 Okay, so welcome everybody. Hello. My name is Brianna. I'm the communications manager for the town, and I'm joined today by John Thompson, code enforcement officer for the town of Amherst, also building inspector and building inspector. I'll have him go into that a little bit more. And community liaison officer Bill Laramie and your town manager Paul Bachman. So before we have introductions, I'm going to ask Paul if he has any general updates to share with anyone. Sure, I just have a couple of things. I know this is going to be a rich conversation so I won't take too much time. I'm really pleased that the town council passed the town's budget for FY 21 on Monday. So very pleased by their action and that we now have a budget for FY 21. And so that's all really good news. And I'm just going to leave it at that. And I'm sure there'll be lots of things that come up during the course of this conversation. Yes, I think we've already got a bunch of questions that have been submitted. But I would like the time take a few minutes for John and Bill to introduce themselves. Two of my favorite colleagues we used to work on the same team a couple years ago. So John is on my top left square so I'll ask him to unmute and go first. Hi, I'm John Thompson. I work for the town of Amherst as a building inspector, health inspector and the senior code enforcement officer. So I'm dealing with building code, sanitary code and zoning bylaws. And my particular focus is rental housing, the health and safety of rental housing in Amherst. Awesome. Thanks John. And then Bill if you could take a moment to introduce yourself as well. Sure. Yeah, thanks for having me on. My name is Bill Laramie. I'm a police officer here in town. I've been with the town for 25 years. On the last five years I've taken on the role of neighborhood liaison officer. So what that kind of encompasses is working with members of the town, the university and then the community to improve relationships. It's mostly centered around students and their impact on our community, both positive and negative. So that's kind of my role in a nutshell. I do work a lot with John and others in town. Great. Thank you. I do see that a couple of new people just joined the room and I want to remind you that we encourage you to ask your questions live. You can do so by raising your hand and zoom or pressing star nine from the phone, or if you'd prefer you can use the Q&A button at the bottom of the screen and I will read your question aloud. So, first question I have here is, how does the town work with the university, when there are house parties normally or any other large gatherings. How was that done in the past and how is that going to look differently. So I can start just based upon a police response, we'll take it as the simplest form. So, you know, we, we expect us in the years past to respond to quality of life complaints and we'll talk about the noise complaint specifically. So, you know, we respond, we identify whoever resides there, depending upon the outcome, it is shared both with John, as well as property managers and landlords and then ultimately with the university. So we meet weekly with a team from both universities in the town every Monday to kind of discuss recap the previous week's activities and then the events of concern to us in the incoming week. So it's a real fluid system. I mean the meeting is a formality, but the stuff kind of occurs really every day. We have a real strong relationship with people at the university. And again, it's a system that works well for us. It's really kind of improved year to year. So this year, I don't think it's obviously there's more concern, you know, everybody's senses are heightened. So, but again, I think the communication is in place. We're just kind of, you know, buttoning up some last minute items, but I think we'll be in a good position to to deal with anything that comes up. John, do you have anything to add to that. I want to thank Bill for for pointing out the team, you know, it's it's inspections here in town. It's the fire department. It's the police department. And it's the University of Massachusetts. We meet with them weekly, every two weeks I run a meeting that's attended by all of those inspectors health inspectors police department. And that's where we talk about issues in the town. So, we try to, you know, take things right as they come and I could say that, you know, in the last year. I've worked on 283 violations and complaints at 93 properties in town. And I don't do that alone. I do that with the help of all those other departments. Um, give an example of how you address it, like maybe something's happened in the last couple weeks about, you talked about individual properties, right. That's right. So I got a complaint about a property on North Pleasant Street, a two family house. I got a two and a half hour video inspection of the place because I didn't want to go inside property manager ran the camera and I compiled six pages of handwritten notes during that inspection. I put that in the form of a order to correct, which was sent to the owner of the home. The house was condemned. Since, since that happened months ago, the owner has hired a contractor, they're gutting the house. It'll be a total rehab. That's pretty successful case. I love that example, John, especially now with technology, how you guys are using technology to do things that you used to have to be very present and oftentimes in people's homes. And are there other ways that you guys are using technology now to do the work that you used to do in person. It's a lot of zoom meetings, you know, we all of it happens virtually. And sometimes here in town hall, the, you know, there's two or three people on the call where we're sitting a little ways away from each other, but we're interacting on a screen. I've been heard that you bought a zoom technology piece for for Bill to help help him get through some of the meetings. So it's a