burgess has announced that she will be retiring next year she wants to get through town meeting and then she's ready to sail off into the sunset and she has not picked a specific date should it might be July one something like that but she went to give plenty of advanced notice to to me that she will be retiring and that will give us some opportunity to do a really good search she will be really hard to replace she has a a wealth of knowledge and has set up really excellent systems it's one of those jobs that it can be kind of quiet for a long time and then when an election hits and there's a lot of pressure because elections are the most important thing we do because it's the fundamental form of democracy and she takes a lot of pressure and is able to handle it very very very well so she will be missed but she's got a long time here before she takes off we're going to make sure she is doing all the work because we need her and I have a just got noticed today that remember the University of Massachusetts put out a request for interest or information for a number of properties that they have so they have announced that I'll just read to the University of Massachusetts building authority issued a request for information to determine the feasibility of a public private partnership for the development financing maintenance and operation of a mixed use facility including residential beds hotel space conference centers athletic facility retail space and medical office at UMass the responses were received in July 28th the responses ranged from global development companies national developers primarily in the student housing arena to local developers development concepts included mixed use commercialization including student housing hotel conference center indoor athletic facility restaurants shops health facility and parking to accommodate housing and retail portions of the project the companies that's responded were American campus communities AJ capital partners capstone development partners LLC CorvS spelled C-O-R-V-I-A-S edR which is spelled E-D capital R Len Delice plenary P-L-E-N-A-R-Y signet S-I-G-N-E-T Skanska S-K-A-N-S-K-A and university student living we don't know anything about other than that information that I've just read to you the and it seems like much of this work is being done in Boston at the UMass building authority we continue to work with the university to get as much information because this is this whatever they're proposing for development will be highly impactful for the town so as we get information you'll get the information I want to let you know that Mr. Rosnoy Mr. Rosnoy brought in his letter of resignation from the planning board in the downtown parking working group today and I'll send this off to you but for he said for various reasons personal professional medical I must resign as a member of town planning board effective immediately and since my affiliation with the downtown parking working group is as its representative member from planning board pursuant to the charge of the downtown parking working group I also submit my resident resignation from that group he's going to keep his membership on the tack transportation advisory committee for the time being but I think that's mostly to encourage there to be a transition so he can relinquish that title too Mr. Rosnoy has done he's carried a lot of weight for a lot of different committees he makes some really nice comments and I'll share this with you out for complementing the planning staff in particular and I think he's felt like the planning board has gone through a transition they have some newer members on who have now developed the sort of experience to be able to to carry more of the load and he feels I did he feels very comfortable stepping back but I just want to thank Mr. Rosnoy for all the work that he has done for the town at your last meeting we we have letters for the chair to sign on the Puerto Rico that Mr. Wald drafted and on Kenagasaki that was drafted in conjunction with Mr. Steinberg so those are in the sign folder tonight for the chair to sign but we haven't got hm? have we ever seen them? no no we said we wouldn't need to on the Puerto Rico letter I mean to we're happy to share that with you yeah I mean just we will when they're done we'll be well yes just got to which is fine we said that we said it was okay we said that they have not gone out yet and then the other thing I think I sent the the latest budget development calendar which now has included the libraries trustees dates on it so that is a thing of still some actual dates to be put in but we're moving forward on that and that's pretty much the chamber legislative breakfast that's the only thing October 26th I think we've heard back from most everybody on that if you want to go or not we're signing up people for that not sure I've responded to that yes you'll get we'll get you tomorrow right so any questions for or comments for the manager yes you go ahead to be on well this totally trivial I mean it it occurred to me that you know people go to Atlantic City for slot machines and here they get revved up but parking parking machines you know different strokes but the serious question was I mean I don't know if this makes sense or not could the town produce a short video that people could watch to see how it operates since they're demonstrating all over yes so there are videos that exist already that the company produces and we will we've done a lot of work on it's the parking page on our website is the most the second most popular page on our website people go to our website a lot to look at the parking page which is very instructive to us so we're putting a fair amount of effort into creating that page to make that useful for people and for businesses to link to as well so we can put all kinds of things right there great yeah I was thinking that earlier as well as a a video clip of someone using the machine would be helpful although I do like the idea of perhaps instead of parking meters slot machines and you win parking time based on see how we do there along those lines I had this idea it could