 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise Vs and generous donations from viewers like you. Thank you. These are our various up and coming meetings and while I'm not going to go through them, I will note that in addition to these, we've had a late announcement today that UMass will begin offering COVID testing to the general public on a limited basis. That announcement will be also available on the town website along with additional information. With that, we're going to have no hearing tonight, so we're going to move on to public comment. So please take the announcements down. Thank you. We are having regular public comment. This is the only public comment tonight. I'd like to see a show of hands of those people who would like to make public comment. And Sean, you might want to return to the matrix vision on the screen. To the announcements? Oh, yes. So we're not just looking at a big name. In other words, the gallery view. Yeah, so I'm back on the gallery view. Is everybody else on the gallery? No, we have not moved to the gallery view. I think you control yourself. Thank you. Okay. I see at this point, five hands. Are there any other hands for people who would like to make public comment tonight? Okay, then I'm going to begin with Josea. Please state your name. We'll bring you into the room so we can hear you. And state where you're from. You have to unmute. Thank you. Can you speak up slightly? Hello. Yes, that's my. Good evening. My name is Josea Shabazz and I'm a resident of district five. I'd like to share with you the comment of my mother, Dmitri Shabazz was this to say about a resolution on the agenda of the council that you might be. Noting on. All right. Dear Amherst town council, regrettably, I'm unable to attend this evening's meeting because like many people of color and Amherst, I'm working at this hour. I did, however, wish to offer my ideas regarding the resolution to the structural to end structural racism that is up for a vote. The good step that I hope leads to it to tangible steps to repair the inequities that shape our daily interactions and understanding of who we are as African descent descendants and Amherst and the Commonwealth. There is still much work to be done and I'm sorry to not stop here because we have only begun to bridge a deep divide, which exists in this valley. The resolution counselors. I hope I don't butcher their names. Bob Milne brewer and de Angelis bring forward is emblematic of a broken process that needs its own reparative effort. What we most need to resolve is to create a consulative process with people of African descent here in what is commonly referred to as the black community to discern what members of the community would like to see happen to make their lives and their connection to the town made more meaningful in the center of policy making decisions that have a direct impact on them. As with other policies and documents and often passed by this council, there's not a process in place whereby discussion occurs, specifically a vetting which extends beyond the usual suspect counselors. But to a group of community members described by the racial equity task force under item three of our documents submitted in August. My father, but in the letter it says my husband, but for me, my father in particular has made revisions, which improved the document greatly, but even this underscores the need for the council to have a consulative process in place with our community. This stress is not a criticism of the white community members who brought forth this measure, but of the town council itself, but of the council itself. The GLL meeting where vetting and shaping of this documents language took place occurs at a time during the day when few working people are able to attend members of the Afro descendant community obviously have a stake in a speech act that acknowledges the harm white supremacy inflicts and has inflicted on us. But to great, but to really get our feedback there has to be a better way for working people to be able to attend members of the Afro descendant community. Oh, wait. Oh, sorry. There has to be a better way to reach and involve us. What I ask is that the council look closely at not this document but the process of a whole as a means of reparative work. Essentially, we need to create a consulative process practice with people of African descent that looks at issues from policy to renaming streets to displaying tablets honoring our veterans of the Civil War to affordable housing to homelessness to the need of a youth oriented cultural center policing and how it affects the BIPOC community are important. But what we asked for in August still stands the creation of a commission of black residents allied in a larger BIPOC group where others desire to come together that way. Similar to how Evanston, Illinois has a reparation stakeholders group, which leads the effort to readdress and repair the damage that white supremacy has caused in that city. We demand a means of ongoing discussion and consultation with stakeholders in the community. I think that our diverse voices are heard. Our white dominated almost entirely white staff town government must develop a process that harmonizes with the racial makeup of the town being 74.6% white, 6.1% black or Afro descendant and 0.5% Native American 13% Asian and Pacific. And 4.5% from two or more races with 6.9% of the population being Latinx or Hispanic of any race. You must hear from us see us and let us lead when it comes to making laws or resolutions that address our reality. regards Dr. Dimitria Rajoshaba's fifth district resident Amherst and may. Thank you for your comments. Bill Cason, you have your hand up please enter state your name and where you live. Sean, are you able to bring Bill into the room. Bill appears to be unmuted. Okay, he appears to be unmuted but Bill, can you hear us. They'll just disconnected. Yeah, he comes back on the next speaker is last name Shabazz. Please enter the room state your name and where you live. Yes, it's a milk car Shabazz, and I live in five. I just am responding to the resolution. I understand a speech act that acknowledges apologizes for the harm of white supremacy. And I, you know, look at it as a step that's positive to take. You know, we had a you all author to resolution on June one this sort of continues in that tradition but goes a bit deeper or a bit broader. And I think that's one of the, one of the, one of the, one of the most important portions of it that that the point that I was drawn in to really look at it that I felt the document would be improved by excising and I have, I have submitted a draft that I have submitted those sections out. The only thing that I saw fit to add and I do encourage you all in on the Council as well as the entire to the of our town population to take a look at the proclamation of the General Assembly of the United Nations that is the International Decade of people of African descent that is from 2015 to 2024. We are in the decade of people of African descent. It is on the web if you go to the United Nations, you can look up International Decade of people of African descent, and the framework is is something I say look at the accomplishments. There's a tab that says accomplishments you can see what's being done in other countries along this lines of the very thing this resolution and the very thing we say we want to grapple with here in becoming a town that that is anti racist and and varies white supremacy. People are doing it around the world they're doing it in the context of the framework of human rights and this International Declaration is something I do encourage the town to promote to study and to align our efforts with so that's the only language that I added to it it's in the last be it further resolved. Everything else is all the wording of the original document. It just takes out some parts that I felt did not work well in regards to the overall message but that is my offering I do support it I support your taking action on it and more importantly I support moving on to developing the kind of consultative process that we need in this in this town with specifically with our people of African descent. Other communities as well but specifically that community in regards to a municipal program of reparations. Thank you for your attention to this. Thank you for your comment Dr Shabazz. Janet Keller, you have your hand up please enter the room and state where you live and your name. Janet you need to unmute. Can you unmute. Sean is there any way to help Janet unmute. I've hit the ask time mute button so. Janet should be getting a request on mute. Do you want to jump back to bill is back on to we want to jump over to bill and then come back to Janet. Thank you. Bill Cason. Let's try it again. So can you hear us. He says it's not working for him. I can, I can put up the slide with the phone number for both Bill and Janet if they'd like to connect that way. That would be thank you. I'll be I'll have that slide up well Jennifer is assuming you want to go to Jennifer next. So meantime bring Jennifer in Jennifer, please state your name and where you live. Hi, my name is Jennifer Page and I live in Amherst. I'd like to comment on the process for bringing the racial equity resolution to the council. I admit that I don't know many of the details about the process that was followed, but it sounds to me that members of the community feel that there was not enough community input, particularly from the black community in Amherst. At the same time, my sense is that the sponsors and petitioners feel that they did considerable outreach to get input. So there's a disconnect here where people in positions of power think they did their due diligence and members of the community feel that they didn't have an opportunity to give feedback. This isn't the first time I've noticed this dynamic in our town. In fact, I think it happens a lot. I don't know what the solution is, but I think part of it is that it's almost always a good idea to take the time to get more input, even if you think you've already gotten a lot. The resolution like this one is so important and would be so meaningful, and that's why it's okay if you don't vote on it tonight. Now that you've heard that more people want to give input, take the time to do that. After all, you have multiple readings of a bylaw before it's voted on. So give this resolution the same time and space to percolate in the community. Now that it's being discussed tonight, it will have a better chance of reaching black community members who are not in the closed circle of town counselors and the petitioners and more people can weigh in. So I hope that you have a robust discussion about the resolution tonight. And I also hope that you pause on voting on it and allow more people to give their input. Thank you. Right. Kathleen Anderson, you state your name and where you live. Yes, Kathleen Anderson, I live in District five. And I would like to support the resolution as has been revised by Dr. Shavas. And I would like the town council to highly consider implementing the actions that were commented by Dr. D Shavas and just now by Jennifer page. There has been an effort in our community over the years to engage members on come in conversations around race and class. And then one of those efforts has resulted in a possible decision, well, a decision but not a follow through action for white people to engage with each other. A learning episode on white supremacy and how whites people can actively work to undo that. A member in our community, Phyllis Labanowski, who is a racial justice activist and educator, who was interested in working with a group of whites in our town to engage in these kinds of conversations. I would also like to additionally comment that resolution needs to be passed. And as Jennifer mentioned, it doesn't have to be passed tonight. But I would like our officials to give it their full consideration, full reading and make sure that there is input by the people who are actively and affected by the white supremacist policies and actions that happen within the school district as well as in other areas of town government. So I'd like to encourage all of you council members to take a good look at the revised resolution that Dr. Amilkar Shabazz has submitted. And I would like you to work with members of the black community to get our continued input on how best to implement such a resolution. I thank you for your time. Thank you for your comments, Kathleen. So we do have one phone caller who joined. I hope you'd like me to turn their microphone on and see if that is Bill or Janet. Sure. Go ahead. This is the person who is here. Please go ahead. Yes, can you hear me? Yes, Bill. Thank you. Thanks. Sorry. I don't know what the technical glitch was. Thanks for your help, Sean. This is Bill Cason. I live in district one in Amherst. I'm going to bring up a slightly different topic, which is the continued closure of our schools to in-person learning. I have two children who are at Wildwood Elementary. And I call while I know that the council is probably familiar with some of these issues, you know, I've in my conversations with people, both parents and teachers and just people in general. There's been a couple of things that I think are worth just sharing publicly. One is that despite rising cases of COVID, all of our neighboring towns were most, I think, Hadley was in, and now they may be back out, have returned to in-person learning or currently in in-person learning in one way or another, either fully or partially, and this includes Levret Elementary. And Levret, of course, is part of the regional school district. The other thing is that the memorandum of agreement signed between the school committee and the teachers union is in effect for the rest of the school year and has really no flexibility in it. And the metrics that are baked into that can't be altered. What this means is that in the spring, given that UMass is bringing back more students, when the weather gets nice and when we have potentially beautiful tents outside paid for by CARES money, we still won't be able to get kids back to in-school learning or at the very least keep them there in all likelihood. So what I'm hearing from parents and certainly what I'm feeling is that we're starting to get concerned about next fall and returning to in-person learning then. Will we or will we not get back to that by then is what we want to know. And parents have already started the ones who are affluent enough pulling their kids from the district. Well, come February parents will be able to choice out of the district as well as, you know, spend money to send their kids to other schools. And, you know, I'm concerned and I think other parents are concerned that we're going to see an even bigger hit. To our numbers next year, if there's not a strong commitment on the part of both the teachers union and the school committee to get kids back to in-person learning next fall, let alone this spring. So, you know, I'm not a healthcare expert. What I would like to see is to, you know, and I don't think I should be making the decisions about whether or not or how safe the schools are. We would like to see the current memorandum agreement gotten rid of, which can only be done if the teachers union and the school committee go back to the table and agree to do it. And I'd like to have healthcare professionals, including our town health director, helping to guide our decisions. I'd like to see any new agreements we have, whether the current one has thrown out or for the fall have flexibility baked into them. I don't have to be stuck in the position that we're now. And so that kids and teachers can all be safe when we do return to in-person learning. Thank you. Thank you for your comment, Bill. And I'm sorry about the connection difficulties. Yeah. Janet Keller, we have another person coming in by phone. So, Sean, would you please confirm if that's Janet? Yes, I will bring that car in in just one second. They seem to have hung up. They should be. I'm sorry, go ahead. They should be connected now. Yep. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Is this Janet? Good. Thank you. Janet Keller, I live in district one. And I would like to offer comments on the CRC rezoning proposal. I would like to ask for more background information so that we can understand where the zones are that are being discussed. It would be terrific to have Matt and to provide more details about what the changes suggested would do. The things are pretty opaque to a lot of us out here. And we'd really appreciate more explanation since these are going to be very long lasting impacts from changing the rules in this way. And the other thing I would like to ask with a great deal of urgency is that the CRC add inclusionary zoning to the things that they are going to examine and recommend. I think the need is only increase during these difficult times. And we've got some good inclusionary zoning proposals that have been proposed in the past. And I would hope that the CRC would put their recommendations in for those. Thank you so much. Thank you for your comment and I'm glad we were able to straighten out the technical difficulty. We are finished with public comment at this point and we're going to move on to the consent agenda. At the end of the following items were selected because they were considered to be routine and it was reasonable to expect they would pass with no controversy to remove an item from the consent agenda for discussion later in the meeting. Please raise your hand and ask the president to remove that item. This does not require a second. Motion is as follows to move the following items and the printed motions there under and approve those items as a single unit. Adoption annual human rights day proclamation. 6C adoption of official citation in honor of Marilyn V. Atten 8B in parentheses one amendment to section four of the town council policy regarding the control and regulation of the public ways. Section 8B2 approval of the permanent use of the public way for SOFA, solar information and communication signs project. 9A1 approval of town manager appointments to the following multi-member bodies, community development block grant, CBBG advisory committee. Approval of minutes 11, November 9, 2020, special town council meeting minutes, financial indicators, November 9, 2020, special town council meeting minutes, November 14, 2020, special town council meeting minutes, November 16, 2020, special town council meeting minutes, public forum on ambulance appropriations, November 16, 2020, regular town council meeting minutes, and November 19, 2020, special town council meeting minutes, budget forum. And Kathy Shane, you have your hand up. Yes, I'd like to move and have a quick discussion on 8B2, which is currently worded as a permanent approval of the SOFA communications. Thank you. I'll move that off of this consent agenda. Are there any others at this time? Okay, the motion is the one that I just made minus 8B2 approval of the permanent use of the public way for the SOFA solar information and communication signs project. Is there a second? Ryan second. Okay. Thank you. Is there any further discussion at this time? I'm going to begin with Pat DeAngeles. Yes. Darcy DuMont. Yes. Rieschmerz and I. Hanneke. Yes. Pam. Yes. Ross. Yes. Ryan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Schreiber. Yes. Steinberg. Yes. Schwarz. Yes. Balmille. Yes. And Brewer. Yes. Passes unanimously 13 to 0 to 0 to 0. We are going to move on to the one remaining resolution and proclamation. And that is the resolution affirming the town of Amherst commitment to end structural racism and achieve racial equity for black residents. And that is the resolution affirming the town of Amherst commitment to end structural racism and achieve racial equity for black residents. This was sponsored by town councillors, Shalini Balmille, Elizabeth Brewer and Pat DeAngeles. On behalf of two other resident sponsors, Michelle Miller and Matthew Andrews who have joined us this evening. Michelle and Matthew. We should go on to Michelle and Matthew. Thank you. Michelle and Matthew. Which one of you would like to speak first? I will Lynn. Thank you. Thank you, councillors. I'm going to speak a little bit about the process and how this resolution came to be. Congratulations for Amherst was formed on July 15, 2020 by myself, Matthew Andrews and Karen Andrews. A petition was drafted and made public on July 30, 2020. RFA had a meeting on August 25 with town council president and vice president to better understand the process of bringing petitions before the council. RFA wrote to the full council on October 1 to request support and on October 8, three members agreed to sponsor the initiative. On October 16, Michelle and Matthew met with the sponsors and continued to meet over the next month and a half to draft the written speech act, the first step. Beginning November 13, RFA sent a letter with the resolution attached to members of the community, including the Human Rights Commission, members of the JCA, chairs of the racial equity task force, and Cobra New England via Kathleen Anderson chair, and many others in the black community to request feedback. On November 18, RFA, along with the council sponsors, had a review of the resolution with the GOL committee. On November 27, RFA had a guest column in the Daily Hampshire Gazette to educate community members about reparations and invite them to an upcoming event to learn more. A public symposium of reparations was held virtually on December 1, 2020. The resolution, along with the history appendix, was revised in accordance with the GOL and community feedback, and brought back for a final review of the GOL on December 2, 2020. And here we are this evening. And Matthew. Our inspiration in bringing this forward was about healing. And we have a sense from the events of the summer, the murder of George Floyd and the general, what might be called an awakening to people around the country, to the real racial inequity that exists. We had a sense that healing was necessary, but it's actually through our research that we've done in preparing this resolution that we get a sense of what that looks like practically. And we've uncovered real overt racism, structural racism within the town, collusion with slavery. And of course, the wealth of this country was built on slaves. So for every instance that we've turned up of a person owning a slave in Amherst, or these details that we've laid out in the history document, everybody, all of the general community, was benefiting from the explosion of wealth. Cotton was oil. That's what cotton was. And 80% of it was coming out of the American South. So America's rise as a superpower and the wealth that was built came out of that. And it hasn't ever really been reconciled or atoned for. We have a persistent racial equity gap in this town that's demonstrated in the document itself and in the history document that racial equity gap has to do with income, has to do with housing. It has to do with education, education outcomes. And those details are there that you can see. Healing starts with an acknowledgement. And as white residents of Amherst, we were motivated to participate in creating that acknowledgement and not apology. The work of moving forward from the apology, moving forward from the acknowledgement, that has to still be done. And it has to be done with broad community support, broad community consensus, collaboration. And especially if we're talking about what remedy looks like, what repair looks like, that has to be led by persons of African descent, unequivocally. And Michelle and I both look forward to getting started on that work once we've had an opportunity to together as a