 Given that we have a majority of the town council present, we will actually make this an official meeting of the town council. And this is a ceremonial swearing in. And with us this evening is our town clerk, Shavina Martin, who is going to be joining me up here. And also our state representative, Mindy Dom, which we'd like you to come on up to. So Shavina does the official swearing in because that is, she's certified to do that by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and by virtue of her position in the town of Amherst. So we're going to start with the school committee and I believe we have all of you present. So would you please come and just stand and you will be sworn in individually. We'd also like to welcome people's families as well. Some of who are right here. Okay. Benjamin Joseph Harrington, please come forward. We get to experiment on it. I, Benjamin Joseph Harrington. I, Benjamin Joseph Harrington. Do solemnly swear. Do solemnly swear. That I will bear true faith and allegiance. That I will bear true faith and allegiance. To the United States of America. United States of America. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I will support the constitutions. I will support the constitution. And do these incumbent upon me. And do these incumbent upon me. As a school committee member thereof. As a school committee member thereof. Say Ben. Hey, Peter M. Dimlin. We're going to repeat and do the same thing. Sounds like a plan. I, Peter M. Dimlin. I, Peter M. Dimlin. Do solemnly swear. That I will bear true faith and allegiance. That I will bear true faith and allegiance. To the United States of America. To the United States of America. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And I will support the constitution. And I will support the constitution. And the duties incumbent upon me. And the duties incumbent upon me. As a school committee member thereof. As a school committee member thereof. Congratulations. I'm going to have a... Right, congratulations. Congratulations. I carry a spitzer. I'm not carrying a spitzer. I'm just needing to carry a spitzer. We're going to do the same thing. You're right. I carry a spitzer. I carry a spitzer. Do solemnly swear. Do solemnly swear. That I will bear true faith and allegiance. That I will be a fair true faith, true faith and allegiance. To the United States of America. To the United States of America. And the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I will support this constitution. I will support the constitution. And the duties incumbent upon me. Encombing upon me. Encombing upon me. As school committee member. As school committee member. Thereof. Thereof. Thank you. Eritie Nakajima. Congratulations. Do solemnly swear that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the United States of America, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I will support the Constitution, and duties incumbent upon me as school committee member thereof. Allison Blyler McDonald. Do solemnly swear that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the United States of America, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I will support the Constitution, and the duties incumbent upon me as school committee member thereof. Allison Blyler McDonald. Do solemnly swear that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the United States of America, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I will support the Constitution, and duties incumbent upon me as school committee member thereof. Allison Blyler McDonald. Do solemnly swear that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the United States of America, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I will support the Constitution, and the duties incumbent upon me as the Library Board of Trustee thereof. Allison Blyler McDonald. Congratulations. Allison Blyler McDonald. Good, congratulations. Thank you very much. Thanks for doing this. Yeah, no problem. Are you ready? Sure. I, Austin D. Serrat. I, Austin D. Serrat. I apologize. Do solemnly swear. Do solemnly swear that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the United States of America, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I will support the Constitution, and the duties incumbent upon me as school committee member thereof. I will bear true faith and allegiance to the United States of America, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I will support the Constitution, I will support the Constitution, and duties incumbent upon me as Library Board of Trustee thereof. As a Library Board of Trustee thereof. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Allison Blyler McDonald. I'm never going to let that happen. Congratulations. Robert Pam. Yay. Hi, Robert Pam. Do solemnly swear. That I will bear true faith. That I will bear true faith. And allegiance. To the United States of America. To the United States of America. And Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I will support the Constitution. I will support the Constitution. And duties incumbent upon me. As Library Board of Trustee thereof. As Library Board of Trustee thereof. Okay. Christopher J. Huffman. Christopher J. Huffman. Do solemnly swear. Do solemnly swear. That I will bear true faith and allegiance. That I will bear true faith and allegiance. To the United States of America. To the United States of America. And the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I will support the Constitution. I will support the Constitution. And duties incumbent upon me. As Library Board of Trustee thereof. As Library Board of Trustee thereof. And duties incumbent upon me. And duties incumbent upon me. As Library Board of Trustee thereof. As Library Board of Trustee thereof. Congratulations. Thanks for Library Board of Trustees. Tammy Ellison, not Allie. She is not here tonight. And Alex, they are also not here. They won't be joining in another time. Great. The housing authority. Please come forward. This isn't a podcast. We are going to start with Nancy E. Schroeder. Nancy. Nice to meet you. You ready? All right, we're going to raise a question for everybody. I, Nancy E. Schroeder. I, Nancy E. Schroeder. Do solemnly swear. Do solemnly swear. That I will bear true faith and allegiance. That I will bear true faith and allegiance. To the United States of America. To the United States of America. To the United States of America. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I will support the Constitution. And duties incumbent upon me. And duties incumbent upon me. As a housing authority member thereof. As a housing authority member thereof. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, that was for two years. Yes. I, Michael A. Burkhart. Do solemnly swear. Do solemnly swear. That I will bear true faith and allegiance. That I will bear true faith and allegiance. To the United States of America. To the United States of America. And the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I will support the Constitution. I will support the Constitution. And the duties incumbent upon me. And the duties incumbent upon me. As a housing authority member thereof. As a housing authority member thereof. Thank you. David W. Williams. Are you ready? I'll tell you. I, David W. Williams. I, David W. Williams. Do solemnly swear. That I will bear true faith and allegiance. Will be a true faith and allegiance. To the United States of America. To the United States of America. And the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I will support the Constitution. I will support the Constitution. And duties incumbent upon me. And duties incumbent upon me. As a housing authority member thereof. As a housing authority member thereof. Congratulations. Thank you. All of your service to the housing authority. The Oliver Smith will elect your carer to the next grade. We were sworn in earlier. And so therefore. We are going to take this opportunity. To return to this meeting. And we will reconvene at 6th. Thank you. Good evening. Seeing that we have a majority of the council president. We are calling this meeting to order. On. January 6th. 2020. We. I have a couple announcements. That I want to mention. First. The Human Rights Commission. Is organizing an event on Wednesday. January 15th. To celebrate the birth of Reverend Martin. Dr. Dr. Martin Luther King. It will be at 4 o'clock p.m. On the front steps of the town hall. Also. The town council wishes to congratulate. All the town employees. Who are recently recognized. For their distinguished service of. 2510. 1520. 25 and 30 years. Quite a number. And we thank you for your service. Our order of our agenda tonight. Which we're going to ask you to put up Athena. And. Along with the timing. Is we're actually going to begin. Very rapidly. By going through the first few items. And then moving on to. Six. A. Which is the school building discussion. And we have superintendent of schools. Mike Morris with us. And. We will proceed with that. So first of all. There are no hearings. I'm going to delay general public comment. Till after. We do the. Six A and six B. And then. But before we do all that. I just want to make sure that we look. At. And. Consider the proclamation. For the dark. Dr. Martin Luther King junior day. And adopt. This proclamation as presented. Do I have a motion. Mindy Joe. I move. To proclaim January 15th. 2020 as Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King junior day. And adopt the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther. Jr. Proclamation as presented. Is there a second. And is there anything that. Particularly. GOL would like to say at this time George. GOL met on December. 18. And voted for. In favor. No opposed and one absent. To. That this proclamation. Is deemed clear consistent and actionable. Okay. Are there any. Any councilor comments at this time. We'd like to recognize. A member of. Human Rights Commission just come up and. Say hello to us. Thank you very much for being with us. We look forward to celebration. Any further questions. Then all those in favor raise your hand. And say aye. Opposed. Abstain. It's 1200. Thank you. Now we will proceed with the MSBA presentation. And we're ahead of schedule. Gull. So welcome. I'm sitting over here because it's a team presentation with the superintendent. But it really is the superintendent's presentation. You'll be hearing mostly from him. And this is a similar presentation. Slightly smaller than what was presented to the school committee. In December. So this is the idea on this is to give you a. The news. About the MSBA decision. Where we go from here. So turn it over to Mike. And thank you for having me. And I will be brief. I know you have a long agenda. And today happens to be a holiday that many people celebrate. And I'm one of those. My family is one of those people. So I'll be brief for your sake and for my families as well. But I want to start with. Just. And you've seen many of these slides and it was in the packet. So I am going to. Go through these pretty quickly with the town manager. And then open up more dialogue, which may be more useful than. Going through the slides. But starting from a place of a very good news. That we were one of. 11 districts. So 18% of applicants were. We're accepted into the core program this year. We're very fortunate to be one of those 11. There are many people. There's some who actually attended the meeting who just wanted to see what it was like on the other side. And actually another district who had a failed project. And is now trying to figure out what to do. So it was. It was a sweet moment for us. But bittersweet knowing that there are many other. Needy communities. With schools that are in need of repair replacement. So one thing that's a little different for those of you who. Track the last process is that. Now they stagger. Eligibility periods. Starting for the 11 districts. And we were on the earlier side of May 1st. Date of when the period starts. There are some that start further into. Later spring and early summer. So we felt good about that. As well. But it's in the kind of old days. You. When you went in the board voted you were in immediately. And now they stagger it. Both. And primarily so that towns can get organized. As well as their staff can get organized. The stagger helps them support districts at a higher level. So just a side note that the statement of interest. For Wildwood school was not accepted. That's not a typical. Both the school committee and. This body prioritized for river. And we would have only expected one project to get in. To be clear. That does not mean that the current project. Other that the. Current project cannot address Wildwood's. Infrastructure challenges. And I think I've just said and I'll be a broken record on this. Have been for a year. Will continue to be that. My belief is that both buildings need to be addressed in the next five to seven years. And so. We'll talk more about Wildwood as we head into this project. Before I do initial timeline. I actually want to start with a thank you. Or kind of slow down and thank you. That goes for many people in the community. But I want to thank the town council for. Engaging with six public sessions. There were three for staff that weren't as public. But then there were six sessions. The attendance of the town council at those listening sessions last. I think it was February, March. It was cold. Was was fantastic. It made a huge difference for the community for myself. For the school committee. To see that their colleagues at the municipal side. Being so present and engaged in the process. The unanimous support for the statement of interest. And then the additional letter. We know we've heard directly from MSBA. Made a huge difference in their consideration. I don't think we'd be having this presentation. If not for your support of the work last winter and early spring. So. I really want to take the time to acknowledge that fact. And thank you all for your continued engagement and support of the project. So. Eligibility period starts May 1st. There's a handout that you may have seen that has like. A lengthy or breakdown. I'm not going to go. I mean, if there's questions about it, I will, but. But I'll just, I'll talk about the initial eligibility