 Seeing that we have a majority of the Town Council present, I am calling this public forum to order at 6.31. And I'm turning over to Andy Steinberg because we are also calling a meeting of the Finance Committee on case they would like to review this issue after the public forum. And we have a quorum of the Finance Committee present and so I'll call a Finance Committee to order. This is a public forum regarding the allocation of the Town of Amherst funds, specifically Community Preservation Act funds, as the required match to a grant for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for the construction of a playground at Kendrick Park. The charter requires that we publish this in advance, which we have. It also requires that we hold a public forum because we are doing appropriation of money out of cycle. And it also means that we have an opportunity to hear from the public regarding this issue. Without further delay, David Zomac, our Assistant Town Manager, is going to provide us with a brief overview of the plan. Thank you very much. Appreciate your time tonight. I will try to be very brief. I know that the Council has heard about this project and I know there are others behind me, representatives of various boards and committees who may want to speak later during your regular agenda about this about this topic. If I could have the next slide. I'm going to run through a few slides here that we used during the process with the CPA Committee and the Finance Committee. As the Town Council knows, recently the Town was excited to receive a $400,000 grant through the Park Grant. This is a state grant, a competitive grant that is awarded to communities throughout Massachusetts to improve public parks, sometimes commons. We've applied a number of times. We've gotten grants for War Memorial Pool and Mill River Pool and we were fortunate this time to get a grant to hopefully improve Kendrick Park. Back in as early as 2008, 9, 10, 11, right in that period, the Town spent considerable time. Many volunteers came together and worked with the then Town Manager and a variety of boards and committees to create a design for Kendrick Park. As part of that design, there was, let's see if I can get, which one? Maybe Athena, can, oops, no, no, no, if you, I'm sorry, stay on that. I just wanted to show where we are, but these, maybe Athena, you could point out with your mouse where we are in Kendrick Park over on the left-hand side. If you go north, north, keep going north, oh, come back south. Right in there, oh, it says play area right there. So if you go over into the park, that is where the playground is proposed to be. As I said, we got a $400,000 grant. This plan is in early design phases. So in other words, the placement of the playground is where the committee proposed it to be. The actual design is what we are proposing to pay for with part of the grant. So the LSSE Commission, Public Works, the Planning Department have all had informal discussions about what the park might look like and if we scroll down, we'll take a look at. So as part of the design, we did get together with some staff and LSSE was briefed on this and talked about a very simple park. This would not be a spray park. This would simply be a playground with accompanying associated walkways that would really be the first step in the town's process to bring life to Kendrick Park. It's a wonderful public space, but really there isn't much to do there other than passive recreation at this point. So we had to come up with a preliminary design and that's what you see on the screen before you. As I said, it would include walkways, a play scape, shade structures, and it would work well within the existing topography of the park. Next slide. This really lays out a rough budget for the both the design and the construction. A total project cost of about $660,000 with 400 of that coming from the state and the remaining share is what we sought and received a recommendation from CPAC and that's what brings us here tonight. So I think I'll stop there. Thank you. Just to inform the audience during our regular meeting, which will begin right after this meeting, we will actually bring this appropriation to a vote and at that point you will hear the report from CPAC. Right now the requirement for public forum is that 50% of the time is devoted to public comment. So I am asking for you to raise your hand if you would like to make public comment regarding Kendrick Park. I do know that there is someone from LSSE here who might like to make public comment. Why don't we go ahead and do that? Yeah, go ahead. Hello, my name is Rebecca Demling and I'm here representing LSSE tonight. The LSSE commission voted unanimously to support this project. On July 27th, June 27th, 2019, we held a public forum that was well attended and received very strong support for the project going forward. Is there any further information about the nature of that discussion you'd like to share with us? A lot of people had input on what type of structures they'd like and what kind of fencing or barriers they would like to have, but LSSE is planning a robust public input process on the playground similar to what was done for Groff Park. So I'm sure we're keeping our, the committee is keeping their minds open as to the direction the residents would like us to go in. Okay, thank you. Are there any other public comments regarding this? We're going to just look at each other for about three more minutes. I'm sure there's nobody else out there who'd like to talk about Kendrick Park. You could even ask a question. Please come forward. Please come forward to the mic. State your name. Good evening. I'm Laura McLeod and I'm just curious to know what environmental aspects have been considered for the park. David, if you answer that question it's not counted. It's counted as 50%. Okay, that's a good, that's a very good question. The park, I guess we're, I would start by saying we're really, what was shown on the on the screen was really a very preliminary design. We just took a look at the available space. So a whole design process would move forward from here. And in fact on January 9th, if the Town Council decides to move forward with this, we would hold our first or one of a series of public meetings where we're gathering more input. So the location that we've proposed is really part of an old streetscape if you will. There were houses in the park itself. There is one underground stream. The Tanbrook does go under Kendrick Park. It's in a culvert under the park. We are not proposing to daylight that. We are going to make sure we avoid that area. This will be farther north in the park. So we will also of course work with our Tree Warden. Alan Snow has been around the table talking with us about what trees might need to be trimmed. Are there any possibilities that trees might be needing to be removed? All of that would be determined during the design process. So we'll avoid the stream that is underground and we'll do the best we can to keep as many trees as we possibly can. Thank you. Are there any other people who would like to make public comment regarding Kendrick Park? We have met the requirement of 50% put aside for comment. So I am going to include this part of the meeting of the public forum officially. At the same time however, Andy Steinberg is picking up with the finance committee and Andy, I'm going to let you go ahead. I know we have at least one member of the committee here who is not a member of the council, Mary Lou. I think... So do you want to come see if somebody can let you squeeze into their space for just a moment? If you're on the finance committee, don't leave. I don't think that this is going to take long. Let me explain what's going on. The finance committee does not like to take final positions on recommended financial orders if there is going to be a public forum until we've had an opportunity to hear from the public. Normally what would happen is that the forum would not be on the same night as the vote would be taking place so that we have space to have a meeting in between. But that was not possible tonight. One of the things that was mentioned in the finance committee report that's very important to know is that if we don't act by the end of this month, then we have not met the grant requirement and we lose the grant. So that the council, if it's going to do anything, must act this evening. The finance committee had previously taken a vote and recommended 4-0 with one council member absent to recommend financial order 2045, which we can discuss in more detail later. I think that the sole question right now is for the finance committee whether there's any member of the finance committee that wants to recommend changing the recommendation based upon the forum and if not then I would take a motion to adjourn and that would leave our prior understanding. I move that the finance committee adjourn. Second. So this motion to adjourn, I usually ask the members who are non-voting members of the finance committee if they have any comment to offer. Frequently the answer is a shake of the head to know, but I do want to make that offer as I always do. So there's no comment. So all members of the finance committee in favor of a motion to adjourn the finance committee meeting, please say I and raise your hand. So it's unanimous and 5-0. So thank you very much. Thank you Mary Lou for being with us. Mary Lou's been a great member of the committee and has helped me with a lot of the drafting and contributed her considerable expertise in that regard too. Public comment on this is over but we will have general public comment in the next round. Okay. All right. Thank you. We're going to take a brief recess but before you do that Scott, where's your photographer? Okay. Thank you. I'd like the council to convene right in front here. He promised me five minutes. Okay. Seeing as we have a quorum of the council present, I'm waiting for two more people. We are going to call the regular meeting of the town council to order and it is 6.50. Okay. And the first order of business is the election of officers and Athena, you will begin that process. Excuse me. Athena is the clerk of the council and this is the responsibility that she has among many that she must run the election for the president. Thank you. Thank you. Charter section 2.2 requires the town council annually to elect a president and vice president who shall serve a one-year term. The town council rules of procedure section 2.1a state that the clerk of the council shall preside over the election of the president. Lynn will take over after we elect a president for both terms. So the process will be that I will ask for nominations. Nominations do not require a second. Counselors may nominate themselves. After each nomination I will ask the councilor nominated if they accept the nomination. If there are no further nominations, I will ask each nominee if they would like to make a brief statement. I will then call for the roll. Please state either the name of the nominee you wish to vote for as president or abstain. At the conclusion of the roll call vote, I will announce the results. The nominee who receives a majority of votes will be deemed elected as president. If no nominee receives a majority of votes, I will repeat the process beginning with accepting nominations. The council will elect a president for a term to end January 6, 2020 and for a term to end January 4, 2021. I will swear in the president after both terms are elected. The floor is open for nominations. Counselor Pam. I nominate Lynn Griezmer. I think she has listened to the counselors and to the public and has been fair. Do you accept the nomination? I do. Are there any other nominations? I don't know how we do a point of order during an election process. Go ahead. So a nomination is putting someone's name into play. Then they're later going to be asked to give a speech. If we're not going to be given any opportunity to ask questions, which I have not heard of yet, I don't think it makes sense that the person making the nomination should be giving a speech about why they're nominating an individual. I think we are still working out how this works. And if we're limited, as we have been instructed thus far, to names and speeches by the actual people nominated, that's what we should be limited to. Are there any other nominations? All right. I'm going to call the roll. Counselor Ball Milne. Yes. Can I just ask, are we voting on both the one month and the one year? We're voting for a term to expire January 6th, 2020 first. Okay. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead and make your statement. Did you want to make a statement? You should. Yes, I should make a statement before you vote. Can I have a point of order? First of all, I'm honored by the nomination. Whether this sounds like it's a ridiculous statement, but I've actually totally enjoyed this year. I am still a sound mind and body. The body's a question mark, but the mind is still fine. But very truly, this has been one of the most interesting opportunities. And I do mean that in the most positive way for me to bring together my professional life, my education, and my life lessons learned in a way that has made me feel terrific about the group of people that were elected to serve on this council. They are fair. They are kind. And they every day work on behalf of the town of Amherst. And it is truly heartening to have such a terrific first council. Are we ready to vote? Hearing no discussion, we're gonna go ahead and call the roll. Counselor Ball Milne, you can vote for the person you would like to elect president or you can say abstain. Yes, for Lynn. Counselor Brewer, abstain. Counselor DeAngeles, yes. I'm looking for a name or abstain. My name or her name? Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lynn Griezmer. Counselor Dumont, Lynn Griezmer. Counselor Griezmer, Lynn Griezmer. Counselor Haneke, Lynn Griezmer. Counselor Pan, Lynn Griezmer. Counselor Ross, Lynn Griezmer. Counselor Ryan, Lynn Griezmer. Counselor Shane, Lynn Griezmer. Counselor Schreiber, Lynn Griezmer. Counselor Steinberg, Lynn Griezmer. Counselor Swartz, abstain. All right, congratulations. President we're going to repeat this process. I'm sorry. It was 11 in the yes and two abstentions. We're going to repeat this process for a term to expire January 4 2021. I'm going to open the floor for nominations. Council Shane. I have a question on order. I wanted to raise an issue and talk about the potential of holding the election for the one-year term on January 6 rather than now, but I don't know whether I should raise it before it's not a question of who's being nominated but what's the role of the president a longer discussion so I don't know whether I would offer that now or off at there after we get a nomination. So that's I don't know at what point I do say something. There's no Alyssa's telling me there's no provision for discussion here but but that's what I'm asking about. Even though I haven't been sworn in I am president at the moment. I believe that if the council would like to have a discussion about that they should go ahead and do so and you might want to provide your rationale for wanting to delay the full election for a year until then. Okay I will I I want to be as brief as possible and that's one of the reasons I'm asking for delay because I looked at how full our agenda is tonight so I didn't want to have a full discussion and and I also want to make it clear this is not about a contested election the way when we were if everyone can remember last December where I was an extremely long process so I think it would be good for us to have a discussion after a year on the role of our president the role of our vice president how that interacts with committees and committee appointments and gives all counselors opportunities should they want them to grow and experience being chair and being on different committees and if you take a look at the committee appointments right now you'll see to some extent our officers are often on many committees that are very important committees so they're both the officers who are meeting regularly with our town manager and planning agendas but they're also on key committees and thinking about do we want that to be a small group or do we want to spread it around and I thought if we postpone the election for the one year we could have it in the context of committees and how all of that works so again this was not about the particular position and I didn't think it was we have enough time to have that discussion tonight otherwise I would have proposed having that discussion tonight so this is to talk about what is the role of vice president president visa VR committees how we all interact and make sure we're not developing an internal power structure that future council members you know five years from now would look at it and say gee it got too centralized we want to invite people in and have people a chance to grow and learn so that's the discussion I'd like to have that would be the longer one and that would be my only reason actually for delaying the one year vote because I think a vote gives us all the energy to have longer discussions I think at this point the question is do you push place in motion to delay the vote for the term of president and vice president to January 4th 2000 I'm sorry January 6th to 2020 at which point we would vote for a president and vice president for a year going to January 4th 2021 that is the motion I would be making about just the one year not the one month is there a second I seconded okay is there further discussion Dorothy Darcy Darcy I guess I would say that I I agree that it makes sense that we take some time with this I watched the video from the meeting a year ago and and there were you know a lot of issues that were brought up in that meeting and and request to clarify the roles of well especially the vice president but also the president which and questions that have never really been answered so I think it would be really nice for this council to be able to have that discussion in the context of the of the election the one-year election and it makes sense to me to do that in January other other yes Alyssa that rationale is the reason I abstained because we had zero discussion about when we were going to have the election we were just told we were going to have an election we didn't have any discussion about how we might discuss the issues from last year I'm a little concerned that if we have the pressure on us however to do it in January and then vote again in January because we just voted for a term we'll have to have discussion in the vote same night whereas in a perhaps more ideal world we might have separated those two things we could easily have had this discussion in October or November and then had the vote a couple months later and so we are up against that time pressure now and so I'm not quite sure what to do with that but given where we are right now I think it would not hurt us at all I don't think we needed this vote tonight to extend the term into January in the first place and there's no charter police to tell us that and so I think we're fine with waiting until January but I'm I'm still a little uneasy that January is still going to be discussion and then vote that night but if that's the will of the council then that's how it any further conversation at this point there's a motion on the floor it's been made in seconded the motion in essence is to delay the vote for the president and vice president that would take terms from January 6th 2020 to January 4th 2021 is there any further discussion yes shall any I'm in favor of having a discussion and I also want to acknowledge that this my decision to do that is not suggesting that I want to change I just want to be very clear that I'm very very appreciative of the work that both Lynn and Maddy Joe are putting in so this is not you know because of any concerns around that but I think at the same time it now that we have been in council for a year it's good to look back and see what might we do differently Dorothy because of the open meeting rule that we are at least I don't get together and talk about these things so we have to talk about them in a meeting and we didn't have that meeting so I just think for a really smooth year it's good if we have that chat okay any further comments Evan yeah I think it's a good idea to have that discussion a year in my concern is that I think it's the idea being we don't have enough time to do so today because we have a very packed agenda but I have no expectation that our agenda on January 6 will be any lighter unless we make clear that it's our intention that that could be a time-consuming discussion and we would want it to be an agenda item carved out and not overload the agenda on that day but then I wonder if what Alyssa said about how it might be uncomfortable to have that discussion under the pressure of then having to immediately have a vote if it makes more sense to have that discussion tonight given that we're always going to have a packed agenda Pat I agree with Evan I feel like the discussion is critical it's important it is not about judging you I think that was very important to state but my feeling is we are involved in essence at the beginning of the discussion now so I guess where I differ is perhaps we need to have the discussion now and the vote at the following meeting okay Mandy Joe the only thing I would caution is our agenda doesn't have this listed as a discussion item and if there are members of the public that would want to weigh in on public comment they won't have a chance if the will of this body is to have that discussion if that discussion occurs tonight Alyssa I completely disagree with that framing by posting it on the agenda the topic has been posted it does not matter if it says will entertain public comment on the item or not that is not what the open meeting laws looking for the open meeting laws looking for whether or not we've advised the public that there's a topic tonight the public in fact may have been surprised that the topic had zero discussion whatsoever under the original plan so I do not believe that the open meeting law in any way says that we have to specify which of our items are going to have discussion in which or not as long as we make clear what items we're talking about to a level of specificity that people know that we don't just say election but like we say election of officers Kathy okay this is I was hoping to avoid having to start the discussion I but you're going to but this is actually one of the reasons I wanted I actually wanted it to be a clear item on next meeting agenda and anchored so that all of us would between now and then be thinking about it you know rather than oh that's an interesting idea and actually come prepared on how do we think the year went what do we think the role should be do we have different opinions I didn't want to make it on the fly and that's exactly why I was trying to do it not in the context of a contested election but just purely we we like our officers but let's take this time if we're voting on a whole nother year to have and yes Evan I agree we should carve out discussion about role committees you know and have it and then the end of it is is an election but we know the election is going to be the one thing we're voting on we're voting more on other content so that was the reason I wanted to split the two to give us a present vice president that would still be here and conducting the meeting it's other any of the comments mainly Joe my my comment is actually a question of procedure the charter I think says something about sort of the first order of business should be elections and a topic of discussion about the role of a president and vice president is not it may be related to an election but it is not the election if our terms or if your term expires on the 6th is it possible to have a discussion before the election under the charter it's just a question I have about timing of agendas and I hate bringing it up but I don't want us to run into the same issue when setting an agenda for the 6th if the charter would require the election to be held before the discussion of the topic the potential solution is to elect to like the 8th or something instead of the 6th we are presently scheduled to meet on the 6th of January and the 27th of January so one of the options is to delay the election for a term till the 27th that's me means we should go back and redo the vote and then on the meeting on the 6th this would be an agenda item it would give the public will notice I do want to stress however that it's an election of the council not of the public you've elected us and if you don't like us get rid of us but we elect you elect the the council elects the president yes doesn't the Charter say that the election can be revisited anytime it does I don't see the harm of voting tonight vote tonight discuss January 6th if we don't like the way we voted we can call for another vote Darcy you had your hand up I just want to say that I think that the discussion that I'm kind of envisioning would include would integrate some of the stuff that the GL has been talking about about you know reorganizing committees trying to figure out workloads of council members and I think that is all related to the role of the president and the vice president so seems like since we're already going to have I guess that conversation this to me seems like it it goes together the the two discussions and that conversation is scheduled for the 6th GL what GL had in mind was a report to we haven't had discussion yet so we'll see what happens later tonight but we were planning to issue or provide a report to the council on our deliberations about committees and how well they're working and make some suggestions this was not something that we have talked about although we could but that's just five of us and it sounds like this body would like to have this discussion with all 13 I'm feeling that I'm uncomfortable putting these two together I'd like to separate elections from discussion about how well this body functions and issues about presidents and vice president's duties I'm sort of sympathetic to Steve's suggestion that we vote we can always undo vote if we want but this is on the agenda it's right in front of us we can talk about this at the next meeting or any subsequent meeting but I don't see I just I'm very uncomfortable with the thought I was having a long discussion on the 6th and then turning to a vote the votes on the agenda let's vote and we can GL can certainly you can ask you well to take this up we certainly can take it up as a body on the 6th and we can talk about as much as we like but I'm getting a little uncomfortable with the connection of voting with a broader discussion that's I guess my thought there's a motion on the floor the motion on the floor is to defer the election of the president and vice president beyond January 6th 2020 until the meeting on January 6th 2020 are people ready to vote on that Alyssa I'm flummoxed by the idea that someone would want to completely separate an election of a person from a discussion of the performance of that person that's like talking about rehiring the town manager before you have his evaluation so we didn't discuss whether or not we were going to do an evaluation we never got around having that conversation now we're in the place of having to have a discussion everyone is going to assume that we worked this out outside of this room because we're having no discussion how does this not look strange to people so we made you know we we've been doing just a lot of stuff we've been really busy we maybe didn't think this through very well but there is no rule that says we had to have this election tonight that is not what the Charter says the Charter says annually it did not mean after the election on December it meant in January we didn't have to do this just as an election can include discussion an election is not there is no legal definition of debt election that applies to this group that says you can't talk about stuff during the election you have to hold the election and have the discussion a different time so we're bollocksing ourselves up in something crazy here let's do what makes sense to the most people do it on the night that makes sense to the most people but this is what happens when you don't have a discussion when you just get something dropped on you and I absolutely do not think the public should have any public comment on this item ever because as you clearly stated this is a town council decision just to be clear this was on the December 2nd agenda at 530 so this got delayed from that because of the snow all right there is a motion on the floor we either going to go forward with that motion the motion is Xena would you read the motion please to delay the vote for president and vice presidents one year terms from January 6 2020 to January 4 2021 to the January 6 2020 town council meeting is there further discussion all those in favor of the motion raise your hand and say aye all those in opposed raise your hand and say nay abstain okay we will now have that election on the 6th given that I will be president and therefore putting the agenda together I will arrange the election such that it happens after there is a discussion of the role of the president and the vice president however we do need to do some action on the 6th otherwise we go forward with no president or vice president for the comment please I want to actually second Alyssa's comment that this is one of the only things we do that is completely an internal council decision and I would strongly suggest we not have public comment on this item okay I agree all right we still need to elect a vice president between now and I'm going to come and swear you in for a one month term I'm sorry that's where you went oh excuse me do this I've been acting without that for about a month okay I will ask for nominations for the council of the from the council for the council vice president nominations do not require a second counselors may nominate themselves after after each nomination I will ask the councilor nomin counselors nominated if they accept the nomination when there are no further nominations I will ask each nominee if they would like to make a brief statement I will then ask the clerk of the council to call the roll call for the vote please state at that time either the not name of the nominee and or abstain at the conclusion of the roll call vote the clerk of the council will announce the results the nominee will receive a majority must receive a majority of votes is deemed elected vice president if no nominee receives a majority we will then continue the process we've been there before so this is a nomination for a term of vice president to expire January 6th 2020 Pat I nominate counselor Hanneke are there any other nominations okay would you like to make a statement do you accept yes I do would you like to make a statement I'll make a brief one and it's been an honor to serve as vice president for the last year I hope despite the election last year that I've earned your trust over the course of the