town, acknowledge and apologize for the persistent structural racism that we've documented and presented in our documentation. Thank you both for your comments and for the background regarding the development of the document. GOL, you had two meetings where this was George Ryan, would you please report on that. Yes, as was mentioned earlier we met twice on November 18 and again on December 2. And after long discussion. And back and forth the committee voted to declare this resolution clear consistent and actionable. And the vote was unanimous. Thank you, George. Are there Councillor comments at this time. Shallonee. Yeah, I just wanted to share some of the thought processes and questions that went through my head when I decided to sponsor this and along the way, some of the questions that have come my way and I thought would be helpful to share with everyone. So one thing we can all agree is that we're here because we all agree that for over 350 years black Americans have been the target of structural violence and systemic racism. So what I do want to clarify which I think Matthew also briefly mentioned is that the resolution resolution today is just making a case for reparations and it's not a plan for reparations. So, which of course the plan itself would involve the larger community and has to come through different stakeholders from the back community. So I want to just thank also and acknowledge all of the different people who and the residents who have been working on these issues for such a long time and especially this year we had people from defund for one three we've had people from the racial equity force. And then tonight we heard again from Kathleen Anderson and Dr. Shabazz and who presented as revised documents I want to acknowledge that and we are definitely going to be discussing so I just want to acknowledge that I do appreciate the additional line that includes support a proclamation of the General Assembly of United Nations that something that we should definitely consider adding. I also want to thank Michelle, Matthew and all of the other people behind the scenes who've been working for several months and at the reparations for Amist and to bring forward this resolution today. So some of the things that I that went through my head were like why reparations are black people and not focus on just income inequalities as a town, right. And what I've learned is that it is different that income equalities that that are related to white people are very different from what black people go through and there's this. I think many people may have read the Tanahasi Coates article in 2014 where he, for example, gave the statistics that the achievement gap does not close the injury gap and in which he said that black college graduates still suffer high unemployment rates that white college graduates than white college and black job applicants with. Okay, let me just read that again. So just as an example to show how white poverty is not the same as what black people are going through he stated that black college graduates still suffer higher unemployment rates than white college graduates and black job applicants without criminal records enjoy roughly the same chance of getting hired as white applicants with criminal records. And he also kind of highlighted that if he did, even if he did address income inequality that would not get rid of the issues of white supremacy so we have to address the case of black reparations and just focus on that as a separate issue which is not to say we should address other systemic issues in that town. I also want to again similarly highlight that putting in black reparations together with all BIPOC issues again similar idea that I am an immigrant and I'm a person of color. I have encountered racism in this town, socially and professionally, and yet my issues are very different from a black mother who's afraid that her son is going to be, you know, might be stopped on the streets at night or the discipline that the black children go through in schools and there are very different issues and they need to be treated separately. Some of the other questions that have come about are around data and the inclusion of the history that we have of course it's a very partial history and in no way is it meant to be exhaustive or even ever suggest that it will allow us to understand and experience what black people have gone through and yet as a person who did not grow up with that history and and for many white people to who ask like why Amherst we don't have any racism here, I think including some of that history in the document is important and that's just my perspective and of course I'm very open and listening to other perspectives here but I think it is helpful to have some of the history there as part of the education and that we all need to have around before we even decide on what, you know, what we want to do. The lack of data is another important issue where we heard from a lot of people this summer and sometimes we were told that or some people felt that does this really reflect racism or systemic racism in whole town or it's just a lived experience of few people and the fact that it's a lived experiences of few people does show that there is a problem in our town and we the lack of data actually is a symptom of the problem that we haven't placed anti-racism as a priority and that we need to actually be systematically collecting more data. The last thing I want to say for now is that I hope this document and this resolution really creates a safe space for all of us who are coming with very different perspectives, different experiences to learn, to listen, to really listen to each other and it opens up an opportunity to bring people with different perspectives together to move forward and in a way that we really do something because as we know nationally the country is very divided and it's not going to happen. The House resolution 40 that it was a bill to establish a commission to investigate legacy of slavery and reparations has been there for 30 years and nothing has happened and the way I see it right now we're only in a worse place and so the only way things will change is locally so I really encourage us to take a very serious look and make sure that whatever it feels right but we do do something about and acknowledge is a town that we acknowledge what has happened here we acknowledge and we apologize for what's happened and we commit to correcting the wrongs that have happened in the past and continue to happen in the present. Thank you. Alyssa you have your hand up. Thank you so much. I will try not to repeat anything because we didn't rehearse our parts ahead of time. So thank you, shall any for all of that. I'm employing my fellow town counselors to focus on something that was stated earlier which is how best to implement this work, not on how to revise the wording of this particular resolution. It is actually really important to act tonight, not on December 21 or some future time, because beyond the many upcoming cultural and family celebrations we're all trying to figure out how to plan and this terribly difficult pandemic challenging our ability to be together at all, and certainly to work together. Acting tonight keeps the momentum going from the work we started this summer, included outreach to various groups and individuals, we can always be talking to more people. To the reparations symposium hundreds of our community members tuned into last week and that luckily a recording is available of to the community safety working group based report that the town manager is going to give us in January. Passing this resolution tonight gives everyone time to say okay, we did this, we declared the town council must act now, and that we commit to our black residents, leading the way on the next steps on the path of remedy, meaning that moving forward tonight doesn't leave anyone behind. It's figuring out how our black residents can lead our next steps to implement the intent stated in the resolution, and that starts tonight, tomorrow morning, depending on when our council meeting ends. So thank you. Pat, you have your hand up and down to go ahead. Yes, I'm finding things that I was thinking about saying already been said so the one thing that I want people to realize is the inclusion of even partial history about Amherst. That partial history is supplemented by a larger document that has been created by subcommittee and historians who have been working with Matthew and Michelle, and we are hoping that the council has had a chance to look at that. And so we, we did pick and choose to get a sense of what Amherst has been like, since the 1600s to the 2020. This is truly something that as a white person, we I needed to have my eyes opened, and this is not the only time I've seen some of this information. But often you we've seen or I've seen the information in the history in a broader outside of Amherst realm. And so I could talk about redlining I could talk about all these aspects of how Jim Crow etc etc. But taking my lens downward into the the microcosm really of Amherst has been a critical step for me and I believe it's a critical step for the council and for the town. This looking and owning that the bubble we are the progressive town that we are needs repair is an honest and important step. And at no point have we avoided or communicating with the community of color. And the resolution itself has gone out in time and yet we only heard responses yesterday. And the difference as has been stated is the removal of the historical statements and the addition of the proclamation from the UN. And I do not believe that that history should be removed because I know there are plenty of my white neighbors right on my little street who don't know any of that history. I don't believe that it is important for us to step forward to the larger proclamation from the United Nations because I want us to sit in the smallness of what we are getting a real sense of the ramifications and the power that we have had to determine how safe how comfortable how we are enduring the lives of people of color have been in Amherst. So that's I think where I'm going to stop. Thank you. I'm going to suggest before we move on to other council comments that one of the sponsors, but the motion forward, I'll read the motion and then one of you can put it forward to adopt the resolution affirming the town of Amherst commitment to end structural and achieve racial equity for black residents is. So who would like to put the motion forward so moved so moved. And is there. Johnny second. Johnny seconded. Okay, further town council comments Dorothy Pam. Dorothy you need to unmute. Thank you very much. I want to thank the people who have been part of this resolution for all the work that they've done, and to remind people that it's always easier to do nothing than to put yourself out there. I also want to applaud Michelle Miller for the wonderful reparations meeting that was that was held and Matthew and Matthew, I went out of obligation. And I was really excited by the really fabulous speakers. And I think it was a very important event and I'm glad that it's recorded, and I guess available on the town page. I also appreciated the Amherst history I knew much of that, but it's always good and I do agree with Pat. Let's not think about the big whole picture let's look about what's in our own backyard and look at our town. And I wanted to say we've been part of a large process, and we want to make a new statement. I did have a worry, some people contacted me about the question of whether enough outreach had been done. But I think the clarification that shall any made that this is a case for reparations, not a plan is very important. Of course, any plan for how it is implemented must have very, very wide participation by the black community. So I just want to say that I support this measure, and I'm going to vote to approve it. Thank you. Darcy, your hand up. Yeah, I have a couple things. One is I want to make sure that the emails received received commenting on the resolution are going to be archived so that we can have them for the future. Secondly, I have a quick question and that is, did the resolution get automatically referred to GOL. Yes. I think that might be a problem in our process in that counselors, the other counselors didn't have noticed that it was even happening. So, for example, I didn't know it was being considered. So, I didn't contact my constituents until the packet came out, which, you know, I was surprised because I didn't know it was happening and I didn't. And also I didn't have the actual document. So, anyway, that's that's a problem. I, you know, I totally support the content of the resolution. As others have said, I hope that in the future, we abide by the rule that states that the injuring party should not shape the remedy that was something that was said repeatedly in the presentation, the reparations presentation last week and it sounds like that's sort of what we're agreeing to. So, you know, I'd also be perfectly supportive if we wanted to make an amendment to the motion to add any of the language requested by Dr. Shabazz. Darcy, I need to ask, are you making that as an emotion? I, yes, yes, I can, I can make that motion to add the additional language. There is a saying, a section at the end that Dr. Shabazz wanted to add. Could you please repeat that language? I don't think I could repeat it because I don't have it in front of me. But it had to do with endorsing the UN framework. Let me see if I can find the language since it was sent to all of you earlier today. Now, the public hasn't seen this language. It's not been part of the packet of posting or anything. So it's new language for the public tonight with zero notice. Lynn, I can read it if that would be helpful. Thank you. The language that I believe, and Darcy will have to confirm this that she's trying to add is to the very end after the another be it further resolved paragraph that the Amherst town council supports the proclamation of the General Assembly of the United Nations of the State of Africa. The amendment to the mandate of people of African descent 2015 to 2024 promote the study of its theme of recognition, justice and development and align future town activities for racial justice with the advancement of human rights for all. I will move that. And is there a second? Second, shall me. So then we're going to stay with the amendment. And meantime, I'm going to send it. That language. Sean. You have it. Can you send it to Sean, please? Yes. Thank you. So the motion was shared with the full council before the meeting. So the motions been made in second to add the language that was just read by Mandy Joe Hanneke. Is there further discussion about the motion to amend? I see several hands up and so I just want to make sure this is the discussion of the motion to amend. Alyssa, as your hands still up. Yes, I'm sorry. I was talking with my mic open earlier. If the objection is that people didn't get more than 48 hours notice of what was in the resolution that I don't know why adding it with zero notice is adding anything to it with zero notice is a better idea. Given the public hasn't seen that at all. Given the content that's involved, I don't have an objection. It just takes us as was just discussed a little further out again with the lens, whereas we were staying focused inward. But if it's really important to people, I'm not going to fuss about it. I just thought that we were focused on the smaller and given that the town council has not support has not read that proclamation. I'm not sure why we're saying we support it because the town council couldn't have read that given that we got that email this afternoon. So unless we're going to take the time to read it and see if it is in fact something we support I'm just a little uneasy about complaining on the one hand that there wasn't sufficient notice and now doing something without public notice. And Andy you have your hand up. Yes, so I think that Alyssa just said, pretty much what I intended to say I am very uncomfortable as a matter of course, and doing an amendment that we haven't had a chance to explore and discuss in committee or think about ourselves. And mostly it's thinking about ourselves and the fact that it's supporting a proclamation that I suspect most of us have not had the opportunity to explore. We may be very enthusiastic about it that Dr. Shabazz is always very thoughtful. But I think that for us to adopt that without having read it ourselves is a dereliction of our own duty and uncomfortable doing that. Evan. Actually, Andy said largely what I was going to say which is that I don't feel comfortable voting to endorse a proclamation that I've never read. And so if we're going to insist that this goes into the proclamation into the resolution I'm not sure it's prudent for us to vote on it tonight with so many of us having not read it. I also just want to say I really appreciated Pat's explanation about why she did not want to add this language and I just did a really quick reread of the resolution and really liked that it sort of closes out very focused on the work we're going to do here in Amherst. And I think that adding this last piece to that, as was mentioned broadens it out and so I really want to respect the work of the sponsors who who worked hard on this and keep to the version that was presented to us tonight. At this point you're only to be showing that last paragraph not anything else. And are there any other count, are there any other comments with regard to the amendment, if not we're going to move to vote on the amendment. The amendment is to add the paragraph that you're seeing on your screen be it for the resolved. Okay, we're going to move to a vote. And I'm going to start. Kathy you have your hand up. I just put my hand up because I know I'm not supposed to do what I just did but I googled the proclamation so I could read it. And it, it's encouraging people at a national level to link to other international cooperation and region so it's a big broad international it doesn't go down to the local level I don't have a problem with what it says but one question I have with this conversation is he sent the town of Amherst wants to have a statement or a resolution that says we want to unite with other towns in Amherst, or the state of Massachusetts or the US with the UN because this is talking about cross nations and cross countries. So Pat's point about most of the resolution up until this point would be about us resolving in the town of Amherst to take actions here. So I don't know whether we're prepared to take it to the national and international level. So it's just, that's what's what I'm reading is in the bigger. I don't have a problem with it it's just a really big stretch from where the current resolution reads. Okay, I'm going to call the question amendment to the motion to the resolution. And we're going to start with Darcy. Yes. Resmart is a no. Anarchy? No. Pam? No. Ross? No. Ryan? No. Shane? No. Schreiber? No. Steinberg? No. Schwartz? No. Paul Milne? Yes. Ann Brewer? No. Andy Angeles? No. The amendment fails two in favor, 11 not in favor, and none abstaining, none absent. We're back to the original motion. The original motion is to adopt the resolution affirming the town of Amherst commitment to end structural racism and achieve racial equity for black residents as presented. Evan, you have your hand up. Yeah, I just wanted to take a moment to thank the sponsors, but also to publicly think the folks that put that timeline document together. That was not the, that was a little bit of a depressing read, but it was very interesting. It was very informative. There's a lot there I didn't know and it looked like a lot of work went into putting that together. And so I wanted to make sure that we think not just the people who are on the screen here tonight, but also everyone that was involved in that document together. It was a really useful appendix to provide context to this resolution. Thank you, Evan. And I have to say I second everything you just said. Kathy. I had my hand up earlier and put it down, but I was going to make Evan's comment and go just one step further. I think the appendix is a terrific addition and I liked its statement in the middle that this is a living document that more will be added as that they're finding it because as an example I called into path that I'm going to try to substantiate. So I wanted to make sure we find a way to link it to the resolution so if people find the resolution it's a hot link right away to the appendix, because the resolution rightly picked out a few appendix, but this is a very rich appendix going through hundreds of years. So I wouldn't want to have it get lost the way documents can get lost that somewhere over there there's another appendix. So just, you know, hot link something that keeps them together and allows them together. And I just applaud the work that went into putting that together. The document by the way for the public's knowledge is in the packet, and it was updated I believe as recently as today. Andy, you have your hand up. Well, I do want to thank Matthew and Michelle and all of the others who were very much involved in bringing this forward. And I enthusiastically supported I've been doing a lot of reading on my own on the national level and local level. I think that we are in a place where with this resolution where we need to go. One thing that came up in the GL meetings as a member of the GL committee that I wanted to just report to you is is that the word there's a word in the final resolution clause. And it is in the sentence that reads in part this resolution as a first step in the reparative process. And, you know, we did receive a memorandum that raised questions that we needed to think very carefully about what the law allows us to do in Massachusetts and but I think that it's if it's an overreach of the word reparation or reparative to do that, which is the point that we discussed in the GL committee, because in the dictionary that I looked at during the second of the two GL meetings we had the word reparative, the first definition and the one that is in bold is the following, the act or process of making amends for wrong. It gives in sub definitions, other things that including the possible financial, but I think that during the discussion with the sponsors participating in the discussion, we focused on that first wording, the act or process of making amends for wrong. And I think that's exactly where we are right now. We, it is to set up a process and then to work later to find out what it means. And, but I did want to report that to you so thank you. Okay. Are there any other comments or questions at this time. Seeing none, we're going to move to a vote. And I'm going to start with Lynn Griezmer and it's a yes in favor, or the word I as someone told me recently I should say. Mandy Joe Hanneke. Yes. Dorothy Pam. Hi. Kevin Ross. Hi. George Ryan. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Hi. Andy Steinberg. Hi. Sarah Schwartz. Hi. Shelley Balmille. Hi. Alyssa Brewer. Hi. Pat D'Angeles. Hi. And Darcy DeMond. Yes. The resolution passes unanimously 13 in favor. We are going to move on, but I hate to do this to the people that have been waiting. We're going to take a very, very, very brief five minute break. Very brief. Okay. All right. Let me just introduce this by saying this is a requirement of the charter. And although it's slightly delayed because the pandemic, we are pleased tonight to have the rank choice voting commission. Join us. I want to point out we did not call this as a meeting of the rank choice voting commission. So although I'll introduce people and they are available to answer questions, they are not available to engage in debate or dialogue. There'll be plenty of opportunity for that if we want that in the future. Thank you. The rank choice voting commissioner. Chair Tanya, please. And we also want to thank the other committee members. Jesse Kraft Finch. Vice chair, John Brian. And Ellen Lindsay. And Peggy Shannon. And Suadette, the acting town clerk with their significant assist for her significant assistance with this committee. Major election. As I mentioned before, we asked committee members only answer questions directed to them by the chair of the commission and not engage in dialogue or debate with the members of the council. I think we need to think of this as a first reading, although we will decide at the end whether or not people are interested in acting on this besides accepting the report. Whether or whether or not we want to bring it back for additional discussion next week, two weeks from now, and or referral to a committee of the council. Eventually it does have to go to the legislature. So that we can get it approved as a special act. So with that, I'm going to have Tanya was prepared slides for us and have her introduce those and we'll move forward. So Tanya, there you go. Thank you so much. We really appreciate this opportunity to present to the town council. The commission's work. As Lynn mentioned, the rank choice voting commission was mandated by section 1010 of the Amherst homeral charter for the purpose of proposing a measure to adopt and implement rank choice voting and Amherst. It's been a great privilege to work with this group of people over the past year and a half. It's really been a fantastic experience and they have been really a fabulous set of people to work on this with. A quick note. I will use throughout the presentation, our CV to stand for rank choice voting. So just really briefly, what is rank choice voting voters will have a ballot in which they can rank their candidates first choice, second choice, third choice and so on. The essential method is that there is a threshold set for a candidate to win the election. The first place votes are counted. If a candidate meets the threshold, then they win the election. If no candidate meets the threshold. If the weakest candidate is eliminated, those ballots are redistributed to the next choice candidates on those ballots. And the process is repeated until one of the candidates passes the threshold and a winner is declared. Local elections in Amherst, the complication is that most of our local elections involve multiple seats. School committee, the library trustees, town counselors have two per district and the three at large counselors. And so there are some further elements that need to be added to the method in order to fill these multiple seat positions. In the small example I have here, it's showing a contest where four candidates are competing to fill three seats. Again, there's a threshold indicated by that dashed line the threshold is determined by the number of seats to there to be filled. If any candidates have enough first place votes to pass the threshold, then they win seats. If then there are still seats remaining to be filled and no other candidates pass the threshold the surplus votes of the winning candidates are distributed to next place choices on those ballots. If still no one meets threshold the weakest candidate is eliminated those ballots are redistributed in this process iterates until all seats are filled. The idea behind this method is that it tends to lead to much more representative outcomes, a greater proportion of the voters contribute to electing the winner and winning candidates to fill the seats. And so it tends to have some some very good outcomes. However, it also as you can see leads to some further complications. So the Commission spent a great deal of time carefully looking into the different methods and calculating ranked choice voting results and how this method could be successfully implemented in a town like Amherst. We spoke to election election officials in multiple towns. We met with the town attorney to ensure that we would be compliant with state election law. We met with experts. We spoke with representatives of voting machine companies to research the hardware and software options. And we also ran a couple outreach events to connect directly with Amherst voters. And I just want to share tonight a few highlights of some of the key steps the essential actions that need to be taken soon. If the town decides to implement ranked choice voting and time for the November 2021 local elections. One really key thing that needs to be done is to submit a special act to the legislature permitting use of ranked choice voting in our local elections. We provide text of such an act in appendix one of our report, which was drafted with the assistance of the town attorney to smooth the acceptance in the legislature of this act. We recommend several actions, including working with the state's election division to ensure that they are satisfied with our implementation plan to solicit support of our state representative and state senators as well as others in the legislature who may support ranked choice voting. And also to talk with East Hampton who recently passed such a act and have been using now ranked choice voting their elections to build on their experience, which could be really helpful to us in streamlining our own effort. We need to acquire ranked choice voting enabled hardware and software this includes tabulators for all of the precincts and that one in town hall, the central results calculator which would then pull in the results from all the tabulators needs to have ranked choice voting enabled software. One issue that we saw is there's really only one company providing commercial software that can handle the multi winner ranked choice voting that would be required in our local election so that's probably our best option. A couple other key issues I'd like to highlight is accessibility. We need to make sure that our auto marks can be programmed for ranked choice voting ballots. And if not, we need to work with the state to identify replacement to ensure that our elections are fully accessible. And another issue is of writing candidates because manually entering a ranked choice ballot is requires quite a bit more work than a regular ballot, it would be very helpful to have a feature turned on in tabulators that would enable direct writing in of the writing candidates into the cast vote record. The town should also be aware that there is substantial work to be done in updating our procedures for training, testing and security. If we were to implement this new system that election staff and poll workers will need to know how to work with the new equipment. The different procedures will need to be updated and I'd like to highlight for example the recount procedure, which would be rather different under rank choice voting than under our current system. And of course to ensure that everything is fully secure in the elections. A few other policy decisions that would need to be set by the town is to finalize all details of the method used. There are a number of small details. For example, things like tiebreaker rules if two candidates both sort of tied for as the weakest candidate you need a tiebreaker to determine who would be eliminated first for example. We would also need to work on ensuring we had a very clear rank choice ballot design that was as friendly as possible so that voters could be confident that they're filling it out correctly. Voter errors are much more likely in this kind of ballot. There's sort of more ways to mess up and so we need to make sure that it's very clear to people how to fill it out. And also for the town to set clear rules on how to interpret ballots with errors so that we can do our best to determine voter intent wherever possible. A last issue on the highlight was a question of preliminary elections. And the question of and under what circumstances would the town hold preliminary elections to narrow the field of candidates for local contests. The key thing we really took away from our meetings with elections officials and other towns that are using rank choice voting is the importance of voter education and voter outreach. That what really made for a successful roll out of rank choice voting was to utilize multiple media contact as many different constituencies as possible to educate them and how to fill out a ballot and make sure that they understood the basics of how the elections would then be decided so that they had confidence and trusted the new system. The town should also be aware that this will require some additional resources to roll out rank choice voting will need of course the new hardware and software that is rank choice voting enabled. But we're also going to need to update many of our procedures and take then staff time not only to update those procedures but to do training testing carrying out the elections may take some extra time just because of everything being under a new system. There's the time then also for this voter outreach and education effort that we strongly recommend to really increase the chances of a smooth roll out and voters feeling confident in the new system. And it may also require some extra staff manning the polls to assist voters. If they have questions about filling out these new ballots. And that I will wrap up. Thank you. And the commission is very happy to answer your questions. Okay. I'm going to go to our council and the first of hand up is Kathy Shane. Hi, I want to thank you for an amazing report for starters. I mean I actually read all the way through it and I thought OK. You've anticipated questions and what the message. The other thing that came through to me is how complicated this is. You went through. You just showed us a very simple graphic on cold surplus votes. And so I want to ask some specific questions as I went through this. So I actually tried to do a ballot. And I thought OK. I would need a lot of instruction because one possibility is I would just if I had seven candidates running for five slots I would just pick my five and make them all ones. And in your document and your document you said there goes my ballot out the door because I've done it wrong. So so let me just go to some of the nitty gritty part but in the graphic you showed if two candidates came in at and above the threshold you take their surplus votes and you give them away to the other candidates. So how do you pick which surplus votes. So if if one said Kathy and Mandy was this and another said Kathy and Evan or Kathy and Alyssa or which one of those is my surplus. It's going to matter because the second person that that person said is going to get that surplus votes. So that's my first question on it. And is there any. So should I just give a several Lynn because I have just two more that are questions. My second would be could we do a trial. You gave a the school what the school was listed with the seven people for five slots. Could we try it out with 300 people and see how hard it is to tell people what they're doing. And because I'm worried that we might suppress the vote, because people find it's difficult or with errors so just a trial. And then the last is I just reread the charter language and Mandy will be able to answer this. And it says the council shall adopt. It does. Do we have the ability with or without amendments but we have to adopt a ranked choice do we have to adopt some rank choice method because you went through some choices within that. If we decide that we can't get this all up and running by 2021 we need a trial period we need more information because there's a lot of costs both machines and people and time. So do we have. Say no, if we decide to so that one may be a Mandy question so my first two on district distribution of surplus votes and could we before we go to the legislature to get something approved do a trial. Um, so why don't we pause and go ahead, Tanya. All right, great. So those are great questions to answer sort of the simpler one first in the outreach events we held where we had people fill out ranked choice ballots. People were very easily able to learn with just a little guidance and usually found it pretty intuitive the elections officials we talked to in other towns said that that was something that people pretty quickly learn to do, especially if you made very explicit materials saying don't make this mistake don't rank more than one person at the same choice level. Don't skip ranks you know you just you lay out exactly what to do. People learn very quickly. In terms of the surplus. I oversimplified it a bit. It's actually a fraction of every one of those votes that voted for that winning candidate that are transferred. And so it's evenly spread across that entire group. But then you get into this idea of a fractional vote proportional to how much of a surplus it was gets transferred over to the next choices on all those ballots so it it does not treat any voter differently from any other voter. And in total you do not get more than a single total vote. And the last question. I actually I'm going to turn to Mandy Joe on that one. Yeah, so I have my questions, but I'll answer that one first it is the intent of the Charter Commission and writing the language shall adopt with or without amendments that the intent was to not give the council any leeway that the council must vote yes. I don't know why it but it must vote yes and the Charter itself actually said we have to vote within I think it's 90 days. I didn't have time to pull post move the Charter down from the section seven that I'm staring at election section. So you have 90 days three months to actually adopt. You know you'd need an opinion from the town attorney on if the council actually voted no or voted to refer back who could potentially sue the council for not following the Charter language but the Charter Commission's intent was that the council vote has to vote. Yes, that they could not even refer back. Is there anything you'd like to add to that. I think there is potentially some leeway in the timing I don't think there is anything in the measure that required it to be accomplished by a certain time so if the town feels it can't get all of this done in time for November 2021 or for example if there end up being hold ups in the legislature. I think I think there there is some flexibility in the timing. But the commission is hopeful to see all of this followed through. Can I just clarify on this particular issue. If we did not pass it, then would there be a primary in right that that's that's the answer I wanted you to come out with. So, so the Charter Commission wrote into section seven of the Charter, which is the elections section, and that that there is one town election, November, the first Tuesday in November of the odd years. The preliminary for our election only that was written into a transition provision of the Charter in in article 10, but article seven does not provide for preliminaries and in fact, the school committee and library trustee election that the RCV Commission kept going back to for ballot names did not have a preliminary because the article seven does not allow for preliminary does not provide for one. So, if you have a comment. Susan debt. No, I, I, I confer with Mandy Joe. Okay, I just want to make sure that if you have anything to add as our, you know, that person who is seen to have the election official responses that you chime in. Okay. Absolutely. No, I'm just sitting here nodding so yes, I'll speak up. Thank you. Mandy Joe, you have a question. Yeah, I had three questions. Two of them are our timing issues actually and the other one goes to ballot ranking options. And so, I guess the question I have for the RCV Commission is do you guys believe that there is and pursue to that there is still time to implement for the November 2021 elections, if we get this to be possible, you know, I know there's a lot of ifs to go with this, because obviously if the special act doesn't get passed till September, it probably can't happen. But if everything goes our way, is there a belief by the RCV Commission and our acting town clerk that it could be implemented for November 2021. I ask that because while we have to act and adopt in 90 days we can probably choose which election to adopt for November 2021. And so I'd like to hear the thoughts on that one. Similarly, if there is a thought that we could do that, is it wise to start the purchase of the new tabulators now. You know, I saw in the report that was fabulous. Thank you so much for the report and all the work that went into this that we're looking at new tabulators anyway. The question is, should we be buying them now in anticipation that we get a special act passed. So we buy the right ones for that. Or is it wiser to wait to see. So those are my two sort of timing issues. The other one was the sample RCV ballot in the appendix, where you listed three different you had school committee you had library trustees and you have the housing authority listed and you had different ranking abilities for school committee library trustees had six housing authority had three. And I thought in my first reading that that was too little for some of them. And so I wanted some clarification on that because the special act language had for each contest the ballot must allow a voter to mark rankings for at the smaller of either the number of seats plus two so for school committee that for library trustees that would be eight, or the total number of declared candidates plus right in candidates. And I think that's where I got confused because I thought we always have to have five or six or three right in options on our ballots, and then you add candidates on top of that and you're probably always going to be over that number of openings of two. Yet, the sample you guys provided, pretty much felt fault, you know, followed the second of that so is that language supposed to mean the total number of declared candidates the names on the ballot. Plus, those who are known to be right in and I put that in quotes because we always have right ends but we don't always have declared right ends and so was that language meant to be someone like when we go back to the Senate election when Joe Comaford was elected in the primary, something like that where there was an actual campaign for a right in that that would count to it. And if there isn't an actual campaign it's just the number of names on the ballot. So that's my other question. Can I, oh, who wants to go. Yes, Sue, please. Okay. Mandy Joe, the right ends are actually dictated by mass general law. You have to have equal number of right ends to the number of seats available so if we're electing five or have to be five right in spaces. Okay, so I'm not looking at the examples that we gave so I'm not sure how to answer that but I can at least address the right ends. That's okay. Yeah, and just note that the samples provided to us by ESNS so we didn't have any control over how many ranks they put on each one they're just trying to show as an example. So we would recommend definitely put as many choices you know for people to fill in as is reasonable. Yeah, so don't don't be you know that that's not supposed to be representative of the number we definitely recommend having a good reasonable set of choices to for people to bubble in. Could we go back to the two questions with regarding timing. Is there still time to do this. And should we purchase start purchasing machines. Good question. I like the if if if if that's all I can say is I agree if this goes perfectly if that goes perfectly if this goes perfectly yeah we I think we all agree we would just have enough time. When did things always go perfectly. I hate to I hate to fly by the skin of our teeth that that's just my opinion I like to have everything well oiled out ahead of time you know well worked out, having all the kinks put out. You know you want to you want to roll this out as Tonya was saying and the rest of the board with a lot of confidence from our voters. I don't want to have any glitches in the system so I personally feel we should hold off and try to take as much time with every single step of the way. Make sure we've we've worked through every single thing before we move to the next. I think we should pursue on the if if if, and that is at what point and at what time. Would you feel it needs to be a definite in order to pursue November 2021. I'd have to look at a calendar. Lynn, I'm not I couldn't answer that off the top of my head. I think that's a critical question for all of us. There was a second question about the purchasing machines. Is Jesse on here. Yeah, I'm here. Okay. Both the machines that the committee has recommended support both ranked choice voting and typical plurality voting what we use right now. So, if you decided to buy machines sooner rather than later, just be aware that it will lock you into specific solutions for ranked choice voting. But if you purchase the machines and have not adopted ranked choice voting act that you will still be able to use them for the normal operations of elections and Amherst. Oh, did you have a comment that you wanted to make. Okay. Is there any other comment from the committee on the issue of machines. And I guess the other did we. Vandy Joe did we answer the question about the right ends. And I guess, you know, I know, Sue that the law is that we have to have a space for every single office for right in or every single, you know, if there's three openings, there have to be three right in spaces. The question is when you use the phrase the total number of declared candidates plus right in candidates. Does that always mean the number of candidates on the ballot plus those three spots on the ballot or does it mean the number of candidates that are on the ballot plus if we know someone is running as a right in like happened with Joe back in the state senate election, or two years ago now that that would get added on but otherwise that right in issue wouldn't get added on to that. No, it's, it's the first situation is just looking at seats and right ends, even if somebody's running a writing campaign, they're taking up one of the right and seats basically. Okay. So if there's five, five seats, there's five lines for right ends. Got it. Okay. Alyssa you have your hand up. Sorry for the delay. Yes, indeed I do. And I think, you know, part of part of the interesting aspect of this right as we have to do something we the timing of something is a little bit questionable. In terms of, you know, could anybody really go after us for not for not doing it for the next election, I'm guessing not, but I don't think we have the choice to just say now you know we don't like that right choice voting. So this is really complicated because it's a matter of both understanding the information we've been given and then understanding what choices we still can make within the fact that we have to do it in some fashion. So I just want to, I want to make a bunch of comments and I'm not sure that actually they can be answered as questions. One is I really, really appreciate that you got the report to us so far ahead of time, because it was really dense a lot of information in there and even for those of us who've been to cookie parties and beer parties with voting before, you know, before you started your candy explanations with the various local organizations that have been promoting this for a long time. It's still really important to see how each of those circumstances got teased out so thank you so much for getting it to us far enough ahead of time. I want to comment that it's really all well and good to say it's easy to explain, but when the people who have ignored all