 This evening we have one counselor attending via remote participation Counselor Hanna key has petitioned and received permission To participate in that manner giving physical attendance would be unreasonably difficult This is permissible under nine four zero CMR 29.10 five Let the record reflect that board committee members Counselor Mandy Joe Hanna key is attending remotely via speaker phone for the meeting of February 11th 2019 Because it would be unreasonably difficult, which is permissible Mandy Joe. Can you hear me? Yes Was very clear Let could let the record reflect that member Counselor Mandy Joe Hanna keys attendance based speakerphone can be heard by all present at the meeting and some of those even further away It's pretty loud All votes taken during a meeting with a remote participant shall be by roll call vote therefore at as all votes at all votes the town count clerk will ask for the individual votes if Technical difficulties arise a result of utilizing remote participation. I will suspend discussion while reasonable efforts are made to correct the problem If remote participation is disconnected that fact in time of disconnection Will be recorded in the meeting minutes I've asked each count the I've asked Mandy Joe in advance to provide with any agenda items that she would like to reasonably speak to and Counsel Ross will indicate that the council are participating remotely wishes to speak in this case Thank you Remote counselors are to speak by stating their name You will be Acknowledged, but they won't speak until called upon usual time limits apply So seeing that we have a quorum. I call the meeting of the town council to order at 632 Welcome all This meeting is being broadcast live and being recorded by Amherst media copies of the agenda are projected on the wall in The meeting room and we're posted in advance of the meeting if you are interested in speaking during the meeting Please sign the sheet at the side of the room over at this table. I have a couple announcements First of all on February 13th 2019 Amherst will mark its 260th anniversary on That date an act for erecting the second precinct in the town of Hadley in the county of Hampshire Into a district by the name of Amherst was passed by the Great and General Court of Massachusetts Second tonight. We begin our education on major capital projects, although we have had a preview on the schools At the town council meeting on Monday, February 25th The council will discuss various funding scenarios for major capital projects And we hope that you both listening at home and in the audience will join us for this educational period in our time There will be school listening sessions where both town councillors and Amherst school committee members will be present and Those sessions have been publicized. They will not be official district meetings that we as we originally had intended Just scheduling would not allow that But they will be two meetings on February 27th to on February 28th and one on March 6th The school building application to the mass Massachusetts school building authority will come before the town council for discussion on Monday, March 18th and For a vote on Monday, April 1st One other date to put on your calendar. We will hold a public forum as required by the Charter on the budget at that time. We will be meeting on Thursday, March 7th at the middle school And as in as with all public forums half of the time is devoted to public comment speaking of public comment Public comment and The agenda have been rearranged. So the council wishes to thank you for your patience as we've organized and as counselors We want to communicate that we have heard you Many counselors and the public have asked that we move public comment earlier in the evening In addition to that the rules of procedure ad hoc committee has proposed a trial rearrangement of an agenda This is our second trial and includes movement of public comment earlier as well as rearranging agenda items in Setting the agenda. I have taken into careful consideration the following The report forwarded by that committee My strong desire to personally move public comment earlier My serious reservations about having what could be five or more public comment periods on one agenda and Request by some counselors to end meetings much earlier than midnight Finally public comment To the town council meeting at town council meetings is only one way To we and we invite you to communicate with us. However, there are others you can email us at town council at amherst ma gov You could send us individual emails with our last name and then our first initial at the same address You can come visit us during office hours, which we're organizing some counselors have done better job of that than others and You can come to district meetings, which will have at least two a year. In fact, maybe even more and Whenever my husband lets me go grocery shopping and doesn't expect me to return for several hours, you can talk to me there. I Had to just enter that it's been a family joke for years So with no hearings, we're moving on to public comment general public comment on matters other than those under agenda items 5a 5b and 6 or frankly others We will have public comment after those items 5a 5b and 6 Public comments on those will be taken at the relevant time after the council has had their initial discussion Residents are welcome to express their views for up to one to three minutes I'll decide on how long when I see how many people wish to speak and The council will not engage in a dialogue or comment on a matter raised during general public comment So These floors open for general public comment. May I see it the hands of those who would wish to speak I Say two hands Let's start with the gentleman in the front Mr. Kuzner you have to push the button Thank you and good evening Rob Kuzner and It's nice to join you here in Quorum and to the absent member who's joining us remotely I wish you were here because I signed my letter with a pen that you'd recognize the color on it's a nice purple flair pen Anyway, I don't know if the letter that I put together about an hour ago was distributed if it is then I'm happy to just let you read it and keep my comments very brief This is an opportunity for town council to show what I think proponents of the system of government Had promised namely the nimbleness of local government. We're now Seven months into Fiscal year maybe eight months depending on how you count fiscal year 2019 last spring we were aware that the governor's budget for public transportation Funding to the non MBTA regional transit authorities the largest of which is the PBTA that serves us Here in Western, you know the Pioneer Valley Was going to cut the transit support by about eight million dollars Happily some of that was restored by the legislature during the summer but not enough it was restored in a way that was So we say non strings attached for those funds to reappear in the budgets of the transit providers like UMass transit So we're in a situation where Last spring our legislature at the time overwhelmingly approved a supplemental Appropriation that would help alleviate some of the service cuts that we've just experienced in this past month and that we're going to Experience in a much bigger way starting in May once the summer break for the colleges begins and those cuts affect some types of public transit services that are Happening every day of the week during the daytime just as the Sun is setting on every summer evening The two main core bus routes are going to stop running till the next morning and the service cuts are even worse on weekends and in general PBTA services lighter in the summer Given our interest in reducing Our impact on climate change and other environmental consequences of driving private vehicles I hope we'll renew our commitment one that this town and our Five college Neighbors have committed to for nearly five decades now our commitment to supporting public transportation locally, I hope that This council will consider two actions and done in tandem I think they'll allow us a to restore those transit cuts and B send a message to the future that we really care about transit namrs And I'll light them in in items one and two below one is to follow the lead of five colleges five colleges incorporated They've committed to increase their contribution to the PBTA system by $50,000 a year for each of the next five years. It's a long-term commitment Which is something that PBTA likes to see when it agrees to create or restore transit services they want to have something that's in place for a long time and Following up on that if the town can commit in a resolution it can't be formally done in the budget that far in advance but I think a resolution showing a good-faith commitment would go a long way to the showing that we care about transit and PBTA would respond to that but then I ask you to Encourage the manager our PBTA representative and us Citizens who care about transit and rely on transit to work with PBTA to make use of the supplemental budget that the town Appropriated to restore these transit services During this summer and that could be done in the FY 19 budget. So thank you for the time Sorry that I haven't sent this to you by email yet But now I know the email address I'd forgotten it and it'll come to you probably as soon as I get back to work Thank you Thank you for your comments the gentleman in the back, please come forward and state your name and Restrict your comments to three minutes. I'm Bill. I am a resident of the Ann Whelan 260 years ago this town was perhaps charming 25 years ago. It was certainly charming It is now moving inextricably toward what might be termed The desolation of modernity and it is my impression that every square centimeter of the town will be five-story High-rises apartment high-rises. I was in Boulder attempting to clean it up many years ago and the same phenomenon occurred it's no longer a Inhabitable environment and I would like to propose again that the five-story construction be limited to the other side of town the the Kendrick Park side as opposed to the sweeter Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Were there any other public comments at this time? Okay, see none. We're going to move on with our agenda We have a variety of public Capital public projects. They're going to be discussed tonight I mentioned before that we have already had a discussion with the schools about the possibility of a new school building and Then we're tonight. I'm going to turn it over to mr. Backelman and ask that he introduce this piece of the agenda. Thank you Thank you. So I'm going to put this in context a little bit Town of Amherst has not built a new building in 30 years We have pent up demand for significant capital investment. I think you have seen our buildings and have Internalized the need for new buildings. We've we've seemed to have taken Built buildings and little bunches like 30 years ago. We built the police station I just one second Mandy Joe. Are you still connected? Yes, sorry about that. Okay. Thank you. So 30 years ago. We haven't built a new building in this town in 30 years We built the police station 45 years ago. We built a number of our three elementary schools plus the north fire station 70 years ago. We built the banks community center 90 years ago roughly The Jones library in the Munson building Then 120 years ago. We built the town hall the fire station and the DPW the town hall was renovated in 1998 so what we wanted to show you tonight is With the new council coming in it's an opportunity for the town to begin addressing these significant capital Needs, but the first thing we have to do is say are they really needs and why are they needs and to tell you what has happened Since these needs have come to the to fruition. So tonight the intent is for us for the library director the fire chief and the DPW superintendent to lay out what the problem is with the buildings where we are in the process for replacement and and entertain any questions that you may have on the conceptual needs Not really talking about the funds because that as the president said is coming up at the next meeting and will be discussed at the finance Committee committee meeting as well. So So that's that's the lay the ground work for the tonight And So the concept that we have been working on is something that I've been calling One-town-one plan we need to address take on all these capital projects plus the things that we have that the council has identified like investment in roads and other smaller investments maintenance that we have to do in terms of roofs and things like that and come to a Consensus as the superintendent had talked about about how we can afford what we can do and What is our plan over the next several decades because it's not a five-year plan or ten-year plan? It's a decades-long plan So this is our first for a and just trying to share information There are a lot of slides our presenters know that they're going to especially the DPW Empire They have lots of slides to show you they're going to go fast. So don't worry when you see the number on there and The other thing that we were that the DPW superintendent will do is sort of lay out What's it take to build a public construction project? So you can see the steps that have to be required there have to be followed in a order for us to build a new new building So first I will ask the library director Sharon Sherry to come up and do her presentation Hi everybody, thank you so much For this opportunity. I wanted to start by introducing the library trustees that are in the room tonight Austin Sarah the president of our trustees is back there Tamsen Ely Chris Hoffman Here we go Founded in 1921 the Jones library quickly became one of the iconic institutions in Amherst Samuel line at Jones bequest enabled a town of 5,500 to build a library that was regionally celebrated in its day Because it exemplified the central role the library should play in a town with the Amherst unique values and interests More than just a place a cozy place to read a book the Jones library welcomed all its citizens to the town's cultural heart Fast forward to today's project It's been in the works for over seven years and the specific design proposal is the result of almost three years Worth of planning by about 20 members of the community along with several architectural professionals and dozens of open meetings So I thought we'd put this project through a sore strategic planning analysis Talk about talking about its strengths opportunities aspirations and results So starting with our strengths. What does our building do? Well Amherst is special It takes great pride in its unique character It's the land of the book in the plow and Amherst town library is also special We are already more heavily patronized than any other library in the state except Springfield and 19 other Boston area libraries We serve over 250,000 visitors and circulate almost 500,000 items every year in addition The 1921 founders had a radical vision that the library can play a central role in supporting the character of a town Thus the Jones was designed and built to look like a house It originally included a 250-seat theater for performances concerts lectures and movies and an art gallery To offer area artists and crafts people a public space in which to exhibit their work and encourage appreciation and understanding of art The Jones has gone through several transformations in its time But two of them were quite substantive in that they drastically changed the look and feel of the original 1928 building The first large-scale renovation was in the late 1960s Planning began and money was secured in 1966 and the work was done in 67 and 68 This renovation removed the auditorium seating area The stage became a mezzanine with additional shelving and a floor was added above the auditorium seating area That became the Burgess fine arts room in the basement the stage coach was removed along with coal bin To make space for more shelving Studios for painting ceramics and weaving replaced a catalogue room and a youth activity room Planning for the second major renovation began in 1988. It was an important expansion renovation project the trustees received an mblc construction grant in 1991 and The and the work was finished in 1993 This renovation which undid some of the 1960s work added 12,000 square feet to the building it removed the stage and the Burgess room Restoring the height of the current fiction room. It removed the art studios Updated heating and cooling systems updated lighting improved handicapped Accessibility created the woodbury meeting room space and the back entrance It also created the atrium added space for the ESL program and created the dedicated space for special collections Opportunities what circumstances can we leverage for success? The last renovation of the Jones that I just talked about followed a plan intended to serve the library for 20 years and Now in 2019 all of the building systems have come to the end of their life cycles And it's time for the Jones physical plant needs to be addressed. We need to become substantially greener Improve overall energy efficiency and replace the atrium. That's too hot in the summer too cold in the winter and leaky year round We can no longer fulfill our historic mission We offer a terrific set of activities and programs which makes us a community building hub But the present facility does not allow us to serve large portions of the population including those who are mobility impaired Children and families the current spaces that are allocated towards to children's needs Whether for activities or simply reading aloud or inadequate to the demand Almost 7,000 children attend activities annually and parents often have to leave because all the reading spaces in The building are already taken Teenagers there is no dedicated space for teens in our in our building either to work on Collaborative school projects or to gather when the school buildings are closed We should be eager to attract them to their own space in the library instead of to this The streets or de facto to the unsupervised stacks of the basement of the current building Those learning English 25% of those in Amherst schools come from families whose first language is not English We need to provide welcoming quarters for English language learners through our recognized ESL program That meets the needs of this growing Amherst demographic and those needing access to computers 33% of Amherst residents live below the poverty level and the Jones computer terminals are regularly over subscribed Reflecting the dramatic change in the ways knowledge and culture is being shared and transmitted Library computers are an especially important lifeline for the growing population of the town that cannot afford a computer at home There are also safety issues that we have to address in this building due to a severe sack of staff sight lines The basement elevators stairwells the cozy rooms and the garden are notorious locations for unwanted activity and our security cameras are reactive rather than proactive once the crime occurs the damage has already been done and Then there's the fact that the Massachusetts Board of Library commissioners calls the Jones library the most dysfunctional public library in the state of Massachusetts We need to preserve the significant elements of the distinctive look and feel of the original 1928 building while replacing the 1993 edition with spaces that are much more user-friendly for both patrons and staff And I'll take you on a visual tour so speaking of the building overall None of the original 1928 building is ADA compliant and much of the 1993 edition including the stacks are no longer up to code The steep pitch of our roof dumps snow onto the heads of patrons The six staircases are confusing and unsafe due to lack of staff sight lines All our building systems need to be replaced the cobbled together technology is old and inefficient The chiller compressor is operating at half capacity due to costly repairs that are needed The pneumatic thermostats are very difficult difficult to calibrate if they work at all The building is not wired properly for a 21st century library The overall layout of the building is extremely confusing as well as many other maintenance issues Which need to be addressed such as stained and faded carpeting and peeling paint and plaster Speaking more specifically about the different rooms in the building the children's room is not big enough to handle the demand There's not enough patron seating there the non-fiction stacks are too high the two close together The collection is housed on two different floors and that creates a hardship for parents of multiple children The room is outdated the cramped children's librarians office is in is located in what should be a gorgeous reading nook And this that space contains the only bathroom on the main floor The Jones adult circulation desk is the worst circulation desk. I've ever seen it is too small for staff Staff spunk functions, and it's not good for customer service. It has three service points So patrons are never sure whether or not they're standing in the right line And the backs of staff are always facing the patrons The interlibrary loan room is neither heated nor cooled And it's just not big enough to handle our interlibrary loan delivery of up to 20 bins a day The atrium roof it's poorly designed and it has leaked badly since it was installed Many attempts throughout the years have to make it watertight have just failed So we have to keep buckets near the adult circulation desk desk to collect the rainwater and The reference department there's not enough computers and this is important because the majority of research materials nowadays are accessed online The non-fiction stacks in the basement. I consider it's a warehouse for books The space is not inviting and it's unsafe to be there because there's no staff presence There isn't enough space for ESL services to meet the demand and it's very difficult to find Then there's the special collections department, which is severely on undersized The materials which do not fit in that archive are not being stored in climate control spaces The exhibit room is only open when special collections is open and you have to be buzzed in There's no no door on the climate controlled storage area Which is like leaving your doors and windows open at home while you have the air conditioning going There's not enough room to collect and store additional items and because this department's location is so far away It's very difficult to find your way back out of the building and then there's our telecommunications room Which is really quite scary. There's a there's little space for expansion in the room And we have data wiring running through the pipes in our boiler room So how do we fix all these problems? We again became involved in the Massachusetts Board of Library commissioners construction grant program Beginning with the creation of a building program. It's a detailed inventory ours is six pages long of all the functions in the library including the number of books computers chairs and tables for each room I do want to reiterate that the only reason our project is here before you now is because of the availability of this grant The MBLC's program only comes around once every 10 plus years And this is why we have been limiting our JCPC requests over the past few years Because we knew this would be the most cost-effective way to preserve and enhance the library So we hired fine gold Alexander architects out of Boston They are historic preservation experts and we gave them our program to analyze Also, remember that the Massachusetts legislature has allocated substantial funds specifically for library projects such as ours similar funding will not be available again until 2025 or later and as I said previously our project is considered a high priority by the Massachusetts Board of Library commissioners Because they fully understand our buildings deficiencies and know that the Jones plays an important role in Western Massachusetts We are very much a regional library through this grant program. The MBLC is returning your tax dollars to Amherst The architects work was guided by several principles They found that they could not solve our problems within the existing 48,000 square foot footprint The facts show that we must expand to 65,000 square feet The MBLC publicly stated it will not fund a smaller project if the town wants to go smaller The town will have to pay for it on its own The most efficient way to add square footage to the Jones is by building off the rear of the building Rather than by adding up and adding an additional floor Within the past few weeks our architects have researched again the possibility of going up in order to preserve more of the rear garden But due to three primary concerns It has been decided that building up an additional floor is not an option and the first problem is shown on this slide Massing so building up another level as is shown on the picture on your right It will negatively impact the original structure visually and most likely have trouble getting