 All right, we're recording. Okay. Good evening. We are going to. Call the meeting to order and then move immediately into. The state of the town addresses. So let me start this by saying governor Bakers, March 12th order. Suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law. Allows us to hold this virtual town council meeting. I will call upon each counselor by name. And at that time they should unmute and say they are present and then mute again. This is also how we will conduct. Questions later on in the general meeting. When you raise your hand. I'm also going to call on a couple other special guests who are with us this evening. And part of the state of the town to make sure that they can also hear and be heard. So given that we have a quorum of the council. I'm going to call the council meeting to order at. 633. Let me start with the role. Alyssa. Present. Pat DeAngelis. Present. Darcy DuMont. Present. Lynn Griezmann. Present. Mandy Joe Hanna key. Present. Dorothy Pam. Present. Evan Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Kathy Shane. Present. Steve Schreiber. Present. Andy Steinberg. Present. Sarah Schwartz. Present. And Shalini Palmil. Present. I'd also like to make sure that the following people can hear me and we can hear them. Paul Backelman. Present. Allison McDonald. Present. And Austin Serrat. And also point out that we're joined this evening by superintendent, Dr. Mike Morris, and also library director Sharon Sherry. This is an evening that begins with the state of the town, which is a prescription of the charter. And I'm going to begin and then after that, Paul Backelman will follow me. After that will be the chair of the school committee, Allison McDonald, and then we'll move on to library trustee president. Austin Serrat. Okay, we have the slides, please. So welcome. This is the second state of the town address. It continues to be an honor and a privilege to serve as president of the Amherstown council. And I'm going to start with the Amherstown council for our second year. I enjoy the challenge. Next slide, please. Our speakers tonight. As I mentioned before our Paul Backelman, Allison McDonald and Austin Serrat. Next slide, please. And let me just say that this is an address. As I mentioned before required by section 2.2 of the charter. Next slide, slide, please. The Amherstown council. The Amherstown council. It's a group of 13 people. They are outstanding in many ways. Very talented individual and independently minded. Our at-large counselors are Alissa Brewer, Mandy Johan ke and Andy Steinberg. Our district one counselors are Kathy Shane and Sarah Schwartz. Three is represented by Dorothy Pam and George Ryan. And district four is represented by Evan Ross and Steve Schreiber. Representing district five are Shalini Balmille and Darcy Dumont. Now more than ever, each brings an important set of values and perspectives much needed in this town. Each councilor strives to represent those who are not apparent in the body of the council. And while a virtual meeting limits how we are able to recognize people, I ask that you let them know of your appreciation in the same way that you let them know about issues that are important to you. Next slide please. Fulfilling the requirements of the charter, the council continues to fill the requirements of the charter and we continue to take notes about what we would like to change. Upon recommendation of the planning board, we adopted the master plan this year, thus fulfilling one of the charter requirements. We have held public forums on the budget and the master plan and other public forums required when we intend to spend money off cycle, such as the purchase of a new energy efficient ambulance that allows for less emissions during standing at the hospital and other places. Each district council has that councilor has held no fewer than two district meetings. And the at-large counselors are often present at the district meetings. There's no doubt that this year has presented a major challenge that has defined all of us, but with the leadership of our town manager, Paul Bachelman, our outstanding clerk of the town council, Athena O'Keefe and our very adept information technology staff, we rapidly moved the meeting virtually as of Monday, March 16, 2020. As of the end of December this year, we will have met 44 times this year in regular meetings, joint meetings and with the library and schools, or town meetings, committees of the whole public forums and hearings. 37 of those meetings have been virtual. We look forward to seeing you all in person again. And that does not include town council committee meetings. We recognize and we reorganized our four standing committees and continue as members of the joint capital planning committee, along with the schools and library. And individual counselors are liaisons to eight town committees and all are available to any committees. Well, next slide please. Well, the challenges of this year have limited in-person meetings. Counselors are regularly in contact with residents through email, phone, Facebook, news, newsletters and yes, text messages. While we have not been able to gather on the town steps to read proclamations since March of 2020, the council continues to pass proclamations, resolutions and attend numerous virtual meetings. One outstanding example is the resolution before the town council this evening, a resolution affirming the town of Amherst's commitment to end structural racism and achieve racial equity for black residents. To the extent possible, we continue to attend events and meetings of other organizations, virtually of course and on rare occasion, outside socially distance and with masks on. Next slide. Despite the special challenges of the year, the council has had some notable accomplishments. Next slide. They include passage of the percent for art bylaw, the wage and tip theft bylaw, the responsible employer, public construction contracts and agreements for tax relief bylaw and prohibiting the use of wild and exotic animals and traveling shows and circuses. In addition to that, we have made amendments to the open container bylaw, the single use of plastic bags and noise violations. Next slide, please. We've taken some specific actions to support local businesses and farmers. They include adoption of a temporary zoning amendment and changes to the public way policy, allowing more rapid approval and flexible use of outdoor space for retail and dining in the downtown and village centers. We approved a plan for the farmers market to use the town commons, thus providing a safe and welcoming environment for one of the town's brightest events every week on Saturdays and for farmers, one of the most profitable. And we've addressed other public way requests, helping local builders move their plans forward. Next slide, please. We didn't just do our budget once this year, we did it twice. We did a 112th budget and then an annual budget. And during the annual budget, we froze two police positions, which has forged the way to the appointment of the community safety working group by the town manager. Thus far, we have not dipped into our reserves to balance the budget. And while it includes limited capital dollars, we continue to improve our roads and sidewalks. Our audit as usual indicates sound financial management. Next slide. Right after the state of the town address last year, Amherst was accepted into the Mass School Business Authority program to build or renovate and repair one elementary school. We have accepted a gift that allows us to make significant renovations and in addition to the North Amherst Library. And we broke ground on the dog park, cut the ribbon on Groff Park and the plans to build a playground at Kendrick Park continue forward. In the area of affordable housing, we have continued to support the renovation and construction of affordable studio apartments at 132 North Hampton Road. But stay tuned. Next slide. We heard from many of you as we looked at polling places and that led us to ensure safe access with significant resident input. We developed and improved a polling location plan that provided for safe conduct of the presidential primary and general elections. And we proudly certify our results is accurate and without any evidence of frauds. Next slide, please. The future and our challenges. As we move forward, we are facing several significant challenges. These are reflected in the town managers performance goals and include addressing community safety, racial equity and social justice, identifying a path forward for our four major capital investments, adopting a climate action plan to help us reach our goals and supporting the economic recovery and vitality of Amherst. Our goals include also include continuing to pass responsible capital and operating budgets, review and revising zoning bylaws and the adoption of a comprehensive housing plan. Other pending bylaws that you'll see include water, sewer, surveillance technology and facial recognition. And finally continuing to make the counselor's job more manageable. Next slide, please. As we bring to a close the comments this evening, please allow me to focus on and thank the town manager and our outstanding town staff as well as others. During this challenging time, you were still protected by our first responders, police, fire, EMS and the Department of Public Works. The streets were plowed, you received water and sewer services, you were able to vote, pay your taxes, get a dog license or a building permit. In other words, our town staff kept the place moving forward despite the pandemic. In August, we evaluated the town manager's performance with input from residents, committees, staff and all counselors. Paul Bachmann was hired in 2016 and he is now in his second contract with the town. He instills confidence in local government and this has never been more demonstrated as he addressed the impact of COVID-19. Never missing a beat, he did not hesitate to make the moves necessary to keep the town operational yet safe. When Push came to shove, challenged the university about their plans for returning students leading to significant positive responses from UMass and weekly meetings between the town and the university. Continuing to serve as clerk of the council is Athena O'Keefe. She is simply outstanding, need to find something she can. Without hesitation, she helps all of us stay on track, never missing a beat. And we also wanna recognize the many town committees and residents that serve on them and the staff who also work with those committees. We have learned lessons from this period of virtual meetings that we need to examine carefully and along with those committees incorporate them into our future meetings once we return in person. The members of our town committees apply to be on our committees. They get interviewed, they share their expertise in areas such as personnel, water supply and contaminants, energy and climate action, housing, et cetera. On behalf of the town council and the town of Amherst, we thank you for your past and ongoing service, your willingness to provide us with sound advice and to put up with our sometimes far-ranging questions. We really wanna particularly acknowledge the planning board, the board of health and the board of licensed commissioners. This year, the planning board and the board of health helped move special legislation or passing special regulations to help our businesses and protect our residents. And once again, we recognize the board of licensed commissioners for assisting businesses during these challenging times. To other serious notes of appreciation, go to Amherst Media for working with us to bring meetings into residents' home with the added features such as displaying the names of those who are in the audience. And to our residents, we have helped Amherst through these challenging times. Thank you and please continue to follow all guidance regarding gatherings, masks, social distancing and public health. As I close on the next slide, a few final observations. Nowhere in any of our election materials, speeches or panels did we ever state or were we ever asked how we would respond as an elected official to a pandemic, but we did and Amherst continues to move forward. The charter continues to be an outstanding document providing guidance to even the most obscure issues. We value the many ways in which we hear from our residents, ask that you continue to tell us when something is wrong and when we get it right. Being president of the council means balancing one's democratic ideals and the need for leadership. The council keeps me in line, but most important to remember is we are all elected and each person has one vote. We stand as equals. Leadership means hearing and seeking solutions. Please let your counselors know that you appreciate them and recognize the dedication they each bring to this important role in our community. We're going to move on to town manager Paul Bachman who joined us in 2016. And rather than going to a lengthy introduction, I'm going to have Paul go right ahead. Thank you, Lynn. So this is a different sort of state of the town speech than we did even, not that we have a long tradition, but we have one year of tradition. But there's no pomp, there's no circumstance. It's just another Zoom meeting with people in little boxes talking to people who are at home on their computers, most likely scanning the internet or reviewing email. I see you. So I'm sure it'll be a cliche pretty soon to say that 2020 was a year like no other. And while I continue to see challenges, especially during the next three to four months, I believe there are reasons for optimism. So next slide. So at first let's go back. A year ago, I reported on the accomplishments of 2019 and the advent of the Newtown Council. We were discussing bold new initiatives like destination Amherst, which would bring renewed attention to the tired centerpiece of our downtown, the North Common, the construction of a privately funded performing art show and possibly a new garage and a new play structure and other improvements in Kendrick Park. Each of these projects were to be funded by a combination of state grants, private guests and investments, business support, Community Preservation Act funds and town funds. There were other initiatives in the pipeline, affordable housing on North Hampton Road, residential developments on Southeast Street, University Drive Extension and Spring Street. The university was preparing to make significant new investments in its residential housing stock. We had just received word, as Lynn mentioned, that the Massachusetts School of Building Authority had agreed to fund a new elementary school in Amherst. Things were moving forward and long overdue needs were being addressed. Then COVID hit. Many of these projects and initiatives were put on hold. Priorities were reordered, town staff were redeployed and all of our focus was on responding to this once in a century emergency. But, and this may sound strange to you, I've never seen town staff more adaptable or perform better than in the past nine months during this pandemic crisis. It was early March. I had called the department head's meeting. We had covered our normal updates, but the focus