of our outreach actually show up to vote. We can't hand them a piece of paper that says, here's how you fill out a ballot like this to the best of my knowledge because we've never been able to do that before. I'm not sure I know you mentioned the education on the spot like you might have somebody there who kind of explains it to people as they're going in, sort of like a stacker when we were like making sure people were in the right precinct to vote. But that makes me uneasy because you know I wish we could hand them something like your wonderful handout and I don't think we're allowed to do that so I'm a little concerned about that because we do know that people are going to show up cold and who knows what we're going to be able to have for mail in voting and that maybe we'd be allowed to include something but I doubt it. I'm not sure why people who were working for you didn't give you any control over what an example ballot would look like I would have hoped they would have done that. I want to point out that in Minneapolis for the people who are using that and I realize Cambridge is our local example but that's Cambridge and that's like you know what 70 years ago. So, Minneapolis has only five seats that are at large. That's none of their city counselors. That's stuff like their tax authority and their parks. And they literally only have five seats that are at large that we have to manage. But as you carefully pointed out here, we have every one of our districts has to at large has three, we got five school committee members we got six library trustees and three, it just doesn't seem to scale particularly well as much as I love the idea of ranked choice voting. It doesn't feel like it scales well for Amherst and so that is, as you say why the educational process is so important. But I don't see any communities that are doing it, given the number of multiple positions that that we have that are actually doing this now I also see like I said at the beginning of my remarks we don't have a choice we have to do it. But it's going to be way harder than it is for Minneapolis to explain and for Cambridge to explain and everybody else. I'm not sure why preliminary elections were discussed at all because Mandy Joe very coherently pointed out that we had one preliminary election, we can't just decide we're going to have a preliminary election just because we feel like it. That would require a different charter that would require special legislation. So that's that's treated in kind of an offhand manner in the report and that concerns me because it's definitely not something we currently have the authority to do so that would be a separate process where we decide to do that. What assumes that if we don't get this done for November of 21 that we would just be, you know, completely at large like East Hampton was, for example, when they didn't have preliminary votes. And we just have all the names on there just like we did for school committee, unless we had some different special legislation, other than what's put here. So that's about the choice that was made for resolving duplicate rankings and maybe that's a place I can actually ask that we can amend something, which is where it talks about if in the cases of when people screw up their ballot, the people who are below that I have this all written out but I know I'm running short on time. And all those get thrown out. And that really concerns me because one of the big reasons to have ranked choice voting is to say hey there are five candidates let's pretend they're only five hard but there are five candidates for three seats you have like five inputs as to how this election works. You don't really get five votes but you have five inputs. If you screw up your ballot you maybe get one or two inputs. And that doesn't feel right as opposed to you screw up your ballot now for president and it's kicks it back out and then you have to redo it. Now it's going to be really easy to do that and it does feel like it's going to worry people that they're going to be disenfranchised so I wonder if we might rewrite that section of the special legislation that I thought I'd copied that I believe is an item D associated with that picking a different choice there. And the other thing like that that's mentioned very, I thought, in a rather generic way, we recommend avoiding random tie breakers like flipping a coin. I can't with a straight face, ever explain to a voter that we're going to flip a coin in Amherst that's just not going to be a thing. And so it does need to be clear what that's going to be like I understand that the special legislation says town clerk board of registrars, etc. But we're not going to flip coins like that's that just makes me crazy. But I do wonder how strongly you felt, given all the work you did about that piece that I said we maybe could amend that said if you spoil your ballot rather than it being, and you don't know if it's laid out there that you stop at that point and everything that's after that is just tossed out the window. If there's a way to at least take that into account. There's like a another option there about apportioning that. And so I wondered if you had like split feelings about that or if you came really strongly on one side or another for a particular reason. And listen to the sake of Larry, I want to just ask and make sure that it's really that one question that you're asking. The other concerns all remain, but it is one that is one question that I think we can write an amendment about because because there seems to be another method that's fairly straightforward associated with that. It's just a matter of if it makes as much sense as it seems to make to me when I read it. I tell people they've spoiled the ballot. Yes. So could I call on Peggy Shannon. She was sort of our expert on this and we did talk very extensively about this issue in the committee. Please. So, Alyssa, you raise a very good point. And it was, we did have mixed feelings on the committee what to say about that. And I want to just speak to it in a couple ways. One is that the tabulators that we use have some settings for recognizing mistakes in the ballots. So depending on what we choose to use for tabulators, they may be able to kick out a ballot that has a mistake on it. And so people voting in person would have that opportunity to then fix their ballot. Cure their ballot, as they say. So we're hoping that the machines that we choose will be able to pick up a lot of the errors that people would make. That's not going to work for the mail-in ballots, obviously, or people may choose not to fix their ballots. In terms of why we made the decision we did, one argument was that the charter has very few requirements for the ranked choice voting system. But it does say that a lower ranked choice cannot hurt a higher ranked choice. And so what would we do with a ballot if somebody ranks two candidates at number one, say, or at number two? What do we do with that information? If we don't throw out the lower rankings, but we do throw out the duplicate rankings, then we are in effect prioritizing the lower rankings over the higher rankings. So there is a concern and perhaps there's a workaround. We're certainly willing to talk about it. But there's a concern that by not throwing out all of the lower rankings, we are then not following the very explicit language of the charter. All right, George. Yeah. I don't know. I just lost my picture, but you don't need to see me really. There I am again. I'm gone. First of all, thank you to the committee. I want to echo that great amount of work. Very impressive and getting to us in a timely fashion. This is much appreciated. I am concerned about the timing here. 2021 we've already heard that basically everything has to go perfectly pretty much. And we know that's just not going to happen. We're still in the midst of the COVID crisis. And that's going to make it even more challenging. So I have serious concerns about the timing getting this done by by September, November 2021 from what I'm hearing. I'm also hearing new machines, software, educational materials, staff time. Sounds like we might be talking about real money. So I'm just curious if there's any sense of what this is going to cost. Apparently we don't have any choice. But maybe we have some choice about more expensive versus less. I'm just curious about the cost of this. Okay. I think the second is really the question. Since we've already talked about the first, are there any. Are there any estimates of cost? So as far as staff time, there's really no way that we could speculate on that cost. We have received some estimates. From one of the companies and either Sue or Jesse may be better able to speak to what the, what those extra costs would be for that machine. So I would pass the ball to them. Jesse Sue. I'm trying to find it. So if you have it first, you can pitch in. I got an early quote. You got a more recent quote. My early quote was around 78,000 for the voting equipment. But you got a better quote. Or at least more recent. Would that include software as well. Yeah, so let me see if I can find that email real quick. Here we go. I found it. And we'll come back to you. Okay, Jesse. I have it up right now. Yeah, the total for so we have two options going for us. And one of one of them we have a quote for the other one is more difficult to estimate because it has some variables which we can't account for immediately. One quote is from LHS associates and it's for the dominion image cast precinct and associate associated software. And that would be a total of $71,500 for one precinct tabulator or sorry, 11 precinct tabulators and a software bundle plus a annual license for that software which is $800 per year. So the other the other company is yes and S they have a precinct tabulator the machine at the at the precincts, which can scan rank choice ballots but they do not have software that can then run the election for it. And so as a result, we would need to use a third party open source software and that would require, you know, depending on what you wanted to do, hiring a software developer or getting it vetted by the state. It's kind of a messy situation and it's why we recommend the other the other solution, but we don't have a quote from them. The expectation is that potentially we can get money from the state or the federal government for these machines as an upgrade, because there is money set aside for that or there was I do not know if there is anymore. Okay. Is there anything else on that particular one George did we answer your questions. Okay, Dorothy. I'm going to talk about timing in a different sense. We're at a time when a huge number of people are questioning elections which we keep being told have been carried out with good security. But if I can't explain to somebody how this works and there's no way I could ever explain what you were talking about surplus votes in a satisfactory way to somebody. And what we're doing is recreating an aura that is not good where people because it's not opaque people can't understand it clearly. If you did it just when I thought it was going to be just your second choice your third choice but they're all these fancy other things that have been added on, make it so that people would say how can you check what's going on. And then in the discussion this evening, you when people talked about problems, you talked about judgments that are made. That's what has been driving people crazy or at least the thought that there were judgments being made in the people who've been challenging elections around the country, the thought that the people there were deciding well this one's okay, but that one's not. Well I think this is a this or maybe it's a that. So it, if we have to do this. I don't think this is a year to do it, that's all it's. For example when you're going to make a big change you need a big lead in when Holyoke Community College decided it was going to quit for bid smoking in any building and any part of the campus. It was a three or four year lead up with signs that were telling you and telling you when it was going to take place. And there were smoking cessation clinics offered. And I see a lot of need for education and education in person to person education, not coven socially distanced, I'm wearing a mask kind of education. So I just see this as an idea which is very exciting to a lot of people has been done in many other places and I guess it's going to be done here at some point. But I don't see it that this is the right year to do it that's all. Andy. So, I guess my question really gets back to the special legislation and the timing of special legislation and whether anybody has reached out to representative Tom and Senator Comerford about it. I think it was pointed to find out when they think that they would like to have proposed legislation before them if we're going to act, ask them to act on it during the first year of the next session. Andy and I have had some experience with this because there was another provision in the charter transition that governed the timing of the election that all of us ran in two years ago. And it required special legislation to and was challenged by some citizens on some legal issues. It was not a simple matter and as a member of the charter commission. And the member of the select board, the two of us were involved in going down to Boston to testify before the joint committee on elections and it was not a quick and simple process. So, having with that observation in hand. Is there any way that we should consider or could consider asking the legislature to file our legislators to file a bill immediately even before we adopt a report. Would they accept amendments to the legislation and would they recommend that as a better process? I'm going to call on Paul Backelman because I know he has already given Mindy and Joe heads up and that's the extent of what I know at this time, Paul. That's literally the extent just to give them a heads up. This was coming to the council that they could read the report if they so chose. Lynn and I are scheduled to meet with Senator Comerford later this week. So we can talk to her about that if we'd like. Excellent questions Andy about whether or not you can file something and then amend it later on. Kathy, you have your hand up. I just want to build on some of the other questions. One, I don't know how many people ran into this but in our first election for council. I can't tell you how often I was asked was I sure that there were two people from each district that it wasn't just one person then they said and what is this at large thing and I'm not in district one I'm in precinct one where does precinct three you know so the the sheer confusion on the shift to choosing two from this column and choosing three wasn't easy. And this is comment on what Minnesota. They are using the multiple slots but they don't have as many multiple slot instances as we do. I feel like we are definitely talking not 2021 but 2023, if we're going to do a run. So it's that's a question on the timing but then I had a question as I understood the equipment that there's an option that is more viable because it comes with the hardware plus the software. Does that mean that we are locked into one vendor going forward. So we have a monopoly or you know if others aren't going this way, or do you expect in the future others would offer this. If it turns out to be a disaster so does that I think you already said that that that vendors machines would work for a normal election also I mean normal meaning just so it wouldn't be that we couldn't go backwards, but are we locked in to that one because we're getting you know I think it used to be Microsoft had a monopoly in a lot of places because all businesses use their software and and you just couldn't break in or you know does that lock us in. I'll pitch in and answer that question. The short answer is no. In part you're locked into a specific machine once you've bought it, obviously. However, both machines export the election results into a common format, you might consider it like an Excel document or you know the generic version of that. And then any software that's able to or wants to read that can do that. The two options we consider are the results tally and reporting software by dominion. That's paired with the machine and that pairing I would say comes with benefit of security because once the results leave the precinct tabulators, they are encrypted and will only be read by that software. However, if for whatever reason in the future you decided we don't want to use this software to run the election, maybe it doesn't have the features we want, maybe we want to go in a different direction. That software will just push out the files in the format that you want and you can run them on whatever software you deem appropriate. And just to reiterate, these machines are used all over the country and Massachusetts in general elections, just for the normal quote type of election, and will work just fine for that. Dave, you have your hand up. Yeah, so thank you so much. So I have, I guess two questions. Your average survey monkey, you can set it up so that it graze out if you've done it wrong. So, so you're like your average online survey prevents the kind of mistakes that we're talking about. So what is it that doesn't allow us to use say a touchscreen voting. And I think I know what the answer is, but what, why not use it. So different places I voted have used and other states have used touchscreen with a receipt with a paper receipt to to have the paper trail to it. So the to prevent exactly what everyone's talking about. The other question is that if I hear a lot of questions about how can we possibly meet this charter requirement. Is there such a thing of who would we ask for an exemption for our own charter. Is that the state legislature that can also grant that kind of exemption, or do we just pretend that it's not there like what if we really literally cannot meet this requirement of the charter. Thank you. So on the first question. Is there a machine question against around touch screens. Sure, it's partially legal question. So Paul may have input into this as well but Massachusetts state law basically requires optical scanners, you can't use digital input. It's for many reasons safer. You have a paper trail you have an actual physical ballot that you can use. It means we can use it with our auto mark systems. And just to address a concern from earlier in the conversation. The specifications don't necessarily say but the manufacturer of auto mark has said that it works with rank choice voting and I know that Minneapolis uses auto mark with their rank choice voting ballots. So those existing pieces of hardware will still function. But yeah, because we're dealing with paper ballots we can't have somebody run over and gray out the option once they've already voted so to speak. And the exemption from our own charter. Who wants to take it on Mandy Joe every hand up. Yeah, no I just want to reiterate that if you go to section 1010 of the charter. You know the, the RCV Commission had to report to us by September one and then because of pandemic and emergency it was extended to December one. But the next sentence is the town council shall adopt the proposed measure with or without amendments within 90 days of receipt. But when you read the, it doesn't say for use in X election. And when you read the special act that the commission provided us through our town attorney, it actually has a section at the very end that says to be used at the earliest on what I don't know what the language is because I don't have that one up, but it actually had a section that dictated which election it would start in if the special act passes. So, you know my logical brain says, we have to act within 90 days, but that act can be forwarding a special act that says that that adopts it and says it will start in election 2023, instead of 2021 that's my logical brain. I don't have a town attorney to agree to that, but given the things we've been presented. I don't necessarily see a problem with, we need to act now but with a problem with saying, but the timing given pandemic given all this 2023 is the election municipal election it would start in. Are there any other questions at this time. Alright, so on. We have various choices before us one is that we think further about this if there's some unanswered questions that we'd like to discuss with the commission. And then we ask them to come back to our meeting on the 21st that's one option. The second option is we actually go ahead and accept the report. At some point the commission gets dissolved and but we hope that they will continue to be their excellent resource that they are and have become and will continue to be part of our active discussions. Another option is that we decide that we're going to refer this to a committee or committees of the council. So, let's start with. There are a desire to have further discussion on the 21st I'd like to just hear some thoughts on that. Nobody seem. Yeah. I would honestly like a little more time to play with the mathematics and really feel like I have really taken in the content of the report. I think my questions would if I have them then would be richer than they are tonight. So that's that's kind of where I am. Melissa. So, while I can appreciate that and this is really complex and you know there were things as I say to the length I have some frustrations with. I don't think it makes any difference. If I process it anymore than I already have. I don't think it makes any difference if I think it was a good example or a bad example or not the best policy choice, that one set of wording right there's like you pointed out there's not a lot of specifics in the charter but it does say that one part about not affecting the higher the higher ranked people. KP law to what you said Mandy Joe KP law certainly did leave that blank at the end of the special act so that does certainly does make one thing that we could say 2023 or they would have handed it to us and said yeah I have no choice you have to put 2021. So unless there's a policy, you know within this like the thing I brought up that we want to change that we want to amend their recommendation. I don't think it makes any difference. What we might talk about at TSO or GL or any place else or two weeks from now. The reality is moving forward. I wonder if there's a way to make it clear in emotion for for acting tonight because I know we have different motions available to us that we could make it clear. I think there's a question that was brought up what feels like hours ago about the idea of going ahead and saying, we need special legislation, we're going to send it in the way it is, we assume we can amend it because it'll get referred to committee, yada yada yada. There is something that we all come up with a brilliant idea of a different way to do something but I think we've had the hard work of the ranked choice voting commission to figure out these are the best choices we have given the choices we have. We have to do ranked choice voting. Therefore, let's just go ahead and move on. Matthew. I think I totally agree. I wouldn't refer to a committee. You know, I don't think we have any committee that could all by itself add very much. Tonight's discussion has made me I made notes as I went through but I didn't get all the way through the legislation. I think there's some places where we're being given options with a recommendation, and I'd like to at least have one more round of discussion where we're all focuses on that. And when we all say, okay, we agree with the options we're adopting the commission report in full or saying, I think I like option to better than option one