year and it would be an honor to serve for another three weeks at this point but so take it as it comes okay any further discussion then please have the roll call vote counselor Brewer abstain counselor D'Angeles Hanneke counselor Dumont Hanneke president Grismar Hanneke counselor Hanneke myself Mandy Joe Hanneke counselor Pam Hanneke counselor Ross Hanneke counselor Ryan Hanneke counselor Shane Hanneke counselor Shriver Hanneke counselor Steinberg Hanneke counselor Swartz abstain counselor Balmille Hanneke it's 11 yes and two abstention okay thank you we will now proceed I'm sorry oh she has to be sworn in please be sworn in right let me briefly go to announcements the in this room at six o'clock on the sixth prior to the regular town council meeting we will actually have the swearing in of newly elected town officials that includes people for for the school committee whether they've served in the past or not as well as new members people for Jones library trustees people for the housing authority and the Oliver will trust Oliver Smith will elect or thank you okay I want to really quickly look at the order of the agenda this is done so that frankly we want to make sure that those of you that have come for special items have an opportunity to have those earlier in the evening versus later and so therefore the order of the agenda is going to be general public comment immediately following this proclamations and commemorations of which we have none action items eight a eight B and eight C those are community preservation act funds for Kendrick Park the acquisition of Hickory Ridge property and community choice aggregation we are then going to move on to the general bylaw reading which is the first reading and then we're moving on to the town manager goals first reading and then going back to presentations and discussions and that is the OCA process for recommending candidates for appointments per charter for full town council by full town council I'm sorry including the zoning board of appeals in the planning board and then we'll proceed with the rest of the agenda item as listed so with that I'd like to see hands for those people who would like to speak for public comment okay I'd like to start with the gentleman right here please come forward and identify yourselves and are you coming as one or two people okay thank you you're limited individually to three minutes okay thank you and I neglected to push the button but I had help thank you my name is David Sloveter I live at 194 Lincoln Avenue I'm joined by Nancy Ratner who lives at 199 Lincoln Avenue and I've been asked by a number of neighbors to present to the council and make you aware of a problem that we have Lincoln Avenue is a direct through route from Amity Street and Route 9 to the UMass campus it is the only connecting street other than Pleasant Street that has no directional restrictions where it meets Massachusetts Avenue and it's popular because it allows drivers and delivery vehicles seeking access to UMass to avoid the lights and traffic on Pleasant Street as a result it is one of the busiest streets in Amherst during the work week especially when UMass is in session the situation involving non-resident cars parking on Lincoln all day during the work week has become increasingly difficult and dangerous in the past year and it continues with no indication that it will change Lincoln Avenue has essentially become a free parking area for UMass during the week it creates delays difficulty for residents trying to leave their driveways and close calls between oncoming vehicles there have even been events where side mirrors on passing cars have hit each other it also creates a hazard for cars trying to turn from McClellan on to Lincoln during the average weekday when the university is in session cars are parked along Lincoln throughout the day in an almost solid line beginning at McClellan and extending well beyond Elm this line of cars forms a gauntlet that interferes with the passage of vehicles only two compact cars can pass each other comfortably large cars must slow and often pull over and wait delivery vehicles such as UPS FedEx oil trucks trash trucks landscapers etc which would be able to flow easily if the line of cars was not there must wait on the side in front of a driveway before being able to proceed down the gauntlet the dimensions of Lincoln Avenue allow for two active transit lanes which move freely and efficiently the dimensions do not allow for two transit lanes and a parking lane a row of cars removes one-third of the street from vehicle movement the remaining space is not sufficient for free and safe movement we are interested only are we're starting with another three minutes yes we are okay thank you sorry I'm Nancy Ratner I live at 199 Lincoln Avenue yes and we are interested only in correcting a situation that is inconvenient and annoying at its best and downright dangerous at its worst we have considered different options but we feel that the best solution is for there to be no parking on Lincoln Avenue on weekdays between 8am and 5pm this would bring the part of Lincoln where parking is currently legal into conformity with the rest of Lincoln north of McClellan where parking is already restricted with those limits a suggestion was made for a two-hour parking limit but we feel that it's not workable and would require significant town resources to monitor and enforce the fire chief agrees that the current situation presents undesirable challenges and support steps and he supports steps that will remove the all-day gauntlet he said that it would be much easier to get around a single vehicle making a delivery or a landscaper who is parked for a short time than negotiating the current situation the police chief told us that he does not support a parking ban because he believes that homeowners have a right to park in front of their homes while we as a community highly approve of the job that Chief Livingstone and the Amherst police department do we respectfully disagree with this one item we believe that his position is a personal one that does not override our problem all of the houses on Lincoln Avenue have off-street parking to accommodate a parking ban and almost every house has signed a petition supporting this request a restriction during the week from eight to five does not restrict residential or visitor parking on evenings and weekends nor does it preclude exceptional situations that have always existed such as a memorial gathering when residents notify the police in advance we appreciate your consideration and we ask the council that you change the current Lincoln Avenue parking rules to the restrictions that we propose and we hope that you feel the same sense of urgency that those of us who live on Lincoln Avenue already feel thank you for your comments thank you are there other comments please come forward again these comments are only on those that are restricted that are general comments not the ones identified for other elements of the agenda okay thank you make sure the red light is the green light is on I'm Nancy Gilbert I live at 166 Lincoln Avenue and I'd like to talk a little bit about this problem I'd really like clarification on the process on how to address the safety issues on Lincoln my husband and I went to the November 20th Transportation Advisory Committee because Lincoln Avenue and parking was on the agenda and it was discussed at that meeting two days later there was an article in the Gazette in which a council member was quote freaking out unquote about the process having lived on Lincoln Avenue for 34 years safety has been a continuous problem and it always takes time at 34 years ago speed and the intersection of Lincoln and fearing was a big issue we nicknamed that corner of and Lincoln as crash corner nothing was done for several years until seven accidents occurred in a four-day period after snowstorms when people couldn't see anything at this because of the high piles of snow at Lincoln and fearing and then a four-way stop sign was put in in after 20 years we finally had speed bumps installed which has helped the speed but in the past 18 to 24 months we have this severe problem that's been talked about where the road is significantly narrowed by parking from especially from Elm to Amity and from Elm up to McClellan it's a hazard for two-way traffic besides what's been mentioned there's runners from UMass and Amherst College there's bikers and I have grandchildren and it's very dangerous exiting my driveway so I would really like to know what the action is or do we have to wait for multiple accidents to happen before something's done thank you for your comments are there any other comments on Lincoln Ave please come forward so good evening thank you I'm Aaron Hayden I'm the chairman I'm the chair of the transportation advisory committee and the issue of Lincoln Avenue was brought to I have two apologies to make first of all the first one is that when this issue was brought to us our understanding was that there was going to be a public hearing here and my committee voted to send me to that public hearing to meet you all on the 16th and do what you know offered to what to do what we could do to help we haven't had a chance to unvote that so I it's very busy tonight and I'm taking your time and I appreciate that the second apology is that I had hoped to send you I hoped you would have a lot of material about our the transportation advisory committee's ideas on Lincoln Avenue most specifically the it was on the our agenda with the hopes that we could take a decision there was a it looked like a reasonable plan and as with most things in transportation they do look reasonable at first blush but we have learned and select boards in the past specifically about Lincoln Avenue have learned is that nothing is as simple as it appears at first the transportation advisory committee in reviewing our charge in one of the pieces of material that I don't think got to you because I sent it to the town manager very late last week includes our charge which it which also in itself includes parking as one of the things that we were charged with under the old government organization the the transportation advisory committee wanted to let you know that we are prepared to and imagine that it's part of our job to take on this issue to try to help figure out what can be done on Lincoln Avenue is among all of the other things that we've taken on Lincoln Avenue like you know West Street like well at South Amherst and North Amherst there are many things that are changing and most of our work involves things that it includes some sort of change it's upset the way things were Lincoln Avenue in particular there's a number of big changes the university has been foisting off on us in the last number of years and plans to in the course of next year what we would offer is probably a routine well I hope would become routine a series of events that would involve collecting the data from the neighbors you know what is it that they're seeing what are their concerns from the various town departments emergency services from our own research and trying to become familiar with best practices along these things we're not the first place to have these problems so thank you very much I just wanted to offer that and hope that we'll see this come to us next year thank you for your comments and thanks for your wrist on the tack are there any other comments on Lincoln Avenue may those people that would like to make other public comment raise your hand please please come forward maximum three minutes everything's ready Lynn thanks for your advice Amy Zuckerman 117 Brittany manner drive briefly I have a lot of work so here you can see it later I've collected lots of book covers we have a lot of authors and emily who are troubled by a man I'm calling the mad hacker okay we're calling this presentation don't steal our books all right this here's what story is I'm looking the urgent need to fund cyber crime training for the Amherst police and any author who sells their books on amazon.com it was very easy for someone in this town to hack into my amazon.com page take over my account and then enter my author's page where he's been changing my profile picture and book covers at least since last February the persons the subject of the Amherst police department investigation they'll like to extend to the FBI okay the issue here is basically that the police they're wonderful I've been working with detectives and the FBI do not know things such as who knew that I had an amazon.com author's page who knew that Emily Dickinson has an amazon.com author's page there are nine hundred three three books that Emily and Robert Cross have in the library of Amherst and all of them could be in danger by a person who hacks right into an account changes their pictures changes uh book covers I've been very concerned because people know that I was actually arrested and charged with being a terrorist look at this can imagine wearing this dress this man had the nerve to take this picture put on my page and say is this not pretty well the New York Daily News took this picture it wasn't pretty to me luckily the case was dismissed but what if he turned me into Patty Hurst I read Patty Hurst with photoshop but he could simply take a gun and put it in my on my page and post it this is very urgent I think that Mr. Bezos who owns amazon.com has 106 billion dollars I'm suggesting we invite Jeff to come here because we need cybercrime training in technology and we need it in the law so what are the statues that have these people this man is possibly violent possibly state and federal statues for social media privacy act gave me around with your uh password they have all the stuff here if there's a wire tapping act he I say behind those back hate uh conversation put it on youtube there's been stuff he's done to time meeting members possibly so I want to talk to you about having a meeting I have lots of information here uh chief living since involved the FBI had no idea there were amazon.com pages if you sell a book on amazon.com like uh steal the streams steal this book all of Emily's books happens you get a page but this mean hacked into my account and took over my page and he's been changing the content so we need money I think Jeff Bezos has 106 million dollars I think Amherst could have 100 million why not why not let's get this man here he owns amazon to help this because who found this out by accident I I've had a phone hit in town got people right here to help us make sure that no one like me is charged with terrorism because someone invades my page and sets me up done everything has been taken I took all the pictures of this you'll get a later thank you for your comments somebody has left their phone up here other other public comment mr riddle Chris riddle uh 252 strong street I really have a question for the president uh regarding the House bill 2810 do you want me to talk about that now or how would you like this to happen you and I had a email conversation um we need to do that by either email or later the main thing is that this we don't have dialogue during public comment okay thank you thanks Ms. McLeod you had your hand up thank you good evening I'm going to read the letter of support from the League of Women Voters the League of Women Voters of Amherst supports the town's purchase of the 140 acre hickory rich golf course as described by assistant town manager David Samak at the district 5 meeting on November 21 2019 this purchase will provide a significant opportunity for the town to address climate change in the broadest sense such as planting native trees to provide habitat and absorb carbon dioxide and restore restoring for river wetlands as well as creating nature trails and recreational opportunities solar panels covering 26 acres are part of the proposed agreement with the seller the League of Women supports is based on both state and local League positions the League promotes an environment beneficial to life through protection and wise management of natural resources in the public interest the League supports the management of natural resources to enhance and protect the unique character of the Connecticut river basin and to protect maintain or restore its function as a green belt in addition the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts unanimously adopted a climate emergency resolution in June 2019 that strongly urges relevant action at all levels of government for the environment the League of Women Voters is a known partisan organization that encourages informed and active participation in government the League comments on specific topics when these topics are relevant to publish local state or national positions League positions are established only after League members study issues and there is general agreement or consensus among members thank you very much thank you there is a copy of that letter in counselors folders and it retains particularly to the Hickory Ridge for which we do not have other public comments tonight thank you thank you very much are there any other public comments at this time okay seeing none we're going to proceed then to action item 8a which is regarding Kendrick Park and the first is to have the community preservation act committee make their report hi i'm Nate buddington i'm chair of the cpa committee typically in the middle of december the cpa committee is evaluating different proposals that have come for before us in preparation to presenting to you a slate of cpa endorsed project sometime in the end of january and and we are doing that and we will be producing that slate for you in in january this particular proposal is a little unorthodox in its timing and it's why we're asking for an expedited approval the park grant requires that full funding of this project be approved by town government by the end of the year end of the calendar year so what basically what we're asking because currently cpa doesn't really have any money to distribute that will come in a little while we're asking for an approval to bond the full 659,000 uh amount for the playground 259,000 of which will be the cpa request that we've approved what will happen is when when the park grant is received we won't borrow that 400,000 so we're really truly only going to be borrowing the 259,000 cpa portion of this but we have to make the formal request because we have no money and the entire amount has to be dedicated by the end of the year well it's a little bit of a squirrely situation but is that makes sense are there questions from the council yes pat um i'm wondering what impact that will have on the distribution of cpa funds to other projects in other words we're taking this out of the pot pile without knowing what the pile is well we won't what it will cost the cpa will be 259,000 that's what will come out of this next year's pot i guess what i'm asking then is what's the impact of removing 259,000 i think we're about 900,000 do we know Sonia would you please come forward but this is a borrowing authorization for the full amount of 659,000 dollars cpa is going to be borrowing as well so once the project is done we get the 400,000 for the grant we end up borrowing 259 and there'll be debt service for 10 years that'll be about 30,000 a year 36,000 each year and some of the debt has already dropped off we have one debt that dropped off this year that was about 26,000 and for 2021 i believe the Hawthorne property debt which is another 36,000 that is dropping off so it will pretty much be right where we are thank you that's helpful are there other questions stay right there Sonia thank you miss oldridge is our controller our fine interim finance director she's the woman with the answers on finance are there other questions from the council can i yes i just wanted to say for those watching or listening who are as slow as i am with numbers that the cost is 659,000 the grant is 400,000 so all we are going to pay is that 259,000 that's correct we don't that 600 forget that we're not paying that correct that's correct yes andy joe i might have missed it but did you state the vote on the cpa committee for the recommendation it was unanimous enthusiastic okay yes andy yeah i was uh saving my report for later but i wanted to just pick up on this piece of it because it all fits together as it stated in the written report it was mentioned by miss oldridge the payments would be over a period of 10 years for the 259,000 at $30,000 year including debt service and that's an approximate amounts for 10 years this is actually a very common practice of the community preservation act committee over the years as and approved by town meeting each time it's come up but there have been numbers of different proposals that have been sufficiently large that the concern was that funding them all at one year in one year time would either exceed the amount available for the year or would take away the ability to do anything else for that year and as a consequence that the wisest financial management approach that has been recommended by the community preservation act committee over the years has been on larger purchases to bond them and spread the payment over a period of time so that each year that there would be amount of money available to consider significant proposals in all different areas are there other questions from the council why don't you just stay right there for a moment andy do you have any further things to comment from the finance committee um well as i stated just a moment ago in the in the packet for today's meeting it's finance committee report of December 16 2019 and the major item the second major item discussed in there and at some length is the kendrick park proposal and i'm not going to go through all of that because i that's why it was provided in advance in writing the point that was just made about how the community preservation act committee was normally operates was actually going to be part of my comments that fit right in and i don't have to repeat that either which then gets us to the last piece is that which you should really be looking at also that was provided in the packet for today's meeting is financial order 20-45 because that's actually what you're going to be voting on that is going to be in effect the motion that's on the floor and after the whereas sections there are three subsections to it and just want to say that those are all requirements of the grant as mr zomek will explain if there are questions about it the first one is to transfer care custody and control of kendrick park to the from from its current management under the town manager to the lssc commission that is a grant requirement of the park grants to assure that the park remain as a park and be under the control of the body in town that is going to be managing that manages that kind of property so that the use continues if that was not included we would not qualify for the grant the second part is to borrow the $659,000 and to authorize the issuance of bonds and notes for payment of that i won't get into the whole distinction between notes and bonds and when each will be issued if anybody really wants to get a dig into that minutia they we can respond to questions either myself from is aldrich and the third part is to authorize the town manager and and or the lssc commission or their designees to apply for and accept grants including the park grant and any other grants that might be available to assist in this particular project so when you vote you will be voting on the order and those are the three action items in the order i think the vote of the nothing else i need to say the vote of the finance committee was four to zero with one member absent okay are there any other questions from the council at this time okay yes i'm sorry when we are saying questions are we saying questions of these people questions in general any questions of the entire project are there any other questions in general from the town council at this time yes okay so um clarifying that again there was an earlier position given by representing lssc but what and then it was mentioned lssc commission those of course being two completely separate entities lssc is town staff the lssc commission is appointed by the town manager and works with staff and in this case verifying that in fact lssc commission is the body rather than just saying the town manager and his employees lssc commission also has a role in here as they traditionally do with other with other park items but just clarifying that those are two different things the other question i'm having a hard time grasping here is it makes me very nervous in our financial situation that we are in right now talking about capital projects to say it's only two hundred thousand dollars four hundred thousand dollars is coming from the state why worry um i'm not seeing and i'm having a hard time understanding what we're buying for over six hundred thousand dollars for this playground setup that we again have been shown a preliminary plan i understand that there's the attention to at least talk about it once more on january ninth but six hundred thousand dollars for some paving some benches and a couple of pieces of playground equipment i grant you that when i worked on developing the mill river playground a couple decades ago things obviously didn't cost that but if someone could explain give us context of there's a problem with the site development or we have to put up fences and because no one's ever shown us fences um i would understand better why we were spending six hundred thousand on this which granted is four hundred thousand dollars of all of our money just not our direct tax money here mr zomek so it's a very good question and we have we have context for this so the town has in the last couple of years embarked on two playground projects one was at crocker farm school and the other one is in process right now at grove park and i'm afraid the the straightforward answer is that these things are expensive um everything must be and of course we will we want everything to be accessible so we will have new as as was shown in the preliminary design we will have new sidewalks which will make a portion of gendrick park accessible to anyone we will have accessible benches we will have many of the playground structures will be accessible and we're also required now the days of wood chips and sand under these structures are long gone the state will not pay for those and frankly we shouldn't be using those surfaces we will use a rubberized surface that is both safe and accessible so when you combine new sidewalks structures benches shade structures potentially all the design and that construction 650 000 is about right and so what we did was we got cost estimates we work with berkshire design we got cost estimates for all of that and then we we also have good working relationships with the vendors who provide the play structures so we even went out and said if we were to pick this this this and this in this area with with the following square footage give us a ballpark as to where we would be and that's where Nate Malloy who's our senior planner and his was very worked very closely with Becky Demling who's behind me and the Crocker farm team on their playground and Nate also worked on Crocker farm with DPW and LSSE so we're getting pretty good at this and that's where the estimate came from further questions yes Dorothy I read through the community comment that was included amongst the many materials for this meeting and one of them said try to make it as natural as possible using grass and stone walls I thought that was very nice but it also mentioned something I brought up earlier in some committee meeting about a public restroom and it said and I agree not to have a public restroom there is not to serve the people well who are there and if I were there with a small child who needed a bathroom I'm going to go cross the street and try to find some small store that's still open and available and wants public to come in and use the restroom I think that's a real challenge I mean I know there's a huge problem in policing public restrooms but I think that a triangle park sitting in the middle of roads has to have its own restroom additional comments from the council yes Dorothy I'm sorry that's that's all right I'll answer to Kathy um you know I just it's a comment I made on finance too but on this idea of natural I also think we're we should be worried about the maintenance of it and keeping it up and what I mentioned during um the finance committee meeting as I recently walked on the air moist grounds behind some of the beautiful new buildings they built their outdoor structure they're using our uh we're a glacier valley and they put some brought in some really big rocks that they created seats out of them that I think will probably be extremely low maintenance over time as seating places because they're rocks and they're gorgeous so it's a rather than traditional benches and other place to sit it's also a beautiful way to do this that will be lower on long-term costs and not have to bring in a lot of wood and other structures that aren't native to us so just thinking in terms of not traditionally just go buying it some there's some pretty creative things that are are happening around town that we could get some good ideas a sustainable park playground not just um uh the quick the quicker one where you can buy all the pieces yes David so these are all great comments and we've heard many of them through the last couple of years certainly about kind of a naturalized features of the of the park of the playground um at grove park for instance we we used a stone to as a both a retaining wall but also as a sitting space so it's about two and a half three feet off the ground so that'll be a great place for children and families to put their towels when they're in the when they're in the uh spray park um I do want to say that rocks are never the perfect substitute when you're talking a da so we need to have both I really needed much so all of this and I encourage all of you and anyone watching at home or behind me in the audience here um we through working with lssc having the dpw and planning all around the table in january in february with these design charrettes um we're going to be needing to move this quickly because we need to have a design in a in a couple of months if this moves forward but we will we encourage all of these kinds of comments I will say that the restroom comment we've heard that one in many times in the planning department I've talked with the town manager I think that's part of a bigger discussion about downtown and what we can offer children families and visitors I will just to put a number on it if you want to add a bathroom which is not part of this proposal you're probably north of two hundred thousand dollars additional uh to the 650 so it's it's probably it's not part of this project um it's part of a larger conversation about our downtown thank you additional questions comments from the council Sarah so I I appreciate this project and I I definitely think a lot of people put a lot of time into it um I will say I'm just going to echo the fact that I realize that a