 Oh, okay. Now we're recording the second. Okay. All right. So. Attendees. See who they are. Okay. Okay. Great. Okay. So, um, Today is the 21st of July, 2022. It is 6 30 for you. And I'm calling the meeting of TSO, uh, to order. It's a virtual meeting can be, it'll be conducted by remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so via Zoom or by telephone. No in person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort we've made to ensure that the public can adequately access proceedings in real time, the technological means. Um, so we have several orders of business and, um, we have suggested timings. Um, I want to strongly urge that we be finished by, um, eight o'clock at the latest. I think that's when we're supposed to be finished, finished because I want to hear the hearings tonight in real time. And we quickly confirm that everyone can hear and be heard. Okay. Um, can you, I'll let me call you. So Anna, how are you? Can you hear us? I'm doing great, Dorothy, and I can hear you. Thank you. Good. Okay. Andy, how about you? I'm fine. If you're fine with hearing me. Yes, we hear you well. And Paul, how about you? I'm here and can hear everybody. Great. Okay. And Athena. I see your new picture. So it's so lifelike. I think it's you, but it isn't. Can you hear us? Yes. I can hear you. Thank you, Dorothy. Okay. So here we are. And we have down, um, uh, suggested timing of 20 minutes on, um, parking regulations, Lincoln Avenue between Amity and McClellan. And we'll hear the tack report. And we'll discuss about the public hearing. Um, and we have 60 minutes of water regulations and water bylaw. Um, and I, we have, I know Anna is here who is leading this discussion. And it's it. I don't know whether, uh, DPW superintendent Guilford mooring will be here. Yes. This fall. Great. And Shalini, um, who we hope will, um, be able to make it wants to have us talk a little bit more detail about her proposal for engagement and outreach. Um, and we have the through some three different committees of appointments from the town manager and approval of minutes. So let us go forward with the parking regulations on Lincoln Avenue. And, um, let me see. In fact, uh, well, okay. Um, I know that we were supposed to read the tack report and I believe that we're going to be able to do that. Um, I don't know how much overlap is meeting at this exact time on their state safe school streets issue. I don't know how much overlap there is on the meeting. So I'm not quite sure how to proceed on that. Um, We're, we're here. Tracy is great. Woman of the hour. Okay. Um, So, um, Since we requested, um, Attack report and Tracy has provided one. Um, Shall we proceed with, um, Tracy presenting some ideas or have people had a chance to read it. I want to start with questions. Oh, hi, Shalini. Can you hear us? Yes. Great. Okay. Glad you're here. Um, So. Order of procedure. Should we have Tracy speak first on this or would, um, People having read the tack report want to start in with questions or comments. If Tracy wants to give like a 30 second overview, that might be really helpful. Okay. If that's something you're interested in. I can try to do that. Okay. So I, I was just attacked at attack meeting. We just ended so we could come over here. Guilford was there too. So, um, Just got to switch gears on that. So, um, So I did send you a, was it a four page memo sort of summarizing our recommendations. Um, Um, So, um, My recommendations are on the first page and then I go into why we're recommending those things. So we are recommending prohibiting parking on the East side of Lincoln between McClellan and Amity. You know, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. That was the key recommendation that was in. The town's report that was done in March, February and March, 2020. And they cited a number of good reasons for that. Um, And the police chief and the fire chief about why that's important. Um, and I know the Guilford morning has said at previous meetings. Right. That it's impossible to have. It's not safe to have two full lanes of traffic. Um, And parking, you know, simultaneously on the road. Um, And so we have a lot of, um, We have a lot of traffic. We have a lot of traffic. We have a lot of commuting traffic. We don't see an issue. Of allowing parking at other times on the one side of the street. And also just we had related comments. Just there's been questions about, um, You know, overflow parking, like people who have been parking. Where would they go? And so an unintended consequences on other neighborhood streets. And that vein. We do suggest, um, limiting parking, Um, on the other side of the street. Um, And so we're going to move on to Amity. Because currently it's completely unrestricted there. And relatedly we recommend prohibiting parking on one side of Elm Elm is just a tiny street. Um, both Sunset and Elm do have driveways for each of the houses there. Um, this is just preemptively because if parking to bank gets pushed to those streets, particularly sunset. I mean, I know for me. Um, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. But I'm often on Sunset. I'm not on Lincoln. Because as a pedestrian, it's easy to get through. Um, and even on Lincoln, right? We also pointed out that Lincoln is not actually. Lincoln is closed and Mass Ave. Right now while the construction is underway, but cars can still travel north on Lincoln, right to the university. Because even though north of theory and Lincoln is blocked off. You just take North Hadley road. So it's not really restricting your access to Mass Ave. And when I've been on Lincoln, I still see quite a lot of traffic. Um, and then we just recommend to that. You know, once the dorms are open, which is planned for the fall 2023. That the parking restrictions be revisited. Um, just because we're not really sure, you know, what that's going to look like. It is like a major housing development on the edge of this neighborhood with over 800 beds. And not that much on site parking. Um, the presentation I had seen previously from UMass was that. They usually estimate that. Um, to have half, you know, 0.5. Parking spaces per bed is the general demand. I don't think they've adjusted that since COVID. And so with over 800 beds, that's over 400 spaces, only a hundred of them will be on site. And then the other students will be asked to park elsewhere. So we're not sure what that looks like. And so I would recommend that. You know, the town plan to reexamine that and see what's happening there. So. That's a nutshell. Thanks. Okay, Anna. First off, thank you. This report was really thorough and helpful. So I do appreciate your work and tax work on this. Um, I think one of the things that's still constantly pinging for me is sorry, my dog is very present in my life right now. Um, please go. Um, one of the things that's been was pinging for me when this was first introduced was the, were the concerns about safety. And so I hear what you're saying as revisit three to six months after those new, the new halls are complete. Um, in your opinion, if you've got so many more folks there and we're only restricting parking until five PM, aren't we? Don't you anticipate, do you, do you see more overnight parking on Lincoln? Um, I'm really concerned about this as, uh, as it was presented from a safety perspective, right? And so I don't want people's driveways getting blocked. Um, after five, if for some reason there are, you know, More cars or they're for whatever reason, there's nothing preventing people from parking really close to driveways and blocking sight lines or blocking ambulances. So do you. I'm worried about the three to six months. That's all. Um, yeah, I mean, I think that, um, I think the town could move up the timeframe if it wants. Um, I see this, I mean, then I also heard from some residents of sunset about this recommendation and they're saying, why are you, we do support having it on one side of the street, which right now sunset south of McClellan doesn't have any. Or is it Elm, sorry, sunset south of Elm doesn't have any restrictions, but they say, why aren't you going to restrict parking on the other side too, at least like eight to five or something? I mean, it's all, um, we just took an incremental approach, right? The sunset on parking hasn't been an issue yet. I don't see a need to provide on street parking supply on both sides of sunset. I do think that that could be problematic just like it is on Lincoln. Um, I mean, you can, the TSO can be more aggressive in its recommendations. I mean, I think just based on the experience that happened previously and that, you know, a lot of the pushback from the town's recommendations that were made on safety standpoint, it seemed incrementally, you can take the step and then you can take another step to do more. And, um, we did hear from, before the TAC made its recommendation, Guilford morning was at that meeting and we did talk about what can be done when there are cars up to them, they parked right up to the driveways or even block in the driveways. And I know that TAC, that was a big thing when we were looking right next to Kendrick Park at the North Pleasant Street there is because I've observed cars actually like in the driveway space, right? And so the sight lines there are terrible on the west side of that section of North Pleasant Street. Um, there's really not that much that the police will do unless you, unless, you know, it's marked, you can mark the curve, but then you can't, you have to repaint the curve constantly and you don't see that during the snow. Also, they, Guilford did say that the police will enforce it if you have signs put up and you could put up signs at each driveway, mandating, you know, that you're not at a park like near the driveways. Um, I think, um, my notes on that I think it was about like 30 signs or something that he would need to put in on Lincoln to do that. So that would be like another option to keep those clear. It just seemed to me like a lot of signs and have to do. Yeah. How many signs do you need to clarify that parking is prohibited only from eight to five? I don't know what those standards on that are. I know that, um, and maybe Guilford who's here can speak to that. I know when I was visiting some of the other neighborhoods, like I went all around the neighborhoods off of North Pleasant Street, north of the North UMass roundabout, um, just to see, and some of the streets only had like a few signs. I don't know if some of the signs have gotten hit or removed over time, but some cases it would only be like one sign per block or something. And so I can see where it would be possible that a visitor or somebody not familiar might not realize if they weren't parked right in front of that sign or something. So I'm not sure what the standards are on that, but Guilford could maybe answer that. I wanted to follow up on that. When you said you wanted to revisit, uh, the parking after the dorm is open, was that because of fearing what Anna's talked about, which there would be more overnight parking or whether it was it just a general thought of following up? I mean, I think it's a general thought of just how much, how much traffic is happening and how, you know, how much is an issue with the parking. I mean, from a safety perspective, there's no issue with overnight parking unless the overnight parkers are blocking the driveways, right? And so I just, it's hard to anticipate, you know, in a space that doesn't have that level of parking demand now, like how committed people will be to like jamming cars in there. I don't know. So, um, Andy. Hi, so I have several questions. Um, and I don't know which order to take them in. As far as the science for concerned at the, at the tech meeting and, uh, by the way, I apologize that I was unable to attend tonight's tech meeting as well. Oh, it was just