 All right, we're open to attendees and we're recording. Okay. Good evening. Seeing there's a quorum of TSO in attendance, I'm calling the November, oops, not November, December 17th, 2020 meeting of the Town Service and Outreach Committee to order at 6.32. This meeting is also meeting the whole council. Council President Lynn Grissmer will call the whole council to order. Given that we have a quorum of the council, I am calling the meeting of the council, the full council to order at 6.32. We need, we are allowed to do this because the governor's orders that allows us to meet virtually. And because this is a meeting of the full council, we're going to also make sure that all of the members that are here can be heard and that we can hear them. And so Darcy, do you mind if I go ahead and do that with everybody or how would you like to handle that? Oh, I can call TSO, Alyssa Brewer. Present. Lorsie Dumans, present. Dorothy Pam. Present. Evan Ross. Present. George Ryan. Present. Go ahead, Lynn. Mandy Jo Hanneke. Present. Lynn Grissmer, present. Pat D'Angeles. Present. Becky Shane. Present. Steve Schreiber. Present. I believe that that's it. Thank you. Okay. Those assisting the meeting will be monitoring committee members' connections and if necessary will pause the meeting until any counselor is reconnected. We request that everybody be patient with the process. The meeting is being recorded and can be watched later on Amherst town government YouTube channel. So public comment. The public may provide public comment at this time on matters within the jurisdiction of the town services and outreach committee. Residents are welcome to express their views for up to three minutes. Let me just check and see if anybody's wants to give public comments. If you are in the public and you want to give a comment, please raise your hand. Okay, we have Claudia who wants to give a comment. See, just gonna go ahead, Claudia. Oh, hi there. I didn't go so quickly. I know you're gonna be talking about the North Common, is that correct? Yes. And so I guess I just want to thank you all for being here, Claudia Pasemani, Emily Lane and Amherst Area Chamber Executive Director. I think clearly you will hear that not all, not one, sir. I'd all agree on this and even our own businesses will have a mixed first reaction to this development of North Common, especially with difficulty in not removing some parking spaces. But we must recall that prior to the pandemic, the bed and chamber were in front of you to support the destination Amherst plan, which falls in line with our master plan. And I wanted to just pause quickly and refer to the master plan to see how well suited this particular North Common is in the scope of the master plan. I think it's section E1C, make downtown village centers vital, attractive and convenient to use. Several kinds of strategic improvements should be pursued in the downtown and village centers to create a mutually supported mix of retail professional residential uses and an attractive and enjoyable environment for residents and visitors. Physical improvements, attention should be paid to pedestrian amenities, streetscapes, public spaces, parking, wayfinding signs, public art and other improvements to attract more people in the downtown and village center. Now it clearly speaks to a lot of the improvements that are covered by the North Common concept. Lastly, I wanna talk about the short-term and long-term benefits. Coming out of COVID, I think in the short-term, we know that we have money secured and the funding secured to move along once we find a plan that we can all agree on within our budget. And that brings jobs locally and brings workers downtown. This really is a stimulus in terms of creating jobs and getting to work. And making capital improvements. But in the long-term, it's also one step, as I mentioned, in the larger destination Amherst, which also includes in the future, a parking garage concept. So though I would love to see fewer cars, it continues to be the number one reason even our own residents refuse to shop or peruse downtown. We must have a concentrated alternative. And this will also help with employee parking issues that I've heard quite steadily. Where employees can park, it's a real challenge, employees parking in front of businesses and so forth. And so the North Common is the epicenter of our downtown. And just recently, we posted this discussion on our Facebook page. And I loved to comment, someone suggested that this really should be our postcard. And our current North Common is not our postcard moment. It stands today, and nor does it help create a destination Amherst that creates an attractive downtown. And a place where we can not only just, not that it's just creative, attractive, but that really says to people, welcome to downtown and stay awhile. I refer back to you. I just want to thank you for your time and thank you for the discussion. I look forward to the discussion today. Thank you for your comments, Claudia. And if you, and anyone else who is commenting want to submit your comments and writing to the council, that you would be welcome to do that. Gabriel. There we go. Hi, everybody. How are you? I just, I want to back up everything. Claudia just so eloquently said, I personally was out on our comment for a bit today. We're going to be putting up some more holiday lighting that we received a grant for. And in the snow, it's beautiful. But we all know that once the snow goes, it really is an unusable space. We were fortunate this past summer to be able to put some picnic tables out there. And it became a little bit more alive and it was lovely to see. But as someone who shares an office with Claudia and looks at it every day and crosses it on a daily basis, we all know that it is an incredible disrepair. I believe the last time work was done on it was in the 60s. And it's a travesty because it truly is the center and the heart of our town. We are going to lose businesses this year. You know, in the next six months we're going to see some attrition. It's just, it's an unfortunate side effect of this devastating pandemic. We know that we have already lost seven businesses permanently. We don't know how many more to come. But what we do know is that I personally am meeting with landlords and we are looking at an economic development plan and a restructuring of our downtown and a rebuilding of our downtown that really focuses on bringing in more retail, more artisans, more crafts makers, more smaller makers and something that really draws people to come here to be part of our community and to shop. Our aesthetic is going to lend itself to that. You know, rents and other things that, you know fall into place are important as well, but so is our aesthetic. I think that coming out of COVID-19 and looking at a post COVID world, Amherst needs to be a leader in moving forward and to creating space that is multifaceted and usable and experiential. And we have the ability to do that with the funds that have already been procured for this and then the additional funds that have been procured through CPA. I think we have the ability to move forward and we really hope that everybody sees the importance of this. Several of the businesses right on the common have written letters to this group in support and after the holiday we're going to be meeting with all of the businesses in downtown and seeing if we can get, you know, the bulk of support which we think that especially in a post COVID world people are open to and available to as they see a new world coming. And I think really that's all I wanted to say just huge support for this project. We need to have a beautiful common. We need to have a beautiful downtown. This is going to be the thing that people looking for homes here are going to drive through and decide this is where they want to spend the next 20 to 30 years of their life. And I know that we can do this together and we can create something worthy of Amherst. Thank you so much. Thank you, Gabrielle. Okay, I think that's it for public comment. Okay, we do have a few fund manager appointments that we're going to do. We have under action items we have time manager appointments to the agricultural commission, the disability access advisory committee, the public art commission and the public safety work group. So let's run through them. My, the first one is the agricultural commission. Alyssa, you have a question. Yes, I do. I don't know if it had been, I know you indicated that Paul was elsewhere and now he's here. And so maybe this is the better time for him, but unless we are doing this because we can have Paul here now that we can't have later, I don't think it makes sense to do the appointments part of our meeting right now. I think we should move on with the North Common Park of our meeting while all the other extra counselors are here. I don't think it's going to take that long to get through the appointments. And I think that it's likely that if we don't do them now, we won't get them done at all. So I would prefer to do it out. Paul? I'm sorry. So we're having some Zoom issues with two other meetings and they need my license for the meetings. So I'm happy, I'm sorry about this, but I can come back after we get the community safety working group finished if that's okay with you. When are they done? They'll be done at 7.30. Okay. So we do, we need you for the North Common presentation? Nope. Okay. So I guess it does make sense to flip them and do the appointments at the end. So why don't we plan to stop at like eight? And I apologize. We've got three meetings all on two, or two meetings all at the same time on the same license, I think. So. Okay. Sounds good. Okay. Thank you. All right. So, okay. The we were going to present on the town manager's public way policy revision policy tonight in case anyone was coming for that purpose. But he suggested we hold off until the next meeting to allow enough time for the town common presentation tonight. So we are going to move forward on that. We're going to start with a 20 minute or so presentation the town manager said with planning director Christine Brestra. And it looks like assistant town manager Dave Zomek. And then we are going to, we also had some counselor questions that were submitted. And so the plan is to the council, the council comments are now, they're in the packet and they're now available to the council and to the public. And after the presentation, I'm hoping that we could move through the topics question by question. And in this order, sort of like overarching questions cost and funding questions, parking issues. And to some extent, I'm going by Mandy Jo's categories that she had in her comments, gathering and seating questions, paths and sidewalk questions, outreach and overarching comments. And as the town manager said to me when we were talking about this, we're assuming that this is not going to be, this is going to be a few town services and outreach committee meetings that we'll need to get through all of this. So I hope to take the town services committee comments first and then look at the counselor questions that were, well, actually you can give me advice about this, whether we should hear first from the counselors that have come to the meeting or whether we should look at the counselor questions that are submitted and writing first. We have a lot of the counselors that submitted them and writing here. So it makes the counselor questions that are in writing are pretty well organized. So it makes sense to me to kind of go through them. Maybe we could do them in big batches and Dave and Christine could respond to them or tell us the ones that they need to go back and look at more deeply before they can answer them. So why don't we start with the presentation which is also in the packet that Dave or Christine. Yeah, I think I will start if that's okay with you. Sure. So thank you very much for inviting us here tonight. I think I'm joined of course by Guilford Moring, our superintendent of public works and Christine Breastrip, our planning director. And Christine and I are gonna walk us through briefly and I think we can do it in well under 20 minutes. We were told actually do it in 10 and maybe 15 if you have to. So we're gonna move quickly. And Guilford of course is joining us because his staff, his team, his engineering team helped with some of the many of the design elements that you're gonna see in a few minutes. And he is of course here for any of the technical engineering and design questions that I'm sure you will have. We've prepared a brief presentation tonight. Our goal really tonight is to restart or reset the conversation about this critically important space in the heart of our downtown. Guilford, Christine, myself, some of the council members, various committees and boards have been talking about the town common and planning for the North Common for many, many years. And we're at this critical juncture. As Gabrielle said a few minutes ago, we're hopefully all gonna be coming out as a community out of the pandemic and we wanna be prepared for what's next in our downtown. We're not seeking funding tonight, rather we're hoping you'll come along and reimagine what this space could look like in the future. We are not locked into any one design. We have spent literally probably hundreds of hours together with community members and Chris will walk us through the process that got us to this point. But we want to reimagine what the potential is to transform this downtown space and help the downtown to really jumpstart to what is going to be in the future. There's been a long process to get here, but there has been no definitive decisions made on the amount of funding that will be spent or the design that has been selected because the space that you see on slide one is in the public way, those decisions really ultimately fall to the council. So next slide. As you know, the North Common and the Common itself, the overall Common has a long and storied history. It's a wonderful space. It is not a park. That's what's critical to understand. It is part of the public way and therefore the jurisdiction falls to you as keepers of the public way. There's been many changes to the Common through the years. We won't go into great detail on that, but there's tremendous in the archives of the Jones Library, wonderful