grant is for a large part of it but I still think there's a great deal of money that CPA which is still our taxes that are going into it and I went to three of the four listening sessions and I heard a lot of people saying we have these capital projects I don't even think there's just four I think there's actually six like you have to put sidewalks in there and another thing that's come up for us a lot is maintenance and I feel like what I heard from a lot of people was they love being here they want the vibrancy but they're they're definitely there is excitement about the four capital projects but people really urged all of us to really think about what our our needs and what our wants and to be really careful about what we spent um and so I myself will vote no on this but I I'm doing it because I feel like um I'm listening to the people that I'm representing and um it's not disrespectful to the work that's been done here if I could just speak to that um I think as a CPA member I would I would hope that and and I fully grasp your sensitivity to the upcoming huge expenses we're going to entail for some of these projects and also a general sensitivity to taxpayers uh the CPA money is a direct surtax right off of people's property taxes we're very sensitive to that in CPA and I think that's why we in the three years that I've been on the committee have been pretty conservative I think we have not hesitated to turn projects down that we didn't think were particularly well supported or particularly valid or necessary or served a wide swath of the population but I would hope that we could separate the CPA funds from uh these larger capital projects because they are you know they're really dedicated funds for these types of projects that sometimes are very hard to find money for and they're not huge they're not often not fancy but they really allow us to bring in these resources from the property tax surcharge or surtax and really fund things that are really hard to find monies for historical preservation and recreation so I I understand there's an overwhelming and completely understandable sensitivity to spending money in town but but I hope we couldn't we avoid kind of confusing these CPA dollars with some of these projects because I think they're they're really different animals Alyssa so I I just want to make clear the two all the people have worked on this it's great and you haven't convinced me so I'm seeing an incredibly unattractive blue and red play structure that I would love next at Graf or at Mill River someplace else not in the middle of my downtown park and for people to say well you know you can come to a meeting and maybe have some more input on that we've been talking about natural features for a long time there's been no indication that's actually going to change there's been no discussion of fencing and why it's important or not important because state of the art says we don't need it in based on the fact that it's in between all these busy roads but explain to us why we don't need it we have an incredibly vague budget that has no indication of what pricing is for equipment we have no final say on design here at town council there's been no discussion around the fact that at town council around the fact that's possibly quite possibly been discussed at leisure services commission meetings and elsewhere that when we have students pouring out of the spoke at two in the morning they're going to use the playground equipment because of course you would if you were 20 and it was two o'clock in the morning at the spoke and there's been no discussion that there's any sensitivity to that and it's not my job to come to your meetings to find out that you've discussed that i feel like it's your job to have told me already that that's there and none of that is here so that is why i'm finally know please come forward from the lssc commission hi rebecca demling lssc commission um so i will say that those are things we actually have discussed at our lssc public forum um we talked about making it less appealing to college students um but what we heard a lot of is amor's playgrounds are fairly run down much like many of our our uh buildings quite frankly and fields um i've worked on three different playgrounds in the last 10 years in town they are really expensive to build handicap accessible to get the type of playground that will serve young families that will entice them to come downtown and play downtown i think it's an investment in our downtown and i know this project is moving quickly and we don't have a lot of answers yet frankly because we haven't hosted more public forums yet which are starting january 9th i am sure lssc commission would be happy to come before town council and give regular updates about this project but frankly the closest playground to downtown is more memorial that playground is older than my you know it is ridiculously old not up to code not accessible we keep talking about making amor so welcoming accessible community part of that is having play spaces for families and it's far more environmentally friendly to have a playground where people can go and socialize than it is for people to keep building plastic things in their backyards so if we want to really consider making amor open and accessible we need to make it open and accessible to families we need to support our downtown businesses by bringing reasons for people to come downtown because that contributes to our tax space and we also need to start tackling delayed investment and things that matter to quality of life thank you other comments from the council yes man did you becky got to it before i did but i echo everything she said we as a council have talked about the flight of families from this town how can we bring families back to this town when on linkin avenue you cannot walk to a playground you might not buy a house on linkin avenue when on blue hills you can't walk to a playground when you can't safely bike to a playground because it's down at grove park down 116 which is what i did with my child very unsafely for years when i lived in downtown you don't want to live downtown we're trying to put a playground in downtown to bring families back into town which is what i thought we wanted to do in this town and to talk about the cpa funds they're restricted to four things housing recreation conservation and historic preservation we talked on this committee this council last year about using those funds to maximize the benefit to all of the taxpayers because it is taxpayer funds to try and look for projects that go to benefit everyone in town this is a project that does this this is not a project and and not to pick on projects or anything but this is not something like and you can argue it does benefit everyone town but the the window in downtown the at the uu that many people argued is more of a private project that doesn't really benefit all the taxpayers this is a public playground using taxpayer money that is dedicated for things like recreation it makes sense to me and if we want to attract families this is what we should be doing and these are the funds we should be using to do it andy and now i'm going to speak personally and not speak on behalf of the finance committee uh playgrounds i've become to very much appreciate by having grandchildren and being able to take your grandchild to a playground that is safe and inviting and accessible is really an important piece of growing up and we want to make healthy adults out of our young children and we have to provide both the programs and the facilities to make that happen playgrounds are very different from when i took my children who are now the parents to playgrounds there's much more conscientiousness about the whole question of the safety of the equipment and the material that the equipment is made of in addition to the fact that they've talked about the surface and all of that does drive the cost of the playground and but i think that it all is of a single piece and that's why i'm as a single counselor i'm very supportive of this i think that it's the right thing to do it's the right thing to do for our downtown uh the business improvement district was very supportive of it because they felt it was important to bring people to downtown with their families and give them a variety of opportunities so the bid support of it i think is something that we should be thinking about and i think for our valuing of children families this is the right thing to do additional comments from the council shallony i echo every everything that was just said very important for our downtown and for families i just have one concern that was brought to me by a resident about the use of rubber and i don't know if this is the right form but there is a rubber that has led in it and i'm just concerned and i wonder if you know what's kind of rubber is being used because it's a particular rubber it's called i think crumb rubber that's used a lot in playgrounds and that has toxic materials in it so we are very aware of that issue and um again the park hasn't been designed so we don't know what rubberized structure we will use um we may be you know we're many months away perhaps a year away from actually constructing anything so we will do our research with the lsse commission with dpw and planning to make sure we buy the safest material possible at that time but again nothing has been designed we don't even know how many square feet of rubberized surface we're going to need but we we are aware of that it's been brought to our attention through other venues and other other sources so we will take that strongly under consideration are there other comments from the council at this time okay so um according to rule 9.3 of our town um rules of procedure um the motion will require a two-thirds votes that's nine votes because it's an appropriation uh we we we do not need to suspend the rules at least in my opinion and i'm more than glad to have someone challenge that uh because if we don't vote on this we jeopardize the possibility of receiving the grant so it is under 9.3 a legitimate item to go forward on without having to come before two council meetings okay any question andy i think the clarification that i just make um is that if this did not require borrowing i think it would be a majority vote but because it involves borrowing thank you okay so um the motion which is on your sheet i need this motion is to appropriate to in term no move in terms of council order number 20 dash 45 in order authorizing the dedication of Kendrick Park for park and active recreation purposes and appropriate funds for the rehabilitation and preservation thereof as presented and that item is the fifth item in your motion sheet and it begins with order it has titled Kendrick Park begins with order 20-45 and mr steinberg referred to that earlier and goes on to the next page is there a motion can move Kathy i move to approve is there second Dorothy i second that motion is there further discussion okay uh since we need to do a two-thirds vote should we do roll call yes okay councilor dangelis yes councilor dumont yes councilor greece murr yes councilor hanneke yes councilor pamm yes councilor ross yes councilor ryan yes councilor shane yes councilor schreiber yes councilor steinberg yes councilor swartz no councilor ball mound yes councilor brurer no that's 11 yes and 2 no and so the motion passes thank you david don't go far because we're going to move right on to um higree ridge higree ridge has come before this council on many occasions including it has come before the public at a public forum that was held on september 23rd 2019 um there is no specific comment on this tonight and uh we will just start with a community preservation act report any further comment on that you've already been you've already we've already it wasn't really prepared to do that so if i can just that was appropriated already correct okay thank you um we did that in uh june of 2019 sunya can you just remind us correct um under on the regular um cpa process you voted 200 000 to be set aside for this purchase when it came through okay it's a funding source right now okay uh any further comment from the finance committee at this point think that the only thing that i'd point out is that in this report there's a reference to the fact that it was the october report to the council that was where we took action on this and had substantial discussion so that there's a a big report in the october 21st finance committee report which i asked to be placed back in the packet for this particular meeting so that it would be before you along with the finance or financial order the report goes into some detail about our vote and how we came about to that vote and i don't have it in front of me but my recollection it was three with one abstention three in favor one abstention and one member absent and the reasons for the first for the councilor shane's abstention were listed in that report very explicitly stated okay are there other do you want to give us just a brief um overview sure i also wanted to bring to you to the council's attention that there is a member of the conservation commission who was not able to be at the public forum who may want to say something if if the council okay at time thank you why don't you start with your report and then we'll have the member from the conservation commission come forward sure i think as as has been stated hickory ridge has been discussed at a number of public meetings district meetings i've been to a number of meetings that i've been invited to to speak on on the topic in fact the number of people have come to me and said you know congratulations when can we start planning for hickory ridge and i have to uh really put the brakes on that and say that actually you know you and and there are town council is not voted on the funding and there are a number of other steps that we still need to go forward uh with if if the town decides to move in that direction but i think there is high enthusiasm for the plan that jeff gravitz and i put forth to you and to the cpa committee to the finance committee to the conservation commission i think um what i have said in all the public meetings where i've talked about hickory ridge it is that this is really an interdisciplinary project it is not a um 100 conservation project although the cpa committee recommended to you and you you authorized the um the spending of two hundred thousand dollars as part of the package toward conserving uh the main portion of the property um mr gravitz and i have looked and continue to look actively at some of those parts of the property that are developable and could be reused for other uh town related purposes whether that be affordable housing whether that be market rate housing or whether it might mean flipping that or selling that land as surplus property to try to make uh back all or most of the outlay of the funds that could be expended on the property we've also had lots of positive comments about connecting the various housing complexes to the north off of east adley road through and to this property this beautiful 150-acre property so that continues to be a reoccurring theme many people have approached me in these meetings and on the street asking also about things like could we do community gardens adjacent to those those residents who live north of the of the course and i think all of that would come out in a master planning process um finally i will say that um our discussions with the owner continue to be positive i informed him and his um company that that i would be speaking with you tonight uh they are still proceeding with solar on the property 25 acres of solar they are um have been accepted into the smart program they're actually on the waiting list for the smart program so they are a waiting word from the state as to what their tax credits for that solar would look like so i think this is a logical next step for you to consider the the purchase tonight again we would continue to do our due diligence including um looking at any um 21e issues that that has come up at a number of meetings as well people want to make sure if we do proceed with this that it's a clean and healthy site so we're doing that due diligence now um that's just part of any land transaction um so we're we're that is an ongoing step we're taking so i think right now it's it's a waiting game and and i i'm welcome your questions okay let's have the young woman from the conservation commission come forward so hi my name is anna devlin gothier i'm a member of the conservation commission and just wanted to echo our support for this project the opportunity to conserve this land would be hugely beneficial to the town of amherst especially for those in the apartment complexes that directly that are right near this it provides opportunities for access to land without needing to get yourself anywhere so yeah really echoing conservation support for this project and um enthusiasm for conserving much of the land at hickory rich okay thank you are there questions from the council yes dorthy so this is for mr zomek uh last time we talked about this they had not gotten on the waiting list for the solar isn't that right and you said that we we couldn't go ahead on something until that was settled so being on the waiting list does that mean it's they're definitely going to be accepted or that is that it's a go in terms of they're having going forward with their solar panel project um first off i'm not an expert on the smart program the smart energy program but my understanding is that they will eventually get essentially an offer there are blocks of tax credits and so depending on what block of those tax credits they get accepted into that will as part of their pro forma budget they will look at all of their sources of revenue solar the town of amherst any other sources of revenue they have and they will decide uh whether they want to move forward with the town of amherst if you vote for the funding package before you and with the smart program so for for the town to be in the best position it would be beneficial for us to come to them with a vote to say um we have the funding we have voted the funding as a town uh the deal is all the the conditions of the deal are set in the purchase and sale agreement the purchase price uh any of the due diligence we have to do is all set now it's a waiting game to see what kicks out for them in the smart program and that could be march or april of 2020 but without them knowing what if we want to play uh in this equation um it leaves them kind of with this big unknown saying well we heard from the smart program march first but we don't know what the town of amherst wants to do um now i will say to be to be frank if the the smart program um block is not favorable to them the possibility exists that they come back to the town and say thank you very much town you've negotiated in good faith but we can't sell the property uh for the package that has been presented to us both by the town and through the smart program if that were the case then hickory ridge might go on the you know up for sale but to put us in the best position to move forward that's why we're here tonight okay thank you other questions uh channeling it's more of a comment um jarcy and i had a district five meeting where we invited dav and brian yellen from fort river watershed association and just want to say i'm not saying by anyways this was a representative meeting of district five people but we had you know a few people there and 30 or 40 40 people 30 people maybe 40 50 50 people okay and there was a real support for this project and the potential for it and there's great excitement about it okay hold on kathy um this is a comment i made and you can see it in the report that we came from finance that this does seem it does to many people feel like a huge bargain price as this slide says but the other part of the parcel is that only a small part of it is developable that's where it's not the 25 acres so um on the open market people would have found oh you can't build there this is rare species this is wetland but so one of the things that i think is important because we're $200,000 is coming from uh cpa but 420 is coming from the town and there's another hundred thousand that's there for legal fees and for maintenance so it's 420 and big chunk is coming out of the stabilization fund so i think it's really important and we when we talk about town manager goals that we move quickly with what are we're thinking about those six to seven developable acres because potentially if depending on what we decide to do with them we could make back a large amount of our money so it would be a really good investment because we would have all the conservation land and that that small stretch of land along homeroy and not leaving the golf club clubhouse to fall apart unused but thinking about using it so sooner rather than later rather than a long planning process the two or three years from now zero in on it and we received at least one public comment during finance about a concern of pulling money out of stabilization fund knowing the other needs that could draw on that so trying to think of how do we are there ways we recoup some of that while getting everything else we wanted sooner rather than later so that was really the only abstention was uh trying to my assumption was not that i didn't like this project but wanting to recoup some of that money yes i'm just to clarify numbers if i could um so 200 from CPA 114 from the sale of real estate account which can only be used to go back into buying real estate for the town and then 306 i think you may have you might have added well i limited 114 in because i think of it as real money we could have bought something else so it's just we're we're choosing to buy this yes so if we think of even the property is zoned um outlying residential so if we think of five or six house lots at a going house lot rate in Amherst we not to say that that is our preferred option to move forward with the frontage but right there is a significant amount of a recaptured funds if an average house lot in Amherst say is a hundred thousand plus so five to six house lots and that's just one option for reuse of the frontage yes pat um this is a project that i've been interested in since the council started um and i think particularly i am supportive of the community gardens for east Hadley road residents however i have some questions because i sort of develop developed a skeptical kind of tension about the project um it's a been a golf course so that means the greens the grounds have been maintained uh with what kind of chemicals or pesticides because that would impact the gardening that's one question another question is there is a flooding in the in the area and i've seen pictures of it um and i'm concerned about what impact that would have on trails and access out through it um and the third part of my concern is an ongoing maintenance costs which we're estimated and i understand they're an estimate of a hundred thousand dollars a year that's one firefighter and we are having a hell of a time staffing our fire department and we need to look at that as a town so i'm sitting here with these three things so i if you could address them in any way for me can i try one can i give a shot all right yeah so um i want to talk specifically about the trail one i drove past it today if anyone else did we got some water going on so the this will i believe be part of the open spaces plan as well in terms of when we think about trail maintenance that is something the commission this year has been meeting admittedly i'm the only one who has not met with Dave yet but we've all been meeting with Dave to think about specifically which areas of the commission we want to focus on and so trail maintenance trail upkeep is something that we're going to be taking very seriously under consideration and looking at the data that we have looking at photos that we have to consider what might flood and how we can mitigate it's going to be taken under consideration whether through bridges through other modes we're not trying to build something that's going to get racked every year that's not efficient that's not helpful yeah cool David buzzer thanks anything we know about the use of chemicals sure let me just add one thing to the trail so we have trails that flood all over town this property if we buy it is no different the one difference is that the i think there are four bridges um those bridges as far as i know have been there for years one of them is planned to be used for the solar installation so it is a very solid bridge so even when it floods as it is right now when the floodwaters recede those bridges pop out from under the water they're metal um and they're really hardy bridges so um there will be times of the year when the trails are inaccessible but that's true of all of our trails or many of our trails yes so no worry there um and we'll just work with nature and yeah and that sorry that water is also really helpful for the ecosystems that live there right so there's it's not necessarily something we're going to try to change i would imagine because we want to continue that that ecosystem that's thriving there so that speaks to your first question about pesticides and herbicides and to be honest um we would have to test the soil there but again um with that water comes um you know a certain amount of cleansing and moving of those materials so although it it'll be part of our master planning process we will take a look at those soils um the good news i guess to say there is that Amherst was mostly orchards or a lot of Amherst was orchards and in fact i'd be more worried if this property had been an orchard than 50 years of a golf course because those are the chemicals that we historically used on orchards um stay there for a long long time in the soil so we will be testing the soil in those areas where where we propose um gardens and your last was ongoing maintenance i think the $100,000 really was for a complete package of due diligence looking at the building looking at the building systems doing any kind of remediation that we have to do i don't think the annual maintenance of the property will be a hundred thousand dollars that is something we would work out in the future um but it'll be significantly less on an annual basis than a hundred thousand dollars mandee joe so we've been talking about how to get potentially the money we're potentially appropriating tonight back and i look at we're pulling money from two sources beyond the cpa existing from from the sale of real estate account and then i think it's our stabilization fund and if we sell the land the buildable land which account does it go back into does it go back into the stabilization because we borrowed from that or does it go into the sale of real estate where the only thing we can use it for is to buy more real estate thank you so go back into the sale of real estate account however you can use that towards building projects too when we have those coming up so you can use it without having to buy a land we would be able to use it yes some of the capital projects yes i just did some research with the d o r on that you can okay thank you for that question and the answer additional questions from the council dorthy i just want to make a comment when you're talking about how wet it was uh i lived in winter connecticut for a while and the fields across the street i was able to go and look for polywalks and you know so many things change and so many things that we used to do disappear this sounds like a place where you could find polywalks are there other comments from the council evan yeah i just want to echo some of the statements that were made when this project was first introduced to us the watershed scientist in me was very excited about the opportunity to conserve the stretch of river and and allow it to flood which is great and then i realized that as an elected official i also have a fiduciary responsibility and i got really sad about that because i thought i've been trying to be very guarded about our use of the stabilization fund and i've voted against things in the past that i might agree with on an ideological level because i want to protect that stabilization fund and i think what's what's allowing me to vote for this project are two things one are the estimates that we have been presented about the pilot payments and the potential to actually receive more in pilot payments than we had in property taxes which will help us recoup some of that money and then the other thing is what kathy and mendigo referenced which is the ability perhaps to sell off some of this land and so my hope is that my vote for this project also indicates an expectation that there will be some attempts to try to recoup some some of the costs on this project so that we can have both okay are there other comments or questions okay then the motion before you we do not need to suspend rule 8.4 this has come before the council on numerous occasions unless somebody wants to challenge that okay then the motion is in terms of council order 20-26 in order authorizing the acquisition of hickory ridge property as presented and that item appears as the last two pages of your motion document do I hear a motion so moved shall any is the motion to second second and is the second it requires a two-thirds vote and we will do a roll call vote you don't think it requires two-thirds yeah it did because we're acquiring property right it requires two-thirds okay i'm sorry i was looking for us i was looking to hear the second and stabilization and to take money out of stabilization requires two-thirds if we recoup enough money and have money to put back into reserves it goes into free cash or we can vote my majority vote to put it into stabilization at that time but it requires two-thirds to take it out okay you were looking for who is the second who is the second thank you. Councillor Dou Whoauc yes Councillor Gris inning yes councillor Henndoke yes AM cm, yes, councillor Ross yes, councillor Ryan yes councillor Shane yes councillor Schreiber yes councillor Steinberg yes councillor Swartz no councillor Balmel yes councillor bröhryes councillor D'Angelis yes. That's 12 yes and one no. Thank you. We're going to take a five minute break. Thank you. Okay. We're going to reconvene and we are now moving to agenda item eight C community choice aggregation. We have a committee report. We have a council discussion. We have public comment on this and then we'll see where we go from there. Okay. Thank you. Stephanie. Thank you. Good evening. Stephanie Ciccarello, sustainability coordinator for the town of Amherst and also a member of the inter municipal community choice aggregation task force and I'm joined this evening by Stan Schwartz who is also a CCA task force member and also a representative of the town of Pelham who will be joining me in this presentation. So in the interest of time, which is going along quite slowly, there's quite a bit to discuss and we don't want to focus on what community choice aggregation is because each of you has already met with individual task force members. Also we've done