of the meeting was this unknown virus and the limited knowledge we had of it at that time. I said to those in the room that this was likely the last time we would all be together in person for a very long time. I actually didn't really mean it. I mostly said it for dramatic effect to drive the seriousness of the situation at home, but unfortunately it turned out to be true. By then our COVID response or what I call core team was meeting regularly. At first it was twice a week, but by mid-March we were meeting every morning, seven days a week. There was so much information to process resources to Marshall, staff to manage and so many decisions to make. We followed basic emergency management principles of incident command and force protection, i.e. making sure our command structure was clear and employees were safe and healthy so they could deliver the services the public needed. And we established operating principles, such as relying on the most recent science to inform our decision-making. And lastly, we were explicit to honor the value of forgiveness. We were all making decisions quickly and with incomplete information, we had to be resilient and that required forgiveness. Although the scheduled decision-making uncertainty and sheer volume of work was grueling, there was great comfort, camaraderie and mutual support among the team. Next slide. I want to recognize the core team by name because their work and commitment to the town was simply outstanding. Fire Chief and Emergency Management Director Tim Nelson, Police Chief Scott Livingstone, Public Works Superintendent Gilford Moreing, Interim Finance Director and Comptroller Sonja Aldridge, Assistant Town Manager David Zomak. And providing leadership and subject area expertise was Health Director Julie Fetterman. Julie has since retired and didn't really get to have in a retirement party, but her knowledge and ability to provide a framework for decision-making were crucial at the stage of the pandemic. I relied on her judgment, good cheer, and let's get this solved mentality, even if it was sometimes delivered with some salty language. Working together with Superintendent Schools, Mike Morris and Library Director Sharon Sherry, I want you all to know that the town was well-served by these dedicated professionals. Next slide. One of the most vexing challenges was that of the most vulnerable members of our community, those without housing, who we quickly realized had no options if they had to quarantine at home because they had no home. We worked many hours developing options to find suitable housing. None worked out until Hampshire College stepped forward. When so many others could see only reasons not to act, Hampshire's President Ed Wingenback said, these are members of our community, they're in need, of course we'll help, let's get started. You remember actions like this in a time of crisis. Next slide. In responding to the pandemic, the sheer number of initiatives undertaken by the town is impressive. Everything from emergency rental assistance for those who could not pay their rent to a range of actions designed to support local businesses. Many of these ideas came from the tireless creativity of the leaders of the chamber and the bid. We worked with the university and pushed back when we felt it necessary to ensure that bringing students back to the town would be done safely, both for the students and for the general population. I'm pleased to note that our ongoing relationship is steady and durable. Next slide. Every town department stepped up during the crisis, every single one. The communications manager organized and has hosted 33 community chats. These are the weekly calling shows where callers can ask me or any of our guests, Superintendent Morris was on last week, any questions that they want. And we continue the monthly cup of Joe, albeit virtually at this point. And we have another one coming up on Friday at eight o'clock. Next slide. In addition to these initiatives, some of them are listed here. Staff continued the work we were hired to do. A new playground across park open, ground was broken on a new dog park. We continued to move forward with the purchase of the Hickory Ridge Golf Course. An anonymous donor has promised to fund it in addition to the North Amherst Library. Next slide. Town staff quickly implemented policies designed to sustain our residents and business community. The planning department shepherded the affordable housing on North Hampton Road through the comprehensive permitting process and reviewed and approved several other projects. Next slide. The town clerk's office put on two major elections under new rules, utilizing social distancing protocols and dealing with a tortured national election process. And the acting town clerk secured a foundation grant to ensure our election workers were safe. The IT staff has set up dozens of employees so they can work remotely if needed. LSSE, now Amherst Recreation, totally transformed their operations, taking on new tasks and doing jobs normally done by summer help. Next slide. The town was incredible at securing grants. You're not gonna read them all here because there's so many. With the largest being the most, the recently announced 1.5 million mass works grant to improve Pomeroy Village and its intersection. We've raised millions of dollars through aggressive fund raising through grants. Next slide. The finance department prepared and as Lynn said, the town council reviewed and passed two budgets for the FY21 fiscal year, a one 12th budget, then a full year budget. Next slide. As we close the books on FY20, despite the challenges of COVID-19, we were able to finish the year with a positive balance as staff are able to offset unforeseen expenses with spending controls, federal support and careful management. Even though revenues are down, our finances are solid as we have made the hard choices to manage the taxpayers funds wisely. Next slide. We've faced many challenges this year and in the years ahead. Fortunately, we are well situated to withstand these difficulties and at this point to make progress on the many needs that we all recognize we must address. The uncertainty creates a difficult environment for all of our budgets. Next slide. Our entire operation is predicated on a strong financial foundation and we are rock solid, but we must be vigilant to maintain this solid footing. We face many challenges moving forward. We have taken on the job of improving community safety to ensure that we live in a community that is safe for black and brown people. We stay committed to making the town a leader in sustainability by taking steps to move forward on climate action initiatives. Next slide. This year has been energizing and exhausting. Moments of frustration and disappointment have been offset time and again with flashes of selflessness and genuine acts of kindness. In spite of all this or more accurately because of all this, I am pleased to report that the state of the town is strong. I appreciate the opportunity to serve you and the people of Amherst. I'm privileged to work with an incredible staff. I love living and working and being part of the special community. And I appreciate the progressive intelligent governance provided by the town council and most directly the leadership and guidance provided by town council president Lynn Griezmer. I thank you for the opportunity to serve. Thank you, Paul. We're going to move on to Allison McDonald. Allison moved to Amherst 18 years ago, choosing Amherst for the strong reputation of its public schools. She is a communications and marketing professional and since 2015 has worked with the Hadley based national nonprofit, Venturewell. Over the years she has volunteered with the parent PGO at Fort River and helped out with her son's youth sports events. After serving on the district's enrollment working group in 1917, I mean in 2017, I'm sorry Allison, you're not that old. Allison was elected to the school committee in 2018. She is now serving as chair for both the Amherst and the regional school committees. Allison, it's your turn. Thank you. You could go to the next slide please. Amherst public schools host a diverse and engaged student body that leads in our communities in many ways, including through political and civic advocacy, gardening programs, community enrichment, performing arts, academics and cultural events. This school year has placed many new that demands on all of us, including learning new ways of teaching and learning. We are proud of our students, educators, staff and volunteers for their efforts, their many efforts in the face of these challenges. Next slide please. Amherst has three public schools that serve nearly a thousand students in grades K through six and an additional 32 students in pre-K. Our three schools, Wildwood Fort River and Crocker Farm are roughly similar in size and demographics. Our student population is highly diverse and more than half are black, indigenous or other people of color. Half of our students are high needs as defined by the State Department of Elementary and Secondary Education or DESI. One in three are economically disadvantaged and more than one in five have disabilities. Our elementary school budget for the current year is $23.9 million. Next slide please. We enjoy a strong statewide reputation for all of our public schools, a legacy that our community values and prioritizes. A few highlights in our elementary schools include the district consistently meets state progress and accountability goals. The persistent gaps remain among our high needs students and other groups. We provide art, music and technology education through weekly specials classes as well as through integration into grade level unit studies. And we enjoy low average class sizes to promote learning and a student teacher ratio of approximately nine to one. Next slide. Amherst is one of four member towns in a regional school district with two secondary schools. The Amherst Regional Middle School serving grades seven and eight and the Amherst Regional High School serving grades nine through 12. The schools serve a total of 1,283 students from the four towns, Amherst, Pelham, Leverett and Schuetsbury. Our student population in the regional schools is also highly diverse and nearly half are BIPOC. Nearly half of the students are high needs as defined by DESI. With nearly one in three being economically disadvantaged and more than one in five having disabilities. Our secondary schools budget for the current fiscal year is $32.1 million. Next slide. Like our elementary schools our regional schools enjoy an excellent reputation thanks to our dedicated and high quality educators, staff and administrators. Our schools provide strong community and school programs that support student wellbeing and social emotional health including our family center, the bright program and restorative practices. We prioritize smaller class sizes that promote learning. Our schools provide high quality in district specialized programs for intensive special needs students and we offer a wide array of electives, clubs and sports which together which define the rich character of our regional schools. Next slide. Looking a little deeper at our budgets our current year budget of $23.9 million included a total net reductions of over $700,000 versus what was needed to provide the same level of services a year ago. Next slide. Looking at next fiscal year the draft budget proposed in November is a reduction from this year and is level funded versus 2019-20. This would be a $1.4 million less than what is needed to provide services level to our 2019-2020 school year and would mean permanent cuts to those level services. Next slide. Taking a look at the regional schools budget the current year budget of $32.1 million includes a total net reduction versus a level services budget of over $800,000. The town of Amherst funds $16.4 million of that budget. Level funding in 21-22 would be nearly $1.7 million in what is needed to provide services at the same level as 2019-2020 and would mean dramatic and permanent cuts that would fundamentally change our regional schools. Next slide. Student enrollment in our elementary schools has been declining in recent years and declines this year during the pandemic were steeper than prior trends. The district recently surveyed families who have left the schools and the presentation of results are available on the school committee webpage. Next slide. The proportion of our students in elementary schools who are high needs grew this year and is comparable to the overall trends in the state. Next slide. Our elementary student population is more diverse than the state average. Next slide. Similar to the trend in our elementary schools, regional schools student enrollment declines were steeper in the current year and the results from that survey are also in the same presentation on the website. Next slide. Regional schools student population is roughly comparable to the state averages with regard to needs. Next slide. And our regional student population is comparable to the state averages with regard to diversity. Next slide. Both districts and our communities have prioritized increasing the diversity within our staff with support from our participation in the Minority Student Achievement Network, or MSAN, which is a national coalition of multiracial school districts that have come together to understand and eliminate opportunity and achievement gaps that persist in their schools. As well as teacher diversification grants from the state, the district has realized a 47% increase in BIPOC staff since 2015. Those staff now represent 28% of our total staff up from 19% in 2015. Next slide. Looking forward, here are some of the key initiatives and challenges we are focusing on this year. With pandemic learning plan, we developed a robust plan that prioritized in-person learning. Yet it is unclear when students will return to the buildings. Going into next year, we will need to focus additional support to address the learning loss and academic deficits that are exacerbated by this extended period of distance learning. As mentioned earlier by others, we were accepted last year into the MSBA program to support a new elementary school building to replace Fort River and Wildwood. And as the pandemic restrictions are lifted and we return to full in-person learning, we will face significant space challenges at those two schools, Fort River and Wildwood, due to COVID alterations that effectively eliminated half the learning and working rooms in those schools, including the rooms where specials are taught. Third, we are facing significant budget pressure this year following the cuts made with up-to-med level funding and further pressure in the coming school year due to the increased needs and the further cuts needed to meet the level of funding going into next year. On a brighter note, we built off of a highly successful first year of the Kaminantes dual language program at Fort River and expanded this year to 36 kindergarten and 38 first grade students. Next slide, please. Additional goals we're working on this year include social and emotional wellbeing of our students and staff, defining post-pandemic education and continuing