a, um, now it was just a subcommittee meeting about safety. I don't, I'm not even sure we sent you up the information. Yeah, I'm not sure I had one either. But anyway, anyway, um, at the tech meeting where we were discussing, where you were discussing Lincoln, um, I did make the suggestion and it was sort of half suggestion, half question as to whether the police would find it sufficient to justify ticketing if there was a sign at each intersection for people coming into the street that says, uh, no parking within whatever number of feet of driveways and whether that would give them reason to take it without having to have signs at every driveway. And, um, I made that I asked that question. Of course, there was nobody to respond to it and there was your meeting. I didn't hear any follow-up discussion on it, but I did one that kind of repeated for today's meeting because I, um, if the police indicate that that is sufficient notice and, um, go for a degree, then it is another option for addressing the, um, problem, you know, because the question was that the police would not, um, ticket if there was no indication of illegality of the parking in that that was what the issue was. So that was, that's one topic that I had any on that one. I'll follow up with the chief on that and get back to the committee. So you can clarity on that enforcement thing, the driveway thing. Okay. Great. Thank you very much. I mean, and I, I just have a quick comment on that one. Is it just seems like I know in my neighborhood that sometimes people park close to driveways too. It seems that you should could sort of being opening some new standard where like every, you know, residential street could say we'd like to have a sign saying nobody can park near driveways. I just, um, but I mean, it's an interesting idea. And also, I guess too, you know, in terms of the enforcement perspective about like how many signs would there need to be, like what's considered like the entrance to that the neighborhood, the exit, you know, what if you're somewhere in the middle, like, I don't know how many of the signs are needed, but I can also see that other neighborhoods might request similar signs. But of course, if we were going to ask for signs on every driveway, you'd have that number of signs, the very constricted space, and it would be unsightly. And you could, for the same expense, spread the signs to more because it's really a reasonable request for any street to make that residents should be able to get in and out of their property, unimpeded in the emergency vehicles from service and property. As far as Donna's point about the effect of what's going to happen going forward, I do want to point out that we do have the experience already. The university owns meters on Fearing Street across from Southwest, but we know that Southwest residents who have parking permits elsewhere do fill those spaces on the weekends and other times at nights and other times when parking is not being enforced by the university at the needed spaces. So there is some experience that I think supports Donna's concern. And so I wanted to point out the Fearing Street experience that we've had. Another thing that I was thinking about was that there was some discussion and I think it even came out briefly during the TAC discussion about having an exception to the parking restrictions, not just in the evenings, but during the summer months. And we had talked about that previously within the committee too. The residents might wish an exception during the summer months because then they can have social events at their houses and guests park there during the day if there's a reason to. I would of course want to hear from residents about that issue when we have public hearing. But I was curious why TAC didn't follow that discussion and if there was reasoning behind it. And the last thing is really for Guilford and that is whether there have been any actual traffic counts since Lincoln was closed off or if we're dealing based upon observations. So those are my four things. Okay. Tracy, can we ask Guilford to answer that last question before I call on you? Sure. Okay. We've done no traffic counts since they closed the road. No. Okay. And so then Guilford, do you want to say anything at this point before I turn it to Tracy? No. No, okay. Guilford, you still think it's an arterial road. It was. Traffic didn't go down enough that you would change the clarification of the roadway. No, we wouldn't change it. I believe it's a collector street non arterial. Yeah, you're right, collector, but thank you for the correction. And thank you, Guilford. But I guess too, I mean, one thing is, you know, the memo from the DPW about how much space is needed for traveling and for parking, you know, based on road classification, it does talk about like based on the levels of traffic. And it is worth noting as I do in the memo that in our community, I think it's important to note that, you know, that the traffic volumes do change a lot, you know, in the summer and not in the summer. So. I mean, we could, Andy, we could have proposed something where it's only for this school year. I don't know. I have mainly seen that enacted in Amherst in terms of the residential, like the parking permits, like the downtown parking permits. I would say no parking eight to five. They have it year round two. I didn't really know if that's an option to say no parking, you know, eight to five only during the school year, because we haven't done that elsewhere. I would say too that just with those new dorms that there's like 600 something undergrad beds and 200. Plus grad student beds and that I mean, grad students are more likely to stay on campus during the summer than the undergrads. The undergrads completely clear out of town, whereas grad students are still employed at the university during the summer. They're still doing work. I mean, some go get internships for many do stay on campus. And so I can see there contained to be parking demand from them in the summer. I would like to ask clarification here. The original proposal. I thought it was during the academic months. Was it not the original proposal or was it year round? Yeah, I was just actually going to say that. The last TSO from the prior council. Recommended that it not be applicable in the summer months. And. The decision which was then rejected on a tie vote. That was not discussed at the council level. The reasons that council. Change didn't go along with prior TSO. Recommendation was other reasons. Yeah, so we were. We as a TSO. We're prepared to do that. Except exception. I think it is a. Possibly something that. This TSO can revisit as a separate issue. Which is why I was suggesting. It might be worth hearing from. Residents and others who comment during a public hearing. To help us make. What is an appropriate decision? I don't think we have to decide that tonight. Comment that has come in past meetings. Has been basically that there hasn't been a big traffic problem on Lincoln during the summer. But Tracy is bringing up the issue that with a new dorm. And. And the two hundred some odd graduate student beds. That might change. So. Tracy, you still have your hand up. Yeah, no, and I just wanted to just, you know, comment on the traffic counts too. So. I mean, I know there have been historic traffic counts on the road. And historic speed studies, right? The speed conditions seem like they've improved somewhat. Since the speed tables were put in, but the traffic volume is still on Lincoln. And I do see a lot of traffic still on Lincoln. And just that, again, it's not really closed because you can still take North Hadley road. So you're not really obstructed getting to the university. If you go north on Lincoln. Also, just, just, I noticed that with those traffic counts. So when. In that March. 20, 20, 20, 20, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30. 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30, 30. And I do see a lot of efforts, 20 Memo from the town that those traffic counts were done the week before UMass completely shut down over COVID in 2020. So I don't know if we were already seeing some effects. Because you know, every day that week, there were new things coming out from the university is like, we're monitoring the situation. in person classes. So, you know, already I kind of, I don't, my recollection of that time is a little fuzzy, but I do sort of remembering things starting to sort of ramp up and people already starting to be like, well, I'm going to be a little more remote because this is starting to happen. So, so we don't know if we were seeing that effect already. I think that's an interesting point. I'm going to talk about time for a second. I know that before we can call a hearing, which we're going to do in the fall, we would have to have a very clear charge. We don't have a motion on the table now, though, if somebody wants to make a motion with such a charge, we could do that now, or we could say we would do that for the next meeting. What are your thoughts, Paul? Yeah, I was just going to mention that you are over budget for this time, like for this item. So I think if you, it would be wise, maybe you take the tax recommendation, say that's what we're going to put in the public notice, and that gives us time to get the public notice. I know you don't want to schedule it until after Labor Day when the student come back, but it gives us time to get that notice prepared. Have you reviewed it? And if, but if you could just sign what you want to put in that notice, that would be very valuable for tonight. Okay. So I guess I would say I would entertain a motion that we accept tax recommendation as our proposal for the public hearing, knowing that after we have the public hearing, we then make our determination of what our position is. Do I have anyone who will make such a motion? There was, sorry, I'm, I'm happy to, oh, go ahead, Andy. Yeah, I mean, I'm happy for you to make the motion on the only question I had is, if we have any open issues that we want to talk about, for example, the issue about applicability during the summer months, or the question of signs, which Paul is going to get us information on, which to consider a subsequent meeting about driveway restrictions, whether we would need to have clarity on that before we can actually do posting. Yeah, the council doesn't designate where signs go. The council doesn't, you know, does those kind of implementation things would be done by Guilford. You don't, you don't have to get to that level of detail. You can decide what you want to see happen. And also, but the important thing is whether you want it during the academic year or year round. But I think that's something that you can either include it in the notice or not. It gives you a proper notice to people that you're looking at restricting parking. I think that's adequate notice for folks. Okay. So you're saying that whether we include during academic year or year round, that doesn't tie us to one or the other. No, you're having the public hearing and the TSO committee makes a recommendation to council. So then we could then move to accept the TAC recommendation as our call for our public hearing and have a chance to do it that way. Is any reason why that would not be a good idea? Okay. Do we need to state that more formally? Can I say I move that we accept the TSO committee accepts tax recommendation for parking on Lincoln Sunset in Elm Street? And just let it go with that. Or do I have a question? Should it be that the motion is that we, that the TSO committee wishes to notice a public hearing consistent with the TAC recommendation? I don't think we're endorsing the TAC recommendation right now, but that gives us the ability to have that be formed the basis of That sounds rational to me. And I think that would be a good