where you've given me a couple of choices, you know, there was, I read through the randomly do this versus the guys put whose name is going to escape me from Australia who developed something but the modified weighted version of his methodology which is where we came down with it gets a new acronym. You know, there was logic that ran through but I'd like to just make sure we totally understand it so I don't know whether we all have the tolerance for if the three or four places where we're asked to between options to just be at to a comfort level that we're going to go with the recommended one or whether we have a couple more questions that so for me one more meeting or I could just send in my questions. I'm going to write them up as I went through because I needed to read it through once before I could read it through again. Evan. Yeah, I understand Alyssa's position. I guess where I'm following right now is this is going to be a pretty radical change to the way that this town runs elections. I've been voting, whether they registered for the first time for this election or have been voting for decades are now going to be faced with something very new. And there's likely a number of people who have no idea that this is happening because most of the public doesn't recall all the fine details of the charter. Zett put on their website, an article about us receiving the report at 330 today so people are about to find out about this. Given what a massive change this is, I don't personally feel comfortable moving on this tonight. I think that at the very least, we need to have a second reading of it on the 21st, because I think that gives it more time to sort of percolate in the public, because you know there's there's a big change. I actually would be amenable to sending it to a committee, even though I often speak against sending things to committees, because I do think that it's complicated because I think we heard a lot of concerns tonight and because there are options. So having a focus group of people looking at some of those options and thinking through concerns, especially around timing and outreach, could be useful. I think that TSO is the committee to do that since they're running of elections is a town service. I don't understand people's reticence to send it to committee. I think that if it was to go to committee, that would be the one and I say that recognizing that it would then be on my plate again. But at the very least, I don't think we should move on this tonight. Susan, can I make a comment? I don't have a hand raise. This is Jesse Kraft's bench. Yes. I just hear a couple of comments from the council members, which is based on assumption I think is false, which is, we present options in our report, but that does not necessarily mean the council needs to make choices in the special act. The choices we present are implementation choices, and we've purposely left the act vague in implementation while restricting it in ways to make sure that people don't mess it up. But we understand and recognize that as the town implements ranked choice voting, they may run into situations that we cannot appreciate looking at it from the past. And so in terms of the method to redistribute the access votes afterwards, we purposefully did not include, I actually don't know, Tanya, maybe we did include Wiggum for now to be amended later. You know, choices in the machines and stuff like that. That's not really the count. We didn't want to make that choice. We wanted to leave that up to the town to determine what is appropriate at that time. And then if they try it and it doesn't work to be able to change it on the fly without, for the most part, having to go and do another special act. That was just my comment. I want to clarify something. I don't feel we should act to actually take the report, take the recommendation and send it off to the legislature tonight. I think that is highly premature and does not give the public an opportunity to weigh in on this. So that was not my suggestion. I was trying to get a sense of the council though. Mandy Joe, you have your hand up. I support referral to TSO and I still don't know whether GOL should get it. We have to send all bylaws to GOL. This is a special act. It's not a bylaw, but in some sense it seems it would seem odd to me not to send it to GOL too, but I'm not sure GOL needs it. The special act has some choices in it as Alyssa referred to as Jesse just referred to, including implementation date for election. You know, that was left blank. We can't vote on something until we fill some of that stuff in. To me, TSO makes the most sense to have that conversation, make sure it's there and filled in. But there were also some other things in the report that were suggested that we don't have, which is mainly the supporting letter accompanying the special act. And that needs to come from the council, and it's probably best written in committee instead of trying to do it at the council level and do all that wording at the council level. And so, you know, that's one of the reasons I support sending it to committee is to get a draft letter hashed out in a committee that supports the, you know, that accompanies the special act when we send it off to the general court. And there were a lot of other things that that the report talked about to that may have council input that may not, you know, some of the stuff about tabulation machines. I'm not sure that council gets involved in at all that's probably just the town clerk the board of registrars the procurement office, you know, all of that, not us picking the specific machine. But they did say we would have a better shot at the special act if some of those decisions are made and talk to the election divisions for. And so, you know, while we have to vote right away, you know, within 90 days we have some time, and maybe we can get some of those decisions, hashed out by the executive side of our, our government, so that they can be included in the supporting committee for accompanying the special act when we send it off to give us as best a shot as ability as able to get this passed. So I, I'm for referral. George. And I'm not for referral or at least I'm not sure it has to be a town committee a town council committee. Maybe it has to be but someone needs to help me understand why an input implementation group a working group called what you will. It doesn't have to be town counselors or be composed of just counselors that doesn't have to be a council committee it seems to me, we've got enough work on our plate. We're also talking about something that that it sounds to me is going to be implemented in 2023. So there is the issue of the letter Mandy's correct and Andy's made the point that you probably should do it sooner rather than later. Other than that I don't really see what value added it is to send it to GOL or TSO, we already have more than enough to do. I would consider creating some kind of of implementation group or working group and give them that task. So I'm not too keen on on referral to a town council committee. You have your hand up. And so the only final comment I wanted to make associated with this beyond the fact that I was going to recommend that Mandy Joe sit down with the right choice voting commission and write that letter, because I think she would be best position to do that to work with Sue and the right choice voting commission is that it one of the you know I'm always about managing expectations. I appreciate what you said Lynn about the public not knowing enough about this even though of course it's been in our packet it was in the charter blah blah blah I know nobody reads the charter but you know it's been out there as much as anything else we do has been out there. And we're not asking the public to weigh in on right choice voting right the only thing we want to hear from them is so on page 21 when we're given options between C&D, even though the right choice voting commission spent weeks and weeks trying to sort out which option they preferred do you the public having read this for the first time for five minutes think that there's a better way of doing that thing. Because otherwise what I'm afraid the public's hearing from this conversation is, you need to tell us whether or not you like great choice voting, it doesn't matter if they like it. It's a matter of, if we're going to say we want to hear more public input if we're going to directly suggest that, then we need to give them like, what are the things we want your input on, because there's not a lot of choices here. I'm open to emotion, simple motion to just accept the report. There have been a couple counselors who have said they would like another round of council discussion before referral or before deciding what to do. If we just accept the report and we put this on the agenda two weeks from now we accommodate that and then we can do referral Dorothy. I was wondering, you have a committee filled with experts who are whatever that they started out are now experts in this. There was a mention made about people in the town who would have to implement it I know that Sue is on that committee, but in terms of buying the equipment and choosing software. So what if there's an interim step where some people that Paul figures out what people from town, his staff should be working with this committee to explore some of those questions and then come back to us with that. Sorry I had to find my unmute button. I don't think we should vote tonight on forwarding a special act it's not it doesn't have everything filled in so are we going to sit here and try and do that. So, you know, it's a first reading to vote for anything but accepting a report and I'm not sure we need to vote to accept a report. You'd have to wave 8.4 and I'm certainly not in favor of that. And I also want to mention about special committees and all, and that's what I was trying to find Paul can probably better say this because because he's the one that asked the amendment, or maybe Tonya Ken as chair of RCV. Didn't we write this charge so that once the report was submitted to us. The RCV Commission was done. So we should check that I don't know whether we have to automatically dissolve it or not but I think, as of the date of the report, they don't exist anymore. And so they, you know, I can, someone can work with someone to write a letter we need. Maybe what we need to vote on is who's writing the letter or who's going to do that. But, but otherwise I don't support voting or waving 8.4 to vote tonight to forward anything. I would, at this point suggest we just carry this discussion on to the 21st. And with a very distinct set of issues we either need to do or not do at that point. Letter, whatever the case may be. And we don't want to dissolve the committee because we still want to pick your brains. Any questions at this point. All right, we're going to carry this over into the 21st and have a further discussion. Please make sure that everybody gets ready for that discussion and we'll come up with some I thoughts about how we write the letter Mandy Joe might attract it after all. Okay. Yeah, if the sense could be that, that you as president would talk to whether if Kathy expresses interest not putting on spot Kathy or Mandy Joe want to work on that letter but I don't think we should be talking about it again on the 21st without having the letter and the dates filled in at the on the special act. Because you've actually helped me write one of these letters in the past. Alyssa that that's often something I either do or I do in serious consultation. Mandy Joe. I think it's similar things to Alyssa which is we shouldn't put it on the next agenda without knowing what we're talking about on the next agenda and who's getting it done we had a good conversation tonight. If we're not going to have a letter or anything. I think that's what we could decide tonight is who's drafted a letter. And when that letter is going to come back to the council for review if we're not if there's no and I'm hearing from the council there's no desire to send it off to a committee to draft a letter. I'm just going to decide who's drafting the letter. I'm more than glad to take responsibility for drafting the letter in consultation with whoever would like to help me. How's that Mandy Joe you're recruited. Okay. Do you accept George rank choice voting however still in existence is that correct. It is. Good. Joe did you have a comment. I think we need to check the charge to see whether it actually exists as a committee still. Don't we have to accept their report or no just they just have to submit the report depends on what the charge says that they have to submit the report we gave them an extension December 1 they met that extension. In the past we have not ever voted to accept any other reports. All mean Joe both of you seem to be reading the charge. If charge says that their term extends until December 1. They're already here is a courtesy. All right, we will return next week with a letter to the count two weeks from now with a letter to the council you'll have it in advance so you. Any opportunity to look at it and meantime if there are additional questions will take them up at that time. Okay. So, Tanya. Jesse, John, Ellen and Peggy and Sue. Thank you. Unbelievable job. You've done amazing work and you've left us with a lot to think about a lot to do. Please leave town. All right, we're going to move on to the use of the public way in the consent agenda we voted on the first of these two issues it was asked that we pull the second one which is the public information. So, the signs. And so, Kathy, you were the person that asked pull that out. And could you please go ahead. Yeah, it was, I think a simple change the actual wording of the motions as a permanent change in all the documents we got supporting this talks about a one year pilot. I wanted to change the wording to be a one year that we're accepting a one year pilot, and then it would with public use rather than permanent use a one year pilot to use because I think we do need to come back after a year with a series of issues on what might be the cost for the town how useful was this some other issues that came up with advertising. So I just want to change the word the permanent the one permanent is what caught my eye versus a one year pilot was what I thought we would be voting on tonight. We want the motion to read to approve a one year use of the public way to install public information and emergency communication signs and solar charging stations known as the sofa solar information and communication signs project at the following locations as recommended by the town council by the town council town services outreach and outreach committee TSO report of December 4, 2020 these locations are subject to adjust adjustments in the field by the town engineer as necessary, and then it lists the six locations for the signs. Is there a second. Yeah. Mindy Joe. So I, I think the wording needs to have an end by date not just one year because is it a year from when they're installed a year from now, you know, I, I'm not familiar enough with the TSO thing but I wouldn't just say one year I would say until X date, if you're going to go for a date. I totally agree, you know, from the starting from whatever they first installed so we can, you know, so maybe needs a little bit words. So I didn't want to hold it up but I just thought permanent is very different from what came out of TSO as a one year pilot. So the one year pilot starting date is January 1. And so we're talking about the ending date is December 31 2021, you know, I'm fine with whatever the date would say one year after the next question I had and this is for TSO about one year versus permanent is we're going to own the solar chargers aren't we doing them permanently and it was just the three signs that you guys were concerned about with the one year pilot. I would like to actually call in TSO at this point Evan, are you the person from TSO is Darcy Darcy should speak to that. Okay. Darcy why don't you give us a summary of your discussion in your report. Have the report in your in the packet, which is very extensive with the answers to all the questions about the super signs they the the motion that we passed was as Kathy said to recommend approval of a one one year pilot program. So, yes, they are permanent structures but they can be removed easily according to Brianna who I think is here. So, if we decided that we did not want the program. Apparently they're easily removed. That included the charging stations as I understood it I mean if we ran into any issues with them they, they plunked themselves down and you, that was one of the attraction above it that we're not making a permanent decision on these that we're doing a pilot. So I just was surprised to see the word permanent I didn't want to make a big issue about this because I think trying this for a year made sense. So, Brianna you have your hand up. Can everyone hear me. Yes, if you could speak a little louder that would be sure. So the, the solar signs we are proposing the one year pilot program where we would evaluate towards the end of that pilot year or at any time within that year that we were unhappy with the the solar charging stations which I think counselor Hanna key was referencing earlier we do, we will own outright as part of this project. However, they are movable, removable. And in that sense, but we will we will own those. Okay, Evan. Thank you, Brianna. Evan. Yeah, I guess I was going to echo what Mandy said I think my assumption is that the pilot per the one year pilot was always meant for the Sufa signs not for the charging stations. I'm certainly in TSO when we discussed it. We talked about the pilot when we talked about our concerns they were holy about the signs. And so I guess I'm wondering if we're if we're going to put an end date on this approval, if we actually want to separate out the motion and have one pilot program for the signs, one for the permanent installation of the charging stations do keep lumping them together but they are two actually very different things and what we're actually doing within is also very different. So maybe this should actually be the motion. The only issue is that. So there is a one charging station with each sign, correct. No, no this locations are completely completely different locations. All right. So here, and we don't and the, the motion we have before us is for the signs, not know it isn't it's for three signs and three charging stations. Okay. Alyssa, you have your hand up. So, yeah, I should have caught this sooner. And I apologize for that that I did not catch this sooner. I think we need to break it into two like Evan said and so the first motion for example could well I could just give it is to approve the permanent wait for it to approve the permanent use of the public ways to install solar charging stations as recommended by the town council town services and outreach committee. These locations are subject to adjustments and then list just the three charging stations. So that because that's permanent use. It's not public information it's not emergency communication it's not it's just solar charging stations. Right. So, take just the first bit of that, and then put the three charging stations and the first motion, and then we can use up the other language and a separate motion on information signs. I'll second that motion that Alyssa just described sort of cobbled together. It is permanent use of the public way to install solar charging stations at the following locations as recommended by the town council town services and outreach TSO report of December 20. These locations are subject to adjustments, and then it's only the last three bullet points. Okay, Kathy, you're going to withdraw your motion at this time. Yes. Thank you. What Alyssa did addresses my concern because then the second would be the one year pilot right. Yes. So the motion's been made in seconded. This one is about the solar charging stations only. Okay. Is there any question about that motion. All right, then we're going to vote on that motion. And we'll start with Hanna key. Yes. Pam. Yes. Evan Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. There are Schwartz. Hi. Karen ball shall shall any ball mill. Hi. Brewer. Hi. Pat D'Angelo's. Hi. Demond. Yes. And Griezmer isn't I so that's unanimous. We're going to go back to the second. And who would like to try the second motion. I think Alyssa. I dug myself this whole to do it. So do we here's my question to Kathy do we want to say temporary do we want to and Mandy Joe do we want to say one year from installation do we want to say pilot what's the right phrase here. I think one year from installation. The temporary use for one year from installation. I like it to approve the temporary use. The temporary use for one year from installation. The temporary use for one year from installation. Okay. To install public information. And emergency communication signs. Known as the Sufa solar information and communication signs project. For one year from installation. At the following locations as recommended by the town council town services and outreach committee TSO report. And that's the first three points. Is there a second. Second. Absolutely. Okay. Excellent. Any further discussion. Mr. Backelman. Just to clarification. Is it the council's expectation that you would need to act to keep them. If we love them, you would need to vote to act or is it that. And that we would take them out if we fail to bring it back to you or is it the council's. The council's interest in saying we want to review it. And with the assumption that they would stay unless we take it out with where do you want that to fall. I would suggest that we review it about. You know, maybe two months or so before the years up. And that we then would either act to extend or have them removed. So the question is, do you need to act to extend or do you need. So the default is they come out in one year. But actually what we would like is the town manager to come to us with a report. About how that, how it's gone. And a discussion. Sometime, maybe two months before the years up. And that we would then act to extend or ask to remove. Right. So the assumption is that they will be removed unless you act. Yes. Kathy. I just want to add to that poll. I think that two months before is probably the right period because one of the questions that was raised during the TSO. Is that after year one, we will be paying for this. Except that the expectations, they can raise some money with advertising. And so what the plan for that is how it would work with, you know, so there's some implementation issues aside from where they're useful. You know, I'd like to know whether we've found them useful. So before we start putting apparatus all over our streets, just because they're cool. So I think that would be it, you know, a report on how they were used and useful. And then looking forward on the advertising plan. Andy, you have your hand up. Yeah, I just wanted to point out that we use the term. We will review, but it actually will probably be a new council. And so we should be aware that it is likely that we are. Passing on a responsibility to a next council. Okay. So the motion's been made or made and seconded. Is there any further discussion? Dorothy. I would think the public would be asked to comment. I'm trying to figure out. Do you mean when the manager comes back to us? Yeah. When the time is coming up and we're deciding whether this, we're going to take on the responsibility of, of paying for these ourselves. And we have some idea of advertisement. And I think we should be aware of that. I think we should be aware of that. I think we should be aware of these ourselves. And we have some idea of advertisement. These are for the public. They're not for us. Council members are for the public. Does the public like them? Did they use them? Or did they find them annoying? Maybe they love them. Who knows. All of that could be incorporated into the manager's report back to the council. Okay. Any further questions on this before we vote? Okay. Okay. I'm not voting a one year from installation for the information signs. Okay. With that. I'm going to. Start with Dorothy Pam. Yes. Evan Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. Yes. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Sarah Schwartz. Aye. Colleen Balmou. Aye. Elizabeth Brewer. Aye. Pat DeAngelis. Aye. Darcy Jamal. Yes. And Lynn Griezmann is an aye. And Hannah Key. Aye. That passes unanimously. Breanna, thank you for your patience. And thank you for all your work in bringing this opportunity to the town. And thank you. Checking them out when we see them. Okay. Thank you all. Have a good night. Yeah. I'm I rather than go through the four memos that I've sent to you. First of all, I apologize for not getting them all to you until Saturday. And that was only after my computer ate one of them. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It literally did. I would like to suggest that each of you look at the memos. I will ask you for individual. Feedback on the memos. And including questions, additional corrections or whatever. And. That. I bring them back on the 21st. And I also have a comment from a person that I'm going to send to you. I don't know whether they would have been on the basis. Any discussion? Mandy Joe. Does that comply with open meeting law? If we're sending our opinions off to you. As a prefer that you send them to Athena. I'm just asking a question because I just don't know. Athena, do you have a comment? you have a revised draft or they can send them to me and I'll remove names and send comments to you. Okay, so we'll work out something that's consistent with open meeting. Alyssa, you often have ideas. Exactly. Being super cautious about open meeting less somebody just got nailed for this recently for having a staff member compile the information. So if you're super if you find a way to do it, that no quorum of the council has been exposed to the opinions of individual counselors outside of a posted meeting. You'll probably be okay but it's that and this is something that a publication recently complained about for us they said well you didn't list out who said it was their priority. Well that's because that would be an open meeting law violation because they'd be publishing that ahead of time. So if you can find a way to do it but I think in an ideal world, one would go ahead and do that tonight and then people would go ahead and send you details later, but I realize it's late and maybe we can be super careful. Thank you. So we have some zoning priorities. First discussion and each out. Yes, so I think Sean, if he hasn't fallen asleep yet. Hi Sean. We've got a two slides. I'll have them up. Yes, thank you. I will try to make this in some sense as short as I can. I'll start while Sean's putting that up CRC undertook a review of zoning priorities for the council to recommend to the town manager, principally, because we had kept getting requests from the planning department for guidance. And under our charge we were able to take, take a look at this and all this started way back in September. I started a little earlier than that but in September, the council remember that we solicited feedback and priorities from all the counselors we received 10 responses. I received 10 responses that I then published in a compiled list. And we had a nice meeting that was joined as a town council meeting and from there the CRC talked about a lot of things and the report is fairly extensive. And a four zero vote with one absent at our last meeting on December 1 resulted in a recommendation that in accordance with the town council policy goal number three, economic vitality that the council to encourage the town manager to direct staff to develop zoning amendments in order to achieve the listed zoning priorities. The three month ones are on the screen, they generally fall into two categories, improving downtown zoning and unlocking housing development, both of which were mentioned by in general terms were mentioned by a number of counselors. And, and so you can see which ones they are there I tried to describe what they were or what was behind them in the report I'm not going to do that tonight. The three month ones it's important to note are in a room measures in the sense that they're they're incremental I guess is a better one than interim. And they're not going to solve unlocking housing development on their own and they're not going to. I mean they'll improve downtown zoning but they won't solve a number of the issues that counselors have mentioned, and have and have been had concerns on their own that these are not the end of the issues these are the beginning of a process and we can go to the next slide for the next recommended priorities. These list the six to 12 month priorities again. They are the start of a process and they also focus on two general categories unlocking housing development and improving village center zoning. The downtown out into the villages to the other centers in our town for them. And, you know, we, we focused on these you'll see a plan, sort of a trend here housing development unlocking housing and doing stuff with zoning in our village centers and town center. We've been working on a comprehensive housing policy so CRC has housing in its brain, essentially. And so a lot of the things we've heard and things we need to do and seven counselors also mentioned all of that. You know, and so this is what we have the other one we had was consultant money and there were only about four items on the list, the whole list that the planning department the planning board and the CRC, or and the town counselors came up with that the planning department thought would need consultant money and of those four or five items. There's already some money appropriated and the planning department indicated that that money was for use in downtown and gateway area zoning, and they believed that form based zoning design guidelines for the downtown would then satisfy or comply with the appropriated use that has already been for that. And so that was one of the reasons we chose that or are recommending that for the use of the consultant money for the town council. And, and the other one is it was one of the highest ones identified by town counselors in terms of, I think it was seven of 10 town counselors identified some form of form based zoning or just design guidelines that like to see implemented in town. And so, you know, the report has a lot more information. You know, I can answer questions. If anyone has any I can do the best to do that and I believe Chris Breastrup is also here for extra information on the specific recommendations to be able to explain some of it in better detail if there's some questions about specific recommendations. Okay. Kathy. I'm unmuting. I, you know, I appreciate the amount of work that went into the memo we received and I know that you received a large amount of input initially, and then I was somewhat surprised to see the result that came before us. One of the things that I want to advocate and I tried to write up my comments which usually I don't do so I just wing it. But I think we need to have a vision of the embers we want. And then an analysis of what are what are the barriers and how the different changes could interact with each other. And the changes, many of the changes that are in this list are quite major and their. I know there's a definition in your report Mandy of each of them but providing the definition of what footnote a is in a dimensional table does not talk about. Why do we have a footnote a what would would happen if we put footnote a under others also removing footnote M it's very opaque if you any. So I went and I pulled the zoning map out. I went and read through this thing I said why aren't we just fixing the dimensional table. So I went through this and I found at the very end the draft housing policy and I thought it had a really great sentence in it, I can't wait patiently for developers to come forward with ideas that fit our vision for the town, we have to articulate that vision, then act to see it implemented, I would like to see something come out first that says what is our vision. And then we see as the problems, and then why this set of changes what does it do to address it. And then I also want to see an analysis before we take any action of each of the recommendations what would it possibly look like if we did this. Steve comes from UMass where I over within the beautiful new building. I've seen 3D models of what might happen if you planned and you read it streets. So I'd just like to see some what this would look like because some of these are quite significant changes. And on just a couple examples with the apartment buildings, 24 units but right now there's a requirement that there'd be a diversity of sizes within the apartment buildings. And elsewhere in the document we want a diversity of housing stock. Why wouldn't you why would you want to release apartment buildings from having this. And one of the explanations is because everyone is escaping to mix these buildings, but I've been to multiple meetings at the planning board and stuff. We said the problem is we have no definition what a mission. If we tighten up on what it could be, and when it could be used, we wouldn't have this escape so maybe 24 is the wrong number. But I think we shouldn't rush. I don't see that we have an urgent need to rush. We've actually been building a lot in Amherst. And when we talk about affordability, it's we're getting apartment buildings up here where I live, the two bedroom units cost $33,000 a year to want to rent them. So it's, it's hard to call those affordable. And we did put a lot of money into making sure some of them were, but there's nowhere in this document that talks about inclusionary zoning which would require any new development that was large to have some of it in it. So I think we need to have this vision of what are we trying to do and go slowly through interlocking pieces the way I've seen Northampton and other towns they don't do a big set. They do small sets that come together as a kernel and make some sense. And then my last comment is there seems to be a sense that if we just free things up, and we allow more to cover more pieces of land where it's all developed not worry about lot coverage anymore but special needs that somehow we'll get to a place that we're generating revenues to do other things we want to do. If that were true New York City would not be in the problems it is if that were true we'd have whole urban areas, which we're saying we finally done it the places that have done this well, have a vision. They talk about balancing it. They worry about the environmental impact, and some of them do special permits. Now, if you put in solar will give you a waiver on some dimensions so they use an incentive. If you do this will give you a waiver, and I didn't see that so I think we could be much more creative. And I just want this to come out at the planning board to what is the vision, and what is the problem with each of these things we're trying to solve, and is this the right way to solve it so I just didn't see the analysis. I don't have any statements, but I would have come up, I think with a different set, and I wasn't on CRC, but I wouldn't have wanted my set alone. I just would want to know why these three pieces, and I've been reading a lot of the smart growth. And the under the layer of form based zoning, they're interlocking pieces where it's worked really well. People said let's focus on this area. What kind of space what kind of housing we want housing for people to move out of their big houses as senior citizens and something smaller but they want a yard. They want a garden. We want a family unit where kids can be with a yard. So, what does it take to get that to give developers both the incentive to want to build it with some of these if you do this will do this for you, and where would we want it. I just didn't see that it was more free it up here free it up here free it up here. So, I think we need a different kind of document coming to us before I would feel really comfortable with it with a lot more analysis of consequences. And I do appreciate the amount of work, but I just want why this one why not this one why focus here, why not fix this dimensional table and I got into the weeds really quickly and stepped up and said what is the vision here. And, and where do we want what. And so I think we need to have a larger discussion about all of this, if we're going to make this a priority and I don't see the rush. You know, I think we need to think about development, and we need to look to the future but we need to look to our past and other places expect experiences to guide it how we develop is really going to matter, because you can't turn some of this back. Once you've started down a road, it will, it will happen under its own accord so we need to be careful when we make changes. And I don't want to go into the specifics but I'd be happy on each of the items to send my thoughts and comments on it. It was a long enough draft that I didn't want to talk longer tonight about specifics. Dorothy. Well, first let me talk about the town of Amherst comprehensive housing policy, which is one of the CRC documents. And I read through it and I had a few questions but I liked so much of it. The talking of the aim of more diverse, moderately priced and affordable housing types, diverse neighborhoods. And again, that would also be if there were an apartment building. I would think diverse types of people in the apartment building which would mean a diversity of sizes of apartments. So I was really happy with that. I got onto the zoning report and I found that I couldn't follow it. And I know that that means that if I did more and more work and pulled out all my maps and my files of which I have enough to fill an office. I could but adding BL to footnote B, I need to find how that relates to the housing policy because I like the vision of the housing policy, but I couldn't see it. I couldn't imagine it. And so it was like picking a poke for me. And I know that's a lot of work but we in the town council we are the liaison with the people the residents of the town. We have to be able to understand this and to be able to explain things to the people who want to know that we see and that we talk to and we communicate with. And I, I can't do that at this point so I know that's asking you to do a lot more work. But I really did like the vision and the housing policy. And I would I would need to say if we do this, then that would create this other result which we want if I were to explain to people what it is. So that that is what I'm hoping that you'll be able to do. But thank you for what you've done. Darcy. Yes. Am I unmuted. Yes. I just would also echo. Thank you for all the work that you're putting to this, especially Mandy Joe had a very intense week. I would also agree with, I guess, pretty much everything Kathy said I was planning to say. I would also agree with that. So I will just say that I agree with her statement that we really need analysis. And I, you know, I, the fact that we got the document on Saturday. I really have time to prepare until today. And so it wasn't for a document of that size that really just wasn't enough time. And I really felt like a lot of, especially what was in the summary. And the first page was not reader friendly, especially for the public who do not understand the names of all the zones and the, and the footnotes and, and there were there was reference to the dimensional table but it would have been extremely helpful to actually, you know, have the dimensional table in the report. I think it probably was very difficult for the public to understand it. And it wasn't in the packet as a separate document. It's in the CRC report. So anyone who was just looking through the packet for things of interest, they would have seen the two slides, but they wouldn't have seen the report. So it was sort of not, not really transparent that it was in our packet this time. So I, you know, I really don't think that we should treat this as a first discussion. I'm assuming that we're not planning on voting on anything in our next discussion. We just won't have had enough time to do what we need to do. Let's see what else was I going to say here. I really would have loved to originally see the actual comments that were made by all the individual counselors. We initially received Evans proposal for zoning changes and his proposal pretty closely tracks the all of the suggestions that are made on the first page of the zoning report. I would, I would really have liked to see everybody else's rather than just a compilation I would have liked to have seen each individual counselors suggestions so that we could really dive into them and see what everyone said. That's another kind of transparency issue I would like to have seen that. And as Kathy said I would, you know, I really feel like there should be an impact analysis. I would like to see has adopted a community impact review process. And I don't, I couldn't see evidence that that had been followed or that you had looked at environmental impacts or financial impacts neighborhood impacts or anything like that, which seems like we have to figure out how we're going to get input and evidence of impact on people in town. So, and lastly, I really think that probably a large number of counselors mentioned that we need to. One of our priorities is increasing the availability of moderate priced housing. And I didn't see that stated in those words, low income and moderate income housing. Because that's a big issue in my neighborhood, a lot of neighborhoods. There just is, we're losing moderate income housing to investors coming in and buying it up and renting it to students. So that's a huge issue in town, and that I really would like to have covered. So, I think that's basically what my comments are. Alyssa. I actually think this is a great first discussion and I really appreciate the way CRC tried to herd cats here because like, wow, this is a lot. And in terms of process, as I'd already made allusion to in another conversation, we could not have published what each person sent in under their name, or it would have been an open meeting law violation that would not have been appropriate. And so, that's the way that we're going to do it that way. I know it stinks, but that's the way real life is. And so that didn't happen. But further, I'm not convinced that was that would have been useful from the standpoint that let's bear in mind that as the report says, only 10 of the 13 of us have even participated in making this list. It's a better editor than creator. Right. And so there's stuff on that list that I was like, which I would have thought to put that down, and then you could have had eight counselors or 12 counselors say that was a great list. So I appreciate that this was a way to do it and I'm totally on board with that but at the same time, you know, more people I know marijuana is such a special project to me, but maybe one or two people might have cared about it if they'd seen it as an option. This was not a survey, right, because there's this huge realm of possibility. This was just what occurred to us and the amount of time that we were each willing to spend on this question. And then you were trying to funnel down from there. But I think you were able to come to see that there was a lot of interest in certain areas, even if I might have voted for some more things given the opportunity. So I wonder if the direction that we're looking at isn't to go ahead and say, okay, well you kind of clumped these things. So can we pick fewer things to clump because I got to say, the list seems real long to me, even for those time periods that seems like a lot of stuff. The planning board doesn't normally generate that amount of work over that amount of time period and so I'm just, is there a way to, you know, to get down more to like just something around housing and yes I understand how all things are related. But finally, I have two other things. One is inclusionary zoning doesn't appear as a concept in this priority list. And so I think we need to address that one way or another. I know that some people refer to it that way, not only in public comment but also in our original counselor comments which I appreciate you having the hyperlink to Mandy Joe thank you so much is, but I think we need to address why we're not addressing it. And that could be because it's just too long and cumbersome or we're making choices here and the words inclusionary zoning do not appear in that fashion except as they're not on the list. And the other part is, when we talk about our vision, the master plan is our vision. That's the thing we just passed. This is exactly within our vision we don't need a new vision document. We just pull out the pages of the master plan and say, this is what goes in this section. Now we've actually got something we want to implement that goes with this section. We are not creating a new vision. This is not up to this town council to come up with some cool vision for downtown. We need to turn to the master plan and say, what's some things we can do to implement and I really appreciate you trying to get us to this point but I wonder if we need to just funnel it down further for the next presentation and say okay well let's start with this because the list you have feels awfully big and in some ways awfully technical. I've been waiting for two years to get to this. So those of us who aren't in a hurry. I'm at the other end. We're entering our third year, and we're finally actually talking about actual zoning and real changes. We have to look at each one individually. We have to think about the impact, but I'm excited by this document. I'm impressed by the amount of work and so forth. There's a lot here. We can narrow it down a little bit perhaps, but please let us start doing something related to zoning. And we've got a number of excellent suggestions and excellent vision here of a comprehensive overall housing policy. This is absolutely correct. We have a master plan. We have a vision. We don't need to start creating new visions. We need to start applying some of these specifically to the larger visions. Inclusionary zoning needs to be part of this. I agree, but please let's not make this the death of a thousand cuts. Let's actually start tackling some of these now. It's three months priorities and then six to 12 months and then work where our job is done. We're finished. It's a new council. So let's get going. I'm going to call on people who haven't spoken Steve Schreiber. So it's okay if I speak if I'm on CRC. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so really interesting comments. So everyone keep in mind that we have a zoning bylaw that basically works. So it's been developed over many, many years through the town meeting process. So really what the goal of this document is to to tune that up to to refine it to make it better. So we're not starting from scratch or really tune it up. So really do keep that in mind. So the other thing to note is that the very last zoning bylaw ever passed by town meeting was inclusionary zoning reform. So basically that's the last major content related change to the zoning bylaw was by town meeting and basically close some of the loopholes in the inclusionary zoning. So so we shouldn't say that we're not addressing inclusionary zoning that in fact was addressed by town meeting. Then furthermore, these pesky footnotes, these footnotes are, I find them head slapping because the footnote can change everything. The footnote also allows special permits in some cases for certain types of buildings or certain dimensions of buildings by special permit. So by special permit means that the inclusionary zoning passed by town meeting triggers. So by adding those footnotes were actually addressing inclusionary zoning. So we might not say that specifically but a lot of this is in fact inclusionary zoning based. So with that, I will stop talking. Chris, rest refuse your hand up and I'm going to make sure you man. I just wanted to make a few comments. I think, you know, if we really want to go beyond the master plan and start talking about a specific vision for downtown, we need to go the route of hiring a consultant like Northampton did. And Northampton's been working on their vision for their downtown and their village centers for a few years now. It does take a long time and it takes a significant investment of money. That's certainly something that Amherst may choose to do. But for right now, we think we have a pretty good idea of what people want in the downtown just by hearing from people over the years. So, you know, you can either choose to go with what we already know, or you can choose to come up with the money to hire a consultant. One thing I wanted to say is, as each item on the list that Mandy Joe put together comes up, of course we will talk about the impacts of each thing. So for instance, applying footnote B to the limited business zoning district, we would come up with an analysis of what that means. What that means for, say, the property on the corner of Halleck Street and North Pleasant Street and how many units, could you actually get there so we would be giving examples of those things as we moved along through each one of these items. And the last thing I wanted to say is, we do care very much about inclusionary zoning and there may be things that we need to do to make inclusionary zoning work better. But in my opinion, I think that we will need a consultant in order to do that to really reach a consensus about what we want to do. We can say that, like some of the communities in Eastern Massachusetts we want inclusionary zoning to apply to absolutely every residential development, and that works for them because they have such tremendous development pressure on them. And people and developers are willing to, you know, jump through all kinds of hoops to be able to develop in these places. But I don't really feel like Amherst is in that kind of position. And we in the planning department are concerned that if we apply inclusionary zoning to every development in town every residential development that we may end up stifling development. So those are just three three comments that occurred to me as I was hearing the comments of the town councilors. Kathy you have your hand up. Yeah, no, I know you said, I get one one chance not to I just wanted to correct the way I talked about vision I do agree we've got a master plan with the vision. What I was trying to do is a vision of why these four piece the long list, how does each one of these and how did they together, get us further along a particular path so a list is asking for a shorter list. I also wanted a shorter list with these three need to happen together, because together they give you this result. And so Chris said we could, we could talk about this. This is what I didn't see there, it was, I didn't want to pick a few because some of these, you can't dial it back once you make those changes. You know I don't think whatever we think about the parking overlay district of you don't have to have parking. Once once you've allowed someone to buy a piece of land and that's what that's what they're understanding you're not going to roll it back so you do want to be careful as you move forward. So I just want to see much more of that interconnectiveness, and I agree with Dorothy that when you get back to the housing document you see these, these words about diversified sizes and then I go over to the zoning side, and I don't see the same thing that that was just where I wanted just more clarity, and I don't believe that just by opening up the ability to build more will get affordable. I've just watched it not happen I mean, and one of the reasons is the generator of big demand on our streets and on our apartment buildings is UMass, where they haven't put enough people on campus. So it's almost as fast as we can build it, it can be go for something else so the building that was originally on Spring Street was going to have family downsizing, and suddenly became all efficiencies because and the reason was, that's where the demand is you know we know there's a market for that so I think we can't just race that way if what we really want is some family housing and some places where people can give up their house as a senior a big house and move to something smaller we've got to build the kinds of things that people would be willing to give their house and move into. So what changes, what small changes or big changes get us further down that road that's the kind of analysis I want to see and whatever the first, the first list is out of us. Family. Yeah, I was wondering if the consultancy for form based zoning and design guidelines if that would speak to a little bit around what people are talking about vision like I know we do have a sense of vision through the master plan and we all know the kind of town we want to create walkable and environmentally friendly and gathering spaces for performances or and we want open spaces so those are some things we all kind of agree on other than I do get the performance shell is still a little issue but overall we kind of agree and so I wonder if hiring a consultant which is there in the plan around the design and flow and some of those things would address the vision issues and I think that was helpful to hear from Chris around the impact analysis at what point that's going to show up. I just want to also mention about the speed like the timing issue and I think we heard from several town staff about positioning ourselves to come out of the pandemic and so as we're thinking about some of these changes we want to keep in mind what thoughtful changes in zoning are going to support and attract people to invest in our town versus let's say had yeah we want Hadley to also have grow and whatnot but you know but we also want to position ourselves as a town which is really really encountering a lot like as we all know of businesses closing and whatnot so what can we do to position ourselves to come out of that. Evan, you have your hand up. I know it's late but I just briefly wanted to talk about timing. You know I know I share George's feelings of we've waited a long time to get here. Let's go. But I also really think that there is a rush to do this. And I think part of that is what Shalini just said which is what we've seen with COVID which is the vulnerability of our local economy and the vulnerability of a lot of people in housing and specifically the renter population. I know that Darcy mentioned that words like low income or moderate housing weren't explicitly mentioned and then think and she's right they weren't and that's perhaps an oversight of the report. But when we're talking about things like supplemental dwelling units when we're talking about things like duplexes and triplexes. These are ways that have historically been avenues for affordable rentals and affordable homeownership which trust me this town needs avenues for people to be able to buy properties. And a lot of folks myself included cannot afford single family homes in this town. And so I know it's easy to say that there's no rush when you don't personally feel there's a rush but I think for a lot of people who are looking at our local economy and looking at its fragility the zoning recommendations that can help bolster that local economy and improve downtown. I think there is a rush and I think for many of us who are looking at the housing situation and seeing people to stay in Amherst struggle to move to Amherst struggle to buy their first home. There is a rush and anything we can do in zoning that can help create more affordable housing and I think things like duplexes and triplexes things like allowing smaller lot sizes were to allow us to build smaller homes that are more affordable for people who don't have the income to buy a $400,000 home. I think those things are important so I actually think there is a rush year beyond just our personal interest in zoning. And I think that COVID has only further exposed the need for this. Okay, Darcy, your hand up. Yeah, I would just say, in response to what Evan just said, that I agree with him that we really need to have those types of duplexes and triplexes and you know, making accessory units easier and so on. But I guess I am wanting to make sure that they are going to go to families to make more housing available for our neighborhood income families and low income families as opposed to just, you know, unlocking housing in general in order to house UMass students throughout all of our neighborhoods in downtown. You know, the more housing we build if we do not somehow have some kind of ability to control that, they won't go to moderate income families. That's what we've seen in our neighborhood. So, like I said, I am for having more of those types of units, but not, you know, I worry about who this is going to end up benefiting. And we want it to benefit our moderate income families so that they will stay here. Great, Steve. So absolutely, so neighborhood stability and affordability are critical. I live in a neighborhood where probably 50% students, 50% that live in 50%, what am I trying to say, mostly owner occupied multi family houses, one or two or three family houses where there's an owner and then there's a source of income, either through students or other people renting. But that is an incredibly, you know, quite frankly, logical business model in Amherst where there are ways of allowing people to, it's a way of achieving affordability is to have a rental unit, you know, on the same piece of property. And we should not be dismissing the fact that students want to live off campus, but in fact we should be addressing that and I think the proposal to allow duplexes and dryplexes or whatever, everywhere as long as their owner occupied is a very wise way of addressing these issues. But it's the owner occupancy which is critical that there. Okay, are there any other comments. First time we're going to have this discussion and Mandy Joe I'll touch base with you to see if you're going to come back in two weeks. Okay. We're going to move on to appointments. There was one that was asked by Darcy to not be included in the consent agenda and it was regarding the personnel. And so Darcy, why don't you give us the TSO report. And also, your reason for wanting it off the consent agenda, which you asked well in advance, and it was not a unanimous decision. So, as you can see from the report, the committee voted four to one to recommend the appointment of the five people put forward by the town manager for the personnel board. I was the dissenting boat and nothing whatsoever against Mr. Butterfield, but it was based on disagreeing with this recommendation for his appointment for a three year term when he spent on the board since 2006. And so I brought up the length of the term and the fact that the term appointed could have been a one year instead of three and George brought up the fact that the normal interview procedure wasn't followed and Alyssa noted that this was the town manager's practice, not to argue reappointments. So my concern actually has grown since that meeting. There were other issues that we were arguing about at the meeting, but since the meeting I realized we didn't really mention this at the meeting, the fact that the appointments weren't the vacancies weren't advertised. So there was not only not interviews, but it wasn't, it wasn't advertised. So, you know, we just voted tonight on repairing our relationship with black residents and Amherst. And one of the things we really should be doing as a matter of course is at the very least advertising committee vacancies, so that if someone somehow with some degree of diversity is available to serve, we can take advantage of it. And how can we ever do it if we don't advertise the position. I feel like our current system sort of is that the charter looked to get away from the kind of old boy system. And that's what we want to do. I think our current system is not what was intended by the charter. So again, I am not saying that Tony Butterfield is not a wonderful personnel board member I'm just saying that we have a new world out here, and we should be opening up opportunities to that new world. The charter actually requires the town manager to set up policies and procedures to increase diversity in committee membership and I, I think that our, our board and committee handbook probably needs to be updated and clarified to to to deal with how, you know, I personally think that it should require that positions have to be advertised when they become bacon, at least after six years of service. It's unclear to me one, what type of motion. I would potentially make tonight to remedy the situation but if any other counselors willing to make a motion or a motion to amend the main motion. I would second it. The second is to approve the following 10 manager appointments to the personnel board effective immediately as filed with the town clerk on November 17, 2020 and recommended by the town services now each committee report of December 4, 2020, for terms to expire June 30, 2023, Tony Butterfield read appointment replica Woodland reappointment for term to expire June 30, 2022 Catherine Porter reappointment for terms to expire June 30, 2021 Christopher Huff Jones trust Jones Library trustee designee reappointment Charlie Charles Sherpa employee designee reappointment is there a second to the motion. Second Ryan. Okay, now, Pat you have your hand up. And Darcy is bringing up a concern for me that I really want to ask Paul about because I know when the disability committee had vacancies, you did not reappoint people because they had been on the committee too long. And yet here we have an instance where this gentleman has been on the committee for a very long time and I thank him for his service. However, I feel like it seems to me one it's not transparent and number two, you kind of, and I guess that's your role is harder but it may it's making me very uncomfortable that you remove people without explaining why for being on too long and then keep people who have been on too long. So I'm left really questioning what happened on the disability advisory committee. And at some point if we want to raise the question of another committee, then we'll come back to but it's the same issue when the issue is the issue but then, but let's stick to this committee. So I have a lot of questions. And I'm going to just put out there that I'm thinking of making a motion but I need to hear from Paul before I can decide whether or not emotion is appropriate. And so I'm hoping Paul you can answer a ton of questions that I have. The first one is why was a member who has already been on the board for 14 years recommended for reappointment for another three when all five positions were open and he could have been recommended for one. There are other two reappointments that have already been on for three and four. And the one that's been on for four was not recommended for another three but the one that was on for 14 was and similar to that. You stated that you advertised in your memo but you didn't put a date and your other memo for tonight's appointment for CDBG had a date that that advertisement went on to the bulletin board. So did you advertise and if so what date did you put on and did you receive any applications and or I think you go back three years for applications are there other people who have applied for personnel board that you did not interview this time despite having five positions open and if so why weren't they interviewed. I don't know who chooses the employee representative that was very unclear in the memo completely. And so who does choose it is it you is it someone else. Is it normally a one year appointment or is that something that could normally be three years or two years and you know I just we don't know this because it wasn't mentioned and I don't even know whether Mr Sherpa is a I think it said reappointment on this but that wasn't in your memo that just showed up in our motion so has he been the employee representative and if so for how long has he been the employee representative and and please explain to me how you deal with the appointed committee handbook because that says clearly that an executive I mean that was adopted by the executive it's never been adopted by the legislative our side but it has been adopted by the executive that the in the appointed committee handbook after two terms, there isn't supposed to be a preference for a third, according to the handbook. And then finally, can you explain why all five positions are up for reappointment right now or appointment at all when it's supposed to be staggered terms how did we get to a point where all five members had their terms expire at the same time like that should never happen when they're all supposed to be staggered. You're muted. So for the terms. So the library under the by law or the charge of the by the actual by law, the, the library trustees have an appointment so I make that a one that's a one year appointment they can choose who they want every year. The employees have an appointment so I go to the employees and say who would who would you like to have, you know, represent you, and whatever names the library trustees give and the employees get and there's a contact person at the employees that I go to, and say, would you, who do you want to represent you, how the employee representative chooses. That's, you know, that's I don't conduct an election or a campaign or anything like that I go to the employees. For the other two appointments one person had served one three year term in the end so I extended that for another three years and the other had already served four years so I extended her two years. Yes, Mr butterfield has been on for a very long time. I've always said to the select court that I don't believe in term limits. That's, that's, that wasn't, that's not my policy. And, you know, and, you know, and that's been the case for the disability access advisory commission. There have been people on there for a very long time for for a couple positions to answer this. That's a very, very, very dangerous question. The. I did not see these as vacancies. It's because I saw these as reappointments and so they did not advertise them that the memo should not have said that. The. I think that's those were the questions. I don't know if I got all the questions. Yeah, I was just going to check with Mandy Joe, whether were there additional questions. I think you got most of them, but the charter in section 9.12 E requires the advertisement for 14 days of vacancies or impending vacancies. Right. So I did not interpret that you don't in, you don't consider the fact that a term is expired as an impending vacancy before you even pull as to whether someone wants reappointed. Is that what you're telling us? That's, that's how I interpret it. Yeah. George. This was addressed in the memo and four members of the committee found the explanation by Mr. Bachman to be quite compelling. Which didn't seem to come out as clearly in the chairs comments earlier. So I'll just read it for what it's worth. Mr. Butterfield has been a member of the personal board since 2006. He brings an unusual set of experience skills and historical knowledge to the board. Human resource directors have relied on him for advice on important personal issues. In addition, I have gone to Mr. Butterfield both as a confidant and guide on some particularly thorny issues. His council has been important in my role as town manager. He has also established an excellent rapport and trust with employees and brings instant credibility to complex situations. As we bring on a new human resources director, I have determined that Mr. Butterfield's continued service on the board is crucial to our continued success. Any further comment George. It's time. I can see that there are some issues about appointments, reappointments that perhaps need to be discussed. But as a general rule, I really feel extremely uncomfortable in having these process discussions done around real people because I think it will make people really think twice about applying for committees. So I do see there's some areas where it's not clear what is the ruling or what is the practice, what should it be, what should it not be. And I think that should be addressed. But I would recommend that we not mix that up with this particular process because we have real people in the being recommended. Steve, you have your, I'm going to go to Steve first and then come back to me and show. So I support the town manager's ability to feel the best possible team. That's really what his job is, you know, that's what the charter says that the town manager is in charge of these certain appointments and legislatures in charge of these other appointments. I respect his ability to do his job. I think that if you ever agree with those who have said that when somebody's term ends, that's basically a vacancy in my opinion and that should be advertised. And I think that that otherwise it really doesn't look transparent. It doesn't look right. So I have not realized I was a practice I was being used. I'm going to vote yes on this slate, but I hope that that message. We hope the town manager. You know, here's that concern because I agree with those who have said that that somebody whose term is expiring is basically creating a vacancy. They might be the right person to fill that same vacancy. But it just doesn't send the right message unless we do that. Unless he does that. Mindy Joe. I'm going to move to amend the motion. And so that Catherine Porter's term expires on June 30, 2023. Charles Sherpa's term expires on June 30, 2022. And Tony Butterfield's term expires June 30, 2021. I second it. Can I speak to it? The motion. So I am very concerned that as a charter commissioner, we put in the requirement to notice on a bulletin board impending vacancies so that you didn't just reappoint someone from the inside over and over again without ever giving someone who's not in government a chance to express their interest. And so while I don't want to reject every single one of these appointments except for Chris Hoffman's and Charlie Sherpa's because those are the two that would in some sense never really get advertised to the outside world. I kind of do want to reject all three of them because I'm really disappointed that we're not advertising positions and kind of keeping an old voice network because that was not the point of the charter. And at the same time, I'm also disappointed that when I asked a question about why Catherine Porter who has served four term four years already did not get a three year term. But Tony Butterfield who has served 14 years did get a three year term the answer was well she's already served four, so we'll give her two, but he served 14 so we'll give him three. It doesn't make any sense. And you can get that continuation of the knowledge that Mr Butterfield provides for a new HR director with a one year term, which