be something where you win something I was here earlier and he said they call one of their treatment plans Rudy maybe we could have names for our kiosks and people could compete interesting idea and then they you know they'd have a little hi I'm really it's more nice than yes and since I have in the past said um our parking page needs some work I appreciate that that I know that that's being worked on and I know that Mr. Brockman mentioned to me in particular that we were consistently naming our parking lots for example as they're going through that so that's really helpful and perhaps even renaming some of them it's cleverer names um homecoming parade so I was gonna ask if anybody's spoken to you about it because it was one of those things where I told myself this year you know what Sarah I'll just deal with it from the bid Ms. LaCour and we'll be on the trolley and I get all worked up about it every year and I'm trying to coordinate all these things and Sarah I'll just deal with it except yet the trolley stopped running this weekend so they're selling the trolley I never I didn't contact UMass that you know students run the event each year and so it's not like they you know it's not like things that we normally deal with where people are like do you remember this thing I mean they don't contact us because it's students running it so we're not in the homecoming parade to the best of my knowledge I hope no one's broken up about this but it was nice when we were participating and it was nice when we were writing on the trolley and we could yell at people out the trolley windows and Ms. LaCour put up big banners for Town of Amherst on the bid trolley it was great but uh I guess that's not happening this year so since you brought up homecoming I thought I should mention that but the parade does go through downtown and so everyone should plan to go to the parade because we tend not to have really big turnouts for parades and it would be lovely if people have came to the parade so so to that point though that actually crossed my mind earlier this earlier this week I was thinking about because I hadn't thought about the UMass football team playing and so I thought they were away or they had a week off or something of that sort and I thought wait homecoming should be coming soon and I was going to look that up and then I discovered it's this weekend and so of course then I wrote to myself trolley slash homecoming is no parade so I don't know that we're necessarily I don't know if anybody's available on Saturday or not do we know the time of the parade I assume anything about it it's on signs all our towns 1030 usually there's a gathering point of 930 but we're not going to be in it so we're just going to go to it so 1030 there are signs at different at the different point some at some point it'll be coming up amity so usually started the stadium usually go and you drive that up amity and then turn turns left I'm across the street it's gone a couple different ways but it's it's not that we are sending a message by not participating we simply are sending the message that we didn't get organized to participate this year so we're going to offer extend an offer is anyone available to go convertibles that's what I'm looking for I'm looking for convertibles electric convertibles of course of course an electric convertible I did actually have a couple quick questions one is associated with the we'll come back to the conversation about the crosswalks report that's been sent out to every but to lots of committees so that's great so at some future point we'll talk about whether or not talk about it um and in terms of the fire fighter study you are planning to have that small advisory group that would include the select board chair another member of the select board and somebody from the finance committee and then and then staff yeah I haven't settled on that one of the questions I had is if this is a public creates a public body or not and so I want to be I was trying to just want to be very clear right because we'll be talking about sensitive issues and it's advisory to the town manager so it doesn't need to be staff conditions I don't believe it does I've got a um opinion from town council that kind of confirms it but I there's and I've checked with other managers who have done similar things so it's I want to be totally in the clear on this one they know they know oh there's no question it'll be fine right because it's it in in the be all end all it's your decision to make and so whoever you want to gather together to do that it just obviously wouldn't be good form for us to send two people for example to that group but for one it should be fine so you'll let us know when that starts meeting is really all we'll want to know is that and then what you're allowed to tell us is what you'll be allowed to tell us in terms of the RFI notice wit from UMass which I'm just ever so pleased about because I did ask about that when the last time I saw the individual from UMass who works on that would you please put that in tonight's packet sure I mean I know everyone really enjoyed writing town the spellings of all those places but at least it's something I mean we don't really even have a place for it to live on the website but if we can at least put it in tonight's packet then it's something that we can look back at UMass RFI update that would be super helpful sure I mentioned the letter that Mr. Wald had written for on the Puerto Rico thing but also as for a community meeting that we are having on November 2nd the the superintendent the schools have been doing a fair amount the our health director has done a lot of work on assembling resources so the two groups have gotten together to sponsor and a sort of coming together of resources and people interested in providing support in anticipation of families that might be moving here and that's it's really very targeted to say what what do we anticipate people will need if they decide that they are moving to Amherst and who can provide those services so that is happening on November 2nd at 630 at the middle school library and I think