outreach to the public. There have been several house gatherings and also a few larger events in public forums. So we feel like tonight we want to more focus on the actual process of what brought us here to you this evening. So how we came together was that we were approached by actually Mayor David Narcowicz contacted municipal leadership to see if we were interested in having a meeting after they're having been approached by the western mass community choice aggregation advocacy group and so we met in Northampton with members, it was community leaders, it was leadership staff and community activists from Northampton, Amherst and Pelham who convened at that meeting and as a result we formed this community choice intermunicipal aggregation effort and so for the past 18 months we've been looking and investigating what the feasibility would be of creating an intermunicipal community choice aggregation which is similar to what's referred to as the California model. So for 18 months we've conducted extensive research and we've worked with two industry expert consultants um basically to identify two things. One is if creating such an entity was feasible and then two to make a right recommendation as to whether or not our community should move forth with this effort. The summary report in executive summary in your packets provides the information of that process in far more detail. Both Northampton and Pelham have received authorization to move forward with developing a plan to create a municipal aggregation. So we are looking this evening for Amherst to do the same. Our state legislators have secured funding for development of a business plan so to assist with development of a business plan for Amherst and Pelham and we're seeking this authorization to move forward so that we create a plan that would be both meeting the DPU Department of Public Utilities statutory requirement but it's also the first step in the formation of a municipal aggregation. And another reason that we are also seeking this authorization is that it's needed to access the funding which our state legislators have secured for us and that funding is only available until June 30th of this year. Also more importantly this aligns with the adopted goals that the council approved most recently for reducing greenhouse gas emissions so we feel that this effort is a vital step in that process and with that I will turn this over to my colleague Stan Schwartz. So yes we are here basically to take what is the first legal step in this process. It is required by the municipal aggregation statute that each legislative body authorized the development of a plan. That's really what you're authorizing today. Simply the development of a plan which then goes to the Department of Public Utilities but we can't submit it unless we have this authorization. And so again this is the beginning of a process not the end of the process and I know one of our members has spoken with each of you but that was a while ago so I'll just hit a couple of the highlights here. The law states that this is an opt-out program so that once it starts residents have an opportunity to opt out but if they don't act then they're automatically in. Our goal in fact that was stated at our first meeting of the task force our primary goal is greenhouse gas emission reductions and we see this as a valuable tool for that purpose. And also the law requires that the plan be available for public review. Normally in towns that do municipal aggregation that's a pretty limited process but to do the type of aggregation that we are envisioning we need public support and we need public engagement and so we are planning to do extensive public outreach and ongoing public outreach as it's not something that some people in the back office are doing it's something that community has to be involved in. And basically that's about it except for questions. I believe you've got the motion in front of you. We do. Okay. Thank you. Council we're open for questions. Yes. Okay I had a couple questions that are in two categories. The first is as I read through what I thought was an excellent report. I mean I just really liked it because you gave a lot of examples on what Cape Cod and others were doing and then you could read to the end and see the resolutions. This initial process as I understand it then once we do if we go ahead with the authorization is there's some costs involved to getting to the proposal that goes to the state with legal advice coming up with some plan design. So my first question is is the amount the $50,000 enough to basically cover that cost? It will probably cover the cost of developing the plan submitting the plan to DPU will probably require additional funding which we are looking for. We're hoping to find additional funding outside of municipal funds but we may be back. Okay because that was you anticipated so if that's not enough or if that's won't that wouldn't be necessarily enough for the next next steps which are kind of trying to set this up and do some of it so the just say a few words on is there outside funding once it's up and running as I read it the fees that will be charged will be covering the operating costs to the extent they are you know what they are but this initial investment on the front end there are funds out there that you think you should can secure? We can look for them but the other possibility is the fees that we can collect on the once it's up and running we can use to pay back. Loans so if communities are willing to loan us the start up funds then we can pay it back in first year or two from operating costs operating revenue. I would like to also add that in addition to the $50,000 that we've secured from the state legislators we have requested funding through the municipal vulnerabilities preparedness program the MVP program. We have requested funds and we will hear about that hopefully around January 6th so there have been funds requested for this specific action. And so can I just continue with my other please question the other is when I looked at the wording of the proposed act that we're asked to do tonight it differs from Northamptons and I was curious of his just we chose to write it in a different way Northampton it makes it more clear that we're authorizing the town manager to do or in that case the mayor to do two things one is do an aggregation process that we're willing to do that and the second is go into a joint agreement and then ours is kind of mushes it together into one. So I didn't know whether that was deliberate or inadvertent because I think we're doing both here we're going into it with two other towns as aggregation but we're also saying we want to move to the next step that we'll do this JPA and then later we're going to set up a public entity. So I was just questioning whether my understanding was right that there are these two steps do we do need to authorize each specifically was the question. Well the thing really is the JPA would have to be authorized after or in the future. We have to first set it up go through the process and get in the paperwork done and then we'd have to come back to the various governments for the actual signing of that. Do we have to authorize the beginning discussion of that to bring it back to us? No this is more to express our intent to move in that direction. So I also have a couple of questions from the report it sounds like given the direction we're asking to go which is the primary purpose is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that means the primary purpose is not to actually reduce costs to consumers. So I want to be clear that it is very likely that going this route is what what is the likelihood I guess is the question that going this route will actually increase costs for all of the consumers that don't actually opt out if we go this route. Good question. This one of the parts of this is the costs are competitive and so if the CCA were to get out of line with Eversource which I believe is this town's utility by any great degree people would start leaving. It's because it's a market mechanism. They would opt out. So we're very conscious of that and the other thing is many of the communities in the state their purpose was to try to save residents money and we did a study with the CEE. Thank you. Clean Energy Extension at UMass and looking at all the CCAs in the state in 2017-2018 and found that yes but half the time they saved people money and that often amounted to eight to ten dollars a month usually less. It wasn't like you were going to send anybody's kids to college but if we retain that those funds within the CCA then the estimate is that that would gather about 180 thousand dollars a year for one mill per kilowatt hour and so over several years we have the ability to build enough resources to both support an organization and begin supporting programs and services. That's basically our initial plan here. Can I ask my next question? Please. So my next one is actually what you've tried to explain the process but I'm still having a little difficulty figuring out when what vote this council takes that makes potentially going this route irreversible. So let me try to explain that a little more. What does today's if we vote today what does that vote bind us to? When is there a possibility at some point if we find out that the rates that you've been able to negotiate are going to be 10% higher than ever source rates and this isn't I'm just you know give me you know they're going to be 10% higher and I get the opt the opt out thing they do it for lots of things because most people don't opt out and so that means we would effectively be increasing everyone's rates and they'd have to affirmatively say I don't want that if we find out that's the thing do we have later on an option to say no we're going to pull Amherst out when is that option what what are those next steps that say here's when it's final here's when it's not what kind of say does this council have in what that DPU agreement looks like or doesn't look like or what I'm just trying to get I I just don't quite get all of it the short answer is we haven't decided yet because you haven't decided yet but we have the option of doing an inter municipal agreement or the JPA which is our preference and if we have a JPA then every each town has a member of the board a voting member of the board at least one and so that is your oversight and your supervision of the of the CCA and so you're not left out of the process and it doesn't go off and just do its own thing and so if and what's happened in a couple of CCAs if they could not get competitive rates they suspended operation until they could get back into the market now that's only been a couple of CCAs and it's not because they couldn't match ever source it's because they couldn't beat ever source by as much as they told people they would so basically if ever source can get a price pretty much we can get a price and we can stay competitive and that's been the history of the CCAs in the state that they can at least get a match every source but that doesn't quite answer my question of if we pass this when we vote does that mean Amherst is in a CCA or is there so when what vote is the one that says Amherst is a CCA when and what say do we have in that so right now you're authoring authorizing development of a plan that gets approved by the DPU it's really not until we implement the plan and the plan would have to come back and be reviewed for approval so there's depth this is just the sort of the first step so there's an opportunity after if this were approved there'd be another opportunity before this goes forward I think it's hard to say what exactly what the rates will be I mean I think it's like anything else in terms of rates you know even with the utility their basic rates their rates go up their rates go down we're going to face the same thing our understanding too was that we spoke with people at the Cape Light Compact and sort of what we were told is that it sort of averages out sometimes their rates are above and the basic service rates and sometimes they're below I mean so it's not like they're always going to be you know at a higher rate so and it flushes out to be sort of somewhat even in the end I think I get your question here the statute does not require an approval of the plan okay so that would be a matter of you deciding that that's going to be a part of your process well if I guess this is where I'm really confused if we vote today on this authorization or next week or whenever that vote happens and say yes we're authorizing the development of a DPU plan or submission to DPO it goes to DPU and DPU approves we it sounds like the statute does not require Amherst to approve that plan for it to go in effect so if Amherst wanted to require itself to approve that plan for it to go in effect how do we do that requirement you said we could make it part of the process who makes it part of that process first but within this organization again you have representatives on the board who have to be count officials and so at that day where the decision makers to say yes the rates are acceptable we go ahead if you want a decision point before that then that would be a matter of you deciding that the something has to come back to you for a vote okay Dorothy I think I understand that rates can go up and down depending upon how big you are well how much power you have in the market but I don't know how this reduces carbon footprint the the plant the well the california model which is what we're trying to follow here basically takes the resources of the cca and one of the ways of doing this is to charge what's called an adder one mill two mills above what the cost of electricity is to the cca one mill is 180 thousand dollars a year roughly for the three towns that money then gets put into both staff and then can be used as resources for programs and we haven't decided what programs we're going to want to do our consultants have given us a lovely laundry list of possibilities but any one of those programs it could be installing solar equipment one of the things we've talked about is marketing every mass save rather than take over mass save try to promote mass save especially those communities that don't access it effectively okay or putting in programs that attract landlords into the process so it's basically part of this is we suddenly have a lot of choices we have control of this instead of somebody at the state house deciding where the money goes what our priorities are going to be andy so uh thinking of my friends and neighbors who have uh put invested in solar on their homes is there any impact on them if we go into this cca there'll be no different than they're experiencing now i assume they're net metering that was my question yeah no there's no impact it's just they're getting whatever electricity they don't get from their solar they're going to get from the provider that we contract with it'll be pretty much transparent for them they won't notice a difference do they continue to get the credits from every source the monthly check yes yeah basically if they have a surplus and are selling back to every source or selling back to the grid then those that will continue that will be changed evan so i i i don't think that mandy joe's question was sufficiently answered i don't think so either and i actually am more confused now than before she asked the question so my understanding having read the report was we were voting today to authorize us to move forward with developing a plan then there's a line in the report that say you develop this business plan and then it says the three municipalities will each approve the business plan prior to commencing the aggregation so my thought was there are two votes to make this happen one to authorize the development of the plan and then we vote on the plan and so to mandy joe's point is we could vote today and say we authorize you to come forward with the plan and then the plan could come to us and we could say i don't like this plan i'm going to vote no and stop it or i love this plan let's go forward but then you just said it's not required by statute for us to vote on the plan so is this our last vote no unless we dictate other ones here's what you can do and this is what we didn't tell them okay we put it into the what we call an article you call it a motion we put it in that the plan had to come back to town meeting for approval and so you could amend this motion to put that in there or have a separate motion but it's not required it's not required by state law no but we can require it lovely to require garcy and another alternative is that um it would just be approved by the town manager so it could come up come back to the full council or the council could authorize the town manager to approve the final plan so i have a couple questions is this essentially creating a public utility not no because you know that would be a municipal utility in which you own all the infrastructure like coyote or south hadley right okay this is creating a municipal aggregation which basically only deals with the supply side of the of the equation the utility still controls all of the delivery and infrastructure all the wires all the transformers all that do the three towns that are presently involved all have average source no no north anthon has a national grid and if you all had the same would that give you greater bargaining power no because we're not bargaining with the utilities we're bargaining with bargaining with actual suppliers yeah okay when i i've been to several meetings on this even before i was elected um the and i know that at least initially it was our goal is to do the aggregation and then over time we hope that the sources will in fact be carbon neutral is that still the goal no no that's uh well i mean that's a goal but the goal is to uh through this cca organization begin to actually implement greenhouse gas reducing projects and programs and again it's uh we now our consultants have now identified a number of possible ways of going about that that's the next step is to okay let's start talking about these and see which ones fit our needs in the area but no it's not simply to wait for the great the grid to get green in fact one of the things our consultants are pushing us towards is putting as much renewable energy mostly solar off the grid or what's called behind the meter so that the energy is used mostly on site and therefore you're taking um strain off the grid and also you're saving the distribution charges that you know anybody who's got solar in his net metering now is kind of familiar with this idea well we want to do a lot more of that other questions from the council evan uh yeah so uh cca 3.0 um what what i couldn't tell by reading the report and a new acknowledgement which i think is great which is everyone has their own definition of what cca 3.0 is um which is of course wonderfully confusing um and so i'm trying to figure out what your definition of it is and one of my one of my questions is i i went to that one of the outreach sessions in 2018 with um represented from kate like compact and my big takeaway message from that was this works great but don't get into the mass save part right and so but my reading of this sounds like perhaps that's something that you're considering and so i i'd like some clarity on what that means and how this interacts with mass save at least the task force um we have said we'll keep that in our back pocket we don't for one thing think we're big enough to do it um it's the only time we would want to do that is if we are in cape lights situation where we didn't think that our residents were getting their fair share of the money they're giving into the mass save fund um that's why cape light did that they they did not feel the cape was getting the return on the money they were putting in um we have no studies now right now to show that we aren't being well served by our investments the um we do know that the state does not allow a lot of tinkering with the mass save program it's basically they wanted to be statewide pretty much the same thing so that that reason for doing it is kind of taken away from us if there was something we wanted to do very specifically for our area um so yeah right now we're not thinking of taking over the mass save program what we have thought of again is we might be able to help enhance the mass save program by getting more people to call take advantage of it and did you have any further questions that you i i mean i think my question was eventually answered that that i've got a couple things to say about it in discussion when we get there but i think the question was eventually gotten to okay yeah i do want to make it plain that what you're authorizing now does not put us into the mass save program okay that is a whole separate process this is prerequisite you have to do this part to get the mass save which is why cape light has a municipal aggregation they didn't really want the aggregation part they wanted the mass save part elissa so the motion that you provided us based on your experiences elsewhere and then pelham and north hampton is not the motion that's in front of us we altered that i had a hand in that and i asked that we have some outreach associated with ensuring that what i had a hand in which i was trying really hard to track mgl because the report wasn't helping me get there um which i think has been answered by some of these questions but one of the things that changed which again i asked for that to happen but i'm not clear on why this happened when i said in the middle of this and i know it's very long and complicated but to authorize the town manager act in partnership with their municipalities to develop a plan detailing the process and consequences this of course is lifted straight from mgl consequences of aggregation to be reviewed by residents and submitted to the department of energy resources instead that got altered to act in partnership authorized development and develop and implementing a plan detailing the process of creating a municipal application so i'm not really clear on why that was changed because what i was trying to get across is what are we actually authorizing right now and what are our decision points in the future and i think mandy joe followed up really well on that and i feel like that's now gone softer again in the motion that we were finally provided tonight and so i'm just confused as to i get the part about how we're initiating the process which is not with the original motion said but that is with mass general losses i get that there are certain steps where it goes to the department of energy for approval and then we could decide like pelham did that they wanted to be able to vote on it i get that there's a whole separate section that also got dropped out of my motion about developing an energy plan in order to qualify for funding which does require our approval but it's not a step that one has to undertake it's in part two of the mgl that athena so kindly provided for all of you so i just want to make sure since i don't know who saw what when we're clear on if we vote tonight what exactly we think we'll end up with after we voted it um athena would you put the motions up please it's yeah it's that one thank you so this is what you were referring to alissa this is the mod the modified modified version which is great i just want to make sure i don't know what a plan detailing the process of creating a municipal aggregation is i didn't use those words and so i don't know why we went back to those words and so i'm just trying to get you know what's our part that we're authorizing and then it might come back to us like at the funding stage like i understood the division there that's not mentioned anymore in this motion but i'm not clear on the middle part i guess yes thank you other comments questions shallony so this seems too good to be true so i just want to know what are the risks and especially for lower income people but you know when you the task force particularly where this didn't where cca did fail and how can we anticipate those risks and what can we do to mitigate those risks very few cca's in the state have actually shut down operation and a couple that did um it was because they were wanting to save significant amount of money over their utility price and weren't able to do that and they did not have any green goals or anything of that nature they were all about saving money the risks the biggest risk i can see because basic municipal aggregation has been working successfully for towns all across the state there's well over a hundred of them so that part of the operation it works it doesn't save anybody a lot of money sometimes you can but you can do a cca 2.0 as we've described in the report and you know green up your supply a bit off the grid for me the biggest risk is that we don't push forward to the 3.0 level that we don't get significant greenhouse gas reductions that we don't transform our energy profile and there there's also risk because there you're starting to make investments and projects and programs and so there's a risk that in any case like that that it may not work but that should not endanger the basic aggregation in fact a lot of that activity will happen outside of the aggregation the legal content that the DPU is interested in okay um as one consultant pointed out a lot of things we want to do are things that towns can do already or towns cities can do already with similar funding sources one of the things this project gives us is a chance to coordinate between towns to make it more regional and more strategic and also to start generating resources that we have control over as opposed to again chasing grants that somebody else has decided what's important and we should add um also to answer part of your question that equity is a big piece of what we want to develop so in the development of a plan and working with that strategy we want to include that as kind of a secondary goal if you will as well so that is something we've discussed and something that we've prioritized we've listed about a half a dozen secondary goals which I look at them as okay our primary goal is green house gas reductions we can try to go at that a lot of different ways but once we have a couple of competing possibilities we look at those secondary goals and say okay which one satisfies more of those than the other one so it's equity resilience uh economic development local economic development okay all of those things also would and again we're not going to be the decision makers ultimately it's going to be people from the the municipal governments basically sitting on the boards making these decisions but this is the framework this is our learnings right now I don't say yes she does the follow-up question and you don't have to maybe explain it now if it's taking too much time but could you send me information why having green goals makes it more likely to succeed than just focusing on the um the cost reduction it define it well depends on what you define as succeeding what your goals are since we've defined a primary goal as greenhouse gas reductions then yeah but if people opt out would that be sustainable then I mean as a town yes we're committed to that but we can't force that those goals and people if they can't afford it so right the experience with existing CCAs is that if they keep their rates competitive people don't opt out even if they're occasionally a little above every source or the utility they don't opt out Evan last question is and the development of local renewable distributed energy sources so is the thought that the the revenue generated would actually be used to perhaps like purchase land and have and develop a solar I'm curious what that looks like in there's a number of different models that the consultants have described for us one possibility is that the CCA actually buys and owns projects the other is that it creates a revolving loan fund and actually enables residents to over time establish equity in a project and and yes it gets really detailed and complicated but that's two possibilities is we increase the amount of ownership and including targeted ownership towards low and middle income people people right now can't afford or renters it allows them to buy into basically ownership in a project that's not on their property I asked this at one point at least once before if other surrounding towns want to join us how does that happen and what's the price of entrance that hasn't been determined what we do know is we would have to go back to the DPU with an amended plan but that's the only thing we know about that process because it hasn't been decided this the JPA board would decide such a thing it'll be part of the rules of the organization as you know do they have to pay it a fee to come in and it's likely so in our experience with Valley Bike Share which is an inter-municipal entity and agreement that was spelled out in how we were going to develop and grow as an organization if you will and so I would imagine that similarly that would be spelled out as to how other communities could join in the development of the business plan will identify how other communities could join along it doesn't mean that they could automatically join in but we would identify a process for which that to happen so is this a non-profit or a quasi-public corporation I think the latter it's the ladder okay if we form a JPA it is a separate body politic right and the advantage of that is of course that the underlying municipalities are indemnified right got it that helps me thank you Alyssa okay so this is going to be hopefully an easy multiple choice question in the MGL it says Department of Energy Resources now the MGL is not always updated to show exactly how agencies change names but suddenly the new motion sheet says Department of Public Utilities is that a typo is that just the name that the agency's called now and MGL hasn't caught up what's going on with that no the statute requires us to go to the Department of Energy Resources for advice it's the DPU that actually approves the plan it says from Department of Energy Resources read the would you read the whole section that whole piece the sentence that talks about the Department of Energy Resources okay there are two separate agencies and while we are developing the plan we have to do that in consultation with the Department of Energy Resources it's called the agency in the statute right right yeah yeah it took me a while when I first read the statute it's like wait a minute where's the DPU in this so this sounds like a startup so where does the funding come let's say we get the plan going where will the funding and what is what sort of funding is needed to launch that there are two approaches to this one is what most every community in the state accepts Cape Light Compact most of the CCAs have done which is the hire broker or contract with a broker to who provides all the startup funds and shepherds it through the DPU and does the whole process for your turnkey and for that they take one mill per year one mill basically for the length of the contract three years so in our case that company