Massachusetts Historic Commission approval Secondly the costs it would be more expensive to build up and thirdly staffing issues We would need more staff if there were another floor going up Thus it was decided that building out to the rear is best as is shown on the picture on the left And to be clear This is the design and the footprint that we submitted in our grant application The footprint is not getting bigger than what was approved already approved by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and Regarding the rear garden we have preserved 70% of that space and the final designs will be a result of a community planning process No landscaping plans have been proposed Instead the trustees have appointed a gardens advisory committee which will help oversee the project The landscaping is already included in the project's budget and the plan is for the existing plants to be moved or replaced in accordance with the community's plan and On to aspirations. What do we want to achieve in the future? We are looking for a building that can be used by everybody in town Teens people with mobility issues the financially disadvantaged and non English speakers a Building which better needs the needs of traditional book borrower or borrowers and encourages user independence With more visible and efficient circulation services and a building which attracts the interest of the next generation of library patrons is safe and Has clear signage so patrons feel comfortable navigating the building Preserves our history including the refurbishment of the wood floors and the fireplaces and the beautiful wood paneling and Safeguards our future by being green Offers plenty of collaborative and silent spaces and has windows and comfortable seating on every floor overlooking the gardens And what are the tangible outcomes? We'll see that demonstrate we've received we have achieved our goals The architects tried to find a good combination of preserving the look and feel of the original building and Designing a new addition that is open and adaptable The designs shown here are very much still a work in progress and that's why they're so small here The MVLC is requiring that we move the large meeting room from the first floor To a different spot so Thus, there's going to be a ripple effect throughout all of the designs But in the end what we're looking for is a front entrance that's handicapped accessible All of the children's services will be on one floor so families have easy access Low shelving in the children's room so the kids can reach their books on their own Children's activities room on the same floor as the collections a story time nook The young adult room which will be bright and welcoming and encased in glass walls So they can be noisy, but we can still see them It will be filled with technology and their collection of materials Restrooms on all the floors the circulation desk will have very clear points of service There will be a book return that doesn't overflow So the police department won't get phone calls anymore and plenty of computers as well as group study rooms The large woodbury room will almost double in size It will have windows and can be used for meetings and events even when the library is closed The entire special collections collection will be stored in a truly climate-controlled space and the exhibits will be open to everyone during all Library hours. We are also making room for the town's refurbished civil war tablets regarding aesthetics The trustees are firmly committed to maintaining the homey feel of the Jones library It's up to the architects to combine the wonderful historic feel of the Jones Along with the updated technological services that we need to provide to our patrons Regarding the interior appearance the MBLC does not care about aesthetics It's up to each individual community to decide on the look and feel of their public library So that's why design development. We haven't been through it yet That doesn't happen until after the grant is received and the town has approved its share of project costs Regarding the exterior appearance the entire facade of the 1928 building will be kept as it is except for some protection from of the front door from ice and snow and The appearance of the new addition is not yet determined. There's going to be a balancing act with the budget primarily between historic preservation and Lead certification and you'll be hearing more about the budget for the project. The total cost is thirty five point six million With thirteen point seven coming from the MBLC six million coming from private donations and historic tax credits and Fifteen point nine coming from the town And what if the project isn't approved? Well passing on this grant is not going to prevent Expenditures because of our deferred maintenance needs we can easily spend millions and get nothing for it So for a moment, let's say we've solved all our collection space problems We've weeded our collections to the fullest patrons are using the ILL system more heavily And we have properly climate controlled or store our special collections materials We are now housing our entire mystery and science fiction collection in the basement of another town-owned building Let's say we've now made enough room at the Jones for a teen room and ramps have been added so that staff with mobility issues Can get to the staff bathrooms one could say that most of our problems have been solved Except they won't be millions of dollars will still need to be spent replacing all of the buildings outdated systems All of our systems have come to the end of their lifespan and need to be redesigned and replaced We are in the same boat on a smaller scale as the schools if the town votes down the grant the trustees will have to go through the JCPC process over several years probably in order to fix many expensive problems our Immediate needs are labeled phase number one on the left side of this slide The fire alarm sprinkler and burglar alarms need to be replaced The atrium has to be entirely removed Redesign and rebuilt no matter what it cannot be repaired The HVAC system needs to be entirely removed redesigned and rebuilt it cannot be repaired The slate roof has to be repaired most of the windows all the carpeting needs to be replaced The front elevator needs to be replaced to make it accessible and the entire interior needs to be repainted Also several of these individual projects will trigger a domino effect for example if we replace the glass atrium We'll also need to replace the HVAC system to avoid heat created ice dams So as you can see phase number one is a no-fills list According to the 19 the the 2017 cost estimate it's going to cost a million a minimum of ten point seven million dollars to do the work in phase one and That ten point seven million dollar figure does not include the phase to work listed on the right side of the slide We do not have a cost estimate for the phase to work because we would have had to hire an architect To get that cost estimate and architects are expensive And after going through the JCP sir JCPC process the resulting structure will still lack Sufficient space and will still not be entirely up to code because without a substantial redesign Several areas will still not be handicapped accessible But it will have cost the town almost the same amount of money as if it had taken advantage of the grant also dealing only with the library's deferred maintenance Accessibility and code requirements will create some of the same hardships as going through an entire expansion renovation project Because we'll still need to relocate temporarily while the work is being done But the result will not be the 21st century learning center that Amherst needs We believe it would be a mistake to spend ten million dollars on repairs when before us lies such an incredible Opportunity for so much more the trustees oppose Propose that the town accept the state grant our goal is to spend 16 million after private fundraising of town money So that Amherst can have the library it needs a library which will last long after you and I are gone The beauty of this grant is that we'll get all our systems replaced and we'll have everything else our patrons want Including safety security common-sense flow bathrooms on all levels lots of natural light green technology and historic preservation I'm gonna end here with the Estimated timeline that you've seen before we're expecting an FY 21 grant announcement an FY 22 town council approval FY 23 construction would begin and construction would end in FY 25 Thank you. Are there specific questions to share it this time from the council Kathy Thank you for their presentation and also what has clearly been a lot of work from a lot of people I want to start out a bit where a Town manager Paul Baccham in introduced in terms of thinking the whole town that we need one plan that fits the whole town and Given our restricted very restricted budgets If we line up all the big Projects, I think we're gonna have to focus on needs Really with a laser beam and not go to once so we might have an ideal situation if we had a lot of money to hone down so I want to ask a little bit more about the Fixing the Jones side of it which I understand you couldn't just go for a grant you have to do the expansion You know so you expand the proposed project increases the total size by about 35% and Demolishes the new wing that was added so it's a major construction project as well as a renovation I went on your website, so I think the renovation Estimates for from Western builders did I get the right to download so you know it had a you could either phase it in Or you could do it all at once And as you had pointed out it didn't do certain kinds of things in their estimate It their costs were a little bit lower on the website than what you showed here about a million lower So I'm not sure about the difference, but say it's in the 10 or 11 range So I think if I'm looking at the numbers right that if we got a grant The townshare would anywhere be for anywhere from around six million to more even with the grant than it would be in Repairing and renovating and when I say or more you need to raise another six million dollars, so I'm What happens if you don't raise the money and we're in the middle of the building project is sort of like that's where 16 million is where you think you're going to be so I have a how much of the Urgent need could be met by the repair and renovation in a phase way the JCPC route rather than an entire building project So I That's that's what I was talking about with the The phase one that's the Ten million dollar estimates, so that's just for those items. Those are the immediate needs And and could could we as a town be living with a functioning library for several years with that type of expenditure? Oh, well, certainly Any you know The town can live with whatever library it is going to you know Put into it So yeah, I mean we're living in it now even without anything being done to it Are there other questions? Yes, Dorothy Excuse me. Oh Yeah, I'm gonna tell you that my husband Bob Pam who is a trustee of the library can't be here tonight because he's babysitting We couldn't be in two places that he couldn't be in two places at once, but he does wish you were here So I do agree with you that the town's public library is something that expresses in a way the soul of the town and I Hearing the details of the atrium in my mind I had kept hoping that that could be repaired or we could keep the sense of the large gracious space and Maybe remove some of the stacks and have something that some people refer to as a the town's living room But you're saying that that from the very beginning. It was not did not work that it leaked Is there any plan for some kind of space in the library that would be? one for people to come and to sit and to reflect and to be able to perhaps talk to somebody but in a quiet way a Public space of an informal type Yeah, I think what we have been working on with the architects is exactly a nice mixture of total Having some totally quiet spaces and having some more noisy spaces and having those spaces in between So yeah, that's the opportunity. That's before us So what was the date of the addition the addition? the most the most recent one it ended in 93 so technically, that's the newest Billing so the finished after the Police station, but it's an interesting study in the tale of two buildings, right? So the Jones edition you know by all accounts is Well, no, I'm sorry by a lot of accounts is you know, it feels worn out for many reasons and the You know the police station not that I've been in there that often, you know You know simply feels You know it feels more solid, but I think it's an interesting case study and value engineering. So we had the the original architect is for the the owner of the firm has passed away, but one of his Helpers came to UMass last year and talked about she talked about Kind of the original scheme for the 1993 edition and really what happened in the value engineering process So at you know, I wasn't around at the time But as far as I understand it in order to meet a budget a lot of things were cut And I think it's those cuts that then made the current Jones as a whole Really not functioned to the highest degree possible So I mentioned that in part because it's a lesson going forward But also in part because people a lot so many people ask the question Why are we tearing down something or why is there a proposal to tear down something? That's only I Can't do the math 26 26 years years old Evan I feel like you said this but I may have forgotten it the ten point seven million is your mic on it is I can I can hold it closer That ten point seven million is that's just that deferred maintenance list. Does that include? Is there an ability to deal with? Some of the concerns over space for English language learners or teens within that ten point seven million or is that strictly those? Yeah, the ten point seven million is just the items in that list. It doesn't it doesn't add space anywhere It's just fixing things So When we asked the question is this something that we could live with That would mean we would still be facing the problems of not having sufficient space to serve our underserved communities English Language learners teens low-income people correct. Thank you. Yes. Thank you Are there comments or questions Kathy? I just want to follow up on that. Have you You did a nice walk-through with me of all the different rooms in the library As there was there a step at which you said suppose we reconfigure the use of our current space to build on Evans Yeah before we got involved this space for teens and move something else over here Move things around. Yeah, so that was a part of a part of my spiel Let's say that we've taken care of all our space issues by you know weeding heavily and and you know Offsite storage and and all of that stuff. You've still got to spend well over ten million dollars to fix the building problems Any other questions? Yes, Pat the off The off-site storage is that fee Our fees required with that that we would be paying for appropriate storage Yeah, I mean depending on Where it went? I Yeah, so I Yes Assuming assuming I'd have to rent space somewhere I mean that would in essence be creating a third branch and I'd have to pay for Heating electricity and all of that. Thank you. Yes, Dorothy I was in the library Recently and I was in the lower level and I discovered by talking to some people that that's where the teens go and It's I if I were teen would actually like the space, but it's completely unsupervised And it's not really safe So I do think you need a new teen space I do have a question and that is would you have to vacate the library under either circumstance? Total renovation because you're adding an addition or the just the repairs So I'm just a librarian, but yeah, if we do a complete renovation the plan is to be located in an interim space For the duration so that it can be done quickly and safely As far as the you know, for example if you if we have to rip out the atrium I would think we would have to close the library because it's right smack dab in them in the middle of the space and You know to get to the bathrooms and things like that. So Yeah, we'd have to be located somewhere else no matter what is the cost of relocation and remove and moving back in this estimate It's in the grant budget estimate. Yes. Thank you very much Shelly So in the slide with the opportunities, do you have a sense? So I'm sure you do which Services are currently being utilized the most and which ones would You know be facilitated better With the new space The children's services are definitely utilized the most I believe Yeah, and I I want to say what we're proposing is doubling or tripling the size of the children's department and so that families can really come and have all their needs taken care of and Yeah Can I just follow up? Yes, then so many the other areas that that we are attributing to the new building would those really be needed if I would say yes. So if you're a teenager you need to be in a teen space and So are those I mean, I'm just trying to just get a sense of what What is the most value we'll get out of the expansion? So what are the services that will be most used so we may create space for teenagers But are they coming or what can we do perhaps do to make sure? Oh, so the teenagers are definitely coming so You know when I started working here the headline in the newspaper was always there's a teen problem at the Jones and That's a shame the teen the word teen should never be put next to problem The fact that these teenagers are coming to the library is the coolest thing in the whole wide world and so the trustees and I we We hired a young adult librarian so we actually we have an actual position now and if you do things with these kids They will be successful library users and they will will grow up knowing that being in a library is good and and and they're not being given dirty looks and And they can eat and they can make noise because these are not they're not children And they're not adults. They're their brains are not fully formed yet We want them to be teenagers and they deserve their own spaces and they are our patrons Are there other questions? At this time, I failed to mention we are going to take public comment at the end of all of the capital projects I'm hate to do that to you, but otherwise we would have public comment at six different times tonight, so I Do want to ask one other question you This is actually a point of information The library is not Quote owned by the town. It's certainly part of the town Therefore, it is not subject to the zero energy bylaw. However, I heard you mention lead certification which some people debate whether that's the way to go or not but And but I gather that is also in your plan. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you very much Good evening Gooford you do need to be close enough to the microphone so we can hear Did you know these toys in the back and you can like do a karaoke thing here if you wanted to and have a really good time with this I actually do this better when I stand up and I apologize if that makes people uncomfortable. I do like it a little better so I was asked To go over some of the classroom work that many of the town staff members have to go through to learn how to do these projects and to Be certified to do these projects The inspector general's office controls procurement in the state and they've come up with a program called the MCPP program, which is the Massachusetts certified public procurement officer program There's about four of us in the town I think there's now five of us in the town who are certified in this and there's one in the school It's kind of a thing that's catching on and a lot of people being certified because it keeps us from breaking the rules Which was actually really popular about the time when they were building a lot of additions at UMass and Boston, you want to look it up You look up the ward commission and a lot of what I talk about has come out of the ward commission findings and Go way back to when they were building and giving contracts to buddies and giving gifts to buddies and Friends and family and people were doing all this stuff. So that's why we have these rules They are they do seem quite onerous at times But they are what they are and this is what we go So this is basically an overview of how we Lay out a project if you're building a building building projects is in the middle Building projects are here in the middle if we're a local government or state government. We follow the same rules If the designer fee is over 30,000 or if the project's gonna be over 300,000 we have to do a special way of hiring a designer It's called the designer selection process and if we're over ten thousand dollars We have to follow MGL 149, which is a lot of other cool stuff This slide actually shows public works. I really wasn't wish it wasn't there for you because I don't want you to get Confused, but these are the rules that control public works type structures and projects Public works are considered a horizontal construction. You're building things horizontally Buildings are vertical and if I switch into that frame of reference, that's what I'm talking about buildings go vertical Public works projects are horizontal We use a process here in the town called design plan design bid it and construct it So it's planning design construction bid design construct the same things as a word you'll hear a lot We design it then we go out to bid it and then we construct it. There are other ways to do it They're much more difficult as many many me more requirements on the town if we do it that way This is a straightforward way of doing it. If you have a simple project if you have a very intricate Unknown project you would do it one of the other ways of doing it. This is your basic way of doing the projects some definitions owner You are the owners The town is the owner as the representative of the town That's that's you as the people of the town that belongs to you as well the owners You define what you want to do you decide what you're gonna do you define who's going to Pay for it. You define how you're gonna do it and make sure we follow the rules That's what the owner's responsibilities are You can have a construction manager This is also known as the clerk of the works to people who have been around a little while longer Construction manager is not required But you can have one and that person helps the owner make their project and make their project go forward You may be required to have a owner's project manager So if your building is more than 1.5 million dollars, you have to have an owner's project manager If you have an owner's project manager, you have to do designer selection based on the qualifications of the firm not based on price You have to ask for the best qualified Choose the best qualified then negotiate the price And if you don't like the price and don't like that as that goes long Then you go to the second qualified But you have to have a reason why you didn't go with the first qualified and the first reason cannot be they were just too high That's not allowed You can also assign a staff member to do this in the school projects We've had a consultant doing this and the library project We had a consultant and the fire and DPW project and in the library project in North Amherst We've had a staff member do it because we still been fleshing these projects out moving forward You can change to a contracted person at any time in the process You just have to be careful about making sure you you do it in synchronization and you don't mess things up a little bit If they these projects is over 50 million dollars. We're required to have an owner's representative, which is basically a Clerk of the works you have to have a clerk will work with his projects many more than 50 million dollars. I Think we might be getting close now to that number on a couple of projects The designer the designer is the person we hire to design the project lay the project out did the project and help us construct the project Because it's over the threshold that we talked about earlier. We have to do a qualification based selection of the designer You cannot just do it based on bids and price You have to ask for their qualifications. You have to examine their qualifications Then you have to decide this is going to be the person we want to choose and then you negotiate the price some parts of this process you can do in steps and you can set the prices and Then they can say that you want to do it or not That's only easily in the first part of the process. You can set that price And then the second part you usually have to go with more of the industry standard What that price should be based on the building you've now come up with Contractor if we do this in a simple format This is the person who builds the building and it could be the person who builds the building with all his friends His subcontractors We will have to have subcontractors in this process Because we will have work that's over the threshold for requiring filed sub bids and