that's going to generate a lot of interest and already it has generated a lot of interest we've had one family that has moved to Amherst and have enrolled their child and they have two children one at school age one is not and given the condition of what's happening on the island we may see more people because there's a very strong connection between Amherst but also holy the whole western mass it's very strong connections to Puerto Rico we have a very high concentration of people from Puerto Rico and relatives of Puerto Ricans who live in the area so that's something we'll keep we're starting to the schools that is publicizing that as well and we're getting the word out as well I'm going to the ever so fascinating open meeting law update during that time unfortunately and so is someone able to go from the board okay thanks so you you guys have a group okay November 2nd what day of the week is Thursday yeah it's Thursday I think 6.30 and then it's important but I'll be able to be at could you make sure these going to upload to our packet too people do occasionally find things that way all the time but sometimes that's great any other questions or comments for the for the manager if not we'll go into member reports who'd like to start does anybody have any when we meet every week I'll just say that I went to the as noted by the manager I went to the couple of Joe at Cushman and this is the second time I did that I also went to one of burgers and they really are very good events and I've been very pleased by the amount of citizens who just some just wandered through for spend a few minutes and ask a question and go on but I really encourage all of my colleagues here to try and go on occasion I think it's a good thing to do it's a good way we can interact with our constituencies Mr. Bachman and his staff are also doing the same thing you plan the next one yet November's tough because we have Veterans Day one week and then it's the there's some other things so it's probably not going to be till December I forget the ninth I think maybe Saturday or eighth then yeah I think that's the next one I have not set a location yet okay are there other member reports please refund you mentioned that North Hampton has a AAA bond rating and we still haven't gotten there well they got a dog park for before us too but we're getting there they've got they have a public car too yeah they do have a public but we're working on that so the dog park task force continues to meet and right now there's quiet investigation of sites going on in the background by town staff and apparently some promising leads we don't we're not told about them either because obviously it's it's not the kind of thing that's conducted in public and in the meantime on the public front the task force is trying to put out some information to Facebook page and mailing lists and so forth to inform people and contact those who are interested so I'll keep you posted as things develop but it's coming along well I guess my report is just downtown part of your working group met last week and sort of it was kind of a regroup around what we had accomplished from our goal list the prior chair Christine Gray Mullen had written up and actually a lot of stuff got done and then looking forward what things it was kind of like doing a six-month work plan which I now have to write up that we discussed and you know I've really been enjoying that committee really interested in the topic and looking really hard so of course the rollout targeted for November 6th there are what we can get done by then and really happy to hear that the information part of that that must go along with it is is underway with staff so I think the only things I really do and you are parking in marijuana we did have another internal working group on marijuana sort of looking at the zoning the proposed zoning and the list of five by los and a little more like kind of strategizing information that was needed looking forward to the town meeting presentations and I don't think we're meeting this week we have another meeting next week so you might want to add to that but that's all I really extra stuff that I did so I could the the event where Baker was at you Governor Baker was at UMass this is a book I picked up there I don't have time to read it but if any of you are interested in this this is time about manufacturing initiatives but it is a fascinating building over there some of us were able to go on a separate tour a while back and they are working on amazing partnerships the reason they were at UMass I'm not exactly sure except UMass got a $500,000 check but most of the other people that got money weren't there but I will also point out that Secretary Ash agrees with us that big checks would be really nice even both literally and figuratively but instead they just give them like a little business envelope here it's just kind of sad there's not enough pomp and circumstance but they did also bring girls ink and which was great because they're constantly working on the connections between math and science and technology and manufacturing with young women and a lot of young women particularly of color from Holyoke and so that was awesome and made a great nice combination event the governor was taking selfies with the with the young women and so it was it was a wonderful event marijuana always all of our time all the time so Monday to let you know the last time that we met as an internal working group one of the discussions we were having was about what's going to go in the town meaning packet sort of an overview document which could be you know an omnibus 30 page document but instead it's going to be like one sheet thing to to kind of tell people go look at the really nice website that Mr. Kravitz has set up that has a ton of detail on it including the slides that were presented to us a few weeks ago feels like just yesterday but it was a month ago and the other thing is when it comes to Monday night's presentation we encouraged him to not talk very long in terms of giving that overview it won't be the same show so to speak as you would see it town meaning