 Okay, I want to welcome everybody to our Amherst community chat for Thursday, March 4. Today we have special guest and Amherst native Jennifer Moisten. Jennifer works on the human resources and also town managers team here in the town of Amherst, as well as serving as one of our community participation officers, and a staff lays on to a bunch of different boards which will hear about shortly. So we want to welcome Jen, and thank you for joining us despite having a big to do with the dentist this morning. We appreciate your dedication. So, so welcome. And I want to remind people in the room live that we will have opportunity for question and answer so feel free to familiarize yourself with the q amp a function in zoom or raise your hand in zoom and we'll be able to continue and hear your question. So before we have Jen introduce herself a little bit more, I would like to invite Paul Bachman your town manager to give any uptown updates. Yeah, so our focus so much more focus on across the team is about vaccinations that includes everybody from police fire health senior center town manager's office communications everybody is involved in one way or another with helping our residents get the vaccinations. We have a really good system set up led by our health director Emma dragon. The frustrating part thing part for us is that there's no supply. We this week we got 280 vaccines we're prepared to do five, five times that many during the course of a week so it's it's kind of frustrating because the need is there. Our residents really want to get it. We are a partner with North Hampton and delivering the vaccine in Hampshire County. Right now we're delivering it through the bank center. And typically what we do is we when we know how much supply we're going to have around 11 o'clock on Monday we open up the registration portal, and people can start registering. One of the deals that we have made with the state, if we were to become a regional site is that our site is open to anyone in the Commonwealth. So, but the announcement that we're happy is that we've done over 5000 vaccines so far. Since we started which is a really good number for a town our size and really proud of everything that people how everybody came together put this through. We don't have high hopes for huge amounts of new vaccine coming down the road unfortunately, it really is a supply and demand and even though we know that the Johnson and Johnson vaccine has been approved. We don't see large numbers of doses of that vaccine coming our way anytime soon that's a one that's the single dose vaccine. I was on a call this morning, a state epidemiologist and they basically said, yeah, we're getting some but not. It's not it's not a game changer at this moment in time. So hopefully we're prepared when they do unleash more vaccine and we're able to deliver it. We're going to be there helping to do that. So I think there's a few other things I do want to mention. This is a great week for us for grants. We received a significant grant 194 to something like that 190 some $1000 to redo the steps near the between Johnny's and the bank center, and create a walkway that's a handicap accessible walkway down from Clark House and Wayland up to that section of the bullwood garage to do additional sort of seating and stuff like that on the bullwood bullwood garage that first level there and also to fix the walking path in front of the bank center that goes over to where the Unitarian Church is so lots of improvements. It's a big number but it doesn't go very far when you're doing major construction like that but we're excited about that. We've gotten a cybersecurity grant from the state where all of our employees will be trained in cybersecurity or you've probably have read some things where people have hacked into any place and really disrupted the operations where we haven't had that experience. It's not like we're not being attacked but our IT department has us pretty locked down and has good protocols in place but we also know that many of these things insinuate themselves and through user error we want to minimize the amount of user error that we have. We got a grant in conjunction with the Business Improvement District and this grant specifically was to hire a consultant to help us re-envision what should be happening in the downtown area so we'll be moving forward on that. And the last thing I want to mention and we can talk more about all these things during the course of the day, the afternoon was that we will be beginning outreach on our Pomeroy Village Massworks grant another $1.5 million grant that will redefine it or rebuild the intersection either as a roundabout or as a signalized intersection. And we're talking about what do people find are the issues that they want to see addressed with this money in that intersection that's really going to be our focus. It's not going to be a, do you want A or B, it's going to be like what's the problem so you identify as going through that intersection either as a driver or a pedestrian or as a bicyclist or whatever. And so that will help inform us and as we move forward. So that's usually longer than normally do but there's a lot going on in our town. There is a lot going on and some of those items that Paul mentioned are up on our website if you want to dig into them a little more. And we will also be putting up some project pages for these initiatives for people to weigh in and share their opinions on some of these bigger projects and initiatives. All right, so I want to put Jen in the hot seat now if she can introduce herself. Give us a little bit of history about what you do. I mentioned you were an Amherst native so feel free to talk about that too, if you'd like. So yes, my name is Jen Moisten I have an administrative assistant for the town manager's office and the human resources department. And I've been here for about eight years. I was raised in Amherst I've raised my boys here so I'm definitely go team Amherst all the way. And so yeah, working for the town has been really great. I'm working really hard on community engagement and opening up the doors for communication from people that we don't typically hear from. I have a couple of questions to and I just will remind our live attendees feel free to chime in with questions for Jen for Paul for myself or just general questions. At any point. I wonder, since the community participation officer role is relatively new considering your tenure. Are there things that you've learned about this community through through your work in that role that you didn't know before. Is there anything that surprised you. I mean, so I just remember we did an