thing to do. Do we have a second to Andy's informal motion? Second. Second. Okay. Shalini is seconded. Okay. All those in favor? Anna? Hi. Andy? Hi. Shalini? Yes. And Dorothy? Yes. Okay. We have a motion that we will use the TAC recommendation as a notice for our public hearing on parking on Lincoln Sunset in Elm Streets. And we will then proceed with Athena's help to get that hearing publicized. And we don't have to set the date right now. We said after Labor Day. So we can discuss that outside of meeting. Is that right, Paul? Yes. Okay. So we are then moving on to our next item. Shalini has a hand up. Okay. Yes, Shalini. Yeah. Just a clarification, Paul. So you said you wanted more like what goes into the public information piece. Do we need to decide that now? Like I'm just thinking in terms of like, you know, in the other committees where we're doing community engagement, we kind of have like a problem statement, like what is the problem we're solving for? And why are we doing this? What do we want to hear from? How is it going to potentially impact people? Or so do we want to clarify that now or can that be discussed later? So what the public hearing notices is that it's a pretty factual thing, like change the parking on these streets to this way. If you want to develop more outreach material, that's something that you could certainly do. We have a sort of pretty comprehensive memo that we did last year that sort of can serve as a base for that because a lot of background information. But however you want to do the outreach, the only thing I've heard so far in addition to the legal ad that we would have to do in the posting on the town bulletin board was to flyer the cars that park there regularly after school starts. Yep, I have a question on that. The thought of doing it every day for seven days, I saw that as a big source of paper in the streets. But is there any past practice about how you flyer cars? Does it have to be done seven days in a row? Because I just, I was a little bit startled by that. But if that's the practice, we'd be pleased to do it. But is there history on this? We've never done anything like that. So it's, it's what we think it's reasonable. You can either, you know, it's also a certain amount of how much staff do we have to do this, right? It takes time to do all those things. We're going to do it with the town staff. So okay, so town staff would do the flyering. Okay. Okay, so we would work up the flyer and using any other practices, right? Great. Okay, so we're a little bit over time, but we forward. And we have Guilford and we have Anna here to talk about water regulations and water bylaw. And to be honest, I don't know where we left off. Can we say thank you and bye to Tracy? Thank you. I'm going to say bye. But I also just wanted to note that there are two attendees in the audience, including Jennifer Taub who had made that original proposal. And if the TSO did want to entertain any public comment on this specific parking issue before moving on to the rest of the meeting, that can be your choice. But thank you. I want to thank you, Tracy. I thought that was a incredibly clear, well-written memo. It was very, very helpful. And I think that we could ask the attendees in the audience if I see one hand is raised. Okay. Ken Rosenthal, you're welcome to enter some brief public comment. Thank you. I'm Ken Rosenthal. I live on Sunset Avenue number 53. I want to endorse the additional suggestion that parking be forbidden on one side of Sunset Avenue east side. That happens to be my side and I accept that as necessary. But I want to point out to you and emphasize that Sunset Avenue is smaller than Lincoln. And if you do not ban parking on the other side of Sunset, what you're going to do is encourage the people who can't park on Lincoln to come over and park on Sunset. And the problem there, and I think Gilbert would confirm it, will be even worse because there is less parking. Now, I know you can't see that right now, except that you could these days because there's a lot of construction work being done on the New Amherst College President's House, which is the former Lucy Benson House. And this morning, there was a long line of trucks parked all the way down past Elm Street from that gray President's House. And cars were having, one car had to pull into a driveway to get out of the way of another car coming down the street. So I just hope that in the public hearing that you have in September or whenever you have it, that you raise the possibility of mirroring what you do on Lincoln with Sunset and blocking it off on both sides of the street. Thank you very much for listening. Okay, thank you very much. And okay, I see Jennifer has her hand up. Jennifer, brief comment. Yes, thank you. I just wanted to affirm and express my agreement with what Ken Rosenthal just said that since TAC has recommended restricting parking on Sunset that also be part of what TSO considers in terms of restricting it on both sides of the street. And I also wanted to respond to, I know at the last TSO meeting that there was the discussion of whether, you know, again, parking should be restricted or not allowed on Lincoln 24-7. And I did, you know, run it by some of the residents who live on the part of the street that, you know, where these parking restrictions are addressing. And they said that that wasn't what they were requesting, but that if TSO that was their recommendation and that is what they wanted to implement, that they could live with that and that would be preferable to the status quo of no restrictions. So I just wanted to share that with the committee. Thank you. Thank you. And I just in wrapping this up, I do want to say that former council member George Ryan emailed me today. He couldn't be here for the meeting, but he can maintain his interest as he was a co-sponsor of this bill originally. And he is hoping that we come up with a good solution to the problem on Lincoln Avenue, although he had wanted us to do it before New Mass was back in session so that we didn't start out with the traffic hazard. But let him know that we've decided we will have to do it after they're back in session. So there are people who are concerned about this. And Andy, I see your hand up here. Yeah, I mean, that can be real quick. If we've adopted as the basis for the notice of the hearing, the recommendations of TAC, then the recommendations that cover streets additional to Lincoln become part of the hearing notice. Yes, absolutely. Okay. I think that we've covered that. And so let's go into water and sewer. Are we doing, do we say sewer or just water? No, just water regulations and water bylaws. Yes. So, Anna, why don't you start off? Awesome. All right. So first off, I want to thank Guilford and Amy for meeting with me last week, two weeks ago. And what we were doing is kind of trying to tie up some loose ends and starting to look into the transition into sewer because one of the things that we've talked about is that these need to be aligned. And so we know we all know that's coming down the pike. So that was on the brain a little bit. But more of what we were doing was tying up a couple of the loose ends that emerged in our discussion from the last meeting. So I don't know if we'll need the full, I'm going to tentatively say I don't know if we'll need the full hour and knocking on wood right now. But a couple of things that we had discussed that I wanted to make sure the group is informed of, we were talking about the clarity on what to do if the curb stop and curb box aren't located at the property line and kind of whose responsibility that would be. And what we came to the decision or what we had talked about in the meeting was that if the curb is in the curb boxes inside the property line when it needs replacing it would be moved to the property line. And the town would be responsible and after discussion with Amy and Guilford, we talked about the owner being responsible for for for paying to move it to the curb to that property line, excuse me. But this only needs to be done as needed to replace the section of the service line. And that and then if that break is on public property, hang on, I'm sorry, my notes are confusing me. So what I have is you only need to do this if the when they need to to replace the section of the service line, if the break is on the property, the owner pays to move. And then what I had was if the break is on public property DPW pays to move. Amy, did you change that to the owner would pay either way? Oh, sorry. I mean, I think what we discussed, I mean, one of the concerns that's come up in this whole thing is like, do we does everybody need to find out where their curbs are immediately and do work immediately and that sort of thing. And so we were trying to alleviate that concern to say like, we don't know that every single problem has to be solved immediately, will address these things as issues come up in service lines. So kind of take it one at a time as there's a leak or there's somebody doing work and you know, when they're lawn or something like that, use those opportunities to bring people into compliance on a lot of these things. And I think what we had decided though was like, basically, you've got the property line and anything that's within the property line is the homeowner's responsibility, you know, we've all kind of agreed to that's the homeowner's responsibility on the town side as the town's responsibility. But that does mean that if somebody's curb box happens to be in their property now, they would be responsible in the process of fixing things to bring that to the property line. Similarly, if the curb box happens to be in the, you know, not on the property line, the town would be paying to bring it to the property line because that's really where we want it. But just kind of we each take responsibility for items that might be out of compliance on our own side. Next thing we discussed was the issue, which we recognize, first off, want to recognize that this is not common. The issue of what to do if the water line crosses over someone else's private property. And what we had discussed is that the owner is responsible property line on, right? So, and it would, which is the same process that we have now basically like that same dispute process is not, we wouldn't change anything in terms of how they would go about discussing that. It's really just saying the town is responsible for these lines when they are on town property. That the owner needs to manage the process. Again, this is one of those things that like, there's not a ton of cases from the water side. But when, you know, as we're looking at applicability between the water and the sewer side, this is a little more common on the sewer side. So we think that it's good that it's consistent with both that the town is responsible in either the town, the town right of way, or if the town has an easement. And that's a little more common on the sewer side, that the town might have an easement for a larger sewer main going in the backyards of a bunch of people. But if the homeowners line goes through their neighbor's property in root to the town owned easement or public right of way that they would be responsible while it's under their neighbor's property. And that's because this is, I know, I feel like I know 2% of this now. This is because sewers go by gravity and water does not. All right, Dorothea, what's your question? Okay. So I'm just saying that I approve a policy which says if it's on the owner's property, it is the owner's expense. If it's on town property, it is town expense. And I'm gathering that from what Amy just said, that when she says town easement, that although it is on prior property, it is acting as if that it's if a town easement means it is acting as if it is town land. Is that correct? Right. That's only if