to work to increase teacher and staff diversity, work that will be supported by another state teacher diversification grant of $110,000 that was recently awarded to the district. Next slide. And finally, we expect to complete and report on two studies in the coming year, one on the viability and implications of moving sixth grade to the middle school and one on expanding access to early childhood education in Amherst. Last slide. We thank you for your support and we invite you all to share your questions with me and my colleagues on the school committee or with superintendent, Dr. Morris and our email addresses are on the slide. Thank you very much. Thank you, Allison. It's informative. Austin Sret will now be providing remarks on behalf of the Jones Library Trustees. He's a professor and administrator at Amherst College where he has been for 46 years. He has served in a variety of other capacities including the zoning board of appeals as well as the board of the common school and a volunteer at Amherst neighbors. I'm going to stop with that, Austin and let you go ahead, please. Thank you, Lynn. Thanks for the opportunity to address the council and my colleagues and the citizens of Amherst. I present this report on behalf of the Jones Library at the end of what clearly has been a very challenging year. To say that 2020 has been marked by uncertainty, fear, loneliness and loss is to name just the obvious psychological and sociological and personal facts of this pandemic year. A perhaps less obvious fact is how important library services has been during the pandemic. Following town guidelines are buildings closed. Yet town libraries remained open via online access. Library services and programs have been lifelines for the old and the young, the well-off and the disadvantaged, longtime residents and those who are new to the community are services of connected town residents to each other to library staff and to the vital resources that the library provides. If 2020 is indeed rightly characterized by uncertainty, fear, loneliness and loss, other words, resiliency, creativity, invention, devotion, indeed, dare I say courage, are the appropriate ways to name the work done by our library director and her wonderful staff. Never has Sharon Sherry's abolience, optimism and can-do spirit been more in evidence and more necessary. Without her, the library's considerable achievements this year would have been impossible. So as Sharon herself would say, a huge shout out to Sharon and her staff. And thanks also to my fellow trustees, Bob Pam, Alex Lefebvre, Lee Edwards, Tammy Ely and Chris Hoffman. They have provided a steady hand as the library has had to navigate the challenges of 2020 and they've kept their eyes on the future, making sure that planning for the much needed and long overdue renovation and expansion of the Jones would be brought to fruition thanks to each of them. Now let me say briefly a word about the day-to-day work of the libraries this year. During COVID closure, our overall circulation dropped by 14%, that in itself is not a surprise. Still our staff has received and responded to more than a thousand request for materials each week and has sent 500 items a week through into library loan to other libraries around the state. Our library staff has gone out of its way to call and reach out to patrons who they knew to be regular users of the library in order to apprise them of ways that they could continue to access library holdings. And if patrons could not come to the buildings during library hours, staff have accommodated and made deliveries to them. Not surprisingly, the number of items we delivered has doubled in comparison with last year. And our fabulous reference department has been similarly busy answering inquiries from residents. We've expanded our digital resources and moved several in-person services online, including library card application and renewal. We've also launched a print from home service for patrons who in the past were able to come into the library to print. And we've expanded our Wi-Fi hotspot lending program. Last year we had 10 hotspots to lend this year, 30. And COVID has certainly affected how the library expended its funds this year. Because patrons were required to stay home starting in March, the library focused much of its purchasing on e-content rather than physical items. And operations and maintenance expenses increased by 37% and 8% respectively due to the need for extra cleaning supplies and PPE once the building reopened. Utility costs, on the other hand, decreased by 28% due to the closure. Since March, the library staff has done a truly remarkable job moving programming online. They've created a series of interviews with the local authors. These interviews have been live streamed on Facebook and have introduced viewers to recently published titles in fiction, nonfiction, and children's literature, all from distinguished authors in our community. The Children's Nonfiction Book Discussion Group continues as does our very popular Sing with Your Little One. And our new Civics and Democracy series provides monthly programs to help people understand both the virtues and challenges associated with participation in democratic government. Our English as a second language has also successfully adapted to the COVID world. Conversation circles have continued, which was important because our ESL students were isolating linguistically as well as socially during this year. And our community can be particularly proud that two ESL students have gained citizenship this year. And every week, remarkably, library staff went to the Amherst Farmers Market, where people could use a laptop, sign up for library cards, or indeed borrow some craft kits. Since last spring, the library has been busy working on an anti-racism agenda, coordinating with town-wide efforts to ensure that we tear down all barriers to equal and dignified treatment of all Amherst residents. But in all of this work, we've had to cope with the serious inadequacies of the Jones building. Our Special Collections Department again sustained damage resulting from an HVAC system long in need of replacement. And COVID has further highlighted the building's shortcomings. Among other things, the rooms in the Jones are too small to have multiple people in them, and our HVAC system may not provide an acceptable air exchange rate. During this year, the trustees completed all needed steps to present the town council with what we regard as a compelling renovation and expansion plan, a plan that will help the library be adequate to the work it does for all residents, but especially for our most vulnerable citizens. This plan will move the Jones from being one of the least sustainable facilities in Amherst to making it a national model for sustainability. And let me be clear, no one will derive greater benefit from our plan to renovate and expand the library than the disadvantaged and dispossessed in our community. They rely on the library, its hospitality and its space. And what we've been able to provide them in the past has been barely adequate to their needs. And we can learn from the experience of almost every neighboring community which has renovated and expanded their library about the importance of those renovations and expansion to the disadvantaged and the dispossessed. The trustees decided to ask the town council to vote on our proposal by the end of April, realizing full well the fiscal challenges that Amherst now faces. We did so for multiple reasons, not the least of which was because we expect to be formally awarded a state grant in July of 2021. Unless it be forgotten or simply taken for granted, the library had to do an enormous amount of work to prepare for and submit and succeed in winning the state grant. Taking advantage of the state funding is a once in a decade opportunity. We've asked the town council to vote by the end of April because we are convinced that we have a sound and feasible plan for financing the project. We did so in addition, because the serious maintenance issues and structural problems which plague the Jones urgently need to be addressed. We've asked the council to vote on our plan because the alternative to a renovation and expansion stays very little money and is clearly inferior. As requested by the town council, we investigated the cost of repairing the existing building and found that it would cost between $14 and $16 million simply to repair the building and make it accessible as required by law. This is close to the amount that town would have to contribute to achieve a renovated, expanded, accessible and sustainable Jones library. We asked the town council to vote on our proposal by the end of April because delay risks both in escalation and cost and further deterioration in the building. We did so because children, teens, English language learners, immigrants, disadvantaged people, students of Amherst history, families, book lovers and all those who flock to the Jones deserve a facility that is as inspiring as their dreams. But most importantly, we did so because in these dark and dangerous times we do not wanna put the future on hold. A renovated and expanded Jones will, we believe, be a beacon of hope and a reminder that a great town deserves a great library. We look forward to working closely with the town council as it determines when and how to consider our plan and our request. But remember what I said about this year of uncertainty, fear, loneliness and loss. During this year, we were reminded yet again that Amherst libraries are among the town's most important facilities. Indeed, history teaches that libraries have always played a critical role in disaster recovery, whether in the depression or following Katrina or in communities devastated by hurricanes. Post COVID, residents of the town who've been cooped up and confined will no doubt eagerly return to the Jones, the Monson and the soon to be expanded North Amherst library appreciating all the more the chance to take advantage of the democratic spaces they provide. And as we all know, public libraries in fact, one of the last free spaces in the United States where vulnerable populations can seek out unemployment assistance, have internet and computer use and daytime shelter from the streets. In conclusion, 2020 has shown us again that Amherst libraries aren't only in the business of books, they're in the business of building, serving, sustaining and strengthening our community. Thanks so much. Thank you for your comments, Austin. I wanna just acknowledge that joining us tonight at least on the website through Zoom are several members of the school committee and the library trustees. I also wanna mention that in the packet that's available for the meeting tonight is both the annual report from the schools, the library and also the annual report from Carol Gray who is the Oliver Smith Elector and also Doug Slaughter who is chair of the board of licensed commissioners and also Michael Burkhart for the Amherst Housing Authority. And with that, we're going to now conclude our part of the tonight's meeting that is in fact the state of the town and move on to the regular meeting of the town council. Thank you for joining us for this part. Sean, would you go ahead please and put the announcements up? Yes. Thank 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 was, 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, is that what you're, 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, okay. 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 fine. 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, Demetria Shabazz, was this to say about a resolution on the agenda of the council that you might be noting on. All right. Dear Amherstown council, regrettably, I'm unable to attend this evening's meeting because like many people of color in Amherstown 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. This is a good step that I hope leads to two tangible steps to repair the inequities that shape our daily interactions and understanding of who we are as African descendants in Amherst and the Commonwealth. There is still much work to be done and I implore you 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 bunch of their names. Bob Milne, Brewer and D'Angeles bring forward is emblematic of a broken process that needs its own reparative effort. What we most need to resolve is to create a conciliative 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 better 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, no. 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 conciliative process in place with our community. I want to stress this 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 GOL 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 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 conciliative 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 a houselessness 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 so 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, 0.5% Native American, 13% Asian and Pacific. Islander 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. Demetria 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? Yeah, Bill appears to be unmuted. Okay, he appears to be unmuted, but Bill, can you hear us? Bill just disconnected. We'll come back to Bill. He comes back on. Next speaker is last name Shabazz. Please enter the room, state your name and where you live. Yes, it's a milk cart Shabazz and I live in district five. I just am responding to the resolution as I understand a speech act that acknowledges, apologizes for the harm of white supremacy. And I get it as a step that's positive to take. We had a, you all authored a resolution on June one that sort of continues in that tradition, but goes a bit deeper or a bit broader. There were portions of it that at 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 submitted a draft that takes those sections out. The only thing that I saw fit to add and I do encourage you all on the council as well as the entirety of our town's population to take a look at the proclamation of the General Assembly of the United Nations that declares this, 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 astounding. 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 is anti-racist 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 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 unmute. Janet, can you unmute? Sean, is there any way to help Janet unmute? I've hit the ask unmute button. So Janet should be getting a request on mute. Do you want to jump back to, Bill is back on, do we want to jump over to Bill and then come back to Janet? I'm sure, thank you. Bill Cason, let's try it again. Bill, can you hear us? He says it's not working for him. 