engage a community engagement event with the schools over at North Village and I was just mesmerized by the amount of different languages that I heard in this one little area right we were out in a parking lot and we created a fair and it was just. It just really made me realize how many different languages and how many different cultures that are here in Amherst. And so it's like how can we celebrate those how can we acknowledge those cultural differences for people. Do you want to talk a little bit about some of those those things that you've learned along the way that you've kind of brought to Amherst for the first time. I believe one of the, one of the cultural celebrations that was new for the town this year with the Lunar New Year that you kind of brought forward you want to talk a little bit about that. And that was a great learning experience because I have always known about the Lunar New Year but never really knew about it in detail. So that was great I worked with the Chinese ministry from first Baptist church and created a whole PowerPoint. And basically, the Lunar New Year comes from the story of non who was like this monster that was in the village and he would come down and terrorize, you know, everyone, including the children and the animals and the residents and so people start putting up red curtains, which is why often in the Lunar New Year you'll see the color red as it kind of held him back a little bit. And then the, it just kind of grew from there and and it is actually like a 14 day celebration it's not just the one day. So that was fascinating the other one that it wasn't celebrated by the town was Kwanzaa so that's always been a lot of fun to celebrate Kwanzaa and I'm working on a working for the Human Rights Commission is working on a because it's women's month and so we are working on acknowledging a specific one or two specific individuals in the town. That's really great. I, I wondered a little bit about, do you think you could talk about some of the internal equity work that's happening for staff that we're trying to build as the co chair of our equity team. So we, you know, I think the whole group in general is firm believer that in order for us to create this inclusion inclusive welcoming community that we need that we need to start here within ourselves. In town hall and with town council and it'll trickle down to all the staff and so we're starting there with the fundamental one on one training and then sorry that's the whole I went to the dentist this morning. Future. To future workshops to come and we really just digging in into how to make the town inclusive so it's also very interesting because I feel it's very important that we work with our surrounding towns with that as well like as you think about it like we have a plastic bag and a plastic bag ban and if you go shopping and Hadley you can get a plastic bag and so the hope is that we can work Hadley has their own core equity team Belcher town has their own palom has their own. And so I think I'll be looking for Mr Kravitz and Miss Gannett to see if we can get some rolling over on that side. So that we can kind of have like this, our little tofu curtain of, of inclusion and equity here and then it can just spread farther and farther throughout the pioneer valley. I really love that that idea about thinking about other communities because that can always always usually be a very introspective process and we're thinking about our own policies and stuff so I think. I think it's really valuable that you were able to work in that lens of that this is a community we're not an island and how that impacts us how neighboring communities impact us as well. Yeah. I think in the core equity team is really important because that was really a grassroots driven group that came from employees getting together and saying we want it. It does need to become more welcoming and need to talk about it amongst ourselves and, and I think that that's been a really powerful thing you know we did join the gear group nationwide and. But this is a group that meets you meet weekly, and it's a really challenging discussion sometimes and some, you know, sharing and things like that so it's, it's, it's people who are really dedicating their time to, to work on some issues and this is something we need to be focused on broadening out to the entire employee base for the town. It's great. I agree and I think I think Jen's perspective and her work with the Human Rights Commission and with the Community Safety Working Group and just her interest in being in training in this space I think she's provided a lot of structure and framework to some of the work to allow the team to move it together in one direction so I just want to give a shout out to Jen on that and it's. So that's really important. So I know right now we mentioned a couple of the different boards that you liaise with and that you support Human Rights Commission and Community Safety Working Group there might be more that I don't I'm not even aware of. So if you want to talk a little bit about what you do for those boards and committees and how that interaction is and what you do to support them. I think the only other one that you're missing is the Munson Memorial. Oh right. That's, they don't meet as often as everyone else, but sorry Munson, Munson, yes, which is a beautiful space to so we should acknowledge that but um, yeah. For the most part I do administrative support for the meetings and since we've gone to zoom meetings I support and you know by allowing people to come in and out of the meetings for speaking purposes and we, and what else do I do for them I don't you know it's you do every day you don't really think about it right like. I just want to jump in here because Jennifer does a ton of stuff I hear I can hear her from my office on the phone. You know, a plus plus customer service because this this office gets every complaint possible and and people walking it in the old days people just walk in and you didn't know who's going to walk in the door and her ability to work with people and be where they are and listen is just off the charts. Great I've learned a lot from Jennifer and how she's interacted with folks. And then, all these initiatives that you've heard are things that she's either invented herself or said let's do something about this the core equity team. Stepping forward with the Human Rights Commission stepping forward with the Community Safety Working Group. That's Jen saying I'm, I'm doing this I'm on it, I'm on it I'm going to make it happen. And then from her, you know, she said she has two boys she's been a football coach basketball coach and