there's an official easement in the deed. Right. Although we can come up with a million exceptions, I think this is a good, clear program. I think that it makes it so less so that people think that somebody is getting a special deal. And some a couple of times it may turn out the way that somebody is not happy. But I think that this is a good way to do it. So I'm just supporting it, although there's a million exceptions and crazy cases you could come up with. Okay. So that's it. Yeah, we go for it. Amy and I went through the process of trying to figure out where my my curb box was on my property, which was super fun. And so I have a measuring tape. I'm ready to find it now. All right. Anyway, so I'm going to skip down and then we'll get to that big transition question. So really quickly, there was one last little issue to wrap up, which was the dispute resolution timeline. I went and looked at our parking ticket timeline. And that's 21 days from the date of issuance. So what we were what we'd like to propose is that the when they are issued a warning when the when the person is issued a warning or a fine, they can appeal it to the DPW superintendent within 21 days of issuance. This is that's the same as parking tickets. What I could not find is what the turnaround time allocation is on the back end, right? So how soon we would be asking Guilford to respond. So I just said consistently everything is 21 days. It's starting to get a little bit of a long timeline because then they have a second appeal to go to Paul if they need it. But I'm I'm I'm okay with it. At this point, it feels easy to me to have it be consistent. But I wanted to hear from Paul or Guilford, whoever feels equipped to or Amy to respond as to whether or not that this is too long of a time, because the work will will have been done. This is appealing a fine. It's not an emergency situation. So does it matter if it get ups get? Sorry, I'm coming back from a long day of traveling gets up to like 80 days, which is what we're looking at is 84 days. If they take they take each 21, if everybody takes 21 days. Paul Guilford, any thoughts? Is there any problem that you see with that? Not from our end. Okay. Shawnee. Yeah, we just got a case today, right? Where after the the meter water meter was changed, the person's water bill went up. And the concern I have about having a very long time period is that if indeed it is some water leakage or something at the end of the home owner, then having those 80 days would mean that the person like we don't know whether there's a problem in the billing or is it but this isn't the appeal. This isn't the this isn't necessarily so like they would have had they have to get the work done anyway because it's on there. Yeah, I know, but she doesn't think there's a problem. It's just that the water bill has gone up and the DPW thinks that the water bill has gone up because there's a leakage, but she doesn't think there's a leakage and so no one is addressing the issues all I'm saying. And it's not exactly what we're talking about. It's sort of it's sort of like how do you appeal? Yeah, go ahead. No, I was just going to say like that that is a that is an example where you know one of the ways that people can appeal is if they are requesting an abatement which to be clear if you're using water in your house, that's not necessarily grounds for abatement, but if you think that a meter is inaccurate and you want you know that so it is an example of a reason that someone could appeal a water bill. So then so so let's let's follow Shalini's line here then. So this person emailed us today Shalini and I today saying that and I'll just if it's okay I'll just share it. I just pulled it up. I got a letter that the town wanted to replace my water meter. I had been receiving water bills in the 150 to 250 range the first bill after the new meter was installed was for like 750. I'm sure there was a mistake. I went to figure out how could I how I could get this sorted out. They suggested I have a plumber come to determine where the running of water was taking place rather than spending money on the plumber I decided to wait for my next bill. The next bill was $77 which makes sense because that's more in keeping with what the usage was. And then there was you know I think this is the another point that Shalini raises which is I'm sure there is an appeal process but we weren't sure what it was. So this person was looking for advice I think on how to appeal. So I think that that's something for us to consider making sure it's very clear but in this case I think Shalini and correct me if I'm missing this what you're saying is that we still haven't figured out what the actual problem was and so if it were a leak even though her most recent bill were lowered you're saying it still would be leaking hypothetically. So she'd still be getting more bills. Yeah Guilford. Based on what you just told me it's not a leak although they probably thought it was at the beginning. To me it sounds like her meter wasn't being read properly or reading properly and that we weren't getting a proper reading for several cycles of the bill. So the water probably went through her house and she used it but she might have been using it for two or three cycles or even more than that to get those bills. So that's something you file for abatement. We talk about it to tell the truth it's really sometimes we give people relief on it sometimes we don't depending on what actually happened and we'd have to look at it more but if she wants to talk to us she files an abatement which is on the website there's a form for that and then we we talk about it more. We typically do not give abatements for people who just have houses that have a little plumbing and it just leaks. We don't want to give it's your responsibility to maintain it as it says in the new regulation but she may have a just the fact that she her billing caught up to her because she had an old meter that wasn't working right but she just needs to file an abatement. So can you explain I have two questions first off what's it Amy. No I was just going to say more just to clarify Gilford and I are in the weeds on this all the time so I think sometimes we talk in short and basically if I can step on my soapbox for a second this is partly why we want people to change out their meters to the new meters because the old meters if we're not getting accurate readings what we do is we estimate based on past usage and if we're estimating lower than what your actual usage is you end up your meter is still measuring how much water is using and it might be more than what we're estimating and if that happens a couple cycles in a row when we actually go to change out your meter we realize gosh we underestimated and you get hit with this whopper bill because of the difference between what we estimated versus what you actually used and this has happened a lot and the more the more cycles that we estimate the more potential for deviation from what we estimate versus what you actually use and it sounds like that might be the case here is just the amount of water that she used for several cycles in a row when her water was being estimated was vastly different from what she was actually using and so this catch up bill as Guilford was calling it can hit you pretty hard because it's a year worth of us getting it a little wrong based on you know just average calculations so I want to I want to do my very best to pull us out of the weeds because our topic is not this specific case but is much more about the process and one of my questions on that is can you please define the difference between abatement and appeal and then two and that's my own lack of anything from there and then second let's zoom out on this please and think about is with is our timeline a problem in this case would our timeline be a problem in this case so those are my two questions the first is for Guilford and Amy to be a dictionary for me please and then the second is for everyone which is if we use our 21 day timeline realistically would you need 21 days all the time as paul as dpw and then two would an 80 day potential long-term timeline be an issue so I'll I'll jump in I think 80 days is fine it actually we may ask some people who file an appeal to go a little longer just to research some things so I think that's fine appeal versus an abatement an appeal is kind of tied towards the regular a fine that we issued to you abatement is when you're requesting us to change your bill and if you read through the regulations there's two separate it's basically two separate sections so you can use the same time period in both sections I'm fine with that but they are two sort of separate things thank you that's really helpful appeal is for fines and warnings abatements for bills Dorothy I'm having a problem with thinking about a defective or old water meter and how it can be trusted in one way and not trusted in another do you know what I'm saying Guilford I mean if it's been giving you something wrong how do you know it's measured the water correctly I think so Dorothy I think this is why Guilford and Amy have been really pushing for us to include the radio meter transitions because the radio meters are not wrong and so they've done a lot of sending out of education materials with folks in their bills and will continue to do so and Guilford and Amy do you have a rough idea of what percentage of meters have been switched over I feel like you've told us and I forgot I think we're at like somewhere between 50 to 60 percent of the meters have been changed over we're moving through it but there's definitely still a lot more yeah at this point we're trying to target not only the ones that we're not able to get reached from but also any ones that are more than like I think before 1990 are the ones at this point that I'm trying to target to get them replaced because again over time as meters get over they lose accuracy although to be clear they lose accuracy and that they run slower so they run in the favor of you guys not in the favor of us as the people that are trying to collect an accurate reading on the water use so it's not like we're charging you more more than the water you're using and that's just how it works they wear out and so they don't they don't spin as much as you know when water comes through because of that okay so does that help Dorothy yes it does thank you all right so then the last thing about this transition unless Guilford and Amy unless I miss something here is really we're talking through the the transition period here and how to switch this over so what we were talking through was one of the questions we had was prior to the town assuming responsibility does the owner need to confirm the location of their curb box we're saying yes we'd like to say that that's that's what they would need to do and that includes there so then we branch back from that right and we say then we need to make sure that we're including in their water bill some sort of step-by-step process Guilford Amy and I did figure out that we can explain this in a step-by-step process for how to find that and they can either then at that point by their choosing pay to move it to the property line and right that's kind of that and then the second part is if they need to make their curb box accessible and we're saying ideally but if they choose not to do it at the time we do have that that process that I described first when a repair is needed they are then responsible for moving it unless it's on the townland and then the town takes whoever brings it to the property line that's that or I think okay would it be possible to give a bonus or discount to any landowner who changed their curb box why their meter I mean you would I guess I'm going back to the meters before you want people to change the meters if somebody