would get over half a million dollars for doing that work 180 thousand dollars a year for three years and we estimate that work probably cost between 100 and 150 thousand dollars okay so what we are doing is trying to get that those startup funds upfront okay either totally upfront or be able to borrow some of it and pay it back out of that mill for the first year and then start hiring staff with that money and building the organization over time and so it is like a startup um mr. Bachmann i should also note that um we have staff time who's being dead who's being dedicated to this that's cost to the town the city of north hampton is the same they're dedicating staff to this and we have a lot of volunteer hours that are being dedicated so that's where the startup sort of comes from this startup cost plus the um money that the state legislators have gotten uh which has been passed and it's $50,000 that is already in the bank basically and we also got a usdn grant uh urban sustainability director's network grant of 75 000 which paid for the consultants to do to basically to find the answers to the questions that we weren't not knowledgeable enough to answer Darcy and just speaking of volunteer time i just would like to point out there are seven members of the inner municipal task force here actually if you could introduce some that would i was actually going to so i was just waiting for a break and an opportunity to do that is the council ready for us to move to some public comment that doesn't mean we won't back come back to our own discussion but why don't we do that by having you introduce people and then we'll move to public comment yes so um along with consular do not um we have sam tidalman who is a newly um newly arrived amherst resident um and then we have Adele Franks who's representing the city of north hampton um we also have river strong who is with the you mass clean energy extension under rose who is um in this role i guess both with the ecac and also um with the western mass community choice aggregation advocacy group right and dwayne bregger behind andra who is with the you mass clean energy extension great um i just want to ask that we not spend public comment being repetitive of each other just uh comments that you feel would help the council maybe understand this better uh and or understand the depth of support so who would like to make public comment okay i see two people here and i may be there let's start over here please come forward to the mic yes thank you my name is adele franks and i am a resident of north hampton and a participant on the inter municipal cca task force and most of what i was going to say has already been said so i'm not going to repeat it um but i will add that um north hampton is very eager uh to move forward but we really don't want to move forward alone uh it's been a wonderful collaboration on the task force um we have been greatly benefiting from shared expertise and we share values and we share goals of greenhouse gas reduction and uh we would we would love to take the next steps together um with amherst and pelham and hopefully i think we all on the task force would very much like other communities to join eventually but we have come a long way together and we would like to take the next step together and i would also just like to add that the way i look at at this um program it's a way of keeping our money in our communities because we're going to spend about the same amount for electricity no matter what we do but if we're paying every source or national grid we're they're they're using that money for their administrative costs if we pay a broker then the brokers you know the the company the broker works for is is getting the profit but the money is not staying in our communities and what we're proposing is a way to basically charge people the same amount of money for their electricity but to benefit our communities by keeping our money here so that we can invest in distributed energy resources solar on parking lots etc and uh and and to our mutual benefit so we hope that we will be able to move forward and take these next steps together thank you thank you sir you had public comment you i want to clear out i guess i'm sam tidalman i'm a member of the amherst pelham north hampton intermeasurable aggregation task force i'm also an amherst resident district 4 25 green leaves drive i wanted to share some written remarks uh that i made as a resident and i think i'm going to try to annotate them briefly in real time to address some of the questions you've raised as well i'll maybe try to but still keep it short i'd like to urge the council to exercise its authority to take meaningful local action to address the challenges of climate change by authorizing the development of an aggregation program in participation with other communities with the primary goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions the language in front of you is simply to authorize development of a part a aggregation program part a under the statute it has nothing to do with the mass aid program or part b under the statutes a completely separate authorization and separate dpu approval as the language is currently drafted you would not have any further review over this process that would go to the town manager you could amend this language so that it came back to you as it was previously stated that you could have further approval say by doing so you would want to consider the fact that funding that's channeled into the development of the aggregation plan it that plan that gets paid for is now contingent upon further approval so it creates levels of uncertainty but by creating an aggregation program Amherst will be giving its residents and businesses more control over where our energy comes from and how it's produced and give us the option but not the requirement to purchase electricity from a program that offers local oversight and accountability to its customers there's an opt out period before the aggregation program begins supplying power and then it continues onward customers can opt out at any time well over 100 municipalities throughout massachusetts have adopted aggregation programs many of which are increasing the amount of renewable energy in their communities electricity supplies beyond the requirements of the common wells renewable portfolio standard primarily through the purchase of additional renewable energy credits designed to foster the development of additional renewable generation capacity those programs that are offering greener energy supply are doing it at rates that are competitive with their utilities basic service more often than not they're beating their basic service whether or not they're above or below the basic service rate on average it's by a margin of a few dollars a year not even a month you might be talking about a difference of five to ten dollars a year some of these programs offer greener supply than what's required in the renewable portfolio standard by default and others make that an option for their customers they can opt up to a greener supply but the default is the same as the basic service whatever is required that year under the rps and your aggregation program can make those decisions accordingly okay some aggregation programs are going further than that kplay compacts developed 20 and a half megawatts of solar pv capacity for the k cut and martha's vineyard municipalities uh very briefly cambridge has developed a solar or is developing a local solar pv program to provide a portion of its customers electricity needs and tucket provides a financial incentive for customers who install solar pv these communities are only scratching the surface of what cca's could potentially do but you're not authorizing an ambiguous or amorphous 3.0 right program right now you're authorizing a basic program that includes a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions thus the program becomes a platform for doing more than simply buying competitive power supply and what those additional steps will be there'll be financially feasible there'll be a lawful and they'll be according to what your community wants and needs and is capable of doing so it will be a progression over time i have to ask you to complete thank you thank you very much are there any other public comments hi andra rose i am speaking as um for the cac that um we voted to support um authorization of a cca program that has its primary purpose as reducing greenhouse gas um jointly with these other communities and that was in your packet so i won't read it to you but that's it thank you chris chris riddle 252 strong street just a plain citizen um not representing anybody but me um but i think this is something that we need to do i hope very much that this council uh will uh move ahead in uh to the next step this is a uh a very exciting thing what's a particular part of it that's exciting to me well the only thing that's exciting about it really is with greenhouse gas reductions um and and i'm interested in well um my my my interest is in buildings existing building stock and uh one and how do we address that problem and try to get to uh the uh net zero by 2040 or 2050 um when i heard about this at first i thought well this is this is great and that means that we're moving toward a time when when you plug something into the wall outcomes uh 100 renewable electricity and then so then all you have to do is to take that the building stock that's out there the existing buildings that are go on forever toward the horizon and uh and make them electrified and bingo you've got the building stock converted to being that zero um that is not that simple and i don't think my understanding is that this that the uh cca 3.0 program is uh at least not expiring to get to 100 renewable soon maybe by 2050 maybe by 25 i don't know i'm sort of curious about what actually a projected timeline might be but whatever it's if green agrees how greenhouse gas reductions is the goal and that's my goal and so i think uh this is a very exciting prospect that i hope the council will support thank you thank you are there any other comments at this time please come forward this is on yes elisa pierce in pelham when i was serving on the select board in pelham uh the cca came before us and what attracted me to it was the idea that we who use electricity are paying a kind of a mortgage every month out it pours and uh here's an opportunity to own what we want to keep in and local and electricity likes to stay local um as a select man uh we reviewed a cca where we would have used uh we would have purchased something that looked that was greener but uh what troubled me was that it was sort of green on paper these were um it was a sleight of hand it was uh texas wind so those electrons that i was going to be having in my house were not going to be green but i was benefiting from a sort of a a mechanism so this to me feels very real and very true and very local and i like i like the implication that with with that half a million dollars over three years and some very passionate people and your guidance sending the right person to that group um they would be thinking really hard about green electrons here and people building those and maintaining those in our communities uh not just some some paper somewhere so thank you thank you are there any other comments from the public at this time we're back to the council and i just would like to propose something okay um and you may decide this is not what you want um this is only our first reading if you will we usually require these for two and i would like to know from Stephanie and perhaps yourself is is anything dramatic going to happen between now and just January 6th that would by us waiting till then to vote no would not till January 6th okay so if we decide we would like to have a second shot at this on December 6th that would be January 6th 2020 we would not be stopping you dead in your tracks no okay what i would say is if we could um beyond that date might become problematic only in that then that slows down the next steps and moving towards development of a plan and because we have funding for a limited period of time we would hope that you would be able to make a decision on this thank you um the other thing that i personally would like to see is that the motion that we eventually vote on be broken into two and include something that allows us to have another shot at this such as Pellum required and rather than sit here tonight and wordsmith emotion at um you know going on 10 o'clock i'd suggest that we do that for our meeting on the 6th instead now that was my proposal that may not be what the council would like Mandy job so i would support that um i definitely want to see something that requires this town to approve that dpu plan or whatever plan it's called i think i don't know whether this language has gone through our town attorney or not but especially if we're adding provisions like that i would definitely want it through our town attorney to make sure it's you know legally binding and all on things because i know the statute itself doesn't require that and so i want to make sure we have the ability to andy right so i guess we need to just clarity of who would be approving the town manager or the town council we'd like it to come back i wouldn't come back to the council yep what i was thinking about was along similar lines and i think that it could be handled as a an amendment to the motion or worse so that we have a clean vote that we have the motion as it would be proposed and then somebody able to make an amendment and then debate them the amendment and i think it might be fairly simple i actually was working at a little bit if you knocked out the words and implement and then after the words municipal aggregation but in to be approved by the amherst town council that essentially does what we wanted to do i would want to have the opportunity to have others than me look at that but we can come back to the next meeting and have a very robust conversation on whether to pass it as it's been proposed originally or with some amendment like i just suggested other comments from the council dorthy i want to know if perhaps one of the eventual goal is to separate us from the the big grid which we know is in bad shape and goes out to self-sustained energy which is local and controlled is that where things might move that is a strategy that we are looking at and talked about it's all going to depend on resources and part of that is the ability to build micro grids and right now the state and the agility are hampering that effort so it'll get hopefully easier at because parts of the state are actually promoting it and parts are getting in the way someone who'd like to go off the grid thank you i'm sorry pat i was once in a play called what's her name in wonderland but that's another story i'm ready to vote now with a little wordsmithing i pretty sure i'm going to be outvoted on that but this is a this is something that i've been looking at for a long time and i see nothing but positives so i would like us to move forward tonight are there other comments yes elissa i was just gonna say that if we do end up making notes for the future as i'm sure someone wrote down on mr steinberg's behalf etc is that i don't like the change in wording that says to act in partnership with other municipalities and authorized that's not the wording i used for a reason we do not just tell the town manager to act in partnership with other municipalities go do it we for a purpose we direct for a purpose not to just say you have that authority now because to a large extent he has that authority already and so what we're trying to tell him is what we want him to do in working with the other powers and i would also like it to be re looked at the idea of incorporating the mgl part that talks about the separate energy plan that's later in the process associated with funding because i think that would be important i would have thought that that would be important to our community that that separate step that's after the fact would make us eligible for some funding and yet that's not addressed in here at all and so if we're throwing a whole bunch of things together i'm not sure why we wouldn't want to address that as a separate later step part i believe you're talking about part b of the statute that is an entirely separate process it actually requires another authorization and a whole another plan a much more detailed plan okay i'm i mean you it's not like this could kick that off by just putting it in here could would legally authorize that and so i'm saying we are in fact trying to give quite a bit of authority to the town manager to make things happen and to not slow things down we may have this separate step where things come back to us but this plan would also come back to us and so i grant you i understand completely they're two separate plans but just like it doesn't change from department to dpu in the middle of a paragraph we need to be really clear on what we're authorizing the motion we originally got didn't do that we're still not quite there and so i'm asking that please you work with the president to make sure we get these questions answered in whatever our final version of this thank you ever so i wasn't sure if i wanted to say this now or save it for agenda item 8e but i think given pat's comment i'll say it now so last meeting we agreed to vote to suspend rule 8.4 which requires us to consider in one meeting and vote in another meeting and i feel as though we sort of opened the floodgates with that because now we have a motion sheet that has three different motions voting to suspend 8.4 one of which we determined was unnecessary voting on this tonight would require suspending that rule um and so i guess my first thoughts on that are if we're going to just always be suspending rule 8.4 then we should just get rid of rule 8.4 but if we have 8.4 it seems like the value of that is one so that we as a council can listen to debate discussion and then take time to think before the next meeting but the other more important thing is that it gives the public an opportunity to see coverage of this that might appear in the paper and to know that they a decision wasn't made before it was on their radar and to weigh in we can decide that we don't agree with that and we can repeal rule 8.4 and if you want to do that you should tell our chair of go l you want to do that but as long as we have 8.4 in the books i am i am really hesitant to continuously vote to suspend it and especially to do so without cause and so my request going forward would be anytime i see a motion to suspend rule 8.4 i want an explanation about why why is it necessary that we we do it i don't see any real reason to suspend the rule in this case uh there's no emergency there's no time limit on the grant as with the last one and so given given that and given that we've got confirmation there's no harm in waiting till the 6th i don't see why we would vote to suspend a rule sort of just because all right at this point i need to get a sense of the council i propose that we have the vote on this on january 6 2020 which is our next meeting that between now and then we work on the motions which we may need to come back to you and also in a legitimate way consult with other counselors so that we're not breaking open meeting law and we come up with at least two motions maybe even a third one given this other mass general law that elissa was referring to and then there are others who would like to perhaps go ahead and vote tonight so i need a sense of whether you want to try to proceed or not so the best way to do that one way to do that which i really truly want to say i don't want to see is that we put the motion forward and we vote it down and i don't want that on the record so i would rather put forward the motion that we delay action on this to the 6th of january 2020 do i have a second second all those in favor raise your hand and say i i oh discussion it it what all that's true that's a very good question the default in our rules is we would wait tonight okay the other way to look at it is you could make a motion to suspend and then if the motions to suspend the rule okay fails you're where you were okay all right let's do this i move to suspend rule 8.4 is there a second okay all those in favor of suspending rule 8.4 raise your hand and say i all those opposed raise your hand and say no okay this is now moving to our next meeting which is january 6. Stephanie i look forward to working with you on the wording of those motions and so forth and thank you for all the hard work your group has done i have been following you and this does help us move forward in some many different ways okay thank you thank you and now our very patient bylaw review just to be very clear with the council this is a first reading and there will be no vote okay so we have before us oh bob richey bernie kubiak and they have been loyal members of the previous bylaw review committee and now this bylaw review committee which also includes evan ross pat de angeles and elissa brewer and i will only say they have learned more about our bylaws than we would ever hope but thank you for all your work shall we proceed yes and i expect and hope to be mercifully brief uh you have 10 to 20 pounds of material and i don't intend to cover any of that i'd like to use the limited time that i've assigned myself to just thank the members of the committee uh starting with k moran uh ken hardree's bernie pat evan and elissa uh and jeff cravitz for absolutely monumental work in producing the documents that you have uh we tried to steer this process from uh data of creation which was precisely one year to the day from the day we sent it to you last week mission was to get this done within a year and i think we accomplished that to the extent that we did zoning in july and we've we've given you the report with our recommendations for the general bylaws it is a fulfillment of the charge to review make recommendations and to uh come up with a plan for implementing it we have delivered you documents which i think cover the waterfront these documents will allow you to trace the trail that we we took there was an audit trail with a number of drafts and what you have before you represents a plateau and a mountain climb there's more to do what we've given to you was a draft set of bylaws is significantly less imperfect than what we started with and but there's work to do so we've given you a draft we've also given you a list of things that we think if we were council members would like to have another crack out so that's where you go on from where we leave off our job is done and by giving you the report i i think bernie has come up with a a a way of saying this we've built a platform on which you can stand going forward and we hope it serves the purposes for which we were created thank you and it is it's a start it's a start there's some recommendations and going forward i think overall what we'd like to see the council develop is sort of an operations manual for the town of amherst where well if citizens can go to a single place a single web page find the charter the bylaws the special acts and the except the accepted statutes and critically the policies procedures and regulations of the town all there all searchable all readable and at some point interlinked so if we can do that and this is a place to start uh i think um folks in amherst will be well served and the government will will reach a level of transparency that you don't often find finally the there was a cross document platform with some consistency among all of the documents that we looked at we've created a template for future changes so that the changes work with each other and integrate the zoning bylaws with the general bylaws to the extent that's necessary the document that we put together has both an alphabetic index so that anybody looking at it and digital format will have ease of navigating from place to place so i think that's we'd like to end there and expose ourselves to your questions if you have any on what we've done but we hope what we've given you is perspective enough to go forward thank you would members from the i'm checking on it just a fact right here um would members from the committee like to speak listen this was a fantastic committee to work on you should all be really jealous because even though it doesn't sound all that exciting it was really interesting to take what they've done and then take it a little further based on the kinds of conversations we've been having here at town council and the leadership provided by bob and jeff was amazing bernie was always there to tell us practically speaking how things worked other places you could have not have asked for a more amazing group to work with so you should definitely all be jealous evan uh so i also want to thank bob and bernie um i think the counselors on the committee were there in many ways to offer our input but also to to sort of provide the perspective of the council but the real work of this committee um were bob and bernie and also jeff who must be very happy to be done with this work um because we put him through a lot and i feel bad for that um but but one thing i do want to make sure i i stress that that bob said is is that this the document that you've received is not our bylaws are perfect and so you don't even have to worry it's it's it's an improvement um and there's still a lot of work to be done um and so i think that future considerations document that you received is going to be really useful going forward um and one of the things i want to say to the members of the council is that a lot of the things on that future considerations document aren't like the sexy things that you want to get headlines in the paper for working on but they're important things that that i hope people will pick up um going forward pat i just want to say thank you to bob and bernie and jeff and alissa and evan it's one of the best committees i've sat on um in terms of hard work and commitment and humor so i appreciated it very much i learned a lot thank you thank you let me i just want to state for the public record we discussed it and adopted a charge for this committee but we not appoint the committee until january 28th 2019 so we're still within the one-year limit for you reporting back i was afraid you'd say that yeah i just want to be very clear that we're within the charter and we've met that requirement so are there questions comments at this time mandy joe start with me um so i i'm going to put two hats on the first ones as a charter commissioner wow um i think when the charter commission put this into the transition section we were thinking oh we'll change all the select board to whatever and have we need a committee to do stuff like that and that's what they'll do and it'll get done you guys went above and beyond what i think anyone on the charter commission ever expected for this review at this time it's what we would have hoped for for the 10-year decennial review um so i i can't express from the charter commission point of view my appreciation too much um now i'm going to put my counselor hat on and i'm going to say you know i was one that sent you guys a ton of comments and last night i went through all of my comments that i sent you weeks ago and color coded them as to what was dealt with where and all of that and i ended up with just one that i'm not happy with how you dealt with which given how many i had and i'm sure some people can figure out which one it was um but um yeah you know you took our comments and you considered them and you gave us back a document that said yeah we heard you but we don't agree or yes that's a good one for future consideration or this and that and and as a counselor who wasn't involved in this process i want to say thank you for that too because it made me as an individual feel like i did have some say before we get to this point so you're going to talk about the one i mean i can mention it and i'll probably make a motion next week but um it it was the lawn mower one and it happens like i know that's what it is i i really i still don't like the fact that it's it's being added and and i will probably move next week to delete it from from the whole set of bylaws for future consideration at gol if you look if you move next week none of us will be here but that's okay at the next meeting i won't be here next week okay uh yes kathy okay i do want to thank you all for the mountain of work and the level of it meant that when i got my first chance to read all the changes i didn't read as carefully as i think mandi did particularly where things were completely deleted um so i have a question on one of them and i had to go back and read the original bylaw to figure out what was in it and it's the piece on condominiums and co-op conversions and i could see in reading that why you might want to do some substantial revisions um what i saw is that the rationale why the entire thing was deleted is that we haven't really needed it because it hasn't really happened in amherst you know so don't worry about it so then i went over to zoning and planning and put the word condominium in and it's kind of silent on it so there were several protections in that bylaw for what could happen and um and i understood why they were in and there are things of if if someone who owns a large apartment complex decides for whatever reasons that they would prefer to convert them into owner there were protections that they can't harass the tenants to try to get them out of there so they can argue you know look we have all these vacancies there was tenants first rights of of refusal of you know all buy in um some process kinds of things on how soon and how fast so by wholesale deleting it you we've removed some things that we might someday need even if we hadn't activated them and so i'm i'm just curious on why the total removal because i know how protective they've been in places that are worried about it and so we had that long prologue of what people were worried about and it's great it hasn't happened in amherst but what if um some of the big apartment buildings since we now have them said you know i'd rather get out of the rent of business and get into the ownership so so that was my question and having said that there were some changes in that section i would have made that i thought didn't make sense so it wouldn't have been keep it just as is it would have required a different discussion so just some rationale on why just get rid of it where you were more careful with dogs and cats and things and things let's keep this one we might not need it or you know you kept something on the books that may be a state law protected because there's nothing i don't think locally that's protective if this is gone back in the 80s this was a real hot topic uh and the fear but putting a law on the book to protect you in case something happens it's not a bad thing to do even if it never happens but the incidence probability kept descending and during the uh during our sessions we had input from people that predicted that its utility back then is absent today uh the other thing to take in mind that