pictures through the years and images of our North Common. So there has been change. It's important to realize that it's been used for many different things. And again, we want to try to activate it for future generations to use. Next slide. I think the issues and problems have been well documented on the North Common. And in fact, this top slide might be a little overly positive with that green grass, but we know there are tremendous issues with exposed routes, lack of accessibility, deficient paths and seating. There are paving and parking and sidewalk needs that have been there for years, as Gabrielle mentioned earlier. So it is in the heart of our downtown and we need to address this. It's not a space that any of us I think are proud of nor would we say to our friends or family, let's go to the North Common and spend some time. That's just not what we do. And I think a lot of us would certainly like to be proud of that space once again. Next slide. So here's where I take over for a little bit. Christine Brestrup, Planning Director. Good evening. So we've been working on this project since at least 2013. I think we've been talking about it since before then. In 2013, we held the first of three public forums to gauge the public interest and to gain input about what residents wanted to see in a rehabilitated town common. And we followed up with public forums in 2014 and 2015. In addition to public input, the North Common project has been guided by a working group that was made up of residents from the historical commission and the LSSE commission. And we had a group of town staff, people including myself, Dave Zomek, the members of the Department of Public Workstaff and Guilford Mooring, and the Assistant Town Manager, I already mentioned Dave. So between 2016 and 2018, we developed concept plans with the help of the DPW. And we applied successfully for Community Preservation Act funding. Both in 2016, FY16 and FY18, we received approval for funds from the historic preservation portion of the CPAC funds as well as the recreation portion. And those amounts totaled $550,000. And during our work on the concept plan, we became aware that the DPW was also working in this area. They were working on a plan to rehabilitate the parking lot which we've been calling the Main Street parking lot, which is just north of the North Common. And so the town decided to incorporate the two projects into one because that made sense. So we went to town meeting in the spring of 2018 and we received approval for the town to borrow up to $400,000 for the Main Street parking lot to help the project. So now we had a total of $950,000. Next slide, please. We engaged the firm of Weston and Samson to work with us to develop a design for the North Common and Weston and Samson and the working group developed three plans. We conducted public outreach and we held a public forum on May 29th, 2018 to seek more input. Weston and Samson refined their plan and we held three more public meetings on August 28th, September 5th and October 22nd, the last two of which were actually select board meetings. The select board though individually supportive of the project determined that the newly formed town council should make the decisions about the North Common and the project was put on hold while the new council established itself. In 2020, this year, town staff developed additional plans to develop concerns we had heard about cost and we made an initial presentation to the town council on November 16th. Town council then referred the project to TSO for a recommendation. And now I'll turn this back to Dave. Next slide, please. So I think we've talked about this in the past but just to be clear, we wanted to state really what we have heard from committees boards and the public process that many staff have been through throughout the past couple of years that our overarching goal really is to create an attractive dynamic signature space in this most important part of our downtown. And if you will just for a minute, I'd like to just kind of take some of the council back to those of you who are at the grand opening of the spray park and playground at Groff Park. And for a minute, think back to what that space was before and kind of a 1980s, early 1990s playground kind of rather understated with old equipment and the number of people who use that space. And since I live near Groff Park and I'm very proud of that project, we all waited a long time for it and we pulled together the funding sources. But I will tell you this fall, every time I made that turn into Groff Park, the number of people who were using that playground and of course when the spray park was on during the good weather was tremendous. And it's that kind of vision that if we can just separate ourselves for a moment from the current condition of the North Common and say, what could it be as a community? Within reason, we all realize that there are budgetary constraints and all staff and I think boards and committees realize that but can we make it accessible? Can we activate the space more than putting picnic tables out there? Can we create an appealing destination where people wanna be? And can we help with the recovery for the downtown? Next slide. So for a minute, can you imagine what it would be like with great seeding and green grass and healthy trees and places for people to eat, to walk, excessively, to have small concerts, to have gatherings, to have poetry readings for people of all ages and all abilities. That's what we're asking our community to just imagine for a minute. Next slide, please. And yes, thinking about both the green spaces and the trees that we want to both, the trees we want to save and new trees we wanna plan for future generations, thinking about the need for heartscape in some of the North Common because we know we all desire to have celebrations, commemorations, ceremonies, vigils and public gatherings there. How do we create that space that's attractive and accessible and durable over time? That's really critical. Working with Guildford's engineering staff, we have limited resources. We want this to be something that can be maintained over time. So we ask you to just imagine what the space could be like with pathways that makes sense, that the desire lines that are now out there, those places that some of us are able to walk to cut through the North Common are actually paved surfaces or created with pavers to make them accessible for people of all abilities. Next slide. So some of the concept considerations that we had in mind in developing the plans were on the ground topographic and property line survey and a site assessment, consideration of past comments from public input, the significant location of the North Common in the center of town and the fact that it's used all year. The North Common is also an urban setting that's surrounded by roads, but it can become a quiet oasis. The Common also suffers from heavy foot traffic and the existing parking is heavily used. Some of the design goals that we had in mind were the historic character of the Common. We wanted to preserve that. The fact that we wanted to better accommodate pedestrians and make the area safe and accessible, as well as adding seating and lighting and incorporating public art and fixing the drainage problems, providing gathering spaces and addressing concerns about parking if some of the parking is removed. Next slide, please. We anticipate that this project will be the crown jewel in our plans for rehabilitating and improving downtown Amherst, including the destination Amherst projects that have been recently enumerated by the town manager. This plan here, which we call plan number one, is the plan developed by Weston and Samson. It includes a graceful circulation pattern of walkways crisscrossing the site. It includes a generous seating area in the center of the Common and a gathering entry space in the Northwest corner where there are peace vigils on Sundays and various other civic gatherings. It also includes a regraded parking lot that's paved with concrete pavers and can be used for public gatherings, performances and celebrations. This plan removes a lot of the existing trees to accommodate regrading and drainage improvements, but it replaces them with new trees. There's a loss of about 11 parking spaces over the existing condition. And the estimated cost for this plan is about $1.9 million. Next slide, please. Plan two is the result of the town staff at the DPW taking a close look at the Western and Samson plan to see if we could save both money and trees. It relocates some of the pathways, but it retains the graceful circulation system and has a charming seating area in the center of the Common. It retains much of the parking, losing only about 11 parking spaces from the existing condition. And the parking lot is regraded to make it more useful as a gathering space. And it's paved with less expensive material than the previous plan. The cost estimate for this plan is about $1.5 million. Next slide, please. Plan three is a response to comments that we heard from the town council on November 16th. This plan retains much of the design and circulation pattern from plans one and two, but it eliminates the parking lot from the North Common. Parking is relocated to Main Street and some parking is added at an angle along Boltwood Avenue. Instead of a parking lot in front of town hall, there is a small paved plaza and a large green open area, both of which could be used for gatherings and performances. This plan retains more existing trees than plan one, about the same number as plan two. It loses about 18 parking spaces because of the elimination of that parking lot. And the cost for this plan is less than $1.5 million because of the lack of parking on the Common. But we haven't yet had an opportunity to do a careful cost estimate for this plan. Next slide, please. So this slide shows, talks about the budget. We have about $886,000 so far for this project, including $550,000 that we received from CPAC. We had to pay Western and Samson for their work so we ended up with about $486,000 out of that. And then the town meeting authorized $400,000 to work on a rehabilitated parking lot to be borrowed and then paid back by the Transportation Fund. We requested a total of $500,000 from CPA funds for FY 22. And that would give us somewhere between $1.3 and $1.4 million for a total. Depending on what town council decides about the parking lot, the $400,000 bond authorization for the parking lot may need to be reauthorized because there would be less parking on plan three. So the cost estimates range from less than $1.5 million to about $1.9 million for the Western and Samson plan. And now Dave would like to speak with you again. Sure, so we're just about to wrap up and happy to take questions. Next slide, please. So our job is staff working with Paul and really responding to your questions about the project and about the potential for the project. Really, we tried to frame in this slide, you know, really in the spirit of continuing the conversation about North Common is really should the town move forward with the scale of improvements that we have scoped out for you today? And there's a range of improvements and there's a range of alternatives. You know, which plan would you like us to develop further? What's a budget that the council is comfortable moving forward with? How much parking should we retain? Should we retain all of the spaces that are currently there? Some of the spaces or no spaces? And then how would you like the public engagement process to be organized? We're looking for your guidance. We will respond to your questions tonight and hope to continue this conversation in future meetings of the TSO and the council. If the council does not want to move forward with any of these plans, what is a realistic budget that we might invest in simply to improve the North Common in a minimal way? And I think it's important if we go in that direction for the council to know, what does that really mean? As we said, there are significant, significant challenges with drainage, with runoff, with electrical service, with accessibility. We've kind of put band-aids on the North Common since the 1960s. So even if the council says no to these plans, it's a significant amount of money simply to fix what's out there and make it accessible and make it usable. So with that, I think we'll leave you with this last slide which we thought was appropriate for tonight. Next slide. Kind of envisioning what the North Common might look like in the winter, if it was accessible, if there was performance spaces and we could activate it even in winter, for a winter carnival or winter events. So we leave you with this and we're happy to take your questions and Guilford, of course, is here with us to address any of the technical and engineering and construction questions. Thank you. Okay, I think I'll just start with this. Our organization of the questions pretty much tracks what you had in your slides. So I don't know if you counselors can see the counselor comments or you have access to them on your own computers or whether we should bring them up. But if we want to start with a category, so I'm gonna go over the categories again. Overarch and concerns, which hopefully would not include any of the following categories, cost, parking, gathering and seating areas, paths and sidewalks, and any other issues that you wanna bring up that don't fall into those categories. So I'm gonna start with the overarching concerns and if you could try to not bring up anything that falls in the other categories, that would be good. We have a couple of questions that are on the counselor comments, but if the town services committee has any comments or questions that fall into that sort of overarching, why don't you raise your hands, Kathy? Thank you. I actually just tried and I was trying on my iPad so it may be an iPod, but I can't get access to your packet. I get to the place, says click on packet and I get back to committees. I go to the calendar and it says materials here and I click on it and I get, the website seems to be have been redesigned and at least, so I will do overarching without looking at your questions. I will follow as you laid it out. So there's a new plan three, is one comment I just want to make that wasn't