true truly a team effort. Yes, at the beginning of the stay home order. I knew that these zoom meetings were going to be important so I, you know, signed up and bought my own account and learned how to do it. I appreciate that in it. I have to say so thank you for your efforts there. So I want to acknowledge a couple comments and a question that came into the room just now. One of them was to an update to make to the COVID-19 site from Abigail which thank you for that I just did that as we were talking so you'll see that changed. One comment here. Is it possible the town, if possible the town should pass an emergency bylaw restricting gatherings of more than X number of individuals X could be determined using science or health guidelines. That might be more of a Julie board of health question but I don't know if anyone here has any comment on that. Bill, I think it'd be interesting to hear for you in terms of how does the what's the police response when there is a gathering and do you have a number that you say that's too many or when the officers are called to respond to a house party of some sort. So I can speak to the question that was fielded as well as your assert. So in terms of response to parties, you know, it's really at the, just prior to COVID it's really be it was at the discretion of the officers and I think it remains as such. I think we're going to see a lot more calls where you know if there's ten or more gathered we're getting a call about that. So there's this little bit of a complicated intersection between what is public safety and what is public health. So that's why you know the question was asked around is there going to be an emergency ordinance past and that's one of the questions I've been asking because as a police department I feel like we're in. a good prepared place to act upon public safety type stuff for quality of life complaints but the piece that we feel like maybe missing is what what capacity can john act right now. There's no direction in terms of. The act monetarily is he just going to do some type of education and outreach so if we can get that, you know clarification that piece, I think that is going to help us in my understanding is there is some discussion in the works around that so that's good to hear. And then a piece about this. We just this week have done have done three zoom meetings with with properties that had complaints. So there was a police response to each of those properties. We followed up by setting up a zoom meeting with the occupants of the properties and talking about the event and what what our expectations are for them going forward. And I do have another comment that just came in in response to what you guys have said. They say calls are fine but there must be a new ordinance with graded warning fines and subsequently more expensive fines so that that's just a comment to follow up on that. Another question here. I am told the university does not know where it's off campus students live during the pandemic would it be helpful for the town to have that information. Much of that population is in rentals. The share. Go ahead. If you, if you look at the community agreement, there's some language in there specifically says they have to tell them where they're living off campus switches. I think it's terrific to hear that news because it's something we've on push for, and I think it's going to help with, you know, the, I think the intention behind it was around contact tracing. But I hope once we move beyond this that I just become standard practice for them so we can better identify where their students are living in our community. Okay, you know as far as rentals in the town goes we have a pretty solid inventory of which homes are rentals but we don't necessarily have the information of whether their students are not based on the town side. So while we can determine which properties are rental units we don't know who's necessarily living inside them right now. Okay, so I want to remind the new folks who have joined us please put your questions into q amp a raise your hand and zoom or star nine from phone. Another question here. What are your main concerns with COVID-19 with the students coming back in the fall. I can jump in. I have the same concerns that I think most people in town have I'm nervous about gathering, you know, in an unsafe way we've already seen that happening on weekends they come back and they have parties at their houses and you know there's 30 or 40 people there. And it looks dangerous. And as a, you know, just as a 65 year old man I, I'm afraid to be exposed to that. Bill do you have any, any specific concerns. My concerns are similar to john's as a, as a parent and a husband and a police officer, you know, and as the town I think we've worked really hard to be in the place we're at now in terms of public health and we don't want students coming here and eroding that in terms of progress. I have two teenagers so it is a battle at times in terms of perception versus reality so you know that's, it's going to be a challenge, but as john and I participated many of these zoom meetings they know that the stakes are high and we've heard from students that they understand the severity of this and they want to cooperate so it's one thing to say it's another thing to do it so we'll see. I'll jump in for a minute and say that we've had meetings with fraternity and sorority management ongoing since March about how to reopen and we've also gone the next layer down we've met with presidents of fraternities and sororities to try to get that message rippled out. And that's been one of the great things for the town is that we have, you know, inspections. Police fire, everybody in conjunction with the University of campus housing folks and the community relations people all working together to get the word out and to let it be known that there is a unified approach to ensuring safety. It's really about safety for students but also the