every kind of coach possible and if you're already a coach of a bunch of kids, you have to be organized and ready to deal with chaos. That's sort of what what this environment is. That is true. So, we call our coach Jen. It's nice to work with the committees. You know, I, the interaction with the communities always nice and then also, you know, with the community safety working group because they're the newest and it is a group of people who we don't typically hear from in town hall. And so it was really nice to have them engaged and then it's like, okay, so how do we keep this momentum moving like, and then we have to realize like maybe a board and committees not everybody's cup of tea select what are the other things that we have to do. And sometimes that's when like the human rights commission comes in, in the hands because we'd like to do the cultural events which has been really great and get great participation. I think for our first lunar New Year celebration we had about 30 people and at Kwanzaa we had about 50 so it's, you know, and their works in progress but all of these things I'm hoping are things that will stay rooted here with the town so that if I'm to leave or retire that they will still continue and they won't just, you know, fade out so got to make them remarkable. And I think I think that's a really valid point with with what that work and other elements of our work is that sustainability, you know, you get these great ideas and how do they get traction and keep going year over year. I want to remind there's a couple new people who've just joined us, please feel free to come in and ask your questions to the q amp a function or raise your hand for Jen for Paul for myself or any just general questions for the town. We've got about 10 more minutes on our chat so feel free to chime in. One thing that happened for you recently Jen is you were featured as a local government employee for the state of Massachusetts through a campaign called mass town careers highlighting different people in different roles in local government and I wanted to hear about your experience with that and kind of what was your message to people when you were taking part of that campaign about working in local government. That was a great experience I got to go to Worcester which is has a beautiful city, they have a beautiful town hall area. It's really great to go out there and work. But I will say the, the overall message was just acknowledging that municipality is a place of is it has a workforce and we're always seeking to hire. I don't think that people typically on average my work for the human resources department doesn't necessarily make me think that people think of working in the municipality kind of maybe they might have seen it, you know, through an advertisement, or such and then you know, but I, I highly doubt anybody wakes up and says I want to be a comptroller so for the town, like, it's just, you know, not very rewarding, but this is a very satisfying job. And, you know, I, I'm going to say that that local government is a lifetime of learning right so there's always something to learn there's always something changing there's always something we have to adapt to. It's just been eight years of learning. I can't think of a day that I went home and didn't learn something new. And what's your take on, you know, the current state, from what you know about local government and different cities and towns do you feel, how are we doing and, you know, diversity on staff. Do you have any opinions or think that recommendations or where we should be moving towards. And so, I think that all places are looking to diverse find everybody's looking to find out how and I don't necessarily know that there's like an actual answer to that. Necessarily, there's efforts that you can make but I don't know that there's like a, this is what you do when you will be diversified and then also, you know, diversity is, I find to be more of a measurement tool of your inclusion. So, if you have equity, then you have inclusion, most likely, and then you have your diversity then you can measure your diversity. So I think it's important to kind of view it through those ways and we, you know, if you come into town hall and you don't have the best experience you're not going to want to engage with town hall so we know a big thing is that customer service for the people who are facing with the customers and making sure that people all come in and have a good time sometimes people on the outside are just having a bad day sometimes we're having a bad day I mean I've got a whole swollen side of my face here you know, but you still, you know, you still have to keep that smile and be professional about it and usually when people come in they're frustrated they don't understand I mean the covert concerns line is definitely showing us that people are really concerned and it's like you know, you can't really be upset about that it's like we got it right we're equally frustrated to because we're told we're going to get vaccine and then we don't get the amount that we can't service the amount of people that we wanted to and so. You know, it is really important that we're answering the phones here and we're enjoying that because I know a lot of communities are just so overwhelmed they are not quite sure how to respond and so. What are some of the things that you've been, you know, as one of the core team who's handling those requests and calls and concerns that are coming in what are some takeaways in the last couple of weeks, you know, what are people worried about what are people thinking about. Oh, I think most people are worried if they'll ever receive a vaccination. I mean, I think that's the number one question there. And I think that at some point they everybody will who would like one I just don't know that it will happen and and the speedy manner that people anticipate. So, you know, if everybody, including the people who are answering the phones and they're at the vaccine clinics just kind of take a deep breath and and everybody will get vaccinated in a. But I know it's scary like I understand for folks, especially our elderly that it's, it's a scary thought. It's also the whole process hasn't been easy for folks because they don't. It's not hard to register but you need to have a computer in front of you and you need all the information and you couldn't get very far you get locked out and you have to start over and the frustration level was very high and then, you know, they would call our number and get Jenner Angela or somebody and K and just to just emote and just the ability to sort of say they're not yelling at you, they're