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 have that slide up while Jennifer is assuming you want to go to Jennifer next. In the 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. Well, 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. I think a 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 wanna give input, take the time to do that. After all, you have multiple readings of a by-law 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. Chavaz, and I would like the town council to highly consider implementing the actions that were commented by Dr. Chavaz and just now by Jennifer Page. There has been an effort in our community over the years to engage members 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. There is 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 practices 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. Chavaz, Amilkar Chavaz 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. We just need to... So we do have one phone caller who joined. I hope you'd like me to turn their microphone on and we can see if that is Bill or Janet. Sure, go ahead. Is this the person who is... Okay. Please go ahead. Yes, can you hear me? Yes, Bill, thank you. Yes, 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 calling 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 Leverett Elementary. And Leverett, 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 getting, 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 spend money to send their kids to other schools. And I'm concerned and I think other parents are concerned that we're gonna 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'd 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 is thrown out or for the fall have flexibility baked into them so that we don't have to be stuck in the position that we're in 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. 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. So let's see if we can- They should be. I'm sorry, go ahead. They should be connected now. Okay. 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 math. And to provide more details about what the changes suggested would do. Some 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 of 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. The consent agenda, 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. The motion is as follows to move the following items and the printed motions there under and approve those items as a single unit. Six A, adoption annual human rights day proclamation. Six C, adoption of official citation in honor of Marilyn B. Patton. Eight B, in parentheses one, amendment to section four of the town council policy regarding the control and regulation of the public ways. Section eight B, two, approval of the permanent use of the public way for SOFA, solar information and communication signs project. Nine A, one, approval of town manager appointments to the following multi-member bodies, community development block grant, CBBG advisory committee. And approval of minutes 11, November 9th, 2020 special town council meeting minutes, financial indicators, November 9th, 2020 special town council meeting minutes, November 14th, 2020 special town council meeting minutes, November 16th, 2020 special town council meeting minutes, public foreign form on ambulance appropriations. November 16th, 2020 regular town council meeting minutes and November 19th, 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 8b to which is currently worded as a permanent approval of the sofa communications. Thank you. I'll, 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 8b to approval of the permanent use of public way for the self solar information and communication signs project. Is there a second. Ryan second. Okay, thank you. Is there any further discussion at this time. And I'm going to begin with. Pat D'Angelo's. Yes. Darcy DeMont. Yes. Riesma is an eye. Yes. Pam. Yes. Ross. Yes. Ryan. Yes. Shane. Yes. Shriver. Yes. Steinberg. Yes. Shorts. Yes. Balmille. Yes. And Brewer. Yes. Passes unanimously. 13 to 0 to 0 to 0. I'm 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. This was sponsored by town councillors. I'm going to move on to the next one. I'm going to move on to the next one. Michelle Nibal Mellon. Alyssa Brewer. And Pat D'Angelo's. On behalf of two other resident sponsors. Michelle Miller and Matthew Andrews. Who've joined us this evening. I'm going to ask these counselor sponsors. If one of them is speaking first. And if not, we'll just go right on to Michelle and Matthew. We should go on to Michelle and Matthew. first. I will then thank you. Thank you, counselors. I'm going to speak a little bit about the process and how this resolution came to be. Reparations for Amherst was formed on July 15, 2020, by myself, Matthew Andrews and Cren 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 a 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. I can just add that 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. The oil today, 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 acknowledgment. And as white residents of Amherst, we were motivated to participate in creating that acknowledgment and that apology. The work of moving forward from the apology, moving forward from the acknowledgment, 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 a long discussion and back and forth, the committee voted to declare this resolution clear, consistent and actionable. I voted 5 to 0. The vote was unanimous. Thank you, George. Are there councilor comments at this time? Shalini? 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 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 it has to come through different stakeholders from the Black community. I want to just thank also and acknowledge all of the different people and the residents who have been working on these issues for such a long time. And especially this year, we had people from DFUN413, we've had people from the Racial Equity Task 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 of proclamation of the General Assembly of United Nations. That's 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 went through my head were like why reparations of Black people are not focused on just income inequalities as a town. And what I've learned is that it is different, that income equalities that are related to white people are very different from what Black people go through. And there is 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, in which he said that Black college graduates still suffer high unemployment rates that white college graduates, then white college and Black job applicants would... OK, 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 highlighted that even if he did address income inequalities, 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 not be addressing other systemic issues in our 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 and 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 Hasan might be stopped on the streets at night for the discipline that the Black children go through in schools. And so they 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 for many white people too 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 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 experience of few people does show that there is a problem in our town and 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 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, 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, Shalini, for all of that. I'm imploring 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 21st or some future time because beyond the many upcoming cultural and family celebrations, we're all trying to figure out how to plan in 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 gonna 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. Two minutes, 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 a 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 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 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, et cetera, et cetera. But taking my lens downward into 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 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 enduring the lives of people of color have been in Amherst. So that's I think where I'm gonna stop. Thank you. I'm going to suggest before we move on to other councilor comments that one of the sponsors put 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 racism and achieve racial equity for black residents. Is, so who would like to put the motion forward? So moved. So moved. And is there? Shalini second. Shalini seconded, okay. Further town councilor 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 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 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 Shalini made that this is a case for reparations, not a plan is very important. And cause 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, hand up. Yeah, I have a couple of things. One is I wanna make sure that the emails 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. And so I didn't contact my constituents until the packet came out, which I was surprised because I didn't know it was happening and also I didn't have the actual document. So anyway, that's a problem. I totally support the content of the resolution but 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, 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 to amend? I, yes, yes, I can make that motion to add the additional language. There is 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. And we just point out 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 another further resolved paragraph that the Amherstown Council supports the proclamation of the General Assembly of the United Nations of the International Decade 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, Shawnee. Shawnee is seconding that. So then we're going to stay with the amendment and meantime, I'm going to send that language to Sean. Athena, you have it. Can you send it to Sean, please? Yes. Thank you. It was shared with the full council before the meeting. So the motion's been made in second to add the language that was just read by Mandy Johannike. Is there further discussion about the motion to amend? I see several hands up. And so I just want to make sure this is discussion of the motion to amend. Alyssa, is your hand 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. But 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 gonna 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. Thank you. 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 in 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 I expect most of us have not had opportunity to explore. We may be very enthusiastic about it that Dr. Shabazz is always very thoughtful and thorough but I think that for us to adopt that without having read it ourselves is a dereliction of our own duty and I'm uncomfortable with doing that. Evan? Yeah, 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 wanted 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 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. Fix that. And 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 to 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. Yeah, 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's encouraging people at a national level to link to other international cooperation and regions 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 suggestion I have with this conversation is 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 that'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 and amendment to the motion as to the resolution and we're going to start with Darcy Dumont. Yes. Rhysmer is a no. Anarchy? No. Pam? No. Ross? No. Ryan? No. Shane? No. Schreiber? No. Steinberg? No. Schwartz? No. Balmille? Yes. And Brewer? No. And DeAngeles? No. The amendment fails two in favor, 11 not in favor and none abstaining and none absent. We're back to the original motion. The original motion is to adopt the resolution affirming the town of Amherst's 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 thank 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 was 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 putting 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. Yeah, 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 they're finding it because I had one example I called into Pat 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 things, 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 hot link something that keeps them together and allows just, 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. Yes. Well, I too 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 GOL meetings as a member of the GOL committee that I wanted to just report to you is that the word, there's a word in the final resolution clause reparative and it is in the sentence that reads in part, this resolution as a first step in the reparative process. And 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 an overreach of the word reparation or reparative to do that, which is the point that we discussed in the GOL committee because in the dictionary that I looked at during the second of the two GOL 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 a wrong. And then 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 a wrong. And I think that's exactly where we are right now. 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 Johanicki. Yes. Dorothy Pam. I. Evan Ross. I. George Ryan. Yes. Kathy Shane. Yes. Steve Schreiber. I. Andy Steinberg. I. Sarah Schwartz. I. Shelley Balmille. I. Alyssa Brewer. I. Pat DeAngeles. I. And Darcy Dumont. Yes. The resolution passes unanimously 13 in favor. We are going to move on. Thank you. George Ryan, are you back? Yes. I'm here. 