period. So that. What that entails starting May 1st is forming a school building committee. And you know that process much better than myself. As the town manager. We can gather information on maintenance and capital planning. We submit that to the MSBA. We complete enrollment projections and certifications. So we have our own enrollment projections. MSBA does their own independent enrollment. And we try to come to some. Models that to study as part of the feasibility study. And then we have to secure local. Local vote authorization for the feasibility study. And the period can last up to 270 days. And that's the, the wording is intentional. Does not have to last 270 days. When all, if all those things are in place. We can submit that to the MSBA. And hopefully move on to the next module. Sooner than 270 days. This is from MSBA's websites. Their visual of the process. This part of it. The eligibility process. And. This is just a screenshot of the people who are required to be on the building committee. Local local municipalities have the opportunity to be. To add members. To add members. To add members. To add members. To add members. To add members. So this is really. From their framing. Who needs to be on a building committee. Not a, it's an exhaustive list. I'd like to add that. Individuals can serve more than one role too. So you may have. The mcppo. Which is the public purchasing agent. Certified who is also. Serving as school principal or something else. So you can have multiple functions. But these are all the. All the functions that are presented on the school committee. And mcppo. For those of you who aren't familiar. Is it's about someone who has a certification for. For procurement. So. I think most of the other ones avoid acronyms. But that one might have seen mysterious. And there are multiple members of both the school staff and town staff who have that. Certification. I know I'm going quickly intentionally to open up more dialogue. But I thought maybe we could pause here. And see if there are questions on this part so far. Before we get into. What happens after that. Study and what we can do now. Yeah, so I have a question. About the ones that are. Focused on particular careers like architecture engineering. Is it. Will reach out to the local professional. Association for. For ideas or how. How are members solicited. How are these potential members solicited. So I think we'd use the normal process of reaching out to people. And using the media. But we could also reach out to professional organizations. For nominees. The process I would think we would. Superintendent and I would. Put together a charge that we would review. And meet with the school committee and the council. However, the council wants to handle it. So. Everybody knows what the committee is going to do. What it's responsibilities are what the commitment. Is expected of. For people who sign up. We do the reach outreach for. People who want to participate. We would do a. Interview process like I do. Under the charter the town manager is the appointing authority. But we've used the residents advisory committee. And the superintendent and I would. Participate in that. Interview process for anyone who submitted their names. Those names would then go to. The council's. Committee outreach communications and appointments committee. For its review and then ultimately. Back to the council within 30 days. You would have to act on that. So we would. We would have to have. We would have to have a. We would have to have a. One of the things I asked in a previous. Email. So see with us and I just wanted to mention to the rest of you. That I'd asked for it. Is that. We had not concentrated in the past on voting members versus. Non voting members. And so I asked that when when Paul. And Mike work on the charge. They sort out what you know what makes sense. Because we have to do it. And what really feels critical to us based on our previous experiences, and then which of those are voting and which are non-voting, we perhaps have not, you know, delved, I know we haven't delved into those details in the past, and I think that, again, will just help people understand what's the role of being there and what part they will play in being there. So thank you for being willing to consider that. Yes, Mike. Just a slight addition to Ms. Brewer's comments is I think one of the things that we're looking for at the school side is how do we engage staff, and I think the same would be on the community side, who aren't members of the committee. In other words, being a member of the committee isn't the only way to offer input and affect the decisions that are made. And so I know on the school side, I'm thinking a lot about staff and teachers explicitly who may not have the time commitment capabilities to participate in something like a school building committee, and yet we really want to actively solicit and gather their feedback and what are the kind of forums and formats by which communication extends beyond the people who are selected, who volunteer and are selected for this committee, because I think it's incredibly important who's on a building committee. It's also incredibly important that those aren't the only voices that are heard. So I want to just kind of acknowledge Ms. Brewer's point and extend it a bit further as well. Okay. Are there other questions about this, Darcy? I guess I would ask some lines. What are your plans to make sure that different voices are actually included in the membership of the building committee? So that's part of our, I would depend on our CPO's who would do additional outreach. And through all of you, you all have connections into the community. We want the committee to be representative of our school committee especially, community especially. So I think while we're trying to hit all those boxes, we're also going to make sure that it's broadly representative of the town of Amherst. Meaning not just diversity of age, race, sex and so on, but diversity of voices, different opinions about our plans. Yes? Yes. I mean we will take into account anybody who interviews and we'll talk to them about what their interests are. I mean, so is it possible that one of these folks can be a town councilor? Well, I mean, we've talked a little bit about this. My feeling is if there's a school committee member, it would make sense if there's a town councilor who's interested in serving, they have a town councilor serve on it as well. I want to note that it's a pretty hefty commitment of time. It's going to be multiple years, it's going to be very regular meetings. And so when someone says I'm willing to do it, we want to make sure before we even advertise what the commitment of time that's going to be expected. So people say, if they raise their hands and say I'm interested, they know what they're getting into. Okay. Alyssa. I just want to follow up on that diversity of opinion concept and I don't want to belabor this because I know we have a lot to talk about tonight just on this topic alone. But perhaps for a future conversation is that it appears self-evident to a large number of people that we are not going to be able to repair both individual school buildings. I do not want to place someone on the school building committee who is dedicated to repairing and renovating two separate school buildings. I don't see the point of that. And so when we're talking about diversity of opinion, I think we need to be clear within what parameters. Just as when we hired the town manager the last time, we said this was what we were looking for as a community in a town manager. You don't get to get appointed to the screening committee and bring a different idea of what you think a town manager should be. You're someone who's moving forward on this. So while at one hand there's open-mindedness, on the other hand, if it's absolutely the only thing that will be done is we are keeping both those buildings where they are right now, I don't think that person has a place on the committee because that's not where we're headed with this. And so I think we need to figure out how to talk about that at some point. Okay. Dorothy? Yes, that was really my question. I think we voted, or maybe the school board voted. I'm not even sure who voted, but I kind of thought I voted. For a one large school, 600 students, K-5 or K-6, that to be determined and that we weren't going to re-litigate that issue. Is that correct? So one thing that has to be studied is a code upgrade of the current building. I think we have a lot of great information about that from the Fort River feasibility study, but really that decision gets made through the enrollment projection process. And it's a tricky, I'll just say my perspective on it. I think it's a tricky matter because when we were doing those listening sessions, I proposed an idea to the school committee which they endorsed bringing to those listening sessions. At no point did we ask people to commit to only looking at that option. We asked them to commit to putting that in a statement of interest that it would be studied, that it was certainly a preferred option. I think I've been really clear about that. I think the school committee, frankly, has been very clear about that. And I think to your point, I think the town council has been clear about that, but we never said this is the only thing we're going to look at. And I think if we said that, it would definitely streamline things, but I do think people would feel like that wasn't the question they were asked at those listening sessions. They were asked their reaction to it, not a full commitment to that being the only option. And the interest of not getting stuck on this issue because we will be looking at a charge for the committee in which these kinds of issues will be hammered out and let's use that opportunity at a future date. Are there other questions on this specifically? Then why don't we move on? So from the MSBA, direct quote at the meeting where I was actually a meeting after the MSBA vote when we were in, with other districts that were in the same position, they reminded us multiple, numerous times that projects take five to seven years and everyone wants to think that they can do it faster. And what they find is that when districts try to do it faster, bad things happen. And so because of that, they built in a safeguard which this went to everyone who received the good news invitation letter that the town's vote by the board of directors approving a potential grant will be no sooner than July 1st, 2022. And let me talk about what that means. What that means is basically what happens is there's multiple approvals that are needed along the way. And the MSBA will not vote what's called a project scope and budget, which is where they commit to their end of the funding, you know, pretty long end of schematic design. They won't commit to their end of the funding sooner than July 1st, 2022. And that means, and they meet every other month. So it's not like they have meetings as regularly as this body. So what that means is the soonest the town could take a potential vote would be the fall of 2022. Because of the nature of the process after both the MSBA vote and the town vote, that means the soonest a new building could open under the best of conditions, the quickest construction method, if that was selected, would be the fall of 2025. Most school years are funny that way. People don't change their buildings in April, right? Even if you were ready to go, you can't move all the things you need to move and make a move with the two months in the year left. So really that's what we're looking at, and that's what they emphasize with five to seven years. I think it's worth noting that I think, well, I feel urgency, there's no surprise there about the buildings, I think the MSBA is wise to do this. We have a lot of information about our buildings, there's still a lot of work to do for this community, for a building committee, and for the MSBA to feel like we're moving at a pace where their approvals are happening regularly, where they're offering systematic feedback and iterative feedback along the way. And so they built in that safeguard to protect themselves, but really it was more to protect towns and communities from trying to rush through a process that's intentionally should not be rushed. And they talked about the past before MSBA existed and what was there was a, it was called SBA, and it was a, there was a similar organization in all the problems they ran into because they weren't as deliberate as they are right now. So sorry to overemphasize that point, but it is one of the sobering point on timeline and yet I think it's a really important point for the council as well as the community to understand clearly. Okay. And so this is also directly from MSBA districts or, you know, the things that districts are primarily in charge of in blue and construction professionals in green. So we're at the very beginning, we're actually cut off, we couldn't figure out a way to graphically show this. We're not yet in eligibility, that starts May 1st, but we're gonna pretend that we are. For informing the project team, that's not, that's really when you're hiring your consultants. So that goes through a formal bid process for the designer that goes actually MSBA gets more votes than the locality that goes to a meeting at MSBA, then you get into a feasibility study when that's approved to get to schematic design and then the funding the project. So that's where both the MSBA takes their vote again, no earlier than summer 2022 and it goes back to then the town or municipality to do that. Detailed design happened after that where you get to schematic design, that's not building construction documents, it's not at that level. So detailed design takes six to eight months on average, could take a bit longer and then you have a construction period in this project you would guess two to three years. New construction a little quicker, add rental a little slower and then completing the project is that there's all this commissioning done afterwards basically to make sure that the building's operating as it should operate. So that process, if you include the completing really takes six years but the kids are in and the staff are in after the fifth