what we saw before. So one of the overarching, arching ones I'd like to have addressed when we get down to the next one, which I think of cost is overarching. We, Dave had a last slide in his presentation is what is the budget for this? And you have listed what amount of money you have if we approve the CPAC 500,000 and it's 1.386 million. So if we said with that kind of a budget, what could you do? What do we leave out? What are we, because it's less than the 1.5, that's an overall. And in that overarching, we're seeing something that has seriously deteriorated over time. So Gabrielle said a disrepair, nothing done, travesty, and Chris Bestrup showed us a place to sit in the existing thing that probably hasn't been touched since the 1960s. So do we have any sense of what the cost to upkeep, an upkeep cost for any of the three designs we're looking at? And do they have different implications on one, two, or three? So that's an overarching. And then the last two showed seating areas. So I know I'm bouncing down, but when you're talking about the total cost, does it include the seats? Or are we just talking about the repaving the drainage? And finally, in my overarching, the Chris listed what we were trying to achieve. And I guess my very first one would have been drainage, that whatever we do, we've got to fix that. So building up, and we have to do that, we have to fix the sidewalks are falling apart, the paving is falling, it's just kind of falling apart. So the fixing it side of it has to be done. And I'm assuming any of the three designs has those costs in them already with drainage being fixed. So I just wanna be assured of that rather than we still have water. I know what it took in my mother's house. First we dug trenches inside her basement, then we added some pumps. Then we went outside the house and drug the trench outside the house. We ran something out to the street to waste water. And she's had to add two more sump pumps. Hey, mainly it was never fixed. They built the house on a river and the river kept flowing. But I just wanna know whether these designs really take care of that. So we won't be looking at the deterioration we're now seeing. So that's my cluster of before we get down to the specifics of any of the designs. Maybe I could start and then I'll turn it over to Guilford and Chris. I will say there are no sump pumps included in the budget for this project. I wanna start maybe with your largest overarching question, Kathy, which is the budget question. And you alluded to 1.3 million and change. I think what we tried to present tonight was a range of project costs from 1.9 to less than 1.5. To less than 1.5. Chris and her remarks stated that we really haven't drilled down in the least expensive and the most recently developed cost estimate yet. But there are some fundamental questions that drive the cost and one of them is parking. So I think it's pretty obvious that parking lots cost more than green lawn. So in that final version that we presented, there's a reduction in parking. We do create more parking on Main Street and we created the design calls for nose-in parking on Boltwood, but a lot of the hardscape that would be the parking lot, the so-called town hall or Main Street parking lot would be eliminated. So that's where a lot of the cost savings is. But it's really, it needs to be a decision-making matrix that the council has. We need guidance from you on parking that will then drive the budget either up or down. We also need to think about the funding sources. We have two funding sources now. One is CPA dollars and one is transportation fund dollars. So those two have different requirements and different thresholds. So we just need to keep that in mind that if we're not creating as much parking then we are not gonna be able to draw as much from the transportation fund for because that is very specific to parking. Dave, can you just, so is that the $400,000? We wouldn't be able to draw. So we have a lower budget. We have a potentially lower cost and I'm hearing around 100,000 because she said just over 1.5 to just under with and without parking or those parking spaces. So I know I'm a little bit off and you're not precise but then do we lose our funding source as well? I don't think we're, you know and Paul or Guilford can jump in here. I don't think we're at the point where we know whether all of that would be lost to the project because we still would have some costs creating parking along Main Street and what would Avenue but we're not there yet and drilling down to that cost. Is that accurate Guilford? You're muted. You caught me off guard. Sorry. Yes, that's accurate. So again, it reaches back to the fundamental question parking, if so, how much and then we can work from there on how we reach that budgetarily. Could I look to Guilford or Chris to talk about seeding and upkeep costs? I can talk about seeding and seeding is included in the budget for the Western and Samson plan and I believe it is included in the plan number two of Guilford developed in that cost estimate. We're really trying to include everything because we don't wanna have any surprises at the end. So it's really a package of improvements that would be acquired for whatever amount we've quoted and it would include drainage, by the way. Yes, drainage, whatever we have to do to improve drainage which would include regrading parts of the North Common and adding probably some underground piping and structures, et cetera and tying into some of the town systems. Okay, thank you. Steve. Thank you for letting me speak. So overarching, thank you for scheme three. So and thank you for listening to the council comments and trying to address some of them. So I think that that's basically a huge step forward. The parking off of Main Street, the parking on Boltwood as a way of, in many ways as a better way of dealing with parking in a situation like this where basically the roadway is the drive aisle. So you don't have to duplicate a drive aisle on the North Common. That was the main thing I wanted to say is thank you so much for scheme three. I can only glance at it. I'd love to study it. I think it really does address a lot of the issues that I was concerned about. The other comment I was gonna make but I think you've dealt with it is that that one shot of the two people with a wreath of looking down towards the town hall entrance that I can't remember which scheme that's from but there didn't seem to be any parking on the common then. So that view of the front door of the common seemed to be unimpeded. But I think that scheme three is actually kind of duplicating that. I don't think it's from scheme three. I think it was from a previous Western and Sampson scheme but that's what I wanna say is that I really look forward to studying scheme three. Okay, so that sounds like a comment, not a question. Dorothy, I'm sorry I didn't call on you first being a member of the TSO committee. That's my fault, sorry. Well, I wanted to make some general comments that I did thank you. I do appreciate the plan three. Oh, you're muted Dorothy. I'm sorry. Thank you for plan three. It's a great improvement. To my mind, the role of the town green is symbolic and practical. And it's space as well as green and it's space for people to do a variety of activities with other people around, but where you can control how close you get to them whether you're in small groups or other groups. And we don't have very many places like that. Towns that don't have a green have inferiority complexes. They feel the loss of the heart of what kind of makes the town. So, but I have to, I understand the parking is a problem, but the problem with the North parking lot is that it's right in front of the door of town hall. So you're looking at the really the symbolic crossroads of the town and you're looking towards the town hall, which is a wonderfully eccentric building and your view is impeded. The other parking lot is on the side of a street. And so you look there and you go down a street and it doesn't bother me. So I think that although I was a big user of that parking lot, that alternative ways of parking will have to be found. I also want to say that in terms of the bid in the chamber, foot traffic in downtown will increase tremendously with the repair and revisioning of the town green. Sunderland, a very small town has put in a path right next to town hall and it has a little arch over it made out of trees and twigs. My daughter lives next to it. So I'm there a lot. Every time I go there now, there are people, they just show up and they're walking on this walk. And it's just a paved walk in back of town hall and the library, athletic fields on the right. And then it goes down to the river and they built a platform. Not anything very big, except it's into the heart of the green that exists in that town. And I think that our business would really profit from this. So this leads me to my question, which is if in fact we have more wonderful tables and places to meet and gather in the chess table. And I did love the stone wall. I love the New Englandness of green grass and stone walls. There would have to be a commitment from the town to spend more money on maintenance. The trash cans would have to be emptied. I mean, it would be a lot more work and it has to be done or otherwise we have done something very bad. So I'm just wondering if that has been considered the increased maintenance of picking up and keeping the green looking great. Actually, it hasn't been yet because we don't really know where we're going. Once we get closer into designing we can actually give you a cost or an estimate of how much more work it'll be. We do pick up trash cans now on the common. We pick them up by the bus stop and there's one over by the on South Pleasant Street. So depending on how we lay them out we may only increase by one trash can or two trash cans that we're already there picking them up every day just about. So that might not be a problem. The town does have an issue about building things putting in new things and then five years later you need to replace something and we don't have enough money. That's just always there. Having new benches and stuff will be nice for a while. But yeah, we do have to figure out how to find maintenance of those benches through time. Okay. We have Pat. Thank you. I am going to apologize because I have not had a chance to review with any at the particularly plan three. But my overarching question is whether or not all three plans eliminate two-way traffic on bulls. Because that's an issue that I know that the church is very concerned with and I would like to get a clarification. Yes, all three plans eliminate two-way traffic. It'll be one-way going south. But if you look at kind of the Weston and Samson's concept for doing this, that when you have events and a church event could be any event, a wedding or a funeral, you kind of close down that section of the roadway to allow for parking. So you would still have use of the parking as the church does it now. Cause I mean, some of them even park on both sides. Yeah, I'm not concerned about the parking as much as of cars or funeral procession being able to come to the front of the church. That concerns me. And I'm also concerned about access for emergency vehicles if that's not a two-way section. You have, from the emergency access, I really don't see a concern. There's only the two buildings that are there right now. You can access them from Spring Street and you can access them from Main Street. If the fire department does need to go in and get in the middle, they will get in and get in the middle, the police will do the same thing. So even if it's one way, I think you'd still have access and we can talk to the chiefs about that and get their confirmation. Thank you. Okay. We have a couple other comments that came in from counselors and one is just, we need a space that looks good as welcoming and has a variety of seating, minimizes or eliminates parking fits within a reasonable budget and is easy and not too expensive to maintain in the long and short term. So that's just a comment. And the other comment was the design should be simplified. There are too many swirls and other moves. And I'm assuming that means design probably isn't three because it was submitted before we got design three. So... Darcy, perhaps Guilford could speak to that, the design three in particular because his engineering staff has really, I have seen them out there hour upon hour trying to figure out how to save the most important trees, deal with the runoff issue and the grade change. And Guilford, can you talk a little bit about the pathways? Why do they look like they do? So if you want two pathways, they're gonna cross the common and go diagonally across the common. You actually do need to make some swirls because the grade across the common saving the trees, you have to make some cutbacks and some switchbacks to get the grade that's required by ADA. One of the things you do get in design three is when you get rid of the parking lot and you make it a big grass area, ADA doesn't apply to a grass area really. So you can cut down some of the swirlies and some of the paths in the grassy area because it's grass, it's not paved access way or paved way and it has to meet those requirements. I have a question. How do you make the North Common level? You really don't, you just make it a little more level. You don't make the North Common level but you can make the area where the parking lot is level in schemes one and two, you can depress the parking lot area and then either add steps or a ramp at the Western end to get down to it and that therefore provide yourself with a level space to have activities. That adds the walls that we had to make those grade changes and then the paths swirling and cutting back on each other a little bit. That adds that if you're having that more level because the parking lot and the parking lot in plans one and two is not completely level either. It has a slight pitch to it. Percy, could I add just one comment to that? And that is that Alan Snow, our tree warden who is a division director for DPW has worked very closely with Guilford and his engineering team and has contributed significantly to the design in plan three. And I think we all need to recognize that we can't save all the