is why I propose and I'm seeking to amend this him down to one year. And because you know, he can do fantastic work. But if we're not even advertising the positions we don't know who else is in this town that can do just as fantastic of work. And that's a big problem. So that's why I'm making this motion. Motion's been made and seconded so comments should be to the amendment. I mean the motion has been original motion has been amended, and that amendment was seconded. So comments should be to this motion, Evan. I don't think this motion is appropriate. This is not a town council appointment. This is a town manager appointment. The charter says that we have the ability to approve or reject the town managers appointments but it does not in any way read to me that we can amend the appointment so if this was a town council appointment. I think we could have a lengthy discussion about term limits I think we could amend them. But I think this this motion is actually in contradiction to the words of the charter I don't think that we have the ability to amend any town manager appointments only to approve or reject and so if, if people are unhappy with the appointments I think they can vote to reject but I don't believe that we have the ability to amend. Thank you for raising that question. I've had that question, frankly, myself as well. Alyssa. Thank you I think that's an approach that maybe is you know is this an amicable way we can work out a disagreement rather than a rejection, but I also understand Evan's point. I want to just make two clarifications one is that TSO did not vote to agree that not advertising explorations in conflict with the charter was a good idea that we were happy about that that conversation didn't happen. Okay, it was that given the totality of the information as George explained, we agreed with the reappointments that doesn't mean we agreed with the process and you know I'm the first to complain when it doesn't when there aren't the postings for the vacancies. And so I think that's something we need to discuss as a separate process issue to see if that is something because there have been things that OCA and then TSO said, if you're aren't going to follow these guidelines we're going to reject your appointments. So that may be that kind of conversation. But the other part is is I can't agree with the amendment of the term for the employee representative or the library trustee. Those have nothing to do with the town manager. The employees should be picking a person every single year if they want to pick the same person forever. That's their problem, but they should not pick that person for two years for three years. They should only pick them for one and the same with library trustees, just like for a Community Preservation Act, for example, Conservation Commission should not be sending somebody for three years. They should send them for one year and if they want to send them 12 times in a row, that's fine with me, but they should only be doing it a one year at a time it has nothing to do with their other lives. The employee should be making a choice every year. The library trustee should be making a choice every year. There's a motion on the floor. It's been amended with and there's been a second to the amendment, although the question has been raised as to whether the council has the authority will to do anything other than accept or reject the town manager's recommendation. Mandy Joe. If it pleases people, I will, I will withdraw that one and make a different one. If that would potentially solve the issue. You need to get your second to agree to that. Yeah. I will withdraw that motion and make a separate motion that is to a motion to amend to delete quote Tony Butterfield reappointment from the motion and to add the phrase quote to reject the town manager appointment of Tony Butterfield to the personnel board as filed with the town clerk on November 17 2020 and to the beginning of the motion. I can read the full motion is how it would. Is there a second to the motion and then I want to discuss why that's any different than the first in terms of whether we have the authority to just to change the authority to reject any appointment of the manager under the charter. And this amendment would reject Tony Butterfield but approve the rest. Okay. Mandy Joe anything further to say on that. If the council doesn't believe we have the ability to change the terms of the appointments then I believe we should reject Mr Butterfield not because he's not qualified but because the personnel boards. The appointments were not advertised and he is the one that has served the longest in contradicting to other statements the manager has already made about terms and reappointments. Kathy. Yeah, I just, I have a question. As I understand it. I understand what Mandy just did which she in a box she found a way to adhere to the charter. If what we really want would like here is for Paul to look at the terms that he proposed and say, Oh, I can change them in the following way. The ability to just to ask for that because we can also reject the whole group and just ask come back. And this is what you want you to address and that just seems to be a more secretive route to go. So that's just, you know, I mean, you know, I will have to recuse myself on this particular motion because I know Mr Butterfield quite well. I wouldn't be in a position to vote on this, I would just have to abstain. But I just, you know, it's, you, you got moved against the wall on changing the term appointments. And so therefore you're picking one out to reject is the way I understand what just happened. I think it's very unfortunate. So that's my comment on this that we can't just have Paul say, huh, okay. Can I respond Lynn quickly. Yes, please. So we have to approve or reject today we can't send back to Paul without one or the other or they are pocket approved according to the charter which is why a referral back to TSO won't solve this issue for an amended motion or amended memo. And the other thing is if we seek to reject three of the five the three reappointments that are not library trustees or person or employee representative. And the personnel board wouldn't have a quorum. So I, I definitely don't know the, you know, Paul's thinking about this but I have confidence that he has thought about all of these terms. He's basically the general manager right for, you know, if we're a sports team, he's a general manager and he's responsibilities to figure out again the best possible teams and I am not a position to guess whether or not somebody should get a shorter term or somebody should get a longer term. I really trust Paul to make that decision. I completely agree with the comments that this could have been advertised. This is not a reason to, you know, basically embarrass really good community members who have been put forth. Any other comment, shall we go back to that friend make it a friendly whatever and what money Joe proposed because I thought that was a much better way to deal with this, rather than. I mean just because we want to be right. I mean, I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying but I just feel that I don't. I think that was a good amicable solution that we offer one year well and then discuss that other process as a separate thing. But it wouldn't it's better than just saying no and rejecting because yeah he's. Yeah, I don't know. There's a motion there's an amendment to the motion on the floor and it's been made in seconded so that's where we stand at this point. I will not support the motion. I don't like the kind of process that that Paul you maintain where you have one set of rules for one people and one set of rules for another group of people. Someone you like someone you don't like I have no idea. I'm hoping it's a better criteria than that. I did respect what you said about Mr Butterfield and I can see why you want to work with him. I feel very strongly while I can't support this right now that you need to come up with a real real criteria and and say to the council. This is the criteria I will use and I will use it consistently because I won't get into the docker. But it's it's got vacancies because the process wasn't well handled and because there was a removal of a person who had a long term commitment. So you need to come up with a consistent criteria or this kind of thing will happen again and I won't support your decision. Steve, you still have your hand up. And shall any you have your hand up. And Darcy, your hand is now up. Yeah, I would just say that a compromise mission might be voting for Mandy Joe's motion, but with a message to the town manager. That he come back to us with a wreck, a recommendation for a one year appointment. He did say that he wanted to have a one year overlap with the new human resources director so that Tony Butterfield could help her in the first year. So if we sent that message, and also the message that we want him to advertise in the future in this type of situation, then maybe that would be a compromise. I don't have any other comments at this time. Okay, the motion's been on is on the floor it's now been amended the amendment is to basically accept the full set except Tony Butterfield. I'm going to call the question on the amendment. It's a favor of the amendment it's to remove the appointment of Tony Butterfield from the list. And if you vote for it, it's to keep it there. That's not true. That's not the motion that she made. All right, what is your motion Mandy Joe. If you vote for the motion, the motion on if the if you vote for the motion you want the motion on the floor to make it it back up to read to reject the town manager appointment of Tony Butterfield to the personnel board as filed with the town clerk on November 17 2020 and to approve the following town manager appointments to the personnel board effective immediately as filed with the town clerk on November 17 2020 and recommended by the town services and outreach committee report of December December 4 2020 for term to expire June 30 2023 Rebecca Woodland reappointment and then the rest would read the same. Okay. The motion to amend would make the motion read voting against it would take it back to the original motion. Okay. Any questions on the motion. Shall me. I'm sorry I haven't understood calls reasoning for this. I'm sorry. Could you again, try to explain what is your reasoning for doing this. You're asking Paul back. Yes, please. I think the question has been called. I think we have to vote. Oh, you asked for discussion or any other questions. Yeah, I'm sorry. Okay. You can't call the question unless we if there's a objection unless two thirds say and debate. I think I think the president said that she calls a question and I'd like I was going to explain what the motion was and we're about to vote. It was basically indicating you move forward shall me as a question her question is to Paul. Mr Ryan council Ryan read the major conversation reason for it and the personnel board is basically advisory to the town manager so the different kind of board than all of every other board it is an advisory to the town to the executive. In my position, there aren't many people that I can confide in when I'm talking about other high level department head level people in my in our organization. I found his I find his advice and his guidance being extremely important to me as a manager is unusual situation I do recognize that. And I and I hear what you're all saying so I respect those points and I hear them and will understand the points you're making that and I'm sure why you're making them. But for this particular instance, because I need someone to be able to talk to who's not as political figure, but also understands the town as a has the respect of the town employees. And I talked to him about the about certain things that I can't talk to my colleagues about, you know, there's no one at this level that I can talk to, you know, I can talk about political things. I can talk about management things with other managers, but in terms of our organization is the person is my go to person. That's why I find him by and and yeah. I'm so glad I asked you this question, because that really helps to clarify for me and it's what I'm hearing is that this is a little different from other regular boats, at least that's what I got out of it and it's helped me decide how I'm going to vote. Thank you, Paul. Oops. Are there further questions of clarification. Dorothy. I just want to say that when someone that you respect was doing a difficult job says that I really need this person to help me do it. And for process reasons, you decide that that's not important that you are actually doing a hostile act to that person. And I don't think anyone in this room on this zoom sport really means to do that. So, I just think let's have some balance. It's all I'm requesting. Are there any other questions from the council comments. Okay. So the motion. This is the amendment to the original motion. Okay. Does everybody understand the amendment. Okay. And I begin the vote with Dorothy Pam. No. Evan Ross. No. George Ryan. No. Kathy Shane. Stay. Steve Schreiber. No. Andy Steinberg. No. Sarah Schwartz. She left. Shalini Balmille. No. Alyssa Brewer. No. No. Garcy Dumont. No. Lynn Griesmer. No. Yes. Okay. The amendment. Did not pass. And we are now back to the original motion. The original motion is to approve the following town manager appointments to the personnel board. The prior and recommended by the town services. Outreach committee report of December 4th, 2020. Returns to expire June 30th, 2023. Tony Butterfield reappointment, Rebecca Woodland reappointment. Returns to expire 20. The expire June 30. 2022. Catherine Porter reappointment. for terms to expire June 30th, 2022. Chris Huffman, Jones Library Trustee Designate Reappointment. Charles Sherpa, Employee Designate Reappointment. Motion's been made and seconded. Any further discussion? All right, then this time we begin with Evan Ross. Yes. George Ryan. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. Yes. Andy Steinberg. Yes. Shalini Bonim. Yes. Melissa Brewer. Yes. Pat D'Angelois. Yes. Darcy DuMont. No. Lynn Griesmer is yes. Mandy Johannike. No. Dorothy Pam. Yes. The motion passes 10 in favor, two opposed, no extensions and one absent. Any further? Okay, we're moving on. We've already done the approval. Now we're on to committee and liaison reports. Community resources committee. Anything else, Mandy Johannike? I just want to highlight quickly two things. Actually one thing, which is the comprehensive housing policy draft. There was attached draft of the goals and objectives sections only of this draft policy along with some introduction and explanatory sections. We are seeking feedback on those sections. So any suggestions counselors have on feedback, on how to solicit feedback from the public would be welcome. Please forward that to me. If you have feedback on the document that was attached to the report forward it to me, I'll include it the next time we're talking about those sections. And I'm not sure my report indicated which committees we'd invited the chairs to. The chairs from to our next meeting to talk about feedback from committees, but I thought I'd indicate which ones they are. And they are the planning board, the zoning board of appeals, the ECAC, the housing trust, the PPA, and the CDBG advisory committees. We've invited the chairs to talk to about feedback from their committees specifically. In relationship to the housing. To the housing policy. Thank you. Thank you. Just clarifying for the public, that's all. All right, Andy. The finance committee I have to be really quick. So I don't have to say that our meeting is going to be later today, which is going to happen very soon. But we are meeting it tomorrow. And the two items are the draft of the guidelines which we will then be forwarding to the council. This is all according to the schedule that was sent to the council in our report of November 9. And the way that we had envisioned it that we would send it to the council that if there was significant questions about it and you wanted to refer it back to the committee that we would meet them the following day on the 22nd of December and bring it back on January 4th. Though there's always the hope and the positive that it'll actually be just adopted at our next meeting on the 21st. And the other item that may come back to the council now is that we're also taking up tomorrow a discussion of a proposal on capital inventory, which was something that the council referred to the committee. And so it may come back after tomorrow's meeting too. So that's the report. Thank you. GOL, George. Yes, quickly three things. First of all, we will be doing interviews for the FINCOM vacancy on December 16th, Wednesday. The SOIs for the candidates will be publicly available on this Wednesday, December 9th. We hope to have a recommendation to the town council for our December 21 meeting. Also note that there is in the GOL report a timeline that we've been working on. This is draft number five related to town manager evaluation, the process of town manager evaluation and the setting of town manager goals. And we very much appreciate any comments you have already gotten some comments from one council already, which will be incorporated into the new draft. But anything you notice, typos, confusions, and please read carefully the section excerpted in the report, which comes from the town manager's contract because that paragraph basically governs this document. But we very much appreciate your comments. If you have any, send them to me. We hope to have this for you, have this finalized by our meeting on December 16th as well. And finally, very quickly, I solemnly promise as chair that we will get the bylaws for future consideration to you by March. Every meeting from now on, we will begin with the homework assignments that I've given to all my colleagues on GOL. And so we are conscious of this, we are conscious of the referral, and we are working on it. Kathy, you have your hand up. Is that a question? Yeah, I just have a quick question. I think I know the answer to it, but for Fincom, then the non-voting resident, if we wanted to reopen the question, I'm on finance, reopen the issue of whether those should just be one year appointments or longer, would we have to first go to the charge, change the charge? Do we need to come through GOL? How do we do it? And I just raise it because I think there's a learning curve on funds, and I would love to bring some new people in and have them stay for two years or for three years with the idea that maybe even some of them might wanna run for counsel someday and getting to know the budget would be a waste. So I just, I don't know when to raise that and we just happen to have an opening right now. So I just need someone to tell me about when and how and where do I raise that issue? And I raised it when we first were elected, when we first ran that I felt those should be longer. So I just need guidance on how I would re-raise the issue. Wendy Jo. So I was just gonna correct that the current charge has two year terms for the non-voting members. So it has at least two. So originally I was doing, it was thinking three. I guess we appointed one of them for only one year was an issue. Correct. Because we were trying to stagger them. Right. And we're still trying to stagger them. So in answer to your question, I think it would have to go back for first of all discussion with finance and then, and they would say then to GOL we'd like to change the charge if they agree. Any other thoughts on that? All right. Kathy, nothing on JCPC yet. Darcy, CSO. Oh, I guess the only, I can't talk. Let me second. I'm not sure I can talk yet. I'll tell you later. Thank you. We've approved the minutes. Paul, town managers report. I know it's like there's just one thing. I want to make sure that you and the audience do that there was the university opened up asymptomatic testing to the community. It starts next Monday. You can go online, sign up for it. It's free. It really is designed to be in for the Amherst area that the governor explicitly said that today during his press conference. We are still exploring a symptomatic testing or contact testing because that's not permitted at this location. We're working with the city of Northampton to have designated a mobile testing site in the town that our health director with that could direct people to if there's an outbreak in a restaurant or a business or someplace and they have close contacts, they need to get tested. There aren't really easy places for them to be tested. But good news on the UMass site and appreciate the work of the university and the governor and his staff for making that happen. Great, thank you. Any questions on the town manager's report? Kathy, you have your hand up. It's a real quick one on the testing poll. Do you happen to know or could you get back to us? Is it the kind of testing like the quest testing where you get your results back two days later or is it the rapid, the 15 minute or it's just today? Thank you. The same thing that they've been offering to students. Yeah. Under town councilor comments, I wanna make sure that you are aware that once I receive the Black History Month and the Martin Luther King Day proclamations, I will be automatically referring them to GOL. I'm expecting to receive them sometime this week so that they can go to GOL next week so that they can come to the council on the 21st so that we can then hopefully approve them in time for the month of January. Darcy, do you have a question? Let's see if I can, yes, I can talk, good. I just wanted to say that the comments for the on the North Common to TSO are due. I had sent out an email suggesting that they be due at the end of the day this Friday. So if you could get them to me, that would be great. And also I just want to repeat my comment from earlier that I would like it if we could have the practice of notifying all of us when we get a referral to a committee so that we all know even if the referral is automatic so that we all maybe the referral could go to all of us, including whatever the document is. I'll be glad to do that, do it that way. I'll send it to the chair of the committee and CCB council. Yeah, that'd be great. No problem, good suggestion. Thank you. Are there any other comments, future agenda items or councilor comments? Darcy, your hand is still up but I assume that you're done. Yes, Alyssa. Maybe this may be a finance committee referral but somehow we need to find a way to talk about as a town council what we're doing with the marijuana money we're receiving from host community agreements and excise taxes. I brought it up before when it finally started showing up on our quarterly reports we need to be making proactive decisions about this not just assuming it'll just get in the general fund and stay that way. Is it acceptable to you that we start it with finance committee and bring it to the council? Absolutely. Andy, got that one? Yes, I do have that one. Alyssa has brought it up before and will look for recommendation also from the town manager, I presume. Okay, and if you would like to bring it back to the council before making a final recommendation just let me know that, okay? Now if you wanna have a council have more of a discussion before the finance committee makes a final recommendation you can certainly bring it to the council we have a conversation goes back to finance you make your recommendation, okay? Yes. Any other councilor comments? Future agenda items? Public's not reasonably anticipated there's none, Alyssa your hand is still up I assume it's gonna go down, okay? Then in that case we're actually going to adjourn at 1144. Thank you.