general public, but you know, it's both and I think that there's been a lot of progress made in the years since, you know, the big event that you guys have made and it's really refreshing to hear you on the front lines and what kind of conversations you're hearing and then you're having and then the kinds of response you're hearing back so it's interesting that they understand the gravity but you're still wary of their if actions going to follow from those statements right. We have another question in the room. We all know that very often more than four unrelated individuals are living in a single house or apartment, which is technically not allowed to have any more than four in the town of Air Mars due to zoning regulations. So the question is the town willing to work harder to enforce this bylaw. And what would that look like. Yes, it is a worry for me as well because that's one of the bylaws that I enforce and I'm nervous this year that so many students are coming back to town with no university housing. I think that they'll be, you know, bunking with their buddies and the way we respond to that is through complaints. You know neighbors call and say look at I I see six or eight cars parked at this house. Can you check it out and you know we do an investigation and then we go after the property owner to rectify and comply. Can you talk a little bit about the complaint process how people in the past have been able to lodge complaints about properties that they have concerns for both something a neighbor notices going on or a tenant themselves trying to get a problem resolved. Yes, so I get complaints by telephone. I get them by email. The town has an electronic complaint form on on the rental page. I get those, you know, every day those come in. We the way we follow up is we do a little investigation. We sometimes do an inspection if it's needed. And then in order to correct goes out. And I know you're a numbers guy. Do you, you know, have a sense of in the past what has been from year to year the the largest amount of complaints that you've gotten or enforcements that you've written the something stand out to you. You know, it runs. It runs about probably what well things that I take action and on, you know, runs about 450 to 500 complaints a year. Okay. All right, so I've got another question here. This person's remembering remembering issues a few years ago with what people are calling Blarney blowout. And they're saying that they haven't heard anything about that since then. Is it still a problem. Are people just not having big big parties like that anymore or bill bill might be best able to speak to to what that's all about. That's frozen. Bill, are you there. You did for sure. Yeah, I'm back. Sorry about that. We had some radio chatter. So in terms. In terms of the, the event that happened many years ago. Yes. It is still somewhere prepared for in March. March does roll around or the end of the semester. There's not many people who haven't reached out to and had these discussions with though. So, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. March does roll around or the end of the semester. There's not many people who haven't reached out to and have these discussions with though. Again, something as a. As a department. We are prepared for it, but. It's been a non event. Okay. Thank you. You were breaking up a little bit there. I just. They're back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess mostly for John, but. How is the quality of rental housing improved? Over the last couple of years. Now that there's a registration program for rentals and dedicated staff to ensuring the health and safety of our neighborhoods. Well, I think it's, it's obvious if you drive around town. When I started doing this job eight years ago, you know, when I was a little kid. I was a little kid. And it just stayed there. They had cars parked all over their front lawns. The town was a wreck. And, and just going after these things one at a time, the word gets out. You know, people know now. And most people know the rules and. And we'll call me and complain. One of the challenges for our town is that we get an influx of traffic. And I think, you know, I've only been here. I haven't been here as long as John has, but there has been a. Clear improvement in the rental properties and how they've been maintained, at least from the, you can see from the streets. And I think that's 100% due to the enforcement actions of the. Inspection services department. And I was wondering, John, you don't seem to sleep if you get 450 or 500 complaints a year. You know, that's, that's just things that I've taken action on. So I, you know, I might go to one house and well, like I said about the North, North pleasant street property, I had, you know, six pages of violations. That's at one house. So that, that bumps that number up, you know, it's, it's only 93 properties that I've been to, but there's a lot of things wrong there when, when you get inside, you know, there's a lot of, you know, a lot of landlords attitude is that, well, I'm just going to rent it to students. So there's no point in fixing it up. And what we've found is, yes, if you rent it to them that way, they don't take care of it. If you fix it up and it's nice. They feel that, um, and they don't tear it up the same way. Uh, but it's a, it's tough to explain to landlords that you got to put out that kind of cash. Um, and I think that's, uh, I think what we're looking at here is just, um, I think what we're looking at is that there's a lot of things that we hear from a lot of parents who dropped their students off in the fall saying. This is not a very good place that we just rented. I didn't even know what they rented. Right? Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh. I just wrote a check for $4,000. I can't believe this place. All right. I got a bunch of questions that just came in from, um, attendees in the room. are later on in the governor's phased approach, phase three approach of the new normal. And I think we will be very careful about opening bars. That's a, you know, a proven place where violence and infection spread. So we will be very slow on reopening bars in this town. We have another question here going back to the rental property bylaw. Are there any ways to change the rental property bylaw to be able to punish property owners who rent to more occupants than permitted? Or would they, or would the property owners just make quick property transfers to change the ownership to avoid sanctions? When we find those cases of overpopulation, we do enforce them. That's, that's part of what I'm talking about with complaints and violations that have been successfully abated. You know, I, it's obvious when you drive by some place and there's eight, it's the same eight cars there every day for two weeks that there's eight people living there. And that, that becomes an issue. Part of the bylaw says that I can do an interior inspection within 24 hours. So, you know, that happens. I order people to, to let me see the place. And I will add to, I mean, it's sometimes news to a property owner. If there's, happens to be more people living there. Sometimes it's not, it really, it really depends on from what I've seen. So I have a comment and a question here from John. Can you all speak to the years of work you've had done through the CCC and off campus student life, creating positive relationships between students and non-student residents in neighborhoods and changing the expectation and perception of UMass students? And then there's a second part of that question. Could you address specifically how those open lines of communication and relationship building actually are more effective in an emergency like COVID rather than fear, hate and blaming? Really good question. I can repeat that if you guys would like. So I think the first part is talking a little bit about CCC maybe saying what that is and the off campus student life programs that have been happening over the last few years. Bill, you want to jump in? Sure. I can, it was a little bit broken, but I can explain to you the CCC is the campus community coalition to reduce high-risk drinking. So it was started by Sally Lenowski who is one of the deans at UMass. She's the dean of off campus student affairs and she has a background in public health. So started with her and is really kind of evolved into people from city, people from the community, both in public health, public safety. We have business owners. The DA has a seated, so it's really kind of a discussion around you know behaviors that adversely impact communities in and around alcohol. So to give you an example, so I'm a person of a community that's trying prevention through environmental design. So it's it's focused around how we can change environments to change behaviors. So if you remember many years ago we would have pretty much every weekend we would have large gatherings in North Amherst, both on Hobart Lane and at the townhouse departments. And large meaning thousands of students would gather without warning. So we were unprepared, ill-equipped, and you know it just got to be a reoccurring theme. So I think we lost you, Bill. I'll just jump in here. What Bill has done on this with everybody else in the town has actually been recognized through the international town gown association as a model practice that other university and college towns are paying attention to. And the idea is that you design things, you put up fences to inhibit large gatherings and it doesn't it's and so it creates a nicer atmosphere. So small gatherings are okay but these gigantic gatherings that are this sort of where it gets a little more dangerous for everyone that we've tried to quell a little bit. Okay so we lost Bill. I think he might be having some connection issues but if he pops back in we'll welcome him. I've got a question here from Steve in the room. Bill and John gave examples of problems being identified through complaints. If the town makes COVID related rules, for example numbers of people together with mask wearing, would it also be complaint driven? Whether complaint driven or not would enforcement be by police action or by the inspectors? You're muted, John. Sorry about that. Great question. It's a question we have too. We're looking for a little direction from the board of health in town about who enforces this. That said I'm not sure I think education is the key to this. I'm not sure that this is something we can arrest our way out of we need a behavioral change and we need the students that I've talked to seem willing to take leadership roles in this. You know and that's important. They have to be in charge. That's a really good point because on Monday the board of health is meeting to talk about a mask requirement for certain areas of town primarily the downtown or densely populated areas which makes perfect sense and usually the health the board of health identifies its health agents and a lot of times it's the inspectors but also it can be the police department but a little bit later today we are going to be talking about other ways to focus on education which is what John's referencing and what the university has found to be way more successful than punitive measures in terms of folks because if people say hey you have to wear a mask people are usually most people by far are more are willing to do that I've seen it in other communities that I've been to where it's the standard and you look odd not having a mask on so and we want to talk about engaging with the university students and other people non-police officers to engage folks to say here's the rules down here so I ask you to comply with it oh you need a mask here's a mask that's a mask to give you don't have to have one so we want to do it as a friendly you know please come downtown enjoy and and you can if you come downtown you can feel safe because everybody