trees if we wanna do something significant, bold and future thinking out there. We can't save all the trees. Alan has assessed all the trees both for their age and their relative health and he has contributed significantly to the design in number three saying that yes, some of the trees can come down to your question about grading. It's one of those things that you might think is very simple. Like, can't we just add soil and add topsoil around all the trees and make it level? But in fact, that would likely kill most of the trees. And I've learned this from talking to Alan Snow that you can't just surround those trees and add six inches of soil or a foot of soil because the trees won't survive that change. By the same token, we wanna make sure that we don't cut roots or we cut as few roots as possible to retain the trees and keep them healthy, the ones that we want in the final plan. Does it make sense to not make the North Common level but make the parking lot level? If you're not gonna have a parking lot, I wouldn't worry about making a very level at all. If you do want the parking lot, there is some grading that we'll have to do and more costs to make it more level to level it out. I would just say too, Darcy, that we have an obligation to make, if we're a significant improvement of this size, this kind of investment, it shouldn't be accessible to all people. So the pathways need to be accessible to all people in our community or visitors. So that obligation holds true for all of the pathways, any of the walkways, the seating areas and the assembly area in the middle that, as I said before, could be used for small performances, for, oh, just catching a bite to eat, catching up with friends. All of those areas do need to be accessible and that's where these sweeping pathways, Guilford and his engineering team have figured out how to make them accessible to meet the grades necessary. So the green area to the north can be as flat as it can be, but the pathways do need to be ADA. We just won't be leveling the areas in between. Thank you, George. I think that my question in a sense has been answered, but I'm wondering if we could look again at this third plan. It intrigues me. I'm someone who feels strongly that reducing or eliminating the parking is an attractive option. It also seems to have some budgeting implications, both good and bad. Obviously if you take all the parking away, the transportation money may go away, but there does seem to be parking in that third plan. It's just not aware it had been before. So I don't know if anyone else has an interest in looking at that again, but it does, okay. I think I'm getting a sense and probably because it's just the way I think about this, which is, but that there's a sense that we'd like to get rid of the parking as much as possible. It would reduce the cost. And if we can keep some of it, perhaps on Main Street and on Baltimorewood, that might still keep the transportation fund available. That would help with the budget. But I'm hearing, and maybe it's just me, that there's a very strong feeling of creating this public space and getting cars out of there. And so if we could look at three, I'd like that just for a moment and maybe some people would have some more specific questions they could ask looking at that proposal. Yeah, if we could just go through our questions first, that would be good. And I don't think there's a consensus on the parking issue. One of the things that I'd be interested in looking at is whether or not if some or all the parking is going to be retained, whether it makes sense in this new era to be looking at solar canopies. And that would be pretty cool to have in front of the town hall. So anyway, that's another possibility. So I would like to move on to the next category, which is cost. Anybody has questions about cost? Alyssa. I'm sorry, Bluntly, I'm having a really hard time following how we're supposedly staying within confines of groups of questions, because in that last section, we literally just talked about everything on the list. We did not talk about just overarching concerns. And so I think at this point we should, you should either just, if you want to, read those questions aloud, but then let us do what we've been doing, which is literally hopping all over the place while we talk about these things, rather than being confined to some alleged category that we're in. I think I would like to see if there are other questions about cost first. And we did already mention some of those cost questions. And there is one on the list that is, I think we did go over all of the ones that are already under cost that were the counselor questions, because the counselors are here. One of them was we cannot eliminate parking, but maybe it could have a smaller footprint, whether changes on the street and shorter car slots, that should have been under parking. Sorry. So, Cathy. Right. I will stay just within costs. I do agree with Alyssa that you can't separate these Darcy, because costs, we have now learned that cost is related to parking and parking is related to whether or not we have enough money, we're in a circular thing. So I just, my question on cost is to the extent after this meeting, not now, we could get a little grid. And I think we're focused on two and three. Okay. I think one is not right now on the drawing table. With a, as best guess as you can, of total costs without the full design and showing us what money you have available to the two sides, the price tag for this and the funding. Because I don't think we can abstract from the funding side. I link it to costs. So if we come up with a project and I would, I just want to say, I would like to see this move forward, but I don't want to move forward where we don't have enough money to do it, that we only do half of it. So whatever the it is. And then Dave in your quick summary said there is, or Chris, one of you said, there is the much more basic and I'm not sure we're interested in this, that's just fix it. And the just fix it is the drainage problem, the electrical problem, the sidewalks, the accessibility. I don't know whether there's a price tag on the just fix it one and whether that's already embedded. So I just, I don't need an answer right now, but I just, it's hard for me to think of, we either have 1.3.1386 million or we have something less and we either have a cost of 1.5 or something more, but we have funding for, I just need the two sides to be able to think of what I'm leaning toward. And I have a strong opinion on parking, which isn't eliminated at all, but I am willing to think of what can we afford here and what gives us the best final result to what we're trying to achieve. I just need the pieces. Dave. Sure, well, no, those are great questions, Kathy, and we appreciate those. And I think my last slide really, you know, when we wanna continue the conversation with the council, we wanna support your inquiries and get you the responses you need to make the decisions that are clearly in your court. I think Guilford may be able to speak broadly to what would it take just to kind of fix the North common in the most basic way. I'm afraid that the delta, the difference between just kind of fixing the critical issues and making it something more for our community is not that great. It's not that large, but Guilford. Just fixing it, if you just wanna fix it, we've kind of thrown some numbers around for parking. So parking, we need about, I think it's 400 and some thousands is what we said and that's what we got from the parking fund to fix the parking the way it is now. But if you don't want that, then that goes away. As we talk about fixing it now, are you saying you just want the sidewalks on the outside and the one path that crosses the middle? Those are things we would have to need to know about fixing it, the path across the middle doesn't meet ADA requirements. So there'd be a little bit of change in the price. I mean, we can tell you these, we can tell you these, but if you're really gonna say you don't want parking, it's just kind of like a, I hate to say it this way, but it's kind of like a busy work exercise for us to estimate that work. It would be better to spend, to think about what do you wanna want and where you wanna go with the design so that then we can concentrate on getting you the best estimate for that item you want. We have an estimate that's a pretty good estimate that we like for number two. Okay. Number three was just put together and we just kind of proofed it out before this meeting about a week before this meeting. So we haven't really put together the estimate yet. It'll probably take a couple of weeks for us to do that if you really like that. And we can put together a pretty good estimate of what that would be in a couple of weeks. That, from what I'm asking, that would be great. I don't want you to go back to, I want drainage fix. So, but then the side column is what money do we have? So if we have, you know, so it goes down because I don't, I'm trying to avoid what I heard happen in the same thing. And when I go way back to when you first asked for the money from CPAC, way back. We thought we could get it for about a million plus a park grant of 400,000. So we thought we were in the 1.4 range. Then we got up to the 1.9 range. And getting down to what's the amount of money we think we have to spend from whatever sources. And if you've got two designs, you can tell us in the other column, what kind of money do we have? Just two would be really useful for me. The thought that we lose $400,000, means we've got a shortfall in three that we don't have in two. Just, and I'm just focused on cost right now. And I agree with it would be nice to see vision three again as we're talking about this, but I'm finished with my focus on just cost. Okay, thank you, Evan. Yeah, so thank you for bringing forth design three. I think that those of us on the council who have been for a long time now, asking for a version that did not include any parking on the common are probably very happy to see that. And that's certainly, I no longer have any interest in one and two, I'm solely focused on three because that's the vision that I know I want. That's the vision I heard many of my colleagues want. Steve and I had a district meeting in February where we presented the destination Amherst and there was a lot of enthusiasm for removing parking from the comments. So it's what I believe our constituents want. I do share that concern about how much we lose. And so the question is one, the question you can't answer now but everyone is asking for, which is what is the impact on what we can on the budget if we aren't doing the Main Street lot? How does that affect the money that's already been allocated? But I guess my secondary question related to that is if we know that there will be, it sounds like we don't know what the reduction will be but we know there will be one. Where are we thinking we're gonna make that money up? Because that sort of my concern is, I think Kathy said it clearly, which is option three may have the lowest cost but we are also going to lose some of the funding source. We already have money allocated from CPA. I'm not looking to question the decision of CPA and how they wanna spend the money that they decide on how to allocate. They've made that commitment, but the money from the transportation enterprise from that borrowing, if that's gonna be reduced, how are we looking to plug that? And I don't know if that's a Dave question or a Paul question, but I'm looking at the project sort of with two lenses. One is our responsibility as keepers of the public way. And from that lens, I'm thinking, I don't just wanna fix the basics. I want a revitalized common. I don't want parking on the common. I want a public space that can be really enjoyed. But then there's also the fiduciary responsibility lens of so where is that money coming from? Because what made me uncomfortable with the presentation in November was the expected part grant. And then there was even a line for potential private fundraising. And those are big question marks, right? And especially right now, private fundraising is questionable because there's a lot of people going for private fundraising. So where are we thinking we're plugging that gap if we have that? Not if, it sounds like we will have a reduction from the transportation enterprise fund borrow and we just don't know how much. Dave? So those great questions, Evan, thank you. I guess my response would be similar to what Guilford said a moment ago, which is if the council would like us to really sharpen our pencils on and dig in and fully on plan three, that's the direction we will go. We don't know the delta. We don't know if we eliminate the parking lot in front of town hall. Yes, there will be a reduction. We can't draw on the transportation enterprise fund. As deeply, but there will be some costs for parking on Boltwood and parking on Main Street. So we need to work those numbers. That will get us to the shortfall you alluded to, Evan. And we would need to come back to you with a proposal as to how we would make up those costs. There are some grant opportunities coming up. I know of one in the near term in February and another one in June. So if we're patient and we, if the council comes to some conclusion on which plan you would like to move forward with, we will move that plan forward. And if there is a shortfall, town staff, I think we're pretty successful at getting grants. We would need to go out there and find additional money. I don't, like you all, I don't want to go back to seat back for another ask. I think we've been there and there will be one coming before you in the months ahead, which you already know about, but I don't wanna go back there again. I don't wanna go back to the well. So my hope and my ask of you would be to have us go forth with plan three and develop it further and answer some of these questions. Alyssa. Because I'm being asked, unlike previous speakers, to define this purely on finance without reiterating everything everybody said. I just need to be clear in the next presentation, as you said, Dave, if we come to some conclusion that plan three is the one for you, then you have the ability to focus on it. And so we do need very clear numbers, not, well, we think it'll be in this range. It's