to have a definitive sub bidding project sub bidding process sorry So bidding this is is difficult because we have to design it then we have to bid Subs and then we bid Contractors take those and they can bid use those subs and then they bid the project. That's kind of how it goes You can design that you can bid this Contractor you want to but then you still have to do filed sub bids and some of that on the Subproper as well. So it's usually subs Then it's the general contract with bid it So it's a it's a bigger process. It's not like People that works projects. We're easier vertical or Horizontal yeah, if you think about it when you go up it's more difficult and when you're going on the ground It's easy. It's smooth. You can go downhill or okay, sorry This is the overall This is the overall picture for you owner You have your construction manager, which actually you could have you could have three people over there in your construction manager You can have your construction manager you choose you can have your required OPM and if the project is over 50 million dollars, you can have another construction manager That's a lot of overhead over there on that side, but you may be required to have some of it You have your designer you have your designer who has his specialty people as we in Amherst He's definitely going to probably have a Environmental specialty person there who's in green buildings and all that type is making sure we meet the green the zero Zero zero by law. Sorry about that. You're definitely going to have the person library. You're gonna have a library consultant a Fire you're gonna have a fire consultant and Tim will talk about that and mr. Nelson will talk about that a little later They had we had a special person who came on board who was his his specialty was designing fire things Storage for oba scuba gear the laundry machines for washing gear So they don't contaminate the whole building all that stuff He was an expert at doing that and then you had the architect who knew how to design the building and put it all together So your team will be made up of subs in the designer and subs in the journal side And And then this is just a so a slide that brings back together what? Qualification based selection of a designer is and this is kind of how you do it You basically are required by those two laws and it's competition based on qualification not price Now if you go to a class and you take one of these classes that the state offers this whole slide shows about an hour and a half, right I Really convinced it down Actually, this is probably all I took out of the whole class anyhow for that hour and a half So that's that one do you want questions or no Sure questions specifically on this Yes, Dorothy Dorothy. Well, I guess I'm quite surprised to hear about this method of bidding I think New York City. It's it's Competitive bidding and price has a lot to do with it So who set up this process and who requires it is this by choice? We're doing this or is this a Massachusetts law. It's Matt. It's a Massachusetts law that we have to do designer selection for our designers It's if you want if you won't look it up. I'll leave it up there You can go to MGL chapter 7c go to section 44 and 58. That's actually the section that requires it and talks about it The selection for the OPM is the other one Kathy Does that apply just to the designer side not to the contractor side? That does not apply to the designer side when we get into the contractor side depending on the price We may have to have a certified contractor who it has to be told to us the contractor is certified to bid these items And then we can only choose from those contractors We can't just choose from a local contractor because he's local, but he's not certified he can't bid Yes, show me. So if you had designers who had some the same Qualifications would would you then be able to choose based on price? No, you have to to choose based on Qualifications first you cannot look at the price to talk like a tiebreaker You have to figure out some way to break the tie without looking at a price You can say who has the best Friday lunches You can ask Yeah, that's that's how do you define qualifications? I guess is well You'll define qualifications when you start looking for your prop designer So if you're doing a fire station do they have they done fire stations? How many fire stations have you done in the last five years? How many so if you get six contract six designers, they've all done five contractors in the last five years Then you'll go you need other qualifications. So there's how many of you done how many of you done on time? What have been the comments from your the people you've worked for it had been good comments I didn't give a bad comments. You'll actually check those references. So those are all go into the selection process Check the web Yes, Steve. So I'm pretty sure that qualification based election is a characteristic of all 50 states for choosing Architects professionals basically architects engineers Yes, I'm only certified in this state. Okay, that's I'm actually stating that as a fact Okay, but the other thing I want to mention is that You mentioned the Ward Commission. So the word commission. I was in architecture school The word commission was in the early 80s. I had to do with scandals mostly at UMass Boston Boston a little bit of UMass air moist and This entire this seems very cumbersome, but the fact is there really has not been a construction scandal in Massachusetts since the Ward Commission, so we actually whether there is a price to pay for this but the price is scandal-free for However, I've turned my mouth tonight Having been being very familiar with the mass UMass Boston situation. Basically, it was a whole entire campus built on top of a two-story parking garage which is no longer able to be used and the price of trying to Make that campus stop sinking is enormous Yes, and just to note that ward was the president of Amherst College and that he chaired that commission Okay, Andy Yes, when you talk about qualifications that we would be we design the qualifications We specify what they are and can we include familiarity with zero and that energy construction as part of the qualification Yes, you can you can actually write in there that you want people who have specific experience and qualifications in that field Other questions on this part of it Moving on So I was also this is another there's another hour and a half to go through class And I promise you I made it much shorter, too So when you're procuring the design contracts Just they have to be licensed registered license and registered people in Massachusetts You cannot have a company from New York come in and do it unless they have a license to work in Massachusetts So that's one of the biggest qualifiers you have is that these people are Qualified and licensed work in the state These are the phases and what the designers mostly do you have the planning phase or feasibility phase From the feasibility phase you'll get schematic design documents and usually those two phases go together And then you have design development and construction documents usually those two go together There'll be a brief pause usually but they're kind of clumped together to make the project go well Then they'll do construction which is they'll do the bidding process Help us with the bidding help us put the bids out make sure all the bidding goes well And then they'll do contract and construction contract administration for the building building cycle There's also the end of this which doesn't get talked about much is once you finish the construction you have commissioning and you have Takeover and close out of the project, which is actually a big part It's lumped into the construction and contract administration But it's something to think about because as you the more detailed and the more Interesting things you have in your buildings net zero energy type stuff The more you want to make sure that your commissioning aspect of your building is very thorough You don't want someone to say they're just slap solar panels on a bunch of things and they're all work fine You want to make sure it actually does work fine So there's a lot of those things that in the end of the project needs to be thought about as well Just it's not talked about much here. So I just want to bring it up So then plant planting stage He's usually confirms what you need and all these things and it's kind of what do you need to make these requirements? You'll see you saw it in the library dot the library. They do a Big charts of what they have you'll see in the DPW in the fire We actually talked about what we need what we do how much space you need for that What's normal space requirement for that to have that and it's all charted together and puts into a big chart? So Basically the study does talk about that puts all that together It's then he does come up and there are places where the say we'll say well, you just need to redo your building You just need to do this. You don't need a new building I can tell you in the fire and police the fire in DPW stays. It was You need to do something besides redo your buildings That was the final outcome of the studies your buildings aren't suitable for what you use them for right? So out of this stage you do get schematic designs and preliminary specifications and that Really big really big cost number which scares the bejesus out of everybody Because it's so far It's so preliminary and so far in the future the building that they put a lot of a Lot of condition on it and a lot of contingency into it so much contingency that you say cut that back cut that back It really will scare you the number, but this is the preliminary side and remember it's preliminary The next phase you'll go into plans and specifications We will actually do detailed plans and specifications for your project and you get to review those and add input into it and then again these are your deliverables which are just your plans and specifications for bidding at this point You're ready to go to bid you'll have your final plans your final specifications and your 100% cost estimate You'll also know what people you need to have filed sub bids from and what professions you don't need file sub bids from And then you go through the bidding process You bid your ward you set it up you start going you oversee the contract and you build this building And then again I left this this slide in here because in this one it shows you that if the designer fees over $30,000 Are for constructions more than $300,000 you have to use the designer selection law, which is MGL 7c44 and 58 That's required by the state and I believe that's That's just another one too. I'm sorry Questions like quick questions on this one I'm glad you mentioned particularly commissioning the building Because when we were working on the zero energy bylaw revision the issue of commissioning all of the Things that are associated with getting the zero energy is a significant piece there questions There will be a quiz So I'm going to take a break now and the fire chief is going to come up here and talk to you about their fire station studying Actually, Guilford was the project manager for the feasibility study for the fire station So I guess what I'm what I'm going to do is just sort of sort of give you give you an idea of where we are in in the long long Process for a news Head to head My my buddy here is the as I said is kind of kind of the tech tech guy He can't kind of level level level led us through through this. I kind of like to say that, you know You want that you want to write the end of the story story story first where where where where we're going to end This is kind of what this is about But we're going to take the show on the road So this is I'm actually going to go go to talk about this gentleman name Bob Nitro came in and it's this is as it says it's a need need need need assessment This is one. This is two pages of probably a hundred page dog document Where he goes through all the needs that you would have have four or five for fire fire fire fire station Every nook and cranny, every type of thing that we do. I mean, for instance here, you have administrative registration walls, mainly the miscellaneous space. And he sat down with me and my staff and fire firefighters and went through every piece of what a new building would need, what a new fire house would need. And he broke it down by square feet. And it was pretty intensive. Took us a good week or so just to kind of go through it all. And then he produced a document with risk roll. So this is what he, we, came up with. And this is what really a mob of modern or enough to date fire firefighters, the station to serve our area should look like. As you can see, we've got several spaces for the ad, ad admin, a place for the public, and fire firefighters. And then you have the, I guess, what you call the operational side of the house. There's another rendering that shows it on the proposed site. But this gives us really enough room to do what we need to do. Again, Gilbert mentioned that both of our buildings aren't adequate for what we're asked to do. It's just size, layout, that type of thing. It's just an adequate. And this is what a model of modern fire, fire, fire, house, fire stations should look like. Site analysis. Part of the project was to find an adequate site. And really, Amherst, the way the town is laid out sort of presents a challenge because the town is long and skinny. And if you're going to get anywhere in town in a reasonable amount of time, you really need to be either somewhere along Route 11616 or along Route 9, somewhere there. And because it's so long, it just makes sense to be south of the town. And this show shows a response time. It's called a heat map. And it just shows a response time. It's the different parts of the town. The other piece of this is the level that's off to the side. It's kind of tough to see. But that's how they came up with the site. And again, the town presents challenges with roads, streets, overpasses that type of thing. So again, it's either you're along Route 9 or you're along Route 11616. So it didn't really hamstring, string it, but it narrowed down where we might put a new station. And this will give you an idea of the raving or raving scale. It's tough to see. But there were a number of properties that Bob looked at. And each show was really, really great. It came up with a total score based on at least 10 criteria to the interior here. So the W site came in at the top site. The site that made the most sense based on this criteria to the interior. So I've got a vested interest in him getting a nice new place so I can steal his land. But again, a lot of work went into it. It's a pretty comprehensive study to find out just where we didn't need to place a new station. So if you can imagine, this is the DBW site. Now, this is the rendering of how it would be laid out. This one, this one. That one there. There we go. So what we would have is our fire engine's here. Ambulance is down here. The truck would go out this way. Ambulance would come out and around here. So it just makes sense in terms of efficiency. And the firefighter area would be back here. And the support for the sections would be here. You'd have storage for gear equipment, medical supplies. You'd have a place to dig it down, to contaminate gear, to contaminate people if that were in need. And our gear source. One of the things is the standard now is that all our turnout gear is not supposed to be anywhere near the living spaces out in here. So you have a very strong sense of separation between the work area here and the living space. You want to do the top. Remember, they're preliminary. Yeah, preliminary. So again, based on what we've priced out here and based on at the time, they actually didn't have a site. So there's no site figures figured in this number either. They just chose generic site cost and they came up with this as a generic price of what we would be talking about right now. There was no discussion about how to arrange anything. It's all arranged one floor. You can arrange it two floors if you wanted to. There was some discussion about how to arrange some of the bays, but this is still in the preliminary phase. It's based on the analysis of what the department needs to conduct its mission and then how much space that equipment and those things need inside the building. Yeah, as he said, there were some plots that they looked at where it would make sense to go up because you don't have enough space. The W site presents the best spot for us just in terms of the footprint of the building. But it also offers us an area for us to the train. There's space there that we don't have now. We have to go out and use rubber rucks to train at times. We can't really train on our own ground and do specific things to what are working in the in-tails. So where we are now, as you can see, we're in the design phase now. And the next two steps would take it probably for 14 months. It would start at 8 to 14 months. And then it's the construction piece. But that's our next big step for us. We actually did not complete the schematic design phase. OK, we're done with that. But you can't go on to the next phase unless you know what site you're building on. Is that correct? We've chosen a site. Gee, I wonder who that is. Sorry. I've got the mic on now. Yes, we have finished schematic design. We can go on. We have a site that's been recommended that the Public Works Department is the best site. We've been talking about how to shrink the Public Works Department so that we can move these two projects along simultaneously. If they're approved, we could build them at the same time. We would shrink back on our site and let the building begin on the fire station while we begin building on our facility. Questions? Kathy? I don't know whether this would ask for speculation, but you've gotten to this point without actually fitting out the project, correct? I mean, so this is the best guess. So the price we're looking at, would that be likely to be higher, lower, or you don't know? That price is what the designer, we went through the designer selection process. The pre-planning section is where we actually selected our designer. We actually did a designer selection. So the designer we selected, which is Castle and Booze, this is their best estimate if we were to build that project, which the price would be. And that's based on the numbers, which we finished in 2018. So those numbers are relatively, they're not very old. They are actually very fresh. That's where I'm looking for, fresh numbers. There was an entire bidding process with specifications for the designer. And the DPW Fire Station Advisory Committee did that selection process. I want to just real quick, just talk. One of the things the town of Antwerp talked about was need. I mean, you can go to our web site. We have a series of photos that were done of the entire building. I'd ask anyone to call and stop in, and we'll give you a tour. The building was put up in 1929. It's been around a little while. It's a nice built building. It just doesn't work. When we did the study in 2006, this was even before your time here, Chief Nelson. Well, the first one was done long before all of the four were here. 1947 was the first study. But even as recently as 2006, the recommendation basically was for Central Fire Station. It was cheaper to demolish it and build a new substation or station there than it was to try to renovate it. If you read the 1947 study, you read the 2003 study. You read the 2006 study. In fact, even the staffing study that was done a couple of years ago, you can take the header's off, and they all read the thing. That building is too small to fit the needs of the fire department, and it just doesn't work. Any other questions at this time? Yes, Steve. Yeah, so I was just curious about zoning, because I didn't see zoning as one of the columns. I see neighborhood impact. But I assume that either be site plan review or a special permit. Yes, there is some permitting that has to go into it. But the one thing about the DPW site is that it's already a municipal site. So it's actually already owned by the town. It falls under those rules, which are a little different. So they didn't actually try to compare apples to apples. And if you read the report, it says they noted that you do have permitting process you have to go through. Yes, Evan. I have a comment from Mandy Jo. OK. OK. I appreciate the cost estimates, but I want to get back to I think what Kathy was saying. When I do a square foot cost on this estimate that I know is really preliminary, it seems really high, somewhere in the $600 to $840 range, depending on which square footage you decide. So I'm curious, is that a normal square foot cost for a fire station? Is that high? Is that low? Do you know where the designers got that? And how do we gauge that? So the number is actually on the right side in the comments section, $596.60, so there's a square footage cost. When you start talking about this building, it is higher than a normal building if you're just building an office building because of the actual things you have to build into it to make it into the fire station. The chief talked a little bit about separating the gear, the turnout gear from the living spaces. There's actually three buildings here, and there's actually an airlock between the two sections. When you leave the fire apparatus bay and you walk into the fire apparatus bay and you walk into this section here, you are in a self-contained airlock system. All the air in that system goes through purifiers and is sucked out and controlled in that one section. Negative pressure? Yes, negative pressure, which pulls it in, makes sure everything comes into it. And any of the vapors, any of the chemicals that the fire fighters were exposed to that's off-gassing from their suits, which is off-gassing from them, is collected and then processed out. So that's actually a cost that's a little above and beyond a normal building. This would be like building one of the labs at UMass where you're trying to make sure that you have positive pressure in there and you're controlling the chemicals they're working in. One of the things that they pointed out a lot and I always wondered about myself, but firefighters have a history of having a lot of nasty diseases and it comes from going to a fire. You come back from the fire, you take your gear off, you throw it at the bottom of your rack and you take a nap and your gear is sitting there off-gassing all this stuff and you're sitting there sleeping or laying there sleeping and taking it all in. So that's why there's this one special section and that actually is probably the biggest cost increaser in this building is having that section. You have a special laundry, you have special storage areas and you have a special decontamination area kind of all together in this area. And that is a national stance, that is standard, really. And it's actually promulgated by the end of the NFDA, right down, down, right down, down the road. The third piece is the admins as second here. So as Gilford said, three separate buildings, three separate functions. Hence, I believe that that's where that increase in cost comes. But you really can't escape that if, as he said, this is not an office building. And it's used 24-7, 365, so. Isn't there also a special decontamination coming off of ambulances? Yes, yes. And when, you know what? Actually, I'm glad you brought that up. Because we do the EMS as well, we have a separate area where we'll take care of those type of biobug biohazards and that type of thing. Dispose, dispose, dispose, you know that. You have to keep all our drugs and equipment separate and not exposed to any type of contaminants. So you've got almost three and a half buildings put in one. And again, it's, you know, this is not a strip mall. It's a fire station and it's highly specialized. That's just, and that's just the world we live in now. Any other questions? Yes, Pat. Since the 1947 study is almost as old as I am, I want to thank you. I want to thank you and the current firefighters and fighters before you for keeping us safe. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Okay, let's move on to. You're up to. I guess we have one other presentation on fire. This is the tour. No, we're going on to DPW. Yeah, like the tour of the station, that's 65 slides. That's a lot of, and it's all on our website or stop in a visit. We are also going to arrange an actual visit to various facilities when the weather is better and we aren't expecting snow. So, moving on. Yeah, great. So the next talk we're going to, a presentation we're going to have is on the DPW. DPW proposal is finished in 2016. So we're already three years old in this. So it's some of the numbers, there is some dated material here as far as the numbers go. Brief history, we're kind of like the bank center. We're one of the few town buildings that functions now, not in the capacity it was built for. The bank center was built as a school and then converted. We were built as a trolley barn and converted. I left out the slide that was inside the trolley barn. I apologize that, but that's actually in the counselor's packet when you see the pictures of inside the building. The four gentlemen who are working on trolley motors. That was, that's what we, this building was used for for quite a while before we took it over. Just that's the history of what we've been doing. So we did the same thing. We took what we do, vehicle maintenance, traffic lights, electrical, administration, highway, parks and rec, water, the parts of the sewer which are in the main building. And we went through and we kind of listed them all out and then listed out our equipment, listed out our people and listed out what we needed to do for each and the spaces we needed for each of those functions. And we came up with schematic drawings like this and a table as well. We came up with some preliminary layouts, how we would lay stuff out in a barn. And then we came up with some needs. These are the square foot needs. The original's needs are on the middle, reduced are on the right. We said, well, that's a lot of space. Can I reduce it? That's what happened. We reduced down 5,000. I think it's, no, we reduced down just a little bit. 4,000, 6,000 square feet is what we reduced down to. So, and then that's basically how we set ourselves up. Administration, staff support. Staff support is like the fire department except it's not as complicated as the fire department. But it is lockers for your gear. So you come to work, you can change clothes and put on your work clothes. At the end of work, you can take your clothes off, shower and go home clean. One of the funniest things is when I did a sewer call in Northampton, I came home and it was really late at night. I came home, my wife met me at the door and said, you're going in the garage. And I actually, she said, your bathrobe's in the garage and there's a towel in the garage. Can't get clothes off and come inside and shower. We had that same problem. We do have chemicals. We are exposed to biohazards when we do some work. So we do need to clean up. But it's not to the detail that the fire department has. So there's showers, there's cleaning areas and so forth. So that's the staff support. Highway, the big trucks, tree and grounds. We want to move the, our proposal is to move the barn at the high school to the new facility and consolidate. We want to do that for two reasons. One's management reason, just to have everybody together and to have consolidation in the same services for the staff and be able to communicate better. The second one is that we want to redevelop community field. And here we have this little industrial site sitting in the middle of community field. It wasn't supposed to get that big. We weren't supposed to have that much equipment there, but it has gotten bigger and bigger as time has gone on and it detracts from if you're going there for recreation or going there to the high school, it's like whose construction company is that over there? So we want to move that out and we brought that to the main building. The water department, their administrative offices function out of our office. That's the distribution crew, and that's the meter crew and a couple other crews that work in the water, they work out of the air. Maintenance, we do all the vehicle maintenance for our building, for our vehicles. We also do some inspections for the entire town. We do all vehicle inspections for the entire town. And then we do, we talked about when we do this building, maybe consolidating and bringing in some of the scattered maintenance that's around town. The schools do some maintenance. The police do some maintenance. The fire do some maintenance. We thought of bringing that stuff in and consolidating it. We don't have really room for that now because our base or maintenance base are too small. And if you look at the pictures in the big presentation, you'll see they're much too small. And then we just need to store our equipment. Storing the equipment takes up the biggest space. Storing our equipment is also the place where we can actually stage how we build this building. We kind of need the stuff at the top. We need some of the vehicle storage immediately and then we can stage and add on as we need to and as funds become available for the additional vehicle storage. We have some vehicles that have to be inside or else they freeze and they're not useful. The Vactor, the big truck with the elephants not on the front. The kindergarteners from the common school call it the elephant truck, elephant truck. That has to be inside because there's water inside of it. There's a couple other vehicles that have things like that inside that can't freeze, they have to be inside. So you can, this is one of the few buildings. Actually it's the only building where you can talk about staging how you do it. When we started this process, we had nine sites. Actually there was a 10th one, it went really fast and was taken off the table. We did all, analyzed all these sites and came up with a chart, rated them all. The top three, I took that slide out, sorry. Top three when we did the study Fort River which we've been taken off the table. The town wants to do something else there if they don't do a school there. School is number one, something else besides DPW is number two. Something else besides something else is number three. About number one million down the list is DPW site. So Fort River is never gonna be a DPW site. So people keep saying that we're never gonna go there. It's just not gonna happen. Second site was off of Old Farm Road which is number four on the list. That's now Conservation Land. The third site is for sale still but I believe there's a purchase and sale agreement going on that's number seven, Ball Lane. Those were the top three sites. We're still looking for a site. We have a couple more which weren't in the original study. We looked at all, when we did site evaluations we looked at all these items. We looked at one of the biggest things we looked at was permitting and effects on our neighbors. So that was a big piece in that one. We are a 24 hour operation. We're not, unlike the fire department who gets a call and leaves, if we come in to work a snowstorm, someone's there all the time during the snowstorm and we make a lot of noise and it's a bit of a disturbance at times. This is just a rough, if you take all the blocks and you just block them in, the very rough schematic of what the layout might look like for the building. That's how we came up with the minimum site size we need. Then the thing to remember is that the big piece in the middle is the one that can be kind of staged. Then for prices, we came up with a, actually I might take the big price off, $375 square feet of, $375 of square foot. So we came up with, and then these at the time were sites we would compare ourselves to. These were DPWs that Weston and Samson were working on at the time. Born and Norwood were very similar to those. Medford was a little different. They don't do as much water work, I think, as we do. Where we are in the process right now, we finished up in March of 2018, which actually we finished up more in 2016. Should've changed that at 16. We're waiting to go to the next phase. We just need to move forward with that. We are looking at a couple of sites and the site, for us, our site has not really been determined yet. So we are kind of still waiting for that. We're still working on that piece. And that's it for this one, if you have any questions. Questions, yes, Pat. The big price, you said you left it off? I don't know why I left that off. Approximate. It's approximately $35 million, if you want. OK. This is my million day. I will talk in millions, not a... Additional questions. Yes, Shalini. I'm just curious if the DPW building could be on the same site as the fire station. We could, if the site is big enough. We can't be on the existing site we're proposing for the fire station because of the river behind us. The Fort River is behind us and there's this 200-foot magical line which is there to protect the resource area of the river. If we take that 200-foot line on the DPW site, the DPW already encroaches onto that line. You can't add anything beyond towards the river. So the site is almost exclusively filled with the fire station and we don't fit unless you could figure out more land in that area. Do you need about, what, eight acres for the... We need eight. For DPW. Eight is why it's another study. If you read the study, it says eight and then if you really want to have nice buffers you might want to go with 10 acres. And fire requires how many acres? About three? It's if you take out the training part. Yeah. I think it was one and a half and then the rest is three, I believe, yes. Okay. Kathy? It's in the study. Yeah. I'm looking at the cost chart that was in our pack. What is that number? And there's, you know, you said around 35 but you have a line called soft costs that adds, you know, so we've got the three different sites and I'm consolidated so there's a bottom line that's quite a bit higher than 35. If you do soft costs, I have a question of soft costs. And my second, in looking at the pictures, the place where the vehicles would be inside is that are those, could those be simple? I'm going to use the wrong terms, but simple metal with a cement floor that just keeps them out of the elements. And would that be less expensive than the visual of the other place that looked quite elegant like it was an indoor building with beautiful bays of some existing world? But think of it as a great picnic you'd have in that big one. We showed you the picnic we have in the other building. It's kind of tight. If we had it, no. So the answer to that question, soft costs are things, or furnishings. Furniture, those type of things that go inside the building. Do you put carpet in? Do you put tile in? Those are things that really haven't been decided. So those are things that are also possible that you could put in basics and then upgrade as you go along. We could take our old furniture we have now and use that furniture. We're like the ultimate take it or leave furniture group. The guys, it's not going to be appreciated with the DPW. It'd be nice if we move into a new building and have new, but there are things that could be, we could adjust the cost and we could work on to make them more compatible. Just like in the fire department, you have three sections of the fire department and the DPW, you really need three sections. We need an office section and a staff section which is climatized so that it's comfortable to work in. Work in, take a shower in, do those type of things. Not all at the same time, but in your right place. You need a section to keep vehicles above freezing. So the vehicles I talked about that can't freeze, the sewer back, a couple other trucks that can't freeze. You need a section of vehicle storage which we keep above freezing. So that's above 50 or around 50, not above 50, around 50. And then you just need a place for covered storage. So yes, you can start out with covered storage which has no heat in it. It's just how the wind, it's how the snow, it's how the rain. And then work from there later on to add heating to it or add what you want to it to it. So yes, that's how we talk about staging. That's where you get the staging. One of the other things that came up during these various studies and that is you reduce the life of a vehicle when it's left outside by at least three years, if you're lucky. Other questions on this. I'm going to actually suggest we take a break before we do the street scan, five minutes. And then we're going to actually look at the horizontal issues of the town, right? Yeah, okay. So as we were looking at the capital projects, there are many people who have suggested that our infrastructure is like a fifth project. And so we asked Mr. Bachmann to have Guilford, Mr. Moring to come back and talk about our streets and our infrastructure side box. So the council has seen this slide before. So a little different, but not that much different. So street scan is what we use to prioritize and scan and manage the roads in town. It has a vehicle which drives, okay, I kind of just cut this a little shorter. So it has a vehicle that drives around. There's LiDAR, there's scanners. There's actually the little motion detectors which you have in your cell phones which can tell vibrations. So you can tell how bumpy the road is, all the stuff comes up with a lot of numbers and tells you the condition of our roads. Again, we showed this last time. This is the breakdown of our road conditions. We're trying to, we want to be at 70, PCI is 70 or higher. 100 is great, just like in school. Zero are no cookies as we call it in school, no cookies. You have to take the class over again. It's not what we want to be at. So we're average is about 63 and the scan was done two years ago now. So we've actually had a lot of deterioration since then. But this is the kind of breakdown of our roads. As we talk about roads, the thing to remember is is a road is a lot like a living being because it's affected by the elements as much as we have people that are affected by the elements. So when the weather's rough, roads get worse eating. If it gets really, really cold and stays cold all winter, that's far better for the road than heating and cooling and heating and cooling just like us. We don't like it when we get really too hot and get really too cold. We like it to stay one temperature, usually about 70 and everything is good, right? So the roads are the same way. This is a breakdown of our segments of roads and how they fall into the categories. Again, to the far right is 85 to 100, which is like excellent, very good roads. 70 to 85 is good roads and then you start deteriorating as you come down. So we actually have four segments when we did this scan, which were zeroes or less than zero. Our weighted survey of the whole town was 63 when we did this two years ago. 28% of our roads have structural damage. We estimated that we needed $16 million just to repave the roads. And then if we put it in contingency and police cost and some other costs that we use, there's another, you just add another $10 million to cover those costs. So that's kind of our backlog for roads. If we actually were to budget, this was based on two years ago. If we actually were to budget these numbers here, we'd be able to bring our PCI, PCI is on the left side. We'd be able to bring our PCI up to 70 if we used $2.5 million a year to pave our roads after four years. Now we're a little behind this now because this is two years ago. And yes, we've had some deterioration, a lot of deterioration. We've had a lot of freezing and thawing. And we're not helping our winter maintenance and our winter techniques for keeping the cars moving in the winter are not helping our roads by having a lot of salt on the roads, keeping the water flowing, keeping water moving around and not just freezing and staying frozen. We're actually helping to accelerate, I think, that freeze-thaw cycle, which we've been noticing over the last few years since we've been using all salt. So we're not really helping with our weather conditions. So we're a little behind. This is just a, if things have stayed perfect, this is just where we are. So we're at $27 million is when we first did the study. We're probably a little more right now. I don't know the exact number. And then as we move along, hopefully we'll catch up. But that's the fifth project is, that's the fifth project is we were talking about the infrastructure for the roads. And that's kind of what it is. We actually do, so we have $800,000 to get from chapter 90. Chapter 90 is $800 and some thousand dollars a year. The town has been putting an extra amount of money in. We put in almost a million dollars. We put 953,000 last year to help us with this. And then we do a lot of roads, water and sewer projects in the roads. And when the water and sewer department cuts the road to make a repair, the water and sewer department pays to fix the road. So Amherst Woods is being resurfaced now. And most of that's coming from sewer funds because we were doing sewer work in that whole section and tearing the roads up for sewer work. We're gonna go, we have a couple more roads. We're doing water work by the next year and they'll get resurfaced with water running. So it's not really fair to make the road people pay for when we're doing the water and sewer work. So sometimes we spend around $3 million, but it's not a consistent $3 million. And sometimes the $3 million is not in the right spot. If we're doing a road or sewer project that's in a road that's in decent condition, we may end up cutting that road a lot sooner than we want to just to deal with a water and sewer issue. So that's kind of how we handle it. The last slide I want to show you on this is actually separate. Yes, Paul. Well, Guilford was looking for that. I do want to emphasize that last year, and you'll see this again this year, the town has moved off a lot of the capital requests from departments so that we carve out as much money as possible for road repairs. Typically, historically the town has done about $300,000 in Guilford Mansion. We were nearly, we almost got to a million dollars this year for road repairs and we're moving in that same direction for the budget you will receive on May 1st. So we're trying to get there. It just means there's just a lot of balancing act and we'll be reviewing this with JCPC. Okay. Thank you. Guilford. So I was asked if there's a list. That's the famous where everybody calls up and says my street has a pothole. Can you fix it? And we say, yes, it's on the list. Well, there actually is a list for big road projects. This is our, this is our list. We kind of keep running for big projects. So at the top was the annual, annual paving for last year which we haven't finished. We'll finish it up in the spring. West Bay Road sidewalks, that's a project, a large project that's going on in the spring. It got moved off. We have to put together our 2019 paving list for this year which we don't really have a final number on what we're spending so we haven't put together the final list of roads we're doing. East Tadley Road multi-use path is being funded by Community Development Block Grant Money, CDBG. That's the sidewalk, the big sidewalk we're doing on East Tadley Road. Mill Street Bridge, that's a state project. The blue ones are funded by the state DOT. That project is going on. Northampton Road resurfacing is underway in the planning phases. It's scheduled for about 2021 in the state list and they're gonna actually pay for that. Northampton Road, route nine from University Drive all the way up to South Pleasant Street. There's some widening going on. There's some sidewalks going on. There's some shoulder work going on. Northampton Road resurfacing. We're working on that project. Wait, wait, Belchtown Road resurfacing. We're working on that project as a tip project. We proposed that to the state and the state's approved it and it's going through the planning and design process. That's from Southeast Street all the way to Belchartown. Road widening, sidewalks, some shoulder work. The state, hopefully, will pay for that as well. These are just rough budgetary numbers in those three. North Pleasant Street and Pine Street Intersection and the Sunderland Road, Montague Road Intersection. Those are the two that are in yellow here. They had been broken apart. Now we're kind of motioning them back together to do the analysis of the intersection concepts we have. So that's going on right now and we're supposed to have a report from them by the end of the month on what the best concepts and how the intersections work together. And then once that's done, we can start moving that project forward and trying to decide what we want to do next in that project. But that's the North Amherst Intersection motion together, both pieces. Station Road Bridge is in there. The one in red, which Kate reads very well, is a parking lot. That's the Main Street parking lot in front of Town Hall, which is on hold, I understand. We did a lot of preliminary work on that, so it's on our list. The North Pleasant Street parking lot, which is a lot previously known as CVS parking lot, which we call North Pleasant Street parking lot now. The two property owners there, we're talking about resurfacing the lot and we would help do our piece as well and resurface the entire lot. That's kind of being a concept being floated around. That's as far as that's gone, it's just a concept. North Pleasant Street, the pet upgrades on North Pleasant Street is a project from the roundabout at Eastman Lane going all the way to Pine Street. And that's to upgrade the sidewalks, maybe change the sidewalks from two five foot sidewalks to one six, eight, 10 foot sidewalk, and then maybe one five foot sidewalk on the other side. The West Street and Pomeroy Intersection was a project which was put together many years ago and it's kind of sitting on the shelf, it's already put together, it just needs to be dusted off and we can change the intersection at Pomeroy and West Street. East Pleasant Street upgrades, I should say pedestrian upgrades, sorry about that. That's for doing sidewalks on East Pleasant Street from where they end now to Pine Street again. And we need to do the survey before we can start the work on that. North Pleasant Street through UMass, that's a project the university wants to do with the town and we're gonna kind of change a little bit how that's set up. So we have basically, well it's gonna have some type of bike lane, travel lane, and the UMass big sidewalks, the UMass big sidewalks. There's a water line that runs through there that we're gonna work on as well. Route nine in University Drive Intersection, that's a state project, the state's been working on this. As I said once before in a meeting there's three intersections that came up on the really bad intersection list from the state several years ago. This is the third one, there was Pine in North Pleasant and there was Meadow in 116. This is the third one, nine in University Drive. The state's working on that. South Amherst Common, that's come back up that's something people want us to look at that makes some changes to the South Amherst Common and do some design improvements there. And then Mill Lane, we've been requested to look at Mill Lane because Groff Park is in there and we're making changes to Groff Park and how to connect Groff Park back to West Street and then to the new sidewalks we're doing on East Hadley Road. That was kind of, that's what that project is. It might grow, people would like us to pave Mill Lane and that whole project might grow a little bit. So as street stuff goes, none of these are included in the $27 and $16 million number. But if we did these, some of that number would get smaller but it's not included in that figure number. When we do things with the state, doing things with the state costs us more. It costs $50,000 or actually $45,000 for me to have a surveyor come in and survey North Pleasant Street from Pine Street back to the campus. It's gonna cost me $160,000 to survey from Southeast Street to the town line for the project on Belchtown Road project. It's about twice the length of the survey but it's not twice the cost. So doing things with the state, because you wanna get free state money, there ain't no such thing from the state as free. You're paying and you're gonna probably pay more than you would normally pay to get that free state money. Just, it's one of my concepts in life. Just remember that, there's no free money. So that's overall road projects. So I guess I'm ready for questions. Okay, questions. Yes, Shalini. I was curious about the criteria you used and I've been talking about that for a while. Like how do you prioritize? How do we prioritize which projects get done first? That's a good question because this is just the leftover list from before we had the TAC and before the TAC got started talking about it. The two projects the TAC started talking about and started to prioritize and started to add on to this list. If you look at the far right corner there's something that says TAC priority for 2019. They chose the North Pleasant Street pet upgrades and they chose the East Pleasant Street pet upgrades as their number one priority that they'd like to see money allocated towards. So how these projects start is there's usually requests and in the past it was usually from the town manager's office and from us talking to this road really needs something done to it and that put it on the list. Are the state came forward with the project and that got it on the list and that's how it went forward. Now we're gonna see that the TAC will have more of an input of taking the requests they get from residents and flushing out something and saying we should spend some money on this and we're gonna put it on our list as a recommendation that goes into the capital plan and then the capital plan goes through its process and we see if money comes out. I'm sorry, is that? Additional questions? Yes, Lisa. Thank you for the hundreds of pages of slides that we had uploaded but we don't have this one unfortunately and so when