there are so many more appropriate and contemporary tools to deal with the problems that condominium conversion regulation sought to achieve that it became not the tool of choice in dealing with some of those issues uh condominium form of ownership is not uh is not a kind of title it's not something that zoning does uh so zoning has limited reach on the ownership of of real estate and so there were a whole bunch of reasons why we thought that in the interest of producing a a a concise set of laws that govern our our town of a non-zoning nature uh it was neater not to have this uh the council could easily put it back in if it chose and you could also you said there are other things that are excuse me please you could you could adopt it from whole cloths in the future if it chose to do so um it was just our thought that this was the better option at this stage and you said there are other laws that are protective the way this is that there are other tools that the town already has on its books somewhere well i didn't say necessarily that it was the town laws but there are uh land use uh options available uh in the in the private marketplace under state statute that allow the mischief that condominium conversion posed back in the 80s that is diminishing the the availability of affordable housing stock for example uh these things are addressed by more surgical instruments than condominium conversion uh the inputs that we got from the town staff uh back then uh indicated that this was the better course to follow and we sort of went along with that idea i don't believe in the town attorney has we bested for the town attorney's opinion on our work from time to time and she certainly didn't object to our removing this piece but bob's point's well taken i mean if the council feels this is a compelling topic then the right thing to do i think would be to have the uh the jol committee query town attorney for a more precise and workable uh by law that can be added back in okay are there other comments i'm sorry dorsi uh i also want to thank you so much for your mammoth amount of work that you put into this um i just have one one comment that's you know um the single use plastic bag prohibition this is the only thing that really stuck out to me um and i'm sorry that i didn't make my comment earlier um that um that the the committee recommended deletion of an aspirational section that encouraged customers to bring reusable bags and encourages to encourage establishments to provide reusable biodegradable compostable or recyclable paper bags and i i get that that you said the reason was it was aspirational but i think in this particular era that's okay we can be aspirational we just passed some pretty aspirational climate goals and this fits with that so i guess i would really like to put that back in there well i think you're absolutely right you can certainly put aspirational statements in the bylaws but the approach taken by the committee was to reduce the working parts to those that were essential uh if statements of purpose or statements of aspiration uh mistaken to be operative it could lead to litigation it could lead to other adverse consequences so looking at the bylaw we said what does the bylaw do let's keep the language that expresses what the bylaw does and how it works uh the purposes of the bylaw don't add anything to the functionality of the bylaw but they do offer as you point out an educational medium it communicates to the public what what it's about so it's entirely appropriate and the committee did leave in a number of statements of purposes and statements of aspiration where we thought it was appropriate and you raised one in which it may the council may wish to stick that back in again but we we we sought to reduce the volume we did it down to 95 pages where do you stop and i think we we just drew the line at that one we we did uh wherever there was because keep in mind these bylaws were created by a series of town meetings with different offers over an 80 year period so we did take a look at all of the preambles and the whereases and the other language and say does it serve a meaningful purpose now and if it doesn't serve a purpose let's move it aside again the council is free to you've got a process you're free to the council's free to put that language back but we what we tried to do and you'll notice when you look at the bylaws you notice the data block and you'll notice there's bulleted lists and you'll notice that there's layered ways we tried to make those bylaws readable and usable um so uh if we were a little bit too rigorous and knocking out some of the aspirational language then by all means the council can put it back but that what what we were trying to do is get people right to the heart of the bylaw and we kept only what we felt uh was explanative of the bylaw and it wasn't that the committee thought that these expressions weren't worth making but that the bylaws themselves were not the right vehicle uh there are places in which this aspirational language should be developed and advanced and promulgated but not within the four corners of a working regulatory document and so we were trying to draw the line at stuff that was part of the functionality of the regulation and uh move everything else to the side for treatment in some other venue Evan yeah just just to build on that I think one of the lenses that I consistently looked at the bylaws through when we were looking at language was is it enforceable or operational and and if you and so things that were sort of statements of uh intent or or aspirational you can't enforce them you can't operationalize them um and so the bylaws seemed like the in the in the proper place for that and so um I think that's a useful lens that I learned to look I mean I certainly grew a lot during this experience of going through these and that's sort of the lens I grew to look at these through is when I looked at language I go I agree with that and I go yeah but can you actually operationalize that and if you couldn't it wasn't appropriate in the bylaws so just sharing that learning experience with all of if the regulatory content is embedded within a chunk of dense text what people go to the bylaw to read they won't find as easily so we try to leave a residue of the stuff that mattered and not that the stuff that is aspirational doesn't matter it's just that it should matter elsewhere okay are there other comments our question is about the bylaws that you things that you've raised before that you've seen taken out or whatever and the reason I'm asking this is because I will send you an email I would like if you want to forward any motions regarding bylaws at our meeting on the 6th I'm going to ask that you provide those to me at least no later than like the Monday the Wednesday before so that we have a collection of what you want to consider and it needs to have all of the references and so forth to where it is okay so that if there's something like a lawnmower our condominium or whereas that you feel needs to go back in that's I do need that in advance but I'll be asking you for that I just want to let give you the heads up now because some of you will be celebrating different holidays and maybe not paying attention Alyssa I was going to ask a couple of things and building off of what you said I don't think anybody should bring us anything in January or submit it to you on the Wednesday before that they haven't brought up tonight because and you you read this a lot more before you got here tonight and you're going to read it again when you go home before the 6th so that's the purpose of a 1st and 2nd reading isn't so we all get surprised at the 2nd reading so I appreciate the specific on the lawnmower and I understand that that one we went out on a bit of a limb associated with I'm less comfortable with the condo thing because we know that that is not current state-of-the-art bylaw we know it's old we know it hasn't been used we know that there are other variations out there and so I would ask that for something like that rather than trying to stick it back in is that you say immediately I want the town council to ask gol to go talk to somebody about giving us a new condo bylaw that provides the protections that I agree are very important protections but I think rather than putting in putting things back in in kind of a onesie-toosie kind of way at this point the lawnmower being the exception feels like not a great way to deal with context let's start with it clean but again let's not for loose sight of any of this stuff I mean some of the things that are on the list of things to do might not be very important to some of you and the condo thing is is important to a lot of us and so let's make sure we get that referred and moved on but let's be able to accept the bylaw without saying let's relitigate the whole condo thing here amongst a group of 13 who have literally never discussed it before right that that seems really awkward whereas I think you could have a really effective conversation elsewhere with additional input from staff etc thank you so are there any other deletions additions changes yes Mandy Joe so I I mentioned the lawnmower but it means it doesn't it doesn't I didn't do it clearly because I realized that many people might not know what I'm talking about um so I'm going to clarify what that is I'm trying to find it in the actual bylaw here page 30 something 3.2 2 3.34 so in unlawful noise bylaw the 3.24 I will and I will definitely send you the motion it was on my list of things to do I will likely ask to delete section a for which is an added section that the bylaw review committee put into the current noise bylaw that is in the current bylaws that reads that makes the noise bylaw that includes the loud disturbing into the definition of loud disturbing injurious or unnecessary noise lawnmowers leaf blowers snow blowers and other similar mechanical devices and I don't think I need to get into a discussion tonight I'm not sure we want to get into why I want to do that but but this my initial comment to the committee was that that seemed to me to be a significant addition to what unlawful noise applies as unlawful noise that maybe goes slightly beyond what this committee was actually tasked with doing and probably deserves its own discussion instead of being part of a wholesale rescind replace yeah the other thing is that as these are raised and I think Alyssa made a good point here on for example the condominium thing that was struck it's struck because it was pretty outdated but maybe we do need something that is a condominium well this will now go to gol and changes that kind of thing where there's going to be more debate and maybe more research will happen within that committee and then come back to the council so that we're not sitting here trying to write bylaws okay yes maybe if the council simply exempts electric lawnmowers it'll encourage those of us who to either get goats or or to reduce our carbon footprint I mean just just just I don't need I don't want to even get into this one or not going to lawnmowers tonight uh Evan did you have another comment or someone over here had another comment okay yeah I just had I just had a clarification on uh and I I understand now on co-op and condo but are there other instances where it was a less than perfect by law wording and content that it was just wiped out because it wasn't great you know so it's that was what kind of startled me when I read content pieces I said so did that should I do a more careful reading on other things where it was just gone rather than fixed because my sense was throughout you you generally did great fixes you know you clarified you moved things to places um and this is the only one I saw where it completely went away and it wasn't like Tiff where you said maybe yes maybe no but we don't really need it but you left it in okay is there a comment we consciously and deliberately left in some pretty bad stuff stuff that we don't like okay it is way more of that than there is taking out something because we didn't like it and we never took it out for that reason they always had to be some other explanation for why it was a vestigial tail and didn't deserve to be continued into the current code okay we explain that in the report point by point by law by by law and but as I pointed out and Bernie and I both made this point clear that we started off with something that was really imperfect and what we are giving to you is something that's really imperfect but less imperfect than what we started with and would put most of our energy into fixing what was easy to fix and identifying things that were more difficult to fix that involve more policy considerations before action is taken which is a council prerogative and not a council committee prerogative so we we did a lot and we've given it to you to play around with its its clay in your hands you can change anything that we've recommended but this is our best thought on the topic are there any other comments from people at this time now that you've been doing this for two years on behalf of the town of Amherst thanks to both of you and to the rest of the committee as well for your work and we will continue our discussion on the sixth and hopefully not at this hour thank you thank you all right we're moving on to eight d the town manager goals this is the first reading um let me just mention that I don't think this group ever officially elected a chair I think I was the coordinator um which meant basically I kept the documents going um and then at one point um Kathy really took over and synthesized um what we had into a document I also want to say it does not particularly concern me that this is only the first reading even though we are now in the end of December or middle of December and that is because Mr Bachman has been part of many of our meetings and so everything that is in this document he's seen we've talked with him about we've talked about whether it's actionable whether it's measurable etc and so it's not like he's flying blind but we would like to have a conversation about it tonight there's no vote tonight it will come back on the second I mean on the sixth of at 2020 and with that Kathy I asked Kathy actually to manage this conversation do you have other comments you want to make um no I just you all have seen the draft and I just want to say a little bit of uh to add to what Lynn said about our thinking as we went into this um we wanted to think about the end point when we're doing an evaluation on how did we do and tried although we didn't succeed in making this a lot shorter um conceptually what we had in mind is around large bold or main headers would be where we would do come some kind of rating great job got half the way there you know and then some of the others could be it happened or it didn't happen you know just a much more simple so for example on roman numeral one of strong physical management ensuring that this happens a we would be rating we wouldn't necessarily be rating every item underneath it it would be more a guideline on how many of these things happened so do we think this was an over the top job so the at the end we would be more able to have a general sense of how we thought things went then the other um pieces just of note here are we elevated climate action to its own topic um so in big bold and you know we we mentioned the words climate action more than once and there was actually some discussion of mentioning it three or four times but it's it's there as as an overarching way of thinking about when we make the next purchase when we uh worry about a new building when we you know name whatever the one we have it have it be in people's minds that we we want to pay attention to this um so that's why it went to the higher level of rather than just embedding it in when you think about the budget when you think about this it was more so we we elevated that to its own topic although it permeates everything then on long-term planning as well as the beginning we tried to identify things that people have raised as concerns that we want to at least hear report back so on the first so let me not quite jump around on the first on financial and sustainable we want to be taking a hard look at are there opportunities to get more efficient more cooperative ways of working so that we can lower our operating costs but are there areas for example fire and emt which we should really be looking at are we staffed adequately and so we've we've raised it to the level of we want to have a look at that and come back to us with uh yes no what so we tried to pick up on things we've been hearing all year round and make it something that uh people wanted focus on so in long-term planning similarly I I mentioned earlier tonight on we've authorized the purchase of hickory ridge let's not delay forever the plan on what we're going to do with it you know be thinking about it so we put some pieces in long term that not necessarily it has been done in the next year but we've at least started to focus on it and we get a report back um on personnel management um you can see what's here the expanding community engagement we and I noticed our letter numbering fell off here Lynn so it should start with an ABC we can fix that underneath that but in each of these we tried to say it's it's community engagement and let's talk about how well we're doing what else we've done to bring the community in what's our relationship with the higher education institutions we tried to group things so that they went together so we used a lot of what had been in last year's evaluation and just move things into categories so they're not necessarily in the same place and uh we put the relationship to the town council last but not least because we think we're off to a really good start but the most important thing in our minds is that getting their town running well thinking about the future was what our aspirational goals are and we want the town manager and we then we want us we we want the way he's working with us to work well to make all of the above so I I think I'll just stop there but to give you a sense of that was we're thinking when we hit July and August and we're looking at these that we can come back to the high level and say how well did we do on these did was it a good start did we get a lot of the way and we can have our checklist of these things happened or didn't and tried to make them actionable as Lynn said you know would we know whether it happened or not so some things where we thought we we like the idea but we have no idea of you know our people happy campers everywhere is teamwork working well so we tried to get things that we could say we've got some baseline we have some way of knowing about it and and focused on those and I'll stop there okay comments yes Evan so thank you for this document I think that in many ways the way we organize things in this document is signaling to the town manager what we think his priority should be and in that way I think it's great that we pulled climate action out as something signal to the town manager that we want to make sure you're using a lens of climate action but I think there are other things that probably should also be singled out and one of the things that threw me in this is in all of these bullets and everything there is economic development appears in 3f in one little line that just says economic development and to me all of the things we want to do around climate action all of the things we want to have within strong fiscal management require some level of economic development and so to have just one little thing on it that just vaguely says identify strategies that build on this report is insufficient and so I would I I would like to see economic development actually be its own category and I'd like to see some actual objectives under that that pair with that I think some of these things could be moved there but I think that you know the words business commercial growth appear nowhere in this document and I think they're all really important for us to achieve what we want and and certainly the council didn't do much with economic development in its first year it did a whole lot on climate it did a decent amount on housing it did nothing on economic development it was my hope that we could try to emphasize that in the year ahead okay other comments Andy so I guess first thing I'm gonna say is thank you to the committee because I think it is really a good piece of work and obviously a monumental effort the one thing that concerns me always this goes back to my select board experience too is that we create a list of expectations that become so long that it's really impossible for anybody to imagine how anybody could do it now of course our town manager works with the large staff and not all of it is done by the town manager some of it is delegated and it's a question of making sure that somebody's following up on it but there always was it struck me and I think I probably said it a few times in select board over the years that we have to be careful we don't get a walk on water in there because you can really put anything in having said that there were several things that I thought about that I was curious why the committee didn't consider or maybe they didn't consider them and so it's sort of backwards from what I just said and my suggestion would be that since this is first reading that we set up a mechanism where we can send back to the committee what those are as opposed to trying to list them tonight because the answer may come back we thought about it and it was really stupid or thank you for your comment we think it's really stupid but at least it gives us a place to go without prolonging this meeting another half an hour or more I think that's a very approachable idea I think the challenge for the goals committee ad hoc committee is going to be meeting between now and the six but we'll do everything we can are there other comments that people want to make at this point or just wait and ask for solicitation yes Alyssa so I know that when you look at something for a really long time things don't always still scan the way you intend to and so since this is based on previous work it is not made up out of full cloth I'm concerned because I think something got lost in translation under item 1 b 2 conduct strategic departmental reviews as needed focus on staffing and systems this just sounds like generic business school 1981 or something I I'm not sure what you meant by that and so I would just ask you to go back and look in your notes and see what it is that you were trying to get across there because he could very easily say we didn't need any strategic departmental reviews and I always focus on staffing and systems so some of these are really concise and easy for us to figure out how we're going to use them in the evaluation instrument but maybe some of the others just slipped a little and so maybe take try and take another look thinking about what that instrument's going to look like at the end because it's not going to look like that Google form again because that was a disaster so but some kind of form where and be thinking about do you want people to rate just a and b or do you want them to rate one two three four five six or you know so but overall aside from missing the economic development thing and that one just jumped out at me as like I don't know where that came from I appreciate the trying to be more concise okay additional comments Evan just is there a particular reason why this has to be adopted on the 6th as opposed to the second no it's just that we're already halfway through the year other than that you know it's like hello we can I mean we'll do what we can and if we can't then it waits till the 27th and then we're five seven twelfths through the year yes Dorothy what I'd be interested in seeing from people is what do you think can be cut my concern besides trying to you know put together this document was to not be so micromanaging I just feel this is just on top of them like oh do this do that do this and I I think that's difficult and I think it'd be kind of hard to work under so I'm if you as any way to kind of get rid of some of the things I think would be good okay Mandy job so I did mine in a track changes document that I can forward to whoever's been facilitating documents but I did want to talk about to try and limit the amount of time I talk number three the long-term planning C and D was some of you know see the begin to develop a five-year plan I kind of want a five-year plan that's logical not just beginning to because beginning to means we might hit the end of this fiscal year and still not have that five-year plan that's logical for the capital investments and and D was also begin to develop a plan to improve downtown public infrastructure parks and spaces I read that and I said I thought we already had one in in sort of concept so I wasn't sure what would go on with that one in addition to what we already have with a Kendrick park and and a town North Common and there seem to be things already there but there was one I and then there were two others I wanted to mention in four B five the respond to health and safety concerns in a timely manner I just wasn't sure what that meant to meant in terms of improved customer services to residents and businesses so some explanation would be helpful on that one and then under five expand community engagement what would become a two it's now f2 report annually on community participation officers activities and recommendations so the charter section 3.3d little number six says that the community participation officers must regularly submit reports to the town manager and town council so I kind of see this one as setting forth something that's already required in the charter and and we're not doing that with any other required charter action so what is this one specifically but the charter says the cpo's do it not that the manager does it so is this something in addition to what the cpo's are doing is it not so I would ask you to look at that one and think more about that one with respect to what the charter actually requires okay and I trust that along with your track changes you also have comments thank you got it thank you okay are there any other questions at this point the people want to bring forward I'm sorry Pat I actually want to ask Paul what do you think of the document seriously not please Paul go ahead so um I was you know are there issues for yeah so I was grateful that the committee invited me to comment on it and we did a lot of the things that you've identified there were conversations in the committee about those items for me I wanted I thought it was important that the there are over 50 goals here it's a lot I thought the goal should be clear measure you know smart goals clear measurable and achievable some of the things that you're identifying I would not be able to commit in six months to be able to achieve them so I won't I would recommend or ask that the council not put those in or put in begin to type comments just looking at what else is on our plate for the next six months because that's the time frame that you're really going to be measuring I thought was important for these goals there's not be a document just for the town manager but it's really a document for the public typically you the council would set its goals and then those from your goals would flow my goals now we don't have time we didn't have time to do that so we're starting with this because there's a little more time urgency so by think this is going to be the document that's going to be out in the public so it should be communicating your values to the public so I think that that's having these big bold things they're highlighted I think they're also things that you should be able to say without a second thought you should be able to say what are the town manager's goals you'd be able to take them off you know the top three or four on top of your head you shouldn't have to look at a piece of paper to say here's what they are the public wants and I think wants to know what are your expectations of me and to be able to articulate that because if you can do it and I can do it and I can communicate that down in pretty straightforward language to the full staff that will be a powerful message throughout the organization so that's why I think having climate action called out is a special thing was an important thing because if that's the goal of the council that's going to be my goal and it will be the goal of the town staff as well as we move forward so I think the bottom line is they should be easy to understand and you should be able they should be pretty straightforward to know if it's been done or not that's really where you want to be in nine months when you're eight months whenever you start looking at the performance you say did he get it done or not and it should be obvious or you know within some shades of obvious so I think these are pretty solid I think you know obviously I would have things differently but it's really the council's document not mine thank you are there a yes just one more quick remark and again I'll try and look at this too in terms I think I mean we could probably all rewrite different sections and I'm sure it's fine it's fine I'm just thinking more about what the evaluation instrument's going to look like at the end in terms of us all having the same expectations we have a lot of conversation that'll be the exciting part yeah but I do just want to push back a little bit on something the town manager said which was that it's not up to us to have town council goals that's absolutely not true it's not been true in this town that was not true with the select board we have goals for the town manager because he is our one employee and we don't have executive authority to do basically anything so I can personally have a goal about economic development which is all really well and cool but unless I can convince all of you to tell the town manager to do something about it I can't do jack about economic development so it's not my goal it's our goal for him and that's why I really have talked about it the retreat before these goals are the important goals our own council goals that we might want to talk about some minor things that will help us function better awesome but these are the important ones and they are our goals for the community and he is our way of implementing those but we're not going to develop like a whole nother set of town council goals out of which these group these are our goals are there other comments all right then you'll be receiving an email I made the minor changes about the numbering and that's all I did not make comments on this but you'll be receiving an email and you will be asked not to respond to this group but to provide feedback just to me okay thank you all right it was Darcy was giving some suggestions about some pre pre pre items I might put on there okay given that um I said Darcy Darthy is doing it this time I'm sorry all right do you need a break at this point no just keep moving all right we are going to seven b which is if you need to okay we're going on to seven b which is the