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 opportunities for that if we want that in the future. So we have rank choice voting commissioner, Chair Tanya Lees. And we also want to thank the other committee members, Jesse Kraft Finch, Vice Chair, John Brian, and Ellen Lindsay and Peggy Shannon and Sue Audette, the acting town clerk for their significant assistance, for her significant assistance with this committee. Also, I might mention while managing an election, major election. As I mentioned before, we asked the 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 and 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 who has prepared slides for us and have her introduce those and we'll move forward. So Tanya, here 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 in 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. Just as a quick note, I will use throughout the presentation, RCV 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, 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. For 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 that are 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 and 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 winning candidates to fill the seats. And so it tends to have 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 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 wanna 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 in 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 a ranked choice vote in enabled hardware and software. This includes tabulators for all of the precincts and have 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 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 ranked 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 ranked 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 I wanted to highlight was a question of preliminary elections. And the question of 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 in other towns that are using ranked choice voting is the importance of voter education and voter outreach. That what really made for a successful rollout of ranked choice voting was to utilize multiple media, contact as many different constituencies as possible to educate them in 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 ranked choice voting. We'll need of course the new hardware and software that is ranked choice voting enabled but we're also gonna 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 rollout 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 wanna thank you for an amazing report for starters. I mean, I actually read all the way through it and I thought, okay, 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 called surplus votes. And so I wanna ask some specific questions as I went through this. So I actually tried to do a ballot and I thought, okay, 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, in your document, you said, there goes my ballot, pachum out the door, cause I've done it wrong. So let me just go to some of the nitty gritty part, but in the graphic you showed, if two candidates came in and above the threshold, you take their surplus votes and you give them away to the other candidates. How do you pick which surplus votes? So 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? So it's gonna matter because the second person that that person said is gonna get that surplus vote. So that's my first question on it. And is there any, so should I just give several Lynn cause I have just two more that are questioned. So my second would be, could we do a trial? You gave a, 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 cause 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. 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 ranked choice method? Cause you went through some choices within it, but could we decide that we can't get this all up and running by 2021? We need a trial period. We need more information cause there's a lot of costs, both machines and people and time. So do we have, can we say no if we decide to? So that one may be a Mandy question. So my first two on distribution of surplus votes and could we, before we go to the legislature to get something approved, do a trial? 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 learned 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 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 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, actually I'm going to turn to Mandy Jo on that one. Yeah, so I had my questions, but I'll answer that one first. It is the intent of the Charter Commission in 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. It could modify 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 move the Charter down from the section seven that I'm staring at, election section. But I think we have 90 days, three months to actually adopt. 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 holdups in the legislature, I think 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's the answer I wanted you to come out with. So the Charter Commission wrote into Section 7 of the Charter, which is the elections section that there is one town election, November, the first Tuesday and November of the odd years. There was a preliminary for our election only that was written into a transition provision of the Charter in Article 10. But Article 7 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 7 does not allow for a preliminary. It does not provide for one. Susan, do you have a comment? Susan, I don't. No, I confer with Mandy Jo. Okay. I just want to make sure that if you have anything to add as our 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. All right, Mandy Jo, you have a question. Yeah, I had three questions. Two of them are 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 too that there is still time to implement for the November, 2021 elections if we get this to the, 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 or goal, go for. 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? I saw on 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. And so 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 seven 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 least the smaller of either the number of seats plus two. So for school committee, for library trustees, that would be eight or the total number of declared candidates plus writing candidates. And I think that's where I got confused because I thought we always have to have five or six or three write-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 plus two, yet the sample you guys provided pretty much 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 write-in. And I put that in quotes because we always have write-ins but we don't always have declared write-ins. 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 write-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 end? Oh, who wants to go? Yes, Sue, please. Okay. Mandy, Joe, the write-ins are actually dictated by mass general law. You have to have equal number of write-ins to the number of seats available. So if we're electing five there have to be five write-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 write-ins. Okay. That's helpful. Yeah. And just note that the sample is 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 us an example. So we would recommend definitely put as many choices for people to fill in as is reasonable. So yeah, so don't be, that's not supposed to be representative of the number. We definitely recommend having a good reasonable set of choices 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 start purchasing machines? Timing is a good question. I like the if, 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, 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'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 Tanya was saying and the rest of the board with a lot of confidence from our voters. You 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 worked through every single thing before we move to the next. Just 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. And that's on your, is Jeff, is Jesse on here? Yeah, I'm here. Okay. Both the machines that the committee has recommended support both rank 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 rank choice voting. But if you purchase the machines and have not adopted a rank 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? Okay. And then I guess the other, did we, Mandy, Joe, did we answer the question about the write-ins? And then appendix? You know, I know, Sue, that the law is that we have to have a space for every single office for a write-in or every single, you know, if there's three openings there have to be three write-in spaces. The question is when you use the phrase the total number of declared candidates plus write-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 write-in like happened with Joe Comaford back in the state Senate election two years ago now that that would get added on but otherwise that write-in issue wouldn't get added on to that. No, it's the first situation. If you're just looking at seats and write-ins even if somebody's running a writing campaign they're taking up one of the write-in seats basically. Okay. All right, so if there's five seats there's five lines for write-ins, got it. Okay. Alyssa, you have your hand up. Sorry for the delay. Yes, indeed I do. And I think part of the interesting aspect of this is we have to do something. The timing of something is a little bit questionable in terms of could anybody really go after us 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, we don't like that ranked 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 wanna 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, 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 wanna 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. So 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 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 gonna show up cold who knows what we're gonna be able to have for mail-in voting and in 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 wanna 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 two, at large has three, we got five school committee members, we got six library trustees, we've got 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 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 gonna 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 Jo very coherently pointed out that we had one preliminary election. We can't just decide we're gonna have a preliminary election just cause we feel like it. We, that would require a different charter that would require special legislation. So 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. One assumes that if we don't get this done for November of 21, that we would just be 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. I'm concerned 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, that then 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 there are only five, Har Har, but there are five candidates for three seats. You have like five inputs as to how the selection 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 kicks it back out and then you have to redo it. Now it's gonna 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 then 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 gonna flip a coin in Amherst. That's just not gonna be a thing. And so it does need to be clear what that's gonna be like. I understand that the special legislation says town clerk, board of registrars, et cetera, but we're not gonna flip coins. Like 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 have all the different methods 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 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. Thank you. And listen, for the sake of clarity, I wanna 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 could write an amendment about 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 and I tell people they've spoiled the ballot. So it's okay. Tonya? 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 raised a very good point and it was, we did have mixed feelings on the committee what to say about that. And I wanna just speak to it in a couple of 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 or 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 gonna 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's a concern and perhaps there's a workaround 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 wanna echo that great amount of work, very impressive and getting it 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 gonna happen. We're still in the midst of the COVID crisis and that's gonna make it even more challenging. So I have serious concerns about the timing, getting this done 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 gonna 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? Excuse me, 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 those extra costs would be for that machine. So I would pass the ball to them. Jesse, Sue? I'm trying to find it, Sue. 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 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 ImageCast Precinct and 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 company is ES and S. They have a Precinct Tabulator, the machine 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, depending on what you wanted to do, hiring a software developer, getting it vetted by the state. It's kind of a messy situation and it's why we recommend 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 gonna 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 the surplus votes in a satisfactory way to somebody, then what we're doing is we're creating 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 gonna be just your second choice, your third choice, but there are 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, 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 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 gonna make a big change, you need a big lead in. When Holyoke Community College decided it was gonna quit forbid smoking in any building and on 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 gonna 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 COVID 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 gonna 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 Dom and Senator Comerford about it as of this point to find out when they think that they would like to have proposed legislation before them if we're going to ask them to act on it during the first year of the next session. Mandy 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 too 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 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 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 and then would they accept amendments to the legislation and would they recommend that as a better process? I'm gonna call on Paul Bachmann 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. And that's literally the extent just to give them a heads up that 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. An excellent questions, Andy, about whether or not you can file something and then amend it later on. Kathy, you have your hand up. Yeah, I just wanna build on some of the other questions. On 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? So the sheer confusion on the shift to choosing two from this column and choosing three wasn't easy. And Alyssa's 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 gonna do a run. So 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 if others aren't going this way or do you expect in the future others would offer this? And if it turns out to be a disaster so I think you already said 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 then to that one because we're getting, I think it used to be Microsoft had a monopoly in a lot of places because all businesses use their software and you just couldn't break in or 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 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 wanna use this software to run the election maybe it doesn't have the features we want maybe we wanna 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. Okay. Steve, you have your hand up. Yeah, so thank you so much. So I have, I guess two questions. So your average survey monkey, you can set it up so that it graze out if you've done it wrong. So 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, you say a touchscreen voting and I think I know what the answer is but why not use it? So different places that I voted have used and other states have used touchscreen with a receipt with a paper receipt to have the paper trail to it. So 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, it's a machine question again. It's 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 Chao, you have your hand up. Yeah, I just wanna reiterate that if you go to section 1010 of the charter you know, 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. We'd need 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 of this 2023 is the municipal election it would start in. Are there any other questions at this time? All right, so 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 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. The third, another option is that we decide that we're going to refer this to a committee or committees of the council. Let's start with, is there a desire to have further discussion on the 21st? I'd like to just hear some thoughts on that. Nobody seem, yeah. Pat. 