will be abiding by the same rules yeah and I just want to echo what John said too you know involving students or young people or the who are people are concerned about coming back into town involving them in the process is huge because good policy isn't created in a vacuum and you could design something that you think makes sense and then it just doesn't take into account that audience so I think that's really important that you have you've taken that perspective John you see Bill in the audience let's get him back in here okay I do see that um Steve has his hand raised so Steve I'm gonna allow you to come in and ask your question just introduce yourself um and unmute you are now in the room okay did I I'm unmuted can you hear yet we can hear you okay okay so I'm Steve George I actually am on the board of health but I'm really not speaking for the board I'm just trying to get information and so I of course I agree that education is the way but if the town puts through an ordinance a law a rule it seems like that will be really toothless if it doesn't have the real possibility of enforcement we could just say let's please please please wear a mask please please please don't gather uh and I agree with that we should do that as much as possible but if there is to be a rule or law it seems to me that we should be very clear about what could happen maybe it would have to be a flagrant violation obviously or something like that but we should be clear about what is going to happen if people don't do it so yeah I agree through 100 percent Steve I mean I think in almost all the board of health regulations there is a fine system that's in place and sometimes it's a graduated fine uh under the state law you can go to find up to 300 dollars uh so that will be that that will be your your decision on Monday yeah okay thanks very much I really appreciate it yeah you know the tickets the tickets that I write are 100 bucks a day um do people pay it do people absolutely okay all right yes we collect quite a bit of money that way I know that there was a case in Nantucket where on the 4th of July there was a big party at a rental house you know 30 40 people the the health agent went to break it up and they laughed at him and he wrote a thousand dollar ticket so I don't think you have to write too many thousand dollar tickets in town for for the word to get out I bet they stopped laughing after they got that bill um so normally we wrap up at 12 30 but I have another question and I feel like if people have more questions we can go for a few more minutes if everyone's okay with that so we have a comment here um from Abigail it's a it's super spreader events like large parties that will seed large number of infections not wearing a mask while walking on a sidewalk downtown um is a lower risk any any comments about how um you're anticipating handling large parties or just in general about that comment can you hear me Brianna we can hear you bill you're a little choppy still but all right my my family made me get this iPhone 11 I don't know I'm not convinced this is the right choice so in response you know our response is going to continue to be the same in and around large parties enforcement that is likely to change you know we have come by a law that's for unlawful noise in nuisance houses so I think you're probably you're likely going to see more broad use of that this year but I think our responses are going to be the same and we're also you know and again working in partnership with John and his team even if we're not responding if we make observations absent a response you know if we're going to be taking photographs and doing some type of documentation to give to his office too so they can conduct some follow-up okay great thank you for filling that in bill um so I do not see any more hands in the oh actually I take that back um there's one more question we we know how many residents have received COVID-19 diagnoses but we don't have that information for people who work here but live elsewhere how can the town monitor this um I don't know if Paul if you have anything to say so so the way that the maven which is the public health system works is that it um it it reports um information by town uh the university has its own sort of it's treated almost as its own little town but there is really terrific communication between our health director and their health people there too so they they share each other the information um if someone is um COVID positive then um in our town we will know about that if someone happens to work in town but live someplace else um typically we get notified through the contact tracing or the health director in that community will contact our community saying you should be aware of this situation but the fundamental organization tool is by place of residence okay so I am going to say that I don't see any new questions in the room or hands um I'm going to thank our guests John Thompson and Bill Laramie for joining us today and sharing their knowledge with us um before I officially wrap is there anything any of you want to any last words you want to leave people with before we close I think we have to have John and Bill back because it's been so popular it's a lot of questions for them this was fun thanks for having us now we thank you on the cooperate thank you we appreciate having you next time we're just going to have to get Bill a new phone um but that's okay we can do that um thank you everybody who's joined us and for all your great questions if there's something that you uh want to follow up on or get more details on please email us at info at Amherstma.gov or call the town manager's office at 413-259-3002 um we also have a cup of joe tomorrow morning at 8 a.m with bid director Gabrielle Gould and chamber Amherst area chamber director director Claudia Pasemani so please join us for that um tomorrow at 8 a.m thank you and have a good day thanks Rihanna take care of her today thank you