year. So when we say five to seven years we're mostly thinking about those nice images we all have of ribbon cutting and excited faces but it actually extends a little bit beyond that. So here's probably the most useful slide in the entire deck which is what the school committee can do. We've actually created a project website so that's already been done in the last slide on this, you'll see that there's a link to that. We have my last meeting tomorrow, I've gone to all the elementary schools to just fill them in on where we are and what this all means. We'll be continuing to have this topic on school committee agendas, publish articles and media that actually has happened most recently in the Amherst Bolton and the Gazette. And next week I think we're, Mr. Bachman and I are gonna be on a window into ARPS episode for Amherst Media just talking about these same topics. And we're developing models as I mentioned earlier of engaging, ensuring that staff continue to be engaged even if they're not able to commit the time to be on the building committee. And when we go to town manager, town council I think we've already talked about that first bloated point about the building committee. The second one has come to me, I've gotten a lot of feedback from members of the public on the second bloated point which is that on November 18th the town council took a vote and one of the goals was to be carbon neutral no later than 2050. And so I've gotten the question, does that mean that this building needs to be net zero whether it's new construction or add rental construction? And I said, it's a great question for town council. There's an email, you can send them and but in all seriousness my belief is my goal number one, goal number two, goal number three is to have students and staff in wonderful healthy buildings as soon as possible. I have a lot of thoughts about climate change and sustainability, I'm not an expert in them and you're not gonna hear them because that's not how I see my role in this but I do think this could be a barrier and the more, I guess my request to town council is if you all can figure out is this, how would this manifest, how does this vote that the town council took manifest in a building project on the front end, it would save us tremendous time, energy and angst as we go through the process because what I've heard already is there's different interpretations of what that vote means and I've been very clear with people I'm not the best person to be able to interpret that vote and I'm not asking you to do that right now but it is something that before we get architects and designers and OPMs on board having clarity on that particular topic and again I'm not weighing in on that but having clarity, whatever it is will really expedite our work and I think avoid some dialogue that has a chance of slowing us down quite a bit and then the last one on this one is funding the feasibility study. The MSBA shared with us that they will not be participating in the funding of the feasibility study because based on their failed vote process that they fund feasibility studies once and that has already occurred and so the vote language that you'll get from MSBA will probably be clear and that'll be sort of the in writing part of what they're willing to do which is support us from a resource, feedback, guidance perspective but not from a financial perspective until we got to project scope and budget in the actual construction. I probably took more of that slide than Mr. Backelman was planning so I apologize Paul. That's good, we're good. And again I'll try to go through the cost of the feasibility studies. This was from data the MSBA gave us that day. This is the last two years every single elementary MSBA project feasibility study that they had in their database. So you can see there's a significant range in feasibility study costs. I do believe because we did, we have a feasibility study for Wildwood and we have one for Fort River that our costs should be on the lowest end of this chart and perhaps even lower. Our previous study granted there's been escalation since that point. What was asked for at town meeting and I think it was spring of 2014 was a million dollars. We did not spend all that million dollars. We were very conservative with our work so I would presume that this project should be lower. It's likely to be higher than $400,000 that has been already discussed by the council but there will have to be a formal vote with language from the MSBA on that and when this body's ready for that vote they'll send us a language that can be reviewed. So I just wanna summarize a couple things I've heard and one is that we will have to do the appropriation for the feasibility study. We will have to have a discussion about the relationship of the building to the issue of our climate action goals and to some extent how that fits in with the zero energy bylaw for first town buildings and the other one is the charge for the committee and the makeup of the committee. Are there other things that I missed? Just in general paying attention. Are there questions from the council? Kathy. Okay, I have one on this slide and I actually sent it in in advance on the, you've already raised it that we have done a considerable amount of work. What I was wondering is can it both save us money on the feasibility study but to the extent MSBA want you to go through certain steps, will they say actually you've done those steps between while, so are we, if it would have been a million dollars but we've spent 400,000 already on steps they care about. So do we know in writing that we think we've got it done but would they think we've got it done? Sure, so actually it goes back to this slide. So what you see on this slide is that the construction professionals are running with the, you know, working for the building committee the feasibility study and the schematic design and the feedback we ask that question directly to MSBA is it really depends on whether the, how the consultants view the work that's happened and what they can integrate from it. So their point wasn't we won't accept it, we will accept it, it's that they accept submissions from designers that are voted by school building committees and at that point they'll make determination. The bar's the same, it's not like we have a higher bar because of that or a lower bar. They thought my personal opinion is likely we'll be able to save time and money because of the work that happened but since we're not designers, we're not in the position to answer that question but that's who would take all the existing data, the Wildwood study, the Fort River study, anything comes out of the Crocker Farm study and be able to integrate that into their work. I just do a follow up on that. Do you have a sense of timing on whether and I'm thinking we budgeted $400,000 so are you gonna need to ask for more and when we're about to go into the budget cycle and we'll have to decide by June 30th but when will you have a good guess of how much more than that you will need? I would guess that we would wanna put a number in during this capital planning cycle and I think what Superintendent is saying we'll probably have the 400,000 that's already been set aside and they add another 350 to it put in 750. Okay. I'm curious why you're thinking about not including choice students in the certified enrollment. Can you give me some information about that? So it's not that I wouldn't be including choice students, it's that when the MSPA on at least the last project we had, they look at resident students. So most MSPA projects and this is no exception at the elementary level, don't benefit the students who are currently in the school. So they're projecting forward, they're looking at census data from the town of Amherst, they're looking at live births from the town of Amherst, they're not looking at well, there are live births from the town of South Hadley and generally a couple school choice students are accepted from South Hadley, they're looking at resident students and that's kind of the MSPA at least in the past has a perspective that the town of Amherst should be building a school for students who reside in the town of Amherst and I get that. So choice is not a typical, I mean, choice is a thing on Cape Cod in Western Massachusetts. If you go to Eastern Mass, there are very few districts that accept choice. So from, I think my belief or my understanding from their perspective is we're funding a project for the children of Amherst, not the children who reside in other towns were accepted by a choice. Mandidra. I just wanted to follow up on that. What about, what I've heard about the choice issue but I've never heard how the charter students and how that affects the enrollment projections in terms of what the MSPA might certify. So I think I'll be able to answer better in five months when they start that process with me. I'm going off my experience which was in 2013, 2014 on the enrollment piece. So I think in general they're looking at the yield. So you look at live births and then how many yield end up in the elementary schools. So I know we do that with our enrollment projections. I know MSPA does that. So if there's 145 live births, what on how many of those children on average enter the Amherst public schools five years later. And so they use some metric around that. So I think it's not about individual looking at this grade level, how many kids are at charter school but it does affect the kind of the correlation between live births and enrollment. Does that help enough? Okay. Pat, did you have another question? Oh, Andy. I'm sorry. So we know that our current elementary schools have significant problems that are gonna need to be addressed over the next years before new building can be built. And I can't, and I would assume that other districts have been in a similar situation. Is there any consideration given by MSPA to work with the community to expedite the process in order to enable the community to deal with those realities and not have to invest multiple dollars and could be into the millions to keep buildings going that we don't intend to keep going? I'm not aware of any system that describes things as you stated, but it's not really something we can inquire as we get into the process. Pat. I'm curious about where we stand in terms of the sixth grade moving to the school. No, no, finish it. I'm just gonna say if. If the sixth grade consideration. Sure, so I think you can describe your questions with a process answer more than a tangible answer. So we have a group that actually the last meeting is coming next Monday that's looking and we call it the Great Span advisory board and they've been looking at that sixth grade question and that's a four town conversations. That's not solely an Amherst conversation. And the idea for that group is they'll, they were explicitly in their charge, speaking of charges that we did earlier, they were not, they were not tasked with making a recommendation. They were tasked with studying coming up with a model that the communities could respond to. And I think there's great work being done. I think we'll be able to do that in probably in February with a report to the school committee and then engaging members, the member towns about what they think. The plan after that would really be in the summer to take both the work of this great span advisory group as well as the feedback we received this spring and have staff members work on a concrete proposal because we're not there yet and intentionally not there. It's not intended to be a quick decision-making process to re-engage folks in the fall about so that they can respond at first to these more general ideas or concepts, get really tangible finite and then have people respond to a more clear proposal in the fall. But we would not anticipate that change happening separate from decision for, we really need two summers for that change to happen because if you know that educators are really busy during the school year, and it's not the best time to be planning that and having lived through closing a Mark's Meadow and redistricting when I was a principal at Crocker Farm, the two summers was invaluable. We couldn't have done it with one summer in between. I think the second part of your question, maybe I've forgotten, I'm sorry. Is it balanced Crocker Farm student population and Fort River student population or are they? That'll play out in the enrollment. I'll give you my initial just piece of information. It's not gonna be a clear answer is, I think when we talked about 600 students, we talked about a third of those students are roughly 200 being part of a dual language program, which is really functionally a school within a school in terms of who students interact with from a placement perspective. So what would be a larger school building, I think there's lots of ways that it would feel not wildly different than Crocker Farm in terms of the number of sections per grade level that you interact with. Is that? Yeah, that's a good answer. Kathy. Okay, I'm gonna go back to money. And it's probably one that you'll say you don't know the answer right now, but if when we were in the listening sessions, one possibility and it's building on Pat's was, if six moved up, you still might, or if it didn't move up, you might be thinking of an expansion on Crocker to absorb the total. And I know there's a Crocker Farm study undergoing. So my question's on the MSB and if at the rear end we come out with, we want this one new school and we want to, and then add a classroom to Crocker, whatever that might be. Or we're moving six up to middle school, but that involves some spending. Could we make that part of the total budget of the project that MSBA would, so we're not doing two schools, but we're doing one project that has two parts. Could they fund it if we packaged it that way? I'll give a slight narrative and then I'll give you an answer. So there's this, because I want to explain some of my kind of responses. So there's the, you know, people know the Fox and the Hedgehog, right? So the Hedgehog answer is really clearly, very confidently. And so I do that on one thing in this project, which is we're in, we start May 1st, and all schools need to be taken care of the next five to seven years, right? So that's my Hedgehog answer. When I'm doing predictions, I'm gonna be very Fox-like, which is that I'm gonna say it's unlikely based on my experience and my professional judgment that MSBA would fund a side project for Crocker Farm. Can I say absolutely they wouldn't? I can't. Do I have evidence, good evidence that would suggest that they would? I don't have that. So that's my personal opinion, but I can't answer definitively for them. I'd like to go ahead. And unless the council has more questions, we did put aside this as public comment. We have one more slide. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. So this actually got to Mr. Steinberg's question, which is that there are going to be capital needs that need to be addressed and we're trying to be very thoughtful and we will be very thoughtful. I met with our facilities director right before actually during the break on this topic. We're gonna be very thoughtful about how we approach for River Wildwood. There are some things that will need to be addressed in the next five to seven years. We're also trying to be, if there it is, whether it's renovation or new construction, we're trying to think about what are the things, there's gonna be a child that's in first grade right now that's gonna spend the rest of their career at Fort River and Wildwood, no matter what happens with this project. What's the most important things for that child? Our staff are gonna be at this school, these schools for five to seven years, no matter what happens. What are the things we need to do and what's the calculus of what do we need to do versus if the building was lasting 20 more years? Yeah, absolutely we'd do this, but can we hold off on those things? So for us it's about health, safety and accessibility and that's gonna be the focus for the capital projects for Wildwood and Fort River in the next five years, five to seven years. I think some of the other things that we would absolutely be asking for and if the buildings we're gonna be on, we're gonna hold off on those because really it's those three are guiding forces or guiding kind of compasses on that project and just our building project website's up and MSBA if you wanna get way into minutia is right there. So wait till you leave, wait, you might wanna just sit to the side. Sure, I will do that, thank you very much. Are there any people with public comment on this particular issue? Okay, are there any further questions from the council recognizing that this is one of, I'm sorry, please. Even though my name is Kate Troste, I live in Dana Street and I wanted to make the statement that even though my children have already gone through the schools, I full-heartedly support investments in the schools in the short term, middle term and long term and really encourage the town to get better at developing a spirit in this town where people don't just have to have kids in the schools to want to fund them. And that in the school district that I had come from before up in upstate New York, when we got a newsletter, everybody in the town did with stats and new teachers and accomplishments and there was this feeling in that town the number one thing is funding the schools. So I believe in that. I think it's the best equalizer. Thank you. Any further comment at this time on this issue? Okay, final comments from the council, but I do wanna move on. Okay, Dorothy. I really support what she said. I think websites are great, but I lived here for many years without ever looking up anything on any Amherst town website. I only did that after I was elected. So I do think mail, direct mail, hand-delivered mail or whatever to people that informs them of what's going on in the schools is a great idea. Mike, thank you very much. We'd also recognize Mr. Slaughter or Dr. Slaughter who's joined us as the new finance director for the schools and our school committee members who are back here. Thank you very much. We're going to move on to the discussion about the timeline for 132 Northampton Road. Would you, Laura, and please come forward. Good evening. Hi. Hi. I'm Laura Baker. I'm the real estate project manager at Valley Community Development Corporation. We really appreciate your time tonight. We wanted to come before you to give a brief update as to process and timing for the next step of the project, which is the project eligibility letter application to a state financing agency. We also wanted to acknowledge and appreciate the amount of time that this council put in over the past summer, considering this project and financially supporting the project. Valley, we continue to be strongly committed to accomplishing the proposed development. And as I said, we're here to give just a brief update tonight. We are running behind our original timeline to submit this application for several reasons. Our original project architect was Kathy Ford. Let us know she'll be retiring in another year or two. Because these projects tend to run for three to five years, we wanted to have continuity. And she and we agreed that it was better to change horses now rather than later. So we hired a new firm, which is called Austin Design, and it took them a little bit of time to get up to speed. And then they looked at the design with fresh eyes as architects are want to do, and that took a little time. And we believe the product in the end will be better for this process, but it was a delay that we had not foreseen. We also, after listening to the feedback last summer, spent a considerable amount of time working on a supportive services plan for the property. This type of plan is not required by the state until you get into funding. So it is not typically part of the project eligibility letter application. However, we wanted to submit it with the application because we heard, especially from neighbors, that this was a high priority concern of theirs. So we spent a lot of time talking to our peers, pretty much statewide, people running similar types of housing. We did accomplish repairs to the existing house at 132 Northampton Road, both because it needed it, and also to get a rental permit from the town for that property. We do plan to have short-term tenants beginning this coming June for one year in order to defray the caring costs of owning the property. We continued to meet with the butters and community members through the summer and well into the fall and the winter. And in fact, we have another meeting scheduled later this week with one of our neighbors. And some of the requests and suggestions coming forward from a butters are ones that took some time and are taking some time to explore whether they can be accommodated or not. And then just as a general point of information, to date, we've received four requests to delay submission of the project eligibility letter application either from council members or from town staff. The first request came to not submit during the summer break because people might be away. Then we were asked not to submit in November due to upcoming kind of exams and end-of-term business. We were then asked not to submit in December due to the upcoming holidays and the break. And most recently, we were asked not to submit until the end of January due to the academic break. And it's not to say that that's driving our timeline, but just as a point of information for the council to understand that we've gotten a number of requests about kind of the timing of the application. At this time, we believe the stars will align for all parties for a submission later this month because we feel ready, the holidays are over, the academic break is coming to an end later this month. For your information, there's typically a little bit of a delay between when a developer submits one of these applications and when the state writes to the town and starts a 30-day comment period, it doesn't happen instantaneously. And just to let you know and everyone know that we do plan to include all of the letters as they're compiled on the town website with this application, as well as press coverage to date. And so the state, when they look at this, will be able to know about the community concerns that have been raised. They will know about local support from people. People who have concerns don't have to write new letters necessarily, although they're welcome to. But we'll be trying to give the state a very comprehensive look at really how much time and effort and energy went into critiquing, supporting, trying to shape and mold this particular development process. And again, really appreciate your time. Are there questions from the council at this point? Again, our purpose tonight is to just receive an update on the submission of the application to the state and to understand what's happening with that. Dorothy? Are you willing to share any of your conclusions about your service and supportive services? I think because we're gonna be putting out all of this information within a few weeks, our preference is to just wait and let everybody have at it at the same time. It's a pretty long document that we put together related to supportive services. So I think it'll be interesting. But to clarify, that supportive services will be part of your application and therefore will be part of the 30-day public comment period. Yes, people can comment on anything related to the project during that comment period. It will, by definition, everything that goes in at this stage is in draft format. The services plan is finalized by approval of the state at the point when they fund the project. So it's a work in progress for quite a while yet. And I think just to clarify, Joe and Campbell, Valley, CDC, is that the 30-day, when we submit the project eligibility letter to the state and to the town, the state will tell you when that 30-day period starts. So you actually have more than 30 days. You could have another two or three weeks beyond that. It doesn't start the moment it gets submitted to the state or the town. And again, they'll get everything that's been submitted so far. So it's not like they won't know the level of concerns and the type of concerns that have been raised. The town has committed to post it on their website. I have personally committed to distribute it to people who requested it from us. So it will be really broadly available to everyone. Okay. Are there other questions, Alyssa? I just had two things. One is when it comes to the delays, and I appreciate you characterizing that. It's obviously always difficult in an academic community. But just for our benefit as a town council, I don't think any town counselors should have been telling them anything about delaying. No one was speaking for this town council when they did that. And so we might want to revisit that at some point. Thank you. And the other, it's kind of September, October, but that's bad too. But the other aspect that I wanted, and then just because it feeds into our role moving forward, if we could clarify, which is not your job to clarify, but if we could clarify before we leave here tonight, what our next step is. I mean, it's great that we are getting more public attention to what they are doing, but what is the actual town council role in the 30 day period and afterward because it's my belief that it's extremely limited. So I would just like that to be clear to people so that when they are commenting, they are commenting through the public comment process, but not to the council if the council can't actually do anything about it. Right. I think that's an important clarification that at this point, the application goes to the state. The comments come into both the state and the town. And that in fact, this does not come down, come back to the town council as an item of business, not to say we're not watching. It's just that it's then goes on to planning ZVM. Right. So really the 30 day comment period is a courtesy from the state, essentially to the government. That's who it's intended for. So the municipality could, in some cases, learning about a project for the first time when this application goes in. And so the state doesn't want the town itself to be taken unawares. And if there are strong feelings, they wanna know about them at that point in time. The town of Amherst has expressed its view in a number of ways already and could express its view again, but the level of commitment of financial support is going to telegraph very clearly to the state government. And I would also just add the counselors who asked us not to submit, I think we're making helpful suggestions. They were not making demands. They were really wanting to protect the process and the right of people to participate in the process. And so felt like if we submit at certain times when people might be out of town, they might feel like they had missed out on that window to comment. And so just wanted us to be strategic about that timing. So, are there other questions from the council? This is an item for public comment who would like to make public comment at this time. Please come forward. My name is Kate Trost. I live at 99 Dana Street. Valley CDC is planning to submit their Pell application with schematic architectural plans and plans for their supportive services later this month. It's been more than six months since there has been an update of information regarding this project to the council. In a situation like this where a project gets a major exemption from the preexisting zoning, of course the abutting neighbors or the neighborhood will have concerns. And of course there will be specific site issues that warrant particular attention. The zoning was created with not this particular site in mind. It could have gone somewhere in North Amherst. It could have gone somewhere in East Amherst. And in those locations, the size would be different, the neighbors would be different, the streets would be different. My opinion as a person with more than 20 years of landscape architecture and planning experience, I have been dismayed by the lack of specific site analysis and acknowledgement. In my opinion, the council here, I understood the vote with the CPA funding. But I, given the unusual zoning situation and the potential effect it will have on the surrounding many things. The traffic on route nine, the Amherst, I think they've