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 kind of where I am. Melissa. So while I can appreciate that and this is really complex and there were things as I said at length I have some frustrations with, I don't think it makes any difference if I process it any more 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 given 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 ranked people. KP Law, to what you said Mandy Jo, KP Law certainly did leave that blank at the end of the special act. So that certainly does make one think 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 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 GOL 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 a motion for acting tonight because I know we have different motions available to us that we could ask the question that was brought up what feels like hours ago about the idea of going ahead and saying we need special legislation we're gonna send it in the way it is we assume we can amend it because it'll get referred to committee, yada yada yada. If 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 or 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. Nathie? I'm Dion. Alyssa, I think I totally agree I wouldn't refer to a committee 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 two better than option one where you've given me a couple of choices you know, there was, you know as 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 get to a comfort level that we're gonna go with the recommended one or whether we have a couple more questions that's so for me one more meeting or I could just send in my questions I didn't 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 falling right now is this is going to be a pretty radical change to the way that this town runs elections people who have 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 I noticed that the Gazette put on their website an article about us receiving the report at 3.30 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 and 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 it'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 I think that having a focus group of people looking at some of those options and thinking through some of these concerns especially around timing and outreach could be useful I think the TSO is the committee to do that since their running of elections is a town service but I do understand people's reticence to send it to committee and 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. Lynn, can I make a comment? I don't have a hand raise. This is Jesse Crafts-Vinch. Yes, Jesse. 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. Most of 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 excess votes afterwards we purposefully did not include, I actually don't know, Tanya maybe we did include Wiggum for now to be amended later but choices in the machines and stuff like that that's not really the count we didn't wanna 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. Yeah, I wanna 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 Jo, 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. That was left blank. We can't vote on something until we fill some of that stuff in and 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 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 that accompanies the special act when we send it off to the general court. There were a lot of other things that the report talked about too that may have council input that may not 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 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 talked to the election divisions for and so while we have to vote right away within 90 days we have some time and maybe we can get some of those decisions hashed out by the executive side of our government so that they can be included in the supporting letter 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'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 implementation group a working group called what you will but 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 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 we probably should do it sooner rather than later but 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 implementation group or working group and give them that task. So I'm not too keen on on referral to a town council committee. We'll see 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 positioned to do that to work with Sue and the right choice voting commission is that 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 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 the only thing we want to hear from them is so on page 21 when we're given options between C and 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 right 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 then I'm open to emotion simple motion to just accept the report and there have been a couple of 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 and I know that Sue is on that committee but in terms of buying the equipment and if choosing software what if there's an interim step where some people that Paul figures out what people from town that his staff should be working with this committee to explore some of those questions and then come back to us with that Maybe John Sorry, I had to find my unmute button I don't think we should vote tonight on forward in a special act it's not it doesn't have everything filled in so are we gonna 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 waive 8.4 and I'm certainly not in favor of that and I also wanna mention about special committees and all and that's what I was trying to find Paul can probably better say this because he's the one that asked the amendment or maybe Tanya 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 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 that 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 otherwise I don't support voting or waiving 8.4 to vote tonight to forward anything I would at this point suggest we just carry this discussion onto 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 wanna dissolve the committee because we still wanna pick your brains further suggestions at this point all right we're gonna 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 Jo might get drafted after all okay Alyssa you have your hand up if the sense could be that you as president would talk to whether if Kathy expresses interest not putting you on the spot Kathy or Mandy Jo wanna 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 bottom on the special 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 Jo I was gonna say 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 then someone's gotta decide who's drafting the letter I'm more than glad to take responsibility for drafting the letter in consultation with whomever would like to help me How's that Mandy Jo you're recruited Okay, do you accept George? Ranked choice voting however still in existence is that correct? It is. Good. Mandy Jo 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 their report depends on what the charge says that they have to submit the report we gave them an extension to December 1st they met that extension in the past we have not ever voted to accept any other reports Comments Paul and Jo both of you seem to be reading the charge If the charge says that their term extends until December one they're already here as 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 have plenty of opportunity to look at it in the meantime if there are additional questions we'll take them up at that time Okay, so Tanya, Jesse, John, Ellen and Peggy and Sue, thank you an unbelievable job you've done amazing work and you've left us with a lot to think about a lot to do Please do 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 and these 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 so I just wanted to change the wording to be a one-year pilot 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 is what caught my eye versus a one-year pilot was what I thought we would be voting on tonight you want the motion 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 4th 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 so 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 I'm not familiar enough with the TSO thing but I wouldn't just say one year I would say until ex-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 1st and so we're talking about the ending date is December 31st 2021 you know I'm fine with whatever the date would take 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 on TSO at this point Evan are you the person from TSO is Darcy Darcy should speak to that Darcy why don't you give us a summary of your discussion and your report you have the report in your in the packet which is very extensive 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 and 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 about it that we're not making a permanent decision on these 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 yeah Brianna you have your hand up can everyone hear me yes if you could speak a little louder that would be useful sure so the the solar signs we are proposing the one year pilot program we would evaluate towards the end of that pilot year or at any time within that year that we were unhappy with the signs the solar charging stations which I think counselor panicky was referencing earlier we will own outright as part of this project however they are movable removable in that sense but we will own those okay Evan thank you Brianna yeah I guess I was going to echo what Mandy said I think my assumption was that the pilot for the one year pilot was always meant for the Sufa signs not for the charging stations certainly even TSO when we discussed it we talked about the pilot when we talked about our concerns they were wholly about the signs and so I guess I'm wondering if 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 and one for the permanent charging stations we 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 one charging station with each sign correct no completely different locations alright so here and we don't and the motion we have before us is for the signs not 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 yeah 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 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 in the first motion and then we can use up the other language in a separate motion on information signs I'll second that motion that Alyssa just described sort of cobbled together we already have a motion on the floor 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 Kathy you're going to withdraw your motion at this time yes thank you what Alyssa did address is my concern because then the second would be the one-year pilot right so the motions been made in second this one is about the solar charging stations only okay is there any question about that motion alright 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 Andy Steinberg yes Sarah Schwartz aye Karen Shalany Balmille aye Brewer aye Pat DeAngelis aye DeMond yes and Griezmer is an aye so that's unanimous we're going to go back to the second motion and who would like to try the second motion I think Alyssa I dug myself this whole to do it so here's my question to Kathy do we want to say temporary 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 we would like it to approve the temporary use of the public way to install public information and emergency communication signs known as the SUFA solar information and communication science project for one year from installation at the following locations as recommended by the town council town services and outreach committee TSO report December 4th 2020 these locations are subject to adjustments in the field by the town engineer is necessary and then that's the first three bullet points is there a second second DeAngelis absolutely okay excellent any further discussion Mr. Bachman Mr. 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 interest in saying we want to review it and with the assumption that they would stay unless we take it out 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 that's what your report would be that they would come out in one year but actually what we would like is the town manager to come to us with a report about 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 so the assumption is that they will be removed unless you act yes Kathy I just want to add to that Paul 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 is how it would work so there's some implementation issues aside from were they useful I'd like to know whether we 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 a report on how they were useful and then looking forward on the advertising plan Andy you have your hand up 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 the 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 when the time is coming up and we're deciding whether we're going to take on the responsibility of paying for these ourselves and we have some idea of advertisement these are for the public they're not for us town council members 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 this time we're 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 Kathy Shane yes Steve Schreiber aye Andy Steinberg aye Mary-Belle Moone aye Elizabeth Brewer aye Pat D'Angeles aye Darcy Jamal yes Lynn Griesmer is an aye and Hannah Key aye that passes unanimously Brianna thank you for your patience and thank you for all your work to check them out when we see them okay thank you all have a good night yeah um 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 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 or actual sending them off to the various places any discussion does that comply with open meeting law if we're sending our opinions off to you as a do you 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 I'd say if counselors want to send their feedback to you and then you're removing names before 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 law 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 a lot of opinions of individual counselors outside of a posted meeting you'll probably be okay but it's 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 I'll be here but I realize it's late and maybe we can be super careful okay thank you zoning