they're worried they're frustrated and so being able to respond back to that is a really powerful thing. Yeah, we get a lot of a lot of happy people who are just glad somebody answered a phone. So that's always nice to write like we are here and we are ready to answer your calls. I think I think it is a cool. I'm sorry, go ahead. I was just going to, you know, the hard jump off of what Paul said was the hardest part about it being in an online sign up is that we have so many people who don't have computers and that don't have access to the Internet and then so at the same time it makes the vaccine as an equity issue as well. Right. So, you know, some people had loved ones that could call for them and others could call for themselves and others could register but there's still that population that that is out there that doesn't have any of the above. I think just the sheer volume of calls and emails that our team gets is just a testament to your excellent service skills people know that they can call for other reasons and then when when the vaccine questions arise they know that they can get a trusted source of information from from our team so. Yeah, and one of the things the team is doing is we're doing actually vaccinating homebound people who can't leave their home and again health director the assistant fire chief and paramedics are going door to door and for just people who just can't leave their home but they really want want to need the vaccine and it's a time consuming process but it's highly important so I think that they're in there we're serving lots of different communities doing that I think today's belcher town and then. So, we've done Amherst we've done Hadley. This is a program that nobody else in the state is doing so really credit our team for pulling that together. And the other thing that Jen mentioned is finding those communities that have language barriers are just hard to reach is another high priority for the town and figuring out how to get vaccines available and making it. The ease of access to vaccine is the key piece for that. And I just, I'd like to just give a shout out for us for being so willing to take on this on a regional level, right, because it's that's it's pretty hard. It is hard work. Yeah. So we do have a question that just came into the room from one of our live attendees so I'm going to read this now how is the town planning to respond to the student parties related to the Blarney blowout. Has the event been canceled or will we have to, or will we have to have town staff on the streets to shut down parties over 10 people. Thank you. So I'll take that. So yeah, so Blarney is not something we don't call it that obviously anymore, but it's not something that town ever schedules it's a it's something that town has always prepared for it was, it was sort of a a social group sort of thing that we're going to have a party this this day and we this year it's different than all the previous years because there is no spring break this year. And typically this party would happen the weekend before spring break. And so, and we don't know when party we anticipate there will be parties, especially as the weather starts to warm up. So we're responding to preparing for this differently. Previously, we could concentrate all of our effort on to one day, and the university did the same this year is will not be that we're going to be spreading out our responses. The town will be paying attention to noise complaints that we receive and just having more of a presence with our covert ambassadors being on the streets and they're actually going out Friday night. Tomorrow night to start to educate people about the limitations on what they can do in terms of gatherings. And these are students and other people who are not police officers who are going door to door in key areas to say, you know, it's not time to party, you can't do that. So, and the university is fully behind this and are prepared and have taken action on students who don't abide by the prohibition on gatherings. And for the person who asked that question or anybody who's interested in two weeks on our community chat will have Captain Gabe Ting and community liaison officer, I got to get all these titles straight. Bill Laramie on to talk about just that about the preparations and the warmer weather and how they'll be addressing some of these concerns so feel free to tune in on March 18 at noon we'll be talking about that topic specifically. So it looks like we're coming up to our last few minutes so usually I give our special guest a chance to plug something give a call to action, talk about an important thing that's coming up. I don't know if you have anything that you want people to be aware of, Jen, but now's your, your chance and you're on mute. There's not a zoom meeting that that doesn't happen to me yet. So, the community safety working group are getting ready to create recommendations or write up recommendations for what they feel on public safety should be so folks should definitely send in if they have recommendations on their recommendations. And, I'm sorry, my mouth just on. And let's see, I think that's about it really is the community safety working group and oh they also have a survey online so if you want to share your experiences it's at Amherst MA dot gov on the website on the community safety working groups page. A lot of a lot of a lot of work to do over the next six weeks and so it's and they meet weekly and Jen's coordinating organizing each one of those meetings so they have a big task ahead of them. And just to Jen's point if you want to head to their website there's a playlist of their, all of their meetings if you need to get caught up on anything survey can be found there agenda's minutes and all of that. Paul how about you anything you want to leave people with before we wrap. I think it's, you know, the, our numbers are not going down unfortunately. So, we're continually reevaluating where we are in terms of the state the state is opening up more the federal government is looking to do that. We're a little bit out of step and so we're going to be continued to evaluate the numbers are coming in for the town of Amherst and UMass, and we'll take appropriate action at this point where we are in in step with the state. But we're open to getting out of step with our numbers don't improve. All right. So I want to thank Jen for joining us today even though she had a dentist appointment that impacted her day so thank you for joining us and thank you all for joining us live, and we will have this up on our channel shortly. It was a pleasure thank you. Thank you. Bye see you next week. Bye.