we do get that one I wonder if you could flush it out I realize that requires additional time but with the words you just gave us in terms of point A to point B because I'm sorry but I don't think we're all gonna remember which section of each road that would be so I wonder if you have either a longer version of this you could send to us that has another field that says from here to here and from here to here because this is really useful to be able to refer to. No, I'll lie that on. It's all kind of burned into our brain so we just know. Sorry. Yes, Kathy. I also I can't see this so I'm glad that this has sent it to us but I think you said that what you have up here is not part of the road backlog that we've got and so the dollar numbers you were showing on the 800,000 plus another so one and a half million a year ish. That doesn't include these calls or does that budget that the town's been allocating doesn't include sidewalks or intersection fixes? Anything that's an improvement beyond just repaving the road it's not included in that 16 or $27 million number right. I'll just call it $27 million number of road repairs. Any sidewalk improvement any intersection improvement that's not included in that number. So you won't be able to take these numbers to the right if you add those numbers up as cost estimates they're a lot more than they don't match up. So these numbers aren't included in that at all. And then they're also not coming out or if they're not budgeted in the budget projections you showed us that doesn't have these in them either. Those aren't in those either at all. That's why there's two separate things. So these are the bigger projects which have more improvements. This is like paving a road, repairing a road on steroids. You're usually getting new sidewalks and usually getting some type of changes to the intersections you're usually getting some type of enhancement beyond just paving the road. The other list is just paving the road. Yes Dorothy. I realized that adding these is very expensive but I applaud you doing it because I think that it will affect the lives of an awful lot of people in the town and the whole quality of life. So I hope we can figure out some way to include it without going broke. Other comments or questions at this time? Shalini? Just a clarification. When you say roads, does it include bike paths as well? What include bike paths? These 16 million because sidewalks is not included but bike paths which are part of the road, is that included? If you're talking about the bike accommodation on the roadway, it's included in the bike accommodation if it exists already. So like East Pleasant Street is wide enough to have bike lanes on it now. So that's included in the 16, 27 million dollars. But Pine Street, I'm not Pine Street, Henry Street does not have bike lanes on it. So bike lanes on Henry Street are not included in that 16 to 27 million dollars. Additional questions. I'd like to open it for public comment and ask it for a show of hands of those people who would like to comment. Okay, we are going to limit you to three minutes. Please come up and state your name and the area that you'd like to comment on. And let's start over here. You have to press the button in the center, yes. Where it says push. I'm Alex Lefebvre. I'm a trustee with the Jones Library. So I'll be speaking on behalf of the library project. I don't have any prepared comments but I heard some really good questions from the council so I just wanted to take a second to give you my thoughts. One of the questions was about could we reorganize the existing space that we have? And I think that's an excellent cost effective question. So I think it's important that people know that the MBLC does the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners does provide a resource to the library which the library did take advantage of prior to applying for the grant to bring somebody in to look at our existing space to see if we could reorganize it to take better advantage of the space for our community needs. And the conclusion that the MBLC came to was that we could not in fact use our existing space. So the second question that was asked was can we do with our existing library? If we make the changes that the library director talked about in phase one and perhaps phase two and we paved for it through JCPC process can we live with that as a community? And I think the answer to that is a difficult one because libraries serve the function of being the great equalizer, right? They are the social justice tool of a town. And unfortunately our existing library without the expansion, the people in our community who are being left behind are our populations that are most in need. So for example, right now children's programming which is our most popular programming. We turn families away from our programming because we don't have enough space to accommodate all of the people who are interested in that programming. Our English as a second language programs are some of our most popular programs. We have a long waiting list. If anyone wants to be a tutor, I'm gonna put a plug in because we always need more people. But those programs, what winds up happening is the ESL programs wind up taking the public meeting spaces because we don't have enough space to accommodate people in the library. So our meeting spaces which are taken advantage of almost every single day wind up not being available to as many people who might want to take advantage of public meeting spaces which I think are important to have access to free meeting spaces in a library and we lose that. Our teen spaces, you know, you have two issues. One, we want to bring teens into the library. We want to teach them about libraries and we don't have a space that does that right now. Putting them in a basement, they may think it's cool but I don't think it's a good way to teach them to be a good citizen. But more importantly, our teen collection is very, very small. Youth adult books have doubled in terms of sales in the last 10 years. The largest group, 70% of people who purchase are 18 to 64 year old. So they're not even teens and we don't have the space to accommodate that kind of growth. So we have somebody to direct the programs but not to accommodate the growth. So I could, I'm sure your, my computers, I could go on, right? If you go into the library on any certain day, you will see a large number of low income, homeless, home insecure people who their only access to the internet, their only access to computers is at the library. We offer programs for college education, for continuing education, for music, for art. There are unlimited resources available to people for free at the library and we don't have enough computer terminals to meet those needs. So what becomes a difficult question is do we as a community feel the library is our social justice support for our community? And if the answer is yes, then I would say our existing building doesn't meet that. Thanks. Thank you. There was another comment back there. Actually, okay. Yes, ma'am. You have to push the button and the green light goes on. Yeah, it's, oh, okay. It is working. All right. I'm Nancy Baer. I'm a member of the District One Neighborhood Association and North Amherst. In the interest of bringing the, this is just a little over one minute. In the interest of bringing the concerns of North Amherst District One residents to the council, I make these points, which are taken from a letter to town counselors from Met Gage. Many of us feel North Amherst infrastructure issues are overdue for attention. We cannot walk over the Mill River Bridge after five years of the bridge being out. Our library does not have a restroom and is not accessible to people with disabilities. The traffic light at the Meadow and Pine Street and Route 63 Montague Road intersection is an ancient signal, which keeps traffic backed up for 15 to 20 minutes every day at rush hour. Many families on East Pleasant Street walk on this well-traveled road without sidewalks. Two excellent steps in addressing these challenges would be a smart traffic light, allowing left turns at the Meadow, Pine Street, Route 63 Montague Road intersection, a $50,000 for a sidewalk survey of East Pleasant Street, the first step in building sidewalks. And I was encouraged to hear that these two items are on the list. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you very much. There was another comment back here, sir. Hello, Chris Hochman. I'm having trouble understanding the distribution on here. I was looking at the numbers 19 and 21 and concluded that that's 40%, but the graphic shows me far in excess of 50% of that area shown. So I'm led to believe that that large area, the majority of the chart shows me that roads are 85 or better for the pavement condition index, but I believe is somewhat misleading if we go down to the next part, the breakdown of by mileage and number segments. We'll see that in actuality, those two categories that are graphically depicted up there looking like 50% or more are really 6.15 miles, which are 11.1 miles of 101 miles of roads, which is 10%. That's not 50-something percent like the slide led me to believe, but if I go back to the slide, I'm wondering if perhaps the, those are just segments of the sampling that were done and so that actually the segments vary in size on the street scan. They can be 150 feet. They can be 2,000 feet, the segments. So maybe the number of actual samplings really would lead to that conclusion, but I think that's a, that graphic is not a good one to assess and say, oh, lots of green, we're great. When in fact, it's only 10% of them are in that color category really, if you go by miles and that's what us drivers are concerned about. Miles, not segments of statistical samples. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Other comments from in here. Yes. Yep, that's on. My name is Julian Heinz and I wanted to first say thank you to Mr. Nelson and for all his work and his department's work in town for keeping us safe and I next like to thank Mr. Mourin for the work that he's probably gonna have to do tomorrow. And then my second comment is that I would like to make sure that we have some way of preserving the fire station downtown that I understand it is sort of falling out of its time of usability. Yet at the same time, I think that it's an important historic figure in our town and it's a very pretty architectural building and is visually appealing. So whether we build a fire station in South Amherst or not, I think it's important to preserve that area and not have demolition there. I'd be very disappointed if we demolished it or made large changes to the front of it but I have heard the ideas of an art studio which I thought was pretty interesting. It could also be turned into things like a coffee shop or like I know Belcher Town has a historic fire museum which I think might be a cool thing there. All right, thank you. Thank you for your comments. Are there any other comments at this time? Okay, then with the council's agreement, we're gonna move on to the next agenda item. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is a discussion item. It's regarding a proposed fourth standing committee of the council and it is labeled at this time the Community and Economic Development Committee. We are not taking a motion at this time although there could be a decision to do a motion but I am actually going to call on both Steve and Dorothy to head this discussion. Well, we are very pleased to introduce the new proposed Town Council Standing Committee of Community and Economic Development. And I noticed that in the material in preference to the charter, not in the charter but the description beforehand, it discussed some things which were not clarified in the charter and it mentioned that the election of council members would promote democracy by representing what the voters want, providing the central focus and now lacking on what we want the town to look like. And the hope was that we would now have a public and comprehensive conversation about issues regarding zoning and the master plan and to quote the text, instead of important planning and zoning decisions being made piecemeal and out of sight. So economic development and vitality are goals that we all share but economic development is closely related to the attractiveness of the town and its quality of life. We want to grow yet to keep the unique qualities of Amherst as a New England college town and to be a town that reflects its intellectual, progressive nature as well as his historical and cultural roots. So the description of the committee, okay, I will read the committee. I have to hold this button down every moment. To advise the council on matters which impact sustainable planning, land use, zoning, agriculture, open space and recreation, infrastructure, housing, design review, transportation, neighborhood stabilization or revitalization, historic preservation, art and culture and economic development in order to build on Amherst's special character and to improve the quality of life. In furtherance of these objectives, the committee shall analyze, research and review recommendations for changes in the zoning bylaw and other land use laws and collaborate with the planning board on master plan updates. The committee shall also consider relevant issues and conduct research on the relationship between the town and the educational institutions and other partners within the town to develop policies and programs that will enhance economic development. So that was well said. So we, this issue's been discussed at full council meetings but then also at our retreat. So we had a great discussion at the retreat and Dorothy and I did our best to weigh through or go through what was sometimes conflicting opinions of the counselors and come up with a document that we think that we hope that the full council can take action on at our next meeting. Are there comments or questions? Andy? So I guess that my question is in the very first line and what sustainable planning is, what, how that's defined, but before answering it, I wanna also just point out that those of us who are thinking about financial structure of the town and the financial health of the town I think that my view of sustainable is something that is financially, it creates a town that isn't itself financially sustainable which means that we have to make sure that we're looking at planning as something that's stimulating tax growth and that's why I was curious as to what sustainable planning was and how it relates to the continued development of taxable property that can give us some relief without burdening current taxpayers. Shallownay? I'd like to add to what Andy said in terms of sustainability. I am curious to hear the definition of that but the way I think of sustainability would be to include equity, environment and economy. They kind of work together for us to have a sustainable community that can be enjoyed by all residents so it has to include the equity piece, it has to include the environment and the economy that Andy pointed out. Cathy? I'll stay on the same point. I think each of us are interpreting this in our own ways but I've been really struck by planning to date in Amherst and this is not dissimilar to what I see in New York City that you can't assume just if you expand and get new taxable property that you get a net positive impact on the town budget because we may incur high public costs for that private development. So what I've seen some places do and I recently looked at Dartmouth's handover for an example, they make any new development do a public impact statement. Is it gonna need a new road? Is it gonna need a sidewalk? Is it gonna have to re so up in North Amherst where we have to reprogram everything because we're already too crowded and that developer has to pay a substantial share of that so it doesn't be public investment in private. So you're looking at New York and it never gets ahead of the game by putting a new piece of real estate in because it's done tax breaks, it hasn't done the extra things and we don't do that kind of accounting that says we get something here but we paid something there. So if the word can sustainable can be that way of thinking that it's not just the character and quality of life but if we're looking for a net yield you better think in advance rather than after the fact. Additional comments, yes, Steve. So I wasn't sure if these were rhetorical questions or but in the interest of trying to summarize our discussion we debated whether or not to include the word sustainable because in many ways in a community like Amherst it seems unnecessary because this committee will only be as good as the, you know basically the members that are on it and the council that it reports to plus all the other boards and we assume that sustainability, the triad that you've mentioned is pretty much in the DNA of the community. So I think that we wanted, we did keep it in there as sort of a reminder and absolutely there are 13 different definitions of what that is we all have. But so we've gotten to the first line but so that was our thing. So we did, I know there was a, someone had come up with the idea that sustainability should be in the name of the committee and we debated that between the both of us and we decided not to in this version but we're only two out of 13 so if there's some comments on that we're all ears. Dorsey. That was me. Yeah, I think it would make sense to have it in the title since it is covering all those different areas that would be in the master plan and since our current master plan, you know, starts right out with words to the effect that sustainability is our overarching value. So I think it would be good to have that there and I think it would be great to have a separate sentence sort of indicating what Shalini just said about the three ways in which we are seeking sustainability in all these different areas. Evan. Coming from Andy Joe. Okay, Andy Joe. Okay, thank you. I'm gonna try and I'm gonna jump around so that I don't have to do this too often. I am concerned moving down to the third and fourth line, the design review and historic preservation portions, how that would intersect with the design review board and I think there's one that does historic preservation to a committee that does that. We've seen it on demolition delays and how their regulatory function would intersect with this committee's charge to advise on matters related to design review. So that's something I'm unclear about. Also one clear about the overarching advise on matters is that general matters, is it things that other committees bring to the council? Is it bylaws, is specifically bylaws or only bylaws and things like that. The appointing authority I believe would need to be the president of the town council since it would be a committee of the council. And then just as chair of the governance committee, as the governance committee is seeking a uniform for a committee charge, a uniform structure, I'd just recommend maybe before any action is done on this a referral to that so that we could put it in that uniform structure. Thanks. Yes, Dorsey. I really like what Kathy said. That's in my mind, that's in this description but it may be that there needs to be some way of making it clearer because what we're trying to do in this committee is to connect the dots to bring the pieces together to put things in context, not to do things just separately. And new things that come in, new buildings that may, for example, there may be sidewalk problems, there may be a need for new parking. There are things that might come with it that we would want the project but we have to make sure that the whole thing is looked at. Okay. Additional comments? Yes, Pat. A small comment. My colleague Steve said that in the DNA of Amherst, we talk, we have equity and we concern for the environment and the economy. And I would say those are aspirational goals that we have not reached those goals as a community and we need to look at ourselves quite clearly because if you can't see it, you can't change it. Okay, additional comments? Evan. Just a question for the authors about what exactly is meant by neighborhood stabilization or revitalization? So an example would be the pressures on the university area, neighborhoods. I think that that concern comes up mostly in Amherst in terms of, you know, in that particular context. It also comes into the context of some of the apartment complexes. Those would be, those are a couple of examples that we discussed. Did you have a following question, Evan? Comment? So that's the concerns. So could you just maybe give me an idea of how you envision this committee would address those concerns and what it means to stabilize a neighborhood? Dr. Erstein. I'll make a few thoughts. Well, of course, that means active code enforcement, citizen engagement. It means in terms of older existing communities, listening to the residents, seeing if there is something that is needed that would make it a better place to live. Just not taking neighborhoods for granted, making sure that part of a strong town has strong neighborhoods and that we would try to do the things that would bring that about. George. My concern with this remains that economic development is gonna get lost in this long list. And I'm wondering what the two authors feel about that, whether one thought was that there might be a subcommittee or some kind of smaller body that would focus on this issue. But when I look at this, I become concerned that economic development is gonna get lost in the mix. I believe that we had a discussion that there was talk of creating another town, town committee, not a town council committee, but a town committee on economic development because we looked and we said that really wasn't being covered that well. So there would be strong work and support that would be feeding into this committee or we could support their work. Alyssa. So while I don't disagree with the things that are written here and I appreciate the comments others have had, I still don't understand what you're actually gonna do when you sit down and meet for the first time because I'm feeling like I understand it if a proposal comes here. And so we start talking about things based on public comment, based on meetings that we've had, et cetera. And we say, you know, this isn't really ready for town council to talk about any further. So let's refer it over to this committee. But it sounds instead like, for example, if this, once this committee exists, that some of the members of this committee might decide we need more code enforcement and then do what. I'm just a little confused about what the process would be like. Steve. So great question. And so I think part of it is the theory, part of the reason for this committee is the theory that anything that's proposed that requires town council action should go to a committee first. So this would be the committee that would, if you think of a typical town meeting, what was heard at town meeting? Much of that had to do with some of the issues that are here, like zoning by-law changes, the public art by-law. I'm not gonna come up with the complete list. So one way to look at this would be that this is simply the first, this is the town council's group that screens proposals that come from either other committees or from, through citizen petition. Now it's possible once the group sort of gets its grounding. So the answer, really the answer to your question is I have no idea after that. But once the group gets its grounding, there's nothing, I mean I could see it becoming more of also an activist where it itself generates, like wouldn't it be great if there was blank? You know, maybe something that doesn't, isn't appropriately coming out of one of the other many committees in Amherst. But I think that our primary, a primary goal of this is to support the committee structure that already exists in Amherst and be the first or be a liaison between those committees and the full council. Dorothy? Well, one example of something that could come before this committee would be what the young man mentioned, the talk about making the firehouse once it is vacated into a public art structure. And I think it was at least two years ago I was invited to a very large committee of people that I didn't know. Or I heard about it and I went, that's probably more likely. That was on that issue. So there's people in the town who've been working on this for a while. When we talk about economic development, we went to panels at the MMA, the Massachusetts Municipal Association on vibrant downtowns. And one of the common threads that was in all of them was that there was restoration of historical buildings and there was some public arts activity. And they pointed out that the public art might not make any money, but it made money for the things around it, the restaurants and whatever. And that's a kind of a fun way of doing economic development. So that was one item. Another item that would be at least looked at and considered by this committee is the one that we are working on and it's gonna come back to us. And that's the town green. In other words, there's professional