priorities first discussion and each out yes so I think Sean if he hasn't fallen asleep yet just for later hi Sean we've got two slides I'll have them up for you in just a moment yes thank you I will try to make this in some sense as short as I can the CRC and 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 a look at this and all this started way back in September it started a little earlier than that but in September the council remember that we solicited feedback and priorities from all the councilors 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 4-0 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 to achieve the listed zoning priorities and 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 councillors 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 these three month ones it's important to note are interim measures in the sense that they're incremental I guess is a better one than interim 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 councillors have mentioned and have had concerns about on their own these are not the end of the issues these are the beginning of a process 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 moving from the downtown out into the villages to the other centers in our town for them and 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 are things we need to do and seven councillors also mentioned all of that 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 and the town councillors 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 satisfy or comply with the appropriated use that has already been for that and so that was one of the reasons we chose that we are recommending that for the use of the consultant money for the town council and the other one is it was one of the highest ones identified by town councillors in terms of I think it was seven of ten town councillors identified some form of form-based zoning or design guidelines they'd like to see implemented in town and so the report has a lot more information I can answer questions if anyone has any I can do my best to do that and I believe Chris Brestrup 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 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 so 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 amorous we want and then an analysis of what are the barriers and how the different changes could interact with each other each of the changes many of the changes that are in this list are quite major and there 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 happen if we put footnote A under others also removing footnote M it's very opaque so I went and I pulled a 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 that we need to make 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 what do 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 of each of the recommendations what would it possibly look like if we did this and I know 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 redid 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 there would 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 in multiple meetings at the planning board and stuff we said the problem is we have no definition of what a mix 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 it could be a bigger 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 if we're getting apartment buildings up here where I live the two bedroom units cost $33,000 a year if you want to rent them so 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 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've 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 if you put in solar we'll give you a waiver on some dimensions so they use an incentive if you do this we'll 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 of the planning board too 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 saw the 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 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 we want green space what kind of housing can we 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 we'll do this for you and where would we want it and I just didn't see that it was more free it up here so I think we need a different kind of document coming to us before I would feel comfortable with it with a lot more analysis of consequences so that's it 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 where do we want what and so I think we need to 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 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 that's my thought and I didn't 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 and 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 would mean a diversity of sizes of apartments so I was really happy with that and then 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 it works 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 and that we talk to and we communicate with and 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 in the housing policy but 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 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 guess I just would also echo thank you for all the work that you've been into this especially Mandy Joe had a very intense week um um I would also um agree with I guess pretty much everything Kathy said I was planning to say a lot of that so I would just say that I agree with um her statement that we really need um analysis um and um I you know I the fact that we got the document on Saturday um I didn't really have time to prepare until today and uh so it wasn't for a document of that size that really just wasn't enough time and I really felt like um a lot of especially what was in the summary on the first page was not reader friendly especially for the public who do not understand the names of all the zones and the um footnotes and uh 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 um uh I think it probably was very difficult for the public to understand it and um it wasn't in the packet as a separate document it was in the 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 um so it was sort of uh not um 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 um we just won't have had enough time to do what we need to do um let's see what else was I going to say here um um um I would have loved to originally see the actual comments that were made by all the individual counselors um we we initially received Evan's um proposal for zoning changes and um 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 um that's another kind of transparency issue I would like to have seen that and um as Kathy said I would you know I really feel like there should be an impact analysis I know CRC has adopted a community impact review process and um I don't I couldn't see any evidence that that had been reviewed 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 um evidence of impact on uh people in town so um and lastly I really think that uh 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 um because that's a big issue in my neighborhood a lot of neighborhoods um there just uh is we're losing moderate income housing to um 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 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 can't 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 even participated in making this list and I myself much better editor than creator right and so there's stuff on that list that I was like wish 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 but I don't want to be 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 you know this was not a survey right because there's this huge realm of possibility this was just what occurred to us in 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 up with a lot of interest in certain areas even if I might have voted for some more things given the opportunity and 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 but 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 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 of you may be 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 exactly within our vision we don't need a new vision document we need to 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 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 to the next conversation 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 I agree with 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 an 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 we're 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 refine it to make it better so we're not starting from scratch we're really tuning 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 that 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 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 but 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 any of those footnotes we're 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 breast repute your hand up and make sure you 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 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 so what 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 would that mean for say the property on the corner of Halleck Street and North Pleasant Street and how many units are 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 and 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 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 comments that occurred to me as I was hearing the comments of the town councillors. Kathy, you have your hand up. Yeah, I know you said I get 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 the long list, how does each one of these and how do they together get us further along a particular path. So Alice 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 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. I don't think whatever we think about the parking overlay district of you don't have to have parking once you've allowed someone to buy a piece of land and 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 inter connectedness 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. So 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 houses. I don't want to 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 to be built. So the reason was that's where the demand is. You know, that's we know there's a market for that. So I think we can't just race that way of 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 up their house and move into. So what we're going to do is we're going to build the kind of things that people would be willing to give up their house and move to something smaller. So that's the kind of analysis I want to see in whatever the first the first list is out of us. Yeah, I was wondering if the consultancy for form based zoning and design guidelines if that would speak to a little bit about 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 of an issue, but overall we kind of agree. And so I wonder if hiring a consultant which is working on 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 city like and so as we are 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 we want Hadley to also have grow and whatnot, but we also want to position ourselves as a town which is really, really encountering a lot like as we all know businesses closing and whatnot so what can we do to position ourselves to come out of that. Evan, you have your hand up. Yeah 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 are explicitly mentioned 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 those are ways that have historically been avenues for affordable rentals and affordable home ownership 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 housing situation and seeing people struggle to stay in and or struggle to move to and or 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 which allow us to build smaller homes that are more affordable for people who don't have the income to buy a $400,000 home but 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. Darcy 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 accessory making accessory units easier and so on but I guess I am wanting to make sure that they are going to go for to families you know to make more housing available for moderate 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 so 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 poor having more of those types of units but not you know I worry about who this is going to end up benefiting and we wanted to benefit our moderate income families so that they will stay here Steve 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 but it's a way of addressing that you know on the same piece of property so 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 this is a 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 board and so Darcy why don't you give us the TSI report and also there are reasons for wanting it off the consent agenda which you asked well in advance and it was not a unanimous decision yes so as you can see from the TSI 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 recommendation for his appointment for a three-year term when he's been on the board since 2006 and so I brought up the length of the term and the fact that the term 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 interview reappointments and 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 interviews but 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 so 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 think that our board and committee handbook probably needs to be updated and clarified to deal with this how I personally think that it should require that physicians have to be advertised when they become vacant at least after six years of service and it's unclear to me what type of motion I would potentially make tonight to remedy this situation but if any other council is willing to make a motion or a motion to amend the main motion I would second it so the motion is to approve the following town manager appointments to the personnel board effective immediately as filed with the town clerk on November 17th 2020 and recommended by the town services now each committee report of December 4th 2020 returns to expire June 30th 2023 County Butterfield re-appointment Rep. Woodland re-appointment for term to expire June 30th 2022 Catherine Porter re-appointment for terms to expire June 30th 2021 Christopher Hough Jones library trustee designee re-appointment Charles Sherpa employee designee re-appointment is there a second to the motion second Ryan okay now Pat you have your hand up thank you 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 re-appoint 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 by the charter 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 I'd want to stay to this committee and at some point if we want to raise the question of another committee then we'll come back to it but it's the same issue as the issue but then but let's stick to this committee Mandy 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 re-appointment for another 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 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 