like, it's gonna be this. The trade-off is gonna be that. We're gonna have parking spaces on Main Street, which we can obviously use because it's another parking thing. So that's enterprise fun. It's just gonna be different than what it was gonna be before. I'm frustrated by, this is a comment, that it's not gonna be the same thing but this is a comment that is not in lieu of a question. It is a comment, which is I am frustrated by this idea that it's busy work to talk about just what it would do to fix it. Obviously at this point, that's true. That wasn't true for the last seven years. Nobody came up with figures that they brought to a body that said just fixing it would cost X amount of dollars. We've had this conversation with the Jones Library of Innovations. We have this conversation with literally every capital project. Nobody ever wants to come up with the just fix it numbers. And then luckily, maybe the discussion becomes moot, but I think it's frustrating for the residents who see us talking about these big capital projects and we never explained to them that Delta we've referenced here several times. Look, yeah, you could just fix things but you just end up with this thing that looked like that and it would cost so much money. It's not worth doing. And so I appreciate that now we're enough down another path that it's not worth doing that way. But it would have been worth doing seven years ago so that I could have been explaining that to people all this time, why we need to make this investment? Why not just go ahead and fix it? So I think that's a cultural shift our town is looking for, which leads me into my X cultural shift, which is maintenance. And I know you've heard us say it, but I don't think anyone's really heard us say it because it has never happened the entire time I've lived here. And obviously, Dave, you've lived here a lot longer. But in terms of my service in town government, we've never put in maintenance funds. We've never had a maintenance plan for a project like this. And we know, because this council has said it over and over again, that we want that to be true moving forward because we wanna be able to tell our constituents that, that that's not gonna happen again. This happened on the current, a lot of current people's watch that it deteriorated to the point that it has. The way we're not gonna let that happen is we're gonna have to unfortunately put aside a bunch of money that people would rather spend someplace else so that we have it available to keep this up. So I think showing people that we have a robust maintenance plan that this time is gonna be different and we've turned over a new leaf that way, I think will really help, especially if we do have to like tell people we have to wait for another grant or tell people we might have to go back to CPAC or we might have to move some money around a different way, but showing that to people, not only the counselors who get to make the decision, but also to our residents to be able to say, we're gonna manage this better moving forward. I think we'll go a long way toward support of just, what is it that you guys are trying to accomplish there? Do we have any response to that? Or is that a comment or a question, Alyssa? Oh, it's a question in that if we don't get a robust maintenance plan for this, I can't imagine why councils would vote for it, except they thought it looked pretty. I mean, it has to be there as part of this proposal before we agree, you know, at some point, not next week, but it has to be part of the whole package. And so that information has to be provided, not just be, oh yeah, we'll do that at some point. Gilford. So I'm gonna step a little out of character. And this is the third time I've heard this comment and it actually cuts a little bit from the standpoint that town staff comes forward many, many times and says, yes, you wanna build a new soccer field. You wanna put irrigation system in. This is what you need to put in the maintenance budget of this department to make it work. What always happens is there's no money to put it in. And that's because money is allocated to other things. And we as the staff don't get very far when we say this is it, but the council guidelines is you only get a 2% increase for their next year's budget. 2% increase in next year's budget doesn't allow you to do what you just asked to do. You cannot then build something really nice and say you're gonna add to the maintenance budget to keep it really nice forever. You're gonna maintain a status quo budget at 2% or 3% and I can pull up the numbers because I've kept track of how much my budget has changed over the years. If I've had a 2% increase anywhere is because we added a program, someone really wanted but it's just not been there. And yes, it is a change of shift but the change in shift is across the board. It's not just with staff saying, coming up with the plan, it's with people realizing that yes, we're gonna give you a number and you're not gonna like the number. And you gotta then decide, well, do I do this and make it really nice knowing that in a few years it's not gonna look really nice but for a few years I'm gonna have a shiny car. I hate to say it that way and I try not to say these things and I try not to be like this but that's kind of what's happened over the 18 years I've been here. I've been told, this is where you are this is what you're gonna get. And we said we need more and we don't find more because it isn't at the well anymore. It's used up. Sorry. Oh, thank you. That was very elucidating, Guilford. Mandy Jo. I'm not sure I constricted this cost but I will try. I know we're times limited. I'm looking at plan three and I must. Parking Mandy Jo. Parking. Parking, yes. Plan three is the plan I'm looking at because it does eliminate the parking essentially eliminate the parking on the town common. So I am thrilled to see that plan. I have a lot of comments on that plan. One of the things that goes to cost is this plan doesn't seem to include a spot for bike parking for the Valley bike share. And I know that sort of sits on the common sidewalks right now. I don't, I'm assuming it's not what I think is a bus shelter near the bus stop. Looking at the common, looking at the plan. And is that, so cost wise is that something I think we need to put it in here somewhere if it's going to be a long-term program in a way that fits in with the design but also is that something that could then be paid for as additional to the parking renovation on Main Street and on Boatwood that would be able to be pulled out of the transportation fund to make sure that that bike parking is there. In terms of maintenance, I support everything Gilford said. It's also on us as a town council to make sure those funds are there. Do, you know, I worry with this plan that there would be extra maintenance. I is striving into paths but there's a path that starts in the middle of the Spring Street lot that I fear what Dave said about social paths would just happen anyway, starting at the corner, the Southeast corner of the lot. And I know the DPW moved away from that path at the Southeast corner to I assume keep a tree but if we end up with a social path there there is more maintenance costs to try and keep the grass there. And so I really want DPW and this plan to explore putting that path back towards the corner even if it eliminates one tree. You know, and I think for now that's my comments on cost and parking is yay, getting rid of the parking. Is that it, Mandy Jo? I think for now I'm trying to stay within cost and parking as much as possible. Yeah, you submitted a number of comments and questions about parking. I have them too. I can go through them if you want me to or if you want. I trust that they've seen that and so that they can address them as needed. Okay, let's see, we have Lynn. Oh, sorry, Alyssa. Yes, a couple of questions. My own personal experience with grants are that the state really doesn't want to take money back. And so I would hope that before we walk away from that grant that we would actually see whether or not they will accept a modified proposal and it would help accommodate the parking that is being proposed surrounding this versus just saying, well, it's not what we first proposed and so here's your money back. They really don't want the money back. They really would like you to figure out how to spend it. My second point is that we keep talking about the transportation fund as a source of funds and from everything I have heard, the transportation fund is in the red. And so as I look at this and the very exciting possibility particularly of design three and really want this, I would really want to make sure that our sources of funds are as solid as we think they are. Thank you. Thank you, Alyssa. I'm sorry, apparently I'm just confused again because I thought we were talking just about costs and then I heard we were talking about costs and parking. So are we talking about parking now still? Cost and parking. Okay, cause that's not what we said at the beginning of that part. But if we're talking about parking and as you indicated, Mandy, Joe had many questions about that and then I wanted to point out associated with parking. I think we already heard several comments about parking earlier tonight too. And of course it was stated that existing parking is heavily used. And so the next time we talk, not now, but when it comes to Grace Church, I appreciate that we included their comments in the packet, but we need to know that they may not be happy with our solution, but we need to know how much of that we feel we've accommodated of what they've requested and what Pat brought up. I mean, again, we may not please all the people all the time, but just to be clear on what we feel like we can do to accommodate them and then what simply can't be accommodated if we go with design three. So that would be a future thing for the future presentation. And then in terms of the parking, one of the things that I know that I get a little frustrated with my fellow counselors when it seems like everybody should just ride their bike everywhere and we forget that there are lots of people with mobility issues that are not officially disabled that don't have handicap placards that don't use a wheelchair, but that do have mobility impairments that prevent them from using those lovely walkable circles that we do in things like a master plan and that we like to imagine everybody's just walking everywhere in downtown. And one of the things that has come up over the years despite the fact that we have the most vocal proponents of make everything pedestrian, just shut down the streets and don't even have cars go through it is that people do need even in a post pandemic world, people do need to be able to access town hall and those parking spaces are very convenient for people doing work at town hall. So what I'm asking is when we make the next presentation about how we're gonna do Main Street and Boltwood parking that we make it clear how we get people from those spaces to town hall who have town hall business that really feel like they need to do it in person. I know I personally may not feel like as a resident I ever need to go to town hall but because I can do everything online but there are lots of people who still feel like they need to do things in person once in person becomes available again. So if we can just show what that path is which then leads me to the other thing about parking which is associated with accessibility for official accessibility issues because we've talked a lot rightfully so about making sure that this space is programmatically accessible. But once again, we just need to be able to tell a clear story about how you can get out of your handicap accessible van or get out of your car and get in your wheelchair to get to that beautifully accessible space. So if we end up putting more handy officially handicap parking along some of the edges that won't help the people who don't have official handicap but it will help the people who we are trying to make this more accessible for. So again, just to tell more about that and that can be really hard to see on these drawings and I think people make a lot of assumptions about that. And so if we could just like add a text paragraph to a future iteration of the plan that shows you can get out of a wheelchair here and come right up this curb cut and you'll get right into this section where people can do celebrations. And if you're just somebody who uses a walker and it's kind of slow and can't walk very far you can park over here and get into town hall at the side entrance you obviously wouldn't be going up those stairs anyway and that will work for you. And I think that just again shows that this is not just about making it look cool and having a wonderful 3D representation of people walking around enjoying themselves but also for some of the practical aspects of people who physically need to be able to get into spaces to show that, yeah, of course we're being thoughtful about that and this is how we're accommodating that. Thank you, I don't see anyone. That wasn't a question, was it Alyssa? It's not a question for tonight. It's for the future version of a prison, of a report and what the map looks like and the little line drawings and what those things mean, that's what it's for. It's not, I'm sure they're, everybody's gonna tell me obviously we're making this as accessible as possible but I wanna be able to tell the story by showing people that and everything Western and Samson which I know we love them but I can't hand their plan to anybody and say to the average person on the street isn't this gonna be amazing? And they're like, yeah, sure it looks okay but I can't explain those things that I just asked about based on the kinds of drawings that are provided that way so some text would be helpful. Okay, Dorsey. Since Alyssa was talking about accessibility may I ask a question on that topic? Yes. Okay, I think she was really bringing up some very important points and I think my opinion sometimes is that everything doesn't have to be accessible but that something has to be really accessible and I went walking in that Conte forest or whatever, it had raised walkways with railings. I liked that, that was really nice and it was a good walk. So I'm wondering is there some