people who do a tremendous amount of work in this town who are doing things. But at some point, we wanted to say, let's look at the whole picture and try to put it together. Pat. I was in favor of this committee when it was first proposed. It had a much smaller definition and I'm feeling like this is kind of burgeoning everywhere without necessarily needing to. I don't think I wanna see this committee review every other committee's actions or thoughts, but I am concerned about sustainable planning, land use, zoning, working on the master plan, economic community and economic development because unless we develop our community, we're gonna lose out on the equity-hugey-muggy thing, but we're also going to lose economic, chances at economic development because the more you support the community, the more you support small business, the more vitality financially it can come. And I'm feeling like this is getting scattered. It's a committee I wanna work on, but I'm feeling like we need to refine it and know that I'm rambling and I apologize. But I remember in the initial conversation, someone made the comment that this would slow down other committees and the comment was made that might be a good thing because of the idea that the two of you have of looking at things holistically. Shelley. I'm seeing the role of this committee also in terms of the master plan and kind of setting the priorities. Like reviewing the master plan and so that we're all on board with what are our priorities as a town. And I think once that's established through that, the other strategic vision is established after that. Of course. Oh, Kathy, I'm sorry. I guess I wanna respond to the sense that is it too large, is it not focused enough if this is the only extra committee we've got? So it's one of our fourth. It's the only one that could actually be actively proposing policies. We're an illegitimate of arm of the government. So a question to ask is do we need two rather than one? And I'm not gonna give the definition of the other if it's too broad, but I'm thinking of policies. We had an early discussion on neighborhoods, rental properties, decline of maintenance. Would this be a place where we view the way inspections and fees for failure to comply? What do we do to raise our standards on rental properties or affordable housing? Cause it's got all of this in it. And in some other towns they have two. You know, I'm not saying how I would divide them. One focused one way and one focused another. Cause we don't have another committee to be thinking about our housing policies, to think about development and culture and economic life. So I think that's why it is as broad as it is. We don't have another place to have this larger policy research task force. Darcy? I have sort of been thinking of this committee as the master plan committee. And when it first came up, I was, you know, one of the people that said, that felt like a barrier if it is looking at issues that are coming up from below, from the committees or the zoning bylaw or whatever. But, you know, my preference would be to have it be the master plan committee where we could refer things down to it. It could have a goal, a general goal of trying to update our policies in general in all these different areas for the updated master plan. And that would be a huge job. And it would, you know, various issues would come up, policy issues that would come back up to us so that we could decide them for the master plan. The piece I don't really like is that to have this committee position to be making recommendations on like the zoning bylaw because it feels like it's taking the power away from the council to be a step in between that and us. Steve? So I think that everyone's made a great point, but, you know, to Kathy's point, I struggle with every committee that we have that we have that has an and statement in it. Like, if we have an and statement, shouldn't that be two different committees? But I was also looking at towns that had broken out economic development and it's kind of planning and zoning. It may be, hold on to your seats, but it may be that some of our committees develop subcommittees in other words so that it may be that these are committees of five counselors and that actually three people are really interested in planning and zoning and three people are interested in, you know, economic development or something like that. You know, to Darcy's point, which I think is also an excellent one, in a way you could call this the master plan committee because pretty much everything that is listed is a master plan issue. So it could either be, it could be the master plan implementation committee. So we evaluate things regarding the master plan. Is this consistent with the master plan? Make a recommendation based on that. It could be the master plan update committee. So I think that that's a very consistent idea with how this is perceived. And then to Pat's point about shortening it, I would love to see your edited version of that because it does look like the whole store and it would be nice to, I mean, I think that there are ways of tightening it up so it doesn't become too diffused. Andy? I guess so one thing about discussion of master plan is that we really need as a counsel to understand, and I'm not the one who can do this, the relationship with the planning board because planning board is statutorily required to be the ones who develop a master plan. And when you read the charter, the role of this body is actually unusually strongly stated for many charters, but it doesn't place us in the position of developing a master plan is a question of reviewing and seeing whether we endorse your support. I forgot what the exact words are right now. So I just wanted to put that out, but I think that there've been a lot of good points raised today, I don't think we're gonna solve it as we did last week, solve a committee problem and somehow ask the president to consider whether there's some way we can get this back to a group that can produce some further work before it comes back to the council the next meeting or thereafter. Comments, I'm thinking at ad hoc committee and rather than send it to governance organization and legislation and get into that round that we did before, I'd rather have a ad hoc committee that meets to really hone in on this charge before we look at structure and stuff like that. Alyssa. I can certainly support that, but one of the things that without us actually having a template and we've discussed some variations on that and governance organization legislation is obviously looking at that more deeply, but one of the things we've been trying to incorporate thus far, things like action steps, reports, town council actions and none of that is addressed yet in this format. And so if I had a better understanding of what folks were actually gonna do on this committee in terms of who they were gonna be talking to before they talked to the council and how often that was going to happen and under what focus I would feel a lot more comfortable with it. I understand it does not wish to just be although one variation is a master plan implementation committee, it does not wish at this point to be simply reactive to things that are happening. Yet I can't grasp a situation where a bunch of people are excited about talking about turning the fire station into an art center and that's a focus of a committee that's a town council standing committee when we have a literally 100 other things that we have to do before we have that discussion. We can't be spending our time on that discussion to the exclusion of other conversations even though it's tied into economic development and other issues. So I'm just a little worried about the reality on the ground of what this will do and maybe if it's beefed up a little associated with what the reporting would be like, what the info gathering would be like, what the expectations were like, how often it was going to report back to this committee on things that didn't get referred to it by the committee but that grew out of its own heads. That would be helpful. Okay. Evan. So one thing that I wanna, I'm thinking about is making sure that this committee isn't duplicating the efforts of any other committee. So Mandy Joe brought up the idea that what does it mean to advise the town council with regard to design review when we have a design review board? What does it mean to advise the town council on historic preservation when we have historic commission? Looking at the last paragraph about relationship between town and educational institutions, what does that look like in the context if it's a UTAC, right? Or maybe a revived UTAC? And so hearing some concerns that maybe this is too broad, what's this gonna do? And I think maybe a starting point for that is to think about constraining this where we don't want it to duplicate because I understand a desire to analyze research and review recommendations for the chaining zoning bylaw but we also wanna make sure that when the planning board puts forth proposals, we're not doing the work over again before it goes to the council. Pat. Initially we were talking about this as being an advisory committee, not a committee that would take away power from the council but would add to the information and that the council had to make decisions. So that feels like an important point to me. And what would we be advising on and how far would we go in our research? I think are important questions. Shalini. I'd like to, I was just curious also, what is the outcome we want to see? Let's say if we do everything this committee wants to do, like in the ECAC committee, our goal is reducing carbon emissions and green gas, whatever, the greenhouse gases, yes. And so what is that goal that we are moving towards in this committee? Thank you. I'm going to suggest we form an ad hoc committee that that committee, so let me just move that, that we, the council form an ad hoc committee to review and refine this charge answering some of the questions, many of the questions that have been raised tonight. Some motion, do I have a second? George, George was over there first. Yes. Can you repeat who made the motion? That we form an ad hoc committee to look at the charge of the Community and Economic Development Committee and refine it in a manner that answers many of the questions raised. So we have a motion and a second. Any further discussion on that? Yes. Just from a process perspective, is there, I'm trying to think, so the ad hoc committee would work on this and bring it forward to the council but it still has to go through GOL and so would we bring it to the council, have a full discussion and then again, and then refer to GOL or is there way to maybe do these that once the ad hoc committee is done it just automatically goes to GOL? I think that that would be a wise plan to have it go to GOL or have GOL give you the format and the issues they want addressed. Yes, Dorothy. One of the things that the ad hoc committee could do is to research similar committees from other towns because that's one of the things we found out from the MMA that most towns have such a committee and it's a very important committee and I think we would say what do you do? Okay, and how do you do it and how do you do it so you don't duplicate? Okay. Other comments, questions, Dorsey? I would just say from my experience with the ECAC that we may want to assume there's gonna be a few more drafts and so we might not want to send it to the GOL committee right away because we might wanna wait till we get to the last draft but up to the committee it might have to go back. I mean, it might have to go back again. I'm hoping that the committee itself can come up with draft and maybe second draft and whatever and so that and then if we could ask the governance organization and legislation committee to say this is the format we want for committee you know, charges, that it can be put in that form. There are gonna have to be issues that you will need to discuss including the makeup of the committee, the terms of the committee and so forth. We've been through this more than once now. We've been through it once and so there's some learning curve that I think we've benefited from all of that. Any other comment? Call the question. We, oops, yes. Yeah, I'm sorry. Do we know who the committee is? We haven't, no. So we're in for the committee. We're gonna create the committee and then I appoint. So this is how a committee appointed by them. Yeah. It is. Mandy Jo, are you there? Yes, I am and my vote is a yes. Okay, this is a roll call vote and I'm gonna ask the town clerk to call the roll. Councilor Ballemill. Yes. Councilor Brewer. Yes. Councilor D'Angeles. Yes. Councilor Dumont. Yes. Councilor Griezmer. Yes. Councilor Hannake. Yes. Councilor Pam. Yes. Councilor Ross. Yes. Councilor Ryan. Yes. Councilor Shane. Yes. Councilor Schreiber. Yes. Councilor Steinberg. Yes. And Councilor Swartz. Yes. The vote is unanimous. Okay. And now I would like to see a show of hands or a voice if, because I can't see a show of hands of those councilors who are interested. I will appoint five of you because that's kind of our standard ad hoc committee at this point. So may I see a show of hands of people interested in being on this committee. Mandy Jo, are you putting your hand up or not? I am not putting my hand up. Okay. All right. Okay. First of all, Dorothy and Steve, definitely. You don't, well, then I think Pat. Yeah. Well, I thought there were too many people here. There are. And it's a hard choice, although I know what Kathy is going to be facing with budget. So I'm actually thinking about this. And this does not mean you can't give us suggestions. Yes. Oh, yes. Since this is an ad hoc advisory committee, could we have an even number? Because, you know, we're making a suggestion to the council and it's good. Could you have an even number? Mandy Jo, can they have an even number? I don't know. I'm going to say yes. All right. So, Shalini, Pat, George and Kathy, as well as our two original authors. I mean, even taking myself out of that, because forget the fact that I wrote the original one. No. And, no, I'm not on it. No, then that's a whole meeting. Okay. Let me just repeat. The people who are on this ad hoc committee are Dorothy Pam, Steve Schreiber, Shalini Balmilne, Pat DeAngelis, George Ryan and Kathy Shane. Okay. Thank you. We're moving on to the next agenda item. And we actually took action on that one. The next agenda item is, in fact, the Energy, Climate and Action Committee. There is a proposal before us of the actual charge. And I'd like to have us move directly to that charge of that committee and have it placed in motion. I'm placing it in motion. I'd like somebody to place the charge in motion. How, when are we hearing the report? It's, I think the report is, in fact, the charge in this case. Pardon? The report is the fact that is the charge in this case. Am I giving a report? No, we're not going to vote the committee out of existence. Into, into, into existence. We already did that. I'm sorry? Evan, yes. I move to approve the charge of the Energy and Climate Action Committee. Okay. Is there a second? George, thank you. Are there other, are there comments regarding the charge discussion? I'm confused. I have on my agenda here a report from the ad hoc committee, and then the council motion and vote. The, Dorsey, the report needs to go back to the committee to be edited in before it comes to the full council. It needs, the report always needs to go back to a full, the committee that it came from to have comments and edits before it can come into the council. And this, at this point, that has not happened. So we're going to not do the report, but stick to the motion of the charge. So we're focusing on the charge. Kathy? I just have a question on what I'm looking at. Okay. So I'm looking at what I think is a revised charge that has color codes in it. And am I reading it as this is the revised charge rather than these are areas we have questions that these are already areas that people have worked out. And are we getting, and then my second question, are we getting a consensus document or was there still some disagreement on what we're looking at? And I don't know the answers to that. Okay. Let me ask, let me stick to the first question. Is this, is this charge before us with the turquoise and all of the yellow, the charge as it stands coming out of the committee? Yeah, so let me just provide a 30 second explanation. The charge in front of you has two colors. The blue is what we voted on as a full council at the January 28th meeting. The yellow are revisions to the charge that were voted on and accepted by the ad hoc committee. So this is the final charge. The yellow is not intended to be areas of discussion. Those are changes from the last version that you saw, but they reflect the votes of the ad hoc committee that was tasked with revising this. Darcy. So the committee met on two different days and basically came to consensus on seven of the issues. And then we voted on three which you saw in that draft report that hasn't been approved, I guess. So the three issues were, whether or not the three issues that were voted on were whether or not the town councilor's term was one or two years and that ended up being Steve moved for the term to be three years and we voted unanimously that that should be the case. The second area in which we didn't have consensus was that Mandy Joe moved to amend section 2B to require that emissions reductions goal dates recommended to the town council other than those required under the 100% renewable energy goals be only those adapted, in quotation marks, adapted by the town council. So that was to require that any new goal dates be for items that had already been decided to be goals by the town council. And the third area was a motion by Mandy Joe to amend section four to remove the list of possible programs and policies. And that was initially we discussed changing it to Concord's list of programs and policies and then we discussed adopting the list that Steve had suggested earlier and ultimately voted four, two, one, two, adopt that. So basically that's where the three motions were voted in the way that I just said. So despite the fact that the charge has been wordsmithed to death in like four hours of the governance committee and at least four hours in the town council and at least about four hours in the ad hoc committee and more than an hour in the temporary rules committee and it had at least 20 final drafts. We met with the town manager a couple of times, with the president several times and even with all of that, I still think that the charge that we came up with is a very strong charge capable of positioning Amherst as a leader in climate action. It has a very strong clear purpose and requirement for long-term and interim goals for both greenhouse gas reduction and climate action in general. I hope very much that in not that long a time because of the outreach and education that we have done, residents from all sectors will have buy-in for the work of this committee. Are there any other comments, George? I think in honor of us, there are 260th birthdays, is that correct? Yes. As the town of the book and the plow, it's time to get this horse out of the barn and not into the fields. So let's please pass this and let these folks get to work. Andy. Okay, so just going through this, my comments are in questions are fairly specific, but one thing that I don't understand is the term of appointment for three years. I just don't see how that works with the council that is elected for two years and I also think that it's important that as a new council is elected every two years, that that council have the ability to appoint its own committees and not be left with committees that were appointed by a prior council. So that's one subject that I was very concerned about. There are some typographical things in here that I will skip commenting on, but we'll point out for editorial purposes, if asked or later. Another question that I have is on page two in the list under subsection four. I would like to know what built environment means because it's not a term that I'm particularly familiar with and I think the last thing is that the SME status is actually, this gets to editorial things again the SME status is mentioned at the beginning and at the end and with the blank there. So I therefore not sure that it's necessary in both. Okay, yes, Steve. So I feel like the guy that hit the jeopardy category that he's been studying for. But so the answer to the three year question, is that just seem like the best possible way to describe the terms. So this is not a committee of the council, it's a committee of the town. So what we're saying is that two members of this town committee must be counselors, the other seven must be residents, some of which may have these expertise is. So why not treat the counselors and the seven other residents the same? So everyone gets a three year term, the staggered terms to begin with will be one third of a year, one third will get two years, one third will get three years. People move in town, they move out of town, they get bored with committees. So people go on and off committees all the time. So if a counselor doesn't win election or wants to go off the council, they resign, their term, their term, somebody else takes their place. And this is a very common practice on all of our boards and committees. And also quite frankly, it's the only possible, every other variation didn't work. Because we need one at staggered terms, then the two years didn't work. I mean, just nothing else worked. So this is the only, in my estimation, this is the only possibility that worked. Also it's, so it means that the two counselors that go on, one will likely get a two year term, the other one will likely get a three year term. So there'll be some continuity or possibly they'll both get three year terms. It's up to the town manager. So the built environment is a term of art that basically means anything that is human constructed. So it could be buildings, it could be roads, it could be parks that are designed, it could be a golf course. So anything that's human constructed by humans as opposed to, well it's opposite, it's the natural environment, but then there's a whole area in between. Maybe I shouldn't have said that last part. I can possibly explain the SME status, which is part of our whole charge issue and the fact that we don't have a standard template for it. But the reason it's mentioned at the beginning is because whether or not it should be available, the reason it's mentioned at the end is to show whether or not we voted on it. So it shouldn't be there three times, it should be there two times, hopefully it's there two times. But this will be clear when we have little lines and things like that on our charges. I still am concerned about the terms and I realize and appreciate that a different group worked on this and that I just keep harping on this every time we talk about it here. But I don't agree with having the town council terms be longer than one year. It totally works to give town councilers only one year terms. There's no conflict with the fact that they're one, two, and three year terms for the initial non-council residence. And it just feels more appropriate to me given that almost all, if not all, certainly all that I have anything to say about terms will be one year when they're appointed by the president. I realize this is not a presidential appointment. It is a town council appointment, but I don't understand going beyond or it's a town manager appointment. That needs to be super clear. But at any rate, it's all the town manager, but to have it be longer than one year just for a town counciler just doesn't make sense to me given that I feel that as we all have developed all our committee commitments that every year we should be looking and saying, okay well now it's time for the president to survey us again to find out who wants to be on JCPC and who wants to do this. Oh, a councilor serving on this because if you're not serving as a councilor then you should be serving as a resident. Well you can't be both. So you're a councilor first and to me a councilor gets a one year term on a committee. I have a question about the use of the type of committee being standing. It seems to me that this is not a standing committee. It is a regular committee or what is the term we should use? Yes. Maybe Mandy Joe actually has a better answer to this but this is still a term of art that needs to be worked out by governance legislation when you see a later charge this evening depending on what hour that is. You will see some, we've now retitled a particular committee a standing committee of the town council. Standing is a term that's been used as opposed to time limited or ad hoc. Now that we have standing committees of the council that's a whole new concept that never existed under the former form of government. So people were just using standing to mean it doesn't end after a certain period of time. So we need a new term of art for that governance, GOL probably. So this is not a standing committee of the council. Okay, Evan. So governance, oh