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 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 re-appointment on this but that wasn't in your memo that just showed up in our motion so has he been 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 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 re-appointment right now or appointment at all when it's supposed to be staggered terms how did we get to a point where all five 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 under the bylaw or the charge of the actual bylaw 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 and employees have an appointment so I go to the employees and say who would you like to have you know represent you and whatever names the library trustees give and the employees give 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 and 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 the I've always said to this like work that I don't believe in term limits that's that's 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 this question the I did not see these as vacancies because I saw these as reappointments and so they did not advertise them the memo should not have said that the I think that's those were the questions Mr. Sherpa has been has been on before so he has been he's the employee representative of the I don't know if I got all the questions I was just going to check with maybe Joe were there additional questions I think you got most of them but the charter in section nine point twelve e requires the advertisement for fourteen days of vacancies or impending vacancies right so I did not interpret this you don't consider the fact that a term is expired as an impending vacancy before you even pull as to whether someone once reappointed is that what you're telling us that's that's how I interpreted yeah 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 go over 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 is also established in 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 Dorothy I can see that there are some issues about appointments reappointments that perhaps need to be addressed 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 though 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 I think that should be addressed 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 board of directors in charge of these certain appointments and legislatures in charge of these other appointments I respect his ability to do his job I do however 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 otherwise it really doesn't look transparent it doesn't look right so I have not realized how much practice I'm going to take I'm going to send a 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 and so that Catherine Porter's term expires on June 30th 2023 Charles Sherpa's term expires on June 30th 2022 and Tony Butterfield's term expires June 30th 2021 I second it Can I speak to it? Emotion Yes 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 even express their interest and so while I don't want to reject every single one of these appointments except 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 at the same time I'm also disappointed that when I asked a question about why Catherine Porter who has served for 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 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 the motion's been made in a second and 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's 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 manager's 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 but I don't think that we have the ability to amend and so 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 Evan 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 little bit on this point I want to just make two clarifications one is that TSO did not vote to agree that not advertising expirations 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 don't agree with that but that 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 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 I can't agree with the amendment of the term I think we're going to have 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 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 their other lives they should the employees should be making a choice every year the library trustees 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 to do anything other than accept or reject the town managers recommendation Mandy Joe if it pleases people 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 so I'm going to withdraw that motion and make a separate motion that is to a motion to amend to delete quote Tony Butterfield re-appointment 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 be. 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 reject any appointment of the manager under the charter and this amendment would reject Tony Butterfield but approve the rest okay alright 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 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 re-appointments Kathy yeah I just I have a question um 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 um do we have ability just to ask for that because we could 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 um so that's just you know I you know I will have to recuse myself on this particular motion because I know Mr. Butterfield quite well um so I wouldn't be in a position to vote on this I would just have to abstain um but I just you know it's you you got moved against the wall on uh changing the terms appointments and so therefore you're picking one one out to reject is the way I understand what just happened um I just 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 um and the other thing is if we seek to reject three of the five the three reappointments that are not library trustees or employee representative um the personnel board wouldn't have a quorum okay right Steve Schreiber 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 you know 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 in 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 Shalini we'll go back to that friend I make it a friendly whatever and what manager 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 while and then discuss that other process as a separate thing but 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 um Pat you have your hand up I will not support the motion I don't like the kind of process that Paul you maintain where you have one set of rules for one people and one set of rules for another group of people well 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 but I feel very strongly while I can't support this right now that you need to come up with a real criteria 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 DACA but 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 Shalini 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 Jo's motion but with a message to the town manager that he come back to us with a recommendation for your 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 when it's a type of situation then maybe that would be a compromise are there any other comments at this time okay the motion is on the floor it's now been amended the amendment is to basically accept the full set accept Tony Butterfield okay I'm going to call the question on the amendment you vote in 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 alright what is your motion Mandy Jo 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 let me get 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 20 December 4, 2020 for term to expire June 30, 2023 Rebecca Woodland reappointment and then the rest would read the same okay that's what voting for 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 we I'm sorry I haven't understood Paul's reasoning for this I'm sorry could you again try to explain what is your reasoning for doing this you're asking Paul that yes please can I have a point of order I think the question's been called I think we have to vote oh you asked for discussion or any other questions I'm sorry okay you can't call the question unless if there's a objection unless two thirds say yeah if I may I think I think the president said that she calls a question and then she explained what the motion was and we're about to vote I was basically indicating you move forward shall we as a question her question is to Paul yeah so I think Mr. Ryan councilor Ryan read the major conversation reason for it and the personnel board is basically advisory to the town manager so it's a different kind of board and almost 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 he is some I find his advice and his guidance being extremely important to me as a manager it's an unusual situation I do recognize that and I hear what you're all saying so I respect those points and I hear them and we'll understand the points you're making and I understand why you're making them but for this particular instance because I need someone to be able to talk to who's not a political figure you know but it also understands the town has the respect of the town employees and I talk to them about certain things that I can't talk to my colleagues about there's no one at this level that I can talk to I can talk about political things I can talk about management things with other managers but in terms of our organization he is the person he is my go-to person that's why I find him by and yeah I'm so glad I asked you this question because that really helps to clarify for me and what I'm hearing is that this is a little different from other regular votes 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 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 for the best 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's board 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 okay does everybody understand the amendment okay and I begin the vote with Dorothy Pam no Evan Ross no George Ryan no Kathy Shane Steve Schreiber no Sarah Schwartz no she left okay Shalini Balmille no Alyssa Brewer no no Garcy Jamont yes Lynn Griesmer is a no Hanneke yes 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 effective immediately is filed with the town clerk on November 17 2020 and recommended by the town services outreach committee report of December 4th 2020 returns to expire June 30th 2023 Tony Butterfield re-appointment Rebecca Woodland re-appointment returns to expire June 30th 2022 Catherine Porter re-appointment returns to expire June 30th 2022 Chris Huffman Jones library trustee designate re-appointment Charles Sherpa employee designate re-appointment motion has been made and seconded any further discussion then this time we begin with Evan Ross yes George Ryan yes Kathy Shane yes Steve Schreiber yes Andy Steinberg yes Shalini Balmille yes Pat D'Angeles yes Darcy DuMont no Lynn Griesmer's yes Mandy Johannike no Dorothy Pam yes the motion passes 10 in favor 2 opposed no extensions 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 Jo? I just want to highlight quickly two things actually one thing which is the comprehensive housing policy draft there was a attached draft of the goals and objectives sections draft policy along with some introduction and explanatory sections we are seeking feedback on those sections so any suggestions councillors 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 chair 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 just clarifying for the public that's all all right Andy for 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 at two o'clock 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 that we would send it to the council that if there was significant questions about it we wanted to refer it back to the committee that we would meet then the following day on the 22nd of December and bring it back on January 4 though there's always the hope that it will 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 meeting up tomorrow discussion of a proposal of the capital inventory which was something that the council referred to the committee so it may come back after tomorrow's meeting too so that's the report okay thank you GOL George quickly three things first of all we will be doing interviews for the fincom vacancy on December 16 Wednesday the SOIs for the candidates will be publicly available on this Wednesday December 9 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 5 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 exerted 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 I 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 so we are conscious of this we are conscious of the referral and we are working on it Kathy you have your hand up to the next question I just have a quick question I think I know the answer to it but for FINCOM the non-voting resident if we wanted to reopen the question I'm on finance reopen the issue of whether there 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 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 say for two years or for three years with the idea that maybe even some of them might want to run for council some day and getting to know the budget would be a waste so 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 the issue and I raise it when we first were elected when we first ran that I thought those should be longer so I just need guidance on how I would re-raise the issue Vendee Jo I was just going to 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 I guess we appointed correct because we were trying to stagger them 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 alright Kathy nothing on JCPC yet Darcy TSO I guess you know I can't talk let me second I'm not sure I can talk yet I'll tell you later okay 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 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 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 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 Paul 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 under 10 counselor comments I want to 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 if I can yes I can talk good I just wanted to say that the comments for the on the north common to 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 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 could go to all of us including whatever the document is I'd be glad to do that do it that way I'll send it to the chair of the committee and CCB council that would 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 it you're done yes Alissa 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 we're going to get into 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 Alissa has brought it up before and we'll look for recommendation also from the town manager I presume okay and if you would like to bring it to the council before making a final recommendation just let me know that okay now if you want to have the 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 agenda items public's not reasonably anticipated there's none Alissa your hand is still up I assume it's going to go down okay then in that case we're actually going to adjourn at 1144 thank you