met with Amherst College. I've been investigating through little snippets of information, the sidewalk improvements, the setbacks, all that stuff. But I think the council and the town are really the ones that are gonna hold responsibility for how this turns out. I understand that we're supposed to go to the zoning committee, have comments and so forth. But I don't really think that those comments from the neighbors are going to be held with, well, we'll see. But I feel as though it is part of your responsibility to follow a project like this, at least check in with the town planners. Is anything happening with this? Can you check, can you do updates with the developer and see where they are? Because I believe gonna be a lot of changes in the site plan from what you saw before. I think they're maybe tearing down that old building that was there. That wasn't what you saw before. I think they may be flipping the parking to the other side. I think they may be asking for a new driveway location and curb cut. A bunch of things. As we've asked, we can't find out what the supportive services are, even though there was a lot of comment about that. And it would, in best of all possible worlds, been nice to have received some response. Response to, these are our concerns. We're going to try to do this, that and the other thing. I mean, it depends on how you like to see things done. But I am an idealist and I really do think that the best project, really well done, would bring the neighborhood in along the way. And if not by bringing everyone in the neighborhood there, at least as our representatives, you follow up with some of the concerns with the developer and parking. I have, I know I had site issues right from the beginning because that's my background, but I mean, I'm not going to get over the, if this project doesn't have enough parking, there's got to be a plan where the extra cars park and not just, well, they won't have cars or no one will be visiting them or any of that stuff. Because this is like for all these developments in town, once they happen, they don't go away. And we can't be, we got to hold the developers accountable to things that residents, tax-paying residents care about and make the developments work for everybody. I accept the project. I just want it to be fine in every way. A success and not cause future problems with traffic on route nine, parking over flow, blah, blah. Okay, so those are my comments. Thank you. Yes. Are there any other comments? Okay, I do want to remind you that we have a three-minute limit. Please come forward. You can certainly ask us questions. It's not clear. We're going to be able to forward them at this time. My name is Hillary Wilbur Farrow. I grew up at the abutting property on 126 Northampton Road. It is my backyard. I've emailed all of you about my, I agree with affordable housing, but I do not agree with the size of this project. My question, my first question is, I believe that the zoning board has to vote on changing the zoning for this property. And I'm wondering where that takes place in regard to once the plan is submitted to the state. Question one, is that something I can be answered? Just continue with your questions and we'll make sure they're recorded. My other question is, other than the supportive services plan, what other considerations might have been taken in after hearing neighbors' concerns? Okay. And those are my two questions. Thank you. Are there other public comments at this time? Please come forward and state your name. It's not clear that we can answer those questions, whether or not we have the right people in the room. The real purpose of tonight's meeting was to talk about the timeline. And so we did not prepare this as a response to various other questions. Thanks. I'm a neighbor on Dana Street and I would prefer not to give my name. So I have three questions and points I'd like to make. First of all, I really appreciate the town's attention to affordable housing. And I think we're united in our understanding of the need for affordable housing and housing in general in Amherst. And I would ask the town council to urge Valley CDC to ensure that the house can be occupied as soon as possible. They mentioned that some repairs have been done but the house is still sitting empty. And that was something we asked about this summer and we're told they were gonna be getting on that as soon as possible. And I think that renting the house would really help to build trust with neighbors that Valley is in fact a responsible and responsive landlord. And that would also help to lower the public costs of the project. So hopefully it can be occupied quickly. My second question is related to that. This is public funding that's being used and I don't quite understand with regards to the timeline how the town council will vet and vote on the new plans that are being put forward by Valley CDC. It sounds like there's a whole new architectural design. There might be a new number of units. And yet the plan that was voted on was something else that went through. So it seems appropriate that the town council would vet and vote on a new plan as because this is public funding by the town. It also seems appropriate that information would be shared with the public about those plans as the town council is vetting those new plans. It just seems to me that it would make sense that it goes back through the CRC process that it went through before. And so my question is about that timeline. My third question is just whether neighbors could participate in the site visit by the state. This is something we had raised with the town planners office and we didn't receive a conclusive answer on that. The purpose of that would just be for neighbors to be able to share their perspective and make sure that the information about the neighborhood was being communicated accurately. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other questions from the audience? We have recorded your questions and to the extent that we can provide answers, we will. Some of those answers are perhaps not what you wanna hear because frankly, this is not something that will come back to the council for approval of the design. That's not how this process works for this or any other public construction project or other construction projects in town. If there are bylaws or issues that have to be addressed because the council is the keeper of those public way issues, then it does come back to the council. But this is the reason why we spend the optimal time that we do both in investing in our expert staff as well as investing in the appointments to the planning board and the zoning board of appeals. And we're in the process now of appointing additional people to those. Those are direct appointments of the council and we have to place by state statue some serious trust in those bodies. Are there any other comments from the council at this time? Evan. Yeah, I just wanted to thank the two people from Valley CDC for coming tonight. I think that there have been a lot of questions about what's going on with the project. And certainly I think a lot of us were expecting things to happen a lot faster. And so having heard those explanations, I think we're very useful. So I appreciate you coming out and spending your time and hearing the work that you all did because this is no longer a matter before the council. And so as far as I'm concerned, you have no obligation to come before us. And so your willingness to do so, I really appreciate it. Are there any other council comments at this time? Alyssa. I just wanna follow up on one of the questions that was raised while the answers are being obtained. It's been a long time since it was part of a project like this. And so I understand the question about the site visit. I also understand that the state designed the process to be for municipal government officials, not for the neighbors. And so I would like that decision not to simply be made by staff on their own. I think that's a discussion that if it's going to be opened beyond what is predicted by the state, that that's something we should have input on. I'm sorry, would you speak up on that last one? So what I'm trying to be clear about is, no, not the neighbors. And if the decision is made to include the neighbors, if there is staff feeling that that would be helpful to the process somehow, I think that discussion should come back here. I don't think that's a decision that staff should make on their own because that's not the way the process is set up with the state. Are there any other comments from this, from the council at this time? Dorothy. Just a very brief, I have a very brief question. In the apartments for the more vulnerable residents, I am hoping that you are including women. And that is one of the reasons why I have been very concerned about asking about support services. I don't think it should just be all male. Any other comments? Pat. I've never heard that the project was all male. I don't think also women need special protections. And I'm also concerned when we start talking about the differences between neighbors in different parts of Amherst. There's a lot of coding that goes on in conversations. And it would be helpful to me if I knew more about what people meant when they were saying some of the things that they were saying. And I think that's a time that we as a council need to ask for more direct reaction instead of coding. Any other comments from councillors? Okay, thank you very much Valley CDC for being here. We actually completed public comment. Please come forward and then let's make sure we move on. Thank you. Again, the purpose of this was to provide an update on the timing. Right, no, I appreciate that. And this is sort of a timing question. Okay. And as they have been through this, I think that they might be able to give me at least some guidelines. My name is Barbara Grabbin-Wilbur and I'm 126 Northampton Road. And I do appreciate- Please speak into the mic. Sorry. And I too do appreciate- Sorry for my bad. The time that they've taken and they have been communicated and we are meeting with them later this week to clarify some of our issues and hear more from them. My question has to do with the zoning board and a sense of how long it takes from the time that you submit, you get a response that it would then go to the zoning board, the town zoning board. So that's my question. Just ballpark. I mean, is it- You've got 30 days to respond. Does the zoning board meet within that time period? Or does the zoning board say, okay, we can meet in two months, three months? Yes, please come forward, Laura. So this is a highly regulated process on the zoning end. And so I will tell you my experience. When we've submitted this kind of application to the state before, it has taken them months to respond with a letter. And then we can, as soon as we get that letter, it's one of the thresholds for applying to the ZBA. As long as we feel ready and we have that letter and we have site control, which we do, we can apply. The zoning board has, I believe, 45 days to open the hearing. They have 180 days to conduct the hearing. They can have a hearing and if they don't feel finished, they can continue to another night. Once they close the hearing, they have some other specified 30 to 45 day period to issue their decision. So it can be, I've seen it go through in one night. I've spent six months in hearings. So it's a pretty big range. Let me just summarize. I think what we're hearing from everybody is the need to have information readily available in a site that the town has, that CDC has, and that to the extent possible, we give people anticipated sense of timeline and process because I think without that, people do feel that they do not feel empowered to move forward with how they would like to express their opinions. Okay, we're going to move on in our agenda and we wanna thank you all. Thank you. So our next agenda item is to come back to, and I say that quite deliberately, to community choice aggregation, CCA, and Sam, you have returned. You might wanna come forward. I don't see our presenters here. It's Stephanie and Sam and Andra, and I don't know if they might be in Stephanie's office or. We're going to do that. I think they, looking at the agenda, they thought it was gonna be later, I guess. Thank you, and remind me again. Just a little pause here. Thank you. I wanna just be very clear. The council and the CCA had a pretty robust discussion about this on December 16th. I don't think we feel the need to go back and redo that discussion. In addition to that, I don't know that I would, I'm certainly not going to say I think you have unanimous support or even full support of the council, but I don't sense that this is a highly controversial discussion. More importantly is that we pass a motion that we can all agree to. And so that's really the purpose tonight. And even though we will have public comment, I'm gonna ask even the people who are making public comment, not feel that they need to convince us that we need to do this on behalf of our community. So you have provided us with some additional information. Is there anything you would like to make sure you've pointed out about that additional information? I guess the only things that I, the only points I wanted to make were really to make clear some of the benefits of community choice aggregation. And I don't know if that's something you feel like you've heard and you don't feel you need to hear here again. I'm happy to summarize their short points. I think we've pretty much got it. Okay. Anybody else need that? Okay. Moving along. Anything else? You can understand. I get pressure from this group to keep the agenda moving. That's why I ask. Okay. And do not take the attitude or the side comments as being non-supportive. They're just really supportive. So, okay. We do. Is there, yes, Alyssa. If I could just ask, so there was a ton of information we didn't have on December 16th. We liked the idea of what you were saying but we didn't have a lot of details. So if you would please just remind us in the public of what you've given us since then that answers the, that you don't have to tell us what the answers are. Just remind us what the materials are. Thank you. That you've provided. That's