actually Mandy Joe wants to say something so she's probably gonna say what I was gonna say. Mandy Joe. So I am gonna address it as chair of governance. The governance committee had gotten as far as sort of type and legal reference and decided that the type would refer to as Alyssa was saying whether it's a standing or ad hoc for any committee, not necessarily just town committees of the council that standing would refer to a committee that's intended to exist for a long time. Ad hoc is something that is time limited and that the legal reference line would be the line that indicates whether it's a committee of the council or a committee of the town. We hadn't quite gotten to discussing whether we wanted to put that also specifically those words committee of the council, committee of the town into the type as Alyssa was saying one charge coming through tonight will say standing committee of the town council I think. But the standing ad hoc was to reference a timing of it not whether it was council or town. And is the section 2.5 the one that allows us to just create committees that are not standing? Not standing committees of the council, excuse me. Yes. Okay. So I've clarified that question. I do have one other question and that is when counselors serve on these committees, are they speaking for the council? If that's coming to me, the governance committee wouldn't have discussed that yet. Can I ask, I'll ask the same question with JCPC when we're on JCPC, are we speaking for the council? Fair. You know, in other words, I mean, we have some other places that we get slotted in. So. Alyssa. That's absolutely the intention with things like JCPC and BCG. Those bodies don't work correctly and have not worked correctly in the past when people have considered themselves representative in a general sense like jury duty, as opposed to taking information back and forth to what was often referred to as their home committee. And the only reason you're there is not because you've been a town counselor, it's because you're talking back and forth to the town council. So that's true for JCPC and BCG. Is that true? Is that an excellent question? There is a difference, those others are all elected bodies coming as representatives. Yes. So my question still stands. Steve. Well, this committee will have a chair, so the chair, but that's not your question. So my opinion is that the two people that are surveying as counselors would be no different than a person who's on it because they have expertise in net zero energy buildings. So the person who has expertise in net zero energy buildings wouldn't be speaking for all net zero energy buildings if they're speaking from their own expertise. And so the two counselors would be speaking from their particular perspective maybe knowing what the pole, having an aerial perspective of what's happened in the town, but I think only the president speaks for the council. Well, the counsel, only the council speaks for the council. And unless the council has voted a position that the counselors on this committee would take forward, can the counselors on this committee in fact then speak for the council? And the reality is they can't. So they can be of the council, but they cannot speak for the council unless the council has made a decision on something. They can be a liaison back and forth to the council, but Alyssa? I am belaboring this because this is why I didn't want counselors on this committee to begin with, or I wanted it to be a standing committee of the council. I think it's a mistake to have committees that have town counselors whose role is not to be a conduit back and forth to the town council. Okay. We have several discussions on the floor. We have a name of a committee and I think that's at this point, fine. We all agree that it is a standing committee meeting, but not standing of the council. It is a standing committee of the town. It's an ongoing committee of the town. Two major questions that have been raised. One is the three year terms. And then the second really is not in the charge itself, but it's basically inherent in the charge and that is the counselors being on the committee. So I think we should deal with the three year terms. Is there a motion to amend this regarding the three year terms? Yes, Shalini? For, I mean, do the motion and then the discussion because I just wanted to respond. What was the reasoning? One of the reasons why we chose the three year term. Please. Yes. I guess we felt that a counselor would need two years at least to work on this. Some of this work, you know, if they're starting out and some of the work is going to take more than a year and it would be, it's not fair for a counselor to have that uncertainty that after a year they may not be appointed. So anyway, that was my reasoning that having at least a two year commitment that they can really do their best in two years at least to get the things rolling. I mean, if there's not a motion to change it, it just means that when, if a counselor is no longer a counselor and they're still in their three year term, they cannot complete that term. And we are already, even though we sit for three years and one month, actually in 27 days, 28 days, future councils will only sit for two years. So it's, this can come back for changing at any point in time. Is there anybody that feels strongly enough on the three year issue that they need to make a motion at this point? Okay, then I don't see on the other issue of counselors being on it, is there anybody that wants to bring that to a motion at this point? Okay, are there any other questions to be raised or in an amendment process at this point? Yeah, it's not an amendment process so I don't want to put it out there in that fashion. I do think we should consider this whole thing about calling any committee. We create a standing committee simply because if you look through the entire list of committees that has been handed off to us and that has existed for eons in the town, there's never been the concept of a standing committee. You create a committee because you're creating committee and you feel a need for the committee. If it's a term limited committee, that's an exception. And it's very specifically stated. The one that is most recent that I can recall was downtown parking working group, which was specifically given a responsibility that was for a limited time and less extended. So it's just a matter of consistency with all of the committee charges that we inherited unless we're gonna go back and change every one of them to use the word standing. They're all assuming the word standing just because of their existence unless otherwise stated. All right, so we're not at this point going to actually change how this is written. However, we may at some point come back and do a whole review of what we call, we refer to different committees. Something I think the charter has started but not finished, okay? Any other questions, amendments? Margaret. I would just ask that in the original motion, the words as presented be added to the original motion so we're clear for the record that it's the charge that was brought forth tonight. Okay, that is a friendly amendment. Yes, and the second person? Seconded. Okay. Are there any other questions? Thank you, because if you didn't, I would. I call the question, all those in favor. This will be a roll call vote. Councillor Brewer. No. Councillor D'Angeles. Yes. Councillor Dumond. Yes. Councillor Griezmer. Yes. Councillor Hanakie. Yes. Councillor Pam. Yes. Councillor Ross. Yes. Councillor Ryan. Yes. Councillor Shane. Yes. Councillor Schreiber. Yes. Councillor Steinberg. Yes. Councillor Swartz. Yes. Councillor Balmille. Yes. The vote is 12-1. Thank you. We were going to have public comment, but I didn't take it. I don't think we need it. Is that okay? Thank you. We've had public comment and it lasted for a few seconds of applause. All right. We are moving on to the Communications Outreach and Appointments Committee. No, actually the ad hoc committee has to go through one more round of exercise, and that is to approve their minutes and to approve their committee report. Okay? And until such time they do, we are not going to dissolve the committee. They can do that by sending things to one person and not debate online. Okay? The Communications Outreach and Appointments Committee is the report of the committee. Sarah. Do you want the report now before we do the motion? Because I just noticed that it's also number eight. So I don't know. It mine's very brief, so. Why don't you just report on this motion at this point? Okay. So the motion before you would be to amend the charge of the Communications Outreach and Appointments Committee. The comment that I would make on that is simply the changes that have been made. One, we did change our name because if we didn't, then our acronym would be the same as the Council on Aging. So we did change our name to the Outreach Communications and Appointments Committee. And the only changes to our charge were you have the original and then you have a markup copy that simply was, there was no change in the context. It's just to meet the requirements of making sure that our charge is the same as the other charges that have been put forward. Okay. So the mission's been made. Is there a second, George? Second, that's to accept the charge. I'm gonna have Sarah being the person that did the motion. George is the second. Any further discussion? Call the question. All those in favor? We have to do a roll call vote. Councilor D'Angeles. Yes. Councilor Dumond. Yes. Councilor Griezmerk. Yes. Councilor Haneke. Yes. Councilor Pam. Yes. Councilor Ross. Yes. Councilor Ryan. Yes. Councilor Shane. Yes. Councilor Schreiber. Yes. Councilor Steinberg. Yes. Councilor Swartz. Yes. Councilor Balamillan. Yes. Councilor Brewer. Yes. The vote is unanimous. Okay. The next item on our budget, I mean on our budget. Next item on our agenda is the zoning board of appeals. And I categorize this as a kind of cleaning up our act, if you will. And it comes, and I've shared with each of you the email that has been sent out, although we have made a change in the reference to the charter in that email, and is in your packet. Basically, this is to extend the appointments of four members, of four people who are acting as members of the zoning board of appeals and have been doing that since December 3rd. And their appointments were initially extended by the select board back in May. And this now extends it to June 30th, 2019. And particularly because that would give us time to go through the process of appointing a zoning board of appeals. Is there, so I'm placing in motion to appoint the following members of the zoning board of appeals to comply with the Amherst-Holm rules section, 10.70, all with terms to expire June 30th, 2019. Keith Langsdale, Joan O'Mearra, Thomas Simpson, and Steven Judge. Is there a second? Second. Any further discussion or questions? Call the question. Is there roll call vote? Councilor Dumont? Yes. Councilor Griezmer? Yes. Councilor Haneke? Yes. Councilor Pam? Yes. Councilor Ross? Yes. Councilor Ryan? Yes. Councilor Shane? Yes. Councilor Schreiber? Yes. Councilor Steinberg? Yes. Councilor Swartz? Yes. Councilor Baumann? Yes. Councilor Brewer? Yes. Councilor DeAngeles? Yes. The vote is unanimous. Okay. The next item on the agenda is appointments. And the only item under that is a town manager appointment. Mr. Bachmann, would you like to speak to the appointments? Yes, thank you. So in your packet, I've been filed with the town clerk today. Simultaneously, I refer to your appointments for the Community Action, Community Preservation Commission. The appointments you have in front of you are the recommendations that have been received from the various committees that are required by our bylaw. These are the committees that said these are the people we'd like to have represented. And those are the ones that are in front of you. I could read their names to you if you'd like. David Williams from the Amherst Housing Authority. Fletcher Clark from the Conservation Commission. Robin Fordham from the Historical Commission. Sarah Marshall from the LSSE Commission. And Michael Burtwistle from the Planning Board. So in other words, these are committees that were asked who they would like to appoint. Yes, and each committee took action to recommend these. And each committee took action to recommend. So in fact, these are not town manager appointments. They technically are. Technically they are, okay. That's why it's, but we honor the request from the committee and it goes to you for your review as well. Okay. So there are two options here. One is to make these appointments. And the second is to refer this to the Communications Outreach Communications and Appointments Committee. Yes, Alyssa. So I have two questions. One is I did not get a chance because we just got this today to go back and go through our minutes of previous referrals. But it had been my belief that because this committee of outreach communications and appointments was established that this no longer needed a referral every time it came to the council, that things were just going straight to us and while they could certainly get additional attention by being reported out at this committee, at this council meeting, it might be that the town manager wanted to make appointments. Some week we're not having a meeting and would not need to hold on to that. And so I'm unaware of why there would need to be a motion to refer it to OCA unless the idea was we would go ahead and simply agree to it because of the unique nature of these particular appointments, which is to that they are sent by what I referred to earlier tonight as home committees, which then leads me to one more comment associated with that which I utterly object to as I have stated to every committee who ever brought forward CPAC appointments in the past that unless they can point to why this is true in this Community Preservation Act law that we accepted as a community many years ago, it does not make any sense to me at all that the person's term would be coterminous with their term on the sending body. So for example, Amherst Housing Authority appointments used to be five years long. And so to say that for five years that person's going to serve on the Community Preservation Act makes no sense to me. That seems like the sort of thing a committee should be looking at every year and sending that forward again because you need to rebalance who's doing what on any individual committee. So as it turns out, most of these dates are either 19 or 20, which would be a one year appointment. But there is one on there that is much longer and it just simply doesn't makes, again, unless it's a technicality in the Community Preservation Act law which is rather burdensome in the way it's rather detailed. We didn't just pick these committees out of the air. They come out of the law that I don't believe we need to have it be coterminous with that end. And we've had problems in the past with bodies who have appointed a person to serve that. They've been appointed to serve for their three year term on the body. Then they've stopped showing up. Then it's become awkward for the committee to throw that person off and then they're not showing up at the Community Preservation Act meetings. And so if you just do it on a year by year basis then it's simplified. So that would be my recommendation to the Housing Authority in this particular case that they understand that it would be for a year that it's not up to them to say when it ends. But that's been a previous discussion. Comments. So the option is to accept these or to refer. I have to say that given the fact that the individual bodies have already made their nominations, I found it less compelling to refer. But that's if the, I have to get the name straight. Outreach Communications and Appointments Committee wants to have it be automatic referral then we can make it automatic referral. Shalini. I think it would be helpful for me to have a sense of what is the charge of the OCA Committee. So, I mean, what is their role and with respect to appointments. Yes, Andy. Please. Yeah, I think that maybe I should respond to that and put that into context of why we probably ought to go ahead and act on this tonight. The Community Preservation Act Committee exists as a matter of state law that if we've accepted the Community Preservation Act as a community, which we have, that there has to be a committee such as the one that we're talking about that obtains proposals and then reviews proposals and makes recommendations for funding to the legislative body of the community. In this case, council. And then when the council receives the proposal, we have the options available to us to accept, reduce the amount, but we do not have the ability to create our own proposals that have not previously gone to the Community Preservation Act Committee. Having been the liaison for several years from the select board to this committee, which is a non-voting member, I just observed the meetings. They worked really hard and there's a lot of thought that goes into the process, a lot of time that goes into the process of reviewing the applications and asking questions of the proposers who've submitted proposals and thinking very hard about how they can propose the best allocation of what is always less money available than money requested. And the CPAC this year has already begun some of that work and I think that we would be not serving the purpose of the committee well if we don't go ahead and confirm the appointment so that the people who have been actually meeting with the committee but are not voting members can actually complete the work that they have already engaged in. So it's a long answer to the question but it gets to the point that I support our making the decision tonight to confirm these appointments as recommended by the manager. So is that a motion? I will make that a motion. Okay. Second, for the discussion. Pat, did you have a question? I just had a comment. It seems to me that as Alyssa said that these, it's very, and Andy also this is a very special kind of appointment that we can pass it through but it's also critically important to me that we refer any town manager recommendations to the Outreach and Appointments Committee and that they have information about the pool of applicants for these committees. Of which there wouldn't have been a pool in this case because they were, right. Yeah. Yes, Sarah, please. I don't want this to be redundant to what Pat said but yeah, just to answer to Shalini the reason that we exist is to make sure that we have a decision tree, a process for all appointments and that we have a process that's transparent and easily understood and can be followed each time. So while I do understand that we're saying what we're saying about this committee, I think that appointments should go through us. When, let me just clarify. Even in the case where they're identified by bodies other than us and other than the town manager per se. I think in this particular, that's what I'm saying. I guess I wasn't clear. I'm acknowledging that in this case that they were, I think that that is okay in this particular case is what I was trying to say. Although I do want to give credence to which when we look at terms, I think that that's something that's important. Right, at some other point, I would suggest that the outreach communications and appointments committee actually look at how we've set up these terms but not necessarily at this point. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with Sarah's reasoning on this. I think that there should be a practice that under normal circumstances that all committee appointments do go through the committee of the council that's appropriate. We're sort of in an unusual circumstance in our first year of operation as a council that we're inheriting a government that's working and is also in transition. And this is just a special circumstance but I don't think the special circumstance should swallow what's the sound practice for council going forward. And in fact, we have agreed as a council, I believe that all committee appointments would go first to that committee and then come to us. So there is a motion on the floor. It's been seconded that in this case, we actually go ahead, yes. Darcy, I'm sorry. I just wanted to say that we had a meeting this morning and we looked up the definition of one off to try to see if we could find a better word, which we couldn't. But so this is just another situation, another one off from my perspective and that we would hope to get future referrals to the committee. Any further conversation? Call the question. This is a roll call vote on the motion to approve the town managers recommended appointments to the Community Preservation Act committee. Councilor Griezmer. Yes. Councilor Hanakie. Yes. Councilor Pam. Yes. Councilor Ross. Yes. Councilor Ryan. Yes. Councilor Shane. Yes. Councilor Schreiber. Yes. Councilor Steinberg. Yes. Councilor Swartz. Yes. Councilor Balmille. Yes. Councilor Brewer. Yes. Councilor DeAngeles. Councilor Dumont. Yes. The vote is unanimous. Thank you. We're now going to move on to committee reports. These reports can be as brief as you'd like to make them. Communications outreach and appointments. So mine is going to be brief. I believe that everyone received our report to read. So you can read it. If you had any questions, feel free. But I think the only things that are worth note that we have done since the last time there's been a report is that we changed our name. We cleaned up our charge. And that today, as our morning meeting at 9.30, we moved to appoint the following members of the Zoning Board of Appeals, DBA to comply with Amherst Home Rule Charter Section 10.70 with all with terms to expire on June 30th, 2019. Keith Langsdale, Joan O'Mara, Thomas Simpson, and Steve Judge. And then we acted on that. Great. And I guess I should also assure everyone that what we have been working very, very diligently on and trying to be thoughtful as well as expedient is decision trees so that we can bring you process for all of the appointments to the council. How do we handle it? We have different decision trees and we're working really hard to do that for you. Great. Thank you. Finance committee. So the finance committee did not have a written report because we actually have not met since we completed our work on the recommendation for the Station Road Bridge, which was a written report that you previously received. We are meeting tomorrow and have a tentative meeting for a week from tomorrow. I should say we're meeting tomorrow if the weather permits us to meet, and I'm assuming that it will. The purposes of the meeting tomorrow largely to work on the capital projects that we discussed earlier to see if we can understand a little bit more about the financial elements of the proposals that are out there or likely to be out there, material that was presented to you, but I think that the committee, our finance committee needs to understand better. The second thing is that we're gonna begin to have discussions about how to develop a long-term plan that would encompass funding of all of the major projects that we're discussing, horizontal and vertical, as they've been previously described to us. And then the third element is to organize ourselves on how we plan to do our work for the remainder of the year and handle the various issues that are gonna be coming before us, mostly the budget, both the operating budget, capital budget, and really it's the consolidated operating budget for the entire community because it also includes the enterprise funds and we're gonna have to determine how we're going to approach that work and the number of meetings and schedule of meetings that we have going forward so at the next meeting I think we will likely have a more substantial and written report for you. The other thing that I wanted to just briefly say is that Kathy, who's the vice chair of the committee and I went last week to meet with Dave Murphy who is chair of the committee on finance of the Northampton City Council because we thought that it would be helpful for us to know how another community works in more than just looking at paper but actually sitting down and having an intensive discussion and being able to ask questions and Council Murphy was extremely generous with his time and allowed us to sort of hear his presentation of how they work. Their charter is very similar to ours because they're a city as we're a city now and so they're working on same timetable also as a very similar process of how the budget moves from the executive in their case the mayor in our case the town manager to the council and is considered in the finance committee. I'm not gonna go through all of my what he said because that would be impossible to do but I'm gonna touch just real quick on four points and then see if Kathy has anything to add. One is that most of their meetings are embedded in council meetings so when a meeting is scheduled it includes a note to that effect in the meeting notice to make sure that that is appropriate and actually did look at their meeting notices afterwards but the way it