part of this common that could have some railings on the walkways and that would be nice to be near one of the places Alyssa mentioned where somebody who is in fact a wheelchair bound could get from a van and get onto that part. So maybe they wouldn't be able to go through everything in the park but they'd be able to go perhaps near the central sitting area and performance light performance area. So that's a question, it's a real question. Gilford. There are railings throughout the project. If you are asking if we can have a rail which like runs along the entire path, that's something we can look at. Dad. I'm interested to know where it works and where it doesn't work but I think the idea of some railings is really good. That's a, Silvio Conte is like a boardwalk. Dave. Yeah, I just wanted to address part of Dorothy's question I think is, so we have a legal obligation. We must make the walkways, the seating areas, the assembly areas accessible by law. We must do that. So there is no leeway, no wiggle room, no anything there. So somebody must be able to get from the Spring Street lot to the central seating area. They must be able to get from South Pleasant Street to the seating area to a bench to a walkway. They must be able to get from Main Street to the central area and all the way down to Spring Street excessively and from in front of Town Hall, likewise going from the northeast to the southwest corner of the park. So that is a given. Any of these plans, any, we can't put a shovel in the ground if that isn't an expectation of this project. So just clarify. Okay, so we'll have two more comments, Kathy. Yeah, I'm going to go back to George's request that we put up plan three and I'm focused completely on parking. So if we could just put that visual, Mandy was talking about the walkways going across because I have very specific focused parking questions. And let me just preface it with, we have not put this up to a district one meeting, North Amherst meeting, but the North Amherst people drive downtown at this point on not everyone bikes. There are a few bikers, but a lot of people drive downtown. And the number of times when I came to a council meeting on Monday night where that parking lot was full, the parking lot behind Town Hall was full. The other parking lot was full. I'm totally willing to park in the basement at lower level of Boltwood. But I would sometimes three streets over because Steve rides his bike when it's raining and snowing, and I don't, but there just wasn't any place. And I'm thinking, this is a Monday night, what's everyone doing downtown? But we heard from a lot of small businesses that the virtue of that particular set of parking places, and there are about 31 of them now, is you can come downtown for 45 minutes, you're paying a bill at Town Hall, you're picking up a sandwich, and then you're leaving. It's not, you're staying, so it's a high turnover a lot. So three, Pat's question about, what are all those slants, if you put it back up, we're giving up roadway, as Steve said, for slots. And we're losing 18 spaces, which is a lot of spaces in a town that lost a bunch down at one North Pleasant, one East North Pleasant used to have a parking lot. And we don't have other spaces we're opening up. So I wanna make sure that that design three is real. It's got a lot of slanted cars coming in at a slant. And Pat's question on, does the road become one way there if the cars can park on a slant? And Main Street has them parking on a slant. So I could see maybe moving the way the commons goes up. It doesn't go up quite as much. So you give up what is now a parking lot to street and the street becomes slanted parking. But I just wanna know that even the ones I'm seeing on the drawing are real. I'm much more leaning toward two because what I hear is I can't park downtown and I can't go downtown without my car. And it's a range of people with kids in their car that they can't all ride, bike downtown. So I just wanna have a two versus three and that visual much better sense of can we really even do what you show in three? So you didn't lose all 32, you lost 18. Let's hear from Guilford and then my... I put the visual on my iPad but it's hard otherwise to talk about it. And then let's have a time check and decide whether we're gonna go long tonight or what we're gonna do because this... We obviously have a lot more questions and a lot more topics to cover. And Paul originally said to me that he thought this would probably be the topic of a few of our meetings. So Guilford, do you have a response to what Kathy just said? Yes, I do. The parking spaces are real parking spaces. They're not like some of the parking spaces we have in town now which are too short, too narrow. These spaces are laid out at the right dimensions. What we can do is if you want, we can print a bigger drawing that we can actually give to you that shows it and you can have a paper copy if you want. We can make one for whoever wants a paper copy or two and three and you can have a copy and you can look at it and play with it and measure it if you want. I can do that and get that to you for probably next week, sometime or the week after. Be nice, good. How many, like everybody wants one? Yes. Sure. I'm fine with getting it as an attached file, Guilford. You don't have to give me the piece of paper. I can print it. Oh, okay, why? But yes. I can print it big. I want it big. Okay, she wants it big. I do, I do. All right, Steve. Thank you for letting me speak. So I was actually gonna make a comment about the rails. So it's a really good point that anytime you get above, I think it's one in 20, then you need to have a handrail. So that will change the image of the common, those railings that will also change the ability of people to say move not on the pathways like someone trying to take a non-anticipated shortcut will find themselves in some cases hitting a rail, but it would be useful to see what those are. So the, I guess I need to make one other comment about the parking, which is I sent an image to the TSO of the common in 1945-ish, 46-ish, in which there was nose and parking all along that edge of the common where there's a proposed to be nose and common net of parking now. And so if you counted all of those spaces at that time, it probably equal half of what is on the common. It seemed to me about equals. So I guess the question that I have, and this is another question that I brought up, is the PVTA spot, a space stop. So the PVTA stop takes away the possibility of multiple parking spaces on that area facing the common. If the PVTA spot, come on, Steve, PVTA stop or move down closer to where the other PVTA stop is near the police station, then that would actually, wouldn't that give a chance to have even more spaces up by Town Hall? And then of course you'd have to deal with the downstream problem of having a new place for this PVTA down there, but there's less of a parking demand down there also. Okay. We did talk to PVTA. Their concern is where the bus stop would be moved to is very narrow now. So they would want to see us make some changes at that end where the new bus stop would be. So that we don't have an issue of mirrors. Did they, the section from basically from the crosswalk. And then they would have to move down to the bus stop. And then they would have to move down to the bus stop. At, um, I can't think of the name of it. Um, loan, where loan Wolf is in the crosswalk right there. From that crosswalk down to the bus stop. That's very narrow for them. And they actually do have. Accidents every once in a while with their buses and losing mirrors. So they would want to have the, um, modified bus stop put in in front of the police station to do that. And, um, you know, I'm one of many voices on this, but is it possible to do that calculation? How many spaces would be gained near the common verse? You know, if that happens. Yes, we could do that. You're also losing loading spaces too. When you, uh, put vehicle parking there for small vehicles. I would be concerned about people pulling out of angled parking spaces near the corner of main street and South pleasant street and main street intersect. Are you going to run into people coming around the corner and hitting somebody who's coming out of the parking space? Evan. Oh, sorry. Uh, was that you, Steve? Yeah, I don't want to do a cross talk if that's not appropriate, but, um, I was going to just respond to Chris. Could you look at that issue also because that's a really legitimate concern. So obviously there's some standard as to how close you could do. You know, angled parking. To an intersection. Evan. Um, so. On parking. Um, and again, I'm probably joining the chorus of I, I'd like to actually see. Nine three again, because I'm working from memory. Um, I, it looked like there was angled parking on boltwood. It looked like there was also some added parking along main street, but I'm curating. Um, what I don't remember seeing, thank you Kathy is on, um, South pleasant. So I mean, if we're eliminating the entrance to the parking lot, the parking on South pleasant actually stops a ways before the entrance to the parking lot, which I assume is partly to provide ability for cars to turn in. But if we're eliminating the parking lot and eliminating that entrance, could you also gain spaces on South pleasant street? Um, up to essentially the turn from South pleasant onto, onto main. The area right now where the entrance to the parking garage is also the right turn lane. So the spaces we have in that section of South pleasant. Are actually laid out. So you have a section for parking. Right. Turn right. So we would have to. Adjust that. Right turn lane either. You away with it or move it. More into the center of the roadway. If you wanted to have. More parking. Um, the plan. Two and three both actually take away two spaces on South pleasant street. Because we're moving away from. A couple of trees on the common. So if you decide you don't want to. Move away from some trees with a sidewalk. You'd keep two spaces there. And then you possibly could. If we're not going to do, we're not going to do outside dining in the parking spaces anymore. Um, there is a possibility of squeezing some, maybe squeezing some more spaces. Diagonally in that section. Okay. Um, Mandy Joe, and then we'll do a time check. I think what I wanted to say was to respond to, to Kathy's and, and her constituents concerns about. You know, losing 11 or 18 spots. Um, This isn't a plan that's going to last for 10 years. This is a plan that's going to last for 50 or 60 years. I mean, the last time the parking lot was added in the 60s. We're. 60 years away from that right now. Um, And I think we need a long-term vision. And we can't worry in the short term about the loss of 11 or 15 spots in an area that we want to have welcoming. We want to have welcoming and a great location for gathering. Um, and so I guess that's why I'm not worried about the loss of 11 or the loss of 18. The difference between those two, between plan two and plan three is seven spaces. You know, like it's, if, if we're talking about, if we're really only focusing plan two and three and, and I'm really now only focusing on three, we're really only talking about like five to seven spaces. And that's not going to make a whole lot of difference to our parking situation in town. Our parking situation with those five spaces or without those five spaces is going to be just as bad. Um, you know, and so. I thought that was an important point to make. And I was going to echo Christine's breast drops concern right now when you look at that plan, because it's in the packet. So I've zoomed in and all. Um, the bus stop. Just takes the corner a little tighter. Um, and it's right there less paving and, you know, with the parking on the east side of, of sort of the common at main street. And I like the parking on that side because there's, it makes it actually from my just initial thinking safer. I feel like it's safer to do the backing out of those spots. Um, whereas the closer you get to that corner. I think the much more dangerous the backing out of those spots will be. And so I'd be hesitant to add the parking close to the corner, because not only I think is the parking backing out. More dangerous. You're then getting close to a crosswalk and the gathering spots for the corner. Um, of where people wait. And I would say on just one other comment, thank you, Gilbert for explaining why that sidewalk juts out and all. Um, because that was one of my questions on the sidewalk section. So now I know why it does that. I don't like it. And I'm just going to say that right now. I'd rather plant a new tree. Um, if the tree dies from keeping, I mean, the sidewalk straight right now. So. We'd, I guess just be trying to help the tree, but I'd rather keep the sidewalk straight. Okay. So, um, I just wanted to add a couple of comments of my own that I didn't say back. Um, unless there are any responses to Mandy, Joe, where that's, was that mainly comments, Mandy? I think it was mainly comments in response to others. Okay. Um, I just wanted to mention, um, you know, some of my comments, which are that. Um, I really appreciate that the, the bid said that they're going to do outreach to all the different of butters. Um, I think that will be great because I, um, and, and I think that some of that will have to be done. Um, with, uh, interpretation, because not all the butters are English speakers. Um, and, um, that I have a concern about the whole maintenance issue ongoing into the future. Um, if we need to really resolve that before we commit. And that we, I feel like we need before we commit, we need to also figure out where the money's coming from. I mean, I'm hearing that. We don't know that. So that, that is a concern to me. Um, And I also really want us to the extent possible think about, you know, the fact that I know this whole thing started in 2013. Um, but now we have these new, um, both racial equity and climate goals for the town and, you know, how, how we can conceivably integrate some of that into this plan, including the possibility of a solar canopy. Um, and, uh, or, you know, charging stations or whatever. Um, but the canopy would be really cool. And, um, So, uh, do. People feel like, um, Or do you, Dave and Guilford and Paul feel like you have enough to go on