changes their meter you get ten dollars off your bill I mean it's already free to them the town pays for the meters right so so people don't want to be bothered with stuff they don't want to read it and they're gonna get a big water bill I mean I think that the incentive is that you're going to get accurate billing I don't I don't I don't think that we necessarily need to incentivize it beyond saying this is a free service the town offers to make sure that your water bills are accurate make sure that you're not going to get wildly fluctuating bills things like that well then the second issue we were talking about curb box you were saying um people the homeowner supposed to or the landowner is supposed to find out where the curb box curb box is and again putting directions on their water bill um people more apt to do that follow through annoying steps when they feel they're very busy if there's an incentive so just throwing it out there I I totally hear what you're saying Dorothy in my mind the huge incentive is that we are vastly changing what they're responsible for and so there is a really big incentive here in that we aren't going to be in situations where people have to pay for repairs that are not happening on their property so for me that's the incentive is is yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna figure out where my curb box is to make sure that if I need to move it I'm saving up the money to do that or I'm you know understanding where it is so that I know if I'm going to have to in the first place I think what we're kind of saying is that we're going to send education out but that the moving of the curb box isn't mandated until a repair is necessary but what we're saying is that when if that repair is necessary then we want to make sure that we have given the education and the information needed for people to understand how to find it and that they are responsible it's really in my mind it's highlighting the the responsibility portion of this policy for people if that makes sense it does it doesn't stick with my knowledge of human nature though yeah I'm struggling to think through how to how how this isn't a huge improvement for people in town Amy no I more was just going to add that like to be clear with that earlier conversation nobody has to do anything until there's a problem in the line and really the only time when you like if you need help finding the curb box if you've got a problem our guys are going to be out there and they're going to help you find it really the the crux of this conversation is if your curb box is paved over by your driveway like the town isn't the one who paved your driveway and buried your gate or you know put a tree right next to it that now grew over this curb box that made it inaccessible so the crux of it is really just that if it's inaccessible and it's something like you put a stone wall or some sort of landscaping over it then ultimately that's not on the town to dig that out and figure out how to make it accessible but at that point we'd want to put it on you know the property line anyway and hopefully you don't have personal stuff on the property line although some people certainly do have you know shrubbery on on property lines and that sort of thing but the the crux of this is really just making things accessible where the onus of who does what falls on based on where it is and ultimately trying to get everything to the property line when there's a problem fixing fixing this these inconsistencies when there's a problem and need to fix them great thank you does that feel resolved for you Dorothy um I think we'll wait to see what people do you know that's basically it okay um so and and yeah so then the last part of that conversation was really just we need to make sure we're including documentation on how to do that um for people and and how to reach um get support on it so the other things that we wanted to to think through um couple minor things we had talked about uh there's some some specific buildings where buildings that are built on are within 10 feet of a property line so now we're talking really mostly buildings downtown uh state law am I correcting me it's state law requires a licensed plumber to be on site and assist and um we'd like to write it into our policy that the uh the building owner or the property owner needs to pay for that plumber because the town doesn't actually have licensed plumbers we don't need them um and so we um we would not want to be hiring contract plumbers that that's a thing uh we'd want to we'd want to make sure the property owner is doing that um and then the other element that we're we're going to look for here the this is the big question right which is the cost of this so we want to know what the overall cost of this transition would be to the town what impact would that have on water bills right is this how would that be where are we going to get that money um is is kind of the really rough way of saying that and um Amy and Guilford are going to look into those those numbers I believe for us at some point um but that's and that's finances that's finances problem um but we don't want to send them something that's a terrible idea so I want to just at least be aware of it um as we send this to to finance committee um and then the only other thing was you know adding in kind of getting to what Amy just said which is that um really making sure that there's a there's a disclaimer in there that DPW is not responsible for what people have placed on top of a water line so if you have beautiful landscaping on top of your water line or on top of your curb box um in cases where people need repairs that might damage it or might rip up part of their driveway or whatever uh that that is not the responsibility of the town to fix um it's unfortunate and it might happen but it's not the town's fault uh Amy or Guilford did I miss anything that we discussed no that was you're perfect oh my gosh step perfection's a fallacy so that's fine um all right so basically well one are there any questions and then two just giving a preview of coming attractions um I think what we're gonna do Amy Guilford correct me if I'm off on this because we didn't actually talk through this is figure out how to phrase these and put them actually into the regulations then we get to look at that super fun document again um and then and we get to talk sewage all day long those are the next three steps in my mind okay um are there any other questions about what we talked about today from TSA my my lovely TSO counterparts concerns we feel good about these once we see them in policy language nothing major's gonna come up that we anticipate I think that there is a certain amount of of consistency which is really good um and if people can hold the general ideas in their head in a couple of simple sentences it makes life a lot easier when they get the details so I think it's a good move yeah Andy I see your hand yeah I just want to make a big thank you to Anna Amy and Guilford for having done all of the work and presenting this to us in such a clear fashion really um I think would have been a lot harder to have this as a discussion of the entire committee and um so the three of you thank you thank you thank you all credit those to Amy and Guilford truly thank you um and don't maybe don't thank us yet we haven't even talked about sewer so um all right great so then I will say a huge thank you to Amy and Guilford uh I'll be in touch with you about getting a timeline maybe for when you you want to have a policy uh a next policy draft and then when we should start talking sewer all right that was great companion uh thank you very much thank you um Amy thank you Guilford thank you Anna but Anna stays the others can I say turn on the TV okay um our next issue is Chalene's engagement and outreach proposal I'm wondering if we could quickly do the town manager appointments before that um and approve the minutes and then get to that is that okay with people okay um I don't know how efficient we are allowed to be uh oh we're not allowed to be efficient at all I'm remembering we have to do a motion a formal motion on each one of these nominations um so I guess we should just do that right now um and um Chalene are you and Andy are you feeling like doing some of the motions and spreading them out are we going to make Anna do them all um because we have the cultural council first um Paul do you need to say anything I read your memos I I mean you may be able to get away with just one motion for all three appointments I think that'd be fine I mean unless Athena says otherwise but yeah these are pretty straightforward there are still vacancies that we're working through um there's not a lot to add to these um other than what I've written okay Athena are you able to give us some advice whether we can use one motion for these appointments to these three committees I don't see why not okay all right um so um I can mumble along or someone else can offer this motion give it a shot okay great thank you okay it's going to be clunky Athena but luckily it will be slow I move to recommend the town services and outreach committee recommend the town council approve the following town manager appointments right to the cultural council for one-year terms expiring June 30th 2025 and oh sorry I'm sorry not one-year terms for a three-year term expiring June 30th 2025 Cody Rooney and for a two-year term expiring June 30th Eleanor Walsh to the historic commission for a three-year term expiring June 30th 2025 Madeline Helmer and to the local historic district commission for a three-year term expiring June 30th 2025 Nicole Miller um did we get um young Eleanor Walsh from Amherst college we get her in there too I did I certainly thank you but okay so we have a motion do we have a second to that motion I'll second thank you so I will call the question and I'll call uh shallony how do you vote yes okay Anna yes Dorothy yes Andy yes okay so we are unanimous with one absent and we have done those recommendations and um we also um can I just move that we approve the minutes of June 2 2022 and of June 30 2022 both regular meeting minutes second okay um calling the question um those in favor uh Andy yes uh Dorothy yes shallony yes and Anna yes okay so we have approved the minutes um we have nobody in attendees we don't need to have public comments so now we can turn it over to you shallony to continue with your proposal yay so did everyone get a chance to look at it I can share my I think I can yeah I can share my screen if that's helpful um but do you want me to go over the whole thing and then go we can go slide by side I think I can do that I can go through there just a few slides and we can take each one and see what feedback we have I think the overall goal is that as the town service and outreach committee that we come up with uh an outreach plan that we can then offer to the town council for other committees to have like a foundation for and of course each committee can adapt it based on their specific needs but at least it will give them some sort of a framework and I can say that we're already using this in the CRC and we've received more than 55 responses to our surveys and um for the rental registration by law and I think just doing it in a systematic way has really allowed us to get at least a few different perspectives than the ones we usually hear from so I think it's really worth us uh at least making an effort and over time the hope is that people who don't speak up may feel more comfortable to speak up because we're using some technologies with UMass that we're collaborating called Community Click and that is something that allows people who attend the um meetings they don't have to publicly speak up especially if it's a controversial issue and you have a different perspective um sometimes people