exactly it. Okay. So maybe we'll just give a very brief overview of the authorization of what it entails. It's basically, can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay. The materials that were submitted. The additional supporting materials. Oh, the supporting materials. Okay. So there's an article about joint powers agreements that gives you an overview of what they are and the benefits that they provide. And that's one form of agreement that the task force is considering that the municipality should enter into to jointly administer the aggregation program. The materials also include Department of Public Utilities webpage that outlines the process for establishing a municipal aggregation program which includes submitting your aggregation plan to the DPU for its approval. Additional materials. I thought your memo was extremely useful. Right, thank you. And we drafted a memo that tried to address a helpful questions that were raised by a number of you, including Alyssa. I think that covers the additional materials. Okay. Are there any questions from the council about the additional materials or the previous materials? So then following our meeting in which we had a discussion about whether, first of all, was it was the Department of Public Utilities or Energy Resources and your memo clearly clarified that. And then there was the discussion as to whether or not we wanted two votes or one vote. And then there was a discussion about what else needed to be in the motion. And as president, I asked people to provide me individually with their thoughts. And I will tell you, I received no less than eight to 10 versions of the motion that we should have. So what we actually did was, after collecting all of those and trying to come up with a motion myself, we then send something off to our legal council and it is the legal council's motion that we are going to begin with tonight. So could we have that up on the screen since it came to us probably around 4.30 this afternoon? And if you could enlarge it so that people can read it and notice that there are some cross-outs and there are some additional words in that. Is there anybody who would like me to read the motion? Kathy. Well, Lynn, I just have a question about this because this revised motion expands the authority that the others were asking for. So I think people should know that there is a significant change in this before we just look at this. Because I got it at 4.30, but I tapped into the MGL and this originally just asked for joint powers agreement. Now it's referring to two sections of the MGL and you could either do this or you could do that and they aren't the same. So I just want to know whether that's fine. I mean, it's a substantive change, so I just want to know is that okay? Asking questions about this motion is absolutely where we're going, okay? I want to just make sure we all know that this is the motion we're going to start with tonight. None of the other motions that you've seen have been sent or been lobbied about. This is the motion we're going to start with tonight. And there are questions that I think you will raise about this motion. But to do that, let me start by asking if someone will put this in the form of the motion. Bandy Jo. So I'm just going to read it. I know I get somebody else to read it. Well. And I'm going to change it slightly to accommodate Alyssa over here. Moved to authorize the town manager to act jointly with other municipalities to initiate the process to aggregate the electrical load of interested electricity consumers under Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 164, Section 134 for the primary purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency and the development of local renewable distributed energy resources. Provided that the town council shall be required to approve the municipal aggregation plan before it is filed with the Department of Public Utilities, DPU, and after it is developed in consultation with the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, DOER. Further, to authorize the town manager to negotiate an intergovernmental agreement or a joint powers agreement pursuant to Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 40, Section 4A or Section 4A and a half to develop and administer the municipal aggregation herein authorized and provide for additional energy related products and services, provided that execution of set agreement shall be subject to authorization by the town council at a future meeting. Is there a second? I'll second that. Thank you. Okay. Now, questions. Dorothy. I move to amend. Darcy. Is this the time to do that? You want to make an amendment? I'd like to have given opportunity for people to ask questions about things they feel appear here but did not appear in the previous motion and ask for clarification of that since that's been raised, okay? Kathy. Okay, that's where I started. So what has been added if people's eyes aren't blurry is there's a Section 4A that is now referenced. There are two sets of new words. Negotiate an intergovernmental agreement. Those words were not in there. So it says that or a joint powers agreement with sections 4A or 4A one and a half. 4A is the intergovernmental part and 4A and a half is the joint powers. So when I went and read them, they're different. You know, they're not necessarily one is better or worse but they are different. So this has been added to the motion that we saw a month ago or three weeks ago and all the versions we've seen over the last week. So it's in addition. And my understanding is that this expands the possibilities of what we're entering into and I didn't know whether we wanted to do that or not. Let me just also mention that adding in intergovernmental agreement which is in fact Section 4A was at the recommendation of our town attorney. And I asked Paul and he said, this leaves us more flexibility. I mean, it's an alternative. So I just, since it was originally proposed more narrowly, you know, not necessarily narrowly but JPA and now we've got two clauses, that's a change and I wanna understand, is that okay? I don't have an opinion about it. I don't know enough about it. I'm gonna take Darcy. I would just ask the task force representatives, would you say that's a friendly amendment? Yes. And Alyssa? It was always our intention that the municipalities would have the option to form a cooperative agreement like an intergovernmental agreement which is a typical cooperative agreement. Okay, that's my question. You know, as long as it's either or is okay that it's two different routes to getting to aggregation. Alyssa. So following on that, because when this originally came to us, it was talking about a joint powers agreement and a joint powers entity. We don't have any of those. And a bunch of people just sat here like, okay, I'm like, you don't even know what that is. We don't have it in the MGL. We don't have any that we're party to. We have a bunch of intermunicipal agreements which are technically called the other thing that's for a intergovernmental agreement. We call them intermunicipals but they're technically called intergovernmental agreements. We have a bunch of those, like that's how we do dog pounds and work with Hadley and we do all those things. And so it's like, well, aren't we just trying to do that? And then as things were explained, no, actually there's a really special thing, the joint powers agreement. And it's actually only been in existence for a couple of years. We don't have any right now. And I did not know that the attorney was gonna say, well, go ahead and hedge your bets and put both of them in there. But it makes sense to me that it expands to both of those because one, we use all the time. The other one's a new thing that seems to be especially applicable to this sort of situation. But it gives our authorization options. Let me just say, as the person who kept trying to find out what form of government this was or organization, I said, is it a nonprofit? Is it a quasi-public? Thank you for this clarification. And Alyssa, thank you for pointing out that we already have various intergovernmental agreements. And that's the form we're used to. Are there other questions about the motion in terms of clarifying what has been added, et cetera? Evan? Yeah, so, and I'm not sure if this is a question for the task first or the people who crafted this. First of all, thank you for that report was really useful and that article was also very useful and also very interesting. Cause Alyssa is right, I had no idea what a JPA was. And so it's always good to know what I'm voting on. I guess, so my reading of this motion is that there are two separate authorizations that council would have to do beyond the one that we're doing today, which seems like one more authorization than we had talked about last time. My understanding when I walked out of the room last time was we were authorizing the town manager to move forward and maybe we had the option to then again approve the plan, which is in that first part. Now there's this additional authorization and I'm sort of curious, and again I don't know who this is directed to of the sort of the genesis of that and what that means and how that compares to, we know that Pelham has an additional authorization, but to me, this is beyond that. I need a little bit of clarity there. Please clarify if somebody can, but I've read it as only two times, this time and one other. So yeah, they're separate. One isn't like, Evan's correct that there are two separate additional approval processes. One is framed or phrased as an approval of the aggregation plan after it's developed and before it's submitted to the DPU, and the second is framed as a subsequent authorization by the town council of the joint powers agreement after it's drafted before it's executed. Thank you. All right, so it does add an additional authorization of ours. Can I just have one more clarifying question? So then the municipal aggregation plan, would that still, when that's submitted, is it still in question whether we're going to do an intergovernmental agreement or the JPA or is that part of the plan, but also needs to be authorized as a separate entity? The short answer is no. Initially the municipalities have to enter into an intergovernmental agreement or a joint powers agreement before submitting the aggregation plan, which gets submitted under that agreement. If, for example, the municipalities enter into an intergovernmental agreement and submit an aggregation plan to the DPU in that manner and that plan gets approved, the municipalities could subsequently reorganize the program under a joint powers agreement in the future. They would submit an amendment to the existing plan to the DPU. And in either case, whether that JPA was entered into before the original aggregation plan or submitted the DPU or later on through an amendment to DPU, under this language, your body would have to authorize the execution of that JPA. Okay, so this includes both the authorization of the JPA and the authorization of the plan prior to it being submitted, okay? Darcy. I just would like it if you would speak to your memo, the part of your memo where you talked about the language that the task force basically wrote this language, although it's been edited by the lawyer, and you talked about your preference around coming back for further authorizations in that memo. Yeah, I think the genesis for requiring further authorization of the JPA before it's executed would be for those council members who want an abundance of oversight in this process and really want to be in the weeds of it. That's not a legal requirement. And I would say that one consideration for omitting that requirement that you authorized the JPA before its execution would be when Amherst is partnering with other communities in Northampton, in particular, investing resources and negotiating to reach consensus, you want the town manager to have the appearance of authority when he's making decisions in that process so that there's certainty that allows that process to go forward more smoothly. First is participating in communities, being aware that whatever agreement is reached is going to require subsequent approval by this council and therefore create some additional risk in the process. Kathy. So you said that very calmly, but it sounds like you would delete one step of this authorization process to make sure that we can speed up the agreements with other towns that they don't feel like it's going to be overturned, that he has the authority to negotiate and we would still be looking at the final plan before it's executed. So just explain which of the two authorizations has the risk of slowing it down or having towns think that you're not able to negotiate with authority? Yeah, I would say I would personally recommend that you delete the requirement that town council authorized the JPA before its execution and then I would also add something regarding the require that town council approve the aggregation plan. The statute requires citizen approval of the plan before it's submission to DPU. That's under the law. So regardless of whether you have language in your authorization requiring further town council approval of the aggregation plan, Amherst is going to have to schedule a public meeting and present the aggregation plan and allow for public comment, typically for several weeks. That meeting, that public meeting can be standalone for the purpose of presenting the plan or it can be in conjunction with other activities. It could be during a town council meeting, for example. And so you are going to have a form of public review and oversight regardless of whether you have that additional approval. So I put that forward for your consideration. Alyssa. But there's a difference between, or there's not and I'm misunderstanding it so please fix me if I'm not. There's a difference between saying it has to be in front of the public and in fact at one point I tried to work that into the language and that didn't need to be in there because it's in the MGL. But holding the hearing doesn't change anything about whether or not this council agrees that this is the plan that's supposed to go. So that's actually two very different things. Yeah, I agree. Okay, so