to, um, We didn't go over all the questions that were the questions. So I'm assuming that you'll just be able to look at them. And then we'll talk about the next time. And that we'll just carry on. From here. Um, At our next meeting on January. What is it, seventh, January seven. So we could start right in with the questions. You know, more of the detailed questions about, uh, the design and outreach. And any of the, any of the responses that you want to make to the questions that we that are in writing that we didn't get to tonight. Does that make sense? Paul. Yeah. So we see this as an iterative process. You know, the council will give us comments. We'll go back and process that you get the answers that you've posed to the questions you posed. Um, So I think that that's, that's what we expect to do. I just want to be clear what we're walking out with in terms of you want us to focus on, uh, Plan three, which shows no parking on the common and then. Develop more of the pricing on that. Give a, get more information about how the pricing works and where the funding sources come from. And then talk a little bit more about all the details that were raised in the design elements for the next meeting. Is that accurate? Um, I would not say that's accurate, but, um, I think plan three involves no parking, right? Correct. Um, yeah, I, I. There's not unanimous agreement on that because I don't, I don't think Kathy agrees. I don't know. Other people, but, um, So if you could be explicit about what you want us to bring back next time. So we're, we're able to give you the information you need. I think, um, answering the questions, uh, That were in the counselor comments. Um, I think we're still looking at different, different options. Parking or no parking. Um, Is my sense of it. Um, so I don't think there's a definitive answer on that yet. Um, I don't think there's a definitive answer to that. Um, Maybe. Maybe you could narrow it just to two and three. You can take one off the table. You know, I, I think you, we need to. Get a little narrower. Um, Yeah. So, um, Is that good for Dave? I just chime in. I would respectfully like to ask Paul maybe outside of this discussion. Um, Um, I'm just, I'm sensitive to the fact that, um, it's been a long year for all of us. And there's not a lot of time between now and January. Seventh. I think you said the next meeting is, and, and we just, if we could just look at that with Paul and see if that's realistic. Cause we, we, it is an iterative process, but we, We want to come back with as much as we possibly can. Um, and, and we'll just need to talk about that. Uh, staff. Uh, timing a little bit on that. In January 25th is the. Is the second January meeting. So if you, if you want to decide now that that's when you want to come back, that's. We can talk to Paul. Okay. That's fine. That's fine. Just let, let me know what you decide. Thank you. That, that would be great. Um, all right. So. Do we want to do the appointments? We, we are at. 823. Hands. Yeah, there are a lot of hands up. Oh, there are. I would like to determine whether or not the rest of the council, that is not part of TSO. Would like to stay or leave at this time. If you are planning. If we're done with the North common conversation, then I supported journey in the full council meeting, but I, I, I yet to be determined whether that's what we're done with, given Alyssa's comment. Alyssa's comment. Well, it was the comment. Oh, oh, oh, yeah. Sorry. Yeah, my, my screen wasn't on the hands. So I, uh, Alyssa. So I, I agree with, with what we're trying to narrow here in terms of what are we expecting staff to have done by the seventh, which realistically, honestly, is there really anything they can get done between now and the seventh? I know that I have some personal deadlines in my other work life. I bet they have some year-end stuff. And I'm guessing they're not going to have a lot of time to devote to this between now and then. So it would be helpful. I think if we gave them guidance and as you said, you offered the January 25th as a possibility as well. The other thing I want to make clear is that, you know, you, I think you did a nice job, Darcy of trying to say, okay, is that a comment or a question? But I want to be clear that. The things that we asked about tonight, all of us were none of them were just like comments, like whatever. So they made some comments. They were all not questions to be answered tonight, but they were all concerns to be taken into account for a future presentation. So I know staff took really good notes, but they are not to just focus on what was written down and provided in our packet tonight that we didn't have time to read ahead of time. Because there are other things that we brought up tonight. And for example, if the farmer's market issue is going to be addressed in any fashion, then it needs to be addressed from the state from a different standpoint than it is just in that limited question. I have additional follow up on that. So. And I will have follow up about trees, right? So I don't want them to focus like it, you know, the thing we have to focus on is, you know, I don't want them to focus like it, you know, the thing we have to do next is answer the written questions. No. The thing they have to do next is think about what would make sense and then talk with you, Darcy, about what would make sense for the next presentation, because there were a lot more questions raised tonight. For future answers then we're written down and all of those need to be addressed at some point in this continuum. And so I think we're going to have to depend a lot on you to work with Paul to figure out what could happen at the seventh and what could happen at 25th. But I don't want us walking out of here thinking that the answer to tonight's thing is just answer those written questions from the counselors because that's not the right answer. That's good. Evan. Yeah, I just from a, from a, how we're framing this perspective. I understand that it's very simple for us to say. Park parking versus no parking options because one has no parking in the common, but I think it's important to point that the difference between the two is actually only about seven or eight spaces. And that when we talk about the no parking option, what we're talking about is no parking on the common, but we're not losing 30 something spaces. We're losing 18. And I worry if we, if we refer to it as the no parking option, it sounds like we're removing all 30 spaces and there will be none of that parking available. And so I know it seems minimal, but I worry about how this is being framed as the parking option. The no parking sounds like full parking lot versus. Loss of 30 spaces, but in reality it's loss of 11 spaces versus loss of 18 spaces. And I think that that's a much less dramatic change that we need to make sure we keep in mind. And so I'm going to hope that we, we not say the no parking option, even though it's an easy shorthand and I understand that. Thank you. Evan Dorsey. Just wanting to respond to your comment. About climate and social justice. To point out that the green as is envisioned, particularly in a plan three meets those requirements. Climate, because. Maintaining our urban forest. The lungs that help us breathe in the center of town. In the most democratic space in town, which is what the common is and will be more so when it's refurbished. We meet social justice and climate. Concerns at least on one level. I mean, somebody can go and sit in the green. And bring a sandwich and have lunch. Somebody can go to a store and buy something and have lunch. Somebody can come and just sit and look at the trees. It's a really a great space that's open to everybody. And when you have the accommodations made to make it totally accessible, then it is a completely wonderful democratic space. So I think it meets social justice and climate concerns by keeping it as green as possible. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. I just want to comment on for next meeting, since I'm not a member of TSO, a couple of things that would be very helpful to me. Number one, getting. More high res versions of plan two and three. We don't have. High res of either of them right now. They're both stuck into PowerPoints. And so it's, you can't read the writing, but. Digital, you know, whether that's a high res or higher res PDF or something of them so that we can zoom in better and really see the, you know, the. The key and all too. And then for, for TSO, since I'm not a member of TSO, the opportunity, I think, to comment on specifics of plan three. Prior to it coming back to TSO, so that maybe it could be modified on what or, you know, or addressed some of the concerns that we didn't get to, since we were just seeing it for the first time. For the whole council, again, like we were allowed to this time to send comments to the chair, I think would be very helpful for the whole council and giving us time to do so. I hear you. I think, I think that's a good idea to have another comment period. A general comment, you know, any comments that anyone wants to submit. Christine. I had a question about schedule. And this has to do with when. The town council. Referred this topic to the TSO. I think they asked to have a recommendation within the town council. I think they asked to have a recommendation within 90 days. And I wonder how strict that timeline is, because we're already 30 days beyond when the referral was made. So if we go to January 25th, we're going to be 60 days. And then staff is going to need time to develop plans and develop cost estimates, et cetera. So the middle of February is going to be 90 days. So I'm just wondering, is that 90 days flexible? Or is that kind of a rigid timeline? Um, Lynn, do you want to answer that? Yeah, I also would like to point out that your meeting, I doubt is on the 25th of January, since that's a council meeting. It must be another evening. Okay. Unless I'm reading the wrong calendar. It's the 28th. Okay. And as for the 90 days, the council has always been very willing to get extensions when needed, especially when we're having an engaged conversation at this level. I do think that if we're going to have staff. Come back with something for the 28th. If we're going to have an engaged conversation like this, we'll ask again, whether or not people are interested in if the chair of TSO. Is willing to have it be a meeting of the whole. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. And I also have a question for the group and that is. We, um, if I'm asking for comments again from the council, what happened this time around was that, um, I couldn't share them with the staff before the meeting because. The whole council hadn't had the opportunity to submit them in writing. And so I guess, um, what I would want is sort of like, uh, to let the whole council know that the, that the comments would be due a certain day. Um, and the TSO would also need to submit written comments. And if they wanted to have them considered, and then all of those comments could go to staff. Um, and that would be helpful to staff. That's what they wanted to do this time, but didn't feel like it could be done. Because TSO had, didn't have the opportunity to put theirs in. Um, And any of that Dorothy, if there's a Darcy, if there's anything I can do to help organize questions, I'm more than glad to. Sure. Um, Alyssa, I have a process question here that's obviously a larger question than just this issue, but this is the issue that's in front of us. I actually completely disagree with the process of having 13, which is never all 13 town counselors, but it's not all of them. Um, I don't know how many town counselors write one question or 25 pages of questions and expecting staff to answer all of them equally as though they are the council's questions. They're not the town council's questions. They're individual town counselors questions. The staff is not obligated to answer 13 sets of individual town counselor questions. So I think that they could spend a whole lot of time. I mean, I mean, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know in terms of if we get better drawings. You can set up a deadline all you want. You can funnel in events of questions, but it doesn't make any sense to me that we imagine now that suddenly town counselors. Are we going to do that with the budget? I mean, this does not make sense to me. We do not just all get to ask random questions and they all get to answer all of them. If the staff doesn't care about that at all, then staff shouldn't be spending any time on that question or because it's a brilliant idea that maybe the staff would want to work on, but how do we address that? And so this is a process issue. It really isn't as simple as we all turn in questions and staff answers them all. That's actually not okay. There needs to be a different approach to this because staff, staff is not going to be able to answer them. It's not going to be in the right time, but also individual 13 sets of questions are not what the town council want to know is that what individual counselors want to know. So if Lynn has thoughts on that, that'd be great. My own. Personal. Attempt has been to try to cluster questions before they're sent on. And I am more than willing to do what I can to work with Darcy to councilors so that they understand that we don't want to be repetitive or duplicative of what's already been gone over. And, you know, to use our discretion and asking new questions or nothing. No, I don't. Excellent point, Darcy. So are we good? I think we are. I think I think the we'll get the questions. I'll talk to Lynn about it. We'll set a deadline for them. Paul and and Chris and Dave and Guilford can talk about what you know, what they think they want to do on the seventh or the 28th or whether you want to just come on the 28th. And just let me know. Okay. So, you other councillors, if you want to. I'm going to adjourn the full council meeting and obviously TSO will continue. For those that are not on TSO, if you would like to stay, we can also put you into the audience. Okay. Thank you very much for having us tonight. Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much for all your hard work. Very, very, very useful. Yes, thank you for plowing my road. Okay, so I think we should get through these appointments, don't you? Okay. All right, so we have four of them. And we'll start with the agricultural commission. Um, would you like to present that Paul? So there are actually two appointments. One is the designated appointee is a non voting member from the planning board, Doug was Marshall. The other is for a two year term Christina Smith, who is works at the Department of Agricultural Resources. And she specifically works in agricultural preservation, restriction program lives in town, has wanted to give back in town does not work in her bot in her work in Hampshire County. Very interested in the local farming community and seemed like a really nice match. And according to the chair of the agricultural commission, what he's looking for someone who can help them stay organized on their missions. And she was very eager to thought that she would bring that skill set to them. Okay. Any, any discussion? Questions? All right. And I move to recommend the town council, the approval of the following time, manage your recommendations for appointment to the agricultural commission for a two year term expiring actually three year term expiring June 30, 2023, Christina Smith and for a one year term, expiring June 30, 2021, Douglas Marshall drive a second Darcy, I'm sorry. I thought it said a two year term for Christina Smith. Am I misreading this? Does it say two year? What I'm looking at says two years. I'm just asking. I copied it in long. Was it to help? Yes. And it's expiring 2022. Yes. Okay. I, I verbally amend that. In a second. Second. Okay, all those in favor, Alyssa, I'm sorry, I need the motion clarified. It's how many years for each term? I don't understand the motion on the table. Your term expiring June 2022 Christina Smith and a one year term for Doug Marshall expiring. Yes. Okay. All right. Darcy. Yes, Dorothy. Yes. Evan. Yes. George. Yes. Okay. So he is they are approved or recommended. The next bunch is the Disability Access Advisory Committee. Paul. Yes. So one of the appointees that you had approved previously had decided before he was sworn in determined that he could not take on the additional tasks of this volunteer effort. So we went out and now I have Martha Smith, who is a semi retired architect who has practiced for many years, has worked at the University serves on the as the facilities board member of the UMass architectural access board for 30 years, has a lot of experience presenting to the Disability Access Advisory Committee. And so it's very well qualified. Any comments or questions? Okay, I move to recommend sorry, I didn't see that Evan. Yeah. So just this is sort of continuing a conversation we've had a couple of times in this extends to both this committee and also when we get to community safety, I'll say in both now, which is for committees that have some type of demographic requirement. So Disability Access requires at least three to have identified the community safety, just having in the memo, whether we're meeting this charge or whether this person, because otherwise it's based on our assumption that we know these people. So I'm pretty sure for both of these committees, we've met the threshold of what the charge requires. But part of that is I know who some of these people are. And so I guess my question would be for both community safety and Disability Access just confirming that we're meeting the threshold. And then just in the future, if that was in the memo, that would be useful. You know, if you don't mind, I would like to update the memo with that information, revise it based on this meeting, and submit that to the council, because I think that's a good thing to show in the memo actually. Yeah, thanks for catching that Evan. Okay, any other comments or questions? All right, I move to recommend that the town council approved the following person recommended by the town manager to serve on the Disability Advisory Committee. For a three year term expiring June 30, 2023, Martha Smith. Second? Second. Roll call Darcy. Yes, Dorothy. Yes. Evan. Yes. George. Yes. Alyssa. Yes. Okay. Next up, Public Art Commission. Hello. Hi. So, Shelly Kirkwood is a had lived in Amherst when she was in college has returned to Amherst and was interested in getting involved, has a background as a curator of photography museums and was as an artist herself, and was interviewed by the chair of the Public Art Commission, along with the Resident Advisory Committee, and we all recommended, or that's why she's being appointed now. Any comments or questions? Okay, I move to recommend that the town council approved the following recommendations by the town manager, persons to serve on the Public Art Commission for a three year term expiring June 30, 2023, Shelly Kirkwood. Second? Second. Okay. Evan. Yes. George. Yes. Alyssa. Yes. Darcy. Yes. Dorothy. Yes. Okay. Amazing how hard it is to rotate like that. All right. Community Safety Working Group. Paul. So, there are two seats available, they're right now on the Community Safety Working Group. At our first or second meeting with the Community Safety Working Group, they identified the need to have additional, at least one additional member, especially a younger person of color, man of color. And they took it upon themselves to start to reach out into their networks to try and get people to apply. And they, they all actually actively did. And this young person puts the thing forward, interviewed with the interview team, which was just pretty daunting experience. He's, and what actually was really impressed the committee the most is that he had kind of an activity problem. So he had to drop, drop off and would have been a very easy thing not to come back on because then but he came back on answered all the questions really well. And so the unanimous among the interview team that this person should be added to the Community Safety Working Group. Thank you. Questions or comments? Did I say his name? Darius Cage. I'm not sure if I said his name or not. Yeah, is he is he a youth? Yes. He's 14 years old. I'm no kidding. Wow. I'm not sure that was in the description, was it? No, I don't think I put his agent. I don't know if I should have said his age actually. Yes, you should. Yeah. Or just say he's under 18 or something if you don't want to be specific. Right? Yeah, I mean, that seems very relevant for this committee. So, Alyssa, I was simply going to say that, you know, we always worry about demographics being too specific, right? And although we list people street addresses, so that makes it pretty obvious because you can look them up in the street list. But maybe at least saying that they're under 18 or, you know, high school student or something along those lines, not giving out his date of birth. Do we get that demographic? No, it's a tribute to the members of the community safety working group who have they work their networks and a lot of them even have children at the high school and couldn't get couldn't get someone to put came forward. So Mr. Cage, this serves a lot of credit. And just was really good at the interview as well. Yeah, so when you when you update that memo, you can put that into So Okay, I moved to record. Are there any other comments? Is that a comment, Alyssa? No. I moved to recommend that the town council approved the following person recommended by the town manager to serve on the community safety working group for an appointment to last the length of the working groups efforts, Darius Cage. Second. Thank you, George. Yes, Alyssa. Yes, Dorothy. Yes, Evan. Okay. So I will put all of those forward. For the Monday meeting of the town council. And I, I just had a quick question for you, Paul, about the appointment process. And that is does the do you just the art? Does the resident advisory committee meet? Or do they basically, you know, just advise you individually? They do mean they meet they met rest recently. I wasn't at their meeting, but they sort of compared notes on the interviews that they sat in on compared help how the interviews went that they thought was productive and things like that. And I didn't realize that that that they or the community participation officers conduct get feedback from people who have gone through the interview process, asking them what it was like. And, and that was interesting to me. And I just was wondering if there's a way that we could get any data about that, because that would be obviously of interest to this committee. So that was an initiative of the residents advisory committee. They did that. You know, they said they wanted to get feedback from all anybody through that interview. So that's their initiative. I, you know, I would see the interview, the question that went out even not actually, nor the results back. So I'm sure they'll look and get the results at some point. So if we wanted if we wanted to see that, what would be a good avenue to take? Well, they discuss it at a public means a public document. Again, I don't know much about what they what they're doing on that. Does anybody else interested in that? Dorothy is nodding. All right. Anyway, thank you, Paul. Let's why don't we move on and adopt our minutes of the 12. Look at our minutes of the 12 three meeting. People get a chance to look at those. Evan is nodding. I'm good to go. Make a motion. You want to make a motion, Evan? What was the date December 3rd? Yeah, I move to adopt the December 3rd 2020 TSO minutes as presented. Second, actually, they are slightly amended. There's their the version that's in there is is redlined. And it's all it's it's just, um, yeah, you would have to look at it. But it's just me going through them and, and, you know, just making minor corrections, etc. etc. So can we move to to accept them as amended? Yeah, I am. Okay. And did we have a second? Okay. All right. So now we're voting Alyssa. Stain. Darcy. Yes, Dorothy. Yes. Evan. Yes. George. Yes. Okay. All right. So the, are there any announcements? The next meeting, we are going to try to, if you recall, I was going to make amendments to the public way policy with the town manager. And so we're going to get that done for the next meeting. And maybe have some element of the North common coming up at the next meeting. That looks like what's happening. Then on the 28th, we had talked about having the surveillance technology come up on the 28th. And probably the North common again too. So that's a lot. But I guess we'll figure it out as we go. So any other comments about our work plan? Alyssa? It's just I had actually two things. One is that I think it makes a lot. Oh, wow, I just changed the view to full screen. So now I have no idea what I was going to say. Thank you. For surveillance technology for the 28th, and you know, we can, we can certainly still do that if you want. But in terms of talking about the North common project, and I still feel like we left it a little open ended as to what we thought was going to happen on the seventh and 28th. So we're largely depending on you to work that out with staff. But I know I don't like it when I show up at a TSO meeting, and I'm completely surprised by what we're actually doing associated with the topic associated with that. I think that it would make sense to write either a separate memo because you write one about the appointments, or you could be like George does with GOL and include like literally everything under the sun that GOLs talked about in their report and mention where we are with the North common project. Because I think saying what we've done with the North common project so far at TSO helps address that issue that we were talking about earlier in terms of the 90 day referral. So you just put like a little line that says, you know, referral from from town council dated such and such. Here's our progress on that particular thing because we did make a lot of progress tonight. And so I think that makes it a lot different than if we just literally don't say a word to the full town council until 90 days after we got the referral, I think it would just be good, especially as we're getting these referrals thick and fast, just to include in our report, whether it's separate from appointments or not to include a line that says referral from town council status. We had this big meeting we talked for hours. I think that would be more useful to the rest of the town council who couldn't make it and might want to watch the tape and also know that we're working on it. Yeah, that may or may not happen. But but why wouldn't we just update the council on where we're at with the with the referral? It's a good idea. It's just depends on the capacity of the chair. That's all. So, Dorothy, yes, I sent another email to Guilford about the resident parking study. And he said he thought he'd be ready for January 7. But that sounds too tight for me, because George and I would have to get together and talk and whatever. So I'm thinking, George, it's the 28th of January sound like a reasonable time to come back to the committee on that. Or what are your thoughts? I think I think that's pushing it. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I'm worried about the North Common. If that comes up on the 28th, that's going to eat up a lot of time. Okay. So I just think in terms of communicating with Guilford, it's a good idea to know that we he needs to get to us. We have to talk and meet with him. And then do you think February 11th is reasonable? Well, I think Dorothy, you and I certainly can meet before and we can have something prepared before the 28th. I have no problem with that. But I think realistically, we may not get that opportunity given all the what else is going on. But we can certainly be prepared to go at some point. And then whenever Darcy can get us on the agenda, we're ready to go. Okay. Okay, thank you. Okay. Anything else about upcoming work plan or agenda or anything? 857. Let me just check and see if there's anybody here. There's one, two, three, four, five, seven, eight. Somebody there. Tracy's there. Okay, so we're at the place where we can take general public comment. If there is any public comment, now is the time to raise your hand. Does not appear to be public comment. Okay, so there are no items not anticipated by the chair 48 hours in advance. And I believe that we are to declare us adjourned. Holiday, everybody are coming up very soon, or you may have already had it.