don't feel comfortable speaking but by using some of these technologies that Community Click we allow participants to share their comments anonymously so just by using um you know some of these technologies using a very intentional approach to reaching the different stakeholders that we're impacting the hope is that we'll hear from you know from different stakeholders and that way we're able to make better decisions so that's kind of so I'll just pause any questions at this point. Shalini I have a question is that? Yeah. So um one question I had is you know we we played with Community Click during one of our district meetings which was really cool I'm curious if there's going to be any sort of support for or if you're envisioning any support for counselors and how to best utilize it because I think one of the things that was really clear was like yes no questions are helpful and it like some there are some things that we're still working through um you know like not having it always like how to clear it and ask a new question or things like that and so I'm curious if there's going to be any sort of um any sort of support for us in figuring out the best way to deploy it and in terms of how we frame our questions because it's not necessarily the same question that you can ask. Right so right now we're just like testing it out because like in our district meeting there were very few people and no one participated really no one really used it and uh but we we are planning to deploy it for the rental registration and we're planning to keep it live like so people can see the sentiments like if people can say agree disagree confused so they can click on that and there'll be a real time monitor that'll be showing people agreeing so many people disagreeing or so we're still what uh to answer your question we are still trying it out to see what are the clink you know what makes it hard for um a counselor to use it and how to streamline it what sort of support we counselors may need to use such a thing and then once we figure that out then we'll roll out the training or something or support. Oh okay okay yeah I think my my thought was like the way that it seemed to work was like it was a full record of everything and so if I asked you know do you like dogs more than cats and everyone would agree for that but then I said if you like cats more than dogs and everyone could disagree it would show even levels um because it it kept the cumulative totals and so I just was curious um and I know I'm getting into the weeds so I apologize but um that was something I was curious about when we thought about using it to collect sentiments like if there's a way to to clear it for each question. I think it's supposed to be time stamped or okay so it will be based on specific questions and not okay thanks that's a goal anyways uh okay I'm going to share my screen. I just want to want to briefly say that I have severe reservations about anonymous programs of that sort but um do you want to share your concerns? Oh we we see how some um in critical groups we've seen how they can load a meeting and people said that if you don't know who they are and they're anonymous it's kind of like we try to protect our meetings from bombers um I think one reason that your constituents probably didn't use it was that they really like raising questions than being who they are you know and have face to face I I just see yeah in our political environment I could see how that could be misused because like a lot of stuff on the internet a lot of social media dwells in this anonymous area and and so far it hasn't had good results but um and yeah I mean it's an interesting point you raised Dorothy because there's a flip side to it I think that you know just from my few conversations on the subject I have had residents of the town who have expressed opinions where they are would be considered to be very unpopular and the best example I can give is people who have serious questions about the reparations proposal and the um I can understand their hesitance about going public in um saying that because that gets done in this community labeled in a certain way but they may have very strong feelings and I've even had some people say that they're so unhappy about the idea of us setting aside the amount of money that has been discussed for reparations that they don't know if they can vote for the school override and so I think this is a serious discussion that we really do need to encourage people to be able to say what's on their mind without fear of being labeled and publicly shamed for stating their opinions because they if they feel that way then they obviously are feeling very strongly about it but are they anonymous you can have a list of names a hundred names of people attending meeting but you don't know who said what but if you don't even know the names of the people who are at the meeting you don't know what you've just heard so will any of the people be um registered so Dorothy uh the way it's happening is it's only people who've entered the meeting okay that will have the link I suppose you could get the link and not be in the meeting that is a possibility but we are encouraging the participants who are in the meeting to then sign up to this thing so we do have we can see who all are participating right okay and we will also have we are we're keeping the questions optional like besides the name we are keeping like maybe like we and that's what each committee can decide what questions we want because when they register uh when they sign up sort of sign up anonymously we can put in the questions we want like what district are you from or you know are you a renter or student or so we it's up to us what questions we want to sort of yeah but you just said they sign up anonymously yeah I I would want a list of the people real names of the people in the meeting not their opinions but yeah right but um that is or we already know that from the because they're entering the webinar so you know how we see participants we can see them so it'll be basically the people who are so we can see the names so they can you can't pack a meeting with people from out of town or something yeah no no that's that's important thank you right yeah okay so where are we I'm just trying to see what's the best way to move this okay there we go okay so the objectives for today is like and and of course feel free to add more steps to this or remove some of the steps I'll just go through some of the steps that I looked at other communities and how they are um utilizing community engagement so some of the key steps were you know in designing and so today hopefully we can go through the steps and see if these make sense and then what are some key questions that the committees can ask under them and what are some channels that we have already in place like amor's current amor's indie like these are channels that we have in that are underutilized right now and so we can talk about that a little bit and it's up to you whichever piece you want to spend more time on so in terms of the steps or the questions you know that we go through is like when a committee comes together with a question maybe they can allocate 15 minutes or so to run through these questions and so the first is to articulate what is the problem we're solving for the second question because every problem does not need the same level of community engagement so they can even ask do we need this what do we know and not know who is impacted and what's the last one and and how are we going to engage people and then finally what what does success look like and how are we measuring that okay so this is the first question which we've been trying to do for rental registration like what for the problems we're solving for like we want better quality housing we want more in climate we want to move towards our climate action goals and so like whatever the problem like it's good to kind of articulate that clearly so any questions here Anna do you anticipate adding a like a time kind of like a deadline like what are the what are the timelines for each phase of this process and like general advice not like obviously it depends but recommendations yeah so I think that has to be worked out with so the way I'll just use again the rental registration as an example so the chair is setting out the timeline for the whole process right like we're gonna on this date we're going to discuss this section and these are the people we want to engage the on this date so the the chair kind of sets it up but then the committee can appoint another person so like I'm the community outreach person who's taking on the extra responsibility of making sure that we are reaching out to and coordinating the sending out of emails and so forth so they can so that it doesn't fall on the chair and and so it's the coordination between the chair and the community coordinator to figure out the timing okay okay so and in terms of this particular questions itself I think some of these questions will be in the initial stages when I let's say we're going to be discussing the universal composting for example so we can have the first 15 or 20 minutes can be spent every time on discussing like what is the problem we're like going through the steps of who do we need to engage what are we you know and answering some of the questions so we can start designing a community engagement plan so that everyone in the community who's going to be impacted by it has is educated about it has information about it has an avenue for sending us anonymously and publicly their comments which is why I think the survey has been great in rental registration like I said we've got pretty diverse points of view and not just people who are who we hear from which is also very valuable every time I say that it doesn't mean residents and neighbors are not important it just means that we also want to hear from tenants what are the issues they are encountering we also want to hear from landlords what are the issues they are encountering so yeah okay so do we need to engage the community so these are just some quick questions we can go through to see like is it worth spending a time on community engagement so obviously if it's going to increase the taxes or if it's something people have been complaining about we should definitely engage andy uh andy thanks yes I just have to give now I think that community engagement can be really important there's lots of questions that have to be worked through I've been curious for example and please don't go into this from the CRC perspective but having the CRC hold the community engagement piece when student renters are not present in town to give their perspective on what it's like for them as renters I was wondering how that decision got made so I think that it is really important that we consider the question of timing I think there are other issues that I can't give come across um but uh have you know number two is have community members voiced interest concerns or opposition to our project well part of the problem is this in my prior example people are afraid to state opposition and um are you devising a process that encourages that from people who are afraid to come forward so those are just a couple things that I had thought about as I'm looking at this yeah I know I really appreciate both the questions andy and so with the students things like for just as an example we are starting the process now but we definitely like we touch with Tony Marulis from campus and Sally and we're working with them so they have an off-campus email that they send out it won't be as effective but they are already going to send it out and our survey questions that we designed they are like if you are a tenant you know these are your questions if you are so right at the upfront it gives people very specific