out oak is appointment process and I'm calling on Evan at this point to yes do we actually need a recess I'm not comfortable with starting this with anybody out of the room nope I'm not wait anybody else need to take a break we're taking a silent break all right it's g the 10 5h thing first reading f the rule is a procedure but the amendments to rule 10.5h regarding public comment first reading all right let's go with that George Evan so I'll start talking um so what we're going to start talking about I believe when Dorothy returns is the uh process adopted by Oka that Oka will be using to develop its recommendations to the town council regarding appointments to multiple member bodies appointed by the town council uh those of you who read uh the report will note that those uh that process now involves public interviews um those public interviews will of course be posted public meetings but there is an interest and I believe this is one of the areas where there is consensus within Oka that those public meetings should not include public comment we have real concerns about having public comment at interviews because the interviews will be the sole agenda item and so the only thing people would be able to comment on would be the interviews and we certainly don't want a situation where we have public commenters offering critiques or potentially disparaging comments about people who just interviewed um and so we we we are hoping to um prohibit public comment during those however the current language of rule 10.5h does not permit us to do that it just says committee meet I don't have in front of me but I believe it says committee meeting shall provide for a period of public comment um which means we don't necessarily have the option of not having public comment so Oka is seeking a rule change um to add the word regular in front of committee meetings to specify that regular committee meetings shall provide for a period of public comment what that allows us to do is to schedule the interviews as a special meeting and then we have the discretion as to whether or not we want to include public comment this is uh this language parallels the charter language as you'll note in the charter it says regular meetings of the town council shall provide for a period of public comment um that allows us to not have public comment at special meetings um and so this would just bring the language around public comment at committee meetings into conformity with the language of the charter around town council meetings and allow us to schedule interviews um without having to deal with public comment just just from a process thing I will say uh because of timing um Oka bringing this for the first reading today it has not been considered by GOL but it is on GOL's agenda for their meeting on on uh Wednesday and so with the hope that we could have uh GOL report a second reading and a vote at the January 6th meeting are there any questions um I just wondered if we should maybe refine the language more to say uh like a particular type of special meeting because do we want to exempt all special meetings from public comment um that seems overly broad I can see that I see the reason why we should do this but but to take public comment out of all special meetings might not be that might be in yeah if you write if you write it so that it says that public comment is required at all regular meetings that does not exclude it from special meetings it just doesn't require it at special meetings right the question is do we want to require it at special meetings except special meetings involving interviews or something like that okay yes Kathy I was going somewhat in that direction because we have had some meetings that have we've called as special meetings of the council that we've always we we assume we would do public comment so what I'm wondering is I understood I'm not disagreeing that it would be good to not have them can we do something either very surgical that you know during interviews we wouldn't take special comments or can we waive the special comment rule for these instances because we can waver a rule when we want to because it seems like it's being written too broadly um regular is an ad hoc meeting so my little percent for art we had public comment on it no no public ever came but we just routinely put it up put it as part of our agenda so I'm worried it's too broad if we just put the word regular Steve Steve yeah so I have a broader question so we don't know when the special meetings will be posted they might be posted the same that as a regular meeting so what prevents a person who wants to public comment about candidates to do it at a public comment period at a regular so in other words if the it's posted that there will be these interviews and the who these being interviewed is and people are gaming the system can't speak at the special meeting I'll speak at the meeting the regular meeting and try to influence I think the surgical approach and I'm sorry I've lost track of who said that that we should just say that we won't accept public comments on issues regarding the elections of our officers personnel and personal issues getting at my more surgical more surgical tug targeted here listen that's a super nice theory but it's illegal so good luck with that you can't control the content of public comment we've tried in the past we did not get taken to court for it and it made everybody's life much happier but there have been court cases done in the last couple of years so you can't have a thing that says you can't talk about candidates that that's just not a thing so the only way to prevent is not a public comment and let's remember that this idea of special and regular meetings is a totally made up thing by the Charter Commission and so if we call something reflecting first back to what Lynn said but if it's you know if it's a regular meeting and you're gonna have it if you call it a special meeting we don't call we don't call most things special meetings we try and regular doesn't just mean we publish the calendar six months ahead there's no rule that says what regular means that's just a concept we have so if we call if we say a special meeting doesn't require public comment then we know if we call the special meeting then we're safe from public comment that doesn't mean that we wouldn't want to have some special meeting sometime that for some reason we called it a special meeting but we were still going to have public comment I don't know why we'd call that meeting a special meeting but you know conceivably something could happen but regular doesn't have a real meaning in real life and neither does special so we're trying to make them mean these things in this case to track with what the Charter says about regular meetings it does not define what regular means but it talks about regular meanings when it comes to public comment can I suggest that it's unless there's any more comment that this now is going to go back to go well and they've been here hearing the comment today and see what you come back with yes okay we're going back to outreach this is under presentation in discussions there's no vote it's OKIS process for reviewing and recommending candidates for ZBA and planning board Evan thank you so as we all know part of focus charge is making recommendations on appointments to multiple member bodies appointed by the town council really that applies to just three bodies the planning board the ZBA and the non-voting resident members of the finance committee at current in less one of the people on ranked choice voting or participatory budgeting that was a council appointment resigns we're really just talking about three body so okas and part of okas charges is recommending those appointments and so okah has to figure out what is the process through our through which our committee comes to those recommendations to bring those recommendations to the full town council the appointment of course is by the council but the recommendation is by okah and so we needed to develop the process through which we come to that recommendation we developed the process last spring y'all probably remember that it was successful in that we got appointments to the planning board the ZBA and several other committees but it was also not without flaws and so okah has spent the past eight meetings I believe eight meetings discussing how to revise that process to respond to some of the critiques we heard from the council I'm not going to go into details about that process because you have I assume already read it we sent a preview of the process to the full town council on December 4th and asked for feedback several of you responded thank you to those of you who responded that feedback was very useful we had a meeting in which we discussed that feedback and then we adopted the process at our meeting on December 9th the process is in the report along with a very detailed discussion of the deliberations behind that process the responses to the feedback we received and so you know what I think we're looking for tonight is just to apprise you of what the process is and also to hear sort of any last-minute feedback as we move into the implementation phase of this process I do want to stress that the opinion of the majority of okah is that this is an internal okah process we worked very hard to make sure that everything within the process exists wholly within the realm of okah so there is nothing in the process that requires action by the town council there's nothing on the process that imposes any type of burden or restriction on the town council it is the process through which the committee develops its recommendation that it then brings to the council and so we even had removed sections of the of the process that were in there originally that sort of exceeded that scope and and touched on the actions of the town council to make sure that this was really a committee process and so we're not looking for a vote on this process it just in the way that we don't look for a vote on the internal workings of any of the committees of the council but we are interested in your feedback because we will be bringing to you at some point our recommendations for appointments and of course we want to make sure that you're confident in those recommendations and one of those part of that confidence relies on confidence in the process through which we came to those recommendations so i'd like to separate the feedback and conversation in the council to two things one is any comments about the general process the second one which will take up after we're done with the first is the issue that i know a couple councils have raised to me and that is is this exclusively an oko process or does the council need to vote on it so let's stick with the first one questions about the process kathy okay um it's a question comment concerns so in that category um uh if i'm reading correctly you're proposing to do a group interview of the entire group of applicants all at one time period so presumably let's assume all five oko people are there and there could be six applicants and they're all in the room number one i can understand that might be efficient in terms of councillor time but it is a very bizarre dynamic for applicants and i've been in my lifetime had to hire people or appoint people and people's styles vary so much that it um and we're we're talking about planning let me just focus on planning and zoning where you want there are going to be some people that are the thoughtful quieter people that you need them to give them a little bit of time to get their words out but they have so much to say if you can do that if they're side by side with someone who's glib and easy to present and that person said almost everything they were going to say they can say me too or ditto in a group thing which will be a very wet you wouldn't get any feeling of did that was that their idea if we give everyone the questions in advance and you're gonna put them all up there and ask the same questions on some level we could just send them the questionnaire had them write their paragraphs you know because there's no individualization at all going on there you know and a bit the way when we ran for council you know we got some good questionnaires and you could see what we thought and make some judgments so i think the notion of a group interview of a group is not basically not a good idea so that's number one because particularly it's this and i know there are some people that you have to say could you tell us a little bit more you just need to get them to open up they don't have a style that comes in chatting number two is that you're proposing that because it's one interview with everyone at the same time if someone can't make that date it just doesn't work they're gone they're not an applicant anymore so one of the criterias for applicants becomes you have to be available the day we're meeting which is a very bizarre criteria for someone for a planning or zoning board um suppose there's a death in the family or four months in advance i do think it's reasonable to ask any candidate can they meet at the time the committee's meeting you know will you generally be available Tuesday nights but to eliminate someone and that goes with the first that if you want to interview everyone at the same time you can't make an exception for one person and interview with them in a separate time so i don't think someone should be eliminated because they can't make your date my third concern is different um as i read it one person the chair would do every interview um i think styles vary tone varies body language varies and if you're going to have a group from opa i would rotate whoever's designated is the person to ask the questions because you actually learn from different people as they ask questions when i've been on interview teams with three or four of us we designated a lead for each of them and some people had a style that just brought more out of people and others didn't and i think you could if you're worried about five people having to do six interviews at six different times it's a lot of time you could say at least three oca people have to be there everyone is should be there for all of them but not everyone has to be there for all of them that would give you a way of rotating the chair so i'm i'm concerned with those three parts of the proposal i didn't mind it being a public interview i i liked this side solution that people came up with but i thought the group interview of a group uh was one of the more the bigger oddities i've seen for particularly for this kind of position where we're not picking someone who's just a show person who needs to perform on it's it's a thoughtful analytic kind of position that we'd be putting people in rather than respond i'm going to suggest that if others have comments they do that and then we collect response okay yes dorthy i find some of the things here a little bit schizophrenic the candidates are so delicate that their cafs cannot be made public although we're told that in north hampton they are public enlisted yet those same people will do well in a group interview um you know i'm an extrovert i can handle a group interview but we all know that a good committee has got people who are of different types and i can see some people saying i'm not going to do that i'm not going to sit there once they hear what it's like i also don't like the inability to do a follow-up question there's just no individuation um and if you happen to be the third person to be asked the same identical question and everybody else has said all the good stuff you're going to feel pretty left out so i i i just don't like the group interview and i think the cafs should be public additional comments on the process well point of order i just want to just to say that saying that something is schizophrenic is incredibly ableist and i realize that i just i don't think words like that should be used although i do understand to a certain point what you are trying to convey thank you thank you for your correction um are there additional comments on the process yes darcy um i uh i'm a member of oca as you all know uh i voted against disclosing the cafs only 48 hours before the interviews um because i believe we should make our application process totally transparent i i i when i when it became clear that we were going to have a public interview it i just kind of assumed that we were going to open up the the whole caf process and make it completely transparent um and i really do feel like we should do the same thing that northampton does instead of holding them until 48 hours before the interview allow them to be public go immediately on application be posted on the website like they are in northampton than anyone who wants to can go look see who's applied how many people have applied look at the cafs see what the qualifications are and make a determination about whether they want to apply you know they they can see from the pool whether they might be needed whether there's already people there that would have their same point of view so they don't feel like they are needed so maybe they won't apply but it definitely is a way for people to find out whether they should apply by having it available to the public immediately upon application so this is of course a problem that i've had all along and i um really hope that we can get to a point of finally doing that um i also think that we it doesn't matter that we have applicants that already have applied and they didn't check off the check off box because we could simply ask them directly and uh or we can provide them with forms that they can check off um so that does not seem to me to be a problem at all with this round of applications i had problems with a lot of other parts of the of the process but you saw that in the report so i'll just let you read about those steve yeah so i agree with everyone um but i so actually the thoughtful analytical part so the these are the zoning board and the the um planning board definitely requires the you know a range of personality types but these are also political positions so you also have to be able to operate in the you know the public realm you have to convince other people in an open meeting that you know that the position that you're advocating for is you know a worthy cause so so so that part of it's really important so i don't see a group interview any different or not that much different than the kinds of things that we went through i was trying to remember who sponsored the last debate of the counselors but in a sense that was a group interview we were all asked the same question we went right down the line and we answered in our own you know our particular styles and if we chose to defer to someone else or to repeat what somebody else had said that's fine but it was it was a form of group interview additional comments at me and andy as far as the group interview process my experience was back on the select board when there was a vacancy on an elected board it was a group interview with the select board and the remaining members of the board that had the vacancy and the process was virtually the same as what is being proposed here and it actually did work and i thought it had served a lot of good purposes because we did alternate who was getting the question first so that not everybody would have the benefit of going first you'd rotate the order we also took turns on so that everybody got an opportunity to ask a question but the i but the the whole feel of the group interview did not in my experience discourage anybody from applying for any of those positions and i thought that it enabled us to really contrast in one setting all of the people who is an efficient process which if we're going to be as counselors invited to observe the process to go to multiple meetings is probably going to discourage any of us from doing that so i based on my select board experience and having done those for numbers of different boards and committees where we were select electing a person i would support the basic concept additional comments shall we so i went in thinking that group interviews didn't make sense but as you'll by now probably know my default is to do research and i did find actually that there were benefits to doing group interviews where you get to see the dynamic of the people and how they are sort of you know vis-a-vis each other i understand there's not going to be a communication amongst the people but it still feels like you would be able to assess how they are so this seems to be a positive to that um and as far as introverts are concerned i think they're capable of answering in a group setting it's just that they may not if there was you know this seems like it's very structured if an introvert is asked a question in a group directly they will be able to answer it's just they may not if there's 100 people they may not raise their hand but i don't think it's going to be because i happen to be an introvert and i think it'll be fine um i still would like i don't know when we will get a response but i'm still not clear about the benefits of keeping our um stuff caps um private i'm still not i'm still on the fence about that and i'm not sure i've received enough information from oka convincing me that that's the best way to go okay in mind job so i just want to thank for actually soliciting advice from the counselors on a internal process i think that was very nice of you um i'll respond to shalini's question that also darcy brought up there are studies out there and and it's tangentially related that show that in a job application setting when you put requirements down men and if that requirement is must have this must have that men who don't have that are more likely to reply apply for that job but the women will read that and if they don't fit any of it they won't apply and so you get an applicant you know an applicant pool that has women who are overqualified and men who are underqualified so i i would worry that if you actually published caps we don't put out their qualifications per se but you could get someone that reads someone's calf that has already applied and said oh my gosh i don't have a shot at all and that person might actually be the person you want but they won't apply because they might see the qualifications and just assume that that's exactly what we're looking for and we might actually get less diverse applicants less um applicants from maybe tangentially related areas that we're actually looking to put on a finance committee a planning board or a zba and so i would worry that publishing them in advance of an interview or at while we're still actively accepting applications might actually harm our ability to get diverse candidates which is what our real goal is additional comments okay this has been comments on the process and actually it's also been on CAFs any other comments with regard to those okay and steve yeah so one thing i forgot to comment on is what if you can't make the group interview date so i wouldn't make it a fatal flaw if you can't make the interview in the same way that if you can't make the debate or whatever you're still a candidate but i would make maybe the interviews aren't mandatory maybe they're optional maybe there's a brain date you know if you simply can't make it sure all right bear with me because y'all y'all said some different things so i'm gonna start with the easiest one which is just a correction to one of kathy's comments so our language is okoh will ask the adopted interview questions of the group that was kept intentionally vague and so the committee could decide whether all of the committee members would alternate asking questions or whether just the chair would or maybe just one member would but it's not the chair i think i think that we wanted to keep it somewhat flexible and so it's not written anywhere in the policy of the chair is the one asking the questions it says okoh will ask the questions to keep it broad regarding the date you know that's certainly a tough one that we discussed where we came down on was the idea that it's not like we're at least under the current process we're not going to say all interviews are going to be held on january 25th and if you can't make january 25th you're out the idea would be that we would work with the applicants to find a date that works with all of them and you know i know in my experience being the person for ranked choice voting we were able to do that we interviewed everyone on on the same day it certainly takes some there's a logistical challenge there but the idea at least at current was never to just say here's the date and if you can't make it the idea would be to the date would come out of the availability of the people who applied whether or not we you know need whether or not you can still be in the pool if you don't do the interviews i think the question with that becomes that sort of an unfair advantage to either someone who didn't or did interview group interviews you know one thing i want to say about that is we had a very lengthy discussion about group versus individual and what we found was just in okka some people went oh my god a group interview that sounds awful i would never do that and some people said oh my god an individual interview where i'm sitting right there and the committee's here and the public there and i'm all by myself that sounds awful i would never do that and what we realized is that everyone is different and that there's no people-friendly solution that works for everyone as long as the interviews are public my preference would be individual interviews in private but we couldn't do that um and what where i i started with individual interviews being my preference and where i got to group interviews was the idea that they are public interviews and we want to make sure there's consistent experience of found candidates so what would make me feel uncomfortable is if someone came in and did their interview and there was an empty room and then all of a sudden six members of the public came in and the next person having to interview had to do it but there's members of the public behind them that that creates there's a different environment that seems unfair and so i think i ended up coming down um on the side of consistency more than anything um and and you know i think kathy noted that it was a very strange format but i think andy sort of got my response which is this isn't a new format this isn't something that we invented this is is is very heavily based on the process used to fill a vacancy and elected body and so this is something that the town is already used to because it's been done before um with regard to CAFS um i think that there is a much larger conversation to have around community activity forms i think that conversation should start in oak up but i think that's a conversation that should come to the full town council uh at some point in time um i am very rigid in my belief that we should not change our policy mid process i don't believe it's as simple as reaching out to the people who already submitted saying would you be okay with this being released publicly even though you submit it under the assumption that it wouldn't be um and then what do you do if someone says no are they now out of the pool if they don't want their calf released publicly or do we just keep theirs private the i think the simplest and cleanest solution is to maintain the policy and have a larger discussion about CAFS because i think one of the things we all realized from the last appointment process was that the CAFS aren't always all that useful and we should probably be having a bigger conversation about how to make CAFS useful and that's where that debate about whether their public or personal documents or personnel records logically falls not midway through a process when people have already submitted them under a different assumption uh the last thing i want to say because i think that i've addressed everything else was about releasing um sort of CAFS and numbers um and you know i think that there's there's reasons too but i think that a few people have hinted on some of the reasons not to release CAFS publicly release numbers or release names in advance um which is one of the goals one of my personal goals that i think is shared by many members of this council is to try to get people um involved in our government who haven't been before and i think that um releasing names releasing CAFS i think that can actually diminish those prospects and i think it actually um benefits people who have confidence um because they've been involved in these things before and i and i i shared a story with okah that i actually want to share uh with the full council which was when i was deciding whether or not to run for office i was someone who had no experience previously in town government um i thought maybe i had something contribute and i and i debated for a while and i went to see who had pulled papers and i and at first i saw the name steve schreiber on there and i said well i don't know who steve schreiber is so i looked him up and i go oh he's the chair of the planning board okay so he he's been in this community he has some authority and i saw the name neils lecor on there and so i looked up neils lecor's name and i because i didn't know him either because i don't know any people and i looked at neil lecor's name i went oh well he's he's been involved with the town he's at umath and i thought i can't win this race these are people with deep ties in the community they have experience in our local government there's no way that i would win the race over these people and i decided not to run and then i told my roommate and he said that's stupid i won't be friends with you anymore if you don't at least try and so i did it but i came very close to not running because i was intimidated by the names and the qualifications of the other people in the race and i think that you we have to think about if you release numbers if you release cafs if you release names in advance that that becomes a possibility and so the opposite of what dorothy said uh or darcy um about dorothy said it in a comment darcy said it tonight they both said it they both said it which is the possibility that someone might see people and say oh i have something to contribute the opposite is also true and to me if we're trying to break down barriers to entry we want to make sure that we're not accidentally erecting them all right thank you so there is a second part of this conversation and that is the issue of whether or not people believe that oka as a standing committee of the council has the right to develop an adoptive procedure that does not come to the council comments kathy um i see this as very different than just an internal process um i think it is uh we made a decision to delegate the interviews um but getting to a comfort level of the process i think we should be willing to vote on it and then we can be held accountable and we're responsible for it so it really makes us do it so i i would like you to come back with whatever revisions you're comfortable with and i went back to think what did we do in april when we had that incredibly long meeting and the plea