we're just clear that there are very different things. If you want it, people who want it to come back to the council can't depend on the MGL because the MGL only says you will give it a public airing and you will make sure that people have the opportunity to speak. That doesn't mean that the town manager can't just say, thank you very much and go ahead and send it in. So the question is do we want to have to ask him to come back to us saying given what you heard, are you still sending it in? Or are we authorizing him to just follow the law and listen to people and then send it in? I mean, how much control do we want to exert is the question. Yeah, I would just add that the town manager can still make changes to the plan after listening to public comment and that's probably a recommended course depending on the nature of the comments. So it's not that you just listen to the comments and then send in the plan. But I agree that there's the distinction that you made is accurate. It seems like this is a good time to be talking about making an amendment. So you'd like to make a motion to amend? Yes. And the motion is, Athena has it. So the motion, and I am going to talk more about it after I make the motion, but the motion is more comprehensible if you look at the second example under the motion because the first just tells, do I need to read that first one? I moved to amend the motion to one, delete the phrase provided that the town council shall be required to approve the municipal aggregation plan before it's filed with the department of public utilities. And after it's developed in consultation with the department of energy resources in the first sentence and replace it with the phrase, starting with developing a municipal aggregation plan to be filed with the department of public utilities after it's developed in consultation with the Massachusetts department of energy resources. Two, delete the word negotiate in the second sentence and replace it with the word execute. And three, delete the phrase provided that the execution of said agreement shall be subject to authorization by the town council at a future meeting. So you can see what it would actually look like below with basically what the name is. After authorization, if we authorized the CCA today, it would delegate the authority to the town manager to do the next two sign offs. So I just have a little statement here that I'm going to read. Having worked with Western Mass Community Choice Energy and the Inter-Municipal CCA Task Force for the last two years, I am really excited with Amherst Hope for Authorization that with the authorization, we can move forward with CCA for the region. I'd like to thank the members of the Task Force for all their work and commitment to the project. Our authorization will help the town get a jumpstart at meeting its new energy and climate action goals. And in the long run, it's my hope that we can be part of a very innovative and effective CCA entity that will be a model for others around the US in greenhouse gas reduction. I know that during our discussion on December 16th, Mandy Jo especially brought up the possibility of further authorizations by the town council and the Task Force motion was amended to reflect those concerns. However, you've now heard the staff and Task Force representatives express that their preference is to actually allow the town manager to provide the further sign-offs to the CCA plan and to the JPA. I moved to amend it already. My motion basically takes us back to the original motion that the Task Force brought last on December 16th that authorizes the town manager to initiate the CCA and to execute the JPA and allows him to sign off on them. We didn't get into all the reasons why this is preferred on December 16th, but we've heard some more about it today. And from my perspective, the main problem is, as Sam mentioned, that we're dealing here with three towns. We're counting on each other to act nimbly and with confidence and consideration for the other towns and not hesitation so that we can move forward. It's a tricky, complicated and delicate dance that we're doing especially to get started. And each of us is watching the others to see how we're acting. Our model is Northampton. It's council authorized the CCA and JPA development, which the executive can sign off on. We and emmers don't have to worry about whether if we put our money into hiring a consultant that Northampton City Council will hold us up at some later date. And that is something that's coming up very soon. The town's authorizing funding to fund a consultant and we really want the towns to feel confident that we're all moving forward with confidence. Northampton has actually suggested that it could possibly act on its own. And that is something that we would like not to have happen. If it saw that we were dragging our heels or that they had to worry about our authorization in what we would do in six months, they might jump the gun and authorize on their own, in which case we wouldn't get that initial cache of being a founding member of the CCA, nor would we be in unnecessarily helping to create the founding principles. So we would really like to avoid that happening. I understand we're taking very seriously our responsibility of due diligence, who is capable of understanding and ensuring that we're in safe territory when authorizing a CCA. My answer to that is staff. And by extension, the town manager. Stephanie has been deeply in the weeds of CCA for more than two years now. She understands the many concepts involved. If you looked at the whole list of concepts in the task force report, Stephanie actually understands what they all mean. She's hosted and facilitated many of the meetings. She's closely worked with other towns with UMass Clean Energy Extension, Pioneer Valley Planning Commission on this topic. She's arranged and participated in meetings with DOER and Cape Lake Compact. And she was very involved in writing the task force report that was presented. So, and I absolutely trust her understanding of CCA. And in addition to Stephanie, we have four members of the ECAC that are on the task force, two of whom work for UMass Clean Energy Extension. And since we don't have experts on the town council regarding this matter, it does make sense in the situation to delegate further sign offs to the executive. In addition, if there's a legal question, Paul has access to KP law for a legal opinion, for example, about the JPA if it's needed. And it's also important to note, as Stan said last week, there is no financial risk involved to the town or to the residents in authorizing or in delegating the further authorizations to the town manager. The main risk that we have that he said last week is that towns won't be able to have confidence and work with each other. So I hope you will consider voting to amend the motion so that it is in line with Northamptons and will give the town's confidence that Amherst is fully on board. There's original motion on the floor, but there's also now an amendment that's been made in second to it. The amendment as it would affect this motion is as appears under example additions in red. If you could enlarge that, please. Don't know if you can. Yep, and move it to the center. Okay. Are there questions about this? Yes. Mandy Jo. I have a comment, but I don't really have a question. And then I have a request based on prior comments. So as Darcy indicated at the last meeting, I was one of the people pushing for additional votes that the council needed to potentially protect itself or the town by requiring the plan to come back to the council for a vote prior to DPU submission and all. After thinking about it for a couple weeks, the benefit of having that time to think about it, I no longer support that. I support this motion. I've thought long and hard about what our role as a legislative body is and as a policymaking body is and what the executives role is. And I firmly believe that our role as a policymaking body is to set the policy, not to micromanage the execution of that policy and that we need to trust our town manager to actually execute the policy. And if we support this amendment, that is what we're doing. We're delegating and trusting the manager that we've hired to actually implement CCA according to the authorization we've given without us needing to come back and say, yes or no on that plan or come back and say, now that we've seen the JPA, no. Or now that we've seen it, yes. We would be saying, yes, you can execute a JPA or yes, you can execute an individual agreement today. We would say today that he has the authority to execute that when it is negotiated. And I think we need to trust our manager, the person we've hired to manage the town's of Amherst, town of Amherst's affairs to negotiate and execute the best agreements that he can under these things. I don't know where the rest of the counselors stand on that. And I would hate to see this motion fail because they want one additional vote, but not two. So I'm actually going to request the president that we divide out sub item one from this amendment and sub item two and three as separate votes. Sub item one refers solely to deleting the future authorization required on the municipal aggregation plan. Items two and three relate to deleting the future authorization on the JPA or in municipal agreement, voting four sub items two and three in the amendment related to two and three would say today, the town would say as of tonight's vote that the town manager has the authority to execute that agreement, not just negotiate it. Voting four sub item one would say, we do not as a town council need to see the municipal aggregation plan before it is filed with the DPU. And I think it potentially makes sense to have those votes separately on this council. So there's a motion on the floor, the motion has an amendment and now it has been asked that that amendment be divided into two separate amendments. Is there a second? I think dividing just happens at the request for division if it's logical to divide. All right. Okay. So I'm going to ask if there's other general comments. Yes, Alyssa. So I'm fine with people arguing about whether they want to look at the plan again or not. I understand the philosophy behind that. I understand that your thinking's changed on that. I'm not particularly wedded to it one way or another. I'm fine with that. I am utterly 100,000% opposed to pre authorizing a joint powers agreement. I cannot even fathom why we would give away a response. It's not just policy making or executive. The law says we authorize joint powers agreements and inter municipal, what do we call, intergovernmental agreements. It does not say go off and set up a strategic partnership agreement with UMass. Do whatever you want. We're supposed to sign off on that. Same with bike share. Same with sharing dog services and weights and measures. Do we want to learn all about weights and measures and get all the details? No, we trust the staff on that. But to pre-authorize to just say, go off and, that is part of our job. MGL says it's part of our job. And so the idea that I would give that away by pre-authorizing just makes zero sense to me. I absolutely would not encourage us to say, oh well, let's question it now. We are absolutely, depending on the detailed expertise of all the people. At the same time, that's why we have to sign off on things like whether or not we share a dog pound. It's not because we all know about dog pounds. It's because it's our job to be responsible for understanding that that was come to by an appropriate means. It doesn't have to be a two hour conversation. It can be really fast. Other comments? Evan. Yeah, so this is an interesting discussion because it's really not about this, right? It's about how much legislative oversight we have over the town manager. All of this seems like an executive function. And so it seems as though it should be within the realm of the town manager. Where I do have some hesitation on that part is, we have three different municipalities who have three different forms of government. And so saying, well, Northampton doesn't require it. I don't buy that. Because in Northampton, it's being negotiated by a mayor who is accountable to the voters. And so this is something that's going to impact all of our residential electricity ratepayers who they're gonna see us authorize something that has no form, nothing right now, and go off. And then maybe, and then their counselors have nothing to say about that. Whereas in Northampton, if people all of a sudden see their electric bills go up and they don't like that and they fairly or unfairly think it's because of CCA, the executive in Northampton is accountable for that. And so I don't buy the Northampton thing at all because it's very different. This is a higher town manager as an executive. Just like I don't buy Pelham doing it as a reason that we should do it. We're a different beast than either those two organizations. And so where I'm struggling is I want to empower our executive to do his executive responsibilities without us stepping on his toes. And I mean that in this situation and I mean that in many situations. It's always interesting to see how counselors fall on when they want legislative oversight and when they don't. And it seems to happen to do with what their priorities and their pet projects are. So I want to be part of the town manager, but I also want to make sure that the community feels though there are people out there who are looking out for them who are accountable to them. And so I don't really know how I'm gonna vote on this yet, which is very rare for me. And so I would like to have more discussion to hear from people because I think that there's a delicate balance at play here. So the motion that has now been divided, the two divisions, one is around approving either the Intergovernmental or the JPA. The second is about improving the plan. Correct? Just want to put it in plain English. All right, additional questions or comments? Dorothy? Well, we do have accountability in that we run for election. And our term is two more years before the next election. And I don't think this thing is gonna, we'd have a chance to see how it's doing too much before then. If it turns out