because we've already had that not only do we have these continuing conversations where Ms. Krueger and I report and we talk about different things amongst all of us but also since he just gave us that slide presentation he's not planning he's planning to be here perhaps Monday night I believe is still the plan but just as Ms. Breastrup will be here associated with the planning board articles the actual planning board will be presenting and the actual select board members I guess will be presenting the articles that are select board driven as opposed to the zoning articles surprise I guess we'll be doing that but just in case you were looking forward to another really excellent presentation by Mr. Kraus she'll have to wait till town meeting because it's not going to happen Monday night because he knew we had so much else to do we said you know we can give you feedback about what things you might want to tell town meeting but you've already told us a ton of stuff so we were not expecting that to be a long one so then we won't have another internal working group meeting before our Monday select board meeting where we have all the marijuana articles yes everyone pay attention to all the marijuana articles we're talking about next week and the other zoning issues that are marijuana related and so we won't have another meeting between now and then so but we will and obviously we talked earlier about the packet going out to town meeting members this week but we can still give suggestions as to pieces of information we might want to have available to us at town meeting as we talk through the presentations on Monday night that's it okay so a couple of things I want to thank Ms. Brewer for forwarding some information you got around the PVTA seeking input from folks because they didn't send it to me why would they send it to you the PVTA doesn't meet again until the I want to say the 15th of November but the finance committee is actually going to meet before that because there's a fair amount of figuring that has to be done for the current fiscal year and also in preparation for the coming fiscal year fiscal 19 some preparatory work and some thinking and planning that has to get on there the other thing I'll mention we had discussed very very briefly some dates for a potential retreat and so I don't know if anybody's giving any feedback I haven't seen any to me but certainly we may formally sort of send an email to myself for Mr. Bachman perhaps we'll flip a coin after this meeting to determine who's going to send the email to say pick a date or rank order them but the other thing that we'll need to think about is topics for that and so if you want to forward ideas of things you think would be worthwhile to have us discuss that that day start sending those cards and letters my way via email if you would couple other things I want to mention just under calendar preview we're meeting next week the following next Monday the following Monday then town meeting starts the Monday after that things to note in and around November is that Veterans Day will be observed on the 10th which is a Friday so town offices will be closed that day of course Thanksgiving day they'll be closed and I'm noticing on our sheet that the Mary Maple Festival is December 1st so playing your afternoons accordingly and then there's a crosswalk design standards public hearing on the 5th of December but we'll get into that more as things come along did you have something else just that the tentative downtown planning workshop is probably about the same time 6th or 7th it's not set yet right Connie is that the well last December there was a date and then they changed it but I don't know I think I've breezed over that email and I can go back and look my old life but yeah I thought 6th and 7th were being tentatively considered so they're working on that yes okay good yeah yeah tell me right tell me it's gonna have it sooner and they couldn't pull it off right I think I got first back and I think there is an email from this breast strip to some of us but yeah it's not look like you have a question I'm sorry yeah that's all right I was looking over my notes why on earth did I write that but back oh so many hours ago when we were talking about lunch carts yes so we need the action every time we act on a lunch cart we should go ahead and have the reg in our packet I know it's a few more trees and I'm sorry about that but we should have the reg in there so that we knew for a fact that it didn't have the hours in it but the other part of it is that there's no point in talking about it again if we don't know if they both fit and so if that can't be done for next Monday then push it to the following Monday but we need to understand that because otherwise we're just gonna be talking about talking about we'll probably setting agenda Wednesday if we can pull us around a time but yeah we'll take that into consideration for whether the 23rd or the 30th will be when we come back to some of those topics now it's not to say we'll get all of lunch carts done but certainly with that license in particular we will be able to resolve and and be a start at least for that location right on how many blocks fit in there like our little color forms or something well there are pavers in there and they're probably certain size so maybe we can measure you can have one of this size or two of that size exactly right so we'll see if we can at least run that one most the other spots are small if it's it's a one or none yes but that one's a big and a little plaza there that may be too fit maybe they don't we'll have to go out and then bridges might be two there are lots of things there though right we don't want to we don't want to prevent the sidewalk from being a sidewalk or be into the lawn of the of the church either um so any other things anyone needs to mention at this point if not I'll entertain a motion to adjourn move to adjourn is there a second second all those in favor please say aye aye aye and so we are adjourned at 1035 thank you to Amherst Media for staying with us this evening and covering us as always and back next week