at that point was because the process of figuring out a way to do an interview had taken so long and we were at april first and we needed a planning board and zoning said let us just try this don't bring this back to a vote right now let's see how this works because if you want us to change it and come back and get a vote we'll never be able to do these interviews so we said let's try it and it's being revised now because it was tried we gave you comments so i i think i don't see it why it's different than our rules or procedure by how we conduct things at a meeting um because this is us choosing particularly these two boards these are regulatory boards and we should be really really comfortable with the process um i think we're pretty close to saying go ahead with it but i i don't see it as purely an internal process and just go ahead because if i felt that someone didn't get interviewed or were excluded might worry about that it's a fatal flaw you didn't make the interview and i found out someone was ready they just couldn't do that date i would feel we hadn't been fair and i'm i'm responsible for not being fair then because i said okay to that process so i think we should get a comfort level with the process and the only way i see it is it comes back and we vote on it um we we were pretty unanimous on almost every rule of procedure there wasn't a lot of dissension but to be stepping away from something as important as our planning and zoning board way we work with the people who might want to serve what is a really difficult job um it's a volunteer physician but it's a lot of time thought and energy so that's my i think this is a policy not just a nice one off internal process that's similar to the finance committee hearing first on kendrick park we write minutes we bring it back to you it's not like we're doing anything other than listening to people we're not doing an interview process and screening people out so i i feel it's different pat i feel um that the what oka did originally was come to the council's sherrod's process solicit feedback um and there were several times and repetitions of that um so i feel like they're doing the same thing now which i respect they're saying this is what we've been working on these are the changes that we're making so i do think it's an internal process for them and i appreciate they're coming to solicit my opinion but i think that they need to determine what the final process is dorothy um we had you did mean me i said dorothy yeah okay no there was something that came before where somebody announced and it may have been elissa committees don't make decisions of this type the council makes these decisions but i can't remember what that issue was but i can tell you that as a council member people have talked to me about appointments they've talked to me about the rules they've talked to me about the process they've talked to me about public cafs they've talked to me about this almost as much as they've talked to me about sidewalks so i think it's a big issue and i do think that if the council should vote on the process now i if i were going to make a bet as to whether the committee's rules would pass i would assume that they they very well likely would but they would have been then put in place with the vote of the council so that when people ask about why did you do this or do that you say we had a vote and that's what it was decided garcy i think the the issue that you're talking about dorothy came up right after we considered the former oca process and that's when we came up with we formulated the rule 10.1 which says that we no committee will will take an action that will bind the council and i assumed that that rule meant applied to this type of situation so that when oca came back with a new process that would apply that we would that would need a recommendation i don't really understand why oca wants this to be an internal process um i i absolutely believe that it's a council policy it goes to council our our democracy our inclusiveness our transparency as a whole council and and um evan elicited input from the full council regarding the proposed process why would the whole council need to give input if it's an internal process um we also um one of our one of our members suggested that this policy once approved and adopted or whatever become an appendix to our rules well that means it's a town council policy um it's there's just no doubt in my mind that this is important enough to be a town council policy um and just because a chair of a committee decides something and states it emphatically does not make it so thus i i really hope that we're going to be able to send this back to oca with some proposed amendments or ideas that we've given to the committee um and request that they bring it back to us as a recommendation to the council so that we can have a full council vote on it are there additional comments mary chow so i agree with what pat said that this is an internal process it does not need the council's vote we created oca to make recommendations on who to appoint to these bodies not on how they make those recommendations i actually do liken this to some of the finance committee processes that we have not voted on as a council for example the finance committee reviews the entire budget the council has not decided how it makes that recommendation to us who it talks to when it talks to those those people whoever they might be the council gets a recommendation from the finance committee that says we recommend you pass or not pass the budget we don't get the process that says when we review the budget here's the 17 or 23 different things we're going to do and please tell me that that's an okay thing for this committee to do we didn't get to weigh in on that and i don't think we should that's what we assigned the finance committee to do and decide how best they can review that budget to make the recommendation we told them we want them to make we assigned oca to figure out how best they can come to figuring out who to recommend to appoint to planning board and zba and that's what we have committees for to figure out how to do those reviews to save this whole council time so i believe they've done their job to try and make this a completely internal process that will comply with their charge to bring us recommendations on who to appoint and that that's where i would leave it i appreciate that they did come to us and say what do you think about this i don't think they had to it was nice that they did though andy i just want to point out that the committee charge indicates under appointments make recommendations to the town council regarding all appointments by the town council i think that if there's dissatisfaction with this the then it ought to go back to gol which is reviewing the committee charges but we have a committee charge and i think that the committee the oca committee has been acting in consistent way with the charge are there any other comments on this issue shall we so i'm brain dead at this point and i can't make up but i just feel like i need to say something about this issue i feel we're a little divided here and rather than closing down on listening to each other i think we need to kind of it feels like to me also that i'm not totally i'm hearing what mandi joe is saying about this i sort of get it what you're saying but somehow this process of appointing planning board seems really important and critical versus some of the other things and and i'm not able to yet pinpoint what the difference is because what you're seeing sounds really logical well done and i can't i can't seem to come out with a counter argument is but it still is not satisfying me somehow this feels like a very important decision and at this point i'm not able to figure out what but i'm not able to accept that argument either elissa just as every literally everything we've talked about tonight was covered very well in the report that evan wrote for on our behalf thank you very much heaven um one of the other things that's mentioned in there is that while indeed these are very important appointments to the town council and the charter makes it clear that these are our appointments they didn't just put it to the president for example they didn't just put it to one person i would like to remind everyone that while we do have control as a town council over these appointments there are very many other very powerful bodies in this town that are appointed entirely by the town manager who we have no idea who applied for those positions and he gives us a small amount of information on those people and they make incredibly important decisions that are no less important than what the zba or the planning board does and so i think we do have to consider the larger context as well in terms of what we want people to be attracted to do for us because we want them to come to us to come to planning board and zba not just go to a very private process that the town manager has okay any other comments at this time chaneline is this oh it seems like it's a policy though it's not like an internal process it's like i mean like we're putting it in a rules of procedure and it seems they're not it's not see like how are we going to decide at this point it is not part of our rules of procedure okay darsie i think i think this particular uh process is a policy and that we i we all have an interest in it that how this turns out is important to all of us and to all of our constituents we are answerable to all of our constituents about how this turns out and these issues are especially important to amherst residents so i mean the fact that we solicited our input we are oka is inviting the full council to attend the interviews doesn't that tell you that this is a policy of the council ever no simply first of all i am taken aback by the suggestion that because i solicited feedback from my colleagues that all of a sudden you're morphing that into meaning this is a policy of the town council he a policy of the town council a rule of the town council is something that is enacted by the town council that is acted upon by the town council the appointment itself is acted upon by the town council the recommendation is holy oka nothing in this policy requires any action of the town council nothing of this policy goes beyond the scope of the operations of oka we it's all leading the end point of this process is a recommendation that's sent to the town council now yes planning board and zba is important as made a joseph so is the budget right so i know that crc has been going through the master plan i'm interested in that too darcy and i know my constituents are interested in the master plan that doesn't make that the process that crc is using to come up with suggested suggestions on updates to the master plan should be subject to town council review their recommendation is what we're going to vote on and so i don't want us to distort this into seeming like it's something everything that happens within that process happens within oka every single step every action happens within oka so there's no way you can call it a policy of the town council if no one who is not an oka has any contribution to it and so you know i think that we have to be we have to be sure that we're respecting the operations of our committees and i think that trying to vote on this is doing the opposite is there any other comment at this time comment so it's going to be short there are a couple of critical things for me that i really appreciate in the policy one that i would if i wish to attend the interviews i can do that with limits and that's okay it is also important to me and has been since we first started this whole schmuggie is that i be able to see who has applied and there is you know the select board got all the caps they looked at it whether they worked as really giving information or not i want that information i also appreciated when we got a report from paul about the caps when he makes appointments so there are things i need to know but i do not need to approve this as a policy because it is not a policy and if it becomes one then i i need to see that there we create a policy about how finance works because i don't always agree with their decisions and so therefore i want a policy or i at least want them to have the respect to come to the council and share how or why they make their recommendations and we've never asked that and i don't think it's necessary that's enough any other comment at this time okay uh then we're going to move on to eight e this is the draft council budget guidelines mr steinberg it's getting late at night and uh so i've been trying to be as brief as i can i don't think that we're going to get this done tonight and i um regret that in some ways but i'm okay with it too i regret it because as with the um count the the town manager goals um we've got a budget process that's underway and we're giving guidelines after the budget process is already commenced but on the other hand um because uh mr bachmann's here he's seen the draft of the document he knows what's in it there's no surprises he's assured me that uh the two key people who are named as getting copies of it mr morris and miss sherry have seen copies of uh are aware of the the key points that relate to the budgets that they're developing if we don't vote on it tonight it's okay um this is something that the way it was phrased um at the um financial indicator meeting that the finance committee would recommend a set of guidelines so that a draft could arise from someplace but as it was a select board guideline um in part in the past that it'd be a council guideline and so that's why it's labeled so prominently draft is because it is just that what we did was we tried to take the select board and finance committee guidelines in the past and the select board always was very careful to try and make its guidelines consistent with the town manager goals um and uh i was pleased to see that we came out the same direction this time anyway without having the benefit of having seen the proposed goals in advance um but then i think we probably were working from the same source documents and two different committees at the same time um the part of it that is um sort of the financial policy piece um was a little bit in both sets of guidelines and you've been given copies of both and uh what we were trying to do was to make sure that we covered the key financial policies and um but a lot of it as in the past was really adopted out of the recommendations that came out of what's now called the financial indicators meeting because um that it's really the the source of the financial piece that goes into the actual budget that's being developed and um the role of the council in the end will be as it develops guidelines to say yes we think those numbers made the most sense the budget piece that was in the financial indicators report so um i think i'm gonna pretty much leave it at that because uh if i go into more detail it's really getting into the minutiae of all aspects of it and i think it's better to come up with responding to questions as far as uh answering something that uh responding to something that haven't said many hours ago um and that is uh why did we put into the agenda the ability to um waive the second reading and proceed in one vote um it was mostly that if there was absolutely no discussion and we got to it at a reasonable hour um that it gave the ability to do that it didn't mean that the motion had to be made to do it but if you don't put it on the agenda you can't even consider the motion so um there's no uh it was it was a plan to make a judgment call at the time and uh see what kind of discussion comes forward so thank you so there's two options at this point one is we ask the council if they have brief comments on this the other option is i send it out and ask you to send your individual comments to andy and he come back with any changes at our meeting on the sixth i do need to note that the finance committee has only one meeting scheduled in between the two meetings and it's tomorrow except that it's going to start snowing at four o'clock this morning that's by two of my three weather sources um yeah we're going to be out by four i i promise you all right are there any council comments on this i have a comment it's a great document and thank you andy i second that comment is there anything else yes alissa i was going to say that despite having great sympathy for not suspending a rule over and over again i was actually going to be willing to vote for this tonight because i thought it was close enough to exactly the kinds of things we've been talking about and based on past practice so i'm good with it i'm not sure how much more refining is really going to make a difference in how useful it is and evans over here chomping at the bit because he doesn't want us to suspend rule 8.4 any other comments yeah i just do want to add actually one thing and that is if you're going to look at anything i would look in the bottom of page five and the top of page six because that's where we put in that if sort of the the suggestions of things to consider if additional funds are available to do that and that is an important piece and you know i think that it left the finance committee on that one without having the prior guidance of previous documents but to use our knowledge of issues that have arisen before this group and to make a good faith attempt to start but that's one section that i would want to make sure that people don't look like looking at are there any comments on that section elissa please i think that we can go ahead and vote for this because if we come back six months a month from now and the finance committee says you know what we totally should have said something else so we fix it right so we add to it it's fine and so would you like to make a motion do i have to move to you to make a motion to suspend rule 8.4 try not to throw anything at me so moved is there a second second all those in favor is there any further discussion evan so my notes for this are all yes i support this good job and so given and given the fact that all the comments would be yeah looks good and there's only one meeting before the next meeting and it's tomorrow and i want to go to bed i will actually support this motion all right all those in favor of suspending rule 8.4 raise your hand and say aye opposed abstain all right then we move on to adopt the draft council budget guidelines as presented in the document entitled f y 21 council budget guidelines draft is there a motion it could could we make that motion but take out the word draft and uh just simplify it a little that just says it's that document we're we're accepting the finance committee's policy guidelines so it would read to adopt the council budget guidelines as presented in the document entitled f y 21 council budget guidelines we're too tired to fix it at this point uh i'm just i see that this agenda item was added in late no it was because it was missed it wasn't meant to be added late it was posted but it it got in it there was because people kept sending things in early and we kept wanting to make sure people got stuff as early as possible this was in that group but then it didn't get posted somehow and i'm sorry about that right this is the first i know i copied a previous agenda so i didn't know this was on the agenda is there any further conversation questions okay the motion is to is to adopt the council budget guidelines as presented in the document entitled f y 21 council budget guidelines as amended is there a second any further discussion all those in favor raise your hand and say i i opposed abstain okay all right uh the liaisons amendments to rules procedure this is the second reading this is rules are procedure 10.1 we previously read this it's with regard to liaisons are there any is there any further discussion george um you have this actually has been um word smith the bit since you last saw it um in response to comments made at a meeting and now seems very very long time ago um and so hopefully everyone's had a chance to look at it it has the track changes in there um very briefly um comments that i made in my geo report at that meeting um were put into the first paragraph to further clarify the function and purpose of a liaison and a couple of minor changes f we added the comment and the phrase and or not to speak on behalf of the council that was i think in response to something and he had brought up um so there's some changes that you see in front of you um otherwise it's ready for prime time any questions dorsi i just want to say that this sounds much friendlier okay thank you all right um so the motion is to rescind the current rules of rule of procedure 10.8 counselors as non-voting liaisons and replace it with revised rule 10.8 as presented by gol in the document entitled rop 10.9 liaisons ryan revisions 11 19 2019 as amended at a meeting at meeting is there a motion i'll move that is there a second i will second can i just say next time we'll have a better wording i realized last night that we hadn't gotten the right version to you guys and so i just cut and paste it and that's what i labeled it at a meeting all right all those in favor raise your hand and say aye opposed abstain i know when to bring things to this group it's at 11 45 at night all right approval of minutes they're we're going to do these as two different minutes the first one is to amend minutes we've already approved and i am personally making this request and we have gone back and looked at the tape because in the tape we real we did say that president greasmer stated that per charter section 5.2 the town manager shall call a meeting of the budget coordinating group which shall consist of the town manager represented as the town council school committee regional school committee library board of trustees this meeting will be considered a meeting of the whole of the budget coordinating committee and that i stated that in an attempt to make sure that that satisfied the requirement of the charter that they have that meeting so the motion is to amend the minutes of november 7th 2019 to include that statement so moved is there a second okay is there further discussion okay then all those in favor please raise your hand and indicate your approval i opposed abstain okay and then we have two other sets of minutes november 18th we do have two other sets of minutes and december 4th i'm sorry are there any questions on either of those minutes okay to approve the minutes of the november 18th 2019 regular town council meeting and the december 4th 2019 special council meeting as presented is there a motion i so move is there second all those in favor raise your hand and say i i opposed abstain so it's nine in favor none against and four abstentions okay there are no appointments on committee reports audit nothing right pat audit the audit committee will be meeting at the end of january to work on an rfp thanks and sonia aldridge will be part of that meeting bylaw review committee already done committee resource community release and remind we need to dissolve that committee at our next meeting community resources committee i will just give a very quick verbal report which is we'll have a written report for the next meeting we are working on presenting a process to you as directed in the referral for the master plan review process that hopefully will come in front of you on january 6th we are also working on recommending back on the downtown parking working group priority recommendations that may be as early as the 6th but i'm guessing that's more likely the 27th and then we're going to be discussing some zoning process and hopefully some transportation things i will be at the request of the planning board presenting the draft process on wednesday of this week at their meeting around eight o'clock p.m i think they said is when they might get to me and so you guys all know when if the committee votes on wednesday morning i will try to get that memo out to you if it has been voted on before i go to the planning board meeting in the evening because they will have requested they have requested if we do vote in the morning a copy of the final memo that's coming to the council and so i feel like it should come to the council before it's handed to the planning board so i will try to make that happen so that's it for now written report next time okay town manager and council goals we've already done our work today finance committee andy anything else okay george anything on gol just draw the attention of the council to that the fact committee is currently considering it's currently reviewing town council committee structure and in your packet is a memorandum from the chair describes the goals that we are using to guide this review and gives you a little bit of a glimpse of what we're considering this is obviously just work in progress but our goal is to have a report to you for the next meeting with suggestions as to how we think the council committee structure might be refashioned to achieve the goals that are stated here in the memorandum and any comments thoughts or suggestions you might have you can send to me and i would incorporate them in our discussion or you're welcome to come on Wednesday at uh no i'm seeing it so much i won't you are certainly welcome to come on Wednesday um at 10 30 so is glm also looking at the issue of public way safety parking it is it's 10 to midnight but i could be happily talk about that um no no we never talk about parking after 11 o'clock never i all i did was ask if you were thank you that's all i want to know ok so real quick you might remember a long time ago you uh referred liaisons to us yes um that we kept putting on the back burner to get through this process now that that process has been adopted okah is meeting uh sort of at an off-cycle meeting this friday at 11 a.m and we are finally going to dig into liaisons so expect uh some report on liaisons from us at the january 6th meeting okay is that a special meeting it's always special percent for art percent for art kathy uh very quickly we did get to the point we reached full consensus unanimous on a revised version of the percent for art um and uh report on the major changes we made it has gone through lin to be sent out again to committees so the two committees that'll be reviewing that revision rc rc and finance and it's on the finance agenda for tomorrow so it's also posted if you original bylaw revised bylaw rationale for the changes okay paul what two words would you like to say i've got a number of things but i'm going to say them if you have more questions you can ask me state of the town first crack um open suggestions on how to do it better capital projects for listening sessions um went very well curious um follow up on that um four towns meeting was held uh no action was taken at the four towns meeting there's a smart growth workshop on thursday at 645 in this room um january 18th mlk breakfast please sign up for that and uh the school committee's meeting tomorrow night is canceled because there's no school they had already thought this through so they their meeting is now scheduled for wednesday at um 6 p.m at the high school library this is where they're gonna talk about universe uh expanding early childhood education and on the msba i have a number of things but i think uh i was going the school superintendent is going to make a presentation to the school committee now on wednesday um i think rather than i don't want to step on his toes because it's really a school project and so i'll make a similar presentation after after he makes his presentation thank you um just very quickly uh thank you for all for attending the uh listening sessions everyone came to at least once several people came to three or four of them the uh capital investment listening sessions additional comments are open until december 20th those comments will then be blended in to the comments that were received during the listening sessions by the consultants and that report will be available um and two other things at this point in time and and until further notice all standing and ad hoc committee appointments continue as they presently stand uh once we have reviewed the committee charges and voted on changes and voted on president and vice president we'll see what happens the next thing is that house 28 20 8 10 uh did was brought to our attention and it is my understanding that um a counselor has stepped forward and suggests said that they would be willing to sponsor a resolution okay is there any other question of me at this point yes the that's coming who is the counselor it's pat oh good you can do it together whatever you want to do so at a future meeting it would be a future meeting um i do think that um there is a time pressure for this particular request i'm gonna leave that up to you all to figure out so people can send in you know you can click on the link in the letter that was sent out so that you can send individual individually as municipal officials um and this is a bill that's supported by uh you know it's a top priority of the mass power forward coalition which is a coalition of like 200 organizations so it's one of it's one of their top three priorities so definitely worth supporting as a municipal official steve is there any word on the retreat that we are holding date for now we're going to have to go back and end um poll again because we don't seem to be able to come up with a very good date but i'll check back i i will check tomorrow with athena and get back to you on so don't give updates yet okay and mandy joe may know more about her dates because one of those was that the other thing is uh the um people from 132 north hampton road the valley cdc has offered to come to one of our meetings and so i've invited them to come to our meeting on the 6th and give us an update since many people have been asking including the residents of the area are there any other future agenda items yes yes future agenda item following up on what darcy said when people tell us to write and sign letters individually as town counselors that is something that i think we need to talk about as a group as to what our policy is because in the past i'm so shocked um in the past uh the select board did not do that we were a different kind of body but we were elected officials and we said if the select board had an opinion on something then yes we would sign off on it but we didn't say i'm a select board member and i think this because then everybody thinks your select board thought that just as they will think your town council thinks that and so we probably need to figure out if there are lines in there someplace maybe it's a referral to a committee um okay any other future agenda items counselor comments yes i just have a question for the town manager um i just wondered if you could update us on um resident capital requests if some came in and what they were about um i think one came in uh and that would be going to jcpc i don't have the list for you though we'll get more information for you okay is there a motion to adjourn so is there a second all those in favor raise your hand and say aye