questions that are relevant to them to invite that and to make them feel comfortable and secondly we're going to have a public forum again when in September once the students come back so we're just starting the process now but we will also continue to re-engage when students are back and definitely I think the other advantage is like with the survey we can see right now for example that 60 percent of the responses have been from neighbors and only like let's say 20 percent are from tenants so that means we need to reach out more to people you know we need to do a better job of reaching out to tenants and focus more on that so it's like the information that we collect it's reiterated it's not a one and end all so we can kind of keep improving on our engagement strategies based on the feedback that we're getting and definitely the hope is exactly what you said Andy the people who are afraid to answer because of controversial questions that we create safe ways like the anonymous survey or the community click and maybe you know we can keep coming up with new ways to make people feel comfortable yeah Dorothy yeah I was going to say that on the items here number one and two we are supposed to be doing these all the time I thought three and four were particularly interesting because what pub would public participation help our public project achieve equitable outcomes and you know that's something that I know you have talked about a lot and we haven't found it necessarily an easy way but I think that that is one area that we need to really work hard on and obviously number four um if there's money involved you have to reach out to the people involved who would have to pay the increased assessment or tax increase or if there's a bond referendum so um I mean number one is of course basic basic but we are supposed to be doing that and we have been doing that to some extent but um so I just wanted to say I really liked the emphasis on number three and four yeah and this is actually just starting questions for people in a committee so they have a ready set of questions to stimulate a conversation but once it gets started like Andy brought in other angles like is the timing right or is the you know is it safe for people so that will just allow the conversation to be more to be richer uh so and then the third step is okay once we agree to like yeah we do need to engage the community then we also look at what do we know and not know because often there are reports and studies that have been done in the past that we kind of sometimes forget to look at so uh and that's on the sponsors I think also the sponsors of the um the proposal to maybe present like okay this is the research that has been done or this is what other towns are doing so just presenting all the possible information it is a kind of all yeah and again these are not the final set of questions but again just something to give people to think about okay then who is impacted I think this is an important question of course like which community members are going to be most impacted who's already engaged like we're seeing right now with residential by-law who's already engaged and so we just had the town staff send out the email today to landlords because they again that's another group that is hesitant to respond in publicly I've reached out to them and they're like people are very hesitant to come publicly and speak so I think the survey anonymous survey we're starting to see some responses on that um so that's good who can we invite to help shape and carry out the community engagement and this is again thinking about like the Gazette and having it on my slide having the Amos Current in India on vacation right now so they haven't posted anything but many people read that those two news media places so maybe using them more and okay so this is just getting people to think get creative over here and then which town departments and committees so is it tack when you want to go like we've been reaching out to ECAC and it was really insightful to have them come and tell us what we could include in our inspections for the rental registration and yeah so just like systematically going thinking through all of this okay what questions to ask and how this again is dependent on the issue and who's being impacted generally we're trying to get into questions that invite people sharing their lived experiences and not opinions as in like do you think we should do that it's easy to say yeah we should do this we should not do that but I think um but we may not jump that we we oops we tend to jump to um solutions wait let me just check my my audio seems a little off um you can hear you is it fine yeah okay there was a second of feedback I don't know why but I think you're still there yeah can you try for a second I'm wondering if it okay I'll keep going okay so what questions to ask um but what is the timeline for engagement who's a town staff and committee lead like finalizing those things and then some of the key channels and tools and the whole goal over here was not to add the burden on the counselors too much or the town staff and so how can we just use uh I mean definitely it took me time to create a survey and manager spend some time also helping with the survey and Brianna spent a lot of time also putting but I think what what happened was that uh I was able to go into engage and enter the survey questions so then Brianna could come in and just do so it didn't take up too much of the town staff time um so I think there is a way to do this where it doesn't take up too much time but we and I think it's worth it so any other channels and tools that uh you know and then we also put in a question in our survey how did you hear about it which has been very helpful to like what's working what's not working so counselor emails is a big one so whoever is sending out emails thank you because um many people are hearing about the Engage website and the survey because of the counselor emails uh the Engage website is another one um people have said they found the survey through the newspaper article that came out on Mass Live and Gazette um what else uh I think those are the so far those are the common ways we've heard people say that that's how they heard about it and then today the town staff sent the email to the landlords because we already have a list of landlords so then that email went out to them yeah Andy yeah going back one page um from where you are when you're putting the questions together I still am back on my big hang up here and that is that just um even suggesting a question and putting wanting to put it into the list of questions um risks um being criticized for having even suggested the question if it's a loaded issue and um I think we need to really think through how we make it safe to have the council discussion within even committees as to what questions to include so that people are not criticized for including a question where they know that there are community members who may have that viewpoint even if they do not share the viewpoint but you know it just seems like uh we need to be very careful in the question how we protect the discussion and really get a full set of questions that the community really wants to be able to speak on because we're getting into topics um where community members themselves aren't going to want to raise it but you're trying to get at questions that they may not feel uncomfortable raising but we want to make sure that they feel comfortable providing their input on it and so it's a it's a very difficult issue I appreciate you grappling with it yeah and thanks Andy as you were speaking I was wondering again that having that position of a community outreach person in for each issue and if there were counselors who had questions and felt that they are going to be and I'm just brainstorming with you and I'm wondering if that's a solution that they would anyone who has a question that's potentially controversial could send it to the community outreach person and then the community outreach person can just without naming anyone say like these are some questions we've collected from uh from residents and from um from counselors and so it doesn't pinpoint any it doesn't identify any single person I would need to think about the answer to that I don't have one right now because I think there might be open meeting law considerations right if it's only two like it's not going open it's only one on one and I think just as leaders I think the more we can create and role model you know the part that it's that all questions deserve to be heard and I know and it's just that some questions can be hurtful to the people who have been impacted so I understand it's a very delicate balance of being having the freedom to ask because if many of the questions that counselors have many residents also have and it is our job as leaders to address at least those questions and so yeah Dorothy um I'm getting a little lost here um who is the community outreach person do you mean the ones that the town manager has appointed do you mean every committee has one or um yes I was suggesting that within the committee for each issue there will be like of course there's a chair but then the committee can decide like for this issue if anyone wants to volunteer to be the key person who's going to coordinate the you know the surveys or this and like who's the key person for coordination between the town staff or you know just who's doing what that there'll be one rather than putting it on the chair I think this is an awful lot of um I guess I don't really see us being able to do this for every issue I think that this is not a full-time job this is a tremendous amount of work and I do expect that and that the committee deals with four issues in a like four months period of time that there would be at least four counselors who would then take on an independent community engagement project I don't see that as realistic at all um and I'm also got confused with Andy's discussion about questions that make people feel uncomfortable and I know he must be referring to something I don't I don't know what we're talking about right now I really don't um there's something that's very so sensitive that we that we can't talk about and so we have to do something very specially um I need clarification and I can't feel beyond the example that I gave when I presented it because as I pointed out I heard from probably two or three residents that they had serious concerns about the decision to set aside the amount of money for reparations we were talking about setting aside and uh that they um had various reactions to it that I thought we as a council should be sensitive to but that uh they were afraid to come forward other than in a private conversation and uh how do we make sure that on that kind of an issue that has tremendous significance for the community that the fact that they have those opinions but they're hesitant to bring them because they feel that they would be labeled as racist just for raising the questions um what is your solution to that how I don't I don't have a solution I was shallony asked for um input I was providing that now the input that there was something that we needed to think about in the process I didn't have a solution because it is a difficult issue I know and I've encountered that also Dorothy with respect to um when we were it's generally related to issues that are sensitive like race and uh where we we've had discussions in the last council and there were many residents who had views but none of them was willing to come and speak up because of fear of being called racist and then I think we in this council I faced that similar thing with the solar moratorium that there were people who disagreed with the moratorium but were not willing to come and speak up publicly about it so things