was described to us is that all of the councilor sit there and then when it adjourns as a council meeting and convenes as a finance committee meeting that the finance committee chair Mr. Murphy takes over and chairs the meeting the only people who vote are the members of the committee on finance and in retrospect and thinking about that I think it's difficult for us to consider such an option mostly because our charter mandates that there be four members of the committee who well it doesn't say for I think we've created for but we've made that commitment now and with non but we are required to have non council members of the committee so I think that would make it a very difficult process but his point was is that it is financial issues integral in everything that a council does and that it creates an understanding in a very efficient way. I think that as a finance committee we're gonna have to discuss that and find how we're going to make sure that we're providing that opportunity for you in some other way. The other things just now trying to be real quick on that we asked about what matters go before the finance committee he said well any matter that has any financial impact on it which can be lots of different things but he also pointed out that their practices in Northampton that matters can go before numerous committees that it doesn't necessarily have to go before just a single committee so that if there's a financial impact they may get it but another committee may get it he did say that if it's an ordinance which is the equivalent to us of what we're calling bylaws that the legislative committee is the last one to comment before it goes to the council and he talked a little bit about the second reading process and the last thing that I wanted to just comment on similar to our JCPC they have a committee on capital improvements that reviews the proposals from the various departments it is a little bit different from our JCPC and it is composed a little bit more solidly of staff and so staff is a more dominant role in that committee than ours but the other thing that I noted was that their committee actually was reviewing proposals in October and November and doing it well in advance of the process it would and then the proposals go in their case to the mayor for review and it sort of emphasized to me a point that I had been thinking about and again we have to raise with the finance committee is we really need to look very carefully at our schedule for the year the annual schedule of how it is that we do the budget process and how the committee the finance committee fits into the entire budget process and what we just did with the community preservation act committee is another example because they have historically worked to try and get a report out by town meeting date at the beginning that was essentially I gave them an April deadline they don't need an April deadline for what we do most cities that have community preservation act have multiple times during the year where they will consider proposals and it's a more of a rolling basis you said that they have two principal rounds in Northampton so there's a lot of scheduling questions that I still think that we have to come to grips with as a council in order to figure out how to make this entire budget process finance process work most efficiently and effectively. Thank you. Kathy did you have anything to add? No that was very thorough. Thank you. Governance, organization and legislation committee? Yes. There is no report because the GOL committee has not met since our last meeting and our last report we have two meetings scheduled this week both Thursday and Friday to get to the rest of our work the first thing on that agenda is the template for committee charges and then we'll be reviewing some of the stuff that I talked about our retreat language for clarity, consistency and actionability and what we actually mean by that and some the charge itself and then the resident advisory committee charge that has been referred to us at this point so that is my report. Thank you. Rules of procedure and committee? Alyssa? Yes before I give the report might I ask that aside from the lateness of the hour would might we normally consider entertaining questions after each committee's report? Oh thank you. Are there any questions thus far? Because Mr. Steinberg answered my question that I had so it worked out perfectly. Alyssa? Our report is in your packet it was submitted many days ahead of time thank you to Vice Chair Kathy Shane she made sure that she basically documented what we decided at a meeting and turned it in immediately so that was incredibly efficient and you saw what we suggested tonight was put into practice associated with the public comment periods and I very much appreciate and we appreciate the President's willingness to say yeah let's try something new so we will continue to offer trials like that on a variety of issues. We have many things that we are working on in terms of all the rules of procedure that are out there in the world that we are trying to turn into appropriate Amherst level procedures but one thing that I think would be useful to consider in your minds governance to consider and luckily Mandy Joe's also on rules of procedure with us is one of the ways we might avoid some of this confusion around what standing committees are and just standing being really it being anything other than standing is there's it's very typical in other communities that what we're calling standing committees of the town council are called town council subcommittees other places maybe mind blown. We could consider calling ourselves subcommittees in which case that would be a lot clearer to a lot of people as to what that committee is. It's a subcommittee that's only town councilors because that's the way we've defined it. So something that we'll be talking about again I assume GL may talk about and may come forward at some point in the process. Kathy. I just want to add one more thing. You have it as Alyssa said you have it in report. We also talked about the public comments we get that aren't people coming to the meeting but are sending us and trying to work with our community participation officers or to figure out a way if we can capture them in a form that we can make a repository that's public. And I we met I met someone who came to chat with me in office hours today that said in Montana and his community their council puts them up and it's called public comments and there is a by correspondence. Someone's putting them up as a PDF and posting them and the charter commission did this. So people will realize that they can send it to us by mail. They can send us by email and it will be out there and it's it'll require some work but it's a way of making people who were really welcoming the comments and the broader public will be able to see them. So this is we have to figure out if it's feasible how we would do it but I think it would be a way of being very responsive and people have families and can't get here at dinner time. They can still feel their comment reach the wider world as well as us. We look forward to a recommendation from the committee. Thank you. Are there other questions or other questions of this committee? Okay, proclamations and commemorations. There are none. We're moving to approval of minutes and let me just state for the purpose of discussion that we do send the draft minutes out to people in advance. We ask that if they have comments they provide them directly to the town clerk by noon on Monday so that they can be corrected and put in this agenda and the two committee minutes sets that we are looking at today and I'll take them first January 28th. Do I have a motion to approve? Is there a second? So it was Pat and Kathy. We need a roll call vote and questions, questions. I'm sorry. Yeah, actually I do have a correction if I have the correct set of minutes on page three and the first time it says voted 3-8-2 it has me voting twice, which in fact, I did not do and because I did abstain, I did not vote for and I also was curious whether Councilor Pam was present and voted and so I was a little bit uncertain on the vote for that meeting. If I may. I don't have the actual video to look back at or the folder to look back at at the moment but we will make the correction. Pam, Dorothy? I was here on the 28th of January. Okay. All right, so it seems that the one correction is that Steve. Page seven at the bottom. January 28th. Yeah. Okay. Page seven at the bottom voted 11-0 but the count I think is 11-2. Okay. Any other comments or observations? That's what I hear. Then I guess we're to call the question as amended. Yes, call the question to approve the minutes as for January 28th, 2019 as amended. We need a roll call vote. Councilor Haneke? Yes. Councilor Pam? Yes. Councilor Roth? Yes. Councilor Ryan? Yes. Councilor Shane? Yes. Councilor Schreiber? Yes. Councilor Steinberg? Yes. Councilor Swartz? Yes. Councilor Balmille? Yes. Councilor Brewer? Abstain. Councilor DeAngeles? Yes. Councilor Dumont? Councilor Griezmer? Yes. The vote is 11 in favor, two abstentions. Okay. We're moving on to the minutes of the council retreat which is February 2nd, 2019. Do I hear a motion to approve the minutes? Steve to move second. George to second. Comments, corrections. Okay, move the question. I'm sorry, Shalini? It seems like there were a lot more discussion that happened than is recorded, even in terms of bullet points, so. We don't have a video of that meeting. So unless you are, I mean, there will be other products coming out of that meeting and one of them I'm going to speak to in a moment and that's the goals. Is that sufficient? Okay, any other questions, comments? Call the question. Roll call vote. The motion is to approve the February 2nd, 2019 town council minutes as presented. Councilor Pam? Yes. Councilor Roth? Yes. Councilor Ryan? Yes. Councilor Shane? Yes. Councilor Schreiber? Yes. Councilor Steinberg? Yes. Councilor Swartz? Abstain. Councilor Baumele? Yes. Councilor Brewer? Abstain. Councilor DeAngeles? Yes. Councilor Dumont? Yes. Councilor Griesmer? Yes. Councilor Hanneke? Yes. The vote is 11 in favor and two abstentions. Okay. Town managers report. Are there some highlights from this? Yes. First, I want to announce students don't know already. There is an early dismissal tomorrow at 11.30 for the regional schools and 12.30 for the elementary schools, anticipation of the snows coming. And also beginning tomorrow night, there will be a snow emergency declared beginning tomorrow morning. And so no cars will be allowed to be parked on the street starting tomorrow night, not tonight, which is Tuesday at 11.59 p.m. that the cars will have to be removed so people want to make sure people hear about that. Attended an excellent event today with the president at Wagner Wood. This was put on by the Department of Energy of the Commonwealth with the secretary and the commissioner of energy being there. It's the executive office of environmental affairs secretary and they announced a grant of $800,000 to Wagner Wood to purchase the equipment to process, handle, store and deliver dry wood, including the purchase of a chip trailer designed to pneumatically deliver dried residential or commercial fuel storage silos. And it was a tremendous event put on by the Wagner family. They had literally carved a podium out of a tree trunk and had decorated and they had created seating out of trees that they had cut just for the event. It was a really remarkable event. The fourth thing was I want to thank the university and the cooperation for the fire and police for the Super Bowl festivities. At the end, there was about 2,500 to 3,000 people who had gathered around the Southwest dorms. There was one injury, our fire chief got, well, there's some incidents off campus with small fires and people being hurt but pretty much our entire staff responded really well and really was focused on have making sure people are in the right place. There's a lot of planning done in advance. Fortunately, we're getting used to this because we've had a lot of victories in our professional sports teams and so they did a great job. Slightly sad note on Sunday afternoon and this is more of a warning to the public. A 11 year old boy was walking across the ice at Puffer's Pond and the ice collapsed under him. He was just, I don't think he went in very deep but there were ice fishermen there that probably gave him, we think, gave him confidence he could walk on the ice but not all of Puffer's Pond is safe to walk on. Police and fire responded, took him over to CDH and he was fine almost as a precautionary measure but an alert to the public that we have signs up there that the ice, especially where the channel comes in, moving water doesn't freeze very quickly and that can be very thin ice even though you might see people fishing, ice fishing in other parts of the pond and this is true so please be careful of the ice. The compliments to the LSEC and their Winterfest, they had a week of activities. Luminaria was spectacular. It brought a lot of people downtown. Children loved it. This is where they put bags with candles in them throughout the comment and it was very popular and I talked to a number of people who came downtown just for that and then we went out to dinner so it was a real boost for the business economy downtown and they concluded on Saturday with an event at Cherry Hill which was very well attended as well. This week we'll be doing a mock emergency drill that the police, the fire chief is organizing with MIMA and he will be putting town staff through their paces on different scenarios that will be at a tabletop exercise but say now this is happening, now that is happening, what would you do, what would you do just to train us in terms of decision making during a crisis. It's a good thing and then we will debrief afterwards to say what went right, what went wrong. Tended a meeting today as we prepare for the event that will not be named on March 2nd. There will be a concert at the university. There's also a hockey game at the university and so the police and fire and the university are all working very cooperatively to make sure that that day goes off as smoothly as it has for the last three years. Interestingly, that's also the day of the four town meetings which will be at the high school because the police take over the middle school for the most part and so we will let the other towns know that they may see a large number of police officers on our streets but that's precautionary, it's nothing to worry about. The downtown parking consultant has started their work. They met with the business improvement district and other stakeholders, I mentioned that and they'll be here again to continue to meet with the public. The Board of Licensed Commissioners has its inaugural meeting tomorrow at the same time as the finance committee and they will be basically hearing, being welcomed, making sure that they've done all the things they need to do to comply with being able to serve, being told, discussed, having talked about what their mission is and being given material. There isn't real action for them to take on that first meeting which was our intention. We're blessed that Mr. Slaughter, former select board chair is serving on that committee. He has gone through a lot of the stuff before so I think that will be a very strong committee. And then I mentioned the four towns meeting and also I think the president mentioned that on March 7th we have a public forum on the budget at the middle school auditorium at 6.30 p.m. Oh, one last thing. Hampshire College, as you all read, is going through some changes potentially. There's, so we're monitoring that and involved with that in a pretty clear way representing the interests of the town because Hampshire is one of our largest employers and one of our largest landowners and to me it's like as if Atkins Market said they were gonna have trouble or was going to go out of business or something, we as a town would gather around and say what is the interest of our community? Hampshire has about 400 employees, about half of them live in Amherst and the other half live in Northampton area so there's a real economic, personal interests for people who work there that we as a community have to be concerned about so we'll be engaged with that as well. Okay, thank you. Any questions? Yes, Kathy. I just have one question. On page three, this is just someone noted this was in your report, one of the people of North Amherst that the North Amherst Library study is in from Coon Riddle and the question was at what point will that be available if people wanna see the results? Sure, we can put that, we can give that put in your packet next meeting if you'd like or it's available, yeah. Other questions? Yes, Alyssa. One of the concerns I've had as we transition through our new lives here is that it appears to me that both our Transportation Advisory Committee and the Downtown Parking Consultant are excluding the town council as stakeholders. I'm not saying they're actively excluding us, that's not what I'm saying at all but we're not being advised of public meetings or of surveys in the case of TAC directly as town counselors, we're just supposed to notice it and I think that's a mistake given that we exist and that we were elected that we should be advised in some fashion, it's totally fine if we are not considered a stakeholder group per se especially if either of those groups is ever planning to present anything to us as I believe is the case in both cases but as I advised my friend who is the chair of the TAC if you don't tell us about the survey then when you come here we're going to say who got that survey, cause we don't know about it and so I'm just asking that somehow there be some thought given to how that discussion might take place throughout the community as things like this come up, okay. Other comments? Yes, Pat? When Gilford Mooring was giving the report on how we bid and build and I was wondering if it wouldn't have been helpful if we had gotten that in advance and enough in advance so that we could all look at it and then just bring our questions because it seemed to take a long time it was valuable but I feel like I could have done it more at home and then just ask him questions based on my understanding or lack of it. Other questions, comments? Yes, Paul? So I'd like to address that because that was a conversation we had and in fact he noted that there were a lot of other slides that we did not go through. I think part of it is for your education but also part of it is for the public education as well because we think as you start to consider significant decisions your constituents are gonna wanna know the context that you're making those decisions. So sometimes we don't go into a lot of detail. This was one it seemed like people needed to know we are here and that was the reason for it and if it was too long I apologize for that. No, no, no it wasn't too long. But and I thank you for that explanation because I wasn't thinking about the public. Okay. Yes, show me. Can you congratulate you for being nominated for the MPL? Congratulations, we don't have the results that, so we don't know whether it was successful. No, it was just the nomination, right? Right, it's one of three. Darcy, yes. I have one more question for Paul and that is in your report you said something about coming up with calculations about the school project by the 25th or something like that and just wanted to know if you could explain what that's all about. So the goal is to have a presentation by the capital project's manager, Sean Magano, who is here tonight. He's the school business finance director as well. In terms of how those four, those projects you saw tonight integrate with the school project and how those can look at on a spreadsheet that and how they could be afforded by the town and what would need to happen for you to afford all of those projects without blowing through our tax cap, which ones, he's got different scenarios that he's developed. They will be discussed with the finance committee first and go through it sort of as a test run to see what, get feedback from the finance committee, see what would be good to provide to the council. I do want to note that there, I might have, having talked to the president about this yet, there might be a conflict with the 25th for him because there's another, they've changed some things that are at the school because they're canceling, likely canceling tomorrow night's meeting. So I might have to talk to you about another date for that because he can't get two places at one night. Really? So I just learned that. So I apologize for that. Other questions of Mr. Bachmann? Then we, just in the president's report, I'm not going to review the substance in the minutes of the retreat, but just say that I hope to have the draft goals to put before the council on, at our next meeting, February 25th. These goals will help guide us and also help us measure our own progress, but then we'll be meshed with the town, with the goals set by the select board and form the basis for the town manager's evaluation. Are there any future, are there any questions on that? Yes, Kathy. When you're talking about goals, we were, we had some conversations about first year, three and five year. Are you gonna present? These are the short term ones. The short term, so what we hope to get done by the end of the year. Exactly. Thank you. Any other questions? Future agenda items, councilor comments? Yes, Steve. So I know that all councilors are interested in the built environment or vertical and horizontal construction. So the Tennyson Mide building, which are the department of architecture, the department of landscape architecture and regional planning and the building construction technology program have excellent lecture series. All, there was a lecture tonight on what UMass is doing for sustainability. So on Wednesday night at, Wednesday afternoon at 430 p.m., Phil Langdon, who is an author, is speaking about walkable communities. So he is kind of an expert in new urbanism, which is sort of the predecessor of what you might think of as form-based zoning. So it's 430 p.m. in the design building, room 170. So the street address is 551 North Pleasant and parking is generally free at UMass on the surface lots after 4 p.m. So, but there's a PVTA stop right in front. So 551 North Pleasant. Steve, which day is it again? Wednesday the 13th. Yeah. Will it be recorded? I'll send that to you all. I'm sorry, Shalini. Steve, will that be recorded? I think they, so it's a different department. It's a different department than mine. I do believe they record them. But if it's, I don't, I'll send that to the council. Cathy? I just wanna, it creates a conflict with yours. I was just checking mine, but there's the TAC meeting that Alyssa, you were saying they should liaise on what this, but there is a TAC meeting talking about a broad schema of transportation that starts at five, that same day, if just people can be looking at it. And the other thing, Linda, on potential future agenda items, I just don't know what might fit. On Wednesday night later at the middle school, the Fort River feasibility studies talking about their results. And I think some of that will be helpful when we are looking at the school proposals. So one issue would be if we wanted to, if we have any room in our agendas to give them some time on our council agenda, cause they actually did look at a way to do zero net energy building and they've done alternative ways of using that piece of land. So it's both to let everyone know that meeting's happening, but it's a potential agenda item for us, even if we kept it to like 15 minutes. I also would like to recommend that you check out the two latest conversations with Stan Rosenberg. One was by two members of the Fort River study committee and the other one was the chair of the school committee and myself talking about the school project. Both of them I think have now been publicly broadcasted so they should be available on the web. Any other comments, questions? Yes, Alyssa? Not tonight, but at a future time, if you could clarify what you said earlier associated with the retreat results and town manager evaluation and goals and we didn't decide on a timeline for the town manager evaluation then that's still being looked at, including by OCA. And so if you could just give us a sense of what decisions need to be made when associated with that to make sure we're all in alignment and all talking to each other, that'd be great. Thank you. Any other comments? Do I hear a motion to adjourn? So moved. Second. Dorothy Pam seconded. We have to have a roll call. Are you still awake, Mandy Jo? I am. And then I wanna know who won the pool. All right, roll call. Counselor Ross? Hold on. Roll call. Okay, yeah. Counselor Ryan? Counselor Shane? Yes. Shriver? Am I gonna take an hour and 15 minutes for my response? Yes. Yes. Counselor Steinberg? Yes. Counselor Swartz? Yes. Counselor Balmille? Yes. Counselor Brewer? Yes. Counselor DeAngeles? Yes. Counselor Dumont? Yes. Counselor Griezmer? Yes. Counselor Hanakie? Yes. Counselor Pam? Yes. It is unanimous. We're adjourned.