that the public doesn't like what it is, they'll let us know and we'll have to give our positions on it. So the town manager is hired by us. We are accountable to the public. So there is democratic input. Additional comments? Minded you. So I just wanted to respond to something Evan said about rates going up. Neither of these requirements, if we keep either requirement in for a future vote, will at neither time will the council know what the rates on electricity are. And we won't, that will be months out from that. So if the desire is to hold off until rates are known, that, you know, that this won't help. So I just wanted to make that clear in case there were counselors that were unclear on that or in case there were public that were unclear about. Both of these, if we keep those votes in, are well before any future rates under CCA are even determined. Andy. I'm pulling up on what Mandy just said. Stephanie at the very beginning had offered to make a description of what are the key points that we would achieve by going through this entire enterprise. And I'm not suggesting that we go back and not ask the president to revisit the decision, but that kind of presentation, I think would have helped assure that we understood but more as important as assuring that we understood, it would have encapsulated how we make that explanation to our constituents and how constituents understand that this program works, which I think is vital because I think that there must be public confidence. I have confidence in it. I will appreciate any assistance I get of how to convey that confidence to residents that I talk to. So if we don't want to have that conversation today, which is fine because it is a little bit different from the agreement, I do think that we need to find a way to allow Stephanie to get that presentation to us in another format. Okay. Are there additional comments from counselors on this, on both of these pieces that have now been brought forward in the amendment and that we are now splitting to vote on. Darcy. I was just going to ask Sam if he could respond to Alyssa's comment about that further authorizations are required in those two areas. Yeah. Our reading of the JPA statute is that the authorization in the initial authorization where you authorized the town manager to enter into and execute a joint powers agreement is the sole authorization required under the statute. There's no subsequent authorization required. Therefore, that's not a pre-authorization. It's the only authorization. That's how Northampton has authorized their mayor to enter into a JPA. That's how we interpret the statute. If that's an incorrect interpretation and we remove that subsequent language, then it's legally ineffective. So to the extent that it's legally effective, it's not a question of what the legal requirement is. It's just a question of whether you want to have that additional oversight. You as a town council. Alyssa. So again, we don't have any JPAs. I read the articles. I didn't spend a lot of time on it. And so I'm perfectly willing to accept that that's the explanation for JPAs. Again, with an elected executive having that authority to do that. But if the inter-municipal agreement and our governmental agreement stays in here, that absolutely is not how that's interpreted legally. That you can't interpret. I mean, I'm not saying you did. I'm saying one cannot interpret MGL associated with inter-municipal agreement the way the MGL is written for inter-municipal agreements to say it says go off and make one. That's not what the MGL says. You're authorizing it. So if you're tracking the language between the two of those, then that's perhaps problematic. But I'm totally willing to accept that the JPA language is separate. But inter-municipal agreements clearly are not, you authorize the town manager go off and make an agreement on weights and measures and he just goes and does it. That's not how it works for inter-governmental agreements. So it may be different for JPAs. And that's fine. And that could be that that's the authorization point. But as long as inter-governmental is still in here, I'm not going to give away that ability. Okay. Are there additional questions or comments? Yes, you made a joke. So I think the question is of the timing. Both statutes require the council to authorize the manager to execute. Normally when we've done this in the past with our dog park, I think for inter-municipal, the council's already authorized the manager to execute a couple of inter-municipal agreements and inter-governmental agreements during our course of this year. He's already negotiated them when he comes to us asking for the authorization to execute them. So they're already negotiated. This is saying before it's negotiated, you have the authority to execute it. So it's just a matter of when the council is giving the authorization to execute before it's negotiated or after it's negotiated. And the amendment would mean we're giving the authorization for the town manager to execute those agreements prior to his actually negotiating them. Whereas if we keep the original language that was in the main motion, we would not be authorizing the execution until after it is negotiated. We now have two motions. Paul, did you need to speak to this? You came, you looked like you wanted to. Would you like to wade in? So I think the way this is set up is that the executive is authorized to sign contracts on behalf of the town. That's what's in our charter. What this request is is does the town council want the town manager to enter into a contract with another city or town? And that's the question before the council. It's not to say we have the authority to negotiate that contract. What's the town manager's role in that case? So I think that it's the division between the authority to execute, not just execute but negotiate and execute a contract which is an executive function versus the authority to say, I want to expand our footprint beyond our community. So right now the town manager has the ability to enter into contracts for the town. Only the town manager has that ability. The town council does not. So that's in our charter, that's what the law says. So I think this sort of mirrors that and that's the question for the council. I mean, I'm open to whatever the council is interested in. I know this is a big step for the town. So I think the council should be recognized what we're getting into and be accountable for that as should the town manager. But to observe the fidelity of the charter, I think you would say our authority is to say yes, you can go do it. And then the town manager's authority, whether it's a mayor or manager is irrelevant. It's the executive function that we're talking about. That that's the authority that's already in the charter. Alyssa. I'm really confused because are you saying that under the charter that we have now versus the town government act we had before that your power is increased when it comes to intergovernmental contracts in comparison to what it was under the old form of government because the MGL remains the same. And so I'm confused by that. But if you're looking at the intergovernmental agreements it's the legislative body didn't get into negotiating the details of the agreement. The select board did. The select board was part of the executive at that point in time. Right. Didn't ever get into the details of work here. We didn't ever get into the details of negotiating the various things like that. What we did was we authorized you to execute that agreement. That's still true under the MGL until someone explains to me that it's not. And so we still I mean we could just like with this just pre authorize you to go off and make all the agreements you want in the world. But that has not been our approach and that has not been KP laws interpretation under a former form of government that you could that the previous town manager could just go and do that. The original strategic partnership agreement was done without complying with the intergovernmental agreement that was clear. It happened. It was over. It's way before his time. What I'm trying to understand is I think I understand what we're talking about here. I just want to make sure we're not if we want to pick and choose which things we want to pre authorize. I'm okay with that in theory. What I'm not okay with is if I'm hearing suddenly actually that our charter changes our relationship to intergovernmental agreements because that's not something we've ever talked about up until this point. I am looking at you. Okay. I mean, I'm not sure I can answer that. The charter gives the manager the authority to sign contracts but the town government act but the MGL for these sections states the town council authorizes the town manager to execute. And I think it's a question of timing as to when we want to authorize that execution before it's negotiated or after it's negotiated. It was not a question in KP laws mind under the former town government act under which the town manager also was the only one who could execute contracts. The select board could not execute contracts. Okay. The question before us and I wanted to leave here tonight and I also don't, we cannot spend a whole lot more time on this. I want to leave here tonight with allowing this to go forward in some manner. If that means we need to split this motion and only act on one piece of it, fine. If we need to continue to act on both of the split pieces of it, the way I understand it, one is that we want the town manager to bring back the JPA once he has negotiated it and we authorize him to execute it. Am I correct? That section two and three and voting yes on the amendment would mean the manager does not bring it back that he's already, as Alyssa would say, pre-authorized to execute. Voting no on the amendment regarding two and three would say the manager needs to bring back a negotiated agreement and ask for our authorization to execute it at that time. Okay. Is there questions on that part of this motion? I'm going to. So I'm going to call a question. Again, A means. Voting on the JPA language? Yes. Okay, so yes means you want this vote tonight to be the final time, to be the authorization for the manager to execute a joint powers agreement or an intergovernmental agreement. No means you want a negotiated agreement to come back to the council for authorization for the manager to execute. All those in, yes. So you divided the question, right? Yes, we did. She took two and three first. Okay, you're doing, okay. That was a confusing question. That's what I'm still confused about. Which one are we, now which one are we doing first? Subsections two and three of the motion. Two and three. But there's no twos and threes here. Yeah, there are. So, okay. Of the motion. Way at the top. Way at the top. Subsection two and subsection three is what Lynn wanted to vote on first. It's the second half of it. Could someone put, what we used to do, could someone put an actual motion that we're attempting to act on up there on the screen? So the motion is to amend the main motion to delete the word negotiate in the second sentence and replace with the word execute and delete the phrase comma provided that execution of set agreement shall be subject to authorization by the town council to future meeting. That's what Lynn asked for us to vote on first. And if you just go slightly more, no, the other way, then you see how it's amended in the second. The second sentence of the original motion. So it starts with to negotiate where we say delete that and put an execute. Further, the Amherstown council. So further, the Amherstown council authorizes the town manager to execute an intergovernmental agreement or a joint powers agreement pursuant to master general laws chapter 40 section A for a or section for a and a half to develop and administer the municipal agreement of aggregation here in authorized and provide for additional energy related products and services period. That is what, that is the second part. What Athena has highlighted on is what Lynn has asked us to vote on first. If you like the changes in the highlighted portion there, vote yes. If you don't vote no. Okay. Call the question. All those in favor, which equals yes, raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Opposed, abstain. Did you get that all? Okay. There's more time. You were too fast. So opposed. Please opposed. And abstain. That was eight in favor, three opposed and one abstention. That's correct. Okay. We're moving on to the first part of it. And the first part of it is highlighted. Where do you want me to start? Go all the way back up to authorize the town manager. Basically, that is the first part of it. And this is the part that deals with the plan and whether or not we feel the plan needs to come back to us. Okay. Questions. If you vote yes, this means the plan does not need to come back to us. If you vote no, this means the plan has to come back to us. And if you abstain, you are perfectly every right to do that. Okay. Okay. So. All of those in favor of this part of the motion, please raise your hand and say aye, which means yes. Aye. Opposed? Raise your hand and say, no. Abstain. Okay. Which I would. Okay. That's okay. Okay. That's okay. Not a problem. I'd like to have a little Venn diagram. Okay. All those in favor mean yes you agree with deleting and adding these phrases and it means yes you agree you will not see the plan. Again. Okay. Opposed means you want to see it again. Okay. All those in favor and yes, raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain. That's 12, zero, zero. Okay. So now we are back to the original motion and the original motion is as you see it. The original. As amended. As amended is as you see it up here because we now have accepted all of the crossouts and all of the additions. Okay. Is there any question? Okay. Call the question. All those in favor of the amended motion please raise your hand and say aye. Aye. Opposed? Abstain. 12, zero, zero. Thank you. We did observe, we did reserve for public comment. Is there anybody who feels they need to make public comment at this point? On this issue. On this issue only. We'll have a general public comment in a moment. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Okay.