that are controversial that might label a person as being anti- you know being a racist or being anti-climate change or being or like if you're a landlord and you are a greedy landlord like and so anything if you say anything you're going to be judged in a particular way people just don't want they don't feel comfortable why would they put themselves through that so they just don't engage and then they're suppressing there and so when it comes time to voting or something then people will kind of react and be the kind of lost that opportunity to engage them to educate them to listen to them and so that's what we are working and like you said Dorothy not every issue needs this level of engagement but just like for some issues that are really important we can go in deeper and there's some issues where we might just say hey can we just put out a notice in like even with the water by like we've had a couple of different people come in and it was very important to them and we made a significant shift these I might change because I heard people who were suffering and you know with related to the water metering and all of that so maybe just putting it out in Emma's current in the newspaper sending it out too so it doesn't have to be elaborate but just letting people know that hey we're discussing this issue I think is is what I'm proposing um I would like to ask Paul what he thinks about this because I'm seeing this is really tricky territory which can you say which part is tricky people who feel I mean we make decisions we discuss them and on on every issue there are people who feel uncomfortable with one thing or another but we still have to have discussions and take votes and take action and having side disguise I don't know so yeah I think it's a problem so um I think this is a framework for what community engagement could look like I think Shalini said it's not for every issue one of the things that popped in my mind is what if we want to study something you know a new new um you know astronomy lab or something it's like that's not even on the table but we're not going to go through this whole process so I think we need some early sort of stop points like what does this trigger this fairly involved and I think that there's going to be stages of it and I think there'll be some things that are more and more involved like rental registration impacts a lot of people some other things might impact fewer people um so I think this is a framework that would be really interesting to work with our cpo's on because this is right up their alley but I do say look at it as being there's somebody's got to do this work so and if it's not going to be a counselor which is kind of a big ask for a counselor who's not really built into this you've got so many other things that you're also responsible for who is going to be taking this on so I think but I think it's important for us because we do value community engagement as a community so we should be sort of laying out what does this look like and and what's the sort of I mean the Lincoln ad is a perfect example like that's a fair amount beside a huge amount but it's a fair amount that we want to engage the community in because we want the people impact to be weighing in um so I think there we're going to have different levels of engagement depending what the issue is but I think having a framework for what it looks like and what it means is really valuable because we don't we sort of like just sort of run around do different things right now and we kind of already doing some of these things but it is not coordinated like you might have a regular newsletter and I have one but maybe others don't and then what you put in your newsletter and what I put in is different but there's certain issues like rental registration which actually maybe impact your district more than mine and so sending out that email to all counselors hey can you include this in your newsletters it's just a simple ask but then everyone is getting the same information that we put on engage it's a uniform communication that's going out to the public so I think there are many benefits to just the low-hanging fruit of let's just coordinate a little bit better let's utilize the resources we already have like Amazon in the newspapers our engaged website and so that's just like the bare minimum we could do and even that could be because I hear a lot of residents saying that they don't hear and they're not engaged and they don't you know how do they find out so this is our way of showing you know it really matters to us what you think yeah Paul I mean I also we have to recognize not everybody wants to be engaged in local government they just want to make sure they want to go to work come home have everything you have their water working and their sewer working and kids going to school successfully and you know and engaging that it was just a hard thing okay now has a handout right and I just want to say one quick thing I see for me at this moment the primary importance of this is I think that they're really excellent questions to be asked in the committee in our own committee work in our town council work and it kind of it's a great checklist of the things we need to think about as we talk so I've got absolutely I really like that Athena thank you I just wanted to add I've been thinking about what Andy said about these sensitive issues and and wondering where or if the one-on-one interactions that counselors have with their constituents are are considered a community engagement then they should be maybe mentioned as part of this process so that we can acknowledge that some of those conversations do happen one-on-one and that can be considered part of the process and counselors can speak to what their constituents are telling them during meetings and and recognize that some of this engagement doesn't happen during meetings and through emails I mean you know we get in my district we get a lot of emails we're in constant conversation a large group of people yeah yeah that's really important well I I just wanted to thank Shalini because I think that you know I'm gonna keep my little copy out with my TSO meeting papers and remember to go check through and see did we check that did we ask that I think that's a really important thing to do and I'll make it like a checklist this was more like a presentation I think I can make it into like a checklist that we can have and then we can just kind of see which are the questions relevant and just say not applicable for this particular issue and that might be easy to do so I would like to say it is 8 15 and I open the floor to anybody who may want to say something at this time otherwise I would like to thank Anna and Shalini for leading really great discussions and to adjourn oh I do see one other member uh otherwise I see Jim Barnett with his hand up under panelists you know under attendees should we that would be public comment I'm guessing you're right okay so let us invite him in for public comment or okay how do you do hi hi I'm Jim Barnett and I live at 34 Dana Place regrettably I I haven't seen much of the meeting until now but I just wanted to talk about the issue of parking on Lincoln Avenue right May so what I want to do is I want to talk on behalf of the people who actually park and work and live in the community and you know I don't think they have much of a voice and if we exclude parking once again to the people from the people who actually use the parking who are actually thriving and studying and working in this community we just further the exclusion uh and the bipolarity of this community as far as I know there is no distinction between the University of Massachusetts and the town and you know the people who work at UMass and study at UMass those are your constituents those are the citizens those are the people that utilize the town of Amherst pay your sales tax and and and all that kind of stuff and I think it's important that we give those people who are utilizing a public good which is parking the opportunity to continue to do so I walk up and down that road twice a day every day and I don't see the you know parade of horribles that the owners of the properties on that street see what I see is a lot of people utilizing a public good and doing the best they can um well let's not forget that is a very wide street um and that is a street that is a natural access point for for UMass Amherst if we exclude parking during the day there the the speed of traffic will go up not down um the way it's used now is actually in my opinion pretty good if we exclude parking there they're going to go right over to sunset um I just think that uh you know certainly there are improvements that can be made but to make it a rule where during the week during the day no one gets to park there uh really sends the wrong message um to to to the people of Amherst regarding who's important in this town are we all important are our only certain property owners important thank you thank you for your comments I would suggest that you watch the tape of this meeting because we gave a very detailed discussion with input from DPW to do with the safety the width of the road and there will be a public forum after Labor Day in which people will be invited to respond on this issue but I think you'll find a lot of information in the what do we call the the videotape of this meeting which well I would encourage I would encourage the members to not just take what DPW says they they only care about what what Mr. Brocklman has told them to do and he cares particularly for the property owners of this community um look at the safety records look at how often not on the corner of Lincoln Avenue of at Amity um sure there were problems there but look at the safety issues up and down Lincoln you'll find they're almost non-existent okay we can't debate this now but thank you for your comment thank you um we have any other um comments at this time um then uh I would say let's be adjourned oh Shalini I didn't see your hand thank you just a question about the community engagement like what are the next steps for that the plan that's proposed do we want to like sleep over it and then have another discussion because my goal was or hope is that we can then finalize something and then propose it to town council um I suggest we discuss it and I'm looking at Paul right now that we discuss it uh briefly at a future meeting I think that the question of who who does it and how it is done and how much of it is done the practicalities is something that maybe we want to think about a little bit um certainly we can do what I mentioned which is to use it as a structure for our own discussions but you are talking about step beyond that you are talking about having more outreach into the community than some committees are doing so um Ana do you have a comment on this I do um Shalini do you think it'd be possible for you to write this up as an actual as a the presentation was great but if you write it up as an actual action plan with the checklist and the timelines or like as much as you know absolutely talk through that as something to pitch that that would be yeah absolutely that's a great idea actually I have a 15 page but I'll try to make it shorter and with resources like I give links to you know where I drew all this information from and then yeah and that will be something that you can then I'd like to offer up the cpo's as a resource to review that with before you bring it back to this committee awesome thank you so much very good idea but that that's really what I was looking for was a way of trying to integrate it into all the structures that we already have and just see what might need more okay um your hand down Shalini are you still have anything okay great so everybody thank you for a good day's work and see you next time meetings adjourned